It’s a challenge for this reporter to write objectively about an old friend like Misty White, but any time she returns to Memphis is news. The rarity of such occasions contrasts sharply with her ubiquity in the city’s underground culture when she lived here — before moving to Toulouse, France, a decade ago — as noted by none other than Greg Cartwright, a well-known fan of her music who, in a 2022 interview with the Memphis Flyer, noted that he met Alicja Trout through White, back in the ’90s. “That’s how we got to know each other: [me] teaching [Alicja] songs for Misty White’s band. So there you go, Misty White is the Kevin Bacon of Memphis!”
Indeed, at the end of the last century, the characters who orbited around her sprawling rental house on Harbert were a veritable who’s who of Memphis rock auteurs, including Ron Easley, Suzy Hendrix, Tav Falco, Amy LaVere, and Alex Chilton, all drawn to a Bohemian atmosphere there thick enough to cut with a knife (but not before inhaling deeply). Along the way, the onetime Deadhead became a garage auteur herself, writing songs and forming groups that were all sparked by the mischievous twinkle in her eye. Her drumming powered those pioneers of all-female garage rock, the Hellcats, before their breakup around 1990, and then she blossomed as a songwriter, sharpening an approach that might best be termed “campfire rock-and-roll,” reminiscent of Jonathan Richman if he were high.
After resettling in Cooper-Young, she met the love of her life, French musician and indie label owner Phillipe Lombardi, and he became an ardent fan of her music. They married and moved to Toulouse, where she lives as Misti Lombardi to this day, preserving her husband’s memory since his unexpected death in 2016. They recorded her songs together in the years leading up to that tragedy, releasing an EP and her first album on his Bang! Records imprint, and she’s carried on ever since.
Now she’s releasing her third LP on Bang!, Dis-Moi, already out in France, and some of which she’ll perform during the three public appearances she’s making this week. The first will be this Thursday, April 4th, as the Zippin’ Pippins, last active about 15 years ago, take the stage at Bar DKDC.
“The original lineup was me, Kristi [White Witt, Misty’s twin sister], Amy LaVere, Suzy Hendrix, and Diana Powell was on keyboards,” White says. “For this show, we’ll have me, Kristi, Amy, and Suzy,” plus two Hellcats, Su Hartline and Lorette Velvette.
The group sprang from her activist days with Save Libertyland, an alliance of Quixotic citizens bent on dissuading the city fathers from dismantling the beloved amusement park and its vintage roller coaster, The Zippin’ Pippin, which Elvis Presley famously enjoyed. In the end, the citizens were thwarted, as documented in the Mike McCarthy short Destroy Memphis, but the band named after the fair ride lived on somehow.
“One of Kristi’s songs is ‘Mid-South Fair,’ about riding the Ferris wheel and falling in love. So many did at the Mid-South Fair. One couple even got married on the Pippin,” says White.
The band will also feature White’s song “Sex Talk,” written well before the group had formed, though it’s only now being featured on White’s solo album. Yet that LP is primarily marked by its newer material. “With this album, I didn’t have a whole album’s worth of old songs that hadn’t been recorded yet. I wrote songs for the record, and that was really interesting, to not have songs I’d played a million times. But yeah, I can still write songs! That’s what that proved.”
It’s fitting that the Zippin’ Pippins are incorporating some Hellcats in the mix, as that group will also be active in the days to follow. On April 10th, superfan Cartwright will moderate an album event and discussion at the Memphis Listening Lab centered on the Hellcats’ full-length LP, Hoodoo Train, produced at Doug Easley’s backyard studio before he moved into the former Onyx Studio building.
After the listening event, various Hellcats will perform their songs in the round at the Lamplighter Lounge. “They all know the Hellcats in France because we were on New Rose,” White says. “Anybody that was on New Rose is kind of held in a higher light because it was such a great label.”