The NashvilleSceneis a proud partner with MashUp! Join them for a Family Reunion and Resurrection Ball on Feb. 21 at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. to celebrate expression in love and chosen family. Purchase your tickets at mashupnation.org/events.
and dance performances, book reviews, film screenings and more. Visit nashvillescene.com or scan the QR code above to sign up.
The Aunt B Radio Hour
The Aunt B Radio Hour is now live on Spotify and Apple Podcasts! Scene columnist Betsy Phillips and co-host Braden Gall dive into Nashville culture, music, news, history and plenty of hilarity. Head to nashvillescene.com/ podcast to listen now.
The NashvilleScene’s Hot Chicken Week kicked off Dine Nashville, which runs throughout February. Enjoy collaborative chef experiences and special offers from some of your favorite local restaurants across Music City. Learn more at visitmusiccity.com.
Win a Pair of Four-Day VIP Passes to Bonnaroo The electric Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival returns to Manchester, Tenn., June 11-14, with performers including Skrillex, Noah Kahan, The Strokes, Rüfüs Du Sol and many more. Enter to win two free four-day VIP passes at nashvillescene.com/promo/freestuff
Conversations at OZ Arts
The NashvilleSceneand Nfocusare proud media partners for Conversations at OZ Arts. Conversations at OZ celebrates the art of conversation with community leaders and vibrant personalities. View this year’s lineup at ozartsnashville.org/ conversations-2026. EVENTS WE’RE INTO
In my 35+ years living and working in Nashville, I’ve navigated the twists, turns and now expansive growth of this wonderful place. Let me help you make the best choices in your biggest investment — real estate. I’m so grateful for my clients’ great reviews, repeat business and continued referrals. I’d love the opportunity to help make your Real Estate Goals a reality!
Vanderbilt vs. Auburn, Nov. 8, 2025; photo by David Russell
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This exhibition presents the incisive and enduring work of Nashville-based artist Barbara Bullock (1949–1996). Through satire, her work critiques systemic racism, sexism, and classism, particularly the expectations placed on upper-class Black women. Bullock’s legacy continues through her lasting influence on the Nashville art community and her role as a visual griot, preserving personal and collective histories.
Get tickets and information at FristArtMuseum.org
This exhibition is part of the Clay and Jeannie Blevins
Gordon CAP Gallery Fund Supported
The Frist Art Museum is supported in part by
Organized by the Frist Art Museum with guest curator Carlton F. Wilkinson
VIVIAN LUX
Introducing Vivian Lux, an exquisite collection of new luxury homes nestled in vibrant East Nashville. Strategically zoned as MUL-A, with select units eligible for non-owner occupied short-term rental properties, Vivian Lux presents an ideal opportunity for home buyers and investors alike. This boutique development redefines luxury with its modern design, seamlessly blending sophistication and contemporary flair. Each home features 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, rooftop decks, and downtown views. Exclusively listed by Shannon Ryan.
LUXURY HOMES FROM $669,000 EAST NASHVILLE
Located near West Eastland & Mcferrin Ave, Richmond Bend is an exciting new mixed-use community in the historic Greenwood neighborhood of East Nashville. Steps from amazing and award-winning restaurants and shops, such as Mas Tacos, Pharmacy Burger, Lyra, and more. Richmond Bend leads with a brand-new restaurant of its own that will be home to Bar Cala Cala, the next culinary endeavor from the team behind Xiao Bao.
CONTEMPORARY HOMES FROM $1,350,000 GREENWOOD
THINKING OF ‘DOWNTOWN SAFETY’ BEYOND POLICING AND SURVEILLANCE
Amid ongoing debates, state grant money is flowing toward a number of proposed safety enhancements in downtown Nashville
BY LENA MAZEL
Street View is a monthly column taking a close look at development-related issues affecting different neighborhoods throughout the city.
ON JAN. 20, the Metro Council voted on a number of proposed safety enhancements for downtown Nashville. Presented as part of a $15 million state grant, the items included an armored vehicle, a “mobile command post,” a “tactical support post” and upgraded security cameras donated to the Metro Nashville Police Department.
The council ultimately accepted all the items except for the security cameras, with multiple councilmembers noting the potential for cameras to become a tool for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But the debate over the grant funding has also raised important underlying questions. Whose safety is being prioritized downtown? And what’s the best way to make it safer?
As a concept, downtown safety is multifaceted. While crime is one piece of the puzzle, there are also ongoing initiatives around pedestrian safety, helping vulnerable unhoused people and responsible drinking.
Better pedestrian safety can’t come soon enough citywide: Nashville had a reported 116 traffic fatalities in 2025, including 24 pedestrians. In the early hours of New Year’s Day this year, a woman was killed in a hit-and-run on Hermitage Avenue, just outside downtown Nashville.
One major concern is safety during larger downtown events, part of the state’s rationale to send Nashville an additional armored vehicle. (The city already has one.) The Nashville Department of Transportation and Multimodal Infrastructure is also installing retractable bollards and an extended pedestrian area on Lower Broadway. An NDOT representative tells the Scene that the bollards — short, vertical, traffic-managing posts — are currently designed, with “construction pending.” The same is true for a number of raised crosswalks with flashing beacons, enhanced striping and pedestrian signage in the downtown area.
Beyond pedestrian safety, there’s also the question of drinking and bar safety. Since 2021, Nashville’s Safe Bar program has offered bystander education to bartenders to help prevent drink spiking and sexual assault.
Cameras, police and security resources can help catch the perpetrators of crimes like drink spiking and hit-and-runs, but some advocates worry these interventions can come at a cost to other vulnerable people.
Last year, the Nashville Downtown Partnership — an entity that manages downtown’s
Business Improvement District and is the recipient of the state grant — faced criticism over its use of security company Solaren, which has been met with allegations of harassing unhoused people downtown. In the summer, homeless advocates drew attention to another safety issue, when NDOT replaced a number of benches along Korean Veterans Boulevard with large concrete spheres. When a grassroots effort was made to add wooden benches back to the street, the city removed them.
Homeless advocate India Pungarcher told the Scene in August that unhoused people can feel they’re “constantly being told to move along” downtown. This presents obvious safety issues for people who rely on the downtown core for services including shelter, employment and transportation.
The Downtown Partnership does have homeless outreach programs, including dedicated outreach workers and a program called Homeward Bound. Notably, At-Large Councilmember Zulfat Suara told the Metro Council at its Jan. 20 meeting that funds not accepted as part of the state grant would be reallocated, including to more of these services. Reading from an email sent by the Downtown Partnership, Suara said, “I believe our preference [for funding] would be to spend it on additional ambassadors for homeless outreach.”
However, when contacted by the Scene about this preference, the Downtown Partnership says: “Any requested funds for safety and grant-approved items that Metro does not accept will be discussed with the State of Tennessee. Any possible reallocation would go through the state’s review and approval process to invest funds in improving downtown safety.” An NDP representative provided no further reference to homeless services.
At January’s council meeting, Suara and others raised concerns about the money allocated to camera upgrades. Nashville has a long history with surveillance technologies, including recent debates over video-network technology and license plate readers.
While downtown Nashville already has a network of security cameras, the proposed funding would upgrade them to more effective, modern equipment. District 19 Councilmember Jacob Kupin, who represents downtown Nashville, tells the Scene he was frustrated to see his colleagues vote against the camera upgrades.
“I understand the frustration that people have and the lack of control people feel like they have over their federal and state government right now,” he says. “And there are horrific things happening that shouldn’t be happening. But to take it out on these video cameras, I think was not fair.”
Kupin says that while surveillance can’t prevent crime, it can help prosecute it, pointing to the hit-and-run on New Year’s Day, whose perpetrator still hasn’t been identified. He also mentions Riley Strain, a tourist who drowned in the Cumberland River.
“The mystery of what happened to [Strain] is a blind spot under the bridge,” Kupin says. “If we had one more surveillance camera under that bridge, we would have known exactly what happened to him.”
While not specifically allocated for immigration enforcement, security footage overall can be used as a tool to aid law enforcement in prosecuting immigration cases. As reported by the tech outlet 404Media and the ACLU, one high-profile example of this is data from security footage aggregator Flock, whose data has been used in partnership with law enforcement agencies across the country, including ICE. No-
tably, Flock also has access to widespread home security footage through Ring cameras, though connections between Ring footage and ICE are currently less clear — even as Ring, with its recent Super Bowl ad, is spinning its AI-powered Search Party feature as wholesome pet-finding technology.
Immigration enforcement was a big part of the discussion about the grant funding.
Speaking about the armored vehicle designed for use at large events downtown, District 17 Councilmember Terry Vo worried that once technology was bought, Metro would lose control over its use. “What happens when we lose the local control and those vehicles are used to kidnap our children on the streets, kidnap our neighbors, kidnap people that look like me?” Vo asked.
A recent survey sent out to 1,000 Nashvillians showed the most support for three safety initiatives citywide — 23 percent supported more gun regulations, 18 percent supported better access to mental health services, and 17 percent supported stricter sentencing. Hiring more police officers was close behind at 15 percent — tied with reducing homelessness. Notably, the survey also showed that 8 percent of people also supported police reform.
In an email to the Scene, the Nashville Downtown Partnership said the city’s safety needs call for “thoughtful investment and a coordinated, multi-faceted approach that brings together outreach efforts, infrastructure improvements, technology, and strong partnerships.” They also pointed to figures of nearly 150,000 people downtown on an average weekday, and more than 250,000 people on an average Saturday in 2025.
Kupin says he’d like to see expanded options for unhoused people and other safety enhancements happen downtown, beyond the grantfunded options.
“Most major cities have a physical building that is a place for unhoused neighbors to go to,” he says. He’d like to see a space that provides permanent supportive housing, temporary housing and a resource center beyond the city’s current options. He’d also like to expand funding to programs like Red Frogs, a volunteer group that helps young people stay safe around alcohol and works downtown one night a week. So while the council did accept some state money for new law enforcement tools, the future of the rest of the funding isn’t currently clear. But for now, there’s plenty of work to do to help make downtown safer. Who benefits — and who could be at risk — all depends on what interventions the city, state and Business Improvement District choose to make going forward. ▼
PHOTO: ANGELINA CASTILLO
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NEWS
BUCHANAN STREET OVERLAY DELAYED BY PUBLIC PUSHBACK
New rules for Buchanan Street businesses spark questions about North Nashville’s future
BY ELI MOTYCKA
parties rage into the early morning and owners make millions hand-over-fist.
A CONTROVERSIAL COMMERCIAL overlay for Buchanan Street will return to the Metro Planning Commission on Feb. 26 after being deferred in January by the same body. Second-term Councilmember Brandon Taylor, whose District 21 includes much of North Nashville, designed the overlay through years of conversation with area residents and businesses. Taylor sponsors the legislation in the Metro Council, where the two bills will come up for second reading on March 3.
has always revolved around the campuses, livelier entertainment and socializing on Jefferson Street, and quieter local businesses on Buchanan Street.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
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RACHEL GRIFFIN
10:30 AM
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19
with ADRIENNE YOUNG at PARNASSUS The Sun and the Starmaker
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21
SATURDAY STORYTIME with NORMAN THE DOG at PARNASSUS Norman, At Your Service: My First Day
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SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28
SATURDAY STORYTIME with MARGARET RENKL & BILLY RENKL at PARNASSUS The Weedy Garden
6:30 PM
JILL MOSER
SUNDAY, MARCH 1
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As real estate speculators, new business districts and rezoning strategies transformed neighborhoods in the past decade, Taylor has struggled to keep North Nashville — Middle Tennessee’s historical center of Black life — both insulated from rapid change and on board the city’s real estate boom.
“Gentrification is very real in Nashville, and we are working with the last frontier in North Nashville,” Taylor tells the Scene. “I take pride that that has not happened in North Nashville. We’ve seen growth, we’ve seen development, but we are trying to drive smart growth and smart development. I’m not thinking of 12South or Hillsboro Village — that is not what we’re striving to be. We’re striving to be the Buchanan Street and Jefferson Street that we’ve always been historically.”
In June, Taylor co-sponsored legislation creating business rules for a “Commercial Compatibility Overlay district,” a codes section that officially passed in October. In November, Taylor introduced two bills that drew a CCO district around several blocks of prime Buchanan Street properties. Fierce public pushback in January criticized the overlay as an attempt to hold Black businesses to a separate standard that would doom their profitability.
“This zoning bill, the Buchanan Street Commercial Compatibility overlay, is being framed as order — as compatibility, as progress — but to the people who live here, build here, create here, it feels like erasure,” said Jordan Gaither, a Tennessee State University graduate, during the Jan. 8 public hearing. “Buchanan Street has never been quiet. It has never been designed to fit inside a box that makes other people comfortable. Buchanan Street is culture, it’s music spilling into the street, it’s Blackowned businesses surviving without apology, it’s nightlife conversation, entrepreneurs and community — not just during business hours, but when the city actually comes alive.”
Taylor says that at times, criticism has strayed into misunderstandings or rumors, which he says he hopes to set straight at an upcoming Feb. 21 community meeting.
We’ve had to do some work in communicating or debunking some of the myths or misinformation that was out there,” Taylor tells the Scene. “ One of the big things was that there’s a curfew on Buchanan Street — that was false. Or that some folks were gonna have to close down — that is false. This legislation would only affect brand-new businesses or brand-new development. If there’s currently a business operating, they’d be grandfathered in.”
Pizzeria Slim & Husky’s opened in 2017 at the corner of Buchanan and 10th Avenue; at the time, owner Clint Gray called the neighborhood a “food desert.” Slim & Husky’s oblong pizzas soon commanded a strong local following. Slowly, the blocks filled up. Former Titans cornerback Kristian Fulton opened a boutique clothing store across the street in an airy space now home to The Loading Dock Cafe. The strip now has at least three coffee shops and bakeries — Sift, Morning Glory Cafe and All or Nothing Bagels — and plenty more social gathering spaces like Moguls Barber & Lounge, Tio Fun! and The Locker Room, a sports bar co-owned by local rap legend David Darnell Brown (known on the Billboard charts as Young Buck).
This momentum has included new and old faces in the area, including many who are extremely proud, protective and wary as Buchanan charts its path into the future. ▼
Taylor’s new rules add explicit restrictions on what new businesses can operate on Buchanan Street — no “alternative financial services,” a legal category that includes high-interest loan giants like Advance Financial, whose confusing contracts and litigious business practices wreak havoc on low-income households. No beer and cigarette markets, including vape shops and smoke shops. Auto repair shops, car washes and liquor sales must have a 2,640foot buffer from one another, while bars and nightclubs can’t amplify sound outside after 9 p.m. and must close between midnight and 9 a.m., among other rules about buffer space and outdoor seating. During the public hearing, some pointed to Lower Broadway, where
Decades ago, North Nashville’s streets teemed with Black-owned businesses and a strong middle class, anchored by nearby institutions TSU, Fisk University and Meharry Medical College. The history rivals any great chapter of America — civil rights leaders organizing in churches, music legends performing in Jefferson Street clubs, generations of students graduating into stable careers. A sharp decline followed in the post-segregation era, hastened by public disinvestment and targeted decisions that tore apart North Nashville’s commercial and residential fabric. Taylor now hopes that, with cautious and careful urban planning, the neighborhood can flourish for Black residents, not real estate speculators or transplants. Life
NASHVILLESCENE.COM/NEWS/PITHINTHEWIND
Last week at the state legislature, Republican-backed anti-LGBTQ and immigration-enforcement bills advanced, while a Democratic push for voucher accountability failed. Meanwhile, a state bill that would criminalize being an undocumented person in Tennessee, sponsored by House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland), also advanced. Visit nashvillescene.com/state-legislature for our ongoing coverage of the Tennessee General Assembly
PHOTO: ANGELINA
FIVE YEARS ON, THE BEHAVIORAL CARE CENTER STICKS TO ITS MISSION
Davidson County sheriff resists changing protocol at the city’s first jail-alternative facility
BY HANNAH HERNER
NASHVILLE WAS THE first city in the country to open a Behavioral Care Center, an alternative to jail that exists outside of the criminal justice system. Dozens of cities have since followed.
As the Nashville Banner reported in September, the Behavioral Care Center is also the only of Metro’s detention centers that still has capacity — the rest are overcrowded.
The Behavioral Care Center opened in fall 2020 with the intention of serving people with a mental health condition or conditions and a misdemeanor charge. Today roughly half of the people it houses have misdemeanor charges and the other half have felony charges, according to Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall. Each person arrested in Nashville undergoes an evaluation by a mental health clinician, who meets with staff at the district attorney’s office, public defender’s office and sheriff’s office to determine whether the person is eligible for treatment at the center in lieu of jail time. The BCC hosts an average of 445 people per year in 60 beds.
Part of the open capacity at the facility is due to a drop in arrests overall. Before the BCC’s inception, the number of arrests per day in Davidson County was 100, whereas today it’s closer to 70 — part of a national downward trend of arrests post-COVID, Hall says. He says he’s faced pressure from community organizations and criminal-justice leaders alike to open the center to more populations, including the backlog of people awaiting competency evaluations under Jillian’s
Law. (That legislation passed following the shooting death of a Belmont student by someone who was deemed incompetent, and requires widespread competency evaluations.)
“What we’ve tried hard to do is to maintain what the program is designed to do and not let it become a catchall for all sorts of different things that the criminal justice system is trying to resolve,” Hall says.
The space is simply not designed for a potentially dangerous or volatile mental health case, the sheriff says. Plus, if a person is not yet deemed competent, they cannot make the choice to go to the BCC.
The BCC is not a sentence, but a choice. One limitation of the process is that people do not know how long their stay will be, but if they go through the court system, there will be a set jail sentence length. The average length of stay since the center opened in 2020 is 19 days, and the average length of stay in 2025 was 21 days. Once a person has finished their BCC assignment, their criminal record carries forward as though the arrest never occurred.
“The individual is going over into the mental health center, and the criminal justice system is no longer involved with your case, so the mental health team decides when you get to go home, when you are stabilized,”
Hall says. “We wanted it that way, because if we honestly believe it’s not a justice-involved case, why are we letting justice-involved people — judges, police, me — decide when you go home?”
When the BCC was introduced, Nashville did not yet have the alternative policing strategies it does now, with programs Partners in Care and REACH. Hall is encouraged by those additions, but says the city needs more mental health beds — places where people can stay long-term, of which there are currently very few.
“The purpose all along was for us to be a stabilization unit,” Hall says. “We were not going to be a long-term treatment center, and one of the things that I think we have got to decide in our community is, where is that next bed?” ▼
FEBRUARY 28
KENNY WAYNE SHEPHERD WITH JIMMY VAUGHAN
MARCH 14
DANAE HAYS
MAY 1
ANI DIFRANCO WITH VALERIE JUNE ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
MAY 31
STEVE EARLE ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
JUNE 16-JULY 21
SPRINGER MOUNTAIN FARMS BLUEGRASS NIGHTS AT THE RYMAN SINGLE SHOW TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM JUNE 12
JOHN MULANEY ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
AUGUST 18
HAPPY TOGETHER 2026 ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
WITNESS HISTORY
This FAME Recording Studios jacket depicts the Muscle Shoals water tower, with the addition of the studio’s logo on the iconic regional landmark, which was also featured on the cover of the Fame Gang’s 1969 album Solid Gold from Muscle Shoals.
From the exhibit Muscle Shoals: Low Rhythm Rising artifact: Courtesy of FAME Recording Studios artifact photo: Bob Delevante
CANDICE STOREY LEE LEADS VANDERBILT ATHLETICS TO VICTORY
The school’s athletic director — the first Black woman to hold the position in the SEC — is helping her teams dominate
BY ELI MOTYCKA
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY athletic director and vice chancellor Candice Storey Lee’s spacious office sits on the second floor of McGugin Center on Jess Neely Drive. It’s just across from Charles Hawkins Field — Vanderbilt’s storied baseball diamond — behind the John Rich Complex, which includes football practice fields. Every day she is surrounded by names. Some, like midcentury football star Jess Neely, served in the same role as Lee — athletic director — while others won significance in the world of Vanderbilt sports with standout athletic accolades and multimillion-dollar donations.
Down the block stands the recently named David Williams II Recreation and Wellness Center, the university’s catchall fitness facility for climbers and swimmers and stressed college students. Williams, a trailblazing Black athletic director like Lee, died abruptly, soon after formally retiring as Vanderbilt’s vice chancellor and AD. That was almost seven years to the day before the
Scene’s conversation with Lee. Williams hired Lee, then captain of Vanderbilt’s SEC-championship women’s basketball team, as an intern more than 20 years ago.
A year after Williams’ death, Lee succeeded him atop the university’s athletics program during a period of drastic change. After decades of streaky Commodore teams finding fleeting success, Vanderbilt now has national contenders in all four major college sports — football, women’s basketball, men’s basketball, baseball — at the same time, and all in the nation’s most competitive conference. Discus thrower Veronica Fraley represented the United States at the Paris Olympics in 2024 within months of completing her Vanderbilt education.
New transfer rules and court cases brought by college athletes, including Vanderbilt football’s star quarterback Diego Pavia, helped usher in the NIL era (allowing these athletes to profit financially with their name, image and likeness).
Universities have scrambled to build programs in this new legal and financial landscape, where athletes can sign six- and seven-figure contracts before going pro. (According to a source familiar with his NIL contract, Pavia earned a little more than $1 million this season.) Money has flowed from donors to athletes via intermediary entities like Vanderbilt’s third-party collective, the Anchor Impact Fund, which disbursed more than $3 million in 2023 and 2024 according to the most recent tax filings. Unlike many pro sports deals, NIL contracts are private. On Feb. 4 the university announced “Anchored for Her,” a $50 million fundraising effort to support Vanderbilt women’s sports. Vanderbilt announced on Feb. 12 that it would dissolve Anchor Impact and manage NIL via Anchor Advantage, a new in-house initiative. Success has also brought more dollars and attention to Vanderbilt sports. The elite academic institution enjoys a wealthy alumni network, and fundraising and revenue generation have gotten
even more creative, from gimmicks to entire reward systems. After scoring a major football upset against Alabama during the 2024 season, Vanderbilt auctioned off pieces of its goalposts, capitalizing on a fan frenzy. Also in 2024, the university launched a “Priority Points” system that resembles a new currency for donors hoping to get better access to games and tickets. Vanderbilt has upgraded football, basketball, tennis and baseball facilities with state-of-the-art amenities that rival professional sports complexes.
Lee can’t write down the winning formula, but she isn’t surprised by the school’s overwhelming athletic success either. She gives credit to Williams for building a culture of integrity that prizes the student-athlete experience. Resources, like money and new facilities, have helped Vanderbilt attract and retain talent.
Like the rest of Commodore Nation, she’s also taking time to enjoy the show.
PHOTO: CASEY GOWER
What was it like going from working in David Williams’ athletic department to leading Vanderbilt athletics yourself? David gave me an opportunity in 2002. I had just finished playing, and he said, “Hey, I’m starting an internship program and I want a former student-athlete.” I didn’t know him, someone had recommended me — I hope because I took great pride in the student-athlete experience and was heavily involved in the community. It was actually an internship not in athletics, but in student affairs, because David was vice chancellor for student life at the time too. From the time I was an intern to deputy athletic director, 18 years later, I always reported directly to David Williams. One of the greatest gifts he gave me — and he gave me a lot of gifts — was the gift of just exposure. To meetings, to people, to his thought process. He gave me his time so I could ask questions, and he was unusually vulnerable. He would say to me, “Have you ever thought about being an athletic director?” It didn’t occur to me. Other than him, I had not seen a lot of African Americans in the role, and certainly had not seen women in the role. Sometimes people have to see things in you before you see it in yourself. A couple times I was thinking about leaving Vanderbilt for the chance to have new role, new responsibilities, but I was getting that here.
What are some specific philosophies or lessons, influenced by David or otherwise, for finding success here? I often wish that I could just sit with David now, having been in the role for almost six years. I did not realize how many balls he was juggling, and that’s coming from someone who saw him every day. He was purposeful in everything and fiercely believed in the things he believed in. I believe fiercely, deeply, in the student-athlete experience and what sport can do for young people. If you can take that and also take a Vanderbilt degree, you can change the trajectory of your life. Yes, we have to modernize our approach all the time, there’s NIL and much more money in it, but every decision that I make is values-based, every single time. I’ve learned that part of being a leader is, your comfort comes last. I also believe in the importance of showing up. I try to be a lot of places, I try to make sure our student-athletes know who I am, I try to make sure our coaches know that I care about what they’re doing, I try to give my attention to as many alums as I can. I
laugh a lot — you can hear me laugh all the way down the hall. We’re gonna approach a job with joy and work really hard.
What have been the hardest decisions you’ve made here? Every time I’ve made a coaching change. Some people may think that’s easy. You look at the record and you make a decision. Winning is a part of it, but it’s not all of it. Your job as the athletic director, of course, is leading the department, but it’s more than that. From a head-coach standpoint, I want to create a vision, unlock the resources and remove the impediments to give our coaches a chance to take their vision, marry it with mine, and we go. If you’re gonna do that well, you’re investing in people. We’re cultivating real trust and relationships here.
Let’s use women’s basketball as an example. It’s a historic program — you were even a part of it — that has recently, quickly, gone from the bottom of the SEC to a top-five program in the country. What happened there? I’ve hired seven head coaches in six years: football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, men’s tennis, women’s tennis, volleyball and track. With women’s basketball, people always ask, because I came from that program, was it more meaningful? I wouldn’t say that my responsibility is for everybody, but emotionally, it runs deep on a personal level. I am an alum of the program, and we were very good. We won an SEC championship, we went to two Elite Eights, we were number one in the NCAA tournament one year. When I go on a coach search I think, “I’m gonna know it when I see it.” I talked to [women’s basketball coach] Shea Ralph the very first day that I began my search. She and I are the exact same year, and she was the best player in the country. I immediately felt like this is somebody that’s gonna be easy to lock arms with and to not just meet what we used to have, but surpass it. To be honest with you, I have felt that with every coach I’ve hired and with every coach we’ve been able to retain here.
Shea’s one of the best to ever do it. She’s got high basketball IQ, an incredible relationship-builder, a great ambassador. She checks every box. Then, unlocking the resources is about facilities, ensuring that she has what she needs operationally. The recruiting had to catch up, but her vision was always very clear. I was proud
ANCHOR UP
“Everybody that’s here, I brought them here to win. I want to win. They want to win. The fact that we have aspirational visions, that’s not surprising.”
—CANDICE STOREY LEE
of her when she was in the [Women’s National Invitation Tournament] just like I’m proud of her now.
Is it not a surprise to you that so much success has come so quickly? Everybody that’s here, I brought them here to win. I want to win. They want to win. The fact that we have aspirational visions, that’s not surprising. I can never predict how long it might take us to turn a corner, because breakthroughs are dependent on so many things. Some that are within your control and some that are not. But I’m really not surprised. I’m excited. I’m delighted when we have big games — I’ll be watching the women’s game against Oklahoma during some SEC meetings tonight, we’ll all be watching. Part of it is having great players like Mikayla Blakes, Aubrey Galvan and Sacha Washington.
Do you have similar stories about football coach Clark Lea and men’s basketball coach Mark Byington? It seems like you flipped a switch and men’s basketball came back in the top 15 and football took a huge stride. Baseball continues to be an exceptional program. Yep. It’s the same thing. The template is the same. We’re trying to create conditions for success — and yes, sometimes you lose. I can’t guarantee you win every game. You need the right leaders. Support from the chancellor, myself, great coaches. Full alignment to unlock resources. Fundraising and also facilities, operational support, time and access. And a culture of clear communication and young people who deeply believe — stubborn enough to believe when no one else believes and yet humble enough to say, “Maybe we gotta do something a little different.”
Your tenure has completely overlapped with the NIL era, a massive shift in college sports. How does that factor into the way a top-tier athletic department is run? You still have to be able to identify people who fit your system, but roster development and roster acquisition is a new muscle for a lot of coaches. NIL is very much tied to how you build your roster, so we had to put resources into that. People can build and rebuild rosters in the blink of an eye now. Earl Bennett, he’s our executive GM, he leads a new division for us called the Roster and Finance Division, which is responsible for making sure that we’re staying within the revenue share cap from the House
settlement, and oversees all of our revenue share agreements, oversees NIL, is directly connected to the sports that are sharing revenue. It sounds like your success has come from constant experimentation. We have had to embrace NIL. It’s the only way. The job of AD is changing — it’s always been to fundraise and hire coaches, but now you gotta think about revenue generation differently. Really, since COVID, we’ve been building the bridge while we cross it. We are not professional sports. You can take elements from professional sports and infuse them into a higher-education landscape — that’s what we’re doing — but I’m really careful with my language there because we don’t consider our student-athletes employees, and we don’t want to be professional sports. Does that mean higher-revenue sports, like football and basketball, become more important to the university? We might be talking about more money being infused into the system now, but that allocation is not a new problem. David Williams had to do the same thing as AD. There’s not limitless resources, and we invest where we can get the biggest return, but that’s not always financial returns. It could be supporting our core mission, or values. The biggest change is that we have to be much more diverse in our revenue now — you can’t meet the need by just relying on philanthropy or media rights.
Even five or 10 years ago, Vanderbilt was bottom of the table in the SEC. What do you credit for the athletics turnaround? Clark Lea says all the time: “We’re one of one.” It is objectively true that we are the only school that has this type of academic distinction in the SEC. I want the high academics. I was drawn to Vanderbilt for that reason. I’ve always believed we could do what we’re doing. We under-invested in athletics for a long time, it’s true. There might’ve been a fear that if you invested in athletics, it might take away from the academic distinction. I’d love to sit with David Williams and say, “Can you believe this?” I know he wanted it, and I don’t know what he was dealing with, why the resources weren’t unlocked for him. You gotta believe it when no one else believes it. Not only did we have believability, but we actually had tangible resources and the courage to try some stuff. But man, it’s not magic. We want to be great at everything. ▼
PHOTO:
CANDICE STOREY LEE
MIKAYLA BLAKES, WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
If you’re going to check out just one person on this list, make it Mikayla Blakes. The sophomore burst onto the scene with an AllAmerican season during women’s basketball’s 2024-25 campaign. She won National Freshman of the Year honors and rewrote the Vanderbilt record books, and she’s only gotten better in year two. Blakes is at the front of the pack in the National Player of the Year race this season as the No. 5-ranked Commodores have jumped out to a historic start. The high-scoring phenom may end up being one of the standout stars of this year’s March Madness as Vanderbilt searches for its first Final Four appearance since 1993 and its second ever. Prepare your brackets accordingly.
TYLER TANNER, MEN’S BASKETBALL
EIGHT COMMODORES TO WATCH
These Vanderbilt athletes are thriving across a variety of sports
BY LOGAN BUTTS
As Vanderbilt University’s meteoric rise in athletics continues, several of the school’s programs are producing stars. Sure, everyone has heard about now-graduated lighting-rod quarterback Diego Pavia, the 2025 Heisman runner-up who attracted attention both on and off the field as he led the Vandy football program to some of its greatest seasons. But these eight Commodores deserve just as much time in the spotlight.
SYDNEY WATTS, WOMEN’S SOCCER
Vanderbilt, standout golfer Wells Williams is making a name for himself nationally. After earning honorable mention All-American honors as a junior, the 2024-25 SEC ScholarAthlete of the Year was named to the 2026 Ben Hogan Award watch list for the nation’s best golfer.
ANCHOR UP
1 2 3 4 5 8 6+7
CÉLIA-BELLE MOHR AND SOPHIA WEBSTER, WOMEN’S TENNIS
Possibly the highlight of Vanderbilt’s fall sports slate was Célia-Belle Mohr and Sophia Webster’s run to the NCAA Doubles Championship final. The elite doubles pair won four matches in four days in November to make the championship match, where they ultimately lost to a duo from N.C. State. But Mohr and Webster — a grad student and sophomore, respectively — accomplished a number of program firsts and earned AllAmerican status for the second year in a row along the way.
Like Blakes, Tyler Tanner made an immediate impact on the court in his first season for the Commodores. As a freshman, the Brentwood Academy alum provided energy off the bench last season, starting fastbreaks with active hands on defense and finding open teammates with smart passes on offense. But even the most ardent local basketball-heads didn’t foresee the leap the Middle Tennessee native would make this year. As Vanderbilt is in the midst of its best season in more than a decade, Tanner has become one of the best point guards in the country, making his way onto multiple national award watch lists and drumming up interest as a potential first-round pick in this year’s NBA draft.
It’s been a banner few years for the Vanderbilt women’s soccer program. The Commodores have made three of the past four NCAA tournaments, reaching the Sweet 16 in each of the past two. (And they knocked off the topranked, defending national champions Florida State along the way.) All-American forward Sydney Watts’ steady presence up front has been a big reason for Vandy’s success. The rising senior led the SEC with 16 goals in 2025, earning a spot on the MAC Hermann Trophy semifinalist list, college soccer’s equivalent of the Heisman. Watts and fellow All-American teammate Mary Beth McLaughlin, a standout defender, should have the ’Dores right back in postseason contention this fall.
WELLS WILLIAMS, MEN’S GOLF
Heading into his final season on the links at
KATELYN ABIGANIA, WOMEN’S BOWLING
With the possible exception of one team we’ll get to below, bowling is Vanderbilt’s most dominant program. The Commodore bowlers have won three national championships this century (2007, 2018, 2023) — as many championships as the rest of the athletic department combined — and the team often has some of the best young bowlers in the country. The latest star on the lanes is Katelyn Abigania. Despite just beginning her college career in the fall, the 2025 U.S. Amateur champion has already become one of the top bowlers in the NCAA and has earned a spot on Team USA’s bowling squad.
CONNOR FENNELL, BASEBALL
The Vandy Boys were making headlines nationally long before the rest of the school’s athletics resurgence. Arguably the best program in college baseball over the past 15 years, Vanderbilt is far from under-discussed on the diamond. But after a few — relatively speaking, of course — down years for the program, All-American pitcher Connor Fennell could be the key to getting the ’Dores back on top of the baseball world. The righty won all six of his starts last season, and Vanderbilt hopes his dominance can translate to a heavier workload this season. If it does, the Vandy Boys might find themselves back in Omaha this summer for their first College World Series since 2021. ▼
Live Music at ON BROADWAY
The Eastside Bowl (on The ‘58 stage) Friday, February 27 | Doors at 6:30pm
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From platinum-selling chart-toppers to underground , household names to undiscovered gems, Chief’s Neon Steeple is c bringing the very best national and regional talent back to Broadway.
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FEBRUARY LINE UP
2.7 Ultimate Eric Church Experience - The Outsiders Album Anniversary Show
2.9 Dallas Moore, Daryl Wayne Dasher w/ Special Guest Jimmy Dasher
2.11 Tyler Hilton & Kate Voegele: Celebrating The Music Of One Tree Hill w/ Special Guest Gina Miles
2.14 A Special Valentines Evening with Karen Waldrup 2.15 Heartland
2.16 Buddy’s Place Writer’s Round w/ Ryan Larkins, Alex Hall, and Smithfield
One of the brightest creative minds in Nashville is XPayne, and his latest exhibition — Myth and Melanin, open through Feb. 28 at Elephant Gallery — builds on all his strengths. First, there’s his unique style. XPayne’s instantly recognizable approach to painting involves soft, stylized forms with lots of early-’90s pop-culture influence. But what shows that the artist is progressing beyond his early potential is the conceptual sophistication of this most recent series. Myth and Melanin incorporates mythology, African symbols and the artist’s own personal history into a series that’s sexy and surprising. The exhibition statement hints at some of the work’s inspiration: “The collection reveals a creative avenue of self-empowerment and introspection on life as a creative Black American.” Fans of lowbrow kings like Keith Haring and R. Crumb will find plenty to appreciate here. But the work’s deeper impact extends beyond those obvious comparisons, drawing instead on the visual language of Harlem Renaissance icons like Jacob Lawrence and Aaron Douglas. LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
THROUGH FEB. 28 AT ELEPHANT GALLERY
1411 BUCHANAN ST.
Visit calendar.nashvillescene.com for more event listings
THURSDAY
/ 2.19
[VOICES CARRY]
BOOKS
SUSAN FINCH AUTHOR EVENT
2026 has been distractingly ugly, making it hard to concentrate with the depth needed to read fiction. Dr. Susan Finch, an associate dean and professor of English and creative writing at Belmont University, presents short stories as the perfect antidote, leaving you feeling amped. Dear Second Husband, published this month by Carnegie Mellon University Press, is a collection of short stories set in our rapidly changing city. The book opens in the Davidson County satellite city Forest Hills, which was recently spectacularly ravaged by Winter Storm Fern. It’s as though Finch knew at the time she wrote the story — however many months or years ago that was — that locals would need a preoccupation from pain (both widespread and local). The rest of her collection follows suit: stories filled with half-quiet characters, humanity and humor. Above all else, it is a beautiful distraction. Following the book launch, Finch will hold a brief conversation about the craft of writing with fellow Belmont professor Dr. Gary McDowell. TOBY ROSE
6 P.M. AT BARBARA MASSEY ROGERS CENTER AT BELMONT UNIVERSITY 1601 WEDGEWOOD AVE.
[NASHVILLE IS BURNING]
FESTIVAL
MASHUP WEEKEND
The theme of this year’s MashUp Weekend — Resurrection Renaissance — is more than just an opportunity to dress up like fetish angels or extras from the Met Gala’s 2018 Heavenly Bodies theme. It’s a spiritual awakening for Nashville’s queer Black community. Consider this line from the organization’s mission statement: “When society tells Black LGBTQ+ individuals they must choose — between their culture or their identity, their faith or their truth — we create spaces where people don’t have to choose.” MashUp organizes community-building events year-round that are all specifically designed to be “safe spaces for blk folx to connect, discuss, share, support and more,” and this weekend’s major fundraising event will show the best they have to offer. The whole thing kicks off with Free(k) Friday — a 21-and-older party designed to celebrate personal liberation and sexual empowerment. On Saturday, there’s a free family-friendly event during the day that also functions as a
wellness market, but Saturday night is the big event — the Resurrection Ball. Hosted by Music City ACC Ball, this will be the place to be and be seen. Find out more and get a weekend pass at mashupnation.org. LAURA HUTSON HUNTER FEB. 20-22 AT VARIOUS LOCATIONS
FRIDAY / 2.20
[CHECKMATE]
CHESS
MUSIC CITY OPEN
“Watching chess is not exactly like going to a football game,” Aaron Caveny of Nashville Chess Center tells the Scene. “It’s pretty quiet.” But don’t let the low volume fool you: The three-day Music City Open promises some high-caliber play. In past years, the tournament has lured grand masters and international masters to the Millennium Hotel Maxwell House, where spectators can watch the official competition for free or hang out in another room with chessboards available for casual play. (Note: Phones are not allowed inside the playing venue.) “Chess players aren’t exactly big advance planners, so you never know who you’re going to see,” Caveny says, adding that players can register at the door. Schedules are available at nashvillechess.org. CARRINGTON FOX FEB. 20-22 AT THE MILLENNIUM HOTEL MAXWELL HOUSE 2025 ROSA L. PARKS BLVD.
[YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?]
FILM
MIDNIGHT MOVIES: TAXI DRIVER
Throughout his career as both a screenwriter and a director, ornery Taxi Driver scribe Paul Schrader is best known for exploring the psyche of lonely — and often disturbed — men. Rolling Thunder, American Gigolo, Raging Bull, Light Sleeper, Bringing Out the Dead, First Reformed, The Card Counter and Oh, Canada all revolve around this type of restless outsider. Taxi Driver was his first and finest work in this decades-long approach. But Taxi Driver wouldn’t have its classic status without director Martin Scorsese’s energetic and empathetic work behind the camera and star Robert De Niro’s iconic performance as the film’s central figure, Travis Bickle. Bickle is a mentally ill, racist, wannabe vigilante, and charting his downward spiral from a run-of-the-mill — if a bit … off — cabbie to a murderous lunatic is a visceral experience. It’s De Niro’s greatest performance, and it beat Western society’s current obsession with the “male loneliness epidemic” by 50 years.
LOGAN BUTTS
MIDNIGHT AT THE BELCOURT
2102 BELCOURT AVE.
[DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY]
MUSIC
SHANE SMITH AND THE SAINTS
Not to dredge up that old Texas country vs. Nashville country debate, but there’s no denying that there’s just something about country artists who come from the Lone Star State. From West Texas poet laureate Guy Clark and Panhandle hero Terry Allen to East Texas-born country queen Miranda Lambert (who co-wrote Ella Langley’s smash hit “Choosin’ Texas”), there’s
a reason why Texans are so darn proud of their state’s musical exports. If you, like Ella, are “Choosin’ Texas” lately, you’re probably already hip to Austin-based troubadours Shane Smith and the Saints. If not, the band’s two-night stand at the Ryman Auditorium is the perfect introduction. The group’s blend of red dirt, Celtic and Appalachian influences made them fan favorites long before they appeared on the juggernaut that was Yellowstone. Be sure to show up early for the opening acts. On Friday, Oklahoma’s Ken Pomeroy, whose album Cruel Joke was one of the best records of 2025, and Australian singer-songwriter Wade Forster will open. On Saturday, Pomeroy and outlaw icon Ray Wylie Hubbard will kick off the show.
BOBBIE JEAN SAWYER
FEB. 20-21 AT THE RYMAN
116 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY N
[SMOKING GUN]
MUSIC
THE ROBERT CRAY BAND
Nashville fans of blues and soul are in for a treat Friday night, when The Robert Cray Band’s All Amped Up Tour 2026 makes a stop at the CMA Theater, their first appearance in the city since spring 2024. A scorching guitarist and soulful vocalist, Cray is a blues and soul icon — a living legend. Known for his signature blend of blues, soul and rock, he’s a five-time
Grammy winner in the Best Contemporary Blues Album category, a 20-time Blues Music Awards winner and a member of the Blues Hall of Fame. He received the Americana Music Lifetime Achievement Award for Performance in 2017. Cray isn’t touring in support of a new album — his latest release was That’s What I Heard in 2020 — so his shows feature selections from across his entire catalog of nearly two dozen studio albums. “All these years we have been fortunate to do what we love doing, playing the music we love playing,” Cray says. “I couldn’t ask for anything more.” The current incarnation of Cray’s band features longtime bassist Richard Cousins, keyboardist Dover Weinberg and drummer Les Falconer. DARYL SANDERS
8 P.M. AT THE COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM’S CMA THEATER
224 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY S.
SATURDAY / 2.21
COMMUNITY
[YEAR OF THE HORSE] MUSICIANS CORNER: CHINESE NEW YEAR CELEBRATION
In its 11th annual celebration of the Lunar New Year, the Chinese Arts Alliance of Nashville (CAAN) sheds the snake’s skin and charges into the Year of the Horse, ushering in an era of
vitality, perseverance, warm-heartedness and success with family-friendly and equine-themed fun at Musicians Corner. The day will be filled with Chinese-language tongue-twister contests, hobbyhorse races, tape-the-tail-on-the-horse, kite flying, Chinese knotting, Chinese yo-yo, tai chi and visits from MNPD mounted patrol and the Nashville Public Library’s Puppet Truck. The event peaks with the percussive lion dance, a traditional Chinese performance featuring elaborate puppets of lions and dragons animated by athletic human dancers and drummers. In case of rain, events will relocate to The Fairgrounds Nashville. To learn more about CAAN’s New Year celebration, to volunteer on the day and to register for the tongue-twister contest, visit chineseartsalliance.org.
CARRINGTON FOX
11 A.M. AT MUSICIANS CORNER IN CENTENNIAL PARK 2500 WEST END AVE.
MUSIC
[STILL ON THE RUN] THE FBR
The FBR returns to their home base, Fox & Locke, Saturday night for a special evening of music. The bluesy rock sextet fronted by soulful vocalist Malarie McConaha is teaming with Grammy-winning producer Peer Munck to record the show for release as a live album in the spring. Munck is renowned for producing instant live recordings for an array of artists, including The Black Crowes, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, The Allman Brothers Band, Allen Toussaint, Gov’t Mule and Cowboy Mouth. “There’s going to be some storytelling, there’re going to be some new covers and a lot of new FBR songs,” McConaha tells the Scene The new material will include songs from the follow-up to their acclaimed debut album Ghost, due to be released by the end of this year, while the covers will include recordings by Nirvana, The Cranberries, Fleetwood Mac and Charles Bradley. In addition to McConaha on lead vocals and guitar, The FBR features co-founder and principal songwriter Tim Hunter on guitar, harmonica and backing vocals; Evan Opitz on lead guitar and backing vocals; CJ Singer on bass, Brandon Mordecai on keys and Jack Singer on drums. DARYL SANDERS
8 P.M. AT FOX & LOCKE
4142 OLD HILLSBORO ROAD, FRANKLIN
[THE LONG RUN]
MUSIC
NICOLE ATKINS RESIDENCY
The pride of Neptune City, N.J., who’s made Nashville her home for about a decade, Nicole Atkins has a preternatural ability to sing and write songs about longing. That applies to rich and nuanced songs about romantic feelings and relationships, as you might expect, but also to reaching her goals as a musician (as in “Never Going Home Again”), figuring herself out (“Goodnight Rhonda Lee”) and coping with a world that feels all the time like it’s broken and on fire (“AM Gold”). All over her catalog, there’s soul, there’s rock, there’s old-school pop, there’s the occasional disco moment and more, all anchored by her streetwise honey-and-finegrit-sandpaper voice. Atkins’ super-sized 2025 included support dates with Stevie Nicks and
PHOTO: MELANIE LEMAHIEU
THE ROBERT CRAY BAND
THE FBR
MARCH
ITALIAN DISCO DINNER
working on a new record that’s due this year via Chris Isaak’s label. She’s set up this February residency at Analog to showcase the new tunes and bring out a few friends: The remaining dates feature JC Coventry and Lauren Morrow on Feb. 21 and Jeremy Fetzer and Kashena Sampson on Feb. 28. I was unaware but not surprised to learn that Atkins is also a professional illustrator, and she’s providing art stations at each table throughout the venue and inviting the audience to draw during the shows. STEPHEN TRAGESER
FEB. 21 & 28 AT ANALOG AT HUTTON HOTEL
1808 WEST END AVE.
HISTORY
[RECKONING] ENSLAVED MEMORIAL COMMEMORATION
Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage hasn’t always done a great job of highlighting the darker side of the seventh president. But this month, with both Black History Month and Presidents’ Day taking place, the historic home is being intentional about crafting family-friendly programming designed to tell the full history of The Hermitage, its inhabitants and Jackson’s presidency. On Feb. 22, the annual Enslaved Memorial Commemoration will honor the lives of those who were enslaved on the historic property. The ceremony will include a keynote address, a performance by the Andrew Jackson Elementary School choir, a roll call of the names of the enslaved, flower-laying at The Hermitage’s enslaved memorial site and a curator talk. Attendance at the commemoration is free, but space is limited, so register online at thehermitage.com to reserve a spot.
MARGARET LITTMAN
10 A.M. AT THE HERMITAGE
4580 RACHEL’S LANE, HERMITAGE
DANCE
[MOVE, MEMBERS, MOVE]
ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER
For nearly 70 years, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has captivated audiences around the world with its unique brand of “power, grace and soul-stirring storytelling.” The celebrated company returns to Nashville this weekend, as the Tennessee Performing Arts Center continues its popular dance series. Audiences can look forward to a great mix of new and classic works, including Blink of an Eye by Medhi Walerski, A Case of You by Judith Jamison and Embrace by Fredrick Earl Mosley — all presented at the matinee performances on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday evening’s program features Ronald K. Brown’s exhilarating Grace, along with Difference Between by Matthew Neenan and Song of the Anchorite by Jamar Roberts. Of course, all performances close with Alvin Ailey’s enduring masterwork Revelations — a piece so vibrant and powerful that it has rightfully been dubbed a “cultural treasure.” Set to African American spirituals, gospel and blues music, this extraordinary piece was first performed in 1960, and continues to honor and explore “the places of deepest grief and holiest joy in the soul.” AMY STUMPFL
FEB. 21-22 AT TPAC’S JACKSON HALL
505 DEADERICK ST.
MUSIC [DAYDREAMS] SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE WITH NATHAN ASPINALL
Passion and drama are hardly uncommon themes in the world of classical music, especially when considering the Romantic Era (roughly 1820 to 1910) — when composers shook off rigid conventions in favor of more emotional intensity and personal expression. This weekend, the Nashville Symphony will present one of the most innovative works of that period
— Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. Often described as a “musical hallucination,” this exquisite piece portrays a tortured young artist who falls into deep despair over an unrequited love and poisons himself with opium. Inspired by Berlioz’s own obsessive infatuation with the Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson (whom he would eventually marry), Symphonie Fantastique uses a recurring theme — or the “idée fixe” — to represent the composer’s beloved. Resident conductor Nathan Aspinall reportedly chose the piece for its passionate storytelling. He has also selected Benjamin Britten’s deeply lyrical Violin Concerto No. 1 to feature the internationally acclaimed violinist Benjamin Beilman. And kicking off the evening is György Ligeti’s marvelous Concert Românesc, a folk-inspired piece that harkens back to the composer’s Romanian roots. AMY STUMPFL FEB. 21-22 AT THE SCHERMERHORN 1 SYMPHONY PLACE
SUNDAY / 2.22
FOOD & DRINK
[DELI-CIOUS]
A TASTE OF DELI HISTORY
Nashville’s bagel game has come a long way in recent years. But we currently don’t have a legit Jewish deli (RIP, Goldie’s Deli). At A Taste of Deli History at Vanderbilt Hillel, you’ll be able to pretend like we do. Buy a ticket online and feast on kosher deli meats and sides, make your own IG-worthy sandwich and discover the history of Jewish kosher delis in Nashville through historical displays. The event is an annual fundraiser for Vanderbilt University’s Hillel, a center for Jewish life on college campuses. Vanderbilt’s Hillel hosts social and educational programming and is home to Grins, the vegetarian and kosher cafe that is
open to the public. MARGARET LITTMAN
5:30 P.M. AT VANDERBILT HILLEL
2421 VANDERBILT PLACE
MONDAY
/ 2.23
[RAINING ALL THE TIME]
FILM
‘NASHVILLE’S BLACK CINEMA CULTURE’ & STORMY WEATHER
Inspired by the Belcourt’s 100th anniversary last year, the beloved Hillsboro Village arthouse has carried its centennial programming into 2026 — and next on the agenda is a seminar on our city’s connection to Black cinema. Presented by Belcourt historian and archivist T. Minton, the hourlong presentation “Nashville’s Black Cinema Culture: A Hidden History of Film From Music City” will center not only on the Black filmmakers, performers and exhibitors who lived in or were connected to Nashville in the 20th century, but also the spaces that nurtured their talents. Following the seminar, the Belcourt will screen Stormy Weather in its 1966 Hall. Released during World War II and featuring performances from legends Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Bill Robinson and native Middle Tennessean Flournoy “F.E.” Miller, Stormy Weather is a trailblazing musical revue starring an all-Black cast. The screening and lecture tick three boxes on the Belcourt’s slate of ongoing series: Music City Mondays, Nashville: A City on Film and Belcourt 100 Seminars. D. PATRICK RODGERS SEMINAR AT 7 P.M., SCREENING AT 8 AT THE BELCOURT 2102 BELCOURT AVE.
WEDNESDAY / 2.25
[GOOD JOKES]
MUSIC
MIKE VIOLA
Massachusetts-born singer and producer Mike Viola got a record deal through legendary Los Angeles hustler and producer Kim Fowley when he was 13. As Viola told Tape Op writer Andy Reed in 2025, his mother mailed Fowley a cassette of his songs, and Fowley got him on the phone and flew him to California. Viola, who is 59, has a résumé that includes co-producing and singing the main song from the 1996 movie That Thing You Do! and producing the likes of Jenny Lewis and the duo of Madison Cunningham and Andrew Bird. On his own, Viola creates wideranging pop that draws from power pop and 1970s and ’80s rock, and he sometimes reminds me of a less sardonic Father John Misty. His 2024 album Rock of Boston is as eclectic as revisionist pop rock gets, with nods to everyone from the Eagles to The Beatles. Rock of Boston manages to be both programmatic and easy on the ears, and the title track is the record’s most obvious power-pop rip. Like Father John Misty, Viola is a joker who loves to tweak the forms he exploits, and Rock of Boston frames the sincerity with plenty of good jokes. Nashville’s Drumming Bird, whose 2025 release Roadkill Poetry was produced by Viola, will open. EDD HURT
7 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT
1604 EIGHTH AVE. S.
A MONTH OF REFLECTION
Ramadan offers opportunities for reflection. Public iftar dinners are one way to connect with Nashville’s Muslim community.
BY MARGARET LITTMAN
“ONE OF THE POPULAR things to do in the United States is to invite neighbors and friends to break the fast at dinner at restaurants or at home,” says Mesut Kelik, a member of Nashville’s Kurdish community and co-owner of Edessa Restaurant Kurdish Turkish Cuisine on Nolensville Pike. Kelik is talking about the nightly iftar dinners that Muslims partake in as part of their observance of Ramadan.
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar — a period of prayer, reflection, fasting and community. Muslims who observe Ramadan fast from sunrise to sunset for the month, abstaining from food and drink, including water. They then break the nightly fast with an iftar dinner. Because the Islamic calendar is lunar, the dates of Ramadan shift annually relative to the Gregorian calendar. This year, Ramadan runs from Feb. 17 through March 19. Nashville has the largest Kurdish population in the U.S., estimated at roughly 15,000 to 20,000 people. The majority of Kurds are Muslim, making this an important month in Music City. Some use the month of reflection and fasting to reflect on hunger in the greater community.
During the month, most Muslims have a variety of ways they observe iftar — often at home with family, sometimes rotating houses with friends or family, also bringing food to mosques and dining in community and eating out at restaurants. Several Nashville restaurants will have extended hours to accommodate groups who want to break the fast and gather in community after prayer. Traditionally, Muslims
break the fast at sunset (between 5:30 and 7 p.m. in Nashville this year) with a date, a fruit Prophet Muhammad ate. After that, they will return to maghrib (sunset prayer) and eat an iftar meal. While there is no prescribed menu, dishes may include many fruits and vegetables, meats, desserts and nonalcoholic beverages. The emphasis for many is on low-carb dishes to help with the repeated fasting. Tea, coffee and dessert follow the meal.
Many restaurants extend and adjust hours during Ramadan to accommodate customers who are fasting and want to eat before sunrise and after sunset. “Muslim people only eat once a day, so they really care about what they eat,” says Kelik. “You want to have a really good meal every night, start to end.”
At Edessa, all diners will receive dates and olives to break the fast, and then dinner starts with lentil soup. The dish is popular among Kurds during Ramadan because it is filling and fibrous.
BELOW ARE FOUR RESTAURANTS WORTH CHECKING OUT.
JERUSALEM REEBAR RESTAURANT
360 Elysian Fields Court
Ramadan brings a nightly buffet, starting at sunset. Price is $25 during the week and $30 on weekends. It includes many of the South Nashville restaurant’s specialties, such as wraps and kebabs, with new dishes rolled out throughout the month and extra dishes on weekends. Pric-
ing includes desserts but not drinks. Because many people dine with large parties of family and friends during Ramadan, reservations are recommended.
EDESSA RESTAURANT KURDISH TURKISH CUISINE
3802 Nolensville Pike
Reservations are recommended at Edessa during Ramadan, particularly for the last three weeks . (Kelik says many people have iftar dinner at home during the first week.) “For most Kurdish people, a meal is not a meal if it does not have meat,” Kelik says, and suggests new diners try the stews and grilled meats. Favorites include clay pot kebabs and lamb shank.
MIDDLE EATZ GRILL
412 Harding Place, No. 104
The South Nashville restaurant serving Yemeni food will be open for dinner from 5 to 9 p.m. six days a week (closed Tuesdays) during Ramadan. The menu is chock-full of rice plates, fries, falafel and salads.
THE HORN HQ
619 Murfreesboro Pike
This Somali cafe will extend the hours at its Murfreesboro Pike location only on Friday and Saturday nights during Ramadan to be open between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. A few specialty beverages will be added to the menu for the month. The Horn is known for its sambusas, fried dough triangles with different savory fillings.
In addition to the restaurant offerings, five Nashville mosques are welcoming the public to different Ramadan iftar dinners over the next month. The events, held between Feb. 22 and March 8, include an Islam 101 presentation. The five dinners at the mosques are free and in various neighborhoods across town, from 12South to Bellevue. Advance registration is required as spots are limited. Visit the Islamic Center of Nashville’s website (icntn.org) for more information.
In Muslim tradition, most people start fasting for Ramadan when they hit puberty, so many students in high school and college are fasting during the day, while they’re at school. In response, the Muslim Student Association at many high schools and colleges hosts Fasta-Thons — iftar dinners with educational and charitable components for faculty, staff and students. At Valor Collegiate Academies on Nolensville Pike, according to Valor family engagement associate Sipel Ibrahim, many younger students do fast in solidarity with older students. A Fast-a-Thon will be held at Valor on March 5 this year, with room for 220 diners. Cost is $20 and includes entertainment, education and dinner. Those interested should register online via the valorcollegiate. org Google form.
“It’s very diverse,” Ibrahim says of the event. “Because we all have the same traditions, reflections as far as the religion goes, but every family has different traditions that they follow and inherit during Ramadan.” ▼
PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND
MIDDLE EATZ GRILL
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BABS IN DREAMLAND
Examining the confrontational, inspirational legacy of Barbara Bullock
BY JOE NOLAN
Nashville native Carlton Wilkinson is a fineart photographer and educator who has made a lasting impression on Nashville’s contemporary art scene — most notably through his locally legendary art space, In the Gallery. The gallery occupied the historic Onyx Building on Jefferson Street, and it served as the headquarters of the North Nashville art scene from 1987 until it closed in 2007. (The iconic Onyx property was destroyed in the March 2020 tornado.)
Among the many artists Wilkinson championed was painter Barbara Bullock, whose presence was a constant in the gallery from its opening until her death in 1996.
Now, two decades after closing his gallery, Wilkinson has brought Bullock back to the forefront with his curation of Sistah Griot: The Iconoclastic Art of Barbara Bullock, on view through April 29 at the Frist Art Museum. The new show reflects the friendship and working relationship between the two artists, and includes Wilkinson’s own irreverent photograph of Bullock seated in front of one of her canvases, holding a cigarette in one hand and a Miller Genuine Draft beer in the other. This photo is emblematic of Sistah Griot as a whole — it illuminates a Nashville artist whose highly personal and deeply idiosyncratic work always played by its own rules.
“To hear me tell it, I think she’s one of the more significant American artists of the latter 20th century,” says Wilkinson in a phone conversation with the Scene. “She’s phenomenal. She lived here in the Belmont area. She befriended a professor at Belmont — Victoria Boone. [Boone] encouraged me to see a show that [Bullock] was having in Gallatin. I saw one work that was quite impactful — it’s where she’s falling from the sky and you see her through a window. I felt very moved by that and all the works that I saw. I wanted to do a show with her, and I ended up being pretty much her sole dealer.”
A key work in the Frist show is “Falling or the Yellow Room,” a self-portrait that depicts Bullock falling off of a balcony past a window in her childhood home. The work is painted on six separate lateral panels that break up and distort the picture plane. The effect is unsettling, and the roses decorating the precisely rendered yellow wallpaper speak to Bullock’s upper-class childhood, while their thorns speak to the struggles she went on to face as an adult.
As a young artist, Bullock became known for her meticulous graphite drawings, several of which are on view in this Frist exhibition. Following a stroke at age 35, Bullock threw herself into art-making to rehabilitate her hand-eye coordination. The setback became a rebirth. After her stroke, Bullock reinvented herself as a painter of vivid characters set within chaotic scenes, their spaces rendered almost surreal by the distortions of her impaired vision. Bullock’s
anarchic compositions still surprise viewers with their strangeness and their commentaries on social ills, but they also attracted a democratic mix of collectors — works in Sistah Griot are on loan from the collections of doctors, policemen and grade-school teachers. Her broad reach among diverse communities across the country speaks to Bullock’s capacity for expressing raw humanity with a personal style that’s as poetic as it is painterly.
“We have works from California to New York — and Montgomery, Ala.,” Wilkinson laughs, recounting the range of collectors Bullock reached in her career. “Literally from all over the country.”
Bullock’s paintings are often described as “earthy” in their depictions of the tragicomic essence of the day-to-day. That said, the most magical aspect of the Frist display is how dreamy it is. Every falling figure, every stylized self-portrait, every beady-eyed businessman, every curious cat is choreographed with a dream logic that informs the exhibition as a whole.
Sistah Griot hangs in the Frist Art Museum’s Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery. It’s directly connected to the institution’s Ingram Gallery, which is currently hosting In Her Place: Nashville Artists in the Twenty-First Century. But Bullock’s work may as well be hanging in orbit around the moon. It exists in a world all its own.
Bullock’s work is visually and psychologically iconoclastic, but her art is often grounded in social concerns. “If I Were Queen” is another self-portrait, and it’s the signature image of the Frist exhibition. In the painting, Bullock wears a crown and a sumptuous string of pearls. She’s seated next to her cat, who is sipping a cup of tea at a table decked out with a lavish meal. All around the scene, tiny little businessmen in suits and ties do the queen’s household chores, dusting and watering plants. The queen lectures a diminutive subordinate, whom she holds
EVERY FALLING FIGURE, EVERY STYLIZED SELFPORTRAIT, EVERY BEADY-EYED BUSINESSMAN, EVERY CURIOUS CAT IS CHOREOGRAPHED WITH A DREAM LOGIC THAT INFORMS THE EXHIBITION
AS A WHOLE.
between her thumb and forefinger. A few tiny disembodied heads decorate the scene.
“She was just too edgy for some people because she just told the truth the way that she saw it,” explains Wilkinson. “And she was unapologetic about it. Not everybody was ready for Barbara.”
Since the artist’s death in 1996, a whole generation of Nashville artists and collectors has known this community only without Bullock — without her beer and cigarettes, without her strong opinions and her unbridled painting. Sistah Griot fills in that blind spot, celebrating one of Nashville’s most unique and influential artists in this current era, when Bullock’s startling and stubborn canvases still provoke, perplex and persuade. ▼
Sistah Griot: The Iconoclastic Art of Barbara Bullock Through April 26 at the Frist Art Museum
PreParty with Kyle Tuttle Band
Afton
The Time Jumpers
Flaherty + Elliott Prather Strumming Fore The Future benefitting The TN Golf Foundation featuring Chris Young + a songwriter round featuring Tyler Reeve, Cole Taylor & Ray Fulcher hosted by Shawn Parr
MUSIC
THE BUILDING AT 2614 Jefferson St. has been the home of Elks Lodge Pride of Tennessee No. 1102 since 1968. The nonprofit charitable organization purchased the building outright in the early ’70s, at a time when it looked like it was headed for demolition. But from the mid-1950s through the ’60s, it was home to Club Baron, a site in the storied North Nashville entertainment district whose importance as a community and culturally historic landmark cannot be overstated.
Preservation efforts have been ongoing since the Elks bought the building. A restoration campaign — supported by an array of Nashville business and music leaders and including members of the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp — kicked off in 2022 and has yielded key improvements like replacing the roof and patching up other damage done by Nashville’s March 2020 tornado. Recently, the revitalization project has taken some significant new steps.
On Jan. 23, the building received approval from the Tennessee State Review Board and the Tennessee Historical Commission for placement on the National Register of Historic Places. This is a huge boost toward eventually getting Club Baron the widespread recognition and status it deserves. The designation officially acknowledges the nightclub’s role as “a premier stop on the historic Chitlin’ Circuit and its legacy as a stage graced by legendary artists including Jimi Hendrix, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Muddy Waters, Etta James and many others.”
This step dovetails with the efforts of Elks 1102’s new leadership and their strategic decision to create the Historic Club Baron Preservation Foundation late last year. Federally recognized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the organization was created to support preservation, restoration and culturally focused programming at the site. Lawrence Hall Jr., who became Elks
FOR PETE’S SAKE
Remembering the great steel guitarist Pete Finney, 1955-2026
BY JACK SILVERMAN
PETE FINNEY, a revered lap-steel and pedal-steel guitarist and longtime Nashvillian who worked with everyone from Patty Loveless, The Chicks and The Judds to Michael Nesmith, Doug Sahm and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, died Saturday, Feb. 7. Born Sept. 9, 1955, Pete, a musician I knew well, spent most of his childhood years in Accokeek, Md., surrounded by a thriving folk music scene that included renowned folk singer and musicologist Joe Hickerson as well as Pete’s first guitar teacher John Dildine. When Pete was around 11 or 12 years old, his brother Dave Finney tells the Scene, Dildine took Pete to see old-time string band The
LIVING HISTORY
The historic Jefferson Street building that once housed Club Baron hits new milestones in its preservation efforts
BY RON WYNN
1102’s Exalted Leader in 2023, says a primary goal is to get Club Baron going again as a hot spot for live music and events.
“That’s what I’ve been striving to see happen since I got in this position,” Hall tells the Scene “The logistics of that have proven a challenge in some ways, but that’s what we envision happening in the future.”
He adds that the nonprofit status will also aid public interaction. “We are definitely looking to partner with community members and organizations who would be interested in helping us with some of the structural issues that still need to be addressed,” says Hall. At present, the building is open mainly on Fridays (with a happy hour as well as later programming) and Saturdays. Hall adds that the space is available to rent for events, and interested parties should reach out at 615-557-5071 or 615-631-3075.
Club Baron’s colorful history is impressive in aspects of both musical and community history. It was built in 1955 and owned by local pharmacist Jackson H. Brown. The building at one point also housed Brown’s Pharmacy, plus the only roller rink open at that time to Black Nashvillians. While longtime music fans debate whether Club Baron or one of its prime rivals called the Del Morocco was the hottest spot on Jefferson Street, none can dispute the array of greats who performed at Club Baron, including Fats Domino, Otis Redding, Jackie Wilson, Joe Henderson, Arthur Prysock, Little Walter, The Isley Brothers and Ruth McFadden.
Perhaps the most famous event at Club Baron was a 1963 guitar duel between Johnny Jones and a very young Jimi Hendrix, who was a frequent featured attraction at the Del Morocco. The story goes that Jones outlasted Hendrix. Depending on who’s telling it, Jones had a more powerful amplifier, or else Hendrix simply hadn’t finished crafting his awe-inspiring signa-
New Lost City Ramblers. Pete got to meet the band backstage, which sparked his lifelong passion for music.
By junior high, Pete was playing electric guitar in a band. The nascent country-rock scene that started to explode after The Byrds’ 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo soon had Pete hooked on the sound of the pedal steel. On the way back from a trip visiting Dave in New Mexico in the early ’70s, he stopped in Nashville to buy a single-neck pedal steel, and the seeds of his prolific career were sown. The day Pete turned 18, then the legal drinking age in Maryland, he got onstage with a local country band for his first roadhouse gig.
Pete’s musical development got a big boost when he fell in with a steel-guitar community that revolved around Buddy Charleton, known for his work with Ernest Tubb and His Texas Troubadours. Charleton lived and taught pedal steel in the Washington, D.C., area in the 1970s, and six of his students became pals who each went on to distinguished
ture sound. In any case, Jones’ 1969 album with the King Kasuals includes a soaring version of “Purple Haze” recorded in tribute to his onstage foe.
Musicians weren’t the only ones attracted to Club Baron. Also in 1963, a rising boxing star who was then going by his birth name Cassius Clay — the world remembers him, of course, as Muhammad Ali — stopped in as he was making his way home to Louisville, Ky., from Miami. Club Baron was the spot Clay retired to for the evening after holding court with reporters outside the Del Morocco.
Club Baron closed and the building was sold at auction in 1966, and it went into a period of neglect. However, it seems there has always been someone who has remembered its importance, and the desire to keep it viable has heightened recently. The Elks’ efforts
musical careers. In addition to Pete, the gang included Bruce Bouton, Tommy Hannum, Bucky Baxter, Tommy Detamore and Robbie Flint.
Pete’s first big break came in the late 1970s, when he got to sit in with late, legendary Austin, Texas, musician Doug Sahm of Sir Douglas Quintet fame. Sahm was playing Washington, D.C., club The Cellar Door, and the night before the show, Pete was at a party where he got the invitation to sit in with Sahm’s opening act Kinky Friedman. Pete had met Sahm briefly at a show a year or so before, and after Friedman’s set, Sahm asked him to stay and play a few tunes with his group.
“It was fun, and we hung out a little bit afterwards, and I went home, and that was that,” Pete told Otis Gibbs in 2016, on Episode 129 of Gibbs’ podcast Thanks for Giving a Damn. “And three or four days later I got a call from Doug. He was in New York. … ‘Man you gotta come down,’ and, ‘Man, it’s just a stone groove,’ and, ‘Man, it’s really happening in New
have been an essential element in keeping the memory and name of Club Baron alive. As Hall stated in a press release earlier this month: “Club Baron is not just a building — it is sacred ground for Black music, culture and community in Nashville. With state-level historic approval, new leadership and a fully recognized preservation foundation, we are now positioned to protect this legacy and activate it for future generations.”
The Historic Club Baron Preservation Foundation plans to formally join forces with the Elks Lodge to raise financial and in-kind support for restoration, preservation and educational initiatives aligned with the historic mission. With help from community members, corporate partners, foundations and preservation supporters, perhaps Club Baron may once again host contemporary giants of music and culture. ▼
York. We had Dr. John play last night, and Paul Simon was here, and Johnny Winter is gonna be here. You should come up and play.’”
Pete and a friend hopped in a car, headed up to NYC and double-parked outside the Lone Star Cafe just before showtime. Pete struggled to load his 80-pound pedal steel and 40-pound amp through the revolving door into the already-packed club — “it is just wall-to-wall assholes and elbows,” as Pete recounted.
“I played with Doug that night, and it was great,” Pete told Gibbs. “The end of the night, Doug came up and said, ‘Man that was a stone groove. … If you ever want to come to Austin, you’ve got a gig, come on down.’ And that was exactly what I wanted to hear.” Before long, Pete was headed to Texas.
Pete’s first Austin gig with Sahm was at the legendary Soap Creek Saloon. “I was totally unknown in a new city,” Pete continued. “Marcia Ball opened for us the first night.
PHOTO:
[The Fabulous Thunderbirds] opened for us the second night. Alvin Crow opened for us the third night. … For me it was just like the perfect introduction. I was on top of the world. … Talk about instant credibility.”
Though a seminal moment in Pete’s career, the Doug Sahm gig didn’t last long. Beloved as he was, Sahm was notoriously unreliable. A tour from Texas to the East Coast fell apart after a few dates, and soon Pete was on a Greyhound bus back to Austin.
In 1983, Pete began working with mononymous country-pop artist Sylvia, which led him to move to Nashville. One of the first artists Pete worked with when he got to town was Vince Gill, and they became good friends. In 2017, Gill performed the George Jones hit “Walk Through This World With Me” at Pete and his wife Carol Tully’s wedding.
“So many good memories with Pete back in the ’80s,” Gill recalls. “He played in my band, and he played with Radney [Foster] and Bill [Lloyd]. This was before he started doing [the Patty Loveless] gig. He came out with me whenever I’d get a band and go travel. The consummate road dog, you know, and a good hang. He was just one of those people who would always put a smile on your face and you were glad to see.”
Pete’s gig with country star Loveless was his longest. “He was so much more to me than a great musician,” Loveless tells the Scene. “I can’t begin to tell you how much I will miss my dear friend and brother in music. His steel solo on ‘Blame It on Your Heart’ is a classic and what great records are made of. I loved him and I will miss him.”
One of Pete’s peers in his early Nashville days was Kenny Vaughan, longtime guitarist with Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives and — like Pete — a veteran sideman and studio wiz.
“Pete and I spent two years together on the road with Patty Loveless,” Vaughan says. “We, along with Carmella Ramsey, commandeered the back lounge of the bus, where he and I played our Fender guitars and Carmella played her alto sax.
“I learned so much about music from Pete during those two years,” Vaughan continues. “Pete was a great guitarist and a well-learned musicologist. I learned as much talking about music with him as I did playing music with him. He reshaped a lot of my ideas about playing, a thing that I’m eternally grateful for. He would regularly crack me up with his wicked, dry humor.”
Pete’s musicologist side was something that Michael Gray, vice president of museum services at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, knows well. Given Pete’s encyclopedic knowledge of music history — particularly the subject of Bob Dylan’s time in Music City — the museum enlisted him to co-curate the 2015-16 exhibition Dylan, Cash, and the Nashville Cats: A New Music City. Pete also wrote
the main essay in the accompanying book and helped compile the CD.
“Pete was with us every step of the way,” Gray says. “He instilled the staff with his passion for understanding Dylan’s ties to Nashville, and the way Dylan and many of his folk and rock contemporaries ushered in a musical era whose influence still resonates here today. Dylan’s career has been analyzed extensively, but with Pete we found a unique angle on the story.
“We told it through the lens of the Nashville musicians — The ‘Nashville Cats’ — and Pete knew the musical intricacies of each one of those players,” Gray continues. “Pete shared his knowledge graciously and enthusiastically, and he worked many hours to assure that the exhibition and its related book, compilation album and educational programs were the best they could be.”
Pete’s career also included work with Justin Townes Earle, Beck, Jim Lauderdale, Jon Langford, Candi Staton, Chris Scruggs, Ron Sexsmith, Shemekia Copeland, Allison Moorer and many others. He was a member of Reba McEntire’s band when a 1991 plane crash killed eight of her band members. Pete, another musician and some crew members were flying on a second plane.
In recent years, Pete kept busy, playing with a wide range of folks, from Hank Williams Jr. to Leftover Salmon’s Vince Herman to The Monkees on their final tour. He was especially excited to work with Michael Nesmith, who had transitioned to country music after his Monkees days with his group The First National Band.
In November, Pete performed as the featured artist in the Hall of Fame’s Musician Spotlight series. It was a mix of musical performance and storytelling, peppered with his dry and often self-deprecating wit. Nashville fixture and BR549 co-founder Chuck Mead performed a few tunes with Pete that day.
“He was one of those guys who came up in the old school,” Mead says. “He was the last link to a lot of the old-time players. He played with everybody from Danny Gatton to Patty Loveless, but you’d also see him at a bar playing with [local country music stalwart] Jon Byrd. He went with what he liked, what he thought was good and important music.
“He played with my band some and went on a couple of the country music cruises with me,” Mead continues, “and I had him in the studio several times on stuff that I was producing, because he had a special touch for a certain thing. He was versatile and could play just about anything. The crux of his biscuit was pedal-steel country, and he understood rock ’n’ roll too. He was a great guy to hang out with. … Whenever he asked me to do something with him, I felt blessed. If he respected you, you always felt like you were on the right track.” ▼
EYES ON THE PRIZE
Jefferson Street Sound Museum and the Museum of Christian and Gospel Music have been added to the U.S. Civil Rights Trail BY HANNAH HERNER
TWO MORE NASHVILLE sites are now a part of the U.S. Civil Rights Trail. The Jefferson Street Sound Museum and the Museum of Christian and Gospel Music were added to the national heritage trail this month.
Before he opened Jefferson Street Sound Museum in 2011, Lorenzo Washington had visited only one museum in his life. He did not expect his own to still be open 15 years later.
“I intended to be there for maybe a year or two, because I didn’t think that that the history was going to be as important to the community [as it has become],” Washington tells the Scene
Jefferson Street was the hub of North Nashville’s thriving Black business and cultural district from the 1930s through the 1960s. Artists including Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, Etta James, Ray Charles, Little Richard and Sam
Cooke played in clubs up and down the street and nearby on their rise to national prominence. North Nashville was also the only place in town they could play since clubs in places like Printers Alley were still segregated.
The U.S. Civil Rights Trail spans 14 states and features more than 100 sites — from museums
PHOTO: JOHN BILLINGS
PETE FINNEY
LORENZO WASHINGTON
to national parks to historic homes and beyond — relevant to the civil rights movement. There are 17 sites on the trail in Tennessee, including Memphis’ iconic Black music and business corridor Beale Street as well as that city’s National Civil Rights Museum. In Nashville, sites include Griggs Hall at American Baptist College, where civil rights leaders conducted training sessions for nonviolent protesters, and the National Museum of African American Music.
The Nashville Public Library’s Civil Rights Room is also part of the trail, but the main library branch where it is housed has been closed since June due to a fire in the parking garage.
The civil rights movement and Christian and gospel music are deeply entwined, explains Steve Gilreath, executive director of the Museum of Christian and Gospel Music. The folk song “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize,” which evolved from the African American spiritual “Gospel Plow,” was adopted by civil rights leaders who encouraged protesters to sing the song out loud if they could, and in their heads if they couldn’t.
“The music in the museum equates to the
MUSIC: THE SPIN
DEEP BLUE
BY BAILEY BRANTINGHAM
NOT MANY ARTISTS can make crying in front of a full-length mirror onstage look cool. But then again, not many artists have the pure panache and theatrical prowess of Nashville indie-pop project Vivienne Blue. The drama darling celebrated the release of her EP Break My Heart, Not My Stride, at Drkmttr on Friday with a slate of special guests. Caroline Red and Claire Maisto joined Blue to form a trifecta of Nashville it-girls, each showcasing massive musical chops and bringing their own distinct styles to the table.
Red stepped up to the stage first, and the electroclash champion asserted her dominance in the packed venue almost immediately. The self-proclaimed “lowbrow Sylvia Plath” came over the speakers with a heavily AutoTuned “Hey, y’all,” before setting the tone for the night with an introduction.
“Before I start my set and go professional-asshole mode, I want to say one thing,” Red said. “There’s a lot of darkness happening in the world right now, [and] it’s really hard to be a person. But it is a privilege to share the stage with two other women who are masters of their craft, and to be in an inclusive and safe space like this. Tonight we are in celebration, so let’s take a break from the world. Take a deep breath, say ‘fuck ICE, fuck Trump, free Palestine’ … and let’s play some basketball.” Red kicked off her set with an unreleased song, wasting no time in making all of Drkmttr her playground. She chose to perform from the front of the crowd rather than the stage, prancing from person to person while belting her lyrics in thick, static-doused stacks of notes over synth-soaked beats. Red blasted through the short discography of tunes she has released so far, firing off the industrial yet dainty “IKYWKM” and her most recent release “Modern Love” with party-girl flair. Claire Maisto approached the stage next, shifting gears completely from Red’s harsh beats with her full band and her signature silky jazz-schooled R&B sound. She moved effortlessly from song to song, pulling out
movement,” Gilreath says. “It’s woven all through it. We call it the soundtrack of the movement. It’s obvious that gospel music didn’t just accompany the civil rights movement along the way, but it really helped shape some of the moral structure and reinforce some of the people involved at the hardest of times to bring them renewed energy.”
Now 84 years old, Lorenzo Washington lived through the civil rights movement, and even participated in some of the seminal sit-in protests at the lunch counter at Woolworth’s downtown, which refused to serve Black patrons. He remembers Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visiting Nashville, where he spoke at Fisk University, just down the street from the museum.
“That was a proud moment for the city, for the Black community,” Washington says, “to know that he came to Nashville to gain inspiration, to take that inspiration to other cities and to inspire the students in Birmingham and other cities that were dealing with the sit-ins.”
The construction of I-40 in the 1960s all but
decimated North Nashville, a fact that many current locals don’t know about, Washington says. He hopes the addition of the museum to the Civil Rights Trail will mean more visitors,
both Nashvillians and tourists.
“I know we’re going to enjoy taking it all to the next level by being a part of the U.S. Civil Rights Trail,” Washington says. ▼
fundamentals from her catalog as well as more recent releases like the contemporary, electronic-beat-driven “Old Ways.” Near the end of her set, the velvet-voiced Maisto performed a cover of Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River,” enhancing the hit soulful ballad — released 24 years ago, it’s old enough to start calling “a classic” — with her Olivia Dean-esque vocals. The stage became a set for a scene in a bedroom, complete with a bed, chair and mirror, and then an ominous voice welcomed the “creatures of the night,” marking the start of Blue’s performance — as much performance art as music. Sobbing, she stormed onto the stage, plopped down in the chair and took a phone call before diving into the EP’s opening song “A Little Bit Off.” Blue’s siren-song vocals effortlessly glided through, with the crowd joining in on occasional quips like:
“Can’t believe I took that / From a man who looks like / A human cigarette.”
Blue kept the theatricality going, pulling out an umbrella for “Stormy Weather” and then taking a seat crisscross applesauce in front of the mirror to recite three of her poems. Next was a stripped-back rendition of “Always on My Mind” — like “Stormy Weather,” not a cover but an original with its own story summed up in the title — in which only a backing track of guitar accompanied her lilting vocals. After the final strums, Blue picked up the phone again for another staged call and retrieved an Omnichord from beneath her chair. She coaxed from it the delicate strums and twinkles of the interlude “Did You Know? Probably Not, Maybe, Whatever,” building up to the Florence Welch-esque harmonies of “Meet Me at the Chateau.” As if on cue, a single lime feather fluttered
slowly from her elbow-length glove and hit the base of her bejeweled microphone as she approached the crescendo of the melodic bridge.
As she reached the EP’s final song “JC Superstar,” Blue got on her knees and prayed for true, unconditional love. God responded over the P.A., deadpanning, “Bitch, shut the fuck up.” After a brief conversation with the Lord, Blue plunged into the dreamy pop tune’s layers, her wispy, singsong vocals ringing on the anthemic refrain, “You can’t be my fantasy.” The song pushes her into a high register, and she let the last notes linger before taking a deep bow and thanking the crowd.
“I’m honored to share the stage with such talented women,” Blue said. “This has been my dream come true. Thank you for tonight. I fucking did this shit!” ▼
PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND
PHOTO: H.N. JAMES
IN HER BLUE PERIOD:
VIVIENNE BLUE
THESE OSCAR-NOMINATED DOCUMENTARIES
DESERVE THE SPOTLIGHT
From Cutting Through Rocks to The Alabama Solution, here’s a look at this year’s powerful nominees — most of them currently streaming BY
REMEMBER WHEN WILL SMITH slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars? Of course you do. Chris Rock was onstage to present the award for Best Documentary Feature, which went to the Questlove-directed Summer of Soul. For a brief moment, the slap did what publicists spend millions trying to do: It thrust an award-winning documentary into the center of public attention. Well, wait. No it didn’t.
We only remember THE SLAP. And the attention was at the expense of Questlove’s big moment and the documentary category itself — which the Academy periodically floats the idea of removing from its broadcast altogether, citing time. Docs can’t get no respect. And yet, there is hope.
I was in Los Angeles in early December catching screenings of documentaries vying for spots on the Oscar short list. One a day. Packed theaters. Lively Q&As. Amid the churn of celebrity biopics and algorithm-approved true-crime “docs,” the format survives. Five exceptional feature-length documentaries from around the world are vying for an Oscar at the March 15 Academy Awards, and they deserve our attention. All but one are currently streaming on various platforms.
MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN, AVAILABLE TO RENT OR PURCHASE, COMING TO THE BELCOURT IN MARCH
In the mining town of Karabash, Russia, propaganda doesn’t arrive with jackboots. It comes laminated and stapled, slipped quietly into a school curriculum in the lead-up to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Pavel “Pasha” Talankin (imagine your favorite theater or English teacher with the cool, arty office) has been recording student life for years with his video camera. Now he documents the shift to fascism happening in real time.
History bends. Patriotism hardens. Teachers stumble pronouncing “denazification.” Children are indoctrinated, pushed to become future soldiers. And Pasha begins to rebel. The film is mordantly funny. And terrifying. You can imagine the slide into these circumstances happening in our own country. After the screening, Pasha told me he now lives in exile in the Czech Republic. In Moscow, he
DAVIS WATSON
said, he would be in prison. In his hometown, people who disagreed with him still protected him. And they loved the film.
CUTTING THROUGH ROCKS, NOT CURRENTLY
STREAMING OR SHOWING LOCALLY
We ride on a motorcycle into the life of Sara Shahverdi, 43, a divorced midwife and motorcycle enthusiast recently elected to city council in a village in northwest Iran. She is the first woman ever elected. I can’t recall another recent film that made me tear up so many times.
Shot over nearly a decade, Cutting Through Rocks follows Shahverdi’s effort to reform her village, curb child marriage and open girls’ minds to a better future. The men are slow to adopt her vision. The regime in Tehran is firmly opposed. Toward the end, things take a surreal turn — the kind possible only in an authoritarian country.
The film is exquisitely beautiful, attentive to life’s quiet charms, and feels guided by Abbas Kiarostami’s hand. Shahverdi has my vote for the Oscar! Unfortunately, this one is currently only available in select theaters, and is not showing locally.
COME SEE ME IN THE GOOD LIGHT, STREAMING VIA APPLE TV+
This film centers on the bravery of American poet Andrea Gibson, willing to let us in as she is dying from ovarian cancer. I came in wary, expecting something saccharine, a mix of Hallmark and reality TV. The familiar beats are there, but the film’s power comes from its willingness to stay with Gibson, her partner Meg Falley and their love.
To be this vulnerable. This thoughtful. It’s heart-scalding.
THE ALABAMA SOLUTION, STREAMING VIA HBO
This may be the most urgent American film
up for an Oscar this year. Built from a decade of contraband cellphone footage, it follows two long-incarcerated organizers, Melvin “Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun” Ray and Robert Earl “Kinetik Justice” Council, as they document life inside Alabama’s prison system. Each man has paid an incredible price, including a beating by guards that nearly killed Kinetik and blinded him in one eye. What they record is devastating: rat-infested cells, rotting food, blood-streaked floors, routine beatings, unreported stabbings, men carried out in body bags. Facilities operate at more than twice capacity with far too few guards, while a black market for drugs flourishes. Alabama’s response has been to build more prisons.
The film exposes a forced-labor system generating hundreds of millions of dollars for the state. Incarcerated workers earn roughly $2 a day — the same rate set in 1927 during Jim Crow — and work long hours for public and private institutions, including the governor’s mansion. When refusing to work can result in your parole being denied, that’s slavery. Since the film’s release, its participants have been retaliated against, transferred to a new prison and placed in solitary confinement.
Director Geeta Gandbhir subverts the use of body-cam footage in this Florida documentary about a new neighbor who terrorizes the community she moves into. The police body cam becomes the film’s camera operator. Saying more would be a disservice. A must-see. ▼
Don’t miss the Belcourt’s lineup of Oscarnominated documentary shorts, Feb. 20-26
THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR, STREAMING VIA NETFLIX
CAUGHT IN A TRAP
Baz Luhrmann’s new archival footage ‘cinematic experience’ retells his vision of Elvis
BY ANNIE PARNELL
EPIC: ELVIS PRESLEY IN CONCERT — the new “cinematic experience” from director Baz Luhrmann, opening wide this Friday — is not exactly a concert documentary. It pulls from previously lost footage of the musician’s latecareer Vegas residency and 1970s tours, but it begins, like a trailer for itself, with a lengthy montage of the familiar beats that led up to it: Elvis’ childhood, his rise to fame, his shaking hips. When he gets arrested, huge letters appear on the screen: “ELVIS ARRESTED.” When he gets drafted, we see “DRAFTED.” Later, when his movie career begins, we see the word “HOLLYWOOD,” which promptly explodes.
Luhrmann is very interested in Elvis. It’s a perfect match: Luhrmann is known for baroque films about vainglorious characters, and the popular mythology of Elvis is about as baroque as you can get. Particularly his Vegas period, which EPiC ostensibly focuses on, and which Luhrmann’s 2022 biopic Elvis cast as a deal with the devil. In that movie, as Austin Butler performs “Suspicious Minds” and the score grows tense, a hotel bigwig scrawls contract terms on a cocktail table with Tom Hanks’ Col. Tom Parker, the singer’s controversial manager and Elvis’ villain. “Elvis Presley at the International Hotel for 5 years,” the writing reads. “All previous debts canceled.”
Years ago, when I left the theater after watching Elvis, I couldn’t stop laughing. I was baffled by the fact that I had spent $15 and three hours to watch Hanks butcher a Dutch accent in prosthetics when I’d thought I was going to mostly see … well, Elvis. After EPiC, I felt a newfound sense of clarity. It’s funny that Luhrmann would use the same shtick in his second Elvis movie — spelling out so literally exactly what’s going on — but it’s also telling. Telling, because between all the rhinestones and exploding typeface, EPiC helped me put into words what it is I reject so much about Baz Luhrmann’s vision of Elvis: He never lets the audience draw their own conclusions.
EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert PG-13, 96 minutes
Opening wide Friday, Feb. 20
EPiC is framed by a recording of an Elvis quote: “There’s been a lot written and a lot said, but never my side of the story.” But Luhrmann seems less interested in using the footage he’s compiled to discern Elvis’ “side of the story” than he is in lending authenticity to his own previously trod narrative about the singer — and then spoon-feeding it to us all over again. EPiC is the most on-the-nose when it circles back to Col. Tom Parker. In the biopic, when he has a heart attack, Parker is shown floating through spacetime and reflecting on his sins: exhausting Elvis, pushing him deeper into addiction, taking his money and preventing him from ever touring outside the U.S. In the documentary, he’s introduced by an echoing sample of his name, which plays over a film clip of Elvis with a gun pointed at his neck. In a confused, hamfisted statement, Parker is also implicated in muzzling the singer’s political opinions while the song “In the Ghetto” plays. I had to wonder: Is there any room left to actually confront the man behind all this menace?
What great political stance does Luhrmann think Elvis would have offered, if Parker was single-handedly preventing him from speaking out? And is Elvis himself in the way — should Luhrmann just be making movies about Col. Tom Parker?
There are truly fascinating moments in EPiC. I was especially intrigued by clips of Elvis being playful in his Vegas rehearsal space and chipper during a period that’s largely portrayed as a downward spiral. There’s a surreal sequence — reminiscent of 2022’s Norwegian film Good Boy — from the film Live a Little, Love a Little in which he talks to a man in a Great Dane costume. The trove of concert footage that Luhrmann has uncovered and restored is undoubtedly a goldmine for Elvis fans.
But toward the end, as Elvis repeats the “Suspicious Minds” line “caught in a trap” like he’s stuck in some giddy hell, I mostly felt like EPiC was another missed opportunity. There are few artists so mythical, so entwined with the United States’ history and conscience as Elvis — so primed, in fact, for a great layerpeeling music documentary like Gimme Shelter or Let’s Get Lost. It’s too bad Luhrmann can’t let the story breathe. ▼
Saturday, February 21
SONGWRITER SESSION Erin Enderlin
NOON · FORD THEATER
Saturday, February 21
POETS AND PROPHETS Josh Osborne
2:30 pm · FORD THEATER
Sunday, February 22
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT Rachel Beauregard 1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, February 28 FAMILY PROGRAM
Billy the Kid Makes It Big 9:15 am · FORD THEATER
Saturday, February 28 WRITERS ROUND On the Rise
featuring Grayson Lane, Elli Rowe, and Amelie Sampson 11:30 am · FORD THEATER
WITNESS HISTORY
Saturday, February 28 MUSIC AND CONVERSATION Photographer Ed Rode with Tony Arata, Matraca Berg, and Don Henry 2:30 pm · FORD THEATER
Sunday, March 1
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT Harry Clark
1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, March 7 SONGWRITER SESSION Jeremy Spillman NOON · FORD THEATER
Saturday, March 7 NASHVILLE CATS
Jerry Douglas
2:30 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, March 7
HATCH SHOW PRINT Block Party
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Locals Kids Always Visit Free Plan a trip to the Museum! Local youth 18 and under who are residents of Nashville-Davidson and bordering counties always visit free, plus 25% off admission for up to two accompanying adults.
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44 Word with sponge or fish
1 Cattle calls
5 Visible sign of hard work
10 El ___ (precursor of the Expressionists)
15 Novelist Quindlen who wrote “One True Thing”
16 One of five ... or maybe six?
17 Like darts
18 *Oft-quoted advice in Matthew 7:7
21 Herb related to parsley
22 Part of L.G.B.T.Q.
23 Races longer than marathons, informally
24 First name in rap?
25 Stat for Aaron Judge
27 Puts the finishing touches on, in a way
28 *24/7/365
32 Some scanners, for short
35 Jan. 1 through today
36 Oodles of time
37 Elate
38 Nobelist Joliot-Curie who synthesized radioactive isotopes
41 Stereotypical dog
42 Bases of shipbuilding
43 Sol, but not Luna
45 Quarterback’s asset
46 Shiny little platters
47 *Evening spent playing with the kids, say
52 Stare in astonishment
53 Just peachy
54 Possible response to “Tu veux du chocolat?”
55 Idiomatic partner of “lose”
58 Disney still
60 Directive written in currants in “Alice in Wonderland”
62 Tendency to reinforce one’s established beliefs … or a hint to answering this puzzle’s starred clues
65 Playwright Chekhov
66 Following
67 “Sorry ... hard pass”
68 Corporate musical chairs, for short
69 Rib
70 Quinceañera celebrant, e.g. DOWN
1 Indian spice blend
2 Low soccer score
3 Food writer Molly
4 Fifth Avenue store
5 W-9 fig.
6 One method of sibling torture
7 Oscar-nominated singer/ songwriter for “May It Be” (2001)
8 Like a used firepit
9 What might give you a brewed awakening?
10 Narrow kitchen
11 Results of feuds
12 Title for any male in the House of Saud
13 Wrestler-turned-actor John
14 Sportsbook calculation
19 Make bubbly
20 Created Yoda, he did
26 Brief letters?
27 Fig. on a driver’s license
29 Unit of force
30 Energy-healing practice
31 Fluctuate between normal singing and falsetto
32 Bit of concert merch
33 Show that celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2025, in brief
34 About a third of an N.F.L. broadcast
37 Highway behemoth
38 Fortune competitor
39 5.5 yards
40 Subject of astrobiology, in brief
41 Star quality
42 Seattle N.H.L. team
44 April fool, e.g.
45 Sixth word of the Gettysburg Address
47 Throwing for a loop
48 Bulldog supporters
49 The moment of truth
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Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/ wordplay. Crosswords for young solvers: nytimes.com/ studentcrosswords.
50 “The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being ___”: Mahatma Gandhi
51 Dons, as an apron
52 Really try to get
55 C-section reminder
56 Nada
57 Not fooled by
58 Where the coffee and Wi-Fi might both be strong
63 Place to strike a pose?
64 Seam contents
59 “At Last” singer James
61 Adjoin
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