When Tab Benoit hits the stage at Lafayette’s Music Room (Tuesday, March 7th and Wednesday, March 8th), he’ll be bringing a flavor of the blues that hits a little differently than those of the Delta or Memphis. That’s because he’s a Louisianan, through and through.
Indeed, Benoit was inducted into the Louisiana Folklife Center Hall of Master Folk Artists in 2020, and is one of the featured musicians in the Sony Picture Classics 2022 movie JazzFest: A New Orleans Story, Frank Marshall & Ryan Suffern’s documentary on the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. As one of the most impressive guitarists to emerge from the rich bayou country of southern Louisiana in recent times, Benoit’s guitar tone is instantly recognizable, though he plays with no effects.
Memphians will also respond to his soulful voice. Indeed, even Nebraskans find it noteworthy. “Tab Benoit has been a frequent Lincoln visitor over the three-plus decades that he’s been bringing his brand of blues out of Louisiana … He’s a powerhouse vocalist who sounds something like Otis Redding,” writes the Lincoln Journal-Star.
Benoit is also renowned for his passionate environmental activism. To that end, he recently performed two nights in his hometown of Houma, Louisiana, at the 16th Annual Voice of the Wetlands Festival. He also appears prominently in the IMAX motion picture Hurricane on the Bayou, a documentary about Hurricane Katrina’s effects and a call to protect and restore the wetlands. That’s two impressive causes: the blues and the bayou — support them both, and check out a different style of blues at Lafayette’s this week.
Steve Selvidge with copies of Peabody Records' latest release and first release, 47 years apart. (Photo courtesy Steve Selvidge)
As anyone reading this week’s music feature about MEM_MODS might have gathered, Peabody Records, the boutique imprint label founded in 1976 by the late singer/songwriter Sid Selvidge, is once again releasing albums after a decades-long hibernation. Naturally, this revival is being guided by Sid’s son, Steve Selvidge, the guitarist extraordinaire best known for his work with The Hold Steady and, more locally, Sons of Mudboy and Big Ass Truck.
Recently, the Memphis Flyer and the younger Selvidge took a deep dive into the ongoing vinyl revival during a 2022 interview centered on the vagaries of the small label game. Peabody has always been the epitome of the Memphis specialty record company, offering but a few releases that nonetheless had a global impact in their day. In that sense, the humble label that Sid Selvidge launched 47 years ago, with it’s oddball duck logo reinforcing the “Peabody” connection (and echoing the classic Bluebird Records label of the 1930s), is the grandfather of today’s many independent imprints like Goner, Black & Wyatt, Blast Habit, Back to the Light, and others.
“Peabody was always a bespoke, curated label,” says Steve Selvidge. “A ‘we’re not going to worry about what you look like or how many units you’re going to shift’ kind of thing. It was just what piqued my dad’s interest.”
That philosophy led Peabody to release some very unconventional material indeed, most famously Alex Chilton’s trash-rock masterpiece Like Flies on Sherbert. During the label’s ten year heyday on vinyl, other releases included Sid Selvidge’s The Cold Of The Morning, Waiting On A Train, and Live LPs, Crawpatch’s Trailer Park Weekend, Cybill Shepherd’s Vanilla, and Paul Craft Warnings! by — you guessed it — Paul Craft.
And there’s one album that the younger Selvidge is particularly proud of: “Peabody had the first vinyl release of Christopher Idylls by Gimmer Nicholson. Well before Light in the Attic or anyone else put anything out. My understanding was that Terry [Manning] and Gimmer cut that stuff in the ’60s, and it never found a home. So when my dad was up and rolling with Peabody, he was like, ‘Well, I’ve got the machine in place. I’ll put it out.'”
Later, Steve Selvidge-related projects like Big Ass Truck and Secret Service were released on CD, as were reissues of Like Flies on Sherbert. But MEM_MODS Vol. 1 marks the label’s first vinyl product since 1986. And, according to Selvidge, the two projects — the label and the ad hoc band — went hand in hand.
After he’d mixed tracks that he’d recorded during quarantine with Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars) and Paul Taylor (New Memphis Colorways), Selvidge says “we realized, ‘We’ve got a record!’ And we were very enthusiastic about it. But trying to see who could put it out became an endless conversation that was going nowhere, until I finally said, ‘You know what? I’ll just end this conversation and put it out. I’ll take it from here.'”
Getting back to the nuts and bolts of vinyl production and distribution came naturally. “It turns out, I do know some things,” says Selvidge, “and I’ve got the stuff together. We didn’t spend any money on the recording; we just did it ourselves. And once I had a project to do, that got the ball rolling with Peabody. Before that, I was always like, ‘Man, I should do that.’ Getting started was the hardest part; the inertia was so great. But the enthusiasm for MEM_MODS became a catalyst to get the whole label moving, finally. I was intrigued by the idea of, rather than saying, ‘Hey, I started up the label, here’s my dad’s records!’ saying instead, ‘Hey, we’re coming back with something new.'”
Now that the ball is rolling, or the duck is flying, as the case may be, look for reissues from deep within the Peabody catalog, and what Selvidge calls “other projects that I’ve been putting off.” Given his famously far-flung collaborations, those projects could be very interesting indeed.
Music lovers at the 2018 Beale Street Music Festival (Photo courtesy Memphis in May)
City’s longest-running music festival will be back in Tom Lee Park this year, May 5th to 7th, and as of today we know what artists will be performing. As usual, the diversity and quality of artists represented is staggering.
For starters, the headliners will include The Lumineers, Greta Van Fleet, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Earth Wind & Fire, HARDY, Jazmine Sullivan, The Roots, AJR and 311. For Memphians, Earth Wind & Fire’s appearance will be especially meaningful, given that the band’s late founder, Maurice White, was born and raised here.
“This year’s lineup reflects the broad musical tastes of our festival goers with a diverse lineup of some of today’s hottest artists as well past festival favorites and stars of tomorrow,” said James L. Holt, President & CEO of Memphis in May. “At the Beale Street Music Festival, we endeavor to offer something for almost every musical taste, and we have a few more surprise additions to come.”
To that end, many other delights are in store, such as chart-topping hometown hip hop queen GloRilla, blues guitarist extraordinaire Gary Clark Jr., reggae icon Ziggy Marley, and others such as Young the Giant, Live, PJ Morton, The Struts, Gov’t Mule, mike., Andy Grammer, Yola, Dru Hill, Toadies, Lucinda Williams, Living Colour, Cameo, White Reaper, Shovels & Rope, Marcy Playground, Phony Ppl, Low Cut Connie, Beach Weather, Myron Elkins, Mac Saturn and more.
As always, Memphis area talent is well represented at the festival with hip-hop stars Finesse2Tymes and Big Boogie making their BSMF debuts. Legendary soul stars The Bar-Kays will be returning to the BSMF stage. and other featured Memphis area talent includes Jason D. Williams, Dirty Streets, Tyke T, Sleep Theory, The Sensational Barnes Brothers, and breakout Mille Manny.
Best of all, the Blues Tent, a mainstay of the Beale Street Music Festival, will be presented in Handy Park in the Beale Street Historic District as the Memphis Tourism “Blues Stage on Beale,” featuring major headliners such as Los Lobos, Keb Mo, and the North Mississippi Allstars.
Ana Popavic, Bernard Allison, Colin James, Cedric Burnside, Selwyn Birchwood, Blind Mississippi Morris, Ghost Town Blues Band, Mr. Sipp, Reba Russell Band, Will Tucker, Rodd Bland Members Only Band, Mark Muleman Massey,and Ollie Moore will also be featured in the Blues Tent, which will be offered free of charge to local Memphians so they can “experience the festival and the musical genre born in our city,” according to organizers.
“Music just sounds better in Memphis, and there’s nothing like experiencing the Beale Street Music Festival in its home in Tom Lee Park next to the Mississippi River with the Memphis skyline and lighted bridges as the backdrop,” said Memphis in May 2023 Board Chairwoman Leigh Shockey in a statement today. “We are so pleased to return the festival to its long-term home downtown on the riverfront at the foot of historic Beale Street.”
Unlike your typical band from, say, Austin or Philadelphia, it’s hard to geolocate the band Making Movies, appearing this Thursday, February 23rd at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts. Technically, they’re from Kansas City, but the band’s diversity showcases just what a world city that Missouri metropolis has become.
Consider the personnel: founding singer, guitarist, and songwriter Enrique Chi, and his brother, bassist Diego Chi, are Panamanian; percussionist Juan-Carlos Chaurand is of Mexican descent; and drummer Duncan Burnettspecializes in Black gospel.
Together, they’ve crafted a unique brand of rock blended with African, African American, and Latin American rhythms and structures. Singing in both English and Spanish, playing electric guitars and indigenous instruments, Making Movies has developed a sound that Rolling Stone calls “an eclectic blend of rumbero percussions, delicate organs, and grungy fuzz rock.”
Percussive, grungy fuzz rock? Sounds pretty Memphis. But recently the band took it a step further and recorded with Hi Rhythm organist Rev. Charles Hodges (featured in this Memphis Flyer cover story) and the Sensational Barnes Brothers (featured here). With these cameos, “Calor,” from their 2022 album Xopa, puts a Memphis flavor front and center. The song is also featured in the band’s PBS music documentary AMERI’KANA, aired in April 2022 in various markets.
Thursday’s show will feature the Barnes Brothers, lending the band’s Memphis appearance a special magic. Soon they’ll be South by Southwest (SXSW)-bound, where they may well connect with other collaborators. That list often includes longtime band champion Steve Berlin of Los Lobos, but Panamanian songster Rubén Blades has also cowritten with them, and other Making Movies collaborators include Hurray for the Riff Raff, trumpeter Asdru Sierra of Ozomatli, Puerto Rican salsero Frankie Negròn, and the women’s mariachi group Flor de Toloache.
Already looking ahead to the fall, Goner Records announced the key bands to be featured at Gonerfest 20 this year. And while the fest will officially be entering its twenties, there’s bound to be plenty of primitive teen spirit afoot with headliners like The Mummies, Osees (aka Thee Oh Sees), and The Gories.
Indeed, the creepy-crawly, goo goo muck vibe is echoed in the Gonerfest 20 artwork, unveiled this week along with the band lineup. Once the festival kicks into action, such is the omnipresence of the annual Gonerfest artwork that its premiere is nearly as newsworthy as the bands themselves. Last year’s imagery by Sara Moseley drew many comments as the festival wore on, and this year she’s back, collaborating with Stacy Kiehl. Together, they’ve created the creature above, with more elaborations sure to come as the festival’s opening approaches.
Osees (Credit: Titouan-Masse)
The three biggest names on the bill are all Gonerfest veterans who, like many punk/art damaged/freakish bands, have retained their edge even as they reel in the years. Case in point: Osees, who last played Gonerfest some 14 years ago as Thee Oh Sees. Known for their prolific output, the shifting personnel around lead Osee John Dwyer have gone through a few stylistic shifts since then, though always with a sound that grabs listeners by the throat.
Just counting their releases since their latest name change in 2019, they’ve put out Protean Threat (2020), Metamorphosed (2020), and A Foul Form (2022). And they recently pulled off an incendiary set on celebrated Seattle station KEXP:
Having first exploded out of Detroit in 1986, The Gories both predate and embody the Goner aesthetic, but they too have not played Gonerfest in over a decade. Their 2011 performance was deemed newsworthy to the Memphis Flyer‘s J.D. Reager at the time, and subsequent footage proved him out as they played an incendiary set:
Clad in tattered “bandages,” the band powers through a dynamite performance. The keyboard player lifts his instrument over his head and onto his back. They’re so obviously in lock-step with each other, the tempo and changes so ingrained, that they play with a ghoulish intensity.
This year, the gonzo independent music festival hosted by the label and iconic Tennessean storefront takes place in Memphis’ Railgarten from Thursday, September 28 through Sunday, October 1.
In addition to the headliners, Gonerfest 20 will showcase many other bands, MCs, and DJs from around the world. Highlights include a number of acts coming from overseas, including performances by UK artists Chubby & the Gang and Vivron Vavron; Australian bands CIVIC, Dippers, 1-800-Mikey, TV Repairmann, Vintage Crop, and C.O.F.F.I.N.; Denmark’s The Courettes; Japan’s The Smog; and Lewsberg from the Netherlands, among others.
Gonerfest 20 tickets go on sale now. Golden Passes, which allow entry to all official GF20 events, are $130. Single-day passes will be available at the door, according to venue capacity. For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.
Fans should also watch for after shows at other venues around town, often as thrilling as the official lineup. This too fits the Goner aesthetic. As Goner Records’ co-founder Eric Friedl told the Memphis Flyer last year, “There’s not a whole lot of separation between fans and bands and everything else in Gonerfest. It gives it a different feel, rather than seeing someone up on stage that isn’t interacting with the people at all.”
With the publication of an annual program guide, Gonerfest also works to support local business while promoting the music, arts, and culture of Memphis to its attendees. “Gonerfest has become a rite of passage,” says Goner Records co-owner Zac Ives. “It allows us to showcase our city and celebrate our little part of the music world in front of an extremely wide audience.” More than 1,000 tourists make the pilgrimage to Memphis for Gonerfest, which culminates in a substantial economic impact for its city. Gonerfest attendees eat at locally-owned restaurants like Payne’s BBQ and Cozy Corner, drink Goner-inspired beer brewed at Memphis Made, and visit the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Graceland, and the National Civil Rights Museum.
Festival goers can also plan on seeing Marked Men, Chubby & the Gang, Sweeping Promises, Ibex Clone, CIVIC, The Cool Jerks, Bill Orcutt / Chris Corsano, The Courettes, C.O.F.F.I.N, Alien Nosejob, Dippers, Virvon Varvon, Cheater Slicks, Lewsberg, 1-800-Mikey, TV Repairmann, Vintage Crop, The Smog, Laundry Bats, and Turnt.
Honoring Jim Stewart at the Grammys: (L-R) Pat Mitchell Worley (Soulsville Foundation CEO), Stewart's children Shannon, Lori, and Jeff Stewart, Michele Smith (VP, Estate & Legacy Brand Management for Concord Records), and Jim's granddaughter, Jennifer Stewart. Photo courtesy Soulsville Foundation.
It’s been less than twenty-four hours since the Grammy Awards wrapped, and there’s been just as much online chatter about what the Recording Academy missed about Memphis as about what they got right. Celebrating fifty years of hip hop music with a sprawling medley, featuring the Roots backing up star rappers from the past half century, was bound to ruffle some feathers, and many zeroed in on the absolute omission of the city’s greatest hip hop innovators.
“If Three 6 Mafia isn’t in this 50 years of hip hop performance at the Grammys than [sic] I don’t want it,” tweeted Silly Little Goose, later adding, “sleep with one eye open tonight, @RecordingAcad.”
Another Twitter user, Jamesetta M. Walker, quipped, “Wow, Gangsta Boo was not included in the Grammys’ 2023 memoriam. No way they never heard of Three 6 Mafia.”
The lack of recognition was indeed striking, given what Memphis has contributed to the genre over the decades. Yet the sprawling medley, curated by Questlove, included a stunning mix of performers such as Grandmaster Flash, Mele Mel, Rahiem, Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Queen Latifah, Missy Elliott, Lil Wayne, Big Boi, Public Enemy, Busta Rhymes, De La Soul, Lil Baby and others. And Memphis was at least represented well by the breakout star Glorilla, who performed a segment of her hit, “F.N.F. (Let’s Go).”
Nevertheless, Memphis music, being the force of nature that it is, was bound to turn up elsewhere during the proceedings. Erstwhile Memphis writer Bob Mehr, now living in Tucson, Arizona, won the Best Album Notes Grammy for his contribution to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (20th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition), his second in that category, while that album’s producers, including Cheryl Pawelski of Omnivore Recordings, also won in the Best Historical Album category.
Meanwhile, Arkansas’ Ashley McBryde won the Best Country/Duo Performance award for “Never Wanted to Be That Girl” with Carly Pearce, and Aaron Neville’s song “Stompin’ Ground,” performed with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band for the film Take Me to the River: New Orleans, which counts Cody Dickinson and Boo Mitchell among its producers, won Best American Roots Performance.
But it was a figure from Memphis history that received the ultimate recognition yesterday, in the form of a Grammy Trustees Award: Stax Records’ co-founder Jim Stewart, who passed away last December 5th. The award, which recognizes “individuals who, during their careers in music, technology, and so on have made significant contributions, other than performance, to the field of recording,” was also given to photographer Henry Diltz and jazz educator (and musician) Ellis Marsalis Jr.
Receiving the award puts Stewart’s name in the company of such legends as Duke Ellington, The Beatles, Thomas Edison, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerry Wexler, and Stewart’s sister and fellow Stax-founder, Estelle Axton.
On hand to receive the award in Stewart’s name were his adult children, Shannon, Lori, and Jeff Stewart, along with Jim’s granddaughter Jennifer Stewart. As Lori noted, “when dad’s dream of being in the music business first began, he was a nine- or ten-year-old boy who received a guitar for Christmas.”
Jennifer Stewart added, “Grandaddy was a man before his time. Not only was he an innovator in the music industry, by creating that distinct Stax sound, he was also an advocate for equal rights and opportunities for everyone. He didn’t care where you came from, what color your skin was, or your gender. If you had any kind of talent, he wanted you to be a part of his family.”
It was a fitting tribute to a man who represented a more progressive demographic among Southern professionals at the time, paving the way for the multi-racial camaraderie that the Stax community strove to foster through all its days.
Jim Stewart with Stax Records publicist Deanie Parker in 2018 (Photo courtesy The Soulsville Foundation)
For blues fans, this is the week when everyone can exhale. All the world of blues has just brought their best game to Memphis. The International Blues Challenge (IBC) has been completed, the winners announced. The performers are now looking to their coming year of shows. But not all who are honored during the IBC are performing artists; they may just return to their day jobs. This time around, we take a look a this last group: the winners of the Keeping the Blues Alive awards.
These awards go to individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the Blues world, often during a brunch as part of the IBC weekend of events.
Unlike the Blues Music Awards, the Keeping the Blues Alive (KBA) awards go to non-performers strictly on the basis of merit, as interpreted by a select panel of Blues professionals. The committee generally refrains from awarding the KBA to an individual or organization more than once. Instead, a new winner is selected each year, except in rare cases when a significant period of time has elapsed since the first award. Yet such is the global span of blues culture now that new pivotal figures in keeping the heart of the blues beating are always appearing.
Ron Wynn (Photo courtesy The Blues Foundation)
This year’s recipients include a particularly Memphis-centric winner, writer Ron Wynn, who served as chief music critic at The Commercial Appeal in the ’80s. Beyond that, Wynn has been writing about music for more than 40 years for publications as varied as Boston’s Bay State Banner, Connecticut’s Bridgeport Post-Telegram, The New Memphis Star magazine, Nashville’s City Paper, and, most recently, the NashvilleScene and Tennessee Tribune. He’s also a columnist for the Tennessee Jazz and Blues Society’s website and writes for Jazz Times. His liner notes for From Where I Stand—The Black Experience in Country Music were nominated for a Grammy, and his work was part of the Grammy-winning Night Train to Nashville, Vol. 1 compilation (covering the Nashville R&B Scene) in 2005. Later this year, a book to which he contributed, Ain’t But a Few of Us: Black Music Writers Tell Their Story, will be released.
Other recipients of the KBA award reveal the diversity of generous spirits dedicated to the blues. DJ John Guregian has hosted his Blues Deluxe show on WUML-FM in Lowell, Massachusetts for over 40 years, scoring many impressive artist interviews along the way. Photographer Marilyn Stringer specializes in the blues, and is the head photographer for some of the most prominent blues festivals in America. She has also published three volumes in her Blues In The 21st Century series, the last focused on Blues Music Awards performances and related events in Memphis. The Blue Front Café, on Highway 49 in Bentonia, MS, opened by Jimmy “Duck” Holmes’ family in 1948, has been essentially unchanged ever since, and has become a beacon for blues fans worldwide as the home of the free Bentonia Blues Festival.
The Little Village Foundation nonprofit, founded by Grammy-award-winning keyboardist Jim Pugh, focuses on seeking out, recording, and promoting artists whose music has not yet been discovered outside of their communities. Franky Bruneel has put 40 years of work into the blues as a DJ, writer, photographer, editor, and publisher of his own blues magazine, website, and record label — a veritable anchor of the European blues community. Lloyd “Teddy” Johnston, owner of Teddy’s Juke Joint, maintains one of the last remaining juke joints on the Chitlin’ Circuit in Zachary, Louisiana, where he expanded his childhood home into a bar over fifty years ago. And Swiss native Silvio Caldelari was instrumental in launching the first-ever Sierre Blues Festival, which attracted 11,000 fans last year.
Mathias Lattin (Credit: Marilyn Stringer)
Of course, the work all these awardees do comes down to the music in the end. And there was plenty of that during the IBC’s. This year’s notable winners included Mathias Lattin, representing the Houston Blues Society, who won both the Band Division and the Gibson Guitar Award for Best Band Guitarist; Frank Sultana from the Sydney Blues Society, who won the Solo/Duo Division; and Adam Karch of the Montreal Blues Society, who nabbed the Memphis Cigar Box Guitar Award. Winning the Best Self-produced CD was Lincoln, Nebraska’s Josh Hoyer and Soul Colossal for their album, Green Light.
Dale Watson and Celine Lee at a previous Ameripolitan Music Awards ceremony (Photo courtesy Ameripolitan Music Awards)
The term “countrypolitan” was coined in the 1950s to describe the more urbane side of the Nashville Sound, “most often characterized by its use of lushly arranged string overdubs and group or choral backing vocals,” according to the Rate Your Music website, and any fan of Patsy Cline knows exactly what that means. But don’t let that skew your perception of a similar, related portmanteau, “Ameripolitan.”
That was coined by Dale Watson, founder of the Ameripolitan Music Awards, to capture a wide range of “original music with a prominent roots influence,” including honky tonk, Western swing, rockabilly, and outlaw country. As Watson told the Memphis Flyer in our 2019 cover story, “if people call it retro, I say, ‘No, these are new songs. Just because you build a house with a hammer — an old tool — doesn’t make it an old house.’ I’m just using an old tool, you know?”
Next month, a multitude of contemporary artists using such time-tested tools will once again convene under the Ameripolitan umbrella for much more than an awards ceremony. In the days and nights leading up to the awards show proper on February 19th at the Guesthouse at Graceland, dozens of artists will be bringing their sounds to both that venue and the venerable Hernando’s Hide-a-way.
The full schedule has now been released, and it includes both familiar and new faces, including Johnny Rodriguez, Sierra Ferrell, Rosie Flores, Kinky Friedman, Brennen Leigh, Summer Dean, Jeremy Pinnell, and The Waymores.
Awards will be given for Honky Tonk male/female and group, Western Swing male/female and group, Outlaw male/female and group, Rockabilly male/female and group, Best Venue, Festival, Radio DJ and Musician. And Ameripolitan is recognizing three individuals with Momentous Achievement Awards as well: Johnny Rodriguez will receive the Master Award, Nick Curran will be named Keeper of the Key, and The Adams Brothers will be recognized as Founders of the Sound.
Aside from the many musical performances, there will also be a Steel Guitar Pull hosted by Lynn Owsley at Hernando’s, a Vintage Western Ameripolitan Fashion Show, “Tequila and Teardrops” with Big Sandy, the Texas Takeover Showcase, the popular “Chicken $#+! Bingo” with Dale Watson, and of course the Ameripolitan Music Awards Show itself.
One notable event for history and film buffs will be a screening of Mike Markwardt’s documentary, The History of Western Swing, on Saturday at 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. at Hernando’s Hide-a-way. There will also be a sneak peek of Mule Kick Productions’ documentary on the World Famous Palomino Club, Palomania, on Sunday at the Theater Stage before the awards ceremony.
Clarinetists from the Razorback Marching Band at the AutoZone Liberty Bowl (Photo: Elizabeth Bainbridge)
When you’re a musician, football games hit a little differently. Take this Wednesday’s AutoZone Liberty Bowl Football Classic, a record-setting nail-biter if ever there was one. “The longest game in the Liberty Bowl’s 64-year history set 24 records, including total points (108), total offense by one team (681 yards by Arkansas) and first downs (32 by Kansas),” a report from the Associated Press tells us, but for this roving pair of ears, it was all about the music.
I was accompanying the mother of a former piano student who now plays clarinet in the University of Arkansas Razorback Marching Band. And hints of the music to come appeared as we walked to Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium: There in the parking area, one could see the Shelby County Sheriff’s Ceremonial Guard milling around in their kilts with assorted bagpipes and drums. And pushing through the throng, one could spy the glint of silvery sousaphones, making their way from the band busses. Those horns would guide us to our seats, as we would be embedded adjacent to the Razorback band.
Settling in, we heard the familiar strains of “Soul Man” being piped through the jumbotron, and although it was the Blues Brothers’ version, not Sam and Dave’s, it still carried enough Memphis bona fides to strike a note of pride in our hearts.
And then suddenly, the pre-game show was upon us! The Razorback band had filed down to the ground level, and were sprinting out onto the field. What followed was an impressive, swinging arrangement of selections from West Side Story.
The music by Leonard Bernstein ranks among the classics of American jazz and theater, yet there was a surreal quality to hearing the poignant strains of “Somewhere” echo from the gridiron, played by young people who may have never before heard it. Later, I asked our clarinetist, Ella Thomas, about the experience.
“‘America’ was the only one I knew,” she said. “But as a section, we had a movie night and all watched the original West Side Story. And I thought the music was really good. Though it was really hard for the clarinets. My favorite part was the finale, a medley of ‘America,’ ‘Maria,’ and ‘Gee Officer Krupke.’ And the clarinets and the low woodwinds have kind of a feature in that one. We play the higher, faster melody. It’s very hard!”
For their part, the Kansas University Marching Jayhawks also brought jazz history into play, featuring a piece by native Kansan Stan Kenton in their halftime show. But it was their version of Cameo’s “Word Up” as the game raged below that really caught my attention.
Meanwhile, the remorseless sadism of football fandom brought other sounds into play. “Break his neck and twist it!” yelled one jolly spectator nearby; and other Razorback fans would gleefully boo injured Jayhawks off the field. Having been raised a Nebraska Cornhusker, I was used to it. But, as Thomas explained, the camaraderie between the opposing teams’ bands transcends any rivalry among the players.
Razorback Marching Band clarinetist Ella Thomas mentally prepares for the pre-game show. (Photo: Alex Greene)
“The Jayhawks band sounded really good!” she remarked. “The Kansas fans weren’t so nice, but the band was really nice to us. The day before, they all came to meet us at the parade, and when we were doing our show, they were cheering for us.” After the game, as musicians from both bands gathered at their busses, Thomas’ comments were borne out by the copious high-fives and back slapping between those wearing opposing colors.
Of course, marching bands aren’t the only source of music at a major bowl game, and this year’s Liberty Bowl was no exception. Naturally, the jumbotron pumped out classic party bangers to get folks revved up. Think Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle.” But classic rock also held court in the form of the halftime headliner, officially known as Starship featuring Mickey Thomas.
These hit-makers hold the dubious honor of having built a career on one of the world’s most reviled songs. This is especially interesting given the band’s genesis out of the ashes of two of rock’s biggest bands, Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship. But that pedigree mattered little when Blender, Rolling Stone, and GQ magazines all named a song by Starship (with “Jefferson” removed for legal reasons) as the ultimate in bad taste. Indeed, it so trounced the competition in Rolling Stone‘s poll for that title that the magazine noted it “could be the biggest blow-out victory in the history of the Rolling Stone Readers Poll.”
Yes, I’m speaking of “We Built This City,” perhaps the only song lamenting corporate rock that is itself the most perfect exemplar of that genre ever recorded. Yet here in a city where the late Jim Dickinson’s Roland keyboard once proudly bore a sticker with the message “Corporate Rock Sucks,” enthusiasm for Wednesday’s performance was high.
While I share most jazz musicians’ reflexive disdain for the 1985 number one hit, as an anthropologist I am fascinated by its simultaneous popularity and unpopularity. Yet all such musings proved irrelevant as the Mickey Thomas and company knocked out a rendition that included a drop-out for the crowd to sing “Rock and rolllllllllll” without a trace of irony. Take that, Rolling Stone!
And then it was back to the game. Even I can tell you that it was one of the most gripping matches in the history of the sport, as the Razorbacks squeaked out a victory in triple overtime, after a stunning second half rally by Kansas. As the moment of victory settled in, the Razorback band launched into its standard choice for such moments, “It’s Hard to Be Humble.” And the fans sang along:
Oh, Lord it’s hard to be humble, when you’re perfect in every way! I can’t wait to look in the mirror, I get better looking each day! To know me is to love me, I must be one hell of a fan! Oh, Lord it’s hard to be humble, when you’re an Arkansas Razorback fan!
As Thomas later noted quietly, “We don’t play anything if we lose.”
Naturally, there are many theories bouncing around the internet as to why the game ended as it did: bad referees, faulty and/or brilliant coaching, lucky breaks, or even the weather. But Ella Thomas and I know the real reason for the Liberty Bowl’s greatness that day: it was the music.
Having our hands full with new Memphis releases, we don’t often write up non-Memphians’ albums here at the Memphis Flyer. But let no one claim that Elvis Costello hasn’t earned some Memphis bona fides, having deeply connected with the city whilst recording 2004’s The Delivery Man at Sweet Tea Studio in Oxford, Mississippi. The DVD Club Date: Live in Memphis, filmed at the Hi Tone, captured his first Memphis ramble well.
In the nearly 20 years since, Costello’s concerts here have often been peppered with covers of deep cuts from Memphis history, and he’s sometimes lingered before or after those shows. Now, he’s released an album made on two such stops here, recorded at the “purpose-built vintage” Memphis Magnetic Recording Company, profiled in the Flyer upon its opening in 2019.
Sharing a title with this past January’s Grammy-nominated The Boy Named If, the new album gets more specific: The Boy Named If (Alive at Memphis Magnetic). And it’s on the latter that Costello and The Imposters really shine as a live band. For while the original studio album version was recorded long-distance during the pandemic, each player overdubbing their parts in isolation, it was not until gathering in Memphis to rehearse months later that the group played the material face to face.
Luckily for them, they chose to rehearse at Memphis Magnetic. And, as a bonus, the usual lineup of the group was supplemented by the guitar artistry of Charlie Sexton, erstwhile Dylan sideman and the brother of Memphian Will Sexton.
This new album features live-in-the studio renditions of songs from The Boy Named If, a slower, soulful version of Costello’s “Every Day I Write the Book,” numbers by The Rolling Stones, Nick Lowe, The Byrds, and Paul McCartney, and a new remix by the Japanese duo chelmico.
Recorded live in the studio during tour rehearsals in October 2021 and May 2022, the album captures the band playing, as Costello puts it in a press release, “Some of our favorite songs while negotiating with any tricky angles in our new tunes.”
The band’s performances during their Memphis stint are the perfect blend of loose and on-point. This was clearly a band gearing up for a major national tour. The harmonies and arrangements are spirited yet precise. By the time someone hit the record button, they knew the songs well enough to get playful with them, even as they drove them home. See the full track sequence below, and marvel at the choice selection of covers.
Nonetheless, the first song to be released is the sole track not recorded in Memphis, a new remix of “Magnificent Hurt” by Japanese female rap duo chelmico, who Costello first heard performing the theme to the anime show Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! (WatchHERE)
In a public statement, chelmico noted that they “can’t believe we did a collab with Elvis Costello & The Imposters!! Who knew this could happen in real life!? When we were talking on a Zoom call, Elvis said we can do whatever we want so we just did! Please enjoy our interpretation of the world of Magnificent Hurt. The beats by ryo takahashi is just a perfection! We’re all HAPPY that Elvis is happy with the track!”
Appropriate to the Beatle-y spirit of the cover versions, The Boy Named If (Alive at Memphis Magnetic) is released on EMI, with Capitol Records as the release partner in the U.S. — just like the Fabs.
The Boy Named If (Alive at Memphis Magnetic) track listing:
Magnificent Hurt (Costello) Truth Drug (Nick Lowe) Penelope Halfpenny (Costello) So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star (McGuinn/Hillman) What If I Can’t Give You Anything But Love? (Costello) The Boy Named If (Costello) Let Me Roll It (Paul McCartney/Linda McCartney) Every Day I Write The Book (Costello) Out Of Time (Jagger/Richards) Here, There and Everywhere (Lennon/McCartney) Magnificent Hurt remix (Costello/chelmico)
Finally, Costello himself wrote out his thoughts on this unique project:
THE BOY NAMED IF (ALIVE AT MEMPHIS MAGNETIC) By Elvis Costello
When The Imposters and I entered Memphis Magnetic studio in October 2021 it was the first time we’d been face-to-face or side-by-side while playing the songs from The Boy Named If.
That album had been recorded over “electrical wire” in late 2020 from our respective lairs and cupboards under the stairs but now we were in Memphis on pretext of rehearsing for our first full tour ever since the world ended in March 2020. Now we were three days from opening on the Soundstage at Graceland but what better way to prepare than playing some of your favourite songs while negotiating with the trickier angles in our new tunes.
In the summer of 2021, we’d invited Charlie Sexton to join us on the guitar when we were unable to obtain Steve Nieve’s “Letters Of Transit” from France to play a couple of shows and liked the outcome so much that we all agreed to proceed as a quintet.
We set up with stage monitors, a plan that Pete Thomas and Steve Nieve would have recognized from the Blood & Chocolate sessions only without all the sulking and sniping.
Now, Pete Thomas once vaulted over a fence to retrieve a brick from the demolition site of the original Stax Studios building. He told any musicians with a faltering groove in his own basement studio – Bonaparte Rooms East – “That brick has heard, “(Sittin’ On) the Dock Of The Bay”.
We celebrated our return to the city by Pete and Davey Faragher putting a little Memphis magnificence into “Every day I Write The Book” with Steve leading us on the Hammond and Charlie filling in around my voice, one of a number of repertoire songs that we re-arranged for the tour.
The album, The Boy Named If, set out to be an antidote to our mutual isolation. Now with my co-producer Sebastian Krys and his assistant Daniel Galindo in the Memphis Magnetic booth and our road crew tight to the walls of the studio or in the hallway outside, we put on the red light and began finding our way around these new numbers in the same room and at the same time, and shaking off a little dust by tearing through songs like Nick Lowe’s 1976 Dutch release, “Truth Drug”.
Having played our first appearance of 2022 at JazzFest in New Orleans before celebrating the opening of the Bob Dylan Centre in Tulsa and even working up an encore of “Like A Rolling Stone” in the dressing room of “Cain’s Ballroom”, we had now returned to Memphis Magnetic to rehearse for upcoming U.K. and European dates and while we let The Imposters and Charlie loose on the Hey Clockface numbers that I’d recorded alone in Helsinki but would now earn their place in the coming shows before lighting “Indoor Fireworks” with a different match and finding a minor mood in “Brilliant Mistake” and filed them away for a future collection called, “King Of America & Other Realms”.
It seems we remained in a freewheeling mood as we cut, “Out Of Time”, the Jagger/Richards tune that I first learned from Chris Farlowe’s Immediate Records release, to which I later added, tambourine, maracas, a second piano and a few other tricks and diversions, after all, we were in a recording studio.
We certainly got the sense of where a tune like, “What If I Can’t Give You Anything But Love?” might be headed from night to night, when Charlie opened up on his guitar solo.
In the evening I returned to my room at the Peabody Hotel and over the next three nights, I heard seven new songs ringing ‘round the walls but that’s a tale for another day…
At the October 2021 sessions, we’d crashed out of “Penelope Halfpenny” into The Byrds, “So You Want To Be A Rock & Roll Star”, now we did something similar, as Paul McCartney’s “Let Me Roll It” emerged from “The Boy Named If” title song. At the end of the final session, we turned off the monitors entirely and recorded a hushed birthday card serenade of “Here, There & Everywhere”.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, chelmico had been working away on a complete re-model and re-fit of “Magnificent Hurt”. Over the last few years we’ve presented some of my songs in other languages on the album “Spanish Model” and the French language E.P. La Face de Pendule à Coucou but this track is something of an entirely different stripe.
One of the gifts of the recent interlude from the traveling life has been the time gathered around the family jukebox, a stack of vinyl or the comic book world of film entertainment.
While, his brother and mother were elsewhere working on their own schemes, my son Frank and I worked our way through the entire anime series, “Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!”, an ingenious look at every aspect of animation from storyboarding to the final cut, through the eyes and escapades of three young Japanese students. Each episode kicks off with the chelmico track, “Easy Breezy”, a cool flow of verses and rhymes over a beatbox and some slide guitar.
A couple of calls later and I found myself on a video conference to Tokyo with Mamiko and Rachel and was delighted that they agreed to work up their own version of “Magnificent Hurt”. My only directions were, “You can do anything you want. Cut it up. Turn it round. Wipe it out. Say anything you want. You can’t be wrong”.
As you will hear, the song is now an entirely different story in both words and music, re-harmonizing my interjections between their verses and it is this new Japanese model of the song that closes the storybook on The Boy Named If (Alive At Memphis Magnetic).
