Our Critics Picks

This Friday night’s lineup at The Basement represents just the kind of hip, regional indie-rock bill that Nashville would be lucky to have any night of the week. Louisvillians Wax Fang—most recently spotted opening for My Morning Jacket at The Ryman—play heavy, melodic rock built around frontman Scott Carney’s angular, suspenseful guitar lines. Dixie Dirt are a Knoxville band who dance between roots rock and low-fi dissonance, crafting a rich, melancholy sound reminiscent of Centro-matic. Singer Kat Brock has a voice that oscillates wonderfully between quiet composure and heartbreaking strain. Richmond, Va.’s Prabir & The Substitutes, who drew raves last time they came through town, meddle in bright, quirky indie pop—the song title “Brian Wilson, I Love You” might offer some hints at their influences. Their pretty, frenetic sound reverberates with joy and is just the right kind of clever. The Basement —Lee Stabert MUSIC

Thursday, 18th JOSH ROUSE In 2004, Josh Rouse released Nashville and left Nashville. The record was a pristine piece of wistful, clever pop that expertly melded the rootsy simplicity of his early recordings with his more recent dabbles in lush, jaunty power pop. Whereas Nashville was rich with tones of departure and regret, 2006’s Subtitulo, written after Rouse had settled in a small seaside town in Spain, finds him sounding rejuvenated. It might be good for him, if not necessarily for the complexity of his music. Despite the sloughing of some of the sadness that made Nashville so compelling, Subtitulo is still a clever record that leaves no doubt of his immense talent. As a live performer, Rouse exudes a quiet grace and light humor—and plays a pretty decent harmonica. (joshrouse.com) Belcourt Theatre; also playing Saturday, 20th at Exit/In —Lee Stabert RACHEL PROCTOR This West Virginia singer’s story is a familiar one: championed back home, Proctor casts her fate to Nashville, achieves some success writing songs, gets a major deal and scores a minor hit—in her case, the outstanding “Me and Emily,” about a mother escaping an abusive husband with a young daughter in tow—and then disappears. Proctor’s debut album on BNA showed plenty of promise, both as a singer with a textured and expressive voice and as a songwriter who broke past the easy formulas by delving into true-life scenarios that evoked real emotions. Fortunately, since leaving the label, she’s shed the record-by-committee approach to concentrate on the kind of contemporary-adult music she writes and sings best. She premieres songs from her self-released EP with her first Nashville performance of 2007. (rachelproctor.net) Douglas Corner —Michael McCall JOHN COWAN, RODNEY CROWELL, DANNY FLOWERS, MARCUS HUMMON, JAMES SLATER, HOLLY WILLIAMS When a Nashville nightclub features an extended lineup of artists who usually headline on their own, it means two things: a fund-raising benefit and a night of artists doing short, impassioned sets of their best-loved cuts. For this show, a series of fiercely iconoclastic songwriters gather to raise money for the Anne Stevens School in Ecuador, which provides an education for more than 100 grade-school children in the impoverished rural community of San Eduardo. Rev. Becca Stevens of Vanderbilt’s St. Augustine Chapel named the school for her late mother, a well-known Nashville charity director. Rev. Stevens also will lead an eight-day medical mission to San Eduardo during Vanderbilt University’s March spring break. The three-hour show begins at 6 p.m. Mercy Lounge —Michael McCall AQUA VELVET Aqua Velvet is the swanky love child of Jim Hoke and Randy Leago, instrumentalists who, between them, have proved they can play roughly every musical device ever made. Leago has handled woodwinds, keyboards, sitar, bass flute and God knows what else for everyone from the Dixie Chicks, Kathy Mattea and Lucinda Williams to Engelbert Humperdinck, while Hoke recently showcased his bad-ass versatility with his modern classical project Otto. As Aqua Velvet, their métier is lush, loungy instrumental reworkings of classic 1960s pop—less Esquivel exotica than cover versions that uncover hidden possibilities measure by measure in some of the hit parade’s hoariest floats. The Easybeats’ sprightly rave-up “Friday on My Mind,” in their hands becomes a wall-to-wall mash-up of grassy plunking, mariachi horns, hip-swinging samba, woodwind chamber music and raga muffinry with a climactic “Bolero” interlude: the incessant what’s-next playfulness turns the original’s windup-release tension into a sustained musical joke. The AV club doesn’t perform live often, so their all-star outing with cohorts Kristi Rose, Richard Bennett, Steve Hermann, Steve Ebe and Tim Marks should be a bug-fogger dose of audio pheromones. 7 p.m. at The Basement —Jim Ridley

Friday, 19th THE SKYLIGHTERS/PETER COOPER This side project arose out of a 2002 Washington, D.C., jam session that sounded so good the participants decided to record an album last year. The Skylighters feature a couple of bluegrass heavyweights—resonator guitarist Mike Auldridge, a founding member of the legendary (and aptly named) Seldom Scene, and mandolinist Jimmy Gaudreau (The Country Gentlemen, The Tony Rice Unit, J.D. Crowe and the New South)—along with three members of Nashville-by-way-of-D.C. roots-rock band Last Train Home. A collection of well-chosen covers (including a Louvin Brothers hat trick) and one original, The Skylighters’ self-titled debut touches on bluegrass, honky-tonk and Western swing and, as you might expect, features superb playing and harmonies. Opening the show is Tennessean music scribe Peter Cooper, whose musical alter ego may get short shrift due to his journalistic career, though he’s as good or better than many full-time singer-songwriters (and he can conjugate a verb). He’ll be showcasing material from his upcoming CD Mission Door. Cooper’s set will feature the first club appearance in many years by steel guitar legend Lloyd Green, who co-produced the record and who played on a gazillion classic country records, not to mention The Byrds’ seminal Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The Station Inn —Jack Silverman

KILL HANNAH w/THE PINK SPIDERS Employing both the goth-glam aesthetic of bands such as AFI and My Chemical Romance and the ’80s dance-rock sound of bands such as Depeche Mode and The Cure, Chicago’s Kill Hannah have monopolies on both visual and aural style. Their scenester swagger shines through their music, as singer Mat Devine’s slick vocals seem to slide over their moody pop rock. Kill Hannah’s live show is even more engaging as the band explores a catalog that goes back nearly 10 years. Openers The Pink Spiders—who also pay tribute to the sounds of yesteryear, but in their case it’s ’60s and ’70s rock—make a hometown pit stop in the midst of their seemingly endless touring. Rcktwn —Emily Zemler JANE HIS WIFE In their early ’90s heyday, locals Jane His Wife never sounded like any other Nashville rock band. Atmospheric, intelligent and impassioned, they created catchy art rock that had more in common with The Police and Peter Gabriel than the cowpunk, power pop and hair metal that dominated the local club scene back then. The members have flourished individually in the dozen or so years they’ve been apart—singer Kent Agee is a successful pop and Americana songwriter; guitarist George Bradfute is a tone master even in a town of six-string specialists; Kyle Miller has been among the city’s busiest bassists, while drummer Scot Miller opened local venues such as the Ace of Clubs and others—but they’re still drawn to their unique former sound. This is the first of a couple of shows the band has on the books, so see them while you can. (myspace.com/janehiswife) The Rutledge —Michael McCall RON SEXSMITH Quietly pained and so evenhanded that its insights can rush by unnoticed, Ron Sexsmith’s new Time Being stands as an exemplary updating of the singer-songwriter record. With sharp production from Mitchell Froom and first-rate backing by drummer Pete Thomas and bassist Davey Faragher, Time Being echoes the British pop of Paul McCartney and XTC. Still, the Canadian performer never substitutes form for content, so that a song like “Jazz at the Bookstore” comes across as a sly parody of neo-soul and as an indictment of heartless gentrification. When Sexsmith sings, “There’s a man standing at the crossroads / With a dark roast in his hand / Livin’ in white yuppie land,” or suggests that music has become another backdrop for consumerism, he includes himself in the critique. He’s a modest, careful musician—and a terrific songwriter—who has mastered an unfashionable mode of sincerity. (ronsexsmith.com) Belcourt Theatre —Edd Hurt SAM BUSH AND DARRELL SCOTT If you listen to Sam Bush’s new album Laps in Seven just once, you immediately understand why he’s known as the king of newgrass. He plays with amplified rock energy on the title track, mixes in a little R&B groove on “I Wanna Do Right” (a tribute to the victims of Hurricane Katrina) and performs a dainty “The Dolphin Dance” with remarkable bluegrass purity. Perhaps the most ambitious song on the album is “River Take Me,” a passionate seven-minute number written by Bush’s friend Darrell Scott. Bush and Scott will premiere a new piece they’ve co-written at their Friday concert. A quartet of musicians from the Nashville Chamber Orchestra will be on hand to back them up. Grace Chapel in Leiper’s Fork. —John Pitcher

Saturday, 20th BLACK DIAMOND HEAVIES The two-white-kids-electric-blues thing has been done enough that jaded music snobs will scoff at the idea of yet another act doing it. But Van Campbell and Reverend John Myers, a.k.a. Black Diamond Heavies, didn’t plan things that way. Back in ’02, the Heavies were a Chattanooga quartet, playing rotgut dirty punk and blues to crowds already familiar with the group’s two outspoken singers, slide guitarist Mark “Porkchop” Holder and keyboardist Myers. As their profile grew, the Heavies, by then a trio, moved to Nashville and began touring with bigger acts (among them, the Immortal Lee County Killers, whom Myers briefly joined). Holder left the group amicably last year, but the duo continue on. Asked about how the band makes up for Holder’s absence, Myers says plaintively, “We went out and got some bigger amps.” Their new album, Every Damn Time, arrives Jan. 23 on Alive Records. The Temptation Club; also playing Thursday, 18th at Radio Café and Saturday, 20th at Grimey’s at 5 p.m. —Mark Sanders

Tuesday, 23rd CADILLAC SKY Ricky Skaggs enthused over “some of the freshest new bluegrass [I’ve] heard in a long time” when he signed Texas quintet Cadillac Sky to his label last year and hustled them into the studio to record Blind Man Walking. “Fresh,” in this case, means elaborately arranged music that tilts in an energetic newgrass direction, muscled along by Matt Menefee’s blazing banjo and mandolinist Bryan Simpson’s intricate, contemporary songs—a kind of alternate set list to the cuts he’s had with mainstream country artists. The group showcased for industry insiders at the IBMA’s October trade show, and despite the inevitable mutterings of purists, most were wowed by a confident presentation based on years of appealing to more than just bluegrass audiences. “Anytime you sign a brand new group, you’re taking a chance,” Skaggs somewhat wistfully noted when he did it, but given the new album’s strength—and the band’s crowded schedule—it’s as close to a safe bet as one’s likely to find. Mercy Lounge, 6:30 pm ­—Jon Weisberger RYAN BINGHAM One minute into any of Ryan Bingham’s songs and it’s clear why he’s receiving enthusiastic endorsements from underground Texas heroes Joe Ely and Terry Allen, and why another avid fan, Patty Griffin, asked him to open her shows as she starts her 2007 tour. His spare but weighty style is part roadhouse cosmic country and part gypsy fiddle soul, and he sings like he hasn’t slept for two days but is still as restless as ever. A former professional bull rider, the 25-year-old Texan’s new album, Dead Horses, was produced by former Black Crowes guitarist Marc Ford and marks Bingham as one of those once-in-a-blue-moon troubadours who seems to have tapped into the mystery that makes a tune sound effortless yet eternal. He stops in Nashville during a break in the Griffin tour, and those who love the bare-knuckle school of hard-living Texas songwriters will want to see what the buzz is about before the rest of the crowd does. (myspace.com/ryanbingham1) The Basement —Michael McCall THEATER CATS It’s been 25 years since Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical (based on the poetry of T. S. Eliot) made its debut on Broadway, where it stayed and stayed (and stayed!) until September 2000, closing out a record-breaking 18-year run. The show has won all the important awards, both abroad and in the States, and it solidified Webber’s place as the leading talent in the field of modern commercial musical theater. Purists might say Cats also ushered in an era of weakly crafted book musicals, in which focus on plot and characterization suddenly took a backseat to glitzy presentation and loud Broadway-style pop-rock. All the same, younger theatergoers—and the young at heart—will likely find the five road-show performances (Jan. 19-21) at TPAC’s Jackson Hall to be invigorating—at least until Act 2, when the litany of numbers profiling cats with catchy names (Macavity, Mr. Mistoffelees, etc.) begins to induce catatonia. Fortunately, before that happens you get a silver anniversary rendition of the Act 1 closer “Memory” before the old mind goes blank. Phone 255-ARTS (2787). —Martin Brady 365 NATIONAL FESTIVAL From Nov. 13, 2002, to Nov. 12, 2003, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks (Topdog/Underdog, In the Blood) embarked on an interesting exercise: she crafted a play a day, consciously attempting to tap into a meditative process aimed at celebrating both art and daily human life. The upshot is the largest collaboration in American theater history—the ambitious 365 Days/365 Plays project, which is being embraced from Nov. 13, 2006, to Nov. 12, 2007, by more than 600 regional, community and college and university theaters nationwide. Vanderbilt University’s Department of Theatre is spearheading local involvement from Jan. 22-28, presenting 10 short productions on campus each day at high noon. The Parks works—ranging from two to five minutes in length—will be directed by Vanderbilt undergrads and performed at various campus locales by actors from the Vanderbilt community. Performances are free and open to the public, and the fest will conclude with a Jan. 28 presentation of all 10 plays in Neely Auditorium. For more information on the local effort, visit vanderbilt.edu/news. For the scoop on the national movement, visit 365days365plays.com. —Martin Brady DANCE ANDRE GINGRAS/KORZO PRODUCTIES CYP17 is the name of the solo dance-cum-video-installation that international choreographer Gingras will bring into Vanderbilt University’s Ingram Hall on Jan. 24 at 7:30 p.m. Working under the auspices of Korzo Producties, a Netherlands-based arts management and presentation organization, Gingras stretches the boundaries of modern dance to incorporate martial arts and break-dancing. CYP17 has been described as the “freakshow of the future,” with its thematic focus on gene manipulation and alien pregnancies. The performance program will be preceded on Jan. 23 by a master class (10 a.m. to noon) and a Performance-on-the-Move (POM) event (6 to 8 p.m.), both taking place on the Vandy campus. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster at 255-9600. For information on the extracurriculars, visit vanderbilt.edu/greatperformance. —Martin Brady ART DANIEL LAI, “BURNT PORTRAITS” In addition to owning the Arcade’s Dangenart Gallery, Daniel Lai is an artist who specializes in using burn marks on canvas to craft images. In one more step in the evolution of art in the Arcade, Lai has created a public art project in which his work will hang from the walls of the main hall. Using a large six-foot-by-six-foot format, he applied his trademark technique to a series of portraits of business owners and employees from the Arcade shops. In addition to showcasing Lai’s unusual artistic technique, the pictures will be a great way for one of the building’s newcomers to acknowledge and appreciate the people who have given the Arcade its unique human character. The portraits will be launched with a reception on Fri., Jan. 19 from 5:30-8 p.m. and will be on display through May 25.—David Maddox SUSAN HALL A painter from Chicago, Hall’s current work overlays lovingly rendered human figures with the detailed patterns of lace and vintage wall coverings. The figures, mostly women, have a contemplative quality that recalls the quiet moments in 17th century Dutch painting or the 19th century Pre-Raphaelites. Her work takes obvious pleasure in both the human face and form, and in the intricate patterns traditionally made by women and found in the domestic realm. Hall’s works are on display at Gallery One through Feb. 17. There’s a reception for the artist 6 to 8 p.m. Jan. 20. —David Maddox TELEVISION OPRAH’S ROOTS Oprah Winfrey was just one of several prominent people whose family histories were explored in last winter’s four-part African-American Lives documentary series on PBS. Now, former Nashvillian Winfrey and series host Henry Louis Gates Jr. further examine her family tree, using documents, interviews, genealogy and genetic analysis to flesh out the lives and achievements of her forebears while discovering distant relatives (like gospel legend Mavis Staples) and the home of Winfrey’s African ancestors. In keeping with Winfrey’s tradition of involving viewers in her latest passion, a companion volume to the program, Finding Oprah’s Roots: Finding Your Own (Crown), will be published this month. Oprah’s Roots airs 7 p.m. Wednesday, January 24 on WNPT-Channel 8. —MiChelle Jones BOOKS WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN PANEL DISCUSSION Another year, another history of country music. This time, however, it’s courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and the editors—Paul Kingsbury and Alanna Nash—are two highly regarded authorities in the field of country music. Plus, over 40 other writers and scholars participate as well. Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Country Music in America, (DK Publishing and the Country Music Foundation Inc., 360 pp., $40) has an encyclopedic feel—but not the accompanying dry writing. Willie Nelson penned the forward; there’s information on the contribution of African Americans, and a subsequent prologue includes personal reminiscences from artists like Loretta Lynn, Charley Pride and Vince Gill. And if ever there was a time to judge a book by looks alone, this is it. Hatch Show Print’s Jim Sherraden designed the book’s cover and the artwork for each chapter. The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum opened up its archives, and every page includes photographs and images of costumes and other memorabilia. In an afterward, Hall of Fame director Kyle Young calls Will the Circle Be Unbroken  “the most comprehensive sampling ever of our museum’s treasures.” Sidebars provide timelines, profiles, historical background and top 10 recommendations from industry veterans like Brenda Lee (who includes the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” in her list of favorite singles). One of the best selections is from Rosanne Cash: “Why I Don’t Love the Music Business—and Why I’m Still in It.” The piece reveals the editors’ attempts to defy the typical, making what could have been a safe and stale recounting of country music something comprehensive and beautiful instead. Lynne Bachleda, Paul Kingsbury, Alanna Nash, Jay Orr and Jim Sherraden discuss and sign Will the Circle Be Unbroken at Davis-Kidd Booksellers at 6 p.m. Jan. 18. —Lacey Galbraith JANE SMILEY If Jane Smiley weren’t a novelist, she would certainly be a performer of some sort. The 6-foot, 2-inch Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist has been known to turn book tours into barnstorm events. When traveling with her 1998 novel, The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, she led bookstore audiences on sing-alongs of a 19th century frontier hymn, her voice often rising above the rest. Since then, Smiley has continued tackling the American scene, one big, ripsnorting, realistic read after the next. An avid horse enthusiast—she owns 10 thoroughbreds—Smiley gamely introduced readers to a racer with a heart the size of a Volkswagen in Horse Heaven (2000). Good Faith (2003) brilliantly sent up the real estate and S&L bubble of the ’80s. Next month, she’ll be making Hollywood squirm in a novel about Tinseltown called Ten Days in the Hills. What’s remarkable about Smiley is that, in spite of her Ph.D. and her ironclad grasp of novelistic traditions—so clearly on display in her 2005 book, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel—her work feels as up to date as last week’s U.S. News & World Report. Read her novels as they come out, and it feels like the work of a kinder, more stylish Tom Wolfe. Revisit them years later, and the books stand firm as literature. Hear her read and talk about them in person, and they’ll sound like hymns to this grand, if battered, old republic, delivered by the ghost of Charles Dickens. On Jan. 23, Smiley will speak at Ingram Hall at the Blair School of Music on the Vanderbilt campus. Attendees are invited to a free reception at 5 p.m.; the event begins at 6. No reservations necessary, but seating is limited. A video of the lecture will be webcast at vanderbilt.edu/news. —John Freeman FILM 50 YEARS OF JANUS FILMS: WEEK THREE A 45-year-old Roman Polanski thriller and a nearly 70-year-old Hitchcock classic drew bigger crowds last week than some of the current movies in theaters, as the turnout for the Belcourt’s two-month celebration of arthouse pioneer Janus Films continues to exceed the theater’s hopes. Coming this week, along with Spirit of the Beehive (see below): • Monika (Jan. 20-21) The last time Ingmar Bergman’s 1953 drama was shown in these parts, five decades ago, it played local passion pits courtesy of the legendary exploitation hustler Kroger Babb—who cut it by a half-hour, dubbed it into English, and added a jazzy new score and come-hither title: Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl. Needless to say, Babb kept star Harriet Andersson’s nude swimming scene intact. (The full story, including the details above, is in Eddie Muller and Daniel Faris’ juicy sleaze-cinema history Grindhouse, now being serialized by GreenCine at greencine.com.) Come see the movie that genius promoter David F. Friedman once hyped as “A Picture for Wide Screens and Broad Minds!” • WR: Mysteries of the Organism (Jan. 20-21) Man, what Babb and Friedman could have done with Dusan Makavejev’s riotous 1971 film—a cartwheeling counterculture collage of hardcore sex, documentary, agitprop vaudeville, goofy Stalinist propaganda and Godardian found-footage assault. Yugoslavian filmmaker Makavejev juxtaposes Wilhelm Reich’s controversial theories of cosmic, sexual and emotional liberation with communist dogma, intercutting the exploits of two free-loving Soviet Bloc babes with interviews, clips from a wheezy Stalin biopic and shots of Fugs singer Tuli Kupferberg in fatigues running through New York with a toy machine gun. No description does its disruptive mania justice.• Viridiana (Jan. 20-23) Luis Buñuel began his peerless late period with this scandalous 1961 savaging of Catholic piety and smug liberal do-gooding, centering on a saintly virgin (Silvia Pinal) whose lecherous old uncle (the director’s beloved Fernando Rey) and the unworthy poor make a mockery of her devout intentions. Paul Young, director of film studies at Vanderbilt, will introduce the 7:30 p.m. screening Saturday. See belcourt.org for show times and more information. —Jim Ridley PAN’S LABYRINTH/THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE The most eagerly anticipated of the year-end prestige releases trickling into Nashville, this grim fairy tale by the gifted Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy) brims with fabulous creatures and indelible dark imagery. In the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, a young girl (Ivana Baquero) living with a tyrannical captain (Sergi Lopez) is drawn into a garden maze where a sinister faun sets her three tasks—each with deadlier, more severe consequences. In what is either brilliant programming or an incredible stroke of luck, the Belcourt opens the film the same week its Janus Films series is showing Victor Erice’s 1973 film The Spirit of the Beehive—the movie del Toro claims as his major inspiration. In a Scene exclusive, del Toro talks with Noel Murray about Erice’s film and why it exerts such power. The chance to see the two films together shouldn’t be missed. “What a cool cinema, that one,” said Children of Men director Alfonso Cuarón, one of Pan’s Labyrinth’s producers, when he heard the Belcourt was showing both films. “Let me tell you something: in L.A. they don’t have that. They just want to have the map of the stars and stuff like that.” Woo hoo! Critic Jason Shawhan will introduce The Spirit of the Beehive 7:30 p.m. Monday. —Jim Ridley LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA Coming just months after Flags of Our Fathers, which captured the American point-of-view of the bloody combat at Iwo Jima, the second piece of Clint Eastwood’s World War II diptych observes from the Japanese side. Ken Watanabe plays the Japanese commander caught between the death-and-glory nationalism of his superiors and the realities of fighting a protracted, dug-in battle with exhausted troops. The movie opens Friday at Green Hills. —Jim Ridley