culture – Memphis Flyer

Ode Audio CEO Howard Robertson (left) and Matthew Harris (Flyer)

If there’s one thing that Memphis knows, it’s music, and Ode Audio is looking to reinforce that fact. A broadcasting group that focuses on the curation of Black radio, podcasts, and music, Ode Audio plans to launch its mobile phone app this spring. The Memphis Flyer spoke with CEO Howard Robertson about his connection to the music industry, the formation of Ode Audio, and his hopes for the future.

Memphis Flyer: Tell us a little bit about yourself and your relationship with Memphis, music, and radio.

Howard Robertson: I’m a native Memphian, born and raised in Memphis during the 50s and 60s and I’m quite proud of that, because that was ground zero and basically the center of the universe if you were young and African American. There were so many things happening here from a musical, cultural, civil rights, and human rights standpoint. I could not have wished, or hoped, or planned to be raised at a better time, or in a better place than Memphis, Tennessee. I had always loved radio as a kid, and grew up listening to WDIA and WLOK. I didn’t know it at the time, but WDIA was the first Black format radio station in America. And that’s what I decided I wanted to do.

One thing that sounds important to you is your sense of pride in the African American community in Memphis. How has that feeling translated into audio?

I was fortunate enough to grow up here and was always exposed to Black excellence and Black entrepreneurs. So that exposure to business came from Memphis. I had an opportunity to see people do things that had never been done before. So having the opportunity to be exposed to that kind of excellence and entrepreneurial excellence, gave me a lot of confidence. I had long since been able to make a living from my ideas and imagination. And that’s how I came up with Ode Audio.

Where did you come up with the name?

Ode Audio has a dual meaning. First, it’s an acronym that stands for “our digital entertainment.” And secondly, the word ode, by definition, means a musical or poetic tribute to something or someone, and in this particular case, Ode is a musical tribute to Black music, Black culture, and Black radio. It speaks in two ways to what we’re trying to accomplish.

Your website says that you want to focus on not just Black radio and Black podcasts, but also on Black culture. What are some of the ways that you’re going to promote that through your new app?

We’re going to do that by being a conduit, being the linkage between music, news, and culture. What we’re going to do is to give an opportunity to pull things together. For example, where does where the National Urban League prize podcast live? Where does the NAACP’s podcast live? Other organizations that are significant contributors to Black people and culture, where does that information live? We’re going to be able to tie it all in because it really has no other place to live. Each group has its own website, but there is not a kind of a central repository, a one-stop-shop for Black information entertainment, and culture, and all of that.

Ode Audio will be launching its flagship app sometime this spring. More information on the app and its message can be found on the organization’s website.

The day shift watches Jeopardy! in Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets.

The greatest irony of the COVID-19 pandemic is that the two most dangerous things you can do are go to church and go to a bar. As independent and self-sufficient as we think we are, humans are social animals. The novel coronavirus spreads by exploiting that need for close contact, singing, and conversation.

All three of those things happen with abandon in Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, directors Bill and Turner Ross’ ode to the vanishing world of the barfly. The Ross brothers, who are New Orleans filmmakers, have until now worked primarily in documentary. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is billed as a hybrid documentary, which in this case basically means nonprofessional actors improvising in real locations.

In other words, this is an indie film in the oldest, and most pure, sense of the term. Was Bicycle Thieves a documentary? Did John Cassavetes make documentaries? Were the Dogme 95 films documentaries? Is Blue Citrus Hearts a documentary? As the saying goes, all films are documentaries of the time of their making.

But while the question of exactly what type of film this is may be interesting if you’re concerned about who your film is competing against at Sundance, it’s not particularly relevant to connecting with the work. The set up here is the last night of the Roaring 20s Cocktail Bar, a cozy little spot carved out of a strip mall in Las Vegas. This is not the tourist Vegas of showgirls, neon, and casinos. This is a working-class joint populated by barstool philosophers and faded honky-tonk queens. One devoted patron takes pride in the fact that alcohol didn’t derail his life. “I ruined my life sober. Then I came to you.”

The dive bar is a cultural institution, but this one is closing due to soaring rents in Sin City. “The World’s Largest Gift Shop is closing. What chance does this place have?” frets the day bartender, a huge bear of a man with a Viking beard. “Celine Dion can have this place.”

The day shift is getting tanked while the Today Show is still on. One craggy drinker named Ian gets a call from his work telling him to come in. He grumbles as he leaves, but they knew where to find him. As the bar fills up for the last time, they watch Jeopardy! together and ignore news about the election. They listen to the bartender sing out the end of his last shift with a rough but moving rendition of Roy Orbison’s “Crying.” It’s a tough song to sing, and he nails it.

Bruce Hadnot

That’s just one affecting moment in a film that’s made of nothing but. There’s no story to Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, just stuff that happens. It’s like two dozen character sketches stuck together with gum found under a bar table, and I mean that as a compliment. There’s the Black veteran (Bruce Hadnot) who laments getting sucked into “horseshit, stupid wars” but waxes rhapsodic about the his time in the Army. “When you in a platoon with me, you like family.”

There’s the nighttime bartender without a childcare option who just has her teenage son stick close to the bar all night until he falls asleep in the backseat of her car. He and his friends smoke weed in the back alley and crack up listening to the drunken conversations indoors. There’s the poet who begins the evening by reading his elegy to the Roaring 20s and ends by trying to fight everybody. There’s Pam, the 60-year-old who still flashes her breasts at the bar, and the young musicians who appreciate her bust.

Most poignantly of all, there’s Michael. Played by veteran New Orleans indie actor Michael Martin, he’s introduced by the day bartender with “I can’t imagine that dude functioning without this place.” Michael is the purest distillation of this little band of lovable losers. Every moment he’s not cleaning houses, he’s at the bar. Everyone wants to pretend this is just another night, but he’s the one who really sees his world crumbling around him. He tearfully tells one young musician to get out of the bar scene before it’s too late. “I used to be an actor. Now I just come to the bar.”

Michael Martin listens to the conversations on the last night of the Roaring 20s Cocktail Bar.

In the end, the regulars get too drunk, and the closing night cake, which says “This Place Sucked Anyway,” gets dropped in the middle of an impromptu parking lot dance party. The all-important sense of community, and what happens when it is taken away, is the subject of Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, and today it takes on new meaning. As the pandemic stretches on, it’s increasingly apparent what we took for granted. It’s not just the gloriously disreputable neighborhood watering holes that are in jeopardy of disappearing forever, it’s the music venues, the theaters, the pizza joints with an open mic comedy night. When this disease has been tamed, we can’t take these places for granted, lest they all end up like the Roaring 20s Cocktail Bar.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is streaming on the Indie Memphis Movie Club.