Here in Memphis, we’re accustomed to seeing groups of Elvis lookalikes around town. But imagine 300 variations of Santa Claus going up and down Beale Street. Yet that is exactly what happened on Sunday, April 28th, as attendees to the International Santa Celebration ended their convention with a jolly parade on Beale.
The event is held every two years with the primary host being IBRBS (the International Brotherhood of Real Bearded Santas). There were dozens of workshops at the Renasant Convention Center covering everything from marketing and using social media to working with special needs children to wardrobe tips to using American Sign Language to the technicalities of booking agreements, and much more.
Chris McCoy, Colin Britton, and Laura Jean Hocking watch the eclipse at the Atlas Obscura’s Ecliptic Festival in Hot Springs, Arkansas. (Photo courtesy Colin Britton)
Did you see it? The April 8th total eclipse of the sun wowed millions of people from Mexico to Maine. Memphis Flyer reporter Toby Sells was there on the Overton Park Greensward as Memphians took in 97 percent totality. Don’t these people have jobs?
Chris McCoy was watching the cloud forecast until the last minute to try to find the clearest skies. He and his companion made an eclipse-day decision to go to the Atlas Obscura’s Ecliptic Festival in Hot Springs, Arkansas, which Flyer music writer Alex Greene hyped in his eclipse cover story. It turned into an experience so magical not even the West Memphis Mergepocalyse could spoil it.
Video: Bus Rider Discusses Transit Funding, Challenges, and More
The Flyer caught up with Justin Davis, secretary of the Memphis Bus Riders’ Union (MBRU), this week to learn more about the union’s work and the transit issues it strives to address.
We met at Memphis Rox Climbing Gym on McLemore and made our way to a nearby bus stop. It drizzled a little as we stood at the uncovered bus stop. Davis used the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA)’s TransLoc app to track when the next bus would arrive.
After waiting about 15 minutes, the 17 McLemore bus arrived on time. Davis said it’s not unusual for buses to arrive ten minutes early, ten minutes late, or occasionally not arrive at all.
We each put $3.50 in the fare box and received a one-day pass.
There was just one other person on board when we boarded the bus. The passenger chatted back and forth with the driver as if she was a regular on the route.
Davis and I settled in the back of the bus. The bus was clean other than a few food wrappers on the floor. And other than the occasional roar from the engine, the ride was quiet. We rode down residential streets through South Memphis and then down Lamar, picking up a few more passengers, before arriving at the American Way Transit Center about 20 minutes later.
Half a dozen more passengers got on there, including an older man with shopping bags, a younger man dressed in a work uniform with a lunchbox in tow, and a teenage boy carrying nothing but a phone.
The transit center is where many riders come to make connections to other routes, Davis said.
As Davis and I rode, we talked about the bus riders’ union’s efforts to advocate for better transit in the city, transit and poverty, dedicated funding for MATA and the proposed wheel tax, and other issues that regular bus riders face every day. Check out the video at the top to hear what Davis had to say.
Memphis Flyer reporter Toby Sells and photographer Justin Fox Burks road-tripped to Ed Duvall Landing last week, working on this week’s cover story: Pipe Dream.
The landing is close to where state officials hope to run a wastewater line across Tipton County and into the Mississippi River with the potential to pour 3.5 million gallons of waste every day. State officials say they need that line to lure a potential tenant to the Memphis Regional Megasite in Haywood County.
Thursday night sees the long-awaited national debut of Morgan Jon Fox’s streaming series Feral.
“It’s been almost exactly two years since we wrapped filming,” says Fox, the pioneering Memphis director whose films like This Is What Love In Action Looks Like and Blue Citrus Hearts have been attracting acclaim for more than a decade.
Seth Daniel in Feral
Feral is the flagship original series of a new streaming service called Dekkoo, which will bring LBGT themed films and series to a national audience. It was originally scheduled for release last summer, when I wrote this in-depth Memphis Flyer cover feature about the show. “I’m so excited for it to finally come out, but there were some moments there, when we had so many supposed release dates, that I was a little worried, to be honest. You hear nightmare stories about projects that never end up being released, for whatever complications. But as it tuns out, it’s just that it’s a brand new company that took a lot longer than they planned to get their footing.”
The Dekkoo app is available on Roku and Apple TV, or through Google Play and iTunes, and boasts “the largest streaming collection of gay-centric entertainment available boasting a larger selection than Netflix or Amazon Video.”
Morgan Jon Fox’s Series Feral Celebrates National Premiere With Local Screening (2)
“I feel great about it,” he says. “A lot of things aligned perfectly in my head. I took some time off from my career to work on other, bigger productions. I worked with Craig Brewer on his projects, and I worked as a producer and assistant director on other projects all around the country. It was truly like going to film school. Everything aligned perfectly for crew members to help make it and edit it and actors to be in it. All of those things fell into place in a way I feel lucky and fortunate for. “
In the two years since filming completed, many of the show’s stars have seen their careers take an upward trajectory, such as singer/songwriter Julian Baker. “I saw her for the first time in my back yard at a going away party for my friend Ryan Azada. She played solo acoustic, just a few songs. I knew that she was in a band with some guys playing harder stuff, but this was the first time I had seen her. It was an incredible moment that I’ll never forget…the lights in the back yard, all these people there to say goodbye to a good friend of hours. It was a golden moment. I knew this person was going to be huge star. Her music was coming from an emotional, authentic space, and that was the space I was working out of to create Feral. She hadn’t even recorded anything except on her iPhone. The songs on her Soundcloud page had from 5-30 listens. By the time it got around to actually being released, I had to work with her publicist, who had to approve the way we mentioned her in our press releases. She had a team now. Memphis has always had a hotbed for music, but people like Julian Baker don’t come around all the time. She’s a rare being.”
The series other big music stars, the Midtown punk band Nots, just opened Gonerfest last weekend before embarking on a huge east coast tour. Female lead Leah Beth Bolton is now an on-air reporter for Fox 24 in Memphis. “She’s doing traffic, which I think is so cool. It’s perfect for her personality. She brought so much light to the project. Her character is essential, because there so much depressing shit happening, and dudes taking themselves very seriously. She inserts a necessary emotional perspective. ‘Stop being so self-absorbed, dudes!’”
Breezy Lucia
Leah Beth Bolton, Chase Brother, Seth Daneil, and Jordan Nichols in Feral.
Ryan Masson and Seth Daniel are now working actors in Los Angeles, and Jordan Nichols is a stage actor and director who, Fox says, “is acting and directing every play, and winning awards every year. He’s a dedicated actor who works very hard, but he has a natural inclination.”
“There are a lot of stereotypical gay characters presented in media. They tend to be comic relief, or stuck up fashion designers. There’s also stereotypes about the South: It’s backwards, the Bible Belt, all those things. I’ve dealt with those things in my previous work, and I didn’t have a desire or energy to continue to tackle those things.”
Breezy Lucia
Seth Daniel and director Morgan Jon Fox on the set of Feral
Fox says his goal for Feral was to present a different view of life in the South “I just wanted to reflect what it was like for me growing up in this Midtown community of artists, where everyone’s kind of smushed together. You go to the Cove, which isn’t a gay bar. You go to Otherlands, which isn’t a gay coffee shop. When you’re a Midtown artist, you’re a Midtown artist, whether you’re a queer artist or a straight artist. I love that about this community. The problems that affect me and young people in their 20s in Midtown are the same problems that anyone in our position would deal with. They’re universal. I just wanted them to be people in this situation who intermingle in a very regular way. I didn’t want them to be a community of wealth. I didn’t want them only going to gay bars or going gay things. I didn’t want them to be a part of a South that is hateful or pressing them…I wanted the fact that they’re gay to be unremarkable.”
Fox and Dekkoo will host a release party at Studio on the Square on Thursday, Oct. 6, where the first five episodes of the series will be shown on the big screen. Showtime will be at 7:30 PM.
Morgan Jon Fox’s Series Feral Celebrates National Premiere With Local Screening
Today’s Music Video Monday takes its protein pills and puts its helmet on.
Memphis by way of Alaska duo Deering and Down are Music Video Monday veterans. We’re glad the prolific songwriters are equally prolific music video makers. This clip for Rev. Neil Down’s song “Spaced Out Like An Astronaut” was shot by Lanha Deering, Rev. Down, Memphis super-producer Doug Easley, and Sam Shansky, all on their iPhones. Deering then cut the footage together into a blissed-out trip by a couple of barely earthbound astral travelers.
Music Video Monday: Deering and Down
If you’d like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
In light of the news that the seminal Memphis indie rock albums One Sock Missing and Crappin’ You Negative by The Grifters are getting a long-overdue re-release courtesy of Fat Possum Records, here’s a video from the band’s 2013 music video campaign. “Teenage Jesus” was directed by Grifters bassist Trip Lamkins and Justin Thompson. The song from the One Sock Missing shows the band at their ragged best, and the video features…wait for it… an adolescent Jesus on a skateboard.
Music Video Whatever: The Grifters
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
Today’s Music Video Monday is the latest from a Memphis original.
He’s a founding member of Three 6 Mafia, an Academy Award winner, and the guy who taught Miley Cyrus how to twerk. Juicy J. is one of, if not THE, most successful Memphis musicians of the twenty first century. His latest music video “For Everybody” is a basic studio shoot featuring the man himself and guest rappers Whiz Khalifa and R. City. It’s racked up more than 3 million YouTube views since June, and it probably goes without saying that it’s NSFW.
Music Video Monday: Juicy J
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Yo Gotti continues to dish out new music to keep fans satisfied until his The Art of Hustle album drops.
In August, he released the project’s debut single “Errrbody,” and dropped a remix to the smash earlier this month, which features fellow Southern spitters Lil Wayne and Ludacris.
Now Gotti’s connected with Louisiana lyricist Lil Boosie for his latest banger “I Feel Like.” The track is also slated to appear on The Art of Hustle, which Gotti said would drop later this year or first quarter of 2015 in a recent XXL interview.
Memphis-bred lyricists Havi and Sal, collectively known as The Sidewayz, showcase their passion for vintage video games with the visual to their Street Fighter-influenced track “Chun Li.” The song comes from their 2013 EP, New World Boredom.
“It’s about being a little too attached to our game systems,” Havi said. “We’re big nerds for games. But the song was also inspired by our love triangles between us, our nerdom, and our girlfriends. Sometimes we’re into the game so hard we can’t pay attention. There’s also a metaphor about being in love with our musical careers buried in there as well.”
Peep the visual to “Chun Li,” the first-ever visual from The Sidewayz, below.
Breezy Lucia 
Breezy Lucia 
