Month: August 2008

Categories
Music Music Features

Voices of the South

If the Southern melting pot has a sound — and you better believe it does — you can hear it at the Center for Southern Folklore’s Memphis Music & Heritage Festival. That’s where, every year since 1988 (and don’t forget the first one, back in 1982), musicians, artists, dancers, cooks, craftspeople, and, of course, citizens gather to celebrate and express their shared culture. This year’s festival, held Saturday and Sunday, August 30th and 31st, is more diverse than ever, representing what’s going on today, looking to the future, and never losing sight of the past.

“Each year, we give people the chance to sample the richness of Memphis’ musical culture,” says Judy Peiser, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Southern Folklore. “We go to the people like Billy Lee Riley, Eddie Bond, and Sonny Burgess, who have been performing rockabilly since they first recorded at Sun Studio. But then we go to young neo-soul performers like Tonya Dyson, Tim Terry, and Hope Clayburn, who are looking at the music heritage of this area and putting their own spin on it.

“It’s not something like [renowned mule trader and auctioneer] Ray Lum used to call ‘p.m. whiskey’ — it’s not past memories. It’s a chance for you to know the musical history of the area but also to know what’s happening today.”

Spread over five stages at the intersection of Main Street and Peabody Place, the festival will be a one-stop spree for all the senses. You can eat Ella Kizzie’s best-of-all-time peach cobbler while watching the folks moving to the sounds of Bobby Rush or Al Kapone, or you can smell Neely’s barbecue while getting your hands on a knockout painting. Multiply that by north of 100 performers, artists, and food vendors, and your options are almost limitless.

One unique feature of the festival is the Talkers Corner. There you can sit and listen to quilters, musicians, songwriters, radio DJs, beer-brewers, baseball players, and others tell about their lives.

Another calling card is the festival’s family-friendly nature, with puppet shows, music and craft workshops, children’s storytelling, and general PG rating. (This year also features kid-friendly music from Joe Murphy and the Flying Monkey Man Band.)

Yet another calling card is the festival’s emphasis on dance — or, more precisely, spirit. “The dance is amazing,” Peiser says, “because whether it’s square dancing, Chinese, Latin, or drum lines, people show out.”

One new feature this year is FestPass. The festival, as usual, is free. But for a $20 contribution to the Center for Southern Folklore, you get a dollar off all beverages, a 2008 festival poster for half-price, and priority seating, when possible, at the stages.

This year’s festival showcases two notables from recent International Blues Challenges. One is Eden Brent, a blues chanteuse/boogie-piano performer who won the competition in 2006. The other is the Homemade Jamz Blues Band, a set of siblings from Tupelo who were runners-up in 2007. What makes Homemade Jamz special isn’t just their sound but their sound in light of their ages: Ryan Perry (guitar/vocals) is 16; Kyle (bass) is 14; Taya (drums) is 10.

Their father, Renaud, wrote all the songs, save one, on their excellent debut album, Pay Me No Mind, and he handmade Ryan’s guitar from a carburetor.

Can you have the blues if you ain’t even old enough to shave? From the sound of Homemade Jamz, that’d be yes. (Hey, if an Olympic gold-medal-winning gymnast can be only 14, why not a blues bassist?) You can and should check my math when the band plays Sunday evening.

The 2008 festival is dedicated to “Little” Laura Dukes, the diminutive dancer, singer, and ukulele and guitar player who toured with Robert Nighthawk and many Dixieland bands and performed in the Memphis Jug Band with Will Shade and Will Batts. In her honor, two jug bands will be on the bill: the Last Chance Jug Band and Steve Gardner and the Jake Leg Stompers.

“We’re presenting live music for people to enjoy, smile at, reminisce with, and dance to,” Peiser says.

To get you in the mood for this year’s festival, go to the center’s website at southernfolklore.com. There you can watch and listen to clips of performances from festivals past, such as Rufus Thomas tap dancing or Mose Vinson playing “Tell It Like It Is, My Girlfriend Won’t Be Still.”

“It’s great to have an archive,” Peiser says, “but if it’s not accessible and not used, what good is it?”

Of course, like past festivals, this year’s will be documented for future generations. Still, you’re going to want to be there in person. It’s the best vantage point from which to see the horizon of Southern culture, spread out before you, the past blending into the future.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Way Back When

CREDIT: by Justin Fox Burks

In a blur of an afternoon in the kitchen at Circa, chef/owner John Bragg is coming across as pleasantly agitated. He’s agreed to take my husband and me on a journey into his culinary past, putting together recipes inspired by the dishes he cooked at the very beginning of his career at the much-missed vegetarian joints Babylon Café and La Montagne.

This circling back has a purpose: Bragg will be hosting a five-course wine dinner featuring tasting portions of fine vegetarian dishes on Wednesday, September 3rd, at Circa. In addition, he’s offering a vegetarian tasting menu on Sunday evenings now through September 7th.

Beginning his career cooking strictly French cuisine at La Tourelle starting in the late 1980s, Bragg often escaped to Babylon Café, which was located on Union behind what was then Seessels and closed in the early 1990s.

“I was just passing through,” Bragg says. “No one ever hired me there. There was no office at Babylon. It was like, ‘This dude will show up and do something, and we’ll let him.’

“It was trial-and-error cooking,” he continues. “There would be no recipe and no guarantee that you’d be able to reproduce what you had cooked if you wanted to.”

For a guy who has never, ever identified himself as a vegetarian, it seems that this particular style of cooking always seemed to find him. Bragg’s next gig, running La Montagne on Park Avenue from 2003 to 2005, extended his involvement in cooking vegetarian (meat dishes were offered as well). Oatbugers, “Spinach Fantasy,” and pesto pasta primavera were standouts at La Montagne, and ordering the restaurant’s tofu fajitas was always a sure bet.

In fact, the re-creation of those dreamy La Montagne fajitas is our first request that afternoon in Circa’s kitchen, and they make our faded memories of the dish come to life. Other dishes appear: an ancho chile pastry dough cradling a rich filling of greens, mushrooms, and red peppers for an eggless spin on traditional quiche; a hummus appetizer revitalized by the addition of black beans and sambal; and lastly, a red curry-coconut soup, offering layers of creamy flavor with galanga, a more insistent, slow-burning cousin of ginger root that acts as a spicy, earthy complement.

This is the kind of fine vegetarian food that could convert even the most carnivorous.

The September 3rd dinner will feature the red curry-coconut soup and a wheat gluten “duck” cassoulet, which is certain to be a dish most of us will be tasting for the very first time. Unique takes on savory flan, spring rolls, and crepes are on the menu as well.

While we watch Bragg work out his last inventive touches — placing a delicate fried basil leaf on top of the red curry-coconut soup, swirling a half-moon of pico de gallo beside the fajita filling — it’s clear that this open-to-anything chef marries his training in fine cuisine with techniques from his days making hearty vegetarian food.

Why does he continue to be interested in smudging the line that divides the two sides?

“What’s good is good,” Bragg replies. “It’s okay to have fun with this stuff.”

The September 3rd dinner begins at 6:30 p.m. and is $75 with wine, $55 without (plus tax and gratuity). For reservations, call 522-1488.

Circa, 119 S. Main (522-1488)

Categories
News The Fly-By

Dog Days

Less than a year ago, Memphis Animal Services had no director, a sky-high euthanasia rate, and a bad reputation for customer service.

In November, a coalition of rescue groups and animal welfare enthusiasts demanded the city reinstate the animal shelter advisory board to allow citizens to investigate cruelty complaints and the euthanasia rate.

Earlier this month, that board, along with the shelter’s recently hired director, Ernest Alexander, held its first meeting in a tiny room at City Hall.

“We hope this board can help create some positive change and debunk the old myths the community has about the shelter,” says Alexander, the former head of the Albuquerque, New Mexico, animal shelter. Alexander was hired in March.

Currently, the seven-member board only has four members: Michelle Buckalew, editor of Animal World; Allen Iskiwitz, owner of Iskiwitz Metals; attorney Carol Katz; and insurance broker Steve Schwartz. The shelter is still taking applications for the vacant positions.

At the first meeting, the board discussed the shelter’s euthanasia policy. Earlier this year, the shelter had an 83 percent euthanasia rate, one of the highest in the country.

“If a dog is adoptable and about to be euthanized, we start calling rescue groups,” Alexander says.

Iskiwitz suggested adding more volunteers to make calls to rescue groups. Currently, Alexander says his staff makes as many calls as they can but would place additional calls if they had the manpower.

The group also discussed the possibility of lowering adoption rates for rescue groups registered as 501 C-3 nonprofit organizations and improving outreach to rescue groups.

“We hope, with this board, that we can create a shelter that’s capable of adopting out more animals, lower the euthanasia rate, and provide a place where animals have a greater chance of survival,” Iskiwitz says.

Already, board members think Alexander has made a huge impact on the shelter’s image.

“The shelter’s already made a 180-degree turn,” Schwartz says. “It’s clean now, and the staff is friendly.”

Upon his arrival, Alexander instituted customer-service training for all shelter employees.

“I also started mandatory shots for all incoming animals. They receive shots when they come across the door sill,” Alexander says. “They didn’t do that before, and it was long overdue. I’ve already seen a substantial change in the number of animals getting sick.”

Though he did not have specific numbers available yet, Alexander says the shelter is adopting out more animals and euthanizing less as a result. Before his arrival, the shelter held twice-a-month off-site adoption events.

“Since Ernie came, we’ve held off-site adoptions every weekend, sometimes two days per weekend,” Buckalew says.

With the shelter’s image improving, Buckalew says the board will concentrate on developing a shelter website with pictures of adoptable animals, increasing the volunteer base, and ensuring euthanasia rates go down.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Anti-Semitic Chickens

The letter began: “Chicken Journalists are absolutely afraid of the Jews.” It went on to cite “Bruce VanWyngarden, Karanja Ajanaku, Chris Davis, Susan Ellis, Wiley Henry, Wendi Thomas, and Jackson Baker,” among other local journalists, as being too “chicken” to take on the Jews in regards to their “hatred” of Jesus.

The letter was from Rev. George Brooks, the preacher from Murphreesboro whose scurrilous, anti-Semitic fliers were widely circulated during the recent 9th District Democratic primary. I’ve been getting two or three of these things a week since I wrote a column about “low information” voters and Nikki Tinker’s defeat in that race. It seems the good Rev. has taken a personal interest in Memphis affairs.

Brooks’ missive continued: “Many of these chickens have been ringing my phone off the hook for months, wanting to talk with me about Steve Cohen and the ‘Jews Hate Jesus’ newsletters I have been flooding Memphis with.”

He is correct about one thing: We’ve been trying to get in touch with “Rev.” Brooks for weeks. I’ve called several times. He doesn’t answer his phone, ever, even though the number is printed at the bottom of his “newsletters.” His address is a P.O. box number.

The man is gutter slime. He threatens to “expose” who Cohen is “sleeping with” and disparages local journalists because we haven’t asked Cohen to “confess” that he does not believe Jesus is the son of God.

Here’s a newsflash for you, Georgie: Lots of people don’t believe Jesus is the son of God. They’re called members of other faiths — you know, like Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, etc. They don’t have to “confess” that they aren’t Christians. They have a right to live and worship here — and even to hold office. It’s because of a little thing called “freedom of religion.” It’s in the Constitution. You might want to look it up sometime.

And if you’re going to call out me and other journalists by name in that putrid snotrag you call a newsletter, I’ll return the favor: Quit hiding behind a P.O. box and a phone answering machine, George Brooks. Come out into the light. Stand up and voice your opinions like a man — instead of acting like what comes out the rear end of a chicken.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

A Reassuring Choice

I saw another man dance with Joe Biden’s wife, Jill. It was almost three years ago, on the terrace of the sublime Villa d’Este on the shore of Italy’s stunning Lake Como, and Biden watched, smiling broadly and sometimes laughing, as the man gracefully moved Jill around the dance floor. It was late, and the guests still there looked on keenly because Jill Biden’s dancing partner was very good-looking and very famous. He was John McCain.

I tell this story to suggest that if anyone — including, of course, Barack Obama — thinks that Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is going to play the usual role given to a vice presidential candidate, that of hatchet man, then the wrong man has been chosen. Biden is capable of the occasional gaffe, the sentence without end, the piquant but (literally) politically incorrect statement such as the one he made during the primary campaign — Obama is “not yet ready” to be president — but he has the essential decency that once was commonplace in Washington and now, alas, is taken for weakness and lack of proper fervor. Joe Biden is a gentleman.

In choosing Biden, Obama reached into the very heart of the Washington establishment — especially its foreign policy wing. In his many years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, both as a member and as chairman, Biden has come to know just about all the players. He has been at it so long — elected senator at the ridiculous age of 29 — that then-Captain John McCain (U.S. Navy) was his military aide on some foreign trips. I applaud the choice of Biden, but the one thing he does not represent is change.

In fact, Biden represents the foreign policy consensus that Obama, and especially his followers, opposed — and in the latter case, abhorred. Biden voted for the Iraq war. He based his position on the received wisdom of that time, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and needed to be taken out. Biden later recanted, said he made a mistake. But his mistake, he had to add, was predicated on the assumption that President Bush would not rush to war. That was his second mistake.

Yet if Biden was wrong on Iraq, he has been right on so much else — including that military force had to be used in the former Yugoslavia to end ethnic cleansing. He has been right, too, about the dangers of nuclear proliferation — a dull topic of merely life-or-death importance. Over the years, he has been loyal, to his party and to his president, even when that president was as irresponsible as Bill Clinton.

Biden’s selection represents an implied admission by Obama that he lacks what Biden has: foreign policy credentials. In that sense, the Delaware senator does not make the ticket whole. Instead, he calls attention to what it lacks.

A vice president’s only meaningful constitutional obligation is to succeed the president in the event of death or incapacitation. Biden can do that. But his foreign policy experience is almost beside the point. A president has an entire staff dedicated to national security and a national security adviser who, depending on the president, can have more power than the secretary of state.

No, Biden was chosen because, in the end, he satisfied Obama’s apparent desire, if not need, to reassure those who wonder about his youth, his race, his manner, his peripatetic childhood: I’m safe. I’m prudent. I’m thoughtful. I was president of the Harvard Law Review, for crying out loud. On the stump, Obama did not need someone like himself. He felt the need for someone more rooted.

For Obama, the risk in choosing Biden is that he will, sooner or later, throw this highly disciplined campaign off-message. Biden has substituted loquaciousness for the conventional and more colorful weaknesses of politicians. To quote something I once wrote, his mouth is his Achilles’ heel.

In response to that column, Biden called and left a message. He thanked me for the column … he needed to be told the truth … it was good for him … hard to hear, but in the end the sort of thing he needed to know … of course, he had his reasons for going on so long — this was during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito — since he had things to say … points to make … but, yes, I was right, and he went on too long and he had to do something about that and it was good of me to point it out … Beep! The machine cut him off.

Gotta love someone like that.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Under Protest

This week Fly on the Wall is reporting not-quite-live from the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, where a variety of disgruntled America-hating Americans have been acting up for the news cameras. Why it seems like only yesterday that Fox News caught several angry citizens saying profane things like “eff you” and “eff America” and your Fly Team’s favorite, “Eff Fox News.” Actually it was yesterday.

But protest in America isn’t just about the creative use of dirty words. It’s also about expressing strongly held opinions printed on bumper stickers.

Modern protest is about dressing up like a commode with jogging shoes and having activists run along behind you with signs that read, “Barack Obama 2,201, Running Toilet 0.”

In 2008, Americans with something to say might try to capture the public’s attention by dressing up like a 10-foot Uncle Sam …

Or like the trumpet-blowing evangelical who identifies himself as Shultais and who stands on street corners furiously screaming at people about how God loves them even though they are revolting, hellbound sinners.

“A lot of people think we judge, but it’s not about being judged. I’ve got no right to judge nobody,” Shultais said while standing beneath a sign reading, “Homo-Sex is a Threat To National Security.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Live From Denver … It’s Chris Davis

Here’s a taste of what’s happening at the Democratic Convention through the lens of Flyer writer Chris Davis:

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

“Chicken Journalists” Fear the Jews

The letter began: “Chicken Journalists are absolutely afraid of the Jews.” It went on to cite “Bruce VanWyngarden, Karanja Ajanaku, Chris Davis, Susan Ellis, Wiley Henry, Wendi Thomas, and Jackson Baker,” among other local journalists, as being too “chicken” to take on the Jews in regards to their “hatred” of Jesus.

The letter was from Rev. George Brooks, the preacher from Murphreesboro whose scurrilous, anti-Semitic fliers were widely circulated during the recent 9th District Democratic primary. I’ve been getting two or three of these things a week since I wrote a column about “low information” voters and Nikki Tinker’s defeat in that race. It seems the good Rev. has now taken a personal interest in Memphis affairs.

Brooks’ missive continued: “Many of these chickens have been ringing my phone off the hook for months, wanting to talk with me about Steve Cohen and the ‘Jews Hate Jesus’ newsletters I have been flooding Memphis with.”

He is correct about one thing: We’ve been trying to get in touch with “Rev.” Brooks for weeks. I’ve called several times. He doesn’t answer his phone, ever, even though the number is printed at the bottom of his “newsletters.” His address is a P.O. box number.

The man is gutter slime. He threatens to “expose” who Cohen is “sleeping with” and disparages local journalists because we haven’t asked Cohen to “confess” that he does not believe Jesus is the son of God.

Here’s a newsflash for you, Georgie: Lots of people don’t believe Jesus is the son of God. They’re called members of other faiths — you know, like Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, etc. They don’t have to “confess” that they aren’t Christians. They have a right to live and worship here — and even to hold office. It’s because of a little thing called “freedom of religion.” It’s in the Constitution. You might want to look it up sometime.

And if you’re going to call out me and other journalists by name in that putrid snotrag you call a newsletter, I’ll return the favor: Quit hiding behind a P.O. box and a phone answering machine, George Brooks. Come out into the light. Stand up and voice your opinions like a man — instead of acting like what comes out the rear end of a chicken.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Hillary Night

CREDIT: jb

Hillary showed up and brought the house down. It had been slated to be The Grudge Match in Mile High City, but instead, it was a dazzling lesson in the art of fine wine making. In a riveting and historic speech, possibly the best of her career, Hillary Clinton gathered the sour grapes of her campaign, pressed and extracted their acidic disappointments, sweetened them with sisterly reflection, and distilled them into a sparkling champagne that got Democrats punch-drunk with unity.

Early on, it appeared that Hillary might actually be setting up for a grudge match with a rope-a-dope form of campaigning by referring to her list of reasons for seeking the Presidency and excluding all but one mentioning of Barack Obama. While exhilarated, the effusive crowd seemed collectively to be thinking, “Hillary, girlfriend, don’t make this all about you anymore.” As if telepathic, she quickly pivoted with, “Were you in this campaign just for me?” At that moment, her “me” became an ‘us” as she began to recite the reasons that all Democrats should support Barack Obama for President. She exerted a wide open appeal for party unity by convincing her apostles that by supporting Barack Obama, they, in fact, would be making history — alongside her. It was a display of political brilliance that was powerful as hell and anyone who was persuadable was going to be persuaded.

Her defining of John McCain as an out-of-touch Bush clone was captivating. “With an agenda like that, it makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities because these days they’re awfully hard to tell apart” was one of the most memorable lines that will surely be incorporated into a new ad. The speech exhibited a sincerity that, for whatever reason, had been repressed during the campaign. Finally, the pressure of walking on a tightrope had ended and the authentic, exuberant Hillary was revealed to the country.

Bill Clinton, as well as Chelsea, watched with expressions that exhibited both pride and pain simultaneously.

On Thursday night, President Clinton and Joe Biden are expected to give John McCain and the GOP the one-two punch. The former president and potential vice-president will be the Democratic Party’s Frazier and Ali. Democrats hope they will give a final sock to the jaw of disunity by delivering body blows to the Bush policies and to the potential for a continuation of the disastrous and ruinous last seven and half years of Republican governance.

The Dems drank Hillary’s sweet champagne last night and toasted party unity. Tonight, they will witness a heavyweight throwing leather for the country’s future.

Hillary showed up and brought the house down. It had been slated to be The Grudge Match in Mile High City, but instead, it was a dazzling lesson in the art of fine wine making. In a riveting and historic speech, possibly the best of her career, Hillary Clinton gathered the sour grapes of her campaign, pressed and extracted their acidic disappointments, sweetened them with sisterly reflection, and distilled them into a sparkling champagne that got Democrats punch-drunk with unity.

Early on, it appeared that Hillary might actually be setting up for a grudge match with a rope-a-dope form of campaigning by referring to her list of reasons for seeking the Presidency and excluding all but one mentioning of Barack Obama. While exhilarated, the effusive crowd seemed collectively to be thinking, “Hillary, girlfriend, don’t make this all about you anymore.” As if telepathic, she quickly pivoted with, “Were you in this campaign just for me?” At that moment, her “me” became an ‘us” as she began to recite the reasons that all Democrats should support Barack Obama for President. She exerted a wide open appeal for party unity by convincing her apostles that by supporting Barack Obama, they, in fact, would be making history — alongside her. It was a display of political brilliance that was powerful as hell and anyone who was persuadable was going to be persuaded.

Her defining of John McCain as an out-of-touch Bush clone was captivating. “With an agenda like that, it makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities because these days they’re awfully hard to tell apart” was one of the most memorable lines that will surely be incorporated into a new ad. The speech exhibited a sincerity that, for whatever reason, had been repressed during the campaign. Finally, the pressure of walking on a tightrope had ended and the authentic, exuberant Hillary was revealed to the country.

Bill Clinton, as well as Chelsea, watched with expressions that exhibited both pride and pain simultaneously.

On Thursday night, President Clinton and Joe Biden are expected to give John McCain and the GOP the one-two punch. The former president and potential vice-president will be the Democratic Party’s Frazier and Ali. Democrats hope they will give a final sock to the jaw of disunity by delivering body blows to the Bush policies and to the potential for a continuation of the disastrous and ruinous last seven and half years of Republican governance.

The Dems drank Hillary’s sweet champagne last night and toasted party unity. Tonight, they will witness a heavyweight throwing leather for the country’s future.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Teddy Says Hello… and Maybe Goodbye

CREDIT: jb

In the minds of the American public, Kennedys do not grow old. Or sick and infirmed. John and Bobby are forever young. But last night, we saw the youngest and last of the Kennedy brothers slowly totter to the podium to deliver an emotional farewell, for he is quite possibly dying.

Introduced by niece Caroline, Ted Kennedy’s swan song was one for the ages. Although his delivery is usually thunderous, brain cancer has reduced his voice to a lower key that at times was almost a whisper. The trademark thatch of white hair was thinner and completely gone in places. The usually pink Irish skin was pallid.

Teddy’s presence reminded us once again of the passionate idealism that his brothers inspired in a time when hope and optimism was allowed to flourish. But most importantly, Teddy’s role was to pass the baton of the family legacy to Obama family. And indeed, the baton was passed as Michelle Obama, accepted it with a style and grace that channeled Jackie Kennedy. Her touching speech about her life, her husband, and their children was truly Kennedy-esque. The legacy had come full circle.

For a man stricken with terminal cancer to leave his sick bed against the advise of his doctors is a testimony of determination that exemplifies a will stronger than forged iron. His promise to be at Senator Obama’s inauguration brought tears to the eyes of thousands in the crowd. “The work begins anew. The hope rises again. The dream lives on”. It was the measure of a man who has the heart of a lion. In Denver, the lion roared for the last time.