The week just past brought with it a plethora of news — good, bad, and ugly.
First, some good news in the braggin’ rights department: It was announced that Memphis International Airport (MEM) is back atop the rankings as the world’s busiest cargo airport for the first time since 2009. More than 4.6 million metric tons of cargo came through MEM in 2020, enough to put MEM back on top of the ranking by Airports Council International (ACI), edging out Hong Kong International Airport.
In other good economic news, Amazon announced it was increasing its presence in the Mid-South with two new facilities: a delivery station in North Memphis and a fulfillment center in Byhalia, Mississippi. The company said it expects to employ hundreds at each facility and will pay a starting wage of $15 per hour plus benefits.
In not so good news, another proposed facility in the Mid-South was denied a permit by the Horn Lake, Mississippi, city government. Last Tuesday, that city’s board of aldermen voted 5-1 to uphold the planning commission’s decision to deny approval of the site plan for a mosque proposed by Ray Elk. The Commercial Appeal reported that the aldermen opposing the building cited “insufficient water mains for fire sprinklers, the fear that the building would break the noise ordinance, and that it would be a traffic hazard as reasons for opposing the application.”
But Alderman John Jones said the quiet part out loud: “If you let them build it, they will come. I think we need to stop it before it gets here.”
The proposed mosque would be 10,000 square feet and have 44 parking spaces and would occupy three acres of an 80-acre plot owned by Elk, who told the CA that there would be no loudspeakers outside the building to issue calls to prayer. Elk added the obvious, that a mosque would add considerably less traffic to the area than if he developed a 400-home subdivision on the site.
But my favorite part of the CA reporting was discovering that Horn Lake has an alderman named Donnie “Chigger” White, who said: “That’s strange, 79 acres to put a three-acre church on. … We must have something on the horizon that you’re not wanting us to know about.” And there, ladies and gentlemen, is your ugly.
Typically, this would be when we Tennesseans would scoff at Mississippi for its backward-ass ways. But let me remind you that Tennessee has its own ugly history with opposing mosques and that the General Assembly just last week appointed an anti-Muslim activist and 9/11-Truther to the state’s official textbook selection committee. And given the many repressive and revolting laws being passed in Nashville this session, we have no business making fun of the Magnolia State any longer. We’ve got plenty of our own ugly.
And that, unfortunately, would include the latest local COVID-19 news — which is that our infection rate is rising and our vaccination rate is at a low ebb. We can’t even give away vaccine using food coupons. FEMA set up a massive facility in Midtown a few weeks ago, no appointments necessary. Just drive up and get jabbed. They are mostly sitting on their thumbs these days and are now talking about dismantling the place and moving out of town.
A recent poll showed that about 54 percent of Tennesseans say they are willing to get vaccinated. By my math, that means 46 percent of Tennesseans don’t want to get protected against a disease that has killed 570,000 Americans and counting. The breakdown by party shows exactly how politicized this issue has become: Six percent of men who identify as Democrats say they won’t get a shot, versus 46 percent of Republican men who said they wouldn’t get it. The only possible good news here is that swinging the state blue may get easier. (Did I say the quiet part out loud?)
I know this is bad — or maybe even ugly — but by this point, I’ve pretty much had it with the viral ignorance so many seem to be infected with. The vaccine is free, easily available, and convenient. Anyone who elects to turn it down for political reasons at this point has bought a ticket for whatever ride shows up at their door. Happy trails, dumbass. Enjoy your quarantine, or worse.
Clarksdale, Mississippi
Juke Joint Festival (Photo: Rory Doyle)
As the spring weather and more widespread vaccinations converge, there’s something more than tulips blossoming in town these days: Live music is, well, alive once more. Memphis is singing and tapping its toes more than it has for over a year — and for many, the relief is palpable. That includes not only music fans, of course, but the artists, club owners, and employees who have suffered more than a few existential crises during the pandemic.
With new health directives changing the landscape of what’s possible, and more spaces privately making decisions to host music, here’s a look at where the area’s state of the musical arts stands today, starting with the science and policy that establishes what can and can’t be done, and moving on to see how that plays out on the ground and onstage.
As always, the default response continues to be fairly simple: Wear a mask!
The Health Department
Bruce Randolph, health officer for the Shelby County Health Department, concedes that the situation for music lovers has been confusing, given the ever-evolving approach the county has needed to adopt.
“It has changed,” he notes. “Part of it is, what is the logic behind those directives? First of all, the virus is transmitted through respiratory droplets and aerosols, so when a person who’s not wearing a mask is talking loudly, yelling, singing, or breathing hard, they can project the respiratory droplets and the virus even farther than six feet. One study has shown that it can travel as much as 20 feet. And certainly up to 15 or 18. So even though the CDC has recommended six feet of separation for social distancing, without a mask, six feet isn’t really far enough. And we know that in a lot of venues the audience is very close to the performers, many of them are not well-ventilated, they’re crowded. If you have that coupled with people not wearing masks, the risk of transmission was very high. So that’s why we had to implement the restrictions of wearing a mask, separation by six feet, or, if you’re performing, by at least 18 feet from the audience, just to provide that protection.”
With that as the foundational principle, music clubs serving food were able to open again after only a few months of lockdown. Shelby County unveiled looser restrictions on October 7th of last year, allowing bars and restaurants to stay open until midnight instead of 10 p.m. and raising the allowed table capacity from six to eight people. Restrictions were eased even more this month, with Health Directive 20.
“Now as more people are becoming vaccinated, we can at least begin to loosen up some things,” says Randolph. “So with the most recent Health Directive, we’re allowing some dancing indoors, but people still should be separated, unless the people you’re dancing with and around are people that you know, and you are familiar with their vaccination status, etc.”
As the number of COVID-19 cases has decreased, other guidelines have been modified as well. Music venue patrons are no longer required to sign in for contact tracing, and, much to the delight of punks and metalheads everywhere, music can once again be loud. “When we first allowed indoor dining,” Randolph explains, “where people could sit at tables and eat, we noticed that, if the music is played loud, people talk louder in order to be heard. With that increase in volume, you’re potentially projecting the virus farther. So that’s why we said, ‘We’ll allow music, but it should be kept at a decibel level where people could carry on normal conversation.’ But then we asked, did we really need that anymore?”
So now we can begin to imagine a more normal musical experience once again, albeit with a mask. And Randolph is eager to see that happen. “My desire is for us to get back as soon as we can to having live music. I think a lot of Memphians do not appreciate that, before COVID, you could go to almost any restaurant in Midtown or Downtown, and there’d be live music. I’ve lived in other cities, and that is not the case. So we’ve got this jewel here that we take for granted. I would love the day when we can return to that, and the truth of the matter is, it’s in our hands if we do the right thing. And anybody who wants a vaccine can get it now. Get that shot, so we can get back to enjoying ourselves!”
Marcella + Her Lovers perform at Railgarten’s outdoor stage. (Photo: Erica Owen)
The Venues
Given the importance of live music to local culture, it’s not surprising that some venues have been hosting it for months now. Lafayette’s Music Room, for example, was one of the first to feature bands again, beginning in the second half of last year. With the size of their room and staff, they were well-suited to it, and soon settled into new work habits to keep the music flowing.
Brent Harding, who books bands for the club, explains that it required new working routines, in addition to requiring masks and making space between tables. “Everything is sanitized after each table becomes free again,” he says. “For the bigger acts, we’ll do an early show and a late show. We can roll the house, clean the place, sanitize everything, and then do another show. That’s really the only way it can work with some of these bands.”
More than any other factor, Lafayette’s has a key advantage: space. Even with more spacing between tables, “I believe we can do about 150 people at a time,” Harding estimates. B.B. King’s Blues Club, which Harding also books, has a similar advantage. But just across Beale Street, the Blues City Cafe has not fared as well. “We have a small room,” says Jason Ralph, booker for Blues City, “and until I can fill it up with people, it’s hard to justify entertainment in the band box. We just need some rules to relax.”
Bar DKDC is in a similar boat. While the tiny club has mainly carried on through the pandemic as an extra seating area for its adjacent sister establishment, the Beauty Shop restaurant, owner Karen Carrier says the much-loved venue will open again in a big way once space is not an issue. “Once they drop the distancing mandate, we’re going to let it rip!” she says, with a hint of big events to come.
Other clubs, however, might have the space, but are baffled by what they feel is ineffective guidance from the county. One club owner describes the frustration of not having a clearinghouse of the ever-changing regulatory guidelines. “I have to look at the Shelby County Health Department page religiously. Nobody’s coming around and telling you what to do and what not to do. You’re supposed to go to the website, but it changes all the time. We have to hear about it through Facebook, and network about it, and talk to other places to see what they’re doing.
“For a long time, you were not supposed to have music louder than people talking at a table. But what does that mean? We were told four months ago that we could have tables pushed up to the bar; you just couldn’t sit at the bar. Well, the health department came in and said, ‘You need to move these two feet from the bar.’ We said, ‘But it says on the website we can do it.’ They just said, ‘No, move ’em back two feet.’ Okay.”
Some have dealt with the reduced attendance capacity by playing up other strengths. Brian “Skinny” McCabe, owner of the Hi Tone Cafe, says, “Before COVID, we had live music every day, and then great food, too. But now we’re focused more on food. We’re now a restaurant that happens to have acoustic shows on the weekends. And open-mic comedy on Tuesdays.”
One silver lining in all the restrictions has been a greater reliance on local bands, while national touring acts continue to wait it out. Jack Phillips of Railgarten says, “We’ve got a lot of Memphis-based bands booked, and some regional bands, as well. We really want to invest in Memphis right now. We want to focus on local musicians because they’re struggling. Also, bigger acts are not traveling that much, so it’s mutually beneficial. I think it’s a great time for everyone to realize what a treasure we have.”
Another advantage Railgarten has is its outdoor stage, and the exponential decrease of risk that comes with an outdoor setting. Now that spring has sprung, that may be driving the area’s resurgence in live music more than any other factor. In just the past month, porch parties have become more common, from impromptu soirees like that recently hosted by Will Sexton and Amy LaVere for a Dead Soldiers show or full-on, coordinated celebrations of the concept such as the Cooper-Young Community Association’s Porchfest on April 17th, with dozens of performers. Upcoming shows at other outdoor venues also herald a proliferation of live music, including the return of the River Series at Harbor Town, the spring music series at The Grove in Germantown, music concerts at the Memphis Botanic Garden, and six ticketed events planned for the Levitt Shell in Overton Park between May and July.
As Natalie Wilson of the Levitt Shell explains, that’s only the beginning, as they make plans to offer their free concert series this fall. “With the impact of COVID-19,” she says, “we can’t do our normal four nights a week, but we are coming back Friday and Saturday evenings in September, through the third weekend of October. We’re going to focus on supporting our local musicians this fall. And we pay our musicians at the market rate because we believe in not just presenting music, but also empowering music. And that includes supporting our musicians and their livelihoods. It’s been our mission since the Shell was built in the 1930s.”
Kingfish DOYLE (Photo: Rory Doyle)
Other music festivals can be expected in the fall, from the outdoor stages of Mempho Music Fest, which returns in October, to the mixed outdoor- and indoor-venue approach of Gonerfest, planned for September 23-26. A foreshadowing of how those might fare just took place in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where the Juke Joint Festival, held only virtually last year, went on as a live experience once again in mid-April.
As Roger Stolle, president of the Clarksdale/Coahoma County Tourism Commission, explains, their festival did everything right, and may serve as a model for those to come. “We put a ridiculous amount of time and money into it, trying to make it safe,” he notes. “We bought touchless hand-sanitizer units, gallons of hand sanitizer, thousands of paper masks, stanchion barriers to keep people back from musicians, clear plexi virus shields for the smaller venues, thermometers. A whole lot of stuff. And a lot of extra security, not because we were going to be arresting people, but just to help control the situation, in case there were problems with compliance.”
And yet, much to his delight, audience respect for the “suggested guidelines” of the festival, such as wearing masks and practicing social distancing, was greater than expected, as crowds saw music on 13 outdoor and 19 indoor stages. “Compliance was really great, except perhaps on Saturday night in the bars. The beauty of it is, people know what they’re supposed to be doing. Until alcohol gets involved, people are pretty good about it. But once they get drinking, and they’re excited and haven’t seen music in a year, that’s where some of it breaks down a bit. We just tried to give people plenty of space, and people took advantage of that pretty well.”
They also took advantage of a more proactive approach taken by the Juke Joint Festival: free vaccinations. Though use of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine had been suspended by the time of the festival, they did offer Moderna shots and cards facilitating a second shot wherever festival-goers might go home to.
Victor Sawyer (Photo: Courtesy Victor Sawyer)
The Players
Vaccinations have been the biggest game-changer for musicians themselves, without whom there can be no shows, no matter what restrictions are lifted. John Paul Keith, who became a fixture in the Memphis live-streamed music world last year, credits vaccines with his return to playing live shows, starting with a show he played with Amy LaVere at the Bartlett Performing Arts Center (BPAC) this month.
“The main reason that I felt better playing live,” he says, “was that the [case] numbers were going down, and the vaccine became available. Once I got the first round, I felt there was an acceptable level of risk in performance. And it didn’t hurt that BPAC did a half-capacity show, with masks.”
Even as clubs began opening last fall, many musicians had mixed feelings about it. Victor Sawyer, trombonist with the Lucky 7 Brass Band and teacher with the Stax Music Academy, recalls, “when we played a show last November, I honestly felt pretty guilty. Just by performing, we were ultimately drawing people together.” But that’s less of a concern now, and he’s rapidly taking on more gigs for the rest of this year, largely due to what he sees as the effective local response to the pandemic.
John Paul Keith (Photo: Jarvis Hughes)
“The city and Shelby County have been doing a great job,” he says. “I hate how our mayors are just getting pooped on. When you look at Tennessee and other mid-sized cities around the nation, Shelby County has had one of the lowest infection rates out of a lot of cities, and they should get credit for that. They’re doing a great job. Also, we’re all vaccinated now. Starting in May, we’re booked pretty much through October. When everything goes away, you feel like it will never come back, but once we said ‘We’re ready to rock,’ the booking requests came in like clockwork. It was a really emotional moment to see that we weren’t forgotten.”
For Keith, the emotions cut both ways, from elation to anxiety. Before the BPAC show, he says, “I was nervous for the first time I can remember. But it was really wonderful. I was grateful they had a stage large enough to have the big band be spread out. And on a stage, you’re separated from the audience.”
The stage at B-Side was one reason he settled on that venue for his first regular live residency since the pandemic started. “I’m much more comfortable if the place has a stage. Otherwise, you can’t get away from people. Once they get a few drinks in ’em, forget it. We know that singing spreads droplets, and that’s why the audience is supposed to be 18 feet from the stage. And the other night, I actually saw a couple droplets arcing through the stage lighting, out past the microphone as I sang. And I thought, ‘There go some droplets!’ It wasn’t even a lot of them! But you’ve still got to be safe. It’s not over.”
And yet, Keith is ultimately relishing the return to live performance, noting that when live performances stopped, “we musicians lost something very precious to us all. I don’t think we’ve processed it yet. Now, I definitely have a renewed appreciation and respect for music. It’s powerful, and it’s a human necessity. It’s like language. It’s something we need for our society to understand itself. And I care about it more now, because I know what it’s like not to have it.”
Willie Melvin Atkins got a shock last week with his order of pancakes from a restaurant in North Memphis. Atkins said “folks done gave me five nickel bags of syrup.” As of press time, the post had been shared more than 3,000 times and had 363 comments.
Posted to Facebook by Willie Melvin Atkins
Cat Mane
“Rescued a cat from Memphis. Needs a home. He answers to Mane and eats his wings fried hard. #lemonpepper.”
Posted to Reddit by u/JugglingLobster
“Feeling Proud”
Mark Lambert said he was “feeling proud” as he shared some aerial photos and video of some of the city’s newest crosswalk art. One crosswalk across Cooper and Monroe now reads “Black Lives Matter.” The other is a tribute to the LGBTQ Pride flag.
Whiskey barrels, when full, are very hard to move. The shape of the things makes you think you can roll them, and you can. But stopping a barrel once it gets moving can be tricky. Overall, it’s a cumbersome business and few distilleries take the trouble to do it — although they won’t admit it. Which is a shame, because rolling a barrel while the white lightning slowly ages inside does a whiskey a world of good.
What separates moonshine from a good whiskey is largely contact between the unfinished spirit and — in the case of bourbon — those charred white oak staves of the whiskey barrel. You probably already knew that, but it does raise the question: What about the spirits in the center of the barrel? The stuff that doesn’t come in contact with the wood? Part of the answer is heat cycling — either naturally with the passing of the seasons or via forced climate control — the liquid expands and contracts creating a (very) slow movement of liquid in the barrel. But it doesn’t move that much. Rolling is better, but tedious.
Enter Hank Ingram, founder of Brown Water Spirits in Ballard County, Kentucky, and the mind behind the O.H. Ingram River Aged Series of whiskeys. Hank is a connoisseur of the brown water but lacks an old whiskey family pedigree. His people were barge people, and that’s what led to one of the more clever — albeit brilliantly simple — innovations in whiskey-making that I’ve read about in a long time.
Rollin’ on the river — O.H. Ingram River Aged Whiskey (Photo: Richard Murff)
When we spoke, Hank was on the road to one of the company’s floating rickhouses on the nearby Mississippi River. Hank explained the process to me with the language of an involved and excited engineer, but the bottom line is this: He lets the natural movement of the river do the sloshing for him. (In Hank’s defense, “sloshing” was my word. His had more syllables.)
The effect of all this is a whiskey being aged in the humid climate of the Mississippi, with river legs wobbling beneath it. Hank admits it’s experimental, but that’s the adventure. What appears to be happening is something of dog years in whiskey aging, where one year of the slow but constant movement of spirits in the barrel is equal to about two or three in a rickhouse.
But innovations, however clever, are only as good as their results.
I opened a bottle of O.H. Ingram River Aged. Jamming a nose into the tasting glass with that dark-gold pour, you get some honey. At 96 proof, there was some ethanol as well. It’s nothing a few drops of water and a swirl won’t fix. After that, the heat dissipates, leaving an almost creamy sensation. The honey is still there — but not sweet, because you get some nutmeg spice as well. It’s not terribly malty, but if you have any inclination toward wheated bourbons, you’ll love this. It’s rich and very smooth and has got a nice, long finish.
Ingram is one of those whiskeys that goes well with a little water or a cube of ice, but I wouldn’t be offended with something more — soda or branch water. The spice would lend itself to an excellent Old Fashioned if you don’t like them too sweet.
If you’ve never heard of it, that’s because it only hit the shelves in west Tennessee in March, but you can find it around town fairly readily. It’s nothing we’d call a value brand; it will set you back around $75 dollars. Still, as cheap as I am, at no point was I wondering why I’d spent the money. That’s saying something.
Hank wouldn’t tell me exactly how old it was — and it’s not on the bottle — but I suppose that’s the point. The rules of terra firma don’t really apply here. It tastes like it’s spent all the time it jolly well needs in the barrel, and beyond that, you really shouldn’t care too much.
The World Famous Hernando’s Hide-A-Way has had its share of struggles through the ongoing pandemic. The legendary club, a major watering hole and music venue throughout the golden age(s) of Memphis music, was purchased by some partners that included former Austinite Dale Watson, founder of the Ameripolitan festival. It reopened in late 2019 after being shuttered for many years. But just when it was really finding its legs, along came COVID-19.
Watson closed for a time, then restructured the club management and set up for virtual performances in the quarantine age. “The silver lining in this stuff was we got wired up for live-streaming,” he says. “Quality cameras, quality sound. So if the bands want to, they can live-stream on YouTube, and we’ve got a tickertape that rolls on the bottom of the screen with their PayPal and Venmo information. We’ve had bands come in and make quite a bit of money through tipping alone.”
Dale Watson makes friends during quarantine.
Nevertheless, making the bar and restaurant pay for itself was an uphill climb, even when the space reopened at limited capacity late last year. “If it wasn’t for the PPP loan, I wouldn’t have been able to make it this far,” he reflects. And recently, Watson nearly gave up on the place for good. “It really was right down to the wire. In fact, I was going to sell the place. It was on the market for one day, when Tony Westmoreland came to me and said, ‘Man, is it true?’ I said it was and he said, ‘No, don’t do that! Let’s do something.'”
Tony Westmoreland is, with Stephanie Westmoreland and Cullen Kent, a co-owner of Tandem Restaurant Partners. And they were a game-changer for Hernando’s. Watson can barely contain his enthusiasm.
“Tandem came in and saved our butts,” he says. “They came in like the cavalry. I can’t say enough about Tony and Stephanie Westmoreland, they’re just great people. His whole outfit, man. And when I say they came in like the cavalry, I’m not exaggerating. They came in just a week or two ago, we pooled our resources, and this week we went full blast.
“We just had a really cool Sunday with a hot rod show. Now we have more music and we’re doing comedy. We’ll have a burlesque show May 6th. We’ll have a Country Drag Night. And residencies have already started, like the Turnstyles and the MD’s. We’ll do a lot of stuff for Elvis week. We’re catering to touring acts as well, but we want to keep the local stuff happening. It’s going to work out great for the Ameripolitan Awards. ‘Cos now we’re going to have more venues for showcases.
“Our menu is also getting bigger. That’s thanks to Tandem as well. They have Growlers, Zinnie’s, Carolina Watershed and others, so they’ve really got the restaurant/bar side of it down. We’re going to extend the patio, too, so more people can go outside.
“We’re not losing money now. Thanks to Tandem, we’ve got our ducks in a row and can see some light at the end of the tunnel. And I’d like to thank all the Memphis folks for hanging with us.
“Tandem came in and overnight just made a huge difference in everything. And that just validated my decision to move to Memphis. Just good people all around. I’ve got the best neighbor in the world, my buddy Carl, and we’ve got a lot of great musicians. Just great friends. Memphis seems to be pulling together and they sure did for me.”
The Four Way Soul Food Restaurant has been awarded a $40,000 “Backing Historic Small Restaurants” grant from American Express.
The award was announced April 27th on the TodayShow.
According to its web site, American Express (NYSE: AXP), in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, is providing the “Backing Historic Small Restaurants” grant, which is “a more than $1 million investment to preserve historic restaurants in the U. S. as they continue to navigate the pandemic and plan for recovery.”
And, it says, “Through the grant program, small historic restaurant owners will have the opportunity to improve, upgrade, and preserve their physical spaces and online businesses, as well as mitigate existing operating costs. For example restaurants can rehabilitate the exteriors of historic buildings and facades, expand outdoor dining, upgrade their takeout and online ordering systems, or establish a stronger online presence. Updates like these are critical for future success in a post pandemic world.”
Four Way owner Patrice Bates Thompson, who appeared on the Today show, is part of the Bates lineage that has owned the restaurant at 998 Mississippi Boulevard since 2002. Her parents, the late Willie Earl Bates and the late Jo Ellen Bates, bought the restaurant, which originally was opened in 1946 by Clint and Irene Cleaves. Dr. Martin Luther King is among the many notables who have dined at The Four Way.
Thompson, who was interviewed in the Flyer, says she worked at The Four Way from the time her dad bought it. “I was office manager at Metropolitan Baptist Church,” she says in the article. “I could walk from my church in five minutes in the next block and work at The Four Way.”
And, according to the story, Bates did whatever she needed to do. “I’d work in the kitchen. I’d work the register. If I had to serve, I’d serve. To be honest, I still do that. Sometimes you’re short handed. You never know when your employees are going to come in and have a chip on their shoulder and not do what they’re supposed to do. I just fill in where I need to. You might come in next week and see me on the line.”
Thompson surprised when she heard on the Today Show that Four Way had won.
“I was extremely excited and I was actually shocked,” she says.
Thompson was interviewed a while back by the show, but not about the grant, which she had applied for. “They told us they wanted to talk to different restaurants and see how we were faring during the pandemic,” she says. And, she says, “I supposed it would be a discussion about how we made adjustments and changed the way we ran our business during the pandemic.”
And, she says, “I just didn’t make the connection. They did a great job keeping the secret.”
As for the $40,000, Thompson says, “The grant I applied for is in conjunction wth the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the whole initiative is to help legendary restaurants improve the outdoor look of there restaurant. Preserve the outdoors. Either outdoor dining or painting your building or, if need be, removing trash and things of that story.
“We’re considering outdoor dining. I’m not sure how to do it. We’ve had severe accidents on that corner. We don’t want anybody to risk their lives eating outdoors.
They might do landscaping and freshen up the green-and-tan building, she says. Thompson also would like to maybe add outdoor benches so customers will have a place to sit while waiting for their table.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has issued a broad statement that basically eliminates all COVID restrictions for Tennesseans and Tennessee businesses by the end of May. The order also revokes the right of counties and cities to issue mask mandates. The entire text of Lee’s order is below:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Today, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced the end of statewide public health orders and signed Executive Order 80 to address economic and regulatory functions. EO 80 also ends the local authority to issue mask requirements in the 89 counties directed by the state health department.
“COVID-19 is now a managed public health issue in Tennessee and no longer a statewide public health emergency,” said Gov. Lee. “As Tennesseans continue to get vaccinated, it’s time to lift remaining local restrictions, focus on economic recovery and get back to business in Tennessee.”
EO 80 contains the following provisions and is effective through May 31, 2021:
Removing Local Mask Authority
While Tennessee has never had a statewide mask mandate, EO 80 removes the local authority for county mayors in 89 of the state’s 95 counties to require face coverings throughout their jurisdictions.
Gov. Lee has requested counties with independent health departments – Shelby, Madison, Davidson, Hamilton, Knox and Sullivan – that have remaining business restrictions or mask requirements to lift all measures no later than the end of May.
Extending Deregulatory Provisions
EO 80 extends helpful deregulatory provisions to enable individuals, businesses and other organizations time to adapt their operations in anticipation of ending said provisions.
Maintaining Federal Funding
EO 80 maintains Tennessee’s access to federal funding, including SNAP benefits and cost reimbursements for the Tennessee National Guard’s testing and vaccination efforts.
In addition to EO 80, the following provisions are effective immediately:
Offering Walk-Up Vaccine Option
While the COVID-19 vaccine continues to be available to Tennesseans aged 16 and older by appointment, local health departments will now offer a walk-up option.
Retiring Optional Business Guidance
The Tennessee Pledge business guidelines issued at the start of COVID-19 have been officially retired.
Goro attacks Cole Young (Lewis Tan) in Mortal Kombat.
Since the dawn of film, there has been one consistent truth: Hollywood will make a movie out of any old thing. Producers have shown few qualms about adapting material from any almost medium, as long as it provides a way to hook an existing audience into buying a ticket on opening weekend. Some of the form’s biggest hits came about this way: Gone With the Wind was an adaptation of a popular novel. Casablanca was a stage play. Mars Attacks was inspired by a series of Topps bubble gum cards. Then, of course, there are comic books. Were you aware they sometimes make movies that aren’t about comic books?
I maintain you can make a good movie about anything. Disney even got two good movies out of their Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride. But for some reason, it’s been historically hard to make a good movie out of a video game. There’s the horror of Super Mario Bros; the Street Fighter adaptation, which is only notable because it was Raul Julia’s final film; Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever is the worst-reviewed film on Rotten Tomatoes. And I swear I will gnaw off my own leg before I sit through another Angry Birds movie.
Maybe it’s the game part that’s the problem. I’m looking at you, Hasbro, for your ill-fated attempts to monetize your intellectual property with Battleship. (But then again, Clue is a campy gem.) You’d think the raw materials are there to make a good movie. But even games with elaborate backstories like Prince of Persia have completely fallen apart as films.
Which brings us to Mortal Kombat. It offers Hollywood the best of both worlds: a video game adaptation AND a remake! The 30-year-old fighting game franchise actually began life as an abortive attempt to create a video game tie-in for the Jean Claude Van Damme film Universal Soldier, and had its first jump to the big screen in 1995. The director for this attempted port is James Wan, the Australian horror director who co-created Saw and The Conjuring, and who had massive hits with Aquaman and Furious 7. So maybe, just maybe, Mortal Kombat could break the curse of the video game movie.
Well, it’s better than Angry Birds, I’ll give it that much. I’d even go so far as “surprisingly watchable in places.” Mortal Kombat, it turns out, has an incredibly dense backstory, developed over 11 major installments, that boils down to a long-standing conflict between our universe, Earthrealm, and an alternate dimension called Outland, described as “the most brutal and murderous realm,” which is populated entirely by butt-kicking evildoers and their wretched slaves. (In the finest, low-budget sci fi tradition of Doctor Who and Star Trek, the Outland scenes are filmed in a quarry.) Certain supremely bad ass mortals carry the mark of the dragon (which is, coincidentally, Mortal Kombat’s logo), and are chosen to fight in a tournament to determine inter-dimensional bragging rights, and also possible enslavement of the losing reality.
Joe Taslim as Sub-Zero
There’s always a Chosen One, but Mortal Kombat takes the title of the most Chosen Ones. Originally, there were seven playable characters and three bosses. Ten major characters is a lot for any film that isn’t a historical epic. But since 1993, there have been dozens more fighters introduced for players to pit against each other. After a fairly smoothly executed cold opening, in which retired ninja Hanzo Hasashi (Hiroyuki Sanda) is assassinated by ice demon Bi-Han (Joe Taslim), aka Sub-Zero, Mortal Kombat settles into a rhythm of a character introduction, followed by individual fights, then new character introductions to challenge the survivors. Ostensible leading man Lewis Tan is a robotic cipher as Cole Young, the journeyman cage fighter who is actually the descendant of Hanzo Hasashi. But there are occasional flashes of life in the sprawling cast, such as Josh Lawson’s winking turn as the treacherous mercenary Kano. I always liked to play as Raiden (Tadanobu Asano), because it’s just immensely satisfying to kill your opponents with lightning.
Raiden (Tadanobu Asano) says “Come get some of this here lightning.”
And that is why video game adaptations are doomed to fall flat. It’s fun for me to kill with lightning. To watch a character on the screen who is not under my control command lightning, or rip out a dragonman’s heart, or fire his eye laser, is less satisfying. The narrative of video games like Mortal Kombat and Angry Birds doesn’t really matter, as long as the gameplay mechanics are fun. But to a film, it’s everything. So it’s useless to try to stick to the game script by having Kano shout “Kano Wins!”, because you’re just not going to get that same adrenaline rush unless you’re pulling Kano’s strings. Also, I don’t say this about many films, but this one really needed a narrator like the video game. It’s not Kano’s place to shout “Kano Wins!” That’s up to the unseen, presumably supernatural, judges. As for the film, this judge is declaring a “FATALITY.”
Jimmy “Sushi Jimmi” Sinh plans to move to Orlando, Florida in May. His last day as head chef at Saito 2 restaurant in Cordova is May 15th, he says.
“It’s a better opportunity for me, the wife, and kids,” Sinh says. “We’ve been living here so long. This is our next move as the family. The whole family is moving.”
That’s his wife and six children, including a baby girl on the way, Sinh says. They currently are living in Atoka, Tennessee.
Why Orlando? “It’s a tourist city. More than four million tourists a year. Things are opening back up and I just want to expand my career to a bigger city. It’s a better opportunity for me. I don’t know what my plans are. I don’t want to speak too soon.”
But, he says, “I’m always going to be cooking.”
Sinh moved to Memphis from a suburb in Orlando in 1995. “I was only down in Florida a year and we moved here.”
Since that time, he made his mark and gained a legion of fans.
He closed his restaurant, Sushi Jimmi, which he owned for three years on Poplar, on May 23, 2019. He closed his food truck the next day.
Shortly after, he reopened the restaurant with his brother as owner and Sinh as chef. It closed for good soon after.
Sinh then went to work at Saltwater Crab, La Hacienda Mexican Restaurant and, finally, at Saito 2.
Will he return to Memphis some day? “I told myself if I ever become really successful I’ll come back to Memphis and invest my money,” Sinh says. “I wouldn’t mind being an investor here. Do business in Memphis.”
Something in the food industry, he says. “Or just have another restaurant again here.”
Memphis, he says, is “home to me. I don’t want to leave, but it’s good for my future and my kids’ future. That’s more important than anything else. I made a pretty good impression here. I want to see how far it will take me. To me, the sky’s the limit. I don’t have a limit. Anything I do, I want more and more and more. It just doesn’t stop.”
Beck & Call terrace in the new Hyatt Centric hotel
Get ready for some great river viewing while dining.
The new Hyatt Centric’s Beck & Call rooftop lounge is slated to open May 1st.
One Beale developer Chance Carlisle recently took me on a tour of One Beale and its completed and uncompleted spaces. This includes the 227-room already-opened nine-story Hyatt Centric at Front and Beale.
There will be a total of five restaurants in One Beale. “All with riverfront views,” Carlisle says.
Troy Dixon, Hyatt Centric director of operations, provided me with descriptions of the hotel’s restaurants.
Beck & Call “pays playful homage to Southern cuisine that pairs perfectly with our curated bourbon and whiskey driven cocktail offerings. Whether you are in the mood for our delicious chilled shrimp with bacon, sweet corn skewers, or the delicious B&C burger, our menu strikes a perfect balance between rooftop sophistication and down-home comfort.”
Beck & CallBeck & Call
While we toured Beck & Call, Megan Davey was working on a giant mural on the side of the restaurant on the enormous river-view terrace, which already was used for a South Main Business Association function, Carlisle says.
Megan Davey on the Beck & Call terrace
CIMAS is already open, serving, for now, breakfast and dinner in the hotel. While I was there, breakfast was being served against a glorious view of the mighty Mississippi. Menu items include breakfast tacos, cornflake encrusted French toast, carnitas breakfast hash, chilaquiles verdes, and something I can’t wait to try: avocado toast, which consists of a brioche, a soft-scrambled egg, and pickled Fresno chili.
CIMAS
According to the description from the Hyatt, CIMAS “draws its inspiration from the rich history and vibrant flavors of Latin American cuisine. Driven by locally sourced ingredients and routes in Southern cooking techniques, the menu reflects fresh and exciting preparations that highlight the very best elements of the season’s bounty. Artfully curated features for breakfast, lunch, and dinner combine heritage grains, heirloom vegetables, and carefully sourced proteins with heat, smoke, and vibrant salsas, creating the perfect ensemble.”
Chance Carlisle at CIMAS
The Market is “a small grab-and-go combined into the lounge area off the lobby in the Hyatt Centric,” Dixon says. This area features coffee, sandwiches, juices and salads from Raw Girls, and “other pastries and case goods.”
Other restaurants in One Beale will include Fancy’s Fish House, a restaurant specializing in casual American seafood. According to a description provided by Carlisle, Fancy’s Fish House will be “a place you want to be all day and night, a ‘go to’ spot. A lively and energetic watering hole with an indoor and outdoor experience. Classically crafted. Simple but not simplistic.”
Charlotte’s will be a speakeasy in One Beale.
Amelia Gene’s, a fine dining restaurant, is slated to open in 2020 in One Beale. The restaurant was named after Carlisle’s daughter. She was named “Gene” after his dad, the late Gene Carlisle.
