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Mark Edgar Stuart: Never Far Behind

Mark Edgar Stuart (Photo: Jamie Harmon)

Some artists ponder making albums, wondering if they have enough material, enough musicians, or enough money. But when you’re a player on the level of bassist Mark Edgar Stuart, always staying busy with one project or another and forever mingling with other musos at gigs and in studios, albums sometimes just fall together. One recording session here, another there, and eventually the whole thing snowballs.

That’s how Stuart’s latest release, Never Far Behind, came about, as the singer-songwriter himself admits. “I didn’t really mean to put out another record,” he says. “I thought I was done for a little bit. And then this record just sort of happened.” 

Things like that tend to occur when you’re part of a crack studio band, as Stuart is — in this case at Bruce Watson’s Delta-Sonic Sound studio, where Stuart, as a member of the Sacred Soul Sound Section, plays bass behind artists like Elizabeth King on the Bible & Tire Recording Co. He can also be heard on secular Watson-related projects, some of which end up on Big Legal Mess Records. There’s always music cooking over at Delta-Sonic. And at times Stuart would show up only to find his own material on the menu. 

“Over the past two years, my buddies and I would get in the studio — Will [Sexton] and Bruce and that whole crew. We just slowly recorded tracks,” Stuart says. “I kind of felt like the universe produced it, you know? Will was the official producer, but every session was just last minute. Will would say, ‘Hey, what are you doing tomorrow? Bruce is in town, I’m here, let’s record some songs!’ And I’m on the phone going, ‘Well, who’s going to be the band?’ So it was pretty much whoever was available at any given moment. Then three months would go by, and Will would go, ‘Hey, we’re in the studio now working on your record! What are you doing?’ I’d say, ‘Oh, shit, I guess I’d better get down there!’”

That approach made Never Far Behind one of Stuart’s most collaborative efforts, including songs he co-wrote with Sexton, Jed Zimmerman, and, perhaps most strikingly, Greg Cartwright. “That loose approach made for some cool combinations,” says Stuart, “like when we recorded a song that me and Greg wrote together [‘We Better Call It a Day’]. I was like, ‘Greg, you in town?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Come over!’ So he played guitar, and Amy [LaVere] played bass, and Krista [Wroten] played on it, and Shawn Zorn, and Will played the keyboards. In the studio, it wound up becoming a duet. It was just real loose and cool. Amy was going to sing backup, and all of a sudden she sang the first verse and it was like, ‘Fuck it, a duet it is! Keep rolling!’”

That track draws on the wit and musicality of Stuart and Cartwright, two of the city’s finest songwriters, to create a kind of Eastern European lament over a failed romance, made all the more haunting by LaVere’s and Stuart’s swapped vocal lines, wistful mandolin, and atmospheric, Tom Waits-esque percussion. 

Yet another track, “The Ballad of Jerry Phillips,” grew from a would-be collaboration between Stuart and the song’s titular hero, son of Sun Records’ Sam Phillips. “I was hanging out with Jerry about a year and a half ago,” says Stuart, “and he said, ‘Man we’re gonna write a song together, and it’s gonna be called “Don’t Block Your Blessings.”’ 

“You know, we’re always blocking our blessings,” explains Stuart. “It’s like God’s trying to bless us, but we get in our own way. We fuck it up sometimes! Sometimes you’ve just got to let it be and just open yourself up to all the goodness. And Jerry and I were supposed to write that song together, but we couldn’t get anywhere with it. So I just turned around and wrote him a silly song about his own biography, and used the blocked blessings idea for the chorus. It came out perfect, you know?” The party atmosphere of the track, a Memphis cousin to “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” captures Phillips’ rock-and-roll spirit and epitomizes the loose recording style that shaped the entire album.

After many months of such hilarity, an album coalesced. As Stuart describes the process, “A year and a half later, Will was like, ‘Well, we’ve got 15 songs here. … Are you going to put a record out?’ And I was like, ‘I guess we should.’ It was really friendly, you know, and that was cool. I’m really happy with it, probably more so than anything I’ve done in a long time. Nothing against anything else I’ve done, but it’s just that cool! I think this could be it for a while. I think after this I’m just going to get into other things.” Could Stuart really mean it this time? We’ll believe it when we see it. 

Hear Mark Edgar Stuart at the 8750’ Barbecue and Music Festival in New Mexico on August 16th; the Fishstock Music Series in Wisconsin on August 25th; Thacker Mountain Radio Hour in Oxford, Mississippi, on September 5th; the Memphis Songwriter Series at the Halloran Centre in Memphis on September 12th; and the Mempho Music Festival on October 4th.

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Music Music Blog

Cooper-Young Fest Announces Lineup

A joyous Cooper Young Fest audience (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

The musical acts at the annual Cooper-Young Festival always hit a little differently from your typical music festival. Maybe it’s because they’re performing in a swirl of other features, like the artisans, fine artists, and food vendors that congregate up and down Cooper Street and adjacent areas, or maybe it’s the neighborhood vibe that reigns supreme at the event, but there’s a certain intimacy to the experience. And that’s in spite of the huge numbers of people that congregate there, often upwards of 120,000 in a given year.

The 2019 Cooper Young Festival (Photo: Jim Weber)

This year, it’s officially the Guaranty Bank Cooper Young Festival, to be celebrated on Saturday, September 14th, and the musical schedule offers arguably the festival’s best lineup yet. The most fervent music lovers will want to arrive even before that lineup begins, when the Bellevue Middle School band, with its 32-piece drum line, kicks off the day by marching down Cooper Street at 9 a.m.

After that, consult this schedule to determine which stage to head for first. The Guaranty Bank Stage in front of the Young Avenue Deli will come to life at 11 a.m., and the Memphis Grizzles Stage, at the intersection of Young Avenue and Meda Street, snaps into action at 12:30 p.m.

StageTimeArtistGenre
Guaranty11:15Rachel Maxann & Her Emotional Support BandFolk/Soul
Guaranty12:15OakwalkerFolk
Guaranty1:15Tennessee ScreamersFolk, Country
Guaranty2:15JombiPsychedelic Rock
Guaranty3:15Salo PalliniProgressive Latin Jazz Rock
Guaranty4:15Cameron BethanyR&B
Guaranty5:15Carla ThomasSoul
Grizzlies12:30TurnstylesGarage/Surf Rock
Grizzlies1:30General LaborElectronic
Grizzlies2:30Late Night CardiganPower Pop/Rock
Grizzlies3:30Black CreamRock/Soul
Grizzlies4:30Steve Selvidge BandRock

The sheer eclecticism of the lineup is astonishing, and a testament to all that Memphis has to offer. Of course, the standout performer is the legendary Carla Thomas, whose frank and trenchant commentary in this year’s stunning HBO documentary, Stax: Soulsville USA, has won her many new fans. Naturally, she’ll be backed by the 926 Stax Music Academy Alumni Band, comprised of the best and brightest musicians trained at the academy on McLemore Avenue, as she presents “B-A-B-Y,” “Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes),” “Tramp,” and other hits that made her the Queen of Memphis Soul. Not to be missed!

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Spiritualized Meets Eggleston in WYXR Fest

J. Spaceman and John Coxon of Spiritualized (Photo: courtesy of the artists)

The annual Raised By Sound Fest that WYXR stages in cahoots with Mempho Presents every December has become a destination for national tours that might not typically visit Memphis. 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. In 2022, when Jody Stephens’ reconstituted Big Star planned only a few shows in honor of #1 Record, the Raised By Sound Fest was a pivotal performance for them.

This December 7th, WYXR will have outdone itself once again, as it presents an incredible cinematic/photographic sound experience for Raised By Sound Fest: a live score to the William Eggleston film, Stranded in Canton, performed by J. Spaceman and John Coxon of Spiritualized.

Eggleston, of course, is known primarily for his still photography, but in 1973-74, he began experimenting with the then-new Sony Porta-Pak video recorder, more portable than any film or video camera preceding it, and, due to its sensitivity to the infrared spectrum, able to film in very low-light conditions. That not only allowed Eggleston to take the Porta-Pak into his regular nightlife haunts in Memphis, Mississippi, and New Orleans, it gave an eerie glow to the subjects he encountered. That they were often Eggleston’s friends, drinking buddies, and fellow artists only added to the easy naturalism of their behavior on-camera, complemented by the great photographer’s unflinching eye in the face of their uninhibited antics.

“Whiffs of Southern Gothic are not new to Mr. Eggleston’s work, but here they rise to the surface — fierce, tragic and proud,” as The New York Times observed upon the film’s release. And that release came long after the video was shot, its 30-odd hours of footage lying in storage for decades until Robert Gordon edited a feature-length version that premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2005, subsequently leading to a deluxe package by Twin Palms Publishers.

While the film is galvanizing, it is also a hot mess, with little in the way of narrative structure. Yet that very meandering quality lends itself to a musical interpretation, and that’s exactly what Spaceman and Coxon created. But that, too, was hidden away for far too long.

In 2015, Spaceman, Coxon, and friends premiered their original score live at a special film screening of Canton at the Barbican Gallery in London, as part of Doug Aitken’s Station to Station festival. The recording sat on a shelf for 10 years, but it will finally be unveiled through the Fat Possum release, Music for William Eggleston’s Stranded in Canton, due out this October 18th.

And then the duo will conduct a very limited tour. As a press release states, “Spaceman and Coxon will perform the work in London, New York, Los Angeles, and Eggleston’s hometown of Memphis, on the invitation of the photographer’s son Winston Eggleston.” Once again, it’s a coup for WYXR and an indication of the global reach of our thoroughly modernized, internet-savvy community radio station. That also means that seats at their events get swiped up fast: on Thursday, August 8th, tickets to the live score by Spaceman and Coxon will go on sale to the general public. Interested parties should act quickly.

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Music Music Features

The King’s Hometown Cuts

Having incorporated elements of Sun Studio, Phillips Recording Service, and Ardent Studios into the design of his own Southern Grooves studio, Matt Ross-Spang has an ear for history, so it’s no wonder that he’s become the go-to guy for mixing Elvis Presley. It started with his 2016 mixes of outtakes from Presley’s 1976 recordings at Graceland, and others followed, but his mixes on 2020’s From Elvis in Nashville compilation, stripping overdubs away from the raw tracks Presley recorded during marathon sessions in June of 1970, were Ross-Spang’s greatest feat, yielding such jaw-dropping tracks as the hard-choogling “Patch It Up.” 

Now, following a brief similar to that of the Nashville album, Ross-Spang has outdone himself on a new box set dropping just as Elvis Week commences this Friday, August 9th. With a nod to last month’s 70th anniversary of Presley’s first recordings for Sun Records, Sony Music/Legacy Recordings will release Memphis, a set of five CDs and/or two LPs produced by Ernst Jørgensen, collecting everything Presley recorded in his adopted hometown. 

Naturally, that includes Presley’s initial work with Sun Records’ Sam Phillips, though those foundational recordings were not tampered with (nor could they have been, not being multitracks), only given a thorough restoration and remastering. After the Sun era, there were three other distinct moments when Presley cut records in Memphis: in 1969 at American Sound Studio, in 1973 at Stax Records, and in 1976 during remote recording sessions the King set up in his own Jungle Room at Graceland. Also included is a live recording of Presley and his touring band at the Mid-South Coliseum in 1974. All of those recordings get the Ross-Spang treatment.

Working from digital copies of the original multitrack tapes offered him a glimpse into the recording techniques of a bygone age. “I was really excited to work on the Stax and American stuff simply because I’m a Memphis history nut,” he says, “and to get to hear those multitracks was really exciting. Working with Chips Moman at American, Elvis had a new band, a new producer, a new studio — everything was new. And yet Chips didn’t have nice technologies like RCA [in Nashville]. He committed all that music to four tracks, typically. And oftentimes he recorded the [reverb] chamber right onto the track. Or put the bass and the acoustic guitar on the same track. So it was really cool for me to open that up and see how much commitment he had, the vision he had from the beginning.”

Those American recordings yielded hits like “In the Ghetto” and “Suspicious Minds,” but the familiar versions, exploding with those distinctive string arrangements, are only hinted at here. The Memphis tracks reveal what preceded those orchestral flourishes: The sure-footed, house band Moman had assembled, aka The Memphis Boys, both soulful and rocking, playing their hearts out while the voice of Elvis rang out in the room. As Robert Gordon writes in the extensive liner notes, the new mixes put us “standing next to Elvis inside the recording studio, us and the basic band, hearing what he’s hearing.” 

Moreover, it’s a master class in minimalist songcraft, as one hears guitarist Reggie Young weave his lines in with those of keyboardists Bobby Woods and Bobby Emmons, the latter’s organ parts suggesting an orchestra, yet molded out of rawer sounds. Here and there are occasional overdubs, as in the remarkable “Don’t Cry, Daddy,” where Presley harmonizes with himself. As Ross-Spang explains, “We left in some of the overdubs that they did on the spot there [at American], but we didn’t use things that they went back to Nashville to do.” 

Ross-Spang didn’t have to mix these tracks entirely on his own. “It was really fun to get to work with Robert Gordon on this. I was sending him mixes and he was sending me notes back. And then producer Rob Santos and Ernst. Sometimes I can treat a mix too technically and not emotionally, but Ernst would give me very nontypical, emotional mix notes.” As the singer’s raw emotion explodes from the speakers, Memphis reveals Elvis to be one of the premier soul artists of his time. 

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Music Music Blog

Hear Memphis’ Sonic Sisters

Suroor Hassan (Photo: Cameron Mitchell)

When we sent our latest cover story, “Sonic Sisters,” to print on Tuesday, we knew we weren’t done with it yet. If you haven’t read it, we won’t judge you — let me rephrase, most of us won’t judge you. Seriously, read it. We worked hard on it, but not as hard as the women in music we talk about in the story. They are producing some amazing stuff at an amazing rate.

That being said, we made a playlist full of music by just some of our favorite women in the scene, and because the Flyer is God’s gift to man, we figured we’d share it. No need to thank us.

Remember, this is only a sampling. A chaotic sampling to be sure. There are so many genres jammed in here, but that’s to be expected. 

As Miz Stefani, founder of Women in Memphis Music (WiMM) showcase series at B-Side, said, “Girls are everywhere here. They’re in reggae, Americana, jazz, hardcore, punk, rock, and hip-hop. And there are some doing genres that I don’t even have names for. … We’re all over the map, and it’s unbelievable. We can’t be pigeonholed.”

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2024 Tambourine Bash Lineup Announced

The finale of last year’s Tambourine Bash (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

You might imagine that today’s announcement of the featured artists in October’s Tambourine Bash at the Overton Park Shell was meant to synchronize with this week’s Memphis Flyer cover story celebrating Memphis women in music. After all, the new lineup for the annual fundraising concert for Music Export Memphis (MEM) is loaded with some of the city’s great sonic sisters. But Elizabeth Cawein, MEM’s executive director, swears the gender skew was sheer serendipity. “It’s funny because, to be totally honest, we hadn’t thought about it at all,” she says. “But it is so heavily representative of women — I love it!”

It’s proof positive of the ways Memphis music is evolving today, and typical of the kind of synergy that happens when an organization like MEM is so diverse, equitable, and inclusive. Guided only by the principle of lending Memphis musicians a hand, serving as an “engine and platform to grow their careers and elevate Memphis’ profile as a contemporary music city,” MEM has an embarrassment of riches to work with, from all corners of the music world.

What’s more, the Tambourine Bash, now in its sixth year, is a unique space where all of those corners can come crashing together, with some imaginative and inspiring results. That’s in part because Cawein chose early on to structure the event around the intense spirit of collaboration that characterizes this city. When artists play the Tambourine Bash, they don’t just appear with their usual performing bands. Instead, three contrasting artists or bands are thrown together to work with each other in any way they see fit. It’s all about the mash-up. Take this year’s lineup, for example:

  • Lana J + EsMod + Aybil
  • Tonya Dyson + Daykisser + ADUBB
  • Lina Beach + Jessica Ray + Ryan Peel
  • Wyly Bigger + MadameFraankie + Blueshift Ensemble
  • Sunweight + Oakwalker + Jeremy Stanfill 
  • Southern Avenue + surprise guest collaborator 
  • FINALE: Superjam featuring all Tambourine Bash performers, produced by Boo Mitchell

Mixing and matching such versatile artists makes the Tambourine Bash unique, for audience members and performers alike. “Curating this lineup is one of my absolute favorite things that I get the privilege to do,” says Cawein. “And artists around the city know about it, so they get excited. I send that email saying, ‘Hey, are you available on October 10th?’ And they get pumped. I love that.”

It’s indicative not only of how collaborative artists here can be, but also of how comfortable they feel when working with MEM. “I feel like they have a lot of trust, too,” Cawein observes. “When I reach out and say, ‘We’re going to put you together with some other artists, and I don’t know who they are yet, but I promise it’ll be good,’ they trust me. And that feels great because it means I can really just come up with some stuff that will be cool.”

One reason it works is because Cawein keeps an ear close to the ground of the local scene. “I have people in my head, and a sense of the scene and where it is and what’s popping. Maybe it’s artists I’ve been playing on my show on WYXR [Straight from the Source] or people that have come across my radar for other reasons. And I’ll have a working document for a solid year. Like, as soon as we do Tambourine Bash this year, I’m sure I’ll have another doc, where I’m dropping names of artists in that I want to feature next time.”

This year’s creative mix have some Tambourine Bash firsts. “One set from this year that I’m super excited about is Wyly Bigger, MadameFraankie, and Blueshift Ensemble,” says Cawein. “We’ve included horns several years. We’ve had the Mighty Souls Brass Band, we’ve had Lucky Seven Brass Band, but this year I really wanted strings. And so Blueshift just popped to mind. As I started putting that one together, I’m thinking about Wyly’s piano playing and just the sort of raucousness of that, mixed with MadameFraankie, who is so versatile as a guitar player, especially the stuff that she’s done with Talibah Safiya recently, just really funky and soulful and kind of gritty, but also going in a very experimental, electronic kind of direction. And then to have strings with that, I’m just so excited about the flavors that have been combined there. I can’t wait to see that one.”

It seems the universe delivered on Cawein’s wish for strings in other ways, too. “The funny thing is that we have strings in several places this year because we have Oakwalker, and we also have EsMod, who is a rapper in that first collaboration on the bill [but] is a violinist as well.”

Another favorite group of artists is a group who originally were competing for a single slot on the bill. “One that I’m really excited about is Lina Beach, Ryan Peel, and Jessica Ray,” Cawein adds. “Jessica Ray was one of the winners of a partnership we did with Choose901. We got them to call on their audiences to vote for artists they wanted to see on the Tambourine Bash lineup. And the secret, that you can totally reveal here, is that we ended up adding all three of them. We narrowed them to finalists, and we had people vote, but in the end, it was like, ‘I want all three of these artists,’ and that was Jessica Ray, Oakwalker, and Jeremy Stanfill.

“So Lina Beach sings and she’s a songwriter, but she’s such an amazing guitar player! And I knew I wanted a big, bodacious vocal to pair with her, and we had a lot of beautiful vocals on the lineup already, don’t get me wrong. But I wanted someone who is just a belter, right? And so I thought of Jessica Ray.”

That’s but a fraction of the sparks that are bound to fly come October. As usual, all artists performing at the Bash will congregate onstage for the finale led by Boo Mitchell. That too should offer some surprises, on a night when all should set aside their preconceptions and expect the unexpected, as these harbingers of the city’s musical future gather together for an unforgettable night.

Click here to reserve your tickets to the 2024 Tambourine Bash now.

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Macrophonics About to Release Their First EP

Lawson Day, Margo Araoz, and Justin Weirich (Photo: Michael Donahue)

Cooper-Young Porchfest 2022 was the catalyst for Macrophonics, which features lead singer Lawson Day, lead guitarist Justin Weirich, and drummer Margo Araoz.

“It was the first Porchfest I’d been to,” Day says. He told Weirich, “We need to play this.”

The two met when they were in the seventh grade at DeSoto Central Middle School in Southaven, Mississippi. 

“I think when we really started hanging out more was in 10th grade,” Weirich says. “Physical science class.”

They would “talk about music and movies for an hour,” Day says.

“I wouldn’t really pay much attention in school. I was more focused on learning music and listening to different stuff,” Weirich says. 

Weirich was 11 when he bought his Fender Starcaster with leftover birthday money and $300 winnings from a family golf tournament.

Day began singing six years ago. He originally was “too lost in video games and things.” Also, he says, “I was terrified to hear my voice for a long time.”

He didn’t sing in front of an audience until he sang karaoke on a cruise. “I’m like, ‘I’m going to sing karaoke.’ And I did it every night on the cruise.”

“Get Down Tonight” by KC & the Sunshine Band was his first song. “I can remember being pretty nervous the first night. And then, I think, from every night onward, I didn’t really care.”

Araoz, who is from Birmingham, Alabama, joined the drumline in high school when she was about 10 years old. “Half the people in my school were in the band,” she says. “That was what the school was known for. I got to see a drumline play live. It was the first time I got to do this. I remember as a 9-year-old feeling the vibrations in my body. I said, ‘I need to do that. I’m put on this Earth to do that.’”

Araoz stopped playing drums and percussion when she was 14 to focus on her high school studies.

She majored in environmental science at North Carolina State University before moving to Memphis in 2021. She met Weirich when they worked together at Otherlands Coffee Bar. “I didn’t have a drum set when I moved here. I hadn’t played since I was 14. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s behind me. I’m no longer a drummer.’”

But, she says, “Justin encouraged me to buy a drum set and he just got the ball rolling for me to retry it.”

The trio got a practice space at Off the Walls Arts, “all hanging out playing music and having fun with it,” Weirich says. 

“It was such a cool experience,” Day says. “It felt like being in some kind of coming-of-age movie.”

Macrophonics at the practice space at Off the Wall Arts (Credit: Michael Donahue)

The name “Macrophonics” was Weirich’s brainchild. “I like the imagery of ‘macro,’ being ‘big,’ and ‘phonics’ — ‘big sound,’” he says.

They’ve described their music as “punk rock,” he says. “More the attitude for us in terms of musicality. We try to make songs that sound aggressive, but still kind of catchy.”

“Some of our songs, while they all have a bit of pop structure, sonically can be different,” Day adds. “They don’t fit what people think of as ’80s punk.’”

Their songs are “just do-it-yourself” with “a little absurdist humor,” Weirich says. “Because humor helps the reality go down smoother.”

They only had two originals when they signed up for their first Porchfest in 2023. Day describes their show as “overwhelming. It was me and Margo’s first show.”

Macrophonics at 2023 Cooper-Young Porchfest (Credit: Michael Donahue)

“I remember being very, very nervous. At that point I was kind of yelling instead of singing. I felt it was a controlled yell. But I was nervous as hell. Freaked out.”

Because it was hot, Day took off his shirt while he sang. He now sings shirtless most shows. “I didn’t want it to be a trademark, but I feel it kind of is.”

Their Porchfest experience was a success. “We wanted to keep doing it: ‘Okay. We’re pretty good at this. We can actually do this. Let’s keep it chugging along.’”

They played shows at Growlers, Hi Tone, Black Lodge, and “a lot of Lamplighter shows,” Weirich says.

Macrophonics is about to have its first EP mastered. They hope to release it “within the next month or so,” Weirich says.

Macrophonics: Justin Weirich, Margo Araoz, and Lawson Day (Credit: Michael Donahue)

Weirich doesn’t like to define their music genre. “I think we like keeping it vague like that. Who wants to be just a punk band? I feel like we have a lot more musical influences to branch into, more things we want to do with the band. For now, it’s more about the ethos of punk than necessarily the direct sound.”

Araoz also makes the band shirts. “I thrift the material for the T-shirts,” she says. “And I carve out my rubber stamps myself. Me and a friend.

“Environmental science shapes how I move through the world in every aspect. I did find a wholesale T-shirt company that uses a closed loop system for fabrics. There’s no waste being produced from any part of the company. They make new T-shirts out of old fibers.

“I wanted to make sure I was producing a product that can be broken down and reused again, not end up in a landfill in Ghana.”

Macrophonics played their second Cooper-Young Porchfest this April with “a lot more confidence going into it,” Day says. “I had a whole year of experience kind of flowing through my body.”

And, Weirich says, “We actually got our first encore. When they asked us, all we had to add on was ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ by the Ramones. We played it double time. We played it faster than the Ramones played it.” 

Macrophonics: Lawson Day, Margo Araoz, and Justin Weirich (Credit: Michael Donahue)
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MonoNeon Gets His Quilt On

MonoNeon (Photo: Logan Schaal)

When I arranged to interview Dywane “MonoNeon” Thomas Jr., the Bluff City’s hardest working bass virtuoso since Duck Dunn, and an auteur in his own right, the plan was to talk about his latest album. “Okay,” I thought, “I’ll give it a listen,” and pulled up the latest release on Bandcamp: MonoNeon on Synthesizer. It’s fantastic! A tour de force of thick Moog sounds, chock-full of inventive harmonies and sonic textures that Tomita himself would envy. There was only one problem: We weren’t supposed to be talking about that new album; it was the other one, due to drop on July 26th, the one featuring both George Clinton and Mavis Staples. “Okay,” I thought, “that new album.”

It’s hard to keep up with such a prolific artist. Since 2010, he’s created at a furious pace, from his trademark YouTube videos wherein his bass mimics found spoken word clips, to one-off singles (like 2016’s “Ruff Enuff,” produced by Prince), to full-on albums — 29 of them, if you count EPs. And if some of those have a real “I built this in my bedroom” quality, the production standards and arrangements have steadily, inexorably evolved over the years.

Which brings us to Quilted Stereo, album number 30. It’s the ultimate expression of MonoNeon’s ongoing evolution and sophistication so far, without sacrificing any of his unpredictability and inventiveness. And several of the tracks have been out there already, including “Quilted,” his single featuring George Clinton.

As none other than IMAKEMADBEATS noted on social media when the track was released in March, “MonoNeon not only just dropped a song with goated funk legend George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, the whole song is MEMPHIS AF. The hook is literally ‘LOOK AT ME MANE.’ C’mon, bruh. Mane really brought George Clinton to US. THAT’S LEGENDARY. AF. People are really out here putting on for Memphis in innovative ways … both the mainstream and the alternative.”

When I caught up with MonoNeon last week, fresh off a European tour, he spoke of his working relationship with Clinton as a very organic, low-key phenomenon. “I met George two years ago, when I sat in with him at some music festival. And although our relationship is pretty new, I go down to Tallahassee a lot, to hang with him and his family. It wasn’t forced, it just happened in a casual fashion. He’s a pretty chill person.”

The song itself is a perfectly Clinton-esque ode to flying your sartorial freak flag high, even if that means wearing suits made of multicolored quilts. It’s a sentiment that Mr. “Get Dressed” himself can obviously relate to. And yet, as MonoNeon relates, the song, co-written with his longtime producer Davy Nathan and the rapper Wax, was practically an afterthought. 

As he explains, the tune is “about my whole aesthetic right now that I’m on, with my quilted clothes. And it came about when I was doing one of my videos, where I’m just acting up, you know, talking about how clean I am. A friend of Davy’s said, ‘That could be a song!’ His name is Wax; he’s a rapper. And we started writing the lyrics. My idea was to get George to do an intro for it and to feature him on the song.”

Nathan, as it turns out, is a key player in the MonoNeon universe. His home studio in Los Angeles is where MonoNeon does most of his recording these days, but their understanding goes deeper than your typical producer-artist relationship. “I usually always write my own songs,” says MonoNeon, “but when it comes to writing songs with other people, I usually go to him. He’s one of my best friends and a mentor, and I trust him with my vision. He understands me; he understands my little quirkiness. He’s really been helping me, seeing how he works and his way of writing — just being around him has really inspired me.”

Nathan also played a major role in MonoNeon’s collaboration with Mavis Staples on the song “Full Circle.” The title was apt, given the ties between the Staples family and MonoNeon’s own father. “I always wanted to do a song with Mavis, because I grew up listening to her, and she reminded me of my grandma, but also because my dad [Dywane Thomas Sr.] played bass with her and her father Pops Staples. So I’ve always been so in love with Mavis and her singing.

“Before this album, I told Davy, ‘I want to do a song with Mavis.’ I wasn’t sure if he was going to happen or not, but I told Davy, ‘Man, I’m going to let you have this, and I’m going to let you write a song, and hopefully me and Mavis can sing on it.’ So he sent me the song ‘Full Circle,’ and it was great. They sent it to Mavis and she loved it. She even told me that she prayed and prayed about it. And so it came to be. When we met in Chicago to record her vocals, I walked in the room and got butterflies.” 

The song, with its doo-wop-ish vocal bass riff evoking some gospel funk of the last century, is a stylistic home run, but that’s just one selection from an album as eclectic as any MonoNeon’s made. There’s the sing-along jam with Clinton, but also the chugging New Wave pop of “Church of Your Heart,” the jungle beat rap of “Segreghetto,” and what may just be the sparkling sizzler of the summer, “Jelly Roll,” full of glossy synth warbles and bass stabs, its video overflowing with extras seemingly right out of the Crystal Palace roller-skating scene of some years ago. Memphis AF.

It all has MonoNeon excited to be touring with new material, which he’ll soon be doing across the U.S. next month, culminating in his appearance at the Overton Park Shell on August 30th, followed by more European dates in the fall and winter. “I’m happy to be back home, but I’m ready to go back out,” he says. “I just want to be on stage and just continue evolving and continue to leave my little stamp down here before I get up out of this world. That’s all that matters to me.”

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Music Music Blog

Remembering Guitarist Sturgis Nikides

Sturgis Nikides (Photo: Horst Petri)

On Sunday, July 14th, the Premiere Palace hosted a memorial service for the late Sturgis Nikides, best known locally as the virtuoso blues guitarist in the Low Society, who passed away last April. Gone far too young, he managed to pack several lifetimes of experience into his 66 years, growing up in Brooklyn, New Jersey, and Staten Island, then ultimately falling in with Manhattan’s alternative music scene. Those familiar with the film Who Killed Nancy?, about Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, may recall Nikides’ on-camera recollections of his days living in the Chelsea Hotel on the same floor as Vicious in 1978, including the night of Spungen’s murder.

During that era, by the time he was only 19, Nikides distinguished himself as a guitarist for John Cale, who’d long moved on to a solo career after his time with the Velvet Underground. At last Sunday’s memorial, that era of Nikides’ life was well-represented by the singer-songwriter deerfrance, who played a short set with a band that included her bassist Kai Eric (erstwhile member of Tav Falco’s Panther Burns) and two local players (Lynn Greer on drums and myself on guitar and keyboards).

During the set, deerfrance spoke wistfully of getting to know Nikides when they both played in Cale’s band from 1979-1981. Indeed, the guitarist was nicknamed “Hellcat” in the credits to Cale’s 1981 album, Honi Soit. That album was Cale’s greatest commercial success, making it into the Billboard 200 that year.

Yet the bulk of those in attendance were Nikides’ Memphis fans and friends, who were most familiar with Low Society, the dynamic band he and his wife Mandy Lemons formed in 2009. Jeff Janovetz, DJ for the online Radio Memphis, gave a heartfelt remembrance of his encounters with Nikides, followed by Brad Dunn, who recalled the power of hearing Low Society for the first time and his efforts to book the band at American Recording Studio. This ultimately led to the band’s second album, released by Icehouse Records/Select-O-Hits in 2014, You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down.

Mandy Lemons and Sturgis Nikides perform as Low Society at the 2018 Western Maryland Blues Festival. (Photo: Alan Grossman)

That made it all the more powerful when Lemons joined deerfrance’s band for a passionate rendition of Tom Waits’ “Way Down in the Hole.” In what was clearly a cathartic moment for the singer, she had the audience spellbound. Afterwards, I caught up with Lemons to learn more of her and her husband’s story.

Memphis Flyer: How did you and Sturgis meet?

Mandy Lemons: It was in October of 2008, in New York. A good friend of mine had known Sturgis for thirty years or so, and he was already trying to hook us up musically. Like, ‘Oh, you need to meet this guitar player!’ and telling him, ‘You need to meet this singer!’ So he had a party at his house and we met and I was just like, swept away immediately. But I had to play it cool for a while. You know what I mean? He had no idea that I was that in love with him! Then, after playing music for a year, we got to know each other and became friends. And then we dated for a year, and then we got married.

How did you two wind up in Memphis?

We had our first European tour at the end of 2012. And after that, I wanted to go down south and roll around a little bit, you know, and take him down there and get into Texas blues. Everyone’s a badass down there, you know, and I’m originally from Houston. So we went down to Texas and kicked around for like four months, but we just couldn’t find a place to live, we couldn’t find a good drummer or bass player. And then we played the Juke Joint Festival [in Clarksdale, Mississippi], as a duo.

My friend, who was kind of like our patron at the time, said, ‘You know, Memphis is right around the corner. You guys should go check it out.’ And we were like, ‘Oh, we didn’t think about that. Really?’ So he put us up for a week here, in an AirBnB, and everything just went right. So we got our stuff in Texas and came back here and have been in the same apartment ever since.

And you connected with the scene here rather quickly, it seems.

On our first night here, we saw Earl the Pearl play at Huey’s. And we were just like, ‘What?’ Like, ‘We’re home. We’re in the right place.’ And the next night, there was an open blues jam at Kudzu’s. So we went over there, and of course they made us wait till the very last, because we looked like a couple of New York freaks, which is what we are! They were like, ‘These people are either gonna really suck or they’re going to be great.’ So we did our best, and everyone loved it. People came up to shake Sturgis’ hand immediately. Me and Dr. Herman Green connected, and we played on Beale Street the next night, which had been a dream of mine since I was 12. And I just was blown away.

Low Society was so well regarded after that point, and many fondly recall your residency at the fabled Buccaneer Lounge back in the day. You made your second album at American Recording, and released a third album as well. Are there any unreleased tracks by Low Society that you were working on while Sturgis’ health was failing?

Well, you know, he started having health issues when Covid started, and had open heart surgery last summer, and that’s when it started getting scary serious. Then he got this crazy, aggressive, super fast cancer that killed him in two months.

So that was on and off for the last four years. He would get better and then something else would happen. But in the good times, when he was feeling good, he definitely was playing guitar. I mean, it’s like being an athlete. You have to give back, because if you don’t consistently use it, you lose it. So he was practicing, and we had our fourth album in the works. He was producing that and mixing it and putting in his magic sauce and overdubs and all that stuff. And he finally finished it just a few months ago, and he said, ‘That’s it! It’s finished.’

All I’ve got to do is lay some vocals down and get it mastered and distributed and all that stuff.

Was it also cut at American Recording?

No, actually, we recorded all of it in Belgium. Our drummer and bass player live there. But it’s been like five years, since 2019, since Sturgis and I played a show. So thank you guys so much for having me up there [at the memorial] and allowing me to sing with y’all. That was really cool and very much needed. It’s been a long time. But…there’s more where that came from.

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Music Music Features

Elvis at the Shell

Elvis backstage at the Shell in 1955 (Photo: Robert Dye Sr. / Courtesy Overton pPark Shell Archives)

It seems like this should be national news — international, even. We’re talking about Elvis Presley, after all. And the 70th anniversary of his first great triumph as a live performer is fast approaching, although anyone who saw it advertised in the paper beforehand might have gotten his name wrong. Promoting the eighth annual Country Music Jamboree scheduled for July 30, 1954, an ad in the Memphis Press-Scimitar read, “In person, the SENSATIONAL radio-recording star, Slim Whitman, with Billy Walker, Ellis Presley and many others … Tonight at Shell, $1.25 reserved.”

Whoever this “Ellis” Presley was, he shared the Overton Park Shell stage with some mighty respected company amongst country music fans. Pretty good for only the second or third public performance of his life.

As it happened, it was more than pretty good: It was earth-shattering. In Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll, Peter Guralnick quotes Presley’s guitarist Scotty Moore as saying, “With those old loose britches that we wore, it made it look like all hell was going on under there. During the instrumental parts he would back off from the mic and be playing and shaking, and the crowd would just go wild, but he thought they were actually making fun of him.” They weren’t. After the show, dozens of teens rushed backstage for autographs from this new singer.

That validation was exactly what the young Presley needed, only 11 days after the release of his first single, “That’s All Right.” 

It’s a story that Cole Early knows well, being the content and archives manager of the Overton Park Shell, not to mention curator of the Shell’s excellent Connie Abston Archive & History Exhibition. That short set, Presley’s first live show with just his recording band of Moore and Bill Black, was akin to a big bang of pop music, in stark contrast to Presley’s one earlier attempt to sit in with a band unfamiliar with his style. 

“His first public performance ever was in a honky-tonk on Summer Avenue, and he wasn’t received well,” says Early of Presley’s previous experience. “The country music audience there at the club that night just saw this flashy kid wearing pink, and this was like a dive bar, a honky-tonk place.” Then came his appearance at the Country Music Jamboree.

Knowing that the Shell bore witness to one of rock-and-roll’s great moments, Early wanted to celebrate the memory of Elvis’ performance in style. Since the Shell already offers the Backstage Experience tour of the Connie Abston Archive, it was easy to imagine the Shell stage as the culmination of an even greater tour. What Elvis fan could resist seeing various key locations in The King’s ascension, working east from Downtown, then ending up at the very stage on which Elvis first made his mark, with music by a live band?

Done in partnership with Backbeat Tours and the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum, the whole package, billed as The 70th Anniversary of Live Rock ‘n’ Roll, will be available one day only, on Saturday, July 27th. Early says the tour will “originate Downtown at the Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum. Of course, they have amazing exhibits down there. Then it’s going to do an Elvis-centric tour of Memphis, though not Graceland.” Expect stops at Sun Studio, the Presley’s Lauderdale Courts apartment, Elvis’ high school, the original Lansky Bros. clothing store, and the like. “And then they’ll come here to the Shell for a custom Backstage History Experience tour with mostly the Elvis points, and then at the end, a live re-creation of that first show, right where it happened.”

Finley Watkins & His Blue Moon (of Missouri) Boys will be playing, and Early says they’re a perfect fit. “You know, Elvis was a teenager when he played at the Shell, he was 19,” he says. “So it’s great having Finley, who’s also a teenager. And yes, he will have a Scotty and a Bill with him as well. That will be super exciting because they’ll have an upright bass, like Bill Black played during the original show. The Shell’s acoustics pick up that slap back really well. So we’re really proud that the Shell is the one venue where that can be realistic, in such a way that it couldn’t be in any other room or venue.” 

For more details and tickets, see the “special events” at backbeattours.com.