Nashville Scene 9-9-21

SEPTEMBER 9–15, 2021 I VOLUME 40 I NUMBER 32 I NASHVILLESCENE.COM I FREE

CITY LIMITS: WHAT TENNESSEE CAN EXPECT FROM THE FEDERAL INFRASTRUCTURE BILL

FOOD & DRINK: TENNESSEE’S WHISKEY RENAISSANCE PAGE 20

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CHRIS SCOTT VOLUNTEERS AT THE BROOKMEADE CAMP CLEANUP

Common Ground The frustrations about homeless encampments highlight Nashville’s struggle to house its neediest residents

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

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BE PURE. BE THE SOUND.

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CONTENTS

SEPTEMBER 9, 2021

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A Part of Society ........................................6

The Granddaughters of Witches You Weren’t Able to Burn

CITY LIMITS

Tennessee closed its last institution for people with disabilities in 2017. That’s where state programs like ECF Choices come in.

BY HANNAH HERNER

What Tennessee Can Expect From the Federal Infrastructure Bill .........................7 The state could receive more than $8 billion for roads, broadband and more

BY KATHRYN RICKMEYER

BOOKS

Young women use magic to achieve vigilante justice in Erica Waters’ The River Has Teeth

BY BIANCA SASS AND CHAPTER 16

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MUSIC

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Emmylou Harris reflects on the dawn of The Nash Ramblers

Common Ground

Lucy Dacus considers her past self on Home Video

The frustrations about homeless encampments highlight Nashville’s struggle to house its neediest residents

Be Kind, Rewind ...................................... 25

Advice King: Should I Live in My Friend’s Doomsday Silo?

BY JACQUELINE ZEISLOFT

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BY RON WYNN

ON THE COVER:

Chris Scott volunteers at the Brookmeade camp cleanup Photo by Eric England

Horse Sense ............................................ 26 Elektrohorse advocates for unity through country dance music

Heist! Series: The Castle of Cagliostro and Rififi, Fashion Is for Every Body, Nikki Lane with Joshua Hedley, a benefit for homeless veterans, An Evening With David Sedaris, Nas and the Nashville Symphony with Tim Gent, Tinder Live! With Lane Moore, Between the Buried and Me, and more

It’s Almost Time for Negroni Week Again

BY GEOFFREY HIMES

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

CRITICS’ PICKS

Garth Brooks,Trisha Yearwood, More to Play Benefits for Flood Victims Former Tennessee Vax Chief Sues State for Defamation

First Impressions .................................... 24

COVER STORY

THIS WEEK ON THE WEB:

27 FILM

The Good Fight ........................................ 27 A new documentary shines a light on Nashville’s relationship with school desegregation

BY KELSEY BEYELER

Heart’s Desire .......................................... 28

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FOOD AND DRINK

The Tennessee Whiskey Renaissance Longtime distillers and newcomers alike are proving that Kentucky doesn’t have a monopoly on whiskey

Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) is a bittersweet reminder of life’s fragility

BY CORY WOODROOF

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NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD

BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

22

VODKA YONIC

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FROM BILL FREEMAN GOV. BILL LEE DEFENDS INACTION ON COVID-19 EVEN WHILE UNDER INVESTIGATION BY THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Tennessee has one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the world, and as I write this, our per-capita infection rates and cases are still growing. The Tennessee Department of Health continues to report staggering numbers, and in the last two weeks of August, the number of active cases increased by 61 percent.

On Sept. 1, the Tennessee Department of Health released data showing that more people in Tennessee were hospitalized with COVID-19 than at any other point. That day, hospitals across the state were housing 3,338 COVID patients, past the previous peak of 3,314 in January. These numbers include 73 pediatric patients, with 18 of those in ICUs and seven on ventilators.

As reported by WZTV, over the course of two weeks in August, the total of school-age children in Tennessee who tested positive for COVID-19 was north of 20,000. By Sept. 1, that number had jumped to more than 28,000. Hospitals are being forced to cancel non-urgent procedures that require overnight stays. If the spike continues, hospitals will begin prioritizing care and triaging. In the Memphis area, for instance, hospitals have already sent a letter warning that they “may be unable to provide timely care to everyone and will have to make choices about delivering care to patients based on their probability of survival.” This is beyond sad — it’s unfathomable.

Amid the breathtaking number of COVID cases across the state, Gov. Bill Lee seems to channel Marie Antoinette. When school districts mandated masks, he issued an executive order that said any parent could opt their child out of the mandate, essentially nullifying the efforts to protect schoolchildren and their teachers.

Thousands of health care workers across Tennessee sent a letter asking the governor to rethink his position on school mask mandates, to follow the science. Those who signed the letter noted that masks, while not perfect, “absolutely work to decrease viral spread, and they do not cause harm.”

The governor was not moved by the plea.

During a press conference on Sept. 2, Lee continued to defend the state’s position, sending mixed messages as usual. School districts aren’t allowed to switch back to remote learning — well, some individual schools may be if they are granted a waiver.

Still, some schools have had no choice but to close due to too many COVID-19 cases or too many students or staff in quarantine. Lee is blind to the simple fact that masks can make a difference.

We have the tools to fight this pandemic, but misinformation is deterring people from getting vaccinated. Pandering to a political base does not help anyone make an informed choice. To that end, Lee’s decision to let parents opt their children out of mask requirements is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which notes that the rule may “discriminate against students with disabilities who are at heightened risk for severe illness from COVID-19 by preventing them from safely accessing inperson education.” The governor previously received a letter from U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona saying the mask exemption order could violate federal law.

In a statement that went out to five states, including Tennessee, Cardona says it is “unacceptable that state leaders are putting politics over the health and education of the students they took an oath to serve.”

When seat-belt requirements first passed, some didn’t like them — but the majority of us adhere to them now. I wear a seatbelt not only because it’s law, but also because it keeps me safe. When my children first started driving, I was happy to know they had to “buckle up for safety” and that there would be at least some assurance they could survive an accident. So why are we so afraid of our children wearing masks? Don’t we want them “covered up for safety” in hopes they can survive this pandemic?

We worked very hard to be Music City, and embraced the “It City” designation after that. Tourists come here to safely have fun and experience our city. Businesses come here because young, creative, vibrant people want to live, work and play here. But will this desire last? People are dying from COVID-19 while our governor stands idly by. His actions, and his lack of action, have prompted a federal investigation. If this keeps up, who will want to come here?

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

NUMBER OF COVID-19 CASES IN 5- TO 18-YEAR-OLDS IN TENNESSEE DATA OBTAINED SEPT. 2

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

A PART OF SOCIETY

WHAT TENNESSEE CAN EXPECT FROM THE FEDERAL INFRASTRUCTURE BILL

Tennessee closed its last institution for people with disabilities in 2017. That’s where state programs like ECF Choices come in.

The state could receive more than $8 billion for roads, broadband and more

BY KATHRYN RICKMEYER

BY HANNAH HERNER

B

ill and Sam Gage of Selmer, Tenn., like to participate in activities at their local senior center. They also like to go fishing and watch wrestling, and they especially like going on trips. The twin brothers weren’t able to do those things when they lived in an institution for people with disabilities, which they did for most of their lives. These days they live on their own, and any assistance they need comes to them.

“It’s like we’re living a regular, normal life,” says Sam, who — like his brother — has an intellectual disability. “You ain’t living in a place where you’re told what to do all the time, having your life regulated every time you turn around. When everyone comes in at night, they lock the doors at 8 o’clock. You can’t go nowhere, you’re stuck.

It ain’t no fun. I would think everybody’s happy not having to stay in those places anymore. They get to be a part of society, just being a part of their communities. Not being locked away somewhere, forgot about.

They can enjoy life, more or less.”

The pair were part of a group called People First, which advocated to close institutions for people with disabilities. And they were successful — Tennessee closed its last institution in 2017. Over the past 30 years, things have completely flipped when it comes to state care for people with disabilities. Data from the Administration for Community Living shows that in 1987, 9 out of 10 disabled people who received government-funded support lived in an institution; in 2017, 9 out of 10 disabled people who received support through the government were getting that in the community.

Still, the same report found that fewer than 1 in 5 people with intellectual or developmental disabilities get publicly funded support at all. It’s important to note that people are still receiving support in smaller settings that can resemble institutions, like nursing homes and managed care organizations. The majority of people who have a disability are actually living with their families. A few thousand intellectually disabled people were living in institutions across the state at their height.

The push to close institutions came from a deep history of abuse and neglect, and advocates like the Gages wanted people with disabilities to have more autonomy, and to be around others who don’t have a disability. But moving out of institutions meant moving away from 24/7 medical staff, equipment, mental health professionals, specialists and recovery professionals — it also meant new variables and more risks.

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FEWER THAN 1 IN 5 PEOPLE WITH INTELLECTUAL OR DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES GET PUBLICLY FUNDED SUPPORT “There’s just so much that can come in and out of an institution that you can’t easily replicate in a community where you need transportation,” says Lauren Pearcy, director of public policy for the Tennessee Council on Developmental Disabilities. “You can’t send all these people to someone’s home realistically, but we don’t have a transportation system where a person can get to all of those different places in one day.”

That’s where Employment and Community First Choices comes in. The TennCare-funded community support organization was introduced in 2016, and the idea is to serve more people who need help but weren’t necessarily in crisis by aiding with employment and quality-oflife support. The program focuses on employment with things like job coaching and prevocational training, as well as transportation to jobs and community activities, and help around the house.

ECF Choices launched to 2,400 people and is helping around 3,500 today. But even combined with the 7,000 people in a legacy state program, it’s still a drop in the bucket — roughly 100,000 people in Tennessee would qualify for such a program.

Pearcy estimates that there are at least 5,000 more people on the waitlist; she also says she knows there are more who simply don’t know that the waitlist is available to them. Basically, if you have any type of intellectual or developmental disability, you should be on the waitlist. But money is tight: The system’s budget is so constrained that ECF Choices has to focus on people in crisis, like, says Pearcy, those who lost a caregiver

or who may pose a danger to themselves or others.

“There’s this self-perpetuating cycle that’s happened for decades here, where people with the most needs, who are in crisis, enroll,” she says. “And then there aren’t resources to add more spots. So it becomes a very small system for a very high-resourced group.”

TennCare recently announced its budget plan to serve 2,000 of the people on the waitlist using American Rescue Plan dollars. The plan is just awaiting the final stamp of approval from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Wanda Willis is the executive director of the Tennessee Council on Developmental Disabilities. She points out that for those who were able to get enrolled, ECF Choices picked up where the school system left off.

It has also opened up to people who have average intelligence but other disabilities.

“What happened is kids come through school and graduate, there was really nothing for them to move forward to,” says Willis. “And so ECF Choices was a real big boost there because it picked up kids coming out of high school, and helped to get them into community-based settings and work, with job coaches and things like that. So it’s just been a fantastic program for Tennessee.”

People like Bill and Sam Gage have seen the system change completely in their lifetime, and for them, it has absolutely been for the better. If the state can fully fund such support systems, the same can be true for the next generation of people with disabilities. That’s the very thing the Gages advocated for.

“I believe in the long run, they’ll be all right if they can get the help they need just to live their own lives, be happy,” says Sam. “To feel more like they fit into society.

They don’t have to worry about these institutions no more because they’re closed down. They can think of a brighter future.”

“I want them to have a normal life,” Bill adds. “Choose their own destiny, make their own choices, live where they want to live, all that stuff.”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

fter hitting several congressional roadblocks, President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill is primed for passage this month. Based on the budget’s blueprints, Tennessee is expected to receive more than $8 billion in federal funding over the next five years. The state legislature will decide the final fate of the funds during the legislative session in January. However, the legislature will be driven by statewide assessments and recommendations of state agencies and interest groups.

Here’s a rundown of where the funds could go:

$5.8 BILLION FOR FEDERAL HIGHWAY PROGRAMS AND $302 MILLION FOR BRIDGE WORK

The infrastructure plan will boost the Tennessee Department of Transportation’s annual budget for hard infrastructure by about 20 percent, according to Commissioner Clay Bright. He says the state typically expects to receive about 2 percent of the funding in the federal government’s infrastructure budget, which equates to about $1 billion annually for TDOT. Based on the breakdown of the new infrastructure plan — which includes $5.8 billion for federal highway aid plus $302 million for bridge replacement over the next five years — TDOT will receive a little more than $1.2 billion a year for the next five years in federal funding, according to Bright.

Bright says the funding will be appropriated evenly across the state and in rural and urban areas. The specific distribution will largely be driven by the projects outlined in TDOT’s three-year transportation plan, which was mapped out with the assumption that the state would continue to receive the routine $1 billion in federal infrastructure funding it has in years past.

The fate of the additional annual $200 million will be determined by the state legislature. The infrastructure and finance committees in the legislature work closely with TDOT. U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Nashville) and U.S. Rep. Mark Green (R-Clarksville) both supported an increase in spending on hard infrastructure. In fact, it was the only line item in the bill Green supported.

“Roads and bridges should have been the only thing we spent money on,” Green tells the Scene. “That has to be done. But the rest of this spending is irresponsible. If we keep adding to the federal deficit at this rate, the United States will be even more vulnerable to China than it already is. People should be scared of that.”

$630 MILLION FOR PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

As part of the infrastructure bill, Tennessee will receive $630 million for public transportation. Bright says the funding is key in maintaining the state’s three public rail systems: the Nashville WeGo Star, the Memphis trolleys and Chattanooga Railway, which combined provide more than 700,000 rides each year.

A vocal advocate for expanding public transportation, Cooper celebrated this grant. Conversely, Green opposed this spending and says expanding the public

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 9 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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CITY LIMITS

transit system is not a high priority. Instead, he believes the money should have been added to the hard infrastructure portion of the budget.

$88 MILLION FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLE CHARGING STATIONS

This is the first infrastructure bill in U.S. history that includes funding for electric vehicle charging stations.

Bright says the $88 million appropriation will complement and support the Fast Charge TN Network sponsored

by TDOT, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. The three agencies have invested a combined $20 million to add 50 fast-charging stations across the state.

In Cooper’s eyes, the installation of EV charging stations is one of the first steps in cultivating green infrastructure. However, Green was adamantly opposed to the provision. He says it’s not the government’s responsibility to install or purchase EV charging stations; he believes the duty falls on the private sector.

Government-funded EV charging stations are “communist,” according to Green. “Why doesn’t the government open gas stations and tire stations too?” says Green.

“We’ve seen how well government programs run. Look at the VA or the DMV.”

$100 MILLION FOR BROADBAND

This provision will provide $100 million to help build broadband coverage across the state, including extending access to the more than 402,000 Tennesseans who currently lack it. It will also increase the Affordability Connectivity Benefit from $30 to $50. The benefit acts as a subsidy for low-income families who struggle to afford internet access, which more than 2 million people qualify for in the state.

Cooper supported the bill’s broadband measure and believes it is crucial in closing the digital divide.

“Nobody’s internet service is $30,” Cooper says. “Even dial-up is probably more than $30. Raising the benefit will allow people to actually afford internet service.”

Green’s feelings toward the funding are similar to his stance on EV charging stations and align with his ideology that “government should not do anything that the private sector can do better.”

$17 MILLION FOR WILDFIRE PREVENTION

With $17 million for wildfire prevention, TDEC will be able to continue to conduct controlled burns and other preventive measures to protect the landscape. Cooper calls the expense essential and references the devastation caused physically and financially by the 2016 Smoky Mountain wildfires. He says the state cannot afford to neglect preventive spending and measures.

Green acknowledges the importance of wildfire prevention; but he says the federal government simply can’t afford to spend the money.

$21 MILLION TO PROTECT AGAINST CYBER ATTACKS

The $21 million afforded to protect against cyber attacks has more arbitrary applications than other

allotments in the budget, according to both Cooper and state Rep. Sam Whitson (R-Franklin), the chair of the House’s transportation subcommittee.

Cooper would like to see Albert sensors purchased for each of Tennessee’s 95 counties with the funding.

The sensors protect election software and machines from hackers. Currently, Tennessee only owns one Albert sensor. Cooper notes that elections are countyrun, so one sensor is not effective in preventing election fraud statewide. He references Florida’s adaptation of the sensors three years ago. In 2018, Florida’s Department of State used $1.9 million in federal funding to purchase sensors for each of its 67 counties. Green said the spending was a “poor financial decision.”

$697 MILLION FOR WATER INFRASTRUCTURE

Metro Water Services does not typically receive annual funding to improve water infrastructure, according to director Scott Potter. It is his understanding that TDEC will be conducting a statewide assessment of Tennessee’s water infrastructure to determine the highest and best use of the $697 million. Potter says that nationally the industry’s focus is replacing old underground pipes, especially in the eastern portion of the United States where many pipes are more than 100 years old. In Nashville, 63 percent of its 3,000 miles of water pipes are more than 40 years old and need to be replaced, according to Potter. Metro also has an aging sewer system — 59 percent of sewer pipes are more than 40 years old, he says.

$300 MILLION FOR AIRPORTS

Doug Kruelen, president of both Nashville International Airport and the Tennessee Association of Air Carrier Airports, says the $300 million allocated for airport improvements will boost the budget of Tennessee’s five commercial airports by more than 50 percent. Those five airports typically receive approximately $25 million in federal funding annually, which is divided relatively equally. This $300 million over the next five years will increase the annual federal funding to $60 million.

Kruelen says each airport has an existing budget that assumes and outlines project allocations based on the routine amount they receive from the $25 million in federal funding, so TAACA will assess the needs of the airports to determine the best allocation of the $35 million in annual federal funding that has not been standard. Kruelen says the funding will likely not be used for BNA’s current expansion project, since BNA has already taken out a loan to complete the project.

Green argues that the spending was unnecessary since funding for BNA’s project was already in place.

“Democrats are spending money for the sake of spending money,” Green says. He also adds that he didn’t think we should be spending more money on airports when fewer people are traveling due to COVID restrictions. (Air travel numbers largely recovered to prepandemic levels over the summer, surpassing 2019 levels at some points.)

Cooper cheers the appropriation.

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

nashvillescene.com | SEPTEMBER 9 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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Common Ground The frustrations about homeless encampments highlight Nashville’s struggle to house its neediest residents

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ 8

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 9 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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onstruction vehicles zip through Brookmeade Park, hauling trash and brush to dumpsters near the greenway’s entrance. The vehicles avoid tents while volunteers and Metro employees in orange vests line up along the trails to let them pass. Some of the people who live in those tents help out too.

The homeless encampment at Brookmeade, off Charlotte Pike in West Nashville, has been around for at least a decade. But it’s grown in the past five years, and the locals who live nearby are frustrated. Residents packed a July meeting at the West Police Precinct to voice complaints about the encampment. Advocates who work with people experiencing homeless also attended, countering calls for the camp’s closure with a simple question: “Where are they going to go?”

Chris Scott doesn’t live at Brookmeade, but he thinks the camp could stick around with the right resources. He likes the idea of bringing in huts similar to those used at one homeless community in Eugene, Ore. Scott is energetic and seems to be everywhere during the cleanup effort — it’s easy to see why people called him “Captain” back when he was homeless and living in the nowdefunct Fort Negley camp.

“I saw Brookmeade on TV, and it touched my heart and I had to go out for myself,” Scott tells the Scene in a phone interview.

So one Saturday he started cleaning up the camp, clearing trash and shopping carts.

Scott hopes to lead by example, and says residents of the camp started pitching in.

He’s also called up the city, trying to get regular trash pickup at Brookmeade. “It’s overwhelming, but they need somebody with a big mouth — a real asshole like me from New York.”

Lisa, an older woman who lives at Brookmeade, watches the volunteers and vehicles from a camping chair and says she’s glad to see the cleanup. She’s been homeless for about five years, and at the camp for two or three, and is hoping to get into housing.

Nearby, a man named Jesse rakes garbage into a pile for a construction vehicle to clean up. He’s been in and out of the camp over the past three years, and an injury from a car wreck has left him unable to work. He’s hoping for housing too — living in the camp “sucks,” he says.

Metro officials say their ultimate goal is to get the campers into housing; no plans for clearings or arrests. The challenge for the city and its partners, however, is actually finding available units.

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

BROOKMEADE PARK

PLENTY OF RESEARCH indicates that housing vouchers reduce homelessness, both for families and individuals. Judy Tackett, head of Metro’s Homeless Impact Division, says the city has plenty of vouchers, including hundreds provided by federal pandemic relief packages. The tricky part is finding landlords who will accept them — NewsChannel 5 reported in August that 200 Nashvillians are approved for housing vouchers, but can’t find a unit anywhere. This has led to the creation of the Low Barrier Housing Collective, a collaboration between Metro and community partners to incentivize landlords to take vouchers.

“I’m not asking people to be patient,” says Tackett. “I’m asking people to redirect their energy and help us right now to find landlords that take Section 8 vouchers.”

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PHOTO: ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

The city has still managed to house people over the past year, and touts success with its rapid rehousing program. Metro set a goal to get 400 families and individuals into homes by December and has already surpassed that number. The rapid rehousing program offers a one-year lease, sometimes in a motel room. Tackett says someone can also transition from that lease to a Section 8 voucher or a supportive program before the lease is up. She says setting “challenging goals” and meeting them creates momentum and shows that these services are actually working. “Is it as quick as we want it to [be in order to] serve everybody? No, but we need to stay the course.”

In August, Metro also launched mobile housing navigation centers. These centers will be temporary indoor spaces, like churches, located away from the cluster of outreach services in downtown Nashville.

(The first two are in West Nashville and Madison.) The goal is to help people find housing within an average of 90 days, and they’re “mobile” because their locations will change and rotate.

Navigation centers have been used in San Francisco since 2015. That city’s housing record is a bit disputed — many “successful exits” are people who were given bus tickets out of town to reunite with family, and only 15 percent received permanent housing. (Tackett says Nashville will look at San Francisco’s approach of “family reunification” as well.) But navigation centers are very popular with San Franciscans, and officials have also produced data showing crime dropped in the locations around most of the centers. They’re low-barrier, meaning couples, people with pets, and even folks under the influence of drugs or alcohol can gain access — populations that often avoid traditional shelters.

Lindsey Krinks is a co-founder of Open Table Nashville, a nonprofit that serves local unhoused and low-income communities. She calls the mobile navigation centers “creative” and hopes they work, but there are other options she’d still like to see considered. For example, cities in California have bought motels and converted them to affordable housing. (Tackett says she’s looking at those cases too.) Krinks stresses the need to build more affordable units, especially for people at the lowest incomes. She’s also worried that without more affordable housing, poor people who have vouchers will just compete against those who don’t.

“The affordable housing crisis in Nashville is like a game of musical chairs where the chairs are units [that] are constantly being removed through gentrification,” says Krinks. “We need to get more chairs in the game, which is developing more affordable housing.”

A recent report from the city warns that Nashville has a shortage of affordable housing that will only worsen without action. And nationally, there’s a sense of urgency: After a U.S. Supreme Court decision ended the eviction moratorium, activists around the country are bracing for mass displacement and a possible rise in homelessness. Aspen Institute reports that 15 million households could be affected by the end of the moratorium. Meanwhile, the number of people living outdoors increased during the pandemic, with many avoiding congregate shelters.

Advocates agree the best way to end homelessness is providing more housing —

DAVID ALLAN CRAIG (LEFT) AND ANDREW LOW even if they disagree on what to do for folks stuck on waiting lists.

THE PATH OF TRAILS winding through trees, overpass columns and tents isn’t exactly labyrinthine, but it could be easy to get lost without a guide. Walking through Old Tent City, India Pungarcher stops and chats with a couple of the folks and exchanges friendly waves with others. Pungarcher is an outreach worker with Open Table, and she’s familiar with many of the camps in town.

Old Tent City — located beneath I-24, near the Cumberland River — is active in the early afternoon, with some residents grilling food and others chatting alongside the trails. Some folks keep their distance. It’s not always a safe place — there have been cases of theft, violence and active drug use in the area.

On a short hill not far from the Cumberland sits a tarped structure and a few tents.

David Allan Craig is proud of the setup, which stays bone-dry during a brief rainshower, and he likes showing off the kitchen he put together. He’s chatting with Andrew Low on a Thursday afternoon, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, and they’re excited that Pungarcher stopped to visit.

Craig and Low met at Room In The Inn’s winter shelter and became fast friends.

Craig had only been homeless a few months, while Low has been unhoused off and on since 1989. Pungarcher says the two men, both in their late 50s, helped build Nashville — recent jobs include construction work at Fifth + Broadway. But physical labor is getting harder on them, and housing isn’t coming any sooner.

Pungarcher asks them what they think about plans to develop the land near Old Tent City — a project called Wharf Park, which would displace the estimated 150 to 200 people who camp there. Low says that if he and Craig get pushed out by the project, they’ll likely just go to another camp. But even options like encampments are starting to get scarce.

“I can understand progress,” says Low.

“THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING CRISIS IN NASHVILLE IS LIKE A GAME OF MUSICAL CHAIRS WHERE THE CHAIRS ARE UNITS [THAT] ARE CONSTANTLY BEING REMOVED THROUGH GENTRIFICATION.” —LINDSEY KRINKS, CO-FOUNDER OF OPEN TABLE NASHVILLE

“I just think they’d be throwing a lot of money away down here because it’s gonna take millions to make this suitable for a park.” For example, the city would need to address the flooding that occurs in the area.

Low believes it’ll take a couple of years for any project to get done, and he hopes he’s housed by then. But with poor credit, weekly earnings of $450 and no history of leasing an apartment, it’s tough for him to navigate the system. He says the campsite has helped him have the stability to go to work everyday — he doesn’t have to worry about returning to a shelter in time to get a bed.

Over the past year, Pungarcher has identified 11 camps that have either closed or are at risk of closing in coming months. In the spring, the city ordered the camp located underneath the Jefferson Street Bridge in Germantown to close down on June 1. The camp’s been around for years with dozens of members. When the closure date came, only a few people remained at the camp — the number fluctuated somewhere between five and 12. Metro attributed the reduced numbers at the camp to aggressive housing and rapid rehousing strategies performed in collaboration with the Salvation Army.

Those who remained at the Jefferson

Street Bridge site worried police would enforce the closure — the Scene visited the camp a few times during June and July, responding to concerns about removal. But officials maintained that no displacement was planned. Later, Metro workers, service providers and volunteers cleaned garbage out of the camp, but people were allowed to remain in place. Even so, several individuals left, uncertain about what to do next. Some moved to Old Tent City. Most were on a list for housing, but skeptical about if and when they would actually be placed in homes.

“We’re gonna load up and find another campsite, and hopefully they don’t run us away from there,” Terry Warren, a camp resident, said in July.

At a June press conference decrying the impending closure of the Jefferson Street Bridge camp, outreach workers said shutting the site down would hamper their efforts to help people. What’s more, it would cause people to lose touch with friends.

Chris Scott’s voice breaks when reminiscing about folks from Fort Negley. He says that encampment was an example of a camp that worked for its residents, with rules and a sense of community. The story of the camp is told in the film Saint Cloud Hill, including the dramatic last day when bulldozers dismantled it. While some residents found housing, some didn’t, and Scott says most of them went their separate ways.

Camp closures can be expensive. A 2017 study from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty called “Tent City, USA,” found Honolulu spent $15,000 a week on campsite sweeps. Los Angeles spent $87 million per year on law enforcement responses to homelessness and just $13 million for housing and services. Even measures like fences can cost thousands of dollars.

Open Table has called for sanctioned camps — for sites like Old Tent City and the Jefferson Street Bridge encampment to be recognized and protected by the city. The practice is controversial, but there are some examples in the U.S. Denver’s sanctioned camp program was met with skepticism, but has since grown from two sites to three.

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 9 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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9/3/21 4:12 PM

Nashville Public Library PRESENTS THE 18TH YEAR OF

Virtual Courtyard Concerts 2021 Every Tuesday, September 7 – October 12 11:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. library.nashville.org/courtyardconcerts 9/7 – Mei Han and Friends, Chinese Music and Beyond 9/14 – Karlton Taylor, Jazz Trio 9/21 – Kristi Rose and Fats Kaplin, Dramatic Americana Duo

9/28 – Crave On, Folk Rock 10/5 – Early Music City, Baroque and Beyond 10/12 – Tim O’Brien with Jan Fabricus, Americana-FolkBluegrass

nashvillescene.com | SEPTEMBER 9 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

Lowe says she and her neighbors feel neglected, and that the city wouldn’t let a camp stay in, for instance, Centennial Park. But enforcement isn’t currently on the table.

“The ultimate goal is to arrange for housing, and we are working with our Metro partners … to achieve a humane and sustainable resolution,” says the Metro Nashville Police Department via a spokesperson. “We understand that these issues have been with us for many years. They did not occur overnight and will take time to resolve.”

JEFFERSON STREET BRIDGE CAMP Vancouver, Wash., followed suit and sanctioned campsites earlier this year. Dignity Village has been operating in Portland, Ore., since 2000, and the city is currently looking to set up six “safe rest” villages.

A 2019 study about encampments from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development notes there is limited research on the effectiveness of sanctioned camps and encampment clearings. But the available evidence suggests that clearing encampments without providing any resources to displaced residents may reduce the likelihood that they seek shelter or other services.

Conversely, the study found some “promising practices” developing in cities that cleared camps while providing support to displaced residents, like low-barrier shelters — but access to housing is still needed in order to keep people from returning to camps.

The study also says “limited evidence suggests that sanctioned encampments help to reduce homelessness,” but stresses that such camps are an interim solution.

While Open Table advocates don’t deny that encampments can be rough, they stress that people need places to go when housing isn’t available. “We can’t just keep playing this Whac-A-Mole game of closing a camp because you don’t like what it looks like, or you don’t like some of the things that are a result of living in poverty and being in survival mode every single day,” says Pungarcher.

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But Judy Tackett is “adamantly opposed” to sanctioned encampments, especially when the city has so many housing vouchers. However, she says she wouldn’t necessarily oppose private entities hosting such camps, depending on how it’s done.

The closest thing to a sanctioned camp in Nashville is at Green Street Church, which hosts a microhome community and also allows guests to set up tents. There are rarely more than 20 people there at a time, and drugs and alcohol are not permitted.

Pastor Caleb Pickering says the camp came together over time, somewhat unintentionally, after the church allowed one member of the congregation to set up a tent. They soon allowed more people to gather, and while they initially butted heads with neighboring businesses and Metro, the community has become a fairly stable place for people to stay and rest — it even now has showers and bathrooms. Pickering says it may help that the location is somewhat isolated; there aren’t houses nearby, and a tall fence offers privacy for the campers and microhome residents.

Rebecca Lowe started the Reclaim Brookmeade group to pressure Metro to do something about the Brookmeade Park camp. As the group’s name implies, members want the encampment out of the greenway — but, Lowe says, only if the camp residents get placed in housing or another dignified option.

Still, Reclaim Brookmeade members are

very vocal about their concerns, especially safety. The city’s greenway website even advises against visiting Brookmeade due to the camp. Lowe herself calls for police to do something about drug dealing and violence in the area, and says the “good people” at the camp are in the minority. She also says crime and incidents like visible drug use and indecent exposure hurt the local businesses near the park. Lowe is unimpressed with Metro’s efforts — if 20 people leave the park via mobile navigation centers, another 20 will move in, she says.

Lowe wants the city to consider converting an unused hospital or empty park to a transitional space. She says she met with one of Mayor John Cooper’s staffers but the idea wasn’t well received. Lowe believes a campsite with amenities could come together in just 10 days, but she doesn’t think Brookmeade would be suitable for such a community — the park is too small, she says, and it was designed for public use, not shelter.

Lowe says hundreds of people have joined her mailing list, but she works most closely with 10 individuals. None of them have any experience working with the homeless, she says, though some have done work around addiction. But she says she’s been eager to learn about local homelessness, and adds that she’s in communication with a man who used to camp underneath the Jefferson Street Bridge, dubbing him her adviser.

ENDING HOMELESSNESS isn’t a pipe dream, though it would be very, very difficult to accomplish. Only five cities in the U.S. have achieved a “functional zero” of homelessness — a definition established by the nonprofit Community Solutions wherein the chronically homeless population is fewer than three people, or less than 0.1 percent of the homeless population at the previous point-in-time count. (About 12 communities have ended veteran homelessness.) One common tool in fighting homelessness is the “by-name” list, which provides real-time information on who needs housing help.

Davidson County has one, and it’s a key component of Metro’s coordinated access entry system, which helps the city identify who is homeless and what services they need the most. A medical respite option is now included in the system, following the opening of a microhome community in July called The Village at Glencliff.

The community offers unhoused people recently released from the hospital a place to recover, so that they don’t have to immediately return to the streets. It’s located at Glencliff United Methodist Church and is an offshoot of Open Table — it’s also a nonprofit run by Ingrid McIntyre, an Open Table co-founder. The microhome community faced some legal battles before its ribbon-cutting, including a lawsuit filed by neighbors that went all the way to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which dismissed the case. The Village at Glencliff is now ready to accept guests into 12 microhomes. (Eventually 24 will be available.)

McIntyre says the community was inspired by a need to make a noticeable difference, and while Open Table couldn’t develop a huge building to house people, it could set up something for some of the city’s most vulnerable people. “Maybe 98 people won’t die on the streets this year because they will have gotten into this medical respite place,” she says. More than 100 people who were homeless or had a history of homelessness died in 2020.

Residents will need referrals to join the microhome community, and the coordinated system helps check for availability.

Likewise, The Village at Glencliff can coordinate with other service providers to help guests get into the appropriate programs or types of housing they need once they recover.

For McIntyre, she hopes The Village at Glencliff can help correct what she identifies as a broken system, and help create something more equitable.

“All of the folks we serve have somehow been systematically oppressed,” she says.

“And we really need to not only continue thinking of these solutions in this kind of way, but we also need to think about, systemically, how can we do a better job?”

EMAIL EDITOR@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 9 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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9/3/21 5:49 PM

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CRITICS’ PICKS W E E K L Y

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T O

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[AS YOU WISH]

NIGHTLIGHT 615 PRESENTS THE PRINCESS BRIDE

It seems no outdoor movie series is complete without a screening of Rob Reiner’s 1987 fantasy/adventure/love story The Princess Bride, a film that has been passed down from generation to generation in many families. Despite the movie being something of a smartass, swashbuckling romance — featuring the same irreverent, tongue-in-cheek flair William Goldman provided when he wrote the 1973 novel it’s based on (he also adapted the screenplay) — audiences still unironically dig the story of a farmhand-turned-pirate (Cary Elwes) constantly fighting to save his titular true love (a very young Robin Wright). And yet, it’s the supporting characters whom audiences usually fall in love with, from Wallace Shawn’s “inconceivable” Sicilian outlaw to Andre the Giant’s gentle giant and Billy Crystal’s Borscht Belt folk healer.

But the most beloved is Mandy Patinkin’s vengeful Spaniard Inigo Montoya, whose mission to wipe out the six-fingered man who killed his father has also made people lovingly remember their own dearly departed patriarchs. On-site food trucks at Thursday night’s screening will include Tasty & Delicious Burger, Southern Spoon,

THE MIDDLE TENNESSEE HIGHLAND GAMES AND CELTIC FESTIVAL SATURDAY, SEPT. 11 Percy Warner Park

The ongoing series has had countless adaptations over the years, including The Castle of Cagliostro, the 1979 anime film that would mark Hayao Miyazaki’s directorial debut. After discovering the money he stole from a casino was counterfeit, Lupin (known as “Wolf” in the film’s English dub) traces the counterfeit bills back to Cagliostro, a small pseudo-European island ruled by the elusive Count Cagliostro. Once there, Lupin — along with sharpshooter Jigen and swordsman Goemon — gets caught up in a conspiracy involving the count, his bride Princess Clarisse and treasure hidden within the island. While Lupin III remains relatively little-known outside of Japan, The Castle of Cagliostro has managed to capture the hearts of audiences worldwide for more

THE PRINCESS BRIDE

FILM

Daddy’s Dogs, Cousins Maine Lobster, Califarmia, Chivanada and Retro Sno. 7 p.m. at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, 600 James Robertson Parkway CRAIG D. LINDSEY [HAIL TO THE THIEF]

HEIST! SERIES: THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO

For more than 50 years, a manga series called Lupin III has been Japan’s version of Ian Fleming’s James Bond series. Inspired

by Maurice Leblanc’s best-known character Arsène Lupin, late Japanese manga artist Kazuhiko Katō (famously known as Monkey Punch) presents gentleman thief Arsène Lupin III as suave and womanizing, following in the footsteps of his grandfather.

than 40 years. Catch the caper yourself at the Belcourt, where it’s screening as part of the Heist! film series. Through Sept. 12 at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. KAHWIT TELA

SATURDAY / 9.11 COMMUNITY

FILM

THURSDAY / 9.09

[KILTS AND KINSHIP]

THE MIDDLE TENNESSEE HIGHLAND GAMES AND CELTIC FESTIVAL

The Middle Tennessee Highland Games and Celtic Festival returns Saturday with a full lineup of activities and events designed to celebrate Scottish and Celtic culture and heritage. There are traditional athletic events for both men and women, such as the stone put, caber toss and hammer throw. And this year’s entertainment includes some great Celtic bands and musicians — among them Seven Nations, Tuatha Dea, Nosey Flynn, Secret Commonwealth and Colin Grant Adams.

A number of bagpipe bands also will be on hand to perform, including Nashville Pipes and Drums, Knoxville Pipes and Drums, and the 17th Lancers. There’s a kids’ zone with plenty of activities for the little ones, plus Scottish and Irish dancers and a solo piping competition. And of course a beer tent, food trucks and a ton of craft vendors. To learn more, visit midtenngames.com. Slàinte!

9 a.m.-5 p.m. at Percy Warner Park, 7199 Highway 100 AMY STUMPFL

THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO

nashvillescene.com | SEPTEMBER 9 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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9/3/21 12:23 PM

CRITICS’ PICKS

[CLASSIC COUNTRY]

NIKKI LANE W/JOSHUA HEDLEY

Two of the best in town at tonking your honk will get together on Saturday at The Basement East for the most honest-toby-Gawd country show of the fall. Joshua Hedley, whose baritone is as smooth as his Nudie-style suits, is still the hardworking classic-country crooner he was when he earned — and he earned it, for sure —

the title of the Mayor of Lower Broad.

Don’t let the drunken Disneyfication of that neighborhood dissuade you: Hedley would have deserved the nickname in the decades when the tears of broken hearts and shattered dreams littered the sidewalks instead of partied-out frat boys and scooters. Mr. Jukebox, his 2018 debut album from Third Man Records, is 11 original tunes (none of which would have

FASHION IS FOR EVERY BODY

been out of place trickling through the walls of Ernest Tubb Record Shop 60 years ago) and one heartbreaking cover of “When You Wish Upon A Star” that will make you wonder why Jiminy Cricket never wore a 10-gallon hat. Hedley, for what it’s worth (and it’s worth a lot in certain circles), also knows a helluva lot about that other nowsanitized American art form: pro wrestling.

On Saturday, he’ll set the stage for the sultry

[STRIKE A POSE]

FASHION IS FOR EVERY BODY

Over the past couple of years, some in the fashion industry have been engaged in a reckoning about size-inclusive designs that fit a larger spectrum of bodies.

If you wear size 18-24, it’s a bit easier these days to walk into the plus-size section of a women’s clothing department and find garments that aren’t gray and tent-like.

But there is much more work to be done.

Local nonprofit Fashion Is for Every Body addresses the need for clothing that is inclusive for folks of size, as well as those whose disabilities limit what they can wear, by hosting an annual fashion show. Say organizers: “Professional models will share the runway with BIPOC, AAPI, LGBTQ, non-binary, cerebral palsy, paraplegic, spina bifida, scoliosis, limb-different, POTS, and Asperger’s individuals.” The show will feature clothing and accessories from local boutiques This Is the Finale, Rank & Sugar, Any Old Iron, Patti + Ricky and Brakefields.

For the first time this year, Fashion Is for Every Body will include dexterity-friendly and seated-friendly designs. Nosh on bites from Actual Food and sip beverages from Corsair Distillery, and shop for the clothes on the runway at a pop-up market.

If you can’t attend in person, a livestream will be available as well. Learn more at fashionisforeverybody.com. 7 p.m. at Studio 615, 272 Broadmoor Drive ERICA CICCARONE FILM

NIKKI LANE MUSIC

PHOTO: BOBBI RICH

FASHION

sandpaper voice of fellow classic country resurrectionist Nikki Lane. Like a lonely woman dancing by herself to a Pandora playlist, Lane spins and twirls to the edges of other genres, but never two-steps too far from the way country music oughta sound.

Her songs are searing and burning honesty, her heart not just on her sleeve, but all the way from her shoulder to her middle finger.

8 p.m. at The Basement East, 917 Woodland St. J.R. LIND

[CHEZ LES HOMMES]

HEIST! SERIES: RIFIFI

PHOTO: ANNETTE McNAMARA

The Belcourt has a lot of choice selections lined up for its Heist! repertory series, including weekend screenings of Rififi. The theater went deep into foreign-film history for this 1955 French robbery classic, directed by former U.S. citizen Jules Dassin (Night and the City). Jean Servais stars as an aging criminal who’s been released from jail and gets back into orchestrating a jewel heist. Dassin despised the Auguste Le Breton novel the movie is based on, with its racist characterizations of dark-skinned villains and a downright disturbing subplot involving necrophilia. Instead, Dassin and co-writer Rene Wheeler came up with a stoic, stylish underworld saga filled with tough guys who are either colorful or coldblooded. It’s less about a clan of crooks pulling off the perfect score and more about men getting so blinded by hubris and ego that it eventually leads to their downfall.

It’s the most honor-among-thieves film ever made, and you should check it out on the big screen. (It’s a digital cinema print, but still.)

Sept. 11-12 at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. CRAIG D. LINDSEY

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NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 9 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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[WIT AND WISDOM]

AN EVENING WITH DAVID SEDARIS

I still remember the first time I picked up David Sedaris’ 1994 collection of essays and short stories, Barrel Fever.

My favorite quote? “If you’re looking for sympathy you’ll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.” All these years later, I’m still a sucker for Sedaris’ unique brand of caustic wit and twisted insight.

On Saturday, the acclaimed author and humorist will be back in Nashville for a reading and signing at War Memorial

BLACK ARTS IN AMERICA: KALIMBA MAN KEVIN SPEARS AND BX & MS. DANA

The venerable Global Education Center recently launched a series of performances, screenings, exhibits and educational talks called Black Arts in America. It’s all about emphasizing and highlighting the vast and fundamental contributions that Black people have made to our cultural expression through dance, music and more. Saturday’s events mark the latest installment in the series, beginning at 4:30 p.m. with a performance from Kevin Spears, aka Kalimba Man, a composer and performer with a wide range of influences. He makes music that puts the kalimba — a Western variation on an ancient African instrument with staggered rows of tines plucked with the thumbs — into new contexts, amplifying it and processing it with electronic effects.

After his performance and discussion, there will be a meal. Starting at 7 p.m., there will be a dance party featuring a pop music concoction that blends Afrobeats, hip-hop and R&B as promoted by LiBx Records.

LiBx is the label of Liberia-born Bexter Richardson, a former member of the Global Education Center’s Helios Dance Ensemble.

The party is meant to celebrate the label as well as the release of a new EP (title to be announced) from Richardson and a fellow choreographer-musician under the name Bx & Ms. Dana. You can buy tickets to each event separately or all together; see globaleducationcenter.org for all the details.

At the site, you’ll also find information on offering additional financial support for the Black Arts in America project, set to culminate in a dance performance in the spring. Global Education Center, 4822 Charlotte Ave. STEPHEN TRAGESER

MUSIC

SUNDAY / 9.12 [NEW YORK STATE OF MIND]

NAS AND THE NASHVILLE SYMPHONY W/TIM GENT

Even though Nas just dropped a new album in August, the rapper is linking up with the Nashville Symphony for a performance of his classic 1994 debut Illmatic. In some ways, it’s a re-creation of Nas’ 2014 performance with the National

PHOTO: INGRID CHRISTIE

NAS

DAVID SEDARIS Auditorium. His latest collection of essays, Calypso, is a New York Times bestseller, and a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. Sedaris takes on everything from aging and mortality to the Carolina beach house he lovingly dubbed the “Sea Section.”

His upcoming book A Carnival of Snackery:

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PHOTO: STEFANIA ORRÚ

[SYMPATHETIC VIBRATION]

Symphony Orchestra, and really, it’s not totally at odds with the new release — King’s Disease II, the follow-up to his Grammy-winning collaboration with HitBoy, is full of reminiscences about Nas’ career and legacy both on and off the mic. (Though he’d rather talk about his business successes than the allegations of domestic abuse made by his ex-wife, Kelis, which he denies.) Illmatic stands tall in his discography almost 30 years later, so it’s no surprise the rapper continues to reimagine and celebrate it. And don’t miss Nashville lyricist Tim Gent on the undercard — Music City has a lot of great rappers these days, and he’s among the most notable. 7:30 p.m. at the Schermerhorn, One Symphony Place ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

MONDAY / 9.13 [EAT YOUR LUNCH]

MUSIC CITY MONDAYS: LYDIA LUNCH — THE WAR IS NEVER OVER

Lydia Lunch is such an icon — of performance art, of experimental music, of New York’s downtown scene — that it’s hard to believe there’s never been a documentary about her. All the more reason to see director Beth B’s careerspanning retrospective Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over, which screens twice on Monday as part of the Belcourt’s Music City Mondays series. Along with interviews with the No Wave pioneer herself, the film includes interviews with several of Lunch’s many collaborators — musicians like Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and L7’s Donita Sparks, journalist Carlo McCormick, performance artist Kembra Pfahler and photographer Richard Kern. According to the director, the film is not only about Lunch, but also about “the scene that she helped spawn, continues to grow and influence, and the creative people who join her in creating a new vision of woman.” 4 & 8 p.m. at the Belcourt, 2102 Belcourt Ave. LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

TUESDAY / 9.14 [SWIPE RIGHT]

TINDER LIVE! WITH LANE MOORE

The internet tells me that the first online dating site, kiss.com, launched in 1994. (It’s still active!) Match.com was not far behind, followed by Jdate, eharmony, Grindr, Christian Mingle and a slew of other platforms on which many of us have tried our luck in the face of awkward messages, dick pics and insufferable dissertations on Infinite Jest. I am among the lucky ones who met a partner on an online dating site, OKCupid. He said my profile was well-written, I sent him a PDF of a James Baldwin essay, and the rest is history. But we’ve got to admit that the whole thing is strange. Comedian Lane Moore has been riding the Tinder train for years, and she’s capitalized on the inanity with a show in which she connects her phone to a projector while she peruses profiles, answers messages and asks the audience to decide if she should swipe right or left.

Tinder Live! comes highly recommended from The New York Times, which had this to say: “Doing comedy that relies on

LANE MOORE unsuspecting strangers might sound like a gimmick or, worse, a cruel prank, but Ms. Moore, a cagey and humane performer, has developed an instinct for turning the raw materials of sexually charged chat with ordinary strangers into honed and generous jokes.” 9:15 p.m. at Zanies, 2025 Eighth Ave. S. ERICA CICCARONE

WEDNESDAY / 9.15 MUSIC

BOOKS

Along with his gifted siblings and bandmates in The Wooten Brothers, keyboardist and singer Joseph Wooten has established himself as an esteemed talent in Nashville over the past few decades. In addition to serving as the keyboardist in the Steve Miller Band and leading a soul, funk, jazz and R&B group of his own — Joseph Wooten and the Hands of Soul — Wooten founded I Matter, You Matter. The nonprofit, which Wooten established with his wife Stephanie, works to give scholarships to young students and to provide aid to folks experiencing homelessness, particularly veterans. On Saturday, both the Hands of Soul and The Wooten Brothers will play a show to benefit I Matter, You Matter at Rudy’s Jazz Room, and you can expect to see the funky family’s deep reservoir of virtuosic talent on full display. As noted on the event’s Facebook page, “the words ‘homeless’ and ‘veteran’ should never be in the same sentence.”

Indeed. Show up to see some world-class musicianship and support an important cause while you’re at it. 8 p.m. at Rudy’s Jazz Room, 809 Gleaves St. D. PATRICK RODGERS

Diaries (2003-2020) will be available in October. 7:30 p.m. at War Memorial Auditorium, 301 Sixth Ave. N. AMY STUMPFL

FILM

A BENEFIT FOR HOMELESS VETERANS

COMEDY

[VICTOR/VICTORIOUS]

MUSIC

COMMUNITY

CRITICS’ PICKS

[BURY A FRIEND]

BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME

When Between the Buried and Me released its self-titled debut in 2002, the North Carolina quintet’s whiplash-inducing flair for technicality was very much in keeping with the gunslinger ethic embraced at the time by many of their peers across the metalcore and death-metal landscape.

But with its third album, 2007’s Colors, BTBAM separated itself from the pack once and for all. Brandishing a fresher, more broadly conceived vision, the band perfected an almost perverse knack for fitting non-metal influences into its sound, which oddly enough remained as brutally harsh as before. Since then, that sound has grown into the very definition of the term “progressive,” with each album fueled by a boundless thirst for change. All these years later, though, the moments of unabashed melodicism and, yes, tenderness on Colors still stand out as some of BTBAM’s most revolutionary artistic statements. So it isn’t much of a surprise that, after a 10thanniversary retrospective tour celebrating the album in 2017, we now have Colors II, a new full-length that revisits several of the same musical themes as the original. (The bluegrass section of “Ants in the Sky,” for example, has grown into an entire new song titled “Prehistory.”) New tunes like the Yesmeets-Trans Am-meets-Mike Patton miniepic “The Future Is Behind Us” epitomize the sheer joy in creativity that’s become this band’s calling card. This time, fans are in for quite the treat, with two sets spanning two-and-a-half hours of material. 8 p.m. at Marathon Music Works, 1402 Clinton St. SABY REYES-KULKARNI

NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 9 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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NOON – 12:45 pm

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HAMILTON, THE DAVISSON BROTHERS BAND & JOSH BAGWELL

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FOOD AND DRINK

THE TENNESSEE WHISKEY RENAISSANCE Longtime distillers and newcomers alike are proving that Kentucky doesn’t have a monopoly on whiskey

BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN

W

of corn in the mash bill, the use of charred new oak barrels and mandatory barrel and bottle entry proofs. However, Tennessee whiskey delineates itself as a category by additionally stipulating that the product be produced in Tennessee and must undergo what is called the “Lincoln County Process” — filtration through maple charcoal.

For generations, distillation was legal in only three Tennessee counties: Moore, Coffee and Lincoln. Until that law was changed in 2009, Jack Daniel’s in Lynchburg and Tullahoma’s George Dickel had a stranglehold on the category of Tennessee whiskey as its sole producers. But since then, new distilleries both large and small have popped up around the state to add to the breadth of Tennessee whiskey offerings. Even though any one of the multiple huge column stills

decided to create a portfolio of new aged whiskeys to showcase what has been hiding out in its rickhouses for a decade. Lexie Phillips, the assistant distiller at Jack, explains why her company spent the time and money to develop this new offering. “Our Tennessee whiskey has long been seen as an all-around easy sip — now that’s never going to change,” says Phillips. “Additionally, with the whiskey boom we are experiencing, we also want to offer the whiskey lovers complex flavors in a premium offering that they are excited to share with their friends. Innovation like our newest release, the 10-yearold Tennessee whiskey, is something I am passionate about, and it’s something you will continue to see.”

At Dickel, relative newcomer Nicole Austin is still waiting for her first Tennessee whiskey to come of age in barrels, but she has discovered opportunities to expand the product line by taking advantage of her superior tasting and blending abilities. Even though she came to the job after stints working in New York and Scotland, Austin — now Dickel’s general manager and distiller — was already a fan of the category. “I felt that Tennessee whiskey as a category was often underappreciated — with some people see-

PHOTO: DANIEL MEIGS

hen it comes to American whiskey, Kentucky likes to boast that there are almost twice as many barrels of bourbon aging in the state as there are people. That may be so (even if Tennessee has something like 2.5 million more inhabitants and an annual population growth rate significantly higher than that of our neighbors to the north). And anyway, there’s some pretty spectacular stuff coming out of the Volunteer State, specifically Tennessee whiskey.

I guess it’s time for the mandatory primer about the differences between Tennessee whiskey and bourbon. First and foremost, all Tennessee whiskeys are bourbons, having satisfied regulations about percentage

at Jack and George can produce as much whiskey in one minute as the pot still at Nelson’s Green Brier can make in a day, both the huge and tiny craft distillers have made positive contributions to the category and raised it in the public consciousness. Unwilling to sit on their laurels and their history, Jack Daniel’s and George Dickel both continue to innovate their product lines and are generally supportive of the efforts of the upstarts across the state.

The vast majority of Jack Daniel’s output is made using the exact same recipe — when you’re the global leader, why mess with success? Other than some small-batch experiments, flavored products and a rye whiskey, Old No. 7’s recipe of 80 percent corn, 12 percent barley and 8 percent rye is about the only thing flowing out of the still. But there is still room for new products within that constraint. Recently, Jack released a 10-year-old version of its flagship — its first product with any sort of age statement since the middle of the last century. No. 7 has always been blended with consistency in mind, and there could be barrels ranging from four to 10 years and up in the huge batches it bottles.

In a nod to Mr. Jack, the distillery has

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FOOD AND DRINK

PHOTO: STACY PRESTON

making great whiskey the Tennessee whiskey style as we have done for generations,” says Phillips. “It means the world to me. I’m proud of my Tennessee roots, and I know our whiskey-making process from start to finish. It’s one I have no problem standing behind with absolute integrity.”

Nelson is optimistic about the future of the category: “The future of Tennessee whiskey is going to be fun and exciting.

There are now at least a couple dozen Tennessee whiskey producers in the state, and a lot of them are just starting to release some of their mature stocks. I have no doubt that there will be some products utilizing diverse new mash bills, heirloom grains, etc. I’m excited to see how the different producers look to push the envelope and put their own stamp on the category.”

“Until most recently, very few people realized anyone else — other than Jack — actually made Tennessee whiskey,” says Weaver.

“So imagine how much we will grow this category over the next few decades, now that Uncle Nearest and so many others are making award-winning whiskeys that are going toe to toe with our neighbors to the north.”

“My favorite part of producing Tennessee whiskey is showing whiskey drinkers how high-quality the category can be,” says Austin, “and that we should be considered among the great American heritage whiskey producing states.”

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM similar process that was brought to America by the enslaved people, who later used it to filter whiskey. So the fact that in order to be categorized as a Tennessee whiskey a process brought here by my ancestors must be used — I will always be partial to Tennessee whiskey as a category and will always celebrate it as the first type of spirit to openly acknowledge the importance of African Americans in the process.”

Charlie Nelson and his brother Andy also leaned heavily on history as the guiding star for their Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery.

Although the distillery burst onto the national scene with its popular sourced Belle Meade Bourbon, they are most proud of their award-winning Nelson’s Green Brier Tennessee Whiskey, made using an old family recipe that benefits from the softness of wheat in the mash bill instead of the usual spicy rye.

“Charles Nelson, our triple-great grandfather, was a pioneer in the Tennessee whiskey category and was the largest producer of it pre-Prohibition,” says Charlie Nelson. “It’s in our blood. And we have an enormous sense of pride, as it represents a perfect blend of our love of our family, our community, our state, traditions, stories and culture.”

Of course, their sour mash also benefits from the Lincoln County Process, as Charlie describes: “Charles Nelson once said, ‘The charcoal mellowing process removes some of the heating elements that cause an unpleasant farewell; however, the aftermath of all whiskeys is unpleasant, if consumed in too large of a quantity.’ ” All four of these distilleries — plus others across the state — realize that bourbon is still the big industry driver, but innovation and protection of their special Tennessee whiskey designation is integral to catching up. “We want to protect the traditions of

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

ing it as more of their grandfather’s whiskey,” says Austin. “From what I had seen at George Dickel and from other distilleries was that the quality of the whiskey was toptier, and had been for a long time.”

Sampling from hundreds of barrels, Austin has discovered “honey holes” in the rickhouses that exhibit particular attributes that stand out, opting to put them out as limitedrelease products. These include a version of Dickel that she says reminded her of the characteristics of a gose beer, another that has held up for an astonishing 13 years, and one that exhibited enough traditional bourbon notes that she actually called it a Tennessee bourbon. Because she could. (Take that, Kentucky!)

In Shelbyville, Nearest Green Distillery is already steeped in history — even though the company hasn’t yet completed construction of its own production facility. Named after the emancipated slave who legendarily taught Jack Daniel to distill, the distillery has quickly become one of the most awarded spirits companies in the country for its artfully selected and blended purchased whiskeys released under the Uncle Nearest brand.

Fawn Weaver, founder of the distillery, is proud to be a flagbearer for the category.

“Tennessee whiskey as a distinct category, as I see it, is incredibly important for African Americans,” Weaver says. “It is the one American spirit that we can take credit for being the most integral part of the process.”

She is specifically talking about charcoal mellowing, noting that the distinction between bourbon and Tennessee whiskey is “the process that was brought to America from the enslaved people of West Africa.”

Weaver continues: “Archaeologists have found the first records of using charcoal for water treatment in 400 B.C. Egypt. It is a

nashvillescene.com | SEPTEMBER 9 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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VODKA YONIC

(DON’T) FIND YOUR JOY

Vodka Yonic NIKKI LANE // SEP 11 W/ JOSHUA HEDLEY

CARTER FAITH, JORDAN JAMES, LAUREN WEINTRAUB, KAT & ALEX, TREY LEWIS, ELLA LANGLEY // SEP 13

THE BRIGHT LIGHT SOCIAL HOUR // SEP 16

SUMMER SALT // SEP 17

W/ LO TALKER

W/ covey & breakup shoes

JORDY SEARCY // SEP 20 W/ PALMERTREES

DK THE DRUMMER // SEP 29 ft. brassville

Upcoming shows Sep 10 sep 11 sep 12 sep 13 sep 16 sep 17 sep 20 sep 21 sep 22 sep 23 sep 24 sep 25 sep 28 sep 29

the foxies w/Wild Love nikki Lane w/ joshua hedley turnstile w/Oginalii SOLD OUT! carter faith, jordan james, lauren weintraub, kat & alex, trey lewis, ella langley THE BRIGHT LIGHT SOCIAL HOUR w/LO TALKER Summer Salt w/ Covey and Breakup Shoes Jordy Searcy w/PALMERTREES palomania! starring james intveld & rosie flores ft. jim lauderdale, jason ringenberg, chuck mead & more!

jonathan tyler Americanafest langhorne slim, jill andrews, peter bradley adams, s.g. goodman, katie toupin Americanafest songs of 1971 Americanafest carlene carter, lilly hiatt, sarah shook & the disarmers, charlie marie, adam chaffins Americanafest wild rivers w/ jillian jacqueline SOLD OUT! dk the drummer w/ brassville

TRISTAN BUSHMAN // SEP 15 w/ caleb elliott

sep 9 sep 9 sep 10 sep 11 sep 12 sep 13 sep 15 sep 15

sep 30 oct 1 oct 2 oct 5 oct 6 oct 7 oct 8 oct 9 oct 11 oct 12 oct 14 oct 16 oct 17 Oct 18 oct 19 oct 20 oct 21 oct 22 oct 24 oct 26 Oct 27

Fozzy w/ Through Fire, Royal Bliss & Black Satellite Jukebox the Ghost w/fleece Perpetual Groove the nude party w/twen freddie gibbs the emo night tour Mae & The Juliana Theory You Got Gold - Celebrating the Life & Songs of John Prine SOLD OUT! k camp natalie hemby okey dokey w/nordista freeze & gatlin parker millsap w/molly parden noga erez w/mckinley dixon Madison Cunningham w/s. g. goodman gus dapperton w/spill tab how long gone the backseat lovers w/brandon anderson Pecos & the Rooftops southern underground pro wrestling tennis w/molly burch Jake Wesley Rogers

JESSICA BREANNE // SEP 19 W/ KYSHONA & ANNIE WILLIAMS

UPCOMING SHOWS

husbands lenox hills, revelry, new suede rock eupora, sad baxter, gentle organisms nate fredrick, ben danaher, vinnie paolizzi quiet hollers, she returns from war, katie guillen & the drive james wilson, molly parden, carl anderson tristan bushman w/caleb elliot the broomestix, kenny dewitt, will wacaser

sep 16

sep 16 sep 17 sep 18 sep 19 sep 22 sep 23

jimbo mathus & the dialback sound, schaefer lanna juliet hawkins, quinn o'donnell kirby brown w/maddie medley the schizophonics w/peachy and Justin & the

cosmics

jessica breanne w/kyshona and annie williams erin viancourt, granville automatic, lonehollow Americanafest india ramey, zach schmidt, phoebe hunt & the gatherers, rach baiman, violet bell Americanafest

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thebasementnash

Why I quit my job during the pandemic — and why I went back

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

T

his year, I — like many other workers of the world — quit my job. It no longer fit the new pandemic “me,” and I was off to find my joy. Plot twist: I — unlike those other workers off to find their joy — went right back after only three months.

See, when I say “job,” I really mean “vocation.” I am a children’s librarian at the public library. This is a job one is called to, rather than one that is simply applied to.

I am also a writer. I write short stories, essays and books. Before the pandemic, I had a classic writerly existence: wake up before the sun, get in writing time on any works in progress, then go to my day job at the library, which was usually a pleasant extension of the writing itself. I had signed with a literary agent, and we were in the process of shopping my book to publishers and garnering serious interest. My library had recently been beautifully renovated, and a robust community of families began to see my children’s area as the place to be.

I had the best of all my worlds — and then my worlds shut down. I loved lockdown until I hated lockdown, and when I went back to work, I went back to work that was profoundly changed and not quite what I signed up for.

A writer needs to write, and a children’s librarian needs … well, children.

The serious interest in my book halted as publishing scrambled into remote work.

Responses to submissions went absolutely dormant as literary journals everywhere took hiatus or folded. What writing I did morphed into writing for hire, which I didn’t love, but editors were still answering their emails.

Meanwhile, my job as a librarian consisted of delivering plastic bags of books into the trunks of patrons’ cars. I needed a story-time fix as badly as I needed a writing one, so I started streaming story times and posting them on Facebook. I also offered story times by Zoom. I made book bundles to help families tackle difficult subjects like change and loss. But it was inevitable that I would forget what it was like to serve. My vocational joy languished. If there’s no joy to the vocation, then why have the vocation at all?

The pandemic turned me into a compass without a needle. Any direction seemed plausible now. I’d always wanted to try my hand at self-employment. The entire nation

was reexamining professional priorities.

Why not me too? So I quit, off in search of new joy. This was a major miscalculation.

Funny thing, joy. It’s often confused with uncontrollable laughter, big smiles, happy times only. But if joy is happiness, then how can we find our joy when we’re experiencing one of the most unhappy times in modern memory? No. Joy isn’t happiness; joy is meaning. And meaning is purpose. I blamed the pandemic for stealing my joy.

But in reality, it simply rearranged my sense of purpose.

My previous vocational purpose was in helping patrons, which at our particular location could be difficult, even in good times. We see a regular rotation of unhoused, perpetually down-on-their-luck individuals who consider our building a sanctuary and our staff sounding boards.

A co-worker of mine talked often about “taking care of her people,” these patrons in need of so much grace. But when our library doors closed, it seemed to me that the people we now needed to take care of were each other.

The pandemic had been a disorienting and traumatic experience for us all, but we were experiencing it together. In the deepest days of lockdown, when my friends hosted happy hours over Zoom, the people I saw every single day were my co-workers. Maybe it was a strange, pandemicinduced type of Stockholm syndrome, but I fell in love with these people. Sure, one of them microwaved a muffin for 15 minutes and caused a small fire. Yes, the management of the book sale resulted in a Bay of Pigs-style standoff between certain staff.

But gosh darn it, I loved these motherfuckers. They were my people — my pandemic family. My purpose.

Alone at my writing desk, I imagined my co-workers clocking in and out without me, solving new problems without me. Their laughter without me. Author Brené Brown calls this “knowing laughter.” Not the giddy laughter of something funny; this laughter is between a group of people who really see each other, who know exactly what it’s like. This knowing laughter had sustained me through the pandemic — without it, I crumbled. I did three months and could do no more. I went back to work.

My joy used to be in the silliness of story time, watching children run wild through our shelves. It was in my hour of writing before dawn. It will be in those things again soon enough. But for now, my joy — my purpose — resides in how I take care of my people. It’s in the masks I hand out to patrons, the cup of water given to a man crying over his deceased wife. It’s in laughing with my co-workers, my fellow public servants, our eyes saying, “We know, we know.”

EMAIL ARTS@NASHVILLESCENE.COM

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BOOKS

THE GRANDDAUGHTERS OF WITCHES YOU WEREN’T ABLE TO BURN Young women use magic to achieve vigilante justice in Erica Waters’ The River Has Teeth

BY BIANCA SASS

E

rica Waters’ second book, The River Has Teeth, wastes no time showing readers what they are in for: The first chapter opens with one of the novel’s two protagonists, Della Lloyd, in an THE RIVER HAS TEETH abandoned prison,

BY ERICA WATERS face-to-face with a HARPER TEEN 390 PAGES, $17.99 monster. Then Della calls the monster WATERS WILL APPEAR “Mamma.”

AT THE 2021 SOUTHERN FESTIVAL OF BOOKS The story is as moving as it is unsettling, characterized by unique and vivid worldbuilding, and its monsters are not always villains. Or at least, that is not all they are. Throughout the novel, readers are forced to grapple with what happens when the people we love do terrible things.

Della comes from a long line of witches who for generations have lived on and drawn their magic from “the Bend,” a Tennessee forest that became enchanted after the family’s original matriarch was killed by men who resented her powers. But now the Bend’s magic is becoming inexplicably contami-

nated, growing increasingly unbridled and sinister. This is why Della’s mother turned into the River Siren and why Della must keep her locked in an abandoned prison. But now young women are going missing, seemingly swallowed by the Bend. Della believes she knows the true culprit, and her suspicions appear to be confirmed after the disappearance of Rochelle Greymont, a wealthy young woman from the neighboring town.

Rochelle’s younger sister Natasha serves as the second narrator of The River Has Teeth. Waters’ use of alternating perspectives complicates what might otherwise have been a traditional mystery. Natasha is desperate to find out who is responsible for the loss of her sister, and Della must conceal the truth at all costs to protect her mother. Then Natasha decides that enlisting Della’s help is the best way to find Rochelle, and soon the Lloyds’ secrets and lies begin to unravel.

Through Natasha’s eyes, readers see what it looks like when the Lloyd magic interacts with today’s society. Waters does not use fantasy to provide an escape from current events and conversations surrounding difficult and painful subjects like discrimination

based on gender, sexuality, race or class; rather, she uses a world with magic as a crucible in which to see what it really takes to make meaningful change.

The River Has Teeth touches on a wide range of social issues, but it deals most heavily with violence against women and institutionalized misogyny. The female characters are complex — sometimes even evil — but Waters never plays into tropes that vilify women on account of their gender.

Additionally, the story does not shy away from interrogating why young women are the ones going missing on the Bend and why the police are only willing to work a certain amount to make things right.

In the end, however, women are not the story’s victims, but its heroes. Through magic, Della and Natasha reclaim their agency. “Women spend so much time trying to make ourselves small so we won’t get hurt, or we make ourselves so visible our visibility becomes a shield. We’ve got a hundred weapons … and none of them work,” Natasha says. “But magic like Della’s — now that’s something else, isn’t it? That’s a weapon with sting, with bite.”

But The River Has Teeth is not merely a story of women enacting revenge. It is a story of family, grief and loyalty, and it features a new take on the enemies-to-lovers trope. In this way, while the book tells a story that is every woman’s worst nightmare, it also shows how much strength women possess and how much joy and peace women can feel in solidarity with one another.

For more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee.

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MUSIC

FIRST IMPRESSIONS Emmylou Harris reflects on the dawn of The Nash Ramblers

BY GEOFFREY HIMES

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y 1990, Emmylou Harris had been working the road for 15 years, ever since her groundbreaking albums Pieces of the Sky and Elite Hotel were both released in 1975. Over that time, she had released 25 singles that reached the top 15 of Billboard’s country charts — including five that went to No. 1.

But she’d only had one top-10 single since 1984, and her voice was showing the wear of singing every night over The Hot Band, even if it was one of the best country-rock groups ever assembled.

“I was riding that pony a bit hard,” Harris says over the phone from her longtime home in Nashville. “My voice was getting worn down, and my spirit was getting worn too. I was whining to my friend John Starling, ‘I need to take a year off.’ And John said, ‘Sam Bush has just left the New Grass Revival. Why don’t you give him a call?’ And suddenly it made sense to ‘go back to bluegrass school,’ as Chris Hillman says.”

So she dissolved the Hot Band and formed an all-acoustic string band. Bush was on mandolin and fiddle. Harris’ fellow singersongwriter Carl Jackson recommended the young singer-guitarist Jon Randall Stewart.

She knew dobro player Al Perkins from her sessions with Gram Parsons. And Roy Huskey Jr. was, she says, “one of the greatest acoustic bass players of all time.” It resembled a bluegrass RAMBLE IN MUSIC CITY: band, but Harris THE LOST CONCERT OUT insisted on having a NOW VIA NONESUCH drummer. She had come to rely on that groove and wasn’t willing to give it up, so Larry Atamanuik sat behind a minimalist kit. Harris called her new band The Nash Ramblers.

Now there’s a new album capturing that group at the height of its powers: Ramble in Music City: The Lost Concert. The 23 songs were recorded during the band’s hometown debut at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center on Sept. 28, 1990, and then forgotten for 30 years. But when music archivist James Austin unearthed the tapes and played them for Harris, she knew they had to be released.

“None of us remembered that we’d recorded that show,” she admits. “That’s why I was so amazed when I heard it, because not a single note was out of place. I felt I owed it to that particular performance to put it out. What happened, I think, was this: All the songs on Ramble in Music City were material I’d already released. For my next album, we decided to work up all new songs for what became Live at the Ryman, like I had with the Hot Band on Last Date.”

To encounter songs such as “Beneath Still Waters,” “Blue Kentucky Girl,” “Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight” and “Boulder to Birmingham” in their new string-band arrangements was to hear them afresh. “It was a way to make the old mate-

rial new,” Harris says, “to give it a new coat of paint. I was worried. Would the songs have the same emotional impact? I shouldn’t have worried.”

No, she shouldn’t have, for bluegrass had been a prominent thread throughout her career. She started out as a Joan Baez-like folk singer, but when she was a single mom living in Maryland, she befriended Starling and the rest of his newgrass band The Seldom Scene. That grounding in bluegrass helped her make the transition from folk to country when she started working with Parsons in the early 1970s. After Parsons died and Harris signed with Reprise, her new producer Brian Ahern, whom she married a few years later, made a point of integrating mandolin, fiddle and banjo into the countryrock arrangements.

“Brian had a sixth sense about how to put things together,” she says of her now-exhusband. “He knew I had come from a folk background and that there was still a folk element in my voice. He knew how to use acoustic instruments to create emotion; he wasn’t just throwing them in there. Just because the marriage didn’t work out doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate him. We have grandchildren together, and I always try to shine a light on his contributions.”

Harris’ first nine nationally distributed albums — including her two bluegrass albums from 1979 and 1980 but not counting her better-off-forgotten 1969 small-label debut — were produced by Ahern when the couple was still living in Los Angeles, ground zero for Parsons-inspired country rock. As the marriage fell apart, though, Harris decided to follow her friends Rodney Crowell, Rosanne Cash, Guy Clark, Emory Gordy and Hank DeVito and move from L.A. to Nashville in 1983.

“It was like Paris in the ’20s,” she says of her new town in those days. “A creative hub. It was the birth of Americana before the term even existed. There was a real songwriting thing going on here: part folk, part country, part rock.” She put down roots

in the city, and when it came time to record an album of new material with The Nash Ramblers, she decided to record it live at the Ryman.

“The Ryman was about to be torn down,” she recalls. “There were only a couple of funky dressing rooms, and you couldn’t sit in the gallery because it was considered unsafe. We could only invite 200 people for each of the three shows we recorded, because they could only sit downstairs. No one had been doing any music there, but I got permission. I was so focused on making the record that I didn’t realize the importance of doing it there. But suddenly people got interested in the Ryman again, and they decided not to tear it down. They said, ‘Maybe we can renovate the old girl.’ ” Recorded April 30 through May 2, 1991, the Live at the Ryman album was such a sensation that everyone forgot about the 1990 tape from TPAC. Now that the earlier recording has finally seen the light of day, we are reminded of the crucial role of the male harmony singer in Harris’ music. It all began with Parsons, of course, but an unknown Rodney Crowell was recruited for that job on the first four Harris-Ahern albums. Crowell was succeeded by Ricky Skaggs, Barry Tashian and Buddy Miller, among others.

“I discovered my voice by singing harmonies with Gram,” Harris explains. “That became a launching pad for everything.

Rodney came in and filled that role in making the first record. It helped me a lot to have that voice to cling to. I’m not an educated musician; I don’t know what the baritone part is. Instead I think of harmony as an alternate melody that combines with the other voice to create a third voice.”

In The Nash Ramblers, that job was given to Jon Randall Stewart, who now performs as Jon Randall. (He joined Miranda Lambert and Jack Ingram on the recent collaborative LP The Marfa Tapes and has a self-titled LP of his own due Oct. 1.) The close-harmony chemistry between Harris and Randall is

most obvious on their duets on Townes Van Zandt’s “If I Needed You,” with Randall taking Don Williams’ part from the original single, and The Carter Family’s “Hello Stranger.”

“Jon has a beautiful tone,” Harris points out, “and he can sing really high without losing that quality. A lot of the stuff we did in The Nash Ramblers was trios, with Sam singing the slightly lower part. With any bluegrass band, it’s all about trios — about that high, lonesome sound created by Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers. The Stanleys are the Rolling Stones of bluegrass; they have such a washed-in-the-blood sound.

Ralph is almost scary, as if his voice were carved out of rock.”

When we talked, Harris was still mourning the death of Don Everly. The Everly Brothers were the culmination of the “brother duos” in country music: The Louvin Brothers, The Delmore Brothers, The Blue Sky Boys. But Don’s driving rhythm guitar helped transform that legacy into the rock ’n’ roll era and thus prepared the way for those Everly Brothers fans Simon & Garfunkel.

It’s no coincidence that Ramble in Music City includes a cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer.” Nor is it any accident that the peak of Harris’ all-too-brief partnership with Parsons was their version of the Everlys’ “Love Hurts.” Parsons was ostensibly the lead singer, but their voices melded so well that it was hard to hear where one started and the other ended.

“It doesn’t make a difference who’s the ‘lead singer,’ ” Harris says. “It’s all about creating that third voice. You start with an emotion, but it turns into something physical. Especially in duet singing, it’s intuitive; you’re free to move around. The lead voice is defining something that seems to work, and you move around that. It’s like you’re dancing together. Harmony singing is Ginger Rogers following Fred Astaire, but she’s doing everything backward in high heels.”

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BE KIND, REWIND

Lucy Dacus considers her past self on Home Video

BY JACQUELINE ZEISLOFT

A

n elegiac retelling of her teenage years, Lucy Dacus’ third album Home Video was released via Matador in June. Throughout the record, Dacus sidesteps nostalgia and centers her lived experiences and those of her friends.

On Wednesday, the indie-rock songwriter returns to Nashville with support from Palehound for a date at Brooklyn Bowl.

“I like the idea of treating an album like a book of short stories,” Dacus tells the Scene via phone. “That’s what I hoped it would feel like listening to [Home Video].”

Like collections of short fiction by Alice Munro or Raymond Carver, Home Video is an uncomplicated rendering of real life, a work fascinated PLAYING WEDNESDAY, with small towns SEPT. 15, AT BROOKLYN and human comBOWL plexities. Like her breakout 2016 LP No Burden and 2018’s Historian, this album focuses on some common themes: friendship, queerness, religion, love and death. Here Dacus populates her songs with people she knew growing up on the rural-suburban outskirts of Richmond, Va. Collin Pastore — a fellow Richmonder who worked with Dacus on her previous two LPs and on boygenius, her collaborative EP with Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers — co-produced Home Video with her at Trace Horse Recording Studio in Berry Hill.

Arrangements of mammoth proportions make use of layered keyboards and guitars, stacked drum tracks, Auto-Tune and rollicking acoustic guitars that imitate a manic jog.

It’s a Springsteen-size sound.

Longtime fans might miss the stark, tight production of “Night Shift,” the popular lead single from Historian, but the more dramatic mood seems appropriate for an album about high school feelings. For world-building fodder — and some loose fact-checking — Dacus revisited a thick stack of journals she’d held onto from those teen years.

“I would have memories, and then not trust my memory,” she says. “I had journals as primary source documents or proof of whether my memories were real or not.”

Tidbits from those journals color Home Video. The pop-inflected “VBS” draws from her summer at church camp in 2007, where she dated a boy who snorted nutmeg and loved Slayer. A few lines from an old text conversation with him inspire the chorus: “You said that I showed you the light / But all it did in the end was make the dark feel darker than before.” In pre-iPhone days, she explains, messages would disappear from your flip phone, so she wrote out those conversations word-for-word, saving them forever as a kind of script.

Dacus’ songwriting genius has always found its balance in being equal parts clever and vulnerable. On Home Video she

practices a new technique, using details to illuminate the world she creates in her songs so it feels like you can stand up and look around it. In “Cartwheel,” she sings about the intimacy and fragility of female friendship on the edge of adulthood — “Firefly juice on your skin / You’re glowing like an atom bomb” — and we follow Dacus and her friend through a landscape of “Curse words and empty cups / Cracked blacktop curling up.” But halt! Don’t get too wistful.

Home Video is not a high-school-was-soooooamazing record.

“People have been asking me about nostalgia constantly, and I’ve just been rolling with it,” she says. “Because, yeah, I am talking about the past, and I am a nostalgic person.

But I think that word means something different than how people interact with it usually. … The album is not innately nostalgic.”

While Home Video is an exercise in remembering, these stories aren’t happy.

“Triple Dog Dare” is dedicated to a female friend whose mom wouldn’t let them hang, suspecting that Dacus was queer, as she sings: “I never touched you how I wanted to / What can I say to your mom to let you come outside?” In “Brando,” she falls out of friendship with a film-obsessed boy who makes her his protégé but doesn’t truly see her: “You called me ‘cerebral’ / I didn’t know what you meant / But now I do / Would it have killed you to call me pretty instead?” In “Thumbs,” she accompanies a friend to meet up with her abusive and estranged father who is trying to reconnect, reassuring her that “You don’t owe him shit / Even if he said you did,” and even offers to kill him if her friend decides it’s necessary.

Dacus’ narratives feel genuine because she doesn’t take us to a warm, shimmery place out of a gold-dusted American Eagle ad campaign. That’s not the way adolescence feels; Dacus just seems to get that, and she communicates it with the natural grace of a good friend. The misapplication of “nostalgia” to Home Video may go to show how overused and often misunderstood that word is. “Yes, I was looking back,” she says, “but also aren’t most songs looking back? Isn’t most storytelling looking back?”

Confronting the younger version of oneself in tear-stained pages full of gel-pen scrawl might sound mortifying, but Dacus found it useful — to an extent. Her journals and her memory only took her so far. “What’s funny is how I realized that I can’t even trust journals, because the way you look at something in the moment is a creative curation of what’s actually true,” she says.

In recognizing that every writer can be an unreliable narrator, Dacus frees herself to write about past relationships in whichever way feels right, shining a light on emotional truth in spaces where reality is blurred.

While Dacus still finds it difficult to write about herself — and focuses on other people in the songs on Home Video — the record is something of a breakthrough.

“I feel like I might be getting closer to just writing about myself, but I don’t know what it’s going to take to just be able to do that.

But I feel like the closer I get to others, the closer I get to myself.”

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HORSE SENSE

Elektrohorse advocates for unity through country dance music

BY RON WYNN

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PHOTOS: WALTER W. BRADY

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n a time when issues of diversity and inclusion are being discussed more urgently than ever before, the songwriter, DJ, vocalist and producer known as Elektrohorse is breaking through idiomatic boundaries. While Chicago’s South VISIT ELEKTROHORSE.COM FOR UPDATES Side was his original stomping grounds, over the past few years he’s become a prolific contributor to Nashville’s country scene. His engaging singles and delightful videos — featuring him in his light-up Deadmau5-style mascot horse head, which he never appears in public without — have become fan favorites across a variety of online platforms and in live settings.

Elektrohorse’s background (which includes work from well before he donned the horse head) includes collaborations with such top artists as will.i.am, Cowboy Troy and Timbaland, but he’s now making inroads on his own. He is the primary practitioner of a hybrid sound he calls CDM — country dance music. The style seamlessly fuses country instrumentation with funk, hip-hop and electronic dance beats — a combination that has fueled mainstream country hits for years. It’s topflight entertainment, whose purpose mostly seems to be sheer enjoyment. Still, despite the fun and frolic in his songs and videos, there’s a serious side to Elektrohorse.

“I really see music as a way of bringing people together, of being a source of unity,” Elektrohorse tells the Scene. “When I came to Nashville, I found the right atmosphere of cooperation and musical interest, and it’s proven the right move.”

He lists as one of his primary goals his desire to become the first Black DJ known for warming up the crowd at country music festivals and awards shows. And there’s no reason he couldn’t dominate there: His material features somewhat edgy vocal and visual flair, humorous storylines and a zany, unpredictable quality. His work is also a perfect fit for platforms like TikTok, because it encourages the audience to participate and put their own spin on the proceedings.

He also has a knack for making even serious discussions fun. His 2016 single “S.T.O.M.P.,” whose title is an acronym for “start teaching others more positivity,” is a rousing tune that calls for racial justice and social change. It’s focused squarely on inclusion and bringing people together. The track includes elements of string-band music and electronic dance music in such a way that you can’t tell where one influence ends and the other begins — helping trace the threads of Black creativity that are vital to country music as well as many other traditions. Elektrohorse worked on the track with Chicago soul singer Floyd Holloway, son of the great disco-era vocalist Loleatta Holloway, as well as Nashville country singer Greg Pratt and South Carolina rapper Terell Skreetzz. Later

Kristyn Regen of New York’s Line ’Em Up line-dance team choreographed the Elektro Stomp, a line dance tailored to the song.

2021 has been a busy year, in which Elektrohorse has issued a string of vibrant singles. In February there was “Suga ’n Spice” with country singer and filmmaker Duke Hanson. In the piece, the pair bellyache in a bemused way about conflicts with their significant others, calling to mind the Conway and Loretta classic “You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly.” That was followed in July by “Ride Like a Horse,” an inspired mix of folksy presentation, club-ready beats and swaggering humor similar to what propelled Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” and Blanco Brown’s “The Git Up” into the stratosphere.

Elektrohorse’s latest single is just as enjoyable and has even more potential to yield him a viral hit. “It’s a Ho Down,” released in August, is a collaboration with Big Mucci, a Cleveland, Ohio, rapper and dancer. In the 1990s, Mucci’s now-defunct crew 71 North launched an enduring regional line-dance craze called The Cleveland Shuffle. It’s worth pointing out that while line dances are extremely popular in the country scene, their roots are in disco and other primarily urban music styles.

In the video for the song, Elektrohorse and Big Mucci roll up to a farm on a lazy afternoon. Big Mucci calls out dance moves that Elektrohorse, decked out in his airbrushed overalls, demonstrates. And before you know it, everyone is dancing along — a fitting display of the Elektrohorse ethos.

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BY DESIGN: THE SHAPING OF NASHVILLE’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS VISIT NASHVILLEPEF.ORG FOR DETAILS ON PUBLIC SCREENINGS THE PREMIERE OF BY DESIGN: THE SHAPING OF NASHVILLE’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS JUNE 29 AT THE BELCOURT

THE GOOD FIGHT

A new documentary shines a light on Nashville’s relationship with school desegregation

BY KELSEY BEYELER

B

ack in June, local nonprofit the Nashville Public Education Foundation premiered its first movie, By Design: The Shaping of Nashville’s Public Schools. The hourlong documentary explores the history of Nashville schools, examining the city’s process of desegregation as well as the resegregation that started again in the late 1990s and how that manifests in our schools today.

“As a community in Nashville, we did not collectively understand or frankly own up to some of the decisions that we have made in the past that have deeply affected particularly people of color, particularly Black people in our community, but other people as well,” says Katie Cour, CEO of the NPEF and co-director of By Design. “And so we wanted to use the film to really start those kinds of conversations about, how can we be better than we were in the past, and where

can we go from there?”

The documentary details Nashville’s vehement response to initial desegregation efforts, including the city’s prolonged inaction on integrating schools after Brown v. the Board of Education established racial segregation as unconstitutional. It also addresses the bombing of Nashville’s Hattie Cotton Elementary School, one of the first schools to start enrolling Black first-graders in 1957 — three years after Brown v. the Board of Education. The documentary relies on archived photos, videos, court documents and news headlines to portray this history, along with interviews from a wide network of politicians, historians, community advocates and five of the original Nashville students who desegregated schools. “It was very important that we didn’t presume to know the history ourselves,” says Cour, who is white.

Another person who appears in the film is former Metro Councilmember Ed Kindall, who also served on the Metro Nashville Public School Board for more than 27 years.

Kindall, who is Black, attended Nashville’s schools during the city’s process of desegregation. Despite Nashville’s initial desegregation efforts, he went to all-Black schools before graduating in 1963. During his time on the school board, Kindall worked to fight inequity, and he says the documentary meant a lot to him. “The lesson we need

to learn from all this is that, did we really give desegregation a proper, good chance to succeed?” Kindall tells the Scene. “And my opinion is we didn’t. … We did not give it a long enough period.”

Kindall remembers times when the community worked together to achieve more diversity and equity in Nashville schools. Cour says the documentary was made to serve as a catalyst for these kinds of conversations.

Discussions like these are as important as they’ve ever been in the wake of local and national debates surrounding what has come to be known as critical race theory. A new Tennessee law, sparked by GOP outcry, limits how teachers can address race in classrooms. At recent school board meetings, parents have complained about race-related curriculum like the story of Ruby Bridges, the first Black girl to attend an all-white school in New Orleans. Protests and outcry have also ensued over school districts’ mask mandates. Kindall says he hasn’t “seen anything [since the era of desegregation] that has been this divisive.”

As it stands, Nashville’s public school system is a diverse one: Forty percent of its students are Black, roughly 30 percent are Hispanic or Latino, roughly 25 percent are white, 4 percent are Asian, and less than 1 percent are American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

There are also myriad nationalities represented in MNPS, with Nashville students speaking about 130 languages. Despite the citywide diversity, it’s not evenly distributed, as several schools still have high concentrations (more than 90 percent) of Black students.

Though By Design is not yet available to watch at home, the nonprofit is hosting several community screenings and panel discussions throughout Nashville, which anybody can attend for free by RSVP-ing on the NPEF website. The documentary doesn’t have an official release date yet, but the NPEF plans to make it available near the end of the month. The nonprofit also provides a list of further action points on its website to follow up on after watching By Design, including reading Ansley Erickson’s book Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits, listening to WPLN’s Peabody Award-winning podcast The Promise, reading NPEF’s advocacy guides, and writing letters to councilmembers and school board representatives.

“I really want to reiterate that we don’t learn about history to feel guilty,” says Cour.

“That we actually learn about history to pave a better path going forward [and ask], what do we need to do differently and what do we need to be aware of so that we don’t repeat?”

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HEART’S DESIRE

Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) is a bittersweet reminder of life’s fragility

BY CORY WOODROOF

L

ife’s not fair. That’s one of the things we first hear even as we take our first steps, and one of the things we first see once we encounter the world beyond our front yard. Life ebbs and flows, shaped by circumstance EYIMOFE (THIS IS MY and random chance.

DESIRE) NR, 116 MINUTES; IN We can follow our NIGERIAN WITH ENGLISH dreams to a wonderSUBTITLES ful future, or reality PLAYING SEPT. 11-14 AT can tank our hard THE BELCOURT work and ambition.

That’s just how it works.

Eyimofe (This Is My Desire), the debut film from twin brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri, laments the unfairness of life — exploring how harsh diversions can delay or permanently halt best-laid plans. Set against the backdrop of a bustling Lagos, Nigeria, the Esiri brothers follow two people — engineer Mofe (Jude Akuwudike) and hairdresser Rosa (Temi Ami-Williams) — who long to leave their country for a life abroad.

Like a story from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne — another set of brothers who depict real-world, everyday issues using relatable characters — we follow Mofe and Rosa as they try to obtain the money, requisite paperwork and visas to exit the country.

Many of us can simply leave our country whenever we want to. For Mofe and Rosa, it is a multi-step, possibly monthslong slog through bureaucracy, family strife, financial stress, work problems, you name it.

Tragedy hits Mofe unexpectedly when his sister and her children die in a freak accident while they’re asleep. Rather than tak-

ing the time to process his grief, the sullen Mofe must keep moving, settle affairs, overcome obstacles and grapple with uncertainties as his window for escape continues to narrow. The Esiris find a wealth of resolve in Akuwudike, whose dignified resignation is counterintuitive — his character has every right to wallow in self-pity. The way Akuwudike leads us through his part of the film provides a close look at just how difficult life can be for those without the means to afford simple luxuries, and how strong such circumstances can make a person.

With Ami-Williams’ character we face a different kind of problem. Rosa and Mofe share the same landlord, the seemingly benevolent Vincent (a standout Toyin Oshinaike), who slowly reveals his true self as the film goes on — he’s less kindly and more resentful due to his failed advances toward Rosa. She’s caring for her sister, who is pregnant, while trying to get them both out of their less-than-ideal circumstances in Lagos. At times, Rosa’s arc can seem a little incongruent with Mofe’s. But that’s part of this film’s genius. The Esiris take two very similar struggles and create wildly different mosaics with their experiences. This isn’t just a plea for empathy; it’s a rich tribute to those who overcome extremely difficult circumstances. AmiWilliams plays Rosa with a steely resolve, but also a stinging sorrow for what she may have to do to provide for her family.

One of the highest compliments you can give a humanist drama is that it feels unforced. By the conclusion of Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) — which is shot in gorgeous, haunting 16mm — we’re not treated to the same type of shoehorned Hollywood ending we might see in an American version of this story. The Esiris find an intellectual honesty with the difficulties the two protagonists face.

In life, things might not all work out as planned in the end, but it’s about making things work regardless. The Esiris’ debut is an honorable embodiment of that principle.

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nashvillescene.com | SEPTEMBER 9 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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Marketplace

Rocky McElhaney Law Firm InjuRy Auto ACCIdEnts WRongFul dEAth dAngERous And dEFECtIvE dRugs

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www.rockylawfirm.com LEGALS Non-Resident Notice Fourth Circuit Docket No. 21D633

Rental Scene

ANTHONY R.E. WALKER vs.

NICCI LYNN HAWKINS 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 NICCI LYNN HAWKINS. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after September 30, 2021 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on November 1, 2021.

It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

In this cause it appearing to the satisfaction of the Court that the defendant is a non-resident of the State of Tennessee, therefore the ordinary process of law cannot be served upon NICCI LYNN HAWKINS. It is ordered that said Defendant enter HER appearance herein with thirty (30) days after September 30, 2021 same being the date of the last publication of this notice to be held at the Metropolitan Circuit Court located at 1 Public Square, Room 302, Nashville, Tennessee, and defend or default will be taken on November 1, 2021.

It is therefore ordered that a copy of this Order be published for four (4) weeks succession in the Nashville Scene, a newspaper published in Nashville.

Richard R. Rooker, Clerk L. Chappell Deputy Clerk Date: September 2, 2021 James V. Mondelli Attorney for Plaintiff NSC 9/9, 9/16, 9/23, 9/30/2021

EMPLOYMENT Medical - $95.00/hr for consulting Occupational Therapists to work in special education classrooms in Nashville.

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HealthStream Inc., in Nashville, TN seeks a Systems Developer to build and create complex analytical dashboards on Tableau. Reqs. MS + 1 yr exp. To apply: mail resume to HealthStream, Inc., 500 11th Avenue North, Ste 1000, Nashville, TN 37203; ATTN: Whitney Drucker, Must reference job title: Systems Developer; Job ID: 000055

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Maintain internal accounting systems and financial records for a major manufacturer of automotive interior components. Employer: Kasai North America, Inc. Location: HQ in Murfreesboro, TN. May telecommute from any location in the U.S. Incidental domestic travel is required. To apply, mail resumé (no calls/e-mails) to Y. Brace, 1225 Garrison Drive, Murfreesboro, TN 37129 and state the requested position.

Program Manager II Position available in Nashville, TN. Amazon.com Services, LLC. seeks candidates for the following (multiple positions available): Program Manager II (Job Code 150.9812.6). Define the program (Mission, Vision, Tenets), set objectives, analyze data and drive improvements that are quantified with metrics. Telecommuting benefits available. Interested candidates should respond by mail referencing specific job code to: Amazon, PO BOX 81266, Seattle, WA 98108.

available in Nashville, TN. Amazon.com Services, LLC. seeks candidates for the following (multiple positions available): Program Manager II (Job Code 150.9812.6). Define the program (Mission, Vision, Tenets), set objectives, analyze data and drive improvements that are quantified with metrics. Telecommuting benefits available. Interested candidates should respond by mail referencing specific job code to: Amazon, PO BOX 81266, Seattle, WA 98108.

Change Healthcare seeks a Full Stack Developer in Nashville, TN to be responsible for all aspects of developing, implementing, and delivering the legacy payments platform using ASP.Net MVC, C#, Web APIs, and SQL Server on Microsoft platform. Reqs BS & 6 yrs. Add’l specific exp. req’d. Can work remotely. To apply mail resume to Change Healthcare, Attn: Dale Lineberry, REQ#R21781, 5995 Windward Parkway, Alpharetta, GA 30005.

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British Woods 264 British Woods Drive Nashville, TN 37217 1 bed / 1 bath 725 sq ft $1084+ per month

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Gazebo Apartments 141 Neese Drive Nashville TN 37211 1 Bed / 1 Bath 756 sq ft $1,119 +

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gazeboapts.com | 615.551.3832 Sunrise Apartments 189 Wallace Rd Nashville, TN 37211 1 Bed / 1 bath 600 sq feet $950 - $1150

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sunrisenashville.com | 615.333.7733 Chase Cove Apartments 2999 Smith Springs Road, Nashville, TN 37217 1 Bed / 1 Bath 730 sq ft $930 +

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2 Bedrooms/ 2 baths 1100 sq feet $1490

3 Bedrooms/ 2 baths 1350 sq feet $1900

To advertise your property available for lease, contact Keith Wright at 615-557-4788 or kwright@fwpublishing.com

Studio 330 sq feet $900 - $1000

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brightonvalley.net | 615.366.5552 nashvillescene.com | SEPTEMBER 9 - SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 | NASHVILLE SCENE

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Nashville is a diverse city, and we want a pool of freelance contributors who reflect that diversity. We’re looking for new freelancers, and we particularly want to encourage writers of color & LGBTQ writers to pitch us.

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Nashville Scene’s Marketplace on pages 30 - 31.

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NASHVILLE SCENE | SEPTEMBER 9 - SEPTEMBER 15, 2021 | nashvillescene.com

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