“Don’t know if I still qualify as a Memphis guy since I moved to Ripley, Mississippi, but this one was recorded here at Five and Dime and Buntyn Presbyterian,” says Tony Manard. “Overdubs and mixing were done in my little home studio I built in a school bus.”
Yes, Tony, Memphis still claims you! You may have moved the “Cuss Bus” out of the city limits, but can’t get away that easily. Especially when you make a good music video! The gorgeous stop motion production features Andrea Manard’s paintings and collage work.
“I wrote the song with Michael Graber,” says Manard. “Stax legend Willie Hall is on drums. It was released New Years Day. I chose that date because its about setting intentions and growth.”
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
What does “New Wave” even mean anymore? Unsure if younger generations even know the genre label, I asked myself that question recently as I spoke to the founders of Above Jupiter, a young band in every sense of the word. Instead of going retro, I asked them what they would call the choppy, stomping, synth-tinged, and hook-filled music they made — so reminiscent of sounds that captivated me in the 1980s. Graham Burks III, the group’s singer and drummer, didn’t miss a beat. “We’ve been calling it art pop.”
To clarify, he added, “We’re trying to make popular enjoyable music that doesn’t really fit into a category. It’s our own art. Other artists that used that label have been like, DEVO and David Bowie — artists that are hard to fit into a specific genre.”
Those two acts are perfect reference points for the fundamentals of their sound, as are influences they list on their website like Talking Heads, Beck, and Gorillaz. The end result is a beat-driven soundscape with equal parts slashing guitar, skronky synth, and cool singing that lives in a kind of timeless pop utopia. And it’s not only timeless, it’s literally ageless. One would never guess that these musicians are all between 14 and 16 years old.
Their debut single was celebrated only last month in Chris McCoy’s Music Video Monday column. “‘Details’ is a super catchy rock song about ‘going off the rails’ if you don’t have the basics nailed now, which these kids definitely do,” McCoy wrote, noting that the group’s bassist and co-founder Noah Hand directed the video, being “a recent Indie Memphis Youth Film Festival alum who learned to animate at Cloud901.”
“I do film,” Hand told me, “and the video was all directed and written by me. I’m really glad how that turned out. It’s all my vision.”
The band, which also includes Zariya Scullark on guitar and Desmond Coppin on keys, was started by Burks and Hand. “We were in fourth grade or fifth grade when we put together our first project, which was going to be a duo called the Breeze,” Burks noted. “That didn’t end up working out, but around that time we recorded four songs as demos. And as time went on we got our two other band members and the songs have just evolved into what they are now.”
As it turns out, all four of the musical wunderkinder attend the Stax Music Academy, but that’s been peripheral to the band’s formation. As Burks explained, “We all happen to attend Stax Academy but I wouldn’t say that the band was formed through Stax Academy. I mean, I’ve been playing with Desmond since I was four, and we were in our first band together. So really, it’s just a coincidence that we all ended up at Stax and I think it’s just because that’s a really amazing music program.”
Hand added, “I feel like the music of Stax and all that stuff that we play over there correlates with our music and affects us. The way we evolved was through that music. And I’m very glad that we have that outlet, because it helps us learn the basics.”
Certainly there’s some serious training and talent behind the group’s home-recorded tracks, which will soon be available Friday, January 12, when Above Jupiter release their debut EP, Demo. There will be a release show at the Hi-Tone (Big Room) that night with Shorty and The Grooves and The Contradictions also playing. Given the polished final product, and the futuristic shimmer of tracks like “Meteor Beach” and “Midnight Sun,” the EP’s title is somewhat ironic.
“The title track, ‘Demo,’ is something that we would show aspiring members of the band when we were trying to recruit them,” Burks noted. “‘Demo’ was always the working title of that piece, because it’s a demo of what we’re trying to go for. We were running with that title for long enough that it just kind of stuck. And I feel like it was a pretty interesting choice to make the title track of the of the EP an instrumental song. That means we can go in more directions with the EP instead of being locked into the style of a title track. Not everything has to be the same.”
And, with that sentiment as a mission statement of sorts, expect a lot more not-the-same music from these young folks in the future.
New year 2024 concept, beginning of success. Text 2024 written on asphalt road and male runner preparing for the new year. Concept of challenge or career path and change.
What do you mean it’s almost January? If you’re anything like us, the encroaching new year has really seemed to have come out of left field. The churning news cycle means that we’ve had our heads down covering the arts, a mayoral race, the Tennessee legislature, and everything in between. But despite a packed 2023, there are plenty more stories on the horizon. With 2024 just around the corner, our writers take a look at what we can expect in Memphis news next year.
Breaking News
Paul Young
Paul Young taking the mayor’s seat will be the Memphis news story to watch in 2024.
Memphis hasn’t had a new mayor for eight years; hasn’t done things differently for eight years — for good or bad. So, Memphians can expect new ideas, fresh faces, and new approaches to the city’s same-old problems (but maybe some new opportunities, too).
Paul Young (Photo: Paul Young for Memphis)
Some could argue too much emphasis is put on the mayor’s office, much like the president’s office. But that office is where the city’s business is done daily, from police and fire to trash collection and paving. Yes, these ideas are later shaped by the Memphis City Council and, yes, the mayor is expected to carry out rules formed entirely by the council. But all of that is executed (executive branch, get it?) by the mayor and his team.
Young has already named a few key staffers. Tannera Gibson will be his city attorney and Penelope Huston will be head of communications, according to The Daily Memphian. Young told the Memphian, too, that he’ll keep the controversial Cerelyn Davis as chief of the Memphis Police Department.
Memphis in May
This next year could be make or break for the Memphis in May International Festival (MIM).
It ended 2023 with a whimper. The nonprofit organization posted a record loss of $3.4 million and record-low attendance for Beale Street Music Festival. Also, its longtime leader Jim Holt announced his retirement.
MIM leaders put Music Fest on hiatus for 2024. It also moved the Championship Barbecue Cooking Competition to Liberty Park.
Meanwhile Forward Momentum and the Memphis River Parks Partnership (MRPP) announced a new three-day music festival at Tom Lee Park (called River Beat) and a new barbecue contest, both in May.
It’s unknown if these new events could supplant MIM. Speculation, though, has the future of the nonprofit in question. It’ll be worth watching.
Tennessee General Assembly
State lawmakers are hard to predict.
Last year, for example, one GOP member spent countless hours persuading his colleagues to add firing squads to the list of options for the state’s death row inmates. Another wanted to add “hanging by a tree” to that list.
However, one can easily predict Republicans will seek to make life harder for the LGBTQ community. One bill paused last year, for example, would allow county clerks to deny marriage rites to anyone they choose (wink, wink).
The little-known but hard-working Tennessee Medical Marijuana Commission may approach lawmakers next year with a plan to get a state system off the ground. Dead medical cannabis bills have become too many to count over the years. But the hope is that the group’s expertise after years of study may help tip the scales.
Easy bets are also on bills that mention “abortion” or “trans.” — Toby Sells
Politics
Oddly enough, the city’s incoming chief executive, Paul Young, remains something of an unknown despite his extensive exposure (and his consistently adept campaigning) during the long and trying mayoral race that concluded in October. Nor will the aggressive ballyhoo of his preliminary activities — parade, concert, and inaugural ball, no less! — have shed much light on his intentions in office, though his inaugural address will be highly anticipated in that regard.
Major changes may be in the offing, though so far the shape of them is not obvious. Young’s announced reappointment of police director C.J. Davis at year’s end may be an indication that, in the personnel sense, anyhow, there may well be a continuum of sorts with the administration of outgoing Mayor Strickland.
C.J. Davis (Photo: Memphis Police Department)
The newly elected council, meanwhile, is expected to be measurably more progressive-minded on various issues as a result of the election than was its predecessor.
A city task force already launched — GVIP (Group Violence Intervention Program), which involves an active interchange of sorts between governmental players and gang members (“intervenors,” as they are designated) in an effort to curb violence on the streets. It will be picking up steam as the year begins.
And follow-up readings will still be required in 2024 on an initiative sponsored by outgoing Councilman Martavius Jones and passed by the council conferring lifelong healthcare benefits on council members elected since 2015, upon their having completed two terms.
(News of that move prompted an astounded Facebook post from former Councilman Shea Flinn, who served back when first responders’ benefits had to be cut and a controversial pension for city employees with 12 years’ or more service was rescinded. Said Flinn: “Do I have this correct? Because I don’t want to be gassing up a flamethrower for nothing!”)
The Shelby County Commission, having worked in tandem with Mayor Lee Harris in the past year to secure serious funding for a new Regional One Health hospital, continues to be ambitious, hoping to acquire subpoena power from the state for the county’s recently created Civilian Law Enforcement Review Committee and to proceed with the construction of a long-contemplated Mental Health, Safety, and Justice Center.
The commission is also seeking guidance from the DA’s office on the long-festering matter of removing County Clerk Wanda Halbert from office.
At the state level, almost all attention during the early legislative session will be fixed on Republican Governor Bill Lee’s decision to push for statewide application of the school-voucher program that barely squeaked through the General Assembly in 2019 as a “pilot” program for Shelby and Davidson counties. (Hamilton County was later added.) The program was finally allowed by the state Supreme Court after being nixed at lower levels on constitutional grounds. Democrats are universally opposed to its expansion, as, for the record, are the school boards in Shelby County’s seven school districts. Prospects for passage may depend on how many GOP legislators (a seriously divided group in 2019) are inclined this time to let the governor have his way.
Also on tap will be a series of bills aimed at stiffening crime/control procedures, some of which may also try to roll back recent changes in Shelby County’s bail/bond practices.
Oh, and there will be both a presidential primary vote and an election for General Sessions Court clerk in March. — Jackson Baker
Music
No sooner does yuletide appear than it’s gone again in a wink, as we turn to face a new notch on life’s yardstick. Yet even before 2024 dawns, Memphis has great music brewing on this year’s penultimate day, December 30th, from the solo seasoned jug band repertoire of David Evans (Lamplighter Lounge) to the revved-up R&B-surf-crime jazz-rock of Impala (Bar DKDC) to Louder Than Bombs’ take on The Smiths (B-Side).
Ironically, DJ Devin Steele’s Kickback show at the Hi-Tone is keeping live music on the menu with a six-piece band alongside the wheels of Steele. Down on Beale Street, bass giant Leroy “Flic” Hodges and band will be at B.B. King’s, and the Blues City Café will feature solid blues from Earl “The Pearl” Banks and Blind Mississippi Morris.
Susan Marshall (Photo: Jamie Harmon)
While New Year’s Eve seems particularly DJ-heavy this December 31st, there are still some places to ring in the new year with a live band. Perhaps the most remarkable will be when three of the city’s most moving women in music — Susan Marshall, Cyrena Wages, and Marcella Simien ringing in midnight — converge at the freshly re-energized Mollie Fontaine Lounge. A more up-close, swinging time will be found at the Beauty Shop’s meal extravaganza set to the music of Joyce Cobb. Orion Hill’s Mardi Gras Masquerade will feature Cooper Union (with Brennan Villines and Alexis Grace), and Blind Mississippi Morris will hold court again at Blues City as a gigantic disco ball rises up a 50-foot tower outside on Beale. For that Midtown live vibe, Lafayette’s Music Room’s elaborate festivities will feature the band Aquanet.
For many Memphians, the new year will begin with a look backward as a smorgasbord of bands — from Nancy Apple to Michael Graber to Oakwalker and beyond — gather at B-Side to honor the late Townes van Zandt on January 1st. The revival of the 1970 musical Company, opening at the Orpheum the next day, also honors an earlier era’s muse, but its five Tony Awards suggest that even today it “strikes like a lightning bolt” (Variety). And the historical appreciations continue: On January 14th, Crosstown Arts’ MLK Freedom Celebration will feature the Mahogany Chamber Music Series, curated by Dr. Artina McCain and spotlighting Black and other underrepresented composers and performers; and on January 20th GPAC will host jazz trumpeter, vocalist, and composer Jumaane Smith’s Louis! Louis! Louis!, blending his own compositions with those of Louis Armstrong, Louis Prima, and Louis Jordan — three giants of the last century.
Who knows, maybe reflecting on all this past greatness will teach 2024 a thing or two? — Alex Greene
Coming Attractions in 2024
2023’s dual WGA and SAG strikes disrupted production, so 2024 should be an unpredictable year at the multiplex. Studios are currently engaged in a high-stakes game of chicken with the release calendar, so don’t take any of these dates as gospel. In January, an all-star apostle team led by LaKeith Stanfield and David Oyelowo tries to horn in on the messiah game in The Book of Clarence.
February has the endlessly promoted spy caper Argylle, a Charlie Kaufman-penned animated film Orion and the Dark, the intriguing-looking Lisa Frankenstein, and Bob Marley: One Love left over from 2023, as well as Ethan Coen’s lesbian road comedy Drive-Away Dolls.
March is stacked with Denis Villeneuve’s return to Arrakis, Dune: Part Two; Jack Black voicing Kung Fu Panda 4; Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire; and Focus Features’ satire The American Society of Magical Negroes.
Monsters will collide in Godzilla x Kong.
April starts with Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and Alex Garland’s social sci-fi epic Civil War.
May features Ryan Gosling as The Fall Guy and Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse in Back to Black. On April 24th, we have a three-flick pile-up with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, The Garfield Movie (animated, thank God), and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. ALL HAIL IMPERATOR FURIOSA!
Anya Taylor-Joy in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
June brings us Inside Out 2, which adds Maya Hawke as Anxiety to the Pixar classic’s cast of emotions. There’s another Bad Boys film on the schedule that nobody has bothered to title yet. Meanwhile, Kevin Costner goes too hard with punctuation with Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter One. (Chapter Two drops in August.)
In July, there’s the horror of Despicable Me 4 and Twisters, a sequel to the ’90s tornado thriller that lacked the guts to call itself Twister$. Ryan Reynolds returns as the Merc with a Mouth in Deadpool 3, the first Marvel offering of the year.
In August, Eli Roth adapts the hit game Borderlands, which, if you think about it, could actually work. James McAvoy stars in the Blumhouse screamer Speak No Evil. Don’t Breathe director Fede Álvarez directs Priscilla’s Cailee Spaeny in Alien: Romulus.
September is looking spare, but Tim Burton, Michael Keaton, and Winona Ryder are getting the band back together for Beetlejuice 2, so that could be fun.
October looks a tad more promising with Joker: Folie à Deux, a psychosexual (emphasis on the “psycho”) thriller with Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. There’s also the cheerful Smile 2, evil clown porn Terrifier 3, and a Blumhouse production of Wolf Man.
November sees a remake of The Amateur, Barry Levinson’s mob thriller Alto Knights, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2 with Denzel Washington, and Wicked: Part One, led by Tony Award-winner Cynthia Erivo.
Then, the year goes out strong with Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim, an anime Tolkien adaptation from Kenji Kamiyama.
This time next year, we’ll be gushing over Barry Jenkins’ Mufasa: The Lion King, Robert Eggers’ boundary-pushing Nosferatu remake, and an ultra-secret Jordan Peele joint. — Chris McCoy
Memphis Sports
Here’s a one-item wish list for Memphis sports in 2024: Ja Morant videos that are exclusively basketball highlights. The city’s preeminent athlete stole headlines this year with off-the-court drama that ultimately cost him the first 25 games of the Grizzlies’ 2023-24 season. Morant’s absence was more than the roster could take, particularly with center Steven Adams sidelined for the season with a knee injury. More than 10 games under .500 in mid-December, the Grizzlies must hope the star’s return can simply get them back to break-even basketball. If that happens — and with the rim-rattling displays that have made Ja a superstar — the new year will have brought new life to the Bluff City’s flagship sports franchise.
And how about a first regular-season American Athletic Conference championship for Penny Hardaway’s Memphis Tigers? The AAC is a watered-down version of the league we knew a year ago (no more Houston, no more Cincinnati), with Florida Atlantic now the Tigers’ primary obstacle for a league crown. A controversial loss to FAU in the opening round of the NCAA tournament last March created an instant rivalry, one that will take the floor at FedExForum on February 25th. David Jones is an early candidate for AAC Player of the Year and sidekick Jahvon Quinerly gives Hardaway the best collection of new-blood talent since “transfer portal” became a thing.
Seth Henigan (Photo: Wes Hale)
With Seth Henigan returning to quarterback the Tigers for a fourth season, Memphis football should also compete for an AAC title and an 11th consecutive bowl campaign. AutoZone Park will hum with Redbirds baseball and 901 FC soccer throughout the warm-weather months, and the PGA Tour will make Memphis home when the FedEx St. Jude Championship tees off on August 15th.
But let’s hope 2024, somehow, becomes the Year of Ja in this town. The heart of Memphis sports echoes the sound of a basketball dribble. And one player speeds that heartbeat like no other. — Frank Murtaugh
Oscar Jimenez will suit up for 901 FC next season. (Photo: Courtesy USL/Louisville City FC)
Meanwhile, 901 FC can look forward to welcoming some unfamiliar opponents to the confines of AutoZone Park next season. A restructured United Soccer League means Memphis will bid adieu to the Eastern Conference and kick off its 2024 season as part of the Western Conference. That means that 22 of 901 FC’s 34-match schedule will be against Western Conference opponents, starting with a March 9th home season opener against Las Vegas Lights FC. There’s a new COO in Jay Mims, while we can expect plenty of new players to suit up before Stephen Glass leads the team out for its first game.
One thing that soccer fans will not be looking forward to, however, is a new stadium, with plans for a soccer-specific Liberty Park arena scuppered after $350 million in state dollars earmarked for sporting renovations did not include any provisions for 901 FC. — Samuel X. Cicci
Wearing a green ribbon can mean a lot of things, or nothing at all. That’s part of the mystery at the heart of Louise Page’s new music video, where the core message is “I want to see you dance the way you dance in your kitchen,” and the stylish art direction assures us that, in that part of the house, green pairs well with pink.
For many, the green ribbon signifies mental health awareness, and there’s a primal call for sanity in the way Page calls out the kitchen boogie as an integral part of mental hygiene. But maybe that’s reading too much into a song that just wants to make you dance.
To that end, Page musters the full power of her band, complete with violin and horns, to make the most danceable track she can. And the video captures that energy perfectly, tacking back and forth between that kitchen and a sweaty, stomping club scene, where drag queens Moth Moth Moth and Baby Mas, plus dancer Felicity Fox, match the singer’s moves strut for strut, and even producer/engineer Boo Mitchell gets down on the dance floor.
As Page says in her artist’s statement, she was “trying to write a song that was both a dance and a celebration, but also acknowledging how absolutely bat shit insanely difficult it has felt to be a functioning human being in a dysfunctional, often dangerous world. Joy can be a revolution. You can dance for the dead. That’s what this song celebrates to me.”
It’s a perfect way to bring out the power of Page’s crack combo. “Huge shoutout to my band — Annalisabeth Craig, Jawaun Crawford, Gunter Gaupp, and Michael Todd — for playing the hell out of this song and for riding with me. Huge shoutout to my friend Calvin Lauber for mastering the song, and Boo Mitchell for recording, producing, and believing in it!”
Director Laura Jean Hocking also hails the group effort that made such a wild party of a video possible. “I am credited as director on this video,” she says, “but so many people were vital in making these visual worlds come to life — the fabulous art direction team of Sallie Sabbatini/Erica Qualy/Annalisabeth Craig, Robbie Eubanks’ beautiful hair & makeup, Chad Barton’s excellent lighting and color timing, Sarah Fleming’s stellar camerawork — the list goes on. Being able to showcase Moth Moth Moth and Baby Mas was important to me, with the government trying to enact laws to ban drag performances. I wanted them to convey the message, ‘You cannot make our art form a crime. We’re not going away.’ And any time Louise calls me to do a music video, the answer is yes. She’s a great collaborator and a joy to work with.”
This Wednesday, November 22nd, will mark an apotheosis of sorts for a man who, despite being raised in El Dorado (pronounced El Dor-RAY-do), Arkansas, has become an institution of Memphis music. That would be pianist and performer extraordinaire Jason D. Williams, who’s been pounding the ivories with boogie-woogie fervor here for over 40 years. Now, those decades of musical mania will culminate in Williams receiving a brass note on Beale Street, in a ceremony just before his performance at Lafayette’s Music Room, where he’ll preside over his twelfth annual “Thanksgiving Eve” show at the venue.
Arriving in Memphis in 1982, Williams quickly began a residency at Mallards in The Peabody Hotel, through which his reputation rapidly grew. Soon after, Jason D. Williams was signed to RCA Records, and later on a latter-day iteration of the Sun Records label. Williams now joins a select few honored by both the Peabody Brass Duck Feet and the Beale Street Brass Note.
Honoring the artist thus is appropriate, given his role in keeping the art of boogie woogie and rock and roll piano alive. As he told the Memphis Flyer in 2021, “You take somebody like Jerry Lee Lewis singing ‘Five foot two, eyes of blue,’ and that was a lesson on the chords of the 1800s. Or ‘Alabama Jubilee,’ or ‘Sweet Georgia Brown.’ Between him and Leon Redbone, you could just about get all the storybook you needed on how to play good ol’ chord changes. Because those songs have a lot of the changes that go through everything, not just the pounding rockabilly stuff. You listen to that stuff, or even Al Jolson, and you’ll get all the changes you need to be a great musician.”
Williams, who often composes songs on the spot, even while performing onstage, has clearly internalized The Great American Songbook and more, yet can walk listeners through all of history, even up to the modern era. “I’ll go from ragtime up to some Elton John or ‘Freebird’ or whatever,” he told the Flyer. “Whatever comes to my mind. I usually am the first one to hear what I’m doing. I’m just an audience member too. My fingers take off and I start singing, and it could just be something somebody said in the audience, and my fingers take off, and I go, ‘Okay, here I go!’”
Jason D. Williams will receive a Beale Street Brass Note and perform at Lafayette’s Music Room, with opener Susan Marshall, this Wednesday, November 22nd, at 7 p.m. Visit lafayettes.com for details.
“You don’t miss your water,” croons local music auteur Susan Marshall in a recent YouTube video, “till your well runs dry.” It’s an especially apt rendering of William Bell’s 1961 hit on Stax Records, tying together two inextricably linked themes: Memphis and water. Marshall posted the video to promote an upcoming show that aims to celebrate both through music. Acoustic Sunday Live, produced by Bruce and Barbara Newman, is now a 20-year tradition in Memphis, a songwriters-in-the-round event that has always brought the finest folk singers to town in support of a worthy grassroots organization. In recent years, that organization has been Protect Our Aquifer, and the list of world-class performers eager to rally around both Memphis and its water has always been impressive. This year’s show (see acousticsundaylive.com) takes place on Sunday, December 3rd, at the First Congregational Church and will include Shemekia Copeland, Tracy Nelson, Tim O’Brien with Jan Fabricius, Loudon Wainwright III, and Will Kimbrough, along with local favorites Marshall, John Nemeth, Reba Russell, and Joe Restivo.
For newcomers to the cause, Protect Our Aquifer spells it out on their website: “Memphis is the only city in the US to rely 100% on groundwater. With people power, we’ve stopped a pipeline, landfills, and TVA wells from poisoning our water. Now, the latest science shows our protective clay layer is more like Swiss cheese and modern water is sinking down, threatening our water with industrial pollution.” The organization is a sentinel of sorts, guaranteeing that the ancient freshwater below us stays pure.
Shemekia Copeland, for her part, is down with the cause. “You know, we live on Earth,” she says. “This is where we live. We have to take care of it.” Protect Our Aquifer, in her eyes, goes hand in hand with that. “For me, it’s about clean water. And whatever politics are involved, what they’re trying to do is a great thing.”
Yet she also appreciates Acoustic Sunday Live from a purely musical perspective, as much as a fan as a star performer. “I’ve listened to all of them, especially Loudon and Tracy Nelson,” she says. “So I’m really looking forward to it.” And part of the magic, she notes, is the freewheeling atmosphere shared by all the performers who are on stage. She feels free to simply wing it, and that suits her just fine. “It’s a running joke with my band. They laugh at me and say, ‘There’s no point to her trying to make a set list because she’s not going to follow it anyway!’” She prefers to be in the moment, especially in a song-swap type of show, saying, “I don’t know who’s going to be singing before or after me, so I try to find things that mesh well with everybody. I want the show to flow nicely.”
Music has always come naturally to Copeland, whose father, Johnny Copeland, was a guitarist and singer inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. His daughter, though, forged her own path into the music. “We are completely different,” she says. “My dad was born and raised in Texas and I was born and raised in New York City. But everybody migrated from somewhere, right? A lot of Chicago artists came from Memphis or from Mississippi. There’s Southern roots and there’s a little bit of everything everywhere. I’m a good mix of everything, my dad being from Texas and my mom being from North Carolina. And then I was born and raised in Harlem, right smack dab in the middle of it.”
Her upbringing in a city not necessarily known for the blues has shaped her to this day. “I was not your typical kid,” she says. “I always had very different interests, but I also have different interests as an adult. One of my biggest fears in life is being like other people.”
That makes her a perfect match for a city where Sam Phillips once decreed, “If you’re not doing something different, you’re not doing anything.” And, having won multiple Blues Music Awards and worked with Steve Cropper, Copeland is no stranger to Memphis and its history. “I think this is my third time to play Acoustic Sunday Live. Memphis is a great city. Great food. Great music. Great people. And it’s a lot of fun to do concerts like this because you get to hang out and play with other musicians.”
David Cousar with Janet Holloway Cousar (Credit: David Cousar)
Even before David Cousar passed away last Thursday at 73, after struggling with cancer, social media was overflowing with tributes to him from fellow musicians, friends, and fans who were touched by his art. The gifted guitarist, songwriter, and singer was also a gifted writer who had shared his journey through the illness with poetic, philosophical, and humorous posts for at least three years, and now the community was staying with him through the endgame. While some misinterpreted the flood of memories to mean that he’d died already, he was weak but relishing the earliest wave of shout-outs.
“He would have been seeing them through Tuesday,” recalls his wife Janet Holloway Cousar of the numerous posts. “But he went really fast. He was alert and we were talking, and he knew everybody was posting things on Wednesday, but he wanted me to read them to him later. And there just wasn’t a later.”
Still, the many memories were a moving tribute to a music-maker known for his blend of spontaneity and discipline, restraint and audacity, in equal measures, and sharing them was clearly cathartic for the local music community. The posts continued even after Bob Mehr’s thoughtful obituary was published last Friday, as people struggled to come to terms with the loss of Cousar’s sprawling, omnivorous talent. His playing had a depth and breadth that was both instantly engaging and difficult to fathom.
Saxophonist Jim Spake was among the first to encounter Cousar’s talent, back in the wild frontier of the 1970s, when musical genres were arguably less siloed than in the current era. “I was in my first or second year of college when Doug Garrison introduced me to him. And we started playing gigs together by ’75 or ’76. He was already more seasoned by then. He was seven years older than me, but he didn’t seem that much older. He was always really youthful acting and looking.”
David Cousar on a trip to New Orleans, ca. 1983 (Photo: Courtesy of Jim Spake)
Even then, Spake witnessed Cousar’s venturesome spirit, his appetite for learning and expanding his horizons. “He loved Wes Montgomery, Ry Cooder, and Taj Mahal, and the way they would reimagine pop standards,” Spake recalls. “He would do Joni Mitchell songs. His ears were always open to stuff that was new to him, always looking for new sounds to incorporate into his own music, you know, even in his formative years of music playing. He came up to visit me in Boston when I was at Berklee [College of Music], and slept on my floor. While he was there he hunted down Pat Metheny and got a lesson with him. David was pretty over the moon about that because Pat Metheny was brand-new then; he was new and fresh. A lot of people hadn’t even heard him yet. Back then you could still do this.”
Though self-taught on guitar, Cousar was a disciplined student of the instrument. “He started out as a young rocker, but he took those Berklee correspondence courses and that was back when it was done by mail. That was sometime in the ’70s,” recalls Spake. “He struck me as somebody who always was looking for ways to improve.”
Later in life, he would share his studies of everything from “Minuet I” by Sylvius Leopold Weiss to klezmer music. That in turn filtered into the imaginative playing he brought to other artists’ music, ranging from Al Green to Amy LaVere to Marcella Simien and beyond. He also had a fine-tuned understanding of Caribbean music, from reggae to Bahamian folk auteur Joseph Spence. His knowledge of such music grew exponentially during the many years he spent in Florida.
“He played with this white reggae band in Florida called Lazy Day, and they would play in the Keys as well,” recalls Spake. That heavily influenced the material covered in one of Cousar’s earliest Memphis bands, the Bluebeats, formed in the early ’80s, which also included Spake. “I was already into reggae. And you know, I think we played some pretty good stuff. I’m sure there was too much Bob Marley, but also some more obscure stuff like the Melodians.”
Ad hoc group featuring David Cousar on bass, with Randy Haspel, Richard Roseborough, Donnie Baer, and Jim Spake, ca. 1982 (Photo: Courtesy of Jim Spake)
That group would become a fixture at Jefferson Square, the Bombay Bicycle Club, and other venues for years, but Cousar was also sitting in with the many ad hoc groups that played in Memphis at the time, including the Midtown Jazzmobile. Yet what many fans treasured most were his solo shows, notably at The Buccaneer before its demise, where Cousar’s playful spirit could have full rein. Such moments were testaments to the singer’s spontaneity, as with this reimagining of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette.”
This venturesome, eclectic spirit stayed with Cousar until the end. As his wife Janet recalls, “he played his guitar up until the last few weeks of his life, playing classical, jazz, and his own songs.” He also read and listened to music voraciously, listening to Marc Ribot, Neil Young, B.B. King, Wayne Shorter, and Ry Cooder as his health failed. “He was always devouring information,” Janet notes, adding that his last readings included The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard P. Feynman — a perfect title to sum up Cousar’s approach to life.
The story of Janet’s presence in his life reads like a novel in itself. As she describes their first encounter in the ’80s, “I met him and it was just love at first sight. We went out on a date and we were living together from that point on for four and a half years. He was the love of my life and vice versa.”
Yet lifestyle differences came between them, and they went their separate ways for decades. By the time Janet found herself free to start seeing him again, Cousar was already ill, but that didn’t dampen their mutual passion in the least. “We never got back together until a little over a year and a half ago,” she recalls, noting her divorce from her then-husband at the time. After that, “I called David, knowing he was sick and did not have long. I wanted to spend whatever time could with him. And you know, he was just happy as can be. Nothing had changed!”
It was a charmed moment for them both. “When we started getting back together, he wasn’t playing. He wasn’t really talking to a lot of people. Though at least his friends would message him or text him just out of the blue, saying how much they loved him.” Cousar ultimately rallied to play on recordings by Billy Swan at Southern Grooves studio this January and in a series of Murphy’s shows with Rick Steff and Shawn Zorn this summer.
Meanwhile, his health issues brought practical concerns that complicated the romance. “When you’re sick and you’re on Medicaid, you don’t want to lose it. We started talking about getting married in February of this past year, but every time I got closer, I was like, ‘I don’t want you to lose your insurance.’ So we waited. We almost waited too late, but I’m so glad we got married. It just means everything.” They had a small bedside ceremony officiated by their close friend Susan Marshall on October 22nd. “He was very sick,” recalls Janet, “but he rallied for that day.”
Since Cousar’s passing, Janet, who works in the medical industry, has been acutely aware of the dire healthcare issues confronting musicians like her late husband. “If I could just get a group of doctors who are fans of music, who would agree to do screenings or something … I just feel very, very passionate about getting people to a point where they feel comfortable going to the doctor,” Janet muses. Fellow musician Vicki Loveland has set up a GoFundMe campaign focused not only on funding a memorial to Cousar at Elmwood Cemetery, but assisting other musicians. “After David’s final expenses are covered,” reads the GoFundMe page, “the family will donate all future donations from this campaign to MusiCares in memory of David,” referring to the medical assistance fund for musicians set up by the Recording Academy.
Meanwhile, Janet Cousar is left picking up the pieces, reflecting on the Renaissance man she knew so well. “David had an amazing philosophy on life,” she muses. “He only looked forward and never back. He lived with hope instead of regret. He encouraged me not to be sad where we were, but look forward to what life we had left. He saw beauty in the mundane that most people don’t notice. Up until the day he passed away he talked about where we would go for our honeymoon. In every step he took in life, he was a true artist.”
For a good decade or more, this city offered a brilliant solution to music-loving parents who couldn’t take their young kids to see great indie bands in the bars that featured them: Memphis Rock-n-Romp. Founded by Stacey Greenberg in 2005, the loose-knit organization was active for 10 years, staging afternoon shows by local bands in backyards and other kid-friendly spaces. And, because the music wasn’t typical children’s fare, younger parents too overworked to frequent the club scene flocked to the events, kids in tow. I know I did.
All the sense of discovery that one finds in the club experience was still present in the Rock-n-Romp shows, and there was even good beer to be had (for the adults). I’ll long remember seeing The Barbaras in all their glory at one such event on the grounds of the Metal Museum. There I was, a dedicated parent, discovering a new band! With their multi-voiced harmonies and pop hooks and hint of madness, The Barbaras were a revelation in more ways than one, and the kids liked it too.
Now, after a long hiatus with only occasional revival shows over the years, Memphis Rock-n-Romp is back in full swing. And with it comes another revival, the beloved Live from Memphis platform, which helped pioneer live-streamed music concerts in the early 2000s, including some of the Rock-n-Romps, before going into hibernation itself for some time.
This Saturday, October 28th, Live from Memphis presents a special Halloween Rock-n-Romp from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Ravine, which many Memphis Flyer readers know from our recent Best of Memphis party. Entry is $5 per adult, but children are admitted free of charge. Adults must have a child with them to attend. (Click here for details).
Bands include KittyPool, Above Jupiter, and Tamar Love (from Mama Honey). While Love is the wisest, oldest, and biggest name on the bill, some of the other players were avidly taking in the music of the original wave of Rock-n-Romps, even playing together as kids at the Rock-n-Romp summer camp more than a decade ago. Their interest thus piqued, they’re still cooking up sounds of their own today.
One often saw the Davis family at the original events; now Josie Davis will be performing in KittyPool. And she’s not alone. As Live From Memphis co-founder Christopher Reyes notes in a statement, “When Mati was a baby, we took her to one of those classic Rock-n-Romps at Mud Island, but she doesn’t remember. She and her sister are now at the perfect age to really appreciate it, so for me, it made a lot of sense to bring it back. Once we started planning, we were all like, ‘Hell yeah,’ and everyone we told about it pretty much had the same response.”
Board member Graham Burks has long been deeply involved in the organization, including as a player, and now it’s time for his son, Graham Burks III, to take the stage in Above Jupiter. Memphis Flyer readers may recall our review of Graham-the-Younger’s band The Becomers two years ago. Above Jupiter began around that same time, and all of the band members attend Stax Music Academy together.
As Graham-the-Elder explains, “An early version of Above Jupiter opened up for the Becomers at the Time Warp Drive. Graham (III) and keyboardist Desmond Coppin have been playing together since they were three, and played a Rock-n-Romp 10 years ago at age four. Bassist Noah Hand and Graham met in elementary school and started plotting this band as an extension of Noah’s visual art. They call the music ‘art pop’ and Noah designs their shirts and art. Noah recently had an animated short in the Indie Memphis Youth Film Fest. He is currently animating their first music video for their first single ‘Details,’ which combines his animation with live footage shot by my brother Justin Burks and edited by Noah.”
And, as Burks notes, Above Jupiter will clearly be in the Halloween spirit this Saturday. “They’ll be in costume as Gorillaz,” he says, “and they’ll be performing live on WREG Live at 9 a.m. on Friday morning.”
The Art Project will also lead Halloween arts and crafts activities for the kids at Saturday’s event, and there will be a Halloween costume contest with prizes awarded.
Bukka White and Jimmy Crosthwait onstage at the the Overton Park Shell in The Blues Society. (Photo: Randall Lyon | courtesy of The Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane)
I felt like it was like the zombie film that wouldn’t die.” So says Augusta Palmer, filmmaker and associate professor of communication arts at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, about her latest movie, The Blues Society, enjoying its world premiere at the Indie Memphis Film Festival this coming Sunday. But the producer/director isn’t talking about any scary on-screen content; her “zombie” comment refers to the film’s half-genesis nearly 10 years ago, and the way it insisted on being made despite Palmer’s other commitments.
She had compelling personal reasons to see it through: Her father was the late musician and writer Robert Palmer, who helped found the Memphis Country Blues Society in the mid-’60s. Her mother Mary Branton was also deeply involved in the blues festivals that the society staged at the Overton Park Shell from 1966-1969. A decade ago, Augusta Palmer saw footage from the final year of those concerts — shot by Adelphi Records owner Gene Rosenthal — and it resonated deeply with her.
“Gene played me a segment of my mom speaking at the festival when she was pregnant with me in 1969. So I was pretty much hooked, but it seemed really difficult to figure out the rights and everything, so I just sort of let it go. A few years later I thought, ‘Well, no. I am interested in this, but I want to tell the whole story, from ’66 to ’69.’”
The festivals and their backstory were rich subject matter indeed, marking a turning point in the history of Memphis and the blues, eminently worth telling in full. When Fat Possum Records bought Rosenthal’s 1969 footage and tasked directors Joe and Lisa LaMattina to edit it down to a feature-length film, Memphis ’69, there was still much left to explore. While that film drops the viewer directly into the experience of a single weekend, Palmer wanted to situate the entire four-year run of festivals within the context of the blues devotees who initiated them, a coterie of artists, musicians, and beatniks (or proto-hippies) who comprised the Memphis Country Blues Society and its supporters. “I was very interested in the whole trajectory of it,” she says.
And so the film roared back to life, lurching in fits and starts as Palmer assembled footage and interviews from sprawling and diverse sources. It helped that some of those involved were film buffs and loved shooting casual, oddball footage of themselves and their friends. Today, their LSD-fueled hijinks live on in the glorious black and white scenes that Palmer uses to set the stage for the festivals-in-the-making, though she found a little of that went a long way.
“The footage of crazy artists in Memphis was shot by an experimental filmmaker named Carl Orr who was part of John McIntire’s Beatnik Manor scene,” Palmer says. “There’s actually a ton more of that stuff. But when I was able to get some of that, at first I felt like I’d sprayed my film with patchouli and I couldn’t breathe! So I dialed it back a little bit. But that stuff really captured the spirit of the time so beautifully.”
So too does the archival footage of great Memphis blues artists that Palmer uses to establish the importance of the blues to Memphis, even as it was ignored by the city’s racist establishment. That historical context underscores why it was down to the beatnik misfits to celebrate the innovations of the Black men and women in their midst, rendered invisible by the mainstream. And, as the engrossing festival performance scenes of Furry Lewis, Bukka White, and others reveal, their exquisite artistry very much deserved celebration.
Yet Palmer also complicates the beatniks’ utopian motivations with some well-considered comments from scholars and writers like Zandria Robinson and Jamey Hatley, who insist on a more critical perspective. Robinson notes that, in presenting poor, often rural Black artists, the white festival organizers had an attitude of “let’s be friends in spite of power dynamics!” Palmer leans into that critique unflinchingly, perhaps best expressed by Furry Lewis’ white protégé, the late Zeke Johnson. “Some of it was paternalistic,” Johnson reflects, “and we didn’t even realize it at the time.”
The Blues Society screens at Playhouse on the Square on Sunday, October 29th, 3 p.m. An after-party will be held at the 1884 Lounge at 5 p.m. that day, featuring The Wilkins Sisters and Sharde Thomas and the Rising Stars Fife and Drum Band. Visit indiememphis.org for more information.
Packy Axton, Don Nix, and Steve Cropper, ca. 1960 (Credit: Don Nix)
Take heart, juvenile delinquents everywhere: there walks among us one of your kind who parlayed his street savvy into nothing less than crafting a new Memphis Sound. You can learn all about that and more this Monday, October 16th at 7 p.m., when author Robert Gordon sits down to chat with Nix about his life in music. It’s part of Gordon’s ongoing series of listening parties at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, in which he curates playlists of songs by the likes of Steve Cropper, Al Kapone, IMAKEMADBEATS, Boo Mitchell, and others with the artists themselves, using the music as a jumping-off point for discussions of their craft.
Nix’s name may not be as familiar as those others to some, but he’s played a pivotal role in Memphis music ever since he was a student at Tech High School, “where the delinquents were transferred and taught a trade before they flunked out completely,” as Gordon writes in It Came from Memphis. That was when he played sax with a group that included Cropper, Duck Dunn, Charlie Freeman, and Packy Axton: The Royal Spades. Axton’s mother Estelle was busy starting up a new business called Satellite Records, and when she facilitated a recording session for the group, she prevailed upon them to change their name to the Mar-Keys.
That session would yield the instrumental track “Last Night,” which was a shot across the bow of pop music, an R&B smash hit by a bunch of white kids that would presage the integration championed by Satellite, as it soon morphed into Stax Records.
Packy Axton and Don Nix in their delinquent daze (Credit: Don Nix)
But Nix was destined to be more of a behind-the-scenes player. As he told Gordon in It Came from Memphis, “I didn’t play on any sessions after a certain point. Not after they got good musicians to play … Eventually, I was producing, and that’s all I ever wanted to do. I wanted to write and to put records together in the studio.”
He embraced that role with aplomb, eventually working as a producer, arranger, and musician for artists as diverse as Furry Lewis, Albert King, Isaac Hayes, the Staple Singers, Jeff Beck, Brian May, Eric Clapton, and many others. His song, “Going Down,” originally recorded by the band Moloch in 1969, has become a rock standard covered by Freddie King, Jeff Beck, Deep Purple, JJ Cale, Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Who, Led Zeppelin, and others. The Rolling Stones performed “Goin’ Down” as recently as 2012 on a televised live concert with John Mayer and Gary Clark, Jr.
Now 82, Nix has decades of stories to share. He was the one member of the Mar-Keys “who could draw the crowds because he was so completely entertaining to watch,” writes Gordon. That instinct for entertaining, and a story well-told, hasn’t left him.
