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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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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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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.” 

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38 Special’s Half Century of Hits

38 Special (Photo: Courtesy Campbell Ent. Group)

On February 16, 1975, a curious story by James Knightly appeared in The Commercial Appeal: “Lynyrd Skynyrd Proteges to Record,” ran the headline. With a fine-grained attention to the minutiae of the city’s recording industry that is rare today, the story explains how a thus-far unknown band “will arrive at Sonic Recording Studios at 1692 Madison to record an album.” News flash! It’s hard to imagine such a story making headlines now, but, as Knightly notes, the unknown band’s singer-guitarist “is the 20-year-old brother of Ronnie Van Zant, lead singer and guitarist for the outstanding Southern rock group, Lynyrd Skynyrd.”

That alone made them notable. And it was true, Van Zant’s kid brother Donnie and the band he’d co-founded only months before with fellow singer-guitarist Don Barnes — 38 Special — had a date with destiny. Though that Memphis session wasn’t their big break, they did release an album two years later, and by 1981 they had perfected a custom blend of Southern rock and arena rock that would keep them high in the charts for years, epitomized by hits like “Hold on Loosely” and “Caught Up in You,” both co-written and sung by Barnes. 

To this day, the band is going strong, with Barnes alone at the helm since Donnie Van Zant’s retirement over a decade ago. In fact, on Saturday, October 19th, 38 Special will return to Memphis, where they were once so presciently heralded nearly 50 years ago. The band, which still plays a hundred shows a year, will cap off the seventh annual Fall Fest Memphis, a two-day event benefitting Room in the Inn. In anticipation of their appearance, I reached Barnes by phone to hear his thoughts on Memphis, the early days of the band, and the longevity of Southern rock. 

Don Barnes (Photo: Carl Dunn )

Memphis Flyer: This story from 1975 really celebrates 38 Special coming to Memphis. How long had you been together at that point?

Don Barnes: We actually put the band together at the end of ’74 and then we got rehearsals started in ’75 so, you know, we’re just going to call 2025 our 50th year. And we’ve got a legacy package coming out with a double CD. One disc has all the greatest hits, and the second disc will have new music. So it should be out about March — great songs!

Whatever happened with those 1975 recordings?

That was the very first recording we ever did. We did our first demo here in Memphis, and, of course, the song never saw the light of day. But you know, that was our very first foray. I remember, we went through the snow and cold of the winter, piled in the van. And we played in a club that had Jerry Lee Lewis’ PA system in there. We all were so honored, you know, to be using his PA system! You know those early days, when you travel around, banging around in a van with an old, dirty mattress in the back, switching drivers and all that, trying to sleep. You start questioning, what about your future? I remember waking up in the van in the middle of Kansas, in a cornfield, thinking, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ But, sticking together like that as a group, it’s like a family. You kind of prop each other up and give each other encouragement. 

What were the early days of the band like?

I’ve known Donnie since we were 14! We were playing around Jacksonville in all these little teen club bands and dance bands — about eight other bands before 38 Special. Still working day jobs. And Donnie called me and said, ‘Let’s try it one more time. We’ll get the people, the right people, who will show up and have the conviction to go all the way.’ So I said, ‘Oh, really, try again?’ Anyway, it worked out, but of course, you make all your mistakes in public, and you suffer and starve for what you want. People think ‘Hold on Loosely’ was on our first album, but it was our fourth album. So you went through a lot of self-examination, like, ‘What am I doing?’ Then, people think you get a record deal and you’ve made it. But they’re just giving you a chance to play in the big leagues. If you can’t come across with something then they’re gonna send you back down to the farm league and the clubs. So we had some desperate times there, but it finally worked out.

When Donnie retired, I said, ‘Well, your brother Ronnie would be so proud that you made it 40 years!’ I still talk to him. He’s still my partner — we own the trademark.

Speaking of Ronnie Van Zant, what kind of impact did he have on you guys as a band, before he died in that tragic plane crash in 1977?

I remember the things that Ronnie told us about: Put your truth in your song; put your light in it. Don’t just say, ‘Ooh baby, I love you, I miss you.’ You’ve got to find real truths from stories in your life. So ‘Caught Up in You’ was about a woman that I was dating at the time, and I happened to say, ‘You know, I can’t seem to get any work done; I’m just so caught up in you all the time.’ And it was just like a light bulb turned on. ‘That’s a pretty good element for a song.’ 

38 Special will appear at 7 p.m. on Saturday, October 19th, at Fall Fest Memphis, held this year at St. Brigid Catholic Church, 7801 Lowrance Rd. For tickets and other details, visit fallfestmemphis.org.

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Music Music Features News We Recommend We Saw You

Michael Donahue Does Mempho Fest

Last weekend, thousands flocked to the Radians Amphitheater at Memphis Botanic Garden for Mempho Fest. The Memphis Flyer‘s own Michael Donahue was on hand to take party pictures for his We Saw You column. I tagged along with a video camera to record the legendary newsman in action. But don’t take my word for it — watch him get swarmed by fans and charm the masses with his easygoing style.

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Music Music Blog

Big Star Rides Again

Jody Stephens sings from the heart, stepping out front during Tuesday's concert. (Photo: Alex Greene)

When Jody Stephens and Chris Stamey put together a new version of Big Star two years ago, the quintet was a new group. And yet the band, which also includes Pat Sansone (Wilco), Jon Auer (Posies), and Mike Mills (R.E.M.), was hardly a bunch of rookies. Indeed, they all were unapologetic fans of that ’70s band that never quite made it, even as it lived on in their hearts and creative minds. And so, when they played WYXR’s Raised By Sound Festival in 2022, it was a revelation and a delight, but no great surprise that they pulled off the tribute to the band’s debut album, #1 Record, with aplomb.

And yet, being a “new” band, they had some rough patches at the time. Mills, battling a cold, was just shy of bringing his A game. The group as a whole still had to work out some details, as evidenced by their grinding to a halt during the bridge of “O My Soul,” only to begin the song again with brilliant results.

Now, two years later, it’s the 50th anniversary of Big Star’s second album, Radio City, and the same quintet is back in the saddle this fall for a series of 10 select dates in the U.S. and Europe. The kickoff show for the tour was at Crosstown Theater this Tuesday, and in the two years since this more stripped-down group formed (compared to the more sprawling bands assembled for the Big Star’s Third concerts a decade ago), they have become even more of a living, breathing unit. While the 2022 show was excellent, Tuesday’s show was jaw-dropping.

It isn’t that the group has grown more precise; rather, they’ve now internalized the material to such a degree that they can loosen up with it. And that is entirely appropriate, given the nature of the album they’re saluting in this round of shows. When it was recorded, Radio City marked the reconfiguration of the band as a trio led by Alex Chilton. Chris Bell, who founded the group, had left in frustration to pursue a solo career. And the album, while intricately crafted and performed, thus reflected Chilton’s greater embrace of the raucous, the chaotic, and the wild. It was nothing like the shambolic masterpieces he would later create as a solo artist, but a bit unhinged nonetheless, and therein lies its charm.

There were still plenty of echoes of Bell’s sensibility in Tuesday’s concert. Indeed, the group kicked off the show with “Feel” and several other chestnuts from #1 Record, the album’s cover projected behind them. A few songs in, the background changed to Radio City, and Stamey quipped, “Something is trying to tell us to move on to the next album.”

And move they did, as they brought some of Big Star’s rowdiest material to life. “That’s just fun to play!” quipped Sansone after they’d ripped through “O My Soul,” this time with no confusion, full steam ahead. After an especially stomping version of “She’s a Mover,” where Stamey seemed to capture a bit of Chilton’s old cutting delivery as he sang, “She name was Marcia, Marcia the name, she look like a dove, now,” the singer exclaimed to the audience, “Can it get any better than that?”

Stamey lit up even more before they launched into “When My Baby’s Beside Me.” As he explained, “This was the first Big Star song I ever heard, and I had to pull my car to the side of the road to hear it. In the Winston-Salem area back then, we thought these songs were hits! They were playing on local radio!” Indeed, each player’s inner fan boy seemed to emerge before our eyes as they conjured up the sounds that had first captivated them as teens.

Pat Sansone, Jon Auer, Mike Mills, Jody Stephens, and Chris Stamey as the Big Star Quintet (Photo: Alex Greene)

The players’ enthusiasm for the material was contagious. And yet it wasn’t all raucous abandon. Several quieter numbers stole the show, including “Way Out West,” “India Song,” and “Thirteen,” where Stephens stepped out from behind the drums to sing. And, from the tender to the tumultuous, the voices of all five players created vocal harmonies of a richness and beauty rarely heard these days.

Not to be outdone, Sansone shone in a solo rendition of “I’m in Love with a Girl” that was so heartfelt, you might have thought he wrote it himself. Auer, too, sang with moving, vulnerable soul on the quiet sections of “Daisy Glaze.” Never did the lyrics “nullify my life” seem so desolate.

Mills, for his part, also shone, especially on a crisp, propulsive “September Gurls.” Before singing it, he thanked Jody for letting him take on the vocal duties, promising him that “the check is in the mail.”

Mills also sang as the band closed their encore with what Mills said was “a rare moment of earnestness from Alex,” the lovingly ambivalent “Thank You Friends.” The group, who made many comments about their admiration for each other, and the joy of working together, may have been singing it to the audience who shared their love for the city’s best loved “unsuccessful” group — or they may have been singing it to one another, now a tight-knit ensemble of El Goodos hell-bent on keeping their favorite music alive.

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Music Music Blog Music Features

Gonerfest Turns 21, Can Now Drink Legally

Derv Gordon and So What (Photo: Alex Greene)

It’s official: as of its closing moments this past Sunday, Gonerfest 21 has been successfully completed. Now it can drink in the state of Tennessee, the joke goes, and now it has fully embarked on its third decade. And, truth be told, it really did feel like our favorite fest had experienced some kind of growth spurt this year, even if some of its participants chose to go alcohol-free.

See interviews and more from the four-day weekend in this exclusive compilation on the Memphis Flyer YouTube channel.

In fact, the common sentiment seems to be, more than ever, an overwhelmingly head-spinning “What just happened?” Perhaps that vibe was amplified because Sunday, traditionally given over to Gonerfest’s rootsier, less distorted side, was instead dedicated to very much the opposite this year, as Oneida proceeded to forge a new approach to rock music before our eyes.

Taking in all their work as a whole, Oneida excels at musical world-building, blending synth sounds with their chugging rock band foundation in an approach that’s both sonic and harmonic, noise-laden and sing-song. And they bashed out one textured tune after another. “I wanna hold your hand/Between my teeth/I won’t draw blood/Don’t wanna stain the sheets,” as one song went. But it was their finale, “Sheets of Easter,” that really took the audience to a different plane.

Bobby Matador of Oneida (Photo: Tad Lauritzen Wright)

Kicking off with the phrase, “You’ve got to look into the LIGHT,” the song then consists of the band relentlessly, mercilessly repeating the last word, mantra-like, along with a single chord hammered out in eighth notes for approximately 19 minutes. “Light, light, light, light, light…” they sang, though the syllables began to morph after a while. Live stream viewers may have refreshed their connections, thinking the video was glitching. It wasn’t! Naïfs like me, unfamiliar with the song, were bewildered, amused, or offended, not knowing how or when it would end. Was it performance art? An MK-ULTRA-like experiment in which we, the audience, were lab rats? A sophomoric prank? Personally, I went through something not unlike the five stages of grief as I listened, from denial to anger, bargaining, depression, and, finally, acceptance.

It was truly one of the most surreal experiences I have had at any festival. As Zac Ives, co-owner of Goner Records, explains, the “song” is an old favorite by the band. “I don’t know how often they do it now, because it was on a record that they did 20 years ago, but it’s always insane. There’s not really much like it. Some listeners are horrified, and others are like, ‘Thank you for playing this amazing song.’ So yeah, it’s very divisive.”

Yet there weren’t many grumblers after it was done. Everyone, the band included, was too raw from the hypnotic onslaught. Finally, Eric Friedl, Goner’s founder, announced, “This concludes Gonerfest 21! After Oneida there is only light…go out into that light! Thanks to everyone who made this happen, the sound crew, the video crew. We made it through the rain, we made it through the not-rain.” And with that simple summation, the four-day roller coaster ride was over.

Looking back, then, one might well ask, “What just happened?” With too many bands to give every one of them a fair shake, one is left with only the most incendiary moments, burned into one’s brain.

The Pull Chains, a new collaboration between Greg Cartwright, Jesse Smith, Joseph Plunkett, and Eliza Hill, marked a refreshing return to harder rock territory for Cartwright, with echoes of the old Reigning Sound, but with all new material. And, as Cartwright notes, nearly every song was “a full four-way co-write from scratch, and they still seem to resonate with a single storyteller perspective. Such a joy to write songs with good people!”

Okmoniks (Photo: Anton Jackson)

Later that day, Okmoniks singer Helene Grotans was on a tear, perhaps trying to outdo the hurricane with which she shared a name, delighting the crowd with her Category 4 vocals and frenzied-yet-precise work on the Farfisa organ. “I usually play an Acetone,” she quipped, but nonetheless praised the beauty of the onstage instrument provided by Goner with an assist from Graham Winchester. Later, she raved about the Pull Chains, saying, “The Reigning Sound is my favorite band! Well, them and the Mummies!”

Revealing her classical training, Helene of Okmoniks demonstrated deft derrière technique on the Farfisa. (Photo: Alex Greene)

Regarding the opening night’s closer, local muso Jeremy Scott posted on social media that Derv Gordon and So What “killed it, just like they did seven years ago.” While the heavier, almost glam sound of So What contrasts with the old records by The Equals, they supplied solid backing for Gordon’s rich vocals, and, despite any audio issues Gordon encountered, had the crowd bouncing for the whole set.

Derv Gordon and So What (Photo: Alex Greene)

It’s Raining, It’s Streaming
Friday was marked by near-constant rainfall, but that did not slow down Gonerfest 21. As Ives notes of the move from the outdoor to the indoor stage, “We were able to deal with the rain really well on Friday, because of the team that we have with us, and GM Jeremy over at Railgarten and his staff. It took a whole lot of work from a bunch of people to be able to make all that stuff happen and pull it all off. And the community that we’re able to bring in, everybody just almost wills this thing to work well, you know? I think we’re really lucky that that it works that way.”

Railgarten, with both an outdoor and an indoor stage, offered a uniquely adaptable venue for such contingencies. And fans could also stay at home, given the reliability of the live streamed video, co-directed by Brent Shrewsbury and Alik Mackintire and executed by a crew of camera operators and other techs.

Availing myself of that option, I found the clarity of the videography and the brilliant online mix to be excellent, especially when running it through big speakers. Surprisingly, Ives himself watched some of the livestream on Sunday.

“I couldn’t be there [due to a mild case of Covid], and I was sort of crestfallen that I couldn’t. But the fact that I could sit there and watch from my quarantined house meant everything. I sent an email to Brent and Alik afterwards saying, ‘You completely saved my day.’ And not only that, that stream is an unbelievable way to watch everything. It is just on a different level now. They’re directing and cutting that stuff real time on a multi-camera shoot. The sound is unbelievable. The video is unbelievable. The real time editing is great. And then all of the in-between stuff that they’ve added in production this year, with Chris McCoy and Ryan [Haley] doing these interviews [see them in this exclusive compilation on the Memphis Flyer YouTube channel], and then taking footage that we’ve collected from the archive over the years and putting that all in, it’s amazing. It was the first time I’ve ever sat at home and watched that way. And I was completely blown away by our team.”

In retrospect, the weather for Gonerfest 21 was perfect. There was just enough bad weather to make comrades of us all, thankful we were spared the worst of it. No doubt the storm’s impact on festival-goers’ own kith and kin in the Carolinas, Georgia, and elsewhere was being felt, but Memphians were largely subject to mere rain (and the odd dead limb crashing down here and there).

L’Afrique, C’est Chic
Oneida wasn’t the only act to leave heads spinning. One of the festival’s most unpredictable moments was the triumphant return to Memphis of Niger’s finest Afro-beat groove band, Etran de L’Aïr. When Goner brought them here for the first time last summer, their show at Growlers was the talk of the town for weeks. This time around, they exceeded even those rave reviews.

Etran de L’Aïr (Photo: Anton Jackson)

While the two-guitar, bass, and drum lineup was conventional, the sounds that emerged as they layered cascades of electric notes over galloping rhythms were nigh otherworldly. Something about the weaving guitar arpeggios created a whole greater than the sum of the parts. After a while, the various overlapping overtones created a kind of aural illusion of other sounds, something several listeners commented on. “I thought I heard harmonicas,” exclaimed one friend, and I did too. Most importantly, the sweep of sound and rhythm proved irresistible to the crowd, who collectively threw their hands up after each tune and gave perhaps the weekend’s loudest roars of approval.

With Etran de L’Aïr not being your typical Goner band (is there such a thing?), Ives was relieved to see them win over the crowd. “After seeing them completely destroy that Growlers stage, I was super excited to see what would happen,” he says. “And then when everybody just completely embraced it and was completely into it, it rejuvenated my whole sense of why we do this thing and how great the audience is at Gonerfest. And I had a whole funny conversation with with a friend about that, about how he was not a ‘world music’ fan. Now, he’s open to it. This was the first world music band that he likes.”

Ladies’ Night
Without any particular agenda in mind, many festival-goers independently singled out the amazing women in the various Gonerfest bands this year. It was a notable, if low-key, contrast to other festivals’ less diverse lineups. Many raved about Py Py‘s co-vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, Annie-Claude Deschênes, whose magnetic presence drew the crowd under her spell, especially when she had fans hold her mic cable aloft as she made her way from the stage to the bar and back.

Tube Alloys (Photo: Sean Davis)

There was also the charismatic charm of Okmoniks’ Helene, noted above. And one friend raved about “that woman playing the Guild SG [guitar]” in Tube Alloys, an L.A. band named after the U.K.’s secret World War II nuclear weapons development program. Given their mastery of fuzz/crunch, the name is appropriate, fueled by their co-ed lineup.

Meanwhile, Angel Face, Japan’s latest purveyors of classic punk sneer-and-shout riffs, were powered by the unrelenting attack of their female drummer, Reiko. With punk/D.I.Y./indie attitudes seemingly more inclusive than ever, strong women players would appear to be par for the course in today’s Gonerfest universe.

Angel Face (Photo: Sean Davis)

All this barely scratches the surface, of course. In answer to the query, “What just happened?” the best answer is likely, “You had to be there…” And, as Ives notes, right there at Railgarten is likely where Gonerfest will be for the foreseeable future. “We were slightly up in terms of ticket sales this year,” he says, “but there’s not really any room to grow. I think we’re basically at capacity for the space. But that feels like a good spot to be in. We were still able to offer day passes for all three nights. So it didn’t feel like we were leaving anybody out, but it also felt like we were maximizing the space and, you know, maximizing the good feelings from everybody there.”

The traditional Gonerfest “alley photo” was moved to Railgarten this year. (Photo: Sean Davis)



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Music Music Features

Drew Holcomb’s Homecoming

Drew Holcomb (Photo: Ashtin Paige)

It’s a hopeful tale for any aspiring singer-songwriters out there, one that starts as any typical troubadour’s would: “I was doing a lot of shows at the P&H Cafe, and those Flying Saucer songwriter nights.” A couple of decades ago, that was Drew Holcomb’s life, pounding the pavement, chasing gigs, and honing his craft. Soon, this being Memphis, he was rubbing shoulders with like-minded artists. “Cory Branan was incredibly gracious to me,” Holcomb says, “and sort of invited me into his world a little bit and let me open up a bunch of his shows. Then later the Hi Tone was kind of my home for a lot of years.”

As he recruited bands to perform his songs, Holcomb hit it off with one local player in particular. “His name is Nathan Dugger. He was in his senior year at Houston High School when he started playing with me,” Holcomb recalls. “Then he moved to Nashville to go to Belmont and stayed with me on the weekends when he was playing around town.”

The fact that Dugger is still playing with Holcomb over 20 years later is proof positive that they had stumbled onto some great musical chemistry. So is the musical legacy of Holcomb, Dugger, and Rich Brinsfield, the core of the band that eventually coalesced as Holcomb too made the leap to Nashville. 

Holcomb’s mixed feelings about moving to the “Athens of the South” revealed his Bluff City roots. “As a Memphian,” he confesses, “I felt very reluctant to move to Nashville. I felt like I was sort of a traitor, in a way. But I married a Nashville woman, and this was where she wanted to live.” Put another way, in “I Like to Be With Me When I’m With You,” Holcomb sings, “If I could live on the moon, I would rather stay in Tennessee with you.”

“So we were looking for neighborhoods 20 years ago,” he goes on, “and I came to East Nashville. It’s the only neighborhood in Nashville that reminded me of home, you know? It had this sort of loyalty culture, and it was a little gritty. It was, like, hardworking. It had a chip on its shoulder about the rest of the city. And I was like, ‘Yeah, this is my spot. These are my people.’”

As it turned out, the entire band, including Holcomb’s wife Ellie (who’s since gone on to a solo career) wound up in East Nashville, and thus settled on the name Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors. That moniker is especially apt given Holcomb’s songs, which so often address the ties that bind, the friends we lean on, and the embrace of family, conveyed with a soulful, folk-infused pop sensibility. The inclusive message, bolstered by inclusive music, capped off by the disarming frankness of Holcomb’s heartfelt voice, has since resonated with millions, and the band’s trajectory is an object lesson in the rewards of simply honing your craft and staying true to your vision without selling out. That certainly holds true for last year’s Strangers No More and the new Strangers No More, Vol. 2.

“With both of these records,” he says, “if anybody wants to hear a band having fun in the studio, they can listen to these records. We had the time of our lives. We weren’t worried about commercial stuff. We weren’t worried about the radio. We just were like, ‘Hey, we love making music as a band.’ 

“I’ve got to be myself,” adds Holcomb. “That’s what I learned from the music I loved growing up in Memphis — you know, bands like Lucero, who are just so incredibly original. It was important for me to be my own version of that. But, I mean, I was influenced as much by U2 as I was by Bob Dylan or Bob Seger or Tom Petty, so some of my songwriting has a sort of broad universality to it, like a U2 song, and I’ve grown to embrace that instead of apologizing for it. And I think that that’s part of the Memphis in me, too: being unapologetically myself and not trying to be somebody I’m not.” 

Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors perform at the Mempho Music Festival Sunday, October 6th, at 4:30 p.m. on the Bud Light Stage. For details and a full schedule of bands, visit memphofest.com.