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Madness!

AAC Player of the Year PJ Haggerty (Photos: Wes Hale)

The Memphis Tigers are back in the NCAA tournament. This is progress. Even better would be a pair of wins and the program’s first trip to the Sweet 16 in well over a decade. But let’s think ambitiously. With six wins needed to cut down the nets as national champion, here are six factors that could make this March memorable for Memphis.

Forget history, especially the previous six seasons. With the exception of forward Nicholas Jourdain, Penny Hardaway’s first six years as Tiger coach mean absolutely nothing to the current roster. The Wiseman Affair. The Lost Postseason of 2020. The Missed Timeout against FAU in the 2023 NCAA tournament. And (blech) the Nosedive of 2024. Sure, this is Tiger basketball history, but it cannot so much as enter the brainwaves of the last man on the Memphis bench.

In his seventh season at the helm, Penny Hardaway led the Tigers to a 16-2 league record and earned AAC Coach of the Year honors.

Following the Tigers’ season-opening win over Missouri way back in November, PJ Haggerty (new to the program from Tulsa) emphasized the good chemistry he felt with his new teammates, actually emphasizing “no beef,” no tension between players just establishing their roles. Guard Tyrese Hunter (new to the program from Texas and this season a first-team All-AAC selection) said this Memphis team has “no ego,” that he and his teammates have “blinders on” for a shared mission.

Point guard Tyrese Hunter suffered an injury to his left foot in the AAC semifinals. His status for the NCAA tournament is unclear.

Read between those lines and you recognize the after-effects of a 2023-24 season where egos were indeed a variable, where a beef or two seemed to compromise any mission, let alone that of a deep NCAA tournament run. Three weeks after that opening win, the Tigers beat both Connecticut (the two-time defending national champions) and Michigan State in Maui to more than clean the slate for a new team, a new campaign. The slogan for the 2024-25 Memphis Tigers should be … This is now. What can today bring?

When asked about his current team and a strength that can help it succeed in tournament play, the 2025 AAC Coach of the Year doesn’t hesitate: “Our unity. We all have the same goal. It hasn’t been that way around here in past years. It’s been kind of selfish. Some people have been so good, they felt they could do it on their own. With this group, our biggest attribute is our unity. We’re together as one.”

Stars must star. While the players must keep those blinders on, we can turn to history for some guidance in what to expect when the Madness tips off. And every Final Four run the Memphis Tigers have made has featured a Leading Man: Larry Finch in 1973, Keith Lee in 1985, and Chris Douglas-Roberts or Derrick Rose (take your pick) in 2008. A sophomore sensation by the name of Hardaway took the Tigers to the Elite Eight in 1992. You get the idea.

PJ Haggerty is this team’s alpha, and he will need to seize that role — maybe even inflate it — for the Tigers to reach the Sweet 16 for the first time in 16 years. The AAC Player of the Year is already just the seventh Memphis player to score 700 points in a season. (He needs 22 to break Dajuan Wagner’s program record of 762.) Haggerty scored 13 points in six minutes to fuel a second-half comeback at UAB on March 2nd that essentially clinched the AAC title for the Tigers. He poured in 42 in the AAC tournament quarterfinals, a win over Wichita State in which his teammates combined to score 41.

“He’s a dreamer,” says Hardaway. “He sat home and watched the NCAA tournament when he was young, like we all have. To have this situation now — ranked the number-one shooting guard in the country, conference player of the year — he’s still dreaming. He may have hoped for all this to happen, but now that it’s actually here, he’s excited.”

Dainja! Dainja!! FedExForum announcer Geoff Mack found his muse with the arrival of Dain Dainja. The Tigers’ big man with soft hands (a transfer from Illinois) has often raised the arena’s energy level with a gentle hook shot or follow-up slam. And when that energy peaks, Mack will bellow into his microphone, “DAINJA! … DAINJA!!” It’s the happiest reaction to something, yes, dangerous we’ll witness near a basketball court.

Dain Dainja tops the Tigers in rebounding and earned first-team All-AAC recognition.

Hardaway inserted Dainja into the Tigers’ starting lineup for their showdown with UAB on January 26th, a game that would determine first place in the American Athletic Conference. Dainja hit 10 of 12 shots and pulled down eight rebounds in only 25 minutes of what proved to be an easy (100-77) Memphis victory. Memphis has only lost one game since. 

How critical is Dainja to a deep run for the Tigers? He and Moussa Cisse are the only “bigs” Hardaway has in his rotation, the closest players — in body and style — to an old-fashioned center. They will be needed to protect the rim on the defensive side and provide interior threats (particularly Dainja) when the Tigers have the ball. Pay attention to fouls for either of these players. And expect Hardaway to leave them on the floor even if they accumulate four. “Going small” might be a strategy, but not when it’s forced.

Dainja vanished in a game at Wichita State on February 16th (four points and a single rebound in 20 minutes of playing time), and the Tigers lost in overtime to a very beatable Shockers team. A week later at FedExForum, Dainja (Dainja!) scored 22 points, pulled down 11 rebounds, and blocked four shots in a 19-point victory over FAU. “It shows me that he cares,” said Hardaway after Dainja’s resurrection against the Owls. “These guys care. They want to come back and do better [after an off game]. He knew he let himself down [against Wichita State]. He has so much pride and he came back hungrier.”

As for the now of it all, Dainja — yet another first-team All-AAC honoree — actually mentioned “getting old” after the Tigers beat Temple last month. (He’s 22.) His basketball life is about winning. The busier Dainja finds himself this postseason, the more danger Memphis opponents will experience.

Clean the glass. There’s one unifying thread when you examine the Tigers’ five losses this season: more rebounds by their opponent. If you consider every rebound an extra chance to score, Temple had 24 more opportunities (49-25) in the Owls’ seven-point win in January. That ugly loss at Wichita State? The Shockers pulled down 54 rebounds to the Tigers’ 45.

Memphis is not a big team. Dainja, Cisse, and Jourdain will be trusted with much of the rebounding responsibility, but smaller players — Haggerty and Colby Rogers, to name two starters — must earn a few extra possessions for the Tigers to win the close games to come. And beware foul trouble for the 6’9” Dainja or the 6’11” Cisse. Losing either for an extended stretch would force Hardaway to play “small ball,” and against the wrong opponent, that can go sideways fast.

“Once Dain gets going,” notes Hardaway, “you have to double-team him. And we can tee up threes; we love that advantage. He’s bought into the role we have for him. He knew Moussa was coming and didn’t know how much time he would get. We need him to score, so we make him comfortable.” If the Tigers are to advance this month, they need Dainja to rebound, too.

Unheralded hero. Or two. The margin between victory and defeat in the NCAA tournament is miniscule. Three years ago, in the second round, the Tigers led the top-ranked team in the country (Gonzaga) at halftime, only to stumble in the second half. Two years ago, had an official granted the Tigers the late-game timeout players requested during a scramble, it may have been Memphis (and not FAU) that advanced to the Final Four.

Remember that win over Connecticut last November? The Tigers found themselves going to overtime against the second-ranked team in the country, but with Haggerty having fouled out. Into the spotlight strides another PJ, last name Carter. The UTSA transfer proceeded to make six consecutive free throws and drain a three-pointer to all but personally deliver a season-changing upset to his new team. 

Haggerty and Dainja must have a productive supporting cast for Memphis to advance in the Big Dance. Will Carter be the one to grab some national attention off the bench? Maybe it will be Rogers, at times a long-distance threat (and others virtually invisible). If the current Tigers have a “glue guy,” it’s Jourdain, the lone veteran, now wrapping up his second season under Hardaway. The senior has started every game this season after starting 25 upon his arrival from Temple for the 2023-24 campaign. Jourdain had a pair of late put-backs at UAB that helped seal the Tigers’ biggest win in conference play. His averages of 6.4 points per game and 5.6 rebounds are mere whispers of his value. Depth is an overrated factor for a 40-minute basketball game, but a surprise performance is always welcome. One or two can shift that precious margin for victory in the right direction.

Embrace the unlikely. Hardaway is associated with the number 1, and for obvious reasons. But the retired jersey number below his name that has hung from the rafters above the Tigers’ court for 30 years now is … 25. Could such a celebrated-but-forgotten pair of digits be an omen for a 2025 tournament run under Coach Hardaway’s watch?

Consider that these Tigers won the first AAC regular-season crown in program history. This was not predicted back in November. (UAB was picked to win.) These Tigers climbed to a ranking of 14th in the AP poll, the highest Memphis has been ranked after Valentine’s Day since 2009 (John Calipari’s last season as head coach). This was not predicted back in November, as the Tigers began the season outside the Top 25. These Tigers have nabbed a 5 seed in the NCAA tournament. Also not predicted, and how significant, you ask? Memphis has reached the Sweet 16 ten times since seeding began in 1979, but never seeded lower than sixth.

As for the crucible of NCAA tournament play, consider the Tigers’ record this season away from FedExForum: 16-3. Not only have they won an ocean away from home (Maui), but they’ve won at Clemson, at Virginia, at Tulane, and at UAB, smaller arenas packed with crowds loudly rooting against their success. This Memphis team may encounter an opponent with more talent, maybe more luck. But it’s hard to imagine the Tigers being intimidated by what’s to come with all the madness. 

“They want to be champions,” emphasizes Hardaway. “They’ve come together and bonded. They’ve set out on a mission, and they’re not letting anything distract them. We’ve had a couple of bad games in conference, but these guys are locked in. They’re together. That’s why we’re so resilient.” 

Seeded 5th in the West Region, Memphis (29-5) opens play on Friday in Seattle against Colorado State (25-9).

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Legislatin’

Photo: Sean Pavone

Lawmakers gonna law-make, and committee agendas for the Tennessee General Assembly are filled to the brim with a vast and complex array of proposals for a better Tennessee (depending on where you sit). 

Hundreds of bills filed in Nashville cover everything from far-right-fueled covenant marriages to hunters finding wounded deer with drones to rules that take the high out of Tennessee cannabis products — and so much more.

Here are a few bills we’re watching. 

Senator Brent Taylor (Photo: wapp.capitol.tn.gov)

Gender transition (SB 0676)

Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) says this law ensures that if a gender clinic takes state funds to perform gender transition procedures, they’ll have to also perform “detransition procedures.” 

The bill also requires a report to the state on a ton of information about any transition procedures: the age and sex of the patient, what drugs were given to them, when the referral was made, what state and county the patient is from, and a complete list of “neurological, behavioral, or mental health conditions” the patient might have had. Almost everything but the patient’s name and WhatsApp handle. 

Forever chemicals (SB 0880)

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is pushing this bill, and maybe not just in Tennessee. 

When Mark Behrens, a representative of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, explained it to a Senate committee last week, he specifically mentioned PFAS (also called forever chemicals by some), which are found in nonstick cookware, firefighting foam, and more. He also broadly mentioned “microplastics” and “solvents.” 

Behrens claimed these may have a PR problem but they may also be in a situation where “the science [on them] is evolving and they may not have an impact on human health, or that impact may be unclear.” 

So rather than the state banning them for just having a bad rap, any ban would have to be based on “the best available science.” 

Senator Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma) asked if this could be used to keep fluoride out of drinking water. No, she was told. 

Medical Ethics Defense Act (SB 0955)

“This bill prohibits a healthcare provider from being required to participate in or pay for a healthcare procedure, treatment, or service that violates the conscience of the healthcare provider.” The bill itself is scanty on details. On its face, it sure sounds like it’s aimed at the LGBTQ community.            

But bill sponsor Senator Ferrell Haile (R-Gallatin) said it was a “straightforward bill,” covering things such as assisted suicide or whether or not a pharmacist felt comfortable prescribing birth control. 

Deer and drones (SB 0130)

This one is straightforward. It would allow hunters to use drones to find deer they shot.  

WHO now? (SB 0669)

With this bill, Taylor, the Memphis Republican, says pandemics can only be declared by the American, baseball-and-apple-pie Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), not the Swiss, soccer-and-Toblerone World Health Organization (WHO).

Senator London Lamar (Photo: wapp.capitol.tn.gov)

Cash for STI tests (SB 0189)

Senator London Lamar (D-Memphis) wants to give higher-education students in Tennessee $250 for taking a voluntary test for sexually transmitted diseases. 

Felonies for protestors (SB 0672)

You know how Memphis protestors like to shut down the Hernando DeSoto Bridge? Well, Taylor, that Memphis Republican, would make that a felony. 

But it’s not just big roads and protestors. The bill applies to anyone obstructing “a highway, street, sidewalk, railway, waterway, elevator, aisle, hallway, or other place used for the passage of persons or vehicles.” Those would be Class E felonies. 

But if the “offense was committed by intentionally obstructing a highway, street, or other place used for the passage of vehicles,” it would be a Class D felony. 

What’s in a name? (SB 0214)

This bill would prohibit any public facility to be named for a local public official who is currently in office — and for two years after they leave office. The same prohibition would also apply to anyone who has “been convicted of a felony or a crime of moral turpitude.”

Covenant marriage (SB 0737)

This bill creates “covenant marriage” in Tennessee. And the most important thing the bill caption wants you to know about the law is that this kind of marriage “is entered into by one male and one female.” 

Covenant marriage is, like, a mega, pinky-swear marriage. To get it, couples have to go to premarital counseling and their preacher or counselor or whoever has to get notarized and some kind of pamphlet to be printed by the secretary of state. 

Getting out of a covenant marriage is, like, way hard. A partner would have to cheat or die, be sentenced to death or lifelong imprisonment, leave the house for a year, or physically or sexually abuse the other partner or the couple’s children. 

These types of marriages are only available now in Arizona, Arkansas, and Louisiana. 

Oh, and if you wonder where this is coming from, check out a video posted on our website that shows Senator Mark Pody (R-Lebanon), one of the bill’s sponsors, at church talking about “wicked” gay marriage. — Toby Sells 

Taylor sponsored SB 0217. (Photo: Joshua Rainey | Dreamstime.com)

Clearing Homeless Camps (SB 0217)

A bill would give those living in homeless camps three days to vacate if their camp is targeted for removal in a new program that could cost around $64 million each year from the state highway fund. 

Senate Bill 0217 would require the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) and other agencies to regulate “the collection, storage, claiming, and disposal of personal property used for camping from the shoulder, berm, or right-of-way of a state or interstate highway, or under a bridge or overpass, or within an underpass of a state or interstate highway.”

The bill, sponsored by Taylor, coasted through its first vote by the Senate Transportation and Safety Committee last week with only one Democrat voting against it. Taylor said he had experience in trying to clear areas of personal property and called it the “most complicated thing [he] had done as an adult.”

“What this bill does is simply allow TDOT to go into communities like Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville, or any other community and to go ahead and preplan how they’re going to deal with homeless encampments and go ahead and work with social services networks in that community,” Taylor said.

Taylor said this network will include law enforcement, so that all the duties will already be spelled out when an encampment needs to be removed. He also said this bill does not criminalize homeless people.

“This serves not only the state and the local community, but this serves the homeless folks as well,” Taylor said. “When they identify a homeless encampment that needs to be cleared, there’ll be nonprofits and social services available to the people in homeless encampments. We all have empathy, but whatever has driven somebody to have to live under a bridge, their lot in life is not getting better by living under a bridge.”

Taylor said the bill will help communities develop a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to tackle this issue in a way that’s beneficial to both the city and the homeless. Senator Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville) asked if the bill outlines how their belongings will be stored, to which Taylor responded that the decision would be left to the board.

“I understand the intent,” Campbell said. “I have a similar thing happen in my district. I just am concerned without the direction from the legislation, the homeless peoples’ items and things need to be considered, that we’re putting the discretion to be able to take stuff away from homeless people in somebody’s hands where it might not have been before.”

Lindsey Krinks, co-founder of Housing for All Tennessee and Open Table Nashville, noted citizens’ concerns for the bill — specifically, the disposal of homeless people’s belongings.

“What this bill doesn’t tell you is that the campsite removal costs will be passed down to local governments; we’re really concerned about that,” Krinks said. “We all want to see the number of people living in encampments decrease, but the way we do that is not to play a game of Whack-A-Mole. It’s to break the cycle of homelessness through providing housing and support to people.”

Krinks said the bill does not address homelessness nor the deficit of housing or shelter. She noted that the bill’s “aggressive” deadline of removal three days after receiving a complaint does not allow people to secure permanent housing.

Taylor said this bill will address these concerns as the agencies and TDOT will help people get connected to the services they need. He said continuing to let people live in encampments without services does not provide them with extra support.

“If you support homeless people and want to get them the services they need and help them live in dignity, then you would support this bill because we’re able to make that connection when we clear a homeless encampment between a person in need and social services they need to connect them,” Taylor said. — Kailynn Johnson

Happy high? (HB 1376)

State Republicans propose either stricter cannabis rules or none at all. 

Despite warnings that the hemp industry would be decimated, the House Judiciary Committee passed a measure last week that would put stricter regulations in place.

Sponsored by House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland), House Bill 1376 would place the industry under the Alcoholic Beverage Commission instead of the Department of Agriculture and remove products from convenience and grocery stores. Only vape and liquor stores would be allowed to sell some hemp products.

The House bill was slated to be heard this week in the Commerce Committee where agreements with the industry could be reached. 

“It does ban [derivatives] THCA and THCP. The reason for that is we have not legalized marijuana in this state,” Lamberth said.

Hemp is distinguished from marijuana in that it contains a compound called delta-9 THC. Cannabis with a concentration of less than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC is defined as legal hemp in Tennessee — and federally. Cannabis with concentrations greater than 0.3 percent is classified as marijuana and is illegal to grow, sell, or possess in Tennessee.

Hemp flowers also contain THCA, a nonintoxicating acid that would be banned in Tennessee under this bill. When heated or smoked, the THCA in the plant converts into delta-9 THC — an illegal substance in Tennessee in greater than trace amounts.

Clint Palmer, a representative of the hemp industry, told lawmakers the bill is similar to one passed in 2023 that led to a lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture that remains in litigation.

If the new measure passes, Palmer said, hemp businesses will be forced to shut down, even after spending millions of dollars complying with state regulations.

“Bill sponsors have said it’s the Wild West in regards to the current hemp program. This is far from the truth,” Palmer said. 

The 2023 law put new restrictions on products containing THC, he said, and noted retail stores, manufacturers, and distributors are required to be licensed or face criminal charges. Palmer added that regulation is lacking from the Department of Agriculture, despite a 6 percent tax on hemp-derived products, half of which nets the department $1 million a month.

Lamberth has said that consumers should know the ingredients when they buy a hemp product. But Palmer said those are listed on labels, based on the 2023 law.

The House leader also indicated that the industry appears ready to sue the state again because the federal Farm Act sets standards on hemp. Palmer didn’t acknowledge whether a lawsuit could follow the new bill’s passage, but he said the Alcoholic Beverage Commission doesn’t “have a clear understanding of the hemp plant, and it’s clearly shown in this bill.”

The Senate version of the bill, sponsored by Senator Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville), is to be heard next by the finance committee. Briggs said last week as soon as the products are heated, they become marijuana.

“We could withdraw the bill and let’s just put another bill out there that says we’re going to have recreational marijuana,” Briggs said. “Let’s be perfectly honest. It’ll help the businesses, we’ll have great revenue, and everybody smoking the stuff will be a lot happier.” — Sam Stockard, Tennessee Lookout

Healthcare on the Hill (SB 0402 / SB 0403 / SB 0575)

Senate Democratic Caucus Chairwoman Senator London Lamar (D-Memphis) introduced SB 0403 and SB 0402 to tackle the issue of medical debt. SB 0403 proposes that hospitals match the amount of money they receive from the government to cover “uncompensated care” in erasing medical debt. According to the Tennessee General Assembly, taxpayers paid $153 million to cover payments for 107 hospitals.

“If a hospital takes public money, they should lift patient debt in return,” Lamar said. “Healthcare should heal, not bankrupt. This is about real relief for working people — helping families stay in their homes, invest in their futures, and live with dignity.”

SB 0402 seeks to further alleviate the toll of medical debt as it would remove its inclusion from credit reports. Lamar called medical debt an “unfair financial harm.”

Lamar has also long been an advocate for reducing the state’s maternal health crisis. The state has historically had the worst maternal mortality rate in the country. To aid in this, Lamar filed SB 0575, which would require new mothers to receive information about postpartum warning signs from hospitals.

“There’s an education gap women are experiencing as far as resources, what to do, and how to go through this process,” Lamar said. “In an effort to ensure that women have the best pregnancy outcome possible, we want to make sure we’re providing them with more tools in their toolbox to protect themselves and their child in this process and after.”

Lamar said this bill would add an extra layer of accountability to make sure hospitals and birthing centers are doing their part to educate women. The senator said that medical deserts create a significant gap in accessing quality care even before they seek pregnancy care. She went on to say pregnancy outcomes are reliant on the mother’s lifestyle before and after the process.

“We have an unhealthy community that is deprived of access to resources and doctors,” Lamar said. “There is a financial burden of not being able to afford the healthcare they need. Healthcare is really expensive. It’s very elitist. It’s the haves and the have-nots, so if you don’t have the money to have insurance or pay out of pocket, then you don’t get healthcare. That stems down to Black women who are less likely to have the care they need, rural women in rural areas who are experiencing poverty don’t have access [to care.]”

The idea of providing equitable healthcare and rights have extended to reproductive bills such as HB 0027 sponsored by Representative Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville). The bill, which has been supported by groups such as Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood, states that everyone has a “fundamental right to make decisions about their reproductive health care.” HB 1220 also protects reproductive freedom as it safeguards the right to choose whether or not a person wants to use contraceptives.

Some GOP bills, like the Medical Ethics Defense Act mentioned above, seek to curb access to care. Meanwhile, SB 0139, sponsored by Senator Adam Lowe (R-Calhoun), would mandate hospitals accepting Medicaid to collect and report citizenship status about patients, and report these demographics to the Tennessee Department of Health. The department would then submit this information to state government officials to track the impact of “uncompensated care for persons not lawfully present in the United States and other related information.” — KJ 

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Spring Arts Guide 2025

Calida Rawles, Towner For Life, from “Away with the Tides” (Photo: Courtesy Brooks Museum of Art)

When Groundhog Day came, I never bothered to find out if he saw his shadow. Even now, I still haven’t bothered. All I know is that it’s time for me to write the Spring Arts Guide, and that is enough for me to know that spring is here — and so are the arts: visual, theater, dance, and otherwise. 

ON DISPLAY

“Regenesis”
Johnathan Payne works at the intersection of drawing, collage, embroidery, beadwork, and painting. 
Clough Hanson Gallery, through March 27

“Accessories”
Althea Murphy-Price presents arrangements of armatures and accessories inspired by beauty tools and everyday objects.
Sheet Cake Gallery, through March 29

“Tales from the Journeys”
Nelson Gutierrez’s work examines the psychological and social consequences of conflict.
Sheet Cake Gallery, through March 29

“Beyond the Surface: The Art of Handmade Paper”
Explore the shape-shifting quality of paper.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, through April 6

“An Occasional Craving”
Chris Antemann cheekily re-envisions the concept of porcelain figurines.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, through April 6

“House of Grace”
The Memphis debut of Floyd Newsum’s large paintings on paper and maquettes for public sculptures.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, through April 6

“Who Is That Artist?”
Interact with Jorden Miernik-Walker’s photography-based work.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, through April 6

“Small Spaces”
Jennifer Watson’s jewel-like paintings.
The Dixon Gallery & Gardens, through April 13

“A Journey into the Shadows”
Nelson Gutierrez’s three-dimensional cutout drawings.
Crosstown Arts, through May 11

“Engorging Eden”
Rachel David transforms everyday furniture into fragmented expressions of life’s chaos, joy, and loss. 
Metal Museum, through May 11

“From the Ashes”
Maritza Dávila-Irizarry integrates printmaking, mixed media, photography, and video to confront a studio fire.
Crosstown Arts, through May 11

“Supernatural Telescope”
Danielle Sierra’s deeply poetic reflection on memory, love, and spirituality.
Crosstown Arts, through May 11

“The Colors of the Caribbean”
Juan Roberto Murat Salas’ works of bold colors and dynamic compositions.
Crosstown Arts, through May 11

“Trolls: Save the Humans”
Thomas Dambo’s larger-than-life fairy tale, in which art and nature intertwine.
Memphis Botanic Garden, through May 21

“Light As Air”
Explore the beauty in tension. 
Metal Museum, through September 7

“Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides”
Picturing water as space for Black healing.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, March 19-September 7

“Summer Art Garden: A Flash of Sun”
Khara Woods’ sun-drenched shades, dazzling patterns, and geometric sculptures.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, April 17-October 20

“Colleen Couch and Dolph Smith: Walk in the Light”
Showcasing the arc of Smith’s oeuvre, new works by Couch inspired by him, and recent collaborations by the two artists.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, April 20-June 20

“with abundance we meet”
Suchitra Mattai’s installation is made of “fruit” sculptures, ripe with possibilities, conjuring wombs and fertility spirits.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, May 22

ON STAGE

A Body of Water
This darkly comic, existential mystery play will leave you laughing, guessing, and gasping until the very last second.
TheatreSouth, through March 9

12 Angry Jurors
Tempers get short, arguments grow heated as jurors convene during a murder trial. 
Germantown Community Theatre, through March 16

Beauty and the Beast
Based on Disney’s film, the classic story of Belle and her beastly bestie.
Theatre Memphis, through March 30

Orchestra Unplugged: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
Robert Moody explores the mind of Beethoven and his most celebrated work.
Halloran Centre, March 6

Children of Eden
Follow Adam and Eve’s descendants through storms and strife.
Bartlett Performing Arts & Conference Center, March 7-9

Elena Urioste to play Piazzolla, Shostakovich, and Richter’s Recomposed (Photo: Courtesy Iris Collective)

Recomposed: Elena Urioste
The celebrated London violinist performs Recomposed by Max Richter, an interpretation of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. 
Crosstown Theater, March 8

Dance Nation
A group of girls fight to find themselves in the preteen competitive dance world.
TheatreWorks at The Evergreen, March 14-23

Thoughts of a Colored Man
The first Broadway play written, directed, produced by, and starring Black men.
Hattiloo Theatre, March 14-April 6

Shakespeare in the Cemetery
Tennessee Shakespeare Company actors perform one hour of Shakespeare’s best death scenes.
Elmwood Cemetery, March 15

Variations on a Theme 
Opera Memphis’ curated evenings span opera, musical theater, and vocal music. 
Opera Memphis, March 15-16| April 26-27

Scheherazade and Butterfly Lovers Concerto
Robert Moody leads the Memphis Symphony Orchestra (MSO).
Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, March 15 | Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center, March 16

Celtic Concert: A Celebration of the Emerald Isle
The Slainte Singers bring the Irish magic.
Germantown Community Theatre, March 16-17

The Great Gatsby
World Ballet Company takes you back to the Roaring Twenties.
Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, March 2

Punk Rock Girl!
Rough and unapologetically authentic. 
Playhouse on the Square, March 21-April 13

Tick Tick BOOM!
The story of the composer of Rent.
TheatreWorks @ The Square, March 21-30

Dance, Girl!
Celebrating Black girlhood through poetry, dance, and music.
The Green Room at Crosstown Arts, March 22

Bartlett Community Concert Band
Offering both classical masterpieces and modern movie soundtracks.
Bartlett Performing Arts & Conference Center, March 28

Chloé Arnold’s Syncopated Ladies
A renowned touring female tap group. 
Germantown Performing Arts Center, March 28

R.E.S.P.E.C.T., a tribute to Aretha Franklin at the Orpheum Theatre (Photo: Jeremy Daniel)

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
An electrifying tribute to Aretha Franklin. 
Orpheum Theatre, March 30

The British Isles – Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” and Grainger’s “Danny Boy”
A sweeping musical adventure.
Crosstown Theater, March 28 | Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center, March 30

Black Violin: Full Circle Tour
Mixing classical depth and hip-hop’s pulse.
Orpheum Theatre, April 1

Dragged Thru Time: Goldie & BeBe’s Extravagant Adventure
Two drag queens accidentally warp through time and must navigate history’s most iconic moments.
TheatreWorks @ The Evergreen, April 4-12

Lessons Learned: A Tap Concert
Hot Foot Honeys probe the human condition through dance. 
Germantown Community Theatre, April 4-5

Saint Joan
George Bernard Shaw’s chronicle of the heroism of French army leader Joan of Arc.
Tennessee Shakespeare Company, April 4-19

The ICON, Babbie Lovett, Fashion Legend
Tennessee Ballet Theater’s homage to the life and legacy of one of Memphis’ most influential leaders.
McCoy Theatre at Rhodes College, April 4-12

The River Bride
Cazateatro Bilingual Theatre Group’s charming story of mystery, love, and family.
TheatreWorks @ The Square, April 4-20

Some Like It Hot
Two musicians flee mobsters after witnessing a hit in Prohibition-era Chicago. 
Orpheum Theatre, April 8-13

Silent Sky
The story of 19th century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt.
Theatre Memphis, April 9-19

Homecoming
Brothers Randall and Miles Goosby return to their hometown, playing chamber music with friend and pianist Zhu Wang.
Highland Capital Performance Hall at GPAC, April 10

Memphis Symphony Big Band ft. Joyce Cobb & Patrice Williamson
A mix of timeless classics and exciting new arrangements.
Crosstown Theater, April 12

The O’Kays
Three young men chase fame and fortune in Memphis’ 1970s R&B music scene.
Halloran Centre, April 19, 2 p.m.

Angels in the Architecture
With Balanchine’s Donizetti Variations, a grand season’s end from Ballet Memphis. 
Germantown Performing Arts Center, April 25-27

Caroline, or Change
A Black maid for a Jewish family is trying to take care of her own kin at the dawn of the Civil Rights movement. 
Playhouse on the Square, April 25-May 18

Cougars
A play set in the high-octane world of a Memphis car dealership. 
TheatreWorks @ The Square, April 25-May 4

Rumors
A wedding celebration turns chaotic.
Theatre Memphis, April 25-May 11

Orchestra Unplugged: Peter and the Wolf – More Than a Children’s Story
A whimsical setting for Prokofiev.
Halloran Centre, May 1

The Drop That Contained the Sea
The MSO with Memphis Symphony Chorus and guests perform Tin’s gem.
Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center, May 4

Cabaret
The great musical of decadence and Nazis. 
Germantown Community Theatre, May 9-25

Chicken & Biscuits
Can two sisters at odds set aside their differences to honor their father? 
Playhouse on the Square, May 9-June 1

Buckman Dance Conservatory’s Spring Celebration of Dance
A blend of ballet and contemporary dance.
Buckman Performing Arts Center, May 10-11

Symphony in the Gardens
A Mother’s Day tradition with the MSO Big Band.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, May 11

The Boy Who Kissed the Sky
A musical inspired by the early life and influences of musical icon Jimi Hendrix.
Hattiloo Theatre, May 16-June 8

Romantic Masterworks by Rachmaninoff and Saint-Saëns
The MSO’s take on the “Egyptian” Piano Concerto and other works.
Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, May 17 | Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center, May 18

La Calisto
A jewel from the golden age of Venetian opera.
Playhouse on the Square, May 21-23

A Particle of Dread: Oedipus Variations
A reimagination of the ancient Greek tale as a modern thriller. 
TheatreWorks @ The Square, May 23-June 8

AROUND TOWN

SneakFest Sneaker Expo
For fans of sneakers and urban fashion.
Agricenter International, March 22, 1-11 p.m.

Metal Petals + Healing Roots
Art from disassembled gun parts collected during the Guns to Gardens initiative.
Metal Museum, March 29  

…

The Dixon and Theatre Memphis present Women in the Arts.  (Photos: Courtesy Dixon Gallery & Gardens)

Women in the Arts

On Saturday, March 8th, Dixon Gallery & Gardens and Theatre Memphis will co-host their fourth Women in the Arts event, a day celebrating the women shaping the arts in Memphis. As in years past, the event will have performances, demonstrations, classes, panels, and an artist market. 

When the event kicked off in 2021, Kristen Rambo, the Dixon’s communications manager, says, “It was like, why is there not an event like this happening in Memphis? … Once it started, we didn’t want to stop.”

The day’s full schedule will be posted to the Dixon’s website on Friday, March 7th, with programming planned for both the Dixon and Theatre Memphis campuses. Guests can take a free shuttle to and from both locations throughout the event. 

“There’s something for everyone to do, whether you’re an extrovert or an introvert,” Rambo says, adding that the event is family-friendly. “We also have some of our community partners that are going to represent themselves and maybe have an activity, like the Memphis Public Libraries, the Metal Museum, Women in Memphis Music, Girl Scouts of [the United States of] America, and Cazateatro [Bilingual Theatre Group]. … So that’s something we always like to highlight as well — supporting all the arts communities in Memphis so we can all improve the arts.” 

“Memphis is so full of amazing women, artists, and arts administrators, people who might not be artists themselves but work and thrive in the arts,” Rambo adds. “And whether that artist is a performer or visual or anything in between — we have some comedians coming — it’s just an exciting way to highlight these artists on one fun, special day. And of course, we should be celebrating women artists all throughout the year, but you can be really embedded in the Memphis art scene and still meet and see people you’ve never met or heard of before at this event, which is so exciting.”  

Women in the Arts, Dixon Gallery & Gardens | Theatre Memphis, Saturday, March 8, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.

…

Luminarus’ cavern wall in progress (Photo: Courtesy Alison Heverly)

Luminarus

Yvonne Bobo and a collective of artists, students, and astronomers are building a planet at Off the Walls Arts (OTWA). The planet will have crochet pods, a cavern wall, and sculptural flora and fauna. “It’s a performing arts place, so we’re gonna have all kinds of events in it — music, dance, just a place for the community to explore,” Bobo says.

The project began from conversations about the extraterrestrial unknown. “We started to think about it in a social situation: What would we do if we ran into aliens? What would we share with them? And if we don’t have the same language or culture, we can share through art, through music, through dance. They’re sort of like our mediums that we can try to express who we are.”

As such, this new planet, created through these media and host to these media, is called Luminarus, Bobo says, because “we’re gonna illuminate people, shine a light on people’s talents.”

Since the first Saturday of February, OTWA has hosted Community Build Days, inviting anyone, regardless of skill, to help construct the multimedia installation inspired by the cosmos. “We built it around an idea of community, and it’s nice to see a community forming,” Bobo says. “People seem to be really energized by the project and what they could bring or how it could kind of feed their creativity.”

People are trying their hand at carpentry, seeing their progress come to fruition at the end of the day; they’ll get a chance to learn large-scale crochet later on as the building progresses. In the meantime, 3D artists can submit their work to make up the flora and fauna in the installation. “We’re just doing a massive call,” Bobo says. “Let them be weird; let them do their thing; let’s just tell stories.”

Students from Bellevue Middle School and Crosstown High School are also participating, with some of them creating sculptures for the group exhibit and others taking part in an alien fashion show. “Everyone knows that art departments are often not well-funded,” Bobo says. “So we like to bring in artists in the community to help to enrich their art programs.”

Also in collaboration members of the Memphis Astronomical Society will provide their photography of galaxies and constellations. The group is also hosting an Evening Astro-Watch on March 7th at 5 p.m. at OTWA to capture the imaginations of Luminarus builders. 

So far, with all these partnerships (and more), Bobo says, “I feel like I made the infrastructure, and now it’s just taking off, getting its own life. That’s what’s valuable with a collaboration. Maybe one person starts the sentence, but it keeps evolving, and then it’s way more interesting than I could have just imagined on my own.”

Luminarus will open Saturday, May 10th, 6 to 8 p.m. The first major event following will be a free family-friendly community day on May 17th that will include the student-led alien fashion show. Other events, both family-friendly and adult-only, are on the horizon. To participate in the Community Build Days or to submit work, visit offthewallsarts.org. 

…

10-Minute Play Festival

This April, Hattiloo Theatre will host its inaugural 10-Minute Black Theatre Festival. “Part of putting it on is to explore the hidden talent we have here in Memphis,” says Jarrod Walker, Hattiloo’s theater manager. “We’re very intentional about cultural storytelling and giving voices to those people who may need an outlet to express their voice.”

In the fall of 2024, Hattiloo opened submissions for the festival, accepting works only from Shelby County residents. “The pieces had to amplify the Black cultural experience in some way,” Walker says. “We wanted to talk about the diaspora because a lot of times, once people think about Black experience, it’s very unilateral. So we want to show the diversity in these stories. … We’re a free-standing Black theater, one of four in the nation, and part of our mission and vision is to amplify these stories.”

The chosen plays are Lele Uku by Levi Frazier Jr., Peekin’ by Velvet Gunn, Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band Saved This Jewish Lesbian by Sarah Ellin Siegel, Vindication by Dabrell Thompson, Cutting Corners by Danica Wilks, and honorable mention Elderberry by Najwa Watson.

Walker hopes that the play festival will “give someone their big break. Some of these, they may workshop and go back and do some rewrites, and who knows, they may end up being developed into a full-length piece.”

Not only that but the 10-minute plays may see some directorial debuts or even acting debuts for others in the theater community. “We just did Black Odyssey, and we had an actor and it was on her bucket list. So she was like, you know, ‘I’m a seasoned woman. I’ve always wanted to try and audition.’ And she got cast in the show and did a phenomenal job on stage. So, hopefully, this may be someone else’s story with this festival.”

Auditions for the 10-Minute Black Theatre Festival will be held on March 22nd at 10 a.m. at Hattiloo Theatre. The festival will take place April 24th to 27th. 

Categories
Cover Feature News

The Battle for Midtown

A series of information meetings and yard signs are speaking out against Memphis 3.0. (Photo: Toby Sells)

Editor’s note: Citywide planning, land use discussions, zoning, and the potential economics of it all are far too broad and dense to ever be covered in a single news story. (So are other considerations about income, race, and population loss.) Please consider this piece the beginning of our coverage on Memphis 3.0.

For this one, we’ll take you inside one of MidtownMemphis.org’s information meetings and share a Q&A rebuttal about it all from John Zeanah, director of the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development (DPD).

Memphis 3.0 will “sell out” Midtown neighborhoods to investors and businesses looking to cash in on (but maybe never really care about) the attractive communities residents in those places have built over decades.

That’s a very basic expression of the argument voiced for months now from MidtownMemphis.org. The volunteer group is fighting the plan with a series of information meetings, an online information hub, and yard signs — sure signs that a Midtown fight has gotten real.

Passed in 2019 and devised by former Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s administration, Memphis 3.0 is a document guiding the growth of Memphis. It’s up for its first-ever five-year renewal. A major strategy for sustainability in the plan has been to support some of the city’s anchors like Crosstown Concourse, Overton Square, and commercial areas around Cooper Street.

However, MidtownMemphis.org argues the locations for these anchors and the planned density that could surround them aren’t fair. For example, group members say a lot of density is planned for Midtown but very little for East Memphis.

Also, adding density to certain places around Midtown means multifamily homes, the group says, instead of single-family, owner-occupied homes. They fear profit-minded landlords will use 3.0 to work around zoning laws to create duplexes or quadplexes, won’t upkeep these properties, create transient tenants, and make neighborhoods less attractive for potential buyers. They say this could slowly destabilize neighborhoods into ghosts of their current selves.     

“What we’re against — and we have history on our side — is destabilizing the neighborhood to support Crosstown,” said MidtownMemphis.org volunteer Robert Gordon, who has spearheaded the battle against 3.0. “[The plan] is going to wreck Crosstown, wreck the neighborhood, and, consequently, wreck the city. And if you don’t believe me, go back to Midtown in 1969. Go back to Midtown in 1974. Go back to Midtown when it was zoned like the [Memphis 3.0] future land use planning map envisions zoning.”

All of it, they say, could lead to a showdown at Memphis City Hall next year as council members review the changes for a vote.

However, John Zeanah, director of the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development, said the 3.0 plan won’t do what MidtownMemphis.org fears it will do.

“The goal is to make sure that our community has healthy, stable anchors that are supported by healthy, stable neighborhoods,” Zeanah said. “The suggestions that we would take extreme actions to destabilize neighborhoods is really puzzling. It doesn’t come from anything that we’re saying as a part of our meetings. It doesn’t come from anything the plan is saying.”

Nearly 60 people gathered for a MidtownMemphis.org Memphis 3.0 meeting earlier this month. (Photo: Toby Sells)

Inside a MidtownMemphis.org 3.0 meeting

A dreary, cold, wet February night was not enough to stop a crowd from sloshing through puddles to hear about how the Memphis 3.0 plan could “sell out our neighborhood,” as the signs say. Nearly 60 people gathered for a MidtownMemphis.org 3.0 meeting earlier this month at Friends For All.

MidtownMemphis.org has been holding meetings like these since September. Other info sessions — six in total — have been organized at Otherlands Coffee Bar, the Cooper-Young Community Association building, and the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library. Gordon said it was in January that planing officials stopped working with MidtownMemphis.org on the 3.0 issue.

At the latest February meeting, Gordon took the stage before a slideshow projected on a screen behind him. He described MidtownMemphis.org as a “sort of neighborhood association for neighborhood associations,” meaning his group meets monthly with Midtown neighborhood groups from Central Gardens, Cooper-Young, and more. MidtownMemphis.org also plants trees around Midtown and oversees the community garden next to Huey’s Midtown.

Gordon told the crowd he entered public planning discussions as a NIMBY (not in my backyard), concerned that the Poplar Art Lofts plan in 2019 would push noise and exhaust onto those enjoying Overton Park. This led him to the MidtownMemphis.org organization and he’s been a volunteer with the group ever since.

Gordon described the 3.0 plan as a “city guide” and a “North Star” for Memphis-area planning efforts. The plan’s motto, he said, reverses the sprawl strategies of years past and embraces the idea to “build up, not out.” While the motto is the essence of the plan, Gordon called it “quite misleading.”

One critical foundation of the Memphis 3.0 plan is where that growth inside the city’s footprint should happen. The plan says that growth should happen around anchors. These anchors, picked with the help of residents, are usually commercial areas like Overton Square, Crosstown Concourse, Cooper-Young, and others.

To Gordon, city planners dropped a compass point on these anchors and drew a circle around them. Inside those circles is where the 3.0 plan wants to grow, he said. This is a critical foundation of MidtownMemphis.org’s argument against the 3.0 plan, with Gordon saying, “I’m not alone in thinking that’s a bad way to make plans.”

“So, you may have bought your home in a single-family neighborhood, but the future land use planning map sees in the future … a change to a more dense kind of neighborhood,” Gordon told the crowd. “One of our big issues with [3.0] is right here at the core of it: the anchors. We don’t agree that an anchor necessarily warrants this kind of density. Nor do we agree with what are called ‘anchors.’ For example, let’s just point out, Overton Park is not an anchor.”

The anchor model and the density projections that come with it are brush strokes too broad to paint the intricacies of planning something as complex as Midtown neighborhoods, Gordon said. This is seen at a macro level in the plan as the city is divvied up into 14 planing zones. In this, Midtown, the Medical Center, and Downtown are merged into one zone called “Core City.”

“I think that is a mistake because Midtown is residential housing, and Downtown and the Medical Center are not,” Gordon says. “So, let’s start by saying those should be separated.”

But Gordon easily shifts into the micro: the dense, complex, nitty-gritty of 3.0 that could allow single-family neighborhoods to legally be chopped into quadplexes, new units built where they can’t be now and, he says, destabilize Midtown neighborhoods.

The density models from anchor planning in 3.0 are the easiest way for a developer to create multifamily in a single-family zone, he said. They’ll pay “professional convincers,” basically development lobbyists at Memphis City Hall, to speak to planning boards like the Land Use Control Board or the Board of Adjustment and ask for a special zoning change on property from single family to multifamily.   

“This professional convincer is going to go in there armed with information from Memphis 3.0 and say, ‘This is what the city wants,’” he said. “So, in short order, your single-family neighborhood is going to begin to show multifamily buildings. And people who are looking for houses to buy are going to go, ‘Wait a minute. I remember this as a single-family neighborhood. What’s that four-plex doing there?’”

While the process may move slowly, he said, it could be a deciding factor for potential Midtown homeowners who might not want to gamble their biggest investment “on a neighborhood that’s in flux.”

A neighborhood could get multifamily zoning even if it’s not in one of those anchor density zones, Gordon said. The Memphis 3.0 plan designates some entire streets for higher density, regardless of where they lie, he said. So, even if your neighborhood passes all the other tests, a developer could use the street designation as an argument for, say, a four-plex on a street. Later, another developer could come in wanting the same thing nearby because there’s already one across the street.

A third way Gordon told crowd members a neighborhood could get density through 3.0 is from degree of change. He joked it was the “dreaded degree of change” because it was harder to explain. The term, he said, basically means how money gets into a neighborhood. The 3.0 plan outlines three categories, he said. In it, the city works alone or with developers to fuel projects in certain neighborhoods, based on the need, and that could mean high-density housing.

“If you’re in a ‘nurture’ neighborhood, the city’s going to throw a lot of money at you,” Gordon said. “If you’re in an ‘accelerate’ neighborhood, the city’s going to throw some money at you but they’re going to try and get private investment to come in.

“If you’re in a ‘sustain’ neighborhood, then the city’s is going to say that private investors are going to take care of that.”

Memphis 3.0’s future land use planning map envisions denser neighborhoods. (Photo: Courtesy Memphis and Shelby County DPD)

A contentious question of motivation

The Q&A portion of the meeting found a raw spot in discussions around Memphis 3.0 and the density topic in general. The basic question: Are single-family housing proponents seeking to bar low-income people from their neighborhoods?

Abby Sheridan raised the point gently at the MidtownMemphis.org meeting. The reason she and her family moved close to Crosstown, she said, was to be within walking distance of the Concourse, for the density. She went to the meeting to see what the opposition to 3.0 was about, she said.

“Don’t be afraid of density,” she told the crowd. “Just because we allow for different types of housing doesn’t mean it’s an automatic guarantee.

“I’ve lived in multi-unit neighborhoods for most of my adult life. They are thriving, vibrant communities.

“If we, as Evergreen [residents], believe that diversity is our strength, y’all are really showing your colors tonight.”

The comment sucked the air from the room that was quickly filled with side chatter, sighs, and low gasps. Emily Bishop, a MidtownMemphis.org volunteer, responded, saying owner-occupied homes stabilized Cooper-Young in the late ’80s when she bought her home (once a duplex, she said) there. 

“The businesses were nonexistent in Cooper-Young,” Bishop said. “There was one Indochina restaurant. [The neighborhood] was light industrial at best.

“There was no zoning change that brought density back. What makes a neighborhood thrive are owner-occupied homes with people who get involved, who do the code enforcement work, who get rid of slumlords, and who support the local businesses.”

In all, Bishop said Memphis doesn’t have a housing shortage; it has an affordable housing shortage.

“And there again,” Sheridan said, “what I’m hearing you say is … ‘not in our neighborhood.’”

Gordon jumped in to cool off the topic by saying that MidtownMemphis.org really is simply in favor of doing smaller plans for distinct neighborhoods.

Joe Ozment spoke plainly.

“I’ve been doing criminal defense in this city for 33 years and I’ve seen what’s happened in areas like Hickory Hill and Cordova when you add density,” he said. “We don’t want that in Midtown.”

Jerred Price, president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association, and his board attended the meeting to “support the neighbors.” He and the board agreed that Downtown should be a separate planning bloc from Midtown. He said the anchor-and-compass method “shouldn’t be a strategy for development.”

Dropping “one of those special, little circle-drawing thingamajiggers” at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital would mean high density for the single-family neighborhoods like Uptown, he said. But higher density could be welcomed on the other side of the interstate there because it’s in the Downtown core.

“So, even for us, those circles don’t make any sense of our communities,” Price said. “We stand with you on that.”

Asked about the timeline of the Memphis 3.0 proposal, Gordon said public meetings will continue through this year. Revised plans with that public input would then be published. Then, the Memphis City Council would vote on them, likely in 2026.

“If the future land use planning map hasn’t changed,” he said, “we will continue to marshal forces and the idea will be a showdown at city council.

“We would bring many citizens up there to protest a map that is not properly planned and does not look at what is stable in Midtown, is determined to destabilize Midtown for the benefit of commercial anchors, and is giving a free pass to other parts of town.” 

Q&A with John Zeanah

John Zeanah is the director of the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development. He said overarching city plans like Memphis 3.0 are nothing new; they’re even mandated for cities in certain states. 

Among those plans, Memphis 3.0 stands out, Zeanah said. It has won awards from the American Planning Association and the Congress for the New Urbanism. Memphis 3.0 is the city’s first comprehensive plan since 1981.

We asked him to respond to the movement against the 3.0 plan, which was authored by his office. — Toby Sells

Memphis Flyer: What do you make of the arguments about 3.0 from MidtownMemphis.org?
John Zeanah: Memphis 3.0 was adopted six years ago. So, when is it going to do those things [that MidtownMemphis.org argues] if it hasn’t already?

They’re saying the plan is up for a five-year review.
We’re undergoing our first five-year plan update now. One of the things that we’re doing as a part of the five-year plan update … is conducting a comprehensive look at the zoning map and understanding how well our zoning works with [Memphis 3.0].

I think part of the misunderstanding is the claim that we would necessarily rezone areas, according to the plan, to the most intense use or the most intense zoning district that could be conceived. And that’s not the case.

First of all, [Memphis 3.0] is general in nature. It — and the future land use map that they are so worried about — is meant to be general, with a generalized land use map. 

I think there’s some misunderstanding about whether the future land use map is calling for all these new things to happen. It’s an expression of what’s existing today. In some cases, it’s a mix of both.

Suffice to say, as we are going through the five-year plan update and we’re thinking about how zoning is a tool to implement the plan, our orientation is not to just apply the most-intense zoning district. There are changes to zoning that may not always be in residential areas. In fact, I’d say most of the zoning changes that will end up being recommended are in some of our commercial areas and commercial corridors.

The goal is to make sure that our community has healthy, stable anchors that are supported by healthy, stable neighborhoods. The suggestions that we would take extreme actions to destabilize neighborhoods are really puzzling. It doesn’t come from anything that we’re saying as a part of our meetings. It doesn’t come from anything the plan is saying.

They’ve said developers could use the future land use planning map as another arrow in their quiver. They could argue that while multi-family homes may not be allowed in a zone now, they could point to the suggestion in Memphis 3.0 and make a case for their project at city hall.
One cannot simply point to a generalized land use map and say, “Well, because this area around an anchor is a mixed-use type, I should be entitled to do the most intense thing that is part of this mix.” That’s no. 1. And no. 2: The plan does not have the authority to entitle that. That’s the role of zoning.

So, if you live in a neighborhood that is predominantly single-family and your zoning is single-family detached, and it is a stable neighborhood, there is no reason for the city to propose changing the zoning for the neighborhood. You are the healthy, stable neighborhood that is helping to support the anchor nearby. That is a good thing. That’s what we want to help preserve. 

Categories
Cover Feature News

The Feagins Fiasco

Former MSCS Superintendent Marie Feagins engages with students during an April 2024 visit to Grandview Heights Elementary School. (Photo: Ariel Cobbert)

I’ve watched every school board meeting since Dr. Marie Feagins was elected superintendent of Memphis-Shelby County Schools a year ago.

I’ve read the board’s resolution that terminated her contract last month, and the special counsel’s 209-page investigation of the board’s allegations against her.

I’ve read Feagins’ response to the allegations in her two-page email to board chair Joyce Dorse-Coleman on January 6th, and her 14-page “official response” to the board January 14th.

I’ve read Feagins’ startling allegations against the board in the 31-page lawsuit she filed in Shelby County Circuit Court earlier this month.

I’ve read every relevant public document and heard every public statement made by all parties involved in the latest disaster that has befallen our local public school system. And I’ve read news articles, opinion columns, politicians’ comments, and angry social media posts about the sordid mess.

I still don’t get it. I still don’t understand why Feagins was fired after less than a year on the job.

Michelle McKissack (Photo: Memphis Shelby County Schools)

The three examples of “professional misconduct” the board leveled against her might have justified a public reprimand, but not a public execution. At best, as six-year board member Michelle McKissack argued, they reflect “growing pains” for a superintendent who started working in April and a board with four members elected in August. At worst, well, we don’t know.

In her recently filed lawsuit, Feagins paints a picture of school board members bowing to local political and financial interests and conspiring behind the scenes — in violation of the state’s open meetings law — to find reasons to fire her.

But board members who voted to fire her, and the special counsel’s January 21st report they relied on to do so, paint a very different picture, one of a renegade superintendent running roughshod over the district and making “false and/or misleading” statements to the board about her intentions and actions.

The public record so far, to say the least, is inconclusive.

The special counsel’s report concluded that Feagins “violated her employment contract no less than eight times and deviated from Board policy on at least nine occasions.”

Six of the nine alleged policy “deviations” pertained to a single board policy — 1013, or the Superintendent Code of Ethics. That three-page policy, approved in 2017, contains 15 “statements of standards” the superintendent must follow, including: “I will endeavor to fulfill my professional responsibilities with honesty and integrity.” Vague enough for you?

As for the eight alleged contract violations, all pertained to a single paragraph in her contract. “Ethical conduct: The superintendent in all aspects of her interactions and transactions related to carrying out her duties of superintendent, agrees to represent, enforce, and adhere to the highest ethical standards.” Whose ethical standards? Which ethical standards?

“I will point out,” McKissack wrote in a January 13th letter to the board, “that Superintendent Feagins is not accused of theft, fraud, or any criminal misconduct.” What she mostly is accused of is making “false and/or misleading” statements to the board about three allegations of “professional misconduct.” That covers 13 of the 17 alleged contract violations.

The four other “violations” were attributed to Feagins’ failure to provide a document or report to the board in a timely manner. Feagins said those failures were unintentional and the result of “staff oversights.” The public record seems to support her version.

Photo: Ariel Cobbert

The Termination Resolution

First, the termination resolution claims that Feagins “misled the board” about “overtime abuse” she brought to the board’s attention last July. “Dr. Feagins never presented any evidence suggesting that her statement was true, and she did not correct or clarify her statement to the public,” the board’s first allegation reads. But Feagins told the board last July and again in December and January that she based her comments on “documented fiscal reports” of overtime pay records for 2022, 2023, and 2024.

“I provided at least three years of data to the board,” Feagins said after hearing the charges against her read aloud at the December 17th special called meeting.

There are no records that the board ever asked for or reviewed the data or tried to substantiate Feagins’ claims about overtime abuse.

Second, the termination resolution claims that Feagins accepted and deposited in the district’s account a $45,000 donation to the district from the SchoolSeed Foundation “without Board approval.”

“At a [November 19th] Board Work Session, Dr. Feagins misrepresented her knowledge of and involvement in depositing the unapproved donation check in violation of Board Policy,” the board’s second allegation reads.

Feagins said she didn’t learn about the donation until November 8th, the result of “a staff oversight,” and “promptly submitted the donation to the Board” at its next meeting, November 19th. The board approved the donation December 3rd. Two weeks later, five board members used it to charge her with “professional misconduct.”

The special counsel’s report cites two emails Feagins sent to staff in July that “irrefutably establish” that she knew then about the check. But neither email mentions a $45,000 SchoolSeed check, which records show wasn’t received by the district until August 13th.

Third, the termination resolution claims that Feagins “was dishonest with the board and public” about missing a deadline for a $300,000 federal grant to help homeless students. Feagins acknowledged that her staff failed to meet the September 30th deadline, but said the state subsequently allowed the district to use the funds for various expenses related to helping homeless students. “We missed the deadline,” she told the board December 17th.

The board’s allegations and investigation do not say how much — if any — of the $300,000 grant (leftover Covid-relief funds) was used or forfeited. The special counsel’s report to the board states that Feagins’ comments about the grant were “only accurate to a degree, but not completely.” That could sum up the board’s allegations against Feagins: only accurate to a degree, but not completely. 

“Clerical errors,” McKissack called them at the December 17th special board meeting. At least five board members at that meeting were clearly determined to fire Feagins. They didn’t explain why Feagins or board members in her corner didn’t see the resolution to fire her until a few minutes before the meeting. They didn’t respond to questions that Feagins or four other board members raised about the specific allegations in the resolution.

Sable Otey (Photo: Memphis Shelby County Schools)

Missing Pieces

They did raise a slew of other issues that weren’t in the resolution or the special counsel’s report. Board member Sable Otey, elected August 1st, blamed Feagins for the suicidal thoughts of an educator in her district, and the firing of a teacher in her district. She also claimed teachers were texting her with complaints about the superintendent. She didn’t present any evidence of her claims, and they weren’t included in the resolution.

Towanna Murphy (Photo: Memphis Shelby County Schools)

Board member Towanna Murphy, elected August 1st, blamed Feagins for the injury of a special needs child in her district, and for putting other special needs students at risk. She didn’t present any evidence of her claims, and they weren’t included in the resolution.

Natalie McKinney (Photo: Memphis Shelby County Schools)

Board member Natalie McKinney, elected August 1st, accused Feagins of creating “a climate of fear and intimidation” in staff across the district. She didn’t present any evidence of her claims, and they weren’t included in the resolution.

Various board members blamed Feagins for the district’s problems receiving sufficient staff and materials for online learning, dual enrollment, remedial instruction, and student assessment. They didn’t present any evidence that Feagins was to blame for those problems, and those complaints weren’t included in the termination resolution.

Amber Huett-Garcia (Photo: Memphis Shelby County Schools)

Board member Amber Huett-Garcia, who voted not to fire Feagins, said many of the complaints were “highlighting the woes of a district that is under-resourced [with] generational challenges” that began decades before Feagins arrived.

McKinney pushed back. “Our [board] seats have given us a bird’s-eye view of the working of the district,” McKinney said. “We see things the general public does not see.”

The general public still is not seeing those things. The superintendent works for the board, but the board works for the public. The board owes the public — not to mention Feagins, her staff, teachers and parents, and other public officials — a thorough, clear, compelling, and public explanation for why she was fired.

There was a fourth and final accusation in the termination resolution: “The board has also become aware of certain patterns of behavior by Dr. Feagins that are not conducive to the effective operation of the District in the best interests of students, including but not limited to her refusal to communicate and/or cooperate with valued District partners.”

That accusation was not included in the 209-page investigation, nor in the list of 17 alleged contract or policy violations. But I suspect it probably comes closest to explaining what went wrong. Feagins could be prickly, curt, and dismissive, even in public board meetings, in stark contrast to her predecessor Joris Ray, who resigned under a cloud in 2022.

A Direct Approach

At board meetings, Ray was unfailingly polite and solicitous, usually thanking board members profusely and formally by title and name for every question. His staff members did the same. Ray began meetings by asking his staff to join him in reciting the district’s motto: “Together we must believe. Together we can achieve. Together we are reimagining 901.”

Feagins didn’t have a motto or lead a cheer. Her responses to board members’ questions were more direct and could include a cold stare or a disdainful “for the record” or “let the record show.”

I suspect that Feagins was fired because a majority of board members didn’t like her, didn’t like how she was managing the district, and were getting complaints from central staff administrators, principals, local nonprofit leaders, and favored local contractors.

They were being told that Feagins was moving too fast and going too far and stepping on too many toes in her efforts to restructure the top-heavy district to address the loss of Covid funding and to give classroom teachers more support and more authority. But that’s just speculation. Just about everything you’ve read or heard about why Feagins was fired is speculation.

Feagins has called the allegations against her “meritless and baseless.” Earlier this month, she sued the school board and asked the court to void the board’s 6-3 vote to fire her. 

In the lawsuit, Feagins claims that Althea Greene, Dorse-Coleman, and several other board members violated the state’s open meetings law by meeting secretly beginning in August to plan ways to terminate her contract.

It’s likely the litigation will end with a quiet, off-the-record settlement much like Ray’s agreement to resign in 2022. Which means the public may never know exactly why Feagins was fired.

What’s Next?

So now the school board is at odds and searching for its sixth superintendent since the 2013 merger upended the entire system. The Shelby County Commission has ordered a forensic audit of the school district’s budget. The state is threatening to take over the school board. State Representative Mark White (R-Memphis) plans to introduce legislation to create a new nine-member board that would oversee the local board. “This would be a management intervention,” White told Chalkbeat Tennessee.

Public education is under duress. The governor plans to spend nearly half a billion dollars a year offering private school vouchers to high-income parents. The Trump administration is prioritizing private “school choice” funding and gutting the U.S. Department of Education. Public schools are preparing for massive safety net cuts and immigration raids and conducting regular “active shooter drills.”

Meanwhile, schools and teachers continue to try to address the academic, social, and emotional needs of students traumatized by poverty, community violence, school shootings, and the pandemic. And constant political turmoil. 

David Waters, a veteran journalist, has covered public education in Memphis and Tennessee off and on for 30 years. He is associate director of the Institute for Public Service Reporting at the University of Memphis.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Bluff City Love Stories

Patrick + Deni Reilly (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Love is in the air, so they say every time Valentine’s Day rolls around, but isn’t love always in the air? At least, we find that to be the case after delving into these three Memphis couples’ love stories. With class president battles, spilled spaghetti, and flutes and pianos, these stories are, dare we say, better than any rom-com.  

Patrick + Deni (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Deni + Patrick

Patrick and Deni Reilly are at work together every day. Patrick is the chef and they’re both owners of three restaurants: The Majestic Grille, Cocozza American Italian, and the upcoming Cocozza American Italian location in East Memphis.

They remember when they met. Patrick, who is from Dublin, was general manager at the Gibson Lounge at the old Gibson Guitar Factory. Deni, who is from New Jersey, worked with DoubleTree hotels. Sean Costello introduced them at his concert in 2001 at the Gibson Lounge.

“I was pretty smitten,” Deni says. “I thought he was pretty cute.”

“I said we should go out to lunch sometime,” Patrick says. “And she leaned over and kissed me. And I said, ‘Or maybe dinner.’”

“I gave him my number,” Deni says.

They began dating. Deni remembers when her parents visited Memphis and met Patrick for the first time. Her mother told Deni’s sister, “She’s in love.”

“I was headed in that direction,” Deni says.

“It’s one of those things,” Patrick says. “We were friends for a while. Then we dated for awhile. We broke up for awhile. I was divorced and I was really gun-shy about another relationship, so it took a minute. I don’t know when I knew, but I knew when I made that commitment. And that was a couple of years later.”

Popping the question backfired at first, Patrick recalls. “I had a plan. I was going to propose at McEwen’s.”

He was all set to propose. “I had the ring, which my friend Suzanne Hamm helped me pick out, and I had it all arranged in my head.”

They went to dinner. “But for some reason they kind of rushed us out. They dropped the check on us really fast.”

So, Patrick didn’t have time to propose.

And, Deni says, “I also spilled spaghetti sauce all over my shirt.”

Patrick then came up with Plan B. The Christmas tree was still up at the Peabody Hotel, so he suggested they have a drink in the lobby. He thought that would be “a fun romantic spot” to ask for Deni’s hand.

But, he says, “There was a fire alarm or something and 200 people in their pajamas with blankets in the lobby. It was so strange. We ended up going home.”

“He lit the fire and some candles, took the ring out of his pocket and said, ‘Here,’” Deni says.

Patrick told her, “I’ve been trying to give you this all night.”

“I think I laughed and kissed him and said, ‘Yes,’” Deni says. — Michael Donahue

David + Holly (Photo: Courtesy David Shotsberger)

Holly + David

Music brought them together, and their music remains decades on.

“We met in piano class,” says David Shotsberger.

It was a mandatory class for serious music students on the campus of Penn State University, piano proficiency. In it, students sat at their own keyboards, listening to themselves on headphones. The professor could select which student to hear and speak to with a special headphone setup. A few keyboards away from his own, Shotsberger saw another student named Holly.   

“I noticed her, and the professor noticed me noticing her and told me — through the headphones — to pay attention to the lesson,” Shotsberger says, laughing.

That was 1993. Holly studied flute performance. David studied music composition and theory. He was a hometown guy, from right there in State College. She was from Pittsburgh. They became friends.

About a year later, they ran into each other on campus and agreed on a date. Dinner was at the then-Penn-State-famous Gingerbread Man (or G-Man). The restaurant closed in 2014 to make way for Primanti Brothers, an iconic Pittsburgh sandwich shop and bar.

Whatever David and Holly talked about on that first date stuck, and that conversation almost certainly included music. For years, the couple would talk about music, play music together, and go to shows together. Holly would travel with, occasionally sing with, and sell merch for David’s family’s traveling gospel and country group, New Life.

The two stayed together and married in 1998 at the Eisenhower Chapel right on the campus of Penn State. That was May. By July, David had selected the University of Memphis for his doctoral work and the couple relocated to the Bluff City. By then, Holly earned a master’s degree in speech language pathology and a job hunt in a new city loomed.

“ I think when you’re that young, you’re just a little bit more adventurous, maybe, willing to go do new things and go to new places when you know no one there,” she says. “So, moving to Memphis felt like an exciting adventure at the time.”

They stuck together, relied on each other, established Memphis as home base, and made friends. Memphis was temporary, anyway. Who knew where they’d end up after David finished his doctorate program?

Turned out, Memphis had plans for David and Holly. He earned a one-year appointment at the U of M and later became the director of operations for the Memphis Symphony Orchestra for a couple of years. Holly worked as a speech language pathologist in early intervention clinics in Marion, Arkansas. David is now the creative director for Advent Presbyterian Church and directs the jazz band and teaches music technology at Rhodes College. The couple raised two children together, and Holly now works as a speech language pathologist in the Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

Memphis and music have remained constants in David and Holly’s lives and relationship over two decades here.

“For sure it’s about the people that we’ve met here,” Holly says. “Memphis has brought many dear friends that we’ve done life with for 25 years or so. They’re family now. So, that makes Memphis home.”

They still play music together and know each other in a special way that only musicians can. David says Holly is the person he’s played music with the longest, around 32 years or thereabouts.

“She’s one of the best musicians I’ve ever met in my life,” David says. — Toby Sells  

Anthony + Patricia (Photo: Courtesy Patricia Lockhart)

Patricia + Anthony

In high school, Anthony and Patricia Lockhart ran against each other for class president. Patricia won, but Anthony, to this day, claims it was rigged. 

“Now that is slightly true,” admits Patricia. “I think the principal had something to do with it. I didn’t get the popular vote, but I got the teacher vote.”

Still, that didn’t stop Anthony from asking her out once they were at the University of Memphis. “The light hit my skin just right one day,” she says. Anthony says they were distant friends and he wanted to see where things would go, so he looked up her email address in the campus directory.

“She sent her number back real quick,” he says. 

For their first date, they went to McAllister’s Deli and the movies at the Malco Paradiso. Neither of them can remember what movie they saw, but they know it was a good first date and they know it was March 2005, an anniversary they still celebrate today. “I’m forced to do that,” Anthony says, to which Patricia replies, “Oh my gosh, you are not forced; you are highly recommended to comply.”

By November, Patricia had moved into Anthony’s, and by April, Anthony proposed. A year later, they were married. “This is not a story we recommend of our kids ’cause this is just the way the cookie crumbled for us,” Patricia says. “My aunties even were like, ‘Patricia, wait five years.’ And I didn’t see the point in waiting because I knew that I was going to be with him.”

“We had fun. We wanted to do everything together,” Anthony says. “We had a great time growing and experiencing each other. It was like we were progressing together. We had a lot of firsts together.”

“If I were to give advice to people, I would say the person that you married is going to change,” Patricia says. “The Anthony that’s sitting beside me is different from the Anthony — in some ways, not a whole lot of ways — that I married, that I started dating 20 years ago. His views have changed; taste buds have changed. And it’s all about loving a person through their changes, and Anthony has seriously loved me through all of my quirky changes and mood swings, especially with hormones and having kids — all of the things.”

“Communication is definitely necessary, either good or bad,” Anthony adds. “[You need to] have an open mind and communication.”

Today, Patricia, an assistant principal and writer (sometimes for the Flyer), and Anthony, a site inspector for the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development, are parents to four children: Eve (11), Elijah (13), Elliott (13), and Aiden (16).  The kids say their favorite parts of their parents’ marriage are their humor, how well they get along, and “the way dad looks down at mom and [she] looks up at [him] when [they’re] in the kitchen standing close to each other.” And Eve, especially, likes that she can poke fun at them. 

“We’re a big family, and we enjoy each other, like genuinely enjoy being around each other,” Patricia says. “And what I love about being a parent with Anthony is that I could walk in and be like, ‘I’m a 20 percent parent today. That’s it.’ And he’s just like, ‘Okay, I got 60, and 80 is enough for today.’”

“I think parenting definitely helps you kind of grow a little bit,” Anthony adds.

But in between parenting and working, the two also know to make time for each other, to date each other. “I’ll be at work, and sometimes being an assistant principal is extra, extra stressful,” Patricia says. “I’ll get this calendar alert and it’s him putting a date on my calendar.” — Abigail Morici 

Categories
Cover Feature News

20<30: The Class of 2025

Photography by Jamie Harmon

Every year, the Memphis Flyer asks our readers to nominate outstanding young people in Memphis who are making a difference in their community. We chose the top 20 from an outstanding field of more than 50 nominations. Memphis, meet your future leaders, the 20<30 Class of 2025. 

Austin Brown
Director of Development and Communications, Community Legal Center (CLC)

A native Memphian, Brown decided to stay in the city and attend Christian Brothers University. There, he became the philanthropy chair for Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Brown says the experience changed his life. “We did a bunch of volunteering opportunities. Just getting a chance to see up close and personal the disparities in the city showed me a lot of the things I wanted to address in my professional career, and in any way I could.

“What makes Community Legal Center unique is, unlike some other legal aid organizations you may be familiar with, CLC offers services at a low cost, and on a sliding scale, depending on household income and household size,” says Brown. “We’re about filling in that justice gap and helping the people in the forgotten middle. So, people who probably make too much money to qualify for free legal services, but they don’t make enough to afford a private attorney. I’m here to make a just Memphis. Simple as that.”

Liv Cohen
Membership and Community Engagement Coordinator, WYXR

“I grew up in Oxford, Mississippi. Memphis was the cool city to come to on a weekend, and I just kind of fell in love with it,” says Cohen. 

She found her niche at the community radio station, WYXR. “I interned my senior year of college, and then just convinced Robby [Grant, WYXR founder,] to keep me around. … I manage all of our individual giving and memberships, so if you’ve ever gotten an email asking to donate to WYXR, it’s probably from me. 

“I’ve found myself deeply rooted in the music community here, and it’s unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced or witnessed. People really care about each other here. The music is just unbeatable, and yeah, I’ve really found my people here and I love it. … I would love to see a city that really invests in creative types and puts them in positions of leadership as well.” 

Leon Cunningham III
Agent, New York Life Insurance

“I think Memphis is, right now, a land of opportunity,” says Cunningham. He’s got a lot of irons in the fire. In addition to his work in the insurance field, he is also dedicated to volunteerism. “I think I’m making an impact here from a financial place, but a philanthropy piece is something that I could hang my hat on at the end of the day.”

One of his passions is mentoring. “Embracing Brotherhood [Foundation] is a social group I kind of started through networking in Memphis. It’s centered around youth, but also minority males, helping them get connections throughout general areas and regions, supporting them in business and life.” 

As if that’s not enough, he’s also a professional model, working on national accounts through the Tribe Talent Management. “I was definitely shy. It opened me up. It helped me be comfortable in my skin.”

Hugh Ferguson
Biomathematics Research Student, Rhodes College

“I’ve always been interested in being a doctor, since I was probably 11 or 12,” says Ferguson. “I have a heart condition and other health conditions, and the care that I’ve received from other doctors has inspired me to make sure other people have that same access.” He volunteers for Remote Area Medical. “We go into rural areas, mostly in Tennessee, that lack proper healthcare. We set up remote clinics and get doctors around the region to help. We usually treat about a thousand people at each clinic.”

This inspired his research into AI-assisted ultrasound devices. “We’re working on, not replacing [X-ray machines], but offering an alternative to help underserved communities. You can’t learn how to care about someone from just reading about science. You have to go into field work, and experience humanity, what it needs, and realize that you’re more than just a person. There’s a whole story behind you.”

Antonella Reyes Flores
Case Manager, Endeavors

When unaccompanied immigrant children arrive in Memphis, Flores takes care of them. “It can be anything from helping them enroll in a school, or connecting them to something like Church Health and getting them their updated vaccinations, or getting them a PCP. If they’re struggling with mental health, connecting with mental health services. Or just connecting them to a local food bank. Maybe they are trying to get onto a local soccer team, or they want to get involved with the church. I’m there to have a feel for what they need, and fill those gaps. 

“I want to build an inclusive Memphis. Everyone has their niche in Memphis, whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or you’re a nonprofit or higher education, there are so many overlaps. We need to keep working together to help the next generation of Memphis. We have to put so much back into our youth. These are future doctors, teachers, engineers. We’re doing our part to guide them into helping build such a great Memphis.”

Zavier Hayes
Owner, Zavier Hayes Shelter Insurance

During the pandemic, Hayes got a job offer to work in insurance. “I’m thinking, ‘Nobody’s going to take a chance on me. I’m 23 years old! I’ve barely got a year of experience.’ … They took the chance, gave me my own office in Mumford.” 

Now, he’s his own boss. “You’re an independent contractor; you’re being your own entrepreneur. There’s some days where it’s harder than others, and there’s some days where it’s like, man, I just wish I could copy and paste this day, and have this be every day. It’s a journey, and I truly enjoy it.”

In his off hours, he coaches basketball at Northpoint Christian School. “I love working with kids. It’s a chance to give back. I tell my players, ‘I was just in y’all’s shoes 10 years ago.’ And this is my chance to say, ‘Hey, if this was younger me, this is exactly what I would teach you guys to do.’”

Raneem Imam
Musician

Originally from the Bay Area, Imam’s family is Palestinian- and Lebanese-American. “I call myself an Arabic cocktail, so I’m really mixed with a lot of great things to make a juicy cocktail,” she says. “I’ve always been singing. My mom says I was getting on top of tables and singing to guests, and convincing her to come to my room for short musicals that I would perform for her and my grandmother.”

At Rhodes College, “I ended up majoring in music and falling in love with Memphis music and all the opportunities that I could seize while I was there. I didn’t know where the road was going to lead, obviously, but I feel like it’s just a part of my life motto to start where you are.” 

Her plan to hit the ground performing after graduation was stymied by the pandemic, but she found an audience through virtual gigs. Now she’s pursuing music full-time and working on a full-length album. “I’m kind of exploring this line between funk, R&B, and pop, while also toying around with some Arabic influence because I haven’t seen that yet.” 

RaSean Jenkins
Board Office Advisor, Memphis-Shelby County Schools 

“I got a scholarship to University of Memphis when I was studying Japanese history and language,” Jenkins says. “I was going through my neighborhood one day, and I had so many questions about why are we so separated as a city. What led Memphis to be this way? It ended up becoming my major, and I ended up becoming an urban historian.” 

Jenkins is currently on track to finish his Ph.D. at the University of Memphis. “I’m writing my dissertation on A.W. Willis and his family’s work to integrate segregated spaces in the Mid-South.” 

Teaching is in his blood. “I’ve been a mentor for Memphis-Shelby County Schools since I was 18, and also I do mentoring with the city. I want to be a professor one day, but I am very dedicated to our district here in Memphis and Shelby County. I would not like to leave the district. I would love to stay and just continue to grow here, but I really see myself being a college professor one day for sure, teaching history.”

Alexxas Johnson
Associate Attorney, Spence Partners 

“I do general litigation, so the easiest way to describe that is, everything except criminal [law] — except when I have to do criminal [law],” says Johnson. “So really, just a smorgasbord of things, which I love, because I’m somebody that is creative by nature. I thought when I decided to become a lawyer, I was a little bummed because I feel like lawyers are in this gray area, with not a lot of time to create and be innovative. There are so many rules and procedures, and of course it’s a very old career field, governed by things that happened in 1935. But thankfully, in the way that I write and craft my arguments, I’ve learned to become creative in this career field.” 

A native Memphian, Johnson returned home after attending college at Alabama and a stint in Miami to attend law school. “Who doesn’t want to be a part of Memphis? I mean, everyone steals our swag anyways, so you might as well come here.” 

Noah Miller
Multidisciplinary Artist

Filmmaker, photographer, printmaker, and painter, Miller does it all. His most recent exhibit, “Days,” ran for seven months at Crosstown Arts. “I’m interested in so many different things. The world is abundant! But most of the time, I have an idea that feels like it could be better represented in a different medium, whether that’s painting, sculpture, music, or film. Film is the greatest medium of all because it’s everything packed into one thing. It scratches every itch for me. But I’m someone who wants to do it all: write the script, build the set, shoot the whole thing myself, edit, and even record the soundtrack. … This is why I’ve gravitated toward painting. I can realistically have something finished by the end of the week.

“Memphis feels like the biggest ‘punk’ city to me in the sense that everyone just does exactly what they want here (or they should be), and you can get away with it! It’s a very genuine place.”

David Oppong
Project Engineer, Allworld Project Management

Inspired by his scientist father, Oppong decided to pursue engineering. “I realized that whatever I wanted to do in life, I wanted to have a direct impact on people and help make people’s lives better. I’ve seen that through civil engineering because people are the most direct result of all the infrastructure that we have in this world. I knew that if I could be around to affect the change and have a positive impact on people’s lives, then I would feel fulfilled in my purpose to be an engineer. 

“We work with MATA on a number of capital projects, and the very first project that I had a chance to be a part of — and eventually got a chance to lead — was their electric bus program, which was for the procurement and implementation of up to 50 electric buses within their fleet. 

“I grew up in the city, and I stayed because I knew that I wanted to be part of the change to make this a better place.”

Phoenix Powell
Community Advocate/Health and Wellness Specialist, OUTMemphis

Powell’s work for OUTMemphis includes cooking weekly community meals. “I found that I really have a passion for advocacy and made a decision to do it as my work last year. I feel like advocacy and cooking go hand-in-hand because any civil rights movement that you look at, things like food and music have always been a part of it. I’m able to use food as a way to give back. … Now the stakes feel a little bit higher than they have been.

“The work we do here is really needed. Every day, people come in and tell their stories. The common denominator is, they don’t really have a support system. They don’t have a group of people that they can feel like, ‘This is like my family.’ And when I’m cooking, I never like to shortcut things. These folks come to us when they don’t have anything. I’m not going to give them the bare minimum.”

Juan Sanchez
Project Engineer, Turner Construction Company

A native of Memphis with “proud Mexican origins,” Sanchez was the first person in his family to graduate from college. “I was born here, raised here, went to school here, went to university here, currently working here. I’m currently building Memphis and building the communities that I’ve been a part of. So it’s all been full circle.” 

Among the projects Sanchez has been the “boots on the ground” for are the Memphis Sports and Events Complex, the Shelby County Health Department, and the soon-to-be-opened Alliance Health Services’ Crisis Center. Project engineer, he says, is “a two-word title, but it has many different responsibilities. … A lot of what I do is coordination and problem-solving among our contractors, design team, and clients to assure construction advances safely, within budget, and on schedule.”

Sanchez takes time to recruit other Hispanic and minority kids into the science and engineering fields. He was the first-ever guest speaker for the University of Memphis’ Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. “There’s much more for Memphis in the future, much more building, and I’m just excited to be a part of that.” 

Josh Shaw
Musician, Blvck Hippie

“I started playing piano when I was 11,” says Shaw. “Music was just my own way of spreading my wings.”

Shaw’s band Blvck Hippie had a great year in 2024, touring extensively, and playing a huge gig at the Overton Park Shell. “Getting to play the Shell was just crazy! I found this little goal list I wrote out when I was a junior in college — my musical bucket list, basically. The top three were, one, tour. The second one was, do a European tour, and the third one was, play the Shell.”

Shaw completed all three items on their list last year and won the Indie Memphis music video competition for the second year in a row. Even sweeter, they got to bring their young daughter to the Shell show. “She got to see me play for the first time! That was just kind of a dream come true.” 

Ciara Swearingen
Family Inn Advocate, Room in the Inn

Swearingen was already a volunteer for Planned Parenthood when she became pregnant at 22 years old, while a student at the University of Memphis. “Going through my pregnancy, I didn’t get a lot of support from my OB-GYN,” she says. 

After having to advocate for herself while enduring a high-risk pregnancy, she became an advocate for others in the same position. “There are things that, growing up, especially in the Black community, nobody prepares you for when becoming a mother. … There are so many women, especially in the city of Memphis, that are struggling to let their doctors know, ‘Hey, I’m feeling this type of way. Is this normal?’

“Once baby gets here, and you’re in the hospital, that’s the most important time for moms to command and demand in their pregnancy. Luckily, I had my mom there with me when I had my son, but there are a lot of Black women in the city of Memphis who don’t have this support.” 

JoElle Thompson
Entrepreneur, The Four Way, Center for Transforming Communities

In 2002, Thompson’s grandfather decided to reopen the shuttered Four Way restaurant after seeing it on a Travel Channel list of the best soul food restaurants in America. “It was the only one that was closed,” Thompson says. 

Her family devoted themselves to “keeping the legacy alive because so many people from Stax and just around the neighborhood of LeMoyne-Owen College, … even Martin Luther King and notable people around the country, knew about the Four Way when they came to Memphis because it was a community staple. We’ve tried to continue that legacy.” 

While working at the restaurant, she also earned a master’s degree in public health and was recruited as a community organizer at the Center for Transforming Communities (CTC). “My project that I’m doing right now with CTC is a community cookbook, specifically based in South Memphis, to honor people like me and some of my friends who are third, fourth, and fifth generation South Memphians because there’s such a rich legacy in our community. I’m trying to capture the history and voices of our community.” 

Katelyn Thompson
Policy Director, Tennessee Senate Democratic Caucus

“I love Memphis because it’s in my DNA,” says Thompson. “It runs through my veins.” 

Thompson is passionate about politics and wants to spread the word about participating in our democracy. “When I went to Tennessee State University, I had started the bus to the polls, and a lot of students didn’t even know that they could vote. … My wish to every school and university is that we could do better with that in educating our students so they can be involved because our students are the future. They’re going to be the ones to keep us moving forward. And if they don’t know what they’re supposed to do, then we’re going backwards.”

She’s already made a splash in Tennessee political circles. “It is such an honor to serve as the youngest policy director for the Tennessee Senate Democratic Caucus, and I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to work with both Mayor Paul Young and Senator London Lamar. Their leadership and trust in me have been instrumental in my journey, and I truly admire their commitment to serving our community.” 

Margaret Tong
Entrepreneur, Mochi & Mi, Bao Toan Kitchen & Bar

Tong was born and raised in Memphis, but “growing up, my classmates were predominantly white and Black. It was very rare for me see Asian people. Once I got myself into the Asian community, I felt more sense of belonging, with people that understand you, understand the culture.”

Tong helped put on the first Asian Night Market, which has seen explosive growth over only two years. “We didn’t expect to have such a big turnout because we were like, ‘Oh, the community is small.’ … And then I saw that crowd! I was glad I was behind the table. There was more room behind the table than there was in that crowd!”

Growing up, her mother had a nail business, but the pair decided to go into the food business together. Now, they’re the force behind Bao Toan Kitchen, the newest restaurant in Crosstown Concourse. “I’d like to see a Memphis that helps each other,” she says. “I love the people, the sense of community here, the Memphis pride here.”

Connor Webber
Staff Attorney, Tennessee Innocence Project 

Why did Webber become an attorney? “I get asked that a lot, and the answer is that I like to argue.”

An internship at the Davidson County district attorney’s office led him to the Tennessee Innocence Project. “We investigate and litigate cases of wrongful conviction in the state of Tennessee. … We received more applications from Shelby County than any other county in Tennessee. This was clearly where the need was, and they asked me to move here and open the office with them. I said, ‘Absolutely.’”

One of the first cases they tackled was Ricky Webb, who had been convicted of a “heinous crime” in 1976. “We started looking into his case almost 50 years later, and there was a lot of evidence that was covered up that really proved that he was in fact innocent. His conviction was overturned in October [2024]. It became formal on Halloween, and he became the fourth-longest serving exoneree in United States history. He served just shy of 47 years in custody.” 

Haley Wilson
Actor, Choreographer 

Wilson first came to Memphis for the annual United Professional Theater Auditions at Playhouse on the Square in 2019. She made her debut as the lead in A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline. “I played one of my dream roles, a country artist that I had always listened to growing up, and also started my company member position at the same time.” 

Since then, she has performed in more than 30 shows, earning an Ostrander Award for Best Supporting Actress in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, as well as three other BroadwayWorld Awards nominations. She’s taught and choreographed at Houston High School, St. George’s Independent School, and Memphis University School. “I like to live other people’s stories to the best of my ability,” she says. “Sometimes being yourself is hard, and so getting away and getting to be someone else for a little bit is what I strive for. Today was a hard day for Haley, but I’m going to go be someone else for a little bit and just get away from that.” 

The Memphis Flyer extends special thanks to Sondra Pham Khammavong, 20<30 Class of 2024, for serving on this year’s selection committee.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Memphis Podcasts We’re Loving

Photo: OneClic | Adobe Stock

According to 2024’s “The Infinite Dial” report by Edison Research, 47 percent of the U.S. population, 12 and older, listened to at least one podcast in the span of a month, up 12 percent from the year before. What can we say? People like their podcasts. So much so that there are millions of them. We tried Googling the exact number but got bogged down in the AI of it all, so we landed at millions … or at least hundreds of thousands. 

What we can say with certainty is that a decent number of podcasts are being created right here in Memphis. Check out what a few local podcasters had to say in this week’s cover story, and take a peek at the sidebar to discover even more podcasts to add to your playlist. 

Verbally Effective

If there’s a go-to expert in podcasting in Memphis, it’s Ena Esco. She’s the host of Verbally Effective, innovator in residence at Cossitt Library, founder of the PodBox Memphis Podcast Festival, and the wearer of many more hats in this new media landscape.

With a background in radio since graduating from LeMoyne-Owen College in 2001, Esco started her podcast in 2018. “With radio, you only have so many minutes that you can have a conversation,” she says, “and I wanted to extend those conversations through podcasting. And so I wanted it to be a podcast that intersected art, culture, politics, entertainment, with a Memphis focus.” 

Ena Esco, host of Verbally Effective (Photo: Courtesy Ena Esco)

Her Verbally Effective became home for just that, with each episode, over 300 in total, in conversation with a Memphis changemaker — from National Civil Rights Museum president Russell Wigginton to Grammy Award-winning Crystal Nicole to therapist Brandy J. Flynn. “You just never know what people have gone through to be where they are today,” she says, “and to hear their stories lets me know that the type of work that I’m doing with podcasting is important because I know that their stories will resonate with other people.”

Esco’s goal, she says, is to elevate voices, whether that’s in her own podcast or through helping others create theirs. “So much is going on right now, especially right now, with people trying to silence voices, but we can utilize the new media platforms to get our messaging across.”

“With podcasting, anything is on the table,” adds Esco. “In podcasting, you can create your own situation. You can format your show however you want to format your show. You can monetize. You can build relationships with people that you probably never would.”

After building her audience with Verbally Effective, Esco drew the attention of Memphis Public Libraries’ leadership and before too long became its first-ever innovator in residence, coordinating free podcast programming at Cossitt Library, developing workshops, curating panels and shows, and working with podcasters individually. In her nearly three years at Cossitt, Esco has helped podcasters in a gamut of genres, from sports to lifestyle to travel. “When you get [people] into podcasting, you’re really building up their confidence in making them a stronger speaker, a better storyteller,” she says. “It just gives me joy to see people transform in their way.”

For her work through the library system, Esco earned an honorable mention from the Urban Libraries Council Innovation Awards in 2024. “It was a big deal because it afforded [the Memphis Public Libraries] the opportunity to receive a grant to bring in more innovators [in other areas],” she says.

This coming year, Esco hopes to produce 10 podcasts, with a focus on community podcasting. “It’s going to be quite the undertaking,” she says. 

Also in 2025, Esco will lead digital radio, podcasting, and TV broadcasting programming for the recently reopened Lowery Communication Center at LeMoyne-Owen College. “This is a full-circle moment for me because I started my media career as a senior, and now I’m back at my alma mater, seeing the students in this particular subject matter, so I’m just blessed. I am really blessed.”

In September, she’ll host the PodBox Memphis Podcast Festival, an annual event with industry experts, panels, mixers, and more. She’ll also host quarterly meetups with established and potential podcasters throughout the year. 

Find Esco on social media @enaesco. Verbally Effective, in addition to being available for streaming, is aired on WXYR on Tuesdays at noon. — Abigail Morici

Cemetery Row

A deep and ominous bell tolls over the cold, lonely, windswept graveyard. 

It’d be pretty scary, but the hosts of Cemetery Row are there to hold your hand and tell you it’s all okay. Then they start telling you the stories of some of the folks buried there and — before you know it, champ — you’re starting to have fun. 

“Cemeteries are not scary places,” says Sheena Barnett, one of the podcast’s three hosts. “They’re not sad places. They can be, obviously if you’re going to where a loved one is buried. But I see them as places of love, places full of stories, places that need to be preserved.”

The sentiment is shared by hosts Lori Pope and Hannah Donegan. The trio of “spooky girls” met as Ole Miss journalism students, kept tight after school, and wanted to stay that way when Donegan moved to Chicago. Barnett volunteered at Elmwood Cemetery cleaning headstones and told the others about all the great stories out there. Cemetery Row became a way for them to connect and to hone their haunted proclivities.

Pope’s dad would tease her about “Rosie the ghost,” who was said to roam an old family cemetery on her grandparents’ farm. Barnett grew up on Unsolved Mysteries and going to cemeteries with her mother and grandmother. A “Jane Doe” headstone mystified a younger Donegan when seen in a graveyard in plain view of her Olive Branch Middle School. 

That ominous bell really does toll to open each episode of Cemetery Row. The hosts introduce themselves, banter, connect, tell a few inside jokes, and they cuss … like a lot. The meat of the show, though, is true stories of the dead.

“Just like most people from history, she has parts of her life where she’s a total relatable badass, and then there’s parts where she kind of sucks a little bit,” Donagen says of occultist, ceremonial magician, and novelist Dion Fortune in an October episode called “Occultists, Psychics, and Cryptids.” “She was a rich, white lady in early 20th-century England. So, what are you gonna do?”

That episode also featured the stories of Simon Warner, a psychic and crime doctor, known as The Seer of Shelbyville (Tennessee), and some spooky tales from Idaho (a bit outside of the cemetery, strictly speaking, but right next door). 

The hosts laugh, bomb each other with bon mots, and keep things casual. But they flex those journalism degrees in well-researched stories, written with a straight-ahead newspaper eloquence. Not every episode has a theme but some have featured athletes, LGBTQ folks, Black excellence, and more. One featured people named Dick.

Dial up Cemetery Row wherever you find podcasts. Pope, Doengan, and Barnett will have you skipping through the headstones in no time. — Toby Sells

Night Classy

Have you ever been curious about the deep intricacies of society that our history books never dreamed of covering? You know, like the 1950s quiz show scandal that unearthed rigging and resulted in congressional hearings? Or have you or a loved one been approached by a charming Nigerian prince who only needs your entire life savings to help him out? If you’re looking to dive more into his origin story (and the many ways he presents himself), or just looking to satiate your hunger for obscure knowledge, class is in session on the Night Classy podcast.

Hayley Madden and Katja Barnhart are two educators by day, taking their aptitude for knowledge from the classroom to the mic. Both women met through Teach For America (TFA) and bonded over The Office — facilitated by the “TFA experience,” which Madden explains is like an “extension of college.”

Katja Barnhart and Hayley Madden host Night Classy. (Photo: Alec Ogg)

Madden says the podcast was originally Barnhart’s idea, which she says stemmed from her “obsession” with podcasts, and after moving to a new place, this seemed like the perfect new hobby to take up. Barnhart remembers thinking, “This is it; this is going to be good.”

The podcast’s future was further solidified when Barnhart met her longtime boyfriend Alec Ogg, who’s a podcast producer by trade and offered to produce the podcast.

As a child, Madden says she liked to experiment with different things such as making mud pies and catching frogs. “Maybe not researching like I do now as an adult, but just getting into things is something I’ve always been into,” she adds.

Barnhart says she’s always been obsessed with history, always finding herself engrossed in historical fiction. She then found herself obtaining a history degree, but ended up teaching math.

“[I] didn’t really have an outlet to read about the kind of things I wanted to aside from my spare time, so the podcast has been a good way to scratch that itch,” Barnhart says.

During each episode, the hosts pick two stories that they’ve each researched with detailed notes about topics that can be defined as “oddities and curiosities you’ve never learned in school.” As they approach their 250th episode on their main feed, the ladies have covered brain eating amoebas, the lore of America’s Next Top Model, and the Ant Hill Kids Cult to name a few.

“It had to be something we wanted to research,” Madden says. “If it’s not fun on the front end, then it’s not going to be fun for us to actually do, execute, and listen to later.”

Barnhart also adds that they didn’t want to limit themselves to true crime, paranormal, and reality TV. While they’re interested in all of these things, diversifying their content keeps the experience fresh.

“I feel like if you have to read about it every single week, you’re going to hate it,” Barnhart explains. “We wanted options.”

“We were like, ‘What’s our hook?’” Madden adds. “Well, we’re teachers.” — Kailynn Johnson

Sonosphere

Sonosphere is more than just a podcast, and had been even before it became a radio show on WYXR (every Monday at 4 p.m.). More than most podcasts, perhaps, it was founded with a mission: fostering more appreciation of unconventional music in Memphis. As co-founder Amy Schaftlein says, the goal of Sonosphere was “highlighting the sort of experimental bands that don’t really fit into a genre, but have always brought intriguing and interesting sounds. Not everybody could tell if they liked or not. You know, like when you try a new food, you’re kind of like, ‘I don’t know if I like that.’ But you might start to like it a lot more as you try it in different ways.” 

Realizing this would take more than a mere podcast, Schaftlein started the nonprofit Sonosphere Inc. with then-fellow president/CEO Christopher Williams in 2017, intent on programming live performances and lectures, music festivals, and audio documentaries. Thus, right from the beginning, Sonosphere the podcast had a parallel production series known as Sound Observations. “A lot of the Sound Observations series that we brought to Memphis back in 2017, ’18, and ’19 highlighted experimental artists like Wu Fei, who plays a very ancient Chinese instrument.”

Amy Schaftlein and Jenny Davis of Sonosphere (Photo: Amy Schaftlein)

At the time, Schaftlein says, Crosstown Arts had not yet leaned into the kind of adventurous programming that they’re now known for. But as Crosstown Arts evolved, with Memphis Symphony Orchestra flutist and Blueshift Ensemble member Jenny Davis taking on music programming for a time, there was less of a need for the Sound Observations series, and Sonosphere the podcast came to the fore. When Williams moved away, Schaftlein, after hosting solo for a while, thought that Davis would be the perfect partner.  

“Jenny worked with Chris and I on our Sound Observations when she was at Crosstown Arts,” says Schaftlein. “And she also created the Continuum Fest [a local celebration of New Music and avant garde classical compositions], which she invited Sonosphere to ‘sponsor’ — which really meant we covered it for them — and we came up with some content for the fest. We’ve always worked with Jenny through Crosstown Arts, and so she’s been a part of the podcast, tangentially, for a while. And so it just seemed like a really good fit.”

This was also a good way for Davis to keep her hand in experimental music as she moved on to become the executive director of the Memphis Youth Symphony Program (MYSP). A recent episode of the podcast, for example, focused solely on last year’s Continuum Fest, staged at the Beethoven Club.

Meanwhile, the podcast evolved into a radio show when WYXR began broadcasting in October 2020. And while that slowed the podcast production a bit, it’s really all of a piece. Indeed, as Schaftlein says, “I actually worked for WEVL when I was in college and I had a show on the station. That’s part of what prompted Sonosphere. I really wanted a radio show on WEVL, and they took a while to get back to me, and so I just kind of started it. I was like, ‘We can do this from home!’ You know, podcasting was a thing. It wasn’t as big as now, but it was still a thing then. So we just went ahead and did it ourselves.”  — Alex Greene

For your listening pleasure:

Astronomica
Join a group of nerds as they crew the definitely-not-piloted-by-a-rogue-AI ship The Admiral Grace in a science-fiction OSR actual play podcast using the Stars Without Number RPG system.

Black Is America
Dominic Lawson highlights little-known African-American figures and stories.

Champions of the Lost Causes
Marvin Stockwell talks to folks across the country about their success and setbacks. 

Got Points Podcast
Ashling Woolley and Tiffani Denham teach listeners how to build up travel points quickly, how to keep a high bank of points, and how to use these points to maximize every benefit. 

Grits and Grinds: Memphis Grizzlies
Keith Parish covers the Grizzlies year-round with in-depth analysis. 

Like You: Mindfulness for Kids
Noah Glenn uses breathing, affirmations, music, and imagination to support social-emotional health and mental wellness for kids. 

Memphis Flyer Video Podcast
Oh, hello, that’s us! Each week, Chris McCoy and a co-host take you through the paper and give you insight into the madness that goes on at the Memphis Flyer. 

The Permanent Record
Just City’s podcast features conversations about the criminal justice system and how individuals can work to make it smaller, fairer, and better for everyone. 

Categories
Cover Feature Music Music Features News

So Long, Sam

Stax salutes a fallen hero. (Photo: Courtesy Stax Museum of American Soul)

Back during the initial flowering of Stax Records, as the label went from success to success in its first half-dozen years, and all its rooms buzzed with an ever-expanding staff trying to keep up with popular demand, one star in particular had a tendency to saunter away from the studio, where the action was, and take a detour down Stax’s back hallways from time to time. Deanie Parker, one of the label’s first office employees who soon became their lead publicist, remembers it well — that’s where she worked. 

“Every now and then, he just walked in the door,” she recalls a little wistfully, “with little gifts for the girls in the office, little packages. That’s the kind of person he was.”

Now, scores of mourners will be sending flowers to that same soul singer, Sam Moore, the high tenor partner of Dave Prater in Stax super duo Sam & Dave, who died at the age of 89 on January 10th in Coral Gables, Florida, from post-surgery complications. This week, we pay tribute to the great Sam Moore by revisiting the pivotal role he played in the history of Stax and all soul music, as remembered by two who were right there with him: Deanie Parker and David Porter.

(Photo: Bill Carrier Jr. | Courtesy of The Concord API Stax Collection)

Sam Moore: The Stax Years

The quieting of one of soul music’s most expressive voices sent powerful shock waves throughout the music world — certainly among his late-career collaborators like Bruce Springsteen, but not least in Memphis, where Moore and Prater, singing the songs of Porter and Isaac Hayes, helped bring the Stax sound to its fullest fruition in the mid-’60s, becoming overnight sensations with hits like “Hold On, I’m Comin,’” “You Don’t Know Like I Know,” “I Thank You,” and “Soul Man.” 

Even then, “Sam Moore got along especially well with the administrative staff,” says Parker, recalling those spontaneous gifts. “He was the most gregarious of the duo. He was a great conversationalist and very personable. Dave was rather laid-back, kind of quiet.

“Keep in mind, now, that I was not in the studio with him all the time because I was in administration,” Parker goes on. “But because of our proximity to each other, it gave me an opportunity to get up and, when the record light was not on in Studio A, go in and observe and listen — not only to their rehearsals, but to the final takes and the playback.” 

Surely anyone at Stax was rushing down the hall to hear the hot new duo’s latest, once the hits were hitting, for they were taking the Stax recipe to a whole new level of artistry. Yet while those songs are now part of the Stax canon, the definitive statements of the Memphis Sound, the success of two newcomers named Sam & Dave was not a foregone conclusion when they arrived.

Deanie Parker heading up the publicity desk at Stax (Photo: Courtesy Bill Carrier Jr. | The Concord API Stax Collection)

Newcomers

“There was no one interested in Sam & Dave,” songwriter David Porter told Rob Bowman in the liner notes for The Complete Stax/Volt Singles: 1959-1968. “It was like a throwaway kind of situation [to] see if anything could happen with them.” Indeed, it seemed no one at Atlantic Records, who had a distribution deal with Stax, knew what to do with this singing duo from Florida, who’d had little luck with their scattered singles on the Marlin, Alston, and Roulette labels. Despite this, said Porter, “I was very much interested in Sam & Dave.”

But were Sam & Dave interested in Memphis? Atlantic had “loaned” the duo to the smaller label that was showing so much promise, but in 1965 Stax was hardly a household name. Moore’s reaction, according to Parker, was, “Who wants to go to Memphis?” Moore had his sights set on crossover pop stardom in the Big Apple, not moving to what seemed like a backwater. “He really did not have a positive impression about Memphis,” Parker says. “And apparently he was not all that familiar with Stax, which stands to reason, because when Sam & Dave got here, we only had a couple of stars. We just had Rufus and Carla, Booker T. and the M.G.’s, the Mar-Keys, and Otis [Redding]. I don’t know that we had more than those in the category of the top stars.”

Moore himself described the situation hilariously in his acceptance speech for Sam & Dave’s induction into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in October 2015. “When Dave and I first came to Memphis,” Moore recalled, “the first person I saw was David Porter. He had on a small hat, a big sweater, and his pants looked like pedal pushers. Water came into my eyes.” Moore paused for laughter with impeccable comic timing. “Then it got worse: I saw Isaac. Isaac had on a green shirt with a low-cut neck, like that, a white belt, chartreuse pants, pink socks, and white shoes. I started crying harder. I wanted to go home.”

There must have been more than a little truth to that, for, as Moore went on to explain, “I had in mind to sing like Jackie Wilson, James Brown, Wilson Pickett … but then they introduced us to these two guys and we went inside and they introduced us to the songs. And they didn’t sound nothing like Jackie Wilson and all these people! And then I turned to Dave … and he was trying to get a phone number to get to the airport.  

“Being the new kids on the block, we had nothing to say. So we had to go on in there.”

In fact, they were walking into the Stax brain trust, which had always dared to be different. When Sam & Dave’s pre-Stax singles tried to emulate the more polished soul of Wilson or Sam Cooke, albeit without their orchestral flourishes, the results came off as rather corny. Now it was 1965, and pop music was getting edgier, from Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” to the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Even James Brown, whose biggest hits had been ballads like “Try Me,” was cooking up material like “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.” 

Porter and Hayes mapping out the next Sam & Dave hit (Photo: Courtesy Bill Carrier Jr. | The Concord API Stax Collection)

Dream Team

David Porter, who saw their potential early on, inched them toward a rawer take on soul music when he penned the shuffling, feel-good “A Place Nobody Can Find” for them, though the B-side, written by Porter and Steve Cropper, was a more tender ballad, with sassy horns thrown in for good measure. Unlike their later hits, Prater was given the lead vocal, though Moore’s upper register parts hinted at the harmonies that were to come. It wasn’t until their next single that Porter and Hayes teamed up to produce the duo, and their nascent songwriting partnership blossomed. And they gelled not only in the substance of the songs, with Porter crafting lyrics for Hayes’ music, but in the strategy they mapped out for the two new kids on the block.

Reflecting on that strategy today, Porter says that Sam & Dave “didn’t have a concept as far as the artistic direction that they needed to go. That’s why Jerry Wexler, the president of Atlantic Records, brought them to Memphis, in hopes of finding whatever that was — he didn’t know what it was. But we had our concept of what we wanted to do, and that was to bring it out of the church, the spirituality out of the church, and have the music emphasize what we called the low end of it, the bass, drums, and guitar, and the underlying chord progressions in the low end, paired with the gospel persona of it, the spirituality of the church.”

And yet, as with Ray Charles and so much of the finest soul music, the gospel underpinnings supported very secular, worldly sentiments. Lyrically, Porter paired the world of the bluesman with the spirit of church. And that came as a shock to the singers, who had both grown up singing in church choirs. 

“David Porter and Sam could clash,” Parker recalls, “but it wasn’t hostile, and it didn’t last but a few minutes. It was like they were sparring, you know? Of course, Isaac’s thing was the keyboard, he was the melody man, and Porter was the lyricist. And sometimes Porter had to stop and help both of the guys understand what he meant when he wrote, ‘Coming to you on a dusty road.’ You know what I’m saying? Because this was not Sam & Dave’s environment. This was David Porter’s environment from the area around Millington, Tennessee.” 

And so a great foursome was born, beginning with the single “I Take What I Want,” which, as Bowman notes, “was to provide the model for the majority of Sam & Dave’s Stax 45s.” By the time “Hold On, I’m Comin’” dropped in March of 1966, topping the R&B charts and reaching number 21 on the pop charts, that model was locked in. After crafting a song and a sound, Porter and Hayes would only need to give the duo a brief rundown before they got it. Porter can still picture it today: “I’m standing there with them, and I’m looking at them as I give them the lyric sheet. We go through the melody at the piano, and then by the time they get on the microphone, they go into another world. They made it their own, and that’s when you know you’ve got something special.”

And so, even if “Sam was the dominant one,” as Parker recalls, and more prone to pushback, both Sam and Dave were consummate professionals. “We had to go on in there,” as Moore recalled, and they did. 

Porter says, “There never was a comment like, ‘Well, I don’t want to do that song. I don’t like that song.’ Because we produced the albums, even when we were doing a song by some other writer, and on occasion we would do that, they still didn’t object. They would bring their own spirit and commitment to wanting to make it as good as it could possibly be. And they did that.”

The Key to the Speedboat

The foursome’s recipe for success not only gave Sam & Dave’s career a boost; it solidified Stax’s standing as a label. As Robert Gordon writes in Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion, “their album Hold On, I’m Comin’ proved to be the breakthrough for Stax’s album sales. In all the company’s years through 1965, they’d released only eight albums. … In 1966 alone they released eleven albums and Sam & Dave’s Hold On went to number one on the R&B album sales chart. Albums were good business.” 

Parker likens it to the fledgling label acquiring a sleek new machine. “They reminded me of a speedboat,” she says. “A boat that nobody was 100 percent familiar with because they were not on the water in the speedboat every day. They had to figure out a lot of things mechanically, and they had to become acquainted with each other. And I’m talking about Sam and Dave and David and Isaac. Once Sam and Dave found their groove with David and Isaac, it was like they had found the key to speedboat. They then began to realize that they had more going for them with their new producers than they’d ever imagined.”

If the speedboat was designed by the producers, Porter makes it clear that Sam & Dave supplied the spark of ignition. “You, as a creator, can create something that you know is strong and good, but when you have an artist that’s able to create their own individuality through the spirit of what you’ve done, then you’ve got something special. That’s the thing that made Sam Moore such a special talent, as well as Dave: They would go into the ownership of the message. I would tell them where the vibe was, and they would have to live the spirit of the message. That’s where true artistry comes in. And the more songs we wrote for them, the more comfortable they would get into doing it.”

Or, as Porter wrote on social media after Moore’s death, Sam & Dave “were always filled with passion, purity, individuality, and believability, grounded in soul.” 

The road grew dustier and rockier as the years rolled on, with Atlantic claiming ownership of all Stax masters prior to 1968, and taking Sam & Dave away from Memphis. The duo never reached the heights of their Stax records again, and split apart as Moore struggled with addiction through the ’70s. Yet, with the help of his wife Joyce MacRae, whom he wed in 1982 and who now survives him, he kicked drugs (coming to support several GOP candidates along the way) and revived his career without Prater (who died in a car crash in 1988). 

By the time he spoke to the Memphis Music Hall of Fame 10 years ago, Sam Moore had fully embraced his Stax past. “Coming from a humble beginning, with no formal training in singing or anything, we were just two guys who got out there and took the church with us, like Al Green did. … I’m going to say this to you: Thank you Memphis people, the band, the friends that Dave and I met all those years. …They believed in us. They stuck with us. Every record company that we had been with just didn’t know what to do with us. Sixty years later, I’ve been doing this. I’m blessed.”

Sam Moore knew he’d helped build something for the ages. As David Porter reflects now, “The music that was done by the four of us together will live on forever. There’s no doubt in my mind.” 

Categories
Cover Feature News Sports

The Grit and Grind of Spirit

Photo: Lauren Shelby Films

For a few weeks since mid-December, the volleyball gym at University of Memphis has been transformed into a dance studio, mats taped over the court floor, with the recognizable Tigers flags and megaphones tucked to the side. Mirrors have been rolled into the end of the court. The Pom Squad and Ambush Crew have been practicing their routines there, with rehearsals ramping up to nearly every day, hours at a time, in preparation for the UCA & UDA College Cheerleading and Dance Team National Championship in Orlando, January 17th to 19th. 

At today’s practice, while I speak with Carol Lloyd, University of Memphis’ spirit coordinator and head dance coach, the dancers warm up, one doing aerials, flipping her legs over her heads. Another jumps, knees turned out with her toes meeting to form a diamond in the air before she lands; soon, back up she springs, another brief diamond formed. 

On the other side of the mat, a group goes through a part of their routine to be performed in a mere few days. Their footsteps are sharp, measured according to counts, heads turning in unison; there’s no music, but they are in sync. They lift one of their teammates in the air, effortlessly — or, so it appears to the untrained eye. Something’s off, though they haven’t quite figured out what exactly. Should so-and-so adjust her leg? Should it be bent at the knee? Lloyd asks for feedback from the athletes, pointing out collaboration’s role in their process. They run through the counts again, and again, and again, and will again many more times. This part is only a few seconds of an entire routine that they’ve been working on since November. 

“It’s so detailed,” says Lloyd. “I don’t think a lot of people realize how much goes into just dancing for this minute-50 seconds.”

The Pom Squad and Ambush Crew compete in three categories: game day, hip-hop, and pom. In a game day performance, dancers recreate the live game experience with a band, fight song, Pouncer the mascot, and lots of spirit. Pom uses poms and can be a mix of hip-hop and jazz. 

Last year, the team took home the national championship for game day and placed third in hip-hop and seventh in pom. That same weekend, the university’s cheerleaders won the national championship in small coed. 

Winning titles isn’t unusual for U of M’s spirit squads, which include the cheer team, the Pom Squad, and the Ambush Crew, which Lloyd started last year to specialize in hip-hop during game days and compete with the Pom Squad at nationals. The cheer team holds seven national titles. The Pom Squad has 16, including nine consecutive titles from 1986 to 1994. 

“It’s always harder to stay on top than it is to get there,” Lloyd says. “I always feel pressure, but pressure is a privilege almost. And they do have the pressure of [having won last year], but also we don’t really harp a lot on it.”

On the back of the mirrors that the dancers rolled into the volleyball gym, the athletes have posted a sign that says, “Go with the goal of hitting your shit, not with the goal of winning.” They even tally up how many “full-outs” they do — how many times they practice their routines as if they’re performing in front of an audience. That number will get up to the 70s by the time they leave for Orlando, the dancers say. It’s about quantifying achievements, big and small. 

“In our league, everybody’s top-notch; everybody is so good and so elite,” Lloyd says. “It’s kind of hard sometimes to realize we’re one of those people, too. Especially with Memphis, because everybody knows who you are [in the college dance world] and it’s such a legacy — the Memphis dance team. Everybody knows you’re from Memphis. They look up to you; you’re a staple in dance team history.”

Photo: Courtesy Memphis Spirit

It’s a Legacy

The first national collegiate dance team championship took place in 1986, and Memphis State, as it was then, won — and it won for the next eight years. 

Lloyd, a Memphis native, cheered throughout high school and was on the college’s pom team during its champion-winning streak from 1989 to 1993. She would go on to succeed her college coach Cheri Ganong-Robinson in 2004. 

While, yes, winning titles marked her time on U of M’s Pom Squad, she also recalls traveling to entertain at NBA games, even going overseas. “We don’t do that any more,” Lloyd says, “and I miss some of our halftimes ’cause we used to dance for four to five minutes every single halftime and nobody left their seats. I don’t miss preparing for it because it is a lot and they do so much more now. … This sport has become so big — way more athletic, technical — so to still be one of the top teams and still keep it at that level is great.”

Other dance alumnae and current athletes agree. Bella Roy, a senior pom dancer, speaks of watching videos of older routines with alumnae at a Christmas party. “They’re like, ‘That’s me, that’s me,’ but it’s just crazy how it’s changed so much. But then, it still is so similar. It’s that crazy drive and that Memphis family; the legacy is just like no other.”

And it’s that legacy that brought Roy from Franklin, Tennessee, to Memphis initially. “I knew from a very young age, I wanted to dance in college,” she says. “Memphis has been so well-known for so long as this amazing program across the nation in the dance world, so to be a part of it is absolutely amazing.”

University of Memphis’ reputation for its dance team also attracted freshman Linda Gail Rutland. She and Roy actually attended the same dance studio back in Franklin, and now they’re on the team together, if only for one overlapping year. For both of them, dance — more precisely dancing competitively on a team — has constituted most of their lives’ passion. 

“[Dancing on a team] comes to the point where, of course, you always want to win, but it’s not even about winning,” Rutland says. “It’s the memories and working for something bigger than yourself, being there for your teammates.”

“You’re all there because you chose to be there and you want to be there and you want to get better and be pushed to do good,” Roy adds. “Carol [Lloyd] is an amazing coach. She can be tough, but it’s in a good way. It’s in a great way. She gives us that tough love that we need.” 

For that matter, last year the National Dance Coaches Association named Lloyd College Coach of the Year. Having accrued so many titles as a student athlete and as a coach, this one speaks to Lloyd’s particular knack for leading her teams. After all, she’s been coaching since was 18.

Today, in addition to working for U of M, she coaches for the Collierville Middle School and Collierville High School cheer teams. Before accepting her position as spirit coordinator in 2013, she also coached for U of M’s cheer team, now under the leadership of Jasmine Freeman. 

“Seeing the athletes grow as individuals and as dancers, that’s always rewarding,” Lloyd says. “Plus, I mean, it’s challenging for them.”

The U of M cheer squad is known for cheers and stunts. (Photo: Courtesy Memphis Spirit)

It’s a Sport

“It’s easy to get so hard on yourself when you have all these long practices and you’re sore and ‘Oh, I can’t make it to my spot’ or this or that,” Roy says. “But then the alumnae are always like, ‘Oh, you’re flipping upside down, and you’re doing 12 turns,’ and we’re like, ‘Wait, we really are good.’” 

Yet neither the NCAA nor the Office of Civil Rights, which enforces Title IX, consider collegiate dance or cheer as sports, defining “sports” as activities whose purpose is competing, not “supporting” other sports on the sidelines. But the spirit squads consider themselves athletes, training hard and competing, albeit once a year, and even though they are at every football and basketball game, they’re also at community and philanthropic events because, as they would say, they’re the “face” of the university. 

While they receive some athletic benefits from the school like access to training and the athletic mental performance department, U of M’s athletics website doesn’t list the Pom Squad, Ambush Crew, or cheer team under women’s sports but instead offers a link in a sidebar, along with athletic news and a composite schedule, suggesting that their status as a sport is in limbo even at their home in Memphis. 

As it is, the spirit teams have to fundraise for the majority of their budget. Each year, the dancers and cheerleaders put on a golf tournament, host dance and cheer clinics, sell popcorn, offer appearances, and more. 

“It takes about $120 to $140 thousand each year to cover everything that we need,” Lloyd says. For reference, according to CNBC, U of M’s athletic program is worth about $148 million. That puts the school third among the American Athletic Conference, behind East Carolina University ($153 million) and the University of South Florida ($150 million). 

“We’re constantly looking for other ways to make money for them so they don’t have to keep fundraising,” Lloyd says.

The spirit squads also don’t have a dedicated facility, which can add another strain on the budget and affects efficiency. The cheer team practices at an All-Star gym out in Collierville, and the Pom Squad and Ambush Crew have bounced around for the past few years, last year renting a church gym and this year using one of the university’s rec gyms until the volleyball gym opened up. “This is my fourth year, and this is our third facility that we’ve been in,” Roy says. 

For each practice in the rec gym, the athletes had to tape down the 10-paneled floor mats they dance on, take up the tape back up, stack the mats on the side, and store away the mirrors and all their props like the megaphones and flags because it’s a shared space. “And that tape is extremely expensive,” Lloyd adds. “We need a facility for us.” 

Rutland puts a positive spin on it: “Even though we don’t have our own facility and sometimes it is a pain, doing it with your teammates, honestly, we bond.”

University of Memphis’ spirit squads perform at every football and basketball game (men’s and women’s). (Photo: Courtesy Memphis Spirit)

It’s a Family

At today’s practice, where 20 dancers are in the pom routine being rehearsed, a few who aren’t in the number have joined to cheer their teammates on. This is typical, Lloyd says. “It’s a good group of people. They’re grateful, very respectful. They’re hella talented. They’re supportive, and that’s important with anything.”

While we speak, Lloyd will interrupt with brief corrections and praises for the individual dancers, her eyes constantly roving the mat filled with multiple performers. “When you know that someone is struggling in a certain part, you’ve got to scream for them,” she says to her athletes. “If everybody gets in their head, start yelling. The mat talk is what’s going to help everybody.”

And so they scream and shout, and so does Lloyd. “This is their family,” Lloyd says, noting that out of 43 team members who are on Pom Squad and Ambush Crew, only four are local. 

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” Rutland says. “I got here and I don’t want to leave. It’s only my freshman year.” 

In a few days, Rutland will compete in her first showcase. “I’m so excited,” she says. “Scary, freaked out, I’m so excited.” She’ll compete in the game day category. “It’s like a big party. We really just have fun the whole time. I love cheering on the school and being at the football games and the basketball games and everything, so I just can only imagine how that will feel on the nationals floor.”

Roy, meanwhile, is competing in game day, pom, and hip-hop this year, her last year competing. Hip-hop, she says, has been the dance style that has challenged her the most but the one she’s most grown in since her freshman year. “I’ve learned so much from [Lloyd] and the upperclassmen, and then Ambush Crew took it to another level,” she says. “Everybody knows Memphis hip-hop in the college dance world, so to go out there and be a part of that is so special and fun.”

Memphis has consistently placed in the top four of the hip-hop division since the division started at the competition. “It’s very captivating, telling a story, being very much like, ‘This is us, we are who we are, watch us do our thing,’” Rutland says of the Pom Squad’s hip-hop routines.

“I feel like, too, it kind of ties into our T-shirts that say, ‘I am Memphis,’” Roy adds. “Like, ‘I am the city of Memphis.’ ‘I am Memphis Pom Dance Team Ambush Crew.’ ‘I am a part of this legacy.’

“But that first time my freshman year after we finished hip-hop for semis, when I did my last little smackdown and looked up, I just held my ending pose for at least 10 seconds,” Roy recalls. “It was that moment where I was just, ‘This is what I’ve dreamed of for so long. And I don’t want to leave.’ I was like, ‘I just did this.’ And then last year, that was always my lifelong goal to win a national championship. And to say that I actually did it is crazy, but it’s so worth it. Since I was little, that’s what I wanted.” 

Now, as Roy, a supply chain management major, looks to life after college, she says, “Since I’ve danced for so long, I think it’s going to be hard, that transition after college, figuring out what I’m going to do with my life. It’s been school, dance, school, dance, school, dance forever, so it’s hard to imagine a life without it, but I think I’ll continue taking dance classes here and there, doing a normal job. I have found a big passion, though, in teaching dance.”

Roy thought about professional dance in the NBA or NFL, a path that some alumnae have taken, so has Rutland, but neither are sure. “I’m set on living in the moment and enjoying my time here,” says Rutland, a finance major. 

Photo: Courtesy Memphis Spirit

It’s Game-Time

The spirit squads traveled to Orlando for the UCA & UDA College Cheerleading and Dance Team National Championship on January 15th, both the dance and cheer teams on the heels of last year’s wins. “We’ll stay true to what we do,” Lloyd says, “just being authentic to our culture. We’re very diverse. We’re a lot of fun, but we’re also very gritty, tough, and still dominating. We don’t try to do what other people do.”

When it’s all over, they’ll fly back on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and the semester begins the next day. “I’m gonna be so tired,” Roy says, “but I would say I’m still kind of on a high a week after because I get to look at everybody’s videos and see how everybody did.”

The season won’t be over after the championship; the athletes will still perform at basketball games and other events, the spirit squads’ seasons lasting all school year. 

At the end of each practice, of which there will be more, the dancers come together in a circle and link pinkies. “Seniors or captains will give a little wrap-up of practice,” Roy says, “just to get everybody in a good headspace before we leave, and then we say the Lord’s Prayer.” The prayer then leads into a chant: “Five, six, seven, eight, whoo, MPDTAC.”

The MPDTAC would stand for Memphis Pom Dream Team (and) Ambush Crew. And, yes, the DT stands for dream team — not the expected dance team — because, according to Lloyd, she’s always coaching the dream team, win or lose.  

Follow the Memphis Pom and Ambush Crew here and cheer team here.