Tag: Harbortown

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Music Music Blog

Tobin Sprout and Elf Power Down By The River

The 1990s lo-fi rock movement had its roots in Memphis and Ohio. All over the country, musicians were discovering the liberating power of the newly commercially available 4-track cassette recorders. An inexpensive Tascam, a couple of decent mics, and some persistence was all you needed to make a record—after all, The Beatles produced Sgt. Pepper with only four tracks. In Memphis, The Grifters and The Oblivians were creating new sounds by pushing the cheapo recording technology to its cacophonous limits. In Dayton, Ohio, disgruntled schoolteacher Robert Pollard was gathering his musician buddies in the house of Tobin Sprout, translating muscular, melodic rock into moody, intimate recordings. Guided By Voices albums like Bee Thousands and Alien Lanes sounded like transmissions from a radio station broadcasting through the static ether from a better timeline. The Grifters, touring in Ohio, hooked up with their musical compatriots and convinced them to hit the road. The first stop of the Grifter / Guided By Voices tour was in Memphis at Antenna club.

Tobin Sprout

Tobin Sprout and Pollard parted ways in the late 1990s, transforming GBV from a group effort into a solo outlet for Pollard’s impossibly prolific songwriting muse. Sprout embarked on a solo music career and pursued his muse into the fine art world. This Sunday evening, he returns to the city where GBV played their first out of town gig for a show in Memphis most unusual venue. The River Series, coordinated by Goner Records’ Zach Ives, brings selected acts to the Harbor Town Amphitheater, tucked away in the Wolf River Harbor with a fantastic view of Downtown Memphis.

Tobin Sprout and Elf Power Down By The River

Joining Sprout will be Elf Power, an Athens, Georgia combo working within the lo fi constraints pioneered by Sprout and company.

Tobin Sprout and Elf Power Down By The River (2)

The show starts at 3 PM on Sunday, May 21 at the Harbortown Amphitheater.

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Sing All Kinds We Recommend

John Paul Keith at Harbortown on Saturday

The River Series at Harbortown is back this Saturday, September 20th, with Memphis workhorse John Paul Keith, who will be joined by his former sidekick-turned-spinoff, Mark Edgar Stuart. If you’ve never been to the small space behind Miss Cordelia’s, you’re just nuts. You can see the Pyramid. The series benefits Maria Montessori School. Like my daddy said, “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.” Go support that school in a cool location while listening to great music and enjoying delicious food and satifying beer. And stop fighting everything.

John Paul Keith at Harbortown on Saturday

Categories
Living Spaces Real Estate

New Neighbor

CREDIT: Renderings courtesy of Grant and Company

Harbor Town, established in 1989 — making it the granddaddy of the downtown residential revival — is getting a new neighbor. Toward the south end of Mud Island, near the Auction Street Bridge, RiverTown is going up. Occupancy is set for November.

Keith Grant, who, along with his brother David, is a principal for RiverTown, says the downtown development was a change of pace for the homebuilding team.

“In the past, we’ve done predominantly single-family housing,” Grant says. “We feel like some of the projects downtown are too contemporary or they don’t have a view of the Mississippi River. By building [RiverTown] and not retrofitting a building, we feel that we can offer something for Memphians to purchase that they can enjoy.”

Grant is president of the Memphis Area Homebuilders Association (see his monthly Living Spaces column on page 4), the third generation of Grants to be so appointed (after his father, Richard, and his grandfather, Carl).

When the finishing touches are put on it, RiverTown will be composed of 200 units in 23 buildings. Prices will range from the mid-$200,000s to the upper-$600,000s, with sizes going from 1,300 to 3,200 square feet. Some units are two or three stories high. The 3,200-square-footers will have a large patio overlooking the river and a recreation room on the upper floor.

Renderings courtesy of Grant and Company

The Signature. RiverTown on the Island offers six different building styles/floor plans.

“The best part about RiverTown are the views,” Grant says. “Every unit has a view of the river or looks back at the skyline. In some cases, they have a view of both. Every unit also has a balcony. We oversized the balconies because we knew people would be spending time on them.” Each unit comes with a garage as well.

Grant feels like he’s well suited, through his homebuilding experience, to know what people are looking for in the real estate market.

“Even though they want something that’s a little contemporary for downtown, the bottom line is that Memphians are still traditional,” Grant says.

“The styling at RiverTown is more contemporary on the outside. Yet, it has a resort appearance because the overhangs on the buildings are similar to what you might see in Florida. We aren’t just putting siding all over it. We’re putting brick, because people down here are accustomed to it.”

Grant assures that RiverTown will fit in nicely with the neighborhood.

“They’ve got a lot of good things going in Harbor Town,” he says. “It’s a nice community with a resort feel to it. That’s kind of what we incorporated into ours. We wanted to be an extension of what’s in Harbor Town now.”

RiverTown isn’t all that different from other projects Grant has been involved with, he says.

“The nice thing is that RiverTown is all on one site. [It’s] not spread out, which makes it a lot easier to supervise. It’s still wood frame. We still use a lot of the same contractors that we use on our single-family houses. So we feel we have a lot to offer coming from the single-family market.”

See for yourself by logging onto RiverTownOnTheIsland.com. In addition to floor plans and renderings of what’s in store for Mud Island, you can go on a virtual tour of what a furnished unit will likely look like. ■ — GA

LivingSpaces@memphisflyer.com