Ashley Monroe, Soccer Mommy, R. Stevie Moore and More Revel on Record Store Day

Record Store Day is, in theory, meant to celebrate independent record shops and their contributions, in terms of making the commercial side of music more about community and less about commodities. The role played by the limited-run RSD releases is pretty open to debate — after all, they’re meant to entice people out on one day, and most record stores are open all year long. It seems to The Spin that the tradition of hosting heaps of free concerts does even more in terms of community-building, and we packed in as much show-going as we could on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon and evening.

We began our day at Third Man Records, where Sophie Allison (alias Soccer Mommy) and her four-piece band delivered a confident, sincere set of confessional indie rock for an early-afternoon audience that skewed young but also counted multiple band members' parents among the crowd. Melody, brevity and bottomless guitar tone are the 20-year-old Nashvillian's calling cards, and the Blue Room's pristine sound only amplified the emotional resonance of songs like “Cool” and “Your Dog,” tightly written three-minute gems off Soccer Mommy's recent Fat Possum LP Clean. The only reminder that Allison's as young as she is was in her charmingly tentative between-song banter. (“More vocals? If that's OK. But if not, that's cool.”)

From there, we cruised over to Grimey’s. We felt a twinge of nostalgia for Nashville’s past as we settled in to catch steel guitar legends Lloyd Green and Jay Dee Maness. They played a brief set as part of the venerable record store’s last Record Store Day at its Eighth Avenue South location before it moves to new digs in East Nashville later this year. Green and Maness performed songs from their new full-length Journey to the Beginning: A Steel Guitar Tribute to the Byrds, which recasts the band’s 1968 album Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Both of the wizardly pickers played on the original recording, and they led a band that included Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach on acoustic guitar. 

Green, who played a Sho-Bud pedal steel, complemented Maness, who kicked his licks on an Emmons model. They flowed through William Bell’s soul classic “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” which The Byrds claimed for country. After performing “Pretty Boy Floyd,” a highlight of which was the interaction between Green and Maness, Green said, “That was a tragic accident.” We thought it sounded fine, but that’s a world-class musician for you — the greats are never completely satisfied. Nashville popster Bill Lloyd joined Americana stalwart Jim Lauderdale to sing a version of Bob Dylan’s “You Ain’t Going Nowhere,” which the crowd sang along with.

Throughout the afternoon, DJs from community radio station WXNA manned the booth, with assists from Pimpdaddysupreme, Television co-founder Richard Lloyd and former Mayor Megan Barry. We happened to be there for Barry’s set, which kicked off with Kacey Musgraves’ “High Horse” and wrapped with Public Enemy’s “Don’t Believe the Hype.”

Over at Fond Object’s downtown store, technical difficulties derailed some of the early sets, but things were back on track when we cruised through for Lasso Spells. Their ever-so-slightly country-tinged take on psych plays like a vapor trail following a caravan through the desert, with swirls of melody rolling along over tight rhythms that evoke constant forward motion. The latest incarnation of Ttotals came on next, with frontman Brian Miles flanked by drummer Austin Edwards and keyboardist-guitarist Dylan Frost. While deep, dark, resonant drones remain at the core of their sound, this latest lineup feels like it’s picking up the tempo and sneaking in more chord changes as it conducts its sonic rituals.

“I've never shouted out the balcony before,” joked Ashley Monroe, looking up at the four-story stairwell packed with people — a sort-of vertical block party — during her mid-afternoon performance in Grimey's backyard. Songs of guilt and regret are Monroe's game as a songwriter, and thanks to contributions from a pair of all-star sidemen, guitarist Brendan Benson and violinist Eamon McLoughlin, material off her forceful brand-new fourth LP, the Dave Cobb-produced Sparrow, sounded extra noir-ish, even in the brilliant afternoon sun. The Knoxville native also seems like a great hang, and the band's easy rapport offset some of the tunes' moody intensity. 

Last Thursday's eleventh-hour reveal of a surprise album drop from Bay Area stoner rock gods Sleep via Third Man Records on 4/20 — and Grimey's being listed as the only place in Nashville (besides TMR's store, presumably) to get the special-edition LP — had set our hopes perhaps a bit high as to who Saturday's “surprise special guest” might be. Still, the short-and-sweet set from country-rock band of brothers The Wild Feathers — which was a sampling of Eagles and Mellencamp-esque songs from their forthcoming Greetings From the Neon Frontier album — was plenty crowd-pleasing, if not exactly groundbreaking.

We made a quick detour to The Groove, where we caught Liz Cooper and the Stampede. We’re big fans of both My Morning Jacket and Mike Bloomfield-era Butterfield Blues Band, so this set of expertly played tunes — some of which are due to appear on a new LP this year — was right up our alley. We also hung out for Okey Dokey, which filled the magic hour with a fine selection of sway-inducing soul-kissed tunes from their 2017 debut album Love You, Mean It. 

Meanwhile, at Fond Object’s East Nashville shop, we caught Peter Pan Band, the latest project from guitarist-singer Peter Stringer-Hye, late of Promised Land Sound and currently in The Paperhead. Stringer-Hye & Co. played tunes from the band’s forthcoming full-length Pan. We grooved to a tune called “Mindy,” a fine example of the group’s Gene Clark-meets-Emitt-Rhodes style. We’re longtime fans of local grunge-popsters Idle Bloom, and the quartet didn’t disappoint. Their taut eight-song set included cuts from their 2017 full-length Little Deaths as well as four tunes from their forthcoming LP Flood the Dial, among them one titled “Empath.” Bandleader Olivia Scibelli’s terse guitar figures formed a near-telepathic lock with those of second guitarist Gavin Schriver. 

IB was followed by Nashville experiential avant-garde folkies The Cherry Blossoms, whose droll forays into music’s collective unconscious were confounding and charming. “You couldn’t find anything so fine as an old train shed,” sang Peggy Snow at one point, and we’re inclined to agree with the sentiment. 

While Idle Bloom reminded us of the ’90s music of Dinosaur Jr. or Pavement, Ornament, who followed The Cherry Blossoms, played post-Moby Grape grooves. Guitarist Sean Thompson shredded away while singer Will Mann switched between keyboard and guitar, and songs like “What You Need” and “Somber Montage” brimmed with intricate musical details. 

Legendary lo-fi pioneer R. Stevie Moore played the last set, which summed up rock history, if such a thing can be done today. The 66-year-old Nashville native looped his acoustic guitar into patterns he embellished with minimalist playing, which reminded us of his debt to the proto-skronk of Captain Beefheart. Moore recited gnomic post-Beat poetry, including the memorable couplet, “Randy Scruggs / Barbara Butch,” and performed songs that recalled the work of Love’s Bryan MacLean and Arthur Lee. It was a rock ’n’ roll cri de coeur that had absolutely nothing do with nostalgia.

See our slideshow for more photos.

In The Spin — the Scene's live review column — staffers and freelance contributors review concerts under a collective byline.