Desmond Bane shoots the ball over Derrick Jones Jr. (Credit: NBAE/Getty images)
The Memphis Grizzlies are on a two-game winning streak for the first time this season. With a final score of 108-94, the Grizzlies dominated the Mavericks for most of the game. Memphis moved to 5-13 on the season.
It was a good start that continued throughout, with Memphis up double-digits at the half. This was a refreshing change of pace after seeing so many instances of the Grizzlies getting down by a lot in the first half and being unable to dig out of the hole they played themselves into.
Desmond Bane has continued to put this team on his back in the absence of Ja Morant. Bane closed out the night with a game-high 30 points, 4 rebounds, 5 assists, 1 steal, and 2 blocks, including going 4 of 6 from beyond the arc.
Jaren Jackson Jr got into early foul trouble leading to an uncharacteristic low-scoring night, ending with just 4 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 blocks.
Big props to the Grizzlies bench who contributed 58 of 108 points in their highest-scoring game of the season, especially to combo guard Jaylen Nowell, who is with Memphis on a 10-day contract.
Nowell put up a season-high 19 points and 4 rebounds on 8 of 14 field goal shooting. The Grizzlies would be wise to figure out a way to keep him on through the season, although that will entail waiving a player. They will need to waive a player to keep Bismack Biyombo on the roster when Ja Morant returns from suspension.
Vince Williams Jr closed out the night with 15 points, 9 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 blocks including 3 of 6 from three-point range.
Santi Aldama played with the second unit but was no less valuable for Memphis. Aldama finished with 17 points, 12 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 steal and 1 block.
Who Got Next?
There is no rest for the weary. The Grizzlies will head to Phoenix to face off against the Suns on Saturday night. Tip-off is at 8 PM CST.
This Saturday, December 2nd, the mighty walls of Crosstown Concourse will be reverberating like a mighty, brick Jeep parked on Cleveland Avenue, shaking with bass hits, shimmering with delicate highs.
If that sounds like a bit of poetic license, it is. But it captures a basic truth: from 1 p.m. – 11 p.m., the towering monument to the arts will be echoing with music, thanks to community radio station WYXR and their festival partner, Mempho.
The Raised By Sound Fest honors Memphis music, new and old, across multiple genres, with WYXR DJs and live bands set up in various areas of the Crosstown Concourse campus, including the Central Atrium, WYXR studio, WYXR HQ, Crosstown Brewing Co., and Crosstown Theater.
From 1 p.m.-7 p.m. during the day, entry to each concert site will be free to the public, culminating in two ticketed musical performances: Cat Power‘s stage show in Crosstown Theater and an afterparty featuring DJ Alix Brown in the Green Room at Crosstown Arts.
Naturally, Cat Power’s appearance has garnered the most buzz, and rightly so. Chan Marshall, Cat Power’s auteur, is turning heads once more with her idiosyncratic approach to Bob Dylan’s 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert on her latest album, Cat Power Sings Dylan.
Memphis is one of the few cities to enjoy a Cat Power concert this year, well ahead of the North American tour she’s officially starting in February, 2024. Having hosted a stellar tribute to Big Star last year, WYXR’s Raised By Sound Fest continues its winning streak in scoring Cat Power for 2023’s celebration. Appropriately enough, Marshall has deep connections to this city, having recorded two albums here: 1996’s What Would the Community Think? and 2006’s The Greatest. For the latter, Robert Gordon filmed the video for her single “Lived in Bars,” at the Lamplighter Lounge.
Although general admission tickets to Saturday’s Cat Power concert are sold out, VIP seats are available here for $268.61. That’s what many pay for standard concert tickets to see big name starts these days, but those shows aren’t even assisting local radio. WYXR program manager Jared Boyd emphasizes the station’s great luck in landing Cat Power in Memphis just as this annual celebration was scheduled.
“This concert of Cat Power playing Dylan covers was miraculous in how it came together. It was happening right around the time we started inquiring about availability for the festival,” he says.
That in turn led WYXR to do what it does best, embracing Cat Power’s show as a teachable moment.
“We put together an event [at the Memphis Listening Lab on Wednesday, November 29th] to honor that history of Dylan going electric, with a small, intimate, listening session featuring some of the bootlegs from the 1966 Dylan tours, to give people some context about what Cat Power was doing and why it was an important moment in rock and roll history. So, it’s been an interesting opportunity to bring a lot of different parts of our stations ecosystem into the fold, and it’s really been a testament to the type of collaborations that have been fostered through this experience over the last three years now.”
The other ticketed event, the post-Cat Power afterparty, features a similarly world-class artist that also has deep Memphis roots. DJ Alix Brown, profiled in the Memphis Flyer in 2019, first started spinning records while living here, sometimes while playing music with Jay Reatard, before moving on to New York and, more recently, Los Angeles. Now a Maybelline model, a globe-trotting DJ, and a music supervisor for films, she’s proof positive of this city’s aesthetic ties to the wider world, and another fitting tribute to WYXR’s global reach.
MadameFraankie self portrait (courtesy of the artist).
But this festival is local as well as global, and the free music flowing through the day around the concourse will be a powerful reminder of that. The earlier portion of the festival, free to the public, will best capture the diversity of the station and the creativity it helps to foster.
One musician who’s an unsung hero of sorts in the local scene is MadameFraankie, known by many as the marketing director of the nonprofit Tone and as an exhibited fine art photographer. She’s also a stellar guitarist, bringing her delicate and imaginative parts to countless sessions in local studios, “Golden (The Wait)” by Don Lifted being one example.
“Fraankie, is more than just what she does with her guitar,” says Boyd. “She does incredible work with Tone, going back to when they were The Collective. So, she’s a visual artist, and she’s someone who has always played a role in the background that I think has been interesting whether it be as a musician or whether it be with a visual arts programing space.
“Fraankie backs up Lawrence Matthews when he does Don Lifted performances. Fraankie backs up Talibah Safiya fairly often as well. And she co-writes with them and collaborates on arrangements with them. But MadameFraankie is an incredible guitarist and an incredible musical artist on her own and I thought that Raised By Sound Fest would be a great opportunity to highlight that. This is a Black, queer woman that is one of the most in-demand performers in the city, and she represents the future of what’s happening with this instrument, and, I think, is on the cutting edge of what’s happening in music right now.”
Other bands will be playing throughout the day as well (see schedule below), and the diversity on display is a powerful reminder of WYXR’s commitment to community. And it goes beyond the day’s featured artists, as Boyd notes.
“Outside of the people who are performing on the actual lineup, several of our DJs will be playing music in the VIP lounge, and we’ve got tons of incredible partners from the community who are going to be providing food and drinks. There will be a lot of other stories and threads, and even our interns really stepped up to be to have a presence at the festival.”
Raised By Sound Fest schedule: 1 p.m. – Univ. of Memphis Blue Tom Revue 2 p.m. – MadameFraankie 2:40 p.m. – Rosey 3 p.m. – Rod Smoth 4:20 p.m. – AJ Haynes 5:10 p.m. – Bass Drum of Death 6:30 p.m. – Doors Open for Cat Power 9 p.m. – DJ After Party with Alix Brown
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. (Photo: John Partipilo)
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is leading a coalition of 17 states in fighting a proposed federal rule intended to give LGBTQ kids greater protections in foster care.
The proposed rule reflects misguided federal policy, illegally intrudes on state authority and risks violating the free speech and religion rights of foster parents and organizations that provide care to kids in state custody, a letter sent Monday U.S. Department of Health & Human Services from Skrmetti and 16 of his counterparts in other states said.
“It also hampers the ability of the states to protect kids by forcing children’s services agencies to police pronoun usage with the same urgency they address physical abuse,” Skrmetti said in a statement released Wednesday.
Announced in September by the Biden Administration, the proposed new rule would require state child welfare agencies to ensure LGBTQ+ kids in state custody are “protected from mistreatment related to their sexual orientation or gender identity, where their caregivers have received special training on how to meet their needs, and where they can access the services they need to thrive.”
LGBTQ kids are disproportionately represented in foster care across the nation, with some studies suggesting that up to a third of all foster youth identify as LBGTQ — often winding up in state custody as result of mistreatment or rejection based on their gender identity, according to DHHS.
The proposed “placement rule” would require child welfare agencies like the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services to place kids in foster homes, residential treatment centers or group homes that are “free of hostility, mistreatment, or abuse based on the child’s LGBTQI+ status” and with caregivers who have the appropriate knowledge and skills to provide for the needs of a child related to the child’s sexual orientation.
“For example, to be considered a safe and appropriate placement, a provider is expected to utilize the child’s identified pronouns, chosen name, and allow the child to dress in an age-appropriate manner that the child believes reflects their self-identified gender identity and expression,” the rules say.
It would also require caregivers to provide access to “clinically appropriate mental and behavioral health care supportive of their sexual orientation and gender identity and expression as needed.”
That requirement is “particularly problematic,” the letter from attorneys general said.
(A proposed federal rule) also hampers the ability of the states to protect kids by forcing children’s services agencies to police pronoun usage with the same urgency they address physical abuse.
– Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti in a statement
A recently enacted Tennessee law, currently facing a legal challenge in federal court, prohibits a variety of gender-affirming medical care for minors. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block the law during the legal challenge, issuing a ruling that expressed deep reservations about such medical treatments for youth.
“The Placement Rule nonetheless appears to condition … Tennessee’s continued funding on foster parents’ providing certain gender-affirming treatments that it and other States have permissibly banned. Or perhaps HHS would require foster parents to take children on costly out-of-state trips for medical visits and surgeries to avoid designation as “unsafe” foster providers,” the letter said.
The attorneys general also expressed concern the new rules, potentially holding foster parents and state agencies legally liable for failing to follow them, and required new training, could deter people from becoming foster parents, or prompt existing foster parents to leave, adding to an already acute shortage in foster homes. Ultimately, that would harm kids not help them, the letter said.
A Department of Children’s Services spokesperson did not respond to request for information, but published agency guidelines maintained by the federal government show that the agency is one of approximately 39 states that provide explicit protections from harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Tennessee’s guidelines, however, do not go as far as the proposed federal government’s rules.
“Flexibility is needed for youth participating in activities that would create safe spaces for LGBTQ in foster care,” Tennessee’s guidelines state. “Caregivers should seek assistance and information on resources and opportunities for these youth if not aware of them and seek consultation with the youth’s worker, when needed.”
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.
