Bria Saulsberry, writer of Dance, Girl!, and Angel Clark, choreographer (Photo: Courtesy Homegrown Arts)
From the womb to young adulthood — that’s how far the girl in Bria Saulsberry’s choreopoem will dance. She’ll learn, she’ll make mistakes, she’ll become herself. “It’s a celebration of Black girlhood,” Saulsberry says of the work titled Dance, Girl!
Produced by Homegrown Arts, of which Saulsberry is executive director, Dance, Girl! will feature ballet choreography and a screening of home videos and B-roll, coinciding with a reading of Saulsberry’s poetry, a collection written initially as a chapbook over the course of a decade. “I’m a poet, and that’s how I express myself,” she says, “that’s how I make sense of my world and my lived experience. It was really through collaboration with [the women of] Homegrown Arts — Jasmine Settles [artistic director] and Akina Morrow [managing director] — that we saw that there was another way that we can bring these poems to life.
“As a poet and a writer, and really as a playwright, finding a unique way to tell stories has always been a goal,” she continues. “Ntozake Shange, she’s really a big inspiration. She’s the woman who wrote For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. And that work is a choreopoem. And so digging into the roots of Black performance arts, we really wanted to uplift a form that a lot of people don’t really know about, like choreopoem [which combines poetry with dance, music, and song].”
This choreopoem will be Homegrown Arts’ second production after its founding in 2019. Since then, though, they have acquired the chapter for the Memphis Youth Poet Laureate Program, naming Ana Hunter of Hutchison School as the first honoree last summer. “We’ll be naming the new Youth Poet Laureate next summer, and we’re really excited about that as well,” Saulsberry says, “but we really want to see how far Dance, Girl! can go. I do plan for us to find different ways to tour this particular show. I want to see it on different stages.”
In the meantime, Memphis can look forward to performances on Friday and Saturday at the Evergreen Theatre. “I really hope [audiences] feel inspired,” Saulsberry says. “I hope that they want to understand the story and really, after experiencing this, they feel good, that they have left maybe thinking deeply about some of the themes that I brought up in the story. Maybe they have more conversations with their families. I’m really hoping that the women in the audience, specifically Black women in the audience, perhaps they see themselves in some of the poems or some of the experiences that this young girl navigates. And I just hope that they leave proud of what they’ve seen and feel good about what they just experienced.”
Mia Goth reprises her role as aspiring actress Maxine Minx, while Kevin Bacon joins the cast as a sleazy PI. (Photos: Courtesy A24)
In 2022’s X, the first of the three-film collaboration between director Ti West and actor Mia Goth, a newbie film crew descends on a Texas farmhouse intending to make a porn flick. Instead, they become the latest victims of Pearl (Goth, in heavy makeup), an elderly woman who bears a strong resemblance to Norman Bates’ mother in Psycho. Only Maxine Minx (Goth, au naturel) escapes the carnage.
In MaXXXine, our eponymous heroine actually visits the Bates Motel — the real one, which still stands on the Universal back lot. She’s there because her Hollywood dreams have begun to come true. But the past just won’t let her go. As Faulkner said, it’s not even past.
West and Goth’s collaboration began on the set of X, when the backstory she had developed for the killer granny Pearl so impressed the director that he decided to make it a prequel. Pearl goes deep into the oppressive patriarchy of rural Texas in the 1920s that twisted a young girl’s ambition into a murderous psychosis. Sixty years later, you can see the same ambition burning in Maxine. It’s 1985, and she’s made it as a porn star in the Valley, the porn industry’s dark mirror image of Hollywood. Now she wants to go legit and get parts in “real” movies, which are filmed on the side of the Hollywood Hills where you can see the big sign.
When she strides into an audition with director Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki), it’s clear she’s got the juice. She slays her monologue from memory, conjuring tears on demand, which impresses the stoic director. Then, Bender asks Maxine if she would take off her shirt so they could see her tits. Not a problem, says Maxine. Later that day, Maxine gets a call from her agent Teddy (Giancarlo Esposito). She got the part. Now she just has to live long enough to make the movie.
This is more challenging than it might sound. The Night Stalker serial killer is taking victims in Southern California, and dominating the headlines. When Maxine goes to what is hopefully her last day on the job at the peepshow, she’s followed by a mysterious figure in a wide-brimmed hat. After work, her friends Amber (Chloe Farnworth) and Tabby (Halsey) invite her to a big party in the Hollywood Hills, but Maxine declines. She’s got to learn her lines, and it won’t do to show up to her first day on the set with a hangover. It looks like she made the right choice when Amber and Tabby’s bodies are found wrapped in plastic and branded with Satanic pentagrams.
Is it the Night Stalker? Maybe. But there’s more weirdness floating around. Maxine gets a lunch invitation at a swanky restaurant from a man named Labat (Kevin Bacon). He’s a private investigator who has been hired to find Maxine and threatens to frame her with the murders, which have become known as the Texas Porn Star Massacre, unless she goes to meet his client at a swanky address in the Hollywood Hills. Meanwhile, two LAPD detectives, Williams (Michelle Monaghan) and Torres (Bobby Cannavale), come calling. They’ve noticed that Maxine seems to be the only person who knows all of the recent victims of the Night Stalker, but who is not yet dead. They offer her protection if she will talk. But they don’t understand who they’re dealing with. Maxine doesn’t need protection. She’s got dreams, a good agent, and her trusty pearl-handled pistol.
Mia Goth’s performances in X and Pearl were the revelation of a major new talent. In MaXXXine, she’s a cocaine-powered whirlwind of ruthless ambition. If she has to kill a few people to see her name in lights on the marquee, then people will die. This might not seem like the makings for a sympathetic character, but her enemies are so much worse. Kevin Bacon drips with sleaze as the utterly amoral private dick sent to retrieve Maxine. When he follows her into a strobe-lit New Wave club where Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Welcome to the Pleasuredome” throbs through the sound system, the film shifts into overdrive. From there, West keeps the pedal to the metal.
In true Hitchcock fashion, MaXXXine’s gonzo climax takes place in the shadow of the Hollywood sign. Ti West has studied Hitch and his disciple Brian De Palma’s early-’80s run of erotic thrillers like Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, and Body Double. But MaXXXine is not a Tarantino pastiche of cool scenes from other people’s movies. There’s a difference between sampling and working in a mode. West and Goth transcend their influences. Yes, these films are in conversation with the past’s lowbrow classics, but they never lose sight of their primary mission: Make it kick ass.
Williams, owner/founder of Morningside Brands, Inc., recently introduced Nocturna, his latest tequila in his Alma del Jaguar (“Spirit of the Jaguar”) line of tequilas. “It’s a high proof tequila blanco,” Williams says. “It’s a 101 proof. Our normal blanco is 80 proof, so it’s higher octane.”
He released his first tequilas, Blanco and Reposado, in 2023.
“This is a really fun expression. As you recall, our brand is all about raising money and awareness for wildlife.”
McCauley Williams (Photo: Courtesy Morningside Brands)
In 2022, Williams left Blue Note Bourbon, which he co-founded, to pursue other opportunities. He wanted to do something with his uncle, Rick Williams, who cofounded the Northern Jaguar Project, a binational effort between biologists and conservationists in the United States and Mexico to study and protect the northernmost population of wild jaguars in the world.
By saving the jaguars, Williams says the organization is also raising awareness about environmental conservation.
As his news release states, “Alma Del Jaguar donates to and fundraises for conservation organizations that help protect wild jaguars in the U.S. and Mexico.”
And, it states, “We also make our tequila as sustainably as possible, using eco-friendly production methods, recycled glass bottles, agave fiber labels, and recycled cardboard boxes.”
Like his other tequilas, Nocturna is produced in a distillery owned by a fifth-generation family of tequila makers who Williams partners with in the Los Altos region of Jalisco, Mexico.
Nocturna uses “100 percent natural wild yeast instead of cultivated yeast. It occurs naturally in mother nature.”
Yeast is in the air “wherever you are,” Williams says. “If you leave something exposed to the right sugar content exposed to air it will naturally ferment.”
Using natural yeast from the distillery in Mexico “brings in just this amazing sense of flavor.”
Williams also produced a 10-minute film, Arizona Wildcats, which is part of film series, Bordering on Wild, to coincide with the new tequila. “It is about wild jaguars in Southern Arizona. And the dichotomy or relationship of conservationists, cattle ranchers, and the border wall.”
Many people don’t realize that a border wall designed to keep people out also keeps out wild animals “that are too big to fit through slots in the wall. Deer, elk, jaguars, mountain lions, hogs, etc. Birds can fly over it and bugs can fly over it, but jaguars can’t get through the wall. So, it’s damaging wildlife conservation.
“For the last 30 years, conservationists and ranchers have been fighting each other over jaguar habitation in Southern Arizona and New Mexico. But now there is this new threat of the border wall.”
And, William says, “Most of the ranchers that live in this area think the wall is a bad thing. Even though they’re strong on immigration, this border wall is a poor way to deal with the problem.”
They believe the wall is inefficient because no one is policing it, Williams says. “Humans can climb over it or dig under it.”
The film, which can be seen on their website almadeljaguar.com or YouTube, doesn’t feature Williams or his tequila. “The jaguar is the hero. The nail that seems to unite everything. There’s something about big cats people love.”
They’re using their tequila as a “fun and creative way to raise awareness and educate people” about “the need for conservation along the border.”
They want to use it “to champion environmental causes.”
The film was shot in Southern Arizona, south of Tucson, along the border. “We filmed back in November.”
Williams hired a film team to make Arizona Wildcats. “I did all the set up and hired a videographer to film the documentary. I was there on site during the whole time. Moving cameras, interviewing the people. It was extremely hands on. It was my first attempt at doing any sort of film. We’re planning to expand that in the future.”
He wants his company to do more “cause-related films” — “short films on topics related to our brand. The brand is never in it. It’s just about the cause. It’s not a commercial for our brand.”
It’s “to show people our integrity and commitment to our cause.”
Williams anticipates doing another film in the spring.
Meanwhile, he has “all kind of exciting projects” in the works. “In the fall, we are releasing our ‘Añejo.’ It means ‘aged’ in Spanish. It has been aged in oak barrels for at least one year.”
Alma del Jaguar tequilas are now in 21 states, Williams says. “We just concluded our first year. We launched last May. So, we’re just now in our second year of sales.”
Asked how they grew so fast, Williams says, “Hard work. Tequila is really popular. It’s the hottest spirit in the Untied States. And ours is all organic and sustainable.
“My office is here in East Memphis. I’m traveling all over the country to meet with our sales teams and distribution partners.”
He also travels to Mexico to meet with his production partner. “To design new expressions with our master distiller.”
They import all of their tequila into a warehouse in Memphis. “Memphis is a logistics hub with companies like FedEx, Nike, AutoZone, and Orgill based here. There’s quite a trucking industry that exists in Memphis.”
Williams’ philosophy? “You can live anywhere and be an entrepreneur. Why not Memphis? It’s my home. I don’t have to relocate to Austin or San Francisco. I can do it here.”
Follow the Facebook group called Through the Eyes of Black Memphis for some cool history and fun photos. Top contributor Don Johnson posted the photo above of Penny Hardaway stopping by the Nike store on Shelby Drive in the 1990s.
The city invited everyone to stay positive about, well, the city last week. An Instagram Reel features Memphis Mayor Paul Young, Al Kapone, Greater Memphis Chamber president and CEO Ted Townsend, and more sharing what they love most about Memphis.
If you need a shot of positivity, search #MemphisProud, #PositiveMemphis, and #CelebrateMemphis.
@Memphis
Posted to X by Memphis Depay
After years of saying we wouldn’t feature him just because of his name, here we are. Dutch footballer Memphis Depay, owner of the @Memphis X handle, helped push the Netherlands to the Euro 2024 semifinals with a win over Turkey last week.
As states across the country adopt harsh new sentencing laws, private prison companies are celebrating, telling investors that they soon expect more people in their prisons — and even higher profits.
From Mississippi to California, many states have taken a decidedly “tough on crime” tack over the past two years in a strengthening backlash against criminal justice reform efforts after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. This year, Louisiana passed a package of harsh sentencing laws that will keep some people in prison for years longer. A new parole board in Mississippi is keeping people in prison for longer terms by denying early release. In March, Washington, DC, enacted a sweeping anti-crime package.
These laws, advocates warn, threaten to reverse years of progress in the fight against mass incarceration. Instead, they would again trap people in prison for lengthy terms, ripping apart communities and exacerbating racial and socioeconomic inequality — while enriching the private firms that manage prisons and their shareholders.
Perhaps no state is more emblematic of the recent sentencing crackdown — and the private interests that stand to benefit — than Tennessee, where one of the world’s largest prison companies is headquartered.
Since 2022, lawmakers in Tennessee have fought to enact a slate of harsh sentencing laws that are expected to increase the state’s spending on incarceration by tens of millions of dollars annually. The key power brokers behind the legislation are also some of the top recipients of private prison company cash, The Lever found.
On May 28th, Gov. Bill Lee signed the latest of these proposals into law, a bill that will end the use of so-called “sentence reduction credits,” which allow people incarcerated in Tennessee to serve shorter sentences as a reward for a clean record in prison. The law, which will only apply to future offenses, is projected by the state to result in a “significant increase” in spending on incarceration.
For the people locked up in Tennessee’s prison system, who are disproportionately poor and Black, this will mean, in some cases, that they will spend years longer in a prison cell. There’s little evidence that longer sentences deter crime.
But the law does have at least one key beneficiary: Tennessee’s private prison contractor, CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America, one of the world’s largest prison companies, which will almost certainly see new profits as a direct result of the legislation. The company, which spends millions of dollars a year lobbying both in states and on a federal level, has begun telling its investors that harsh sentencing laws across the country will soon translate to bigger profits from the 70-plus prisons it runs nationwide.
“There has been a fair amount of activity both this year, and really the last two years, within state legislatures on adjustments to sentencing reform,” Damon Hininger, CoreCivic’s CEO, who has political aspirations in Tennessee, said in an earnings call last month.
Hininger said he expected this development to lead to “pretty significant increases” in prison populations — good news for the prison company, which is often paid by how many inmates are housed in prison at a given time. Already, he said, higher occupancy rates in CoreCivic-managed prisons had led to, in turn, “strong financial results” for investors.
Bianca Tylek, the executive director of Worth Rises, an advocacy organization that focuses on the harms of prison industries, called Hininger’s comments “brazen” and proof that the companies “don’t think people are listening.”
“It’s a real travesty that we’re allowing industry to shape what our carceral system looks like,” she said.
Tennessee lawmakers on the Joint Ad Hoc Committee to Review the Adequacy of the Supervision, Investigation, and Release of Criminal Defendants review prison release and sentencing policies at October 6th hearing. (Photo: John Partipilo)
“Increased the Sentences Tremendously”
David Raybin, a criminal defense attorney in Nashville, has been fighting for sentencing reform in Tennessee since the 1970s. He has witnessed decades of ebbs and flows in sentencing policies. Yet the crackdown that Tennessee lawmakers have launched over the last two years is like nothing he’s ever seen before. “Over time, it will have an enormous effect,” he said.
In 2022, the Tennessee legislature passed a “truth in sentencing” bill, a sweeping law that essentially rewrote sentencing practices in the state, requiring people to serve, in some cases, up to 10 years longer for certain felony crimes.
“It just absolutely increased the sentences tremendously,” Raybin said.
The 2022 law was just the beginning of Tennessee’s draconian sentencing crackdown. Last year, lawmakers proposed a “three-strike” bill requiring even harsher sentences for people with prior convictions. The legislation passed a key House committee last year but did not reach the governor’s desk, though it has continued to move forward in the Tennessee Senate this session.
Should the three-strike bill ultimately pass, it will require an entirely new prison to be built in Tennessee to house 1,400 more inmates, costing taxpayers at least $384 million.
In May, ignoring the outcry of criminal justice advocates around the state, Lee signed a bill that will largely end early release from prison, which inmates were able to earn through participation in educational programming and maintaining a clean record in the system.
Now, people in Tennessee’s prisons will only be released early on parole, which in the state is rarely granted. The effect will be to “keep people incarcerated longer,” said Matthew Charles, a Nashville-based policy advisor with Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonprofit that advocates for more just sentencing reform.
Lee also signed a new law this spring that will impose adult sentences on teenagers after they have served a juvenile sentence, which criminal justice reform advocates say will have “alarming” repercussions for youth in the state.
It will take several years before the full impact of the laws becomes clear as new cases wend their way through the courts.
“It’s not immediate,” said Dawn Deaner, the executive director of the Nashville organization Choosing Justice Initiative. She estimated that it would take more than five years to start to see the full effect of the new sentencing laws.
“But we’re going to see the prison populations grow,” she said.
House Speaker Cameron Sexton, center, with House Majority Leader William Lamberth at left and Republican Caucus Leader Jeremy Faison (Photo: John Partipilo)
“The People That Have the Money”
Tennessee is an important state for CoreCivic, as evidenced by the company’s significant lobbying expenditures in the state. The private prison company is headquartered in Nashville, and it has long been one of the state’s biggest political spenders. Since 2009, the company has spent $3.7 million on lobbying and campaign donations in the state, a Tennessee Lookout analysis found.
In response to a request for comment from The Lever, CoreCivic spokesperson Brian Todd wrote the company “supports candidates and elected officials who understand the limited but important solutions our company can provide,” and noted that it employs 1,200 people at its prisons in Tennessee.
Although a Tennessee law from the 1980s mandates that the state have only one privately-run prison, CoreCivic has carved out a loophole after years of attempts to rewrite the law entirely. The company now runs four of the state’s fourteen prisons by routing contracts through counties rather than the state. Together, the value of those four contracts exceeds $200 million.
Lobbying records from last year indicate that CoreCivic has a small army of eight lobbyists working on its behalf in Tennessee’s state house. According to state campaign spending data aggregated by FollowTheMoney.org, Tennessee’s current governor has received the most money from the private prison company of any politician in the nation: $65,400 over the last two election cycles, including donations from company executives, making the company one of his largest donors.
This year, Hininger, CoreCivic’s CEO, who is said to be considering a run for Tennessee governor in 2026, chaired a fundraiser dinner for the state Republican Party and personally gifted each attendee a souvenir glass emblazoned with the state’s Republican Party logo. Hininger himself has donated more than $100,000 to politicians in Tennessee over the years.
Meanwhile, lawmakers who have pushed the slate of harsh sentencing laws in Tennessee have been rewarded.
House Republican Majority Leader Rep. William Lamberth of Portland, a former county prosecutor, has spearheaded the sentencing bills in the state, championing the sweeping 2022 law and sponsoring the more recent bill that did away with early release. “He’s been very active in trying to pass harsher sentencing laws,” Deaner of the Choosing Justice Initiative said.
Lamberth is also one of CoreCivic’s biggest beneficiaries in Tennessee, receiving $8,500 from the company. So, too, are other Republican champions of the sentencing bills, including Lt. Gov. Randy McNally of Oak Ridge, who has received $7,500 from CoreCivic, House Speaker Cameron Sexton of Crossville ($10,000), and Rep. Jerome Moon of Maryville ($3,000).
The money is “absolutely” having an impact on policy, Deaner said.
“Who are the people that have the money in Tennessee?” she said. “Particularly in rural places, there are not a lot of wealthy donors.” In the absence of other campaign funding sources, this state of affairs has allowed CoreCivic to wield an especially significant influence with state lawmakers, she said.
”Driven By Greed”
CoreCivic regularly claims it does not lobby on sentencing-related bills — in Tennessee or elsewhere — and did so again in response to questions from The Lever. “CoreCivic does not lobby or take positions on any policies, regulations or legislation that impact the basis for or duration of an individual’s incarceration,” Todd, the company spokesperson, wrote.
But it’s clear from executives’ statements to investors that they are, at the very least, monitoring these laws closely.
“Going forward, the next three years to five years, a lot of states are looking at pretty significant increases [to prison populations] because, again, of changes, maybe, in sentencing reform,” Hininger said in the May call.
For the first time in a decade, prison populations across the country are rising after a dramatic drop in 2020 during the pandemic, when court backlogs and early releases due to Covid-19 lowered the number of people in prisons. The majority of states have reported an increase in the number of people incarcerated in their prisons over the last two years, according to a study published by the U.S. Department of Justice last November. According to the report, there were currently more than 1.2 million people behind bars — raising the country’s already sky-high incarceration rate.
A significant part of this incarceration surge is the return of normal court systems as judges worked through case backlogs that had persisted through the pandemic. But tough sentencing laws, criminal justice reforms say, also appear to be playing a role.
Prison executives agree. “In conclusion,” Hininger said in May, “the macro environment in which we operate continues to improve.”
The agency found Tennessee is seeing one of the country’s sharpest increases in its prison population — a reported 8 percent surge between 2021 and 2022. Colorado, Montana, and Mississippi all reported incarceration rates growing at 8 percent or above, and another 42 states reported some growth in their prison populations.
Many of CoreCivic’s prison contracts, including in Tennessee, are paid on a “per inmate, per day” basis, meaning that these fluctuations in prison populations directly impact the company’s bottom line. Many of the company’s facilities, its financial statements show, are not at full occupancy levels — and laws that could change this would put money directly into the pockets of prison companies.
CoreCivic’s “unholy alliance,” in the words of one state Democratic lawmaker, with the state of Tennessee illustrates just how greatly private interests are profiting from rollbacks to criminal justice reforms — whether that’s prison companies raking in cash from harsh sentencing laws or the bail industry’s success in Georgia, which reimposed cash bail requirements after experimenting with bail reform, a move that will benefit bail bond agents and insurers.
“This moment is revealing exactly what we’ve known about the carceral system,” Tylek of Worth Rises said. “The expansive use of incarceration as a solution to social failures is driven by greed.”
This article was originally published by The Lever, an investigative newsroom.
“Come on, man. I’m the guy who turned this economy around and created 11 million new jobs.”
“President Biden, do your friends and family think you’re senile?”
“No. And they would tell me.”
“President Biden, would you state your social security number backwards?”
“What, uh, no, that’s personal.”
“President Biden, are you so senile that you poop your pants?”
“What? No!”
And on it went for 25 minutes: George Stephanopoulos interviewing President Biden and asking him the same question 19 different ways: “Are you senile, and if you’re not, can you prove it?” It was the agreed-upon media follow-up after Biden’s disastrous performance in the preceding week’s debate with Donald Trump — and it was a no-win interview for both men.
My advice to Stephanopoulos: If you want to find out if someone is mentally slipping, the worst way to do it is to ask them if they are. A better approach would be to ask the person a number of questions on a variety of topics, in order to see how they react and think. If a person is really in cognitive decline, they likely aren’t aware of it and would deny they had a problem. It’s a Catch-22 (a reference that only old people and English majors will get).
As defined in the novel of the same name by Joseph Heller, Catch-22 means a dilemma from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting conditions. In the book, a pilot forced to fly dangerous combat missions thinks he is going crazy and wants to be relieved of duty. But he is informed that by asking to stop flying dangerous combat missions he is proving he isn’t crazy, because only a crazy person wouldn’t want to stop flying dangerous combat missions.
The Democrats are now wrestling with their own Catch-22, with some party leaders insisting that Biden’s debate performance demonstrated mental and physical decline and he should step aside for the good of the party (and country). Others say he’s been a great president and he just had a bad night and the party should dance with the one who brung them.
The Stephanopoulos interview didn’t settle anything. The media have latched on to the issue of Biden’s age and competence and won’t be letting go. That’s because it’s an open-ended question, ripe for speculation, which means pundits and opinions and outrage, and that means ratings! Media whores like Lindsey Graham are elbowing their way onto every talk show they can find to blather about the Democrats’ dilemma. They know that the longer the spotlight stays on the troubles of the opposing party, the better for Trump and the GOP — and for their own down-ballot candidates’ election hopes.
My advice to President Biden is to take a cognitive test (if he hasn’t already) and release the results. If he’s genuinely losing sentience, he needs to admit it and drop out of the race for president. If he isn’t, then he — and his party — can move forward with his campaign. The longer this “Will he or won’t he pull out?” drama continues, the longer Trump can keep his own dementia issues out of the spotlight. Let’s not forget that just a couple weeks ago, Trump was rambling on about the dangers of flying in an electric airplane (??) when the sun wasn’t out. Maybe it was a solar electric plane? I dunno. But it was nuts.
My two cents: It seems obvious that Biden has slipped a couple of notches, physically and mentally. If he stays in the race, I think it’s unlikely he gets to November without further episodes that raise the issue of his age, stamina, and mental competence. Even his most ardent supporters would be hard-pressed to convince themselves that Biden will be an effective president until 2028, when he would be 86.
Both candidates are too old — 81 and 78 — and both are demonstrably past their prime. One of them is an elderly politician with good intentions. The other is a elderly felon with the conscience of a toaster oven. If Trump wins, our republic will be in real trouble. His second term will make his first term look like Camelot. The first party to offer America an alternative to either of these two guys is going to win.
Though you may have read about Steve Lee in the Memphis Flyer before, none of those articles have really been about him. That’s the paradox of being an educator who devotes so much time to public service, as Lee has done since founding the Memphis Jazz Workshop (MJW), one of the city’s premier institutions in music education, in 2017. The scope and impact of that nonprofit have been so great that it’s easy to forget about Stephen M. Lee, the virtuoso jazz pianist and recording artist. He’s getting in two lifetimes’ worth of existence for the price of one.
A clue to the mystery of how Lee manages to accomplish so much in both worlds can be found in the title of his new album, In the Moment. That’s clearly where he lives, as one listen to his deft improvisations will tell you. Composing in the moment, on the spot, is at the heart of jazz, and jazz is at the heart of Steve Lee. But beyond the album itself, one senses that it’s been his ability to improvise as the director of MJW that’s led to its impressive staying power. “We’ve been at about seven locations in the last seven years,” he says. Yet the MJW not only survived the onset of Covid; it has thrived ever since. “We’ve averaged from 50 to 70 students for each session since 2020,” he adds, and those numbers are only half the story.
While those individual and group lessons, taught to teens during spring, summer, and fall sessions every year, are at the core of what Lee’s nonprofit has accomplished, perhaps the greater indicator of MJW’s success has been the degree to which its students have been performing for live audiences. Case in point, this Friday, July 13th, the MJW students will command the stage at the The Grove at the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC), featuring “the area’s most talented young jazz musicians in a variety of combos, ensembles, and even a big band,” as the GPAC site notes.
“This will be our third year [at The Grove],” Lee says. “It’s a great location, and they pretty much donate the space to us. Paul [Chandler] and his staff are great — the only thing we have to do is show up. It’s a great opportunity for the organization.” Moreover, MJW players can be seen on the third Saturday of every month as the featured attraction at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (the next event being August 3rd, noon to 2 p.m.).
And this is where the two lives of Steve Lee begin to meet, as some MJW students distinguish themselves enough to finally play on the bill with the maestro himself. That too will be apparent this Sunday, the day after the GPAC show, when Steve Lee will headline at the Sunset Jazz Series at Court Square.
“A few students will be playing on July 14th with me,” he says with a hint of pride. “The drummer, Kurtis Gray, is just 18. He just graduated from high school.” Flyer readers will know his name from our story on the Jazz Ensemble of Memphis, produced by David Less in emulation of the classic 1959 album, Young Men from Memphis: Down Home Reunion. “And the bass player’s also one of my former students, the drummer’s brother, Kem Gray Jr.,” Lee adds. “And then the sax player, Michael Price, just graduated from UT-Knoxville. He’s about to go to [grad school] at Rutgers.”
When Price was just a junior at UT, he shared some thoughts with the MJW Instagram page that may stand as the greatest endorsement of the program to date, saying, “The life skills that I gained from the Memphis Jazz Workshop were discipline, communication, honesty, support, love, mentorship, and community. … Understanding the intricacy of these different skills and their relationship to music is vital and you need to have all of these qualities in order to seriously pursue music, and I’d go as far as to say to succeed in life.”
In a way, it harks back to the glory days of Manassas High School, which trained generations of jazz greats here, starting in 1927 with educator Jimmie Lunceford, who polished his school band into a nationally recognized recording group, the Chickasaw Syncopators. “I think [MJW] is a continuation of what he was doing,” Lee told me in 2018, speaking of Lunceford. “But Memphis never had a jazz workshop like the workshops we have now. They always had jazz in the schools.” Today, Lee is forging that culture of excellence on his own, outside of any infrastructure, finding venues to hold classes anywhere he can, albeit now much more recognized by funding institutions, and always recruiting his faculty from among the city’s best jazz players.
He benefited from local greatness himself, when he studied under the great Memphis pianist Donald Brown (on the faculty at UT-Knoxville for many years), which in turn led to Lee’s years in New York City, prior to his return to Memphis. All that may explain the dedication and determination with which he’s thrown himself into leading the MJW. And the organization’s success has reflected well on both Lee and the city, a fact that was commemorated this past April when Lee received the Memphis Symphony Orchestra’s (MSO) Eddy Award, recognizing him as community leader in music.
“As chair of the Eddy Award selection committee, we agreed that Steve Lee embodies the award’s meaning as his incredible career has brought young people from all backgrounds, races, and life experiences together through the power of jazz music,” said Jocie Wurzburg in a statement on behalf of the MSO. Now, this weekend will show off both the MJW and Lee in their best light.
And, as he explains, his two skills feed each other, though balancing them has been demanding. “I have to be the teacher, the principal, the janitor, all of it,” he laughs. “I’m not one of those executive directors who just lets other people do it. Because, you know, it helps me. I don’t really have a lot of time to practice. So showing information to these students, that’s a part of practicing because I still have to sit at the piano and show them what I want them play. So it helps. That’s why I enjoy doing it. Because it is a form of practice, and you know, the students motivate me.”
Mike McCarthy lent a hand as guests climbed a ladder in front of his 10-foot, papier-mache sculpture work-in-progress of David Bowie.
Guests at his “Glam Rock Picnic” were given little pieces of clay to tap onto the sculpture to help build the statue.
Colleen Couch and Stevan LazichChris McCoy, Craig Brewer, and Natalie EnsmingerJohn Marvel McCarthy and Nya Goble
The statue, which portrays Bowie in the “Tokyo Pop” jumpsuit by Kansai Yamamoto, has four heads, which represent Bowie’s predilection for taking on different identities.
The goal of McCarthy’s nonprofit, Sculpt Memphis, is to preserve Memphis music through sculpture. He believes placing the statue in Overton Park near the site of the old Memphis College of Art in Overton Park would be a good spot for the Bowie statue when it’s completed. In 1973 Bowie visited the school, then known as Memphis Academy of Arts, to accept a watercolor by Dolph Smith, an instructor at the time.
Vincent and Misti Rae HoltonHanna McCarthy
Smith and his son, Ben Smith, attended the picnic.
“I thought it was a great kickoff to phase one,” McCarthy says.
The ultimate goal is to cast the sculpture in bronze. Which may mean another party or two in the future.
Anthony Dionne, James A. Edwards, and Father Joe Sax (Photos: Michael Donahue)
This year’s 66th Hole-in-One Charity Festival at St. Louis Catholic Church drew “well over 10,000, but maybe pushing 15,000,” says Wes Kraker, who’s been involved with Hole-in-One for more than 20 years.
June 21st and 22nd drew at least 2,500 people each night, Kraker says.
Taylor and Patrick Quinn, Chris MurrayAndrew MostellerCaden Robinson and Emma Roaten
This is the annual St. Louis fundraiser that begins on Father’s Day and ends six days later.
As Kraker explained to me last year, “We transform the campus at St. Louis Church into a 37-tee-box range. And we give out cash and prizes for good golfers for getting holes-in-one or close to the hole. Certain qualifiers shoot out for a car from City Auto. And we accumulate points for performers all week. And those top 10 performers shoot out for a million dollars on Saturday.”
Evan Winburne and Julia DiGeronimoJon Shivers, Corderoa Smith, and Patrick ShiversJoseph Tidwell, Cory Human, and Cole Tidwell
The St. Louis Men’s Club puts on the event. Proceeds go to St. Louis Church sports, scouting, and youth ministry programs.
The “St. Louis Men’s Club Culinary Institute” makes outstanding food, including barbecued bologna.
Eric in front of Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child at the Church of Our Lady in Bruges, Belgium (Photo: Stephanie Painter)
In Amsterdam, my husband and I are scanning a bar menu that advertises Pornstar Martinis and trying to stay clear of patrons engaged in a rousing pool game. It’s our first plunge into the famed Red Light District, and after paying our tab, we stroll down the block. At night, the 15th-century Gothic church Oude Kerk glows over sex workers’ windows and rows of padlocked bikes. The contrast is surreal.
“We’re going to the Rijksmuseum tomorrow,” I remind him.
He grins. Amsterdam is a city known for liberal lifestyles as well as artistic masterpieces. Like many of his brother dudes living out college fantasies, Eric can snoop out a strong martini, but art is his real driver, and it’s best to be in an alert and lucid state when exploring paintings by Old Dutch masters Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Frans Hals. An artist who works in abstract style, Eric has studied great Flemish artists’ works prior to our trip and looks forward to exploring paintings and sculptures shown in churches and galleries. His zeal — for art rather than religion — means that he always carries a pair of binoculars when touring a museum.
At the Rijksmuseum in the borough of Amsterdam South, Eric pauses for protracted and hungry examination of Rembrandt’s painting The Night Watch, occasionally shifting his angles and position in the crowd. Meanwhile, I view three other paintings to the best of my nearsighted ability. To my frustration, the stream of visitors forces me farther from the art. Then, Eric presses the set of binoculars on me. “Try them,” he urges.
With curiosity, I loop the cord over my scarf and take a look. This is where the magic begins as rich details suddenly spring into focus. The jewels in bracelets worn on a woman’s wrist in Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride gleam like characters in their own story, and lace patterns form a beautiful maze in The Merry Family. In other paintings, facial characteristics and loose brush strokes come into closer view. In this heightened scale, one can find elements not easily detected by the bare eye. Five hundred years later, it’s as if you’re standing with the artist in the act of creation, seeing details intended for your appreciation but that can get lost in large works and crowds.
“How does it look now?” Eric asks, confident of my delight. “Amazing,” I answer in surprise. Binoculars are essential tools at baseball games and golf tournaments, and some in more formal settings raise opera glasses. So why not brush off the dust remaining from the last ball game and scope out some art?
By the time we reach the Van Gogh Museum, I covet the art glasses. While my husband searches out tiny details in Almond Blossom and Sunflowers, I must politely wait my turn. Almond Blossom, one of my favorites, was gifted by the artist to his brother Theo and sister-in-law on the birth of their son. For the next phase of the trip, we ride the train to Ghent, Belgium, where we seek out The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, the 15th-century polyptych altarpiece completed by Hubert and Jan van Eyck in 1432. Stolen by the Nazis, the piece was recovered by the Monuments Men from an Austrian salt mine in 1945. Today it hangs at Saint Bavo’s Cathedral, and once again, Eric generously passes his binoculars to me.
The new perspective elevates my experience, and now I see that The Lamb of God’s blood spills into the Holy Grail, something missed before with my poor vision. A former aristocrat, St. Bavo repented of enslaving others and distributed his wealth to the poor. One characteristic that Eric shares with a real saint is devotion. In these masterpieces, there is so much to contemplate, and yet my husband is the only visitor who thinks to use a set of binoculars to appreciate art. This middle-aged guy who routinely wears a navy beret spreads his own kind of gospel, leading family members and friends to look deeply and consider the miracle of artistic conception and execution.
Next time you visit Dixon Gallery & Gardens or Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, you might find him peering closely — very, very closely — at a canvas. Follow his example, and you might view the next painting — really, all of the paintings to come — in a cool new way. Art glasses, anyone?
Stephanie Painter is a local freelance writer and author of the children’s picture book Liz Tames a Dragon (and Her Anger).
