The people, institutions and happenings that complete the city’s cultural life, from theater to film to visual art to classical music.
Best New Art Space: Madison Art Center Madison Art Center is a terrific new space for art, so don’t let the drive through the infernal and eternal construction on I-65 or the traffic on busy Gallatin Road deter you. It’s worth the effort. Once there, you can spend hours looking at all the fine furniture, hand-woven rugs, elegant glassware, ceramics and contemporary paintings. There’s even a cafe and espresso bar on site, and the center is open on Sunday afternoons, when lighter traffic makes the trip to Madison much easier.
—Angela Wibking
Best Art Gallery You’ve Never Been To: Premier Art Décor & Designs Gallery Premiere Art Décor on Demonbreun near the Music Row roundabout presents fine contemporary African American art in a sophisticated gallery setting. (Eddie George reportedly collects some of the gallery’s artists, including Marvin Posey.) Other artists you’ll find at the gallery include Memphis’ Ephraim Urevbu, Nashville’s own James Threalkill and Mississippi artist H.C. Porter, to name a few. Gallery owner Carolyn Waller will make you feel like an old friend, even on your first visit.
—Angela Wibking
Best Gallery Exhibition: “Gravity: Works by Steve Benneyworth and Karen Platt,” at ruby green contemporary art center Viewing Benneyworth’s sculptures and Platt’s drawings at ruby green on Sept. 11 last year had the force of a body blow. And although the connection between world event and aesthetic experience is undeniable, the impact of Benneyworth’s work—huge rusted disks and globes that look like remnants of toppled monuments—is difficult to shake. Similarly, Platt’s abstracted drawings of deserted industrial sites stay with the viewer and demand continued contemplation. Through the beauty of art, the exhibition mitigated, at least a little, the memories of that terrible day.
—Angela Wibking
Best art Exhibition: (Tie) “Photography’s Multiple Roles” at Cheekwood/” From Twilight to Dawn” at the Frist Center Cutting-edge art and photography have been all over Nashville, thanks to these two shows. The Cheekwood show, drawn from the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, offers more than 100 works by such artists as Robert Frank, Ansel Adams, Irving Penn, William Wegman, Diane Arbus, Sally Mann and Carrie Mae Weems. The Frist show, drawn from the UBS PaineWebber Collection in New York, gives Nashvillians a chance to see works by Cindy Sherman, Julian Schnabel, Edward Ruscha, Don Flavin and dozens of other postmodernists rarely if ever seen in the Music City.
—Angela Wibking
Best Place to Shop for Art Glass: Prism Glass Studio and Gallery With locations on White Bridge Road and Opry Mills Drive, Prism Glass showcases works by more than 100 glass artists from all over the country. There are vases, bowls, teapots, sculptures, platters, jewelry, ornaments and just about anything else that can be imagined in glass here. Do yourself and the shop owners a favor, though, and leave the kids at home—if little Jimmy breaks one of these glass beauties, you’ll be out several hundred dollars.
—Angela Wibking
Best Food at an Art Reception: Belmont University Galleries The standard art reception menu of cheap wine and cheese won’t get me off the couch on Saturday night, but I’d walk a mile for the brownies, chocolate chip cookies and tea punch Belmont University sets out for its Sunday-afternoon opening receptions at the Leu Gallery in the library and the Leu Center for the Visual Arts.
—Angela Wibking
Best Artist to Stage a 1960s Art Happening: Don Evans Evans retired from teaching art at Vanderbilt University last December, but his legend lives on as a performance/multimedia artist whose collaborative works celebrate the artist in us all. His swan song at Vandy was an installation/performance piece that incorporated 100 paper shopping bags, electronic music, flamingo dancing and a fireworks video. Evans plans to keep staging art events around Nashville and at his farm on Little Marrowbone Creek Road in northern Davidson County. The city needs more artists like Evans, who believes there are no spectators in art—only participants.
—Angela Wibking
Best Small Theater Venue: Bongo After Hours Theatre When selecting plays to produce, members of the theater community are limited in large part by content. Edgy material just isn’t as bankable as something more proven, and often the same group of classics gets produced ad nauseam. At a small venue like Bongo Java’s After Hours Theatre, plays that audience members (gasp!) may not have known since birth can get produced without the budget concerns that go along with a larger venue. Venues like After Hours invite, if not demand, inventiveness and creativity in terms of choosing plays, and that’s exactly what Nashville’s theater scene needs.
—Deke Shearon
Best New Theater Company: BroadAxe Theatre We’re hoping to hear a lot more from this fledgling group, which debuted last fall with an edgy, well-acted production of Irene Maria Fornes’ Mud. It also successfully restaged Jeremy Childs’ popular Vampire Monologues. Meanwhile, company co-founder and singer-songwriter Steve Earle continues to work on his play, Karla, about executed killer Karla Faye Baker, which is scheduled to be staged by the company at some point in the future.
—Martin Brady
Best Consistent Theater Company: Nashville Children’s Theatre Good theater is good theater is good theater. No company exemplifies this fact better than NCT, which has celebrated its 70th anniversary this year in fine fashion, mounting one terrific show after another. From the literate spookiness of Gatherings in Graveyards to the science lessons of Franklin’s Apprentice to the folktale warmth of Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, artistic director Scot Copeland and his creative and technical staff produce nothing less than excellence. It may sound kinda corny, but NCT is a Nashville treasure. May it enjoy 70 more years of high-quality programming—for children and adults alike.
—Martin Brady
Best Musical Comedy Theater Company: Boiler Room Theatre It may still be striving for consistency, but this Franklin theater company is run by musical comedy kids who are nothing less than dedicated to their mission. After ambitiously transforming an old outbuilding at The Factory at Franklin shopping mall into a congenial performing space, Lewis Kempfer, Jamey Green et al. proceeded to mount their first season of productions last year, which included I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, A Chorus Line and some lesser-known, occasionally offbeat musicals. Green’s strong skills as musical director are the backbone of the program, and the second season is well under way.
—Martin Brady
Best Free Cultural Saturday: Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s Shakespeare in the Park Culture en plein air and under the stars. First, this is the closest you’ll get to the real thing: Shakespearean theater for the intelligentsia and the masses. And it’s a lot more authentic than, say, the medieval times throwbacks in Orlando and other turista meccas. Second, it’s uniquely Nashville, taking place each summer in the shadow of the icon of the Athens of the South, the Parthenon—home of Athena, goddess of wisdom and the arts. Finally, many of Nashville’s finest actors do some of their best performances here. Bring kids, a quilt, a picnic supper and a jug of wine, and enjoy theater at its primal best: raw, wry and ruggedly original. Coming this summer: All’s Well That Ends Well.
—Beth Alexander
Best Artistic Collaboration: Nashville Symphony and Tennessee Repertory Theatre’s West Side Story This collaboration would have been a good idea even if the outcome were merely not bad: Arts organizations benefit themselves and the city when they combine their strengths. But the outcome this time was gratifyingly top-notch. The music was married to a strong cast in great costumes on a dramatically expressive set. The cast included singer/actors who looked and sounded right in their roles, nearly all of them beautifully athletic and precisely coordinated dancers who delivered powerful performances of a story as tragically true today as half a century ago—and half a millennium ago.
—Marcel Smith
Best Musical Theater Performer: Mike Eldred Not that we didn’t already know it, but Eldred is the people’s choice in Nashville musical theater. His fine singing as Tony in Tennessee Repertory Theatre’s big production of West Side Story (see above) was matched only by his vocal work as the title character in The Rep’s full-bodied staging of the Marcus Hummon musical Francis of Guernica. Mike recently released a CD too. Big year.
—Martin Brady
Best Triple-Threat Actor: David Alford Mockingbird Theatre artistic director David Alford is a marquee name in Nashville acting circles. He had a high-profile year too, appearing onstage in Mockingbird’s excellent production of Of Mice and Men, on television in the PBS broadcast of James Agee’s A Death in the Family and in the Robert Redford feature film The Last Castle. He also performed his one-man Truman Capote show at TPAC during Christmastime.
—Martin Brady
Best Actor Tackling the Classics: Marc Mazzone We don’t get the classics too often in Nashville. Strangely enough, it’s a community theater, ACT I, that did the best of it this past year. Both its Oedipus Tyrannos and Richard III starred Mazzone, who proved himself up to the Sophoclean and Shakespearean tasks. Mazzone declaims heady formal language with clarity, intelligence and passion. It’s no mean feat, and he actually seems comfortable doing it.
—Martin Brady
Best Actress to Move Here From L.A.: Holly Butler After tallying up impressive stage and television credits in the City of Angels, Butler moved to Nashville three years ago to ply her trade as a songwriter. Music Row’s gain could be the theater’s loss, but in the meantime, Butler impressed local audiences this current season with a captivating stage personality and bigger-than-life performances, first in Big Bawl Baby Productions’ Women of Manhattan and shortly thereafter in Working With Glass at Actors Bridge Ensemble. Go on, Holly—write a hit song. Then get back onstage.
—Martin Brady
Best Actor in a Leading Role: (Tie) Barry Scott/Kimberley LaMarque The American Negro Playwright Theatre’s production of August Wilson’s Fences featured a strong cast throughout under the direction of writer/actor John Henry Redwood. But the lead players—Scott and LaMarque—really rose to the challenge, offering deeply emotional performances as forlorn ex-baseball player Troy Maxson and his wife, Rose. In an epic story that is as simply American as it is African American, both Scott and LaMarque supported and balanced each other with power and tenderness.
—Martin Brady
Best Actor in a Cameo: George Pendergrass ACT I’s production of Oedipus Tyrannos was one of the nicest surprises of the past year, featuring a strong directorial hand, a marvelous Greek chorus and a few key performances, not the least of which was Pendergrass as Teiresias, the old blind seer charged with laying a lot of bad news on the title character. Offering an indelibly commanding presence, as well as an ominous yet lucidly stentorian reading, Pendergrass did more in a few minutes onstage than most actors can accomplish in an evening.
—Martin Brady
Best Actress in a Cameo: Tracy Gershon In between her work with a Music Row publisher and her duties as a producer with Actors Bridge, Gershon occasionally takes to the stage. Who knew she was so well-versed in the modes of expression and the variety of vocal nuances of the female orgasm? Vanderbilt’s local “V-Day” production of The Vagina Monologues again attracted huge crowds on campus, and those who attended were treated to an ovaries-to-the-wall gyne-fest that culminated in Gershon’s personalized catalog of moans, sighs and ululations indicative of, um, pleasure. Oprah would’ve been proud.
—Martin Brady
Best Performance by a Couple: (Tie) Evelyn Blythe/ Henry Haggard and Martha Wilkinson/David Compton It almost looked a little gimmicky when director Todd Olson announced the casting for Tennessee Repertory Theatre’s production of Donald Margulies’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Dinner With Friends. Two married couples were playing—ulp!—two married couples. By opening night, the idea looked inspired. The Haggards and the Comptons offered sincere, knowing performances that ultimately spoke best for their actorly talents. (Maybe wedded bliss got a little bump too.)
—Martin Brady
Best Actor to Destroy the Scenery: Bill Feehely Feehely wears many hats in Nashville theater, but his heart is nearest to the Sanford Meisner acting techniques he teaches to eager students. One can only imagine the anticipatory joy Feehely experienced knowing he could join his craft with his training ethos in the lead role in Actors Bridge’s production of David Mamet’s American Buffalo. By late in the second act, when Feehely angrily started to dismantle the motley surroundings of a cluttered resale shop, we wanted to cheer him on till the job was completely finished.
—Martin Brady
Best Performance by a Veteran: Joe Keenan As the old gaffer Candy in Mockingbird Theatre’s Of Mice and Men, Keenan was simply marvelous, heartrendingly expressing the yearning spirit of John Steinbeck’s Depression-era drama. Jeremy Childs as the addlepated Lennie may have scored more points for pathos in René Copeland’s production, but Keenan made you want to take him home and give him a hot meal and a warm bed.
—Martin Brady
Best Performance by a Minor: (Tie) Margaret Durkovic and Maggie Jones With all the many good performances on Nashville’s stages this past year, we would be remiss to overlook these two young ladies, who—in a deft bit of double-casting by director Todd Olson—each accepted the daunting challenge of portraying the young Helen Keller in Tennessee Repertory Theatre’s moving production of The Miracle Worker. With solid support from leading lady Anna Stone as teacher Annie Sullivan, Durkovic and Jones admirably maintained their concentration and poignantly convinced audiences of the deaf, mute and blind Keller’s childhood struggles.
—Martin Brady
Best Stand-up Comedienne to Relocate to Nashville: Dawna Kinne Kinne’s show-biz journey has stretched from Alaska through New York City and on into Nashville, and she continues to perform on the national comedy club circuit. Locally, besides performing at Zanies, she has also founded the improv troupe The Skeleton Crew, which has a regular Monday-night gig at The Sutler. She’s been known to perform with the Crew, but Kinne’s still funniest when she serves up her brand of wry, self-deprecating stand-up humor. She also knows how to take a beloved potshot at her adopted Music City.
—Martin Brady
Best Improvisational Comedy Teacher: Marshall Stern Stern’s yet another one of those guys who came to Nashville as a songwriter but didn’t let that get in the way of achievement. He’s had success onstage at Actors Bridge, ACT I and Chaffin’s Barn, and he keeps terrifically busy as a performer and artistic director for the improvisational comedy troupe One Hand Clapping. But Stern also spreads the improv gospel in more formal, tangible ways through the classes he conducts at Nashville State Tech. He’s kind of the godfather of improv here in Nashville, and a growing number of followers have benefited from his passion for his craft and the expertise he himself has gleaned from foremost teachers at Chicago’s Second City.
—Martin Brady
Best Artistic Gamble: Paul Vasterling’s Choreography for Nashville Ballet Nashville Ballet’s artistic director Paul Vasterling is a laid-back, confident guy. It’s fun to watch him work a rehearsal, to see dance’s narrative power come into sharp focus. And it’s good to see him take risks that lift his programming beyond safety to vivifying insight. His most audacious move last year was to choreograph some parts of Handel’s Messiah—to make the music visible, he said. He turned “All We Like Sheep” into a delightful scherzo that restored robustness to an asthmatic cliché. Equally bold and exciting was his decision to use Salvatore Aiello’s choreography for Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. This choreography said, among other things, that swans are not just emblems of grace—they are also roasted and eaten.
—Marcel Smith
Best Local Opera Singer: Marcia Jones Thom For half a dozen years at least, Nashville Opera has been mounting first-rate productions featuring very fine imported singers. But such imports can overshadow fine local performers—among them Marcia Jones Thom. Her recent performance as the mother in Hansel and Gretel filled the Polk Theater with her vocal and dramatic presence. A role that might have been satisfactorily sung as a two-dimensional stock figure became a complex and sympathetic woman filled with fierce impatience and intense anxiety. Hers was, both vocally and dramatically, the finest performance in a fine production.
—Marcel Smith
Best Opera on the Cheap: Blair School of Music’s Gianni Schicchi Blair School of Music’s new Ingram Hall is a venue the entire city can delight in. But it properly works as a teaching tool. And a recent production of Gianni Schicchi there suggests what a fine tool it is. This production, directed by Gayle Shay, cast Belmont professor Keith Moore in the title role. But all the other roles belonged to undergraduates, and all of them delivered fine performances, as did the student orchestra in the pit. A Calvinist might feel guilty about getting such good stuff for free. An opera buff will keep an ear out for the next such production.
—Marcel Smith
Best Arts Marketer: Rhonda Stokes, Nashville Opera Association With enthusiasm, grace and efficiency, Stokes promotes the activities of Nashville Opera Association. She’s a classy ombudsman for a decidedly classy performing arts group, and her dedication to the company’s goals has paid off in increased public awareness of opera’s beauty and its appeal to the common man. Thanks to Rhonda, more people know that it’s OK to leave the tuxedo at home and still sit in TPAC’s Jackson Hall while Puccini transforms your soul.
—Martin Brady
Best Movie Theater: The Belcourt Theatre Because the city’s last historic neighborhood movie house has managed to stay in the picture, despite internal shake-ups and a booking jihad from the Regal Cinemas chain. Because programmer Shawn Shepherd has done a heroic job of juggling customer requests and a Byzantine schedule. Because a patron can pay less per ticket than at any other theater and be assured, almost every week, of seeing the best movies in town. Because the money stays here in Nashville. Because it’s fun. Because it’s finally on the verge of surviving, even turning a sliver of profit. Because we all helped save it. Because it just is. This week’s attractions tell the story: On the Waterfront and Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang’s What Time Is It There?
—Jim Ridley
Best Movie Event: Nashville Independent Film Festival At age 33, Nashville’s annual showcase of indie features, documentaries and shorts is both the oldest and youngest film festival in the South. Oldest, because it was founded back in 1969, a full decade before Sundance. Youngest, because it’s exploding with energy and new possibilities. Under the guidance of new executive director Brian Gordon and veteran Kelly Brownlee, the selections are better and more discerning than ever: an ideal mix of American indie features, world-cinema giants, cool trash and visionary experimental work. This year’s fest, starting June 5, promises to raise the bar even higher, with more visiting actors and filmmakers and a half-dozen extremely strong features already announced. (See the story in City Limits.) The better the NIFF gets, the more likely it is to boost Nashville’s own nascent film industry. And for people-watching, it’s hard to beat a revolving-door parade of 10,000 scenesters, movie geeks, reporters and celebs milling around the Regal Green Hills lobby.
—Jim Ridley
Best Hope for Nashville Moviegoers: Cinema Clubs More and more, local cinephiles are taking it upon themselves to make sure the films they want to see get shown. The champ is Nashville Premieres, the tireless grass-roots kino-club responsible for recent showings of Marc Singer’s Dark Days, Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker at Sarratt. Coming up strong, though, is its sick cousin Nashville Cinema Underground, a faction of Belcourt staffers with a yen for controversial fare like Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl and Claire Denis’ cannibal love story Trouble Every Day (starting April 26). The Nashville GLBT Film Group has also had a decent turnout for its Sunday video screenings at the Rainbow Community Center. Factor in DIY events like Norbert Thiemann’s popular living-room movie nights—where the lineup careens from the Maysles brothers’ Gray Gardens to Werner Herzog’s Even Dwarfs Started Small—and you have signs of a lively, restless and expanding local film culture.
—Jim Ridley
Best Alternative Film Festival: Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour Each year, the Banff Centre for Mountain Culture in Alberta, Canada, hosts what is becoming the largest film festival dedicated to mountain themes. The winners of the festival then set off on a world tour, and Nashville’s Belcourt Theater happens to be one of the stops. Warren Miller fans, outdoor gear-heads and National Geographic fiends, this is the festival for you. For more information, visit www.banffcentre.ab.ca/mountainculture.
—Erin Edwards
Best Independent Video Store: Video Culture, Murfreesboro Two years ago, I was trying to track down a copy of Dario Argento’s Suspiria. Sadly, the film was not to be found for rent anywhere within the confines of Davidson County. In a panic, I made the drive down I-24 to Murfreesboro, where the wrong color traffic light and a clear field of vision directed me into the lot of Video Culture on North Tennessee Boulevard. Classics and trashics line the wall nearly from floor to ceiling. On hand are disturbing anime titles, Faces of Death docs and the oeuvres of Italian horror greats from Argento to Umberto Lenzi. As for deliciously eggheaded arthouse fare, Errol Morris and Marguerite Duras share shelf space with Just Jaeckin, Henry Jaglom and the midnight movies of any cinematic era (including every Paul Bartel title). You can’t go wrong with the knowledgeable, friendly and blissfully disturbed staff, and their prices are mercifully inexpensive. If that isn’t enough, their copious and varied selection of naughty titles will leave even the most jaded libertine satisfied.
—Jason Shawhan
Best Competition for Blockbuster: Nashville Public Library System Don’t expect to find the latest Adam Sandler release among the public library system’s almost 15,000-strong movie inventory (which includes 2,500 DVDs). But what you will find in the eclectic, hit-or-miss collection is the best deal in town: free rentals for five days. There are the Hollywood mainstays of recent years past—The Cider House Rules and Speed, for example, and classics like The Graduate and The Way We Were. In the mix too are more obscure offerings like the early Martin Scorsese films Italian American and The Big Shave. The city’s various library branches have video selections, but the best bet for stocking up on an armload of flicks for a rainy weekend is the Main Library downtown. Not only is the price right, but the service is certainly better than Blockbuster too.
—Liz Murray Garrigan
Best Specialty Video Store: (Tie) OutLoud/Suraj Imports Nashville has been blessed with two specialty-video powerhouses, and oddly enough, they’re located within easy walking distance of one another. A lot of unsuspecting people got their first exposure to the transcendent majesty of India’s cinema in last year’s indie phenomenon Ghost World, which excerpted the opening sequence of Raja Nawethe’s 1965 thriller Gumnaam. Those who want the unadulterated Bollywood experience need go no farther than Suraj Imports on Church Street. In addition to being an all-purpose market for Indian cooking materials and foodstuffs, the selection of movie titles will provide countless opportunities for the adventurous moviegoer. And for gay and lesbian video, there is no source better than OutLoud, located just down the road a bit on Church Street. You’ll find queer-cinema auteurs such as Derek Jarman and Rosa von Praunheim alongside cutting-edge material like the films of Canadian maverick Bruce LaBruce (whose Super 8 1/2, an unheralded landmark in modern reflexive cinema, is only available here), as well as the more mainstream aspects of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered experience.
—Jason Shawhan
Best Hub of Underground Culture: Off 12th Records/Halcyon Books From the outside, barely glimpsed off 12th Avenue South on Halcyon Avenue, it looks like an innocent, nondescript storefront. Inside is the pivot point of Music City’s apocalypse culture, its free-swinging underground of noise bands, dub deejays, anarchist bibliophiles and Fantagraphics fans. The front room is Matt McKeever’s small but endlessly surprising record store, a haven for exotic foundlings ranging from Studio One reggae comps to the Langley Schools Music Project CD. The back room is Angela Messina’s indie bookstore-slash-salon, where the topic of the day might be third-party politics or bubblegum music. If there is a punk house show, unknown author or left-of-center cause worth championing, you’ll find out about it here. And with the long-overdue addition of a neighborhood coffeehouse, Portland Brew, just across the street, it gets easier every week to kill an afternoon in 12 South.
—Jim Ridley
Best Professional Bibliomane: Vanderbilt University Librarian Paul Gherman With more than 2 million books at his fingertips, Vanderbilt University librarian Paul Gherman is a bookman’s bookman. He’s also at the forefront of a movement to transform traditional libraries from passive warehouses into dynamic engines of intellectual exchange. Gherman was an early adopter of the “electronic solution” for consolidating library collections and broadening their availability over networks. His “wired” Blacksburg Village project in the early ’90s foreshadowed the worldwide village of the Internet. Today, in addition to overseeing “electronification” of Vandy collections, he has teamed with Metro librarian Donna Nicely to initiate Project Athena, which ties area university and college libraries with the Nashville Public Library in a 13-way consortium for greater public access.
—Marc K. Stengel
Best Book Gnome: Charles Elder Don’t bring up the subject of books with Charles Elder unless you’ve got both the time and the mental agility to keep up with more than 70 years of his photographic memories. Eponymous founder of Elder’s Bookstore at 2115 Elliston Place, Elder has surrendered ongoing management of the store to son Randy. But the 95-year-old remains a fixture among the stacks. A particular passion of Elder’s is Southern history, and he’s republished scores of valuable texts that might otherwise have languished out of print. Moreover, he served in the ’30s as a director of the Federal Writers’ Project that conceived of the Tennessee Travel Guide as a meticulous roadmap through state and local history.
—Marc K. Stengel
Best Garden Show: Nashville Lawn and Garden Show The two big garden shows in Nashville are frequently confused, although they are ultimately different. The Antiques and Garden Show of Nashville, held this year at the Nashville Convention Center, is dazzling to the eye, but usually out of reach of most Nashvillians’ wallets. In contrast, the Nashville Lawn and Garden Show, which takes place at the much grittier Tennessee State Fairgrounds, brings in everyone from career farmers to old-moneyed Belle Meaders. Vendors offer everything from kitschy garden sculptures to Martha Stewart-esque centerpieces to “real guy stuff,” like glorified ladders that can practically paint your house for you. The Antiques and Garden Show may be more luxurious, but what most Nashvillians really covet is the luxury to shop without fear of going broke—and that’s where the Lawn and Garden Show wins out.
—Erin Edwards
Best New TV Show: CMT Crossroads In case you tuned out back around, oh, 1995, the newly energized CMT has been trying to connect with a young audience that digs Bocephus and the Wu-Tang Clan equally. Better still, the network has been smart about it, as in this monthly showcase that pairs mutual admirers from across musical boundaries. The first show featured Lucinda Williams and Elvis Costello trading songs and duetting sweetly. The next had Kid Rock and Hank Williams Jr. taking a propane torch to the Opry, while the next will team Ryan Adams and Elton John. Once you get started, it’s like fantasy baseball—the mind reels with dream teams. Mary Chapin Carpenter with Tom Waits. Willie Nelson with India.Arie. Allison Moorer with R.L. Burnside. Dolly Parton with David Byrne. Raul Malo with the Buena Vista Social Club. At any rate, CMT is to be commended for crediting its viewers with broader tastes than the rest of the industry, and for thinking outside the tube.
—Jim Ridley
Best Public Access TV Show: The Travis and Jonathan Show They’ve had nibbles from Comedy Central, a writer for The Late Late Show With Craig Kilborn loves them, and a fan recently wrote in offering to get hosts Travis Harmon and Jonathan Shockley laid. All this on the strength of about six episodes, which have been repeated so often on Channel 19 you can see the back of the TV through the picture. Call it a homegrown Mr. Show—a mix of surreal sketch comedy, college-town weirdness and ersatz variety-show cheer. As with another onetime regional-TV phenomenon, Mystery Science Theater 3000, the shows are getting taped and traded all over the country. But Travis and Jonathan may have raised their local profile most at the recent Starvy Awards, where their brief appearance left jaded scenesters agape. Along with guerrilla prankster James Clauer, they’re among the few people in Nashville we’d strongly encourage to consider making a feature film. Middle Tennessee needs them like Austin needs Richard Linklater.
—Jim Ridley
Best $40 Investment: NPT Membership Every time I turn on The Antiques Roadshow, I feel guilty—at least up until the point when some kid’s rare Star Wars figure is appraised at more than the car I drive. That’s because—and this is a shameful confession—I’m not a member of Nashville’s public television station. I should be (and will be), and so should you. The offerings are the best on TV: gardening, cooking, travel, Bill Moyers on all things deep and meaningful, not to mention concerts—everything from bluegrass to Andrea Bocelli. The problem, of course, is that there are too many people like me, who benefit every day from its programming but don’t become patrons. That’s plain wrong. And on a more practical note, it perpetuates those irritating but obviously necessary pledge drives. Let’s preempt one of those right here. Pledge with me, people: The check’s in the mail. Really.
—Liz Murray Garrigan
