You might imagine that today’s announcement of the featured artists in October’s Tambourine Bash at the Overton Park Shell was meant to synchronize with this week’s Memphis Flyer cover story celebrating Memphis women in music. After all, the new lineup for the annual fundraising concert for Music Export Memphis (MEM) is loaded with some of the city’s great sonic sisters. But Elizabeth Cawein, MEM’s executive director, swears the gender skew was sheer serendipity. “It’s funny because, to be totally honest, we hadn’t thought about it at all,” she says. “But it is so heavily representative of women — I love it!”
It’s proof positive of the ways Memphis music is evolving today, and typical of the kind of synergy that happens when an organization like MEM is so diverse, equitable, and inclusive. Guided only by the principle of lending Memphis musicians a hand, serving as an “engine and platform to grow their careers and elevate Memphis’ profile as a contemporary music city,” MEM has an embarrassment of riches to work with, from all corners of the music world.
What’s more, the Tambourine Bash, now in its sixth year, is a unique space where all of those corners can come crashing together, with some imaginative and inspiring results. That’s in part because Cawein chose early on to structure the event around the intense spirit of collaboration that characterizes this city. When artists play the Tambourine Bash, they don’t just appear with their usual performing bands. Instead, three contrasting artists or bands are thrown together to work with each other in any way they see fit. It’s all about the mash-up. Take this year’s lineup, for example:
- Lana J + EsMod + Aybil
- Tonya Dyson + Daykisser + ADUBB
- Lina Beach + Jessica Ray + Ryan Peel
- Wyly Bigger + MadameFraankie + Blueshift Ensemble
- Sunweight + Oakwalker + Jeremy Stanfill
- Southern Avenue + surprise guest collaborator
- FINALE: Superjam featuring all Tambourine Bash performers, produced by Boo Mitchell
Mixing and matching such versatile artists makes the Tambourine Bash unique, for audience members and performers alike. “Curating this lineup is one of my absolute favorite things that I get the privilege to do,” says Cawein. “And artists around the city know about it, so they get excited. I send that email saying, ‘Hey, are you available on October 10th?’ And they get pumped. I love that.”
It’s indicative not only of how collaborative artists here can be, but also of how comfortable they feel when working with MEM. “I feel like they have a lot of trust, too,” Cawein observes. “When I reach out and say, ‘We’re going to put you together with some other artists, and I don’t know who they are yet, but I promise it’ll be good,’ they trust me. And that feels great because it means I can really just come up with some stuff that will be cool.”
One reason it works is because Cawein keeps an ear close to the ground of the local scene. “I have people in my head, and a sense of the scene and where it is and what’s popping. Maybe it’s artists I’ve been playing on my show on WYXR [Straight from the Source] or people that have come across my radar for other reasons. And I’ll have a working document for a solid year. Like, as soon as we do Tambourine Bash this year, I’m sure I’ll have another doc, where I’m dropping names of artists in that I want to feature next time.”
This year’s creative mix have some Tambourine Bash firsts. “One set from this year that I’m super excited about is Wyly Bigger, MadameFraankie, and Blueshift Ensemble,” says Cawein. “We’ve included horns several years. We’ve had the Mighty Souls Brass Band, we’ve had Lucky Seven Brass Band, but this year I really wanted strings. And so Blueshift just popped to mind. As I started putting that one together, I’m thinking about Wyly’s piano playing and just the sort of raucousness of that, mixed with MadameFraankie, who is so versatile as a guitar player, especially the stuff that she’s done with Talibah Safiya recently, just really funky and soulful and kind of gritty, but also going in a very experimental, electronic kind of direction. And then to have strings with that, I’m just so excited about the flavors that have been combined there. I can’t wait to see that one.”
It seems the universe delivered on Cawein’s wish for strings in other ways, too. “The funny thing is that we have strings in several places this year because we have Oakwalker, and we also have EsMod, who is a rapper in that first collaboration on the bill [but] is a violinist as well.”
Another favorite group of artists is a group who originally were competing for a single slot on the bill. “One that I’m really excited about is Lina Beach, Ryan Peel, and Jessica Ray,” Cawein adds. “Jessica Ray was one of the winners of a partnership we did with Choose901. We got them to call on their audiences to vote for artists they wanted to see on the Tambourine Bash lineup. And the secret, that you can totally reveal here, is that we ended up adding all three of them. We narrowed them to finalists, and we had people vote, but in the end, it was like, ‘I want all three of these artists,’ and that was Jessica Ray, Oakwalker, and Jeremy Stanfill.
“So Lina Beach sings and she’s a songwriter, but she’s such an amazing guitar player! And I knew I wanted a big, bodacious vocal to pair with her, and we had a lot of beautiful vocals on the lineup already, don’t get me wrong. But I wanted someone who is just a belter, right? And so I thought of Jessica Ray.”
That’s but a fraction of the sparks that are bound to fly come October. As usual, all artists performing at the Bash will congregate onstage for the finale led by Boo Mitchell. That too should offer some surprises, on a night when all should set aside their preconceptions and expect the unexpected, as these harbingers of the city’s musical future gather together for an unforgettable night.
Click here to reserve your tickets to the 2024 Tambourine Bash now.