The first words of Marcella Simien’s new album, To Bend to the Will of a Dream That’s Being Fulfilled, are the perfect introduction to the journey that awaits listeners: “May I heal this family bloodline, forwards and backwards through time.” It’s an incantation of sorts, delivered with a devotional energy that sets the tone for what’s to come. Musically, it’s a departure from Simien’s previous recorded work by way of its minimalism, her main accompaniment for this song being a piano, so evocative of New Orleans and Louisiana. That region, of course, is where the Simiens have been for generations, and where any journey into the singer’s family bloodline must take her.
But while that’s zydeco country (her father Terrance being one of the most celebrated artists of that genre), this is not a zydeco album. Nor is it “swamp soul,” as the rootsy-yet-eclectic sound of Marcella Simien’s band has come to be called. For this most personal of journeys, she’s playing nearly all the instruments, crafting a setting in a kind of synthetic world-building, evoking the sweep of generations with the sweep of electronic filters.
With the new sound comes a new performance style, as Simien will unveil on Saturday, November 23rd, at Off the Walls Arts. “Yvonne [Bobo] built this structure out of metal,” Simien says, “with a screen on the front, and Graham [Burks] will be projecting visuals on this cylinder. It’s gonna be this really interesting experience for the audience, something new.”
Yet the electronic approach itself is not especially new to Simien. “I don’t even know where to begin with my love for synths, from Kraftwerk to Gary Numan to Gorillaz,” she says. “I always wanted to explore that more. Then we finally invested in a Korg recently.” With the new album, that investment has come to fruition, but in a subtle way. This sculpted audio universe doesn’t wear its synths and drum machines on its sleeve, yet it doesn’t shy away from them, either.
Other, rootsier sounds do make an appearance. Speaking of a song honoring her late great-grandmother, Simien says, “With the song ‘Lelia’ in particular, which was the guiding light for the whole idea, I intentionally used instruments that Lelia would have heard in her life and in the 1930s, when she was young and building her family.” Lelia is a centerpiece of the album, and the track bearing her name begins with the sounds of crickets in a field at night, then Simien saying, “Recently I’ve been writing with my great-grandmother.” Indeed, listening to the album, it feels as though Lelia is sitting in the room with us, though Simien never met her.
Nor did her father, Lelia having died when he was an infant. Yet Simien felt a deep bond with her father’s grandmother, and the small town where she helped raise him. “I spent a lot of time in Mallet, Louisiana, a very small community outside of Opelousas,” she says. “And I feel this deep, deep connection to the Simiens. I spent so much of my time around them there, where our family goes as far back as the early 1700s, when they settled on that land.” Simien recalls imagining Lelia when visiting the old family house, where “there was this old photo of her when she was 15, taken on the day she got married. And you can see this beautiful Creole woman with long, dark hair, and these hands of hers reminded me of my hands. I would just stare at that picture, and I think she became a deeper part of me, beyond the DNA.”
Paradoxically, the first word of “Lelia” is “hydrated,” probably not a word used much in Mallet back in the day. Yet that’s also a clue to the power Simien finds in her family past: She came to it through her yogic practice, as a source of strength when she herself was navigating some dark days of her own. It was a time when she struggled with pharmacological dependence. “After a decade of being prescribed Adderall,” she confides, “I decided to get off it. It’s been over three years now, and I don’t miss it at all, but it was scary because I really didn’t trust myself for so much of my 20s, you know?”
Through the struggle, Lelia and others in her family lore were guiding lights. “I started to think about just how challenging her life was,” Simien says. “Giving birth to 15 children, living off the land, making your own stuff, and building a life with next to nothing — I couldn’t comprehend it, but I always thought, ‘If she could handle that, I can handle whatever I’m going through.’ She was tough, and it showed me that there’s so much I can learn from these women. And I want to honor them any way that I can.”
Melanie Pierce (center) as Tina Turner “definitely has the look.” (Photo: Danny Day)
Melanie Pierce has two Tina Turner wigs. She describes one as the “big hair ’80s” wig and the other, the “short, bouncy with curls” wig.
Turner’s later curly hair style still had “a rock-and-roll feel, but more of a classy rock-and-roll feel,” says Pierce, who, along with La-Shon Robinson, are founders of Elevation Memphis: A Tina Turner Tribute Experience. They will be part of the Beale Street Brass Notes Walk of Fame ceremony honoring the late singer November 9th at 3 p.m. at Alfred’s on Beale. Memphis guitarist, songwriter, and recording artist Robert Allen Parker also will be featured at the event.
There’s probably nothing you could ask Pierce and Robinson about the late singer that they can’t answer.
It all began when they went to see Tina: The Tina Turner Musical in February 2023 at the Orpheum Theatre. Both women were familiar with Turner, but they were awestruck after they went to the show.
“I am a child of the ’80s,” Robinson says, recalling when she saw the 1984 video for Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” “I was like, ‘Woah. My God. Who is this mature lady? She’s walking with all this confidence in this video. I’ve got to find out more about her.’ And from there I became fan.”
A native of Grenada, Mississippi, Robinson, a sergeant in the Army National Guard, already had an alternative band, Elevation Memphis. “We do covers of all genres — from ’60s to today’s hits. And we also have original music.”
After the Tina musical at the Orpheum, she thought, “Hey, let’s add Tina.”
Robinson plays flute, tambourine, and a little percussion, and Pierce plays bass and the African djembe drum in the cover band. “Our keyboardist Derrin Lee has played an integral part in all of the arrangements for our Tina tunes. And he’s been with us almost since day one. And it’s been almost four years.”
The band also includes core member dancers and musicians. “We have great dancers and we do have some of the best musicians in Memphis,” Pierce says.
Robinson and Pierce write the originals. “We currently have six originals out right now streaming,” Robinson says.
Almost immediately after they put the Turner tribute together, she and Pierce were referred by Memphian Richard Day to perform their show at the Tina Turner Museum at the West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center in Brownsville, Tennessee. They met Turner’s granddaughter, great-grandson, and a lot of her first-cousins, Robinson says. “And they all look just like her.”
Robinson and Pierce became friends with the family members and they began Facebook-ing each other.
More and more people began asking them to play at their venues, she says.
And “next thing you know” they were invited to perform at the Brass Note ceremony, Robinson says. “We will perform 25 minutes of Tina’s biggest hits.”
Robinson doesn’t portray Turner in the tribute show. “I don’t do Tina. I wear a wig, but Melanie definitely has the look. And when I tell you she studies day in and day out to perfect her — I’ve never seen anybody put in so much work and dedication.”
“I’m learning her every day,” Pierce says. “Her elegance. The way she carries herself on stage. Her confidence on stage.”
And, she says, “Anybody would love to impersonate Tina just because of who she is and just the name. Everything about her.”
Asked how she’d describe Turner, Pierce says, “I would say that she’s very calm. Looking at her interviews, she’s very educated. She just has a peace when you listen to her speak.”
Pierce studies Turner’s voice. “I do try to talk like her. I have made some songs where my sound is similar to her, but I think because I’m bringing the look and that confidence and that presence on stage, sounding like her is not even the thing. ‘I can feel Tina in you.’ ‘You are the next Tina.’ That’s the type of feedback that I get.
“But I do work really hard to talk like her when I am talking in the microphone. I would say Tina’s stage voice is so powerful. It’s raspy. It’s very rock-and-roll.”
And, she says, “Tina Turner has the best legs. I definitely don’t compare to her legs, but I think I have pretty nice legs. I don’t need insurance on them, though. Tina definitely did.”
A native of West Memphis, Arkansas, Pierce got into singing three and a half years ago. “It was just karaoke from time to time.”
Robinson, who worked with her in an office back then, invited her to try out for her Elevation band. “She asked me to come and audition because she heard me playing the djembe with my friend, jamming out at my house. And we had a video on Facebook [of us] jamming out. She said, ‘I really want you to sing. Do you sing?’ I said, ‘No, I’ve never been in a band. I don’t know anything about it.’”
Pierce sang but “just for fun around the house. But not thinking about growing up and being a singer.”
After being coached by Robinson, Pierce got in the band.
When they began getting ready to do the Turner tribute, Pierce began working on the Turner look. “I started off just ordering my first wig off of Amazon. Just because I needed something.”
When ordering it, Pierce says, “I just put in ‘Tina Turner’ and this big hair wig came in.”
Now, she says, “People make me custom wigs.”
In addition to her “rock-and-roll hair,” Pierce dresses like Turner. She describes the look as “female, classy, but sexy rock-and-roll. She wears the dresses with the tights. With the fishnet tights. With the high heels. I do dance in heels.”
Portraying Turner carries over into her daily life, Pierce says. “I have more confidence because I’m having to play a very confident woman.”
Pierce changes her persona from the cover band to the Turner tribute. “I get in ‘Tina’ mode as soon as I hit the stage. I’m ready to go. Ready for whatever crowd, whatever genre of music we do.”
And, she adds, “Tina is always ready. She’s bold. She’s daring. She’s a visionary. She’s fearless.”
They perform their Turner tribute at Memphis locations, including Neil’s Music Room and Lafayette’s Music Room, but not very often. “We don’t want to water it down here in the city,” Robinson says. “So, we’re just starting to go outside Memphis. Arkansas last weekend. St. Louis. Nashville.”
They’d love to one day take their Tina Turner show to Las Vegas. “People have already reached out.”
So, what do they think Tina Turner would think of their band if she were still alive? “I think that if Tina saw us from day one till now, she would definitely say she is very proud of us,” Pierce says. “She can see how hard we’ve been working to improve our show. And she would tell us we have what it takes to be the best Tina Turner tribute band of our time.”
On February 16, 1975, a curious story by James Knightly appeared in TheCommercial Appeal: “Lynyrd Skynyrd Proteges to Record,” ran the headline. With a fine-grained attention to the minutiae of the city’s recording industry that is rare today, the story explains how a thus-far unknown band “will arrive at Sonic Recording Studios at 1692 Madison to record an album.” News flash! It’s hard to imagine such a story making headlines now, but, as Knightly notes, the unknown band’s singer-guitarist “is the 20-year-old brother of Ronnie Van Zant, lead singer and guitarist for the outstanding Southern rock group, Lynyrd Skynyrd.”
That alone made them notable. And it was true, Van Zant’s kid brother Donnie and the band he’d co-founded only months before with fellow singer-guitarist Don Barnes — 38 Special — had a date with destiny. Though that Memphis session wasn’t their big break, they did release an album two years later, and by 1981 they had perfected a custom blend of Southern rock and arena rock that would keep them high in the charts for years, epitomized by hits like “Hold on Loosely” and “Caught Up in You,” both co-written and sung by Barnes.
To this day, the band is going strong, with Barnes alone at the helm since Donnie Van Zant’s retirement over a decade ago. In fact, on Saturday, October 19th, 38 Special will return to Memphis, where they were once so presciently heralded nearly 50 years ago. The band, which still plays a hundred shows a year, will cap off the seventh annual Fall Fest Memphis, a two-day event benefitting Room in the Inn. In anticipation of their appearance, I reached Barnes by phone to hear his thoughts on Memphis, the early days of the band, and the longevity of Southern rock.
Don Barnes (Photo: Carl Dunn )
Memphis Flyer: This story from 1975 really celebrates 38 Special coming to Memphis. How long had you been together at that point?
Don Barnes: We actually put the band together at the end of ’74 and then we got rehearsals started in ’75 so, you know, we’re just going to call 2025 our 50th year. And we’ve got a legacy package coming out with a double CD. One disc has all the greatest hits, and the second disc will have new music. So it should be out about March — great songs!
Whatever happened with those 1975 recordings?
That was the very first recording we ever did. We did our first demo here in Memphis, and, of course, the song never saw the light of day. But you know, that was our very first foray. I remember, we went through the snow and cold of the winter, piled in the van. And we played in a club that had Jerry Lee Lewis’ PA system in there. We all were so honored, you know, to be using his PA system! You know those early days, when you travel around, banging around in a van with an old, dirty mattress in the back, switching drivers and all that, trying to sleep. You start questioning, what about your future? I remember waking up in the van in the middle of Kansas, in a cornfield, thinking, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ But, sticking together like that as a group, it’s like a family. You kind of prop each other up and give each other encouragement.
What were the early days of the band like?
I’ve known Donnie since we were 14! We were playing around Jacksonville in all these little teen club bands and dance bands — about eight other bands before 38 Special. Still working day jobs. And Donnie called me and said, ‘Let’s try it one more time. We’ll get the people, the right people, who will show up and have the conviction to go all the way.’ So I said, ‘Oh, really, try again?’ Anyway, it worked out, but of course, you make all your mistakes in public, and you suffer and starve for what you want. People think ‘Hold on Loosely’ was on our first album, but it was our fourth album. So you went through a lot of self-examination, like, ‘What am I doing?’ Then, people think you get a record deal and you’ve made it. But they’re just giving you a chance to play in the big leagues. If you can’t come across with something then they’re gonna send you back down to the farm league and the clubs. So we had some desperate times there, but it finally worked out.
When Donnie retired, I said, ‘Well, your brother Ronnie would be so proud that you made it 40 years!’ I still talk to him. He’s still my partner — we own the trademark.
Speaking of Ronnie Van Zant, what kind of impact did he have on you guys as a band, before he died in that tragic plane crash in 1977?
I remember the things that Ronnie told us about: Put your truth in your song; put your light in it. Don’t just say, ‘Ooh baby, I love you, I miss you.’ You’ve got to find real truths from stories in your life. So ‘Caught Up in You’ was about a woman that I was dating at the time, and I happened to say, ‘You know, I can’t seem to get any work done; I’m just so caught up in you all the time.’ And it was just like a light bulb turned on. ‘That’s a pretty good element for a song.’
38 Special will appear at 7 p.m. on Saturday, October 19th, at Fall Fest Memphis, held this year at St. Brigid Catholic Church, 7801 Lowrance Rd. For tickets and other details, visit fallfestmemphis.org.
“I guess I learned from Covid what anxiety and depression really were.” Alice Hasen is recalling the genesis of her latest release some years ago, when cabin fever’s creeping trepidation was not only a personal matter, but a generalized fear for all of humanity. All of us went through similar emotions, but Hasen, being a classically-trained violinist and composer, and well-seasoned on the stages of the Mid-South, confronted them through her music. Hearing her EP Dream of Rain now, it’s clear that the stress helped her to produce the most powerful music of her career.
But if the Covid lockdown era jump-started the musical project, it quickly grew beyond that, thematically. That’s made clear in “Temperature Rising,” the EP’s opener. As she explains, there are multiple dimensions to both the global and the personal stress she’s confronting, and the opening track is about “all of the different ways the temperatures were rising around us. Primarily, the EP is mostly about climate change, wildfires, and the mental response to that. But it’s also definitely a product of the pandemic because our internal temperatures were rising and the political temperature was rising, too. So it’s a musical embodiment of all of those anxieties, for me, coming together and needing to find a way to be expressed.”
Hasen, of course, wouldn’t be the first artist to respond to end-of-the-world angst. Local rock band Heels, for example, released Pop Songs for a Dying Planet a couple of years ago, and that title says it all. But Heels’ “pop songs” were punk-infused barn burners reminiscent of, say, the Clash — exactly what you’d expect from apocalyptic rage. Hasen, on the other hand, takes a subtler approach. While she’s dabbled in funk, classic rock, and other genres in her previous solo work (and in the work of Blackwater Trio, her more collaborative band), this EP reflects a more introspective approach and a lush beauty all its own. Facing up to such anguish, it turns out, can be a very delicate thing.
The EP’s title song is a prime example. “Dream of Rain” begins quietly, Hasen’s violin meandering pleasantly before the subtle rhythm kicks in and, with Hasen’s conversational musings melodiously unfolding in the verse, it resembles nothing so much as Joni Mitchell. Clearly this is a world where beauty and fear come in equal measures. As Hasen reflects, “Part of me wants to let people interpret it for themselves, but for me, that song is about denialism and being invited into this world where nothing is wrong. It’s not real; it’s not a real world. So there’s extreme beauty and comfort, but also there’s something off about it that you can’t quite place. Yet there’s also sort of a hope that we can just dream of rain. Like in the bridge, where it kind of breaks down and turns into spoken word: If you can dream of rain, pray for rain, sing for rain, and dance for rain, then we can magically manifest it.”
Such magic is therapeutic in a world that seems to be falling apart. As Hasen notes, the vast scale and inexorable march of climate change “makes me feel trapped. But there is some hope in the album, too. Like, ‘Dream of Rain’ is an optimistic song for me because we’re trying to manifest rain to go to the places it needs to go.”
The fine line between hope and despair comes through loud and clear as the song unfolds:
“For generations this has been our home,” she sings, “our hiding place/But now we’re running where we used to play, all burned away/No fire escape, all burned away/Have you heard the news?/Where we’re going there is no more pain, no yesterday/Worrying or arguing on how to play the game/Funny how those words of peace and anger sound the same/When you’re the one in the flames.”
The grim imagery continues through other songs on the EP as well. “Goodnight Moon,” far from an homage to the popular children’s book, describes humanity as “coming in hot/Caught victim by our firelust,” as we become mere “victors of dust, prizes of rust.” But the first single off the EP, “Hold Still,” which drops September 20th, offers a kind of balm to this collective anxiety. Over some of the most delicate music of her career, Hasen sings some sage advice: “Hold still, this won’t hurt a bit/Finding the heartbeat, keeping the magic/Hold still, the world is an eggshell/We’re on the inside, nothing is tragic.”
Leaning into the fragility of the tune, Hasen also plays flute on it, a flourish that complements her arrangements for string ensemble throughout the EP. While she overdubbed herself for the latter effect during recording (with Estefan Perez on cello), she’s looking forward to featuring a live string ensemble and a flutist when she celebrates the EP’s release at The Green Room at Crosstown Arts on October 4th. And, she notes of the Green Room performance, “this will probably be the only show where I do the entire EP front to back, ever. Because this project, being full of emotions and a definite darkness, has been very laborious and emotionally taxing.”
Yet, on the flip side, Hasen’s looking forward to having fun while playing live this season. The first gig on the horizon will be the Mighty Roots Music Festival in Stovall, Mississippi (near Clarksdale), this Friday and Saturday, September 13th and 14th, with Hasen and band appearing Saturday at 2:15 p.m.
“I’m really excited about that,” says Hasen. “I spent four years in Clarksdale, and that was sort of where I was born as an artist, I think, because that was the first place I really got to experience playing non-classical music. And of course, it’s such a musically rich part of the world, I think it really influenced me and the way that I sound, and my particular voice on the violin, my songwriting voice.”
She pauses a moment, then adds, “And Stovall is an amazing place because it’s the birthplace of Muddy Waters. When I was looking in Clarksdale, I used to ride my bike over to Stovall and just sit under a pecan tree and look out over the fields for a little bit before going home.”
Amber Rae Dunn with The Royal Blues Band at “A Tribute to the King” (Photos: Michael Donahue)
If you heard Amber Rae Dunn sing for the first time at the recent “A Tribute to the King,” you might want to know more about her.
The captivating singer filled the stage of Lafayette’s Music Room with her voice and personality at the event held August 11th, featuring headliner Ronnie McDowell as well as The Royal Blues Band with Wyly Bigger on keyboards.
“I am from Schererville, Arkansas,” Dunn says. “I grew up with six siblings and my dad was just a barber and my mom was a stay-at-home mom who took care of all of us. There was not a lot to do, but we had a three-acre garden. Just about every memory of my life, I have it in the garden. My favorite animal is a turtle, and I loved that I got to collect worms off tomato plants to feed to my turtle.”
Dunn also sang. “All the time. Everywhere around the house. I was definitely the loudest kid my parents have.”
Dunn with Leon Griffin
If she wasn’t singing “This Little Light of Mine” in church, Dunn was listening to her mother’s Al Green, Michael Jackson, and Prince albums and her dad’s ’90s country music. “So, I’m sure I was singing those songs as well.”
Like she still does, Dunn worked at her dad’s barbershop, Larry’s Hair Design, in West Memphis, Arkansas. She learned how to cut and style hair when she was in high school. “Other kids go to soccer practice or others take acting. I enrolled in hair school.”
She began singing on stage while attending Memphis College of Art for a degree in sculpture. Yubu Kazungu, a fellow student, invited her to join him at an open mic. She asked Kazungu, who heads Yubu and the Africans, why he thought she could sing. She says he told her, “I can hear you humming in the sculpture room working on a pot. You hum on key, and I feel like you can sing on key.”
Dunn joined Kazungu’s band and appeared with the group at open mics around town.
Kazungu “had been pestering” her to write a song, so Dunn came up with “Arkansas Line.” After some persuading from Kazungu one night at a soul food restaurant, Dunn sang the song in front of an audience while keeping the beat by snapping her fingers.
People at the show told her she was really good, but that she needed to go to Nashville because “that’s not really the type of music we have in Memphis.”
So Dunn got a job at Wayne’s Unisex, a Nashville barbershop. She went to clubs at night to “work tips for the band.” She did whatever she could, whether it was “do handstands” or “pinch cheeks,” to get customers to put money in the tip jars. “Then, finally, at the end of the night when everyone was good and drunk and half the people were gone, they would let me get up and sing two or three songs at 3 in the morning.”
Dunn was realistic about living in Nashville. “My plan was five years. If nothing happened, I was like, ‘Okay, I guess this isn’t the path I’m supposed to get on.’”
But nine months after she got to Nashville, one of her brothers was killed in a motorcycle accident, so she returned home to comfort her parents. “I’m a sucker for family.”
Starting at an open mic at Earnestine & Hazel’s, Dunn thought, “I need to meet people. If you build it, they’ll come.”
Mark Parsell stopped in one night and invited Dunn to check out his venue, South Main Sounds. Singing at one of Parsell’s Friday night shows, Dunn met Andrew Cabigao, who helped her get a job as social media representative at Mark Goodman’s MGP The Studio. While there, Dunn recorded her first album, Arkansas Line. Attending a songwriters workshop at Visible Music College, Dunn met Billy Smiley, founding member of White Heart, a Dove Award-nominated Christian rock group. He invited her to come to Nashville and maybe do an album at his studio, Sound Kitchen Studios.
She was two songs into the album when Covid hit. She released a couple of singles, but the album, I Guess That’s Life, wasn’t released until March 2023.
One of those songs, her popular “Barbershop,” is “just kind of talking about my dad’s barbershop and the type of customers we have. It’s just nostalgic.”
She also began going to workshops in and outside of Memphis in addition to bartending on Friday nights at South Main Sounds and performing with her band, Amber Rae Dunn and the Mulberries.
Dunn is thinking about a new album, but it might go in another direction. “Vocally, there’s a lot of soul and blues to my voice. But there’s also a lot of country. So, I don’t know. I feel like there’s a way to navigate the two.”
She’d like to mix “a Memphis sound” with her “traditional country sound.”
When she’s not cutting records or cutting hair, Dunn, who is married to Justin Craven, is performing with her band around town. She’s also a guest host with Leon Griffin on Memphis Sounds on WYPL.
Not forgetting her visual art chops, Dunn, who recently got into mosaics, currently is working on a mural at the Super 8 motel in West Memphis.
But Dunn is primarily sticking with songwriting, which she decided at 25 was going to be her journey. She told herself, “I don’t know what the outcome is, but I’m going to give it my all.”
See Amber Rae Dunn live at Momma’s, 855 Kentucky Street, Wednesday, August 28th, 7 p.m., with Mario Monterosso.
When I arranged to interview Dywane “MonoNeon” Thomas Jr., the Bluff City’s hardest working bass virtuoso since Duck Dunn, and an auteur in his own right, the plan was to talk about his latest album. “Okay,” I thought, “I’ll give it a listen,” and pulled up the latest release on Bandcamp: MonoNeon on Synthesizer. It’s fantastic! A tour de force of thick Moog sounds, chock-full of inventive harmonies and sonic textures that Tomita himself would envy. There was only one problem: We weren’t supposed to be talking about that new album; it was the other one, due to drop on July 26th, the one featuring both George Clinton and Mavis Staples. “Okay,” I thought, “that new album.”
It’s hard to keep up with such a prolific artist. Since 2010, he’s created at a furious pace, from his trademark YouTube videos wherein his bass mimics found spoken word clips, to one-off singles (like 2016’s “Ruff Enuff,” produced by Prince), to full-on albums — 29 of them, if you count EPs. And if some of those have a real “I built this in my bedroom” quality, the production standards and arrangements have steadily, inexorably evolved over the years.
Which brings us to Quilted Stereo, album number 30. It’s the ultimate expression of MonoNeon’s ongoing evolution and sophistication so far, without sacrificing any of his unpredictability and inventiveness. And several of the tracks have been out there already, including “Quilted,” his single featuring George Clinton.
As none other than IMAKEMADBEATS noted on social media when the track was released in March, “MonoNeon not only just dropped a song with goated funk legend George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, the whole song is MEMPHIS AF. The hook is literally ‘LOOK AT ME MANE.’ C’mon, bruh. Mane really brought George Clinton to US. THAT’S LEGENDARY. AF. People are really out here putting on for Memphis in innovative ways … both the mainstream and the alternative.”
When I caught up with MonoNeon last week, fresh off a European tour, he spoke of his working relationship with Clinton as a very organic, low-key phenomenon. “I met George two years ago, when I sat in with him at some music festival. And although our relationship is pretty new, I go down to Tallahassee a lot, to hang with him and his family. It wasn’t forced, it just happened in a casual fashion. He’s a pretty chill person.”
The song itself is a perfectly Clinton-esque ode to flying your sartorial freak flag high, even if that means wearing suits made of multicolored quilts. It’s a sentiment that Mr. “Get Dressed” himself can obviously relate to. And yet, as MonoNeon relates, the song, co-written with his longtime producer Davy Nathan and the rapper Wax, was practically an afterthought.
As he explains, the tune is “about my whole aesthetic right now that I’m on, with my quilted clothes. And it came about when I was doing one of my videos, where I’m just acting up, you know, talking about how clean I am. A friend of Davy’s said, ‘That could be a song!’ His name is Wax; he’s a rapper. And we started writing the lyrics. My idea was to get George to do an intro for it and to feature him on the song.”
Nathan, as it turns out, is a key player in the MonoNeon universe. His home studio in Los Angeles is where MonoNeon does most of his recording these days, but their understanding goes deeper than your typical producer-artist relationship. “I usually always write my own songs,” says MonoNeon, “but when it comes to writing songs with other people, I usually go to him. He’s one of my best friends and a mentor, and I trust him with my vision. He understands me; he understands my little quirkiness. He’s really been helping me, seeing how he works and his way of writing — just being around him has really inspired me.”
Nathan also played a major role in MonoNeon’s collaboration with Mavis Staples on the song “Full Circle.” The title was apt, given the ties between the Staples family and MonoNeon’s own father. “I always wanted to do a song with Mavis, because I grew up listening to her, and she reminded me of my grandma, but also because my dad [Dywane Thomas Sr.] played bass with her and her father Pops Staples. So I’ve always been so in love with Mavis and her singing.
“Before this album, I told Davy, ‘I want to do a song with Mavis.’ I wasn’t sure if he was going to happen or not, but I told Davy, ‘Man, I’m going to let you have this, and I’m going to let you write a song, and hopefully me and Mavis can sing on it.’ So he sent me the song ‘Full Circle,’ and it was great. They sent it to Mavis and she loved it. She even told me that she prayed and prayed about it. And so it came to be. When we met in Chicago to record her vocals, I walked in the room and got butterflies.”
The song, with its doo-wop-ish vocal bass riff evoking some gospel funk of the last century, is a stylistic home run, but that’s just one selection from an album as eclectic as any MonoNeon’s made. There’s the sing-along jam with Clinton, but also the chugging New Wave pop of “Church of Your Heart,” the jungle beat rap of “Segreghetto,” and what may just be the sparkling sizzler of the summer, “Jelly Roll,” full of glossy synth warbles and bass stabs, its video overflowing with extras seemingly right out of the Crystal Palace roller-skating scene of some years ago. Memphis AF.
It all has MonoNeon excited to be touring with new material, which he’ll soon be doing across the U.S. next month, culminating in his appearance at the Overton Park Shell on August 30th, followed by more European dates in the fall and winter. “I’m happy to be back home, but I’m ready to go back out,” he says. “I just want to be on stage and just continue evolving and continue to leave my little stamp down here before I get up out of this world. That’s all that matters to me.”
Elvis backstage at the
Shell in 1955 (Photo: Robert Dye Sr. / Courtesy
Overton pPark Shell Archives)
It seems like this should be national news — international, even. We’re talking about Elvis Presley, after all. And the 70th anniversary of his first great triumph as a live performer is fast approaching, although anyone who saw it advertised in the paper beforehand might have gotten his name wrong. Promoting the eighth annual Country Music Jamboree scheduled for July 30, 1954, an ad in the Memphis Press-Scimitar read, “In person, the SENSATIONAL radio-recording star, Slim Whitman, with Billy Walker, Ellis Presley and many others … Tonight at Shell, $1.25 reserved.”
Whoever this “Ellis” Presley was, he shared the Overton Park Shell stage with some mighty respected company amongst country music fans. Pretty good for only the second or third public performance of his life.
As it happened, it was more than pretty good: It was earth-shattering. In Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll, Peter Guralnick quotes Presley’s guitarist Scotty Moore as saying, “With those old loose britches that we wore, it made it look like all hell was going on under there. During the instrumental parts he would back off from the mic and be playing and shaking, and the crowd would just go wild, but he thought they were actually making fun of him.” They weren’t. After the show, dozens of teens rushed backstage for autographs from this new singer.
That validation was exactly what the young Presley needed, only 11 days after the release of his first single, “That’s All Right.”
It’s a story that Cole Early knows well, being the content and archives manager of the Overton Park Shell, not to mention curator of the Shell’s excellent Connie Abston Archive & History Exhibition. That short set, Presley’s first live show with just his recording band of Moore and Bill Black, was akin to a big bang of pop music, in stark contrast to Presley’s one earlier attempt to sit in with a band unfamiliar with his style.
“His first public performance ever was in a honky-tonk on Summer Avenue, and he wasn’t received well,” says Early of Presley’s previous experience. “The country music audience there at the club that night just saw this flashy kid wearing pink, and this was like a dive bar, a honky-tonk place.” Then came his appearance at the Country Music Jamboree.
Knowing that the Shell bore witness to one of rock-and-roll’s great moments, Early wanted to celebrate the memory of Elvis’ performance in style. Since the Shell already offers the Backstage Experience tour of the Connie Abston Archive, it was easy to imagine the Shell stage as the culmination of an even greater tour. What Elvis fan could resist seeing various key locations in The King’s ascension, working east from Downtown, then ending up at the very stage on which Elvis first made his mark, with music by a live band?
Done in partnership with Backbeat Tours and the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum, the whole package, billed as The 70th Anniversary of Live Rock ‘n’ Roll, will be available one day only, on Saturday, July 27th. Early says the tour will “originate Downtown at the Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum. Of course, they have amazing exhibits down there. Then it’s going to do an Elvis-centric tour of Memphis, though not Graceland.” Expect stops at Sun Studio, the Presley’s Lauderdale Courts apartment, Elvis’ high school, the original Lansky Bros. clothing store, and the like. “And then they’ll come here to the Shell for a custom Backstage History Experience tour with mostly the Elvis points, and then at the end, a live re-creation of that first show, right where it happened.”
Finley Watkins & His Blue Moon (of Missouri) Boys will be playing, and Early says they’re a perfect fit. “You know, Elvis was a teenager when he played at the Shell, he was 19,” he says. “So it’s great having Finley, who’s also a teenager. And yes, he will have a Scotty and a Bill with him as well. That will be super exciting because they’ll have an upright bass, like Bill Black played during the original show. The Shell’s acoustics pick up that slap back really well. So we’re really proud that the Shell is the one venue where that can be realistic, in such a way that it couldn’t be in any other room or venue.”
For more details and tickets, see the “special events” at backbeattours.com.
Though you may have read about Steve Lee in the Memphis Flyer before, none of those articles have really been about him. That’s the paradox of being an educator who devotes so much time to public service, as Lee has done since founding the Memphis Jazz Workshop (MJW), one of the city’s premier institutions in music education, in 2017. The scope and impact of that nonprofit have been so great that it’s easy to forget about Stephen M. Lee, the virtuoso jazz pianist and recording artist. He’s getting in two lifetimes’ worth of existence for the price of one.
A clue to the mystery of how Lee manages to accomplish so much in both worlds can be found in the title of his new album, In the Moment. That’s clearly where he lives, as one listen to his deft improvisations will tell you. Composing in the moment, on the spot, is at the heart of jazz, and jazz is at the heart of Steve Lee. But beyond the album itself, one senses that it’s been his ability to improvise as the director of MJW that’s led to its impressive staying power. “We’ve been at about seven locations in the last seven years,” he says. Yet the MJW not only survived the onset of Covid; it has thrived ever since. “We’ve averaged from 50 to 70 students for each session since 2020,” he adds, and those numbers are only half the story.
While those individual and group lessons, taught to teens during spring, summer, and fall sessions every year, are at the core of what Lee’s nonprofit has accomplished, perhaps the greater indicator of MJW’s success has been the degree to which its students have been performing for live audiences. Case in point, this Friday, July 13th, the MJW students will command the stage at the The Grove at the Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC), featuring “the area’s most talented young jazz musicians in a variety of combos, ensembles, and even a big band,” as the GPAC site notes.
“This will be our third year [at The Grove],” Lee says. “It’s a great location, and they pretty much donate the space to us. Paul [Chandler] and his staff are great — the only thing we have to do is show up. It’s a great opportunity for the organization.” Moreover, MJW players can be seen on the third Saturday of every month as the featured attraction at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (the next event being August 3rd, noon to 2 p.m.).
And this is where the two lives of Steve Lee begin to meet, as some MJW students distinguish themselves enough to finally play on the bill with the maestro himself. That too will be apparent this Sunday, the day after the GPAC show, when Steve Lee will headline at the Sunset Jazz Series at Court Square.
“A few students will be playing on July 14th with me,” he says with a hint of pride. “The drummer, Kurtis Gray, is just 18. He just graduated from high school.” Flyer readers will know his name from our story on the Jazz Ensemble of Memphis, produced by David Less in emulation of the classic 1959 album, Young Men from Memphis: Down Home Reunion. “And the bass player’s also one of my former students, the drummer’s brother, Kem Gray Jr.,” Lee adds. “And then the sax player, Michael Price, just graduated from UT-Knoxville. He’s about to go to [grad school] at Rutgers.”
When Price was just a junior at UT, he shared some thoughts with the MJW Instagram page that may stand as the greatest endorsement of the program to date, saying, “The life skills that I gained from the Memphis Jazz Workshop were discipline, communication, honesty, support, love, mentorship, and community. … Understanding the intricacy of these different skills and their relationship to music is vital and you need to have all of these qualities in order to seriously pursue music, and I’d go as far as to say to succeed in life.”
In a way, it harks back to the glory days of Manassas High School, which trained generations of jazz greats here, starting in 1927 with educator Jimmie Lunceford, who polished his school band into a nationally recognized recording group, the Chickasaw Syncopators. “I think [MJW] is a continuation of what he was doing,” Lee told me in 2018, speaking of Lunceford. “But Memphis never had a jazz workshop like the workshops we have now. They always had jazz in the schools.” Today, Lee is forging that culture of excellence on his own, outside of any infrastructure, finding venues to hold classes anywhere he can, albeit now much more recognized by funding institutions, and always recruiting his faculty from among the city’s best jazz players.
He benefited from local greatness himself, when he studied under the great Memphis pianist Donald Brown (on the faculty at UT-Knoxville for many years), which in turn led to Lee’s years in New York City, prior to his return to Memphis. All that may explain the dedication and determination with which he’s thrown himself into leading the MJW. And the organization’s success has reflected well on both Lee and the city, a fact that was commemorated this past April when Lee received the Memphis Symphony Orchestra’s (MSO) Eddy Award, recognizing him as community leader in music.
“As chair of the Eddy Award selection committee, we agreed that Steve Lee embodies the award’s meaning as his incredible career has brought young people from all backgrounds, races, and life experiences together through the power of jazz music,” said Jocie Wurzburg in a statement on behalf of the MSO. Now, this weekend will show off both the MJW and Lee in their best light.
And, as he explains, his two skills feed each other, though balancing them has been demanding. “I have to be the teacher, the principal, the janitor, all of it,” he laughs. “I’m not one of those executive directors who just lets other people do it. Because, you know, it helps me. I don’t really have a lot of time to practice. So showing information to these students, that’s a part of practicing because I still have to sit at the piano and show them what I want them play. So it helps. That’s why I enjoy doing it. Because it is a form of practice, and you know, the students motivate me.”
Elaine de Kooning, Black Mountain #6 (Photo: Courtesy Dixon Gallery & Gardens)
Memphis, it’s summer. Officially. June 20th marks the start of the season. So that means it’s time for the Flyer’s Summer Arts Guide, and never one to disappoint, the Flyer has it ready, not a moment too soon, and not a moment too late.
ON DISPLAY
“Memphis 2024”
Memphis 2024 celebrates artists working in Memphis today through more than 50 works.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, through June 30
“It’s All Relative”
Morgan Lugo’s metal work examines how our unique perspectives shape our experiences.
Metal Museum, through July 7
“Progression”
Sowgand Sheikholeslami’s colorful paintings exist outside of realism.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, through July 7
The WE Art Gallery
This year’s annual exhibit at the Woman’s Exchange features new works by established local and regional artists and a number of talented newcomers.
Woman’s Exchange, through July 31
“People Are People”
This exhibit honors famed American designer Christian Siriano’s electrifying contributions to fashion.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, through August 4
“Branching Out”
Discover intricate connections between students, teachers, and casting communities, which branch out much like a family tree.
Metal Museum, through September 8
“Summer Art Garden: Creatures of Paradise”
Monstrous bugs and tiny Thumbelinas relax in a fantasy landscape in Banana Plastik’s installation.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, through October 26
“Bracelets, Bangles & Cuffs: 1948–2024”
This collection of contemporary bracelets reveals the wide-ranging creativity of artists working in this jewelry form.
Metal Museum, through November 17
“2023 Wilson Fellowship: Danny Broadway, Claire Hardy, Thad Lee, and John Ruskey”
The Dixon has partnered with the town of Wilson, Arkansas, to help bring cultural activity to the Arkansas Delta through an artist residency program. This exhibit features work by the inaugural cohort of Wilson Fellows, Danny Broadway, Claire Hardy, Thad Lee, and John Ruskey.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, July 14-September 29
“Health in Enamel”
Themes of health, healing, and spirituality crystallize with a survey of current enamel holdings in the Metal Museum’s permanent collection and a community-based quilt project.
Metal Museum, July 14-September 29
“Southern/Modern: 1913-1955”
This exhibit tells the tale of progressive visual art in the American South.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, July 14-September 29
“Beyond the Surface: The Art of Handmade Paper”
This exhibit explores the shape-shifting quality of paper.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, September-December
“Roll Down Like Water”
Memphis-based Peruvian-American photographer Andrea Morales’ portrayal of the Delta South is deeply rooted in the communities she engages with.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, September-January
ON STAGE
Catch Me If You Can
This musical tells the thrilling adventure of a con artist who poses as a pilot, doctor, and lawyer, all while being pursued by the FBI.
Playhouse on the Square, through July 14
Josh Threlkeld at The Grove (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)
Concerts in the Grove
Enjoy music, food trucks, and corn hole. Scheduled to perform are Cyrena Wages (June 20), Alice Hasen and Josh Threlkeld (June 27), and MSO Big Band (September 19).
Germantown Performing Arts Center, select Thursdays
Orion Free Concert Series
The Orion Free Concert Series welcomes local, national, and international acts. Find the full lineup at overtonparkshell.org/freeconcertseries. Opera Memphis will give a special Opera Goes to Broadway performance on September 29, and Tennessee Shakespeare Company will perform a special production of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors on October 20.
Overton Park Shell, select dates
Happy Hour in the Grove
Enjoy a free concert, drink specials, deals on local beer, and $5 wine. Scheduled to perform are Short in the Sleeve (June 21), Soulshine (June 28), Bedon (July 12), Alexis Jade and D Monet (July 19), and rising talent from the Circuit Music Seen (July 26).
Germantown Performing Arts Center, Fridays through July
Cinderella
The iconic saga of rags to romance comes to life in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway classic.
Theatre Memphis, through June 30
9 to 5: the Musical
Collierville Arts Council presents this fun musical, based on the titular film, with music by Dolly Parton.
Harrell Theatre, June 21-30
Come From Away
Residents of small town in Newfoundland open their homes to 7,000 stranded travelers on 9/11.
Orpheum Theatre, June 21-23
Coco Queens
Four women confront the deep and often painful challenges of love, forgiveness, and Black womanhood.
TheatreWorks@TheSquare, July 12-28
MAMMA MIA!
The characters, the story, and the timeless hits of ABBA are what make this the ultimate feel-good show.
Orpheum Theatre, July 23-28
Carmen Jones
Hattiloo Theatre puts on this World War II-era musical about a love that turns deadly.
Hattiloo Theatre, July 26-August 18
Coconut Cake
A woman moves to town and tempts Eddie and his retiree buddies with her mysterious ways.
Hattiloo Theatre, August 9-September 8
Bill Cherry … The Final Curtain
World-renowned Elvis Tribute Artist Bill Cherry returns to the Halloran Centre with special guest Ginger Alden.
Halloran Centre, August 14
Grease
Grease is the word in this iconic musical.
Theatre Memphis, August 16-September 8
Ride the Cyclone
Six high-school choir members have died on a faulty rollercoaster. A mechanical fortune teller offers one of them the chance to return to life.
Germantown Community Theatre, August 16-September 1
Waitress
Jenna, a skilled pie maker and waitress, is trapped in a loveless marriage with an unexpected pregnancy, but finds hope in a baking contest.
Playhouse on the Square, August 16-September 15
PJ Morton
The five-time Grammy-winning soul singer, songwriter, performer, producer, and Maroon 5’s full-time keyboardist for the past 12-plus years comes to Memphis.
Orpheum Theatre, August 18
Jazz in the Box: Alexa Tarantino Quartet
Get up close and personal with live jazz, including performances by the Alexa Tarantino Quartet on September 6 and Tierney Sutton and Tamir Hendelman on September 27.
Germantown Performing Arts Center, September 6 and 27, 7 p.m.
Memphis Songwriters Series: Victoria Dowdy, JB Horrell, and Raneem Imam
Hear from three of Memphis’ own seasoned musicians.
Halloran Centre, September 12
Southern Heritage Classic Presents Patti Labelle
The Godmother of Soul brings her effortless ability to belt out classic rhythm and blues renditions, pop standards, and spiritual sonnets.
Orpheum Theatre, September 12
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Theatre Memphis puts on one of the Bard’s most popular comedies.
Theatre Memphis, September 13-29
Little Shop of Horrors
This deviously delicious Broadway and Hollywood sci-fi smash musical has devoured the hearts of theater-goers for over 30 years.
Harrell Theatre, September 13-22
What the Constitution Means to Me
Playwright Heidi Schreck skillfully breathes new life into the Constitution through her innovative play.
Playhouse on the Square, September 13-October 6
Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and Copland’s Third Symphony
Memphis Symphony Orchestra kicks off its 2024-2025 season with this performance.
Cannon Center, September 14, 7:30 p.m. | Scheidt Family Performing Arts Center, September 15, 2:30 p.m.
Roman Banks as ‘MJ’ and the cast of the MJ First National Tour (Photo: Matthew Murphy, MurphyMade)
MJ
Michael Jackson’s unique and unparalleled artistry comes to Memphis in MJ, the multi Tony Award-winning new musical centered around the making of the 1992 Dangerous World Tour.
Orpheum Theatre, September 17-22
Patterns
Germantown Community Theatre presents emerging local playwright Michael Hoffman’s world premiere of Patterns.
Germantown Community Theatre, September 20-29
Avatar: The Last Airbender in Concert
This captivating experience blends a live orchestral performance of the iconic series soundtrack with an immersive two-hour recap of the animated show’s three seasons on a full-size cinema screen.
Orpheum Theatre, September 25
AROUND TOWN
Super Saturday
The Brooks offers free admission and art-making during its monthly Super Saturdays.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, first Saturday of the month, 10 a.m.-noon
Stax Family Day
Join the Stax for a fun-filled afternoon with free admission, games, activities, and music.
Stax Museum of American Soul Music, second Saturday of the month
Live In Studio A: Summer Series with 926
Join the Stax Museum of American Soul Music for live music by 926, the Stax Music Academy Alumni Band. Admission is free for all Shelby County residents.
Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Tuesdays, June and July, 2-4 p.m.
Munch and Learn
Grab lunch and enjoy a lecture presented by local artists, scholars, or Dixon staff, sharing their knowledge on a variety of topics.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Wednesdays, noon-1 p.m.
Whet Thursday
The Metal Museum hosts a free after-hours event with demonstations, admission to the galleries, food, and drink.
Metal Museum, last Thursday through August, 5-8 p.m.
Wax & Wine: Soul Records + Southern Chefs + Global Wine
Wax & Wine is a fundraiser benefiting Stax Museum of American Soul Music, and celebrating the unmistakable character of southern soul and R&B music, food, and wine.
Stax Museum of American Soul Music, June 28, 7 p.m.
Glam Rock Picnic: Fundraiser, Art Market, & Interactive Sculpture Party
Participate in the making of local artist Mike McCarthy’s newest sculpture, The Aladdin Sane Weathervane, a 9-foot tall statue honoring David Bowie. Featuring live music, art vendors, face painting, Eric’s food truck, and a David Bowie-themed bar, this event has something for everyone.
Off the Walls Arts, June 30, noon-5 p.m.
Exhibition Lecture: Hidden in Plain Sight: Reconsidering the South’s Role in Modern American Art
Exhibition curator Dr. Jonathan Stuhlman will discuss how “Southern/Modern” was conceived and organized, and introduce the key artists and themes found in the show.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, July 14, 2-4 p.m.
“Christian Siriano: People Are People” Inspired Pattern Making Workshop with Jayla Slater
Teaching artist Jayla Slater leads a hands-on fashion workshop and explore fashion as a designer.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, July 24, 5:30 p.m.
Christian Siriano’s “People Are People” (Photo: Courtesty Memphis Brooks Museum of Art)
A Fashion History Tour of “Christian Siriano: People Are People” with Ali Bush
Get an inside look at how fashion history informs contemporary designers like Christian Siriano from Ali Bush’s point of view, in the “People Are People” exhibit.
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, August 1, 6-7 p.m.
Art on the Rocks: Garden Cocktails & Craft Beer (21+)
Art on the Rocks brings botanical cocktails, craft beer, wine, and more together in the gardens. Guests will enjoy a variety of drink tastings, bites from local restaurants, and live music.
Dixon Gallery & Gardens, September 6, 6-9 p.m.
6×6 Art Show-Canvas for a Cause
Join the UrbanArt Commission for the 6×6 Art Show-Canvas for a Cause where artists showcase their talent on small canvases to support a great cause.
UrbanArt Commision, September 12,6-8 p.m.
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“It’s a Fine Line”
Since opening her Sheet Cake Gallery in December 2023, Lauren Kennedy has enjoyed pairing artists together in two-person exhibitions, making aesthetic connections that wouldn’t have been made otherwise. For the upcoming show, “It’s a Fine Line,” with Stephanie Howard (Greenville, SC) and Khara Woods (Memphis), Kennedy says both artists reflect on the passage of time — “feelings of impermanence and lack of control” — both through meticulous linework, repetition, and attention to detail.
“For Stephanie, in sitting down and really getting lost and meditating in the practice of making these really intricate detail drawings, she finds that she can suspend a moment in time in the work that is going to live on forever as that finished product,” Kennedy explains.
Meanwhile, the precise, geometric forms in Woods’ woodworking evoke her deep love for architecture and desire for structure in a chaotic world. “Specifically in this body of work for Sheet Cake, she’s gotten really fixated on thinking about the life cycles of stars,” Kennedy says. “And we use the stars and celestial bodies to mark time or to measure unimaginable distances, but at the same time, they’re so beyond our reach and so outside of our full comprehension. So there’s both this process of exerting her own control through the way that she is making the work, and being able to create these highly ordered and clean, precise woodcut panels, but also kind of honoring the universe in which we’re existing and in these things that are really beyond her control.”
“These are concepts that really can be very overwhelming and consuming,” Kennedy continues, “but then to take that and to make something really specific and just find their way through it by the process of creating art, I find it really poetic in a way.”
Yet when seeing the show, Kennedy encourages viewers to seek out whatever makes their “heart sing.” “It’s totally valid to have your own experience and understanding of it,” she says. “I would just want people to come in and feel moved by the work and to feel excited about the work.”
“It’s a Fine Line” Opening Reception, Sheet Cake Gallery, Saturday, June 29, 5-7:30 p.m.
On view through August 9.
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24 Hour Plays
In 24 hours, six playwrights will write six 10-minute plays, which six directors will then direct for 24 actors to then act in. It’s the ultimate challenge for any theater-lover, a beloved format founded in New York City back in 1995 and adopted by LoneTree Live for Memphis in 2022. This June marks Memphis’ third 24 Hour Plays.
On Friday, June 28th, the six writers will write overnight, says Julia Hinson, LoneTree’s executive director. “I almost think of it like a theater lock-in. Their plays are due at 6 a.m. and then we print all the plays. And then the directors come just a little bit later, and the actors, and then we rehearse all day. And then by seven o’clock the next night, we perform all six plays.”
Of the day, Hinson says, “It’s fun. It’s exhilarating. There’s usually a moment in the day for the actors, where they are like, ‘Why did I sign up for this?’ Because it can be pretty scary to think you’re gonna go on at the end of the night.”
Perfection is often unattainable for the performances, which actually can be creatively freeing in stages as early as the writing process. “At a certain point you just have to be done, yet you still get a production,” Hinson says. “In the world of theater, you’re not always guaranteed a production. We love to give local talent the opportunity to shine.”
The plays themselves range from comedy to drama. “Then, there’s always just a level of absurdity,” Hinson says. “I don’t know if it’s the late hours or just how quickly we have to do it, but there’s always kooky kookiness.” She adds, “It really is a celebration of the theater community.”
Before the production and in between plays, musician and composer Eileen Kuo will perform. There’ll also be donated beer from Hampline Brewery, popcorn, and cotton candy.
24 Hour Plays, TheatreWorks@Evergreen, Saturday, June 29, 7 p.m.
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Clandestine Creative Club
On any given Thursday evening, if you walk into the back of the Ink Therapy, you’ll find a group of artists — hobbyists and those looking to break into the scene professionally alike — working on their craft, whether it’s drawing, painting, graphic design, jewelry-making, or crochet. They call themselves the Clandestine Creative Club, and anyone’s welcome to join.
The founder of the club Noah Womack, who also goes by the artist name Braincrumbs, says he was inspired by a similar club called the Grind Shop that only lasted about a summer in Memphis a few years ago. “Artists would come together and work on projects,” he says. “After that ended, I think everybody was kind of missing that. And then after the pandemic, there was really a lack of community, and everybody felt very isolated and distanced. And I know, especially for a lot of my artist friends, especially after the pandemic, with a lot of their social anxiety, it was really hard to get out and meet people and get together after the pandemic. So after feeling that for several years, I wanted to put it back together.”
Photo: Courtesy Ink Therapy
So last summer as David Yancy’s Ink Therapy was still getting its licensing in order, the tattoo shop opened its doors to the club which held meetings there for a while until the business opened. “This January, [Yancy] had bought that additional back room and had built a little area for us in the back,” Womack says. “So he invited me to start it back up, and so we’ve been doing it ever since then.”
The weekly meetings are free and non-committal, with members so far ranging in ages 19 to 35. “I consider anybody who’s been to the club meeting at least once to be an official club member,” Womack says.
Recently, the club started having theme nights, such as a “Clay Day” and an “Everybody Draw Everybody” night. “People seem to be a lot more engaged during those nights,” Womack says. “So I think I’d like to do some of those more often.”
Clandestine Creative Club, Ink Therapy, 485 N. Hollywood, Thursdays, 7-9:30 p.m. Keep up with the club on Instagram (@clandestinecreativeclub).
You can trace the shifts in Chris Milam’s songwriting style through the type of guitar he’s opted to play over the course of his three albums. And music fans who’ve come to appreciate the more sparse Americana of his first two albums, Kids These Days and Meanwhile, will hear the change immediately when they play his latest album, Orchid South. The songs mine an anthemic, power pop vein that he’s hinted at before, but never embraced to this degree. And of course, with power pop comes the sound of electric guitars. In this case, the triple guitar team of Milam, Steve Selvidge, and Luke White.
Electric guitar has always been in Milam’s toolbox, but never in quite this way. “In the lead up to making Kids These Days, and then touring that album in 2017, I was playing solo electric. There’s a lot of acoustic guitar on there, too, but the main guitar you hear me playing on that album is a hollow body, Gibson-sounding, reverbed-out electric. So yeah, there was a couple years there where I was doing a fair amount of electric playing — in solo shows. But then I shifted to acoustic surrounding Meanwhile.”
Chris Milam (Photo: Lisa Mac)
That sophomore effort, released in 2020, was a sparse masterpiece of which Milam said at the time, “I inadvertently wrote a good album for quarantine, honestly. It’s basically 10 different versions of how we deal with loss, or survive being in limbo.” Along with that pensive mood came pensive music, with acoustic guitar at its foundation.
Now that’s all changed.
“For this one, I don’t know, maybe this is impolitic to say,” he says, “but I’ve just been bored to tears by so many singer-songwriter albums” with acoustic guitar at their heart. “I just was like, I think that you can discuss weighty topics and still make an album that is fun and dynamic and that people actually want to listen to.”
And that’s a fair description of Orchid South, which seems custom-made to burst from radio speakers while blasting down the highway on a hot summer night. “I’ve always been a big fan of power pop from the 1970s and alt-rock of the 1990s,” he says. “That was the stuff that I was listening to when I first picked up a guitar and when I first really fell in love with music. That was really the soundtrack of my adolescence.”
Yet it wasn’t until recently that Milam, now 40, felt he could address those years with the proper tone and voice. And the tone, he knew, would have to be full of jangle and crunch. Who better to bring that sound than Selvidge and White?
“Most of the lead guitar is Steve, and all the 12-string Rickenbacker guitar is Luke, kind of on the left channel. With Steve on the right. I added rhythm guitar, for the most part.” Moreover, the album gains its immediacy and energy by virtue of having largely been tracked live, with the players all in the same room. “At the heart of the album, the core band was Shawn Zorn on drums, Mark Stuart on bass, and then me and Luke. And then Steve came in for an overdub day, and the horns [Art Edmaiston and Marc Franklin] did an overdub day. And that was pretty much it.”
The end product is a big, radio-friendly sound that conjures up the longings and impulsiveness of adolescence. And ironically, though Meanwhile came out during the onset of Covid, this album is even more of a product of that time. “A good chunk of the album was written during quarantine,” Milam says. “And I was probably going a little stir crazy and wanting to be loud and kick out the jams.”
Yet he was also applying his more finely-honed writerly chops to an earlier version of himself, the young man listening to alternative radio in the ’90s. “When I was a teenager, growing up in Memphis, I was listening to 96X [FM],” he recalls. ““Hey Jealousy’ was one of the first songs I learned on guitar, and there’s a lot of Gin Blossoms influence on this album.” But there was more to evoking his youth than turning his amp up to 11.
“My earlier stuff had been more in the Americana or folk realm, and so the lyrics were a little bit more of that narrative style,” reflects Milam. “But when I was a teenager, I didn’t really experience things in that way. It was all very heightened emotions, very amplified feelings, and everything was just evocative and impressionist. That was the type of writing I did when I was that age and I wanted to get back to that again, but hopefully do a better job on it. Instead of narrative lyrics, I wanted stuff that had more freshness, or was a little bit more evocative. That makes emotional sense, even though it doesn’t necessarily make literal sense.”
Chris Milam is in the midst of a national solo tour now, but will celebrate the release of Orchid South with a full band at Railgarten on Saturday, August 10th, with Alexis Grace opening.
