Month: August 2017

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

James Mackler: A Democrat in the Senate?

Can a Democrat be elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee? James Mackler, a Nashville lawyer and Army veteran, intends to find out. Mackler was in Memphis on Tuesday as part of an ongoing tour in which he is acquainting himself with Tennesseans across the state and simultaneously getting them acquainted with him.

Mackler is a political newcomer, making his first bid for office as an aspirant for the Senate seat now held by Republican Bob Corker and on the ballot in 2018. Besides having begun his race as an unknown, he confronts the fact that no Democrat has served in the Senate from Tennessee for a full generation, since then incumbent Senator Jim Sasser was upset by Republican Bill Frist in 1994.

Neither circumstance fazes Mackler, who sees his race as a case of  answering a call to public service. This is the second time he has felt such a call. As he puts it, the first time was on September 11, 2001, when the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington prompted him to “shut down” his law practice and join the Army, becoming a Blackhawk helicopter pilot in Iraq and later serving in the Army’s JAG (legal) corps.

“I needed to do something to make a difference,” he explained on Tuesday. “I resigned from my job to run for the U.S. Senate for the same reason. I felt called back to service, and I believe my track record of service will appeal to voters across Tennessee, especially those ready for change.”

So, for the second time, troubled by “seeing what our leaders in Washington aren’t doing,” Mackler left his law practice and hit the road as a candidate. There was a personal motive as well. His daughters, students at a private Jewish school in Nashville, were evacuated from their school four times for bomb threats — part of a wave of such actions nationwide.

“I was so upset that our country has become so divided and that I had to explain that to my girls. It was a critical moment,” he says.

Mackler’s platform focuses on three issues: “jobs, health care, and education.” He sees incumbent Republican Corker as especially vulnerable on the health-care issue, having voted with the majority of his party in several unsuccessful efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Mackler might take comfort from a poll taken earlier this month by Public Policy Polling, a company that normally takes its surveys in tandem with Democratic causes and candidates and was paid for by the health-care advocacy group Save My Care.

That poll was taken from a sample of 663 registered Tennessee voters during the period of August 11th-13th by robo-call, a method whereby a recorded message poses questions to persons on a pre-selected call list and listeners who hear the message out are invited to respond by using the numbers on their dial pad.

That poll purported to show Corker with a favorable job-performance rating of 34 percent, as against an unfavorable rating of 47 percent and found that less than half of those surveyed would vote for Corker, while 37 percent would vote for an unnamed Democrat.

Besides Democrat Mackler, a first-time candidate who is in the process of introducing himself to a state constituency, two Republicans with some pre-existing name identification have also talked of opposing the senator.

One is former state Representative Joe Carr, an ultra-conservative who garnered a respectable 40 percent in a 2014 primary race against Tennessee’s other Republican senator, Lamar Alexander. Another, who also occupies a place on the GOP’s right wing, is current state Representative Andy Holt, who has referred vaguely to “multiple polls” but has not identified them or cited any particulars.

And, of course, there are even vaguer soundings taken by President Trump, who responded to Corker’s recent criticism of him for lacking “stability” and “competence” with a tweet that said: “Strange statement by Bob Corker considering that he is constantly asking me whether or not he should run again in ’18. Tennessee not happy!”

For all that, two recent polls — one released by Vanderbilt University showing Corker with a 52 percent approval rating and another taken by the polling company Morning Consult giving the Senator a 57 percent approval rating — would seem to bolster Corker’s chances.

In any case, Mackler knows he has his work cut out for him. His rounds in Memphis on Tuesday included an appearance at a Latino Leadership Luncheon and an evening fund-raiser. And, as he indicated, he intends to be back, again and again.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Bus Budget

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) leaders want to expand its services and will start securing more money next month to do just that.

Various funding options for MATA and Tennessee’s three other major public transit systems were laid out in Gov. Bill Haslam’s IMPROVE Act, which went into effect in July. But the legislation requires MATA to create a transit vision plan before going to the Memphis City Council to request more funding.

MATA officials, along with Innovate Memphis and the city, will begin working on this vision document at a stakeholders conference on Monday, September 25, followed by a planning conference in October.

Gary Rosenfeld, MATA’s interim CEO, told city council members last week that his agency could add about 200,000 hours of bus service by mid-2019 with $30 million added to its annual operating budget. Rosenfeld said MATA is specifically looking to expand its services to job and educational opportunities.

Justin Fox Burks

MATA on the move

“Everything that we do primarily at MATA is really geared towards employment and opportunities for our passengers,” he said.

Collaborating with Shelby County School (SCS) officials, MATA has been developing a pilot program that will increase the number of schools MATA services and help integrate high school students into public transportation, Rosenfeld said.

This effort is twofold, he said, as “it will open up opportunities for students and allow MATA to groom bus riders for the future.”

MATA was set to begin a pilot program this fall, but after staff changes at SCS, there were several logistics that hadn’t been worked out, such as how to determine which schools to include in the pilot.

As for access to jobs, Rosenfeld said the current structure and frequency of MATA’s routes make it difficult for people living in certain areas to commute to and from work using public transit and, in extreme cases, may take up to four hours for some to get to and from work.

The way the system is set up now, he said, also limits opportunities to reach different levels of employment, as “there is a lot of service that goes into areas that might pay minimum wage to $10 an hour, but less opportunities to get to those $15- and $20-an-hour jobs.”

For those reasons, he said it is important to improve the level of service in the city and decrease trip times for passengers. Reducing a trip from four hours to 20 minutes “changes the dynamic of using the bus service,” he said.

To do this, Rosenfeld said MATA plans to increase its service in areas near the Airways Transit Center, Frayser, Macon/Waring, and Hollywood/Union. He said more routes will not necessarily be put in place, but more buses will be added to existing routes, in order to increase frequency.

MATA planners anticipate bringing the plan for expanded service and funding before the MATA board, as well as the city council by March 2018. However, council member Edmund Ford Jr. says that the city should not have to handle the entire financial burden of funding MATA.

“If it’s a Memphis issue, it is a Shelby County issue as well,” Ford said. “We should also have our friends on the other side of the street looking at this.”

Correction: The article originally cited an incorrect date for the stakeholder conference; it is Monday, September 25.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1488

Real Gone

Last week, the Orpheum Theatre ended a 34-year tradition of screening the Civil War epic Gone with the Wind for reasons related to paternalistic race narratives and the glorification of a Southern rebellion to preserve and expand the institution of human chattel slavery.

Hell broke loose on the internet. Here’s the essence of the response boiled down to a few choice Tweets like …

“Asian sportscaster named Robert Lee yanked from broadcast and theaters canceling Gone with the Wind…far more stupidity to come.”

There was a lot more stupidity to come. Like … (warning: grammar mistakes ahead)

“NOW there’s a prob with Gone with the Wind?…I guess To Kill a Mockingbird is next…”

And…

“Why are they taking gone with the wind movie,what about the movie color purple,slavery and rape.?”

Nazi references happened …

“First they came for GONE WITH THE WIND and I said nothing…

And, as is often the case in games of telephone, the story changed with each telling until …

“Hollywood announced they are banning the movie Gone With The Wind. How about banning Hollywood? Hit their money pockets.I ordered it on line.”

Winner

Memphis’ annual theater awards — the Ostranders — are always a fashion parade. This year’s most daring ensemble was worn by triple-threat diva Annie Freres. She was protesting the omission of the Tracy Letts’ drama Killer Joe by adorning herself with fried chicken.

For a better understanding of the metaphor Google “Killer Joe” and chicken. NSFW — or anywhere, really.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

Memphis: A Tale of Two Cities

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

My paternal great-grandmother abandoned rural Mississippi in the 1960s in order to escape her husband, an abusive man who decided early in their marriage that he wanted a farmhand instead of a wife. My great-grandmother — affectionately called “Granny” by her great-grandchildren — survived assaults from men who wanted to claim her body, a wage-slavery system that wanted to claim her soul, and a concentrated dose of white supremacy that had no qualms about making a feast out of her bones as well.

In her old age, my Granny’s favorite pastime was riding around the city to visit shopping malls and department stores, but she couldn’t drive, so when one of her children or grandchildren was too busy to serve as chauffeur, we rode the bus. During the face-meltingly hot Memphis summers of the early 1990s, I was frequently her co-pilot and traveling companion. One of my fondest memories of her was a summertime bus ride where we rumbled past the Sears Crosstown tower on Cleveland, which by then had been long abandoned. As we passed the building, Granny looked up at it, cursed (she only cursed when she was mad), and sighed.

My Granny had given most of her life to affluent white Memphians who visited our house whenever they wished to slip silver dollars from behind our ears like stale magic, praising my Granny for her hardworking nature and her homespun wisdom even as they worked her to her grave. Her sigh that day as we passed Sears Crosstown wasn’t wistful. She did not long for bygone days, and she was not lamenting lost fondness; my Granny had lived through so much pain at the hands of men, white-folks, and crushing poverty that she rarely ever seemed fond of anything other than her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Justin Fox Burks

Crosstown

I carried her memory and her history with me more than 10 years after that bus ride when I crossed Cleveland and stepped into the brand new Crosstown Concourse. I was there to witness firsthand the realization of a project purported to bring new life into central Memphis. New life, of course, because the old ones are less meaningful in the face of developments like this one.

I can’t lie, the Crosstown Concourse is a nice building. The idea of a “vertical urban village” is a concept out of my futurist fantasies, and the Crosstown Concourse looks the part. The updated construction has managed to retain the massive look and feel of the building from my childhood while also making the new space feel fresh and modern. The public servant in me is impressed by the convergence of commercial and civic interests into a single public-use space.

But Memphis is full of disrespected dead, and their spirits still cry out for justice. On the afternoon of Saturday, August 12th, our city was at the crux of an interesting convergence: Less than three miles from the celebration of Crosstown’s shining beacon, hundreds of protesters (many of whom are descendants of the slaves that kept Memphis living in high cotton) decided to use their bodies and lives to demand that our elected representatives stand on the correct side of history and remove hateful edifices from our taxpayer-funded parks. While the people who Memphis prioritizes bobbed their heads to performances from some of our most brilliant black artists, immigrant Memphians marched to defend themselves and their families from forces that threaten to rupture their families and destroy their livelihoods.

We are living in a literal tale of two cities.

I want to know: How can I be excited about the Crosstown Concourse when the grocery store inside of it is explicitly not marketed to the disenfranchised residents of Klondike and Smokey City? How can I be excited about the Crosstown Concourse when there are thousands of unemployed and underemployed Memphians in a two-mile radius of its doors? How can I be excited about the Crosstown Concourse when entire swaths of the city remain blighted and infested with vermin and waste? How can I be excited about the Crosstown Concourse when white supremacy, the system that makes Memphis great (for white residents) is still deeply ingrained in every facet of our city’s operation, from the police to the politics to the food and employment deserts, and is still killing people in whatever way it deems best — just like it killed my Granny?

Just last week, I was visiting South Memphis, talking to residents in an area infamous for having lead soil contamination readings higher than 1,700 parts per million (the federal standard for lead soil contamination is 400 parts per million). One woman caught my eye — her resemblance to my Granny struck me so deeply that it nearly brought tears to my eyes.

She was hurt and disgusted. Everyone in Memphis seemed to be on the receiving end of such great developments. Her neighborhood had changed too, with new housing and freshly constructed green space, but she was still not impressed. Where were the opportunities for her children and grandchildren to escape the chains of poverty that had held her in place for generations? Where were the nearby jobs? The adequately funded schools? There isn’t a full-service grocery story within three miles of her house. Those seem to be very basic requests, and I thought that Memphis was in the business of being brilliant at those. At one point during our conversation, she sighed and shook her head. For a moment, I was back on that bus with my Granny, my 10-year-old self finally understanding the weight of her sigh.

Time and again, our city’s leadership proves to folks like me that it does not care about our poor black grannies, our immigrant friends and family, or anyone else who dares to speak up and demand that all of the edifices to hate and white supremacy — mounted or not — be removed from this place where we’ve planted our roots. In the face of all these past memories and current pain, tell me: Why should I, or any Memphians like me, be excited about these future developments?

Troy L. Wiggins is a Memphis writer whose work has appeared in the Memphis Noir anthology, Make Memphis, and The Memphis Flyer.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Monumental Democracy

Enormous amounts of rhetoric have been loosed, both locally and nationwide, regarding the monuments to confederate figures and confederate causes that were erected in years past, and action of some sort is sure to follow. Even before the unsettling recent disturbances involving a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, a circumstance that saw opportunistic Nazis on the march and the resulting tragic death of a counter-protester, these statuary homages to a lost cause had potential for serious divisiveness.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu

Recognizing that fact, Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans had the foresight to remove the confederate monuments there. Baltimore has since dismantled its own, and, pending possible further action, Charlottesville has moved to cover up the statue of Lee and another of Stonewall Jackson. Other cities have done something similar, and, famously and urgently, Memphis has the ongoing quandary of what to do with its downtown statues to Nathan Bedford Forrest and confederate president Jefferson Davis.

The prospect for decisive action on the matter has mounted significantly of late, with Governor Bill Haslam joining city officials in calling upon the Tennessee Historical Commission to acquiesce in the statues’ removal, and the momentum is such that, one way or another, they could be gone even without such formal approval.

As it happens, Memphis is not just on the verge of abandoning an outmoded view of its history by junking one set of monuments, it also has the opportunity to refresh its horizons by erecting another set of memorials.

On Monday, the members of the Shelby County Commission voted unanimously to contribute significant funding to a memorial entitled Memphis Suffrage Monument: Equality Trailblazers, a permanent tribute in glass and bronze to Tennessee women who have loomed large in the expansion of voting rights.

This new memorial is to be a component of the Tennessee Womens Suffrage Trail, a statewide framework overseen by Memphian Paula Casey and Jacqueline Hellman, as well as of the Memphis Heritage Trail. It will also mark the 2020 Centennial of Tennessee’s decisive passage of the 19th Amendment for universal suffrage. It is the work of sculptor Alan Leguire, who has created other monuments to the suffrage movement and to women’s rights in Nashville, Knoxville, and Jackson.

The local memorial will be unveiled in August of 2018 in front of City Hall, and, on the way to the Suffrage Centennial, will also mesh with next year’s 50-year planned commemoration in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and with the 200th anniversary of the founding of Shelby County.

Plans are also afoot to create other monuments to equality in the general perimeter of the monument to the Equality Trailblazers, which will bear the busts of eight pioneers in the fight for, and exercise of, women’s suffrage — Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, Lide Smith Meriwether, Lulu Reese, state Representative Joe Hanover, Charl Ormond Williams, Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, and state Representative Lois DeBerry, with additional tributes to Marion Griffin, Maxine Smith, and Minerva Johnican.

Monumental women, all of them.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Judy Peiser’s Beale Street Note

The brass notes on Beale are like puddles on the sidewalk reflecting the names of artists long ago written in the stars. As father of the blues, W.C. Handy is there, but so are Elvis Presley, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, B.B. King, and Justin Timberlake. The notes also honor authors like Peter Guralnick, politicians like Lamar Alexander, and other notables like civil rights photographer Ernest Withers. A new note will be unveiled Sunday, September 3rd, during the final day of the Center for Southern Folklore’s Memphis Music and Heritage Festival. This note commemorates the life and work of Judy Peiser, the Center for Southern Folklore co-founder and driving force behind Memphis’ most musically significant Labor Day weekend party for 30 years and counting.

Although the Center is located in Peabody Place on Main, its roots are on Beale, having begun life in the Old Daisy Theater where visitors could watch a slide show about regional music and culture.

“We were in four different places on Beale,” Peiser says, unable to list them all because visitors keep dropping into the Center, and they all have questions.

Judy Peiser

Peiser’s note will be installed on the stretch of sidewalk in front of Silky O’Sullivan’s, which was, in another life, a former home to the Center.

Peiser says she doesn’t have words to describe how she feels about the note. She just says she’s been honored to tell the stories of everybody from bluesmen to Holocaust survivors, and to build the archives of art, photography, film, and interviews related to life in the South. “To humanize,” Peiser says. “I guess that’s what we do.”

Every Labor Day weekend, the Memphis Music and Heritage Festival fills a stretch of Main just north of Beale with live music, dancers, storytellers, cooking demonstrations, and more. This year’s festival runs from Saturday, September 2nd through Sunday, September 3rd and features music by Earl “the Pearl,” Los Cantadores, Kate Campbell, the Last Chance Jug Band, Marcella Semien, Joyce Cobb, Luther Dickinson, the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band, and dozens more. Still free, though donations are encouraged.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Exposure on 901-Day at AutoZone Park

The 31st Annual Memphis Music and Heritage Festival isn’t the only way to celebrate the soul of Memphis. On the first day of September, more than 150 arts organizations and businesses will gather in AutoZone Park for a different kind of party. Memphis loves its area code so much a new holiday is emerging — 9/01. To mark the occasion, New Memphis Institute is bringing back a free event called Exposure on 901-Day.

New Memphis wants to attract talent to Memphis and keep it here. They also serve people who are new to the Bluff City as a kind of engagement-oriented welcome wagon, helping new arrivals adjust and discover all the good stuff Memphis has to offer. Exposure on 901-Day is an opportunity for newbies — and everybody else who’s ever wondered how they might engage with their community — to get involved with everything from performing arts to animal rescue.

Kickball, 901-style

“We believe in making Memphis magnetic — for newcomers and longtime Memphians alike by creating connections,” New Memphis communications specialist Anna Traverse explains. “That’s why we make it possible for people to connect with the city in a multitude of ways at Exposure.”

The event kicks off at 6 p.m. with entertainment by the Beale Street Flippers, the Grizz Drumline, and more. The main event is a Memphis celebrity kickball game. Engagement is the name of the game, and the overarching goal of 901-Day exposure is matching people with the kinds of places, things, charitable causes, and social opportunities they love. Organizations in attendance range from ArtsMemphis and Opera Memphis, to Project Green Fork, Explore Bike Share, Stax, WEVL, the YMCA, and the NAACP.

“We found, to our delight, that lots of longtime Memphians were eager to get involved in and enjoy Memphis life,” Traverse says.

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Ingrid Goes West

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in January 2007, no one really understood the enormous cultural change about to happen. The foundation of the new world was already in place — the internet was 15 years old, and cell phones, many of them with built-in cameras, had been ubiquitous since the turn of the century. But the iPhone — and the smartphones it inspired — brought everything together in a powerful, versatile, easy-to-use package that fit in your pocket.

As the saying goes, a good science-fiction writer could have predicted the automobile, but it takes a great one to predict the traffic jam. Instant, fully portable, audio, video, and data communication had been predicted since the 1930s. The iPhone’s front-facing camera, meant to be used for video conferencing, had comics fans giddy at the thought of finally having their own, working Dick Tracy two-way wrist radio. What almost no one saw coming was the selfie.

Smartphones not only changed our culture, but also the kinds of stories we tell. Plot points that rely on missed communication, for example, are no longer believable. Romeo and Juliet would have ended very differently if the two lovers could have just exchanged text messages before they decided to kill themselves. Horror movies now have a mandatory scene where they establish that the soon-to-be-murdered person is out of cell range.

Elizabeth Olsen (left) and Aubrey Plaza star in director Matt Spicer and writer David Branson Smith’s social media satire.

There have been attempts to grapple with the side effects of this new cultural paradigm, but few have hit the mark harder than Ingrid Goes West. It’s a carefully observed dark comedy, equal parts Sunset Boulevard, Heathers, and The Social Network, about how our emotional needs and self image are shaped by people we’ve never even met.

At the heart of the picture is a penetrating, sharp performance by Aubrey Plaza. The actress gained fame with her flat deadpan in Parks and Recreation, and she’s made a career of being a dependable comedic player, but nothing I’ve seen her in has hinted at the depth she achieves here. When we first meet Ingrid, she is crying bitter tears while flipping through the Instagram feed of a bride-to-be. It’s only when she jumps out of her car and maces the bride that we realize the wedding is in progress.

Once Ingrid gets out of the mental hospital, the roots of her dysfunction are revealed. Her mother has just died after a long, painful illness. She is alone in the world, except for people she follows on Instagram. Tired of watching glamorous Californians eat avocado toast while she munches on hot pockets in front of the TV, she takes her modest inheritance, moves to Los Angeles, and starts a new Instagram account under the name Ingridgoeswest. Her goal is to befriend Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), a professional social media influencer who, judging from her photo feed, seems to drift through upscale boutiques, vegan restaurants, and party houses in the high desert.

Ingrid’s inheritance-funded transformation from provincial loser into the image of the perfect California girl is a quintessential American story, from The Great Gatsby to Chicago. Plaza, director Matt Spicer, and writer David Branson Smith turn Ingrid’s desires and methods just a notch above socially acceptable levels and put in her hands the greatest tool for stalking ever invented. Is it even really stalking if the subject does all the surveillance work for you?

O’Shea Jackson Jr. does stellar work as Ingrid’s Batman-loving landlord who gets slowly pulled into her web of lies. Wyatt Russell takes what could have been a throwaway part as Taylor’s ineffectual artist husband and makes it memorable. The only actual villain in this conflicted cast is Billy Magnussen as Nicky, Taylor’s cokehead brother who is, like everyone else in this world, a ruthless social media grifter.

The dynamic between Plaza and Olsen is an intricate deconstruction of the way we build our identities in the social media age. As Ingrid learns once she worms her way into Taylor’s life, social media stars put a lot of work into creating a seamless illusion of happiness and connection with an audience who lives vicariously through them. Ingrid’s biggest fault is that she believes the lie too deeply.

Categories
Music Music Features

Tramp-Rock Troubador

Keith Sykes is the kind of songwriter who has a few stories up his sleeve. He jokes in a soft country lilt as he recalls now-shuttered music lounges on Beale Street, and his sense of humor — as well as his musical resume — bespeaks a man with stories to spare …

Like the time in the summer of 1967 when the Murray, Kentucky, native hitchhiked to the Newport Folk Festival, so the story goes, and caught Arlo Guthrie’s set. A few months later, thanks to a faithfully reproduced version of Guthrie’s signature song, “Alice’s Restaurant,” Sykes had picked up a regular gig in a Charleston, South Carolina, hotel. In the 50 years since that fateful first contact with Officer Obie and the shrink from “Alice’s Restaurant,” Sykes has released 13 full-length albums, toured and recorded with Jimmy Buffett, written hundreds of songs for other performers, discovered Todd Snider, and, this year, finally finished his screenplay about a rancher and his talking horses. But more on the screenplay later.

His songs are simple and heartfelt, comforting and spare, like the break in the summer heat that comes with nightfall. Borne along on shuffling rhythms and clean, crisp guitars, Sykes sings wistfully of slipping into the shade and name-checks former band mate Jimmy Buffett in the EP’s title track.

“It’s called Songs from a Little Beach Town. All the songs are songs that I wrote down in a little beach town called Port Aransas, Texas,” Sykes says of the breezy acoustic track. It sounds like something a filmmaker might use to score a scene of someone tooling around town on an old beach cruiser. “When I first started going there, it was still a little fishy place,” Sykes says of his Texas hideaway. But it’s still really cool. You can take a bicycle around the whole town in 15 minutes.”

Two of Sykes’ balmy tunes, written in that same beach town, landed on the tropical rock charts in 2016. “Come as You Are Beach Bar” hit No. 1 and stayed in that position for seven weeks, and “The Best Day” has been in the top 40 since August of last year. “It just blew my mind. … It’s not a big deal chart, but it’s the kind of music I like,” Sykes says of the rock-and-roll, country, Calypso, and zydeco-infused island hybrid style popularized by artists like Jimmy Buffett.

“They finally came up with a name for it about 20 years ago and called it trop rock. When I was in [Buffett’s] band, we called it ‘tramp rock,'” Sykes laughs about his time in Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band.

Fresh off the release of his newest single, “I Pick You,” Sykes will play with a group of Memphis musicians at the Delta Fair and Music Festival next week. “Dave Cousar is an excellent guitar player, and Dave Smith on the bass, he’s just one of the best anywhere, much less Memphis,” Sykes says. “All these are Memphis guys who I’m just crazy about. Smith, Cousar, and Willie Hall, who I haven’t played with for years.”

The singer-songwriter’s Memphis roots run deep. Sykes used to host a long-running songwriter showcase on Beale Street. “It covered about 10 years all in all; I did nine shows a year. … I brought in songwriters from everywhere. I had the best seat in the house — that’s why I was doing it.” During his Memphis years he also recorded I’m Not Strange, I’m Just Like You at Ardent Studios.

“I hate starting stuff and not finishing,” Sykes says, without a trace of irony for a man whose songs have collectively sold 25 million copies worldwide. And that brings us back to his screenplay, Horses & Me. “What I did this year, rather than write songs, was write a screenplay. I’ve started a couple, and I’d always set ’em aside and go back to songs. This year I said, ‘Dang, I should finish one of these.'”

The screenplay is about a simple man who works with his hands. He owns some land and some horses, and he spends a lot of time alone. That’s when the horses start to talk to him. “He thinks he’s insane. ‘Cause he’s been drinking, you know, imbibing a little bit,” Sykes chuckles.

For next week’s show, Sykes and his band will perform music from his entire catalog, including the new Songs from a Little Beach Town EP. The album’s final and most-recent single, “I Pick You,” was released Friday, August 25th by KSM Entertainment.

Keith Sykes & Band at the Delta Fair & Music Festival at the Agricenter International, Friday, September 8th at 8 p.m.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Doubling Down: Two-ingredient Drinks for Every Occasion

CREDIT: Oleg Magurenco | Dreamstime

I’m 10 days into a three-week kitchen renovation, and boy, do I need a drink!

The dog’s nerves are frayed from all the people coming and going, and my nerves are shot from making sure he doesn’t get out the front door while all the people are coming and going. My throat feels constantly parched from the thick dust that’s hung in the air after demolition. Life is upside down — I can’t find a clean coffee cup, let alone a jigger or my cocktail shaker. And last weekend, my mom came to town for a four-day visit.

We ate all our meals out, enjoying tart gin gimlets at Second Line and pouring our own glasses of “chicken wine” — La Vieille Ferme — straight from the box during a boisterous dinner with friends at Arepas Deliciosas. At the Crosstown Concourse opening, we sipped pinot grigio as we took in the crowds. Then we’d come home, inspect the kitchen progress, and vacuum the living room before sitting down for a few rounds of Rummikub. Inevitably, we’d both want one more glass of something before bed.

Apologies to my mother, but we made do with vodka-tonics, sans even a slice of lime. My fault entirely, but the countertops, kitchen sink, and my knife drawer disappeared a day earlier than I expected. We used our fingers to stir our glasses, mercifully filled with ice from the refrigerator now parked in the middle of my dining room. The dining room table, in case you wondered, is now in the living room, blocking a bookcase. The day she left, the tonic ran out, and I moved on to the exotic bottle of A’ Siciliana, or Limonata di Sicilia, which some blessed soul had left in the fridge. It was an outstanding mixer while it lasted.

Now, I’ve turned to the internet, desperate for easy drinks that require no garnishes, tools, or frills. My go-to, gin and tonic, is out, because I refuse to use bottled lime juice, and I have no idea where my cutting boards are. Because of my mold allergies, I can’t drink wine as often as I’d like. To my astonishment, I’ve found a number of two-ingredient cocktails that fit the bill for a kitchenless house.

Oleg Magurenco | Dreamstime

First, there’s the Paloma, which is made with equal parts tequila and grapefruit-flavored soda. No need to even measure properly — I just eyeballed my glass as I poured in a few fingers of El Jimador over ice, then topped it with an equal-ish amount of Toronja Jarritos, purchased at the corner store.

Continuing the grapefruit theme, I’ve also been enjoying an old standby: the Greyhound, or, as I like to call it, “a Salty Dog without the salt.” Truthfully, this is best drunk in a rocks glass, but my cocktail glasses are in a box somewhere, so I rinsed out my coffee cup and used it instead. All I needed for a Greyhound was ice, a little vodka, and a lot of grapefruit juice. Inspired by a photograph I saw on the lifestyle website MyDomaine, I even added a sprig of rosemary, pulled off a bush in my front yard.

One night last week, I picked up a can of Coca-Cola (a rarity in this house) so I could enjoy a Kalimotxo, a red wine-based drink I’ve mentioned here before. It turns out that the secret to a good Kalimotxo, if you’re in the midst of a disruptive home project, is to use a bottle of screwtop wine, no particular vintage required.

During a trip to Fresh Market to stock up on deli items, I was inspired to buy a few bottles of ginger beer. Afterward, I enjoyed a run of Dark and Stormies, made with Goslings Black Seal rum, which, truthfully, were not as good as they could’ve been since they were missing the fresh lime. Once the ginger beer ran out, I turned to rum and Coke.

Mercifully, the end of this insanity is in sight, and by Labor Day, I hope to be unpacking. Soon, I’ll be able to have fresh lime wedges anytime I want, and I’ll be able to easily put my hands on a highball glass, a shot glass, or any of the bar accoutrements I’ve come to depend on. My first drink will be accompanied by a toast to the workers who demolished and (hopefully!) rebuilt this hodgepodge kitchen space — and my second will be drunk with a promise to never take such luxuries for granted again.