Native | August 2014 | Nashville, TN

No. 26

NATIVE

A U G U S T2 0 1 4

#NAT IVENASHVILLE / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / 1

growlers & tap room

sunday - thursday 11:30am - 12:00amfriday - saturday 11:30am - 1:00am

Pair a fresh salad, some piled-high nachos, a hot dog on a pretzel bun, or delicious ice cream with a broad selection

of porters, pales, sours, wits, and ciders

17 menu items 36 craft beers

612 combinations Good thing we

open at 11:30am

The Hop Stop is located at 2909 B Gallatin Pike Nashville, Tennessee 37216 615.739.6547

2 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / #NATIVENASHVILLE

EAT. DRINK. BE ENTERTAINED.Acme Feed & Seed creates a uniquely “Nashville” atmosphere that

honors the city’s past, present and future. With 22,000 square feet of

cocktail, culinary and entertainment space, The Acme invites you to

experience an entirely new Lower Broadway.

F O R M O R E I N F O





MEN'S STORE • CUSTOM CLOTHING BAR • BARBER SHOP

ALDEN BOOT COMPANY • BARBOUR STEVE MCQUEEN • DEUS EX MACHINA • GITMAN VINTAGE • FAHERTY BRAND • FARIBAULT WOOLEN MILLS • THE HILLSIDE • HAMILTON 1883 • IMPERIAL BARBER PRODUCTS • IRON & RESIN • JACK SPADE • LBM 1911 • LEVI'S XX VINTAGE CLOTHING • LIFE AFTER DENIM • NAKED & FAMOUS DENIM • NEW BALANCE MADE IN USA • NEW ENGLAND SHIRT CO.

P.F. FLYERS • RALEIGH DENIM WORKSHOP • RICHER POORER • TODD SNYDER + CHAMPION • SOUTHWICK CLOTHES • SAVE KHAKI UNITED • THE WEST IS DEAD • WILL LEATHER GOODS • WOOLRICH • WOLVERINE 1K MILE

WWW.HAYMAKERSANDCO.COM

N O W O P E N !

FOLLOW US ONLINE FOR GRAND OPEN ING EVENTS ALL MONTH !


THE GOODS 17 Beer from Here 18 Cocktail of the Month21 Master Platers86 Hey Good Lookin’89 You Oughta Know92 Observatory94 Animal of the Month

FEATURES24 Heart, Soul, and Horns 34 The Thyme of the Season 46 A Screen of Their Own 56 Contributor Spotlight: Cool Sign! by Andrea Behrends66 Retreat from the Noise76 All the Young Dudes

TABLE OF CONTENTSAUGUST2014

1824

56

34

66

21


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SYLVAN PARK | NASHVILLE

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DEAR NATIVES,

When Napoleon III (the Napoleon’s neph-ew) staged a coup d’état and overthrew France’s Second Republic in 1851, Charles

Baudelaire was pretty pissed. And rightfully so: as France’s new self-appointed emperor, Napoleon III took it upon himself to start destroying all of Baudelaire’s favorite Parisian cafés and hangouts. Baudelaire being Baudelaire, he naturally wrote about the transformation in “Le Cygne,” saying,

“La forme d’une ville / Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d’un mortel”—or, “The form of a city / Changes more quickly, alas! than the human heart.”

Living in Nashville in 2014, we can’t help but think about ole Chuck’s words. Even as we write this, our whole office is rumbling with the sounds of construction next door. Whether you love, loathe, or simply don’t care about our changing landscape, the fact remains that Nashville is chang-ing, no matter what you are or aren’t doing about it. Lucky for us, you can always look to the past to help you make a better future, which is exactly what our features this month have done.

In this issue, you’ll meet Elizabeth Suzann, a de-signer who makes long-lasting, timeless garments inspired by 1939’s vision for a future with fashion-able and—more importantly—functional apparel. You’ll also meet COIN and GED Soul Records, two sets of musicians that are combining elements of the past and present to give Nashville hopeful, al-beit nostalgic, albums.

Then there’s the one, the only, “Nashville’s Alice Waters”: Margot McCormack. Like Baudelaire and Paris, she’s stuck with Nashville her whole life, and fortunately, she’s a little more optimistic about her city’s future than the Les Fleurs du Mal poet. Her culinary achievements serve as both a reminder of Nashville’s place in history and a preview of what’s to come. And for that, we—and more specifically, our stomachs—can’t thank her enough.

Whatever the future holds for Nashville, we’re just happy you’re willing to spend it with us.

Je vous envoie mes bien amicales pensées,

president, founder: ANGELIQUE PITTMANpublisher, founder: JON PITTMANassociate publisher: KATRINA HARTWIG

founder, branddirector: DAVE PITTMAN

founder: CAYLA MACKEY

creative director: MACKENZIE MOORE

managing editor: CHARLIE HICKERSONeditor: DARCIE CLEMEN

art director: COURTNEY SPENCER

community relationsmanager: JOE CLEMONS

community representative: LINDSAY ALDERSON

account manager: AYLA SITZES

web editor: TAYLOR RABOIN

film supervisor: CASEY FULLER writers: MATTHEW LEFF SCOTT MARQUART JONAH ELLER-ISAACS DAVID GARRIS ARMSTRONG LINDSEY BUTTON CHARLIE HICKERSON MELANIE SHELLEY PHILIP OBENSCHAIN

photographers: DANIELLE ATKINS EMILY B. HALL ISAAC LADD ERIC BROWN ANDREA BEHRENDS JESSIE HOLLOWAY ZACHARY GRAY LEAH GRAY BRETT WARREN KATE LOEHRER WILL VASTINE

editorial interns: CHLOE HALL MOLLY MCGHEE

p.r. interns: DALY CANTRELL KELSEY HUTCHINSON

design intern: CHRISTINE CRAFT

founding team: MACKENZIE MOORE JOSHUA SIRCHIO TAYLOR RABOIN

want to work at native? contact: [email protected] advertise, contact: [email protected] all other inquiries: [email protected]





C a n ’ t g e t e n o u g h o f O k t o b e r f e s t ? B u s t o u t y o u r

l e d e r h o s e n a n d A l p i n e h a t s f o r Te n n e s s e e Vo l k s f e s t ,

S e p t e m b e r 1 3 - 1 4 , a t t h e N a s h v i l l e F a r m e r s ’ M a r ke t !

Fo r m o r e i n f o , ch e ck o u t t e n n e s s e ev o l k s f e s t . c o m



1 12-oz. bottle of Mexican Coke 2 oz. of Belle Meade Bourbon 1 handful of salted peanuts

F Pour out 5 ounces of Mexican Coke (give it to a kid or something). Pour 2 ounces of Belle Meade Bourbon directly into the bottle. Add a large handful of salted peanuts. The longer the peanuts sit, the more peanut brittle taste will show up—there is no right or wrong amount of peanuts. —Ben Clemons, No. 308

THE GOODS

photo by danielle atkins18 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / #NATIVENASHVILLE

The PAPAWSouthern day laborers had short lunch breaks in the 1800s, so they’d “drink their lunch” by dumping a bag of salted nuts straight into a bottle of Coke. Ben Clemons of 308 really wanted to recreate that in a cocktail. He tried making his own syrups, but nothing tasted authentic. Finally he said, “Fuck it,” bought himself a bottle of Mexican Coke (for the cane sugar), and got some bourbon. Note: this drink IS NOT a cocktail; it’s an American novelty. Classic American. American as fuck (except for the Mexican Coke).

OPEN AUGUST 2014!



burgers craft beer shakes

30 Draft BBB20 Draft BBBCome check out

ouu nee bBu list!LENOX:

6900 Lenox Village Dr. Ste 22(615) 499-4428

GULCH:420 11th Avenue South

(615) 915-1943


THE GOODS:FOR THE PASTA:

1/2 cup ground fried red quinoa

2 cups gluten-free flour

1 Tbsp. salt

2 eggs plus 8 egg yolks

1 Tbsp. olive oil

1 Tbsp. milk

DIRECTIONS:F Fry raw quinoa at 375° F using a mesh strainer, shaking it around till it’s puffed like popcorn. Let cool, then grind the fried quinoa into flour. F Combine flour, salt, and quinoa in a bowl. F Mix and make a shallow well in the center of your mixture.F Add eggs, olive oil, and milk into

the well and gently beat until eggs are lightly mixed. F Slowly fold in flour until a loose dough forms. F Move dough to stand mixer with paddle attachment and mix on me-dium for 3 minutes. F Using a pasta sheeter cleaned of any flour, take an extra handful of gluten-free flour and spread on machine and table. F Starting at the 9th setting, send half of the dough through, folding 3 times. F Go through settings 9 to 5, feeding the dough through each number once. F Using a pastry cutter, cut your dough into 1-inch strips, and then blanch in salted boiling water until al dente.F After roughly 4 minutes, remove from water and toss in oil. Add your favorite pasta sauce and toppings.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY ROBERT

McGRATTAN, SOUS CHEF AT 1808 GRILLE

PHOTO BY DANIELLE ATKINS #NAT IVENASHVILLE / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / 21

RED QUINOA PAPPARDELLE



24 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / #NATIVENASHVILLE 24 / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / #NATIVENASHVILLE


WITH FIRE-SPITTING BRASS AND CLASSIC

CROONING, THE GUYS BEHIND GED

SOUL RECORDS ARE BRINGING

GROOVE BACK INTO NASHVILLE—ON THEIR

OWN TERMS

BY SCOTT MARQUART

PHOTOS BY EMILY B. HALL

HEART, SOUL, AND HORNS


GED SOUL RECORDS:

gedsoulrecords.comFollow on Facebook@GEDSoulRecordsand Twitter @GEDSoulnative.is/ged-soul-records


BEWARE OF DOG. The sign hangs loosely on the rusting chain-link fence, the crimson let-ters bleached orange by the same sun that hangs above me now.

Picturing the Beast from The Sandlot, I call ahead to be safe. The glass door swings open, and Nick DeVan—cofounder, producer, and house drummer for GED Soul Records—waves me up the path and into the plain white house. No Beast in sight.

His aptly named Poor Man’s Studios has a spar-tan charm. Garage sale rugs and upholstery foam drape down from the walls; microphone cables are pushed into the space where the molding meets the champagne carpet. Up above is a stucco ceil-ing that reminds me of the ’60s suburban house where I grew up.

It may be spare, but like many legendary studios from Muscle Shoals to Memphis, it’s not the looks that count. As any seasoned soul player will tell you, it’s all about the vibe, and this place has it.

I hear laughter bursting out from another room. Following Nick into the kitchen, I come upon AJ Eason and DeRobert Adams, front men of AJ & the Jiggawatts and DeRobert and the Half-Truths. They’re watching video of a recent show, compar-ing notes on the backup singers, and generally giv-ing each other a hard time. AJ’s charisma hits you right away, though DeRobert, who comes off like the little brother of the two, counters with an in-nocence and upright likeability unique among the pantheon of soul singers.

David Guy, bassist for the Half-Truths and the Coolin’ System, and Dave Singleton, bassist for The Magic in Threes and The Grips and drummer in the SkyHi Funk Band, stand off to the side. Nick offers me a drink, and we all take him up on it.

I sit down on the tracking room carpet, leaning against the grille cloth of an Ampeg bass cabinet. DeRobert, AJ, Dave, and David gather stools and

folding chairs to form a loose circle. Nick leans coolly against the wall.

There’s history between these guys. If I didn’t know better, I’d have guessed that they grew up on the same block, playing backyard baseball af-ter school until they finally figured they could get more girls if they started a band. They have the unmistakable camaraderie that comes from sur-viving more than a few all-nighters together in the studio.

Nick tells me that he and Dave Singleton had played together for six years before they started the label in 2007, and the GED mantra (think high school equivalency) had been around nearly as long. They had a band called GED Funk and a ra-dio show called the GED Soul Revue. When they needed a label to put out the music they had been making together with DeRobert, GED Soul Re-cords seemed fitting.

The label was born out of necessity, without delusions of grandeur. Leaning back calmly on a brushed metal folding chair, Dave explains, “I think we just wanted to put records out. But at the same time, I don’t think Nick and I thought that trying to get another label to do it was . . . I’d rath-er just do it ourselves.” AJ nods his side-cocked fedora in agreement, “When you’ve got a shit-ton of original material, you’ve got to record it . . . and put it out.”

Nick makes the whole process sound simple. “We just started it out of nothing. You put out a record and you say you have a label and you do have a label.” Laughing, he insists, “It’s as easy as that . . . all you have to do to start a label is say that you have one.”

I’m taken by how natural they make this seven-year journey sound. The way Nick tells it, they’ve just put one foot in front of the other, year after year, accumulating a distinct catalogue of fourteen seven-inch singles and eight LPs along the way. In



the process, GED Soul Records has become a beacon for what people are starting to call Nashville Soul—blue collar, earnest music that pushes the genre forward without ignoring its past. Still, no one is shy to admit that it has taken equal parts hard work, good fortune, and community support to get to where they are today.

Like their soul music forebears, they started out only pressing vinyl and put out 45s from The Grips, SkyHi Funk Band, and DeRobert and the Half-Truths in quick succession. Nick and Dave mailed them out to DJs from St. Louis to New York to Berlin, and GED began to build a name for itself. They started branching out from their own projects, working first with soul-jazz combo the Coolin’ System, whose bassist, David Guy, quickly took an interest in the label.

David set off to sell the label’s 45s to record stores door-to-door. In a Boston store, he bumped into a rep from Traffic Entertainment Group and eventually con-vinced him to give the label a distribution deal. With global distribution in place, the label was ready to make the jump to releasing full-length LPs—they just had to figure out where the money was going to come from. Da-vid chuckles a bit nervously, “My parents, Nick’s sister, and the bands pitched in to get to about $6,500 to put out two records, on the same day, in March 2011. And those were the first LPs we put out.”

Two years later, however, they found themselves in the same predicament. They had finished new records, but they needed capital to give them a proper release. This time, a successful Kickstarter campaign came to the rescue, providing $11,000 to release all three. With

this influx of cash and the growing popularity of the label’s artists, GED Soul Records achieved fi-nancial solvency, paid its debts, and now has the reserves to keep putting out records.

Through it all, the label has embodied the DIY attitude seen throughout Nashville’s under-ground music scene. Nick’s house serves as the label’s de facto headquarters and recording stu-dio. The bands record there for free. Dave and DeRobert have both lived there over the years, and the house serves as a meeting place for the group of local musicians that make up the GED Soul family. “It’s a group of about fifteen to twenty musicians, a community of people who have known each other for years . . . and they’re all kind of figuring out the business stuff too, and you’ve got this beautiful situation with a studio that we’re not paying for,” says David, smirking.

Because they record everything in-house, the label’s releases have a cohesive sound, a vibe, just like the labels used to in the heyday of soul. Nick is behind the boards on every project, and

he has his own way of doing things. He’s especially particular about the sound of the bass and drums, the bedrock of soul music. Often, he tracks them both straight to cassette before dumping them to a one-inch reel-to-reel and then into Pro Tools. There are no hand-wired Neumann microphones and no vintage guitar collections in sight. Nick makes do with what he has—most importantly, good ears and experienced players.

AJ is quick to point out that the studio’s technical lim-itations don’t come without their benefits. “Some of the best horn players in town will come into this place with one call from any of us, because they want to be a part of it. There’s a respect factor because we’re doing stuff so au naturale that people really enjoy it, and they’re free over here . . . We’ve got respect in this town because we do it so damn raw.”

This rawness flows into GED Soul’s business prac-tices as well. Unlike a traditional label, none of the bands are under contract and are free to stay or go as they please. When he’s not recording, Nick serves as the mail clerk for all online orders. Dave and house guitarist Andrew Muller do all of the design work, and they have screen printed hundreds of T-shirts and LP jackets by hand at Nick’s house.

Leaning on an open-hammered upright piano, DeR-obert speaks up from the corner of the room, “That’s who GED is to me right there. We’ve all been doing this for so long, and we never got a certificate for it, never got a piece of paper for it, but we can do it. We’re just as capable as anyone out there who has the right label, the right exposure, or the right radio play.”

Still, no one is too proud to admit the downside of do-ing everything in-house. When I ask if it would be better to have a manager or a label staff to run the business side of things, Nick is quick to agree. “Oh yeah, it would be better, I wish . . . I don’t want to fuck with that shit.”

Though they agree that the grunt work of running a label can be exhausting, they share a strong sense of pride over the work that they’ve put in. When AJ asks, hypothetically, what everyone would think if a larger la-bel offered to buy them out, they all agree: only if they retained control over the music itself. Nodding, DeRob-ert notes sincerely, “I don’t want to lose that creativity.”

Though it might seem like a pipe dream at the mo-ment, such an offer would not be out of the question down the line. Soul music has proved its staying power in the present age time and again, from modern progen-itors D’Angelo and Erykah Badu, to Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, to straight-up pop musicians like Amy

“ WE’RE

BRINGING

BACK THAT

OLD-SCHOOL

STUFF...”



Winehouse, CeeLo Green, and Aloe Blacc. The press attaches the append-ages “neo,” “retro,” and “revival” at regular intervals, but the music never goes away. AJ is characteristically confident about their position within it all. “We’re at the forefront, I really do think. We’re bringing back that old-school stuff but doing it in such a modern way that everybody can relate to it.”

In this light, GED Soul has posi-tioned itself wisely as the home of soul music in the music capital of the South, the genre’s birthplace. “Us being from the South, where Stax [Records] is from, it helped from the beginning. That’s stuff we grew up on, that we could drive down the street and see,” DeRobert says earnestly.

“That spirit that’s connected to all of that runs through us.”

Whatever it is, it’s working. DeR-obert and the Half-Truths’ January release I’m Trying was the label’s fast-est selling record to date. By February, David was already on the phone to or-der a second run of vinyl. But even as the label starts to see the first fruits of its hard-earned notoriety, sales aren’t the true motivation. DeRobert paraphrases a line Nick once told him:

“Records are forever.” If someone were to stumble across the GED Soul catalogue in eighty years and appreci-ate it for the work that went into it, that would be good enough for them.

Bringing the conversation back to center, David confesses, “We’re working toward a paycheck, there’s no doubt about that. But at the same time, the idea is so strong that the long game will keep going, regardless of the short game successes.”

He continues, “We’ve been going from having money to broke, and hav-ing it, to broke—” AJ quickly cuts him off. “Ain’t that the story of the bands, though?” Then, with a smirk, he starts to hum Sam Cooke under his breath, and DeRobert joins him on the cho-rus: “That’s the sound of the men, working on the chain–gay-ee-ang.”

5 0 5 1 2 T H AV E S . ( 6 1 5 ) 2 5 2 - 8 7 8 7

SUSHI LUNCH BUFFET MONDAY - SATURDAY 11:30AM - 2:30PM

HAPPY HOUR MONDAY - THURSDAY 4:30PM - 6:30PM

GOTSUSH I?

Visit our campus to pick up your shades while supplies last. While you're here, make your future brighter by taking a tour and learning about our associate degree and diploma programs in music business and audio technology.


DJs + Bands + Bout i qu e s + Poo l s + Yoga + Eats & Dr i nk s

AUGUST 10th @ 12pmA POP -UP POO L PARTY AT THE CRY I NG WOL F

PART OF THE WOLF PACK WEEKEND:

AUGUS T 8 TH : Y EAR O F THE WOL F ART SHOWAUGUST 9 TH : NASHV I L LAGE POP -UP BOUT I Q U E & BRUNCH

THE CRYING WOLFIS A YEAR OLD!

LET’S PARTY!


DJs + Bands + Bout i qu e s + Poo l s + Yoga + Eats & Dr i nk s

AUGUST 10th @ 12pmA POP -UP POO L PARTY AT THE CRY I NG WOL F

PART OF THE WOLF PACK WEEKEND:

AUGUS T 8 TH : Y EAR O F THE WOL F ART SHOWAUGUST 9 TH : NASHV I L LAGE POP -UP BOUT I Q U E & BRUNCH

THE CRYING WOLFIS A YEAR OLD!

LET’S PARTY!



Nashville legend Margot McCormack works tirelessly

to promote the local and seasonal ingredients that

delighted her as a young girl. Lucky for us—and our mouths

By Jonah Eller-Isaacs | Photos by Isaac Ladd



It's a Tuesday night when I pull up to Margot Café & Bar for the first time. The air in Five Points is sultry, but only just so. Summer’s primordial tendrils are rambling through the late June evening. I can feel the sea-son’s implied power, though I know we have a long hot slog ahead of us yet. This is my first summer in Nashville, and I’m learning quickly that air condi-tioning is a necessity.

When I open the door to enter the restaurant, I’m not greeted by the blast of central air frigidity I’ve already come to love. It’s not too warm, but it’s not cold either. The aging HVAC is on the fritz, and though the staff is working their hardest to keep the place cool, I’m grateful that the evening’s heat is reasonable. An enormous standing unit next to the front window is partially covered with a sheet. It’s a cerulean blue beast, its long tubes jutting out. The hulking box reminds me of nothing so much as B9—the wonky robot from the original Lost in Space. You know, the “Danger, Will Robinson!” one. Except he’s an air conditioner.

Jay Frein, Margot Café & Bar’s bespectacled co-owner, welcomes me in, and I take a seat at the triangular marble bar. I spend the next few hours watching the place hum, listening to the echoing laughter and muffled conversations of happy din-ers, observing their wine-flushed satiety as they head out into the warm night. Ryan Adams’s “New York, New York” fades into classic Zeppelin. Vari-ous copper pots line the exposed brick walls, and weathered pieces of furniture hang from high odd angles. I’m slowly sipping a Parisienne, a delicious, delicate cocktail that perfectly balances gin, elder-flower, and grapefruit. At least, that’s the local iter-ation—it’s traditionally made with gin, vermouth, and crème de cassis—but I’m partial to the drink in my hand. I usually am.

Margot McCormack, head chef and the restau-rant’s namesake, comes to chat with me as her kitchen duties allow. She has a warm, unassuming presence. When I ask what she would recommend for dinner, she says her favorite is the sweet and sour eggplant with basmati rice and feta cheese.

“That’s probably what I’ll have for dinner,” she tells me. She then proceeds to talk excitedly about the beets and peaches with pistachios and mint vinai-grette. And the roasted mahi mahi with sweet corn, peppers, and baby leek oil. And the grilled golden trout. And the tri-tip steak with fries, escarole, and lemon-anchovy dressing. And the pork tenderloin. After she suggests nearly the entire menu, I’m not

any closer to making a choice, and I don’t want to miss out on anything spectacular, since Margot’s menu changes every night to match seasonal avail-ability.

I decide on the aged Vella Jack cheese with peach preserves, followed by the grilled pork tenderloin with grits, swiss chard, and a cherry mostarda (an Italian fruit and mustard condiment). I don’t re-gret it.

The handmade California cow’s milk cheese makes me want to go home and throw my Kroger cheese in the trash. The Vella Jack is complex, dead dry, and lovely, especially with the peaches, which taste as if they were picked that morning and pre-served by noon. The pork is masterfully cooked, with a crisp crunch to the exterior but an interior that’s moist and holds just the right amount of pink. It’s a pinkness that declares supreme confidence in both the quality of the meat itself and of the chef responsible for its preparation. With the mostarda and the bed of freshly farmed swiss chard, it’s rich, sweet, spicy, and utterly tasty. Paired with a glass of red, a Grenache-Syrah blend, I begin to under-stand the gleeful faces of departing patrons. This is world-class food, prepared simply and lovingly and without great fanfare.

When I return the following afternoon to chat with Margot, I discover that the food is a reflec-tion of the woman herself: she’s a masterful chef who carries herself confidently and without great fanfare. Margot invites me into her “office,” a table for four close to the kitchen that’s already set, each place setting adorned with a single fragile plate of mismatched antique china. Spilling over the neat arrangement is a pile of standard food industry detritus: bills, seating arrangements, calendars, a cordless phone. Margot greets me wearing a shirt with her name on it, but it feels like her every-day uniform, not an oversized ego on display. No one would blame her for feeling a little puffed up. With Margot Café & Bar and its nearby sister spot Marché Artisan Foods, Margot has established her-self as one of the culinary treasures of Nashville. Though Time earlier this year called her “Nash-ville’s Alice Waters,” there’s much more to this native Nashvillian than adherence to Waters’ prin-ciples of locally sourced, farm-to-table dining.

I ask Margot to tell me about her Nashville child-hood and how it changed her understanding of food. “Well, I grew up here in West Meade, which is a nice ZIP code,” she begins. “My mom was very particular . . . She cooked everything from scratch,


which is not to say that we had very extravagant meals, but it is to say that we had fresh food. We wouldn’t have canned peas or canned asparagus or some of these other horrors that I hear people telling me here in the restaurant. We had fresh food, and we had seasonal food. She didn’t buy tomatoes in the wintertime.”

But when it wasn’t wintertime, and the tomatoes and peaches were in season—Margot waxes poetic when she reminisces on that fresh Southern produce. “I remember eating the ripest, juiciest peaches on our patio and just re-ally going, ‘Wow.’ And really, everything tastes amazing when you’re a kid, because you’re a kid. And, I don’t know, it’s new and it’s exciting.” Before I can ask her if she’s able to recreate those moments in her kitchen, she adds, “I have yet to really duplicate some of those food memories when we were little. But I just remember the tomatoes being amazing, and the peaches. I’m sure part of that’s just rose-colored glasses, and mom, and lilac bushes.”

As we talk, Margot laughs and runs her fingers through her thick, black, curly short hair. She likes to tap the table to drive home a passionate point (of which there are many), and I start to worry that my recording of our chat will sound like I’ve tried to interview a jazz drummer mid-solo. Lucky for me, other than the occasional slap of a palm that rever-berates through her “desk” when she gets especially worked up, it comes out just fine, and our conversation begins to yield some insight into Margot’s journey. Her efforts to un-derstand food and the art of the chef led her far from West Meade to the bluffs of the Hudson River and the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, New York. Natu-rally, she brought along both her Southern charm and her mother’s traditions.

“When I went to New York,” Margot tells me, “people made fun. Hee Haw. Country. They made fun of your accent. Basically, if you were from Nashville, for some reason, it was Elvis and not the Grand Ole Opry that people thought about. And people thought you were stupid. Your Southern ac-cent meant you were a dumb hick.” Even with all that she’d picked up in the kitchen from her mother, Margot still had to learn “proper” cooking techniques. She recalls a breakfast class at the Institute, when she was casually peeling a ba-nana, just like her momma taught her—holding the banana sideways and cutting gently to the palm, letting the slices fall into the bowl. But the chef overseeing the class was less en-thused. Margot remembers what happened next: “He comes over and he grabs the banana and takes it out of the peel, and spots it on the cutting board and chops at it real fast . . . Basi-cally like, ‘That’s how you do it. You don’t do it like that.’ It’s like, ‘Wow, okay. He told me!’”

Still, in the face of hard-nosed culinary traditions, Margot held dearly to her roots, and the care and love with which her mother assembled every home-cooked meal continues to inform her own cooking. When she arrived at the school of her son, Jacob, with (gasp!) store-bought cookies, it felt

“IF YOU WERE FROM NASHVILLE, FOR SOME REASON, IT WAS ELVIS AND NOT THE GRAND OLE OPRY THAT PEOPLE THOUGHT ABOUT.”


MARGOT McCORMACK:

margotcafe.commarcheartisanfoods.com

Follow on Facebook @Margotcafeandbar and @marcheartisanfoods

native.is/margot


so wrong: “We don’t do it that way!” she exclaims. Her mother taught her, “If you take the time to make it yourself, it’s more special than if you pay three dol-lars for it. Because it’s something of you

. . . The kind of food we do here, even though I went to culinary school and did work in New York, it is just very super simple stuff. My mom could make a lot of the dishes that we have on our menu. Now, would she top it with a cherry mo-starda? Probably not.”

When I ask Margot about her Nash-ville homecoming, I hear a familiar re-frain. I left Brooklyn last year to join my wife as she returned to her childhood home, and I’ve come to the conclusion that New York City is awesome if 1) you’re in your twenties and/or are will-ing to live on the edge, or 2) you have millions of dollars. When we hit our

thirties and were only hundredaires, we decided it was time for a change. Margot’s experience is remarkably similar. She explains that she “start-ed thinking like a grown-up and was like, ‘Wow, I don’t have insurance. I’m living very month to month. I’m making a lot of money, but I’m spending a lot of money. And that was fun for a while, but now I feel like I need to be thinking about other things.’”

One of those “other things” for Mar-got was starting her own restaurant, but she was nervous to try and establish her-self in the unforgiving New York food scene. A trip home for the holidays was all it took for her to find her place back in Nashville. “I had been in a relation-ship that wasn’t working out any longer. Came home for Christmas, never went back. I kinda hung out for a little relax-

ing time . . . My mom was all of a sudden my unemployment officer. She was like,

‘Well, did you go here? Did you go here? Did you go here?’ And I was literally, the next day, about to pack the car and go back to New York, and she said, ‘Well, you haven’t been to F. Scott’s—you need to go to F. Scott’s.’ So I went there, and it just so happened that someone had cut themselves, the chef was moved from LA and was working with a very limited Nashville pool of cooks. Took one look at me and went, ‘CIA? New


York? You’re hired.’”Within six months, Margot was

named F. Scott’s Executive Chef. From there, it didn’t take long before she launched her own spot, and just a few weeks back, on the fifth of June, Margot Café & Bar celebrated their thirteenth year. Margot has watched the city grow and change since she was a little girl, and I ask her what’s next—for her, for Margot Café & Bar, and for Nashville itself. She tells me about her many goals: A cookbook. Twelve more years to give the restaurant an even quarter century. Time with her son. Time to guide her kitchen staff on their own cu-linary adventures. Margot speaks with particular fervency about her recent focus on “grassroots-y, more issue-oriented things,” like her position as Board Chair for the Nashville Farmer’s Market, or the “Meet Me at the Market” program, which works with the AARP to bring seniors to the market and pro-vide them with much-needed access to fresh, healthful food.

Nashville is in the midst of a popula-tion explosion, and Margot’s lifetime of experience gives her great insight into the city’s future growth and transfor-mation. She’s excited that the blossom-ing of artisanal, locally driven business-es around town means that “people are finding us, and they’re liking us. We’re not the ugly step-kid anymore . . . It runs the gamut from clothes to cars to bicycles to food—to everything.” Still, she adds, “Having said that, I think that it’s equally as much the problem. We don’t want to become some façade of ourselves. When you have all these new people coming into town, you don’t want to dilute the authenticity.” Native Nashvillians concerned about the rapid pace of change should be reassured by Margot’s steady presence as a defender of Southern cuisine, a lover of local peaches and tomatoes, and a staunch advocate of food prepared with genu-ine integrity.

With Margot McCormack, the only thing that changes overnight is her menu.

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THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT A GREAT STORY THAT CAN CAPTIVATE JUST ABOUT ANYBODY. MEET TWO YOUNG GIRLS WHO WON AN OPPORTUNITY TO TURN THEIR STORIES INTO PROFESSIONAL SHORT FILMS THROUGH THE POWER OF NASHVILLE’S CHARITABLE FILM PROGRAM, ICIT


BY DAVID GARRIS ARMSTRONG | PHOTOS BY EMILY B. HALL


I’m sitting dead center in the top row of a set of bleachers in Oz’s auditorium. Dim and spacious, the room is filled with young students, teachers, family members, and a handful of pros from Nash-ville’s film community. It’s the night before the Nashville Film Festival, and all of us are waiting for the premiere of two professionally produced shorts that were both written by . .

. highschoolers. In particular, two young girls ages fifteen and eighteen, respectively, named Jaida Utley and Jessica Polk. Somewhere be-neath me in the bleachers, they’re sitting with their friends and family, waiting eagerly to see their dreams brought to life after two years of work. Before any of this, three people had a vi-sion for a program that could bring a moment like this into reality: Inspiring Creative Innova-tive Thinkers (ICiT).

The founder of this program, David Perry, is making his way to a microphone in front of the projection screen to give his opening address. Clean cut with short curly hair and a charm-ing smile, David looks up into the bleachers. Silence settles over the room, and he clears his throat before speaking confidently into the mic. “Stories are the cornerstone of our cul-ture. And if stories are the cornerstone of our culture, then storytellers are the architects that build the world that we live in. ICiT is about cultivating storytellers; it’s about empowering them and giving them a platform.”

David’s voice fills the room as it is cast out of the loudspeakers. Those words reveal what Nashville is all about: people and their stories. With only three years under its belt, ICiT has developed into an extensive network of people, including the program’s founder, the youths he is working with, and the professionals that are on board. Paul Andrew Skidmore and Motke Dapp were the respective directors of Jessica’s and Jaida’s films, and they were all under Rob Chepliki’s guidance as producer. From start to finish, these and many others—we’re talking hundreds of people—all faithfully invested in the power of great stories and great storytell-ing.

In 2011, David set out with cofounders Elena Dering and Matthew Rampulla on a quest to

offer something to our community through storytelling and film. He recounts their mis-sion: “The program really started with this idea of youth in and of themselves—forget class—have stories to tell, they have a voice that needs to be heard, and if you give them a chance they can wow you with what they have to say. Un-derserved people, but especially youth, have the same capacity but even less chance of being heard, and they also need and want to be taken seriously. Seeing all of that combined, we saw a huge need. We saw a huge void of arts educa-tion that went to the extent of empowerment.”

Fast-forward to the premiere night, and you have a room full of people who are actually experiencing how powerful ICiT and the films they’re making are. Their latest offerings have me shedding empathetic tears. One carries you into the world of a young girl with problems at home and bullies at school (The Upside of Down, by Jaida), and the other busts out some unexpected laughs while following a shy, love-stricken bookworm and a not-so-capable cupid, both of whom are on a comedic quest for true love against unlikely odds (Love Is Alive, by Jes-sica).

A couple of weeks after watching the two films, I’m sitting with David, Jessica, and Jaida having coffee and discussing the journey that ICiT has taken them on. The girls are bright and energetic. Jessica has a smile and a sense of humor that could cheer up a war vet, and Jaida is remarkably mature and thoughtful for her years.

“So how did you two get involved with this?” I ask.

Jaida looks over my shoulder and recounts, “I was in the YMCA camp with my aunt, and she’s the head director. She asked me if I want-ed to go to a summer camp or ICiT, and I chose ICiT. I don’t really like nature.” She smiles wryly, and we all laugh at this.

Jessica finishes chuckling in time to share, “I was in the Boys & Girls Club and they said, ‘Hey, anybody want to learn how to make a movie?’ and I was like, ‘Me!’ But I didn’t know we were going to write the movie; I thought we were going to videotape it. When I found out there was writing, I thought, I don’t wanna


ICiT:

icitfilms.com Follow on Facebook

@inspiringcreativeinnovativethinkersnative.is/ICiT


do this. I’m not gonna win. I suck. But I said to myself, Screw it. Do it.” She taps her fingers on the table, making keyboard noises. “And then they said I won and I was like, ‘Are you sure?’ I thought I was second or something.”

Jessica calls her triumph a “crying-on-the-ground-oh-my-gosh-I-made-it” event. But both of the girls put in some effort to earn that opportunity. As a program, ICiT is fast paced, aca-demic, and personally challenging. Over the course of four weeks, a small group of youths are divided into two separate age groups, attending class-es three times a week at the YMCA on Church Street. From day one, they are writing their scripts and being guided by their teachers on what a great sto-ry is and how to tell their own. Once complete, the scripts are taken in by a group of anonymous judges who have never met the youths, and the judges

narrow them down until one script from each group has been selected to be transformed into a short film.

This makes me curious about the other youths and their scripts. David points out that all of the scripts have offered up compelling, powerful sto-ries. However, the selection process involves finding a good story that also works with ICiT’s production budget. They stress merging art and com-merce early on in camp, focusing on the quality of the actual story. “One of the things that we really want to teach them is this simple, yet highly complex idea of how to tell a great story.” Thinking back, David recounts something he told Motke during the early stages of creating The Upside of Down. “You know, if I were really honest, I would prefer a single-shot, one-scene, one-take film that com-municates a great story over all the

bells and whistles and fireworks that come with a mediocre one.”

The two films presented are cer-tainly not epics, but neither are they stripped down to their bare bones. The girls were invited to the sets dur-ing filming, and Jaida shares what she experienced: “It was chaos, but it was a good chaos. I saw cameras, and how they use them, and the directors saying ‘cut’ and stuff, and that little—what’s it called?”

She looks over to David, who re-sponds, “Clapper?”

“Yeah! Clapper. It was cool to be on the set because I’ve never done that either. Especially acting in the film, because seeing myself on the TV was weird, but it was cool.”

Jaida looks at Jessica, who elabo-rates further, “ICiT helps you to look deeper into a movie. I actually want to look through the credits now. I don’t


just skip through the credits—I take the time to see who made the movie and give them their props.”

At the heart of this whole experience, there are simple mes-sages these girls are trying to convey. “I like comedy.” Jessica pulls out a big smile before she continues,

“I’m a funny person. I really didn’t want to get too serious with it. So it’s more of a spoof.”

“So you just wanted to have fun with it?” I ask.

“Mmhmm.” She nods quickly, and remaining true to form, counters with,

“And then if that didn’t work, I was

gonna go totally Tyler Perry on ‘em and just have a random song in the middle.”

Despite all her light-hearted talk, Jessica eventually gets a little serious when elaborating on the ideas behind Love Is Alive. She looks me in the eyes to say, “Don’t get in the way of other people’s destinies. Be strong. Fight your own battles. Don’t rely on a lot of people to do everything for you. Be comfortable in the skin you’re in. It’s pretty much a moral bungee. Any way you can get it, that’s how it’s gonna go.”

Jaida has a more simplistic re-sponse to questions about The Up-side of Down’s message: “Don’t judge a book by its cover. Being different isn’t wrong. Both of those things are morals. I was just trying to let people know that bullying isn’t right and you shouldn’t do it.”

The directors, Motke and Paul, were both very concerned with mak-ing sure that these basic truths came to life on camera during the filming process. Motke opens up with a sense of urgency. “We tried to capture as much of Jaida’s personality as we could—and keep it in there—while taking the story to that next level and really hoping that it will become something that will transcend all of us. It’s like gardening in some ways. The writer plants the seed and as it starts to grow, it doesn’t look like a seed anymore, but all of that person-ality is still in there.”

Paul agrees and makes an eloquent point about what’s happening to the youths in that process: “It shows them that they matter and what they have to say matters. And the correla-tor to that is, what they have to say has consequences, good and bad . . .

“IT WAS CHAOS, BUT IT WAS A GOOD

CHAOS.”-JAIDA

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They could say something that could be uplifting and enriching; if they would just say it, somebody would hear it. What they could say could hurt and destroy somebody, and they should know that would be heard as well.”

What’s truly unique about ICiT is how much potential the program has in its back pocket. David points out that with each year, the program will grow and expand, and they hope to offer longer forms of production to create new challenges for youths that are taking it seriously. All of this is with the hope that a resume and port-folio of several years with ICiT could produce scholarship opportunities when applying to colleges.“That’s where this thing can go. ICiT could set people up for success so that they get to college and say, ‘I have actually been in the trenches for seven years.’ I mean, that’s incredible. Who has that?”

Jaida hits this point home when I ask her about what it was like to win. She tells me a story of when she won a hundred dollars, which she used to go out shopping afterward. “A hun-dred dollars is nice, you know. Re-ally nice. Very nice. But this carries on with you—it’s something you can keep. A hundred dollars goes away be-cause you buy stuff, and I guess ma-terialistic things don’t matter. So this is way better than a hundred dollars.”

With hundreds of people getting involved, ICiT is a beautiful expan-sion and embodiment of those three sentences David chose to open with at the premiere. The program is un-locking the creative potential of un-derprivileged youths in Nashville by providing them a voice, and more importantly, a platform for them to share their experience and touch the lives of others. There’s no way to con-vey how big it really is, or how big it will become, but with so much heart and a great vision, ICiT will only con-tinue to change lives and leave a last-ing impression on Nashville’s creative community.




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INTRO & PHOTOS BY ANDREA BEHRENDS

COOLSIGN!


HEY GUYS, ANDREA HERE.

You might have seen my photos in these pages before. Usually, I photograph bands or food or people doing things, but sometimes I find myself driving around, shooting old buildings with cool signs.

I shot these because I liked the font of the sign, the vintage aesthetic, or just because

“the photo will look cool in twenty years.” Of course there is a lot more to it than that . . .

We could talk about how landmarks and businesses are being rapidly replaced by gi-ant condominiums. We could even talk about how a neighborhood looks one way when the average household income is $20K, and how it suddenly looks very different when a neighbor moves in who makes four times that. We could talk about it. But instead, let’s just look.

Because that’s the thing about photographs: they do the talking for us.

—ANDREA

CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT









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OUT SEPTEMBER 16TH!


ELIZABETH SUZANN DEMONSTRATES THE POWER

OF SIMPLICITY AND PRACTICALITY WITH

HANDMADE GARMENTS THAT STAND THE TEST OF TIME

Retreat From The

Noise


By Lindsey Button | Photos by Jessie Holloway Model Photos by Zachary Gray



THE YEAR IS 1939, AND A VOICE RADIATING FROM A BLACK-AND-WHITE SCREEN AN-NOUNCES, “ONE IDEA IS A DRESS THAT CAN BE ADAPTED FOR MORNING, AFTERNOON, OR EVENING.” The sleeves of the dress zip off, and the young woman excitedly demonstrates the way the dress effortlessly becomes a new look. Another woman appears on the screen wearing a free-flowing jumpsuit, and the same voice narrates,

“Another designer predicts that skirts will disappear entirely and an electric belt will adapt the body to climatic changes.” Seventy-five years ago, these were designers’ predictions of what women would dress like in the twenty-first century.

“It’s a weird thing I can’t stop thinking about.” Elizabeth Suzann recalls her initial historical inspi-ration for her simple and versatile style with excite-ment.

“I studied this sort of strange phenomenon in college,” she explains. “I was really interested in clothing during the time of war, especially during fascism. While there was this terrible thing hap-pening, there was also this world of creative people who were doing some wildly amazing things and very off the wall but brilliant when you really look into it. There were a few different French designers that were working really hard on this idea of cre-ating a single garment—they called it a unit—that you could wear for everything. It would turn into pants and you could unzip it and it would become a dress, and you could take off the leg pieces and make it into a coat, and then you could wrap it up and make it into a bag, to carry it like a suitcase.”

Over the buzz of sewing machines, Elizabeth dis-cusses her inspiration for and philosophy of fash-ion. She is a soft-spoken, charming woman with short dark hair and a comfortable attitude. Look-ing at her, I am tempted to believe that what you wear really does affect the way you feel. It’s hard to tell if her clothes reflect her attitude or if the clothes themselves are the reason she seems so calm and relaxed.

Despite the whirling of the fan near the ceiling, the steamy air from outside finds its way indoors and wraps around the room like a thick blanket. There is something immediately calming about the atmosphere—the whitewashed walls, the textures of the linen and silk, the rows of neutral colors—all in contrast with the pops of green from hanging plants, floor plants, and table cacti.

Elizabeth’s husband, a bearded man with bare feet, is standing at a table, working from his Mac-book on his wife’s new website. Elise Joseph, Eliza-beth’s ideal customer, muse, and vital member of

her branding team, pours me a glass of water that drips with con-densation. She’s wearing the Mara jumpsuit, a piece from Elizabeth’s spring collection.

While we may not have air-conditioned dresses or belts that adapt to climatic changes, the past’s prediction that the twenty-first century would become ob-sessed with versatile clothing was not so far-fetched. “That’s the ex-treme of the idea,” Elizabeth says,

“but it really fascinated me. I want-ed to take that and do something small with it if I could.”

For Elizabeth, designing was born out of person-al necessity. She never imagined she would make clothes for anyone but herself. “I was looking for comfortable clothes that would meet the aesthetic I had in my head, but I could never find anything. Everything was polyester and everything was made in China, and the shapes that I wanted weren’t sold for my demographic. I hated clothes for a while, and I didn’t feel comfortable in much of anything. And I didn’t feel comfortable wearing things that were popular. That’s why I started sewing for my-self in college.”

Observing her strategically crafted clothes and the intentional aesthetic of the studio space, it’s hard to believe this was never part of Elizabeth’s plan. “I didn’t consider myself a designer,” Eliza-beth says. “Not until it became time to go to grad school or do something else and I found myself putting off applications for school.”

Elizabeth’s style partly stems from her educa-tional background. She studied art history and po-litical science in college but had always been drawn to the idea of fashion, specifically the way it fits into social history. “There aren’t as many stories told about the connection between fashion and history, so when we would go into details about certain images, I was always drawn to what they were wearing. For some reason that really appealed to me—the untold story of the clothing of the time and what was happening socially.”

Possessing the knowledge of fashion’s place in history, Elizabeth is gifted with creating garments that feel timeless. The notion of a trendless and seasonless wardrobe is at the heart of what she be-lieves fashion should aim to be. “I think there is a lot of waste in the industry because of seasons. I often think of military clothing—it’s made to be worn and not made to be disposed of. It’s made

“ I JUST HATE THAT SO MUCH OF WHAT WE WEAR ENDS UP IN THE GARBAGE.”


to stand up to time, and the fabrics are high quality. I don’t like the idea of buying something at a price point that lets me feel comfortable throw-ing it away. I just hate that so much of what we wear ends up in the garbage.”

Her solution to avoiding dispos-able clothing is creating a signature collection that will be available year-round, composed of items that can be worn in any season. “These are the pieces that I really feel strongly can stand the test of being worn through all seasons. Especially if you’re trying to afford nice things, it’s hard to buy a large amount of them. If you make that choice to buy more sustainable, made-in-America, quality goods, it’s hard to say you’re going to revamp your wardrobe like that. But if you can buy a piece that really serves you in a lot of different ways, that makes it an easier decision.”

Included in the signature collec-tion are pieces such as the Marlena Tank, which is an ideal example of the way Elizabeth’s pieces fulfill her aspiration of creating true versatility.

“It has both a V-neck and scoop neck, so you can wear it with the V in the front or in the back—it becomes two shirts in one. And of course you can wear that in the middle of summer because it’s very lightweight, but you can easily layer that under sweaters and coats and jackets. It’s a piece you can wear really anywhere, anytime.”

The twentieth-century collective may have imagined fashion would become more intricate and compli-cated as technology progressed and as artists continued pushing bound-aries, but it almost seems as if the opposite has happened. Simplicity is what young women of the second de-cade of the twenty-first century look for in the clothing they wear. The world around us is blatantly—almost vulgarly—complex and full of tech-nological chaos. In the midst of this noise, to put on a white linen tee and simple pants, if both are made with quality and structure, is a refreshing and mind-clearing experience.


ELIZABETH SUZANN:

elizabethsuzann.comFollow on Facebook

and Twitter @elizsuzannnative.is/elizabeth-suzann


Jo i n u s fo r a c u sto m i z e d p r iva te p a i r i n g m e n u wi t h m i xo l o g i st Z a c h He l to n . A five - c o u r s e t a st i n g m e n u p a i re d wi t h h a n d c rafte d c o c kt a i l s - u s i n g l i q u o r o f yo u r c h o i c e.

To p l a n a n d re s e r ve, c o n t a ct tr i s h @ wa te r m a r k- re st a u ra n t .c o m

“I think fashion can potentially be ex-tremely distracting, even in a physical way,” Elizabeth notes. “If you’re wear-ing a lot of bells and whistles, you feel it all day. You feel the necklaces, you feel the bracelets, the tight shoes, and the hose and tights—it physically weighs you down. I’d rather not be thinking about what I’m wearing. I’d rather put it on, be completely comfortable, feel like I look good, and that be the end of the story. I think there’s a purity of thought that comes from not having to think about that.”

Elizabeth’s target market is women who believe the comfort of the clothes they wear has real power to affect the way they feel and process the world.

Perhaps millennials cling to the idea of simplicity because it seems everything rapidly became too complex in their childhood. Maybe they’ve become ob-sessed with handmade goods because commercialism and technological pro-gression drained quality out of the first decade of the century.

“That’s a huge reason I felt a need to retreat away from all of that—all of the noise,” Elizabeth muses. “Something that’s simple and clean and not fussy is freeing.”

I ask Elizabeth if she has an idea of what modern clothing will really say about this generation. It seems she has asked herself this question before, that it’s one of the many historical ques-tions lurking behind her philosophy of fashion. “There’s so much more variety now that it gets harder to map those connections, but I think there is a clear

desire for simplicity, especially starting right now with the independent design-er realm. I think everyone is expressing the same need for simplicity and quiet and quality. There is a huge draw for people wanting things of quality again. The ’90s and early 2000s were this frenzy of excess, and we had these new fibers we could do anything with, and designers were like, ‘Let’s just see what we can do with this, we can make any-thing.’ I think it got a little out of hand, and people are reeling in from that.”

Beyond a personal level of freedom that Elizabeth’s clothes can provide, she adds that she also believes social awareness plays a role in why there has been a clear shift in concern for buying local, handmade items. “People want to feel like they have less of a footprint or are contributing a little bit less to the negativity of the world,” she says.

“That’s how I feel—any small way I can help is good.”

Elizabeth has eight people on her team, and she hopes to continue grow-ing organically. “While we do need a lot of help with production, we don’t need a factory, so it’s kind of a good system. And I think it’s kind of an interesting re-turn to the cottage industry system. But it’s working well.”

Her collection is full of linen and silk—both strong, versatile fabrics with the initial impression of being more delicate than they actually are. Linen doesn’t degrade with wear, it can be warm or it can be breathable, and it only gets better with age. Silk, she explains to me, is actually one of the strongest fibers, though many people are afraid to buy it. It is fluid and one of the most comfortable materials to wear, but it’s durable and lasting.

Elizabeth’s own personality reflects this notion perfectly—while she may initially seem soft spoken and gentle, she’s actually as tough and timeless as the fibers and designs that make up her clothing.


Jo i n u s fo r a c u sto m i z e d p r iva te p a i r i n g m e n u wi t h m i xo l o g i st Z a c h He l to n . A five - c o u r s e t a st i n g m e n u p a i re d wi t h h a n d c rafte d c o c kt a i l s - u s i n g l i q u o r o f yo u r c h o i c e.

To p l a n a n d re s e r ve, c o n t a ct tr i s h @ wa te r m a r k- re st a u ra n t .c o m





AL L THE YOUNG DUDES

DUCKTALES, DADS, AND DEATH: INSIDE THE WORLD OF COIN,

NASHVILLE’S MOST OPTIMISTIC INDIE BAND

BY CHARLIE HICKERSON | PHOTOS BY LEAH GRAY


1992. Jay Leno takes over for Johnny Carson, Microsoft launches Windows 3.1, Barney and Friends airs on PBS, and a charismatic young candidate from Ar-kansas takes the Oval Office on behalf of the “forgotten middle class.”

Though self-described “swirly indie party pop” band COIN’s latest EP is titled 1992; and though they proudly call themselves a “product of the ’90s,” they don’t remember the King of Late Night leaving his upholstered throne or Clinton being sworn in. That’s because most of the band was still in utero while Nirvana was working on In Utero (sorry, some puns are too good to pass up).

This borrowed nostalgia for the ’90s isn’t uncommon among other Nash-villians who aren’t old enough to re-member the Cold War, so I realize I’m not telling you about some burgeoning social phenomenon. If you’re not fa-miliar with this trend, here are some (slightly exaggerated) examples of what it entails: Facebook event page photos featuring Seinfeld or Full House–inspired art, tattoo choker necklaces, all VHS everything. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen said the “Dream of the 1990s” proceeded the “Dream of the 1890s” in Portland, but you could argue that the opposite is true in Nashville. The kids have exchanged their handcrafted sus-

penders and wide-brimmed hats for vel-vet crop tops and jellies.

But as I look across COIN’s patio ta-ble, I don’t see four extras from Empire Records hanging out at a house full of intentionally kitschy ’90s memorabilia. Instead, Joe Memmel, Zach Dyke, Ryan Winnen, and Chase Lawrence lounge on the back porch of the band’s headquar-ters—a stone-sided relic of ’70s subur-bia hidden behind Nolensville Road’s auto body shops and fast-food chains—in clothes that are distinctly 2014. We’re talking this season’s H&M and Gap, nothing vintage in sight. Well, nothing vintage if you don’t count their tour bus, a red 1985 Dodge Ram van aptly named Clifford.

COIN hasn’t adopted the detached smartassness and angst common among

’90s alt acts—and contemporary ’90s alt revival acts—either. 1992 is devoid of ironic, tongue-in-cheek rock n’ roll posturing or odes to the joys of slack-erdom. Instead, lead singer, keyboardist, and lyricist Chase opts to sings earnest songs about actual human emotions: falling in (and out of) love, worrying about the future, missing the past. It’s the same brand of wide-eyed sincerity found on Pet Sounds—just replace the theremin with Chase’s Microkorg and the harpsichord with Joe’s crisp Tele

lines. The melodies aren’t obscured by calculatedly lo-fi compression, the guitars aren’t run through vintage fuzz pedals, and the rhythm section doesn’t chug along at a Kim Deal clip.

As Joe puts it, “COIN is always go-ing to have a pop structure. It’s easi-er to listen to—it’s friendly.” “We want to make something that’s good in everyone’s eyes,” Chase echoes. It’s hardly the Stephen Malk-mus or Thurston Moore philosophy to rock music, but then again, I don’t think COIN plans on trying to become Pave-ment or Sonic Youth any time soon.

So why is COIN fixated on the Clin-ton era if they don’t look, sound, write, or act like bands from the Clinton era?

“We’re not the band right now that’s regurgitating the aesthetic of the ’90s,” Ryan explains. “We called the record 1992 because that’s when all of us were born. We called it that because all of our personalities are very similar to how we were when we were kids. And we see that in each other . . . This band brings

me to childlike optimism.” It’s this sense of “childlike

optimism” that not only in-forms COIN’s music, but their lease on life as well. They’ve got youth and good looks (Ryan has actually modeled for local bou-tique Savant Vintage); they’ve played a sold-out show with Young the Giant; they’ve inked a deal with Columbia Records/Startime International—which means they’re now labelmates with Foster the People and Pe-ter Bjorn and John.

My point: if anyone has the right to fall victim to the pitfalls of stardom, it’s COIN. But after five minutes with the band, I

“COIN IS

ALWAYS

GOING TO

HAVE A POP

STRUCTURE

. . .IT’S

FRIENDLY.”



realize that a viral TMZ freakout or court-ordered community service isn’t in their future.

“We don’t have the rock n’ roll lifestyle. We don’t care about that, that’s not what the band is about,” Ryan begins. Chase cuts in, laughing: “We don’t trash too many ho-tel rooms—we’re pretty clean-cut guys.”

COIN isn’t doing their best Guns N’ Ros-es impersonation, and that’s because they collectively share an enthusiasm for—at least as far as I can tell—pretty much ev-erything life has to offer. Over the course of the afternoon, they answer my questions from the edge of their seats, maintain eye contact with me, and politely laugh at my shitty jokes. They’re the kind of guys that

help you move or the kind of guys that your mom loves to have over for dinner.

At first glance, you could mistake this sin-cerity for naivety, but it’s not that the mem-bers of COIN are gullible; they just haven’t succumbed to the aloofness and cynicism that often comes with being in an indie rock band.

“We’re going to grow up,” Chase begins, “But I don’t think we’ll ever lose that sense of childlike wonder . . . We all maybe over-romanticize our childhoods, but I really like the idea of being young forever.”

And after hearing about their childhoods, I can’t blame the guys for being a little sentimental. Chase’s dad grew up playing churches and USO shows around the coun-


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try, so it was only a matter of time before the future COIN frontman started praising the Lord by playing piano alongside his old man. Similarly, the rest of the band was raised by fathers who encouraged their sons to get in-volved in music from an early age. For Zach’s and Ryan’s dads, that meant sending their kids to rock camps with ridiculous names like Power Chord Academy and Camp Jam. Ryan’s dad even weathered an Aaron Carter show for his son. It makes sense, then, that COIN “over-romanticizes” their (very short) past: if your dad was nice enough to suffer through “Aaron’s Party” live, I think it’s safe to assume you probably had an enjoyable adolescence.

It’s not all fun and tween-party-anthem

games in the world of COIN, though. Sure, their songs are hopeful, and sure, everyone from college kids to soccer moms can prob-ably bob their heads to Ryan’s bass drum and Joe’s highlife riffs on “Atlas.” But behind the spring reverb and airy synths, there’s subtle bittersweetness and even morbidity.

For instance, Chase and Joe’s harmonies on the shout-along chorus of “It’s Okay,” COIN’s latest single, fool you into thinking you’re listening to a feel-good summer an-them. One SoundCloud user even called it the “perfect song for the beginning of spring ahh” (smiley face emoticon not included). Give it another listen, however, and you’ll notice that Chase isn’t exactly singing about your typical synth-pop subject matter: “Cut


“WE HAVEN’T DONE A 180. WE’RE

NOT RECREATING OURSELVES,

WE’RE JUST MAKING A BETTER

VERSION OF OURSELVES.”

me down or cut me open / Don’t even tell me why / We’re all promised some misfortune / We come and then we die.” I hope that commenter listens a few more times and moves “It’s Okay” from her “Spring Jams” playlist to her

“Existential Crisis” playlist (frowny face emoticon not included).

“It’s just a song about being okay with death,” Chase nonchalantly says.

“I was going through a time when I didn’t want to die at all, but I just kind of realized that it comes and it goes and we’re all promised death. That’s all we’re promised—death and taxes, I guess. It’s super depressing, I know,

but it means you just have to live now . . . that’s sort of our motto: being here now and living with whatever hap-pens.”

“We are young—not the FUN. song,” Joe jokingly clarifies. “And we don’t want to look back on our lives in twenty years and be like, ‘I had my eyes closed the whole time, and I didn’t experience anything.’”

But something tells me COIN doesn’t need to worry about having their eyes closed: they’ve already fin-ished writing a follow-up to 1992, and they’re slated to start recording it with producer and guitarist Jay Joyce


(Iggy Pop, Cage the Elephant, Eric Church, Emmylou Harris, Little Big Town) this month. They promise that the forthcoming album, which will be the band’s first full-length, is more guitar driven and “sonically mature” than their previous efforts, but still true to 1992’s synth-pop sensibilities.

“We haven’t done a 180,” Chase says. “We’re not recreating ourselves, we’re just making a better version of ourselves . . . Everything is off of our plates at this point except for making this record. We’re 100 percent cre-ative, 100 percent of the time—or at least we try to be.”

At the moment, that means the guys are writing and rehearsing from nine to five (okay, maybe more like ten or eleven to five) every day, preparing for their upcoming fall tour with Kopecky Family Band, drinking a ton of cof-fee, and generally bro-ing out. It’s the COIN version of The Endless Summer, and they certainly aren’t taking the freedom for granted. “We’re all on the same page and writing the same kind of music, and we all agree on every-thing now. It’s really cool—we’re like brothers. It’s like DuckTales,” Chase jokes. Ryan sits up in his chair to say,

“We’re like the team in Miracle!” But COIN’s odds of success look

better than the 1980 US hockey team’s did before playing the Soviet Union. All signs—a major record deal, a notable producer, a steadily growing fanbase—point to a prosperous fu-ture, but they aren’t concerned with checking items off of some musical bucket list. They just want to bring the childlike optimism of COIN to as many people as possible.

“We want millions of people to know that we’re good people with good intentions in this industry, be-cause that’s really hard to come by sometimes,” Ryan explains. “And I don’t care if that’s cheesy—that’s what we’re all about. We’re not going to change that about ourselves.”

I don’t think you’ll have to work too hard to convince them, Ryan.

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HAILING FROM THE “WINTERY PLAINS” OF WEST BEND, WISCONSIN, the duo who make up self-described

“electronic folk” act Foreign Fields, Eric Hillman and Brian Holl, made Music City their home in 2011. Friends since their early teenage years, Hillman and Holl have experienced enviable success, due in no small part to the unlikeliest of fans: Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz. Be-fore Duritz came into the picture, how-ever, the pair spent months between an abandoned office building in wintery Wisconsin and a makeshift studio in their new home of Nashville, writing and recording what would become their debut album, Anywhere But Where I Am.

A flourishing, restless, and nuanced epic akin to albums by Sigur Ros, Broken Social Scene, and fellow Wisconsinite Bon Iver, Anywhere was released with

little fanfare online in 2012, employing a pay-what-you-want approach. The band, at the time called Flights (they later changed their name to avoid internet search confusion), harbored no specific expectations; the press, however, fell in love. As word of Foreign Fields began to spread, their music found its way to Adam Duritz, a passionate advocate for emerging artists. Having only ever played a handful of shows, the group soon found themselves on the road with Counting Crows (with a live backing band in tow), spending time in New York, and adopting Duritz as something of a mentor figure. Continued media buzz would follow, as would a string of music videos, an impromptu live EP (last sum-mer’s Tuscaloosa), more tour dates, and appearances at the likes of SXSW, CMJ, and Bonnaroo.

While the band has retreated from the public eye a bit in recent months, it’s all for good reason: they’re hard at work on their sophomore album. The as-yet-untitled release is nearing completion and is expected to arrive later this year. Though its genesis can be traced back to demos in Wisconsin, it will mark Foreign Fields’ first effort recorded solely in Nashville. The process—much more involved and deliberate this time around—has yielded a record the group describes as more dark and introspec-tive while also maintaining a theme of hopefulness. Album news, as well as live dates and additional surprises, should be right around the corner, but while you wait, you have plenty of time to familiar-ize yourself with one of Nashville’s most promising bands on the rise.

By Philip Obenschain of No Country for New Nashville | Photo by Kate Loehrer

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Native | August 2014 | Nashville, TN