Tag: Alicja Trout

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Art Art Feature

Alicja Trout’s “Understory”

Brantley Ellzey and Alicja Trout (Photo: Abigail Morici)

Alicja Trout’s explored the rock-and-roll scene. She’s taken the risks that come with that, toured, worked the merch tables, designed her album covers and band T-shirts — and she’s not done with music, that much needs to be said — but Trout has found a new passion, or rather reignited an old one: visual art. And, this Sunday, she’ll introduce her new artform to Memphis in her solo art show, “Understory,” at Brantley Ellzey’s Summer Studio.

Ellzey, who helped curate the show, says he didn’t know Trout painted until this year, and he expects most Memphians also know Trout solely for her music. Even so, when he first saw her paintings, he knew he wanted to show them in his studio. “I had a show for Lee Chase for his photography, and then I had a show for Moth Moth Moth,” Ellzey says. “So I’m kind of focusing on artists that are multidisciplinary but maybe people don’t necessarily know that they are visual artists, and they might be familiar to people in Memphis in other ways.”

For Trout, who’s been known as Alicja-Pop around Memphis for the better part of her life, art has taken a backseat to her music after earning her master’s in fine arts from the Memphis College of Art. “One of the main reasons I chose to do music is I do enjoy being alone a lot, and I found that I would just not ever socialize [if I were a visual artist, working alone in a studio],” she says. “I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to live my twenties and my thirties alone,’ so I chose music as a thing to do with people.”

As the years went by, she would make things here and there — dresses for her daughters, a small painting for a room. “Maintenance art,” her friend called it. “I love art,” Trout says. “And every time I go to a museum, I just love it. And I just got inspired by that again, and music started to weigh on me as, ‘Oh, it’s work. I have to record and sit in my dark space in front of a screen or computer and play over and over again to get it right.’ I just felt like I needed a break.”

That break would come in 2020 with the onset of the pandemic. She started small with simple graphic linework on a small canvas, but eventually she graduated to large landscapes. She experimented with styles and forwent realism. 

(Photo: Abigail Morici)

“Because I came from doing music for so long and then went back into painting, I think a lot of it, I had fun doing it because I was experimenting again,” Trout says. “When I left art school and I went into music, I would do more like posters and flyers and record covers and things that were done with a purpose with words on them and stuff. It was kind of like graphic design, rock-and-roll posters.”

But this return to painting allowed her to “get more simple.” “I also took on this nature and interest in trees,” she adds, “because I think it’s part of getting older as a person, especially when you come from rock music and rock-and-roll and you’re used to the aesthetic of nighttime clubs and all that stuff. But then I have children and I just got a lot more into taking peace outside and animals and nature and creatures in my yard and growing things. So it’s just like a natural progression of time.”

Music, it turns out, had allowed her to work out “a lot of issues in my brain and anger and frustration, just angst and all that stuff. And I think I’ve processed that at this point.”

So, her paintings lean into the fantastical, portraying a sense of peace in storybook landscapes. “As with a diorama in a natural history museum, the viewer is transported into a scene both natural and artificial,” reads Trout’s artist statement. “Sheltering tree limbs comfort and calm like a protective parent.”

(Photo: Abigail Morici)

Often in Trout’s landscapes viewers can find a lone creature, at ease in its environment varied in color, often not found in nature. A winding path or river, or sometimes a single light source, will bring the eye to the a focal point on the canvas, offering a familiar image though it represents the unknown. 

“For some reason, it’s cozy and comfortable [in the fantastical],” Trout says. “ I am kind of a loner, and that stuff, like Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and fairy tales, has always been a cozy space for me, and maybe having daughters, I went through that again with them and watched a lot of Disney and I read at a lot of beautiful illustration books with them. It was such a cozy space.”

But even in this coziness, Trout hopes to challenge the viewer to reflect on the environment and their place in it. “This body of work displays my love and fascination for the natural world and my fear that we will lose it to inharmonious human development,” she writes in her statement. 

In all, though, the works are a personal triumph for the artist. “I was super happy to come back to painting,” she says. “It’s normally in my house and shut in closets and to see it all up, I just want people to come and be part of the experience.”

Join Alicja Trout for the opening reception of “Understory” at Brantley Ellzey’s Summer Studio (3086 Summer Avenue) on Sunday, May 19th, 2 to 6 p.m. The show will be on display through June 2nd.

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Cover Feature News

We Will Rock You

Songwriter/guitarist Alicja Trout has long been a mainstay of Memphis’ rock scene. (Photo: Jamie Harmon)

There’s an epic tale unfolding in the Memphis music world these days. You might call it “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Rock Empire,” though it’s still not clear how much of a fall has been suffered. The local rock scene is a creative hotbed, as we’ll see, but that’s in the wider context of “rock music,” whatever that is, suffering an overall drop in popularity.

Six years ago, Salon noted that a Rubicon had been crossed in the music industry. “For the first time in Nielsen Music history, R&B/hip-hop has become the most consumed music genre in the United States,” wrote Taylor Link. “It’s a watershed moment for the Black-dominated genre. Former longtime volume leader rock … dropped to second with 23 percent of the total volume.” And only last year, Louder magazine decried, “There’s not one new rock/metal album among this year’s 200 best-selling albums in America.”

Such a sea change would have been unimaginable in the last century. Rock, aka “rawk,” the stepchild of rock-and-roll, arguably born with the opening power chords of The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” in 1964, marked a whole new approach to the electric guitar, trading on its capacity for noise. If British musos were inspired by American innovators like Bo Diddley and local hero Paul Burlison, a whole new sound was forged once Kink Dave Davies leaned into the metallic sound of his distorted guitar chords — loudly. Suddenly that lurching cousin of the blues, the rock riff, was selling records. Now, nearly 60 years on? Not so much.

Museum Relics

That’s put in perspective with a visit to the Memphis Museum of Science & History (MoSH), where two current exhibits shed perspective on rock by looking at its chief tool and icon: the guitar. Both “America at the Crossroads: The Guitar and a Changing Nation,” curated by the National Guitar Museum, and MoSH’s own “Grind City Picks: The Music That Made Memphis” trace the instrument’s evolving design and cultural importance with more than 40 examples of the luthier’s craft on display. As Harvey Newquist of the National Guitar Museum notes, rock, hard rock, and metal were more than just a sound. They expressed the whole ethos of the counterculture.

Julien Baker’s guitar at MoSH. (Photo: Alex Greene)

“It was the first generation that had guitar sounds of its own,” he says. “And they were distorted guitar sounds. Post-British Invasion, the first insanely heavy guitar sounds in America came from people like Jimi Hendrix, who inspired later bands like Aerosmith and Van Halen. The rise of that sound was very much a reflection of American youth culture, more so than country-western and the blues and everything else because it was so very integrated with teen angst, as it were.”

Angst and good times, that is. “I want to rock and roll all night — and party every day!” as KISS sang. The rock riff captured the zeitgeist in all its contradictions. “Hard rock and metal, and the sound of a distorted overdriven guitar, was a sound that had never been heard before,” says Newquist. “Here was a generation that didn’t want saxophones and pianos and horns. They wanted something raw and powerful to represent them, and hard rock and metal fit the bill perfectly.”

In the exhibit, changes in the guitar’s sound are tracked visually, as the instruments come to embody either futuristic utopianism or pre-modern warfare. “The iconic, heavy rock guitarist was playing Les Paul,” Newquist explains. “But B.C. Rich created extraordinarily angular guitars that were embraced by bands like Slayer and Lita Ford because they were so aggressive looking. They’re all points and angles, which gives them kind of a lethal look.”

It was all happening in Memphis, as well. At the end of the nationally touring exhibit comes MoSH’s Memphis addition, “Grind City Picks,” where you can see, mixed in with blues, soul, funk, jazz, and rockabilly axes, signs of heavy rock taking up permanent residence on the Bluff.

Hear Rock City

One of those signs in “Grind City Picks” is Steve Selvidge’s Fender Stratocaster. That single artifact captures an entire genealogy of heavy guitar rock in Memphis, in part because Selvidge is “following in his father Sid Selvidge’s footsteps,” as the signage says. But it goes deeper than that. The Selvidges were especially close with fellow Mudboy & the Neutrons member Lee Baker, a local pioneer of heavy guitar. “Baker would be over at the house a lot, or we’d be over at Baker’s house,” Selvidge noted of his childhood in a 2021 interview. “He had a guitar … and I was just fascinated with the guitar, any guitar.”

Indeed, Baker was an innovator in the realm of loud, distorted riffs. The influence of the 1969 debut by his pre-Mudboy band, Moloch, was obvious three years later when Jeff Beck, cutting an album in Memphis, covered their version of “Going Down.” The song’s slow, sinking rock riff was the perfect transformation of the blues into a wholly new genre, and Beck kept it in his set for decades to come.

Today, Selvidge the younger, arguably the city’s biggest Moloch fan, has repeatedly distinguished himself in the rock riff department, sporadically in the ’90s funk/alt-rock band Big Ass Truck and today with The Hold Steady, a Brooklyn-based group combining a pile-driving rock sound with Craig Finn’s trenchant, literate lyrics, with whom Selvidge has played with since 2010.

But that’s just the tip of the hard rock iceberg in this town, where, despite national trends, the rawk sound marches on. Memphis has had its hand in that game for decades. Having played with classic rock-leaning Target in the ’70s, singer Jimi Jamison then led the band Cobra, which in turn led to his joining the mega-group Survivor combo in 1984 (after they’d already hit it big with “Eye of the Tiger”). Jamison helped keep them in the charts with hits like “I Can’t Hold Back” and “High on You.” Like the bigger hard rock bands in the charts, Survivor was a prime example of “Album Oriented Rock” (AOR), which mixed heavy guitar riffs with catchy choruses and sparkling production values. Meanwhile, a Memphian who’d previously dabbled in country rock, Jimmy Davis, adapted to the times and dove into AOR himself, fronting Jimmy Davis & Junction. Their debut, Kick the Wall, was produced by Jack Holder, who’d helped pen songs for Southern rock outfit 38 Special, and the title song became a minor hit.

Tora Tora in their heyday (Photo courtesy Anthony Corder)

Those artists in turn inspired many younger groups in their wake. Take Tora Tora, sometimes considered a “hair metal” band. Singer Anthony Corder recalls those times in the late ’80s when he and three other high schoolers were just learning their craft. “We were into older bands like Target, one of Jimi Jamison’s bands, who were on A&M [Records],” he says. “We won some local competition and the prize was a day at Ardent. And when we went in, the engineer happened to be Paul Ebersol.” As it happened, Ebersol was to become a key figure in the heavy rock coming out of Memphis, ultimately producing local angst-metal hitmakers Saliva in the early 2000s. “Paul just saw something in us that we didn’t even see,” says Corder.

Championed by Ebersol, Ardent took the band under its wing, and it was a particularly charmed era to be playing hair metal. “As we were coming up, the scene was exploding,” Corder notes. Before long, with Corder still in high school, Tora Tora was signed to A&M as well, and their debut album reached #47 on the charts. By the dawn of the ’90s, other Memphis groups, like Roxy Blue, Every Mother’s Nightmare, and Mother Station (featuring guitarist Gwin Spencer and singer/songwriter Susan Marshall), were also thriving, albeit not with the same success as Tora Tora. But even as Memphis metal was going big time, the seeds of its demise had already been sown.

Metal Meets Punk

Even before Tora Tora’s ascent, an alternative approach to hard rocking sounds had been gestating in the legendary Antenna Club, originally known as The Well. While some punk was morphing into what’s now called hardcore, played at a frenetic pace and with little melodic content, others, like the Modifiers, played metal-inspired music that retained a punk attitude. “The Modifiers poured their sweat and souls into every performance, breaking ground and opening doors for every original punk/alternative band in this town,” wrote J.D. Reager in the Memphis Flyer after the band’s guitarist, Bob Holmes, died in 2019.

Reager quotes Memphis native David Catching, who, after playing with the Modifiers for 10 years, went on to be a producer and guitarist for the Eagles of Death Metal and Queens of the Stone Age: “I’ll never forget meeting Bob at the Well,” says Catching. “He and Alex Chilton were my first guitar heroes I could actually talk to.”

While the Modifiers never dented the charts, to some extent they prefigured Nirvana’s breakthrough smash Nevermind in 1991, which spelled the end of hair metal’s dominance. The so-called grunge movement proffered “seventies-influenced, slowed-down punk music,” as producer Jack Endino told Rolling Stone in 1992. Like the heavier bands at the Antenna, grunge bands rejected the more pop elements of glam metal but kept the riffs, and their audiences followed suit. Ironically, by 1995 the Antenna Club had closed its doors. But a new hybrid hard rock was just getting started.

One unique Memphis group from that era was Son of Slam, whose album Trailer Parks, Politics & God was released in 1994. According to LastFm.com, they “spit in the face of pretty boy glam bands” and “found legions of loyal fans in cities throughout the South and the Midwest.” Fronted by the flamboyantly unhinged Chris Scott, the group also featured guitar virtuoso Eric Lewis and the rhythm section of Terrence “T-Money” Bishop (bass) and John “Bubba” Bonds (drums). All four, especially the latter two holding down the rhythm, continue to impact the scene today.

Only slightly later, other artists fond of killer riffs were getting their start. Local bluesy punks the Oblivians inspired young James Lee Lindsey Jr. to begin a career of his own that, like the Modifiers before him, would sometimes straddle the line between punk and metal.

Taking the name Jay Reatard, Lindsey began firmly in the punk camp, yet as the century turned, he partnered with Memphis songwriter/guitarist Alicja Trout to form the Lost Sounds, slowing the tempo slightly and adding synths to their guitar crunch. Beginning in the early 2000s, long after hair metal’s star had fallen, the Lost Sounds and other Goner-affiliated bands kept the torch of hard rock riffs burning. Hard rock was already giving way to hip-hop and electronic music on the charts, but it still percolated in Memphis with a fierce, rebellious energy.

Lost Sounds ca. early 2000s (Photo: Dan Ball)

“We were trying to challenge ourselves,” Trout says today of the Lost Sounds’ debut, Black-Wave. “It was not quite prog rock because there weren’t any jam-out moments there. We called it Black-Wave because we were trying to mix black metal and new wave.”

The Lost Sounds challenged listeners’ preconceptions as well, not least because a woman playing heavy guitar riffs was not a common sight. “When I started playing, it was novel to have a woman playing guitar and playing heavy,” Trout says. “Now, it’s no longer a novelty to be a female playing guitar in a band, although I feel like rock is still mainly dude territory.”

Trout ultimately parted ways with Lindsey, who carried on as Jay Reatard, eventually releasing the popular punk/metal hybrid albums Blood Visions and Watch Me Fall in 2009. Tragically, the next year a likely overdose took his life, a loss that the city still mourns. But Trout had already struck out on her own years before, recruiting Bishop and Bonds to found the River City Tanlines in 2004.

“I think the River City Tanlines is the most rock-and-roll band of any band I’ve ever been in,” Trout says today. “The Lost Sounds were just getting further and further from conventional songwriting, getting into time changes and epic outros and noise intros and all these layered keyboards. It really came down to me thinking, ‘Man, I just want to do something simple and fun.’ Going back to basic songwriting with a good verse or chorus riff. And then Terrence and Bubba put their rock experience twist on it.”

The Son of Slam rhythm section was perfect for Trout, for whom the “punk” label never was quite appropriate. “Whenever I’m put in with punk,” she notes, “the only thing I can think of is the Ramones, Blondie, and maybe The Velvet Underground — the New York definition of that word. Other than that, I only like smatterings of punk. It’s not me at all.”

We Will, We Will Rock Us

Despite all labels and market trends, artists like Selvidge and Trout epitomize hard rock’s staying power. The River City Tanlines still play today, as does Trout’s other group, Sweet Knives. That band’s 2022 album Spritzerita is a masterful punk/hard rock hybrid not unlike the Lost Sounds and, as Trout explains, that’s no accident. “I formed Sweet Knives to play all the Lost Sounds songs that had been put to sleep,” she says. “But it wasn’t long until [original Lost Sounds drummer] Rich Crook and I started writing songs together.” Now they continue with an evolving lineup.

Other bands that began in the ’90s have enjoyed similar longevity. The 30-year-old band Pezz, who, according to the Flyer’s Chris McCoy, has always had “a melodic streak that endeared them to pop-punk fans,” continues to play today and is featured in the MoSH exhibit. And the Subteens, who also feature Bonds on drums, have soldiered on for nearly as long, releasing what is perhaps their greatest work, Vol. 4: Dashed Hopes & Good Intentions, only last year. It’s full of “propulsive anthems, driving riffs, and soaring solos that offer portraits of an underground community teetering between hope, exultation, rage, and despair,” as noted in the Flyer.

Still more groups straddling punk and hard rock have sprouted up in the past decade and a half, including the Dirty Streets, whose rocking guitar sound harks back to the Faces or The Rolling Stones; HEELS, who combined Clash-like politics with up-tempo riffs in last year’s masterpiece, Pop Songs for a Dying Planet; Opossums, who skew towards pop punk melodicism in their latest, Bite; and the duo Turnstyles, who’ve perfected the rock sound in its most minimalist expression: a guitarist and a drummer, both of whom sing.

Simultaneously, some masterful guitarists are keeping the classic rock spirit alive here. The originals on Robert Allen Parker’s recent double album, The River’s Invitation, mine a classic mash-up of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and the Allman Brothers. Mama Honey, a trio led by guitarist Tamar Love, relies on her Hendrix-inspired, unabashedly rock-and-funk-fueled riffs.

And no group tours more regularly than Joecephus and the George Jonestown Massacre, the brainchild of guitarist Joey Killingsworth, who’s specialized in masterminding charity albums that draw on cameos from the metal, rock, and punk worlds (such as J.D. Pinkus from the Butthole Surfers), often in tributes to classic ’70s rockers like Black Oak Arkansas and Nazareth (with an MC5 tribute to be released later this year). Killingsworth is also the axe man behind A Thousand Lights, who started as a Stooges cover band but soon morphed into an original goth rock band in their own right.

Perhaps the clearest sign that hard rock is rooted here for good is the revival Tora Tora has enjoyed in recent years, having released an album of all new material, Bastards of Beale, in 2019 — still with the original four members that met in high school. “There’s still an audience here that I’m playing to, and they’re like super fans,” says Corder. “They’re super passionate. We jumped on the Monsters of Rock Cruise for the first time back in 2017, and man it was the most awesome experience. We’ve rediscovered our heavy metal tribe.”

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Music Music Blog

Greg Cartwright Opens Up About Songwriting and His Hit Black Keys Co-Writer

Greg Cartwright appears Thursday at Halloran Centre (Photo courtesy Orpheum Theatre Group)

Fair warning: there’s an undeniable bias in my reportage here, being a frequent band mate and collaborator with the subject of the interview below, native Memphian Greg Cartwright. And yet a certain historical imperative compels me to document the details of this songwriter’s process when his work is deemed so notable by critics and fans alike. That became eminently clear this spring, when a song Cartwright co-wrote with the Black Keys, “Wild Child,” topped Billboard’s adult alternative airplay chart. It was a level of success that’s long eluded an artist who’s typically had more critical acclaim than financial windfall. Yet tomorrow, when the Black Keys appear at the Radians Amphitheater at Memphis Botanic Gardens for Mempho Fest, Cartwright will be able to hear the song echoing through the air from his back yard. Will he raise a toast to the Memphis night?

Moreover, this evening, Thursday, September 29th, Cartwright will join Don Bryant and Alicja Trout in the season opener of Mark Edgar Stuart’s Memphis Songwriters Series at the Halloran Centre, with all three artists performing examples of their craft without a band, in the round. At such a moment, how could I resist calling up my old pal Greg to ask him his thoughts on the songwriter’s craft, in all its intricacies and rewards?

Greg Cartwright (Credit: Graham Winchester)

Memphis Flyer: You’ll be appearing with a national treasure, soul singer Don Bryant, on Thursday. How do you relate to his work?

Greg Cartwright: Don’s got an amazing voice and range, and boy that guy can sell a song. It’s amazing! And I love that he and Scott Bomar have this cool relationship, where Scott is Don’s producer and bandleader, and I think that’s such a cool older guy/younger guy relationship. And it’s win/win both ways. Scott’s got great skills, too. And he’s going to be at the event, I think, playing guitar while Don sings his stuff.

Also, I’m a huge Lowman Pauling and “5” Royales fan, so for me, it’s cool to work with somebody who wrote a song for them. It’s as close as I’m ever gonna get to doing anything with somebody who was there when all that magical era of gospel and R&B was happening. And Don’s an amazing songwriter. I love all his songs, from the 50’s on, including the more recent stuff that Scott’s produced. And the Willie Mitchell stuff — all great. I know he’s going to really bring it. I’m a little bit intimidated, to be honest. I don’t know if I can sell a song quite as well as he can.

Don Bryant (Credit: Jacob Blickinstaff)

There’s a certain spirit in that older school of songwriting that you have really zeroed in on and emulated.

Yeah, I really have. A lot of Don’s generation is what inspired me, in a lot of ways, to write in the way that I write. So I take a lot more inspiration from that era of country and rhythm and blues as a songwriter. I’ve always tried, when I have an opportunity to perform with or alongside artists from that generation, because I know there’s something I can learn in person that I can’t glean from a record.

You can kind of see how they embody what they do.

Yeah. Listening to records is great. You can get a lot from that, like you can get a lot from reading a book. But to be able to have a conversation with Hemingway would be a lot different. I can talk to him and understand more where the person is coming from. I always find it interesting to meet performers from that era, because it’s a little more insight into what makes the magic happen.

That era of songwriting has influenced you going back at least as far as the Compulsive Gamblers, and even through your Oblivians work.

You know, Jack [Yarber/Oblivian] and I had already done rock and roll, folk, country, all kinds of R&B and all kinds of other stuff with the Gamblers. So when Eric [Friedl] joined us and we did the Oblivians, it was a pretty late-blooming punk band. We were already adults. It was kind of a fake punk band, is what it was. The idea was, “What is punk music? It’s discontent.” So there were a lot of songs about what you don’t want to do [laughs]. And we took a lot of inspiration from the Ramones. That was Joey’s thing: I don’t wanna do this, I don’t wanna go there, “I’m Against It.” Him telling you what he’s not going to do. And that was an inspiration for the Oblivians. A template, if you will.

You’ve mentioned before that you Oblivians thought of your band as both fun and funny. There was a sense of humor to it.

Yeah, there totally was. It was an opportunity to laugh at life. There are some things in life where you can either laugh or cry. And there’s some very dark material in the Oblivians’ catalog. We took a lot of inspiration from the Fugs, which is a very tongue in cheek critique of society, as well as the Last Poets, also with a heavy critique of society, particularly the racist society in the United States. And you might laugh, and then find yourself going, “God, I shouldn’t laugh at that. That’s horrible!” But it is part of looking at what’s going on around you and trying to find some way to think about it that’s not just sad. But yeah, there’s a lot of dark stuff in the Oblivians. And I’m glad I had a platform to do that stuff when I was younger, because I don’t think I have it in me to laugh at a lot of that stuff at this point in my life.

You’ve talked about how with the last Reigning Sound studio album, you were trying to write in a more positive way.

Yeah, that was a big goal for me; because the pandemic, for a lot of people and a lot of songwriters, was a reset button, where it’s one thing to gripe in songs, or complain, but when you’re faced with some kind of new reality where you don’t even get to be around people, well, you stop complaining and you want to find something to be appreciative about. And that’s a better way of putting it. I was looking to appreciate. There are many things out there that are obstacles, always, but if you’re curious about what is happening around you, and you’re appreciative of the good things that come your way…

For a lot of my life, I thought that the gift I had was that I was very good at emoting whatever pain I was experiencing, in a way that other people seemed to relate to. There are a lot of songwriters like that. They really know how to put that into words, and emote it in a way that elicits a response from other people, where they totally empathize. So a lot of times, I would just be in this kind of trance onstage, sort of crying in public, in a way, and people responded to that. And I can’t say I grew out of it. It wasn’t a natural thing. I would have stayed that way if I hadn’t done a lot of work. But on the back side of that work, I wondered if I could also be just as good at emoting appreciation.

A sense of curiosity is important to that kind of openness, isn’t it?

It really is.

I’ve talked to Don Bryant about this, and also William Bell. Certain writers have this curiosity and this empathy, listening to and absorbing others’ stories. William Bell described sitting in cafes, just people-watching and getting song ideas.

That’s very true a lot of times; it’s so important to be curious, listening to people’s stories, because that’s how you find new subject matter. If you were confined to your personal autobiography, that’s pretty limited. I remember that someone once asked Jack [Oblivian], “Where do you get ideas for your songs?” He was like, “Small talk in bars.” Local gossip! If you keep your ears open, there’s plenty out there to write about. There’s plenty of new ways to frame an age old story, if you’re curious enough to see all the options, all the twists and turns.

Alicja Trout (Photo courtesy Orpheum Theatre Group)

You’ve known and worked with Alicja Trout for decades now, haven’t you?

A long time! Yeah, so when Lorette Velvette left the Alluring Strange, Randy Reinke took her place. And then I took Randy’s place, and played with them for a couple years. Then I started the Oblivians and started to get busy with that, and Alicja Trout was learning guitar, and it was my job to teach her the Alluring Strange songs, so she could take my place. And that’s how we got to know each other: teaching her songs for Misty White’s band. So there you go, Misty White is the Kevin Bacon of Memphis! [laughs]

Alicja was just learning guitar, and it’s amazing that she’s come so far. It wasn’t that much later, maybe five years or so, that she was doing her own stuff and playing with Jay [Reatard]. But even before she played with Jay, she had a band called Girls on Fire, and that was her and Claudine, who played guitar with Tav [Falco]. They had a band together. And boy, when I saw them for the first time, I called Larry Hardy at In The Red the next day and said, “I found a band I want to record, send me some money!” But before I could make it happen, they broke up. [laughs].

And even at that time, I thought, “Wow, she has really come a long way.” And it really amazed me. She had surpassed me as a guitar player, as far as what she could do as a lead guitarist. Because I’m very limited. For me, I’m always accompanying myself so I can perform a song. I’m not a great lead player. I enjoy the challenge, but I would never say I’m very good at it. But there are just some people that really take to something. They’re really passionate about it, and just want to do it, so I guess she must have wanted it. It didn’t take her very long to become a very good guitar player.

You and Alicja both have one foot in the punk world, the heavier rock world…

Aggression.

Yeah! But you both also step back and write these very delicate songs. Like Alicja’s beautiful “Howlin'” on the album of the same name; it’s mostly just her vocals and quiet electric guitar.

I like a bigger palette, and I think she does, too. As for me, I’m so in love with songwriting. It’s been such a helpful tool for me in my life, in so many ways, to process things, that the bigger palette I have, the better I can express myself. And I’m not very concerned with commercial success. So that gives me even less limitations. I think a lot of artists become very limited stylistically because they’re trying to define themselves as a certain kind of performer, or a certain kind of artist. And there’s no shame in that, but you have to have one eye on the marketplace to do that.

The Black Keys appear at Mempho Fest on Friday, September 30. (Credit: Jim Herrington)

How did your collaboration with the Black Keys come about?

I met them a long time ago, probably about 15 years ago. They were traveling with The Hentchmen from Detroit. So when the Hentchmen played Asheville, they told me Dan Auerbach was a huge fan and wanted to meet me. So Esther and I went to the show and afterwards we had an impromptu jam session, with myself, the Black Keys, and the Hentchmen, and we had a great time and got to be pretty friendly. And I hesitate to say this, but he basically said to me how inspiring he found my work. And that’s a massive compliment. Whether it’s the Hives or the Black Keys or whoever — people who’ve actually had success — for them to say to me, “Wow, you’re a huge inspiration to me, a lot of my art comes from emulating some of the things I hear in your music.”

But it’s an even bigger compliment when someone gets to a successful point in their career, and they say “Hey, would you like to come help me work on these productions and songs?” Dan thought enough of my songwriting that he not only wanted it in the Black Keys, but wanted me to help him with other artists he was working with. I really appreciated that. It helped me in so many ways. It gave me a new income stream, just to have a song credit on a Black Keys record is no small thing, especially if it’s a hit. And “Wild Child” was a hit. The synch license requests are still coming in daily.

But also, I think it opened me up to the idea of collaboration in a way that I had not allowed myself before. So around the beginning of the pandemic, I said I tried to focus more on appreciation, and that was a huge moment of growth. But then doing all these co-writing sessions with Dan also represented a lot of growth for me.

Prior to that, being in so many rock bands … When you’re in a band together, you spend too much time together, and eventually some things end acrimoniously. It was definitely that way for me. Prior to the Reigning Sound, the Oblivians spent too much time together and started to get on each other’s nerves. Then Jack and I went back to the Gamblers for a while, and we thought we could do that, but we quickly found out that we still, underneath it all, needed to get away from each other.

The now-defunct Reigning Sound in 2003 (cover photo by Dan Ball)

So when I started the Reigning Sound, my idea was that I would start a band where I would be the benevolent dictator, and everybody would have to do what I said. And I would be good to everybody, I would pay everybody fairly and be equal, but it would just be my songs and the covers I picked. I had never been the boss before, but at that point in my life, I needed that level of total control. Because I didn’t trust people. I had been burnt, I had had relationships that crumbled. And this kind of happens in romantic relationships, too, where you get to the point where you think, “I just need to be in control. I can’t relinquish any control because I might get hurt”. If you can’t be vulnerable, being in control is kind of the obvious option. And luckily I met you and Greg [Roberson] and Jeremy [Scott], and you guys were cool with that. You’re all great songwriters, so to find a bunch of talented people who understand music and get where you’re coming from, who aren’t going to be angry that you don’t want to consider their songs, that’s tricky. And for that same reason, it can’t last forever.

And I came to a point where, when I wrote this last record [A Little More Time with Reigning Sound], I thought, this is a much more positive side of my songwriting, but it’s also the last great burst, for a while, of me needing to have a band where it’s just me and my vision all the time. Now what I really want is to learn how to be vulnerable with other people, and to open up to other people’s ideas. Right now, I really want to do that. You have to tread lightly, and pick people that you trust. You have to pick people that feel safe, and then you can be vulnerable, and then you can be playful.

Did your collaboration with Dan Auerbach begin during the pandemic?

It did. His engineer Alan called and said, “Dan would really like you to come and write. Are you available these days?” So I went, and I had no idea what we would be doing, or who I’d be writing with or for. I assumed it was Dan; I thought maybe it was a solo record or something.

So I got there, and Dan said, this guy Marcus King is going to be here in a half hour and we’re going to write. And it kind of scared me! But as soon as Marcus got there, he was so friendly and open and funny that we had a great time. We got right to it and had four songs in a day. And a little while later, Dan called me back to work with another guy he’d signed, Early James. And we ended up doing two writing sessions together.

And after that, Dan said, ‘I’ve got another one.’ I asked him who it would be with, and he said, ‘It’s the Black Keys.’ [laughs]. So I went and we talked about some song ideas. He played me some jams that he and Pat [Carney] had recorded, with some hooks and stuff. So I went home, sat with them for a couple ideas, thought about lyric ideas, song ideas, chord changes that might be beneficial to the riffs that they had. And I went back and we sat around that day and wrote the rest of the songs. And I wasn’t sure what was going to happen at that point, but they just walked into the other room immediately and started recording. It was instantaneous. They recorded them just as we had worked it out together, then Dan put down a vocal, and that was it, we were done.

I’ve never experienced anything like that in my life! Usually you write a song and there’s weeks or months in between that moment of inspiration and when it gets laid down on tape. But Dan loves the idea of catching something when it’s fresh. There’s some kind of magic there that you might lose if you continue to play and record it. And I think that’s what makes the Black Keys work, especially when you listen back to their earliest stuff, that’s kind of raw and live, like the early Oblivians stuff. There’s not a lot of production going on, and not a lot of adjusting it after the fact. It is what it is.

It also speaks to how carefully you crafted it right out of the gate.

Right, you did all your thinking already. And I think Dan’s very much like the early Billy Sherrill and Rick Hall and all those people. They’re his heroes. And back in their heyday, pre-production was everything, because you couldn’t do much once it was on the tape. It was so limited, track-wise. So pre-production was everything. Where are the mics gonna go? Are you gonna play loud or soft? How are you going to sing it? Everything had to be figured out before the tape rolled. And then you got what you got. And I think Dan appreciates that way of thinking. He tracks live to one inch 8-track, the same as the last few records I’ve made. I’m enamored with it as well. I love the idea of planning everything out on the front and then just recording it.

With something like “Wild Child,” some people may not associate it with ‘great songwriting,’ because it’s more primitive. It’s not, say, Leonard Cohen-style lyrics or whatever, but a lot of craftsmanship really goes into riff-oriented songs as well, doesn’t it?

Yeah. The song is two chords. It’s about as simple as a song can be. To me, that requires even more work. How do you build all these dynamics and cliffhangers and hooks and everything if it’s just the same two chords over and over? So it’s almost more challenging to make a really fun ride out of those two and half minutes. And I think that’s how people used to work back in the day. Now artists and musicians have the option of, “Well, you can lay down the basic track and continue to tweak it and add things and take things away, ad nauseam.” That is definitely a way to build a song. But it doesn’t really speak to me. And also, it’s exhausting. Because you’re never really sure when you’re done. If you’re doing all this stuff after you record it, editing and stuff, where do you stop? The way people used to do it, when you stopped was when it was recorded, and then you just mixed it.

It must have been very gratifying to go through that process in a day or two, and have one of those songs become a hit.

Yeah, it’s been a real experience, to say the least. I knew the date it was coming out, and I was really anticipating it, almost voyeuristically, like, “Boy, nobody knows I’m part of this, and I get to just watch it all happen.” But then it came out and all this press came out, and there was my name in every interview, talking about the process and my songwriting. So I felt a little bit vulnerable in a way I wasn’t anticipating, which was a little scary. I thought I was just gonna be a name in a credit on a record label. I didn’t think they’d actually talk about me. But I was also really appreciative of that, once I became comfortable with it. They were trying to tell the world I’m a good songwriter. What a nice thing to do.

I always enjoyed the feeling of sitting in the audience at a Big Ass Truck show, say, watching my songs be performed by others.

I know what you mean. There is that feeling of like, “This will stand!” This will stand on its own. I don’t have to be there animating it. It’s not me, it’s the song. And that is a great, great feeling. You’ve built something that will last, and that other people can inhabit. People will empathize so much with the lyric that they want to deliver it themselves.

Categories
Music Music Features

Alicja-Pop: Howlin’ From a Place of Wilderness

Alicja Trout (Photo: self portrait)

If you find yourself in the waiting room of the Utopia Animal Hospital, cast your eye over the informal exhibit of nature-inspired artwork there. The studies of wolves, foxes, and other creatures in near-tropical landscapes dotted with neon trees and flowers will draw you into their own universe. But what’s really striking is the art’s backstory: It’s all created by badass no-wave rocker Alicja Trout, perhaps best known as Jay Reatard’s collaborator in the Lost Sounds, later a key creator behind such propulsive bands as the River City Tanlines and the Sweet Knives.

Completists also know of Trout’s other works, which mine a different sonic territory, going back to the sweetly naive-yet-arch synth-pop of The Clears, and her solo singles on Loverly Music, under the name Alicja. That side of Trout, now known as Alicja-pop, was still going strong in 2016 with the release of Rats (Home Recordings 2009-2013), its sounds echoed by cover art depicting the artist up against a wall with a synth. Reflecting on the look and feel of that album, Trout says she was striving “to make a cover that fit the aesthetic of the music I was associated with.”

Which brings us to Howlin’, Alicja-pop’s new LP on Black and Wyatt Records, which sports a cover more in-line with her fantastical animal studies from Utopia. The songs, too, have an earthier feel, even if the overall mix of guitar-driven and synth-driven music is consistent between both albums. (Indeed, the versions of “Shadow Hills” on both releases are nearly identical.) And the album is already turning heads. As Henry Rollins himself has said, “Howlin’ is not only a great collection of songs, but balances her considerable skills excellently. It’s a very cool record.”

“Balance” is the key. Though Rats certainly featured guitar-heavy rockers, Howlin’ ventures further into the sonic possibilities of the guitar, from the classic rock strut of “Glass Planet, Blank Space Mind” to the wistful ostinatos of the title track. And there’s ecological balance as well: Both the album cover and the title song reflect Trout’s deepening embrace of the nonhuman world, or what Trout calls “natural inspiration.”

“It could just be progressing through life, getting older. I used to love city life, but the noise started driving me nuts,” she says. In contrast, she found respite in nature. “There’s an escape when you cultivate your wild garden. And I’ll obsess on different animals.” One need only look at her paintings of dogs, wolves, and foxes to see it. “They’ve always interested me as being the top of the food chain before humans came and controlled all that. They’re the main balancer in the ecosystem, the wisest hunters. They have a complex group and pack. And they also get along with humans. Even going as far as human children being raised by wolves. People don’t give canines credit for their abilities and sensitivity. So I think some of that little world was getting incorporated into the art.”

By “art,” Trout means both her visual and musical ventures. Taking it a step further, she considers the creative act itself to be an expression of nature. “Just making music, what’s guiding you?” she asks. “It’s nature that’s guiding you. How do you pick what chord goes next? And why do those three or four or five chords all sound good together? It’s just something having to do with nature, the same way you throw a bunch of zinnia seeds in the ground and they all grow together, all a little different, yet similar. And everyone agrees that they’re pleasing: The bees and different creatures come to them, and this different system is going on. I think it’s related.”

That natural reverie may be why, when asked if these songs emerged from the isolation of quarantine, Trout can’t quite say. “I just try to go into this space of alone time where it’s almost like meditation, except you’re doing something the whole time. And I really can’t place where I was in time at the time because the memory in my head is just this space of recording. It has nothing to do with what’s going on around me. So the memories from 2015 and 2018 and 2021 would all look the same in my head.”

Alicja-pop will play a record release show with full band at B-Side Memphis, Friday, November 12th.

Categories
Cover Feature News

2021: Here’s Looking at You

If 2020 was the year of despair, 2021 appears to be the year of hope.

Wanna see what that could look like? Cast your gaze to Wuhan, China, birthplace of COVID-19.

News footage from Business Insider shows hundreds of carefree young people gathered in a massive swimming pool, dancing and splashing at a rock concert. They are effortlessly close together and there’s not a mask in sight. Bars and restaurants are packed with maskless revelers. Night markets are jammed. Business owners smile, remember the bleak times, and say the worst is behind them. How far behind? There’s already a COVID-19 museum in Wuhan.

That could be Memphis (once again) one day. But that day is still likely months off. Vaccines arrived here in mid-December. Early doses rightfully went to frontline healthcare workers. Doses for the masses won’t likely come until April or May, according to health experts.

While we still cannot predict exactly “what” Memphians will be (can be?) doing next year, we can tell you “where” they might be doing it. New places will open their doors next year, and Memphis is set for some pretty big upgrades.

But it doesn’t stop there. “Memphis has momentum” was Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s catchphrase as he won a second term for the office last October. It did. New building projects bloomed like the Agricenter’s sunflowers. And it still does. Believe it or not, not even COVID-19 could douse developers’ multi-million-dollar optimism on the city.

Here are few big projects slated to open in 2021:

Renasant Convention Center

Throughout 2020, crews have been hard at work inside and outside the building once called the Cook Convention Center.

City officials and Memphis Tourism broke ground on a $200-million renovation project for the building in January 2020. The project will bring natural light and color to the once dark and drab convention center built in 1974. The first events are planned for the Renasant Convention Center in the new year.

Memphis International Airport

Memphis International Airport

Expect the ribbon to be cut on Memphis International Airport’s $245-million concourse modernization project in 2021. The project was launched in 2014 in an effort to upgrade the airport’s concourse to modern standards and to right-size the space after Delta de-hubbed the airport.

Once finished, all gates, restaurants, shops, and more will be located in a single concourse. The space will have higher ceilings, more natural light, wider corridors, moving walkways, children’s play areas, a stage for live music, and more.

Collage Dance Collective

The beautiful new building on the corner of Tillman and Sam Cooper is set to open next year in an $11-million move for the Collage Dance Collective.

The 22,000-square-foot performing arts school will feature five studios, office space, a dressing room, a study lounge, 70 parking spaces, and a physical therapy area.

The Memphian Hotel

The Memphian Hotel

A Facebook post by The Memphian Hotel reads, “Who is ready for 2021?” The hotel is, apparently. Developers told the Daily Memphian recently that the 106-room, $24-million hotel is slated to open in April.

“Walking the line between offbeat and elevated, The Memphian will give guests a genuine taste of Midtown’s unconventional personality, truly capturing the free spirit of the storied art district in which the property sits,” reads a news release.

Watch for work to begin next year on big projects in Cooper-Young, the Snuff District, Liberty Park, Tom Lee Park, and The Walk. — Toby Sells

Book ‘Em

After the Spanish flu epidemic and World War I came a flood of convention-defying fiction as authors wrestled with the trauma they had lived through. E.M. Forster confronted colonialism and rigid gender norms in A Passage to India. Virginia Woolf published Mrs. Dalloway. James Joyce gave readers Ulysses. Langston Hughes’ first collection, The Weary Blues, was released.

It’s too early to tell what authors and poets will make of 2020, a year in which America failed to contain the coronavirus. This reader, though, is eager to see what comes.

Though I’ve been a bit too nervous to look very far into 2021 (I don’t want to jinx it, you know?), there are a few books already on my to-read list. First up, I’m excited for MLK50 founding managing editor Deborah Douglas’ U.S. Civil Rights Trail, due in January. Douglas lives in Chicago now, but there’s sure to be some Memphis in that tome.

Next, Ed Tarkington’s The Fortunate Ones, also due in January, examines privilege and corruption on Nashville’s Capitol Hill. Early reviews have compared Tarkington to a young Pat Conroy. For anyone disappointed in Tennessee’s response to any of this year’s crises, The Fortunate Ones is not to be missed.

Most exciting, perhaps, is the forthcoming Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda prose anthology, expected February 2nd. The anthology is edited by Memphis-born journalist Jesse J. Holland, and also features a story by him, as well as Memphians Sheree Renée Thomas, Troy L. Wiggins, and Danian Darrell Jerry.

“To be in pages with so many Memphis writers just feels wonderful,” Thomas told me when I called her to chat about the good news. “It’s a little surreal, but it’s fun,” Jerry adds, explaining that he’s been a Marvel comics fan since childhood. “I get to mix some of those childhood imaginings with some of the skills I’ve worked to acquire over the years.”

Though these books give just a glimpse at the literary landscape of the coming year, if they’re any indication of what’s to come, then, if nothing else, Memphians will have more great stories to look forward to. — Jesse Davis

Courtesy Memphis Redbirds

AutoZone Park

Take Me Out With the Crowd

Near the end of my father’s life, we attended a Redbirds game together at AutoZone Park. A few innings into the game, Dad turned to me and said, “I like seeing you at a ballpark. I can tell your worries ease.”

Then along came 2020, the first year in at least four decades that I didn’t either play in a baseball game or watch one live, at a ballpark, peanuts and Cracker Jack a soft toss away. The pandemic damaged most sports over the last 12 months, but it all but killed minor-league baseball, the small-business version of our national pastime, one that can’t lean on television and sponsorship revenue to offset the loss of ticket-buying fans on game day. AutoZone Park going a year without baseball is the saddest absence I’ve felt in Memphis culture since moving to this remarkable town in 1991. And I’m hoping today — still 2020, dammit — that 2021 marks a revival, even if it’s gradual. In baseball terms, we fans will take a base on balls to get things going before we again swing for the fences.

All indications are that vaccines will make 2021 a better year for gathering, be it at your favorite watering hole or your favorite ballpark. Indications also suggest that restrictions will remain in place well into the spring and summer (baseball season). How many fans can a ballpark host and remain safe? How many fans will enjoy the “extras” of an evening at AutoZone Park — that sunset over the Peabody, that last beer in the seventh inning — if a mask must be worn as part of the experience? And what kind of operation will we see when the gates again open? Remember, these are small businesses. Redbirds president Craig Unger can be seen helping roll out the tarp when a July thunderstorm interrupts the Redbirds and Iowa Cubs. What will “business as usual” mean for Triple-A baseball as we emerge from the pandemic?

I wrote down three words and taped them up on my home-office wall last March: patience, determination, and empathy. With a few more doses of each — and yes, millions of doses of one vaccine or another — the sports world will regain crowd-thrilling normalcy. For me, it will start when I take a seat again in my happy place. It’s been a long, long time, Dad, since my worries properly eased.— Frank Murtaugh

Film in 2021: Don’t Give up Hope

“Nobody knows anything.” Never has William Goldman’s immortal statement about Hollywood been more true. Simply put, 2020 was a disaster for the industry. The pandemic closed theaters and called Hollywood’s entire business model into question. Warner Brothers’ announcement that it would stream all of its 2021 offerings on HBO Max sent shock waves through the industry. Some said it was the death knell for theaters.

I don’t buy it. Warner Brothers, owned by AT&T and locked in a streaming war with Netflix and Disney, are chasing the favor of Wall Street investors, who love the rent-seeking streaming model. But there’s just too much money on the table to abandon theaters. 2019 was a record year at the box office, with $42 billion in worldwide take, $11.4 billion of which was from North America. Theatrical distribution is a proven business model that has worked for 120 years. Netflix, on the other hand, is $12 billion in debt.

Will audiences return to theaters once we’ve vaccinated our way out of the coronavirus-shaped hole we’re in? Prediction at this point is a mug’s game, but signs point to yes. Tenet, which will be the year’s biggest film, grossed $303 million in overseas markets where the virus was reasonably under control. In China, where the pandemic started, a film called My People, My Homeland has brought in $422 million since October 1st. I don’t know about y’all, but once I get my jab, they’re going to have to drag me out of the movie theater.

There will be quite a bit to watch. With the exception of Wonder Woman 1984, the 2020 blockbusters were pushed to 2021, including Dune, Spielberg’s West Side Story remake, the latest James Bond installment No Time to Die, Marvel’s much-anticipated Black Widow, Top Gun: Maverick, and Godzilla vs. Kong. Memphis director Craig Brewer’s second film with Eddie Murphy, the long-awaited Coming 2 America, will bow on Amazon March 5th, with the possibility of a theatrical run still in the cards.

There’s no shortage of smaller, excellent films on tap. Regina King’s directorial debut One Night in Miami, about a meeting between Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown, premieres January 15th. Minari, the stunning story of Korean immigrants in rural Arkansas, which was Indie Memphis 2020’s centerpiece film, lands February 12th. The Bob’s Burgers movie starts cooking April 9th. And coolest of all, next month Indie Memphis will partner with Sundance to bring the latest in cutting-edge cinema to the Malco Summer Drive-In. There’s plenty to be hopeful for in the new year. — Chris McCoy

Looking Ahead: Music

We usually highlight the upcoming hot concerts in this space, but those are still on the back burner. Instead, get a load of these stacks of hot wax (and streams) dropping next year. Remember, the artists get a better share when you purchase rather than stream, especially physical product like vinyl.

Alysse Gafkjen

Julien Baker

One of the biggest-profile releases will be Julien Baker’s Little Oblivians, due out on Matador in February. Her single “Faith Healer” gives us a taste of what to expect. Watch the Flyer for more on that soon. As for other drops from larger indie labels, Merge will offer up A Little More Time with Reigning Sound in May (full disclosure: this all-Memphis version of the band includes yours truly).

Closer to home, John Paul Keith’s The Rhythm of the City also drops in February, co-released by hometown label Madjack and Italian imprint Wild Honey. Madjack will also offer up albums by Mark Edgar Stuart and Jed Zimmerman, the latter having been produced by Stuart. Matt Ross-Spang is mixing Zimmerman’s record, and there’s much buzz surrounding it (but don’t worry, it’s properly grounded).

Jeremy Stanfill mines similar Americana territory, and he’ll release new work on the Blue Barrel imprint. Meanwhile, look for more off-kilter sounds from Los Psychosis and Alicja Trout’s Alicja-Pop project, both on Black & Wyatt. That label will also be honored with a compilation of their best releases so far, by Head Perfume out of Dresden. On the quieter side of off-kilter, look for Aquarian Blood’s Sending the Golden Hour on Goner in May.

Bruce Watson’s Delta-Sonic Sound studio has been busy, and affiliated label Bible & Tire Recording Co. will release a big haul of old-school gospel, some new, some archival, including artists Elizabeth King and Pastor Jack Ward, and compilations from the old J.C.R. and D-Vine Spiritual labels. Meanwhile, Big Legal Mess will drop new work from singer/songwriter Alexa Rose and, in March, Luna 68 — the first new album from the City Champs in 10 years. Expect more groovy organ and guitar boogaloo jazz from the trio, with a heaping spoonful of science-fiction exotica to boot.

Many more artists will surely be releasing Bandcamp singles, EPs, and more, but for web-based content that’s thinking outside of the stream, look for the January premiere of Unapologetic’s UNDRGRNDAF RADIO, to be unveiled on weareunapologetic.com and their dedicated app. — Alex Greene

Chewing Over a Tough Year

Beware the biohazard.

Samuel X. Cicci

The Beauty Shop

Perhaps a bit hyperbolic, but the image that pops into my head when thinking about restaurants in 2020 are the contagion-esque geo-domes that Karen Carrier set up on the back patio of the Beauty Shop. A clever conceit, but also a necessary one — a move designed to keep diners safe and separated when going out to eat. If it all seems a little bizarre, well, that’s what 2020 was thanks to COVID-19.

We saw openings, closings, restrictions, restrictions lifted, restrictions then put back in place; the Memphis Restaurant Association and Shelby County Health Department arguing back and forth over COVID guidelines, with both safety and survival at stake; and establishments scrambling to find creative ways to drum up business. The Beauty Shop domes were one such example. The Reilly’s Downtown Majestic Grille, on the other hand, transformed into Cocozza, an Italian ghost concept restaurant put into place until it was safe to reopen Majestic in its entirety. Other places, like Global Café, put efforts in place to help provide meals to healthcare professionals or those who had fallen into financial hardship during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, not every restaurant was able to survive the pandemic. The popular Lucky Cat Ramen on Broad Ave. closed its doors, as did places like Puck Food Hall, 3rd & Court, Avenue Coffee, Midtown Crossing Grill, and many others.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Working in the hospitality business requires a certain kind of resilience, and that showed up in spades. Many restaurants adapted to new regulations quickly, and with aplomb, doing their best to create a safe environment for hungry Memphians all while churning out takeout and delivery orders.

And even amid a pandemic backdrop, many aspiring restaurateurs tried their hand at opening their own places. Chip and Amanda Dunham branched out from the now-closed Grove Grill to open Magnolia & May, a country brasserie in East Memphis. Just a few blocks away, a new breakfast joint popped up in Southall Café. Downtown, the Memphis Chess Club opened its doors, complete with a full-service café and restaurant. Down in Whitehaven, Ken and Mary Olds created Muggin Coffeehouse, the first locally owned coffee shop in the neighborhood. And entrepreneurial-minded folks started up their own delivery-only ventures, like Brittney Adu’s Furloaved Breads + Bakery.

So what will next year bring? With everything thrown out of whack, I’m loath to make predictions, but with a vaccine on the horizon, I’m hoping (fingers crossed) that it becomes safer to eat out soon, and the restaurant industry can begin a long-overdue recovery. And to leave you with what will hopefully be a metaphor for restaurants in 2021: By next summer, Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman’s Hog & Hominy will complete its Phoenician rebirth from the ashes of a disastrous fire and open its doors once again.

In the meantime, keep supporting your local restaurants! — Samuel X. Cicci

“Your Tickets Will be at Will Call”

Oh, to hear those words again, and plenty of arts organizations are eager to say them. The pandemic wrecked the seasons for performing arts groups and did plenty of damage to museums and galleries.

Not that they haven’t made valiant and innovative efforts to entertain from afar with virtual programming.

But they’re all hoping to mount physical, not virtual, seasons in the coming year.

Playhouse on the Square suspended scheduled in-person stage productions until June 2021. This includes the 52nd season lineup of performances that were to be on the stages of Playhouse on the Square, The Circuit Playhouse, and TheatreWorks at the Square. It continues to offer the Playhouse at Home Series, digital content via its website and social media.

Theatre Memphis celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2021 and is eager to show off its new facility, a major renovation that was going to shut it down most of 2020 anyway while it expanded common spaces and added restrooms and production space while updating dressing rooms and administrative offices. But the hoped-for August opening was pushed back, and it plans to reschedule the programming for this season to next.

Hattiloo Theatre will continue to offer free online programming in youth acting and technical theater, and it has brought a five-week playwright’s workshop and free Zoom panel discussions with national figures in Black theater. Like the other institutions, it is eager to get back to the performing stage when conditions allow.

Ballet Memphis has relied on media and platforms that don’t require contact, either among audience members or dancers. But if there are fewer partnerings among dancers, there are more solos, and group movement is well-distanced. The organization has put several short pieces on video, releasing some and holding the rest for early next year. It typically doesn’t start a season until late summer or early fall, so the hope is to get back into it without missing a step.

Opera Memphis is active with its live Sing2Me program of mobile opera concerts and programming on social media. Its typical season starts with 30 Days of Opera in August that usually leads to its first big production of the season, so, COVID willing, that may emerge.

Courtesy Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Dana Claxton, Headdress at the Brooks earlier this year.

Museums and galleries, such as the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, National Civil Rights Museum, and the Metal Museum are functioning at limited capacity, but people can go and enjoy the offerings. The scope of the shows is limited, as coronavirus has put the kibosh on blockbuster shows for now. Look for easing of protocols as the situation allows in the coming year. — Jon W. Sparks

Politics

Oyez. Oyez. Oh yes, there is one year out of every four in which regularly scheduled elections are not held in Shelby County, and 2021 is such a year. But decisions will be made during the year by the Republican super-majority of the state legislature in Nashville that will have a significant bearing on the elections that will occur in the three-year cycle of 2022-2024 and, in fact, on those occurring through 2030.

This would be in the course of the constitutionally required ritual during which district lines are redefined every 10 years for the decade to come, in the case of legislative seats and Congressional districts. The U.S. Congress, on the basis of population figures provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, will have allocated to each state its appropriate share of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. And the state legislature will determine how that number is apportioned statewide. The current number of Tennessee’s Congressional seats is nine. The state’s legislative ratio is fixed at 99 state House members and 33 members of the state Senate.

Tennessee is one of 37 states in which, as indicated, the state legislature calls the shots for both Congressional and state redistricting. The resultant redistricting undergoes an approval process like any other measure, requiring a positive vote in both the state Senate and the state House, with the Governor empowered to consent or veto.

No one anticipates any disagreements between any branches of government. Any friction in the redistricting process will likely involve arguments over turf between neighboring GOP legislators. Disputes emanating from the minority Democrats will no doubt be at the mercy of the courts.

The forthcoming legislative session is expected to be lively, including holdover issues relating to constitutional carry (the scrapping of permits for firearms), private school vouchers (currently awaiting a verdict by the state Supreme Court), and, as always, abortion. Measures relating to the ongoing COVID crisis and vaccine distribution are expected, as is a proposal to give elected county executives primacy over health departments in counties where the latter exist.

There is no discernible disharmony between those two entities in Shelby County, whose government has devoted considerable attention over the last year to efforts to control the pandemic and offset its effects. Those will continue, as well as efforts to broaden the general inclusiveness of county government vis-à-vis ethnic and gender groups.

It is still a bit premature to speculate on future shifts of political ambition, except to say that numerous personalities, in both city and county government, are eyeing the prospects of succeeding Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland in 2023. And several Democrats are looking at a potential race against District Attorney General Amy Weirich in 2022.

There are strong rumors that, after a false start or two, Memphis will follow the lead of several East Tennessee co-ops and finally depart from TVA.

And meanwhile, in March, the aforesaid Tennessee Democrats will select a new chair from numerous applicants. — Jackson Baker

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Sweet Knives

Music Video Monday is coming in hot!

Today, we’ve got a world premiere from Sweet Knives. The group grew out of the wreckage of Lost Sounds, the legendary Memphis band that counted the late Jay Reatard as a founding member. Alicja Trout, Rich Crook, and John Garland got back together and added Eli Steele and Lori McStay to write and record new music. “Sweet Knives’ new batch of songs sounds different from the Lost Sounds dark-wave synth punk sound,” says Trout. “With this song in particular Rich [drums] wrote the core of the song and the guitar solo, then I built the melodies and lyrics from there. It’s a new approach for us. We don’t want to sound like Lost Sounds. We are a new band, though our set still includes a few old Lost Sounds songs.”

“I Don’t Wanna Die” has a personal meaning for Trout and the band. “Jay, as we know, died of substance complications. All of us are concerned for our health, and I think I speak for the band that we want long, healthy lives; we don’t want to live recklessly and have our lives end early as Jay’s did,” she says.

The video was directed by Laura Jean Hocking, shot by Sarah Fleming, and stars Shannon Walton as a pilot facing a bad situation. “This was a really enjoyable collaboration,” says Hocking. “The concept was Alicja’s idea, but I was given free rein. I’m very attracted to the image of a woman set adrift alone in the world.”

Music Video Monday: Sweet Knives

Sweet Knives sets out on a two-week tour of the Southwest and West Coast this week. Here’s where you can catch this don’t-miss live show.

-Friday, June 14, Little Rock, AR – White Water with Stifft Beat

-Saturday, June 15, Oklahoma City – Blue Note with Psychotic Reaction

-Sunday, June 16, Albuquerque, NM – Launchpad with The Ordinary Things and nowhiteflag

-Tuesday, June 18, San Diego, CA – Whistle Stop

-Wednesday, June 19, Long Beach, CA – 4th Street Vine with Assquatch

-Thursday, June 20, Los Angeles, CA – Cafe Nela with Guilty Hearts and Tenement Rats

-Friday, June 21, San Pedro, CA – Recess Ops with Lenguas Largas

-Saturday, June 22, San Francisco, CA – Parkside with Control Freaks and Dots

-Monday, June 24, El Centro, CA – Strangers

-Tuesday, June 25, Tempe, AZ – Yucca Tap Room with Lenguas Largas

-Wednesday, June 26, Tuscon, AZ – Club Congress with Lenguas Largas

-Thursday, June 27, El Paso, TX – Monarch Theater with Lenguas Largas

-Friday, June 28, Austin, TX – Barracuda outside with Lenguas Largas, Wiccans, more tba

-Saturday, June 29, New Orleans – Circle Bar with Manatees and Dummy Dumpster, Ponk Dance party DJs

If you’d like to see your music video on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Music Music Blog

Gonerfest 14: Thursday

After a blisteringly hot Cooper Young Festival, the weather for the Gonerfest opening ceremonies in the Cooper Young gazebo was just about perfect.

King Louis and Abe White rock the crowd at the Cooper Young gazebo for Gonerfest 14’s opening ceremonies.

The talent, however, was less cooperative. Gonerfest staple King Louis was scheduled to open the show with former Manatees and True Sons of Thunder member Abe White on drums, leading into Memphis legend Greg Oblivian Cartwright. Instead, Cartwright—in town from Asheville, North Carolina where he’s raising a brood of kids—opened up with some new songs in a more mellow mode, before being joined by Louis on drums for “Bad Man”, “North Cakalacky Girl”, and ‘Hey Hey Mama”. From there on, White, Cartwright, and King Louis swapped around in various configurations, calling out songs, (Louis’ rendition of “Streets of Iron”, a song he performed with Jay Reatard, has become a memorial tradition at Gonerfest) until the permit ran out. As Goner Records owner Zach Ives said, “There are no schedules in rock and roll”.

Goner Records’ Zach Ives and Greg Cartwright

At 9 PM, the party cranked up at the Hi Tone, where a mixed crowd of Memphians, and international visitors sipped the tasty Memphis Made Brewing Gonerfest beers: a Sessions IPA and the ever popular Gönerbraü. A man named Efe was in town from Toronto, Canada for his second Gonerfest. “One of the things I had to think of before coming was whether or not the political climate would effect it,” he says. “Those kinds of things have far reaching consequences.”

The Canadian wondered if the “Trump effect” had suppressed the number of international travelers coming to the festival. “Maybe people are bummed out,” he said. “But I’m here. There’s a lot of bands from Japan, a lot of bands from New Zealand. Other people have mentioned it, too.”

But after last year’s Gonerfest, Efe says he couldn’t bear missing it this year.  “It’s great. I wouldn’t be back if I didn’t like it! I love the aspect of discovery. Gonerfest has a mix of legendary bands—we know you know this, or, look it up—and a bunch of new bands that you look up on Soundcloud and go, holy shit, that’s awesome! That’s the most rewarding part. I hope they keep it that way. In America, you’re saturated with all these big music festivals, but it’s very generic, paint-by-numbers type stuff.”

Benni

The diversity of musical styles was evident from the beginning, with Benni, a new act on the Goner roster. The New Orleans-based keyboardist has played with several Goner-adjacent acts rock acts, but his debut album is all analog synths action.

Gonerfest 14: Thursday

By the time New Zealand screamers Blood Bags’ put a cap on their set, Efe’s turnout worries appeared to be misplaced, as the Hi Tone big room filled up.

Hi Tone crowd

Sweet Knives, the Memphis band made of some former Lost Sounds members, including Alicja Trout and Rich Crook, John Garland, and Jonny Valiant, played a blistering set of mostly new songs. The band was in rare form, and the crowd ate it up. Why doesn’t every 14 year old cool girl in America have Trout’s music in their playlists?

Gonerfest 14: Thursday (3)

Los Angeles’ Die Group kept the party rolling with the kind of chunky, muscular riffs that are Gonerfest specialties.

One of the most anticipated acts of the weekend was A Giant Dog, garage rock powerhouses from Austin. Singer Stephanie Ellis was all flailing limbs and piercing screams, grabbing the crowd from the first notes. The band had been hanging out with some folks from down under, so they climaxed their set with a spirited cover of INXS’ “Don’t Change”.

“This is my first Gonerfest,” she said later. “A Giant Dog has been together for nearly a decade. We’ve attended Gonerfest, and we wanted to play. We played the Hi Tone when there wasn’t anybody here. So this is our first Gonerfest, and it’s a damn fucking good one!”

Gonerfest 14: Thursday (2)

Gonerfester crashing after the first full day of rock.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Worst Gig Ever! Memphis musicians share the worst nights of their career.

Music is Memphis’ greatest export. But for the musicians, taking it on the road means long drives, long nights, and a lot of weirdness. It can be a hard life, full of ups and downs, but it sure makes for good stories. So we asked some of Memphis’ finest musicians to tell us about their Worst Gigs Ever.   

Amy LaVere

I think it was the Memphis Queen. It was this new concept for a river voyage: A group of cyclists boarded for what was supposed to be a three-day cycling/boating adventure down to New Orleans. They were to port in Memphis in the early mid-morning, then they would depart the boat to go on a 40-mile bike ride. Then they would get back on the boat and have dinner, and we would be the after-dinner entertainment for their cruise.

Then they were going to stop in Tunica, where we would disembark with our gear and get ourselves back to Memphis. So the gig required us driving our van to Tunica with someone following us to bring us back to Memphis.

We get on the boat and waited around for everyone to finish a Cajun buffet dinner that had beignets and etouffee and French bread and alcohol, after they’d finished a 40-mile bike ride. They’re pretty much done. So about two-thirds of the audience goes to bed.

So right before we play, the promoter wants to introduce the band. We’re all on stage, and he gets up there in front of us and proceeds to give a speech to the audience that takes 15 minutes. It included such things as how to operate the toilets in their cabins. And we’re just standing there, wondering what the hell is going on. And then we play, and we put everyone to sleep, and it’s so sad. There were literally people with their arms folded, dozing.

When we get to Tunica to disembark, they had not reserved a docking spot for the riverboat, and the dock was full. There’s no place to dock. There’s a rocky cliff that goes up to a sidewalk/boardwalk along the Mississippi. I’m in a dress and heels, mind you. So what they did was, they basically reversed the boat, trying to stay stationary. But it was still moving down the river! It was going, like, five MPH. They lowered a plank, and I get handed down to a deck hand onto a rocky cliff that I then have to climb up barefoot with my dress up to the top. They were helping us get our gear off, but they were still moving, so by the time they got it all off, we were like a quarter mile strung out down the sidewalk.

By this point, we have a more interested audience watching us disembark than were interested at all in hearing us play. Then we had to walk our gear, piece by piece, all the way back up to the parking place at the dock. I think we made $400 on that gig, in total. Certainly the most comical and worst gig of my life.

Eric Oblivian,
True Sons of Thunder

I’ve played in bands around the world. I’ve played in squats in Slovenia. I’ve played in Croatia where they had no money to give us. But the worst show I’ve ever done was right here in Memphis with True Sons of Thunder. At one point, we had a goal of playing every club in town, which included the Rally Point. We booked a show with some emo band from somewhere. We show up, and the place is dimly lit — no microphones. It was so dark, we couldn’t tell if the turd that was on stage was human or canine. The show went on, and we did the show without vocals. We just sang into the air. We did our set, got out of there, and to my knowledge, the turd was still there while the other band played.

Alicja Trout, Rich Crook, and
John Garland, the Lost Sounds/Sweet Knives

AT: There was one that was just an epic night of bad things happening. The Vibrators wanted to get on our show in Detroit at the Old Miami club. We were playing with the Piranhas and Guilty Pleasures. The Vibrators were playing down the street, and they had this promoter named Lacy, and he says, “We’re playing down the street, and there’s nobody at our show. Can we come down and play with you guys?” And we said, “No, we’ve already got three bands . . .”

RC: We eventually said yes, but we weren’t going to share any money. And the Vibrators were HORRIBLE that night.

AT: I had this Peavy amp that had a phaser built in. I asked the guy if he wanted me to show him how to use the amp, because he was borrowing my stuff, rudely enough.

RC: … and he was like, “I think I’ve played enough amps!”

AT: So the phaser was turned all the way up, because we had ended the set with this big noise thing. And he played the whole show going “wheew … wheew . . . wheew…” He never figured it out. Then, one of the funniest things Jay [Reatard] ever said in his life…

RC: Dude said a lot of funny things.

AT: He said the dude from the Vibrators looked like Jimmy Page’s nutsack. He was balding and like had really wiry, black hair.

RC: Phil Spector-ish.

AT: It ended with this giant bar fight. The promoter walks in with a giant block of concrete. The cops come, and I kept saying, “Yeah, the puff-mullet. You know those guys with the puff mullets?” And everyone was like, what is she talking about?

RC: Turned out the guy had a goiter on his neck with hair growing out of it.

AT: I thought it was a mullet.

RC: I was outside the whole time. I walked in, it was like a saloon piano was playing. John got slid across the bar.

JG: I saw Alicja get punched, so I went in.

AT: Oh yeah. I got punched right in the face. The bartender came up to me, and this dude’s fist was coming right at me. He grabbed me. ‘You gotta get out of here! You’re gonna get killed!” He was carrying me out, and I was like, “Where the hell am I going?” Jay comes out of the bathroom. He’s been doing coke with this guy from the other band. They looked around and realized, “Gahh! We’re enemies!” They started going at it.  

Chris Davis, Papa Top’s West Coast Turnaround

This would have been sometime in the late 1990s. We had just played a gig at Kudzu’s, and we had a little liquor in us. The only piece of parental advice (guitarist) John Stiver’s father ever gave him was, “Stay away from Harpo’s Lounge. You’ll get killed.” So we decided we would see if they would let us play for beer. This is a self-inflicted gig. It was our own fault.

Let me first say that Harpo’s has reopened, and it’s nice. They’ve gentrified it. Back then, they self-described it as the most redneck place on Earth. It was infamous for finding dead hookers out behind it.

The minute we walked in, we could see that there were more people than teeth here. It was all rebel flags and unfinished plywood. There was a lot of drug dealing, a lot of meth. So there were a lot of working ladies. They made it clear we were different and unwelcome.

I had on a sequined, knock-off Nudie suit jacket. There was a guy following me around saying, “I’m gonna go home with that jacket!” There was a working girl who looked like Grandma from the Addams Family. She was saying I looked like Elvis, and she was going home with me.

John Whittemore was playing pedal steel, and he had a woman who was reaching around him with one hand on the hand he was picking with, and the other hand he’s barring with. Grandma would walk around behind me, and when I would be singing, and my hands occupied with the guitar, she would reach up between my legs and start squeezing my business. It got a lot easier to hit those high notes.

Was this a bad gig? I guess it depends on how you define gig. We just sort of showed up. They didn’t want us. But by the time it was over, there were people calling out requests. We did our usual set, and played Elvis’ “Little Sister.” That was when the guy who was going to knock me in the head and steal my jacket decided we were okay. He wasn’t going to knock me in the head, but he was still probably going to take my jacket.

Marcella Simien,
Marcella and Her Lovers

We were playing this outdoor festival, and I was handed a note in the middle of a song asking me to announce that a 6-year-old boy was missing and had been for over an hour. They made it sound like this kid just took off — a little renegade. I smiled to myself at first, thinking “Okay, the kid is probably off doing things 6-year-olds do.” Then it started to sink in.

I’ve gotten notes on stage with song requests, marriage proposals, birthday requests. But a missing persons report? This was a first, real “Stop the presses!” kind of stuff. So I made the announcement, and the stage manager motioned for us to continue, to keep playing. So we did. But the whole time there was this feeling, this undertone of … missing kid … impossible to ignore. I mean, how can you not be concerned?   

Several songs later the kid still hadn’t shown up, and no one was any the wiser as to where he might have been. Someone from the sheriff’s department got onstage and made another announcement as the band and I helplessly looked at each other, eyes all big. This person makes the announcement sounding like the conductor of a train and then hands the mic back to me. Somehow we finished the set, packed up, and headed out. But not before leaving behind a suitcase full of our merchandise. Thankfully we got word on the drive home that the child had been found. He pedaled his Big Wheel back on up to the house like nothing had happened.

Steve Selvidge

Big Ass Truck was playing at a fraternity down in Oxford. They paid well. That show would finance a whole tour. And people usually had a good time. It was in our contract that you were hiring us to be us. We weren’t going to play Dave Matthews or Phish. We’re playing outside at this crawfish boil. It’s an all-day thing. People were getting drunk. Some kid thought it would be funny while we’re playing to flip the breakers. So we’re playing, and the power cuts. That happened all the time — it’s no big deal — you just have to sit there and wait for it to come back on. So we start playing again, and the kid flips the breakers again. Power goes off. It keeps happening!

Finally, the sound guy figures what’s going on. “There’s a kid flipping the breaker. We dealt with it.” But it messed up the P.A. The monitors went out, and we couldn’t play. With a DJ, we needed the monitors, because we’re playing to him.

People didn’t understand why we wouldn’t play, and they were getting restless. This entitled little fuck frat kid hops up on stage, grabs the mic, and says “Big Ass Truck sucks!” I was livid. I got up and I was just like, “Get the fuck off my stage you little shit.” Then the monitors come back on, and I’m like, “Hey, sorry about that! Let me tell you what was going on. We’re here to play and have fun. It’s gonna be a good time. But that little fuck who was flipping the breaker on and off, your mother [string of shocking expletives deleted].” Should have taken the high road. But I didn’t. Then we just light into the set. We were furious. It was fun. Next thing you know, there’s a bunch of people who want to kick my ass. I’m looking at guys in the crowd mouthing, “I’m going to kill you!”

Joseph Higgins, Chinese Connection Dub Embassy

The worst gig was one of the first gigs we played out of town. It was just a trip to Nashville. Everything was going great, then 30 minutes out of Nashville, our front tire pops off and drags the car a quarter mile down the expressway.
So we get the tow truck to come and get us, and then we find out we have to go to the nearest place to get it fixed before we can do anything. So our bass player, Omar, and Paul, our guitarist at the time, and my brother David head to the Walmart to change the tire out. This is in the middle of summer, and it’s got to be 105 degrees. Two of us are in the tow truck, and the other three are in the car.

We finally get to Walmart after driving around everywhere looking for it. We’re desperate to get to Nashville to play the gig. This was on a Saturday, and all of the places to get a tire fixed are closed. Then we find out we need over $800 worth of work on the car before we can do anything. We had to call some friends and family to see if we can find anyone to take us to the gig. The guitarist called his family to come and get us. He was so angry at the whole thing, he just wanted to go home. We were like, “No man, we should at least go to Nashville, play the gig, and make some money to pay for the car!” But he was all flustered. “We can’t do this. Let’s just go.”

After we come back to Memphis, we find out later that night that the venue we were playing — it was called Nash Bash — had over a thousand people at the show. We did know it at the time, but we were one of the headliners. We find out there was a big crowd waiting to see us, because there was no reggae on the bill. Then we find out the promoter for the show lives in Franklin. He could have picked us up and taken us to the show and brought us back. It literally could have all been fixed if we had had the promoter’s number on hand. Since then we have a backup plan for everything. 

Jonathan Kiersky, Club Owner
Without naming names, this was the worst: It was a Brooklyn four-piece — three synthesizers and a drummer. They had a bunch of press and a strong booking agent, so I booked them. Not sure how they had so much professional support, except it was the heyday of the indie pop scene in Brooklyn. One of them may have been a model.  

Early on, we realized this show would be a mess, since it was their first tour, and set up and soundcheck were a disaster. Show starts, and the vibe on stage is complete fear. Finally during the third song, the lead singer/synth player just yells “Stop, stop, stop!” and starts weeping on stage. We hoped she would pull it together and the show would go on but that was not the case. They just walked off stage, packed their shit up, and left. My jaw had never been closer to the floor.

Chris Milam
Friday night in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The bar was packed, the crowd homogenous: male, bearded, titanically drunk. Picture the cast of Perfect Storm meets the cast of Jersey Shore. And I was scheduled to play for two hours, solo acoustic.

Somehow, they liked me — too much. A mosh pit formed — onstage. One guy insisted on “freestyling to his lady.”  Another swiped at my guitar mid-song, “helping” me play. The night got later, the crowd drunker, would-be fights started popping up around me. It was a farce; a mostly-improvised, slightly-violent farce.  
When I finished, I hustled my gear out to my car. I came back to find a waitress literally stiff-arming a man away from my night’s pay. Come to think of it: I made it out in one piece, my guitar made it out in one piece, and I got paid in full. I’ve had worse gigs.

Brennan Villines
I was playing with my trio years ago at my uncle’s house for a pool party in Arlington, which is as amazing as it sounds. My music doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a backyard full of Gen X white people who have musical tastes spanning from George Strait to Kenny Chesney. We were asked — yelled at — to play a certain song, the name of which I cannot recall at the moment. I remember being disgusted at the request coming from the drunkest person at the party.

I said I didn’t know the song and continued with my set. He called me a queer and threw a wet towel at my face from about 25 feet away. The towel smacked me surprisingly hard … in mid song. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed with his throwing ability, given the distance factored with his blood alcohol content. But, this was definitely a low point in my career. Just as I was feeling defeated, my uncle pushed him in the pool, and we all had a good laugh.

Andria Lisle, Music Journalist
The worst gig I ever attended was one I knew would be awful going in. I expected, and got, the worst on November 16, 1991, when I walked through the doors of Antenna to see G.G. Allin and the Murder Junkies.
It was the pre-internet age, so what I knew of G.G. Allin was gleaned from the pages of MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL and via first-hand stories from friends who had caught Allin on the road in other cities. Self-billed as “the last true rock and roller,” Allin would take Ex-Lax before his gig, then defecate on stage. When the Memphis stop on his fall 1991 tour was announced, I should’ve wondered “Who on Earth would want to attend something like this?” Instead, I thought, “Who would want to miss it?”

I paid my $5 and cautiously took a post in the back of the room, close enough to the door that I could escape if necessary. I can’t remember who opened or what songs were on the Murder Junkies’ setlist. Allin wore a black hoodie, his pale ass gleaming under the lights. He paced the stage, drinking beers and throwing the bottles into the audience. He had the frightening intensity of Charles Manson — I recall being too afraid to meet his gaze. At some point, the microphone he ranted into went up his ass. Later, Allin leapt off the stage and began antagonizing the audience at close range. Most of us ran out of the door of the club.

He’d chase us outside, then stop at the corner of Madison and Avalon while we raced to the relative safety of the Piggly Wiggly parking lot. For some reason, that happened more than once. I have no idea why I didn’t just leave at that point, but I kept going back in for more. Finally, Allin chased us out again, and one audience member ran to Murphy’s and came back with a knife. She began chasing G.G., and that was too much for me. I went home, took a long shower, and questioned every decision I’d made in life.

Chris Shaw, Ex-Cult, Goggs
Every time a band goes on tour there are shows that inevitably get highlighted for various reasons — you’re playing with friends, you like the venue, the gig pays well, or there’s promise that someone who “needs to see your band” will be there. Ex-Cult had just released a new record, and so we were working with a new publicist who had promised to gather all her industry friends for a show at Mercury Lounge, the Manhattan venue that is known for being a “music industry hotspot,” whatever that means.

This show was on my radar from the beginning of the tour. We performed in Baltimore the night before, but because of a sound ordinance, we had to soundcheck at some ridiculous time, like 2 p.m. the day of the Mercury Lounge show.

We left Baltimore on time, but to make sure all goes according to plan, I decided to drive into Manhattan. I was driving like a bat out of hell, impressed with my band mates that we are all up and moving, hangover-free and ready to hit New York City. Then my phone starts going off. Repeatedly. I’m driving so I can’t look at my texts. Then our booking agent called,  annoyed I haven’t been answering the phone.

What comes next is something I’ve never heard happen to any other band: A pipe burst in front of the venue, and a rather large sinkhole formed outside of Katz Deli, literally next door to the Mercury Lounge. The show was cancelled. Best of all, the publicist with all her industry contacts has gone AWOL. I don’t hear from her again for the duration of our time in New York City. Maybe she fell in the sinkhole?

Do you remember the scene in Ferris Buellers Day Off when Bueller’s buddy Cameron screams as the camera pulls out to show all of Chicago? That’s how I felt. The show eventually got removed to a lovely little club called Fontanas, but as you have probably guessed, no one came. What doesn’t break you makes you stronger, so when this exact same scenario happened to us a year later in San Diego, all we could do was laugh.

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Of The Moment: Nots “Decadence”

Natalie Hoffman in Nots new music video ‘Decadence’

Memphis director Geoffrey Brent Shrewsbury‘s new music video for the Nots is as chaotic, raw, and beautiful as the band’s music. Combining performance footage, a studio shoot, and some well-chosen manipulated stock, “Decadence” is reminiscent of the golden age of MTV. 

Music Video Of The Moment: Nots ‘Decadence’

In Shrewsberry’s career, he has done everything from short narratives to PBS documentaries, but he got his start making stylish music videos for some of the best Midtown rock bands of the last 20 years. Here’s his director himself starring in his first video, a narrative of the ultimate New York street hassle he made for The Obivians’ “You Better Behave”. 

Music Video Of The Moment: Nots ‘Decadence’ (2)

A few years later he immortalized Jay Reatard and Alicja Trout’s seminal band Lost Sounds at their peak with the Gothy “Memphis Is Dead”, which saw the filmmaker come into his own as a visual stylist. It’s particularly cool when the video, which has been frantically phantom riding through Downtown, slows to a theatrically languid pace as the music downshifts from punk drive into synth dirge. Shrewsbury is also a musician, and its his deep understanding of and love for Memphis punk that allows him to create such compelling work in a time when music videos are as important as ever.

Music Video Of The Moment: Nots ‘Decadence’ (3)

Categories
Music Music Features

Big Ass Conflict!

My band is playing. You should go.

When I met my bosses at the Flyer, I mentioned that I play music and that eventually there might be a conflict of interest. Well, the mother of all conflicts of interest is here. I play bass in three groups right now. Two of them, Big Ass Truck and Alicja Trout, are playing with Sons of Mudboy on Thursday night at Minglewood Hall to commemorate the local run of Meanwhile in Memphis, a documentary film about the local music scene. You should go.

Big Ass Truck began in the winter of 1992. I left in 1995. But most of the others didn’t. They soldiered on through the rest of the decade. In doing so, Big Ass Truck released five records and developed a fan base that spanned the country. The quality of the recordings and the high level of musicianship spoke to a lot of people over the years. Younger people revere the band in ways that still amaze me. Andrew VanWyngarden of MGMT has cited Big Ass Truck and Steve Selvidge as influences. Half of the members of my other extremely cool band, the Knights Arnold, were fans of Big Ass Truck and would probably not play with me if I had not been a member.

Steve started it. Selvidge had a gig at the Antenna and no band to back him. He was a kid. And, as guitar shaman Rod Norwood will tell you, exactly the type of punk to hoodwink Antenna boss Mark McGehee into giving him a spot even though he was a bandless child.

Steve had the good sense to call Alex Greene, who had played keyboards with smart, important people like Tav Falco and Alex Chilton. Robert Barnett had played drums with eventual Grammy nominee Stephan Crump and founding member of Galactic Rob Gowen. Steve also demonstrated the family brains in getting his friend and creative supervolcano Robby Grant to come on board.

I met Steve a year earlier in a since-destroyed building across from Midtown Huey’s. Winston Eggleston invited me to jam with Steve and Senegal-based math whiz/synthesizer maniac Shelby Bryant. Was it instant magic? I can’t remember. But I’m glad Steve called me a few months later.

Steve’s next move was his Black Swan. Colin Butler is a DJ. But he’s a special sort of DJ: He has a sense of Memphis and a sense of humor that set us apart. He and Greene added dimension that defined our sound and was essential to our success. Any critical references to soul or hip-hop stem from the turntables and the keyboards. They gave us the bigger sound and wider palette we heard from Al Green at Royal Studios and the Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal records.

That first night at the Antenna was terrifying. We played some covers and jammed. I can’t recall any reaction from the audience. But we were fun people with lots of friends, so we were a draw. That got us more gigs and kept us practicing.

Those Antenna shows and the early days in our second home at Proud Larry’s in Oxford are fond memories of really fun times. While bands like the Grifters were being aesthetically brilliant, we were having unmitigated, shirtless (sometimes pantless) fun on stage and around the country. That bothered some serious-minded people. But plenty of people were into the party. Big Ass Truck was a hardworking good-times A-team.

Andria Lisle and Gina Barker (now married to Bryant) ran a record label called Sugar Ditch out of Shangri-La Records. They agreed to put out an EP. Steve led us over to Sam Phillips Recording, where we had the privilege of working with Roland Janes. I’m still proud of those recordings. We liked recording and started experimenting in production with help from Paul Ringger, Posey Hedges, and Ross Rice.

Greene introduced us to the writer Robert Gordon, who had the sense, initiative, and connections to get us a record deal. I remember sitting on the porch of Harry’s across from Ardent with Jake Guralnick saying we could make a real album. That was a special night.

In 1994, I was working at Ardent Studios as a cat dung removal specialist. The studio gave us a deal, and we settled in for a week with Rice, Erik Flettrich, and Pete Matthews. The result was Kent, our first full-length album. We named it Kent after a friend. His name is Kent.

That album represents something of a lost art. We didn’t use computers. Tape is a taskmaster. I remember one grueling dawn when Ross was cajoling me to stay awake during the overdubs of Chris Parker’s “Thermopolis.” We put everything we had into that record.

When Kent came out, we went on the road. I hated touring; so I quit. Within a month, I got fired from Ardent and went back to school. For the next few years it was hard to watch as the band started touring in glamorous places: They played Red Rocks in Colorado and appeared on MTV, which is a thing that used to put music programs on the television set.

The Big Ass Truck bassist job became the Spinal Tap-drummer thing: Subsequent bassists included Lucero’s John Stubblefield, Paul Taylor, Jon Griffin, Dros Liposcak, and Robby’s brother, Grayson Grant.

Big Ass Truck made three more records and amassed a network of fans and friends from coast to coast. Our bandmate and road manager Mike Smith got so good at touring that he went on to manage tour logistics for Widespread Panic. We never would have made it out of the Antenna with out Mike.

But, really, we’re all old and gross now. So we’re grateful that Meanwhile directors Robert Allen Parker and Nan Hackman asked us to play. I’m appreciative of the work the others did and thankful the band called me. It’s not as easy as it was 20 years ago: I can’t remember the songs, my hands are numb, and I can’t wear cool shoes for any extended period.

It’s been fun connecting with old friends and hearing from people who shared our good times. I’m sure the other members have things to say, but they are not the music editor of this paper. Plus, I need to use the remaining space to brag about the Knights Arnold. We are the next big deal. Trust me.