Nashville Scene 3-12-26

The People Issue

Battlemont Neighborhood Seeking Legal Protections From New-Builds

Stressed by new construction, neighbors pursue historic preservation tool to control teardowns near 12South BY ELI MOTYCKA

Pith in the Wind

This week on the Scene’s news and politics blog What Happens to Roundup in Tennessee Farming? The Legislature Can’t Decide. Before lawmakers gavel out this year — ahead of an election cycle — a bill designed to protect pesticide companies’ liability remains uncertain BY EMILY R. WEST

Rape Kits See Processing Time Lessen as Legislature Confirms Teen Access Bill from Sexual Assault Center sees bipartisan support, clarifies Tennessee law BY HANNAH HERNER

COVER PACKAGE: THE PEOPLE ISSUE

Emily Henegar

Cookie in the Kitchen portrays the lives of friends and celebrities through edible art BY MADELEINE BRADFORD

Carlos Whittaker

The Crieve Hall resident wants to help people be human in the technology age BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

Averianna the Personality

Talking with the host about building up Black art and culture in Nashville BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

Dr. Gangrene

The local TV figure keeps a longtime Nashville tradition alive BY D. PATRICK RODGERS

Emily Hoskins

The two-time gold medalist balances being a counselor with coaching wheelchair basketball BY LOGAN BUTTS

Laura Mae Socks

Socks cultivates human connection through dance and music — and astrology BY JULIANNE AKERS

Paul Budslick

Keeping a pink fiberglass elephant on Charlotte Pike is this local’s contribution to keeping Nashville quirky BY MARGARET LITTMAN

Rodney Williams

Coach, stringer and local tennis historian marks 50 years holding court at North Nashville tennis center BY ELI MOTYCKA

The Princess RuPaul’s Drag Race alumna and longtime Play and Tribe emcee shares journey of drag discovery BY HANNAH HERNER

Sofia Krysiak and Jack Latham

The couple is launching an ‘insolent’ international photobook platform BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

CRITICS’ PICKS

Diana Ross, Neko Case book event with Ann Powers, The Hives, Friday the 13th doubleheader and more

CULTURE

Acting Up

Considering the lasting legacy of Nashville’s LGBTQ magazine Out & About BY CAMERON BEYRENT

MUSIC

Living Proof

Considering Cat Power’s The Greatest at 20 ahead of her Nashville appearance on the album’s anniversary tour BY ANNIE PARNELL

What Is She Building in There?

Brooke Vespoli writes her own alt-pop playbook with book NOT brooke BY BAILEY BRANTINGHAM

The Spin

The Scene’s live-review column checks out Gay Ole Opry Nashville at The Basement BY BOBBIE JEAN SAWYER

NEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD AND THIS MODERN WORLD

MARKETPLACE

ON THE COVER:

Emily Hoskins; photo by Eric England

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HIROAKI UMEDA AT OZ ARTS NASHVILLE

OZ Arts presents Hiroaki Umeda, March 26-28. Choreographer and performer Hiroaki Umeda redefines the boundaries of dance and performance through his inventive use of multiple video projections and immersive sound art. ozartsnashville.org.

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. nashvillescene.com/promo/freestuff

A RED CARPET EVENING BENEFITING THE BELCOURT THEATRE The Nashville Scene is a proud media sponsor of A Red Carpet Evening at the Belcourt Theatre on March 15. Enjoy an elegant event benefiting the Belcourt on one of Hollywood’s biggest nights. belcourt.org/redcarpet.

THE POWER OF THE PURSE Step into a celebration of generosity at Power of the Purse on April 16 at OZ Arts. Enjoy an evening benefiting the Women’s Fund at the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, featuring auction items and an experience. Visit cfmt.org/ calendar-events for tickets

LOOKING AHEAD

Settle in for an evening of powerful songs, behind-the-lyrics stories and even better company. tinpansouth.com.

March

March

March

WHO WE ARE

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF D. Patrick Rodgers

MANAGING EDITOR Alejandro Ramirez

SENIOR EDITOR Dana Kopp Franklin

ARTS EDITOR Laura Hutson Hunter

MUSIC AND LISTINGS EDITOR Stephen Trageser

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Logan Butts

AUDIENCE EDITOR Annie Parnell

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Jack Silverman

STAFF WRITERS Julianne Akers, John Glennon, Hannah Herner, Hamilton Matthew Masters, Eli Motycka, Nicolle Praino, William Williams

SENIOR FILM CRITIC Jason Shawhan

EDITORIAL INTERN Jasmin Enriquez

March

April

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Cat Acree, Sadaf Ahsan, Ken Arnold, Ben Arthur, Radley Balko, Bailey Brantingham, Ashley Brantley, Maria Browning, Steve Cavendish, Chris Chamberlain, Rachel Cholst, Lance Conzett, Hannah Cron, Connor Daryani, Tina Dominguez, Stephen Elliott, Steve Erickson, Jayme Foltz, Adam Gold, Kashif Andrew Graham, Seth Graves, Kim Green, Amanda Haggard, Steven Hale, Edd Hurt, Jennifer Justus, P.J. Kinzer, Janet Kurtz, J.R. Lind, Craig D. Lindsey, Margaret Littman, Sean L. Maloney, Brittney McKenna, Addie Moore, Marissa R. Moss, Noel Murray, Joe Nolan, Katherine Oung, Betsy Phillips, John Pitcher, Margaret Renkl, Daryl Sanders, Bobbie Jean Sawyer, Nadine Smith, Ashley Spurgeon Shamban, Amy Stumpfl, Cole Villena, Kay West, Nicole Williams, Ron Wynn, Kelsey Young, Charlie Zaillian

ART DIRECTOR Elizabeth Jones

PHOTOGRAPHERS Angelina Castillo, Eric England, Matt Masters

GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Sandi Harrison, Tracey Starck, Mary Louise Meadors

GRAPHIC DESIGN INTERN Torian Staggs

PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Christie Passarello

MARKETING AND EVENTS DIRECTOR Robin Fomusa

EVENTS MANAGER Tristan Maryanski

BRAND PARTNERSHIPS AND EVENTS MANAGER Alissa Wetzel

MARKETING AND PROMOTIONS MANAGER Meredith Grantham

PUBLISHER Mike Smith

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Michael Jezewski

SENIOR ADVERTISING SOLUTIONS CONSULTANTS

Teresa Birdsong, Olivia Britton, Carla Mathis, Heather Cantrell Mullins, Niki Tyree

ADVERTISING SOLUTIONS CONSULTANTS

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SALES OPERATIONS MANAGER Chelon Hill Hasty

ADVERTISING SOLUTIONS ASSOCIATES Audry Houle, Jack Stejskal

SPECIAL PROJECTS COORDINATOR Susan Torregrossa

PRESIDENT Mike Smith

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Todd Patton

CORPORATE CREATIVE DIRECTOR Elizabeth Jones

IT DIRECTOR John Schaeffer

DIGITAL DIRECTOR Caroline Prater

CIRCULATION AND DISTRIBUTION DIRECTOR Gary Minnis FW PUBLISHING LLC

INTERVENTIONS: Karen LaMonte

MARCH 14 – MAY 31

Through sculptural freestanding garments rendered in glass, bronze, and stone, Karen LaMonte explores themes of fleeting beauty, identity, and historic inspiration. Experience the haunting grace of her sculptures as they inhabit Cheekwood’s historic period rooms, blending contemporary artistry with classical elegance. Reserve tickets at cheekwood.org .

Funded in part by

BATTLEMONT NEIGHBORHOOD SEEKING LEGAL PROTECTIONS FROM NEW-BUILDS

Stressed

by new construction, neighbors pursue historic preservation tool to control teardowns near

ON A RECENT Wednesday evening, about 30 people sat facing a PowerPoint slideshow in a basement classroom on Granny White Pike. The Battlemont Neighborhood Association had called this meeting to brief neighbors on its top order of business: securing a conservation overlay from the Metro Planning Department.

“Some of you might live in a house that looks like that or that,” said Brian Nock, a steering committee member, pointing to two side-byside houses — a tall and boxy modern duplex on the left, towering over a stout brick ranch home on the right. “We’re not making a statement about whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I think the observation that we’re pursuing is that these two things are very different, and are we OK with replacing the right with more of the left? Again, not to pick on anybody that lives in the neighborhood.”

Battlemont, a quiet contained neighborhood tucked between I-440 and Woodmont Boulevard, has slowly been remade with large new homes over the past decade. Proximity to 12South, Lipscomb, Green Hills and Eighth Avenue, balanced with large lots safe from through traffic, made the land here a perfect candidate for lucrative house-flipping. It also tightly bonded neighbors fiercely protective of this corner of Nashville — in 2022, a few Sutton Hill Road residents banded together to take builders to task over a legal but out-of-step setback for a new home.

After reviving a Battlemont neighborhood association during COVID-era reflection, many now want to break the cycle of teardown development. Historic landmarks still dot the area. Former buffalo trail Granny White Pike dates back more than 150 years as a usable road to Franklin. Union and Confederate armies clashed here during the Battle of Nashville, and a few 19th-century structures — including the Mulberry House on Clifton Lane — still stand nearby.

The group will host a public meeting once more on April 8 alongside the Metro Planning Department in pursuit of a coveted conservation overlay. If approved, the planning tool would apply specific building restrictions to new construction based on design guidelines. The Metropolitan Historic Zoning Commission, a mayor-appointed panel moved to the Planning Department last year, would then extricate architectural elements based on “contributing” homes to formally establish what does and doesn’t fit. These design guidelines help translate abstract terms like new homes’ “feel” and “character” into legal standards for future construction.

“People would come to our neighborhood

BY ELI MOTYCKA

BATTLE OF NASHVILLE MONUMENT IN THE BATTLEMONT NEIGHBORHOOD

meetings and say that they felt nearby development was out of context for our neighborhood,”

Kira Hilley, treasurer of the Battlemont Neighborhood Association, tells the Scene. “Everyone was concerned about the character of the homes and the sizes. Too much mass, too much change, too drastic of a change. So we looked up what the options were and asked if we would be eligible for a conservation zoning overlay.”

If successful, Battlemont would join a growing registry of acreage governed by additional building restrictions. Conservation neighborhoods are elite company, often overlapping with the city’s most expensive enclaves like Whitland, Richland and Lockeland Springs.

These residential areas often share key qualities: single-family dominant blocks conveniently located near urban amenities but not overrun with tourism or commercial real estate. Most overlays came online in the late 2000s and 2010s as Nashville’s boom began, though neighborhoods like Salemtown (2023), Lathan-Youngs (2023) and the Rock Block (2024) secured overlays in recent years.

Green Hills Councilmember Jeff Preptit, whose District 25 contains Battlemont, is simultaneously guiding another neighborhood through the city’s conservation overlay process for a few hundred homes near Lipscomb University. That legislation was deferred in January and is listed as “in the works” by the MHZC.

“These have both been efforts that originated with community groups that approached me with interest in historic preservation,” Preptit tells

12South

Nashville Noticias reporter Estefany Rodriguez was pulled over and detained by immigration enforcement on March 4. Her arrest has earned national coverage and calls for her release. On Monday afternoon, volunteers gathered at North Nashville taco spot Tío Fun to spend hours calling up local and state representatives and voice support for Rodriguez — a Colombian native who is married to an American citizen and has been following all the legal steps to citizenship. A federal judge gave ICE a deadline of Monday at midnight — after this issue went to press — to file a written justification for Rodriguez’s arrest and continued detention. Stay tuned for our up-todate coverage.

the Scene. “These measures have previously been identified as being appropriate for these areas and are narrowly tailored for those purposes and are in line with [Nashville’s] Community Character Manual. Given the current character of these neighborhoods, I am confident that these areas will be able to facilitate future growth in line with the needs of Nashville in a manner that respects the history of these areas.”

Prime neighborhoods have been ideal candidates for real estate development seeking to capitalize on Nashville’s popularity and population boom. Still, new residents have outpaced housing units, leading to skyrocketing home prices within Davidson County and concentrating development in city suburbs, like Mt. Juliet and Nolensville. Some Metro councilmembers, led by Rollin Horton of The Nations, have tried to reform Nashville’s outdated and restrictive zoning code to help induce density-rich homebuilding closer to the city. For years, market dynamics and zoning rules have led developers to tear down smaller, older homes and build structures maxing out the allowable building envelope, increasing the new home’s square footage and price.

Such is the case in Battlemont. Hilley says the potential overlay would not prevent density, but that its main priority is to slow down change on her neighborhood streets.

”It would make development more measured and gradual, and it would keep the character of the neighborhood, is what it would do,” Hilley says. “It wouldn’t be so sudden and so drastic.” ▼

State Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin), a Williamson County Republican who could be next in line to lead the chamber, made a substantial investment in Elon Musk’s Tesla as the state coordinated The Boring Company’s Music City Loop deal last year. Johnson bought 50 shares of the corporation, whose vehicles will exclusively service a proposed underground tunnel running beneath state-owned roads, in April 2025 — an investment of more than $10,000. “Tesla is one of the most widely held stocks in America,” Johnson tells the Scene in a statement. “Although there is no legal or ethical requirement to do so, I have fully liquidated my position in Tesla to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”

Last week, several outlets reported that Nashville is set to possibly receive its “first” children’s museum — the Music City Children’s Museum which is eyeing a location on the Cumberland River’s East Bank. That’s not right, writes opinion columnist Betsy Phillips — who points out that the widely loved Adventure Science Center for decades was known as the Nashville Children’s Museum. Writes Phillips: “According to the MCCM’s website, this has been in the works since 2014, with a ton of support from the community, and yet no one ever pointed out that this isn’t the first children’s museum?”

There’s a lot going on in the state legislature — from GOP lawmakers attempting to pass a “mercenary rioting” bill targeting “paid protesters” to the advancement of a bill that would require public schools to track the immigration status of students. Find all our coverage of the Tennessee General Assembly at nashvillescene.com/state-legislature

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WHAT HAPPENS TO ROUNDUP IN TENNESSEE FARMING? THE LEGISLATURE CAN’T DECIDE.

Before lawmakers gavel out this year — ahead of an election cycle — a bill designed to protect pesticide companies’ liability remains uncertain

BY EMILY R. WEST

IT’S RAINY OUTSIDE, and there’s not a lot of work Alan Meadows can accomplish mid-Monday in early March.

Meadows sits in his workshop, anxious — with his cat Kitty perched on the table across from him. It’s not the weather or how the upcoming growing season will affect his 4,000 acres that’s on his mind, but the Tennessee legislature.

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Glyphosate is a chemical colloquially known as Roundup, a weed-control substance long used in the row-crop fields of Tennessee, and it’s been up for debate for two years. A bill at the Tennessee General Assembly would provide liability protection to pesticide and weed-killer companies. But right now, House Bill 809/Senate Bill 527 is stalled, with Republican lawmakers uncertain they can provide solace for farmers regarding the product so widely used. Farmers worry lawsuits over the product will prevent them from using the chemical in Tennessee.

SATURDAY, MARCH 14

SATURDAY STORYTIME with PARNASSUS STAFF at PARNASSUS

SUNDAY, MARCH 15

with HANNAH BROWN at PARNASSUS Once and Again

6:30 PM

LINDY WEST

with KIM BALDWIN at PARNASSUS Adult Braces: Driving Myself Sane

6:30 PM

LAING F. RIKKERS

with BETSY WILLS at PARNASSUS Morning Leaves

6:30 PM

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18

“You know, it’s critical for me as a producer to have access to certain tech and pesticides: glyphosate,” says Meadows, whose family has been farming in Tennessee since the 1800s. “It’s one of the most critical uses for farming. It’s the foundation of every path across my fields. It’s a broad-spectrum weed killer and something we have used for many years. It’s critical for me to keep access to tools like that.”

Rep. Rusty Grills (R-Newbern) has had trouble running this bill in the House, to the point that he’s not sure it will get accomplished this General Assembly cycle. Since it’s an election year, Grills would have to push the measure through before the House gavels out, or have to bring it back for a new fight in 2027 — assuming he’s reelected.

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Grills and Sen. John Stevens (R-Huntingdon) got the measure passed in the Senate in 2025. Right now, the label for Roundup doesn’t tell users it could potentially cause cancer — this legislation would prevent anyone from suing Roundup over the disease, even if a person linked the chemical to their illness. (The World Health Organization’s cancer agency has ranked glyphosate as a possible carcinogen, while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said it is “unlikely to be a human carcinogen.”)

out of business and could ultimately make our country more dependent on foreign nations for our food supply.”

Which leaves the fifth-generation farmer in a tough spot. As a member of the Tennessee Soybean Association, Meadows has made his appearance inside the state Capitol in Nashville, hoping lawmakers will listen to him and the hundreds of others across the state who say they rely on the chemical.

Meadows says they have reached this crossroads in part because society doesn’t believe in science anymore. He says members of the Make America Healthy Again movement — an extension of Health and Human Services Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s agenda — were causing problems for the bill’s movement through the House. When asked during a recent Nashville visit if he was actively opposing the bill, Kennedy said he had nothing to do with it.

for ensuring supply, he says the legislature has taken a step back to evaluate what role, if any, the state should continue to play.

“I understand and respect the concerns that have been raised about accountability and public health,” Stevens says. “Those are valid issues, and they deserve careful consideration. My position has always been that we can support our farmers and our food supply while also ensuring companies operate responsibly and transparently. The pause in the House gives us time to continue that conversation and look for the right balance.”

When asked about the measure by the Scene, Gov. Bill Lee — whose family is made up of generational farmers — says he’s not sure about the legislation either. He says he hasn’t read the language of the bill and would need to read it before weighing in.

Even so, Lee mirrors Stevens’ comments about striking the right balance between public health, science and farming.

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“At this point, the path forward for the legislation remains uncertain,” Grills says. “We are continuing to engage with farmers and other stakeholders to find the best way to address the concerns raised. We cannot allow a situation where manufacturers stop offering the products farmers rely on to protect their crops. If we begin losing access to new technologies and modern farming tools, we risk putting American farmers

“I am very frustrated,” Meadows says. “I would tell you that our voice isn’t being heard. Because if it had, we would have seen action taken already. It got pushed back a year, and I think if our voice was being heard, it would be law. It’s not rocket science. It’s very straightforward. It’s been proven time and time again. I feel like, in general, the farmer’s voice isn’t what it used to be. There’s just not as many of us as there used to be.”

State Sen. Stevens says an executive order from President Donald Trump could also be a solution to the General Assembly’s problem. He says 1950’s “Defense Production Act” addressed the domestic production of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate at the federal level. Because that action moves the issue into the national-security arena and provides a federal framework

“I think that agricultural products are obviously crucially important for our industry, and the protection of the public from products that are potentially harmful for them is crucially important,” Lee says. “So finding that right balance is where we want to be. I don’t know what this bill does as it relates to balance, but that’s the goal, right? [The goal] is effective tools that are safe for the public, and that’s what we should look to do.”

As of publication, it’s not clear when the bill will reach another committee. Much to Meadows’ dismay, the legislation sits idle in the House.

Hamilton Matthew Masters contributed reporting. ▼

RAPE KITS SEE PROCESSING TIME LESSEN AS LEGISLATURE CONFIRMS TEEN ACCESS

Bill from Sexual Assault Center sees bipartisan support, clarifies Tennessee law

BY HANNAH HERNER

IT’S IMPORTANT FOR a teen to have access to a rape kit without parental consent — because according to Nashville’s Sexual Assault Center, as many as 90 percent of offenders are known to the victim.

House Bill 679/Senate Bill 920 makes it clear that victims ages 14 and up can seek a rape kit — a package designed for gathering physical evidence following a sexual assault — without parental consent. The legislation is now on the way to the governor’s desk with bipartisan support.

“[The perpetrators] are people of power, they could be family members,” bill sponsor Rep. Bob Freeman (D-Nashville) said in a recent committee meeting. (Disclosure: Freeman also owns Scene parent company FW Publishing, though he does not have editorial oversight regarding what the Scene publishes.) “To ask a minor to go in front of the person who could have very likely been the perpetrator of this crime and ask for permission and/or a person of power in their community to ask for permission removes their ability to get real justice.”

The new legislation is a direct response to confusion caused by “The Family Rights and Responsibilities Act,” a Tennessee law that went into effect July 2024. Under the 2024 law, Tennessee public health clinics can no longer give teens ages 14 and up access to care including birth control, sexually transmitted infection treatment and pregnancy testing without parental consent. The law also requires health care providers to obtain parental consent before offering counseling or psychological services.

While the law did not explicitly mention rape kits, Knoxville’s Sexual Assault Center of East Tennessee was advised by its lawyers not to provide the exams to minors, and even had to turn away at least one teen.

Nashville’s Sexual Assault Center — which is not affiliated with the Sexual Assault Center of East Tennessee — brought the bill, says Rachel Freeman, president of Sexual Assault Center (and wife of Bob Freeman). She says access to rape kits for Tennesseans has improved significantly since the center opened in 2018. (Before then, only Nashville General Hospital offered them, but other hospitals have since begun providing the service.) The number of rape kits completed in the city has more than doubled during her tenure, from 160 in 2018 to 376 in 2025.

Even so, it has taken years for rape kits’ lengthy processing times to lessen. When the

SAC first opened, Rachel Freeman remembers telling patients it would take 18 months to two years for law enforcement to process the tests. In 2022, rape kit processing took up to 45 weeks, and prompted additional hires at the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. As of Jan. 31 of this year, Nashville has an average of 8.9 weeks turnaround time, according to the TBI. Another win for the Sexual Assault Center was a bill that required the implementation of a sexual assault kit tracking website in 2022.

“We have seen a significant decrease in processing time of rape kits, not only in our city, but across our state,” Rachel says. “And that’s something that a lot of people have worked really hard on, and we should be proud of, that we’ve come a long way.”

“

“WE HAVE SEEN A SIGNIFICANT DECREASE IN PROCESSING TIME OF RAPE KITS, NOT ONLY IN OUR CITY, BUT ACROSS OUR STATE,”

— RACHEL FREEMAN, PRESIDENT OF THE SEXUAL ASSAULT CENTER

The Sexual Assault Center also works on preventative measures, including the Safe Bar program, which trains bar and restaurant employees in preventing sexual assault. Another bill co-sponsored by Rep. Freeman and introduced in the Tennessee General Assembly this year would make drugging a person a felony. As the law currently stands, a person can be prosecuted only if there’s another crime in addition to the drugging.

“There’s still more sexual assaults happening than should ever happen, and I think it would be fantastic if we continue to pivot our attention and resources to prevention, so that we can not just focus on reacting, but how can we be more proactive and stop this crime,” Rachel says. “That’s our next big goal at the Sexual Assault Center.” ▼

The People Issue

Profiling some of Nashville’s most interesting people, from a Paralympic gold medalist and a longtime horror host to a Drag Race alumna and more

COOKIE GIRL

Emily Henegar

Cookie in the Kitchen portrays the lives of friends and celebrities through edible art

BY MADELEINE BRADFORD

NOT MANY PEOPLE can say they’re living a fangirl’s dream. But Emily Henegar can.

Henegar’s business, Cookie in the Kitchen, gave her the opportunity to make cookies for Harry Styles — a project she balanced in the middle of exam season during her senior year at Belmont University. When Bridgestone Arena slid into Henegar’s DMs to commission her ahead of Styles’ October 2021 concert, she turned to a trusted source — his devoted online fan base. After posting a video asking which poses and outfits she should re-create, Henegar’s social media seemingly blew up overnight.

“Harry Styles fans are insane in the best way,”

she says.

Henegar’s cookies featured many of Styles’ classic looks, as well as Easter eggs geared toward avid listeners. “My aim is to both have the big, notable moments that are going to be very visually iconic or recognizable,” she says, “but also those things that the fans are going to notice.”

Henegar started Cookie in the Kitchen when she was just 11, sparking her lifelong dream of one day owning a bakery. She first made cookies for family and friends in her hometown, Atlanta, but she soon grew into partnering with record labels, venues and promoters to make artists feel celebrated during their Nashville tour stops. Names on her star-studded client list include Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan, Dolly Parton and Sabrina Carpenter.

“I made cookies for Dua Lipa in high school, and she posted about it on her Instagram, and that was the first pop star, compared to smaller indie bands, that I had baked for,” says Henegar. “My mom was like, ‘You really have

something here.’”

How did she get discovered? By doing what any dedicated fangirl would — waiting outside concert venues, hoping to give her creations to the artists who inspired them.

“I had a big passion for wanting to capture their art and life in cookies, and it was fun,” says Henegar. “No one was telling me to do it. I wasn’t getting paid for it.”

Though she’s creative-minded, Henegar also enjoys running the business, steering her social media presence and partnering with brands. (She recently collaborated with Girl Scouts of the USA, re-creating its famous cookie boxes with her signature frosted touch.) “I love not only being a baker but an entrepreneur, which isn’t always the case for a creative like me,” she says.

When it is time to be creative, Henegar sets up shop in her brightly decorated home kitchen — an upgrade from the dorm kitchens she worked out of in college. As part of her research process, she goes down Wikipedia and Reddit rabbit holes to identify key moments in

her subject’s life. Before transferring her ideas onto sugar cookies, she lays them out in Adobe Illustrator.

“My sister is a very traditional artist, and that never really clicked for my brain,” she says. “But graphic design is a lot more of how I think.” Baking and hand-mixing icing takes three to four hours — essential for finding accurate color matches. “It’s surprisingly really technical too,” says Henegar. “There’s a lot of math involved in it.” After 10 to 30 hours total, her edible artwork is ready for green room dropoff.

Henegar’s motto: “Making people feel like celebrities and making celebrities feel like people.” Through capturing both big moments and tiny details from people’s lives, she aims to make customers feel seen — and even humanize celebrity clients who are often viewed as personas.

“It really is about who they are and encompassing their artistry and their personal life as best I can.” ▼

Photographed in her kitchen by Angelina Castillo.

The People Issue

AUTHOR AND SOCIAL MEDIA PERSONALITY

Carlos Whittaker

The Crieve Hall resident wants to help people be human in the technology age

BY ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

ANYONE OUT TO reduce their screen time might come across Carlos Whittaker and his 2024 book Reconnected. The book — a mix of selfhelp memoir, gonzo journalism and reflections on faith — recounts Whittaker’s seven-week experience going device-free and living with Benedictine monks and the Amish during the summer of 2022.

The experiment was inspired by a notification about his average daily phone usage: 7 hours, 23 minutes. With some back-of-the-napkin math, he figured that meant 100 days per year. In the book, Whittaker recounts the panic he felt disconnecting from his sizable Instagram following (349,000 followers at the moment).

“One of the things that terrified me at the beginning [and] that was balm to my soul by the

end was silence and solitude,” Whittaker tells the Scene. “It’s actually a gift that we no longer have access to.”

He’s since made small but meaningful changes to his daily life. He doesn’t use his phone or even turn on the radio during short drives. Every year, he learns a new hobby that requires both hands — especially one that gets his hands dirty, like beekeeping or car repair. He uses an alarm clock and charges his phone outside the bedroom.

“I’ve lessened my screen time tremendously,” he says. “I’ve gotten probably four hours a day back.”

Whittaker is not anti-tech. He’s a very popular figure on social media and leverages his following for charitable causes. He’s even a self-described “Claude power user,” referring to the large-language model that’s proven to be a handy coding tool. Companies hire him as a motivational speaker to address “AI fatigue” as these tools become more commonplace, and Whittaker stresses to audiences the need to focus on what makes them human. He talks about “lost art forms” like wondering about topics without Googling the answer, or navigating without GPS. He thinks AI-generated books and movies will become common (which sounds like a bummer), but he also thinks the desire and

need for face-to-face interactions will increase (which sounds nice).

Whittaker’s approach to emerging technology was influenced by his time with the Amish. One day he was surprised to see a farmer pull out a flip phone. He soon learned that each Amish order determines its own rules about acceptable technology use — business owners may have permission to make phone calls, for example. Whittaker mentions another nuance in how Amish communities are adopting e-bikes but still eschewing cars. The Amish aren’t so much anti-technology as they are averse to tools that “take them away from their community,” he says. The idea became Whittaker’s North Star. “When I am entering into new technology, the question I ask myself is: Is this piece of technology going to take me farther away from who I want to be, or is it going to keep me close to my community and who I want to be?”

That focus on community can be seen in Whittaker’s social media presence. He filmed his visits to check in on his mother and older neighbors during the late January ice storm, and voiced relatable frustrations and concerns with the multiday delay to restore electricity to homes. His Christmas decorations — including giant inflatable characters and a scoreboard counting down the “sleeps ’til Christmas” —

made him a fixture of the Crieve Hall neighborhood. When his 20-foot-tall snowman decoration ripped, he filmed a video pouring one out for the deflated Frosty and woke up to Venmo donations for a replacement. He spun that momentum into a charity drive for Middle Tennessee families.

Faith is a big aspect of Whittaker’s writing and social media content. The son of a Baptist preacher, he moved to Nashville from Los Angeles in 2010 to pursue a Christian music career. But Whittaker’s next book — his seventh overall — is a bit more secular. Titled Burn the Blueprint, it pushes back on that classic American notion that professional adults need to follow some professional roadmap to find happiness or fulfillment.

Slated for September, the book is about “helping people build a compass instead of burning a blueprint.”

“It’s my first book that’s not a memoir,” says Whittaker. “It’s my first book that I thought, ‘You know, I’ve lived enough life that I think I’ve got some things to say that I didn’t learn from monks.’ That I can just kind of take the salt-andpepper beard and talk a little bit.” ▼

Photographed at his Crieve Hall home by Eric England.

VOICE OF CASHVILLE

Averianna the Personality

Talking with the host about building up Black art and culture in Nashville

BY STEPHEN TRAGESER

IN RECENT YEARS, both local and national outlets have finally started paying more and better attention to Black musicians from Nashville, from rappers and producers to Black country artists and beyond. A decade ago, Averianna the Personality was already holding the banner high for Black music and musicians in her hometown, as a radio and TV host and event curator and organizer.

“I just felt like the hip-hop scene didn’t have a voice at the time, when I was growing up, and it wasn’t getting, like, any coverage — I mean, none,” recalls the Nashville native born Averianna Patton. “I’m a solidified journalist, and I’m like, ‘OK, well, if we can’t get the news to cover, I’ll just start my own platform.’”

A graduate of Nashville School of the Arts and Middle Tennessee State University — where she excelled after teachers and classmates encouraged her to get in front of the camera — Patton moved to Los Angeles armed with a thorough knowledge of TV production. She dove headfirst into both TV and radio broadcasting, and worked as a production assistant on nationally syndicated programs like The Dr. Phil Show. When Patton returned to Nashville a few years later, those kinds of jobs were much harder to find, but she became a personal assistant to country music star Kellie Pickler and Ben Aaron, Pickler’s co-host on the Pickler & Ben talk show. Through that gig, Patton became a pro at navigating major live broadcast productions like the CMA Awards. Her skills and experience, along with her understanding of how difficult it has historically been for Black artists to gain traction in Nashville, planted a seed. With the support of longtime DJ Dolewite at Nashville commercial hip-hop station 101.1 The Beat, she began showcasing local artists on the Cashville Spotlight show. From there, she took on hosting duties on Nashville internet hip-hop station Streetz 99.3, spent about three years hosting on FM station Yoco 96.7 and launched a podcast called The Voice of Cashville

While working as the community engagement manager for the National Museum of African American Music, Patton kicked off a recurring talk-show-style interview program called Music City Check-In. In addition to producing that show on an occasional basis and hosting various live events, she has completed production on four episodes of a game show called The Blacker the Berry and is on the hunt for the right outlet. Expressing her gratitude to God for the ability to keep the plates spinning in what she calls her “purpose work,” she explains that she’s also taken on a very important role in her “kingdom work”: She’s now teaching physical education and

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coaching girls’ basketball at Margaret Allen Middle School.

“I have so many visions and so many expectations, but I try not to put that on myself, because I know I can’t do it on my own,” she says, speaking on what will help Black art and culture thrive in Music City. “Regarding our need, I feel like it’s happening — it just takes time, and I feel like they just got to keep pushing at it, keep watching the world and seeing how it’s growing. And don’t just look at what’s happening here, but make sure you’re keeping up with the music scene worldwide, because it’s a big world out there.”

Practicing what she preaches, Patton is also making preparations to take up hosting duties (by remote) on Streetz 99.3’s sister station Streetz 94.5, in the much bigger market of Atlanta.

“I feel like Atlanta embraces the culture 120 percent. We [in Nashville] just got to be embraced. And it takes time, because, you know, this is the capital of country. But I always like to tell everybody, ‘This is the capital of music — this is Music City.’ We’re covering a lot of different genres, so we can’t just expound upon one and not give all the others grace.” ▼

The People Issue

HORROR HOST

Dr. Gangrene

The local TV figure keeps a longtime Nashville tradition alive

BY D. PATRICK RODGERS

THE ART OF TV horror hosting is a fine American tradition.

For decades, B-movie aficionados with campy, creepy personas have taken to the airwaves to riff and pun their way through under-seen horror schlock that’s cheap or free to re-broadcast. There were mid-20th-century originators like Vampira and Fright Night’s Sinister Seymour, as well as household names like Elvira of Movie Macabre and modern-day host Joe Bob Briggs. Nashville has its own rich history of home-grown horror hosts, which includes WSIX-Channel 8’s suave Dr. Lucifur in the 1950s and ’60s and WSM-Channel 4’s grotesque and hunched Sir Cecil Creape, played in the 1970s by Nashville native Russ McCown.

And then there’s Dr. Gangrene, a lanky, labcoated and begoggled mad scientist who’s carried the tradition forward in Music City and beyond for nearly three decades. Before he be-

came a horror host, Gangrene — by day a wholesome and excitable VA hospital employee by the name of Larry Underwood — ran an independent comic book company. But in 1999, inspired by Sir Cecil Creape in particular, he decided to launch a public-access horror-host showcase of his own with Chiller Cinema

“Definitely Sir Cecil Creape, and wanting to do that kind of show that was around when I was a kid,” Gangrene tells the Scene from his home in Hendersonville when asked about his predecessors. “I didn’t get to watch Sir Cecil Creape. My grandparents and mom, at the time they really wouldn’t let me watch it — strict, conservative Christian household. … It was kind of like forbidden fruit.”

Gangrene did get the opportunity to meet his hero at least one time — he points to the patch he has stitched on his trademark lab coat. “I have a memory of walking up to him, him giving me the patch, and me telling him, ‘I want to do what you do,’” Gangrene says of Creape. “He said, ‘Don’t quit your day job’ or something. … So I don’t know if I’ve made that up in my head over the years, but I did get to meet him.”

Gangrene’s home looks just as you’d likely picture it. A Dirty Harry poster in the hallway.

Stacks of B-movie, comic book and Halloween ephemera spilling off of shelves and out of closets. A Gunsmoke rerun plays on the TV while a chubby senior beagle named Copper waddles by. Down the hall is a makeshift studio outfitted to look like a mad scientist’s laboratory — that’s where Gangrene has historically done much of his horror-hosting work.

He kicked off Chiller Cinema on Hendersonville public access nearly 30 years ago with his buddy Chuck Angel. (“He thought it would last about three weeks,” Gangrene admits.) Following the traditional format of hosting campy classic horror movies, Gangrene jumped from network to network a handful of times. After Hendersonville, it was cable access in Nashville for a time, then briefly onto the local UPN affiliate, then the WB (later the CW), before moving back to Nashville on the NECAT network.

Gangrene hasn’t been producing many new episodes recently, though he does host three or four live shows per year, broadcast from the NECAT studio. He also hosts his yearly Horror Hootenanny, an “annual Halloween rock ’n’ roll party,” which had its 19th installment last year at Eastside Bowl. But Gangrene has a good reason for the slowdown in episodes. He’s wrap -

ping a decades-long book project — Masters of Terrormonies: The History of TV Horror Movie Hosts in Nashville is set for release this summer, and will be followed by an accompanying documentary. Gangrene has been researching the book for more than 20 years, he says. At one point he’d walk from his day job at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center next door to Vanderbilt University, where he’d do research in the library.

Before the book drops, Gangrene has a pair of upcoming live NECAT shows on the docket — one in April and another in June. Expect guests, a live studio audience, a horror showcase, a truckload of puns and more opportunities to reach new fans and say hey to the old ones.

“I’ll meet people who tell me, ‘I grew up watching your show,’” Gangrene tells the Scene. “That’s exactly what I wanted when I started it, was that old-school, traditional powerhouse show. That’s what I was aiming for from the get-go. I wasn’t worried about being cutting-edge and edgy and racy or anything. I wanted a traditional, old-school-type show, just like the ones that I grew up with.” ▼

Photographed at his home by Eric England.

PARALYMPIAN

Emily Hoskins

The two-time gold medalist balances being a counselor with coaching wheelchair basketball

BY LOGAN BUTTS

THERE ARE NOT enough hours in the day for Emily Hoskins.

The two-time Paralympic gold medalist is a licensed professional counselor in Nashville. But she’s also the coach of the Music City Thunder, a wheelchair basketball team under the umbrella of ABLE Youth, a local nonprofit that provides opportunities for youth who use wheelchairs to learn independence skills via sports.

In addition to coaching both the junior division team (kids 13 and under) and the varsity squad (age 14 through high school graduation), Hoskins handles all the administrative duties for the two teams, including communication with parents.

ABLE Youth operates as a two-person outfit — just Hoskins and executive director Amy Saffell, with the help of volunteers. But that doesn’t pay the bills. That’s why Hoskins refers to her 13-year post-wheelchair-basketball career as a therapist as her “real job.” Plus, Hoskins’ husband, local musician Cody Campbell, doesn’t have a typical 9-to-5, adding another layer to the daily chaos.

“It’s a struggle sometimes,” Hoskins tells the Scene at Madtown Coffee in Madison. “It takes a lot of coordination.”

Hoskins was born with a cancerous tumor on her spinal cord, which caused her to be paralyzed from the waist down. She grew up in Illinois, but traveled to Tennessee to receive treatment at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Hoskins was deemed cancer-free at 13 — the same year she discovered wheelchair sports. She started playing wheelchair basketball with the St. Louis Rolling Rams, a junior program near her hometown, before being recruited to play for the University of Illinois. She ultimately won four national championships during five collegiate seasons.

Following her trophy-cabinet-filling college career, Hoskins tried out for the U.S. Women’s National Wheelchair Basketball Team. She was painfully close to making Team USA’s roster ahead of the 2004 Summer Paralympics in Athens — 12 players would be traveling to Greece for the tournament, and Hoskins was on standby as the first alternate. Less than 10 days before the team was supposed to leave, Hoskins got a call saying she was needed to fulfill the final roster spot. Team USA went on to win gold — America’s first in the event since 1988 — and in 2025, the whole squad was inducted into the United States Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame. Hoskins felt lucky to be along for the ride in 2004. The 2008 Paralympics in Beijing were different. In wheelchair basketball, the starting positions are broken down into numbered classifications rather than traditional roles like point

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guard or power forward. Due to her form of disability, Hoskins is categorized as Class 1.0, and she was Team USA’s starter in that slot in Beijing.

Hoskins continued playing in adult leagues after her time with the national team was over, but finding a local team can be difficult with organizations spread across the country.

“Wheelchair sports in general can be challenging, because first of all, you have people with disabilities being the minority,” Hoskins says. “But then also disabled women, we’re a minority already. Then you take [the number]

of women who want to play wheelchair basketball, that’s a smaller minority in itself. So really — and this is true for men, women and kids — it is difficult to find teams that don’t involve travel for a lot of families.

“I have families that drive two hours to practice every week,” she continues. “We’re Nashville-based, but I have families that live in Alabama. I have another family that lives in Mississippi.”

The experience can be transformative, and Hoskins wants to give as many kids as possible

that chance.

“You see their eyes get wide,” Hoskins says. “I can say, from personal experience growing up, most of these kids, especially if they’re from a small town like I was, there aren’t always other kids with disabilities, and so you often feel like the weird one. You feel singled out, and going in and getting to see all these kids in wheelchairs. … It’s life-changing.” ▼

Photographed at Madison Community Center by Eric England.

The People Issue

DANCE INSTRUCTOR

Laura Mae Socks

Socks cultivates human connection through dance and music — and astrology

BY JULIANNE AKERS

JUST ABOUT ANYONE who’s two-stepped at Nashville’s Honky Tonk Tuesday Nights in the past decade is likely to have crossed paths with Laura Mae Socks.

Socks has been at the helm of the famed weekly dance night — now hosted at Eastside Bowl — since it first began at Inglewood’s American Legion Post 82 nearly 11 years ago. She spends every Tuesday evening leading a crowd of dancers in two-step dance lessons.

For Socks, the weekly lessons are also a bit of a matchmaking session as she pairs dancers together. She says there have been three mar-

riages, many coupledoms and countless friendships that have been born from her lessons.

“I still get Christmas cards from groups of friends that were like, ‘I didn’t have any friends, then I came to your dance class, and now look at us,’” Socks says. “Or people that come like, ‘I don’t get any human touch. This is the place that I get it.’ And it’s all ages. I have 4-year-olds, and then I have 70-year-olds and anywhere in between.”

While she doesn’t have any formal dance training, Socks is also versed in Cajun and zydeco dance styles, which she picked up during her time living in Southwest Louisiana. She also knows Appalachian flatfooting, which stems from her roots in her home state of West Virginia.

Socks moved to Nashville in 2015, picking up a job at East Nashville’s Mas Tacos por Favor and focusing much of her time making country music — often performing at the early iterations of Honky Tonk Tuesday. She’s been a musician since the early 2000s, and has played with the Michael Nau-fronted band Page France, spend-

ing a year playing keys and percussion and singing harmonies.

Those in town who don’t know Socks as a performer might recognize her from another of her passions: astrology. She’s been reading astrological charts and working professionally in hypnotherapy and past-life regression since 2010, though she was first introduced to the practice when she was 13.

“This 18-year-old guy who was on mushrooms drew out my chart by hand and explained it all to me,” Socks says. “And I was obsessed from that moment on in 1993, and then I started studying it and have been obsessed ever since.”

She says public interest in astrology has soared in recent years, and that while she’s met with skepticism or nerves from some, her client base ranges from artists to CEOs.

“The way I use astrology is always in an empowering way,” she says. “I would never make it seem like a person doesn’t have free will. I believe that anyone has free will. This is the blueprint of who you are. You can renovate that blueprint, and a lot of times the chart you’re

born with is like the scaffolding of who you are, but you’re going to grow and live.”

Through her varying fields of work, she sees a throughline — particularly with the vulnerability she witnesses in people through dance and astrology.

“It’s just fascinating to me to watch the dynamics of two people that are nonverbally communicating with their bodies,” she says of dance. “That’s also what it feels like reading an astrology chart, because you’re getting into the depths of the psychological needs of a person.”

Whether she’s reading someone’s astrological birth chart, teaching a couple to dance or strumming her guitar, Socks says she never likes to focus on just one interest.

“I just feel like all of the things that I do is me trying to make people feel witnessed and seen and loved and cared for, and it’s just a different modality,” she says.

Photographed at Eastside Bowl by Angelina Castillo.

PINKIE RESCUER

Paul Budslick

Keeping a pink fiberglass elephant on Charlotte Pike is this local’s contribution to keeping Nashville quirky

BY MARGARET LITTMAN

LAST SUMMER, Paul Budslick made a weird phone call to his business partners. Budslick wanted them to spend what he describes as “a not insignificant sum of cash” to buy a 12foot pink fiberglass elephant.

“It’s a random phone call to get,” Budslick admits. The trio had recently purchased and upgraded a Charlotte Pike car wash. But the spot — Clean Getaway Auto Wash — had been previously derelict for so long that it had yet to attract many new customers.

Budslick grew up in West Nashville loving Pinkie — the giant pink fiberglass elephant that lived in a car lot on Charlotte Pike. Back then, Pinkie made the rounds at neighborhood birthday parties and events. Budslick knew Pinkie would draw folks to Clean Getaway. In fact, he had previously asked Joe Agee, then the owner of both University Motors and Pinkie, if he could rent the elephant to draw folks to Clean Getaway when it reopened. Agee, who had inherited Pinkie from the old McPherson’s Motors, said Pinkie wasn’t in any shape to travel, even though he lives atop a trailer. But a month later, Agee called Budslick back. He was planning to retire. Pinkie was for sale.

Budslick’s business partners aren’t native West Nashvillians, so they were skeptical of the purchase — but Budslick’s pachyderm passion convinced them.

After Budslick got the go-ahead, he headed over to hitch Pinkie’s trailer and drive to a body shop for restoration. Before Budslick even left the parking lot, a local by the name of Spencer Connell drove up, asking questions about where Pinkie was headed. While they didn’t know each other, Budslick and Connell soon discovered they’d grown up near each other and shared a childhood love of Pinkie. In fact, Connell — a professional luthier who works on highend guitars — had been helping keep Pinkie in shape for years, making his new Ray Ban-esque glasses and changing his holiday decor, such as the 4-foot martini for New Year’s Eve. Connell talked Budslick into letting him give Pinkie his facelift, a task that took about 150 hours.

“I felt like I was the pope on Charlotte with Pinkie,” Budslick says of moving him to Clean Getaway. “Everybody was pulling over. Everybody had their phones out, and my wife was sending me Instagram pictures before I could even get out of my car.”

Budslick’s instincts were right. Business at Clean Getaway picked up, as did traffic of people wanting to take selfies with Pinkie, and grand-

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parents bringing a new generation to see their beloved elephant. “We ended up on a lot of people’s Christmas cards,” Budslick says.

Budslick owns a number of other car washes in town, some with the same business partners on Charlotte — plus one on White Bridge Road, which also houses Duke’s General Store, owned by his wife Allison Duke. While Budslick would like to see Pinkie make the birthday-party circuit again, he knows that 34-year-old fiberglass might not have a lot of miles left in it. He’s particularly concerned about the structural

integrity of the trunk. Right now, he’s working on designing a bracing system to get Pinkie — trailer, trunk and all — to Murfreesboro Pike for the opening of a new car wash.

But Budslick’s investment in Pinkie isn’t due solely to the elephant’s strength as an advertising tool. Like many Nashville natives, Budslick is concerned about the increasing homogenization of Nashville’s streetscapes.

“West Nashville is special. Charlotte Pike is pretty quirky, with Pinkie and the dome bank and the Wendell Smith neon sign. We’re start-

ing to see less and less of that quirkiness. I’m sure a chain will go in where University Motors was because, with property taxes and rent, that’s who can afford it. That’s why it is important to us to keep some character there.”

Certainly, though, there’s a little nostalgia. Budslick and Duke have two young children. Every Saturday, they head over to get a car wash and check on Pinkie, just like he used to. ▼

Photographed at Clean Getaway Auto Wash by Eric England.

The People Issue

TENNIS SORTA-PRO

Rodney Williams

Coach, stringer and local tennis historian marks 50 years holding court at North Nashville tennis center

BY ELI MOTYCKA

“IN MY 20s, I would almost say I was addicted to playing tennis,” says Rodney Williams, laughing, on a bench outside Hadley Park Indoor Tennis Facility. “Two or three hours a day, four to six days a week. If you do something enough, you’re gonna be good at it.”

Rodney is a different kind of celebrity in Nashville’s tennis world. He’s earned a mononym and gets name-checked across the city — as in, “I have to go see Rodney,” a colloquialism for be-

ing down a racket due to string issues, or simply,

“Tell Rodney I said hey.”

Equal parts coach, technician, player and local historian, Williams recently marked 50 years at Hadley Park, where he’s officially employed as a recreation leader by Metro Parks. Williams started teaching lessons 30 years ago, about when he organized his life around taking care of his father, who had suffered a bad stroke. Tennis gradually took over his life. Stints followed coaching tennis at the University School of Nashville and working at a tennis nonprofit.

“Teaching tennis became like a really easy way to make money, and I had time that I could give to my father,” Williams explains. “My big takeaways from the game: Pay attention to how your feet move; prep your racket as early as possible; don’t try to hit the ball as hard as you can; and then move your opponent around.”

A typical week includes daily lessons, clinics and the administrative work that comes be-

He learned stringing from local Hadley legends Terry Shields and the late Reggie Rouse, names Williams mentions with reverence. Decades ago, he strung courtside out of the back of a pickup truck. Today, stringing is a side gig that benefits scores of players across Nashville who are otherwise looking to save money, time or gas coordinating pickups and dropoffs.

Williams remembers sitting courtside watching his dad, who would play for hours on the weekends. This was sometime in the 1970s — it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when, but he knows where, walking around the back side of the facility. Outside on a warm March morning, Williams dates each court by memory, starting with the tennis center’s enormous central complex.

“Actually, we’re sitting on the first base line of TSU’s baseball field,” Williams says, gesturing across John A. Merritt Boulevard where Tennessee State University’s academic buildings rise up on a hill.

Two single courts predate the 1950s. Two more — possibly clay — came in 1953, if memory serves, says Williams. Then four to replace the baseball and softball diamond, then two more and finally, the fur indoor courts that make Hadley a destination for year-round hitters.

American tennis is currently experiencing a cultural renaissance. In recent seasons, U.S. fans have cheered No. 25 Emma Navarro, No. 18 Iva Jovic, No. 6 Amanda Anisimova and No. 5 Jessica Pegula — but none more than world No. 4 Coco Gauff, a Wimbledon and U.S. Open champion and the only currently competing American with a major tournament win. Two American men — Taylor Fritz and Ben Shelton — have comfortably made their way into the world’s top 10, while four more sit in the top 30. A simultaneous pickleball boom — “It’s fun, but not as fun as tennis,” says Williams — has sharply increased demand for courts and brought more attention to racket sports generally.

hind Hadley’s sign-in desk. Teams come from Belmont and Tennessee State University to hit, mainly drawn by Hadley’s all-weather bubble. Players set up matches and weekly meetups. Williams credits Joe Goldthreate, a 2020 Black Tennis Hall of Fame inductee, as Hadley’s erstwhile resident coach and the founding force behind the nonprofit that is now the Friends of Hadley Park.

Another draw that has made Williams so popular — his unorthodox love for racket stringing. He describes the cumbersome, frustrating maintenance work as his personal flow state, born from necessity.

“I had taken four rackets out to Nevada Bob’s, an old tennis store on Old Hickory Boulevard, and they told me it would be a week,” Williams remembers. “At that point in time I was playing almost every day, and I needed a racket. So when I got my rackets back, I decided I was gonna learn to string.”

Tennis’s distance-friendly structure also led to a COVID-era playing resurgence, while pop culture has glamorized the sport with celebrity cachet and the 2024 blockbuster Challengers Wealth still dominates, but tennis — once considered a country club game — has gradually been democratized, thanks to public facilities like Hadley.

“Everybody came out here to play — Black, white, doesn’t matter,” says Williams. “I grew up out here and got to play with people who I knew didn’t have two pennies to rub together, and at the same time, lots of guys had lots of money. There was a state Supreme Court justice who played tennis out here. There may be differences, but people stand across the court from each other, and the only thing that matters is who can make the ball bounce twice first. This is just a cool place to play tennis.”

Photographed at Hadley Park Indoor Tennis Facility by Eric England.

The People Issue

DRAG STAR

The Princess

RuPaul’s Drag Race alumna and longtime Play and Tribe emcee shares journey of drag discovery

BY HANNAH HERNER

ADAM BIGA HAD a RuPaul CD as a tween, and as a teen would sneak-watch the drag queen’s ’90s talk show at his grandmother’s house.

“I didn’t know what RuPaul was,” Biga tells the Scene. “I knew he was a drag queen, but what is a drag queen? I didn’t know.” This was before Google and social media, and definitely before YouTube drag makeup tutorials and the phenomenon that would be RuPaul’s Drag Race

Biga definitely knows what a drag queen is now. In fact, he’s mastered the art. For the past 13-plus years, it’s been Biga’s full-time job, performing four to five nights per week locally at Play Dance Bar and Tribe as The Princess, who emcees drag shows, trivia nights and Drag Race watch parties, among other events. The Princess

was also a Season 4 competitor in 2012, and finished touring just in time to land in Nashville in 2013 as the city began to boom.

The Princess is gifted on mic, connecting with the variety of queens who visit the bars. Her role also includes reminding the crowd that drag is meant to be interactive; it’s not just something you watch on TV. And that means cheering — and tipping, especially the local queens who aren’t paid thousands of dollars in booking fees to perform.

Drag is more mainstream now than ever before, thanks primarily to the aforementioned competition show, but “boy queens” like The Princess often aren’t highlighted. Audiences don’t understand just how many different types of drag there are, Biga tells the Scene

“Drag is an infinite amount of ways, and there is pretty drag and ugly drag and feminine drag and masculine drag,” he says. “You can put any adjective you want in front of the word ‘drag,’ and it’s that. And when an audience only wants one type or one certain way, that can be really frustrating.”

In his youth, Biga was “very prissy and

proper,” he tells the Scene, so his friends called him “Princess.” The Princess (“The,” rather than “Miss”) is singular in her aesthetic — pop punk mixed with a superhero motif and angular shapes that strike a balance between masculine and feminine. Her jewelry and pins rattle as she strikes power poses onstage.

“I realize I look like a Muppet sometimes too, but that’s what’s fun to me, is wearing all the bells and whistles and big hair,” Biga says. “That’s why I do drag. I don’t want to be a woman. I want to be a drag queen.”

Thanks to having a home bar in Play, Biga wants to stay in Tennessee — even as the Tennessee General Assembly continues its attempts to limit drag performances. Play is one of just a few places like it in the country, with a stage dedicated solely to drag rather than a dance floor that pauses for drag numbers. The Princess and her castmates (Playmates) call it “conveyor-belt drag.” They come out in new looks two to three times per night for the 9 p.m., 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. shows.

“When I’m not at work, when I’m not The Princess, I’m just at home recharging my

battery, so I can keep doing it four nights a week,” says Biga, a self-described introvert at heart.

Biga’s pipeline to drag was through marching band and musical theater, whereas many of the younger queens had the visibility of RuPaul’s Drag Race and access to other drag queens on social media as they were honing their craft. In some ways, Biga says he feels like a dinosaur.

Younger queens might go to social media for advice before they’ll go to a veteran queen, but it’s in live, face-to-face interaction that The Princess has found her niche and purpose. She’s a steady force, an older sister of sorts who can sense who is new and invite them into her world — sharing all the forms drag can take.

Biga just turned 47, and he always told himself he didn’t want to be onstage at 50.

“But why though — why is that the cutoff point?” he asks himself.

He’ll stop when he’s not having fun anymore, and he hopes that won’t be for a long time. ▼

Photographed at Play by Angelina Castillo.

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PHOTO AFICIONADOS

Sofia Krysiak and Jack Latham

The couple is launching an ‘insolent’ international photobook platform

BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

IT WAS ALMOST exactly one year ago that husband and wife Sofia Krysiak and Jack Latham found out they were moving to Nashville. That’s when Latham officially took the job as associate professor of photography at Belmont University. But even though the international couple — Krysiak is originally from Buenos Aires and Latham is Welsh — had long been living in London, they’d been considering a relocation to Tennessee for years.

“London is massive, it’s hectic, and it kind of grinds you down after a while,” Krysiak says. “Here you can be more spontaneous, and you can make plans without having to plan two months ahead.”

“Tennessee as a state has always been in my mind — partly because I’m named after the whiskey,” says Latham, whose middle name is Daniel. When he accepted the position at Belmont, they both felt like it was a long time coming — and they didn’t just come for the booze.

“I’ve always been aware of the photographic scene [in Middle

Tennessee],” he says. “Tennessee seems to export more photographers that happen to be women than any other place internationally. So it seems to be a really incredible place — not just for photography, but specifically female artists.

“In fact, my first ever solo show was at an art festival where Stacy [Kranitz] had her first international exhibition,” Latham continues. “And so I’ve known her for pretty much my entire career, and I’ve exhibited with Kristine Potter, and I’ve been aware of Tamara [Reynolds]’ work for a very long time.”

As for why so many great photographers seem drawn to Nashville, Latham is unsure — but he has theories.

“Photographers are desperate to be musicians in a strange way,” he says with plenty of European cheekiness. “Like, they go away, they make a project, then they make a book, they have an exhibition that tours, and it all tackles a certain theme. There is this kind of cyclical nature of making work and releasing work that reminds me a lot of the music scene.”

Latham’s photography career has tackled a multitude of topics, all conceptually complex and well considered. His most recent project is 2023’s Beggar’s Honey, which grapples with the clandestine underbelly of internet click farms and includes images gleaned from TikTok and photographs of actual click farms in Vietnam and Hong Kong.

Krysiak is an independent curator and photo researcher, and her most recent work has been laser-focused on photobooks. Each of the books she edits feels precious and painstakingly curated. A

recent project is Aseptic Field by Lean Lui, a handmade cobalt-blue box with a debossed title and two compartments that contain limited-edition prints and posters of photographs that delve into myths about menstruation.

This is highly ambitious and interesting stuff that requires incredible amounts of preparation, tenacity and, in their words, insolence. It’s part of what’s so exciting about the book-publishing platform the duo is launching later this spring.

“Sofia’s worked in publishing for so many years,” Latham says, “and I’ve had to deal with the publishing world as a photographer for so many years, and so I think after a while of realizing how exploitative and not artists-first that environment can be, we thought we would kind of put our heads together and create something to try to do things in a different way.”

Krysiak and Latham did not choose the name of their publishing platform without consideration.

“It’s called Terrible Baby,” Krysiak says. “It’s basically a crass translation of the French expression l’enfant terrible — which is usually used for men, by the way. It’s a description of somebody who does something really well, but at the same time, they are so insolent.”

“Like a black sheep,” Latham offers.

“There’s this insolent/excellent quality of what we want to do,” Krysiak says. “We want to start uncomfortable conversations.” ▼

Photographed at Skinny Dennis by Angelina Castillo.

Victor Wooten & The Wooten Brothers

&

TURNS

Backstage Nashville! Daytime Hit Songwriters Show featuring Tim James, Gary Nicholson, Beau Bailey & Ray Stephenson + Julia Hutchinson 3

featuring Pat McLaughlin Band featuring Kenny Greenberg, Greg Morrow & Steve Mackey + Jimmy Hall & The Prisoners

Bluebird on 3rd featuring Marshall Altman, Dylan Altman, Brice Long with Katelyn Myers and Maura Streppa

Emily West & Friends

Skullcrusher with h.pruz

SATURDAY, MARCH 14-APRIL 25

ART [FEATURED CREATURES]

JULIA MARTIN: CREATURE COMFORTS

Artist and gallerist Julia Martin is primarily known for her poignant, stylized portraits, but this new collection of oil paintings at the Browsing Room Gallery at the Downtown Presbyterian Church shows a new direction for the artist. Inspired by the storybooks she loved as a kid, Martin’s Creature Comforts display is a narrative affair featuring a selection of fantastical scenes with characters and the titular creatures that fly and trot and run and slither through them. I love the palettes here and the abstract landscapes of layered hues shot through with dappled light. Martin is currently making work at the church as an artist in its storied residency program, and the Browsing Room has always been intended as an experimental space where creatives can take chances. This show is a great example of what the church’s art resources do best, and Creature Comforts is a perfect pairing for a late winter season that keeps teasing Nashville with springtime. JOE NOLAN

OPENING RECEPTION 6-9 P.M.; THROUGH APRIL 25 AT THE BROWSING ROOM GALLERY

154 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY N.

THURSDAY / 3.12

MUSIC

[BURN IT DOWN] RATBOYS W/FLORRY

Beloved Chicago four-piece Ratboys perfect their twangy, twee sound on Singin’ to an Empty Chair. It’s the band’s sixth record and my favorite album of 2026 so far (and it may be tough for any other release to beat it). While the band co-pens tunes together, the naming of the album comes from lead singer Julia Steiner’s experience with the empty chair technique — a practice in psychotherapy that involves speaking to an empty chair to verbalize thoughts and feelings otherwise difficult to say out loud to someone else or yourself. She practiced this method herself and recorded her sessions, which planted the seeds for the album. In both lyrics and arrangements, you feel the thoughtfulness and catharsis come across in each song, whether it’s a direct address about an estranged relationship or a bouncy love song. With Singin’ to an Empty Chair, Ratboys have created a space for holding nothing back.

Witness them rip through the record live, and be sure to get there on time to see the virtuosic and gloriously unhinged Philadelphia alt-country group Florry open. JACQUELINE ZEISLOFT

8 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT EAST 917 WOODLAND ST.

FRIDAY

/ 3.13

FILM [YOU’RE ALL DOOMED] FRIDAY THE 13TH DOUBLEHEADER

Friday the 13th has long been my least favorite of the Big Three slasher franchises — A Nightmare on Elm Street is the most consistent series, while Halloween has the single best movie out of the three series with its original installment. But over the past few years, I’ve slowly come around on ol’ Jason and company. Before, I appreciated only a couple of the franchise’s entries: Part 2 and Jason Lives, to be exact. Now I find myself throwing on each of the first seven movies (Jason Takes Manhattan is when I check out) at various times during October. The rustling leaves and pitch-black

nighttime settings are a perfect vibe-setter for Halloween season. There happen to be three Friday the 13ths in 2026, and Hermitage horror house Full Moon Cineplex is scheduling Friday the 13th doubleheaders for each of them. This Friday, you can catch Part III (the 3-D one) and Part IV (hilariously billed as The Final Chapter at the time), a pair of sturdy slasher exercises directed by genre experts Steve Miner (Halloween H20) and Joseph Zito (The Prowler). Think of this as a precursor to the release of Jane Schoenbrun’s latest meta-horror film, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, slated for August. LOGAN BUTTS

6 P.M. AT FULL MOON CINEPLEX

3445 LEBANON PIKE, HERMITAGE

[VENI VIDI VICIOUS]

MUSIC

THE HIVES

The Hives bring their The Hives Forever, Forever The Hives tour to Brooklyn Bowl Friday night, and it will be the legendary Swedish garage rockers’ first show in the city since they headlined the venue in October 2021. Founded in Fagersta in 1993, the quintet’s lineup is the same one they’ve had for more than a decade, and it includes four of the group’s original members — lead vocalist Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist, lead guitarist-vocalist Nicholaus Arson, rhythm guitarist-vocalist Vigilante Carlstroem and drummer Chris Dangerous — plus bassist The Johan and Only, who replaced original bass player Dr. Matt Destruction in 2013. They’ve released two albums since their last visit to Nashville — 2023’s The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons and The Hives Forever, Forever The Hives, which came out in August of last year. The Hives’ sets on their current tour have been heavy on material from those two albums, but also have included a smattering of songs from their five earlier full-lengths, such as fan favorites “Hate to Say I Told You So” and “Tick Tick Boom.” “It’s really cool we’ve been a band this long, and we still want to do this,” Almqvist says. “We’ve never sounded better. This is it for me.” Australian pub rockers The Chats will open the sold-out show. DARYL SANDERS

8 P.M.

MUSIC [BIRTHDAY BASH]

JIMMY HALL AND THE PRISONERS OF LOVE & THE PAT MCLAUGHLIN BAND

Beloved nightclub 3rd and Lindsley is celebrating its 35th birthday this year, and Friday’s bill featuring Jimmy Hall and the Prisoners of Love and The Pat McLaughlin Band is part of the ongoing celebration. Both groups have been playing the venue for decades — former Wet Willie frontman Hall and his band first played the club in 1993 when the stage was still in the front window. In addition to being an accomplished saxophonist and harmonica player, Hall is one of the most soulful vocalists in Nashville music history. In addition to releasing a series of solo albums over the years, most recently 2022’s superb Ready Now, he toured and recorded with legendary rock guitarist Jeff Beck off and on for three decades. Friday night, Hall and the Prisoners of Love — guitarist Kenny Greenberg, bassist Ted Pecchio and drummer Lynn Williams — will perform material from across his career, including his work with Beck. They’ll be joined by ace keyboard player Reese Wynans. “I’m excited about getting back to 3rd and Lindsley, because it is one of my favorite venues in town,” Hall tells the Scene. “We’ve had some great shows there.” McLaughlin and his band will take the stage first, followed by Hall and his band. “Then after that, we might do some jamming,” Hall says. DARYL SANDERS

7:30 P.M. AT 3RD AND LINDSLEY

818 THIRD AVE. S.

[OPENING NIGHT]

THEATER

LITTLE BLUE THEATRE COMPANY: ALL SMILES

It’s always exciting to celebrate the debut of a new arts organization. But the opening of the Little Blue Theatre Company feels especially significant, as it offers professional theater that “honors children not for who they will become, but for who they already are.” Founded by respected theater artist and educator Colin Peterson (formerly of Nashville Children’s Theatre), Little Blue Theatre is committed to principles of diversity, inclusion and accessibility, while producing work that boosts empathy and imagination. And the company’s

inaugural production, All Smiles, certainly fits that description. Designed specifically for little ones ages 6 and younger and their families, All Smiles “invites young audiences to explore big feelings — and learn how to move through them safely.” Developed in partnership with Autism Tennessee, Nashville Metro Parks and Recreation, and the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center’s Neurodiverse Community Access Network, the piece is totally sensoryfriendly and interactive, meaning children are welcome to move, vocalize and engage with the performance, which runs roughly 35 minutes with no intermission. The cast includes Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva and EmElise Knapp, with live music from Joe Mobley. AMY STUMPFL THROUGH MARCH 22 AT CENTENNIAL BLACK BOX THEATER 211 27TH AVE. N

SATURDAY / 3.14

FILM [NOBODY’S FOOL] MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN

In the mining town of Karabash, Russia, propaganda doesn’t arrive with jackboots. It comes laminated and stapled, slipped quietly into a school curriculum on the eve of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Pavel “Pasha” Talankin (imagine your favorite theater or English teacher with the cool, arty office) was the beloved videographer at Primary School #1, spending years documenting student life. When the curriculum shifted, the Russian Ministry of Education sent filming instructions, detailed down to the minute. Every lesson scripted. Every child’s reaction choreographed. They even provided a shot list. Pasha followed it. And documented a slide into fascism up close, as teachers struggled to pronounce “denazification” and began indoctrinating the children with an absurd level of nonsense. I nearly expected banners saying “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” to be unfurled. Fresh off a BAFTA win, Mr. Nobody Against Putin is mordantly funny and genuinely terrifying. When a new treason law threatened Talankin with prison, he kept filming. When trailed by police, he kept filming. He ultimately sacrificed his life in Russia and smuggled the footage out. He now lives in exile in the Czech Republic. The terrain feels uncomfortably familiar in the USA. We need more people with moral courage. More Mr. Nobodys. DAVIS WATSON

MARCH 14 & 16-18 AT THE BELCOURT 2102 BELCOURT AVE.

MUSIC [BAR STAR] CARTER FAITH

About midway through Carter Faith’s debut album Cherry Valley, there’s a song that stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it. “Six String,” which nods to The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” is a stunner wrapped in dizzying melancholic strings and further proves that the North Carolina native is one of the most gifted young singer-songwriters working today. Not that she needed to prove herself. Since the release of her 2021 EP Let Love Be Love, Faith has

been winning over listeners with both Roger Miller-esque wit and tear-soaked testimonials worthy of Tammy Wynette. The stellar Cherry Valley, born out of the singer’s desire to create her own whimsical, artistic escape, simply marks Faith’s arrival. “[Cherry Valley] became a place in my brain that I would go to if I was done with the bullshit of reality,” Faith told the Scene last year. “I just wanted to create a space for people, when they listen to my music, that feels like that.” As part of her first-ever headlining tour, Faith will bring that escape to Exit/In for a two-night stand at the legendary venue. Abbie Callahan will open on night one, while Angel White kicks off the show on night two.

BOBBIE JEAN SAWYER

8 P.M. AT EXIT/IN

2208 ELLISTON PLACE

MUSIC

[BOUNTIFUL HARVEST] STARDEW VALLEY: SYMPHONY OF SEASONS

Stardew Valley is probably one of the most triumphant stories in video game history: a Harvest Moon riff built entirely by one man that now sits atop the farming sim genre. And Eric Barone, aka ConcernedApe, keeps pumping out new updates and content 10 years after its release, even if it means further delays to his follow-up, Haunted Chocolatier. (To learn more about his tortuous development journey, read the chapter about the game in Blood, Sweat and Pixels.) And when I say he built every part of the retro-style indie hit, that includes the infectious music: the jaunty summer theme, the melancholy autumn song, twangy store themes and more were produced by Barone with Reason music software. As far as video game soundtracks go, it’s an unexpected symphony concert entry in TPAC’s Tech & Arts series, but an appropriate one as we shake off an icy winter and head into spring. Take in wistful, adventurous and whimsical scores and contemplate whether you’ll try out the brandnew Sandy and Clint romance options on your next playthrough. ALEJANDRO RAMIREZ

8 P.M. AT TPAC’S JACKSON HALL 505 DEADERICK ST.

ART [PERFECT PAIR] SHELL GAME

For those unfamiliar with card-shark slang, a “shell game” is a classic sleight-of-hand trick in which an object is hidden beneath one of several shells (cups, cards, even literal shells) and shuffled to confuse the player. But it’s also a phrase that’s evocative in itself, suggesting the seaside and childhood even as it carries an undertone of deception. Shell Game is also the title of a two-person exhibition of works by Hannah Rose Dumes and Paloma Wall. Dumes is a Detroit-based artist whose paintings were part of last year’s Fount at Tinney, where they were also paired with sculptural work. These compositionally bold paintings have a real Lee Krasner sensibility, but with big, clotted brushstrokes that kind of remind me of artfully arranged Play-Doh. Wall is the Nashville-based artist in the show, and her work is just as strong

ALBUM

BOOK NOT BROOKE

From platinum-selling chart-toppers to underground icons, household names to undiscovered gems, Chief’s Neon Steeple is committed to bringing the very best national and regional talent back to

MARCH LINE UP

3.1 Nathan Belt - Under the Neon Steeple, EP Release Party & Honky-Tonk Celebration

3.5 Dalton Solo - The Built From The Bar Up Tour

3.7 Moonshine Bandits

3.11 History of Country Music Presented by CJ Field: Outlaws and Rivals

3.13 Struggle Jennings - “Last Name” Album Release Party

3.15 Russ Taff w/ Steve Taylor and Some Band - The Almost Farewell Tour - Matinee Show

3.15 Russ Taff w/ Steve Taylor and Some Band - The Almost Farewell Tour

3.16 Flaming Tortuga Records Night w/ Scott Southworth, Daryl Wayne Dasher, Jacklyn Hart

3.17 Buddy’s Place Writer’s Round w/ Michael Logen, Lauren Lucas, The Young Fables

3.18 Jamie O’Neal, Craig Campbell, Rebecca Lynn Howard

3.19 Ashley McBryde: Just Me and My Shadow

3.20 Ashley McBryde: Just Me and My Shadow SOLD OUT

3.21 Bradley Gaskin w/ Special Guest Cort Carpenter

3.22 Buddy’s Place 15th Anniversary w/ Kayley Bishop, Fraser Churchill, Abbey Cone, Sean Kennedy, Paul Sikes, Striking Matches, Cyndi Thomson

3.25 Uncle B’s Damned Ole Opry Presents Dylan vs. Dillon: The Songs of Bob and Dean Slug It Out!

3.28 Ryan Waters Band

— and delightfully weird — as it was in last year’s New Relics solo exhibition at Elephant Gallery. The exhibition statement explains this perfect pairing in playful terms: “In these intermingled bodies of work, some immediate meaning lies hidden; concealment emerges as a method of preservation. The personal is abstracted, a form of encryption — ambiguity as defense.” LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

THROUGH APRIL 4 AT TINNEY CONTEMPORARY

237 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY N.

ART [WHERE’D ALL THE TIME GO?] RICHARD HEINSOHN: THE GHOST WE LIVE BY

People like to throw the term “liminal” around a lot, but it’s the only word I can think of when I remember the last studio visit I had with artist Richard Heinsohn. It was right after the March 2020 tornado ripped through his neighborhood in East Nashville, and just a few days before the COVID pandemic lockdown began. Among the many things that have happened since then is that Heinsohn earned an MFA from Watkins College of Art at Belmont. Still, I can’t help but think back to that particular in-between era when I look at the new works he has at Bankers Alley, the downtown space that used to be 21c Museum. Take, for example, “The Future of Rocks 12,” a mixed-media work that looks like a litter-cluttered lunar surface, a dried-out riverbed and an ashy Pompeii-like relic all at once. It’s not a stretch to imagine it’s a historical document of mass destruction. The exploration of deep time is a flashpoint for this work. From Heinsohn’s exhibition statement: “Using video, photographs, wall reliefs and mixed-media paintings, this project invites viewers into an immersive and relational engagement with ideas of transformation through vast measures of time.”

LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

OPENING RECEPTION 6-9 P.M.; THROUGH AUG. 1 AT BANKERS ALLEY

221 SECOND AVE. N

[REDEFINING DANCE] COMPLEXIONS CONTEMPORARY BALLET

Established in 1994 by innovative Alvin Ailey dance alums Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, Complexions Contemporary Ballet has always been a bit of a rebel — blending different styles, ideas and perspectives, while consistently defying the bounds of traditional dance. You can catch this extraordinary company this weekend, as Tennessee Performing Arts Center continues its popular dance series. The evening’s first act features a terrific collection of favorite short works from co-founding artistic director and principal choreographer Rhoden. This Time With Feeling, Deeply (Excerpt), Ave Maria, Gone and Mercy illustrate the company’s tremendous versatility and virtuosity, while honoring its 30-plus-year history. And with the second act, audiences can look forward to experiencing the evocative glam of Star Dust: From Bach to David Bowie. Billed as a “glittering, genre-bending tribute to David Bowie,” the piece merges bold

WEDNESDAY

theatricality with joyful artistry, promising a memorable — and exhilarating — evening of dance. AMY STUMPFL

2 & 7 P.M. AT TPAC’S POLK THEATER

505 DEADERICK ST.

SUNDAY / 3.15

MUSIC [PICK UP THAT KNIFE] WEDNESDAY

Talking to writer Eli Enis in 2025, Wednesday singer and songwriter Karly Hartzman said she wanted to explore making music that was influenced by hardcore. “I don’t want to get more singer-songwritery,” she told Enis. I hear the North Carolina band’s 2025 album Bleeds as a chapter in the ongoing story of how indie-rock nudges against the pop music that was made in the past. Whether she and her bandmates get into noisier music on their next album remains to be seen, but I like her melodies. Like their obvious forebears Pavement, Wednesday might be most effective when they concentrate on the basics, and I notice the way she turns the words “died” and “down” into the chorus of the Bleeds tune “Townies.” I rate Bleeds a notch below their 2023 album Rat Saw God because the subject matter of both albums — the complicated lives of indie rockers who live in what seems like an outpost of civilization but is actually just North Carolina — might be more forcefully expressed on Rat Saw God. Still, they’re a great band, and their current tour features guitarist Jake Pugh, who replaces MJ Lenderman in their live shows. Gouge Away opens Sunday at Brooklyn Bowl.

EDD HURT

8 P.M. AT BROOKLYN BOWL

925 THIRD AVE. S.

[QUEEN OF MOTOWN]

MUSIC

There’s really no way to talk about the past six decades of music and performance

growing up to her complicated relationship with the music industry — particularly the country establishment — as an adult. That easy complexity also marks her latest album, Neon Grey Midnight Green, whose contradictions are upheld together down to the title. On March 18, Case will discuss both works at Grimey’s in conversation with NPR Music critic Ann Powers, whose 2024 book Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell retraces the steps of the legendary songwriter she calls a “homesick wanderer.” Powers previously discussed The Harder I Fight the More I Love You with Case at a January 2025 Parnassus Books event, and has described it as “gorgeously lyrical.” Both authors will be available to sign their works following the talk, and everyone who preorders a copy of Case’s book or album will receive a wristband for guaranteed entry and participation in the signing.

ANNIE PARNELL

4 P.M. AT GRIMEY’S

1060 E. TRINITY LANE

TV [DROP YOUR BUFFS] SURVIVOR 50 WATCH PARTY

without Miss Ross coming into play. She’s been an icon for long enough that the term itself seems somehow lacking, and she’s served up so many enduring and classic songs and so many staggering looks that she is simply the embodiment of the American ideal of entertainment and has been that way for generations. The Motown classics, the Larry Levan- and Michael Jackson-endorsed club jams, the torchy ballads, the killer duets, the midtempo struts that birth new generations of drag performers every time they’re played, the experiments with people like the Bee Gees, BT and Felix da Housecat. She’s got so many hits that it becomes intimidating to try to wrap your mind around it. And then you add in that one-two punch of Lady Sings the Blues and Mahogany, and you realize that there’s just too much fame in this remarkable woman’s life and career to cover everything. But here’s a Ross Rewind quartet to get ready for when she takes the stage at the Opry House: 1965’s immaculate “I Hear a Symphony” with The Supremes, 1977’s disco dream “Love Hangover,” 1984’s Lina Wertmüller/Arthur Baker/Daryl Hall freakout “Swept Away,” and 1991’s power ballad/pageant winner “When You Tell Me That You Love Me.”

We’re losing too many of our legends, so take that moment and bask in the enduring power of Ross. JASON SHAWHAN

7 P.M. AT THE GRAND OLE OPRY HOUSE

600 OPRY MILLS DRIVE

WEDNESDAY / 3.18

BOOKS [CASE STUDIES] NEKO CASE BOOK EVENT WITH ANN POWERS

In her memoir The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, acclaimed musician Neko Case is comfortable holding a lot at once. Love, grief, trauma and art are all balanced in her careful, thoughtful hands, from her fraught family life

Survivor’s milestone 50th season has been marked by those involved with the iconic reality series as a massive celebration of the past 25 years. What better way to celebrate Survivor than with beer, fellow fans and some of your favorite castaways? Survivor alums and popular podcasting duo Brice Izyah and Season 36 winner Wendell Holland are bringing their traveling Season 50 party to East Nashville Beer Works for a live viewing of the fourth episode. Brice and Wen will be joined by a slew of other Survivor fan-favorites, including Sam Phalen, Jessica “Figgy” Figueroa and Sugar Kiper.

CHARLIE RIDGELY

5 P.M. AT EAST NASHVILLE BEER WORKS

320 E. TRINITY LANE

[NOTES FROM A LOUD WOMAN]

BOOKS

LINDY WEST AUTHOR EVENT

In the crowded field of funny memoirists, Lindy West may be the one true heir apparent to Nora Ephron. She is best known for her memoir Shrill, which was adapted into a Hulu series starring Aidy Bryant and executive produced by West. Her earlier works include Shit, Actually, a collection of film reviews that she also narrated as an audiobook that I cannot recommend highly enough. All of which is to say that her author appearance at Parnassus is bound to be alternately hilarious and smart as hell. She’s touring to promote the March 10 release of Adult Braces: Driving Myself Insane. The memoir is being heralded as her most ambitious yet, and follows the newly famous West through a postShrill rock bottom. It can only help that she’ll be joined by Kim Baldwin, the Scene’s onetime digital editor, who is an all-time funny bookevent co-host. We’ll see you there — but get your tickets ASAP, since this is bound to sell out.

LAURA HUTSON HUNTER

6:30 P.M. AT PARNASSUS BOOKS

3900 HILLSBORO PIKE

CULTURE

ACTING UP

Considering the lasting legacy of Nashville’s LGBTQ magazine Out & About BY

CAMERON BEYRENT

LONG BEFORE social media offered an instant connection, print media served as a vital lifeline for marginalized groups. Out & About was no exception. The magazine officially folded in September 2021, but during its tenure it did more than relay information — it galvanized a community by carving out a visible, physical space in a world that would prefer it remain hidden. Industrious by nature and creative by design, the magazine became an anchor for queer people throughout the Southeast.

“I started the magazine because there wasn’t a true source of journalism covering the community,” Jerry Jones, who founded the publication in 2002, tells the Scene. Already seasoned from working in Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s news office, Jones envisioned the magazine as “the hub” of the local community. Enlisting local volunteers — many from the Nashville Pride organization — the magazine gained momentum.

Out & About’s first long-term managing editor, Brent E. Meredith, helped bring the publication to life after Jones noticed the work he’d done redesigning Nashville Pride’s Pride Guide.

“It had a startup feel,” Meredith says from the same home office where he worked on the magazine. “Everybody was excited and new, and this was pre-marriage-equality, so everyone was fighting harder for the underdog.”

Meredith worked tirelessly on the publication, and describes how he used to spread out magazine pages across the floor of his Sterling Court apartment. Meredith, who always seems to be thinking two moves ahead, quickly pivots to another memory: Out & About making the cover of the Scene’s 2007 “You Are So Nashville”

issue — when a reader submitted the winning line, “You are so Nashville if you saw Kenny Chesney in a Kroger reading Out & About.”

Pam Wheeler, Pride’s president at the time, initially oversaw circulation — a crucial role at the beginning. Some subscribers needed anonymity, so Wheeler mailed issues in discreet-looking blank envelopes. Despite the responsibility, she remembers the era fondly. “The launch was a sweet spot in the history of our community,” she says. “It was a good time to be gay.”

The magazine’s launch also coincided with the opening of Tribe, which Jones describes as a “flash point” in wanting to start the magazine, because “it was the first gay bar in Nashville that had windows that weren’t blacked out” — signaling to him that visibility was increasing.

This energy carried into 2005, when Meredith and Wheeler created and hosted Out & About Today, a monthly NewsChannel 5 program spotlighting Tennessee’s LGBTQ community, which Meredith still hosts.

With contributors almost entirely volunteer-based (the managing editor was the only paid staffer), Out & About achieved success. It survived several rebrands (including a name change to Out & About Newspaper following a brief Knoxville expansion, though it eventually returned to its original name) and frequent sabotage — Jones recalls people dumping distribution boxes or filling them with dog waste.

There was also a legendary clash with Kroger. The grocery chain initially refused to carry the magazine after signing a distribution deal; the magazine partnered with the Tennessee Equality Project to rally locals to shop elsewhere, forc-

ing Kroger to honor the contract. Out & About also broke revelatory stories, including a series on illegally towed cars on Church Street and fraud by a local LGBTQ nonprofit.

The magazine’s final managing editor, James Grady, who held the role for nearly eight years, joined the magazine to connect more deeply with the local LGBTQ community. He guided it through its biggest transition — from newsprint to glossy. During his tenure, he wrote some of the magazine’s most-read and most provocative stories — including a piece on a local gay sex club and an in-depth look at racism within the gay community, which highlighted the experiences of Black gay men in Nashville.

When asked what he’d be covering if the magazine were still in print, Grady doesn’t hesitate: “Too many A-list gays will give up the trans community in a heartbeat if that means they get to hold on to their privilege. And if I still had a magazine, that’s what I would be calling out.”

Though Jones later moved to Mexico and started Out & About Puerto Vallarta, he sold Nashville’s Out & About at the start of the pandemic, and has since called that one of his “biggest regrets.”

At the end of our conversation, I tell Jones how much the magazine meant to me and how, as a gay teenager in Nashville, reading it made me feel safe. Just seeing the magazine around town used to bring me comfort, and I love that you can still find some old Out & About distribution boxes standing around the city like sentinels. I reiterate how much I miss it.

“Me too,” he says of the loss. “But mission accomplished.” ▼

LIVING PROOF

Considering Cat Power’s The Greatest at 20 ahead of her Nashville appearance on the album’s anniversary tour

BY ANNIE PARNELL

THIS YEAR, CAT POWER’S The Greatest turned 20. Released in January 2006, the album marked a turning point for both Cat Power’s musical output and her live performances. Long wracked by stage fright, the expressive and evocative singer-songwriter found a new confidence touring the record. “The way I feel now onstage singing is the way I felt when I was 6 years old singing for my grandmama,” she told one outlet, as recounted in a recent feature in Far Out. To mark the album’s anniversary, she released an EP called Redux in January, which pairs a rousing new version of “Could We” with covers of James Brown and Prince songs. On her current tour, the artist born Chan Marshall revisits The Greatest live, including a Nashville stop Saturday at Brooklyn Bowl.

Marshall came home to the South to record The Greatest — not to Atlanta, where she was

raised, but to Memphis, where she recorded her strange, surprising third album What Would the Community Think with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley 10 years prior. In the decade between those two albums, she released three others: 1998’s Moon Pix, The Covers Record in 2000 and 2003’s You Are Free, which paired her minor-key piano and alto vocals with appearances from grunge gods like Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder. With breakup ballads like “Good Woman” and “Half of You” and stream-of-consciousness lyrical outpourings like “He War,” the thread running through You Are Free is of releasing herself from old patterns.

The Greatest, meanwhile, begins from a place of deep resignation. Written as Marshall was navigating sobriety and the end of a long-term relationship, it’s at times a dismal record, forthcoming about disappointment and loss. It also begins from an ending: Its devastating title track explores lost ambition and failed potential, and establishes a fascination with Muhammad Ali that echoes throughout the album’s imagery.

“It’s about, ‘What if he never became Muhammad Ali,’” she told the Raleigh News & Observer ahead of a show at Carrboro, N.C.’s Cat’s Cradle in 2006. “That’s a song for every man, woman

or kid who had that same great strength as him, but didn’t go as far.”

To bring the record to life, Marshall returned to the sounds she’d grown up on, leaning into influences from soul music and the blues. Two Memphis soul heavyweights, the brothers Flick and Teenie Hodges, joined her as members of the 12-piece Memphis Rhythm Band, imbuing the album with formidable sonic chops and a deep well of emotion. Alongside them, Marshall becomes more open as The Greatest goes on.

“Lived in Bars” reflects on youthful misadventures with a wry smile, while “Willie” marvels at a meet-cute that Power heard from a taxi driver. “There are some people who don’t believe in love, but Willie and Rebecca prove ’em all wrong,” she muses. By the time the fractured scales of “Where Is My Love” begin, she’s searching for it for herself.

Being vulnerable like this is a kind of hope, and Marshall reckons with the implications of that on the album’s rollicking closer, “Love and Communication.” With the Hodges brothers in mind, the song might be an allusion to “Love and Happiness,” from Al Green’s 1972 classic I’m Still in Love With You — an album Teenie plays on, and a song that he helped write “Love and

Happiness” is ecstatic and driving, but “Love and Communication” is more off-kilter, an anthem to letting go when the fear of losing control pushes you to the tipping point. “You called me and you were not hunting me,” Marshall repeats. “I want you to come along for the ride / How long will you stay?”

In the years since The Greatest, Marshall seems more comfortable onstage. When I last saw her play, during her 2019 tour for the album Wanderer, she blessed the audience with incense. In 2022, she told Milwaukee Magazine about her strategy of creating “a portal” when performing, to focus on “just be[ing] within the music.” The portal she’ll open in Nashville is a must-see. ▼

Playing 8 p.m. Saturday, March 14, at Brooklyn Bowl

WHAT IS SHE BUILDING IN THERE?

Brooke Vespoli writes her own alt-pop playbook with book NOT brooke

BY BAILEY BRANTINGHAM

BROOKE VESPOLI IS an expert at blurring the line between beautiful and grotesque. Through her pop-star alter ego book NOT brooke, the singer-songwriter constructs an immersive universe full of lush, sometimes uncanny soundscapes. On book NOT brooke’s forthcoming debut album Dancer First, out March 13, that once-hazy world finally comes sharply into view — glittering, strange and perfectly absurd.

For the past few years, the cellist by training has been making waves in the Nashville music scene in several ways. She has a hand in a heap of different projects, from rocking stages as the bassist in shoegaze-adjacent trio Baby Wave to backing Annie DiRusso on bass, cello and keys for DiRusso’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert.

For the past few months, the musical multitasker has focused more of her time on book NOT brooke. Through book, the Ohio native expresses a side of herself that doesn’t come out in her other work, promoting her projects with bizarre visuals that tread a thin line — sometimes it’s hard to tell whether laughter or a bit of unease is the right response.

“I love how that gray area feels for me,” Vespoli says. “And what it does to align me to accept all aspects of my humanity, rather than internalizing too many super cut-and-dried standards onto myself.”

Dancer First has been a long time coming from Vespoli. It’s her first full-length album after nearly six years of releasing solo music. In the months leading up to her time in the studio,

Vespoli decided to put her instrumental virtuosity on the backburner. She aimed to bring the “dancing” aspect of her Dancer First mindset to the forefront, simply running tracks so she could practice singing and moving onstage.

“The Dancer First journey actually started as my Instagram bio before it was my album name,” she says. “It just felt like this thing that I identified with. I wanted to be dancing at shows.”

While recording, Vespoli experienced a songwriting process that was gradual and then all at once. Though she began recording in early 2025, a few songs that made it onto the final release had been churning in her mind for more than two years. Most of the songs, however, organically fell into line in the latter half of the year.

“It feels like a concept first,” says Vespoli, “and then all of these songs just kept falling into the bucket, and it just made sense.”

She describes the album as beginning with a “genreless abstract.” There’s a rainbow array of sounds throughout the record, with gnarly industrial focal points on songs like “Ugly California.” Meanwhile, other tracks such as “Nobody Dances Anymore” feature fast-paced twinkling synth sounds. Though Dancer First is stylistically eclectic, Vespoli emphasizes that every song fits under one definitive category: “dance-forward, innovatively simple pop.”

“I really love when you can look at or listen to something and not be exactly certain what decade it was made in,” she notes.

Dancer First will be selfreleased Friday, March 13

Playing 8 p.m. March 13 at The Blue Room at Third Man Records

Much of the album’s instrumentation was inspired by Nashville’s DIY music scene. Becoming part of the local alternative culture exercised a new part of her brain, sparking experiments with her production and a deep dive into the avant-garde.

“I’ve gotten to take this unexpected and really positive journey,” says Vespoli. “It’s helped me to really feel pulled deeper into performance art and dance, and arranging primarily with synths or using electronic drums. You know, just everything that doesn’t feel like the first thing that you reach for in a band context.”

As the year unfolds, Vespoli aims to play as much as she can across her multiple projects, with book NOT brooke and Baby Wave at the top of her dance card. She aims to fully crack open the visual world of Dancer First with more video productions, while also promoting a forthcoming Baby Wave album that’s in the final mixing process and will most likely hit racks in late summer.

To celebrate Dancer First, Vespoli will sing the new album in full during her album release dance party at The Blue Room at Third Man Records on Friday. Abstract indie-pop artist Henry J. Star and Nashville home-recording ace Iven are also slated to share the stage, while DJ sets from Sarah Goldstein and Spuddy will round out the evening. Covers, choreo and costume changes are to be expected at the party, as well as a fun cello moment.

“If nothing else, you can expect a spectacle.” ▼

MUSIC: THE SPIN

BOOTS ON THE GROUND

BY BOBBIE JEAN SAWYER

a song from a folk compilation album that’s due out in the summer.

COUNTRY MUSIC SPEAKS to an incredibly broad range of people, and everyone should feel welcome. Over the past two decades, artists and fans have increasingly become organizers, fostering community among those who love country music but have rarely felt represented (let alone welcomed) in the mainstream country world. Gay Ole Opry Nashville, which launched in 2024, is one such organization working intentionally to make space for LGBTQ country musicians and fans in Music City.

Saturday, March 14

FAMILY PROGRAM

Riders in the Sky

10:00 am · FORD THEATER FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Saturday, March 14

SONGWRITER SESSION

Brinley Addington

NOON · FORD THEATER

Saturday, March 14

BOOK TALK

Land of a Thousand Sessions with Rob Bowman

2:30 pm · FORD THEATER

Sunday, March 15

MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT

Josh Okeefe

1:00 pm · FORD THEATER

Thursday, March 19

OPENING RECEPTION Kalup Linzy Chronicles. Interludes. Testaments.

5:00 pm · HALEY GALLERY

Saturday, March 21

SONGWRITER SESSION Carter Faith

NOON · FORD THEATER

Sunday, March 22

MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT Sierra Hull

1:00 pm · FORD THEATER

Saturday, March 28

SONGWRITER SESSION Skip Ewing

NOON · FORD THEATER

Sunday, March 29

MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT Chris Nole

1:00 pm · FORD THEATER

WITNESS HISTORY

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.

Saturday’s show at The Basement, which included everything from Chappell Roan sing-alongs during a set change to a lesbian rewrite of RaeLynn’s song “God Made Girls,” carried on with the mission. Proceeds from the show went to Trans Aid Nashville, a mutual aid collective that provides assistance, community and building power for trans folks in the Nashville area. Trans Aid Nashville has been invaluable in Middle Tennessee, particularly at a time when LGBTQ programs at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have been gutted and state lawmakers continue presenting legislation that targets the rights of LGBTQ Tennesseans.

Following a scorching set from drummer and singer-songwriter Lauren Horbal, who previously performed with Nashville pop-rock band Fame & Fiction, Again and Again took the stage. The self-described “friendly neighborhood lesbian comedy band” follows in country music’s rich tradition of humor and razor-sharp wit. They dipped into their catalog for observations about cougars, “straight cis men who won’t accept that you’re a lesbian” and more, all while extolling the virtues of checkered Vans and carabiners.

The evening ended on a comedic high note as Scott returned to the stage to take part in the band’s “Wheel of Misfortune” bit. This time out, the wheel tasked a band member with performing the aforementioned “God Made Girls

The evening’s host, drag queen extraordinaire Kennedy Ann Scott, took the stage to open the show with a rendition of Wilson Phillips’ “Hold On.” She immediately made it clear that the evening would serve as a much-needed celebration of queer joy and solidarity.

“Our trans community has been fighting on the front lines since the beginning, fighting for all of us,” Scott said from the stage. “It is our turn to fucking fight for them.”

Lonely Hunter followed Scott with a stellar set of dreamy, richly layered alt emo. That led into a stirring acoustic performance from singer-songwriter and relatively recent Nashville transplant Lizzie No. “It’s such an honor to be invited to play at the Opry,” No quipped. “I’ve never been invited to the Opry before — gay, straight or otherwise.” Their “Pity Party” felt particularly apt for an evening about finding joy through art. “Every time I play my songs for a couple of friends,” sang No in the gem of a folky tune, “it lights a match for a dark time to come.”

Two other highlights of their performance both featured guests: Quinn Hills joined in on the gorgeously tender “Annie Oakley,” and Mercy Bell came up for “The Heartbreak Store,” a tune about “when you’re sad and have to go to the club and see the girls.” “I’m Lizzie No — Lizzie with an ‘ie’ and ‘No’ as in ‘no fucking tolerance for transphobes or Nazis,’” No said, introducing

(Lesbian Version).” The whole band participated, and the riffs brought the house down as they sang: “Somebody’s gotta wear a backwards hat / Somebody’s gotta own a rescue cat / Somebody’s gotta work with their hands / So God made girls.” Eat your heart out, Weird Al.

Time and again throughout the evening, we got reminders of how important it is to band together in tumultuous times. During the show, Trans Aid Nashville co-founders Maxine Spencer and Alexandria Danner took the stage to encourage attendees to share in the duty of caring for one another.

“Mutual aid is not charity,” Spencer said. “It is a duty to each other to be able to help make sure that we have everything we need to live. In a city that has a $3.8 billion budget, we go too often without the things that we need as trans people. So it’s up to us to carve out the things that we need and to make sure that we have all the things that we deserve for a healthy and happy life. [At Trans Aid Nashville], we see ourselves as stewards of funds and support and resources [provided] by our community. I want to invite you all to share in that journey with us — to share in the duty of that with us, to help be your siblings’ keeper for folks that you may not ever know. But because you understand that their life and their liberation is tied up in yours, you give a fuck about them.” ▼

ACROSS

1 Dives into

6 Cause to crack up

10 Pillow covering

14 Florida’s ___ National Forest

15 Give quite a shock

16 Antifur org.

17 | $ | $ | $ | $ |

19 Sheltered from the wind

20 Charge on imports

21 Bible-inspired tourist attraction in Williamstown, Ky.

22 Excel spreadsheets, essentially

23 Go (for)

24 | : : : | / /

27 “How dare you!” looks

29 Tree whose “slippery” variety has medicinal bark

30 Mistake “air” for “heir,” say

31 Chick checker of a sort

32 Put one’s hands together

34 About

35 Classic Jack Kerouac novel …or where you’ll find 17-, 24-, 49- and 58-Across

38 Fundamentals

41 Helps out

42 Spinal stack

46 Grassy grazing ground

47 Wrestling match ender

48 Racer’s final go-round

49 | : : :--|

53 Gershwin brother

54 Adds to a stuffed suitcase, say

55 Schedule pro

56 Choice of bands, for short

57 Church nook

58 |X:X:X:X| |X:X:X:X| |X:X:X:X|

61 Crown

62 Dynamic starter?

63 Fictional region that includes Bag End

64 Slap (at)

65 “Your turn,” on a radio

66 Sent up on social media, say DOWN

1 Show-offs

2 Not many 3 Levy that helped fund the Erie Canal

4 Friend in tough times

5 Paragraph starter, perhaps

6 Archive

7 Potato pancake for Hanukkah

8 Campfire residue

9 “Definitely!”

10 Prince Harry, per his memoir’s title

11 Genomic shapes

12 Put up with put-downs

13 Baton wielder

18 Galley implements

22 Class that may require a change of clothes

24 Leaves in a waiting room?

25 Becomes tiresome

26 Brand in the pet aisle

28 Some vintage autos

32 Khaki alternative

33 Played the first card

34 Possible score seven points after love-love

36 Follow

37 In unison, musically

38 Case of emergency?

39 Source of a large print

40 Card game played with two decks

43 Meat stick brand

44 Commuter’s charge

45 Barraged with irrelevant material

47 HPs, e.g.

48 First tennis player to achieve a Golden Slam

50 Become acquainted via Gmail, say

51 Jump ___ (horror movie staple)

52 Willing to take part in

56 Pine

58 Confucian “way”

59 Energize, with “up”

60 Suffix with capital

DORIS LUCINDA REYES

ORELLANA, Petitioner, and GIL ARMANDO GONZALES

GUEVARA, Respondent.

SUMMONS BY PUBLICATION

Health Care Service Corporation seeks Sr Mgr. Engineering Services (Nashville, TN) to deliver short- and long-term tech soltns across three dimensions of engg, ops, & staff growth/dvlpmnt . REQS: Bach + 7 yrs exp. 100% telecom/wk from home permttd. Pay: $ 201,802 - $ 203,500 /yr. Benefits: https://careers.hcsc.com/tota lrewards. Email resume to hrciapp@bcbsil.com & ref R0047460.

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The State of Indiana to the defendants above named, and any other person who may be concerned. You are notified that you have been sued in the Court above named. The nature of the suit against you is: Verified Petition for Registration and Domestication of Foreign Order. This summons by publication is specifically directed to the following named defendant(s) whose addresses are: Gil Armando Gonzales Guevara, address Unknown And to the following defendant(s) whose whereabouts are unknown: . In addition to the abovenamed defendants being served by this summons there may be other defendants who have an interest in this lawsuit.

If you have a claim for relief against the plaintiff arising from the same transaction or occurrence, you must assert it in your written answer. You must answer the Complaint in writing, by you or your attorney, on or before the 11th day of April 2026,(the same being within thirty (30) days after the Third Notice of Suit), and if you fail to do so a judgement will be entered against you for what the plaintiff has demanded.

Katie Rosenberger, #30830-49

Attorney for Plaintiff VILLARRUBIA & ROSENBERGER, P.C. 6349 S. East St. Indianapolis, IN 46227

STATE OF INDIANA COUNTY OF ELKHART SS: IN THE ELKHART COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT CAUSE NO. 20D06-2510MI-000461 DORIS LUCINDA REYES ORELLANA, Petitioner, and GIL ARMANDO GONZALES GUEVARA, Respondent. SUMMONS BY PUBLICATION

The State of Indiana to the defendants above named, and any other person who may be concerned. You are notified that you have been sued in the Court above named. The nature of the suit against you is: Verified Petition for Registration and Domestication of Foreign Order. This summons by publication is specifically directed to the following named defendant(s) whose addresses are: Gil Armando Gonzales Guevara, address Unknown And to the following defendant(s) whose whereabouts are unknown: .

In addition to the abovenamed defendants being served by this summons there may be other defendants who have an interest in this lawsuit.

ATTEST: Clerk of the Elkhart Court

NSC 2/26, 3/5, 3/12/26

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If you have a claim for relief against the plaintiff arising from the same transaction or occurrence, you must assert it in your written answer. You must answer the Complaint in writing, by you or your attorney, on or before the 11th day of April 2026,(the same being within thirty (30) days after the Third Notice of Suit), and if you fail to do so a judgement will be entered against you for what the plaintiff has demanded.

Katie Rosenberger, #30830-49

Attorney for Plaintiff

VILLARRUBIA & ROSENBERGER, P.C. 6349 S. East St. Indianapolis, IN 46227

ATTEST: Clerk of the Elkhart Court

NSC 2/26, 3/5, 3/12/26

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