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NEWS
Metropolitik: Thin Mayoral Field Gives
O’Connell a Clear Reelection Runway
Nashville is lukewarm about the mayor. A canny challenger would start campaigning right about now.
BY ELI MOTYCKA
Justin Pearson Bets on Economics —
Not Culture War — to Unite Tennessee
The ascendant Memphis politician aims to break Republicans’ gerrymander with hustle and fundraising in the 9th Congressional District
BY ELI MOTYCKA
Around the World
Talking with ex-USMNT star Desmond Armstrong about his trailblazing career and local youth soccer
BY LOGAN BUTTS
Pith in the Wind
This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog
COVER STORY
The Struggle for Equality
How Nashville’s historic sites are reckoning with their history of slavery
BY HANNAH HERNER
CRITICS’ PICKS
Bob Dylan, Hilary Duff, 91 Rock Live, Twin Peaks: The Return, Robert’s Western World’s Fan Fair and more
FOOD AND DRINK
Pride of Place
Nashville-based chef service Placemat wants to revolutionize the home-dining experience
BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN
ART
Downtown Rebound
The Untitled Nashville Hotel helps the downtown art district bounce back
BY JOE NOLAN
MUSIC
Cathartic Blues
On Peaches! The Black Keys dive deeper into the music of North Mississippi
BY DARYL SANDERS
The Whisper That Opens Up the Door
Jessie Gray seeks answers from the universe on The Muse
BY BOBBIE JEAN SAWYER
The Spin
The Scene’s live-review column checks out Of Montreal at The Mil at Cannery Hall
BY ANNIE PARNELL
FILM
It’s Natural, It’s Chemical
I Want Your Sex is a brisk, freeing, imperfect romp
BY JASON SHAWHAN
Camping Out
Avalon Fast’s witchy, dreamlike CAMP is now available to rent
BY ANNIE PARNELL
NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD
AND THIS MODERN WORLD
MARKETPLACE
ON THE COVER:
Hermitage photograph retrieved from the Library of Congress, loc.gov/item/2003681029; Deed for land and slave sale from the office of the Davidson County Register of Deeds
CHECK BACK HERE WEEKLY TO LEARN ABOUT LOCAL PROMOTIONS, PARTNERSHIPS AND EVENTS
FARMERS MARKET The Gay Farmers Market is held twice a month on Sundays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in East Nashville, May through October. The next market is on Aug 9. Shop locally grown produce and more. View the full 2026 schedule at musiccityprep.org/gfm.
Robin Trower brings his soul-stirring guitar and timeless sound to Nashville
21 at Fisher Center. Expect an unforgettable evening. Enter to win two tickets at nashvillescene. com/freestuff.
EVENTS WE’RE INTO LOOKING AHEAD
THE RED WHEEL AT THE FACTORY AT FRANKLIN
The Red Wheel brings singersongwriters to Turner Theater at The Factory at Franklin. Local and touring artists play Thursday-Saturday at 7:30 p.m. through Sept. 12. Tickets at factoryatfranklin.com.
Ascend Amphitheater, Aug. 9. Enter at nashvillescene.com/promo/freestuff.
WIN TICKETS TO ROBIN TROWER LIVE AT FISHER CENTER
Sept.
INDIGO GIRLS RETURN TO THE RYMAN The Indigo Girls bring their iconic folk rock to the Ryman Auditorium with special guest Linda Perry on Sept. 30. Enter to win a pair of tickets at nashvillescene.com/promo/freestuff.
WHO WE ARE
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF D. Patrick Rodgers
MANAGING EDITOR Alejandro Ramirez
SENIOR EDITOR Dana Kopp Franklin
ARTS EDITOR Laura Hutson Hunter
MUSIC AND LISTINGS EDITOR Stephen Trageser
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Logan Butts
AUDIENCE EDITOR Annie Parnell
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Jack Silverman
STAFF WRITERS Julianne Akers, John Glennon, Hannah Herner, Hamilton Matthew Masters, Eli Motycka, Nicolle Praino, William Williams
SENIOR FILM CRITIC Jason Shawhan
EDITORIAL INTERN Emma Pickett
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Cat Acree, Sadaf Ahsan, Ken Arnold, Ben Arthur, Radley Balko, Bailey Brantingham, Ashley Brantley, Maria Browning, Steve Cavendish, Chris Chamberlain, Rachel Cholst, Lance Conzett, Hannah Cron, Connor Daryani, Tina Dominguez, Stephen Elliott, Steve Erickson, Jayme Foltz, Adam Gold, Kashif Andrew Graham, Seth Graves, Kim Green, Amanda Haggard, Steven Hale, Edd Hurt, Jennifer Justus, P.J. Kinzer, Janet Kurtz, Craig D. Lindsey, Margaret Littman, Sean L. Maloney, Brittney McKenna, Addie Moore, Marissa R. Moss, Noel Murray, Joe Nolan, Katherine Oung, Betsy Phillips, John Pitcher, Margaret Renkl, Daryl Sanders, Bobbie Jean Sawyer, Nadine Smith, Ashley Spurgeon Shamban, Amy Stumpfl, Cole Villena, Kay West, Nicole Williams, Ron Wynn, Kelsey Young, Charlie Zaillian
ART DIRECTOR Kayla Stark
PHOTOGRAPHERS Angelina Castillo, Eric England, Matt Masters
GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Sandi Harrison, Tracey Starck, Mary Louise Meadors
GRAPHIC DESIGN INTERN Alex Levin
PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Christie Passarello
MARKETING AND EVENTS DIRECTOR Robin Fomusa
EVENTS MANAGER Tristan Maryanski
MARKETING AND PROMOTIONS MANAGER Meredith Grantham
Spanning one hundred years of modern and contemporary Indigenous art, An Indigenous Present includes works by artists who use strategies of abstraction to represent personal and collective narratives, describe specific and imagined places, and build upon cultural and aesthetic traditions. Co-organized by artist Jeffrey Gibson (member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent) and independent curator Jenelle Porter, the exhibition offers an expansive consideration of Indigenous art practices, highlighting a continuum of elders and emerging makers.
THIN MAYORAL FIELD GIVES O’CONNELL A CLEAR REELECTION RUNWAY
Nashville is lukewarm about the mayor. A canny challenger would start campaigning right about now.
BY ELI MOTYCKA
Metropolitik is a recurring column featuring the Scene’s analysis of Metro dealings.
NASHVILLE USED TO have too many choices for mayor. Today there are too few, leaving Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s office with nothing to fear.
Without a credible challenger, O’Connell will walk to a second term despite decreasing support during Nashville’s steady rise in national importance. The ideal window for a strong campaign announcement just opened, and no one is ready to force the real city conversations that blossom from a competitive race.
O’Connell, the eventual champion of a crowded 2023 field, risked his own Metro future by challenging then-Mayor John Cooper in spring 2022, more than a year before O’Connell’s eventual election. This early plunge showed guts and gave the accomplished councilmember time to build a strong support base among the many disaffected voters who saw Cooper as a rudderless nepo mayor preoccupied by a personal obsession with real estate. A whole year to persuade business owners, other electeds, the media, community groups — all those constituencies who affect campaigns with more than a single vote — proved crucial for the bespectacled Salemtown candidate, who gradually progressed from dark horse to favorite. Cooper didn’t even make it to Election Day, choosing not to seek reelection, a political gift that turned O’Connell into the office’s best qualified applicant.
JUSTIN PEARSON BETS ON ECONOMICS — NOT CULTURE WAR — TO UNITE TENNESSEE
The ascendant Memphis politician aims to break Republicans’ gerrymander with hustle and fundraising in the 9th Congressional District
BY ELI MOTYCKA
WHEN JUSTIN J. PEARSON talks about his 6-month-old congressional campaign, convincing voters sounds like the easy part. It’s the other demands — constant travel, daily fundraising, missing his wife and dogs — that grind the 31-year-old state representative from Memphis.
“ I do six to eight hours of call time a day, hence why my
Three years later, he still is. O’Connell’s first term peaked in November 2024 with another ballot-box win: The mayor secured dedicated funding for his Choose How You Move transit initiative via a 0.5 percent sales tax boost. Bus ridership has improved but traffic hasn’t, and city streets remain just as lethal for pedestrians and cyclists while bikeway and greenway building stalls. Climbing housing prices continue to keep affordable homes out of reach for working-class Nashvillians, while the city continues to welcome wealthy newcomers. The mayor funds city affordable housing efforts, but has not directly tackled true zoning reform — perhaps deterred by politically nuclear zoning reform proposals known as NEST (Nashville’s Essential Structures for Togetherness) in 2024. O’Connell was late to the data center conversation, an issue he clearly sees as politically important, and he has waged a legally dubious and expensive attempt to catch up.
This doesn’t touch on the downtown power struggle, state lawmakers controlling the East Bank, an FBI investigation at Metro Water Services, faltering leadership during the winter ice storm or the property tax bind that recently drew in Broadway business owners — all deserving of debate that won’t happen unless O’Connell feels threatened enough to truly campaign. Instead he is stacking cash and blending his mayor-candidate persona into the city’s default politics.
If polling trends hold, O’Connell could fall below 50 percent support next year: Vanderbilt’s annual poll saw the mayor’s approval rating
voice is not as strong as you’re used to,” explains Pearson, speaking to the Scene in a conference room at the Cordell Hull State Office Building in downtown Nashville on July 23. “ The most important thing I remember is to put family first. No matter what happens with the campaign, my family will be there. The reason I’m fighting so hard, campaigning so hard, working so hard, raising money so hard, losing my voice so much is because I want the world that my family lives in, and hopefully my future kids live in, to be better than what I’m currently dealing with.”
Pearson, making the most of a Midstate road trip from his West Tennessee home, has two events lined up after his interview with the Scene and more scheduled for the weekend. Minutes after we part, a campaign text arrives — it leads with a half-smiling Pearson in front of Memphis’ Hernando de Soto Bridge. He’ll be back in Nashville to headline voting access nonprofit Organize Tennessee’s summit on Aug. 29.
Pearson’s plan to win an upset in Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District, newly gerrymandered from a majority-Black safe Democratic seat, is simple and difficult: Be everywhere, do everything, talk to everybody, and appeal to every Tennessean with economic populism. After initially declaring against incumbent Democratic U.S.
slip from 70 percent in 2024 to 67 in 2025 and 54 this year. Just three names — District 32 Councilmember Joy Styles, Bellevue neighborhood activist Lou Wilbanks and perennial candidate Natisha Brooks — are set to compete with O’Connell in August 2027. Styles announced her challenge in January but has little to show for it seven months later beyond a web page and meager fundraising numbers. Her campaign has aimed sharp critiques at O’Connell from her council post, some of which fairly illuminate his administration’s shortcomings and have provoked the O’Connell administration into a spat over Metro’s Office of Entertainment. Styles still struggles to make inroads that could translate into voting support, but it is early, and her campaign might yet find a higher gear. Wilbanks and Brooks (also a candidate for Congress this year) both appear to be running vanity campaigns. Nashville knows how to put on a show. The next campaign fundraising disclosures are not due until 2027, allowing ample time for one or two campaigns to stand up real infrastructure before the spring. Any more options than that would likely divide the field into a game of Whac-A-Mole for the incumbent. There is no shortage of names who could carve out a compelling lane.
District 26 Councilmember Courtney Johnston has shown an appetite for grievance politics, financial accountability and retail campaigning, having unsuccessfully attempted to unseat incumbent U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles via 2024’s Republican primary. Well-connected
Rep. Steve Cohen in the old 9th, Pearson reoriented his campaign after a May special legislative session redrew the seat to favor Republicans and set up state Sen. Brent Taylor, a Republican who represents suburban Memphis. Cohen ultimately announced that he would not run for reelection. Taylor faces his own party challenge from affable state Rep. Todd Warner, a Republican who represents Chapel Hill and has gained ground in recent months.
Pearson faces a primary challenge of his own from state Sen. London Lamar, a fellow Memphis legislator.
Pearson believes Democrats across the district — but especially around Memphis, Murfreesboro and Williamson County — will carry him in the primary and make his general election bid competitive. Trump’s unpopularity and Republicans’ MAGA core have alienated enough voters to suppress GOP turnout, he reckons, and Democrats are energized like never before. If Pearson wins — or even gets close — in the district, which connects the Memphis suburbs to Brentwood and voted for Trump by 21 points, Pearson might remake state politics in the process.
“ If you work for a check, you are a working-class person,” says Pearson, unspooling the core pillars of his political message. “I don’t care how big you think that check is — you’re one of us. We have to create a big tent, we have
businessmen like Sam Davidson, Sam Reed and state Rep. Bob Freeman (D-Nashville) could quickly raise money (or self-fund) and corner support among the Chamber of Commerce crowd, both intimidating qualities in a challenger. Councilmembers Delishia Porterfield and Sandra Sepulveda have enjoyed good working relationships with O’Connell since his time on the council but have the skill and politics to define themselves to the left of his mayoral administration. Former Councilmember Jamie Hollin, a Metro sharp who slams O’Connell from the comfort of his podcast, would be among the field’s most entertaining hypothetical entrants. There is the city hall old hand in Bob Mendes, whose long Metro résumé ends with a stint working the East Bank as O’Connell’s chief development officer, and the ambitious newcomer Rollin Horton, a first-term West Nashville councilmember who has crafted sound local legislation at times imitated (or co-opted) by the mayor himself.
Freeman, state Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville), Councilmember Zulfat Suara and affordable housing developer Matt Wiltshire, who ran in 2023, all recently dismissed the idea of running for mayor, setting up an all-time moment in Nashville politics: O’Connell, who captured backlash against the new Titans stadium to win his seat, warmed by the spotlight of hosting the 2030 Super Bowl.
Disclosure: Bob Freeman owns the Scene’s parent company, FW Publishing. He is not involved in the Scene’s editorial process or day-to-day operation. ▼
to mobilize, and we have to have working-class people realize the value of their labor, their personhood, and what they contribute to this world.”
A focus on nation-leading medical debt, soaring gas prices, grocery bills and a rigged economy helps Pearson connect with rural Republicans just as easily as the Memphians in his state House district.
“ We’ve been baited nationally and in our statehouse into culture wars — voters don’t care about that,” says Pearson, citing interactions on the campaign trail. “Culture
wars work when people aren’t struggling every single day to make ends meet. We care about what people care about: costs being too high and the amount of money in their pocket being too low.”
His campaign leads with arguments favorable among Democrats, Republicans and the large group of voters who switch parties or don’t vote at all: fight resource-intense data centers, a fixture of Tennessee’s future; stop sitting lawmakers from enriching themselves in office, specifically by trading stocks on privileged information; and kick corporations and billionaire money from steering the political process via functionally unlimited election dollars. Finally, provide healthcare. The last point resonates strongly in his now-rural district, home to aging voters suffering under hospital closures and poor medical infrastructure.
“I don’t meet people who disagree with it,” Pearson says about guaranteed healthcare. “We can have questions about how to pay for it — obviously by taxing billionaires and corporations and penalizing them if they offshore our jobs or if they replace our jobs with AI — but this is a broadbased movement that most people agree on.”
Along with fellow state Reps. Justin Jones (D-Nashville) and Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville), Pearson became a national figure three years ago when Republicans expelled him from the chamber following a floor protest against gun violence. That’s become an asset too, Pearson says, bolstering his reputation as a principled advocate for Democrats’ patchwork resistance in the Trump era.
“ The Republicans expelling us from the statehouse created a lot of exposure,” he says, moving quickly between campaign talking points, personal anecdotes and the high-level strategy guiding his campaign and his own political path. “The racist redistricting created a lot of exposure. It’s going to be probably one of the closest elections in the country for a Democrat and a Republican. My age is absolutely a big advantage — I think people want new energy and new ideas for this moment, and I think most people are exhausted by the 80-yearolds who have run our country into the ground.”
Pearson points to the U.S. House and Senate — where the average lawmaker is 58 and 64, respectively — as physical examples of the country’s outdated and out-oftouch political elite. At the time of our interview, media speculated about Kentucky’s 84-year-old U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell disappearing from the public eye in June following successive medical crises. “Most people think he’s dead, and I think he is dead, plugged in on a ventilator somewhere,” says Pearson, citing a source in D.C. politics.
Pearson has linked his campaign with the opposition party’s energetic left wing, scoring endorsements from U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez en route to more than $2 million in fundraising without any corporate PAC money. He leads Democratic fundraising in Tennessee along with Chaz Molder — the staid Columbia mayor and 5th Congressional District candidate — who reported a campaign total of $2.5 million this month, about 10 times the money raised by gubernatorial candidate Jerri Green.
While infighting roils the state’s Democratic Party, Molder and Pearson are running strategic, professional operations spanning urban and rural Tennessee with distinctly different politics. Should both favorites prevail in their primaries, voters’ response in November could light Tennessee Democrats’ path. ▼
NEWS: SPORTS
AROUND THE WORLD
Talking with ex-USMNT star Desmond Armstrong about his trailblazing career
and local youth soccer BY LOGAN BUTTS
AFTER THE U.S. MEN’S NATIONAL SOCCER TEAM’S disappointing exit at this year’s home World Cup, you might be asking yourself:
Why isn’t the USMNT more successful? Like seemingly everyone with World Cup Fever this summer, Nashvillian Desmond Armstrong has some thoughts on how the U.S. men can improve their standing globally.
But unlike most of the talking heads on TV and at your neighborhood bar, Armstrong has practical experience in the American youth soccer landscape — and he suited up for the U.S. at the 1990 World Cup in Italy.
“We need rec programs across the country that have basic standards,” Armstrong tells the Scene one morning at TashTea Cafe near his home in Antioch.
Armstrong’s winding journey to the USMNT is indicative of the difficult path to high-level soccer American kids face. If he and his parents hadn’t moved from Washington, D.C., to the Maryland suburbs, Armstrong says he might never have played soccer in the first place.
“My drive has always been: What can I do
to help other kids that might have talent to make it?”
It’s expensive to play just about any sport at a high level in America, but it’s especially true when it comes to soccer. It costs thousands of dollars per year to play competitive travel soccer, which is increasingly the only way to get noticed by professional scouts. And that makes truly elite training a suburban endeavor.
“Had we not moved, I wouldn’t be playing soccer,” Armstrong says. “I might have done something else in sports, but not soccer, and I wouldn’t have had a chance to go around the world.”
In 1986, following a successful college career at the University of Maryland, Armstrong took the only path available at the time for Americans looking to play professional soccer domestically — he joined the Major Indoor Soccer League. Between the folding of the influential North American Soccer League in 1984 and the inaugural season of Major League Soccer in 1996, there was not a top-flight pro league in the country.
Thanks to his performance for the MISL’s Cleveland Force, Armstrong earned his first call-up to the USMNT for the 1987 Summer Universiade in
then-Yugoslavia. A successful outing there led to a spot on the 1988 Olympic squad for the Summer Games in Seoul, where Armstrong solidified himself as a mainstay for the USMNT. It was around this time that the U.S. was awarded hosting duties for the 1994 World Cup. Host countries are automatically given a spot in the tournament, but to be prepared to compete at that level, the program desperately needed to qualify for the 1990 World Cup — something the USMNT had not done in 40 years. It was a nearly impossible task for a country without a top-flight pro league.
“That was a lot of pressure,” the National Soccer Hall of Famer says.
It came down to one final match, on the road in Port of Spain against Trinidad and Tobago. With Armstrong watching from the sideline due to an ankle injury, his teammate Paul Caligiuri scored the “shot heard ’round the world” to clinch the USMNT’s spot in the 1990 World Cup.
On June 10, 1990, Armstrong became the first African American to play for the U.S. at the World Cup.
“It was surreal,” Armstrong says.
Although the first match resulted in a 5-1 loss
PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO
to Czechoslovakia, the team earned respect from the entire football world following its second match — a showdown with the hosts, Italy, at the famed Stadio Olimpico in front of more than 73,000 fans.
“We’re on the bus, traveling through Rome,” Armstrong says. “Everything’s shut down. People are in the streets leading into the stadium. It’s unbelievable.”
The U.S. would ultimately lose 1-0, but it was far from the bloodbath most expected. Armstrong helped hold star Italian strikers Gianluca Vialli and Salvatore Schillaci (the latter the top scorer at that year’s tournament) scoreless. The match was a turning point for soccer in America.
“They were all top players,” says Armstrong of Italy’s all-star team. “We lost 1-0, but we established a modicum of credibility.”
Armstrong ended up playing every minute of all three U.S. matches during the Cup, and it put him on the national radar. After a brief stint with Luton Town in England, he got a call from his agent saying the legendary Brazilian club Santos was interested in signing him.
“I said, ‘Are you serious? Get me a ticket. I’m out of here.’”
No American had ever signed a professional contract in Brazil, much less for the team known for perhaps the greatest soccer player ever — Pelé. When he arrived at the airport in São Paulo, Armstrong was swarmed by media members. His translator? Pelé’s son Edinho, who was on the team at the time and knew English thanks to his father’s time in the U.S. with the NASL’s New York Cosmos.
More than 30 years later, two of Armstrong’s sons, Ezra and Dida, play professionally here in the U.S. That’s thanks in no small part to what Armstrong and his teammates accomplished.
“It’s a far cry from when I came up,” he says of the modern youth soccer landscape.
But there’s still work to be done. After helping guide hundreds of local kids with FC Nashville Heroes and East Nashville Soccer, Armstrong believes he has a solution to some of America’s biggest soccer issues.
His pitch? Instead of families shelling out top-dollar fees for travel teams — organizations that often have a monopoly on quality local fields — when their child is young, have them play in recreation leagues until it’s time to specialize. And that’s preferably around high school age. The quality in local rec leagues can vary, so Armstrong is running a pilot program with Metro Nashville Public Schools, forming a partnership in which everyone benefits. The clubs — with licensed coaches like Armstrong — can train the kids on the fields at schools, which are rarely used outside of school-sanctioned matches.
“Let’s improve their skills, and let’s make it competitive right in the city of Nashville,” Armstrong says. “You don’t have to go to Memphis. You don’t have to go to Knoxville. You don’t have to go to Chattanooga to play a team that’s only as good as a team that’s right down the street.
“We already have an infrastructure,” he adds. “I want to start here in Nashville.” ▼
PITH IN THE WIND
NASHVILLESCENE.COM/NEWS/PITHINTHEWIND
Early voting continues to surge in Davidson County as voters decide several contested primaries in U.S. congressional races A few days into early voting, turnout outpaced the 2024 primaries by more than 35 percent, with 21,765 ballots tallied across Nashville’s 15 polling sites as of this writing. Three additional voting locations — Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, Scarritt Bennett Center and the Davidson County Election Commission — more than offset the loss of the Green Hills Library, which led all early voting locations in 2024. A chaotic war in Iran, rising prices and an unpopular president may be behind increased voter energy, especially for Democrats who hope to build on state Rep. Aftyn Behn’s overperformance in last fall’s special 7th Congressional District election. While the early data indicates a juiced Democratic vote, Republican voters have the season’s featured primary: a heated race for governor between U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn and U.S. Rep. John Rose.
Data centers now face regulatory hurdles crafted by councilmembers and Mayor Freddie O’Connell and approved by the Metro Council at its July 21 meeting. A blanket moratorium pauses all data center permits until Dec. 1 following several months of public outcry over a proposed center near the Nashville Zoo as well as a center planned on the campus of Fisk University. New regulations ban data centers larger than 500,000 square feet and introduce zoning restrictions and special permits for smaller data centers, as well as noise and water requirements. O’Connell has also pushed legislation to condemn the property slated for a data center near the zoo. He faces a legally complex and expensive path to wresting control from DC BLOX, the data center developer that recently closed on the site for $23 million. Also last week, the zoo announced that it has declined a memorandum of understanding proposed by DC BLOX. The MOU would have allowed construction of DC BLOX’s initial 10-megawatt data center but eliminated the company’s plans for a larger 40-megawatt data center expansion. DC BLOX also offered to give a portion of the property to the zoo for future development. The zoo’s board unanimously rejected the proposal.
A court ruled against an ACLU legal challenge to the state legislature’s new congressional maps that heavily favor Republicans in all nine U.S. House districts. A last gasp for Democrats hoping to stall the GOP advance, the challenge failed to show that maps explicitly targeted race, rather than partisan leaning, according to the threejudge panel. The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais on April 29 struck down race as a protective criteria for districts, paving the way for Republicans to crack Memphis’ majority-Black Democratic stronghold into three parallel districts that stretch into Middle Tennessee.
JULY 30-AUGUST 1 & AUGUST 6-8
VINCE GILL SEPTEMBER 1
ROCK THE RYMAN
HOSTED BY JOHN OATES, FEATURING DEVON ALLMAN, WYNONNA, YOLA & MORE ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
OCTOBER 6
AUDREY HOBERT ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
NOVEMBER 9
CONCERT FOR CUMBERLAND HEIGHTS A TRIBUTE TO JOHN HIATT ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
NOVEMBER 19
JOY OLADOKUN ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
NOVEMBER 27, 28 & 29
BRETT ELDREDGE GLOW 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY TOUR ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
DEC 15, 16, 17 & 18 LIVE AT THE OPRY HOUSE FOR KING + COUNTRY
A DRUMMER BOY CHRISTMAS ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
WITNESS HISTORY
Stephen Wilson Jr. wore this sweater, jacket, bolo tie and clasp, and ballcap embellished with embroidered roses and an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe when he performed “Stand by Me” at the CMA Awards, November 19, 2025.
From the exhibit American Currents: State of the Music
artifact: Courtesy of Stephen Wilson Jr. artifact photo: Bob Delevante
THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY
How Nashville’s historic sites are reckoning with their history of slavery
BY HANNAH HERNER
THERE’S NO SUCH thing as a good slave owner. That’s the short answer to the most common question across Nashville-area sites with a history of enslavement. Were they “good” slave owners? None of them were, neither Andrew Jackson at The Hermitage, nor Adelicia and Joseph Acklen at Belmont Mansion, nor John Harding at Belle Meade, nor John McGavock at Carnton, nor John Overton at Travellers Rest. The term “good slave owner” is an oxymoron.
That fact is made clear on the recently reopened In Their Footsteps: Slavery at The Hermitage tour, which takes place on the grounds of the longtime Nashville home of the American president. It was common for slave owners to place ads in the newspaper offering a reward for an escaped slave, but Jackson took it a step further: He would offer an additional reward for each 100 lashes the finder gave to the escapee.
The tour, which was put on pause for a time at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, begins inside the cabin of Alfred Jackson, one of Jackson’s slaves. There visitors find a showcase of items that were used by the people who were enslaved there. The tour ends in the grounds’ newly discovered enslaved cemetery with a reading of the names of each of those buried there.
Jackson’s abuses of the enslaved were talked about truthfully, honestly, from that, and we also wanted to highlight the resilience of enslaved people. Despite this terrible degradation, they are building families, they are pushing against this coercion, and they’re able to carve out their own lives within it.”
While the standard house tour does discuss slavery, it does not include a visit to Alfred’s cabin. The Scene overheard a guest on a recent self-guided tour tell a young relative that Alfred “didn’t have it as bad as the others.”
Even with updated context, historic sites still must fight the myth of the happy slave and the kind slave owner. It’s part of the larger “Lost Cause of the Confederacy” myth, which is most famously explored in the 1936 novel Gone With the Wind and its 1939 film adaptation and portrays slavery as a benevolent institution.
Alfred was born at The Hermitage and stayed through his emancipation, leading some of the first tours there before he died in 1901. At his grave — which is near Andrew Jackson’s — he’s described as a “faithful servant.” That’s not necessarily a compliment, Youngblood notes.
“I think you could even compare it to what you call a dog that follows around its master,” he says. “This is a dehumanization of these individuals because of their African American descent, because of the racism that has permeated all these public history institutions in the 1880s and 19th up to the mid-20th century.”
Area historians are painting a more complete picture of the past, and newly named Davidson County Historian Learotha Williams is a part of that. He previously established a historical marker for the Nashville Slave Market and was also on hand when the Nashville City Cemetery recently erected a bench honoring the thousands of enslaved people who are buried there.
“We’re also more honest in this tour,” says Cody Youngblood, director of visitor experience at The Hermitage. “We wanted to make sure that
“If you’re going to talk about life in these spaces, how are you going to do that and not talk about the people that made up the majority, without the people whose presence made that space valuable?” Williams tells the Scene. “We haven’t really been doing that until very recently in this city.”
ANDREW JACKSON BUST AT THE HERMITAGE
PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND
imperative to have a Black historian not just to consult or sit on the board, but to work on staff, Williams says.
“Culturally, African Americans can bring something to the table that their white counterparts cannot,” Williams says, “and that is a shared ancestry with the people who were in the chains, who bore the violence that was necessary to sow to maintain this system.”
“The well is deep, and if they wanted that sort of interpretation, there’s spaces where they could look and find people that will be very, very qualified to do these jobs.”
ancestors. She already knew she had a connection to Rippa Villa plantation in Spring Hill when she heard from historian Kristi Farrow, director of African and African American History at the Battle of Franklin Trust, which manages the site.
Stuart gave a speech at the 2025 unveiling of a bust characterizing her ancestor, Anna, who continued to work on site as paid domestic staff after she was enslaved there. Stuart says she wishes more Black people were interested in visiting sites like Rippa Villa, and learning about their ancestry. For her, a sense of identity is paramount.
no control over, but also have no choice but to be in, it allows people to understand just how heavy the situation of slavery was, the lived experience was.”
Historian Brigette Jones, a former student of Williams’ at Tennessee State University, was the only Black docent at Belle Meade Historic Site and Winery when she started there in 2018. Later she led the development of the Journey to Jubilee tour focused on enslavement on the property, which is still offered today.
Jones now works as assistant executive director at Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area Alliance in Georgia. Visitors won’t currently find a Black historian on staff at Belle Meade or The Hermitage, or Travellers Rest, or Belmont Mansion, or any of Nashville’s former sites of enslavement.
Jones says she is very skilled at talking to rooms full of white people about difficult history, but she understands why young Black people may not want to set foot on a former plantation. Even if they wanted to work as a historian there, they might not be able to survive on what she describes as low pay for such positions.
Of her time at Belle Meade Historic Site and Winery, Jones says she remembers people wiping away tears following the Journey to Jubilee tour as well as people stumbling tipsy from a wine tasting.
“There’s this weird energy there that everybody’s not going to be able to handle, because quite frankly, it will piss you off as a Black person.” Jones says. “You’re looking racism in the face every day, but it’s one of those things where if the cause is bigger than the fear, then you do it anyway.”
Belle Meade Historic Site leadership says having Jones around was invaluable to the interpretation of the history as well as the connection to the Black community in Nashville. Williams says he brought his classes to Belle Meade when she was there, and when she left he stopped. It is
Today Williams takes his students to a nearby Civil War site, Travellers Rest Historic House and Museum, which is also a common K-12 field trip
“You have a group of people that are truly interested, and they do tours … but then you have so many people right here in Spring Hill [who] don’t know anything about their family,” Stuart says. “They are not even trying to find out anything about their family.”
“When you tell a story that is rooted in both fact and emotion, it holds a mirror to the face of many Southern white people, because God forbid their ‘Papaw’ was a racist."
—Brigette Jones, historian
destination. Slavery is mentioned in tours for each age group, but it is discussed more in-depth with students in fourth grade and older, says Andy Blair, director of education, interpretation and outreach at Travellers Rest.
“We try to be open and up-front with the teachers so they can be able to relay that information to the parents that we will be taking a visit to a place that formerly enslaved individuals, learn what that was like,” Blair says. “And it’s important to be respectful and to acknowledge the past and the history here.”
The site has also released a public call for descendants of those enslaved at the site through its Travellers Rest Enslaved Persons Documentation Project. In 2024, for the 225th anniversary of the construction of the home, the descendants of those who were enslaved there and descendants of the enslavers met and spent time together.
In Bridget Stuart’s family, she’s the one everyone goes to if they have a question about their
The Journey to Jubilee tour at Belle Meade stands out in its in vitation to imagine what the people who were enslaved there must have felt like, compared to other sites focused on a lineup of facts from which visitors can draw their own conclusions. For historian Jones, emotion is the most important aspect.
“I think that emotion is the one thing that everyone can understand, whether you are white, Black, rich, poor, green or in the middle,” she says. “I think that by welcoming people into the shoes of a situation that you have
During the Belle Meade tour, visitors hear from Susanna Carter, one of the only enslaved people directly quoted — she was interviewed by a journalist during her time as head of the domestic staff after emancipation. Guests are invited to imagine what she meant when she answered a deeply misguided question: When asked, “Do you prefer to be free or enslaved?” she replied, “I do and I don’t.” Did Carter have options to work elsewhere? Did she have access to healthcare? Was she paid enough to afford the things she needed? Was her former enslaver looking over her shoulder when she answered the question?
The Journey to Jubilee tour also addresses head-on the rape that took place in these environments. A census from the era shows a number of people enslaved at the site listed as “mullato” — biracial in modern terms. Enslaved women had children by their masters, and enslaved men often were powerless to stop their wives from being raped. Jones notes that the imbalance of power negates any affection between the two parties. This type of frankness has turned some tour attendees off. Jones says that during her days as a docent, some people even left midtour.
“When you tell a story that is rooted in both fact and emotion, it holds a mirror to the face of many Southern white people, because God forbid their ‘Papaw’ was a racist,” she says.
Jones says that while some turned away, others looked to her to absolve them of their guilt. Her tours were often followed by an impromptu therapy session, she says. It was a lot of “my child’s best friend is Black, and we treat him just like family,” Jones says.
“There’s this Black person right here, so let me show this Black person that I am not racist,” she says. “Quite frankly, I don’t think we need that. I think the people who need it are the people that you are in direct contact with on a daily basis.”
While it’s important to have the input of Black historians on any such tour, it shouldn’t be entirely on the Black population to try to change minds. That’s where white historians like the Battle of Franklin Trust’s Farrow come in, Jones says.
“I think that it is really important that white people who choose to do this work do it with empathy and accuracy, and do it knowing the privilege that they hold, and also do it within your community,” Jones says. “Don’t just be a white historian trying to tell Black people about Black people — go tell other white people about Black people.”
Eric Jacobson, CEO of the Battle of Franklin Trust, argues that you don’t have to defend your racist great-great-grandfather — you didn’t know him, and nobody alive today does. A point he’s also trying to drive home at the sites the trust manages is another one circulated by the “Lost Cause” myth: The Civil War was not driven by states’ rights; it was driven by slavery.
“It does not matter one bit that someone’s great-great-grandfather didn’t own slaves, or that someone’s great-great-grandfather from Michigan wasn’t fighting to free slaves,” he says. “Well, they’re both fighting in a war that’s all driven by slavery. I mean, we were in Vietnam because of communism. We were in Iraq because of terrorism.”
Jacobson says he saw pushback from all directions — staff, board members, guests — when the Battle of Franklin Trust took over two Williamson County historic houses in 2009, Carter House and Carnton. (Rippa Villa was added in 2021.)
In the early days, stakeholders said staff at these sites should “stick to the battle.”
“I was somewhat puzzled, because it wasn’t like it was a super-edgy interpretation,” Jacobson says. “I was simply advocating and promoting and pushing the idea that we had to talk about slavery.”
As part of construction at Carter House, BOFT is also moving the slave cabin on site directly into the path from the visitors’ center — that way people cannot miss it. There’s a refrain among current historic home operators: They don’t want guests to leave the site without hearing how slavery was a part of its history, even if guests didn’t choose a slavery-focused tour.
Michael Hedges is the newly installed CEO of
Belle Meade Historic Site and Winery, having previously managed only the winery side. He says he is proud of the Journey to Jubilee tour, but wants to expand physical markers honoring the stories of those who were enslaved. For example, he’d like to better represent Robert Green, the formerly enslaved horse trainer who gained national fame and bred horses whose descendants are still regu-
lar Kentucky Derby winners.
“I think you can still come here and squint a little bit and not think about some of the more complicated aspects of the history of Belle Meade,” Hedges says, “and I do think that we need to continue to physically ensconce things that help people to be aware.”
“[Younger visitors at historic sites have] grown up in a much different environment, and I think they’re much more open to the idea of talking about politics or race or slavery. They’re not interested in the sort of hero worship of the Confederacy.”
—Eric Jacobson, Battle of Franklin Trust CEO
Belmont Mansion docents received the question about “good slave owners” so often that they took the liberty of printing their official answer on one of their exhibit signs. The answer reads, in part: “There were households where physical abuse was not present, and adequate food, clothing and medical care [were] provided. Yet, even then, enslavement meant the denial of basic freedoms including the ability to protect loved ones from harm or separation by sale.”
Adelicia Acklen was the mansion’s original owner, and her first husband Isaac Franklin was the source of her wealth. He was one of the most prolific slave traders of his time.
In an exhibit, Upon the Toils of Many: The Story of Enslaved, Free Black and Immigrant Workers, there is a rare physical depiction of a formerly enslaved woman, Mildred Haley. She’s depicted in mannequin form leaving the mansion after emancipation in 1870, when she attended Roger Williams University in Nashville — a historically Black university that’s now part of Memphis’ Howe Institute.
“When you’re presenting that information in a black-and-white factual sort of basis, it’s a little harder to connect on an emotional level and to begin to feel like you can visualize a person,” says Lauren Batte, deputy director at Belmont Mansion. “That’s why we did the mannequin.”
Jones thinks there should be security implemented on historic sites for guides leading tours about slavery. She’s also called for scholarship funds for descendants with proceeds from ticket costs. None of the historic sites have set up such a fund yet.
Jacobson of the Battle of Franklin Trust says the pushback he experienced at first has nearly dissipated as younger visitors replace the older ones. He’s hopeful for the next generation.
“They’ve grown up in a much different environment, and I think they’re much more open to the idea of talking about politics or race or slavery,” Jacobson says. “They’re not interested in the sort of hero worship of the Confederacy. So we see more of those people, and we see less of the older ones.”
Historians believe history is always evolving, and as we learn more, that information should be implemented into education at historic sites.
“We’re learning new stuff every single year, so our stories should be better,” Davidson County Historian Learotha Williams says. “They should be more informed, because we are getting smarter.
“Slavery is a chapter,” he continues, “but it’s one of the ones that has been most misinterpreted, marginalized and erased. So it’s critical for us to get this right, because it’s the foundation of everything else that we would look at later on, be it the Civil War, or Reconstruction, or Jim Crow — the struggle for equality.” ▼
LEAROTHA WILLIAMS
ERIC JACOBSON
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SATURDAY, AUG. 1
ART [CIRCADIAN]
GEORGANNA GREENE: CIRCA DIEM
Nashville native Georganna Greene is a painters’ painter, and her new solo show at Julia Martin Gallery makes a statement about attention in a time of distraction. Circa Diem (Latin for “about a day”) gathers recent paintings that reflect the rhythms and textures of the artist’s daily life: marriage, friendship, gardening, the company of animals and managing chronic pain. Greene compresses everyday observations into layered fields of color guided by what she calls a linguistic approach to painting, utilizing poetry, prayer and meditation as her navigational tools. Greene is a recent artist-in-residence at Arcade Arts downtown, and her latest body of work seeks out the mystical inside the minutiae, framing attention itself as an act of generosity. Greene will be taking part in an artist talk on Aug. 27 from 6:30-8:30 p.m.
JOE NOLAN
OPENING RECEPTION 5-9 P.M.; THROUGH AUG. 29 AT JULIA MARTIN GALLERY
444 HUMPHREYS ST., SUITE A
THURSDAY / 7.30
MUSIC [MATURE]
HILARY DUFF
At this point, Hilary Duff is a millennial deity. Just ask anyone who was a teen or pre-teen between the years of 2000-2005 about Lizzie McGuire and be prepared for a diatribe about the time Lizzie went goth after befriending an alt girl (relatable!) or the time she snuck onto the set of an Aaron Carter music video and got a kiss from the pop star (less relatable, but I do remember being extremely jealous). Ask anyone between the ages of 30 and 40 about the ancient text, aka one of the hardest lines in one of the most iconic PSAs of all time: “That’s so girl wearing a skirt as a top.” (If you know, you know.) And that’s before you factor in her pop music career, which gave us bangers like “Come Clean,” — Laguna Beach hive, rise up — “So Yesterday” and “With Love.” Despite being a meme queen, Duff is no nostalgia act. Her album Luck...or Something is a whip-smart pop album that centers the realities of adult relationships and aging. So whether you’re
an OG Duff-head or along for the ride with your millenial bestie, the pop queen and actor’s stand at Ascend is not to be missed.
BOBBIE JEAN SAWYER
7 P.M. AT ASCEND AMPHITHEATER
310 FIRST AVE. S.
FRIDAY / 7.31
COMEDY [MIC DROP] WILL ABELES W/COREY PERRY
Nashville-based comedian Will Abeles is recording his next album at Love & Exile on Friday night in a fittingly Music City way — straight to vinyl with the help of a team of local audio engineers and videographers, a decision that would make fellow Northern transplant Jack White proud. Abeles’ previous special, The Pride of Hagerstown, features plenty of material about how the longtime New Yorker adjusted to his adopted hometown in the South after moving to Nashville in 2021. The performance on Friday will also mark more than a year of sobriety for Abeles, something he tells the Scene is “probably my biggest accomplishment since moving to
“IN BLOSSOM TIDES” BY GEORGANNA GREENE
Nashville.” Fellow local comedian Corey Perry will open the show with a recorded set of his own. LOGAN BUTTS
7 P.M. AT LOVE & EXILE
715 MAIN ST
MUSIC
[HIGH ON A MOUNTAIN] OPRY 100 FEAT. LINDSAY LOU
Lindsay Lou will be making her hardearned Opry debut Friday night as she honors all women in bluegrass. Commonly dubbed the “Queen of Festivals,” the Michigan native is known for her intently traditional and sincere voice, backed by a plucky army of quick strings. She’s releasing a new album, Bluegrass Women, on Aug. 14 along with a four-part minidocumentary, forging a major cultural imprint. The album credits are stacked with some of the most impressive female voices in bluegrass today — including Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull and Sarah Jarosz — highlighting the essential role women have played in the historically male-dominated genre. As she notes, most people don’t realize how many of their favorite bluegrass tunes were written by women. And now is the time to show ’em! Friday she’ll be performing with her Honey Moon Trio as they continue to make sweet, sweet musical history. Country duo Wilson Fairchild and country-rock vet Brantley Gilbert will also be taking the stage Friday night.
TOBY ROSE
7 P.M. AT THE GRAND OLE OPRY HOUSE
600 OPRY MILLS DRIVE
MUSIC
[RING ON THE TABLE] BELLES
Singer-songwriter Belles (Kelli Belles) is embarking on her 24-city headlining tour this summer and is making a few stops in Tennessee. Her Midwestern grit and authenticity make her voice stand out. One of her most popular songs, “Son of Jolene,” is a creative outlook on one of country’s most iconic songs with a feature from the beloved Dolly Parton herself. Belles already performed at The Bluebird Cafe on July 28 on this tour and still has local shows lined up at the Grand Ole Opry House (July 30) and Hop Springs in Murfreesboro (July 31). When people think of concerts and country music, Nashville is the first place that comes to mind. But just 40 minutes from downtown sits this much less crowded, but still cool, venue. Hop Springs is a family- and petfriendly open-air site where you can enjoy this exciting artist. EMMA PICKETT
8 P.M. AT HOP SPRINGS
6790 JOHN BRAGG HIGHWAY, MURFREESBORO
MUSIC [TIME TRAVELING]
91 ROCK LIVE
Three Nashville rock veterans — Joe Blanton (guitar, lead vocals), Jonathan Bright (drums, vocals) and Mike “Preach” Rutherford (bass, vocals) — have formed a new group to do a little time traveling. Called 91 Rock Live, the group pays tribute to the music broadcast in the 1980s and ’90s on WRVU, also known as 91 Rock, the student-run radio station at Vanderbilt University. The late, great station was an influential champion of the city’s burgeoning
indie-rock scene. “We were fortunate to live in a place where that kind of a station existed,” Blanton says. Bright first had the idea a couple of years ago for the group, which will give its first performance Friday night at Eastside Bowl. They will perform songs by a number of artists from that era, including Raging Fire, Walk the West, Bill Lloyd, The Questionnaires, The White Animals, Royal Court of China, Swing and Jet Black Factory. On a number of songs, the group will be joined by some of the musicians whose music they’ll be performing. The show will be presented like a radio program with former ’RVU DJ Heather Lose acting as a live DJ. Lose will introduce the mini-sets of songs performed by each band, and in between, she’ll play actual station promos from back in the day. DARYL SANDERS
7 P.M. AT THE VOLUME LOUNGE AT EASTSIDE BOWL
1508A GALLATIN PIKE S., MADISON
FILM
[LOOK
HOW
BEAUTIFUL IT BECOMES] WEEKEND CLASSICS: BEAT THE HEAT: ANDREI RUBLEV
In the slow-cinema pantheon of filmmakers who’ve made stunning works of art that can also take your ass to beddy-bye land, Andrei Tarkovsky is the Michael Jordan of the game — and Andrei Rublev is his magnum opus. When I saw it, I spent the first half trying not to doze off and the other half energized by the elaborately staged sequences. (You can say that for nearly all his pictures.) He filmed the epic, episodic biopic on the titular 15th-century Russian painter in 1966, but Soviet officials weren’t too keen on having this down-and-dirty, dream-like trip through medieval Russia, with its naked pagans and moments of murder, mayhem and animal cruelty, out there in these world-cinema streets. By the time it hit America in 1973, myriad cuts of
the film were already circulating. (An editor hid a print of the 205-minute first cut underneath her bed.) The Belcourt will screen the directorapproved, 183-minute version (with a 10-minute intermission), which will either captivate audiences or give them the most glorious, threehour nap they’ve ever had. CRAIG D. LINDSEY 11:30 A.M. JULY 31-AUG. 2 AT THE BELCOURT
2102 BELCOURT AVE.
THEATER
[A NEW WAY OF SEEING] DEEPFAKE PRESENTS OEDIPUS:
SIMULATION
I’ve been following the work of Nashville theater artist Scott Patrick Wilson since he was a student at Lipscomb University. Always a standout, he cut his teeth with the likes of Street Theatre, Nashville Rep and Actors Bridge, and even cofounded a student-led company called Second Stage Student Theatre. Wilson just recently moved back to Nashville, having spent several years working in New York City. And you can check out his latest project this weekend with the premiere of Oedipus: Simulation. Described as an audiovisual theater performance, the piece uses Sophocles’ Oedipus plays as “a codebase for interfacing with the past and present, human and technology, reality and simulation.” Wilson teamed up with longtime writing partner John Theo and Actors Bridge artistic director Vali Forrister to create this intriguing new work. And it just so happens to be the first official production under the banner of Wilson’s new experimental theater project Deepfake. AMY STUMPFL
JULY 31 & AUG. 1 AT THE ACTORS BRIDGE STUDIO
4610 CHARLOTTE AVE.
SATURDAY / 8.1
MUSIC
[THE NEVER ENDING TOUR]
BOB DYLAN
Bob Dylan, arguably the greatest songwriter in popular music history, brings his Long Hot Summer tour to Ascend Amphitheater Saturday night. Dylan has had a long relationship with Nashville dating back to 1966 when he first came to the city to record Blonde on Blonde, the acclaimed double album many consider his finest work. Between 1967 and 1970, he recorded two more albums here, and most of a fourth. Since then, a slew of Nashville musicians have worked in his band, especially guitarists. The list of Nashville axmen who’ve played with Dylan over the past 35 years includes John Jackson, Bucky Baxter, Billy Burnette, Colin Linden, Bob Britt and Doug Lancio. Under circumstances that remain unclear, Lancio left Dylan’s band in midJune, and Britt followed two weeks later. Lancio has yet to comment publicly about his departure, but in a Facebook post dated June 29 Britt stated, “I was not fired, but left of my own accord for reasons I would prefer to keep private.” Since Lancio and Britt left the band, Dylan has used a trio of rotating guitarists — Joel Paterson, Julian Lage and Jad Tariq — to round out the band’s lineup, which includes drummer Anton Fig and bassist Tony Garnier. At press time, it was not known which of the guitarists will be with him Saturday night. Country legend Lucinda Williams and blues rockers Jimmie Vaughan and the Tilt-A-Whirl Band open. DARYL SANDERS 7 P.M. AT ASCEND AMPHITHEATER 310 FIRST AVE. S.
PET OF THE WEEK!
MEET M c COY!
This handsome hound is always ready to turn an ordinary day into an adventure with his playful spirit and boundless enthusiasm. Whether he’s following an exciting scent, showing off his zoomies, or inviting everyone to join in the fun, he knows how to keep life entertaining. If you’re looking for a loyal, lovable sidekick with a heart as big as his personality, McCoy is your guy! Name: McCOY 1 yr. 9m
Call 615.352.1010 or visit nashvillehumane.org
Located at 213 Oceola Ave., Nashville, TN 37209
Adopt. Bark. Meow. Microchip. Neuter. Spay.
FOOD [A MOVEABLE FEAST] EAT AROUND THE WORLD FESTIVAL
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UPCOMING EVENTS
PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET/EVENTS FOR TICKETS & UPDATES FRIDAY, JULY 31
4:00PM
FIND WALDO PARTY at PARNASSUS
6:30PM
ZACHARY SLINGSBY
MONDAY, AUGUST 3
with CAROLLYNN XAVIER at PARNASSUS Ballad of the Gangster's Daughter
4:30PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 4
DORENA WILLIAMSON with KATIE DOW, LMSW at PARNASSUS Love Lives On
6:30PM
10:30AM
Missing that international camaraderie now that the World Cup is over? Copperline Ranch, once the private estate of country crooner Kenny Rogers, is hosting the Eat Around the World Festival, which should give you some global goodwill. The lineup includes vendors with foods from Portugal, Cuba, Mexico, Japan, Jamaica, Hawaii and elsewhere. Specific vendors include Haole Boys Teriyaki, Portuguese-Southern fusion Millie’s, Cuban Cracker Family Kitchen and many others. In addition to the food, the new one-day event includes live music, farm animal encounters and the chance to attend the firstever public event at the 60-acre property, located about 13 miles east of downtown. Admission is free, but there are costs for food, merch, hay rides and a customized hat bar. MARGARET LITTMAN
11 A.M.-4 P.M. AT COPPERLINE RANCH
1 COPPERLINE ROAD, HERMITAGE
ART [IN FULL BLOOM]
FLEURS DE VILLES: THE GILDED AGE
the Courtyard party (Aug. 1), plus themed floral workshops and classes, book signings and Fleurs de Villes designer talks. AMY STUMPFL AUG. 1-9 AT CHEEKWOOD ESTATE & GARDENS 1200 FORREST PARK DRIVE
MONDAY / 8.3
[SWING TIME]
FILM
MUSIC CITY MONDAYS: JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY
THURSDAY, AUGUST 6
CHRIS YOUNG at PARNASSUS The Wound Is Where the Light Enters: A Memoir of Resilience
SATURDAY, AUGUST 8
SATURDAY STORYTIME
with CARTER HAMRIC at PARNASSUS Big Ole Day on the Farm
Shop online at parnassusbooks.net @parnassusbooks @parnassusbooks1 @parnassusbooks @parnassusbooksnashville
The Gilded Age is set to return to HBO for its fourth season later this year. But fans can revisit all the opulent style and elegance of the acclaimed drama series this weekend, as Fleurs de Villes returns to Cheekwood with the debut of Fleurs de Villes: The Gilded Age. Created by some of Nashville’s top floral designers, this unique showcase features a dozen fresh floral mannequins — all inspired by the show’s iconic characters. Guests are invited to stroll Cheekwood’s Historic Mansion and Museum and the Frist Learning Center, where they’ll encounter everything from “the bold, aspirational gowns of Bertha Russell to the refined sophistication of Agnes van Rhijn, the understated elegance of Marian Brook, and the modern perspective of Peggy Scott.” You can also enjoy a wide range of related events throughout the celebration — including a spirited kickoff Summer Soirée (July 31) and a fun Cocktails in
Jazz was still popular music in July 1958, when directors Aram Avakian and Bert Stern filmed Jazz on a Summer’s Day at the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, R.I. Jazz on a Summer’s Day is celebrated today for preserving performances by singers Anita O’Day and Dinah Washington, who share the stage with the likes of Thelonious Monk, saxophonist Sonny Stitt and drummer Max Roach. In particular, O’Day — who is resplendent in white gloves and feathered hat — sings in a scatting style that has largely disappeared, while Washington delivers the jazz standard “All of Me” in exemplary fashion. The film also features progressive jazz as it was practiced in 1958, with great music from saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre and drummer Chico Hamilton’s quintet. Jazz on a Summer’s Day catches jazz just as it begins to slide toward Ornette Coleman’s avant-garde version of the music, and you can see the young Eric Dolphy playing flute with Hamilton. Rock ’n’ roll fans will note how the great jazz drummer Jo Jones drags the beat behind Chuck Berry, who gets through “Sweet Little Sixteen” without any support from the bemused rhythm section. In 1958, rock ’n’ roll, as exemplified by Berry’s electric guitar, was the real musical avant-garde, but no one knew that yet.
2 & 8 P.M. AT THE BELCOURT
2102 BELCOURT AVE.
EDD HURT
AGNES VAN RHIJN MANNEQUIN BY BLUEBIRD BOUQUETS
PHOTO COURTESY OF FLEURS DE VILLES
[BROADWAY’S
FAN FAIR
We know. We know. You don’t like to go downtown. But sometimes you should. And this is one of those times. Robert’s Western World, one of Nashville’s and Broadway’s true country-music treasures, hosts its third annual Fan Fair block party on Aug. 3. The fun takes place across Lower Broad between Fourth and Fifth avenues, so you’ll truly be kicking up your heels on Broadway. The lineup, as expected, is a head-turner, including Ben and Noel Haggard playing their late father Merle Haggard’s music; Sweet Megg and The Westernaires; Broadway’s longest-running house band, JesseLee Jones & Brazilbilly; and more. And the merch? Any Old Iron is making an exclusive, limited-edition Robert’s Western World Fan Fair T-shirt available only at the event. The all-day festival is free, but of course, you know to tip the bands and the bartenders. The party takes place from 10 a.m. to midnight, so it should be easy to fit into your schedule for an hour or two.
should contain some dish about Sting, with whom Copeland apparently disagreed during the sessions for 1983’s Synchronicity, the final Police album. As Copeland — an unflappably energetic person whose career is multifarious — likes to describe his role in The Police, he simply sat back and drummed while Sting and guitarist Andy Summers did their respective things. Summers and Copeland filed a lawsuit in 2025 against Sting about royalties from Police hits including “Every Breath You Take,” which continue to fascinate four decades after The Police disbanded. EDD HURT
7:30 P.M. AT CITY WINERY
609 LAFAYETTE ST.
WEDNESDAY / 8.5
FILM
[YOU WILL ALREADY BE THERE]
TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN
MARGARET LITTMAN
10 A.M. AT ROBERT’S WESTERN WORLD
416 BROADWAY
TUESDAY / 8.4
[TRUE STORIES]
MUSIC
STEWART COPELAND
The news that former Police drummer and prolific film composer Stewart Copeland is doing a spoken-word tour led me back to his 1978 single “Don’t Care,” which he released under the moniker Klark Kent. Copeland made a good foil for Sting in The Police, which became a band forever identified with their 1983 hit “Every Breath You Take,” one of the most insidiously two-faced songs of that decade. Listening to “Don’t Care” reminded me how cheerfully crass The Police could be, as you can hear on 1980’s Zenyatta Mondatta. Sting put his name on “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” and “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” two singles that almost make you forget the later, middlebrow Sting. Copeland’s show on Aug. 4 at City Winery
Twin Peaks: The Return upends all of the romanticized notions of the original 1991 series. Originally broadcast on Showtime in 2017, the long-gestating third season sees David Lynch finding freedom in eschewing the trappings of network television, crafting a continuation of the Twin Peaks story that emphasizes its dark heart. In the first run, the unexpected was charming and quirky — but in The Return, it’s a means for Lynch to upend form itself, to terrifying, unsettling effect. Kyle MacLachlan is back at the forefront, but while Dale Cooper’s face is the same, behind it are twin uncanny simulacra of the FBI agent we know and love. Is there a trace of him left in the bumbling, green-suited Dougie, or the ruthless Mr. C? More familiar faces dot the Pacific Northwest landscape, while new ones (including a musical performance from Sharon Van Etten) take the story in even stranger directions. Pre-show introducers, post-show discussions and returning pop-ups from Pie Rewind will accompany The Return repertory series — curated by Quinn Hills — on Wednesday nights in August and September. Tickets are available online. ANNIE PARNELL THROUGH SEPT. 23 AT THE BELCOURT 2102 BELCOURT AVE.
TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN
nashvillescene.com
Live Music at ON BROADWAY
The Main Room
7/31 MUSIC CITY STONES
8/1 THE VOID: ROCK & INDUSTRIAL NIGHT
8/6, 8/7, & 8/9 EAST NASHVILLE FACEBOOK PAGE: THE MUSICAL
8/8 PRO WRESTLING SYMPHONY: NO REMORSE
8/12 GIMME GIMME MORE MARKET
8/13 RAQ BABY
8/14 STATIC SURGE FEST
8/15 AUDIO GEAR SWAP EXTRAVAGANZA
8/21 DEFY FILM FESTIVAL
8/29 KARROT: A TRIBUTE TO KORN
8/30 EMAROSA
9/9 VOLUMES
9/10 ATTA BOY
9/12 OVERTOW: A TRIBUTE TO TOOL
9/17 MILITARIE GUN
9/19 JUTES
9/20 WXNA FALL RECORD FAIR 2026
9/27 HOT FIX SIDESHOW
9/29 MESSER CHUPS
10/2 HAZLETT
10/3 DRIVIN N CRYIN
10/9 OMENBRINGER: A NIGHT ON BLACK MOUNTAIN The ‘58
7/31 BOBBY BARE JR. WITH DANNY MALONE
8/1 REWIND: 80’S MUSIC VIDEO DANCE PARTY
8/3 UNPUBLISHED
8/4 STEEL GUITAR SOCIAL CLUB
8/5 BREAKING SOUND
8/6 THE SOAPGIRLS
8/7 GREASY CHICKEN REVIEW: REVOLVER
8/8 LIP CRITIC
8/10 KATE COSENTINO
8/15 ELECTROLUST
8/16 ACHING BACK SUNDAY
8/18 BULL Y LOS BÚFALOS
8/22 THE VELVET AFFIAR: TROPICAL OASIS
8/25 DESTRUCTO DISK
8/27 HOWLING GRANT
8/28 BOOTSAROO: A “WINDOWS ON THE CUMBERLAND” CELEBRATION
8/29 MOLDING
9/4 THE WELL
9/12 SMOKIN’ PEAS
9/18 DEATH LENS
9/30 HOT ROD CIRCUIT
10/1 THE BLACK QUEEN
10/6 SOPHIE HUNTER
10/17 LAMP FT. LAWTON, METZGER, & PACZKOWSI
The Lounge
7/30 BRITT RONSTADT 7PM
SOFT POWER FM AT 8PM
7/31 91 ROCK WRVU DREAM AT 6PM
8/1 CURT PERKINS &... AT 8PM
8/4 JON BYRD AT 7PM
From platinum-selling chart-toppers to underground , household names to undiscovered gems, Chief’s Neon Steeple is committed to bringing the very best national and regional talent back to Broadway.
JULY LINEUP
7.2 Brinley Addington, Johnny Clawson, Neil Medley
7.4 Aaron Nichols & The Travellers — 4th of July Post-Fireworks Concert!
7.12 Dixieland Delight: Hotter than a Hoochie Coochie — Alan Jackson Tribute
7.14 Buddy's Place Writer's Round w/ Clark Beckham, Kayley Bishop, Fraser Churchill
7.15 Rebecca Lynn Howard, Carolyn Dawn Johnson
7.16 Buddy Jewell
7.18 CJ Field Full Band Show
7.21 Belles, Dan Harrison, Tyler Bank, Adam Sickler
7.22 Uncle B's Damned Ole Opry Presents: Tom Petty's "Wildflowers" Gets Grassed! w/ Taylor McCall, Everette, Matt Warren, Thad Cockrell, Collin Nash, Maura Streppa, more!
7.25 Take Me To Church Tribute — #1 Eric Church Tribute in Americaa
7.26 American Legend — A Tribute to Johnny Cash's Life in Song
7.29 Flat River Band
7.30 Fink, Special Guest: Maggie Koerner
Bourbon Lovers, This is Your Chance!
Enter the Nashville Ronald McDonald House Pappy Van Winkle Raffle for a chance to win the highly coveted six-bottle bourbon and rye flight, valued at $13,000! Tickets are $100, and every purchase provides a home away from home for families with critically ill children! One lucky winner will take home a six-bottle flight of Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon & Rye, including:
Tickets* on sale now through Tuesday, August 11th at 10 a.m. CST or until all tickets are sold, whichever comes first.
FOOD & DRINK
PRIDE OF PLACE
Nashville-based chef service Placemat wants to revolutionize the home-dining experience
BY CHRIS CHAMBERLAIN
WHEN YOU THINK about it, restaurant staffing is pretty much a crapshoot. Unless the reservation books stay full, management has to guess how many bodies will be needed to prepare and serve the number of meals ordered during any particular service. Even if you think you have a good handle on the predicted count, out-oftown groups of visitors — cough, bachelorette parties, cough — are notorious for making multi-
ple reservations for the same time and choosing where to actually eat by which neighborhood they find themselves traipsing through when hunger strikes. The members of the “Last Bash in the Nash” crew are likely not concerned about getting blackballed by The Hampton Social.
Many restaurants try to even out the dips and bumps in staffing needs by encouraging private dining and catering gigs that give prior notice
of how much, what kind and when food will be prepared so they can staff up appropriately. This is helpful, but it requires even more staff to actually handle selling and scheduling these types of events. In an industry that already runs on very slim margins, these inefficiencies can be fatal for a struggling restaurant.
Placemat is a Nashville-based company that aims to provide additional opportunities for culinary workers while offering a valuable service to visitors and locals looking for a unique at-home dining experience. Founder Ryan Reisdorf was a nursing student at Belmont when he came up with the concept: connecting restaurants to home dining in a more engaging way than just dropping off a catered meal.
Dealing with his own Type 1 diabetes while learning about healthcare made Reisdorf conscious of the connection between food and health. He was frustrated that his studies concentrated on reactively treating disorders instead of addressing potential prevention. As someone who managed his diabetes by maintaining a healthy lifestyle, he recognized the benefits of eating better, and he strived to incorporate that into the Placemat model.
He also saw countless Nashville Airbnbs inhabited by rotating groups of hungry tourists — who mostly left their kitchens unused. It seemed like a natural opportunity to provide healthy meals cooked by local chefs so visitors could get a real taste of Nashville. Initially, restaurants were skeptical of the model, and Reisdorf had to
do much of the cooking himself.
The first few years were a struggle to balance the supply of cooks with the demands of diners. If Reisdorf enlisted too many restaurants, individually they wouldn’t feel as much impact from the extra gigs or see the benefits in participating. But without enough choices of cuisines, would diners really want to pay $125 apiece for a dinner at home? After years of hard work, Reisdorf feels he finally has a good equilibrium.
“After building Placemat independently for more than seven years and navigating COVID, I realized we had created the infrastructure and revenue channels to help restaurants extend their dining rooms into people’s homes,” Reisdorf says. “More importantly, I saw an opportunity to open new revenue streams for restaurants that help address the growing affordability challenges facing both restaurants and the people who work in them.”
The service model is essential to Placemat’s success, and what sets it apart from an ordinary catering experience. For a minimum of eight guests, a host can peruse an online list of more than 60 restaurants and culinary partners who range from restaurant chefs who like to get out of the office every so often to cooking instructors and food influencers. The flat rate of $125 (including tax, but not tip) covers a choice of appetizer, a salad, an entrée, two sides and dessert, all served family-style. The three-hour booking includes the chef arriving 90 minutes before service to prepare the food on site using the host’s
Placemat notcatering.com
Follow on Instagram: @eatplacemat
INTERNATIONAL MARKET’S ARNOLD MYINT (LEFT) AND MAC MCCLOSKEY AT A PLACEMAT EVENT
kitchen, cookware and tableware. Chefs clean up as they cook and leave the kitchen the way they found it, with all the pots, pans and dishes loaded in the dishwasher.
extension of what they are already doing — not a catering business. Their success comes from embracing hospitality, being open and flexible to something new, and treating every in-home reservation with the same care they would inside their dining room.”
Locally, Placemat now offers an impressive roster of restaurants, chefs and types of cuisines — from Audrey to Xiao Bao and almost every letter in between. Not every restaurant draws from its own menu for their Placemat offering, preferring to allow the chefs to express a different side of their culinary personality. Others build the menu around the most popular menu items, so you can bet Black Rabbit’s rabbit rolls, Amerigo’s chicken piccata and Fishmonger’s blackened grouper will all be on offer.
Alcohol is not provided — a decent cost saver when you consider typical restaurant markup on a bottle of wine. Reisdorf believes direct interaction between chef and guests is another major differentiating factor.
“Placemat isn’t catering or traditional private cheffing,” says Reisdorf. “Guests are booking a restaurant experience in their home. The restaurant’s own team prepares or finishes the meal on site, serves guests, and creates the same hospitality and interaction people would expect inside the restaurant. This is a new stage for the restaurant and its team to cook on, which allows guests to get a little bit behind the scenes and to hear the stories of these culinary professionals that make Nashville special.”
Placemat has picked up momentum over the past year, and restaurants are lining up to join the service. Margot McCormack and Hadley Long of Margot Café & Bar — which closed its doors in June — were among the first chefs to jump on board. Long will still come to your home and cook a Margot-style meal or something different, even now that the restaurant has shuttered. Reisdorf feels that Placemat should be additive to the revenue stream of any restaurant that joins up, or even chefs who don’t have a restaurant.
“Our goal is to help restaurants make more money and market what they already do exceptionally well without adding another brick-andmortar location or additional overhead. Placemat creates a new revenue channel while helping restaurants build deeper relationships with guests and strengthen long-term sustainability.”
The chefs who already really “get it” are discovering the advantages of working with Placemat.
“Partners like Hadley Long, Ryan Costanza from Present Tense, and chef Chris DeJesus from Butcher & Bee understand that Placemat is an
Other benefits include the opportunity to give up-and-coming cooks on a restaurant staff the chance to step into the spotlight and develop more comfort working directly with guests. Restaurant owners might want to send a sous chef out to make a little extra money on a slow night while helping to control their own labor costs. The fact that guests need to schedule at least 10 days in advance gives the restaurant the chance to plan ahead for staffing.
Reisdorf is pretty pleased with the supply side of his business. He has grown the demand side enough to attract plenty of participating chefs and restaurants across 11 states, so now he’s concentrating on building up the number of users to accelerate acceptance from partners and users. It’s a delicate balance to maintain, but Reisdorf is confident about the future.
“We see Placemat operating in more than 25 major U.S. markets, leading restaurant-led in-home dining experiences,” he says when asked where he sees his company in five years. “Our vision is to create an entirely new category of dining that helps restaurants become more financially sustainable while changing what people think a restaurant reservation can be.” ▼
DOWNTOWN REBOUND
The Untitled Nashville Hotel helps the downtown art district bounce back
BY JOE NOLAN
WHEN 21C MUSEUM HOTEL opened its Nashville location in 2017, the Louisville-based boutique chain converted a historic downtown building on Second Avenue into an art-forward hotel, complete with unique art exhibition spaces throughout. For six years, 21c’s world-class art exhibitions were a highlight of Nashville’s downtown art district. Then spring 2020 brought the pandemic, followed by the Christmas Day bombing. Downtown Nashville struggled, and in July 2023, 21c Nashville officially ceased operations. This June, following a multimillion-dollar rebrand to Hilton’s Tapestry Collection, the hotel reopened as The Untitled Nashville Hotel at Bankers Alley.
Curator Anna McKeown is the hand that threads the needle between Untitled Nashville’s dual identities as a hotel and museum. She helped develop gallery programs that remained vital even as the venue’s branding kept changing. The galleries at Untitled Nashville emphasize local and regional artists, so hotel guests can experience contemporary Southern art at museum scale, while Nashville artists gain institutional contemporary art spaces in a scene that’s thirsty for more.
“We want to give our visitors a sense of place,” she explained after the museum’s grand opening last month, “but there also has to be a sense of play.”
The Untitled Nashville Hotel is the newest development in a broader revival of the downtown art district. In 2006, the commercial galleries on Fifth Avenue North and artist-led spaces in the Arcade co-founded the First Saturday Art Crawl, pulling together studios and galleries into a
monthly event that became buzzworthy with locals and tourists alike, and saw Music City’s visual art culture landing mentions in national press. Eventually development pressure, rising rents and the creative migration to Wedgewood-Houston thinned the district’s creative ranks. The Arcade was mostly emptied when investors purchased it in 2021 and undertook a three-year renovation.
Now Arcade Arts has been established on the building’s newly restored second floor, where 12 rent-free artist studios welcomed their first cohort in October 2024. Events, workshops, gallery shows and curated programming have made Arcade Arts a multifaceted highlight of the district. The program’s spaces provide local artists and independent curators with crucial infrastructure, and its educational, social and cultural offerings restore the raison d’être of the original Arcade art scene: a broad selection of creative exhibitions, studios and happenings all in one place.
Tinney Contemporary has been on Fifth Avenue — now Rep. John Lewis Way — since the early days of the original downtown art crawl, before the First Saturday event dwindled to just a few venues. Through it all, gallery owner Susan Tinney — along with Joshua Edward Bennett, who has been the gallery’s director since 2020 — has maintained one of Nashville’s most consistent and ambitious exhibition programs by striking a balance between the tastes of the commercial art district and the stranger flavors of the neighborhood’s artist-led projects.
More recently, Tinney and neighborhood arts leaders like McKeown formed the Downtown
on Fifth Avenue North. Anne Brown opened her expansive artsy exhibition emporium in 1996 and built it into one of the pioneering outposts of Nashville’s contemporary art scene. In November 2019, artist Jorge Arrieta took over ownership from Brown, and he rebranded it Chauvet Arts in 2020. Chauvet recently made the move to a new home on Union Street, where the gallery speaks with a distinct curatorial voice focused on Southern art and pop-inspired work. The new crawl also includes Visual Minds Co.’s creative third-space sensibility, and Swipe Right Art is curator and photographer Ashley Bergeron’s gallery project.
Saturday Art
January
binding the neighborhood art spaces into a snazzy monthly event that reimagines the original art crawl.
The crawl connects Untitled Nashville Hotel, Arcade Arts and Tinney Contemporary with other venues like the Downtown Presbyterian Church, which has hosted artists-in-residence in its upper floors since 1995. Those resident artists opened The Browsing Room as a curatorial outlet and project space in 2014. It has hosted more than 100 exhibitions, and remains one of the crawl’s most adventurous stops.
Another influential downtown venue is Chauvet Arts, which traces its lineage to The Arts Company — the first commercial gallery
The name Untitled Nashville Hotel may have been chosen because of the spot’s affinity for artsy storytelling, but local gallerygoers with long memories will recall that the founding of the Untitled Artists Group in 1991 marked the beginning of Nashville’s contemporary art scene. The nonprofit, artist-run collective staged uncensored, unjuried, one-night-only pop-up exhibitions in nontraditional spaces across the city. The group’s early iterations are remembered for their irreverent themed art exhibitions, and for seeding Nashville’s visual art culture with a discordian, DIY ethos that insisted on local contemporary art at a time when nobody knew that was a thing. Untitled brought artists together with a sense of place, but they never forgot their sense of play.
May the circle be unbroken. ▼
221 Second Ave. N. theuntitlednashvillehotel.com
Arts District Alliance. DADA launched its Second
Crawl in
2025,
The Untitled Nashville Hotel
ARTWORK BY BRANDON OWEN
ANNA MCKEOWN WITH ARTWORK BY RICHARD HEINSOHN
The Cleverlys with Nick Fallon
Backstage Nashville! Daytime Hit Songwriters Show featuring Earl Bud Lee, Tyler Reeve, Joe Fox & Ray Stephenson
Dave Barnes - Chasing Mississippi Album played in entirety celebrating the 20th Anniversary with Matt Wertz
895 aLIVE presents Cimarron 615 with Abigayle Oakley
The Time Jumpers
Derek St. Holmes
Bluegrass Nashville presents Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen with Rosine
Tim Miner & Friends featuring Benjy Gaither, Tabitha Fair, Chip Davis, Zach Gonzalez & Chris Rodriguez
WMOT Roots Radio Presents Finally Friday featuring Mara Connor, Coyote Midnight & Brand New Heartache Rodriguez
Jimmy Hall & The Prisoners of Love featuring Kenny Greenberg + Jack Ruch with SMC (Ryan & Alex Hall + Chris Smith)
31
Red Vox w/ Super Guitar Bros Jerry Garcia’s 84th Birthday Celebration w/ members of Los Colognes and more Riff Wood w/ Willowake diggy graves w/ resentvul & ryan oakes king lazy eye w/ Hayden Pattengale & violet moons wetouchgrass presents: anime rave the weird sisters w/ pressure heaven clipping.
14
w/ open mike eagle & pedestrian deposit royal coda w/ dwellings, strawberry milk cult, & amarionette josh tatofi w/ abby anderson framing hanley w/ lowfye50, flip the mule & hollow wake abby holiday x charli adams helmet w/ spirit in the room legend zeppelin w/ Obscured By Meddle (Pink Floyd Tribute) Adrian Vandenberg w/ Marco Mendoza and Vinnie Moore my so-called band: all 90's hits live!
hot girl shit w/ Pistol Pearl, Qwynn & more [7pm] sam sample with samuel james [7pm] boomstick w/ los ojos
MUSIC
CATHARTIC BLUES
On
Peaches! The Black Keys dive deeper into the music of North Mississippi
BY DARYL SANDERS
THE BLACK KEYS weren’t planning to make a new record when they went into Easy Eye Sound Studios in March 2025 with the core of musicians who had accompanied them on their high-charting 2021 album Delta Kream Drummer Patrick Carney just wanted to take his partner Dan Auerbach’s mind off a difficult family situation — his father Chuck Auerbach had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer.
“His dad fell ill in the fall, and it progressed to a terminal illness that was officially diagnosed in February,” Carney recalls in a recent interview with the Scene. “I could tell it was really hard for him. I suggested that we call [bassist] Eric Deaton and [guitarist] Kenny Brown, the guys that we made Delta Kream with, back up to Nashville and do some recording. Just casually in the afternoon, for like four days or something.”
As Carney had hoped, the sessions were cathartic for his bandmate.
“We weren’t making a record, we were just jamming, like, this is for us,” lead vocalistguitarist Auerbach says in a release. “Really primal, in a moment when all the nerves were raw, just kinda screaming. … I think my dad getting sick made me not give a fuck and just wanna scream for a bit.”
During those sessions, which included multi-instrumentalist Jimbo Mathus of Squirrel Nut Zippers fame, the duo recorded 15 songs, eight of which are featured on their latest album Peaches! Released May 1, Peaches! is in many ways a sequel to Delta Kream, their 2021 exploration of North Mississippi blues, but it’s a louder, more raucous record. With the exception of a few vocal and percussion overdubs, everything was recorded live and unrehearsed in one or two takes, with all the musicians in the same room. It’s probably the rawest record the group has made since their debut album, 2002’s
“I’ve only played double drums a couple times in my life,” Carney says. “So I just popped over to the studio, and yeah, it was cool.”
Once the tracks were completed with backing vocal overdubs by Andy Gabbard and percussion overdubs by Chris St. Hilaire and Sam Bacco, Carney and Auerbach began mixing the record.
“The mixing took a long time because the vocals and everything were live in one room,” Carney explains. “It was slightly difficult to balance all the bleed coming through everything, so it took us like three weeks to mix it.”
THE WHISPER THAT OPENS UP THE DOOR
Jessie Gray seeks answers from the universe on The Muse BY
BOBBIE JEAN SAWYER
The Big Come Up. A number of tracks feature a three-guitar attack, with Mathus on rhythm, Brown on slide and Auerbach on lead.
“Delta Kream is more like a trance,” Carney says. “There’re moments where this kind of sounds like The Stooges.”
As they were for the earlier album, late North Mississippi juke joint legends R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough are the musical touchstones for this record. They were the first two artists Auerbach and Carney bonded over when they were becoming friends in 1997.
“When we were like 17, Dan came to my house and was looking through my records,” Carney recalls. “I had just gone to a record store and bought the R.L. Burnside ‘Georgia Woman’ 45. He saw that and was like, ‘You know who R.L. Burnside is?’ … I was the only guy that he knew that had even heard of those guys. So he said, ‘You need to check out Junior Kimbrough.’ So the first thing we shared in common was Junior and R.L.”
Peaches! features 10 songs written by other artists. There’s a song by Burnside and two by Kimbrough’s son David Kimbrough Jr., as well as material by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, Ike Turner and Dr. Feelgood among others.
“I don’t want this to be perceived as a covers record,” Auerbach says. “It’s so much of a retelling that to call it a covers record would be to oversimplify it.”
“We never even referenced the originals,” Carney says. “We just recorded them on the floor live.”
A pair of tracks — “Stop Arguing With Me” and “Fireman Ring the Bell” — feature two drummers: Carney and another of Junior Kimbrough’s sons, Kenny Kimbrough. Those songs were recorded in 2024 when the same lineup minus Carney was working on an album for Robert Finley.
The songs chosen for Peaches! grew out of Auerbach and Carney’s keen interest in obscure recordings. That shared obsession has led to them occasionally hosting record hangs open to the public. Over the years, they’ve hosted a couple in Nashville, including one at Skinny Dennis in September. Carney says they may host another record hang when they bring their Peaches ’N Kream World Tour to Nashville next week for a pair of shows, Aug. 6 and 7 at The Pinnacle.
“It’s essentially like a dance party, but trying to play stuff that’s relatively obscure,” Carney says. “Songs that sound like they should have been hits, but weren’t hits. … We pick a spot and pop in. We try to avoid rock clubs. I think we’re going to do one in Nashville after The Pinnacle show on [Aug. 7]. Part of the fun is to announce it last-minute, because you want the people to come that are gonna dance.”
Anyone interested in dancing should keep an eye on the duo’s Instagram page for an announcement of the location. ▼
Peaches! out now via Easy Eye Sound Playing 8 p.m. Aug. 6-7 at The Pinnacle
IN MANY WAYS, singer-songwriter Jessie Gray’s new album is a scrapbook of her first few years in Nashville. Gray wrote most of the songs during her first couple of years here, following her arrival in 2021, and began recording the album in 2024 at renowned East Nashville studio The Bomb Shelter with producer Matthew Welde. The work continued outside the studio as vocals and string arrangements were overdubbed at friends’ houses around Music City.
“This is my first Nashville album,” Gray tells the Scene. “Matthew Welde was doing this recording process with me, so it was like having a friend help you who sometimes believes in your music more than you. It was a really special experience because of that.”
The result of that labor of love is Gray’s second record The Muse, out July 31 on Bandcamp and on streaming platforms next month. It’s a stunning ninetrack album with spare arrangements built around gentle fingerpicked guitar and Gray’s ever-so-slightly tremulous voice, which she uses to explore various catalysts for inspiration and artistic expression.
“There’s the muse of grief and heartbreak and loss, and there’s the muse of longing for everlasting love,” Gray says. “Then there’s the muse of creation. There’s the muse that’s guiding us through all that we do.”
Raised in a musical family in New Jersey — her father played guitar and her grandfather was a drummer and saxophone player — Gray recalls that singing and writing were always constants in her life.
“I was always writing … just for my own catharsis, or [writing] journal entries or poetry,” she says, noting that Jeff Buckley, Patti Smith, Virginia Woolf, Adrianne Lenker and Laura Marling are among her inspirations. “I was trying to figure things out with writing.”
Though she grew up singing, Gray didn’t start writing songs until her early 20s. A monthlong stay studying
yoga in an ashram helped her rekindle her passion for music in general and for her voice in particular.
“We all had to sing together every night,” Gray says.
“I remember that feeling of ‘Oh my gosh, I miss this feeling of singing.’ It’s been the thing that’s given me the most life.”
Gray’s warm, ethereal vibrato has a timeless quality that sounds like it could be from the 1920s as easily as the 2020s. Take “Can We Call It Love,” a delicate, cinematic standout from The Muse, which Gray says was inspired by the “tangible desire to understand the more human relationships I was in.” The night before she wrote the song, a talk with a friend about the nature of creativity lit a spark for her.
“Ideally as artists we’re antennas, and we’re trying to pick up what God or the universe is sending and just let it come through us,” she says. “I remember that conversation being really inspiring. The next day I was sitting down to write and just sitting with that. I was in a new relationship at the time. I remember wanting to grapple [with the question of] ‘What is eternal love? What is real love that is unending and love that is forever?’ It was trying to answer the big questions that we can’t answer.”
thing that I knew I wanted to go towards, but I couldn’t see it yet. I remember a literal winged creature flying around me.”
The Muse is a perfect late-summer album, made for twilight listening amid a chorus of cicadas and katydids. Gray’s vocals and vivid lyricism are at the forefront of each song, such as the haunting “Follow,” which echoes with the eldritch lilt of a forgotten fairy tale, and “Black Sea,” a mournful sea shanty featuring pure notes at such high pitches that they feel supernatural.
“We really wanted the raw voice to be on top,” Gray says. “A lot of music tucks the voice, tucks the lyric. We wanted it to be really live and real and raw. … It’s pretty sensitive and open to touch. It’s right there. I’m proud of the way that truth came through, the honesty of it.”
Gray hopes her music encourages listeners to slow down and focus on their own humanity and how we’re all connected.
“I would love people to feel less alone. We’re all in our own aloneness in some way.” ▼
MUSIC: THE SPIN
I FEEL SAFE WITH YOU, TRASH
BY ANNIE PARNELL
SINCE THEY EMERGED in the ’90s from Elephant 6, the same sprawling rock collective we have to thank for Neutral Milk Hotel, Of Montreal has been emblematic of a certain kind of maximalist quirk. One 2009 entry in our live-review column The Spin calls them “psychedelic sex fiends.” Another, uncovered by Scene writer Julianne Akers from the depths of 2011, calls them “hyper-sexualized pop androgyny straight out of Athens, Ga.”
This is a band that is stranger and darker than all the Technicolor suggests, though.
“Wraith Pinned to the Mist (and Other Games)” from their 2005 album The Sunlandic Twins might be many people’s first exposure to Of Montreal — with a little thanks to Outback Steakhouse, naturally. But on the same record, frontperson Kevin Barnes imagines the effects of a grisly tide of fascism (sound familiar?) in the anthemic “Forecast Fascist Future.” On “I Was Never Young,” Barnes repeats the line “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been a brooding basket case” into absurdity, taking the twee hallmark of singsongy contrast to new heights.
In “The Moth,” Gray explores the muse of artistic creation.
“I remember sitting outside and being at a point where I had to decide to focus on the light, and on the things that I knew would prevail in me,” she says. “It was kind of like my future self guiding me towards some-
At The Mil at Cannery Hall July 21, that strangeness was foregrounded by a shapeshifting bill. First, Nashville native Nordista Freeze took the stage for a solo set, trading his typical experimental pop for mellow, acoustic guitar picking. He told a story about seeing Of Montreal in the same room years ago and being accosted by security for trying to crowdsurf. Freeze also handled an audience member’s sudden fall like a champ, pausing the set to chat with the crowd and lie back and look at the ceiling. After the all-clear came through, he brought special guests Sunshine Scott, Crumbsnatchers’ Samuel “Guetts” Guetterman and Future Crib’s Bryce Dubray onstage for a
The Muse will be selfreleased Friday, July 31
NORDISTA FREEZE
gorgeous stripped-down take on his 2021 release “Wysteria,” as well as a charming cover of The Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby.”
The vibe shifted when theatrical chambernoise band Sloppy Jane took over. As “Blue Velvet” played behind them, the group set up two violins, a flute and a cello, and the band’s mastermind Haley Dahl stepped out in fishnets and a blue tailcoat to start the set by conducting the ensemble to produce a round of discordant, off-kilter sound. A wall of noise followed. Sloppy Jane’s act is a bit like PJ Harvey meets Alice in Wonderland, and between pummeling forthcoming releases and churning favorites from the band’s 2021 album Madison, their I Saw the TV Glow soundtrack feature “Claw Machine” provided a moment of calm. With a fresh set of electric-blue makeup tear tracks running down her cheeks, Dahl had the room wrapped around her finger. At one point, she silenced a whoop from an audience member with a single swift hand motion, and later she caressed another’s face after crawling into the crowd. At the end of the set, she led everyone in a “New Year’s in July” countdown, confessing she loves the “free pass” the holiday offers and screaming, “Is this going to be our year?”
An Of Montreal set is a true audiovisual experience, and their headline performance began with a projection of the artwork for Aethermead, the album the group released in June, plus a massive sculpture of the one-eyed creature at its center. The Mil crowd was packed with members of Of Montreal’s thriving cult fan base who knew every lyric, from the new album all the way back to their 1997 debut Cherry Peel. The marathon set ran the gamut of that decades-spanning discography, complete with psychedelic on-screen visuals and backup dancers dressed in high-concept costumes.
These songs feel somehow edgier live — like the bitterness in them ironically has more space to shine among all the lights and zany antics. Aethermead’s “Already Dreaming” is really a pretty biting number about a decaying relationship, and the quippy Knoxville sendup in Aureate Gloom’s “Empyrean Abattoir” has even more teeth when you’re hearing it performed in Nashville. Barnes’ charisma and stage presence created a truly dynamic set, constantly moving and changing and inspiring the whole crowd to dance. They led a cover of “Tennessee Waltz” that found them waltzing onstage with robed skeletons before it spun out directly into a performance of “Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider,” complete with droll pointing and finger wags that accentuated the song’s camp lyrics. “Triumph of Disintegration,” meanwhile, ripped with gnarly frustration, especially paired with the sweetness of “Peace to All Freaks.”
Of Montreal excels at letting that bitterness coexist with joy — as Barnes declared onstage during “Take the Form,” “If I can do no harm, then I can do no good.” It’s a symbiotic duality: Dancing helps us to process our pain, and tumult makes humor feel all the more precious. During the epic closer “Nonpareil of Favor,” keyboardist JoJo Glidewell’s voice called out through a haze of sound and flashing lights.
“I couldn’t fall asleep, so I punished myself,” Barnes confessed to an ecstatic audience, as the band harmonized behind them. It was strange and funny and cathartic — the perfect distillation of a decidedly trippy Tuesday evening. ▼
Saturday, August 1
SONGWRITER SESSION Dani Flowers NOON · FORD THEATER
Sunday, August 2
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT Guthrie Trapp 1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, August 8
SONGWRITER SESSION Carter Faith NOON · FORD THEATER
Saturday, August 8
NASHVILLE CATS Salute to Musician John Jorgenson 2:30 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, August 8
HATCH SHOW PRINT Block Party
3:00 pm and 6:00 pm HATCH SHOW PRINT SHOP
WITNESS HISTORY
Sunday, August 9
HATCH SHOW PRINT Family Block Party 10:00 am HATCH SHOW PRINT SHOP
Sunday, August 9
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT Matt Combs 1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, August 15
SONGWRITER SESSION Luke Dick NOON · FORD THEATER
Wednesday, August 19
LOUISE SCRUGGS MEMORIAL FORUM Honoring Trey Fanjoy 6:30 pm · FORD THEATER
Sunday, August 23
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT Luis Espaillat 1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Locals Kids Always Visit Free Plan a trip to the Museum! 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.
SLOPPY JANE
IT’S NATURAL, IT’S CHEMICAL
I Want Your Sex is a brisk, freeing, imperfect romp
BY JASON SHAWHAN
CAN GEN Z and Gen X make it work together, sexually? Don’t millennials get to play as well? Is it possible to find a common starting point to build something … if not enduring, then something rewarding? Is this an evolution of Prince’s “U Got The Look” and its “boy versus girl in the World Series of love”? Sort of. I Want Your Sex is a film about power dynamics and hornitude and the questions we don’t often ask one another in a public forum, and thankfully, it’s a Gregg Araki film (along with co-writer Karley Sciortino),
CAMPING OUT
Avalon Fast’s witchy, dreamlike CAMP is now available to rent
BY ANNIE PARNELL
WE ARE IN the midst of a queer horror renaissance — and it’s a perfect antidote for our current Christofascist era. This summer, scary movies about queerness and religion are everywhere, each presenting community as a path to transcendence. In Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (coming to the Belcourt in August), Gillian Anderson seems to have developed a zealous devotion to the slasher Little Death. In Adrian Chiarella’s debut Leviticus, two teenage boys flee a conversion therapy demon. In CAMP, a witchy Chattanooga Film Festival selection from Canadian director Avalon Fast, the character Clara (Alice Wordsworth) declares: “God brought me to the devil, and to my closest friends.” CAMP is not an easy movie to watch — but if you speak its language, it’s positively hypnotic. Stylistically, it’s impressionistic and dreamlike: While the term “Lynchian” has been overused as shorthand for “weird cinema,” CAMP directly nods to the Twin Peaks mastermind with lingering liminal shots, fourth-wall disrup-
I Want Your Sex R, 90 minutes
Opening Friday, July 31, at the Belcourt and Regal and AMC locations
so it’s briskly paced, not afraid to deploy the groceries, and happy to plant some seeds in the lesser-traveled parts of the brain. Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman are along for the ride, broadening the canvas and leaving furniture to be professionally cleaned.
This is a film with a lot on its plate, aiming to mellow out Gen Z about sexual indecision but also making a point that Gen X talks a great game about being free and experimental even when there’s no coherent philosophy operating
tions and unmooring tableaus. Fast calls their work “girl horror,” and pulls from predecessors Picnic at Hanging Rock, Yellowjackets and Heavenly Creatures, as well as the moody animation and lush wild landscapes of ’80s dark fantasy films. At one point in CAMP, a teenage girl reaches out of an attic window into a painted indigo sky, drawing in beams of stardust. At another, blinding light from a massive white cross coats a dark lake where a girl is swimming.
Narratively, CAMP also asks us to accept uncomfortable sympathies from the start. We follow Emily (Zola Grimmer), a young woman at the center of two freak accidents: a vehicular manslaughter when she was a teenager, and her best friend’s accidental overdose in her car, on drugs Emily gave her. Emily’s grief and self-hatred over both deaths distorts time. Her trauma is inconvenient and embarrassing, erupting in awkward answers to Truth or Dare at parties and explosive fights at home with her dad (Michael Tan).
When Emily’s dad convinces her to spend a summer as a counselor at a mysterious Christian camp for “damaged kids,” however, she’s embraced immediately. She befriends a tight-knit coven of fellow counselors: chipper Rosie (Cherry Moore), lonely Nev (Lea Rose Sebastianis), introspective Hope (Ella Reece, with some striking monologues) and Clara, with whom she
behind the scenes. There’s no big horny eureka here (not like in Araki’s 2010 film Kaboom, at least) — just a lot of ribald skirmishes that leave the viewer to keep score and figure out how they’ve been conducting themselves in the boudoir (or leatherette couch, or pool, or modern workplace). Plus one midcredits scene that raises the ante for interrogating the Gen X perspective on matrimony with a jaw-dropping flourish.
Wilde is very good as the artist Erika, a button-pusher quickly running out of buttons. We get the ongoing battle she’s fighting against the exterior world and its constant disdain for women who ford their own path, but we also understand the internal uncertainty that is eating her alive, trying to wring relevance out of a naughty reputation. (In a way, this is like a more naked version of The Christophers, which was released earlier this year.) It’s a gutsy performance that makes the audience work for it, just as effective as what Hoffman is doing but coming from a completely different cultural space. There’s something mercenary about Erika, both sexually and as a businessperson, and Wilde never softens the edges to make things easier for the audience. Hoffman is a revelation
CAMP
NR, 111 min Available to rent on Amazon Prime and the Letterboxd Video Store
here, a cubby golden retriever of a sub who has boundless enthusiasm and a willingness to fling open doors and doff his drawers to figure out what sparks his joy.
Taking structural signposts equally from Sunset Boulevard and 9 ½ Weeks, this is very much in Araki’s wheelhouse. It’s a spicy ride that offers a lot to think about, as well as providing a continuum with which to evaluate one’s own sexual ways and means. Each of the supporting characters could star in their own film, with Mason Gooding vivisecting the kind of gay stereotypes that only gay people deploy, Araki/Catherine Breillat all-star Roxane Mesquida giving all the French business, and Charli XCX in another finely tuned but tiny (possibly ace) role that keeps the viewer wondering when she’s going to turn up again.
It’s not a home run, though, with some clangy moments that feel like they could have been dropped in mistakenly from a Bill Maher writers’ room. The same goes for a Roisin Murphy needle-drop. (Granted, her song “Something More” predates her virulent transphobic turn by almost three years, but it still breaks the mood.) Even in a plasticine adult fairy-tale land, there are still the little indications of the emotional brick wall of a world we live in. The fact that we’re never going to get a second season of the series Now Apocalypse is already cruel enough, one might think. But in the deeply repressed and unhappy moment we’re all stuck in, there is something genuinely freeing in this film, and it could very well do quite a bit of good. ▼
begins to form a deeper connection. Kick-started by “sacrificing” a fellow staff member’s virginity to gain more power, the group’s disaffected hijinks grow increasingly dark. It’s the kind of all-consuming, obsessive female friendship common to sapphic coming-of-age, and Fast leaves room for multiple interpretations. Has Emily found her people — or been pulled into something
sinister through the high of feeling seen? Are the girls to blame for the extreme places they go to create solace? Queer stories don’t have to be didactic to be honest, especially when they center the messy, ego-dissolving process of figuring out who you are. What Fast has accomplished with CAMP is a rare feat — one that heralds the arrival of a new queer auteur to watch. ▼
63 & 65 Market no-no … or a hint to entering the answers to the starred clues
1 Some terminals
7 Gamer’s state of invincibility enabled by a cheat code 14 Listens to, as a radio station 16 Achieves success for the first time
17 *They may result in people wrongly being sent to jail
*Bonny young girl
Spanner of 11 time zones
Klondike territory
Copacabana locale
*Exercise experts 26 Bit of improv
28 One end of a playground “telephone”
30 Wish for a romantic pairing between, in modern lingo
33 “Thor: Ragnarok” actress Thompson
35 *Advocate of women’s equality
38 Tower in the water
39 Hi-fi spinners
41 Ewe said it!
42 School org.
43 *“Let’s pick up the pace!”
46 Preschooler’s wheels
48 Trivia contest venues
49 Restaurant icon McDonald
51 Breakfast that may be prepared overnight
54 *Some online courses
58 “The Matrix” character
60 N.C.A.A. basketball powerhouse, informally
62 Cantina freebie
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE
68 Simply taboo
69 Melted adhesive 70 Categorizes 71 Removes a curse?
Up
2 Front-line hero during the 2020 pandemic
3 “We’re live!” studio sign
4 Goes 5 Spanish pronoun
6 The Science Kid, in children’s television
7 Get an eyeful
8 Some McFlurry ingredients
9 Knocked back a few
10 Bad start?
11 Analyze excessively
12 Slicer’s place
13 ExxonMobil brand
15 “Bye Bye Bye” boy band
21 Falcons’ grp.
24 Congressional divide
25 Like purchases made while playing freemium games
27 Distinctive doctrine
29 Point of writing
31 “So that’s how it is”
32 Organizer of an after-school event, in brief
33 You might go on tiptoe in this
34 Consequences of compliments
36 Sharansky who wrote the memoir “Fear No Evil”
37 Country rocker Steve with the album “Exit 0”
38 Medicinal amt.
40 Paul McCartney, for one
44 Org. that hires cryptanalysts
45 Minor municipality
47 Conventioneer’s passport
50 First grade of high school, typically
52 Old royal house
53 Lilac, e.g.
55 Twinkle-toed
56 Preceding time
57 Solomonic figures
58 1492 caravel
59 Grandson of Eve
61 Get a lode of these!
Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 9,000 past puzzles, nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year).
Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/ wordplay. Crosswords for young solvers: nytimes.com/ studentcrosswords.
64 Words sealed with a kiss
66 ___ blind
67 W.N.B.A.’s Dream, on scoreboards
Puzzle by Tarun Krishnamurthy
Amazon.com Services LLC seeks candidates for the following (multiple positions available) in Nashville, TN. Apply at: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/ , referencing job ID
AMZ16015.6: Industrial Designer II (Job ID: AMZ16015.6). Design, develop, test, and deliver straightforward solutions (e.g., workflow/process path layout, space utilization/efficiency, ergonomics, etc.), seeking input and guidance from team members or your manager. Identify and communicate any issues associated with the design, development, implementation, and optimization of fulfillmentcenter technologies or design solution. Domestic or international travel up to 25% to perform role responsibilities may be required. Salary Range: $106912 - $160000
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Services, LLC seeks Lead Data/Information Architect in Hermitage, TN to lead the strategic oversight and planning of data models and database structural design, development, and maintenance. Works closely with firm development teams to deliver on major firm projects and initiatives. Telecommuting/working from home is permissible within commutable distance.
APPLICATION METHOD: Search by Req # "5410" and apply online at https://applyglobal.deloitte.c om/careers/
Envision Physician Services, LLC seeks DevOps Engineer IV in Nashville, TN to architect & lead implementation of advanced CI/CD pipelines, IaC, & DevSecOps integrations across cloud-native & hybrid env’ts. BS in CS, Info Sys, Engineering, related field, or foreign equiv req’d & 5 yrs exp in DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, or Infra Engineering, incl. at least 2 yrs focused on Data Engineering environments in DevOps Engineer or rlt’d position req’d. In alt, employer will accept MS in CS, Info Sys, Engineering, related field, or foreign equiv & 2 yrs exp in DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, or Infra Engineering, incl. at least 2 yrs focused on Data Engineering environments in DevOps Engineer or rlt’d position. Add’l specific skills req’d. Position is 100% remote. For details & to apply, visit: https://careers.envisionhealt h.com/.
Full Stack Developer. Develop, create, and modify computer application software and specialized utility programs. Employer: Applied Health Analytics, LLC. Location: Nashville, TN. May telecommute from a location within normal commuting distance of Nashville, TN. To apply, email your resume to R. Sloan at r.sloan@appliedhealth.net.
Amazon.com Services LLC seeks candidates for the following (multiple positions available) in Nashville, TN. Apply at: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/ , referencing job ID AMZ24223.2: Supply Chain Mgr III (Job ID: AMZ24223.2). Facilitate supply chain analysis to identify and recommend improvement opportunities for both new and existing processes scaling processes to standard methodologies across businesses, and leading alignment across organizations. Identify and drive operational improvements by proposing network wide solutions that improve the health of the supply chain. Salary Range: $139651 - $148400
following (multiple positions available) in Nashville, TN. Apply at: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/ , referencing job ID AMZ24223.2: Supply Chain Mgr III (Job ID: AMZ24223.2). Facilitate supply chain analysis to identify and recommend improvement opportunities for both new and existing processes scaling processes to standard methodologies across businesses, and leading alignment across organizations. Identify and drive operational improvements by proposing network wide solutions that improve the health of the supply chain. Salary Range: $139651 - $148400
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