Month: October 2015

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Cover Feature News

Indie Memphis 2015: The Directors

“We serve two complementary groups of people in Memphis,” says Ryan Watt, executive director of Indie Memphis. “We serve the filmmakers and artists, to help their work get seen, and help with things like grants and workshops and panels and networking opportunities. We help artists from Memphis and beyond get their movies seen. On the other hand, we serve the audiences who are dying to see something different. I like superhero movies, too, but there’s only so much of that we can see.”

For 18 years, Indie Memphis has pursued those twin missions. What began with movies projected on a sheet in a downtown bar has evolved into one of the city’s premier cultural events. This year brings big changes to the festival, beginning with Watt, who took over as director earlier this year after the departure of Erik Jambor. Watt, a producer with seven features under his belt, was an Indie Memphis board member who volunteered to be the interim director after the January resignation of Jambor. In September, what was originally a temporary position became permanent. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I thought that would be it. But we started the search for executive director, and I got about a month into it, and I thought, ‘I’m really enjoying this.'”

This year’s festival expands to eight days, from November 3rd-10th, to allow audiences more opportunities to see movies that might have gotten lost in the shuffle in the former four-day format. “We kept the weekend, which is the anchor of the festival, and we added screenings before and after it,” Watt says. Friday through Sunday screenings, panels, parties, and events will take place at Circuit Playhouse and Studio on the Square in Overton square, while the rest of the festival will take place downtown in the Orpheum Theatre’s new Halloran Centre.

The festival takes place late in the film calendar, which means Indie Memphis can get unique films. “The Sundance and South by Southwest films have made the rounds and already have distribution. But we’re a month before the big Oscar push, so we get movies like Carol and Anomalisa and Brooklyn. Other festivals don’t get those,” Watt says.

One of the most buzzed-about films at the festival is Tangerine, director Sean Baker’s comedy that was shot entirely on an iPhone. “I think about that movie on a daily basis,” Watt says. “You think about the movies that change independent film, like Clerks or Pulp Fiction. Tangerine will be on that list.”

Director Whit Stillman

In addition to bringing the cutting edge of film to Memphis, the festival also celebrates classic cinema. The groundbreaking indie Metropolitan will get a 25th-anniversary screening, with director Whit Stillman on hand to answer audience questions and, on Saturday, conduct a screenwriting panel. For the centennial of Orson Welles’ birth, the festival is partnering with Rhodes College to screen his 1965 Shakespeare adaptation Chimes at Midnight, which the director considered to be his best film. “This is a big deal,” Watt says. “We’re showing a 35-mm print. Only a handful of copies exist in the world.”

With a new online ticketing system and a plan for expanded year-round programming, Watt wants to make sure Indie Memphis rounds out its second decade bringing even more big-deal events to the city.

Andrea Morales

Joann Self Selvidge and Sara Kaye Larson worked for four years on The Keepers

The Keepers

This year’s crop of local films is the strongest in recent memory. The festival opens with The Keepers, a documentary by Memphis directors Joann Self Selvidge and Sara Kaye Larson. The pair met at a dinner party hosted by photographer William Eggleston in 2011.

Larson is a survivor of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. “One of my first films I was recognized for was, I did a super-D.I.Y. film where I videotaped everything while I was going through chemotherapy in the early 2000s.”

Andrea Morales

The idea for The Keepers came from Larson’s daily walk through Overton Park. “I was obsessed with the Zoo,” she says. “I wanted to go behind the scenes. I’d always wanted to make a real documentary. Joann said, ‘I do too!’ And that’s how it happened.”

Self Selvidge has produced and directed documentaries for 11 years. Her most recent work, The Art Academy, detailed the history of the Memphis College of Art. Her close collaboration with Larson was a first for her. “We’re both used to doing everything ourselves,” Self Selvidge says. “She and I actually think a lot alike. We have way more similarities than differences. We had lots of friction in certain areas and a lot of opinions. And it made the film stronger. I’ve always worked with really strong people and a strong crew. I didn’t go to film school. I’ve learned by doing it, and I learned from other people.”

Jamie Harmon

Carolyn Horton and Kofi the giraffe

Jamie Harmon

Fred Wagner, the big cat keeper

The pair shot more than 300 hours of footage during the four-year production. “The biggest thing we want Memphis to know about this movie is that they’re going to get unprecedented access behind the scenes at the Zoo. The whole point of making this movie was to answer documentaries that rely on sensationalism. It doesn’t matter if zoos are good or bad. What about the people who work there? What is their experience? Connecting to zoos through the eyes of the worker, it’s going to give you a perspective that you have never seen before,” Self Selvidge says.

Larson says the finished product ended up being far different from the film the directors thought they would be making. “When we went into it, we thought, ‘This is going to be such an interesting story, because we’re going to film people that love animals, but yet they have to take care of them in captivity. They’re going to be so conflicted. This will be a great story.’ But guess what? They’re not conflicted. They’re fine with it. And they should be. They’re totally zen.”

But for the Grace

But for the Grace

Emmanuel A. Amido came to Memphis at age 12 as a refugee from war-torn South Sudan. “The first four or five years are kind of a blur, because I didn’t know the language or understand the culture,” he says.

His interest in filmmaking began when his mother bought a digital camcorder. “During birthday parties and events, I always wanted to be the one holding the camera. During my junior year of high school, I took a media class. Our final project was to produce a little newspiece. I loved it. That was the first time I got to edit. That’s when I decided I was going to do this for a living.”

Amido’s films are shaped by his immigrant experiences in Memphis. “I’m very fascinated by American society. In such a short period of time, so much has happened. When you look at the world timeline, when America came into the world, it’s like nothing. But in that short period of time, it was established, developed, and surpassed nations that had been around since Moses. That’s fascinating to me, the idea of democracy, and rights, and privilege.”

His first film Orange Mound, Tennessee: America’s Community won the Soul of Southern Film award at 2013’s Indie Memphis. “It was going to be about the violence of Orange Mound, but when I started making it, it became something else,” he says. “I wanted to make something that the people of Orange Mound could celebrate. A lot of people I met were beat up and worn down from the struggle and the poverty. So I wanted to make something to lift them up.”

In But for the Grace, Amido explores questions of faith and race in contemporary America. “I started with Martin Luther King’s quote that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America. I went in to look at some of the issues that keep churchgoing Americans segregated. I wanted to move along both socioeconomic and racial lines. But as the movie progressed, I discovered that race is still a very touchy subject for people to talk about in the church, on both the white side and the black side. So I focused more on the racial side.”

Amido’s unique perspective allows him to conduct frank discussions on race relations with people on both sides of the Sunday-morning divide. “America is not a perfect society, not by a long shot. But what I like about being here is that even though it’s imperfect, even though there’s a lot of inequality, somebody like me, who’s not even from here, can make a documentary calling people out on these issues. I’m not saying that after this movie comes out, blacks and whites are going to hug each other. But I’m able to do that, and there are people who will see it, and will think about it, who don’t think they have to defend a certain point of view. The majority of the world doesn’t have that, and Americans take it for granted.”

Girl in Woods

Girl in Woods

“We sort of made the movie twice,” says Memphis native Jeremy Benson about his psychological horror movie Girl in Woods.

After completing and selling his 2008 film Live Animals, he and his producing partner Mark Williams were trying to sell investors on a vampire film. “We were in a pitch meeting, and the investor said he liked the business plan, but he didn’t want to be attached to that kind of story,” he recalls. “I blurted out that I was working on a short story about a girl with some mental problems who gets lost in the Smoky Mountains. From that statement to about two months later, we had the money, but we didn’t have the script.”

Over the course of an 18-day shoot in East Tennessee, the crew, which included ace Memphis cinematographer Ryan Earl Parker, battled the elements. “We underestimated how hard it would be to shoot in the mountains. Out of the 18 days we were there, it rained nine of them. It looks great in the movie, but it really slows you down.”

Juliet Reeves London, who plays the lead character Grace, turned in a nuanced performance despite the harsh conditions.”Juliet was a trooper, having to shoot around snakes. She’s in 90 percent of the movie. She does a great job.”

But when Benson got the hard-won footage back to the editing room, he and editor Brian Elkins discovered their problems were only beginning. “We cut it, but there were big sections of the story that were not coming across like they should.”

So the crew convinced their investors to finance a series of reshoots that would add a backstory in flashbacks that was previously told in dialogue. “We went back and shot half the movie again,” Benson says. “Honestly, I’m glad we did it. I’m 10 times more proud of this cut than I was two years ago. It forced us to go from the in-town, D.I.Y.- style to getting a casting director, go through the unions, and get a breakdown, and do it the way we’re supposed to do it.”

The reshoots added Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Charisma Carpenter and Party of Five‘s Jeremy London to the cast. Girl in Woods is also the last film role by the late Memphis actor John Still, who was a fixture in Craig Brewer’s films. The finished film is dense and twisty, not relying on gore and jump-scares to build tension. “It’s a horror film, but it’s definitely pushing the genre in all sorts of different directions.”

Benson says the movie is a tribute to the power of persistence. He recalls asking experienced filmmakers for advice on how to improve after his first film. “And they always said ‘Just do it.’ We thought they were being sarcastic. But after doing it, we realized they were telling the truth. You just do it.”

Wind Blows

Syl Johnson: Any Way the Wind Blows

“Syl’s story really found me,” says director Rob Hatch-Miller. The New Yorker met the soul singer in 2009 while filming for a radio station’s website. “I didn’t know a lot of his music at the time. I knew his name, and I knew he had a reputation for being sampled a lot in the hip-hop world. But I didn’t know much beyond that. Seeing him interviewed that day, it was clear that he had a fascinating story about his career in music and that he was a fascinating character. He’s a super interesting guy: funny, quirky, great personality. The character is the most important part of deciding to do a documentary.”

Johnson is not as well known as Al Green or Marvin Gaye, but he had an astonishingly prolific career that spanned three decades. “He’s not someone who made one album and disappeared. The boxed set of his album that was nominated for a Grammy while we were filming is six LPs, and that doesn’t even cover half of his career. He did everything, from early 1960s, heavily blues-influenced R&B music, to super funky James Brown-style hard funk, to Hi Records-Memphis-style, to even doing some great disco-y stuff towards the end of his main recording career. His music went on to influence hip-hop in a major way, as much as James Brown or Al Green influenced hip-hop. Syl’s song ‘Different Strokes’ from 1967, recorded in Chicago for an independent record label, is one of the most sampled songs of all time.”

Johnson is a native of Holly Springs, Mississippi, and the film brought him back to the Memphis area. “We were going to these places in Memphis with Syl that he hadn’t been for years, seeing people whom he hadn’t seen in years,” Hatch-Miller says. “Hearing these stories that we had only had glimpses of previously, it was a really exciting time filming, and probably the most fun we had shooting. You can see it in the scene when he shows up at Hi Records where all of the stuff was recorded with Willie Mitchell and Al Green and Syl and Otis Clay and O.V. Wright. It was a wonderful day. The audience walks in the door with him and meets the family of Willie Mitchell, and you really feel like you’re being taken back in time. It’s one of my favorite parts of the film.”

Orion: The Man Who Would Be King

Orion: The Man Who Would Be King

Twelve years ago, English director Jeanie Finlay was at a car boot sale — “You would call it a yard sale” — when she found an old vinyl record called Orion Reborn. “On the cover there was a man with a mask, his hands on his hips, and big hair. For a pound, you can’t go wrong! So I took it home and played it. It was confusing. It sounded like Elvis, but it was after Elvis died. It was on Sun Records. What’s going on here?”

She went on to forge a career as a documentary filmmaker, but she never forgot about the mystery of Orion. She struggled for years to get funding for Orion: The Man Who Would Be King and traveled to the States to shoot whenever she could. “I never gave up. I feel like filmmaking sometimes is a test of your own resilience,” she says.

She gathered together 80 hours, 5,000 images, countless hours of archival material, and 337 crowd-funders before winning backing from Creative England, Ffilm Cymru Wales, BBC Storyville and Broadway. “Once I had gotten all of those things in place, everyone else came on board. There’s no magic bullet when it comes to making films. I felt possessed by Orion’s story, and I knew that one day, in some way or another, I was going to make it into a film.”

Orion’s Elvis-esqe appearance and singing style was cooked up by Sun Records, at that time owned by Shelby Singleton, and was the origin of the persistent myth that Elvis faked his death. “People just want it to be true. Every time there’s something people want to be true, those are the stories that go viral.”

Finlay says Orion: The Man Who Would Be King, which closes Indie Memphis, is, like all her films, “about what music means to people. It’s a different take on the things that were going on in the wake of Elvis’ death. Elvis is not actually in the film, but he casts sort of a long shadow over it. It’s funny, it’s moving, and it’s surprising.”

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

A Pumpkin Power Primer

CREDIT: Ari LeVaux

As I was leaving his farm a few weeks ago, a farmer tossed me a parting gift in the form of a large, green and orange orb.

“It’s a special variety of pumpkin, called a Kakai, grown specifically for its seeds,” he told me.

It was curiously light for its size, suggesting a big air cavity inside. My wife and kids carved it into a scary face. She then came into the house and announced how good the seeds were.

“I’m not surprised, dearest,” I prepared to lecture. “It’s a special pumpkin bred for … wait, are you eating the seeds raw?”

Indeed she was. I munched on one myself, had another, and was struck not only by how delicious they were but also how soft. They were a bit slimy, but they air-dried in a few minutes. Roasted, they were divine pumpkin-seed glory. They puffed out in the heat, into oblong chunks of meat that were bereft of the usual coat. Alas, there were surprisingly few seeds inside for such a large pumpkin.

Pumpkins are a powerhouse plant in human history, one that can produce tremendous amounts of edible material in the flowers, flesh, and seeds. A Native American food, pumpkins were one of Christopher Columbus’ most valuable New World acquisitions. They were originally cultivated in Spain, but soon found their way to Austria, where they were adopted in a major way.

The province of Styria in Southeast Austria became ground zero for all things pumpkin seed oil. By the 1700s, Styrian bureaucrats were regulating its production. In the late 1800s, a mutant came along in which the seed’s hard shell was replaced by a soft membrane, and the naked-seeded pumpkin was born. Its soft-seeded descendants became the progenitors of the finest edible and oil seed pumpkins in the world.

Today, there are about a dozen varieties of naked-seed pumpkins, all of Austrian descent, according to Jay Gilbertson of Hay River Pumpkin Seed Oil company in Prairie Farm, Wisconsin. And despite its recent tune-up in Europe, pumpkin is more American than apple pie, he told me on the phone.

When they got started in 2006, Gilbertson and his partner Ken Seguine planted as many pumpkin seed varieties as they could get their hands on, and finally settled on one that grew well on their land. While he wouldn’t tell me which variety — “it’s our only secret” — he says the seeds are considerably larger and more plentiful than the ones in a Kakai pumpkin.

I went to the store and picked up a few bottles of pumpkin seed oil, one Austrian and one domestic, and played around with them. The domestic, Omega Nutrition brand is lighter; the Austrian Castelmuro brand is darker and stronger. Both have a deeply toasted smell that’s almost burnt, almost smoky, but not quite. It is a nutty, oily chord, in baritone, and I could see why it’s occasionally used as a replacement for toasted sesame oil in Asian dishes.

The culinary uses of pumpkin seed oil are limited by the fact that you can’t cook with it, as it readily breaks down in heat. So it’s often added raw to dishes as a finishing touch. In Austria, pumpkin seed oil is added to various preparations of meat, like rare slices of beef, or mixed into salad dressings, often with cider vinegar. It is even added to sweets like vanilla ice cream, to which it imparts its nutty flavor in a pleasing way.

That night I went Styrian-style and put Kürbiskernöl, as they call it, on everything. I drizzled it on salad, salmon, and squash, dipped tomato slices into it, and tried to follow a recipe for pumpkin seed and walnut oil mayonnaise, which failed.

Gilbertson tells me it takes 20 to 40 pumpkins’ worth of seeds to make an eight-ounce bottle of oil, which seems like an extraordinary effort. The pumpkin flesh, meanwhile, is basically inedible, he says. But the seeds and their oil alone make the enterprise worth it.

“If I had a million bottles, I could sell every one,” Gilbertson says. Unfortunately, the pumpkin-farming conditions in his area have not been favorable recently. “The last two years have been disastrous,” he says. “Cool summers and too much moisture.”

This made me appreciate my Kakai pumpkin all the more deeply. Those seeds. While they are quite edible raw, cooked they are straight up spectacular, thick and meaty and bursting with flavor. Straight out of the oven and dressed with olive oil, and table and garlic salts, they exploded in my mouth.

It also made me appreciate all pumpkin and squash seeds. Well, the yummy ones, anyway. They really are worth eating, so don’t forget the seeds when you carve that pumpkin. At the farmers market, growers can direct you to the pumpkins and squash with the best seeds.

And yeah, those seeds will probably have husks. I chew them up and swallow, husks and all. With all the pumpkin pie I’ll soon be eating, I could use a little extra fiber.

Categories
Music Music Features

Alex G Live at the Hi-Tone

The Domino Recording Company artist Alex G plays the Hi-Tone this Friday night, touring on the release of his brand new album, Beach Music. Giannascoli (or G for short) started out as an Internet sensation, releasing multiple records on Bandcamp before getting attention from music media outlets like Noisey, Stereogum, Pitchfork, and more. While Beach Music might be Alex G’s introduction to a potentially much larger audience, the Philadelphia songwriter has been working on his lo-fi “bedroom pop” since 2010, releasing seven albums and building a solid fan base in the process. Alex G has obviously already proved to have a solid work ethic, and with a label like Domino behind him, this could be your opportunity for bragging rights of the “I saw him when … ” variety.

Joining Alex G on tour is Spencer Radcliffe of the bands Best Witches and Blithe Field. Radcliffe also has a new album out this month, making for the first proper release under his own name. Looking In will be released by Run for Cover Records, the Boston label that brought you Elvis Depressedly, Modern Baseball, and, most notably, the vinyl version of Brand New’s genre-defining album Déjà Entendu. The Memphis show will be the first of Radcliffe’s three gigs with Alex G, and much like Julien Baker (last week’s cover story), Radcliffe’s music is soft, subtle, and easy on the listener. Radcliffe and Giannascoli seem to be perfect for touring with one another, all the way down to their knack for coming up with vague, one-word song titles. Oxford’s Bonus are also on the bill, along with locals Loser Vision. The show takes place in the Hi-Tone small room, and kicks off a stacked weekend for the Crosstown venue.

Categories
News News Feature

Memphis Noir: from Dames to Graceland.

By June 2013, Laureen Cantwell had lived in Memphis for a year — long enough to have fallen in love with Elvis (“I went to Graceland twice with the VIP pass, and I cried both times”), long enough to recognize the city’s selfdom, and long enough to notice a glaring omission on the part of Akashic Books Noir series.

“[They had] a Detroit Noir, Chicago, New Orleans. There was a Tel Aviv Noir. But no Memphis Noir. It was sort of surprising,” Cantwell says.

She found it no coincidence that she ran into the publishing company’s booth at an annual library conference that summer, so she emboldened herself to ask about the oversight.

The answer was simple enough.

“They told me they had not had the right proposal,” Cantwell says.

A business card exchange and a Labor Day later, the idea of producing an anthology recounting the Memphis experience through the noir lens was in the hands of team Akashic, and so began Cantwell’s journey of overseeing her first anthology.

Brooklyn-based Akashic Books was launched in 1997 by three musicians as an independent publishing company to “reverse the gentrification of the literary world.”

In 2004 the company released its first Noir book, Brooklyn Noir, 19 stories using death, revolvers, stalkers, and squatters to showcase the diversity and personality of the New York borough.

“In a sense they’re like a travel guide, perhaps in a creepy kind of way, and perhaps that will compel people to go and visit that place,” Cantwell says. “Akashic is very selective in their projects, and they really believe in the author or story or product they’re putting out.”

There are 72 Noir books, with 18 forthcoming, ranging from Tehran to Trinidad, and as of November 3rd, a Memphis edition will be added to the roster.

Cantwell started her process with a 2001 Flyer article that described the somewhat disjunctive writers’ scene in Memphis.

She contacted some of the writers, who put her in touch with other writers, and eventually she had 30 submissions on her hands.

Through her newfound connection with the River City writers’ sphere, she also came upon a coeditor — Leonard Gill.

“She called me out of the blue. When she proposed it to me, I thought, ‘Why not Memphis, indeed,'” Gill, longtime book columnist for the Flyer and Memphis magazine, says.

“He and I gelled very quickly. We seemed to have the same ideals and perspective on the project and what we wanted to produce,” Cantwell says.

After many dinners and coffees and discussions and possibly a little gnashing of teeth, the two settled on 15 stories. The Brooklyn offices had requested 14.

“We were hoping that they would agree that No. 15 was so good, they couldn’t produce the anthology without it,” Cantwell says.

Not only did Akashic include the 15th entry, they chose the publisher’s birthday to release it.

“That’s a high compliment,” Cantwell says.

Memphis Noir covers train cars and Beale Street, hoodoo and segregation, Nathan Bedford Forrest and, of course, Graceland, and even includes a graphic novella, the only one in the series.

“I didn’t know much about noir except for the movies I’d seen. I knew there had to be a dead body and a dame and a lot of drinking,” Richard Alley, who contributed “The Panama Limited,” says.

Veteran Noir contributor and writer Cary Holladay says she was delighted to participate in the project.

“Memphis literally has stories growing on trees. Every day, I hear about or read about or find myself involved in … stories that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, are not too strange to happen but are much too strange to believe,” Holladay says. “Memphis is quirky and feral. It should have its own entire series.”

Gill says readers will be as impressed as he was with the outcome.

“Memphis should be proud. The collection was beyond my expectations, and I couldn’t be happier with it,” Gill says.

A launch party will take place at Crosstown Art’s story booth, 438 N. Cleveland, on Tuesday, Nov. 3rd. Sponsored by the Booksellers at Laurelwood, it starts at

6 p.m. and includes a Q-and-A and signings with several of the writers.

For more information, visit akashicbooks.com.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

It’s Paul Ryan for Speaker — for better or worse

Want to hear a good one? For much of the last month, the House speakership being vacated by Representative John Boehner (R-Ohio) was going unfilled because the sizeable super-right minority of Republican House members who call themselves the “Freedom Caucus” were finding Boehner’s most likely replacement, Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) too “moderate” to hold the job.

Having basically run off Boehner and another possible successor to the leadership post — Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-California) — on grounds of being too soft toward President Obama or Planned Parenthood or congressional Democrats or whomever, the Freedom Caucus gang was surely choking on a gnat if they were gagging on Ryan, whose reason for entering politics had been his self-confessed youthful swoon for the writings of objectivist icon Ayn Rand.

Somehow, though, the far-right House members have apparently found themselves out of any other acceptable options, because the word is that, on Thursday of this week, the votes are on hand for Ryan to be elected as Speaker of the House, when Boehner formally steps down.

So Paul Ryan, who not too long ago was nominated by his party to be vice president, will have now slipped down a notch to become third-in-line for the presidency, no matter who gets elected president next year. That’s what the Constitution provides.

Never mind that Ryan has never forsworn the philosophy of Rand, whose guiding ethical principle was to trust in human selfishness as the only motive needed to guide the government of mankind. The speaker-to-be is still, so far as we know, an exponent of that 21st-century derivative of Randism which holds that society is divided into makers —the privileged minority who profess to need nobody’s help — and takers — the mass of mortals who, to one degree or another, require some measure of concern or assistance on the part of their government.

Not only is the makers/takers dichotomy an unethical point of view, it is woefully inaccurate, inasmuch as the supposed “makers” class contains as many moochers dependent on government protection of inherited wealth as it does innovators or manufacturers of tools necessary for life. And conversely, the so-called “takers” are often the toilers who provide the muscle or the man-hours to actually keep the wheels turning that allow the ticker tape (or, these days, the digital dial) to reflect some measure of economic progress.

Even so, we take our satisfaction when and as we can. And if the party that now controls both elected houses of Congress on the basis of its hatred of government per se is willing to name someone as leader who at least pledges — as Paul Ryan has done — to forgo the right to shut down government by rejecting a routine debt-ceiling increase, then maybe that’s the best we can hope for.

So here’s a weak whoopee that the GOP is willing to abide by some measure of economic common sense. Maybe they’ll even get tired at some point of exploiting Benghazi!

But that really would be asking too much.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

The Battle Over Julian Bolton

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Julian Bolton, the former Shelby County commissioner who was appointed two weeks ago by commission chairman Terry Roland as a “special purposes” lawyer to look into the legality of his (Bolton’s) being hired by the commission as its permanent independent counsel, responded to Roland on Monday with a lengthy series of citations from the County Charter. All seemingly attested that he could indeed be hired, a prior finding by County Attorney Ross Dyer to the contrary notwithstanding.

The commission promptly voted 8-5 on Monday in favor of a resolution from chairman Roland to carry out the hiring.

Jackson Baker

Chairman Roland and County Attorney Ross Dyer seemed focused on another matter here, but they were much on each other’s mind on Monday.

Dyer chose not to comment on the new development, other than to reaffirm his contention of two weeks ago that any permanent attorney hired by the commission would have to be a member of his (Dyer’s) staff, paid by him, and managed by him. And, since Dyer determined that he and the commission chair would have to agree on a candidate, the county attorney in effect had claimed veto power over any such appointment.

All that had seemingly scotched a resolution offered at the time by Roland to hire Bolton — as a decisive first move in a commission effort to assert its authority at the expense of County Mayor Mark Luttrell, who, a clear majority of commissioners believed, had over the months been ritually usurping prerogatives that either did not exist or that were more properly those of the commission to administer — both in determining policy generally and in fiscal administration, specifically.

Back in the 1990s, the Memphis City Council had engaged Allan Wade as its own independent attorney to sift evidence, make arguments, and determine policy in contradistinction to the city attorney and the office of the mayor. Wade was the model for the position the commission intended to create.

For weeks the commission had been battling Luttrell, and Dyer, both of whom had maintained the County Charter permitted only one county legal office under the direct administration of the mayor serving as legal advisor to all aspects of county government, including the affairs of the commission itself.

Two weeks ago, at the time of the first abortive resolution to hire Bolton as an independent lawyer, Dyer had, as indicated above, rejected that idea, but to mollify Roland et al., had suggested that, for specific, limited purposes, the commission could, as it had during moments of the city school-merger controversy of 2010-13, and, as it had during wrangling at Chancery Court over the various ways of reapportioning itself, hire an attorney for special, limited, non-recurring purposes.

“Fine,” announced Roland, who withdrew his original resolution and hired Bolton on the spot for the “single purpose” of countering Dyer’s case against the county commission’s hiring Bolton as a permanent and full-time independent counsel.

From that point, the Luttrell administration and the commission went on to hold what had been a preordained “budget summit” last Friday at St. Columbia Episcopal Conference & Retreat Center in Bartlett. The purpose was to reach a meeting of the minds on some of the issues dividing administration from commission and, if possible, to get on the same page regarding matters at large.

With Luttrell and Roland sitting side by side as co-chairs for the event, with principals from throughout county government sharing breakfast and lunch at the casual affair, and with a polite discussion of subjects ranging from revenue sources to the respective roles of the commission and the mayor in the budget process to the problem of OPEBs [Other Postemployment Benefits] to educational spending to recondite aspects of the county wheel tax and county infrastructure, all gathered did seem to achieve some sense of accord.

Interestingly, one idea that became something of a hit at the conference apparently derived from research by Bolton, who determined that in virtually every corner of Shelby County there were unused county-owned enclaves that could serve as office space for the county commissioner whose district happened to coincide with the available space.

One commissioner, Mark Billingsley, who represents Germantown, professed himself happy with the prospect.

So lingering was the mood of concord and free sharing of information on Friday, so warm and comfortable the sense of common purpose, that developments on the following Monday came as the proverbial cold shower.

By Monday morning, ad hoc attorney Bolton had made his report to chairman Roland, who distributed copies to the full commission.

Bolton’s report, based on his reading of the County Charter, said, in great and specific legal detail, that “the legislative power of the county is vested in the Board of County Commissioners of Shelby County [and] includes all lawful authority to adopt ordinances and resolutions governing the operation of government or regulating the conduct and affairs of the residents of Shelby County.”

From that broad first declaration, Bolton, citing codes and sections from the charter, went on to state that “the charter clearly subordinates the position of the chief executive officer, i.e., county mayor,” whose role is “to see that all resolutions and ordinances of the board of county commissioners and all laws of the state subject to enforcement by them or by the officers who are subject under this charter, to their direction and supervision are faithfully executed.”

Bolton’s memo went on and on in this vein, but its bottom line contention is that the commission, not the mayor, is the county’s chief governing authority. On the matter of the county attorney’s authority claimed by Dyer, Bolton writes, “The rules of statutory construction do not allow the subordinate office of the County Attorney, although chief counsel for the commission, to impair, frustrate, nor defeat the object of a statute, ordinance, or resolution by interpreting that ‘chief counsel’ means ‘sole counsel,’ absent specific statutory, or charter authority.”

All of this readily convinced Roland to add the new appointment resolution making Bolton a de facto independent attorney for the county commission. The actual vote on his resolution Monday was 8-4, in favor, with Democrat Van Turner demurring and four Republican commissioners — David Reaves, Billingsley, Steve Basar, and George Chism voting no.

Various reasons were adduced for the lack of solidarity with the commission — the fact that Dyer had reportedly interrupted their attempted executive session on the matter Monday morning, declaring it illegal, or allegations that interested Republicans from outside the commission had intervened with individual commissioners against the appointment of a Democrat, Bolton, as the commission’s attorney, rather than a Republican.

The 8-5 vote, underwritten by all Democrats save for Turner and by Republicans Roland and Heidi Shafer (whose argument for enhanced commission authority is this week’s Viewpoint, p. 15), holds for a document that contains a space for Mayor Luttrell to sign.

The county charter would allow the resolution of Bolton’s appointment to become official without the mayor’s signature or, should Luttrell choose to veto it, by a simple majority override on the part of the commission.

The remaining obstacle to the installation of Bolton as an independent attorney representing the county commission is contained in one of the resolution’s enabling clauses: “Be it further resolved that the Shelby County Attorney is directed to prepare a contract under the supervision of the chairman, or his designee, for execution by the parties in accordance with Section 3.03 (A) (D) of the Shelby County Charter.”

County Attorney Dyer has made it clear to his confidants that he has no intention of preparing such a contract, technically forestalling the effect of the document and likely throwing the whole matter into the jurisdiction of Chancery Court for final judgment.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Choose901 Recruits New Yorkers For Memphis Jobs

Choose901, the city’s proverbial cheerleading group run by City Leadership, took a trip to the Big Apple this week to try and convince New Yorkers to trade the 212 for the 901.

The organization is partnering with the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce to help recruit New Yorkers to fill open positions at Shelby Farms Park, Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, Muddy’s Bake Shop, International Paper, the Memphis Grizzlies, and other companies with openings.

The organization’s trip to New York also focused on recruiting college talent as they visited Columbia University, King’s College, City College, and New York University —Alexandra Pusateri

Luke Pruett and wife April in New York

Flyer: Why New York?

Pruett: We’re advocating for Memphis. We believe that Memphis is a premier destination for millennials to enjoy and invest their lives in. That’s always been our goal: to tell Memphians about that and tell the whole world about that.

That plays out in a couple of campaigns we run other than just Choose901, one being Teach901, which is recruiting urban educators to Memphis along with other efforts; another being Serve901. It’s a way to serve the city and showcase opportunities to invest your life here.

We’re [here in New York] to network, meet with Memphians that now live and work here, and recruit Memphians back to the city, as well as show new people the opportunities that exist.

Some people might say that Memphians need those available jobs.

That’s our focus every day — to show off Memphis inside the city and outside the city. We want every single Memphian and folks outside to find the best economic opportunity in the city they can. That’s why our presence is so large with events and campaigns in the city. This is one of the many recruiting efforts we’ve done both inside and outside the city. It really isn’t a departure; our founding mission from day one has been to advertise for the city of Memphis and opportunities here. We want to be a conduit of connection for every single opportunity to the people looking for it inside the city, no matter where they’re from. Our goal is to tell the stories here.

What other trips like these have you taken?

Teach901 went to Phoenix last month. We did a job fair in Chicago a few years ago, called the Choose901 Job Fair. I’d say we take about five to seven trips like these a year.

How’s the week going?

We’ve really been overwhelmed with how many people are excited about things going on in the city. We have an incredible opportunity to showcase the Memphis art scene, which you know has so many amazing artists. Wednesday night, we’re going to be celebrating the Grizzlies season at the Half Pint, which is kind of the Grizzlies bar [in New York City]. A lot of Grizzlies fans gather here to watch the games. Only a fourth of our staff is here [in New York], so the rest of our people are still back in the city doing what we always do.

The core things you need when you’re looking for a place to live are: Where do I live?; What do I do?; Where do I work?; and ultimately, how do I serve and invest in the city? We’re staying devoted to our mission. So much of what we do is attempting to lead through surprise, so you gotta stay tuned to know what’s coming next.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Haunted Pub Crawl Combines Spirits with Spirits

CREDIT: Toby Sells

Memphis may be one of the most haunted cities in America, according to local paranormal investigator Stephen Guenther.

That fact is hard to quantify. Savannah, Georgia, St. Augustine, Florida, and New Orleans also make that claim.

But Guenther makes a pretty good case for Memphis, home to a string of deadly events including the Battle of Memphis and countless Civil War deaths, the Sultana disaster (still the biggest maritime disaster in American history), the yellow fever epidemic, and “a number of grisly, historical murders.”

“I think it’s one of the most haunted cities just because of how much different activity we’ve had here, from disasters to epidemics to just your usual human drama,” Guenther said.

Guenther is a founder of the MidSouth Paranormal Society (MPS), which investigates hauntings all over the Mid-South in homes, businesses, cemeteries, schools, and more. Guenther and MPS cofounder Tanya Vandesteeg also founded the tour company Historical Haunts.

Toby Sells

Karen Brownlee and Stephen Guenther

This year the company started a new tour, a haunted pub crawl in the South Main Arts District. I tagged along with Guenther last Friday afternoon, but before we got to the pubs, we began at the Woodruff-Fontaine House, a sort of home base for the MPS.

A.J. Northrop, a Woodruff-Fontaine House board member and member of the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities, said he has a long relationship with Elliott Fontaine, who died at age 34 of Spanish flu but whose spirit allegedly lives on inside the house.

“He electrocutes me, shoves me, pinches me, breathes heavily at me,” Northtrop said. “It’s not always one specific thing, but it’s just that there’s always someone here.”

Later, Guenther and I hit South Main. As I stand near the register of IONS Geek Gallery, Guenther tells of the grisly 1918 murder of Memphis police officer Edward Broadfoot inside the building.

“Do you know on what spot he was killed?” I ask.

“Well, you’re standing on it,” Guenther said.

In the basement, folding chairs circle a table that holds a number of ghost-hunting devices and a photo of officer Broadfoot. Guenther’s pub crawl groups fill the chairs as he tries to make contact with the murdered officer. “We did get the little bell to ring once,” Guenther said.

Down the street, Harry Zepatos told Guenther and me that he’d never seen any ghosts inside his Arcade Restaurant, but others have.

“My wife, Karen, has seen my grandfather in here before,” Zepatos said. “Also, this head of security guy — nice people, good wife, normal people — he saw him, too, during [River Arts Festival] four or five years ago. We were closed, and he saw him through the window.”

No ghost tour of Memphis is complete without a visit to Earnestine & Hazel’s, so we stop in there. Bartender and manager Karen Brownlee said she’s seen a woman (who she thought might have been Earnestine) at the end of the downstairs hallway. The bar lights have flickered when patrons made fun of ghosts. The locked-up piano has played by itself upstairs. Though she was alone, someone nudged her shoulder as she stood at the jukebox one night.

“I used to be [afraid], but now I feel like whatever’s in here will take care of me,” Brownlee said.

The haunted pub crawls begin on South Main on most Wednesdays and Fridays at 7:30 p.m. However, this Friday, Guenther and his team will lead ghost tours at the Woodruff-Fontaine House during its annual fund-raiser called Haunted Happenings.

Categories
Book Features Books

Dave Eggers and Peter Guralnick to make appearances

Reading is a solitary venture, a quiet moment spent with a book, and between reader and author. But sometimes even the most introverted readers among us want to be sociable, right? And this year Memphis Reads — the Christian Brothers University-led, city-wide reading initiative — has selected Dave Eggers’ What Is the What.

What Is the What is the story of Valentino Achak Deng, who, along with thousands of other children known as the Lost Boys, was forced to leave his village in Sudan at the age of 7 and trek hundreds of miles by foot, pursued by militias, government bombers, and wild animals, while crossing the deserts of three countries to find freedom. When he finally is resettled in the United States, he finds a life full of promise, but also heartache and myriad new challenges.

On Wednesday, November 4th, Deng will lead a discussion at Rhodes in Hardie Auditorium at 6 p.m. The following day will bring Eggers, a literary entrepreneur and the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

“By having both Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng here together, readers can have the unique opportunity to meet both the writer of What Is the What and the man upon whom the story is based,” says Karen Golightly, associate professor of English for CBU and director of Memphis Reads. “They can hear, firsthand, Deng’s life story as a Sudanese Lost Boy, but also Egger’s experience in writing that story.”

Valentino Achak Deng appears at Hardie Auditorium/Rhodes College on Wednesday, November 4th, 6 p.m.; and Dave Eggers at the Creative Arts Building (2375 Tiger Lane South), Thursday, November 5th, 7 p.m.

And then sometimes a book isn’t so quiet. Sometimes it is a rollicking good time. Sometimes reading can rattle the cage and stomp the floor, and no one rattled the cages more than Sam Phillips, the man who gave us “Rocket 88” and Elvis Presley and rock-and-roll itself.

On November 10th, the much-anticipated Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll will be released. Written by honorary Memphian (he hails from Boston), Peter Guralnick, who has penned such laudatory and auditory tomes as Last Train to Memphis, Searching for Robert Johnson, and Sweet Soul Music, among many others, the book looks at the life of the founder of Sun Records. On Wednesday, November 11th, Guralnick will be at the Brooks for a discussion moderated by Memphis author and music historian Robert Gordon.

As he prepares for his umpteenth trip to Memphis, whose music royalty have been the subjects of so many of his books, Guralnick told me by phone that everything he’s ever done “has stemmed from personal passion, everything I’ve ever written about has been written out of belief and out of a desire to tell people.” It is a passion that springs forth from the pages of his books.

He first met Sam Phillips in 1979 and says he was “mesmerized, I’d never met a more charismatic figure.” Phillips at that time hadn’t been interviewed much outside of local newspapers and trade publications, and really had no interest in looking back. “He didn’t need to tell about history because history was going to take care of itself,” Guralnick says. Knox Phillips, Sam’s son, wrote Guralnick a letter, and the two became fast friends, with Knox becoming an advocate for his father to tell his own story to select writers, one of whom was Guralnick.

“This is an epic story, but it’s a story which, as Sam said, ‘isn’t worth anything if it isn’t big fun.’ He said that about every session he ever had,” Guralnick says. “And I wanted to write something on a grand scale that could be epic, tragic, comic, discursive, that could suggest some of the breadth of Sam’s ambitions, his aspirations, and the depth of his thinking, too. Because more than anything, I think Sam considered himself a teacher, and it’s what he dedicated himself to.”

Peter Guralnick discusses Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll

Wednesday, November 11th, 7 p.m. at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

Categories
Music Music Features

John Lydon on What the World Needs Now

CREDIT: Paul Heartfield

John Lydon is one of the most quotable men in the music industry. He’s been considered one of the biggest instigators in punk rock history, but chatting with him these days, it seems as if Mr. Rotten has a heart of gold. I talked with Lydon last week about his new album, his D.I.Y. ethic, and his love for the Peabody Hotel in a conversation that was as interesting as it was inspiring.

Memphis Flyer: In 2012, Public Image Ltd released their first album in 17 years, but the band has been back together since 2009. What led up to the reformation? What clicked to make you want to start again?

John Lydon: The two decades out there in the doldrums were me arguing with the major labels I was on. I couldn’t function as a musician, so I had to go and find other work. I’ve given a lot to the music industry, and they’ve taken a lot from me. But there’s no self-pity involved in this. The time off allowed me to recharge my batteries.

How do you feel about people chalking you up as just a reunion act?

It’s music, and, as long as you live, you have music in your soul. It shouldn’t be this attitude of “how dare you [reform], go away and die.” We do this music because we love it. Not much happens in the teenage angst years that is relevant to the whole experience. I view myself as a folksinger, and folksinging has no limitations. I’m true to my Irish roots, and we will continue to write rebel songs. As long as I live, I will rebel.

You’ve had complete control over this new album and the singles that are coming out soon. You funded the album, released it yourself, and drew the singles artwork yourself. How important was that to you?

It was worth every second of the effort. Most of my career was fraught with problems with the record labels because I absolutely refused to compromise. Patience is a virtue. Possess it if you can. I’m able to sleep well at night because I tell no lies, otherwise I wouldn’t be worthy of my name. My culture would despise me. It’s all family values to me, but I don’t mean in a Republican way because, let’s face it, all their families are fucked.

The drawings [on the singles] represent the prankster, the trickster, the joker. That’s the person that mocks ceremony, the most excellent character that every culture needs. The clown is actually the most intelligent, as we know with politicians.

What are your thoughts on punk/post-punk music as a genre these days?

I want to listen to an original point of view. When I hear bands that are imitating a genre or a style, I lose interest. Variations on the theme don’t come into my dreams; this is why my music collection is so huge. There are enough of us out there creating original music, and more than enough imitating, of which I’m not the slightest bit interested in.

I recently read an interview where you said you weren’t going to cancel a gig because of a boo-boo on your ankle. What’s the worst thing personally that’s happened to you on tour?

I once had to cancel because I tore the back of my throat from oversinging. It has to be pretty damn serious for me to let everyone down. I was raised with proper Irish sensibilities to never let no one down. This is why our audience respects us. They have every right to demand that from us. We don’t need light shows, or dancers, or fireworks. We aren’t a Las Vegas production. The heart and soul of live music is connecting with the audience’s eyes. It’s the point and purpose of my existence.

What is the lyrical process like for you? Do you have ideas or fully-written songs before the music is written?

No, I never do it that way because we play so intensely and tour so extensively. In my last book, Anger Is an Energy, I wrote about things I’d never openly declared before, but now I can open the doors to that side of that me. I’m not looking for sympathy any longer. I wanted to see if I could survive in the world on just my merits alone. I endured one hell of a horrible childhood, but I’m still here, exploring now these painful areas, personal loss when your memories are stolen from you. We have to learn to share our pain and share our joys. I’m not interested in people who continue the spreading of hate. I never have been, which is what I’ve always been accused of. I’ve never written a song attacking a human being; I’ve attacked institutions because those are what divide us.

One of the earliest punk shows in Memphis occurred when the Sex Pistols played at the Taliesyn Ballroom. Do you remember anything special about that show?

Yes, I’ve heard that place is a burger bar now.

It’s actually a Taco Bell.

Well, that’s great I guess, if you’re interested in getting diarrhea. Memphis is a very special town to me. My best friend and manager got married there, and I’ve always had a very fond attraction to the Peabody Hotel. The Peabody is not just a hotel. It’s an absolute cultural icon, and without our past, there is no future. Everything is connected.