Memphis and Shelby County Airport Authority – Facebook
Over the last 12 months, passenger counts through Memphis International Airport reached levels not seen since 2012 and the airport also saw gains in air service, according to figures recently released.
These facts point to improvements at the airport, which saw major declines in both the number of people flying through the airport and the number of flight available to them after Delta axed Memphis as a hub in 2013.
Since then, airport officials have been recruiting airlines to fly through Memphis and to entice existing airlines to off more flights to the city.
In the last 12 months, the airpot saw more than 2 million enplanements. That’s 3.3 percent more people getting on or off airplanes at the Memphis airport than the previous year. Enplanements this past June were 5.6 percent higher than they were in June 2016.
The airport also offered an average of 7,650 seats on various flights in June, which has increased even just since May. Airport officials pointed to new flights like Air Canada’s nonstop flight to Toronto, and summer seasonal flights offered by sOuthwest and Allegiant.
“It’s encouraging to see our passengers filling planes and outpacing our projected growth,” said Pace Cooper, board chairman of the Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority. We’re continuing to build on this momentum by meeting with airlines to find additional routes for our passengers.”
Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region (PPGMR) joined a federal lawsuit Thursday challenging the Tennessee state law that requires a woman seeking an abortion to wait 48 hours and see a doctor before the procedure.
The new requirements became law in the state on July 1. The state legislature passed it this year and Gov. Bill Haslam signed the bill in May, even though Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slattery called the move “constiutionally suspect.”
PPGMR joined the lawsuit with Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee (ACLUT), representing the Knoxville Center for Reproductive Health.
The delay serves no medical purpose, according to Hedy Weinberg, executive director of ACLUT, and she called it “invasive political interference in private healthcare decisions.”
[pullquote-1]“This has a disproportionate impact on communities of color and low- income women, who already face systemic barriers in accessing quality health care,” said Ashley Coffield, chief executive officer of PPGMR. “We are in court to fight for every person’s right to access medical care that’s based on their doctor’s expertise and best interest – and not based on political interference.”
The suit was first filed in 2015 and is still pending in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennesse. The lawsuit, Adams & Boyle, P.C. et al. v. Slatery, et al., asks the court to strike down the 48-hour delay requirement as an unconstitutional.
Austin band The Hex Dispensers were a delicious mix of punk and pop that won over a lot of Memphis fans. They had a good run and even played Gonerfest a couple of times. How things have changed. Tomorrow, one of the band members will be passing through town while touring up to New York for a Goner-sponsored event. But it’s not what you’re thinking. He won’t be playing the Hex Dispensers’ “Pile of Meat,” he’ll be serving it, and you should get on out and git you some.
Tom Micklethwait was always passionate about food, and had a day gig baking for an Italian restaurant. But around 2012, he began delving into the world of barbecue, and it has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Though based out of small food truck, Micklethwait Craft Meats has developed quite a reputation in Texas. As Food & Wine wrote last month, the eatery has been “turning heads at its Austin trailer. Unorthodox offerings like pulled goat, brisket Frito pie, and pork belly kielbasa helped put Micklethwait on the BBQ map.”
Goner co-owner Zac Ives says, “His BBQ is insanely good, totally unlike anything you can get in Memphis.” At Memphis Made on Friday, you can find out for yourself, while Ives and Hot Tub Eric spin vinyl on the wheels of steel. Oxford’s Tyler Keith will be there as well, playing a solo set. While it may not shake everyone’s faith in Memphis’ reign as king of the ‘cue, it could do us all some good to get some strange for once. It’s free and family-friendly.
From Hex Dispensers to BBQ glory: Goner hosts Austinite’s food trailer tour
“Hey, I”m looking forward to this! It’s a full band and everything. It’s exciting to me!” Don Bryant can barely contain his mirth, contemplating another show with old-school soul masters the Bo-Keys. With a new album out this year – his first since his 1969 debut LP on Hi Records – he’s been leading the band through several performances lately. But Friday’s show, dubbed “Poppa Willie’s Night” in honor of Hi’s longtime manager and producer Willie Mitchell, will be especially notable: it marks Bryant’s return to Royal Studios, where he worked for many years as a hit songwriter for Hi. He’ll be kicking off a series of three concerts being staged to celebrate the studio’s sixtieth anniversary.
It was as a songwriter that Bryant gained his widest fame, having co-written the hit “I Can’t Stand the Rain” with Ann Peebles, who he married soon after. And it could only have been in the Hi Records milieu, bursting with talents like Al Green, Otis Clay, and others, that a singer of Bryant’s caliber would be relegated to writing rather than recording hits. And he wrote many – 154 by one account.
It started early. Having begun his career leading a vocal quartet, the Four Kings, he had a song of his, “I Got to Know,” recorded by the 5 Royales when still in his teens. “When they recorded the song it was at a studio down on North Main,” he recalls. “And I wasn’t even allowed to go in the studio, I had to sit out in the lobby. That was one of the biggest deals I could have had in those days, because they were one of the most famous groups. My group was always trying to imitate them, dance-wise and song-wise. They had a lot of popular songs.”
Poppa Willie’s Night: Royal Studios kicks off 60th Anniversary Celebration
Soon after that, the Four Kings began fronting Willie Mitchell’s band. This proved fortuitous for Bryant’s solo career. “My group had problems and broke up. So I told Willie, ‘If you would accept it, I’d like to try doing solo.’ Because singing was my thing. And he said, ‘Okay, I’ll try you out.’ And that’s how I got to sing vocals with Willie Mitchell and band.” Bryant started by contributing vocal parts to some of Mitchell’s singles for Hi.
Boo Mitchell, heir to Willie’s throne as manager of today’s Royal Studios, says “He sang on some of my dad’s instrumental recordings. My favorite is a song called ‘That Driving Beat’, which he sings. It’s a Willie Mitchell song and Don is singing it. It is badass. It’s from like ’66, I think. And there’s a song called ‘Everything’s Gonna be Alright’, and it’s a Willie Mitchell song, but Don is singing. And I only found this out after my Pop passed, ‘cos it has harmony vocals throughout the whole song, and Don said, ‘That’s Willie singing harmonies.’ I was like, ‘No Shit!’ I never knew it, man! And then, Pops wasn’t around so I couldn’t give him any shit about it, and say, ‘How come you never told me it’s you singing?’”
Poppa Willie’s Night: Royal Studios kicks off 60th Anniversary Celebration (3)
Poppa Willie’s Night: Royal Studios kicks off 60th Anniversary Celebration (2)
For Bryant, this culminated in the release of his solo album, Precious Soul, in 1969. But it wasn’t long before other singers in the Hi Records stable, like Al Green, eclipsed Bryant’s solo career. Part of this had to do with major changes for Hi Records, Royal Studios, and Willie Mitchell himself. Says Boo, “Right after Joe Cuoghi [Hi Records’ original owner] died in 1970, I think he willed his shares in Hi Records to Pops, and so it was a big transition for him, you know. And when Joe Cuoghi died, [Al Green’s] ‘I’m So Tired of Being Alone’ had been out for like three or four months and had only sold like 2000 records. And Pops knew it was a hit, so after the funeral and all that stuff was over, Pops basically went to Atlanta, New York, and Chicago, and just camped out at radio stations until they played it. And they finally played it. When they played it in Atlanta, it hit. They played it in NY, same thing, Chicago, same thing. And then it went platinum.”
This marked the beginning of many years of mega-hits from Green, who outsold even the classic hit makers from Stax Records. As Boo Mitchell recounts, “Stax was doing a lot of singles. And they weren’t really selling a lot of albums, you know what I mean? And Al Green was doing the opposite because Willie Mitchell came from the album world. Which was more I guess what white artists were doing. Because of Hi Records. And so when he started doing Al Green, he did it with that same mentality of the album. And you know there were songs that were selling the albums…like ‘How Can You Mend a Broken Heart’ was the song that sold the Let’s Stay Together album. ‘Let’s Stay Together’ as a song was awesome, but all the radio stations were playing ‘How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,’ which was like a six minute song. It was never a single. Neither was ‘Love and Happiness’.”
Bryant settled in as a songwriter for the Hi Records team. He married Ann Peebles and saw her star rise through the 1970s. But by the end of the decade there came another sea change. “You know, it was like a perfect storm of badness,” says Mitchell. “Stax posted bankruptcy in ’75, which was very impactful. Then Elvis died in ’77. Al Green went completely gospel around the same time. And then disco was coming in. So things were changing. Pops had partners and he was kind of outvoted to sell the label. Because his partners were business guys, you know. And on paper it probably looked like the right thing to do. Okay, our bread and butter Al Green is going gospel and the music is changing and we should get out. You know what I mean? It may not have been a good decision. But Pops made the great decision, when they outvoted him to sell the label, he made the decision to buy the studio. So that was a great decision on his part.”
Joey Miller
Royal Studios
This was a pivotal moment for Royal, enabling it to continue operating without Hi. And through all these years, the studio itself has barely been altered. “It hasn’t changed since 69. It’s the same,” says Mitchell. And this only enhances its appeal to current day artists. Lately, after the success of the Mark Ronson/Bruno Mars hit “Uptown Funk,” recorded at Royal, the studio’s star is on the rise again. Mitchell explains, “Me and my sister started Royal Records last year. And also Royal Radio. Which is an app, or on Google Play. And it’s housed at Royal Studios, and it streams mostly music that was made at Royal, but all kinds of different music. We have radio shows with Barbara Blue and Preston Shannon, they have a blues show. Al Kapone has a show. Frayser Boy has a show. Charles Hodges from the Hi Rhythm Section has a show.”
Joey Miller
Boo Mitchell
A distinct family vibe permeates the studio to this day. This will be apparent at Friday’s shindig. The in-studio party will feature homestyle cooking by Mitchell’s Aunt Yvonne, who has served soul food to most of the renown artists who have recorded there. And now Don Bryant, with his new record, Don’t Give Up on Love, out on Fat Possum Records, will return there to honor Royal’s rejuvenation. “It’s just like homecoming to me,” he says.
And no other living artist goes as far back into Royal’s history as Bryant. “It’s so awesome to have Don, because he was there with my dad almost from the very beginning, you know,” says Mitchell. He says having Bryant kick off this year’s anniversary celebrations “was really the only thing that made sense to me, historically. You know, it was just like, that’s the right thing to do. It’s a miracle he was available because he’s been touring all over the place. And, you know the stars lin ed up.”
Rhythm on the River (Poppa Willie’s Night), featuring Don Bryant & the Bo-Keys, takes place at Royal Studios, Fri., July 28, 7 p.m., $200. Future events connected to Royal Studios’ 60th Anniversary include a free show, Memphis Mojo, at the Levitt Shell on October 14th, and the grand finale, Sixty Soulful Years, featuring several international stars at the Orpheum Theatre, November 18th.
After a “surge” by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), seeking arrests of undocumented immigrants in Shelby County commenced Sunday, local activist group Latino Memphis began to mobilize a counter surge.
The group’s goal, according to a Facebook post is to empower the immigrant community and inform them of their rights.
Attempting to ease some of the fear growing in the community since the arrests began, the group has been knocking on doors of undocumented immigrants, distributing “Know Your Rights” flyers, warning them of the surge, and informing them of what to do if an ICE agents shows up at their home.
Additionally, while Latino Memphis is providing free legal consultations for anyone that has been detained, beginning Friday, local church, Victory Life Iglesia Hispana is accepting donations ranging from clothes to groceries for the families affected by the recent surge.
The surge has been targeting “family units, adults who entered the U.S. as unaccompanied alien children (UAC), and UACs who are at least 16 years old and have criminal histories and/or suspected gang ties.” according to a statement released by regional ICE spokesperson.
The exact number of arrests, taking place in several East Memphis apartment complexes is unclear at this time, and ICE officials say more information won’t be released until the surge concludes.
The Memphis Police Department released a statement Sunday, iterating they had no involvement with the ICE operations. It went on to say, “ICE is an independent agency and is not affiliated or linked to MPD. MPD has not conducted any research related to migration laws or will do so in the future.”
There was a package addressed to me on our front porch the other day. This is not an uncommon occurance at our house in this, the age of Amazon. I’ve even been surprised by something I ordered and forgot about — perhaps after a couple of cocktails. Like 12 pounds of Benton’s bacon, or that $14 Larry Dahlberg bass fly that appeared one day. And we shall never speak again of the blue folding deck chair.
So, anyway, I opened the package, not sure what to expect, and found a DVD (so practical!) of the old movie The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming. I was momentarily puzzled, but then I realized it had to have come from my Trump-loving Arkansas friend, Maurice Lipsey. The note inside confirmed it — something along the lines of, “nothing new to see here.”
Maurice, a former Memphian, sent me a big safety pin after Trump won last November, and urged me to find a “safe space.” And he’s sent a couple other gag gifts in recent months, all poking fun at my misery and frustration with the idiot currently serving as our president.
On Maurice’s birthday, I sent him a video of a woman singing “Happy Birthday” in Russian.
But, unlike his hero, Maurice isn’t an idiot. He’s truly a great guy, even if his politics aren’t, in my opinion. I’ve known him for 12 years or so, ever since I started going over to fly-fish at his place, Fat Possum Hollow, on the Little Red River. Maurice has built a dozen or so nice cabins on the stream, practically in the shadow of Sugar Loaf Mountain. I go for a long weekend every couple months or so. It’s my happy place.
After a day on the stream, most of the visitors end up in Maurice’s “bar” in his barn, drinking beverages and talking fishing, Grizzlies, Tigers, Memphis, Razorbacks, and who knows what else. It’s a nice way to wind down in a place where you don’t have to drive home — and Maurice has a great jukebox. If it gets down to the two of us, late of an evening, we might venture into politics, where we will cordially but vociferously disagree on just about everything.
But that’s the thing — we’re cordial. I recognize that he’s a sentient American with the right to hold whatever (misguided) political views he wants to. He treats me the same. Yes, we make fun of each other’s politics, but we don’t call each other names, and we end the evening with a hug, as friendly as when we started. We need more of that kind of interaction in this country. Maybe somebody somewhere will even change somebody else’s mind.
Through talking with Maurice and a couple of other friends, I sort of get how some folks can find Trump appealing. They believe — as Trump, his allies and supporters, and the official state media (Fox News) would have us believe — that the Russia stuff is all made up, just sour grapes; that the Fake News media and the Deep State and Hillary Clinton are conspiring to bring down a great American president. Lots of people buy into that narrative and believe it with all their heart. To which I say, “Really?”
I believe, on the other hand, that the autocratic, strong-man cult that is being promulgated by Mr. Trump will eventually be brought down by the rule of law and the investigation of multiple nefarious Russian political and business connections. I believe Jared Kushner was in on this up to his little eyeballs, as were Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., Carter Page, Mike Flynn, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, all of whom have publicly and repeatedly lied about their meetings and interactions with Russians. Innocent people don’t do that.
And I believe Trump is trying to “bad vibe” and insult Sessions into quitting, so he can name a loyalist toady to that supposedly independent position — a loyalist who will fire special counsel Robert Mueller. I believe we are headed for a Constitutional crisis in the coming months, as all this shakes down.
But no, I don’t believe the Russians are coming. I believe they’re already here.
The Economic Development Growth Engine for Memphis and Shelby County (EDGE) awarded its first residential payment-in-lieu-of-tax (PILOT) incentive last week for a 108-unit multifamily residence to be constructed at Madison and McLean.
EDGE’s residential PILOT program was created earlier this year on a test basis after a push from city and county officials to include multifamily residences in the organization’s incentives. The organization agreed to do 10 projects during the test phase.
The first of 10 recipients is development group Makowsky Ringel Greenberg, LLC, the same group proposing to construct the controversial Overton Gateway near Sam Cooper and East Parkway.
The group applied for an eight-year tax abatement from the Downtown Memphis Commission’s Center City Revenue Finance Corporation last year, but never presented the application to the board. But last week, the company was awarded a 14-year tax abatement to construct the residence named for its location — Madison @ McLean.
Costing about $14 million, the 132,477 square-foot complex will occupy the entire block between McLean and Idlewild to the south of Madison.
The four-story building will be constructed above a 127-space parking garage with additional parking spaces along Madison.
Though rent is estimated to be about $1.50 per square foot, approximately 22 units will be reserved for low or moderate income residents — a requirement of the EDGE program.
Similar to other EDGE PILOT programs, a little over $3 million has to be spent contracting city- and county-certified minority and women business enterprises (MWBE).
EDGE officials say the future site of Madison @ McLean, currently producing $25,000 in taxes, will produce about $90,000 in tax revenue during the PILOT term and about $364,000 post-PILOT.
The group expects residents to be able to move in about nine months after construction begins, which is set to begin late this year or early next.
Proposed apartments at Madison and McLean
Thomas & Betts
Last week, EDGE also awarded a 15-year expansion PILOT to electrical manufacturing group Thomas & Betts for the company to invest in and renovate a new space in East Memphis.
The $20 million project will allow the company to consolidate its research and development operations, as well as the transportation and logistics operations from other parts of the country to the new location.
Planned for the former ServiceMaster headquarters in the Ridgeway loop, the new office will house around 600 employees, with an average base salary of $86,788.
Of those 600 jobs, 523 will be retained and 75 will be newly created positions.
EDGE staff projects that during the PILOT term, the local tax revenue from the company will equal a little under $45 million, with Thomas & Betts receiving a $3.1 million benefit.
As a PILOT recipient, the company is required to spend $2.3 million with certified MWBEs.
A lot of people told Sharon Udoh (aka Counterfeit Madison) she sounded like Nina Simone, but what that might mean never really registered. “I have a very religious background,” she explains. “I never listened to secular music until late in life, so I had no idea who Nina Simone was.” When she finally figured out who she was, Udoh was 29 years old, had been playing the piano for two decades, and consciously avoided songs written and popularized by Simone, the classically trained, juke-joint-tested author of “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” and “Mississippi Goddam”. She wanted people to hear her voice, not someone else’s. Then something happened.
“What prompted this show was a Nina Simone biopic that caused a lot of controversy,” Udoh says. “Because they cast a fine actress named Zoe Saldana but put blackface on her and gave her a prosthetic nose. I was upset. As a dark-black woman, I’d hope if I were to die and somebody told my story, they would cast a dark-black woman to tell the story. Nina Simone was a person of color who sang about the plight of people of color. So I decided, ‘fuck it, I’m mad enough,’ I was going to do a Nina Simone.”
Sharon Udoh (aka Counterfeit Madison)
Udoh’s first show was in Chicago, backed by a hot quintet. She’s coming to Memphis solo and sees the change as an opportunity to explore Simone’s frequently improvisational performance style.
“I had to pick where I was going to shine through and where she was going to shine through,” Udoh says of her work adapting Simone’s famously difficult material. “In doing that, I found myself even more.”
Friday, July 28th, Evergreen Presbyterian Church presents “Counterfeit Madison Meets Nina Simone: A Celebration of Blackness” at The Den on Marshall in partnership with the Memphis Medical District Collaborative. Saxophonist Marque Boyd opens. A portion of the proceeds go the Memphis’ official Black Lives Matter chapter.
The Commercial Appeal’s been going through changes since its acquisition by media giant Gannett Co.
Massive staff layoffs were followed by an announcement that the paper would be moving from its longtime home at 495 Union, which is now for sale.
While reporters continue to work night and early morning shifts, reduced security and shortened business hours prompted this memo from Executive Editor Mark Russell: “Starting today (Monday), building security in The CA‘s 495 building has been reduced to 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
“For this week, if you work after 5 and need an escort to your car, please ask a colleague to accompany you. If you are worried about working in your department alone after, say, 6 or 7 p.m., please consider leaving at 5 to work from a coffee shop, home, or some other location that has what you need and where you feel secure.
“And the same thing goes for someone starting at 6 a.m. Please work from a coffee shop or home if you are worried about being safe coming in at 5:45 before security starts this week.”
Shortly thereafter, the newspaper tweeted a reminder for readers to celebrate their workplace.
It’s a Sign
If your adolescent child suddenly shows an obsessive interest in glossy women’s magazines, chalk it up to the power of advertising — and probably this billboard off I-40 and Whitten.
Last December in this space, I wrote out my Christmas list with a one-item wish: that a single nonprofit would come to the forefront and champion the local literary community. In the same way that the visual arts, live music, indie films, and theater have their advocates, so should the writer and reader.
I recently found my stocking stuffed. It wasn’t any jolly old elf slipping down the chimney, but a simple tweet: “Last Dec, @richardalley wrote in @MemphisFlyer wishing for ‘a single organization to gather these folks up and give them a home.’ So we did.”
That message was tweeted out by Molly Rose Quinn, and the “we” she mentions includes writers Jamey Hatley and Zandria Robinson. The trio have established the Center for Southern Literary Arts (CSLA) and, while still in the planning stages, those plans are bold and visionary. The mission states the CSLA “aims to cultivate the rich and diverse stories of the Memphis region by encouraging innovation in the literary arts and their adjacent economies.”
The CSLA seeks to draw writers out and into the community, bringing them together with readers to share their stories, regardless of publication credentials. “People tell stories in churches, in community organizations, at the gas station, and those stories are just as important,” says Hatley, the 2016 Prose Fellow for the National Endowment for the Arts and winner of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award that same year.
“It’s our collective response as friends and writers to the peril that we think the literary community is in here,” says Robinson, an urban sociologist and award-winning author. Rhodes College, where she’s an assistant professor of Sociology, was recently awarded a grant through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and a portion will be put toward the CSLA’s startup.
The group was struck by the loss of the Booksellers at Laurelwood (that store will reopen soon as Novel) and with the changes at Literacy Mid-South, which, most notably, will see an indefinite hiatus of its three-year-old book festival. “At its core, it’s about returning Memphis to the literary map, reclaiming Memphis as a literary space, and making Memphis a place where professional writers can be trained up and developed and retained and thrive,” says Robinson.
The women are in the process of fund-raising with long-range goals of a permanent space for workshops, readings, and signings. Local programs — story booth and book festival, along with Christian Brothers University’s Memphis Reads initiative — tended to work as lone wolves, sometimes pulling in bookstores and the University of Memphis’ MFA writing program, but more often going it alone. The CSLA aims to stitch the community together.
“These programs that have run into obstacles or have folded, when they did exist, were so siloed, which is something we heard from so many people,” says Quinn, a native Memphian who has been in New York City the past 10 years working as a community organizer and arts administrator leading programs with literary and cultural institutions.
Though there is no physical space for the Center at the moment, there will be programming beginning with the next academic year: dinner with the arts, a multidisciplinary event featuring a chef, visual artist, and writer who discuss issues of the South; partnering with writers to facilitate workshops within a local high school; and a truncated version of their own take on the Mid-South Book Festival.
If this reader/writer could be granted one more wish, it would be for the CSLA to find a home within Crosstown Arts, at least temporarily as an incubator, while working its way through its prologue. The nonprofit that has seen the revitalization of the old Sears building is sorely lacking in literary event programming, and a partnership would be a means to an end for both organizations.
“We are geographically and strategically positioned to be a regional leader in the area,” Robinson says. “We’re looking to serve as an umbrella, collaborator, clearing house, friend, partner, supporter of other organizations with similar missions.”
Memphis and Shelby County Airport Authority – Facebook 
Joey Miller 
Joey Miller 
Joey Miller 
Latino Memphis 
