Lawrence Matthews at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts (Credit: Gabrielle Duffie)
If you thought Don Lifted concerts used to be rare, Lawrence Matthews shows are even more so, leaving all who attended last Saturday’s sold out performance at the Green Room feeling lucky. Of course, the two artists are one in the same, Don Lifted being Matthews’ stage name for many years even as he built a name and a reputation in visual art under his given name. Then, back in September of 2022, Don Lifted took his final bow during one last show at the Overton Park Shell. A few minutes later, out came Lawrence Matthews, rapper, spitting tougher rhymes than ever, flanked by Idi x Teco.
That announced a new direction in Matthews’ music, but it also turned out to be a hiatus of sorts. The one sign of action was Matthews’ release, last May, of the single “Green Grove (Our Loss),” the first cut from what is still the unreleased album Between Mortal Reach and Posthumous Grip. And while that track sported some very Don Lifted-esque atmospherics until its harder-hitting beat kicked in, it then featured Matthews’ new voice, full of grim determination yet mixed with a new playfulness that made it even scarier as he sang of “This blood, this soil, infused, this river …”
Last Saturday, after the pre-show playlist of classic soul wound down, that same tune was the first thing audience members heard as Matthews stepped into the center of the chairs in-the-round, mic in hand. In stark contrast to the often elaborate sets and multiple screens of Don Lifted shows, this show was stripped bare, the music’s auteur wearing the utilitarian garb of a mechanic or delivery driver in a single beam of light.
Meanwhile, some of the sounds were downright lush, as other prolonged samples of soul, gospel, and blues (most taken from the Fat Possum-owned Hi Records catalogue) often shaped the intros, sometimes drenched in effects like echoes from the past, before giving way to harder, more militant beats and Matthews’ angrier raps, almost reminiscent of classic KRS-One, delivered solo as he prowled the floor for most of the night (except for a brief, powerful cameo by Idi x Teco).
Lawrence Matthews in The Green Room (Credit: Gabrielle Duffie)
At one point, that lush soul threated to engulf the night, as Matthews turned one track’s prolonged intro of “(Lay Your Head on My) Pillow” by Tony! Toni! Toné! into a singalong of sorts. Ultimately, it always came back down to hard slamming raps and beats (often co-created on the upcoming album with Unapologetic producer C Major, who was low-key in attendance Saturday night).
“It’s been a year and four months since I performed,” Matthews noted. “All through 2023, I was just tucked away, not really recording music, not really practicing anything.” Indeed, the album he promises to release later this year was essentially finished in 2022. “And while I was away, it just seemed like shit kept getting worse and worse in the world. And in this city, too.” He noted how he began hearing people’s “weight, frustration, and tightness, until it turned into desperation.”
All of that came out in his performance, and even in one moment in which Matthews, like his audience, simply listened and grooved along. That was when Matthews the performer was set aside and the artist implored us to simply listen to a track, “An Acquired Taste,” from his upcoming album. He too became a fan as it played on, featuring a powerful cameo by the singer Uni’Q.
Then it was back to business, as the pounding beats and atmospheric samples ground on, ultimately providing background to one of Matthews’ latest tracks, a meditation on the murder of Breonna Taylor by police officers titled “Breonna’s Curse.” In that final moment, however, the militant, simmering rage of most of the night’s beats and raps faded away somewhat, and Matthews ended the concert with something unexpected: a profound sense of mourning.
Last year, we covered the transformation of the artist formerly known as Don Lifted into … himself. That would be multimedia Renaissance man Lawrence Matthews, of course, who soon followed through on that promised transformation in real time during his show at the Overton Park Shell last September. After a solitary delivery of songs from his Don Lifted trilogy, Matthews stepped offstage for a moment, only to reemerge with a rougher look and fellow rappers Idi x Teco flanking him in classic rap posse style. Don Lifted, the beloved emo-alt-hip-hop persona, was gone.
It left many of us wondering, “Where will this artist go next?” But it turns out he’d already gone there. All the while, parallel to his alter ego’s greater exposure. Matthews had been creating music emanating from his truer self. “I had been making a rap album at the same time with IMAKEMADBEATS,” he says of the time leading to Fat Possum’s release of Don Lifted’s 325i album. “So at the same time that I was asked to make 325i, I was already seven tracks deep into a rap album.”
No one’s heard those tracks with IMAKEMADBEATS, but Matthews’ latest work is very much a rap album and very much not Don Lifted. On May 18th, the world will hear “Green Grove (Our Loss),” the first release from his upcoming album Between Mortal Reach and Posthumous Grip. Kicking off with some classic soul strings, it dips into some very Don Lifted-esque atmospherics until a harder-hitting beat kicks in. Matthews’ new voice is one of grim determination, mixed with a new playfulness that might even make it scarier. “This blood, this soil, infused, this river/This money, this drink, devour your mental …”
And just then it cuts to some mid-song banter from an old record by Mississippi Fred McDowell. And that’s typical of the whole album. As Matthews explains, “My narrative mirrors the narrative of so many folks who have lived and died poor, fighting for scraps, even while their songs are known all across the world. I felt a kinship with them, but at the same time, I didn’t want to be that. So while I was signed to Fat Possum, I started to pull from their catalog for samples. Nearly every sample on this new album is from Hi Records, Fat Possum, or Big Legal Mess. And even though I’m not signed with Fat Possum now, we have a great relationship and they’re helping me take care of business. So this project, to me, was channeling those artists’ stories.”
Yet the spirit of the album is not celebratory. If the near-emo quality of the Don Lifted work captured both the alienation and the romanticism of youth, the newer work seems more obsessed with sex and death. It’s an approach he dubs Southern Gothic. “Outside of one Stylistics sample, every person sampled on the record has passed. There are four Syl Johnson samples on this album. He passed while we were making it,” Matthews explains. “And because I had Covid early in 2022, death was very prominent in my thinking. Most of the songs are about death — death and love and obsession. And, being from the South, violence. How much violence I’ve experienced in life, and how much violence is brewing in me, because of what I’ve experienced. Those elements of my life had no place in the music I made as Don Lifted. But with this project, I could express my anger and frustration more directly. I’m expressing the ways violence has come at me and comes out of me. Now, I’m leaning into that without shame.”
And yet he’s also leaning into it with considerable intention and thought, with a sense that this is larger than himself. “There’s also the story, these folks’ energy that I’m channeling, and what they have to say,” says Matthews. “In Memphis, in this geography, there’s a lot of dead Black and brown people under us, in this space that we create in, and I feel that. I feel that energy. And that can lead to something beautiful. I think this project is the most beautiful thing in the world, but it’s also scary. The South is all of that: sex and violence and beauty. It’s this cauldron of energy.”
When Don Lifted appears in the Orion Free Concert Series at the Overton Park Shell this Friday, September 16th, it may not exactly be his last performance, but don’t hold your breath ’til the next one. That’s the message from artist Lawrence Matthews III, who created the alter ego of Don Lifted, as he ponders the upcoming show. “I’m not treating this as the last time you’re ever going to see me perform,” he says. “That’s too finite of a thing to say.” And yet Germantown’s Renaissance man, who’s exhibited photography and paintings, directed videos, and motivated nonprofits, does seem to feel the Don Lifted persona has run its course.
For one thing, the most recent singles/videos he’s released, “Baby Teeth” and “The Rope,” will certainly be the final recorded products under that name. And that alone is significant, coming barely a year after his major label debut, 325i on Fat Possum. When we featured that album in a story last year, it seemed to portend a storied career for Don Lifted. But in this era, seemingly permanent things can slip through your fingers in a heartbeat.
You might even chalk Matthews’ change in priorities to a heartbeat: the accelerated pulse of a panic attack. “I entered 2022 having a panic attack on Cooper. I don’t even know what triggered it. I managed to get down the street to Overton Park, and I laid in the grass until I could breathe again. I was really, really scared. I had never had a panic attack in my life.”
It turns out that after the album release last fall, and as Matthews commenced work on its follow up, a lot went down. “When I released 325i, there was a lot of anxiety that started to click in. A lot of people who hadn’t been around for a while popped back up. My social circles shifted a little bit. I was way too busy to see what was shifting, and it resulted in me being in a very unsupportive and unhealthy environment. I started getting really paranoid, because there were people around me that were not genuine. Part of that was also my anxiety around Covid. I have asthma and can’t play around. So I closed off and became isolated.”
Furthermore, being snubbed two times over caused the artist a lot of anguish. “Fat Possum informed me they couldn’t do another album with me, and I was already four songs into it. That was very deflating. It took the wind out of my sails a bit, but it was also a chance to be free, not think about a label or budgets. Well, two weeks later, my manager dropped me. After that, I was like, ‘Oh shit, this is coming apart really fast!’ Then I went through a phase of blaming myself. ‘Did I screw up? Did I not make a good record? What? How?’
“Anyway, I was dealing with so much that I just stayed in the studio, working on this new album. At the same time, I spent a month grieving my old job with Tone, which I left in April in order to focus on music more. It didn’t just feel like quitting a job — it felt like breaking up. So I was processing a lot of emotions.”
Somewhere along the way, Matthews also realized that relating to his own Don Lifted persona was becoming more difficult. But while the most recent singles might be Don Lifted’s swan song, Matthews still has a full album under his belt, ready to be released under his own name. And as for Friday’s show, “I’m really excited to show that this is not an ending, but a continuation of a story.
“I’ve been trying to reevaluate this Don Lifted thing for a long time,” he continues. “Now, the trilogy of Alero, Contour, and 325i is perfect. It tells the story of my youth, and me getting to the man I am today. But the story of Lawrence Matthews is so much bigger than that. From here on out, it’s just Lawrence. This is me talking.”
Turning a corner, producer/engineer Matt Ross-Spang had no idea what he was walking into. None of us did back in late November 2019, though that marked the birth of a certain spiked virus that would change all of us. That was a world away when Ross-Spang heard the murmurs from a show already in progress, and he walked in. “The Green Room in Crosstown Concourse has caused me to see a lot more live music, with how easy it is to sneak over there after work. So I walked in and was immediately blown away. A string quartet was out in front, and the singer was behind them, hiding a little bit. There was a light projector and two or three screens with video going on. There was this amazing visual aspect to the show, and he was using two different vocal microphones with different effects for certain parts of the song. I immediately was struck by the cinematic and genre-bending music and lyrics I was hearing. And I noticed the crowd. Every walk of life was in there: old, young, Black, white.”
The singer in question was Lawrence Matthews III, but the artist on the bill was Don Lifted. They’re one and the same, of course, or are they? After all, there were two microphones, two voices. And at that point, having already self-released two albums, Matthews didn’t know if Don Lifted would be around much longer. “I was putting out the energy that I was not going to continue doing what I was doing,” Matthews muses in his soft-spoken manner, as we sit in the hushed environs of the Memphis Listening Lab. “I felt like I was at the end of what that body of work was. I was just not where I wanted to be.”
Nonetheless, he booked a modest national tour, a last hurrah perhaps, with The Green Room show right in the middle of it. “And I had this moment where I was like, ‘Damn, I’m halfway through this tour and nothing’s happening.’ I went on the tour to close the Don Lifted thing down, but also 50 percent of you is like, ‘I would love for something to happen.’ I’m traveling across the U.S., driving to San Francisco, going to L.A., going to New York. I would like for something to happen if this is going to continue being a thing.”
Any artist would feel such ambivalence if their first two albums matched the quality of Don Lifted’s. Rooted in hip hop’s rhythmic rhyming, but including elements of shoegaze rock and even smooth R&B, both revealed the artist’s fine sonic craftsmanship, limning the growing pains of his late teens/early twenties with equal parts hindsight and poetic furor. In both Alero and Contour, named for the respective cars he drove in those pivotal moments of his life, he crafted subtle, moody soundscapes over which his lyrics flowed like incantations. And from the start, he took great care with the presentation of his music. As he told the Memphis Flyer in 2017 when performing his Alero material with Blueshift Ensemble at the Continuum Music Festival, “I graduated with a painting degree [from the University of Memphis]. But I also did photography, sculpture, painting, drawing, ceramics. I don’t do shows unless I can do a self-curated event in an alternative space. And I try to completely transform the space. So you might come into a space and see three projections, all in sync with the music. I’m just trying to curate a whole experience.”
When Ross-Spang walked into his show two years later, he was still at it, with much critical acclaim but only middling sales and no record deal. “After The Green Room show, I literally had just had that thought of, ‘Damn, something has to happen between San Francisco and L.A.’ Those were the next two stops on my tour. ‘Something’s gotta happen, dawg.’ And then my phone started going ping ping ping ping! I looked, and it said, ‘Fat Possum [Records] has followed you.’ And then I got an email from my manager saying, ‘They want to meet with you.’ And I was just like, crying in the car.”
Lawrence Matthews, filming his music video for his single, “Lost In Orion” (Photo: Courtesy Lawrence Matthews)
“Pick How I’m Moving”
Matt Ross-Spang, it turned out, was beginning to spread the word. “I thought I would be remiss if I didn’t tell my friend Bruce Watson about him,” he recalls of his talk with the co-owner of Fat Possum. “The very next day after the show, I called Bruce. I never do that, really, but I was pretty blown away. So I told him, you should check this guy out. He doesn’t sound like anybody; he’s hard to pigeonhole. He’s really young, but he’s already figured so much out, and he’s working his butt off. And he checks all the boxes of what you’re looking for in an artist.”
After that, Matthews recalls, “The higher-ups at Fat Possum and I had a meeting that was dope. They all had different goals in the conversation, and I was trying to balance it. As someone who has not talked to record label people regularly, I was like, ‘What’s happening?’ They wanted to know, like, ‘You haven’t released anything since 2018, what are you up to?’ So I wrote and recorded ‘Golden (The Wait)’ that week and gave it to them. And the energy I have in that first verse is like, ‘This is who I am. And this is why I am here. Fuck with me.’ And they were like, all right, let’s do it.”
Pick how I’m moving
Pick who I’m choosing
The product is soothing
I pray to God that he Fluid
Flow how the way I be moving
Cut to 2021, and the imminent release of Don Lifted’s new album on the label. It’s an apotheosis of sorts, not only solidifying the artist’s reputation as a performer with staying power, but Fat Possum’s ongoing reputation as a home for music that is beyond category. While the Mississippi-based imprint has featured other hip hop-leaning artists like MellowHype, Patrick Paige II, and El-P, it appealed to Matthews precisely because of its eclecticism.
“My approach with Fat Possum has been very much like, ‘Let’s not treat me like a hip hop artist.’ I’m liable to put out some of anything, so I try not to go through some of those traditional hip hop outlets, as I navigate the music industry. It’s still weird. I’ve been called alternative, indie rock, rap, even R&B from one publication. Everybody wants to genre you. I don’t know what it is, to be honest [laughs]. I was trying to get them to just call it a pop record.”
Indeed, that may be the most apt way to describe the album 325i, to be released October 22nd. Once again named after the car he drove during events that inspired the songs, it’s notable that a BMW 325i is Matthews’ current ride, carrying him through recent times. This marks a new territory for the songwriter: the here and now.
In the Moment
“My previous works were built on reflection,” says Matthews. “Alero and Contour were both me going back five years, seven years, to reflect about a time, to build it and put it together and create a narrative and a timeline. This one feels more evolving throughout because I’m changing as life is changing me. I’ve had very large transformative changes working on that project, but also how I see the world, how I see myself within the world, how I see everything. Everything is completely changed. By the end of the record, I’m a completely different person with a completely different perspective and style than I had when I wrote ‘Golden.’”
Of course, one reason for that is the timing. “Golden (The Wait),” which kicks off the new album, was the only track written in the relatively innocent last weeks of 2019. “Fat Possum liked the record,” Matthews recalls. “And they had me come down to Oxford and I signed in March 2020. A week before the shutdown.”
Even for those who survived the spread of Covid-19, the isolation and anxiety of 2020 was a long, dark night of the soul. It was no different for Matthews, and, as he describes it, 325i, recorded in his home over those months, is the ultimate chronicle of that interior journey. “There were points where my anxiety was so crazy because of Covid, the election, the shootings. Everything that was happening,” he says. “I thought, ‘I may not make it to the end of this record.’ That was a serious anxiety of mine. I just stayed in the house, not just because of Covid, but because I didn’t want to end up dead.
“A lot of people died. I think that’s something we don’t really want to talk about. So I had a lot of anxiety, and you can hear it in the record. You can hear a lot of fear and unsureness in the record. But by the end, there’s also this realization of some kind of peace within the thing. So you work however many years, you receive this thing that allows you to pursue your art at a level you haven’t done before. This hasn’t been an opportunity provided to most folks from the scene that I came from. Anybody who’s transitioned on to higher aspirations has moved. I stayed. I got this deal. A week later, the world goes insane and stays insane.”
And yet, 325i is not a “news of the world” experience. The upshot of quarantine, for Matthews, was living in close quarters with those nearest and dearest to him. “I was spending a lot of time in the house with my loved ones and writing about very personal, intimate experiences. There’s so much going on in the world right now, but I didn’t want to put a protest album out. I wanted to challenge myself: How do I write about how bad things are right now without directly telling you how bad things are right now? I want you to feel how bad it is out here.”
Lawrence Matthews and film crew on set for “Brain Fluid” music video (Photo: Courtesy Lawrence Matthews)
Reach Out from the Inside
And by “out here,” Matthews actually means “in here.” The album comes across as a very interior journey, between contradictory impulses to have loved ones see your full self, even as you fear to reveal it. “In what scenario are you longing for a person you can’t interact with?” Matthews asks. “Lockdown. You’re closed in with a person. You have an issue. You have to work through that. You’re in it together. In the past, when you could run from it, you maybe wouldn’t want to dig into certain insecurities and fears you might have with a partner. But this is the time. If we don’t deal with it now, we’ll never deal with it. So those moments inform that body of work, and there is this overall dread of that in the background.”
Yet it’s a dread mixed with the determination to unpack one’s self. As Matthews notes, “There’s a series of lines on ‘Darla’ which essentially say, ‘I don’t know how to do this.’ A lot of us are products of divorce and failed marriages and weird family things, and now, getting older, I’ve realized, ‘Wow, I don’t have any proper examples of this stuff.’ You really have to relearn how to love somebody, not based on how you’ve been taught to love folks. ’Cause I’ve got a whole series of lines that go: ‘I don’t know no way, so I can’t make my own.’ Basically, ‘I’ve never seen nobody do this right, so I don’t know how to do it. Nobody ever held my hand, so I can’t hold no hand.’”
In the restless imagination of Matthews, all these interior reflections ultimately lead back to the world at large. He began with a challenge: How can an artist evoke the spirit of troubled times without simply describing the world as it is right now? And even now, he keeps returning to the political within the personal, the soul as an expression of the world’s corruption. It’s a natural extension of his art in general, both in his photographic work, grappling with topics as diverse as Black masculinity or gentrification, or his work with the Black arts nonprofit Tone, for whom he is the gallery director. An awareness of the wider forces around us informs even the most intimate moments of 325i.
“I have to make my own way,” he muses. “Everything I was taught about going to college or getting married, or doing this or that, wasn’t working. I think of 2020 as a year of ‘Yeah, all this stuff we’ve been taught does not work.’ It’s a complete travesty. It’s collapsing around us. Everything that’s dealing with humans is crumbling in front of our face and we see how sorry our infrastructure is. And people just think about that as a government or politics thing, or a healthcare thing. It’s all of that and how we are taught to love each other. How we are taught to show up for each other. ’Cause last year we saw the most insane selfishness, and still are seeing it to this day. People don’t really give a shit about other people. And we’re finding that out in real time, watching history unfold in front of our eyes, and seeing people making conscious choices not to take care of their grandparents, their children, folks around them, their loved ones, to risk things, to literally risk death to … go eat at Chili’s. See what I’m saying? It was like, ‘Oh wow! We don’t know nothing!’”
Taking a breath, he turns his eye inward. “Hey, I myself have not been taught this stuff. I need love, I want love, but sometimes it feels like I’m not capable of giving it. And here are all the reasons why — I need you to work with me. That’s a tough thing to admit. A lot of guys, a lot of people, just try to pretend that they’re like some hard-shelled individual, closed off from other people. The reality is, you wanna be loved just like everybody else. You’re just scared of what that means.”
Don Lifted recently signed with Fat Possum records. He christens the new ride with his most ambitious music video yet, “Lost in Orion.” Matthews co-directed the video with Joshua Cannon, and co-wrote it with Nubia Yasin. Sam Leathers is the cinematographer behind some arresting images, including a spectacular location shot in the empty Orpheum Theatre.
“‘Lost in Orion’ feels confessional to me,” says Mathews. “The weight of feelings that through the summer of 2020 couldn’t escape me, personally and societally. So much of those fears and anxieties manifested themselves in introspection, mystical imagery and poetry. It’s a sacrificial and ritualistic piece of art for me. A culmination of growth and shedding of every version of myself that’s been informed by love, societal pressures and fear. This visual is a new beginning for me. The end of many other things but the start of something I’ve been on a journey to share for quite some time.
“Working with Josh, Sam and the folks at Studio One Four Three has been something long in the works. It’s funny ’cause once I reached out we both expressed when didn’t feel ready enough to collaborate. The shoot days were very special in all of the beautiful and challenging ways making art can exist. Nubia Yasin, Amber Ahmad, Joshua Cannon, Sam Leathers and myself all trying to work toward the best ideas and ways to approach everything, trying to match the vision in my head as best as possible. The subject matter and the elements definitely had effects on all of us in various ways and pushed us toward our goals. I look forward to expanding this world we are building together in conjunction with this music.”
If you would like to see your music videos featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Michael Butler, Jr. accepting his award Best Hometowner Narrative Short award for ‘Empty’ at the 2020 Indie Memphis Virtual Award Ceremony.
In normal times, the Indie Memphis awards ceremony is a raucous gathering, full of self-deprecating gags and boozy cheers. This year, things were different.
Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, the awards ceremony was virtual. The ceremony was broadcast from the auditorium at Playhouse on the Square, where it would usually occur, with about a hundred filmmakers calling in on Zoom. As befitting the times, it was a more somber affair, but it produced moments of unique magic.
Many more of the awards recipients were able to accept in person than in a normal year. Executive Order writers Lázaro Ramos & Lusa Silvestre accepted the Duncan Williams Screenwriting Award from their home in Brazil. I Blame Society director Gillian Hovart, at home in Los Angeles, introduced her cat, who co-starred in the film, when she accepted the Craig Brewer Emerging Filmmaker Award. And most remarkable of all, director Michael Butler, Jr. accepted his Best Hometowner Narrative Short award for “Empty” from Methodist Hospital, where he was on call, cheered on by his fellow nurses, who looked a little bewildered. It was a uniquely 2020 moment.
The Best Narrative Feature went to Emily Seligman’s coming-of-age comedy Shiva Baby, while Best Documentary Feature went to Cane Fire, director Anthony Banua-Simon’s story of colonial exploitation and labor struggle in Hawai’i. When Deni Cheng accepted her Best Narrative Short award for “Paradise,” the astonished first-time filmmaker revealed that she had not been accepted into any other festivals. Kyungwon Song won Best Documentary Short for “Jesa”.
The Hometowner Feature prize went to Lauren Ready for We Can’t Wait, her cinéma vérité portrait of Tami Sawyer’s 2019 mayoral campaign. Best Hometowner Documentary Short was awarded to “Road to Step” by Zaire Love, which documented a season of Black fraternity life at the University of Mississippi. Best Hometowner Music Video went to The Poet, Havi for “You’re My Jesus”.
The Indie Grant program, which awards production packages worth $13,000 to short film proposals from Memphis filmmakers, went to G.B Shannon for his documentary short “Here Be Dragons,” to Justin Malone for his narrative short “Beware of Goat.” The first ever proof-of-concept Indie Grant, intended to help a filmmaker produce a short film that could sell a feature film concept to potential investors, went to Daniel Farrell for “Beale Street Blues.”
The Festival Awards, selected by staff and board members, are enduring traditions at Indie Memphis. The Soul of Southern Film Award, which stretches back to the origin of the festival, went to Lawrence Matthews’ Memphis labor documentary “The Hub.” The Ron Tibbett Excellence in Filmmaking Award, which honors the festival’s DIY roots, went to “The Inheritance” by Ephraim Asili. The Indie Award, which honors a Memphis-based crew member for outstanding service, went to Daniel Lynn, sound engineer at Music + Arts Studio. Lynn, who was mixing sound for the ceremony live stream, was one of the few people to actually accept their awards in person at Playhouse.
The most emotional moment of the night came courtesy of the Vision Awards. Kelly Chandler founded Indie Memphis in 1998 while she was a film student at the University of Memphis. Chandler no longer works in the film industry, and has lived abroad for decades. For years, journalists such as myself and Indie Memphis staff have tried to contact her to clear up details about the founding of the festival which have been lost to history. Finally, earlier this year, Indie Memphis staffer Joseph Carr, with the help of the U of M alumni office, tracked her to South Korea. Chandler gave a moving speech accepting the Vision Award in which she recounted the first night of the festival, which was held not in the Edge coffee shop as legend had it but instead in an empty Cooper-Young warehouse owned by the same people, and encouraging filmmakers to follow their dreams.
More winners from Indie Memphis 2020:
Best After Dark Short: “The Three Men You Meet at Night” by Beck Kitsis
Best Departures Feature: My Darling Supermarket by Tali Yankelevich
Best Departures Short : “The Return of Osiris” by Essa Grayeb
Best Sounds Feature: Born Balearic: Jon Sa Trinxa and the Spirit of Ibiza by Lily Renae
Best Animated Short: “Grab My Hand: A Letter to My Dad” by Camrus Johnson and Pedro
Piccinini
Best Music Video: “Colors” by Black Pumas, directed by Kristian Mercado
Best Poster Design: Pier Kids
Tonight, Indie Memphis 2020 concludes at the Malco Summer Drive-In with One Night in Miami. Regina King, who won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for If Beale Street Could Talk and recently took home an Emmy for her work on HBO’s Watchmen, makes her feature film directorial debut with this adaptation of Kemp Powers play about the night Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) celebrated winning the Heavyweight Championship with his friends Malcom X (Kingsely Ben-Adir), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), and Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom, Jr.).
Indie Memphis 2020: One Night In Miami, and An Awards Ceremony Like No Other
Then the festival closes with a little Halloween spirit. House is a legendary 1977 horror film from Japan’s fabled Toho studios. Directed by experimental filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi and featuring a cast of all-amateur actors and some truly eye-popping special effects, it has had huge influence on the horror comedy genre.
Indie Memphis 2020: One Night In Miami, and An Awards Ceremony Like No Other (2)
Ira Sachs, Sr. in Lynne Sachs’ documentary Film About A Father Who
In a virtual version of its traditional preview party, Indie Memphis announced the lineup for its 23rd annual film festival. The opening night film is Memphis-born director Lynne Sachs’ documentary A Film About A Father Who. Sachs draws on 35 years of footage she shot of her father, Ira Sachs, Sr., to draw a portrait of a family struggling with generational secrets. Michael Gallagher, programmer for the Slamdance Film Festival, where the film had its world premiere in January, said “This divine masterwork of vulnerability weaves past and present together with ease, daring the audience to choose love over hate, forgiveness over resentment.”
Sachs is the most prominent of the Memphians among the dozens of filmmakers who have works in the 2020 festival. The Hometowner Features competition includes Anwar Jamison’s feature Coming to Africa, a bi-contentental production which was shot both here in the Bluff City and in Ghana. We Can’t Wait is director Lauren Ready’s documentary about Tami Sawyer’s 2019 campaign to become Memphis’ first Black woman mayor. The Hub is Lawrence Matthews portrait of Memphians trying to overcome discrimination, underemployment, and financial hardship in an unforgiving America. Morreco Coleman tells the story of Jerry C. Johnson, the first Black coach to win an NCAA Basketball title, with 1st Forgotten Champions. The detective thriller Smith is a neo-noir from director Jason Lockridge. Among the dozens of Memphis-made short films on offer will be “The Little Tea Shop,” Molly Wexler and Matteo Servante’s moving portrait of beloved Memphis restauranteur Suhair Lauck.
Director Anwar Jamison (far left) filming Coming To Africa in Ghana.
World premieres at Indie Memphis include Trimiko Melancon’s race relations documentary What Do You Have To Lose? and Cane Fire, director Anthony Banua-Simon’s incisive history of the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i.
Indie Memphis remains devoted to the latest in film innovation, but the festival’s Retrospective series alway offers interesting and fun films from years past. In 2020, that includes The Wiz, Sidney Lumet’s 1978 cult classic remake of The Wizard of Oz with an incredible all-Black cast, including Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow and Diana Ross as Dorothy. Joel Schumacher, the legendary writer/director who passed away this year, wrote the screenplay, which was adapted from a 1974 Broadway show. He will be honored with a screening of Car Wash, the 1976 comedy which is the definition of classic drive-in fare.
Ted Ross, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, and Nipsey Russell in The Wiz
With film festivals all over the United States facing cancellation because of the coronavirus pandemic, the theme of this year’s Indie Memphis is “Online and Outdoors.” Screenings will take place at the Malco Summer Drive-In and at various socially distanced outside venues across the city. All films will also be offered online through the festival’s partnership with Eventive, the Memphis-based cinematic services company that has been pioneering online screening during the pandemic. “We hope to bring people together, in person and online, and provide inspiration and an outlet,” says artistic director Miriam Bale. “In order to counter Screen Burnout, we’ll be offering a series of what we call ‘Groundings’ throughout the digital festival, including a meditative film called ‘A Still Place’ by festival alumnus Christopher Yogi.”
You can buy passes for the 2020 festival at the Indie Memphis website. The Memphis Flyer will have continuing coverage of the fest throughout the month of October.
Musician and studio artist Lawrence Matthews has always had a multimedia practice. He got interested in film creating music video albums for his Don Lifted musical persona. Now, he has translated that video prowess into documentary film.
“The Hub” was directed by Matthews, who filmed and edited over the course of more than a year. It follows three young Black men, Martin Matthews, Najee Strickland, and Joncarlo Whitmore, as they try to navigate the minefield that is low-wage hourly work. Matthews highlights all the barriers which make making an honest living in Memphis so hard. Minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and that makes building up any kind of emergency fund next to impossible. One unexpected expense and “the peanuts I’m saving are gone.”
Just getting around in Memphis is trouble, thanks to the sorry shape of public transportation. “The bus is super-trash,” says Strickland. “It’s intentional that the bus is that way.”
“The Hub” is a sobering, serious documentary which puts human faces on problems of poverty and oppression that are most often talked about only in abstract terms. Beginning today, Matthews is releasing it for free on Vimeo. You can watch it here:
Last week, Memphis multi-genre artist Lawrence Matthews, who performs as Don Lifted, announced he’d been invited to join the Recording Academy, host of the Grammy Awards. So I called to talk with him about the invite, the potential risks of performing in a pandemic, and the importance of knowing when to take time and to listen.
“As a person who would love to get a Grammy one day, to be a part of the process is really exciting,” Matthews says. “I’m hype to learn more about the recording academy and everything that comes with it. I’m oddly obsessed with studying the Grammys, the winners, and all of the correlations between engineers and producers, so to be close to that process has been something that I’ve wanted for a while.”
As for what he’s been up to in quarantine, the prolific artist sounds almost meditative: “I’m taking time.”
“I’ve been working on music. I’ve been recording, doing the social distance thing,” Matthews continues. “I’ve been showing up to people’s houses, running cords into their house or into backyards, recording from a safe distance.”
“As far as performing, I’m not going anywhere until Live Nation starts doing stuff. That’s been the barometer for me,” Matthews says, explaining that he’s watching the mainstream music industry and sports, keeping an eye on sites like Ticketmaster and Live Nation. Contrasted against responses that include cries to “LIBERATE!” states, reopen business, resume school in the fall, and get back to normal — seemingly at all costs — Matthews’ measured assessment is a welcome dose of sobriety in what has become a charged discourse over how to handle living with the coronavirus.
Lawrence Matthews
Matthews’ work has already been affected by the current health crisis. His photography exhibition “To Disappear Away (Places Soon to Be No More),” which was on view at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, closed about the same time the coronavirus showed up in Shelby County. “I’m hoping that by next year we can navigate this a little differently,” Matthews says. “People’s livelihoods depend on group things, especially artists.”
Matthews says he’s given the matter of safe, socially distanced concerts some thought, but when it comes down to it, he’s not ready to try something like that. “For me, I’m thinking about ‘What do I gain from that? What does the viewer gain?’” Matthews says artists have a responsibility to weigh the possible risks against any rewards, be they financial or artistic fulfillment. “It’s potentially life-risking. You’re thinking individualistically. You’re like, ‘What can I get out of this? How much money will I make? It’s their personal choice if they choose to do a thing or not.’ But that’s being irresponsible.
“At this point, I try to lead by example. Stay safe, stay in the house, share stories,” Matthews says. “I’m not going to pretend I’m the most knowledgeable person in the world, but for the people that are, I’m following them and I’m sharing the words they’re trying to put out.”
As for his advice to his fans, other artists, and everyone else? “Stay the fuck in the house, or keep the fucking mask on,” Matthews says, laughing. “One of the two.”
Don Lifted’s Contour album from 2018 is a saga of teenage love and loss. It’s been the source of some of the best Memphis music videos of the last two years. All along, Don Lifted’s alter ego Lawrence Matthews (or is it the other way around?) has intended it as a multimedia experience, and has released the visual album on a DVD for sale at his shows. Now, he’s releasing the entire album online, and we’re bringing it to you here!
Contour is a mesmerizing 23 minutes. The low-key masterpiece video for “Muirfield,” shot by Kevin Brooks, takes on new meaning in the larger context. Matthews’ collaborated with Nubia Yasin for cinematography and editing, and Martin Matthews on camera.
Here’s the long-form video your quarantine needs:
Music Video Monday: Don Lifted
If you would like to see your music video on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
