Automatic tipping is familiar to any dinner gathering with a large party or, more recently, on checks for servers during the pandemic. But it’s arrived on every check at some restaurants and it may be here to stay.
Tipping is hardwired into the American hospitality industry. So are strong opinions about it. Some diners believe tipping is sport, a lagniappe earned on a server’s hustle. Some diners can’t bring themselves to tip less than 20 percent — no matter what — because servers depend on them as a big part of their salaries.
Even professional opinionistas can’t agree. A 2019 opinion piece in The New York Times claims the tipping system is “immoral.” However, an opinion piece for The Washington Post in 2018, claimed that if you get rid of tips, you’ll “lose your best servers.”
Automatic tipping, usually 20 percent-18 percent on every check, became more widespread during the pandemic. The demand for restaurants was high for diners looking for something familiar, normal. The supply of servers dwindled as many were laid off, quit on health concerns, or looked for new jobs.
Many restaurant owners made tips automatic. They wanted to retain their valuable, in-demand servers with steady cash, rather than leaving it to the whims of customers to determine their paychecks. This sentiment is said out loud at Margaritas in Cooper-Young. There, a sign in the dining room read recently that automatic tips would be included on all checks in order to keep servers.
“In the wake of the current employee shortage in the restaurant industry, many employers are beginning to understand that they can not maintain quality [front of house] staff at $2.13 [per hour] plus optional tipping,” said Allan Creasy, a political consultant and longtime Memphis bartender. “What I find unsettling is that in any other industry, the solution would be simple: raise the hourly wage.”
This tipping structure, called automatic gratuity, has been around and discussed long enough to need a shorthand, an abbreviated portmanteau. Those in the restaurant industry just call it “autograt.” But it’s not for all.
I’m opposed to it.
Mike Miller, owner Patrick’s Neighborhood Bar & Patio
“Me and my operation at [Patrick’s Neighborhood Bar & Patio], I’m opposed to it,” said Mike Miller, the restaurant’s owner, past president of the Memphis Restaurant Association, and 2019’s Tennessee Restaurateur of the Year by the Tennessee Hospitality and Tourism Association. “I have never, nor do I have any desire or intent ever to institute an autograt. … I want my staff accountable to their customers. The idea of a gratuity is to ensure proper service.”
Tipping is ingrained in American society, Miller said. But the model is also ingrained in the American restaurant business.
Profit margins at independent restaurants are thin, Miller said, probably somewhere between 3 percent and 6 percent to the bottom line. Wages for many restaurant’s front-of-house workers — servers, hosts, and bartenders — make up around 5 percent of a restaurant’s expenses.
Increase current minimum wages (of around $2 per hour) to $10 per hour, Miller said, and those wage expenses would rise to 25 percent of a restaurant’s income. That wipes out the profit margin (of 3 percent-6 percent) and makes the business no longer viable, Miller said.
Numerous restaurants around Memphis have gone to the autograt system, sometimes quietly. But diners are taking notice.
Will it last? Miller thinks maybe so.
“I would say that once you go down this road — it’s kind of like the wheel tax — you never go back,” Miller said.
Camri McNary of
The Vegan Goddess (Photo: Photos and Phases)
Camri McNary originally wanted to make a living concentrating on people’s faces, not their stomachs.
“I wanted to be a makeup artist growing up,” McNary says. “That was my passion.”
She had second thoughts after she graduated from beauty school. “I said, ‘I can’t imagine doing this my entire life. Touching people’s faces and doing their hair. Maybe this isn’t what I want to do.’ It just didn’t feel like fun. It felt more like work. And I don’t like the feeling of work.”
But now, McNary, owner of The Vegan Goddess, probably works harder than she would have as a beautician. “I cook huge portions of things. It’s definitely work, but it’s still fun,” she says.
In addition to holding Sunday pop-ups of her vegan creations, McNary teaches cooking classes and makes and sells her packaged dishes at Memphis Kitchen Co-Op & Marketplace.
She began “experimenting” in the kitchen when she was 8 years old. “I made a Mexican pizza,” she remembers. “Back in the day I ate meat. I didn’t grow up vegan.”
McNary helped her grandmother, veteran professional cook Donna Carr, in the kitchen. McNary marveled at Carr’s expertise. “She flowed so naturally. Like it was instinctual.”
Two years later, McNary began cooking family breakfasts. “I was a chunky kid growing up. That’s why I transitioned to vegan. I loved cooking, loved eating,” she says.
After beauty school, McNary worked in a Kroger organic foods section, where she learned about holistic and natural herbs and gluten-free products. “My grandmother used to cook nothing healthy. I wasn’t familiar with any of those things.”
McNary became a pescatarian after she got a job at the old Stash Home Furniture store. She met a lot of customers from India who had relocated to Memphis to work at FedEx.“[They] were big on vegan. They introduced me to things they ate and their lifestyles, and it intrigued me. And I did my own research,” she says.
When she stopped eating beef and dairy and ate only seafood, she says, “I noticed a huge change in my energy, my body, my skin.”
McNary began creating vegan dishes, which she posted on Facebook. “I would make enchiladas, tacos, burritos, everything vegan,” she says.
People began sharing her posts, and she built on that momentum. “It was like a chain effect. It happened so quickly.”
McNary, who was selling health insurance from home, officially began her vegan food business in June 2021.
She started out simple, with a few items, including a Cheesy Gordita Crunch, patterned after the Taco Bell item. “Completely vegan. I put beans, rice, chipotle sauce, mushrooms and walnuts, and vegan flatbread, and I covered it in cheese and wrapped it in a crunchy taco shell.”
McNary made vegan versions of familiar fast food items. In addition to “veganizing the entire Taco Bell menu,” McNary made a vegan version of McDonald’s McRib and chicken sandwiches.
People can be skeptical about vegan food. “They think it’s rabbit or bird food.”
McNary quit her health insurance job after The Vegan Goddess “blew up.”
On March 6th, McNary and her business partner Rebecca Devlin will feature a “vegan Taco Bell menu” from noon to 4 p.m. at her pop-up at Memphis Kitchen Co-Op. Previous pop-ups include one that featured her “barbecue tacos” made of jackfruit, which has the texture of pulled pork, with black beans and pico de gallo.
In addition to her ever-increasing menu, McNary makes her own sauces. “I use chickpeas and northern beans — white beans — to make the base of the sauce, and I infuse it with chili peppers and wine, lime, and cilantro. All the good flavors.”
McNary eventually wants to open a food truck and, perhaps, a brick-and-mortar restaurant. “I want to go nationwide,” she says.
McNary wants people to experience vegan food. “I don’t necessarily want to push people to be vegan. It’s more, ‘Listen to your body and how it reacts when you eat certain things.’ That’s what I promote.”
Memphis Kitchen Co-Op & Marketplace is at 7942 Fischer Steel Road in Cordova; (901) 674-2541.
In 2010, Randall Hartzog and Jonathan Christian co-starred in Theatre Memphis’ La Cage aux Folles as Georges and Albin, a couple who’ve lived together happily for years in San Tropez. Twelve years later, the two actors, finally at the right age to play the middle-aged pair, have returned to these roles, now under the helm of director Cecelia Wingate.
The musical is derived from the 1973 play of the same name, turned 1978 French film, which was adapted into the 1996 American film The Birdcage, starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane. In all its various forms, Georges and Albin’s son returns home with news that he is engaged. The catch: The prospective in-laws are an ultra-conservative bunch while Georges runs a drag nightclub, at which Albin is the star entertainer. As Georges and Albin try to impress their son’s love and her parents, madness and hilarity ensue.
“The fact is that it’s really funny,” Wingate says, “but at the end of the day, it’s a really beautiful and charming love story. A love story between family and who we call family.”
Though Theatre Memphis has performed this musical before, audiences can expect a fresh take, even with the same leads. The original telling is set in the ’70s, but this production is set today. “We wanted to show that things have changed a little bit since the ’70s, but there’s still [anti-LGBTQ] prejudice,” Wingate says. “We also knew it would open us up to different styles of choreography and color palette. … Visually, it’s going to be stunning. The choreography is really exciting.”
Another reason for change in era, Wingate explains, “Drag is so different today than it was in the ’70s.” From the hair to the makeup to the costuming, drag is even more elaborate these days. To that effect, the production brought on local drag performers Wednesday Moss (Austin Wood), Iris LeFluer (Joseph Grant), and Justin Allen Tate.
To purchase tickets or to view the full schedule of performances, go to theatrememphis.org or call (901) 682-8323. Evening performances will begin at 7:30 p.m., with matinees at 2 p.m.
La Cage aux Folles, Theatre Memphis, 630 Perkins Extd., opens Friday, March 4, with performances through March 27, $35.
Talking about his new album, Until We Meet Again, singer/songwriter Mark Edgar Stuart thinks back on his first recording session, at Sun Studio. Over in his hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, 15-year-old Stuart played in a band with the nephew of Memphis Horns trumpeter Wayne Jackson. Jackson booked the band at Sun as an avuncular gift, befriending Stuart in the process. “Wayne took a liking to me,” Stuart recalls. “That was one reason I came to Memphis. He was my first mentor.”
It just so happened that the engineer on those ancient sessions was Dawn Hopkins, who, fast-forwarding a few decades, was also behind the board for Until We Meet Again. “Working with Dawn was a real full-circle moment,” Stuart says wistfully. “Here I am 30 years later, going back to the basics, and Dawn’s at the helm! I love these full circles. And the whole record’s full of them.”
Hopkins works with co-producer Reba Russell, a renowned singer and songwriter in her own right. Under the name “The Blue Eyed Bitches,” the two are making waves around Memphis and beyond with their naturalistic approach to production. Not long after producing the acclaimed Delta Joe Sanders, they set their sights on Stuart.
Reba approached Madjack’s Ronny Russell and asked, “Do you think Mark would let us produce a record on him? I love that guy.” It caught Stuart unawares.
“I got a green light to make a record and I wasn’t even looking to do it,” he marvels. Being a singer herself, Reba heard untapped potential in Stuart’s voice. “That was her big pitch to Ronny: She wanted to produce me as a singer,” says Stuart. “She told me, ‘I know there’s a voice living inside there, and you haven’t tapped into it yet.’”
The results are easy, breezy, and natural, thanks to the producers’ focus on feel above all else. That suits Stuart just fine. “They come from that Jim Dickinson school of thought,” Stuart says. “It’s just about the emotion. Every song just took one or two takes. It’s pretty much what I do when you see me live.” The result is an album of spare arrangements, often featuring just Stuart’s voice and guitar, with an occasional second guitar, bass, light drums, or background vocal — and plenty of breathing room.
These days, with Stuart established as one of the best singer/songwriters around, it’s hard to imagine that he started writing less than 10 years ago. Until then he was a bass player, first for the Pawtuckets and then as a hired gun on many recording sessions and tours. Eventually, backing quality songwriters like Cory Branan, Jack Oblivian, and John Paul Keith inspired him to try his hand at the craft.
“On the first record, I had something to say about my cancer and about my dad,” he reflects. “On the second record, there was more cancer stuff and stuff about my wife and our little troubles.” After that, he found himself collaborating with the likes of Keith Sykes, working on the follow-up to his sophomore album. But somehow, he wasn’t connecting. “When the third record came around, I’d been hanging out with these really great songwriters, and I think I let their craft influence my craft. Looking back on that, I should have just recognized my craft as being weird and unique.”
Now, with Until We Meet Again, he’s come full circle back to himself. He credits his producers with helping him find his voice as never before, partly by choosing the songs. “The ones Dawn and Reba picked just so happen to be about love and life,” he says. “About writing love letters at a time when no one writes love letters. And fishing in heaven. And dying one day. I don’t think men would have picked all those songs. It took these two women to do that. Their biggest contribution was the song selection. They gave the whole record a theme. I feel like I’m saying something again.”
The Mark Edgar Stuart album release show will feature a full band and opener Kelley Mickwee, The Green Room at Crosstown Arts, Friday, March 4, 7:30 p.m. Visit crosstownarts.org for details.
Mighty Lights, the ever-changing light show on the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, did what the MEMernet suggested last week. The bridge lights were changed Sunday to yellow and blue, the colors of Ukraine’s flag, to show solidarity with the country now under Russian invasion.
But some said the image of the bridge Mighty Lights shared to Facebook was old, showing a previous light arrangement used for a Grizzlies game.
Never Ending Elvis
Posted to YouTube by Warner Bros. Pictures
In about a week, the trailer for the new Elvis biopic (issued last week) racked up more than 13 million views on YouTube. The movie is due in theaters in June and stars Austin Butler as Elvis and Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker.
Kimball Coyote?
Nextdoor user Jill Anne Dyer Levy said last week she saw what looked like two coyotes near her house in the Kimball neighborhood. Comments on the post remembered the mythical Midtown Coyote, though someone claimed the animal had been shot. Other comments, though, listed other fauna spotted in and around Memphis including bears, beavers, foxes, and even Manny, the wayward manatee in the Mississippi River.
“Don’t forget about us,” Jerry Dutkewych, the first director of the U.S. Peace Corps in Ukraine, said to me as I stood up to leave my exit interview in August of 1997. At 23, it was hard to know what role my time in Ukraine would play in my life. I could hardly imagine that almost 25 years later the whole world would be lit up with the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag. Ukraine is showing the world how its years of nation-building and democratization have led to a united and dedicated resistance to autocracy and aggression. In a time when our own democracy has seemed on the brink, Ukraine is reminding us what it means to fight for freedom and justice.
Since 1992, the United States Peace Corps has sent thousands of volunteers to Ukraine, more than most countries in the world. I was in the fifth group and was one of the first Americans that my neighbors, students, and English teacher colleagues had ever met. I taught English in a high school in the southern city of Mykolaiv. I learned both Ukrainian and Russian (Mykolaiv was a predominately Russian-speaking city). It was the first time I had encountered life in a bilingual environment, and that experience ended up shaping my career as a linguist, for which I am very grateful.
As Peace Corps volunteers, we were there for both economic and political reasons. The country was in major transition — poverty and hunger were prevalent in some regions, the elderly were suffering without regular welfare payments, businesses were trying to privatize, teachers were changing the way they taught, organized crime and human trafficking were on the rise, and heroin addiction, AIDS, and suicide were all problems that everyday citizens were dealing with, some for the first time. Some people were nostalgic for the more stable days of the USSR, but they were also hopeful about new contact with the West and the opportunities for new business ties, trade, travel, and education. Ukraine was looking West, and we were there to help in the small ways that we could.
During my two years, I had many conversations with Ukrainians about the changes in their country, comparing what life was like in the U.S. I talked to people about anything they wanted to know — religion, homelessness, or who my favorite author was. I helped my English teacher colleagues write a textbook and my friends, who were musicians, translate their lyrics.
I remember one afternoon in particular when the German language teacher came and sat down in my classroom. “We don’t know how to do democracy,” she said. “We have never had a democracy.” But Ukraine and Ukrainians have proven that they do, in fact, know how to do democracy and do it well. They have protested rigged elections, fought for their rights to trade with the EU, and maintained a free press and free speech despite consistent pressure from the Kremlin. They have cautiously promoted language policies that valorized the Ukrainian language and sought to unify the country while at the same time including rights for Russian speakers.
Ukraine is the borderland of Europe (the word literally means “on the border”). It sits between Russia and all of the democracies that make up the so-called West. The country is a battleground — economically, politically, and socially. Ukrainians have been required to disagree with their own kin to create the country they have become, to fight their own Slavic neighbors for their freedom. And by doing so, they are protecting us all.
In 1994, the United States and Russia signed a treaty with Ukraine that promised Ukraine protection in return for the removal of nuclear missiles back to Russia. That treaty was broken in 2014 when Russia took Crimea, and we did not come to help. That is part of the reason why we are where we are today — on the brink of a larger war, engagement of NATO, the EU, and possibly the U.S. As historian Allan Lichtman has put it, “the West’s failure to defend Ukraine will go down as one of the great mistakes of history.”
We will always remember Ukraine for the bravery and strength they have shown this week. We will remember the heroism of everyday citizens, the defense of Kyiv against all odds, and President Volodymyr Zelensky going into battle with his troops. Ukraine deserves our full support. For me personally, I realize that it was a mistake to not return to that place that provided me a better education than all of my years in college and graduate school. I will be returning to Ukraine to visit my former host sister and students as soon as I can.
Lyn Wright is an associate professor of applied linguistics in the English Department at the University of Memphis. She is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Ukraine) and former Fulbright Fellow (Russia).
As he poses for a new photo, leaning against a tree with his guitar, tall and slender guitarist Kenny Brown looks pretty much like he did in old photos of himself in his twenties performing with blues legends.
“I’ve weighed between 130 and 160 since I got out of high school,” says Brown, 68.
But then he adds, “Somebody told me the other day — we went down to the coast — something about my skin looking so good. That’s the only person who ever told me my skin looked good. Hell. My hair iscoming out. Growing out my ears and nose and falling off my head.”
Kenny Brown at the 1999 Thirsty Ear Festival in Santa Fe (Photo: Jennifer Esperanza)
Though his hair is falling “off his head,” Brown’s musical ability continues to grow. The latest proof? Brown is nominated, with The Black Keys and Eric Deaton, for a 2022 Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album for Delta Kream.
“[The title] ‘Delta Kream’ came from a William Eggleston photo of a Delta Kream custard stand down in Tunica,” Brown says. “Eric Deaton plays bass and I play guitar. The way it happened was, Eric had done a couple of records with [The Black Keys’] Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye studios in Nashville. They were doing a Robert Finley record and they asked me to play on it.”
They finished that record in two days, but Auerbach asked Brown and Deaton to stick around for a couple more days. They recorded Delta Kream.
That serendipitous recording session was no fluke; Brown has a history of finding himself in the right place at the right time.
Junior Kimbrough and Kenny Brown at Kimbrough’s juke joint (Photo: Rita Weigand)
Must Have Been the Right Place Brown recorded his debut album, Goin’ Back to Mississippi, in 1995 with Dale Hawkins in Little Rock, Arkansas, but his list of bona fides is long. Brown played on albums with blues legends R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Paul “Wine” Jones, and CeDell Davis, all of which were recorded for Fat Possum Records based in Oxford, Mississippi. That was also where Brown recorded his solo album, Stingray.
He performed in the 2006 movie, Black Snake Moan, which was written and directed by Craig Brewer. In addition to backing Samuel L. Jackson’s singing, Brown appears in the film as a blues band guitarist along with his buddy, Grammy-nominated drummer Cedric Burnside.
“I was always a big fan of Kenny Brown,” Brewer says. “I am a fan of that whole early Fat Possum era that he was a part of. I think why I love him and everybody loves him, is there’s a great craft in the way he plays. The older I get, the more I tend to appreciate that. It’s authenticity. He’s playing what he lives. He’s playing what he knows and you can feel it. It’s more than just hearing it. You can feel it. There’s only a handful of artists that can do that. And he’s one of them.”
Big Jack Johnson and Kenny Brown (Photo: Rita Weigand)
Raised on Radio Brown’s mother was spot-on when she wrote about her child in his baby book. “She said that I was crazy about guitars, guns, horses, and cowboys,” Brown says. “I still am.
“The first time I remember hearing any music was getting in my parents’ car in the early ’50s,” the musician remembers. “I was laying in the car getting ready to go to church and hearing, I guess, a Johnny Cash song. I grew up watching the Ozzie and Harriet show with James Burton and Rick Nelson playing. There were some country shows that would come on like Louisiana Hayride.”
Brown also listened to a blues station late at night with a friend. “We’d sneak out in the car and lay down in the seat and turn on the radio and get that Nashville station,” Brown says, remembering that he didn’t need the car key if the car was put in “lock.”
Growing up in Nesbit, Mississippi, Brown remembers when he heard his first blues fife and drum band, a style of music with its roots in African drumming, military fife and drum corps, and blues influences. “I was out in the yard playing one day and I heard this music. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and it was getting closer and closer. I looked and there was this truck coming up the road and there was this fife and drum in the back of the truck,” Brown recalls. “That’s how they announced the picnics. Not everybody had phones [at the time]. They turned right across the road from my house. There was this guy who had picnics right across from the house.”
Brown didn’t get to go to them, but the picnics fascinated him. “I would lay in bed at night. Sometimes they’d play all night long and party all night.”
The music took root in Brown’s mind, and he got his first guitar when he was 10 thanks to a business venture with his brother. “You could order seeds from the back of a comic book. We ordered a bunch of seeds and we rode our bicycles selling garden and flower seeds to the ladies around us,” he says.
The Brown brothers won prizes for the amount of seeds they sold. “I got a little plastic guitar that would tune up and had a book with it. I think my brother got a BB gun,” he remembers.
Brown taught himself to play the guitar, which had “little catgut plastic strings,” by reading the book as well as listening to the radio “trying to figure out stuff.” He also took some lessons.
One day his mom surprised him with a real guitar. “A Kay archtop acoustic guitar with the F holes and stuff,” Brown says.
In another right-place, right-time moment, blues guitarist Mississippi Joe Callicott moved next door when Brown was 10. “His house was probably not 100 yards away. I could hear him sitting on the porch playing.” Brown’s brother said, “You ought to go over and see Joe.”
Brown and Callicott played “When the Saints Go Marching In” and other gospel songs. They also played blues songs, including “Frankie and Albert.”
Callicott gave him pointers. “He’d say, ‘Hit it like this, boy.’ And he was singing songs. All that got me really interested. I hung out with him almost every day.”
Conjuring Brewer’s comment about authenticity, Brown muses about the heart of blues music, saying, “It feels so good. And it’s real music — comes from the heart. It’s hard to describe. People just get feelings for different things.”
Brown, who plays the “North Mississippi hill country blues” style, says, “The hill country stuff kind of fit. Maybe from growing up around here, I don’t know. People always ask me to describe ‘hill country.’ I just tell them, ‘Don’t try to analyze it. Just feel it.’”
R.L. Burnside, Kenny Brown, and Cedric Burnside (Photo: Laurie Hoffma)
“Some of That Stuff” As he got older, Brown began meeting other blues players, including Jim Dickinson, Sid Selvidge, and Lee Baker. “Sometimes I think I was better when I was 18 than I am now,” he says. “I guess ’cause I didn’t know anything. I’d just do whatever I could do. I was so hungry for it back then, I guess. I was a slow learner, but I just tried to learn from everybody I could. I never expected to make a living at it.”
A friend who had a rock-and-roll band hired R.L. Burnside to open for him. Brown introduced himself and said he liked what he was doing and wanted to learn “some of that stuff. He told me where he lived and I started going down there and playing.”
They played together at juke joints, picnics, and other events “for 30 years until he quit playing. For years, I’d just play around his house or go to picnics or juke joints.”
R.L. took him to his first juke joint, Brown says. “It was a juke joint way out in the sticks somewhere in Panola County.”
It was “just an old house in the middle of nowhere. Seems like we drove down one of the wooded roads that was like a tunnel for 20 miles. All the trees have grown together above you. We came to a house. There was nobody there for 30 minutes. As soon as we started playing, it filled up. I don’t know where they came from,” he says.
“We got to playing. And they were gambling in the back room. All Black people. I was the only white person there. It was the first juke joint I’d really been in. We were playing for a while and R.L. said, ‘You keep playing. I’m going in the back and gamble some.’ I said, ‘R.L., don’t do that. They’ll kill me out there.’ He said, ‘I think you’ll be all right.’ He lost his money and came back. I kept playing and people loved it.”
Brown went on to play gigs with other blues performers. “We used to play a lot of picnics and little juke joint house parties. Sometimes I’d get with Johnny Woods and pick him up Friday and start driving and go to different house parties and stay gone all weekend.”
Music was a side job at first. “I made decent money doing construction, being a carpenter. That way I could afford my habits — going to the juke joints and stuff to play.”
Photo: Courtesy Kenny Brown
Juke Joint Caravan, Hill Country Picnic Brown began touring after he met George “Mojo” Buford on Beale Street. “Hit it off with him and we got to playing. We did a tour up to Canada and the East Coast and ended the tour in Clarksdale on Muddy Waters’ birthday.”
Brown invited R.L. to sit in with the band at the Clarksdale show. R.L. arrived with Matthew Johnson, founder of Fat Possum Records, where R.L. was recording.
A couple of weeks later, Johnson called Brown and said they wanted him to play on R.L.’s record. They said, “We love his solo stuff, but we want it to rock a little more.”
They recorded R.L.’s album, Too Bad Jim, with drummer Calvin Jackson the first day. Then Brown played on Junior Kimbrough’s album, Sad Days, Lonely Nights. They were recorded at Junior Kimbrough’s legendary now-gone juke joint near Holly Springs, Mississippi.
“I love Kenny,” Johnson says. “I was lucky to be around a lot of great people, but I put Kenny at the top of the list.” Of Brown, whom he calls “a savage guitar player,” Johnson says, “We wouldn’t have Fat Possum without him. He was so vital in the creation of the label.”
Plus, in a nod to the seemingly mundane but practical details that can make or break a burgeoning music career, Johnson says, “He had a van. He had a driver’s license.”
After they made a record, they had to get out and promote it, Johnson says. “You got out there and beat the hell out of the road if you’re going to make it. And we did that. We toured nonstop.”
After they did the Fat Possum albums, Brown and R.L. were invited to play a gig in Canada. They needed a drummer. R.L. said, “I’ve got a grandson who plays pretty good.”
That was Cedric Burnside, whose Grammy nominations include Best Traditional Blues Album in 2019 for Benton County Relic.
“We would go out for two weeks at a time. We’d have me and R.L. and Cedric and T-Model Ford or Paul ‘Wine’ Jones. We’d have a vanload of people. A lot of times they called it the ‘Juke Joint Caravan.’”
And, he adds, “I think I counted up one time. I’ve been to every state and, I think, something like 12, 15, 17 countries.”
Brown began the iconic North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic 16 years ago. “I’d been traveling all around the world, seeing all this interest in this style of music. I think they began calling it ‘hill country’ music by then. People were loving it everywhere we went, but nobody was doing a festival here in Mississippi focusing on that type of music from the region.”
The first Hill Country Picnic was held in a pasture in Potts Camp, Mississippi. The stage was a flatbed trailer. About 1,000 people attended the picnic, which was organized by Brown’s wife, Sara. “All we did was send out maybe 100 emails.”
Brown later had a permanent stage built at the picnic’s current location between Oxford and Holly Springs. One year, Brown says, the two-day event, which is held the last full weekend in June (June 24th and 25th this year), drew 3,000 people from 38 states and 11 countries. “I wanted it to be like the old-style picnics where there was plenty of food and drink and good hill country music.”
Farther from home, Brown plans to attend this year’s Grammy presentation on April 3rd in Las Vegas. “I hear all the time people are booking gigs and asking if they’re Grammy-nominated. I don’t know. I hate to say it’s not a big deal ’cause I guess it is. But I don’t know how much my life will change.”
For now, Brown says, “I’m doing a tour with The Black Keys this year. It’ll be fun. Decent pay.”
Brown, who lives near Potts Camp, says, “I’ve got a big barn over here next door to my house with a big living area upstairs I’m trying to convert. We set up some recording equipment in there. I’ve got a project I’m trying to get done there. There’s a record by a pretty big country artist that I played on that’s supposed to be coming out in April, but I’m not supposed to tell who. I’ve got some songs put together good enough to record them. And digging out some old stuff to record. And trying to get everybody lined up, find the right people to record them.”
He’s written original songs over the years as well. “I write ideas down all the time. Lot of times I get them during the night,” Brown says, “and if I don’t get up and write them down, they just keep flying through the air and somebody else gets them.”
Kenny Brown (Photo: Courtesy Kenny Brown)
Last Kind Word Blues Brown has watched his old friends and mentors die. He was 15 when his next-door neighbor Mississippi Joe Callicott died. “His wife told me he rolled over and his last words were, ‘Kenny be a good boy.’
“I hated to see him go, but he had gone downhill some. None of us are getting out of here alive. Hell. It used to be I was the youngest one hanging around all these guys like Bobby Ray Watson, Johnny Woods, and R.L. Burnside. Now I’m one of the older guys.”
Brown once visited a psychic at a health food store. “He told me my purpose on Earth was to raise the vibratory rates of the human race through music. I don’t know how many people he told that to, but I was one of them. He didn’t know I played music. That was kind of a weird thing that he could actually tell that. He could have been making it up and it could have been all bullshit.”
But, Brown says, “We were on stage in Santa Fe, New Mexico, one time. The place was packed wall to wall. T-Model and R.L. were doing the show. And every face that I saw had a smile on it. And I thought, ‘Maybe he was right.’”
People around the world were shocked and horrified when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine last week. The idea of an actual old-school land invasion of a settled, sovereign country seemed somehow incomprehensible in 2022. Mercilessly launching missiles, bombs, and cannon fire into cities full of civilians, hospitals, schools, and churches surely could not be happening. But it was. And then the world watched as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky instigated a fierce resistance that has continued into Tuesday morning, as I write this.
There were mass demonstrations against the war across Europe. Cities all over the free world began lighting up buildings, iconic edifices, and bridges in the blue and gold colors of the Ukrainian flag. Except in Memphis.
It wasn’t for lack of interest. Or trying. On Twitter, people began suggesting that Memphis light its bridges in blue and gold as early as last Thursday. It seemed a no-brainer. As someone tweeted on Saturday (possibly a Flyer senior editor): “If Memphis bridges aren’t gold and blue tonight, somebody has got some damn explaining to do.”
But Mighty Lights, the nonprofit organization that runs the light displays on Memphis’ two interstate bridges, was totally unresponsive. Some people filled out the form on their website, which appeared to be the only method to communicate with the group, to no avail. Increasingly caustic comments on the group’s Facebook and Instagram accounts also got no response. Was anyone home? It didn’t appear so.
The tweeting started to get a little snippy: “Is Tucker Carlson running things over there?” “Memphis should be leading instead of following!” “MLGW is still working on the problem [sarcasm].” “I know a lot of people who’ve reached out to them and gotten no response. What is the damn deal with these people?”
What was the damn deal with these people? I still don’t know. I do know that on Sunday afternoon, on a freshly created Twitter account, @MightyLightsMem issued its first tweet, and it went over like a fart in a crowded elevator: “Laissez les bons temps rouler!” it read. “On Tuesday, March 1, the Mighty Lights will glow purple, green, and gold for Mardi Gras!” There was an accompanying photo of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge in Mardi Gras colors.
Mardi Gras? Who was in charge over there? People tagged, texted, and emailed Mayor Strickland and other leaders. They tweeted pictures of the Eiffel Tower, the Christ statue in Rio, the Roman Colosseum, the Empire State building, all lit in blue and gold, next to a screenshot of the Mardi Gras tweet, and wrote: “The rest of the world vs. Memphis.” Tambo38104 spoke for most when he tweeted: “This is the most tone deaf thing I think I have ever seen. What is WRONG with you?”
We’ll never know what finally sparked the change, but I’m guessing somebody with clout probably noticed the growing outrage and made a call. The Mardi Gras tweet came down within the hour and was shortly replaced by one that read: “Tonight, February 27, and on Monday night, February 28, The Mighty Lights will join iconic landmarks around the world to glow in solidarity with Ukraine,” accompanied by a picture of the M bridge lit up in blue and gold. Never mind that it was an old photo from after a Grizzlies game, they seemed to have finally gotten the message. On Sunday and Monday nights, the bridge was a beautiful blue and gold.
Still, I think it’s safe to say some adjustments need to be made. Mighty Lights has been a wonderful addition to Downtown, but after the events of the past week, it appears — how to say this, delicately? — no one is home. At the very least, somebody needs to be monitoring social media, so they aren’t caught looking clueless again. Someone should also be responding to comments and questions on the group’s social media pages. This is sort of Marketing 101.
I get that this is not a big-bucks organization. It’s a nonprofit with little staffing that does nice visual things for Downtown. But those bridges are public highways, and the public needs a way to communicate with whoever’s controlling the switch.
Not long ago, I ran into my nemesis — Jesse James Davis. Maybe you’ve heard of him. He’s the singer/songwriter/guitarist with the golden vocal cords and a name not unlike mine. He also thinks it’s the height of hilarity to pretend to be me.
In a scene eerily similar to the final duel in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, our eyes narrowed when we spotted each other across the room.
“Davis,” I hissed, my voice like gravel and cut glass.
“Davis,” he echoed, his lips pulled into a tight frown.
Well, that might have happened, or we might have both yelled “Jesse Davis” and hugged each other. However the initial moment played out, we eventually ended up in a conversation about the strange hesitance people have for admitting that they don’t know something.
One might think that I would be especially susceptible, with knowing and writing about things making up a significant chunk of my job description, but honestly I think it’s my willingness to admit the gaps in my knowledge that makes me suited to this peculiar gig. Who wants a journalist who thinks they know everything already? I’m of the opinion that the world is older and odder and more mysterious than I can ever fully comprehend, so any discerning person’s best option is to be endlessly curious and willing to admit when they don’t know enough to comment.
I bring this up because there’s little going on in my personal life at the moment except nursing my still-rehabilitating cat, trying to get my and my fiancée’s cars to the mechanic, and babysitting my nephew. I’m not sure I can tease a column out of those issues. As far as the hot news goes, well, I’m not going to present myself as a foreign policy expert. (See where I’m going with this now?)
For a weekly paper in Memphis, we have the tragic situation in Ukraine covered as well as I think we can at the moment, and anything I might add would only do our readers a disservice. For one of the local implications of the conflict, see Bruce VanWyngarden’s “At Large” column on page 9, and to hear from someone who actually lived in Ukraine for a while, be sure to read Lyn Wright’s excellent column in “The Last Word.” It adds perspective I could never hope to.
Yes, it can be embarrassing to admit to a gap in knowledge. Adding to the potential embarrassment, it seems that social media has conditioned us to feel we have to respond to whatever the latest trending topic is. If we don’t speak out, are we complicit? In some instances, certainly, but rushing in guns a-blazing when we lack the context to understand the situation can end up doing more harm than good.
So, in the interest of using this space to do as much good as I feel I can, I’m (hopefully) setting a good example by saying that sometimes I have no idea what the hell is going on. Say it with me, won’t you? It can be quite liberating, really.
Uncle Goyo's Mexican Restaurant (Credit: Michael Donahue)
TacoNganas owner Greg Diaz, who is from Mexico City, and his wife, Daisy, are the parents of three children — Damaris, Aaron, and Caleb — all raised in Memphis.
Diaz now has four TacoNganas locations and ten food trucks.
“Memphis is mi casa,” Diaz says.
He will open his newest venture, Uncle Goyo’s Mexican Restaurant, Saturday, March 5th, at 1730 South Germantown Road in the Thornwood community. “Goyo” is an endearment for “Gregorio,”which is his full name, Diaz says.
Diaz describes the food at his new restaurant as “very authentic Mexican” instead of chalupas and other items sold in many local “Tex-Mex” restaurants. Israel Loyo, also from Mexico City, is his executive chef. Ramiro Zapata is sous chef.
He will not be selling the same food that he does in his TacoNganas food trucks, but he will be selling some other tacos, which are “very similar.”
Uncle Goyo’s will open at 11 a.m. March 5th.
To whet your appetite, here are some sneak peek shots of the restaurant:
The bar at Uncle Goyo’s Mexican Restaurant. (Credit: Michael Donahue)The bar at Uncle Goyo’s Mexican Restaurant. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Seating in the dining room. (Credit: Michael Donahue)The entrance at Uncle Goyo’s Mexican Restaurant. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Ramiro Zapata and Israel Loyo at Uncle Goyo’s Mexican Restaurant. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Uncle Goyo’s Mexican Restaurant. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Uncle Goyo’s Mexican Restaurant. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Uncle Goyo’s Mexican Restaurant. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
