Month: June 2005

Categories
Music Music Features

local beat

After a decade on Beale Street, the Memphis chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (aka the Recording Academy, aka the Grammy folks) has set up new digs on South Main. The Recording Academy moved to 493 South Main, Suite 101, over Memorial Day weekend, setting up shop at the new address on Wednesday, June 1st.

“We’d been admiring the development in the South Main historic district, and we wanted to be somewhere where we can help a neighborhood develop,” says project manager Katherine Sage. “That’s what we did on Beale Street 10 years ago, and it was time for a change.”

The Recording Academy inhabits the bottom floor of a three-story building, in a space designed by South Main neighbors, architecture firm Archimania. The second and third stories of the building will be sold as condos. The building, located between Central Station and the entrance to the National Civil Rights Museum, offers a different vibe from the noisier, people-packed atmosphere of Beale Street.

Sage says the organization’s sign was beginning to get lost amid the neon on Beale. “We’re looking forward to this being a more accessible location for our members and customers to come and see what we’re all about. We like that this space is more user-friendly.”

The Recording Academy plans an open house for their new location on Friday, July 29th, which will coincide with one of the neighborhood’s Trolley Tour nights.

In the meantime, the academy will sponsor a screening of the musical documentary Make It Funky! Thursday, June 23rd, at Malco’s Studio on the Square in Midtown. The documentary focuses on the evolution of the funk and R&B sound in New Orleans, featuring artists such as the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, the Neville Brothers, and Allen Toussaint. Director Michael Murphy will be on hand to speak about the film, while artist Kermit Ruffins will provide live music. The event will be catered by famed New Orleans restaurant Galatoire’s. The event starts at 6 p.m. with a $20 admission. Recording Academy members get in free.

Local Music News and Notes: After being delayed by this spring’s Easley-McCain Studio fire, local rockers The Glass have finally finished recording their third album with producer Kevin Cubbins and have rescheduled a canceled May record-release show. The celebration now takes place Friday, June 24th, at the Young Avenue Deli. After the show, the band will head out on a month-long tour alongside fellow locals Lucero, whose new Nobody‘s Darlings was recently reviewed in Spin. The Lucero/Glass tour starts Thursday, July 7th, in St. Louis and will hit Western cities such as Denver, San Francisco, and Portland … Alvin Youngblood Hart‘s Motivational Speaker, his first electric album since 2000’s great Start With the Soul, is due out this week on Tone Cool/Artemis … Other Memphis-connected records due out in the coming weeks include singer-songwriter John Hiatt‘s Master of Disaster on June 21st. Recorded at Ardent Studios with Jim Dickinson at the helm, the record also features back-up from North Mississippi Allstars Luther and Cody Dickinson … Also on June 21st, a couple of interesting collections are on tap. Local label Ecko will release On the Chitlin Circuit: Southern Soul Hits and historic local radio station WDIA will release a two-disc collection of music and station history/soundbites, WDIA-AM 1070: The History, The Music, The Legend … You may have to wait awhile longer for the upcoming Big Star album, but newest members Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow will have a new album from their other band, The Posies, out June 28th. Titled Every Kind of Light, the album is on Rykodisc, the same label that will release the Big Star record … June 28th also sees the start of another round of Al Green reissues. The ongoing reissue series picks up with Green’s 1975 classic Livin‘ for You, but the feature attraction will be 1977’s self-produced The Belle Album. Other titles include Al Green Is Love, Full of Fire, Have a Good Time, and Truth n Time … A couple of weeks later, on July 12th, Arista/Legacy will reissue a real rarity, Green’s pre-Memphis 1967 album Back Up Train, recorded under the name Al Green & The Soul Mates … That date should also be a big one for local rap, as Three 6 Mafia cohort Frayser Boy releases Me Being Me on the group’s Hypnotize Minds label. But the big story will be the arrival, just ahead of the film, of the soundtrack to Craig Brewer‘s Hustle & Flow. The final track list for the record hasn’t been released, but you can hear instrumental samples of some of the tracks on the film’s Web site HustleandFlow.com, which also features a “Memphis Insider” link where Brewer waxes romantic about such Memphis haunts as Black Lodge Video and Cozy Corner barbecue shop. n

Categories
News The Fly-By

GERMAN CHOCOLATE

For the past year, German authorities have been trying to stop pranksters from mounting tiny George W. Bush flags into piles of dog crap. Legal experts claim there¹s no law against using crap as a flag stand and are not sure what sort of action might be taken against the offenders should they be caught poo-handed. Perhaps the German authorities should pay a visit to Germantown where, no doubt, there¹s an ordinance against such things.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Surfin Safari

Many visitors to the Memphis Zoo this summer might call it a “hot spot.” The animals can retreat to the shade or the cool waters of their moats, an amenity that could make zoo patrons jealous. But humans will soon have access to one hot spot the animals don’t.

Next time you’re visiting the zoo, you might want to try bringing a laptop — and your opposable thumbs — because the Memphis Zoo is the city’s newest “hot spot,” a place where you can access the Internet.

Memphis-based Catecea Sound installed wireless access around the zoo’s reflecting pool, as well as in the zoo’s education department. For visitors, the reflecting pool is a calm, shady area where you can check e-mail, do a little pre- or post-visit research, or surf the Web while basking in faux-Egyptian splendor. The wireless access is not officially up and running yet, but I was able to connect during my visit, so the system clearly has promise.

Catecea’s motivation for the installation was education, according to the company’s president, John Fleskes.

“What we’ve installed right now is a backbone system that will support the growth of wireless throughout the zoo, hopefully for the next couple decades,” said Fleskes. “Ultimately, I would like for the Memphis Zoo to go completely wireless, to become a virtual zoo, so that more people can have access to it.”

The zoo is still formulating plans on how to take advantage of the technology.

“We want to put together programs that would increase the visitor experience and integrate this new hardware into the activities of the education department,” said Brian Carter, the zoo’s director of marketing and communications.

In some ways, the zoo is ideal for the Internet, especially when visiting with children, because it can provoke so many questions. After watching the new baby orangutan at the nursery, I checked orangutans out online and learned that they are the most arboreal of all primates, meaning they spend almost all their time in trees, and adults rarely, if ever, touch the ground.

Other Memphis hot spots include Court Square, the Tobacco Bowl, the Deliberate Literate, and Empire Coffee.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Four More Years?

It’s time to bring our sojourn in Iraq back into some focus. And a few recent events and news stories should help us on our way.

First, there was the recent story by Walter Pincus in The Washington Post, in which it was revealed that two of the Army intelligence analysts most responsible for the notorious aluminum-tube snafu have been given performance commendations in each of the past three years. It would be one thing if this were just a close call that someone got wrong because of incomplete evidence. But every report and investigation into this blunder shows that the mistake resulted, at a minimum, from seriously flawed tradecraft.

And yet here we find that pretty much over exactly the period in which the poor performance of these two analysts has become more and more evident, they’ve been getting commendation after commendation — the institutional equivalent of pats on the back for a job poorly done.

Not long before that, there were the revelations of the secret British government memorandum in which the head of British foreign intelligence, a year before the invasion began, told Prime Minister Tony Blair that in Washington “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” of going to war.

A few months before that revelation, a related — but much less noted — event took place.

Last year, you’ll remember, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, under the leadership of Sen. Pat Roberts (R) of Kansas, prepared an elaborate report on just what went wrong in our prewar assessments of Iraq’s phantom weapons of mass destruction. To the relief of Republicans and the consternation of many Democrats, the upshot of the report was that the intelligence community just didn’t do its job and gave bad information to the decisionmakers who had to make the tough decisions in the lead-up to war.

Of course, committee Republicans had insisted — and their Democratic colleagues foolishly agreed — to limit the inquiry to the actions of the intelligence community itself and not to look into the political pressures the administration may have exerted to get the information it wanted from the community. That part of the story was supposed to be investigated after the November elections.

But then this spring, Roberts blithely announced that the committee had more pressing matters to deal with and that the second phase of the investigation would probably never occur.

And then there was Vice President Cheney’s appearance on Larry King Live the other evening. The big press came in response to his improbable claim that the Iraqi insurgency was “in its last throes.” But that wasn’t his most telling remark. Cheney told King that he was confident the Iraqi insurgency would be quelled before President Bush’s term of office expires — or, in other words, before January 2009.

A year or two ago, such a remark would have been roundly decried as the worst sort of defeatism if uttered by one of the president’s critics. And now it’s something the vice president says, seemingly to reassure people.

If the Iraqi insurgency is finally quelled at the end of 2008, that will mean that the war went on for almost six years.

I know these probably seem like disparate and not wholly related events. But they all add up to a picture so obvious that it scarcely needs stating but about which the country seems in an odd and eerie sort of collective denial.

The United States is now fighting a long and bloody guerrilla insurgency in one of the most conflict-ridden and dangerous parts of the world. Our military is stretched thin. Recruitment is becoming more and more difficult. And the more we find out about how we got to this point the more it becomes clear that the entire effort was premised on a fraud.

Not everyone was acting in bad faith, perhaps not even most. But the upshot of what happened is that the American people were led into a costly and horribly bloody war for reasons that were pretty much entirely bogus.

That’s a national scandal of immense proportions — one that should transcend partisan politics, especially since the presidential election is now over and the repercussions for both parties are not as immediate and tangible as they were last fall.

Talk about the admirable successes or at least the continuance of the new Iraqi government is important but beside the point on this basic question of just what happened to this country during the lead-up to war in Iraq. Eventually, it’s something we’ll all have to reckon with. For now, we’ve hardly even started.

Joshua Micah Marshall writes for The Hill and TalkingPointsMemo.com.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Upside-Down

One of the more telling moments of the Tennessee Waltz drama occurred when Chris Newton, the token Republican in the sting, rose on the floor of the state House of Representatives last Wednesday (a day before he and the others went down) to withdraw the suspect bill designed to benefit what turned out to be a dummy electronics company.

Assuming the air of one outraged by an impropriety, Newton, one of the bill’s sponsors in the House, said he was yanking it because: “A certain individual who was supposed to have been a lobbyist did not register with the Registry of Election Finance for this particular company on behalf of this particular legislation.” That turned out to be Charles Love of Chattanooga, one of three “lobbyists” for the bill and one of two subsequently arrested.

One other “lobbyist” turned out to be a government informant. This was the soon-to-be-outed Tom Willis, a denizen of Capitol Hill and Legislative Plaza, and for that matter of City Hall and the county building right here in River City. Until his surprise conviction in 2002 of credit-card charges in Mississippi, Willis had earned the trust of the Establishment over the years, serving as a pivot person for enterprises ranging from Congressman Harold Ford Jr.’s annual Christmas-basket giveaway to the blue-ribbon NBA Now effort that resulted, ultimately, in the arrival of the Grizzlies and the construction of the FedExForum — circumstances that, in retrospect, have raised more questions about the community’s future than they have answered.

In a curious way, Willis’ comedown seems to have validated him for a different sort of trust.

F. Scott Fitzgerald couldn’t have had it more wrong when he famously opined, early in the last century, that there were no second acts in American lives. These days, anyhow, it’s a toss-up as to whether public persons can count on the five-act dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s time or the relatively stripped-down three-act structure favored by later playwrights. There is a reason why Richard Nixon lived his political nine lives and the G. Gordon Liddys and Chuck Colsons of the world go on to successful second careers.

Ask respected city councilman Rickey Peete, a good bet to run for mayor, how lasting his 1989 conviction for extortion has been. Nor was the arrest and presumed disgrace of former legislative lion Tommy Burnett, a decade or so ago, an impediment to his flourishing present livelihood as a lobbyist.

In the transcripts released by the FBI in last week’s detention hearing for John Ford, the senator is demonstrated to be suspicious enough of both Willis and the undercover agent known to him as businessman “L.C.” to utter not-so-veiled threats. (“I got a gun. I’ll just shoot you dead.”)

An important ancillary fact: Ford was not just growing alarmed; he was downright offended at what he was beginning to perceive as violations of the Code. Interrogating Willis, Ford asks about “L.C.” and company, “Anything that you know that you could, ah, tell me if, whether or not they’re legit. You know what I mean?” What he means by “legit” is: Are they the crooks they appear to be or are they shameless dissemblers, i.e., lawmen? “I trust you,” Ford keeps telling Willis, even as he vents his doubts.

And when the suspicious senator finally confronts “L.C.” with his misgivings, he puts it this way: “[I]f you’re honest with me, I’m gonna be honest with you.” Such language, establishing a moral probity of sorts as the root condition of what to the outside world looks like simple graft, is interspersed throughout these transcripts.

As the scandal unravels, tracking this inversion of ethical standards is destined to be one of the true tasks facing investigators — whether legal or journalistic.

Jackson Baker is a Flyer senior editor.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Towing the Line

Cynthia Smith’s morning was right on schedule. She left her home for work at the usual time, and although traffic was heavy, she made it with a few minutes to spare. But as she opened her car door, a man approached, flashing a gun underneath his shirt. He ordered Smith from the car, snatched her purse, then got in and sped off.

Eventually the thief was caught in Smith’s car, where he had been living for more than a week. Her car was towed to the Memphis Police Department’s (MPD) impound lot, where it sat for days while Smith wrangled with her insurance company over liability and fees. While the company finally agreed to tow the vehicle to a dealership, Smith had to pay two towing bills, impound-lot storage fees, and thousands of dollars in damages.

Not only was Smith robbed by a gunman, she was gouged by a Memphis towing system that is badly in need of an overhaul. A city ordinance is supposed to regulate the towing industry through a division of the Police Department. Unfortunately, the division is a one-person operation, and the ordinance — last revised in 1989 — is years beyond its usefulness. A committee composed of wrecker operators, attorneys, city councilmen, and members of the Police Department is working to update the policy and prevent lawsuits that have plagued other cities.

The MPD wants to regulate all service and storage charges. Wrecker owners say free enterprise is important to their business and that accusations of gouging are mostly unfounded. Meetings have been held since spring, headed by committee chair and city councilman E.C. Jones. “There had been requests from some wrecker owners about fees that haven’t been increased for some time, especially due to the increase in fuel costs,” Jones says. “We also had concerns from the Police Department that we needed to strengthen the ordinance a little. We’re not trying to keep people from getting in business, but we’re trying to make sure that the public is not being taken advantage of by unethical people.”

Everybody’s Business

When your car is towed for being illegally parked, or picked up after an accident, or moved from your home to a service station for minor repair work, you’re being served by the tow-truck industry. In Memphis, approximately 100 companies provide this service — towing cars, overturned tractor-trailers, hazardous-material containers, and stalled school buses — in order to keep city streets clear. The MPD uses a rotating list of 48 wrecker companies to tow more than 2,600 vehicles each month involved in wrecks, thefts, and DUIs.

Police sergeant Monique Campbell is the one-person division that enforces the city charter wrecker ordinance. Campbell is responsible for wreckers and other transportation services, such as taxis, horse carriages, and motorized scooters. “I feel safe in saying that [the MPD] is in good control of who’s driving and who’s towing for us,” she says. “But a lot of companies not on the [police rotation] list are not regulated by anybody. Sometimes they don’t even have regular business licenses, and that is a requirement.”

The city pays towing companies $75 for each car towed to either the city’s impound lot or to a privately owned lot. The fee is recouped by the city from vehicle owners or from their insurance companies. Companies set their own prices for private calls and non-consent tows. Vehicles towed by companies that are not on the police rotation list often charge fees double or even triple what the city pays.

The committee is proposing a $10 increase in fees to $85 and an increase to $95 over the next three years. The price would be standard for MPD calls, but officials are also considering regulating private towing companies as well. Wrecker operators say the increase is long overdue but still not adequate.

“Most of my business is private tows and body-shop contracts, but there are some [wrecker] companies out there really hurting because the city price is too low,” says All-Care Towing president and CEO Mike LaBudde. Like most wrecker operators, he thinks the $85 proposal from the city is inadequate. “The cost ha sn’t been raised in 10 years,” he says. “If we had been receiving a simple 3 or 4 percent cost-of-living raise each year, we wouldn’t be in this situation now. All we want is a fair price.”

A fair price is relative, says Dallas’ administrator of Transportation Regulation, Don Bearden. In the late 1990s, Dallas towing companies sued the city for an increase in police-call fees. Before the lawsuit, police tows in Dallas paid $48. The fee was increased to $95 after the suit, but with the fee increase came stiffer penalties for violating city towing ordinances. Similar issues have sparked new regulations and fee changes across the country. Congress is now considering legislation that would give authority for towing regulations to state governments.

“It’s funny that the wreckers talk about the injustice of the low city money but will tow for auto clubs for a lot less,” says Bearden, who oversees 43 companies on the Dallas police rotation list.

But LaBudde says comparing auto-club tows and city tows is comparing apples to oranges. “Of course, I’ll tow for AAA for less, because you can be done with the entire call in 20 minutes. Those calls are close to us and have a destination of less than five miles. There’s also no street to clean and no headache. Police calls can take up to four hours, depending on the traffic at the city’s impound lot,” he says.

In addition to running his company, LaBudde is president of the 25-member county towing association and vice president of the 60-member state towing association. The Shelby County organization has proposed raising the standard price for police calls to $135. “The city must come up to $135, or they’ll be hard-pressed to find someone to tow for them,” says LaBudde. “If they go jacking with us, they’ll never forget it.”

What Memphis residents are unlikely to forget are the increased costs. Not only will they be responsible for the towing fee, but other proposed increases would also hit their pocketbooks.

The administrative fee assessed for each tow ticket processed at the city’s impound lot is being raised from $5 to $7.50. The fee, currently paid by wrecker operators, could soon become the responsibility of vehicle owners. Storage fees, also paid by vehicle owners, could increase to $20 each day. Also on the horizon is a Police Department plan to increase the size of the city’s vehicle storage facility, which would cost taxpayers about $17 million in capital improvement funds.

Cost of Business

Under the city’s proposed ordinance changes, fees charged to wrecker companies for things such as zone stickers and permits could increase as well.

“People would be surprised at how much it costs to keep gas in my trucks or that it costs me $870 per truck for tags,” says LaBudde. “That’s not even counting the cost of salaries. I don’t think anybody would want to work today for the same amount they were getting 10 years ago.”

Not only have expenses increased but so has the danger, says Memphis wrecker operator James Birch. While working in Ft. Worth, Texas, Birch nearly lost his life at an apartment complex when the vehicle owner fired 17 rounds into his tow truck. A bullet through the door left Birch with a deflated lung and broken ribs. The shooter’s reason for shooting at the tow truck driver: “to scare him a little.” Birch bought a $55,000 repo-style truck instead of the flatbeds used by most wrecker companies. Now he rarely has to leave his vehicle.

“The city is trying to regulate something they know nothing about,” he says. Birch tows for European Wrecker and Body Shop on Main Street. The business operates three lots and is on the city’s rotation list, towing in downtown and Midtown. “There is no profit to be made in towing for the city, and it takes too long,” says Birch. He says the city is punishing everybody for the actions of a few.

During a Flyer ride-along, Birch removed three vehicles from the New Horizon Apartments on Millbranch. Although the tows were not police calls, they still had to be reported to police communications, or COMSTAT.

The first tow went smoothly. Birch’s new truck can secure a car in about five seconds. The second tow became momentarily tense when the vehicle owner came onto the parking lot, but he left without confronting Birch.

Birch’s biggest complaint is that he can’t get through to COMSTAT on a timely basis. Before towing a vehicle, a wrecker driver must notify the Police Department. On this occasion, Birch got five busy signals before finally reaching an operator. Then he had to wait 20 minutes, after which he was told to call back in 10 minutes. It took Birch a half-hour to get through and report that he was going to tow a vehicle.

“That’s a short call,” Birch says. “Lots of times the system goes down or the operators are in the middle of a shift change and you’re stuck waiting for at least an hour.” Birch estimates that his company spends about 3,000 minutes each month on the line with COMSTAT. “That’s ridiculous,” he says. “Can you imagine holding up your employees for that long? That lost time and money have to be made up.”

Gene and Lisa Gleaves have owned Gleaves Towing on Democrat Road for 30 years and have been on the police rotation list since its inception. About 30 percent of their business is city calls.

Lisa Gleaves is one of the most vocal members of the city’s towing ordinance committee. Gleaves has seen towing-business costs skyrocket. “Everything has increased, from fuel to steel. The city isn’t even offering us what they did 15 years ago,” she says. “It granted companies a $20 increase then, and now they want to give us half of that. I think the police officers understand what we do, because they are out there in the streets with us, and just like them, we’re always the bad guys. Whether it’s an accident or not, no one likes to see a tow truck.”

“We can talk till we’re blue in the face,” says LaBudde, “but we’re going to get what the city gives us.”

Whatever is passed will at least be a step in the right direction, says Lisa Gleaves. “It’s time for this dinosaur to be updated. For many people a car is their second largest investment, and as wreckers we owe them quality service to protect that investment,” she says.

The motto on the back of Gleaves’ business card sums it up: “The bitterness of poor service remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

HOLLYWOOD HUSTLE

Just below its seedy surface, the Tennessee Waltz scandal has the unmistakable glow of Tinsel Town. Indicted state senator Kathryn Bowers worked on legislation that would have offered tax incentives to filmmakers, making Tennessee more competitive with showbiz-savvy Louisiana.

Memphis city school board member Michael Hooks Jr. circulated a press release saying that he met with representatives from FBI dummy company E-Cycle Management while attending the Miami International Film Festival because of his budding film career.

But of all the players in the Tennessee Waltz scandal, former lobbyist, convicted felon, and FBI informant Tim Willis may have been bitten hardest by the film bug.

Willis’ desire to break into the movie business was recounted last week by a number of media outlets. Much to the dismay of many in the Memphis film community, he was misidentified by WMC reporter and blogger Darrell Phillips as an “assistant to the director” for Craig Brewer’s Memphis-shot Hustle & Flow. Phillips’ mistake was an honest one. According to reports from the Memphis/Shelby County Film and Tape Commission, the impression that Willis was closely associated with Hustle & Flow was common. In the lead-up to Willis’ own film project, the commission received several calls wherein Willis was identified as Hustle’s assistant director. Though he wasn’t part of the creative team, the fallen-lobbyist-turned-FBI-front did have a connection to Brewer’s film: He briefly and unsuccessfully hustled product-placement deals for the Memphis-based film.

Earlier in 2005, Willis began work on a project, alternately identified in the media as a film and a TV pilot, featuring Judge D’Army Bailey as a tough cop named Mike Stone. Some scenes were shot in E-Cycle’s now-infamous office where state senator John Ford was caught on grainy surveillance video depositing a wad of bills into his back pocket.

A letter on file at the Film and Tape Commission suggests that BunZ Entertainment, Willis’ hastily formed production company, was disingenuous in its dealings with Memphis film professionals. Those working in pre-production to secure permits, cars, locations, etc., were never paid or reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses.

The Flyer recently obtained a copy of Street Life, the screenplay Willis was shooting in the E-Cycle offices, and although it would be a stretch to suggest that it was based on Willis’ adventures with the FBI, there do seem to be a few interesting parallels.

The characters in Street Life have allegorical names. The story revolves around Jarez Green, a high-tech thief whose “banker,” a hedge-fund manager named Dan Turnkey, has turned up missing along with over a million dollars of Green’s dirty loot. Worse for Green, the man who fences his stolen goods (cleverly named Fence) has been nabbed by the authorities. What follows is a drama of shady doings, paranoia, and betrayal.

“My best man got popped,” Green tells one of his co-conspirators. “Who else I’m gonna sell the stuff too [sic], and it won’t be long before that cat starts talking … He’s not so good under pressure … That nigga FENCE ain’t the kinda cat who’ll do a stretch, especially when them folks put that pressure on ’em he won’t hold water long.”

Green is a crook with a heart of gold. All he wants is a yacht, like the one he once saw some “dudes partying on,” and enough money to live in comfort. He plans to give much of the proceeds from his “last heist” to a North Memphis community center. But danger lurks at every turn.

“You’re doing the right thing,” Officer Stone tells Nicole, his most valuable mole and informant. “We’ll protect you, I promise.”

“I’m off the hook now?” Nicole asks. “Almost,” Stone answers. “I need to catch [the perp] in the act, and then I need more names … Get him to talk … Get me what I need and you have nothing to worry about … I promise.”

Calls to BunZ Entertainment about the screenplay went unanswered. Willis’ voice message claims he is on location shooting a movie.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

A New Brew

Nature famously abhors a vacuum, and so do Shelby County Democrats. In the aftermath of state senator Kathryn Bowers’ resignation last week from her position as local Democratic chairman, some well-known party names have resurfaced as possible successors.

One of them is David Cocke, a former party chairman on two prior occasions and a card-carrying member of the Ford party faction. (The Memphis lawyer is, in fact, the longtime attorney for former congressman Harold Ford Sr., though, as he rightly points out, has from time to time been on the opposite side from the Fords — notably during a dispute some years back concerning the desirability of local party primaries.)

Cocke, who acknowledges a serious interest in succeeding Bowers, is being encouraged to run for the now-vacant party chairmanship by none other than current 9th District congressman Harold Ford Jr., who launched his bid for a U.S. Senate seat the day before the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz arrests netted several prominent arrestees, including Bowers and the congressman’s uncle, state senator John Ford.

Another name being thrown into the hat is that of former chairman Gale Jones Carson, who serves as Memphis mayor Willie Herenton’s press secretary and has standing in the Democratic Party faction that is partial to the mayor.

“A lot of people have asked me to run, including people I don’t even know,” Carson said Thursday. “I have no intention of doing so,” she said, but declined to rule out a bid.

The names of the two well-known party warhorses have surfaced as a direct result of the FBI sting and its impact on the party. And not only Representative Ford but other ranking Democrats regard the naming of a known quantity as chairman to be one good way of stabilizing a shaken party on the eve of the 2006 election season.

Other names receiving some mention in party circles are those of former U.S. attorney Veronica Coleman, Shelby County property assessor Rita Clark, and former chairman Jim Strickland.

The only two candidates for the Democratic chairmanship who have declared so far are Joe Young, who was a field director for the state Democratic Party under former chairman Jane Eskind, and Cherry Davis, currently a member of the party’s Shelby County executive committee. Though Young and Davis have some support in the Ford and Herenton wings of the party, respectively, neither yet commands the organized support of a faction.

Both spoke, however, at a weekend meeting of the Germantown Democratic Club, where they were well received. And they could be the beneficiaries of a growing momentum for new faces in party ranks — especially among those party cadres freshly recruited during last year’s presidential season.

A freshly minted group advocating such change is Mid-South Democrats in Action, an outgrowth of the Democratic presidential campaigns last year of both Howard Dean and eventual party nominee John Kerry.

Members of Mid-South Democrats were among those who turned up at local Democratic headquarters on Poplar Avenue for the regularly scheduled meeting of the party executive committee, at which Bowers tendered her resignation as chairman, effective June 25th.

Though professing her innocence of charges that she had accepted illicit funds from a dummy corporation operated by the FBI, Bowers acknowledged to party members that continuing in office would make her a lightning rod for criticism and would interfere with the party’s “progress” and preparations for next year’s political campaigns.

Although Bowers was politely received — even enthusiastically by what seemed to be a majority of those present, her support would have been shaky if she had opted to try to tough things out. As it turned out, the small contingent from Mid-South Democrats had been on hand to call for Bowers’ resignation if she hadn’t offered it. (Desi Franklin, a spokesperson for Mid-South, elaborates on the organization’s goals in this week’s Viewpoint on page 13.)

The G.O.P. Makes Its Move

And Democrats weren’t alone in stirring the newly turbulent waters. Meeting last Thursday night at the same time Bowers was tendering her resignation across town, the local Republican Party’s steering committee adopted a resolution formally asking the seven-member Republican majority on the Shelby County Commission to appoint Republican Terry Roland to the District 29 state Senate vacancy created by the resignation of John Ford.

Roland is a Millington businessman and a conservative who had made a strong feint some months back concerning a challenge for the GOP chairmanship. That job was subsequently won by Bill Giannini, whose chairmanship has been characterized by stepped-up Republican efforts in the Democrats’ electoral hinterland.

Backed stoutly by both the local and statewide Republican organizations, Mary Ann McNeil polled 36 percent as the Republican candidate in last month’s special election, won by Bowers, for the District 33 state Senate seat.

And, although Roland’s chances of prevailing were chancy, commission vice-chair Tom Moss, a Republican, indicated last week that the commission might depart from normal gentleman’s agreements requiring members of each party to vote for a representative of the other to fill vacancies in districts where the other party predominates.

Meanwhile, the new political climate was further demonstrated in a press release from Brian Kelsey, a freshman legislator from Germantown, who said that Bowers and the two other legislators arrested in the Tennessee Waltz sting (state senator Ward Crutchfield of Chattanooga, a Democrat, and Representative Chris Newton of Cleveland, the lone Republican arrested) should follow Ford’s example and resign — assuming that audio- and videotapes were on handto back the charges.

If nothing else, that indicated that first-term representative Kelsey had not accidentally violated long-standing protocol two months ago when he issued an earlier press release directly challenging a ruling in the state House by Democratic speaker Jimmy Naifeh.

Clearly, political protocol is getting a working-over under the extreme circumstances now prevailing.

A Democrat Cautions

Representative Ford

One more time for the old French expression: The more things change, the more things remain the same. As if the Tennessee Waltz were not enough sour music for Congressman Ford, he was the recipient last weekend of an ode of sorts from John Jay Hooker.

Yes, that John Jay Hooker, the once-great party luminary and two-time party nominee for governor who in recent years has come off as something of a circus clown but still has a charismatic moment or two left in him. On his blog, Hooker vented a lyric to Ford that might have been entitled “Not Born To Run.” Or not this year, anyhow.

“Wait, Harold, Wait” was what it was actually entitled. After extolling the Memphis congressman as “a highly intelligent, capable public servant … a man of good character with a profound love of his country,” Hooker went on to say that “in my view, he should not run for the United States Senate, because I think it’s virtually impossible for him to be elected.”

Spelling that out, Hooker said, “I have talked to a good many people, most of whom are supporters of Congressman Ford, who would vote for him, and who think he would be a first-class United States senator, but who like me, think that the existing circumstance regarding his uncle and political bribery, make his election highly doubtful.

“I think the 2006 election is going to be difficult at best, as Governor Bredesen is now burdened with the TennCare problems. And therefore, I think the Democrats are going to have their hands full in re-electing Governor Bredesen.”

Hence, said Hooker, the congressman should wait.

As for the aforesaid Bredesen, whose reelection does in fact no longer look like the shoo-in it seemed to be a few scant months ago, the governor this week formally set August 4th as the primary election for ex-Senator Ford’s District 29 seat and ex-Representative Bowers’ District 87 seat. The general election date for both seats will be September 15th.

Those are dates to reckon with. But so are June 25th and July 23rd, dates of the first local Democratic Party caucuses and the party reorganization convention, respectively.

n David Pickler is too good a politician not to have been diplomatic when he announced publicly last week that which he had already confided privately some time back — namely, that he wouldn’t seek another term as president of the local conservative activist group Defenders of Freedom.

Consequently, his letter to DOF founder Angelo Cobrasci sounded a note familiar in other political leave-taking cases: “In light of the time commitments required by my new business, I do not feel I can give the appropriate level of time and energy to do the job properly.”

In a conversation after a recent appearance at the monthly Dutch Treat Luncheon forum, Pickler, whose firm specializes in financial advice and estate planning, had indicated he would not serve another term as DOF president. He said then that DOF founder Cobrasci had approached him two years ago about taking the reins and he agreed — in the hope, he said, of moving the then nascent group “into the mainstream.”

Apparently, he succeeded in that aim. Several other mainstream figures, including Shelby County sheriff Mark Luttrell, were subsequently attracted into DOF. Pickler said in that conversation, as he repeated in last week’s letter, that he continues to support the aims of the group — though he said he disagreed with a recent mass e-mail from Cobrasci which suggested that DOF members should espouse a form of militant Christianity.

Cobrasci, who has become a fixture on the conservative and Republican circuits, was recently identified on a blog operated by Flyer staff writer Chris Davis (ThePeskyFly.com) as having once served a prison term for burglary, for which he was later pardoned by former Governor Don Sundquist. Cobrasci was then known as Greg Moore.

Pickler said he had been aware of Cobrasci’s past but still regarded him as a conscientious and public-spirited citizen.

Supporters of Pickler as the perennially reelected president of the Shelby County School Board need not fear, by the way: The line in his letter to Gobrasci that says, “I must respectfully decline any nomination to serve in any office,” applies only to DOF affairs. Pickler, an opponent of school consolidation and an advocate of special school districts, intends to continue in his current board role.

n Count A C Wharton, nominally a Democrat, as a backer of district attorney general Bill Gibbons, a Republican, for reelection next year. Wharton introduced Gibbons Monday afternoon at a well-attended fundraiser at Ronnie Grisanti’s restaurant and announced his support. ¥

Edwards Clarifies Tennessee Remarks

“Nonsense!” is the response this week of former North Carolina senator and Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Edwards to widespread reports that he, like Delaware senator Joe Biden, had attempted to distance himself from recent statements by Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean.

Edwards was the featured speaker at last weekend’s annual Jackson Day Dinner for Tennessee Democrats on the grounds of the Hermitage, just outside Nashville. During a brief interview session with reporters, Edwards was asked about Dean’s recent remark that many Republicans “have never made an honest living in their lives” and was quoted as responding that Dean was “not the spokesman for the party” but merely “a voice” that Edwards did not agree with.

The former senator’s remarks were coupled in mainstream coverage with Biden’s statement Sunday on ABC’s This Week program that the chairman “doesn’t speak for me with that kind of rhetoric and I don’t think he speaks for the majority of Democrats.”

But on his personal blog (oneamerica.com) this week, Edwards seemed to recant. Contending that he was quoted out of context, Edwards said, inter alia: “And then the flap arose: A chasm! A split! A revolt! Instead, how about: Nonsense!

“We are both talking about the Republicans and their failure to address the needs of working people. We both agree with this basic truth: This Republican president and this Republican majority are not doing what they should be doing for working people in this country. That’s a core belief we need to fight for. And what’s more, we agree that we — all Democrats and all working people — should be complaining, criticizing, and generally speaking out about this critical failure of the Republican Party and offering our positive vision for America. And we have.”

Among the other speakers at the Hermitage Saturday were the Democrats’ two declared U.S. Senate candidates, Congressman Harold Ford Jr. of Memphis and state senator Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville. On Sunday Ford was the beneficiary of a fund-raiser at Felicia Suzanne’s restaurant.

Categories
News The Fly-By

the Cheat Sheet

1. After being accused of extortion and other charges, state senator John Ford remains free on bond. Meanwhile, his supporters are beginning to whisper that the FBI’s “Tennessee Waltz” sting operation was nothing short of entrapment. Oh my. We think this is going to be a more complicated case than Michael Jackson’s.

2. Northwest Airlines announces that it will no longer hand out free magazines on their planes as a cost-savings measure. They had already stopped giving away those little bags of peanuts. What are they going to eliminate next — sodas? Seat belts? Barf bags?

3. The so-called Hack’s Cross Creeper, already linked to some 35 burglaries in the Germantown area, has apparently returned after two homeowners last week discovered objects missing when they woke up. The police called the thief bold, one officer saying, “He has no nerve endings whatsoever.” Maybe — or maybe it’s just easy to simply walk into homes. How many times do we have to tell you? Lock your doors, people!

4. Yet another earthquake rattles the Mid-South. This one, centered 90 miles east of Memphis, is the third rattler since February. An earthquake expert says that “stress levels are low,” but he’s talking about below the ground. Up here, our own stress levels are beginning to get pretty high.

Categories
Music Music Features

Love/Hate Relationship

It’s almost noon, and Bobby Bare Jr. is cruising around Seattle, looking for a cup of coffee. “This is confusing, dangerous, and complicated,” he mutters, determined to find a jolt of caffeine, which, in Seattle, should be simple. But life for Bare Jr. isn’t often quite as easy as it seems on the surface.

Take his music career, which began with a bang: Bare Jr. received his first Grammy nod at age 5. The song was a duet with his father, country music veteran Bobby Bare. The duo also performed at the Grand Ole Opry on its closing night at Nashville’s fabled Ryman Auditorium. But as he grew older, Bare Jr. decided to go against the grain, and he forged ahead in rock-and-roll.

Able to live anywhere, he’s nevertheless made Nashville — the seat of modern country music — his home, even though making rock music in the Tennessee capital is akin to ordering a cup of decaf in downtown Seattle. But he’s played with the big boys — Sony and Virgin — and he’s eked out a nice living for himself as an indie artist on the respectable Bloodshot Records roster.

“The worst music in the entire world is made in Nashville, but it’s home,” he says. “Like everybody else who lives there, I embrace it with one hand, but twist, fondle, and molest it with the other. I hate my city,” he mock-groans. “I love my city.”

It’s a sentiment he explored on his last album, 2004’s From the End of Your Leash. “The hills are filled with naked Hee-Haw honeys who all sing along in perfect harmony/The world’s greatest living guitar pickers can deliver you a pizza or sell you weed,” Bare sings on “Visit Me in Music City,” the lyrics delivered with a perfectly pitched, acerbic wit.

“It’s really that way there,” he insists, describing how he discovered guitarist David Steel — a sideman for John Prine and Lucinda Williams — while getting some work done on his van.

“Nashville sucks, but there are so many cheap studios there, and you can get any piece of gear worked on at any hour of the day or night,” Bare says. “And there are more talented guys per capita in Nashville than anywhere else on earth,” he adds triumphantly.

Yet Bare has spent the better part of a decade shaking the stigma of his Music City upbringing. “The first people who heard my music and liked it were the guys who signed Korn and Incubus,” he says of his short-lived Sony deal. “They weren’t signing me because I was somebody’s son, and that meant a lot.

“It’s not like I’m Bob Dylan Jr.,” he adds. “Hardly anyone my age or younger knows who my dad is. Today, I’m like, hey, I have this dad, and he’s really talented. But people really think that because I live in Nashville, I hang out at the bar with Wynonna Judd. They don’t understand that you can buy an AC/DC record in Nashville, Tennessee.”

At home, Bare manages to fly under the radar. He’s in the shadow of more famous offspring — second- or third-generation musicians such as Shooter Jennings (son of outlaw royalty Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter), Waylon Payne (son of Willie Nelson guitarist Jody Payne and “Help Me Make It Through the Night” singer Sammi Smith), and the possessor of the ultimate country pedigree, Shelton “Hank” Williams III.

“Shooter. Well, my dad would kick me in the teeth if I did something so similar,” Bare says, alluding to Jennings’ role as his father in the upcoming Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. “That Hollywood thing. It’s a facade, God bless him,” he continues. “He’s much better sitting behind a computer writing music that sounds more like Nine Inch Nails than [sounding like] Waylon.

“Shelton is a friend. I’ve known him since he was a kid, and that Hank routine is the most applicable use for him. He’s really good at it. But Shooter, Shelton, and I all love modern, industrial bands like the Ministry,” Bare says. “It would be really fun to do a Ministry tribute record instead of trying to walk in our fathers’ footsteps.”

That said, Bare quickly contradicts himself with news of his latest project. “I’m currently working on a psychedelic crooner album with my dad,” he says. “He’s singing ’40s and ’50s music — not country songs. He knows that if he releases a straight-up country album, it will be boring. He has a sincere passion for songs, so he’s letting me and [frequent collaborator] Mark Nevers do our weird stuff with it, things like horns and strings, space noises and Star Trek harmonies. We’re recording it at the Beech House studio, which is located in the middle of town.”

That’s the same studio where Bare cut his own strangely soulful From the End of Your Leash and where he recently recorded an album with Dave Berman’s Silver Jews. At the Beech House, he’s content to make music with players such as former Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison, violinist Andrew Bird, and saxophonist Deanna Varagona, three players you’d never find at a session on Music Row.

“They don’t give a damn,” Bare says of the mainstream Nashville scene. “All they’re trying to do is pump money into radio. Groundbreaking albums like [Loretta Lynn’s] Van Lear Rose and the O Brother soundtrack might come along every once in a while, but Music Row isn’t about to move toward that. All they care about is pumping up Kenny Chesney.”