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CITY LIMITS: PEOPLE’S PLAZA CELEBRATES 50 DAYS

AUGUST 6–12, 2020 I VOLUME 39 I NUMBER 27 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

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CULTURE: THE RESCUED ELEPHANTS OF HOHENWALD PAGE 22

FOOD & DRINK: SMALL RESTAURANTS DEAL WITH PROPERTY TAX INCREASE

MUSIC: WHERE ARE OUR BLACK WOMAN COUNTRY STARS?

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NEW SCHOOL Nashville students, families and staff brace for an unprecedented school year BY BAILEY BASHAM cover_8-6-20.indd 1

8/3/20 6:22 PM

Landscape paintings by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), widely regarded as Britain’s greatest painter, are now on view at the Frist. Come witness the power of Turner’s palpable atmospheres, stormy seascapes, transcendent effects of light, and epic scenes of history.

THROUGH SEPTEMBER 7

Downtown Nashville, 919 Broadway, Nashville, TN 37203 FristArtMuseum.org #TheFrist

Currently closing every day at 5:30 p.m.

Get your required advance timed tickets at FristArtMuseum.org/tickets. Learn more about our new safety procedures at FristArtMuseum.org/reopening.

J.M.W. Turner: Quest for the Sublime was organized in cooperation with Tate. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Platinum Sponsor

Silver Supporter

This exhibition is supported in part by the 2020 FRIST GALA PATRONS

Supporting Sponsor

Hospitality Sponsor

Education and Community Engagement Supporter

The Frist Art Museum is supported in part by

MONTH 1 – MONTH 2, 2018 NASHVILLE SCENE nashvillescene.com J.M.W. Turner|(1775–1851). The Blue Rigi,|Sunrise, 1842. Watercolor on paper, 11 3/4 x 17 3/4 in. Tate: Purchased with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund (with a contribution from the

Wolfson Foundation and including generous support from David and Susan Gradel, and from other members of the public through the Save the Blue Rigi appeal), Tate Members and other donors 2007. Photo © Tate, 2019

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CONTENTS

AUGUST 6, 2020

Protesters Celebrate 50 Days of Plaza Occupation .................................................6

What Good Are Galleries?

CITY LIMITS

People’s Plaza activists reflect on weeks of protesting racial injustice at the foot of the Tennessee State Capitol BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

The Old College Try ....................................8 Area universities take different approaches to opening for fall semester BY HANNAH HERNER

A Nashville Defense Attorney Takes Over the DA’s Conviction Review Unit ...............8

ART

How Nashville art galleries are adjusting during the pandemic BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

BOOKS

Don’t You Dare Say Nothin’ In Odie Lindsey’s Some Go Home, secrets, lies and myths collide across generations

Sunny Eaton will begin working to right wrongful convictions next month

BY ED TARKINGTON AND CHAPTER 16

BY STEVEN HALE

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB: National Museum of African American Music Opening Postponed Metro Shuts Down Viral ‘Fashion House’After Super-Spreading Soiree Virgin Hotels Nashville Announces Signature Restaurant and New Chef

MUSIC

High Fences Made of Stone ................... 26

COVER STORY

Why haven’t we had a Black woman country star?

New School

Nashville students, families and staff brace for an unprecedented school year

BY ANDREA WILLIAMS

BY BAILEY BASHAM

The Scene’s live-review column checks out Nashville MusiCares Ambassadors’ inaugural Music City Showcase

The Spin ................................................... 28

BY OLIVIA LADD

CRITICS’ PICKS Movies in the Park-ing Lot: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, sign up for a class with The Porch, get inspired in the kitchen by Crazy Delicious, celebrate baseball’s return, support the Nashville Free Store, support Project Sing Out! and more

29 FILM

Primal Stream XX Brand-new horror, a classic mock rapumentary and more, now available to stream BY JASON SHAWHAN

FOOD AND DRINK

NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

Feeling Taxed

How independent and immigrant-owned restaurants are dealing with Nashville’s property tax increase BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

MARKETPLACE

CULTURE

Trunk Show At The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, pachyderms regain their ‘wild elephant spirit’ BY ERICA CICCARONE

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917A Gallatin Pike S, Madison, TN nashvillescene.com | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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PET OF THE WEEK!

LOOK AT THIS FACE! MEET MIA PIA. She is a PURR-FECT 10 week old, 3 pound kitten who is full of spunk, playfulness and sweetness! It’s summertime, which means it’s “Kitten Season” so MANY cuddly kittens like Mia Pia come to NHA waiting for a chance to grow up with a loving family. Could they find a home with you? Paws crossed your answer is YES - Please visit NHA today! Call 615.352.1010 or visit nashvillehumane.org Located at 213 Oceola Ave., Nashville, TN 37209

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FROM BILL FREEMAN LET FREEDOM RING: COHEN, LEWIS AND THE FIGHT FOR AMERICA’S SPIRIT Each day’s headlines cue a familiar refrain: “Today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders.” That refrain echoed in my mind last week as some of our current leaders worked to seek out the truth and hold this White House accountable. I watched U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, Tennessee’s congressional champion for justice, bluntly question U.S. Attorney General William Barr during the July House Judiciary Committee hearing. Said Cohen: “On the first day of June, the world watched in horror on live television as federal agents deployed by the administration, and with you present and telling them to ‘get it done,’ used force to clear Lafayette Park so that the president — with you and others at your side — could walk across the park and have a photo op in front of St. John’s Church. “This was anathema to the bishop of the diocese and the rector of the church,” Cohen continued. “It was also an affront to the Constitution and to the American people.” Tennessee has been in good hands for a long time with Rep. Cohen, who continually looks out for every American’s safety, opportunity and ability to succeed. As he has said often, his goal is “to ensure that everyone — regardless of race, class or creed — has the opportunity to achieve their American dream.” I’d like to think Nashville has played a role in shaping Cohen’s efforts to champion fairness — and that it has helped shape other giants who’ve led the march for justice in our country. The late Rep. John Lewis was a college student in Nashville, where he practiced the tools that led him to become one of the most admired leaders of the civil rights movement. As two passionate and emboldened leaders, Cohen and Lewis experienced things in Nashville, both good and bad, that shaped them into the men who worked to create change and accomplish fairness for everyone. Cohen was a Vanderbilt University student just a few years after Lewis’ time in Nashville, and he was here during the especially turbulent efforts of dissent and protest that occurred in 1968. He was in school when Robert Kennedy spoke here in 1968, commenting on the “destiny of dissent” necessary to create change. “Today, as the world seems almost to unravel around us,” Kennedy said, “there is much — there is much to dissent from.” Lewis said for years that the youth of today has the greatest impact on seeking change. It was here in Nashville that he practiced attempts to get into “good trouble,” as he called it. He organized peaceful protests that led to many actual changes for good, including Nashville becoming the first Southern city to desegregate its downtown lunch counters. In the New York Times op-ed Lewis wrote just days before he passed away, the late civil rights leader said, “Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble.” Robert Kennedy’s words to Nashville

REP. STEVE COHEN also included a call to action: “I ask for your help to change the course of the United States — to give us back our spirit, give us back our heart, and give us back our soul.” We stand at the same place, more than 50 years later, asking each other for the same help once again. We need America to regain its spirit, its heart and its soul. Steve Cohen heard that call for help more than 50 years ago, and he’s dedicated his career to doing his part in the fight. If anything can encourage today’s youth to become capable and courageous leaders of tomorrow, it is Steve Cohen and the example he’s set. If we follow the peerless example set by the late John Lewis, our country can become the place of fairness and cooperation we all want and deserve. As Lewis wrote in his final words: “Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.”

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

Editor-in-Chief D. Patrick Rodgers Senior Editor Dana Kopp Franklin Associate Editor Alejandro Ramirez Arts Editor Laura Hutson Hunter Culture Editor Erica Ciccarone Music and Listings Editor Stephen Trageser Contributing Editors Jack Silverman, Abby White Staff Writers Stephen Elliott, Nancy Floyd, Steven Hale, Kara Hartnett, J.R. Lind, William Williams Contributing Writers Sadaf Ahsan, Radley Balko, Ashley Brantley, Maria Browning, Steve Cavendish, Chris Chamberlain, Lance Conzett, Steve Erickson, Randy Fox, Adam Gold, Seth Graves, Kim Green, Steve Haruch, Geoffrey Himes, Edd Hurt, Jennifer Justus, Christine Kreyling, Katy Lindenmuth, Craig D. Lindsey, Brittney McKenna, Marissa R. Moss, Noel Murray, Joe Nolan, Chris Parton, Betsy Phillips, John Pitcher, Margaret Renkl, Megan Seling, Jason Shawhan, Michael Sicinski, Ashley Spurgeon, Amy Stumpfl, Kay West, Andrea Williams, Cy Winstanley, Ron Wynn, Charlie Zaillian Art Director Elizabeth Jones Photographers Eric England, Daniel Meigs Graphic Designers Mary Louise Meadors, Tracey Starck Production Coordinator Christie Passarello Events and Marketing Director Olivia Moye Promotions Coordinator Caroline Poole Publisher Mike Smith Senior Advertising Solutions Managers Maggie Bond, Debbie Deboer, Sue Falls, Michael Jezewski, Carla Mathis, Heather Cantrell Mullins, Stevan Steinhart, Jennifer Trsinar, Keith Wright Advertising Solutions Manager William Shutes Sales Operations Manager Chelon Hill Hasty Advertising Solutions Associates Emma Benjamin, Price Waltman Special Projects Coordinator Susan Torregrossa President Frank Daniels III Chief Financial Officer Todd Patton Corporate Production Director Elizabeth Jones Vice President of Marketing Mike Smith IT Director John Schaeffer Circulation and Distribution Director Gary Minnis For advertising information please contact: Mike Smith, msmith@nashvillescene.com or 615-844-9238 FW PUBLISHING LLC Owner Bill Freeman VOICE MEDIA GROUP National Advertising 1-888-278-9866 vmgadvertising.com

Copyright©2020, Nashville Scene. 210 12th Ave. S., Ste. 100, Nashville, TN 37203. Phone: 615-244-7989. The Nashville Scene is published weekly by FW Publishing LLC. The publication is free, one per reader. Removal of more than one paper from any distribution point constitutes theft, and violators are subject to prosecution. Back issues are available at our office. Email: All email addresses consist of the employee’s first initial and last name (no space between) followed by @nashvillescene.com; to reach contributing writers, email editor@nashvillescene.com. Editorial Policy: The Nashville Scene covers news, art and entertainment. In our pages appear divergent views from across the community. Those views do not necessarily represent those of the publishers. Subscriptions: Subscriptions are available at $150 per year for 52 issues. Subscriptions will be posted every Thursday and delivered by third-class mail in usually five to seven days. Please note: Due to the nature of third-class mail and postal regulations, any issue(s) could be delayed by as much as two or three weeks. There will be no refunds issued. Please allow four to six weeks for processing new subscriptions and address changes. Send your check or Visa/MC/AmEx number with expiration date to the above address.

In memory of Jim Ridley, editor 2009-2016

NASHVILLE SCENE | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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Music is a fundamental part of living, nourishing all corners of our culture in good times and bad. The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is honored to be keeper of the flame for one very important piece of that great American mosaic. CountryMusicHallofFame.org

nashvillescene.com | AUGUST 6 â€“ AUGUST 12, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

CITY LIMITS

PROTESTERS CELEBRATE 50 DAYS OF PLAZA OCCUPATION

People’s Plaza activists reflect on weeks of protesting racial injustice at the foot of the Tennessee State Capitol BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

PHOTOS: MATT MASTERS

n June 12, following a wave of Black Lives Matter protests that swept Nashville and the country, a group of activists decided to set up camp on the steps of the Tennessee State Capitol. They aimed to establish an autonomous zone, similar to the protest site that had sprung up in Seattle a few days prior. They called the area Ida B. Wells Plaza — named for the pioneering Black journalist and activist — and demanded to speak with Gov. Bill Lee about removing the Nathan Bedford Forrest bust from the Capitol, as well as defunding and demilitarizing the police. Earlier that day, Lee issued a statement saying that camping on state property “not expressly designated as a campground area” is illegal, adding “that law will be enforced.” No arrests were made that night. Tennessee Highway Patrol officers took down demonstrators’ tents the next day, but the protesters didn’t leave. After hours of stand-offs on the lawn of the Capitol, the campers and several supporters moved across the street and set up a new site. They began organizing shifts for people to stay overnight in the plaza and launched Twitter and Instagram accounts under the handle People’s Plaza. On Aug. 1, protesters celebrated the 50day mark of plaza occupation, which they say is the longest continuous protest in the country.

“It’s been a blur,” says activist Justin Jones, one of the first to camp out at the site. “What started as a protest became a community with a life of its own.” Saturday night’s celebration was full of music and dancing, as protesters — nearly all of them wearing masks in compliance with COVID-19 guidelines — gathered on the sidewalk across the street from the Capitol, waving signs and blasting music from Megan Thee Stallion, Rico Nasty, Missy Elliott and more. They turned the crosswalk stretching across Dr. M.L.K. Jr. Boulevard into a runway, showing off their best moves. Longtime activist the Rev. Venita Lewis, also a frequent presence at the plaza, spoke at the event. She thanked and congratulated the protesters on their continued occupation, saying, “This space will never be the same again.” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Jeff Yarbro also spoke, telling the protesters their occupation represented “50 days where this group of people has made the undeniable claim that the people’s house belongs to the people.” Several nights of action led up to the day-50 celebration, including vigils for victims of police violence and immigrants detained by ICE. The site has lasted seven-plus weeks despite nighttime raids and mass arrests at the Capitol. Most arrests were made on the grounds of criminal trespass and took place after bigger events — like on July 4, when

ACTIVISTS CELEBRATE 50 DAYS OF CONTINUOUS PROTEST

JUSTIN JONES 55 people were arrested following a massive march organized by Teens for Equality. Many protesters arrested on July 4 accused state troopers of unnecessary force and of leaving them out in the sun for hours with their hands zip-tied. They also reported unsanitary conditions in the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office, and witnessed correctional officers use a chemical agent on a man in a cell. Over the course of June alone, WSMV reports, Tennessee spent nearly $880,000 in overtime pay and travel expenses for state troopers to observe the protest — and that Lee still had no plans to meet with the protesters. Protesters have noted several times that they likely would have gone home by now had Lee simply met with them. Jones, who has been arrested five times during the occupation, says the run-ins with state troopers were traumatic for many protesters. Many protesters were arrested multiple times, and one People’s Plaza press release from July estimated there had been more than 150 arrests made at that point. “It’s definitely shown just the fragility of

the state, in terms of the fact that they’re willing to spend all this money for armed troopers to guard an empty building,” says Jones, “rather than just come down and have a conversation about a crisis in America and in Tennessee.” On July 9, the protesters claimed a victory when the State Capitol Commission voted to relocate the bust of Forrest, an early Ku Klux Klan leader and alleged war criminal, to the Tennessee State Museum. The protesters decided to carry on in the plaza. But now the activists are beginning to consider a transition stage. While they voted a recent nightly assembly to continue on until at least Aug. 8, the future of the movement may look different than the current 24/7 occupation — group members say they’re looking to create something more sustainable for the long-term struggle against racial injustice. The protest site has grown and changed a lot over the past 50-plus days — from just a single tent and a handful of people to a community that organizes email campaigns and sets up socially distanced dance and yoga events in the plaza. But for activists like Sheronica Hayes, it’s the consistency of movement that’s most impressive. “I think that, for me, it hasn’t been about what changed,” says Hayes. “It’s been about what remained [consistent], and that consistency has been people really believing in what we’re here for and what we’re fighting for. I think that the most impactful changes have been from that consistency of us building relationships and … just becoming more confident in our ability to assemble and organize.” For all the nights spent outside, the multiple arrests and the challenges of organizing a movement during a global pandemic, the activists say it has been worth it — and they’re optimistic about the future. “We didn’t know that we would even come this far,” says activist Jonelle Christopher. “We just started and said, ‘Hopefully we can stay one night.’ And Gov. Lee. said we wouldn’t stay one night and that we would be arrested and charged for camping on state grounds. And so we’ve made it this far by being able to continue to reclaim this space. And so it’s been a major, major win for all of us, and we want to continue to win.” EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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CITY LIMITS

THE OLD COLLEGE TRY

Area universities take different approaches to opening for fall semester Kramer says tenured and tenure-track faculty like himself felt it is important to protect faculty members who aren’t tenure track — temporary and graduate student teachers who have less job security and might feel pressured to teach in-person. The petition also notes that teachers with young children might not have child care, and that teachers who are caretakers of elderly parents are also especially at risk. “One of our concerns is that both junior faculty that don’t have tenure and more precarious faculty might not feel like they’re in a position to request remote teaching,” Kramer says. There is also a heavily research-based Vanderbilt parent letter circulating that emphasizes the need for more COVID-19 testing. According to the letter, a test of the whole student body before coming to campus and another test four weeks later is not enough. At press time, that had 42 parent and student signatures, most of them anonymous. Vanderbilt has not issued a response to the faculty petition or the parent letter, but the school’s website states: “Individual colleges/ schools have developed (or are developing) their own processes to match the pedagogical demands of their courses to the spaces available for physically distanced teaching.” Local colleges have also chosen a range of different testing plans. Fisk University boasts the most mandatory student-bodywide testing. They require one test before arriving on campus, one after two weeks of socially distanced online classes to start the semester, and another testing cycle of the student body during the five remaining weeks of in-person classes. On the other

A NASHVILLE DEFENSE ATTORNEY TAKES OVER THE DA’S CONVICTION REVIEW UNIT

District Attorney’s Office, working to right wrongful convictions and free innocent people from prison. The unit was created in 2017 but has not yet secured any exonerations. Eaton is complimentary of the work the unit has done so far, but her appointment — the hiring of a defense attorney from outside the office — feels like a reboot. “Did I ever see myself going to work for a prosecutor’s office?” she asks. “Truthfully, no. I think most people who know me would be surprised by that decision.” Eaton got her start working in entertainment law on Music Row, but she says she’d always wanted to be a criminal defense attorney. It wasn’t long before she got a job at the Metro Public Defender’s Office, where she worked for four years — first under Ross Alderman, then Dawn Deaner. After that, Eaton started her own firm, working alongside several other former public defenders, until a series of events changed her life. She got married, and when her wife developed a rare, life-threatening medical condition, the couple was forced to reevaluate their life. They sold everything and embarked on a road trip through Mexico and Central America. Eaton and her wife have been back in Tennessee for about a year now. Eaton says her decision to leave the defense side of the bar was motivated by a desire to influence the system in a broader and deeper way.

Sunny Eaton will begin working to right wrongful convictions next month BY STEVEN HALE

n more than a decade as a lawyer, Nashville defense attorney Sunny Eaton has seen clients she believed were innocent go to prison. “Every defense lawyer has those two or three cases that keep us up at night, and will forever,” Eaton says. That said, Eaton’s new gig makes a lot of sense — even though she’s as surprised as anyone that she’ll be taking it. Starting next month, Eaton will lead the Conviction Review Unit at the Davidson County

side of the spectrum, Belmont’s “Defending Our Den” website at one point said students could get testing for a “modest out-of-pocket fee” — that has since been removed. Belmont’s return to campus website now reads, “Testing will be available on campus for symptomatic individuals and any campus member determined by Health Services to require testing.” Lipscomb is taking a similar stance. There is no routine testing for students — only if they have symptoms or have come in contact with someone who has tested positive. Tennessee State University, like Fisk and Vanderbilt, will require negative COVID-19 test results for each student before checking into the residence halls. TSU is the only university offering a discount on tuition due to the heavy use of online classes. They’re providing a 15 percent discount to in-state undergraduate students who won’t be living on campus, and a special “e-rate” for out-ofstate students. The other area universities are charging the same tuition rates regardless of how many classes are being taken online versus in person. Fisk University is taking a different approach from the rest when it comes to

SUNNY EATON

PHOTO: JOSHUA COREY

housands of college students will move into Nashville this month to start their fall semester, though thanks to COVID-19, things will look different than they did last year. But some say not different enough. Belmont University, Lipscomb University, Vanderbilt University, Fisk University and Tennessee State University all have a banner on their homepages touting a plan to return to campus. These plans have a few things in common: condensed semesters, sending students back home by Thanksgiving; quarantine housing at the ready. They’ll all offer online courses, but none are going completely remote. All five of those schools will also host students in on-campus housing, but it remains to be seen just how many teachers will be willing to come to campus to teach. More than 500 Vanderbilt University faculty, staff and students have signed a petition to make remote online teaching not a special accommodation, but the default option. “It didn’t seem like the university was really consulting the instructors, who on the one hand have the most expertise on how to run a classroom effectively, and on the other hand were going to be on the front lines of possible health risks,” says Paul Kramer, associate professor of history at Vanderbilt. “The university announced pretty unspecific plans about trying to get it to be sort of half-and-half remote and face-to-face. The idea would be that you would be teaching on campus face-to-face unless you submitted a form requesting an exemption on the basis of medical criteria.”

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

BY HANNAH HERNER

“[As defense attorneys] our power to change things and power to impact lives is very finite,” she says. “It is person by person, and that is tremendously important. It is. But for me, I reached a crossroads where I wanted to have a bigger part in the conversation about reform and change, and what this justice system means and what it’s come to mean.” Eaton says she sees District Attorney Glenn Funk as a part of the movement of progressive prosecutors who have come into office in recent years and have

structuring the fall semester. The university has split the semester into two seven-week sessions. For the first seven weeks, freshmen will move onto campus along with some special groups, including the Fisk Jubilee Singers and athletes. After that, freshmen will move home and the university will be cleaned before upperclassmen move in for the remaining seven weeks. “We prioritized the arrival of our freshman students because it’s critically important that they start their journey and their career at Fisk as normally as possible,” says Joseph Watkins, chief of staff at Fisk University. “It’s really important for them to get acclimated and cultured to how we operate.” No matter what the details of the plans that Nashville universities put forth, students will have to cooperate for any hope of keeping the spread of COVID-19 under control. “It’s a shared responsibility,” Watkins says. “We are all united in this fight of COVID-19. I just hope that they can trust us and work with us and cooperate with some of our guidelines. If they’re able to cooperate with our guidelines and be allies with us in this process, we won’t have to curtail activities.” EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

turned away from the old way of doing things. Funk has, for instance, worked with the public defender’s office to divert driver’s license charges that disproportionately affect lower-income people, and he recently announced his office would stop prosecuting simple possession of marijuana. After Funk approached her about running the CRU, Eaton says she came back to him with a list of conditions that would need to be met in order for her to do the job. Those conditions included the ability to choose her own investigators and work with independence — she’ll be based in a different building than the rest of the DA’s office. Eaton wants to increase awareness of how people can apply to have their cases reviewed and emphasize transparency around how the unit’s decisions are made. Most importantly, though, she says she wants to get started. Her first day on the job is Sept. 1, but she says, “I have a trial transcript in my hand and will be participating in meetings over the next few weeks.” “One thing that I feel very good about the mandate that I’ve been given is to act with a sense of urgency, and I really intend to do that,” Eaton says. “Because either way, when I get a case to investigate, we either quickly need to restore confidence in that conviction, or continue the confidence we had in it, or we need to remedy it.” EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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THE GULCH

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ALICIA SULLIVAN AND HER SIBLINGS AT THEIR WORKSTATIONS IN THEIR HOUSE

NEW SCHOOL Nashville students, families and staff brace for an unprecedented school year BY BAILEY BASHAM

NASHVILLE SCENE | AUGUST 6 â€“ AUGUST 12, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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licia Sullivan says things have been pretty strange this year, and not just because high school can be weird. In previous years, late July meant the last days of summer break — the days just before another stretch of required reading, homework assignments, study groups and marching-band practice. But this year, there have been no schoolsupply lists to tick off with back-to-school shopping trips, no end-of-summer hurrahs. In the last days of July, Sullivan wasn’t coordinating where to meet friends before class on her first week of school, or what to wear. Instead, she was making sure her laptop was charged and that the workspace her mom prepared for her and her siblings was ready to go. For the foreseeable future, Sullivan and her siblings — along with more than 86,000 other Metro Nashville Public Schools students — will be doing all their schoolwork virtually. “Honestly, it’s been a lot less stressful,” says Sullivan, a junior at McGavock High School. “We don’t have to go shopping or figure out where in school all our classes are or see what friends we might have lunch with. I feel that [taking our classes remotely] is safer than us being in class right now, both for the teachers and for the students. It’s a relief to not have to worry about those things.” For the past two years, Sullivan has played baritone saxophone in the marching band and soaked up as much as she can in her history classes. History is her favorite subject, and she particularly enjoys learning about the major wars. As of late, she’s also curious about how the era of COVID-19 will be remembered. As of July 30, there have been more than 4.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Roughly 100,000 of those have been in Tennessee. As the number of cases continues to rise and the 2020-21 academic year begins, many school districts have opted to begin virtually. Director of Schools Adrienne Battle announced in early July that MNPS students would be returning to school in August, albeit virtually. “This won’t be six-and-a-half hours a day of video meetings,” Battle said in a statement. “There will be a healthy mix of synchronous classroom experiences, where students will interact with their teachers and peers in real time, and a lot of asynchronous learning experiences, where students will be able to work at their own pace to complete the tasks and assignments required of them. That way, students will be learning at the same pace as their peers and in such a way that they can move between a virtual and an in-person class environment as the situation requires if we have to shut

down schools or the district again due to spikes in COVID-19.”

MNPS CLASSES BEGAN this week for the 86,000-plus students in the district. For the foreseeable future, students in grades kindergarten through 12 will be required to log in for virtual class sessions Monday through Friday. “We are expecting school to be virtual, with students being able to maintain as much of their normal schedule as possible,” says Keith Ekhator, a school social worker and coordinator. “There will be 12 to 14 hours of synchronous education per week, and the teachers are all required to have virtual office hours for two hours per day to respond to needs and address specific questions. Teachers will come back with specific needs when classes start, and we’ll have to have on-demand supports to address the different needs as they arise. We have a wealth of supports throughout our department, and all our partners come together to meet student needs.” Those supports include Centerstone, which provides treatment for mental health issues and substance abuse, as well as Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Community Achieves and STARS, a nonprofit that helps students navigate issues like bullying, substance abuse and violence. Nicole Valentine, Community Achieves’ site coordinator, says the district’s focus for the first 20 days of school will be helping students adjust to a new way of learning. “In addition to building community and relationships, the first 20 days will be focused on culture and acclimating the students to the school’s expectation with the mindset that eventually we will be going into the school building,” Valentine says. Community Achieves is an MNPS initiative focused on personalizing learning for students and engaging parents and the community. For some students, that might mean providing food assistance — as Community Achieves does at Two Rivers Middle School — or providing school supplies and helping families secure housing. Program director Alison McArthur says the district has directed all of Nashville’s schools to contact 100 percent of their students in the first 20 days and ask about the need for support services or school supplies. “We will also ask how the families would like to receive any updates, whether that be text message, email or phone call,” McArthur says. Sean Braisted is executive officer of communications and community engagement for MNPS. He says Battle has plans to re-evaluate and announce at least two weeks before Labor Day whether class sessions will remain virtual. “[Classes will be virtual] through at least

Of the 86,000 students in the district, McAdams says more than 10,000 students — ranging in age from 3 to 21 — are served by the Department of Exceptional Education. Labor Day, and whether we will be able to offer in-person classes will be based on the level of community spread of COVID-19,” says Braisted. “Once we are able to go back in person, parents will have the opportunity to continue in the virtual environment. Metro Schools has been preparing and planning since schools closed in March. Our teams have been developing plans for various reopening scenarios throughout the summer and having planning sessions to create guidelines and implementation policies for schools once they reopen.” For some families, this shift is doable. The Sullivan family is well-prepared. Alicia says her mom, Martha Lopez, has set up a workstation for her and her siblings downstairs so they can all do schoolwork together. “We feel ready,” Lopez says. “I know Alicia doesn’t necessarily like learning [by] just reading off the computer, but we know how much is at stake here.” But for others, like those solo-parenting or working full-time from home, remote learning presents significant challenges. Take Ms. M, who requested anonymity to protect the privacy of her son Jay, who has autism. (We’ve changed Jay’s name to protect his privacy.) Jay receives accommodations to help him with his schoolwork. He is also classified as an English Learner, meaning the language spoken in his home is not English. Ms. M., who is a single mother and a non-native English speaker, says Jay has trouble sitting in one place for long periods of time, and staying on task during virtual class sessions is challenging. She sits with him and helps him go through the lessons as often as she can, but she can’t always make sense of the lessons he’s learning. And if she can’t understand well enough to explain the material to Jay, she wonders where that leaves her son. “I would like him to go back to school in person, but I worry about the virus,” says Ms. M. “It’s good for him to meet his friends and teachers and gain more skills than he can just studying at home. But it’s good if he has a chance to study at home and school too. I can learn from what he learns, and that helps us have better communication, but I think he needs support with his behavior. Sometimes he gets upset that he cannot do the work by himself. He answers a question, and it’s wrong and he gives up. He needs the support from a teacher who could help redirect him and not just put him on a computer.” Debbie McAdams, executive director of

the Department of Exceptional Education, says she has seen concerns from parents in situations similar to that of Ms. M. and Jay. Of the 86,000 students in the district, McAdams says more than 10,000 students — ranging in age from 3 to 21 — are served by the Department of Exceptional Education. “We have heard and we understand the concern from parents that have children with significant cognitive disabilities mainly that need different options,” McAdams says. “All students will have equitable access to core content through scaffolds and differentiation of instruction, and our students will receive special education intervention and services as outlined in their [individual education plans]. Teachers and service providers are developing a Continuous Learning Individualized Plan that does not replace the IEP but instead identifies how MNPS will implement the interventions, services and supports outlined in a student’s IEP or … during virtual learning.” CLIPs require teachers to plan for and document the strategies they will employ in a virtual setting to meet the needs detailed in a student’s IEP. Special education teachers and service providers have developed the plans with input from students, families and general education teachers. The CLIP must be updated each time a new IEP is finalized, and McAdams says all legal requirements of the IEPs are still in place — the only thing that has changed is the mode of implementation. Though some parents are concerned about how things will work virtually, Joyce Spriggs says both she and her daughter — who receives support from the exceptional education program through an IEP — are unconcerned about how the support services will translate from traditional classroom assistance to virtual accommodations. “She’s happy to have a shortened school day and to not have to deal with any classroom pressure,” says Spriggs. “[Her] needs are well taken care of through the McGavock cluster [the zone composed of the elementary and middle schools that feed into McGavock High], and I know that I have people to reach out to if there is a problem. Everyone is invested in making sure that my child has a good year, and if we are struggling and find that we aren’t able to do the things we need to do to excel, there will be a million people we can reach out to. The children may only be there for an hour on the screen, but the teacher is still there

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SOCIAL WORKER KEITH EKHATOR says students often bring their home lives with them to school. “You can address and help alleviate some problems as a social worker, but oftentimes, we focus so much on academic rigor that we forget the problems a student experienced the night before that they have to bring in to school with them,” Ekhator says. “They may not be able to be present at their desk because they might be thinking about what happened the night before at home or in their neighborhood. That trauma can be brought into the classroom, and it can negatively affect our students. “For meeting needs virtually, we align ourselves with the telehealth guidelines to make sure we are doing things ethically and effectively to meet students’ needs,” he continues. “We also drafted some guidelines of our own as a team to address things like crisis response and threat assessment policies. In previous years, we were the ones hands-on doing the crisis support and suicide protocol, and now we’re trying to modify how we do that. Things are going to look different, and we won’t entirely know how until we get started.” Monica Coverson, director of social work

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

for the whole day and is there to help. The district has done a good job in providing us with everything they could think of. Metro has never had to do this before, and we’re all essentially figuring things out as we go.” Homeless liaison Catherine Knowles says the core of the Homeless Education Resource and Outreach program for Families in Transition will remain the same. During a typical year, the HERO program serves upward of 3,000 students, providing transportation to and from school, enrollment assistance, educational support services, community referrals and emotional support in the school setting. The National Center for Homeless Education recently reported that more than 1.5 million students experienced homelessness at some point during the previous three years, as of the 2017-18 school year. Knowles says that last academic year, the HERO program served 3,945 students. Even with classes being held virtually, she expects that number to increase. “Special transportation will be on hold until in-person learning resumes, but the HERO program will continue to offer the supports that we do in a typical year,” says Knowles. “Requests for shelter and affordable housing are likely to increase as evictions resume, and we will continue to connect families with the community services providers who provide these supports. The district is addressing needs related to technology for all students, and laptops and hot spots are being distributed directly to those who need them by schools.” Braisted says that since the end of July, MNPS has distributed more than 17,000 laptops to students across the district, and an additional 19,000 devices have been prepared for delivery. “Including the 10,000 laptops deployed this spring, MNPS has identified up to 44,000 school- or district-purchased devices throughout the system,” says Braisted. “We also distributed 17,000 hot spots to families without internet access. We do anticipate we’ll have enough for those students who don’t have access to their own devices.”

STUDENTS PICKING UP SCHOOL SUPPLIES AT EXPLORE COMMUNITY SCHOOL

Virtual classes may provide an opportunity for students who are less likely to participate in a classroom setting to take ownership of their learning. for MNPS, says despite the best efforts of social workers, there is only so much that can be addressed when advocates are limited. “We have 62 in the district in total, and 169 schools covered,” Coverson says. “We love the work we do, but in order to meet the needs of our families, we need more social workers. The recommendation is that there be one social worker for 250 students, but in Tennessee, [there is] one for every 2,000 students. We’re behind in regards to mental health. There’s advocates at state level for school counseling, but as far as the responsibilities for social workers, it’s always somebody who is in a dual role that doesn’t have the space to fully advocate for students.” Community Achieves’ Valentine says that in spite of all the potential concerns, she thinks there are also some potential advantages to virtual learning. Virtual classes may provide an opportunity for students who are less likely to participate in a classroom setting to take ownership of

their learning. “There are a lot of factors of course, and things will look different for a kindergartener going to school for the first time versus for a seventh-grader who is familiar with middle school and their teachers,” says Valentine. “But I think in a lot of cases, this will be an opportunity for our students to learn without having an audience, so to speak. For those students who are extroverts and who love having that engagement, it will be a bit harder, but for students who are always aware of how they’re being perceived, they may be more likely to speak up and engage without worrying about being embarrassed.” As noted by Braisted, the decision on whether in-person classes will resume this semester will be made prior to Labor Day, and parents will have the opportunity to choose whether their children continue with virtual learning or return to the classroom. But Spriggs says many issues will have to be addressed before she would feel

comfortable making the decision to send her children back to school. “For my son, there is some sadness over not getting to be with his friends, and I know ideally, he would be back at school in that social environment,” she says. “My decision would be based on safety, versus saying I want to hurry up and put my kid back in school. But at this moment, I’d rather have my children at home where I can control the environment better rather than in a classroom of 30 children.” Ms. M. says she feels the same way. Her son Jay would do well having teachers at his side to help him stay on task and support him through assignments, and though she has her concerns, she thinks working at home will give Jay the opportunity to realize that he is capable of learning to get things right. “Learning at home, the parents get to be more involved in their child’s learning process, and that is good. We can work on his listening skills, going slow and trying again. I think it will really help us both to have this opportunity to learn more and work on our communication. I just worry a little bit. His teachers know how to help him and explain things, and I’m still learning. I still have to try to figure out how to help. I don’t know what to do in all the situations. We will have to wait and see.” That’s what Alicia Sullivan plans to do — wait and see. In the meantime, she will still be playing her baritone saxophone, still talking with friends and still learning as much as she can in her history classes. “I’m going to miss the marching band,” she says. “I’ve been doing it for a few years, and that’s not going to happen this year, but overall, we just have to be patient and understand that everyone is still trying to figure things out too. I think we are in good hands.” EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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CRITICS’ PICKS W E E K L Y

R O U N D U P

O F

T H I N G S

T O

D O

about how much Chihuly’s maximalist work looks like the COVID-19 virus molecule. Tuesdays-Sundays through Jan. 10 at Cheekwood, 1200 Forrest Park Drive

MUSIC

It turns protest chants (like “Fuck 12” and “I can’t breathe”) into hooks that stick long past the EP’s breakneck eight-minute runtime. For something mellower but still unique to this moment in history, try LAURA HUTSON HUNTER ODD CURE from D.C.-area hip-hop artist Oddisee. Recorded under lockdown in the [QUARANTINE ANGST] spring, ODD CURE seamlessly blends PONDER YOUR 2020 TIME CAPSULE chilled-out, soulful sounds and cautiousON BANDCAMP FRIDAY but-hopeful lyrics with actual recordings If one were to put together a time of phone conversations with loved ones and capsule of new music that captures the colleagues about the virus. Also in the uncharted weirdness and darkness of time capsule: Saving for a Custom the current moment, something Van, a tribute to champion by NNAMDÏ belongs in there. power-pop songsmith Adam The Nigerian-American, EDITOR’S NOTE: Schlesinger of Fountains of Chicago-residing musician AS A RESPONSE TO THE ONGOING COVID-19 PANDEMIC, Wayne, whose sudden death born Nnamdi Ogbonnaya WE’VE CHANGED THE FOCUS OF THE April 1 from COVID-19 has had three releases (and CRITICS’ PICKS SECTION TO INCLUDE complications was shocking, counting) so far in 2020, and ACTIVITIES YOU CAN PARTAKE IN devastating and maddening. they’re all wildly different. WHILE YOU’RE AT HOME. The 36-track compilation — a Where the cross-genre benefit for nonprofit group tapestry BRAT and ZappaMusiCares’ coronavirus relief esque Krazy Karl showcased the fund — features Schlesinger’s crooner-rapper-shredder-drummer’s Gen-X peers like Nada Surf and Ted Leo unique skill set and boundless will to create, alongside millennial acolytes including Bree Black Plight is NNAMDÏ at his most direct. McKenna of Tacocat and Sadie Dupuis from Recorded and released in June at the Speedy Ortiz. But whoever’s music has been height of the Black Lives Matter protests sustaining you during this time, kick them stemming from the killing of George Floyd, some dough on Bandcamp Friday, Aug. 7 — the three-song EP distills the simmering the now-monthly tradition during which, for rage of a nation into a riff-tastic funk24 hours, the music-streaming site waives punk-prog-emo hybrid (think Minutemen its 10-15 percent cut of all artists’ sales. meets At the Drive-In) that doesn’t mince words about race and policing in America. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

[I LIKE TO DRINK EGG CREAMS, AND I LIKE TO FIGHT NAZIS]

MOVIES IN THE PARK-ING LOT: SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDERVERSE

ART

It was such a shame to watch June come and go without the Scene’s long-running annual Movies in the Park lineup — but it was a necessary step in helping slow the spread of COVID-19. Well, we’ve found a way to bring our free, long-running film series back, and do it responsibly. This week, we’re kicking off our Movies in the Park-ing Lot series with 2018’s Academy Award-winning SpiderMan: Into the Spider-Verse. Co-directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman, Spider-Verse is an innovative film in a number of regards — from its combination of CGI and 2D animation techniques to its incorporation of fringe comic-book characters like Spider-Ham (voiced brilliantly by comic John Mulaney) and Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage, also brilliant). Also delightful is Shameik Moore’s portrayal of Miles Morales, a deeply relatable if conflicted teen and Peter Parker’s successor as Spider-Man. Into the Spider-Verse is just as enthralling the first time as it is the third or fifth (trust me), and it’ll go over well with the whole family. In order to attend, enter our lottery for parking passes. We’ll select 50 winners for each screening, six guests maximum per car. Visit nashvillemoviesinthepark. com for more information and to enter the parking-pass lottery, and stay tuned for the rest of this month’s titles. 8 p.m. Thursday at OneC1TY, 8 City Blvd. D. PATRICK RODGERS

up like a glass Las Vegas is the real reason for going. Outdoor installations include two pieces on the newly accessible Ann & Monroe Carell Jr. Family Sculpture Trail, as well as two new site-specific works created for this exhibition. A monumental sculpture is on view in the Frist Learning Center Great Hall. The Cheekwood grounds are always magical, but at night it gets even better — the temperature drops, the crickets and frogs and fireflies are all singing and buzzing and blinking away, the mood gets more romantic. Add some of the blown-glass sculptures by Chihuly to that mix, and you might forget you’re in the middle of a pandemic — if it weren’t for the required masks and the safe-distance requirements. Advance online ticket purchase is required — prices vary from around $15 to $30. One tip: Try not to think

[RAZZLE DAZZLE]

GO TO CHIHULY NIGHTS AT CHEEKWOOD

Sure, you could say Dale Chihuly’s sculptures are over-the-top, gaudy or artificial — but you could say the same about Liberace’s entire persona, and just think of how much fun it would be to see him play at Cheekwood. But seriously, don’t let an aversion to ostentatious art keep you from enjoying one of the few truly transcendent experiences of the summer. From 5-10 p.m. through Jan. 10, the Cheekwood grounds are open for visitors to walk around and see the installation of two large-scale site-specific installations in the gardens. There are smaller pedestal works inside, but seeing the Chihuly behemoths lit

“SUMMER SUN,” DALE CHIHULY

FILM

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

CHIHULY NIGHTS AT CHEEKWOOD

nashvillescene.com | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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[NECTAR AND AMBROSIA]

GET INSPIRED IN THE KITCHEN BY CRAZY DELICIOUS

Here we are in the dog days, when it feels like the worst is simultaneously over and yet to come. Gone are the sunny spring days spent having hourlong lawn chats with friends, and socially distant hikes in city parks. Instead, I shower myself with DEET before I water the garden and take a cold shower afterward. With fewer outdoor activities — and fewer indoor spots to enjoy safely — I find myself knocking around the house in a daze, tripping over unfinished craft projects that I started in earnest at the beginning of the pandemic. Sound familiar? The Porch Writers’ Collective is ready to revive us with a newly announced slate of quality multiweek and one-day workshops. As always, the Porch offers classes appropriate for both seasoned writers and those toe-dippers who want to try something new. You can find your writer’s voice with Lisa Bubis, discover flash fiction with Simon Han, or get a foundational understanding of young-adult lit with Stewart Lewis. Ready for a bigger project? Author Mary Adkins will teach a four-week novel jump-start course. Opportunities to write and study poetry abound, with classes like The Poetry of Extraordinary Times with Meg Wade, and Modern Sonnets with Elise Anderson. For something more niche, check out Creating Diverse Worlds in Fiction with Claire Jimenez and Soul Foods: Black Writers on Cuisine, Craft and Culture with Destiny O. Birdsong. (Wade and Birdsong have both published poems in the Scene recently.) Find the full slate of workshops at porchtn.org, and prepare to unmelt your brain. ERICA CICCARONE

NASHVILLE SCENE | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

FILM

[A LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAIN]

CATCH UP ON BROADWAY-THEMED DOCUMENTARIES

Broadway may be dark, but theater fans can still celebrate — and perhaps even learn more about — their favorite art form through a variety of streamable documentaries. Hamilton-heads might start with We Are Freestyle Love Supreme, available on Hulu, which looks back to the origins of the hip-hop improv show established by Hamilton and In the Heights creators LinManuel Miranda and Thomas Kail, along with their Wesleyan classmate/performer Anthony Veneziale. The film takes us from their early days of making up lyrics in the basement of the Drama Book Shop to their 2019-20 run on Broadway. Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, which is available on Netflix, chronicles the ill-fated 1981 production of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s musical Merrily We Roll Along — “a sure-fire hit that wasn’t.” Every Act of Life (streaming for free via pbs.org) offers an intimate look at four-time Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally’s remarkable life and career. And for something completely different, check out Bathtubs Over Broadway (available on Netflix) — an affectionate look at the unexpected world of industrial musicals, which were big-budget productions written from the 1950s-’70s for brands like Ford, General Electric and McDonald’s. Winner of the Best Documentary Screenplay at the 2019 Writers Guild Awards, Bathtubs features interviews with everyone from Chita Rivera and Martin Short to the late Florence Henderson. AMY STUMPFL [ODD BALL]

CELEBRATE BASEBALL’S RETURN

After being MIA for April, May, June and most of July for the first time in more than a century, Major League Baseball is finally back. For now. The plan is a 60-game season (in contrast to the customary 162) with no fans in attendance, teams’ schedules reworked to minimize travel, and social distancing measures (NO SPITTING) firmly in place. They’re also going to test-drive a bunch of rule adjustments — like a designated hitter in both the American and National leagues, a threebatter minimum for relief pitchers, starting

extra innings with a runner on second, and an expanded playoff field with 16 teams vying for the World Series. The purist in me bristles at these changes, and my inner skeptic has serious doubts they’ll make it all the way to the fall, considering that a number of players have tested positive and several games have already been canceled, just a couple weeks into the season. But my glass-half-full side says: It’s going to be weird no matter what, and it’s still baseball, so let’s enjoy it while it’s here. The league’s streaming service, MLB. TV, is currently offering three-day free trials, with various packages available depending on your level of fandom. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN COMMUNITY

[BRAIN FREEZE]

CELEBRATE BASEBALL’S RETURN

SPORTS

The past four months of cooking at home have been enough to exhaust anyone’s kitchen repertoire. But experimentation doesn’t always yield an edible result. Crazy Delicious, a competitive cooking show produced by the BBC and streaming on Netflix, is all about the middle of that Venn diagram. In each episode, contestants take on three challenges to appease the Food Gods, aka celebrity chef judges Carla Hall (a Nashville native!), Heston Blumenthal and Niklas Ekstedt. The gods desire a dish featuring a magic ingredient, a reimagination of a classic recipe and a full meal. The specific assignments (as relayed cheekily and chummily by host Jayde Adams) change in each episode, but the criteria remain the same. If the contestant wants to take home the Golden Apple, his or her creations must be as inventive as possible while still being mouth-wateringly delectable. Sure, the deconstructed pizza that is also a working model volcano looks amazing, but do you actually want to eat it? OK, so you made a delicious carrot soup and served it in an edible diorama, but does that actually make it more interesting than, you know, a regular bowl of carrot soup? Even if you find some of the dishes a little too daunting to try at home, the competition is a font of intriguing ways to look at what’s lying around in your pantry. STEPHEN TRAGESER WRITING

Save the dishwashing for later

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FOOD

CRITICS’ PICKS

[GETTING FREE]

SUPPORT THE NASHVILLE FREE STORE

One thing has become painfully clear: Our elected officials aren’t going to help us. Davidson County’s unemployment rate in May was 12.6 percent (compared to 2.4 percent in May of last year), yet Gov. Bill Lee continues to sit on a mountainous $1.2 billion Rainy Day Fund because apparently a life-shattering, economy-crashing pandemic is just a sprinkle of bad fortune. The Nashville Free Store at independent venue Drkmttr (1111 Dickerson Pike) is here to help. Organizers opened the new store on July 25, and as the name suggests, everything on the shelves — from food and perishables (they have a fridge!) to household supplies and even clothing and toys — is free for anyone who needs it. No questions asked, no judgment passed. If you’re in the position to give, you can donate cash to the Nashville Free Store via Venmo (@Nashville-Freestore) and drop off goods at Drkmttr every Friday from 3-6 p.m. and every Saturday from noon-6 p.m. You can also set up a donation appointment by emailing nashvillefreestore@gmail.com. Organizers say cleaning supplies (including all-purpose cleaner, bleach, laundry and dish soap) and baby supplies (diapers, formula and food) are especially needed right now. Follow along on Instagram (@nashvillefreestore) for updates. Shop the Free Store! Fill the Free Store! And remember how Gov. Lee watched Tennessee struggle from atop his giant pile of money when he’s up for re-election in ’22. MEGAN SELING

CRITICS’ PICKS

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GET OBSESSED WITH LILY TOMLIN

THEATER

In the annals of American comedy, Lily Tomlin stands out among our very best. Let’s review. Tomlin is a singular actor and writer — inventive, original and fearless. She found her big break when Robert Altman cast her in Nashville, his 1975 homage to our fair city and searing critique of the country music industry. As gospel singer Linnea Reese, Tomlin acts as the moral anchor in a film full of pompous narcissists and tasteless automatons. Tomlin never fails to bring intelligence and complexity to her more oddball characters — like The Incredible Shrinking Woman’s Pat Kramer and All of Me’s Edwina Cutwater. The 1980 masterpiece 9 to 5 puts Tomlin on screen with powerhouses Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton, and the triumvirate tackles the issue of sexism in the workplace with tenacity, grace and humor. In the lesser-known 2015 gem Grandma, Tomlin plays a misanthropic lesbian poet whose granddaughter (Julia Garner) turns to her when she needs an abortion, and the two hit up friends and acquaintances for help raising money. It’s emotional but funny — and Tomlin’s dry humor carries the day. Tomlin’s roots in stand-up are on full display in the buddy sitcom Grace and Frankie (available on Netflix) where she plays opposite Jane Fonda as the indomitable Frankie Bergstein. They are women scorned who, after decades of marriage to a pair of lawyers, find themselves single again when their husbands (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterson — both wonderful here) confess that they’ve been having an affair for decades. Grace and Frankie take up residence in the families’ shared beach house in San Diego, and hijinks ensue. Tomlin’s Frankie is a hippie-dippy free spirit who develops a lube made from yams and has a regular diet of bong water and Mountain Dew. As with all of Tomlin’s work, Grace and Frankie makes for feel-good quarantine viewing. And if you find a recording of Tomlin’s onewoman theatrical show, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, you have a moral obligation to share it with everyone you know. ERICA CICCARONE [ART WITH A HEART]

SUPPORT PROJECT SING OUT!

Between canceled spring shows and all the uncertainty surrounding current reopening plans, school theater programs are really struggling right now. Fortunately, a star-studded crew of Broadway artists recently stepped up with Project Sing Out! — a livestream concert event to benefit the Educational Theatre Foundation’s

Thespian Relief Fund. Produced and hosted by Tony nominee Hailey Kilgore (star of the 2017 revival of Once on This Island, and the daughter of educators herself), the event featured some great performances from big names such as Ramin Karimloo (Les Misérables, Anastasia), Ali Stroker (Oklahoma!), LaChanze (The Color Purple), Celia Rose Gooding (Jagged Little Pill), Adam Jacobs (Aladdin) and more. Vanessa Williams, Don Cheadle, Audra McDonald, Brandon Victor Dixon, George Salazar and others were also on hand to talk about the importance of arts education and the impact that such programs had on their own lives. Originally presented on July 20, the virtual concert event can be seen on playbill.com’s YouTube channel or Facebook page. To learn more — and to make a donation — visit projectsingout.org. AMY STUMPFL GAMES

FILM & TV

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Before the pandemic, getting together with friends for a regular game night was a great way to stay in the loop with friends and family. The need to be connected with others is as critical as ever, but with no end to COVID-19 in sight, you need a safe way to do it. The online portal Board Game Arena has become my personal favorite outlet. The developers have brokered deals with a wide variety of publishers to adapt more than 200 physical games for online play. You can play against your friends — try a round of Sushi Go!, an easy and quick card-drafting game featuring downright cute pictures of smiling sashimi, while you’re FaceTiming with your pals. Or you can pick a game and compete against experts from all over the world: Sharpen your skill at the intricate, Mayan-calendar-themed resource-gathering game Tzolk’in. It’s free to join BGA and to play most games, but a premium account — which costs $24 for a year or $4 for a single month — gives you access to a handful of premium-only titles and other capabilities. (For instance, if two people on the same internet connection want to play the same game, one of them has to be a premium member.) It’s a website, not an app, but its lean, simple, Web 1.0-looking interface helps it work extraordinarily well in browsers on most computers and mobile devices. And it’s well-thought-out. BGA simplifies the timeconsuming physical setup of games like Dice Forge, and the many rules of games like Carcassone or 7 Wonders are built in so you can’t make an illegal move, by accident or on purpose — in some ways, making them even more fun to play online than in person.

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nashvillescene.com | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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NASHVILLE SCENE | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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FOOD AND DRINK

FEELING TAXED

How independent and immigrant-owned restaurants are dealing with Nashville’s property tax increase BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

n the heels of the Metro Council’s approval of a substantial property tax hike, the media has been awash with complaints from business owners bemoaning the onerous nature of the increase. Many of the business owners who get the most ink and broadcast time are located within the urban core, and many of them own the buildings where their restaurants and bars operate. While there’s no question that such a sudden and substantial tax increase — which raises the rate by 34 percent, to $4.221 per $100 in assessed value — creates a burden for businesses of all sizes, those entrepreneurs who actually own their property at least have an exit strategy. If their businesses were no longer viable, property owners have salable assets in their building and land, tangible resources that most likely have appreciated in value during the real estate boom of Nashville’s past decade. While no one wants to see

businesses fail under the pressure of increased financial strains brought on by the combination of … well, just about everything that has happened during 2020, the opportunity to convert equity into cash does offer a bit of a safety net. But what about restaurateurs who don’t own their buildings, particularly those who have not seen the benefit of increased attention and investment in Nashville’s downtown? Many of Nashville’s immigrantowned restaurants depend on support from clientele who don’t have the same disposable income as tourists and other denizens of downtown establishments. Most restaurant leases are structured with what is known as a triple-net agreement, in which the tenant is responsible for paying all the expenses of the property — real estate taxes, building insurance and any utilities, maintenance or improvements. Even before the end of a lease’s term, any increases in these expenses are passed on immediately to

the lessee. That means Metro’s new tax rates have already become a fact of life for restaurant tenants. Kurt Rutkowski owns and operates two restaurants with his wife Zulema — the casual Zulema’s Taqueria as well as Zulema’s Kitchen, a full-service restaurant near the airport that serves Latin-inspired cuisine and depends on neighboring office workers for much of its business. Many of those workers have been displaced by the pandemic. Says Rutkowski: “When the entire Latin American division of Bridgestone moved out to work from home, it really affected my customer base. It’s had a tremendous impact on us.” Rutkowski is a renter of both his buildings, and the effect of the tax increase is substantial. “Triple net hits me three times,” he says. “I’ll see it in my rent, in my utilities and in any improvements I might want to make to my businesses, unless I’m willing to use companies from outside of the county to do the work. My customers don’t realize it yet, but they will feel it, too. Whether they own a house, or go to a restaurant or a bar, or if they buy a product that’s made in Davidson County, they’ll be paying that increase. How long can we sustain on just 10 percent of our sales, higher costs plus a property tax increase? I don’t know the answer, but the mayor

is making it really hard to do business in Nashville. I feel that it’s very unfair. Independent restaurants don’t have a huge cash purse behind them like big downtown restaurants do. Any consumer can just look at the business auction sites to see how many restaurants are already going under.” Rutkowski says he can’t cut his labor costs any further than he already has. “Most of our workers are family or family friends,” he says. “The main reason we opened up again after the shutdown was so that we wouldn’t lose our people.” In addition to the property tax, Rutkowski has seen many other input costs increase. “We’re an ethnic business,” he says. “We sell tacos and burritos. You can’t make those without maseca [the corn flour used to make tortillas]. The Mexican border is closed, so you can’t get it here. Sam’s Club doesn’t have it. Our regular vendors don’t have it. We’ve had to source it from wherever we can find it at much higher prices. Avocados, limes, anything that comes from Mexico, the costs have gone up.” In the face of this sort of financial headwind, Rutkowski has to figure out how to change his business. “We haven’t passed the increases on to our customers yet. We sell three tacos and a side for $9, so I can’t go up by 35 percent without shocking them. I’ll probably do it as a fee per transaction

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

KURT RUTKOWSKI

nashvillescene.com | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

FOOD AND DRINK

PABLO BONACIC rather than through increasing menu prices, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. I’ll also be forced to make some cuts, so maybe my hamburger patty will go down a size, meaning the consumer will be getting a lesser value.” Rutkowski tries hard to be sanguine about his situation, but it’s difficult. “I’m not a pessimist, or I’d have never become an entrepreneur,” he says. “I honestly don’t know if we can sustain this for the rest of the year. And as a renter, I can’t really sell my business, because there’s no money in it.” Hugo and Any Reyes own three P upuseria Salvadoreña restaurant locations — in Nashville, Antioch and Murfreesboro. Thanks to translation assistance from their daughter Yasmin, we spoke with Any about how the tax increase has changed her family’s attitude toward investing in their businesses. “We own the Nashville location on Welch Road and rent the other two,” explains Any. “Every time the taxes go up, our rent goes up, so we’re not inclined to invest in the rentals.” Besides, she adds, “Welch Road was our first, and it’s a blessing that God has given us.” Hugo is a board member of the Nashville Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, but Any says the group has been more interested in discussing PPP loans than the

new tax rates. “The meetings have been very informative, but we will bring up the taxes at the next one,” she says. As small business owners, the Reyes family recognizes what their customers can afford to pay. “The customers come because our food is accessible,” Any says. “It’s especially hard because they don’t have as much work, so they’re not spending as much. We can’t raise our prices because we would not have as many customers, so we will try to look for other solutions.” Chilean-born chef Pablo Bonacic opened Subculture Urban Cuisine and Cafe with his wife and brother in 2016. The tiny cafe near the corner of Nolensville Pike and Old Hickory Boulevard quickly earned a cult following thanks to its creative approach to bold, flavorful cuisine. Bonacic also opened small outposts of his restaurant adjacent to a couple of brewery taprooms, but those spots aren’t currently in operation as he waits out the pandemic. It’s exactly this nimble attitude and business acumen that Bonacic says will help him survive both the downturn and the tax increase. “We’re at about 50 percent of our regular sales,” he says, “but even with being closed for so long with half our sales, we can still support our staff. We’re all getting paychecks, at least enough to get by, and we’ll start fresh next year.”

Bonacic’s secret is watching the numbers like a hawk and operating out of a 600-square-foot restaurant space. “It’s a really small space, so a 34 percent increase really only amounts to $500 a year, because we intentionally make sure that our rent is only about 3 percent of our total sales.” In recent years, Bonacic has looked to expand into larger rental spaces closer to downtown, but he says he’s glad he didn’t pull the trigger on any of those deals. “We were looking at places with $10,000-a-month triple-net leases and considering building a kitchen at Southern Grist. It would have cost 90-grand to put a hood in that place, but it just makes no sense. We don’t want to go into debt, and if we had built it, we wouldn’t exist.” Instead, Bonacic invested in himself. “I’ve got some money that I’ve invested in small businesses in the Hispanic community to help start food trucks and stuff. I decided to put it into a food trailer at Southern Grist [in the Nations] and help create the brand and clientele to pay off the investment. We have a tiny overhead, and the trailer is already paid off in full.” Contrary to what you might see on the nightly local news, Bonacic believes that big downtown restaurants are the only ones that can afford to operate with rent or mortgage costs at percentages higher than he does. “If

I had gone downtown or to East Nashville, rent would have been 10 percent of our sales, and we would have to produce so much just to survive. A 34 percent increase on that rate is much harder to swallow, but those big downtown bars have got so much money behind them that their mortgages aren’t too big for them to pay in a good weekend. The margins are so good with alcohol, and their volumes are so huge.” Bonacic is confident about his plan, but he’s still a realist. “There are no guarantees you’ll be able to stay open,” he says. “Our model is small enough that if we have to go back to day one, when it was just me and my brother in the kitchen, we can do that. If everything fails, I know we can get work pretty quick because we’re hard workers. Sometimes you just gotta be willing to let go, man.” He also believes that the community where he works at the edge of the county on Nolensville Pike has another advantage when it comes to dealing with the tax increase. “Immigrants are willing to do whatever it takes to save their businesses,’’ he concludes, sounding a bit like Hamilton and Lafayette in “Yorktown.” “They just want to work. When it comes to the tax and their rent, it’s going to go up, and they’re going to pay it.” EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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PHOTOS: DANIEL MEIGS

CULTURE

FLORA

TRUNK SHOW

At The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, pachyderms regain their ‘wild elephant spirit’ BY ERICA CICCARONE

ome call her Hurricane Flora — she leaves a path of destruction everywhere she goes. At 8 feet, 6 inches tall, the 38-yearold African savanna elephant mows down trees at The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn. WORLD ELEPHANT DAY IS But for 18 years WEDNESDAY, AUG. 12 of her life, Flora ELEPHANTS.COM/ WORLDELEPHANTDAY wasn’t felling any trees. After being captured in Zimbabwe when she was 2 years old, she became the star of a traveling circus and performed in 1988’s Big Top Pee-Wee. As Flora got older, the man who owned her decided to let her retire, and The Elephant Sanctuary added Flora to their small African herd in 2004. Joy Owens, an education specialist at the sanctuary, says Flora’s tree-felling habit is the kind of behavior that is common among her species in the wild. “It’s actually part of their ecological role in the wild to keep

those savannas open and clear and grassy,” says Owens. “To see her doing this at the sanctuary is pretty incredible. Flora is a captive elephant. … She would not have seen her herd mates doing this. … That’s something we really like to see in all of our elephants — to see them kind of regain some of that wild elephant spirit and engage in those natural behaviors.” The sanctuary sprawls across 2,600 acres in Lewis County. For the past 25 years, it has provided a safe, peaceful place for a total of 28 elephants who have lived for decades in captivity to finally rest and roam. It’s one of only two such places in the U.S. The mission of The Elephant Sanctuary is twofold: to provide a safe, supportive environment for captive elephants to get the medical and social care they need, and to educate the public about the crisis facing elephants in the wild and the challenges they face in captivity. It’s a true sanctuary — it’s never open to the public, and the waitlist for volunteering is years long. The

Elephant Discovery Center in downtown Hohenwald provides a place for supporters and students to connect, attracting visitors from around the world and hosting school groups from all over Tennessee. There you can watch three “EleCams” to see the sanctuary herds munching on grass or lounging in a mud bath, listen to the various sounds

elephants make to communicate, come to understand the crisis facing elephants in the wild, and more. While much of the world had to pivot to online activities when the pandemic started, the sanctuary’s education team members were already experts in distance learning. They host virtual classrooms with

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CULTURE

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that’s topped with a wad of masking tape. All 11 elephants roam freely in their habitats with optional use of one of four barns that is heated in the winter. Some, like Flora, love human attention — “she’s a little bit of a diva,” according to caregiver Jessica Burchard. But others, like Asian elephant Billie, took a long time to warm up to training. It was five years before Billie allowed caregivers to remove the last chain from around her ankle. “We do everything on elephant time,” says CEO Janice Zeitlin, referencing one of the staff’s favorite sayings. “My background is as a social worker, and I specialized in attachment and separation issues, foster care and adoption,” says Zeitlin, who became involved with the sanctuary as a volunteer in 1997. “And that’s what we’re doing. We’re bringing unrelated animals together and trying to build a family, and the parallels are there. Building trust is important, having routines to build their trust is important. One of the biggest surprises is how much we can learn.” Zeitlin says it costs around $50 per day to feed an elephant, and the 30 miles of secure fencing on the property cost $100 per foot to build. With a staff of 45 and an operating budget of $5 million per year, the sanctuary is funded by public support and grants. Operations and outreach manager Todd Montgomery says he hopes connecting people with the sanctuary’s education programming will inspire them to take up the cause. “If someone is thinking about going to a place to see a performing elephant,” says Montgomery, “we want them to say: ‘Now wait a minute. I know what an elephant needs. Is this elephant getting what she needs?’ And if the answer is no, then [we want them to think]: ‘Maybe there’s something I can do about that. Maybe I can contact my local representative, maybe I can write letters, maybe I can learn more.’ That’s the chain of events that we like to see happen. And it does work, because places have passed laws to protect elephants based on a better-educated populace asking those questions and having their voices heard.” EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

E ★ B

schools, libraries and civic organizations around the world, and they’ve seen an uptick in requests because of COVID-19. On Wednesday, Aug. 12, The Elephant Sanctuary will take part in World Elephant Day, an annual international event that raises awareness about the plight of the majestic mammals. To highlight the work contributing to conservation, the sanctuary will host Facebook Live sessions with five of its partnering organizations. At 10 a.m., you can hear from folks at Elephants Without Borders, the Botswana-based conservation agency on the front lines of managing the country’s elephant population. At noon, meet the sanctuary’s education team. At 2 p.m., learn about the Montana-based nonprofit Working Dogs for Conservation, which trains shelter dogs to sniff out ivory and weapons to combat poachers in Zambia. See the full schedule of virtual events at elephants.com/worldelephantday. The sanctuary is currently home to 11 pachyderms, who arrived there under varying circumstances. Some, like Flora, were voluntarily retired by their owners or by zoos. Others have sadder stories, marked by instances of abuse and neglect. Nosey, another of the sanctuary’s four African elephants, was seized by authorities in Lawrence County, Ala., after public outcry drew attention to her case. Nosey was the only elephant in the Liebel Family Circus for 29 years — her owner received multiple animal cruelty citations dating back to 1993. When Nosey arrived at the sanctuary, she was suffering from a painful skin condition that had gone untreated for years. It has now cleared up, but her custody battle continues in court. The sanctuary practices protected contact — meaning that caregivers and elephants are always separated by fencing to keep everyone safe. Caregivers exclusively use positive reinforcement — never punishment — to train elephants to participate in medical care. Many elephants used in performances are trained with something called a bullhook — a medieval-looking cane with a sharp hook at the end. But at the sanctuary, keepers use a simple bamboo pole

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ART

WHAT GOOD ARE GALLERIES?

How Nashville art galleries are adjusting during the pandemic

leries who want to succeed need to treat the virtual crawl more like a supplement than a replacement. But what can galleries do in the meantime? Tinney Contemporary has put its in-person exhibition schedule temporarily on hold, refocusing its attention on virtual exhibits and viewing rooms — these might not replace traditional viewing experiences, but they certainly show a graceful transition. Jeff Scott’s creepy, atmospheric photographs in The Surveillance Series are paired with deeper dives into the work, like quotes about specific pieces, that wouldn’t be available to general audiences in the brick-and-mortar space. The claustrophobic, noirish aspects of the photos fit the moodiness and paranoia that many of us are feeling, especially as they’re transmitted via computer screen. While exhibitions can certainly be enhanced by virtual elements, if the current shifts in gallery life are any indication, we may be in the beginning of a long-term institutional overhaul. A recent installment of Art in America’s advice column “Hard Truths” made a series of memes that mock artists and gallerists who need a more robust virtual presence. In one, Bernie Sanders is once again asking “for you to update the website and tighten your Instagram game.” Would Rob Matthews’ message about only making art about important things be more effective with a bit of polish? Perhaps. There will likely be plenty of time for us to improve our skills at virtual communication, and we could all benefit from investing in some good audio equipment and some YouTube tutorials. But the truth in his statement — that the only art worth making is about more than itself — should be adopted by artists and gallerists who hope to make the most of this moment of reset. Nashville isn’t a town in which most artists can make a living strictly from gallery sales, but nevertheless, buying art has become an urgent act of community service. Several galleries are opting to showcase art at lower price points, utilizing the ease of virtual transactions to make it all but irresistible to purchase something new. Zeitgeist had so much success with works on paper by Brady Haston that the gallery had to restock halfway through the exhibition. Zeitgeist’s collection of carnival-colored paintings by Alex Blau are just as strong.

Julia Martin Gallery has taken a similar approach, and the gallery’s website offers a large array of works by mixed-media artists Mark Mulroney and Elise Drake — many of which are less than $200. At The Red Arrow Gallery, around 100 affordable works, including several pieces by local favorites John Paul Kesling and Dana Oldfather, are available to purchase. It’s as if these galleries have made a virtual flat file of work by artists whose more expensive canvases may be out of reach for everyday audiences — it’s art-fair work at craft-fair prices. Artists and curators are programming exhibitions around contemporary events, and those are on view at several spots in town, most expansively at Red Arrow. Gallery owner Katie Shaw has organized Breathless, an ambitious group exhibition of work made

since March. Photographs by Marcos Maddox — some of which were taken at recent Black Lives Matter protests — ground the show in reality. Installation shots of the exhibit show large-scale mixed-media work by Jodi Hays and an installation of a suspended bike by Desmond Lewis sharing space with the Maddox works. The scope of the Breathless exhibit — which includes work that’s thematically linked to the March 3 tornado, the COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide proliferation of racial injustice — is both wide-ranging and hyperlocal, and is a good example of how a gallery can act like a microcosm of the community it represents. Unrequited Leisure has been noticeably nimble in its reactions to both online-only viewings and the growing awareness of systemic racism in the gallery world. This month, the gallery is handing over its curatorial reins to Omari Booker, a Black artist and educator. Booker, whose painting was also on display in Pockets of Real Passion at Channel to Channel, guest curated a selection of video works by dancer and choreographer Dorese Brown and visual artists Elisheba Israel Mrozik and Aaron Mrozik. In Booker’s curatorial statement, he says it’s hugely important to investigate the history that created our current circumstances. The exhibition is called What Could Happen?, a reference to spiritual teacher Orland Bishop’s statement, “History is not only what happened, but what could have happened and didn’t.” Art is always about taking another person’s perspective and trying it on for size. Artists — as well as the galleries, curators and critics that connect them to their communities — should all be reconsidering their own long-held assumptions about the world in which they create. By reframing our collective uncertainty about what the future holds, we have the chance to rethink our expectations of the art around us. What happened to all those barriers — racial, virtual, economic? What could have happened, but didn’t? EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM “UNTITLED,” MARK MULRONEY

n a video from the virtual exhibit Heed, presented by David Lusk Gallery, Rob Matthews says that one of his rules for making art is this: Only make art about things that are more important than art. The distance between art and everything that’s more important than it has grown exponentially since early March, when a tornado devastated neighborhoods throughout Nashville just days before the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down. Then, of course, came protests against police brutality and an invigorated movement to end systemic racism and white supremacy in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police. As a result, even as the systems that have supported the art community have been hit by the pandemic, art’s role as a catalyst for cultural change remains more important than ever. In Nashville, artists and galleries are depending on collaboration and creativity to survive. The most visible example of that collaboration is the Nashville Gallery Association’s series of virtual art crawl videos, which combine short tours of current exhibitions that mimic the experience of the monthly Art Crawl. Some of the most successful elements of the virtual crawls are the fun and lighthearted contributions from the Julia Martin Gallery. In the gallery’s June virtual crawl installment, artist Marlos E’van’s hand-painted T-shirts were presented in quick succession on various models, and it was as playful as an early ’90s MTV promo. Other galleries’ presentations are more straightforward, like Channel to Channel’s June virtual crawl tour of Pockets of Real Passion, a group exhibit that made brilliant use of the space by hanging works directly on top of a geometric installation of artist’s tape. That installation’s artist, gallery curator Dustin Hedrick, gives a succinct and thoughtful — if slightly dry — walk-through of the work. A preview of Lusk’s Heed show, which features work from Matthews alongside new work from Ashley Doggett, Maysey Craddock and Leslie Holt, incorporates video elements from each of the artists. Doggett’s contribution includes vintage home movies of Black women celebrating, shots of her studio and current paintings, and photos of palatial museum interiors. In her voiceover, Doggett is a casual but confident speaker, and her newest paintings — sexier and more colorful than her earlier work — are strong enough to make you overlook the elevator music that plays in the background. The ever-increasing appreciation of genuine human interaction thanks to social distancing means that in the virtual art crawl, relatability is key. Still, a little showmanship goes a long way. Attention spans are waning — the first virtual crawl video has more than a thousand views on YouTube, but at press time, the second crawl has fewer than 300. With figures like that, artists and gal-

“MALCOLM X”, MARCOS MADDOX

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

NASHVILLE SCENE | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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BOOKS

DON’T YOU DARE SAY NOTHIN’

In Odie Lindsey’s Some Go Home, secrets, lies and myths collide across generations BY ED TARKINGTON

arly in Some Go Home, Odie Lindsey describes two of his protagonists — JP, an erstwhile Chicago house-flipper, and Derby, his construction foreman — sprinkling catfish feed into a pond on JP’s property: Within seconds, hundreds of charcoal-gray catfish swarmed the surface, scuttling over each other, their white bellies oily in the sunlight as they gasped for feed. The frenzy made the water look like it was boiling. As a second sling of pellets hit, the fish formed a metaorganism of mouth and fin and whisker. Near the banks a few even breached, their bodies wriggling in the mud, oblong mouths agape, until a minute later, as abruptly as they had appeared, the last of the catfish swam back down to the mud bed. One should not mistake this scene for mere downhome-rural-Mississippi window dressing. It is in fact a vivid metaphor for the central theme of this ambitious debut novel. Below the still surface of the psychic pond, Lindsey implies, hidden things silently swirl, waiting to be summoned, briefly exposing the disquiet and grotesquerie always lurking in the deep recesses of consciousness. Set in the fictional town of Pitchlynn, Miss., Some Go Home is an ensemble piece, but its most endearing character is a familiar one to readers of Lindsey’s acclaimed 2016 story collection We Come to Our Senses. Iraq War combat veteran Colleen, last seen crashing her car into an irrigation tower in the midSOME GO HOME BY ODIE LINDSEY W.W. NORTON 288 PAGES, $26.95 LINDSEY WILL DISCUSS SOME GO HOME IN A VIRTUAL EVENT 7 P.M. THURSDAY, AUG. 6; VISIT NASHVILLESCENE.COM FOR THE EVENT LINK dle of a Mississippi cornfield, is now happily married, keeping house and expecting twins. It’s clear from the start, however, that Colleen is neither interested in nor equipped for stay-at-home motherhood, and the lingering wounds of the war are not done with her. Her husband, Derby Friar, has his own demons to reckon with. His estranged white-supremacist father, Hale Hobbs, is soon to be retried for the murder of a young Black man in 1965. Derby has traded his father’s name for his mother’s in an effort to renounce the old man and his sins, but Pitchlynn isn’t the sort of place where a simple name change erases one’s history. Derby’s dilemma is complicated by his

role as foreman for JP, who has relocated from Chicago to Pitchlynn to remodel his late wife Dru’s ancestral home, which sits on the property where the murder occurred. The key word here is “remodel,” not restore. JP believes that Dru’s depression and eventual suicide were instigated by the familial shaming that drove her to leave Pitchlynn years before. He means to alter the home beyond recognition as a means of revenge against Dru’s family and the town itself — to whom the house and the massive magnolia tree adjacent to it are sacred monuments honoring a lost and largely mythical past. Though secrets abound in Some Go Home, its author makes no attempt to disguise his own ambitions or his consciousness of the territory to which he’s staking his literary claim. Currently a writer-in-residence at Vanderbilt University, Lindsey is himself a veteran, both of Desert Storm and of Faulkner’s Oxford. He earned an M.A. at the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture and worked as a bookseller at the fabled Square Books. It’s not an accident that Lindsey named JP’s suicidally depressed widow Dru — as in Drusilla, widow of Faulkner’s John Sartoris, driven mad at the end of The Unvanquished by her lust for vengeance amid the turmoil of Reconstruction. It’s also no coincidence that the land on which Dru’s ancestral home stands has been converted to a golf course, à la the Compson manse in The Sound and the Fury. There are echoes here as well of later Mississippi luminaries like Larry Brown, Barry Hannah, Steve Yarbrough and Brad Watson. Lindsey weaves a complex web of narratives and interior struggles. These strands occasionally feel dispersed and unwieldy, but the same is true for every novel of such scope and depth, and faith in Lindsey’s ability to draw the disparate threads back together is amply rewarded. The eruptions of violence that punctuate the novel’s climax are devastating, but more shattering are the psychic wars still being waged in the hearts and memories of the characters when the story draws to a close. The unsettling and somewhat unsettled conclusion of Some Go Home emphasizes the grim truth that some wounds never heal, and even those that do leave scars. What is clear, however, is that Odie Lindsey has earned his place in the Mississippi writers’ canon, and Some Go Home will be remembered as among the most timely and timeless novels of this troubled and troubling year. To read an extended version of this review — and more local book coverage — please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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MUSIC

HIGH FENCES MADE OF STONE

Why haven’t we had a Black woman country star? BY ANDREA WILLIAMS

FRANKIE STATON

rankie Staton is gregarious and exuberant. Her laugh starts deep in her soul and ricochets off the walls around her. Her facial expressions — the kinds of looks only Black women can give — often reveal far more than her words ever could. Staton is also 66 years old, so there’s no putting on for me and my recorder during our interview. No, as she makes her way through her seventh decade on this planet, Staton is as assured as she’s ever been, especially when she’s talking about her love of country music. “I sat in my house in the great state of North Carolina and saw this movie about this woman driving to radio stations from Butcher Hollow, Ky.,” Staton explains. “I said, ‘That’s what I want to do with my life.’ ” In the spring of 1981, shortly after arriving in Music City, Staton played her first jam session. Years later, she marvels at how that night yanked off the rose-colored lenses through which she’d previously viewed her journey to Nashville. Despite being the first person to sign up for the open mic, Staton was passed over time and time again, only to be questioned about her ability when she was finally allowed to take the stage. “I told the band I wanna do ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ in the key of D,” she says. “And they said, ‘You know keys?’ I said, ‘That’s the key of the record, right?’ They said, ‘How do you know that?’ And I said, ‘Because I play it.’ ” Staton brushed off the players’ dismissive attitude and kept pushing toward country music stardom, toward her own browntinted version of Loretta Lynn fame. In the meantime she landed gigs at restaurants and lounges around town, playing piano and singing, singing, singing. That kept the lights on while she continued to chase

bigger stages. It also put her son through private school. “In the beginning, I didn’t really see all the racism because I was trying to survive,” says Staton. These systemic issues were around before Staton, and they persist to this day, shackling both long-established artists like Mickey Guyton and Rissi Palmer and rising talent like Reyna Roberts and Brittney Spencer. And once Staton fully understood this — once she saw how the industry’s baked-in biases would likely prevent her from ever becoming a marquee artist — she shifted her focus to songwriting. No one listening to the radio or attending live shows by white artists who’d cut her songs would ever have to see the Black woman who’d held the pen. But while Staton made connections around town, she consistently fell short of a real breakthrough. Once, one of her friends heard her humming a tune — an original called “Leading Lady,” which Staton wrote with Tammy Wynette in mind — and offered to introduce her to a publisher she knew. Without telling the publisher that Staton was Black, the friend landed the meeting. But after listening to only half of the tune, the publisher accused Staton of bringing in someone else’s song. “I don’t believe you wrote that,” he told her. All the while, Staton was still playing gigs, still trying to break in on Music Row. She even landed a spot on Ralph Emery’s morning show that she held for 10 years. “People were watching, and I had fan mail,” Staton says. “But I was never allowed to cross that line.” The truth is, Staton would have just kept going anyway, banging her fists against doors that kept slamming in her face. She would have continued fighting this battle alone, in fact, and she would have said nothing of

her bruised and bloodied knuckles. But fate intervened and gave her new purpose.

IN THE FALL OF 1996, music journalist Bruce Feiler published an article titled “Has Country Music Become a Soundtrack for White Flight?” in The New York Times. The piece addressed the genre’s color line that, once drawn by record label execs who sought to divide the sounds of the South into white hillbilly music and Black race records, was now seemingly etched in stone. Like Staton in her early days in Nashville, Feiler was hesitant to attribute the dearth of Black faces to racism. For him, “Nashville’s new broadened constituency, which is both younger and better educated than in the past, makes such blanket dismissals hard to support.” Instead, Feiler believed that the country music industry served as visible proof that Black and white audiences were drawn to different kinds of music. He even quoted a Music Row executive who upheld the notion that there weren’t any Black people in country music because Black people just weren’t interested in it. ‘’I’m not saying that bigotry and racism don’t exist in our business,’’ Tim DuBois, then the head of Arista Nashville, told Feiler, ‘’because they do. But I guarantee you that if there were a marketplace and if there were a talented person out there, few people in this town wouldn’t sign that talent.’’ When Staton read Feiler’s article, she nearly choked. She saw DuBois’ words as an insult and an attack. Most importantly, she knew they were a lie. Staton had been in Nashville 15 years by then — a full 50 percent longer than the decade most folks around town say that it takes to break in. She’d seen firsthand that talent couldn’t keep doors from slamming in your face. Not

Godmother, and she was hell-bent on proving Feiler, DuBois and similar white folk wrong. Even when she was called a control freak by the Black artists who wanted to sing songs they’d written, she never let up. If she controlled the narrative, she assumed, she could ensure a Happily Ever After. Unfortunately, despite earning national and local press coverage for the showcase, not one artist ever saw success beyond the Bluebird stage. That was bad enough for Staton, but the plight of one artist in particular shook her to her core. Valierie Ellis, a Black woman from Ashland City, Tenn., with a voice both big and buttery, should have been a contemporary of Faith Hill and Martina McBride. Instead, Staton recalls, Ellis became a volunteer firefighter in her hometown and helped maintain the family farm. “When Valierie didn’t make it, that broke me,” Staton says. “There was just no excuse. None.”

TO BE CLEAR, Staton’s heartbreak didn’t have to happen. In 1969, a dozen years before Staton came to Nashville, another Black woman arrived from South Carolina. Her stage name was Linda Martell, and she’d been playing R&B and soul music in clubs around Columbia, S.C., since she was 14 years old. Indeed, she probably would have kept singing soul music if not for a show performed in front of a rowdy group of Air Force men in the spring of ’69. The crowd dared her to play some country music, and Martell, a Southern girl with Southern music pumping hard in her veins, happily obliged. “The show we ended up doing was a

“IN THE BEGINNING, I DIDN’T REALLY SEE ALL THE RACISM BECAUSE I WAS TRYING TO SURVIVE.” —FRANKIE STATON if you were Black. In the end, Staton also viewed DuBois’ words as a rallying cry. If he didn’t believe there was Black talent in Nashville, she was going to show him. And once she did, she expected the label and publishing deals to rush in like a flood. Staton co-founded a nonprofit called the Black Country Music Association, and began hosting regular showcases at songwriter haven The Bluebird Cafe, creating a space for the best Black performers to prove themselves worthy of a genre that their forebears helped to create. There were artists who flew in from around the country to be a part of the show, and she vetted them all, even choosing the music they would sing. Thanks to her industry connections, she was able to secure songs that had been put on hold by signed artists. Staton the Aspiring Country SingerSongwriter had become Staton the Fairy

mixture of R&B and country and Western,” Martell told Tennessean reporter Jack Hurst that June. “I can’t remember any of the others now for sure, but I know I sang ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’ and ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart.’ ” Martell’s renditions of the Don Gibson and Hank Williams standards were impressive, certainly as much as Staton’s jam-session take on Loretta Lynn. But the two women have massively different career trajectories, namely because Martell was fortunate enough to follow the meteoric, albeit improbable, rise of Charley Pride. Beginning with 1966’s “Just Between You and Me,” Pride landed nine consecutive singles in the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart through the close of the decade. 1969’s “All I Have to Offer You (Is Me)” and “(I’m So) Afraid of Losing You Again” rose to No. 1, and they were just the first two of 29 No. 1 hits Pride has had to date. Not bad for a former Negro League

NASHVILLE SCENE | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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MUSIC

PHOTO COURTESY OF SUN ENTERTAINMENT CORPORATION

LINDA MARTELL

baseball player, a man known to disarm allwhite and potentially hostile audiences by joking about his “permanent tan.” Pride’s success was enough to make the idea of Black artists more palatable for execs who would have never considered the prospect years before. As a result, when Shelby Singleton — owner of a stable of independent labels known for releasing Jeannie C. Reilly’s “Harper Valley P.T.A.” — heard the demo Martell cut after her impromptu country gig, he was all-in. Martell became the first Black woman to play the Grand Ole Opry in 1969 and the first Black woman to chart a country song with 1969’s “Color Him Father.” In 1970 she released her debut album, Color Me Country, on Singleton’s Plantation Records. It was the only country album she ever recorded. “Linda Martell just didn’t have the industry support Pride had, who was on RCA and had the huge support of both his producer Jack Clement and Chet Atkins,” explains Amanda Marie Martinez, a Ph.D. candidate in history at UCLA who is completing a dissertation on race and the country music industry from the 1970s to the 1990s. “Martell was recorded by Shelby Singleton, an odd and divisive character in Nashville who borderline marketed her as a novelty. Second, being Black and a woman brought her increased skepticism throughout the industry. And besides these factors, CMA marketing leadership encouraged the industry to continue to market the genre as a product for whites only.” Unfortunately for Staton and every other Black woman who would follow, Martell’s failure to break big has been treated as a pessimistic prophecy. In an industry that fails to do right even by white women, the prospect of a Black woman ascending to stardom needs the support of a success story. There must be an artist who the skeptical suits could look to before pulling out their checkbooks — like they pointed to Pride before Darius Rucker, and Rucker before contemporary chart-toppers Jimmie Allen and Kane Brown. But Martell couldn’t provide that. “By the Reagan era, fewer Black artists broke through,” Martinez explains, “and this, combined with the lack of much precedent for being a Black woman in country music, has made it all but impossible for a Black

woman to make it in country.” But that hasn’t stopped Black women from trying. We are nothing if not persistent. Just ask Miko Marks, who made her way to Music City in 2003 after growing up listening to Patsy Cline and Waylon Jennings in Flint, Mich. Her work got recognized by national outlets like People Magazine, and she’d spent her college years at Grambling State University performing in a band with future neo-soul icon Erykah Badu. Still, success proved elusive. Marks played the CMA Fest three years in a row, but as her crowd grew each year, so did efforts to tamp down her progress.

“The third year, I was left without a sound engineer,” says Marks, “and my husband had to work the machine. But we still left with a standing ovation.” The last blow sent Marks to California for good. She was informed of a new rule that required performers to hit a sales threshold and have a song in the top 40 of Hot Country Songs before being allowed to play the largest showcases. These were criteria nearly impossible for an independent artist like her. Marks’ voice aches with longing as she reflects on the years she spent chasing Music City success. “In trying to pursue the

gates of Nashville, I discovered that they were high fences made of stone.” Marks may have been forbidden from scaling the fences that greeted her in Nashville, but her very presence, along with the heavy lifting done by Staton and Martell in the years prior, began to dismantle them, stone by stone. And thanks to Marks, Staton and Martell’s decisions to stand proudly as Black women in country music, those stones have been laid end to end. The path is far from complete, but the beginnings of it are there for today’s artists to follow and build upon. EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

MIKO MARKS

nashvillescene.com | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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MUSIC

THE SPIN

WHOA DAKOTA

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S STREAM BY OLIVIA LADD

hen the pandemic shut down the live-music industry in mid-March, The Recording Academy’s health-focused nonprofit MusiCares took nearly immediate action by launching a COVID-19 relief fund. The fund has provided a safety net where in many cases there isn’t one, supporting numerous artists with canceled tours and many industry professionals who suddenly found themselves without a job. Thursday night, an affiliate group called Nashville MusiCares Ambassadors held its inaugural Music City Showcase via Zoom to raise money for the cause while presenting a genre-diverse lineup of Nashville’s talent in bite-size sets. The program was hosted by Recording Academy trustee and 102.1-FM The Ville program director Shannon Sanders, and began with a quick pop-in from Austin Grimm from the reggae band Roots of a Rebellion. In spite of a poor connection that resulted in glitchy audio quality, he banged out an acoustic version of “Shapes of a Soul,” the title song of the group’s 2019 album, as well as a tune written during quarantine. Whoa Dakota’s Jessica Ott and Collin Gundry broadcast from their basement bedroom while decked out in glittery stagewear. They played the

titular song from 2018’s Patterns as well as “Baggage,” a groovy dance track with jazzy electric guitar riding the Americanameets-disco rhythm. Ott also mentioned the band’s forthcoming single “Walk Right By,” set to drop Aug. 6. Standout MC Daisha McBride was seated at her bedroom desk, but she kept up the same high energy we saw at her Spewfest set earlier this year, one of her last live shows before COVID-19. Over a backing track, McBride rapped “Ballgame,” the introduction to her new EP Yafeelme, switching into singing for the chorus. Her deft flow and melodic leanings were on display in “Top of the World.” While her shows are usually quite kinetic, this one felt more intimate while maintaining her positive mood. Alanna Royale’s Alanna Quinn-Broadus is one of Music City’s best vocalists, without a shadow of a doubt. The much-loved showstopper took the virtual stage from the music room of her home, backed only by

guitarist Jared Colby instead of her usual expansive band setup. Before her set, Quinn-Broadus had a conversation with Sanders about how Black music has influenced her, sharing the story of how her Puerto Rican grandmother immigrated to Atlanta and became immersed in the culture, later passing on DAISHA McBRIDE

her love for soul and R&B to her. “The Ville is Americana music,” said Quinn-Broadus. “That is real folk music. That is real American music.” Even without an audience to work with, she conveyed power and an easy grace. Belting out “I Know” from 2018’s So Bad You Can Taste It, Quinn-Broadus maintained supreme command of her voice. She made the song sound full, despite not having the benefit of her keys and horn section. Pop singer and songsmith Whit, aka Whitney Coleman, doesn’t have a massive catalog of her own work out in the world, but she

has worked with artists like Anderson East and Rival Sons as well as producer Dave Cobb. She joined the stream from her couch, alongside an acoustic guitarist. Her passionate voice came as a welcome surprise on the unreleased “All the Same,” reminiscent of the sound of ’90s country’s best female artists. She followed that with her nostalgic 2019 single “When We Were Kids.” Coleman mentioned more music was in the works, and we can only hope we’ll get to hear it soon. The show was lovely even in this stripped-back setting. The live portion of the program wrapped up with Samuel Lee, who spoke about how MusiCares helped him and his musician friends stay sober in an alcohol-oriented industry. Alone with his acoustic guitar, he played “Right Behind You” from his record Mirrors, putting his strong, emotive voice under the spotlight. The final artist was choreographer and singer Laurin Floyd. She couldn’t perform live, but shared two music videos and a message about MusiCares’ support during her late husband’s cancer treatment. Livestream shows have taken some getting used to. This one was a reminder that, while they’re no replacement for inperson gigs, they provide a certain intimacy. At the best of times, it’s like a friend inviting you over to hear their latest yet-to-bereleased music, one on one. In the bargain, it helped raise awareness of and funds for a very worthy cause — ensuring there will still be musicians ready and able to play when all this is over. EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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FILM

PRIMAL STREAM XX Brand-new horror, a classic mock rapumentary and more, now available to stream BY JASON SHAWHAN

THE WITCH WHO CAME FROM THE SEA

SHE DIES TOMORROW

his is the 20th installment of my streaming-recommendation series. That’s roughly 20 weeks into this pandemic, with no signs (in the U.S.) of stopping — so that’s something to knock around in the hamster wheel of the subconscious. I’ll keep doing them if you keep reading them, and you’ve got lots of options from previous installments to keep your mind from sinking into despair. Which, come to think of it, is actually a major part of this week’s big release …

SHE DIES TOMORROW VIA VIDEO ON DEMAND Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) is having a particularly shitty day. A getaway with an interesting new guy has hit an impasse, and what some would call a fatalistic funk holds sway. The routine of favorite records helps a bit, as does the wine. But this is a bad emotional place for Amy, suddenly back on the booze, and it seems like what she’d like best is to just vanish into the wall, despite her exquisite scarab-beaded cocktail dress and leafblower ensemble. She’s unequivocally not suicidal, but has become fixated on her own death — and it’s happening tomorrow. So Amy reaches out to her friend Jane (Jane Adams, from Happiness and The Anniversary Party). Jane’s seen Amy drunk before, so she has to battle out her impulses between being a supportive friend and also not supporting a destructive relapse — not to mention a birthday party for her hated sister-in-law looming (though there will be cake, so there’s that). Amy’s insistence that her inevitable death is waiting for her tomorrow tends to grate. But no matter where the night takes either of these women, that fixed end point looms. And it’s spreading, because now Jane has that teleology stuck in her head as well. That’s the hook of She Dies Tomorrow, and it’s silky-smooth, so you don’t even notice that it’s already got you — think of Pontypool or Sinister, in which the moment of awareness is your passage into the surreal otherworld, or to a lesser extent, that amazing teaser for the remake of The Hills Have Eyes 2, with its reveal that the film has

in fact already killed you. Writer-director Amy Seimetz (she did the emotional heavy lifting in the 2019 Pet Sematary remake and directed the first season of The Girlfriend Experience) knocks it out of the park. This is experimental and existential horror that disassembles every emotional and social crisis you’ve been steeping in for the past few months, and serves up something transcendent and beautiful that will put your emotions through the ringer. We’re out of sync with time, and color palette is essential to understanding the fragmentary nature of how things are unfolding. You don’t unlock this film — you sort of ease into its spaces and moods. It’s a puzzle that you can’t quite touch, diaphanous and mysterious. I can see some people having issues with She Dies Tomorrow, because this isn’t a typical horror film — there’s no monster or murderer (other than time). But I think it’s more likely that people are going to be taken aback by what this film tells us about ourselves, because it certainly told me about myself, like a therapist with a comfy chair with unexpected poky angles.

FEAR OF A BLACK HAT

If you’ve been stewing in your own anxieties and you feel powerless to keep from doom-scrolling your way through whatever unspeakable horrors the world has to offer, this speaks right to the heart. I wasn’t expecting an emotional exorcism, and more than that I wasn’t expecting this to be quite as open-hearted and mordantly funny as it is. The supporting cast is great (including TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, Fast/ Furious alumna Michelle Rodriguez and indie icon Kentucker Audley), and I am in awe that a film this cathartic and disarmingly weird is getting as wide a release as movies do these days. If you’ve been wanting to find some art to help metabolize some COVIDera angst, this will help.

FEAR OF A BLACK HAT ON AMAZON PRIME AND TUBI Though its specificities are focused on late-’80s and early-’90s hip-hop (sadly, neither streaming option features the “Ice Froggy Frog” video that preceded the film’s theatrical and VHS engagements), there is something timeless in Fear of a Black Hat. Rusty Cundieff’s rightfully beloved mock rapumentary centers on the group N.W.H., whose countless hits (“Guerrillas in the Midst,” “Fuck the Security Guards” and “Booty Juice,” to name but a few) have kept members Ice Cold (Cundieff), Tasty Taste (Lamar LaTrelle himself, Larry B. Scott) and Tone Def (Mark Christopher Lawrence) both famous and infamous. Aiming to be the This Is Spinal Tap of rap music, Fear of a Black Hat mostly succeeds in that objective. To this day, it’s the only film, fiction

or documentary, to address a lot of shady business practices in the music industry (see Martha Wash vs. C+C Music Factory and Black Box) as well as offer up Weird Al-level parodies of just about every style of hip-hop at the time. If you’ve never seen this film but have love for hip-hop in your heart, you need to check it out.

THE WITCH WHO CAME FROM THE SEA ON TUBI If you’ve watched the show GLOW, you know that the character Marc Maron plays has a backstory of having made deeply Freudian exploitation films. Well, Matt Cimber (the actual guy that character is based on) has a few films of that nature in his past, and if you’ve never seen The Witch Who Came From the Sea, it is something very special. Someone is murdering (and sometimes castrating) bodybuilders, but that’s just garnish for this singular psychodrama that finds a weird middle ground between Greek tragedy and gutbucket psychological suspense. Millie Perkins plays Molly, a troubled woman dealing with a world that doesn’t ever quite make sense. She’s got her sister, her nephews Tad and Tripoli (note: if you have two puppies or kittens, there are your names — you’re welcome), and her stories of the sea. This is a very ’70s film, so know that in some respects it is very retrograde in its depiction and analysis of trauma, but it’s something very special and absolutely worth a watch.

“THE PINE BLUFF VARIANT” ON HULU This 1998 episode of The X-Files has been in the back of my head since the pandemic started. It’s the one where Mulder has to infiltrate a militia, and there are secrets and boundaries and political intrigue, as you’d expect. (It also features Lord of Illusions’ Nix the Puritan himself, the late Daniel von Bargen.) But it’s immortal, and it has occupied permanent real estate in my hippocampus for 20-plus years because of its central sequence, in which a virulent bioengineered agent has reduced several movie-theater employees and patrons to corroded and goopy skeletons. I’m not actually afraid of melty bioterrorism under normal circumstances, but the way COVID-19 works (and the way people seem determined to ignore/ flout it) has given it a very weird resonance. I know that for a lot of people Outbreak (which I’ve never seen) and Contagion have helped define their fears of this sort of thing. So I’m sharing this in case you wanted to know where my most visceral fear was drawing dream visuals from. Also, The XFiles is generally awesome. EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

nashvillescene.com | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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ANNOUNCING OUR 2020 LINEUP!

PRESENTED BY

IT’S BACK!

AUGUST 6

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

AUGUST 13

LITTLE WOMEN

AUGUST 20

COMING SOON!

AUGUST 27

COMING SOON!

FRE E FUN FILM S

The Nashville Scene is excited to announce our new drive-in movie series, Movies in the Park-ing Lot!

This August, join us at oneC1ty, where — instead of bringing a blanket or a chair — you can pull up your car and enjoy four movies under the stars!

Each week we’ll be screening a fan-favorite film FOR FREE, and guests can order a delicious picnic dinner and sweet treats.

V I S I T W W W. 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 F O R D E TA I L S O N H O W T O W I N PA S S E S A N D T O L E A R N M O R E ! PRESENTED BY

I N PA R T N E R S H I P W I T H

NASHVILLE SCENE | AUGUST 6 – AUGUST 12, 2020 | nashvillescene.com