Month: May 2012

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Local Record Reviews

The long-in-coming return of Memphis-bred troubadour Cory Branan.

It’s been six years since Memphis/North Mississippi-bred and now Nashville-based singer-songwriter Cory Branan released an album. And even that’s being generous. Branan’s first two albums — 2001’s The Hell You Say and 2006’s 12 Songs — were released via the now mostly dormant local indie MADJACK Records. Despite a publicity bubble that landed Branan in Rolling Stone and on David Letterman, the albums didn’t have much national penetration.

The years in between have seen Branan bounce around — Fayetteville, Austin, Nashville, etc. — and spend more time touring than he did early in his career. And now, with Mutt, released May 22nd on venerable Chicago-based roots-rock indie label Bloodshot Records, Branan’s recording career is getting a long-delayed second life.

Recorded a couple of years ago in San Francisco with help from another Memphis ex-pat, John Murry, the album opens audaciously: “The Corner” is a sardonic deconstruction of Branan’s own good press and gallows-humor appraisal of his wayward career. “I ain’t been transcending … much of nothing,” Branan sings, snickering at an ill-chosen word from an uncomprehending rave, before twisting the knife on himself: “I been down in it/I ain’t free/Weren’t no experiment/These seven years they went like life out of me.” But Branan also invests the song with a crack of hope — “almost gone but maybe not just yet” — and the rest of the album testifies to a talent that has remained sharp through the disappointments and delays.

“Survivor Blues” is an escape scenario in the Springsteenian (“Thunder Road,” “Born To Run”) tradition, but the romance is laced with a darker, more dangerous undercurrent. When a love interest asks the narrator if he’s got a car, the affirmation comes with a warning: “It’s parked out back/It’s pointed out of state/A recent acquisition/We should probably ditch the plates.” “Survivor Blues” is reprised at the end in a more subdued manner that highlights the song’s hard wisdom: “How about you wait to see just what you regret/Til we get what we get.” And the swaggering “Badman” doubles down on a similar scenario, with Branan pleading his case: “They say I’m a bad man … I think a bad man would do you good.”

“Yesterday,” with its hints of “Jack & Diane,” moves the record into sunnier but reflective territory, equating nature, memory, and eroticism in the manner of previous Branan standout “Tall Green Grass” and imbuing romantic recollections with comically religious significance (“When you walked on the waterbed”).

As on Branan’s previous albums, there’s full-band production here, with arena-ready guitar riffs, chiming piano flourishes, horns, and other sonic touches. More than just a folkie, Branan prefers to lace his words-first songs with a dynamic musicality that matches his at times overactive vocals. Harder to replicate solo-acoustic on the road, no doubt. But it generally makes for better albums.

When Mutt ventures furthest from folk and roots-rock, as it does in its second half, it feels less certain. The Tom Waits-style crooning of “There There Little Heartbreaker,” the Latin-jazz-flavored “Snowman,” and the multi-tracked, Beach Boys-esque vocals on “Jericho” are worthy experiments that don’t entirely come off. But it’s good to have Branan back on wax, so to speak. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait another six years for album number four.

Branan began a European tour as Mutt was released but will return to Memphis for a show at the Hi-Tone Café on July 20th.

— Chris Herrington

Grade: B+

Categories
Music Music Features

Jimbo Mathus & the Tri-State Coalition at the Levitt Shell

Outside of Mississippi, Jimbo Mathus may be best known as a founding member of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, the North Carolina-based outfit. Unfairly lumped in with the superficial swing revival of that decade, the Zippers were actually sophisticated stylists, blending hot jazz, ragtime, string-band, and any number of other styles. But over the past decade, via a variety of projects — including the Knockdown Society, the South Memphis String Band (with Luther Dickinson and Alvin Youngblood Hart), and his current band, the Tri-State Coalition — Mathus has devoted himself to the roots music of his home state, whether it’s blues, country, folk, jazz, or anything in between. Mathus’ most recent album, 2011’s Confederate Buddha, was directly inspired by the Alan Lomax Mississippi field recordings in the 1950s. It’s a collection of postmillennial country blues and Southern honky-tonk so deliriously slack it sounds like it was recorded in one take with no rehearsals. Jimbo Mathus & the Tri-State Coalition play the Levitt Shell on Saturday, May 26th. Showtime is 7:30 p.m. Free.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Sullivan’s Travels

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

When Kevin Sullivan started working at Tsunami in Cooper-Young, he was a senior at Northside High School, content to bus tables for his summer job. In those 10 years, encouragement from Tsunami owner Ben Smith and Sullivan’s own curiosity transformed a summer gig into a culinary career.

“I was in such a nurturing environment that I stuck with it,” Sullivan says. “Over time, cooking has just become more and more of who I am.”

Earlier this year, he began working up recipes for a catering and personal chef business, Ki Kitchen. Ki is Japanese for “soul,” and Sullivan describes his cuisine as Asian-soul food fusion borne out of his experience with Pacific Rim dishes at Tsunami and his upbringing at a distinctly Southern table.

“Black-eyed pea hummus was my first idea, because it’s something I haven’t heard a lot about,” he says. “Growing up, black-eyed peas were a staple, so I wanted to take that and do something fresh with it.”

At first, he was a little wary about taking his new brand of Southern food back home with him.

“I thought my family wouldn’t be open to me changing the preparation of the black-eyed peas,” he says. “But they loved it. And now I’ve been talking with my mom and my aunt about what my grandmother used to prepare. We’ve been getting back to our roots, so it’s been a revival within my own family. It’s bringing us together.”

To black-eyed pea hummus, Sullivan has since added tomato jam, chow chow, collard green kimchee, Andouille sausage with risotto and red pepper coulis, pasta salads, and cornbread crostinis. He began selling his hummus at the Tsunami Winter Farmers Market to get his name out to potential clients. His tomato jam is available at Stone Soup Cafe, and he’s already got some catering gigs under his belt.

“I imagine that at the apex of it all, I’ll have a restaurant where I do dinner service and still do catering gigs on the side,” he says. “I just want to make good food more accessible. A lot of people think the more elegant the food is, the more it’s out of their reach. I want to get back to where food brings everyone together.”

If this chef-philosopher sounds like a far cry from the Sullivan of 10 years ago, a teenager not so much interested in cooking as a summer paycheck, it’s because he has dedicated years to learning from those around him.

In addition to Ben Smith, Sullivan counts Marisa Baggett, the Southern sushi chef, among his chief influences. While serving as her apprentice, Sullivan learned about more than sushi rolls. He credits her with teaching him about self-promotion and discovering his independence as a chef.

“I kind of fell into it,” he says of his career. “I started peeling potatoes and washing dishes, then moved on to mussels and calamari and shrimp, then making salads and desserts, and then finally progressed to the grill. I became curious about the food and started asking questions, and eventually they promoted me and allowed me to prepare foods.”

For those interested in working with Sullivan, or, he says, just sparking up a casual conversation about food, his Facebook page (www.facebook.com/chefsullivan) is a surefire way to reach him. Or you can email him at chefkevinsullivan@gmail.com.

Ki Kitchen’s menu is on the Facebook page as well. All selections cost between $4 and $5.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Tenacious B.

The shifty tonal ground where director/co-writer Richard Linklater has planted his new film Bernie is staked out in the opening scene. After two silent-movie intertitles announce “This You’re Fixin’ to See/Is A True Story” as melancholy string music plays in the background, we are shown funeral director Bernie Tiede (Jack Black) as he teaches a few mortuary-science students how to prepare a recently deceased person for viewing. Delicately yet firmly, Bernie explains and demonstrates the key parts of this process — glue the eyes shut, insert a piece of plastic to preserve the shape of the mouth, apply the right amount of makeup, and be sure to tilt the head to the left (“in greeting”). His performance is met with polite applause. It’s an informative, funny, strange opening for an informative, funny, strange, and possibly great film.

Adapted from a terrific 1998 Texas Monthly article written by journalist and co-screenwriter Skip Hollandsworth, Bernie is a tragicomic work noteworthy for the way it plays around with notions of authenticity, realism, and local color. For example, in addition to the usual dramatizations and embellishments, Bernie’s remarkable story is retold, added to, and complicated by witty testimonials from 21 residents of Carthage, Texas, the town where most of the events in the film take place. Even though their comments were pre-scripted, these nonprofessional actors sound down-home, informal, and sincere as they recount Bernie’s unusual relationship with rich, wicked old widow Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine). One man describes Nugent thusly: “That ol’ heifer — she’d turn down a loan for a hobby.”

And on at least two occasions, the film’s vox populi is more than just a bunch of gossips. They occasionally engage with and challenge the assertions made by the film’s stars, notably district attorney Danny Buck Davidson (Matthew McConaughey). These townsfolk (with some help from a couple of professional actors pretending to be townsfolk) get most of the film’s biggest laughs. They also emphasize the way that public perception shapes the contours of a life, especially in a small town.

The townspeople’s confusion and ambivalence about Bernie’s presence in the town — is he really as charitable and saintly as he looks? Why does he like old ladies so much? Is he, as one man posits, “a little light in the loafers”? — only increases during the second half of the film. But Jack Black’s quietly flamboyant performance generates an atmosphere of unease from the start. Black’s agility, grace, demonic eyes, and ski-jump belly (aided by some high-waisted pants) are put to maximum effect here. He’s soft-spoken, gentle, and kind, but there’s always a sense of something else lurking behind the curtain he draws back whenever he appears in public.

Like his contemporary Steven Soderbergh, Linklater’s films often function as an indirect commentary on whatever genre he happens to be working in. So while Bernie may look like Linklater’s version of a true-crime picture, it’s also, like the previous Linklater-Black collaboration School of Rock, a kind of musical. Bernie embraces both the hymns and the Broadway/Hollywood numbers he sings, and Black is clever and restrained enough to pull back from full-on parody whenever Bernie is in the throes of each song. Bernie’s enthusiasm and love of music is both genuine and sinister, adding one more layer of unease to this singular movie.

Bernie

Opening Friday, May 25th

Ridgeway Four

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Golden years travelogue goes against the summer movie grain.

The full title of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel includes the phrase “for the elderly and beautiful,” which is both a nice sentiment and an important clue about the potential audience for a film so pleasantly indifferent to the exigencies of the current summer movie scene. Directed by John Madden, the guy who made Shakespeare in Love, Best Exotic is a light-if-not-lite “tradition of quality” picture all the way. But has there ever been a time when there were so many quality movies in theaters that they could be freely ignored?

The film gathers up seven financially strapped (or just plain unhappy) aging Brits — among them a recently retired judge (Tom Wilkinson), a married couple (Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton) who’ve given their daughter their nest egg so she can finance an internet startup, an ornery old woman (Maggie Smith) looking for a cheap hip replacement, and a pair of aging swinger types (Ronald Pickup and Celia Imrie) — and sends them off to Jaipur, India, where they hope to spend their golden years in relatively inexpensive comfort.

Sending old people to India for relaxation is a pretty good running joke. I spent some time in Jaipur 11 years ago, and even as a hardy, well-traveled twentysomething, I was excited, overwhelmed, and exhausted by its abundance of people, sounds, colors, and commotion. (Over the course of a single afternoon, I saw a traffic fatality, a riot, and a wedding procession.) Best Exotic doesn’t have much to say about India beyond some similarly generic observations about the chaos of its big cities, but it does a very fine job at seeing the country from a befuddled tourist’s point of view.

Once the guests arrive and discover that their future retirement tabernacle is a far cry from the images in the brochure, the floor plan of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel starts to look pretty familiar. It’s easy to find your way around the story — just ask the right questions. Is the married couple really happy? Who is the judge looking for? Will the old swingers find love? Wouldn’t a few coats of paint brighten the old place up?

The film is an effective ensemble piece and a gentle satire of both master-servant dynamics and the outsourcing craze. It’s most successful, however, as a valentine to its star, 77-year-old Dame Judi Dench. Dench plays a recent widow headed to India to escape her husband’s bad debts, and the film’s most emotionally satisfying scenes occur when the other actors get to play off Dench’s unique, unflappable sensuality. Everyone — from Nighy and his stammering Bob Newhart-isms to Wilkinson and his tart kindness to Dev Patel and his double-talking hyperactivity — looks better after they spend some time with her.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Opening Friday, May 25th

Multiple locations

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Donald “Duck” Dunn used to say that Al Jackson Jr. was the greatest drummer he’d ever heard. With the recent passing of both Andrew Love and Charles “Skip” Pitts, the guys have all the makings of a smokin’celestial soul combo. Add Isaac Hayes and Otis Redding to the mix, and they’ve got a full-blown Stax/Volt Revue going on for the Heavenly Host.

If you’re inside the Memphis city limits and you’ve never heard of Duck Dunn, you must be a tourist. Dunn, who died last week in Tokyo at age 70, was one-fourth of Booker T. & the MGs, the house band during the glory days of Stax Records and among the greatest instrumental groups to ever record. Duck was in Tokyo for a series of gigs with his childhood friend, Steve Cropper, and Stax soul star Eddie Floyd. Cropper posted, “Today I lost my best friend and the world has lost the best guy and bass player to ever live.” Booker T. Jones said, “I can’t imagine not being able to hear Duck laugh and curse but I’m thankful I got to spend time and make music with him. His intensity was incomparable. Everyone loved him. None more than Otis Redding.”

Duck’s passing essentially ends the 50-year phenomenon known as Booker T. & the MGs. The band recruited another drummer to replace the late Al Jackson Jr. and played on for another 37 years, but nobody can replace Duck Dunn.

Listen to any track by Otis Redding or Sam & Dave. If Al Jackson Jr. was the pulse, then Duck’s bass was the propulsion. He not only supplied the bottom but also the energy for some of the 20th century’s most memorable recordings, like “Soul Man,” “The Midnight Hour,” and Otis’ remarkable “Try a Little Tenderness.” Watch those old, black and white videos of the Stax Revue in Europe, 1967, and you’ll see Duck’s characteristic neck-jerk in time with the music, increasing in fervor with the strength of the groove. 

Duck’s biographical information is familiar to friends and fans: a graduate of Messick High, where he and his friend Cropper had a band called the Royal Spades, which morphed into the Mar-Keys and had Stax’s first monster hit with the instrumental “Last Night.” When Cropper moved on to a fledgling label, he recruited his friend Duck to replace Lewie Steinberg in the MGs, and history was made. The MGs were Memphis’ first interracial band, something unheard of in the early Sixties. But those of us who were younger and aspired to a music career took pride and inspiration from the group during those turbulent times. In segregated Memphis, an integrated group would most likely be denied the right to share the same bandstand, but in the recording studio, nothing could stop a group of teenagers who all grew up listening to Rufus Thomas and Dewey Phillips on the radio and Willie Mitchell and the 4 Kings, Bowlegs Miller, and the 5 Royales in the clubs of West Memphis.

It’s worth noting that in his fellow musicians’ remarks, in the same breath that they praise Duck’s musicianship, they note that he was an even better human being. That’s what his friends recall first: that Duck was a humble man, unaffected by his worldwide fame. He loved to laugh, either at your jokes or his own, and he very well could have put a bumper sticker on his bass guitar that read, “I’d rather be golfing.”

Like most Memphians, I admired Duck from afar and regarded him as a soul  icon, until 1981, when we became acquainted. That was the year Huey’s restaurant made its first attempt at expansion with Louie’s, a converted eatery on Poplar Avenue in East Memphis, and had hired my band, the Radiants, to play on Sunday nights. While other local bands were covering Journey and Foreigner, we were still performing a venerable list of R&B classics, with a healthy dose of Stax songs. When Duck began to show up and we asked him to sit in, everyone so enjoyed themselves that we reserved a regular spot for him every Sunday. Our long-time bassist, Steve Spear, was leaving Memphis and I was in a bind to find a suitable replacement. I asked Duck if he knew anybody and he answered, “What about me,” and the next day, he was in the band.

Along with our Sunday gig, the Radiants began playing Tuesday nights downtown at Jefferson Square, and Duck propelled our band like he did the MGs. When our young saxophonist, Jim Spake, had to leave the band suddenly and I needed to replace him, Duck said, “I don’t think Andrew Love is doing anything.” The next week, one half of the Memphis Horns joined the band. Andrew stepped in seamlessly without need for rehearsal, and I suddenly found myself fronting the best soul band I ever had.

It couldn’t last forever. Andrew and his Memphis Horns partner Wayne Jackson went on the road with Robert Cray, and Duck got the call from Eric Clapton. Shortly afterward, in a memorable night at the Orpheum Theatre, Clapton headlined with Duck on bass while the warm-up act was Ry Cooder, featuring Jim Dickinson on keyboard. Then there was the night a rejuvenated Booker T. & the MGs made their first homecoming appearance at B.B. King’s on Beale Street. I was sardined into that packed house mainly to support my friends, but when the Hammond organ began a thunderous, roiling noise that ultimately became the introduction to “Green Onions” and the band kicked in, I leapt to my feet cheering like the Tigers had won the national championship. Duck found a groove and was snapping his neck sideways, always to the left, and a roomful of lucky patrons got to see the show of a lifetime. Duck was a cancer survivor and lived the past few decades in Sarasota, where he had moved for the golfing as much as for the nice weather. If Duck and Andrew had one thing in common aside from their music, it’s that they both were supported by wonderful spouses. June Dunn and PeeWee Love are two of the kindest, yet strongest, women I know, and the love both couples shared made it a delight to be in their company. I’m proud to have known them.

In Tokyo, Duck had just finished two shows at the Blue Note Nightclub, when he called home to say he wasn’t feeling well. Later that night, he passed away in his sleep. Like the true, musical road-warrior that he was, Duck Dunn died with his boots on.

Randy Haspel writes the blog “Born-Again Hippies,” where a version of this column first appeared.

Categories
News

Memphis: Fitness Friendly?

John Branston offers some thoughts on various Memphis’ fitness facilities.

Categories
Sports

Is Memphis a Fitness Friendly City?

Audubon_Park_Memphis_TN_06.jpg

Surveys of America’s fittest and fattest and park-friendly cities are a dime a dozen, and I see about one a week. Here’s one that came in today from the Trust for Public Land. I don’t read most of them any more. But public sports facilities — that means anyplace you can use for free or by paying a fee — have played a big part in my life and they are part of our lifestyle and our personal and municipal budgets.

Most surveys lie. Fat cities are not fat due to a lack of public facilities. The problem is diet, personal motivation, and access. Ours is a disposable city, and the facilities and the people are not always in the same place. Here’s my Memphis survey. It is personal, subjective, anecdotal, and uninformed in some categories, less so in others. But in most cases I have seen ’em and and used ’em, which is more than most of the surveys can claim.

Public parks: Oversupplied. Shelby Farms is four times bigger than Central Park. Overton Park is getting better year after year. There are riverfront parks from Mud Island to Tom Lee Park to Crump Park near the Ornamental Metals Museum, some of them rarely visited. Mud Island River Park is closed half the year. Greenbelt Park on Mud Island is the best of the lot. Tiger Lane at the Fairgrounds is for the football crowd. Kennedy, Willow Road, Bellevue, and Leftwich/Audubon serve multiple needs. There are probably too many parks for a disposable city to maintain adequately.

Walking trails and running: Adequate. Put your shoes on and take off. True story: a former colleague was so obsessed with training for a marathon that he ran hundreds of laps around his living room when it rained. There are oval tracks at the fairgrounds and many high schools. There is an organized race of some kind nearly every weekend.

Fitness machines and structured programs: Unbalanced. Suburbs oversupplied with clubs and community facilities, inner city Memphis is undersupplied. Kroc Center, Streets Ministries, Memphis Athletic Ministries, and Church Health Center are helping a lot.

Tennis: Oversupplied in both indoor and outdoor courts. High schools and colleges that emphasize tennis build to tournament capacity, which leaves a lot of courts unused at other times. The University of Memphis has moved its tennis operations to the Racquet Club, leaving several perfectly good courts on campus for everyday players. Memphis has more public indoor tennis centers than Chicago. There are unused and deteriorating but still playable courts at Frayser Tennis Center. There is no single public center to compare with the biggest public centers in Little Rock, Mobile, Murfreesboro, and Nashville but overall Memphis is still oversupplied.

Racquetball. Oversupplied. A dying sport that thrived in Memphis 30 years ago, but plenty of courts remain at University of Memphis, Racquet Club, downtown YMCA, and some of the fitness clubs and community centers.

Outdoor basketball: Adequate. The cheapest sport around, requiring only nets, backboards, level rims, and a ball.

Indoor basketball: Adequate. Schools, churches, and community centers meet the need.

Bicycle riding: Oversupplied. If you want to ride a bike, there’s nothing stopping you, assuming you can afford one, and if you can’t there are organizations that will help. The dedicated bike lanes, bike paths, and sharrows are nice but a city-wide grid is unnecessary. Memphis is mostly flat and the weather is more conducive to riding than in the Snow Belt.

Football: Oversupplied. Liberty Bowl Stadium is used nine times a year. Football defined the fairgrounds. Most high schools have a field, and some of them are putting in artificial surfaces.

Baseball and softball: Oversupplied. Baseball is a suburban game, and teams migrate to the suburban baseball fields for tournaments and leagues. An unkempt field and backstop is a typical scene at most Memphis parks and high schools, a relic of another day. Good fields like the ones at Rodney Baber are expensive to light and maintain and lightly used.

Soccer: Equals suburban, although some of the world’s greats came out of poor Third World countries. Adequate to oversupplied, thanks to Mike Rose Fields.

Golf: Adequate. Memphis had to close public courses, which are magnets for wasteful spending and political squabbles on the City Council. Galloway serves the high end, and if you are willing to spend $40 you can play just about anywhere. Overton Park needs real greens.

Swimming: Undersupplied, but expensive, seasonal, and fraught with liability. The Kroc Center will help when it opens next year. Closing the Mason YMCA hurt. High marks for suburbs, downtown YMCA, University of Memphis, and Rhodes College which offers a summer membership.

Others: volleyball, skateboarding, squash, lacrosse, field hockey, rugby, bowling, Ultimate. You want to play it, you can find a place. It may require some effort and practice but that’s the point. And it may require some cash and a car, but if you don’t have those there are less expensive or free alternatives. It comes down to motivation and lifestyle. A new building or a new facility — or a survey — is usually not the answer.

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

How To Use Bread

It struck me as funny that the serving suggestions on this bag of Le Brea whole grain bread breaks down to toast and sandwich.

photo-4.JPG

Not that the suggestions aren’t good ones …

Categories
Opinion

The Price of Free Music

At a time when everything from Facebook to Delta airfares is monetized to the max, one of the nicest stories to come out of Memphis is the popular free concert series at the Levitt Shell in Overton Park.

Last Saturday night, the grassy embankment in front of the Shell was packed with 4,800 people for a season-opening concert by the Wandering featuring acoustic music and singing with a regional flair by Luther Dickinson, Shannon McNally, Amy LaVere, Valerie June, and Sharde Thomas. It was especially nice to see LaVere, who has occasionally made ends meet by working part-time as a receptionist for the Flyer‘s parent company, Contemporary Media.

While I was praising the Wandering at work on Monday morning, two of my colleagues were raving about another concert the same night by Wilco at the Mud Island Amphitheater. But, they said, that venue was only a little more than half full. Granted that the barbecue contest was also going on downtown, the musical offerings were somewhat similar except that one was free and the other was $42 a ticket, plus service charges.

Was there any connection between the size of the two crowds? (Disclosure: The concept of “free” is something of an obsession to those of us in journalism.)

One person who thinks so is Bruce Newman, a Memphis attorney specializing in clients in the music and entertainment business. Newman, who moved to Memphis from New York in 1989, is also a songwriter, guitar player, humor blogger (thetwobruces.com), and host of “Folksong Fiesta” on WEVL Memphis 89.9 FM.

Newman is a big fan of the Levitt Shell and its 50 free concerts each year, which are supported by major grants from the Mortimer Levitt Foundation, the Plough Foundation, and the Assisi Foundation of Memphis. But he is wary of the power of “free” in music, books, and intellectual property.

“The Internet has given us the mindset that everything should be free or discounted,” he said. “Free downloading of music in the early days gave people the expectation that they should not have to pay. There are more opportunities to have intellectual property heard or seen, but in essence, everybody is making less money.”

Newman and his partner, tax expert Peter DeCoster, have worked with most all of the local nonprofits, artists, record companies, and producers, so he has a pretty good sense of the economics of the market.

“If Wilco, a national act, is doing half the amphitheater at Mud Island, I can’t imagine the band is going to want to come back or that the promoter will want it to come back,” he said. “That’s why a lot of acts don’t pass through here, because it’s not profitable.”

Simply put, free concerts impact the local concert scene and venues that have a cover charge.

“People should pay for live entertainment,” Newman said. “If you want quality, you’ve got to pay for it. When you have too many free venues, it certainly will reduce the revenues at some of the struggling venues. That may be just healthy economics. But if you kill off venues, you have less opportunity for acts to come through. That’s why some good musicians have left Memphis.”

Anne Pitts, executive director of the Levitt Shell, said it’s a rare occasion when the Shell hurts another venue, because the acts are family oriented and usually end by 9 p.m. “so you can still go out on the town.”

It costs about $8,000 to put on each concert, including production, hospitality, and performance fees. Donations collected at the concerts go toward expenses.

“We negotiate,” she said. “Every artist is different. Performers get a guarantee based on what we feel the crowd and donations will be. We have a long wish list and a long waiting list.”

She said the Wandering drew the largest crowd in the history of the concert series. The show ended at 10 p.m. but was not as loud as the Stooges Brass Band on Thursday night, which shut down at 9 p.m.

“It was a mellow crowd, and we didn’t have any problems,” Pitts said. “There was some hesitation on the part of neighbors in the beginning years, but people have seen the benefits now.”

If you want to support Memphis music, keep those donations — and cover charges — coming.