Richard J. Alley

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

May 23, 2013

Good seats are still available on ‘Believe Memphis’ bandwagon

I was born and raised in Memphis, weaned during the 1970s on a steady stream of negativity flowing through a city whose dreams had slipped into the river and whose borders had become porous. Everyone, it seemed, wanted out. The grass must have looked greener in the next county over, a neighboring city, any other state.

But things have turned, haven’t they? Negativity is passed from generation to generation like a bad gene, and the only way to arrest it is to flip the off-switch in our DNA. My children are being raised in a new Memphis, one with possibilities imagined from the uppermost reaches of government down to the teacher in the classroom, from the 7-foot-1 defensive player of the year to the CEO to the waitress serving sweet tea.

And it’s borne upon one word: Believe.

It’s a directive being spread around these days on billboards, the airwaves and a little yellow towel, but the attitude has been growing in us all along. We have flipped that switch and begun believing in ourselves and our city, and to proudly share the stories that make us who we are.

Believe Memphis. So powerful is this simple command that it isn’t just for those born and raised here. It’s for everyone everywhere. We are all of Memphis. If you have a favorite pop star and dance to your radio, if you’ve stayed in a hotel, shopped in a grocery store, shipped a package or tasted the perfect pulled pork sandwich, then you are of Memphis. And we’re glad to have you. We welcome you.

The term “bandwagon” gets used in a negative way, but I say come on board. Ours is a wagon that has been hitched in the past to teams of Tigers, a couple of kings, two pandas and a Redbird. It has been loaded into the belly of a purple and orange cargo plane. More recently, it has been pulled behind a 400-passenger paddle wheel steamboat, a fleet of food trucks, and bicycles along a 7-mile Greenline, through a revitalized park, and eventually, it will cross the river over the Harahan Bridge. When there was no one to pull it, we stoked its steam engine with issues of Forbes magazine and the words of bitter columnists from afar. Currently, it’s being pulled by a grizzly bear. So climb on: It’s a bandwagon with an actual band led by Booker T. Jones fresh from a concert of American soul music at the White House.

My children already have their own memories of Memphis to share, their own stories of visiting the Memphis Zoo and the Levitt Shell, of standing riverside to gaze at the water, exploring Midtown’s cafés and riding the trails at Shelby Farms. They’ve visited the farmers markets and Botanic Garden, caught movies at the Summer Twin Drive-In and danced at the Stax Museum. They’re old enough to understand the news they see and hear, and open enough to understand that it’s not all perfect. But they have the sense that it can be changed for the better, and that is a brand new sensation.

I’ve loaded my family aboard this wagon, and I’m stopping the cycle of negativity for my own children. I am of Memphis, and my children believe because they’ve never known any other way.

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“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

May 9, 2013

Wanted: a second chance to be a band geek

The story was all over my social media feeds last week. The principal of a low-performing school in Roxbury, Mass., let his security staff go to help pay for more arts teachers. It was another of those stories I ignored at the time, knowing that if I found I was interested in reading it later, then it would be there; stories have a way of circling around and coming back to us. And this one did just that as I sat in the audience twice in the past week for my sons’ band concerts at White Station Middle and High Schools. It’s the type of setting where a story on the importance of funding arts programs in schools might be set to the music of Gershwin.

If you’ve never been to a concert at that level, it is nothing less than extraordinary. I wasn’t in the band in high school. Band geeks, that’s who was in the band. It turns out there is no shame in that. Just the opposite: It’s a moniker worn with pride. There may be no other instance of students working so closely together with their teachers than in a school auditorium as they give a performance everything they’ve got. They all have a stake in it. They’re all trying to make this thing — this arrangement — sound as whole and as perfect as possible. To do such a thing takes more than mere talent: It takes teamwork.

Many of the professional musicians I know all came to their instruments through their secondary schools’ band programs. How many adults today do you know who can show a direct line from middle school to their careers? The conductors on stage this past week — Mr. Wright, Mr. Guinn and Mr. Scott — are the Pied Pipers of our children, leading them into something that, even if they don’t make a job of it, they will use in some way or other their entire lives.

In a recent conversation, Dru Davison, performing arts coordinator with Memphis City Schools, hit on the ability of music to facilitate all learning when he spoke of the many jazz ensembles in the schools and the art of improvisation.

“You can recite someone else’s piece of music, or you can take everything you know about music and create your own, and that kind of creativity and innovation is really what employers are looking for,” Davison told me. “It’s about being college- and career-ready, and if you have kids in a jazz band, you know that they’re showing up on time for every rehearsal or else they can’t perform.”

That school in Roxbury, Orchard Gardens Elementary, has shown a vast improvement in its test scores, in its morale and in its security issues even without the aid of a police force. They’re working as a team now — students, teachers, administration — to make their arrangement the best that it can be.

If I had it all to do over again, would I be a band geek? You bet I would. I would be awful, mind you, but I would try my hand at the saxophone or the clarinet or maybe even the tuba. In lieu of talent, I sit in the audience as a music lover.

I’m a proud parent of public schoolchildren, and I’m with the band.

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Small Business Spotlight for The Memphis Daily News

April 8, 2013

In 2007, Sean Faust and business partner Brad Ellis came together with Memphis music icon Doug Easley to create a company offering full-service audio and video recording and mixing services.

Both Faust and Easley had recording studios that burned in 2005 and New School Media is the Phoenix that has risen from those ashes.

“We had all the ingredients,” Easley said of their new project.

And indeed they do. Easley has recorded music heavyweights from Sonic Youth and Wilco to Jack White, Loretta Lynn and Jeff Buckley.

Faust earned degrees in theater and documentary film production from Syracuse University, has more than 15 years of experience and grew up running sound with his father, saying that his Saturday mornings were full of cables and amplifiers as opposed to cartoons.

Ellis is a writer and director with 10 feature films under his belt, including “Act One,” which claimed Best Narrative Feature, Hometown Award in the 2005 Indie Memphis Film Festival.

The studio is a 3,300-square-foot complex swathed in grass cloth walls, swag lamps, retro seating and original Lamar Sorrento artwork. To take a tour of the facility is to walk through a museum of vintage styles and scenery, ending in a top of the line, 5.1 audio mixing suite, something more akin to mission control at NASA with dim lighting punctuated by bright LEDs and computer monitors … (read more)

Memphis Standout profile for The Memphis Daily News

April, 5, 2013

John Bass earned a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Memphis.

Specifically, the degree is focused on 16th century music compared to modern jazz pedagogy and how musicians then might have been taught improvisation.

Where does one go with such a degree?

Bass has taken it across Midtown to Rhodes College where he is the director of the Mike Curb Institute for Music. The Curb Institute was established to preserve and promote the distinct music traditions of the South, as well as research its effect on history, economy and social systems.

What better place than Memphis, the genesis of so much in popular music? And what better place for a musician from Mobile, Ala.?

Bass’ father was a physician by trade and also an after-hours banjo player, so Bass grew up with music in his ears and, eventually, a guitar in his hands.

After a typical adolescence spent playing in garage bands around town, Bass took the not-so-typical turn of seriously studying jazz. His high school band director suggested the University of Southern Mississippi, where Bass majored in jazz guitar.

He and his wife, Johnnie, considered Memphis for their respective pursuits and programs. She is an audiologist now with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and he received his master’s in jazz guitar from Memphis before pursuing his doctorate.

While working on that advanced degree, Bass began teaching guitar as an adjunct professor at Rhodes College, which doesn’t offer a degree in music, per se, yet in the liberal arts tradition students can graduate with a Bachelor of Arts and a major, or emphasis, in music … (read more)

Standout Profile for The Memphis Daily News

March 29, 2013

Willy Bearden is a local filmmaker best known for works such as his 2010 feature “One Came Home” and the Memphis Memoirs series on WKNO-TV.

He produced the video exhibitions for the Cotton Museum and has produced the New Year’s Eve telecast from Beale Street as well as the Blues Music Awards for the Blues Foundation.

The bearded and bespectacled Bearden is a renaissance man with a down-home flair whose talents extend far beyond any single medium.

“I’m a filmmaker, a writer and a storyteller, and I think all of these things are connected, at least as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “I couldn’t be a filmmaker if I weren’t a writer, and I couldn’t be a filmmaker if I didn’t know photography.”

And it’s his photography that will be in the spotlight during an opening reception Friday, March 29, at 6 p.m. at the Leadership Memphis Gallery 363 (365 S. Main St.) during the South Main Art Trolley Tour.

For the show, Bearden culled 10 years of photographs for the 20 or so to be edited, printed and framed.

“There’s a lot of work that goes into it,” Bearden said. “I’ve had a good time going through and choosing things, it’s been interesting to kind of walk back through the thousands of things I’ve shot.”

Ken Hall has partnered with Michel Allen in Allen Projects, a gallery and consulting firm, to curate shows for Leadership Memphis. The Bearden photography installation marks one year for such shows.

Hall has known Bearden for several years and was familiar with his video and production work, but when he saw the still photography for the first time, he wanted to showcase it to the public.

“I was just mesmerized by his great work in still photography,” Hall said. “So immediately – I think the next day – I called him for an exhibition at Gallery 363.”

Bearden, a Rolling Fork, Miss., native, spends a lot of time in the Delta and his photography represents this … (read more)

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

March 28, 2013

Teach kids to enjoy city with family

The week before last, for about half a week, it was springtime in Memphis. Remember that? Temperatures in the 70s, sunshine, the saucer magnolia in my front yard even dared to show its colors. Luckily for my kids, that was during their spring break, and we took full advantage of it.

The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art held a chalk art festival with folks creating their own works of art on the plaza in front of the museum. Kids got into the act as well and turned the concrete into a rainbow of butterflies, puppies, squiggly lines and shapes. It looked as if spring had fallen upon Midtown alone and blossomed in chalk dust.

From there, it’s only a hop and a skip to the Memphis Zoo. A short trip unless it’s 70, sunny and spring break. The line of cars waiting to get in snaked through the park and down Poplar. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to see the snakes. Or, more accurately, they wanted to touch a stingray. We never did make it into that exhibit; the lines there were too overwhelming for impatient children (and adults). We’ll make a special trip for the rays.

The highlight of the week for me was a visit to the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. The museum is a treasure trove of soul, blues, styles and grooves. My kids laughed at Isaac Hayes’ hats and boots; they dug his car with its fuzzy floor and gold detail. They swayed and strutted on the dancefloor in front of a floor-to-ceiling episode of “Soul Train,” and they marveled at the display of black Frisbees. “Those are records,” I explained.

My favorite part is the short film shown at the beginning of every visit. I’ve seen it before, and it never fails to bring a lump to the throat. Stax, in its heyday, rode a wave of hits, fame, funk and, most inspirational, family. Steve Cropper, legendary guitarist for Booker T. & the MG’s, says in the film that when you walked into Stax, you were family. Color did not matter. Until it did. When things turned after that tragic April 4 in 1968, a day we’ll commemorate next week, neither Stax nor the city of Memphis would ever be the same.

In the 10 years since the museum opened, though, that tide has turned again. I saw it two weeks ago in a museum where black and white, young and old, all studied the rise and fall of a great American sound. We laughed at the size of the collars, wiped a tear at the story of a plane crash and danced to the same beat. In a park across town on another day, my kids sidled up to others from throughout the city to revel in color. At our world-class zoo, where there was once a day of the week set aside for black-only visitors, multitudes of all ethnicities wandered.

Last week saw the official first day of spring, though the predicted snow the following day said otherwise. Either way, the long winter hibernation is over. It’s time to get out and visit your city, wherever you live; learn what it holds, its history good and bad, and enjoy time with family that you know, and that you have yet to meet.

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Centerpiece feature for The Memphis Daily News

March 20, 2013

Blues Foundation in final stage of fundraising for Hall of Fame

If all goes well, The Blues Foundation will be raising the roof on a new Blues Hall of Fame at 421 S. Main St. in six months.

The roof, of course, is already there, and the ground floor now holds the foundation’s offices and a gift shop, but the Raise the Roof campaign is hoping to garner the last $1 million needed of the $2.5 million proposed to build out a first-class venue.

The architecture firm of archimania and the museum exhibit firm Design 500 are working on final plans for what should be another jewel in the city’s heavyweight belt of music that includes Sun Studio, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, Graceland and the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum.

For a music genre known for testifying to the human condition and championing the everyman, it is fitting that $1.25 million of the funds have come directly from blues fans around the world in the form of direct contributions and membership dues – the Blues Foundation currently has 4,500 individual members.

The Memphis area is responsible for $250,000 with the largest local donors being ArtsMemphis ($175,000), First Tennessee Bank ($45,000) and the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau ($25,000).

“We have been focusing on getting blues fans, wherever they live, to show that this is an important thing and step forward first, and now we’re reaching out more to the Memphis community,” said Jay Sieleman, president and CEO of the foundation.

“The Blues Foundation is recognized around the world for bringing attention and acclaim to this unique, authentic art form,” said Susan Schadt, president and CEO of ArtsMemphis. “Where could be better than Downtown Memphis to house the Blues Music Hall of Fame? It’s thrilling to see the broad base of support Jay Sieleman and the Blues Foundation have garnered for this project, not just in Memphis but nationally.” … (read more)

Centerpiece feature for The Memphis Daily News

March 13, 2013

Musicians for Le Bonheur raises money for children’s hospital

Just as Jim Jaggers, meteorologist for WREG News Channel 3, uses the power of his bike pedals to raise money and awareness for Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital through Go Jim Go, his son Justin is using guitar pedals to do the same.

The younger Jaggers and business partner Rae Williams founded Angry Nerd Productions and created Musicians for Le Bonheur. Through the program, they have elicited the help of musicians and recording technicians across the city to produce a CD and stage live shows all for the benefit of Le Bonheur.

This isn’t the first time Jaggers has used music to fundraise. In 2010, while searching for ways to market his own musical concern and promote the charity, he put together 18 musicians for a 20-track CD. The following year he tied it in with his senior project as a music business major at the University of Memphis and staged a battle of the bands to raise $1,200.

This year, he brings to the table a renewed vigor to the cause and more than 30 local artists crossing many genres willing to record and donate nearly 50 tracks so far, requiring a double album and bonus, digital B-side compilation for download.

Artists already committed to participating include FreeWorld, Star & Micey and The Bo-Keys, among many others.

To set this year apart from others, the partners knew that “we need to make the events bigger, we need to try and brand more and promote more and really try and present Memphis music on a whole new level,” Jaggers said. “Both of us have just been amazed at how quickly this has grown this year.”

The double CD will drop in the beginning of September with a release party on Sept. 13. The project formally kicks off a series of live shows around town throughout the spring and summer at Hard Rock Café on Beale Street the weekend of May 17, a bold move considering locals and visitors alike will be flooding the area for the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.

The $5 cover that night will go toward production of the CD, and all proceeds from sales go directly to the Le Bonheur Foundation … (read more)

Feature story for MBQ magazine

March/April 2013

Park It Here

The Overton Park Conservancy is the newest caretaker for the city’s 111-year-old oasis

In November of last year, Memphis celebrated Overton Park’s 
111th birthday. On 347 acres of land known as Lea Woods, in what was then considered the northeastern part of Memphis, George Kessler of Kansas City, Missouri, designed a park that was to be connected to downtown via parkways and would eventually be swallowed whole by the city, burning bright in the belly as an oasis among asphalt, concrete, cars and steel.

A month after that auspicious birthday, the Overton Park Conservancy celebrated its one-year anniversary. The Memphis Park Commission was dissolved by the Herenton administration in 2000 and folded into city government. In December 2011, the Memphis City Council voted unanimously to allow the Conservancy to take over the management of the 184 acres of public parkland including the Greensward, Rainbow Lake, the formal gardens, Veteran’s Plaza, the 126-acre Old Forest State Natural Area, and the East Parkway picnic area. Though the entities share grounds and work together, OPC has no authority over the Levitt Shell, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis College of Art, Memphis Zoo, or the Overton Park Golf Course. The agreement between the city of Memphis and OPC is a 10-year contract … (read more)

March/April 2013

“Because I Said So” column for The Commercial Appeal

Feb. 28, 2013

Memories of baby held in phone, not in an album

The wall over the desk in my office at home is hung with snapshots of family and friends, inspiration for when I need a little push to write this column or anything else I might be working on.

The pictures have been culled from years of going through the photo albums of grandparents and parents. Many have been taken from place to place with moves over the years, tucked into books, shoeboxes and desk drawers.

Actual photo albums on my shelves, however, are few and far between. There are gaps in the years to be filled in by imagination. During a recent visit with my grandparents, my kids and I flipped through plastic-coated pages brittle with age, and took a trip into the distant past. Each leather-bound book was a time capsule filled with faded images from a camera, a contraption from the past that Jules Verne might as well have imagined.

These days most of us don’t carry cumbersome cameras that require a flashbulb, batteries and a roll of film. We have a phone. And that phone is, more than likely, equipped with an application that will make the snapshot you just took of your kid on a swing at the park look like it was taken in 1978. Or, if you prefer, 1928.

When I look at my own baby pictures, the washed-out tones and white, tell-tale borders help place the time firmly in the 1970s. The Instagram app does that for us now. Other than the electronic tablets in their hands, a picture of my kids last Christmas morning might just as easily have been taken four decades ago. It is a way for us to force nostalgia upon something witnessed only moments before.

Within our phones is where these photos will reside; a collection of ones and zeroes zipping through circuits and saved somewhere in a cloud. Something as precious as a baby book is quickly becoming an anachronism.

What seasoned parents know is that, with each child, the chances of putting together such a memento becomes slimmer and slimmer. When my oldest was born, I wasn’t snapping pictures with a telephone and texting them to family three states away. Had anyone suggested such a thing in 1998, I would have looked as confused as I was anyway standing there in the labor and delivery room at Baptist Hospital. Instead, I held up my 35mm Pentax and documented Calvin’s arrival into what now seems a low-fi, analog world. Those precious memories were entrusted to Walgreen’s and a day or two later I retrieved an envelope of glossy photos to tape into his book.

My 6-year-old, by contrast, pressured us for her book only last year. We were woefully short on actual, hard-copy photographs. What I did have was a phone full of her face. And some dinners I’d prepared. And quite a few of a recent show at the Hi-Tone, some plumbing that needed to be repaired and a particularly picturesque sunset.

What do we picture for the future? A set of hard drives arranged on the bookshelf by year? A lone smart phone hung on the wall above my desk? Document childhood well because it is fleeting and the memories captured will evaporate over time; gone, it seems, in an instagram.

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