Category: Music

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Driving in the Delta for ‘Sinners’

Boo Mitchell works with Chris Mallory and Sharde Thomas Mallory at Royal Studios (Photos: Courtesy Boo Mitchell)

You know music will be at the heart of a movie when both its writer/director and composer are researching its soundtrack over a year before its release, making an epic road trip that’s equal parts fact-finding, soul-searching, and club-hopping. Such was the case for this summer’s popular and critical smash hit Sinners, a film that weaves the blues deep into its narrative threads of vampirism, spiritualism, and racial identity. Indeed, music plays such a central role in the film that its box office success has gone hand in hand with the soundtrack’s fortunes, the album having risen to the top of Billboard’s blues charts, to number five in the soundtrack charts, and to number 18 in the Americana charts within two weeks of its release. And it’s worth noting that the musical pilgrimage that informed the film so deeply was launched here in Memphis, with Royal Studios’ Boo Mitchell at the helm. 

“The Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel,” runs the old quote, and that was certainly the case when Mitchell and Hi Rhythm guitarist Lina Beach pulled up to that fabled lobby with a van and driver; picked up Sinners’ writer/director Ryan Coogler, composer Ludwig Göransson, and his father, Tomas Göransson; and headed to Clarksdale, Mississippi. 

“As soon as we get to Clarksdale and turn off the highway, right where you go past that grove of beautiful pecan trees, Ryan was, like, ‘Pull over, man!’” says Mitchell. “So he starts taking pictures and video. I didn’t know what they were up to. I knew who they were, definitely, so I thought, ‘Maybe they’re scouting a movie or something.’ And we get into Clarksdale, and there was a festival, and Super Chikan was playing!”

Boo Mitchell and Ludwig Göransson 

Seeing one of the Delta’s most original artists, a purveyor of the living blues as it exists today, was the perfect introduction to the contemporary scene, and perfect for Mitchell’s guests, all avowed fans of the blues. “Ludwig’s father has had a blues band for 35 years in Sweden, and they play all this Albert King stuff. So they got to see Super Chikan, and that was mind-blowing. He’s up there playing the diddley bow and all that stuff.”

That was just the beginning. Moving on to Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero Blues Club, also in Clarksdale, they saw Anthony “Big A” Sherrod & the All Stars, and from there went on to a hotel in Cleveland, Mississippi, checking in on the Grammy Museum there. “The next day we get up and drive to Indianola, and it’s just a whole lot of cool topography. Ryan had us pulling over in spots where there was some kind of river or stream or something, and he’d start taking pictures of the scenery.”

But it was Indianola’s B.B. King Museum that was the real draw, where the museum director first gave them a personal tour, then asked, “Y’all want to go see Club Ebony? We just redid it.” That drew an immediate yes. “We were like, ‘Club Ebony, where B.B. King cut his teeth as a performer? Hell yeah, we want to go see it!’” explains Mitchell. “He’s like, ‘I’m gonna grab one of B.B.’s guitars.’ And the guitar that he just happened to grab was Lucille 01! So we hung out at empty Club Ebony, and it’s a really cool place because it looks almost exactly like it was back in the day. And so then [the museum director with Lucille] said, ‘Somebody want to play it?’ So Lina was immediately, like, ‘Hell, yeah.’ Then Ludwig’s father was playing it.”

Beyond that, the traveling party was learning some history. “I was telling them about sharecroppers, plantations, and the plantation bucks,” recalls Mitchell. “I’m like, ‘This the first form of economic slavery and how they kept the slaves on the plantation. That money was only good at the plantation store, right?’ And Ryan was fascinated by that. I think he had some knowledge of it. But he liked hearing another account, and then I ended up taking them to the Dockery Plantation. He was trying to get his hands on some of these plantation bucks.”

Those who’ve seen the film know how company scrip comes to play a role in the story. But it was ultimately seeing and hearing the music that made the most lasting impact. The filmmaking team now had a clearer vision of how to proceed. “Ludwig asked me to put together a list of blues musicians who I thought were authentic. So, you know, I made a list, and Bobby Rush was at the top of that list. Then Alvin Youngblood Hart, Cedric Burnside, Southern Avenue, and Sharde Thomas Mallory [Otha Turner’s granddaughter and leader of the Rising Stars Fife and Drum Band]. A lot of people on that list ended up on the soundtrack.”

And much of the hit album was in turn recorded by Mitchell. While Göransson worked on most of his score in Los Angeles or New Orleans, the composer booked time at Royal for the bluesiest musical segments. “They wanted me to assemble the team,” says Mitchell. “So I called Bobby Rush, Charles Hodges, Cedric Burnside, Tierinii Jackson,” and others. “They were interested in writing new songs. So people were pairing off, like Cedric and Tierinii wrote a song. Reverend Hodges and Super Chikan wrote some stuff. We did all these crazy pairings and people would go home, write some more, and come back. So it’s like a big writing session. And out of that, Alvin Youngblood Hart wrote ‘Travelin’.’”

The song is pivotal in the film, seeming at once timeless and fresh, and establishes the character Sammie Moore’s command of the blues. As it turned out, the actor playing the bluesman internalized Hart’s composition. “Alvin didn’t perform,” says Mitchell. “Miles [Caton] learned the song and played it. But I was really glad to see Alvin was in the mix. Because he’s like the modern personification of a 1930s Delta bluesman. Like, that’s who he is.” 

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Memphis Music Hall of Fame Announces New Inductees

Wendy Moten (Photo courtesy Memphis Music Hall of Fame)

While many cities and even states have their dedicated music halls of fame, not many can compare to the diversity and impact of the one in Memphis. And while it was only founded in this century, it’s thriving and quickly becoming a fundamental city institution. And geographically, its location in the former Lansky Bros. building on 2nd Street and Beale foreshadows the planned new home of its sibling organization, the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum.

It’s literally a cornerstone of the local music economy. But all monetary concerns aside, it’s also a cultural flashpoint for the respect and recognition due Memphis and the stunning musicianship it’s spawned.

This year’s list of inductees are a case in point. In alphabetical order, they include:

Art Gilliam, President & CEO of Memphis’ WLOK Radio for over 45 years, who became the first Black radio owner in Tennessee and the entire Southeast.

Cordell Jackson, the “Rock ‘n’ Roll Granny” who became the country’s first female recording engineer and the first woman to start her own record company, Moon Records, in 1956.

Robert Johnson, who became one of the most celebrated blues musicians of all time despite only recording 29 songs, and, as revealed in his sister’s memoir, Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson, spent considerable time in Memphis. 

Denise LaSalle, late blues singer, songwriter, and producer sometimes considered “The Queen of the Blues.” Beyond music, LaSalle was an advocate for blues history, founding the National Association for the Preservation of the Blues in 1984.

Wendy Moten, whose first single, “Come in Out of the Rain,” hit the Top 10 in the U.K., and who has recorded and toured with other hit makers and finished as first runner-up on The Voice.

Johnnie Taylor, “The Philosopher of Soul,” who began his career in gospel with Sam Cooke and The Soul Stirrers before creating million-selling hits at Stax Records like “Who’s Making Love” and “Cheaper to Keep Her.”

The inductees will be honored at the 2025 Memphis Music Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Thursday, September 25th, at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, beginning at 7:00 pm. Tickets are available at this link.

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Sonic Explorers

Logan Hanna and Art Edmaiston

When Memphis Concrète was founded eight years ago, it raised a lot of eyebrows. One sometimes had to explain that its name was a play on the musique concrète genre, founded on the principle that anything can create a meaningful listening experience, from industrial noises to pre-recorded sound effects. Nowadays, though, as the Memphis Concrète Experimental Electronic Music Festival 2025 approaches, the two-day event’s purview is clear to most music fans: It’s the place to be for anyone interested in stretching their sonic boundaries. 

Yet when I call founder and organizer Robert Traxler to learn more, the first thing he wants to talk about isn’t technically part of the festival at all. The unofficial kickoff event is actually two days prior to the festival proper, when Traxler’s Memphis Concrète Scrap Metal Orchestra will provide a live score to a classic film, The Terminator, at Crosstown Theater on Thursday, June 5th. As he puts it succinctly, “You get to watch Arnold Schwarzenegger do his thing. And, you know, people banging on metal.”

There could be no purer expression of the musique concrète aesthetic, and it will clearly transform one’s perception of the 1984 sci-fi warhorse and its era-defining star. But how does one create a new score for a film with the original audio baked in? “I take the movie, extract the sound, remove the music as much as I can, and then put it back into the movie,” Traxler explains. “I do it manually, pushing the volume up and down. You might get a little bit [of the original soundtrack], but it’s not usually too noticeable. It works pretty well, I think, especially because our music kind of blends in. If music comes in as a low drone, it kind of blends. It’s fun!”

The Memphis Concrète Experimental Electronic Music Festival gathers artists who defy expectations, like Suroor (above) and Janet Xmas (below). (Photos: Courtesy Memphis Concrète)

And, to be sure, he’s not kidding about the scrap metal. “I’ve got nine people, all playing and banging on a different piece of metal. I got the metal from a friend who had taken apart an old furnace. There are these four things that look like radiator shapes, one drum-looking piece, and one person’s playing a couple of … tubes.” 

While it sounds cacophonous, it actually grows out of Traxler’s very musical appreciation of the film’s original audio. “I’m very much taking inspiration from the original score of the movie. It’s one of my favorite soundtracks of all time. So we’re taking the weird things about it and kind of pushing them even more out there. For most of it, I thought it would be fun to have different parts, where each part is in a completely different time signature. The technical term would be polymetric. So one person is playing in 5/4, another in 11/8, another in 7/4, and you get some interesting rhythms.”

That’s just a small sample of what will be on hand at the festival, of course, which will take place at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts on Saturday and Sunday, June 7th and 8th. And that won’t necessarily be a synth-fest either, as the whole event embraces “electro-acoustic” instruments. Reed man Art Edmaiston, for instance, will make an appearance from the “free jazz” universe. “We did a show with him last year, and he kind of did an electro-acoustic thing then, where he was running his saxophone into some electronic stuff and creating these soundscapes,” says Traxler. “He’s a really incredible musician who has a lot of range and a lot of space to explore different sonic textures. And for this show, he’s playing with Logan Hanna, who plays incredible soundscape guitar. So, like with the festival, I never have a hard ‘electronic is all you know’ approach, right? Because, you know, even with a microphone, you’re getting an electronic signal out of that.”

Another electro-acoustic experience will be the performance by Ipek Eginli. “She’s a pianist from Atlanta,” says Traxler, “and she combines true acoustic piano with modular [synth] stuff that is absolutely phenomenal. And she also plays jazz, pretty free, and when she performs she’s really intense, her hands just attacking the keys.”

Some of the artists are even harder to capture with mere words. On social media, for example, Memphis Concrète describes Liars Serum as “acid-cult mood music that puts da-da lotion on your skin. Puppy-core IDM, industrial chamber-wave, dystopian azul-grass-house.” 

Another notable out-of-towner will be Janet Xmas, who combines her music with a kind of gymnastic, interpretive dance. Traxler explains that in her videos, “she’s climbing a ladder hooked up to contact mics and is writhing around and all kinds of crazy, crazy stuff. It’s kind of like a sound sculpture. She’ll have minimal tape loops, and then the contact mics are set up so when she’s moving and bumping against the ladder, they’re picking up the noises. And those are run into effects and delays and things. So it’s kind of this visual sculpture, and sonically, the sculptured thing reacts to her movements.”

Naturally, there will be plenty of purely electronic sounds on hand as well, as with the synth group led by Lamplighter Lounge co-owner Chuck Vicious, Noir Walls, and many more. But whatever is making the sound, the point of the festival will be the sense of exploration brought to the event by all of the artists. There’s so much to explore, in fact, that another “pre-festival event” will be held before the festival, a collaborative improv session at the H&S Printing Co. on Friday, June 6th at 7 p.m. “Schaeffer Mallory of Drop Ceiling has organized that,” says Traxler, “and he’s invited a bunch of other people who are playing the festival, so there’s going to be a really big band!” 

The Memphis Concrète Experimental Electronic Music Festival 2025 starts at 3 p.m. on Saturday, June 7th, and runs until 9 p.m. on Sunday, June 8th, in The Green Room at Crosstown Arts. For the full lineup and other details, visit memphisconcretemusic.com.

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Music Music Features

‘Rock On Forever’

A Kiss Before Dying (Photo: Noah Guffin)

A Kiss Before Dying departs on its “full East Coast tour” June 1st, but the members of the metalcore band won’t be wearing dog collars with spikes and strictly black clothing.

That was the 1980s stereotype. They don’t adhere to today’s look, either, says lead singer Alex Harris, 24. “There’s definitely a modern hardcore style, but we don’t make a point to conform to it,” he says. “We do our own thing.”

The modern hardcore style is “a lot of baggy clothes and lots of camo. Like baggy camo pants are really in. Stuff like that.”

Harris wears T-shirts, jeans, and a band T-shirt along with running shoes on stage. “I like to bust out my Ja Ones. Ja Morant,” he says. “When I first started out, I wore a Grizzlies jersey at every show and they started calling us ‘basketball metalcore.’”

As for their music, Harris says, “We’re sort of metalcore, which is essentially hardcore heavily influenced by metal.”

The band, which also includes drummer Ben Oliver, 20; lead guitarist Josh Smith, 26; rhythm guitarist Brodie Climer, 19; and bass player Rhyan Tindall, 24, recently released a two-song promo featuring their songs “Rage of Caliban” and “The Most Heartfelt of All Fallacies.”

“Rage of Caliban” is “about getting an imposter syndrome about being a good person,” Harris says. “Like fear of having evil inside of you and you want to purge it.”

Describing “The Most Heartfelt of All Fallacies,” he says, “That’s the one a little bit more of a traditional heartbreak song. A lot of it is struggles with neurosis and feelings of abandonment.”

Harris grew up around music. “My dad was a local musician. My entire childhood he played in a band, Taco & Da Mofos.”

His dad, Shannon Harris, was the drummer in the band, which Alex describes as “reggae, rap, rock fusion.”

“Taco was the first person to ever try to teach me guitar when I was really young. My dad was always trying to take me to shows, but they never ever really played all-ages venues being the type of band they were.” 

A Kiss Before Dying used to go by Lachance, Harris says. “It’s a dual reference. It’s the last name of the main character in Stand By Me. And it’s also a character from a video game called Oblivion.”

Alex’s first band was Ten Crowns, which he describes as “a bad one.”

Alex played guitar in Ten Crowns, but he wanted to do vocals instead. “So I started Lachance. At the time it was just a side project. I didn’t expect to do anything with it. All the music was themed around the video game Oblivion. There’s a faction in that game, the dark brotherhood, a group of assassins. The lyrics were more about the gruesome killing and death. And when it became a more serious project, I stopped using those type of lyrics and started using more emotional lyrics.” 

They released their first record, If Bleeding Out’s in Style, as Lachance. “It was a four-song EP. We had abandoned the whole video game theme. It was an emo record, really. Screamo and emo, violence.”

The EP was “distributed by a small DIY record label, Jean Scene, in Pittsburgh. At that time, it was funny: We had a pretty big following in emo and screamo up North, but we didn’t have as much of a following down here.”

During the tour, Harris’ drummer, bass player, and guitarist left.

Alex had to find all-new band members. “I pretty much had to rebuild it from the ground up. We decided to back away from screamo and go more into metalcore.”

And, he says, “With a lineup change and a slight shift in genre, we decided to change the name.”

The name, A Kiss Before Dying, had nothing to do with the 1956 movie of the same name starring Robert Wagner and Joanne Woodward. “It’s from the same video game Lachance is from. A quest in Oblivion.”

But, he says, “We actually used a clip from the ’50s movie in one of our tours. We played it at the beginning of the set.  The woman screaming as she falls off the building. All the dialogue leading up to that scene. We’d play that right before we started our set.”

Alex met Oliver at Haven House, a “DIY venue,” Harris says.

“I was in a cover band with a couple of friends,” Oliver says. Epistaxis was the name of the band. “It’s another word for ‘nosebleed.’”

Oliver, who is from Marion, Arkansas, grew up “listening to punk and stuff like that.”

Climer was attracted to guitar at a young age. “My dad always played guitar in his room. It was always full of guitar gear. I was like, ‘I want to do that.’ I started playing guitar in fifth grade.”

Climer was a “huge fan of Metallica and Megadeth” when began playing guitar when he was 15 or 16. “I was really attracted by all the riffs, I would say.”

“My first band was Anaphylactic Shock. We played shows for maybe a year or two.”

Tindall, another native Memphian, says, “I pretty much grew up being surrounded by music. My mother was a choir vocalist. My dad was in a plethora of bands when he was my age. Rad Tindall. His most locally popular band was a band called South Second. And he was in another band, Pavillion Nine.”

Smith originally wanted to be a vocalist or a drummer. But after moving to a small town in Arkansas and hearing the bass player in a high school jazz band, he was hooked on bass. “I had my eyes glued to him the whole time.”

And Smith says, “My older brother got me into old punk and hardcore. And got me to learn bass guitar so we could play together. I started middle school band shortly after this on the trombone.”

But, he says, “Guitar is my go-to because I feel like I can be the most expressive and really dig into new tones.”

In 2024, A Kiss Before Dying released its first full length album, The Death of All I Once Held Dear. “Half of the lyrics on that album are abstract expressions of grief and the loss of the innocence of youth. But a lot is more about directing that anger and pointing blame, almost.”

The opening line of “A Kiss Before Dying” is “Where will we seek our cleansing when all our gods are dead and every place of respite is corporate.”

They get together every week and practice.

“We’re all adults with busy schedules,” Harris says. “Every now and then stuff gets in the way.”

But their slogan is, “Rock on forever.”

“It’s just something we’ve been saying to each other for a long time,” Harris says. “It’s kind of a joke.”

Then he adds, “It’s not a joke. We live by it.” 

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Music Music Features

Luke White: In Memoriam

Luke White (Photo: Tommy Kha)

There were no breaking news articles about it in Rolling Stone or Billboard on April 18th, yet on that day a pivotal figure in Memphis music passed away. After only two days in hospice care, William Luke White succumbed to the glioblastoma brain cancer he’d been struggling with since experiencing a seizure in July of 2019. And, as was clear in Bob Mehr’s reporting in the Commercial Appeal that day, there was a great cry of grief from the local music community.

The affable White had connected with the city’s musically-inclined through multiple bands for decades, including Snowglobe, The Pirates, Spiral Stairs (Pavement’s Scott Kannberg), Colour Revolt, James and the Ultrasounds, Clay Otis, Jeffrey James & the Haul, The Coach and Four, Sons of Mudboy, Harlan T. Bobo, and Rob Jungklas.

Most were aware of White’s health issues; indeed, he boldly foregrounded his condition after the brain surgery he underwent just over a year after his first seizures and diagnosis. Tommy Kha’s photograph of White’s post-operative shaven head, complete with skull stitches, graced the cover of an EP, William Luke White, released in October 2020. Yet it seemed he’d passed through the worst of it then, and White seemed to slowly recover his musical dexterity.

As lifetime friend and bandmate Tim Regan explains, “In August 2020, he had brain surgery and got the tumor removed, and was doing all sorts of recovery and doing things. Then, last January or the November or December before that [in 2023], he had a second brain surgery. After that one, he never totally got back over the big hump.”

Yet he continued to stay as active as possible, doing occasional studio sessions and even following Pavement on the South American leg of their reunion tour last spring. That trip grew in part from Regan and White’s tenure in Kannberg’s band, Spiral Stairs, touring the U.S. and Europe until White’s first seizure, but was also down to Regan and White’s love for the Northern California band. “Tommy Kha, myself, and my buddy Drew Arrison took Luke to four Pavement shows in South America,” says Regan. “We got to go on tour with our favorite band since we were growing up. So that was really great. That was a really big thing that we wanted to do.”

Still, White’s health began to decline. Toward the end, “there were times where you could see the old Luke peeking through,” says Regan, “and other times it was tough for him to get some words out. Just kind of a rough situation all around that was very unfair.”

While there’s an injustice to cancer curtailing the life of any 45-year-old, this tragedy was amplified by the powerful playing White brought to his musical projects. White was known as a careful listener whose guitar lines always served the song in question, yet who could also bring strong statements to recordings he worked on, throwing down bold, blazing solos, full of sonic surprises. “Luke definitely was a very gentle soul, very loving,” says Regan, “but he was also very confident. If there was something that wasn’t good in a piece of music, he would let you know. And the most powerful thing was that, in all his singing and playing, he was completely 100 percent focused and present on making those things as good as they could be.”

That’s apparent in his work with Snowglobe, with whom he began working early on; in early recordings by James and the Ultrasounds; with Sons of Mudboy (as he and Steve Selvidge were particularly simpatico); and many other bands. Speaking of Snowglobe’s 2024 album, The Fall, largely recorded before the pandemic, Regan said of White, “his song ‘Willow Tree’ is so damn beautiful. And it’s also the first one that Luke’s written [with Clay Qualls] for us. Not that he hasn’t been a big part of our recordings before, but with this one, he brought it to the table and said, ‘I’ve got a song.’ We were all like, ‘Let’s do it!’ It’s his first writing credit with Snowglobe.”  

Regan also fondly recalls work White did outside of Snowglobe. “‘Girl Arms’ is probably my favorite song. I still remember him playing that for me before The Coach and Four did it. That must have been in 2002 or so.”

Toby Vest, producer/engineer at High/Low Recording, also worked with White for years. “Sometimes you meet a musical soulmate, somebody who you don’t have to say everything to,” Vest reflects. “They just understand what you’re looking for. We really hit it off in that context. When you work in intense, creative situations, it bonds people together. And I haven’t made a record of my music that doesn’t include Luke as a guitar player, singer, confidant, or co-writer. In fact, I have a new record that’s going to come out in the fall that includes his last studio performance. He was one of the most unbelievable male background singers I’ve ever seen. He could blend with anybody and sing any harmony you wanted.”

White kept chasing such creative situations right up to the end. “In early 2023, me, Luke, and my brother Jake decided to do some co-writing, like a Traveling Wilburys kind of thing,” says Vest. “And we made this record that hopefully will be released soon. There are three songs that Luke wrote, three songs that Jake wrote, three songs that I wrote, and then one song that Luke and I wrote together. Those were the last songs he recorded.”

On those tracks and everything he worked on, it was clear that White made music the way he lived his life — with great empathy. “He really did understand how to support people in his real life and in his musical life,” says Vest. “It was an intrinsic trait that he had, that translated into whatever he was doing: his empathy for other creative people. He understood how to get you where you wanted to go.” 

The Luke White Celebration of Life will be held at Memphis Made Brewery on May 24th, 2 to 7 p.m., and will include live music by Snowglobe, Circle Birds, Toby Vest, Jeff Hulett, Mark Edgar Stuart, Steve Selvidge, Ellsie Day, Kait Lawson, Pepper & the Sausage Boys, and others.

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Memphis Flyer Podcast May 15, 2025: Barbecue Time!

Join Toby Sells and Chris McCoy as they talk about the Barbecue Issue. Plus, the troubling verdict in the state trial of the police officers who killed Tyre Nichols, and Central High School brings the world jazz band championship trophy home to the 901.

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Music Music Features

Southern Avenue Comes Home

Southern Avenue (Photo: Rory Doyle)

This year’s SmokeSlam barbecue competition will bring some fine music to Memphis, including headliners Shane Smith & the Saint, The Revivalists, and Big & Rich, but it will be especially meaningful to some hometown favorites who’ve gone from success to success, yet never quite felt they’d nailed down their sound until their 2025 release. 

The story behind Southern Avenue’s fourth album, Family, is one of the prodigal daughter — lead singer Tierinii Jackson — who had to leave her past behind before returning to it to find herself. And now, this band and this singer have crossed a threshold. But it’s taken a while. Jackson was still chasing after her ideal sound — the sound of this album — almost a decade into a career that was already charmed. 

Eight years ago, Southern Avenue came bursting out of nowhere with talent and promise — seemingly fully formed. In fact, blues guitarist Ori Naftaly had previously made his way from Israel to Tennessee, only meeting Memphis native Jackson and her sister, drummer and singer Tikyra, aka TK, after souring on his first band. Their chemistry, melding Naftaly’s guitar chops with TK’s power-groove beat and Tierinii’s soul-steeped voice, was electric; soon they’d added keyboardist Jeremy Powell and a roster of bassists, and were the toast of Memphis. 

Three albums and a Grammy nomination followed, but, as Nafatly confides now, “We were always looking for our sound. We got signed to Stax seven months after we first met, and we were still getting to know each other as people.” Having merely cobbled their debut together, Naftaly says, “the second record had a lot of record label involvement: ‘You should be the new Alabama Shakes.’ And then for the third we had Steve Berlin, and he had a particular vision for us.” But after that, a new band member joined and something clicked. 

“In 2021,” Naftaly recalls, “Ava — Tierinii’s and TK’s younger sister, who’d only sung with us off and on — graduated from Belmont University in classical violin, and we asked her to join us full-time. When that happened, we started to change.” By then, Naftaly and Tierinii had also fallen for each other in a big way, married, and brought a daughter into the world. Seismic events all around.  

Musically, it wasn’t Ava’s violin that was the game-changer (though you’ll hear some of that), but her singing: She exponentially amplified the power of Tierinii’s and TK’s blood harmony. Their effortless blend was a revelation: Though they’d all grown up attending the church founded by their grandfather, their age differences meant they’d never quite sung together. Not like this. 

Meanwhile, the ever-evolving Mississippi blues rolled on, and Tierinii was taking notice. “I got inspired listening to Cedric Burnside’s album, I Be Trying,” she remembers. “It felt like home to me. That kicked me off into listening to all the Hill Country blues, and something magical happened. When we were growing up, we were only singing church music, but I was familiar with just about every song on that Hill Country blues playlist. I’d been hearing it my whole life! The melodies were the same as what we grew up singing in church. Only the lyrics were a little bit different.”

For the soul singer-songwriter, embracing both her guitar-playing father’s roots in Senatobia, Mississippi, and the church she grew up in “felt like I found my place in the blues.” But that required a bit of reckoning with her past. 

“In my early adulthood, I ran from the church because I had bad experiences. So it was a real moment of healing when I started listening to this Hill Country blues. It reminded me of the love that I grew up with. I’d forgotten about the music side of the church. But then I reconnected with myself and embraced everything that I shunned for so many years. It was a homecoming, a rebirth back into my inner child.”

Her exuberance was infectious, as the band dug in to write their story in a flurry of inspiration. “When I had this epiphany,” says Tierinii, “it was like, ‘Duh, of course, this is what we’re supposed to be doing!’ It was no longer about making the label happy or appealing to a younger generation. It was strictly about honoring our roots and our ancestors, and that’s what the blues is. I think the contemporary aspect will come with the stories that we tell and the freshness of our voices.”

Meanwhile, Naftaly worked with North Mississippi Allstar Luther Dickinson to perfect his bottleneck guitar technique, and the band dove deeper into the rawest roots of the blues, making the most personal music of their lives. Singing what they know has given their sound full flower, even approaching the majesty and power of the Staple Singers, as Naftaly’s grinding riffs gel with TK’s beat and the pulse of either Dickinson or the dearly departed Blake Rhea on bass, laying down a gritty, gravel road for the sisters’ harmonies to roll over like a Cadillac. 

The final piece of this puzzle was cutting it. Yet Naftaly wasn’t overly cowed by recording at Royal Studios. Those magical walls, acoustically perfected by the late producer Willie Mitchell, bore witness to countless Hi Records classics. Yet what mattered most to the band was the man working within those walls: Willie’s son Boo. Having produced Cedric Burnside’s Grammy-winning album, Boo knew. “It’s really not about Royal,” says Naftaly. “It’s just about working with Boo and being able to finally have him in the room. The focus was on being able to write the most important songs we’ve ever written and then bring them to a person who would actually get it.”

Producer John Burk, who executive-produced their first two albums, also got it, allowing the band to breathe. And as they drink in the air of the Jackson sisters’ homeland more deeply than ever, their personal odyssey becomes a journey into the very building blocks of the blues themselves, to be pulled apart and reassembled just as Southern Avenue sees fit, as they’ve never been heard before. 

See Southern Avenue play SmokeSlam on Friday, May 16th. For details, visit smokeslam.com.

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Central High School Jazz Band Wins Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington Competition

Dr. Ollie Liddell directs the Memphis Central High School Jazz Band at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater on Saturday, May 10, 2025, as part of the The 30th Annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition and Festival. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday/Jazz at Lincoln Center)

It was nail-biting time yesterday during the finals of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 30th annual Essentially Ellington High School Jazz Band Competition & Festival, where the top three placing bands competed at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City to be recognized as the top high school jazz band in the world.

One of the three was the Central High School Jazz Band, under the direction of Dr. Ollie Liddell. The day before, Liddell posted these words to Facebook: “God is just showering us with blessings. The Memphis Central (THE) High School Jazz Band performed with the rest of these phenomenal bands from around the world. Yesterday we were named top 10. After the second round performance they announced us as top 3 in the WORLD. We find out if we are 1, 2, or 3 on tomorrow night. I am so overcome with emotion at these kids!”

Yet Liddell and his students kept their cool as they took to the stage to perform, staying in the zone, focused and swinging madly. Each top-placing band performed with its choice of a Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra member as a featured soloist. Finally, after all three bands had played, the award ceremony began and Memphis’ Central High School was named the best high school jazz band in the world.

Dr. Ollie Liddell directs the Memphis Central High School Jazz Band
at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater. (Photo: Gilberto Tadday/Jazz at Lincoln Center)

It was the students’ first time competing in person, and most of them had no experience playing an instrument before high school. Yet it was clear that Liddell had nurtured and coaxed incredible reserves of talent out of them. The soloists were on fire, harking back to the glory days of Jimmie Lunceford’s Manassas High School Band of the 1920s-30s, who wowed audiences at the Cotton Club in their day.

A record 127 schools from across the world entered the competition, which allowed international bands to compete for the first time this year. The five-day event saw students immersed in workshops, jam sessions, rehearsals, and performances as they competed for the top honors.

The three finalists on Sunday also included the Osceola County School for the Arts of Kissimmee, Florida, and the Sant Andreu Jazz Band of Barcelona, Spain. Other international schools competing during the week included Blackburn High School of Victoria, Australia, and Tomisato High School of Chiba, Japan. Central High was the only school from Tennessee included among the competitors.

Wynton Marsalis, managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, presented awards to the top bands. Central High School’s first place trophy came with an award of $10,000. “Congratulations to all our bands who performed this week,” said Marsalis. “We recognize your sacrifice and commend you on your commitment. One of the things I’m most proud of about this festival is how it brings together parents, children, administrators, and communities around something truly worthwhile — the inner development of our kids.”

Though Sunday’s performances are not available online at this time, Central High’s appearance at the semi-finals at Lincoln Center on Saturday, May 10th was recorded:

In the end, the awards garnered by the Central High band included First Place Overall, Outstanding Trumpet Section, Outstanding Trombone Section, Outstanding Rhythm Section, Outstanding Alto Saxophone Soloist: Jackson H., Outstanding Trumpet Soloist: Kingston G., and Outstanding Trombone Soloist: Marqese C.

The bands were evaluated by several judging panels comprising distinguished jazz musicians and historians, including Joseph Jefferson, Ingrid Jensen, Sherrie Maricle, Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Ulysses Owens, Catherine Russell, Reggie Thomas, Camille Thurman, Liesel Whitaker, and others.  As one of the most innovative education events in the world, the Essentially Ellington program aims to elevate musicianship, broaden perspectives, and inspire performance through the music of jazz icon Duke Ellington. The program provides free transcriptions of original Duke Ellington recordings – accompanied by rehearsal guides, original recordings, professional instruction, and more – to thousands of schools and community bands in 58 countries. More than 7,000 high school bands have benefitted from free charts and resources over the 30 years of Essentially Ellington.

Now, returning home with their newly won crown, Liddell and the band are preparing for a show on more familiar turf: Central High School Auditorium. The school’s Jazz Band, Concert Band, Symphonic Band, and Wind Ensemble will all perform in a free show there at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, May 13th.

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The Blues Music Awards Have Spoken!

Ronnie Baker Brooks (Photo: Courtesy Blues Foundation)

The Blues Foundation‘s 46th Annual Blues Music Awards were held at Renasant Convention Center on Thursday, May 8th, and once again a regional wunderkind, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram of Clarksdale (who appears in the cinematic vampiric smash Sinners), snagged the title of Best Instrumentalist on the guitar. Other big winners were Ronnie Baker Brooks (Contemporary Blues Album, Contemporary Blues Male, Song of the Year for “Blues In My DNA”); Sue Foley (Acoustic Blues Album, Traditional Blues Female); John Primer (Traditional Blues Male, Traditional Blues Album for Crawlin’ Kingsnake with Bob Corritore); and Curtis Salgado (Soul Blues Male, Soul Blues Album). The venerable Keb’ Mo’ was recognized as Acoustic Blues Artist of the Year.

Complete list of the 2025 winners:

Acoustic Blues Album: One Guitar Woman, Sue Foley           
Instrumentalist – Horn: Vanessa Collier                         
Blues Rock Artist: Tommy Castro                          
Instrumentalist – Harmonica: Billy Branch                              
Soul Blues Female: Thornetta Davis                     
Instrumentalist – Piano (Pinetop Perkins): Eden Brent             
Instrumentalist – Bass: Bob Stroger                       
Instrumentalist – Drum: Kenny “Beedy Eyes” Smit               
Blues Rock Album: Life is Hard, Mike Zito             
Contemporary Blues Male: Ronnie Baker Brooks         
Traditional Blues Album: Crawlin’ Kingsnake, John Primer & Bob Corritore 
Traditional Blues Male: John Primer                           
Instrumentalist- Guitar: Christone “Kingfish” Ingram               
Contemporary Blues Album: Blues In My DNA, Ronnie Baker Brooks     
Soul Blues Album: Fine By Me, Curtis Salgado                 
Traditional Blues Female: Sue Foley                       
Contemporary Blues Female: Ruthie Foster                           
Soul Blues Male: Curtis Salgado                                       
Acoustic Blues Artist: Keb’ Mo’                                           
Band of the Year: Rick Estrin and The Nightcats                   
Best Emerging Artist: Revelation, Piper & The Hard Times       
Instrumentalist- Vocals: Ruthie Foster                             
Album of the Year: Blame It On Eve, Shemekia Copeland     
Song of the Year: “Blues In My DNA,” Written by Ronnie Baker Brooks   
B.B. King Entertainer of the Year: Mr. Sipp (Castro Coleman)

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RiverBeat’s Musical Memories

Public Enemy at RiverBeat (Photo: Joshua Timmermans & Noble Visions)

Memphis music fans have strong opinions. Take the avid listener and Memphis Flyer reader who approached one of our writers while chilling near the Ferris Wheel at RiverBeat Music Festival last weekend. “I can’t believe it’s accepted to just play a backing track while an artist performs!” he said, noting that, as far as he could tell, that’s exactly what Busta Rhymes and Ludacris did during their sets. While it is indeed a common practice, especially with hip hop artists (but increasingly in other genres), did anyone else care? Given the enthusiasm with which those artists were greeted, it’s hard to claim that they did.

Missy Elliot’s show at RiverBeat (Photo: Bob Bayne)

Take the ecstatic reception that Missy Elliot received for one of the best performances in the history of either Beale Street Music Festival or RiverBeat. Using only pre-recorded tracks, her Friday night headliner was a highlight of the weekend. While stage productions have become more elaborate in the “post-Beychella era,” too often that comes at the expense of the music. But Missy was firing on all cylinders — literally. After cartoon versions of Missy’s various phases introduced the show on the big screen, a car that looked like it was designed by Syd Mead appeared on the stage.

“Oh,” we all thought. “Missy’s going to drive around in the car.” No, reader. She WAS the car! The first of five costumes she wore in the course of the night was a Transformer-inspired drip which drew gasps from the assembled thousands. The rest of the evening was a parade of hits and bangers which drew heavily on Missy’s turn-of-the-century work with Timbaland. Surrounded by a crack cadre of dancers and MCs, she made a case for herself as one of the most important and influential artists of the last 30 years.

The Hypos (Photo: Joshua Timmermans & Noble Visions)

Yet most of the remaining standout performances of RiverBeat reveled in good old fashioned instrument-playing, such as Saturday’s set by The Hypos. This band, which includes Memphians Greg Cartwright and Krista Lynne Wroten, is a living tribute to making records in the traditional way, with a combo playing finely wrought songs in a room (and they’d been doing just that prior to their festival appearance, with Matt Ross-Spang), focused on the sound of the human voice, sans autotune. The pro sound system of the Bud Light Stage showed off all these strengths in their best light, including the group’s stellar harmonies.

Artist after artist took to the festival stages as if to prove that musicians playing instruments can still wow an audience. Anyone who saw the virtuosity of MonoNeon‘s set won’t forget his command of the bass Fender created in his name, droopy sock and all, complemented by a crack band and conjuring up a vibe close to George Clinton’s party-down approach, with an extra dollop of jazz in the mix. The bass virtuoso put on a low end clinic, taking the supporting instrument and shredding like a lead guitar. It was magical!

MonoNeon (Photo: Joshua Timmermans & Noble Visions)

Local heroes FreeWorld also wowed ’em at Tito’s Pavilion stage, with their saxophonist’s home brew synth sax stealing the show (until his laptop crashed). They also arguably represented Memphis history more deeply than any other group, with front man Richard Cushing calling out the late Herman Green before they played one of Green’s compositions from his tenure with the group, “Earth Mother” — not to mention a sizzling version of “Green Onions” which benefited from the presence of a real Hammond organ in that stage’s backline.

FreeWorld brought the synth-sax sounds (Photo: Chris McCoy)

The Neckbones were a standout Oxford Mississippi band from the 1990s who played a searing reunion set on the Mempho Presents stage. Tyler Keith, who co-fronts the band, brought his larger than life stage presence to the small stage, exclaiming “let’s have a moment of NOISE.” Mid-afternoon latecomers turned their heads and drifted over for a face full of Mid-South punk. As purveyors of ragged-but-right garage rock, they were the only band who offered that sound at the festival this year — and the only band who could have offered that sound, though Deaf Revival brought their own brand of chunky molten metal to the same stage earlier that day.

Then it was finally time for Public Enemy. In a weekend full of classic hip hop acts, PE stood out for the cultural impact and razor sharp live set.  Memphis-based multi-instrumentalist Khari Wynn, who used to be PE’s musical director, opened the set with a Hendrix-inspired take on the Black national anthem, James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” It was a gripping reminder of the historical sweep of Public Enemy’s aesthetic, and Wynn’s presence in the band for the rest of their set only toughened up their sound.

Chuck D and Flava Flav were in rare form. Chuck D called Busta Rhymes and Ludacris “our nephews,” rapped over AC/DC samples, and delivered epic readings of “Welcome to the Terrordome,” “Shut ‘Em Down,” and their 2020 anti-Trump anthem “State of the Union (STFU).” During “He Got Game,” Chuck D amended the line “fuck the game if it don’t mean nothin'” to “fuck the president if he don’t mean nothin’,” to wild cheers.

Public Enemy truly embraced Memphis as well, with Chuck D saluting both the Mid-South Coliseum and the great Isaac Hayes, and referring to his bandmate, Flava Flav, as the “heir apparent of Rufus Thomas.” The set concluded with a welcome message of unity from The Flav, who exhorted the crowd to raise peace signs.

After the intense workout of Public Enemy, The Killers, one of the slickest and most popular bands on the planet, had their work cut out for them. Perhaps that’s why they opened with “Great Balls of Fire,” which they had clearly learned in soundcheck. It was a humanizing moment, reminding us that, for all of the expensive production values and Vegas residencies, The Killers are, at their heart, a rock band coming home to the holy city of rock and roll.

And, it must be noted, The Killers represented the “live bands over pre-recorded tracks” concept well, especially guitarist Dave Keuning. The triumph of pure musicianship continued on the festival’s closing day as well. One reason for that was the focus on down-home gospel at the Mempho Presents Stage, starting with octogenarian Elizabeth King, still as powerful as ever, accompanied by her son Zack McGhee on bass, drummer Tavion Robinson, as well as Will Sexton on guitar and (Memphis Flyer music editor) Alex Greene on keys. Later, the Jubilee Hummingbirds also appeared, before The Wilkins Sisters brought the house down for the day.

Elizabeth King and band, with her daughter and granddaughter on background vocals (Photo: Chris McCoy)

The Wilkins Sisters and Salo Pallini, the quirky, genre-defying instrumental combo, were the only local bands to be featured in both last year’s and this year’s RiverBeat, but the latter made their big stage debut this year. For this year’s RiverBeat, they had the welcome addition of singer Alexis Grace, who added shimmering texture to the songs from their album Sirens of Titan, then blew the crowd away with a soulful rendition of Portishead’s “Sour Times.”

They were followed on the Bud Light Stage by one of the great revelations of RiverBeat, La Lom, a trio of ace players from the City of Angels (and it’s been said their name indicates they’re an “L.A. League of Musicians”). Their subtle and surprising instrumentals captivated the afternoon crowd with no effects, fireworks, or grandstanding — just finely-tuned musicianship of the grooviest, slinkiest kind.

Khruangbin (Photo: Joshua Timmermans & Noble Visions)

The best double feature of the festival involved running back and forth from the Bud Light stage to the Pavilion stage on Sunday afternoon, trying to catch both Texas glide-rockers Khruangbin and Afro-beat legend Sean Kuti and Africa 80. Khruangbin’s soaring but simple instrumentals were flawless and precise, drawing a huge crowd. With a captivating, retro set design, moody lighting, and subtle choreography, they had the crowd in the palm of their hand with the inspiring musicality of their arrangements.

Moreover, Khruangbin’s bassist, Laura “Leezy” Lee Ochoa, who was dressed for Wimbledon but had moves akin to Tina Weymouth’s shimmies with the Talking Heads, was but one of the badass female bassists at the fest this year, the other being Gayle.

Gayle (Photo: Joshua Timmermans & Noble Visions)

With a huge, rocking stage presence, she wielded her four-string axe like, well, an axe, and exuded pure pop-punk rage, especially when lamenting an ex in her 2022 hit, “Alex.” “I gotta break up with Alex/It’s gotten way too dramatic … Ba-da-da-da-da!” Admittedly, some of our sensitive writers at the Flyer found such lines both triggering and oddly alluring.

Meanwhile, Sean Kuti battled through Khruangbin’s sound bleed to get his crowd moving. Kuti, the 42-year-old son of Afrobeat originator Fela Kuti, bounced from player to player, calling for solos over the twisty, infections beats from his rhythm section. He is legit one of the best front men in the business, and has been for years.

Anderson .Paak (Photo: Joshua Timmermans & Noble Visions)

And finally, speaking of the highest standards of musicianship and a commitment to featuring a live band, Anderson .Paak & the Free Nationals brought the weekend to a perfect close with some inspired playing. As .Paak exclaimed halfway through the set, “I still believe in real instruments played by real people and fuck that AI shit!” And his drumming alone revealed the power of such an approach. But he also brought the charisma and humor of a born performer, even appearing in drag at one point as he belted out some soulful R&B, before settling into a look more reminiscent of L.L. Cool J for the rest of the show. His set was a tour de force, and the people lingering late Sunday night didn’t want RiverBeat to end.