Nashville Scene 7-17-25

WITNESS HISTORY

This Norma Kamali–designed patchwork-pattern blazer, with matching bell bottoms, was worn by Lainey Wilson during her first performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, May 26, 2022.

From the exhibit Lainey Wilson: Tough as Nails

artifact: Courtesy of Lainey Wilson artifact photo: Bob Delevante

Street View: ‘Junk Fees’ and the Landlords Who Charge Them

A local attorney is suing an apartment management company over fees he says violate the terms of his lease BY LENA MAZEL

Candidates Line Up for Special Election Sprint in Tennessee’s 7th

At least five state representatives will vie for U.S. congressional seat left open by Mark Green BY ELI MOTYCKA

Pith in the Wind

This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog

COVER STORY

37th Annual ‘You Are So Nashville If …’

See the winners, honorable mentions and other gems in this year’s YASNI contest

CRITICS’ PICKS

Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Ateez, Dolly: A True Original Musical and more

FOOD AND DRINK

Mais Oui, Pastis in Nashville

From bouillabaisse to boeuf bourguignon, Pastis is bringing bistro buzz to Nashville BY MARGARET LITTMAN

VODKA YONIC

The Anatomy of Being Homesick

What I learned by leaving my college town BY JULIANNE AKERS

FILM

Soulful Dudes

Preston Lauterbach chronicles the Black pioneers who created Elvis Presley’s music and style BY ARAM GOUDSOUZIAN; CHAPTER16.ORG

MUSIC

It Isn’t Even Past

The Mekons wrestle with the evils of the past — and their echoes in the present — on Horror BY SEAN L. MALONEY

Home Bass

Acclaimed bassist Tal Wilkenfeld plans a celebration of her move to Music City BY DARYL SANDERS

Harmonic Convergence

Chris Stamey talks about playing Big Star’s music and his new album BY EDD HURT

The Spin

The Scene’s live-review column checks out Yo La Tengo and Built to Spill at the Ryman BY P.J. KINZER

Mask Off

Ari Aster’s pandemic-era Eddington is dishonest at its heart BY JASON SHAWHAN

To Boldly Go

Nashville’s own Anson Mount is beaming back onto your TV screens BY LOGAN BUTTS

NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD AND THIS MODERN WORLD

MARKETPLACE ON THE COVER:

Illustration by Cole Roberts

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‘JUNK FEES’ AND THE LANDLORDS WHO CHARGE THEM

A local attorney is suing an apartment management company over fees he says violate the terms of his lease

BY LENA MAZEL

Street View is a monthly column taking a close look at development-related issues affecting different neighborhoods throughout the city.

IN MAY, TENANTS at Artemis Midtown received an email from the apartment complex’s management team, informing them of some fee increases. Their monthly fee from utility management company Conservice would increase from $4.99 to $7.50. The complex was also instituting a “standard vacant service fee” of $50, plus $25 move-in and move-out fees.

These fee increases weren’t big enough to faze some Artemis residents. But one tenant, attorney Devin Majors, saw the situation differently. He believes these fees violate the terms of his lease. And if Artemis is allowed to institute them, they might set an alarming precedent for landlords across the state.

Now Majors is suing Elmington Properties, the management company that owns Artemis Midtown. His lawsuit alleges that because Artemis’ fee increases constitute an alteration to residents’ leases, the charges aren’t legal.

“There is no provision in the lease that allows management to increase the utility billing fee or add new move-out charges during the lease term without the tenant’s written consent,” writes Majors in an email to the Scene.

Elmington Properties has faced controversy in the past. Last year, the company faced significant backlash from local advocates for allegedly unlawful evictions, tenant mistreatment and lack of maintenance at Hobson Flats. Hobson Flats is an Elmington-run affordable housing complex that received funding from Metro’s Barnes Housing Trust Fund. In 2022, Elmington faced more controversy when the company raised rent twice in six months at another affordable housing complex.

When Majors initially disputed the fees, he received an email from Keandria Bean, Elmington’s multisite manager. The Conservice fee “is not set by us, but rather passed through to residents, as outlined on the first page of your lease,” she explained. “The fee change is due to a transition to a new utility billing company, which comes with different pricing,” the email continued.

“Your lease doesn’t allow for changes to your base rent during the term,” Bean explained. “However, it does allow for adjustments to thirdparty service fees.”

“Their theory is that because it’s not considered rent that they’re allowed to [raise prices] according to tenancy law,” says Majors. “Obviously I disagree with that opinion — I think most attorneys would disagree with that opinion. When you sign the lease, everything in there is rent, even if you phrase it as a fee.”

These fees may seem small, but they can add up when multiplied by Artemis’ 146 units. But more than that, the increase raises important questions about what landlords can and can’t charge. If a landlord’s bills increase and it’s not specified as variable in the lease, do they accept less profit, or should tenants foot the bill?

Elizabeth Leiserson, an attorney for Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands, says these increases are common practice among Nashville landlords. It’s “part and parcel of a bigger issue of what tenant advocates call ‘junk fees,’” says Leiserson. She points to recent studies and reports from the National Consumer Law Center about these fees, which can take the form of excessive application fees, added charges for services landlords are required to provide, or other miscellaneous charges like a “check cashing fee.”

When they’re big enough, junk fees can seriously impact tenants’ lives. But when they’re smaller, they can slip under the radar. And while many “junk fees” are lease violations, fighting them can be challenging.

Majors initially emailed Artemis and said he didn’t consent to the charges. On May 23, he sent Elmington a notice of breach, asking for the complex to remove the Conservice fee increase and move-out fees, and assure him that no ad-

verse action would result from nonpayment. After that, Elmington stopped emailing Majors. But when he didn’t include the additional $4.50 in his rent, they charged him a $200 late fee. On May 29, Elmington sent a letter through their attorney, Jennifer McCoy, contesting Majors’ points and saying the company “considered the matter fully resolved” and wouldn’t communicate any further regarding the issue. (McCoy’s office, which often handles evictions, has more than 20 unanswered complaints and an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau.)

“I’ve spent more time and money on this case than I’m going to get,” says Majors, who will recoup just his filing fee and possibly $4.50 if he wins.

Still, he said he’s taken the case because he’s worried about the implications for the market in general. If Elmington wins the case, Majors says it “will just encourage deceptive practices across the market, because all you have to do is disclose the rent amount and then on the back end, when they’ve already signed it, [residents] are stuck in their lease and you have the unilateral authority to just increase the fees on them.”

Majors’ case is set for its first hearing on July 17. He says Elmington still hasn’t communicated with him since Jennifer McCoy’s initial email.

Leiserson says Legal Aid often sees issues like

this, and they encourage tenants to write to their landlords.

“A good place to start if a landlord tries to charge you fees that you don’t agree with is with a written request to remove the fees from your ledger,” she says. “Send an email explaining that you noticed these new fees and they don’t seem to be consistent with your lease. Ask your landlord to identify the lease term that allows these fees, and if they can’t do that, to please remove the extra charges. But be careful. If you withhold even a small portion of your rent, you might end up with an eviction filed against you. So try to get the issue sorted out in writing before your rent is due, or if you can afford it, pay the fee that you dispute and then ask afterward for it to be refunded.”

Fighting beyond that can be out of reach for many tenants, unless they qualify for services from organizations like Legal Aid. But that’s why Majors is taking Elmington to court.

“With an amount this small, I’ll just take it on the chin and hopefully it can bring some relief for other people in the apartment complex that probably can’t afford an attorney to fight over a hundred dollars worth of fees,” he says.

Representatives from Artemis Midtown and Elmington Properties did not respond to the Scene’s requests for comment on this story.

PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND

DEVIN MAJORS

CANDIDATES LINE UP FOR SPECIAL ELECTION SPRINT IN TENNESSEE’S 7TH

At least five state representatives will vie for U.S. congressional seat left open by Mark Green BY

THE TENNESSEE GENERAL ASSEMBLY adjourned in April, but at least five sitting representatives — state Reps. Jody Barrett, Aftyn Behn, Vincent Dixie, Bo Mitchell and Lee Reeves — are eager for more politicking. All five, as well as former House Rep. Brandon Ogles, have jumped into the race to be Tennessee’s newest member of Congress, vying for a seat left open by the abrupt retirement of Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Green, a close Trump ally and former U.S. Army surgeon. Just nine months ago, Green won the district over former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry by nearly 70,000 votes.

Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District includes downtown Nashville and neighborhoods inside the I-440 loop as well as Clarksville, Dickson and rural counties stretching all the way to the Tennessee-Alabama border outside Waynesboro. It is one of three seats resulting from state Republicans’ redraw of Nashville into parts of three congressional districts following the 2020 Census. Green previously announced his retirement from Congress in February 2024 before changing his mind after conversations with top GOP officials, including Trump, who nominated Green for secretary of the Army in his first term.

His resignation, effective July 20, sets into motion a compressed timeline for party primaries and an off-cycle special election likely to capture national attention less than a year into Trump’s tumultuous second presidential term. State and federal guidelines around vacancies and special elections are a tangle of timelines, statutes and exceptions. Gov. Bill Lee sets off the process within 10 days of Green’s official departure, followed by a primary period and a general election that will likely fall in late 2025.

Word of Green’s abrupt departure began circulating a few weeks before the official June

ELI MOTYCKA

release from his congressional office. Political insiders say Green spent the preceding weeks lining up former state executive Matt Van Epps as his successor — Van Epps, a combat veteran squarely behind the Trump agenda, moved quickly, filing paperwork on June 13 with support from a hired political firm. Green officially endorsed Van Epps on Monday, calling him “exactly the kind of leader the 7th District wants as its voice in Washington.”

Green’s announcement caught Democrats Dixie and Mitchell on vacation, but both were quick to verbally confirm interest in the seat, which overlaps with their longtime state House districts. Mitchell’s paperwork came in on July 7 and Dixie’s on July 9. Dixie has won four consecutive terms in the state House representing parts of Bordeaux and Madison, but his formal campaign for Congress has not yet taken shape.

Mitchell’s run for Congress follows a steady

pattern of political ascension. The Nashville Democrat was elected twice to represent Bellevue as a Metro councilmember before making a run for the state legislature in 2012. Mitchell’s campaign texts have already started pinging Davidson County phones, highlighting his commitment to protecting rural health care access.

Behn, a progressive Democrat elected to the state legislature in a 2023 special election after the death of Rep. Bill Beck, hit the same health care talking points on a Zoom call with constituents the day before she announced her campaign.

“The impacts are going to be awful — nine rural hospitals are at risk of closing in Tennessee, we’re expecting one in four nursing homes to close,” Behn said, explaining the expected impacts of the federal “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” recently passed by Republicans. “There will be cuts to [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], and we’ve already seen the

REP. AFTYN BEHN

REP. BO MITCHELL

REP. VINCENT DIXIE

REP. JODY BARRETT

REP. LEE REEVES

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rollback of summer meals. This is going to be really devastating.”

On the call, Behn — the youngest of the group, with a background in advocacy with the Tennessee Justice Center and Indivisible — framed political organizing against the national GOP agenda as a way to channel the “palpable rage” she wakes up with “every day.”

Republican Barrett has spent more than two decades deeply involved in Dickson civic life and first won a seat in the state House in 2022. Barrett was outspoken against Gov. Lee’s voucher program during this legislative session, criticizing the steep fiscal burden that a growing number of private school scholarships would place on future budgets. He firmly supports the political agenda set by the national GOP and heaps praise on the Trump administration.

“I promise to take that same Tennessee toughness to Washington to stand with President Trump and fight the liberal elites trying to destroy our way of life,” Barrett said in his campaign announcement. “I didn’t come from money or power, and I’ve never been impressed by either. I’ve always put Tennessee First, America First, and I always will.”

Less than a year after eking out the Republican primary in House District 65 by 97 votes, freshman legislator Lee Reeves will vie for the congressional seat. Educated at Emory and Georgetown Law School, Reeves blazed an ambitious path into Tennessee politics with the help of pro-voucher PAC money, replacing moderate Sam Whitson in a Williamson County district that includes Leiper’s Fork and Fairview. A handful of other Republicans are also interested in the seat: veteran and Montgomery County Commissioner Jason Knight, as well as fellow veterans Jon Thorp and John Wilt, and now-pardoned Jan. 6 insurrectionist Stewart Parks. Barrett, Van Epps, Knight, Parks and Wilt all appeared at a forum Thursday hosted by the Benton County Republican Party at the Birdsong Resort and Marina in Camden.

At the event, both Barrett and Van Epps framed themselves as “America-first” conservatives, while Knight promised he “will be exactly as hard on border security as Mark Green has.” Parks focused his comments on “the Biden reign of terror with the transgenderism and the political persecutions,” while Wilt spoke about “the radical left and the Democratic Party supporting jihadis, supporting intifada around the world, supporting Hamas and supporting the communists for the mayor of New York City.”

Meanwhile, several Democrats pitched their platforms during the state party’s Three Star Dinner at Nashville’s Music City Center on Saturday. Those included Behn, Dixie and Mitchell, along with Davidson County Assistant District Attorney David Jones (also a Belmont professor) as well as Darden Copeland, founder and managing director of the public affairs firm Calvert Street Group. Copeland touted his experience working with numerous Democratic campaigns and party leaders like former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile.

Hamilton Matthew Masters contributed reporting. ▼

The family of Josselin Corea Escalante, the 16-year-old killed in the Jan. 22 Antioch High School shooting, is suing Metro Nashville Public Schools and the Metro government Escalante’s parents say MNPS and Metro failed to protect students from harm and should have taken steps to further create a safe environment. The lawsuit cites negligence by MNPS based on the shooter’s history of violent behavior and the failure of the school’s weapon detection system to identify the firearm used during the shooting — according to the filing made in Davidson County Circuit Court on June 23 by local attorney Perry Craft. The lawsuit describes the shooter, 17-year-old Solomon Henderson, as a “walking red flag,” noting juvenile court records that revealed he threatened another student with a box cutter in October 2024.

The national Democratic Party targeted U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District with attack ads last week as part of a nationwide strategy to flip House seats in 2026. Small-dollar banner ads associating Ogles with declining rural health care began running on Meta platforms on July 7, according to site analytics — 16 months before he faces reelection in Tennessee’s 5th. “Because of his vote, rural hospitals across America are now at risk of closing,” the ad reads, alongside a picture of Ogles. It cites a recent study from the University of North Carolina connecting the legislation to potential health care site closures in rural America.

Several tanks typically used to hold flammable gas were found in the aftermath of the June 10 fire in the Nashville Public Library’s downtown garage. All were in or around the fourth-floor storage room, the same location where Nashville Fire Department investigators believe the fire originated. The Nashville Downtown Partnership, which leases the garage, previously told the Scene that the staff of urban beautification contractor Block by Block uses the room to store unspecified “equipment and supplies.” Fire department investigators released a preliminary report identifying the room as the fire’s origin but did not name a definite cause.

Millions of dollars in repairs and building projects have been approved for Tennessee State University a move spurred in part by a recently signed memorandum of understanding between TSU and the state. The State Building Commission on Thursday approved the projects, which include $5.2 million for plumbing, mechanical and electrical repairs and $13.3 million for repairs to the university’s central water plant.

37TH ANNUAL YOU ARE SO NASHVILLE IF …

See the winners, honorable mentions and other gems in this year’s YASNI contest

SINCE 1989, without fail, the Scene’s annual “You Are So Nashville If …” issue has ranked among our most popular. No matter the state of federal and local politics, no matter the issues or discourse of the day — when it’s time to submit YASNI entries, Nashvillians show up. We like to think that’s because Nashvillians, and Scene readers, have a pretty solid sense of humor about themselves.

For our 37th annual YASNI issue, we once again asked readers to complete the iconic phrase “You are so Nashville if …” As ever, certain themes popped up again and again among our hundreds of submissions. People love to reference Dolly Parton and cowboy boots. Very consistent themes in recent years have included the ubiquity of bachelorettes and skyrocketing housing costs — “You can’t afford to live here anymore” has been a recurring entry every year for the past half-decade.

This year, our contestants chimed in on ICE raids, the Nashville International Airport, the Tennessee Titans’ forthcoming stadium, Bonnaroo, property taxes and Vanderbilt’s goal posts. There were

ABOUT THE WINNER

mentions of Mayor Freddie O’Connell, scandal-ensconced politicians Andy Ogles and Glen Casada, and the forthcoming ABC series 9-1-1: Nashville, which is currently filming here in town. What topic saw more entries than any other? With a whopping 52 submissions, that trophy goes to Ed the Zebra, the Rutherford County equine who made national headlines after running rampant in Middle Tennessee for more than a week. Congrats, Ed.

As always, the Scene’s editorial team combed through all the submissions, and after a daylong meeting, we narrowed down our list to the most funny, original and incisive. Below find our first-, second-, third- and fourth-place winners and our honorable mentions, along with everything else that made the cut. We even threw in a handful of Weirdies — the entries that don’t make a lick of sense. Dive into this year’s entries, accompanied by excellent illustrations from artist Cole Roberts. Thanks for submitting, and thanks for reading.

IN MEMORIAM:

In June, Nashvillian and frequent YASNI competitor Charlie Harris died at age 42 after a battle with cancer. He leaves behind a wife and 1-year-old daughter. In honor of Charlie, we’ve selected just a handful of his many past submissions to include here — among them his 2018 entry, which took first place. Thanks for all the great submissions, Charlie.

You’re on track to have more football stadiums than

Super Bowl appearanc e s .

ALLISON DAMRATOSKI

Allison Damratoski works at an independently owned pharmacy in West Nashville, and she’s been a self-admitted fair-weather Titans fan since the team first moved to Nashville in the late 1990s — though she admits she doesn’t go to quite as many games as she used to.

“The whole issue with the new stadium was a hot topic in my household this year,” she tells the Scene, “and I figured that there would be quite a few submissions about that one.

Born and raised in Franklin, Damratoski says she “would never claim a Nashville unicorn title” — alluding to the term often used in reference to current Nashvillians born within the city limits. Still, she’s been in Middle Tennessee for most of her life, save a handful of years in college in Birmingham, Ala.

“Living in Alabama for six years kind of forces you to pay attention to football.”

About the “You Are So Nashville If …” contest, she says she feels like she’s finally hitting her stride. Last year, three of her entries — all of which were about the airport — made it into the issue. Like a lot of YASNI entrants, Damratoski keeps a running list of ideas for entries. Oddly enough, she gets a lot of her best ideas when she’s traveling to other cities.

“That’s when you really start to pick up on what makes Nashville Nashville,” she explains. “You know, every big city’s got traffic and construction,” Damratoski says. “but I try to jot down the things that are true to Nashville when it comes to this contest.” —LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

2013: You’ve developed a hierarchy of every Kroger in town.

2014: You didn’t flinch when Miley Cyrus kissed Katy Perry but the real test will come when Charlie Daniels and Colt Ford reach second base.

2015: You skipped right past your destiny as “the next Austin” to the overhyped, overcrowded and embittered climate of the current Austin.

2017: Phase 1: Exhume corpses of former president and his wife. Phase 2: ?????? Phase 3: Profit! 2018: Nashville is canceled. Also, the TV show was not renewed.

2019: Your governor doesn’t have a stance on [insert issue] at this time, but he would like you to watch this video of him riding a tractor.

2020: You like to think of your at-home quarantine as the only private prison your government won’t throw money at.

2021: In this past year, you’ve dined in fewer restaurants than Sean Brock opened.

2022: Your next-door neighbor is in a different congressional district.

2023: This is not what you meant when you wished for arena football to make a comeback.

2024: They 12South’d your Five Points, so you 86’d yourself from the area.

SECOND PLACE

You think the high prices on Lower Broadway are due to the guitariffs.

—JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY

AND THE REST:

Even the bachelorette mural artists don’t believe in Nashville anymore. —ANDY GASPARINI

You got more calls from the Metro Alert system this year than from people wanting to buy your house. —JAMIE YOST

The only time your congressman pays attention to your city is when he wants to pick on the mayor. —DREW MAYNARD

Your mayor’s in trouble with the pro-life folks for supporting basic human rights. —CHASE STEJSKAL

Metropolis charged you for parking in your own driveway. —KENNETH BLANKENSHIP

You wait in longer lines for pancakes than voting. —JESSE CASE

You’d rather have half the Tennessee General Assembly than half the Metro Council. —STEPHEN YEARGIN

The violinist in your baroque ensemble won the Grammy for Bluegrass Album of the Year. —FRANCIS PERRY

You’re stocking up like a doomsday prepper for the incoming hemp and THC restrictions. —SARAH DENSON

You can explain in detail that the main difference between THC and THCa is that THCa only gets you high if you burn it. —NATE GRIFFIN

You were going for a Will Levi’s joke but just couldn’t hit the target. —JAMIE YOST

You hit your daily step goal walking to your rideshare at BNA. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA

You’re looking forward to BNA’s new Departures Drop-Off Point in Mt. Juliet.

—ANDY GASPARINI

You think the Bart Durham International Airport has a nice ring to it. —AMANDA WILMOTH

You put BNA carpet in your house.

—JOSEPH RAPOLLA

Your favorite dive bar was founded three months ago by a venture capital group. —JESSE CASE

The keyboard player at your church is on tour with Post Malone. —ALLISON DAMRATOSKI

You stole several “Save the Boulevard” signs and placed them around Old Hickory. —MIKE DORR

You have a “Save the Boulevard” sign in your front yard, but you live in Antioch. —RAY SHELIDE

You don’t know your neighbors, but you are a Friend of Belle Meade Boulevard. —JIM FLAUTT

THIRD PLACE

You can’t immediately tell if the Carhartt/mullet profile pic comes with a matcha latte and a tote bag or a Bud Light and a red hat. —ASHLEY HASKINS

Your Congress members spend all their time dumping on Nashville while enjoying the sweet tax revenue we generate. —RICK EWING

Your local weather anchors regularly have to work 72-hour shifts. —KEITH HEIM

The only time you go down Broadway is when Vandy beats Bama. —SARAH SMITH

You’ve four-starred the location of the Vanderbilt Goal Posts in the Cumberland River. —ANDY GASPARINI

Vanderbilt Football being the highlight of the Nashville sports world last year tells you just how bad things got. —STEPHEN YEARGIN

You’ve bought new furniture for your tornado shelter. —PATRICK REILLY

You stock your downstairs bathroom with beer during tornado season. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA

You blew your entire Xanax prescription on @NashSevereWx’s spring coverage. —ASHLEY HASKINS

You have a NashSevereWx tattoo. —DREW MAYNARD

Your AA sponsor has a Grammy. —MICHAEL ROBERTSON

You think reading Advice King counts as therapy. —JIM FLAUTT

The Gulf of Antioch has a nice ring to it. —LESLIE HALES

You know where the one remaining Shoney’s in town is. —CLETIS CARR

Now you’re just trying to beat Andy Gasparini for number of entries published. —JAMIE YOST

You look at the list of potential 2026 gubernatorial candidates the same way you would a Whitman’s Sampler filled with cat turds. —ANDY GASPARINI

You’re property taxes are too high and your favorite alt-weekly’s font is too fucking small. —WILLIE HALL

You know what the “D.” in D. Patrick Rodgers stands for. —MANDA HACKNEY

You’ve lost friends over your choice of meatand-three. —BRIAN MACKEY

Your nightmares are of Phil Williams and his microphone. —SARAH SMITH

You weren’t sure who to root against in the Swan Ball-Cheekwood lawsuit. —JIM FLAUTT

You needed directions to Swan Ball this year. —JEREMY NAGOSHINER

FOURTH PLACE

Nothing in this world makes you as mad as a Belle Meade resident gets at the thought of building a sidewalk. —STEPHEN YEARGIN

It’s high time we bring back the Swine Ball.

—TRENT HANNER

Every time you drive down I-24, you boldly assume the role of War Boy on Fury Road.

—CARA DORRIS

You suggest visitors go to the West End Chili’s. —LESLEY PAONE

You have dined at the famous West End Chili’s. —SARA MEISSNER

You tell visitors the best restaurant in the city is the West End Chili’s. —MATT TRASK

Spirit Halloween is eyeing the vacant new construction on your street. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA

You have an alarm notification at midnight in hopes of getting a reservation at Kase. —LESLIE HALES

You think Jon Bon Jovi should lead Metro emergency dispatch. —PATRICK REILLY

You’re sure Whey Jennings preferred a different stage name but thought Curds was already taken. —STACY HARRIS

Your kid’s private school tuition increased by exactly $7,500 this year. —KEITH HEIM

You would rather die of heat stroke than hire Lee Company to fix your AC. —KEITH HEIM

You already know ICE at Opryland is sponsored by the governor’s office this year.

—JOE SOUTER

You know that “There are ICE agents on Broadway” isn’t a code for a bachelor party handing out Smirnoff Ice near Tootsie’s.

—ASHLEY HASKINS

You were worried the ICE problem on Broadway meant they were serving warm beer.

—NATE GRIFFIN

The patrons of your bar on the weekend are the same people who conduct immigration raids on it the following week. —RANDAL COOPER

Karaoke night has a rehearsal. —ALEX LUCAS

The most authentic Italian restaurant you’ve been to is in Columbia, Tenn. —ANDREA SPENCER

You miss the good old days when you could buy a pardon or a used car from Ray Blanton.

—STEVE WOLF

You’ve named the speed bumps on your street after state legislators. —MIKE MONTGOMERY

You clutch your pearls over a speed cushion but roll through a four-way stop like it’s a roundabout. —MOLLY HORNBUCKLE

Wellness Spas are the new Smoke Shops. —LESLIE HALES

You don’t take the bus because to do so would damper the objectivity of your critique of a public transportation system of which you’ve yet to avail yourself. —WILLIE HALL

You complain about the lack of public transport but never even Google the bus.

—RUBY BEVINGTON

You think the NYE Note should be replaced by Ed the Zebra. —PAUL WHITFIELD

You saw a random girl at Bonnaroo wearing a zebra-striped romper and thought Ed had escaped again. —SARAH SMITH

You looked for that dadgum zebra in your backyard. —JACKIE HUGHES

That zebra escaped and you thought “Welp, that’s going to be the most popular YASNI topic this year.” —SARAH SMITH

You didn’t know how much you needed an airlifted zebra until you saw an airlifted zebra. —JAMIE YOST

You passed a zebra on I-24 driving home from work. —KEITH HEIM

You didn’t blame Ed the Zebra for trying to get out of Tennessee. —JOSEPH R.

You’re convinced Rutherford County set that zebra loose just to overshadow CMA Fest. —TRENT HANNER

Zebra, zebra, zebra, zebra, zebra. —SARAH SMITH

HONORABLE MENTIONS

You met your spouse in the YouTube Live chat of a tornado warning. —JESSE CASE

You’re sick of all these old buildings downtown getting turned into celebrityowned bars and just want to go back to a simpler time when we just turned old churches into strip clubs. —KEITH HEIM

Your Uber driver was the Head of Cancer Research at Vanderbilt last month. —JESSE CASE

You know the difference between Lolu, Lulo, Lola, Babu, and Babo. —RACHEL KRAMER

You think Robert Altman’s Nashville doesn’t seem chaotic enough anymore.

—JOSEPH RAPOLLA

You believe the Nashville International Airport should be renamed for Dolly Parton because it would be a shame for a signature phrase like “Departin’ D. Parton” to go to waste. —STACY HARRIS

You’ve used Belcourt popcorn as a meal replacement. —PATRICK REILLY

You celebrated Casada’s guilty verdict at Party Fowl. —BOB VOGT

Metropolis texts you when you leave your driveway each morning with a receipt. —CHUCK ARNOLD

You fight ChatGPT over primary songwriting credit. —KEN LASS

You used to buy coke off a guy named Skinny Dennis. —HEATHER SCUDDER

You worry it’s too late to admit you’re not sure who Sean Brock is. —RACHEL SCOTT

Your congressperson doesn’t live within 50 miles of your house. —MIKE MONTGOMERY

Andy Ogles leading an investigation is more surprising than him being the subject of one. —STEPHEN YEARGIN

You renamed your student loan account “Campaign Finance” just in case Andy Ogles wanted to make another honest mistake. —ASHLEY HASKINS

When you hold up a piece of the goal post to your ear, you can hear the Cumberland River. —ANGELA GIMLIN

You think the Predators off-season spending could have subsidized the transit plan. —IAN DINKINS

You wish the Thunder From Down Under was the start of underground transit and not a male strip show. —LESLIE HALES

On November 6, 2024, you used the words “bright side” and “transit referendum” in the same sentence at least five times. —KESHAWN IVORY

You’re glad we finally got that Transit thing solved. —ANDY GASPARINI

You want to know where Glen Casada gets his coke. —ASHLEY HASKINS

You’re anxiously awaiting Robert Altman’s Nashville to be turned into a cosplay bar on Lower Broad. —KEVIN WALTERS

Your granny used to babysit the Bang This Twins. —HEATHER SCUDDER

You got selfies with both Jim Cantore and Reed Timmer this year. —KEITH HEIM

Glen Casada’s corruption trial happening right before the YASNI submission window opened made you weirdly nostalgic for the 2019 contest entries. —SARAH SMITH

Interstate traffic is 9 mph but you’re happy it’s even moving. —CHRIS JONES

You know where the I-24 potholes are by heart. —JOSEPH PATRICK

Maybe we should rename town hall meetings to “illegal immigrants in the area” so Marsha Blackburn will actually show up. —ASHLEY HASKINS

You are enjoying the last few peaceful evenings before Marsha Blackburn starts buying television ads. —STEPHEN YEARGIN

Ugh. Now you have to go to a “normal” Kroger. —JAMIE YOST

You believe the Library fire was part of a viral marketing campaign for the upcoming ABC smash hit Nashville 9-1-1 —ANDY GASPARINI

You can trace most of the stores on your street back at least three “used-to-bes.”

—ALLISON EVERETT

You got too invested in the Frist Missed Connection of the guy in the green jacket and girl with a red beret. —LESLIE HALES

You have a recurring nightmare that you’re stuck at that little Mapco at 21st and Blair, and NO ONE WILL LET YOU MAKE A LEFT TURN TO GET OUT. —TRENT HANNER

You have lied to a spouse about how much you have paid for a musical instrument.

—ALAN SPINDEL

You have to ask if the quirky name is a new band or a new dive bar. —ASHLEY HASKINS

You just found the perfect bike lane for your truck. —PATRICK REILLY

You keep a YASNI section in your phone notes all year long. —LIGHTNING DE LA FLAME

You own a house you can’t afford to buy from yourself. —OLIVIA CLOUD

You say “They have a location in Brooklyn.” —ZACH HALFHILL

You still have a Turkey Rockefeller punch card from Cafe Coco’s in your wallet. —SARAH DENSON

You’d love to answer this question but Cameron Sexton silenced your mic. —ASHLEY HASKINS

You think Mayor O’Connell should respond to every letter from Cameron Sexton saying that he should talk to his West Nashville councilmember first, but to let him know if he doesn’t hear back. —STEPHEN YEARGIN

You thought the Transperfect Bowl had been outlawed. —BOB VOGT

You wonder why NewsChannel 5 never plays “Yakety Sax” when Ben Hill is on the news. —JEFF BELL

You’re waiting for the formal announcement from The Detroit Cowboy announcing their chef de cuisine, the recently pardoned Zip Tie Guy. —ANDY GASPARINI

Your councilmember is about to get laid off. —TRENT HANNER

Your neighborhood has plenty of golf carts, but no golf courses. —ALLISON EVERETT

You miss at least one of the Coopers. —JIM FLAUTT

Reading about Michael Tait makes you long for Michael English. —STACY HARRIS

You asked the Metro weather alert system to submit this to make sure everyone saw it 23 times. —JAMIE YOST

You believe if the Frothy on 12South falls, you’ll go down with it. —RACHEL SCOTT

You think replacing Christie Cookies with Le Labo at 12South stinks. —STACY HARRIS

You don’t trust those diagonal crossings. —JOHN BLACKWELL

You voted FOR bike lanes because you keep getting stuck behind slow-pedalin’ Tony Gonzales. —SEAN ALEXANDER

You’ve been hopelessly lost in the MC Escher Parking Garage after a show at The Pinnacle.

—ANDY GASPARINI

Your Tennessee House rep thought Aftyn Behn wanted to fill potholes with actual pot.

—ANGELA GIMLIN

You post a QR code next to your driveway to charge your visitors for parking. —ANGIE SWINFORD

Your driveway just became a Metropolis lot.

—JOSEPH RAPOLLA

You raised your tenants rent to pay for a PSL at the new stadium. —BOB VOGT

You have outlasted a football stadium.

—PAUL WHITFIELD

You hope the Titans are here long enough to play in their new stadium. —JACKIE HUGHES

Your childhood nightmare fuel was TECHS the robot from 100 Oaks mall. —SARAH SMITH

The only reason that you know the police non-emergency number is because of a slightlyprobematic-but-still-extremely-catchy reggae radio jingle from 20 years ago. —ANDY GASPARINI

One of your family members is buried in the cemeteries under Percy Priest lake. —CLAYTON KIDD

You don’t believe Bart Durham actually died. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA

You finally make plans to go to Porter Flea because the Thompson Lane Tuba Guy is playing. —LISA KINKEL

It’s still hot and you still need a pool. —JAMIE YOST

You know at least one person who went to school with Jelly Roll. —JACKIE HUGHES

You have a new line item in your personal budget to give monthly to WPLN. —JON BLANKENSHIP

You think Tom House should be nominated for the Booker Prize. —WILLIE HALL

PAST WINNERS

1989: You think our Parthenon is better because the other one fell apart. —SUSAN FENTON

1990: Your mayor is married and engaged at the same time. —MARALEE SELF

You wish they’d offer a vanity license plate with Snowbird on it. —JOSH MALKOFSKY-BERGER

WEIRDIES

Traveling by car from Madison to Donelson was possible only by a ferry ride across the Cumberland River until January 14, 1964 when a bridge was built across the Cumberland River. —GENE CLARK

You reschedule a Schubert trio rehearsal because your pig, Jubilee, has been asked to appear in a Christian rap video wearing a gold chain. —CARRIE BAILEY

You tattooed the secret hot chicken spice recipe on your neck in a dead romance language. —WILLIE HALL ▼

1991: You say to the person behind the counter at the Hot Stop, “We really kicked y’all’s ass in that Desert Storm.” —WILLIE D. SWEET JR.

1992: You go to a Hank Williams Jr. concert at Starwood and pass out before Hank does. —TED W. DAVIS III

1993: Your church congregation is referred to as “the studio audience.” —SHARON KASSERMAN

1994: You think that the H.O.V. lane is for people with AIDS. —PAUL ALLEN

1995: No winner

1996: You never meant to stay here this long. —ROBERT JETTON

1997: You’ve checked your flower bed for Janet March. —TERRY ROBERTSON

1998: You’re the only one who doesn’t know you’re gay. —DIANA HECHT

1999: You dig up your mom. —RICK HAGEY

2000: You want to vote Brad Schmitt off the island. —CHAD TRIBBLE

2001: Your minister follows the Nine Commandments. —KEN LASS

2002: Towns you’ve never heard of are going to be hit by a tornado at 6:51, 6:53 and 7:01 p.m. —RICK HAGEY

2003: You returned a friendly Southern wave to Adam Dread as he veered across Franklin Pike. —CINDY PARRISH

2004: You need a war to sell records. —JOE SCUTELLA

2005: Your governor gives TennCare beneficiaries McDonald’s instead of health care coverage. —KEN LASS

2006: You were a gay cowboy before being a gay cowboy was cool. —MICHAEL WILLIAMS

2007: You saw Kenny Chesney in a Kroger reading Out & About —MICHAEL WILLIAMS

2008: Your DUI arrest gets a five-star rating on YouTube. —ROY MOORE

2009: Your local GOP makes the KKK look like the ACLU. —JONATHAN BELCHER

2010: Your city flooded and all you got was a lousy T-shirt. —DAVID ANTHONY

2011: Gay gay gay, gay gay; gay gay gay gay gay. —DANA DELWORTH

2012: You think Bart Durham should direct The Real Housewives of Nashville —HOLLY MATTHEWS

2013: You think the TV show should have been called Mount Juliette —BILL HENCH

2014: Your amp goes to 11, but not to Belle Meade. —ZACK BENNETT

2015: You’re afraid Bob Mueller’s mustache will be torn down to build a high-rise apartment building. —ZACK BENNETT

2016: Your therapist doesn’t know you’re gay. —RUSSELL RIES JR.

2017: In June, you were citing Rule No. 48.24-B that states a goal can be reviewed if an inadvertent whistle caused a stoppage in play. In January, you thought hockey was played with a ball. —BRIAN BATES

2018: Nashville is canceled. Also, the TV show was not renewed. —CHARLIE HARRIS

2019: Your idea of “light rail” means doing just a little bit of coke. —KATIE WESOLEK

2020: Your idea of contact tracing is checking for hand stamps from Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk & Rock ’N’ Roll Steakhouse. —MEGAN MINARICH

2021: You think Derrick Henry offseason workout vids should be flagged as erotica. —CHASE STEJSKAL

2022: You’ve been on the darkweb trying to solicit trash pickup. —LOGAN ELLIOTT

2023: The state legislature already overturned this joke. —JJ WRIGHT

2024: You wonder which will return first: the cicadas or women’s rights? —ANDY GASPARINI ▼

AUGUST 7, 8, 9, 15 & 16

VINCE GILL WITH CORRINA 5TH NIGHT ADDED—AUGUST 7

AUGUST 22

DANIEL DONATO’S COSMIC COUNTRY

SEPTEMBER 23

NASHVILLE SONGWRITER AWARDS

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

NOVEMBER 20

MARGO PRICE WITH RATTLESNAKE MILK ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

NOVEMBER 26

BÉLA FLECK & THE FLECKTONES

JINGLE ALL THE WAY ON SALE FRIDAY AT 9 AM

DECEMBER 21, 22 & 23

LADY A THIS WINTER’S NIGHT TOUR ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

JANUARY 25, 2026

NASHVILLE THE ENCORE TOUR ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM

UPCOMING SHOWS AT THE MUSEUM’S CMA THEATER

JULY 22

TRISHA YEARWOOD AND FRIENDS

CELEBRATE LINDA RONSTADT AND LOS ANGELES COUNTRY-ROCK WITH RODNEY CROWELL, EMMYLOU HARRIS, PATTI SCIALFA, AND JAMES TAYLOR SOLD OUT

OCTOBER 11

YOU GOT GOLD

CELEBRATING THE LIFE & SONGS OF JOHN PRINE

NOVEMBER 4

BRIAN CULBERTSON BRIAN CULBERTSON’S DAY TRIP TOUR

DECEMBER 14

JON MCLAUGHLIN AND FRIENDS

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS ON SALE JULY 18

TICKETS ON SALE NOW

Museum members receive exclusive pre-sale opportunities for CMA Theater concerts. Learn more at CountryMusicHallofFame.org/Membership.

CRITICS’ PICKS: WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF THINGS TO DO

THROUGH OCT. 12

ART [POWERFUL PATCHWORK]

FABRIC

OF

A NATION: AMERICAN QUILT STORIES

According to Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi, “When people think of quilts, they think about warmth and security. So they can be kind of a soft landing — a way to tell the story of difficult topics.” Mazloomi’s quilt “Strange Fruit,” a reference to the haunting Billie Holiday song, currently hangs below this quote in the Frist Art Musuem. In the quilt, Holiday fills the sky, gardenia in her hair, caressing one of the six Black men hanging from a lynching tree. Below, Ku Klux Klan members stand in front of an American flag. Quilts are often passed down through generations as wholesome heirlooms. Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories, now in Nashville from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, challenges that singular notion, revealing how this “women’s work” has stitched together threads of protest and identity. Nearly 50 quilts trace American history through the lens of slavery, industrialization, war and gender — from a women’s suffrage quilt to architect Richard Rowley’s quilt of the Chicago skyline, which he entered under his mother’s name. The result is an appraisal of the power in one of the country’s most democratic art forms to do much more than just keep us warm. KATHLEEN HARRINGTON

THURSDAY / 7.17

FILM [SHARED HISTORY] ECHOES OF THE FORKS OF CYPRESS

Filmmaker Frederick Murphy, a Tennessee State University alum and a Clarksville native, is hosting a free screening of his latest documentary, Echoes of the Forks of Cypress, at The Lodge at Montgomery Bell State Park on Thursday. Echoes “explores the largely unacknowledged stories of enslaved African Americans who labored at iron furnaces across Middle Tennessee,” including the Cabin Row community in Montgomery County. The film traces these Southern communities’ connection

to the Forks of Cypress cotton plantation in Florence, Ala., which was run by James Jackson, a Nashvillian who moved to Alabama in 1818. The documentary tracks down some of the descendants of these enslaved people, several of whom have formed a connection over their shared family histories. Doors open at 5:30 p.m., and Murphy encourages attendees to come early to “connect with others, engage in meaningful dialogue and honor the past through truth and storytelling.” LOGAN BUTTS

6 P.M. AT THE LODGE AT MONTGOMERY BELL 1000 HOTEL AVE., BURNS

[POWER LINES]

MUSIC

SOUND + SOLIDARITY:

A BENEFIT CONCERT FEAT. NICOLE ATKINS, FLIGHT ATTENDANT & GLOOM GIRL MFG

When it comes to polymathic pop mastery, singer and songwriter Nicole Atkins is a Nashville artist who does things her way. Thursday night’s show at The Basement East benefits Advocating Opportunity, a nonprofit that provides legal and support services to people who have experienced sex and labor trafficking. It’s a worthy cause, and you’ll get a chance to catch Atkins — one of Nashville’s more mercurial and experimental pop artists — in action. Atkins reinvented the torchy Southern soul album concept that the likes of Dusty Springfield and Aretha Franklin perfected in the 1960s and ’70s on her 2017 release Goodnight Rhonda Lee, which sported contributions from the likes of the Texas production team Niles City Sound and songwriters Louise Goffin and Chris Isaak. Atkins also shines on 2020’s Italian Ice, cut at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Sheffield, Ala., with a set of musicians that includes bassist David Hood and keyboard wizard Spooner Oldham. Also on the bill is Nashville post-punk band Gloom Girl MFG, whose 2024 album Polycrisis includes the indelible song “Batshitlorette.” Meanwhile, Music City pop band Flight Attendant specializes in catchy, synth-laden tunes on their 2024 album Under the Powerlines — vocalist Karalyne Winegarner keeps everything as cooled out as possible

throughout. EDD HURT

8 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT EAST 917 WOODLAND ST.

FRIDAY / 7.18

[TENNESSEE ROYALTY]

THEATER

DOLLY: A TRUE ORIGINAL MUSICAL

Is there anything Dolly Parton can’t do? She’s an absolute music legend and a committed philanthropist, with business interests ranging from entertainment and hospitality to retail — including everything from a line of pet apparel and accessories to makeup, fragrances and even baking mixes. Now Miss Dolly has her own Broadway musical, and Nashville fans can get a first look, as Dolly: A True Original Musical premieres at Belmont University’s Fisher Center on Friday. Directed by Tony Award winner Bartlett Sher, this much-anticipated new work explores Parton’s “triumphs, trials and trailblazing path to icon status,” and features a book by Parton and Emmy winner Maria S. Schlatter. Packed with familiar hits such as “I Will Always Love You,” “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors” and “9 to 5,” the musical also promises new songs Parton has written specifically for the stage. The cast includes some serious Broadway talent, including Katie Rose Clarke, Carrie St. Louis, Quinn Titcomb, Beth Malone, John Zdrojeski, Jacob Fishel, Tabitha Lawing, Danny Wolohan and more. And be sure to keep an eye out for Belmont alum Peri Barnhill, who was selected through the national “Search for Dolly” casting call. AMY STUMPFL

THROUGH AUG. 31 AT THE FISHER CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

2020 BELMONT BLVD.

[OUR TIME]

MUSIC

YEAH YEAH YEAHS

Listening to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at maximum volume is one of life’s loudest pleasures. In the car, on your headphones, it doesn’t matter where you are — crank it up

all the way, because seriously, what are you protecting your hearing for at this point? When indie sleaze’s greatest band announced their Hidden in Pieces Tour, celebrating the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ 25th anniversary, they made it clear this run of shows will be different from previous ones. Intimate. Stripped-down. And we are so lucky, as a city, to be one of five stops on the U.S. leg of their tour. Audiences at the Ryman will be treated to seeing the trio — drummer Brian Chase, guitarist Nick Zinner and legendary vocalist Karen O — accompanied by strings and piano as they highlight their three-album catalog and introduce new songs, including their cover of Björk’s “Hyperballad.” As usual, all eyes will be on Karen O, in full glam, costumes designed by Christian Joy, contorting her body into dark drama. She’ll be storming the stage as she always has, her confidence shivering and sublime. Though she might be quieter this time around, she can’t be tamed. As of this writing, only a few tickets remain for each show. If you read this in time, take action. TOBY ROSE

JULY 18-19 AT THE RYMAN

116 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY N.

[DIG IN]

MUSIC

JACK VINOY W/CLAIRE MAISTO, WHOISJORDAN & FESSSI K

Jack Vinoy keeps a full plate, with production work for artists in the hip-hop, pop and R&B realms and organizing songwriting and production get-together ca.mp3, now in its third year. Somehow he also finds time to make his own music, like Relay, an LP that distinctively blends a lot of those influences. The electronically warped grooves bob and weave with nods to jazz, funk and soul, and the vocal cadences of the songs draw on rap while he leaves the bars to Nashville hip-hop luminaries. Vinoy doesn’t get time to play out that often, but he headlines Friday’s show with support including R&B-schooled singer-songwriter and producer Claire Maisto — don’t miss “Expectation” backed with “Want U Bad,” her recent dance-floor-ready collab with Andrew Twining that also features Olivia Jones. Singer, MC and ca.mp3 alum WHOISJORDAN will also be there, following up an appearance at May’s

inaugural ca.mp3 showcase and on “Exit Away,” a pensive posse cut from a crew called The Wholesum. Coming all the way from Florida to round out the bill is Fesssi K, whose recent Tender trilogy spotlights a wealth of patient, heavy songs that came pouring out when her beat-making computer died and she went all-in on studying electric guitar. STEPHEN TRAGESER 8 P.M. AT THE EAST ROOM 2412 GALLATIN AVE.

MUSIC

[SOUTHERN-FRIED JAMS] RIVERSIDE FISH FRY FEAT. CHUCK MEAD

Rowdy country-rock jams? Southern-fried fish? A sticky-hot night in July? Yes please. Head to Riverside Revival on Friday for a plate of deepfried catfish and live tunes from local favorite Chuck Mead. An annual gathering in East Nashville, the fry features an all-you-can-eat bar of catfish, slaw, hushpuppies, corn on the cob, white beans, collard greens and banana pudding for dessert. Onstage, expect a hearty dish of entertainment from Mead, a staple of the city’s Americana scene and co-founder of tastemaking 1990s band BR-549 (as seen on Lower Broadway long before the celebrity bar takeover). Those wanting to catch the music can enter for free. If you want to eat, plates cost $20 for adults and $10 for children under age 10. Per the Riverside Revival website, the event promises to “bring neighbors together over delicious food, live music and great company.” Heat up the grease, turn on the music, and enjoy. MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER

6 P.M. AT RIVERSIDE REVIVAL 1600 RIVERSIDE DRIVE

SATURDAY

/ 7.19

FILM [KING KONG AIN’T GOT SHIT ON ME] ACTION DISTRACTION: TRAINING DAY

Denzel Washington should’ve won an Oscar for his title role in Spike Lee’s greatest film, Malcolm X (1992). Denzel is brilliant and incendiary as Malcolm X — he’s weak, naive, violent and ambitious in the first act; then

JACK VINOY

PHOTO: PHIL DUDEVOIRE

NICOLE ATKINS

JULY

JULY

Morton Plumbing

devout, wounded, righteous and beaming with charisma by the finale. Washington embodies the evolution of the martyred civil rights-era leader in a role that’s the opposite of his part in Training Day (2001), which is what landed Washington the Academy Award for Best Actor. In Training Day, Washington plays Det. Alonzo Harris, a decorated cop who runs a renegade LAPD narcotics squad. Harris is both a parasite and a predator, grifting off the excesses of a corrupt criminal justice system, and using his position and his badge — and his gun — to intimidate and prey on his own community. Denzel, not surprisingly, is on fire here too. His Alonzo Harris is a sadistic sociopath; a leering, lethal liar. He’s also Officer Jake Hoyt’s (co-star Ethan Hawke) new boss. For showtimes in the Belcourt’s Action Distraction showcase, visit belcourt.org JOE NOLAN

JULY 19 & 22 AT THE BELCOURT 2102 BELCOURT AVE.

celebrating all day. Oh, and make sure to take a picture underneath the “book nerd” sign out front. TINA DOMINGUEZ

9 A.M. AT THE BOOKSHOP

1043 W. EASTLAND AVE.

MUSIC

[LEMON DROP] ATEEZ

the show website as “responsible events for irresponsible people,” the two-day gig includes top-billed performances from goth rock go-to Olivia Jean on Saturday and self-described “demon Elvis” band ELZIG on Sunday. Additional acts slated for Saturday include Scrooge Mandella, Ways Away, Triangle Fire, The Daddy Sisters, Do Yourself In (DYI) and more. Sunday’s bill features Dumpster Pussy, Tank Rats, The Beat Creeps, Part Time Filth and secondSELF, among others. Per the website, ticket holders can expect local punk vendors (it’s a flea market, after all), arcade games and a free photo booth on site throughout the weekend. See the full lineup at nashvillepunk.net. Festivities kick off Saturday at 11 a.m. and noon on Sunday. MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER JULY 19-20 AT EASTSIDE BOWL

1508A GALLATIN PIKE S., MADISON.

5

BOOKS [SHOP LOCAL] THE BOOKSHOP’S NINTH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

Beloved East Nashville bookstore The Bookshop is celebrating its ninth anniversary! The bookshop, a small but mighty store, is owned by editor-turned-shop-owner Joelle Herr. Since the doors opened, Herr has carefully selected each of the titles carried in the shop. Throughout the years, the store has hosted monthly book clubs, author events and reading challenges, and donated part of the proceeds to local nonprofits once a month. As part of the upcoming celebration, they’re giving away a free anniversary tote bag with every $25 purchase, plus a free sticker with any purchase. They’re also having a special book recommendation activity — leave a rec, get a rec — and other specials throughout the day. Their neighbors at Hanna Bee Coffee will also have a specialty drink just for the occasion. Stop by and grab a new book and a funny little bevvy; they’ll be

With Blackpink set to embark on a huge global stadium tour and artists topping the Billboard charts in the U.S., K-pop is having a huge moment, and it shows no sign of slowing down. One of the leading groups of this cultural phenomenon is Ateez — an eight-member group made up of Hongjoong, Seonghwa, Yunho, Yeosang, San, Mingi, Wooyoung and Jongho — who will be heading to Nashville on Saturday for their In Your Fantasy world tour. Ateez is among the most innovative and entertaining live performers in K-pop, as they elevate their music through incredible visual effects and energetic performances. The upcoming show will also give Nashville fans the chance to be one of the first crowds to hear Ateez perform songs from their EP, Golden Hour: Part.3, which came out in June. If you’ve never been to a K-pop concert before, I highly recommend this one — it’s a totally unique experience as an audience member, especially an Ateez concert. The dedication to craft, the fandom, the choreography, the visual effects and the stage design are up there with some of the best. ADAM DAVIDSON

7:30 AT BRIDGESTONE ARENA

501 BROADWAY

[PERUSE PUNK]

SHOPPING/MUSIC

NASHVILLE PUNK ROCK FLEA MARKET

One of the coolest shows in town this weekend may be at Eastside Bowl, where you can catch 20-plus bands for $10 (not bad, right?) at the latest installment of the Nashville Punk Rock Flea Market. Fittingly described on

SUNDAY / 7.20

MUSIC

[HELPING YOUR NEIGHBOR] BACKYARD PICKIN’ PARTY FEAT. NATHAN EVANS FOX & FRIENDS

Edgehill United Methodist Church is hosting the Backyard Pickin’ Party Sunday to raise money for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. The family-friendly event will take place at 6 p.m and see the official release of Nathan Evans Fox’s “Hillbilly Hymn (Okra & Cigarettes),” also known as “When the Lord Comes Back,” which has already seen some viral success via an Instagram post. Other performers include Ross Collier, Ziona Riley and Julia Cannon. While the event is free, with tickets available online at edgehill.org/nathan-evans-fox, donations in support of TIRRC are encouraged, with cash, check or Venmo accepted. (Venmo payments can be made to @edgehillumc1502 with “TIRRC” in memo.) Bring a blanket and lawn chair, pack a picnic and enjoy an evening of live music, community and solidarity with one

CHAPEL

W/ PHANGS

THU, 7/17

A FOREIGNER’S JOURNEY TO BOSTON FRI, 7/18

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL A RAVE SAT, 7/19

BALLYHOO!

W/ CYDEWAYS & BEACHFLY SUN, 7/20

ESHA TEWARI W/ SAVANNA LEIGH TUE, 7/22

ONE DIRECTION NIGHT FRI, 7/25

KEITH WALLEN SAT, 7/26

MT JONES WED, 7/30

VANDOLIERS W/ NATE BERGMAN THU, 7/31

JULIA DIGRAZIA W/ SIERRA CARSON FRI, 8/1

HARBOUR W/ ABBY HOLIDAY FRI, 8/1

BRENDAN WALTER SAT, 8/2

JAVIER ESCOVEDO W/ TYLER KEITH THU, 8/7

OZOMATLI THU, 8/7

CHIDDY BANG FRI, 8/8

of Nashville’s front-line organizations standing up for immigrant communities, as federal agents and politicians target immigrants and allies alike. HAMILTON MATTHEW MASTERS

6 P.M. AT EDGEHILL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH 1502 EDGEHILL AVE.

BOOKS [A BOOK AND A BEV] BOOZY BOOK FAIR

As Nashville’s bookish scene continues to grow, mobile pop-up romance bookstores — smut trucks? — have also begun to appear throughout the city. Slow Burn Bookshop arrived in 2024, with an all-black truck and a highly curated selection of romance books. Since its opening a year ago, Slow Burn has traveled throughout Middle Tennessee and established its own monthly book club. To celebrate its first year in business, Slow Burn is hosting a Boozy Book Fair at Fait la Force. Local authors will have copies of their books available for signing, and will be joined by other bookish vendors including Starlight Candle and Clay + Clover Earring Co. Icon Tattoo and Body Piercing will also have a tattoo pop-up with a tailored flash sheet for the occasion. Of course, you can always pick up a new title from Slow Burn, which will be open during the event. Bring your lunch money and relive the excitement of the Scholastic Book Fair — but with a beer this time around. TINA DOMINGUEZ

NOON AT FAIT LA FORCE BREWING

1414 THIRD AVE. S., SUITE 101

[LET’S GO RIDE A BIKE]

BIKING

OPEN STREETS

drive-in theater in the Nashville area is, without a doubt, Stardust out in Watertown. Throughout the summer, Stardust hosts Retro Wednesdays, where the theater shows a thematically linked doubleheader of either two repertory screenings or one new release paired with an older counterpart. Earlier this summer, a buddy and I posted up in our lawn chairs for the late’90s high school pairing of Scream and American Pie. It was delightful. Perhaps this summer’s best Retro Wednesday double feature is taking place July 23, as Stardust has coupled ’80s classics The Terminator and The Shining. Just make sure there are no signs of bad weather that night — we wouldn’t want to re-create Twister’s famous drive-in scene, when ol’ Jack Torrance busted down the bathroom door as a tornado burst through the screen. LOGAN BUTTS SUNDOWN AT STARDUST DRIVE-IN THEATER 310 PURPLE TIGER DRIVE, WATERTOWN

MUSIC

[A REAL COOL TIME] NEGATIVE APPROACH

One of the things that keeps me from biking around town is the fear of cars. Needless to say, Nashville is not especially suited to pedestrians. That’s exactly the sort of concern nonprofit advocacy organization Walk Bike Nashville has its eyes on. Through its Open Streets events this summer (also taking place on Aug. 17 and Sept. 7), people are invited to experience a connected downtown route without cars. From noon to 5 p.m., a 5-mile loop that stretches from Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park through First Avenue, Rolling Mill Hill and the Gulch will be sanctioned off from cars — and open to walkers, bikers, skaters and the like. Another goal of the event is to get people out of their homes and more connected with their neighbors and neighborhoods. There will be options for activities along the way too. I personally find it even more fun on an e-bike, which makes zipping up the hills to see a gorgeous view of the Cumberland River easy.

HANNAH HERNER

NOON AT BICENTENNIAL CAPITOL MALL STATE PARK

600 JAMES ROBERTSON PARKWAY

WEDNESDAY / 7.23

FILM

[AT THE DRIVE-IN] RETRO WEDNESDAYS: THE TERMINATOR & THE SHINING

There’s nothing quite like watching a classic movie at an old-school drive-in theater. The best

One of the truly great books about American punk is Tony Rettman’s oral history of the Detroit hardcore genesis, Why Be Something That You’re Not. Rettman shows that while Washington, D.C., and Southern California get credited with founding hardcore punk, the ugly urban blight of the Great Lakes region helped codify the early U.S. thrash sound. Disenchanted Rust Belt ragers took inspiration from Bad Brains, early U.K. oi! singles and the first crop of California bands — not to mention Motor City forefathers like The Stooges — to forge one of the premier scenes in the country. Homegrown label Touch and Go was pumping out crucial EPs from The Fix and Necros, but the most furious release was the self-titled 7-inch from Negative Approach. Bashing through 10 songs in nine minutes, NA helped craft a template to show teenagers around the country how it’s done. NA still has a massive impact as one of the driving influences of every new generation, which can be felt in Music City thrashers sharing the stage with the Motor City madmen at Cobra on July 23. Locals B.O.A. just released a collection of relentless razorblade riffs on their new split LP with Chicago’s Stiff. The live reputation of Sinkers has made them an act never to miss. And Family Dog’s recent Macroplastics might be my favorite Nashville punk record of 2025, fusing the sound of early Wire with the raw dirge of hardcore ruiners like Flipper or The Dicks. P.J. KINZER

7 P.M. AT THE COBRA 2511 GALLATIN AVE.

2ND &

Live Music at ON BROADWAY

JULY LINE UP

7.3 Levi Hummon

7.4 Waymore’s OutlawsPost Firework Concert

7.5 Ricochet

7.6 Livin’ The Write Life w/ Sherry Austin, Gary Frost, Ellis Griffin, Jadynce Jean, Aaron Loy, Allison Nichols, Will Rambeaux, Jagger Whitaker

7.8 Salute the Songbird with Maggie Rose, Special Guest: Kaitlin Butts

7.9 Eric Paslay’s Song In A Hat w/ Tenille Townes, Adam Hambrick

7.10 Brassfield w/ Special Guests Rick Huckaby, Kayce

7.12 Gabe Dixon “Parts I’ve Played” Album Release Show 7.13 Pick Pick Pass w/ Kevin Mac, Keith Stegall, Michael White

7.15 Chief’s Outsiders Rounds w/ Skyelor Anderson & Ben Kadlecek w/ Guests Ivy Alex, Sheyna Gee, Emily McGuill, Rachel Schumacher

7.16 Songwriter City Presents: The Songs of Music City with Lee Thomas Miller and Wendell Mobley

7.17 John Paycheck

WRITERS’ ROUNDS AT CHIEF’S

From platinum-selling chart-toppers to underground icons, household names to undiscovered gems, Chief’s Neon Steeple is committed to bringing the very best national and regional talent back to Broadway.

7.18 An Evening with Joe Bob Briggs: How Redneck’s Saved Hollywood

7.19 Take Me To Church Tribute - #1 Eric Church Tribute in America

7.20 Like Combs - The Luke Combs Experience

7.23 Uncle B’s Drunk With Power String Band Show Featuring Tyler Childers’ “Purgatory” with Leah Blevins, Alex Lambert, Nathan Belt, Aniston Pate, and Many More!

7.25 Jason Eady w/ Special Guest Addison Johnson

7.26 Jeff Hyde & Ryan TyndellThe Songs of Eric Church

7.27 Music Row for Musicares w/ Jackson Dean, Driver Williams, Jason Nix, and More Special Guests!

7.28 Buddy’s Place w/ Dylan Gerard, Walker County, Paul Sike

7.29 Dan Harrison, Jeff Middleton, Mark Irwin, Mark Taylor

7.30 Thom Shepherd Presents The Songwriters

7.31 Jamie O’Neal - There Is No Arizona 25th Anniversary

At Chief’s we understand that great music is born from the heart and soul of it’s creators, which is why our writers’ rounds are dedicated to celebrating the brilliant minds behind some of today’s most iconic songs.

O’Neal

7.8 Maggie Rose

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FOOD & DRINK

MAIS OUI, PASTIS IN NASHVILLE

From bouillabaisse to boeuf bourguignon, Pastis is bringing bistro buzz to Nashville

BY MARGARET LITTMAN

THE BUZZ ABOUT Pastis Nashville’s opening has been, well, buzzing for a long time. The Scene first reported on it in 2022, but the rumors began in 2021, when famed restaurateur Keith McNally posted a photo that appeared to have been taken in Wedgewood-Houston, suggesting that Pastis might be headed to Nashville.

In June of this year, the French bistro restaurant finally announced it would be opening later that month, and then opened reservations on Resy. In the first three hours of availability, Pastis Nashville had more than 8,000 reservations booked, and had some reservations on each of its first 90 days in business (the period for which spots were made available). That’s according to Pastis general manager Tyler St. Denis. “That is insane, and we are very thankful,” he says.

The original Pastis was opened in 1999 by McNally, a famous — and polarizing — restaurateur. It closed in 2014 and reopened in 2019, this time in combination with STARR Restaurants, helmed by Stephen Starr, another well-known restaurateur.

McNally, who was also behind famous restaurants including Odeon, Balthazar and Minetta Tavern and has won several James Beard Awards, is known for restaurants that offer the visual details of a stage set, with no aesthetic element overlooked.

Starr says McNally is not an owner of Pastis Nashville, but has licensed the restaurant name to his company, STARR Restaurants, and is consulting with Starr on the Nashville opening. AJ Capital Partners is the landlord for the 8,400-square-foot space, which is in the historic May Hosiery Mills complex on Houston Street.

McNally was not available for an interview with the Scene. But in his memoir I Regret Almost Everything, published in May of this year, McNally writes that while today there are several Pastis restaurants outside of New York — including in Miami and Washington, D.C. — he doesn’t believe that restaurants should create carbon copies of themselves in other cities. Both St. Denis and Starr subscribe to that philosophy. St. Denis worked at Pastis in Miami and D.C. and saw the ways those restaurants adapted to local markets, while keeping the Pastis vibe and reputation intact. For example, Pastis typically doesn’t have pasta on the menu, but when Miami diners asked for it, it was soon added.

But Pastis Nashville does look like the other Pastis restaurants, with its French bistro aesthetic, including a zinc bar, white subway tiles and tin ceiling.

“The designers did an incredible job,” St. Denis says of the space. “It looks like it has been here forever, even though it is brand-new.”

The menu is chock-full of dishes that people expect from Pastis, or any good French bistro for that matter, including daily specials hand-

512 Houston St. pastisnashville.com

written on vintage mirrors. Favorites include both steak frites and lobster frites, and boeuf bourguignon, which Starr says folks were ordering with abandon even when the outside temperatures were close to 100 degrees. “It’s not 98 degrees in the restaurant,” he says, “and part

of what we do at the restaurant is transport you to a different world.”

The escargots and sardines, both classically French appetizers, have also sold very well, adds St. Denis. “Not everyone knows how to eat escargots, so we guide people in the experience

and pair it with toasted baguette and some of the finest butter.” Desserts are more French favorites, including profiteroles, frozen citron with lemon sorbet, and selections of cheeses. The menu is overseen by executive chef Mark Coleman, who worked at Bar Continental

Pastis

PHOTO:

LOBSTER FRITES

most recently before joining STARR Restaurants. Before that, Coleman spent three years in kitchens in Italy — from traditional osterias to Michelin-starred kitchens in Tuscany — and worked at a number of New York restaurants, including Rezdôra Osteria Emiliana and Forsythia Restaurant.

Coleman is developing relationships with local purveyors, adding more Tennessee ingredients to the classic menu.

“We do not want to disrupt the neighborhood that is [already] there, but we want to be part of it,” St. Denis says.

In addition to their food, Pastis locations are known for being see-and-be-seen spots. The list of celebrities who have dined there and raved about it — from Demi Moore to Sarah Jessica Parker and Cyndi Lauper — is long. McNally is known for sharing photos of celebrities at tables of his restaurants.

The unwritten Nashville code is never to interrupt famous musicians when out and about. Bus tours of stars’ homes don’t have the same cachet as they do in other cities. And many of Nashville’s most famous names are songwriters and producers whose faces are not immediately recognizable to the general public. But Starr says Nashville celebrities don’t have to worry about discretion with their dinner at Pastis.

“Servers have been trained not to gloat or hover,” Starr says. “We are very good at this. We have dealt with presidents and rock stars. Nashville is no different from New York in that way.”

Ideally, St. Denis says, Pastis Nashville should be somewhere that welcomes tourists and locals both — somewhere you might take your parents for a birthday celebration and also somewhere to have a martini at the bar before heading elsewhere for the night.

Starr is particularly excited about the Nashville location of Pastis because he became enamored of the city during the years the project

was in development. He likes the large population of young people who live in town and the emphasis on creativity that is part of the city’s ethos. “I love to be around creative people. I find business people and lawyers boring. It feels really good in Nashville.”

Starr also likes how passionate Nashvillians are about their city. “I talk to people who have been there for 15 years and fell in love,” he says. “I did not realize how special it was before I came here. Without making the other markets feel bad, I feel an energy that transcends all the others.” In fact, Starr is so star-struck by Nashville that he plans to open an outpost of St. Anselm, another one of his restaurants, in the near future.

Pastis Nashville is currently serving only dinner. Plans are to open for lunch and weekend brunch in the next few weeks, and a new patio for outdoor dining is currently under construction — the team hopes to open that in August, though recent rains have slowed outdoor construction. Starr says opening for breakfast is a possibility too.

While Pastis Nashville has been popular in its first weeks, it is possible to get a table for dinner without too much trouble. There are tables regularly available at the 170-plus-seat restaurant, particularly if you dine after 8 p.m. And that’s when things really get good. Dining later is cosmopolitan, yes. It’s also a point of difference for Pastis Nashville. While Lower Broadway is a late-night, almost-always-open destination, it can be tricky to find a restaurant open late in many parts of the city — particularly in Wedgewood-Houston.

On a recent Tuesday night, Starr says, the restaurant was “packed” near midnight. Elton John’s “Rocket Man” started playing. “The entire crowd started singing together,” Starr says. “It is truly a party. You step in a Pastis, and the night is a party. The energy makes you want to smile and have a good time.”

Vodka Yonic, the personal essay column in Nashville Scene, features the voices of women and nonbinary writers, on topics ranging from the deeply serious to the delightfully everyday. Now, The Porch and the Scene are partnering on a summer writing contest. Submit your original 800-word essay by July 25 for a chance to win $200, a free one-day Porch class, and publication in one of the August issues of Nashville Scene We welcome a wide range of voices and topics: TV, grief, sex, politics, fashion, and everything in between. Entry fee: $5. Pour your truth on the page—we’ll raise a glass to it.

Submissions open the week of 7/7 Submissions due 7/25

porchtn.org/vodkayonic

Summer Semester begins on May 27. Apply by May 16. Fall Semester begins in August. Apply Now. Register Early. nscc.edu/arts-and-humanities

VODKA YONIC

THE ANATOMY OF BEING HOMESICK

What I learned by leaving my college town BY

JULIANNE AKERS

Vodka Yonic features a rotating cast of women, nonbinary and gender-diverse 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.

PANGS OF SADNESS, a sweet ache. For the first time in my life, I’m homesick.

I thought the feeling might hit me years ago when I left for college, but it never came.

My version of reality for 18 years was the dirt roads and hayfields of my home in Statesboro, a college town in southeast Georgia. Like many angst-filled teenagers, I yearned for something more. Something bigger.

When I moved three hours north to Athens, Ga., for college, I entered with wide eyes and a sense of opportunity. It felt as if I received a golden ticket allowing me to build a real community for myself. I never looked back.

I grew in and out of myself and became someone new altogether. I clung to that feeling of independence, of doing things on my own terms — so much so that I spent nearly two years post-graduation living in Athens, finding solace in the tight-knit music scene and the familiar faces I came to know.

In all that time, I never felt homesick. Sure, there were times I would look back fondly at the wide-open fields and sublime sunsets of my childhood, but never once did I question my decision to leave.

Six months ago, I left it all behind to move to Nashville. Coming here was a sort of fresh start for me. My life took a tumultuous turn in the back half of 2024, marked by the unexpected death of a co-worker and mentor almost immediately followed by the disintegration of a two-year relationship. I was engulfed in grief and an influx of emotions — ones I’m still sorting through — and I immediately began looking for a way out. In some ways, I was running from my problems. But as I looked around my home in Athens, I knew my time there had reached its expiration date. Instead of continuing to grow, things were becoming stale.

On a snowy Sunday in January, I packed nearly all my belongings into my car and began the five-hour drive to Nashville alone. As I crossed the Tennessee River and watched the icicles clinging to the mountains slowly melt away, I knew my life was changing forever. Leaving the comfort of everything I knew and the home I had meticulously constructed for myself was the boldest thing I had ever done. Moving didn’t feel the same as it did when I was 18. It really didn’t feel like much of anything. I got a job offer and left 22 days later.

LEAVING THE COMFORT OF EVERYTHING I KNEW AND THE HOME I HAD METICULOUSLY CONSTRUCTED FOR MYSELF WAS THE BOLDEST THING I HAD EVER DONE.

My decisions moved faster than my mind, and I wasn’t sure how to process it. All I knew is that I was once again en route to something more, just like I had been six years prior.

When a few friends visited for my birthday in May, it all finally hit me. I hadn’t left Nashville since the move or seen any of the people who played such an integral part of my life over the past half-decade. We shared drinks and I snortlaughed until my face was red. I experienced a joy I hadn’t felt in quite some time. When they left on Sunday, my heart sank. I felt an anxious, pit-in-the-stomach feeling, reminiscing on what felt like a past life. That was it. I was homesick.

I’ve blossomed in new ways since coming to Nashville, and moving here pulled me out of one of the darkest periods of my life. But seeing my friends and getting a glimpse of what I left behind in Georgia gave me an overwhelming emotion of nostalgia and bittersweet longing.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the feeling, or if I was even supposed to do anything at all.

I ultimately decided to tackle it head on. I visited Athens in June in what I expected would feel like a grand return. I stayed at my old house, where empty nails still stood out on the wall where I’d once hung the art I quickly packed away in the move.

Being back in the town that harbored my most transformative years, I saw that everything was the same. The steep hills I used to hike up after a night out, the coffee shop where I sat when I felt I had nowhere else to go — it was all still standing. Life there was still moving. I was the one that had changed. It was so easy to feel as if the entire city had crumbled behind me when I left, but it didn’t. Countless versions of myself existed in Athens, and this time I stood there as an entirely new person. I was now the “friend from Nashville,” a quasi-stranger in my former home.

I began to wonder what it really means to be homesick. It doesn’t always mean you want to go back. Sometimes it’s realizing that leaving is the best decision you ever made. ▼

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SOULFUL DUDES

Preston Lauterbach chronicles the Black pioneers who created Elvis Presley’s music and style BY

ARAM GOUDSOUZIAN

In the 1990 hip-hop anthem “Fight the Power,” Chuck D of Public Enemy slammed Elvis Presley. Elvis may have been “a hero to most,” but for the militantly conscious rapper, that “sucker” was a “straight-up racist,” lumped with the conservative icon John Wayne.

The lyrics evoked the long, complicated debate over Presley’s legacy: Did his music bridge a racial chasm, or did he steal from Black artists? In Before Elvis, Preston Lauterbach flips the frame on this question. He explores Elvis through the lives of the Black musicians who shaped his style.

Lauterbach is the acclaimed author of books that explore the history of Black music and Black Memphis, including The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ’n’ Roll, Beale Street Dynasty and Bluff City. He answered questions via email.

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UPCOMING EVENTS

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10:30AM

THURSDAY, JULY 17

6:30PM KANDI STEINER at PARNASSUS The Wrong Game and The Right Player

SATURDAY, JULY 19

SATURDAY STORYTIME with KIM HOWARD at PARNASSUS Do Mommies Ever Sleep?

6:30PM

LISA SCOTTOLINE at PARNASSUS The Unraveling of Julia

6:30PM

HANNAH WHITTEN with JENNA LEVINE at PARNASSUS The Nightshade God

MONDAY, JULY 21

TUESDAY, JULY 22

6:30PM BARRY MAZOR with ANN POWERS at PARNASSUS Blood Harmony: The Everly Brothers Story

TUESDAY, JULY 29

4:00PM FIND WALDO CELEBRATION at PARNASSUS

This July, Waldo is hiding at local businesses. If you joined the hunt (or if you just love Waldo), celebrate with us! Featuring a special appearance from Waldo himself!

3900 Hillsboro Pike Suite 14 | Nashville, TN 37215 (615) 953-2243

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Elvis aficionados know that Presley’s breakout song “That’s All Right” was written and performed by Arthur Crudup and that his hit “Hound Dog” was first done by Big Mama Thornton. If we focus on these Black musicians, what can we learn about the rise of rock ’n’ roll? Of course those songs are foundations of rock, but by the time of the American mainstream rock ’n’ roll craze of 1956, Crudup and Thornton had become so marginalized and disillusioned, they practically gave up music. So as it often happens in American business, the inventor ends up with a knife in their back and their money in someone else’s pocket.

“The most overlooked, underappreciated, and important Elvis Presley influence,” you write, “was a man named Calvin Newborn.” How did you come to this conclusion? Most of the book is devoted to the people who wrote and recorded Elvis’ biggest songs, but that’s only part of the story. I think that Elvis’ stage presence is as important to his legacy as his songs are, and as with many of his most important songs, there’s a Black originator behind the curtain. Elvis’ first recordings hit radio in 1954. But he didn’t become a superstar until 1956. That happened after people saw him on television. To this day, his moves, the gyrating hips, his “Elvis the Pelvis” identity, are such a powerful aspect of his fame and his mystique.

Elvis’ most important stage influence was Calvin Newborn, a performer young Elvis saw in Beale Street and West Memphis nightclubs. I had the opportunity to get to know Calvin. His insights add so much to the Elvis story. A lot of witnesses who were there maintain that Elvis took his whole presentation straight from what Calvin was doing at the Flamingo Room in Memphis right at the time Elvis cut his first sides at Sun Records. Calvin was philosophical about the whole thing. Calvin had a right to feel ripped

off but shared a much more nuanced view of what happened with Elvis and Black culture, one that I hope readers will benefit from, as I have. My favorite Calvin quote about Elvis is, “He ate pork chop and gravy sandwiches. He was a soulful dude.”

Did these Black artists ever benefit from Presley’s superstardom? Did they achieve cultural appreciation or financial success? The originators never benefited to the degree that they deserved to with respect to Elvis. But Crudup and Big Mama Thornton, in a very gritty way, used their stories to their advantage, telling their audience about what had happened and gaining appreciation. After Crudup died poor, as he knew he would, his family members fought for their rights and I think that readers will appreciate how that turned out.

How, in the end, should we judge Elvis Presley? Is he celebrating Black music or exploiting it? People want one answer about Elvis and race, but as with other issues involving human beings, things developed as he changed over time. The Elvis who ate pork chop sandwiches with Calvin Newborn and sang at East Trigg Missionary Baptist Church in 1953 no longer existed in 1970. That young Elvis, according to multiple sources who knew him, stood out as a rebel against the Southern white order. His actions, many of which are historically documented, prove that he stood against segregation. He loved Black

music, and he treated Black people with respect and courtesy.

Later in his superstardom phase, he could have done more for Black music. Many major touring rock acts on the road during the early 1970s had roots artists open for them and gained exposure for these artists. An Elvis roots show featuring Crudup, Thornton, Junior Parker, Joe Turner and others would have been monumental. Even lacking that direct acknowledgment, artists like James Brown and Rufus Thomas, whose “Tiger Man” Elvis performed into the 1970s, maintain that Elvis functioned as a major ally, opening the door for Black culture to the mainstream. I’m not here to argue with James Brown about Black music. To read an uncut version of this interview, as well as more local book coverage, please visit Chapter16.org, an online publication of Humanities Tennessee. ▼

Before Elvis: The African American Musicians Who Made the King By Preston Lauterbach Da Capo 320 pages, $30

SATURDAY, AUGUST 2

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MUSIC

IT ISN’T EVEN PAST

The Mekons wrestle with the evils of the past — and their echoes in the present — on Horror

BY SEAN L. MALONEY

SEVEN MONTHS INTO 2025, the big headline is that America is a hot fuckin’ mess. Thank the maker for this better news: The Mekons are coming to town! With nearly five decades of punk deconstruction and folk reconstruction under their belt, the U.K.-founded group is back with the incredibly timed Horror LP, 12 songs of barbed social commentary with a deep sense of history and careening sense of melody. Horror finds the band making some of the best music of their 48-year career, incorporating all the disparate sounds they’ve dabbled in over the decades, and cranking out songs that are ferocious and focused in a way that only comes with hardearned experience. We caught up with guitarist and singer Jon Langford ahead of Wednesday’s show at City Winery.

“I still believe in grassroots, believe in changing things,” Langford tells the Scene. “I believe in exercising power — you can actually have some influence on things. And I think it’s largely a very positive enterprise with [the band]. It’s a group of friends who have been playing music together for a long time. A lot of the forces of commercialism and economics tell us we shouldn’t do it, and we should actually stop. A lot of people [have been] telling us we should stop for years. And it’s active, kind of bloodyminded resistance, really, to keep going.”

That bloody-mindedness, that refusal to get along to go along, has defined the band since its inception. It is the through line that connects the band’s punk roots to its current incarnation. Longtime fans will breathe a sigh of relief as Horror returns to familiar themes, updated for

HOME BASS

Acclaimed bassist Tal Wilkenfeld plans a celebration of her move to Music City

BY DARYL SANDERS

You can add Tal Wilkenfeld’s name to the list of world-class musicians who call Nashville home. The bass phenom relocated to the city from Los Angeles last month and is celebrating her move with a show at 3rd and Lindsley Friday night with guitar ace Tom Bukovac, which they’re billing as “Tal Kin Buk.”

“I’ve been thinking about moving to Nashville for a few years, but I’ve just been so settled in Los Angeles,” Wilkenfeld tells the Scene during a recent interview. “Every time I go to Nashville, I just love the music community there, and I love the musicians there. It’s

our current era of all-out fucking fascism. Yes, everything is terrible. But having the whole Mekon gang in your earphones, reminding you that we’ve seen these terrors before and made it through, will remind you that art and camaraderie are the building blocks of resistance to a world that wants to commodify and control you for capitalist gains.

“I mean, the content of the lyrics on the albums — we can’t help ourselves but locate it in the context that we are living in,” Langford explains. “And that’s just the way it works with us. And people are free to ignore us if they want. Many do.”

In an era when many of the punks of their vintage have basically been reduced to marketing merchandise for the nostalgia-industrial complex, the Mekons are still pushing themselves and their music in new directions. Which isn’t to say they’ve abandoned the works that built their reputation, but they aren’t making past victories the entirety of their existence.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Fear and Whiskey, the first of five, maybe six masterpieces in their catalog. Those songs have been making their way into set lists. The fact that tunes such as “Hard to Be Human Again” are as relevant as ever is a bit depressing — the renewed threat of global thermonuclear annihilation is a big ol’ bummer — but, damn, are they a great soundtrack for waiting for the bombs to drop. It is a testament to the Mekons’ vision that the decades haven’t dulled their edge one bit.

“With this [band], it’s very much a potluck dinner sort of situation,” says Langford. “People

bring a lot of things to the table, and then we can try and make a sensible meal out of it. I feel like the band, as a band, it’s as good as it’s ever been, if not better. Which is strange to say, but I think this album’s very strong. I’m really proud of it. And there’s really no reason to just knock you on the head because you’re supposed to.”

Horror kicks off with “The Western Design,” a laid-back reggae tune that is a primer on British colonialism, putting nearly 500 years of fucked-up shit in perspective. The unsettling predatory lope of “Private Defense Contractor” is a spiritual sequel to Red Krayola’s avant-psych classic “War Sucks.” As tense as that song is, it feels like a relieved gasp after you’ve held your breath for the entirety of its immediate predecessor, the beautiful and piano-driven “A Horse Has Escaped.”

The Mekons have always been about prog-

ress, evolution, forward movement. While they could join their peers selling butter or bad politics, trying new things and going into new places while still engaged with the moral that made them Mekons in the first place is the plan going forward.

“I think in the future we’re going to explore other avenues to do special, more special and more interesting and weird things. Yeah, [we’ve] got to keep it interesting.” ▼

amazing that everybody I’ve met already and played music with or written songs with, I’ve had a real deep connection with.”

Wilkenfeld, whose first name is pronounced “tall,” is a talented singer, songwriter and recording artist in her own right with a pair of well-regarded albums to her credit and another due within the next year. But she is best known for her bass work with other artists. By age 21, she had toured the world with both Chick Corea and Jeff Beck. Beck also tapped her for a weeklong residency in November 2007 at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London, which was recorded and filmed for his Live at Ronnie Scott’s album and DVD. The following year, she got a call from Prince, which led to sessions at his Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis. Those recordings were finally released in 2021 on the posthumous album Welcome 2 America

After those projects, the demand grew for

Playing 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 23, at City Winery

Wilkenfeld’s bass services. Over the past decadeand-a-half, the Australia-born musician has recorded with an array of legendary artists, including Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson, Buddy Guy, Todd Rundgren, Dr. John, Joe Walsh, Rod Stewart, Wayne Shorter, David Gilmour, Billy Gibbons, Carlos Santana and Jackson Browne.

Her first visit to Nashville was in 2015 to work on Keith Urban’s 2016 album Ripcord. More recently, she played at the Ryman in December as part of the Allman Betts Family Revival concert and worked with producer Tom Hambridge on Buddy Guy’s forthcoming album Ain’t Done With the Blues, due to be released July 30. But Wilkenfeld’s most consequential connection to Nashville was with string-instrument repair guru Joe Glaser at Glaser Instruments.

“Whenever I get instruments worked on, I have Joe Glaser work on them because he’s so great,” she says, “and I met other musicians either through him or at his store.”

One of the musicians she met this way was Bukovac, a top-rated session player. They decided to celebrate Wilkenfeld’s move to Music City by getting together with some other musicians for a night of covers. That was the genesis of the Tal Kin Buk show, the name of which is a riff on the title of Steve Wonder’s 1972 album Talking Book Wilkenfeld is looking forward to her first headlining gig in her new adopted hometown.

“I have a full band of some of the most amazing musicians,” she says excitedly. In addition to Bukovac, Wilkenfeld will be accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Bryan Sutton, keyboardist Michael Rojas, steel guitarist Russ Pahl and drummer Greg Morrow. Rodney Crowell, with whom she has done some cowriting, also will join them as a special guest vocalist.

Now that she is getting settled in Nashville, Wilkenfeld wants to spend more time on her songwriting. She points to Leonard Cohen and Jackson Browne as two of her primary influences.

“Both of those guys are so lyric-centric. When I went to Nashville and noticed everyone actually feels that way there — like, the lyric is king — it made me feel so at home, you know, like a big warm hug.” ▼

HARMONIC CONVERGENCE

Chris Stamey talks about playing Big Star’s music and his new album

BY EDD HURT

A half-century after Memphis power-pop band Big Star released their first three studio albums, their music has entered the rock canon through a kind of trapdoor that connects classic rock with indie rock. Singer, songwriter and producer Chris Stamey is playing Sunday at The Basement East with the Big Star Quintet — a group that includes Big Star drummer Jody Stephens along with a lineup of musicians who have been influenced by the sound of Big Star’s 1974 album Radio City — performing that album as well as selections from 1972’s #1 Record and 1978’s Third. For Stamey, this is a way to connect to the audience that was there all along.

“A lot of people discovered listening to the Big Star records late at night on their own, and have a personal relationship with those records,” Stamey tells the Scene from his home in Chapel Hill, N.C. “But there’s a difference that comes about when you hear them in a hall with hundreds of people who have also felt that same way.”

Stamey, who grew up in Winston-Salem, N.C., tells me he and his future bandmates in power-pop band The dB’s heard the #1 Record track “When My Baby’s Beside Me” on local radio in 1972. You hear the spirit of Big Star’s Southern-fried Anglophile rock on The dB’s 1981

albums Stands for Decibels and Repercussion. Stamey played and recorded with Big Star singer, songwriter and guitarist Alex Chilton in 1977, during a year when Chilton decamped from Memphis to New York to play shows in the city.

Big Star famously played few shows and sold few albums in the ’70s. Still, for many postpunk bands, the skewed bite of Chilton and Big Star-cofounder Chris Bell’s guitar playing, which harked back to the British Invasion, provided a template for their style. Along with Stamey and Stephens, R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills, Wilco singer and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone and guitarist Jon Auer — who has played with The Posies and the re-formed version of Big Star that began performing in 1993 — bring the Big Star repertoire to life as Big Star Quintet.

On his own, Stamey cut Chilton and Tommy Hoehn’s song “She Might Look My Way” on his 2023 album …The Great Escape. Back in 1977, Stamey recorded a version of the song with Chilton (who died in New Orleans in 2010) on a demo for Elektra Records. Stamey’s version includes work by producer and musician Terry Manning, who worked with Big Star on #1 Record. Manning played all the instruments on Escape except drums and rhythm guitar, while Stamey’s vocals are suitably Chilton-esque.

Meanwhile, the harmonic palette of Stamey’s new album Anything Is Possible serves as a reminder that one of the great contributions Big Star, The Beach Boys and The Beatles have made to pop is via harmonic innovation. Anything Is Possible features vocal harmonies from New York neo-power pop band The Lemon Twigs on

three tracks, including “I’d Be Lost Without You.” As he says, “I sent them a few harmony ideas remotely, because they couldn’t come down here, and they sent me back the most glorious harmonies.” “I’d Be Lost Without You” updates the kind of American art song favored by Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks and, occasionally, Chilton himself. Stamey will play songs from Anything on Monday at the original Basement with bassist Byron House and keyboardist Jen Gunderman. For a Big Star fan like me, who has tried for years to fathom the mystery of what might be Big Star’s best album, Radio City remains allusive, enigmatic and endlessly replayable. No other classic rock album refuses to boogie so firmly, and Chilton, Stephens and bassist Andy Hummel never play in anything like a fast tempo. In that, Radio City reflects the tempo and groove of Memphis music itself.

“The idea was, they’re Southerners,” Stamey says about discovering Big Star in the long-ago ’70s. “And they’re doing this in a time when the Allman Brothers were the be-all and end-all. We just felt like we were less alone.” ▼

Big Star Quintet playing 7:30 p.m. Sunday, July 20, at The Basement East

Chris Stamey Trio playing 7 p.m. Monday, July 21, at The Basement

Anything Is Possible out now via Label 51

Tal Kin Buk plays 8 p.m. Friday, July 18, at 3rd and Lindsley

TWO TO TENGO

BY P.J. KINZER

THE CO-HEADLINING TOUR is a strange animal. It can be a win for the performers, the promoters and the venue, since each artist might draw a bigger crowd than they typically do in the market, and the rising tide will theoretically lift all boats. It can be a major win for the fans too, even if the Venn diagram of the artists’ fan bases isn’t a circle. On their summer doubleheader tour, indie-rock heroes Yo La Tengo and Built to Spill are alternating between the starter and the closer positions, which is like having John Smoltz and Dennis Eckersley in the same pitching rotation.

Friday night, the show came to the Ryman While the hallowed hall has a way of making most shows feel intimate, its capacity of more than 2,000 is admittedly a big jump from the audiences of 500 to 1,500 these groups have historically played for in Nashville. To be blunt, attendance was underwhelming, and that’s one of several factors that might have played a role — alongside increases in ticket prices and all the associated costs of seeing a concert that have outpaced many fans’ income growth. That said, it was still a show to remember.

heartfelt BTS catalog, from 1994’s There’s Nothing Wrong With Love through 2023’s When the Wind Forgets Your Name, Martsch’s first LP with Radford and Esguerra. Mother Church parishioners seemed to have a keen response, as you could hear shouts of “I love you Doug!” during nearly every quiet moment.

There were even fewer people in the seats when the intermission was over. Those who left probably had no regrets. But if you did cut out early, you missed the best YLT show of the many I’ve experienced.

Their performance was such a good reminder of all the things I love about Yo La Tengo’s fearlessly creative approach to music. Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew — who got their start in New Jersey but have spent so much time in Music City they count as honorary Nashvillians — all rotate instruments and vocal duties throughout their sets. The stage setup always feels like they’ve invited fans into their rehearsal studio, even in a big room like the Ryman. After opening with the widely loved “Autumn Sweater,” the trio quickly abandoned the “Greatest Hits” approach to dive into the exceptionally broad variety of sounds that makes up their work.

The first part of the night focused on the band’s mellow side, showing off how deep their still waters run with jazzy electric piano, poetic vocal deliveries and spacious percussion. Noting

If you went to venerable dive Springwater in the Aughts you were very likely to have heard Built to Spill’s 1999 album Keep It Like a Secret, their first record to chart on the Billboard 200, coming from the jukebox. That’s where a lot of my knowledge of the Idaho rockers comes from, absorbed via other people who love them dearly. But I do have a great love for the kinds of guitar heroes who influence BTS frontman Doug Martsch, like Neil Young, Johnny Marr and J. Mascis.

At one point, Built to Spill featured three guitarists including Martsch, but for about the past decade the band has been a power trio. The current lineup features two top-notch players in the rhythm section, Melanie Radford on bass and Teresa Esguerra on drums, who gave Martsch a rock-solid foundation and tons of space to fill with gritty riffs and white-hot solos. The set list touched just about every corner of the wry and

that they had played Ramones and Richard Hell songs at their first CBGB gig and covered the Dead at the Fillmore, Kaplan mentioned that the Mother Church offered another opportunity to pay tribute, which teed up Hubley’s downtempo rendition of Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone.”

But as the show progressed, the sounds got louder and more abrasive. By the conclusion, Kaplan was using his guitar to unleash the sort of free-form noise that I always enjoyed from Sonic Youth or Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. I decided to follow some others from the balcony and sneak downstairs for the encore of YLT’s “Beanbag Chair” and “One Hundred Years From Now” from The Byrds’ groundbreaking country-rock LP Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Even the floor was full only nearest to the stage, bringing the vibe a little closer to the club circuit where the two bands have been making memories for decades. ▼

COMING SOON

7/18 SALLY HILL

7/25 GIMME GIMME DISCO

7/26 NICK SMITH

8/2 FORT KNOX

8/9 GORILLA ZOE

8/14 DANIELLE NICOLE

8/15 NOUR KHODR

8/17 CASKEY

8/21 TANNER ADELL

8/22 FEAR

8/26 YEP REWIND

8/28 THE SUPERVILLAINS

8/30 VERYGENTLY & BROTHER ELSEY

9/3 VOLA

9/5 DJ SWIFTIE

9/6 DRAM

THREE OF A PERFECT

PAIR: YO LA TENGO

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MASK OFF

Ari Aster’s pandemic-era Eddington is dishonest at its heart

BY JASON SHAWHAN

PERHAPS LARS VON TRIER Could have made this script work.

On one side of writer-director Ari Aster’s Eddington, you have Joaquin Phoenix in sniveling daddy mode as a sheriff unable to handle the stresses of the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other is Pedro Pascal as a mayor in the pocket of tech exploiters. Plague-related stress and punishing New Mexico heat have been amping up the pressure, and several cultural flashpoints loom.

In May of this year, I got text messages from two different colleagues at the Cannes Film Festival warning me to prepare before I saw this one after the whole deal with last year’s Civil War, which was the first film I walked out of since Annie Ross’ robotransformation in Superman III sent 7-year-old me dragging my dad to the exit. These colleagues were right to do so — not because Eddington actually has something to say, but because it is impossible for art to “both sides” its way to profundity.

The film places itself at a disadvantage from the beginning, because it wants to depict a no-holds-barred battle between American ideologies, but to do so requires an utterly fictional space where there actually is the kind of organized left-wing violence that delusional minds insist exists. There’s also a nomadic unhoused person who pops up intermittently, existing only to incarnate paranoia for the unimaginative. It’s one of the two times the film actually skews offensive, but more because of how gratuitous these interludes seem — again more of an abstraction than addressing anything concrete. There really should be a term for when a work of art desperately wants to have something to say about racism, but instead puts its foot in a mess and doesn’t ultimately say anything coherent.

When Eddington starts relitigating the battles over masking, I could feel the bile rise. That’s

because it’s not really about exploring ideas — it’s about how annoying masking is for otherwise decent folks, and how everyone who believes in masking is doing so in a weaponized fashion — and the actual health aspect is incidental, and it feels like another example of avoiding taking a side and calling that drama rather than tragedy. Internet paranoia and phone addiction feed these situations, as does just wanting to feel some kind of control over anything. (Which is, honestly, one of the reasons why so much of Eddington feels so wrongheaded. Masking is actually taking personal control of public health, while the ostentatious refusal to do so is whiny and dangerous. But no film as enamored of not actually making a statement as this one would even consider exploring that perspective.)

Everyone in this film who believes in actually trying to improve society is portrayed as a dupe or opportunist or virtue signaler, but the film’s objectively psychotic and actually opportunistic characters are portrayed as regular folks buffeted by society into an untenable situation. It’s the lingering “sincere belief and giving a shit is stupid” mentality that’s plagued society for the past couple of decades, and this film is much more interested in that contagion than COVID-19. When Eddington occasionally clicks, there’s a palpable, inexorable pull that draws you along in a way that feels like your own idea, so in that respect it really does capture the way that doomscrolling has become a dominant means of absorbing information. There’s a subtler, quieter film being held hostage in all the conflagration that really wants to get at how we’ve been transformed by the immediacy of The Now and have incorporated our phones into the structure of our brains. If you wade through the misplaced anger and hemming and hawing, there is one concrete aspect of the film steeped in righteous fury that rings true, and it’s concerned with how easy it is to snare people in hypothetical concern for abstract children even as they ignore the horrors in their own houses. It’s why you keep seeing the people who yell “groomer” in public forums being arrested for the crimes they project onto others, and it’s the only time that it feels like Ed-

dington has something real to diagnose in society. This is when Emma Stone steps up and wipes the floor with the rest of the cast. It’s a tiny wisp of a part, and she’s the only aspect that lingers in any genuine way.

The film is dishonest at its heart — neither an objective portrayal of complex human people nor the kind of stylized, mean satire that it feels like it really wants to be. At its heart, this is about two insecure men and their escalating conflict, with the added spice of A Woman in Common. That’s a pretty basic plot foundation, and one that’s been part of narratives since the beginnings of storytelling, and it’s where Aster and his cast are on their strongest footing. His three previous features (Beau Is Afraid, Midsommar and Hereditary) have all been exceptional, so perhaps it was inevitable that he would drop the cake tray in such a haphazard fashion. (But also, he Donnie Darko’d himself with the director’s cut of Midsommar, which wrecked the whole tonal balance and made each character exponentially less effective.)

Phoenix’s Sheriff Joe Cross could be a captivating subject, especially in a film that was actually interested in who he is and how he got there, or how the general Eddington populace feels about him. But instead he’s a cipher — a spontaneous and perceptive opportunist in some scenes, a helpless pawn in others, and squirrelly and exhausting in pretty much every scene. That’s not to say that Pascal’s Mayor Garcia is in any better sort of narrative shape, but he seems consistent and understandable (and not borderline psychotic from the beginning), and most importantly, his exhaustion with Cross is relatable to anyone who’s been watching the movie.

There were a lot of people who bagged on Beau Is Afraid for its weird shifts and unexpected turns, but that film felt like something summoned from the most personal of anxieties and fears. Eddington feels like something done with a script about escalating dude insecurities that had an AI summary of the past three years and change grafted on with the theory that the scale and scope of it would keep onlookers from noticing how ramshackle the whole effort reads.

Eddington R, 149 minutes Opening Friday, July 18, at the Belcourt and Regal and AMC locations

TO BOLDLY GO

Nashville’s own Anson Mount is beaming back onto your TV screens

BY LOGAN BUTTS

ANSON MOUNT IS the perfect example of a longtime movie-industry paradox: a character actor trapped in a leading man’s body.

The Dickson County native’s career has mostly split the difference. Mount has led television series like Western drama Hell on Wheels and Marvel’s Inhumans while building a character-actor filmography in movies like cult horror favorite All the Boys Love Mandy Lane and Liam Neeson action vehicle Non-Stop

“There is some truth to the idea that leading roles are different than character roles in the sense that — I don’t even know if you can name it or train for it — but there are actors who are capable of giving the audience the piggyback ride of their experience through an arc,” Mount tells the Scene during a recent video call. “And it has nothing to do with looks. I would say that the less-talented eyes in Hollywood think that it has to do with looks. … I fought it for a long time because I wanted to play all the character roles.”

Mount’s latest starring role is as Capt. Christopher Pike in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the third season of which premieres on Paramount+ this week. This isn’t Mount’s first time being handed the keys to the spaceship — he played Pike on a couple of series before this one — but having grown up a Star Trek fan about 30 miles west of Nashville in White Bluff, he still finds it hard to fathom starring in a series set in the long-running franchise’s universe.

“It is the longest a job has remained surreal to me, because I probably watched every episode of [Star Trek: The Original Series] three times, at least,” says Mount. “It was our make-believe game in my neighborhood, so it’s very strange to find myself still doing that.”

The deck of the USS Enterprise feels about as far away from White Bluff as you can get. But Mount says he wouldn’t be captaining the iconic ship without the support of his family and local folks who encouraged him along the way — including Randy and Glenda Sullivan, his theater teacher and forensics coach, respectively, at Dickson County High School.

“You don’t grow up in a place like White Bluff and think, ‘Oh, I’m gonna go be in the movies,’” he says. “It just doesn’t seem like an option that’s on the table.”

After studying theater at Sewanee (in the drama program to which Tennessee Williams left the bulk of his estate), and the obligatory summer spent at Centennial performing with the Nashville Shakespeare Festival, Mount made the move to New York City, where he pursued acting at Columbia University. Thirty years and an impressive CV later, Mount is back in Middle Tennessee. He and his wife Darah Trang — whom Mount met in Calgary while filming Hell on Wheels — recently bought a house in the West Meade area. Mount gave Trang “the royal treatment” during a visit to Nashville in hopes of convincing her to move

here; they even stayed with Brad Paisley and Kimberly Williams-Paisley during their sojourn.

“Once we had a daughter, it quickly became clear that we needed more than farmland, and it was also time to be closer to my mom,” Mount says. “I’d always felt that Nashville was a great place to raise kids.”

Like many industry veterans who live in the area, Mount thinks the state’s film incentive program needs a major overhaul. He says he’s even been discussing the matter with members of the state legislature.

“The current incentives package that we have functions essentially as a pipe dream in comparison to peer states,” Mount says. “The people on the entertainment commission, along with [Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner Stuart] McWhorter, are working very hard with limited resources, attempting to increase these manufacturing jobs. The things we manufacture may be television shows and movies, but they are as much a product as a car or a modem. And if we can do it for Oracle, we can do it for this.”

Mount believes the state needs to retain local talent from film programs at universities like Belmont, while also ensuring that film incentives apply to filming locations in the entire Middle Tennessee area.

“We lose over 50 percent of our film grads to places like Los Angeles and Atlanta and New York,” he says. “That’s the lifeblood of any entertainment business. What you’re looking for in film production is a place that you can go and find the majority of your workforce already there.

“We have the talent, so that immediately puts us at the forefront of the states that could be vying for this kind of work. … The trick is, how do we make this beneficial for not just Davidson and Williamson counties? How do we make this beneficial for places that need more economic development?”

If his passionate interest in the economic complexities of the local film industry weren’t enough to secure his Nashville bona fides, Mount — whose father was a sports writer for Playboy — also has something to say about promising Tennessee Titans rookie quarterback Cam Ward.

“I think he’s got all the tools both on the field and, apparently, off the field, which is probably what we needed more than anything. … We could see this thing turn around, while continuing to shore up our defense.”

Cautious optimism about an upcoming Titans season? I know a true local when I see one. ▼

Get paid instantly.

Sell your digital and film gear

Friday, July 18th, 10am - 6pm Saturday, July 19th, 10am - 12pm

5point6 Studio 103 S 11th St., Nashville, TN 37206

This event is accepting walk-ins. keh.com

The Made Foundation will also be hosting a gallery event on: Saturday, July 19th: General Admission: 3pm - 7pm VIP Admission: 8pm - 10pm

Saturday, July 19

SONGWRITER SESSION

Jon Decious and Aaron Raitiere

NOON · FORD THEATER

Sunday, July 20

MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT

Rodney Dillard

1:00 pm · FORD THEATER

Tuesday, July 22

CONCERT

Trisha Yearwood and Friends

Celebrate Linda Ronstadt and Los Angeles Country-Rock 7:30 pm · CMA THEATER SOLD OUT

Thursday, July 24

HATCH SHOW PRINT Block Party

9:30 am, NOON, and 2:30 pm

HATCH SHOW PRINT SHOP

WITNESS HISTORY

Saturday, July 26

SONGWRITER SESSION

Gary Nicholson NOON · FORD THEATER

Sunday, July 26

POETS AND PROPHETS

Dennis Morgan 2:30 pm · FORD THEATER

Sunday, July 27

MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT

Buddy Miller 1:00 pm · FORD THEATER

Saturday, August 2

SONGWRITER SESSION

Cameron Bedell NOON · FORD THEATER

Saturday, August 2

MUSIC AND CONVERSATION

The Fairfield Four 2:30 pm · FORD THEATER

Local Kids Always Visit Free Plan a trip to the Museum this summer! Local youth 18 and under who are residents of Nashville-Davidson and bordering counties always visit free, plus 25% off admission for up to two accompanying adults.

1 Actress Green of “Casino Royale”

4 Play ground?

9 Edible part of okra

12 Word before or after “open”

14 “Weeping” giant

15 Tick off

16 Condition that Simone Biles has described as giving her a “superpower,” in brief

17 Ticked off

18 ___ Wister, the so-called “father of western fiction”

19 Like some “On Air” signs

20 They draw people

21 Guarded

22 “Principle of parsimony” philosopher

24 Pick up

25 ___ white (lightbulb specification)

26 Sixth word in the Gettysburg Address

27 Exemplar of excellence

30 Cries of wonder

32 She was named the U.S. Soccer Female Player of the Year five years in a row

33 Adds power to, as an engine

34 Writer Capote, to friends

35 Correspondants, fréquemment

37 Stone used in ancient Greek jewelry

38 Orchestra tuner

39 Mini-brawl

40 Owned (up)

41 “___ are like sausages. It is better not to see them being made” (quote attributed to Otto von Bismarck)

42 Visionaries

44 Dining places

45 Some hot spots

48 Phys. or chem.

50 Major basketball feat … or a feature shared by 3-, 6- and 9-Down

57 Sephora competitor

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE

58 Handle, as questions

59 “Hold your horses!”

60 Breaking a tie, informally

61 Article about a photo?

62 Rainbow, to some

63 P, in the NATO alphabet

64 The Titanic disaster partly inspired its invention

65 Org. that developed the “pumpkin suit”

31 Brings an action against

36 Excel function

38 N.B.A. great Hakeem who is one of only four players ever to achieve a 50-Across (1990)

43 Big thing in California?

44 ___ Max

46 Fans

47 ___ Agnew, vice president who resigned in 1973

48 City that’s an anagram of SALEM

1 McGregor who played

Obi-Wan Kenobi

2 Output from Blizzard Entertainment

3 Temporarily established panel

4 Do laps, say

5 Low pressure indicator

6 You can go anywhere with one of these

7 Briefly experienced, with “of”

8 She-eep

9 Gridiron game for young tykes

10 Risks an interception, say

11 Just say “no” to

13 Pulitzer winner Ferber

15 What you have to pony up to play?

23 Oscars V.I.P.s

25 Motor oil brand

26 Epiphanic moments

28 Have one’s feet up, maybe

29 Told “You’re on!,” for example

49 Farmer’s squeeze?

50 Pithy remark

51 Leg : fibula :: arm : ___

52 Crowning

53 Cut and trim

54 Tuscaloosa’s Tide, to fans

55 They may be white or naked

56 High point of a trip to Italy?

PUZZLE BY DANIEL BODILY

2025, the Davidson County Sheriff’s Department will offer to sale to the highest bidder, for cash, the interest of Charles J. Fenton, in the following real property located at 2647 Delk Avenue, Nashville, Tennessee 37208, Map/Parcel 081 - 100-048.00 (the “Property”) and described as follows:

Legal Description: The Property is described in the Quitclaim Deed dated April 28, 2021, of record at Instrument No. 202106080076678, Register’s Office for Davidson County, Tennessee.

Street Address: The street address of the Property is believed to be 2647 Delk Avenue, Nashville, Tennessee 37208, but such address is not part of the legal description of the property. In the event of any discrepancy, the legal description herein sha ll control.

Land in Davidson County, Tennessee, being Lot No. 44 on the revised plan of Normal Heights –Section 2, as of record in Book 2330, page 54, Register’s Office for Davidson County, Tennessee, to which plan reference is hereby made for a more complete and a ccurate legal description.

Being the same property conveyed to Charles J. Felton by the Quitclaim Deed dated April 28, 2021, of record at Instrument No. 20210608-0076678, Register’s Office for Davidson County, Tennessee.

August 21, 2025, on the steps of the historic Davidson County Courthouse, 1 Public Square, Nashville, Tennessee 37201, the Sheriff will sell the above property for payment toward said judgment together with all expenses a nd legal costs accruing.

TERMS OF SALE: Cash, Certified Check, Receipt on Judgment from Plaintiff, or credit of not less than 6 months. Pursuant to Sale Order: bidding will start at $116,650.00, pursuant to Tenn. Code Ann. § 265-115; high bidder will be required to execute a written sale agreement at conclusion of bidding; Plaintiff is allowed to credit bid; redemption rights and equity of redemption are waived, pursuant to Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-8-101(2); the sale shall be approved and confirmed by the Davidson County General Sessions Court, the Court which issued the process directing this Sale; and the Sheriff shall provide the deed described at Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-8-111 after entry of the order of confirmation of the sale and after confirmation of payment to Plaintiff.

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NOTICE OF SHERIFF’S SALE OF REAL PROPERTY

By virtue of an execution and Levy issued by the General Sessions Court of Davidson County, Tennessee, in 611 Live Life Lane, LLC, Plaintiff, vs. Charles J. Fenton, Defendant, Davidson County General Sessions Court Docket No. 24GT8149, as well as that Order

Directing the Davidson County Sheriff to Conduct Judicial Sale of Real Property entered on April 25, 2025, the Davidson County Sheriff’s Department will offer to sale to the highest bidder, for cash, the interest of Charles J. Fenton, in the following real property located at 2647 Delk Avenue, Nashville, Tennessee 37208, Map/Parcel 081 - 100-048.00 (the “Property”) and described as follows:

This sale is made pursuant to Tenn. R. Civ. P. 69.07(4) and Tenn. Code Ann. § 26-5-101, et. seq. and is in satisfaction (whole or in part depending on amount of sale) of the judgment in favor of 611 Live Life Lane, LLC by that Judgment dated September 3 0, 2024, in the original base amount of $23,526.11, plus all post - judgment interest since the entry of the Judgment, sale expenses and costs, and court costs.

All property is sold “as is.” No warranties or guarantees are made, expressed or implied.

Other interested parties receiving notice: Metropolitan Development Housing Agency; Samaroo Development Group; Robert Reed f/u/b State Farm; American Heritage, Inc.

At 9:00 o’clock A.M., on Thursday, August 21, 2025, on the steps of the historic Davidson County Courthouse, 1 Public Square, Nashville, Tennessee 37201, the Sheriff will sell the above property for payment toward said judgment together with all expenses a nd legal costs accruing.

As of July 1, 2025, notices pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated § 35-5- 101 et seq. are posted online at www. https://foreclosuretennessee.com by a third-party internet posting company. Questions related to the sale or the underlying debt can be addressed to: David Anthony, attorney for judgment creditor, at: Exo Legal PLLC; P.O. Box 121616, Nashville, Tennessee 37212; 615 -869-0634; david@exolegal.com. THIS 17th day of July, 2025.

By: Davidson County Sheriff

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Legal Description: The Property is described in the Quitclaim Deed dated April 28, 2021, of record at Instrument No. 202106080076678, Register’s Office for Davidson County, Tennessee. Street Address: The street address of the Property is believed to be 2647 Delk Avenue, Nashville, Tennessee 37208, but such address is not part of the legal description of the property. In the event of any discrepancy, the legal description herein sha ll control. Land in Davidson County, Tennessee, being Lot No. 44 on the revised plan of Normal Heights –Section 2, as of record in Book 2330, page 54, Register’s Office for Davidson County, Tennessee, to which plan reference is hereby made for a more complete and a ccurate legal description. Being the same property conveyed to Charles J. Felton by the Quitclaim Deed dated April 28, 2021, of record at Instrument No. 20210608-0076678, Register’s Office for Davidson County, Tennessee.

TERMS OF SALE: Cash, Certified Check, Receipt on Judgment from Plaintiff, or credit of not less than 6 months. Pursuant to Sale Order: bidding will start at $116,650.00, pursuant to Tenn. Code Ann. § 265-115; high bidder will be required to execute a written sale agreement at conclusion of bidding; Plaintiff is allowed to credit bid; redemption rights and equity of redemption are waived, pursuant to Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-8-101(2); the sale shall be approved and confirmed by the Davidson County General Sessions Court, the Court which issued the process directing this Sale; and the Sheriff shall provide the deed described at Tenn. Code Ann. § 66-8-111 after entry of the order of confirmation of the sale and after confirmation of payment to Plaintiff. As of July 1, 2025, notices pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated § 35-5- 101 et seq. are posted online at www. https://foreclosuretennessee.com by a third-party internet posting company. Questions related to the sale or the underlying debt can be addressed to: David Anthony, attorney for judgment creditor, at: Exo Legal PLLC; P.O. Box 121616, Nashville, Tennessee 37212; 615 -869-0634; david@exolegal.com. THIS 17th day of July, 2025.

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