If you’ve wondered why something you eat pairs perfectly with a particular wine, you can find out at Science of Wine, the annual fundraiser at Memphis Museum of Science & History (MoSH).
Mary Sisson and Jordan BuchananDr. Rosie Richmond and Gerry Dupree
About 400 people attended the event, which was held March 8th. Eighteen food purveyors participated.
Usually, about 600 people attend, says MoSH special events coordinator John Mullikin. “We had to limit the number of ticket sales,” he says. “Only because of Sue.”
Melanie Hill and Tiquan PryorAnthony MendozaJeanie Gundlach and Steve Conley
Sue is the full-scale Tyrannosaurus rex cast in MoSH’s current “SUE: The T-rex Experience” exhibit. Sue takes up three rooms.
The VIP area featured fare from Erling Jensen: The Restaurant, The Grecian Gourmet Kitchen, Pete & Sam’s, Nothing Bundt Cakes, and The Blue Room Restaurant.
Haley Lyerly and Robby CowanEddie, Ana, and John Osadzinski
Guests paired duck and amarena tartlets from Erling Jensen’s with a 2018 Rockmere cabernet, and learned from a poster at the booth: “The wine boasts red and black fruit to marry well with the cherry tartlet, while having soft tannin and enough acidity to support the richness of the duck.” Jensen has participated in all eight of the Science of Wine events.
Joecephus & the George Jonestown Massacre (Credit: Steve Hatley)
We’ve had a great reader response to this week’s cover story on the more metal edge of Memphis music, still thriving even as hip hop and indie pop have come to rule the charts in recent years. And with that have come questions, especially this one: Where can I rock out in Memphis?
Certain venues favor that sweet spot where rock takes on a harder edge without adopting the frenetic pace of punk. Call it hard rock, hair metal, or rawk, chances are you know the sound, and you can be sure to find some at clubs that have long catered to that sound. Minglewood Hall and Graceland Soundstage sometimes book major hard rock acts for that “go big or go home” experience — Tora Tora had a triumphant show at Mingelwood in April, and Cheap Trick just played Graceland. The Hi-Tone Cafe, Growlers, B-Side Memphis, and Railgarten are perfect for that medium rock show vibe, while smaller spaces like the Lamplighter Lounge and Bar DKDC might sometimes host metal-leaning acts with a special intimacy that may require you to wear ear protection.
Of these, the Hi-Tone arguably rocks out the most reliably and consistently. Joecephus and the George Jonestown Massacre, who are about to drop a star-studded tribute to the MC5, Call Me Animal, will be playing there on October 8th.
Cover subject Steve Selvidge will be leading his own band at Railgarten this Friday, September 15th. While his solo shows offer an eclectic mix of styles, this ace guitarist has so internalized Jimmy Page and other heavy music trailblazers that plenty of rock energy is sure to permeate the evening. Note also that Big Ass Truck (of which this author is a founding member), while one of the most eclectic bands of the past 30 years, does rock out righteously at times and features Selvidge as lead axe man; they’re playing Minglewood Hall on October 14.
Gonerfest 20 revs up next week, and can certainly be counted on to bring hard-rocking bands. But lately the festival’s lineup has favored groups beyond category, not quite punk and not quite metal. “We have more post-punkers this year,” says Eric Friedl of Goner Records, before adding that “Poison Ruin from Philadelphia is ‘dungeon metal,’ on Relapse Records, a traditionally metal label. And we just added Drew Owen’s Evil Tree to the Saturday lineup. They are heavy metal from New Orleans.”
Yet the Gonerfest afterparties are just as lit as the festival itself, and that’s where you can see Alicja Trout and Sweet Knives on Thursday, September 28th at Bar DKDC. If you can’t wait that long for that cozy, hard rock experience, consider taking in the guitar artistry of Tamar Love and Mama Honey at Bar DKDC this Friday, September 15th.
Speaking of festivals, the Mempho Music Festival is just around the corner. Such festivals are where that big, heavy riff rock sound lives on, and Mempho is no different, with this year’s lineup featuring the Black Crowes and Dinosaur Jr., representing opposite ends of the Church of the Distorted Guitar.
That instrument, of course, figures heavily into this week’s feature, as it’s being celebrated in twin exhibits at the Museum of Science and History (MoSH), running through October 22nd. What’s not as well known are the musical performances and workshops MoSH is hosting during this time. The next event is Saturday, September 16th: The Way They Play, with Gerald Harris, is a series that spotlights special guest musicians through discussions and demonstrations of their iconic styles, tricks, and techniques. Next month, on October 21st, they’ll host Laser Live: School of Rock, where the three area School of Rock locations (Memphis, Wolfchase, and Germantown), will collaborate, accompanied by a full laser light show.
Finally, don’t forget about that champion of local live music, the Overton Park Shell. The Orion Free Concert Series there will present the Dirty Streets this Friday, September 15th. The following week, on September 23rd, hear some heavy blues rock when both the North Mississippi Allstars and Alvin Youngblood Hart play the Shell’s Country Blues Festival.
“Once the Europeans came to America in the late 1400s — Columbus, colonial invasion, all that stuff — they brought three things with them: guns, foreign influence, and guitars,” says Harvey Newquist, the founder of the National Guitar Museum. “Ever since then, the guitar has been a part of the American nation. … You can track American history through the way people have used guitars, not only for music but also as symbols of what they’re doing.”
Indeed, within the National Guitar Museum’s traveling exhibition “America at The Crossroads: The GUITAR and a Changing Nation” each of the 40 or so guitars represents a snapshot in U.S. history — “whether it’s an emblem or a symbol of the blues and emancipation of enslaved people going out and playing the blues circuit, onto country and Western music that became popular in the late 1800s, onto Hawaiian music which actually changed America in the early 1900s, on up into protest music and folk music,” Newquist says.
The exhibition, now on display at the Museum of Science & History, even has a bit of a Memphis touch, with one of B.B. King’s Lucilles and one of Elvis’ stage guitars on display. It also coincides with the museum’s “Grind City Picks: The Music That Made Memphis” exhibit, which centers around the guitar’s role in Memphis music history. “It’s a celebration of music and Memphis, but it’s not trying to be comprehensive,” says Raka Nandi, director of exhibits and collections. “We have 15 guitars and each one of them has an amazing story.”
From Albert King’s Flying V to The Bar-Kays’ James Alexander’s very first guitar to the guitars of Eric Gales and Sid Selvidge, the exhibit borrows guitars from “the people that you expect to hear about” and guitars from people who are newer to the scene like MonoNeon, Julien Baker, the Lipstick Stains, and Amy LaVere, who has lent her banjo. “These guitarists have really been at the forefront of the evolution of music in Memphis,” Nandi adds.
To accompany “Grind City Picks,” the museum also created a downloadable Spotify playlist for those who visit the exhibit. Additionally, MoSH will host “The Way They Play” every second Saturday of the month for the duration of the exhibit. The event will spotlight special guest musicians, who will demonstrate and talk about their quirks, techniques, and styles. “You’ll get an insider view on how an artist sort of thinks about that, and how they manipulate the instrument and how they’re creative with it,” says Nandi. The museum, she adds, will also host a monthly Laser Live, where Memphis musicians will perform live to a full laser light show in MoSH’s planetarium.
For more information on either exhibits and their programming, visit moshmemphis.com.
“America at the Crossroads: The Guitar and a Changing Nation” and “Grind City Picks: The MUsic That Made Memphis,” Museum of Science & History, on display through October 22.
Eric Papineau and Jon Duncan with yours truly at Science of Beer (Credit: Justin Lawhead)
Heinken was my beer of choice back in the day. That’s about all I drank when I drank beer. So, if there had been a Science of Beer class at the old Memphis State University, I’d probably have made a “C” because of my limited knowledge about the subject. My beer preferences from the time I began drinking beer began with (A.) Schlitz, (B.) Busch, and, finally, (C.) Heineken. Or “greenies.”
Today, beer lovers can learn while they drink at Science of Beer, the annual event at Museum of Science & History (MoSH). This year’s tasting was held January 13th. It also included food as well as information about specific beers and beer in general.
Science of Beer is a “beer festival” where guests get to learn as well as taste different variations of beer, says MoSH director of development Jared Bulluck. “It’s really awesome to see the beer and food community come together to help celebrate an institution such as MoSH. And coming without question to this event.”
Science of Beer 2023 at MoSH (Credit: Michael Donahue)Jon Duncan, Eric Papineau, Wendy and Justin Lawhead at Science of Beer (Credit: Michael Donahue)Lethelea Grayer and Rose Ford at Science of Beer (Credit: Michael Donahue) Cindy, Byron, Connor, and Jackson Phillips at Science of Beer (Credit: Michael Donahue)
Bulluck adds, “Beer vendors also talk about how their specific beers are created. Some of them choose to create a beer for the event. Some bring whatever they’re brewing at the time. It’s an opportunity for brewers to try something new and see how it lands with the guests.”
Memphis Made Brewing Co. created “Shrunken Head” beer for the event in honor of the museum’s popular shrunken-head exhibit. “It’s a Belgian style Wit ale with orange peel and coriander. “
Shrunken Head beer honored MoSh’s iconic shrunken head exhibit (Credit: Jared Bulluck)
“But it tastes like MoSH,” says Bullock. “MoSH tastes like an inspiring, exciting museum.”
The museum held Science of Beer in 2022, but, Bulluck says, “This one was kind of our big hurrah and our big sell-out since COVID. MoSH is excited to have sold-out events again. We had over 700 people. That included vendors.”
And they raised more than $40,000 for the museum, Bulluck adds.
On their way out, guests voted for their favorite beer and food sampled at the event. Here are the winners:
BEER
First: Hampline Brewing
Second: Memphis — Filling Station
Third: Athens Distributing Co. — Thistly Cross
FOOD:
First: Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken
Second: Bosco’s Squared
Third: A tie between Margie’s 901 Homemade Ice Cream and Cakes and Maciel’s Tortas & Tacos.
The next Science of Beer will be held January 12, 2024.
Will Lamb and Grant Van Horn at Science of Beer (Credit: Michael Donahue)Dylan and Hanna Rutherford at Science of Beer (Credit: Michael Donahue)Derek Hardaway and Jimisha McMorris at Science of Beer (Credit: Michael Donahue)Jamie Odom and Robert Bond at Science of Beer (Credit: Michael Donahue) We Saw You
In the wake of the recent tragedies impacting our city, our feeling of safety, and our wellbeing, Memphis’ community spaces are doing what they do best — being there for us. Whether you need to meditate in a serene garden or watch penguins be penguins so you don’t have to think, the organizations you support are here to support you.
♥️ Memphis Botanic Garden is offering free regular admission on Friday, September 9th, 9 a.m. – 6 p.m., to help Memphis heal and to offer a safe outdoor space for all to enjoy and find comfort and light in.
♥️ MoSH recognizes that Memphis needs some love and is offering free admission to all exhibits, movies, shows, and to the Lichterman Nature Center on Friday, September 9th, 10:30 a.m. – 5 p.m.
♥️ Friday, September 9th, Memphis Zoo is offering free general admission to the community to reflect and relax and just exist with the animals. The zoo’s hours are 9 a.m. – 6 p.m., last admission at 5 p.m.
♥️ The Dixon Gallery & Gardens always has free admission and wants to remind us to take advantage of the oasis of safety, calm, and beauty there.
♥️ Memphis Rox will offer free admission on Friday, September 9th. No reservation or special equipment needed.
♥️ The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art will offer free admission Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so that people may reflect, find constancy, and experience the beautiful possibilities of humanity.
We have included all the local sites we know are offering free admission tomorrow, but we may have missed a few. If you are associated with or know of another venue that should be included, please email calendar@memphisflyer.com.
Krisco Kringle (Photo: Courtesy Blue Suede Sisters)
If you’ve ever seen a loud gaggle of nuns of various genders in white face paint, you’ve come across the Blue Suede Sisters, one house of the international Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, known for their community service and advocacy (and outlandish drag). And if you haven’t met them yet, you’re missing out.
Originally from California, Blue Suede Abbess Krisco Kringle says, “Since I was probably in my late 20s, I wanted to be a sister because I admired the work they do. But I was never in the right career, time, city, and I’m in Memphis working and I’m in one of the local bars and sisters walk in, and I was like, ‘Oh. My. God.’ … I said, ‘I’m joining now.’ For me, it’s the impact they have on society and people, and my personal mission is to spread joy [and] bring smiles.”
A few years later, sisters Twinkle VanWinkle and Kat Ion would feel a similar calling. “I have seen sisters and known about them probably since the early ’90s, late ’80s, somewhere in there,” says Twinkle, but she admits that she assumed the group was only for gay men. However, after reaching out to the group about hosting a volunteer event, they explained that the sisterhood is open to anyone, no matter their gender, sexuality, age, religion, etc., and before Twinkle knew it, she was going through the process of becoming a sister herself. “Once a sister gets her little claws in you,” she says, “they just don’t ever let you go. Although Krisco really likes the clowning aspect, what really fills my heart when I work with the sisters is the fact that I have the opportunity to work with so many different charitable organizations and so many different groups. And the fact that we get to dress up and do silly things and get away with stuff that we’d never be able to get away with until we put that white makeup on, it’s an added bonus.”
Sisters Krisco Kringle, Twinkle VanWinkle, and Kat Ion (Photo: Courtesy Blue Suede Sisters)
Indeed, the group aligns itself with a number of community issues, from advocating for the unhoused community to marching for reproductive justice. “If there’s a protest or a need to bring attention to it, having a white-bearded man in a full-on nun outfit with white-face, it brings attention,” Krisco says.
“That is what we would call ministry of presence,” Twinkle adds. “We are present and using our presence to inform, educate, to make people smile. Krisco’s always got a joke or some smart-ass little comment to make. I’m always the one with business cards and contact info.”
“And I’m just running late walking in shoes that I can’t really walk in,” quips Kat.
Kat, for her part, is a novice, yet to become a full-fledged sister, and part of that process is coming up with a novice project for the community’s behalf. Serendipitously, a representative from the Museum of Science & History had reached out for the group’s insight for its exhibition about LGBTQ+ history in Memphis, “Memphis Proud.”
“They said, ‘We want the sisters to be involved,’” Kat says, “And I said, ‘Well, I could sorta do chemistry while dressed up.’” And what unfolded are the Cocktails & Chemistry sessions, at which Kat, as part of her novice project, will lead participants through “actual, real experiments. It’s very college-level and intense, but it’s none of the hard stuff, none of the math, none of the ‘Oh my god, I’m going to fail,’ none of that. It’s all the fun stuff. Without giving too much away, we’re just doing some really cool stuff with metal — stuff that you wouldn’t think that anyone would let me play with but they do.
(Photo: Courtesy Blue Suede Sisters)
“I like to tell people I’m not a mad scientist. I’m a bad scientist.”
In fact, this attitude inspired Kat’s name choice. She explains, “In science, a positive or negatively charged molecule is known as an ion. If it’s a positive ion, it’s known as a cation. If it’s a negatively charged molecule, it’s an anion. I feel like a cation. If it’s positive that means it’s lost electrons, so I’m a few electrons short of a whole atom.”
“We agree with you, but only in love,” Twinkle adds. “Which is why Sister Krisco and I will be mingling and enjoying the signature cocktails while Sister Kat deals with all the chemicals far, far away.”
As such before the experiments, participants will get a chance to mingle and enjoy cocktails with the sisters. Tickets for the 21+ event on Friday, August 19th, can be purchased here. Two sessions will be available to choose from, one at 6 p.m., the other at 8 p.m. Another set of Cocktails & Chemistry sessions will be held on September 16th.
In the meantime, the sisters are hard at work preparing a sexual health educational session for young people in the fall, as well as a job fair for previously incarcerated people. And they’ll be making an appearance at Memphis Public Libraries’ Pride Kickoff at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library on September 3rd. To keep up with the sisters, visit bluesuedesisters.org.
Cocktails & Chemistry, Museum of Science & History, Friday, August 19, 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., $25, 21+.
An image from MoSH’s new Pride exhibits (Courtesy MoSH)
At the beginning of June, the Museum of Science & History (MoSH) opened two exhibitions to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, both nationally and locally, with “Rise Up: Stonewall & the LGBTQ Rights Movement” and “Memphis Proud: The Resilience of a Southern LGBTQ+ Community.”
Bookended by the historical moments of the Stonewall Uprising and Obergefell v. Hodges, “Rise Up” explores how the media and coinciding movements of the latter half of the 20th century shaped the national LGBTQ+ history. Though the exhibition’s timeline begins with Stonewall, Raka Nandi, director of exhibits and collections for MoSH, points out that the story of the LGBTQ+ national rights movement “is not so much driven by the Stonewall Uprising but by the stories of various activists who were a part of the movement. These activists were here long before Stonewall, which was in 1969. When you go in, you learn about other activists who were at the foreground fighting for rights straight people take for granted.”
To complement the traveling “Rise Up” exhibition, MoSH also curated “Memphis Proud” to demonstrate how national moments intersected with local ones as Memphans of different backgrounds and experiences came together in community, creating safe spaces and becoming powerful voices for change. Through artifacts, photographs, oral histories, videos, and more, the exhibition intersperses various LGBTQ+ stories in Memphis, beginning as early as 1876, with Frances Thompson, a formerly enslaved Memphian and survivor of the Memphis Massacre, who was imprisoned for dressing as a woman even though she was assigned male at birth.
An image from MoSH’s new Pride exhibits (Courtesy MoSH)
Though LGBTQ+ people have always lived in Memphis, even before Thompson, before our vocabulary and conceptions of sexual orientation and gender identity even existed, tracing the LGBTQ+ community’s history in Memphis proved a laborious yet gratifying task for MoSH’s curatorial team. “There really isn’t any book about the Memphis LGBTQ+ community,” Nandi says. “There’s a historiography published in 1997 by Daneel Buring — Lesbian and Gay Memphis: Building Communities Behind the Magnolia Curtain. This book is actually out of print. It was kind of the formative text that we started with, but we went to archives. We went to Gaze, Gaiety, Triangle Journal, Focus Magazine, The Unleashed Voice Magazine.”
Yet these archives could go only so far in telling Memphis’ LGBTQ+ history. “You can’t talk about Memphis history without talking about race,” Nandi says. “To uncover the Black LGBTQ+ community story was challenging because their history is not archived anywhere.” So to fill the gaps in the archives, the curatorial team talked one-on-one with people who were there in addition to forming an advisory committee with groups and organizations like OUTMemphis and TriState Black Pride to make sure the museum depicted the community accurately and respectfully.
“We wanted to make sure that this wasn’t an exhibit for straight people. It’s for the LGBTQ+ community and their allies,” Nandi says, adding, “This is not a perfect exhibit. Things are left out, and we know things are left out, … but we were very intentional also to make sure that we were including certain things.”
Both exhibits are on display through September 26th, and the museum will have programming throughout the summer because celebrating Pride shouldn’t be constrained to just June. Events include the Summer Pride Film Series, which will screen Swan Song,To Decadence with Love, Thanks for Everything, and Moonlight; an Intergenerational Conversation Panel Series, a live webinar series covering topics important to the local and national LGBTQ+ community; Cocktails and Chemistry with the Blue Suede Sisters, which promises a night of cocktails, drag nuns, and science experiments; and the museum’s first ever drag show on September 24th. For more information or to purchase tickets for these events, visit moshmemphis.com/celebrate-pride-all-summer.
