Nation of Language is bringing their 2026 summer tour to The Basement East on July 23 at 8 p.m. Enter to win a pair of free tickets at nashvillescene.com/promo/ freestuff.
WIN A PAIR OF TICKETS TO THE DEAR HUNTER AT THE BASEMENT EAST The Dear Hunter’s Road to Sunya tour stops by The Basement East on July 29. Enter to win a pair of free concert tickets at nashvillescene.com/freestuff.
ART FEST RETURNS The Tomato Art Fest returns Aug. 7-8 at Five Points in East Nashville, celebrating its 23rd year with music, art, food and the Tomato Parade. Visit tomatoartfest.com for details.
KINDLING ARTS FESTIVAL 2026: UTOPIAS
Explore 22 unique performance experiences at Kindling Arts Festival 2026: UTOPIAS at venues around West Nashville July 23-26. Enter to win a pair of passes at nashvillescene.com/promo/freestuff.
WIN A PAIR OF TICKETS TO SEE BELMONT PERFORM BETWEEN YOU AND ME Enter to win tickets to see Belmont perform Between You and Me at The Basement East on July 22, featuring Major League, Spite House and all in ur head.
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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 Emma Pickett
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, 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 Kayla Stark
PHOTOGRAPHERS Angelina Castillo, Eric England, Matt Masters
GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Sandi Harrison, Tracey Starck, Mary Louise Meadors
GRAPHIC DESIGN INTERN Alex Levin
PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Christie Passarello
MARKETING AND EVENTS DIRECTOR Robin Fomusa
EVENTS MANAGER Tristan Maryanski
MARKETING AND PROMOTIONS MANAGER Meredith Grantham
From platinum-selling chart-toppers to underground , household names to undiscovered gems, Chief’s Neon Steeple is committed to bringing the very best national and regional talent back to Broadway.
7.2 Brinley Addington, Johnny Clawson, Neil Medley
7.4 Aaron Nichols & The Travellers — 4th of July Post-Fireworks Concert!
7.12 Dixieland Delight: Hotter than a Hoochie Coochie — Alan Jackson Tribute
7.14 Buddy's Place Writer's Round w/ Clark Beckham, Kayley Bishop, Fraser Churchill
7.15 Rebecca Lynn Howard, Carolyn Dawn Johnson
7.16 Buddy Jewell
7.18 CJ Field Full Band Show
7.21 Belles, Dan Harrison, Tyler Bank, Adam Sickler
7.22 Uncle B's Damned Ole Opry Presents: Tom Petty's "Wildflowers" Gets Grassed! w/ Taylor McCall, Everette, Matt Warren, Thad Cockrell, Collin Nash, Maura Streppa, more!
7.25 Take Me To Church Tribute — #1 Eric Church Tribute in Americaa
7.26 American Legend — A Tribute to Johnny Cash's Life in Song
7.29 Flat River Band
7.30 Fink, Special Guest: Maggie Koerner
A ROAD BY ANY OTHER NAME
Talking to the veteran who named Vietnam Veterans Boulevard — in the wake of its rededication as Charlie Kirk Memorial Highway
BY LENA MAZEL
Street View is a monthly column taking a close look at development-related issues affecting different neighborhoods throughout the city.
AT AGE 19, Sam Creed was one of 1.7 million people drafted to serve in the Vietnam War — and one of the 2.7 million people who served in Vietnam between 1961 and 1975. But when he returned to America after his time in the Air Force, reactions weren’t what he expected.
Creed says that while he was at Arkansas State University, a professor called on him in class while he was in his uniform. “He said that it was my fault that I was in Vietnam and that I should’ve protested and gone to Canada.”
“We were called baby-killers,” Creed says. “Most of us just quit talking about being Vietnam veterans.”
This feeling persisted for many years. But after a former prisoner of war reached out from Nashville’s chapter of the Vietnam Veterans Association, Creed worked to create Vietnam Veterans Association Chapter 240 in Sumner County.
Amid discussions of some sort of local monument in the early 1980s, Creed had an idea: renaming a stretch of Tennessee State Route 386 between Goodlettsville and Henderson-
ville. Construction on the new highway was underway. What if the state named it in honor of Vietnam War veterans? He proposed the idea to the other veterans in Chapter 240. “They were exuberant about it,” he says.
The naming process was a grassroots endeavor, but it gained traction quickly, Creed says, moving from Sumner County’s city council to the Tennessee Department of Transportation to the state. The road was officially dedicated as Vietnam Veterans Boulevard in 1987. Creed and his 8-year-old daughter were the first people to drive on the new road, followed closely by thenGov. Ned McWherter.
These days, the legacy of a road like Vietnam Veterans is complex. While many veterans feel it offers long-overdue recognition, the war itself was deeply unpopular: By 1973, 61 percent of Americans believed that sending troops into the country was a mistake. The U.S. lost roughly 58,000 troops in the war; the Vietnamese lost more than 3 million people. Humans, animals and the natural environment are still feeling the devastating effects of the U.S. military’s use of Agent Orange, and many veterans continue to suffer from PTSD.
For many veterans, there was a tension between the political and the personal — a war that was chosen for them by the government, and their personal experiences coming back from that war. For Creed, the way forward was clear: “We would not allow another group of veterans to come home to what we did.”
After Vietnam Veterans Boulevard was named, Creed spent much of his life educating people about Vietnam, through school visits
and later as a high school history teacher. He toured schools talking about the veteran experience with a truckful of props, says his daughter Allison Steinquest.
In 2012, Chapter 240 worked with the Tennessee General Assembly to add 25 new signs to the road, each with the name of a Sumner County resident who died in the war.
But after nearly 40 years, a new sign has emerged on Vietnam Veterans Boulevard: a sign reading “Charlie Kirk Memorial Highway,” honoring the late right-wing influencer and founder of conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA. While the signage didn’t officially rename the highway (it is technically an honorary marker), its message hit Creed hard. He says the state legislature and Tennessee Department of Transportation didn’t consult with any veterans before the sign went up.
“It feels like we’ve been stepped on again,” he says. (Creed tells the Scene, however, that he does not oppose Kirk’s beliefs or the messages of Turning Point USA.)
The sign placement is certainly odd. Kirk — who was killed in September of last year — was not from Tennessee, he did not have any apparent connections to Sumner County, and he never served in the armed forces. One of his most famous connections to local issues is also fraught at best: At a Turning Point USA event just a week after Nashville’s Covenant School shooting, Kirk told the crowd, “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other Godgiven rights.”
But views on Kirk aside, Creed — and other
local veterans — just want the sign somewhere else. “It breaks up the whole point of Vietnam Veterans Boulevard,” he tells the Scene.
State Rep. Johnny Garrett (R-Goodlettsville), who sponsored the bill for the Charlie Kirk Memorial Highway sign, has called Kirk a “patriot” who “died exercising the very freedom that veterans have served to protect.” He told Fox 17: “This does not change the name of the highway or take away from the service and sacrifice of those who have fought to protect the freedom of speech for all Americans.”
Initially, it didn’t look like the sign would move. Creed himself was skeptical, telling the Scene that the veterans’ group did not have the political power to do anything about it — despite other Vietnam veterans telling the state legislature to “take this bill [memorializing Kirk] and put it really where the sun doesn’t shine.”
But on July 7, things changed. Steinquest says Creed got a call from Garrett, who promised to move the sign somewhere else.
Steinquest, who spent a lifetime watching her dad educate people about the war, wants people to keep thinking about what Vietnam Veterans Boulevard means — a way to remember Vietnam. “I hope people keep learning,” she says. “And I hope people don’t let it just be a story in the books.”
“American history is worth knowing,” Creed says. “Vietnam was a very politicized war, but we were just young men doing our duty,” says Creed. “We were young,” he tells the Scene. “We were very young.”
Garrett’s office has not responded to the Scene’s request for comment on his plans to move the Charlie Kirk Memorial Highway sign. ▼
ALLISON STEINQUEST AND SAM CREED
PHOTO: ERIC ENGLAND
MOONSHOT
AIRPARK Concerts CORNELIA
As the
anniversary of the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing approaches,
we speak with two Tennesseans who were part of the mission
BY HANNAH HERNER
RALPH AND ROSIE GRAHAM were ecstatic to hear that the United States is planning to return to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years through NASA’s Artemis program. That’s because the two Middle Tennesseans were among those who helped put people on the moon the first time.
Ralph, as an engineer for NASA, and Rosie, as a computer programmer for IBM, were among the thousands of experts who worked on the Apollo missions in the 1960s.
On July 20, 1969, Rosie was fresh out of college with a master’s degree in mathematics and education when she was recruited to be one of 30 women to work for IBM (alongside 600 men). Junior programmers drew times when they could watch the action from mission control during the Apollo 11 mission. Rosie, just six months into her tenure, happened to draw the hour during which Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon’s surface and uttered his famous “one small step” line.
The Grahams see putting a man on the moon as one of the country’s greatest accomplishments — a reflection that’s especially fitting as the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary. The moon missions also get the credit for how the pair met. “The moon brought us together,” says Ralph.
HOW STAND UP NASHVILLE IS TRAINING CITIZENS FOR METRO GOVERNMENT
At least four people have joined boards and commissions this year after training with the progressive group BY ELI MOTYCKA
UP SEVERAL FLIGHTS of stairs, inside a nondescript MetroCenter office building, a dozen people were contemplating the biggest controversies facing Nashville. When the Scene visited their headquarters, they were
When Rosie first started in the field, computers were capable of holding just a single megabyte of data and were big enough to fill an entire room.
(Modern iPhones can hold tens of thousands of megabytes.) A computer programming degree didn’t even exist at the time, and coding was done on paper.
“I always used to tell my son, my students, if the car industry had moved as fast as the computer industry had, today six cars would fit on the head of a pin and they’d get a million miles to the gallon,” says Rosie, who pivoted to a career as a teacher in 1975. She has since taught at several colleges including Motlow State Community College in Tullahoma.
Ralph was appointed to the Space Task Group in 1961. There he helped design the Apollo launch escape system and led wind-tunnel studies to ensure the spacecraft could safely reenter the Earth’s atmosphere. Later the pair moved to Tullahoma and worked at aerospace testing facility Arnold Engineering Development Complex.
Ralph notes that NASA’s moon-landing missions brought various disciplines of science and math together for new advancements — and that’s one side effect of the plan to take people to Mars by way of the moon through Artemis in the coming years. Apollo and Artemis are twins in Greek mythology, after all.
“Nobody can predict the future, but with a focus on going to Mars and back safely, you’ll end up learning something — advancing technology, advancing human disciplines, learning
technically powerless on this fall afternoon in 2025, play-acting decisive moments that influenced a Metro Arts grant debacle that led to lawsuits and six-figure settlements from city coffers. Jokes and snacks lent the space a classroom feel.
Within a year, practice turned into the real thing.
Stand Up Nashville’s Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute has churned out alumni who currently sit across the Metro government. Two first-time candidates — Deonte Harrell and Jeff Preptit — won seats on the Metro Council in 2023. Both had attended the BCLI, an initial step in moves toward politics. Harrell sought out the program while serving on the Metro Beautification and Environment Commission. It helped clarify his aspiration to run for a council seat.
“As a citizen, you think you have knowledge of what the city does, and my intent was to prepare myself to
more about how teams work together,” Ralph says. “Look at your smart watches and phones and PCs and all the things that you’re benefiting from that had [their] birth in the space program. You’re fortunate to live in these times, and now it’s in AI times, where it could be frightening — but it’s also an exciting time too.”
The pair is hopeful to travel to see the Artemis III launch in 2027; Artemis IV in 2028 is planned for a lunar landing. They also hope another moon landing will bring the country — and the world — together, as they experienced in 1969. We all share the same moon, Ralph points out.
“It’s that blue marble in the sky there,” Ralph says of the view of Earth from the moon. “You don’t see the continents, you don’t see the walls, and you don’t see people of different nationalities. You see we’re together in this thing.”
The Artemis missions also mark the first occasions of women traveling to the moon. Artemis II astronaut Christina Koch became the first woman to orbit the moon in April, and while next year’s Artemis III crew is set to be all-male, women may be included in future Artemis missions. Rosie followed closely behind the Black female mathematicians and engineers who worked for NASA in the 1950s and ’60s (whose exploits were featured in the 2016 film Hidden Figures). She says she was grateful for the opportunity, even temporarily, to step outside of women’s typical roles in the workforce at the time — teacher, nurse and administrative assistant.
“It is a thrill to watch other young people learn and go off and do bigger and better things than I ever did,” she says.
As they were with the Apollo missions, Ralph and Rosie are comfortable being a small part of a larger cause.
“It’s a humbling thing to think how Rosie, me — how we could make a contribution, but all of these contributions together made it happen,” Ralph says. “That’s a humbling thing, and also I’m grateful I was part of it, because I was part of something that really was important.”
“Everybody needs to know that you don’t always have to be up here being the big shots,” Rosie adds. “You can be a part of something that makes the whole great.” ▼
learn more,” Harrell tells the Scene “You meet with elected officials and learn about their day-to-day. I think it’s very beneficial for people who want to get more involved but don’t know exactly how.”
More than 10 other alumni currently sit on, or have served on, the city’s boards, commissions and authorities, of which there are more than 70. Not all are created equal. Some, like the Metro Sports Authority and Industrial Development Board, have the power to issue bonds — a powerful tool that can shape the city.
Incentive packages for corporations like Oracle clear the IDB board, for example, and the sports authority was the primary political arena as the Titans negotiated the new $2.1 billion domed stadium currently under construction on the East Bank.
Quineka Moten and Manaen Hall have it all mapped out on a series of color-coded spreadsheets. Moten,
who oversees leadership development for SUN, refers to the pair as “Batman and Robin,” though she won’t clarify who is who. They keep an eye on Metro’s current power centers — the East Bank Development Authority, for example, quickly became a key local agency — and track upcoming vacancies with an eye toward qualified, interested matches in their BCLI rolodex. Given the right opportunity, Moten helps fast-track training for a perfect candidate. Such was the case for Diamond Bell, a SUN organizer who won a spot on the Short Term Rental Appeals Board in May. Bell is among four BCLI trainees confirmed by the Metro Council so far this year, along with Nick Cavin, Brittany Tabor and Hall himself, who now sits on the Transportation Licensing Commission — the Metro body best known for regulating party vehicles.
Stand Up Nashville established itself as a key political force in 2018 when the nonprofit helped ink a community benefits agreement across from billionaire John Ingram’s Nashville SC holding company. A slim operation headed by Odessa Kelly — an organizer and Democrat who unsuccessfully challenged former U.S. Rep. Mark Green for Congress in 2022 — and labor leader Michael Callahan-Kapoor, SUN seeks to advance racial and economic equity in the city and counts close allies in the Metro Council including Harrell, Preptit, Sandra Sepulveda, Kyonztè Toombs, Sean Parker, Clay Capp and Delishia Porterfield.
“The purpose of the program is to reimagine policymaking for the common good by training and supporting individuals from Black, brown, immigrant and working-class communities to serve on boards and commissions with the explicit goal of advancing equitable policies,” reads a handout advertising last year’s training. “It provides fellows with a framework to deepen their understanding of how local government works, economic development, employment, housing, land use, and transit through an intersectional lens that includes race and class.”
Curricula in the BCLI classroom reflect SUN’s political theory of change: Equip interested citizens with lived experience who can represent marginalized points of view, with an explicit preference for working-class Nashvillians and racial minorities. The two-month course includes bureaucratic skill work, like learning how meetings run via Robert’s Rules of Order, as well as media training and analyzing scenarios that might face a board or commission.
SUN’s effort correctly identifies how Metro distributes decision-making power to specific, dedicated, citizen-led bodies that generate hundreds of seats in need of dedicated volunteers. So much opportunity has historically favored the politically connected and Metro’s donor class, tending toward industries like law and real estate.
The entire appointments process has changed under Vice Mayor Angie Henderson, who won her seat presiding over the Metro Council in 2023. Each vacancy now triggers a council-wide announcement and a longer vetting process, meant to ensure more transparency and choice. Hearings push candidates to explain potential conflicts of interest and bear scrutiny from councilmembers on the Rules, Confirmations and Public Elections Committee — it’s no longer enough for the mayor or a councilmember to simply throw in a name. ▼
PITH IN THE WIND NASHVILLESCENE.COM/NEWS/PITHINTHEWIND
After a seven-hour Metro Council meeting on July 7 — during which concerns were heard from nearly 180 Nashvillians — the council advanced several pieces of legislation that could impose strict regulations on future Davidson County data centers Those include a unanimously approved data center regulation framework proposed by Councilmember Rollin Horton, a 90day moratorium on the tech centers sponsored by Councilmember Courtney Johnston, and condemnation legislation filed by Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s office seeking to use eminent domain to acquire the zoo-area property being eyed for a data center by Atlanta-based tech company DC BLOX. Each piece of legislation, though met with thorough support, has more hurdles to jump before implementation.
Speaking of data centers, executives at Tennessee Valley Authority have begun to reorient the federal utility around sharp increases in expected data center power demand. More combustion gas and nuclear power will make up the difference, according to TVA’s revised Integrated Resource Plan. The public has until July 22 to submit feedback about the utility’s plan. Since the beginning of the IRP process in 2024, the majority of public comments have called on TVA to accelerate decarbonization. Nonpartisan local think tank ThinkTennessee released its own data center report this month warning that the state is at a “critical inflection point” and calling for careful planning across government and industry.
In a new ad from Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the leading gubernatorial candidate sits in a restaurant near a basket of fortune cookies and says she’ll protect Tennessee land from China and hunt down communists. She scowls at a camera and crumbles the cookies, which reveal pro-Blackburn messaging. Scene managing editor Alejandro Ramirez points out not only that fortune cookies were likely invented in the United States by Japanese immigrants, but also that the commercial features no details about loopholes Blackburn plans to close — or any evidence about an upcoming land-grab by China. Meanwhile, Scene opinion columnist Betsy Phillips opines that, from racism to hypocrisy and crushing cookies, Blackburn’s race to be governor is paved with unpleasantness and cruelty.
JULY 30-AUGUST 1 & AUGUST 6-8
VINCE GILL AUGUST 5
DOGSTAR WITH THE BACKFIRES
AUGUST 9
THE BEACH BOYS
SEPTEMBER 22
NASHVILLE SONGRWITER AWARDS ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
NOVEMBER 18
THE STRAY CATS ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
DECEMBER 4 & 5
THE MAVERICKS
A MUSICAL CELEBRATION HONORING RAUL MALO ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
DECEMBER 8, 9 & 10
LITTLE BIG TOWN
THE CHRISTMAS SHOWS ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10 AM
WITNESS HISTORY
This script, given to Clint Black in 1998 for being a guest on the final episode of HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show, features signatures from the episode’s cast, including Garry Shandling and Tom Petty.
From the exhibit Clint Black: The Hard Way on Purpose
artifact: Courtesy of Clint Black artifact photo: Bob Delevante
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You Are So Nashville If …
See the winners, honorable mentions and other gems in this year’s YASNI contest
IT’S A VERY strong year for YASNI entries.
Once a year since time immemorial (read: 1989), the editorial staff of the Nashville Scene has asked our readers to complete the iconic phrase “You are so Nashville if …” And every year, certain recurring themes rear their heads among the submissions: California transplants; the recording industry; Dolly Parton. Recently, themes of rapid development, affordability and tourist culture (specifically, bachelorettes) have become prevalent.
But this year? This year feels different.
Sure, those themes appeared again — and sure, some of the fresher versions of the ever-present Dolly and bachelorette jokes were good enough to make the cut. But many first-time topics and phrases popped up again and again among our hundreds of submissions. To the best of our recollection, the phrase “data center” had never before appeared among YASNI submissions; this year it was included in 22 entries. Similar story with “Waymo,” which went from 0 to 23. Nashville’s impending 2030 Super Bowl was mentioned roughly 30 times, with Nashville Electric Service called out by name in about 20. (That number more than doubles
About the Winner
if you throw in ice-storm-related references to “power” and “trees.”) Aside from NES, the most popular targets of YASNI submitters’ wrath were the Republican supermajority’s congressional gerrymandering efforts, The Boring Company’s under-construction Music City Loop, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, and ICE. Plus a few jabs at the ABC series 9-1-1: Nashville for good measure.
The Scene’s editorial team combed through all the submissions, and after a daylong meeting, we narrowed down our list to the most funny, original and incisive — about 200 of them in total. Below find our first-, second- and third-place winners and our honorable mentions, along with everything else that made the cut. We even threw in a handful of Weirdies (the entries that don’t make a whole lot of sense) and Earnest Ones (submissions that aren’t exactly funny or incisive, but are just too wholesome to cut).
Dive into this year’s entries, accompanied by excellent illustrations from artist Corrie Liotta. Thanks for submitting, and thanks for reading.
—D. PATRICK RODGERS, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
First Place
NES blocked you. —TRENT HANNER
Second Place
You’ve lived through enough disasters to fill two, maybe three, episodes of 9-1-1: Nashville. —MEGAN MINARICH
Third Place
Your airport tunnel spans three congressional districts.
—KERI PAGETTA
Honorable Mentions
We asked for better mass transit and all we got was this hole in the ground.
—STEPHEN YEARGIN
You would never celebrate rising unemployment in Nashville, unless it’s at The Daily Wire. —ANDY GASPARINI
When you learned we were getting a Hermes you thought they were building another Parthenon. —RACHEL SCOTT
You thought the Boring Co. was that family your wife met in Brentwood.
—JASON MARSDEN
You’re prouder of your second-place YASNI than of your Grammy or Michelin star. —JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
You have survivor’s guilt because you only lost power for 48 hours. —MEGAN MINARICH
You took a Waymo to WeHo for the pesto at Il Forno. —DAN MCNAMARA
“Burying lines” and “hitting speed bumps” used to refer to what happened in the back of the tour bus.
—JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
Trent Hanner may have won this year’s YASNI contest and had eight other entries published, but his record for most printed submissions was in 2024. That year, he had 10 submissions published, and as a longtime reader, he wears that accomplishment like a badge of honor.
“I grew up in Goodlettsville,” he tells the Scene, “and I think I started looking at these when I was in high school. I moved away, then came back in 2006 after being away for about eight years, and that’s when I actually started contributing.”
What’s his submission strategy? “I usually wait till the week before, and I sit outside, and I just try to imagine what was in the zeitgeist this year — and how can you sum that up into the pithiest, most really relatable way?”
He appreciates the craft of creating the perfect YASNI, and says that workshopping the one-liners is a huge part of the draw.
“Sometimes I’ll enter one, and then after I hit send I’ll rephrase it and fine-tune it and resubmit it.”
Of this year’s winning entry, which cuts to the heart of January’s devastating ice storm as well as public resentment for the way Nashville Electric Service handled it, Hanner drew on his own personal experience.
“That’s actually true,” he explains. “One of my neighbors had gotten so mad at NES that they blocked her from reporting outages during the ice storm.”
Still, he knows the comedy lies in distilling genuine frustrations into a concise quip that trusts the reader to get the joke.
“I’ve noticed over the years,” he says, “you guys don’t really publish really dark stuff. You keep it pretty light. I mean, it’s always — like I said — in the zeitgeist, it’s very timely. It’s like taking the pulse of the city. But you avoid negativity, and that’s what keeps them fun.” —LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
The NashSevereWx team had a better season than any of your city’s professional sports teams. —ASHLEY HASKINS
You celebrate Aftyn Behn and Diego Pavia almost winning their races. —KEN LASS
You know Oprah vs. Moist is the real Nashville Super Bowl. —ANDY GASPARINI
And the Rest
You got gerrymandered before it was cool. —STEWART DAY
It’s only a matter of time before you’re gerrymandered out of participating in this contest. —HAILEY JOHNSON
Your voting district isn’t! —ALLISON EVERETT
You have to drive past two Buc-ee’s to get to your congressman’s house. —WOODY WOODWARD
You now share a congressional district with towns you only ever heard of on storm broadcasts. —MEGAN MINARICH
You had to park four congressional districts away to vote. —BLAIR STILWELL
You had to drive through five congressional districts just to get to work. —LAURA SEAY
You can drive four hours and never leave your legislative district. —KEITH HEIM
All your protesting showed them exactly where to draw the new district lines. —NATE GRIFFIN
Your partner’s side of the bed is in a different congressional district. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA
Your duplex is in three different congressional districts. —BILL FLOWERREE
You’ve had more U.S. representatives than serious relationships. —ALLISON DAMRATOSKI
You haven’t moved but you are in your third congressional district in four years. —KRISTEN STEWART
Your new voting district is your neighbor’s guest bathroom and all of Utah and Wyoming.
—DAN MCNAMARA
Memphis lost its IKEA before it could be drawn into your congressional district. —STEPHEN YEARGIN
The state legislature fills out your voting ballot for you to save time. —RONALD LEE
You’re worried that burying power lines will somehow create mutant cicadas. —MEGAN MINARICH
You envy those 13-year cicadas sleeping through all this crap right now. —TRENT HANNER
“We ass.” —DAN MCNAMARA
Both of your favorite restaurants in town are named after Willie Nelson songs. —ANDY GASPARINI
You named your Porch Goose Honk Williams. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA
You dressed your Porch Goose as Dolly Parton. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA
Your lifestyle is WeHo but your budget is DickPi. —JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
Your perception of Dickerson Pike will always be frozen in time by Chris Crofton. —BRIAN SISKIND
Your city’s main recession indicator is that Jason Isbell is down to only a six-show residency at the Ryman. —LINDSAY BERGSTROM
You are an ardent supporter of the burgeoning agro-terrorism scene developing in Joelton.
—WILLIAM HALL
You think Joelton is a nice place to raise a family. Of Nazis. —WILLIAM HALL
You plan to ask the Ralph Lauren staff what’s on tap out of protest. —EMILY FREITAG
You’re a vegetarian, but you have a passionate opinion on what is the best hot chicken in town. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA
You wonder if Elevation Orthodontics is trying to sexualize dentistry. —LESLIE HALES
You wish we could all be as indestructible as the Rivergate Mall JCPenney Portraits.
—MEGAN MINARICH
You stopped asking folks what part of town they live in and instead ask how long they were without power. —JAMIE YOST
Your driveway de-icer is Prince’s Chicken XXX Hot seasoning. —JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
Your special commission to investigate NES will have power to subpoena … maybe in five to seven days, 10 days max depending on ZIP code.
—JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
You appreciate that it took the largest power outage in Nashville history, combined with some patently false Facebook rumors, to turn all the worst people you know pro-union.
—ANDY GASPARINI
You know exactly how long Blake Farmer was without power. —MEGAN MINARICH
You’re calling Marsha Blackburn the next time your power goes out so she can put in a good word with NES for you. —STEPHEN YEARGIN
Your 1%ers refer to both wealth and where they were in line to get their power back.
—JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
You have PTSD from NES during the Super Bowl halftime show. —LESLIE HALES
You bought an extension cord long enough to reach Marsha Blackburn’s house. —ABBY GEORGE
You think NES needs a rebrand more than the Titans did. —PATRICK CONLEY
Your neighbors complained about trees falling during winter and are now complaining about NES tree trimming. —ANONYMOUS
You have officially given up on ever seeing your curb again and have started naming the moss ecosystems growing on your sidewalk brush piles. —JACKIE HUGHES
You blew up the library and Metro Council still found the courage to give you more power.
—JOSEPH LEE
You still don’t understand whether the library garage is gonna collapse, or what. —TRENT HANNER
You’re still trying to find a place to store your dangerous, highly flammable gas containers, since your last idea of storing them in the Nashville Library garage didn’t turn out so well.
—DAN MCNAMARA
Your car is still trapped in the downtown library garage. —AUNT BECKY
You heard there was a fire at the library and you hoped it was because of chemicals in a closet and not a book burning gone wrong.
—JAMIE YOST
You can’t decide if you want to bury your power lines or your local utility board.
—JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
Your power just came back on. —DREW MAYNARD
You holiday at the pothole’s edge. —WILLIAM HALL
People with chainsaws are helping. —CORNELIA MINARICH (AGE 2)
You accidentally discovered the next Kid Rock at a cursed local venue called The Capitol. —SHELBY BOTTOMS
You know the difference between a farm and a plantation. —WANDO WEAVER
You avoid the thrift store because coming across your ex’s band T-shirt again would be too much. —LINDA BAILEY
You’re not sure if it takes longer to drive to the cellphone lot or walk to the new D gates. —EMILY FREITAG
You haven’t been fooled and you’re still using Exit 216A at BNA. —TONY GONZALEZ
You thought you knew how to get to the airport. —JAMIE YOST
You only think you’re on the airport board. —TRENT HANNER
You don’t know how all these restaurants got Michelin recommendations but not Donut Den. —JOSH MALKOFSKY-BERGER
You wonder when a tornado will turn the Stix sculpture into a bunch of projectiles, and how many of them will wind up lodged into the green roof on the Music City Center. —ERIC BLEVINS
On a brighter note, we didn’t get a tornado this year. —TRENT HANNER
You just can’t make yourself buy tickets to see music at a venue called The Truth without feeling like you’re joining a religious cult.
—ANDY GASPARINI
The governor of California has held more town hall meetings in your city than Marsha Blackburn. —ASHLEY HASKINS
You can take the train to Lebanon, but not Chattanooga, Knoxville nor Memphis. —LEX TINSLEY
You can’t tell if you’re in a church or a co-working space that used to be a church.
—SHEA STRIPLING
Ann Patchett silently judged you for reading Off-Campus —RACHEL SCOTT
You almost believed Nate Bargatze’s political neutrality stance all these years. —KEITH HEIM
You have a Bart Durham tattoo. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA
You think the guy pulling the 7 a.m. singer-songwriter shift at BNA deserves his name on a Broadway bar more than Morgan Wallen.
—STEPHEN YEARGIN
You wear red and green for your favorite holiday: Tomato Art Fest. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA
Every August, you unsuccessfully try to care about tomatoes. —ANDY LOGAN
You think the Nashville Kats are what you signed the data center petition to save.
—RACHEL SCOTT
You strongly oppose a data center affecting the Nashville Zoo but use AI to generate inspo pics for your hairdresser. —ASHLEY HASKINS
Your “down with data centers” protest sign was written by AI. —HAILEY JOHNSON
Every time you open Instagram, you’re scared your favorite bar posted a goodbye letter.
—CARLEY CARDER
You’re afraid to mention a restaurant by name because it might be closed by the time this issue hits the stands. —RACHEL SCOTT
You quoted lyrics from “True Believer” by Hayley Williams when they asked about how you feel about the city. —STEPHEN YEARGIN
You’ve actually caught Hayley Williams at the Green Hills and Franklin Whole Foods.
—ASHLEY HASKINS
You think Lower Broad is so lame even the Bang This Twins don’t go anymore. —JASON MARSDEN
You can identify a Local Honey haircut from across the room. —CARLEY CARDER
You finally broke down and scheduled a hair appointment at Local Honey. —MAGGIE RENO
You wonder what ever happened to that illustration of naked people walking off a spaceship that lined the escalator corridor of the old Tennessee State Museum. —HAILEY JOHNSON
You got invited to Buddytown.
—STEPHANIE EATHERLY
Your favorite out-of-towners are the purple martins. —EMILY FREITAG
You don’t think you should have to pay to park in some vacant lot if you can name the business it replaced. —DREW MAYNARD
You were ok with digging tunnels under the city, but only because you thought it was an effort to find the long-lost Nun Bun. —ELIJAH REYNOLDS
It’s been such a long year that you almost forgot about the Cracker Barrel rebranding debacle. —LESLIE HALES
You know that we can’t possibly bury our power lines, because that’s where we keep the Teslas. —ANDY GASPARINI
Your street is calmer, but your car’s suspension is shot. —LOUISE PHILLIPS
Your entire street is now just speed cushions. —MATT NAHAY
The music in your local library’s puppet show got great reviews. —MEGAN MINARICH
The private equity firm that owns the house next to you won’t hire a landscaper. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA
You have the Ryman seating chart PDF memorized. —JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
You and your roommate are in different congressional districts. —TRENT HANNER
Your school carpool line moves more people through it than the Music City Loop ever will. —STEPHEN YEARGIN
You thought the “Music City Loop” was a new line dance. —RAY SHELIDE
An abandoned Tesla tunnel becomes our second-most-realistic transit plan. —HOPE PACE
The Boring Company tunnel promo looks like it was shot with a colonoscopy camera. —LESLIE HALES
You checked your home insurance for “sinkholes” the second Elon Musk mentioned a tunnel. —DEBBIE EMORY-UTZIG
Somehow, drilling a tunnel in our underside is the perfect metaphor for how the state is always treating us. —HAILEY JOHNSON
You wonder if Elon’s tunnel will have speed cushions. —BOB WARD
You realize only three iconic properties remain downtown: The Station Inn, White Castle and the Hustler store. —BOB VOGT
Your favorite “Old Nashville” restaurant that still exists: the White Castle on Broadway. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA
Guitar Center sends you flowers on your birthday. —ALAN SPINDEL
You get triggered by the way Jesse Palmer says Mt. Juliet in those Rooms To Go commercials. —LESLIE HALES
You spotted more than one “Don’t California my Tennessee” bumper sticker at In-N-Out. —ASHLEY HASKINS
You are saving so much in taxes after moving here that you built your own In-N-Out. —JAMIE YOST
The “Mance for Judge” graphic design really confused you. —LESLIE HALES
The extent to which you are willing to support public transport is by playing a train song.
—WILLIAM HALL
You’re writing in the NashSevereWx guys for governor. —RACHEL SCOTT
You feel strongly that your Trader Joe’s is better than the other Nashville one. —KRISTEN SMITH
You submitted a FEMA disaster relief application for the CMA Florida Georgia Line reunion.
—MICHAEL WILLIAMS
You found yourself frantically Googling what number LXIV is. —HAILEY JOHNSON
You’ve already listed your home on Airbnb for February 2030. —WILLIAM LAMB
You’re going to be more interested in the rigging and the staging of the halftime show than in the Super Bowl itself. —HAILEY JOHNSON
Your bus stop benches require bike locks.
—TONY GONZALEZ
Your city’s idea of a new walkable neighborhood includes a six-lane highway down the middle of it. —EZRA HOWARD
Your governor goes nuclear over Pride Month.
—KEN LASS
You thought the “scrap metal junkyard eyesore across the river” referred to the Titans.
—JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
You were rejected by the hip-hop community only to find success in bro country. —ASHLEY HASKINS
You’ll always say it “Luh-FAYE-it.” —CARA DORRIS
You’re beginning to suspect that the three white stars on our state flag are just 15 little klan hoods. —DREW MAYNARD
You fact-checked the geographical accuracy of 9-1-1: Nashville but accepted the nail-shooting fire tornado without question. —EZRA HOWARD
You forgot that 9-1-1: Nashville was a thing until you saw a bunch of YASNIs referencing it.
—HAILEY JOHNSON
The only names you recognize in the Fan Fair lineup are people you went to high school with.
—ASHLEY GISH
You found religion again praying for Dolly’s health. —AMANDA WILMOTH
You have an ongoing bet that Taylor Swift will play the Super Bowl at home before the Titans will. —ASHLEY HASKINS
You think Diarrhea Planet should play a two-hour set for the Super Bowl halftime show. —LEVI CONRAD
Your new stadium was completely financed by the hotel taxes paid by locals in January and February 2026. —JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
The hotel you stayed at during the ice storm was more affordable than your home. —KEN LASS
After Winter Storm Fern, you think Nashville should name its plow and salt truck “Abolish Ice.” —DAVID DUHL
You have to be specific about which ICE is surrounding your house and blocking your driveway.
—SHELBY BOTTOMS
Ice really screwed up the city. Then we had a snowstorm. —NATE GRIFFIN
That sound could be guns, fireworks or the newest one: exploding trees. —SHELBY BOTTOMS
You have five months left of a six-month supply of hand warmers. —JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
You didn’t have a lawn mower, leaf blower or, in fact, any yard equipment, but as of Feb. 15, 2026, you own a lumberjack-rated chainsaw and a diesel-powered woodchipper.
—JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
You are afraid of your own trees.
—JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
You named the feral cats in your neighborhood Conway Kitty and Purrgill Simpson. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA
It’s May and you’re still coming up with banger YASNIs about the ice storm.
—JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
You had to distinguish between “ICEpocalypse” and “icepocalypse” to your out-of-state friends. —MEGAN MINARICH
You’re now VERY prepared for the ice storm of 2056. —JOCELYN PHILLIPS
You still get excited when you see NES trucks on the block. —EMILY FREITAG
Gaylord Opryland’s ICE! got really out of hand this year. —MEGAN MINARICH
You thought “redrawing the maps” meant they were finally updating the Nashville Electric Service outage webpage. —SHELBY BOTTOMS
In January, you ask your family for updates on the winter storm and they tell you Scott
You took a Waymo to the ER after you got run over by a pedal tavern. —JENNY SCHAFER
Hamilton is doing double axels in the cul-de-sac. —ROB BERGER
You spent your first few months of this year in the sticks. —ALLISON EVERETT
You think that Brooks & Dunn is a law firm and that Morgan & Morgan is the latest country hat-act duo. —JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
You didn’t know the Chinese buying up our farmland was such a big deal. —MICHAEL WILLIAMS
You have all this pink paint, but no racist statue to throw it on. —HAILEY JOHNSON
You stop at roundabouts and roll through four-way stops. —BRIAN GILLELAND
You think the crossing guard directing Saturday morning soccer traffic at First Presbyterian has the hardest job in the city. —EMILY FREITAG
You whine about property taxes while paying your performers in exposure. —SK’BURPLE URPSLURPLE
You’ll make a day trip to Dollywood, but not to Broadway. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA
You’re still mad they haven’t named a street after Marty Stuart. —ANDY LOGAN
You’ve checked to see if Taylor and Travis are registered at the White Bridge Road Target. —NATE GRIFFIN
You’ve hiked the “I-40 East Trail” from the Ferrari dealership to BNA more than the trails at Percy Warner. —JIM FLAUTT AND WADE MUNDAY
The child you conceived during the 2008 financial crisis just graduated from MBA or Harpeth Hall. —NARESH PATEL
You realize that the end will finally be heralded when Dave and Gillian finally merge into a single body. —WILLIAM HALL
You named your firstborn Diego. —BOB VOGT
You’re still hungover from trying to outdrink the Pavia family last fall at a Vandy game.
—DAN MCNAMARA
January 13th will now be known as Bree Smith Resurrection and Revitalization Day. —LESLIE HALES
When people ask you what our new stadium is going to look like, you say “Private Equity Sheik.” —ANDY GASPARINI
You call the new football stadium a “tall-andnot-so-skinny.” —JASON MARSDEN
You get more texts from Metropolis Parking than anyone in your contacts list. —TRENT HANNER
You hope that Nashville gets a pro baseball team so you don’t have to hear about the Milwaukee Admirals in July. —ANDY LOGAN
You painted your house white with black trim, means she be a’goin on the market!!!
—JASON MARSDEN
You secretly wonder how Ed the zebra is doing. —HAILEY JOHNSON
Your state would rather support bodily autonomy for Waymos than for women. —RACHEL HOUSE
Past Winners
You won’t get in a Waymo, but you think it’s completely rational to ride on a rolling tavern driven by drunk people. —TRENT HANNER
You’d rather your Waymo drive you into the Cumberland than park downtown. —ABBY GEORGE
You played your new album for your Waymo driver and it left them speechless. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA
You’re excited to see Bill Lee go back to fixing toilets. —NARESH PATEL
You’re not enthusiastic about Flock cameras turning the rest of the world into Belle Meade.
—ANDY GASPARINI
You’ve already lived through the three worst weather-related events in Nashville history.
—STEPHEN YEARGIN
Your city leaders think you can handle the Super Bowl when a rainy afternoon snarls traffic for hours. —KATIE MILLER
Your new football coach thinks seed oil was the real reason for six total wins in two seasons.
—STEPHEN YEARGIN
You hope the higher tax assessment comes with a concert presale code. —ANDREW DEMOLAT
You’re planning on opening a checking account with the new East Bank. —CLETIS CARR
You are from California and you are a jerk to everyone. —ECKHARD KNOEPKE
You really don’t care what happens to the racetrack and are just tired of the debate.
—KATIE MILLER
1989: You think our Parthenon is better because the other one fell apart. —SUSAN FENTON
1990: Your mayor is married and engaged at the same time. —MARALEE SELF
1991: You say to the person behind the counter at the Hot Stop, “We really kicked y’all’s ass in that Desert Storm.” —WILLIE D. SWEET JR.
1992: You go to a Hank Williams Jr. concert at Starwood and pass out before Hank does. —TED W. DAVIS III
1993: Your church congregation is referred to as “the studio audience.” —SHARON KASSERMAN
1994: You think that the H.O.V. lane is for people with AIDS. —PAUL ALLEN
1995: No winner
1996: You never meant to stay here this long. —ROBERT JETTON
1997: You’ve checked your flower bed for Janet March. —TERRY ROBERTSON
1998: You’re the only one who doesn’t know you’re gay. —DIANA HECHT
1999: You dig up your mom. —RICK HAGEY
2000: You want to vote Brad Schmitt off the island. —CHAD TRIBBLE
2001: Your minister follows the Nine Commandments. —KEN LASS
2002: Towns you’ve never heard of are going to be hit by a tornado at 6:51, 6:53 and 7:01 p.m. —RICK HAGEY
2003: You returned a friendly Southern wave to Adam Dread as he veered across Franklin Pike. —CINDY PARRISH
2004: You need a war to sell records. —JOE SCUTELLA
2005: Your governor gives TennCare beneficiaries McDonald’s instead of health care coverage. —KEN LASS
2006: You were a gay cowboy before being a gay cowboy was cool. —MICHAEL WILLIAMS
The Earnest Ones
Your idea of peaking in life is finding yourself as a featured subject in a Ray Di Pietro “Moments From Nashville” Instagram post.
—GRACIE FREEMAN
Your husband received a YASNI tribute when he died. (Thank you, Nashville Scene. We miss you, Charlie Harris.) —MEGAN MINARICH
Your obituary mentions your winning submissions to YASNI. —CORNELIA COODE
You have Hatch prints older than your children. —JAMIE YOST
You’re not religious, but the Glendale United Methodist Church signs make you smile.
—LESLIE HALES
Your grandparents spent their high school weekends downtown, catching a movie or grabbing some dinner at the diner. (Yes, THAT downtown.) —TIFFANY PETTY
You walk into Arnold’s and Rose knows your name. —JESSICA LOGAN
You and your dad compete with YASNI submissions every year and he’s in the lead so pick this one! —KATIE MILLER
You get a little wistful every time you drive by Todd Snider’s recording studio in East Nashville.
—STEPHEN YEARGIN
You voice-to-text yourself a YASNI idea while driving so you don’t forget it before you get home. —KEITH HEIM
You jot down “You’re so Nashville If …” ideas throughout the year. —JOSEPH RAPOLLA
You’ve had a patty melt at Hermitage Cafe at 3 a.m. —TIFFANY PETTY GILLIAM
You love original music and you listen every chance you get!!! —LYNNE GILBERTSON
You love dogs. —BROOK HILL
Weirdies
You want the police start enforcing jaywalking law, especially on lower broadway and extra especially when the jaywalkers are in a crosswalk while the red hand is lit up, but only when the jaywalkers are actually impeding the flow of vehicle traffic. —ERIC BLEVINS
You got a tattoo of someone else getting a tattoo. —WILLIE HALL
You get cut off on the 440/40 split and have a woman dump someone’s ASHES from an URN on you. —KYLE ANSPACH
The guy who desperately tried to get you to be in an ethical, nonmonogamous relationship is running the ambient noise night at the meter for the guy who ghosted you because he didn’t have the emotional capacity for a relationship.
—LAURA FOSTER
2007: You saw Kenny Chesney in a Kroger reading Out & About —MICHAEL WILLIAMS
2008: Your DUI arrest gets a five-star rating on YouTube. —ROY MOORE
2009: Your local GOP makes the KKK look like the ACLU. —JONATHAN BELCHER
2010: Your city flooded and all you got was a lousy T-shirt. —DAVID ANTHONY
2012: You think Bart Durham should direct The Real Housewives of Nashville —HOLLY MATTHEWS
2013: You think the TV show should have been called Mount Juliette —BILL HENCH
2014: Your amp goes to 11, but not to Belle Meade. —ZACK BENNETT
2015: You’re afraid Bob Mueller’s mustache will be torn down to build a high-rise apartment building. —ZACK BENNETT
2016: Your therapist doesn’t know you’re gay. —RUSSELL RIES JR.
2017: In June, you were citing Rule No. 48.24-B that states a goal can be reviewed if an inadvertent whistle caused a stoppage in play. In January, you thought hockey was played with a ball. —BRIAN BATES
2018: Nashville is canceled. Also, the TV show was not renewed. —CHARLIE HARRIS
2019: Your idea of “light rail” means doing just a little bit of coke. —KATIE WESOLEK
2020: Your idea of contact tracing is checking for hand stamps from Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk & Rock ’N’ Roll Steakhouse. —MEGAN MINARICH
2021: You think Derrick Henry offseason workout vids should be flagged as erotica. —CHASE STEJSKAL
2022: You’ve been on the darkweb trying to solicit trash pickup. —LOGAN ELLIOTT
2023: The state legislature already overturned this joke. —JJ WRIGHT
2024: You wonder which will return first: the cicadas or women’s rights? —ANDY GASPARINI
2025: You’re on track to have more football stadiums than Super Bowl appearances. —ALLISON DAMRATOSKI
Dickerson Pike gusfriedchicken
CHICKEN IS
MONDAY, JULY 20
COMEDY [AND THE NOMINEE IS …] THE NOMINEES
Temperatures may be heating up, but Third Coast Comedy Club has got a cool lineup of fun improv shows running this summer. This month, the company is bringing back its popular Nominees — an offbeat, improvised take on the Tony Awards. The first act features five unlikely new songs, fueled by audience suggestions. After voting for their favorite, audiences are treated to a fully improvised musical in the second act — complete with a reprise of the winning song. The cast includes pros like Erika Bailey, Caroline Conner, Gabe Cyrus, Seth Nathan Green, Amelia Rossettie and Cammie York. Plus, Third Coast’s musical director Alex Dolezal will be on hand to provide fabulous live piano accompaniment. Audiences can also check out a couple of new shows this month, including fast-paced improv rant competition You Gotta Be Kidding Me (hosted by Third Coast favorites York and Kim Herrmann, kicking off July 17) and the new Third Coast Storytelling Hour (which returns July 26, offering an intimate evening with main stage regular Andrea Ley). AMY STUMPFL
JULY 20 & 27 AT THIRD COAST COMEDY CLUB
1310 CLINTON ST.
THURSDAY / 7.16
[TURNING 2]
BOOKS
SLOW BURN BOOKSHOP ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
Last month, Slow Burn Bookshop was faced with a nightmare: A neighbor’s sprinkler system went off, and Nashville’s first all-romance brick-and-mortar bookstore flooded. Luckily, Tonya Pineda’s locally beloved, vine-clad shop on Gallatin Avenue is back on its feet and open for business — and it’s getting ready to celebrate its second anniversary all weekend long. With a jam-packed schedule that includes author signings, pop-ups from tattoo artists and local vendors, and free gifts with purchase and special merch offerings, the celebration is sure to impress the romance fan in your life — and it’s a great way to support the store as it continues to bounce back. The weekend kicks off with an after-hours event on Thursday, featuring signings and a conversation with authors L.R. Friedman and T.C. Kraven. RSVP for free online at slowburntn.com. ANNIE PARNELL
JULY 16-19 AT SLOW BURN BOOKSHOP 604 GALLATIN AVE., NO. 208
MUSIC
[SICK AS A DOG]
HAMILTON LEITHAUSER
The nostalgia pendulum has fully come back around to consider indie sleaze and twee, so maybe Hamilton Leithauser will finally get his due. As lead vocalist for The Walkmen, Leithauser first established himself with dynamic vocal chops and real rock-scene creds — a D.C. native, he helped engineer the Fugazi album Red Medicine during a high school summer job at Inner Ear Records, and in more recent years he’s collaborated with Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij. Leithauser’s songwriting careens between dour belligerence and catharsis: On “Happy Lights” from his 2025 album This Side of the Island, he confesses, “I burned all my friends, and I burned all my weed” as backup singers shout along behind him. On Thursday, his summer tour comes to The Basement East with support from Nashvillian Josh Gilligan, whose mellow, introspective indie rock considers matters of the heart on the 2025 album Party of One. ANNIE PARNELL 8 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT EAST 917 WOODLAND ST.
FRIDAY / 7.17
MUSIC
[POPPING NASHVILLE] DRIP CASTLES
The main action of the singer-songwriter scene might have moved to Nashville sometime in the 1980s, but the concept of the individualistic songwriter who also sings remains rooted in timeless principles. The Nashville quartet Drip Castles played their first show in May 2025, and the band brings together a group of songwriters who combine pop, Americana and country-rock. Singer Parker Millsap explores themes of spirituality on his 2023 release Wilderness Within You which chugs along in rhythms that are both New Wave-influenced and homey. Millsap has been releasing music for more than a decade — check out his 2014 track ”Truck Stop Gospel.” Meanwhile, pianist Jillette Johnson shows off post-Carole King harmonic structures on her 2026 EP The Pain, My Friend. Drip Castles are rounded out by keyboardist Jess Nolan and bassist Will Honaker, who also bring popmeets-Nashville sensibilities to the band. On the evidence of their live shows, Drip Castles favor a style that’s light on its feet, complete with harmonies that sit somewhere between yacht rock and circa-1970 Laurel Canyon rock. They’re reportedly working on their debut album, which should be interesting. Nashville singersongwriter Ziona Riley, whose new album Ten New Pens is set for release this year, opens Friday at The Basement. EDD HURT
9 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT
1604 EIGHTH AVE. S.
[ONLY WHEN I’M DREAMING]
FILM
WEEKEND CLASSICS: BEAT THE HEAT: CÉLINE AND JULIE GO BOATING
In the unbridled world of girlhood, anything is possible through the magical power of play. Céline and Julie Go Boating is a three-hour (plus!) arthouse behemoth that taps into girlhood
like a dream, where you’re left only with the fragments you latch onto and attempt to explain. Widely considered the first time-loop comedy, it is delightfully curious and joyously unhinged. Nothing about this classic makes sense, because Céline and Julie eat psychoactive candy that allows their identities to meld. If one reads a book about magic, the other is a magician, and so on. They are linked in action through their slapstick efforts to rescue a ghost child from a haunted house. Directed by Jacques Rivette in 1974, the film represents the hopeful flip-side to the French New Wave’s romantic fatalism. Having inspired some of the identity play and mystery of Mulholland Drive and Desperately Seeking Susan Céline and Julie Go Boating is like experiencing an afternoon of girlhood in film form. TOBY ROSE
11:30 A.M. JULY 17-18 AT THE BELCOURT THEATRE 2102 BELCOURT AVE.
[VOCAL ALL THESE YEARS]
MUSIC
TORI AMOS
Tori Amos has spent three-and-a-half decades putting her declarations on pretty much any topic worth talking about — religion, womanhood, loss, politics, family legacy and abuse, to name a few — to music, powering her way to commercial and critical success thanks to virtuosic piano playing and rich lyricism. On May’s In Times of Dragons, she’s “documenting America right now in its fight for democracy” through an allegory featuring Celtic and Wicca folklore, a queer biker gang and the American South. It can be heady stuff, but it doesn’t take a literature professor to understand that the mystical-sounding Lizard Demons, for example, represent exploitative, power-hungry villains who have done so much damage to our realworld society. The average Dragons track can best be described as “sprawling” or “towering” in a way that should play nicely in the Mother Church, but you’ll also find moments of vintage, rollicking Amos on tracks like “Provincetown.” Baltimore alt-rocker Bartees Strange will open
Friday’s show. COLE VILLENA
8 P.M. AT THE RYMAN
116 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY N.
MUSIC [THE FINAL COUNTDOWN]
THE NASHVILLE 100
In an era when so many people are finding new music through TikTok or recommended playlists, Foster Entertainment is giving 100 local artists a chance to showcase original songs on Saturday as part of The Nashville 100 at Brooklyn Bowl. The showcase will be set up with 10 rounds, with 10 artists performing each round. This is a great chance for people to discover new songs and be among the first to hear original work. The event is a celebration of Nashville singer-songwriters, and though it’s ticketed, prices are less than $25 — four bands per dollar is a pretty solid ratio. The show is open to all ages and doors open at 5 p.m., with performances starting at 5:30. EMMA PICKETT
5:30 P.M. AT BROOKLYN BOWL
925 THIRD AVE. N.
SATURDAY / 7.18
MUSIC
[HEAVY PETTING] BE YOUR OWN PET
After reuniting in 2022 and releasing the album Mommy in 2023, acclaimed garagepunk quartet Be Your Own Pet has averaged a show per year in their hometown. This year’s Nashville show will be Saturday night at The Blue Room, and the band has something special planned. “We’re doing something we’ve never done before — we’re going to play the whole first album in its entirety,” lead vocalist Jemina Pearl tells the Scene. After performing that eponymous album from 2006, BYOP — Pearl, guitarist Jonas Stein, bassist Nathan Vasquez and drummer John Eatherly — will return for a second set. “We’ll dive into kind of the greatest hits of everything people like — stuff off of Get Awkward, some songs off of Mommy, and maybe a new cover or two,” Pearl says. “We have a song that’s not been released that we’ve been playing on the road, and it’s turned into something fans like. It’s called ‘On YR Knees,’ so we might play that.” That’s not the only unreleased song the band has in the can. “We are slowly working on new stuff, but no specific plans for a full album,” the vocalist says. “People won’t have to wait another 15 years, but they might have to wait a little bit longer.”
DARYL SANDERS
7 P.M. AT THE BLUE ROOM AT THIRD MAN RECORDS 623 SEVENTH AVE. S.
[CHOP IT UP]
MUSIC
TOMAHAWK W/THE MELVINS
Saturday night, Brooklyn Bowl will play host to one of the best rock double bills of the year. Hard-rock supergroup Tomahawk — lead vocalist-keyboardist Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle), guitarist Duane Denison (The Jesus Lizard), bassist Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle) and drummer John Stanier (Helmet) — headlines a bill that includes alt-rock legends the Melvins. It will be Tomahawk’s first live performance
since 2013 and kicks off a 21-date run dubbed the A Huge Waste of Your Time and Money Tour. Starting the tour in Nashville was not a coincidence. “Nashville has oddly kind of been a home base in a way,” Denison, who lives in Nashville, tells the Scene. “We started here. I met Mike Patton here. We had our first rehearsals here. We recorded our first album here. So it’s kind of been an unofficial home away from home.” While Tomahawk’s set will feature a lot of fan favorites from across a career spanning a quarter-century, they will lean into material from their stellar 2021 full-length Tonic Immobility, which was released during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Even though that album came out five years ago, we’ve never played any of it live — anywhere,” the guitarist says. “So it’s kind of exciting. It’s kind of like we’ve got a new album.” DARYL SANDERS
8 P.M. AT BROOKLYN BOWL 925 THIRD AVE. N.
MUSIC [RED ROOM DUB] KURT VILE
Few artists write songs that fit as perfectly against the backdrop of a sticky-hot night in July like Kurt Vile, who brings his collection of laid-back rock ’n’ roll tunes to the Ryman Auditorium this week for a one-night show alongside his trusted band The Violators. Vile — a Pennsylvania native known for his take on country-ish and folk-ish indie rock that captures wry truths in everyday observations — tours this summer in support of Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me, a 12-song collection that he cut at a home studio in Philadelphia. Earlier this year, Vile described the release as “my best vocal record. It’s my best electric guitar record. It’s my most organic record, made in the comfort of my own zone.” Listeners can hear the result on songs like “Zoom 97” — a Todd Snider-like ode to those moments when you take an aimless drive in your car — and “Chance to Bleed,” a riffy rumination on long nights with rock music. Texas band Being Dead opens the show. MATTHEW LEIMKUEHLER
8 P.M. AT THE RYMAN
116 REP. JOHN LEWIS WAY N.
DRIP CASTLES
[HOEDOWN THROWDOWN]
COMMUNITY
LAVENDER ROOTS DANCE PARTY
The Scene recently put The Cowgays on our cover, so readers should be well-informed about the cross-section of queer folks and people who love country music. Another item in that Venn diagram overlap is Lavender Roots, a locally based queer line-dancing group. The group, which hosts weekly lessons at a local dance studio, is set to host its first queer linedancing party outside of that space. Lavender Roots is coming off a killer Pride month run, which included a Muna-themed lesson and a performance as backup dancers for The Cowgays at a packed Queer Dance Party. Dancers can expect some line-dancing lessons, dance routines set to traditional country songs, dance routines set to gay songs and dance routines to gay country songs — plus some time to dance without a routine at play. Lavender Roots members teach line dancing skills, but also excel at making people feel included and accepted whether they can dance or not.
HANNAH HERNER
7-11 P.M. AT DRKMTTR
1111 DICKERSON PIKE
[LET’S DANCE]
COMMUNITY
BIG BAND DANCE SERIES
There’s something about an open-air concert that takes me right back to the summers of my childhood. Lazy evenings spent under the stars, good food, good music and watching my folks dance the night away. You can revisit this beloved summer tradition as Metro Parks Music and Creative Parks Nashville (in partnership with the Centennial Park
Conservancy) welcome back their popular Big Band Dance series. Hosted by local radio legend Dave Eastman, Big Band Dance takes place at either the Parthenon Ellipse or Centennial Art Center, every Saturday through Aug. 15. Dynamic Ballroom and Performing Arts offers free lessons, starting at 7 p.m., with live music and dancing from 7:30 to 10. Guests are welcome to bring their own lawn chairs and blankets, pack a picnic or visit one of the food trucks available on site. This weekend’s dance features the Lynn Beal Big Band, who’ll be serving up a great mix of big band classics and original jazz tunes at the Centennial Art Center. And keep an eye out for upcoming performances from The Jazz Alliance (July 25), The Establishment (Aug. 1), Five Points Swing (Aug. 8) and Moonlighters Big Band (Aug. 15). AMY STUMPFL
SATURDAYS THROUGH AUG. 15 AT CENTENNIAL PARK 2500 WEST END AVE.
MUSIC
[MIGHTY MIGHTY GRRRL TONES] GIRL
TONES
Sisters Kenzie and Laila Crowe of the Bowling Green, Ky.-based rock duo Girl Tones are set to cover a lot of ground in Nashville and Middle Tennessee this summer. The riotgrrrl-tinged sister act made their second-ever Bonnaroo appearance this year, though their performance was cut off early due to lightning in the area. Fear not if you’re upset about the shortened set or you simply didn’t want to cough up the cash for a Bonnaroo ticket. The sisters are headed to The Basement on Saturday for yet another high-energy, commanding performance reminiscent of female-fronted indie-punk acts like Sleater-Kinney, Mannequin
TUESDAY / 7.21
MUSIC [ENDLESS ENIGMAS] OF MONTREAL
The musical references on of Montreal’s new album Aethermead are all over the place, which means they’re not obtrusive. I hear techniques that have been used by The Beatles, Steely Dan, The Beach Boys and The Left Banke, but that might just mean singer, songwriter and of Montreal mastermind Kevin Barnes favors a late-1960s musical reality that works for him. Much like the songs on one of the band’s most accomplished albums, 2010’s False Priest, the compositions Barnes wrote for Aethermead sound like what The Beach Boys might have done if they’d elaborated on the idea behind 1977’s The Beach Boys Love You by folding some Pet Sounds lushness back into the mix. Like, say, Brian Wilson or Paul McCartney, Barnes writes about himself and his romantic and spiritual problems throughout Aethermead. The result is a relationship album that comes with deluxe chord changes and lyrics that seem enigmatic until you figure out Barnes is singing about himself, or a version of his persona. The music is rarefied and enigmatic on the album’s “Hack It Up” and “Lacan in the Family,” which skirt brilliance. Aethermead is the work of a true pop experimentalist — we need more of them.
EDD HURT
Pussy and Sincere Engineer — all while crafting their own unique, punchy sound full of gritty and distorted guitars. With the release of several singles this year, Girl Tones have made it clear they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. They are inching toward the release of their debut album, the date of which has yet to be announced. Plus, if you can’t make it to this weekend’s set, the duo is also set to play East Nashville’s Tomato Art Fest in August.
JULIANNE AKERS
7 P.M. AT THE BASEMENT 1604 EIGHTH AVE. S.
FILM [GET OVER HERE]
CRAZY GNOME MOVIE CLUB: MORTAL KOMBAT
Who says movies are only for the theaters? The fine folks at Press Play Video are teaming up once again with Crazy Gnome Brewery for a free outdoor movie night. On Saturday, you can catch the original 1995 Mortal Kombat (fresh off a brilliant 4K restoration from Arrow Video) under the stars at Crazy Gnome. Press Play will be open both before and during the movie, with a preshow (which includes a Mortal Kombat video game tournament) set to begin at 7 p.m. FAB Pizza will be open to pair with Crazy Gnome’s vast beer selection. The techno-violent goodness of Mortal Kombat kicks off at 8. CHARLIE RIDGELY
7 P.M. AT CRAZY GNOME BREWERY
1005 W. KIRKLAND AVE.
8 P.M. AT THE MIL AT CANNERY HALL 1 CANNERY ROW
WEDNESDAY / 7.22
MUSIC
[YOU GET WHAT YOU NEED] SOURTOOTH W/MORE WEIGHT, GOOD SAMARITAN & KNIFEY
The conventional summer jam is groovy and lightweight, perfect for kicking back with a beverage or singing along with the windows down on a road trip. If you’re looking for something that’s the opposite of what I just described this season, catching this all-local bill just might help you find it. Topping the lineup is post-hardcore outfit Sour Tooth, whose 2025 album Bruxism (that’s a technical term for grinding your teeth) blends songs of emotional turmoil with a heavy and abrasive but notsluggish sound, which brings to mind early Jesus Lizard. More Weight describes themselves as “angry shoegaze,” and I hear a lot of the best stuff from ’90s and Aughts hard rock in their March EP The Thing That Survives. There was a lot that I found plain boring in how nu metal brought heavy music and hip-hop together, but I might have had a different assessment if Good Samaritan had been around then. I’ve only experienced Knifey, the band rounding out the evening, via clips of their live show posted to Instagram — but what I’ve seen and heard of their hardcore-meets-New Wave style and the controlled chaos of their show has put them at the top of my list to see ASAP. STEPHEN TRAGESER
8 P.M. AT THE EAST ROOM 2412 GALLATIN AVE.
BIG BAND DANCE SERIES
BOWER NAILS, PASTIS AND CULTURE CLUB
Going solo in Nashville’s rapidly developing Wedgewood-Houston
BY DANNY BONVISSUTO
Date Night is a multipart road map for everyone who wants a nice evening out, but has no time to plan it. It’s for people who want to do more than just go to one restaurant and call it a night. It’s for overwhelmed parents who don’t get out often; for friends who visit the same three restaurants because they’re too afraid to try someplace new; and for busy folks who keep forgetting all the places they’ve driven past, heard about, seen on social and said, “Let’s remember that place next time we go out.”
ALMOST EVERY SUMMER for the past two-plus decades, my extended family has made the all-day drive to the Forgotten Coast of the Florida Panhandle — three cars loaded down with enough food to feed nine people three meals a day for a week because no one wants to drag their sandy ass off the beach and run to the Piggly Wiggly once we settle in. It’s the one week of the year I fully step off the hamster wheel, shut down devices and reset, like when the dental hygienist scrapes the layers of tartar off your teeth until they’re smooth again. Yes, there is a family beach photo. Yes, there is an agreed-upon outfit color. (I’ve learned to live with it.) The purpose is to get as far away from the world as possible and be together, which is wonderful. Most of the time. Because I thrive on alone time and space — especially from people to whom I’m related by
blood and marriage — I’ve learned to stock up on both before I enter a week of full frontal family time. It’s as essential as a stack of good books and sunscreen.
STOP 1: BOWER NAILS
Outside on a recent summer night, Wedgewood-Houston vibrated with activity. Tourists strolled by in their brand-new boots, Hermès shopping bags swinging on their arms. A gaggle
of crop-top teens, followed by one disheveled parent, dipped hot-pink spoons into fro-yo bowls. (More on that in a bit.) Cars slow-rolled by, drivers craning their necks to find a sliver of space to park amid the rampant, clanging construction. Inside Bower Nails, my feet soaked in a copper pedestal bowl while I reclined against a royal-blue lumbar pillow, a light blanket within arm’s reach should I get chilly.
Opened in June, Bower Nails exists because two women who live in We-Ho — Amanda Soeder Gleaton and Andrea Fishkin — kept running into each other and saying, We need a nail salon in the neighborhood. They said it so often they eventually asked each other, Wait, are we supposed to open a nail salon?
So they did. And it is beautiful in a leafy, modern and completely comfortable way. It’s not one of those turn-and-burn salons with rows upon rows of chairs, racks of polish choices and Jerry Springer reruns blaring from the TVs. And it’s not impossibly tiny or precious, chichi, frou-frou or any of those eye-rolly terms. And even though they offer all the things — clean polish and custom oils and scrubs from Nashville-based wellness company
The Herbalist Collective — they’re not in-your-face about it. That said, the price tag reflects the affluent area: Basic adult pedi prices start at $105 to $115 with additional charges for nail art and other services.
I spent too long looking at my polish options, trying not to pick the same bright berry color I always choose. I narrowed it down to “Pumpkin” (warm coral) and “Love in the Dunes” (grayish purple). I went with “Pumpkin,” which was not, as I feared, too UT orange. My nail tech Allison put my own shoes back on me when she was done — none of those flimsy disposable flip-flops for Bower — and I took my moisturized feet around the corner to dinner.
in June 2025. But these days it feels right at home amid the high-end restaurants and retail options in every direction.
I found a bar seat with a view of the kitchen door, ordered a glass of bubbles from a bartender with a topknot and eavesdropped on two sound engineers next to me. It’s fascinating how they obsess over sound the way writers obsess over words. Each appetizer on the menu was more decadent than the last — escargot, foie gras parfait, steak tartare and a $150 fresh seafood tower — and I settled on the squash blossoms stuffed with lump crab. There were two, and I didn’t have to share.
Then onto the moules frites, or mussels and fries, which are worth the work it takes to pry those little bivalves out of each shell so they can bob in the buttery white-wine broth with razor-thin slices of onion and garlic. Pastis serves the mussels with a fork, but I asked for a spoon because I’m mostly in it for the broth. I learned this lesson long ago over dinner with Father John Putka, the priest who married my husband Dom and me: He used shells to scoop broth into
his mouth once the mussels were gone. Back then I was aghast. Now I appreciate it for the nofucks-given move that it is.
STOP 2: PASTIS NASHVILLE
Anyone who thinks eating alone at the bar is sad hasn’t bellied up at Pastis Nashville. One of a handful of outposts of the original NYC brasserie started by restaurateur Keith McNally in the late ’90s, it seemed a bit out of place when it opened
One of my favorite things about French food is its celebration of mayonnaise. The South may divide itself between Hellmann’s and Duke’s, but handmade always wins in my book — especially if I’m dipping fries in it. Which I did, many times, alternating between room-temp mayo and chilled ketchup, and barely made a dent in the small silver bucket they came in. It was like every time I ate one, three more replaced it.
PASTIS BAR
BOWER NAILS SEATING AREA
STOP 3: CULTURE CLUB
Despite the heat, I took a much-needed lap of Houston Street after leaving Pastis, past Every Direction Vintage, Americano Lounge and Bastion to Never Never and back on the other side of the street, past Jackalope Brewing, Aba, Present Tense and Alla Vita. It’s shocking how quickly one city street can change in a matter of months. I expected a line outside of Culture Club, the new frozen Greek yogurt spot on Martin Street — but I didn’t expect it to move so quickly. Within minutes I’d moved past every tween and pregnant lady sitting on the banquette that runs the length of the small space, sampled a few flavors and filled my one-size-fits-all cup with a solid base of peanut butter. Greek yogurt has more protein than regular fro-yo and is considered healthier, which maybe doesn’t matter much when you cover it with cookie dough and dark chocolate fudge. Customers can’t add their own toppings, which was fine because I got a little overwhelmed with all the cool choices, including local collabs like strawberry jam from Nashville Jam Co., “croissant crack” from Perenn (Culture Club’s soon-to-be neighbor) and Tennessee Artisan Honey. On that note, Culture Club has the branding and feel of a national chain but is local, and their second location opened inside Chief’s on Broadway this month.
From my seat by the door, I watched people walk in and either pretend not to check themselves out in the mirrored wall behind me or very obviously check themselves out, fluffing
bangs, sucking in their nonexistent guts. The crowd included scruffy guys in pajamas, girls carrying tiny dogs, dates, dads and everyone else who consumed Culture Club content on the socials and came to check it out. And the glory of it all was that none of them are related to me. ▼
Bower Nails
1214 Martin St. bowernails.com
Pastis
512 Houston St. pastisnashville.com
Culture Club
1212 Martin St. eatcultureclub.com
The Main Room
7/19 NASHVILLE GUITAR & GEAR SWAP MEET
7/23 BIT BRIGADE PERFORMS “MEGA MAN X” LIVE
7/24 & 7/25 WILL HOGE’S EASTSIDE RAMBLE
7/31 MUSIC CITY STONES
8/1 THE VOID: ROCK & INDUSTRIAL NIGHT
8/6, 8/7, & 8/9 EAST NASHVILLE FACEBOOK PAGE: THE MUSICAL 8/8 PRO WRESTLING SYMPHONY: NO REMORSE
8/14 STATIC SURGE FEST
8/29 KARROT: A TRIBUTE TO KORN 8/30 EMAROSA
9/9 VOLUMES
9/10 ATTA BOY
9/17 MILITARIE GUN
9/19 JUTES
9/20 WXNA FALL RECORD FAIR 2026
9/27 HOT FIX SIDESHOW 10/2 HAZLETT
10/3 DRIVIN N CRYIN 10/9 OMENBRINGER: A NIGHT ON BLACK MOUNTAIN
The ‘58
7/16 AMERICAN BLONDE
7/17 20 YEARS OF PARADISE DAZE
7/18 FIN 7/22 AN EVENING WITH SUPER FELON
7/31 BOBBY BARE JR.
8/6 THE SOAPGIRLS
8/8 LIP CRITIC
8/10 KATE COSENTINO
8/28 BOOTSAROO:
A “WINDOWS ON THE CUMBERLAND” CELEBRATION
9/4 THE WELL
9/18 DEATH LENS
9/30 HOT ROD CIRCUIT
10/1 THE BLACK QUEEN 10/6 SOPHIE HUNTER
10/17 LAMP FT. RUSS LAWTON, SCOTT METZGER, RAY PACZKOWSKI
The Lounge
7/16 MARY RODGERS MENAGERIE AT 7PM BUULB AT 8:30PM JUNE & GILES AT 9PM
7/17 THE SUGAR PILLS AT 7PM
7/18 NEIL NIGHT AT 7PM 7/19 SWAP MEET LOUNGE FEST:
CHRIS CASELLO AT 12PM
SILAS CALDWELL AT 1PM
THE PATRICK SWEANY MIXED BAG AT 2PM
THE RUSTY NAILS AT 3PM ANDREW WHITE BAND AT 4PM
CULTURE
PET OF THE WEEK!
Name: HATTIE MAE
Age: 3 yrs.
Weight: 15 lbs.
MEET HATTIE MAE! gentle soul with a heart full of love! This sweet girl is happiest when she’s close to her favorite people, often following them from room to room hoping for pets and affection. Hattie Mae loves to cuddle, lean in for attention, and curl up in her cozy bed for a relaxing nap. While she enjoys spending time with her humans, she also appreciates having her own space to unwind. She has a calm personality, a friendly nature, and a playful side that shines when she explores her favorite tunnel. Hattie Mae is ready to find a loving home where she can be cherished.
Call 615.352.1010 or visit nashvillehumane.org
Located at 213 Oceola Ave., Nashville, TN 37209
Adopt. Bark. Meow. Microchip. Neuter. Spay.
INSIDE NASHVILLE’S WORKER-
OWNED SALON CO-OP
Mayday Salon Cooperative is transforming the beauty industry, one haircut at a time
BY CAMERON BEYRENT
Westwood. She describes the staff simply as “punks who grew up.”
“I’ve noticed that [my time here] between clients is just as valuable as [time spent] with my clients,” says stylist Kaitlynn Shaw. “It’s important to have an understanding of what’s going on in everybody’s day-to-day and not just your own.”
Zac Sirten, a founding stylist at Mayday, adds: “Not having a major hierarchy here sets the tone. We all have to work together.”
an independent bookstore for independent people
UPCOMING EVENTS
PARNASSUSBOOKS.NET/EVENTS FOR TICKETS & UPDATES
FRIDAY, JULY 17
4:30PM I SURVIVED: A HISTORIC CELEBRATION! at PARNASSUS
MONDAY, JULY 20
6:30PM MIRANDA SMITH with KIERSTEN MODGLIN at PARNASSUS Scary Movie Night
THURSDAY, JULY 23
6:00PM TEEN WRITING WORKSHOP with MAGGIE STIEFVATER at PARNASSUS for teens ages 13 - 18
TUESDAY, JULY 28
6:30PM
D.W. GILLESPIE at PARNASSUS The Doll House
THERE’S AN AIRY loft space at Mayday Salon Cooperative where the staff often assembles for what’s known as radical healing. In a worker-owned co-op, full transparency is key to success, and at Mayday in East Nashville, nothing is off the table — from finances to the emotional realities of working there.
“I genuinely have a justice kink,” Mayday’s founder Olive Scibelli tells the Scene. “I just want everyone to be taken care of. I want everything to be fair. I want everything to be just. I want people to feel heard and seen.”
cal when it’s a worker-first mentality.”
The salon is named after the International Workers’ Day holiday, which celebrates labor solidarity and collective action on May 1. Think of it as a progressive, international Labor Day — a holiday rooted in workers reclaiming their agency by taking to the streets.
Mayday seemed to emerge from a cosmic string of events. Scibelli and longtime friend and fellow stylist Alexa Brooke were co-managers at Fruits Hair Lab, the Nashville salon owned by singer-songwriter and Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams that shuttered in June 2025. When the news broke, the two immediately knew they wanted to open their own salon as a co-op. Scibelli’s father had recently died, leaving them money that helped make the business possible. The Woodland Street location was also available because utility limitations made it unsuitable for a bar — one of the few businesses that can typically afford Nashville’s high rents.
Scibelli remains transparent about the business’s finances — there’s no hierarchy among who has information, and the books are always open to everyone. Originally from upstate New York, Scibelli references Joni Mitchell as an inspiration. It’s a little like how Mitchell described writing her 1971 landmark album Blue — operating “like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes.” Scibelli has nothing to hide.
6:30PM COLSON WHITEHEAD at FISK UNIVERSITY Cool Machine
WEDNESDAY, JULY 29
FRIDAY, JULY 30
4:00PM FIND WALDO PARTY at PARNASSUS
3900 Hillsboro Pike Suite 14 | Nashville, TN 37215 (615) 953-2243 Shop online at parnassusbooks.net
A worker-owned business model is a perfect fit for Scibelli’s radical sensibility. According to the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, worker cooperatives are “values-driven businesses that put worker and community benefit at the core of their purpose.” At Mayday, everyone shares in the labor and profits. Decisions are made collectively, with systems in place for conflict resolution. The salon operates on a 60/40 split (60 percent to the workers), compared with the industry-standard 50/50 split at most salons. Mayday also pays apprentices a living wage — $20 an hour, plus tips — which employees confirm is rare in the industry.
Mayday’s stylists frequently move in and out of the space as they work, and being in their company feels kind of like being inside a Charli XCX-inspired Frida Kahlo painting: vibrant, stylish, genuinely kind.
“A really freeing experience for me is coming in here where you can be more outwardly hopeful,” stylist and education director Haley Spillman says. “You don’t have to tiptoe around people you work with who maybe don’t agree with you. When everybody’s on the same page, there’s a freedom in that.”
Despite seemingly being the only one of its kind in the country and operating for less than a year, Mayday is thriving. The salon is consistently booked, and Brooke notes that the staff has more than 100 years of combined experience — a rarity for a salon that’s still in its infancy.
“A rising tide lifts all ships,” Brooke says, citing a mantra the staff frequently returns to. “And that’s really what we try to do here.” ▼
Scibelli, who also runs community-driven allages music venue Drkmttr, was already familiar with co-op ideology through years in Nashville’s DIY and activist communities. For Scibelli, the philosophy behind Mayday is simple: “It’s a safe space here, and it’s crazy that we think it’s radi-
Spillman wears a gold orb necklace — a nod to the iconography of punk fashion designer Vivienne
Shop the latest trends from 20+ local boutiques with up to 75% off retail prices, $10-$15 bins , BOGO deals and more!
THE FACTORY AT FRANKLIN SATURDAY, AUGUST 15 11AM-2PM FASHIONFORAFRACTION.COM
Participating Boutiques
CT Grace | e.Allen | Elle Gray | Fab’rik Franklin
Flash & Trash & a Little Bit of Sass | Harper’s Den
Society Boutique | Square-D Nashville
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MANY MORE TO BE ANNOUNCED!
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and more
Gary Nicholson & The Change + Yates McKendree Jim Brown + Taylor Austin Dye + Jesse Keith Whitley with Lee Newton
(Molly Felder & Bill DeMain), Suzi Ragsdale, Marna Taylor, The Prickly Pair (Mason and Irene) & Seth Timbs
The Time Jumpers
Bluebird on 3rd featuring Phil Barton, Kylie Sackley & Jerry Flowers with Jordan Budde + Emma Geier Blondeme - A Blondie Tribute + RAYGUN
The Long Players performing Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” featuring Todd Sharp, Jonell Mosser, Billy Burnette, Yvonne Smith, Swan Dive Big Damn Music Jam featuring Erin Stoll, Nick Watson, Steve Anthony, Jenny Teator, Jon Brennan & Krystina B
HANGING OUT TO MAKE MUSIC TO HANG OUT TO
Styrofoam Winos’ Any River is fueled by the casual magic of camaraderie
BY SEAN L. MALONEY
MUSIC HAS MADE me do a lot of strange things over the years. But feeling wistful about the Green Hills Recycling Center? That’s new. But that’s the charm of Styrofoam Winos and the joy of their latest long-player Any River. The trio makes the quotidian feel magical, bringing a vibe that is equal parts hip-shaking, heartwarming and bucket-filling. Any River is the aural equivalent of tubing down the Caney Fork: cool, laid-back and deeper than the still waters on the surface suggest. We caught up with the trio of stellar songwriters — Joe Kenkel by phone, and Lou Turner and Trevor Nikrant by email since they’re on the road with a different band — ahead of a pair of hometown celebrations for the album, released in June via Dear Life. They’ll play July 23 at Grimey’s and July 24 at The Blue Room at Third Man Records.
“There are a lot of moving parts,” Kenkel tells the Scene. “The three of us are all individual songwriters that also have our own solo projects. … But with the band, it’s like in some ways the constraint is helpful for us. I think we work really well with a goal together.”
The Winos are involved in an impressive amount of creative activity, even for a band
in a town like Nashville. With a core of three songwriters who are also multi-instrumentalists, there is plenty of potential for things to go haywire. But the collaborative nature of their friendship and the way they listen keeps things grounded and focused without feeling forced or constrained. It’s a delicate balance that keeps the listener engaged without demanding engagement. It’s a colloquy between band and listener, a dialogue between musicians and audience.
“There are only three of us, and the songs are ours — there is some more freedom here,” explains Nikrant. “For example, we were playing a really hot and rowdy Saturday night show in London, and in the middle of the song ‘BBQ’ I realized that we were about to reach the very quiet bridge. The crowd was definitely not ready for a gentle interlude.
“So with a quick glance, we all decided to end the song with some big hits after the second chorus, and just get onto the next rocker. Conversely, for more intimate shows we can play our more rocking songs in a more tender and gentle way. So we have the freedom to sculpt the dynamics however we want, and it’s a fun way to
tailor ourselves to different rooms and different audiences.”
The way the players support each other sonically — the little backup vocals that drift in as each singer takes a turn at the mic, the interplay between the pocket and the riff — all points to bigger, stronger emotional bonds than even those that develop through being bandmates. The group recorded over four days with Jim Marlowe at End of an Ear in Louisville, Ky. The fun of a long weekend with buds, eating oysters and hot dogs at Yachtsea, playing some tasty jams and bingeing Lord of the Rings, spills onto Any River like a pal rolling out of a kayak after one too many tallboys.
The band’s roots go back to their days as students at Belmont University circa 2011 and later co-workers at the much-missed J.J.’s Market & Cafe.
The combination coffee shop, bar and student hangout is the kind of thing that’s long gone from Midtown and vanishing from the city overall.
“It was much more than the sum of its parts — something for everyone” explains Turner. “It was a place you could go to be alone and work on something or to hang with friends. It was like a communal living room.” That third-space, something-for-everyone aesthetic is reflected in the Winos’ ability to blend sounds and ideas from different scenes into a cohesive whole, eclectic though it may be.
“Most of the time the songs — and I think this is the case for [all of Any River] — came from things that we all just improvised together,” Kenkel says. “We’ll improvise, make a little voice memo and record it, or record it to the computer. And we’ll amass a good amount of recordings of improvised stuff and revisit them and be like, ‘Oh, this is awesome. Let’s pursue this as a real song.’”
The finished works are free-flowing and loose, slacking off in that classic indie way — think Silver Jews on a day when everyone’s feeling good, Michael Hurley at the height of his powers, Stephen Malkmus slinking his way through country and psychedelia. From the Herb Alpert-channeling trumpet part on “New Friend” to the unbelievably catchy “Someone Wants to Send You a Message,” Styrofoam Winos songs are ready to camp out in your head until fall comes.
“I think I’m just such a big fan of being in the studio together, and it’s just so fun to feel the songs come to life,” says Kenkel. “There’s a little bit of a mischievous fun energy to it as well, I think.” ▼
Any River out now via Dear Life Playing 4 p.m. Thursday, July 23, at Grimey’s Playing 8 p.m. Friday, July 24, at The Blue Room at Third Man Records
WALKING TALL
On The Great Unknowing, John R. Miller follows in the footsteps of songwriting giants
BY BEE DELORES
fell in love with as a teenager to support his thoughtful narratives and unfussy drawl.
In June, the Newport Festival Foundation announced Miller as the 2026 recipient of the prestigious John Prine Songwriter Fellowship. Not only will Miller make his debut at the upcoming Newport Folk Festival, set for July 24 through 26, but he was also given a chance to spend a week writing at the Almanack Arts Colony on Nantucket.
JOHN R. MILLER cuts his work from the same cloth as John Prine. He’s plainspoken, yet he taps into what makes humans tick — for better and worse — with profound nuance. The Washington, D.C., native incisively points his lyrical pen at the for-profit prison industrial complex on one of the most brilliant songs of his career. “Jails get fuller, but they ain’t getting any whiter,” Miller sings in the dusty but venomous “Looking for a Place to Die.” The song stretches the thematic scope of his new record The Great Unknowing, which hits streaming platforms on Friday following its initial physical-only release in June.
“If you incentivize crime, you make it so that crime is profitable, which means you incentivize criminalizing people,” Miller says of the song, which he wrote even before the 2024 presidential election sent Donald Trump back to the White House. “Typically, the people who get criminalized the most are the people who are the most marginalized. In our country, that is basically anyone who isn’t white, straight, and not a cisgender person. It has fallen on minorities. I see it as basically modern-day slavery.”
Miller spent the first 11 years of his life living just outside of D.C. before his family relocated to Hedgesville, in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. While living among the Appalachian hills, he met his longtime collaborator and co-producer Adam Meisterhans (Tyler Childers, Lillie Mae, Kelsey Waldon). Miller recorded his previous two albums Heat Comes Down and Depreciated in Nashville, which he’s called home since the late 2010s. But with The Great Unknowing, he sought a new challenge, so he and Meisterhans headed to Tulsa, Okla., and set up shop in The Church Studio.
Restored by current owner Teresa Knox, The Church had housed several different church denominations through the years. Leon Russell bought the building in 1972 and turned it into an office and studio for his Shelter Records. During the time that followed, the space served legendary musicians and songwriters (some Shelter signees and some not) from Willie Nelson, Tom Petty and Dwight Twilley to Stevie Wonder, The Gap Band, Freddie King and beyond.
“IF YOU INCENTIVIZE CRIME, YOU MAKE IT SO THAT CRIME IS PROFITABLE, WHICH MEANS YOU INCENTIVIZE CRIMINALIZING PEOPLE.”
-JOHN R. MILLER
Miller was naturally very familiar with the studio’s history before recording. In fact, he’d just read Heartbreaker: A Memoir, co-written by famed guitarist-vocalist Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and novelist Ari Surdoval. “There’s a whole part of that where Tom Petty and Mike get to The Church Studio for the first time in the early ’70s,” Miller recalls. “Peter Tosh is there, and they greeted him at the door.”
Stories like that have greatly inspired Miller to craft his best, most emotionally rich record to date. The record brings a heavier, hard-driving sound that nods to the heavy rock music Miller
“I never got into this to be awarded anything, or get any kind of recognition from anybody,” Miller says. “But it’s obviously a great honor. You never really expect to be doing something like this this long, much less getting to be in the orbit of things that have been very meaningful to you for so long.”
He spent only a few days in Nantucket before he got the call that his father had passed away. When he hops on our Zoom call, he’s just returned from the funeral the night before.
“It’s been a crazy, very strange couple of weeks,” he says. He also notes that he’s carving out time to return to Almanack later this year.
“I got into a groove almost immediately when I got there,” he says, adding that he wrote two or three songs’ worth of material. “I only took my phone, some notebooks, a little Bluetooth speaker and some sundry items. I don’t get to do that very often, just be completely alone in a place and bored out of my mind. That’s the best way to make anything.” ▼
The Great Unknowing out now via Rounder Records, streaming July 17
Performing Thursday, July 23, on the Grand Ole Opry
SPIN
IN DA CLUB
BY EMMA PICKETT
TAKE A SPIN through the catalog of shoegazekissed bedroom rockers The Sewing Club, penned primarily by singer-bassist Hannah McElroy, and you’ll find songs about love and loss and reflections that make personal experiences universal and relatable. They’ve been a consistent presence in Nashville music for years and tour regularly, so it was a little bit of a surprise that their show Saturday night at The Blue Room at Third Man Records marked their first time headlining in their hometown. They made it one to remember with material new and old, a full-body massage with drums and bass and wicked guitar solos — and a little help from some friends.
TSC booked experimental rockers Melaina Kol to open the show, but an illness forced them to cancel. (By the way, watch for the group’s forthcoming album Okay That’s a Great Idea Because If I Do That Then, out Aug. 14 via Julia’s War.) One of the great things about Music City is there’s usually a good chance you can call up a friend of a friend to help you out. And so at 8 p.m. sharp Ella Molsee and her band stepped onstage. Along with her gratitude for the opportunity to play, she shared that her set came courtesy of Billy Ayers — frontman of Billy!, who’d be playing next — who rang her up and asked if she wanted to have band practice in front of an audience at The Blue Room. Molsee and company brought their dreamy rock that sounds soft and hits hard, opening with “Lego Bricks.” The single was released last year and leads her
April EP Unsaid Truths, whose “Secret” and “The Dog” were also part of the set list. Near the end of the performance, she played “Newer Clothes,” in which she name-drops Ayers — a solid segue into his portion of the show. Including singer-guitarist Ayers, Billy! is a six-piece outfit sporting three guitars, bass, percussion and drums, and they make heavy, twangy rock with textures that draw strength from shoegaze. It’s been a little more than a year since their debut album Holding On, and their infectious camaraderie was apparent from the second they hit the stage. They played songs old and new, including “Fire Marshal,” “Big Star” and “Milk,” and ending with “Cheek Full,” the closer of 2023’s This Is How It Started EP. You could feel the bass in your chest, and the guitar solos were full-throttle. The set never fully came to a stop, as the group was aiming to maximize the amount of playing they got to do in their limited time slot, and Ayers didn’t speak much between songs. Sporting a camo hat in place of his usual Braves cap and a T-shirt celebrating legendary Crimson Tide football coach “Bear” Bryant, the Alabama native made one brief statement few would argue with: “What a great night to be at The Blue Room.”
After a short break, The Sewing Club took over. The audience drew closer to the stage as McElroy sang into a phone receiver repurposed as a mic. She told the crowd we’d be hearing a lot of new songs from an unreleased album, which the band will disclose more info about at a later time. Among the unreleased highlights was the thunderous, head-banging, punk-schooled “Alright, OK.” Then McElroy and band switched gears effortlessly into the slower almost-ballad feel of “Pocket,” a classic TSC song she explained to us was about being shy and in love. Another longtime fan favorite, “Wyatt” has become a set list staple, and it felt like the whole crowd was singing the lyrics in unison. They wrapped with “Strange,” one of their best-known songs, which recently got the music video treatment.
McElroy seldom stayed in one place onstage, enhancing the feeling of intimacy natural to the venue, and she danced and interacted with the fans all through the night. The Sewing Club worked hard to make the show warm and welcoming, and it paid off with a thoroughly engaged audience, in which it felt like everyone was having the time of their life singing at the top of their lungs. Making music professionally can be overwhelmingly difficult, and it’s frequently unpredictable. But shows like this are part of what makes the struggle worth it. ▼
Saturday, July 18
SONGWRITER SESSION
Alan Rhody NOON · FORD THEATER
Sunday, July 19
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT Fats Kaplin 1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, July 25
SONGWRITER SESSION
JD Shelburne NOON · FORD THEATER
Saturday, July 25 INTERVIEW
Buddy Cannon 2:30 pm · FORD THEATER
Sunday, July 26
HATCH SHOW PRINT Let’s Go Bandanas!
BANDANA-MAKING WORKSHOP 10:00 am
HATCH SHOW PRINT SHOP
WITNESS HISTORY
Sunday, July 26
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT
Daniel Grindstaff 1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, August 1
SONGWRITER SESSION
Dani Flowers NOON · FORD THEATER
Sunday, August 2
MUSICIAN SPOTLIGHT Guthrie Trapp 1:00 pm · FORD THEATER
Saturday, August 8
SONGWRITER SESSION Carter Faith NOON · FORD THEATER
Saturday, August 8
NASHVILLE CATS
Salute to Musician John Jorgenson 2:30 pm · FORD THEATER
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.
BOYHOODS
Filmmaker Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March and Remake document and devastate
BY LAURA HUTSON HUNTER
I’VE BEEN KNOWN to push the documentary Sherman’s March onto people with the fervor of an evangelical. It’s so many things at once — a time capsule of mid-1980s aesthetics, a menagerie of eccentric characters baring their souls, a master class in the art of cinéma vérité from filmmaker Ross McElwee. But perhaps most importantly, it is what the film’s subtitle claims: “a meditation on the possibility of romantic love in the South during an era of nuclear weapons proliferation.”
The film’s narrative breaks down right
SPLICES
Audacious epics headline the late-summer film schedule
BY LOGAN BUTTS
MY FAVORITE WAY to escape the oppressively humid Tennessee summer is with a trip to the air-conditioned oasis that is the movies. Luckily, both our local arthouse and the megaplexes are obliging this year with slates dotted with extra-long epics.
Christopher Nolan is one of few directors left who can truly conjure a blank-check film. After the mega success of 2023’s Best Picture-winning Oppenheimer, Nolan was operating with the blankest of checks. The result is his nearly three-hour retelling of The Odyssey (and other assorted Greek mythology texts), which opens wide this week — including on 70 mm IMAX at Regal Opry Mills and on 35 mm at the Belcourt. You can find our review online this week.
With Odyssey fever about to take over the film world, the Belcourt has lined up a special series celebrating lavish big-screen epics of all kinds. Weekend Classics:
away — in the first scenes, McElwee explains with voiceover narration (delivered with a dry, soft-spoken drawl) that his intention was to make a documentary about the lingering effects of Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s 1864 march through the South. But just before filming began, his girlfriend left him, and he’s unable to think about anything else. As he leaves New York and his now-ex-girlfriend to return to his family in the South like a lovelorn prodigal son, a new kind of film takes shape.
Beat the Heat began earlier this month with Nolan’s space saga Interstellar and Martin Scorsese’s desert crime chronicle Casino. The series continues this weekend with surrealist French friendship tale Céline and Julie Go Boating (July 17-18) and the Ross McElwee documentary Sherman’s March (July 19 & 21). Remake, McElwee’s reevaluation of Sherman’s March following the tragic death of the filmmaker’s son, will also screen on July 21. Other entries in the series read like a Letterboxd bro’s ideal lineup: Oliver Stone’s madcap JFK (July 24-26), Andrei Tarkovsky’s biography of Russian artist Andrei Rublev (July 31-Aug. 2), David Lean’s epic of all epics Lawrence of Arabia (Aug. 7-9), Sergio Leone’s revisionist Western masterwork (and a favorite of late Scene editor-in-chief Jim Ridley) Once Upon a Time in the West (Aug. 21-23) and Quentin Tarantino’s Tinseltown fairy tale Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Aug. 28-30), which will be screening on 35 mm.
The Queer Qlassics series continues at the Belcourt with Park Chan-wook’s twisty The Handmaiden (July 29) and 2019 action/sci-fi anime Promare (July 22).
Midnight Movies has a robust slate of cult classics on deck with Godzilla vs. Biollante (July 24), Cloverfield (July 25), Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Aug. 7), Scott
Pilgrim vs. the World (Aug. 8), Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (Aug. 22) and the return of the Super Secret Mystery Midnight Movie on Aug. 21.
Music City Mondays are still rolling with NOFX doc 40 Years of Fuckin’ Up (July 20), Michelangelo Antonioni’s conspiracy thriller Blow-Up (July 27), 1958 Newport Jazz Festival concert film Jazz on a Summer’s Day (Aug. 3) and Gypsy 83: The Director’s Cut (Aug. 31). There will also be a special Music City Mondays screening on Aug. 10 of The Easy Kind, a film starring and inspired by the story of Nashville country singer Elizabeth Cook. Cook will be on hand for a performance and a Q&A.
The Belcourt is also set to celebrate Elaine May with screenings of the lauded multihyphenate’s directorial efforts A New Leaf (Aug. 11 & 15), Mikey and Nicky (Aug. 12 & 16) and Ishtar (Aug. 17). A 4K restoration of Jane Campion’s acclaimed 1993 drama The Piano will show Aug. 21-27. And a pair of Staff Picks round out the Belcourt’s summer repertory lineup — Olivier Assayas’ meta-text Irma Vep (Aug. 4) and the beloved object of cult worship for Millennial Film Guys, Michael Mann’s 2006 Miami Vice remake (Sept. 4).
Nashville comedian John Early’s directorial debut
In the 40 years since its 1986 release, Sherman’s March has become even more. McElwee pioneered first-person filmmaking decades before smartphones made it ubiquitous, documenting his life and the people closest to him with nearly constant attention. That’s one of the reasons that Remake, McElwee’s latest film, is so effective. The new film, which screens twice on July 21 at the Belcourt, reexamines Sherman’s March under a new, devastating rubric — his son, Adrian, has died from a fentanyl overdose. McElwee sets up the film’s waylaid narrative in Remake, much as he did in Sherman’s March, in voiceover narration. This footage of his young son is no longer part of the film he had intended to make. “Now, as I look back over that footage from those years,” McElwee says in a similar but now older and more weathered drawl, “I find a partial record of what was happening in our lives then. What you were up to, and what I was up to, and how we were both moving closer to the day that you would die.” ▼
Sherman’s March NR, 157 minutes
Screening 11:30 a.m. Sunday, July 19, and 3:25 p.m. Tuesday, July 21, at the Belcourt
Remake NR, 114 minutes
Screening 1 and 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 21, at the Belcourt
Maddie’s Secret is still playing at the Belcourt, as is Olivia Wilde’s hilarious dramedy The Invite. Coming attractions on the new release schedule include Gregg Araki’s first feature in 12 years I Want Your Sex (opens July 31), Jane Schoenbrun’s slasher deconstruction Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Aug. 13, on 35 mm) and Matt Johnson’s Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony (Aug. 21).
The industry is clearing out for a Tom Holland takeover of the megaplexes this summer with the aforementioned The Odyssey and the latest Peter Parker entry Spider-Man: Brand New Day (July 31). The jury’s still out on whether Mr. Zendaya himself has the sauce when it comes to non-Spiderman leading roles, so this one-two punch will be an intriguing test case. Other wide releases to look out for include the long-awaited return from indie genre weirdo Nicolas Winding Refn with Her Private Hell (July 24), high-concept rom-com One Night Only (Aug. 7), David Robert Mitchell’s suburban dinosaur mystery box The End of Oak Street (Aug. 14), Ridley Scott’s post-apocalyptic adaptation The Dog Stars (Aug. 28) and the rescued-from-tax-write-off-hell Coyote vs. Acme (Aug. 28). ▼
SHERMAN’S MARCH
REMAKE
Across
1 Word before baked or naked
5 Pinnacles
10 Thousand ___, city that’s part of Greater Los Angeles
14 ___ Sea, body of water that lost 90% of its volume to irrigation
15 Not secured
16 Arm part
17 It might have many sides
18 “Yes, sir!,” to an ancient Roman?
20 Like photons, but not protons
22 Passes out
58 A wine (with an accent), or a flower (without one) 59 Farm measures 60 Genetic communicator, for short 61 Lyrical works 62 Bare amount 63 Gym units Down 1 Jon of “Top Gun: Maverick”
Integral calculation
Setups for some routers, in brief
Poker holding of four cards of the same suit 5 Clark Kent has one
23 Sarcastic laugh syllable
24 Yea or nay
25 Sailor’s bearings, to an ancient Roman?
30 Flu-fighting org.
33 Met someone?
34 “Begone!”
35 Milky Way explosion
36 Live
38 Many a commencement speaker, in brief
39 Had the answer
40 Your mind’s eye?
42 “To be,” in Iberia
43 Certain Microsoft Office files, to an ancient Roman?
45 Destination for 2025’s ESCAPADE satellites
46 “Cobra ___” (Netflix series)
Barnyard producers of 7-Down 7 Sounds produced by 6-Down 8 Key next to a Touch Bar on some Mac laptops
9 Ocean mist
10 Convex physical feature
11 EGOT-winning composer Menken
12 Furrow, as one’s brow
13 Without 19 Gillette Stadium team in the N.F.L., to fans
21 TV journalist Spencer
24 Truth
25 Traffic jam cacophony
26 Barely winning, say
Word on either side of “say”
47 Chicken
50 Something you might keep tabs on?
55 Prestigious group of schools, to an ancient Roman?
57 Lack of friction
People one might meet at a drive
Bounded
Olympic snowboarder
Reservations
Shows up
Bargain hunter’s targets 37 Most perilous
Country that forms a tripoint border with Niger and Nigeria
Fall short
Test
Puzzle by Nikhil Bailey
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