Tag: Mark Edgar Stuart

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Music Music Features

Mark Edgar Stuart: Never Far Behind

Mark Edgar Stuart (Photo: Jamie Harmon)

Some artists ponder making albums, wondering if they have enough material, enough musicians, or enough money. But when you’re a player on the level of bassist Mark Edgar Stuart, always staying busy with one project or another and forever mingling with other musos at gigs and in studios, albums sometimes just fall together. One recording session here, another there, and eventually the whole thing snowballs.

That’s how Stuart’s latest release, Never Far Behind, came about, as the singer-songwriter himself admits. “I didn’t really mean to put out another record,” he says. “I thought I was done for a little bit. And then this record just sort of happened.” 

Things like that tend to occur when you’re part of a crack studio band, as Stuart is — in this case at Bruce Watson’s Delta-Sonic Sound studio, where Stuart, as a member of the Sacred Soul Sound Section, plays bass behind artists like Elizabeth King on the Bible & Tire Recording Co. He can also be heard on secular Watson-related projects, some of which end up on Big Legal Mess Records. There’s always music cooking over at Delta-Sonic. And at times Stuart would show up only to find his own material on the menu. 

“Over the past two years, my buddies and I would get in the studio — Will [Sexton] and Bruce and that whole crew. We just slowly recorded tracks,” Stuart says. “I kind of felt like the universe produced it, you know? Will was the official producer, but every session was just last minute. Will would say, ‘Hey, what are you doing tomorrow? Bruce is in town, I’m here, let’s record some songs!’ And I’m on the phone going, ‘Well, who’s going to be the band?’ So it was pretty much whoever was available at any given moment. Then three months would go by, and Will would go, ‘Hey, we’re in the studio now working on your record! What are you doing?’ I’d say, ‘Oh, shit, I guess I’d better get down there!’”

That approach made Never Far Behind one of Stuart’s most collaborative efforts, including songs he co-wrote with Sexton, Jed Zimmerman, and, perhaps most strikingly, Greg Cartwright. “That loose approach made for some cool combinations,” says Stuart, “like when we recorded a song that me and Greg wrote together [‘We Better Call It a Day’]. I was like, ‘Greg, you in town?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Come over!’ So he played guitar, and Amy [LaVere] played bass, and Krista [Wroten] played on it, and Shawn Zorn, and Will played the keyboards. In the studio, it wound up becoming a duet. It was just real loose and cool. Amy was going to sing backup, and all of a sudden she sang the first verse and it was like, ‘Fuck it, a duet it is! Keep rolling!’”

That track draws on the wit and musicality of Stuart and Cartwright, two of the city’s finest songwriters, to create a kind of Eastern European lament over a failed romance, made all the more haunting by LaVere’s and Stuart’s swapped vocal lines, wistful mandolin, and atmospheric, Tom Waits-esque percussion. 

Yet another track, “The Ballad of Jerry Phillips,” grew from a would-be collaboration between Stuart and the song’s titular hero, son of Sun Records’ Sam Phillips. “I was hanging out with Jerry about a year and a half ago,” says Stuart, “and he said, ‘Man we’re gonna write a song together, and it’s gonna be called “Don’t Block Your Blessings.”’ 

“You know, we’re always blocking our blessings,” explains Stuart. “It’s like God’s trying to bless us, but we get in our own way. We fuck it up sometimes! Sometimes you’ve just got to let it be and just open yourself up to all the goodness. And Jerry and I were supposed to write that song together, but we couldn’t get anywhere with it. So I just turned around and wrote him a silly song about his own biography, and used the blocked blessings idea for the chorus. It came out perfect, you know?” The party atmosphere of the track, a Memphis cousin to “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” captures Phillips’ rock-and-roll spirit and epitomizes the loose recording style that shaped the entire album.

After many months of such hilarity, an album coalesced. As Stuart describes the process, “A year and a half later, Will was like, ‘Well, we’ve got 15 songs here. … Are you going to put a record out?’ And I was like, ‘I guess we should.’ It was really friendly, you know, and that was cool. I’m really happy with it, probably more so than anything I’ve done in a long time. Nothing against anything else I’ve done, but it’s just that cool! I think this could be it for a while. I think after this I’m just going to get into other things.” Could Stuart really mean it this time? We’ll believe it when we see it. 

Hear Mark Edgar Stuart at the 8750’ Barbecue and Music Festival in New Mexico on August 16th; the Fishstock Music Series in Wisconsin on August 25th; Thacker Mountain Radio Hour in Oxford, Mississippi, on September 5th; the Memphis Songwriter Series at the Halloran Centre in Memphis on September 12th; and the Mempho Music Festival on October 4th.

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Film Features Film/TV

Music Video Monday: “Until My Dying Day” by Mark Edgar Stuart

Memphis’ own musician/producer Mark Edgar Stuart has a new album, Never Far Behind. It was produced by Will Sexton at Bruce Watson’s Delta Sonic Studio. The first single is the floaty, melancholy “Until My Dying Day.” The music video, which was produced and directed by Landon Moore, takes us to some visually interesting locations in Memphis, like the stage of the Crosstown Theatre.

“I’ve had this song in my pocket for a long time,” says Stuart. “It’s a song for my mom. A song of reflection, gratitude, and joy. A simple ditty, repetitive and catchy, almost like a nursery rhyme. I just wanted her to have no problem understanding the sentiment. It could also be about a father, daughter, a friend, or even a sweetheart. It’s your song now.”

If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

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Film Features Film/TV

Music Video Monday: “Hello, Is That You?” By Wyly Bigger

Wyly Bigger’s new album on MadJack was produced by Mark Edgar Stuart and features a full cast of Memphis players, including drummer Danny Banks, guitarists Jad Tariq and Matt Ross Spang, sax legend Jim Spake, and Stuart himself on bass.

“Hello, Is That You?” is the rollicking first single. “This track is actually a cover of an old tune by a group called The Red Tops out of Vicksburg, Mississippi,”says Bigger. “A couple years before she passed, my grandma gave me her collection of 45rpm singles from the ’50s. I was digging through them and saw a label I’d never seen before, so I threw it on the turntable, and really dug the sound. Come to find out, it was the only recording The Red Tops ever did — just that A-side (“Sewanee River Rock”) and B-side (“Hello, Is That You?”). I started playing “Hello” at some of my shows, and when it came time to start picking a cover or two for the album, I pitched that one to Mark, who produced the record, and he was into it! The original is a bit more big-band-ish, so we decided to rock it more and make it fit my sound better.”

The video was conceived, directed, shot, and edited by Landon Moore. It features Bigger rocking and rolling in some familiar Memphis locations. “For the video, we wanted to shoot it in a place that was relevant to my career with people who were important to me. So we went with Earnestine & Hazel’s, one of my favorite spots in town to play with my band, and I invited a bunch of friends and family to be in it.”

Take a look.

If you would like to see your video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

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Music Music Features

The Dynamite Dozen

Harlan T. Bobo – Porch Songs (Goner)

Recorded before Bobo’s battle with lupus, these songs offer his intriguing songcraft in stripped-down form. “Around 2016, I went to see this guy in Perpignan who’s got an old 8-track set up,” he says. “It sounds very Sun Studio-y.” These minimalist tracks bring Bobo’s heart-piercing lyrics to the fore.

Cory Branan – When I Go I Ghost (Blue Élan)

Pairing slice-of-life writing with all manner of musical worlds, Branan pulls out all the stops in this literary stroll through the dark corners of American life, running the stylistic gamut. With contributions from guests like Jason Isbell, Garrison Starr, and Brian Fallon.

Frog Squad – Frog Squad Plays Satie

One of classical music’s most minimalist composers re-imagined by an eight-piece free jazz ensemble? It might just be crazy enough to work. Indeed it is, for David Collins assembled a heavy band for this Green Room show, guided by his unexpected arrangements and the players’ own flights of improvisation.

Eric Gales – Crown (Provogue)

This triumphant assertion of the Memphis guitar master’s indomitability is graced with a cameo from Joe Bonamassa, but Gales hardly needs that feature to claim the throne. This funky, inventive mission statement by a true virtuoso of blues guitar brings a newfound urgency to Gales’ playing, with electrifying results.

GloRilla – Anyways, Life’s Great…

It’s GloRilla’s world, and we’re just living in it. Yet the vision she offers in massive hits like “Tomorrow” (one version with Cardi B, one on the massive Memphis mash-up by Yo Gotti and Moneybagg Yo, Gangsta Art) and “F.N.F. (Let’s Go)” (with Hitkidd) is a communal one, a fly-girl community where she reigns as the bird-flipping queen.

Elizabeth King – I Got a Love (Bible & Tire)

King’s voice has always combined a tender intimacy with soaring passion, and this second album since she re-energized her gospel career takes it all to a new level, with funkier and more imaginative arrangements. Yet it’s the classic, dark gospel blues of the title song that shakes you to your core.

Charles Lloyd – Trios: Ocean (Blue Note)

When Lloyd played GPAC this year, he reminisced generously about his Memphis youth, then showed how his post-bop experience here evolved in brilliant directions. Here, he explores the trio form with onetime Crosstown resident artist Anthony Wilson, a sterling guitarist with family roots here, and the otherworldly piano of Gerald Clayton.

The Love Light Orchestra – Leave the Light On (Nola Blue)

You’d think you had just scored an old LP on Duke Records from the 1950s. Like Bobby Bland, singer John Németh’s dynamic range goes from a silky purr to a growl in a heartbeat. And the nine jazz players backing him up in these jump-blues originals get it. Matt Ross-Spang’s mix cinches it.

MonoNeon – Put On Earth for You

This has been MonoNeon’s year, as Fender released a bass in his honor. This album reveals why: finely crafted George Clinton-esque, kitchen-sink funk that veers into the scatological, but always keeps a soulful, philosophical message at its heart. And this virtuoso knows how to play to the song.

North Mississippi Allstars – Set Sail (New West)

The Dickinson brothers have always experimented with rootsy blues grooves, and their latest has them looking both backward (with Stax legend William Bell) and forward, as singer Lamar Williams Jr. weaves his magic into their soul stew. Sonic surprises mix with tasty licks from the Mississippi mud.

PreauXX – God You’re Beautiful (Unapologetic)

If steez is the perfect blend of style and ease, PreauXX himself has all of that. But the rapper is working on many levels here. “This is my most vulnerable project,” he says. “This is my Handsome Samson persona. I’m very luxurious, my skin glowing. I’m being who I am.”

Mark Edgar Stuart – Until We Meet Again (Madjack)

Produced by Dawn Hopkins and Reba Russell, under the name “The Blue Eyed Bitches,” the focus here is on Stuart’s voice. The results are easy, breezy, and natural, thanks to the producers’ focus on feel above all else. That suits Stuart just fine. As he says, “It’s just about the emotion.”

Best Archival Release: Various Artists – The D-Vine Spirituals Records Story, Vol. 1 & 2 (Bible & Tire)

This slice of ’70s gospel, from Pastor Juan Shipp’s old label, is a must-have for all soul fans.

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Music Music Blog

Bailey Bigger to Headline Cooper-Young Festival

Bailey Bigger (Photo: Bethany Reid Visuals)

The 2022 Evolve Bank & Trust Cooper Young Festival, slated for Saturday, September 17th from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., has announced its musical lineup.

The headliner will be Bailey Bigger, backed by a band featuring Mark Stuart (bass guitar), Wyly Bigger (keyboards) and Danny Banks (drums).

Growing up in small town — Marion, Arkansas, just outside of Memphis, Tennessee — Bigger began writing and performing seriously in Memphis at the age of 14. It’s been quite a journey from that to Bigger’s debut full length album, Coyote Red, released by Madjack Records in March and featured in the Memphis Flyer‘s music column at the time.

At the time, we wrote of her strong-yet-delicate singing and evocative songwriting, with echoes of Joan Baez and similar artists. Bigger noted that when producing the album, Mark Stuart told her, “I think this record’s about you showing who you are, in a genuine, down-to-earth way.” It’s not to be missed. Visit baileybigger.com to learn more and find tour dates near you. 

Here is the complete music lineup for the 2022 Cooper Young Festival:

Memphis Grizzlies Stage
12:30 pm             Joy Dog – Danny & Joyce Green
1:30 pm               Rachel Maxann
2:30 pm               The Delta Project
3:30 pm               Jay Jones
4:30 pm               Generation Gap

Evolve Bank & Trust Stage
11:15 am             SoundBox
12:15 pm             Rodrick Duran
1:15 pm               Elevation
2:15 pm               The City Fathers
3:15 pm               Chinese Connection Dub Embassy
4:15 pm               Carlos Guitarlos
5:15 pm               Headliner – Bailey Bigger

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Music Music Features

Bigger Sounds: Coyote Red

PHOTO: BETHANY REID VISUALS Bailey Bigger

Bailey Bigger is on solid footing now, and that’s a good thing. While some music fans hope their favorite artist will never get too comfortable, feeling that great art comes only from suffering, Bigger is here to show that the opposite is true. Her new album on Madjack, Coyote Red, is an object lesson in being secure enough to open up in one’s art and, thus, reveal something truer than ever. 

We last spoke with her upon the release of her 2020 EP, Let’s Call It Love (Big Legal Mess), and it was no accident that we characterized those songs as “confronting trauma.” Even then, her strong alto, evoking a classic era of strong female singers like Joan Baez, was in full effect, as was her ability to turn a phrase and a melody. Now, with the imminent release of her first full-length album, those qualities are more apparent than ever, with the added bonus of “blood harmonies” — that almost inseparable harmony some singing siblings share — with her brother, Wyly Bigger, who also contributes piano. She recently touched base with the Flyer to fill us in on what’s changed.

Memphis Flyer: It feels like a lot has changed since your last release.Bailey Bigger: That was released in December of 2020, and I guess we all have gone through a transformation since then. I think Let’s Call It Love was more centered on that first breakthrough, of saying enough is enough with certain aspects of your life and deciding you want to change the way it’s going. With this record, I don’t think I’ve written anything that has felt more like me. I feel like I settled into myself in these last two years, more than I ever have, and that reflects in this album. 

It’s a little more of an honest look into who I am, without all of these ordeals and setbacks fogging my mind and my heart. I’ve found myself again, but in a new form, where I can still bring back those parts of my innocence and my childhood. I’m settling into my own shoes and finding that inner joy again. I think everyone around me was feeling that simultaneously.

“Everyone” meaning the band and producer Mark Edgar Stuart?
Yeah. Mark and I have become really good friends, and I think him taking the reins really set the tone for it immediately. We had the same vision. And all the musicians he got to play on it, and Kevin Houston engineering, just set the energy for the record immediately and kind of made it this little paradise of friends. That sounds so cheesy, but it was just so fun and real and raw. I think the experience we had is captured in the music because it was really emotional, and everyone who was there experienced the same thing, which was pretty powerful.

What was Mark’s approach as a producer?
He was very hands-off. And I think we equally trusted each other. We both knew we had the same vision. So we trusted each other’s calls. He wanted it to come off as personal, as these songs of mine are, so he stepped back in all the right places. But he helped me pick out the songs, and he actually supported a lot of songs that I was down on. That gave me confidence to create what this is. I don’t think I would have chosen half the songs on the album if it wasn’t for his encouragement. He brought that outsider’s perspective.

There’s a song called “Wyly,” which is about my brother, obviously. It was a song I wrote for him in 10 minutes one night, when I was really emotional. I was kind of down on it, because I thought, “It’s one of those songs that I just spit out, that’s not refined enough.” Mark was the one who said, “No, no, no, this is the gold right here. You can’t recreate something that’s that raw.” He said, “I think this record’s about you showing who you are, in a genuine, down-to-earth way.”
Bailey Bigger and band will play a free record release show on Friday, April 1st, at Hernando’s Hide-A-Way, 8 p.m.

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Film Features Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: “What’s Louder Than Love?” by Mark Edgar Stuart

Memphis folk-rock stalwart and MVM frequent flyer Mark Edgar Stuart‘s got a new album coming out called Until We Meet Again. “It’s a quasi-concept album about life, love, and afterlife,” he says.

The lead single, “What’s Louder Than Love?” exemplifies the mood of the record, which Stuart calls “Nothing too heavy, and nothing too personal … My past videos have been melancholy, so this time I wanted to come out swinging with something upbeat and light-hearted. I figured after the past two years we’ve had, who wants to hear more sad shit?”

Bassist Landon Moore directed the video. “It was 100 percent his vision,” says Stuart. “All I did was just walk around Midtown and hang out with some of my favorite Memphis people — mostly those who worked on the record like my two producers Reba Russell and Dawn Hopkins, plus musician pals Will Sexton and Shawn Zorn. There’s tons of great cameos too including Keith Sykes, Jerry Phillips, and Matt Ross-Spang … Making this video was an absolute hoot. My favorite scene is Steve Selvidge and Rod Norwood airing out their Facebook rivalry on camera.”

If you’d like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.

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Music Music Features

Jed Zimmerman: Bringing It All Back Home to Memphis

Jed Zimmerman channels his Memphis roots in his album, Below the Blooms. (Photo: Jamie Harmon)

Jed Zimmerman may be the most Memphis Texan you’ll ever meet. Or is he the most Texas Memphian? Living in the Fort Worth area, he’s clearly a Texan now, but this is one native son of Memphis who hasn’t forgotten his roots. It’s more apparent than ever on his new album on the local Madjack label, Below the Blooms, wherein our hero journeys back to the land of his birth to record his songs with players steeped in the Memphis sound.

That was the goal from the outset, when Zimmerman called on his old friend Mark Edgar Stuart to produce the project. A core band was assembled at Delta-Sonic Sound that included Stuart, Danny Banks, Al Gamble, and Will Sexton (another Texas/Tennessee border jumper). Other odd players, like myself, were recruited to toss in a few chords, and, to hear Zimmerman describe it, it was a bit of a dream team.

“It’s almost like a little Wrecking Crew, this group,” he says. “I just wanted that authentic thing. With you Memphis guys, man, I was like, ‘Let it do its thing, man!’ There was nothing to think about here. I wanted to make a record with you guys, the way you guys feel it right when you hear it. There was no pre-planning. Let’s just get these guys together and let them interpret it the way they want to interpret it.”

Zimmerman typically plays solo guitar in the classic troubadour style, but with the Memphis band, he found himself rethinking the arrangements. “I don’t need my name in the credits, like ‘Jed on guitar,’” he says. “I might try a guitar overdub. Well, maybe Jed’s inadequate, all right? And sometimes it just didn’t need it! And I was fine with that. It’s big boy music. There’s so much beautiful space on this record that we didn’t need a lot of mandolins or guitar strumming. The breathing is important.”

Case in point, the opening track, with nary an acoustic strum to be heard. “Oh my God, them birds are chirpin’!” Zimmerman sings. Okay, is this a nature lover’s song? “Oh my God, look at all the light!” Hmm, he doesn’t sound too thrilled about it. “Doin’ time for the crime of … murder.” Wait, what? And then comes the song title and punch line, all rolled into one: “I killed a day, last night.” As remorseful morning-after looks at tying one on go, it’s a gem. That craftsmanship is typical of the entire album, and Zimmerman’s approach generally. Not surprisingly, his craftsmanship has roots in Memphis as well.

As he recalls, after graduating from Germantown High School, “I was 19 or something, living in Eads, Tennessee, and that’s when Cory Branan was starting to blow up. I’d hear the Pawtuckets, Jimmy Davis and the Riverbluff Clan — Jimmy’s like a brother to me. And then there was Mark Stuart. I’d play songwriter showcases at the Flying Saucer. Mark Stuart heard me and drove all the way out to Eads, and we sat on the front porch. He really thought I had something.”

Encouraged, Zimmerman moved to Midtown, ultimately reuniting with his high school sweetheart, Kelley Mickwee, to form a musical duo that lasted for years. That’s when a turning point came. “I was playing a Jed and Kelley gig when Keith Sykes walked in, and my knees started shaking! I was already a fan. We had a beer, and he liked the songs. So he ended up producing two Jed and Kelley records. He’s the ultimate songwriter. I have such respect for him and his comedic genius.”

Today, having long parted ways with Mickwee, he’s still honing the craft exemplified by songsmiths like Sykes, and, Memphis Wrecking Crew or not, the new album lives and dies by Zimmerman’s pithy writing and unaffected delivery. “I’ve worked really hard on my songs,” he says. “A lot of people have this notion of ‘You gotta write a song every day if you wanna be this or that.’ But I pore over my stuff. I’ll fill up half a notebook on just a line or two. Because I don’t see the point in turning in a homework assignment or finishing a song just to say that you’ve finished a song. When I finish it, I’d like to sing it for the rest of my life.”

Jed Zimmerman, Mark Edgar Stuart, and special guests will play a record release show at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts on Friday, October 15, 7:30 p.m. $10.

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Cover Feature News

Sound Traditions: Matt Ross-Spang Builds a Studio in Crosstown Concourse

Photo: Jamie Harmon

Memphis is rightly known as a city of musicians’ musicians. Whether they stay planted here, like MonoNeon, or move to the coasts where the music industry and its stars are based, they bring a feel and a groove that few others can match. But the city also attracts brilliant players from elsewhere, in search of that Memphis sound. More than any formula or ingredient, like our much-touted horn players, there’s an elusive ambience, a holistic character, that emerges when one works in this city. And one element of that is simple: It’s in the rooms.

That doesn’t mean our well-appointed lodgings, but rather the classic studios that have dotted the city for over half a century. But it wasn’t always thus. At the dawn of the 2000s, digital technology led many to retreat into the safety and economy of home studios, to such an extent that many studio owners wondered if they’d go the way of the dinosaurs. Was there any money in the studio business?

In recent years, that question is being answered with a definite maybe. The pendulum has swung back to the advantages that only dedicated studios can offer, especially larger rooms, classic gear, and efficient engineering. As Boo Mitchell, co-owner of Royal Studios, one of the oldest continuously operated spaces of its kind in the world, recently noted, “It’s shifting back to the way it used to be, when we were a recording destination.”

All such history is new again, as many artists and producers clamor for a sound that some call retro and others call classic. One indication came in 2019, when what was once unthinkable came to be: A new studio opened in town. And the classic sound was crucial to it. As Memphis Magnetic Recording Co. co-owner Bob Suffolk reflected, “Our studio is brand-spanking new, although it’s done in what I call a purpose-built vintage style.”

Matt Ross-Spang (Photo: Jamie Harmon)

Memphis Sounds, Southern Grooves

Now, a new “purpose-built vintage” recording space is opening with an even more local provenance. Matt Ross-Spang, who distinguished himself first at Sun Studio and then as a Grammy-winning engineer and producer based at the renowned Sam C. Phillips Recording Studio and elsewhere, is custom-designing a new room, to be called Southern Grooves, in what was once the Sears cafeteria on the second floor of Crosstown Concourse. As he puts on the finishing touches, it’s clear that this one project embodies all Ross-Spang has learned from multiple studios around Memphis for over a decade, a distillation of the city’s legendary history of recorded music.

“On these walls, we used a polyurethane paint. And that doubled the length of the room,” Ross-Spang says. When you get a tour of a studio, you hear such absurdities regularly. Wait a minute, I think, the paint alone can double the length of the room? That’s when I realize he’s talking about the length of the room’s echo. In a studio, what matters is how your ears measure a room, not your eyes or your yardstick.

In this instance, the room is basically a closet, but it’s a closet designed to always remain empty: another absurdity. “This is what I’m most proud of, our echo chamber. Steve [Durr] designed it. Here’s what it sounds like,” says Ross-Spang as he claps a single time. “It’s about four seconds. Of course, our bodies are soaking up some of the sound.” When in use, the room will have only speakers, playing audio from the control room, and microphones to record how those sounds bounce off the walls. To build such a room, Ross-Spang and Durr studied Phillips Recording intensely. “Phillips has three chambers. The one behind the pink door at the end of the hall there is the greatest echo chamber I’ve ever heard. It’s about six seconds. I didn’t have that much space, but we had height.”

Ross-Spang is one of the few to have seen the Phillips chambers in detail. As Jerry Phillips, son of the late Sam Phillips, says, “We’ve got some of the greatest echo chambers in the world in that building. And we keep them kind of a secret. We don’t let anybody take pictures in there. It’s proprietary. We have three different sizes. And the combination can really give you a great sound. You cannot duplicate it in any kind of digital process.”

That’s true of all such physical spaces, be they echo chambers or the large rooms in which bands record. Stepping into the tracking room at Southern Grooves is like stepping back in time, both sonically and visually. Wood panels alternate with orange fabric on the walls; a wooden chair rail runs along the room’s perimeter; linoleum floor tiles sport geometric patterns here and there; perforated light fixtures, reminiscent of the Summer Drive-In, hang from a ceiling with similarly perforated panels, arranged in an uneven sawtooth pattern. All of it seems to invite a band to set up and record in the old-school way, all together, playing live in the room that time forgot.

A session at Phillips Recording, with (l-r) Rev. Charles Hodges, Matt Ross-Spang,
William Bell (behind piano), Leroy Hodges, Ken Coomer, and David Cousar (Photo: Jamie Harmon)
Southern Grooves, the new recording studio in Crosstown Concourse (Photo: Jamie Harmon)

Memphis Soul Stew, or Ingredients of a Sound Studio

“I kinda stole from all my Memphis heroes. At Sun, the V-shapes on the ceiling went long ways, and at Phillips they go like this. And then Chips Moman’s thing was latticework,” Ross-Spang explains, referring to the producer/engineer who helped found both Stax and American Sound Studio. “So the ceilings here are about 15 feet high; the panels drop down and are angled, but the sound goes through the perforated metal, and then there’s insulation so it stops before it comes back down. So you still get the big room, but you don’t have the parallel surfaces. You never want parallel surfaces.” Such surfaces cause sounds to bounce around too much. “That was another big Sam [Phillips] thing. The angles throw off the flatness of the floor.”

And yet some bounce is desirable. Take the linoleum floor, also a design element from Sun (actually known as the Memphis Recording Service in its heyday). Those floors have often been celebrated as being critical to the roomy sound of early Howlin’ Wolf, Elvis, and Jerry Lee Lewis recordings. As musician Mark Edgar Stuart notes, one story among his fellow tour guides at Sun Studio is that once Bob Dylan himself walked in on a tour, looked at the floor, said, “Ahh, tile,” then walked back out.

As Jerry Phillips says of his father, “Memphis Recording Service was his baby, of course. And Marion Keisker helped him a lot. They laid the floor tiles. He would clap his hands and hear how the echo sounded in the room. How alive or dead it was. He wanted a combination of live sound and controllable sound. And he just built the acoustics in that studio by experimenting.”

Jerry Phillips at the bar in Sam C. Phillips Recording Studio (Photo:Jamie Harmon)

As Ross-Spang envisioned it, having such a “live” tracking room, with some echo (as opposed to a “dead,” echoless room) was critical. “In the ’60s, all the rooms were really reverberant,” he explains. “And then in the late ’60s, early ’70s, when they got 16 track machines and could put mics closer on stuff, they started to deaden stuff with burlap. And then they went so far, they would just really deaden it. So I wanted to have a ’60s room that just started putting up burlap. I always thought that was the coolest balance. ’Cause you can always deaden something more. I can always put more shag rugs down; I can put in baffles. But it’s hard to make stuff livelier. And I just love the old tile floor. Ever since Sun, I’ve always loved that sound.”

The wood and burlap on the walls, on the other hand, are inspired by the second location of Ardent Studios, built in 1972, where Big Star (and many others) made legendary albums. Once again, Ross-Spang leaned on his design collaborator for much of those details. “Steve Durr was really good friends with Welton Jetton, who built all the equipment for Stax and Ardent and helped John Fry [and Terry Manning and Rick Ireland] design the original acoustics at Ardent. So Ardent Studio A had these kinds of reflectors and absorbers. That was a Welton Jetton design. I brought that back because I always thought that was a great look, and they sound amazing.”

Yet there are some elements of Southern Groove’s acoustics that are completely unique, unrelated to the studios of yore. “You always want limitations, and I had the limitations of the columns,” Ross-Spang explains. He’s speaking of the huge concrete columns that pepper the entire Crosstown Concourse structure. There was no possibility of removing or moving them, but Ross-Spang was okay with that. “Acoustically, the columns are interesting because they’re three-foot-thick concrete, they’re smooth, and sound will bounce off that randomly every time. There’s no way to mathematically account for that, acoustically. You play guitar from here, you move and inch, and it’ll bounce differently. I think it’ll be interesting when we get mics in here because it will randomize the room a lot.”

For Ross-Spang, the randomness was a bonus. “A lot of acousticians have one design that they go for every time, but Steve [Durr]knows I wanted something weird and not necessarily correct. Because all the Memphis studios aren’t correct, but they’re cool. I didn’t want a perfect studio; I wanted a weird studio.”

As we move into the control room, where two electricians are painstakingly working, it becomes clear that weirdness is literally wired into the entire space, thanks in part to Ross-Spang’s forethought. Pointing to the electricians, he says, “They’re pulling 30,000 feet of cable, and we’ve got conduits and troughs running to all the rooms. I wanted to wire every room for sound ’cause sometimes you want something to sound perfect, and sometimes you want it to sound like it’s in a garage. The hallways and every other little room are wired. Sometimes a guitar in the main tracking room sounds too good. So you put it in the hallway and it sounds like Tom Waits, and that’s what you need, you know? I do that a lot. At both Sun and Phillips, I would use that front lobby all the time. So I wanted to keep that here. All the wiring is running through the floor in troughs, and the cables will come up into these old school ’60s one-fourth-inch patchbays.”

Ultimately, the wires will converge on a mixing board that, among all the design features, will make Ross-Spang’s commitment to classic Memphis studios more apparent than ever. “I actually have John Fry’s original board from the original Ardent on National Street, where they did the first Big Star stuff. It’s getting fixed up, and it’ll be the main board. It was built in Memphis by Welton Jetton. And I also have a later board that Welton built for Stax, when they upgraded to the bigger boards. We’re putting the Ardent console in the original Stax frame, this cool white Formica top thing.”

The influence of Jetton on the studios of Memphis is hard to overstate. As Terry Manning, the first engineer at Ardent and now a distinguished producer, says, “Welton was a genius. He was the chief engineer at Pepper [Sound] Studios, which at the time was the biggest jingle recording company in the world and had several studios that Welton had put in. Pepper was huge, and Welton was a prime part of that. And later he started his own company making consoles, which became the Spectrasonics consoles that Stax and Ardent had. Later he changed that to Auditronics, and they were used all over the world. It was all Welton and his crew — acoustic design, electronic design, building the consoles. ‘Hey, we need a direct box! What’s a direct box? I don’t know, but Welton will build it!’ It was an amazing time, where you made your own gear and recorded your way.”

Finally, aside from the collection of other vintage gear that Ross-Spang has amassed in his current home base at Phillips, there will be vintage amps and instruments, including a Hammond A-100 organ and one thing most home studios and even many professional ones simply do not have these days: a grand piano.

For that, Ross-Spang received some sage advice from one of the pillars of Memphis’ golden era of recording. “I brought one of my heroes, Dan Penn, over here, and out of nowhere he said, ‘What kind of piano are you gonna get?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to get anything too big.’ And he said, ‘You need to get the biggest durned piano you can buy. Them little pianos, the sound don’t wanna come out of them. But them big pianos, they can’t wait to be recorded. They jump out the speakers.’ So I’m going to have a Baldwin from 1965 in here. It’s a 7-footer. It was really cool to get it from Amro Music ’cause it’s their 100th year of serving Memphis.”

James Taylor, Peter Asher, and Terry Manning at Ardent Studio in 1971, using the mixing board Matt Ross-Spang has acquired. (Photo: Courtesy Terry Manning)

I’ll Take You There, or Setting is Everything

And yet, despite all of Ross-Spang’s committment to the designs and instruments and gear of yesteryear, there’s another element that he may value over all others. As we wrap up the tour, he reflects a bit more on the simple fact of where Southern Grooves will live. The name screams out “Memphis,” of course, but there’s more to it than that. Something unique.

“Never has a studio been in such an ecosystem like Crosstown,” he says. “That was one of the biggest selling points to me. Think about with Ardent and other places with multiple rooms and who you might run into. You might be doing an overdub, but then Jack Oblivian’s in Studio A, and you’re like, ‘Hey, will you come play real quick?’ And that’s kinda gone now with home studios and one-studio facilities.

“But at Crosstown — like, we just ran into Craig Brewer! It’s kinda like having Jerry Phillips come visit Phillips Recording. Here, you can go next door to the Memphis Listening Lab and remember why we’re doing this in the first place. Crosstown is a million-and-a-half-square-foot lounge, essentially, filled with creative people. And I don’t think any other studio has had that opportunity. That’s what I feed off of: other people’s energy. If you put me in here by myself, I couldn’t create anything. But when I have the people here, I’ll go two days without sleeping because I’m so jacked, you know?”

Matt Ross-Spang plans to have Southern Grooves fully operational this August.

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Cover Feature News

2021: Here’s Looking at You

If 2020 was the year of despair, 2021 appears to be the year of hope.

Wanna see what that could look like? Cast your gaze to Wuhan, China, birthplace of COVID-19.

News footage from Business Insider shows hundreds of carefree young people gathered in a massive swimming pool, dancing and splashing at a rock concert. They are effortlessly close together and there’s not a mask in sight. Bars and restaurants are packed with maskless revelers. Night markets are jammed. Business owners smile, remember the bleak times, and say the worst is behind them. How far behind? There’s already a COVID-19 museum in Wuhan.

That could be Memphis (once again) one day. But that day is still likely months off. Vaccines arrived here in mid-December. Early doses rightfully went to frontline healthcare workers. Doses for the masses won’t likely come until April or May, according to health experts.

While we still cannot predict exactly “what” Memphians will be (can be?) doing next year, we can tell you “where” they might be doing it. New places will open their doors next year, and Memphis is set for some pretty big upgrades.

But it doesn’t stop there. “Memphis has momentum” was Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s catchphrase as he won a second term for the office last October. It did. New building projects bloomed like the Agricenter’s sunflowers. And it still does. Believe it or not, not even COVID-19 could douse developers’ multi-million-dollar optimism on the city.

Here are few big projects slated to open in 2021:

Renasant Convention Center

Throughout 2020, crews have been hard at work inside and outside the building once called the Cook Convention Center.

City officials and Memphis Tourism broke ground on a $200-million renovation project for the building in January 2020. The project will bring natural light and color to the once dark and drab convention center built in 1974. The first events are planned for the Renasant Convention Center in the new year.

Memphis International Airport

Memphis International Airport

Expect the ribbon to be cut on Memphis International Airport’s $245-million concourse modernization project in 2021. The project was launched in 2014 in an effort to upgrade the airport’s concourse to modern standards and to right-size the space after Delta de-hubbed the airport.

Once finished, all gates, restaurants, shops, and more will be located in a single concourse. The space will have higher ceilings, more natural light, wider corridors, moving walkways, children’s play areas, a stage for live music, and more.

Collage Dance Collective

The beautiful new building on the corner of Tillman and Sam Cooper is set to open next year in an $11-million move for the Collage Dance Collective.

The 22,000-square-foot performing arts school will feature five studios, office space, a dressing room, a study lounge, 70 parking spaces, and a physical therapy area.

The Memphian Hotel

The Memphian Hotel

A Facebook post by The Memphian Hotel reads, “Who is ready for 2021?” The hotel is, apparently. Developers told the Daily Memphian recently that the 106-room, $24-million hotel is slated to open in April.

“Walking the line between offbeat and elevated, The Memphian will give guests a genuine taste of Midtown’s unconventional personality, truly capturing the free spirit of the storied art district in which the property sits,” reads a news release.

Watch for work to begin next year on big projects in Cooper-Young, the Snuff District, Liberty Park, Tom Lee Park, and The Walk. — Toby Sells

Book ‘Em

After the Spanish flu epidemic and World War I came a flood of convention-defying fiction as authors wrestled with the trauma they had lived through. E.M. Forster confronted colonialism and rigid gender norms in A Passage to India. Virginia Woolf published Mrs. Dalloway. James Joyce gave readers Ulysses. Langston Hughes’ first collection, The Weary Blues, was released.

It’s too early to tell what authors and poets will make of 2020, a year in which America failed to contain the coronavirus. This reader, though, is eager to see what comes.

Though I’ve been a bit too nervous to look very far into 2021 (I don’t want to jinx it, you know?), there are a few books already on my to-read list. First up, I’m excited for MLK50 founding managing editor Deborah Douglas’ U.S. Civil Rights Trail, due in January. Douglas lives in Chicago now, but there’s sure to be some Memphis in that tome.

Next, Ed Tarkington’s The Fortunate Ones, also due in January, examines privilege and corruption on Nashville’s Capitol Hill. Early reviews have compared Tarkington to a young Pat Conroy. For anyone disappointed in Tennessee’s response to any of this year’s crises, The Fortunate Ones is not to be missed.

Most exciting, perhaps, is the forthcoming Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda prose anthology, expected February 2nd. The anthology is edited by Memphis-born journalist Jesse J. Holland, and also features a story by him, as well as Memphians Sheree Renée Thomas, Troy L. Wiggins, and Danian Darrell Jerry.

“To be in pages with so many Memphis writers just feels wonderful,” Thomas told me when I called her to chat about the good news. “It’s a little surreal, but it’s fun,” Jerry adds, explaining that he’s been a Marvel comics fan since childhood. “I get to mix some of those childhood imaginings with some of the skills I’ve worked to acquire over the years.”

Though these books give just a glimpse at the literary landscape of the coming year, if they’re any indication of what’s to come, then, if nothing else, Memphians will have more great stories to look forward to. — Jesse Davis

Courtesy Memphis Redbirds

AutoZone Park

Take Me Out With the Crowd

Near the end of my father’s life, we attended a Redbirds game together at AutoZone Park. A few innings into the game, Dad turned to me and said, “I like seeing you at a ballpark. I can tell your worries ease.”

Then along came 2020, the first year in at least four decades that I didn’t either play in a baseball game or watch one live, at a ballpark, peanuts and Cracker Jack a soft toss away. The pandemic damaged most sports over the last 12 months, but it all but killed minor-league baseball, the small-business version of our national pastime, one that can’t lean on television and sponsorship revenue to offset the loss of ticket-buying fans on game day. AutoZone Park going a year without baseball is the saddest absence I’ve felt in Memphis culture since moving to this remarkable town in 1991. And I’m hoping today — still 2020, dammit — that 2021 marks a revival, even if it’s gradual. In baseball terms, we fans will take a base on balls to get things going before we again swing for the fences.

All indications are that vaccines will make 2021 a better year for gathering, be it at your favorite watering hole or your favorite ballpark. Indications also suggest that restrictions will remain in place well into the spring and summer (baseball season). How many fans can a ballpark host and remain safe? How many fans will enjoy the “extras” of an evening at AutoZone Park — that sunset over the Peabody, that last beer in the seventh inning — if a mask must be worn as part of the experience? And what kind of operation will we see when the gates again open? Remember, these are small businesses. Redbirds president Craig Unger can be seen helping roll out the tarp when a July thunderstorm interrupts the Redbirds and Iowa Cubs. What will “business as usual” mean for Triple-A baseball as we emerge from the pandemic?

I wrote down three words and taped them up on my home-office wall last March: patience, determination, and empathy. With a few more doses of each — and yes, millions of doses of one vaccine or another — the sports world will regain crowd-thrilling normalcy. For me, it will start when I take a seat again in my happy place. It’s been a long, long time, Dad, since my worries properly eased.— Frank Murtaugh

Film in 2021: Don’t Give up Hope

“Nobody knows anything.” Never has William Goldman’s immortal statement about Hollywood been more true. Simply put, 2020 was a disaster for the industry. The pandemic closed theaters and called Hollywood’s entire business model into question. Warner Brothers’ announcement that it would stream all of its 2021 offerings on HBO Max sent shock waves through the industry. Some said it was the death knell for theaters.

I don’t buy it. Warner Brothers, owned by AT&T and locked in a streaming war with Netflix and Disney, are chasing the favor of Wall Street investors, who love the rent-seeking streaming model. But there’s just too much money on the table to abandon theaters. 2019 was a record year at the box office, with $42 billion in worldwide take, $11.4 billion of which was from North America. Theatrical distribution is a proven business model that has worked for 120 years. Netflix, on the other hand, is $12 billion in debt.

Will audiences return to theaters once we’ve vaccinated our way out of the coronavirus-shaped hole we’re in? Prediction at this point is a mug’s game, but signs point to yes. Tenet, which will be the year’s biggest film, grossed $303 million in overseas markets where the virus was reasonably under control. In China, where the pandemic started, a film called My People, My Homeland has brought in $422 million since October 1st. I don’t know about y’all, but once I get my jab, they’re going to have to drag me out of the movie theater.

There will be quite a bit to watch. With the exception of Wonder Woman 1984, the 2020 blockbusters were pushed to 2021, including Dune, Spielberg’s West Side Story remake, the latest James Bond installment No Time to Die, Marvel’s much-anticipated Black Widow, Top Gun: Maverick, and Godzilla vs. Kong. Memphis director Craig Brewer’s second film with Eddie Murphy, the long-awaited Coming 2 America, will bow on Amazon March 5th, with the possibility of a theatrical run still in the cards.

There’s no shortage of smaller, excellent films on tap. Regina King’s directorial debut One Night in Miami, about a meeting between Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown, premieres January 15th. Minari, the stunning story of Korean immigrants in rural Arkansas, which was Indie Memphis 2020’s centerpiece film, lands February 12th. The Bob’s Burgers movie starts cooking April 9th. And coolest of all, next month Indie Memphis will partner with Sundance to bring the latest in cutting-edge cinema to the Malco Summer Drive-In. There’s plenty to be hopeful for in the new year. — Chris McCoy

Looking Ahead: Music

We usually highlight the upcoming hot concerts in this space, but those are still on the back burner. Instead, get a load of these stacks of hot wax (and streams) dropping next year. Remember, the artists get a better share when you purchase rather than stream, especially physical product like vinyl.

Alysse Gafkjen

Julien Baker

One of the biggest-profile releases will be Julien Baker’s Little Oblivians, due out on Matador in February. Her single “Faith Healer” gives us a taste of what to expect. Watch the Flyer for more on that soon. As for other drops from larger indie labels, Merge will offer up A Little More Time with Reigning Sound in May (full disclosure: this all-Memphis version of the band includes yours truly).

Closer to home, John Paul Keith’s The Rhythm of the City also drops in February, co-released by hometown label Madjack and Italian imprint Wild Honey. Madjack will also offer up albums by Mark Edgar Stuart and Jed Zimmerman, the latter having been produced by Stuart. Matt Ross-Spang is mixing Zimmerman’s record, and there’s much buzz surrounding it (but don’t worry, it’s properly grounded).

Jeremy Stanfill mines similar Americana territory, and he’ll release new work on the Blue Barrel imprint. Meanwhile, look for more off-kilter sounds from Los Psychosis and Alicja Trout’s Alicja-Pop project, both on Black & Wyatt. That label will also be honored with a compilation of their best releases so far, by Head Perfume out of Dresden. On the quieter side of off-kilter, look for Aquarian Blood’s Sending the Golden Hour on Goner in May.

Bruce Watson’s Delta-Sonic Sound studio has been busy, and affiliated label Bible & Tire Recording Co. will release a big haul of old-school gospel, some new, some archival, including artists Elizabeth King and Pastor Jack Ward, and compilations from the old J.C.R. and D-Vine Spiritual labels. Meanwhile, Big Legal Mess will drop new work from singer/songwriter Alexa Rose and, in March, Luna 68 — the first new album from the City Champs in 10 years. Expect more groovy organ and guitar boogaloo jazz from the trio, with a heaping spoonful of science-fiction exotica to boot.

Many more artists will surely be releasing Bandcamp singles, EPs, and more, but for web-based content that’s thinking outside of the stream, look for the January premiere of Unapologetic’s UNDRGRNDAF RADIO, to be unveiled on weareunapologetic.com and their dedicated app. — Alex Greene

Chewing Over a Tough Year

Beware the biohazard.

Samuel X. Cicci

The Beauty Shop

Perhaps a bit hyperbolic, but the image that pops into my head when thinking about restaurants in 2020 are the contagion-esque geo-domes that Karen Carrier set up on the back patio of the Beauty Shop. A clever conceit, but also a necessary one — a move designed to keep diners safe and separated when going out to eat. If it all seems a little bizarre, well, that’s what 2020 was thanks to COVID-19.

We saw openings, closings, restrictions, restrictions lifted, restrictions then put back in place; the Memphis Restaurant Association and Shelby County Health Department arguing back and forth over COVID guidelines, with both safety and survival at stake; and establishments scrambling to find creative ways to drum up business. The Beauty Shop domes were one such example. The Reilly’s Downtown Majestic Grille, on the other hand, transformed into Cocozza, an Italian ghost concept restaurant put into place until it was safe to reopen Majestic in its entirety. Other places, like Global Café, put efforts in place to help provide meals to healthcare professionals or those who had fallen into financial hardship during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, not every restaurant was able to survive the pandemic. The popular Lucky Cat Ramen on Broad Ave. closed its doors, as did places like Puck Food Hall, 3rd & Court, Avenue Coffee, Midtown Crossing Grill, and many others.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Working in the hospitality business requires a certain kind of resilience, and that showed up in spades. Many restaurants adapted to new regulations quickly, and with aplomb, doing their best to create a safe environment for hungry Memphians all while churning out takeout and delivery orders.

And even amid a pandemic backdrop, many aspiring restaurateurs tried their hand at opening their own places. Chip and Amanda Dunham branched out from the now-closed Grove Grill to open Magnolia & May, a country brasserie in East Memphis. Just a few blocks away, a new breakfast joint popped up in Southall Café. Downtown, the Memphis Chess Club opened its doors, complete with a full-service café and restaurant. Down in Whitehaven, Ken and Mary Olds created Muggin Coffeehouse, the first locally owned coffee shop in the neighborhood. And entrepreneurial-minded folks started up their own delivery-only ventures, like Brittney Adu’s Furloaved Breads + Bakery.

So what will next year bring? With everything thrown out of whack, I’m loath to make predictions, but with a vaccine on the horizon, I’m hoping (fingers crossed) that it becomes safer to eat out soon, and the restaurant industry can begin a long-overdue recovery. And to leave you with what will hopefully be a metaphor for restaurants in 2021: By next summer, Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman’s Hog & Hominy will complete its Phoenician rebirth from the ashes of a disastrous fire and open its doors once again.

In the meantime, keep supporting your local restaurants! — Samuel X. Cicci

“Your Tickets Will be at Will Call”

Oh, to hear those words again, and plenty of arts organizations are eager to say them. The pandemic wrecked the seasons for performing arts groups and did plenty of damage to museums and galleries.

Not that they haven’t made valiant and innovative efforts to entertain from afar with virtual programming.

But they’re all hoping to mount physical, not virtual, seasons in the coming year.

Playhouse on the Square suspended scheduled in-person stage productions until June 2021. This includes the 52nd season lineup of performances that were to be on the stages of Playhouse on the Square, The Circuit Playhouse, and TheatreWorks at the Square. It continues to offer the Playhouse at Home Series, digital content via its website and social media.

Theatre Memphis celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2021 and is eager to show off its new facility, a major renovation that was going to shut it down most of 2020 anyway while it expanded common spaces and added restrooms and production space while updating dressing rooms and administrative offices. But the hoped-for August opening was pushed back, and it plans to reschedule the programming for this season to next.

Hattiloo Theatre will continue to offer free online programming in youth acting and technical theater, and it has brought a five-week playwright’s workshop and free Zoom panel discussions with national figures in Black theater. Like the other institutions, it is eager to get back to the performing stage when conditions allow.

Ballet Memphis has relied on media and platforms that don’t require contact, either among audience members or dancers. But if there are fewer partnerings among dancers, there are more solos, and group movement is well-distanced. The organization has put several short pieces on video, releasing some and holding the rest for early next year. It typically doesn’t start a season until late summer or early fall, so the hope is to get back into it without missing a step.

Opera Memphis is active with its live Sing2Me program of mobile opera concerts and programming on social media. Its typical season starts with 30 Days of Opera in August that usually leads to its first big production of the season, so, COVID willing, that may emerge.

Courtesy Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Dana Claxton, Headdress at the Brooks earlier this year.

Museums and galleries, such as the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, National Civil Rights Museum, and the Metal Museum are functioning at limited capacity, but people can go and enjoy the offerings. The scope of the shows is limited, as coronavirus has put the kibosh on blockbuster shows for now. Look for easing of protocols as the situation allows in the coming year. — Jon W. Sparks

Politics

Oyez. Oyez. Oh yes, there is one year out of every four in which regularly scheduled elections are not held in Shelby County, and 2021 is such a year. But decisions will be made during the year by the Republican super-majority of the state legislature in Nashville that will have a significant bearing on the elections that will occur in the three-year cycle of 2022-2024 and, in fact, on those occurring through 2030.

This would be in the course of the constitutionally required ritual during which district lines are redefined every 10 years for the decade to come, in the case of legislative seats and Congressional districts. The U.S. Congress, on the basis of population figures provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, will have allocated to each state its appropriate share of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. And the state legislature will determine how that number is apportioned statewide. The current number of Tennessee’s Congressional seats is nine. The state’s legislative ratio is fixed at 99 state House members and 33 members of the state Senate.

Tennessee is one of 37 states in which, as indicated, the state legislature calls the shots for both Congressional and state redistricting. The resultant redistricting undergoes an approval process like any other measure, requiring a positive vote in both the state Senate and the state House, with the Governor empowered to consent or veto.

No one anticipates any disagreements between any branches of government. Any friction in the redistricting process will likely involve arguments over turf between neighboring GOP legislators. Disputes emanating from the minority Democrats will no doubt be at the mercy of the courts.

The forthcoming legislative session is expected to be lively, including holdover issues relating to constitutional carry (the scrapping of permits for firearms), private school vouchers (currently awaiting a verdict by the state Supreme Court), and, as always, abortion. Measures relating to the ongoing COVID crisis and vaccine distribution are expected, as is a proposal to give elected county executives primacy over health departments in counties where the latter exist.

There is no discernible disharmony between those two entities in Shelby County, whose government has devoted considerable attention over the last year to efforts to control the pandemic and offset its effects. Those will continue, as well as efforts to broaden the general inclusiveness of county government vis-à-vis ethnic and gender groups.

It is still a bit premature to speculate on future shifts of political ambition, except to say that numerous personalities, in both city and county government, are eyeing the prospects of succeeding Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland in 2023. And several Democrats are looking at a potential race against District Attorney General Amy Weirich in 2022.

There are strong rumors that, after a false start or two, Memphis will follow the lead of several East Tennessee co-ops and finally depart from TVA.

And meanwhile, in March, the aforesaid Tennessee Democrats will select a new chair from numerous applicants. — Jackson Baker