Memphis Flyer sportswriter Frank Murtaugh talks with Chris McCoy about the Memphis Tigers’ long-awaited return to the NCAA basketball tournament. Murtaugh knows everything, McCoy knows nothing. Plus, the single worst bracket in March Madness history! Can you do better?
Playin’
Entrepreneur and community organizer Keedran Franklin was straight up playing on Facebook last week. Over several Facebook posts, he pumped up what would be a huge announcement. Announcement time came, and his sound cut out. It left many laughing and many more like this from Arlen Dewayne Berry.
Franklin had still not revealed his big announcement as of press time.
A Cannabis Request
“Can y’all not smoke a crap load of weed and then hang out at the zoo around kids?” asked u/criticalmonsterparty over in the Memphis subreddit. “I’m not hating on anyone’s personal preferences, but there was two distinct smells at the zoo today — animal poop and weed.”
Seeing Double
The subreddit was also enamored with a glorious double rainbow that appeared over the city last week.
Trophies
“Trophies.” That was the whole Tweet.
Every year I play in an online pool to predict the outcome of the NCAA basketball tournament, aka March Madness. It’s made up of longtime friends who are scattered all over the country and who communicate for the most part via social media. It’s become a rite of spring for a lot of us, with good-natured smack talk being the main attraction.
We use a CBS Sports platform, and for some of us the hardest part is remembering our password every 12 months. Well, that and trying to guess who’s going to take that pivotal first-round game between, say, Siena and Northeast Idaho. And for me, there’s also the dilemma of predicting how far the Memphis Tigers will go — a delicate balancing act that pits my hometown rooting interest against years of painful experience. A Penny (Hardaway) for my thoughts.
The tournament is a particularly timely distraction this year. That’s because the daily news is just delivering one plop-load of angst after another. I went online Sunday morning and read the following headlines: “Arlington Cemetery Website Scrubs Links About Black and Female Veterans”; “Trump’s FCC Chief Orders Investigation into NPR and PBS Sponsorships”; “Trump Signs Order to Gut Staff at Voice of America and Other U.S.-funded Media Organizations”; “Trump’s NIH Cuts Threaten Scientific and Medical Research at U.S. Universities.”
So yeah, just let me ponder that crucial West Bracket matchup between Maryland and Grand Canyon for a while. Maryland’s pretty good, but Grand Canyon is deep, heh, and it’s tough to beat a national park. Or it used to be until they got defunded. Sorry, I’m just trying not to go crazy thinking about the frightening idiocracy that’s now dismantling our government piece by piece.
This administration’s credo appears to be “Knowledge Is the Enemy of the People.” Or maybe it’s “They Can’t Handle the Truth.” In many areas of the world, Voice of America is the only news that isn’t controlled by autocratic governments. NPR and PBS news services have long been considered the gold standard for fact-based, in-depth reporting. The U.S. government shouldn’t be in the business of suppressing its own media. The First Amendment still means something. Or at least, it did until a month ago, when this administration decided that it would begin hand-selecting the reporters allowed in the press pool to ask questions of the president.
If knowledge is power, then power is being taken away from us at an alarming pace. And, let’s be blunt, we’re all being put in danger by the reductions in funding and personnel at agencies that provide air traffic control, weather prognostication and warnings, and medical and scientific research. Not to mention the emotional stress being imposed on millions of Americans who depend on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and their 401(k) funds.
It’s important to understand that all of these decisions are being made by executive orders that are mostly being carried out by an unsupervised, unrestrained, and unelected creep with billions of dollars in conflicts of interest between his own businesses and federal subsidies. It’s unconstitutional, and none of it is being opposed by Congress, which is constitutionally designated to restrain the excesses of the executive branch.
It goes without saying that the Republicans in Washington are all in the tank for Trump, but the fact that the Democrats are so numbingly compliant is really troubling. They appear to be as vested in accommodating this autocratic insanity as the Vichy French collaborators were in World War II. It makes you wonder just how much kompromat Putin has. Is everyone in Washington compromised except Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Liz Cheney? Where is the damn anger?
I’m no James Carville, but I play one in this column and I have a message for the Democratic Party: Get your shit together. My suggestion would be to set up a daily evening press conference in which a rotating cast of the party’s stalwarts (not Schumer, Jeffries, or Pelosi) addresses the news of the day, takes on the latest lunacy enacted by the White House, explains the real-life consequences of it for everyday Americans, and yes, expresses the outrage that millions of us are feeling right now. It’s time for the opposing party to get in the game — and take some shots.
Memphis on the internet.
#OOTD
“Mwelu wanted to share his outfit of the day,” the Memphis Zoo said in an X post. “Is he rockin’ the Snoopy fitted sheet or what?”
Super Bowl-Bound
Three former University of Memphis Tigers will suit up for the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX this weekend. Kenneth Gainwell, Bryce Huff, and Jake Elliott (above) all wore Tiger blue.
Grammy winner
Adrian Maclin, choir director at Cordova High School, earned the Grammy’s 2025 Music Educator Award last week. “Known for his philosophy of fostering a ‘choir family’ rather than just a choir class, Maclin emphasizes life lessons alongside musical excellence,” Memphis-Shelby County Schools said in a post on its website. “His dedication has had a positive impact on so many students, and many consider him a father figure in their lives.”
In seven years as basketball coach at his alma mater, Penny Hardaway hasn’t always delivered March Madness for the University of Memphis. But let it be said he has delivered star power. The Tigers have featured a first-team all-conference player in each of Hardaway’s first six seasons and will all but certainly make it seven straight this March when current headliner PJ Haggerty gains the honor from the American Athletic Conference. It would be an unprecedented streak for the proud program.
How good has Haggerty been since transferring from Tulsa? He’s among AAC leaders in scoring (21.6 points per game), steals (2.1), minutes (36.5), and free throws made (145). He could follow Kendric Davis and David Jones and become the third straight Memphis player to win an AAC scoring title (he’s third in the entire country), and if the Tigers play enough postseason games, Haggerty could join six former Tigers — including his current coach — with a 700-point season. The sophomore’s numbers are all up from his 2023-24 campaign, for which he was named the AAC’s Freshman of the Year.
And the mark of true impact is consistency. Haggerty has scored fewer than 12 points in only one game this season and he’s topped 20 points in 15 games. The Texas native achieves this by regularly getting to the foul line (he’s fourth in the country in free throws) and making the shots (81 percent). Haggerty made 11 of 14 freebies in the Tigers’ two-point upset of defending national champion UConn in Maui. He hit 10 of 11 in another two-point win at Virginia in December. A famous coach around here once said his players would “make their free throws when they need to.” They’re all needed, and Haggerty makes them. It’s among the chief reasons Memphis is in the Top 25 with aspirations for more than a single NCAA tournament game.
“[Haggerty] is so good at what he does,” emphasizes Hardaway. “He’s a quiet spirit, but he plays aggressively. Once he gets going, he’s pretty dang good.” Hardaway shared those views of his star after the first game of the season. He also noted that last season, only Zach Edey (the national player of the year and current Memphis Grizzly) took more free throws than Haggerty. PJ Carter has been a valuable reserve for Hardaway. The Tigers would not have beaten Connecticut without Carter’s starring role in overtime and he outscored Haggerty in last week’s win at Tulane. Alas, Carter is decidedly “the other PJ” on this roster.
There’s a somewhat new, though already tiring, exclamation for athletes intent on seizing even more spotlight than the multimedia universe currently provides: “I’m him!” The message being, apparently, that the person shouting is The Man, The Guy, The Player Paramount To Your Team’s Chance At Victory. (I’ve yet to see, by the way, a WNBA star scream, “I’m her!” at a camera.) Haggerty, fortunately, does not lean on this mantra, but the notion is one to consider as March nears and the Tigers’ chances at an NCAA tournament run are tossed around whatever water coolers may still exist.
The Tigers beat UAB on January 26th in a showdown for first place in the AAC, and Haggerty’s 23 points were a large factor. But his nine assists helped make the victory a 100-77 blowout. Consider it a case of “him” making “them” better. “Trying to make the game easier,” said Haggerty after the win. “Just get my teammates involved, get them going early.”
Memphis has suited up precisely three players who earned first-team All-America honors from the Associated Press: Keith Lee (1985), Hardaway (1993), and Chris Douglas-Roberts (2008). Each of those players led a Memphis team to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament and two of them reached the Final Four. That, more than the individual honor, is how the trio tends to be remembered among folks in blue and gray. For all his stardom — for all his “himness” — PJ Haggerty must lift his teammates to new heights in March to gain legend status in these parts. For now, let’s say he’s checking the boxes.
Penny Hardaway’s seventh season as coach of the Memphis Tigers began with a bang(!) Monday in Maui. A roster that’s all but entirely new battled the second-ranked Connecticut Huskies into overtime and, thanks to nine points (six free throws) from someone named P.J. Carter, upset the two-time defending national champions, 99-97. Wait, you say, Memphis entered the game with four wins in four games. Began?
The nature of college basketball in 2024 is, in a word, flux. Players come and go with the frequency of fickle middle-school crushes. Last year’s Tiger star, David Jones, played one season in blue and gray (and won the American Athletic Conference scoring title). The Tigers’ star in 2022-23, Kendric Davis, played one season in blue and gray (and won the American Athletic Conference scoring title). These were veteran players that Hardaway essentially borrowed for a one-winter run. Cutting to the present, the 2024-25 Tigers are measuring the star power of their new roster, knowing full well most of the players we see in uniform in Maui will not be here twelve months from now. And those first four games didn’t tell us much, other than this group plays better after halftime than before.
Then came the opening game of the Maui Invitational. A team that struggled after the tip in its first four contests hit 56 percent of its shots (and five of ten three-point attempts) in going toe to toe with the mighty Huskies, the score knotted, 40 each, at halftime. Those twenty minutes would have been a win for Memphis, coming so early in the season against such a formidable foe. But the Tigers played even better (that developing trend) after the break. They again hit five of ten long-distance shots, matched UConn in rebounding, and led by 13 points with under five minutes to play. But the Huskies played like the champions they are, tying the game on a nothing-but-net three-pointer by Solo Ball with a second left on the clock. Those 40 minutes would have been a win for Memphis.
But the Tigers played even better in overtime, and without their primary scoring threat, P.J. Haggerty, who fouled out late in regulation. Enter P.J. Carter. The Atlanta native is playing his fifth college season. He spent two years at Campbell University (4.3 minutes per game), a year at Georgia Highlands College, and last season at UTSA, where he started 10 games and averaged 9.5 points per game. With six clutch free throws and a three pointer in the overtime period on Monday, Carter is now a Memphis Tiger for life. That’s how big the Tigers’ Hawaiian punch felt at the final buzzer.
Hardaway needs this team to get to the NCAA tournament . . . and win a couple of games in the Big Dance. Year Seven is long enough to wait for the hometown legend to return some glory to a long-proud program. Honestly, Hardaway has produced more national controversies as coach of the Tigers than he has NCAA tournament victories (one). And this is why the upset of UConn felt like a beginning. (For some perspective, the last time Memphis beat the second-ranked team in the country was an upset of Louisville at the Mid-South Coliseum on March 2, 1972, four months before Hardaway’s first birthday.) A team most of us didn’t know two weeks ago now has familiar faces (Tyrese Hunter!) who seem capable of beating, yes, anybody in the country.
It would be nice if Memphis beats Michigan State on Tuesday and goes on to win the Maui Invitational. But even with a loss to the Spartans, the 2024-25 Tigers have created a permanent memory: Remember Maui! That is exceedingly hard in modern college basketball, and next to impossible without a lengthy tournament run in March. A new season, a new roster, and, it appears, a new life for coach Penny Hardaway. Many journey to the islands to make a dream come true. Perhaps these Tigers’ truth is creating new dreams.
Memphis on the internet.
Dammit Gannet
Most by now expect small errors in The Commercial Appeal, knowing how much of it is produced out of Memphis. But when the paper got the University of Memphis sports mascot wrong in a headline … there were strong feelings.
Kroger’s Dill?
Kroger made a big dill about National Pickle Day last week, enough so that some worried their social media had been hacked.
Las Toxicas?
For the second time this year, Memphis Reddit users wondered just what in the heck happens inside the Las Toxicas … bar? club? restaurant? … on Summer at I-240.
Some of the answers included a “Hooteras” (a “Mexican-style Hooters place,” according to u/LadPro), a dance hall, strip club, bar, and a “thinly veiled brothel,” said u/alex32593.
A Google video (above) from March apparently shows the Las Toxicas dance floor in full swing. In it, patrons two-step respectfully to ranchera.
Larry Kenon is a certifiable Memphis basketball legend. In his one season as a Tiger (1972-73), Kenon established a single-season rebound record (501) that will never be touched. He helped another Larry legend (Finch) lead Memphis State to the NCAA championship game, where the Tigers fell to mighty UCLA. Kenon’s number 35 is among ten retired numbers that now hang from the rafters at FedExForum on Tiger game days.
A detail you might now know about Larry Kenon: Among the conditions he insisted upon before committing to the Tiger program: He didn’t have to attend a class. (I was three years old in 1972, but I have this nugget from a reliable source who was near the program for that unforgettable season.)
The Tigers won their biggest conference game of the season Sunday afternoon at FedExForum, beating FAU, 78-74. But they did so without one of only two players still on the team from FAU’s upset of Memphis in last year’s NCAA tournament. Center Malcolm Dandridge sat out the game as the university investigates chatter of academic misdeeds involving the fifth-year senior. It’s a deflating cloud over a program that has reached the heights of a Top-10 ranking and the lows of a four-game losing streak this winter. But you know what? These cloud conditions are part of Memphis Tiger basketball, every bit as much as the blue and gray of their uniforms.
If you’re too young for memories of Larry Kenon, perhaps you recall Keith Lee, the record-shattering power forward from West Memphis who became a Tiger in 1981 upon receiving a shoebox — between a size seven-and-a-half and a nine, according to Lee himself — full of cash. You’ve likely forgotten the Tic Price tryst. Finch’s successor as Tiger coach resigned abruptly before the 1999-2000 season when he was discovered to have been playing some bedroom ball with a U of M student. It’s easy to forget this scandal, as all it cost Memphis was a mediocre coach.
Arguably the greatest team in Tiger history reached the championship game in 2008, but there’s no banner to celebrate the squad because star freshman Derrick Rose, the NCAA determined, had someone else take the standardized test that qualified him to play at Memphis. James Wiseman was the most heralded freshman to suit up for the Tigers since Rose, but played in only three games early in the 2019-20 season before the NCAA ruled he had taken improper payments from his future coach — Penny Hardaway — when his family moved to Memphis before his senior year at East High School. And just last November, Hardaway served a three-game suspension for what the NCAA deemed an improper recruiting visit.
It’s exhausting to read all together, isn’t it? One ugly “distraction” after another, almost as regular for the Memphis program as visits to the Sweet 16. Making the current Dandridge matter especially troubling: The player is as Memphis as Hardaway, no import (like Kenon, Rose, or even Lee, from West Memphis). Dandridge surely has a sense of those historic “clouds.” If not, the man who coached him at East and now for five years at the U of M could certainly draw a picture.
Maybe it’s all a misunderstanding. Maybe it was one or two bad decisions made by one young man, and the problem can be sliced cleanly from the larger basketball system this city celebrates and its favorite son, Hardaway, manages. Hardaway had little to say about the matter following Sunday’s win: “I’m gonna learn as [everyone else] learns.” And that’s a component to the problem: If Hardaway truly knows nothing about a fifth-year player breaking rules, the coach is part of that problem.
FedExForum splashed an awkward promotion on the scoreboard and concourse screens as fans departed Sunday’s game. “Senior Day” will be celebrated when the Tigers host UAB on March 3rd. The player staring from those screens, representative of this year’s Memphis senior class: Malcolm Dandridge. The guess here is that a Dandridge appearance for Senior Day is a 50/50 proposition, at best.
The Tigers have now won 20 games under Hardaway in each of the coach’s six seasons. Feels like something to celebrate, especially in an up-and-down campaign. But with the scent of scandal in the air? We pause the celebration. Yet again.
How will 2023 be remembered by Memphis sports buffs in, say, 2033? What will stick on the ever-growing timeline of games we play and cheer in the Bluff City?
Let’s start with the good stuff. The Memphis Grizzlies posted an impressive 51-31 record on their way to a second consecutive Southwest Division championship. (How about a banner or two at FedExForum? Let’s get this done.) Forward Jaren Jackson Jr. led the NBA in blocks for a second straight season and earned Defensive Player of the Year honors, only the second Memphis player to take home that prestigious piece of hardware.
On the college level, Penny Hardaway’s Tigers reached the NCAA tournament a second straight year and made some history on the way. In beating Houston to win the American Athletic Conference tournament, the Tigers earned their first victory over a team ranked number-one in the country. Guard Kendric Davis should stick on that timeline of memories having led the AAC in both scoring and assists in his lone season as a Tiger.
Those who follow Memphis Redbirds baseball will remember 2023 for one of the top prospects in the sport, shortstop Masyn Winn. The speed demon with a cannon on his right shoulder set a franchise record with 99 runs scored before a late-season promotion to the St. Louis Cardinals. Then there was slugger Luken Baker. The big first baseman slammed 33 home runs and drove in 98 runs in only 84 games, figures so eye-popping that Baker was named International League MVP at season’s end, the first Redbird in franchise history to receive a league’s top honor.
Alas, none of those news items stole the national spotlight in the way Ja Morant managed … and it wasn’t the All-Star’s heroics on the hardwood. After a Grizzlies loss to the Nuggets in early March, Morant flashed a handgun on social media from a Denver nightclub. The images were disturbing enough to cost Morant the next nine games on the Memphis schedule.
Morant returned to action and put up 45 points in a playoff loss to the Lakers, a reminder of just how high his ceiling could be, but he fell back to Earth, and dramatically, when another gun-toting video surfaced shortly after the Grizzlies’ season ended in Los Angeles. After weeks of deliberation, NBA commissioner Adam Silver handed Morant a 25-game suspension, punishment that would delay the start of Morant’s fifth professional season until late December. Minus Morant and injured center Steven Adams, the Grizzlies went 6-19 over the course of the suspension. For Mid-South NBA fans, 2024 can’t get here soon enough.
Sports are unique in the way our favorite teams and athletes so directly impact a day’s mood. There are football fans in Memphis who gained from the return (after 38 years!) of the USFL’s Memphis Showboats. Affordable tickets to pro football — even in the heat of June — are mood-lifters, to say the least. Our soccer outfit, 901 FC, put together another playoff season in the USL Championship, even as attendance at AutoZone Park sagged from the heights of the club’s 2019 debut season. But a mood-lifter on game night for soccer buffs? Check.
All of this makes Morant’s off-court troubles the kind a fan base suffers most, because Morant the basketball player takes us places no other man in Grizzlies history has taken us. (Recall that Morant made second-team All-NBA before his 23rd birthday.) When poor decisions weigh down Morant the human being, it shifts the fan/athlete perspective into one centered more on compassion than any form of adrenaline-fueled elation.
Let’s remember 2023 for the victories we had, and we had a few. And let’s hope we remember 2023 for the year this town’s most famous athlete became a new kind of hero.
Frank Murtaugh is the managing editor of Memphis Magazine. He writes the columns “From My Seat” and “Tiger Blue” for the Flyer.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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