What does “New Wave” even mean anymore? Unsure if younger generations even know the genre label, I asked myself that question recently as I spoke to the founders of Above Jupiter, a young band in every sense of the word. Instead of going retro, I asked them what they would call the choppy, stomping, synth-tinged, and hook-filled music they made — so reminiscent of sounds that captivated me in the 1980s. Graham Burks III, the group’s singer and drummer, didn’t miss a beat. “We’ve been calling it art pop.”
To clarify, he added, “We’re trying to make popular enjoyable music that doesn’t really fit into a category. It’s our own art. Other artists that used that label have been like, DEVO and David Bowie — artists that are hard to fit into a specific genre.”
Those two acts are perfect reference points for the fundamentals of their sound, as are influences they list on their website like Talking Heads, Beck, and Gorillaz. The end result is a beat-driven soundscape with equal parts slashing guitar, skronky synth, and cool singing that lives in a kind of timeless pop utopia. And it’s not only timeless, it’s literally ageless. One would never guess that these musicians are all between 14 and 16 years old.
Their debut single was celebrated only last month in Chris McCoy’s Music Video Monday column. “‘Details’ is a super catchy rock song about ‘going off the rails’ if you don’t have the basics nailed now, which these kids definitely do,” McCoy wrote, noting that the group’s bassist and co-founder Noah Hand directed the video, being “a recent Indie Memphis Youth Film Festival alum who learned to animate at Cloud901.”
“I do film,” Hand told me, “and the video was all directed and written by me. I’m really glad how that turned out. It’s all my vision.”
The band, which also includes Zariya Scullark on guitar and Desmond Coppin on keys, was started by Burks and Hand. “We were in fourth grade or fifth grade when we put together our first project, which was going to be a duo called the Breeze,” Burks noted. “That didn’t end up working out, but around that time we recorded four songs as demos. And as time went on we got our two other band members and the songs have just evolved into what they are now.”
As it turns out, all four of the musical wunderkinder attend the Stax Music Academy, but that’s been peripheral to the band’s formation. As Burks explained, “We all happen to attend Stax Academy but I wouldn’t say that the band was formed through Stax Academy. I mean, I’ve been playing with Desmond since I was four, and we were in our first band together. So really, it’s just a coincidence that we all ended up at Stax and I think it’s just because that’s a really amazing music program.”
Hand added, “I feel like the music of Stax and all that stuff that we play over there correlates with our music and affects us. The way we evolved was through that music. And I’m very glad that we have that outlet, because it helps us learn the basics.”
Certainly there’s some serious training and talent behind the group’s home-recorded tracks, which will soon be available Friday, January 12, when Above Jupiter release their debut EP, Demo. There will be a release show at the Hi-Tone (Big Room) that night with Shorty and The Grooves and The Contradictions also playing. Given the polished final product, and the futuristic shimmer of tracks like “Meteor Beach” and “Midnight Sun,” the EP’s title is somewhat ironic.
“The title track, ‘Demo,’ is something that we would show aspiring members of the band when we were trying to recruit them,” Burks noted. “‘Demo’ was always the working title of that piece, because it’s a demo of what we’re trying to go for. We were running with that title for long enough that it just kind of stuck. And I feel like it was a pretty interesting choice to make the title track of the of the EP an instrumental song. That means we can go in more directions with the EP instead of being locked into the style of a title track. Not everything has to be the same.”
And, with that sentiment as a mission statement of sorts, expect a lot more not-the-same music from these young folks in the future.
This Wednesday, November 22nd, will mark an apotheosis of sorts for a man who, despite being raised in El Dorado (pronounced El Dor-RAY-do), Arkansas, has become an institution of Memphis music. That would be pianist and performer extraordinaire Jason D. Williams, who’s been pounding the ivories with boogie-woogie fervor here for over 40 years. Now, those decades of musical mania will culminate in Williams receiving a brass note on Beale Street, in a ceremony just before his performance at Lafayette’s Music Room, where he’ll preside over his twelfth annual “Thanksgiving Eve” show at the venue.
Arriving in Memphis in 1982, Williams quickly began a residency at Mallards in The Peabody Hotel, through which his reputation rapidly grew. Soon after, Jason D. Williams was signed to RCA Records, and later on a latter-day iteration of the Sun Records label. Williams now joins a select few honored by both the Peabody Brass Duck Feet and the Beale Street Brass Note.
Honoring the artist thus is appropriate, given his role in keeping the art of boogie woogie and rock and roll piano alive. As he told the Memphis Flyer in 2021, “You take somebody like Jerry Lee Lewis singing ‘Five foot two, eyes of blue,’ and that was a lesson on the chords of the 1800s. Or ‘Alabama Jubilee,’ or ‘Sweet Georgia Brown.’ Between him and Leon Redbone, you could just about get all the storybook you needed on how to play good ol’ chord changes. Because those songs have a lot of the changes that go through everything, not just the pounding rockabilly stuff. You listen to that stuff, or even Al Jolson, and you’ll get all the changes you need to be a great musician.”
Williams, who often composes songs on the spot, even while performing onstage, has clearly internalized The Great American Songbook and more, yet can walk listeners through all of history, even up to the modern era. “I’ll go from ragtime up to some Elton John or ‘Freebird’ or whatever,” he told the Flyer. “Whatever comes to my mind. I usually am the first one to hear what I’m doing. I’m just an audience member too. My fingers take off and I start singing, and it could just be something somebody said in the audience, and my fingers take off, and I go, ‘Okay, here I go!’”
Jason D. Williams will receive a Beale Street Brass Note and perform at Lafayette’s Music Room, with opener Susan Marshall, this Wednesday, November 22nd, at 7 p.m. Visit lafayettes.com for details.
Jared McStay raises a leg (Jim McDermott in foreground) at a 2016 Simple Ones reunion at Shangri-La (Credit: Mike Brown)
Memphis music was dealt yet another gut-punch last week with the announcement that Jared McStay had succumbed to cancer on November 15th. And while there was no separating the man from his music, what Memphians mourned most was McStay’s winning personality, either as the congenial owner of Shangri-La Records or as the ever-curious man-about-town, eager to check out new music in whatever form he could find it.
Yet any remembrance of McStay’s legacy must go beyond noting that he was a member of the Simpletones/Simple Ones, So Gung Ho, and other bands, for the sheer number of those “other bands” was stunning, as was the prolific pace at which McStay wrote songs. To get a sense of Jared McStay, the musician, I spoke to two local players who knew him best: Tripp Lamkins, best known as the bassist for the Grifters, and John Stivers, best known as the guitarist for Impala. Aside from those more widely recognized bands, the two played with McStay in various less celebrated collaborations, and gained much insight into what made this unofficial Mayor of Midtown tick, musically speaking.
Unsurprisingly, both Lamkins and Stivers were drawn to McStay via the Simple Ones (originally called the Simpletones), who impressed most of Midtown Memphis right out of the starting gate. “One Friday night in 1991, Andria Lisle, Roy Berry and I went down to the Loose End to see the Simpletones,” recalls Lamkins. “It may have been their first gig, or one of their earliest shows for sure. I fell in love with them right away. And Jared was a big Grifters fan, so once he saw me there he announced that their next gig would be with the Grifters. Of course no such show had been discussed or booked or anything. Right after their set Jared came up to me and said ‘Come on man! What do you say? Let’s do this!’ And I was like, ‘Yeah! Why not? Sure!’ This began a long run of us playing shows together and of course a long friendship.”
1995 debut album by the Simple Ones on Shangri-La Records
Stivers was similarly struck by the Simple Ones’ earliest shows, and what he saw seems to have inspired him to co-found Impala. “I’m not sure if I saw their exact first show, but I saw them soon after. I was just like, ‘Man! These guys are playing great music, these guys are rockin out.’ Jared came out of the chute just like a rocket. I thought, ‘Man, this band is tight and the songs are crazy.’ It wasn’t like going to see Chilton or someone who’d already been on the scene for years. These were new guys and they were killing it. It inspired me to want to play more music.” Not long after, Impala was born.
Lamkins, for his part, wanted to be even more involved after that first show. “This began a long run of us playing shows together, and of course a long friendship,” he recalls. “I ended up hanging with the Simpletones all the time. I mixed their first record, which was just a four track cassette outing, and I was usually present whenever they went to Easley-McCain Studios. I was kind of a producer, but mostly I helped rein in Jared some, because he would never stop tweaking a song or rewriting parts on the fly. He was just never satisfied with anything. I’d have to stop him and let him know that what he had was already great. But even after the songs were all done he would keep tweaking them.
“I ended up joining the Simple Ones eventually. I may have been the second longest serving member of the band, though I haven’t done the math on that. Maybe Jim McDermott was there longer than me.”
With Lamkins an official Simple One toward the end of that band’s tenure, and Stivers jamming with the group occasionally, a new group was inevitable, given McStay’s penchant for launching new projects. That would turn out to be the Total Strangers, which included Lamkins, Stivers, Grifters drummer Stan Gallimore, and McStay. “We started Total Strangers around 1998, I think,” says Stivers. “There are a lot of recordings of that stuff. We did a single, with an instrumental that we all came up with, and then a song that Jared wrote, ‘Netherworld,’ which I think is the greatest. We recorded almost an album’s worth of stuff at Easley-McCain, and they were mostly all Jared’s songs. Impala had imploded by then, so I liked just being a guitar player in the background, filling in spots over Jared’s rhythm parts. We played quite a few gigs. We even went on a mini tour in the Upper Midwest.”
Fraysia was yet another band that sprouted from McStay’s imagination, many years later. “Jared pulled Fraysia together,” says Lamkins. “I think it was his dream lineup at the time. I had been Jared’s go to bass player for a while. We had been playing with Andy Saunders, who is the most underrated drummer in Memphis. And of course adding Stivers to any band automatically classes up the joint. Stivers came up with the name Fraysia, since we were a supergroup like Asia but from Memphis. John and I have been playing together since we were little kids so we have a great rapport, but Jared and John had really great chemistry as well. Fraysia was such an easy gig for me because I basically just got out of the way and let the guitars shine.”
Stivers recalls their six-string interplay well. Asked to describe McStay’s approach to the guitar, he says, “It was just pure energy. I mean, absolute pure energy. And I have never, never played with a more enthusiastic musician. He was always so happy to be playing. It didn’t matter if we were screwing it up and sounding awful, it didn’t bother him. He didn’t ever get bothered by that, he didn’t ever get frustrated. And I’ve been in plenty of bands where the frustrations run high when things aren’t working right. Jared just never looked back. Like, ‘Keep going. Because none of that matters. This is the energy.’ It was totally about energy for him.”
While Fraysia’s heyday was some seven years ago, McStay naturally stayed busy with other bands, such as So Gung Ho, one of his latest groups, profiled here. He also launched many combos with his wife, Lori Gienapp McStay. One of the busiest was Relentless Breeze, a cover band in which the erstwhile punk wholeheartedly embraced the complexities of “yacht rock,” featuring the smooth sounds and jazzy chords of Christopher Cross and the like. Appropriately enough, the couple was dedicated to those songs even as they vacationed on the beach with Stivers and his family.
“They bought keyboards and guitars so they could learn songs for Relentless Breeze,” Stivers remembers. “We were on vacation and they were practicing music — after the day was over, after we’d gone to the beach. That’s dedication right there. They liked to always have something cooking, and I love the fact that Jared was involved in music with his wife. Of course, she is a musician and very talented. In fact, they pulled off two or three bands. And Jared just rolled like a tank through music, musical experiences, and bands. And man, I’m glad he did.”
Stivers has to take a breath before stepping back to reflect on a life well-lived in music. “Jared never, ever stopped,” he says. “You know, he never said, ‘God, man, I haven’t done anything for a couple of months, or six months!’ That never happened. He never had any downtime. If one thing kind of faltered or ended, there was something new. I’ve never known anybody with that much of a legacy.”
A visitation will be held for McStay from 4-6 p.m. this Tuesday, November 21st at Canale Funeral Directors. A celebration of his life is being planned for December.
Como bluesman R.L. Boyce and daughter Shanquisa (Credit: Yancey Allison)
When lung cancer claimed the life of drummer, guitarist, and singer/songwriter R.L. Boyce on November 9th, it left a gaping void in the heart of the North Mississippi blues. Indeed, over the course of his 68 years on earth, he emerged as one of our most powerful voices in that unique tradition, embodying its rhythms and harmonies with his very being.
When he was named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) earlier this year, it only confirmed what many in the Mid-South already knew: that he was an integral player in the North Mississippi scene, having had a hand in some of its most distinctive music since at least the 1970s.
That was made clear soon after he passed away, when Dr. David Evans, who headed up the University of Memphis’ ethnomusicology program for many years, posted an image of a 15-year-old Boyce on social media.
R.L. Boyce (second from left) playing snare with Napoleon Strickland (left) in 1970. (Credit: David Evans)
Evans wrote that this image “might be the very first photo taken of him, at least in a musical setting,” adding that the occasion was a Labor Day weekend picnic at L. P. Buford’s place east of Senatobia, MS, on Sept. 4, 1970. “R. L., then aged 15, plays the snare drum,” wrote Evans, “with an unidentified bass drum player and Napoleon Strickland playing fife.”
His penchant for drums put him at the center of the vivid musical culture of North Mississippi for the decades that followed, as he played drum set for Jesse Mae Hemphill in the 1980s and ’90s, then bass drum and snare with fife master Othar Turner (whose wife Ada was R.L.’s relative).
He continued as part of the Turner drum corps for years, but also took to the guitar as this century dawned, and in recent years he was known primarily for his self-accompanied singing, releasing the albums Ain’t the Man’s Alright (Sutro Park, 2013), Roll and Tumble (Waxploitation Records, 2017), Rattlesnake Boogie (Waxploitation, 2018), and Ain’t Gonna Play Too Long (Waxploitation, 2018) under his own name, as well as being included on this year’s compilation Tell Everybody! on Easy Eye Sound.
Shanquisa Birge Boyce, Boyce’s daughter, remembers his guitar playing as an integral part of her life. “He had jobs as I was growing up, but music’s always been his passion,” she says. “Then, as he started getting older and stopped working, he went full time with his music.”
The music was something Boyce lived and breathed, according to Shanquisa. Even as he was nominated for Grammy Awards, Blues Music Awards, or named a National Heritage Fellow, it was the music that mattered most to him. “He was really excited [by such recognition] but the only thing he really wanted to do was play blues guitar,” she recalls. “If he didn’t make enough money, or would get down or sad or something, he’d pick up his guitar to bring up his spirits.”
R.L. Boyce with daughter Shanquisa. (Credit: Yancey Allison)
That took the form of many jam sessions in and around his home in Como, Mississippi. “There was always music in the yard,” says Shanquisa. “He’d start up in the yard and play day and night.”
Such festivities created many beloved memories for Boyce’s family over the years, even as his playing remains indelibly etched into the minds of the fans who witnessed his shows. This weekend his family will pay their respects — joined by the Como community and many the music lovers whose hearts he touched. Many around the world will pull out their R.L. Boyce albums to revisit his finely-wrought, rhythmic blues, and, as Shanquisa notes, that’s just what Boyce would have wanted. “I think he would like to be remembered as a Mississippi Blues Man.”
R.L. Boyce funeral service schedule details Friday, November 17th Visitation, 2 p.m. – 5 p.m. Felix Cauthen Funeral Home 13653 MS-HWY 4 Senatobia, MS, 38668 662 562 8667
Saturday, November 18th Visitation, 1 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. Celebration of Life, 2:30 p.m. Hunter Chapel MB Church 1654 Hunter Chapel Road Como MS, 38619
Donations for flowers and other expenses can be made to Boyce’s GoFundMe page.
Feeling a bit like a stringer for Rolling Stone, I leapt at the chance to talk with Mark Arm of Mudhoney, a rock band among rock bands, a band that’s kept largely the same personnel and certainly the same aesthetic in sharp, punk-primed focus for over three decades. With the same disbelief, I had to pinch myself when I heard the band would be playing Memphis, a city so often missed in tours by such well-established bands. But there it was: Mudhoney and Hooveriii, playing the Hi Tone this Friday, November 3rd.
Yet if Mudhoney is established, they most certainly are not establishment, still embodying the punk credo of the ’80s, also embraced by Jim Dickinson, that “corporate rock sucks.” Words to live by, and worth reiterating with this band, so often lumped with “grunge” but more lively and not as salable as those mega-grunge bands of yore. Even the albums Mudhoney has done with big-name producers (including Dickinson) have kept at their heart a rawness that should make any grit-n-grind Memphis punk feel at home.
Catching up with Arm as the group arrived in Asheville, North Carolina, I jumped in by asking what it takes to keep things surprising and a little unhinged even in a band with such longevity.
Memphis Flyer:You have a 35-year long catalog of songs to draw from. How do you and the rest of the band approach that and keep it fresh?
Mark Arm: It’s true, we tend to play some of the older stuff — that we can remember. Occasionally, we’ll dust off some some weird thing that no one’s heard for a while. And people respond well to them. So it’s like a feedback loop. You can feed off that energy and that keeps the song fresh.
Listening to various records of yours over the years, it seems like you guys strike this beautiful balance between evolving and keeping things fresh, yet staying true to a certain aesthetic of really thick, sick guitar tones and great riffs.
I appreciate that a lot. You see a lot of bands chasing something — they might start out initially kind of cool, but then they’re like trying to catch up with whatever they think is trendy. And by the time their record comes out, it’s two years too late.
Meanwhile, you guys could give fuck-all about the trends.
I don’t even know what they are. I mean, even if we were to, God forbid, do an unplugged album, it would still sound like us. That whole notion of the unplugged album was like, you can really tell a good song if it’s stripped down to its bare essentials and played acoustically. It’s like, ‘No! the whole point of the song — the way we recorded it — was the guitar sound.’ That’s it!
And there is a real cornucopia of guitar tones in your albums over the years. Do you think of that in any particular way, like saying, ‘Okay, this song has got to have a Black Sabbath kind of tone’ or something like that?
Not in terms of trying to exactly emulate something, but I did get an Sabbra Cadabra pedal that sounds like you’re going through a Laney [amplifier] from the ’70s. You know, it doesn’t quite but it’s a very cool pedal.
Certainly diving into the possibilities of the guitar. I’ve been listening to the latest album, Plastic Eternity. Did that mark the first use of a synthesizer on a Mudhoney album?
No, no — we have done things like a fake Hawkwind song. [laughs] And on Five Dollar Bob’s Mock Cooter Stew, we re-did “Make It Now Again,” and and I think there’s also a song called “No Song III” on that. They both have synth noise or chords in the background. And actually the first time we played in Asheville we went to the Moog factory. That put Guy [Maddison] on a path of starting up an all-synthesizer band called The Beauty Hunters with an old friend of his. It’s actually a three piece but the third person does projections. And they would do these really cool shows in places that don’t normally host shows, like a generator under a bridge or in some weird park or something. And that was always a really cool thing to go see. Obviously Guy moved to Australia, so that isn’t quite happening anymore, but Guy’s put synthesizer on a couple of songs on Digital Garbage and on this record. And he actually learned his way around it. It wasn’t like what we did in the 90s, where it was just like, “Arrgh, let’s make noise!” It was a more considered approach.
So Guy, your bassist, lives in Australia now, and rejoins you guys for tours like this?
He moved to Australia in the summer of 2022. And this is our third tour since he’s moved to Australia. This time Guy just came to Seattle before the tour. We had a couple practices and now by the fourth show into the tour we’re firing and all cylinders. By now, Guy’s been in the band for more than twice as long as Matt [Lukin] was.
I wanted to ask you a second about working with Jim Dickinson. Some people say it’s sort of your blues rock album, and I don’t really hear it that way.
I don’t hear it that way either. I mean, there’s always been a hint of blues but it’s not actual blues. And hopefully it’s not like Blues Hammer in that Ghost World movie. But it’s kind of taking a blues structure, not quite 12 bar or whatever, but with two lines of the same line and the third line’s a different line.
Did Dickinson draw out anything in the band when producing you?
It’s hard to say, it was so long ago. But I have really fond memories of working with Jim. That was a weird period, because the way that deal with Reprise was structured, on the third record, we wouldn’t be able to keep the back end of the recording budget, so whatever we spent was spent. We could kind of feel the end [with Reprise] was coming, and this would be our last chance to actually work with a quote unquote “producer.” We were wracking our brains, trying to think of like who would we even want to work with, and Jim Dickinson was the only person that we thought would be great. And he was.
I just love the fucking looseness of Like Flies on Sherbert. Obviously, he wasn’t gonna be like, “You need to clean that shit up.” Right? He’s gonna let whatever happens happen. He wasn’t living in a music industrial town like LA or New York. He was just living in his house in North Mississippi.
Has the band come through Memphis much over the years?
Not often enough! I mean, the last time we played there was a Gonerfest. Fucking a blast! And I generally don’t enjoy festivals that much, especially the bigger kind. I would never go to one. There’s no way I would just like pitch a tent in the mud somewhere. But Gonerfest is definitely different. It’s got a different aesthetic than most festivals. It’s the only time I’ve been able to see Human Eye!
Well, Memphis welcomes you. I’ll just say that on behalf of the city.
David Cousar with Janet Holloway Cousar (Credit: David Cousar)
Even before David Cousar passed away last Thursday at 73, after struggling with cancer, social media was overflowing with tributes to him from fellow musicians, friends, and fans who were touched by his art. The gifted guitarist, songwriter, and singer was also a gifted writer who had shared his journey through the illness with poetic, philosophical, and humorous posts for at least three years, and now the community was staying with him through the endgame. While some misinterpreted the flood of memories to mean that he’d died already, he was weak but relishing the earliest wave of shout-outs.
“He would have been seeing them through Tuesday,” recalls his wife Janet Holloway Cousar of the numerous posts. “But he went really fast. He was alert and we were talking, and he knew everybody was posting things on Wednesday, but he wanted me to read them to him later. And there just wasn’t a later.”
Still, the many memories were a moving tribute to a music-maker known for his blend of spontaneity and discipline, restraint and audacity, in equal measures, and sharing them was clearly cathartic for the local music community. The posts continued even after Bob Mehr’s thoughtful obituary was published last Friday, as people struggled to come to terms with the loss of Cousar’s sprawling, omnivorous talent. His playing had a depth and breadth that was both instantly engaging and difficult to fathom.
Saxophonist Jim Spake was among the first to encounter Cousar’s talent, back in the wild frontier of the 1970s, when musical genres were arguably less siloed than in the current era. “I was in my first or second year of college when Doug Garrison introduced me to him. And we started playing gigs together by ’75 or ’76. He was already more seasoned by then. He was seven years older than me, but he didn’t seem that much older. He was always really youthful acting and looking.”
David Cousar on a trip to New Orleans, ca. 1983 (Photo: Courtesy of Jim Spake)
Even then, Spake witnessed Cousar’s venturesome spirit, his appetite for learning and expanding his horizons. “He loved Wes Montgomery, Ry Cooder, and Taj Mahal, and the way they would reimagine pop standards,” Spake recalls. “He would do Joni Mitchell songs. His ears were always open to stuff that was new to him, always looking for new sounds to incorporate into his own music, you know, even in his formative years of music playing. He came up to visit me in Boston when I was at Berklee [College of Music], and slept on my floor. While he was there he hunted down Pat Metheny and got a lesson with him. David was pretty over the moon about that because Pat Metheny was brand-new then; he was new and fresh. A lot of people hadn’t even heard him yet. Back then you could still do this.”
Though self-taught on guitar, Cousar was a disciplined student of the instrument. “He started out as a young rocker, but he took those Berklee correspondence courses and that was back when it was done by mail. That was sometime in the ’70s,” recalls Spake. “He struck me as somebody who always was looking for ways to improve.”
Later in life, he would share his studies of everything from “Minuet I” by Sylvius Leopold Weiss to klezmer music. That in turn filtered into the imaginative playing he brought to other artists’ music, ranging from Al Green to Amy LaVere to Marcella Simien and beyond. He also had a fine-tuned understanding of Caribbean music, from reggae to Bahamian folk auteur Joseph Spence. His knowledge of such music grew exponentially during the many years he spent in Florida.
“He played with this white reggae band in Florida called Lazy Day, and they would play in the Keys as well,” recalls Spake. That heavily influenced the material covered in one of Cousar’s earliest Memphis bands, the Bluebeats, formed in the early ’80s, which also included Spake. “I was already into reggae. And you know, I think we played some pretty good stuff. I’m sure there was too much Bob Marley, but also some more obscure stuff like the Melodians.”
Ad hoc group featuring David Cousar on bass, with Randy Haspel, Richard Roseborough, Donnie Baer, and Jim Spake, ca. 1982 (Photo: Courtesy of Jim Spake)
That group would become a fixture at Jefferson Square, the Bombay Bicycle Club, and other venues for years, but Cousar was also sitting in with the many ad hoc groups that played in Memphis at the time, including the Midtown Jazzmobile. Yet what many fans treasured most were his solo shows, notably at The Buccaneer before its demise, where Cousar’s playful spirit could have full rein. Such moments were testaments to the singer’s spontaneity, as with this reimagining of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette.”
This venturesome, eclectic spirit stayed with Cousar until the end. As his wife Janet recalls, “he played his guitar up until the last few weeks of his life, playing classical, jazz, and his own songs.” He also read and listened to music voraciously, listening to Marc Ribot, Neil Young, B.B. King, Wayne Shorter, and Ry Cooder as his health failed. “He was always devouring information,” Janet notes, adding that his last readings included The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard P. Feynman — a perfect title to sum up Cousar’s approach to life.
The story of Janet’s presence in his life reads like a novel in itself. As she describes their first encounter in the ’80s, “I met him and it was just love at first sight. We went out on a date and we were living together from that point on for four and a half years. He was the love of my life and vice versa.”
Yet lifestyle differences came between them, and they went their separate ways for decades. By the time Janet found herself free to start seeing him again, Cousar was already ill, but that didn’t dampen their mutual passion in the least. “We never got back together until a little over a year and a half ago,” she recalls, noting her divorce from her then-husband at the time. After that, “I called David, knowing he was sick and did not have long. I wanted to spend whatever time could with him. And you know, he was just happy as can be. Nothing had changed!”
It was a charmed moment for them both. “When we started getting back together, he wasn’t playing. He wasn’t really talking to a lot of people. Though at least his friends would message him or text him just out of the blue, saying how much they loved him.” Cousar ultimately rallied to play on recordings by Billy Swan at Southern Grooves studio this January and in a series of Murphy’s shows with Rick Steff and Shawn Zorn this summer.
Meanwhile, his health issues brought practical concerns that complicated the romance. “When you’re sick and you’re on Medicaid, you don’t want to lose it. We started talking about getting married in February of this past year, but every time I got closer, I was like, ‘I don’t want you to lose your insurance.’ So we waited. We almost waited too late, but I’m so glad we got married. It just means everything.” They had a small bedside ceremony officiated by their close friend Susan Marshall on October 22nd. “He was very sick,” recalls Janet, “but he rallied for that day.”
Since Cousar’s passing, Janet, who works in the medical industry, has been acutely aware of the dire healthcare issues confronting musicians like her late husband. “If I could just get a group of doctors who are fans of music, who would agree to do screenings or something … I just feel very, very passionate about getting people to a point where they feel comfortable going to the doctor,” Janet muses. Fellow musician Vicki Loveland has set up a GoFundMe campaign focused not only on funding a memorial to Cousar at Elmwood Cemetery, but assisting other musicians. “After David’s final expenses are covered,” reads the GoFundMe page, “the family will donate all future donations from this campaign to MusiCares in memory of David,” referring to the medical assistance fund for musicians set up by the Recording Academy.
Meanwhile, Janet Cousar is left picking up the pieces, reflecting on the Renaissance man she knew so well. “David had an amazing philosophy on life,” she muses. “He only looked forward and never back. He lived with hope instead of regret. He encouraged me not to be sad where we were, but look forward to what life we had left. He saw beauty in the mundane that most people don’t notice. Up until the day he passed away he talked about where we would go for our honeymoon. In every step he took in life, he was a true artist.”
For a good decade or more, this city offered a brilliant solution to music-loving parents who couldn’t take their young kids to see great indie bands in the bars that featured them: Memphis Rock-n-Romp. Founded by Stacey Greenberg in 2005, the loose-knit organization was active for 10 years, staging afternoon shows by local bands in backyards and other kid-friendly spaces. And, because the music wasn’t typical children’s fare, younger parents too overworked to frequent the club scene flocked to the events, kids in tow. I know I did.
All the sense of discovery that one finds in the club experience was still present in the Rock-n-Romp shows, and there was even good beer to be had (for the adults). I’ll long remember seeing The Barbaras in all their glory at one such event on the grounds of the Metal Museum. There I was, a dedicated parent, discovering a new band! With their multi-voiced harmonies and pop hooks and hint of madness, The Barbaras were a revelation in more ways than one, and the kids liked it too.
Now, after a long hiatus with only occasional revival shows over the years, Memphis Rock-n-Romp is back in full swing. And with it comes another revival, the beloved Live from Memphis platform, which helped pioneer live-streamed music concerts in the early 2000s, including some of the Rock-n-Romps, before going into hibernation itself for some time.
This Saturday, October 28th, Live from Memphis presents a special Halloween Rock-n-Romp from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Ravine, which many Memphis Flyer readers know from our recent Best of Memphis party. Entry is $5 per adult, but children are admitted free of charge. Adults must have a child with them to attend. (Click here for details).
Bands include KittyPool, Above Jupiter, and Tamar Love (from Mama Honey). While Love is the wisest, oldest, and biggest name on the bill, some of the other players were avidly taking in the music of the original wave of Rock-n-Romps, even playing together as kids at the Rock-n-Romp summer camp more than a decade ago. Their interest thus piqued, they’re still cooking up sounds of their own today.
One often saw the Davis family at the original events; now Josie Davis will be performing in KittyPool. And she’s not alone. As Live From Memphis co-founder Christopher Reyes notes in a statement, “When Mati was a baby, we took her to one of those classic Rock-n-Romps at Mud Island, but she doesn’t remember. She and her sister are now at the perfect age to really appreciate it, so for me, it made a lot of sense to bring it back. Once we started planning, we were all like, ‘Hell yeah,’ and everyone we told about it pretty much had the same response.”
Board member Graham Burks has long been deeply involved in the organization, including as a player, and now it’s time for his son, Graham Burks III, to take the stage in Above Jupiter. Memphis Flyer readers may recall our review of Graham-the-Younger’s band The Becomers two years ago. Above Jupiter began around that same time, and all of the band members attend Stax Music Academy together.
As Graham-the-Elder explains, “An early version of Above Jupiter opened up for the Becomers at the Time Warp Drive. Graham (III) and keyboardist Desmond Coppin have been playing together since they were three, and played a Rock-n-Romp 10 years ago at age four. Bassist Noah Hand and Graham met in elementary school and started plotting this band as an extension of Noah’s visual art. They call the music ‘art pop’ and Noah designs their shirts and art. Noah recently had an animated short in the Indie Memphis Youth Film Fest. He is currently animating their first music video for their first single ‘Details,’ which combines his animation with live footage shot by my brother Justin Burks and edited by Noah.”
And, as Burks notes, Above Jupiter will clearly be in the Halloween spirit this Saturday. “They’ll be in costume as Gorillaz,” he says, “and they’ll be performing live on WREG Live at 9 a.m. on Friday morning.”
The Art Project will also lead Halloween arts and crafts activities for the kids at Saturday’s event, and there will be a Halloween costume contest with prizes awarded.
Packy Axton, Don Nix, and Steve Cropper, ca. 1960 (Credit: Don Nix)
Take heart, juvenile delinquents everywhere: there walks among us one of your kind who parlayed his street savvy into nothing less than crafting a new Memphis Sound. You can learn all about that and more this Monday, October 16th at 7 p.m., when author Robert Gordon sits down to chat with Nix about his life in music. It’s part of Gordon’s ongoing series of listening parties at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, in which he curates playlists of songs by the likes of Steve Cropper, Al Kapone, IMAKEMADBEATS, Boo Mitchell, and others with the artists themselves, using the music as a jumping-off point for discussions of their craft.
Nix’s name may not be as familiar as those others to some, but he’s played a pivotal role in Memphis music ever since he was a student at Tech High School, “where the delinquents were transferred and taught a trade before they flunked out completely,” as Gordon writes in It Came from Memphis. That was when he played sax with a group that included Cropper, Duck Dunn, Charlie Freeman, and Packy Axton: The Royal Spades. Axton’s mother Estelle was busy starting up a new business called Satellite Records, and when she facilitated a recording session for the group, she prevailed upon them to change their name to the Mar-Keys.
That session would yield the instrumental track “Last Night,” which was a shot across the bow of pop music, an R&B smash hit by a bunch of white kids that would presage the integration championed by Satellite, as it soon morphed into Stax Records.
Packy Axton and Don Nix in their delinquent daze (Credit: Don Nix)
But Nix was destined to be more of a behind-the-scenes player. As he told Gordon in It Came from Memphis, “I didn’t play on any sessions after a certain point. Not after they got good musicians to play … Eventually, I was producing, and that’s all I ever wanted to do. I wanted to write and to put records together in the studio.”
He embraced that role with aplomb, eventually working as a producer, arranger, and musician for artists as diverse as Furry Lewis, Albert King, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Jeff Beck, Brian May, Eric Clapton, and many others. His song, “Going Down,” originally recorded by the band Moloch in 1969, has become a rock standard covered by Freddie King, Jeff Beck, Deep Purple, JJ Cale, Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Who, Led Zeppelin, and others. The Rolling Stones performed “Goin’ Down” as recently as 2012 on a televised live concert with John Mayer and Gary Clark, Jr.
Now 82, Nix has decades of stories to share. He was the one member of the Mar-Keys “who could draw the crowds because he was so completely entertaining to watch,” writes Gordon. That instinct for entertaining, and a story well-told, hasn’t left him.
Craig Shindler was a musician’s musician, a bassist, singer, and guitarist who walked the fine line between the accessible and the unconventional, the funky and the edgy. After some years playing bass, singing, and writing songs in the collaborative art-rock power trio K9 Arts (alongside Rich Trosper and Jim Duckworth), he went on to front his own groups to great acclaim. When he died of heart failure in New York in 2000, at the age of 34, all of musical Memphis was shaken by his loss.
This Saturday, October 14th, will witness a celebration of his talents by some fellow players from his band Mash-O-Matic, who will open for Big Ass Truck at Minglewood Hall, beginning at 8 p.m.
Due to Shindler’s untimely death, the popular Memphis rock trio came to an abrupt end just as they were hitting their stride. While there have been occasional concerts in tribute to Shindler in the years since, this will be a focused set by a single band, featuring Mash-O-Matic’s original members Clint Wagner on guitar/vocals (The Scam, Banyan, Devil Train) and Jay Sheffield on drums/vocals (The Scam, Mudflaps, Clanky’s Nub, Noisy Cats Are We), playing Shindler’s distinctive songs.
It’s telling that three people will be required to fill the void left by Shindler’s passing, as the onetime trio expands to include Chris Scott (Son of Slam, Mudflaps) on lead vocals, Jay Fite (The Scam, Noisy Cats Are We) on guitar, and John C. Stubblefield (Lucero) on bass.
Together, they will rekindle Shindler’s wide-ranging vision. That promises to bring some closure to musicians and fans who were caught off guard by his loss. Sheffield told The Commercial Appeal reporter Bill Ellis at the time of Shindler’s death, “I thought he was playing better than ever,” noting that his bass playing “was very percussive [yet] melodic … schooled but also front porch.” Suddenly, that was gone.
Shindler’s musicianship made an impression far beyond Memphis. Ellis reported that shortly after Shindler’s death, Mike Watt, bassist for the Minutemen and fIREHOSE, recalled meeting him after a K9 Arts show: “I dug him much. He was a sweet man and I was proud to be a fellow bassist along with him. I value the fact we shared that machine … He even let me use his for a bit.”
The Super Jam from Tambourine Bash 2022 (Credit: Greg Thompson)
Once again, it’s time to expect the unexpected. When Music Export Memphis (MEM) stages its annual fundraiser, The Tambourine Bash, it’s more than just a celebration of local artists in all their diversity. Rather, MEM throws together those diverse players in one-of-a-kind combos that might represent two or three bands at once, all collaborating on unique sets that lead to some intriguing cross-pollinations.
That time is upon us once more, with the event happening at the Overton Park Shell this Thursday, October 12, at 7 p.m. All ticket sales benefit MEM, the equally one-of-a-kind organization that gives Memphis bands a boost as no other nonprofit can.
To see what’s in store this year, I spoke with Elizabeth Cawein, MEM’s founder and executive director. With a Grammy winner headlining, and at least 17 different bands or artists represented, her enthusiasm was palpable.
Memphis Flyer:It seems the Tambourine Bash really came into its own when the Overton Park Shell started hosting the event.
Elizabeth Cawein: This is our third year at the Shell, so it’s our third year to really execute our vision of collaboration at this scale. And it’s really exciting and kind of satisfying to me that we typically put about 30 musicians on this stage, and I haven’t repeated any of those acts yet. You know, I have no doubt that I wouldn’t have a problem doing the same thing next year. You know, not everyone knows how deep our bench is, even Memphians. and so it feels good to be able to prove that year after year with this event. And what they come up with is just magical every time.
Do you personally curate the collaborations, selecting who will be in the ad hoc groups?
Yeah, I’ve put together all of the collaborative groups and it’s something that I definitely enjoy doing. In fact, I already have a note on my phone for Tambourine Bash 2024, where I’m jotting down ideas, and that’s pretty typical. I put them together and then we give them a few instructions like, “Here are some things you might consider. You could work up new arrangements of each other’s music, you could cover Memphis classics, or you could write a new song together.” I know for sure that one of this year’s collaborative groups has written a new song. Typically every year we have at least one or two that do, but every set is completely different in terms of how they’ve decided to embrace it, so we won’t know until tomorrow night.
Thursday’s headliner is Grammy-winner Cedric Burnside. Who will he be collaborating with?
It’s going to be the Rising Stars Fife and Drum Band! So, of course, they’re no strangers to the Shell stage. And what I love about it is that both Cedric and the Rising Stars have headlined our AmericanaFest showcase that we do every year in Nashville. Cedric headlined it in 2018, and Shardé Thomas and Rising Stars headlined in 2019. So it’s kind of cool to have them now together doing some cool collaboration.
Will Boo Mitchell lead all the artists in a large group performance at the end, as in years past?
Yes, that is an every-year thing. It’s our finale that we call the Super Jam, and rehearsals for that happened at Royal Studios on Sunday. And the songs are always a secret. So you not do not want to leave your seat, because at the end you will definitely see every performer come on stage. The stage is totally full of people, and it’s just a really good time. Boo is gracious enough to produce that for us every year.
Have all the artists who are collaborating Thursday worked with Music Export Memphis?
Almost every single one I can think of. Maybe one or two haven’t specifically gotten a grant from us yet. But almost every single one has, and I will tell you that most all of them, or many of them, received support from us during the pandemic. And most of them have also received tour grants or merch grants, or they’ve been on festival showcases with us. So we certainly consider all of them to be Music Export Memphis ambassadors in one way or another.
How does MEM compare to nonprofits in other cities that support musicians and bands?
People should know that there’s not another organization in any other city doing this type of work. You know, we’re really unique nationally. And I think that should be a great point of pride and hope for us. I hope that people who want to support the Memphis music scene will get behind our work, because MEM is this unique thing we have that sets us apart from other cities, just like our music itself. And you know, when you support an event like this, it means that funding is going into musicians pockets. It’s going to grants, but it’s also going to things like the advocacy work we do, where we’re really trying to improve working musician’s lives in our city.
The featured artists in this year’s Tambourine Bash are: Cedric Burnside + Rising Stars Fife and Drum Band Cory Branan + Brennan Villines + Alice Hasen Qemist + Telisu + Raneem Dirty Streets + Alexis Grace + Deonna Sirod Chris Milam + Alexis Jade + Mighty Souls Brass Band Mak Ro + Ariel Reign + Tangela
