Category: Music Features

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Reba Russell’s Life in Music

Reba Russell reflects on her career (Photo: Jamie Harmon)

Last Saturday at Hernando’s Hide-A-Way, the Memphis Blues Society recognized nine artists for their regional and global impact with its Lifetime Achievement Awards. Among the awardees were Thomas Bingham, Charles Gage, Mike Glenn, Eric Hughes, Al Kapone, Memphis Gold, Andrew “Shine” Turner, and Jay Sieleman, a roster marked by its eclecticism and inclusiveness. Yet there was one more recipient who was especially notable: Reba Russell. As one of the few local women still regularly singing the blues in this town (also including Barbara Blue and the incomparable Joyce Cobb), the celebration of Russell’s decades-long career was significant beyond the music itself.  

It was an appropriate award for the artist who only last year released the powerful single, “Women Rule.” As Russell says, “You know, I am a woman-lover. I believe in women, and I want women to do good, and I have even been ugly and kind of mean to men over my career and in life! It’s one of my favorite themes. But I’m really passionate about that. I really believe it. I just don’t think we get a good enough shake and that we’re still trying to overcome that.”

Saturday’s ceremony, then, meant a great deal to Russell. “Memphis doesn’t support the blues or the Memphis Blues Society like it could, you know,” she says. “I just wish there were more people that cared, but at the same time, it was just a big, warm hug. And for me personally, Wayne and James and Sally were there, and they were at the very first gig I ever played at RP Tracks.”

Memphis Blues Society president Angela Ghoreishi and Russell at last Saturday’s event (Photo: Mark Cardwell)

That would be Wayne Russell, her husband and bass player; drummer James Cunningham; and longtime friend Sally Raburn, who, Russell says, “has been a music fan her whole life.” 

Speaking of that first RP Tracks show back at the dawn of the ’80s, accompanied by her husband-to-be and Cunningham, Russell says today, “I told the dude who was giving me a ride there, my friend Bill Turner, ‘Take me home. I don’t want to do this. I’m scared!’” Luckily for the club-goers that night, Turner stayed the course.

But it was still nerve-racking for the young singer. “I pretty much sang with my back to the audience,” she laughs, and that was not lost on Raburn. “She was the one who, at the end of that night, came up and said, ‘You are an amazing singer, but you know, it’d be nice if we could see your face. You should turn around while you’re singing!’”

It may be hard for today’s fans to reconcile that stage fright with the bold, bawdy blues (and soul and rock) singer they know. That’s summed up by longtime Memphis multi-instrumentalist and erstwhile guitarist for the Reba Russell band, Paul Taylor, now living in Wisconsin. “You could ask anybody about Reba,” he says, “and they would say that she’s one of the most electrifying vocalists you’ll ever hear in person, and she never fails to deliver, and she has the same powerful voice that she’s had for her entire career. I just marvel at her every time because she just has such an intense power.”

That power was apparent to friends who heard her even before that first show, and Russell credits their encouragement as a key motivator back in those early days. Through a series of bands, first Visions, then Portrait, and finally Reba and the Portables, Russell, Wayne, and a rotating cast of band members took the city by storm, performing mainly covers at clubs like Solomon Alfred’s or the Bombay Bicycle Club. In the meantime, the singer and her bassist were clicking romantically, marrying in 1986. 

Yet on her journey, from the Portables becoming one of the city’s premier cover bands, to a production deal with Chips Moman, to finally leaning into singing and recording her originals with the Reba Russell Band, the singer has remained appreciative of friends who helped her along the way. At Saturday’s event, Russell says, “I just got up there and praised Memphis and Memphis musicians and producers and engineers and everybody who perpetuates the whole blues scene. Because, you know, I had no experience when I started. I came here and, boom, everybody helped me. Nobody was ugly to me or told me to go away. So I was just trying to express my appreciation to the fabulous musicians in this town, many of whom aren’t here anymore, that have left the planet, yet were so instrumental in helping me and other people get on our feet and become worthy and hard-working musicians.”

That gratitude extended to her fellow awardees as well. “It was really awesome to be included in that group because there were some really cool other people that were given awards that night,” says Russell, noting that it reflected well on the the Memphis Blues Society. Founded in 2005, it gave aid to blues artists during Covid, then launched its Lifetime Achievement Awards in 2021

“There are blues purists, and then there are people who are into opening the blues up,” she observes. “It was really cool that Al Kapone was honored last night, and he spoke about that. He has been advocating and adding a blues feel and blues themes to his rap, and I’m sure that there are a lot of blues purists who kind of thumb their nose at that. But from my point of view, it’s absolutely amazing that he’s doing that, and teaching kids, and passing that blues legacy on. I really enjoyed his speech. What he said was really important.”

Reflecting a bit more on the evening and Al Kapone, she continues, “I think he was as proud as I was about receiving the award. And, you know, he’s a lot younger than I am, and he’s got a long time to perpetuate his artistry. So yeah, that part was lovely to me because it was about the continuation of this genre. It’s important for younger people to get hip to it.”

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Music Music Features

Simple Songs of Freedom

Tom Rush (Photo: Courtesy Acoustic Sunday Live)

In these fraught days of authoritarianism and climate change, when our fate depends more than ever on local community action, music continues to seal the bonds between those fighting the good fight. It’s an age-old function of song, for songs are both rousing and inherently inclusive, spreading equally to all eardrums in the vicinity. America has a tradition of protest and organizing songs going back more than a century, from Joe Hill and the Wobblies, to singing through megaphones at Occupy Wall Street, to today’s pop songs at political rallies or in countless poetry-song slams across the land.

It was no accident, then, that Bruce and Barbara Newman’s mutual love of folk music and the blues led them to create a concert series celebrating both music and community action simultaneously. And, appropriately enough, it started back in the ’90s with the music of Woody Guthrie. “My law practice was starting to represent folk musicians like Tom Paxton and Dave Van Ronk, a whole bunch of them,” says Bruce Newman. “So we started calling on these people to play music concerts, each one for different charitable beneficiaries. The first one we did was a tribute to Woody Guthrie, and we had Odetta, Oscar Brand, Richie Havens, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Tom Paxton, and Josh White Jr. on that first bill. And the second one had Tom Paxton and Oscar Brand again, plus Melanie, Roger McGuinn, and Tom Rush.”

Those early concerts became Acoustic Sunday Live, an annual tradition unlike any other in Memphis, now in its third decade. And that last headliner from the early days — veteran singer-songwriter Tom Rush — is significant because he hasn’t been back since then. But it wasn’t for lack of trying. 

“I consider Tom Rush a friend,” says Newman. “I see him at Folk Alliance [International] every year. And I bugged him for 20 years, ‘Tom, when are you coming back?’ Well, he always had a conflict the first week in December, right when we always have our concert. But this past summer he said, ‘Bruce, if you move it one week, I’m coming down. It’s a good cause. It’s important.’ And that’s what we did.”

Booking Rush, a diehard pioneer of the folk club scene whose first album came out in 1965, would be a coup for any folk festival, but this year’s Acoustic Sunday Live will also feature Shakura S’Aida, Steve Forbert, and Tim Easton, not to mention special guests Anne Harris and Marcella Simien. As in other years, one thing is clear: When the Newmans get their Acoustic Sunday on, they don’t play. 

While finally getting Rush back was a challenge, it was especially significant both because of his ties to the series’ earliest days and because of his role in the ’60s folk revival. Like many folkies of that era, Rush had a great love of Woody Guthrie and classic Appalachian and Southern folk songs when he launched his career as a young English major at Harvard, filling his first albums with such material. But he had too much curiosity to be a pure traditionalist, and, as the ’60s wore on, he filled out his repertoire with songs as disparate as Bo Diddley’s “You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” and Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game.” 

That eclecticism has marked Rush’s career ever since, setting him apart from the “more authentic than thou” folk set. “I’ve never been accused of being pure,” Rush quips today. “Early on, when I started out in Cambridge, Massachusetts, there was this big folk scene going on, with people playing all kinds of different traditional music. They all tended to specialize. There was one guy who did almost nothing but Woody Guthrie songs, and a band that did nothing but bluegrass, and another guy who did Delta Blues, or Irish-Scottish ballads, and so forth. And I tended to be the generalist.”

That doesn’t detract from the power of Rush’s music to bring folks together. Indeed, his inclusiveness only amplifies that power, even as he eschews what Bob Dylan once pejoratively dubbed “finger-pointing songs.” Part of that came down to Rush’s own sense of himself. “There’s a certain irony in a bunch of Harvard students sitting around singing about how rough it was in the coal mines,” he chuckles. “I did ramble around from genre to genre. By the time I cut my second album for Elektra, I’d run out of traditional songs that got me excited. So one side of that album was traditional songs, and the other side was me covering rock-and-roll tunes, including one that I wrote, ‘On the Road Again.’”

He also had his antennae out for a new era of songwriters. “Then the following album was The Circle Game, where I introduced [the songs of] Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, and Jackson Browne because nobody really had heard of them before. That was a further switch away from traditional folk. These three brilliant writers came at me from different directions, but they were writing stuff that was dazzlingly great, yet not so different from folk that I couldn’t relate to it.”

His ear for a good song has served him well, up through his latest release of all originals, Gardens Old, Flowers New. Those attending Acoustic Sunday Live should expect that same soothing voice and eclectic ear that’s kept Rush, now on what he likes to call his “63rd annual farewell tour,” in demand for decades, as he swaps songs with other legendary troubadours. “I stay away from getting political on stage,” he says. “I have done shows to support various causes, but I don’t take it on stage. I think my shows should be a little bit of a vacation from problems of the world.” 

Acoustic Sunday Live — The Concert to Protect Our Aquifer, presents an evening with Tom Rush, Shakura S’Aida, Steve Forbert, and Tim Easton, as well as special guests Anne Harris and Marcella Simien, at First Congregational Church, Sunday, December 15th, 7 p.m. Tickets start at $50.

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Music Music Features

WYXR Vibrations

J Spaceman and John Coxon (Photo: Courtesy Fat Possum Records)

Raised By Sound Fest, the music festival and fundraiser staged by community radio station WYXR and Mempho Presents, is once again in the offing, scheduled to have the Crosstown Concourse bursting with sound this Saturday, December 7th, and, as with the event’s previous iterations, the mix of performers is intriguingly eclectic. 

Through its short history, Raised By Sound has earned a reputation for drawing top-tier artists for its main concert event, always held in the Crosstown Theater, and this year is no different. In 2022, when Jody Stephens’ reconstituted Big Star quintet planned only a few shows in honor of #1 Record, the Raised By Sound Fest was a pivotal performance for them. And last year, Cat Power made Memphis one of their first stops when they began touring their Dylan tribute album, The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert.

This year, WYXR has outdone itself once again for Raised By Sound’s main concert, presenting a live score to the William Eggleston film, Stranded in Canton, performed by J Spaceman and John Coxon of Spiritualized. “We just heard they had a really incredible show in London,” says the station’s executive director Robby Grant, “and in the U.S., Memphis is the only city they’re doing it in, outside of New York and L.A.” 

As Grant notes, these marquee events all came together by way of the station’s openness and centrality as a meeting place for creatives of all kinds. “We keep our antenna up,” he says. “We have a huge window. We’re very welcoming. We’re very transparent. There’s a lot of benefit to that and making these connections.” The Spiritualized event is a case in point, as WYXR DJ David Swider, owner of Oxford’s The End of All Music record store, told Grant that the group’s live score was slated to be released on the Fat Possum label; the next day, Winston Eggleston (son of the photographer/filmmaker) mentioned that the group had reached out to him about permission to use the film. Things simply clicked by virtue of the station’s network. 

Tommy Wright III (Photo: Courtesy WYXR)

Yet that capstone event, now sold out, is only one of many musical experiences that Raised By Sound will offer. Throughout the day, many other performances will echo in the columns of the Central Atrium, and that will only heat up once the final credits roll for Stranded in Canton, as the ticketed after-party kicks off in the East Atrium at the top of the red staircase, with a DJ set by Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney of the Black Keys and performances by hip-hop legends Tommy Wright III and Lil Noid. 

The free music begins at 1 p.m., when artists from the University of Memphis’ Blue T.O.M. Records will perform, including Meaghan Christina, Ozioma, and Canale. “It means a lot to us to be able to give [Blue T.O.M. artists] that level of exposure,” says WYXR’s program manager Jared Boyd, “and we’re also promoting an educational component, partnering with Grammy U, Stax Music Academy, and Crosstown High School. It creates a level ground for them to be on the same bill as the Black Keys and Spiritualized. It’s bringing it all under one house.”

That revue will be followed by Fosterfalls, a solo performer also based in Memphis. “They’re a really interesting solo artist,” says Grant. “They’re kind of acoustic, very ethereal, with a lot of loopy-type stuff, and they’re a great example of a local artist who’s getting out there and working really hard and just doing it.” Also in the hard-working vein is the blues-rock HeartBreak Hill Trio, fronted by Matt Hill, a longtime presence on the Memphis scene, known for his axe work with wife Nikki Hill. Once the trio has livened things up, Brooklynite Max Clarke, aka Cut Worms, will take the stage. His 2019 album Nobody Lives Here Anymore was produced by Matt Ross-Spang. And finally, the afternoon will close out with a solo show by Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra, who has close ties to New Orleans despite being from the Bronx. 

Indeed, all of the artists happen to have ties to Memphis. Celebrated Memphis-born photographer Tommy Kha, for example, has worked closely with Hurray for the Riff Raff. Yet the festival organizers are not strict about that as a criterion for inclusion. As Boyd notes, “We wanted to be able to present homegrown artists as well as artists who have some sort of significant Memphis or regional influence. Some are from elsewhere, but were called to Memphis because of music.”

“You don’t have to be a Memphis-connected artist to be booked for Raised By Sound Fest,” adds Grant, “but we found that every artist we booked has some connection. Like, no matter who we book, because Memphis is such a music city, there’s some connection.” That even goes for the performers from Spiritualized, who first debuted their live score for Eggleston’s film a decade ago at the Barbican Gallery in London, as part of Doug Aitken’s Station to Station festival. Now, a recording of that has been released by the local heroes at Fat Possum.

The after-party, too, will have strong Memphis roots. The Black Keys, based in Nashville, are not only steeped in the North Mississippi blues via that same record label, but have worked closely with Memphis’ Greg Cartwright. And, of course, Tommy Wright III and Lil Noid were on the ground floor of the local hip-hop revolution that gave rise to superstars like Three 6 Mafia. Wright is arguably the better known of the two, his music having been embraced by the skateboard scene. As Boyd notes, “There’s even a skateboard hardware company in L.A. called Shake Junt, and their entire brand image is an homage to Memphis rap culture!” But Lil Noid’s profile is also rising, and, tying it all together, he’s even featured on a new Black Keys track, “Candy and Her Friends.”

All told, the Raised By Sound Festival will provide a compelling glimpse and staggering diversity of music in Memphis, but other dimensions of the city will be represented as well. Community groups like Music Export Memphis, Memphis Music Initiative, and CHOICES will have tables, and visual artists like Sara Moseley, Darlene Newman, and Toonky Berry will have works either on display or being created as the music plays on. It’s all part of a concentrated celebration of what Memphis brings to the world. As Boyd says, “We have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to talent. And if you grew up in it, you may not always realize that most places are not like this.” 

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Iron Mic Coalition

Mac, Derelick, and Duke of the Iron Mic Coalition, performing at the Undugu Hip Hop Festival. (Photos: Courtesy IMC)

Memphis is known for its world-class rappers; trap is the new “Memphis Sound.” But while we might hear BlocBoy JB shout out, “901 Shelby Drive, look alive, look alive,” on the radio, there’s a cohort of lesser known but very active hip-hop artists among us who live and breathe such lyrics, depicting life in our place and time like no others. Does any recent rhyme capture the feeling of living under the weight of this city’s history like: “I rap Memphop, I rap the deep quadrant/I come from the marshes, the shady tree garages/The torn-down projects, the cotton on the barges”?

Some readers will instantly recognize that as a line from “Maybap Music” by Iron Mic Coalition (IMC), as a devoted following has developed around the group over the past 20 years. If you know, you know. Part of that comes down to IMC’s undeniable grounding in this region. That comes across both lyrically and musically, as on 2014’s “Home,” driven by a minor key soul blues sample, with the lyrics: “A stranger in his own land, a Delta blues homeland … Crossroads demon summit, now the blues man cometh with the truth boom bappin’ hell on ’em.” 

Jason Da Hater, Duke, Milk, and Mac of the Iron Mic Coalition (Photo courtesy IMC)

Indeed, IMC’s music over the years has been full of Southern soul and blues, (or even the tweaked voice of Billie Holiday singing “Gloomy Sunday” on “Crown”). Case in point: the hard-hitting blues guitar lick on their best-known single, “Memphop,” done many years before Al Kapone began experimenting with his own style of blues-infused rap. Clearly, IMC is fully rooted down, devoting a whole track (not just one line of a hit single) to the “901 Area Code” on their 2005 debut.  

Skipping back and forth across the decades is par for the course with IMC’s music, as the collective of DJs and MCs have been remarkably true to their vision and consistent in their output for 20 years, across three releases whose titles speak to their shared coherence: The 1st Edition (2005), The 2nd Edition (2008), and The 3rd Edition (2014). These artists have always been playing the long game, as should be clear this Friday, November 29th, at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, where the IMC will make a rare appearance to celebrate their 20th anniversary, revisiting their debut album in full and hinting at what a fourth work-in-progress might hold in store. 

The Memphis Flyer, it should be noted, has been with IMC for the whole ride, starting with Chris Herrington’s 2004 survey of Memphis hip-hop, but as I speak now with IMC member Quinn McGowan, aka The Mighty Quinn, there’s one thing he’d like to clear up about how the group’s been described here in the past. “The popular misnomer was always we were like the Wu-Tang [Clan] of the South, but actually a more accurate description would have been the Native Tongues of the South, right? Because we were always a group of groups. Native Tongues was the Jungle Brothers, Black Sheep, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Queen Latifah — all those folks kind of wrapped up in a loose association.” The same affiliation of like-minded groups coalesced in Memphis “because we were all doing shows together, right? And we were carving out what would become Memphop, throwing our own kind of shows, with b-boys [breakdancers] and the artists out front. We were adhering to the four elements.”

Those would be the four elements of hip-hop — DJing, MCing, breakdancing, and graffiti art — and the IMC members’ adherence to them as a way of life might explain the collective’s longevity, despite having never blown up coast to coast. Through the decades, the core group of groups, including Fyte Club (General MacArthur, The Mighty Quinn), M.O.S. (Duke, Derelick, and Milk [aka Yasin Allah]), Kontrast (Jason Da Hater, EMPEE, and DJ Capital A), and Fathom 9 (aka Avenging Wind), have continued as a tightly knit cohort, despite Fathom 9’s untimely passing in November of 2014.

“There have always been eight MCs and our DJ Capital A,” says McGowan, before noting the involvement of another stealth participant of sorts. “My son was always a secret 10th member. I drew a future projection of him as a silhouette inside of the eye in the Iron Mic borders.” That was back when McGowan was helping craft the visuals for the fledgling group. McGowan’s son, then very young, uttered the first line of the first IMC release. An upcoming album now in the works will echo that when Eillo, as McGowan’s son is known, now a key player and artist in his own right with the Unapologetic collective, will join the IMC. “Eillo is finishing a verse at the end of the project for the point of the symmetry, right?” says McGowan. “He starts out The 1st Edition. So we wanted to make sure to have him, you know, get his lyricism on to close out The 4th Edition.”  

In keeping with the four elements of hip-hop, expect a visual element at Friday’s show as well. McGowan’s other creative outlet is his visual art, including a line of comics called Wildfire, published by his own Legends Press. “My approach to comics is very much rooted to my approach to hip-hop. There’s this lineage of comic books in hip-hop that goes back to Rappin’ Max Robot.” It’s all been part of living the hip-hop life for McGowan, staying true to his vision and offering commentary on the state of the world. (It’s no accident that IMC opened for knowledge rapper KRS-One back in the day). “My band of brothers are a group of men that I have a great deal of respect for, and we try to live the values that we espouse,” says McGowan. And part of that involves embracing the unabashedly local “Memphop” tag, a term McGowan coined when the group began.

“There’s always going to be a culture of hip-hop or Memphop in Memphis. Hip-hop has its own very distinct expression here, even in the ways that we execute those four elements. Our graffiti is different. We have not only have b-boys; we’ve got jookin, right? You can still hear a Southern twang, so to speak. Memphop is bigger than us. So we want to do something that’s dedicated to that. And this thing at Stax is about our own placement in that.” 

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Music Music Features

For the Love of Lelia

Marcella Simien (Photo: Jenny Max)

The first words of Marcella Simien’s new album, To Bend to the Will of a Dream That’s Being Fulfilled, are the perfect introduction to the journey that awaits listeners: “May I heal this family bloodline, forwards and backwards through time.” It’s an incantation of sorts, delivered with a devotional energy that sets the tone for what’s to come. Musically, it’s a departure from Simien’s previous recorded work by way of its minimalism, her main accompaniment for this song being a piano, so evocative of New Orleans and Louisiana. That region, of course, is where the Simiens have been for generations, and where any journey into the singer’s family bloodline must take her. 

But while that’s zydeco country (her father Terrance being one of the most celebrated artists of that genre), this is not a zydeco album. Nor is it “swamp soul,” as the rootsy-yet-eclectic sound of Marcella Simien’s band has come to be called. For this most personal of journeys, she’s playing nearly all the instruments, crafting a setting in a kind of synthetic world-building, evoking the sweep of generations with the sweep of electronic filters. 

With the new sound comes a new performance style, as Simien will unveil on Saturday, November 23rd, at Off the Walls Arts. “Yvonne [Bobo] built this structure out of metal,” Simien says, “with a screen on the front, and Graham [Burks] will be projecting visuals on this cylinder. It’s gonna be this really interesting experience for the audience, something new.”

Yet the electronic approach itself is not especially new to Simien. “I don’t even know where to begin with my love for synths, from Kraftwerk to Gary Numan to Gorillaz,” she says. “I always wanted to explore that more. Then we finally invested in a Korg recently.” With the new album, that investment has come to fruition, but in a subtle way. This sculpted audio universe doesn’t wear its synths and drum machines on its sleeve, yet it doesn’t shy away from them, either. 

Other, rootsier sounds do make an appearance. Speaking of a song honoring her late great-grandmother, Simien says, “With the song ‘Lelia’ in particular, which was the guiding light for the whole idea, I intentionally used instruments that Lelia would have heard in her life and in the 1930s, when she was young and building her family.” Lelia is a centerpiece of the album, and the track bearing her name begins with the sounds of crickets in a field at night, then Simien saying, “Recently I’ve been writing with my great-grandmother.” Indeed, listening to the album, it feels as though Lelia is sitting in the room with us, though Simien never met her.  

Nor did her father, Lelia having died when he was an infant. Yet Simien felt a deep bond with her father’s grandmother, and the small town where she helped raise him. “I spent a lot of time in Mallet, Louisiana, a very small community outside of Opelousas,” she says. “And I feel this deep, deep connection to the Simiens. I spent so much of my time around them there, where our family goes as far back as the early 1700s, when they settled on that land.” Simien recalls imagining Lelia when visiting the old family house, where “there was this old photo of her when she was 15, taken on the day she got married. And you can see this beautiful Creole woman with long, dark hair, and these hands of hers reminded me of my hands. I would just stare at that picture, and I think she became a deeper part of me, beyond the DNA.”

Paradoxically, the first word of “Lelia” is “hydrated,” probably not a word used much in Mallet back in the day. Yet that’s also a clue to the power Simien finds in her family past: She came to it through her yogic practice, as a source of strength when she herself was navigating some dark days of her own. It was a time when she struggled with pharmacological dependence. “After a decade of being prescribed Adderall,” she confides, “I decided to get off it. It’s been over three years now, and I don’t miss it at all, but it was scary because I really didn’t trust myself for so much of my 20s, you know?”

Through the struggle, Lelia and others in her family lore were guiding lights. “I started to think about just how challenging her life was,” Simien says. “Giving birth to 15 children, living off the land, making your own stuff, and building a life with next to nothing — I couldn’t comprehend it, but I always thought, ‘If she could handle that, I can handle whatever I’m going through.’ She was tough, and it showed me that there’s so much I can learn from these women. And I want to honor them any way that I can.” 

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IMAKEMADBEATS: Not of this Earth

IMAKEMADBEATS (Photo: Peyton Dollar)

The road to recovery from a major health condition can happen in stages. Confronting a disease when you’re in its grips, determined to keep moving forward, is one thing; putting yourself out in the world once the worst of it is over is another. Having gone through hell, you realize things about yourself — things you can’t forget.

That’s one way into WANDS, the new instrumental album by IMAKEMADBEATS, aka James Dukes, which arguably marks a new aesthetic high point in the producer’s career. That much will be evident on Saturday, November 16th, at the Pink Palace’s Sharpe Planetarium, when MAD (as he is known) will premiere the album live, in an extravaganza of light and projections that will likely be seen as a defining moment in Memphis’ Afrofuturist scene. 

It should come as no surprise that the producer who named his dream studio Outerspace has been fascinated with the cosmos, or characters like the Mars-dwelling Watchmen character Doctor Manhattan, all his life. “The only field trip I cared about as a kid was to the planetarium. I didn’t care about nothing else!” he says, as we chat amid the glowing buttons and dials of Outerspace. 

“I’ve always been attached to space and the unknown,” he explains. “In WANDS, the general idea is that I have to leave here to find out where home is. The very first song is about me leaving here. The second song is the soundtrack to me making my way through the Earth’s atmosphere. The third is about flying through stars. The fourth is about me running into an alien that is telling me where to go to find home. The fifth song is about me descending onto that planet where there are clouds of bubbles that sing to me. And so that song is called ‘Choir of Bubbles.’”

If such a tale captures the album’s epic sweep, that last title hints at the album’s sonic palette. While there are indeed mad beats throughout, sporting MAD’s trademark glitches and tweaks, there are also orchestral passages both ethereal and bombastic, at times sounding eerily like the ’70s synth-meister Tomita. It’s an interstellar trip in audio form, in which you’re never sure if you’re hearing a sample or an intricate new composition by MAD himself. The track “I’m Losing My Mind I’m OK” even features lyrics, hauntingly sung by Tiffany Harmon.  

Another track, “James Michael,” features the producer — typically seen behind a console of sample triggers — playing a solo keyboard passage. And that, it turns out, is a clue to how the entire album came to be, starting with MAD’s decision to take videoconference music lessons (full disclosure, from me) during Covid’s early months of social distancing. As with the great Sun Ra himself, MAD’s latest voyage to outer space began through that trans-dimensional portal known as a “piano.” 

“I wanted to be a jazz pianist since I was a teenager,” he says. “I just didn’t have any kind of keyboard. What I did have was access to old records and a sampler. So, you know, I had a professional career in music before I had an instrument. Then I bought this keyboard, the Korg SV-1, with the weighted keys on it, and it feels like a real piano. And I felt drawn to that, like, ‘Yo. This is my time to actually learn this.’”

But eventually there was an even more compelling reason to play. During his first forays into playing keyboards, “I was just messing around and having fun,” MAD says, “until I got sick.” Just as Covid emerged, the producer contracted a rare autoimmune condition which initially threatened his motor skills. “You know,” he reflects, “I spent my whole life making things with my hands, and suddenly I couldn’t use my hands, with any real accuracy, for a couple of months. That scared the shit out of me!” He points to our surroundings to underscore his point. “I mean, I’m literally surrounded by buttons and knobs.”

Nonetheless, he kept at it, often with Kid Maestro twiddling the dials under MAD’s direction, and eventually the material that became MAD Songs, Volume 1 and Volume 1.5 came together. Those albums stood as proof positive that he could soldier on artistically through the hardship of his illness. Yet after that came a recovery of sorts, and it was in that period that the seeds of WANDS were planted. 

“A few months later, my hands came back and I started hitting you up.” MAD was a student of singular focus and determination. “One of the top things I remember in those lessons was how you would slide from one note to the next, and it would just add these, like, half step emotions. Which I am addicted to: half step movements in any chord progression I ever write.”

But beyond the raw knowledge of harmonies and melodies, or the basic physical therapy of strengthening his hands, playing the piano became a skeleton key, thanks to the infinite library of sounds available to any producer now, into the world of composing and arranging. (If this was a film, we would insert the heroic montage here.) Taking long sabbaticals of studying only piano, MAD began experimenting with the complex jazz harmonies that had always fascinated him. At that point, pairing music’s infinite plane of harmonics with his love of space was an easy leap to make. That in turn led him to an insight into his own condition. 

“There’s no one else in my family with any sort of autoimmune disorder. So for me to have this is an extreme anomaly. And so it made me wonder, you know, maybe I’m an alien?” Which brings us back to the story of WANDS, soon to be premiered musically in the planetarium (on his birthday, no less), but later to be revealed narratively, a bit further down the road. Look for a second edition of the album early next year that includes voiceovers recounting the tale in all its world-building glory. In the meantime, just know that an alien walks among us, and he is MAD. “I literally was telling my mom a couple weeks ago,” he says. “I was like, ‘Mom, if you didn’t actually remember birthing me, I would swear I’m not from here. You are the sole evidence that I am from Planet Earth.”

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Local Tina Turner Tribute Band Taking Off

Melanie Pierce (center) as Tina Turner “definitely has the look.” (Photo: Danny Day)

Melanie Pierce has two Tina Turner wigs. She describes one as the “big hair ’80s” wig and the other, the “short, bouncy with curls” wig.

Turner’s later curly hair style still had “a rock-and-roll feel, but more of a classy rock-and-roll feel,” says Pierce, who, along with La-Shon Robinson, are founders of Elevation Memphis: A Tina Turner Tribute Experience. They will be part of the Beale Street Brass Notes Walk of Fame ceremony honoring the late singer November 9th at 3 p.m. at Alfred’s on Beale. Memphis guitarist, songwriter, and recording artist Robert Allen Parker also will be featured at the event.

There’s probably nothing you could ask Pierce and Robinson about the late singer that they can’t answer.

It all began when they went to see Tina: The Tina Turner Musical in February 2023 at the Orpheum Theatre. Both women were familiar with Turner, but they were awestruck after they went to the show.

“I am a child of the ’80s,” Robinson says, recalling when she saw the 1984 video for Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” “I was like, ‘Woah. My God. Who is this mature lady? She’s walking with all this confidence in this video. I’ve got to find out more about her.’ And from there I became fan.”

A native of Grenada, Mississippi, Robinson, a sergeant in the Army National Guard, already had an alternative band, Elevation Memphis. “We do covers of all genres — from ’60s to today’s hits. And we also have original music.”

After the Tina musical at the Orpheum, she thought, “Hey, let’s add Tina.”

Robinson plays flute, tambourine, and a little percussion, and Pierce plays bass and the African djembe drum in the cover band. “Our keyboardist Derrin Lee has played an integral part in all of the arrangements for our Tina tunes. And he’s been with us almost since day one. And it’s been almost four years.”

The band also includes core member dancers and musicians. “We have great dancers and we do have some of the best musicians in Memphis,” Pierce says.

Robinson and Pierce write the originals. “We currently have six originals out right now streaming,” Robinson says.

Almost immediately after they put the Turner tribute together, she and Pierce were referred by Memphian Richard Day to perform their show at the Tina Turner Museum at the West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center in Brownsville, Tennessee. They met Turner’s granddaughter, great-grandson, and a lot of her first-cousins, Robinson says. “And they all look just like her.”

Robinson and Pierce became friends with the family members and they began Facebook-ing each other.

More and more people began asking them to play at their venues, she says.

And “next thing you know” they were invited to perform at the Brass Note ceremony, Robinson says. “We will perform 25 minutes of Tina’s biggest hits.”

Robinson doesn’t portray Turner in the tribute show. “I don’t do Tina. I wear a wig, but Melanie definitely has the look. And when I tell you she studies day in and day out to perfect her — I’ve never seen anybody put in so much work and dedication.”

“I’m learning her every day,” Pierce says. “Her elegance. The way she carries herself on stage. Her confidence on stage.”

And, she says, “Anybody would love to impersonate Tina just because of who she is and just the name. Everything about her.”

Asked how she’d describe Turner, Pierce says, “I would say that she’s very calm. Looking at her interviews, she’s very educated. She just has a peace when you listen to her speak.”

Pierce studies Turner’s voice. “I do try to talk like her. I have made some songs where my sound is similar to her, but I think because I’m bringing the look and that confidence and that presence on stage, sounding like her is not even the thing. ‘I can feel Tina in you.’ ‘You are the next Tina.’ That’s the type of feedback that I get.

“But I do work really hard to talk like her when I am talking in the microphone. I would say Tina’s stage voice is so powerful. It’s raspy. It’s very rock-and-roll.”

And, she says, “Tina Turner has the best legs. I definitely don’t compare to her legs, but I think I have pretty nice legs. I don’t need insurance on them, though. Tina definitely did.” 

A native of West Memphis, Arkansas, Pierce got into singing three and a half years ago. “It was just karaoke from time to time.”

Robinson, who worked with her in an office back then, invited her to try out for her Elevation band. “She asked me to come and audition because she heard me playing the djembe with my friend, jamming out at my house. And we had a video on Facebook [of us] jamming out. She said, ‘I really want you to sing. Do you sing?’ I said, ‘No, I’ve never been in a band. I don’t know anything about it.’”

Pierce sang but “just for fun around the house. But not thinking about growing up and being a singer.”

After being coached by Robinson, Pierce got in the band.

When they began getting ready to do the Turner tribute, Pierce began working on the Turner look. “I started off just ordering my first wig off of Amazon. Just because I needed something.”

When ordering it, Pierce says, “I just put in ‘Tina Turner’ and this big hair wig came in.”

Now, she says, “People make me custom wigs.”

In addition to her “rock-and-roll hair,” Pierce dresses like Turner. She describes the look as “female, classy, but sexy rock-and-roll. She wears the dresses with the tights. With the fishnet tights. With the high heels. I do dance in heels.”

Portraying Turner carries over into her daily life, Pierce says. “I have more confidence because I’m having to play a very confident woman.”

Pierce changes her persona from the cover band to the Turner tribute. “I get in ‘Tina’ mode as soon as I hit the stage. I’m ready to go. Ready for whatever crowd, whatever genre of music we do.”

And, she adds, “Tina is always ready. She’s bold. She’s daring. She’s a visionary. She’s fearless.”

They perform their Turner tribute at Memphis locations, including Neil’s Music Room and Lafayette’s Music Room, but not very often. “We don’t want to water it down here in the city,” Robinson says. “So, we’re just starting to go outside Memphis. Arkansas last weekend. St. Louis. Nashville.”

They’d love to one day take their Tina Turner show to Las Vegas. “People have already reached out.”

So, what do they think Tina Turner would think of their band if she were still alive? “I think that if Tina saw us from day one till now, she would definitely say she is very proud of us,” Pierce says. “She can see how hard we’ve been working to improve our show. And she would tell us we have what it takes to be the best Tina Turner tribute band of our time.”

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Music Music Features

Aquarian Blood Redux

(left to right) Jeremy Speakes, Michael Peery, Laurel Horrell, JB Horrell, and Keith Cooper: the latest Aquarian Blood (Photo: Sara Moseley)

Once you delve into their catalog, Aquarian Blood can be hard to pin down. Their 2017 debut LP on Goner was a rollicking, riff-heavy burst of punk guitar and synth noise centered on the hearty screams of co-founder Laurel Horrell. And while there were more minimalist flavors present, such as the moody “Won’t Forget to Die,” few were prepared for the sea change that came with their sophomore release. A Love That Leads to War was an abrupt, acoustic about-face that featured co-founder JB Horell’s delicate picking on a nylon string classical guitar, blended with low-key drum machines and hand percussion, spooky synths, and haunted, primitive melodies in a quieter vein. 

And yet the world the Horrells created was no fairy folk land of unicorns and tarot card poetry. These were dark missives from an underground life filled with trauma and desire, and the sheer sound of the home recordings captured what might happen if German sonic artists Can reinterpreted the Incredible String Band. It was intimate and compelling, and, with Covid striking only months after the album’s release, oddly prescient. During lockdown, I wore the album out. And, it turned out, there was more where that came from. In 2022, the band released Bending the Golden Hour, also on Goner, and earlier this year Black & Wyatt Records dropped Counting Backwards Again. Throw in the 2020 EP Decoys, and it’s clear that this acoustic chapter of the band’s career has been fruitful. Indeed, the three LPs and associated material hang together so well, I called on JB recently to lend some perspective to this impressive body of work, and what the future may hold.

Memphis Flyer: I’ve really been digging Counting Backwards Again since it came out in April. And it strikes me that you could call the last three full-lengths a trilogy. They hang together that well. 

JB Horrell: Yeah, I agree with that. All the music on those three records was created in the same period of time, between 2019 and 2022. And it’s interesting because there are songs on this third [acoustic] record that predate songs on the first record, and songs on the first record that post-date songs on the third record. There’s this specific body of music that’s broken up over three albums, and all of the songs encapsulate everything that was going on. And it feels good. Three is a good round number.

Is there a narrative through-line to the albums, or is it more oblique than that?

I didn’t choose the songs for the two before this third one. Zac [Ives, of Goner Records,] was a huge catalyst in the entire shift in the band’s approach and sound. Our drummer had broken his arm, so in the down time we were doing this kind of acoustic thing for fun. [We told Zac], “I guess it’s still Aquarian Blood, whatever.” And he was very encouraging. He said, “Well, you guys should try playing a show like that.” 

And then Zac more or less curated the first albums, correct?

Yeah. We gave him 23 tracks for the first record, and that ended up being 15 songs. Then there were 32 tracks we gave him for Bending the Golden Hour, and he picked 15 again. So for the Black & Wyatt record, we had 17 left, and I pared it down to the 12 that felt to us, in a very personal way, like the ones that completed that whole trip. That was a really brutal period for all of us, with Covid going on, everybody sort of disconnected, and a lot of personal stuff going on, like losing people close to us in terrible ways. So all that felt like it was of a time and of a process. It was cathartic, a process of grieving and sort of trying to figure out the way forward.

And the band was expanding through those years, as you embraced the wider sonic palette.

Yeah, it had gotten up to seven people. But coming into 2024, it kind of felt like we had cleaned out the closet to make room for new stuff. We knew that there was this imminent change about to take place, and we knew the band was going to downsize to five people, total. I wanted everybody involved in the new lineup to have a lot more of a hand in writing and arranging the songs.

So, since the release of Counting Backwards Again, there’s been another sea change in Aquarian Blood’s sound?

Yeah. We knew that we were ready to turn the page. We had a whole batch of brand-new songs. So we started completely from scratch last winter, with Keith Cooper on guitar, Michael Peery on keyboards, and Jeremy Speakes on drums. Then we took it on the road in June, and it was interesting to be touring, playing nothing that was ever released. I wasn’t sure what to expect about that. We had never played a show with that lineup before the tour! All of it seems counterintuitive, but the opportunity was there, so we jumped at it, and the tour couldn’t have gone any better.

Playing 17 shows in 18 days really locked it in. So, since we’ve been home, we’ve been hitting the studio quite a bit, and the recordings are just stacking up. Our intuition was right. We’ve got this group of people together, taking it somewhere else. The Lucky 7 Brass Band just put horns on some stuff last week. And Krista Wroten and Ethan Baker play violin on it. So the whole thing has become very collaborative. And it feels really good to get out of my head and out of my recording room at home and go out and collaborate again. 

Aquarian Blood will play with Vorhex Angel (with members of Jeff the Brotherhood) at B-Side on Friday, November 1st, at 9 p.m.

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Music Music Features

Iris, Transformed

Randall Goosby (Photo: Kaupo Kikkas)

Over two years ago, we reported that the beloved Iris Orchestra, facing an uncertain future, had transformed itself. Local fans of classical music will recall the orchestra’s unique brief since 2000: to bring a roster of virtuosos from around the world to Memphis for a few select concerts every year, and thus have them mingle with local host families and otherwise engage the community. And while their more than two decades of such concerts and engagement had been brilliant, after Covid it seemed that model was financially unsustainable. 

But, it turned out, the players’ passion for the music and for Memphis prevailed, as the Iris Orchestra became the Iris Collective. Founder and conductor Michael Stern said at the time, “The musicians themselves grouped together, committed to the idea that they simply would not let Iris go away. It was absolutely musician-driven. And Iris will continue on. It’s going to have a different feel. I will be less involved, and it will be an amalgam of ensembles, chamber music, orchestra concerts, and new ways of imagining community engagement.”

It was not a far leap for a group that had, from the beginning, committed itself to being “an ensemble for the 21st century — flexible, nonhierarchical, and passionate about the highest standards of performance.” Yet, as an even less hierarchical collective, Iris was now charting a new course. How has the group fared since the dramatic restructuring?

Judging by the upcoming performance at the Germantown Performing Arts Center on Saturday, November 2nd, featuring the rising star violinist and former Memphian Randall Goosby, with Michael Stern back to conduct the orchestra, Iris is thriving more than ever. Indeed, it’s appropriate that the program is titled Transformations, for it is proof positive that the ensemble’s metamorphosis has been complete. Those violet Iris petals have become wings, a butterfly shed of its chrysalis and ready to fly higher.

Iris artist fellows Gabriela Fogo and Roberta dos Santos (Photo: Courtesy Iris Collective)

As executive director Rebecca Arendt says of the concert, “It’s a beautiful example of how we’ve evolved. Orchestral concerts were such a huge part of Iris Orchestra, obviously, but they’re not a focal point in Iris Collective. We love to do them. We’re really excited about the show coming up, but what we’re really excited about is to use it as an opportunity to showcase the importance of music education in our community. The week leading up to it, Randall Goosby will be here all week, working with the students that we work with every day. He’ll be in the classrooms with us. He’ll be working after school with them, and then a number of them will be joining us on the stage for one of our pieces.”

That piece will be Adoration, by a composer who’s only been getting her due in this century, Florence Price. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, she moved to Chicago due to Jim Crow and became a part of the Chicago Black Renaissance, and, though celebrated at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, her work “fail[ed] to enter the canon; a large quantity of her music came perilously close to obliteration,” as Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker in 2018.

Yet as more ensembles have made a course correction to embrace composers of color, that has changed, and Price’s work has gained a higher profile. “Adoration is really beautiful,” says Arendt. “Randall plays it often. And there are a lot of iterations of it, so a number of our students have actually played it as an orchestral piece, just within their own programming that they do in schools. So to be able to come together to play it with professional musicians, with Randall as a soloist, with Michael Stern conducting, gives them a beautiful taste of what it’s like to be a professional musician with something that’s familiar to them already.”

It certainly won’t be lost on those students that Goosby, the star soloist of the evening, was one of their own only 10 years ago. “He went to Arlington High School,” notes Arendt. “I don’t believe he ever studied with an Iris teacher, but a number of our Iris musicians have worked with the same teachers that he’s worked with. Still, he is a product of Memphis. He performed all around the city while he was in high school.” 

Goosby also echoes the kind of community engagement on which the Iris Collective thrives. He’s deeply involved with several nonprofits, such as Project: Music Heals Us, Concerts in Motion, and the U.K.-based Music Masters organization, which provides teaching, grants, and performance opportunities to young musicians. He’ll be carrying on such work in the week leading up to the concert as he makes special appearances in Iris’ educational programs, complementing the ongoing music instruction efforts of Iris artist fellows Gabriela Fogo and Roberta dos Santos.

The centerpiece of the November 2nd performance by Goosby, Stern, and the Iris Collective will surely be Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, a foundational work in that instrument’s repertoire, opening with a striking solo violin passage that was unconventional for its time. But the players will also perform Emotive Transformations, a 2018 piece by James Lee III, and the folk-infused masterpiece Variaciones Concertante by Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, which features a virtuosic movement for violin, Variazione in modo di Moto perpetuo. Yet Goosby’s star turn in this piece will be complemented with passages that highlight other musicians as well. 

That, says Arendt, perfectly captures the Iris ethos. “It’s a piece that exemplifies what we think Iris Collective is all about because each variation highlights a different instrument within the orchestra. The collective wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for our musicians, so I love the fact that the concert ends by celebrating them. For us, the collective is really about many voices coming together for a single purpose, and that’s to make Memphis a great place to live and a great place to connect.” 

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Kurt Vile’s Memphis Pilgrimage

Kurt Vile (Photo: Adam Langellotti)

Certain musical artists are so unorthodox that it’s hard to compare them to their peers. In a process akin to world-building in film or literature, they can’t be assessed in conventional terms: They’ve woven together such disparate influences as to be standing alone in a universe of their own making. For the past 15 years or so, no one has epitomized this quality more than Kurt Vile. 

For starters, that’s his real name, not a clever, punk-infused spin on Bertolt Brecht’s songwriting partner, Kurt Weill. That’s but one clue that this auteur, far from being a calculating hipster, is coming from a place that’s disarmingly sincere. Indeed, his lyrics so defy traditional rhyming schemes and meter that they register more like conversational incantations, meandering excerpts from a diary, dream journal, or friendly chat that Vile intones word-for-word, beat-for-beat, throughout a song as one would with rhyming verses and chorus. And he sings these incantations over music that seamlessly blends elements of classic rock, psychedelia, folk rock, and noise rock as if the entirety of rock history occurred in one simultaneous Big Bang, not spread out over decades. 

Yet Vile appreciates those eras preceding him with the fidelity and care of a music historian. That’s one thing that’s bringing him to Memphis. But it’s not the Memphis of the Sun, Stax, or Hi labels that so many pilgrims have enshrined. This is the gonzo Memphis of the ’90s, when alternative artists flocked to the Bluff City primarily for one reason: Easley-McCain Recording.    

Doug Easley and Matt Qualls at Easley-McCain Recording (Photo: Neal Bledsoe)

When Doug Easley and Davis McCain moved from their backhouse studio to a larger location, the former Onyx Studio on Deadrick Avenue, they did so at the dawn of the ’90s, a time when indie music’s star was rising. Their approach, melding exacting engineering standards with an improvised, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach that defied the overly sterile approach of most studios, was perfect for artists who wanted to deconstruct the elements of rock history and refashion it into something more alien and unpredictable. For a young Kurt Vile, the aesthetic of records made at Easley-McCain then was a revelation.  

“I can remember when Starlite Walker, the Silver Jews record, came out,” Vile says today. “I was just a teenager in high school, and I maybe even cut school to go to my local suburban Philadelphia record store, and I took it home, and those voices just cut right through. There was an introduction with Steve [Malkmus] and David [Berman] saying, ‘Hello, my friends …’ Then David’s voice just cuts through: ‘Troubles, no troubles on the line …’ I would say that’s the first Doug Easley record that hit me super hard. And I was, what, 15?”

One can trace a straight line from that album, full of Berman’s own poetic/ conversational incantations, to Vile’s body of work. But that was just a fraction of Easley-McCain’s output at time, and young Vile began soaking up other albums cut there. “Pavement’s Wowee Zowee was my gateway drug!” he quips, then rattles off another half dozen seminal works recorded at the Memphis studio. 

“I also love Jon Spencer’s Orange,” he says. “And Washing Machine by Sonic Youth. ‘The Diamond Sea’ [the album’s closing track] is probably my favorite epic, long song out there.” Like those ’90s classics, Vile, in his own way, seems to be rebuilding rock history from spare parts. Having started as a home recordist (with even his 2009 Matador Records debut containing two tracks, “Overnite Religion” and “Blackberry Song,” recorded in his home years earlier), it’s understandable that the Easley-McCain aesthetic, which seemingly preserves home recording’s anything-goes spirit in a professional studio setting, would instantly appeal to Vile. Indeed, while passing through Memphis years ago, he made a pilgrimage there, or at least to Easley-McCain’s current home on Kelly Road, which has much of the vibe of the old Deadrick location. “When I saw that place, finally, it had all those vibes in there,” says Vile. “It’s got that cozy house, chill vibe. It’s not sterile. Everything’s organic and blends together, more than I’ve ever seen in a studio.” 

That home vibe is so important to Vile that, after having made many recordings in professional studios since his Matador days, he’s come full circle and mainly records at home now, albeit in a dedicated space with more high-end equipment than when he started. That makes it all the more notable that next week he’ll be doing sessions at Easley-McCain. “We went through Easley and all the lights flashed,” says Vile. “It’s this other place. You’ve got to step out and go to another professional zone, eventually. But, like I say, it’s professional, but it’s got the cool kind of grit as well, and that’s what feels cozy. Not to mention, it’s Doug Easley! With a nice young guy, Matt [Qualls], who really rules — a nice young guy with energy to help, who’s really good.”

And yet, for Vile, it’s just as important to play a live show while here. That will happen on Tuesday, October 22nd, at Hernando’s Hide-A-Way, just before he and his band, the Violators, start tracking with Easley. “We’ve been together so long now as this unit that we know how to just set up and perform for the people and for ourselves. And ideally you want to set up like that in the studio as well. We like to start a session at the end of a tour or something. So we’re booking this one show to perform in real time, and then carry that over to the studio. Also, I’m really excited to play with Optic Sink. I met them last time we played. I just love the vibe in Memphis. Within a really short span, I tapped into the scene pretty quick.”