Author: Jesse Davis

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Music Music Features

Blues Invasion: International Blues Challenge Returns to Beale Street

CREDIT: Jayne Dooger

For one week each year, there is a sudden, temporary population spike in the number of blues musicians on Beale Street. This year, it’s January 16-20, and Delta blues cats, aficionados of the bottle-neck slide, and 12-bar and 16-bar enthusiasts of every variety will descend on Memphis from all over the globe to compete in the International Blues Challenge (IBC).

They will come from the Oslo Bluesklubb, the Kalamazoo Valley Blues Association, France Blues, and Mojo Station — and from Austin, Texas, and Tampa, Florida. Each year, for 34 years running, Memphis’ own Blues Foundation has brought the most talented musicians from its affiliate organizations to the Bluff City to compete in the IBC.

In addition to hosting the IBC, the Blues Foundation has tasked itself with preserving and celebrating the legacy of the blues, a uniquely American musical tradition. The Foundation has 200 affiliated blues societies spread across the globe, and it is from that pool that the entrants for each year’s IBC are drawn. Bands and solo performers compete in regional competitions held by Foundation affiliates and are whittled down until only the best and bluesiest bands remain. Those 200 blues players then head to Memphis for a week of wailing saxophones, screaming guitars, soulful harmonicas — and tearing up the dance floor — until, at last, the IBC judges — industry professionals distinguished by their knowledge and experience — crown a winner.

With 200 competitors in both the full-band and solo/duo categories, it’s a near impossibility to interview every performer. One story among many is that of the Tampa-based Souliz Band featuring Sugar and Spice — returning this year for a second bite at the proverbial apple.

Last year, the sextet came within a hair’s breadth of snagging the first-place prize in the IBC. They went home to Tampa with second place — second out of 200 competitors being nothing to scoff at — but this year, bassist/multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Tony Fullwood wants to win the ultimate prize. “We need to win first place. Second place is first-place loser,” Fullwood says before he chuckles. “Second place is great, don’t get me wrong. I’m just a type-A personality. I don’t like to take a back seat.”

Originally from upstate New York and with roots in jazz and fusion, the multi-instrumentalist took note of the talent on hand at the IBC last year. “There was some great competition there. Everybody had a different style, and I was quite impressed.

“To me, it’s not about who’s better; it’s about what you do and how you do it,” Fullwood says. “Everybody has a different style. Everybody has their own creative flow.” Souliz Band’s style, Fullwood says, tends to lean toward a Southern soul sound. But the blues is always an influence. “The singers, [sisters Myra and Velma Glover] their mother [Loretta Glover] was a blues singer,” Fullwood says. “She was very prominent here in Tampa. She passed away onstage singing, actually.”

Loretta passed on her serious vocal chops to her daughters, whose confident and heartfelt take on Sam & Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Comin'” at 2017’s IBC elevated the now-classic soul song to a frenetic assurance.

“Of course, it’s all one style,” Fullwood says of jazz, soul, and R&B, all of which have a common root in the blues. “After you hit Virginia, everything coming down is basically blues until you hit the West Coast.”

But the well-traveled bandleader of Souliz says he’s excited to be in Memphis. His voice sounds determined and confident, like a boxer on the eve before a big match. “Just know that Souliz is coming back to town,” Fullwood says. “And we need to have that Number One.”

The 34th National Blues Challenge takes place in multiple venues on Beale Street, January 16th through 20th. (blues.org/international-blues-challenge/)

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Music Music Features

Acoustic Sunday with Tom Paxton, Three Women and the Truth

Folk music icon and 2009 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Tom Paxton says he doesn’t mean to preach. He just tries to hold a mirror up to the world. “I’m not a propagandist. I never have been,” Paxton says. “I just try to reflect the world I see around me.”

Though he has written his share of incendiary folk songs — such as “If the Poor Don’t Matter” and “Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation” — Paxton believes in the importance of seeing the whole spectrum when it comes to songwriting. “I write all kinds of songs,” he says. “I write songs for children. I just finished a love song this afternoon.”

Paxton recently wrapped up a tour in celebration of his 80th birthday — and more than 50 years in the music business as a songwriter, performer, and supporter of music education — from his beginnings as a frequent performer in New York’s Greenwich Village, where in 1962, he recorded his first of more than 60 albums, to his more recent songwriting workshops as part of Warren Wilson College’s Swannanoa Gathering. “I turned 80 on Halloween, and within two weeks, I heard myself described as spry,” Paxton says. “You know you’re old when people describe you as spry.”

Kathy Mattea

Paxton credits Pete Seeger and Seeger’s group the Weavers as being early sources of inspiration. “My model has always been the Weavers. They were the ones who inspired me,” Paxton says. “They didn’t shy away from singing songs about the world around them, but they also sang lullabies and songs of family.” It’s that spirit of unprejudiced observation that fuels Paxton’s songwriting engine. “I’m looking for an idea, and any idea can be a good idea,” Paxton says. “I wrote a song about the firemen on 9/11, who ran up the stairs when everybody else was running down.”

Paxton, along with his band the Don Juans, will play a benefit concert for Indie Memphis, dubbed Acoustic Sunday Live, on December 17th at the Halloran Centre for Performing Arts downtown. “I’m having as much fun now as I’ve ever had,” Paxton says, “and it’s all because I’m hanging out with these two friends from Nashville, John Veznor and Don Henry, who call themselves the Don Juans.” The Acoustic Sunday event seems to represent something of a Tennessee truce between the often differing musical styles of Memphis and Nashville, as many of the performers at the Indie Memphis benefit have made Tennessee’s state capital their home. Also performing will be the Nashville-based Three Women and the Truth: Gretchen Peters, Kathy Mattea, and Mary Gauthier.

Bruce Newman, Indie Memphis board member and host of WEVL’s popular Folk Song Fiesta program, conceived the event as a fund-raiser and a showcase. “I’ve been doing these concerts as fund-raisers for different organizations since maybe the late ’90s,” Newman says. “When I started on the board of Indie Memphis a year ago, I thought that [it] would be a good beneficiary of a fund-raiser.” And Newman says asking Paxton to participate was a no-brainer. “I had him in Memphis for a Woody Guthrie tribute,” Newman says. “Then I had him in Memphis to open the Rose Theater at the University of Memphis.

Mary Gauthier

“I know Mary Gauthier and Gretchen Peters,” Newman says. “I thought it would be cool if we could split the bill up with Tom and then have [them] do this thing called Three Women and the Truth, which is basically songs about what it’s like to be a female in a fairly male-dominated business.”

Describing themselves as “three women, three guitars, and the words, music, and hard-won wisdom of three lifetimes spent in pursuit of the song,” the women can boast multiple Grammy nominations, a CMA Song of the Year, and accolades from No Depression magazine, The New York Times, and Bob Dylan.

“I’m looking forward eagerly to coming back to Memphis,” Paxton says. “I’ll be as spry as ever.”

Tom Paxton and the Don Juans, Three Women and the Truth featuring Gretchen Peters, Kathy Mattea, and Mary Gauthier at the Halloran Centre for Performing Arts, Sunday, December 17th at 7 p.m.

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Music Music Blog

Band Geeks: A Live Tribute to The Last Waltz

CREDIT: Blake Billings

Blake Billings

Manley, Pulley, and Whalen

On Thanksgiving Day of 1976, one of the seminal groups of the ’60s and ’70s, the Band, held their farewell concert at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. Ronnie Hawkins and Bob Dylan, two musicians who had been previously backed by the Band, were brought on board as special guest performers, and from there, the guest list swelled, growing to include Neil Young, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, the Staples Singers, and others. Robbie Robertson, the Band’s guitarist, recruited Martin Scorsese to film the event. The show included poetry readings, ballroom dancing, and even turkey dinners, which were served before the concert. The whole thing was called The Last Waltz, and it’s been regularly popping up on lists of the greatest concert films of all time ever since the its release in 1978.

Some fans of the Band might contend that the film focuses too much on Robertson, that the group’s break-up seems contrived, and that the performers and filmmakers were out of their minds on cocaine, but even the detractors would have to admit it’s a damn good concert film. And on Saturday, November 25th, Memphis-based space-rockers Glorious Abhor have assembled a group of musicians that includes HEELS and Chinese Connection Dub Embassy to pay homage to the Band with their second annual Memphis’ Last Waltz concert at the Hi-Tone.

“I booked the stage a year in advance,” Josh Stevens Glorious Abhor’s guitarist and vocalist says of 2016’s inaugural Memphis’ Last Waltz concert. Stevens had been toying with the idea of an homage show, tackling an entire album by a band, when he fell down a deep hole of Band music and lore. He immediately contacted the Hi-Tone and booked the venue, opting for Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, rather than holding the show on the holiday of gratitude and gravy itself.

Stevens’ plunge into the music of the Band was precipitated by an encounter with the Band’s former drummer, Levon Helm, who continued to tour and record until his death in April 2012. “I met him at Bonnaroo. I almost knocked him off the stage,” Stevens says. He was working sound production at the middle Tennessee music festival, and despite nearly ending the set before it began by causing an untimely tumble from the stage of the lead performer, Stevens says he was transfixed by Helm’s set, which sent him down the path of discovery that lead him to the Band.

Though Stevens is a somewhat late-in-life — if fervent — convert to the Church of the Band, not all his bandmates were as late to the show. “Jason [Pulley] is a wealth of music knowledge,” Stevens says of GA’s keyboard player and vocalist — and confirmed lifelong fan of the Band.

“I’ve grown up with the music of the Band and The Last Waltz since I was a child,” Pulley says. “The songs are a part of my DNA at this point, and Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson have had a big impact on my playing style.” That lifelong familiarity with the songs of the group has come in handy as Pulley, Stevens, drummer Taylor Moore, and bassist Mitchell Manley arrange the songs of The Last Waltz to be performed by a rotating cast of Memphis musicians that includes members of all three headlining groups, as well as some special guests. And Stevens says “we’ve almost doubled the set [from 2016].”

Blake Billings

Whalen and Stevens

Stevens wants to keep the set list under wraps until the show, but he says that at one point “in true Last Waltz fashion, we’re all going to be on stage at the same time.” And when it came time to pick the other performers, both in 2016 and for this year’s show, Stevens didn’t have to struggle with his deliberations.
“HEELS was a no-brainer,” Stevens says of the band led by vocalist/guitarist Brennan Whalen and drummer/vocalist/comedian Josh McLane. “I loved Glorious Abhor’s performance from start to finish,” Whalen says of last year’s show. But when it comes to highlights, the singer quickly mentions playing with an expanded band. “Josh and I hadn’t played as a full band for a while last year, so it was really fun playing with a couple guitars and harmonicas going.”

The Band’s use of different instrumentation and musical styles throughout their catalogue was one of their defining characteristics, and in Memphis’ Last Waltz, the audience can expect guitars, harmonicas, mandolins, and other instruments to change hands as the performers on stage adapt to try to conjure, for a night, the magic of that Thanksgiving in 1976.

“The songs don’t need anything,” Whalen says. “They just need to be played.”

Memphis’ Last Waltz featuring Glorious Abhor, HEELS, Chinese Connection Dub Embassy, Saturday, November 25th, at the Hi-Tone, 8 p.m. $10.

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Music Record Reviews

Alive and Crooked: New music from the Crooked Vines

The Crooked Vines packed their trombones, saxophones, keyboards, and other gear into the Hi-Tone on a weekday night not long ago, when Memphis was still making up its mind about summer and autumn. Hailing from New Orleans, Memphis was the first stop on their tour. The Vines played a tight set, high-energy and soul-inflected. And it gave me a chance to pick up the band’s newest album, Alive, before its November 9th release.

The Crooked Vines’ sophomore effort plays like a summer road trip between the Bluff City and the Big Easy, flipping the radio dial between soul and dance stations. A bright brass section and smooth-until-they’re-gritty piano and organ licks drive the album. The horns are the hook, and vocalist Mikayla Braun reels the listener in with her smoky vocals and lyrics.

Alive conjures a mood of celebration out of life’s many minor tragedies and imperfections. It seems to say “I know more than I knew, and I know enough to enjoy what I can, while I can.” Braun returns to themes of growth spurred by change and loss, and the ways our flaws highlight our strengths. It’s a clever trick for a record packed with so many songs that inspire movement. There’s enough tension and drama in Braun’s subject matter to justify the minor chords. But in the end, whether it’s to forget or to celebrate, the songs seem to suggest that the closest thing to salvation on earth can be found on the dance floor.

Each of the album’s 11 songs are tight and nuanced, but “Better Off (For Loving You),” “Anything New,” and the title track are the essentials. The time change during the bridge of “Better Off (For Loving You)” turns the bouncy soul song into a plaintive ballad right out of 1960s TV Land. As the organ swells, Braun croons the lyrical coda, “Oh, wouldn’t it be grand holding your hand? Just like I should.” The quick and tasteful change highlights the group’s versatility, a flexibility and resourcefulness demonstrated throughout the record.

I would wager that these New Orleans players have listened to their share of Memphis soul — and probably even have a few Booker T. & the MG’s and Staples Singers records in their collections. But Alive is more than just a remixed soul serenade. It’s a rich and multi-hued creation befitting the eclectic music legacy of the Big Easy. Sure, the placement of the groove — front and center — and the prominence of the horns call to mind funk comparisons, but prog-rock guitar riffs, pop melodies, and a hip-hop guest vocalist do their part to flesh out the sound, crafting something toe-tapping and soulful.

Alive is available on iTunes and at thecrookedvines.com.

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Music Music Blog

Shangri-La goes to La-La Land

With the annual Sweatfest and Purgefest — and last April’s special election-year edition, Fool Fest — local record store Shangri-La Records has grown a quirky and enduring series of family-friendly music-festival-meets-record-sale events. And this Saturday’s fall sale is a birthday tribute to Lori McStay, wife of Shangri-La co-owner Jared McStay and a musician in her own right.

Affectionately known as La La, Lori has been out of Memphis for the most recent editions of Shangri-La’s festivals, so this year’s one-time-only tribute, dubbed La La Fest, will reunite an array of her old bands and projects. Yacht-rockers Relentless Breeze and ’80s hits aficionados the Cassette Set will continue their battle of the bands for the hotly contested title of Catchiest Midtown Group. The Ultracats (featuring local guitar hero Alicja Trout), the Villains (with Forrest Hewes and Tripp Lamkins), and the Glitches (featuring Robby Grant) are among the groups reuniting for the Saturday afternoon festival, and the star-studded lineup will include special guests Graham Winchester, Kelley Anderson, and James Godwin.

Over the years, Shangri-La’s record preview parties, record release shows, and one-day festivals have provided a chance to catch rare and intimate performances and special reunion shows by Memphis artists. The local store has hosted record-release concerts for Memphis heavy hitters such as Stax soul sultans Southern Avenue and blues-rockers the Dirty Streets. Tonight, Shangri-La hosts a pop-up listening party to celebrate the release of Julien Baker’s anticipated new album, Turn Out the Lights. Each concert or mini-festival at Shangri-La is a unique event, not likely to be replicated again. And at a time when content is expected be created and consumed constantly, in a city where bands perform every night of the week, the little record store has built a tradition as a curator of not just physical media but also special one-time-only occasions. La La Fest is sure to add to that tradition.

Performances will take place Saturday, October 28th, in the Madison Avenue record store’s parking lot, which McStay fondly refers to as Shangri-La Stadium, and the event will include discounts on all merchandise in the store.

Shangri-LALA Fest, Saturday, October 28th at 2 p.m. at Shangri-La Records. Free.

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Music Music Features

Music Cities Memphis

CREDIT: Paul Harmer

This week, people will gather in Memphis to talk about music. Sure, that’s hardly news. But this week, Memphis hosts an international conference featuring leading music- and business-savvy minds from as far away as the U.K. and Estonia — and even Tennessee’s other Music City, Nashville — for a symposium on creating strategies to promote music as an engine of growth.

The Music Cities Convention has brought music industry professionals to several cities to discuss how music impacts their identities and economies — and how to help it flourish. This time around, it’s Memphis.

“It’s funny, phones from America can’t call outside the U.S.,” Music Cities Convention (MCC) organizer Shain Shapiro commented when he called me to talk about the conference’s sixth iteration. Shapiro is the managing director of Sound Diplomacy, a London-based development agency that helps clients tweak their music strategy and policy, and the conference organizer for Music Cities.

“I’m a nerd,” Shapiro says, so he found himself interested in things like global connections, building codes, noise curfews, and how music makers and cities could strengthen a symbiotic relationship to bring more profit to both parties. “It wasn’t planned,” Shapiro says of the path that led him to be the creator of an altogether different music conference.

MCC gathers organizers, performers, legal authorities, and cultural ambassadors to discuss the roles music plays in the life of a city. Because promoters or songwriters don’t often ponder noise curfews or the economics of entertainment, there’s a need for parties with different perspectives to view the big picture. And that’s where MCC comes in.

Talks will include “Smart Music Cities: Data Driven to Support Artists,” “Every City Needs a Music Strategy,” and “Time for the Cities: Let Music ‘Take You There’,” a panel asking “How can property developers and the creative industries work more cohesively?”

Planners who have re-made their cities as music destinations, from Tallinn, Estonia, to Chengdu, China, will offer their success stories. Memphis’ own talents will also contribute, from singer/promoter Tonya Dyson, who helped develop the Memphis Slim Collaboratory, to Lawrence Matthews (aka Don Lifted), who pioneered genre-breaking performances in non-traditional venues. Deron Hall of the Memphis Arts Engine and Darren Isom of the Memphis Music Initiative will also contribute.

Other speakers include far-flung performers, academics, activists, and attorneys who know how to capitalize on the musical life of a city: Igor Lozada, the head of culture for the city of Guadalajara, Mexico; Australia’s Emily Barker, whose most recent album was recorded at Sam Phillips Recording Service; Justine Avila, executive director of Nashville’s Music City Music Council; and Shawn King, Colorado’s “Music Ambassador” (and drummer and trumpeter for the indie-folk band Devotchka).

The global perspective of the conference has contributed to its success. Its 2015 debut sold out in Brighton, England. Then in October of that same year, Music Cities made landfall in Washington, D.C. It returned to Brighton in 2016, and the most recent convention was held in Berlin, earlier this year. This week’s Memphis Music Cities Convention will mark the conference’s second hosting in the U.S.

When asked what drew MCC to Memphis, Shapiro says that it was important to him to bring attention to cities that aren’t necessarily giant culture centers like New York or L.A., yet are positioned to benefit from the convention’s ideas.

Another factor, he notes, was the persistence of Music Export Memphis (MEM), a local nonprofit responsible for the successful Memphis Picnic concerts held at South By Southwest and Americana Fest.

MEM founder Elizabeth Cawein hopes the international attention will bring more Memphians into the conversation. She says diverse perspectives can help a city juggle the many strategies for bringing music front and center. “It’s difficult to see [just] one next step,” Cawein says. “There are so many things already in motion. So many strategies that work somewhere else might, with a little experimentation, work here.”

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Music Music Features

Tramp-Rock Troubador

Keith Sykes is the kind of songwriter who has a few stories up his sleeve. He jokes in a soft country lilt as he recalls now-shuttered music lounges on Beale Street, and his sense of humor — as well as his musical resume — bespeaks a man with stories to spare …

Like the time in the summer of 1967 when the Murray, Kentucky, native hitchhiked to the Newport Folk Festival, so the story goes, and caught Arlo Guthrie’s set. A few months later, thanks to a faithfully reproduced version of Guthrie’s signature song, “Alice’s Restaurant,” Sykes had picked up a regular gig in a Charleston, South Carolina, hotel. In the 50 years since that fateful first contact with Officer Obie and the shrink from “Alice’s Restaurant,” Sykes has released 13 full-length albums, toured and recorded with Jimmy Buffett, written hundreds of songs for other performers, discovered Todd Snider, and, this year, finally finished his screenplay about a rancher and his talking horses. But more on the screenplay later.

His songs are simple and heartfelt, comforting and spare, like the break in the summer heat that comes with nightfall. Borne along on shuffling rhythms and clean, crisp guitars, Sykes sings wistfully of slipping into the shade and name-checks former band mate Jimmy Buffett in the EP’s title track.

“It’s called Songs from a Little Beach Town. All the songs are songs that I wrote down in a little beach town called Port Aransas, Texas,” Sykes says of the breezy acoustic track. It sounds like something a filmmaker might use to score a scene of someone tooling around town on an old beach cruiser. “When I first started going there, it was still a little fishy place,” Sykes says of his Texas hideaway. But it’s still really cool. You can take a bicycle around the whole town in 15 minutes.”

Two of Sykes’ balmy tunes, written in that same beach town, landed on the tropical rock charts in 2016. “Come as You Are Beach Bar” hit No. 1 and stayed in that position for seven weeks, and “The Best Day” has been in the top 40 since August of last year. “It just blew my mind. … It’s not a big deal chart, but it’s the kind of music I like,” Sykes says of the rock-and-roll, country, Calypso, and zydeco-infused island hybrid style popularized by artists like Jimmy Buffett.

“They finally came up with a name for it about 20 years ago and called it trop rock. When I was in [Buffett’s] band, we called it ‘tramp rock,'” Sykes laughs about his time in Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band.

Fresh off the release of his newest single, “I Pick You,” Sykes will play with a group of Memphis musicians at the Delta Fair and Music Festival next week. “Dave Cousar is an excellent guitar player, and Dave Smith on the bass, he’s just one of the best anywhere, much less Memphis,” Sykes says. “All these are Memphis guys who I’m just crazy about. Smith, Cousar, and Willie Hall, who I haven’t played with for years.”

The singer-songwriter’s Memphis roots run deep. Sykes used to host a long-running songwriter showcase on Beale Street. “It covered about 10 years all in all; I did nine shows a year. … I brought in songwriters from everywhere. I had the best seat in the house — that’s why I was doing it.” During his Memphis years he also recorded I’m Not Strange, I’m Just Like You at Ardent Studios.

“I hate starting stuff and not finishing,” Sykes says, without a trace of irony for a man whose songs have collectively sold 25 million copies worldwide. And that brings us back to his screenplay, Horses & Me. “What I did this year, rather than write songs, was write a screenplay. I’ve started a couple, and I’d always set ’em aside and go back to songs. This year I said, ‘Dang, I should finish one of these.'”

The screenplay is about a simple man who works with his hands. He owns some land and some horses, and he spends a lot of time alone. That’s when the horses start to talk to him. “He thinks he’s insane. ‘Cause he’s been drinking, you know, imbibing a little bit,” Sykes chuckles.

For next week’s show, Sykes and his band will perform music from his entire catalog, including the new Songs from a Little Beach Town EP. The album’s final and most-recent single, “I Pick You,” was released Friday, August 25th by KSM Entertainment.

Keith Sykes & Band at the Delta Fair & Music Festival at the Agricenter International, Friday, September 8th at 8 p.m.

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Music Music Blog

Dead tribute raises awareness & donations for MIFA

If there is a rule book for Memphis music, the following are surely included: Memphis bands share members, and they love tribute shows like nothing else.

From the recently released, Luther Dickinson-led Sun Records tribute, Red Hot: A Memphis Celebration of Sun Records to Graham Winchester’s “Memphis Does Bowie” show, to last year’s star-studded lineup for the Talking Heads tribute concert, musicians in the Bluff City usually jump at the chance to pay tribute to their heroes and legends — both the local and international varieties. And what else do all the aforementioned concerts and records have in common? They all raised money and awareness to benefit local charities. Proceeds from sales of Red Hot go to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, as did the proceeds from the Memphis Does Bowie benefit show. And the Talking Heads tribute benefitted the  National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

So local psychedelic jammers Left Unsung will be honoring a Memphis tradition when they pay tribute to the Grateful Dead by accepting canned goods as admission, for use by the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association (MIFA).

Left Unsung is John Day on guitar and vocals, L.J. Cates on guitar, Michael Shelton on drums and vocals, Chris Hardy on bass, and Nathan Powell on pedal steel. The members of the tribute group all play in other local bands; they met after a Dr. Brown show. “We all kind of share each other around here,” drummer Shelton says. They also share a passion for the Dead, and, as Memphis was somewhat lacking in the long-and-improvisational tribute band department, they set about to remedy what they saw as a serious deficit in the usually lush Memphis music landscape.

But the jam-heavy musicians are more interested in playing music than in earning a buck. The members of Left Unsung have day jobs and gigs in other Bluff City bands, and the Grateful Dead tribute project has more to do with a passion for the Dead than with a paycheck. “It’s never been about the money,” Shelton says. So, after their first two performances, Shelton and the group decided to partner with local organizations to bring attention and donations to charitable causes. “We have an opportunity here with a captive audience and one who is focused on conscious change.” With that in mind, Left Unsung have partnered with MIFA for their upcoming Growlers show.

MIFA is one of the local organizations partnered with the Mid-South Food Bank – an organization that typically sees a “food drought” in the summer as donations slow down until the next school year (see article below). MIFA is the organization behind the Meals on Wheels program, which delivers nutritious lunches daily to senior citizens. “We want to remind [the audience] that we have this service in the community,” Shelton explains.
As for what to expect at the Growlers show, Shelton says the band has been steadily adding songs to the set list since their last performance at the Cove. “We focus on learning songs that not only span the band’s discography from the ’60s and onward, but also on varying styles of structure through playing songs like ‘Brokedown Palace’ and ‘Dark Star’ all the way to ‘Casey Jones’ and ‘Scarlet Begonias.’”

Shelton says the band intends to perform only every two months, with the intention of keeping the shows special – and giving the musicians time to learn new songs. They plan on adding 15 or so songs to their repertoire for each new performance so that, much like the concerts of the Grateful Dead themselves, no two shows will be the same. “Our goal is to keep the crowd guessing about what we’ll play at each show,” Shelton says. “We value learning well-known songs as well as deep-cut, obscure originals from the band. We keep an integral focus on transitioning and improvising through songs throughout our sets, so the music flows similar to the way Grateful Dead’s sets flowed. We’ll be dropping some newly learned songs at Growlers and will continue to expand our song base every show we play.”

Left Unsung Grateful Dead tribute and MIFA benefit at Growlers, Saturday, July 29th at 9 p.m. $5 or two canned goods.

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Music Music Blog

Belvedere Chamber Music Festival brings classical performers and composers from around the globe.

People the world over associate the Bluff City with the sounds of rock-and-roll, the blues, jazz, Stax-flavored soul, and Goner’s brand of garage-punk. Classical music rarely gets a mention in that list — despite the accomplished Memphis Symphony Orchestra (see Chris McCoy’s cover story below), the PRIZM Ensemble (see Alex Greene’s June 15th column), and others. The Luna Nova Ensemble is another hidden gem for the music lover in search of something a little more refined.

Luna Nova Music is celebrating the 11th annual Belvedere Chamber Music Festival at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church June 21st-24th. The festival will include performances of works by Bach, Bartok, Martinů, and Ravel, as well as original compositions by three composers selected from the 189 entrants to the Luna Nova student composition contest.

Patricia Gray, Ph.D., is the executive director of Luna Nova Music. Gray has been a musician her whole life and once taught in the music department at Rhodes College, after which she began working with the music tech division of the Associated Colleges of the South, a consortium of colleges like Rhodes. “That was a springboard,” Gray says. “That’s where Luna Nova came from, because I was working with a lot of composers and performers of new music who were from small colleges, and they didn’t all have the support that they would like to have. So we were able to blend a lot of resources from a number of institutions and build an ensemble and build a concert series and create a lot of wonderful networking between really talented people. That just started with a bang.”

Gray couldn’t help but notice that students, talented though they might be, did not always have access to the funds, technology, or professional performers necessary to lay down a high-quality recording of their compositions. And it’s exactly that kind of recording that a student bound for post-graduate studies or a career in recording or performance would need. Gray and her husband Robert Patterson found a void in the music community, and they set about filling it.

Luna Nova was initially funded by a Mellon Grant, but when the grant ran out, Gray and Patterson kept the ball rolling. They established Luna Nova as a private 501(c)(3), and with the help of Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, they began the Belvedere Chamber Music Festival to showcase the composing talents of students worldwide and the performance abilities of local and national classical musicians. “Since we’ve been independent in Memphis, it’s been worldwide,” Gray says. “We’ve had people from France and Italy and Australia and China.”

This year marks the 11th anniversary of the Belvedere Chamber Music Festival, and once again, Luna Nova has partnered with the Beethoven Club, a group of local musicians dedicated to the promotion and sustenance of classical music, to put on the international student composition contest. The winners of this year’s contest are Alex Burtzos from New York, Brendan McMullen from Seattle, and Jack Frerer from Australia. (Fun fact: Burtzos is the founder and president of ICEBERG New Music collective, a group that has been working with Memphis’ own Blueshift Ensemble during a residency at Crosstown Arts this week, see below.) Each of the three composers boasts a list of impressive bona fides, and each will have a piece performed in this year’s festival.

The performers will be John McMurtery (flute), Gregory Maytan (violin), Nobuko Igarashi (clarinet), Craig Hultgren (cello), Paul Murray (baritone), Perry Mears (piano), Daniel Gilbert (violin), Tomaz Robak (piano), Jonathan Kirkscey (cello), Marisa Polesky (violin), Jenny Davis (flute), Brian Ray (piano), Robert Patterson (horn), Mark Volker (guitar), and Michelle Vigneau (oboe).

The Belvedere Chamber Music Festival will be presented at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on June 21-24, 2017. Evening concerts start at 7:30 and are free and open to the public. Afternoon concerts are Thursday and Friday at 3:00.

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Music Music Blog

Bacon Brothers at GPAC Wednesday

There’s a certain romance associated with brother bands. It must be something about the strength — or the volatility — of the bond between siblings. From the Everly Brothers to Oasis, from the Beach Boys to the Kinks (who were banned from performing in the U.S. from ’65 to ’69 after some onstage brotherly disagreements blossomed into a full-on brawl mid-performance), audiences keep dropping the needle on songs by siblings.

Brothers Michael and Kevin Bacon (yes, that Kevin Bacon) have played music together for more than 20 years, so it should come as no surprise that their arrangements are tight. They have honed their songwriting and arranging craft through years of touring and over the course of recording their seven studio albums, and the Bacon Brothers are bringing their act to Memphis for a concert at Germantown Performing Art Center this Wednesday night.

The group really shines as a vocal act. Their harmonies seem to come effortlessly, indubitably the result of a lifetime spent singing together. Both Bacon brothers have strong, clear voices with just enough grit to keep them from sounding too polished. The siblings are gifted arrangers, usually sticking to simple acoustic guitar arrangements (with occasional flare from cello, accordion, mandolin, or auxiliary percussion) that give their voices room to breathe.

The Bacon Brothers were special guests on Daryl’s House back in 2013, which makes sense, as they could be easily compared to early-period Hall & Oates. This is easy-like-Sunday-morning music, warm and enveloping layers of vocal and guitar harmonies arranged too artfully to be cluttered.

For a quick listen before the show, check out the Bacon Brothers’ cover of the Beatles’ “If I Needed Someone,” recorded at Paste magazine’s studio in New York. The Harrison-penned, Revolver-era track is an ideal vehicle for the Bacon Brothers’ easy harmonies and experimentation with unorthodox instrumentation. Or check out the music video for their original track “Broken Glass,” which was written and directed by Kevin Bacon, who is no stranger to film.

The Bacon Brothers will perform at Germantown Performing Arts Center Wednesday, June 14th at 7:30 p.m. $35-$75.