Alex Greene joins Chris McCoy to talk about his cover story on protest music in Memphis, “Positively UnAmerikan.” Check it out on the Memphis Flyer YouTube channel.
Category: Music
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Play On, Amro
For nearly 20 years, Amro Music has won the Flyer’s Best Music Equipment Store in Memphis. Regarding the long-standing honor, vice president and co-owner Nick Averwater says it’s as simple as customer and employee satisfaction: “This is our people telling us that we’re doing a good job.”
You’ve certainly driven by Amro. Located on Poplar Avenue next to the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, its iconic piano sign displays the weather or phrases like “Music Makes You Smarter.” “Most people know us as that music store with windows,” says Averwater. Inside is an abstract arrangement of stringed instruments and pianos. The historical Piano Gallery is housed in the lot next door. This dates back to Averwater’s great-grandfather, Sil Averwater, who founded Amro in 1921. “He was on his way to L.A., seeking fame and fortune, and made a stop in Memphis. Nobody was teaching piano, so he opened his windows and played for passersby. That was marketing back then.”
The century-old shop eventually grew to serve school orchestras in rural farm communities outside of Memphis. It continues that practice today, repairing and providing instruments for students in Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi.
Walking into Amro, an array of shining saxophones, trumpets, and trombones rests above a fire-engine red keyboard. Dozens of stringed instruments hang on the north wall, with hundreds of music education books (for all skill levels) in accompaniment.
Music has been part of Averwater’s life since childhood, he says. “I’m a product of music education … and Memphis should have a music culture. It makes our schools and communities a better place.” As they reach their 104th year, their mission of nourishing students has remained unchanged. “School orchestras might not be the blues or clichéd Memphis music, but it’s a vibrant cornerstone.”
Averwater asks if I want a tour. I expect a walk around the floor and a couple of employee greetings. Instead, we walk through the repair shop upstairs. He shows me specific tools, cleaning methods, lighting fixtures, and mechanical approaches to repair. The brass section is flush with bright overhead lights. One mechanic, Jason, solders a brace back onto a trumpet. “Without the light, I wouldn’t be able to see this,” he says, pointing to a minute dent near the mouthpiece. He learned how to repair instruments at Amro, where he’s been working for the past three years. He got his first trumpet at Amro in fifth grade and went on to march in the University of Memphis band.
Nearby are the woodwind mechanics, who work in a much darker space. “They utilize the shadows to better analyze their instruments,” says Averwater. One technician feeds an illuminated fluffy tube through a saxophone while fluttering the valves. I’m not sure what he’s doing, but it looks very professional. Yet the extent of their work goes beyond examinations and soldering. “We’ve seen ’em run over by cars, dropped off buses. … There’s not much that would surprise us anymore,” says Averwater. “We’ve seen it all, and then some,” says Nico, another repair technician.
I also see a mountain of instrument cases. Averwater says it’s the line of instruments waiting to be repaired. There were two rooms full of French horns, tubas, trumpets, trombones, oboes, saxophones, and more. “Those instruments represent a kid who doesn’t have an instrument … and they need their instrument to learn.” The shop churns out nearly 300 instruments a week for students all across the Mid-South.
The tour ends with a framed, original copy of Sil Averwater’s first piano instructional book, titled Amro System of Popular Music. As fourth-generation co-owners, Averwater and his cousin, CJ Averwater, both consider family to be an incredible foundation behind Amro’s success.
To Averwater, it was never a question whether to join the family business. To contribute to such an integral part of Memphis’ youth is nothing but a privilege, he says. “We could sell something else, but we get to sell musical instruments.”
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New Music for the Ages
There will be a distinctly personal aspect to the four-day Belvedere Chamber Music Festival when it kicks off its 19th year this Wednesday, June 25th, at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church — and that personal quality exemplifies just how much Luna Nova Music, the nonprofit that launched the festival, is built on relationships that span the globe. Italian composer Gianluca Verlingieri began attending the festival in 2007 as the winner of its first Student Composition Contest. Now, many years later, he’ll be paying bittersweet tribute to a recently deceased Memphis friend.
As Patricia Gray, executive director of Luna Nova, explains, Breen Bland and Jeanie Mercer “were complete believers in this whole project. We used to bring the student composers to Memphis for the festival from wherever they came, and I would find housing for them. At the very first one, the first-place winner was an Italian composer named Gianluca Verlingieri, who stayed with Breen and Jeanie, and they got to be big friends. They had all these things in common. They were big cooks. They liked the same music. Well, it turns out that they kept this up over all these years. When they would go to Europe, they would visit Gianluca. He is now a very successful composer in Italy.”
After Bland passed away in December, “Gianluca volunteered to write a piece that was dedicated to Breen, to be premiered at the festival,” Gray notes. “So he wrote this piece for violin and cello that’s going to be on the first concert. And Gianluca will be back in Memphis for this performance of his piece for Breen.”
As the composer notes in the program, the Galician-Portuguese title, “Falar sen voz [To speak without a voice], in memoriam Breen Bland,” describes “what music often does. And it is also what the memory of a loved one does — continuously — within us.”
Verlingieri’s piece in Bland’s memory not only evokes the deep personal connections behind the festival; it also reveals one strength of any concert series primarily devoted to contemporary compositions, as opposed to works from over a century ago: Whether personal or political, new music speaks to our time. Consider the works’ titles, so unlike the dry catalog entries of older works in the classical repertoire: “Fast Track,” written in 1999 by Jonathan Chenette; “Ghost Rags,” written by William Bolcom in 1970; “Flouting Convention,” Louis Anthony deLise’s 2024 work; “Moonsong,” David Crumb’s piece for piano and cello, also from last year; or, perhaps most evocatively, “Glimpses of a Better World,” a new piece written by P. Brent Register, with movements like “Trapped,” “Find It,” “Little Things,” “Silence,” and, arguably the most unlikely of classical titles, “I Like Dogs.” These works reflect our lives, our language, our loves, and our loss as we exist today.
As for the newest of the new music, one aspect of the festival evokes not only the present, but the future. The Belvedere Student Composition Contest may be the festival’s most impactful element, shining a light on the latest up-and-coming talent and providing a venue to debut their work. This year, the festival honors “is it still autumn?,” a piano trio by first-prize winner Matthew Tirona of the New England Conservatory and Tufts University; “Three Urban Scenes,” a piece for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano by second-prize winner Ethan Resnik of Rice University; and “Piano Trio No. 1” by third-prize winner Brittney Benton of Yale University.
Beyond that, the festival offers an opportunity for Luna Nova’s players to stretch out on less common material both old and new. As Gray sees it, including older works is important to the festival’s programming, providing historical context to the newer works, as with the chaconne movement of Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor that will kick off the festival. “Bach is a towering figure that puts the whole world in perspective,” says Gray. “We feel like it’s kind of a cleansing thing to start with some movement of Bach.”
This year, that particular passage will also serve as a tribute to Breen Bland. “Breen and Jeanie also were the hosts for Gregory Maytan, an amazing violinist that’s coming here from Germany, and Gregory of course has played that Bach chaconne a number of times. In fact, Breen had a recording of it that Gregory listened to at home often. So that was another reason it made sense to begin the first concert with it.”
Other recognized giants of the classical world will make an appearance, largely through 20th century works such as Romanian Folk Dances and selections from “Duos for Two Violins” by Béla Bartók, “Suite for Violin, Clarinet and Piano” by Darius Milhaud, “Five Melodies for Violin and Piano” by Sergei Prokofiev, and L’Histoire du Soldat by Igor Stravinsky, not to mention pianist Maeve Brophy’s take on “A Shaded Lane” from Florence Price’s Village Scenes, and cellist Hannah Schmidt’s interpretation of Philip Glass’ Orbit, which premiered in a 2013 Yo-Yo Ma performance that also featured Memphis-born dancer Lil Buck.
Expect many sonic surprises from roughly two dozen contemporary composers (including music inspired by art at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens composed by Gray’s husband, Robert Patterson of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra).
If the chamber music form lends itself to every variety of musical exploration, its inherently close-up and personal nature has led the Belvedere Chamber Music Festival to touch the hearts of Memphis audiences, and they keep returning. “I think it’s an easier draw,” Gray muses, “because you can tailor these programs to what you have available, to who you know you’ve got to play, and what they play, and how good they are. And you can tailor it to your audience. I think that there’s something that’s very approachable about it, just from the point of view of it being pretty easy to get in the car and go to a church and listen to music for an hour.”
The free Belvedere Chamber Music Festival takes place evenings at 7 p.m., June 25th to 28th, at Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church (use the west entrance), with additional concerts on June 27th and 28th at 3 p.m. Visit belvederefestival.org for details.
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‘If It Rips, I’m About It’
When Joybomb takes the stage at the Radians Amphitheater in the Memphis Botanic Garden, opening for Third Eye Blind for Live at the Garden’s kickoff concert of the summer this Saturday, June 21st, the band will be where it was always meant to be, in a sense. Sure, the group has cut their teeth in local clubs like Bar DKDC, Growlers, and the Hi Tone, but a quick listen to their wall of sound confirms that they were destined to rock festival stages.
“Some bands lean into the lo-fi, and that’s a signature part of their sound,” reflects the band’s front man, singer, and songwriter, Grant Beatty. “But I don’t know, for Joybomb, I want to feel the drums in my chest. I want to hear the guitar soar in the left and right speakers. I think some of those alt-rock, pop punk records of the mid-aughts by, like, Taking Back Sunday and Jimmy Eat World, from 2005 to ’06, just sound so good.”
It’s a huge sound, one that the band has embraced from the beginning. And that’s due to Beatty’s earliest encounters with the first music that moved him in the mid-aughts. “When I was a kid,” he says, “I got into punk rock and went to the Warped Tour, and there was Rock Against Bush. ‘Political punk’ sounds so cheesy, but at the time, you know, there was a war going on. Being a kid, I was super inspired by a lot of that stuff and those bands, even going back to the Clash, you know? Protest music through the power of good lyricism and clever writing and rock-and-roll.”
And he’s serious about the rock-and-roll. His guiding mantra has kept him focused on that, as he’s aimed to “will myself to just make the best shit that I can and just bring the rock, you know? Just strive to melt face and then make it undeniable, I guess is my inner motto,” says Beatty.
That’s also staying true to his inner teen, dating back to his youth in Mississippi. And for much of his life, that just meant having fun, even when he moved to Memphis after completing his undergraduate degree from Mississippi State University in Starkville. His bass player at the time moved here soon after, and “we made Memphis our new home, our new launch pad. So for a few years after that, Joybomb played places like the Hi Tone, and we’d occasionally go to Nashville, stuff like that. But we were kind of treading water. We were having fun, making friends, sowing our wild oats. But I don’t know, I wasn’t really goal-oriented with it, or trying to spread our wings, and then I just got it got to a point where that made me sad. I wanted to do something for real. I wanted to give it my best shot, like a real effort.”
To be sure, that still included fun, but, for the record, “Joybomb” is not a playful take on the phrase “Soy Bomb,” which artist Michael Portnoy scrawled on his torso before jumping onstage during Bob Dylan’s appearance at the 1998 Grammy Awards. “No,” says Beatty, “it was a compromise between two different names, and so we just smooshed them together and decided on Joybomb.”
All names aside, the group, while going through some personnel changes since those early days, has only leaned into rocking harder since becoming a quartet a couple years ago. “We were a four piece by the middle of ’23,” says Beatty, “because we did two singles in ’23 that had a fourth member. So that was when Joybomb was really coming together, although I’ve been with my bassist Conner Booth since ’21.” The other players in the current lineup are Luki Luvsik on guitar and vocals and Xander Sinclair on drums. And ultimately, having a four piece helped the band flesh out their arrangements to create that big, anthemic sound that Beatty has always loved.
Also crucial to perfecting their bigger sound was starting to record with Matt Qualls at Easley-McCain Recording. “We have worked with him since cutting the singles in ’23. And honestly, he hit home runs with those. He just really knew his background. He was really from that era that I was talking about, the early- to mid-aughts, punk, hardcore, metal kind of stuff. And so he really gets the hi-fi, big rock album thing.”
Those singles, like “Visions” and “Tell Tale Boys,” come on hard and heavy with angular riffs that give way to lighter, sparkling guitar textures and background vocals. That continued into last year’s tracks, collected on the Modern Scripture EP, a collection that strikes a perfect balance between heavy slabs of riffage and shimmering pop flourishes. Now, about to open for ’90s hitmakers Third Eye Blind, Beatty sees them as kindred spirits.
“Third Eye Blind are icons because their music is just baked into the psyche, at least the hits, right? That first record is really interesting and chock full of bangers, dude! That was a super hi-fi, well produced record, but it was just really interesting, too. They’ve got hooks. They’ve got thick, really interesting guitar tones. I salute bands that are able to do something without being super flashy, and it just delivers in a catchy way.”
In other words, they pair well with Joybomb, though the local band’s love of heavy riffs may well surpass Third Eye Blind’s — a predisposition which should fit a major stage like the Radians Amphitheater to a T. “I love rock, right?” Beatty notes. “So I like anything that throws down, whether it’s ’80s thrash and hair bands or, I mean, like Black Sabbath, one of my all-time faves. I’m informed by decades of that. If it rips, then I’m about it.”
The cover of Stuntarious, Vol. 5, the fifth compilation from the Unapologetic crew, and their first post-Covid entry in the Stuntarious series, puts the emphasis on the word “stunt,” and it foretells the moments of production wizardry and vocal daring within. Yet the greatest stunt may be how this fiercely indie label/artist collective/media workshop/garment factory/studio has ultimately produced what may be the playlist of the summer.
Your typical summer playlist for joyriding around town or taking a road trip getaway would be full of hits that stream in the millions. But there’s a reason that this year’s collective Unapologetic album starts with a skit’s opening words, “I’m at the radio station”: The whole thing plays out like a broadcast from some dreamland antenna in, well, “Outerspace” — which just happens to be the group’s home base and studio. Most importantly, that means the flow of skits and sounds rolls out hooks, hip-hop, and harmony in constant waves, flavors changing, big beats dropping, and melodies soaring in just the way a blasting summer radio broadcast should. It’s a parallel universe playlist.
In this universe, the summer hit, which should be booming out of passing cars right and left, would be “Say Hello,” an irresistible jam by Sequoia Gray and Eillo (produced by Kid Maestro) blending rapid-fire rap and captivating vocal lines to tell a meet-cute tale from two perspectives. As with almost every track here, the singing is half the draw. For while these artists are all steeped in hip-hop, they blend it with a melodicism and harmonious funk that’s all soul.
Sure, there are many moments here where the rappers come hard with onslaughts of verbal daggers, including the first musical number, “FWII,” the initials referring to the very non-melodic chorus/chant, “I don’t give a f*ck what it is!” in a tale of friendship gone wack. Featuring PreauXX, AWFM, IMAKEMADBEATS, C MaJor, Kid Maestro, and Nae9ne, it’s an all-star shot across the bow that doesn’t play nice yet somehow avoids all the cliches of thug life that permeate most major label trap.
Speaking of catchy chants and major labels, you might think “Expresso,” the collaboration between C MaJor, Project Pat, Spookyli, and AWFM, would be the hardest-hitting rap here, but it’s a disarmingly restrained, nay, contemplative track, albeit backed by slamming beats.
What comes through all the tracks, including the one featuring Project Pat, is a willingness and even striving to represent the whole of human experience, from flirting to fighting, from the crib to the street.
That’s partly expressed by the intriguing moods and atmospheres set by the various Unapologetic producers here, evoking alien cityscapes and eerie half-lit alleyways at every turn, yet which can erupt into radical beauty and inspired chord flourishes.
That’s especially true of the more melodic tracks here, of course, and that’s where the talents of guitarist and singer Aaron James also shine. “A Million Needles” kicks off with a strong rap by R.U.D.Y. before James joins in with the very singable chorus. “Say Hello” keeps things rolling on the melody and harmony tip, as does rheannan’s “I Know,” complete with a contemplative rap worthy of Digable Planets. And then Cameron Bethany kicks those qualities up a notch with “Magic Wand,” which shimmers with jazz flavors, as intricate vocals (and background vocals) weave among each other in dazzling display. When you hear him sing, “Turn the lights off,” you’ll swear this is hit radio from … somewhere. And then AWFM adds to it with his usual rugged humor, even as the platinum harmonies continue their weave.
The melodic string continues with Jai Musiq’s “Nowadays,” another bid to represent the full spectrum of human experience. “Nowadays I’ve been trying to figure out how I can spend the rest of life just writing songs,” go the lyrics, as if speaking for the entire collective and the art it lives for. It’s clear that sentiment is shared when the quietest moment of all arrives, with James, Nubia Yasin, and Rachel Maxann trading verses in classic folk ballad style, albeit with a bit of that inimitable Unapologetic humor thrown into the solo.
There are a lot of trademark Unapologetic moves here, as these artists have jointly mined certain themes and sounds repeatedly over the years, exploring “where vulnerability becomes art,” as their masthead proclaims. It’s wrapped up neatly in the closing banger, “Unfortunate,” by LJ1S and Tangela, whose voices ring out strong and proud like, yes, another hit on that parallel universe radio. And since I’ve repeatedly claimed the album works for that purpose, I recommend that you take it out for a spin and see for yourself. Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair, play this, and you’ll find the sound of Memphis — all of it — in the summer.
On Saturday, June 14th, at 6:30 p.m., AWFM and PreauXX return to the stage in the alley outside of Java Cabana, teaming up with Unapologetic producers Kid Maestro and C MaJor, and joined by General Labor, Big Clown, and Uncle See’J.
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!”
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.”
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
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!”
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.
Categories
‘Rock On Forever’
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.”
Categories
Luke White: In Memoriam
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.