When Wilco take the stage at Mempho Fest on Sunday, they’ll be returning to a kind of spiritual center for the band. As the band’s multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone reflects, “How can you do what we do and not have a crush on Memphis? Whether you’re pulling from early rock and roll, or from Big Star, or Memphis soul and Stax — whatever it is, there’s gonna be a thread that leads back to Memphis, somehow. I mean the first Wilco record was done at Easley-McCain Studios!”
Wilco’s Mempho appearance will kick off another round of two- to three-week jaunts the band has been making since spring, in an ongoing tour marked by its balance between large halls and smaller rock clubs. “Part of the band’s philosophy is to bring it to the people,” says Sansone. “Just recently we played Red Rocks, and then a week later we played a 1,300 seat rock club in Bozeman, Montana. And that little club show ended up being one of our favorite shows of the year. We try to make it approachable. It’s the nature of our band — we’ve got little pockets all over the place.”
These days, the band will be premiering songs from their latest album, Cruel Country, an album they backed into rather unexpectedly. “As we’ve been working on lots of tracks over the last couple of years, it seemed like we were making two records simultaneously,” Sansone explains. “One batch of songs had a country flavor and was more acoustic, and another batch was more the art pop side of Wilco. We were going to focus more on the art pop, but as we were getting close to our festival we do every two years in North Adams, Massachusetts, the Solid Sound Festival, it occurred to Jeff and to us that we had this country/folky body of work that was not far from being finished, so why not put the finishing touches on it, and offer it to our fans at the festival? Kind of as a gift for coming to the event. But as we started digging into these tracks and putting the finishing touches on them, it became apparent that, ‘Oh, this is our next album!’ This is a significant piece of work for us. So it wasn’t really planned to be the next official Wilco record until just weeks before it was released.”
And as for the live show, Sansone says “we’ve been playing a handful of the new songs in the set. And then a grab bag of stuff over the years. There’s a lot of material to choose from at this point! But we try to represent the different records of the band’s life.”
Pat Sansone (Credit: Sansonica, Inc.)
After their Mempho appearance, the band will make a slight detour: “We’re going to do an afternoon set at the festival,” says Sansone, “and then we’re gonna run over to Crosstown with some guitars and a snare drum and do two or three songs and have a chat on [community radio station] WYXR. I really want to show the rest of the guys what’s happening at Crosstown. I think they’ll be blown away.”
Beyond having his own program on WYXR, 91.7 FM, Sansone has seen Crosstown evolve and blossom since the earliest days of its renovation. “It all started with my friendship with [WYXR executive director] Robby Grant. I was involved in the Mellotron Variations project with him, and spending time at the Crosstown Concourse because of that. And I got to know Winston Eggleston. But I remember before Crosstown was even completed, we were in town for a Wilco show, and Robby picked me up to show me the building as they were developing it. And a couple years later, we performed the Mellotron Variations there. So Robby kept me in the loop as he was developing the ideas for WYXR, and when it became a reality, he asked me if I’d like to do a show, and I said I’d love to. There’s a radio station in Boston that I really love, WUMV, and I turned Robby onto it, and we’d trade other internet radio stuff. So we shared this love of radio as a medium.”
Having a radio show in the Bluff City brings things full circle for Sansone, who’s interest in Memphis far predates Wilco. “I grew up just hours away, in Meridian, Mississippi,” he says, “and I have an aunt and uncle and some cousins in Memphis, so it’s just always been a part of my life. Memphis was the big city. From a very early age, I felt the gravitational musical pull of Memphis. And when I was in my teens, and obsessed with the Beatles, I discovered Big Star and heard those half Southern/half English accents, and realized that this music had been made in Memphis, a place I had actually been to, I was hooked! There was no turning back.”
Wilco will appear at Mempho Fest on Sunday, October 2nd, 4:20 p.m., followed by a live appearance on WYXR 91.7 FM from 7-8 p.m.
Greg Cartwright appears Thursday at Halloran Centre (Photo courtesy Orpheum Theatre Group)
Fair warning: there’s an undeniable bias in my reportage here, being a frequent band mate and collaborator with the subject of the interview below, native Memphian Greg Cartwright. And yet a certain historical imperative compels me to document the details of this songwriter’s process when his work is deemed so notable by critics and fans alike. That became eminently clear this spring, when a song Cartwright co-wrote with the Black Keys, “Wild Child,” topped Billboard’s adult alternative airplay chart. It was a level of success that’s long eluded an artist who’s typically had more critical acclaim than financial windfall. Yet tomorrow, when the Black Keys appear at the Radians Amphitheater at Memphis Botanic Gardens for Mempho Fest, Cartwright will be able to hear the song echoing through the air from his back yard. Will he raise a toast to the Memphis night?
Moreover, this evening, Thursday, September 29th, Cartwright will join Don Bryant and Alicja Trout in the season opener of Mark Edgar Stuart’s Memphis Songwriters Series at the Halloran Centre, with all three artists performing examples of their craft without a band, in the round. At such a moment, how could I resist calling up my old pal Greg to ask him his thoughts on the songwriter’s craft, in all its intricacies and rewards?
Greg Cartwright (Credit: Graham Winchester)
Memphis Flyer:You’ll be appearing with a national treasure, soul singer Don Bryant, on Thursday. How do you relate to his work?
Greg Cartwright: Don’s got an amazing voice and range, and boy that guy can sell a song. It’s amazing! And I love that he and Scott Bomar have this cool relationship, where Scott is Don’s producer and bandleader, and I think that’s such a cool older guy/younger guy relationship. And it’s win/win both ways. Scott’s got great skills, too. And he’s going to be at the event, I think, playing guitar while Don sings his stuff.
Also, I’m a huge Lowman Pauling and “5” Royales fan, so for me, it’s cool to work with somebody who wrote a song for them. It’s as close as I’m ever gonna get to doing anything with somebody who was there when all that magical era of gospel and R&B was happening. And Don’s an amazing songwriter. I love all his songs, from the 50’s on, including the more recent stuff that Scott’s produced. And the Willie Mitchell stuff — all great. I know he’s going to really bring it. I’m a little bit intimidated, to be honest. I don’t know if I can sell a song quite as well as he can.
Don Bryant (Credit: Jacob Blickinstaff)
There’s a certain spirit in that older school of songwriting that you have really zeroed in on and emulated.
Yeah, I really have. A lot of Don’s generation is what inspired me, in a lot of ways, to write in the way that I write. So I take a lot more inspiration from that era of country and rhythm and blues as a songwriter. I’ve always tried, when I have an opportunity to perform with or alongside artists from that generation, because I know there’s something I can learn in person that I can’t glean from a record.
You can kind of see how they embody what they do.
Yeah. Listening to records is great. You can get a lot from that, like you can get a lot from reading a book. But to be able to have a conversation with Hemingway would be a lot different. I can talk to him and understand more where the person is coming from. I always find it interesting to meet performers from that era, because it’s a little more insight into what makes the magic happen.
That era of songwriting has influenced you going back at least as far as the Compulsive Gamblers, and even through your Oblivians work.
You know, Jack [Yarber/Oblivian] and I had already done rock and roll, folk, country, all kinds of R&B and all kinds of other stuff with the Gamblers. So when Eric [Friedl] joined us and we did the Oblivians, it was a pretty late-blooming punk band. We were already adults. It was kind of a fake punk band, is what it was. The idea was, “What is punk music? It’s discontent.” So there were a lot of songs about what you don’t want to do [laughs]. And we took a lot of inspiration from the Ramones. That was Joey’s thing: I don’t wanna do this, I don’t wanna go there, “I’m Against It.” Him telling you what he’s not going to do. And that was an inspiration for the Oblivians. A template, if you will.
You’ve mentioned before that you Oblivians thought of your band as both fun and funny. There was a sense of humor to it.
Yeah, there totally was. It was an opportunity to laugh at life. There are some things in life where you can either laugh or cry. And there’s some very dark material in the Oblivians’ catalog. We took a lot of inspiration from the Fugs, which is a very tongue in cheek critique of society, as well as the Last Poets, also with a heavy critique of society, particularly the racist society in the United States. And you might laugh, and then find yourself going, “God, I shouldn’t laugh at that. That’s horrible!” But it is part of looking at what’s going on around you and trying to find some way to think about it that’s not just sad. But yeah, there’s a lot of dark stuff in the Oblivians. And I’m glad I had a platform to do that stuff when I was younger, because I don’t think I have it in me to laugh at a lot of that stuff at this point in my life.
You’ve talked about how with the last Reigning Sound studio album, you were trying to write in a more positive way.
Yeah, that was a big goal for me; because the pandemic, for a lot of people and a lot of songwriters, was a reset button, where it’s one thing to gripe in songs, or complain, but when you’re faced with some kind of new reality where you don’t even get to be around people, well, you stop complaining and you want to find something to be appreciative about. And that’s a better way of putting it. I was looking to appreciate. There are many things out there that are obstacles, always, but if you’re curious about what is happening around you, and you’re appreciative of the good things that come your way…
For a lot of my life, I thought that the gift I had was that I was very good at emoting whatever pain I was experiencing, in a way that other people seemed to relate to. There are a lot of songwriters like that. They really know how to put that into words, and emote it in a way that elicits a response from other people, where they totally empathize. So a lot of times, I would just be in this kind of trance onstage, sort of crying in public, in a way, and people responded to that. And I can’t say I grew out of it. It wasn’t a natural thing. I would have stayed that way if I hadn’t done a lot of work. But on the back side of that work, I wondered if I could also be just as good at emoting appreciation.
A sense of curiosity is important to that kind of openness, isn’t it?
It really is.
I’ve talked to Don Bryant about this, and also William Bell. Certain writers have this curiosity and this empathy, listening to and absorbing others’ stories. William Bell described sitting in cafes, just people-watching and getting song ideas.
That’s very true a lot of times; it’s so important to be curious, listening to people’s stories, because that’s how you find new subject matter. If you were confined to your personal autobiography, that’s pretty limited. I remember that someone once asked Jack [Oblivian], “Where do you get ideas for your songs?” He was like, “Small talk in bars.” Local gossip! If you keep your ears open, there’s plenty out there to write about. There’s plenty of new ways to frame an age old story, if you’re curious enough to see all the options, all the twists and turns.
You’ve known and worked with Alicja Trout for decades now, haven’t you?
A long time! Yeah, so when Lorette Velvette left the Alluring Strange, Randy Reinke took her place. And then I took Randy’s place, and played with them for a couple years. Then I started the Oblivians and started to get busy with that, and Alicja Trout was learning guitar, and it was my job to teach her the Alluring Strange songs, so she could take my place. And that’s how we got to know each other: teaching her songs for Misty White’s band. So there you go, Misty White is the Kevin Bacon of Memphis! [laughs]
Alicja was just learning guitar, and it’s amazing that she’s come so far. It wasn’t that much later, maybe five years or so, that she was doing her own stuff and playing with Jay [Reatard]. But even before she played with Jay, she had a band called Girls on Fire, and that was her and Claudine, who played guitar with Tav [Falco]. They had a band together. And boy, when I saw them for the first time, I called Larry Hardy at In The Red the next day and said, “I found a band I want to record, send me some money!” But before I could make it happen, they broke up. [laughs].
And even at that time, I thought, “Wow, she has really come a long way.” And it really amazed me. She had surpassed me as a guitar player, as far as what she could do as a lead guitarist. Because I’m very limited. For me, I’m always accompanying myself so I can perform a song. I’m not a great lead player. I enjoy the challenge, but I would never say I’m very good at it. But there are just some people that really take to something. They’re really passionate about it, and just want to do it, so I guess she must have wanted it. It didn’t take her very long to become a very good guitar player.
You and Alicja both have one foot in the punk world, the heavier rock world…
Aggression.
Yeah! But you both also step back and write these very delicate songs. Like Alicja’s beautiful “Howlin'” on the album of the same name; it’s mostly just her vocals and quiet electric guitar.
I like a bigger palette, and I think she does, too. As for me, I’m so in love with songwriting. It’s been such a helpful tool for me in my life, in so many ways, to process things, that the bigger palette I have, the better I can express myself. And I’m not very concerned with commercial success. So that gives me even less limitations. I think a lot of artists become very limited stylistically because they’re trying to define themselves as a certain kind of performer, or a certain kind of artist. And there’s no shame in that, but you have to have one eye on the marketplace to do that.
The Black Keys appear at Mempho Fest on Friday, September 30. (Credit: Jim Herrington)
How did your collaboration with the Black Keys come about?
I met them a long time ago, probably about 15 years ago. They were traveling with The Hentchmen from Detroit. So when the Hentchmen played Asheville, they told me Dan Auerbach was a huge fan and wanted to meet me. So Esther and I went to the show and afterwards we had an impromptu jam session, with myself, the Black Keys, and the Hentchmen, and we had a great time and got to be pretty friendly. And I hesitate to say this, but he basically said to me how inspiring he found my work. And that’s a massive compliment. Whether it’s the Hives or the Black Keys or whoever — people who’ve actually had success — for them to say to me, “Wow, you’re a huge inspiration to me, a lot of my art comes from emulating some of the things I hear in your music.”
But it’s an even bigger compliment when someone gets to a successful point in their career, and they say “Hey, would you like to come help me work on these productions and songs?” Dan thought enough of my songwriting that he not only wanted it in the Black Keys, but wanted me to help him with other artists he was working with. I really appreciated that. It helped me in so many ways. It gave me a new income stream, just to have a song credit on a Black Keys record is no small thing, especially if it’s a hit. And “Wild Child” was a hit. The synch license requests are still coming in daily.
But also, I think it opened me up to the idea of collaboration in a way that I had not allowed myself before. So around the beginning of the pandemic, I said I tried to focus more on appreciation, and that was a huge moment of growth. But then doing all these co-writing sessions with Dan also represented a lot of growth for me.
Prior to that, being in so many rock bands … When you’re in a band together, you spend too much time together, and eventually some things end acrimoniously. It was definitely that way for me. Prior to the Reigning Sound, the Oblivians spent too much time together and started to get on each other’s nerves. Then Jack and I went back to the Gamblers for a while, and we thought we could do that, but we quickly found out that we still, underneath it all, needed to get away from each other.
The now-defunct Reigning Sound in 2003 (cover photo by Dan Ball)
So when I started the Reigning Sound, my idea was that I would start a band where I would be the benevolent dictator, and everybody would have to do what I said. And I would be good to everybody, I would pay everybody fairly and be equal, but it would just be my songs and the covers I picked. I had never been the boss before, but at that point in my life, I needed that level of total control. Because I didn’t trust people. I had been burnt, I had had relationships that crumbled. And this kind of happens in romantic relationships, too, where you get to the point where you think, “I just need to be in control. I can’t relinquish any control because I might get hurt”. If you can’t be vulnerable, being in control is kind of the obvious option. And luckily I met you and Greg [Roberson] and Jeremy [Scott], and you guys were cool with that. You’re all great songwriters, so to find a bunch of talented people who understand music and get where you’re coming from, who aren’t going to be angry that you don’t want to consider their songs, that’s tricky. And for that same reason, it can’t last forever.
And I came to a point where, when I wrote this last record [A Little More Time with Reigning Sound], I thought, this is a much more positive side of my songwriting, but it’s also the last great burst, for a while, of me needing to have a band where it’s just me and my vision all the time. Now what I really want is to learn how to be vulnerable with other people, and to open up to other people’s ideas. Right now, I really want to do that. You have to tread lightly, and pick people that you trust. You have to pick people that feel safe, and then you can be vulnerable, and then you can be playful.
Did your collaboration with Dan Auerbach begin during the pandemic?
It did. His engineer Alan called and said, “Dan would really like you to come and write. Are you available these days?” So I went, and I had no idea what we would be doing, or who I’d be writing with or for. I assumed it was Dan; I thought maybe it was a solo record or something.
So I got there, and Dan said, this guy Marcus King is going to be here in a half hour and we’re going to write. And it kind of scared me! But as soon as Marcus got there, he was so friendly and open and funny that we had a great time. We got right to it and had four songs in a day. And a little while later, Dan called me back to work with another guy he’d signed, Early James. And we ended up doing two writing sessions together.
And after that, Dan said, ‘I’ve got another one.’ I asked him who it would be with, and he said, ‘It’s the Black Keys.’ [laughs]. So I went and we talked about some song ideas. He played me some jams that he and Pat [Carney] had recorded, with some hooks and stuff. So I went home, sat with them for a couple ideas, thought about lyric ideas, song ideas, chord changes that might be beneficial to the riffs that they had. And I went back and we sat around that day and wrote the rest of the songs. And I wasn’t sure what was going to happen at that point, but they just walked into the other room immediately and started recording. It was instantaneous. They recorded them just as we had worked it out together, then Dan put down a vocal, and that was it, we were done.
I’ve never experienced anything like that in my life! Usually you write a song and there’s weeks or months in between that moment of inspiration and when it gets laid down on tape. But Dan loves the idea of catching something when it’s fresh. There’s some kind of magic there that you might lose if you continue to play and record it. And I think that’s what makes the Black Keys work, especially when you listen back to their earliest stuff, that’s kind of raw and live, like the early Oblivians stuff. There’s not a lot of production going on, and not a lot of adjusting it after the fact. It is what it is.
It also speaks to how carefully you crafted it right out of the gate.
Right, you did all your thinking already. And I think Dan’s very much like the early Billy Sherrill and Rick Hall and all those people. They’re his heroes. And back in their heyday, pre-production was everything, because you couldn’t do much once it was on the tape. It was so limited, track-wise. So pre-production was everything. Where are the mics gonna go? Are you gonna play loud or soft? How are you going to sing it? Everything had to be figured out before the tape rolled. And then you got what you got. And I think Dan appreciates that way of thinking. He tracks live to one inch 8-track, the same as the last few records I’ve made. I’m enamored with it as well. I love the idea of planning everything out on the front and then just recording it.
With something like “Wild Child,” some people may not associate itwith ‘great songwriting,’ because it’s more primitive. It’s not, say, Leonard Cohen-style lyrics or whatever, but a lot of craftsmanship really goes into riff-oriented songs as well, doesn’t it?
Yeah. The song is two chords. It’s about as simple as a song can be. To me, that requires even more work. How do you build all these dynamics and cliffhangers and hooks and everything if it’s just the same two chords over and over? So it’s almost more challenging to make a really fun ride out of those two and half minutes. And I think that’s how people used to work back in the day. Now artists and musicians have the option of, “Well, you can lay down the basic track and continue to tweak it and add things and take things away, ad nauseam.” That is definitely a way to build a song. But it doesn’t really speak to me. And also, it’s exhausting. Because you’re never really sure when you’re done. If you’re doing all this stuff after you record it, editing and stuff, where do you stop? The way people used to do it, when you stopped was when it was recorded, and then you just mixed it.
It must have been very gratifying to go through that process in a day ortwo, and have one of those songs become a hit.
Yeah, it’s been a real experience, to say the least. I knew the date it was coming out, and I was really anticipating it, almost voyeuristically, like, “Boy, nobody knows I’m part of this, and I get to just watch it all happen.” But then it came out and all this press came out, and there was my name in every interview, talking about the process and my songwriting. So I felt a little bit vulnerable in a way I wasn’t anticipating, which was a little scary. I thought I was just gonna be a name in a credit on a record label. I didn’t think they’d actually talk about me. But I was also really appreciative of that, once I became comfortable with it. They were trying to tell the world I’m a good songwriter. What a nice thing to do.
I always enjoyed the feeling of sitting in the audience at a Big Ass Truck show, say, watching my songs be performed by others.
I know what you mean. There is that feeling of like, “This will stand!” This will stand on its own. I don’t have to be there animating it. It’s not me, it’s the song. And that is a great, great feeling. You’ve built something that will last, and that other people can inhabit. People will empathize so much with the lyric that they want to deliver it themselves.
Tennessee House Republicans sent a letter Wednesday to Vanderbilt hospital urging it to immediately stop gender transitioning surgeries on minors.
Sixty-two members of the House Republican Caucus signed the request in the wake of social media videos purportedly showing a physician calling the surgeries a “huge money maker” because of the number of follow-up visits required.
State Rep. Jason Zachary, a Knoxville Republican who wrote the letter, details “serious ethical concerns” about procedures Vanderbilt’s Pediatric Transgender Clinic is allegedly performing on minors, in addition to claims the hospital could be discriminating against employees who refuse to participate in the surgeries.
Zachary’s letter says he and his colleagues are “alarmed” by a Daily Wire report about “surgical mutilations” of minors and calls the clinic’s practices “nothing less than abuse.”
“While those 18-years and older are recognized as legal adults and free to make decisions in their best interests, it is an egregious error of judgment that an institution as highly respected as Vanderbilt would condone (and promote) harmful and irreversible procedures for minor children in the name of profit,” Zachary’s letter says.
The letter also requests Vanderbilt hospital, Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine, School of Nursing and affiliates to “honor” conscientious objectors whose religious beliefs prohibit their participation in certain procedures.
The letter demands a response from the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Board of Directors within 10 days of receiving the letter and says that will determine what action the Legislature takes when it convenes in January.
Asked about the letter Wednesday, Vanderbilt University Medical Center referred questions to its statement after the Twitter videos were posted last week, saying the media posts “misrepresent facts” about the care it provides to transgender patients.
The hospital noted it provides care to all adolescents “in compliance with state law and in line with professional proactive standards and guidance established by medical specialty societies,” including requiring parental consent to treat minors for issues related to transgender care.
In the videos taken from 2018 and 2020, Vanderbilt physician Dr. Shayne Taylor calls gender transition surgery “a big money maker” but does not refer to children.
Another video shows a Vanderbilt plastic surgeon discussing guidelines doctors must follow before doing “top surgeries,” or double mastectomies, on transgender patients. Those include a letter documenting persistent gender dysphoria from a licensed mental health provider. Patients who are 16 and 17 who’ve been on testosterone and have parental permission can qualify, the doctor said.
A state law passed in 2021 prohibits hormone therapies – such as puberty blockers – for prepubescent patients, a practice physicians told lawmakers at the time was not part of their standard of care.
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.
A Drag March is planned for Friday evening for the “horrible mishandling” of the recent drag event at MoSH.
Event organizers canceled a drag show there last Friday after a group of Proud Boys arrived armed to protest the event. Kevin Thompson, executive director of MoSH, told WMCTV that the museum is “fine with protesters” but “not armed militia” with “military-grade weapons.”
In response, a group called Memphis TransLove has planned a march for Friday, September 30th at 5:30 p.m. The march will roll from the metal statue at the corner of Cooper and Madison in Overton Square to the gay pride rainbow crosswalk at the corner of Cooper and Young. A rally will follow the march featuring speeches from community leaders in the First Congo parking lot.
Memphis TransLove says the event is “in direct response to the horrible mishandling of the safety of the children and adults at MoSH’s drag event.”
“We will be loudly expressing that people that intimidate us with guns and violence are not protesters but terrorists,” reads a statement form the group. “We will be expressing that our community deserves to be protected and allowed to express our queerness without fear of violence.
“This march will be a spectacular display of color, glamour, and beautiful queerness. We will be taking over the streets and taking back our safety!
“We stand strong as queer people and refuse to be forced to only express ourselves in spaces deemed ‘gay.’”
Park bench at Cancer Survivor's Park. (Credit: Memphis Flyer)
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s office says that it will seek public input concerning renovations to Audubon Park, after several complaints from neighbors.
The $8 million project was recently announced by Memphis Parks, and will include a new playground, pavilion, and golf course, according to a post on the Memphis Parks Facebook page.
The post also states that Memphis City Council approved the budget, and Strickland signed off on it. The renovation was part of Strickland’s 2022 budget proposal for $95 million in capital improvements that also promised a new Lester Community Center and a new Mt. Moriah police precinct.
According to Angela Link, leader of a group called “Saving Audubon Park,” the Memphis Parks department released design renderings of the proposed Links at Audubon. She says that these renderings failed to acknowledge that the renovations will eliminate public use of green spaces by the lake at Audubon Park.
Several citizens have voiced their concerns regarding these renovations, with many criticizing the lack of transparency by Strickland. A new website, savingaudubonpark.org, states that citizens found out about these plans through other media outlets.
“Despite the mayor’s suggestion that he wants transparency in his administration, there have been no public meetings to discuss the plan or get feedback from the people who currently use this area, the taxpayers of Memphis,” the website says.
The Flyer reached out to the mayor’s office regarding these concerns, and they released the following statement.
“The golf course design portion of Audubon Park in question has yet to be finalized,” reads the statement. “Greenspace near the lake will be available for use by the public. Memphis Parks will be seeking public input in an upcoming community engagement forum.”
Link agrees the course needs a renovation, but there “is no need to expand the course at the expense of all the greenspace.”
“This greenspace and lake area is used by picnickers, walkers, dog walkers, teens playing hacky sack, families flying kites, and feeding the ducks, people just eating their lunch looking at the lake and all the rest people who are seeking a quiet calm refuge to just enjoy nature,” Link says. “If this plan moves forward, there will be nowhere in East Memphis for all these people to go to enjoy the outdoors by a lake.”
On Tuesday, September 27, citizens Laine Agee and Cathy Minch set up a table at Cancer Survivor’s Park to encourage parkgoers and visitors to sign a “Save The Park,” petition, in hopes of reaching 150 signatures. According to Minch, an employee with Memphis Parks informed her that if they received 150 signatures, a meeting would be set up to discuss concerns.
The Flyer reached out to Memphis Parks but has not yet not received a response.
Minch says that she recently went to a groundbreaking ceremony for the new pavilion and playground at Audubon Park. She initially thought this ceremony was for the golf course.
“There were about 25 people down there, and Mayor Strickland was at the podium, and he had this big mound of dirt behind him with shovels stuck in them, a big [public relations] opportunity for him,” Minch says. “While they were filming him talking, I held my sign up behind him. One of them said ‘sneaky deals,’ and the other one said ‘don’t tell the public.’ I held both of those up and people started coming from both ends.”
Minch says that they threatened to call the police if she didn’t stop, but she didn’t care. It was at this moment that she was approached by an employee and was able to receive pertinent contact information.
“It got their attention,” Minch says. “I consider this a success.”
Quark Theatre’s show opening this weekend isn’t exactly opening this week. It opened a while back but has been on something of a hiatus. For two and a half years.
The show — what happens to the hope at the end of the evening — had its Memphis debut in March of 2020. It was performed twice before Covid-19 shut it down.
“We thought we’d be back to finish the run in two or three months,” said Tony Isbell, director of the production and a founder of Quark. “Well, two or three months turned into almost two and a half years, but here we are, we are finishing the run.”
The pandemic was an effective crash course in the virtues of patience. Quark, being small and able to quickly adapt, bided its time until it could get back to its mission of doing “small shows about big ideas.”
“We try to produce shows that no other theater in Memphis would produce,” Isbell said. “Not because they’re bad shows, but because people maybe haven’t heard of them or they could not guarantee that they would be able to get enough of an audience to make a profit. Quark doesn’t have to worry about that.”
Isbell got to do this unconventional show in an unconventional way.
“I found the playwright’s email address,” he said. “I emailed him and said, ‘Do you ever license your shows for other people to do?’ He said yes and sent me the script, and I said that we wanted to do it.”
There are actually two playwrights. Isbell had communicated with Tim Crouch, who has had a long involvement with the other writer, Andy Smith.
“Smith writes very kind of cerebral, intellectual, presentational plays where he talks directly to the audience and he invites them to think about what theater is and how it can affect the lives of people who see it,” Isbell said. “Crouch’s plays are more about how people can become involved in the theatrical process.”
The two characters in the play reflect the two playwrights and their approaches. Marques Brown plays Andy and Isbell’s character is known only as Friend. And the plot is pretty simple, dealing with two old friends who haven’t seen each other in a few years.
“They reunite and they find out that each of them has gone in different directions, and neither of them could have expected what the other one is doing,” Isbell said.
But don’t be fooled by that somewhat conventional description.
“The thing that I found really interesting about it was that it’s also about two different styles of theater,” Isbell said. “Andy is a character based on a real person. He sits, literally sits, on a stool on one side of the stage. He reads all of his lines from the script — he doesn’t act them in the traditional sense. My character comes into this world and wants to have what we consider a ‘realistic’ encounter. As the play goes on, my character says several times, ‘Come join me. Come over here, be with me.’ And Andy’s character keeps saying, ‘I’m fine. I don’t want to come over there. I don’t want to get involved.’ It leads to whole lot of humor because there are these clashes between these two different kinds of theater, the kind of abstract intellectual presentational and the very emotional, active kind of wound-up theater.”
The show, Isbell said, is funny, very poignant, and kind of sad.
“It’s like many Quark shows,” he says. “We want people to come and be entertained. We also want them to think about what they’ve seen and think about the ideas in each show that we do.”
In August, Quark came back on the scene with a remount of its 2019 production of Wakey, Wakey with Adam Remsen. That recent production, as well as this one of what happens, are on the stage at Germantown Community Theatre. But Quark’s usual home is TheatreSouth at the First Congo Church and it will stage two more shows there this season, one in January and another in April.
Performances of what happens to the hope at the end of the evening are September 29th and 30th, October 1stand 2nd; and then the following week on October 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th. The 6 p.m. performance on October 9th is pay what you can. Tickets are available at quarktheatre.com.
This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for its newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
Most Tennesseans who wrote the state about three proposed charter schools linked to Michigan’s Hillsdale College said they oppose the applications from the charter network, American Classical Education.
Statewide, more than 70 percent of the public commenters wrote that they supported local school boards that voted to deny the network’s applications in Madison, Montgomery, and Rutherford counties. And many said any decision by a state panel to overrule those decisions would amount to government overreach.
The written feedback from nearly 400 Tennesseans, analyzed by Chalkbeat, ran counter to the positions of most of the 39 people who spoke during last week’s time-limited public hearings held in each of the three affected school districts. The in-person speaking slots were filled on a first come, first serve basis, with American Classical supporters signing up for most of them and opponents complaining that the process was skewed toward approving their applications.
In Rutherford County, where all 13 commenters at a Sept. 14 hearing in Murfreesboro spoke in favor of the network’s charter proposal, people who submitted written comments opposed the school by a margin of more than 4 to 1.
The margins were much tighter in Jackson-Madison County, and tighter still in Clarksville-Montgomery County.
Ultimately, all feedback submitted in each district will be considered when the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission votes Oct. 5 whether to approve each American Classical application on appeal, said Tess Stovall, the panel’s executive director.
“We weigh all comments the same, oral or written,” Stovall told reporters after the Rutherford County hearing. Some people “can’t necessarily get here in person, so that’s why we offer multiple avenues.”
Lee as well as Hillsdale College have been under sharp attack across Tennessee since June when a leaked video showed the governor sitting quietly at a private reception in Franklin, south of Nashville, while Hillsdale President Larry Arnn declared that teachers are “trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.” Lee has refused to disavow Arnn’s comments or end any charter “partnership” with the small conservative Christian college in south central Michigan.
The college’s charter spinoff also has been criticized for its approach to civics education and its 1776 curriculum, which glorifies the nation’s founders and downplays America’s role in slavery.
Both issues were raised by numerous Tennesseans who wrote the commission during the week after a public hearing in their district.
Arnn “demonstrated utter disrespect for educators and an arrogant ignorance regarding the craft of teaching and learning,” said Rebecca Oldham, a parent who is an assistant professor of child development and family studies at Middle Tennessee State University.
“I do not support an establishment in Murfreesboro that collaborates with him or his college, nor utilizes his propaganda that masquerades as ‘curriculum,’” Oldham continued.
Patricia Craig, who identified herself as a concerned citizen of Madison County and an 85-year-old student of history, worried about Hillsdale’s selective view of events that are presented through an ideological lens instead of a full telling of history based on the facts.
“This is a veiled attempt to present curriculum that further crushes poorer children (and) children of color and promotes only one world view,” Craig wrote.
Many supporters, meanwhile, praised the “classical” school model that focuses on math, science, literature, and history, plus the study of Latin, music, and the arts. American Classical also promises instruction on the principles of moral character and civic virtue.
“Why not give this program a try?” wrote Peg Ramsay from Jackson. “Madison County has gone thru several Superintendents with little achievement in academic success.”
“I think a classical academy would make our community a better place to live and to raise a family,” said Stuart Leach, a Rutherford County parent and teacher. “While not perfect, our history is full of inspiring men and women to learn from.”
Other supporters argued the charter network’s schools would improve public education by increasing competition and adding classroom seats to overcrowded districts. But most just wanted more public education choices for families.
“The Jackson-Madison area desperately needs another educational option, especially for lower income students, since the only other options are expensive private schools or homeschooling, which may also be cost prohibitive,” wrote Trudy Abel, a retired university professor.
Opponents argued that local education control is a bigger issue.
All three locally elected school boards voted overwhelmingly to reject the Hillsdale group’s applications.
“The issue concerning a charter school within Rutherford County is not about school choice but rather lack of ownership of our schools,” said Laura Roland, a teacher at Central Magnet School. “As a teacher of 20 years, I find it disturbing that those who are not in the trenches make assumptions about what is actually occurring in our schools.”
Others worried that public charter schools — which are privately operated and taxpayer-funded — divert money from traditional public schools. And many noted that none of American Classical’s applications included a concrete plan for serving students with disabilities.
“Instead of a charter school to help certain children, use that money to go into the public schools you already have to benefit ALL children,” wrote Lindsey White, also of Rutherford County.
The commission’s staff are using the same state-developed scoring criteria as the districts used to decide whether the applications meet Tennessee’s standards for academics, operations, and finances, plus whether the proposals are in the best interests of students, their school district, and their community. Ascertaining the level of local public support is a part of that process.
Best Culture Tour: The American Dream Safari (Photo: Courtesy Tad Pierson)
Best Culture Tour
You’ve probably seen Tad Pierson’s 1955 beige Cadillac cruising around town. It’s quite likely he’s giving some lucky tourists a personalized tour of Memphis’ music and civil rights landmarks.
“It’s the same year Cadillac that Elvis bought his mama,” says Pierson. “Only hers was pink.” Pierson prides himself on being able to captivate visitors with his knowledge of local culture, from obscure juke joints to Graceland. “I call it ‘anthro-tourism,’” he explains. “It’s what Memphis needs more of. You show off the local culture and it brings money into the local culture at the same time.”
Elvis Costello, Katie Couric, Rufus Thomas, Wilson Pickett, and Ken Burns are just a few of the notable clients that have ridden in the back seat of Pierson’s beautifully restored Caddy since he began his tour business in 1995. But, Pierson, whom Smithsonian Magazine once called “a straw-hatted blues aficionado,” says, “My favorite customers are the ones who’ve been saving to come to Memphis and take part in The American Dream Safari. They appreciate the deeper and more personal experience that we can offer.” — Bruce VanWyngarden
The American Dream Safari, tad@americandreamsafari.com, (901) 527-8870
Best Close Thing: JB Smiley Jr. (Photo: City of Memphis)
Best Close Thing
Dr. Jason Martin, a Nashville physician, beat Memphis City Council member JB Smiley Jr. for the Democratic primary for the upcoming governor’s election. While that all seems very Memphis/Nashville, Martin won by fewer than 1,500 votes. 1,500. With this, Smiley — and Memphis — showed some statewide clout. — Toby Sells
Best Porn Preference
When Tennesseans headed to Pornhub last year, they wanted to see “interracial” videos. That’s according to the website’s annual report. The preference gives hope, in a weird way, that maybe our private desires could lead to more public tolerances. It’s a stretch, but a boy can dream. — TS
Best Sea Change
Our city’s problems seem so unbeatable. But a group of dedicated leaders banded together with county officials to reform our money bail system. The groups had to threaten to sue, of course. But the sea change is set in motion and, by next year, pretrial release or detention will be based on fairness, thoughtful judgment, and be more in line with the state constitution. — TS
Best Evolution
For 15 years, Black Lodge Video was a staple on Cooper. The last surviving video store in Memphis went dark in 2014 and began searching for a new home. Now, in their huge space on Cleveland in Crosstown, the Lodge not only offers one of the biggest video collections in the world — 35,000 titles strong — they also have a growing list of video and console games, as well as a newly opened kitchen and bar. The variety of events hosted on their stage, from film screenings to drag shows to armored medieval combat matches, is unequaled in the city. — Chris McCoy
Best Patch-Up
Memphis is hard on auto glass. This is a place where the “road debris” flying at your windscreen can range from gravel to large chunks of other automobiles. When the crack in your windshield finally reaches from one side to the other, Jack Morris Auto Glass will fix you up cleanly and quickly. — CM
Best Fan Group
American sports fans are so boring. Yelling things like “de-FENSE” over and over again at games. Not so with soccer fans, however. Take Memphis’ Bluff City Mafia, the supporters group for 901 FC, who march into the stadium, drums a-drummin, and come up with customized chants and songs for the team and individual players. Brilliant stuff. — Samuel X. Cicci
“Best” Italian Fusion Dish (Photo: WREG News Channel 3 Twitter)
“Best” Italian Fusion Dish
Can I interest you in some roadside ravioli? Some interstate al dente? I don’t know what to call this dish exactly, but Memphis made national headlines when an 18-wheeler crashed and spilled Bertolli Alfredo sauce all over I-55, and Memphians were left eating plain fettuccine noodles. Mamma mia! — SXC
(Who are the) Best Bar Regulars
On any given weekday, a steadfast group of regulars meets at RP Tracks by 3:30 p.m. sharp to test their wits at Jeopardy. It’s a long-standing ritual of sorts for both customers and employees — some of whom should actually take the stage on the show (looking at you, Paul!). Fran, Shelley, Rachel, Ross, Amanda, Ana, Tory, and others whose names I’m surely forgetting (hey, I’m not the one who’s good at retaining information, as evidenced by my poor trivia skills) gather to flex their knowledge and have a beer with friends — or serve them — while they’re at it. I’d wager it all on a Daily Double to say they’re the coolest crew in town. Cheers! — Shara Clark
Best Food Court Staple
Sometimes I make a special trip to the mall solely to “try chicken.” Those words, which led an unassuming young Shara straight up to China Master to nibble on a hot piece of honey chicken skewered on a toothpick, are now synonymous with the Oak Court Mall. I’m not sure how they do it, but the delectable bits of chicken are super crispy on the outside, juicy inside, and have just the right level of sweetness. Add a couple sides (lo mein and mixed veggies for me), and you’ve got a heaping plate of some of the best and most affordable fare in the city — from a food court! — SC
Playing the white tees (Photo: Agaliza | Dreamstime.com)
I used to play golf with a regular foursome almost every weekend at Galloway. However, due to injuries, age, and a general lack of desire on our parts to wallow in the Memphis summer heat for four hours, we fell out of the habit. As a result, my clubs have been sitting in my garage all summer, gathering dust.
But last week, when a friend asked me to join a foursome to play nine late-afternoon holes at Mirimichi, the splendid course near Millington that was once owned by Justin Timberlake, I couldn’t resist. I pulled out my clubs and shoes and hosed off the dust — in the process, upsetting a gecko that had taken up residence in my left golf shoe. I drove out to Mirimichi well before our tee time, so I could hit some balls on the practice range. After 15 minutes of hacking, my creaky body finally began finding its way into some semblance of my old swing. This could be ugly, I thought.
It helped that we played from the “old man” white tees, something we used to scoff about, but I was happy to take any advantage offered. A fine time was had by all, and I hit enough decent shots to keep from getting too discouraged — and even made a couple of pars.
At the end of the round, we pulled our carts up to an outdoor bar area for a beer. An older man and his son arrived soon thereafter, and we chatted amiably for a couple minutes about general things — the weather, the course, etc. After a bit, the son said he had to go, but the older fellow (let’s call him Bill) said he was going to hang around a while. “I love you,” they said to each other, as the son walked away.
Bill told us that he didn’t play much anymore and that he just enjoyed riding around the course with his son. Then the conversation took an unexpected turn. Bill let us know that he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer and was going regularly to MD Anderson Hospital for treatment. I’m no doctor but I know that prognosis is not a good one. We all offered our sincere wishes for good luck in dealing with his condition, but Bill casually moved on to other subjects: Where do you fellas live? What do you do for a living? That kind of stuff. Then, somehow, the conversation got around to how generally “crazy” things were in the country today, and I started to get a little nervous.
This is precarious conversational turf among strangers these days. You never know who’s going to pull a MAGA rant out of their butts. In fact, earlier in the week, I’d been subjected to a surprise diatribe about how the war in Ukraine was “fake” and was being promoted by the Democrats to help President Biden. This cockamamie spiel, I might add, came from a man whose name every Memphian would recognize. The crazy can come from anywhere, and I certainly had no interest in getting into a political argument with a possibly dying stranger at a golf course bar.
But one of my friends (thanks, Sam) said something to the effect of, “Well, Bruce writes about that stuff every week for the Flyer, you should ask him what he thinks.” I was stuck. And Bill didn’t mess around. “You write for the Flyer?” he asked. “Well, what do you think about Trump?”
I took a sip of my beer and said: “Well, I think he’s a crook and a conman. And I think it’s obvious he stole top-secret government documents and he should be prosecuted for a federal crime, like anyone else would be.”
There was a brief pause, then Bill said, “My son works over there at the naval base in Millington, so I asked him what would happen if he took any documents home. He said they’d arrest him so fast he wouldn’t know what hit him.”
“Well, I think that’s what should happen to anybody who does that,” I said.
Bill didn’t say anything, but he nodded his head a little. I got the feeling he’d been a Trump supporter, but that we were now playing from the same tees.
Mia Goth executes a spellbinding performance as Pearl in this prequel.
What makes a person into a monster? Is it a response to a life of trauma and bad breaks, or were they born that way? Or is it a little bit of both?
In the fall of 1918, Adolf Hitler had been on the front lines of World War I for four years. He was sitting in a field hospital, where he was recovering from a mustard gas attack that left him temporarily blinded. When he heard the news that Germany had surrendered, he went blind again. Hitler never got over the emotional trauma of his army’s defeat on the battlefield, and the narrative that the Jews, the Marxists, and the racially impure had “stabbed Germany in the back” formed the core of Nazism.
One factor in Germany’s defeat that perhaps didn’t occur to Hitler was that 900,000 of their soldiers caught the flu. The 1918 flu pandemic started at an Army base in Kansas and was unwittingly shipped to warring Europe by American troop transports, where it spread like wildfire in the cramped, unsanitary trenches. When director Ti West’s new film Pearl opens, the rural Texas community where the title character, played by Mia Goth, lives is struggling to keep going as the second wave of the 1918 flu pandemic sweeps over them.
Pearl lives on a farm that will be familiar to those who have seen X, the slasher homage West and Goth released earlier this year. She lives with her mother (Tandi Wright), a German immigrant who is none too happy about the way the war is going, and father (Matthew Sunderland), who is paralyzed and completely dependent on his family. Though the carefully tended farm looks idyllic from the outside, the dynamic between Pearl and her stern, demanding mother is increasingly toxic. Pearl’s husband Howard (Alistair Sewell) is in Europe fighting with the Allied Expeditionary Force, and she’s chafing under the demands of farm life and caring for her invalid father. Pearl’s only escapes are the fleeting trips to the local movie theater, where she sees Thea Bera, film’s first sex symbol, as Cleopatra. It’s the dancing chorus girls in a “soundie” (short films played between features that were the precursors to modern music videos) called “Palace Follies” that really catch her eye. She plays out her fantasies of dance and fame before a captive audience of cows and sheep in the farm’s little barn, away from the disapproving eyes of her mother.
Maybe it’s the little hits of morphine she skims off the top of her daddy’s medicine, but Pearl doesn’t feel like other people, and the pandemic-induced isolation hasn’t done her state of mind any good. The only person who seems to understand her is the theater projectionist (David Corenswet), a self-described “bohemian” type who is pretty easy on the eyes. Pearl struggles with unfamiliar feelings of lust — she’s already married, after all — but when he offers to take her away to Europe, where they can rake in the cash making stag films, she falls for him. When her sister-in-law Mitsy (Emma Jenkins-Purro) tells her of a dance audition at the local church for a touring vaudeville show, it sets her on a collision course with her family obligations that will end well for no one.
If you’ve seen X, you know that Pearl never does escape that farm. She’s too dangerous to walk among the normals, and she knows it. This prequel is all about the creeping revelations of her murderous nature, and the titanic failures of nurture that set her on a path to destruction. Goth and West came up with the idea for Pearl while devising a backstory for the villain in first film, and dove right into Pearl once A24 saw the early cuts of X and immediately green lit the prequel. Her final monologue, in which she confesses everything that’s been going on in her mind to a horrified Mitsy, is an instant classic, but she’s spellbinding in every frame of this film. West shoots Pearl like it’s a Douglas Sirk technicolor melodrama — think Imitation of Life, with more beheadings. There’s another Goth/West film in production, which finishes the story of Maxine, Goth’s porn star character in X. Based on Pearl, all I have to say is, shut up and take my money.
