Nashville Scene 9-24-20

CITY LIMITS: FEAR, UNCERTAINTY AND COVID-19 SPREAD AT A WOMEN’S PRISON PAGE 8

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SEPTEMBER 24–30, 2020 I VOLUME 39 I NUMBER 34 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

FOOD & DRINK: OUR FOOD CRITICS DISCUSS THE FIFTH ITERATION OF THE CATBIRD SEAT PAGE 22

9/21/20 5:41 PM

Music is a universally shared experience—an open heart—asking only to be heard.

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum celebrates that experience every day, and honors the men and women who have given their hearts to the world.

Our doors are open, and we invite everyone to explore the galleries and the music, observing our newly established protocols.

Visit CountryMusicHallofFame.org for more details.

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NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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9/18/20 11:33 AM

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THROUGH OCTOBER 12

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In the building that long served as Nashville’s main post office, where countless letters have been sent and received, the acclaimed Indian artist Jitish Kallat is presenting two installations that are each centered on a piece of historical correspondence. Through immersive experiences, these works prompt contemplation of our world and the universe.

Organized by the Frist Art Museum

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THE SANDRA SCHATTEN FOUNDATION

The Frist Art Museum is supported in part by

Covering Letter, 2012. Fog screen projection, installation dimensions variable. Burger Collection, Hong Kong. © Jitish Kallat. Image courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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9/16/20 4:01 PM

CONTENTS

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

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At a Women’s Prison, Fear and Uncertainty Spread Along With COVID-19 ....................................................8

Voter’s Choice

CITY LIMITS

One woman has died at the Nashville prison, which is currently the site of the state’s worst outbreak

BY STEVEN HALE

Pith in the Wind .........................................8 This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog

Status Update ............................................9 Federal court’s TPS ruling could affect thousands of immigrants in Tennessee

CULTURE

Nashville Opera’s innovative season opener honors the 19th Amendment

BY JOHN PITCHER

26 ART

Radical Vulnerability Suzy Slykin exposes herself in Mother Eunuch

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

27

10

MUSIC

COVER STORY

Maretocracy............................................. 27

Get On Board

Historic buildings in Nashville’s Black neighborhoods are disappearing. Learotha Williams is fighting so the city’s legacy isn’t lost.

BY J.R. LIND

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB: Jack White, Jason Isbell,Ashley McBryde and More Set for Bonnaroo’s Virtual ROO-ALITY New Report From The Equity Alliance Assesses Nashville’s Pandemic Needs Deb Paquette to Open New Casual Restaurant Concept in Former Saltine Space Randall Kenan’s If I Had Two Wings Returns to Tims Creek ON THE COVER:

Analog synth mastermind Eve Maret won’t be boxed in

Photo by Eric England Photo illustration by Elizabeth Jones

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

This Southern Life ................................... 27 Bendrix Littleton peers into his inner depths on Deep Dark South

BY JACQUELINE ZEISLOFT

On a Roll .................................................. 28

17

Breland keeps his sights set high in the wake of his country-trap hit ‘My Truck’

CRITICS’ PICKS

BY MARCUS K. DOWLING

Become a Belcourt member — and go to the Belcourt Drive-In, love on cats at the Catio, check out Broadway-themed podcasts, watch the MLB playoffs, build your own streaming Miranda July film festival, tune in to Music City Bandwidth and more

Root Cause .............................................. 29 AmericanaFest’s Thriving Roots virtual conference offered up insightful conversations with musicians, scholars and more

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

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22

FILM

FOOD AND DRINK

Primal Stream 25

Nine Lives

Two of our food critics weigh in on the fifth iteration of The Catbird Seat

Horror old and new, a snake-handler doc and more, now available to stream

BY JASON SHAWHAN

BY STEVE CAVENDISH AND ASHLEY BRANTLEY

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NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

BOOKS

The Kids Are All Right Talking with Nashville author Erica Waters about writing LGBTQ characters in YA lit

BY MARGARET KINGSBURY

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PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

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NASHVILLE LOSES MONEY DAILY, AND PUBLIC TRUST IS WANING AS AN ‘ERROR’ IN REPORTING SPREADS LIKE WILDFIRE Since our spring shutdown, we’ve experienced incredible losses — yet we continue to keep the faith that Nashville will get back on its feet and back to thriving. Even the Four Seasons is still planning to add its 40-story hotel to our skyline, with incredible benefits for Nashville and its musicians once it opens in 2022. In the meantime, we have a long road ahead of us. Between the tornado and COVID-19, our tourism and hospitality industries have been hit hard. The return to phase two — while also looking at a 34 percent property tax increase when they can least afford it — has many musicians and club owners understandably upset.

Making matters worse, Fox 17’s Dennis Ferrier recently reported that Mayor John Cooper and other city officials kept accurate COVID-19 numbers secret, suggesting a cover-up in regard to the number of confirmed cases at Nashville’s bars and honky-tonks. After a flurry of national attention and outrage, Fox 17 recanted, called it an “error” and said there was “no evidence of a cover-up.” But the story had already made national news, and that original report angered many.

Nashville’s best-known moniker is of course Music City, and closed bars mean lots of folks out of work. One year ago, we enjoyed a 3 percent unemployment rate — now 12.1 percent of Davidson County residents are unemployed. Nashville has lost nearly $3 billion since March according to WKRN — roughly $100 million weekly. That means our city is losing $14,285,714.29 daily.

According to the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp, Nashville is forecasted to lose another $1 billion in visitor spending by the end of 2020.

Coupled with these numbers, a story like the since-deleted Fox 17 one led many to become inflamed. Entertainer John Rich even took to the airwaves and promised the mayor a class-action lawsuit. Bar owners, after all, are doing all they can to stay open — to keep their employees working and to help keep Music City going.

Steve Smith, who owns Broadway’s wellknown Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, decided to seek licensure as a full-service restaurant to operate at a greater capacity when bars were limited to only 25 patrons at a time.

But many bar owners haven’t been fortunate. Some have had to close permanently,

putting their employees out of work. Despite this unpopular situation, Nashville is mirroring New Orleans and other cities with similar tourism draws that are also remaining in phases of partial reopening, choosing to err on the side of caution.

Nashville’s coronavirus infection rates are still significant. Staying in a modified phase two may be limiting the spread, but will anyone believe it now, given the recent error-filled newscast?

The Tennessean and NewsChannel 5’s Phil Williams thoroughly refuted the charge that the mayor was concealing anything, but lies are a wildfire that the truth struggles to contain. In addition to illness, COVID-19 also spreads mistrust and divisiveness as we live our days separate from one another. Public health concerns have somehow become partisan arguments.

But the mayor being cleared of a coverup is not the only issue at play here. Nashvillians, especially business owners, are still in shock over the 34 percent property tax increase, and struggling to find ways to pay it. Granted, the mayor isn’t personally responsible for our city’s finances, and he led the charge for fiscal responsibility while on the Metro Council. He warned us about Metro’s finances while they grew into the tangled mess they are today. As mayor, he is now obliged to take care of Nashvillians to the best of his ability. The tax increase makes many feel he has failed at that. Almost any other solution would’ve been more favorable.

The mayor’s office, the Nashville Area Chamber and NCVC are all doing what they can to bring tourism and new business back to Nashville, while working to support the businesses that are still open. The hardest part is all the unknowns. We don’t know when there will be a vaccine, or when the virus will slow down.

One thing we do know is that Nashvillians have always been resilient and helped each other. It’s important that, regardless of our preferred party affiliation, we don’t become a city divided. That end result would be the worst outcome possible.

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

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NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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The Acceptance Pledge I pledge acceptance of myself.

I pledge to celebrate my perfect imperfection, To listen so that I may understand, To speak out for what is right, To follow with curiosity and lead with integrity.

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Everyone has something to learn, Everyone has something to teach, Everyone is someone.

We are celebrating Kindness and Compassion When we take a pledge we are holding ourselves accountable. When we make it public, we let others keep us accountable and we inspire them to join us. In pledging acceptance, we are declaring that we want to live in a kinder, more just world, and that we will take an active role in creating it.

Take the pledge at acceptancepledge.com and help us grow the movement by sharing on your social media with #EveryoneIsSomeone #IPledgeAcceptance. nashvillescene.com | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

7

CITY LIMITS

AT A WOMEN’S PRISON, FEAR AND UNCERTAINTY SPREAD ALONG WITH COVID-19 One woman has died at the Nashville prison, which is currently the site of the state’s worst outbreak

BY STEVEN HALE

O

n May 10, Dadra Porter, an incarcerated woman at what was then called the Tennessee Prison for Women in Nashville, wrote a letter to the prison advocacy organization Free Hearts. The group, which is run by formerly incarcerated women, has spent much of the past six months working with the families of incarcerated people and advocating for their release amid the coronavirus pandemic. Porter’s letter was a plea for help.

“I am 50 years old and have severe medical issues,” Porter wrote, citing diabetes and heart problems. “If I get the virus I won’t survive.”

About three months later, in early August, Porter — known to other women at the prison as “Red” — was reeling from the news that her mother, Martha Porter, had died on the outside when she started feeling sick. One of Porter’s daughters, Keshia Porter, says that her mother’s concerns about feeling ill were dismissed by prison staff as symptoms of grief. Dawn Harrington is the executive director of Free Hearts, and she kept in touch with Porter after receiving her letter. Harrington says she heard the same thing from other women inside the prison.

A woman who has been incarcerated at the prison for 17 years wrote a letter to the Scene dated Sept. 9 in which she says she saw Porter being wheeled around in a wheelchair by other inmates. As weeks went by, other women who knew Porter started advocating

THIS WEEK ON OUR NEWS AND POLITICS BLOG: Nashville was atwitter after a Fox 17 report that alleged leaked emails from various officials in the mayor’s office and the health department demonstrated that the city was covering up the number of cases of COVID-19 linked to Lower Broadway bars. That number is indeed low — it’s about 80, though that wouldn’t account for tourists who test positive and return home. The reason we know the number is low is because that information was released by the mayor’s office. In early August.

At a news conference. That Fox 17 attended. The

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for her inside the prison, asking for her to receive medical attention. According to the incarcerated woman who wrote to the Scene, by late August, Porter was hallucinating and having trouble breathing.

“If it weren’t for [the other incarcerated women at the prison], my mama probably would have died in her cell,” Keshia tells the Scene.

Keshia and her older sister Brittany kept in close touch with their mother. Keshia says that before her mother fell ill, she spoke to her on the phone every day. The last time the two spoke was on Aug. 23. On Aug. 28, Keshia received word — not from prison officials, but through her mother’s cellmate — that her mother had been taken to the emergency room. Dadra Porter died on Sept. 1, with officials confirming she had tested positive for COVID-19. Keshia only learned of her mother’s death through a call from the prison chaplain, who she’d gotten to know.

“I don’t have closure, and I’m truly upset,” Keshia says.

Outbreaks in May put two Tennessee prisons among the worst COVID-19 hotspots in the country. Since then, the state has seen another wave of infections in its prisons. As of Sept. 16, the worst of the state’s outbreaks is at the Nashville prison formerly known as the Tennessee Prison for Women, which was recently renamed the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center. After a recent round of mass testing, 186 women incarcerated at the prison tested positive for COVID-19, with dozens of tests still pending. Porter is

Fox 17 report was full of misleading information, taking emails between Tennessee Lookout’s Nate Rau (mistakenly credited as a reporter with The Tennessean, his former employer) and public health officials out of context to make it appear as though the city didn’t want people to know that very few cases cases could be traced back to Lower Broadway. The emails did say that the city shouldn’t give the number of cases linked to each bar specifically, because in many cases that number was low enough to make it obvious who was positive, which would be a HIPAA violation. Falsehood flew, to paraphrase Jonathan Swift, and the truth came limping after — but it was too late. Even though reporters around the city (including Rau) discredited the report within about four seconds, it had already caught the attention of various right-wing mouthflappers and keyboard warriors, like new and soon-to-be Nashville residents Tomi Lahren and Ben Shapiro as well as our own homegrown Clay Travis, a sportswriter famous for railing against the

FROM LEFT: DADRA PORTER, BRITTANY PORTER AND MARTHA PORTER the only woman to have died at the prison so far.

“All inmates in the general population are checked twice weekly for symptoms,” Tennessee Department of Correction spokesperson Dorinda Carter tells the Scene in an emailed statement. “If someone is identified with symptoms, that person is tested and contact tracing is conducted to determine whether targeted or mass testing is needed. There have been several rounds of mass and targeted testing at the women’s prison since May. One of the challenges we face is with inmates not being forthcoming about possible symptoms due to concerns about being placed in isolation or quarantine.

We have worked to ensure that they understand that neither of these measures is punitive and access to necessary services and utilities are the same as they would be in general population.”

In all, 16 Tennessee prisoners have died across the state after testing positive for COVID-19. Advocacy groups like Free Hearts have pleaded with Gov. Bill Lee to grant clemency to older and medically vulnerable inmates during the pandemic, but he has not done so.

All the while, fear and confusion have

spread throughout the community of incarcerated women and their loved ones on the outside. As prison officials have tried to contain the virus by quarantining infected and possibly exposed women, advocates and family members say the incarcerated women themselves have rarely received clear information about why they are being moved to a different unit, or what is being done to keep them safe.

“The idea appears to be that you’re not entitled to know anything,” says Wanda, whose daughter is incarcerated at the prison. “ ‘If it’s something you need to know, we’ll tell you.’ ” Wanda asks that the Scene identify her solely by her first name, and not name her daughter at all. She’s concerned about opening her daughter up to retaliation on the inside — and she’s not the only one.

Harrington says other family members and incarcerated women have been afraid about the repercussions of speaking on conditions at the prison and the concerns they have.

Wanda says supporting her daughter during incarceration has “not been easy, and it’s not been cheap.” Her daughter works, but she makes less than a dollar an hour, and half of that goes to paying off court costs. The rest goes toward food and clothes and phone

politicization of sports even though he can’t stop talking about politics. In his most widely viewed screen appearance since that time he accidentally broadcast himself pooping on Facebook (yes really), Metro Councilmember Steve Glover made it to Tucker Carlson Tonight. People claimed the mayor should be impeached (there is no mechanism for impeachment of a mayor, per se) and so on and so forth. Fox doubled down on the story for a day or two before retracting it during their no doubt widely watched 9 p.m. newscast on Friday. … A new report from The Equity Alliance took stock of what Nashvillians need most as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, with an emphasis on how to best invest federal CARES Act dollars into helping vulnerable communities hit hardest by the crisis. The Our Fair Share study found that out of more than 8,000 respondents, Black and Latino residents reported the most acute negative impacts during the pandemic. The report found that more Black and Latino workers (45 and 54 percent,

respectively) had to physically report to work, and that Black and Latino employees are less likely than white workers to feel safe on the job. Another notable finding highlighted in the report: Thirty-five percent of Nashvillians want Metro to put money toward mortgage and rent relief. … A Shelby County judge ordered DNA testing of a knife and other evidence in a 1987 murder for which Pervis Payne was convicted. Payne, who has always maintained his innocence, is scheduled for execution Dec. 3. Payne first requested testing in 2006 but was denied based on a since-reversed decision of the state supreme court. … The Titans moved to 2-0 for the first time since 2008 with a 33-30 win over divisional rival Jacksonville. The TwoToners have won both games this season on late field goals.

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NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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CITY LIMITS calls, with Wanda chipping in to make up the difference. Wanda says she has concerns about the conditions at the prison, but also sees it as a rather small ship being battered by the pandemic’s enormous waves.

“It’s a worldwide problem, and it’s hard for one location to address a worldwide problem,” Wanda says. “I think most people there are scared to death of it, and I think [my daughter] has a healthy respect for it.”

The woman who wrote to the Scene expressed concern about the struggle women inside were facing getting tested — a struggle seemingly illustrated in the weeks leading up to Porter’s death. But the

STATUS UPDATE

Federal court’s TPS ruling could affect thousands of immigrants in Tennessee

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

R

eina del Carmen Arevalo arrived in Nashville nearly 20 years ago after leaving her home country, El Salvador. Months later, an earthquake rocked the Central American nation. Along with thousands of other Salvadorans, she was granted temporary protected status — commonly referred to as TPS — which is given to people fleeing natural disasters, war or other disruptive events in their home countries. In the years since, del Carmen Arevalo became a business owner — she runs a pupuseria and is able to enjoy life in the States thanks to the protections afforded by TPS. “It’s been a big help for many Salvadorans and many Central Americans,” del Carmen Arevalo tells the Scene in Spanish.

But now the future of del Carmen Arevalo’s status feels uncertain.

On Sept. 14, a federal appeals court ruled in a 2-1 decision that the Trump administration could move forward with a decision to end TPS for immigrants from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan. The ruling could affect 300,000 immigrants nationwide, including more than 3,000 in Tennessee.

Del Carmen Arevalo is worried about the ruling’s impact, saying the government could ruin an option that has helped many immigrants.

“I just hope the government looks at the situation we’re in and doesn’t remove [TPS],” she says. “A lot of people have children who were born here — it’s sad that this could cause families to get separated.”

Judith Clerjeune is the policy and legislative affairs manager at the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. “It’s been really disappointing to see that the court has chosen to side with the Trump administration in this case,” she says.

“TPS has provided families the ability to work, and provided legal status to hundreds of thousands of people who really have deep ties within the community — who have families here, who have homes here, who have raised their kids here,” Clerjeune continues. “And so it’s really troubling and deeply disappointing to see that the court has chosen to side with the Trump administration’s really racist attacks to kick immigrants out and also to keep people out of this country.”

If President Donald Trump follows through on the move to end TPS protections, people may be forced to leave the country as early as March 2021.

Clerjeune says about 3,500 people in Tennessee

woman also described precautions being taken at the prison. Inmates from county jails have continued to be moved into the facility — a fact that has worried family members and advocates — but the woman did say that new arrivals are being kept at a distance from each other and quarantined for their first 14 days at the prison.

Like many on the inside, this woman is looking ahead to upcoming court dates and hoping they will lead to her release. The heart of her message comes at the end of a 10-page letter, in neatly handwritten half-cursive.

“I want to make it out of prison alive.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

have TPS — most of them from El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti — and that there are also roughly 3,200 U.S.-born children in the state who have parents who receive TPS. It’s not uncommon for those children to be citizens or to have another form of protection like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allows young people to work and study without fear of deportation.

Cristiam Lopez, a computer engineering major at Trevecca Nazarene University, is from a Salvadoran mixed-status family. He benefits from DACA (a program that survived a legal fight of its own earlier this summer), while his younger brother is a citizen and his father receives TPS. “We’ve been able to make a life over here, while we also contribute,” says Lopez, whose family came to the U.S. in 2001, when he was just 2 years old.

Five years ago, his parents opened a restaurant, and last year his father also started a lawn-care company. Lopez adds that, thanks to TPS, many immigrants around the country have helped their communities by working, creating jobs and, of course, paying taxes. A report from research and advocacy group New American Economy found that TPS holders paid $1.5 billion in taxes in 2017.

Says Lopez: “I can’t imagine how many other families have been able to make a lifestyle … where also they’ve been helping other families.”

Lopez receives a scholarship from the Equal Chance at Education program, which benefits many young immigrants, including DACA students. ECE program coordinator Vanessa Delgado says there are other students in the program like Lopez whose families would be affected by changes to TPS. Advocates have noted that ending TPS could mean sending some recipients into dangerous conditions — for example, recent increases in gang violence have made El Salvador one of the most dangerous countries in the world.

The fight against the proposed changes to TPS isn’t over yet. Clerjeune notes that while TIRRC is not one of the plaintiffs in the case (which also includes TPS holders as plaintiffs), it has national partners who are part of the effort. If the Ninth Circuit doesn’t reconsider its decision, there may be an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Clerjeune says that right now “there is no pathway to citizenship,” especially with a backlog in the immigration process, and that the end goal is securing long-lasting protections for vulnerable immigrants.

“We ultimately know that the solution is to get permanent protection and status for TPS and DACA folks and families who are undocumented,” Clerjeune says. “And so this is another thing that is on the ballot for November — to really highlight that a lot of families, their futures are on the ballot, because we really need … our elected leaders to take action to protect those families.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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MORRIS MEMORIAL BUILDING

Get On Board

Historic buildings in Nashville’s Black neighborhoods are disappearing.

Learotha Williams is fighting so the city’s legacy isn’t lost.

BY J.R. LIND | PHOTOS BY ERIC ENGLAND

T

here’s a block or so of downtown Nashville that contains three spots critical to understanding Black history in the city.

The best-known — the one Nashville at-large is proudest of, the one we want to talk about — is the Public Square.

It was the destination of the silent march that followed the 1960 bombing of civil rights leader Z. Alexander Looby’s home, and where Fisk University student Diane Nash asked Mayor Ben West, who was in the midst of an argument with C.T. Vivian,

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to use his office to end racial segregation in the city. West replied that he “appealed to all citizens to end discrimination.”

Nash pushed him: Did that include the lunch counters? West said yes, prompting raucous cheers from the marchers — so loud, in fact, few people heard him qualify that by saying the decision was up to the managers of the counters themselves. In the papers, The Tennessean emphasized West saying the counters should be integrated; the more conservative Nashville Banner focused on his quiet qualification.

A few blocks away is a darker place. A

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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BOYD HOUSE

place Nashville doesn’t like talking about.

The intersection of Fourth and Charlotte (it was Cedar Street at the time) was the center of the city’s slave-trading business. The firms that operated there — and there were many — engaged in the wicked industry that kept white Nashville prosperous and Black Nashville in chains. The firms had pens that could hold hundreds of enslaved people to be callously bought and sold.

Between these two extremes is a gorgeous wedding cake of a building.

Built in the mid-1920s with a neoclassical design by renowned architects McKissack & McKissack — the first Black-owned architectural firm in the United States — the Morris Memorial Building was built as the headquarters of the National Baptist Convention’s Sunday School Publishing Board. Other Black-owned businesses occupied its offices as well.

The Morris building — now the only extant building in the downtown core connected with Black enterprise — is a monument of sorts to achievement by Black Nashville on its own terms, particularly in a time when every power structure was aligned against such accomplishments.

For Dr. Learotha Williams, a Tennessee State University history professor focusing on African American history, public history and the Civil War, the Morris building was also his earliest connection to Nashville — through the R.H. Boyd Company, a Christian publisher headquartered there.

“I was born and raised a Baptist in Tallahassee, and we got all of our materials from the Boyd Company,” says Williams. “My father was [Sunday school] superintendent, so it was a rite of passage for us to wait for the books every month and find out what our Sunday school classes would be. Graduating from one class to another was a big deal, and it was cool until we became adults and found out they wanted us to teach the classes. Those books were a big deal. We knew the name Boyd.”

But when Williams took his position at TSU, he developed an even deeper appreciation for the Boyd family — particularly R.H. and his son Henry Allen — after visiting the Morris building. He calls the building “a magnificent shrine,” and describes standing on its roof as making him feel “like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic.”

“I get here and find out [Henry Allen

Boyd] was president of the Nashville Globe, and find out he was instrumental in bringing TSU to Nashville, and then the connection with the Morris building,” says Williams. “They did more than print Sunday school books. They printed hymnals and songbooks. I saw this man and his family providing a way to physically touch these songs our ancestors raised when they were enslaved. The songs became flesh.”

THE BOYDS WERE TRULY renaissance men, involved in nearly every part of Black life in Nashville in the early 20th century — from the publishing concern to TSU to the OneCent Savings and Trust Company Bank (now Citizens Bank, the oldest minority-owned bank in the country). When Tennessee segregated Nashville’s streetcars in 1905, R.H. Boyd helped organize a boycott, and along with James Napier and Preston Taylor, he started a bus company. The electricity for the vehicles was provided by a generator in the basement of the National Baptist Convention publishing house, so as to avoid having to buy power from a whiteowned utility.

Nashville, though, has done little to honor the family.

“I looked around and saw how Nashville was commemorating the influence this guy had,” says Williams. “TSU has a dorm named for him, and it’s a dorm that needs a lot of work.”

Henry Allen Boyd had McKissack & McKissack build a home at 1601 Meharry Blvd. for him and his wife Georgia in the 1930s. Georgia was also a central figure in Nashville’s Black history as part of the influential Colored Women’s Club Movement, which fought for both racial and gender equality. Now the home on the Fisk campus, once the scene of salons and parties, is crumbling.

“The Boyd house was something that resonated with me because of the disrepair it was in. … This is the capital city, which means the infrastructure for preservation is here, but that house is on its last legs. It’s one of the few remaining homes from that period that still stands [in the area].”

Through his work with preservation nonprofit Historic Nashville Inc., Williams learned that Fisk pulled a demolition permit for the home — and he roared into action.

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“You have a guy that did so much in this city that we fail to acknowledge, that we fail to commemorate, and it gets to the point that even the lasting monuments to his work and his life are threatened by the bulldozer and the wrecking ball.” ­—Dr. Learotha Williams

DR. LEAROTHA WILLIAMS “It troubled me,” says Williams. “I heard about it after the fact. Had it not been for me being on the board of Historic Nashville, I would have never known. I’m grateful I received word that Saturday that demolition was imminent and that the trucks would be there on Monday.”

With the alacrity of a man on a mission, Williams posted a petition on MoveOn.org to save the home. It garnered nearly 4,000 signatures.

“I put that petition out, and it accomplished what it was supposed to accomplish, which was to get everyone to pull up a second,” he says. “You have a guy that did so much in this city that we fail to acknowledge, that we fail to commemorate, and it gets to the point that even the lasting monuments to his work and his life are threatened by the bulldozer and the wrecking ball.”

While the Boyd home has been saved — for now — the whole fiasco raises troubling questions about why Nashville hasn’t and isn’t doing more to preserve its Black history.

“As a historian, I teach history, and I try to look into the margins and see what other people don’t see or tell,” Williams says.

“Oftentimes I wonder if it was this city’s desire to compete with large Southern cities that caused them not to pay close attention to the built environment that was worthwhile.”

As Nashville and the nation wrestle with telling a fuller and more honest history, Williams wants to ensure that includes preserving places that are tangible reminders of the past — just as his North Nashville Heritage Project, an ongoing undertaking collecting first-person accounts of the neighborhood’s history, is

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ELLIOTT HALL preserving memories.

“I try to raise awareness with students because that’s who I interact with,” he says.

“These places, these spaces have meaning and value, and I say something that’s maybe a little corny: Every brick, every board, every mortar has meaning, because more often than not, Black brickmakers, Black carpenters put that together. They said, ‘We

built this house for the Boyds, and it’s going to be nice.’ That’s the emotional connection they had. The house is a memorial of sorts.”

THERE ARE OTHER PLACES that need protection too, Williams says.

One such place is Z. Alexander Looby’s home at 2012 Meharry Blvd. The home

“should be a historical landmark,” Williams says, because its bombing led directly to the silent march culminating in Nash’s famous colloquy with West.

Another is Elliott Hall, which for decades was the site of TSU’s cafeteria.

“When the leaders [of the Nashville movement] from American Baptist College needed foot soldiers for the movement, they

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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“If you ignore them, if you are less than truthful with the history, you aren’t being truthful about yourself.” ­—Dr. Learotha Williams JEFFERSON STREET OVERPASS knew they could get several at Elliott Hall,” says Williams. “If you look at the articles from The Tennessean on the days following the sit-ins, they were posting students’ names and addresses. Seventy-nine students were arrested, and 50 were from TSU — and I can almost guarantee they were recruited in Elliott.”

Though once slated for demolition, Elliott was saved because it’s one of the few places on TSU’s campus where the art department can store its supplies. Sometimes practical matters do more for preservation than historical or sentimental reasons.

Even a place as seemingly prosaic as Haddox Pharmacy on Charlotte Avenue, torn down to make way for a hotel, had meaning to the Black community. Its location meant residents of the Henry Hale Home had a convenient place to get medication without having to make their way to Jefferson Street.

And this is just the recent history. When Interstate 40 came through the city in the late 1960s, entire blocks of Jefferson Street fell victim to Eisenhower’s progress.

Founded in 1918 at 14th and Jefferson, Jefferson Street Church of Christ moved to 26th and Jefferson — its second building featured incredible brickwork, crafted by members of the congregation itself. It was torn down to make way for I-40. As a result, the congregation moved to Schrader Lane in 1967, and became the Schrader Lane Church of Christ.

Williams says it’s unclear if the required review of historic properties — it’s called a Section 106 review — was even undertaken on Jefferson Street.

“In retrospect, there weren’t a whole lot of Black faces at the table,” he says. “It’s probably the same way now.”

The interstate routing destroyed churches and nightclubs, and essentially split the vibrant neighborhood in two. Who knows what other potentially historically important places were traded for an unsightly overpass?

“Our older churches, the churches that were created either shortly after the Civil War or in the early days of Jim Crow, these institutions are monuments to the struggle for Black equality, for freedom in Nashville,” Williams says.

As a practical matter, preserving

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historical sites isn’t easy no matter their location or whose history is involved.

Williams’ first job out of graduate school was working in historical preservation for the state of Florida, and he says in that game, “You catch a lot more Ls than Ws, and even the wins are transient” — something a lifelong love of the Miami Dolphins prepared him for. But preserving history in historically marginalized communities is even harder.

“Oftentimes our spaces are not valued by the larger community,” he says. “I don’t know if that’s because they didn’t know about it or didn’t care to know about it, but I know how history has been taught.”

He goes on, referencing the 21-yearold text The African American History of Nashville, Tennessee by Bobby L. Lovett.

“The history of Black Nashville wasn’t written until 1999, and it probably needs updating. There’s a lot of stuff we are still learning. My message to my students and Nashville in general: These old Black schools, these churches, these Black spaces in general, if you ignore them, if you are less than truthful with the history, you aren’t being truthful about yourself.”

Williams says that in Nashville, the historically Black neighborhoods — North Nashville, Edgehill and Edgefield — are close to downtown, making economics a big obstacle as well.

“Money is the driving issue,” he says.

“Think about a senior person thinking about leaving behind something for their children.

They might be offered $300,000 for a home in College Hill.”

That neighborhood near TSU’s campus is full of “amazing homes,” many built by McKissack & McKissack. “As far as the Black middle class, this spot is as important as any spot in this city.”

In talking about College Hill, Williams takes the opportunity to dispel a lie Nashville tells about itself: that it had a Jim Crow-era Black middle class more robust than its sister cities in the South. Williams says nearly every Southern city tries to convince itself of the same thing.

“You had some African Americans that were really doing it: Preston Taylor, the Boyds and intellectual geniuses. …

Flem Otey: I don’t think I’ve encountered any grocer that was doing as well. The

undertakers do well. I’m fascinated by Preston Taylor, who parlayed being an undertaker and pastor into being involved in a lot of things. By the same token, you had a bunch of people that were barely getting by.”

He points to Hell’s Half Acre, which was a slum north and west of the Tennessee State Capitol.

“I see it in proximity to all these Black folks doing well,” says Williams. “I don’t know if the shine of their success was blocking out what life was like for most other people, but we had wealth that was surrounded by extreme poverty.”

He says “an old historian’s trick” is to read what newspapers in other cities are saying. In 1926, The Pittsburgh Courier sent George Schuyler to the South. The trenchant Schuyler said he’d never seen a more undemocratic city than the Athens of the South, an acerbic observation that burns through the decades.

IT’S UP TO NASHVILLE at-large to recognize the value in places central to Black history, a lesson learned after Fort Negley was threatened. The fort was long esteemed

by Black Nashvillians as a place of accomplishment and triumph — and rather incongruously co-opted by the Ku Klux Klan and various Confederate cosplayers — but its importance was lost on much of the city.

Williams says communities that value those spaces must also learn what to do to save them.

“We need to do a better job emphasizing the importance of these spaces. These spaces define a community. They are the heart and soul of our community. Our ancestors built them or worked like hell to get these buildings up. These buildings are symbolic of that. Their influence reaches beyond these communities. These churches teach kids to read and write and stand up to speak, and they go out and do great things in the world. These buildings have meaning. But buildings deteriorate. The federal government created the National Trust, and its purpose is to preserve these spaces that have meaning. If you reach out and say, ‘My building is historic,’ they will assist you. That doesn’t protect it from destruction, but it will provide an avenue to get grants that can help you repair that roof

or that plumbing. That listing may bring you under the watchful gaze of someone who has interest in historic preservation.”

Yes, nominations for the National Register or the National Trust can be daunting, and there’s a misconception that being listed means giving up control of the property. But the labor is worth it, Williams says.

“We need to prepare people to talk about these things in a meaningful way, to explain why this building is important to the community and to Nashville,” he says.

Once those connections are meaningfully made, it’s easier to say no to someone “scratching out a check for your ancestors’ memories.”

“The need to make a buck, to make a profit, never goes away,” he says. “You might hold them at bay for a little while, but these people have a lot of cash and a lot of time, and once they bulldoze it, it’s gone.”

And what’s gone may be more than just a building.

“Much of what I learned about North Nashville came out of J.T. Smith’s barbershop,” says Williams of a longtime Black Nashville institution that is now closed. “Doctors, lawyers, professors and ordinary folks would just come through and just hang out there, and I was struck about how equal it was in that space.

There were opinions — some profound, some ignorant. It was a place I could hear about when Tina Turner came to Jefferson Street, or hear about the heavyhandedness of the police.”

Metro is now building a park where the barbershop once stood.

“I remember being in a meeting with [Metro] Parks, and they asked what we could do to replicate that,” he says. “You can build something different, but it won’t be the same. When they tore that down, they tore down a library, an archive.”

It’s up to all of Nashville to fight and work to save places in North Nashville and in the other historically Black neighborhoods, because, as Williams says, our history is our history.

“We need to be shining a bit more light on its role in making Nashville Nashville,” he says of North Nashville. “Its victories were Nashville victories, and where it stumbled is where the city stumbled.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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CRITICS’ PICKS R O U N D U P

O F

T H I N G S

T O

D O

[MEMBERS ONLY]

BECOME A BELCOURT MEMBER — AND GO TO THE BELCOURT DRIVE-IN

The Belcourt Drive-In series — which the beloved arthouse announced in late August — has been so popular with cinemastarved local film buffs that screenings often sell out immediately. In fact, according to staff, tickets for both The Birds and North by Northwest were gone in less than a minute during the drive-in’s opening week. But that’s a great incentive to become a Belcourt member, if you aren’t one already: Members get first dibs on purchasing tickets — and with excellent new releases on the docket alongside great repertory titles, making sure you’re at the front of the line is a great idea. Just as importantly, your membership will help support Nashville’s beloved nonprofit film center at a time when it, like many independent arts organizations, could really use it. Among the titles now showing in the series is Kajillionaire, the latest from director Miranda July (more on her catalog below), which is set for a two-weekend run (Sept. 25-27 and Oct. 2-4). Go to belcourt.org/membership to sign up, and keep an eye out for more titles to come throughout October and possibly beyond — the Belcourt has been announcing the drive-in selections via its site, social media and email blasts to members.

ROADSIDE ATTRACTION, BUFFALO BARNES; PHOTOS: MAMA HOT DOG

FILM

W E E K L Y

ROADSIDE ATTRACTION

LOVE ON CATS AT THE CATIO

A positive byproduct of quarantine is that animal adoptions are up, with shelters reporting record numbers of dogs Seems like cinephiles can’t get enough and cats finding permanent homes. Cat of the drive-in movie experience these cafes, however — which also have kitties days. From the Bill & Ted Face the Music available to adopt, as well as a low-key premiere party at Stardust Drive-In in vibe that’s perhaps more conducive to Watertown to the Scene’s Movies in the getting a sense of the cats’ personalities Park-ing Lot series to the Belcourt’s sold— are struggling. Earlier this month, out-in-minutes screenings of Hitchcock South Nashville’s Mewsic Kitty Cat Cafe classics (more on that above), movie lovers’ announced there simply haven’t been plates are full. But for visual art lovers, enough people coming by to sip coffee replicating a pre-pandemic experience and chill with their cats for a in socially distant conditions is nominal fee, and they weren’t proving more difficult. Leave EDITOR’S NOTE: AS A able to keep the lights on — its it to the resourceful weirdos RESPONSE TO THE ONGOING last day will be Wednesday, at Elephant Gallery to come COVID-19 PANDEMIC, WE’VE Sept. 30. That leaves the up with a fun alternative to CHANGED THE FOCUS OF THE Opry Mills-adjacent Catio traditional gallery openings.

CRITICS’ PICKS SECTION TO as the only game in town. I Roadside Attraction is a INCLUDE ACTIVITIES YOU CAN PARTAKE IN WHILE YOU’RE AT checked it out last month, and showcase for artist Buffalo HOME. it did not disappoint — just a Barnes, whose menagerie of great big room full of happy, painted plywood signs has all loving felines, and cat-condo and the outsider charm of Howard cat-tower inspo to boot. The Catio is solid Finster or Jesse Howard. The works will on mask protocol, great at social media, be displayed outdoors all day long on the holds fun events like trivia nights, beer grounds of the North Nashville spot, and tastings (for humans) and “cat speed promises to be both social-distancingdating,” and seems to arrange adoptions at friendly and larger-than-life. Given the a steady rate (more than 500 since opening gallery’s wildly successful 2017 show of in December). But because of the cafe’s Don Shull’s carved whirligigs, Roadside zero-foot-traffic location — a quiet strip Attraction should be a hot spot (the good mall tucked behind the Nashville Palace kind) this weekend. Masks are required.

— a little signal-boost from us crazy cat Saturday, Sept. 26, at Elephant Gallery, 1411 ladies still goes a long way. For more info, Buchanan St. LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

visit cationashville.com. The Next Catio Trivia Night is 6-10 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26, at 2416 Music Valley Drive CHARLIE ZAILLIAN [POD-CASTING CALL]

CHECK OUT BROADWAY-THEMED PODCASTS

Whether you’re a die-hard podcast listener or just hoping to expand your cultural horizons, the Broadway Podcast Network is a great resource. There’s a little something for everyone — from cast reunions and interviews with industry pros to audition tips and behind-the-scenes perspectives on blockbuster hits. There are show-specific podcasts featuring fun conversations with cast members from fan favorites like Come From Away, Hadestown, The Prom and more. Join Tony winner Donna McKechnie (A Chorus Line) as she dishes with special guests in The Ladies Who Lunch. Or get an in-depth look at life in the theater with legendary lyricist Tim Rice’s Get Onto My Cloud. History lovers will enjoy David Armstrong’s Broadway Nation, which considers the brilliant artists — as well as the outsiders and misfits — who have shaped the theater world. And through Broadway Together, you can even follow artists-turned-activists as they shine a light on important social issues. Search these titles and more at broadwaypodcastnetwork.com. AMY STUMPFL

SPORTS

CHECK OUT ROADSIDE ATTRACTION AT ELEPHANT GALLERY

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PODCASTS

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TRIVIA

ART

D. PATRICK RODGERS [SIXTEEN BLUE]

WATCH THE MLB PLAYOFFS

If the traditional 162-game baseball season is a marathon, the virusshortened 2020 campaign is definitely a sprint. Major League Baseball has used this year’s bizarro season, which includes just 60 games, to beta-test several proposed rule changes — including three-batter minimum, universal designated hitter and starting extra innings with a runner on second. It’s actually worked out better than expected. But the World Series? It could go one of 16 ways. That’s how many teams will be invited to the expanded 2020 tourney, which starts this week with eight sets of nail-biting best-of-three matchups.

At press time, my L.A. Dodgers are a likely top seed in the National League, and to even be put in a position to potentially lose in three against an eighth-seed with a sub-.500 record doesn’t sit well — especially if it’s our archrival, the San Francisco Giants. The orange menaces have somehow won the Fall Classic three times since 2010, taking the back door into the playoffs as a wild card for two of those; my boys in blue, meanwhile, have won their division outright each of the past seven seasons, yet remain mired in a 32-year title drought. Though the potential of a first-round bracket-breaker going all the way is unnervingly high (“Your 2020 World Series Champion Miami Marlins,” anyone?), if a team that dominated the 60game sprint can withstand the extra steps and cross the finish line first, they’ll be

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CRITICS’ PICKS lineup is a stacked one, and includes singersongwriter Andrew Combs playing The High Watt on Friday, soul musician Jason Eskridge performing at The 5 Spot on Sunday and eclectic rockers Trigger Hippy hitting the O.G. Basement on Monday. Shows begin at 7 p.m. each evening and stream via the Music City Bandwidth homepage (visitmusiccity.com/music-city-bandwidth).

Shows are free to stream, but donations to support participating artists and venues are strongly encouraged. 7 p.m. every night via Music City Bandwidth BRITTNEY McKENNA [BRAVE NEW WORLD]

ART

PARTICIPATE IN VANDERBILT’S ENGINE FOR ART, DEMOCRACY AND JUSTICE

BUILD YOUR OWN STREAMING MIRANDA JULY FILM FESTIVAL

While longtime arthouse darling Miranda July doesn’t have a great deal of feature-length films under her belt, the writer-director-actor’s small and fiercely singular catalog has earned some adamant fans over the past decade-and-a-half. So let’s kick off the 24th installment of our ongoing stay-at-home streaming film fest with July’s debut 2005 feature, Me and You and Everyone We Know. That one, which was written by, directed by and stars July, is currently available with a bunch of special features via The Criterion Channel (and also available to rent on iTunes for $4).

Some critics and cinephiles find the — to borrow an adjective that is applied to July far too often — quirky tone of that ensemble romantic comedy too cloying or precious. For others, however, it really strikes a chord — none other than Roger Ebert declared Everyone the fifth-best film of the Aughts, describing its tone as “fragile magic.” While July’s follow-up, 2011’s The Future ($4 on Amazon Prime Video and YouTube), didn’t make quite the splash her debut did, it’s still got whimsy and a bit of magical realism, plus a good score from Jon Brion. Next queue up 2018’s Madeline’s Madeline (free on Prime, and described by our own Jason Shawhan upon its release as “a joyful nightmare”), which was written and directed by prolific filmmaker Josephine Decker and features a performance from July. If tickets remain, you can bring your fest home with Kajillionaire — July’s brandnew absurdist heist comedy featuring Evan Rachel Wood, Richard Jenkins, Gina Rodriguez and Debra Winger — at the Belcourt Drive-In (more on that above). If you don’t snag tickets in time, however, just stay tuned. Kajillionaire will likely hit streaming services before long. D. PATRICK RODGERS

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[IMPOSTOR SYNDROME]

PLAY AMONG US, A SPACE-MURDERMYSTERY PARTY GAME

A lot of games have stolen the spotlight this summer — chill-ass life-simulator Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a wholesome reprieve for many in the early days of the pandemic, while battle royale game Fall Guys brought in some very goofy but not-so-friendly competition more recently. A space-themed survival game from 2018 was probably the least likely title to assume the “game of the moment” mantle, but Among Us has suddenly become a title everyone is talking about. Kind of like the social-deduction game Werewolf, Among Us features a space crew (up to 10 players) that has to complete tasks before the two impostors *ahem* among them sabotage the station or kill everyone off. Of course, the crew can call meetings to vote on who they suspect is the impostor — better hope you’re launching the right person into space.

The dark, horror-sci-fi premise is softened greatly by the cartoon-y aesthetic, while the simple controls and fact that you can play it for free on your phone (and just $5 via Steam on PC) make it very accessible to a broad audience. Gather your friends, get into space and start pointing fingers at each other. ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

program called Lived Experiences in Tech.

You can catch the fourth panel discussion at noon on Wednesday, Sept. 30. Titled Lived Experiences: The Digital Nomad Life, the panel will include Chanita Simms, founder of the tech community-building platform Melanin.Tech; Michael Green, a senior data scientist at Tumblr; Amanda Scott, content marketing manager at WiFi Tribe; and Tatiana Johnson, director of digital marketing strategy and digital support at iHeartMedia. Noon on Wednesday, Sept. 30, via mintechagency.com ERICA CICCARONE MUSIC

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forever immortalized as undisputed kings of coronaball. CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

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ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW

[STREAM ON]

TUNE IN TO MUSIC CITY BANDWIDTH

The COVID-19 pandemic has decimated the live music industry, leaving countless musicians and music venues without access to their primary sources of income. The new series Music City Bandwidth, put on by the city of Nashville, seeks to alleviate that financial pain with a month-and-a-half of virtual concerts hosted at 15 local venues, including Drkmttr, Exit/ In and The Bluebird Café. This week’s

When artist and educator Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons moved to Nashville, it was only a matter of time before she used her influence to galvanize the local community.

The Engine for Art, Democracy and Justice was initiated by the prolific Afro-Cuban artist, and its timing couldn’t be more welcome. The first of eight discussions — each of which will be hosted online and available to stream — will be an academic examination of the consequences of social and historical inequities in art from Latin America, Africa, South Europe and the American South. On Wednesday, Sept. 30, the discussion will center on redefining monuments. In it, Fisk curator Jamaal Sheats will be joined by Nashville-based writer Caroline Randall Williams and Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama to discuss the creation of counternarratives — that is, “the creation of a public-facing art that redefines the concept of monuments as vehicles for propagating inclusive ideals in contemporary idioms.” The series might be the most valuable way you’ve spent a Wednesday morning in years — sign up via Vanderbilt’s EADJ website, where you can also learn about future sessions that include everyone from artist Theaster Gates to prolific producer T Bone Burnett.

10 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 30, via Vanderbilt’s Engine for Art, Democracy and Justice LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

[TECH SAVVY]

TUNE IN TO LIVED EXPERIENCES IN TECH WITH MINTECH

Last year, Wired reported that despite the promises that Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft made to diversify the tech workforce in 2014, the percentage of Black and Latinx technical workers — coders, engineers and data scientists — rose only by single digits. As Nashville’s tech profile rises, locals are addressing this problem head-on. MinTech is a tech recruiting company that works to balance the scales, connecting Black and Latinx techies with progressive, inclusive places to work. To celebrate its one-year anniversary, MinTech is hosting a monthlong virtual

ANDREW COMBS: MUSIC CITY BANDWIDTH

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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nashvillescene.com | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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sept. 28 -oct. 4

Visit our website www.scenemargandtacoweek.com

for restaurant hours, order information, details on our photo contest and more!

Vote for your favorite eats and drinks of the week and help crown the Best Taco and Best Margarita in town!

Participating Restaurants

Sponsored by t t’s Le bou co eal! ta d a

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Ask for a $4 Modelo and Lechosa Hot Sauce with your meal!

#SCENEMARGANDTACOWEEK

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NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

It’s tacos and tequila time!

Head to these restaurants for $6 margaritas and two tacos for $6 all week long, September 28 - October 4. No tickets are required, just show up, eat your heart out and sip on cervezas! Strategize your week below.

Chago’s

Belmont

Ancho Chile Braised Beef Taco 12 hour Ancho Chile braised

beef topped with cheddar cheese diced onion and cilantro. Served on a flour tortilla.

The Skinny Lite and refreshing!

Our Skinny Margarita is served in an 8 oz. to go bottle to drink on our patio or when you get to your next destination.

El Fuego East Nashville Street Tacos Your Choice of a

grilled chicken taco, flour tortilla, lettuce OR carnitas taco “street style” with a corn tortilla, onions and cilantro.

House Margarita Freshly

squeezed lime, 100% agave tequila and orange liquor, balanced just right.

La Terraza Nolensville Pike Street Tacos Choose between

two tacos of asada, pork carnitas, pastor and beef tongue.

House Margarita The best

margarita in the house, made with Patrón tequila Puerto Vallarta Mexico style.

Las Palmas All 9 Nashville

Area Locations

Street Tacos Pick any TWO

street tacos- The Nash Palmas (Pollo Desebrado-Shredded Chicken) The Bless Your Heart (Al Pastor) and The Honky Tonk (Suadero).

Skinny or Cucumber Jalepeno Margarita

Made from scratch lower calorie margarita made with 1800® 100% blue agave and our special mix. OR with a little heat if you like.

Made from scratch with fresh cucumber, jalapeño, and 1800® blue agave.

Mestizo’s Bellevue Tacos off the Truck

Corn or flour tortilla with cilantro and onions and choice of meat: Chorizo, carnitas, steak, chicken or lengua (beef tongue).

Classic Margarita

Choice of flavors: cucumber jalapeño, grapefruit hibiscus, wild berry, strawberry, mango or classic lime.

Mojo’s Tacos Franklin Bahn Mi Taco Lemongrass pork,

pickled daikon & carrots, morita sauce and cilantro.

Blackberry Margarita

Corralejo tequila, blackberry liqueur, agava, fresh lime juice.

South side Kitchen & Pub South Nashville Beau Barbacoa Taco Slow

Cooked Barbacoa Beef, Rainbow Radish, Tomato, Red Onion, Lime Crema on a Flour or Corn Tortilla.

Peach Heat & Beet Blanco

Tequila, Poblano & Fresno Infused Lime Juice, Corn Husk Syrup, Peach Syrup, Beet Juice & Black Walnut Bitters.

Phat Bites Donelson Maliante Taco Flour tortilla

filled with local HYDROHOUSE lettuce, onions, green peppers, tomatoes & steak charred in our house made mojo sauce. topped with shredded cheddar cheese & avocado slice. Served with a side of Remoulade & pickled jalapeño slaw.

Mango Paloma Fresh mango

purée, fresh lime juice, Jaritos grapefruit soda, tequila, served on the rocks with a Tajin rim.

Subculture Urban Cafe Nolensville Pike Hot Chicken Taco

Our award winning Hot Chicken (we won the Scene Hot Chicken week in 2020, 2018, and 2017!) in a taco. Nashville Hot Chicken (deboned thigh), our house aioli, sesame slaw on a soft corn tortilla.

Maypoparita A cocktail using

local sparking water company, Maypop Sparking water. Orange, grapefruit sparkling water, and a tequila & agave house made syrup.

Republic Downtown Street Tacos Your choice of 2

street tacos! Choose from Carnitas, Baja Fish, Short Rib and Bourbon Chicken

Real Margarita Made fresh with Cazadores Reposado, agave, and hand squeezed lime juice.

Hillsboro Village

The Sizzler Taco Grilled steak

tenderloin, grilled onions, avocado, lettuce, tomatoes, red chile butter sauce, queso fresco.

Sliderhouse Midtown

The Real Deal Giro Tequila,

Southern Comfort Taco

Grand Marnier, Lime Juice, Simple Syrup.

Street taco with shredded lettuce, tomato, avocado, cheddar cheese, bacon, honey sriracha with choice of marinated chicken or beef.

Tacos y Mariscos Lindo Mexico Madison

Razz Rita Altos tequila margarita with raspberry liqueur and fresh raspberries.

The 6” Tortilla Taco

Two 6” tortilla tacos with your choice of meat: chicken, beef or spicy pork

Smokin’ Thighs Wedgewood-Houston

Smoked Chicken Taco

Taco Mama

The ModeloRita Modelo Beer Michelada - margarita style

Soft flour tacos filled with BBQ applewood smoked chicken topped with a roasted peppercorn slaw lettuce combo and ranch drizzle.

Moonrita We rival the tequila but

starting with White Moonshine, Lime, Triple sec and a dash of salt to make the perfect moonshine margarita.

nashvillescene.com | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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FOOD AND DRINK

NINE LIVES

Two of our food critics weigh in on the fifth iteration of The Catbird Seat

BY STEVE CAVENDISH AND ASHLEY BRANTLEY

Steve Cavendish: I’ve had Brian Baxter’s food in some other spots, but this was the first time I’ve eaten a menu entirely by him (and his team). The thing that struck me, as compared to other iterations of The Catbird Seat, is how Southern the point of view was. I mean, at various points there were a tomato finger sandwich (with hackleback caviar) and a straight-up, ain’t-no-sugar-inthe-recipe piece of cornbread in front of us (with, of course, truffle butter).

Ashley Brantley: First of all, God bless Baxter for knowing sugar in cornbread is heresy. Secondly, I agree that the Southern elements were front and center. Looking at the full menu, I feel like it was almost a 30/30/40 split between Southern, classic French and Japanese. For example, that epically satisfying opener you mentioned was on Japanese milk bread with sauce gribiche — so basically French egg-salad sauce — with caviar that comes from the Mississippi River.

Add a sprinkle of Dutch cheese here or a madeira truffle sauce there, but by and large, that Southern/Asian/French split reminded me of the opening Catbird days — kind of reminiscent of early Catbird chefs Josh Habiger and Erik Anderson in its global-but-anchored-here bent.

SC: I think that’s fair. Trevor Moran took Catbird in a more wide-open direction when he was there, while after him Ryan Poli’s mostly European influences were always on display. After that, Will Aghajanian and Liz Johnson spent most of their one-year tenure trying to be deliberately provocative — they told Food & Wine “We’re not making Southern food” — before leaving in a hurry.

Baxter feels, in some ways, like a course correction, which is interesting for a place that is designed to be a laboratory of sorts.

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CHEF BRIAN BAXTER

But enough comparisons. We landed at the restaurant in the middle of a pandemic, and some things were different. The staff was all masked, and there was significant distance between parties. Part of the vibe of Catbird is that the seats are a wraparound theater for the show being cooked in front of you. I always enjoy watching how the people around me react to the same courses, and the distancing certainly cut down on that shared experience. But that’s a minor gripe (and a temporary one, hopefully, in response to a necessary change). What was your favorite course?

AB: Honestly, I didn’t notice a huge change from the experience perspective. We were still close enough to visually stalk the plates coming out before ours, and to point to drinks and say, “I need that pink wine!” So the experience remained largely intact.

As far as favorites, I narrowed it to three.

(And you can’t make me choose, because we aren’t in the same room. Thanks, COVID!) The first is the red pepper three ways — pickled, grilled and escabeche — which was topped with smoked shrimp, burnt-bread sauce and banana pepper emulsion. Not only does it come in a badass bowl that looks like molten lava, but it also stars a bell pepper, which is a vegetable most people treat as an afterthought. The flavor was sweet and subtle but powerfully fresh, which is the kind of magic trick I expect at Catbird. Did that one stick with you?

SC: It did, and I’d even put it near the top. But the dish that really got me was the hay-smoked mussels in a sauce poulette with a cured egg yolk. I’m kind of an easy mark for mussel dishes (I once ate them for six straight days on a trip to Belgium; did I mention I have gout?), and this ticked all the boxes — slightly smoky, rich, and it came in a little dish shaped like a hen that became, basically, a shooter when you took the chicken-as-porcelain-top off. It was an amazing bite. It also conformed to the best practices of a great tasting menu, which is to leave you wanting more.

A close second was the Alabama blue crab with summer squash and Japanese curry spice. Again, it was that Southern sensibility stretched in a different direction, which I loved — the curry brought every-

MUSSELS

PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

S

ince it opened in 2011, The Catbird Seat has operated in a rarefied space among Nashville restaurants. Designed to be a kind of restaurant lab with frequently changing leadership, Catbird — via its parent company Strategic Hospitality — has for years been stocked with chefs with experience at some of the best restaurants in the world.

It’s also among the hardest to review, for a few reasons: While some other restaurants offer tasting menus, none offer a dozenplus-course gauntlet spread out over twoplus hours; the techniques on display are meant to challenge as well as delight; and the bar setup around the open kitchen offers a level of interaction with the staff you might find in only one or two other places.

At $135 per person, it’s a once-in-a-bluemoon ticket for most diners.

With former Husk and Bastion chef de cuisine Brian Baxter taking the helm earlier this year, the Scene sent writers Ashley Brantley and Steve Cavendish to give the restaurant its first proper consideration in several years.

DOUGHNUTS

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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FOOD AND DRINK

SNAPPER thing together so beautifully, and the fried squash blossom that came with it (also with Japanese flavoring, this time in the form of seven spice) was such a fun complement.

What else was on your list?

AB: Mussels, baby! That was also in my top two, for every reason you listed — as well as portion size, which indirectly saved your gout-getting ass from itself. If there was one bite to define the night, that was it.

I liked the crab dish, but at that point in the meal, I wanted a little more punch from the curry or umami from the bonito-cured butter. Salt, fat and crab are my favorite flavors, and this was lovely, but I think it needed to be bumped up in the rotation two spots to be a home run. (Am I using those terms right? My baseball knowledge starts and ends with Sam Malone on Cheers.)

And my final podium pick: I really enjoyed the swordfish sushi — country-hamified fish, fried grits done like sushi rice — but it was just edged out for me by the red snapper en papillote. The lemony elements; the non-gooey okra dressed in fermentedgreen-tomato vin; the sauce made from dry,

SWORDFISH

smoked fish bones. As a nation, we don’t grind enough bones, and Baxter’s doing his part there.

Anything I missed in the savory department?

SC: I liked the swordfish as well, maybe because I loved that fried grit bite so much, but those were the highlights. There were a few misses for me — notably the beef course, which was a piece of ribeye cap cooked in beef fat with a madeira sauce and side of corn purée. It was the least interesting thing we ate in 12 savory courses and four sweet ones. A few stops before, a little bit of raw short rib arrived with tuna, watermelon dashi, cured tomato and little bits of watermelon rind pickled in the style of ginger. It was fascinating to me, even if I preferred other dishes. The ribeye was the last protein course and just felt flat. I think after eating enough tasting menus, I would take almost any vegetable course over another beef-forward one.

AB: I agree. Ultra-rich proteins are ubiquitous, so if you’re going to make one the pinnacle of your tasting menu, it needs to be unforgettable. (See: The sliced smoked duck with morels and garlic scapes we had at Bastion in June, which I’m still drooling over.) I actually thought the side dish — corn fritter wrapped in cured beef belly — was the most interesting part of that beef dish.

Overall, my biggest critique is that I wanted more flavor and fewer ingredients from a few dishes. Take the chanterelles: pain perdu, apricot jam, fermented apricot juice, mushroom jus, midnight moon cheese, chive, tarragon, black butter. That’s what we in the biz call a shit-ton of ingredients. And on paper, they sound like they’d make overthe-top umami magic. But even a day later, my memory of the taste was muddy. I think losing a few elements would actually clarify the flavor. It’s the Coco Chanel school of cooking: Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.

SC: That’s fair. There’s a lot of process in

some of these dishes, with a ton of pickling, fermenting and curing, and frequently it pays off. The opening flight of tomatoes — a finger sandwich, a small pie and an ’nduja — showcased a range of preparations pretty brilliantly. Overall, my criticisms are on the margins, because this was a showstopping meal. I’m always intrigued when chefs take over a restaurant, particularly one as successful as Catbird, because there are expectations. At least half of the restaurant’s clientele is from out of state, and that national reputation has been won by an extremely talented set of chefs with large ambitions. Baxter fits into that mold very well.

I don’t want to sidetrack this without getting to dessert, though. We got four courses, and one of them really stood out to me — the doughnut. They took a round ball of pretty light dough, deep-fried it, punctured the bottom and filled it with foie gras bavarian cream, dipped it in a cherry sauce and then smashed freeze-dried cherries and sprinkled the crumbs over the top. It was a nearperfect combination of flavor and texture, and it found that oh-so-satisfying zone of being sweet, but not too sweet, that the best desserts find. It was pure delight, I didn’t even care about the mess I made.

AB: I’ll cede the point that there is a ton of successful pickling-adjacent stuff going on behind the scenes; I just wanted one or two of them per dish rather than three or four so I could taste them better.

On the doughnut front, I’ll just agree, full stop. It was another course like the tomatoes where a food memory popped up to anchor it. Bizarrely, this one was eating a cherry danish in Sunday school, but obviously wildly elevated, made with 100 percent more liver and a hell of a lot more finesse.

To me, it was a perfect dish, and an example of where Baxter is superb: balancing weird ingredients, technique and nostalgia. That feels very modern-South to me.

SC: So, let me ask you this one question: Where do you put Catbird among Nashville

restaurants? In many ways, it’s the ultimate outlier. The price tag means that I’m likely going to eat there once every year or two.

The ambition of the place is matched only by a select few restaurants in town. We both get asked this question all the time: Where should I eat in Nashville? Is it a must-go kind of place? I know that buried in that question is the inevitable Should I pay $135 per ticket for a spot at the bar?

AB: Hearing that question, I realize now that I recommend Catbird far more to locals than visitors. I’ll tell friends who live here to save up and go for Their Next Big Thing, but I’m less likely to tell weekend visitors it’s the go-to spot.

I think there are a few reasons for that: 1. There’s more competition in the tastingcourse space than ever before with places like Tailor, Setsun East and Bastion, which come in at slightly lower price-points (despite the fact you’re getting more courses and typically more over-the-top WTF-ery per bite at Catbird); 2. It is an experience, and not every visitor to TrashVegas is in the market for that (definitely not all of my hooligan friends); and 3. I think there’s a bit of a local, secret-society element to Catbird that keeps it on a different shelf.

For example, when we were sitting at the counter, we discussed which Catbird chefs we’d gotten to try over the years. I recalled Poli using cookie jars, or Trevor making me eat crab out of its shell with my hands.

(I was wearing a silk dress, just sloppin’ around like the dainty Southern belle I am.)

But if you go to Alinea in Chicago or Tickets in Barcelona, the meals may change over the years, but it’s not a whole new restaurant. Catbird is. And I think people who care about going to every chef’s version have a kind of SNL-Five-Timers-Club mentality. Is that a little insane? Sure. But it’s also hardcore and fun and pretty fucking cool — just like Nashville’s food scene.

SC: I keep a recommendations list for out-of-towners in my email, because I get asked once a week for it. You could probably guess half the list. But Catbird isn’t on it, because I don’t think it’s something uniquely Nashville. But I recommend it absolutely to all locals. Why? Because it’s on par with experiences I’ve had in New York, London and Chicago. The ambition of the restaurant has never changed, even though the cast changes every year or two. And even when there are misses — and there absolutely will be on a menu of this size — that desire to delight inevitably outweighs anything that I didn’t love.

AB: Agreed. Is Catbird 5.0 my favorite iteration? Personally, no. But it’s a game of inches, and Baxter’s food is essential eating as far as I’m concerned. Plus he played both “Africa” and “Careless Whisper” on an ’80s playlist while we were there, so the soundtrack is at the top of its game.

SC: I don’t know that I can compare the versions, because it’s wrapped up in memories that probably aren’t the most reliable (and ultimately, as Letterman would say, this is an exhibition, not a competition; please, no wagering). I would say this: It is one of Nashville’s best and most important dining experiences, period, and a required destination meal for anyone in the city who cares about food.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

nashvillescene.com | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

BOOKS AND CULTURE

ERICA WATERS

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT Talking with Nashville author Erica Waters about writing LGBTQ characters in YA lit

BY MARGARET KINGSBURY

E

ach year, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracks the requests that patrons make to remove materials from their community, school, university and prison GHOST WOOD SONG libraries. Of the 10

BY ERICA WATERS books on 2019’s Most HARPER COLLINS 368 PAGES, $17.99 Challenged Books list, eight feature LGWATERS WILL DISCUSS BTQ characters.

GHOST WOOD SONG AT THE ONLINE SOUTHERN Growing up as FESTIVAL OF BOOKS OCT. 3 a teen in the rural South, Nashville author Erica Waters never came across any book with queer characters, much less bisexual characters like herself.

“I’m well aware that some schools may choose not to include my book in their libraries because of its queer characters,” says Waters, whose debut YA novel Ghost Wood Song was published by Harper Collins in July. “And what a shame! How many queer students are missing out on the chance to read books about people who make them feel more at home in their own skin?”

Though teens need to read coming-out stories, it is equally vital that they experience tales of magic and adventure that happen to have queer characters. While Waters’ eerie and atmospheric novel features a bisexual main character named Shady Grove,

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the supernatural plot focuses on intergenerational trauma and familial love rather than sexuality. Ghost Wood Song takes place in a rural Florida town where Shady Grove lives in a trailer with her mother, siblings and stepfather. She plays folk songs on her inherited fiddle, which can also call up ghosts when played with enough sorrow.

After someone murders her stepfather and the police arrest her older brother Jesse for the crime, Shady Grove decides to use her fiddle to solve the murder and set her brother free. However, every time her music calls up ghosts, a dark, shadowy man appears and attempts to control her movements. Meanwhile, in Shady Grove’s social life, she’s torn between a longtime crush on her fellow bandmate Sarah and her new crush on the cowboy-hat-wearing Cedar, who plays the bluegrass folk songs she adores.

While more and more young adult books are being published with queer characters, there’s still a lack of representation, especially in Southern settings. “It’s important to me to write queer characters,” says Waters, “especially queer characters who are Southern and low-income, because there are currently very few characters of that demographic in YA. It makes queerness seem like something that belongs to other people, something not accessible to you if you live in a trailer in rural Florida, if your

parents are blue-collar, if you aren’t on your way to an ivy league university.”

Originated by Corinne Duyvis, the term #OwnVoices is used in marketing to identify books written by someone with a marginalized identity and featuring characters that have the same marginalized identity. For example, Ghost Wood Song is tagged as #OwnVoices because it’s written by a bisexual author and has a bisexual character. But the designation comes with some complications.

While the #OwnVoices label can help teens find books representing their identities, it can also be a burden for queer and

VOTER’S CHOICE

Nashville Opera’s innovative season opener honors the 19th Amendment

BY JOHN PITCHER

L

eave it to the Grand Ole Opry’s hometown to reinvent grand opera for the age of coronavirus.

That’s essentially what Nashville Opera is doing for the start of STREAMING ON VIMEO its 2020-21 season SEPT. 25-27 VIA this weekend. Instead NASHVILLEOPERA.ORG/VOTE of opening with yet another incarnation of Aida or Madama Butterfly at TPAC, Nashville Opera will stream the world premiere of a short operatic film titled One Vote Won. John Hoomes, Nashville Opera’s artistic director, says the company’s new film is a true innovation.

marginalized writers. “Queer writers are often asked to speak only on queerness when they might rather talk about writing craft or other topics,” says Waters. “Readers can sometimes be intrusive, asking personal questions they otherwise wouldn’t. And some queer creators feel pressure to ‘perform’ their queerness to prove their right to write books like this.” Waters makes it clear that these are issues all marginalized writers face, not just queer authors.

In a recent Medium article, Leah on the Offbeat author Becky Albertalli writes about the enormous amount of pressure authors face to come out for their audience and to be deemed queer enough. “But labels change sometimes,” Albertalli writes. “That’s what everyone always says, right? It’s okay if you’re not out. It’s okay if you’re not ready.

It’s okay if you don’t fully understand your identity yet. There’s no time limit, no age limit, no one right way to be queer.”

The only way to alleviate the pressure is to have more queer voices and more queer characters in YA literature. No one person can encapsulate an entire identity, nor should they be expected to.

Thankfully, queer YA novels are becoming more popular, and hopefully, this will lead to more publishing deals for queer authors. This month, Aiden Thomas’ YA novel Cemetery Boys became the first novel by a transgender author to make it on The New York Times’ top 10 YA bestseller list.

Waters also plans to continue writing queer characters. Her second book, The River Has Teeth, which is set to release next summer, features a predominantly queer cast. Like Ghost Wood Song, it’s a dark, contemporary fantasy with witches, monsters and sisterly love. It takes place in a nature park inspired

by Bells Bend Park and Beaman Park.

“I am grateful to be able to write queer characters and to give young people a chance to see themselves represented in a story,” says Waters.

Magical, lyrical and moving, Ghost Wood Song belongs in the hands of any reader who enjoys YA fiction with a dose of the fantastical.

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

“We didn’t film one of our live operatic productions for later releases on video, which is what the Met does,” Hoomes tells the Scene. “We actually made an original operatic movie, which we filmed at various locations one scene at time. As far as I know, this isn’t something that’s been done before. The pandemic forced us to create a new art form.”

Given the virus’s disruptive nature, it’s perhaps not surprising that Nashville Opera’s innovation followed a circuitous path. The project originated with citywide plans to mark the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women a federally protected right to vote. Passage of the amendment required ratification by threequarters of the states then in existence (36 out of 48), and on Aug. 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to approve the amendment. Tennessee’s pivotal role in ratifying the amendment prompted the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp to encourage the city’s arts organizations to create commemorative performances and exhibitions.

“I thought a celebration of women’s suffrage was a great idea,” says Hoomes. “We originally thought that Nashville Opera’s contribution to a citywide event

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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BOOKS AND CULTURE

would be to perform a song cycle on a Sunday afternoon in August at the Tennessee State Museum. But then the pandemic happened.”

The pandemic didn’t dampen Nashville Opera’s enthusiasm for the project, but it did force the company to shift gears. Hoomes considered creating a digital version of his original song-cycle idea. But he also thought about expanding the initial concept beyond suffrage to include the civil rights movement as well. In the end, he settled on something new — a short operatic movie.

For the score, Hoomes brought in the Nashvillebased composer Dave Ragland, who is steeped in modern classical music and African American art song. Together, they conceived of a 30-minute work about a young African American woman questioning the value of voting.

Both Hoomes and Ragland envisioned a contemporary story that was nonetheless rooted in Nashville’s history. For this, Ragland collaborated with Mary McCallum, a librettist skilled in writing about historical subjects. In short order, she created a script that combined realism with elements of fantasy. The story is set in contemporary Nashville on Election Day. A young African American woman named Gloria is sitting at home alone, fixating on the cynical notion that voting is a waste of time. “They pass the laws they want, and they elect who they want,” she sings.

“None of them care about me.”

Suddenly, Gloria hears the off-screen voices of two prominent voting rights activists from Nashville’s past — the suffragist Frankie Pierce and civil rights icon Diane Nash. They have a simple message: “Go vote.” Their unexpected appearance represents a kind

Want the Scene Delivered?

of magical intrusion into reality worthy of a Gabriel García Márquez story.

With the libretto complete, Ragland set about creating a score that would work for both stage and film. “Events happen more quickly on film than on the stage, and so we created a work that moves at a brisk pace,” says Ragland. “We were also mindful that this work will likely be shown in local schools, which is why we focused on making it be as accessible as possible.”

Hoomes hired Nashville film director Anthony Popolo to make the movie, which was filmed at both the Noah Liff Opera Center and at a private residence.

Popolo has made a beautiful film, one full of contrasts between darkness and light. He also made good use of the sort of closeups seen in films like Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Vocalist Tamica Nicole will be making her Nashville Opera debut as Gloria. Singers Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva (Frankie Pierce) and Brooke Leigh Davis (Diane Nash) both appeared in the company’s 2012 production of The Difficulty of Crossing a Field and 2019 staging of The Cradle Will Rock.

Hoomes admits to having some concern about streaming a film about voting in the middle of a contentious election season. No doubt, some viewers may interpret the opera’s focus on voting in the African American community as promoting a leftleaning agenda. But Hoomes insists this film is not taking sides.

“I don’t want people to hang too much meaning on this film, because it’s not supposed to be partisan,” says Hoomes. “It’s a celebration of Nashville’s honored place in the history of voting.”

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nashvillescene.com | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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ART

RADICAL VULNERABILITY Suzy Slykin exposes herself in Mother Eunuch

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

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“SUZY AND SETH,” SUZY SLYKIN

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This is the song of the eunuch mother.

This is the elegy of the sexually tormented son.

S

uzy Slykin was a student in the art department at Lipscomb University when she first conceived of Mother Eunuch. She was riding her bike through Nashville, a head swimming with ideas about conceptual sculptures by Marcel Duchamp and Damien Hirst. She decided that she was going to cut off her testicles and put them in a jar, and that she was going to build an art exhibition around it. Seven years later, her creation is ready for its audience.

“It’s such a loaded procedure to have your testicles removed,” Slykin tells the Scene via video chat. “There’s the whole concept of emasculation, which historically has been used as a punishment, or seen as a negative thing. But in the context of embracing my gender experience, it became a way more complicated relationship.”

SUZY SLYKIN Currently on view MOTHER EUNUCH THROUGH OCT. 3 AT THE in the artist-run ELECTRIC SHED, space the Elec254 MORTON AVE. tric Shed, Mother INSTAGRAM.COM/ Eunuch centers ELECTRICSHEDTN Slykin’s testicles in a room filled with mixed-media paintings that are moody, psychedelic storms of sexual confluence. The vintage glass jar in which her testicles have been soaking in formaldehyde for the past four years sits atop the slanted surface of a log she found in the woods near her home just outside Nashville.

The whole exhibit glows under black lights.

The sculpture, titled “Suzy and Seth,” is deceptively simple, and pulls from a variety of aesthetic associations that range from rural

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you might think of a crime scene, or the bedspread of a seedy motel room. But Slykin, a self-proclaimed exhibitionist, treats the space like a temple, and laughs about its magical energy like a puckish shaman.

“When you introduce an observer, everything changes,” she says. “In a way, inviting observation of this intimate space — this intimate part of me — makes more space between myself and that object. As more people experience it, it becomes less personal, and I can detach from it a little bit more.”

These paintings were mostly created during the 2020 lockdown, when the twin pillars of social isolation and racial injustice seem to overshadow practically everything else.

But as a transsexual woman, Slykin recognizes her own important role in affecting social change.

“I felt a little nervous about taking up space with the show, given the circumstances, given my whiteness and my privilege,” she says. “But I came to terms with the fact that my body is also a highly politicized thing, and that it interrupts the patriarchy and expectations of white supremacy also. So it’s interesting to think about how I fit into the conversation about what it is to be embodied in America.”

Mother Eunuch is an extension of Slykin’s own body as both the object and subject of examination, interest, hatred, mistrust and sexual power. In her artist’s statement, she laments that burden:

(the jar) to masculine (lumber) to psychedelic (experimental lighting).

“It was a thing that I wanted to celebrate, but it also caused me a lot of pain and grief and discomfort,” says Slykin. “I’m not ready to give them back to the earth. It was so much labor to grow them and have to own them, and to be connected to them and to be fed by them for so long. Like, why would I just disappear that energy?”

The paintings are indeed celebratory — all fluorescent colors marking shapes made by pressing canvas together to create what she describes as symmetrical, Rorschachian patterns. The addition of the black light makes the flung strings of fluorescent paint gleam like a psychedelic Jackson Pollock painting. There are even two works on paper — titled “Cum i” and “Cum ii” — that are painted entirely with seminal fluid. If you watch a lot of forensic-investigation shows,

The role of the transsexual is to be a bridge, to straddle the liminal, and transcend bodies.

The role of the transsexual is to evolve.

“It has to do with celebrating sacrifice,” she says. “There’s this inevitability that we have to sacrifice parts of ourselves in order to grow. It’s like going into a transformation portal where you might discover things about yourself and your capacity to evolve.

There’s such a fixation on being in control of our lives, and in a way this is rejecting all that. There’s an element of just submitting to mysteries, submitting to the unknown.

“Sometimes power looks like these really visceral sacrifices,” she continues. “And sometimes power looks like something you never expected it to be. Sometimes being powerful is just being really vulnerable.”

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NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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MUSIC

MARETOCRACY

Analog synth mastermind Eve Maret won’t be boxed in

BY CHARLIE ZAILLIAN

THIS SOUTHERN LIFE

Bendrix Littleton peers into his inner depths on Deep Dark South

BY JACQUELINE ZEISLOFT

T

he album cover of Bendrix Littleton’s Deep Dark South shows a pale, shirtless figure wearing a cowboy hat and staring into the abyss of the night sky. One might assume that the photo is of Bennett Littlejohn, the artist who performs as Bendrix Littleton, but it’s merely a DEEP DARK SOUTH OUT look-alike.

FRIDAY, SEPT. 25, VIA NNA TAPES “It’s not me, though it

ora of shows, film events and workshops around town and a performance at Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival. Later in the year, the collective dissolved, freeing Maret to finally give Mills and Oakland a proper shot. Once there, however, she found herself quickly at odds with “dogmas and certain beliefs” toward what is and isn’t “free” music.

“I was like, ‘I want to be experimental, and I want to be pop too,’ ” Maret says. After her first term at Mills, she felt held-back by the time commitment grad school called for — “I was ready to bust out, do all these things” — and returned to Nashville.

Stars Aligned, out Friday via Cincinnati’s Whited Sepulchre Records in the U.S. (with London indie PRAH Recordings doing an international release), seeks to immortalize in sound this formative, eventful period in Maret’s life. Steadfastly resistant to staying in one place, Stars has an experimental brain and a pop heart. You can dance to it (opener “Synthesizer Hearts,” which establishes a high-BPM baseline for the proceedings), sing along to it (the playful but firm “Do My Thing”) and just as easily get lost in it (the spellbinding album centerpiece “Impressions,” a longform exploration of tone and texture in the vein of ’80s film scores by Vangelis and Tangerine Dream).

The nine-track LP doubles as a celebration of a highly creative cadre of contemporary Nashville players. Among others, there are assists from Montgomery, MVP guitarist-about-town Sean Thompson, Lou Turner from folk-pop-rock outfit Styrofoam Winos (who plays flute here) and ambient pedal-steel luminary Luke Schneider.

Though Stars is fearlessly eclectic, it’s got a steady pulse. Maret studied at Fork’s Drum Closet with jazz hero Chester Thompson, who’s also kept time for Genesis and Frank Zappa. In addition, she has a deep love of Neu!, Can, Kraftwerk and other ’60s and ’70s Germans whose patient, propulsive psychedelia, which came to be known as krautrock, was crucial in helping reshape their nation’s cultural

identity post-World War II. “Krautrock feels very expansive, very true,” says Maret. “It isn’t about anything other than having a spiritual musical experience. I have German heritage too, so that makes me feel even more connected to it.

Krautrock was the sound of a new beginning for those people, for that country. That affects me in a big way. I love it.”

How musicians here in Nashville and around the world will bounce back from COVID-19 remains to be seen. But for now, Maret is seizing the opportunity for deep listening, marathon music-making sessions — she’s got a new series of one-synthesizer,

single-take improv recordings in the pipeline — and self-reflection at every turn.

“Because I’m not playing shows or touring, I’ve been taking the time to come back to my intention around creating,” Maret explains. “To ask myself why I make the music I make, why I like the sounds that I like … and try to go deeper with all of it. My intention is to explore the healing properties of sound … so when I share my music with others, they can experience a little bit of that, too. That spiritual connection, reassurance and trust I feel is very necessary during these chaotic times.”

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

looks like it could be me,” Littlejohn tells the Scene.

“It really reminded me of home in some way.”

The Texas-born, Nashville-residing artist will release Deep Dark South, his solo debut as Bendrix Littleton, on Friday via Brooklyn label NNA Tapes.

The record deals with themes of disillusionment, alcoholism and grief, all grounded in images that call to mind a familiar Southern languor. That said, the cowboy hat on the cover is by no means glib or ironic; it’s just one of many references to the South and adjacent regions that permeate the record.

Littlejohn’s work is deeply influenced by country music. “I love how simple it is, and how it belongs to a form,” he says, citing The Chicks (formerly The Dixie Chicks) and Tim McGraw as some all-time favorites.

When listening to DDS, it’s entertaining to consider that this lap-steel-playing, Chicks-loving artist could make a record that defies most of the structural and sonic conventions that he praises. All but one of the songs on DDS have been sped up to play 25 percent faster than they were initially recorded, moving the

music’s tonal center up about a whole step and making the record a quick 28 minutes. The effect on Littlejohn’s voice isn’t exactly chipmunk-like, but the change is notable.

Littlejohn’s work reminds us that no music exists in a vacuum. For years he made whispery and moody lo-fi as one-half of “NyQuil pop” group Bent Denim, and he’s produced records for angst-ridden DIY rock outfits like Austin, Texas’ Hovvdy and Nashville’s Sinai Vessel. Bendrix Littleton takes on some similar qualities to Littlejohn’s previous work. Yet when listening to the sweeping layered synth arrangements and sparse, haunting verses on DDS, the influence of songwriting legend Lucinda Williams might be most apparent.

In the album’s standout track “Clark,” Littlejohn crafts an elegy for his family friend and mentor Clarke Hammond, a music lover, antique collector and larger-than-life character from Austin. Details of their friendship are shared as the two drive around town in Hammond’s “two-tone beat-up pickup truck,” and

Littlejohn goes to visit Hammond in the hospital while he’s recovering from a liver transplant.

Reminiscent of Williams’ classic track “Lake Charles,” a memorial for musician Clyde Woodward, “Clark” takes you through the pain of losing someone you’re close to. Littlejohn sings for Hammond: “If I spent my whole damn life / Living with half the light / You put off in your life / I’d die happy.” Mirrored in Littlejohn’s record you have Williams’ sensibility — raw storytelling that easily puts you in your feelings.

“I use writing as a form of self-help and therapy, in addition to other things,” says Littlejohn. The disillusionment and alcoholism that color DDS make for a lonely scene, one he grapples with continuously throughout the record. On “Daylight Curls,” he sings: “I’ve been out reading at the bar / Till the words blur / Till I feel far away.” In “Deep Dark South,” one of the most memorable lines is, “I’ve seen heaven / It was red wine on ice.” The image of plopping some ice cubes into Trader Joe’s Two-Buck Chuck and sweating out an 80-degree night on the back porch lands

PHOTO: ATHENA KULB

T

hree years ago, Eve Maret was California dreaming. As the St. Louis-raised, Nashville-residing musician struggled to find a local audience for her nascent analog-synth soundscapes, she felt drawn to the electronic music MFA program at Mills College in Oakland, Calif. Avant-garde composer guru Terry Riley famously taught there, along with the late John Cage and Pauline Oliveros.

The thought of living in the Bay Area, a renowned experimental-music stronghold, was enticing for Maret.

Then that dream came true: Maret was accepted to Mills. But as John Lennon once said, life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. Maret had been so consumed with plotting her escape from Music City that she almost neglected to notice the community she’d been craving cropping up all around her. The shows were getting better: Maret earned a slew of new admirers after opening for JEFF the Brotherhood and Coupler at The Basement East two Octobers ago. Local fixtures in experimental and experiential music — like saxophone virtuoso JayVe MontgomSTARS ALIGNED OUT ery (alias Abstract FRIDAY, SEPT. 25, VIA WHITED SEPULCHRE Black), drum juggerRECORDS AND PRAH naut Will Hicks (aka RECORDINGS B|_ank) and dronefolk songwriter-producer Jess Chambers (who performs as Dream Chambers) — were no longer just acquaintances. They’d become friends and collaborators.

“It was like everything I wanted had started to unfold in my immediate reality,” Maret tells the Scene via phone. When Chambers pitched her about starting a collective to amplify female, trans and nonbinary voices in electronic music — the group was later dubbed Hyasynth House — Maret decided Mills could wait. “I felt like I needed to stay in Nashville and do the work I needed to do,” she says.

Hyasynth started 2019 strong, with a pleth-

nashvillescene.com | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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MUSIC

ON A ROLL

Breland keeps his sights set high in the wake of his country-trap hit ‘My Truck’

BY MARCUS K. DOWLING

close to home if you’ve spent time in the deep dark South. On “Bud Light Flows Like Water,” the shortest and only instrumental track on the record, Littlejohn uses the title to reference a conversation overheard between two older men at Fran’s, the beloved East Nashville dive karaoke bar.

Littlejohn doesn’t want Deep Dark South to take up more space than it needs to. He acknowledges that releasing music at this moment feels strange, especially considering the array of voices calling for widespread, sorely needed social change. The stories Littlejohn tells are part of an alternative kind of Southern music made by folks who acknowledge the deep, deep flaws of the South. Littlejohn and his peers are creating work that steps away from a superficial narrative about the place they call home and, in the process, reveals the truth of their connection to it.

“Music has been really helpful to me,” Littlejohn says, “and I hope that [this record] will be helpful to the people who listen to it.”

EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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beginning to soften. Country fans are positively responding to records that encompass not just the genres they love but also that I, as a Black artist, love. Like the greats — the Charley Prides, all of the people who came before me — I intend to make music that connects all people.”

Breland counts Lil Nas X as both a musical inspiration and an online friend. “He opened doors for me!” Breland says. “We’ve never met in person, but we chat over Instagram.” The trail for Black country crossover success that Lil Nas X blazed last year is also very important. “Old Town Road” was one of 2019’s most ubiquitous singles, selling the equivalent of 18.4 million units worldwide — coming in second to the year’s most popular single, Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy.” In the same territory as “Old Town Road,” Blanco Brown’s “The Git Up” benefited from massive TikTok virality in 2019.

Earlier this year, RMR’s “Rascal” received considerable critical acclaim for its grim yet novel trap-country take on Rascal Flatts’ cover of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “Bless the Broken Road.”

Breland offers a tasty metaphor when discussing the secret ingredient that may allow his trap-tinged, Black country-pop success to continue past his inaugural hit.

“I’m making the musical equivalent of chicken-and-rice dishes right now,” Breland says. “Country’s often used to making chicken and rice with one seasoning. Instead, I’m sampling the whole cabinet of flavors. Ears are like palates to me, and I’m serving familiar dishes in ways that people haven’t experienced before.”

Breland’s success is not only essential because it expands tastes across genres — he’s also unlike any other top-selling Black country artist in history. He’s a gospel-trained vocalist. His musical accomplishments also lean more toward cocaine cowboys than whiskey-soaked outlaws. As a young songwriter and engineer fresh out

PHOTO: BEN DAVIS

B

y the end of 2021, more Black country musicians could reach the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart than have done so in any one year since the chart launched in 1944. Key to this SEE BRELANDMUSIC.COM potential profound FOR MORE FROM THE evolution is West ARTIST Orange, N.J., native and Atlanta resident Breland, a highly touted singer-songwriter signed to Atlantic Records.

His February country-trap single “My Truck” was certified gold by the RIAA in August, with more triumphs easy to imagine.

Breland’s success is predicated on his ability to thrive in a position where his hit single’s crafty fusion of tropes about drinking liquor and smoking blunts converges with his prodigious musical talent. As Black artists make progress as top sellers in country music — see Lil Nas X’s astonishing chart success with his yeehaw-meets-boombap hit “Old Town Road” in 2019 — Breland could be leading the charge.

In a recent video-conference conversation with the Scene, Breland’s replies show off the blend of intellect and empathy that enables his high levels of grace under pressure and his musical aptitude. Breland’s responses to questions about his music-business acumen — he was 24 years old when he began promoting “My Truck” — highlight the wit that factors into his appeal.

“How do you know things about the music industry at 24 that most people don’t know at 48?” I ask.

“Well, I just turned 25,” Breland says. “I learned a lot last year.”

As Breland speaks broadly about his future, his charisma and directness add a certain gravitas.

“We [as Black country artists] are all making revolutionary music right now,” he says.

“This impact is nothing as compared to what we’ll see in the future. Perspectives are

BENDRIX LITTLETON

of Georgetown University, Breland worked with Queens-based and French Montanaaffiliated rapper Chinx, who was killed in 2015. Breland absorbed lessons from working with the slain MC that are vital to his country music success.

“I learned to be drawn to melody and hooks first,” Breland says. “It’s not until the third or fourth listen to a song where I’m [concerning] myself with what the song is about, and if that’s resonating with me. On all of those levels — melody, hooks and song-

writing — country offers a lot.”

Working in country music has allowed a golden mean to emerge in his work. “My Truck” and other tracks on his Breland EP — like the poppy country-trap ballad “In the Woulds” (a collaboration with mainstream stars Chase Rice and Lauren Alaina) and the groovy, R&B-tinged “Hot Sauce” — have an ear-worming synergy.

The EP highlights a desirable middle ground between sonic universes that are stereotypically separate, but that have come closer and closer together in recent years. Breland is unwaveringly confident about his thus-far successful studio strategy.

“I’m always in service and indebted to the song,” he says. “Whatever energy the song needs to be successful, I will provide it. If I share this desire with everyone in the studio, we can make the best version of whatever we’re making.”

He has a candidly positive assessment of the permanence of his music and other similar sounds. With skills like his, there’s no reason to think that his first hit will be his last.

“This moment in country music has the potential to be exponential,” says Breland. “ ‘My Truck’ or any of these [hit countrytrap songs by Black artists] could have quickly been deemed accidental hits. But by no means are they. Let’s dispel that notion. As for how I see my future as an artist progressing, I want to continue to make the best — and most undeniably popular — songs possible.”

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NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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MUSIC

ROOT CAUSE

AmericanaFest’s Thriving Roots virtual conference offered up insightful conversations with musicians, scholars and more

BY BRITTNEY McKENNA

D

ue to COVID-19, the full in-person programming of AmericanaFest couldn’t happen this year, including the annual Honors and Awards ceremony, which has been postponed THROUGH SEPTEMBER 2021, indefinitely. But the Americana Music CONFERENCE REGISTRANTS CAN REVISIT THE STREAMED Association moved CONVERSATIONS AT the conference THRIVINGROOTS.PATHABLE.CO portion of the annual event online via its charitable and educational arm, the Americana Music Association Foundation. Under the new name Thriving Roots, the three-day virtual conference featured dozens of panels of musicians, journalists, scholars and industry insiders discussing a broad array of topics, all for attendees to watch from the comfort of their own homes. Below, check out five of the best panels the Scene caught at Thriving Roots 2020.

STRIKING A CHORD: INSIGHT FROM AMERICANA’S INSTRUMENTALIST OF THE YEAR NOMINEES Instrumentalist of the Year may not be the flashiest category at the annual Americana Honors and Awards, but it often offers significant insight into the overall state of the genre. This year’s category features three women nominees, a noteworthy feat and perhaps a sign that the genre is moving in a more equitable direction. (One can hope that next year’s group features nonwhite musicians, too.) The Grammy Museum’s Scott Goldman moderated the Sept. 16 panel featuring this year’s instrumentalist nominees: guitarist Ellen Angelico, bassist Annie Clements, fiddler Brittany Haas, multiinstrumentalist Zachariah Hickman and guitarist Rich Hinman. The group shared how they have been coping since live music ground to a halt in March and offered insight to some of the politics behind working as an employee for another artist. It was particularly interesting, though, to hear Angelico, Clements and Haas discuss working in a field dominated by men.

Speaking on the early days of her career, Angelico shared, “I didn’t see a lot of people who looked like me in the positions I wanted to be in.”

CHANGE THE CONVERSATION PRESENTS: LADIES, YOUR ROOTS ARE SHOWING Change the Conversation has been a vital presence in country music for some time now, highlighting the urgent need for gender equality in the male-dominated country music industry. For Thriving Roots, Change the Conversation brought together artists Brandy Clark, Tanya Tucker and Lee Ann Womack alongside journalist Marissa R. Moss and industry executive and Change the Conversation cofounder Tracy Gershon for a Sept. 16 conversation that charted the parallels and differences in experience for women in mainstream country versus women in Americana. The conversation covered a lot of compelling territory, but of particular note and relevance was the group’s discussion of contemporary country radio airplay, which is and has been dominated by men. Gershon noted that when she moved to Nashville in the late ’80s, her A&R work didn’t consider whether an artist was a woman or man. Referring to women artists, Tucker quipped: “None of us sound alike. Some of them guys are sounding just the same.” While the panel boasted a

truly stacked lineup, if next year’s conference includes a similar panel, it would make for an even richer and more representative conversation to include women of color in the mix too.

BEYOND REPRESENTATION: COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP FOR BLACK EQUITY IN AMERICANA In mid-August, the Americana Music Association hosted Black Equity in Americana: A Conversation, a free, livestreamed conversation between musicians Adia Victoria, Rev. Sekou, Lilli Lewis and Kamara Thomas and Muddy Roots Music Festival organizer Jason Galaz about issues of racial equity in the Americana music community. A follow-up to that panel was set for Sept. 16, bringing back together Sekou, Lewis and Thomas for a second conversation with moderator Marcus K. Dowling. (Incidentally, Dowling also contributes a story to this issue: See “On a Roll,” p. 28.) Introducing the panel, Dowling noted: “This conversation will probably bear very minimal similarity to what you heard 28 days ago. If only because things are different now than they were 28 days prior. History moves at a ridiculous pace.”

And Dowling was right. While the first conversation was an excellent crash-course on the current landscape for Black Americana artists, this Thriving Roots panel dug even more deeply, particularly on ways that white artists and executives can use their platforms and institutional power to make Americana more equitable.

ROSANNE CASH’S ‘LOVE AND VIGILANCE’ One benefit of moving things online was the opportunity to bring together panelists who may not otherwise have been able to make the trek to Nashville to speak in person. Rosanne Cash’s Sept. 18 panel featured the artist and activist herself alongside fellow musicians Bonnie Raitt and Ry Cooder, author and songwriter Alice Randall and activist and author Angela Davis. Cash described the panel’s intent as “to play songs and talk with me about the history of protest music, the long, hard journey of Black musicians to achieve justice, and the anger and longing of the present moment.” The group of panelists traded turns performing their favorite protest songs, like Raitt’s take on Jackson Browne’s “World in Motion” and Cooder’s rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “Vigilante Man.” They also discussed the power of music to effect social change. A particularly powerful moment came when Davis shared her thoughts on the song “Suppertime” as performed by Ethel Waters, which obliquely tells of a woman preparing a meal for her children knowing that the man she loves has been lynched. “It relies not so much on the actual lyrics to give you an idea of what is happening, but rather it creates a feeling,” Davis said. “I think this is what music does. It can allow us to feel that which we have not yet learned how to express in words.”

PRICE POINTS: TALKING ARTISTIC VALUES WITH MARGO PRICE Thriving Roots saved one of its best panels for the last slot on the final day of the conference: an intimate and wide-ranging conversation between critic, journalist and author Jewly Hight and singersongwriter and local hero Margo Price. On the heels of releasing her third studio album That’s How Rumors Get Started, Price had no shortage of things to talk about with Hight, including navigating the pandemic, moving away from country music on her latest album and Price’s experience recording music while pregnant with her child, Ramona Lynn Ivey.

Regarding Price’s recent exploration of rock music, Hight and Price discussed being hemmed in by genre restrictions. Price pointed out that no one questioned The Rolling Stones when they explored blues, soul, country and rock in their music.

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FILM

PRIMAL STREAM 25 Horror old and new, a snake-handler doc and more, now available to stream

BY JASON SHAWHAN

W

e’re back with another week of quality options for viewing in the safest possible conditions. There is a certain degree of community in the perpetual, poking uncertainty we’re all experiencing. So here are several options from many genres, and I hope they (or some of the previous 24 weeks’ worth of columns) provide you with some joy and/or transcendence. Also, just in case you’re wondering, I’m not going to be discussing that film, the very famous one that’s causing the uproar right now, because four of my critic colleagues have gotten death threats just for having opinions about it in a public forum.

act of a dramedy, and everyone is acting at the top of their game. This is one of those traditional French films where everyone speaks directly about issues that would be concealed beneath decades of finely wrought repression in other nations, and it refuses to be predictable or easy to process.

Director Justine Triet has a gift for tonal shifts and keeping the characters intersecting on interesting paths. We’ve got a review of this one from contributor Sadaf Ahsan in last week’s issue of the Scene, so give that a read.

HOLY GHOST PEOPLE ON AMAZON PRIME Made for (and rejected by) PBS in 1967, Holy Ghost People is one of the great

SIBYL VIA THE BELCOURT Sibyl (Virginie Efira, from Paul Verhoeven’s Elle) is an alcoholic therapist who is going through it. She’s taking some time off from her practice to get her life in order and finish her book, but professional boundaries have always been an issue for her (especially when she starts mining her patients’ lives for her novel) — and then she gets called in to be the on-set counselor/ mediator for a film experiencing production problems. Sibyl’s patient (Blue Is the Warmest Colour’s Adèle Exarchopoulos), the film’s director (Sandra Hüller, from Requiem and Toni Erdmann) and Sibyl’s own husband (The Ornithologist himself, Paul Hamy) are all part of this sexy juggling

HOLY GHOST PEOPLE

documentaries of that era, exploring a snakehandling congregation and the people who express their faith as such. It is an essential document that features just about the greatest ending to any work of art focused on the human experience. It is rare that any work about the religious impulse goes quite this far, and it will shake you to your very foundation.

THE BABYSITTER: KILLER QUEEN ON NETFLIX If you remember video on demand in its most late-’80s incarnation, then you remember Viewer’s Choice. A satellite feed accessible in specific chunks of time via your cable box, it was like having an analog take on a video store every couple of hours, and it was how the most enduring genre offerings of that decade’s end made their debut.

A sequel to 2017’s charmingly grotesque The Babysitter: Killer Queen is Viewer’s Choice aesthetics conjured up and given form — teens in trouble, a fun soundtrack, outrageous gore and a propulsive pace that keeps things lively so you don’t dig too deep into some very strange structural issues.

Cole (Judah Lewis) barely survived that time when his babysitter (Samara Weaving!) and her satanic blood cult nearly killed him in the first movie, and the experience has made him a little weird. So rather than let his clueless parents send him off to psychiatric high school, he goes off with the only other survivor of that night and some other cool kids to a bunch of houseboat parties up at the lake. But here’s the thing about a satanic blood cult: They’re gonna get you. This is generally pleasant and kind of inconsequential, but it’ll scratch your danceparty-and-exploding-head itch, even if it’s not quite as fun as its predecessor and gets mired in some unexpected sentimentality.

THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT ON HBO Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is a shambly and amiable caper dramedy that launched Michael Cimino’s directorial career and served up Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges as a couple of outlaws moseying toward a possible big score. It’s also one of those ’70s films in which tone is everything, and the vibe is warm. Eastwood’s ex-con preacher and Bridges’ pretty car thief meet cute, eventually reconnecting with some old prison buddies to try and recover some stashed loot. There’s clever plot twists and great performances across the board (though the double-edged sword of ’70s cinema sexuality is both freeing and in one particular scene deeply problematic), but it’s all about the journey. Calling it a more narratively inclined Two-Lane Blacktop is a fair comparison, and the film’s pansexual tendencies feel liberating. The film is packed to the collar with the freedom of a top-down convertible and the open road itself.

MESSIAH OF EVIL ON AMAZON PRIME One of the enduring classics of hippie horror, Messiah of Evil is a very California apocalypse, foretold in the stars. Arletty (Marianna Hill) has come to this beachfront town to find her father, whose art has spiraled into fatalistic cosmic dread even as the dead themselves simply refuse to remain that way. Trippy, terrifying and unique in ’70s shock cinema, this effort from Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck (responsible for American Graffiti and Howard the Duck) is a dreamscape where dark waves are always lapping at your feet and prophecy and paranoia are inseparable. The grocery store, the gas station, the movie theater — whatever safety and security you may have derived from these spaces and the institutions they represented are gone, and this spry nightmare boasts set piece after stunning set piece. It’s essential viewing.

SEVEN FILMS BY MARLON RIGGS ON OVID.TV

THE BABYSITTER: KILLER QUEEN

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Having mentioned the late Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied in a previous installment of this column, I would be remiss if I didn’t bring some attention to Ovid.tv’s acquisition of seven of the director’s titles for domestic streaming. Those include the staggering Color Adjustment (a document of the history of Black representation on television), the aforementioned Tongues Untied and Black Is … Black Ain’t. Riggs was one of the greats in Black and queer cinema of the ’80s and ’90s, and having his work represented to this extent is a gift.

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NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 24 – SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 | nashvillescene.com

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CROSSWORD EDITED BY WILL SHORTZ ACROSS 1

Finishing touches, of a sort

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Bases make up a part of it

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Dr. Evil’s little clone in the “Austin Powers” films

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Dainty dining decorations

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*An old wedding dress might have this

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Heretofore

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See 3-Down

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Root in Polynesian cuisine

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Custom auto accessories

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First name in jazz

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*“Er … um …”

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Relatives of violas

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“So cool!”

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Kitchen brand

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Carrier of sleeping sickness

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Mens ___ (legal term)

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Pinches pennies

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“Why ___ thou promise such a beauteous day”: Shak.

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PUZZLE BY GRANT THACKRAY

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Popular Oldsmobile model of the 1980s-’90s With 20-Across, balance regulator

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It’s got teeth

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Salinger title girl

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Popular salad dressing

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-y, pluralized

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Jon Arbuckle’s dog

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Issuance from an American embassy

*Mickey’s rival for Minnie’s affection

QB protectors, informally

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Super’s apartment, often

Ring-shaped cutters attached to drills

Dish served with a spoon and chopsticks

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Hindu god of destruction

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Big pitchers

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A while ago

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Romania’s currency

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-speak

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Dipstick

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It can be broken, but not fixed

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Serenader on a peagreen boat, in rhyme

Classic young adult novel … or hint to the path taken by four letters in the answers to the starred clues

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Beef, e.g.

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“The ___: Generation Q,” sequel series starting in 2019

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Shiny fabrics

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Request that’s risky if you’re over 18?

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Must-haves

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Pink alcoholic drink, familiarly

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Former inmate

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Peter of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”

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Grandson of Adam and Eve

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Commercial lead-in to mart

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Basic bio subject

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One-up

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE S A F A R I S

P R O S H O P

F A N T A S Y

A P O S T L E

D O L P H I N

R E A I R E D

W H E I E R L L S S P H I A T S S L L E E N S

MICHAEL JEROME WHITNEY vs.

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon IRIS BEST OATES. It is ordered that said Defendant enter Her appearance herein with thirty (30) days after September 24, 2020 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on October 26, 2020. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk W. North, Deputy Clerk Date: August 27, 2020

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“All good here”

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“Get a room!” elicitor, for short

DOWN

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Title with a tilde

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Non-Resident Notice Third Circuit Docket No. 20D700

Tiny beef

Cure-all

NO. 0820 11

Non-Resident Notice Fourth Circuit Docket No. 19D1284

LEGALS

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R E N C O N O R N G R O W V O N E E V E R G A T A L L C N O A M S N L Y S T I T M U S K B R A I O N Y X

H H A E A M C K Z A H E E L E Y G S T A S I M M O N E R N O B C N O N E A O N L E T E E S E R E S T

M O L I E R E

S I L E N T R

M A L A R I A

O N L Y S O N

Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 9,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/ crosswords ($39.95 a year).

Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/wordplay.

Crosswords for young solvers: nytimes.com/ studentcrosswords.

Jessica R. Simpson Attorney for Plaintiff

AMBER NICOLLE WILLIAMS vs.

SANTIAGO BRONCHALES In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon SANTIAGO BRONCHALES. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after October 8, 2020 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on November 9, 2020. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Public Notice – Request for Comment Reappointment of Henry Martin United States Federal Public Defender Middle District of Tennessee Please visit our website at www.ca6.uscourts.gov for detailed notice.

NSC 9/17, 9/24, 10/1/20

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk M. De Jesus, Deputy Clerk Date: September 11, 2020

Advertise on the Backpage!

It’s like little billboards right in front of you!

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H. Julianne Lackey Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 9/17, 9/24, 10/1, 10/8/20

NSC 9/3, 9/10, 9/17, 9/24/20

Non-Resident Notice Third Circuit Docket No. 20D1183

Non-Resident Notice Third Circuit Docket No. 20D1191 GLORIA MARIA MARTIN

MIGDALIA GARCIA

Vs.

vs.

AARON MARSHALL MARTIN

FLAVIO ROBERTO ROCA

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon AARON MARSHALL MARTIN. It is ordered that said Defendant enter His appearance herein with thirty (30) days after October 15, 2020 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on November 16, 2020. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon FLAVIO ROBERTO ROCA. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HIS appearance herein with thirty (30) days after October 8, 2020 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on November 9, 2020. It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk M. De Jesus, Deputy Clerk Date: September 11, 2020 Bethany Peery Glandorf Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 9/17, 9/24, 10/1, 10/8/20

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk W. North, Deputy Clerk Date: September 16 2020 GLORIA MARIA MARTIN, pro se Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 9/24, 10/1, 10/8, 10/15/20

A E B T ’ N O D

KAREN

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2000

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