Future site of Maeve’s Tavern on the Collierville town square (Photo: Michael Donahue)
Google describes the Irish Queen Maeve, who is believed to have ruled in the first century A.D., as “a warrior of great strength, resilience, and at times, ruthlessness. With a name said to mean ‘intoxicating,’ it is certain that she wielded enormous power and sway during her reign.”
All of which sounds like a great name for an Irish drinking establishment. And that’s what DJ Naylor is calling his new restaurant/bar. Maeve’s Tavern is slated to open in mid June at the site of the old Highlander Scottish pub at 78 North Main Street in Collierville, Tennessee. Naylor, Reny Alfonso, and Brad Allbritten of the Brazen Restaurant Group are the guys behind those other Irish watering holes, Celtic Crossing and Bog & Barley.
“Maeve was a mythical queen in the Connaught region in the west of Ireland,” Naylor says.
He had his daughters Kyla and Teagan in mind when he chose the name. “An Irish figure that would represent them,” he says.
Maeve was a “very fierce warrior,” who was “ambitious, courageous.”
Asked why Colllierville, Naylor says, “We want to expand our footprint, our reach, our business,” he says. “We’d always planned to have a larger number of restaurants. We were leaning towards Lakeland, but the opportunity presented itself.”
Maeve’s Tavern is more intimate than the other two bars/restaurants, says Allbritten, who is director of restaurant operations for the group. “It’s 120, 130 inside with a 50-seat patio,” he says. “We’ll really be able to be serving some outdoor entertainment.”
They will feature Irish music and dancing. “It’s very important for us to keep our authenticity to the Irish culture.”
It will have “a family atmosphere. It’s going to be a casual tavern you’ll feel comfortable being in.”
And it will be a great place to bring the kids and for groups who want to “have nice lunches and enjoy tea” with their friends.
Inside, Maeve’s Tavern is going to be very Irish-centric. “All the interior furniture, bar furniture, and dining room furniture are going to be sourced in Ireland,” Naylor says.
The color scheme for Maeve’s Tavern will be “some nice reds and greens.”
Maeve’s Tavern will have “a more feminine and softer approach to your average pub,” Allbritten says. “Not just leather, but a lot more design appeal.”
Also included will be artwork and Irish bric-a-brac, including “antique mirrors from Ireland.”
And they want to tie in symbols of Maeve, including “the bowl, the crown, the raven,” Naylor says. “Tying all those aspects of her mythology into the design.”
As for the food, Naylor says they will “maintain the staples” at Maeve’s Tavern. “The tradition will stay with us, but we’ll definitely show the community a different side of our culinary scope.”
Alfonso, who is director of operations for the group, does the menu development and works with the chefs in each restaurant. “Currently, I’m leaning towards more Irish countryside,” he says. “Cottage-style food. Like heartier composed plates.”
Maeve’s Tavern is “going to be a tavern, but we also want to make it fresh and exciting and new. Focused on things you’d find in the countryside in Ireland. More emphasis on seafood like you’d find on the coastal side.”
But he says, “I’m trying to lighten it up as well, if that makes sense. Sort of make it healthier and not so heavy.”
Alfonso also will feature traditional items, including shepherd’s pie and fish and chips, along with some new items.
He’d like to do a “lighter and less pungent version of liver and onions.” It will have “caramelized onions.” But he’ll lighten it up with grape vinegar. “The acidity in it will brighten up the richness of the sauce in the liver. I’m using influences not only from Ireland, but Scotland, England, and maybe some Australian. They were also colonized by England. A mishmash of United States and Ireland.”
His other ideas include a version of stuffed leeks, but he’s not sure what he’s going to stuff them with. Maybe shrimp paste or something similar, he says. “They’ll be glazed in some Irish cider.”
Alfonso also plans to make a brunch item called “boxty,” which is a “traditional potato pancake,” and a“cabbage cake.”
“I do want to do a version of — I don’t know what I’m going to call it yet — chicken cordon bleu with Irish ‘rashers’ — Irish bacon — and smoked Irish cheddar.”
And, he wants to do a fish “in some kind of a curry.”
He’s playing with an idea for a salmon en croûte. “Maybe coulibiac, an old Russian dish, traditionally. It’s salmon that’s rolled in puff pastry with mushrooms, eggs, rice, and spinach. I’m going to find a kale or cabbage to make that more Irish.”
“I want to do a curry-marinated chicken paillard and salad-type thing. I’m definitely going to try to do proper English roasted potatoes. The potatoes are peeled, and they’ve got to be gold, with a little bit of baking soda. They’re boiled first in baking soda and water, and then you toss them to beat them up. Then they go in a hot pan with beef tallow.”
He wants to do something called an “Irish spice bag,” which is “a thing that you’d find on the streets in Ireland. Like stands and stuff.”
You “fry little pieces of chicken and vegetables and sometimes seafood and toss it in a paper bag with seasoning.
For dessert, he’s thinking of a “mulled fruit trifle,” which he says is “stone fruit mulled with Irish cider and layered with cream sauce and some scones crumbled into it.”
In keeping with the rest of Maeve’s Tavern, Alfonso wants to make his menu items “warm and inviting.” He wants it to be a place people will visit “multiple times a week.”
The experience will be like “going to a cottage and eating dinner.” Like “mom is cooking for you,” he says. “But more refined at the same time.”
Naylor, who is from Ballina, County Mayo, in Ireland, moved to Boston, Massachusetts, before moving to Memphis, where he opened Celtic Crossing in 2005 and Bog & Barley in 2023. “The hospitality of Memphis was far more akin to Ireland than Boston,” he says.
His mother said she’d “much rather come here,” Naylor says. She said the people are friendly. And she loved to go to the department store because the people are “so nice.”
Each of his Irish bars is different, Naylor says. “We don’t just open Irish pubs and sling beer and shots.”
He maintains the quality of each place so they’re “not being a beer joint” like other cities “where Irish pubs are a dime a dozen.”
Each of his Irish bars has its own personality.
“Celtic, for me, is the neighborhood bar that is the soccer headquarters for the city of Memphis.”
The elegant, majestic Bog & Barley, which is “more of an upscale Irish pub,” is “the cathedral to Irish pubs,” he says.
Maeve’s Tavern will be “a third experience to the Irish dining scene.”
“I love openings,” Alfonso says. “They’re just challenging. Getting all the pieces together. Finding out what’s going to work in a new area. New kitchen. New team. Like a giant jigsaw puzzle getting all the pieces together.”
He adds, “We’re just looking forward to welcoming the community into our new home, if you will.”
Elected officials took heat over spicy comments they made on the MEMernet last week.
Memphis-Shelby County School Board Member Towanna Murphy issued a formal apology days after she threatened to have a Facebook commenter deported for comments she made.
Posted to Facebook by Brent Taylor
Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) raged on Facebook about a column from the Daily Memphian’s Dan Conaway. In it, Conaway criticized Taylor’s moves to remove Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy, called him a “gadfly,” and said Taylor lives in a replica of the Mississippi governor’s mansion.
For this, Taylor issued a “libtard alert,” calling Conaway “a pompous, elitist, leftwing clown … suffering from Taylor Derangement Syndrome.”
“A dog gets more useful information sniffing the ass of another dog than you get reading a Dan Conaway column,” Taylor wrote.
Posted to Facebook by Otis Sanford
Otis Sanford, a longtime Memphis pundit, said, “This is one of the meanest things I have ever read from an elected official who fashions himself a public servant.”
Sanford wanted as much hubbub on Taylor’s post as Murphy’s deportation post.
“Shame on you, Senator,” Sanford wrote. “Your respect meter is plummeting toward zero.”
CAKE will always be with us. I’ve gleaned this insight after more than 30 years of listening to the band, ever since my days in Dixon, California, when they were merely regional favorites, not international headliners. One indication of their longevity is the simple fact that the interview I conducted with lead singer/songwriter John McCrea for a Graceland Soundstage concert scheduled for five years ago still holds just as true today as it did then. After our chat, a little thing called Covid happened, and the show never took place. Yet here we are: CAKE will finally make their Mid-South appearance by kicking off this year’s season of concerts at the BankPlus Amphitheater at Snowden Grove on Friday, April 18th.
Shockingly, things have only gone from bad to worse since 2020, pandemics aside, but that’s kept the band’s outspoken political activism more relevant than ever. The landing page of their website sports the Turkish proverb, “When a clown enters a palace, he does not become a king, the palace becomes a circus,” and their Facebook page is dotted with exhortations to “never forget who Trump really is.” But they also take their activism in a more positive direction.
In honor of Earth Day and Arbor Day, the band will join forces with BankPlus Amphitheater, Mammoth Live, and Barbian Entertainment to plant a magnolia tree, Mississippi’s official state tree, on the venue grounds. The symbolic planting highlights CAKE’s decades-long commitment to environmental sustainability, including global reforestation efforts, clean energy innovation, and eco-conscious touring practices. The band also operates out of a 100 percent solar-powered recording studio in Sacramento, California, a facility that regularly generates more electricity than it uses. Now, in addition to the on-site planting, one lucky fan attending Friday night’s show will receive their very own magnolia tree to take home and plant.
Through all such efforts, a reliable constant has been the band’s musical aesthetic, yet it can’t be boiled down to any single genre. It’s more accurately characterized by its smallness and sparseness, as McCrea explained when I mentioned seeing the band at a festival of alt-rock superstars in the late ’90s. By then, the band had blown up, with their second album, Fashion Nugget, going platinum in 1997, but they weren’t always comfortable with other groups they were lumped in with at the time.
“It was a very strange experience for me,” said McCrea. “Everything was, like, big dumb rock, even ‘alternative’ was just about this big, sort of bulbous, wide-load sound, right? And we knew people were not gonna get it. I remember one critic called us ‘dinky beats,’ and that was meant to insult us. But for me, it was like, ‘Yes!’ I mean, obviously they didn’t get it, but it was good because I realized, ‘Okay, good. It’s sounding small.’”
Yet while the band’s sound was often sparse, it was expansive stylistically, with Vince DiFiore’s trumpet echoing everything from mariachi to jazz, McCrea’s dry delivery and richly allusive lyrics drawing on all walks of life, and a taste for scrappy, dirty instrumental sounds. It was — and remains — decidedly anti-trendy, right down to the fishing cap McCrea often sports and the beat-up acoustic guitar he plays through “a Fender Sidekick amplifier, the kind that they give away for free when you buy a Telecaster.”
It’s always been a sound that’s resolutely D.I.Y. and unpretentious. Yet McCrea has typically been reluctant to confine the band to any aesthetic, even a sparse one. “I don’t want to make ‘less is more’ sound like the main goal,” he said, “but I think ‘less is more’ in the service of providing musical narrative, I could say that’s our prime directive. It should be a means to an end.”
At the heart of the CAKE experience lie the songs, of course, and the unpredictable turns of phrase which can appear in them. Listing some of his greatest influences, McCrea noted some of the usual suspects: “I love Hank Williams Sr. for his economy, his ability to tell a story with very few words. I love Cole Porter for his cleverness and how he’s clever without being completely annoying. And then I guess Bob Dylan is similarly clever, you know, and mostly not annoying. I like Leonard Cohen a lot for his lyrics and vocal melody. I mean, all of these people write great melodies.”
Turning to his contemporaries, McCrea zeroed in on Stephen Malkmus of Pavement as a favorite. “I would definitely list him as one of my top songwriters, especially of the ’90s.” But he went on to emphasize that, while CAKE are unabashedly political in their practices and in their extra-musical communications, he avoids the vagaries of topical struggles in his craft as a tunesmith.
“I don’t enjoy songs that are sort of beating you over the head in any way,” McCrea said. “I do think it’s an emergency right now, like the humans are having a confusing time and we need to focus. And I don’t see why every part of our presence should be about music. I think I’d like to let the music be about music, and let our social media be about whatever the hell we want. But some part of me resists talking about music too much on our page. Somebody wanted to interview me for a book titled something like Rock Stars’ Inspirations, or something like that, and it sounded like a really fascinating book with lots of interesting artists, but I just didn’t want to do it because of the title. You know, ‘rock stars’ — there’s just so much baggage with that, and I’m against it. I’m ideologically opposed to that, you know? I don’t really want to be a celebrity. I don’t want to be talking about what I’m doing as necessarily more important than what anybody else is doing today.”
Michael B. Jordan, as both of the Smokestack twins, is a little reluctant to invite a vampire into his juke joint.
Ryan Coogler has proven himself to be one of the great masters of genre films. Every time he’s tried a new kind of film, he has mastered it and made it better. In 2015, he made the Rocky spin-off Creed, starring his friend and frequent collaborator Michael B. Jordan as the son of Rocky’s frenemy Apollo Creed. It was, incredibly, better received than Sylvester Stallone’s attempt to revitalize the inspirational sports picture he had pioneered. Remember 2005’s Rocky Balboa? Of course you don’t.
Then Coogler moved on to the superhero space with Black Panther, the consensus choice for the best chapter of the never-ending Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Coogler saw the potential of his star Chadwick Boseman to transcend the shallow and banal crash-bang and become a hero for the people. And I’m not just talking about Black people, who were finally able to see on-screen both a hero and a culture which looked like them. T’Challa was the MCU’s moral center, the person who took time to wrestle with the right and wrongs of the situation, rather than just punching the bad guys. Marvel’s vision of good leadership is not the American President Thaddeus Ross, a barely reformed war criminal, or Tony Stark, the technocratic billionaire. It’s T’Challa, the King of Wakanda, who prioritizes justice for all humanity and puts his nation’s (and his own) blood and treasure on the line to achieve it.
Now, Coogler ventures into the horror genre with Sinners. The 21st-century superhero film cannibalizes genres so they can be digested by the corporate body. Captain America: Winter Soldier was a ’70s paranoid thriller in colorful tights; Guardians of the Galaxy is a sci-fi adventure with the occasional super-heroic flourish. Even Black Panther more closely resembled The Adventures of Robin Hood than it did Thor: The Dark World. The horror genre gives its practitioners more freedom. Throw in an atmosphere of creeping dread, a few jump scares, and a little monstrosity, and you can call it horror. After all, this is a genre that encompasses both David Lynch’s Fire Walk With Me and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
Coogler takes the opportunity to play fast and loose in Sinners, bringing in elements from all over the cinematic map. One of its biggest influences is Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan, a decidedly not-horror psychological portrait of two deeply damaged people trying to find themselves in the squalor of North Mississippi. Another major tributary is Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark, the vampire neo-Western that provided Bill Paxton’s finest hour. If I had to pin it down, I would call Sinners folk horror. Like The Wicker Man and Midsommar, it finds terror in the inscrutable laws of pre-Christian pagan beliefs.
The film’s animated preamble introduces us to the concept, handed down over millennia through dozens of different cultures, of shamanistic figures whose music-making was so powerful that it became magic and temporarily tore the veil between our world and the spirit world. We then meet Sammie Moore (Miles Caton). It’s October 1932 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and times are tough. Sammie’s a preacher’s son who quotes scripture from the pulpit on Sunday morning after playing the blues on Charley Patton’s resonator guitar on Saturday night.
Against the wishes of his pa, who warns him against “playing music for drunkards who shirk their responsibilities,” Sammie takes a gig at the Delta’s newest venue, Club Duke. The owners are the Smokestack twins, Smoke and Stack, both played by Jordan. They left Clarksdale 15 years earlier to fight in World War I, then joined the Great Migration to Chicago, where they became enforcers for Al Capone’s Prohibition smuggling operation. After years of being good soldiers, they have unexpectedly returned to the Delta, throwing cash around and sitting on enough bootleg booze to stock a juke joint for months. How they came into this good fortune is one of the film’s early mysteries.
The twins buy a former cotton warehouse and proceed to get the band back together, Blues Brothers-style. Along with Sammie, they recruit piano pounder Delta Slim (the great Delroy Lindo) and the singer Pearline (Jayme Lawson) for opening night. It is one hell of a party. Every drunken shirker in a three-county radius packs into the run-down old building to party their butts off late into the night.
Did I mention that Sinners is also kind of a musical? And that some of the music was recorded here in Memphis by Boo Mitchell at Royal Studios? Coogler frames the big emotional moments with musical numbers performed by his cast. On Club Duke’s opening night, Sammie’s songs whip the revelers into a frenzy of ecstatic dancing. When people from other eras start to appear in the barn, from a masked San shaman of Kalahari to Eddie Hazel decked out in Parliament-Funkadelic-era Afro and star-shaped sunglasses, we know we’re through the looking glass.
The revelers are mostly oblivious, but someone notices the magic working. Remmick (Jack O’Connell) appears, smoldering from the sunlight. He’s an Irishman of indeterminate age, who knows all the old Appalachian folk songs. When he and his little band show up at Club Duke, the door man Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) won’t let them in. Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), Smoke’s ex-wife, is a secret voodoo priestess who recognizes the undead when she sees them. But it’s going to take more than a mojo bag and a trunk full of guns to defeat the devils this time.
Sinners spends a long time giving backstory to its sprawling cast, so that when the action kicks in, we feel each loss and setback. Coogler takes big swings, but not all of them connect. Jordan’s double duty as twins could have been a disaster, but he pulls it off with bravado. On the other hand, a half-assed subplot involving the Klan bogs things down in the final reel. It hardly matters. Sinners is one of our great filmmakers exploring the outer limits of his gifts. Let Coogler cook.
Agricenter International’s five-acre solar farm produces enough energy to power the entire 1,000-acre Agricenter complex. (Photo: Tom Hrach)
After years of stagnation, Memphis is finally taking major steps toward creating a solar power system.
The news broke last month when Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW) announced it would seek a site to install solar panels and purchase batteries to store electricity.
CEO Doug McGowen said the city-owned utility is seeking proposals to install 100 megawatts of solar generation and up to 80 megawatts of battery storage. The move is significant for Memphis, which trails many Tennessee communities and is far behind other Southeastern cities in developing community solar power.
Doug McGowen, president and CEO of Memphis Light, Gas and Water (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht)
“In our nation and around our world, our demand for energy will soon outpace our collective ability to meet it,” McGowen said in March. “If we are going to meet our needs here locally and nationally, we need everyone in the game. With today’s announcement, I will tell you MLGW is in the game. We are taking an important, huge first step in helping our community … meet the challenges ahead.”
The development hinges on a tentative “side agreement” with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) that would allow MLGW to generate some of its own power. MLGW currently gets all its electricity from TVA under an exclusive contract that forbids it from getting electricity from any other source.
That decades-old contract has long stood in the way of MLGW developing solar power. First signed in December 1984, the rolling, five-year contract contains language preventing MLGW from getting power anywhere other than TVA.
MLGW is one of just five local power companies in TVA’s 153-local-utility system that hasn’t agreed to a long-term contract that allows signers to get up to 5 percent of their power from other sources. Some local utilities that have signed those 20-year contracts have left Memphis far behind in developing solar power.
McGowen hopes to change that.
“This does nothing to change our fundamental power agreement that we have with TVA,” he said. “This is going to be a side agreement, an amendment. That is what we will work on together, on something that will work for both organizations.”
Solar power is something MLGW has had in the works for at least two budget cycles. MLGW inserted money into its budget for solar power in fall 2023 when it prepared its 2024 budget. Money was then also included in fall 2024, when it prepared the budget for the current year.
McGowen’s March 5th announcement follows a report in February by the Institute for Memphis Public Service Reporting that detailed the impediment that the TVA contract poses to developing solar power.
“The community needs more energy. The demand is going up. Where are we going to get it? We do not want to burn more fossil fuels, so solar is where it can come from,” said Dennis Lynch, a Midtown Memphis resident and member of the MLGW citizens advisory committee.
“I could imagine many empty blocks in Memphis covered with solar panels and then people signing up to be members and getting reduced rates for electricity, but even that is not allowed in the current TVA contract.”
In 2022, MLGW discussed entering a 20-year agreement with TVA, which would have allowed the creation of its own solar power system. But that long-term agreement was never signed, so the terms of the 1984 agreement remain in place. In May 2023, McGowen announced that the utility would stick with TVA as its power supplier under the terms of the old contract for now.
Was that a mistake?
Not so, said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, a Knoxville-based nonprofit. That is because committing long-term to TVA means Memphis likely could never get out from under TVA’s onerous exit clauses to pursue cheaper and cleaner energy sources, Smith said.
Under the terms of the current contract, MLGW must give TVA a five-year notice if it wants to leave. A long-term contract would require a 20-year notice, which means it would be decades before Memphis could get free from TVA.
“MLGW is losing out on clean energy, particularly solar, due to the fact that they are not independent from TVA,” Smith said. “But I do not think that signing a long-term contract would be worth it. Memphis would lose out by agreeing to stay with TVA for so long.”
One reason is that the 5 percent limit TVA places on its long-term customers is miniscule compared to the potential for solar power in West Tennessee, Smith said.
“MLGW did absolutely the right thing by not signing that long-term contract. Instead, we would like MLGW to start re-negotiating that agreement again and start using the leverage it has to encourage the use of renewable energy,” Smith said.
Baby Steps to Solar
Outlining his 2025 capital improvement plan at the October 2, 2024, MLGW board meeting, McGowen said the utility is doing what it can to move toward solar power by installing a first-ever battery storage system.
McGowen has acknowledged MLGW is prevented from creating its own solar power because of the current TVA-MLGW contract.
“We are still committed to that. I want to get the battery storage rolling first,” he said. “We have some architecture and engineering money allocated for solar. We are working with our partners at TVA to determine how to do that in the constraints of our current contract. That remains a priority for us.”
Solar power would be part of what McGowen called “an aggressive expansion of capacity” to provide electricity for Memphis. At an MLGW board meeting on February 5th, McGowen noted that the request for proposals for the battery storage would be out soon. But he offered no exact timetable. McGowen has said Memphis needs to expand its ability to provide electricity in order to support economic growth.
The best example is the establishment of the xAI facility in south Memphis, which has huge power demands. Bloomberg News reported that new artificial intelligence data centers can be drivers of economic growth for communities, but they have huge power demands. Communities that are prepared to provide increasing amounts of electricity will be the beneficiaries. And part of providing increasing amounts of electricity is that local communities need to be generating their own power instead of just buying it from someone else.
Battery storage is pivotal to plans for implementing solar power at the utility scale because the sun does not shine at night, so the electricity must be generated during the day and then stored for use at other times. But a battery storage system is only the first step toward using the sun to generate electricity.
Memphis Falling Behind
Scott Brooks, senior relations specialist for TVA, confirmed via email that Memphis is way in the minority when it comes to developing its own power generation, writing, “Many of our partners are doing solar and community solar.”
Other TVA communities that are generating their own solar power are the Knoxville Utilities Board, BrightRidge (which serves the Tri-Cities area of Tennessee), and the Nashville Electric Service.
A 2023 study done by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy titled “Solar in the Southeast” confirmed that Memphis was behind Knoxville and on par with Nashville when it came to using electricity generated by the sun.
The same study showed that Memphis will be even further behind Knoxville by 2027 if things stay the same with the TVA contract. And Tennessee, which is almost entirely served by TVA, is miles behind the average utility in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.
The goal of creating Memphis’ own solar power system is not new. It was part of the Memphis Area’s Climate Action plan written in 2020. That 222-page plan said: “Transforming our energy supply over the next 30 years will need to take an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach, with actions ranging from partnering with TVA to increasing renewables in their portfolio, to encouraging and constructing local sources of renewable generation (particularly solar).”
The plan said the city of Memphis and Shelby County would work with TVA to explore changes to the MLGW contract. The report mentions solar power 35 times as a key goal for the community.
Yet more than five years since that report, no substantial progress had been made toward establishing a local solar power system in Memphis.
Photo: Tom Hrach
Some solar power exists
Despite the restriction, solar power is not absent in Memphis. The TVA contract does not prevent companies, individuals, or even government entities from putting up solar panels and generating power. One of the most visible solar projects in Shelby County is happening at the Agricenter International, where thousands of vehicles whiz by five acres of solar panels on Walnut Grove Road.
That project, launched in 2012, is generating enough electricity to power 110 homes per year. And it is connected with TVA’s system, showing the potential for solar power in Memphis. The Shelby County government also generates electricity with the establishment of its modest collection of solar panels off of Farm Road behind the county construction code enforcement office.
How can Memphis start maximizing the benefits of solar power?
Citizen action is what is needed to change the situation, says Lynch, a frequent public speaker at MLGW board meetings and member of the West Tennessee Sierra Club.
“Citizens need to better understand what is the story,” Lynch says. “They need to knock on the doors of MLGW and ask MLGW, ‘What are you doing to allow TVA to allow us to install solar?’”
At the March 5th announcement, Mayor Paul Young specifically thanked TVA for agreeing to allow Memphis to move forward with solar power. And he acknowledged how Memphis has been behind when it comes to solar power and creating sustainability energy.
“We know that power is one of the utmost concerns for people throughout this nation. We are thinking about ways to do this with more sustainability, cleaner, thinking about ways we can limit our impact on the environment,” Young said. “This is such an important step. I cannot say enough about how many strides MLGW has been taking.”
Young cited reliability as a key. Solar power and the batteries to store that power help a community keep the electricity flowing during blackouts, storms, and natural disasters.
Mike Pohlman, MLGW board chair, also acknowledged that Memphis has been behind in creating solar power. He said the board has been pushing MLGW for years to get moving on solar power.
“We have gotten out of the pace of snail. And things are happening a lot quicker. We have been looking at this solar thing for two years now. It is finally coming to fruition,” Pohlman said.
McGowen said the proposals for solar generation and battery storage are due back to MLGW by the end of April. He said the goal is to start producing and storing electricity by the end of 2026. MLGW has not yet identified a site for the solar facility.
Tom Hrach is a professor in the department of journalism and strategic media at the University of Memphis. He has a doctorate degree from Ohio University and has more than 18 years of full-time experience as a journalist.
The Nuclear Option
Earlier this month, the future of energy development in the Tennessee Valley was thrown into uncertain territory. TVA is owned by the federal government, having been established in 1933 during the first wave of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation. Its original purpose was to electrify the rural areas of Tennessee, which had been neglected by for-profit electric utility companies who feared the high cost of building thousands of miles of electrical transmission infrastructure to serve a relatively small population in what was at the time the most impoverished region in the country. These days, TVA receives no taxpayer money and operates by selling electricity to ratepayers like a privately owned utility company.
But the executive branch still has control over TVA’s board of directors, and in April, the Trump administration removed two board members, Michelle Moore and Board Chairman Joe Ritch. No reason was given for their removal. The board usually consists of nine members, but with the removal of Moore and Ritch, only four remain. That means that there is no longer a quorum on the board, effectively paralyzing the $12 billion organization which provides power for more than 10 million people.
Shortly before the firings, the board appointed Don Moul, the utility’s former chief operating officer, as the new president and CEO. After the firings, Justin Maierhofer, a longtime TVA executive, was appointed as chief of government relations. A new Enterprise Transformation Office, created by an executive order from President Trump, will seek to reorganize the utility’s leadership structure, according to reports from Knoxville News Sentinel. The office will seek at least $500 million in savings to make way for building new generation capacity.
What, if any, effects this shake-up will have on MLGW’s solar power plans are unclear. But if Tennessee senators Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn have their way, TVA’s focus will not be on solar but on nuclear energy. This is familiar territory for TVA, which was a pioneer in civilian use of nuclear power in the 1960s and ’70s. But the utility’s nuclear program has stagnated, thanks to ballooning costs for building huge power plants like the one at Watts Bar in Spring City, Tennessee, where the last new reactor came online in 2016 after decades of development and construction.
In an op-ed published in Power magazine, the two senators call for TVA to invest in a new fleet of nuclear power plants which would be smaller and easier to construct than the mammoth facilities the utility currently operates. “With the right courageous leadership, TVA could lead the way in our nation’s nuclear energy revival, empower us to dominate the 21st century’s global energy competition, and cement President Trump’s legacy as ‘America’s Nuclear Energy President.’” — Chris McCoy
Roast battle at last year’s Good Vibes Comedy Festival. (Photo: Courtesy Nathan Jackson)
Has life been so stressful lately that you haven’t had the time to do activities that you enjoy doing? Whether that’s watching your favorite movie or hanging out with your closest friends, it’s clear that it’s been way too long since you have had real fun. It’s okay, relax. Your one-stop destination for live entertainment has arrived because the Good Vibes Comedy Festival is back to make sure their attendees leave grinning ear to ear with their mouths sore from nonstop laughing.
Hosted by John Miller and Nathan Jackson, and sponsored by several local businesses like Hi Tone Cafe and Charlie Vergo’s Rendezvous, the Good Vibes Comedy Festival will feature several comedians that will be headlining this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. “So we have Carlos Hernandez. He’s from Miami. [Then we have] Erica Nicole Clark. [Next] is Joshua Black; he was voted one of Nashville’s best stand-up comics last year, I believe. And our local headliner is a young man named Wild Beale,” says Miller.
Black will be headlining Friday night, Clark and Hernandez will be there Saturday night, and last but not least, Wild Beale will be representing the Bluff City on Sunday night. In total, there will be 14 shows across three days with more than 40 comedians performing.
Those who are up-and-coming comedians or improv artists can apply to be featured as a headliner for next year’s festival. “Next year, anyone can submit. All [you] have to do is send a video to the submission form, fill out the application, pay the fee, and we’ll be watching your video,” says Miller. “And the selection process is by committee. So it’s me, [Nathan Jackson], and a few other people [who] will vote.”
The Good Vibes Comedy Festival will be held at the Hi Tone Cafe and tickets are on sale now. To find out more about this event and where to purchase tickets, go here.
Hi Tone Cafe, 282-284 North Cleveland Street, Friday-Sunday, April 18-20, 6 p.m., $20/single show, $35/all-day pass, $80/three-day pass.
Chad Marriott, Erin Amlicke, and
Austin Hanna (Photo: Joey Miller)
The opening scenes of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, the latest production by Tennessee Shakespeare Company, may be disarmingly light for some theatergoers. Many of us, myself included, tend to imagine the story of Joan of Arc in the direst possible terms — we all know it ends with her being burned alive, after all. And the first few minutes of the play depict just that, as if to remind us what’s at stake before the narrative begins in earnest.
But then the story launches on a disarmingly light note, with the broad, jocular acting of a comedy. Two characters blow raspberries at each other. It’s a jolly romp, as local big shot Robert de Baudricourt (Austin Hanna) blusters about the lack of eggs from his hens, which, his underlings insinuate, is likely caused by the slightly touched-in-the-head farm maiden Joan (Erin Amlicke). She’s unfazed by the generalized buffoonery, her face uplifted, radiating joy, embodying the chipper, plucky optimism of a naïf.
In a sharp disconnect from the romp, Joan insists that she hears voices, and that Saint Catherine, Saint Margaret, and Saint Michael all have instructed her to lead troops against the British at Orléans. There’s an undaunted quality in Joan’s convictions (and Amlicke’s performance) that wins over the men of power, and ultimately they are swayed to send her off to an audience with the Dauphin, aka Charles II, France’s as-yet uncrowned heir apparent.
Tennessee Shakespeare Company is nothing if not resourceful, and it casts the eight actors in this production as different characters as the changing scenes demand. Thus, the Dauphin is also played by Hanna, the broad bluster of Baudricourt replaced by his effeminate take on poor little rich boy Charles. This continues the somewhat farcical tone of the opening scene, even as graver characters, like the Archbishop of Rheims (Chad Marriott), enter the narrative. Another man of power, the Duke la Trémouille, also enters the story here, yet, in the fine Shakespearean tradition of gender-swapping roles (done in Elizabethan times because women were not allowed to perform), la Trémouille is played by Sarah Sakaan.
Indeed, several women take on the visage of powerful men in this production, and none more powerfully than Lauren Gunn, who plays several characters here, most impressively the English Earl of Warwick. She brings an undeniable gravitas to her performances that at last seems appropriate to what is ultimately a tragedy.
Then, as the play proceeds, farce recedes and the entire cast rises to the occasion of the story’s inherent drama. As Joan is put on trial for heresy, we see some of the show’s finest performances, including finely wrought characterizations by Hanna as the Inquisitor and Sakaan as Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais. And Amlicke’s distress in the finale is all the more powerful in contrast with her unflappably jaunty take on Joan in earlier scenes.
Indeed, that may be a key to this intriguing staging of the play, as the lighthearted gives way to the tragic. The powerful ending is underscored by way of contrast with the early scenes. And, speaking of underscoring, the sound design and musical compositions by Joe Johnson foreshadow the tragedy to come. That in turn is capped off with a coda wherein a visitor from the 20th century reads the official statement of Joan’s canonization in 1920, and all the key characters step out of time to consider their role in it.
The contrasts in tone, as director Sarah Hankins astutely conveys here, are ultimately what Shaw envisioned when writing the play. As he noted in the play’s preface, “There are no villains in the piece. … It is what men do at their best, with good intentions, and what normal men and women find that they must and will do in spite of their intentions, that really concern us.”
Tennessee Shakespeare’s final two performances of Saint Joan are on Friday, April 18th, at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, April 19th, at 3 p.m. Visit tnshakespeare.org for details.
Official portrait of President Donald J. Trump, Friday, October 6, 2017. (Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead)
It’s been a matter of weeks since President Donald Trump single-handedly deprived the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) board of its quorum, and the giant semi-public utility may come to figure in crucial decisions regarding Elon Musk’s controversial Colossus xAI project in Memphis.
When Trump issued walking papers to two members of an already truncated TVA board, he effectively deprived the board of its ability to vote on policy shifts and other matters of consequence.
The utility’s rules require the presence of five active and voting members to constitute a quorum. At full strength, the board would number nine directors, but attrition of various kinds over the years had previously reduced the board’s membership to five.
That membership now stands at only four after Trump, in successive acts, fired both Michelle Moore, a well-known “clean power” advocate, and Board Chairman Joe Ritch. The president gave no reasons for either firing, but coincidentally or not, his actions came in the immediate wake of public prodding from Tennessee’s two Republican senators for changes in the Authority’s leadership.
In an op-ed that appeared in the industry periodical Power magazine on March 24th, senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty had expressed doubt that the TVA leadership, as then constituted, was up to the need, as they saw it, of jump-starting a new era of reinvigorated nuclear power.
“With the right courageous leadership, TVA could lead the way in our nation’s nuclear energy revival, empower us to dominate the 21st century’s global technology competition, and cement President Trump’s legacy as ‘America’s Nuclear President,’” the senators wrote.
Within days of the op-ed’s publication, the TVA board, then still at quorum strength, if only barely, named the utility’s chief operating officer, Don Moul, to serve as the CEO of TVA. (For what it’s worth, the two senators had wanted a new CEO from outside the Authority’s ranks.) Almost immediately after Moul’s appointment, Trump would fire the two board members, thereby stalling any immediate initiatives on TVA’s part beyond matters of basic maintenance. That would include oversight activity vis-à-vis the energy situation of Memphis.
Ultimately Trump will have the prerogative of restocking the board to quorum strength, with his nominations in theory drawn from all reaches of the Authority’s operating area, which comprises all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. Members, subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate, serve five-year terms.
Created under FDR, TVA is no longer taxpayer-funded but is still federally owned. One way or another, politics plays a major role in its operation, and critics of Musk are increasingly conscious that the contours of the Trump ally’s giant xAI program are rapidly expanding, with its demands on available energy from MLGW mounting well beyond what the original estimates were when Musk acquired the vacant Electrolux property to house the supercomputer last year.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young is now finding himself under fire for his apparent acquiescence with the Musk project. In a blistering letter to Young, Shelby County Health Department Director Michelle Taylor criticized the mayor for not imposing stricter air-quality controls on the Colossus project, which is requiring the use of even more gas turbines — potentially as many as 35.
Amid an upsurge in various forums and ad hoc opposition groups, one leader of a burgeoning citizen revolt is Representative Justin Pearson, immersing himself in anti-xAI activities in the manner of his successful 2021 opposition to a gas pipeline.
More and more obviously, the xAI matter is rising to a potentially dominant status politically, almost on a scale with the city’s No. 1 bugaboo, crime. And uneasiness about the Trump-Musk alliance could be a major part of that concern.
Tennessee lawmakers are proposing a $6 million audit of Memphis-Shelby County Schools. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht for Tennessee Lookout)
Tennessee lawmakers could spend $6 million to audit Memphis-Shelby County Schools as a potential forerunner to a state “takeover” of the district.
Senate finance committee Chairman Bo Watson (R-Hixson) confirmed Monday another $3 million for a forensic audit was placed in the Senate’s $59.6 billion budget plan to go with $3 million in Governor Bill Lee’s supplemental budget amendment.
Senators also placed $4.5 million in the budget plan to expand Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s special litigation unit, which previously was tasked with opposing former President Joe Biden’s policies.
When the 2025 session started, Republican lawmakers started discussing appointment of a state management board that would supersede the elected Memphis Shelby County School Board. Memphis residents testified against the bill.
Representative Mark White, a Memphis Republican, said Memphis schools have “a decades-old issue of underperformance.” (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
The proposal hasn’t gained a foothold yet, but lawmakers appear bent on auditing the school district even though the Comptroller’s Office conducts school system audits.
Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) said Monday the audit is needed to start a deeper look at the school district.
“That kind of money spent on that kind of audit, that’s the kind of audit that somebody goes to the pokey over, and this is something that’s been building for decades, and it’s time we finally take the bull by the horns,” Taylor said. He didn’t pinpoint any wrongdoing on the part of Memphis-Shelby County Schools officials.
Taylor, who is sponsoring the bill to make major changes in the district, said lawmakers shied away from a takeover because of problems with the Achievement School District, which is being abolished because it failed to make major improvements over a decade in spite of a billion dollars in expenses. The bill’s wording remains in talks, though, and an advisory board could be placed in the measure, he said.
Senator Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville) a member of the finance committee, called the pending expenditure “ridiculous.”
“The purpose of our school funding is to educate children, not to create ammunition for some garbage political fights,” Yarbro said.
Rep. Mark White (R-Memphis) has been pushing for change this session to deal with what he calls “a decades-old issue of underperformance.”
The purpose of our school funding is to educate children, not to create ammunition for some garbage political fights.
– Senator Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville
His bill contains a provision to put a nine-member management group appointed by the state in charge of operating the school district, giving it authority over the locally-elected school board and administrators.
Taylor’s version isn’t quite as restrictive but puts the state in charge by allowing Tennessee’s education commissioner, with approval from the Department of Education, to remove the schools director or school board members and allow the county commission to replace them. If a school district goes through three district directors in three years, a county mayor could appoint a new director for a four-year term.
The Senate bill also would lift income caps on the Education Savings Account in effect in Shelby County, the governor’s initial private-school voucher program, and change the process for a public school to become a charter school.
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.
Unfortunately, there are no good videos on YouTube (yet) of GloRilla’s stomping set, which whipped the audience into a frenzy. Luckily, we’ve got Three 6 Mafia’s volcanic opener, “Hit a Muthafucka,” to bring you up to speed if you couldn’t afford to spend the weekend in the desert. Get ready to get buck! (And do I have to tell you this clip is NSFW? ’Cause it ain’t.)
