Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-Germantown (Photo: John Partipilo)
Brian Kelsey changes his plea.
Ten months after calling the feds’ case against him a “witch hunt,” outgoing state Sen. Brian Kelsey is set to plead guilty to federal campaign finance violations, according to a court filing.
Kelsey’s attorneys, Paul Bruno and Jerry Martin, filed documents in federal court Thursday requesting a hearing to change his not guilty plea.
The Germantown Republican is charged with funneling more than $90,000 from his state account to his failed 2016 congressional campaign through two political actions committees and then to the American Conservative Union, which bought independent radio/digital ads supporting his run for office.
The request for a plea change comes a week after Kelsey’s co-defendant, Joshua Smith, pleaded guilty to one charge in the case. Smith’s sentencing is set for June 2023.
Federal prosecutors say Kelsey gave a $103,000 check six years ago to Smith, proprietor of The Standard Club, a downtown restaurant that catered to Republican lawmakers. The money was filtered through The Standard Club PAC and Citizens 4 Ethics in Government PAC to the American Conservative Union, which bought the advertising shortly before Kelsey finished fourth in the race, according to the indictment.
In an impassioned statement on the Senate floor this year, Kelsey blamed the indictment on political divisiveness and the Biden Administration, even though the investigation started during the Donald Trump presidency.
Kelsey also pinpointed former friend, ex-state Rep. Jeremy Durham, for talking to federal prosecutors in exchange for immunity. The Tennessee Lookout obtained a copy of Durham’s subpoena, which required him to provide copies of all documents and records related to Kelsey, Kelsey’s wife, Amanda Bunning, who worked for the American Conservative Union at the time, Jessica Durham, Josh Smith, Andrew “Andy” Miller, Zach Crandell, Matt Schlapp of the American Conservative Union, and several other people and organizations believed to be connected to the scheme.
Durham, an unindicted co-conspirator, also was required to turn in all records related to the transfer of funds between several entities and the Standard Club PAC.
Bunning, who later married Kelsey, is listed in the indictment as an individual who received information from the senator and passed it on to others who handled the ACU’s advertising.
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.
Sam Now won the Audience Award for Best Poster at the 2022 Indie Memphis Film Festival.
The 25th annual Indie Memphis Film Festival wrapped on Monday night with Shaft. The juries’ decisions were announced at a raucous awards ceremony on Saturday night, but it’s taken until now to tabulate the results for the Audience Awards, which are determined by votes from ticket buyers, who are asked to assign each film a letter grade of A through F.
Audience and jury opinions lined up this year for three films which swept both awards. Our Father, The Devil by director Ellie Fombi won both of the Narrative Feature awards, and currently holds the coveted 100 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Here’s a sample:
Kumina Queen by director Nyasha Laing similarly repeated its jury win in the Sounds category.
In the Hometowner categories, director Lauren Ready repeated in Documentary Shorts with “What We Will Never Know.” This is Ready’s fourth Indie Memphis trophy for documentaries, making her one of the most decorated filmmakers in the festival’s 25-year history.
The National Documentary Feature Audience Award went to Butterfly In The Sky, the story of the beloved PBS show Reading Rainbow by directors Brett Whitcomb and Bradford Thomason.
From the exceptionally crowded nine-film field of Hometowner features, audiences voted for Show Business is My Life — But I Can’t Prove It, director G.B. Shannon’s biography of legendary comedian Gary Mule Deer. The crowd-pleasing film about the crowd-pleasing funny man features appearances from comedy luminaries such as David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, and Steve Martin, and dramatic recreations of some of Gary Mule Deer’s jokes and stories starring a who’s who of Memphis-based actors.
The audience’s favorite Hometowner Music Video of 2022 was “Imagine That” by Tailbah Safiyah, directed by Zaire Love. Check it out:
The Departures Audience Award, which includes experimental and generally “out there” works honored Maria Judice’s Elephant.
“Stress Dreams” by Greensky Bluegrass, directed by Grant Knolton, won the National Music Video Audience Award.
In the Short film categories, “F*** ‘Em R!ght B@cK” by Harris Doran won the National Narrative category, and “Call Me Anytime, I’m Not Leaving The House” by Sanjna Selva won the National Documentary category. Caleb Suggs’ “Homeboys Haunted 2” took home audience gold in the Hometowner Narrative Shorts. Audiences also chose Reed Harkness’ Sam Now, which won the jury award for Best Documentary, in the poster category.
Kevin Lewis founded the Memphis Mushroom Foragers Facebook Group. (Credit: Toby Sells)
I’m a pro lurker and a professional lurker; I’m good at it and I get paid to do it.
You won’t see me on Reddit leading discussions about Memphis’ insane drivers or keyboard-bombing the mayor’s Facebook page. But I’m there, probably.
The Memphis Flyer started MEMernet in 2019. It replaced the iconic “Fly On the Wall” column that could not exist without the inimitable Chris Davis. He retired. I scrambled to fill the news hole and MEMernet was born (named by our own Shara Clark).
The column captures the best of Memphians living their lives online. I love the funny stuff, the weird stuff, the intriguing stuff, the sad stuff, and everything in between.
But what I really love is when MEMphians find each other online and do stuff IRL. Love and/or sex, maybe. But definitely hooking up on their interests. There’s no better/easier place for this (imho) than Facebook Groups. Search “Memphis” in Groups and you’ll find real estate agents, gear heads, foodies, fishing folks, film fans, and entrepreneurs.
MEMernet IRL will be an occasional series of meeting up with some of the city’s finest, funniest, and most-interesting digital citizens. — Toby Sells
I’d been lurking on the Memphis Mushroom Foragers Facebook Group (1,900+ members) for a while. In the group, there’s a lot of mushroom identification going on. Basically, people head out into the woods, see a mushroom, photograph it, post it to the group, and (usually) ask, “What is this mushroom?”
Memphis Mushrooms Foragers/Facebook
For a long time, I wondered how cool it would be to hit the woods with these folks. Last week, I acted. One comment in the group and two texts later, I was standing in a parking lot at Shelby Forest shaking hands with the group’s founder, Kevin Lewis.
He told me he’d be hard to miss and he was right. A long, brown-and-gray beard spilled down to his chest under clear gray eyes and a black cowboy hat. A keyring jangled from his blue Levi’s that ended over a pair of black, square-toed cowboy boots, scuffed from miles of mushroom hunting, apparently.
Kevin Lewis, founder of the Memphis Mushroom Foragers Facebook Group, in his natural habitat. (Credit: Toby Sells)
I suggested looking around Overton Park, but Lewis was adamant about Shelby Forest and for good reason. A place can be over-foraged, he said, and that’s not good for people or for mushrooms. My mushroom education had begun even before I shut my car door.
He grabbed a large wicker basket — what looked like an Easter basket — from his car and laid several small brown bags at the bottom of it. The first fall chill cooled the air and I zipped my hoodie all the way up for the first time since April. As we walked, Lewis said he started the Facebook page a couple of years ago.
“I couldn’t find anybody to help me when I got started [mushroom foraging],” he said. “So, I started the page so I could help others, a place they could find some resources to get them started.”
The fact that his mushroom group has so many members “blows me away” and he said those members are from all over the country and the world. The page has earned him invitations to speak at events, including the recent Memphis Mushroom Festival.
Credit: Toby Sells
Past the trailhead sign, Lewis and I walk and talk down the comfortable trail. He’s behind me. So, I can’t see his eyes darting to both sides, expertly tracking spots for Memphis-area mushrooms to hide. I tell him I’m a willing-but-unseasoned outdoorsman and asked if it’s okay to eat mushrooms you see in the woods. Lesson No. 1: “Before you eat any mushroom, the very first thing you need to do is to identify it 100 percent,” Lewis said. “You don’t want to be eating something that you don’t know what it is, which is the same with any plant, also.”
But mushroom foraging, to Lewis, is more about the finding, the discovery. While you can eat some mushrooms, the art is really in the challenge of finding new species and cataloging them — almost like birdwatching — and just being out in nature.
I start to ask another question and he pauses, silencing the crunch of autumn leaves under his boots.
“We got some turkey tail [mushrooms] right here,” he said, pointing at the end of log. “Nope. My bad.”
Lewis shows the difference between a turkey tail mushroom and something I can’t pronounce. (Credit: Toby Sells)
Then, he said, “This is …” and rattled off the Latin name of what he’d actually found. I swore to myself then that I’d look up the term later. Despite my 7th-grade biology education, I could not find the name.
Maybe that’s the thing I loved about Lewis, what made him so Memphis. He looks like a mushroom forager — the beard, hat, and boots, maybe — and his casual conversation style makes him sound like one, too. (He imparts knowledge to me on our hike in little anecdotes, doing all the different voices and sound effects.) But he can rattle off a mushroom’s binomial nomenclature (thanks 7th grade) like his favorite song lyrics. Memphians, like Lewis, let folks know you care before you show them how much you know, and do it with style.
Down a bank, I spy some yellow, mushroom-looking … things at the base of downed tree. Lewis skids down to them, calls them “butter mushrooms,” flicks open his grandpa’s old knife, and harvests five or six golden stems and caps. (Lewis explained to me earlier in the day that what most call “mushrooms” are really just the sex organs of mushrooms, which live inside trees or under ground.)
Credit: Toby Sells I Lewis shows off some “butter mushrooms.”Lewis shows off a haul of “butter mushrooms” at Shelby Forest. (Credit: Toby Sells)
After 30 minutes in, I knew I had too much information for this story, too much mushroom information to pack in for sure. We turn for the parking lot. On the way out, we pass the couple of ladies and their dog which we passed on the way in. (One of them pressed Lewis for mushroom IDs from pictures on her phone for a full five minutes.) Lewis shows them our haul in his basket and tells them to join the Facebook Group and to post their mushroom pictures there.
For all of it — mushrooms or anything else — humans are sometimes at their best, Lewis said, when they’re sharing information with each other, helping each other out with experience and knowledge. For him, that’s what the Memphis Mushroom Forager’s Facebook Group is all about.
Kosten Foundation supporters take off from the starting line at the Kick It 5K (courtesy: Kosten Foundation)
This Sunday, October 30th, the Kosten Foundation will host its annual Kick It 5K benefiting pancreatic cancer research and support.
“The Kick It 5K isn’t just our largest fundraiser, it’s also a time for us to honor those we’ve lost, celebrate our pancreatic cancer survivors, and enjoy a fun afternoon outside with friends and family,” said Alan Kosten, Chairman of the Kosten Foundation. “We extend our deepest thanks to all of our supporters who volunteer to make the Kick It 5K a great event, as well as those who participate to help raise money for pancreatic cancer research and support.”
The event, which includes a 5K run/walk, 1-mile fun walk, opportunities for spirit/virtual runners, an inspirational memorial and survivor ceremony, entertainment, and vendors, begins at Shelby Farms Park at 1 p.m.
The Kick It 5K is presented by Baptist Memorial Health Care. Runners, walkers, or anyone who would like to support the race can register on the event’s website at kick it 5k.race roster.com.
Registration is $35 to participate in person or virtually, and all proceeds go toward funding pancreatic cancer research. The Kick It 5K is the Kosten Foundation’s largest fundraising event, and at its best-attended, the race has included more than 2,500 participants. Last year’s race raised more than $150,000.Those interested in learning more about the Kosten Foundation’s mission can find more information at kostenfoundation.com.
For families living in poverty, the reality of having a newborn sometimes comes with hard decisions such as having to choose among putting food on the table, paying rent, or buying diapers.
According to Cori Smith, founder and executive director of the Sweet Cheeks Diaper Ministry, many families will opt for food and rent, leaving them to use items such as t-shirts or towels in place of diapers or leaving the child in diapers for longer than needed.
Sweet Cheeks, which was started in 2014, was born out of Smith’s personal experience. Smith said that during her first pregnancy she became very sick to the point that she couldn’t work, which resulted in her losing her job shortly before giving birth. Her husband was then laid off shortly after Smith had her baby.
Luckily the Smiths had family helping them out, but they also relied on social services such as food banks. Smith said these services were able to help them out with pretty much everything except for diapers.
“There was not a single organization in the city, at that time, that was providing diapers for families,” Smith said.
Once Smith got back to working and on her feet, she began to lay the groundwork for Sweet Cheeks. Smith said they initially started to do diaper drives once a year, where they would donate diapers to the agencies that did not have them. However, in 2018, Smith said she would receive constant phone calls from families inquiring about diapers.
“So maybe this is something that I need to do all the time instead of once or twice a year,” said Smith. “So in 2018, we got our 501(c)(3), and we’ve been going non-stop since.”
The mission of Sweet Cheeks is to “reduce poverty by ending diaper need,” which Smith said goes back to impoverished families having to make hard decisions when it comes to taking care of a newborn and other necessities.
“For families that are living in poverty, they often have to choose, with what little income they have, they have to make a choice on what their money is going to be spent on. Whether it’s rent, groceries, transportation, medical, and then when you have a baby it’s baby supplies,” said Smith. “Oftentimes, diapers are the choice they don’t choose,” said Smith.
Smith said that since most of these families cannot afford diapers, they also cannot send their child to daycare, since you must send diapers with your child. This means that most families cannot work or go to school, and Smith said this causes the cycle of poverty to continue.
“That’s where we step in,” said Smith. “If we can alleviate some of that burden of providing those basic essentials for the child, then you can use that money to pay rent or send your child to daycare so you can go to work.”
While Smith and her team give out diapers through diaper distribution drives, they also donate period supplies for school-age girls, women, and anyone who menstruates.
According to Smith, one in four girls report that they miss school due to not having period supplies. Through 901 Period, a program of Sweet Cheeks Diaper Ministry, Smith and her team make sure to provide monthly supplies to those in need, while also working with certain schools to make sure their supply closets are stocked with pads and other feminine products. Adults can also reach out to Sweet Cheeks for adult diapers as well.
Smith said they do not ask those seeking help for income or ask for them to “jump through hoops,” just to receive help.
“If someone is already struggling, you don’t want to make them feel worse,” said Smith.
Sweet Cheeks not only services Tennessee, but also Mississippi and Arkansas. According to Smith, they are sometimes the closest resource for families, especially those living in rural areas. Smith also said that some of those counties are not being served whatsoever.
“Because there aren’t those resources for them to go to, we are their one-stop-shop for those items,” said Smith. “Even those families who get food stamps — you can’t buy diapers with that.”
Smith said that they have close to 300 to 400 families that reach out to them each month, which proves that the need is there.
“If I didn’t think there was a need, I wouldn’t do it,” said Smith. “Going on 10 years, I would have hoped by now that we would have had something else for the families, but right now there isn’t. So that’s what keeps us going, because our government, our state, our cities — they’re not helping us provide these items for these families. So it’s up to us.”
Yolanda Martin. (Credit: Memphis Shelby County Schools)
For the second time in six weeks, a Memphis-Shelby County Schools official has been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation into an employee complaint.
The nature of the complaint against Yolanda Martin, the district’s chief of human resources, was unclear as of Tuesday morning. The district declined to comment on the investigation on Friday, and in a statement, interim Superintendent Toni Williams said the district “investigates all employee complaints as we continue our ongoing efforts to emphasize integrity in all MSCS functions.”
Weeks earlier, the district put John Barker, deputy superintendent for strategic operations and finance, on leave following an employee complaint. The Commercial Appeal reported last month that Martin complained of ongoing race- and sex-based harrassment, intimidation, and discrimination by Barker, her direct supervisor.
“Dr. Barker makes me feel as though my voice does not matter and my thoughts are irrelevant as a black woman,” Martin wrote in an eight-page complaint obtained by Chalkbeat.
Martin, who has been on family and medical leave since Sept. 13, said Monday that the complaint and investigation “blindsided” her. When a district employee informed her she was under investigation last week, Martin said they didn’t give her any information about the complaint or an update on the status of her complaint against Barker.
Martin says the investigation of her may be retaliation. In an email dated Sept. 13 that Martin provided to Chalkbeat, she told several administrators she heard from “reliable sources” that Barker was “attempting to galvanize former employees to write statements/file false complaints” against her.
Martin said several principals and other district employees have reached out to her since word got out about her being placed on leave, saying they were “concerned and scared” that they will be retaliated against if they also file harassment complaints.
Board Chair Althea Greene said Friday that Martin’s leave is not related to her complaint against Barker. She declined to comment further. The district did not respond to questions about Martin’s allegations as of Tuesday morning. On Friday, the district confirmed Barker remains on leave.
Barker and fellow Deputy Superintendent Angela Whitelaw recently served as co-acting superintendents while Joris Ray was on paid administrative leave over claims that he abused his power and violated district policies. Ray resigned in late August under a severance agreement with the board.
The absence of two key district leaders comes in the midst of an already tumultuous school year for MSCS, as the district faces challenges such as an upcoming national superintendent search, academic recovery from the COVID pandemic, declining enrollment, teacher shortages, rising gun violence, and concerns about student mental health.
Asked about how the suspensions might affect the district’s response to its personnel challenges, Sarah Carpenter, executive director of the parent advocacy group Memphis LIFT, said: “I trust this interim superintendent and the school board to do what’s right.”
This story has been updated with new information.Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Percy Norris and
“Big” Robert Stewart in The ’Vous
The 25th Indie Memphis Film Festival concluded last Monday with a film that made a case for the importance of the 1970 Blaxploitation wave, and a film that proved its point. Is That Black Enough For You? is the first movie by Elvis Mitchell, a former New York Times film critic and cinema scholar turned documentary director. Mitchell traced the history of Black representation in film from the era of silent “race” pictures and D.W. Griffith’s pro-KKK, proto-blockbuster Birth of a Nation through the foreshortened careers of Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge to the wave of low-budget, Black-led gangster, adventure, and fantasy films which started in the late 1960s and crested with The Wiz. Films like Superfly and Coffy, Mitchell argues in his voluminous voice-over narration, presented the kinds of rousing heroes that attracted film-goers while the New Hollywood movement presented visions of angst-filled antiheroes.
Blaxploitation films also introduced a new kind of music to films and the concept of the soundtrack album, which was often released before the movie itself in order to drum up interest. The prime example was Shaft, which featured an Academy Award-winning soundtrack by Isaac Hayes. Mitchell introduced the classic with Willie Hall, the Memphis drummer who recorded the immortal hi-hat rhythm that kicks off Hayes’ theme song. Mitchell revealed in Is That Black Enough For You? that Hayes had been inspired by Sergio Leone’s score for Once Upon a Time in the West, and the score he penned for Shaft still holds up, providing much of the detective film’s throbbing propulsion.
The winners of the competitive portion of the 2022 film festival were announced at a hilariously irreverent awards ceremony Saturday evening at Playhouse on the Square. After a two-year hiatus, Savannah Bearden returned to produce the awards, which were “hosted” by Birdy, the tiny red metal mockingbird which has served as the film festival’s mascot for years. But amidst the nonstop jokes and spoof videos, there were genuinely touching moments, such as when Craig Brewer surprised art director and cameraperson Sallie Sabbatini with the Indie Award, which is given to outstanding Memphis film artisans, and when former Executive Director Ryan Watt was ambushed with the Vision Award.
The Best Narrative Feature award went to Our Father, the Devil, an African immigrant story directed by Ellie Foumbi. Kit Zauhar’s Actual People won the Duncan Williams Best Screenplay Award. The Documentary Feature award went to Reed Harkness for Sam Now, a portrait of the director’s brother that has been in production for the entire 25 years that Indie Memphis has been in existence.
The Best Hometowner Feature award, which honors films made in Memphis, went to Jack Lofton’s The ’Vous, a moving portrait of the people who make The Rendezvous a world-famous icon of Memphis barbecue. (“We voted with our stomachs,” said jury member Larry Karaszewski.) The Best Hometowner Narrative Short went to “Nordo” by Kyle Taubken, about a wife anxiously waiting for her husband to return from Afghanistan. Lauren Ready earned her second Indie Memphis Hometowner Documentary award for her short film “What We’ll Never Know.”
In the Departures category, which includes experimental, genre, and out-of-the-box creations, This House by Miryam Charles won Best Feature. (This House also won the poster design contest.) “Maya at 24” by legendary Memphis doc director Lynne Sachs won the Shorts competition, and “Civic” by Dwayne LeBlanc took home the first trophy in a new Mid-Length subcategory.
Sounds, the festival’s long-running music film series, awarded Best Feature to Kumina Queen by Nyasha Laing. The music video awards were won by the stop-motion animated “Vacant Spaces” by Joe Baughman; “Don’t Come Home” by Emily Rooker triumphed in the crowded Hometowner category.
Best Narrative Short went to “Sugar Glass Bottle” by Neo Sora, and Best Documentary Short went to “The Body Is a House of Familiar Rooms” by Eloise Sherrid and Lauryn Welch.
Some of the Special Awards date back to the origin of the festival in 1998, such as the Soul of Southern Film Award, which was taken by Ira McKinley and Bhawin Suchak’s documentary Outta The Muck. The Ron Tibbett Excellence in Filmmaking Award went to Me Little Me by Elizabeth Ayiku. The Craig Brewer Emerging Filmmaker Award went to Eric Younger’s Very Rare.
The IndieGrants program, which awards $15,000 in cash and donations to create short films, picked Anna Cai’s “Bluff City Chinese” and A.D. Smith’s “R.E.G.G.I.N.” out of 46 proposals submitted by Memphis filmmakers.
The Mississippi is 10.75 feet below normal. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)
The boardwalk to Harbor Town Marina on Mud Island usually runs at a slight decline to the water from the parking lot near Cordelia’s Market. Today, the walkway slants at a precipitous angle, flat to the ground, down to the marina and its collection of yachts, cruisers, houseboats, and ski-boats, most of which are literally stuck in the mud. The Mississippi River is at its all-time historical low in Memphis — 10.75 feet below normal.
I’m meeting John Gary, one of Memphis’ preeminent river men. Gary’s been going out on the Mississippi since his boyhood, 50 years ago. He knows the Memphis section of the river like few others. We’ve been friends for many years.
“Over here,” he shouts. I see him approaching from the far end of the dock, where there appears to be at least a few inches of water, and where Gary’s 19-foot runabout is tied up.
“This is crazy,” I said.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he replies. “There’s a lot of beach out there where a river used to be.”
John Gary and Max (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)
We climb into the boat and putter our way south, heading out of the harbor, past the Downtown skyline, past the exposed cobblestones, and past an ancient, long-hidden motorboat with its stern sticking out of the mud. Gary’s two dogs, Max and Lyon, are our happy passengers.
Once on the river, we turn north and motor briskly under the Hernando DeSoto Bridge. We’re going over to take a look at the Loosahatchie Bar (known by locals as Robinson Crusoe Island). It’s the island you see just north of the bridge as you cross into Arkansas. Well, it used to be an island. Now, not so much. What was once a river back-channel is currently a vast sandbar that connects the island to the mainland and reaches halfway across the river to Downtown.
Gary finds a good spot to stick the boat anchor in the sand and we tie off. The dogs run ahead, eager to explore this fresh Sahara, with its high white dunes and its deep dark pockets where the water lingered longest, now as dry as the gar and carp bones bleaching in the sun. Animal footprints remain in the once-muddy sand around the now-gone watering holes: great blue heron, coyote/dog, raccoon, even a large cat track or two. I take photo after photo, dazzled by the weirdness of standing on the bottom of the country’s biggest river.
After a while, we decide to motor upriver along Mud Island, where we pass a long string of barges that are running their engines at the precise speed needed to stay in place against the current. They are loaded with benzene (used to refine gasoline), ammonia, fertilizer, concrete, and other farm and industrial essentials.
Harbor Town Marina (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)
Gary explains that the channel has narrowed so much upriver that only one barge can pass at a time. Barges coming downstream have the right of way, so upstream barges can often sit for hours a day, burning fuel, awaiting their turn. For the moment, this section of America’s supply chain is dead in the water. Results coming soon to a gas station or construction site near you.
We continue north until we reach the mouth of the Wolf River, which looks more like the Wolf Ripple as it splashes over rocks and mud, adding a temporary trickle to the Mother of Waters.
How long does this go on? How low can the Mississippi go? And as Mother Nature continues to show us new climate change tricks, is this something we can expect to happen more often? The immediate prediction is that we can expect the river to stay low for the near future, and possibly even drop further. Meaning we can expect a vital supply lane for the U.S. economy to continue to be slowed, at best.
Back at Harbor Town, we tie off Gary’s boat to the very end of the marina in a couple feet of water. As we survey the bent steel and broken boards of the marina’s structure, and the dozens of boats settled into the brown goo, it’s obvious that most of these vessels won’t be going anywhere for quite some time. For now, there is no joy in Mud Island. The mighty Mississippi has struck out.
Posts are pouring in on the record-low level of the Mississippi River. Let’s have a look at conditions from the headwaters at Itasca State Park in Minnesota (where levels are normal) to Louisiana (where they’re not).
Minnesota
Illinois
Posted to Twitter by Ohio Valley Aerial
A dry spot south of Cairo, IL.
Missouri
Posted to Twitter by Hiking With Shawn
People are hiking to Tower Rock, which is usually surrounded by water.
Tennessee
Posted to Twitter by Charles Peek
Boats sag onto the muddy bottom of the Wolf River Harbor at the Mud Island Marina.
Joshua McLane and
Brennan Whalen (Photo: Courtesy Joshua McLane)
The new HEELS album, Pop Songs for a Dying Planet, features 15 songs from Joshua McLane and Brennan Whalen.
“Brennan writes all the lyrics,” McLane says. “Except anytime you hear me scream on the record, I write it. When you work with someone like Brennan Whalen, why would you want anybody else to write the lyrics?”
The album, released October 22nd, is “what we’ve been since day one,” McLane says. “Life’s a fucking struggle, man. It’s like we love writing upbeat, fast, very poppy, catchy songs. But once you break down the lyrics, they’re usually pretty sad.”
“This one feels a little more frantic,” Whalen says. “I guess I feel like the overall sound of the record is kind of reflective of where my mind was and where Josh’s mind was when we were writing. Just individually shaken up by the last few years. We both had really bad years. We both had stuff in our families. There was a lot of loss.”
But there also was joy. McLane’s wife Cara gave birth to their son Gideon, who just turned 2.
The album includes “old songs we wanted to give a fair shake to” and “brand-new ones,” McLane says.
“Dread,” one of the new songs, is “trying to face tragedy with a sense of optimism about the future,” Whalen says. “But that’s against the backdrop of kind of wishing for the end of the world.”
“Last Man” is “maybe the heaviest song,” McLane says. “That song was the key to the whole record. When we pieced it together, it was kind of missing something. Brennan said, ‘Hey, check out this song I just pulled out of thin air.’ I sped it up a little bit and it turned out to be a monster.”
McLane wrote “Sad Max” “from neck to nuts. … That song is about how I spent most of my life as a junkie asshole. And plowing through life. And then I grow up.”
As for “Wolf,” McLane says, “Brennan ends the record with a hopefulness we’ve never done before. It’s literally screaming, ‘Let me die.’”
McLane plays his son’s toy piano on “Giddy.” He thought, “What if we put this at the very end? A bookend? Maybe there’s some hope in the future. Which is something we usually don’t do.”
“I didn’t have any hope for the fucking future. I guess I didn’t have anything vested in it. Now, I have to work for it. It sucks. I would love to be just a bump on a log.
“For me, it opens up, for lack of a better word, stylized memories. Like it’s a wonderful kind of a vision where everything is perfect. For some reason, I associate things like the Muppet Babies. Like perfection of childhood that I probably never had much of.”
They say they’re halfway done writing their next record. They usually say the next album is going to be a “big departure” and “super weird,” but, McLane says, “It ends up being more pop songs for a dying planet.”
Whalen sees his writing style changing. “I think I’ve been a little more loose with my writing,” he says. “Kind of leaning a little more into punk and garage rock.”
Previously, he says, “I tried to focus more on narrative lyrics and leaning more into a kind of a folk songwriting style. That translated over to the sound that we have. But, lately, I’ve been leaning more into more aggressive, more enthusiastic music.”
Why? “Need it more. I think everybody needs more fun. The past decade has been a huge drag. So, I don’t like being a part of making anybody sad, even though I do. I don’t mean to.”
Describing Pop Songs for a Dying Planet, McLane says, “This is a playlist for the end of the world kind of thing. Meaning, a bunch of these songs are really sweet pop songs to distract you from everything going to shit. Once you actually figure out the lyrics, it’s about how everything is going to shit. You don’t notice that at first.”
Pop Songs for a Dying Planet can be heard on all musical platforms. The record release party for the album will be at 8 p.m. October 29th at Hi Tone at 282-284 North Cleveland Street. Mo Alexander will open.
