Tag: Shangri-La Records

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Jared McStay’s Musical Legacy

Jared McStay raises a leg (Jim McDermott in foreground) at a 2016 Simple Ones reunion at Shangri-La (Credit: Mike Brown)

Memphis music was dealt yet another gut-punch last week with the announcement that Jared McStay had succumbed to cancer on November 15th. And while there was no separating the man from his music, what Memphians mourned most was McStay’s winning personality, either as the congenial owner of Shangri-La Records or as the ever-curious man-about-town, eager to check out new music in whatever form he could find it.

Yet any remembrance of McStay’s legacy must go beyond noting that he was a member of the Simpletones/Simple Ones, So Gung Ho, and other bands, for the sheer number of those “other bands” was stunning, as was the prolific pace at which McStay wrote songs. To get a sense of Jared McStay, the musician, I spoke to two local players who knew him best: Tripp Lamkins, best known as the bassist for the Grifters, and John Stivers, best known as the guitarist for Impala. Aside from those more widely recognized bands, the two played with McStay in various less celebrated collaborations, and gained much insight into what made this unofficial Mayor of Midtown tick, musically speaking.

Unsurprisingly, both Lamkins and Stivers were drawn to McStay via the Simple Ones (originally called the Simpletones), who impressed most of Midtown Memphis right out of the starting gate. “One Friday night in 1991, Andria Lisle, Roy Berry and I went down to the Loose End to see the Simpletones,” recalls Lamkins. “It may have been their first gig, or one of their earliest shows for sure. I fell in love with them right away. And Jared was a big Grifters fan, so once he saw me there he announced that their next gig would be with the Grifters. Of course no such show had been discussed or booked or anything. Right after their set Jared came up to me and said ‘Come on man! What do you say? Let’s do this!’ And I was like, ‘Yeah! Why not? Sure!’ This began a long run of us playing shows together and of course a long friendship.”

1995 debut album by the Simple Ones on Shangri-La Records

Stivers was similarly struck by the Simple Ones’ earliest shows, and what he saw seems to have inspired him to co-found Impala. “I’m not sure if I saw their exact first show, but I saw them soon after. I was just like, ‘Man! These guys are playing great music, these guys are rockin out.’ Jared came out of the chute just like a rocket. I thought, ‘Man, this band is tight and the songs are crazy.’ It wasn’t like going to see Chilton or someone who’d already been on the scene for years. These were new guys and they were killing it. It inspired me to want to play more music.” Not long after, Impala was born.

Lamkins, for his part, wanted to be even more involved after that first show. “This began a long run of us playing shows together, and of course a long friendship,” he recalls. “I ended up hanging with the Simpletones all the time. I mixed their first record, which was just a four track cassette outing, and I was usually present whenever they went to Easley-McCain Studios. I was kind of a producer, but mostly I helped rein in Jared some, because he would never stop tweaking a song or rewriting parts on the fly. He was just never satisfied with anything. I’d have to stop him and let him know that what he had was already great. But even after the songs were all done he would keep tweaking them.

“I ended up joining the Simple Ones eventually. I may have been the second longest serving member of the band, though I haven’t done the math on that. Maybe Jim McDermott was there longer than me.”

With Lamkins an official Simple One toward the end of that band’s tenure, and Stivers jamming with the group occasionally, a new group was inevitable, given McStay’s penchant for launching new projects. That would turn out to be the Total Strangers, which included Lamkins, Stivers, Grifters drummer Stan Gallimore, and McStay. “We started Total Strangers around 1998, I think,” says Stivers. “There are a lot of recordings of that stuff. We did a single, with an instrumental that we all came up with, and then a song that Jared wrote, ‘Netherworld,’ which I think is the greatest. We recorded almost an album’s worth of stuff at Easley-McCain, and they were mostly all Jared’s songs. Impala had imploded by then, so I liked just being a guitar player in the background, filling in spots over Jared’s rhythm parts. We played quite a few gigs. We even went on a mini tour in the Upper Midwest.”

Fraysia was yet another band that sprouted from McStay’s imagination, many years later. “Jared pulled Fraysia together,” says Lamkins. “I think it was his dream lineup at the time. I had been Jared’s go to bass player for a while. We had been playing with Andy Saunders, who is the most underrated drummer in Memphis. And of course adding Stivers to any band automatically classes up the joint. Stivers came up with the name Fraysia, since we were a supergroup like Asia but from Memphis. John and I have been playing together since we were little kids so we have a great rapport, but Jared and John had really great chemistry as well. Fraysia was such an easy gig for me because I basically just got out of the way and let the guitars shine.”

Stivers recalls their six-string interplay well. Asked to describe McStay’s approach to the guitar, he says, “It was just pure energy. I mean, absolute pure energy. And I have never, never played with a more enthusiastic musician. He was always so happy to be playing. It didn’t matter if we were screwing it up and sounding awful, it didn’t bother him. He didn’t ever get bothered by that, he didn’t ever get frustrated. And I’ve been in plenty of bands where the frustrations run high when things aren’t working right. Jared just never looked back. Like, ‘Keep going. Because none of that matters. This is the energy.’ It was totally about energy for him.”

While Fraysia’s heyday was some seven years ago, McStay naturally stayed busy with other bands, such as So Gung Ho, one of his latest groups, profiled here. He also launched many combos with his wife, Lori Gienapp McStay. One of the busiest was Relentless Breeze, a cover band in which the erstwhile punk wholeheartedly embraced the complexities of “yacht rock,” featuring the smooth sounds and jazzy chords of Christopher Cross and the like. Appropriately enough, the couple was dedicated to those songs even as they vacationed on the beach with Stivers and his family.

“They bought keyboards and guitars so they could learn songs for Relentless Breeze,” Stivers remembers. “We were on vacation and they were practicing music — after the day was over, after we’d gone to the beach. That’s dedication right there. They liked to always have something cooking, and I love the fact that Jared was involved in music with his wife. Of course, she is a musician and very talented. In fact, they pulled off two or three bands. And Jared just rolled like a tank through music, musical experiences, and bands. And man, I’m glad he did.”

Stivers has to take a breath before stepping back to reflect on a life well-lived in music. “Jared never, ever stopped,” he says. “You know, he never said, ‘God, man, I haven’t done anything for a couple of months, or six months!’ That never happened. He never had any downtime. If one thing kind of faltered or ended, there was something new. I’ve never known anybody with that much of a legacy.”

A visitation will be held for McStay from 4-6 p.m. this Tuesday, November 21st at Canale Funeral Directors. A celebration of his life is being planned for December.

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National Vinyl Record Day in Vinyl City, USA

Pressing LPs at Memphis Record Pressing (photo courtesy of MRP)

Music fans know all about Record Store Day, that occasional holiday when buyers flock to their favorite local brick-and-mortar shops to load up on playable media. And while the growth of Record Store Day’s popularity has gone hand in hand with a resurgence in vinyl sales over recent years (see last year’s cover story on the subject here), it’s worth remembering that RSD is media-agnostic. There are even those who come home with nothing but a load of CDs after the day’s grand events. Meanwhile, there’s one holiday for vinyl and vinyl only: National Vinyl Record Day, which falls on Saturday, August 12th this year. And, given the importance of Memphis to every step of the vinyl food chain, it comes as no surprise that there will be a unique celebration here.

Vinyl is clearly no joke here. Memphis Record Pressing (MRP) recently underwent a multimillion-dollar expansion, tripling the size of the company and bringing the total number of presses to 52 and the staff to more than 400. With these changes, the company’s on track to produce 20-25 million records this year. When running at full capacity, MRP can press as many as 125,000 records a day or more than 45 million a year, making it the largest vinyl record manufacturer by volume in North America.

A worker prepares to flatten a lump of vinyl into an LP (photo courtesy of MRP)

Having turned this monumental corner, MRP is now marking National Vinyl Record Day with a giveaway for record enthusiasts. In partnership with local record stores Goner Records, Shangri-la Records, and River City Records, MRP is giving away a limited-edition, specially designed National Vinyl Record Day commemorative pin, to be available on a first-come-first-served basis at the participating stores. MRP employees will also be sporting the pins at work in the week leading up to National Vinyl Record Day.

“National Vinyl Record Day, obviously, means a lot to us, and we thought this was a fun way to mark the occasion and thank all the vinyl enthusiasts who have helped our industry thrive in recent years,” noted MRP CEO and co-founder Brandon Seavers in a statement.

California radio host and vinyl enthusiast Gary Freiberg started National Vinyl Record Day in 2002 to promote the “preservation of the cultural influence, the recordings, and the cover art of the vinyl record.” The date was chosen to honor the reported date in 1877 when Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. This year’s celebration comes fast on the heels of the 75th anniversary of the long-playing album, or LP, marked this June.

The event also comes as the vinyl renaissance that began almost two decades ago has reached a new milestone. Vinyl record sales have been increasing steadily for 17 years, and only grew more during the pandemic. Last year, vinyl album sales overtook CD sales for the first time since 1987, with 43.46 million copies sold.

MRPs growth in recent years has been equally impressive. An offshoot of defunct CD manufacturer AudioGraphc Masterworks, MRP has expanded dramatically since opening its doors in 2015.

Meanwhile, what of the city’s veritable temple to vinyl culture and music, Memphis Listening Lab, on this day of tribute to the majesty of wax? “We don’t have anything planned,” says MLL head archivist Jim Cole. “But we’re here if anyone wants to come spin some records.”

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The Vinyl Countdown

Memphis Record Pressing (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

It’s no secret that vinyl is resurgent. After being eclipsed first by CDs in the 1990s and then by streamed digital music, records were nigh impossible to find in mainstream stores for many years, until around 2008, when the manufacture and sales of vinyl albums and singles began to grow again. Since then, the trend has only accelerated, with market analyses predicting continued annual growth between 8 percent-15 percent for vinyl musical products over the next five to six years.

What fewer people realize is how every step of the process that makes records possible can be found in Memphis. “The Memphis Sound … where everything is everything,” ran the old Stax Records ad copy, and that’s especially true in the vinyl domain: All the elements are within reach. Johnny Phillips, co-owner of local record distributor Select-O-Hits, says “There’s not very many cities that can offer everything we offer right here. From recording to distribution, from inception to the very end. Everything you need, you have right here. Memphis is like a one-stop shop for vinyl right now.”

From the musicians themselves to the final product you take home on Record Store Day, here are the 10 pillars upon which our Kingdom of Vinyl rests, 10 domains which thrive in Memphis as in no other city.

Take Out Vinyl’s Jeff Powell (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Mastering

A lacquer master, freshly cut on a lathe, offers a level of high fidelity that most listeners, even record aficionados, almost never hear. But Take Out Vinyl, run by Jeff Powell and Lucas Peterson from a room in Sam Phillips Recording, is that rare beast, a vinyl mastering lab, where raw audio from tape or a computer is first transferred to plastic and one can sometimes hear a lacquer playback. It’s not meant to be listened to. The discs cut here would typically be used to create the metal discs that stamp the grooves onto the records we buy, but the lacquer itself is too soft for repeated plays. And yet, for those who’ve heard a playback from a freshly cut lacquer, the quality is haunting.

That was the idea behind the one-off Bob Dylan record auctioned at Christie’s last month for $1.78 million. Spearheaded by producer T Bone Burnett, a new recording of Dylan performing “Blowin’ in the Wind” was cut onto a single lacquer disc, never to be duplicated or mass-produced.

Producer T Bone Burnett (Photo: Jason Myers)

To help make it a reality, Burnett enlisted Powell, one of the world’s most respected mastering engineers. “Lacquers are very soft,” says Powell. “We can’t play these things after I cut them or it destroys the groove. You lose a little high-end every time you play it. T Bone’s idea was to try to capture that sound of a fresh cut lacquer, but one that you could play over and over again, even up to a thousand times, with no degradation to the sound. And that’s what we have accomplished.”

The trick was finding a way to protectively coat the lacquer after it had been cut, and after years of R&D, the labs enlisted by Burnett found the right compound. “T Bone says the coating is only 90 atoms thick,” says Powell. “A human hair is about 300,000 atoms thick — that’s how thin the coating is. It was derived from a protective material used on satellites.”

Ultimately, says Powell, the goal was to reassert the value of vinyl records over digital media. “The purpose of this was not to see how much money could be made,” says Powell, “but to show how music has been devalued to next to nothing. T Bone wanted to establish that a recording like this should be considered fine art.”

Memphis Record Pressing (Justin Fox Burks)

Manufacturing

The notion of a vinyl record as fine art is not so alien to legions of collectors who curate their own personal galleries of albums and singles. But even the rarest of records were mass-produced at one time, and Memphis has that department covered as well. For decades, nearly all of the records recorded in Memphis were made at Plastic Products on Chelsea Avenue. Such was the pressing plant’s impact that an historical plaque now marks where it once stood. But in recent years, a new business has taken up the torch of vinyl manufacturing.

In 2015, the Memphis Flyer alerted readers to the fledgling Memphis Record Pressing (MRP), which arose from a partnership between Brandon Seavers and Mark Yoshida, whose AudioGraphic Masterworks specialized in CD and DVD production, and Fat Possum Records, whose co-owner Bruce Watson first suggested that they move into vinyl production. Now, it’s in the hands of Seavers and Yoshida and GZ Media, the largest vinyl record manufacturer in the world, and the Memphis company is expanding dramatically.

Memphis Record Pressing (Justin Fox Burks)

As Seavers points out, the world of vinyl has evolved as well. “When we started, we searched the world for record presses, which was really a challenge. Back in 2014, there were no new machines being built. You had to scour the corners of the earth to find ancient machinery and bring it back to life. Fast-forward to 2018, when a few companies emerged around the world that invested in building new machines. We started bringing in these brand-new, computer-controlled machines that were very different from our old machines. And that started the process of expansion. Through 2018-2021, we replaced our aging equipment bit by bit, and in September of last year, we replaced the last of our old machines.”

The pandemic was actually a boon to the young company. “We reopened in May of 2020, and by June our orders had skyrocketed. We were overwhelmed. And by the first five weeks of 2021, we booked three-and-a-half months’ worth of work in five weeks. So to say it overwhelmed us is an understatement. Now we’re sitting on a quarter-million units’ worth of open orders. So, it’s insane to see the demand grow. Before Covid, we had reduced our lead time to eight weeks. Now, it’s frustrating to quote nine months of lead time to new customers because that amount of time is life and death three times over for some artists. That’s why we’re so intent on expanding as quickly as possible.” Construction of additional facilities, expected to be operational in October, is now underway.

Distribution

Once the records are made, where do they go? Thanks to the decades-old Select-O-Hits, the answer is “across the globe.” Johnny Phillips reckons it’s the oldest distribution service in the world, and it may be one of the oldest businesses in Memphis, period. “In 1960, my dad, Tom Phillips, was Jerry Lee Lewis’ road manager. When Jerry Lee married his 13-year-old cousin, he couldn’t be booked anywhere. My daddy put all of his money into promoting Jerry Lee, and he lost it all. So, he came up from Mobile, Alabama, to Memphis and went to work with my uncle Sam, taking back unsold returns: 45s, 78s, and a few albums. We gradually grew into one of the largest one-stops in the South, supplying all labels to smaller retail stores. There used to be over 25 retail stores in Memphis, believe it or not. And then in the early ’70s, we started distributing nationwide. My dad retired, and my brother Sam and I bought him out.”

Over the years, Select-O-Hits has seen every ebb and flow of the vinyl market, including a major uptick after the advent of hip-hop. “We were the first distributor for Rapper’s Delight by The Sugar Hill Gang in 1979,” notes Phillips. That tradition continues today. “We’ve released about half of Three 6 Mafia’s catalog that we control in the last two years, on colored vinyl. And we distribute it all over the world.” And if the distribution numbers are not what they used to be before CDs and then streaming took over, they are climbing steadily. “Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, we were selling half a million vinyl records. But now we’re doing 5,000, 15,000. Still, last year was our biggest vinyl year ever [since CDs became dominant], and this year is looking just as good.”

Shangri-La’s Jared McStay (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)

Record Stores and Record Labels

If Select-O-Hits is moving the product around the world, it needs to land somewhere, and in Memphis that means record stores. Though we no longer have 25 retail outlets for vinyl, there are several places to buy records here. The granddaddy of them all is Shangri-La Records, founded by Sherman Willmott in 1988, then taken over in 1999 by Jared McStay, who now co-owns the shop with John Miller.

“The first couple of years,” says McStay, “I had to bet on vinyl because I couldn’t compete with the CD stores, like Best Buy or whatever. I was getting crushed, until I realized I could never compete with them. In the early 2000s, they were phasing out vinyl, and even stereo manufacturers stopped putting phono jacks on their stereos. But I had tons of records.”

Around the same time, Eric Friedl was running a small indie label, Goner, which ultimately became the Goner Records shop when Zac Ives joined forces with Friedl in 2004. They too leaned into vinyl from the very start. “I think Eric had done maybe two CDs at most when we joined forces and started expanding the label in 2004,” says Ives. “Out of his 10 or 11 releases, I think only The Reatards had a CD release. The rest were only on vinyl. There was no giant resurgence of vinyl for us. Those things came up around our industry, but we never left that model. And that’s how it was for most smaller, independent labels, especially in punk and underground realms.”

Combining a record shop with a record label is a time-honored tradition in Memphis, going back to Stax’s Satellite Records, and it carries on today through Shangri-La and Goner, which have both been named among the country’s best record stores by Rolling Stone. Both stores’ dedication to vinyl relates to their investment in live bands. Gonerfest, which brings bands, DJs, and record-shoppers from around the world, will be enjoying its 19th year next month, and Shangri-La has hosted miniature versions of that for years.

“We’re having Sweatfest on August 13th,” says McStay, “and we haven’t had one in three years because of the pandemic. There are going to be thousands of bargain records. We’ve been hoarding them for three years!” Meanwhile, local bands will perform in the parking lot, a pre-Covid mainstay of Shangri-La for most of its existence.

Though Goner boasts its own label, and Shangri-La has spawned at least three (Shangri-La Projects, plus the loosely affiliated Misspent Records and Blast Habit Records), not all stores do so. River City Records opened last year and, along with Memphis Music and A. Schwab, is already doing a brisk vinyl business in the Downtown area. Meanwhile, the city has several vinyl-friendly labels untethered to any retail outlet, namely Back to the Light, Big Legal Mess/Bible & Tire, Black and Wyatt, Madjack, and Peabody Records. These local imprints and the bands they sign, in turn, feed into the doggedly local support that the above mastering, manufacturing, and distribution businesses offer. As Powell says, “Anybody local, I’ll always try to move heaven and earth to get them ahead of the line a little bit and treat them special. Because you know, it’s Memphis, man!”

Memphis Listening Lab has thousands of LPs. (Photo: Jamie Harmon)

Archives, Audio Technology, Community Radio, and DJs

A wide swath of this town’s music lovers are brazenly vinyl-centric, and that demographic has a ripple effect in other domains. The Stax Museum of American Soul Music, for example, boasts the huge archive of Bob Abrahamian, a DJ at the University of Chicago in the 1990s, with more than 35,000 singles and LPs, now being cataloged by a full-time archivist, Stax collections manager Leila Hamdan.

Then there’s the Memphis Listening Lab (MLL), founded last year on the strength of the music collection of John King, a collector’s collector if there ever was one. As a promoter, program director, and studio owner, he’s collected music all his life. Now, his roughly 30,000 45s, 12,000 LPs, 20,000 CDs, and 1,000 music books reside in the public archive of the MLL, free for the listening and even free to record. Further, MLL has hosted countless public events where classic or obscure albums are played and discussed in depth.

The listening lab also benefits from a less-recognized aspect of vinyl culture in Memphis: the technology. Being outfitted with high-end, locally made EgglestonWorks speakers enhances the listening experience at MLL considerably. And the city is also home to George Merrill’s GEM Dandy Products Inc., which markets his highly respected audiophile-grade turntables (one of which MLL hopes to acquire).

Another archive boasting EgglestonWorks speakers is the Eight & Sand bar in The Central Station Hotel. The private bar was envisioned as a place to celebrate Memphis music history, and its dual turntables are duly backed by a huge vinyl library of mostly local music. “Chad Weekley, the music curator, is doing an incredible job there,” says Ives. The bar now plays host to the DJs who enliven Gonerfest’s opening ceremonies, and the hotel has even offered package deals combining room reservations with gift certificates to the Goner shop.

And let’s face it, this town is crawling with great DJs. In a sense, they are the ultimate vinyl record consumers, and thus help to drive all the other institutions. “It’s similar to a band,” says Ives, “because you’re taking your knowledge of music and putting it back out into the world in some way. I love hearing somebody’s personality coming through their radio program or DJ event. … Sometimes at venues like Eight & Sand, sometimes on community radio.”

The latter is clearly fertile ground for those who favor the sound of vinyl. Both WEVL and WYXR sport turntables in their on-air studio rooms, not to mention their own vinyl libraries. As WYXR program manager Jared Boyd says, “I’m a record collector myself, and for a time I was DJ-ing at Eight & Sand and using those turntables. So, when we started the radio station, we wanted people to be able to have that experience without having to go down to Central Station. We wanted these people who collect deeply to broadcast these really unique finds. I particularly wanted to cater to people who use records.”

The Music

And so we come full circle, following vinyl’s great chain of existence back to the reason we all want it in the first place: music. And it’s undeniable that the music this city produces fits our predilection for vinyl — from Jerry Lee Lewis’ piano swipes to the guitar/organ growl of “Green Onions,” from the choogling riffs of power pop to the crunching, distorted damage of punk, the sounds of this city lend themselves to the weight and warmth of music’s greatest medium. Just drop a needle on your favorite band and you’ll hear the truth in Brandon Seavers’ words: “Memphis is the grit to Nashville’s glitz,” he says. “And grit sounds a lot better on vinyl.”

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So Gung Ho

So Gung Ho (Photo: Lori McStay)

If you’re a music fan, sometimes you sense such a connection with a band that you feel compelled to join the group by any means necessary. Even non-musicians know the feeling: “I have to be in this band!” Jared McStay, who first burst upon the scene with the Simpletones (aka the Simple Ones) in the early ’90s, then went on to become a co-owner of Shangri-La Records, felt this way about the Turnstyles, Seth Moody and Graham Winchester’s guitar/drums duo, back in pre-Covid days.

As Moody describes it, “Jared wanted to play bass for the Turnstyles so bad! We were like, ‘No, you don’t get it! It’s a two-piece. There’s no bass!’ But he was just relentless. He’d come to see us and in between sets he’d say, ‘Dude! That song needs a bass on it!’ So I told Graham, ‘Let’s just start a different band and do the songs that don’t work without bass.’ There are certain songs where you just can’t cover everything with guitar. And I’ve tried, doing pretzel chords while I solo and all that. And So Gung Ho started that way: ‘We’ll just do all the songs we can’t pull off as a two-piece.’”

But a funny thing happened on their way to being a trio: McStay had a lot more to contribute than just a big bottom end. “Then we realized that Jared’s got this treasure trove of awesome originals,” says Moody. “I’d only heard one or two of them at that point, two or three years ago, but he had a whole portfolio of great, kind of Kinks-y pop songs. Cool lyrics and neat chord changes and hooks that stuck in your head. So we were like, ‘All right! Let’s utilize his catalog and pepper in a couple originals from me and Graham.’”

The result was a self-titled LP, bursting with energy and fun, which has been in heavy rotation on this writer’s turntable since its release on Blast Habit Records last year. (The launch of the label, run by Jared McStay, his wife Lori, and Winchester, was detailed in our blog last June.) It turned out that McStay, Moody, and Winchester were on the same stylisitic page. And not a page from, say, an Anne Sexton anthology, more of a page from an Archie comic.

“It’s fun,” says Moody. “It’s kind of like tongue-in-cheek rock. Like meathead rock. We’re making fun of the guys that take it too seriously. The unspoken rule is, ‘nothing too introspective.’ Make it fun or aggro. If a song has a little more testosterone, throw it in the So Gung Ho bag. We’ll never do a Beck thing, where it’s fun, then depressing, then fun. We’ll skip the depressing ones!”

Nothing expresses that sense of levity more than McStay’s “Free Man Band,” which makes use of cod-Cockney to obliquely chide groups with an overwrought sense of mission. “As usual you’re half past late/Hangin’ around on some date/Wif your uvver group … This was ’sposed ta be/A free man band/And you ain’t gonna be/No free band man!”

Though much of So Gung Ho’s origin myth hinges on the sanctity of two-piece versus three-piece lineups, the song was conceived much earlier. “I would bet $14 that that song was at least a year or two old before So Gung Ho came into existence,” says Moody. “It’s funny, I’ve been put in that situation a few times. And it’s fun to picture these British blokes arguing with each other. It’s harder to understand in Memphis. We all recycle our band members like mad in this town. That song wouldn’t make much sense with Midtown musicians.”

The sense of play, undergirded with choppy riffs, propulsive bass and drums, and chiming background vocals, is downright contagious, especially when combined with the lyrics. The band’s theme song (and album closer) captures that attitude in a nutshell: “We were so gung ho/About doin’ that thing/That we wanted to do … and I can’t recall what we wanted to do/But it was probably cool!” Nowadays, with the hopes of the last two years so clouded by deferred dreams and postponed plans, it’s easy to forget what we were on about, way back when. But, as this band reminds us, what’s important is that we remember that feeling — the feeling of being so gung ho!

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Music Music Blog

Listen Up: Lavendear

Lavendear perform at a Halloween show. (Credit: Dalton Miller)

Lavendear kept Joseph Baker from having the blues during the 2020 quarantine.

“It started as a solo project I had been working on during Covid while I was staying at home,” says Baker, 18. “It was just the result of me being in my room and needing to write songs during that time period we had.”

That project blossomed into an indie rock band, which, in addition to Baker on guitar and vocals, includes Olivre Heck, 17, on bass and guitar, and Joey Eddins, 16, on drums.

Acting, not music, was Baker’s first creative outlet. Instead of a guitar, Baker carried a staff in his favorite role as “Little Bog Man” on stage when he was 11 years old.

His parents were part of the Our Own Voice Theatre Troupe at TheatreWorks, so Baker was exposed to theater at 3 or 4 years old.  “Little Bog Man,” a character in an original production Attorney/Joker: Part Sign, was a “very peculiar character. Lived in the woods in the bog. He came into town and caused a ruckus. I loved that character. He was like Mr. Tumnus from Narnia. I had a beard and I was dressed in very nature-driven clothes, a wreath around my head. I was barefoot.”

Baker got into music at the Rock and Romp summer camp. “They had local musicians just teaching kids how to play instruments.”

He loved it. “Playing drums was exciting to me. And the idea of being with a group of people and putting a song together and playing it was a lot of fun. I couldn’t get enough of it.”

Baker was a die-hard David Bowie fan at the time. “I would carry my David Bowie CD around with me even if I wasn’t listening to it in the car. [The Rise and Fall of] Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I would just open it up and look at the lyrics. I just loved David Bowie as a kid. He was definitely my favorite. I love that he was just all about putting on a show. And every Bowie era and album was so distinctive and masterfully crafted into this cacophony of sound and visuals.”

Baker’s first Rock and Romp show was playing drums with a “makeshift” band at Young Avenue Deli. “I think it went fine. We played one song. And the crowd made some noise. So, it must have been OK for some 12 year olds on stage.”

He was hooked. “After that, music was everything.”

Baker began going to Goner Records and Shangri-La Records on weekends with his parents. “I would just get Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Black Flag, and all those old hardcore punk band records. I was in love with that scene.

 “I was totally in love with Dischord Records, that really hardcore and post-hardcore scene. All those great bands doing it all themselves. They were the definition of what punk is: People getting together, making music, and making it happen. They were pressing their own records, starting their own labels, making their own merch. No big record labels influencing their art.”

His parents, who were more into Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, were supportive, but they “weren’t really into this weird punk scene I was into,” Baker says, adding, “I was making my own T-shirts for bands that weren’t around anymore. I was taking Sharpies and making my own Bad Brains shirt in my room.”

That summer before he went to White Station Middle School, Baker “so desperately wanted to be in a band and playing music with people.”

He wanted “that hunger for the feeling of pure happiness when you’re playing music and you look out and you see people smiling. Which is a feeling I didn’t really get to feel until this last summer. But the idea was so wonderful. My young mind just needed it.”

Baker made posters saying he was looking for a drummer. “And I put them up everywhere. All over Cooper-Young, Goner Records, Shangri-La. I put up these posters everywhere saying I was looking for a drummer who wanted to do punk and metal music.”

(Credit: Joseph Baker)

He only got one response, but it didn’t work out. “He was definitely more interested in doing progressive rock.”

Baker began writing songs at the beginning of sixth grade. “I know I wrote some songs about Star Wars just as a writing exercise.”

But, he admits, “I’m a huge nerd. That was familiar material when you’re 12. You don’t have many experiences. Unless I want to write about ‘I don’t want to do my homework.’”

He described those songs as  “punk songs with a pop sensibility,” Baker says. “Almost power pop. Elvis Costello meets Bad Brains.”

He began working on a song project that he called “Guilloteen,” he says. “With the added irony I wasn’t a teen yet. I was still 12 years old. I so desperately wanted to be this punk rock teenager. Ian MacKaye is who I wanted to be. I was a funny kid.”

Baker recorded four songs on his Tascam dp-008ex eight track recorder. “I emailed them to myself and burned them to a CD and made five copies and gave them to my mom and my dad and a few friends.”

“One Punk Rock Jesus” was about MacKaye. “It’s the only one I can still kind of remember how it went.”

Baker then joined “this weird internet community of kids that just liked metal music. It was a Google hangout chat called ‘Metal.’ We all met in a YouTube comment section and all commented on our emails and created this group chat.”

He and a member, Theo Charlesworth, “would listen to songs together and talk about them. He introduced me to pretty much all my favorite music now. Bands like Alcest and Dance Gavin Dance.”

They recorded Ephemeral Eternity, an EP of songs they wrote. “It was definitely a very post-hardcore kind of like a concept EP about that transitional period between middle and high school.”

And, he says, “We used a lot of imagery and words that made it seem a lot more whimsical and magical than it actually was. That was my first band. It was the first time I really sat down and wrote songs with somebody else. It taught me a lot about working with other people and taught me how much I love writing music with other people. Telling stories with other people.”

During his freshman year at Crosstown High School, Baker formed a Christian metalcore band, Victimless Disconnect. “We only played one gig at Visible Music College. It went pretty well.”

He was in church camp at the time. “The other members of the band were also Christian, so it made sense to follow that direction.”

The band broke up six months later when one of the members moved away. “I took a little bit of a break from  playing music. I would sit in my room and learn songs I liked, but I didn’t really write until quarantine happened and I had nothing to do.

“I originally wanted to do a five song EP kind of like Shoegaze dream pop songs. I was a big fan of bands like Ride and Alcest. I love pretty-sounding music and that’s the kind of music I wanted to make.”

He knew he wanted “Lavendear”  as the name of his project. “The smell of lavender is one I’ve always associated with comfort because in my house we had lavender candles or lavender soap, lavender laundry detergent. That was what I was used to. This tranquil scent of lavender.”

Baker thought “Lavendear” sounded cool and “read” very well. “And kind of reminded me of bands like Hopesfall. It had a very nice ring to it.”

He wrote five songs, but “Meet Sleep,” an instrumental, and “Balloon,” are the only two songs Lavendear now plays.

“Balloon” is about the “disjointed summer” he went through that year, Baker says. “Things are all over the place. And we’re all young and not really sure what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Adolescence was a beautifully confusing time.”

He asked Eddins, who he met last April at Society Skatepark & Coffee, if he wanted to play drums. “He instantly came up with a brilliant drum part. I was like, ‘Now, we would just be a band. No point in being a solo project.’”

Their first gig was at Society Skatepark & Coffee. “It was more just hanging out and playing music on the little mini ramp.”

But, he says, “After the first show Joey and I were like, ‘This can be something real.’ So, we decided to just start working really hard on writing songs.”

Baker wanted Heck, who went to school with him, in the band, but, he says, “I was nervous to approach him. This guy is so talented and cool. I texted him, ‘Hey, man. You want to come jam with us?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah.’ Just very joyful and excited. “

The jam was a success and Heck joined the band. “It worked out phenomenally. It felt like there was a lot of magic going on in that room.”

“I had heard about them on social media,” says Heck, who also goes to Crosstown High School. “Some of my friends had seen them already.”

He was impressed when he saw the band perform at a house show. “It was just different. It was new to me. Joseph was someone I hadn’t really talked to much at school in the year and a half I had been going to school with him. I didn’t realize he had written all these cool songs. And some of them he had even sent me a couple of months before and I blew them off a little bit.”

He didn’t have time to listen to them at the time. “I didn’t realize what they were.”

The jam session went great, he says. “It was really easy to play bass to the other guitar parts Joseph wrote.”

And he found he was compatible playing bass to Eddins’ drumming.

Heck also writes songs for Lavendear. His song, “Older,” will be released December 10th. “It’s kind of a personal song about being cast out of someone’s life for wronging them. And thinking you’ve changed over time. But you haven’t done anything to actually make that change. You’ve just gotten older.”

Eddins, the youngest member of the band, likes the fact Lavendear plays to a wider audience than some other young bands. “All the bands we’re friends with are older,” he says. “They’re all in college. We’re all in high school. I’m 16. A junior in high school. Christian Brothers High School. That brings a whole different audience, which I think is really cool.”

And, he says, “I love the music we make. We make a variety of music. So, we have some faster songs to some slower songs. A ton of different music.”

Lavendear currently is working on a full-length album. The group has released three singles, including “Pitch Perfect Penguin Mirror,” which Baker describes as “a catchy little power pop song about I guess, not to sound cliche, but just standing up for yourself and not letting whatever people say get to you.”

Making music was something Baker never had to justify to anybody.  “Everyone was just very excited. Whatever negativity there was I never listened to.”

Listen to “Pitch Perfect Penguin Mirror” and “Shadow Man” on Spotify.

Lavendear will perform at an all ages show December 6th at Hi Tone at 282-284 North Cleveland Street. Doors open at 7 p.m. Cover is $10. Also performing are $2030M and Beneviolence. Public Strain is headlining.

Lavendear also will perform at an all ages show December 10th at Society Skatepark & Coffee at 583 Scott Street. Doors open at 7 p.m. Show starts at 8 p.m. Also performing are Hotel Fiction and headliner Arlie.

Lavendear (Credit: Dalton Miller)

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Music Music Blog

Kelley Anderson & the Crystal Shrine Play Shangri-La’s 30th Anniversary

It’s fitting that this Thursday’s celebration of Shangri-La Records‘ 30th Anniversary, at the Levitt Shell, will feature an artist whose first glimpse of Memphis was in the store itself. Kelley Anderson was a key player in the Nashville folk/country/punk group Those Darlins, starting about a decade ago, and, having first played here on Shangri-La’s porch, felt such a strong affinity for Memphis that she ended up moving here permanently. In recent years, she’s been known for the country/western/rock/pop sounds of her group, the Crystal Shrine. I asked her a bit about the evolution of the group, and where they’re headed musically.

Memphis Flyer: It seems you’ll have a bigger version of the band than ever at Thursday’s show, with Jana Misener and Krista Wroten Combest on cello and violin, Jesse Davis on guitar, Seth Moody on keyboards, Andrew Geraci on bass, and drummer Matthew Berry. Is this a new lineup for the Crystal Shrine?

Jamie Harmon

Kelley Anderson

Kelley Anderson: It’s not really a new lineup. The rock band that plays with me, I’ve played with them quite a bit, as well as with Jana and Krista. But this show is the first opportunity to finally put the whole band together: to have the rock band with strings added, and to have a little bit wider instrumentation. Because I have a really good rapport and history playing with Seth and Jesse. Those are my bros. And the same with Krista and Jana. We did the Harbor Town Amphitheater fund-raiser for the Montessori School last March, and we did that as a trio, and we’ve performed a couple other times as a trio. And then more recently, I’ve added Andrew Geraci and Matthew Berry as my consistent bass and drums.

This Levitt Shell show has been really instrumental in helping pull together some of those loose ends and really inspire me to get all of it together. I’ve been really focused on writing, and really focused on the music, and making art music, and not as much on delivery, or marketing, or publicity. You know, all of that business. It’s so cool that Shangri-La asked me to play for their 30th anniversary, because one of the first shows that I ever played in Memphis was on the porch there. It may have been the first show Those Darlins played in Memphis, on the porch at Shangri-La. And that was 10 years ago. So I’m super proud of them for keeping everything running. I firmly believe in the importance of having a local record store in your community, and the ways the store supports the community and the way the community supports the store. It’s an integral part of the music community in Memphis. I’m super proud of all the work that Jared McStay and John Miller and crew are doing over there.
Jamie Harmon

Crystal Shrine as a trio, with (l-r) Jana Misener, Kelley Anderson, & Krista Wroten Combest.


You’ve been working with the Crystal Shrine for some time now. Has the sound evolved in new directions with all these players?

I’m exploring a lot of similar themes, such as redemption and guilt, oppression and liberation, salvation, grace, forgiveness. I’ve been recording some music over at High Low, so I’ve got some new stuff in the works. But no rush to get a ton of it out there. I just got two of the mixes mastered, and I’ve got the new track “Benny” uploaded to my Bandcamp site. All proceeds from the track go to Youth Empowerment through Arts & Humanities (YEAH!), an organization I founded in 2006 to amplify the voices of young people. It’s the organization that provides the Southern Girls Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp.

I also do more experimental pieces, like this take on the folk song “Worried Man Blues.” I loop the song on a nylon folk guitar and layer harmonies and manipulate the song using a 4-track and pedals. I performed it at Marshall Arts and my friend sent a video he took with his iPhone. Then I manipulated the video to reiterate the time travel aspect and duality of past/present idea I was trying to work out through the audio.

Kelley Anderson & the Crystal Shrine Play Shangri-La’s 30th Anniversary

I’m just writing songs, and whatever the song needs is the instrumentation. I’m thinking of it kinda song first. It’s got kind of a Southern psychedelic vibe to it. Kind of Spaghetti Western, like Morricone. I’m really interested in film and making music for films, and also using a lot of visual elements with music. In fact, film maker Brian Pera and I have a residency at Crosstown Arts starting next fall. We’ll be using some of this material that I’m currently recording, and working on images and video pieces to go with it.

So was it a conscious decision on your part to move away from the sound of Those Darlings?

Not as much the sound of Those Darlins, because I still have all of those same influences. Everything from traditional country music to psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll to noise music and experimental forms of music. It was more a conscious decision to move away from the industry. Nashville’s very much a music industry town, and Memphis is a music town. And I really wanted to explore music as an artist, and not think of it so commercially.

It’s been useful for me to disentangle the two, and not think about commercial viability or how it’s gonna get marketed, or any of that. Ultimately, I’d love for people to hear it, and use those opportunities in any way I can to support other aspects of the community, or lift up voices that are marginalized. And I think when you’re not as focused on it commercially, sometimes that can allow you to do that more.

And Memphis has been really receptive and wonderful. There are lots of weirdos and people doing outsider art and music here. And I appreciate that energy and that undercurrent. And the amount of support that everyone has provided. There’s so many opportunities to collaborate with people. More projects than you ever would possibly have time for. 

Those Darlins

Part of that goes back to ten years ago, and Those Darlins playing in Memphis. I mean, Memphis really embraced us, whereas Nashville was just confused by us. So this really felt like a second home, and at times like a first home for us and for our music and for our vibe and energy. I recall always feeling very accepted here, and have been in love with Memphis for a long time. And so, getting to actually reside here and work and collaborate with other people in the Memphis music community has been a real blessing.

It’s really special and an honor to collaborate with Krista and Jana. They’re exceptional musicians in their own right. But the ultimate goal was always to bring it together under one roof, and have this larger instrumentation. This is the first gig opportunity that has provided the stage and the resources that would accommodate that size of a group. That band lineup doesn’t really work at Bar DKDC, you know? And I can’t say enough about Shangri-La sponsoring and underwriting the show and making those resources available.

I’m also very grateful to the Memphis music community, and to the Levitt Shell and people who have revitalized that space, and people that support live music there. And Shangri-La is a big part of that community. It’s all very connected for me. And I’m very grateful to get to play on the same stage that so many historical, amazing musical acts have performed on. That’s a real treat and a real honor.

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Music Music Blog

J.D. Westmoreland Celebrates Royal Records Release

CREDIT: Paul Chandler Moulton

Paul Chandler Moulton

J.D. Westmoreland

Shangri-La Records continues its tradition of remaining absolutely undaunted in the face of the Memphis heat. This Friday, they’ll host an early evening show by J.D. Westmoreland, who’s celebrating the vinyl release of a single he cut at Royal Studios. It’s one of a handful of releases by the new Royal Records label, and, as such, it’s an interesting statement of eclecticism by the new imprint.

Westmoreland, perhaps best known as a member of the popular “Gypsy-Jazz-Bluegrass-Skiffle” group Devil Train, is revealing his skills as a singer/songwriter of late. The single, which is already available online, has a laid back vibe that brings to mind early ’70s Dylan, with his unhurried vocals layered over a soul shuffle tinged with pedal steel (“Birds of Paradigm”) or sprightly, uptempo folk (“Can’t Seem to Get it Right”).

As Westmoreland says, “For this particular project I wanted more of a clean, simple production so that the songs could really express the story. Both these songs deal with the ambiguity of love and circumstance. I wanted to crystallize emotions in a simple format – kind of a bright way of looking at darkness.”

On the A-side, it’s especially encouraging to hear the warm electric piano tones of Royal coloring the country/soul saunter of Westmoreland’s writing. Somehow, in this age of chaos, the marriage of homespun poetry and funky urban grooves does the soul good. A perfect choice for a vinyl release, and an intriguing new twist from Royal.

‘Birds of Paradigm’ single

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Music Music Blog

Louise Page: From Salty to Sweet at Shangri-La’s Fool Fest 2

CREDIT: Kaitlyn Flint

Kaitlyn Flint

Louise Page

Memphis-based songwriter and pianist Louise Page has been busy of late. She released her first EP, Salt Mosaic, last September, and, after a winter of steady gigging in support of the EP, she and her band will open the festivities this Saturday at Fool Fest 2, Shangri-La Records’ spring sale and mini-festival, which doubles this year as a 30th anniversary celebration for the store.

“I have deep family roots in Memphis. My mom is from here,” Page says. The singer/songwriter moved to the Bluff City from central Pennsylvania to study creative writing at Rhodes College, where her grandmother matriculated when the college was still called Southwestern. “I got a degree in creative writing, which I now use to write songs,” Page muses. “It’s not what I thought I’d use it for.” Page’s songwriting prowess is on full display on her first EP, which mixes folk-inflected numbers with indie-rock laments of heartbreak.

Salt Mosaic opens with “Little Coast,” a plaintive wish for a new beginning. Piano runs and Page’s haunting vocals come in first. “I want to cut and run away,” she sings, “I want to rewire my disobedient brain.” Then the rest of the band joins in, bringing the energy up to match the fervency of Page’s lyrics with horn squeals and guitar arpeggios. But Page’s lyrics — and her voice — are the star of the show, and they remain so for much of the EP. The band, which includes a horn section, a violin, guitar, upright bass, and drums, adds details at just the right moments, giving Page’s voice textures to work with.

As a song, “Little Coast” stands on its own, but it also works as a thematic starting point for Salt Mosaic, whose songs share themes of endings and beginnings, of stripping away layers to reveal the essential self. “The name Salt Mosaic comes from the fact that the songs I ended up picking to record are all pretty much about broken relationships, be they romantic or friendships,” Page says. “I used to have really bitter, salty feelings about those experiences and those people.” Page elaborates on the cathartic aspect of songwriting, saying part of the process is “taking those bitter, salty feelings and turning them into something beautiful.”

“Simple Sugar is sort of the aftermath of Salt Mosaic,” Page says of her planned sophomore release. “One of the lyrics for one of the newer songs is ‘When you’re used to salt, everything tastes sweet.’” As with Salt Mosaic, Page will track her new, sweeter batch of songs at Young Avenue Sound. Calvin Lauber will reprise his role as engineer for the Simple Sugar sessions. “The first EP was kind of experimental. I was figuring a lot out,” Page says, expounding on the two EPs’ complementary relationship. “In my head they go together; they’re kind of a pair.” But Page says that, while Salt Mosaic collected songs she wrote over a span of six years, from age 18 to just weeks before the recording sessions, the songs on the new EP are “all songs I’ve written since September.” She thinks that will lead to Simple Sugar sounding more streamlined than Salt Mosaic, which, true to it’s name, has a collage-like eccentricity, an eclectic mix of quirky but complementary colors.

“I’m just a classic band kid. That was my group in high school,” Page says. “I was in marching band, and concert band, and choir.” Music has always been a part of her life, Page says. She started playing piano as a child in central Pennsylvania. Her parents bought the piano for her older siblings, but Page, the youngest, was the one to embrace it. Page began taking formal piano lessons, and in the fourth grade, she joined the school band and took up oboe as well. Citing her classical training, she counts Claude Debussy among her influences, which also include contemporary artists St. Vincent and Fiona Apple, who share an experimental streak that appeals to Page. “They both take risks,” Page says, then adds, “I want my music to have a personality.”

The Fool Fest show kicks off a busy spring for Page and her crew. She’s playing Lucero’s annual Block Party at Minglewood Hall on April 14th before she and her band return to the studio to begin tracking Simple Sugar. This summer, they head out on a 10-day east coast tour, to New York and back.

Fool Fest 2 featuring Louise Page, Negro Terror, Model Zero, and Alicja-Pop at Shangri-La Records, Saturday, March 31st at 2 p.m.

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Music Music Blog

Shangri-La goes to La-La Land

With the annual Sweatfest and Purgefest — and last April’s special election-year edition, Fool Fest — local record store Shangri-La Records has grown a quirky and enduring series of family-friendly music-festival-meets-record-sale events. And this Saturday’s fall sale is a birthday tribute to Lori McStay, wife of Shangri-La co-owner Jared McStay and a musician in her own right.

Affectionately known as La La, Lori has been out of Memphis for the most recent editions of Shangri-La’s festivals, so this year’s one-time-only tribute, dubbed La La Fest, will reunite an array of her old bands and projects. Yacht-rockers Relentless Breeze and ’80s hits aficionados the Cassette Set will continue their battle of the bands for the hotly contested title of Catchiest Midtown Group. The Ultracats (featuring local guitar hero Alicja Trout), the Villains (with Forrest Hewes and Tripp Lamkins), and the Glitches (featuring Robby Grant) are among the groups reuniting for the Saturday afternoon festival, and the star-studded lineup will include special guests Graham Winchester, Kelley Anderson, and James Godwin.

Over the years, Shangri-La’s record preview parties, record release shows, and one-day festivals have provided a chance to catch rare and intimate performances and special reunion shows by Memphis artists. The local store has hosted record-release concerts for Memphis heavy hitters such as Stax soul sultans Southern Avenue and blues-rockers the Dirty Streets. Tonight, Shangri-La hosts a pop-up listening party to celebrate the release of Julien Baker’s anticipated new album, Turn Out the Lights. Each concert or mini-festival at Shangri-La is a unique event, not likely to be replicated again. And at a time when content is expected be created and consumed constantly, in a city where bands perform every night of the week, the little record store has built a tradition as a curator of not just physical media but also special one-time-only occasions. La La Fest is sure to add to that tradition.

Performances will take place Saturday, October 28th, in the Madison Avenue record store’s parking lot, which McStay fondly refers to as Shangri-La Stadium, and the event will include discounts on all merchandise in the store.

Shangri-LALA Fest, Saturday, October 28th at 2 p.m. at Shangri-La Records. Free.

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Music Music Features

Vinyl Heaven: It’s Record Store Day

CREDIT: Jesse Davis

April 22nd may be the busiest Saturday this spring for Memphis music lovers and vinyl hounds. Shangri-La Records and Goner Records are both opening early to participate in the 10th anniversary celebration of Record Store Day [RSD]; Burke’s Book Store is hosting a reading and concert for Jim Dickinson’s I’m Just Dead, I’m Not Gone in the Cooper-Young gazebo; and Lucero’s annual Block Party closes out the festivities in the Minglewood parking lot.

I’ve done the math, and it seems like, with determination and careful planning, it’s possible to see Tall David, Some Sons of Mudboy (twice), and end the day on a blanket in front of Minglewood, counting a stack of rare 7-inchers to the sounds of Son Volt.

The official list of RSD exclusives is nine pages long and includes rarities from Link Wray, Emmylou Harris, Prince, Ramones, Spoon, and the Kinks, not to mention a previously unreleased Diamond Dogs-era David Bowie concert. As if that isn’t enough to get any music junkie out of bed early, Waxploitation Records is releasing a “literary mixtape” of stories written by Nick Cave, Jim James, and others. And I haven’t even mentioned the children’s record by Johnny Cash or the third and final installment in Big Star’s three-part release for Complete Third.

“We’re participating in a huge way,” says Shangri-La owner Jared McStay. “We ordered more stuff than we ever have.” McStay says he’s not allowed to let slip which of the RSD exclusives he ordered for the store, but he’s excited about what’s coming in. The store cleared out some space with their Fool Fest sale, and McStay says they have been stockpiling some special rarities as well as local records to put out on Saturday alongside the RSD exclusives. “We’re open early,” McStay says. “And we’ve got a band playing at 2 p.m.”

Last year, while waiting for a show to begin at the Mercy Lounge in Nashville, I watched as David Johnson, the leader of Tall David, led the crowd — or at least the Memphis contingent of it — in an enthusiastic sing-a-long rendition of Harry Nilsson’s “Without You.” (I don’t want to add fuel to the feud, but no one from Nashville joined in the sing-a-long.) This year, fresh from an opening slot at Dead Soldiers’ album-release show, Tall David will lead the festivities at Shangri-La with an afternoon performance in the store’s parking lot.

Jesse Davis

“Come expecting to see the world’s tallest rock-and-roll crooner. Come early,” Johnson says of the free show. However, most Memphis music junkies will split time between the Madison record shop and its Cooper-Young counterpart, the holy grail of garage rock, Goner Records.

“One year we had a memorable guitar shred-off with some people playing their best licks back and forth,” Goner guru Eric Friedl says, but this year, Goner is letting Burke’s Book Store take over the performance duties with a reading from Jim Dickinson’s memoir by Mary Lindsay Dickinson and a performance by Some Sons of Mudboy.

“That seemed like enough [live music],” Friedl says, but guest DJs will spin soul and punk records in the store throughout the day. And the store will have coffee and donuts for the early birds.

“We’ve got the usual batch of exclusive RSD releases that everybody’s scrambling to get,” Friedl says. The store is also releasing Golden Pelicans’ Disciples of Blood LP on red vinyl. “We do have a secret release from NOTS that’s only going to be available in the store and from the band,” Friedl continues. “We were trying to figure out the best way to leak the word, but the NOTS Live at Goner [LP is being released for RSD]. We wanted to find a good way to release it, and tying it into RSD from the record store where it was recorded seemed pretty good.”
That’s right; Goner’s dropping a new, used-to-be-secret NOTS record this Saturday. And it’s not the only new Memphis LP coming just in time for RSD. A smorgasbord of spring releases by groups with Memphis roots is bolstering the RSD exclusives.

Valerie June’s The Order of Time led the blitz of spring releases, but hot on her heels were Dead Soldiers with The Great Emptiness, Chris Milam with Kids These Days, and Cory Branan’s Adios. At the time of this writing, Milam and Branan’s LPs are barely a week old, but Memphis-based psychedelic rockers Spaceface are dropping their debut LP Sun Kids on colored vinyl the day before RSD.
Though the band strived to record something that felt organic and could be replicated live, there were a few guest appearances — the band invited Flyer favorite Julien Baker to give a guest vocal performance. “[It] has our friend Julien Baker on there. We knew she would kill it,” Daniel Quinlan says.

With live music and new and exclusive releases from every genre, Memphis is primed to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Record Store Day. Whether it’s the new NOTS or the new Spaceface, the pop perfection of Tall David, or the country-punk attack of Lucero, there’s something to satisfy every listener.
For a list of all Record Store Day releases, visit www.recordstoreday.com. Tall David at Shangri-La Records, Saturday, April 22nd at 2 p.m. Free.