On February 16, 1975, a curious story by James Knightly appeared in TheCommercial Appeal: “Lynyrd Skynyrd Proteges to Record,” ran the headline. With a fine-grained attention to the minutiae of the city’s recording industry that is rare today, the story explains how a thus-far unknown band “will arrive at Sonic Recording Studios at 1692 Madison to record an album.” News flash! It’s hard to imagine such a story making headlines now, but, as Knightly notes, the unknown band’s singer-guitarist “is the 20-year-old brother of Ronnie Van Zant, lead singer and guitarist for the outstanding Southern rock group, Lynyrd Skynyrd.”
That alone made them notable. And it was true, Van Zant’s kid brother Donnie and the band he’d co-founded only months before with fellow singer-guitarist Don Barnes — 38 Special — had a date with destiny. Though that Memphis session wasn’t their big break, they did release an album two years later, and by 1981 they had perfected a custom blend of Southern rock and arena rock that would keep them high in the charts for years, epitomized by hits like “Hold on Loosely” and “Caught Up in You,” both co-written and sung by Barnes.
To this day, the band is going strong, with Barnes alone at the helm since Donnie Van Zant’s retirement over a decade ago. In fact, on Saturday, October 19th, 38 Special will return to Memphis, where they were once so presciently heralded nearly 50 years ago. The band, which still plays a hundred shows a year, will cap off the seventh annual Fall Fest Memphis, a two-day event benefitting Room in the Inn. In anticipation of their appearance, I reached Barnes by phone to hear his thoughts on Memphis, the early days of the band, and the longevity of Southern rock.
Don Barnes (Photo: Carl Dunn )
Memphis Flyer: This story from 1975 really celebrates 38 Special coming to Memphis. How long had you been together at that point?
Don Barnes: We actually put the band together at the end of ’74 and then we got rehearsals started in ’75 so, you know, we’re just going to call 2025 our 50th year. And we’ve got a legacy package coming out with a double CD. One disc has all the greatest hits, and the second disc will have new music. So it should be out about March — great songs!
Whatever happened with those 1975 recordings?
That was the very first recording we ever did. We did our first demo here in Memphis, and, of course, the song never saw the light of day. But you know, that was our very first foray. I remember, we went through the snow and cold of the winter, piled in the van. And we played in a club that had Jerry Lee Lewis’ PA system in there. We all were so honored, you know, to be using his PA system! You know those early days, when you travel around, banging around in a van with an old, dirty mattress in the back, switching drivers and all that, trying to sleep. You start questioning, what about your future? I remember waking up in the van in the middle of Kansas, in a cornfield, thinking, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ But, sticking together like that as a group, it’s like a family. You kind of prop each other up and give each other encouragement.
What were the early days of the band like?
I’ve known Donnie since we were 14! We were playing around Jacksonville in all these little teen club bands and dance bands — about eight other bands before 38 Special. Still working day jobs. And Donnie called me and said, ‘Let’s try it one more time. We’ll get the people, the right people, who will show up and have the conviction to go all the way.’ So I said, ‘Oh, really, try again?’ Anyway, it worked out, but of course, you make all your mistakes in public, and you suffer and starve for what you want. People think ‘Hold on Loosely’ was on our first album, but it was our fourth album. So you went through a lot of self-examination, like, ‘What am I doing?’ Then, people think you get a record deal and you’ve made it. But they’re just giving you a chance to play in the big leagues. If you can’t come across with something then they’re gonna send you back down to the farm league and the clubs. So we had some desperate times there, but it finally worked out.
When Donnie retired, I said, ‘Well, your brother Ronnie would be so proud that you made it 40 years!’ I still talk to him. He’s still my partner — we own the trademark.
Speaking of Ronnie Van Zant, what kind of impact did he have on you guys as a band, before he died in that tragic plane crash in 1977?
I remember the things that Ronnie told us about: Put your truth in your song; put your light in it. Don’t just say, ‘Ooh baby, I love you, I miss you.’ You’ve got to find real truths from stories in your life. So ‘Caught Up in You’ was about a woman that I was dating at the time, and I happened to say, ‘You know, I can’t seem to get any work done; I’m just so caught up in you all the time.’ And it was just like a light bulb turned on. ‘That’s a pretty good element for a song.’
38 Special will appear at 7 p.m. on Saturday, October 19th, at Fall Fest Memphis, held this year at St. Brigid Catholic Church, 7801 Lowrance Rd. For tickets and other details, visit fallfestmemphis.org.
Jody Stephens sings from the heart, stepping out front during Tuesday's concert. (Photo: Alex Greene)
When Jody Stephens and Chris Stamey put together a new version of Big Star two years ago, the quintet was a new group. And yet the band, which also includes Pat Sansone (Wilco), Jon Auer (Posies), and Mike Mills (R.E.M.), was hardly a bunch of rookies. Indeed, they all were unapologetic fans of that ’70s band that never quite made it, even as it lived on in their hearts and creative minds. And so, when they played WYXR’s Raised By Sound Festival in 2022, it was a revelation and a delight, but no great surprise that they pulled off the tribute to the band’s debut album, #1 Record, with aplomb.
And yet, being a “new” band, they had some rough patches at the time. Mills, battling a cold, was just shy of bringing his A game. The group as a whole still had to work out some details, as evidenced by their grinding to a halt during the bridge of “O My Soul,” only to begin the song again with brilliant results.
Now, two years later, it’s the 50th anniversary of Big Star’s second album, Radio City, and the same quintet is back in the saddle this fall for a series of 10 select dates in the U.S. and Europe. The kickoff show for the tour was at Crosstown Theater this Tuesday, and in the two years since this more stripped-down group formed (compared to the more sprawling bands assembled for the Big Star’s Third concerts a decade ago), they have become even more of a living, breathing unit. While the 2022 show was excellent, Tuesday’s show was jaw-dropping.
It isn’t that the group has grown more precise; rather, they’ve now internalized the material to such a degree that they can loosen up with it. And that is entirely appropriate, given the nature of the album they’re saluting in this round of shows. When it was recorded, Radio City marked the reconfiguration of the band as a trio led by Alex Chilton. Chris Bell, who founded the group, had left in frustration to pursue a solo career. And the album, while intricately crafted and performed, thus reflected Chilton’s greater embrace of the raucous, the chaotic, and the wild. It was nothing like the shambolic masterpieces he would later create as a solo artist, but a bit unhinged nonetheless, and therein lies its charm.
There were still plenty of echoes of Bell’s sensibility in Tuesday’s concert. Indeed, the group kicked off the show with “Feel” and several other chestnuts from #1 Record, the album’s cover projected behind them. A few songs in, the background changed to Radio City, and Stamey quipped, “Something is trying to tell us to move on to the next album.”
And move they did, as they brought some of Big Star’s rowdiest material to life. “That’s just fun to play!” quipped Sansone after they’d ripped through “O My Soul,” this time with no confusion, full steam ahead. After an especially stomping version of “She’s a Mover,” where Stamey seemed to capture a bit of Chilton’s old cutting delivery as he sang, “She name was Marcia, Marcia the name, she look like a dove, now,” the singer exclaimed to the audience, “Can it get any better than that?”
Stamey lit up even more before they launched into “When My Baby’s Beside Me.” As he explained, “This was the first Big Star song I ever heard, and I had to pull my car to the side of the road to hear it. In the Winston-Salem area back then, we thought these songs were hits! They were playing on local radio!” Indeed, each player’s inner fan boy seemed to emerge before our eyes as they conjured up the sounds that had first captivated them as teens.
Pat Sansone, Jon Auer, Mike Mills, Jody Stephens, and Chris Stamey as the Big Star Quintet (Photo: Alex Greene)
The players’ enthusiasm for the material was contagious. And yet it wasn’t all raucous abandon. Several quieter numbers stole the show, including “Way Out West,” “India Song,” and “Thirteen,” where Stephens stepped out from behind the drums to sing. And, from the tender to the tumultuous, the voices of all five players created vocal harmonies of a richness and beauty rarely heard these days.
Not to be outdone, Sansone shone in a solo rendition of “I’m in Love with a Girl” that was so heartfelt, you might have thought he wrote it himself. Auer, too, sang with moving, vulnerable soul on the quiet sections of “Daisy Glaze.” Never did the lyrics “nullify my life” seem so desolate.
Mills, for his part, also shone, especially on a crisp, propulsive “September Gurls.” Before singing it, he thanked Jody for letting him take on the vocal duties, promising him that “the check is in the mail.”
Mills also sang as the band closed their encore with what Mills said was “a rare moment of earnestness from Alex,” the lovingly ambivalent “Thank You Friends.” The group, who made many comments about their admiration for each other, and the joy of working together, may have been singing it to the audience who shared their love for the city’s best loved “unsuccessful” group — or they may have been singing it to one another, now a tight-knit ensemble of El Goodos hell-bent on keeping their favorite music alive.
It’s official: as of its closing moments this past Sunday, Gonerfest 21 has been successfully completed. Now it can drink in the state of Tennessee, the joke goes, and now it has fully embarked on its third decade. And, truth be told, it really did feel like our favorite fest had experienced some kind of growth spurt this year, even if some of its participants chose to go alcohol-free.
See interviews and more from the four-day weekend in this exclusive compilation on the Memphis Flyer YouTube channel.
In fact, the common sentiment seems to be, more than ever, an overwhelmingly head-spinning “What just happened?” Perhaps that vibe was amplified because Sunday, traditionally given over to Gonerfest’s rootsier, less distorted side, was instead dedicated to very much the opposite this year, as Oneida proceeded to forge a new approach to rock music before our eyes.
Taking in all their work as a whole, Oneida excels at musical world-building, blending synth sounds with their chugging rock band foundation in an approach that’s both sonic and harmonic, noise-laden and sing-song. And they bashed out one textured tune after another. “I wanna hold your hand/Between my teeth/I won’t draw blood/Don’t wanna stain the sheets,” as one song went. But it was their finale, “Sheets of Easter,” that really took the audience to a different plane.
Bobby Matador of Oneida (Photo: Tad Lauritzen Wright)
Kicking off with the phrase, “You’ve got to look into the LIGHT,” the song then consists of the band relentlessly, mercilessly repeating the last word, mantra-like, along with a single chord hammered out in eighth notes for approximately 19 minutes. “Light, light, light, light, light…” they sang, though the syllables began to morph after a while. Live stream viewers may have refreshed their connections, thinking the video was glitching. It wasn’t! Naïfs like me, unfamiliar with the song, were bewildered, amused, or offended, not knowing how or when it would end. Was it performance art? An MK-ULTRA-like experiment in which we, the audience, were lab rats? A sophomoric prank? Personally, I went through something not unlike the five stages of grief as I listened, from denial to anger, bargaining, depression, and, finally, acceptance.
It was truly one of the most surreal experiences I have had at any festival. As Zac Ives, co-owner of Goner Records, explains, the “song” is an old favorite by the band. “I don’t know how often they do it now, because it was on a record that they did 20 years ago, but it’s always insane. There’s not really much like it. Some listeners are horrified, and others are like, ‘Thank you for playing this amazing song.’ So yeah, it’s very divisive.”
Yet there weren’t many grumblers after it was done. Everyone, the band included, was too raw from the hypnotic onslaught. Finally, Eric Friedl, Goner’s founder, announced, “This concludes Gonerfest 21! After Oneida there is only light…go out into that light! Thanks to everyone who made this happen, the sound crew, the video crew. We made it through the rain, we made it through the not-rain.” And with that simple summation, the four-day roller coaster ride was over.
Looking back, then, one might well ask, “What just happened?” With too many bands to give every one of them a fair shake, one is left with only the most incendiary moments, burned into one’s brain.
The Pull Chains, a new collaboration between Greg Cartwright, Jesse Smith, Joseph Plunkett, and Eliza Hill, marked a refreshing return to harder rock territory for Cartwright, with echoes of the old Reigning Sound, but with all new material. And, as Cartwright notes, nearly every song was “a full four-way co-write from scratch, and they still seem to resonate with a single storyteller perspective. Such a joy to write songs with good people!”
Okmoniks (Photo: Anton Jackson)
Later that day, Okmoniks singer Helene Grotans was on a tear, perhaps trying to outdo the hurricane with which she shared a name, delighting the crowd with her Category 4 vocals and frenzied-yet-precise work on the Farfisa organ. “I usually play an Acetone,” she quipped, but nonetheless praised the beauty of the onstage instrument provided by Goner with an assist from Graham Winchester. Later, she raved about the Pull Chains, saying, “The Reigning Sound is my favorite band! Well, them and the Mummies!”
Revealing her classical training, Helene of Okmoniks demonstrated deft derrière technique on the Farfisa. (Photo: Alex Greene)
Regarding the opening night’s closer, local muso Jeremy Scott posted on social media that Derv Gordon and So What “killed it, just like they did seven years ago.” While the heavier, almost glam sound of So What contrasts with the old records by The Equals, they supplied solid backing for Gordon’s rich vocals, and, despite any audio issues Gordon encountered, had the crowd bouncing for the whole set.
Derv Gordon and So What (Photo: Alex Greene)
It’s Raining, It’s Streaming Friday was marked by near-constant rainfall, but that did not slow down Gonerfest 21. As Ives notes of the move from the outdoor to the indoor stage, “We were able to deal with the rain really well on Friday, because of the team that we have with us, and GM Jeremy over at Railgarten and his staff. It took a whole lot of work from a bunch of people to be able to make all that stuff happen and pull it all off. And the community that we’re able to bring in, everybody just almost wills this thing to work well, you know? I think we’re really lucky that that it works that way.”
Railgarten, with both an outdoor and an indoor stage, offered a uniquely adaptable venue for such contingencies. And fans could also stay at home, given the reliability of the live streamed video, co-directed by Brent Shrewsbury and Alik Mackintire and executed by a crew of camera operators and other techs.
Availing myself of that option, I found the clarity of the videography and the brilliant online mix to be excellent, especially when running it through big speakers. Surprisingly, Ives himself watched some of the livestream on Sunday.
“I couldn’t be there [due to a mild case of Covid], and I was sort of crestfallen that I couldn’t. But the fact that I could sit there and watch from my quarantined house meant everything. I sent an email to Brent and Alik afterwards saying, ‘You completely saved my day.’ And not only that, that stream is an unbelievable way to watch everything. It is just on a different level now. They’re directing and cutting that stuff real time on a multi-camera shoot. The sound is unbelievable. The video is unbelievable. The real time editing is great. And then all of the in-between stuff that they’ve added in production this year, with Chris McCoy and Ryan [Haley] doing these interviews [see them in this exclusive compilation on the Memphis Flyer YouTube channel], and then taking footage that we’ve collected from the archive over the years and putting that all in, it’s amazing. It was the first time I’ve ever sat at home and watched that way. And I was completely blown away by our team.”
In retrospect, the weather for Gonerfest 21 was perfect. There was just enough bad weather to make comrades of us all, thankful we were spared the worst of it. No doubt the storm’s impact on festival-goers’ own kith and kin in the Carolinas, Georgia, and elsewhere was being felt, but Memphians were largely subject to mere rain (and the odd dead limb crashing down here and there).
L’Afrique, C’est Chic Oneida wasn’t the only act to leave heads spinning. One of the festival’s most unpredictable moments was the triumphant return to Memphis of Niger’s finest Afro-beat groove band, Etran de L’Aïr. When Goner brought them here for the first time last summer, their show at Growlers was the talk of the town for weeks. This time around, they exceeded even those rave reviews.
Etran de L’Aïr (Photo: Anton Jackson)
While the two-guitar, bass, and drum lineup was conventional, the sounds that emerged as they layered cascades of electric notes over galloping rhythms were nigh otherworldly. Something about the weaving guitar arpeggios created a whole greater than the sum of the parts. After a while, the various overlapping overtones created a kind of aural illusion of other sounds, something several listeners commented on. “I thought I heard harmonicas,” exclaimed one friend, and I did too. Most importantly, the sweep of sound and rhythm proved irresistible to the crowd, who collectively threw their hands up after each tune and gave perhaps the weekend’s loudest roars of approval.
With Etran de L’Aïr not being your typical Goner band (is there such a thing?), Ives was relieved to see them win over the crowd. “After seeing them completely destroy that Growlers stage, I was super excited to see what would happen,” he says. “And then when everybody just completely embraced it and was completely into it, it rejuvenated my whole sense of why we do this thing and how great the audience is at Gonerfest. And I had a whole funny conversation with with a friend about that, about how he was not a ‘world music’ fan. Now, he’s open to it. This was the first world music band that he likes.”
Ladies’ Night Without any particular agenda in mind, many festival-goers independently singled out the amazing women in the various Gonerfest bands this year. It was a notable, if low-key, contrast to other festivals’ less diverse lineups. Many raved about Py Py‘s co-vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, Annie-Claude Deschênes, whose magnetic presence drew the crowd under her spell, especially when she had fans hold her mic cable aloft as she made her way from the stage to the bar and back.
Tube Alloys (Photo: Sean Davis)
There was also the charismatic charm of Okmoniks’ Helene, noted above. And one friend raved about “that woman playing the Guild SG [guitar]” in Tube Alloys, an L.A. band named after the U.K.’s secret World War II nuclear weapons development program. Given their mastery of fuzz/crunch, the name is appropriate, fueled by their co-ed lineup.
Meanwhile, Angel Face, Japan’s latest purveyors of classic punk sneer-and-shout riffs, were powered by the unrelenting attack of their female drummer, Reiko. With punk/D.I.Y./indie attitudes seemingly more inclusive than ever, strong women players would appear to be par for the course in today’s Gonerfest universe.
Angel Face (Photo: Sean Davis)
All this barely scratches the surface, of course. In answer to the query, “What just happened?” the best answer is likely, “You had to be there…” And, as Ives notes, right there at Railgarten is likely where Gonerfest will be for the foreseeable future. “We were slightly up in terms of ticket sales this year,” he says, “but there’s not really any room to grow. I think we’re basically at capacity for the space. But that feels like a good spot to be in. We were still able to offer day passes for all three nights. So it didn’t feel like we were leaving anybody out, but it also felt like we were maximizing the space and, you know, maximizing the good feelings from everybody there.”
The traditional Gonerfest “alley photo” was moved to Railgarten this year. (Photo: Sean Davis)
It’s a hopeful tale for any aspiring singer-songwriters out there, one that starts as any typical troubadour’s would: “I was doing a lot of shows at the P&H Cafe, and those Flying Saucer songwriter nights.” A couple of decades ago, that was Drew Holcomb’s life, pounding the pavement, chasing gigs, and honing his craft. Soon, this being Memphis, he was rubbing shoulders with like-minded artists. “Cory Branan was incredibly gracious to me,” Holcomb says, “and sort of invited me into his world a little bit and let me open up a bunch of his shows. Then later the Hi Tone was kind of my home for a lot of years.”
As he recruited bands to perform his songs, Holcomb hit it off with one local player in particular. “His name is Nathan Dugger. He was in his senior year at Houston High School when he started playing with me,” Holcomb recalls. “Then he moved to Nashville to go to Belmont and stayed with me on the weekends when he was playing around town.”
The fact that Dugger is still playing with Holcomb over 20 years later is proof positive that they had stumbled onto some great musical chemistry. So is the musical legacy of Holcomb, Dugger, and Rich Brinsfield, the core of the band that eventually coalesced as Holcomb too made the leap to Nashville.
Holcomb’s mixed feelings about moving to the “Athens of the South” revealed his Bluff City roots. “As a Memphian,” he confesses, “I felt very reluctant to move to Nashville. I felt like I was sort of a traitor, in a way. But I married a Nashville woman, and this was where she wanted to live.” Put another way, in “I Like to Be With Me When I’m With You,” Holcomb sings, “If I could live on the moon, I would rather stay in Tennessee with you.”
“So we were looking for neighborhoods 20 years ago,” he goes on, “and I came to East Nashville. It’s the only neighborhood in Nashville that reminded me of home, you know? It had this sort of loyalty culture, and it was a little gritty. It was, like, hardworking. It had a chip on its shoulder about the rest of the city. And I was like, ‘Yeah, this is my spot. These are my people.’”
As it turned out, the entire band, including Holcomb’s wife Ellie (who’s since gone on to a solo career) wound up in East Nashville, and thus settled on the name Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors. That moniker is especially apt given Holcomb’s songs, which so often address the ties that bind, the friends we lean on, and the embrace of family, conveyed with a soulful, folk-infused pop sensibility. The inclusive message, bolstered by inclusive music, capped off by the disarming frankness of Holcomb’s heartfelt voice, has since resonated with millions, and the band’s trajectory is an object lesson in the rewards of simply honing your craft and staying true to your vision without selling out. That certainly holds true for last year’s Strangers No More and the new Strangers No More, Vol. 2.
“With both of these records,” he says, “if anybody wants to hear a band having fun in the studio, they can listen to these records. We had the time of our lives. We weren’t worried about commercial stuff. We weren’t worried about the radio. We just were like, ‘Hey, we love making music as a band.’
“I’ve got to be myself,” adds Holcomb. “That’s what I learned from the music I loved growing up in Memphis — you know, bands like Lucero, who are just so incredibly original. It was important for me to be my own version of that. But, I mean, I was influenced as much by U2 as I was by Bob Dylan or Bob Seger or Tom Petty, so some of my songwriting has a sort of broad universality to it, like a U2 song, and I’ve grown to embrace that instead of apologizing for it. And I think that that’s part of the Memphis in me, too: being unapologetically myself and not trying to be somebody I’m not.”
Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors perform at the Mempho Music Festival Sunday, October 6th, at 4:30 p.m. on the Bud Light Stage. For details and a full schedule of bands, visit memphofest.com.
While Gonerfest is known for bringing cutting-edge bands to Memphis, one can’t forget the keen sense of history that also informs their bookings. This week’s Gonerfest 21 is a good reminder of that, with the opening night’s headliner being Oakland’s So What fronted by Derv Gordon, the original lead singer of The Equals, a band founded in 1965. They could have hit it big in America like so many during the British Invasion, had they ever bothered to invade. But, being one of the first multiracial beat combos ever, they had mixed feelings about that.
“We didn’t want to tour the U.S. because we wouldn’t have been able to cope with this ‘no Blacks’ business and not being able to stay in certain hotels or whatever,” Gordon recalls today, speaking from his home in England. “Still, ‘Baby, Come Back’ made the Top 40.” But with no U.S. touring, they never made it big here.
Though The Equals’ blend of freakbeat, soul, ska, and bubblegum rock was plenty cutting-edge (and plenty infectious) at the time, having a group with both Black and white players pushed the envelope even further. Booker T. and the MG’s may have been the only such small combo to precede them. But The Equals were more of a rock band, paving the way for later groups like The Foundations, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Love. And while they did find greater success in Europe and Asia, race still factored into everyday London life. Harassment by the cops was a regular feature of life for Black Londoners, and that in turn led to the creation of one of The Equals’ most enduring songs, “Police on My Back.”
“I left the guys at rehearsal and went to a main railway station to get some cans of drinks,” Gordon recalls, “and as I walked into the station, two huge men, one on each side, picked me up, lifted me off the floor, and said, ‘You’re nicked.’ I said, ‘I’m what? Why am I nicked?’ They just said, ‘You’ll find out,’ and they took me across the street to the police station. I was there for what seemed like forever. I gave them all my information, then said, ‘Excuse me, can you tell me why this is happening to me?’ A policeman says, ‘You resemble someone who murdered his girlfriend.’”
Gordon cleared things up only after requesting that his band be brought in to vouch for him. As they entered, “I could see them coming in with big grins on their face,” Gordon recalls. “Bastards!” Humor aside, the incident was a wake-up call for them. Soon Eddy Grant, The Equals’ lead guitarist and main songwriter (who later gained worldwide fame with his solo hit, “Electric Avenue”), would pen arguably the best song about being on the lam, later made famous via a cover version by The Clash, with its heartfelt cry, “What have I done?” And Gordon’s voice brought the phrase to life.
The band had other politically charged songs, including 1970’s anti-war “Black Skin Blue-Eyed Boys,” but their primary focus was on fun and groove, with charging rock riffs paired with infectious beats and Gordon’s fiery, soulful vocals, often portraying whimsical characters: “Soul Brother Clifford,” “Michael and His Slipper Tree,” “Viva Bobby Joe.” And while their sound got heavier and funkier by the late ’60s and ’70s, The Equals always kept things short and sweet. “I don’t think Eddy enjoyed doing long guitar solos,” quips Gordon now.
That makes The Equals’ music perfectly suited to the D.I.Y., short-and-sharp vibe of so many Gonerfest bands. And that’s an aesthetic shared by retro-stomp rockers So What, with whom Gordon first played in 2017, including an incendiary performance at Gonerfest 14 that year. Gordon feels they’re the perfect group to play Equals songs: true to that original stripped-down spirit, but with their own self-described “junkshop glam/bubblegum/proto-punk insanity.” Gordon notes that So What’s bassist, Sean M. Lennon (not the son of a Beatle), “is the only bass player I’ve ever heard actually do all the bass runs in ‘Police on My Back.’ And Jason [Duncan, singer and guitarist] actually knows more about Equals songs than I do!”
Gonerfest 21 runs from Thursday, Sept. 26th, through Sunday, Sept. 29th, at Railgarten, featuring dozens of bands. Visit goner-records.com for more information. So What takes the stage at 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, and Derv Gordon joins them at 10 p.m.
Neil Young in Oslo, Norway, 2009. (Photo: Per Ole Hagen)
The 2024 Memphis Music Hall of Fame (MMHOF) Induction Ceremony this Friday, September 27th, was already going to be lit. With the likes of garage boppers The Gentrys, soul men supreme James Carr and Wilson Pickett, and hip-hop producer/rapper Jazze Pha being saluted, the music was guaranteed to be stellar.
But at a ceremony of such historical importance, it’s not just about the performances. Simply having the honorees together in the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts is significant, especially if they are expressing their mutual admiration. And it’s in that spirit that Friday night will suddenly be a lot more stellar, as Neil Young has announced that he’ll be there to induct a legendary player he’s worked with for decades: Dewey “Spooner” Lindon Oldham Jr.
Singer, keyboardist, and songwriter Oldham performed with Young at this weekend’s Farm Aid, but his association with the Canadian folk rock innovator goes back much further than that. He played on Young’s celebrated 1992 album Harvest Moon, appeared in the concert film Neil Young: Heart of Gold, and joined Crosby Stills Nash & Young on their 2006 Freedom of Speech tour. He’s also played in two of Young’s occasional touring bands, The Stray Gators and the Prairie Wind Band.
Oldham’s track record, of course, goes way beyond that. Known for his command of the organ and the Wurlitzer electric piano, he recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, at FAME Studios as part of the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section in his early years, playing on such legendary tracks as Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman”, Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally,” and Aretha Franklin’s “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You).” Later Oldham followed Dan Penn to Memphis, working at American Sound Studios as well as in Muscle Shoals, and co-writing hits by the Box Tops, James and Bobby Purify, and Percy Sledge with Penn.
In all, The Memphis Music Hall of Fame will be inducting and honoring nine inductees this year, who will thus expand the Hall of Fame roster to over 100 world-changing Memphis music icons. In addition to Oldham, this year’s inductees include Carr, Pickett, Jazze Pha, and The Gentrys, as well as operatic soprano Kallen Esperian, background singers Rhodes/Chalmers/Rhodes, Memphis Tourism CEO Kevin Kane, and Jack Soden, CEO of Graceland for more than 40 years.
The 2024 Memphis Music Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will be held Friday, September 27th, at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts at 7 p.m. Tickets are available at Ticketmaster (ticketmaster.com) and the Cannon Center box office.
For those who love live Memphis music, Jeremy Stanfill has been a familiar presence for over a decade, often as a drummer for either Star & Micey or James & the Ultrasounds, or, in more recent years, as a singer-songwriter. And Stanfill, sporting a denim jacket, looking a little weathered, toting an acoustic guitar, fits the latter role perfectly. His words, his voice, and a few strummed chords are all he needs to put the songs over in a room. But if you’ve only heard Stanfill in solitary troubadour mode, you’re in for a surprise.
Over the course of the summer, he’s quietly been releasing another side of his sound, and it reveals just how expansive his musical imagination is. Don’t be surprised if you hear him on the radio one day soon. With three singles dropping on streaming services this year (so far), Stanfill has unveiled a new, confident approach that is unquestionably pop. July’s “4403 (Time Machine)” sports a slow disco beat, percolating synths, and the singer’s plaintive falsetto; the crunchy classic rock guitar underpinning last month’s “Wild Heart” spins a moody vibe for Stanfill’s tough/tender vocals; and the most recent, “Moving Day,” starts with his solo voice, then gives way to keyboard flourishes and stacked harmonies, complete with subtle pitch-correct effects.
But unlike some rookies hungering for stardom, Stanfill came to this glossy soundscape organically. At heart, he’s a deeply personal songwriter, and that has not changed even as he’s upped his production game. Even those recordings were the result of his long-standing friendships with fellow Memphians Elliott Ives and Scott Hardin, both studio-savvy engineers/producers/musicians who’ve worked in the big leagues (Ives with Justin Timberlake, Hardin with bands like Drew Holcomb, Saliva, and Drivin N Cryin).
“We’ve all been friends forever,” says Stanfill of the trio, “and we’ve always wanted to work together. We just haven’t had the time or it just didn’t work out until now, but we have so much love and respect for each other. We were connected to Elliott through Young Avenue Sound because Star & Micey were connected to Young Avenue Sound early on.”
Young Avenue Sound, in turn, was where they made the magic happen. But it wasn’t all fun and games. Stanfill was still reeling from a series of hits his life had taken after 2015. “I had a lot of things happen,” he says. “I got really bad off with drinking, then ended up getting sober. My mom passed away. I was in a long-term relationship that was falling apart just as I got a small record deal. I ended up making the record, but then chose to walk away from it. I thought it was the best thing for me as an artist — I just wasn’t happy with it. But I was still thinking, ‘I want to make something.’ So I called Scott and Elliott.”
Stanfill’s old friends knew he’d abandoned one album already. “They were like, ‘Do you want to re-record what you just did, and make it sound really good? Or would you like to throw caution to the wind and just see what we can come up with and be creative?’ I was like, ‘I want to do that: be creative, and feel like I did when I was a kid, and be excited about music again.’”
From there, “we started building these songs together. ‘Wild Heart’ was already written, but the other ones were built from scratch. We weren’t trying to make a record or anything at the time. I just wanted to make something different, and I just wanted to change the gears. And immediately there was this magical chemistry.”
In the finished products, Stanfill’s sincere folk disposition becomes larger than life through the trio’s collaboration. And, he says, there’s more on the way. For now, there are the online singles, with two of them (“4403” and “Wild Heart”) slated for a vinyl 45 release on October 30th. That will be celebrated with a Memphis Listening Lab premiere party on the day of release. Meanwhile, Stanfill carries on in troubadour mode, playing Music Export Memphis’ Tambourine Bash at the Overton Park Shell on October 10th, and opening for Bailey Bigger at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts on Halloween.
“I guess I learned from Covid what anxiety and depression really were.” Alice Hasen is recalling the genesis of her latest release some years ago, when cabin fever’s creeping trepidation was not only a personal matter, but a generalized fear for all of humanity. All of us went through similar emotions, but Hasen, being a classically-trained violinist and composer, and well-seasoned on the stages of the Mid-South, confronted them through her music. Hearing her EP Dream of Rain now, it’s clear that the stress helped her to produce the most powerful music of her career.
But if the Covid lockdown era jump-started the musical project, it quickly grew beyond that, thematically. That’s made clear in “Temperature Rising,” the EP’s opener. As she explains, there are multiple dimensions to both the global and the personal stress she’s confronting, and the opening track is about “all of the different ways the temperatures were rising around us. Primarily, the EP is mostly about climate change, wildfires, and the mental response to that. But it’s also definitely a product of the pandemic because our internal temperatures were rising and the political temperature was rising, too. So it’s a musical embodiment of all of those anxieties, for me, coming together and needing to find a way to be expressed.”
Hasen, of course, wouldn’t be the first artist to respond to end-of-the-world angst. Local rock band Heels, for example, released Pop Songs for a Dying Planet a couple of years ago, and that title says it all. But Heels’ “pop songs” were punk-infused barn burners reminiscent of, say, the Clash — exactly what you’d expect from apocalyptic rage. Hasen, on the other hand, takes a subtler approach. While she’s dabbled in funk, classic rock, and other genres in her previous solo work (and in the work of Blackwater Trio, her more collaborative band), this EP reflects a more introspective approach and a lush beauty all its own. Facing up to such anguish, it turns out, can be a very delicate thing.
The EP’s title song is a prime example. “Dream of Rain” begins quietly, Hasen’s violin meandering pleasantly before the subtle rhythm kicks in and, with Hasen’s conversational musings melodiously unfolding in the verse, it resembles nothing so much as Joni Mitchell. Clearly this is a world where beauty and fear come in equal measures. As Hasen reflects, “Part of me wants to let people interpret it for themselves, but for me, that song is about denialism and being invited into this world where nothing is wrong. It’s not real; it’s not a real world. So there’s extreme beauty and comfort, but also there’s something off about it that you can’t quite place. Yet there’s also sort of a hope that we can just dream of rain. Like in the bridge, where it kind of breaks down and turns into spoken word: If you can dream of rain, pray for rain, sing for rain, and dance for rain, then we can magically manifest it.”
Such magic is therapeutic in a world that seems to be falling apart. As Hasen notes, the vast scale and inexorable march of climate change “makes me feel trapped. But there is some hope in the album, too. Like, ‘Dream of Rain’ is an optimistic song for me because we’re trying to manifest rain to go to the places it needs to go.”
The fine line between hope and despair comes through loud and clear as the song unfolds:
“For generations this has been our home,” she sings, “our hiding place/But now we’re running where we used to play, all burned away/No fire escape, all burned away/Have you heard the news?/Where we’re going there is no more pain, no yesterday/Worrying or arguing on how to play the game/Funny how those words of peace and anger sound the same/When you’re the one in the flames.”
The grim imagery continues through other songs on the EP as well. “Goodnight Moon,” far from an homage to the popular children’s book, describes humanity as “coming in hot/Caught victim by our firelust,” as we become mere “victors of dust, prizes of rust.” But the first single off the EP, “Hold Still,” which drops September 20th, offers a kind of balm to this collective anxiety. Over some of the most delicate music of her career, Hasen sings some sage advice: “Hold still, this won’t hurt a bit/Finding the heartbeat, keeping the magic/Hold still, the world is an eggshell/We’re on the inside, nothing is tragic.”
Leaning into the fragility of the tune, Hasen also plays flute on it, a flourish that complements her arrangements for string ensemble throughout the EP. While she overdubbed herself for the latter effect during recording (with Estefan Perez on cello), she’s looking forward to featuring a live string ensemble and a flutist when she celebrates the EP’s release at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts on October 4th. And, she notes of the Green Room performance, “this will probably be the only show where I do the entire EP front to back, ever. Because this project, being full of emotions and a definite darkness, has been very laborious and emotionally taxing.”
Yet, on the flip side, Hasen’s looking forward to having fun while playing live this season. The first gig on the horizon will be the Mighty Roots Music Festival in Stovall, Mississippi (near Clarksdale), this Friday and Saturday, September 13th and 14th, with Hasen and band appearing Saturday at 2:15 p.m.
“I’m really excited about that,” says Hasen. “I spent four years in Clarksdale, and that was sort of where I was born as an artist, I think, because that was the first place I really got to experience playing non-classical music. And of course, it’s such a musically rich part of the world, I think it really influenced me and the way that I sound, and my particular voice on the violin, my songwriting voice.”
She pauses a moment, then adds, “And Stovall is an amazing place because it’s the birthplace of Muddy Waters. When I was looking in Clarksdale, I used to ride my bike over to Stovall and just sit under a pecan tree and look out over the fields for a little bit before going home.”
This coming weekend brings some overdue recognition to one of the city’s true jazz giants, Donald Brown. The pianist was born in Mississippi but raised in Memphis before going on to study at Memphis State (now the University of Memphis), where he was one of the “Memphis Three,” the trio of genius-level ivory-ticklers who emerged in the 1970s that also included James Williams and Mulgrew Miller. Of the three, Brown was arguably the most eclectic, ranging from classic straight-ahead jazz piano to more funk-influenced recordings over the course of 18 studio albums, plus appearances on records by the likes of Donald Byrd and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Through most of that time, he was a much-loved educator at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville from 1988-2020.
This Friday, September 6th, at 7 p.m., he’ll receive a Beale Street Brass Note and a tribute to his life in music at the Museum of Science & History (MoSH), complete with a concert by the Memphis Jazz Workshop (led by Steve Lee, one of Brown’s former students). And Saturday, September 7th, at 6 p.m., the Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center will host a reading by Valeria Z. Nollan from her upcoming biography of Brown. It’s a pair of events befitting a career as distinguished as Brown’s, and yet the cruel irony is that he won’t be playing at any of them.
That’s due in part to his aging. “I’ve been having problems with my hands, so I haven’t really performed for the last seven years, so it’s been kinda rough,” he says with some resignation. Yet, at 70, his mind is as sharp as ever, which bodes well for Nollan’s biography, slated for release in 2025.
Brown’s life since college has been single-mindedly focused on his mastery of the piano, but it wasn’t always thus. “I came to jazz kind of late,” he says. “Originally, I was a drummer, and then I played tuba in the marching band, baritone horn in the concert band, and trumpet in the ROTC band. Through high school [at South Side High School], even though I was playing trumpet and drums, I still knew enough about piano and harmony that I was arranging for my high school marching band. Playing trumpet probably influenced my writing more than my improvising, but playing drums definitely influenced me more as a pianist.”
And then there were the keyboardists who showed him the way, influences that came pouring out once Brown took to the piano as his main instrument when starting college. “All the great players that were in Memphis at the time just made me want to play the instrument. Booker T. [Jones] was a big influence. Marvell Thomas, Sidney Kirk, and other guys that were contemporaries of mine.” Like most Stax-affiliated players, these were virtuosos who were equally at home in jazz or pop settings. And that was true of Brown, too, as he progressed through college and began working more steadily.
“I played in a lot of top 40 bands and a lot of studio work,” Brown explains, “so I was influenced by the music of Motown and Philadelphia International, players like Bernie Worrell with Parliament-Funkadelic, Sly and the Family Stone, Prince. I was really into the group Yes and Rick Wakeman. So it was a very diverse amount of keyboard players and pianists that influenced me.”
A grounding in funk is reflected in some of Brown’s greatest jazz work, where strong left-handed bass figures can be key, as in two of his tributes to civil rights leaders, “A Poem for Martin” and “Theme for Malcolm.” Yet even those reveal Brown’s subtle mastery of classic jazz piano as well, which comes to the fore in his piece “Phineas,” a tribute to the greatest of all Memphis pianists, Phineas Newborn Jr.
Looking back on his storied life in jazz, Brown himself can hardly believe it. “I was blessed to have worked with so many other legends, like Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Donald Byrd, Toots Thielemans, and Johnny Griffin. But still, the highlight for me was playing with Art Blakey. I still have to pinch myself when I see recordings or videos and see that it actually happened. Even though I haven’t been there walking the streets with Bird and Bud Powell, I tell my students that that’s about as close as you can get to the source.”
Matthew Sweet is the perfect choice to headline the Memphis PowerPop Festival, happening at the Overton Park Shell at 5 p.m. this Saturday, August 31st. Being younger than the likes of the Who, the Raspberries, or Big Star, he’s nevertheless an actively performing link to the originators of the genre — first as a fan. The direct result of the first wave of “power pop” filtering down to younger denizens of the 1970s via radio and funky little record shops, he can well remember the thrill of discovering key LPs back when power pop gems were rare.
Sweet, of course, came to define power pop for a whole new generation after his third album, Girlfriend, blew up in 1991, not coincidentally featuring band members — Richard Lloyd, Robert Quine — who’d appeared on the very records he bought in high school. From the ’90s on, he’s been a reliably rocking and intriguing artist, and continues to mine the power pop vein today, with one album dropping during Covid and another on the way. A common thread through all of his music, as a both fan and an artist, is his love of melody, often paired with rock’s grit. And that, in a nutshell is what power pop is. Naturally, the topic of melody was where my recent conversation with him soon headed.
Memphis Flyer:As it turns out, you and I were growing up in eastern Nebraska at the same time [much discussion of this ensues]. I imagine you were a frequent patron of Dirt Cheap Records in Lincoln?
Matthew Sweet: Most of the records that found their way to me were from my older brother, or from someone recommending them to me at Dirt Cheap. People at Dirt Cheap knew all about everything. So you’d get to know a guy at a record store and he sort of knew what you liked. I remember going in Dirt Cheap one day and seeing one of the 45s that ended up on Singles Going Steady, by the Buzzcocks. That record was one that I really loved, because they were really melodic, but also very new wave.
I think of it as a British Invasion, that kind of new wave, punk, and everything, and it’s interesting, because my concern at the time was, How can I be like an American person, from a new generation or whatever, and do that kind of thing? And that’s why it was so, so critical for me to find [records by] the dBs or Big Star, because they became my American role models. Like on #1 Record, the voices were so pristine and beautiful sounding. The guitars were so incredible. It was everything I loved really melodic stuff that really hit me emotionally. Melody was always really important to me. It’s kind of what I heard first, even before lyrics. Even when the lyrics were important, it was the melodies that I really felt like I had, you know, inside me or something.
There was a lot of surprise in discovering the music then. And now I realize what a special time it was. I love the internet, and I love being able to find out instantly about anything I’m interested in, but back then, records were very special, at least to me and people I knew at the time. A record was this thing that was really personal.
It seems like those melodic records also led you to the South, in a way. The dB’s and Mitch Easter coming out of the North Carolina scene, and Big Star being from Memphis. Were you already into those bands when you moved to Athens, Georgia?
I had all these records in high school. I got into the dBs, and they were the gateway for me to find Big Star. As far as I was concerned, Alex Chilton was, you know, John Lennon, or something. He reminded me so much of Lennon, and does now even, because what I admired about John Lennon was the breadth of emotional things in his songs. He could write very beautiful, tender music that showed he really had a heart, and he could do more edgy stuff that was sort of sassy. And that was also such an Alex thing. From the soft and beautiful to the crazy and weird and electric. And I just loved those records as I was preparing to leave Nebraska, when I got out of high school. I guess that would have been May of ’83. I just told my parents, like, ‘I have to go to college in Athens, Georgia.’
The scene there was still really kind of going, and there was just kind of a magic. Growing up in Nebraska was so different from that Southern Gothic kind of feeling [in Athens]. It was a place that had a much longer history than we had in Lincoln or Omaha, you know. So it really felt kind of heavy and mysterious and kind of magical to me, as an 18 or 19 year old. Yeah, it was amazing.
And now you’re calling me from Athens, where you really got your career going when R.E.M. and that scene was taking off, and where your current full band tour is taking you now, just before playing Memphis. And you’re living in Nebraska again. A lot of full-circle moments are happening these days! How does it feel to hear the new release, WXRT Live in Grant Park, Chicago, IL, July 4, 1993, documenting a live show you and your band played at the height of the Altered Beast era?
It feels so long ago, I wanted it to be called Matthew Sweet, Live in Chicago, 1893. I thought it was funny, but no one would implement it. But that was a really memorable show. The Jayhawks were there, and I love Gary [Louris]. And Chicago was always a great place for me, so I had a lot of support there, not just fans, but from radio. It was one of the places where everything sort of went right, you know? So it’s always been a little bit of a second home area around Chicago. I wasn’t, you know, living in Nebraska at the time, but it still felt closer to home. You know, it was just sort of cool, the big Midwestern city. But maybe the real reason I loved that show was that the next morning, there was a newspaper headline in Chicago that read: The Pope, the Bulls, and Matthew Sweet. My mother came from a giant Catholic family, and she was pretty religious and so, you know, there could be nothing more thrilling for her than me being mentioned in the same breath as the Pope.
And here you are, 1993 is in the far distant past, and you’re still touring with a full band.
And playing this power pop fest! I’ve never heard of such a thing, except maybe in Spain, right? Power pop is a thing there, and we toured there a lot, and did really well. But to think we are in America, at a power pop festival! I heard it may get moved out of the bandshell to an indoor venue, due to weather, but we really want to play the Shell. It’s one of the last bandshells, I think. There’s only a couple left. And, I mean, you know, we’ve all seen those photos of Elvis standing in the middle of that stage…
The Memphis PowerPop Festival, part of the Orion Free Concert Series, takes place at the Overton Park Shell this Saturday, August 31st at 5 p.m., and features Matthew Sweet with openers Abe Partridge and The Sonny Wilsons. An after-party featuring Your Academy, 40 Watt Moon, and Lately David starts at 9 p.m. at B-Side.
