Even as many are eyeing their favorite bands in the three-day blow-out known as the RiverBeat Music Festival, another music fest is just over the horizon, perhaps obscured by the delicious clouds of barbecue that enshroud it. That would be SmokeSlam, aka “The World’s Ultimate BBQ Showdown,” yet another production by Mempho Presents.
This year, the festival at Tom Lee Park will be held May 15-17th. In addition to nearly 75 teams competing for the largest purse in BBQ competition history, SmokeSlam promises an immersive experience for the whole family, bringing together world-renowned pitmasters, carnival games and ferris wheel rides, fireworks shows, and electrifying music.
The three-day music experience will feature some celebrated musical guests on the Main Stage sponsored by ZYN:
Thursday: Headliner Shane Smith and The Saints, with performances by Waylon Wyatt and Mark Edgar Stuart
Friday: Headliner The Revivalists with performances by Southern Avenue, The MDs, and Jombi
Saturday: Country music giants Big & Rich close out the festival, with supporting acts Neon Mooners and Cyrena Wages
It will be an especially powerful homecoming for Southern Avenue, who will be celebrating the April 25th release of their Alligator Records debut album, Family. Known worldwide for their inclusive, message-driven songs fueled by hard-hitting grooves and electrifying guitar, the band’s new album is a very personal one for Southern Avenue, telling the band’s story via musical storytelling magic. With their unique blend of Hill Country Blues and Memphis stomp, the band is unlike any other on the scene today.
Southern Avenue announced, “Memphis is home, and every time we get to hit the stage here, it’s something special. We’re beyond excited to bring the energy to SmokeSlam and celebrate a night of raw, real, and soulful music – Memphis style!”
It’s appropriate that when ZZ Top’s Billy F. Gibbons makes his appearance at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale this Wednesday, April 9th, he will be celebrating both the creation of the “Muddywood” guitar, in honor of Muddy Waters, and the longevity of the museum itself. His vision of commissioning a guitar paying tribute to Muddy Waters went hand-in-hand with his discovery of the museum some 37 years ago.
“One of my associates in Memphis came back from a sales run which allowed him to pass through Clarksdale,” Gibbons tells me, recollecting events from more than three decades ago. “And he spotted a tiny sign simply stating ‘Blues Museum,’ stuck in the grass next to the curb.”
That alone should indicate how long ago it was, for now the Delta Blues Museum is one of Clarksdale’s and the Delta’s crown jewels. It’s educational programs are the toast of Mississippi, inspiring young people such as Grammy-winner Christone “Kingfish” Ingram to throw themselves into the blues. But when the museum opened in 1979, it was merely a single room, and a little hard to find, even well into the ‘80s, when ZZ Top frequently worked at Ardent Studios, and Gibbons heard tell of the place from his associate.
“The following week,” he says, “we headed down to Clarksdale in search of this blues museum. For a good hour, we were stopping around town asking about it, but no luck. But right as we were about to give up, we were filling up on petrol, and the gas station attendant overheard us talking. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you must be talking about Sid Graves and his blues museum, which is located in the public library.’ And with that, we turned around, marched up the steps to the library, and sure enough, found the annex room where Sid Graves had made a place to park his personal collection of artifacts from that great American art form called the blues.”
But there was more afoot than seeing artifacts on the day that Gibbons and company showed up. Graves had his finger on the pulse of the whole Delta region and beyond, including a wide network of blues aficionados. On this day, Graves was consulting with a fellow scholar.
“Lo and behold, visiting Sid was none other than Jim O’Neill,” says Gibbons, “who was the founder of Living Blues magazine. I had met Jim on a couple of occasions. He and Sid had gathered to discuss their concern over a recent storm where the high winds had dislodged a few timbers in the cabin that Muddy Waters grew up in. And they said, ‘It’s just a few miles down the road next to Stovall Farm.’ And we said, ‘Yeah, we will go.’
Muddy Waters’ cabin (Photo: courtesy Delta Blues Museum)
“Sure enough, there was a pile of rubble that had been gathered up and placed next to the highway. We had a nice visit for a while, and on departure, Sid said, ‘Listen, they’re hauling this refuse away tomorrow. Why don’t you take a stick of this wood as a souvenir?’ And there was a big, big square timber, about six feet long, and we piled it in the trunk of the car. About halfway back to Memphis, my buddy said, ‘What are you going to do with this log?’ I thought for a minute and then I said, ‘Well, I know a guitar maker. We could probably saw this thing, and glue the planks together and cut a guitar out of it.’”
That guitar-maker was none other than Rick Rayburn, Gibbons explains, who owned Pyramid Guitars at the time. Others have identified the cabin plank as cypress wood, and Gibbons said it just happened to be perfect for its new purpose.
“Once it was all together in one piece, there was a bell-like resonance. It was just a match made in heaven, and it turned out to be a really resounding and very strident-sounding instrument.” Its basic shape was a design Gibbons had been toying with at the time. “I had outlined the perimeter of a guitar, and we had it in in a blueprint form. And I thought, ‘Gee, now’s the time to break it out!’ We handed it over to Rick, and he said, ‘How shall we finish it out?’ And I said, ‘Well, let’s give it a nice, bright coat.’ And then I said, ‘I’ve got a design for a graphic.’”
The paint job Gibbons had in mind spoke to the very muddy waters that the great bluesman (born McKinley Morganfield) had lived beside for so long. “The squiggle down through the body and down all the way down the neck is the Mississippi River,” Gibbons notes. “The two colors represent the water and the banks of the river. And it culminates in the headstock, which is kind of a deltoid shaped piece, representing the Mississippi Delta.”
Muddywood (Photo: courtesy Delta Blues Museum)
It came out better than anyone had dreamt possible. “We tagged it the Muddywood guitar,” says Gibbons, “and it was such a delightful instrument, we thought, ‘Gee whiz, this would make a nice addition to the collection that Sid Graves put together.’”
The rest is history, as that encounter led ZZ Top to contribute funds to the museum, which in turn spawned matching grants and an ambitious event in which Muddywood was added to the museum’s collection. John Lee Hooker even showed up. It was just the kickstart that the Delta Blues Museum needed, paving the way for its eventual move into a train depot in Clarksdale, which it still calls home today.
This Wednesday, the support that Gibbons and his band gave to what is now a Delta landmark will be honored in a full-circle moment, as the museum pays tribute to ZZ Top at a “Crossroads Connection” event, part of its annual Muddy Waters Month celebration. The program kicks off at 2:00 PM at the Delta Blues Museum Stage where local musicians, civic leaders, and state dignitaries will help the Museum thank Billy and ZZ Top for their long-time support of the blues and the culture of the Mississippi Delta. Live music will be provided by the award-winning Delta Museum Student Band, joined by Gibbons, who will play the Muddywood guitar for the occasion. That event in turn will serve as a lead up to the 2025 Juke Joint Festival that kicks off in Clarksdale this Saturday.
At 3:00 PM, festivities will continue inside at a ticketed reception in honor of Gibbons and in support of the museum’s programs. There, Gibbons will be joined in conversation by the Delta Blues Museum’s “Blues Ambassador,” Charlie Musselwhite, a Delta native, Grammy winner, and Blues Hall of Fame and Memphis Music Hall of Fame inductee. The two will discuss the life and legacy of Muddy Waters and his enduring influence on music. Visit this link for tickets.
Kraftwerk at the Overton Park Shell last Tuesday (Photo: Alex Greene)
Last week, the Overton Park Shell hosted a remarkable show by the band Kraftwerk as part of its Shell Yeah! benefit concert series. The group has long been hailed as pioneers of electronic dance music, but, more than that, as world-building conceptual artists in their unyielding pursuit of a vision. That vision was on full display last Tuesday, and clearly touched a wide swath of the Memphis music community, who had turned out in force. “I think everyone I’ve ever met in Midtown is at this Kraftwerk concert right now,” quipped one music fan on social media. “It’s like a family reunion with synthesizers.”
Yet, while there was much moving and grooving in front of the Shell stage, there was a disappointing lack of the very style of dance that the German synthesists have doggedly promoted throughout their career, even in their choice of a band name. Of course, I’m talking about Twerking.
As with much music aimed at a popular dance, from the Twist to the Pony, it’s difficult to say if Kraftwerk actually invented twerking or were merely inspired by what they saw in the discotheques of 1970s Düsseldorf. But the dance has been associated with them ever since they celebrated it in their very name, which was originally rendered as KRAF-Twerk.
Founders Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider soon found that name either too obvious or too obscure, depending on the source, and quickly settled on the simpler spelling. But early demos, unreleased at the time, have made it clear that KRAF was an acronym denoting “Kinetic, Repetitive Ass Flexing.”
On the demo, an unused track titled “Twerk-Tanz Automatisch” from the Autobahn sessions, thus far only available on bootlegs, a voice intones, with deep gravitas, first the words “Mit gebeugten Knien tanzen” (dance with bent knees), then “das Gesäß betonend!” (emphasizing the buttocks!), before initiating a vocoder-steeped chant in English of “Kinetic! Repetitive! Ass! Flexing!”
Clearly the group was onto something, and the video above, from Detroit circa 1981, reveals how their trademark dance craze was soon being adopted internationally.
And it still is overwhelmingly popular in Germany and across the world to this day, as seen in this video with nearly 848.5 million views:
Yet there was little evidence of twerking at Kraftwerk’s triumphant Shell appearance. That’s not say it wasn’t going on at all, however. The dance is fully incorporated into the band’s method, just as surely as cycling, programming, and 3D projections. As Hütter himself revealed in a rare interview with Der Spiegel, “Diese Tanzmethode ist entscheidend für unsere künstlerische Praxis” (This dance method is crucial to our artistic practice). “Wir twerken immer still hinter unseren Podien” (We’re always twerking silently behind our podiums).
Kraftwerk behind their podiums (Photo: Alex Greene)
Terry Manning at an exhibit of his photography in Boston (Photo: Josh Reynolds)
Terry Manning, the pioneering producer, musician, and photographer who was the first staff engineer at Ardent Studios and worked with many of their greatest artists, from Big Star to Led Zeppelin to ZZ Top and beyond, died yesterday, March 25th. Musician Robert Johnson, a friend of both Manning and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, informed the Memphis Flyer that Gibbons had shared news from Manning’s wife that Manning suffered a sudden, fatal fall in the early hours of the morning at his home in El Paso, Texas. An official cause of death has not been made public at this time. He was 77.
This comes only two months after Manning released his latest album, Red and Black, the latest in a series of strong efforts from a very active career in music. He was also physically active all his life, according to the bio on his website, captaining the soccer team at then-Memphis State University in his youth, and running marathons and coaching racquetball later in life. His passing has come as a shock to his friends and colleagues.
Johnson, who worked closely with Manning by way of his music career and continued to be in touch in recent years, says, “He was the epitome of health. I remember him being a vegetarian early on, and he never smoked and never drank. He never partied. He always just worked.”
And work he did, chalking up nearly 200 credits as a producer and even more as an engineer since the 1960s. Over more than half a century, he worked with Booker T. & the MG’s, Shakira, Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, Iron Maiden, Bryan Adams, the Tragically Hip, Johnny Winter, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Jason and the Scorchers, the Staple Singers, Molly Hatchet, George Thorogood, Al Green, Widespread Panic, Shania Twain, Joe Cocker, Joe Walsh, Lenny Kravitz, and many others.
After moving to Memphis from Texas, he attended Memphis State and played keyboards for the band Lawson & Four More. That was when Johnson first met him, and the two soon became close. When I spoke to Manning in 2018, he said of Johnson, “We’re good friends. I worked with Robert quite a bit. Quite a character. Someone I just love dearly.”
“The first time we really locked horns,” Johnson recalls, “was at the Battle of the Bands at the T. Walker Lewis Community Center. One band would be under one basketball net, and the other band would be under the other. And so you’d play a set, and then all the kids would just move back and forth. At the end of the night, they’d all put their ticket into the hat and vote. Every time, we’d always lose to Terry Manning’s band. Lawson & Four More were a good band, and they had the world record of winning the Battle of the Bands at that little place. All their fan base was in that neighborhood.”
Even then, Manning was prone to experimenting to take the music further. “He had this little trick with the organ. It was a Doric, a German off-beat organ. And he would take Mercury dimes, these really thin 10 cent pieces, and make a chord, and he would stick the dimes between the keys, and they would just hold down this chord. His amp would have all this distortion, and he would take his hands and move and spin around. I mean, it was almost like seeing Jimi Hendrix playing the organ. It was just totally incredible. You thought the organ was playing itself.”
Before long, Manning began working as the first staff engineer at the fledgling Ardent Studios, engineering sessions for Stax Records when their main studios were overbooked, and both working the board and playing when the studio supported local rock bands, including Chris Bell’s Icewater and Rock City, which went on to become Big Star after Alex Chilton joined them. Manning was also deeply involved in Chilton’s solo recordings just before the Big Star era, as the singer-songwriter sought to define his sound after leaving the Box Tops, ultimately released on the retrospective 1970 album. And Manning masterminded his own solo psychedelic album, Home Sweet Home, at the time — now widely celebrated.
Terry Manning in the early days of Ardent Studios (Photo: Chris King)
Earlier, while playing with Lawson & Four More, Manning befriended Jimmy Page as he was touring with the Yardbirds, leading Page to work with Manning years later during the mixing of Led Zeppelin III, as detailed in this Memphis Magazine story.
Perhaps his greatest success was with the band ZZ Top, who recorded several albums at Ardent. “When ZZ Top started making ‘Gimme All Your Lovin” and those other Top 10 songs,” Johnson says, “those sounds were all Terry on the Oberheim keyboard and drum machine, programming drums and keys. He was MIDI-ing up the bass and coming up with those drum turnarounds. Of course, Billy Gibbons is a good drummer and probably did some of that programming down in in Texas, but then Terry came in and totally took it to the next level.”
Manning later moved to London and worked at Abbey Road Studios, then moved to the Bahamas as Chris Blackwell’s partner at Compass Point Studios, where he worked for over 20 years.
Terry Manning (right) at Ardent Studios with James Taylor and Peter Asher (Photo: Courtesy Terry Manning)
In more recent years, Manning leaned into making his own music again, releasing the albums West Texas Skyline: A Tribute to Bobby Fuller (2013), Heaven Knows (2015), Planets (2016), and Playin’ in Elvis’ House (2019), recorded live in the former home of Elvis Presley on Audubon Drive.
He was also a highly respected photographer, publishing two books of his work. In 2016, his work was featured in the Stax Museum of American Soul Music’s exhibit, “Scientific Evidence of Life on Earth During Two Millennia.” The exhibit showcased both Manning’s urban landscapes and his portraits of luminaries ranging from British singer Dusty Springfield to civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr.
But his studio wizardry, informed by his highly musical ears, was arguably his greatest accomplishment. As Johnson notes, “I’m sure Terry learned a lot of things from [Ardent’s] John Fry, because Fry was a little older than Terry, and was more of a mechanical nerd with the tape machines and compressors and all that, but Terry soon surpassed everybody. It didn’t take long before he was probably the number one guy in town. Other engineers just didn’t have that sparkle that he had. I’ve worked with great engineers, like Glyn Johns and Bill Price, but I’ve got to tell you, my favorite engineer of all time is really Terry Manning. He taught me so much about audio electronics and all of John Fry’s techniques. And he just really opened my mind to a world of creativity that I didn’t have. He just flat out knew how to make a record, you know?”
Rising up from the murk and mud of the underground, Gonerfest 22 has emerged in the form of a gigantic bipedal fish to announce what will be in store this fall, from Thursday, September 25th, through Sunday, September 28th, 2025. And with many puzzling over the apparent closure of Railgarten, Gonerfest’s host since 2021, it comes as a relief to hear that this year’s festival has found a new home at Wiseacre Brewery on Broad Avenue.
The big news, of course, is that the fest will be headlined by “Zamrock” legends W.I.T.C.H. (purveying Zambia’s unique blend of traditional African sounds and psychedelic rock) and Missoula/Seattle indie rockers Silkworm. Also included in the initial list of confirmed bands are Sydney, Australia’s (via L.A.) “egg punks” Tee Vee Repairmann; Athens, Georgia’s rockers Pylon Reenactment Society; Auckland, New Zealand’s post-punks Guardian Singles; Sydney’s garage punks Itchy & the Nits; and up-and-coming Chicago popsters Sharp Pins.
Part of a rich flowering of edgy psychedelic rock in Zambia, W.I.T.C.H. (an acronym for “We Intend To Cause Havoc”) were formed during that country’s golden post-independence days, headed by lead vocalist Emanuel “Jagari” Chanda, and were soon embraced as one of the greatest “Zamrock” bands of the 1970s. With the economy collapsing at the end of that decade, and facing increased government authoritarianism, W.I.T.C.H., like most Zamrock bands, were reduced to playing daytime shows to avoid the curfews, then faded away. Cut to 2012, when Chanda was invited to the U.S. to perform. In 2013, “New Witch” began touring again with a lineup including Chanda and new members from the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland. The band’s previous discography has also been re-released.
Silkworm, meanwhile, formed in 1987 and released nine influential albums and many singles, EPs, and compilations over an 18-year period, as well as touring worldwide in North America, Europe, and Asia, notably playing every state in the continental U.S. (except Delaware, for some reason). The group recently played together as a dual-guitar quartet, for the first time in thirty years, at Steve Albini’s memorial in 2024, and the experience was so rewarding that they began to discuss regrouping for some additional events — which now will bring them to Gonerfest.
Silkworm (Photo courtesy Goner Records)
Early Bird Gonerfest 22 golden passes go on sale March 19th at 10 a.m. CDT. They are $150 each for entry into all official shows. Single-day passes will be available at the door, according to venue capacity. For more info and tickets, click here.
Immersion (Photo: Ben Newman); SUSS (Photo: Bob Krasner)
When Colin Newman and Malka Spigel started their synthesizer duo Immersion back in the 1990s, part of electronica’s appeal was the chance to reinvent oneself. “We were very into the electronic music when it started; it felt like a fresh movement.,” says Spigel. “It freed us from our past, and we could start fresh ourselves, without people’s expectations of what we did before.”
“Yeah, there was an element in a lot of dance music at the time of it didn’t really matter where it came from,” adds Newman. “It didn’t matter who the people were, what gender they were, what color they were, or what language they spoke, because it was instrumental music. So I think for the first time in the history of what you might call popular music, you lost that kind of axis of basically Britain and America — and in Britain, Jamaica — really having the majority of the markets. Suddenly you could really come from anywhere. And that really opened up the whole scene. Although the roots of techno were in Detroit, and roots of house were in Chicago, they were not adopted at the same level in America as they were in Europe. So Berlin and other places, you know, became centers of techno, and that was kind of interesting.”
Newman, of course, had already sought out and created alternatives to the usual pop fare with Wire, whose debut, Pink Flag, with its stop-start breakdowns, semi-spoken/shouted vocals, and angular riffs created a stir in the music world of 1977. For the band at the time, though, punk was already a cliche: They were rejecting both classic rock posturing and punk posturing at the same time. They were, perhaps, the first example of “post punk.”
And yet, as Newman pointed out years ago on The Guestlist podcast with Sean Cannon, “There was no such thing as post-punk. We were just ‘not punk.’ But we were not punk in a way that was familiar with punk already.” Wire was thus premised on reinvention. “Punks hated us … Our songs were too short or they were too slow. We were too weird. We were too arty. We looked wrong.”
By the 1980s, with Wire and his own solo albums, Newman was still questing for new, unique sounds, and in 1985 he came to produce an album for the Israeli synth band Minimal Compact, which included Spigel. They became a couple and eventually married, as both explored the potential of synthesizers in their separate projects. Ultimately, they formed Immersion and released Oscillating in 1995.
And reinventing themselves was part of the appeal of electronica at the time. As Spigel says now, “We liked how mysterious the artists were. Even the famous ones were kind of hiding, not really showing who they were. And the music, of course, was inspiring.”
Embracing the sonic world of synthesizers has served them well, and since 2021 they’ve expanded Immersion’s sound to include collaboration with other artists, under the umbrella term of Nanocluster. The debut Nanocluster album saw Immersion collaborate with Stereolab’s Lætitia Sadier, German post-rock duo Tarwater, and electronic musicians Ulrich Schnauss and Scanner. Released in June 2024, Nanocluster, Vol. 2 had guests Thor Harris — the charismatic percussion player from Swans and Cubzoa — and Jack Wolter from Penelope Isles. And this year has seen the release of Nanocluster, Vol. 3.
On the new album, the couple are collaborating with the American “ambient country” band SUSS, described by Uncut magazine as “Eno’s Apollo Atmospheres crash-landed in America’s Sonoran Desert,” and by Pitchfork as “Neither rawboned nor ramshackle … their elegantly composed brand of ambient country stands as tall and clean as a brand-new pair of cowboy boots.”
A trio of veteran musicians Pat Irwin (the B-52s, Raybeats, 8 Eyed Spy), Bob Holmes (numun, Rubber Rodeo), and Jonathan Gregg (the Combine, the Linemen), SUSS combine traditional instruments like pedal steel, National steel guitar, mandolin, harmonica, baritone guitar, and harmonium with synthesizers and loops to create their a spacious, cinematic sound.
This sense of adventure makes them perfect partners for the Nanocluster project. As SUSS’ Bob Holmes notes in a press release, “Collaboration is an important aspect of the type of music SUSS makes. Whether we are collaborating with each other, or with musicians and artists outside of the band, the exploration and discovery of the unknown is central to our creative process. When Colin & Malka approached us to collaborate with them on Nanocluster, it seemed like a perfect fit. Their use of rhythm, synthesizers, bass and atmospherics felt very complementary to our instrumentation. As expected, the results were unexpected and our music was taken to a place where we would not have gone otherwise.”
Unexpected results can be good or bad, as Spigel points out. “It’s risky. There’s always nervous moments where you think, ‘Is it gonna work? Do they get the concept? Do we find a common ground?’ But surprisingly, so far, we’ve found a really beautiful common ground with every artist we’ve worked with, and we end up being friends. So that’s good.”
A common thread runs through every Nanocluster project, in that every album is ultimately initiated and brought to a close by Immersion. As Newman notes, “The thing that all the collaborations have in common, certainly from the recording side, is that we always finish and mix it, just to give it some kind of sense of continuity, and we do that with absolute inclusion of everything that our collaborating artist has given us. And they can say anything they want about how it ought to be. I mean, SUSS’ way of mixing is very different to ours. We tend towards something which you can hear all the all the nuance on it. They tend to like mix a bit more like jazz.”
Spigel adds, “But they’re into space, which is one of the things that draw us to them.”
The modern miracle of file sharing has been critical to Nanocluster. “With SUSS, they would send us four or five tracks with sounds that we could play over, and we did the same for them, and we built what ended up being the album,” says Newman. “It was all done remotely — actually, before last week, we never met them. We met them for the first time in New York when we rehearsed.
“I think once they kind of realized and trusted us that we could actually finish this off and produce something that was really something that we could all be proud of, that was probably the hardest moment. Once we were past that moment, then we started going very much into their world, and then finding what we could do that was really out of SUSS’ aesthetic. One is vocals. ‘In the Far Away’ started off as almost a kind of neoclassical piece, with the cycling pianos and that kind of vibe. And then Malka was like, ‘I think I’ve got a vocal for this.’ And so we put the vocal on it, and sent it. And they were like, ‘We love it!’ Also, having drums, which are a thing that SUSS don’t have, but actually they were encouraging all of this to be harder, tougher.”
Finally, as Spigel points out, “I think we did what felt right, within the music. It’s about what’s right for the piece.”
The latest Nanocluster collaboration will appear at the Green Room at Crosstown Arts Tuesday, March 18, at 7:30 p.m., with each band performing their own set before joining together for a third set as Nanocluster.
Yo-Yo Ma (Photo: courtesy Memphis Symphony Orchestra)
It has been said that if a person can count on the fingers of one hand all the musical experiences that transport you to another realm, then you are very lucky indeed. The Memphis Symphony Orchestra’s concert on Tuesday, February 25th, with guest cellist Yo-Yo Ma was just that — a transformative and life-affirming experience.
Playing to a glittering (black-tie optional), excited, sold-out audience, Maestro Robert Moody and his talented Memphis Symphony Orchestra musicians not only rose to the occasion, they uplifted their rapt listeners.
The orchestra opened with John Williams’ “Superman March,” a well known favorite from the movie Superman. What followed was a splendid performance of Death and Transfiguration by the great German composer Richard Strauss. A tone poem, this Opus 24 is surely one of Strauss’ highest achievements. Written for a large orchestra, demanding of every player, the reading by Maestro Moody and our symphony was a triumph in every way. Bravo’s echoed throughout the Cannon Center.
Okay, let’s be real. Yo-Yo Ma was the reason for the sell-out. Rightly so. He is a consummate artist, not only as a musician, but also as a human being. His ability to draw every member of the orchestra, every member of the audience, into his world is nothing short of astounding. The cello concerto by Antonín Dvořák is a masterpiece. The performance by Yo-Yo Ma and the Memphis musicians transported the audience into the heart and mind of a great composer, and told his story.
Then, encore! Yo-Yo loves to spotlight local talent in every place he visits. On this special night he brought to the stage Memphis’ pride and joy – “Lil Buck” Riley, who is known for a style of street dance that orginated in Memphis called “jookin.” Now a world superstar, Lil Buck began his career with Katie Smythe’s New Ballet Ensemble. The treat was a dance interpretation of “The Swan” by Camille Saint-Saëns. Yo-Yo and the cello section accompanied. It was an unbelievably beautiful capstone to a stellar evening of music.
Missy Elliott (Photo: Derek Blanks with crowdMGMT), The Killers (Photo: Chris Phelps), and Anderson .Paak (Photo: Israel Ramos)
With the new year barely begun, many of us are still recovering from holiday indulgences, just trying to get it in gear. Not so for the magical elves at Mempho Presents, who have clearly been working overtime to book yet another stellar spring music lineup.
Following last year’s successful debut, RiverBeat will return to the banks of the Mississippi River this May 2nd through 4th, with Missy Elliott, The Killers, and Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals headlining this year’s celebration. Other notable acts include Benson Boone, Cage the Elephant, Khruangbin, Ludacris, Public Enemy, and many more.
As is now standard Mempho practice, the lineup is heavy with local Memphis musicians. Producer Lawrence “Boo” Mitchell will be returning this year with Royal Studios Blues Jam featuring Bobby Rush, Duwayne Burside, Garry Burnside, Kent Burnside and Kinney Kimbrough. WYXR will be presenting the Memphis Rap OGz featuring local artists La Chat, Crunchy Black, Al Kapone, Skinny Pimp, DJ Zirk, Gangsta Pat, and DJ Spanish Fly. And the festival’s Sunday Gospel Celebration is also back, featuring local Memphis gospel legends The Wilkins Sisters, The Sensational Barnes Brothers, The Jubilee Hummingbirds, and Elizabeth King.
“RiverBeat is more than just a music festival — it’s a celebration of Memphis’s rich musical heritage and its vibrant future,” Jeff Bransford, Festival Producer at Mempho Presents, noted in a statement. “From blues and soul to rock and hip-hop, we’re looking forward to our second year as we continue to elevate Memphis’ position as a premier destination for live music and cultural experiences.”
The festival has implemented significant improvements for 2025, including two main entry points — the newly optimized North Entrance that puts attendees immediately in the heart of the action, and the Butler Street entrance, designed to enhance Downtown accessibility and support local businesses. The festival grounds will feature the return of a Ferris wheel, family-friendly activities, diverse food vendors, and nightly fireworks displays.
While some of the national acts featured have long employed local musicians, as when local axe man Khari Wynn plays guitar for Public Enemy, many full-fledged local acts will also appear, such as MonoNeon, FreeWorld, Iron Mic Coalition, Lina Beach, Salo Pallini, Black Cream, Joybomb, Jombi, Deaf Revival, the Neckbones, and Asheville-Memphis hybrid band The Hypos.
Three-day general admission tickets go on sale today at a discounted rate of $199 and VIP at $849, including all fees. The daily lineup will be announced in early February along with sales of single-day general admission and VIP tickets. Visit RiverBeat.com for more information.
The new “90 for 90” exhibit at Graceland (Photo: Courtesy Elvis Presley’s Graceland)
The anniversary of Elvis Aaron Presley’s birth, January 8th, has always been a time of reflection and dual meanings, as it also marks the day in 1935 that his twin Jesse Garon was stillborn a half hour before baby Elvis emerged. Yet that’s just one among a host of dramatic moments that punctuated one of the 20th century’s most epic lives. And even after all these years, the exhibits at Elvis Presley’s Graceland have never captured the whole story.
With that in mind, Elvis Presley’s Graceland launched a new exhibit this Wednesday, January 8th, full of never-before-seen gritty objects from a life well lived. Four days of festivities surround the opening of the new yearlong “90 for 90 Exhibit” that celebrates Presley’s life.
The new exhibit features 90 curated “stories” told through items specially selected from the over 1.5 million artifacts housed at the Graceland Archives at Preseley’s home in Memphis. These artifacts, each embodying a unique moment from the singer’s life, range from iconic items easily recognizable by fans to rare, personal pieces that capture Presley’s private moments out of the spotlight.
The earliest known photo of the Presleys (Photo: Courtesy Elvis Presley’s Graceland)
One such artifact, never displayed until now, is the earliest known photo of the Presley family, taken around 1938, cataloged as inventory no. 1 in the Graceland Archives Collection database. This is the original black-and-white photo found inside the family’s steamer trunk. The exact date of the picture is unknown, but Elvis appears to be two or three years old. It’s a gripping slice of life from the earliest days of the young family.
Other artifacts range from the trivial to the profound. Few may realize that Presley’s ’70s passion for racquetball actually led to a business venture, Presley Center Courts, founded in 1976, intended to become a nationwide chain of branded racquetball and spa facilities. Commemorative paddle rackets from that time are included in the exhibit.
So is the original film reel of The Frank Sinatra Timex Show: Welcome Home Elvis television special; a poem, “Why God Made Little Girls,” that Presley treasured; a road case of stage scarves from 1977; and, arguably the most badass of them all, a special pair of nunchucks personalized for “Master Elvis Presley.”
Many of the artifacts in the new exhibit have never been seen on display until now. (Photo: Courtesy Elvis Presley’s Graceland).
This yearlong exhibit will run through December 2025 and can be toured as part of the Elvis Presley’s Memphis entertainment complex. Throughout the coming year, Graceland will unveil additional new exhibits and refresh some existing spaces to enhance the visitor experience, so stay tuned. A full schedule of events going on now is available at Graceland.com/Birthday.
A week later, and the Memphis music community is still reeling from the cold-blooded murder of bassist Blake Rhea. As Bob Mehr reported in the Commercial Appeal last Thursday, the musician was at Louis Connelly’s Bar for Fun Times & Friendship on South Cleveland Street in the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 6th, when he was involved in an argument with another man. That led to the two stepping outside, where security cameras recorded the other man first possibly stabbing, then shooting Rhea point blank in his car before running off. Rhea was pronounced dead on the scene. Later that day, police “arrested and charged 51-year-old Edward Wurl with first degree murder in the shooting.” Wurl was also charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.
Fox 13 News later reported that two witnesses in the bar claimed that “Wurl and Rhea had both been recently involved in a romantic relationship with the same woman. The witnesses then positively identified Wurl from a six person photo lineup.” WREG News Channel 3 reported that “court records show that Wurl was convicted of burglary and unlawful wounding in 1994.” WREG then quoted bar owner Louis Connolly as saying, “Stories like this are so common that we have become almost numb to them. We are thankful that the violence did not come into the bar. But that doesn’t make this any less heartbreaking, and our thoughts go out to the victim and the victim’s family.”
Since that fateful night, those who knew Blake best having been struggling to pick up the pieces, recalling his easygoing humor, his skill and sensitivity as a musician, and his role as a much-loved teacher at School of Rock Germantown. Having played in such pivotal bands as CYC, American Fiction, John Németh, Lord T & Eloise, The Gamble Brothers Band, Marcella Simien, and, most recently, Southern Avenue, his brilliance had been celebrated for years by fans and fellow musos alike.
Just how many lives Rhea touched will be apparent on Saturday, November 16th, from 4-8 p.m., when Railgarten will host “Blake Rhea’s Encore,” a celebration of his life, featuring performances by bands who were especially close to him, including Jombi, American Fiction, Salo Pallini, and (possibly) “Tierinii, Tikyra, and Ori from Southern Avenue.”
Speaking to the Flyer this Thursday, Southern Avenue’s drummer, Tikyra Jackson, was still trying to get past a feeling of unreality, having toured extensively with Rhea over the past year. “I’m still just taking it in,” she confided. “We spent all year together. It’s so weird, knowing that we’re gonna get back into the vehicle and it won’t be the same vibe.
“He had already toured a lot [in the past], and so he kind of was, like, staying home. He was a teacher. But he came back out on the road for us, because he liked us and he enjoyed what we were doing. So over this past year we were able to create something together. I was able to be a part of his life.”
Asked if there was a special bond, as there so often is, between the drummer and the bassist, Jackson replies, “Yeah. And it’s all on camera too. I have my camera set up by my drum. So when I’m watching this footage, it’s like, you can see that connection between us. And for this latest record that we’ve made, he recorded on half the record. Luther [Dickinson] was on bass on the other half. So yeah, Blake was a great part of what we played. We played the new record before we even went into the studio. We had some shows before the studio session, just to go into the studio more comfortable. So he was a part of the early process of getting from the stage of the writing to actually making it happen, making it happen live.”
In the studio, Jackson notes, Rhea’s contributions were memorable. “He was open to trying different things,” she said, noting that “his touch, his flavors in the music” were memorable. “One of the songs, ‘So Much Love,’ is very iconic to me because of the bassline that he came up with.”
Recalling all this, it was hard for Jackson to go on. “I don’t know, man, even talking to you now, I’m like, I feel like I’m experiencing new emotions and new realizations. But what a beautiful thing to capture his soul on the record, you know. And it’s not like it was 30 years ago. This was him living and breathing just yesterday, you know?”
