Tag: P&H Cafe

Categories
Music Music Blog

Dive Bar Love Fest to Benefit the P&H Cafe

Chinese Connection Dub Embassy (Photo courtesy CCDE)

The P&H Cafe holds a special place in the hearts of Memphis music and comedy fans. Its walls carried the memorabilia and images of decades of shows where the performer/audience divide was blurry, to say the least. Many a night of inspiration took flight there, and it even inspired the title of Craig Brewer’s first feature film, The Poor & Hungry. The venue carried on for over 30 years at 1532 Madison Avenue until a few months ago, when new property development in the area forced them to close.

That has now inspired a small army of performers to pitch in with a fundraiser for the beloved venue. “Dive Bar Love Fest” will run from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. this Saturday in the Minglewood Hall parking lot, with food and drinks offered by B-Side Bar.

I spoke with the event’s organizer, singer/songwriter Tiffany Harmon, to get the scoop on what will be, for many, the first live musical outing in over a year.

Memphis Flyer: How did the Dive Bar Love Fest get started?

Tiffany Harmon: A few months ago, I brought up the idea of a benefit with Matt [Edwards], who’s one of the partners, with Robert [Fortner], at the P&H. A good friend talked him into doing a GoFundMe for the place. I think they’ve gotten $19,000 with that so far.

Right now they’re without a location to move to. They’re trying to find a new location that’s not being ruled and regulated by one of these big tycoons. It’s kind of like Monopoly in Memphis right now. So sad. Especially with the pandemic. That’s put a lot of local businesses into a vulnerable place where they can get easily kicked out.

What’s your relationship to the P&H? What’s it mean to you?

I’m just a musician and supporter of that place. I’m a longtime regular, and I used to host the open mic nights there for five years. This benefit is going to be 15 acts, mostly artists who have frequented the bar or headlined there.

We’ll also have five to eight comics doing five minute spots between the band breakdowns. We’re going to have mostly acoustic acts during the day, except for one punk band, the Lipstick Stains. And later in the evening we’ll have the other full bands: Pinky’s, Louise Page with a trio, Javi and the Hyenas, and Blvck Hippie. Chinese Connection Dub Embassy is headlining at 9:40.

What’s your goal for this P&H benefit, beyond raising money?

I hope this opens up the conversation about gentrification and how it’s affecting all of our bars. Everybody has been seeing this happen, where people come in and bring money and development companies. And we’re seeing a few of our favorite bars struggling. With Madison Avenue having all these apartment buildings and hotels popping up, it’s driving everybody out of the neighborhood. It starts with apartment tenants and people in low income areas, and that’s what really should be talked about, but bars and the culture of the city is being visibly affected too, now.

Featured performers will include:

Music:

Bigger Fish
Chris Davenport
Jeremy Stanfill
Ben Abney
Yubu Music
Ben Mitchell
Kitty Dearing
Alejandros Paredes
Luke White
Crockett Hall
Louise Page
Pinky’s
Blvck Hippie
Javi and the Hyenas
Chinese Connection Dub Embassy

Comedians:

Kate Lucas
Ross Turner
Josh McLane
Jowa Horn
Hunter Sandlin
John Miller
Mo Alexander

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

901 Comics Hosts P&H Fundraiser Saturday

CREDIT: Facebook/The P&H Cafe

More than babies are born after a few beers at the P&H Cafe. Sometimes two drunk guys mutually consent to the birth of a comic book store.

“I worked at the P&H Cafe for six or seven years,” says Jaime Wright, co-owner of 901 Comics. “Shannon and I conceived 901 Comics on a few bar napkins over more than a few beers.”

Wright’s business partner Shannon Merritt also owns 901 Games with his wife Erin. According to Wright, Merritt opened a lot of doors for him, including a job working with Stan Lee. The P&H Cafe is a very important part of their lives. When they heard the news, they had to help.

Facebook/The P&H Cafe

The secret origins of 901 Comics have their roots in the P&H Cafe.

The P&H GoFundMe page states, “Due to some inconvenient and unforeseen circumstances, the P&H Cafe is unfortunately having to move to a different location.”

The new location is thus far undisclosed; rumor has it that the Crosstown area might be the lucky location to welcome the beloved dive bar. Wherever it moves, it’s going to cost a lot of money. In addition to the GoFundMe, a benefit is planned for this Saturday. Twenty percent of all 901 Comics sales will be donated to the cause. Enter to win a Stan Lee signed comic book, participate in auctions, and enjoy live music at the Cooper-Young Gazebo featuring Switchblade Kid. This is a socially distanced benefit. Cosplay attire is encouraged.

Wear your superhero mask.

A Benefit for the P&H Cafe, 901 Comics, 2162 Young, Saturday, Dec. 5, noon-6 p.m., free.

Categories
News News Blog

P&H Owner Worries New Development Could Hurt Business

CREDIT: P&H

P&H


The Memphis and Shelby County Land Use Control Board (LUCB) voted 9 to 1 Thursday on a new Midtown development that Matthew Edwards, one of the owners of the P&H Cafe worries could potentially hurt his business.


Developers 1544 Madison Partners want to construct a four-building, gated apartment complex close to the P&H, between Madison, Court, and Avalon. Because the developers want to gate off the complex, including an alley that P&H-goers often travel down, Edwards believes this will limit access to the bar.

“We’ve been working on the business, trying to keep it up and build it up,” he said ahead of Thursday’s meeting. “And for it to just be shot down, or shut down is kind of frustrating.”

Edwards adds that the issue is not with the development itself, but with the gate around it that would restrict accessibility.

“That’s the balance that we often have to deal with in the world of planning.” Don Jones, with the Office of Planning and Development said.

But developers said they’ve altered their original plans to only close parts of the alley and to also include turnarounds to help traffic flow better.

[pullquote-1]

Edwards’ other key concern is how the development would affect parking availability for P&H customers. The cafe’s rear parking lot on Court would be “rendered useless,” while some of the on-street parking spots on Madison will be eliminated to make way for the apartment entrances, Edwards said.

He said his patrons will likely have to compete with visitors of the complex for the remaining street parking.

“If we’re losing street parking, and we lose our actual property parking, then are we going to have to move?” Edwards said. “Or are we going to lose business or go out of business? You don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Parking will especially be scarce on nights when shows are scheduled for the P&H, as well as both the event venue nextdoor at 1524 Madison and Minglewood Hall, which is directly across the street. This is already an issue, Edwards says, recalling last weekend when cars lined Madison in both directions during shows.

Garbage pick-up, fire and police department access, and noise complaints are other concerns of Edwards.

One building of the proposed development is planned to go directly against the P&H’s building, and Edwards said this could present a noise problem.

Development plan


“We have comedy shows and we have bands, and sometimes the bands get loud,” he said. “These people know they’re moving in with a artist, music venue right next to them though.”

The P&H is not the only business likely to be affected by the development, Edwards says. Closing off the alley will also limit access to the many-decades-old carwash between Avalon and Willett, next to the large vacant lot.

“This could shut them down,” he said.

Thirteen people spoke in opposition to the development at the board’s meeting ahead of the vote.

One of them, Sam Goff, president of the Evergreen Neighborhood Association said he is not opposed to the project, and that any concerns he has would be allayed if a parking study was done prior to construction.

Others, owners of surrounding businesses, including the carwash and a recording studio on the south side of the street, expressed similar concerns about parking and traffic flow on Madison.

Owner of Cotton Row Recording said this development could make the street “musicless,” as musicians will likely struggle to find parking with enough room to unload large equipment.

An online petition opposing the plans was recently launched by Edwards’ business partners and so far has received more than 1,600 signatures of support.

Across the road, owner of Minglewood, Trey DeHart, has a different outlook than Edwards on their potential neighbor. He calls the development “a great idea.” With plenty of parking for his patrons, DeHart said he doesn’t expect the complex to have a negative effect on Minglewood.

[pullquote-2]

“Any kind of growth is a good thing, especially places to live and that bring people to the area,” DeHart said. “So I welcome the new neighbors.”

The development plans still have to be approved by the Memphis City Council before the developers can move forward.

Categories
News News Blog

Opposition Arises to Complex That Would Limit Access to P&H

P&H Cafe


A petition was recently launched to prevent the closure of the one-way alley behind the P&H Cafe on Madison.

The alley would become closed and gated off if developer 1544 Madison Partners’ proposal of constructing a 230-unit apartment complex in four building near there comes to fruition.

The four buildings would be bounded by Madison, Court, Avalon, and the property that contains the P&H, and would only be accessible with two gated driveways on Madison and one on Court.

Petitioners say this will hinder public access to the P&H, as the one-way alley behind the cafe would no longer be an option.

“We are asking the old and new alike who have found refuge and came to love this historical local watering hole to help us fight against this closure,” the petition reads.

Petitioners are also concerned about the effect the new complex could have on parking availability for P&H goers.

“Parking is already a hassle as it is,” another comment reads. “ Let’s not make it worse.”

So far the petition, posted to the site Care2, has 1,201 supporting signatures, but that number is rising steadily.

[pullquote-1]

“The P&H is a Memphis institution,” one supporters comment reads. “Please don’t keep chipping away at the character of Midtown by letting spoiled-brat developers get whatever they demand.”

The developer’s application will be heard by the city’s Land Use Control Board at its Thursday, March 8th meeting. The meeting will begin at 10:00 at City Hall in the Council Chambers on the first floor.

If approved by that board, the Memphis City Council will make the final votes on the plans later.

Categories
Cover Feature News

You Look Like a Cover Story

So a gaggle of comedians from Memphis walk into a bar in Western Arkansas …

No, this isn’t the beginning of a joke. It’s an origin story for Memphis’ most popular monthly, game-based comedy event. You Look Like — so named because the competition’s mean-spirited jokes all begin with the words, “You look like” — recently tickled film and television director Craig Brewer’s funny bone, so now it’s being developed as a streaming digital series.

You Look Like is beginning to look like a comedy institution in the making, but back in the summer of 2015, the embryonic thing that rapidly evolved into You Look Like (YLL), just looked like local funsters Katrina Coleman and Benny Elbows swapping off-the-cuff insults to pass time over a long, boring haul to Fayetteville. Once the other comedians on the evening’s bill were introduced to the concept, they jumped right in and started playing along, too, saying terrible things to each other, such as: “You look like you really believe you’re going to get custody this time,” or “You look like the youth minister who needed a talking to.”

Amanda Walker and Craig Brewer in the bar that inspired Brewer’s The Poor & Hungry

“One time somebody told me I look like Malcolm X-Man,” says Black Nerd Power host Richard Douglas Jones, an early YLL player and convert.

The seminal Arkansas, gig at Nomads Music Lounge (regrettably titled “Memphis in Fay”) started late, in part because the Bluff City comics couldn’t stop playing their fun, new game. When the comedic bloodsport finally broke up, comic and YLL co-founder Tommy Oler grabbed Coleman by the elbow and told her the silly, mean, hilarious thing she’d started needed to grow into something bigger.

“I wasn’t sure. I just thought it was a thing I like to do,” says Coleman. For her, You Look Like was a warm-up exercise — the funny person’s equivalent of a gymnast stretching before a tumbling routine.

Oler took the idea to the P&H Cafe, where he was already hosting a popular Thursday night open mic. The idea was instantly green lit, and it wasn’t long before the eclectic Midtown bar famously associated with poor and hungry artists had to reconfigure its seating to accommodate bigger and bigger crowds turning out for comedy.

“I remember when I’d have 10 or 15 people at one of my shows, and I’d think it was the greatest thing,” Coleman says. “I’d get all excited and call my mom. Now, if there are only 50 or 75 at a show, I wonder if there’s some big concert at Minglewood Hall or something.”

Now, when episodes of the accompanying YLL podcast post late, out-of-town subscribers send grumpy messages. “It’s this really weird show that audiences seem to like and that the comics love to do,” Coleman says, floating a theory: “If you really love somebody, you’ll cut their heart out for a giggle.”

For all the terrible things being said on stage, the love inside the P& H is thick and sticky when, over the course of a week, Brewer and his local production team shoots the entire pilot season for a digital You Look Like series.

“You got robbed,” the winner of one round calls out, chasing down his opponent. “I know. I totally beat you,” the loser shouts back. Nobody’s angry. They’re all in this together.

“I’m not drunk enough to cry,” Coleman announces from the stage as the camera crew prepares to shoot the last five episodes of the 10-episode trial season. “But set your watches.”

Coleman, who certainly looks like the person most responsible for assembling the current big tent of modern Memphis comedy, then gestures to a ridiculous, clearly homemade crown spinning on a turntable just offstage: the winner’s prize.

“It’s still the You Look Like show,” she assures the “studio audience,” acknowledging that, in spite of the many physical upgrades to her show’s homemade aesthetic, “I made that motherfucker in my living room.”

A machine pumps fog into the room, standing in for the P&H’s famously thick cloud of cigarette smoke. Local writer/director Morgan Fox orders the cameras to roll, and the games begin in earnest.

The rules for You Look Like couldn’t be simpler. Two comics stand face to face, trading appearance-based insults: “You look like heroin might improve your life.” Or “You look like the Sorting Hat put you in House of 1,000 Corpses.” Like that. The meaner it gets, the more respect you can feel radiating from the combatants. When a round ends, the audience chooses a winner, and the loser has to gaze into a mirror of shame and play the game over again, solo, hurling insults at him/herself.

Brewer encountered the You Look Like Show while attending the 2016 Memphis Comedy Festival. The Hustle & Flow filmmaker had no idea that such a mature comedy scene had grown up in the artsy little beer joint at the center of his own filmmaker origin story.

For that festival, the show was moved to the Hi-Tone, and Brewer had initially assumed it was put on by a visiting troupe of comics from Chicago.

“I was like, ‘Wow, it’s so great that this touring group came in and did this,'” Brewer says in a phone interview from Los Angeles (where he recently added a new credit to his resume: co-executive producer of the hit show, Empire). Brewer was immediately corrected by fans who told him it was, in fact, a Memphis-based show that had been running for about a year at the P&H.

“Do you know where the P&H is?” someone asked. “Yeah,” Brewer answered. “I think I might know where that is.”

Seeing Brewer at work again inside the P&H causes epic déjà vu. The Madison Avenue bar, with its rotating cast of oddball regulars inspired his first movie, The Poor & Hungry. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, when he was still an aspiring filmmaker and part-time bookstore employee, Brewer would go to the bar to write his screenplays, shoot scenes, or screen daily “rushes” on the P&H’s ancient TV.

Although The Poor & Hungry never received wide theatrical distribution, the award-winning digital feature, shot on an impossibly low budget of $20,000 with a two-man crew, became Brewer’s Hollywood calling card. When other wannabes were slinging pitches, he was mailing out VHS tapes of a little movie about life at the P&H Cafe that arguably helped step up Hollywood’s digital shift.  

“I felt like grandpa,” Brewer says, shocked but not all that surprised by the revelation that he and YLL shared a creative womb.

The following June, two-months after the comedy festival, Coleman received an unexpected voicemail: “Hi, this is Craig Brewer. I make movies. I saw your show and was wondering if you’d maybe like to get together and talk about it.”

Like any any mother faced with sudden, unknown change, Coleman’s initial response was caution. “Please, please, Hollywood, don’t take my ugly baby away,” she pleads emphatically, recounting her initial worry. “But Craig was great. He walked me through the whole contract and explained everything.” All Coleman really needed was assurance that the live show would be always be hers to do with as she sees fit, which had been the plan all along.

“See, the whole live show fits in this little, pink duffle bag,” Coleman says, giggling. As long as she could continue running it out of the P&H and taking it on the road, Coleman says she was up for just about anything else that might happen.

Brewer has always scouted opportunities for exporting Memphis talent and weirdness. In the 1990s, he shot footage of the city’s burlesque scene, resulting in his early short, Clean Up in Booth B. His team-up with MTV on $5 Cover resulted in Midtown’s rock scene playing a semi-fictionalized version of itself.

Unlike earlier projects, where Brewer was starting from scratch, You Look Like was complete and alive. Adapting it as a digital series was additionally enhanced by an all-local crew he’s been collaborating with for a decade and an uncommonly united comedy scene that’s spent the last five years learning to work together.

It’s like what comic Josh McLane says, making his way from the stage to the writers room: “I get paid the same if I win or lose. All that matters is if it’s funny.” That was the dominant attitude backstage during the YLL shoot, giving the whole event an old-school Memphis wrasslin’ vibe. Unlike wrasslin’, outcomes to the matches weren’t predetermined, but the beefs aren’t real, and everybody’s working together to bring serious pain from the top-rope.

“I’m addicted to this feeling now,” Brewer says, remembering the electricity in the room when the comedians hired to write jokes between rounds gathered around the P&H’s pool tables and built their insult database.

Richard Douglas Jones described the writing process as “completely organic.” When one vein of material ran dry, somebody would open another. “I will reinvent the wheel and run you over with it again and again,” he said. Brewer had one big concern. “There needed to be something positive coming out of You Look Like,” he says. “If you were looking at comedians tearing each other apart, you need to feel that they are friends. So, in a weird way, it could be inspiring.”

The backstage cooperation insured that that would be the case. “I left the experience asking, ‘How can I create that again,'” Brewer asks. “Can I go narrative with it? If we did a TV show, what would it be? And what are the jokes?”

That wasn’t the only feeling Brewer left with. He’d drifted away from the P&H after the passing of its colorful proprietress Wanda Wilson, the big-wigged protector of artists, misfits, and backgammon gamblers. “For a while that place lost its energy,” Brewer laments. Working on YLL assured him that the bar’s original spirit is alive and well under the current management.

So what’s next for YLL? The live show continues as usual but now with a new guest host every month. What happens with the pilot series is anybody’s guess, but there are some interesting possibilities: Maybe it gets snapped up right away by a streaming content provider. Or maybe the original series, like The Poor & Hungry, simply becomes a calling card — something Brewer can screen on his phone when he’s pitching ideas. Maybe a producer likes the web series but wants to know if the show can be adapted as a reality show or narrative comedy. “So many times you walk in with a pitch document, and you just don’t know how it’s going to turn out,” Brewer explains. “The network might say, ‘Oh, that’s great, but we want it with Snapchat stars.'”

YLL was a perfect catch for Brewer, who’d been actively looking for right-sized projects for his Memphis-based company BR2 and longtime collaborators like David Harris at Gunpowder & Sky, a production company co-founded by Van Toffler, a former MTV executive instrumental in purchasing Brewer’s Hustle & Flow at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. He sums up YLL‘s appeal — particularly for companies looking for unscripted material — in one exclamatory sentence: “Oh my God, you can highlight 20 comedians per season, and it’s already a living thing!”

Brewer thinks a few scenarios seem more likely than others. “These days, there are celebrities who want their Facebook page — or whatever — to be a channel. So there are comedians and celebrities who might buy it just to put on their channel,” he explained.

“And there are networks who might say, ‘Okay, this works on the digital level; what does this look like on the network level?’ But what I really wish is that we can take what we’ve made and just keep making more of that. We just made 10 episodes this first time, but if we do it again, we can make 50. Just plan for three or four solid weeks of work, where we just go in and bang it out.”

Oler, who no longer hosts the live show but remains affiliated with the digital project, says it’s exciting to imagine what YLL might be like as a movie or a sitcom. But he can’t shake the joy of knowing, wherever it goes, it started with a bunch of knuckleheads insulting each other on the patio at Nomads Music Lounge in Fayetteville.

“I’m just really thankful to have had a chance to work on this,” he says. Oler and Coleman are funny co-founders; they don’t agree about much. But they do agree that, given an opportunity to show its stuff, the Memphis comedy scene stood up.  

The You Look Like Show is the third Saturday of every month at the P&H Cafe. Doors at 8 p.m. show at 9 p.m.

You Look Like a List

What comprises a perfect you look like insult? It has to walk a fine line between credibility and the absurd. Some require context, some are just funny no matter who they’re aimed at. Here’s a completely subjective list of great You Look Like lines.

You look like:

You support displaying the Confederate flag, but only because you don’t have any other good towels.

You masturbate with ranch dressing.

People who look like their dogs.

The most well adjusted person here, surgically.

One more sandwich and that shirt’s over.

You ask to speak to managers.

You regularly delete your search history.

Your head mole makes all your decisions.

You think the Dakota Access Pipeline is a porn trilogy.

The target audience for Buzzfeed articles.

You pronounce the L in Salmon.

You grew up outside a trailer.

Your spirit animal is a chain wallet.

You fucked up the proposal because you left the ring in your other cargo shorts.

You don’t mind talking to people while they’re using the bathroom.

You broke someone else’s ankle auditioning for Grease.

You were designed by scientists for the purpose of disappointing women.

Birdwatching makes you horny.

Group photos are always your idea.

Your husband hides your yoga pants.

The side bitch of Frankenstein.

God swiped left.

The guy other guys are totally okay letting their girlfriends hang out with.

You’re still waiting to hear back about that job.

Your dad is more proud of his other family.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Memphis Is Funny

CREDIT: Photographs by Chris Davis

Nothing ever happens on a Tuesday night. Especially if it’s a rain-drenched Tuesday night in downtown Memphis. The Brass Door on Madison manages a brisk bar business in spite of the weather, but the pub’s downstairs music hall, where the big comedy show is scheduled to happen, is empty except for some old wooden library chairs and a lonely microphone.

With its red velvet curtains and vintage wallpaper, the room has an effortlessly sleazy vibe that prompts Nashville comic Josh Wagner to say, “It looks like it was decorated before jazz was legal.” But at 7:55 p.m., only five minutes before go-time, it looks like Tuesday Show Comedy, an independently produced showcase hosted by Doug Gillon and Kyle Kordsmeier, is a bust.

Four minutes later, the bar’s stairs groan like a bad joke as the whole, weirdly prompt crowd pours in at the same time, filling every chair in the underground venue, with stragglers spilling out into the aisle. By 8:05, Gillon and Kordsmeier are on stage trading jokes, playing guitar, and introducing a tight slate of unknown comedians with wits sharp enough to cut through the chilly, late winter gloom.

A funny thing happened in Memphis. While nobody was paying very much attention, it grew a comedy scene. There are open mics almost every night of the week, and a steadily increasing number of heavily attended monthly showcases.

“I knew there was an audience for something like this, even on a weeknight,” Gillon explains, slouching in a chair outside the Brass Door after shooting a commercial for his next installment of Tuesday Show Comedy. The commercial is a Friends parody, and for the past three hours, he’s been wrangling Memphis comics as they danced on and around a red sofa in front of the Court Square fountain. “Of course you can get people out to see comedy on a Tuesday,” he says. “But you’ve got to develop a good product and you’ve got to promote it right.”

Comedy clubs come and comedy clubs go, but Memphis’ ragtag indie scene abides, always just outside the spotlight, tugging at its sweaty collar and begging, Rodney Dangerfield-style, for a little respect.

This week it gets some, when the Memphis Comedy Festival celebrates its fifth birthday. The festival is expected to bring more than 5,000 comedy fans to Midtown for intimate solo performances by up-and-comers like Last Comic Standing vet Phoebe Robinson, and Kenny DeForest, who was named as one of Comedy Central’s “Comics to Watch” 2015. There will be games, workshops, comic karaoke, improv with the Wiseguys, open mics, and live sets by more than 40 stand-up artists. It seemed like a perfectly good time to talk to some Memphis comedians to find out why they do what they do, and why they’re so serious about keeping Memphis funny.

But first a word from a skeptic.

Mo Alexander has seen it all. The professional comedian has spent 20-plus years on the road and describes his career arc as being so up and down it looks like the McDonald’s logo. He’s worked dumps and headlined in Las Vegas, where his face was plastered across 33 billboards and three city buses.

“Things aren’t like they used to be in Memphis,” he says, calling out the fundamental difference between comics then and comics now. “When I was getting started, none of us were looking to stay in Memphis. We all wanted to get out.”

Memphis comics still want to tour. They still want to do cool things like sell out and write for reality television. But they have a strong sense of community, are networked to the gills, and are constantly looking for ways to nurture local talent and create more professional opportunities.

Alexander isn’t as nearly as impressed with the local scene as it is with itself, but then again, saying terrible things is a part of his job description. “Everybody sucks at first,” he says, recalling the good old days when Memphis had three comedy clubs but fewer opportunities for developing talent. “I can’t even look at a lot of the stuff I did back then,” he admits. But for all of his complaints, Alexander admires many of the things he sees taking root in his hometown. “What I like is that they’re doing all of this stuff without the support of the clubs,” he says.

Photographs by Chris Davis

Katrina Coleman, founder of the Memphis Comedy Festival, brings the funny.

Had things turned out the way she originally planned, Katrina Coleman, might not have founded the Memphis Comedy Festival. There was a time when she wanted to be a road dog and was planning go on tour with Alexander. That’s when she found out she was pregnant. “When a male comic hits rock bottom, he goes to rehab,” Coleman grumbles, setting up the deeper cut. “Females get pregnant.”

Sometimes you can’t get out of Memphis. Small children and life on the road didn’t compute. So Coleman started looking for ways to make comedy happen closer to home. In 2011 she founded the Memphis Roast Club, creating “a brotherhood of Memphis comics and comedy writers” dedicated to skewering the elite, tarnishing celebrity halos, and taking pretentious people down a peg or two.

“It created a situation where a lot of people who’d never really worked together before had to work together, and research together, and write together. I was a cruel taskmaster,” she says.

The Memphis Comedy Festival was founded a year later, when Coleman’s friend Larry Clark booked time at TheatreWorks to perform an original one-man show. Clark, a contemporary vaudevillian who’s juggled chainsaws on tour with Nine Inch Nails, driven nails up his nose for Jim Rose’s Sideshow, performed host clown duties for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and sacked groceries at the Kroger at Poplar and Cleveland, didn’t think his new show would be ready in time. So Coleman agreed to take over the dates to produce something comedy-related. And festive.

“We had a Dollar Store table cloth with stick-on letters that read ‘Memphis Comedy festival,'” Coleman says, telling her janky origin story. At the end of weekend when accounting time arrived, she realized all expenses were covered with $121 to spare. “I cried and danced around the theater,” she says, closing her eyes and clutching the imaginary money to her chest. “And before I could say ‘Well, that’s done,’ people were coming to me and asking when I was planning on doing it again next year. And so it began.”

Tommy Oler talks soap and butt-munchers at the P&H Cafe.

Tommy Oler has his own ideas about what makes Memphis’ comedy special. “So this girl was totally munching on my butt,” he says. “And she was like, ‘Ugh! It tastes like soap. And I was like, ‘Uhhh, you’re welcome?'” But that’s another story entirely.
Oler, who’s developmentally stuck somewhere around the seventh grade (in a good way, if that’s possible), hosts the enormously popular and notoriously tough Thursday-night open mic at the P&H Cafe, a proving ground for locals and a regular stopover for touring comics like Chris Cubas and Jake Flores. He also cohosts the You Look Like a Comedy Show with Coleman, a monthly bloodsport where comics go head-to-head trading brutal insults, such as: “You look like you were going for ‘sexy school librarian’ but settled for the lunch lady;” “You look like you were fired from Medieval Times for being too into it;” and the devastating, “You look like Harry Potter’s sorting hat assigned you to the House of 1000 Corpses.”

Oler started performing in Knoxville at a monthly open mic where he had to pay a cover charge in addition to bringing three paying guests, who also had to buy at least two overpriced drinks so he could perform. “I’ve been a lot of places,” he says. “And this is one of the nicest scenes around.”

Oler would know. Open mic hosts are like comedy gatekeepers. Or, as Oler’s friend and Dirty Show founder Lila Bear puts it, “It isn’t like some kind of Mafia thing, but it is like some kind of Mafia thing. But you’ll always do fine as long as you aren’t mean.”

Hunter Sandlin is a bespectacled fellow who uses the Twitter account @Ireviewvans to store his vast archive of deadpan jokes about living in vans and van-related humor. He’s been performing his unique brand of van, snack, and CPAP mask-related comedy for two years and confirms that, while the local scene may appear clubby at first, it supports new comics no matter how different the work may be.

Sandlin has a gift for surreal imagery and awkward non sequitur. He experimented with stand-up in college but didn’t get serious about it until he and his wife split up in 2014. “I’m a lot older than most of the other comics,” he moans, falling into the woeful cadence of his stage persona. “I’ve found myself hanging out with 24-year-olds again. And that’s weird.”

Sandlin is adamant. If he ever lives in a van again, he’s not going to share it with a roommate, because there’s not enough room for him and all of his trophies, let alone some other guy and all of his trophies. He describes open mics as “safe places” where “nobody judges you even if you’re hopelessly terrible.” Except, of course, for hecklers.

Richard Douglas Jones bounces off the couch and into comedy.

Like Sandlin, Richard Douglas Jones had some history with stand-up, but only committed to it after a difficult breakup. “I was working for the Peabody Hotel when somebody jumped off the roof, and my coworker and I were the first people to find the body.” That same day, his girlfriend, who knew he’d just found a body, came home and broke up with him. Depression set in, and productivity bottomed out. First Jones lost his job, and then he lost his will to leave his apartment or even get off the couch. Except for when he’d go out to work on his comedy at open mics around town. “Comedy literally saved my life,” he says.

Since coming off the couch, Jones has proven himself to be one of the funniest comics in Memphis. He’s opened for Hannibal Buress and warmed the crowd for Patton Oswalt, whom he now describes as an email buddy. He hosts the Black Nerd Power podcast and the Black Nerd Power Comedy Hour showcase which is held monthly in the Basement, a disconcertingly white venue in Crosstown. I’m talking about the paint job, of course.

Jones isn’t a fan of the traditional comedy club system. “For an unknown comic, it’s like begging,” he says, explaining why he feels it’s important to create opportunity for other comics. “If there’s anything I really want to accomplish, it’s to get comedy respected as an art form. When people hear somebody say ‘I’m an artist,’ they’re like, ‘Well, do you sing? Dance? Paint? Anything?’ We live in a city where poets get more respect than comics. Fucking poets.”

Lila Mae Bear

After hosting the Black Nerd Power podcast for two years, Jones launched the Black Nerd Power Comedy Hour showcase, “because the black experience isn’t homogeneous, and that’s not always reflected in comedy.” Comics who don’t ascribe to the Def Comedy Jam model, “aren’t always included in the reindeers’ games,” he says. “But as I went out and traveled, I realized I wasn’t as exotic a bird as I thought I was. There are a lot of comics of color in this alternative scene. But in a lot of cases, within our home scenes, we’re the only Klingon on the Starship Enterprise, if you know what I mean. So I wanted to create a space for comics of color who are genuinely funny, but don’t get much love in the urban rooms.”

Memphis’ tallest comic, Benny Elbows, named his Blacksmith Comedy company for something he heard Katrina Coleman say once, and he embodies the idea: “Memphis has a great comedy scene, but there’s no brass ring. You’ve got to make your own.” Through Blacksmith, Elbows produces shows for visiting comics, and hosts a game-based show called Homeroom. He also does stand-up all over town, and performs improv with the Wiseguys.

Doug Gillon, cohost of Tuesday Show Comedy, knows comedy can bring a crowd.

When Alexander was in the hospital with blood clots in his heart, Elbows dropped by every afternoon to help his fellow comic learn to walk again. There’s a reason why Joshua McLane, the hyperactive host of the Hi-Tone’s Don’t Be Afraid of show calls Elbows, “the future of Memphis comedy.” In spite of all that, he still can’t quite believe how much the independent comedy scene has grown over the past five years. “Part of me worries that it’s a bubble,” Elbows says, sitting on the back porch of the P&H Cafe. “And I’m afraid it’s just going to burst and I’m going to wake up tomorrow and nobody in Memphis is going to want to hear comedy again.”

And then he laughs.

Memphis Comedy Festival March 31st-April 3rd. For schedule and ticket informaton visit memphiscomedyfestival.com.

Where to Find Comedy in Memphis

Sunday – Open Mic, 7 p.m.  

The Cove

Monday – Open Mic, 9 p.m. Dru’s Place

(2nd and 4th Mondays of the month) – LOL Memphis Sketch & Improv Show, 7 p.m., Chuckles Comedy House

Tuesday – Showcase, 8 p.m.
Mot & Ed’s Soulspeak

Tuesday – Open Mic, 8 p.m.  

Chuckles

Wednesday – Showcase,
8:30 p.m., Clicks

Wednesday – Open Mic, 8 p.m., RockHouse Live

Thursday – Open Mic, 9:30 p.m., P&H Cafe

Friday – Showcase, 9 p.m., BeRatus Restaurant and Grill

Friday – Showcase, 10 p.m., Pulse Lounge

Saturday – (2nd Saturday of the month) Wiseguys Improv Show, 8 p.m., Cafe Eclectic

Saturday – (3rd Saturday of the month) Wiseguys Improv Show, 10:30 p.m., Cafe Eclectic
Recurring Showcases

Don’t Be Afraid of the Comedy, Memphis

The Tuesday Show

The Best Damn Nerd Show

You Look Like a Comedy Show

Black Nerd Power Comedy Hour

Leftist Comedy Night
Comedy Clubs

Chuckles Comedy House

Podcasts

Black Nerd Power

You Look Like a Comedy Show

Rocket Science Audio

Resurrection Man

Memphis Comic Mo Alexander releases his new CD, “Got Clots.”

On April 5, 2015, Memphis comedian Mo Alexander died. And for the first time in his life, it had absolutely nothing to do with his material. The “slap the stupid” funnyman had a pair of blood clots in his heart, and although he was quickly resuscitated, the prognosis wasn’t good. He’d pee on a nurse and die at least one more time before things started getting better.

“You know, when I came to, I had this mark on the back of my head, and nobody’s owned that one yet,” he says, airing his grievances, but happy to be alive again and working.

Memphis Flyer: So the name of your new CD is “Got Clots.”

Alexander: It’s the most personal album I’ve ever done. It’s about me dropping dead twice in the hospital. Dealing with crazy nurses. Then having to learn how to walk again. Everything that happened to me during the 78 days in the hospital. I talk about the highlights.

But, are blood clots funny?

Blood clots are hilarious, trust me. Now, none of it’s funny when you can’t breathe, but once you can breathe again, it all is. I’m releasing the record on April 5th, which is the year anniversary of me dropping dead the first time. I think that’s funny. I rolled over to get a urinal. Next thing I know, I’m on a ventilator. Some people ask if I saw a light or anything, and I didn’t. But I swear I heard Notorious B.I.G. singing, “I love it when you call me Big Poppa.”

Of course, you did.  

You know, Memphis comedy really supported me when I was in the hospital, and I’ve got to give them a lot of love for that. Parties with beer and everything. $20 in a sock. That’s why I don’t hate them all nearly as much as I used to.”

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

You Look Like a Comedy Show at the P&H

CREDIT: Courtesy Tommy Oler

First things first, I ask Tommy Oler to insult me. He is, after all, co-host along with Katrina Coleman of the monthly You Look Like a Comedy Show, where comedians are paired off in a tournament of insults.

“I have to see what you look like,” he responds.

Oler says that the You Look Like a Comedy Show is a natural for comedians. “We were all bullied, and we bullied,” he says. He notes that when comedians get together, the shit’s going to fly.

Courtesy Tommy Oler

Tommy Oler and Katrina Coleman

These gladiators of put-downs are local comedians and comedians from around the Southeast. Competing at Saturday’s show are: Kaia Hodo from Fayetteville, Arkansas; Brandon Perel Sams of Memphis; Amy Sulam from Nashville; Mitchell Dunnam from Memphis; returning champ Ozzy Jackson of Little Rock; and Lila Bear of Memphis.

Oler and Coleman knew they were on to something even before the first show, such was the excitement. Oler says that every comedian knows his laughs, and the laughs they were getting were “so large … I don’t get this alone.”

Courtesy Tommy Oler

Oler says that it’s impossible to hurt a comedian’s feelings, and if it is possible, then maybe this is not the show for them. The insults range from the absurd to the downright lewd. Oler and Coleman have been shocked at some of the jokes. One comedian who hurled such a foul jewel said later, “I’m pretty sure I’m going to hell.”

As co-hosts, Oler and Coleman take jabs at each other. Oler is ribbed about his youthful looks, and one thing they both riff on is that they look alike. Says Oler, “I told her she looks like my after-picture on Faces of Meth.”

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Wanda Wilson Memorial

CREDIT: Brandon Dill

Craig Brewer is trying to figure out the best way to honor the life and legacy of Wanda Wilson, the Midtown muse, and former P&H Cafe proprietress, who was interred in her hometown of Parsons, Tennessee. The Poor & Hungry filmmaker, who went on to success in Hollywood with movies like Hustle & Flow and Footloose, doesn’t know if it’s something that can be accomplished in a single event.

“I feel like the arts community needs to check in with each other again,” he says, wondering if there’s anything in Memphis quite like the P&H was when Wanda held court at a little round table at the end of the bar.

Brandon Dill

Wanda Wilson

“You know, if Wanda didn’t exist, if I had just created her for a movie, somebody would say, ‘Craig, you can’t just will somebody like this into existence because you think it would be cool,'” he says, remembering how the earthy, feather-draped beertender had given him such good advice when he was just starting out as a filmmaker.

“She was so instrumental in my career and in my life,” Brewer says. “What I’m left with is this feeling that there isn’t anybody else like her. There’s nobody who’s this fulcrum of all these different people and artists.”

The local arts community and all other denizens of the P&H Cafe can “check in” to pay their respects at “Wanda: A Celebration of the Life of Wanda Wilson” at Playhouse on the Square on Saturday, February 14th.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Everything That’s True

CREDIT: Photo by Fontaine Pearson

Photo by Fontaine Pearson

Darling, we are the light reflected 

Darling, we are the love we made 

Darling, nothing precious is protected 

We’re all trembling like a blossom 

With winter on the way. — Rob Jungklas 

Maybe it’s last week’s passing of Wanda Wilson, the singular and much-loved proprietess of the P&H Cafe, a woman who created and curated a beer joint that once made Midtown feel like a village of like-minded souls. It was a harbor, a place of sanity (and insanity), conversation, friendship, and laughter for those of us of a certain age.

Maybe it’s the rain and the long cold spell and the winter hanging on, but there’s an inevitable sadness that comes when you ponder the passing of people and things. Sometimes you just have to let it in.

Or maybe it was my discovery of Rob Jungklas’ “Everything That’s True,” a perfect and gorgeous song celebrating the temporal, inevitable human condition. Memphis singer Susan Marshall posted Jungklas’ song on her Facebook page and dedicated it to all the “beloved Memphians who have recently passed: Jimi Jamison, Jack Holder, John Hampton, John Fry, Sid Selvidge, Jim Dickinson, Di Anne Price, Mabon ‘Teenie’ Hodges, James Govan, and Wanda Wilson.”

Seeing that list in black and white was stunning. So many Memphis music and cultural icons gone in such a short time, so much light no longer reflected.

I found myself wanting to disconnect from the hive-mind of email and chatrooms and Twitter and Facebook for a while. I dug out some old books and hunkered down by the fireplace on Sunday, reading from Be Here Now, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, and a battered Alan Watts tome — books that offer words and thoughts that lead one back to the center, to this moment.

Here. Now. All that we have.

And after thinking for a while, it came to me that the hive itself, the incessant connections we make with each other these days, is itself a gift — a way of learning more about the joys and pains of the human condition. The village is larger now; the beer joints are still there, but there are other paths to empathy, to sharing sorrows, celebrations, and memories, to being connected to those we don’t see often enough.

The deepest valley of the human heart knows winter is always on the way, even as spring approaches. It’s as certain as the throw of stars overhead on a February night. There’s a sadness there, but it’s a good sadness. And that too is a gift.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

‘Night, Darlin’

The first person I met at the P&H Cafe wasn’t the beer joint’s famous proprietress, Wanda Wilson. It was Martha Sue Campbell from Florence, Alabama, a longtime beer-and-hash slinger who passed away last April. Sue frowned at me and squinted, which I later discovered was her way of smiling, and gave me the once-over twice. I was new in town, only 18 years old, and sure she was going to ask for an I.D. that I didn’t have. Instead, she took my order and asked if I’d like to hear a joke.

“Do you know which two toes a woman’s most ticklish between?” Sue asked, frowning even harder, which meant she was about to bust a gut. Before I could reply she blurted out, “The big ‘uns,” and we both frowned and frowned and laughed and laughed. I was a country kid, on my own for the first time in a city I didn’t know. But watching my funny new acquaintance waddle through a swirling curtain of cigarette smoke to fetch my cheeseburger and gazing for the first time at all those strange, nicotine-browned murals of famous (and infamous) locals like banker, politician, and mega-fraud Jake Butcher, and Dana Kirk, Memphis State’s ticket-scalping basketball coach, I knew I had somehow landed in safe harbor, right where I belonged.

Like so many other “poor and hungry” artists, musicians, actors, authors, journalists, roustabouts, and straight-up weirdos, I was immediately intrigued by Wanda Wilson. She always wore a big, curly, blonde wig, a feather boa, and a hat that she might have won from Mae West in a poker game. She chain-smoked cigarettes from a long, jeweled cigarette holder and called everybody “darlin'” in a husky Parsons, Tennessee, drawl that reminded me of home.

Wanda reminded many people of home, no matter where they came from.

Last Friday, Wanda Wilson shuffled off this mortal coil, leaving Memphis a poorer and hungrier place. She was Midtown’s muse, and many artists painted her portrait, though few captured her timelessness like Paul Penczner, whose impressionist works once hung in the bar. She was the patron saint of the local theater community, and a real life honky-tonk angel, famous for her generosity and a love of lost souls. Chances are, if  you were ever a regular at her beer joint and found yourself down on your luck, she’d offer to start a tab before you asked, buy your first round, offer a job if she could, and a place to stay until you were back on your feet.

One particularly busy night, Wanda told me to “jump behind the bar” and get my own beer. “Act like you belong here,” she scolded, unconcerned with any potential ABC violations.

“Act like you belong here” was something I’d hear her say to many other customers. It wasn’t just permission to self-serve; it was the golden rule, and the one thing you really had to do to become a part of the P&H family. Like she once told an old friend whom she’d thrown out for bad behavior (and invited back with open arms): “This isn’t a bar sweetie. It’s an orphanage for the misunderstood.”

Wanda was mugged one summer night in 1999 while leaving the bar with the evening’s bank deposit. The girls of Memphis Confidential Burlesque — more P&H orphans — concocted a plan to stage a pudding-wrestling event to recover the losses, and Jerry Lawler agreed to referee. Somehow I found myself in the middle of it all, in a kiddie pool filled with chocolate pudding, wearing a grass skirt and coconut boobs, wrestling three women, and feeling like I’d stumbled into some lost chapter of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. Hundreds of people paid cash money and lined up 20-deep to take in the gender-bending, fire-breathing, bodice-ripping show.

“I love you for thinking of this, but I don’t need the money,” Wanda told the event organizers. “Let’s give it to Hands on Memphis.”

That’s who she was.

Wanda traveled to Hollywood when Craig Brewer’s P&H-inspired film, The Poor & Hungry, had its big moment at the Hollywood Film Festival. I will never forget the moment when she arrived on the Paramount lot, wearing a stunning black gown covered with tiny gold coins. When someone asked about her outfit, she proudly announced, “A drag queen gimme this dress, darlin’.” Even in a city accustomed to seeing stars, this Memphis glamor girl could turn heads.

Losing Sue last year was hard, but I’m still having trouble imagining a world without Wanda Wilson. When I had no family in Memphis, Wanda and the P&H regulars stepped up. Now we’re orphans all over again.