Tag: festival

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Music Music Features

Indie Memphis Does Music

This weekend, Live from Memphis will present its second annual Music Video Showcase, part of the Indie Memphis Film Festival (see Cover Story, page 19). Twenty-five music videos will be screened during the Saturday night showcase, held at Peabody Place‘s Muvico theater, augmenting main-theater music-related screenings such as Return of the Blue Moon Boys, which documents musicians Scotty Moore, DJ Fontana, and the late Bill Black; Soul of the Delta, a 30-minute movie about the Mississippi gospel scene; and the fictional Stomp! Scream! Shout!, which follows the exploits of an all-girl garage-rock band, circa 1966.

John Michael McCarthy, who has cast local musicians such as Jack Yarber and Poli Sci Clone in movies such as Sore Losers and E*vis Meets the Beat*es, has a few videos in the showcase, including a scripted short built around California garage-rock group The Willowz‘ “Equation #2.“ Muck Sticky will screen his self-directed opus “Thingy Thing,“ while other offerings include videos for Lord T. & Eloise‘s “Million Dollar Boots” (produced by Old School Pictures), Mr. Sche‘s “Front Me Somethin'” (directed by Marc A. Dokes), Chess Club‘s “Devastortion” (directed by Amy Frazier), and Skillet‘s “Rebirthing” (directed by Darren Doane), as well as animated videos for “Linchpin” from Clanky’s Nub (directed by G.B. Shannon) and Arma Secreta‘s “Segue/Debris” (directed by Clayton Hurley).

Additionally, Live From Memphis will screen footage culled from performances by The Secret Service, captured at the Buccaneer; The Reigning Sound, filmed at the Hi-Tone Café during Goner Fest 2; and Lucero, shot at Young Avenue Deli.

Live From Memphis founder Christopher Reyes also directed two music videos on the schedule — Organ Thief‘s “Psychochauffeur” and a Ballet Memphis performance choreographed by Garrett Ammon, called “In Ways Ungrateful” — while Sarah Fleming, Reyes’ creative partner, will be showing “Can You Hear Me Now,“ a Spinal Tap-inspired video for John Pickle‘s mock rock group Mung.

“As a music lover, I would much rather see footage of a live band,” says Reyes. “With live videos, we try to recreate what it’s like to actually be at a show, to give a sense of what the band is about and document that moment. But as a filmmaker, I like the creativity of making a music video, which affords me a lot more visual leeway.”

Reyes says that he shot the Organ Thief video on a zero budget, working at night with his Panasonic VX 100 camera and using a hearse belonging to the Memphis Roller Derby Girls as a prop. “It was fun and loose,” he says. “I had a concept but no real time to create something with tons of thought-out shots.”

He sees the final product as a marketing tool that the band can use on Web sites like MySpace and YouTube or send to MTV2 and cable-access video shows.

“YouTube,” Reyes notes, “can be so beneficial for bands, but I’m seeing a lot of single-camera, shaky from-the-back-of-the-room footage. You can’t really see the band, and the audio is distorted. I usually turn that kind of stuff off. So, at times, having a video can do more harm than good.”

“Music videos are just another form of media that’s available for exploitation,” Fleming says. “If you have something that looks good, it can lend professionalism to the band’s overall image.”

Local musician and filmmaker Geoffrey Brent Shrewsbury also has an entry in the showcase: a video for Evil Army‘s “Friday the 13th.“ Shrewsbury is no stranger to the Indie Memphis festival: He won an award for Best Narrative Short in 2004 with 17-inch Cobras and snagged the Tennessee Filmmaker’s Award with San Quentin, a series of static shots cut to the Johnny Cash song, last year.

“I haven’t made anything in a while, and I wanted a new project to practice with, something more contained and quick to turn around,” says Shrewsbury, who made the minute-and-a-half video using a camcorder and some blank tapes he had lying around.

Jeff Pope stars in the black-and-white horror flick, which, says Shrewsbury, was shot without spending a dime. “The goal was to make something as creative as possible with no budget and the least amount of stress on the band,” he explains. “It sounds like I was cutting corners, but I intentionally designed it that way. It was really a creative exercise, a challenge to remain simple and tell a story in under two minutes.”

Look for more from Shrewsbury later this fall, when he hopes to release a DVD of his short films, including videos from local bands the Lost Sounds, The Oblivians, his own group Vegas Thunder, and more.

Live From Memphis Music Video Showcase

Saturday, October 14th, 9 p.m.

Muvico, Peabody Place

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News News Feature

October Fest

In 2004, Humanities Tennessee made its move. It took the Southern Festival of Books from Nashville, where the event had been held annually, to Memphis, and despite some soggy weather, the festival made a major splash — major enough for Humanities Tennessee, which organizes the event, to make Memphis the site of the festival every other year. (Major enough too for the 2004 festival to contribute over $600,000 in state and local taxes and for planners this year to anticipate more than 20,000 visitors.)

The 18th annual Southern Festival of Books is Friday-Sunday, October 13th-15th, and it’s once more celebrating the written word in downtown Memphis at the Cook Convention Center and on the Main Street Mall — celebrating big time, inside and out, with over 200 national, regional, and local authors who will be reading from their works, participating in panel discussions, and meeting one-on-one with readers at booksignings.

Booksellers and publishers will be among the 70 exhibitors. Outdoor stages will be the setting for songwriters and musicians, poets and playwrights. And a children’s stage will include a puppet show, a magic show, and appearances by favorites such as Winnie the Pooh, Curious George, and Lilly (of purple plastic purse fame). See the festival’s full program in this week’s Memphis Flyer (which is helping sponsor the event), but see here: All events are free and open to the public, rain or shine.

“I don’t even look at the weather,” says Serenity Gerbman, director of literature and language programs for Humanities Tennessee. “My boss keeps track of it. I pretend like it’s going to be fine, because there’s nothing I can do about it.”

What she can do is praise Memphis for its volunteer support and financial support: “Both have been strong,” Gerbman reports. “Smooth” is how she describes this year’s planning of the festival; “pleased” is how she describes the staff at Humanities Tennessee, who having been working closely with sponsors AutoZone, Archer Malmo advertising, the Assisi Foundation, Davis-Kidd Booksellers, the Community Foundation, and Mid South Reads.

But in case you don’t know, what is Humanities Tennessee?

“We’re a private, nonprofit organization, and it’s important to note that,” Gerbman says. “People do sometimes get confused and think we’re a state agency like the Tennessee Arts Commission, but we’re not. We get no funding from the state at all. We’re most closely associated with the National Endowment for the Humanities, through whom we get the bulk of our funding every year.

“In addition to the Southern Festival of Books, we do the Tennessee Young Writers Workshop, a weeklong residential writing program for high school students. And we’re involved in the Museum on Main Street program, in conjunction with the Smithsonian, which takes traveling exhibits, based on a particular area, to rural communities throughout the state.”

The idea to alternate the Southern Festival of Books between Nashville and Memphis was one that had been “floating around.” In fact, according to Gerbman, “a National Endowment for the Humanities evaluation years ago recommended we think about it. When Nashville wasn’t available in 2004 because of construction at the festival’s downtown site, it was a good time to explore the move to Memphis. We’re a statewide organization — with a statewide mission and a statewide focus. We felt our constituents would be better served if we took the festival — Humanities Tennessee’s largest annual event — to another area.”

Working to bring writers of national repute to the area is another matter, and this year the festival delivers with a wide range: Andrei Codrescu, John Hope Franklin, Julia Glass, J.A. Jance, Edward Jones, Garrison Keillor, Nicholas Lemann, and Barry Lopez. (In addition to all-time Jeopardy! champ Ken Jennings.)

On the Southern literary front, count on Howard Bahr, Robert Owen Butler, Elizabeth Dewberry, William Gay, Kaye Gibbons, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith.

Graeme Base, Memphian Alice Faye Duncan, Laura Numeroff, Deborah Wiles, and Paul Zelinsky are among this year’s authors or illustrators of children’s books.

And on the local front, fiction and nonfiction, Memphians or former Memphians, look for Richard Bausch, Marshall Bosworth, Erik Calonius, Tom Carlson, Lisa C. Hickman, Cary Holladay, Alan Lightman, Reginald Martin, Phyllis Tickle, James Perry Walker, and Treasure Williams. (And look to Oxford too: John T. Edge, Beth Ann Fennelly, Tom Franklin, and David Galef.)

No wonder Serenity Gerbman calls the literary scene in Memphis a “vibrant” one. The authors above testify to it. The 18th annual Southern Festival of Books is coming to prove it.

HumanitiesTennessee.org

Southern Festival of Books

Cook Convention Center and Main Street Mall

Friday-Sunday, October 13th-15th

Free and open to the public

gill@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Music Music Features

Goner Goes International

With France’s Cheveu, England’s Hipshakes, Japan’s Rockin’ Enocky one-man band, German guitarist Roman Aul (who will front a Memphis-meets-Oxford, Mississippi supergroup called The Brand New Love Affairs), and Canadian duo The Leather Uppers (who made their debut on Goner Records with the release of their Bright Lights album in June), this weekend’s Goner Fest 3 is shaping up as a garage-rock world summit.

“The stars aligned, and a few of these foreign bands were able to make it, which has got us really excited,” says Goner Records co-owner Zac Ives, who booked the three-day music festival along with the label and retail store’s founder, Eric Friedl.

Rockin’ Enocky — a member of the Japanese rockabilly trio Jackie & the Cedrics and a friend of Friedl’s for more than a decade — is traveling the farthest, some 6,600 miles from Tokyo to Memphis. Yet it’s his second trip to the Bluff City in less than six months — he turned up at the Ponderosa Stomp last May.

Experimental French rockers Cheveu are traveling 4,500 miles to get here, which barely beats out Sheffield, England, trio the Hipshakes. But Cheveu has a three-week stateside tour planned, while the Hipshakes are flying 8,600 miles round-trip to play just one set in Memphis.

“We were surprised and happy to get the Goner Fest invitation. It’s given us a lot of energy,” says Cheveu’s Olivier, who explains that they’ve booked shows in other cites before and after their Gonerfest appearance.

“It’s worked out great,” says Friedl. “I think Cheveu wanted to tour the U.S., and [Goner Fest] gave them a good excuse to do it.

“The Hipshakes are crazy. There’s no reason for them to come over for one show, other than the fact that they’re young and they want to do it,” he adds.

Although he’d be the last to admit it, Friedl is the number-one reason that these musicians are traveling so far. His former group The Oblivians (which also featured Jack Yarber and Greg Cartwright) are a “mythic band” in Europe, says Olivier, who lists Memphians like Yarber and Jeffrey Evans along with local bands Viva L’American Death Ray Music and The Cool Jerks among his favorite performers.

“We first heard the Oblivians on a compilation in a crap metal magazine [that] had been put together by The Hives,” says Hipshakes bassist Andrew Anderson, who cites the Memphis band as a major influence.

While they performed at Chicago’s Horizontal Action Blackout Fest last May, the Oblivians aren’t on the roster for Goner Fest 3. The band, which officially called it quits at the end of the 1990s after releasing six albums, last played in Memphis on Halloween 2003; today, Cartwright lives in Asheville, North Carolina, which makes odds for an impromptu reunion highly unlikely.

“In a way, that Oblivians reunion was the start of all this,” says Friedl. “After we booked that Halloween show at the Hi-Tone, we realized that all of these people were coming to town, so another night [of entertainment] was added, with The Final Solutions and a bunch of other bands. It was so much fun that we decided to set up a legitimate festival.”

“It also has a lot to do with the Goner Records Web site and message board, which really fosters a community,” Ives says. “We’re constantly surprised by the gung-ho attitudes of Goners around the world.”

More than 300 people a night packed the Hi-Tone Café for Goner Fest 2 last September; this weekend, Goner Records, Live From Memphis, and Rocket Science Audio are releasing a DVD of that experience.

“People come because there are so many bands on the bill they want to see,” Ives says. “It’s about the crew you go with and meeting friends at the shows. Spending three days in Memphis, you get to do Stax and Sun, eat barbecue and fried chicken, and hopefully get a little more out of it than getting your head kicked in by a bunch of bands.”

According to Olivier, Cheveu plan to eat plenty of barbecue, tour Graceland, and visit Al Green’s church during their weekend in Memphis. The Hipshakes’ Anderson says simply, “We’ll have to have the most fun ever — there’s no choice.”

Goner Fest 3 kicks off with a performance from the King Louie One Man Band at Goner Records on Thursday, September 28th. Other events will be held at the Hi-Tone Café, the Buccaneer, and Sun Studio. For a complete line-up, go to www.Goner-Records.com/Gonerfest.html.