Author: Alex Greene

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Music Music Features

Reba Russell’s Life in Music

Reba Russell reflects on her career (Photo: Jamie Harmon)

Last Saturday at Hernando’s Hide-A-Way, the Memphis Blues Society recognized nine artists for their regional and global impact with its Lifetime Achievement Awards. Among the awardees were Thomas Bingham, Charles Gage, Mike Glenn, Eric Hughes, Al Kapone, Memphis Gold, Andrew “Shine” Turner, and Jay Sieleman, a roster marked by its eclecticism and inclusiveness. Yet there was one more recipient who was especially notable: Reba Russell. As one of the few local women still regularly singing the blues in this town (also including Barbara Blue and the incomparable Joyce Cobb), the celebration of Russell’s decades-long career was significant beyond the music itself.  

It was an appropriate award for the artist who only last year released the powerful single, “Women Rule.” As Russell says, “You know, I am a woman-lover. I believe in women, and I want women to do good, and I have even been ugly and kind of mean to men over my career and in life! It’s one of my favorite themes. But I’m really passionate about that. I really believe it. I just don’t think we get a good enough shake and that we’re still trying to overcome that.”

Saturday’s ceremony, then, meant a great deal to Russell. “Memphis doesn’t support the blues or the Memphis Blues Society like it could, you know,” she says. “I just wish there were more people that cared, but at the same time, it was just a big, warm hug. And for me personally, Wayne and James and Sally were there, and they were at the very first gig I ever played at RP Tracks.”

Memphis Blues Society president Angela Ghoreishi and Russell at last Saturday’s event (Photo: Mark Cardwell)

That would be Wayne Russell, her husband and bass player; drummer James Cunningham; and longtime friend Sally Raburn, who, Russell says, “has been a music fan her whole life.” 

Speaking of that first RP Tracks show back at the dawn of the ’80s, accompanied by her husband-to-be and Cunningham, Russell says today, “I told the dude who was giving me a ride there, my friend Bill Turner, ‘Take me home. I don’t want to do this. I’m scared!’” Luckily for the club-goers that night, Turner stayed the course.

But it was still nerve-racking for the young singer. “I pretty much sang with my back to the audience,” she laughs, and that was not lost on Raburn. “She was the one who, at the end of that night, came up and said, ‘You are an amazing singer, but you know, it’d be nice if we could see your face. You should turn around while you’re singing!’”

It may be hard for today’s fans to reconcile that stage fright with the bold, bawdy blues (and soul and rock) singer they know. That’s summed up by longtime Memphis multi-instrumentalist and erstwhile guitarist for the Reba Russell band, Paul Taylor, now living in Wisconsin. “You could ask anybody about Reba,” he says, “and they would say that she’s one of the most electrifying vocalists you’ll ever hear in person, and she never fails to deliver, and she has the same powerful voice that she’s had for her entire career. I just marvel at her every time because she just has such an intense power.”

That power was apparent to friends who heard her even before that first show, and Russell credits their encouragement as a key motivator back in those early days. Through a series of bands, first Visions, then Portrait, and finally Reba and the Portables, Russell, Wayne, and a rotating cast of band members took the city by storm, performing mainly covers at clubs like Solomon Alfred’s or the Bombay Bicycle Club. In the meantime, the singer and her bassist were clicking romantically, marrying in 1986. 

Yet on her journey, from the Portables becoming one of the city’s premier cover bands, to a production deal with Chips Moman, to finally leaning into singing and recording her originals with the Reba Russell Band, the singer has remained appreciative of friends who helped her along the way. At Saturday’s event, Russell says, “I just got up there and praised Memphis and Memphis musicians and producers and engineers and everybody who perpetuates the whole blues scene. Because, you know, I had no experience when I started. I came here and, boom, everybody helped me. Nobody was ugly to me or told me to go away. So I was just trying to express my appreciation to the fabulous musicians in this town, many of whom aren’t here anymore, that have left the planet, yet were so instrumental in helping me and other people get on our feet and become worthy and hard-working musicians.”

That gratitude extended to her fellow awardees as well. “It was really awesome to be included in that group because there were some really cool other people that were given awards that night,” says Russell, noting that it reflected well on the the Memphis Blues Society. Founded in 2005, it gave aid to blues artists during Covid, then launched its Lifetime Achievement Awards in 2021

“There are blues purists, and then there are people who are into opening the blues up,” she observes. “It was really cool that Al Kapone was honored last night, and he spoke about that. He has been advocating and adding a blues feel and blues themes to his rap, and I’m sure that there are a lot of blues purists who kind of thumb their nose at that. But from my point of view, it’s absolutely amazing that he’s doing that, and teaching kids, and passing that blues legacy on. I really enjoyed his speech. What he said was really important.”

Reflecting a bit more on the evening and Al Kapone, she continues, “I think he was as proud as I was about receiving the award. And, you know, he’s a lot younger than I am, and he’s got a long time to perpetuate his artistry. So yeah, that part was lovely to me because it was about the continuation of this genre. It’s important for younger people to get hip to it.”

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Music Music Features

Simple Songs of Freedom

Tom Rush (Photo: Courtesy Acoustic Sunday Live)

In these fraught days of authoritarianism and climate change, when our fate depends more than ever on local community action, music continues to seal the bonds between those fighting the good fight. It’s an age-old function of song, for songs are both rousing and inherently inclusive, spreading equally to all eardrums in the vicinity. America has a tradition of protest and organizing songs going back more than a century, from Joe Hill and the Wobblies, to singing through megaphones at Occupy Wall Street, to today’s pop songs at political rallies or in countless poetry-song slams across the land.

It was no accident, then, that Bruce and Barbara Newman’s mutual love of folk music and the blues led them to create a concert series celebrating both music and community action simultaneously. And, appropriately enough, it started back in the ’90s with the music of Woody Guthrie. “My law practice was starting to represent folk musicians like Tom Paxton and Dave Van Ronk, a whole bunch of them,” says Bruce Newman. “So we started calling on these people to play music concerts, each one for different charitable beneficiaries. The first one we did was a tribute to Woody Guthrie, and we had Odetta, Oscar Brand, Richie Havens, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Tom Paxton, and Josh White Jr. on that first bill. And the second one had Tom Paxton and Oscar Brand again, plus Melanie, Roger McGuinn, and Tom Rush.”

Those early concerts became Acoustic Sunday Live, an annual tradition unlike any other in Memphis, now in its third decade. And that last headliner from the early days — veteran singer-songwriter Tom Rush — is significant because he hasn’t been back since then. But it wasn’t for lack of trying. 

“I consider Tom Rush a friend,” says Newman. “I see him at Folk Alliance [International] every year. And I bugged him for 20 years, ‘Tom, when are you coming back?’ Well, he always had a conflict the first week in December, right when we always have our concert. But this past summer he said, ‘Bruce, if you move it one week, I’m coming down. It’s a good cause. It’s important.’ And that’s what we did.”

Booking Rush, a diehard pioneer of the folk club scene whose first album came out in 1965, would be a coup for any folk festival, but this year’s Acoustic Sunday Live will also feature Shakura S’Aida, Steve Forbert, and Tim Easton, not to mention special guests Anne Harris and Marcella Simien. As in other years, one thing is clear: When the Newmans get their Acoustic Sunday on, they don’t play. 

While finally getting Rush back was a challenge, it was especially significant both because of his ties to the series’ earliest days and because of his role in the ’60s folk revival. Like many folkies of that era, Rush had a great love of Woody Guthrie and classic Appalachian and Southern folk songs when he launched his career as a young English major at Harvard, filling his first albums with such material. But he had too much curiosity to be a pure traditionalist, and, as the ’60s wore on, he filled out his repertoire with songs as disparate as Bo Diddley’s “You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” and Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game.” 

That eclecticism has marked Rush’s career ever since, setting him apart from the “more authentic than thou” folk set. “I’ve never been accused of being pure,” Rush quips today. “Early on, when I started out in Cambridge, Massachusetts, there was this big folk scene going on, with people playing all kinds of different traditional music. They all tended to specialize. There was one guy who did almost nothing but Woody Guthrie songs, and a band that did nothing but bluegrass, and another guy who did Delta Blues, or Irish-Scottish ballads, and so forth. And I tended to be the generalist.”

That doesn’t detract from the power of Rush’s music to bring folks together. Indeed, his inclusiveness only amplifies that power, even as he eschews what Bob Dylan once pejoratively dubbed “finger-pointing songs.” Part of that came down to Rush’s own sense of himself. “There’s a certain irony in a bunch of Harvard students sitting around singing about how rough it was in the coal mines,” he chuckles. “I did ramble around from genre to genre. By the time I cut my second album for Elektra, I’d run out of traditional songs that got me excited. So one side of that album was traditional songs, and the other side was me covering rock-and-roll tunes, including one that I wrote, ‘On the Road Again.’”

He also had his antennae out for a new era of songwriters. “Then the following album was The Circle Game, where I introduced [the songs of] Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, and Jackson Browne because nobody really had heard of them before. That was a further switch away from traditional folk. These three brilliant writers came at me from different directions, but they were writing stuff that was dazzlingly great, yet not so different from folk that I couldn’t relate to it.”

His ear for a good song has served him well, up through his latest release of all originals, Gardens Old, Flowers New. Those attending Acoustic Sunday Live should expect that same soothing voice and eclectic ear that’s kept Rush, now on what he likes to call his “63rd annual farewell tour,” in demand for decades, as he swaps songs with other legendary troubadours. “I stay away from getting political on stage,” he says. “I have done shows to support various causes, but I don’t take it on stage. I think my shows should be a little bit of a vacation from problems of the world.” 

Acoustic Sunday Live — The Concert to Protect Our Aquifer, presents an evening with Tom Rush, Shakura S’Aida, Steve Forbert, and Tim Easton, as well as special guests Anne Harris and Marcella Simien, at First Congregational Church, Sunday, December 15th, 7 p.m. Tickets start at $50.

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Music Music Features

WYXR Vibrations

J Spaceman and John Coxon (Photo: Courtesy Fat Possum Records)

Raised By Sound Fest, the music festival and fundraiser staged by community radio station WYXR and Mempho Presents, is once again in the offing, scheduled to have the Crosstown Concourse bursting with sound this Saturday, December 7th, and, as with the event’s previous iterations, the mix of performers is intriguingly eclectic. 

Through its short history, Raised By Sound has earned a reputation for drawing top-tier artists for its main concert event, always held in the Crosstown Theater, and this year is no different. In 2022, when Jody Stephens’ reconstituted Big Star quintet planned only a few shows in honor of #1 Record, the Raised By Sound Fest was a pivotal performance for them. And last year, Cat Power made Memphis one of their first stops when they began touring their Dylan tribute album, The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert.

This year, WYXR has outdone itself once again for Raised By Sound’s main concert, presenting a live score to the William Eggleston film, Stranded in Canton, performed by J Spaceman and John Coxon of Spiritualized. “We just heard they had a really incredible show in London,” says the station’s executive director Robby Grant, “and in the U.S., Memphis is the only city they’re doing it in, outside of New York and L.A.” 

As Grant notes, these marquee events all came together by way of the station’s openness and centrality as a meeting place for creatives of all kinds. “We keep our antenna up,” he says. “We have a huge window. We’re very welcoming. We’re very transparent. There’s a lot of benefit to that and making these connections.” The Spiritualized event is a case in point, as WYXR DJ David Swider, owner of Oxford’s The End of All Music record store, told Grant that the group’s live score was slated to be released on the Fat Possum label; the next day, Winston Eggleston (son of the photographer/filmmaker) mentioned that the group had reached out to him about permission to use the film. Things simply clicked by virtue of the station’s network. 

Tommy Wright III (Photo: Courtesy WYXR)

Yet that capstone event, now sold out, is only one of many musical experiences that Raised By Sound will offer. Throughout the day, many other performances will echo in the columns of the Central Atrium, and that will only heat up once the final credits roll for Stranded in Canton, as the ticketed after-party kicks off in the East Atrium at the top of the red staircase, with a DJ set by Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney of the Black Keys and performances by hip-hop legends Tommy Wright III and Lil Noid. 

The free music begins at 1 p.m., when artists from the University of Memphis’ Blue T.O.M. Records will perform, including Meaghan Christina, Ozioma, and Canale. “It means a lot to us to be able to give [Blue T.O.M. artists] that level of exposure,” says WYXR’s program manager Jared Boyd, “and we’re also promoting an educational component, partnering with Grammy U, Stax Music Academy, and Crosstown High School. It creates a level ground for them to be on the same bill as the Black Keys and Spiritualized. It’s bringing it all under one house.”

That revue will be followed by Fosterfalls, a solo performer also based in Memphis. “They’re a really interesting solo artist,” says Grant. “They’re kind of acoustic, very ethereal, with a lot of loopy-type stuff, and they’re a great example of a local artist who’s getting out there and working really hard and just doing it.” Also in the hard-working vein is the blues-rock HeartBreak Hill Trio, fronted by Matt Hill, a longtime presence on the Memphis scene, known for his axe work with wife Nikki Hill. Once the trio has livened things up, Brooklynite Max Clarke, aka Cut Worms, will take the stage. His 2019 album Nobody Lives Here Anymore was produced by Matt Ross-Spang. And finally, the afternoon will close out with a solo show by Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra, who has close ties to New Orleans despite being from the Bronx. 

Indeed, all of the artists happen to have ties to Memphis. Celebrated Memphis-born photographer Tommy Kha, for example, has worked closely with Hurray for the Riff Raff. Yet the festival organizers are not strict about that as a criterion for inclusion. As Boyd notes, “We wanted to be able to present homegrown artists as well as artists who have some sort of significant Memphis or regional influence. Some are from elsewhere, but were called to Memphis because of music.”

“You don’t have to be a Memphis-connected artist to be booked for Raised By Sound Fest,” adds Grant, “but we found that every artist we booked has some connection. Like, no matter who we book, because Memphis is such a music city, there’s some connection.” That even goes for the performers from Spiritualized, who first debuted their live score for Eggleston’s film a decade ago at the Barbican Gallery in London, as part of Doug Aitken’s Station to Station festival. Now, a recording of that has been released by the local heroes at Fat Possum.

The after-party, too, will have strong Memphis roots. The Black Keys, based in Nashville, are not only steeped in the North Mississippi blues via that same record label, but have worked closely with Memphis’ Greg Cartwright. And, of course, Tommy Wright III and Lil Noid were on the ground floor of the local hip-hop revolution that gave rise to superstars like Three 6 Mafia. Wright is arguably the better known of the two, his music having been embraced by the skateboard scene. As Boyd notes, “There’s even a skateboard hardware company in L.A. called Shake Junt, and their entire brand image is an homage to Memphis rap culture!” But Lil Noid’s profile is also rising, and, tying it all together, he’s even featured on a new Black Keys track, “Candy and Her Friends.”

All told, the Raised By Sound Festival will provide a compelling glimpse and staggering diversity of music in Memphis, but other dimensions of the city will be represented as well. Community groups like Music Export Memphis, Memphis Music Initiative, and CHOICES will have tables, and visual artists like Sara Moseley, Darlene Newman, and Toonky Berry will have works either on display or being created as the music plays on. It’s all part of a concentrated celebration of what Memphis brings to the world. As Boyd says, “We have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to talent. And if you grew up in it, you may not always realize that most places are not like this.” 

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Music Record Reviews

More Love: FreeWorld’s Jazz-Funk Affirmation

FreeWorld (Photo: Steve Roberts)

Thanksgiving just hasn’t been the same since 2020. On that very day, November 26th of that year, the epic life of saxophonist and flutist Herman Green came to an end. Covering it at the time, the Memphis Flyer quoted Richard Cushing, who co-founded the band FreeWorld with Green, reporting that his friend and bandmate had passed away “at home, surrounded by family, listening to Coltrane.”

That one comment spoke volumes about the deep commitment to jazz Cushing shared with Green, capturing Cushing’s concern for what his bandmate was hearing in his final hours. And it was indicative of how a deep love of jazz marked FreeWorld’s earliest days. Of course, anything involving Green, who once played with the likes of B.B. King, Lionel Hampton, and John Coltrane, among many others, was bound to tap into a direct throughline to jazz at its deepest. And yet, FreeWorld has never been considered a jazz band, per se.

Not that the players themselves care much for labels. Over more than three decades, the band has perfected a cheerful amalgam of influences, noting the influence of artists from Steely Dan to the Meters to the Grateful Dead on their website. Or, as one writer put it, “the best of Memphis, New Orleans, and San Francisco.” That combination, with a strong common denominator of funk and soul, has been tested in the crucible of FreeWorld’s countless nights on Beale Street.

And you have to hand it to a band that can keep nine musicians working regularly: with its horn section and solid command of the funk vocabulary, it’s as close to the old Beale Street as we have these days, and, like Beale in its heyday, the crowd-pleasing big band also happens to host some great jazz players.

In that sense, the legacy of Herman Green shines on through FreeWorld, but it’s especially worth noting with the band’s new album, More Love, as it contains one of the purest musical tributes to Green I’ve heard, by way of one of his own compositions: “Red Moon.” Though not the obvious crowd-pleaser, to these ears it’s the crown jewel of the album.

Easing in quietly with saxophone evoking Green himself, it seems like noirish crime jazz, before kicking off into a Chicago-like groove that provides a superb bed for some virtuosic solos, including a Clint Wagner cameo on guitar and a dazzling jaunt on the Fender Rhodes piano courtesy erstwhile Memphian and FreeWorld alum Ross Rice. Finally, as the whole swanky arrangement comes to a close, we hear the voice of Herman Green himself, advising us on how to get to heaven.

Yet Green’s tune is not the only instrumental vehicle for these stellar soloists. “Rush Hour” and “Who Knew?” by sax player Peter Climie and “Color Trip” by keyboardist Cedric Taylor (both of whom shine, along with trumpeter Alex Schuetrumpf, throughout the album) are other standouts. And, speaking of noir, “11:11 on Beale” is a masterclass in atmospherics, featuring some very beat poetry by co-writer Benjamin Theolonius “IQ” Sanders. Ultimately, his monologue winds up with a promotional spiel of sorts: after introducing the band, he notes that they can be heard “every Sunday on Beale Street,” and, appropriately, that brings the instrumental odyssey back to the band’s bread and butter.

Those bread-and-butter tunes are here too, of course, with stomping grooves and singalong choruses aplenty. Indeed, the title song, sung by the inimitable Jerome Chism (who’s usually across Beale fronting the B.B. King’s Blues Club All-Star Band), takes “singalong” to a whole new level, as Chism’s soaring lead is backed by the Tennessee Mass Choir, directed by Jason Clark. That’s entirely appropriate if you consider “More Love” to be a kind of secular gospel, a non-denominational call for greater understanding from all our hearts.

Much of the other songs have the same positive message. There are no songs of lust, deception, or murder here — only testimonials to what one hopes are noncontroversial values of tolerance, empathy, and forbearance. Hippies can dream, can’t they? As Cushing sings on one track, “Why all this fussing and fighting? Stop all this killing and dying … The world we know is transforming, trees on fire, the water is warming … It’s time for justice to arise!”

Don’t be surprised if you hear the track during broadcast breaks for Democracy Now! in the near future. And, for such a song to come from Memphis, Tennessee, at this dark hour is a very welcome thing. The same could be said for FreeWorld’s single from 2021, titled “D-Up (Here’s to Diversity),” included here as a bonus track. As a band promoting both Herman Green’s memory and good ol’ wholesome, progressive values, I say more power to FreeWorld, and may they ever go viral.

FreeWorld will have a series of record release shows this Thanksgiving weekend, starting with Lafayette’s Music Room on Thursday, Nov. 28, 7 p.m.; followed by the Rum Boogie Cafe on Friday, Nov. 29, and Saturday, Nov. 30, 8 p.m.; and wrapping up with Blues City Cafe on Sunday, Dec. 1, 8 p.m. The band will also host a listening party at the Memphis Listening Lab on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 6 p.m.

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Music Music Features Uncategorized

Iron Mic Coalition

Mac, Derelick, and Duke of the Iron Mic Coalition, performing at the Undugu Hip Hop Festival. (Photos: Courtesy IMC)

Memphis is known for its world-class rappers; trap is the new “Memphis Sound.” But while we might hear BlocBoy JB shout out, “901 Shelby Drive, look alive, look alive,” on the radio, there’s a cohort of lesser known but very active hip-hop artists among us who live and breathe such lyrics, depicting life in our place and time like no others. Does any recent rhyme capture the feeling of living under the weight of this city’s history like: “I rap Memphop, I rap the deep quadrant/I come from the marshes, the shady tree garages/The torn-down projects, the cotton on the barges”?

Some readers will instantly recognize that as a line from “Maybap Music” by Iron Mic Coalition (IMC), as a devoted following has developed around the group over the past 20 years. If you know, you know. Part of that comes down to IMC’s undeniable grounding in this region. That comes across both lyrically and musically, as on 2014’s “Home,” driven by a minor key soul blues sample, with the lyrics: “A stranger in his own land, a Delta blues homeland … Crossroads demon summit, now the blues man cometh with the truth boom bappin’ hell on ’em.” 

Jason Da Hater, Duke, Milk, and Mac of the Iron Mic Coalition (Photo courtesy IMC)

Indeed, IMC’s music over the years has been full of Southern soul and blues, (or even the tweaked voice of Billie Holiday singing “Gloomy Sunday” on “Crown”). Case in point: the hard-hitting blues guitar lick on their best-known single, “Memphop,” done many years before Al Kapone began experimenting with his own style of blues-infused rap. Clearly, IMC is fully rooted down, devoting a whole track (not just one line of a hit single) to the “901 Area Code” on their 2005 debut.  

Skipping back and forth across the decades is par for the course with IMC’s music, as the collective of DJs and MCs have been remarkably true to their vision and consistent in their output for 20 years, across three releases whose titles speak to their shared coherence: The 1st Edition (2005), The 2nd Edition (2008), and The 3rd Edition (2014). These artists have always been playing the long game, as should be clear this Friday, November 29th, at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, where the IMC will make a rare appearance to celebrate their 20th anniversary, revisiting their debut album in full and hinting at what a fourth work-in-progress might hold in store. 

The Memphis Flyer, it should be noted, has been with IMC for the whole ride, starting with Chris Herrington’s 2004 survey of Memphis hip-hop, but as I speak now with IMC member Quinn McGowan, aka The Mighty Quinn, there’s one thing he’d like to clear up about how the group’s been described here in the past. “The popular misnomer was always we were like the Wu-Tang [Clan] of the South, but actually a more accurate description would have been the Native Tongues of the South, right? Because we were always a group of groups. Native Tongues was the Jungle Brothers, Black Sheep, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah — all those folks kind of wrapped up in a loose association.” The same affiliation of like-minded groups coalesced in Memphis “because we were all doing shows together, right? And we were carving out what would become Memphop, throwing our own kind of shows, with b-boys [breakdancers] and the artists out front. We were adhering to the four elements.”

Those would be the four elements of hip-hop — DJing, MCing, breakdancing, and graffiti art — and the IMC members’ adherence to them as a way of life might explain the collective’s longevity, despite having never blown up coast to coast. Through the decades, the core group of groups, including Fyte Club (General MacArthur, The Mighty Quinn), M.O.S. (Duke, Derelick, and Milk [aka Yasin Allah]), Kontrast (Jason Da Hater, EMPEE, and DJ Capital A), and Fathom 9 (aka Avenging Wind), have continued as a tightly knit cohort, despite Fathom 9’s untimely passing in November of 2014.

“There have always been eight MCs and our DJ Capital A,” says McGowan, before noting the involvement of another stealth participant of sorts. “My son was always a secret 10th member. I drew a future projection of him as a silhouette inside of the eye in the Iron Mic borders.” That was back when McGowan was helping craft the visuals for the fledgling group. McGowan’s son, then very young, uttered the first line of the first IMC release. An upcoming album now in the works will echo that when Eillo, as McGowan’s son is known, now a key player and artist in his own right with the Unapologetic collective, will join the IMC. “Eillo is finishing a verse at the end of the project for the point of the symmetry, right?” says McGowan. “He starts out The 1st Edition. So we wanted to make sure to have him, you know, get his lyricism on to close out The 4th Edition.”  

In keeping with the four elements of hip-hop, expect a visual element at Friday’s show as well. McGowan’s other creative outlet is his visual art, including a line of comics called Wildfire, published by his own Legends Press. “My approach to comics is very much rooted to my approach to hip-hop. There’s this lineage of comic books in hip-hop that goes back to Rappin’ Max Robot.” It’s all been part of living the hip-hop life for McGowan, staying true to his vision and offering commentary on the state of the world. (It’s no accident that IMC opened for knowledge rapper KRS-One back in the day). “My band of brothers are a group of men that I have a great deal of respect for, and we try to live the values that we espouse,” says McGowan. And part of that involves embracing the unabashedly local “Memphop” tag, a term McGowan coined when the group began.

“There’s always going to be a culture of hip-hop or Memphop in Memphis. Hip-hop has its own very distinct expression here, even in the ways that we execute those four elements. Our graffiti is different. We have not only have b-boys; we’ve got jookin, right? You can still hear a Southern twang, so to speak. Memphop is bigger than us. So we want to do something that’s dedicated to that. And this thing at Stax is about our own placement in that.” 

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Book Features Books

We Are All Drifters

The Continental Drifters were a band whose lineup alone would turn heads. Though members came and went over the decade or so of their existence, the personnel settled to include Peter Holsapple of the dB’s, Mark Walton of the Dream Syndicate, Vicki Peterson of the Bangles, Susan Cowsill of The Cowsills, and, most notably for Memphians, Robert Maché, the journeyman guitarist who played with Steve Wynn for years and now lives here, often seen playing with his wife Candace in Dan Montgomery’s band, or touring with Dayna Kurtz. Yet despite their collective pedigrees, they never quite “made it” in terms of sales or record deals, perhaps because all involved found the “supergroup” tag repulsive. That’s one of the few things they all could agree on, as is made clear in Sean Kelly’s new book, White Noise & Lightning: The Continental Drifters Story (Cool Dog Sound), which traces the group from before they coalesced until after they’d broken up. One strength of the book is that all living former members embraced this chance to speak freely and tell their story. And Holsapple is particularly blunt about the “supergroup” tag. 

“We were hell-bent on not seeming like this purported busman’s holiday,” he tells Kelly. “We were so irked by that description that it was this sort of ‘sometime supergroup.’ It was like, ‘Fuck. You really are just not getting it, are you? This is a band.’”

That latter point also comes through loud and clear, as Kelly delves into the complex, Fleetwood Mac-level entanglements between the members that, despite making relations fraught at times, also sealed the family-like bond between them. And that bond seems to have been, in retrospect, a key to the group’s sound, a brand of roots-infused alt-rock with a strong focus on harmonies and songwriting that might today be labeled “Americana” but had no such pigeonhole in the ’90s.

Indeed, the book deftly conjures up the spirit of that era in Los Angeles, where the group began. The respected session drummer and producer Carlo Nuccio, who appropriated the band’s moniker from a group of the same name he’d played with in his native New Orleans, was a focal point, sparked by his relocation to L.A. and his talent for gathering like-minded souls around him. Eventually, he and friends Mark Walton and Gary Eaton were rooming together in what they called the “Batch Pad” (at a time when native Memphian David Catching was also in their orbit), and, sharing similar tastes, formed a band that also included guitarist Ray Ganucheau and keyboardist Dan McGough. By 1991, the newly formed Continental Drifters had taken up a Tuesday night residence at Raji’s, which soon became a scene unto itself. 

That was a bit of a paradox at the time. As Greg Allen, who went on to found Omnivore Recordings with fellow Raji’s patron Cheryl Pawelski, tells Kelly, “There was no real scene in L.A. It’s not like it was the power-pop era or the new wave era or what have you. It was just a lot of whatever. The kind of void that the Drifters filled, especially with the shows happening every week — that was its own scene.”

The Raji’s residency nevertheless became legendary to those who participated, setting the aesthetic tone for all of the Drifters’ subsequent years: keeping things loose, inspired, and very much at the service of the songs more than any identifiable “sound” that could be marketed. The many rock veterans in and out of the band preferred to do as they pleased, rather than bow to the demands of a producer or label. Ultimately, as new members like Holsapple and Cowsill (eventually wed, then divorced), Peterson, or Maché joined the group, the group’s aesthetic, impervious to fickle fashion, carried on. This held true when they migrated piecemeal to New Orleans in the mid-’90s, destined to be as celebrated there as they had been in L.A. 

Kelly’s book weaves this web of relationships into a tale driven by his love of the music. Prospective readers should revisit the group’s records before diving into this meandering tale: They are what make the vagaries of friendship, dating, marriage, divorce, and substance abuse among the members so compelling. Moreover, it was by remaining staunchly eclectic that the band defined its place in (or not in) the music industry. Being outsiders who were nonetheless revered by their fans defined the lives of all involved, as they all rejected grandstanding musicianship in favor of playing to the songs. And that approach, whether in L.A. or New Orleans, is why their records (and friendships) have endured.

A new compilation from Omnivore Recordings, White Noise & Lightning: The Best Of Continental Drifters, can be purchased here. And a new tribute album, We Are All Drifters: A Tribute to the Continental Drifters, has been released as a companion to Sean Kelly’s book. Proceeds from the tribute album benefit The Wild Honey Foundation. 

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Music Music Features

For the Love of Lelia

Marcella Simien (Photo: Jenny Max)

The first words of Marcella Simien’s new album, To Bend to the Will of a Dream That’s Being Fulfilled, are the perfect introduction to the journey that awaits listeners: “May I heal this family bloodline, forwards and backwards through time.” It’s an incantation of sorts, delivered with a devotional energy that sets the tone for what’s to come. Musically, it’s a departure from Simien’s previous recorded work by way of its minimalism, her main accompaniment for this song being a piano, so evocative of New Orleans and Louisiana. That region, of course, is where the Simiens have been for generations, and where any journey into the singer’s family bloodline must take her. 

But while that’s zydeco country (her father Terrance being one of the most celebrated artists of that genre), this is not a zydeco album. Nor is it “swamp soul,” as the rootsy-yet-eclectic sound of Marcella Simien’s band has come to be called. For this most personal of journeys, she’s playing nearly all the instruments, crafting a setting in a kind of synthetic world-building, evoking the sweep of generations with the sweep of electronic filters. 

With the new sound comes a new performance style, as Simien will unveil on Saturday, November 23rd, at Off the Walls Arts. “Yvonne [Bobo] built this structure out of metal,” Simien says, “with a screen on the front, and Graham [Burks] will be projecting visuals on this cylinder. It’s gonna be this really interesting experience for the audience, something new.”

Yet the electronic approach itself is not especially new to Simien. “I don’t even know where to begin with my love for synths, from Kraftwerk to Gary Numan to Gorillaz,” she says. “I always wanted to explore that more. Then we finally invested in a Korg recently.” With the new album, that investment has come to fruition, but in a subtle way. This sculpted audio universe doesn’t wear its synths and drum machines on its sleeve, yet it doesn’t shy away from them, either. 

Other, rootsier sounds do make an appearance. Speaking of a song honoring her late great-grandmother, Simien says, “With the song ‘Lelia’ in particular, which was the guiding light for the whole idea, I intentionally used instruments that Lelia would have heard in her life and in the 1930s, when she was young and building her family.” Lelia is a centerpiece of the album, and the track bearing her name begins with the sounds of crickets in a field at night, then Simien saying, “Recently I’ve been writing with my great-grandmother.” Indeed, listening to the album, it feels as though Lelia is sitting in the room with us, though Simien never met her.  

Nor did her father, Lelia having died when he was an infant. Yet Simien felt a deep bond with her father’s grandmother, and the small town where she helped raise him. “I spent a lot of time in Mallet, Louisiana, a very small community outside of Opelousas,” she says. “And I feel this deep, deep connection to the Simiens. I spent so much of my time around them there, where our family goes as far back as the early 1700s, when they settled on that land.” Simien recalls imagining Lelia when visiting the old family house, where “there was this old photo of her when she was 15, taken on the day she got married. And you can see this beautiful Creole woman with long, dark hair, and these hands of hers reminded me of my hands. I would just stare at that picture, and I think she became a deeper part of me, beyond the DNA.”

Paradoxically, the first word of “Lelia” is “hydrated,” probably not a word used much in Mallet back in the day. Yet that’s also a clue to the power Simien finds in her family past: She came to it through her yogic practice, as a source of strength when she herself was navigating some dark days of her own. It was a time when she struggled with pharmacological dependence. “After a decade of being prescribed Adderall,” she confides, “I decided to get off it. It’s been over three years now, and I don’t miss it at all, but it was scary because I really didn’t trust myself for so much of my 20s, you know?”

Through the struggle, Lelia and others in her family lore were guiding lights. “I started to think about just how challenging her life was,” Simien says. “Giving birth to 15 children, living off the land, making your own stuff, and building a life with next to nothing — I couldn’t comprehend it, but I always thought, ‘If she could handle that, I can handle whatever I’m going through.’ She was tough, and it showed me that there’s so much I can learn from these women. And I want to honor them any way that I can.” 

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Music Music Blog

Blake Rhea’s Final Encore at Railgarten

Blake Rhea (Photo: Bob Bayne)

A week later, and the Memphis music community is still reeling from the cold-blooded murder of bassist Blake Rhea. As Bob Mehr reported in the Commercial Appeal last Thursday, the musician was at Louis Connelly’s Bar for Fun Times & Friendship on South Cleveland Street in the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 6th, when he was involved in an argument with another man. That led to the two stepping outside, where security cameras recorded the other man first possibly stabbing, then shooting Rhea point blank in his car before running off. Rhea was pronounced dead on the scene. Later that day, police “arrested and charged 51-year-old Edward Wurl with first degree murder in the shooting.” Wurl was also charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.

Fox 13 News later reported that two witnesses in the bar claimed that “Wurl and Rhea had both been recently involved in a romantic relationship with the same woman. The witnesses then positively identified Wurl from a six person photo lineup.” WREG News Channel 3 reported that “court records show that Wurl was convicted of burglary and unlawful wounding in 1994.” WREG then quoted bar owner Louis Connolly as saying, “Stories like this are so common that we have become almost numb to them. We are thankful that the violence did not come into the bar. But that doesn’t make this any less heartbreaking, and our thoughts go out to the victim and the victim’s family.”

Since that fateful night, those who knew Blake best having been struggling to pick up the pieces, recalling his easygoing humor, his skill and sensitivity as a musician, and his role as a much-loved teacher at School of Rock Germantown. Having played in such pivotal bands as CYC, American Fiction, John Németh, Lord T & Eloise, The Gamble Brothers Band, Marcella Simien, and, most recently, Southern Avenue, his brilliance had been celebrated for years by fans and fellow musos alike.

Just how many lives Rhea touched will be apparent on Saturday, November 16th, from 4-8 p.m., when Railgarten will host “Blake Rhea’s Encore,” a celebration of his life, featuring performances by bands who were especially close to him, including Jombi, American Fiction, Salo Pallini, and (possibly) “Tierinii, Tikyra, and Ori from Southern Avenue.”

Speaking to the Flyer this Thursday, Southern Avenue’s drummer, Tikyra Jackson, was still trying to get past a feeling of unreality, having toured extensively with Rhea over the past year. “I’m still just taking it in,” she confided. “We spent all year together. It’s so weird, knowing that we’re gonna get back into the vehicle and it won’t be the same vibe.

“He had already toured a lot [in the past], and so he kind of was, like, staying home. He was a teacher. But he came back out on the road for us, because he liked us and he enjoyed what we were doing. So over this past year we were able to create something together. I was able to be a part of his life.”

Asked if there was a special bond, as there so often is, between the drummer and the bassist, Jackson replies, “Yeah. And it’s all on camera too. I have my camera set up by my drum. So when I’m watching this footage, it’s like, you can see that connection between us. And for this latest record that we’ve made, he recorded on half the record. Luther [Dickinson] was on bass on the other half. So yeah, Blake was a great part of what we played. We played the new record before we even went into the studio. We had some shows before the studio session, just to go into the studio more comfortable. So he was a part of the early process of getting from the stage of the writing to actually making it happen, making it happen live.”

In the studio, Jackson notes, Rhea’s contributions were memorable. “He was open to trying different things,” she said, noting that “his touch, his flavors in the music” were memorable. “One of the songs, ‘So Much Love,’ is very iconic to me because of the bassline that he came up with.”

Recalling all this, it was hard for Jackson to go on. “I don’t know, man, even talking to you now, I’m like, I feel like I’m experiencing new emotions and new realizations. But what a beautiful thing to capture his soul on the record, you know. And it’s not like it was 30 years ago. This was him living and breathing just yesterday, you know?”

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Music Music Features

IMAKEMADBEATS: Not of this Earth

IMAKEMADBEATS (Photo: Peyton Dollar)

The road to recovery from a major health condition can happen in stages. Confronting a disease when you’re in its grips, determined to keep moving forward, is one thing; putting yourself out in the world once the worst of it is over is another. Having gone through hell, you realize things about yourself — things you can’t forget.

That’s one way into WANDS, the new instrumental album by IMAKEMADBEATS, aka James Dukes, which arguably marks a new aesthetic high point in the producer’s career. That much will be evident on Saturday, November 16th, at the Pink Palace’s Sharpe Planetarium, when MAD (as he is known) will premiere the album live, in an extravaganza of light and projections that will likely be seen as a defining moment in Memphis’ Afrofuturist scene. 

It should come as no surprise that the producer who named his dream studio Outerspace has been fascinated with the cosmos, or characters like the Mars-dwelling Watchmen character Doctor Manhattan, all his life. “The only field trip I cared about as a kid was to the planetarium. I didn’t care about nothing else!” he says, as we chat amid the glowing buttons and dials of Outerspace. 

“I’ve always been attached to space and the unknown,” he explains. “In WANDS, the general idea is that I have to leave here to find out where home is. The very first song is about me leaving here. The second song is the soundtrack to me making my way through the Earth’s atmosphere. The third is about flying through stars. The fourth is about me running into an alien that is telling me where to go to find home. The fifth song is about me descending onto that planet where there are clouds of bubbles that sing to me. And so that song is called ‘Choir of Bubbles.’”

If such a tale captures the album’s epic sweep, that last title hints at the album’s sonic palette. While there are indeed mad beats throughout, sporting MAD’s trademark glitches and tweaks, there are also orchestral passages both ethereal and bombastic, at times sounding eerily like the ’70s synth-meister Tomita. It’s an interstellar trip in audio form, in which you’re never sure if you’re hearing a sample or an intricate new composition by MAD himself. The track “I’m Losing My Mind I’m OK” even features lyrics, hauntingly sung by Tiffany Harmon.  

Another track, “James Michael,” features the producer — typically seen behind a console of sample triggers — playing a solo keyboard passage. And that, it turns out, is a clue to how the entire album came to be, starting with MAD’s decision to take videoconference music lessons (full disclosure, from me) during Covid’s early months of social distancing. As with the great Sun Ra himself, MAD’s latest voyage to outer space began through that trans-dimensional portal known as a “piano.” 

“I wanted to be a jazz pianist since I was a teenager,” he says. “I just didn’t have any kind of keyboard. What I did have was access to old records and a sampler. So, you know, I had a professional career in music before I had an instrument. Then I bought this keyboard, the Korg SV-1, with the weighted keys on it, and it feels like a real piano. And I felt drawn to that, like, ‘Yo. This is my time to actually learn this.’”

But eventually there was an even more compelling reason to play. During his first forays into playing keyboards, “I was just messing around and having fun,” MAD says, “until I got sick.” Just as Covid emerged, the producer contracted a rare autoimmune condition which initially threatened his motor skills. “You know,” he reflects, “I spent my whole life making things with my hands, and suddenly I couldn’t use my hands, with any real accuracy, for a couple of months. That scared the shit out of me!” He points to our surroundings to underscore his point. “I mean, I’m literally surrounded by buttons and knobs.”

Nonetheless, he kept at it, often with Kid Maestro twiddling the dials under MAD’s direction, and eventually the material that became MAD Songs, Volume 1 and Volume 1.5 came together. Those albums stood as proof positive that he could soldier on artistically through the hardship of his illness. Yet after that came a recovery of sorts, and it was in that period that the seeds of WANDS were planted. 

“A few months later, my hands came back and I started hitting you up.” MAD was a student of singular focus and determination. “One of the top things I remember in those lessons was how you would slide from one note to the next, and it would just add these, like, half step emotions. Which I am addicted to: half step movements in any chord progression I ever write.”

But beyond the raw knowledge of harmonies and melodies, or the basic physical therapy of strengthening his hands, playing the piano became a skeleton key, thanks to the infinite library of sounds available to any producer now, into the world of composing and arranging. (If this was a film, we would insert the heroic montage here.) Taking long sabbaticals of studying only piano, MAD began experimenting with the complex jazz harmonies that had always fascinated him. At that point, pairing music’s infinite plane of harmonics with his love of space was an easy leap to make. That in turn led him to an insight into his own condition. 

“There’s no one else in my family with any sort of autoimmune disorder. So for me to have this is an extreme anomaly. And so it made me wonder, you know, maybe I’m an alien?” Which brings us back to the story of WANDS, soon to be premiered musically in the planetarium (on his birthday, no less), but later to be revealed narratively, a bit further down the road. Look for a second edition of the album early next year that includes voiceovers recounting the tale in all its world-building glory. In the meantime, just know that an alien walks among us, and he is MAD. “I literally was telling my mom a couple weeks ago,” he says. “I was like, ‘Mom, if you didn’t actually remember birthing me, I would swear I’m not from here. You are the sole evidence that I am from Planet Earth.”

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Music Music Features

Aquarian Blood Redux

(left to right) Jeremy Speakes, Michael Peery, Laurel Horrell, JB Horrell, and Keith Cooper: the latest Aquarian Blood (Photo: Sara Moseley)

Once you delve into their catalog, Aquarian Blood can be hard to pin down. Their 2017 debut LP on Goner was a rollicking, riff-heavy burst of punk guitar and synth noise centered on the hearty screams of co-founder Laurel Horrell. And while there were more minimalist flavors present, such as the moody “Won’t Forget to Die,” few were prepared for the sea change that came with their sophomore release. A Love That Leads to War was an abrupt, acoustic about-face that featured co-founder JB Horell’s delicate picking on a nylon string classical guitar, blended with low-key drum machines and hand percussion, spooky synths, and haunted, primitive melodies in a quieter vein. 

And yet the world the Horrells created was no fairy folk land of unicorns and tarot card poetry. These were dark missives from an underground life filled with trauma and desire, and the sheer sound of the home recordings captured what might happen if German sonic artists Can reinterpreted the Incredible String Band. It was intimate and compelling, and, with Covid striking only months after the album’s release, oddly prescient. During lockdown, I wore the album out. And, it turned out, there was more where that came from. In 2022, the band released Bending the Golden Hour, also on Goner, and earlier this year Black & Wyatt Records dropped Counting Backwards Again. Throw in the 2020 EP Decoys, and it’s clear that this acoustic chapter of the band’s career has been fruitful. Indeed, the three LPs and associated material hang together so well, I called on JB recently to lend some perspective to this impressive body of work, and what the future may hold.

Memphis Flyer: I’ve really been digging Counting Backwards Again since it came out in April. And it strikes me that you could call the last three full-lengths a trilogy. They hang together that well. 

JB Horrell: Yeah, I agree with that. All the music on those three records was created in the same period of time, between 2019 and 2022. And it’s interesting because there are songs on this third [acoustic] record that predate songs on the first record, and songs on the first record that post-date songs on the third record. There’s this specific body of music that’s broken up over three albums, and all of the songs encapsulate everything that was going on. And it feels good. Three is a good round number.

Is there a narrative through-line to the albums, or is it more oblique than that?

I didn’t choose the songs for the two before this third one. Zac [Ives, of Goner Records,] was a huge catalyst in the entire shift in the band’s approach and sound. Our drummer had broken his arm, so in the down time we were doing this kind of acoustic thing for fun. [We told Zac], “I guess it’s still Aquarian Blood, whatever.” And he was very encouraging. He said, “Well, you guys should try playing a show like that.” 

And then Zac more or less curated the first albums, correct?

Yeah. We gave him 23 tracks for the first record, and that ended up being 15 songs. Then there were 32 tracks we gave him for Bending the Golden Hour, and he picked 15 again. So for the Black & Wyatt record, we had 17 left, and I pared it down to the 12 that felt to us, in a very personal way, like the ones that completed that whole trip. That was a really brutal period for all of us, with Covid going on, everybody sort of disconnected, and a lot of personal stuff going on, like losing people close to us in terrible ways. So all that felt like it was of a time and of a process. It was cathartic, a process of grieving and sort of trying to figure out the way forward.

And the band was expanding through those years, as you embraced the wider sonic palette.

Yeah, it had gotten up to seven people. But coming into 2024, it kind of felt like we had cleaned out the closet to make room for new stuff. We knew that there was this imminent change about to take place, and we knew the band was going to downsize to five people, total. I wanted everybody involved in the new lineup to have a lot more of a hand in writing and arranging the songs.

So, since the release of Counting Backwards Again, there’s been another sea change in Aquarian Blood’s sound?

Yeah. We knew that we were ready to turn the page. We had a whole batch of brand-new songs. So we started completely from scratch last winter, with Keith Cooper on guitar, Michael Peery on keyboards, and Jeremy Speakes on drums. Then we took it on the road in June, and it was interesting to be touring, playing nothing that was ever released. I wasn’t sure what to expect about that. We had never played a show with that lineup before the tour! All of it seems counterintuitive, but the opportunity was there, so we jumped at it, and the tour couldn’t have gone any better.

Playing 17 shows in 18 days really locked it in. So, since we’ve been home, we’ve been hitting the studio quite a bit, and the recordings are just stacking up. Our intuition was right. We’ve got this group of people together, taking it somewhere else. The Lucky 7 Brass Band just put horns on some stuff last week. And Krista Wroten and Ethan Baker play violin on it. So the whole thing has become very collaborative. And it feels really good to get out of my head and out of my recording room at home and go out and collaborate again. 

Aquarian Blood will play with Vorhex Angel (with members of Jeff the Brotherhood) at B-Side on Friday, November 1st, at 9 p.m.