Month: June 2018

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Big Week for Shelby County Politics Features Joe Biden

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

What a week! What a weekend! Local political junkies of every stripe had plenty of occasions to nourish their activism. In addition to several fund-raisers and meet-and-greets for specific candidates in this year’s elections, there were debates, forums, and other kinds of smorgasbords featuring several at once.

The highlight of local Democrats’ week was surely the appearance on Friday night of former Vice President Joe Biden, who brought his “American Promise Tour” to the Orpheum. Biden’s visit, a ticketed affair, was part revival and part book-tour stop (for Biden’s new volume, Promise Me, Dad: a Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose, about his son Beau’s illness and ultimate death from brain cancer.)

With his regular-guy persona and tell-it-like-it-is style, Biden inarguably kindled the kind of political enthusiasm that Hillary Clinton could have used in 2016 and that Biden seems eager to deploy in 2020 against Donald J. Trump.

Not that Biden talked up a race; in fact, he got one of his most animated reactions when he complained about the unnamed Washington scribe who suggested that his book was a calculated bid for sympathy prior to a presidential run. The crowd’s murmur of outrage morphed into delighted laughter when Biden muttered something about administering a personal corrective to “the sonofabitch.”

Biden’s appeal is based partly on that kind of plain talk and partly, too, on his ability to revivify a kind of unpretentious patriotism that is either left unsaid these days or is more often obscured by the gaslight of insincere platitudes.

When host Terri Lee Freeman of the National Civil Rights Museum asked Biden what he had meant by writing that he was nostalgic for the American future, the author of that seemingly oxymoronic sentiment furrowed his brow as if wondering himself what he had meant by the line. But what followed was a wonderfully developed disquisition on the process of regaining the forefathers’ democratic dream of a just and honest realm that resolved the paradox perfectly.

On Saturday morning, Republicans turned out en masse for the opening of the party’s 2018 campaign headquarters in the Trinity Commons shopping center. Shelby County party chair Lee Mills introduced GOP candidates in the forthcoming county general election and federal and state primaries on August 2nd.
Partisans of both political parties got close-up looks at the rival candidates for Shelby County mayor and Tennessee governor when Republican mayoral candidate David Lenoir and Democratic candidate Lee Harris squared away on Wednesday at the Kiwanis Club. And four candidates for governor appeared on Thursday at a forum on legal issues before members of the Tennessee Bar Association.
At the mayoral event, moderated by WREG-TV anchor Stephanie Scurlock at the University Club, Lenoir put forth his standard goals of “great jobs, great schools, and safe streets” while boasting his achievements in managing Shelby county’s financial assets as trustee for the last eight years. Harris said he intended to focus on the themes of poverty, injustice, and residual segregation, and recounted occasions when he took the lead in resolving difficult issues as a city councilman and as state Senate Democratic leader.

Participating in the bar association event at The Peabody were Democrats Karl Dean and Craig Fitzhugh, as well as Republicans Beth Harwell and Randy Boyd. The candidates were interviewed sequentially by Commercial Appeal editor Mark Russell on such issues as criminal justice reform, judicial redistricting, and the desirability of changes in school-zone drug laws.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Memphis’ Hip Hop Renaissance

Mark down 2018 as the year that Memphis music conquered the world — again.

We can dwell on the chart conquests of yore by Sun and Stax, all fueled by the fiercely independent spirit of those studios’ producers and artists. Or we can fast forward to the widespread use of Memphis soul samples by NWA, Snoop Dogg, and others in the late 1980s. Or skip ahead to DJ Paul, Juicy J, Crunchy Black, and Frayser Boy winning an Academy Award for Best Original Song. Even that was a dozen years ago, and was only the tip of the iceberg. As it turns out, that iceberg has been chugging along for decades now, gathering momentum. Now, once again, it has crushed the charts.

“It’s been a big year for Memphis hip-hop,” says Devin Steele, DJ for K97 FM. “Just with Yo Gotti, BlocBoy JB, Moneybagg Yo, and Young Dolph, alone. About a month ago, all four of those artists had records in the top 20. You hear Memphis records on the radio in every major city now.” And that’s not even including less visible Memphians like Teddy Walton, who produced a track on Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy- and Pulitzer Prize-winning DAMN.

Beyond new material, classic sounds from the 1990s and early aughts are being revived as well. Steel explains, “There’s a resurgence of Three 6 Mafia, with people reusing their beats for a lot of popular songs. Like that classic Juicy J song, ‘Slob on My Knob.’ G-Eazy took that record, put Cardi B on it and just redid the record. It’s the same record!”

Lawrence Matthews, aka Don Lifted

Indeed, a recent article in Rolling Stone calls Juicy J’s track “the most influential rap song of 2018,” naming no less than three artists who have used it. It’s a rare accomplishment for a song cut a quarter-century ago.

One thing made clear by this is the way a track can live on, independent of any one artist. Aside from Memphis performers who have topped the charts, the success and longevity of those tracks rely heavily on Memphis producers — the unsung heroes of this story.

Many of the new hits, such as “Look Alive,” the BlocBoy JB collaboration with Drake that reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100, grew out of tight connections between artists and producers dating back to childhood. Tay Keith, the 21-year-old who produced “Look Alive,” grew up with BlocBoy JB in Raleigh, and they helped refine each others’ skills in their early teens.

As Keith told Fader magazine, “We used to have everybody in the neighborhood record their music in the garage … [BlocBoy] used to be freestyling to the beat the whole time while I’m making it.” As Keith developed his reputation, he went on to work with Blac Youngsta and Moneybagg Yo. But when Drake connected with BlocBoy JB, it brought a sea change. “It definitely changed my life and opened a lot of doors for me,” he says. “It helped me elevate to the next level. But I’m actually still in college, so I’m basically just working this summer.”

DJSqueeky

Lawrence Matthews, aka Don Lifted, recalls a similar friendship. “Cody Jordan — ThankGod4Cody — he’s a friend. We grew up producing together in a friend’s attic. He ended up moving to Atlanta, then moving to L.A., and now he has two platinum records. He’ll also be featured on my upcoming album. I remember when we used to have parties in my living room in 2011. We were talking about that last week at his place, outside his new studio that they’re building. Sitting in the back yard with a pool and a basketball court, and it’s just like, ‘We’re out here! How did seven years lead us to this?'”

The tale of youthful collaborations leading to great things is common in Memphis hip-hop. As the now-legendary producer DJ Squeeky told the Memphis Flyer of his early days in the late 1980s, “I was probably about 15 [or] 16 years old. I did some work with 8 Ball & MJG, Criminal Manne, Project Playaz, and Tom Skeemask. We all kinda grew up together in the same neighborhood.” Some 30 years later, DJ Squeeky is still making hit records, now with Young Dolph, born about the time Squeeky got started. Their track, “100 Shots,” was just certified gold — Squeeky’s second gold record to date.

Pondering the fact that he, unlike many Memphis-bred artists and producers, still lives in his hometown, Squeeky reflects on the lack of recognition Memphis gets, given its high ratio of talent. “People are just milking Memphis. They’re getting millions of dollars. Everybody’s got the sound of Memphis,” he says. “But Memphis ain’t getting the acknowledgment as the source where they’re getting all this music from, where they’re making all this money. They keep pointing at Atlanta. And it’s really not Atlanta. In Atlanta, they have more belief in rap than we ever had in Memphis. Because they look at it like it’s a business venture. They look at it like, if we spend money, we make money. In Memphis, we get kinda skeptical about spending our money. We gotta think about it three or four minutes.”

It’s a familiar story, going back to a producer Squeeky cites as an early inspiration: DJ Spanish Fly. Now, with his early mixtapes being rediscovered on the internet, Spanish Fly is recognized as a pioneer of the crunk sound. But for years, aside from a few shout-outs by the Three 6 Mafia crew, he went unappreciated. As Squeeky notes, “We’ve been having this sound for the longest time, but nobody called out what we was doing, ’cause we was before our time. But over time, that’s how everybody sounds now. It’s like the sound of the world now is Memphis.”

IMAKEMADBEATS

DJ Squeeky, since before his earliest hits with 8 Ball and MJG, has also been an architect of that sound. As Steele says, “His name is coming up a lot with the whole trap vs. crunk debate, over who came up with what, where it came from. Atlanta’s taking credit. Memphis came up with it.”

But what is the Memphis sound? Ever evolving, it’s not easy to define nowadays.

“In Memphis, we have our own sound: the bounce,” Tay Keith explains. “That bounce sets us aside from everybody else.” The prominence of the Roland TR-808 drum machine is a part of that. It figured heavily in hip-hop’s earliest days, but as rap explored sampling more through the 1980s, loops of classic funk and soul drum breaks came to dominate. That is, until Memphis producers stepped up, bringing the 808 into the foreground once again. Over such beats, DJ Squeeky, Three 6 Mafia, and others layered more orchestral sounds, creating the doom-laden “horror movie” sound of the 1990s.

That’s still a defining sound, as the current recycling of old Three 6 Mafia tracks proves. But records from the new generation of Memphis producers, like Keith, can be spare, almost bleak, with the 808 percussion foregrounded even more. This is calculated.

Yo Gotti

As Keith explains, “You make the beats simple so you give the artist more room to ride the beat. If you put too much into a beat, artists really don’t have much room to do what they want. The simplicity is the creativity.”

DJ Squeeky puts it another way: “The new people making the new trap sounds, they’re making the beat with less of the music. When I was coming up, we had more music. It was in our blood with the Memphis sound, to have more music in a track — guitar, pianos, and all that other stuff. I grew up on a lot of that. So I added a lot of that to my tracks.” Having spent his early years as a drummer at the First Baptist Beale Church, where his family attended services, he’s still committed to layering more sounds over his beats.

But DJ Squeeky isn’t the only producer from Memphis with a musical background. Alan Hayes is possibly the least recognized Memphis hip-hop producer/engineer, emerging as he did out of the white rock and new wave scenes of the 1970s and 1980s. He, too, notes the change in the recent hip-hop soundscapes. “It seems to me that the tracks have gotten a lot less musical and a lot more beat-oriented. Now it just seems like the music is just some kind of ethereal bed underneath a big giant 808 kick and snare.”

A paradoxical figure in Memphis rap, Hayes is a missing link between the city’s electronic music scene of the 1980s and the hip-hop that was to come. Having played with successful electronic new wavers Calculated X, he already had a TR-808 and many other synthesizers when he built his House of Hayes studio around 1988. Thus, he was perfectly poised to catch the initial wave of Memphis rappers.

Tay Keith

“The first rapper I worked with was named AlleyCat. The producer was Carlos Broady (another Memphis native). This was right after he had done the stuff with Biggie Smalls.” Soon thereafter, Hayes cut the first demos of a 15-year-old named Yo Gotti, whose success led to more work in the genre, such as Gangsta Blac’s 74 Minutes of Bump. But he credits another studio as the scene’s true pioneer. “MegaJam was probably the earliest commercial hip-hop studio in Memphis. One of the guys there was Michael Patterson. He’s now done a lot of big time stuff.” Kojack, another renowned producer from Memphis, also started at MegaJam.

Though Hayes produces and engineers many styles of music, he hasn’t lost the enthusiasm for hip-hop that he felt in those early days. “There just aren’t any rules of what you can put together to make a beat,” he says. “I bought my first synthesizer, a Minimoog, probably about 1971. And I’ve always been just as enamored by sound and texture as actual music, you know? So hip-hop was a huge opportunity to just go wild with weird sounds and stuff.”

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The idea of “going wild” is significant. Though the current trend is minimalist, the more expansive possibilities of hip-hop are still alive and well in Memphis, and not just with musician-producers like Squeeky or Hayes. Under the surface of the Memphis-derived hits, the city is witnessing an explosion of creative approaches.

The Unapologetic label/collective, for example, is premised on the notion of diversity. Memphian James Dukes left town after high school for a job at Quad Recording Studios in New York, working with Talib Kweli, Common, Missy Elliott, Ludacris, and others. Unlike many, he returned here in 2011. “New York toughens you up in a very interesting way, in a very social kind of way,” he says. “I would say I went up there as Nemo, which was just a nickname, and I came back IMAKEMADBEATS, a kind of scarily dedicated guy.”

Kenny Wayne

Dukes found himself pursuing a richer vision of what Memphis hip-hop could be. Inspired by other like-minded Memphians who chafed at the new “Memphis sound,” he founded Unapologetic to nurture their work.

Now, a few years on, Unapologetic has developed a stable of artists and producers who evoke the freewheeling spirit of the Native Tongues collective in late-1980s New York: rappers like PreauXX and A Weirdo From Memphis; producers like C Major and Kid Maestro; less rap-oriented artists like angelic singer Cameron Bethany or bass phenom MonoNeon; and even a clothing line. The musical environments created by IMAKEMADBEATS and his fellow producers are imaginative and eclectic.

One precursor to the Unapologetic model was the Iron Mic Coalition, which held to a similar set of values, though not with the same production and marketing savvy as Dukes and his cohort. Dukes counts them as an inspiration, especially the work of Ennis Newman, aka Fathom 9, who passed away in 2014. Dukes recalls, “While the I.M.C. has various talents, Fathom 9 to me was the most left wing. He was past the point of comfortable and cute. He did it in a way to where it was daringly uncomfortable.”

Which brings us to the “message”: While overt politics mostly emerge in rappers’ lyrical choices, they inform the production as well, and it’s clear that groups like Unapologetic and I.M.C. create a milieu where politically conscious rap can flourish. Of course, you can’t dismiss the raw political impact of Three 6 Mafia or Yo Gotti raps, even if they mainly celebrate the classic outlaw hero. But conscious rap is less conducive to the call-and-response chants of crunk.

(Clockwise from top) IMAKEMADBEATS, A Weirdo from Memphis, PreauXX, Aaron James, Quinn McGowan, Jr., Kid Maestro, Eric Stafford, C Major

When I ask IMAKEMADBEATS about political rappers in Memphis today, he singles out two. “Marco Pavé is one. He’s built a whole identity around it. And Don Lifted. His stuff is maybe not as aggressive in that sense, but he’s very aware.”

Don Lifted and Marco Pavé are indeed a study in contrast. Don Lifted, a member of the mostly visual arts-based group The Collective, curates his own and others’ artwork in local galleries, creates objets d’art as set pieces for his concerts, and is one of many local rappers who produce their own tracks. C’Beyohn, Cities Aviv, and Kenny Wayne (also a visual artist in The Collective) all work in this way, often combining autobiography with “message” rap.

Pavé presents himself as more of an activist and auteur, though he relies on producers like Broady to create striking juxtapositions of samples and lyrical protest. Wayne also creates tracks for Pavé, and the two have recently been scoring their hip-hop works for live orchestra. This may represent the newest frontier in the genre. Sam Shoup, an arranger and instructor at the University of Memphis, tutored Wayne in conducting classical musicians and assisted with an operatic version of Pavé’s Welcome to Grc Lnd. He finds Pavé’s approach “very interesting. His vision is huge. It could be a landmark piece to come from this town.”

But it was not Shoup’s first run at genre-busting. “This started about four or five years ago, when I arranged the Opus One show for Al Kapone [with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra],” Shoup recalls. “That was one of the first orchestral rap things ever done. And so we kind of pioneered that. Recently Nas did a concert with the National Symphony. Al Kapone was texting me and saying, ‘Man, we did this four years ago!'”

Wayne, whose brother is producer WeboftheMacHinE (a collaborator with Missy Elliot, Timbaland, and Young Dolph), is far from alone in breaking into the realm of live musicians. During Memphis’ MLK50 commemorations, students from the University of Memphis Department of Music staged an original hip hop symphony, “Echoes of a King.” With a jazz band on the left, a string section on the right, and several impressive rappers and singers weaving in vocal parts, the work was a stunning taste of what R&B-tinged hip-hop can become.

While it’s difficult to call such grand explorations “underground,” they certainly exude an indifference to the usual markers of commercial success. But that’s not to say any of these alternative artists would shun more public acclaim. There’s always the chance that, in following their unique visions, they’ll build a larger following. Indeed, they already are.

The bottom line: Memphis is teeming with producers, and even the chart-toppers are pushing their creativity to the limit. As Tay Keith says of his success with BlocBoy JB, “We just did it in more of a creative way than other people. My advice would be to be more creative with it. Stick with a new rhythm, your specific way.”

Clearly, dividing producers or rappers into commercial vs. underground realms is too simplistic. As IMAKEMADBEATS notes, “I don’t think there’s a binary way to look at it in 2018. I think the angle that we want to focus on most is the future progression. For example, what has been deemed an underground sound, like Memphis crunk in the ’90s, became commercial simply because it got the right visibility. So what is underground is very relative.”

This in turn has a direct bearing on a city’s musical identity. Pavé notes that “for Memphis to become the city that it needs to become, music-wise, we definitely have to create other types of sound, other types of rappers with different images.”

Editor’s note: Andria Lisle offers a comprehensive guide to the best spots in Memphis to hear hip hop.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Infill Frenzy

CREDIT: Edge

This week, developers of a massive apartment complex planned for Broad Avenue are in line for $12.1 million in public assistance, but the public — business owners around the development — say their voices are not being heard.

3D Realty, a conglomerate of Loeb Properties and M&M Enterprises, has planned a $51 million project for the north side of Broad that will raze an existing warehouse there and raise multiple four-story buildings that will house 414 apartments.

The Memphis and Shelby County Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE) was slated to consider Wednesday whether or not to slash the property taxes — money that pays for police, fire, parks, and more — of the project over the next 15 years.

Broad Avenue business owners have been meeting with the developers since October, they said, but no one is listening.

“From the beginning … the process has felt extremely one-sided,” said Lisa Toro, co-owner of City & State and The Liquor Store. “We were asked what we think and provided some thoughts but there has been no resulting action or compromise.”

James Maclin, principle owner of M&M Enterprises, said “conversations with neighborhood partners are absolutely ongoing” but provided no other comment on neighborhood concerns.

Edge

A proposed apartment complex on Broad.

“We look forward to continuing our commitment to be good neighbors in the area through 3D Realty’s [Historic Broad Avenue Arts Alliance] membership — [Loeb Properties owner Bob Loeb] and I are already members — as well as our active community participation,” Maclin said.

Parking and traffic are already major concerns on Broad, according to Pat Brown, co-owner of T Clifton Art Gallery. She worried about adding (possibly) 414 more cars to the area.

“We asked the developers to fund a mobility study that would allow us to look at the entire area and the traffic congestion coming from Sam Cooper, and options for vacant lots and blighted property that could be converted into parking lots,” Brown said. “We just wanted to be ahead of the situation, but the developers said they feel [traffic and parking] are the city’s responsibility.”

Small businesses — many from first-time business owners — have been Broad Avenue’s life blood since it came back to life a few years ago. Brown and Toro worry that when the new apartment complex arrives, rents will rise, those small business owners will be forced out, and Broad’s unique energy will be zapped.

Both say they can only watch, their voices muted in a conversation about a project that will directly impact their lives, their businesses, and the community they’ve help to build.

“Fifty percent of Broad Avenue is about to change,” Toro said. “Not making that a community-based effort is a huge disservice to the businesses who have been there for years.”

Brown wondered “what is the role of neighborhoods as development goes into neighborhoods?”

“The neighborhood is often viewed as a barrier to development,” she said. “But the neighborhood is why those developers want to come in the first place.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1530

WBDS-Memphis

This week’s award for most awkward, faintly porny moment goes to Action News 5 reporter Janice Broach.

Broach redefined teaser with a promotional clip introducing the Germantown psychiatrist Valerie Augustus of Christian Psychiatrist, who has been accused of, “using riding crops and whips on some of her patients.”

To illustrate the story, Broach held a riding crop in her right hand and gave her left hand a fierce little swat when she said, “riding crop.” It totally happened.

Dammit, Gannett

When the bot and/or out-of-town editor editing Memphis’ daily paper can’t distinguish between Lucero, the Mexican entertainer, and Lucero, the enormously popular Memphis band, there’s a problem.

Barbecue Sneaker

Memphis barbecue is allegedly the inspiration for artist Lizzie Darden’s Tennessee sneaker.

Adidas commissioned female artists to design a one-of-a-kind Ultraboost X sneaker for each U.S. state. Darden’s shoe is pink with what appears to be a slice of ham on the toe.

Categories
Music Music Features

Memphis Concrete at Crosstown Arts

CREDIT: Twitter | facebook

On Triangles: Sound in Geometry Series Vol. 1 borrows its title from a 15th-century collection of treatises by Johannes Regiomontanus. The German renaissance astronomer and mathematician, often identified as simply Regiomontanus, claimed his book would explain “all things necessary for anyone wishing to reach perfection” in his or her knowledge of the astronomical sciences. Similarly, On Triangles is a generous 17-track sampler CD showcasing electronic music and soundscapes crafted by the artists playing at this year’s Memphis Concrète Festival. It can make clearer what to expect from a three-day event devoted to experiments and improvisations in electronic sound better than any descriptive overview could ever hope to do. On Triangles is a varied collection of sonic exotica that ranges from pop-inspired and percussive to freaky and free-form.

“Memphis Concrète was a play on words,” festival organizer Robert Traxler says, explaining a desire to mix this cerebral approach to music-making with a hint of regional grit.

“Musique concrète,” the expression Traxler was riffing on when he christened the festival, describes various methods of collecting, organizing, and manipulating recorded sound in ways that aren’t restricted by traditional conventions of melody, harmony, and rhythm. The approach was employed by a variety of 20th-century European artists inspired by the idea of “acousmatic sound” — sound that’s been uncoupled visually from the original source of production. That concept was inspired, appropriately enough, by the Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, who sometimes lectured his students from behind screens, so they might focus their attention not on him, but on triangles.

“Last year’s festival was basically a proof of concept,” Traxler says. That event was two nights, featured primarily local and regional artists, and all events took place sequentially in Crosstown Arts’ tiny gallery space on Cleveland. This year’s festival moves across the street to the main Concourse and picks up a second stage. The event has also expanded to three nights.

The Memphis Concrète lineup features several area performers, including IMAKEMADBEATS (see cover story, p. 10), singer/songwriter Linda Heck, and DJ/recording artist Mike Honeycutt.

“I think a lot of people around Memphis probably think of Heck playing rock music,” Traxler says. But of “Right,” Heck’s sometimes dreamy, sometimes anxiety-inducing contribution to On Triangles, Traxler says Heck’s “doing something different, and it’s phenomenal. It’s the most straight-up musique concrète on the CD.”

This year’s festival brings a number of national acts to town, including Wolf Eyes, STARFIGHTER YELLOW SUPEROVERDRIVE, and former Dirty Beaches artist Alex Zhang Hungtai. Zhang moved from rock to jazz to even freer forms, creating epic soundscapes and intimate little suites that mix electronics and traditional instruments such as guitar, piano, and drums. Fans of Showtime’s Twin Peaks reboot may also recognize Zhang as a member of the show’s fictional band, Trouble.

Traxler describes Circuit des Yeux as being, “probably the most like what you might think of as a rock band.” Fronted by Haley Fohr, a singer with a multi-octave range, Circuit des Yeux’s sound can be difficult to pin down, with tracks that range from ambient burbles to guitar-driven knife-fights. “It’s an eclectic sound with pop roots,” Traxler says. “And a lot of surprises.”

There’s quite a bit of surprise built into Memphis Concrète’s lineup, including three films with electronic or electronic-friendly soundtracks that will be performed live by festival artists. “Woman in the Moon is a silent film,” Traxler says. “Those are always some of the most fun to do live soundtracks for.”

That’s just a small sample of what’s available at the Memphis Concrète Festival, which is bringing more than 30 artists to the Crosstown Concourse this weekend. On Triangles: Sound in Geometry Series Vol. 1 is available at Shangri-La Records now.

Memphis Concrète Festival at Crosstown Arts, Friday, June 22nd-Sunday, June 24th.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Hydro at the Hi-Tone

CREDIT: Mrhighsky | Dreamstime.com

Marijuana laws may be loosening up in various regions around the country, but what kind of effect does that have on places like Tennessee where they’re not? Lee Otts, executive director for the Memphis Chapter of the National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana Legislation (NORML) says there’s a propaganda campaign happening, if you know where to look. That’s one of the reasons Otts organized Hydro at the Hi-Tone. “We need to stop the reefer madness and misinformation that’s been getting out,” he says.

Otts shares a news article from ABC affiliate WKRN in Nashville. Set in dark alleys where the threat of violence always looms, it tells a terrifying story of big money and potent pot. “Agents are concerned because they are seeing an increase in marijuana coming from the West Coast states like Colorado and Washington, where pot laws are more relaxed and the pot more potent,” the report states. “The pot [that] used to come to middle Tennessee from Mexico is being replaced with marijuana hydroponically grown.” (Insert Dragnet theme here).

Mrhighsky | Dreamstime.com

Little green bag

The article Otts shared describes how the quality product commands higher prices. More money means more violence. Well, in places where it’s not legal, anyway.

“A lot of money stands to be lost with legalization,” Otts says, specifically addressing law enforcement and the issue of forfeiture.

In some regards, Hydro at the Hi-Tone is just a regular monthly meeting for Memphis’ Norml but with a twist. Laws will be addressed, elections will be considered, chapter business will be discussed. Also, hydro rigs will be on display, and there will be a demonstration comparing hydroponically and soil-grown plants.

“We’re trying to come up with different events for monthly meetings, and we had a lot of success with our class on how to make edibles,” Otts says, hoping Hydro at the Hi-Tone will have a similar appeal.

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We Recommend We Recommend

Tuesday Comedy Show at High Cotton

All good things must come to an end. How else can you charge a premium for reunion tours?

“You have to grow,” says Tuesday Show Comedy co-founder Doug Gillon, explaining why, after three years of showcasing local, regional, and touring comedians on a school night famous for not much going on, he’s calling it quits.

“The idea that I’m going to stop doing productions or stop being around comedy is just silly,” Gillon says. “But the point of Tuesday Show Comedy, initially, was to build up exposure for quality comedy in Memphis on a regular basis. And I think we’ve done that.”

Dusty Slay

Gillon thinks he, former co-host Kyle Kordsmeier, and current co-host Jonny Bratsveen have contributed to building Memphis’ thriving comedy scene. “Now I can look at different avenues to bring things to people and be more adaptable,” he says. “Also, my own performance has improved. I’ve become a much better comedian in three years. Not necessarily any good, but I’m better and I get a lot more opportunities to perform just by myself. I want to be able to take advantage of those as well.”

Gillon has big plans for the last Tuesday Show — a rapid-fire retrospective featuring 20 Tuesday veterans doing just a couple of minutes each followed by headliner Dusty Slay. Memphis band Glorious Abhor provides music and rimshots.

Raised in a trailer park and uncertain as to why they’re called parks, Slay has performed his brand of blue collar comedy on Jimmy Kimmel Live and Last Comic Standing.

Looking back over three years of comedy, Gillion is able to identify several high points, like the time his Tuesday crew worked on Kevin Hart’s Comedy Central series. He’s particularly fond of the night Memphis comic Brandon Sams asked Midtowners if they could identify on a map, “Where the zoo touched you.”

Categories
Book Features Books

Caryl Phillips’ A View of the Empire at Sunset.

Jean Rhys is one of my favorite writers. Her early autobiographical novels are singular depictions of marginalized lives, the lives of women in a man’s world. In some of her novels, men represent a structure and a security her heroines don’t quite believe is possible. Rhys was born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams on the Caribbean island of Dominica, but she moved to England to attend school. For a while she led a wayward life of alcohol and opportunistic, inappropriate suitors. She met Ford Madox Ford and, under his influence, wrote those early novels which paralleled her life in disturbing ways. Yet, for all their pain and sadness, they shine with a light that is honest, compelling, and eccentrically rendered. In the 1940s, she disappeared from public life and quit writing. Then, in 1966, in a miraculous end to her unconventional writing career, she published her greatest novel, a brilliantly realized prequel to Jane Eyre, The Wide Sargasso Sea.

In A View of the Empire at Sunset, Caribbean novelist Caryl Phillips gives us a fictionalized account of Rhys’ life that works as both biography and fiction. He manages to limn Rhys’ style while not falling fully under its sway and abandoning his considerable novelistic abilities. You can taste Rhys, but it’s still Phillips’ exotic stew. Here she is called Gwennie. I was absorbed initially in waiting for young Gwennie to become one of the 20th century’s best novelists. But Phillips is after more than this. His narrative is about homeland, family, alienation, loneliness, and need. His Gwennie is a masterfully drawn character, as dissolute, yet as determined, as Rhys’ tragic characters. Is Rhys’ story her characters’ story? Yes and no. While there is much to suggest that Rhys drew from her own life, it is a disservice to her remarkable novels to see them only as thinly disguised autobiography.

Phillips traces Gwennie from her birth in Dominica to her schooling in London. When she abandons school to tread the boards, she encounters and learns from other wannabe actresses. She abandons this as well; she wanders; she fails continuously at attempts to find herself. Comparing herself to a friend she says, “Unlike herself, Ethel was busy; unlike herself, Ethel had not stooped to love and thereafter found herself sitting idly about waiting for a man to whisper kind words in her ears as he unfolded his wallet.”

She is married twice, loses a child, and has a daughter who survives her. She drinks. Her marriages are unhappy. “Is it possible, she wonders, that she might well be participating in a modern marriage: attachment and detachment at one and the same time?” Poor Gwennie!

Phillips is a colorful writer, even with such dour material. His sentences are as sharp as etchings in glass. And he’s a storyteller of the first water. His Gwennie is a sad wreck; often one wonders where the triumphant Jean Rhys is in this gloomy, inchoate life. Of his heroine Phillips says, “She understands that it doesn’t matter where you are, on land or sea, you always hear the noises before you see the light — and then soon after, the new day will arrive to torment you.” But, perhaps the most telling statement about Gwennie is this: “Mabel always insisted that the key to happiness was to simply stay quiet and make them fall for you. Eventually she learned how to do this, but it was afterward that always proved difficult, when she invariably decided that she no longer wished to remain quiet.” Of course, we know the conclusion. She does not remain quiet. She emerges as one of the most unforgettable female voices in all of literature.

In the end, A View of the Empire at Sunset is more novelistic than biographical. If Phillips doesn’t give us the Jean Rhys, he gives us a Jean Rhys, a fascinating portrait of a clever, sensitive woman, who never quite gets where she’s going. At novel’s end, Wide Sargasso Sea cannot even be discerned on the distant horizon, but Caryl Phillips’ Gwennie is still moving, still moving on.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Trauma-free desserts from the Pink Bakery; nuts over pistachios at the Peanut Shoppe.

On the Pink Bakery website, there’s an image of family around a cake. At right is Pink Bakery owner Nubian Simmons, at about 10 or so and cute as a button in her pigtails. She is staring so intently at the cake it calls to mind one of those “Get you a man” memes. Get you a man who looks at you like Nubian looks at that cake.

Simmons doesn’t recall whether or not she ate that cake. But if she had, she most likely would have broken out in hives, her throat closing and her tongue swelling.

“Not the best time, you know?” Simmons says.

Simmons’ bakery is Tennessee’s first big-eight allergen-free bakery. Those allergens are fish, wheat, peanuts, tree nuts, milk, eggs, shellfish, and soy. “Those allergens cause 90 percent of food reactions,” she says.

The Pink Bakery sells brownie, cookie, and cupcake mixes, as well as ready-to-eat brownies, cookies (choco-chip, sugar cookies with lemon frosting), donuts (pumpkin spice, chocolate sprinkle among them), and cupcakes (chocolate with white chocolate peppermint frosting, vanilla bean with strawberry frosting, etc.). The products are available at thepinkbakery.com and at the Collierville Farmers Market Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Sweet treats from the Pink Bakery

Simmons is actively looking for a retail space right now, which is a far cry from what she thought she would be doing.

As a child, she always had health problems, but no doctor, despite her growing file, ever considered food allergies. After her allergies (milk and wheat) were figured out, Simmons set about recreating safe treats for herself. “I was a graphic designer in my former life,” she says. “I had no clue.”

But, as it turned out, she did have the skill set as a education major with a concentration in math and science. “I could solve a problem. I could break something down and figure it out. So when it came to this baking thing, I had to learn how to not only bake without wheat, which is in everything but how gluten functions. I was learning how to duplicate the protein content. It was very difficult,” she says.

“When I was doing my research, it took me five years to get my recipes together because I’m very particular about the taste and texture. If the texture is off, I’m not eating it.”

She did figure it out, and through her tight connection with FARE (Food Allergen Research & Education) and food allergy blogs, she was contacted by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for some of her treats, which eventually brought her to Memphis.

Simmons says she has provided a child with his first-ever donut, a bride with a cake she could share with her loved ones. Imagine, she says, a life where a cookie could cut your life short. Then imagine suddenly not having to worry about hidden nuts or gluten. To be, in a way, normal. “It’s just a cookie to you,” says Simmons. “To them, it’s a life-changing experience.”

thepinkbakery.com

Back in March, the Peanut Shoppe on South Main Downtown began selling baklava, burma, and cashew/pistachio fingers. The owner Rida AbuZaineh specially orders them from Jordan and calls it a little taste of home.

These treats, deeply rich rather than sweet, are a bit pricey, though. One dollar will buy you a rather small square of baklava. “It’s a quality product,” says AbuZaineh. “We look for the Cadillac, not the Toyota.”

AbuZaineh says that flying the product over from Jordan adds to the cost, and also, pistachios happen to be very expensive, especially after the drought in California.

Using pistachios in these desserts rather than walnuts is the eastern way. (Though the walnut baklava is good, too, AbuZaineh and his daughter Nurah concede.) AbuZaineh orders me to quote him: “If you want to go fancy, you go pistachio,” he says.

Peanut Shoppe, 24 South Main, 525-1115, memphispeanutshoppe.com

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Off to Cuba!

CREDIT: Richard Murff

I’ve always liked the idea of a fine Cuban cigar better than actually smoking one. So, when Michelle Laverty, “Lav” to one and all, over at Babalu, slid a creation called a Cuba Cigar across the bar, I was intrigued. A single massive square of ice swimming in Bacardi Gran Reserva Rum with Havana, hyde and smoked bitters, with an orange slice. It is a solid drink, with the bitters supporting, not hiding the rum. And here it was, that smoky, leathery ideal of a cigar without the reality of it. Which is good, because in reality I’m allergic to tobacco.

This is just one of the five new cocktails rolled out by Babalu Tapas and Tacos in Overton Square this summer. The new drinks were created under the direction of Lisamarie Joyce, a bar consultant you’ve probably never heard of and frequent guest of Bar Rescue, which you probably have. She became a bartender at 15, and has been one ever since, worked for TGI Fridays and created training programs and films for bartenders. “I don’t do anything over email,” Joyce says. “It’s all ‘human touch’ training.”

Babalu wasn’t in any real need of rescue; they just wanted to shake up the cocktail list. “I don’t just come up with a new menu,” Joyce says. “I like to make a partnership with the company, talk to the employees, the guests. I do secret shopping. See what works — I collaborate with the staff to come up with a new menu.”

Richard Murff

Lisamarie Joyce

The Cuban Cigar was one of those collaborations — the brainchild of Joyce and Lav, who likes to work with spirit-forward cocktails. Some of the new choices are more a celebration of fruit than booze, though. The Lemon-Berry Sour tastes like a delicious booze-free sorbet. Mrs. M’s review was simple and straightforward: “Wow.” Be warned, there is Grey Goose vodka in there, with that swirl of blackberry, raspberry, and fresh squeezed sour, all lightened up with a good splash of soda. Others at the bar were eyeballing the colorful drink, and Mrs. M., being more delightful than myself, was making friends.

Next on the list, and tied for my personal favorite with the Cuban, was the Baba-Breeze: Bombay Sapphire Gin, cucumber, mint ginger, lemon, and soda. My summer go-to is a gin and soda (and yes soda, not tonic — long story), and because I can’t leave well enough alone, I will substitute lemon, or mint or cucumber, for the traditional lime. It had never occurred to me to simply drag my cocktail through the garden and stick it all in there. Which explains why Joyce makes her living as a bar consultant and I don’t.

Babalu is famous for its tacos and tapas — it says so right on the sign — so Mrs. M and I thought it prudent to get into the shrimp tacos at this point. In a place also known for super-fresh guacamole, it seems obvious that at least one cocktail would involve the creamy avocado. To wit, the Straw-vacado, which Lav described as an “adult smoothie.” Made with Grey Goose Le Citron Vodka, avocado, strawberry, and fresh squeezed sour, this is the Guinness beer of tropical cocktails.

The last of the new menu was more fruity goodness with the La Paloma. It wasn’t nearly as spirit-forward as the Cuban Cigar or the Baba-breeze, but the booze wasn’t entirely in stealth mode, like the Lemon-Berry sour. This is because it is made with Cazadores Reposada Tequila — which is tasty but next to impossible to entirely hide — along with grapefruit, blood orange, and agave to soften the whole thing up.

The menu isn’t entirely new. The classics remain, and after still another round of shrimp tacos, we finished off with an old-fashioned daiquiri — shaken, not frozen. Babalu is big and loud and takes all kinds — the new roll-out reflects that with something for those who’d rather be in a leather chair with a cigar, and those who’d rather think they were drinking a smoothie.