Month: April 2017

Categories
Music Music Features

Don Lifted Is In Control

I’m searching for Don Lifted’s East Memphis crib, but I’m not sure which house on the crowded street is his. Then I see the battered Oldsmobile in the driveway. It’s the trusty, mid-sized domestic sedan immortalized in the title of his new album, Alero.

“The suburbs are a pause for me,” he says.

The nine songs on Alero evoke a particular moment in his life when he didn’t have a place to pause. Before he was Don Lifted, Lawrence Matthews’ girlfriend Aleq went to college in Washington, D.C., and he enrolled in a Baltimore school to be near her. “I was on my own for the first time. I had never traveled outside of the South.”

But the constant crush of people and personal turmoil threw him for a loop. “I had some demons I had to get out about that time period. It was a time that I had a lot of frustrations, but I had extreme longing for that time and place and the experiences I had there. I wanted to relive them. The reality was, it was beautiful, but it was bad at the same time. I was poor; I got kicked out of school; I was struggling. I don’t want to say it was drugs. … I was being young and dumb about what I was putting in my body.”

Matthews returned to Memphis, but Aleq stayed in D.C. to finish her schooling. For him, that meant a lot of driving back and forth. “It’s a record about the time period spent in the car.”

Eventually, he got a degree in art from the University of Memphis. “I did everything. I was a photographer, painting, sculpture work, installations, everything. I decided to focus on painting because at the time, that was what people knew me the most for.”

At the same time Lawrence Matthews’ visual art was gaining traction, Don Lifted’s music was struggling. At first, he was making beats for rappers, but when he heard the finished songs, he always was disappointed with the results. “I knew I was writing better songs than these people. So I started writing my own songs and making mixtapes,” he says. “I have to be in control. I now understand that about myself. I make decisions based on maintaining control over what I do.”

These days, the control extends to the venues where he plays. The artist’s first gigs were multi-artist showcases in traditional club venues. “I always had very elaborate visions of ways I wanted to see and express my music. … It’s an all-encompassing art experience. In these group shows, you can’t really do your own thing. You just have to be a person on the stage. That’s not why I’m doing it. I’m not doing it to just be a performer. That’s just an element of the greater scheme. After a couple of bad experiences, I decided I’m never doing that again. I have to have my own stuff, to sell and curate my own performances and experiences. It started at Crosstown Arts and then branched off from there.”

In mid-April, he became one of the first musical acts to play in the Brooks Museum’s downstairs theater, utilizing multiple digital projectors to create layered, moving images over the stage while he performed songs from Alero, his prior album, December, and some new material. “Art comes easier. Music is a challenge to me. … Being the guy who has to perform these lyrics I wrote, that’s hard. I get stressed about that. I have extreme doubts and extreme confidence in myself musically.”

The autobiographical Alero mixes chillwave synths with twisted and chopped samples. Don’s verses are quick and staccato, sounding sometimes as if the ideas and memories are coming too fast for him to keep up. “I’ve done a lot of projects, but that was the only one that flowed out like that. It happened really quickly.”

For the accompanying videos, he teamed up with Crosstown Arts’ Justin Thompson for “Harbor Hall,” and filmmaker Kevin Brooks for “It’s Your World” and “Take Control of Me.”

“I want to make as many videos as I can. I want to tell the stories through great videos,” he says. “I need people who are just as maniacal and controlling about what they do as I am about what I do.”

The mastering for Alero took place at Bernie Grundman’s Mastering studio in Hollywood, California, with Kendrick Lamar’s engineer Mike Bozzi. For Matthews, it was a life-changing experience — and one that reinforced his determination to stay in Memphis. “When I was in Los Angeles, I thought ‘I could come out here, like everyone else is coming out here, and I could make it out here.’ But every time I do something [in Memphis], the impact is much deeper and more spiritual. They don’t need me in Los Angeles. They don’t need me in New York.”

Categories
Book Features Books

Hannah Tinti’s The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley (The Dial Press) is a violent book. It’s a book about guns and gun culture, revenge, paranoia, and murder.

It’s a book about family. The story of a father and daughter, a wife lost too soon, and a grandmother who wants to be nearer to her granddaughter to keep a sense of that lost daughter.

It’s these two worlds that make Hannah Tinti’s first novel in 10 years so compelling. It is the world we live in today, one consumed by compassion and devotion, anger and violence. Her storyline can be so authentic at times that I had to put the book down and walk away. As the news and social media fed me a steady diet of all that is wrong with our society, I didn’t want it from a novel I’d chosen for escape. But I’d go back to it because the pull of the story of Hawley and his daughter, Loo, as they struggle to survive as a team in the world he’s made for them is too strong.

Sam works as a collector, traveling the country taking back merchandise or cash from those who have stolen from powerful and corrupt people. That merchandise is collected by any means necessary, most often violently. It’s the sort of life that leaves in its wake grudges and vendettas like a map of stars across the night sky.

The structure of the book breaks every other chapter into the story of a bullet in Hawley’s life — 12 in all. As a writer, when I first began reading this book, I thought, “Why 12? Why not make it easier on yourself with, say, six bullets?” But Hawley’s life is measured by these bullets as they pass through his body. And Hawley passes through his life the same way — messily, violently, bloody. He tears at flesh and the fabric of a decent society as he moves from one job to the next.

He and Loo move from place to place, often at a moment’s notice, taking along whatever they can fit in a piece of luggage. There are other ways to measure time — a shampoo bottle, lipstick, a handwritten shopping list, a bathrobe, snapshots. Hawley carries these items of his wife’s, long dead now, from place to place, scraps of memory he arranges into a shrine at every stop along the way. This is how Hawley finds his way back to Lily.

Hawley’s longtime friend and partner in crime tells Loo, “Watches used to be important. When you got your first, it was special. A reminder of the days you had left, ticking away right there on your arm.”

Hawley knows from the beginning that his days are numbered, ticking away, and he wants to quit for his daughter’s sake. Violence begets violence. But simply retiring isn’t an option, and he works backward through time, tracing his wounds to the men who caused them like following the constellations to eradicate any future threat. Tinti writes: “What a mess he’d made, Hawley thought. He wished he could erase his entire life, starting with his father’s death and then every step that had led him here to this crap motel room, every bullet, every twisted turn of the road he’d followed — even meeting Lily, even having Loo. Hawley wanted it all gone.”

I want to finish by saying that, while Samuel Hawley is violent — and let’s make no bones about it, he is a bad dude — his devotion to his daughter is without question. And because he loves his daughter so much, he’s raising her to be a strong and independent woman. He may be going about it in the extreme — the book opens with Hawley teaching a 12-year-old Loo how to shoot a rifle — but it’s a lesson for all of us: If we love and respect our daughters, we must raise them to resist when society seeks to undermine their strength. Sam gets that, flawed though he may be.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Grownup Drinks

As I’ve “grown up” career-wise, I’ve had to do quite a bit of on-the-job drinking. Of course, I drink for this gig — but I’m talking about my day job, the one that covers the majority of my bills, health insurance, and the like. I’m currently in transition, which has got me thinking about what it means to drink responsibly with coworkers, which is much different than being an ethical drinker at large.

Thankfully, I’ve never gotten smashed and photocopied body parts at a work party, made an untoward pass at a fellow employee, or woken up with any real regrets about how I’ve handled myself. I have, however, had to quickly transition from sitting at my desk to standing at a cocktail party with nothing but lunch in my stomach to pad the alcohol. I still haven’t mastered noshing on passed appetizers while juggling a wine glass and my purse, so I typically just sip one glass of white wine (okay, maybe two) and then excuse myself for dinner elsewhere.

When attending a work event, I’ve learned to pay close attention to company culture. At the end of the 1990s, I worked at a company that regularly rolled kegs into the employee cafeteria on Friday afternoons. Everyone would dutifully go a few rounds and then leave work to enjoy the weekend. I’ve also worked places where I didn’t trust my coworkers or my mouth, so I eschewed drinking and extricated myself from the conversation as quickly as possible. Now, most invitations to imbibe come at nighttime work events or when entertaining out-of-town visitors. On those occasions, I’ve learned to observe my immediate superior and never outpace them. I make it a point to eat before drinking, even if it’s a vending machine snack. I’ve also discovered low-alcohol cocktails, a delicious way to keep your wits and still enjoy a good drink.

Let’s start with what should be the obvious go-to: Campari and soda, made from the Italian liqueur that weighs in at around 20 percent ABV (alcohol by volume). Around since 1880, the distinctive red liqueur is created by infusing fruits and herbs in an alcohol and water blend. In Italy today, you can even buy a premixed Campari Soda, which has a very low ABV of 10 percent. Slightly bitter, Campari is always a sophisticated choice when you need to take it easy on the booze but still want to join in the fun.

Prosecco — Italian sparkling wine — also has a low ABV of under 12.5 percent. Spring and summer are the prefect times to drink it, whether you enjoy a glass on its own or add fruit for a cocktail. When peaches are in season, I always go for a Bellini, named for 15th-century Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini and first mixed at the legendary Harry’s Bar in Venice, Italy, 72 years ago.

The Basque cocktail Kalimotxo is also easy on your liver. I was first introduced to this drink, a simple mix of equal parts Coca-Cola and cheap red wine, by a Basque guy who arrived in Memphis by way of Boise, Idaho, which has a Basque population some 15,000 strong. The Coke and wine blend makes for an overly sweet but quite sippable cocktail that I like to nurse in a red Solo cup at all-day festivals or sporting events.

Also worth drinking: the unsung work dog of cocktails, vermouth. The low-alcohol white wine, originally a “wormwood wine” devised as a cure for intestinal issues, comes in at about 18 percent ABV and makes for an interesting cocktail base on its own.

Ask your bartender to serve you ginger ale and dry vermouth with a squeeze of lemon. Or order an Addington, a jazz-age cocktail that consists of both sweet and dry vermouth, sparkling water, and an orange twist. Served in a martini glass, it can hold its own against any vodka cocktail. If that’s too fancy for you, go for the Americano. Not the coffee drink, but a cocktail created with equal parts sweet vermouth and Amaro liqueur, served on the rocks in a lowball glass and topped with soda.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

The Edge Gets Lit! Alley Party

CREDIT: Courtesy: The edge gets lit! alley party

Mike Todd’s been championing the Edge District since 1994. That’s when he bought his first building in the area. “I’m not a gentrification guy. I’m a capitalist,” he says. But, he adds, “I want the Edge to maintain its coolness.”

To that end, there’s The Edge Gets Lit! Alley Party set for Saturday, April 29th, noon to 11 p.m. This is a place-making event for Floyd Alley, designed after similar events in other cities. The alley will be strung with 1,000 feet of lighting — signaling that the alley is safe and spotlighting all the businesses and stuff that’s going on.

The alley party will take advantage of the Edge’s resources. The Black Farmers Association, a new tenant, will be in charge of the hay rides. Evelyn & Olive, a sponsor of the event, will be cooking on site. There will be storytelling, too — on the history of music in the Edge and Sam Phillips and Sun Records.

Courtesy: The edge gets lit! alley party

We can’t not mention the Wacky Dog Olympics, which will include the Great American Peanut Butter Lick Off. As described by Darrin Hillis, Edge supporter and owner of event production company In the Wings, this involves dog owners, about a cup of peanut butter per, swim goggles, and (most likely excited) dogs.

Of course, the highlight of the event will be the lighting of the alley. The switch gets thrown about 7:50 p.m.

The ultimate goal, Hillis says joking, is to eliminate the question, “Now, where’s the Edge?” “Bottom line,” he says, “is to expose the Edge. It’s everything cool in one spot.”

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Bookstock at the Central Library

You know how at some offices they’ll have one monthly birthday party to cover the entire staff? Well, consider Memphis Public Library’s annual Bookstock event that party, only with local authors instead of cakes and candles.

According to the library’s Adult Services Coordinator Wang-Ying Glasgow, the origins of Memphis Public Library’s Bookstock were purely practical. Local authors would approach the library to do a booksigning. Not having the staff to accommodate all the requests, they would turn down most of them until the idea struck them to have one large, yearly event. Now, when the library’s approached by authors, Glasgow says, “We tell them we have this event for you.”

Bookstock, now in its seventh year, features 40 local authors — covering everything from nonfiction to inspirational. Different this year: Instead of one keynote speaker, they’ll have four. They are Lisa Wingate, author of Before We Were Yours; ReShonda Tate Billingsley, author of The Secret She Kept and The Perfect Mistress; Daniel Connolly, author of The Book of Isaias; and Adrienne Berard, author of Water Tossing Boulders. Flyer friends Justin Fox Burks and Amy Lawrence will be giving a cooking demo, and Otis Sanford, Geoff Calkins, and Mark Greaney are among the other authors who will be at the event.

Welcome to Bookstock!

One key feature of Bookstock is the scavenger hunt. Every author’s booth has a clue. This encourages guests to talk to the authors. There will also be hat making and musical story times. Kids can get their faces painted like a storytime character.

Connolly’s Book of Isaias follows a young Latino immigrant in Memphis. Berard’s Water Tossing Boulders tells the true story of a Chinese family in Mississippi fighting segregation. In a nod to those books and to draw in all of Memphis, Bookstock will feature Latino dancers and a Chinese choir and other flourishes. These are “our stories,” says Glasgow. The event, she says, is focused on community and history.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Vouchers Bill Dead for 2017 Legislative Session

Rep. Harry Brooks

For yet another year, the attempt to pass school-voucher legislation has proved unsuccessful. This year’s version — by state Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) was taken off notice for the year in the state House Finance Ways and Means Committee.

Kelsey’s House co-sponsor, Rep Harry Brooks (R-Knoxville) said he was pulling the bill to examine “particular wording,” but did not elaborate. He said he thought the bill would be back next year, though. (Voucher legislation has beeen a fixture of General Assembly sessions for at least a decade, and versions of it have — briefly — enjoyed at least the nominal blessing of Governor Bill Haslam, but no voucher bill has yet run the gauntle of legislative resistance.)

The Kelsey bill would have instituted a “pilot program” restricted to Shelby County Schools, with 5000 vouchers of a maximum of $7000 made available to students from low-performing public schools in the SCS system.

With near unanimity, Shelby County legislators, both Republican and Democratic, opposed the measure and questioned its constitutionality.

MTK

Categories
News News Blog

Volunteers Paint RiverPlay Mural

CREDIT: Maya Smith

Maya Smith

Volunteers worked side by side with the Fourth Bluff team today to paint Riverside Drive between Court and Jefferson Avenue, bringing life to the pop-up park, RiverPlay, which is set to open May 5.

The goal today was to get the community involved with the project, by completing the street mural that spans the park, which will soon hold basketball courts, ping pong tables, a skating rink, and seating areas.

Grants coordinator for the City of Memphis and backer of the Fourth Bluff project, Maria Fuhrmann says it’s important for people to get involved and have input on the things going on in their city.

“We want the public to feel ownership and stewardship over public spaces like this,” Fuhrmann said.

Meg Johnson, a designer at Groundswell Design Group, the Philadelphia-based firm helping to conceptualize the Fourth Bluff, says the group wanted to do a bright, colorful mural that talks about the Mississippi River.

“We wanted to start a dialogue about it being adjacent to the river,” Johnson said. “So we wanted to feature flora and fauna that can be found right there in the Mississippi River.”

Categories
News News Blog

How to Turn Your Room Into a Wardrobe

Fashion and personal style should always be a direct reflection and outward visual expression of who you are. The philosophy of style whether you speak to the eclectic woman, celebrity stylist, or GQ man in a boardroom will probably the same—It should tell a story. Most of the time that story line will be the same, the source of inspiration. Inspiration is everywhere! If you keep your eyes open, it’s on murals of historic buildings, it’s the natural gradient in ocean waves on vacation, and also interiors of boutique hotels and interiors.

I’ve always found my greatest source of inspiration from interiors. You’ll find many ideas and sources of inspiration to develop a broad and eclectic wardrobe from color ways, textures and mixing prints from your su casa or some one else’s.

Here’s a How to Guide to Turn Your Room Into A Wardrobe:

+ Look for prints. Drapes and pillows and even art work are great interior pieces to reference in a wardrobe look. Florals, stripes, and abstract art can easily be sourced and styled as a blazer or pair of trousers.

+ COLORS!!! Many interior designers plan room vignettes based on mood-boards and color palettes. You can too! It’s your easy little color palette cheat book. Play around with gorgeous color combination pairings like blues paired with shades of orange, complimentary and contrasting color ways, and monochromatic looks.

+ ACCESSORIZE WITH TEXTURE AND FIXTURES. I love to replicate a statement earring look from placement of a chandelier in a dining room. There are endless options when it comes to playing around with accessories. The wood texture of African drums in a Afroglam family room, velvet loveseat upholstery styled as a velvet formal gown, acrylic centerpieces rendered as a chunky bracelet.

DETAILS

ANDREA FENISE LOOK 1 Blazer : Main Event Boutique Blouse: byAndreaFenise Denim: H&M INTERIOR DESIGN : GWEN DRISCOL

ANDREA FENISE LOOK 2 Dress : Target Shoes : Style Junkie INTERIOR DESIGN M. STEFFENS INTERIOR

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KPFUSION

Get inspired to Turn Your Room Into A Wardrobe by looking at byAndreaFenise.com or attend Art by Design April 29th, 13 design vignettes and a Turn Your Room into A Wardrobe Tour and Presentation

UPCOMING EVENT ART BY DESIGN Propcellar April 29th 11a-3p Benefitting ArtsMemphis, Art by Design is a 3-Day event featuring the design artistry of 13 of Memphis’ top interior design teams. Demonstrating an astonishing array of talent, style, furnishings and art, the designers are collectively working to raise funds for over 60 arts organizations and individual artists in our city.

Categories
News News Blog

Memphis Pets of the Week (April 27-May 3)

Each week, the Flyer will feature adoptable dogs and cats from Memphis Animal Services. All photos are credited to Memphis Pets Alive. More pictures can be found on the Memphis Pets Alive Facebook page.

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Categories
Beyond the Arc Sports

Game 5: Spurs 116, Grizzlies 103: Home Cooking

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Larry Kuzniewski

The home team hasn’t lost a game in this series yet. On Tuesday night the role players for the Spurs who didn’t play well in Memphis finally snapped out of it, and the Grizzlies got nothing from players not names Mike Conley or Marc Gasol (and even the latter had another tough outing).

Simply put, given how poorly the Grizzlies guarded the perimeter, and how well the Spurs shot even when they defended flawlessly, the Griz should’ve gone down 20 in the third quarter and stayed that way. That they didn’t is a signal of just how close this series really is, and just how much success or failure for either team will depend on whose role players are able to show up in a road game. So far, it hasn’t happened either way.

As discussed after games 3 and 4, this has been Mike Conley’s series, and that continued in Game 5 even though the results didn’t go Memphis’ way. Conley was 10/17 for 26 points, including 2/4 from 3-point range, and he made things happen with his passing and rebounding, just as he has all series (and all season) long. The problem for the Griz in Game 5 was that nobody else did much of anything, while Spurs reserves who had been having a quietly bad series all sprung back to life. Zach Randolph didn’t get much going. Gasol was pestered by double teams and not moving quickly enough to get his best shot. Andrew Harrison and Wayne Selden shot well but mostly played like rookies in a road playoff game (imagine that). Vince Carter still didn’t contribute much. Ultimately, the things said after Game 2 still stand in some ways: the Grizzlies don’t have the roster to beat anybody in the playoffs if they don’t get bench production.

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Larry Kuzniewski

Manu Ginobili sprung to life in Game 5 after struggling all series.

Coming back home for Game 6, that will be the primary determining factor in whether the Griz can force a Game 7. Can the reserves step up? Will the Spurs—like Manu Ginobili, who had 10 points after having not made a shot the entire series yet, or like Patty Mills, who hit some devastating threes and got to the rim at the worst possible times, or like Davis Bertans, who hit some big shots from long-range that he hadn’t been able to make yet.

Listen: this is a game that is very easy to over-analyze. “What if Troy Daniels had played more?” (Patty Mills would’ve had 30 instead of 20, probably.) “What if Zach Randolph had played more?” (He probably would’ve been 5/14 instead of 4/10.) I’m a big fan of Occam’s Razor in basketball analysis: the Spurs shot better and their role players finally showed up. Usually the dumbest explanation is the correct one.

Games 3 and 4 allowed Grizzlies fans (and to a large extent the Grizzlies Internet Commentariat) to forget and/or ignore some of the larger issues that loomed behind the first two games—issues that made the Grizzlies the underdogs in the series in the first place. Andrew Harrison is not a battle-tested backup point guard (and last year’s Chalmers injury still haunts this team). The wing rotation is ostensibly missing its two best players in Chandler Parsons and Tony Allen. Marc Gasol is not consistent. JaMychal Green is an excellent player but not quite big enough to defend well against this San Antonio team. The Spurs defend Zach Randolph well by the way they send the double team. None of those factors have gone away; at home, the Griz got an unexpected boost from their role players and showed the Spurs to be more vulnerable than they seemed. That’s still true. Game 5 was close for much longer than it was a fait accompli. Game 6 is still very winnable for the Grizzlies, and maybe even Game 7 should they force one. But Game 5 showed why that was unlikely in the first place, and why Grizzlies fans should treat every minute of Game 6 like the miracle that it is, because it wasn’t “supposed” to happen.

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Tweet of the Night

Last night was a rough one out here on the Griz Twitter streets, but it wasn’t without its moments:

Game 5: Spurs 116, Grizzlies 103: Home Cooking