The year 2013 was kinda nuts, which made for great pickings for Monsieur Fly on the Wall.
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Month: January 2014
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Marcella Simien at Mollie Fontaine’s
Chris Shaw suggests you check out Memphis singer/songwriter Marcella Simien.
Local songwriter extraordinaire Marcella Simien plays a free solo show tonight at Mollie Fontaines. Check out a Marcella Simien recording from last summer below.
Leaving room for dessert at Central BBQ — I wasn’t quite sure it was possible, as I had never seen it with my own two eyes.
But it was a coworker’s birthday, and we had to have a sweet for this sweet person, and so it was the peanut butter pie ($4). This is a dense, cheesecake-like pie, very rich with a nice garnish of chocolate sauce.
The Cooper-Young Community Farmers Market is considering a move to Overton Square.
Market leaders entered a Facebook contest in late 2013 for free marketing services by local firm Obsidian Public Relations. The main reason the market needed the services, according to contest posts, was to help it begin the move from the parking lot of First Congregational Church Memphis to bustling Overton Square.
But the move is not happening “as of today,” said Lauren Boyer, a member of the market’s board of directors.
“We are considering a potential move but have not decided or made any formal agreements with Loeb Properties,” Boyer said.
The market did not win Obsidian’s PR 180° Project contest for PR services.
The Cooper-Young Community Farmers Market was founded in 2009. The market is now a year-round market and is open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. each Saturday at the corner of Walker and Cooper.
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Prayer Breakfast Speakers Stress “Unity”
Jackson Baker reports on Councilman Myron Lowery’s annual prayer breakfast.
Enter the world of Chris Travis: a 20-year old up-and-coming rap artist who refuses to follow the same guidelines being used by his lyrical peers.
Instead of emulating the styles of other rap artists dominating the radio, he stays true to his heart with his music. The Memphis native’s confident but slow-paced delivery, nonchalant lyrical content, and distinct West Tennessee accent has grabbed the attention of thousands who thirst for something outside the norm.
Boasting an international following, Travis is among the pool of artists who have successfully used the emergence of social media to build their fan base and establish a fruitful career. Making noise within the underground circuit for the last few years, he developed a solid following from his Codeine and Pizza mixtape; he released the project while a member of the hip-hop collective Raider Klan.
After leaving the group in late 2012, Travis dropped several mixtapes independently, began performing at venues across the country, and received numerous requests from other aspiring artists to collaborate on songs.
In early December, Travis dropped his latest project, Born In The Winter. Over the course of 16 tracks, he uses the installment to bring listeners into his life: a world of self-motivation, marijuana appreciation, and strong desire for success.
Travis visited the Memphis Flyer headquarters to talk about Born In The Winter along with how he got into music, having a cross-country fan base, his upcoming joint-project with fellow Memphis artist Xavier Wulf, and much more.
Follow Chris Travis on Twitter: @KenshinTravis
Check out his Soundcloud: Chrisfuckintravis
Visit his website: chriskenshintravis.com
Download Born In The Winter here
Are you originally from Memphis?
I’m from Memphis. I moved everywhere in Memphis: Orange Mound, Bartlett, East Memphis. Fuckin’ everywhere. I’ve been all around, going to different schools. I went to Germantown then Southwind and all them schools in the east.
How did you get into making music? Did you always think it was something you would like to pursue as a career?
I probably started rapping in like the fifth, sixth grade. I was on the Windows recorder rapping off old instrumentals. But I didn’t really take it serious until I got in like the ninth or tenth grade. And that’s when the Internet [took off]. You can build your fan base off the Internet; that’s when social media got cool. It was just the right time. I started to take it serious.
Who were you listening to early on that put you in the frame of mind that, ‘okay, I’m going to try rapping out?’
I used to listen to Tommy Wright III. 3 Memphis Kniccas. I messed with Three 6 [Mafia]. Playa Fly. Skinny Pimp. Gangsta Blac. Tommy Wright was my favorite though.
I got familiar with you around your Codeine and Pizza mixtape, but were you releasing projects before then?
Codeine and Pizza was actually like my first official mixtape. All that other shit that’s on the Internet, like Hell On Earth, Underground Series, that was shit I did back in like 9th and 10th grade but I just combined them and made something of it. But Codeine and Pizza was my first well-put together mixtape. Hosted by Gianni Lee.
That project came out during your days as a member of Raider Klan. How’d you link up with them?
I fucked with my homie Key Nyata. He reached out. He was fuckin’ with me. And Amber London, she’s been fuckin’ with me since day one. They had told [SpaceGhost]Purrp or whatever about me. He was like, ‘wassup, I fuck with your music. You can join Raider Klan.’ It was really an Internet thing. It was off the Internet, and then we met up. I met up with all of them; we just got cool and went from there.
You along with fellow Memphis artist Xavier Wulf (formerly Ethel Wulf) left Raider Klan. What brought forth your departure?
I left around last year in December. I was just trying to build my own shit from the ground up, not by getting a buzz off another nigga name and shit like that. I had tweeted one day, ‘I fuck with Raider Klan but I’m just doing my own shit,’ and I got my own shit popping. Even after that, I was still affiliated with them. We were still doing shows and all that, because I was still under contract. We were cool, but I was just on my own shit. But it was straight while it lasted.
Was it difficult for you to make the transition from being in Raider Klan to generating your own fans?
Yeah, but what I did was, I just kept on dropping music, dropping videos, and I built myself up off the Internet. It’s easy now, because you’ve got Twitter, Tumblr and all that shit, so you can just build yourself up off that. That’s what I did.
I’ve noticed from looking online as well as listening to your last few projects, you’ve been talking about the Water Boyz movement. Can you explain that?
Aw yeah, Water Boyz. It’s my shit I made on some stay pure shit. It’s really a positive movement just to get folks to drink water and not sodas. Just being healthy. Actually, what I was doing was trying to get niggas to stop drinking codeine, because after niggas heard Codeine & Pizza they was like, ‘aw, I’ma try that. What’s codeine?’ I was actually trying to get niggas to convert…just to stay pure and drink water.
On the other hand, a portion of your content focuses on smoking weed and sipping codeine. What’s the balance between the two?
It’s a balance. I barely drink syrup [codeine] anymore. I do, but I don’t do it as much as I used to. I got water all day. I be drinking water and smoking, but I think you can still stay pure and smoke weed. I’m just letting folks know, ‘drink water and you’ll be good.’
On Born In The Winter, you state that Water Boyz is actually a label.
Yeah, Water Boyz Ent. I’m trying to make it into a label. That’s what I’m trying to do now.
Will the label consist of you and other artists?
Yeah, it’s going to be me and other artists, but I like to get producers. It’s a lot of underground producers on the Internet making noise. It’s producers from everywhere that send me beats. I got people in France, over seas, [and other places] that send me beats and they be crazy. Like, 12-year-old boys, [they send me beats] and they be crazy.
What inspired you to name your latest project Born In The Winter?
My birthday’s in December, so I was just like, ‘I’m Born in the Winter,’ ya feel me? I was actually planning to release a mixtape on my birthday anyway. I didn’t know it was gonna be called Born In The Winter. I just thought of it during the summer, and as it went on, it got cold and shit, I was like, ‘this is me. I was born in this weather’ so I was just like, ‘Born In The Weather.’ If you see on the tape cover, it was snowing in Memphis and I got the pyramid and shit right there.
One of the most meaningful songs to me off the mixtape is “Fuck The World.” Where was your mindframe at when you created that song?
I was just on some dark ass, fuck everybody-type shit, but still trying to, like, motivate. ‘Everybody gonna talk bout you.’ It’s just how people will feel. You’ll feel like, ‘aw, these folks don’t fuck with me; they talking about me and shit,’ it’s just like that. It’s how I was feeling at the time. And then I sampled [Lil] Boosie on the beginning of that junt when he was talking before he was going to jail in that [interview]. It was on some deep shit.
Why did you choose to put that excerpt in the beginning of it?
Boosie is one of my favorite artists, and I just think that what they did to him was wrong. I was like, ‘I have to put Boosie at the beginning of this shit,’ because that was a powerful ass interview; it was true what he was saying.
On the mixtape’s tracklisting, it’s a parenthesis after every song that reveals a time. What’s that for?
That’s when I was done with the actual song. Every time I got done with recording a song, I’d look at the time. ‘This is when the masterpiece was finished,’ that’s how I looked at it. Because I like to think of my music, not to sound cliché and shit, I try to make that shit classic. I’d like for [people] to be bumpin’ my shit five to ten years from now. That’s why I just try my best.
With being an artist, everyone listening to your music is not going to like your material, or they’re going to have different opinions and feel different ways. How do you handle that?
How I look at it is, I don’t care. I know what I like. Whatever I like, I’ma put out. I just don’t care about what people say. I just do what, in my mind, I fuck with. If I know this song that I did is hard, I’m gonna be like, ‘oh, okay this shit hard.’ I don’t care what nobody say about that shit; I just put my shit out. I don’t give a fuck. People be talking on the internet; I’m like, ‘okay.’ I got plenty of music; you can’t just dislike all of my shit. It don’t bother me at all.
I noticed on the majority of your projects, you don’t have any features. Why is that?
I just feel like I don’t even need features. I’ll do features but I wouldn’t put them on my project. It depends. Most of the time, I don’t put nobody on my project, like, at all. It really ain’t even a reason behind it. I just feel like my projects should be me, myself, my experiences in life, everything that’s been going on. I would make like a compilation mixtape with me and my niggas on there but as far as my project’s concerned, I just never liked putting anybody on my projects.
Who are you working with as far as production wise? It doesn’t sound like the sound that’s popular right now.
I go to Eric Dingus. He’s from Austin. His shit is ridiculous. I got my homeboy Dirty Up. He produced on my latest shit, Born In The Winter.
What’s your writing process like when you’re creating your music?
When I’m on my projects, I write and take my time. But it doesn’t take me long to write a song. I’ll knock a song out in one day. That’s how I make my mixtapes. I’ll do a song a day—play it, bump it and see how it sounds. I make plenty music. I make a lot of music and just put that shit out. I’ve got so used to doing it, I’ll just drop music whenever I want to. I’ve got plenty of music on the Internet; that’s how my fan base expanded, too.
You also call yourself Kenshin Travis. What made you adopt that moniker?
That’s Rurouni Kenshin. I was raised off it. I used to watch Rurouni Kenshin when I was little and shit. Last year, I think I was in New York and I had got this beat [and] in my brain, I was just like ‘bitch, I’m Kenshin Travis.’ That’s how that song came about—the “Bitch, I’m Kenshin Travis” song. I just started calling myself Kenshin Travis from then on.
You’re friends with Xavier Wulf, but you guys really don’t make appearances on each other’s projects. Would you ever consider doing a project with him?
Aw yeah, we’re doing a project together.
What can people expect from that?
That shit’s gonna be big, bro. I think that’s what’s gonna do it for us. We’re both talking about going hard on that shit. Our styles are different as hell, so when we get on a song, you don’t never know what to expect. It’s just like that on all of our songs. We’re both competitive, so we both try to go hard. We ain’t never dropped no project, but once we drop this junt in 2014, we’re gonna see where this shit take us. We’re gonna try to tour off this shit.
Who are some of your favorite artists to listen to?
I bump Sade. I bump Anita Baker. I like a bunch of old, soothing music. I like Fonda Ray. I got plenty of artists I listen to—just old, classic music that I be bumpin’.
How would you describe your sound?
What I think of when I hear my music is, like, beach music or some shit. At the water. Some wavy shit but all of my music isn’t like that. I can get on a trap beat and kill that shit and then get back on my own lane and kill that shit. I try to be versatile. I just try to make as much sounds as possible. I try to start new sounds with all my projects. People tell me to make Codeine and Pizza 2 and all that shit, I won’t paint the same picture twice. Codeine and Pizza, that shit was too classic for me to just go and think I’m gonna do better.
Talking with Xavier Wulf, he told me that he really doesn’t have a fan base in Memphis. He said it’s big in places like California and Texas. He also said he’s never did a show in Memphis. How is your fan base?
It’s the same. My fan base is all over. It’s in L.A., Florida, Texas; it’s heavy. I’m just starting to see my fan base in Memphis. I’m just now starting to see people bumpin’ me and asking ‘when are you going to have a show in Memphis.’ That’s why I’m like, ‘aw okay, they’re starting to wake up now.’
Why do you think people outside of your own city gravitated to your music before your local peers did?
I just think, I don’t know if it’s a lot of closed-minded people in Memphis, they don’t accept different music, or whatever the case may be, but over the Internet, [my music] reached them other places and hit they ass. Over the Internet, these folks over here ain’t never seen me but they bumpin’ my music and when I go over there to do a show, it’s a lot of people. We get a lot of people at our shows. I ain’t never had a show in Memphis. We’re trying to set up a show, right now.
How is it for you, being an independent artist and still being able to go to big markets and pack them out? And do you think you need a major label to truly prosper with your career nowadays?
I really think that I can do it independent. As far as the new era, you can do anything you want. Once you build your shit up off the internet and you have supporters in fuckin’ Cali, New York, I can go over there, do a show, a bunch of fans come, I show love to them, and they actually fuck with me—they mosh pitting and going crazy when we perform.
Outside of music, what’s something that people don’t know about Chris Travis?
I like to do art. I do my own videos, edit them and put them out on YouTube. My Youtube channel has like 10,000 subscribers…I’ve been building up off that shit.
When I was in high school, I used to draw. I used to do art. I wasn’t even rapping. My mamma wanted me to be an artist. I was like, ‘hell naw. I’ma be an artist in music. I’ma be a musician.’
Did you ever make a video to “Misty” off Hidden In The Mist?
Naw. I’m supposed to be making a video to “Misty.”
Does it bother you releasing your music for free? And how do you profit from this other than touring?
Not really. It doesn’t bother me. And I always ask myself this: ‘should I put my music out on iTunes?’ And then at the same time, I’m like, ‘naw,’ because I don’t necessarily need to. I can make an album whenever I want to. I’ma make an album when the time’s right. That shit’s got to be perfect. That shit’s gotta be on point. If a label wants to do an album, I’ll do that shit. If I’m funded everything I need to make an album, I’ll do that shit. But as far as now, I’m just building my fan base up with putting out all my music on the Internet.
What’s next for you?
I got the mixtape with Wulf coming up in 2014. After that, I might drop an album. I’m just trying to do some big shit in 2014.
Check out an alternate version of the interview in the video below:
Follow me on Twitter: @Lou4President
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Mixing elements of lingering controversy with expressed desires for unity in 2014, members of the Memphis/Shelby County political establishment welcomed the New Year at City Councilman Myron Lowery’s 23rd annual prayer breakfast Wednesday at the Memphis Airport Hotel and Conference Center.
Keeping to a stated theme of “Continuing to Move Memphis & Shelby County Forward” were 9th District congressman Steve Cohen, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, and Lowery himself.
In a general way, this year’s version of the annual event conformed to Lowery’s description of the annual event as “the only occasion of the year when all aspects of our diverse community can come together,” including political candidates, officeholders, and representatives of both “the corporate community” and labor.
Speaking to an audience of some 300 that included numerous political hopefuls for the forthcoming 2014 election season, including his potential Democratic primary opponent, lawyer Ricky Wilkins, Cohen expressed hopes that the bipartisan bickering of recent years might ease when Congress resumes its labors later this month. He called for an increased minimum wage and cited good omens for Memphis, including the likelihood of a federal grant to aid in expanding Presidents’ Island.
Cohen also noted that the much-belabored Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) has so far succeeded in enrolling some 2 million new sign-ups, and he expressed optimism about the future of the act, President Obama’s signature legislative achievement.
Not everything said at the breakfast evoked a sense of kumbaya. The congressman made a point of endorsing host Lowery’s pending resolution of No Confidence in Shelby County Administrator of Elections Rich Holden. The resolution, a companion of one recently passed 9-0 by the Shelby County Commission, is in response to a series of glitches that have occurred in the local election process during the last few years and will be taken up at the Council’s first meeting of the year, on January 7.
In their remarks, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell and Memphis Mayor A C Wharton kept to the tone of general uplift and harmony, Luttrell noting the fact of frequent political controversies in 2013 and suggesting a return to genoeral “civility” as an antidote in 2014.
Wharton also made an effort to emphasize the positive, including the city’s taking over management of Beale Street and the prospect of expanding the noted entertainment district all the way to the Mississippi River.
“I’m through with whose fault it is,” the Mayor said, apropos his current strained relations with the Council. He pledged to make joint efforts with the Council in resolving disputes over issues like city pension reform and to get beyond the impasse over whether and for how much the city should purchase AutoZone Park.
The New York company which is bondholder for the facility has threatened to auction off all or part of the property, but the National League’s St. Louis Cardinals, for whom the Triple-A Memphis Redbirds are a farm team, have offered to purchase the local team from the struggling non-profit Memphis Redbirds Baseball Foundation and to operate it themselves. The offer, though, is conditional on the city’s purchase of the stadium facility.
In his remarks, Lowery referred to the recent acrimony in City Hall and made an appeal for “trust.” On the stadium issue, he revealed that representatives of the Cardinals organization will be in Memphis this coming week to speak directly with Council members about the matter.
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Lester Merriweather: Artist and Curator
Eileen Townsend talks with Lester Merriweather, artist and curator of the Fogelman Gallery at the U of M.
Lester Merriweather has been doing a lot with Memphis art for the past decade, but 2013 may have been his most remarkable year to date. In addition to curating the University of Memphis’s new Fogelman Gallery, he was featured in group shows at The Cotton Museum and Material and held two excellent solo exhibitions, “BLACK HOUSE” and “WHITE MARKET”, at South Main’s TOPS space. He produced an entirely new body of collage pieces, worked with ArtsMemphis and the UrbanArts Commission, and was a constant presence at openings and events throughout town.
The first time I visited Lester’s studio, I found him standing several rungs up on a ladder, affixing a picture of a bejewled female wrist to the top of a 12 foot canvas. He was putting the finishing touches on the body of collage work that would form the first half of his solo exhibition at TOPS. Around us, glossy magazines were stacked floor-to-ceiling, along with Tupperwear containers full of carefully extracted clippings.
The collages, many imposingly large yet sparse, feature delicate wreaths of jewels, sunglasses, watches, lipstick, and other luxury ephemera. These images are interspersed with deconstructed pictures of celebrities, or parts of celebrities. The works are about wealth and race and pop culture, and about how human bodies are co-opted by the brutality of capitalism. In following weeks, hanging in the grimy TOPS basement, they looked both bleak and luxe.
I recently visited Merriweather in his studio for a second time, to talk about 2013 in Memphis art and in his work.
Flyer: You devoted this year to making work and showing work in Memphis. As an artist who has shown internationally, but who has spent his career here, what was that like?
LM: It’s a mixed bag. You always have positives and negatives from situations in which you are exhibititing work. There were high moments, like being able to do the 100th show at Material. I think everything came from just wanting to focus on changing things in my studio, and developing different bodies of work that I had started on, and just wanting to get actual ideas materialized.
There is a long way to go for Memphis’s communities, in terms of how they receive, understand, and support art. But a lot of my work, this year, was to achieve that specific goal [of making and showing work in Memphis]. TOPS was a highlight, because I felt like I got a chance to do several different types of work, and make them all work within the space. There are two other Memphis shows coming up on my radar. But I want to use this next year to travel [my work] to other museums and other spaces, and other places….The thing about Memphis is— you could say sometimes— the audience is relatively particular… it is not like you will be blackballed from the art world if you make a misstep here in Memphis. I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted to do.
[jump]
How are things in Memphis for artists now and where do you see things going?
There have been setbacks, like what happened with the Powerhouse [closing]. There have been major positives for what could happen, like for instance, the crowd that was at the Theaster Gates talk, or the Eggleston Museum that is coming in the future. There is always a fluid motion for what the audience could be. I think once there is an actually financially supportive audience, then we will be able to talk about what Memphis really could be.
What do you think we need? Could you elaborate on that? Buyers or institutional support?
We need both. Artists need to have more opportunities. I just sat in on an ArtsMemphis [ArtsAccelerator grant] meeting, and it was its own process, but there was a strange feeling, when it was over, that there were so many artists who needed to be supported. There were so many artists who deserved to be supported. It was, what’s the phrase? —a double-edged sword. I saw that whole process from beginning to end. A lot of people deserved to be fought for more, vouched for more. Not that the people who won didn’t deserve it. There were just a lot of people who deserved it.
Moving focus, there is an overt discussion in your most recent work about racial history. But, maybe as a corollary, I also noticed that many of the scenes have a mythic quality… multi-armed women, or shining blue seas. It is almost Odyssean. It feels like a deconstructed hero-myth. Am I right about that?
I don’t know that I would call it a myth. It is more that these [historical] things have not had a chance to be realized, or that the ideas have not come through. And it kind of becomes obvious in the way that we still look at these magazines, and we still see all of these specific ads, and we don’t neccessarily connect the history between why these ads exist now. We don’t connect them back to the original conquests and voyages.
You know, all of those things also tie into how society is right now, about how hierarchies exist, but no one talks about it. It’s talked about in terms of, “Oh, this is everyday society and this is how things are”, but there are these connections that really ought to be made. Some of those pieces had a “mythical quality”, but I think it is only because no one wants to talk about the multi-headed monster of consumer nature, or capitalism. No one wants to talk about those things in terms of what they really are, from a historical standpoint. While they have a mythic individual nature, when you look at them together, the reality sets in about why we are where we are today.
It it interesting that you can make something that is explanatory of violence, but have it be beautiful. Particularly in light of a discussion of capitalism, that these pieces can be works of art, but also beautiful objects.
You have the idea that things are attractive as pieces of art, as quote-unquote luxury goods. But at the same time, I guess that is where the politics come in. You communicate bigger picture issues with that beauty, but you don’t neccessarily have to beat anyone over the head to come up with a way of communicating.
Can you tell me about your work as a curator, versus your work as an artist? Does being a curator change the way you think about making work?
I wouldn’t say that [working as a curator] changes my own specific work, because I approach Fogelman’s gallery as an artist. There is this list of really specific things that any artist wants. They want to be able to come into the space, envision their work, see it shown the way they want to see it. They want to not have to worry about where they are going to stay or what they are going to eat, the flight, the per diem, all of those basic things that any artist really cares about. At the end of the day they want to see their work shown the way they want it, and they would like for it to be reviewed…favorably, they hope. [laughs]
As an artist, I come into the Fogelman situation understading what artists want. So that is what affects the majority of what I try to do with the gallery. I try to find the best possible artists for that space, for that situation, the best possible installation artists — people who are making cutting edge work, who give prime examples for the students to be inspired by.