Tag: Robby Grant

Categories
Film Features Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Have A Merry “Christmas At Midnight” with Robby Grant

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, things were really weird.

Just in time for your Saturnalia celebrations, something new from Memphis’ favorite experimental filmmaker Ben Siler. “Christmas at Midnight” is from Robby Grant’s 2020 album Put A Quarter In The Christmas Vending Machine, and it represents a darker take on the holiday season. Siler, no stranger to darkness himself, rose to the occasion with this music video. Starring expat actress Kim Howard and a host of Memphis talent (including yours truly, who provided sets), this one is for everyone who feels frog marched through Yuletide joviality. Happy holidays, and enjoy the world premiere of “Christmas At Midnight”!

Categories
Cover Feature News News Feature

Radio Free Memphis! How Did One City Get Four Non-Commercial Stations?

If you enjoy any sort of music or news that’s slightly off the beaten path, you may ultimately have a bit of Scotch tape to thank for its availability on the radio. Back in 1967, when President Lyndon Johnson was about to sign the Public Broadcasting Act into law, the language was being debated up to the last minute, including the use of the word “radio.” In Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio, author Jack Mitchell describes how the words “and radio” had been removed from the document only days before heading to Johnson’s desk. At the last minute, the bill’s author used tape to add the two words back in, thus laying the foundation for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, including National Public Radio and its nearly 50-year legacy of local affiliates. 

Not long after that, in the mid-1970s, there was an explosion of independent, listener-supported community stations. And since then, public (NPR-affiliated) and community (volunteer) radio stations have offered the best alternatives to commercial music and news radio. For all the touting of “choices” offered by market-driven institutions, commercial broadcasting can take on a dispiriting sameness. As brilliant as pop culture may be at times, let’s face it: A city’s creative life depends on art that rises above the demographic- and market-driven ethos of commercial media. 

Memphis might have been very different if nonprofit radio had not taken root here. But take root it did, and now the city boasts four non-commercial stations that are driven and supported by their listeners. April is an especially auspicious time to honor that legacy, it being the month when two of our most venerable stations were founded. Here’s a look at the state of non-commercial Memphis radio today. 

Darel Snodgrass and Kacky Walton show off their NPR temporary tattoos. (Photo:courtesy of Darel Snodgrass)

WKNO (91.1 FM): The Mother of Mid-South Public Radio

“In April of next year, the station’s going to be 50 years old,” says Darel Snodgrass, director of radio at WKNO-FM. “We went on in April of ’72, which was only like three months after NPR was formed. The only program they had was All Things Considered, so all the rest of the time was filled with classical music.”

As Snodgrass points out, that twin commitment to both news and music has defined WKNO ever since. “There are not many stations that do what we do anymore, that have programming that mixes news and classical music. Most stations have added HD channels and split it, with all news on one and all classical on the other. There are only about five or six stations in the country that do what we do, and mix them. It makes us kind of unique.”

Though one might imagine that a kind of homogeneity pervades NPR stations across the country, there’s actually a lot of diversity among them. For one, stations differ radically in the degree to which they weave local news into the content of national programs. Snodgrass is justifiably proud of WKNO’s commitment to Mid-South news. “Doing local news is hard. It’s a lot of work, and we’ve got people now who do wonderful work. That’s one of the things I’ve been so pleased with over the last 10 years: the growth in our local news reporting.”

But it’s no surprise that the onetime music major and current music host is even more proud of the station’s commitment to his preferred art. As he explains, it is not just music in the abstract, but music as curated by devoted DJs in real time. 

“This [NPR] station is unique in that we individually program our own shows. We pick our own music. This just doesn’t happen anymore. Even other classical music stations have a program director who’s telling them what to play. And of course commercial stations are all heavily programmed, mostly from New York and Los Angeles. So Kacky [Walton] and I consider ourselves to be extremely lucky. We can use that freedom to respond to things. If it’s a gloomy, rainy day, we can play something uplifting.We can react to things both locally and nationally, which a lot of people just don’t get to do. It’s kind of amazing, honestly.”

Kacky Walton, the station’s music coordinator and other music host, agrees. “You can respond to events,” she says. “The best example was after September 11, 2001. We just had news for I don’t know how many days. But when we finally went back to music, there was still that feeling of sadness, and you had to be really mindful of playing something with the appropriate mood to it. It was difficult, but at the same time, I discovered a lot of music that I hadn’t really played before.” 

This was especially true as the lockdown conditions of the pandemic set in last year. Radio took on a new importance in people’s lives. “In hard times, radio gives you a sense of community,” Snodgrass says. “We heard a lot from folks who were listening to a lot of classical music. They may have previously been going to their jobs every day. Now they’re at home, listening to classical music, because it’s a haven, it’s a refuge. It provides a sense of security and continuity. These are pieces that have been around, in some cases, for hundreds of years. And they’re still there.”  

Bryson Whitney
(Photo: Antwoine McClellan | AJM Images)

WEVL (89.9 FM): The Pioneer Spirit

WKNO was one of the first affiliates to join the NPR family, benefiting from the largess of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but not long after its launch, there arose an alternative take on nonprofit radio in the heart of Midtown. In fact, for many years, it was only in Midtown, because the station’s 10-watt broadcast couldn’t reach any farther. 

“I think I came to the station in 1978, two years after it went on the air,” recalls Judy Dorsey, the longtime station manager for WEVL. “I was strictly a volunteer. I was just interested in it. I’d read about it in the paper and couldn’t believe we had something like this in Memphis. Granted, it was only 10 watts. You could only hear it in certain areas of Midtown. But just the fact that it was there and people were doing this was very exciting to me. And when I first went down to the house where it was located, I knew, ‘Here’s my people. I found ’em.’”

That esprit de corps fueled much of the counterculture, of course, including the little station that could. “There were a lot of what you might call hippies and assorted musicians. They were drawn to it almost immediately. And curious people like me, people who liked oddball music that wasn’t being heard.” As with the hippies that started the Memphis Country Blues Festival, there was an inclusiveness to the WEVL volunteers’ ethos that lent itself to diversity.  

Judy Dorsey
(Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht)

“I remember the first time I heard a live performance on the air,” Dorsey recalls. “I think it was [local blues legends] the Fieldstones. They played live on there several times, because we had connections with them. And they had what they called a Blues-a-thon. And I remember opening the door and there was Rufus Thomas up at the top of the stairs, doing the Funky Chicken! 

“That was the first night that Dee ‘Cap’n Pete’ Henderson ever came to the station. He lived way over in Box Town, and had gone to Radio Shack and bought a big ol’ antenna, and stuck it up on his roof, just so he could hear the Blues-a-thon, because he’d read about it in The Commercial Appeal. Then he called the DJ on the air and the guy told him, ‘Come on down here! You know more about this stuff than I do!’ So he came down.” That encounter led to the late Cap’n Pete becoming one of the station’s preeminent blues DJs, whose shows are still rebroadcast to this day.

Homemade antennas and chance encounters capture the spirit of WEVL well, which has become a local institution on the strength of its do-it-yourself attitude. It persisted even as the station outgrew its original wattage in 1986. “Our first transmitter building, when we went back on the air in ’86, was all built with donated materials and volunteer labor. I don’t think we paid for anything out there,” says Dorsey.

The same personal commitment, and reliance on local pledges, has helped WEVL weather the cycles of funding and attrition. The Carter years were a good time to begin. “You had a lot of little 10-watt stations starting up at the same time as WEVL. A lot of them were born in that part of the 1970s. We’re charter members of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters — we were some of the first people to join it. Our first station manager and program director were getting paid through grant money from the federal government, and when the grant money ran out, that’s when they left. There were all kinds of different grants in those days. When all that stopped, that was a bad time. It was Reagan, he ruined everything. That was sort of a dark era, because we didn’t have any money to pay anybody. There was a period where it was strictly volunteers. It was a bit chaotic.”

But sometimes you can make chaos work for you, as WEVL’s longevity bears out. Today, they carry on much as before, still using the homemade record shelves made years ago, the epitome of listener-supported radio, with last year’s mid-pandemic pledge drive being one of the station’s most successful ever. 

Marcella’s Memphis Soul Stew hostess Marcella Simien
(Photo: Courtesy of Tommy Warren)

WYPL (89.3): Serving the Underserved, Dishing Out Memphis Magic

Though WEVL’s original 10 watts may have been rather weak, a station now using one of the region’s most powerful transmitters had even more humble beginnings. “We are now a 100,000-watt station, covering a 75-mile radius from the tower in West Memphis. That tower was actually donated to the library in 1997, and its power and size is a bit of overkill, but that’s the situation we’re in.” So reflects Tommy Warren, broadcast manager for WYPL, the station based in the basement of the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library. 

Yet the station still retains its original mission of offering the vision-impaired and others readings of current newspapers, magazines, and books — one of only two such stations in the country. “It started out in 1978 as a ham radio kind of situation,” says Warren. “I am only the second radio manager here since then. Before me, there was a manager who was himself vision-impaired. He organized volunteers, and they’d sit in a little booth and read, and you had to have a ham radio at home to pick it up. It operated like that for about 15 years.”

When Warren came on board, he added an element to the readings by tapping into the huge digital archive of Memphis music in the library system. That has seen its audience increase dramatically, especially overseas, where the station can be heard online. 

“We started doing all the music shows five or six years ago. Now we’re bringing in DJs like Randy Haspel and Lahna Deering and Barbara Blue. People who actually play Memphis music also come in here and produce shows.” 

The new emphasis on music has made WYPL a real player on the community radio scene, although they, unlike the other stations mentioned here, do not depend on public donations. “Because we’re paid for by the city of Memphis, we feel there’s an obligation that we have to live up to. Especially through COVID. When there are emergencies, people turn to over-the-air radio for their first source of information.” 

Jared “Jay B” Boyd, Shelby McCall, and Robby Grant
(Photo: Jamie Harmon)

WYXR (91.7 FM): The New Kids on the Block

Yet another player in the nonprofit world of the airwaves arrived right in the middle of the pandemic lockdown last year, but the timing does not appear to have slowed its roll. Its frequency was already familiar to Memphians, having been where the University of Memphis’ station, WUMR, had lived on the dial for decades. But sometime in 2019, the U of M decided the jazz-only format and station management needed a change of course. 

Robby Grant, executive director of WYXR, describes the process as an evolution of goals. “The University of Memphis knew they wanted to do something different with the radio station. They had an existing relationship with the Daily Memphian, and reached out to them, but the folks at the Daily Memphian said, ‘We don’t want to run an entire radio station.’ So they approached the Crosstown Concourse. The U of M wanted to get more connected with the community, so this was another way for them to reach outside of their campus. It made sense for it to be a partnership.”

For Grant, who has a background in software and web development, a crucial element was also making the most of digital technology to archive every show put on the air, which community stations in other cities have implemented. But once that infrastructure was in place, the shows themselves had to be created. (Including Flyer Radio, a show produced by Flyer staff featuring news, interviews, and Memphis music, and airing every Friday at noon.) 

“They brought me in,” he says, “and I brought in Jay B [program director Jared Boyd] soon thereafter to really shape the programming. I had some ideas. I knew free-form radio allows a lot of flexibility for the community to be involved. I wanted some talk programming. I felt like that was missing. There’s some talk programming on a national level, but I thought there was a way to elevate more of the community talk. The Daily Memphian has their news part of it. So I was working on the nuts and bolts, bringing that together, getting agreements in place. When Jay B came on, we hit the ground running with the programming. We built on our networks, along with the applications process, to find DJs.” 

By the time of their debut broadcast on October 5th of last year, they had 70 volunteer DJs, arguably with a greater programming diversity than any other station in the country. But it felt a bit like a minefield. As Boyd explains, “Frankly, moving from WUMR’s jazz-lover focus to a new format, a free-form radio station, was going to be a hard change for a lot of people, no matter what our content was. We were taking something away from the community that was extremely needed, in some people’s eyes. And that can be rough.”

Nonetheless, Boyd was determined to raise the stakes of the diverse programming. “People may not expect to hear community radio in Memphis, in the South, that has a space for hip-hop, house music, or punk. But the reality of Memphis is that those people are as much if not more representative of our community than the genres most people think of when they consider community radio. So how and why could we be representative of the community if we’re not representative of those people? 

“And there are still places where we haven’t been able to find the right person, who understands what we do, and can present to their segment of the community. Like the Latinx community. But also the Vietnamese community and the Chinese and Japanese and Ethiopian and Somalian and Kenyan communities. There’s tons of cultures who pair their origins with the identity of being American and being a Memphian. But there are only 24 hours in a day, so we have to be creative about how to bring everybody on.” 

Though there are more ambitious plans ahead, Boyd feels that the mix WYXR has settled on passes one key test, perhaps the toughest test of all: “The feedback we’ve been getting is that people don’t know how to explain what we do, except that it just feels and sounds like Memphis,” he says. “I wanted to lead with that.”

Editor’s Note: This month, WKNO, WEVL, and WYXR all have their seasonal pledge drives. We urge you to tune in and give generously. 

Categories
Music Music Blog

Have a Punky Xmas with the Goner TV Holiday Special

This happens on the Goner TV Holiday Special.

It’s that time of year when you ask yourself, “How many more versions of A Christmas Carol do I have to watch?” Well friends, liberation is available if you want it. It’s called the “Goner TV Holiday Special,” and it’s happening tonight.

Memphis’ pioneering garage/punk label and beloved record store Goner’s pivot from live shows to streaming has been one of the rare success stories of the pandemic. Their weekly webcasts have become wacko variety shows combining live music, comedy, art, talk, and whatever else they can put in front of their cameras.

Now, the variety show format reaches its final form with the Holiday Special. Goner honchoes Eric Friedl and Zac Ives will be joined by Friedl’s Oblivians bandmate Greg Cartwright, Christmas music from Robby Grant (joined by Memphis Flyer Music Editor Alex Greene), Shannon Shaw & Cody Blanchard, and Detroit’s Human Eye madman Timmy Vulgar. You’ll also get to see the world premiere of The Sheik’s new “Christmas in Space” video, which is absolutely bonkers. There’s also new art by ex-Nots keyboardist Alexandra Eastburn, a cooking segment, and a bunch of other cool stuff that you’re just going to have to tune in to believe.

The Goner TV Holiday Special streams tonight at 8 p.m. CST on Twitch or GonerTV.com.  

Categories
News News Blog

New WYXR Station to Air From Crosstown

CREDIT: WYXR

WYXR

New radio station WYXR’s initial staff includes (from left) Shelby McCall, Robby Grant, and Jared Boyd.

WYXR, a new, non-commercial radio station will hit the air (and digital devices) here this fall in a partnership between Crosstown Concourse, The Daily Memphian, and the University of Memphis.

The station’s radio home is at 91.7 FM and its call letters stand for “Your Crosstown Radio.” That’s where the station’s staff will produce and air its daily broadcasts. The station partners came together to reimagine the U of M’s WUMR station back in November.

The station will be led by executive director Robby Grant, who spent 15 years at advertising firm Archer Malmo after first starting his own online marketing company. Grant is also a staple on the Memphis music scene, touring widely and also as a member of Mellotron Variations.

“I’ve been wanting to help make a change with Memphis radio, specifically community radio, for a long time,” Grant said in a statement. “The fact that it has organically become real is exciting.
[pullquote-1] “We are going to amplify voices in Memphis and the Mid-South. By taking a freeform approach, we want to begin finding personalities and DJs who have their own tastes and things they’ve grown up loving and sharing with people.

“A freeform station allows those DJs to turn people onto music, whether it’s the music they’ve loved their whole lives or what they’ve heard this past week.”

Jared “Jay B.” Boyd will serve as WYXR’s program director. Boyd is a DJ, reporter with The Daily Memphian, and host of NPR-syndicated radio program “Beale Street Caravan.”

“Aside from the opportunity to be hands-on in cultivating new and emerging broadcast talent in the Mid-South, I’m most gratified by this radio partnership’s potential to truly reach people in the Mid-South area by virtue of being open and welcoming in nature,” Boyd said in a statement. “When you walk into Crosstown Concourse, it won’t be hidden. The nuts and bolts of the operation will be showcased behind glass right in the lobby of the Central Atrium. By design, this community-minded radio station will not just broadcast to its audience but live and breathe alongside it.”

WYXR

Former WUMR staffer Shelby McCall, who works now with Entercom Memphis, has signed on as WYXR’s operations coordinator. The University of Memphis is also searching for an instructor for student radio. This position will facilitate student involvement with the station and also program and plan a second university-focused internet stream, on which students will broadcast news, sports, and music.

The station’s programming will be made up of volunteer contributions from regular content producers and special guests to achieve a freeform format, providing room for a rotating cast of local personalities and an educational ground for university students.

WYXR

From left: Grant, Boyd, and McCall

The WYXR studio is now being built in the space once held by The OAM network, an independent podcast company. The new space will have a redesigned control room, production room, and live audio connections from Crosstown Theater, the Green Room at Crosstown Arts, and plans to simulcast event’s from the U of M’s new, $40 million Scheidt Family Music Center.

For more information or to volunteer, go to wyxr.org. Initial programming will be posted on the site in the coming weeks.

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Mellotron Variations

Increase your chill with Music Video Monday.

It’s the weekend after Gonerfest, and you’re too tired to be at work. But here we are. Chill out with Mellotron Variations.

The groundbreaking project from Robby Grant, Johnathan Kirlscey, John Medeski, and Wilco’s Patrick Sansone now has a second album, recorded at the April 24, 2018 Crosstown Arts show. That was the first time in history that four Mellotrons had been on stage at the same time—but not the last.

The quartet has since played at Wilco’s Solid Sound festival in Maryland, and will perform in Nashville in December. The video, directed by Ben Rednour, is a psychedelic feast, incorporating footage from John Wayne westerns and vintage home movies. Go “Into The Sunrise!”

Music Video Monday: Mellotron Variations

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

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday on Tuesday: Big Ass Truck

CREDIT: Cole Early

Cole Early

Robby Grant and Steve Selvidge rock Railgartenwith Big Ass Truck

You were out of pocket on Labor Day, so we’re doing Music Video Monday on Tuesday.

In the 1990s, Big Ass Truck was the hottest ticket in Memphis. Formed by Steve Selvidge, Robby Grant, and Alex Greene (who is the current music editor for the Memphis Flyer) with the goal of being the post-modern MGs, they were one of the first bands anywhere to incorporate turntablism in a rock band setting, courtesy of DJ Colin Butler.

After touring relentlessly for the better part of the decade, the band went on hiatus in 2001. Nowadays, Grant is instrumental in the Mellotron Variations and Selvidge is the lead guitarist in, among other bands, The Hold Steady. Big Ass Truck has been periodically reforming for one-offs and short tours, like they did last winter at Railgarten. Director and producer Cole Early was on hand with his camera crew to capture the stone cold groove.

This Saturday, September 7th, Big Ass Truck will open for The Hold Steady at The Basement in Nashville, and once again, it’s the hottest ticket in town. Courtesy of Early, here’s a little taste of what the folks paying top dollar for that show will see.

Big Ass Truck – Live at Railgarten Memphis 11-21-18 ”Theem From” from Cole Early on Vimeo.

Music Video Monday on Tuesday: Big Ass Truck

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

Categories
Music Music Features

Mellotrons Redux: “Mellotron Variations” Spawns a Record and Film

CREDIT: Jamie Harmon

Regular readers of these pages already know about a particular musical niche in which Memphis has lately played a pivotal role: the Mellotron revival, which has slowly been gathering steam over the last two decades.

Collector and enthusiast Winston Eggleston, son of famed photographer William Eggleston, has instigated concerts featuring the 1960s-era keyboard, which uses analog tape loops to eerily recreate the sounds of real instruments and even whole bands at the push of a key. So far, the culmination of this has been the stunning Mellotron Variations concert in April 2018 at Crosstown Arts, in which local players Robby Grant and Jonathan Kirkscey were joined by Pat Sansone (Wilco) and John Medeski (Medeski Martin & Wood), presenting semi-improvised original pieces that showed off the evocative range of multiple Mellotrons being played at once.

Jamie Harmon

l to r: Robby Grant, Jonathan Kirkscey, John Medeski, Pat Sansone

This Friday, that concert will be released as a live LP on Spaceflight Records, with a film of the concert on the way. I spoke with Grant about how this project just seems to grow more legs at every turn.

Memphis Flyer: It seems like with Mellotron Variations, you’re making more use of the rhythm fill features, the stock rhythm section recordings featured in the old Mellotrons.

Robby Grant: Yeah, they call those the rhythm and fills. It might be due to the way we were writing these for the show. We didn’t really compose these to be on a record. Because Pat and John weren’t there, Jonathan and I spent a lot of time working on these songs, and I think maybe it was a shorthand way of experimenting with sounds. Certainly Jonathan had a couple songs that were very composed, but this was another way to play around and see what felt right. We wanted the hour-long show to be kind of varied. All you really have to do is dial up those rhythm and fills and add different noises and loops. It’s kinda like when you first get any new keyboard. The most innocent and fun part is just going through and finding sounds.

And due to John and Pat being busy elsewhere, you guys only had a limited number of hours to prep for the show, correct?

It’s like a yin/yang kinda thing. Jonathan and I had a really long time. From January to April of 2018, we were working on it at least three to four times a week. Pat and John were only there on a limited basis. Pat came in maybe two weekends in that span of time, and John came in just one weekend in February. So that was when we really got together for three days and wrote the songs. We developed some ideas, and then Pat and John came back for three days before the actual show in April and we rehearsed.
Were there particular challenges in mixing down recordings of a live show?

We didn’t intend to make this a record, honestly. It was all built around the performance. And that came out so well, we were like, let’s try this. Jonathan probably spent 100 hours mixing and editing it. Since it was recorded using direct output from the Mellotrons, we never had crowd noise. So it is a live album, but it doesn’t sound live.

And soon you’ll be releasing a film of the show?

Yes, Justin Thompson led a four-camera shoot that night. And Daniel Lynn at Music+Arts Studio is doing a surround-sound mix for the movie. So this thing just keeps going. We did the show last April, then were invited to play the Solid Sound Festival, and I was like, ‘Okay, that’ll be a good ending.’ Then I got a call from OZ Arts in Nashville. We’ll play that and a Tiny Desk concert on NPR in December. If people want us to do it, we’ll do it!

Categories
Cover Feature News

Station Break: WEVL Board Faces a Member Uprising

CREDIT: Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

Let’s get one thing straight before we start: Everyone in this story loves WEVL.

Since 1976, Memphis’ volunteer community radio station has been having a party on the left end of the FM dial, and volunteer programmers get to pick the music. Thanks mostly to the donations of its nearly 2,200 members, WEVL (89.9 FM) remains fiercely independent, and free from the concerns of advertisers who’d prefer the station play something, y’know, popular.

Justin Fox Burks

WEVL offices on South Main (center)

Former WEVL board president Tim Taylor says the station attracts a wide variety of listeners, and that there is also a wide variety of opinions on what WEVL should be and how it should get there. But everyone loves the station and wants it to succeed.
It may be that definition of success and, perhaps, how to attain it that has brought about a very public split between WEVL’s long-established management team and board and a group of members called Friends of WEVL who want to shake things up. At stake is the future direction of the station. It can either remain on its current path, as board members seem to prefer. Or it can expand with more — and more diverse — programmers (that’s what WEVL calls DJs) and board members, possibly find more avenues for revenue, and a new location.

Beyond those challenges, many are calling for more openness from WEVL board and management. Members and programmers don’t really know each other anymore, critics say, not like in decades past. And, as evidenced by a recent member meeting, the board isn’t exactly welcoming fresh thoughts and ideas from its members.

According to those who’ve been around the station for a while, this tension between board and members has happened many times before. Labelled “coup attempts” in WEVL lore, such group uprisings have largely been stymied by a board and staff that station critics say is resistant to change, no matter the reason. So, the latest power struggle is a recurring one, but it seems to have a renewed force this time around.  

Photographs by Justin Fox Burks

Friends of WEVL (from left to right) Les Edwards, Robby Grant, and Amanda Dent

The Friends of WEVL

In August, the Friends of WEVL created a website and began reaching out on social media. The original three “Friends” are Amanda Dent, a longtime WEVL programmer; Robby Grant, a local musician; and Les Edwards, a former WEVL board member. The three had been working on a WEVL board-sanctioned committee to help form a strategic plan for the station’s future. For months, committee members say, the project was moving along nicely. Everyone was cooperative and friendly.

But at some point this summer, the WEVL board changed its mind. Taylor and Brian Craig, a WEVL board member and the station’s programming director, say the committee started moving too fast, and that the committee began communicating its ideas with board members and programmers without approval from the station management. The strategic plan was one thing, Craig says, but committee members were also moving to re-shape the WEVL board and looking at a possible move to Crosstown Concourse.

The process quickly got “off track,” says WEVL station manager Judy Dorsey.   

A statement from Taylor in a board meeting hinted at what was to come — the curtain of cooperation was coming down. “Since the board makes the final decisions, the committee is not in a position to comment on what WEVL wants to do or will do, unless already approved by the board,” Taylor said, according to the minutes of the meeting. 

Craig says the WEVL board discussed the committee’s work and “thought it just wasn’t the right fit for WEVL.” During that discussion, he says, the board dissolved the committee.

They did so without a word to Dent, Grant, or Edwards, who had been working on the project for months. Craig says that “perhaps we probably should have called them and talked.” But the three, he says, never called him to see “if we could work this out.”

About three weeks after the abrupt dissolution of the committee, Dent, Grant, and Edwards took their story to the public. The Friends of WEVL website was created and Grant outlined the situation in a late-August Flyer Viewpoint piece.

“I’m writing because WEVL is at a crossroads,” Grant wrote. “And as listener attention is pulled in so many directions, WEVL needs to turn back to its community and re-engage to survive.”

Expansion and Diversity

So, what do the Friends of WEVL want to change? They want more programmers, to start with. 

According to Friends of WEVL, the station had 82 volunteer programmers in 1993. As of August, 2018, it had 42. The station had no open time-slots in 1993. It now has 32, according to the Friends website. The group wants WEVL staff to be more aggressive in recruiting programmers and to make the process of getting a show more uniform and less complicated.  

“The process to get approved for a show can take a year or longer after submitting the application,” reads the Friends website. “Some applicants never receive a reply to their request.”

Shows used to be picked by a programming committee. Now, Craig, as the program director, has the say on shows — who gets one and who doesn’t. One source, who wishes to remain anonymous, recounts the saga of a New Orleans transplant who had a show on WWOZ (that city’s WEVL equivalent) and waited two years to get a show on WEVL before he finally gave up.

“If someone from New Orleans who had a show on WWOZ moves into this town and wants a show on this station, we can find a spot for them,” says the source. “Having one person in charge of programming? Crazy!” 

The Friends also want more diversity. Joyce Cobb, they note, is the station’s single African-American programmer (out of about 40 programmers in a city that’s 63 percent African American). For a long time, Cobb was the only person of color on the board of directors. African-American attorney Bryson Whitney was elected by the members last week.

The Friends also want to push the station to 24/7 programming. In 1993, the station was off the air 20 hours per week. Currently, it’s off the air 42 hours each week, mainly between midnight and 6 a.m. They also want to find new sources of funding for the station, and want the station to partner with more local nonprofits. And they want to see the station’s South Main headquarters renovated or find a new space. 

But at the top of the Friends’ list is a mission to redevelop the WEVL board. How to do that was the main thread of conversation when the Friends of WEVL met in person for the first time at High Cotton Brewing, two weeks ago. It began with casual chatter over beers. Twenty minutes later it had become a full-on, battle-plan session for the WEVL members meeting set for the following week.

WEVL staff had apparently set the member meeting and then moved it to a later date with no explanation, leading Grant to call it “shrouded in secrecy.” Later, the staff sent an email to members telling them the board had approved a slate of candidates for them to vote upon during the meeting. But they did not include the names of any of the candidates or even how many there were.  

All of it had the Friends scratching their heads. They turned to the station’s bylaws, hoping to determine just what they could and could not do during the meeting and what rights they had as dues-paying WEVL members. 

“The bylaws, in several ways, are vague,” says attorney Casey Shannon, a Friend of WEVL. “It’s the first set of bylaws I’ve read all the way through that I would call ‘paranoid’ on their face.”

Shannon explains: “[By paranoid], I mean it is controlled in an insane degree by the current set of directors, which can and does include an employee of WEVL, [Brian Craig].”

Edwards, one of the original Friends, thinks the whole thing should be simpler. “This is a members meeting; we are members and they are the board,” Edwards says. “It seems to me that we should be able to do whatever we want in our meeting.”  

The Friends wanted to ditch the board-approved slate of candidates and nominate their own board member, Amy Schaftlein.

Just a few days later, though, those optimistic, high-energy intentions and plans broke like a wave on the rocky shores of the WEVL board of directors.  

“They Couldn’t Find Anybody”

A nonprofit consultant, Barbara Prescott, told that now-defunct WEVL committee this summer that the station could not even begin to work on a strategic plan until it developed its board. That piece of criticism doesn’t just come from the Friends group. Four members of the board have exceeded their term limits. Taylor, Joyce Cobb, Hal Mabry, and Steffen Schreiner have served together for about 13 years, according to sources. Taylor has been on the WEVL board for 15 years.

The WEVL board is supposed to have 12 members. Currently there are six. It’s unclear why the current board can’t or won’t fill out its ranks. Board members themselves are responsible for filling 10 of the 12 board seats, thanks to changes made in 2001. The other two board slots are voted on by members, but even those candidates are selected from a slate vetted by the board.

“They told Les [Edwards] they just couldn’t find anybody,” says Nancy Morrow, former WEVL board president and a Friend of WEVL. 

Taylor said during last week’s member meeting: “The board is always looking for members, and we’re always soliciting applications. We’ve gotten some recently, but they weren’t submitted in the period in time to [be voted on at the meeting].”

One thing was clear from that member meeting, the board does not seem much interested in engaging with its members — or explaining why they do the things they do. Most of the four board members didn’t speak. When Taylor did speak, often it was to evade or shut down questions from the members. 

For example, Edwards asked if there would be an opportunity for members — from which WEVL gets most of its money — to ask questions. Taylor said, simply and flatly, “no.”

As planned, Edwards then attempted to nominate Schaftlein, the Friends of WEVL candidate, from the floor. Taylor shut it down quickly, saying only “our bylaws do not provide for nominations from the floor.”

The nomination strategy died, but questions came anyway. When asked about term limits for board members, Taylor said that state law and WEVL bylaws allow them to serve past their terms. “Isn’t that just so business can continue?” Morrow asked. “It’s not meant to keep people in perpetuity, right?”

Taylor evaded the question.

“One again, the board follows the bylaws and chose this slate of candidates,” he said. “Vote for them or don’t vote for them. These are the candidates for election tonight.”

Edwards objected to Cobb’s inclusion on the slate of candidates, because she had already served well past her term limits. Someone spoke up and said her inclusion was against the bylaws.

“Les, we’ve done our research on this,” Taylor said. Edwards objected again and Taylor told him “You can make your statement, but these are the candidates for the membership to choose from.” 

Cobb lost the election. Attorney Bryson Whitney was approved. Cobb was re-installed to the board later that night by her fellow board members. 

After the vote, WEVL members weren’t satisfied. The room thrummed with tension. Ward Archer, owner of Archer Records, asked the board when the rules governing board elections were changed. Here’s how that exchange went down:

TAYLOR: I don’t know, sir! I wasn’t around. 

ARCHER: Well, I was around! This is not in the spirt of the WEVL that I grew to know.

TAYLOR: We’ve been operating under these bylaws for 17 years. They were in place before I ever had any contact with the station.

ARCHER: Well, that’s no excuse. They need to be revisited. I’d like to have a motion from the board to revisit the bylaws.

TAYLOR: I think the board is probably going to look at the bylaws.

ARCHER: Well, give me something more than that. 

TAYLOR: No. Why?

No resolution was made, partly because the board was not formally in session. Taylor also would not commit to make a good-faith effort to appoint new board members by the end of the year, per Morrow’s suggestion. 

Edwards called the board’s actions that night, “the wall.”

“They said, ‘We’re the board and we’re telling you what we’re going to allow you to do. We don’t want to hear from you. We don’t want you to ask questions.’ There’s no connection to the community. It’s a perfect example of everything about the the station. It’s those people behind that table versus everybody else.”

But Edwards and Grant say the Friends of WEVL is playing “the long game,” already preparing candidates for the member election next year.   

Tension and Intimidation

The tension at the members meeting also exists inside the WEVL offices on South Main. 

Nearly 300 people now have signed on as “Friends of WEVL” on the group’s website. Look at the bottom of that list and you’ll find 17 people listed as “Anonymous WEVL Programmer.” They’re anonymous because some say they’ve been threatened by WEVL staff. If they show public support for the Friends of WEVL, the station will cancel their show. 

When asked, Taylor said he was not aware of the situation. Dorsey and Craig denied it. “We never told anyone we were going to throw them off the air if they signed [the Friends of WEVL website],” Dorsey says. 

Craig says he has discussed the matter with WEVL programmers at the station. “I’ve told some people I was surprised that they would sign that,” he says. “I’ve told several people that I wished they would un-sign it.”

The Beale Street Caravan show was cancelled on WEVL last month. Its co-host, Kevin Cubbins, joined the Friends group, which did not go unnoticed by Craig. But Craig says he’d long considered canceling the show as it was never a top performer for WEVL, and it is already carried on three other Memphis radio stations. 

“It is on those other stations, but I hadn’t really thought about that too much,” Craig says. “But, perhaps, [seeing Cubbins’ name on] the Friends of WEVL website maybe, y’know, reminded me of that.”

Caravan co-host Pat Mitchell Worley wrote on Facebook after the show was cancelled, “Next to Joyce Cobb, I’m only the second African-American female on this non-commercial, community station in Memphis, Tennessee. Well, I used to be.”

Dorsey says the tension around these issues has made at least one new programmer want to quit. 

“When this starts becoming not fun, when people start getting emails and seeing weird stuff on Facebook and reading the editorial in the Flyer, they’ll tell you, ‘I get enough of this in the real world, my job, and my life,'” Craig says. “I don’t need all this extra stress.”

Just Another “Coup” Attempt?

“That stuff that Robby [Grant] wrote about in the Flyer, everything on his list has been presented 10 years prior, and nothing was ever done,” says one former WEVL board member. “So, when [the board] said they were going too fast. … Kiss my ass. You’re lying again.”

Craig and Dorsey can tick off the “coup” attempts of WEVL’s past. One involved closing a station at Rhodes College, they said. Another was about having talk shows. Another was a coup attempt from board members. 

That last one was in 2011. Some board members thought they’d found some new funding sources. And they had a plan to hire an executive director to help Dorsey and Craig run the station, according to the former board member. 

After a meeting detailing those plans, the member left feeling that progress was being made. But the other board members voted the person off the board at its very next meeting. That source says it’s the prevailing attitude at WEVL, and it keeps the station in a state of stunted growth.  

“Every new idea that we came up with, they’d say, ‘Oh, we’ve already tried that. We can’t do that,'” the former board member says. “You’d get constant pushback. Several people quit the board because of it. There were some legitimate things, but every little thing that came up was ‘Well, we can’t do that.’ That’s too much of the old Memphis attitude. This is a new generation now, and we do what we want to do and we can do anything.”

Zac Ives, a Friend of WEVL and co-owner of Goner Records, says very little of the Memphis community is reflected in WEVL now. For example, he said station officials claim Federal Communication Commission (FCC) rules won’t let them promote local music and live shows. But he said they could do “plenty” to “help foster a [music] scene rather than pull away from it.” The station needs help, he said, and believes the Friends of WEVL can provide it.

“If WEVL — the staff and board — can’t accept help from a group so clearly coming from a place of love for what WEVL stands for and has been in the past, who will they accept it from?” Ives says. “Their inability to listen to anyone but themselves is troubling.”

When asked if she could imagine WEVL officials ever working with the Friends of WEVL on future solutions, Dorsey says, “Well, I can imagine anything.”

Stay tuned.

Categories
Music Music Features

Ghost Music: Mellotrons Return to Crosstown Arts

CREDIT: Jamie Harmon

“When I’m playing a real Mellotron, it’s like I’m playing ghosts,” says Pat Sansone, multi-instrumentalist for Wilco, who’s in town for a series of concerts this week. It’s not a comment you would hear about many instruments, but the Mellotron is unique. Its immediate precursor was the Chamberlin, in which strips of audio tape triggered by a keyboard could mimic various orchestral instruments. When a Chamberlin employee absconded to England with two of the machines in 1962, he created his own consumer-oriented model, and the Mellotron was born. The new instrument, using lower fidelity recordings, tended to color the sound of the instruments with its own warble and woof. Before long, it was appearing on records by the Beatles, the Kinks, and others.

It’s that slightly corrupted sound that makes the Mellotron a sought-after keyboard to this day, and it’s what brought Sansone to Memphis to collaborate with three other musicians in shows using multiple Mellotrons simultaneously.

Jamie Harmon

Pat Sansone contemplates the next note

“The way the old Mellotron tapes were recorded, with the amount of degeneration that happened before they got to the machines themselves, they’re just instantly evocative,” Sansone explains. “There’s already a sense of passed time built into those sounds. It’s like a faded photograph, where you see somebody in the corner. There’s a humanity creeping around inside those sounds.”

It was that mechanically tweaked humanity that appealed to Winston Eggleston (the son of photographer William Eggleston) when he plunged into the world of Mellotron schematics to make his own. Eggleston, ended up building and collecting a few of them, leading his friend, musician Robby Grant (Big Ass Truck,  >manualcontrol<, Mouserocket), to ask, “What now?”

As Grant describes the process, “I reached out to cellist Jonathan Kirkscey and we created new music using only Mellotrons. Neither of us was a keyboard player.” But technical virtuosity was not the point. All of Memphis was abuzz with the results: two sold-out shows in 2016, dubbed Duets for Mellotron. The show was enhanced by projections designed by Winston Eggleston and John Markham. 

Jason Schepman

with Jonathan Kirskcey and Robby Grant .

Following the success of the duets, “a person from Crosstown mentioned an interdisciplinary NEA grant — that we eventually were awarded. What we did was make it a lot bigger,” Grant says. “We’re gonna put on multiple shows. The first piece will be Robert Patterson. He’s a composer with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, and he’s gonna be contrasting the Mellotron with real flutes and real cellos in his chamber music pieces. Then, we have the New Ballet Ensemble (NBE) working with Ross Rice,” the erstwhile Memphian, producer and keyboard wizard.

The capstone of this year’s project, known as Mellotron Variations, will be a performance (again featuring the projections of Eggleston and Markham) by a quartet of Mellotron players including Grant, Kirkscey, Sansone, and jazz/funk keyboardist John Medeski, of the trio Medeski, Martin & Wood. Sansone says he’s excited to be playing with Medeski. “He is such a deep musician, and bringing a whole new level of musicianship to it. He’s a fearless player.”

Jamie Harmon

John Medeski

For Medeski, fearlessness is key. “How do you push the limits of an instrument? That’s what Hendrix and so many great musicians did. This instrument can be both a sampler and, by messing with the speed of the wheel inside it, you can be a DJ. It’s really an expressive thing.”

“I heard a recording of Captain Beefheart doing this incredible Mellotron solo,” Medeski goes on, “that really blew it open for me and made me realize it’s so much more than just fake strings with a weird sound. That inspired me in terms of not being afraid. It’s an expressive instrument unto itself. Imitating something for the sake of imitating it is stupid. Why not just get violin players? But the Mellotron has a total sound of its own.”

Grant and Kirkscey were committed to pushing the instrument’s boundaries as well, in part by recording new sounds, previously unheard in vintage Mellotron iterations, including eerie cello and flute harmonics, backwards guitar, and children reciting spoken word pieces. Together, the four have created semi-improvised works that they’ll premier this week. Medeski notes, “Improvisation is composition; it’s just immediate. You make a sound, and what note you choose next, where you put it in time, is like composing, except you’re doing it really fast. And the other guys are all that kind of musician. It’s such a cool project. I’m just excited to be part of it, and I’m honored.” 

For an exhaustive listing of albums and songs featuring the Mellotron, see Planet Mellotron.

Categories
Music Music Features

Duets for Mellotron

CREDIT: Jason Schepman

In April, 2016, there was a unique concert at Crosstown Arts. Memphis musicians Robby Grant and Jonathan Kirkscey performed original compositions for two Mellotrons. Why was it unique? “No one has ever done Mellotron duets before because you never have more than one of them in the same place,” Kirkscey says.

The Mellotron is a keyboard instrument that is the precursor to the modern sampling synthesizer. “Back in the day, tape technology was the only way to recreate sound,” Grant says. “People wanted to recreate a violin or a flute, they basically recorded the A, A#, B, etc. of a flute and put them on a tape.”

Pressing a key on the Mellotron activates a tape head that presses against the tape loops to play back the sound. Each of the instrument’s 48 keys, therefore, require its own individual 1/8-inch tape, meaning that the mechanism is ungainly and delicate. “They’re pretty rare and relatively expensive for an instrument,” says Grant.

Winston Eggleston, with whom Grant has been friends since high school, is one of a handful of people worldwide who collect Mellotrons. “We spent time hanging out at his house watching The Song Remains the Same,” Grant recalls. “We were synched up musically.”

Eggleston has been obsessed with Mellotrons since the Beatles fan discovered that the ethereal intro to “Strawberry Fields” was produced with one. In 2015, Eggleston told Grant he was going to build his own Mellotron, and Grant suggested putting on a house show. “It was really to just show off the instrument.”

Grant enlisted his Mouserocket bandmate Kirkscey, a noted cellist and composer, to co-write some songs that would show off the Mellotron’s unique sounds and capabilities. “The Mellotron has a symphonic potential that I thought Jonathan would be good at.”

Jason Schepman

with Robby Grant and Jonathan Kirskcey.

Grant and Kirkscey composed nine songs to be performed on a combination of vintage tape-based Mellotrons and the digital emulators created by the Mellotron company. While the analog Mellotrons can only hold three sounds per tape cartridge, the digital versions offer a bank of every sound created for the instruments, including custom tones crafted for Black Sabbath, Tangerine Dream, Yes, and Wilco. Kirkscey says the instruments are idiosyncratic. “The action of the keyboards is not the most desirable. It doesn’t feel like a piano or synth. You have to get used to it. Sometimes there will be one note that’s horrendously out of tune, while all the other notes are in tune. You can avoid that note, or you can embrace it as an eccentricity. In some of those vocal sounds that are recordings of singers, the singers are … not good. Their singing was out of tune! There’s no amount of tuning that can correct that.”

The show took place in the round, with visual effects projected on the walls of Crosstown Arts, created by Eggleston and John Markham, a Californian who learned how to create psychedelic liquid light shows from the people who had created the techniques for Jefferson Airplane in the 1960s. “The question was, how do you do it? Do you do it live, with overhead projectors? I didn’t think that was a good idea.”

Markham and a crew of editors from Archer Malmo created digitally manipulated HD video of the vintage psychedelic effects to be played along with the music. During the final rehearsals, Grant and Kirkscey modified their compositions. “We were reacting to the visuals,” Grant says.

Engineer Kevin Cubbins recorded the weekend of shows at Crosstown Arts, but as the team moved into mix-down mode, tragedy struck. The hard drives and computer equipment containing the recordings were stolen from Cubbins’ studio in a series of break-ins. So the team decided to do it all over again. “I felt bad for Kevin, but I wasn’t upset at the prospect of re-recording,” says Kirkscey. “It’s another chance to do it better.”

The second takes came from a private session at the Eggleston Artistic Trust, with Kirkscey supervising the recording. “I realize now that trying to do all of it — the show the visuals, and the recording — at once was probably too much,” says Grant. “This allowed us to focus on the songs, and focus on the recordings. Jonathan did an incredible job of mixing and editing everything.”

The finished album, Duets for Mellotron, is a gorgeous collection of sounds. There are nods to composers like Philip Glass and Brian Eno, but the overall vibe is unique. The album’s release on Friday, January 13th will be celebrated with a listening party at Crosstown Arts, beginning at 6 p.m. Grant says there are plans afoot for a second live show once the new Crosstown Arts facility opens in the Concourse building.