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The New Normal: Examining the Pandemic’s Lasting Effects on Dining, Remote Work, and the Arts

The COVID-19 pandemic is not over. The Johns Hopkins University of Medicine’s Coronavirus Resource Center, which has been tracking the spread of the disease for more than a year, reports that 165 million people have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 worldwide; 3.4 million people have died from the disease. The United States has both the most cases, with just over 33 million, and the most deaths, with 588,548. In Shelby County, roughly one in 10 people have been infected, and 1,644 people have died.

The development of COVID vaccines and a massive government push to get “shots in arms” has blunted the spread of the disease. In real-world conditions, mRNA vaccines such as Pfizer and Moderna have been found to reduce an individual’s chance of infection by more than 90 percent. A two-shot dose virtually eliminates the possibility of hospitalization and death.

Vaccine development has been a science success story, but we’re not out of the woods yet. It’s unlikely COVID will ever go away entirely. The virus will go from pandemic to endemic, with flu-like regional outbreaks recurring every year. It will take time to vaccinate the world. Early fears about new virus variants able to evade vaccine-generated antibodies have not materialized, but most experts believe it’s just a matter of time before a new mutation makes a vaccine booster shot necessary.

As restrictions ease with the falling case numbers, the country seems to be crawling back to normal. Interviews with Memphians from different fields impacted by the pandemic reveal how this new normal will be different from the old.

Tamra Patterson (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Dining In/Out

Tamra Patterson, owner of Chef Tam’s Underground Cafe in the Edge District, was just getting her business off the ground when the pandemic hit. “In February of 2020, we saw such great success, having just relocated from Cooper-Young,” she says. “We were right in the middle of Black Restaurant Week, and we were expecting for that to catapult us to new heights. As you could imagine, we were kind of sucker-punched in March.”

Instead of managing new growth, Patterson found herself facing no good options. “We had to make the really hard call of do we close, or do we do what we ended up doing, which is strictly going to-go?”

The constantly changing health directives made closing the dining room the logical choice. “I didn’t want the yo-yo: You can open but you can only have six people. You can open but you can only have 20 people. I felt like the inconsistency for a customer would be much more detrimental than what was happening.”

Eric Vernon of The Bar-B-Q Shop agrees that dine-out business was the only play available but says a good restaurant is about more than just the food. “At The Bar-B-Q Shop, you come in, you sit down, you stay overtime, and the staff gets to know you. So a lot of what we did was cut right off the bat. We don’t just sell food, you know. It’s an atmosphere thing. I think we went into a little bit of panic mode. I couldn’t worry about atmosphere; I just had to get the food out. So within a three-week, maybe four-week process, we did what normally takes a year to develop. We had to come up with an online system for people to pick up, and we had to do a delivery system, and we had to figure out how to get all these systems to ring up in our kitchen.”

Huey’s (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Steve Voss faced the same challenge across the nine Huey’s locations. “We hit the streets as quickly as possible to figure out, how are we going to get food out to our guests efficiently and timely while maintaining the quality? So we went straight into curbside.”

Customers liked picking up food to eat at home, but the learning curve was steep, says Vernon. “We went from people placing orders for ribs and a couple of sandwiches to-go to doing full family orders. People don’t get that it takes longer for us to bag up an order for a family than it does to get it to the table. We had never done to-go orders for seven or eight people, every other time the phone rang. We had people calling to say they’re outside. Well, we’ve got a front door and a back door, so we’re running out to the front, they’re not there, so then we’re running out back!”

Restaurateurs got a crash course in the delivery business. “We’ve had people approach us in the past, wanting us to venture into that area,” Voss says. “We’ve developed some systems with DoorDash and ChowNow, and now it is a tremendous part of our business, but it’s really hard to execute well. It’s like having a whole other department in the building.”

Crosstown Brewing Company (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Take-out wasn’t just for restaurants. “We had to shut down the taproom, which was a major source of revenue for our business,” says Crosstown Brewing Company owner Will Goodwin. “But people kept coming, and we made beers available in six-packs. I remember having a stack of beer sitting in the middle of the taproom, and we had a skeleton crew taking pre-orders and running beer out the door to people in cars.”

Goodwin says pandemic-era liquor law changes saved his business. “Beer is kind of hung up in this antiquated, three-tier system where there’s a manufacturer, there’s a distributor, and there’s a retailer.”

The pandemic proved direct sales from brewery to customer is “a new business model that could be sustained. We’re still doing deliveries on Mondays and Tuesdays from the brewery. I’ve got one guy that orders a mixed case of beer every Monday. He’s done it for a year and a half.”

Vernon says his dining room is filling back up, and the take-out business is bustling. After having to cut his staff in half, re-hiring is proving difficult. “Drive down Madison, and there’s a help wanted sign in every restaurant.”

The new normal will likely include both curbside service and increased delivery options, says Voss. “We’ve been very fortunate to have great managers and tremendous support from the community and our wage employees to navigate all this. It’s been a heck of a ride, and we’re still battling every day.”

Out of the Office

For millions of office workers, 2020 meant taking meetings in your Zoom shirt and sweatpants. Kirk Johnston is the founder and executive partner of Vaco, a consulting and staffing firm specializing in technology, finance, accounting, supply chain, and logistics. He says many businesses who were dipping their toes in remote-work technology found themselves shoved into the deep end. “I think a lot of them were just slow to adapt, but now that it’s been proven that people can work remotely and be very effective, companies have been forced to say, ‘Gosh, this does work, and there’s no reason we shouldn’t be more flexible because it makes people more productive when they can do the things they need to do for their family and also get their job done and done well.’”

Just before the pandemic, Memphian Audra Watt started a new job as vice president of a medical device company based in Lebanon, Tennessee. “I lead a marketing organization of individuals all over the country, and we’re a global organization, so we interact with people all over the world,” she says. “We have a lot of folks that already worked remotely. I’d never really worked with remote employees. I’d always been with people, who reported to me and my bosses, in the office. So I was like, this is going to be weird. I had no idea it was going to be the new normal. A month into my new job, everybody started working from home. I was shocked at how productive everybody was! It was like, well, we don’t actually need to all be together. Our productivity just skyrocketed to the point where I was telling people, ‘Hey, you don’t need to work nights and weekends.’”

The experience was an eye-opener. “I don’t see a reason to go back to the office in the full-time capacity we had in the past,” she says.

As vaccinations decrease the danger of an office outbreak, a new hybrid model is likely to take hold. “There’s a very hands-on element to what I do, with product development and product management,” says Watt. “Being able to touch and feel, and look at prototypes, and talk to people on the line is super critical. But I don’t do that every day. If I look back at my time in the office, a lot of it was spent on the phone. … I think one of the most compelling things I realized is how much time I spent traveling to get to in-person meetings, which probably could have been accomplished virtually.”

Like most teachers, John Rash, assistant professor at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, spent the last year and a half teaching remotely. “I would say it went pretty well for certain areas,” he says. “There were definitely some areas where it was not as good as in person, but there’re some areas that actually worked better. … I have one class I teach nearly every semester with a hundred students in it. It’s just not possible to address their questions and individual concerns during class time. A lot of those things that might take two or three back-and-forth emails, now, we can jump on Zoom and get it settled in four or five minutes. I feel like I’ve had a lot more contact with students over the past year than I did previously, just because of that accessibility that’s available through Zoom.”

Johnston says some form of remote work is here to stay. “The question is going to be, what is the best model for each individual company and each individual person? I think both are going to have to be flexible. Those companies that are just saying, ‘No, we’re going back eight-to-five, five days a week,’ will have a hard time recruiting people. And I think those people who are dogmatic and say, ‘I will only work remotely,’ will not find themselves in the best company or the best position. There’s going to be some kind of a compromise on both sides.”

Amy LaVere (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

The Show Must Go On

Amy LaVere and Will Sexton were touring in support of two new albums when COVID shut the country down. “We had gigs just falling away off the calendar,” LaVere says. “We had one big one left in Brooklyn, and it canceled because they shut the city down.”

On the terrifying drive back to Memphis, they stocked up on rice and beans and prepared to hunker down indefinitely. “What will become of us? Is this the end of mankind?”

LaVere and Sexton were among the first Memphis musicians to try streaming shows as an alternative to live gigs. “We just had to figure out a way to try to make a living, but it didn’t really work,” she says. “For the first couple of months, we were doing one a week, and people were very, very generous and sweet to us. It helped us get back on our feet. But then, it just became so saturated, and there were so many people doing what we were doing, that we really just kept at it to keep our craft up. It was a thing to do every week to just not lose your mind.”

Eventually, LaVere and Sexton started playing private, socially distanced shows in their driveway. “I hated the livestream so much,” she says. “It’s really difficult to perform to nobody.”

Zac Ives says the pandemic accelerated changes at Goner Records. “We were already working on a website and converting everything over to a more functional, online way to sell records. We’ve been living in the ’90s for the majority of our lifetime as a company online, and for a while that was fun and it worked. But we went ahead and launched the site we had been working on about a month before it was ready. That was our lifeline.”

Applying for a PPP loan and emergency grants forced Ives to re-examine long-standing assumptions. “The grants made us pull a bunch of different numbers and look at things differently,” Ives says. “My biggest takeaway from all of this is that it forced everybody to get way more creative, and way more flexible with how their business works.

“We were pushing people online to shop, but we also started thinking, if there are no shows, how can we get these records out when the bands can’t tour with them? How do you put stuff in front of people? Our solution was Goner TV.”

Goner had already been livestreaming their annual Gonerfest weekends, but after participating in a streaming festival over Memorial Day weekend 2020, Ives says they realized the bi-weekly show needed to be more than music. “The idea was sort of like the public-access cable shows we used to pass around on VHS tapes,” he says. “People would do all kinds of crazy stuff.”

Filmed on phones and laptops and streaming on Twitch and YouTube, the typical Goner TV episode includes live performances, music videos, comedy, drag queen tarot card readings, puppet shows, and even cooking and cocktail demonstrations. “We recognized that the power of all of this was that there were all these other talented people around who wanted to try to do stuff together. And it really did kind of bring that community back together. We’d get done with these things and be like, ‘Wow, how’d we pull that off?’”

In August 2020, Gretchen McLennon became the CEO of Ballet Memphis. “I think from a strategic standpoint, it made coming into leadership a little more compelling because all the rules go out the window in a global pandemic,” she says. “Dorothy Gunther Pugh left a wonderful legacy. Ballet is a very traditional art form, but it’s time to pivot, and the world was in the midst of a pivot. We just didn’t know where we were going.”

With grants and a PPP loan keeping dancers on staff, Ballet Memphis started streaming shows as an outreach, including an elaborate holiday production of The Nutcracker. Learning a new medium on the fly was difficult, but rewarding. “We had to be thoughtful about the moment in time we were in,” she says. “We successfully filmed over the course of two weeks, but we had to do daily testing of the crew in our professional company and all the staff that was going to be on set. … We wanted that to be a gift to the city of Memphis.”

Held last October, the 2020 Indie Memphis Film Festival was a hybrid of drive-in screenings and streaming offerings. “It was a huge success, without a doubt,” says Director of Artist Development Joseph Carr. “There was no existing infrastructure because no one was doing this prior to the pandemic. It was actually very frowned upon in the film festival world to have films online. Everybody kind of stepped up and rallied around each other in the community and really created a sense that we can all learn from each other. It brought a lot of the festivals much closer together.”

Carr says the virtual format allowed Indie Memphis to expand its audience. “We had filmmakers from as far away as South Korea and Jerusalem, but also we had audiences from those regions. That is impossible to get in any other way.”

Melanie Addington is one of very few people who have led two film festivals during the pandemic. The 2020 Oxford Film Festival was one of the first to go virtual, and by the time 2021 rolled around, the winter wave had subsided enough to allow for some limited in-person and outdoor screenings. “It was, for so many people, literally the first time they’ve been around other people again. And so all those awkward post-vaccine conversations. Like, do we hug? We don’t know what to do with each other anymore when we’re physically in the same space.”

Addington just accepted a new position as director of the Tallgrass Film Festival in Kansas, which means she will be throwing her third pandemic-era festival this fall. “A lot of us have learned there’s a larger market out there who can’t just drop everything for five days and watch a hundred movies. It’s going to allow for a bigger audience.”

McLennon says Ballet Memphis has a full, in-person season planned next year and sees a future for streaming shows. “In our virtual content, we can be more exploratory at low-risk to see, does it resonate? Does it work?”

LaVere sees signs of life in the live music world. “Who knows what the future will hold in the winter, but we’re full steam ahead right now. My calendar is filling up. It seems like every day, the phone is ringing with a new show.”

Categories
Music Music Blog

Memphis Musicians Remember Omar Higgins

Courtesy Christopher Reyes

Omar Higgins plays the Food Not Bombs benefit show in 2009.

Omar Higgins, 37, died on April 18th, 2019 from complications related to an untreated staph infection. The Memphis music community expressed shock and grief at the unexpected passing of the bassist and bandleader of Memphis’ premiere reggae band, Chinese Connection Dub Embassy (CCDE), and the buzzed-about hardcore outfit, Negro Terror — the man everyone knew as simply Omar.

 “I’ve struggled to find the appropriate words to share with everyone about how much Omar meant to me,” says Kris Garver, DJ who has been friends with Omar since they were teenagers. “I don’t quite remember how I met Omar, in person. It might have been at Kirby High School, it may have been at the Hickory Ridge Mall or even on the front stoop at his house, a place that was Omar’s de facto headquarters for as long as I’ve known him. Our mutual friend kept talking about this friend of his, Omar, who was so fucking rad and knew how to play the bass and loved kung-fu movies and cartoons and knew about all kinds of fucking music, and just moved here from Brooklyn.”

Garver says he and Omar were “music nerds, amateur musicologists. We would talk about all the kinds of bands we wanted to form.”

Joseph Higgins, who along with his brother, David, formed the core of CCDE, says Omar was born in Memphis, but lived in Brooklyn for “a good chunk of his life. He loved it so much. That was the place where he honed his skills on punk rock. But he brought his skills back here to Memphis and we sharpened our swords like crazy.”
[pullquote-7] Omar Higgins was an Army veteran who served in the Iraq War. “He talked about it, but it was always something that he tried to keep to himself,” says Joseph Higgins. “He loved this country. Anybody ever try to talk bad about it, he would say, ‘nah, this is my home.’ We were born here. You black, white, Asian, whatever. We are all one….In Iraq, in the field, we’re all brothers, we’re all one. That’s the only way we get a chance to come home. We can’t be like, ‘I don’t protect this person, because he’s this, or I don’t protect this person, because she’s that.’ That was one thing he brought back: The whole mentality of, we are all one. He was just trying to be the best Omar he could be.”

The Higgins brothers played together in worship bands at churches such as IPC, New Beginnings. Miracle Redemption, and New Genesis. “They have done nothing but show us love and let us hone our skills,” says Joseph. “Omar talked about those churches as things that kept him centered. With all the wickedness and crazy stuff that went on the world, we all need that assurance, hope, and peace. We got that from reggae music, and the churches.”

Omar’s spiritual beliefs were as idiosyncratic as they were deeply felt. In John Rash’s award-winning 2018 documentary Negro Terror, Omar claimed a strong affiliation with Hari Krishna, and performed a blistering psych-rock chant in his name. He was a spiritual seeker, who found deep meaning in the healing and uniting power of music. “If you didn’t like him, you just don’t like good energy,” says rapper SvmDvde. “He never told anybody to harm this person because they were gay, or harm this person because they were white or black — except racists and rapists. Omar was an advocate for women. I feel like if he could catch a rapist, he would hang a rapist.”

While playing punk rock in Brooklyn, Omar became associated with Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP), which arose from the first-wave ska scene in late 1960s London. The SHARPs, who appropriated the logo of Jamaican reggae label Trojan Records as their own, are a loose-knit, anti-fascist organization who acted as a counterweight to the violent, racist skinheads who infiltrated punk rock culture in the 1980s and 90s.

When he returned to Memphis in the mid-2000s, Omar dove deep into reggae history, and started training his brothers to play the music. “I was always into hip hop and R&B and a little bit of rock,” Joseph says. “Bob Marley was a great artist, but I thought he was the only one people listened to. Omar introduced me to Gregory Issacs, Barrington Levy…I fell in love with reggae.”

Omar Higgins had a well-earned reputation as a demanding bandleader. “Anybody that we have ever featured or had join us on stage, they had to do their homework,” says Joseph.
[pullquote-6] Singer Kween Jasira of Ras Empress, who frequently sang with CCDE, says, “Omar taught me to be knowledgeable about what you’re doing. Some people play certain music, and sing certain music, but they don’t understand it. They just sing it because it sounds good. Omar had knowledge about not only reggae and rock, he had a true love of music, regardless of genre. Not only true love, true knowledge…Omar really taught me to research my craft, and let that shape me as an artist.”

CCDE drummer Donnon Johnson says, “He was really a James Brown type. He was very specific about how music should be played. One rehearsal, when I first got into the band, I watched Omar literally change instruments, teach piano and guitar parts, give a horn line, voice lines, and show me what drum pattern to play, all in one rehearsal…Nine times out of 10, he was the most skilled musician in the room. But he was the least likely to try to show somebody up, or exhibit any type of attitude. He was the most skilled and the most humble on any stage he was on. That’s his legacy.”

David Higgins says the band passed up offers from a record label in 2009. The label executive “…loved what we were doing. He had never seen anyone like [Omar] who was an American.”

But the label wanted the band, then known as the Soul Enforcers, to stop playing club shows and record with them exclusively. “Omar would never sign on the dotted line,” says David. “He was like, I want to keep playing. This guy doesn’t want us to play out. So we’re going to keep doing it under the name Chinese Connection Rhythm Selection. I came up with the Dub Embassy part…The name is funny. It was supposed to be a thing so Omar could go out and play, to minister to people, to play life music. That’s what reggae music is, life music. We wanted to get out there and keep that camaraderie going. He didn’t want to record until he was ready, until we were all mentally ready. He didn’t want to take us through a whirlwind of BS. I’m glad we did it the way we did, the underground way, the independent way. That’s what everybody’s doing now. Nobody wants to be signed to some big label. Independent is where it’s at. Omar was ahead of his time.”

At first, Omar’s version of a ministry meant playing in some of Memphis’ worst dives. Negro Terror guitarist Rico Fields met Omar at the notorious Rally Point in the University of Memphis area. “The Buccaneer was the Cotton Club compared to the Rally Point,” Fields says. “That’s where you went when you couldn’t go anywhere else.”
[pullquote-5] An early supporter was Eso Tolson of the a cappella hip hop act Artistik Approach. His series of Artistik Lounge shows featuring up-and-coming artists started out at the Rumba Room in Downtown Memphis. Tolson booked Chinese Connection Dub Embassy to play. “His charisma, his stage presence, his energy was just so compelling…That’s when I knew these guys were special. It was a rainy Sunday night. The energy was living good. There were a lot of up-and-coming musicians there. Right after the performance, it was sprinkling outside. They were putting up equipment. Donnon, on the drums, he just had his snare, and he started playing this rhythm. He’s from New Orleans, it was like a second line. Then Suavo came out with his trombone. Omar and me were outside chanting in the rain with this second-line energy. They had just played this amazing set, and here we were, on the street in the rain, chanting. It was that energy they created, and that vibe they had. Omar was the leader. He had that spirit. People trusted him. They valued his wisdom, his ideas, and his leadership. Chinese Connection traveled all over the South and the Midwest, and people were catching those vibes. But that performance was a pinnacle for me.”
[pullquote-4] From that point on, CCDE was the house band. “The Artistik Lounge is kinda like a convergence,” says rapper PreauXX, who frequently performed with the band. “Omar had this powerful energy about him that commanded your attention, but it was so thoughtful, so grateful. It was, ‘don’t bullshit me, because I’m stylin’ in your face.’ It was an honest person. I love characters like that…They brought me to one of my first festivals, the Wakka Roots festival. I didn’t have any money to my name, and they said, ‘PreauXX, get in this truck and come tour with us.’…Any time performing with them, it was always a family reunion.”

“They are completely different,” says Kween Jasira, who also began playing with the band around the same time. “The other bands I had been with, there were singers, and there were musicians, if that makes sense. CCDE are a complete package. They are the definition of one band, one sound. You don’t just have singers with the musicians playing behind them, background singers to the side. The entire band is responsible for the sound, and for the singing. It’s a self-contained thing that I hadn’t seen before. But what makes them unique from other bands is they found a way to integrate themselves with other genres of music, and other artists. They found a way to bring hip hop and reggae together, and R&B and reggae together. The way they immersed themselves in the artist community around them, and both spread their seeds and became a part of what was already there, and bringing people into reggae as well. A lot of those people didn’t know reggae, or even knew that they liked it at the time. They’ve never given it a chance. But the way CCDE moved in the artist community, they were exposing that roots reggae, and people latched onto it.”

Chris McCoy

Chinese Connection Dub Embassy playing the 2018 Beale Street Music Festival

PreauXX says, “(Omar) could hang with the hipster kids, he could hang with the grunge kids, he could hang with people who love reggae music. He could move fluidly throughout all of these communities and be appreciated. It’s a rare feat. There will never be anyone else like that.”

“Musically, that is one of the tightest bands you’ll see,” says Justin Jaggers. “It’s just fun to watch them perform, and nonverbally communicate. A look from Omar, a response from Joseph, and they just know what to do.”

Jaggers is the organizer of Musicians for LeBonheur. In 2013, he reached out to CCDE. “The quickest ‘yes’ I got was from those guys….I was just blown away by their response. They would do anything we asked them to do.”

Jaggers arranged to have CCDE play for LeBonheur patients. “There was this kid who had some kidney issues. He was 19 or 20, and just a frail, small guy. We went into the room, and he just looked miserable. These guys started playing, and they were interacting so well with each other. The kid kinda lifts up his arm and starts dancing with the only body parts he could move. You know that kinda had to hurt a little bit, but he wanted so badly to be a part of this music.”

CCDE’s reputation and fan base grew with their 2013 album The Firm Foundation, named for an earlier incarnation of the group. But the ever-restless Omar continued to branch out. Omar sat in on bass with cowpunks Jocephus and the George Jonestown Massacre. “We had another underground project called the Cotton Pickers,” says David. “We used to work for Mr. [George] Klein for Elvis Radio. We had another project called Ten Foot Ganja Plants, and another called John Brown’s Body. We had a studio thing, and a live thing. We were going to drop this thing called Slave vs. Master. We intend to put that out in the future as a tribute to Omar.”
[pullquote-3] CCDE had a minor hit with their grooved-up cover of A-Ha’s synth-pop classic “Take On Me,” Joseph says, “That was Omar’s thing. For the longest, he wouldn’t do a Bob Marley song, because he didn’t want to be a cover band. But we were like, this is Memphis. People love Bob Marley. So he said, ‘OK, but if we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it Chinese Connection Dub Embassy way.’ Every time, if you heard a cover we did, it’s not like the original song. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it our way.”

I first met the Higgins brothers backstage at the David Bowie tribute concert at Minglewood Hall organized by Memphis musicians after the legend’s 2016 death. I had seen them play before, but up close, the 300-pound Omar’s energy was intense and unmistakable. Five months later, I watched them steal the show at the Prince tribute with Omar’s stunning arrangement of “How Come You Don’t Call Me?” The next time I saw them play at the Hi-Tone, Omar greeted me as soon as I walked in the door. Offhand, I asked if he knew “Heathen” by Bob Marley. The band then opened their set with a barn burning version of the song.

Omar was cooking up a fresh surprise. He recruited his old friend Rico Fields and drummer Ra’id to get back to his hardcore punk roots. “When he hit me up about the idea, all I knew was I wanted to be involved with it,” Fields says. “I didn’t know nothing about skinhead subculture, nothing. I knew enough about punk to have a conversation, but I wasn’t a sub-genre guy: American, oi, this punk, that punk, whatever. I was like, there’s more than one? He was an encyclopedia. He drilled us hard for a year. We didn’t do any shows. All we did was practice.”
Courtesy Christopher Reyes

Omar Higgins plays with Negro Terror at the 2019 Black Lodge Halloween Ritual

[pullquote-1] The band would become the controversial Negro Terror. “We knew to get the message out, it had to be crazy,” Fields says. “There were five or six other band names that came before Negro Terror. Some of them were like, you should never, ever say those two words together ever again. That’s going to get us arrested.”

Negro Terror’s mission was to challenge the assumption that punk is an exclusively white genre. “Growing up in the 80s, 90s, that’s what they told you: You’re black, so you have to be gospel, hip hop, or R&B. You gotta stay in your church. Folks like me and Omar, we love black music. If you could put a color on popular music in America, it would be black. I’m never one of those people who says certain colors need to stay in certain genres of music. And Omar was the same way.”

Negro Terror instantly made a big impression. “People were very confused at first,” says Fields. “They were used to seeing Omar play reggae, because that’s what he was known for…When we did our first show at the Hi Tone, we kinda decided to fuck with the crowd, and play reggae first. Then, all the sudden, I turn that distortion on, and people were just like, ‘whoah, shit. It’s about to go down.’ Then he started singing, and people were like, is that Omar’s twin brother? Who is that?”
[pullquote-2] One of Negro Terror’s earliest coups was a cover of “Invasion” by the infamous English racist band Skrewdriver. Fields says Omar was determined to do it better than the fascists. “Literally the only negative reactions we got were from racists. We even had a white supremacist on YouTube comment on ‘Invasion’ who actually showed respect. He said, ‘I may not agree with you ideologically, but you know what? You did really good on this song and I really like it.’ I’m the dude who handles the social media, and I was like, ‘Thank you? I think?’”

One of Negro Terror’s most notorious gigs was playing in front of City Hall during the protests surrounding the Madison Hotel’s (now Hu’s) forced eviction of artist and Live From Memphis founder Christopher Reyes from his home at 1 S. Main. “I didn’t know him all that well,” says Reyes. “However, he was part of the Live From Memphis scene, always doing something. What stands out in my mind mostly is how he supported my family in our time of need.”

Chris McCoy

Rico Fields performs with Negro Terror in front of Memphis City Hall during a protest in April, 2018.

Negro Terror was the subject of a documentary by Mississippi director John Rash. The film included incendiary performance footage and intimate interviews with the band members. In the film, Omar revealed that he had a wife who was killed in a car accident. “I’m surprised he put that out there,” says Joseph.

The documentary Negro Terror premiered in November, 2018 at Playhouse on the Square during the Indie Memphis Film Festival, with the band providing a live soundtrack to the packed house. It would go on to win the festival’s Soul of Southern Film Award.

This spring, Omar was hard at work preparing the release of Negro Terror’s debut album Paranoia. “He had back problems,” says Fields. “Last summer, at one of these little funky-ass festivals, he fell through some stairs and fucked up his leg real bad…He was getting better. He just got back in the gym. He was already down 30 pounds. We were about to hit the road hard, and he was ready for it.”

In mid-April, he hit a wall. “His back was hurting,” says Joseph. “We usually play three church services on Sunday. We played one and he was like, man, I feel bad. I don’t think I can make it.”

Omar returned to the family home to get some rest. His brothers later discovered him laying on the floor. “He said he felt like he had a pinched nerve in his side. I asked if he needed to go to the hospital, and he said nah, he’d had this before. It was something that would die down quick. After a couple of days, he still wasn’t feeling well. He was still in the same spot, it looked like. Then we were like, nah man, we gotta get an ambulance.”
[pullquote-8] An untreated sore on Omar’s back had led to a staph infection which spread quickly. In the hospital, he suffered a stroke and ended up in the ICU. As his condition deteriorated, word spread that Omar was in trouble. CCDE had fought to get Kween Jasira and Ras Empress included on a show they were opening with Jamaican dub musician Jah9. They eventually arranged to give their protégées half of their set. “When Omar fell ill, we had to open up the whole show,” says Jasira. “I was calling and checking in every day. I think the thing that made it the toughest, the night we played the Jah9 show, word was he was turning the corner. He was out of ICU, and the breathing tube had been removed. I was not ready for it to turn the other way the next day.”

Joseph says, “While he was in the hospital, he did nothing but crack jokes. We were watching TV and praying, just being as positive as possible. It was a time when you would think he would be depressed, he was trying to stay positive about everything…I want to say the day before we passed, he was on the phone with Donnon, our drummer. He said, ‘When I get out of this bed, we’re going to start working on the Chinese Connection Dub Embassy record. It’s way overdue. People are waiting on it’…He said, ‘This happened for a reason. It’s telling me that we need to keep on what I’m doing, but we need to bring light to the dark times. That was what inspired him. He wanted to get it out to the masses. We said, we’re with you for the long haul.”
[pullquote-9] Omar Higgins died on Thursday night, April 18. “We were with him until he passed,” says Joseph.

As the news leaked out over the weekend, there was an anguished outpouring of love from Memphis musicians and admirers on social media. “Omar was the powerful voice who stood up for you, even when you couldn’t stand up for yourself,” says PreauXX. “That’s something I’m always going to carry in my heart, and I think everyone who knew Omar knew that about him.”

“For a couple of days, I couldn’t wrap my head around the why,” says Kween Jasira. “Now, I’m just trying to accept it and be there for his family. I want to make Omar proud. They say death isn’t final. As long as you speak their name, and talk about them, they’re never truly dead. That’s what we can do to keep Omar alive, with the music that he loved, and to carry the same Omar spirit along with that.”
[pullquote-10] “I’m still processing it,” says Donnon Johnson. “I love Omar so much, as a man, and what he brought out in me as a musician, that my heart is going to have to find a new way to break.”
Chris McCoy

Omar Higgins plays the Green Room at Crosstown Concourse in March, 2019. It would be one of his last shows.

“I told somebody today, ‘God sent him to me,’” says SvmDvde. “I had to meet him and learn from him in order for me to get where I needed to be. He opened my mind completely. I could talk to him about anything. He guided me spiritually, musically, everything.”

Fields says Negro Terror cannot continue without Omar. “Negro Terror has died and been reborn. Look at what’s going on in pop culture. The Lil Nas X kid? He’s Negro Terror…The idea of Negro Terror isn’t even to be a cool punk band with a cool logo. It was showing black kids that they could do anything they wanted to without worrying about it being a white space. There ain’t no such thing as a white space.”
[pullquote-12] “Not only did he have the skill and the talent, it was not in vain. He was using his talent to inspire and build community. He was giving of himself, sometimes not to his advantage. He was skilled, and humble,” says Eso Tolson. “That spirit, what he was about, his music, will carry on. Those who didn’t know him will come to know him with the stories that will be shared.”

Fields says he got to say goodbye to Omar. “He came to me in a dream. He looked kinda down, so I gave him a hug. ‘I got you,’ I said. He said, ‘No no no. I got YOU, forever.’ I hadn’t had a dream since.”

Omar Higgins


A memorial for Omar Higgins will begin with a Beale Street parade at 10:30 AM on Tuesday, April 30, followed by a reception at I Am A Man Plaza at 11:00 and funeral services at Clayborn Temple at noon.

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Memphis Filmmakers Take Home The Hoka at Oxford Film Festival

Joey Brent

Winning filmmakers on the red carpet at the 2019 Oxford Film Festival, (left to right) John Charter, Paul Kaiser, Timothy Blackwood, Bradford Downs, Suzannah Herbert, Morgan Jon Fox, John Rash, Will Stewart, and Christian Walker

Memphis-born filmmaker Suzannah Herbert and directing partner Lauren Belfer’s documentary Wrestle took home the prize for Best Documentary Feature at this year’s Oxford Film Festival, which took place over the weekend. Herbert and Belfer were also awarded the Alice Guy Blaché Emerging Female Filmmaker Award. The sports documentary, about a high school wrestling team in Huntsville, Alabama, has also won the Ron Tibbets Excellence In Filmmaking Award at Indie Memphis, the audience and best sports documentary awards at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, and the Best Documentary award at the Denver Film Festival.

The Narrative Feature Hoka, as the festival’s awards are called, went to Jordan Noel for This World Alone.
Joey Brent

Sonya A. May, Hudson Phillips, Jordan Noel, and Trisha Solyn celebrate their win for Best Narrative Feature at the Oxford Film Festival.

Oxford’s Best Music Documentary Award went to John Rash’s Negro Terror, a portrait of the Memphis anti-racist hardcore punk band.

Memphis filmmaker Morgan Jon Fox’s short film “The One You Never Forget” tied for Best LBGTQ Short Film with Will Stuart’s “All We Are”. The documentary The Gospel Of Eureka by Michael Palmeri and Donal Mosher won in the LBGTQ feature category.

Memphis filmmaker Christian Walker won Best Mississippi Music Video for “Wash My Hands”, a video he made for Cedric Burnside with Beale Street Caravan.

Mississippi film awards included John Reyer Afamasaga’s Door Ajar: The M. B. Mayfield Story winning Best Feature, “Roots and Wings” by Hannah Miller winning Best Short, and Bennett Krishock winning Best Emerging Filmmaker for “Happy Birthday Papa”.

You can see the complete list of winners for the 16th annual film festival on the festival’s website

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Indie Memphis 2018 Friday: MIA, Diana Ross, and Negro Terror

After a gala opening at the Halloran Centre Thursday night, Indie Memphis moves to Overton Square on Friday. The schedule is packed with great stuff beyond what I could fit into this week’s cover story about the festival. 

Madeline’s Madeline (1:10 PM, Studio on the Square) is an acclaimed, visually inventive film by director Josephine Decker, who won the Craig Brewer Emerging Filmmaker Award at Indie Memphis 2014.

Indie Memphis 2018 Friday: MIA, Diana Ross, and Negro Terror

She began as a refugee from Sri Lanka, and ended up playing on the world’s biggest stages. Matangi/Maya/MIA (3:40, Studio On The Square) is a documentary about the fascinating life of political dance pop musician M.I.A.

Indie Memphis 2018 Friday: MIA, Diana Ross, and Negro Terror (2)

The festival’s first world premiere is Diego Llorente’s Entrialgo, a beautiful vérité documentary about life in rural Spain.

Entrialgo || trailer from diego llorente on Vimeo.

Indie Memphis 2018 Friday: MIA, Diana Ross, and Negro Terror (3)

The second world premiere of the day is Shoot The Moon Right Between The Eyes (6:30, Studio on the Square). It’s a musical by Austin, Texas director Graham L. Carter that sets the music of John Prine amidst a story of a pair of small-time grifters who meet their match in a strong willed widow. It’s inventive, heartfelt, and a little rough around the edges, which is totally appropriate for a film that takes inspiration from Prine’s lyrics.

Shoot The Moon Right Between The Eyes [Official Trailer] from Graham L. Carter on Vimeo.

Indie Memphis 2018 Friday: MIA, Diana Ross, and Negro Terror (4)

At 6:30 at Playhouse on the Square, the Hometowner Documentary Shorts bloc features films from Memphis artists, including Lauren Ready, Jason Allen Lee, and Klari Farzley. Best of Enemies director Robert Gordon and producer Kim Bledsoe Lloyd’s film “Ginning Cotton at the Dockery” tracks down the men and women who worked at the last functioning cotton plantation in Mississippi. Memphis musician Robbie Grant makes his directorial debut with “Ben Siler Gives Ben Siler Advice,” in which Memphis filmmaker and Flyer film contributor Ben Siler meets a younger Memphian named Ben Siler and tells him how the world works. It pretty much does what it says on the box, in two hilariously depressing minutes.

At 9:10, there’s a genuine only-at-Indie Memphis moment. Mahogany is a 1975 star vehicle for Diana Ross, directed by Motown impresario Berry Gordy (and a couple of ringers). Also featuring a smoking turn from Billy Dee Williams in his prime, and a smash hit number one song from Ross as a theme, it’s a 70s classic. To illustrate the depth of the Mahogany cult, the film will be proceeded by “Mahogany Too,, a short film shot on Super 8 by Nigerian filmmaker Akosua Adoma Owusu that is a lighting retelling of Ross’ film, featuring Nollywood star Esosa E.

Indie Memphis 2018 Friday: MIA, Diana Ross, and Negro Terror (5)

At 9:10 on the big stage at Playhouse On The Square, an experimental documentary about Memphis’ most radical band makes its world premiere. In Negro Terror, director John Rash maintains a light touch, focusing on the sights and sounds of the hardcore punk band’s legendary stage show, and the words of the band’s three very different members, led by Omar Higgins, an anarchist Hari Krishna devotee who is a longtime member of Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP). In what is definitely a first for Indie Memphis and probably a first for just about anywhere, the band will provide a live soundtrack for the film about them as it premieres.