RED BULL FLUGTAG NASHVILLE

SATURDAY, 23RD

This Saturday at Riverfront Park, CBS Sportsline columnist Clay Travis, Radio Lightning’s Team Green, a USN physics teacher and 26 other groups—including a tribe of Nashville cavemen—will compete to plummet 30 feet into the Cumberland in front of God, YouTube and everybody. The occasion is this free spectacle sponsored by consumable liquid propellant Red Bull, which challenges crews to build and pilot a human-powered aircraft from a three-story flight deck. Sound easy? First, the whole contraption, pilot and all, must weigh less than 450 pounds. Second, the U.S. flight record (set last year in Baltimore) is a mere 81 feet. Third, showmanship, design and imagination are at least as important as whether the thing can actually fly. Of the seven Nashville teams competing, participants promise an airborne Batman Building (courtesy of Rhett “Mr. Freeze” Butler and Graham Central Station’s Team Bull South), a blimp (from Travis and his ClayNation’s Making It Rain), a tank (via U.S. Army Sgt. Gary McDowell and the men of Army Strong) and a vision of prehistoric terror (constructed by local filmmaker Adam Rector and his Pteam Pterodactyl). The only way this could be more fun to watch is if every team somehow got whacked in the nuts on the way down. “The scariest thing is, by far, actually entering the Cumberland River,” said Travis in an email. “I feel like there is a decent chance by the time I come back to the surface I’m going to have an extra eye, have lost an ear, and take 10 years off my life just by going underwater.” In the event’s 16-year history, previous Flugtags (“flying days”) have drawn as many as 75,000 people in the U.S., so expect a crowd. Gates open at 11 a.m., with the first flight at 1 p.m.; watch also for flyovers by the Red Bull Air Force and a parachute drop. For those about to flug, we salute you. —JIM RIDLEY

MUSIC

THURSDAY, 21ST

EARL SCRUGGS WITH FAMILY & FRIENDS W/THE NASHVILLE BLUEGRASS BAND Earl Scruggs is no sloppy sentimentalist—he’s got a dry wit that’s woven not only into his conversation, but his playing, too. But there’s reason to believe that The Ryman, where Scruggs rose to stardom on the Grand Ole Opry some 60 years ago, brings out the best in him. Under the Family & Friends moniker, he’s consistently built solid groupings around the electric bass and lead vocals of son Gary that provide just the right mix of sympathetic support and challenging inspiration for his banjo picking. (This one will feature other son Randy, guitarist Jon Randall, Dobro player Rob Ickes, Hoot Hester on fiddle and John Gardner on percussion.) Opening the show with an all too rare hometown appearance is Nashville Bluegrass Band, one of the classiest outfits in bluegrass today. Ryman Auditorium —JON WEISBERGER

FRIDAY, 22ND

THE BLACK KEYS/DINOSAUR JR. Akron duo The Black Keys have bent the blues in their own image, combining the ragged rumble of juke-joint guitarists such as Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside, a sludgy, rough-edged recording style and a contemporary rock sensibility to forge a musical vehicle with more raw, rattling firepower than the murderous raiders from Mad Max. The closest musical comparison would be The White Stripes, whose dirty garage roar shares a visceral intensity with the Keys. But the Keys are nowhere near as traditional, and this is their gift: while the bass-less team of guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney are deeply informed by Chicago blues and its Mississippi hill country cousin, they avoid familiar chord progressions and riffs. Auerbach’s well-weathered vocals are as lived in as the band’s gritty sound, fueled less by hunger than the stubborn resilience of his reedy wail. They’ve maintained a prolific pace, putting out four full-lengths and two EPs since forming in 2001. Last year featured the release of major-label debut Magic Potion, which compromises none of their thick, grainy ambience or quicksand grooves. Opening is the reunited original lineup of alt-rockers Dinosaur Jr., whose distortion-drenched approach is in full-effect on their new album, Beyond. City Hall —CHRIS PARKER

JEREMY LISTER PRESENTS “THE SHOW” You have to hand it to Mississippi transplant Jeremy Lister for trying to shake up the whole staid singer-songwriter thing. It’s not that Lister’s music is all that different from the ever-expanding crew of nationally recognized local pop-rock songwriter-artists (Tyler James, Landon Pigg, Mat Kearney), or that he’s cultivated an image that appeals to indie elitists (see Ryan Adams). Where Lister distinguishes himself is with “The Show.” The first time he attempted to stage this ambitious circus-themed concert in December 2005, he sold out the Exit/In and kept tongues wagging about his inspired amalgamation of low-budget theatrics and top-shelf songcraft. This time, Lister’s plans are more outrageous, while his setting is more appropriate. Hosted by jack-of-all-genres Steve Lee, the show sees Lister backed by string and horn sections with a choir composed of many of his songwriter pals. It also features appearances by Leigh Nash, Kyle Andrews, Katie Herzig, Jace K. Seavers, K.S. Rhoads, the Bodhicitta Belly Dance Troupe, Panty Raid!, The Nashville Roller Derby Girls, Gypsyville Belly Dancers and local magician the Great Scott Cantrell. The fear here is that Lister’s music won’t hold up under the weight of such tomfoolery and heightened expectations, but by the time he takes the stage you’ll certainly have already had a full evening’s entertainment—and what other singer-songwriter show promises that? Belcourt Theatre —JASON MOON WILKINS

SATURDAY, 23RD

ANNE MCCUE Anyone who’s heard Anne McCue’s songs won’t be surprised to learn that she earned a degree in film production and film studies in her native Australia. Her third full-length studio album, last year’s Koala Motel, presents a vivid picture of emotionally wounded characters searching for shelter in a disintegrating world as country, rock, blues and folk mix and mate on the soundtrack. Although mentor Lucinda Williams (who contributes backing vocals on Motel’s “Hellfire Raiser”) is McCue’s most obvious touchstone on record, recent shows have seen her stretching out as an electric guitarist, tearing into her own songs and an audacious cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun” power-trio style with bass player Shawn Byrne and drummer Dave Ray. The Mercy Lounge —CHRIS NEAL

PRABIR & THE SUBSTITUTES Richmond’s Prabir & the Substitutes bear much resemblance to frontman Prabir Mehta’s previous band, the well-received and frequent Middle Tennessee visitors The Rachel Nevadas. Still blending the anthemic side of Elvis Costello with the sheen of ’60s psychedelic pop, the Substitutes focus heavily on thick vocal harmonies, wearing their Beach Boys influence on their sleeves with songs such as “Brian Wilson, I Love You!” The band has toured the region frequently, including several Nashville stops—the most notable being last January’s opening slot for Wax Fang. This time around the band will be supporting their recently released debut album, Annabelle, I’m Coming Home Tonight. Five Spot —MATT SULLIVAN

THE ETTES Veering dangerously close to sugary pop before slamming on the brakes in the nick of time, The Ettes turn rock ’n’ roll’s familiar oom-pah oom-pah beat into an irresistible melodic rush. The heaps of reverb on their new album Shake the Dust make it seem as if the band is playing at a distance, which entices the ear to strain closer. It’s a great effect, while the slurring drums suggest the sweat that the music calls for. The songs are chock full of both vocal and guitar hooks and the band rarely slows down long enough for you to realize they’re not hitting their instruments very hard. What they don’t offer by way of force they make up for in cleverness and energy, and Shake the Dust dives out of your speakers with an almost physical presence that often eludes even the best in the power-chord garage set. Grimey’s, 5 p.m.; Springwater —SABY REYES-KULKARNI

SCOTT MILLER Scott Miller is no hothouse flower. Born in Virginia, Miller got a degree from William and Mary, but his musical education came from playing bars in Knoxville followed by a lesson in the perils of show business as a member of the much-hyped, now-defunct V-Roys, who were signed to Steve Earle’s E-Squared label. He went solo with a backing band called the Commonwealth, and now a new live album, Reconstruction, captures the depth of Miller’s generally unsung career and demonstrates why his roots-rock Americana has a devoted following. To his credit, he can write a funny song, which isn’t always the case with his peers in the Americana scene. If you can’t sing along to “Drunk All Over This Town,” well, you’ve probably had one too many. Mercy Lounge —WERNER TRIESCHMANN

JOHN D. LOUDERMILK Best known as the author of “Tobacco Road,” a clangorous 1964 hit for The Nashville Teens, John D. Loudermilk has made huge contributions to pop, country and rock ’n’ roll. With a droll sense of humor and a surrealistic bent, the 73-year-old North Carolinian occupies a unique place among songwriters. His “Break My Mind” and “Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye” are standards, and that’s not to mention “Ebony Eyes,” a gorgeous 1961 Everly Brothers hit, or “Road Hog,” covered by Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso under its Portuguese title, “O Calhambeque.” It’s a fascinating body of work, and this program will combine an interview segment with a short performance by Loudermilk, along with career-spanning video clips and still images. Expect a free-wheeling, literate experience: in 1968, Loudermilk won a Grammy for liner notes for his previous year’s Suburban Attitudes in Country Verse, a title that speaks volumes. 2 p.m. at Ford Theater, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum —EDD HURT

BERNADETTE PETERS WITH THE NASHVILLE CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Bernadette Peters has conquered most areas of show business. She established her considerable skills at age 20 in a 1968 off-Broadway production of the 1930s musical spoof Dames at Sea, where she also created the cutesy retro persona that sustained her through subsequent television and film appearances in movies such as The Jerk and Pennies From Heaven. She’s reclaimed the Broadway musical stage in revivals such as Annie Get Your Gun or as the foremost interpreter of the works of Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Peters has also had a significant career as a recording and concert artist, and this gala appearance with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra should find her in maximum cabaret form, drawing from a set list featuring the works of show-tune masters like Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jule Styne, Jerry Herman and others. Peters’ Nashville appearance will also encourage animal adoption, a cause she and Mary Tyler Moore have promoted through the founding of Broadway Barks, a New York City fund-raising effort. (Show night at 5:30 p.m., the Nashville Humane Association will preview their new mobile dog adoption vehicle, “Teddy’s Wagon.”) The first half of this bill features music director Paul Gambill leading the orchestra through John Mock’s The Stone, a short Celtic-flavored work commissioned several years ago by the NCO. Schermerhorn Symphony Center —MARTIN BRADY

MONDAY, 25TH

DARK MEAT It’s worth nothing that the same journalists who touted Polyphonic Spree—the white-robed choir-cult of 20 or so musicians who exclaim Tim DeLaughter’s anthems with a zealot’s fervor—as a religious experience slept on last year’s big-band triumph, the 23-piece from Athens, Ga., called Dark Meat. Whereas The Polyphonic Spree have mass appeal for the NPR set, Dark Meat—sweaty, loud, given to free-jazz excursions on pieces with emancipator intentions such as “Well Fuck You Then” or the righteous “Freedom Ritual”—are their DIY/PBR counterpart. Their Cloud Recordings debut Universal Indians was summarily excellent (a true Southern bro-down for smart kids and cheap booze, if you can believe as much), but it only captures a sliver of their raw live essence. This is a life experience, duder. The Basement —GRAYSON CURRIN

TUESDAY, 26TH

ROBBERS ON HIGH STREET The confounding thing about Brooklyn’s Robbers on High Street is that they sound so familiar. The rhythms are jagged, slinky things full of Spoon’s jerky cool, while frontman Ben Trokan’s swooning vocals and the foreboding cinematic textures suggest some of the same British new wave influences that propel NYC peers Ambulance LTD, The Walkmen and Interpol. The combination is terse, chewy and beguiling, alternating between punchy post-punk throb and warm, frothy, late-night shimmy. While critics have complained about their similarity to the aforementioned acts, the execution of their shadowy minor-chord melodies diminishes the worth of such arguments. The songs usually come dipped in desperation and dissipation, as on the keyboard-driven “Dig the Lightning,” or “The Fatalist” off their recent EP The Fatalist and Friends, which encourages giving in and letting go of those things beyond your control. Grand Animals, the follow-up to 2005’s full-length debut Tree City, is due for release July 24. Mercy Lounge —CHRIS PARKER

THEATER

AND A NIGHTINGALE SANG Scottish-born playwright C.P. Taylor died prematurely in 1981 at the age of 52, leaving behind a body of work that includes many plays for young audiences but also a few mature dramas such as the provocative Good, which daringly addresses the topics of euthanasia and the rise of the Third Reich. Also set in the World War II era is Taylor’s bittersweet And a Nightingale Sang, a more readily recognized piece that merges comedy with a serious portrayal of the lives of members of a rambunctious Geordie family in England’s northeast. Steppenwolf Theatre, the noted Chicago troupe, presented the U.S. premiere 1982, and a 1990 Masterpiece Theatre TV adaptation starred Joan Plowright. Laura Skaug directs Boiler Room Theatre’s new mounting, which stars Elizabeth Eakin and features veteran BRT talents Alan Lee, Lisa Gillespie, Megan Murphy and Jack E. Chambers. Opens June 22 and plays through July 21 at the Factory at Franklin. For tickets, call 794-7744 or visit online at BoilerRoomTheatre.com. —MARTIN BRADY

ART

SYLVIA HYMAN: “FICTIONAL CLAY” This Nashville artist’s most recent work started out as a joke. A virtuoso at molding clay, Hyman began making Chinese fortune cookies and birthday cakes out of clay, and these goodies looked so real people were tempted to take a bite. “I would then give these cakes and cookies to my friends, and you should have seen their faces,” says the artist. Amazingly, Hyman only began making this kind of art (called trompe l’oeil or “to deceive the eye”) about a decade ago, after she had already turned 80. Now just shy of her 90th birthday, Hyman has a new exhibit at the Frist that showcases 22 of her most meticulously crafted clay sculptures. The exhibit includes a faux alligator skin violin case filled with sheet music (the music, including Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5, is all made from clay), a realistic shelf holding such books as Plato’s Complete Works and The Cat in the Hat (all fake) and a basket filled with papers and a Mad magazine (Alfred E. Neuman is a constant motif). The exhibit opens Friday and runs through Oct. 7. Frist Center for the Visual Arts —JOHN PITCHER

FILM

HITCHCOCK IN THE ’50S: VERTIGO If movies are the “ultimate pervert art,” as philosopher Slavoj Zizek asserts in the filmed essay The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, Alfred Hitchcock’s morbid 1958 masterpiece deserves an entire museum wing: its plot can be summarized as boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy remakes new girl in order to romance dead girl. In possibly the most diseased of all his neurotic 1950s roles, James Stewart is the traumatized San Francisco detective haunted by femme fatale Kim Novak, who disappears and reappears midway through the film in one of the most disturbing narrative gambits in all of movies. Not to be missed on the big screen, it plays Saturday and Sunday afternoon at the Belcourt, which may extend its popular Hitchcock series through July. —JIM RIDLEY

YOU’RE GONNA MISS ME: A FILM ABOUT ROKY ERICKSON You’re gonna miss this first-rate documentary about psych-rock cult hero Erickson if you don’t get to the Belcourt by Thursday. Same goes for Johnnie To’s Hong Kong gangster epic Triad Election and the well-attended holdover of Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, which make way Friday for the hit doc Crazy Love (see the review on p. 68) and the 30-years-in-the-making double bill of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s psychotropic epics El Topo and The Holy Mountain. Coming soon: the Edith Piaf biopic La Vie en Rose (June 29), the anthology film Paris Je T’aime (July 6) and the horror comedy Black Sheep (July 27). —JIM RIDLEY

FILMING: APOSTLES OF COMEDY “Want to be part of a major Christian movie?” With a come-on like that, how could you resist? You’ve seen the Kings of Comedy, the Queens of Comedy and the Comedians of Comedy; get ready to roll in the pews as Jeff Allen, Brad Stine, Ron Pearson and Anthony Griffith perform before a live audience for a concert film 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Belmont’s Massey Hall. The $10 tickets benefit the Bridges Academy and the World Outreach Church. See apostlesofcomedy.com for more info. —JIM RIDLEY

COMEDY

NEIL HAMBURGER Even among comedians—a profession notoriously populated by people plagued by insecurities and self-loathing—Neil Hamburger is in a league of his own. His act is obviously a put-on, but his groaning, throat-clearing uneasiness is a thing of comical beauty, capable of suspending disbelief in even the most clued-in audience member. On one hand it’s performance art: a Borscht Belt hack spewing out some of the unfunniest shit you’ve ever heard, leaving you squirming at either the unfunniness of said shit or your empathy for the other folks in the crowd who aren’t in on the joke. Then he’ll unleash something so hilarious (and often inappropriate) that you’re rolling on the floor. It’s the horror movie of comedy, a game of tension and release (or sometimes, tension and more tension). And be sure to harass him from the audience. He likes it, and never ruthlessly pulverizes hecklers with a fury heretofore unseen. Seriously. We wouldn’t lie to you. Though Hamburger often opens for rock acts—he thrives on crowds where much of the audience is caught off-guard—this time around he’s touring with Dr. El Suavo, a prestidigitator/DJ/performance artist described by The Drum Media magazine as “the magician even kids love to hate.” Sounds like a match made in heaven. Or hell. The End —JACK SILVERMAN