Author: Alex Greene

Categories
Cover Feature News

Beale Street Bound

“All roads led to Memphis”: the Rock ‘n’ Soul museum today (Photo: Alex Greene)

“Would you like to take a look inside?” asks Josh Harper of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, as I stare at the white and pink letters on a black door, spelling out some of the most revered words in the annals of rock-and-roll fashion: Lansky Bros., Memphis, Since 1946. That’s an offer no inquisitive journalist can refuse, and when Harper turns the key, it’s as if he’s opened a portal into the past. The brick walls of the clothier’s longtime location at 126 Beale Street, now vacated in favor of the newer Lansky at the Peabody boutique, exude an aura of living, breathing history, dating back to the structure’s incarnation as Burke’s Carriages in the early days of Beale.

“The building used to be two buildings that were bricked together,” says John Doyle, executive director of both the Memphis Music Hall of Fame (MMHOF) and the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum. “On the second floor, they shoed horses. There was a ramp on the outside of the building where they walked the horses up there. A saloon was on the first floor. And the original hardwood floors are still there; the original beams are still there.”

Doyle has every reason to savor the history of the location, beyond the fact that the MMHOF museum was sandwiched between Lansky’s and the Hard Rock Cafe there for nearly a decade. Helming a museum makes one partial to the legacy of any building, especially when it’s destined to be the home of the very exhibitions you manage. And that’s precisely what’s in store for the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum. 


Artists’ renderings of the future J.W. and Kathy Gibson Center for Music  
Photos: (top) Courtesy Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum; (bottom) Courtesy Mike Curb Family Foundation

A Movable Feast

The move was made public one year ago at a press conference outside the building that featured Doyle, businessman J.W. Gibson, and host Priscilla Presley, where it was announced that Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Inc., the nonprofit that operates both the museum and MMHOF, had purchased 126 Beale from Lansky’s for $5 million with funding from Gibson, Mike Curb, and other benefactors. The highlight of the event was the unveiling of a sign marking the address as the new “J.W. and Kathy Gibson Center for Music” that will include MMHOF, Rock ‘n’ Soul, and the Mike & Linda Curb Music Center.

As reported at the time by Bob Mehr in the Commercial Appeal, Gibson, who is chairman of the museum’s foundation board, said, “It’s Memphis music that I’m committed to, and that I think is sorely missing tremendous opportunities year after year. Since I’ve been on the board, I’ve been preaching the notion that we need to take advantage of the talent that Memphis has and the history we have. Memphis music is substantial to the music industry internationally. However, locally, what are we doing to uplift that industry, to support that industry? We saw an opportunity here.”

Naturally, migrating the museum into the space will take some time, but the institution has long had patience on its side. Now in its 25th year, Rock ‘n’ Soul occupies a unique niche in the local museum ecosystem. For one thing, it was launched by the Smithsonian Institution, the first of that venerable organization’s exhibitions to be located outside the Washington, D.C., area. Moreover, Rock ‘n’ Soul was uniquely peripatetic even before it opened, with its origins rooted in a traveling exhibition. 

As Doyle explains, “When the Smithsonian was celebrating their 150th anniversary as a museum system, they decided to get some of their stuff out in the world and did an exhibit that toured the country. It included the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, Abraham Lincoln’s stovepipe hat, and other things, but the centerpiece of it was an exhibit about the origins of America’s music. It featured the quote that ‘In the quest to identify the roots of rock-and-roll, all roads led to Memphis.’ And they actually tapped some Memphians to do some of the research. David Less, here in Memphis, who has been head of the Blues Foundation and is a record producer and author, conducted over 60 oral history interviews with Memphis musicians who were still alive at the time.”

That ultimately led to siting the brick-and-mortar Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum in the Gibson Guitar Factory, a block south of Beale Street, in 2000. But though Gibson was not destined to keep that facility in operation in perpetuity, the museum had already migrated by the time it closed. As it turned out, Gibson wasn’t the only business interested in having a music museum in its corridors. The Grizzlies were coming.

Doyle explains that the NBA team “wanted a music museum to be part of the FedExForum campus because they were theming the basketball arena with a Memphis music thing. Anyone who’s come to a Grizzlies game recognizes that Memphis music is pretty prevalent through there. It was wise on the Grizzlies’ part to really embrace that aspect of the city’s culture. So they wanted a music museum to be part of the campus, and the Rock ‘n’ Soul board and staff preceding me raised, I think, $1.3 million to convert what was going to be a three story building into a four story building, so that Rock ‘n’ Soul would encompass the first floor.”

And that’s where it has stood since 2004, when the FedExForum opened. “We can never say enough about the Memphis Grizzlies. To have a nonprofit museum developed by the Smithsonian Institution, that pays no lease, is pretty unheard of. We’re the envy of most of the nonprofits in the city, and that’s out of the graciousness of the Grizzlies.” Indeed, the museum has thrived there for 20-odd years, and only last month, USA Today included Rock ‘n’ Soul among the top 10 music museums in the country as part of their 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards series. That puts it in the company of the Johnny Cash Museum, the Patsy Cline Museum, and the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville; the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland; the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix; the Museum at Bethel Woods in Bethel, NY; the Motown Museum in Detroit; the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol, Virginia; and the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

A Weird Coincidence

Thriving as it is in its current location, one might well ask why Rock ‘n’ Soul would move at all. And at one time, several of the museum’s board members were asking the same question. But at least one of them was inclined to think big.

“We had a strategic planning session a few years ago,” Doyle says, “and we were talking about things like improvements to the museum exhibits, expanded programming, and starting an endowment for the longevity of the organization. And then one board member threw up their hand and said, ‘What if we dreamed about having our own building, and both museums being under one roof?’ And another board member said, ‘Are you crazy? We pay no lease at FedExForum, thanks to the Memphis Grizzlies. Over at the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, we pay no lease, thanks to the Hard Rock Cafe [the anchor tenant in Lansky’s building, serving as MMHOF’s landlord]. We would be stupid to do something like that!’”

But even as they spoke, events were coalescing to nudge them out of their comfort zone. As Doyle explains, “It wasn’t two months later that Hal Lansky came into the lobby of Rock ‘n’ Soul and said, ‘I need to talk to you about something. The Hard Rock Cafe is leaving Memphis.’ This was in June of 2023. And I said, ‘When are they leaving?’ He said, ‘Thirty days from now.’ And I said, ‘Are y’all going to get another tenant in there who can serve as landlord for the Memphis Music Hall of Fame?’ And he said, ‘No, probably not. We’re probably going to put the building up for sale.’

“So I went to our board and said, ‘Remember that idea that some of us said was the stupidest idea anyone had ever come up with at a strategic planning session? It looks like it’s coming true.’ And so, with a very visionary board of directors, our soon-to-be board chairman J.W. Gibson donated a million dollars towards the purchase of the building. Then we wrote a grant, and the Assisi Foundation of Memphis graciously donated a million dollars. And then Mike Curb with Curb Records, who owns Elvis’ home on Audubon and funded the [Mike Curb Institute for Music] at Rhodes College, stepped up with $2.5 million, and in eight months, we purchased the building.”

That was just the beginning, of course. Expanding and creating new spaces for public engagement will incur costs far beyond the purchase of the building itself. “We then started a capital campaign to raise another $15 million to renovate the building, to do upgrades to both museums’ exhibits, to make them bigger and better, to have a performance space, so that we can assist musicians, to have a studio, so that we can assist students, and grow the gift shop. And now we have that underway. It’s kind of a surreal moment.”

Furthermore, both Rock ‘n’ Soul and MMHOF will live together in a space that’s undeniably, inherently historical. As Doyle points out, that’s something that other Memphis music tourist destinations have that Rock ‘n’ Soul has never possessed. “There’s only one place where you can have Sun Studio. The Stax Museum [of American Soul Music], even though the building was demolished, they rebuilt a replica on the same site. And then obviously, you can’t move Graceland. The fact that we tell the complete Memphis music story separates us somewhat from our other partners in the field of music here, around Memphis.” Yet that has also meant that Rock ‘n’ Soul has lacked any obvious, charmed location. But that’s about to change. 


John Doyle and Priscilla Presley (Photo: Courtesy Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum)

Keith Richards at 2015 MMHOF Induction Ceremony (Photo: Courtesy Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum)

Sacred Ground

Although Rock ‘n’ Soul won’t move for another year or two, the upcoming location is already spurring on a new groundswell of support for the museum. As it turns out, there’s nothing like having a Beale Street address. “Priscilla Presley is very engaged about what we’re doing,” says Doyle. “She’s obviously engaged because Elvis was tied to that building. But she also considers Memphis home, despite the fact that she lives in Los Angeles — as she’s said, she lived at Graceland longer than she lived anywhere in her life, being a military brat. And so she’s gone with me twice to the State Capitol to talk to legislators and the governor about how important this is, not just for the Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum, but for Memphis music and for the future of Beale Street, the safety of Beale Street: to have daytime and family-friendly programming, to enhance what the clubs and restaurants are doing. We’re looking forward to working with the Beale Street merchants, to be a good partner there, even though we’re on the other side of Second Street from the Beale Street Historic District.”

Mike Curb, for his part, also sees the move as potentially creating a critical mass around Beale Street. “We’re kind of hoping to do on Beale Street what we did in Nashville’s Music Row, where we bought quite a few buildings. … We’re going to do something really special.”

A whole new world of possibilities is opening up, in part because of a significant increase in square footage, but also because of what the Hard Rock Cafe left in its wake. “Fortunately, when Hard Rock Cafe left town,” says Doyle, “they left every plate, every fork and spoon, the most incredible kitchen equipment you’ve ever seen, and a stage with full sound equipment, full lights. Everything was left for us. I guess it was a housewarming gift. And we have great space in the building, double the space that we currently have for our two museums’ exhibits, so we could make room for a performance space, a larger gift shop, a recording studio to help students with podcasts, and host Beale Street Caravan, that sort of thing. We can have summer camps for kids, music performances, private facility rentals, anything that you want in that space, and still keep the museums running. This building is going to afford that.” 

Naturally, putting the museums at the head of the entertainment district will make them both more visible, and, together under one roof, able to attract more visitors. Most of all, they will be both on and of Beale, the old carriage shop’s brick walls, where a saloon’s rowdy crowd once fought, courted, and raised toasts, exuding the street’s spirit. Within those walls, Rock ‘n’ Soul and MMHOF will embody the very history they celebrate. As Doyle puts it, “Those are the things that make us sacred. We are moving into sacred ground.” 

Categories
Music Music Blog

Gonerfest 22 Rears its Giant Fish Head, Announces Lineup

W.I.T.C.H. (Photo: Izzie Austin)

Rising up from the murk and mud of the underground, Gonerfest 22 has emerged in the form of a gigantic bipedal fish to announce what will be in store this fall, from Thursday, September 25th, through Sunday, September 28th, 2025. And with many puzzling over the apparent closure of Railgarten, Gonerfest’s host since 2021, it comes as a relief to hear that this year’s festival has found a new home at Wiseacre Brewery on Broad Avenue.

The big news, of course, is that the fest will be headlined by “Zamrock” legends W.I.T.C.H. (purveying Zambia’s unique blend of traditional African sounds and psychedelic rock) and Missoula/Seattle indie rockers Silkworm. Also included in the initial list of confirmed bands are Sydney, Australia’s (via L.A.) “egg punks” Tee Vee Repairmann; Athens, Georgia’s rockers Pylon Reenactment Society; Auckland, New Zealand’s post-punks Guardian Singles; Sydney’s garage punks Itchy & the Nits; and up-and-coming Chicago popsters Sharp Pins.

Part of a rich flowering of edgy psychedelic rock in Zambia, W.I.T.C.H. (an acronym for “We Intend To Cause Havoc”) were formed during that country’s golden post-independence days, headed by lead vocalist Emanuel “Jagari” Chanda, and were soon embraced as one of the greatest “Zamrock” bands of the 1970s. With the economy collapsing at the end of that decade, and facing increased government authoritarianism, W.I.T.C.H., like most Zamrock bands, were reduced to playing daytime shows to avoid the curfews, then faded away. Cut to 2012, when Chanda was invited to the U.S. to perform. In 2013, “New Witch” began touring again with a lineup including Chanda and new members from the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland. The band’s previous discography has also been re-released.

Silkworm, meanwhile, formed in 1987 and released nine influential albums and many singles, EPs, and compilations over an 18-year period, as well as touring worldwide in North America, Europe, and Asia, notably playing every state in the continental U.S. (except Delaware, for some reason). The group recently played together as a dual-guitar quartet, for the first time in thirty years, at Steve Albini’s memorial in 2024, and the experience was so rewarding that they began to discuss regrouping for some additional events — which now will bring them to Gonerfest.

Silkworm (Photo courtesy Goner Records)

Early Bird Gonerfest 22 golden passes go on sale March 19th at 10 a.m. CDT. They are $150 each for entry into all official shows. Single-day passes will be available at the door, according to venue capacity. For more info and tickets, click here.

Categories
News Politics Politics Feature We Recommend

Timothy Snyder’s Call to Action

Timothy Snyder (Photo: Merlin.anthwares)

Leading up to the last election, millions of Americans were aware of the creeping fascism of the Republican Party, who’ve fallen in line behind a power-hungry authoritarian kingpin like a Russian duma. Yet many of us have felt blindsided by the rapid evisceration of government services, the warrantless apprehensions of immigrants, and the further flouting of law, treaties, and decency that have ensued since Inauguration Day. How are we to make sense of it all?

Timothy Snyder is more than a teacher, and more than the Richard C. Levin Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University: He has been a reliable public voice of reason, critique, and perspective since the first Trump administration. His 2017 book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, quickly became a bestselling guide to navigating what he’s called “America’s turn towards authoritarianism.”

Now, his latest work, On Freedom, approaches the same issues from a perspective that’s both more personal and more philosophical. In anticipation of his upcoming appearance at Rhodes College on Sunday, March 30th, Snyder took some time to speak with the Memphis Flyer about his thoughts on democracy and freedom, and how they might apply to our city in particular.

Memphis Flyer: In your new book, you speak of the “labor of freedom,” the ongoing work we must put in if we want to see democratic principles made real. I wonder how you see that in relation to what Neil Postman called “amusing ourselves to death,” the deep immersion in entertainment media that Americans seem to crave. Is it hobbling our ability to stay engaged as citizens?

Timothy Snyder: You’re absolutely right. Freedom is something that you have to work for. It can’t be given. If it’s given, it’s not freedom. And this does run against our intuitions. We’d like to think that freedom can be given to us by, you know, the ancestors, the Constitution, capitalism, American exceptionalism, history. But if it’s given, it’s not freedom. And worse, anybody who tells you a story about how it’s given is drawing you into authoritarianism, because if you believe that something’s going to give you freedom, then that means that you’re being taught not to act for yourself.

And that’s because, second point, freedom has to depend upon the unpredictable, eccentric combinations of things that each individual cares about and their ability to realize those things, those values in the real world. And so freedom isn’t just an absence of constraints. It’s not just being able to do what your impulses tell you to a given moment, freedom is something much bigger. It’s about becoming yourself. It’s about acting as the unpredictable, unique person you are, and changing the world in a way that only you can change it.

Which leads to a third point: Freedom always has to be something that we do together. We can’t achieve things by ourselves, because some of the basic elements that will need to be free, unpredictable people can only be built over generations working together, and those are very simple things like roads or schools or health care, or the rule of law, or whatever it might be.

And so it follows that if we train our brains to be stimulated all the time, to be entertained all the time, then we’re not training ourselves for freedom. We’re training ourselves to think that everything’s going to come to us, right? The stimulation all comes from the outside. We’re not questioning the frameworks. We’re putting our heads inside a framework. And also, we’re using up all the time next to the screen. We’re not getting our bodies out into the world, which is also very important. So when Postman was writing, we didn’t have the internet. The internet makes that point, unfortunately, ten times more applicable than it was before.

Your point almost echoes Plato positing that we have to build the perfect republic in our own mind, in the individual, for the Republic to exist in the world. It has to start with this interior initiative. Is that why On Freedom includes such personal, autobiographical passages?

The main reason I use so much personal material was to show that I have made a lot of mistakes [laughs]. And this is, I think, very important for a book about freedom, because a person who says they’re always right can’t possibly be a free person. The only way to be right all the time is to be living inside a story which you just modify no matter what you do so it turns out that you were right. And this is one of the things that’s very troubling about our Vice President, for example, is that no matter what happens, he’s yelling at other people, I mean quite literally, that they’re wrong and he’s right. He has this need to say that all the time to people who actually know what they’re talking about, in situations where you know, to put it gently, he isn’t completely correct or knowledgeable or an expert. And so freedom has to be a matter of accepting that you make mistakes, and moving on from them.

And also, another point is, I don’t think freedom can be written about point by point, the way that Plato was trying to write. I don’t think you can do it kind of paragraph by paragraph, building up a case. I think you have to accept that freedom is somewhere between people, and so you have to work in the writing to find ways to communicate to other people. So I share things about myself, about being young, about being sick, about being a parent and so on, as a way to reach out to the other person. Because it is a movement, but it’s not just an interior movement. I mean, it has to be a movement from the inside of yourself out to the inside of another person. Empathy, as I see it, is very central to freedom.

And this is a way that my book is different from other books. Usually, we start in the U.S. from the idea that we can be completely alone and we can be completely isolated, and we can just rebel against stuff around us, and that’s going to make us free. And I just think that’s completely wrong. If you’re completely alone and isolated, you’re going to be alienated and unhappy, and you’re going to make bad decisions, and you’re not going to be free. You’re also not going to be self-critical, or know when you’ve made mistakes. Freedom has to start from recognizing that other people are in the same predicament that we are in, learning to see yourself also from their point of view, and thereby becoming more knowledgeable about yourself. I think that’s a necessary condition for becoming a free person.

I’ve always struck by Ralph Nader’s idea of the “citizens toolbox,” calling for more town hall-style meetings, and other ways to participate in groups. In your travels and your historical thinking, can you point to any really strong examples of people building democracy from the ground up again?

That’s, that’s a wonderful question, because democracy, of course, can’t be built by a bunch of individuals who are alone in their houses, staring at screens. The thing that you should be doing is trying to organize people to do things that are beyond the screen. And I think that’s kind of the big trick of 21st century organizing. Of course, you have to spend time on social media, but you need to spend time on social media getting other people out to do things in the real world, because human contact is really special. It’s not depressing, it’s encouraging. It allows you to break the cycle of just reacting to everything that’s going around you emotionally, and allows you to act sensibly and in a way which also ends up improving your overall emotional state.

As far as examples, all the recoveries of democracy in the late 19th, late 20th, and early 21st century have to do with some kind of movement, some kind of mass movement, which goes beyond political parties, and goes beyond the existing framework. And I want to just make a little footnote to that: a lot of folks are saying, ‘Well, the Democrats should do more.’ And no doubt, the Democrats should do more, no doubt individual elected officials could do more, but there’s a certain way in which asking elected officials to do more is missing the point, because it’s really down to the citizens. It’s down to the citizens to organize creatively, to create more opportunities for elected officials. Because if we’re not out there building some kind of a movement, if we’re not literally creating a scene for them, then they can’t really act in that scene. If we don’t build up that civil society, we are, in effect, keeping them in their traditional role and not giving them anywhere else to go, right?

 So what I worry about is that when people say, ‘Oh, the Democrats should be doing more,’ it’s like you’re kind of repeating the mistake. I mean, sure they should be doing more, but we also have to do more.

You ask for specific examples. So the one that comes to my mind an awful lot lately is Solidarity in Poland, which was a labor movement, which you can’t really classify as being either left or right, which involved workers even though at the beginning most of its members were not workers, which was outside the normal rules of the game, and which didn’t fit into people’s preoccupations about what was possible in in a given moment. But that was in 1980-81. Since then, in the intervening 45 years, pretty much all the examples that I can think of, of democracies being recovered, have involved some kind of mass movement which went beyond a political party. At the end of the day, a political party might be helped by it and join with it or overlap with it, but the movement is the key.

So part of your point is, it’s up to local actors to invent these forms, these movements. I appreciate that in your book, there’s an emphasis on improvisation, or adaptability. And that that’s part of what makes democracies and freedom in general, more resilient. Is that a fair statement?

Yeah, yeah. No, I love that. That’s really good. Democracy is not like a car, right? Like, I have this feeling that a lot of people think democracy is like a car, you know, and it runs one day and it runs the next day, but then on the third day it stops running. And so what do you do? You get out and you start kicking the tires. But democracy is not like a car. It’s not something which is meant to run on its own. If it exists at all, democracy is always the result of people doing the things they care about together. It’s not a machine that either runs or breaks down.

[Automated voice breaks in]: ANNOUNCEMENT 19: WE’RE SORRY. THE NUMBER YOU HAVE DIALED HAS CALLING RESTRICTIONS THAT HAVE PREVENTED THE COMPLETION OF YOUR CALL. [Phone disconnects].

[I call Snyder back]: Sorry, that was very Orwellian.

I hope that makes it into your article!

Let’s switch metaphors. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig talks about how there are two kinds of people who ride motorcycles. There are the ones who just want to go, and then there are the ones who like to tinker. And if you want to have democracy, you have to be a tinkerer, which isn’t to say you have to know how everything works, but you have to know how something works, or how to try to figure out how something works —whether that’s the school board, or the city council, or the public library, you have to know how something works, and you have to be active at some level. I think the mistake people make is to say, ‘Well, either we’re going to have democracy or not, and that’s all going to be decided in Washington by big people who are far away.’ And that’s not it at all, right? Although big people who are far away are going to do their best to make you think that, because if you think that, you’re not going to do anything.

It seems like the implication is that so much of this has to happen on the local level, in those face-to-face encounters. I’m wondering if you have any case studies that might apply to Memphis, as we’re currently coping with Elon Musk’s Colossus supercomputer, and there’s this tension between the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce and City Hall rolling out the red carpet for him, with almost no public debate, despite the grave doubts of everyday citizens and environmental activists in Memphis. Have you seen case studies dealing with similar oligarchs who are squatting down in the middle of communities, and how those communities can push back?

I can’t claim any personal familiarity with the situation in Memphis, so I’m going to limit myself to just a couple of general points. The first is that Musk is an extreme case of people who look for unregulated environments where they’ll be able to do whatever they want. Different companies are better and worse about this, right? But he’s an extreme case of someone who seeks out an environment where he’s going to be completely at liberty to do whatever he wants.

The second point is that his record can be checked in other cities, in other places where he’s done business, like Texas. And the third thing, which is worth noting, is that his businesses are tanking. He has a big name and a big reputation and all that, but pretty much all of his businesses are tanking right now. And so the idea that this is some kind of sure-fire investment, I think, is unclear.

And that’s related the fourth point, which is that this is a person who’s assisting in a drastic attempt to carry out regime change in the United States. I don’t think one can just ignore that basic fact, because you’re then choosing to bring to Memphis all of the consequences of that, right? The guy has hundreds of billions of dollars, and he’s trying to change the entire structure the United States. And so if you decide to bring him to your county or your city, you’re bringing that too, with all the consequences of that, forever.

That’s a great point: We have to keep the big picture in mind, even as we act locally.

Yeah, and there’s always going to be the thought that outside investment is good. Our community needs investment. And then it’s up to local people to say, ‘Well, wait a minute. Who are the investors? What is their record? What are the positives and negatives on balance. What does this do to our community?’ So of course, the role the Chamber of Commerce is going to be the role the Chamber of Commerce. And it’s a legitimate role. I would say that’s not the only argument. People have to rise up, explain, creatively protest, and make all of the arguments, rather than treat this as something which just has to automatically happen, because ‘investment’s always good.’ Not all investment is good.

It seems that the left, or progressives, or whatever you want to call the current anti-fascists, could take a page out of the Republican playbook in as far as we should be leaning into local offices: school boards, city councils, that sort of thing. Have you seen that happening in response to the national political climate?

Yeah. First of all, I just want to agree with the premise that people should be running for office at all levels. From township trustee, or whatever you call it in Tennessee, through governor, through senator, people should be running for office, and especially for local office. There are too many races that are unopposed, and you’re right that the Republicans have done well by caring about that. And in my view, the Democrats hurt themselves with the notion that we have the more charismatic dynasties and we’re in control of the presidency forever. That didn’t turn out to be true. It was a bad, bad premise, because in the end, it’s what happens in the states that, over the long term, is going to determine who’s president, and not not the other way around. The funnel goes from the local to the state to the federal, and not the other way around. In the short term, the federal government can do lots of things, but in the long term, as you say, the Republicans are right about this: the funnel of historical action is from local to state and then ultimately to the federal.

Finally, I wanted to ask about your thoughts on the politics of race and how entrenched they seem now. I’m an anthropologist by training, and learned early on that race is an absolute fiction in the biological sense, even if it is, you know, imprinted on bodies, culturally, and so forth. Yet it’s a political force that seems to dovetail with your concepts of “sadopopulism” and “the politics of eternity.” Could you elaborate on those terms with regard to the politics of race?

Yeah, of course. So, by sadopopulism I mean a politics which is trading not in goods, but in pain. A populist might make promises. They might need to be unreasonable promises, but a populist is saying the government can do something for you. A sadopopulist is saying the government won’t really do anything for you, but our inaction is going to hurt other people more than it’s going to hurt you. And I think that captures a lot of American life. And it goes back to the to the question of what freedom actually is. Because it’s true: If we don’t do anything, if we’re inactive, if we just make the government small, or we don’t want the government to do anything, it’s always true that somebody else is going to suffer more. And in the U.S., very often white people are being told, implicitly or explicitly, that it’s the Black people who are going to suffer more. It’s the immigrants who are going to suffer more. That can become a kind of politics. You go from expecting the government to do things for everybody so that we’ll all have more opportunity, to thinking, ‘Okay, well, the government’s role is to tell me where I’m supposed to direct my gaze, to watch the people who are having a harder time than I am.’

That’s what I’m afraid the federal government is now up to. It’s pulling back things that the federal government could do to make us all free, and instead it’s creating a spectacle where we’re supposed to look at the deportation, we’re supposed to look at other people’s pain and think, ‘Oh, that’s not me,’ and be satisfied with that.

By the politics of eternity, I mean the idea that there isn’t really a future, and that therefore we should be concentrating on a time when the country was innocent. This is a very dominant way that authoritarians practice politics, from Russia to the United States: the idea that there was a time when we were great, when we were not flawed, when we were pure, before everyone else came and spoiled it for us. How does that connect to race? Well, in America, that’s a kind of white utopia. It’s the notion that 100 years ago, only the white people ran everything, and everything was better then, we weren’t troubled then, we didn’t have troubled consciences. We didn’t have to think about things then, and everything worked then. And of course, none of those propositions are actually true. The United States in 2024 was a much better country than the United States in 1924 in every conceivable respect, and a lot of it has to do with the merit of people who are not white, insofar as they were allowed to take part in the broader economy and the broader political system.

Then the racial utopia of [the politics of eternity] becomes racial politics, right? Where white guys who are less competent then get thrown into roles for which they’re clearly unprepared. You know, there are a whole bunch of cabinet secretaries now who fit this bill, and really the only thing that makes them vaguely look like they could be prepared is that they’re white guys and they can tie a tie. And that only seems plausible because of a kind of aesthetic, a nostalgic aesthetic, like, ‘This person looks like they should be a cabinet secretary, because they’re a middle-aged white guy who can tie a tie.’

And so that’s a way that the politics of eternity comes in, as opposed to thinking about our country in terms of its future, its better futures which it could have, in which all kinds of smart and talented people come in from all kinds of angles. You know, people who’ve been here for 15 generations, and people who’ve been here for one, people of European ancestry and people of Asian ancestry and African ancestry or whatever it might be. Instead of thinking of our country as having a billion possible futures that mix up the talents of all these people, we apply this false vision of when certain kind of person controlled everything and try to bring it back. So that’s a way that race connects to the politics of eternity.

I guess the great irony is, you know, people like Elon Musk are always going on about the future, but it’s this kind of pie in the sky, let’s colonize Mars type of thing, as opposed to the future of Americans living or not living, as the case may be, in the near future here on Earth.

Yeah, no, I think the notion of bringing apartheid to the whole solar system is probably not actually going to happen. But yeah, you’re exactly right. I mean, what they’ve done is they’ve basically colonized the future, right? Instead of there being a kind of everyday, all-American future, we have instead these stupid ideas: let’s go to Mars, let’s live forever, right? And those things are completely implausible, and they won’t happen, but they take up the space of the future. They’re like these polluted clouds that fill the air, so we can’t see our way to actually possible futures, which are out there.

Timothy Snyder will speak “On Freedom and Just Habits of Mind” at Rhodes College’s McNeill Concert Hall on Sunday, March 30th, at 3 p.m., sponsored by the Spence Wilson Center for Interdisciplinary Humanities. Registration required. Visit Rhodes.edu/wilson for details.

Categories
Music Music Features

The Glass Key Trio

The Glass Key Trio (Photo: Courtesy Jeremy Bleich)

A lot of bands can be described as “improvised music,” and that’s the beauty of the genre. Straight-ahead jazz has improvised solos built in, of course, yet generally that’s over a framework of complex chord changes. More rock-oriented groups will simply lay down a drone, grind out riffs, or rely on blues changes. I’ve been told the legendary Grifters would often facilitate freestyle moments in their live sets by having sheets of paper marked with chord names, like “C” or “A-flat,” laid out on the stage. They would wail for a while, and when one player wanted to shift gears, he would point to a new chord and the rest would follow suit. To audiences, it seemed like sheer telepathy. 

This Thursday, March 20th, the Lamplighter Lounge will present a case study in two approaches to improvised sonic adventure. The opener will be Turnt, who have enjoyed a Sunday residency at the Lamp for years now, often with a rotating cast of players. They’re not always strictly improvised, but that’s often the starting premise, and they arrive at it from a decidedly rockist orientation. The true “soloist,” as it were, is drummer Ross Johnson, who’s been globally celebrated for his off-the-cuff verbal rants since 1979’s “Baron of Love, Pt. II.”

Turnt (Photo: Courtesy Skyline Records)

That recording, of course, was made in cahoots with firebrand Alex Chilton, but more recently Turnt, too, have shown off Johnson to great effect. You can hear his magic on Bandcamp on such tunes as “Methadone Takeout Card,” “Twelve Hours on a Respirator,” or “Merry STD Baby,” where the verbal pugilist is backed by core Turnt members Scott Taylor (of Grifters fame), Bill Webb, and Hans Faulhaber. Though Taylor was sidelined by a stroke about a year ago, from which he’s now heroically fighting his way back, the band carries on. And while Johnson claims to have sworn off his ranting, we fans will believe it when we see it. 

After their set, some fresh faces will take the stage: The Glass Key Trio from Santa Fe, New Mexico. As Faulhaber quips with characteristic humility, “They can actually play!” 

Indeed, band leader and guitarist Jeremy Bleich studied composition at Cleveland State University, mostly playing bass and classical guitar at the time. And his trio’s debut album, Apocalypse Fatigue, led to two nominations in the 2023 New Mexico Music Awards, including Best Jazz Album and Best Instrumental Song. Yet when I note to Bleich that the Lamplighter Lounge doesn’t often play host to award-winning jazz groups, Bleich lets out a hearty laugh. “Actually, the thing that we’re not used to is playing in jazz rooms, to be honest,” he says.

“It’s interesting. The word jazz means different things to different people,” he goes on. “And I think the way that jazz is marketed or presented in certain venues can sometimes be codified in a way that we would definitely be excluded from. In my view — and I’ve played a lot of straight-ahead jazz in my life, too — I feel that jazz should be a living, breathing thing, and it always brings in different elements of music. A lot of the jazz that I’ve played has been influenced by so much music outside of bebop or straight-ahead jazz. Our music has a lot to do with other traditions, some of which are improvised, like Balkan music or bluegrass or American folk. I don’t really see much of a division between them. And a lot of the leading people that I’m listening to in jazz music are definitely interested in all of those different things, including punk rock.”

Although parts of Apocalypse Fatigue sound a bit like Bill Frisell if Frisell listened to more Wire, you won’t hear much punk per se on The Glass Key Trio’s album — yet it’s clearly in Bleich’s musical DNA. That goes back to his post-collegiate years in New York. “In the ’90s and the 2000s, the Downtown New York scene was kind of centered around the things that John Zorn was involved in, and his Tzadik label. I played with a group called Birth, and we did a lot of playing in New York at that time, with a lot of those guys who were on that label. They were all into, you know, klezmer music or Balkan music or Arabic music. I played the oud a lot, and that kind of came from that scene, which was reaching for something outside of straight-ahead jazz, for sure.”

Nor do the other two members of the trio limit their definitions of “jazz.” Drummer Milton Villarrubia III comes from a respected musical family in New Orleans. “He’s an old friend of mine,” says Bleich. “We’ve been collaborating on so many different styles of music and groups over the years. He ended up moving to Santa Fe the night of Hurricane Katrina, trying to get to the highest ground he could. And he’s an amazing drummer. He’s got this thing that only New Orleans drummers have, which is this deep, easy pocket that’s just so easy to play to. And then he can turn on a dime, and just play completely free.”

You can also file bassist Ben Wright under “free,” though he’s equally at home with more structured music. Many Memphians have enjoyed performances by his renowned father, saxophonist Jack Wright, whose Wrest trio was brought here by Goner Records, in a show at B-Side Bar. While Bleich’s music is clearly composed, he has an open approach to the band’s interpretation of his music, especially with newcomer Wright inheriting his father’s proclivities. “Ben can really go there,” Bleich enthuses. “He was raised in that [free] tradition. So, you know, The Glass Key Trio’s music is kind of taking on a whole new kind of life from the improv element. It’s a little freer. It’s a little more sound-based, and so I’m excited to explore those elements as well.”

Categories
Music Music Blog

Immersion + SUSS = Nanocluster

Immersion (Photo: Ben Newman); SUSS (Photo: Bob Krasner)

When Colin Newman and Malka Spigel started their synthesizer duo Immersion back in the 1990s, part of electronica’s appeal was the chance to reinvent oneself. “We were very into the electronic music when it started; it felt like a fresh movement.,” says Spigel. “It freed us from our past, and we could start fresh ourselves, without people’s expectations of what we did before.”

“Yeah, there was an element in a lot of dance music at the time of it didn’t really matter where it came from,” adds Newman. “It didn’t matter who the people were, what gender they were, what color they were, or what language they spoke, because it was instrumental music. So I think for the first time in the history of what you might call popular music, you lost that kind of axis of basically Britain and America — and in Britain, Jamaica — really having the majority of the markets. Suddenly you could really come from anywhere. And that really opened up the whole scene. Although the roots of techno were in Detroit, and roots of house were in Chicago, they were not adopted at the same level in America as they were in Europe. So Berlin and other places, you know, became centers of techno, and that was kind of interesting.”

Newman, of course, had already sought out and created alternatives to the usual pop fare with Wire, whose debut, Pink Flag, with its stop-start breakdowns, semi-spoken/shouted vocals, and angular riffs created a stir in the music world of 1977. For the band at the time, though, punk was already a cliche: They were rejecting both classic rock posturing and punk posturing at the same time. They were, perhaps, the first example of “post punk.”

And yet, as Newman pointed out years ago on The Guestlist podcast with Sean Cannon, “There was no such thing as post-punk. We were just ‘not punk.’ But we were not punk in a way that was familiar with punk already.” Wire was thus premised on reinvention. “Punks hated us … Our songs were too short or they were too slow. We were too weird. We were too arty. We looked wrong.”

By the 1980s, with Wire and his own solo albums, Newman was still questing for new, unique sounds, and in 1985 he came to produce an album for the Israeli synth band Minimal Compact, which included Spigel. They became a couple and eventually married, as both explored the potential of synthesizers in their separate projects. Ultimately, they formed Immersion and released Oscillating in 1995.

And reinventing themselves was part of the appeal of electronica at the time. As Spigel says now, “We liked how mysterious the artists were. Even the famous ones were kind of hiding, not really showing who they were. And the music, of course, was inspiring.”

Embracing the sonic world of synthesizers has served them well, and since 2021 they’ve expanded Immersion’s sound to include collaboration with other artists, under the umbrella term of Nanocluster. The debut Nanocluster album saw Immersion collaborate with Stereolab’s Lætitia Sadier, German post-rock duo Tarwater, and electronic musicians Ulrich Schnauss and Scanner. Released in June 2024, Nanocluster, Vol. 2 had guests Thor Harris — the charismatic percussion player from Swans and Cubzoa — and Jack Wolter from Penelope Isles. And this year has seen the release of Nanocluster, Vol. 3.

On the new album, the couple are collaborating with the American “ambient country” band SUSS, described by Uncut magazine as “Eno’s Apollo Atmospheres crash-landed in America’s Sonoran Desert,” and by Pitchfork as “Neither rawboned nor ramshackle … their elegantly composed brand of ambient country stands as tall and clean as a brand-new pair of cowboy boots.”

A trio of veteran musicians Pat Irwin (the B-52s, Raybeats, 8 Eyed Spy), Bob Holmes (numun, Rubber Rodeo), and Jonathan Gregg (the Combine, the Linemen), SUSS combine traditional instruments like pedal steel, National steel guitar, mandolin, harmonica, baritone guitar, and harmonium with synthesizers and loops to create their a spacious, cinematic sound.

This sense of adventure makes them perfect partners for the Nanocluster project. As SUSS’ Bob Holmes notes in a press release, “Collaboration is an important aspect of the type of music SUSS makes. Whether we are collaborating with each other, or with musicians and artists outside of the band, the exploration and discovery of the unknown is central to our creative process. When Colin & Malka approached us to collaborate with them on Nanocluster, it seemed like a perfect fit. Their use of rhythm, synthesizers, bass and atmospherics felt very complementary to our instrumentation. As expected, the results were unexpected and our music was taken to a place where we would not have gone otherwise.”

Unexpected results can be good or bad, as Spigel points out. “It’s risky. There’s always nervous moments where you think, ‘Is it gonna work? Do they get the concept? Do we find a common ground?’ But surprisingly, so far, we’ve found a really beautiful common ground with every artist we’ve worked with, and we end up being friends. So that’s good.”

A common thread runs through every Nanocluster project, in that every album is ultimately initiated and brought to a close by Immersion. As Newman notes, “The thing that all the collaborations have in common, certainly from the recording side, is that we always finish and mix it, just to give it some kind of sense of continuity, and we do that with absolute inclusion of everything that our collaborating artist has given us. And they can say anything they want about how it ought to be. I mean, SUSS’ way of mixing is very different to ours. We tend towards something which you can hear all the all the nuance on it. They tend to like mix a bit more like jazz.”

Spigel adds, “But they’re into space, which is one of the things that draw us to them.”

The modern miracle of file sharing has been critical to Nanocluster. “With SUSS, they would send us four or five tracks with sounds that we could play over, and we did the same for them, and we built what ended up being the album,” says Newman. “It was all done remotely — actually, before last week, we never met them. We met them for the first time in New York when we rehearsed.

“I think once they kind of realized and trusted us that we could actually finish this off and produce something that was really something that we could all be proud of, that was probably the hardest moment. Once we were past that moment, then we started going very much into their world, and then finding what we could do that was really out of SUSS’ aesthetic. One is vocals. ‘In the Far Away’ started off as almost a kind of neoclassical piece, with the cycling pianos and that kind of vibe. And then Malka was like, ‘I think I’ve got a vocal for this.’ And so we put the vocal on it, and sent it. And they were like, ‘We love it!’ Also, having drums, which are a thing that SUSS don’t have, but actually they were encouraging all of this to be harder, tougher.”

Finally, as Spigel points out, “I think we did what felt right, within the music. It’s about what’s right for the piece.”

The latest Nanocluster collaboration will appear at the Green Room at Crosstown Arts Tuesday, March 18, at 7:30 p.m., with each band performing their own set before joining together for a third set as Nanocluster.

Categories
Music Music Features

Vivaldi’s Remake/Remodel

Elena Urioste (Photo: Chris Gloag)

Sure, we all have our favorite composers, but who’s your favorite re-composer? If the term is not on your radar, that’s understandable: It’s typically only used in reference to the contemporary classical auteur Max Richter, who, back in 2012, turned his postmodern, post-minimalist ears to Vivaldi’s masterpiece, The Four Seasons, and created Recomposed. Structured, like Vivaldi’s celebrated 18th-century string concerti, with three movements for each season, plus additional “electronic soundscapes” on the Deutsche Grammophon album where it premiered, Richter’s reimagining of the canonical work won critical acclaim for its mix of inventiveness and historical relevance. 

Indeed, it quickly became almost as omnipresent as Vivaldi’s original, used to soundtrack television series as disparate as My Brilliant Friend, Bridgerton, and Chef’s Table. But, as it turned out, Richter wasn’t finished with his time-traveling. In 2022, he released a new album, The New Four Seasons – Vivaldi Recomposed, which had a slightly different approach. This Saturday, March 8th, Memphians will be able to hear this latest take on Vivaldi in person, with a live performance by Iris Collective at the Crosstown Theater, led by Elena Urioste, the virtuoso violinist featured in Richter’s most recent recording of Recomposed. 

Urioste, a Philadelphia native, is one of the finest violinists of her generation, having won the Sphinx Competition for young players of minority backgrounds at an early age, then making her debut at Carnegie Hall in 2004. In 2012, she was named a BBC New Generation Artist. And so it was no great surprise when she was recruited to play on Richter’s New Four Seasons album two years ago. But it wasn’t your typical classical recording session.

“The first recording [of Recomposed] that Max released was with Daniel Hope as the violin soloist, and it’s just been so unbelievably successful,” she notes, speaking from her current home in London. “It’s performed all the time around the world in all sorts of different settings. And I think it’s such a powerful piece, and I think it also attracts a lot of different types of listeners. But anyway, the first recording was so successful that for its 10th anniversary, Max wanted to re-record the piece with everyone playing on gut strings and using period bows. So he enlisted me for that project, and we all came together and made this recording in December of 2021, with him playing a vintage synthesizer. I don’t know a whole lot about synthesizers, but he spoke very passionately about this one that he used for the project.”

For Memphis gearheads, the internet reveals that Richter used a vintage Moog keyboard, though the model is not specified. More to the point, using violins that could have been made in Vivaldi’s era took the piece back to an edgier time. “All of us were on gut strings, using Baroque bows. So it was cool to combine looking backwards and implementing historical performance techniques, feeling the purity of sound that gut strings afforded us, but also combined with what Max spoke of as a punk aesthetic. He really enjoyed the grittiness of using this sort of equipment. So I think it all came together in a really cool way, and we’re very proud of the recording.”

Indeed, the new version seems to loom large in the composer’s own view. As he told writer Clemency Burton-Hill, “I see this as a multidimensional project. It’s a new trip through this text using Vivaldi’s own colors, so you have different eras talking to one another.” He further reflected on using the ethnically diverse Chineke! Orchestra to back Urioste. “It’s also recomposing the social structure of our classical music culture to some extent, and focusing on different perspectives, which is really exciting and important to me,” he said. “I don’t see this as a replacement, but it is another way of looking at the material. It’s like shining a light through something from a fresh angle … as if a layer of dust has been blown off.” 

It was a profound experience for Urioste. “Since we made the recording, I’ve performed it in a lot of different scenarios, sometimes with Max. We played it in Berlin and in a pavilion in London for Earth Day, using amplification. And then I’ve also played it really bare bones, just acoustically, even without the synthesizer. So this Iris performance will be the latter. There won’t be synthesizer. We won’t be amplified. It’ll just be the strings, just the music itself. But I think it works so beautifully in all of these different forms.”

The show will also be a homecoming of sorts for Urioste, who’s been associated with what is now the Iris Collective for years, culminating in her appearance as a featured soloist with them on a violin concerto by Korngold. “I did so many concerts with the Iris Orchestra in my early 20s,” she says, “and when I went back to play the Korngold seven years ago, there was a real sense of returning to a very healthy place, and I’m hoping to see some familiar faces there on this visit. I hope I see people who I knew back in the day.” 

Beyond that, she looks forward to bringing the Richter work she knows so well to the land of her birth. “I mean, I am American,” she says, “and it’s always nice to return to home turf. Although, to be honest, the home turf is kind of terrifying for me at the moment.” 

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

A World Turned Upside Down

A.D. Weaver as George Washington in Hamilton (Photo: Joan Marcus)

A crash course in historical irony was on hand last night, as my son and I trundled into the Orpheum to see Hamilton: An American Musical. While the cast of the celebrated musical sang and rapped their way through the circumstances and ideals upon which this country was founded, a shadowy Trump administration and its unelected advisor, Elon Musk, had just frozen funds for the National Endowment for Democracy in direct violation of the 1974 Impoundment Control Act (which mandates that funds appropriated by Congress be distributed to their proper recipients). Meanwhile, the United States apparently abandoned all commitments to erstwhile ally Ukraine. Authoritarian states like China and Russia were delighted by both moves. And, with characteristic hubris, Trump tweeted “LONG LIVE THE KING,” referring to himself. Welcome to another day in Upside-Down World, where a supine Republican Congress continues to give the executive branch free rein.

Meanwhile, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) diverted all funding originally targeting underserved communities only two weeks ago. Instead, those monies shall now go to projects honoring the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. That, perhaps, is the most chilling irony: the NEA celebrating a revered historical document as a kind of fetish while caving in to principles that defy its very intent.

It was not always thus. As Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda told CBS News in 2017, without the NEA he might never have had a career at all.

“My first musical was workshopped at the O’Neill Musical Theatre Center, which is partly funded by the NEA,” he said. “But that’s not even the real story. The real story is the NEA funds things in all 50 states. They are the supplement when arts programs get cut. They fund reading programs between parents and young children in Kentucky. They fund, you know, educational initiatives all over the state, all over the United States. So, when we talk about the NEA, we’re talking about a very small amount of money that does get an enormous return on its investment in terms of what it gets out of our citizens.”

How could one not imagine President Trump’s royal ambitions whenever Hamilton‘s farcical character of King George III (Justin Matthew Sargent) appeared, full of imperious condescension, the perfect foil for the musical’s American patriots? It was enough to give this audience member chills, a bracing reminder of this country’s origins.

The Orpheum has always championed Miranda’s 2015 musical, having been the first theater to bring Hamilton to Tennessee in 2019, then again in 2021. And while those touring productions were stellar, the new touring production, at the Orpheum until March 2nd, hits differently. Suddenly, it seems more necessary than ever.

From the beginning, Hamilton was a shot across the bow for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Its central conceit was to recast the country’s white, propertied “Founding Fathers” as multi-ethnic players fired with the grit and grind of hip hop culture and the soaring emotions of an R&B ballad. And, as Miranda told the New York Times after its opening, “Our cast looks like America looks now, and that’s certainly intentional. It’s a way of pulling you into the story and allowing you to leave whatever cultural baggage you have about the founding fathers at the door.”

Indeed, the musical’s staunchly pro-immigrant ethos is a heartening reminder that Trump is not our king. This was abundantly clear last night, when, during the “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)” scene, after the Marquis de Lafayette (Jared Howelton) says the word “immigrants,” and Hamilton (Michael Natt) joins him in saying, “We get the job done,” there were enthusiastic cheers and whoops in the audience. Clearly, I was not the only one who’s spirits were bolstered.

Natt, as a person of color, perfectly embodied the idealism and the drive of his character, delivering the rhymes and raps — sometimes derived from actual historical texts — with understated aplomb, as did his more aggressive foil, Jimmie “JJ” Jeter as Aaron Burr. Lauren Mariasoosay, of South Asian ancestry, masterfully inhabited the unique mix of Colonial-era decorum and emotionalism of Eliza Hamilton, especially in the anguish she conveys at the show’s final moment, just before the house goes dark. And perhaps none captured the play’s inclusive spirit more than the regal A.D. Weaver as George Washington, who expressed all the gravitas that the role demands.

Washington’s repudiation of demands that he become the young nation’s new king, insisting instead on mounting an election for his successor, was a compelling beacon of hope in these dark times, when an American president dares call himself king and jokes about never needing elections again. In matter-of-factly expressing, with new urgency, what once seemed to be this nation’s imperfectly executed yet fundamental principles — a respect for diversity, the peaceful transfer of power, and the rule of law — Hamilton preserves the ideals that we’ve thus far taken for granted and offers the possibility that they haven’t been forgotten.

Back in 2016, newly elected Vice President Mike Pence attended a performance of Hamilton that caused quite a stir when Brandon Dixon, the actor playing Burr, stepped out to share some thoughts with the audience and Pence after the curtain call. If those words rang true then, they are even more critical today, as all of the first Trump administration’s excesses are amplified beyond belief. See Hamilton if you can, take your sons and daughters, and when you do, remember Dixon’s reminder to Pence:

We, sir, are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents — or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. All of us.

Categories
Music Music Features

Bright Eyes

Mike Mogis, Conor Oberst, and Nate Walcott of Bright Eyes (Photo: Nik Freitas)

As any Memphian knows, there are advantages to being a land-locked city far away from the coastal metropoles of money and power. While music industry towns like L.A. or New York seem to be where the action is, being left to one’s own devices in mid-America encourages a certain independence of mind, and hence some especially innovative creatives — from Sam Phillips to Jay Reatard. It turns out the same can be said for Omaha.

That Nebraska burg, like Memphis, felt relatively sleepy back in the ’90s, yet ultimately birthed a scene of its own that has endured for decades. Eventually the standard bearer for “the Omaha sound” was Bright Eyes, still going strong and set to appear at Minglewood Hall on Monday, March 17th. But they were only one of many bands sprouting up in the Omaha scene as the last century ended. 

Bright Eyes multi-instrumentalist and chief recordist Mike Mogis recalls those days well. “Over the course of the last 25 to 30 years, a lot has changed about the Nebraska music scene,” he says today from his ARC studio in Omaha. “But back in the day, like the late ’90s, early 2000s, there was a very strong community of friends that all made different-sounding music. Bands that come to mind are Bright Eyes, our band, or The Faint, which is kind of an electronic band, or a band like Cursive, which is a heavier, emo kind of rock band. But we all played in bands together as well, like side projects. We’re all just friends, and that created a supportive musical community that we all felt inspired by. You know, inspired by each other.”

And the way Mogis describes it, all those bands sprang from a determination to make their own fun, despite living in the hinterlands. “I’m looking out my window, and it’s like 10 degrees and there’s snow everywhere,” he observes. “It’s sometimes a harsh place to live, but because of that, it’s also a good place to make music. When it’s cold like this, it’s what I call ‘record-making weather.’ You stay inside and you record music. Weirdly, Bright Eyes tends to record mostly in the winter. Maybe it’s coincidental, but it’s right after fall, which is kind of my favorite season. Anyway, it’s a good place to make music because, to be honest, there’s not a ton else to do.”

It was in that spirit that Mogis first worked with Bright Eyes’ chief singer/songwriter Conor Oberst. “I remember making the first proper Bright Eyes record, which is [1998’s] Letting Off the Happiness. I lived in Lincoln at the time, going to college, and I would drive to Omaha because Conor was in high school. I set up a quarter-inch Fostex eight-track reel-to-reel machine — you know, all analog — and a little mixing board. And we recorded that record in his mom’s basement. I set up in the laundry room as a control room, and then the room adjacent to that was like a little family den. Me and my brother A.J. Mogis just learned on our own, and he kind of taught me.”

That early effort already featured the fundamentals of the Bright Eyes sound, resting initially on the twin pillars of Oberst’s socially and psychologically astute lyrics and melodies over a strummed guitar, and Mogis’ delight in recorded sound and its infinite mutability. Both born of a D.I.Y. spirit, they come together to stunning effect on opening tune “If Winter Ends,” launching with a sound collage suggesting playgrounds, feedback, and traffic, then yielding to Oberst singing, “I dreamt of a fever/One that would cure me of this cold, winter-set heart/With heat to melt these frozen tears.” Record-making weather, indeed.

With a rotating cast of players, the band went from success to success into the new millennium. “We started our own record label, Saddle Creek, and just did our own thing, putting out our own records and our friends’ records,” says Mogis. “And, you know, it kind of took off for a moment there, in the early 2000s, with all those three bands that I just mentioned. We’re all still kind of kicking it today. And we all live in different places now, but Conor and myself have stuck it out here in Nebraska.”

As the band was taking off, another member of the extended Nebraska musical family, Nate Walcott, with roots in Lincoln, joined the group as a multi-instrumentalist, and 2007’s Cassadaga featured his musicianly contributions and full-on, edgy orchestral arrangements. “The first time we recorded the orchestra in L.A., at Capitol Studios, in their big room,” says Mogis, “I just got chills. I’m getting goosebumps right now, just remembering it.”

Thus the now-classic trio emerged, each bringing his own strength to the mix, as they continued to work primarily in Mogis’ studio. All the while, even after a nine-year hiatus, the group has made a point of giving every album a distinctive sonic stamp. Which holds true for their latest work, Five Dice, All Threes, released last year.

“With this one we wanted a more simplistic, sincere-sounding rock record, not too labored-over. We wanted to get back to being more of a live band again, like we used to be. It kind of had a similar approach to what we took on I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, except the fact that it’s not a folk record. This one is more akin to The Replacements, like more ruckus-y rock music.” Having said that, there are plenty of the band’s other elements present, from extended cinematic audio quips to Walcott’s arrangements for horns and strings, not to mention cameos from Cat Power and The National’s Matt Berninger. Mogis says audiences for their upcoming tour can expect an unpredictable mix of songs old and new, with a full sonic palette. 

“We have a whole sample bank that Nate plays live, so he’ll trigger them throughout the show. It changes from night to night, depending on the mood,” Mogis says. “And we dig deep into our back catalog.”

Meanwhile, he’ll keep savoring the “record-making weather” that Nebraska offers. “You know, there’s not that many distractions,” Mogis reflects. “And that’s sort of what keeps me here. The fact that Conor and I built this recording studio anchors me here, because it’s a nice place. I enjoy making albums, making music, art, you know, whatever. And it’s a good place for that because it’s affordable, there’s not a whole lot else to do, and there’s a lot to be inspired by, living out here.” 

Categories
Music Music Features

The Drip Edges

The Drip Edges (Photo: George Hancock)

Many know Jeremy Scott through his work with the now-defunct Reigning Sound, but there’s a lot more to this rock-and-roll lifer’s music career than that. After leaving that band for the first time (before the original group re-formed and then split again in this decade), he went on to found The Wallendas (featuring guitar pyrotechnics from Jim Duckworth), followed by Toy Trucks, The Subtractions, and a million ad hoc projects like the all-star tribute to Doug Sahm that he organized last month. (Full disclosure, I played with him in some of these groups.) One common thread through all of these has been the presence of the gritty, indie rock energy he often showcases on his weekly radio show on WEVL, Out On the Side, marked by a close attention to vocal harmonies.

That was also true for the first album under his own name, 2022’s Bear Grease, which he pieced together with multi-instrumentalist/engineer Graham Burks Jr. through the magic of overdubs. As the Flyer observed at the time, “though he started with acoustic intentions, he couldn’t help but let his rock instincts take over.” And, as that unfolded, the album took on a hard-rocking edge that required a full band. 

And thus were the Drip Edges born, as Scott added Noel Clark on guitar and Mitchell Manley on bass to create a team that could present the album in a live setting. Now, with the release of their new EP, Kicking the Tires on the Clown Car, the quartet has come into its own. I spoke to Scott last week to see how this release compares to his solo debut.

The new EP

Memphis Flyer: The song “Dirty Sound” on the new EP seems the most like Bear Grease, and it’s the only acoustic-driven song on the record. You’ve said this new release was recorded by the Drip Edges as a band, but is that true for “Dirty Sound”?

Jeremy Scott: That’s 97 percent me, and Graham helped with the percussion tracks.

So that’s the only track done in the manner of Bear Grease? 

Yes, it is. I put all the harmonies on. And Graham’s got a Mellotron, and I was playing around with it. And I’m like, “Well, maybe you can put some of this on?” Because he put Mellotron on “Fred Neil Armstrong” on the first record. And then he was like, “Well, why don’t you just do it?” I’m like, “Are you sure? People could get hurt!” But it wound up sounding not awful. Then there are weird things in there that sound almost like a trombone in spots. That’s just me on the guitar, running it through this pedal called a Slow Engine. Sometimes it can make it sound a little bit like a backwards guitar. It’s a pretty cool device.

You’ve certainly leaned into the hard rock elements of Bear Grease on this new release, but they’re revved up more, played by a seasoned band. I hear a lot of Hüsker Dü’s influence on some of the tracks. 

Yeah. Hüsker Dü was so formative for me. Okay, I heard the Replacements first, and I dug them, but I got really burned out on the Replacements, and now I don’t really feel like I ever need to listen to them. Ever. That’s not their problem, that’s mine. Hüsker Dü, I can listen to whenever. It all holds up. And the one that really bit me in the ass was [1985 album] New Day Rising. That was a great combination of power and melody. That whole run from Metal Circus through Zen Arcade is so amazing. But New Day Rising is probably my personal favorite.

What exactly has stayed with you from those records, as you’ve written your own songs?

Just the songwriting combined with that guitar sound. And I picked up some things here and there from Bob Mould’s guitar style. Like, I was listening to the intro to the first song of ours — “Everything’s Gonna Have to Be Alright” — and thinking it probably sounds a little bit more like Sugar [Mould’s post-Hüsker Dü band]. Even though I didn’t have that Rat [distortion] pedal and the other stuff he used.

The intro to another song, “Nobody Wants to Drive,” almost sounds like Ratt, the band. The crunch and darker chord changes are a little more metal.

That one actually is probably more influenced by Sugar. And that one is funny because that started off when I was still doing the Toy Trucks band. We tried playing that song, but it was more like a really energetic, forceful waltz. It was in 6/8, and the chorus was the same, but the verse was entirely different — different melody, different lyrics. And I came back to it with these guys, thought about a little bit, and I’m like, “What the hell am I doing here?” So I just decided to make it 4/4, to make it more of a straightforward thing.

The band seems to really relish playing an outright rocker.

It’s a testament to how these guys can put a song over, and it’s good playing with these younger guys that have that energy. I mean, nobody’s going to confuse me with a spring chicken at this point. I guess I’m a little bit more of a winter chicken. 

The Drip Edges will play a record release show at the Lamplighter Lounge on Saturday, February 15th, at 3 p.m. Joecephus & The George Jonestown Massacre will open.

Categories
Music Music Features

Delta Stardust’s Debut: “Roots Psychedelia” 

Delta Stardust opening for Acid Mother’s Temple. (Photo: Andrew Geraci)

The blues have always hung out at the crossroads of the mundane and the supernatural — as when Robert Johnson exhorted anyone listening to “bury my body down by the highway side, so my old evil spirit can get a Greyhound bus and ride.” But in spite of the blues walking side by side with the devil and buying mojo hands for so long, the genre was never quite associated with shamanic states of consciousness until the ’60s, when tripping hippies folded the blues into both the folk and the heavy rock they favored. Yet when that sonic mash up coalesced into psychedelic rock, the music lost all its grounding in a particular place. It was largely part of the everywhere/nowhere world of pop music, never spawning a site-specific tag analogous to “Delta blues,” but rather proffering a universal message of peace, love, and understanding.

Now, with the advent of a new Memphis/North Mississippi band, Delta Stardust, that may well be changing. As the band’s chief songwriter Michael Graber, aka Spaceman, puts it, “We wanted to go for this transcendence, but we also wanted to be from somewhere. It’s that whole yin-yang, push-pull thing.” 

Album art by Rowan Gratz

Beyond being an abstract statement of the band’s mission, those words also capture the sound they’ve come up with, which can be heard on their debut album, Snakes Made of Light, released on January 24th. At the foundation of most tracks is the jangling, earthy, ramshackle string band sound to which Graber and his new/old bandmates have devoted themselves since at least the mid-’90s heyday of Prof. Elixir’s Southern Troubadours, through the venerable Bluff City Backsliders, and on into more recent projects under the name Graber Gryass. All these have sported, to varying degrees, Graber’s songwriting, which often blends the archaic language of the Carter Family with Graber’s more Whitman-esque, visionary poetry. This holds true for his work for Delta Stardust. But the new band also explores novel audio flavors. 

“We gave ourselves permission to bring in all kinds of different textures,” says Graber of the new sonic stew. “You know, the synthesizers, the mellotrons. We recorded at the home studio of John Kilgore, who was the co-producer and engineer. He’s the engineer at Zebra Ranch studio [established near Coldwater, Mississippi, by the late Jim Dickinson 30 years ago]. But John also makes his own guitar pedals and has about 400. And we had tons of Moogs and different compressors. He’s like a Brian Eno in Senatobia. There, in his home studio, John said, ‘If you can dream it, I can find the sound equivalent.’ So we were able to add that alchemical — we call ‘stardust’ — texture that way.”

Thus the yin-yang qualities were baked into the band’s sound simply by virtue of where they cut the music. Even as they fired up old Moog synthesizers, they never forgot that they were in Senatobia, Mississippi. “That’s why we call the genre ‘roots psychedelia,’” Graber explains. “What would happen if, just to take any example, if The Chemical Brothers or The Flaming Lips were actually from the Mississippi Delta? And they had all that burden of influence, but they still wanted to hit escape velocity, too, so to speak, right? If they didn’t want to just rewrite Beatles chord structures, but wanted to talk to their ancestors, in a sense, yet also reach for new heights?”

It should be noted that this cornucopia of sounds is deployed with some restraint, compared to your typical synthesizer band, because the string band is always holding down the fort. And some of the sounds are nonelectronic, yet still unfamiliar in the jug band context. Like the chortling “Hoooo!” that opens “Owl in My Backyard,” a bit of field recording that adds a visceral dimension to a song about a bird that “kisses creation on the forehead each night.” A few tracks later, “Two Questions” opens with frogs and crickets before the swooping, lush chords of Eric Lewis’ pedal steel sweep you away. 

Even that opening pastoral evolves before reaching “escape velocity,” as Graber notes. “Then you can hear The Band influences on the chorus, with the accordion and dobro, and then it gets into a weird sound somewhere between Pere Ubu and Black Sabbath, as kind of an inner dialogue, right? But then weaving it all together. Just trying to hit that range of emotions was a joy, and the band was willing to do it as well. You know, we cut most of the stuff live, and then we did some overdubs.”

Recording the basic tracks live was made possible in part by the caliber of musicianship that the core membership of Delta Stardust represents, including Andy Ratliff (a “key collaborator” who goes back to the Prof. Elixir days), Carlos Gonzales, Jesse Dakota Williams, and Scott Carter, as well as many virtuosic cameos by Grayson Smith, Mark Jordan, Victor Sawyer, Jeremy Shrader, Tom Link, Robert Allen Parker, Julia Graber, Eric Lewis, and Kitty Dearing. 

The most “topical” track is arguably “Memphis Tattoo,” which brings some uniquely urban concerns into the album’s lyrical universe. “I think anyone in Memphis can relate to the story behind that song,” says Graber. “I was running on the Greenline and I got shot at. The bullet just buzzed right past me into the bushes, and my dog took off. There was smoke everywhere. I called 911, and I posted on social media about it. And then everyone started telling me about how they have these gunshot wounds. You know, people have them as almost a badge of joy. And people start piling on to that post and even posting pictures and other things about their gunshot wounds that have healed. So then I started thinking: What is a Memphis tattoo, but a healed gunshot wound?”

And therein lies yet another opposition held in tension, where the folk harmonies and strums of the music, and psychedelia’s promise of transcendence, undergird an all-too-real, yet somehow hopeful take on the gritty world of today. “The bittersweetness,” says Graber, “is that only the survivors can sing it. But it’s just life here, you know?” 

Delta Stardust will celebrate the release of their debut album at the New Memphis Psychedelic Festival, Friday, February 7th, at B-Side Bar, 7 p.m. Other bands at the festival will include Twin Face Kline, Arc of Quasar, and The Narrows.