Coyote Motel
Guitarist, bandleader and journalist Ted Drozdowski has spent more than three decades performing, celebrating and commemorating the South’s greatest music. He’s done it with bands including the Scissormen and his current ensemble Coyote Motel, in occasional contributions to the Scene in times past, and in comprehensive interviews with numerous great players in Premier Guitar, where he’s now a senior editor.
His latest project is both a cinematic portrait and career retrospective. The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South is a song cycle about the history that continues to unfold — per the liner notes, the “lives, lore and locales” — along three great rivers of the American South, the Cumberland, the Mississippi and the Tallahatchie. The accompanying film adeptly blends music and a wealth of other modes of expression into a visually stunning presentation. The River makes its official premiere Tuesday night at the Belcourt.
The River also proves a fine showcase for Coyote Motel, which differs from its predecessor the Scissormen in both thematic concerns and personnel. Coyote Motel features Drozdowski on vocals and guitars, Sean Zywick on bass and Kyra Lachelle Curenton on drums and backing vocals, as well as Luella on vocals, guitar, and percussion and Laurie Hoffma on theremin and glockenspiel. Though the foundation remains the blues, Coyote Motel ventures into other edgy, experimental styles. The film is an outgrowth of that expansion, and its mixture of elements reflects the group’s broad performance scope.
Coyote Motel
“Laurie and I started raising money in early 2022, and we recorded the soundtrack in June 2022,” Drozdowski explains. “All the collaborators came together for three intense days of filming in November 2022. I also spent months collecting still and historic photos and footage for the narrative sequences. The director Richie Owens and I put in 450 hours editing the movie.”
There are performance sequences that include the band, aerial dancers and light-show artists working together in a kind of psychedelic ballet. They were all filmed at La Vergne soundstage NOZ Entertainment.
“There were 20 people altogether there for three 14-hour days of setup and shooting,” says Drozdowski. “The director and I also did a 36-hour marathon to shoot B-roll, traveling from Nashville to north Mississippi, to the Delta, to Helena, Ark., to Memphis. We spent 24 of those 36 hours filming.”
Drozdowski certainly hopes The River finds an audience through the network of indie film houses, film festivals and the like. But he has a larger goal in mind.
“I feel like the last 30 years of my work as a musician, journalist and music historian have been a rehearsal for this film. And I’d like people to be touched by its honesty, beauty and authenticity — and moved and entertained by the songs and visuals and aerialists. Every one of the 10 connected songs and narratives is a story. And all together, they create a bigger story that’s about being human.”
