Growing up in Franklin, Tennessee, Lina Beach came to love playing music, but she never imagined that her playing would go as far and as fast as it did once she moved to Memphis. “Since I was born, both my parents sat me at the piano, and my dad started teaching the violin at 5 years old,” she says, “and I wanted to be around that however I could. But when I got to college, I didn’t necessarily believe in myself enough to pursue a career as an artist and musician.” These days, all that has changed.
As a teenager learning guitar, Beach knew what she liked: Joe Walsh, U2, classic rock, Stevie Wonder, The Beatles. Then one day a new sound seized her imagination. “I was out eating lunch at a hot chicken place in Franklin and they played ‘I’m Still in Love with You’ on the speaker. And it literally stopped me and my friend mid-conversation and we got out our phones and Shazam’d it.
“That became one of my all-time favorite songs. I found the vinyl LP in a shop in Downtown Franklin and that was a heavily rotated album for me. When I got to Rhodes, I made that Memphis connection and I started to learn that that’s where that music was made. This was before I knew about the Hi Rhythm Section. I just knew I was in Memphis.”
That changed in the spring of 2021 when she landed an internship at Royal Studios, where Al Green and other Hi Records artists had recorded with the Hi Rhythm Section. Suddenly she was working directly with Boo Mitchell, whose father had produced those hits for Hi.
“When I got to Royal I was soaking it all in: how to make records, learning the engineering side, and watching Boo work,” she recalls. “Boo allowed me to get my hands dirty, wrapping cables, learning how to match the mic to the channel in the [mixing] board. And he let me sit at the board and learn commands in Pro Tools, and I just felt so empowered. I took that back to Rhodes and would help lead the live sound events all over campus, and helped teach other students, too.”
About six months into her time at Royal, a fellow intern had brought an acoustic guitar to the studio and Beach started idly playing it. “I’d been inspired to soak up all I could at the studio and go home and learn the guitar riffs. I was playing a lot at home. But it wasn’t until halfway through the summer that Boo first heard me play guitar in the lobby. He came in and asked, ‘Who’s playing that guitar?’ That was a life changing moment. Boo said, ‘Okay, I didn’t know you could do all that.’ And then he looked kind of puzzled and said, ‘It doesn’t make sense. I’m looking at this girl, and she sounds like a 70-year-old Black man!’”
Mitchell began incorporating Beach’s playing into sessions, most notably on his son Uriah’s track “Exotic Love,” released last year. And then came a game changer: Beach received a grant from the Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies, which contributes $3,000 to each fellow for summer projects and research. Beach, who had just begun writing her own songs, decided that her “research” would be recording an album, and Mitchell was all for doing it at Royal.
For the past two years, that’s been at the center of Beach’s life. The songs began to pour out of her, and, in another watershed moment, her backing band for some of those sessions turned out to be the Hi Rhythm Section. That group still includes brothers Rev. Charles Hodges and Leroy “Flic” Hodges, plus Archie “Hubbie” Turner, who all played on Hi’s hits half a century ago, not to mention Steve Potts on drums, cousin to original Hi drummer Al Jackson Jr. And until his death 10 years ago this month, Mabon “Teenie” Hodges, with his uniquely stinging guitar lines, was also central to the group.
To this day, Hi Rhythm remains in demand, especially as the core band in the musical documentary series Take Me to the River, and as the touring group representing the film on the road for the past 10 years. “When I was in the studio with them recording my album, it was a dream come true,” says Beach. But by 2023, fate was about to give her another undreamt-of boost.
“I think it was in May, right after I graduated,” she recalls. “The guitar player that was filling in [for Teenie Hodges] moved out of town right before this big Hi Rhythm show and Boo was like, ‘Uh, Lina, do you think you could learn these 20-plus songs in the next two weeks?’ From that point on, I was listening to the songs in all my free time. I listened to all those Teenie parts — really studied them. And I don’t even think Boo told the band that I was the guitarist! I just showed up at sound check with my guitar and I had to kind of breathe in my car for a second before I went inside. Then I walked in and they saw me and were like, ‘Lina! Are you going to be playing with us today?’ I was like, ‘Apparently so, yeah.’ So I get up there and plug in, and Charles is playing Al Green’s ‘It Ain’t No Fun to Me.’ As Charles was playing the organ, I jumped in and he was like, ‘Oh man, that’s amazing!’ He said, ‘I can feel that!’ All my nerves melted away then; it was a huge validation from the band themselves.”
The rest, as they say, is history, as Beach has proved herself a worthy addition to this legendary group. As Boo Mitchell noted before their appearance at the RiverBeat Music Festival, “Hi Rhythm features Lina Beach, who is officially filling in the Teenie Hodges guitar spot. The band has adopted her as their sister. She’s the official guitarist and she’s also an artist.”
And so, even as she still puts the finishing touches on her debut album, Beach has ascended to the heights of Memphis soul royalty, holding her own with Hi Rhythm, even leading them through her own songs as they’ve toured Australia, England, and the U.S. this year, not to mention accompanying the likes of William Bell at England’s Red Rooster Festival. Not bad for a 23-year-old (who sounds like a 70-year-old Black man).