Election Commissioner Bennie Smith and DA candidate Steve Mulroy. (Photo by Jackson Baker).
With Shelby County’s Democrats and Republicans bracing for an imminent showdown at the polls on Thursday, spokespersons for both parties got off last-minute parting shots on Wednesday —Democrats expressing watchful skepticism about the fairness of the electoral system and Republicans levying charges of vandalism at the headquarters facilities of two prominent GOP candidates.
Shelby County Republican chair Cary Vaughn contacted various local media Wednesday morning and expressed outrage about banners that apparently were attached overnight to the glass facades of the headquarters of Amy Weirich and Worth Morgan, the Republican nominees for District Attorney General and Shelby County Mayor, respectively.
One of several banners that appeared on the facade of DA Amy Weirich’s campaign headquarters overnight Tuesday. (Photo courtesy Cary Vaughn).
Without providing specific evidence that the banners, which attacked the two Republicans in various ways, were the work of the Democratic opposition, Vaughn said the action was an “affirmation of things to come if the wrong people get into office” as a result of Thursday’s county election.” He said “anarchy” could be the result.
Meanwhile, assorted spokespersons for the Democratic ticket took turns at a pre-election luncheon at Osaka Restaurant on Poplar intimating that Shelby County Election Coordinator Linda Phillips and the Republican majority of the county Election Commission needed to be watched closely under suspicion of favoring GOP candidates in the election and depriving Democratic members of the Commission from having full oversight of the election process.
Typical was State Representative Joe Towns, who said, “Beat me in a fair fight, and I’ll shake your hand, but not if you cheat.”
Others who spoke at the Osaka luncheon, calling for strenuous Get-Out-the-Vote efforts, were the two hosts, County Mayor Lee Harris and DA candidate Steve Mulroy, both of whom are on Thursday’s ballot, as well as Election Commissioner Bennie Smith, State Representative G.A. Hardaway, and Trena Ingram of the National Bar Association.
Mulroy continued to seek an answer from Weirich to his call on Monday for her to recuse herself from the ongoing prosecution on harassment charges of talk show host Thaddeus Matthews, on whose online show Weirich appeared last month to explain the concept of “truth-in-sentencing.”
Mulroy said Weirich’s appearance on the show was a likely source of electoral benefit to her and constituted a conflict of interest in her role as DA.
Weirich continues to insist that no recusal is called for in that she had received no campaign contribution from Matthews nor paid him for the public exposure and that she appeared on the show “in my official capacity” merely to explain “truth-in-sentencing,” which is now embedded in state law.
Tennessee is turning Volkswagen’s deceptions into charging stations for electric cars.
The automaker publicly admitted in 2015 that it had secretly and deliberately installed software designed to cheat emissions tests and deceive federal and state regulators in about 590,000 vehicles from 2009 to 2016. The U.S. Department of Justice sued Volkswagen and won a settlement of $14.9 billion.
Some of that money was awarded this week to Memphis Light, Gas & Water (MLGW) to install fast-charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. The funding came from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) from a total of $5.2 million awarded to 12 entities.
“We are glad we can put these funds to use in ways that serve all motorists with electric vehicles,” said TDEC Commissioner David Salyers. “We are rapidly moving toward more electric vehicles on our roads, and this is a way to stay ahead of that demand.”
The 12 entities will fund 32 charging units at 13 sites. All of them are intended to help TDEC and the Tennessee Valley Authority establish the Fast Charge TN Network. The program plans a network of fast-charging stations every 50 miles along Tennessee’s interstates and major highways.
“Electrification of transportation is critical to help our nation achieve its energy security and decarbonization goals,” said Jeff Lyash, TVA president and CEO. “Today, thanks to Governor [Bill] Lee and TDEC, our region is the nation’s epicenter for [electric vehicle] technology and manufacturing, and this grant demonstrates how we can move the Tennessee Valley further and faster, together, to make a cleaner future a reality.”
MLGW said the new stations will bolster its existing network of more than 100 public charging stations throughout Shelby County. The utility did not say where the new stations would be installed, only that the grants are for areas “along prioritized interstate or major highway corridors across the state.”
“Together, we will expand public access to convenient, fast EV charging, alleviating fears of range anxiety and making EV charging a more visible activity, so that when residents and businesses consider their next vehicle purchase, they also consider electric vehicle options,” said J.T. Young, MLGW president and CEO. “MLGW is grateful to TDEC for this funding opportunity, and we look forward to operating fast-charging sites that serve Shelby County residents, businesses, and travelers.”
Elliott Ives and chief engineer Scott Hardin at Young Avenue Sound (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Taylor Berger, founder of Two Broke Bartenders, is passionate about creating and managing short-term rentals for people who want to experience Memphis.
On Valentine’s Day 2022, Berger and Elliott Ives bought Young Avenue Sound, which they are converting into spaces that can be rented as short-term rentals on the order of Airbnbs. Half of the building will continue to be a recording studio. The overall name for the building is “Young Avenue Sound.”
A grand reopening party for Young Avenue Sound will be September 24th.
Young Avenue Sound (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Berger’s Two Broke Bartenders team currently manages seven units at Young Avenue Sound. Berger, who began Two Broke Bartenders in 2020, says, “Two Broke Bartenders was founded because all of the service industry was essentially laid off at the same time at the beginning of the pandemic. They needed employment. That’s how it was founded. Then, over time, it ended up specializing in moving and property maintenance and then only recently specializing in short-term rentals like Airbnbs.”
Ives, a songwriter/co-producer and a longtime studio and touring guitarist with Justin Timberlake, will be over the studio side of the building. “I had thought about buying this building in 2018 and just wasn’t able to get the people here to do it,” Ives says. “The studio business is a tough business.
“We own the building and then there’s a few adjacent properties. The house and the back house behind it. Another house across the street on Philadelphia we own together.”
Ives already had been working out of Young Avenue Sound. “The building is so eccentric. All these bits and bogs, nooks and crannies, different styles.”
So, he and Berger thought, “Why not turn it into a short-term living space and take pressure off the studio business? This is either the craziest thing or genius.”
They split the building in half, Ives says. “I built a studio within a studio. I moved the big piano and took my operation, which I had on the other side for seven years, and built a room within a room. And did not how how it was going to turn out. It’s not completely finished yet. It will be within a month. So far, it’s working out great.”
Chief engineer Scott Hardin works on an EP for the band, Jombi, with drummer Bry Hart at Young Avenue Sound as Michael Rose, left, looks on. (Credit: Michael Donahue)Living room in a Young Avenue Sound short-term rental. (Credit: Michael Donahue)A bedroom in a Young Avenue Sound short-term rental. (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Performers already are working in the new studio space. “We’re working with Jeremy Stanfill doing his new EP. And I’m working with this 17-year-old freaking artist, Ava Wilson.”
They’re currently finishing her EP. Her boyfriend, musician Dylan Dunn, who is related to Donald “Duck” Dunn, is in Memphis from California “playing on her stuff. And they’ve got a band together.”
Berger also partnered with Shelby County Commissioner Reginald Milton’s nonprofit SMA Social Suds Laundromat and community resource center to do laundry for the short-term rentals. “I’ve known Reginald forever and I just had loads and loads of laundry,” Berger says. “I knew he had this laundromat.”
He told Milton, “I’m drowning in laundry. Can you help me?”
“What was so ironic was he had been working on a business plan to start doing laundry for (short-term rental) owners. This gave him a chance to pilot something he’d been wanting to do for months.
“The machines are not being used at night. So, it’s a really good business for him to get into.”
And, Berger says, “This provides jobs to the South Memphis people he is already helping. His mission is a nonprofit. The laundromat just helps sustain their nonprofit mission.”
“One hundred percent of this money we make goes to support our 144 foster youths,” Milton says. “We are presently seeking the donation of a van so we can do the pickup and drop-off services.”
For more photos of Young Avenue Sound, go to offbeat.love and click “book now.”
Over the last few weeks, we’ve heard a few grumblings of support for the Memphis City Council’s referendum seeking to extend its own term limits from two to three terms. Unfortunately for the council, those grumblings appear to be coming only from its own members and their cronies. Nevertheless, they continue unabated in their effort to rally support for this mistaken attempt to supplant the will of residents.
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland has abandoned his previous promise not to seek a third term in office if term limits were extended. Now, showing a little mayoral leg to entice his voting bloc, Mayor Strickland said if the referendum passes, he will be more than happy to flip-flop his position to keep himself in office.
Meanwhile, Councilman Dr. Jeff Warren — the referendum’s most vocal supporter — seeks to garner votes in his quixotic quest to remain in power.
I’ve said this before: I like Jeff Warren. I appreciate his service. I appreciate his efforts to protect Overton Park. Although I’ve never voted for Mayor Strickland, he offered strong leadership through the pandemic and has offered a welcome, tempering voice as the city council unwisely sought to hop into bed with the Carlisle group and have the city carry far too much financial risk in the One Beale project.
I have strong disagreements with these men on a number of other issues, but even if I didn’t, their cynical efforts in backing the term limit referendum demonstrate a disappointing amount of hubris and/or frightening misunderstanding of the goals of public service.
Strickland and Warren have primarily argued in favor of the referendum because there is still work to be done. Well, of course, there is, but that’s not a good reason to extend term limits. There will always be work to do, challenges to overcome, and improvements to make. Extending term limits to three terms or eliminating them altogether will not change that fact.
Public service and governing should be about making as great a contribution as you can while you have the opportunity. Democracy is about making long-term, incremental progress, and a good public servant should work to make those contributions and that progress, but with an eye on developing young leaders to follow behind him or her and continue that work. That’s Strickland and Warren’s first mistake — contending that the work can ever be finished. Their second mistake and the much more troubling one is believing that only they are capable of doing that work.
Look around Memphis. We have so many talented, energetic, and creative people working to make the city better. Whether it is in business, nonprofits, or advocacy, Memphis’ greatest resource is our sheer abundance of smart and caring individuals working to build a more just and equitable city. Working to build a stronger education system. Fighting to ensure that as we develop, we do so in an environmentally sustainable way.
Instead of wasting their energy and spending political capital on keeping themselves in power, Mayor Strickland and Councilman Warren would be better off identifying young leaders who are already contributing to our city and encouraging them to bring their energy to public service.
Let’s bring this debate to a close on August 4th. What is on the ballot is not a referendum on term limits but one on the arrogance of a few. For the third time in 14 years, vote against this cynical referendum. Once that’s done, we can focus on what really matters, continuing the work of improving the lives of all Memphians.
Bryce W. Ashby is an attorney with Donati Law, PLLC.
Cinderella had her glass slippers, and Ramona Sonin had her white go-go boots. “I was about 5 years old, and my mom got me my first pair of white go-go boots,” she says, “and it was over. I wore those boots everywhere and everything became about those boots. Magic happened, I think, with a 5-year-old ready to take on the world walking in her go-go boots.”
It was from that moment — if she had to choose a moment — she discovered her love of fashion. “It’s just kind of something you’re born with.”
Today, Sonin channels her passion into designing couture dresses with sculptured bodices and tulle that pours, almost floats, out of the skirt in her latest exhibition of gowns at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens. “There’s no machine involved,” she says. “Everything you see is completely hand-stitched, and so each gown and each couture piece you see is at least 300 hours of work a piece.”
Though Sonin starts with a sketch outlining her general idea, once she approaches the dress form, improv and intuition take over, and the piece takes on a life of its own, thirsting for the artist’s creativity to feed and care for it. “I just kind of sculpt it on the body and on the form, … and all of a sudden I’m breathing life into these things,” she says, before referencing a quote from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that goes: “With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.”
What lays at Sonin’s feet are the pieces of fabric already in her studio, which she upcycles into a fabric of her own to piece together and make three-dimensional appliques. For one gown in the show, Ophelia, she even uses fabric from her own wedding dress, showing that though the histories of her materials may come from vulnerable, some even forgotten, moments, these moments came together in support of this new creation, in support of the potential wearer. “The history of the material, there’s power and strength in that,” she says.
At first glance, the dresses may seem overly delicate with their muted colors, tulle, sequins, and the embellishments that seem to have fallen in the perfect place, but they have a bit of “edge” to them, an ephemeral quality that’s haunting and intimidating. The gowns’ fragility is an armor in itself; it’s untouchable. As Sonin says, her gowns are a blend of “Viking shields and Brigitte Bardot.”
Sonin also takes inspiration from other recognizable women, specifically Shakespearean women after whom she titles her gowns. “In what Shakespeare did,” she says, “many of the women were notable and very strong and powerful and free-thinking in a time where society actually commanded them to be delicate. Shakespeare’s women played both of those, that struggle between power and femininity.”
And yet Shakespeare’s women, just like Sonin’s dresses, find power in the feminine.
“Flowerful: Fashioning the Armored Feminine,” Dixon Gallery & Gardens, on display through October 23.
I can understand why term limits are an attractive sell to the many Americans who are frustrated with the state of American politics. However, the data and research do not support these frustrations.
According to political science research, term limits have had little to no impact on diversity, more distributive fiscal policies, or incentivizing legislators to be more responsive to constituents. In an article for the Brookings Institution, Casey Burgat, assistant professor at George Washington University, writes, “Term limits — despite their broad appeal to a politically dejected public — simply don’t provide the benefits advocates promise.”
The broad consensus amongst political scientists is that term limits are not only gravely overestimated in their effectiveness but also come with a heap of unintended consequences.
The most devastating unintended consequence is the loss of qualified, committed, and experienced elected officials whom voters can no longer return to office. Experience handling emergency situations is an important point to consider as our world continues to deal with the immediate and long-term fallout of the pandemic. Facing inflation, a looming recession, and political instability overseas, I believe we will need the steady hand of leadership shown by Mayor Jim Strickland and my colleagues on the council.
Continuity and enough time in office is important for the city to continue to maintain the momentum we have worked so hard to achieve. Neither the mayor nor the city council have shied away from tackling ambitious projects during their time in office. However, short term limits threaten innovative public policy just the same.
The administration and council have shown excellent partnership and cooperation by collaborating on the creation and funding for the Group Violence Intervention Program, a new and holistic approach to combating gun violence in our city. Started in 2021, violence interventionists are out in our communities working with individuals who are at risk of committing violent acts, and they are also immediately on the scene after an act of gun violence is committed, to help reduce the likelihood of retaliation and get victims on the path to healing. This program is just starting to get off the ground but is showing immediate promise in reducing gun violence in our city. New policy approaches such as this are vulnerable without continuity of leadership.
In the winter of 2021, the city council approved Mayor Strickland’s Accelerate Memphis plan that made a historic $200 million investment in Memphis parks, community centers, libraries, roads, and pedestrian safety. Continuity of city leadership is important to make sure these important projects get done.
The lack of experience in municipal government caused by too short terms is another adverse impact. In fact, research shows that term limits are more likely to empower outside actors, such as lobbyists and bureaucrats, as newly elected politicians struggle to fill the knowledge and policy gaps. This lack of knowledge is not just related to the large bureaucracy at Memphis City Hall but also applies to the state of Tennessee and the federal government as well. So often our city is left out or behind on economic development, education funding, public works projects, and other investments. City leaders with intergovernmental affairs knowledge are crucial to advocating for our city getting the resources and respect it deserves from Nashville and Washington.
Opponents of extending term limits focus on apparent benefits that scholarly research tells us are overestimated at best. Because the research so clearly favors lax term limits, the public debate has become personal. Arguments against extending term limits are more about why certain officials should not be reelected. I feel this line of thinking jumps the gun as extending term limits does not bestow a mandate to anyone to run. Mayor Strickland and several of my colleagues on the city council would have to make their case to voters once more next year.
The term of any elected official ends with the next election; if constituents want change, they will vote change in. We saw during Atlanta’s city council elections last November six new officials unseat incumbents while, at the same time, long-serving and returning members retained seats. The different outcomes signal voters prioritize results over time in office. I hope Memphians will vote “yes” on the referendum to extend term limits, so we may have the opportunity to vote for civil servants and their experience and expertise.
Dr. Jeff Warren is a physician and a member of the Memphis City Council.
Jamal Boddie recently launched a Kickstarter for a brand-new party game called You Can’t Say That: Memphis Mane Edition. “It’s basically the Memphis version of Taboo with hundreds of cards that celebrate the culture and history of our great city in a fun way for your friends and family,” reads a description of the game on Boddie’s YouTube channel.
A player tries to get her teammates to guess Isaac Hayes, for example. But she can’t use words like “Shaft” or “Black Moses.” If she does, the other team can yell, “Naw Mane,” and takes the card and the points from the other team.
“Full of Hatred”
Posted to YouTUbe by djvlad
Memphis rapper NLE Choppa told VladTV that Memphis is “full of hatred” in a video posted last week when he was asked about growing up in the city. “It’s one of the most gruesome, unloving cities to be a part of,” he said. “But I just love it so much because I see the potential.”
Phil Mickelson (Photo: Wikimedia Commons |
Creative Commons | By Peter Brown)
Golfing legend Phil Mickelson stands in the first-hole tee box, staring down the fairway, picking out his target. Several yards behind him, under a mound of freshly turned earth and a bouquet of white flowers, lies the recently interred body of Ivana Trump, ex-wife of Donald Trump (and mother of the three children he pays attention to). Mickelson takes a couple practice swings and waggles over his ball. As he pulls the club back, someone in the crowd shouts, “Do it for the Saudi royal family, Phil!” Mickelson steps away, a pained look on his face. After a moment, he resets and gives the ball a resounding whack. A fan in the gallery screams, “Let’s go, Brandon!” as the little white pellet soars into the blue, blue sky.
All of the above is true. It happened last Friday at the LIV Golf Series tournament at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey. If you’re not a golf fan, you may be unaware of the sea-change that has upended the PGA Tour this year. The Saudi Arabian government has lured several top professional golfers (and three-dozen mediocre professional golfers) to play in eight events around the world, instead of on the venerable PGA Tour.
And by “lure,” I mean, pay them absurd amounts of money. Mickelson got $200 million to flip, plus whatever winnings he takes home. Dustin Johnson got $150 million. Consider that the greatest golfer of all time, Tiger Woods, has won a total of $120 million in his 26-year career.
The Saudi LIV tour is not serious golf. Everyone gets paid, even the guy who comes in last. Winners get a ludicrous $4 million paycheck. The golfers ride in carts, tee off from different holes, and play on meaningless “teams.” Music blares from loudspeakers during the round. It’s goofy golf.
So why are the Saudis doing this? Well, they do have some PR issues, which happens when 15 of your citizens attack the Pentagon and World Trade Center, and when your leader has a Washington Post journalist dismembered and murdered (in that order). So, maybe they’re buying European soccer teams and international gaming franchises, and, well, 47 professional golfers, in an attempt to appear, er, human?
The Saudis also paid Trump a handsome fee to use his New Jersey course, and he had no ethical qualms about it. Shocker, I know. He showed up for the Thursday pro-am, drove around in a cart with the presidential seal, and pretended to play golf. (If you’re interested in Trump’s day, I recommend reading, “Watching Trump Play Golf: Decent Drives, Skipped Putts, Lots of Sweat,” which appeared in The New York Times on Friday. It goes about how you’d expect.)
Lots of 9/11 survivor families showed up to protest outside the gates of Bedminster. And as they do at every LIV tournament, the golfers faced pointed questions from journalists about the ethics of selling out their profession to the murderous Saudi government. They don’t care. They’re rich.
It’s easy to dismiss all this as meaningless — billionaires paying millionaires to play a silly game — but consider what astoundingly good things could be done with the $60 billion(!) the Saudis have committed to fund sports and games. And maybe consider why the Saudis have such an obscene amount of money to blow on ethically challenged morons like Mickelson and Johnson. It’s oil, of course. Under the vast deserts near the Arabian Gulf lie some of the world’s greatest deposits of fossil fuel, without which Saudi Arabia would be just, well, a giant sand trap, not a country President Joe Biden recently felt compelled to travel to and give a ceremonial fist-bump to a murderer and ask if maybe, sorta, kinda he wouldn’t mind lowering oil prices.
Now think about the raging wildfires, the prolonged droughts, the empty reservoirs, the deadly heat waves, the record floods — all consequences of the global climate change caused by mankind’s inability to meaningfully reduce its global addiction to fossil fuels. And maybe think about the devastating impact on all the world’s economies when the price of gas increases by a couple bucks. Our dependence on oil is screwing the economy and the planet. The attempted deconstruction of the PGA is just another reminder of how it’s all connected — a birdie in the coal mine.
It’s no secret that vinyl is resurgent. After being eclipsed first by CDs in the 1990s and then by streamed digital music, records were nigh impossible to find in mainstream stores for many years, until around 2008, when the manufacture and sales of vinyl albums and singles began to grow again. Since then, the trend has only accelerated, with market analyses predicting continued annual growth between 8 percent-15 percent for vinyl musical products over the next five to six years.
What fewer people realize is how every step of the process that makes records possible can be found in Memphis. “The Memphis Sound … where everything is everything,” ran the old Stax Records ad copy, and that’s especially true in the vinyl domain: All the elements are within reach. Johnny Phillips, co-owner of local record distributor Select-O-Hits, says “There’s not very many cities that can offer everything we offer right here. From recording to distribution, from inception to the very end. Everything you need, you have right here. Memphis is like a one-stop shop for vinyl right now.”
From the musicians themselves to the final product you take home on Record Store Day, here are the 10 pillars upon which our Kingdom of Vinyl rests, 10 domains which thrive in Memphis as in no other city.
Take Out Vinyl’s Jeff Powell (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)
Mastering
A lacquer master, freshly cut on a lathe, offers a level of high fidelity that most listeners, even record aficionados, almost never hear. But Take Out Vinyl, run by Jeff Powell and Lucas Peterson from a room in Sam Phillips Recording, is that rare beast, a vinyl mastering lab, where raw audio from tape or a computer is first transferred to plastic and one can sometimes hear a lacquer playback. It’s not meant to be listened to. The discs cut here would typically be used to create the metal discs that stamp the grooves onto the records we buy, but the lacquer itself is too soft for repeated plays. And yet, for those who’ve heard a playback from a freshly cut lacquer, the quality is haunting.
That was the idea behind the one-off Bob Dylan record auctioned at Christie’s last month for $1.78 million. Spearheaded by producer T Bone Burnett, a new recording of Dylan performing “Blowin’ in the Wind” was cut onto a single lacquer disc, never to be duplicated or mass-produced.
Producer T Bone Burnett (Photo: Jason Myers)
To help make it a reality, Burnett enlisted Powell, one of the world’s most respected mastering engineers. “Lacquers are very soft,” says Powell. “We can’t play these things after I cut them or it destroys the groove. You lose a little high-end every time you play it. T Bone’s idea was to try to capture that sound of a fresh cut lacquer, but one that you could play over and over again, even up to a thousand times, with no degradation to the sound. And that’s what we have accomplished.”
The trick was finding a way to protectively coat the lacquer after it had been cut, and after years of R&D, the labs enlisted by Burnett found the right compound. “T Bone says the coating is only 90 atoms thick,” says Powell. “A human hair is about 300,000 atoms thick — that’s how thin the coating is. It was derived from a protective material used on satellites.”
Ultimately, says Powell, the goal was to reassert the value of vinyl records over digital media. “The purpose of this was not to see how much money could be made,” says Powell, “but to show how music has been devalued to next to nothing. T Bone wanted to establish that a recording like this should be considered fine art.”
Memphis Record Pressing (Justin Fox Burks)
Manufacturing
The notion of a vinyl record as fine art is not so alien to legions of collectors who curate their own personal galleries of albums and singles. But even the rarest of records were mass-produced at one time, and Memphis has that department covered as well. For decades, nearly all of the records recorded in Memphis were made at Plastic Products on Chelsea Avenue. Such was the pressing plant’s impact that an historical plaque now marks where it once stood. But in recent years, a new business has taken up the torch of vinyl manufacturing.
In 2015, the Memphis Flyer alerted readers to the fledgling Memphis Record Pressing (MRP), which arose from a partnership between Brandon Seavers and Mark Yoshida, whose AudioGraphic Masterworks specialized in CD and DVD production, and Fat Possum Records, whose co-owner Bruce Watson first suggested that they move into vinyl production. Now, it’s in the hands of Seavers and Yoshida and GZ Media, the largest vinyl record manufacturer in the world, and the Memphis company is expanding dramatically.
Memphis Record Pressing (Justin Fox Burks)
As Seavers points out, the world of vinyl has evolved as well. “When we started, we searched the world for record presses, which was really a challenge. Back in 2014, there were no new machines being built. You had to scour the corners of the earth to find ancient machinery and bring it back to life. Fast-forward to 2018, when a few companies emerged around the world that invested in building new machines. We started bringing in these brand-new, computer-controlled machines that were very different from our old machines. And that started the process of expansion. Through 2018-2021, we replaced our aging equipment bit by bit, and in September of last year, we replaced the last of our old machines.”
The pandemic was actually a boon to the young company. “We reopened in May of 2020, and by June our orders had skyrocketed. We were overwhelmed. And by the first five weeks of 2021, we booked three-and-a-half months’ worth of work in five weeks. So to say it overwhelmed us is an understatement. Now we’re sitting on a quarter-million units’ worth of open orders. So, it’s insane to see the demand grow. Before Covid, we had reduced our lead time to eight weeks. Now, it’s frustrating to quote nine months of lead time to new customers because that amount of time is life and death three times over for some artists. That’s why we’re so intent on expanding as quickly as possible.” Construction of additional facilities, expected to be operational in October, is now underway.
Distribution
Once the records are made, where do they go? Thanks to the decades-old Select-O-Hits, the answer is “across the globe.” Johnny Phillips reckons it’s the oldest distribution service in the world, and it may be one of the oldest businesses in Memphis, period. “In 1960, my dad, Tom Phillips, was Jerry Lee Lewis’ road manager. When Jerry Lee married his 13-year-old cousin, he couldn’t be booked anywhere. My daddy put all of his money into promoting Jerry Lee, and he lost it all. So, he came up from Mobile, Alabama, to Memphis and went to work with my uncle Sam, taking back unsold returns: 45s, 78s, and a few albums. We gradually grew into one of the largest one-stops in the South, supplying all labels to smaller retail stores. There used to be over 25 retail stores in Memphis, believe it or not. And then in the early ’70s, we started distributing nationwide. My dad retired, and my brother Sam and I bought him out.”
Over the years, Select-O-Hits has seen every ebb and flow of the vinyl market, including a major uptick after the advent of hip-hop. “We were the first distributor for Rapper’s Delight by The Sugar Hill Gang in 1979,” notes Phillips. That tradition continues today. “We’ve released about half of Three 6 Mafia’s catalog that we control in the last two years, on colored vinyl. And we distribute it all over the world.” And if the distribution numbers are not what they used to be before CDs and then streaming took over, they are climbing steadily. “Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, we were selling half a million vinyl records. But now we’re doing 5,000, 15,000. Still, last year was our biggest vinyl year ever [since CDs became dominant], and this year is looking just as good.”
Shangri-La’s Jared McStay (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)
Record Stores and Record Labels
If Select-O-Hits is moving the product around the world, it needs to land somewhere, and in Memphis that means record stores. Though we no longer have 25 retail outlets for vinyl, there are several places to buy records here. The granddaddy of them all is Shangri-La Records, founded by Sherman Willmott in 1988, then taken over in 1999 by Jared McStay, who now co-owns the shop with John Miller.
“The first couple of years,” says McStay, “I had to bet on vinyl because I couldn’t compete with the CD stores, like Best Buy or whatever. I was getting crushed, until I realized I could never compete with them. In the early 2000s, they were phasing out vinyl, and even stereo manufacturers stopped putting phono jacks on their stereos. But I had tons of records.”
Around the same time, Eric Friedl was running a small indie label, Goner, which ultimately became the Goner Records shop when Zac Ives joined forces with Friedl in 2004. They too leaned into vinyl from the very start. “I think Eric had done maybe two CDs at most when we joined forces and started expanding the label in 2004,” says Ives. “Out of his 10 or 11 releases, I think only The Reatards had a CD release. The rest were only on vinyl. There was no giant resurgence of vinyl for us. Those things came up around our industry, but we never left that model. And that’s how it was for most smaller, independent labels, especially in punk and underground realms.”
Combining a record shop with a record label is a time-honored tradition in Memphis, going back to Stax’s Satellite Records, and it carries on today through Shangri-La and Goner, which have both been named among the country’s best record stores by Rolling Stone. Both stores’ dedication to vinyl relates to their investment in live bands. Gonerfest, which brings bands, DJs, and record-shoppers from around the world, will be enjoying its 19th year next month, and Shangri-La has hosted miniature versions of that for years.
“We’re having Sweatfest on August 13th,” says McStay, “and we haven’t had one in three years because of the pandemic. There are going to be thousands of bargain records. We’ve been hoarding them for three years!” Meanwhile, local bands will perform in the parking lot, a pre-Covid mainstay of Shangri-La for most of its existence.
Though Goner boasts its own label, and Shangri-La has spawned at least three (Shangri-La Projects, plus the loosely affiliated Misspent Records and Blast Habit Records), not all stores do so. River City Records opened last year and, along with Memphis Music and A. Schwab, is already doing a brisk vinyl business in the Downtown area. Meanwhile, the city has several vinyl-friendly labels untethered to any retail outlet, namely Back to the Light, Big Legal Mess/Bible & Tire, Black and Wyatt, Madjack, and Peabody Records. These local imprints and the bands they sign, in turn, feed into the doggedly local support that the above mastering, manufacturing, and distribution businesses offer. As Powell says, “Anybody local, I’ll always try to move heaven and earth to get them ahead of the line a little bit and treat them special. Because you know, it’s Memphis, man!”
Memphis Listening Lab has thousands of LPs. (Photo: Jamie Harmon)
Archives, Audio Technology, Community Radio, and DJs
A wide swath of this town’s music lovers are brazenly vinyl-centric, and that demographic has a ripple effect in other domains. The Stax Museum of American Soul Music, for example, boasts the huge archive of Bob Abrahamian, a DJ at the University of Chicago in the 1990s, with more than 35,000 singles and LPs, now being cataloged by a full-time archivist, Stax collections manager Leila Hamdan.
Then there’s the Memphis Listening Lab (MLL), founded last year on the strength of the music collection of John King, a collector’s collector if there ever was one. As a promoter, program director, and studio owner, he’s collected music all his life. Now, his roughly 30,000 45s, 12,000 LPs, 20,000 CDs, and 1,000 music books reside in the public archive of the MLL, free for the listening and even free to record. Further, MLL has hosted countless public events where classic or obscure albums are played and discussed in depth.
The listening lab also benefits from a less-recognized aspect of vinyl culture in Memphis: the technology. Being outfitted with high-end, locally made EgglestonWorks speakers enhances the listening experience at MLL considerably. And the city is also home to George Merrill’s GEM Dandy Products Inc., which markets his highly respected audiophile-grade turntables (one of which MLL hopes to acquire).
Another archive boasting EgglestonWorks speakers is the Eight & Sand bar in The Central Station Hotel. The private bar was envisioned as a place to celebrate Memphis music history, and its dual turntables are duly backed by a huge vinyl library of mostly local music. “Chad Weekley, the music curator, is doing an incredible job there,” says Ives. The bar now plays host to the DJs who enliven Gonerfest’s opening ceremonies, and the hotel has even offered package deals combining room reservations with gift certificates to the Goner shop.
And let’s face it, this town is crawling with great DJs. In a sense, they are the ultimate vinyl record consumers, and thus help to drive all the other institutions. “It’s similar to a band,” says Ives, “because you’re taking your knowledge of music and putting it back out into the world in some way. I love hearing somebody’s personality coming through their radio program or DJ event. … Sometimes at venues like Eight & Sand, sometimes on community radio.”
The latter is clearly fertile ground for those who favor the sound of vinyl. Both WEVL and WYXR sport turntables in their on-air studio rooms, not to mention their own vinyl libraries. As WYXR program manager Jared Boyd says, “I’m a record collector myself, and for a time I was DJ-ing at Eight & Sand and using those turntables. So, when we started the radio station, we wanted people to be able to have that experience without having to go down to Central Station. We wanted these people who collect deeply to broadcast these really unique finds. I particularly wanted to cater to people who use records.”
The Music
And so we come full circle, following vinyl’s great chain of existence back to the reason we all want it in the first place: music. And it’s undeniable that the music this city produces fits our predilection for vinyl — from Jerry Lee Lewis’ piano swipes to the guitar/organ growl of “Green Onions,” from the choogling riffs of power pop to the crunching, distorted damage of punk, the sounds of this city lend themselves to the weight and warmth of music’s greatest medium. Just drop a needle on your favorite band and you’ll hear the truth in Brandon Seavers’ words: “Memphis is the grit to Nashville’s glitz,” he says. “And grit sounds a lot better on vinyl.”
A phrase that has attached itself to presidential election years, especially between well-matched candidates struggling to get in the last and best word to the electorate, is “October Surprise.” That’s the name given to an unexpected event that sometimes occurs and sometimes doesn’t, but is always feared by each of the rival candidates.
The October Surprise, so called because it occurs just before the final vote takes place in early November, is sometimes carefully hatched by one of the candidates and sprung against the other. Sometimes it occurs all by itself, without any obvious prompting or advance management.
The late announcement in 2016 by FBI director James Comey that his agency was reopening its investigation of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails was an October Surprise. So was Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The one circumstance benefited Donald Trump, the other Barack Obama, the then-president whose emergency efforts were enabled thereby to come to the fore.
In the case of this week’s county election, one could speak of both a late July Surprise or an early August Surprise — both affecting the crucial and hard-fought race for district attorney general. The first was the brutal hijacking murder a week before last of beloved local pastor Autura Eason-Williams. The second was a controversy over the call-in appearance by incumbent GOP DA Amy Weirich, via Facebook and YouTube, on the talk show of “shock jock” Thaddeus Matthews.
The murder, committed by a 15-year-old who had been the beneficiary of a restorative-justice program, fed directly and unexpectedly into the ongoing debate between Weirich and Democratic opponent Steve Mulroy over the pros and cons of transferring violent youthful offenders to adult criminal court. An issue that had been discussed in statistical, largely hypothetical terms — with Weirich taking the hard line and Mulroy a reformist view — suddenly became very real and very concrete. It is fair to say that determining the right legal response proved a difficult task not only for the two candidates but for members of the deceased’s family and for on-the-fence voters as well.
Was Weirich’s discussion of the state’s new truth-in-sentencing law with Matthews, who is the subject of ongoing prosecutions by her office, as seen both on Facebook and on YouTube, an open-and-shut case of conflict of interest, as charged by Mulroy? Or, was it, as Matthews maintains, a simple matter of venting an informed view on a matter of public interest?
One thing is certain: Both of these circumstances could have had a seismic effect, whether small or large, and in whatever direction, on the outcome of a race which, in the well-established jargon of pol-watching, had been too close to call.
• One of the most unusual — and in many ways most endearing — endorsements administered during the run-up to the August 4th election occurred at a fundraiser back in July on behalf of David Pool, a judicial magistrate seeking to become the judge of Criminal Court, Division 6, otherwise known as felony drug court.
Before an audience including at least a score of other candidates for various offices at the East Memphis home of Dr. Kishore Arcot, Pool was steadfastly making his case. “What do you want in a Criminal Court judge?” he asked his audience rhetorically, then began dutifully listening to some of the likely answers to such a question: experience, dedication, knowledge of the law, etc., etc. Until he was stopped cold by an outburst from one of the several rows of listeners seated nearby.
“Cute!” came a loud and enthusiastic voice. “Cute!” the voice repeated. “That’s what we want!” As the stunned audience beamed in surprise, the even more surprised Pool, a performing musician in his spare time, bounded over to where fellow lawyer and supporter Ellen Fite was sitting and gave her an appreciative hug. Then, he walked back to where he’d been talking and there, sober as a judge, resumed his remarks and his recitation of judicial attributes, to the group at large.
