The Chewers
The stage at Betty’s Bar & Grill, a longstanding West Nashville establishment that has become one of the city’s most interesting music venues, is small and hung with silver tinsel. If you look closely at the back of the stage, you’ll also see a couple of 45-rpm singles hanging amid the tinsel: John Sebastian’s “Welcome Back” and country singer Rex Allen Jr.’s 1983 single “Whiskey Cheer.” The pairing may seem incongruous, but it’s not. Over the past decade, Betty’s has performed a dual function. It has flourished as a neighborhood bar serving beer and burgers to its local clientele. It has also hosted a dizzying array of local and out-of-town music that has encompassed avant-garde jazz, country, Americana, progressive rock and futuristic disco. In an era when Nashville music has become pluralistic, Betty’s may be the most unpredictable spot in town for adventurous listeners.
Friday through Sunday, close to 20 Nashville bands will take Betty’s stage at Local Fest, an event that helps sum up contemporary Nashville music. Local Fest will feature electronica, punk and jazzy instrumental bands, along with unclassifiable rock artists of every description. The brainchild of guitarist, bandleader and promoter Joseph Page, who has organized Local Fest, it makes a compelling case for Nashville as a hotbed of untrammeled creativity.
Page moved to Nashville 10 years ago from Gainesville, Fla., where he played in that city’s punk and metal scenes. He currently leads a punk-metal-prog trio, Vladopus9, which will perform at Local Fest. He says he conceived of the festival this year while talking to the group’s drummer, Chris Simpson, about the role of Nashville rock bands.
“Me and Chris, we were driving, and we were trying to discuss the Nashville scene and the problems in it, and what could be done,” Page tells me from a seat on Betty’s back porch. “We ended up talking about how Nashville bands can’t make any money in Nashville, and how touring bands make money.”
Having already gained experience over the past three years booking bands into Betty’s — which charges no production fee, has virtually no social-media presence, and makes little effort to advertise its events — Page explains the rationale behind Local Fest.
“There’s only a couple of bands that are playing Local Fest that aren’t bands I book pretty regularly,” he says. “All the bands were chosen because — one, they don’t sound like anybody else, and two, that they’ve played countless shows.”
Some of the bands set for Local Fest are well-known, like former Nashvillian AC Carter’s electronic performance-art project Lambda Celsius. Others, like the rock trio Hungry Mother — which has played live but hasn’t released a record — are still figuring out their strategies. What unifies the disparate elements that characterize Local Fest is a commitment to no-frills music, as Steve Poulton, a longtime local musician who has also helped book bands into Betty’s, makes clear.
“It kind of led us over to a situation over there at Betty’s,” says Poulton about the West Nashville rock scene of 2006 and 2007. Back then, he says, listeners could hear free jazz and improvisational rock at house venues all over West Nashville. In contrast to the East Nashville scene, which is dominated by music that often references folk and country, West Nashville has favored a scrappy take on the rock ’n’ roll verities.
The approach of the groups who sometimes performed at another nearby venue, the Centennial Park-adjacent Springwater Supper Club & Lounge, made Betty’s a perfect place for them to show off their skills. Founded in the 1920s, Betty’s started its life as Candy John’s Pie Wagon and moved to its present location in 1931. Once called The Trolley, the space was renovated and expanded in the ’80s, and current proprietor Betty Carol Butts took it over in 2000.
With Poulton and others pitching in to book bands, Betty’s became the unintentional vanguard of Nashville rock. (Promoter and renowned noise musician Leslie Keffer, who’s since moved away, also booked a variety of experimental artists, electronic pop musicians and more at Betty’s over several years, starting in the late Aughts.) A denizen of Nashville nightlife looking for new thrills can stumble onto a broad assortment of music just by walking into Betty’s. The bar features multiple televisions tuned to sporting events, a Breathalyzer machine, and a clientele of regulars who, at times, receive the frenetic music with amusement or incomprehension.
Over the past two years, I’ve witnessed performances at Betty’s by pedal-steel innovator Susan Alcorn and avant-garde folkie Ralph E. White, both booked by FMRL head Chris Davis, who has also helped shape the venue’s aesthetic. I’ve also caught a performance by Chicago disco-funk artist Pastel Fractal, who makes electronically modified sounds by blowing into a conch shell. Local Fest honors the unconventional in a city that sometimes disregards music that isn’t designed for mass consumption.
Hungry Mother
Betty’s has done a great job of bringing eccentric music to Nashville. On the other hand, Hungry Mother — a trio led by guitarist, singer and songwriter Chelsea Peebles — continues in the populist tradition of New Wave artists like Elvis Costello and the Attractions and Rachel Sweet.
“A lot of it is satire, and I think we’re a good mix between evoking emotion and also keeping it fun,” says Peebles about Hungry Mother songs like “Plastic Straws,” an indictment of consumerism. She’s been playing guitar for a year-and-a-half, while drummer Caila Singleton took up the drums three years ago. Meanwhile, bassist Emily Jared has been playing for four years. Perhaps because of their relative lack of experience, Hungry Mother has mastered a style of rock that is both commercial and unpretentious. Peebles says they’re nearing completion of their debut full-length.
“That’s where I live,” says Jared when I ask her about her musical upbringing. “The other band I’m in [The Dangerous Method], I literally learned bass to play in that band.”
If Hungry Mother reinvigorates rock classicism, another Local Fest band, The Chewers, pays homage to the twisted rock of The Residents and Captain Beefheart. Major players in Nashville’s DIY scene — they’ve hosted bands at their house space, The Mouthhole, for six years — The Chewers mix abrasive textures with well-honed song structures.
“We played our very first show at Betty’s, in 2011,” says Michael Sadler, who leads The Chewers with fellow West Virginia native Travis Caffrey. “It’s always a free environment — there’s nobody up your ass about a show when you’re there, and the bartenders are just doing their thing.”
The milieu of Betty’s should be ideal for The Chewers and bands like Skin Tension, which specializes in mutated, post-On the Corner jazz instrumentals, and Soy Milk Boy, a superb pop-punk group. In a city that has shed the skin of its previous incarnation as a country-music capital, Local Fest is set to make a statement that both The Residents and Rex Allen Jr. might appreciate.
