Music Video Monday is on a Thursday and its time to PANIC!
On Friday, March 31 at the New Daisy Theatre, Dead Soliders is throwing a record release party for their third release The Great Emptiness. The band’s electrifying live shows and careful song craft have made them one of Memphis’ favorites, landing them on the Memphis Flyer’s Best of Memphis Best Band list. For the new record, guitarist and vocalist Michael Jasud says, third time’s the charm. ““If you make furniture, is the first table you make going to be the best? No! The last table you make is going to be the best one…If you want longevity, then lightening in a bottle is not the way to go about it. If it happens by accident, that might make a great record, but it doesn’t necessarily speak to the artistry behind it.”
“Prophets of Doom” is is the galloping first single from The Great Emptiness. The band indulges in a little media criticism, calling out the Fox News fearmongers and self-serving propagandists with lines like “We’ve got to keep you scared to keep our jobs.” In the video, directed by Jasud and shot and edited by Joey Miller and Sam Shansky, the band hits the streets to get the wrd out about the dangers of Candy Crush invites.
Music Video Monday Special Thursday Edition: Dead Soldiers
For more about Dead Soldiers new record, check out the music feature in next week’s Flyer. Meanwhile, I’ll leave with a little more media criticism from Jasud: “I think the modern comic book movie is one of the worst things that’s ever happened to cinema. They’ve made enough of them, they’re using all the money, Hollywood won’t take chances any more, because they can just spend $300 million on an X-Men movie that has the exact same plot as every other superhero movie. I don’t care about aliens destroying the earth any more. I don’t care about ANYTHING destroying the Earth. In fact, I want something to destroy the Earth for real. I don’t want to go to work tomorrow. So I guess that’s why people go to see superhero movies, but I don’t like them, either.”
And now, Music Video Monday brings you a new Weirdo.
I know what you’re saying. “If there’s one thing Memphis has plenty of, it’s weirdos.” But we (and by “we”, I mean “I’, because it’s pretty much just me doing this MVM thing) have a new weirdo for you, and he’s the kind of high quality weirdo you expect from Memphis. His name is A Weirdo From Memphis, and you’ve got to respect the fact that he’s just putting it all out there like that. Not only does he have a smooth, smart flow, but he tops it all off with a floppy pink anime hat.
In “America’s Perverted Gentlemen (Drawls)”, he’s joining bass virtuoso MonoNeon for a towed skateboard trip down Madison Avenue. The crew makes a short stop at venerable Memphis smoke shop Whatever, because this kind of weird doesn’t just make itself. You have to work at it.
Both artists come from the IMAKEMADBEATS Unapologetic crew, and he also directed the snack-sized music video. Peep it:
Today’s Music Video Monday is gonna patch things up.
We’re going to wish you a happy first day of spring with a world premiere from Memphis duo Idle & Wild. Caleb Sigler and Sara Jo Cavitch have been playing together since meeting in church in 2014, and they have just released their first single “Come A Little Closer”, a bubbly homage to togetherness recorded at the Gove Studio. “Every person involved was not only someone we respect at what they create,” Sigler said, “but also a dear friend.” The song is now available on iTunes, Amazon, and Bandcamp. Idle&Wild will be performing at Lafayette’s Music Room on Thursday, March 30.
This video, directed by Noah Glenn of Choose901, depicts Singler and Cavitch as relationship repair service, helping out a pair of lovers in a spaghetti fueled spat. It’s joyful ending montage of happy couples is just what you need to brighten your Monday.
Music Video Monday: Idle & WIld
If you would like to see your music video on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
Jennifer Burris is back as Crown Vox, Memphis’ gothic synth pop queen, with a world premiere! In “Ruler Of The Ball”, she’s taking drastic steps to maintain her hold on the realm—and some of the steps are backwards. Vox’s spooky, atmospheric song was produced by Eliot Ives at Young Ave. Sound. The video was directed by Mitch Martin, and shot by Gabe DeCarlo in the Annesdale Mansion. Robert Fortner returns in his role as Vox’s chief antagonist, a role he originated in last year’s “No Loving But Yours” video, and this time he’s brought along a squad of bannermen. I think I speak for all music video directors in saying that we hope to one day make something that needs Six Corolino’s services as weapons master. So while we’re waiting for the belated Game Of Thrones season premiere, here’s four minutes of sinister, sword-wielding bliss.
Music Video Monday: Crown Vox
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
Valerie June announced her return with “Shakedown,” a hill-country drone textured with keys and handclaps over a minimal, driving beat. The song stays coiled like a spring until the bridge, where the band cuts loose for a few wailing bars before settling back into the swing.
The Valerie June who is sporting glamorous polka dot slacks and a gold, low-slung electric guitar is very different from the woman who, only a few short years ago, was strumming an acoustic and singing her tunes in Midtown’s Java Cabana. But she says the songs she sings on her new album, The Order of Time, have their roots in the Bluff City. “I wrote the songs over the course of 10 or 12 years. Some when I was living in Memphis, some when I was on the road, some when I was in Brooklyn, and some when I was off in different places. That was about a decade of my life. It all takes time.”
Valerie June
Her songs emerge intuitively, bubbling up from her subconscious. “Normally, I just write by hanging out and being around. As I’m living my life, I hear voices. The voices come and they sing me the songs, and I sing you the songs. I sing what I hear.”
“Astral Plane” highlights a new confidence in her voice, which ranges from thin and ethereal to a soaring mezzo-soprano. She says during the six-month recording process for The Order of Time, which ranged from Vermont to Brooklyn to her parents’ living room in Humboldt, Tennessee, she found her footing as a bandleader.
“I had a lot more confidence in the studio than I did with Pushing Against a Stone. That was my first record, so I was still in a place of learning what being in the studio was really supposed to be like. I learned from some pros. So by the time I hit the studio this time, I was like ‘Yeah! I’m ready! Let’s go! I’m going to express myself, say what’s on my mind, dance, and have fun.’ Before I was more quiet and reserved. So it’s two very different approaches.
“On this record, you hear the musicians learning how I speak. I don’t read or write music, so I just have to tell them in colors and feelings and ideas, kind of getting them in the places where they can really absorb the songs. When I get the songs, I go to places. They take me places. I wrote my favorite songs in Memphis, and some of them are on this record. Some of them were in dream states, some were in waking states. These are beautiful places where the songs take me, and I have to take the musicians there with me in order to be able to get them to feel it so much that they can work with me.”
Valerie June recently kicked off a year on the road with sold-out shows in London and Paris, but the excitement of the new record is tempered with loss. On the same day, she lost both her father, music promoter Emerson Hockett (“He was amazing. He was so good, and he encouraged me all the time. He would run down to Memphis just to be with me.”) and one of her musical mentors, soul legend Sharon Jones. “It’s been a lot of loss in the last couple of months.”
On Friday, Feb. 17th, Valerie June will return to Memphis with a show at the Hi-Tone. “Please just tell Memphis that I love them. I love them very much, and I wouldn’t be who I am and where I am today without Memphis.”
Find a friend and settle in for Music Video Monday.
To soften the blow of the post-Super Bowl Monday morning, here’s “Ferris and Effie”, the first video from Memphis dream rockers Pillow Talk. Directed by lead singer Joshua Cannon—who, it just so happens, is a Flyer staffer— with Sam Leathers and Nate Packard shooting and editing, “Ferris and Effie” is all about hanging around with that special someone, even if she’s inanimate. Pillow Talk will celebrate the release of their new LP This Is All Pretend at the Hi Tone on Friday, March 31.
Music Video Monday: Pillow Talk
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
The CMT series filmed in Memphis under the name Million Dollar Quartet will premiere on Feb. 23, 2017—but it won’t be called Million Dollar Quartet.
The eight-episode series is based on the 2010, Tony Award-winning jukebox musical by Floyd Mutrux and Colin Escott. Today’s announcement of the premiere date was accompanied by the news that the show will now be called Sun Records. No reason was given for the name change.
The series, which was filmed in Memphis in the spring and summer of 2016, stars Chad Michael Murray as Sam Phillips, comedian Billy Gardell as Colonel Tom Parker, Drake Milligan as Elvis Presley, Kevin Fonteyne as Johnny Cash, Christian Lees as Jerry Lee Lewis, Jonah Lees as Jimmy Swaggart, Trevor Donovan as Eddy Arnold, Keir O’Donnell as Dewey Phillips, Jennifer Holland as Becky Phillips, Margaret Anne Florence as Marion Keisker, Kerry Holliday as Ike Turner, and Dustin Ingram as Carl Perkins.
Music Video Monday gonna slow it down a little this week.
Richard James’ reputation as one of Memphis’ punk wild men is well deserved. By the end of his raucous garage sets, he can end up singing from atop the bar, or preaching punk aphorisms while prone on the floor. But his song “Children of the Dust” shows a much chiller side of the Special Rider—an echoy slab of one-man bedroom psychedelia.
“The song came out of watching movies late at night,” he says. “It is named after the 1995 movie that starred Sidney Poitier and inspired by classic, European, horror films like Tombs of The Blind Dead. ”
For the video, Memphis filmmaker George Hancock captured footage of James on the banks of the Mississippi, and then layered on altered landscapes to create a dreamscape.
Music Video Monday: Richard James
If you would like to see your music video on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
To a lot of America in the 1970s, it seemed like punk rock just appeared out of nowhere to challenge the content mediocrity of the status quo. But that’s not really how it happened. Punk did not spring forth fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. It was shaped and midwifed by a series of writers, hucksters, and hustlers, the most prominent of whom was a New York promoter named Danny Fields.
Fields is the subject of Danny Says, a new documentary directed by Brenden Toller, that will have a free screening at Studio on the Square on Tuesday, November 22 at 7:30 PM. The film explores the lasting impact the hype man had on American music, from his promotion of The Doors to his careful shaping of the rough public images of artists like Iggy Pop and The Ramones, whose song about Fields gives the film its name. Goner Records and Magnolia Pictures are sponsoring the screening, which, although it is free, does require a ticket to get in. Passes are available at Goner Records while supplies last.
Danny Says Reveals Untold Story of the Punk Revolution
Thursday night sees the long-awaited national debut of Morgan Jon Fox’s streaming series Feral.
“It’s been almost exactly two years since we wrapped filming,” says Fox, the pioneering Memphis director whose films like This Is What Love In Action Looks Like and Blue Citrus Hearts have been attracting acclaim for more than a decade.
Seth Daniel in Feral
Feral is the flagship original series of a new streaming service called Dekkoo, which will bring LBGT themed films and series to a national audience. It was originally scheduled for release last summer, when I wrote this in-depth Memphis Flyer cover feature about the show. “I’m so excited for it to finally come out, but there were some moments there, when we had so many supposed release dates, that I was a little worried, to be honest. You hear nightmare stories about projects that never end up being released, for whatever complications. But as it tuns out, it’s just that it’s a brand new company that took a lot longer than they planned to get their footing.”
The Dekkoo app is available on Roku and Apple TV, or through Google Play and iTunes, and boasts “the largest streaming collection of gay-centric entertainment available boasting a larger selection than Netflix or Amazon Video.”
Morgan Jon Fox’s Series Feral Celebrates National Premiere With Local Screening (2)
“I feel great about it,” he says. “A lot of things aligned perfectly in my head. I took some time off from my career to work on other, bigger productions. I worked with Craig Brewer on his projects, and I worked as a producer and assistant director on other projects all around the country. It was truly like going to film school. Everything aligned perfectly for crew members to help make it and edit it and actors to be in it. All of those things fell into place in a way I feel lucky and fortunate for. “
In the two years since filming completed, many of the show’s stars have seen their careers take an upward trajectory, such as singer/songwriter Julian Baker. “I saw her for the first time in my back yard at a going away party for my friend Ryan Azada. She played solo acoustic, just a few songs. I knew that she was in a band with some guys playing harder stuff, but this was the first time I had seen her. It was an incredible moment that I’ll never forget…the lights in the back yard, all these people there to say goodbye to a good friend of hours. It was a golden moment. I knew this person was going to be huge star. Her music was coming from an emotional, authentic space, and that was the space I was working out of to create Feral. She hadn’t even recorded anything except on her iPhone. The songs on her Soundcloud page had from 5-30 listens. By the time it got around to actually being released, I had to work with her publicist, who had to approve the way we mentioned her in our press releases. She had a team now. Memphis has always had a hotbed for music, but people like Julian Baker don’t come around all the time. She’s a rare being.”
The series other big music stars, the Midtown punk band Nots, just opened Gonerfest last weekend before embarking on a huge east coast tour. Female lead Leah Beth Bolton is now an on-air reporter for Fox 24 in Memphis. “She’s doing traffic, which I think is so cool. It’s perfect for her personality. She brought so much light to the project. Her character is essential, because there so much depressing shit happening, and dudes taking themselves very seriously. She inserts a necessary emotional perspective. ‘Stop being so self-absorbed, dudes!’”
Breezy Lucia
Leah Beth Bolton, Chase Brother, Seth Daneil, and Jordan Nichols in Feral.
Ryan Masson and Seth Daniel are now working actors in Los Angeles, and Jordan Nichols is a stage actor and director who, Fox says, “is acting and directing every play, and winning awards every year. He’s a dedicated actor who works very hard, but he has a natural inclination.”
“There are a lot of stereotypical gay characters presented in media. They tend to be comic relief, or stuck up fashion designers. There’s also stereotypes about the South: It’s backwards, the Bible Belt, all those things. I’ve dealt with those things in my previous work, and I didn’t have a desire or energy to continue to tackle those things.”
Breezy Lucia
Seth Daniel and director Morgan Jon Fox on the set of Feral
Fox says his goal for Feral was to present a different view of life in the South “I just wanted to reflect what it was like for me growing up in this Midtown community of artists, where everyone’s kind of smushed together. You go to the Cove, which isn’t a gay bar. You go to Otherlands, which isn’t a gay coffee shop. When you’re a Midtown artist, you’re a Midtown artist, whether you’re a queer artist or a straight artist. I love that about this community. The problems that affect me and young people in their 20s in Midtown are the same problems that anyone in our position would deal with. They’re universal. I just wanted them to be people in this situation who intermingle in a very regular way. I didn’t want them to be a community of wealth. I didn’t want them only going to gay bars or going gay things. I didn’t want them to be a part of a South that is hateful or pressing them…I wanted the fact that they’re gay to be unremarkable.”
Fox and Dekkoo will host a release party at Studio on the Square on Thursday, Oct. 6, where the first five episodes of the series will be shown on the big screen. Showtime will be at 7:30 PM.
Morgan Jon Fox’s Series Feral Celebrates National Premiere With Local Screening
Breezy Lucia 
Breezy Lucia