Tag: Bruce Newman

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Film Features Film/TV

Music Video Monday: “My Brother Is Weary” by Bruce Newman

Bruce Newman is a folkie. By day, he’s an entertainment attorney. Wednesday mornings, he’s the host of Folk Song Fiesta on WEVL, but he’s not just a fan. Newman writes and produces his own music, which we’ve featured before on Music Video Monday.

“Last week, we hosted a breakfast which included Janis Ian and other folk legends at Folk Alliance in Kansas City. Janis told us that her big songs such as ‘At Seventeen’, ‘Jesse’, and ‘Society’s Child’, were very painful to write, and she received death threats and had things thrown at her when she performed them. She told us it was well worth it; those songs and those things needed to be said,” Newman says.

“During the last few years I have been especially sick and tired of the beatings, the mass shootings, and the racism that has now become commonplace, with our leaders doling out much of it. One particular day hit me; when I went to a rally against the oil pipeline in Boxtown (the formerly enslaved community in South Memphis) I saw the abject poverty which stems from years of institutional racism. I’m not ashamed; white privilege sunk in again. I think everyone should put that on their bucket list; go to a rally in Boxtown and see what reality is.”

Newman’s new song “My Brother Is Weary” is a call for empathy and understanding across races, classes, and religions. The song features performances from Eric Lewis, Susan Marshall, Reba Russell, Gerald Stephens, and Shawn Zorn. The video was directed by longtime Newman collaborator Laura Jean Hocking (who, full disclosure, is my wife, and I helped out on set at Black Lodge.)

“My love of folk music starts with Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Josh White, and all who came before and after, including Zimmy [Bob Dylan], and the music they created to champion the exploited workers and the downtrodden. I have come to study the music from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, such as that from the SNCC Freedom Singers, the CORE Freedom Singers, Cordell Reagon and Bernice Johnson, and Phil Ochs, to name just a few. As a young kid growing up in New York, I marched for Soviet Jewry, and now having lived in Memphis for half of my life, I see the issues just have a different name, but intolerance is the common thread. Given the opportunity to speak out for whatever the injustice is, we should, because we are all brothers and sisters.”

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

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Music Music Features

Calm Down, People: Livingston Taylor on Acoustic Sunday Live

Livingston Taylor by Mim Adkins 2017

Acoustic Sunday Live: It’s a Memphis tradition over three decades old now, and this year’s iteration is perfectly in keeping with its predecessors. The series, curated by Bruce and Barbara Newman, makes use of the couple’s deep contacts in the folk music world, typically bringing in multiple artists who could fill a room on their own in support of a local cause. “This concert series has benefited the Memphis community in various ways for many years,” Bruce Newman says, “but I’m especially pleased to work with Ward Archer and his team at Protect Our Aquifer — and their associated community partners — to protect the environment in our own backyard.”

This year’s concert, at the First Congregational Church on December 5th, features Grammy-nominated and Blues Music Award winner Shemekia Copeland, Nashville singer-songwriter Will Kimbrough, Grammy-nominated country/Americana singer-songwriter Jim Lauderdale, Memphis’ own hip-hop legend Al Kapone, and the iconic singer-songwriter and folk musician Livingston Taylor.

Taylor, one of five musical siblings, has been making records nearly as long as his famous brother James, having signed with Capricorn Records in 1970. When we spoke, he was in Tampa, Florida, to film a video on the craft of stage performance, something he knows a thing or two about. “You have to be able to not only write a song; you have to be able to present it,” he says. “I’ve been a professor at the Berklee College of Music for 30 years, where I teach a course I wrote called Stage Performance. It’s about the minutiae of how to go on stage, what your responsibilities are as an entertainer, and why people should be willing to pay attention to you.” Former Berklee students who have put his guidance to good use include John Mayer and Susan Tedeschi. “It’s been a wonderful course to teach over these years, though I’m winding that down a bit and turning into a professor emeritus.”

But music is far from an academic exercise for the veteran pop/folk performer. Indeed, there’s a strong current of uplifting spirituality to his music, though only a small portion of it is technically gospel. “Like all human beings, I’m a spiritual fellow,” he says. “I have no sense of a strong Christian upbringing or anything, but I was raised in North Carolina, with a lot of those Black gospel sensibilities around. So it seems to fall pretty easy, to write gospel songs. I love writing songs like ‘Oh Hallelujah’ or ‘Step by Step,’ or one called ‘Tell Jesus to Come to My House,’ which are all strong, ‘paint the barn red’ gospel songs.”

His ultimate goal, though, is more of a nonsectarian call for peace. “My music is designed to calm people down. These days, we’re being pretty hard on one another, and I’d really like to see that calm down. Certainly the forces that are around us profit from us being agitated and at each other’s throats. They get viewers and listeners by being inflammatory. And to me, that’s a discouraging trend. I would love it if we found a way to be a little gentler with one another. What I’d love my music to emphasize is that we are well and strong and, at the basis of all of it, we like each other.”

It’s a message appropriate for any grassroots-oriented gathering, and Taylor is enthusiastic about playing the upcoming benefit. “It’s obviously a worthy undertaking. I’m delighted to know about Protect Our Aquifer. Yet my real enthusiasm is for the musical event itself.”

That enthusiasm is only compounded by bringing his music to the Bluff City. “Memphis is certainly my favorite city in Tennessee,” Taylor says. “Not taking away from Chattanooga or Nashville, but Memphis is the strong one. It’s got a very mighty heartbeat, and the idea of coming back there to make music is a real thrill for me. Just to make music in Memphis, with all the beautiful spirits of that great city, will be a lot of fun. There’s a lot of musical energy there. I find when I play in Memphis, my playing gets reinforced by all those ghosts.”

Acoustic Sunday Live! presents The Memphis Concert to Protect Our Aquifer at 7 p.m. on Sunday, December 5th, at First Congregational Church. $50 and up. Visit acousticsundaylive21.eventive.org/schedule for details.

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Film Features Film/TV

Music Video Monday: “Strange Question” by Bruce Newman

Music Video Monday wants to get to know you.

Bruce Newman is the host of WEVL’s “Folk Song Fiesta,” where he brings you deep cuts from the long history of folk and Americana music every Wednesday from 8 to 10 a.m. He’s also a singer/songwriter in his own right, one who has previously graced Music Video Monday with his music, which can touch on the emotional and the political.

His latest song, “Strange Question,” was inspired by the looks he got when he returned to Memphis from the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada with his hair dyed. “It is usually tinted with some color before I go out to Black Rock City,” the attorney and accountant said. “I began to realize if my skin was brown or if I was blind or if you did not like a feature of mine, would you judge me or just accept me?  Would you ‘love me for me being me?’  So, accepting me for ‘me being me’ is the gist. What does it matter?  And, especially now, it is about acceptance of our brothers and sisters. Let the obvious be clearly understood, that my choice to color my hair is not to be compared with separation based on race or disability or any other factor, but rather a small, personal realization of how we are sometimes unfairly and unkindly separated by differences.”

After the song debuted at Folk Alliance, he put together a band of his Memphis friends — Eric Lewis, Reba Russell, Susan Marshall, Paul Taylor, Gerald Stephens, Heather Trussell, Carrington Trueheart, Sam Shoup, and Kevin Houston — to record it at Music+ Arts. Director Laura Jean Hocking made the music video, which stars the most accepting people of all — kids. Take a look.

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

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Bruce Newman

Music Video Monday is on the march!

Bruce Newman is a lawyer and accountant specializing in small business and entertainment law. He’s also the host of Folksong Fiesta, airing Wednesdays at 8 a.m. on WEVL. A true polymath, when he’s not helping his clients navigate the difficult world of the music business, he’s writing songs of his own. Like most people nowadays, Newman is concerned about the state of the world, and in the best folkie tradition, he lays it all out in his new tune “Doing The Best We Can”. It’s a song of protest and solution which urges us all to listen to our better angels.

To help record the song and film the video, he gathered a crew of Memphis all-stars including vocalists Susan Marshall and Reba Russell, James Alexander of the Bar-Kays, blues guitarists Eric Lewis and Doug MacLeod, horn players Art Edmaistan and Marc Franklin, keyboardist Gerald Stephens, and multi-instrumentalist Paul Taylor. Director Laura Jean Hocking combines footage of the musicians taken at Music + Arts Studio with extensive animation to create a lyric video which really gets Newman’s point across. Take a look, then make sure you’re registered to vote.

Music Video Monday: Bruce Newman

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

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway

Shannon Walton in Sweet Knives video for ‘I Don’t Wanna Die’

You’re going to be hard pressed to see everything great on Indie Memphis Sunday, so some triage is in order. We’re here to help.

First thing in the morning is the Hometowner Rising Filmmaker Shorts bloc (11:00 a.m., Ballet Memphis), where you can see the latest in new Memphis talent, including “Ritual” by Juliet Mace and Maddie Dean, which features perhaps the most brutal audition process ever.

Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway

The retrospective of producer/director Sara Driver’s work continues with her new documentary Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Micheal Basquiat (1:30 p.m., Studio on the Square). Driver was there in the early 80s when Basquiat was a rising star in the New York art scene, and she’s produced this look at the kid on his way to becoming a legend.

Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (2)

The companion piece to Driver’s latest is Downtown 81 (4:00 p.m., Hattiloo Theatre). Edo Bertoglio’s documentary gives a real-time look at the art and music scene built from the ashes of 70s New York that would go on to conquer the world. Look for a cameo from Memphis punk legend Tav Falco.

Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (4)

You can see another Memphis legend in action in William Friedkin’s 1994 Blue Chips (4:00 p.m., Studio on the Square). Penny Hardaway, then a star recruit for the Memphis Tigers, appears as a star recruit for volatile college basketball coach Pete Bell, played by Nick Nolte. It’s the current University of Memphis Tigers basketball coach’s only big screen appearance to date, until someone makes a documentary about this hometown hero’s eventful life.

Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (5)

The Ballet Memphis venue hosts two selections of Memphis filmmakers screening out of the competition at 1:50 and 7:00 p.m., continuing the unprecedentedly awesome run of Hometowner shorts this year. There are a lot of gems to be found here, such as Clint Till’s nursing home comedy “Hangry” and Garrett Atkinson and Dalton Sides’ “Interview With A Dead Man.” To give you a taste of the good stuff, here’s Munirah Safiyah Jones’ instant classic viral hit “Fuckboy Defense 101.”

Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (3)

At 9:00 p.m., the festivities move over to Black Lodge in Crosstown for the Music Video Party. 44 music videos from all over the world will be featured on the Lodge’s three screens, including works by Memphis groups KadyRoxz, A Weirdo From Memphis, Al Kapone, Nick Black, Uriah Mitchell, Louise Page, Joe Restivo, Jana Jana, Javi, NOTS, Mark Edgar Stuart, Jeff Hulett, Stephen Chopek, and Impala. Director and editor Laura Jean Hocking has the most videos in the festival this year, with works for John Kilzer, Bruce Newman, and this one for Sweet Knives.

Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (6)

If experimental horror and sci fi is more your speed, check out the Hometowner After Dark Shorts (9:30 p.m., Playhouse on the Square), which features Isaac M. Erickson’s paranoid thriller “Home Video 1997.”

Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (7)

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Bruce Newman

Music Video Monday wishes you a happy Independence Day!

Bruce Newman, best known as DJ and host of WEVL’s Folk Song Fiesta radio show, is also a singer/songwriter himself. His first music video is in the finest folk tradition of dissent and protest.

“’Reality Star’ was written as an observational commentary on the current leadership of our great country, with hope and prayer that this, too, shall pass,” Newman says.

The video is directed by Laura Jean Hocking and stars Billie Worley as…well, you’ll see.

Music Video Monday: Bruce Newman

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

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Music Music Features

Acoustic Sunday Live presents Dave Bromberg and Others

CREDIT: Joe del Tufo

Nestled between Memphis’ many music festivals, Acoustic Sunday Live doesn’t always get much attention. But don’t let that lull you into indifference. For a quarter century, this labor of love has been bringing some serious talent to town, always to the benefit of local causes.

Bruce Newman, the founder and chief organizer of the series, describes its origins: “We started out about 24 years ago with a Woody Guthrie tribute. I had Richie Havens, Odetta, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Tom Paxton. And then, over the years, we’ve had Guy Clark, Gretchen Peters; last year, we did Kathy McCay and Tom Paxton again. Jonathan Edwards one year. Just acoustic artists.”

Joe del Tufo

Dave Bromberg

Each show in the series is a benefit for a different local institution. “It’s always for a cause,” Newman notes. “Like last year’s show at the Halloran Centre was for Indie Memphis.”

The artists tend to be of the ilk featured on Newman’s weekly radio show on WEVL, Folk Song Fiesta. And this year is no different, with this Sunday’s concert featuring Dave Bromberg, Tom Chapin, Shemekia Copeland, Bobby Rush, and John Kilzer. The beneficiary will be Protect Our Aquifer, a nonprofit “dedicated to protecting and conserving the Memphis Sand Aquifer,” the source of Memphis’ drinking water.

Newman notes that this year’s beneficiary is more “political” than most. “Even though,” he adds, “I don’t even see why it should be a political issue. It’s our water, right? This is an asset that just has to be protected. Doesn’t matter what side you’re on.”

One of Sunday’s star performers is Dave Bromberg, who’s no stranger to combining politics and music, being one of the most distinct voices to emerge from the New York folk scene of the 1960s. Still, that association doesn’t quite sit right with Bromberg. “I don’t know that I was ever really a folkie, past 1960, but I’ve always been accused of that,” he says. “The term is very limiting, because there are many radio stations who have decided that’s who I am.”

Ironically, Bromberg’s love of all things musical played a role in his leaving show business for an extended time. After writing and performing with the likes of George Harrison and Bob Dylan, among others, he notes, “I got really burnt out from performing too much. And at the point where I was really doing the most, and playing for the largest audiences, and getting the most radio play, I completely stopped playing for 22 years. All I knew was, when I wasn’t on the road, I wasn’t practicing, I wasn’t jamming, and I wasn’t writing. I questioned that and decided I didn’t wanna be one of these guys who drags himself onto the stage, doing a bitter imitation of what he used to love.” He changed course into work that he does to this day. “I decided I had to find another way to lead my life. What I wanted to learn was how to identify different violins. It’s like art appraisal. You have to recognize not only the brush strokes but the chisel strokes to really get an idea of what’s what.”

In recent years, Bromberg has eased back into recording and performing. Two years ago he released The Blues, the Whole Blues, and Nothing But the Blues, which, with its full-band, Chicago-style jams, should break the “folkie” tag once and for all. Yet he remains a master of solo performance and plans to play acoustic versions of many of the album’s tracks Sunday night. And as for the politics of our aquifer, Bromberg’s only too happy to support the cause. “The water thing is only now beginning to be important,” he notes. “It’s gonna get a lot more important. We’re almost over oil. But water, I don’t know if there’s a way past water.”

The Concert to Protect Our Aquifer, Sunday, December 9th, 7–10 p.m.,
St. John’s United Methodist Church, 1207 Peabody Ave.; Tickets, $50-$100.

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Music Music Features

Acoustic Sunday with Tom Paxton, Three Women and the Truth

Folk music icon and 2009 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Tom Paxton says he doesn’t mean to preach. He just tries to hold a mirror up to the world. “I’m not a propagandist. I never have been,” Paxton says. “I just try to reflect the world I see around me.”

Though he has written his share of incendiary folk songs — such as “If the Poor Don’t Matter” and “Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation” — Paxton believes in the importance of seeing the whole spectrum when it comes to songwriting. “I write all kinds of songs,” he says. “I write songs for children. I just finished a love song this afternoon.”

Paxton recently wrapped up a tour in celebration of his 80th birthday — and more than 50 years in the music business as a songwriter, performer, and supporter of music education — from his beginnings as a frequent performer in New York’s Greenwich Village, where in 1962, he recorded his first of more than 60 albums, to his more recent songwriting workshops as part of Warren Wilson College’s Swannanoa Gathering. “I turned 80 on Halloween, and within two weeks, I heard myself described as spry,” Paxton says. “You know you’re old when people describe you as spry.”

Kathy Mattea

Paxton credits Pete Seeger and Seeger’s group the Weavers as being early sources of inspiration. “My model has always been the Weavers. They were the ones who inspired me,” Paxton says. “They didn’t shy away from singing songs about the world around them, but they also sang lullabies and songs of family.” It’s that spirit of unprejudiced observation that fuels Paxton’s songwriting engine. “I’m looking for an idea, and any idea can be a good idea,” Paxton says. “I wrote a song about the firemen on 9/11, who ran up the stairs when everybody else was running down.”

Paxton, along with his band the Don Juans, will play a benefit concert for Indie Memphis, dubbed Acoustic Sunday Live, on December 17th at the Halloran Centre for Performing Arts downtown. “I’m having as much fun now as I’ve ever had,” Paxton says, “and it’s all because I’m hanging out with these two friends from Nashville, John Veznor and Don Henry, who call themselves the Don Juans.” The Acoustic Sunday event seems to represent something of a Tennessee truce between the often differing musical styles of Memphis and Nashville, as many of the performers at the Indie Memphis benefit have made Tennessee’s state capital their home. Also performing will be the Nashville-based Three Women and the Truth: Gretchen Peters, Kathy Mattea, and Mary Gauthier.

Bruce Newman, Indie Memphis board member and host of WEVL’s popular Folk Song Fiesta program, conceived the event as a fund-raiser and a showcase. “I’ve been doing these concerts as fund-raisers for different organizations since maybe the late ’90s,” Newman says. “When I started on the board of Indie Memphis a year ago, I thought that [it] would be a good beneficiary of a fund-raiser.” And Newman says asking Paxton to participate was a no-brainer. “I had him in Memphis for a Woody Guthrie tribute,” Newman says. “Then I had him in Memphis to open the Rose Theater at the University of Memphis.

Mary Gauthier

“I know Mary Gauthier and Gretchen Peters,” Newman says. “I thought it would be cool if we could split the bill up with Tom and then have [them] do this thing called Three Women and the Truth, which is basically songs about what it’s like to be a female in a fairly male-dominated business.”

Describing themselves as “three women, three guitars, and the words, music, and hard-won wisdom of three lifetimes spent in pursuit of the song,” the women can boast multiple Grammy nominations, a CMA Song of the Year, and accolades from No Depression magazine, The New York Times, and Bob Dylan.

“I’m looking forward eagerly to coming back to Memphis,” Paxton says. “I’ll be as spry as ever.”

Tom Paxton and the Don Juans, Three Women and the Truth featuring Gretchen Peters, Kathy Mattea, and Mary Gauthier at the Halloran Centre for Performing Arts, Sunday, December 17th at 7 p.m.

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Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Remembering Pete Seeger

CREDIT: Bruce Newman

Memphis attorney Bruce Newman is the host of “Bruce’s Folksong Fiesta” on WEVL. Newman was lucky enough to meet Pete Seeger, who passed away last week. Enjoy his story and see his memento from one his idols. – Joe Boone

Pete Seeger and “The Banjo”

By Bruce Newman

On November 9th, 2012, Pete Seeger and the Clearwater Foundation (Pete’s “clean up the Hudson River” organization) honored David Amram with the “Power of Song Award” at New York’s Symphony Space Theatre. I was invited by Doug Yeager, a longtime, New York City-based, folk-artist booking agent. Yeager has helped me over the years produce various folk concerts in Memphis, including an April 2000 fundraiser for the Solomon Schechter Day School called “Woody & Me” (Richie Havens, Odetta, Tom Paxton, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Josh White Jr., and Oscar Brand) held at Theatre Memphis and filmed by WKNO. I was delighted to watch the Clearwater Awards ceremony and the concert that followed from a backstage perch, but who knew? At these events, you just never know what may happen.

I was wearing my WEVL cap, and, yes, people really did want to know about our community radio station. Most well-versed folk musicians understand that the fairly recent history of Stax, Sun, Hi, and all related popular labels and artists put Memphis on the popular music map in a very public way. I say recent; it is also well-known by folk music lovers that what long preceded the above was black folk music and Delta blues, and much of this (Leadbelly, by example) eventually travelled up to New York City and became part of the Greenwich Village folk scene. The true essence of this; I did a concert here in Memphis in September 2000 with Dave Van Ronk, and all he wanted to do was go to Clarksdale, Mississippi, and the surrounding areas to get some vibe from his idol, Mississippi John Hurt.

At the Clearwater Awards, I was standing in a small circle chatting with Guy Davis, John Sebastian, Peter Yarrow, Josh White, Jr., Tom Paxton, Henry Butler, and some others. Sebastian pulled me into a very small men’s room so that I could get a quick MP3 WEVL radio station ID.

So, when I came back to the group, my mind wandered as I glanced over the heads of these famous folkies, and I saw “THE BANJO” on a stand through the open door of a small backroom. In 1948, Seeger wrote the first version of his now-classic “How to Play the Five-String Banjo”, a book that many banjo players credit with starting them off on the instrument. He went on to invent the Long Neck or “Seeger banjo”. Yes, this appeared to be the banjo that says “This Machine Surrounds Hate & Forces It To Surrender”. This is the banjo which is as equally as famous as Woody’s guitar that says “This machine kills Fascists”.

Bruce Ginsberg, a neighbor of Pete in Beacon, NY, was also in the group, and he offered to take me back, and there was Pete, tuning the famous instrument, the one that played on all the pro-union, civil rights, and classic songs as recorded by the Almanac Singers, The Weavers, and with Woody. He let me hold it, and, as anyone who has held that thing has expressed, it was a moment I will never forget, mostly because he was and still is, I imagine, a gentle soul.

Several years earlier, I had invited Pete to Memphis to be part of a Work o’ the Weavers program, and he wrote a personal, longhand and very polite decline with his signature banjo, proving that some things (not all) were better in the old days. If I wrote to Daft Punk or Bruno Mars, what would the reply be? I cannot even get Carole King to return my calls.

It is now well known that Arlo Guthrie spoke to Pete Seeger an hour before he died last Monday evening. Arlo made a comment later the next morning. “Well, of course he passed away! I’m telling everyone this morning. But that doesn’t mean he’s gone.”

And so, Pete Seeger, the real icon, whose songs are much connected to the South, lives on in the music and lyrics of tens of thousands of guitar and banjo players.  

Bruce Newman

Pete Seeger’s note to Bruce Newman