Tag: Memphis

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Amy LaVere

Today is Music Video Monday, and we’re flashing back to 2007. 

“Nightingale” was the first video from Amy LaVere‘s debut album This World Is Not My Home. This video, which takes us behind the scenes of the recording sessions that produced the album, was directed by Christopher Reyes and debuted at Live From Memphis’ Music Video Showcase. LaVere is one of the most successful Memphis musicians of the 21st century, and here we see her flashing her thousand-watt smile at the beginning of her solo career. Also in the video are Music+Arts owner Ward Archer and multi instrumentalist extraordinaire Paul Taylor. 

Music Video Monday: Amy LaVere

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

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Tony Manard

This week’s sepia-tinged Music Video Monday harkens back to when the levee broke. 

“Sharon” is by Memphis singer/songwriter by Tony Manard. “The song is a story from the Mississippi River Flood of 1927,” he says. “I wrote it after going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole triggered by reading about Jeff Buckley drowning in the Mississippi.” 

For the video, which he directed, Manard skillfully edited together footage from the 1927 flood and a silent film from the same era. 

Manard will be playing at Otherlands this Saturday, July 18 with Stephen Chopek, Harry Koniditsiotis, and Richard James. 

Music Video Monday: Tony Manard

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

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Lord T. and Eloise

Happy post-holiday weekend Music VIdeo Monday. Did your July 4th look something like this? 

I’m guessing probably not, because no matter how crunk you got over the fireworks and hotdogs, you didn’t get as crunk as Lord T. and Eloise. 

Today’s video is the latest from Memphis’ own time travelling hip hop lords of vast wealth, and it’s a doozy.  

“The Straight Liberace” pretty much sums up Lord T and Eloise’s sartorial philosophy, and this video is as gloriously over the top as the band’s legendary live performances.  I couldn’t decide which screenshot to use from this video, directed by Isaiah Conyers, aka Ikonick, so I’m just using all of them.

Decadence? Check. Women? Check. 25-foot velvet cape? Check. Giant glasses of champagne? Double check. Good taste? Nope. 

If you can’t celebrate excess in a Lord T. and Eloise video, where can you do it? 

Music Video Monday: Lord T. and Eloise

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

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Indie Memphis Film Festival Partners With Starz

Television network and streaming media company Starz has announced a partnership with the Indie Memphis Film Festival to begin during the upcoming festival, running from November 3-10. 

“Starz Digital is pleased to announce sponsorship support for the Indie Memphis Film Festival,” said Mara Winokur, SVP, Digital at Starz. “Our group has shown the film community that we are ‘indie-friendly,’ providing a high-quality home for their movies. We are delighted to continue our collaboration with independent filmmakers by showcasing this event to our partners and consumers alike.”

In addition to sponsor support, Starz will be flying in representatives from its various distribution partners to scout the festival’s offerings. 

“We are thrilled that Starz Digital chose to join Indie Memphis as a Spotlight Sponsor and host guests in our city,” says Ryan Watt, Interim Executive Director of Indie Memphis. “Sponsor support is critical to the success of our festival, Starz Digital will have a significant presence at the event, joining presenting sponsor
Duncan Williams Inc. It means so much to have an industry leader in digital media endorse what we are doing at Indie Memphis.”

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We Recommend We Recommend

Don’t Be Afraid of the Josh McLane Comedy Special at the Hi-Tone

CREDIT: Eric Huber

The title “hardest-working man in show business” gets tossed around lightly at times, but it is certainly an appropriate moniker for local creative Josh McLane. Not only is McLane a highly respected drummer around town with bands such as Hombres, Heels, and Special Agent Cooper (just to name a few), he’s also a sturdy presence in the burgeoning local stand-up comedy scene.

But wait, there’s more! He’s also a podcaster, radio host, pro-wrestling ring announcer, independent film writer/producer/actor, and show promoter. How does he keep it all together?

“I enjoy doing a lot of things,” McLane says. “I get bored easily. Comedy is a main focus, but so is playing music and making sure my wife isn’t tired of it yet.”

Eric Huber

Josh McLane

McLane started doing stand-up more than seven years ago on a dare from local comic Mike Degnan, who said McLane was “funny enough” to get up at an open-mic. By his own admission, McLane’s early forays into comedy were somewhat one-note (“I was just screaming at everyone,” he says), but he has since developed a more nuanced, heartfelt approach to his performances and is now easily one of the scene’s unique and most consistently funny voices.

On Wednesday, McLane will tape his first stand-up comedy record live at the Hi-Tone. The event is called “The Don’t Be Afraid of Josh McLane Comedy Special,” named after the successful monthly show “Don’t Be Afraid of the Comedy, Memphis” that McLane hosts at the venue. The idea was born out of yet another dare — this time from Katrina Coleman, a fellow Memphis comedian who released her own debut album, Womanchild, last year.

“Josh has emerged as a reluctant mentor and role model to the other comics with the longest-running and strongest showcase in town,” Coleman says, who will serve as host for the show. “His stand-up is somewhere between a hellfire-spouting evangelist for reason and a chain-smoking stitch.”

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Music Music Blog

House of Lightning and WRONG, Wednesday at the Hi-Tone

House of Lighting play the Hi-Tone this Wednesday.

      WRONG (yep…all caps) and House of Lightning are newer names in the all-things-heavy underground, but boast impressive membership pedigrees that their respective sounds each expand upon. WRONG is a quartet some readers may have caught opening for Nothing and Torche at the Hi-Tone back in March. Torche’s drummer, Rick Smith, is in this touring version of WRONG, which also features Eric Hernandez, formerly of the great and sadly overlooked Capsule. WRONG covered Nirvana’s “Stay Away” on this year’s Whatever Nevermind tribute compilation, released by Robotic Empire, and that label is also responsible for last October’s four-song debut 12” EP, Just Giving. Freshly signed to Relapse Records, as per a press release issued on June 17th, WRONG is probably sick of reading references to early Helmet, but with a sound this reminiscent of the Strap It On (1990) and Meantime (1992) albums, from riffs to vocal delivery, what did they expect? They are clearly super-fans of the noise-rock/alt-metal pioneers.

     House of Lightning is a duo (known to tour as a 3-piece w/ a keyboardist) that was founded in 2012 by Henry Wilson, longtime drummer for Floor, one of the many members that went through Cavity’s revolving-door lineup, and founding guitarist in the mid-00s band, Dove. Wilson, who covers guitar, synth, and vocals in House of Lightning, is joined by his former Dove band mate John Ostberg on drums. Though the band previewed tracks online as early as 2012, activity surrounding Floor reunion shows and the trio’s amazing comeback album Oblation put the House of Lightning debut full-length, Lightworker, on hold, though it was finally released last October on Fair Warning Records. House of Lightning recalls Floor and Torche only in the sense that the riffs are huge and the vocals soar with a golden-throated grace. While touches of Torche, Floor, Dove, and Capsule can be heard on Lightworker, the album is defined by what it miraculously manages to invoke while avoiding the high risk of overt, try-too-hard failure: Van Halen’s last three albums during the original David Lee Roth era, late-70s Rush, Thin Lizzy, the busiest riffing of original Bay Area thrash, the sadly overlooked and misunderstood late-90s/early-00s post-hardcore enigma Party of Helicopters, and more playful Melvins moments (along with that band’s rhythm section, Big Business). In truth, the band sounds unlike anything operating within the topical, forward-thinking heavy music scene.   

House of Lightning and Wrong, 9 p.m. at the Hi-Tone Cafe. $10.

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From My Seat Sports

The Memphis Redbirds’ Dan Johnson: A Long Odyssey

CREDIT: Roger Cotton

Roger Cotton

Dan Johnson

The Memphis Redbirds were stumbling along with a record of 8-15 on May 4th when their parent club in St. Louis signed Dan Johnson. The transaction didn’t make headlines, not even here in Memphis. Johnson had been released by the Cincinnati Reds two weeks earlier after playing nine games with Louisville, the Reds’ Triple-A affiliate in the International League.

Two days later, Johnson slammed a 3-run, walk-off homer at AutoZone Park to give Memphis a 6-5 win over Colorado Springs. It was Johnson’s first home run in a Redbirds uniform . . . and the 240th of his lengthy minor-league career. (Only Toledo’s Mike Hessman has hit more among active players.) Since the 35-year-old slugger’s arrival, Memphis has turned its season around, going 26-15 and climbing back into contention in its division of the Pacific Coast League.

Johnson is Crash Davis — of Bull Durham fame — come to life. He played his first professional game (with Vancouver in the Oakland A’s system) in 2001 and his first game at the Triple-A level (with Sacramento) in 2003. Unlike Kevin Costner’s character, though, Johnson has had some time in The Show, appearing in 431 games with five major-league teams. He hit the most famous home run in Tampa Bay Rays history, a ninth-inning shot in the last game of the 2011 season that tied the score and allowed the Rays to later clinch a playoff berth. But Johnson’s big-league achievements have been interspersed with stints in the bushes. He’s one of two men in baseball history to be named MVP of both the Pacific Coast League (with Sacramento in the River Cats’ 2004 championship season) and the International League (with, you guessed it, the Durham Bulls in 2010).

The secret to sustained happiness when traveling so many miles — over so many years — on the baseball map? According to Johnson, it’s as simple as being a good teammate.

“I enjoy being around the guys,” he says, “and helping out. If you get the label of being a bad clubhouse guy, or selfish . . . teams don’t want that around. It wears on other players. When I first got to Triple-A, it was unheard of for a young guy to be at that level. You respected the veterans. I learned from the vets in front of me, and listened to what they had to say.”

Johnson’s felt the sting of being traded or demoted, but each time has dusted off any bitterness, packed his gear, and headed for the next franchise and next challenge. “You can’t feel sorry for yourself,” he says. “I got traded from a good situation in Houston [last spring] to Cincinnati. From the beginning, it didn’t seem right, and it never was right. But if it didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to play for the Cardinals. Things happen for a reason.”

Johnson won’t accept credit for the Redbirds’ improved play since his arrival. (Despite not appearing with the Redbirds in April, Johnson is second on the team with 28 RBIs.) “It wasn’t that the talent wasn’t here,” says Johnson. “We just needed to put it together; change the mindset a little bit. This game is very humbling. If you stay down, you’re never going to win. You go out there and know that you can win, instead of just hoping.”

The Cardinals’ system is the eighth in which Johnson has played, and he recognized a different culture within days of his arrival in Memphis. “It’s been awesome,” he says. “The way you go about your business here, the way everybody’s pulling for everyone else. It’s not something you see often. The guys here are rooting for the players with the big-league club. In a lot of organizations it’s, ‘I hope that guy stinks, or that guy’s hurt.’ There’s no negativity here. The value this organization brings, and the tradition in St. Louis is amazing. The way they teach things, the thought process.”

Johnson’s entire family — his wife and four children — have joined him for a summer in Memphis, one he hopes takes a detour through St. Louis. He’s seen much of the baseball world (including the 2009 season in Japan), but has yet to land the sport’s most prized possession. “There’s nothing like the playoffs in the big leagues,” says Johnson. “There’s no better feeling as a baseball player. I don’t have a [championship] ring, and I’d love to get one. I’d love to play till I’m 100. Until I can’t compete, I’m going to go out there and try to get a job and make a difference.”

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: John Kilzer

By any measure, John Kilzer has had an eventful life. He’s been a college basketball player, an English professor, an internationally renowned recording artist, and a Methodist minister. Now, at age 57, he has put out a new album of original songs on Memphis’ Archer Records. 

“California” is the second video from Hide Away. The song is about trying and failing to make it in the wilds of Hollywood. Director Melissa Anderson Sweazy and editor Laura Jean Hocking put Memphis actor Drew Smith back in the silent era for this beautiful and poignant video—and be sure to watch for the cameo by Drew’s son Hank. 

Music Video Monday: John Kilzer

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

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Editorial Opinion

B.B. King, the Maestro

CREDIT: Randy Miramontez | Dreamstime.com

Randy Miramontez | Dreamstime.com

B.B. King

For all that has been written about Memphis as a popular-music foundry, as the major originating point of blues and rockabilly and soul and so much else that the world now takes for granted, there is one aspect of the city’s endemic sound that is often overlooked, even in otherwise reasonable and authoritative accounts. 

That has to do with the elements of precision and control that underlie all the city’s characteristic musical products. From the tightly energized backing given to Elvis Presley’s earliest Sun recordings by Scotty Moore’s electric guitar and Bill Black’s bass to the massed harmonics of the Memphis Horns over at Stax/Volt, our city’s musical exemplars would pioneer in all the ways in which the raw and elemental stuff of life can be captured live and contained. That, if you will, is “the Memphis sound.”

No one represents this defining characteristic better than B.B. King, the maestro of the blues guitar, who died last week at age 89 and rightly received plaudits and eulogies from all over the globe. What distinguished B.B.’s playing was his unique single-string style, in which notes were played one at a time, rather than in ensemble or chord form, and each note sang its own song of sadness or joy or playfulness or indefinable longing. Each note — held or clipped, bent or played straight, isolated or in sequence — was an infinite universe of meaning.

Though B.B. King was no academic scholar, his knowledge of musical properties was profound and arose both from the gigs he did and from his path-finding service in the late ’40s and early ’50s as a disc jockey on Memphis’ WDIA-AM, the nation’s first all-black radio station. 

It was as a performer, though, that he was best known and will remain so, through recordings that will be played as long as there are means to hear them and places on earth where people are free to do so. B.B. King was not just a musical maestro, he was an emissary of civilization itself. God willing, he is one thrill that will never be gone.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Indie Memphis To Focus On Locals For 2015 Festival

At an event in Midtown Monday night, Indie Memphis announced that the 2015 edition of the film festival would be held in Overton Square on November 3-10. 

The 18th annual festival, the first held since the recent departure of Executive Director Erk Jambor will be spread out over an entire week to allow festivalgoers an opportunity to see more films. For the past several years, the festival has been a one-weekend affair with more than 40 features spread out over as many as 6 screens at once, often creating impossible choices for audiences. The festival date has also been moved away from Halloween weekend, which has hurt attendance in the last two years. 

“We want to give our audience more opportunities to see these great independent films. The extended festival will give people more options to enjoy the festival on both the weekend and weeknights. It also reduces the number of simultaneous screenings for our dedicated members who want to see a bunch of the films,” says Indie Memphis Board President Ryan Watt.

The call for entries to the features competition this year is open only to filmmakers from the Mid-South area. There is no entry fee for hometowner films submitted before July 17, thanks to a grant from ArtsMemphis. The shorts competition will be open to films from all over the world. National and international feature films will be chosen to screen at the festival on a curated basis.

For the second year, the Indie Grants program will award two Memphis filmmakers $5,000 each to produce a short film for the 2016 festival. Two additional grants for $500 will be offered to first time filmmakers from the Memphis area. Filmmakers can apply for the grants at the Indie Memphis website.  

Watt also announced a national search for a new executive director.