Fall Guide 2015: Music

Big news at The Belcourt tops an autumn feast in the Scene's annual Fall Guide. Read on for this season's best in film, classical and dance, theater, food, music, books and art.

Fall Music Festival Roundup

It's a question many Middle Tennesseans ask themselves every summer when enduring the heat at CMA Fest and Bonnaroo: Why does this damn thing have to happen in June? And it's a question that's kept just as many Middle Tennesseans away from summer music festivals altogether. But with a pair of new midsized happenings (and a couple small ones as well) cropping up in the Nashville area this fall, live music fans who hate skin-scorching heat and long drives have some pretty good festival options.

And let's go ahead and consider Franklin "the Nashville area," as The Crown Jewel of Willliamson County will host the first Pilgrimage Music and Cultural Festival on Sept. 26-27. Set to transpire on the quaint Park at Harlinsdale — a horse farm turned public park — the two-day, 35-act festival features headliners the likes of Willie Nelson, Wilco, Weezer, Cage the Elephant, The Decemberists, Sheryl Crow and, making his festival debut as a country singer, Steven Tyler (of Aerosmith). And the undercard ain't too shabby either, rounding up a diverse array of artists like Dr. John, Jimmy Cliff, Neko Case, Band of Horses, Chris Stapleton, Nikki Lane and Dawes.

A week earlier, kicking off this Tuesday in fact, is an event that needs no introduction: AmericanaFest. Now a major player in the multi-venue music festival and conference world in its 16th year, the six-day blowout will attract fans from around the globe from Sept. 15-20, showcasing more than 170 artists representing American roots music — from The Supersuckers to Los Lobos — in all its multifarious facets at more than 30 venues across town. While most of the shows are at clubs like Mercy Lounge and The Basement, this year the festival will host its single biggest show to date, a two-stage bash at Ascend Amphitheater topped by legacy acts Loretta Lynn, Steve Earle and Gillian Welch. That's on Sept. 19.

While Centennial park has hosted the growing seasonal free concert series Musicians Corner for the better part of the past decade, it's been a hot minute since the Music City's most centrally located expanse has been the setting for a full-fledged music festival. Forty-seven years ago the park hosted radio station WMAK's first annual, creatively named Nashville Music Festival, which between 1968 and 1970 reportedly drew crowds of more than 70,000 and featured such acts as Roy Orbison, Ray Stevens, The Box Tops and a band from New Jersey called Steel Mill, which was fronted by a 20-year-old singer-guitarist named Bruce Springsteen.

So who knows, maybe you'll see the next Boss or Alex Chilton rocking out in some kick-ass up-and-coming band on Oct. 17 at the first SoundHarvest, a single-day, two-stage musical festival that, along with a headlining set from festival junkies the Flaming Lips, will also feature local beer, food, art and craft vendors. While side-stage acts are still TBA, in addition to the aforementioned Lips the main stage lineup includes New Orleans soul-punk Benjamin Booker, neo-soul crooner and Macklemore collaborator Allen Stone and local Southern-grunge favorites The Weeks.

That same day, another new, smaller single-day hip-hop and R&B festival makes its debut just across the river at East Nashville's Cumberland Park. It's called the NuEra Music Fest and Block Party, and the bill boasts a stellar set of DJs, rappers and R&B singers such as Talib Kweli, Mint Condition, Mike Floss, Mike Hicks and the Contribution, Bilal, Kiya Lacey and Kenny Smoov.

A few weeks later, on Oct. 3, East Nashville will see the rise of  another small new festival. Topped by Middle Tennessee's all-time favorite rock 'n' roll powerhouse The Features, the East Side Social, taking place at East Park, offers a local-centric bill including R&B revivalist Alanna Royale, power-poppers Reno Bo and Justin and the Cosmics, country-rock singer-songwriter Lilly Hiatt and dance-rockers The Future. —ADAM GOLD

The Ryman's Americana Marquee Names

This trifecta of traditional-hewing breakout country and folk artists — all of whom fall under the broad and often difficult-to-define umbrella of Americana — have something in common, and it isn't just the fact that they're all moving the needle of mainstream popularity more and more toward what just a few years ago would have been perceived as very non-mainstream sensibilities. Jason Isbell, Kacey Musgraves and Sturgill Simpson are all headlining multiple-night runs at Nashville's Mother Church of Country Music this fall, and each show is long sold-out.

Musgraves, who plays the Ryman Sept. 23 and 24, further secured her status as country music's clever, convention-bucking bad girl with this summer's Pageant Material. Thanks to the themes of individuality and acceptance espoused in singles like 2013's "Follow Your Arrow" and Pageant's "Biscuits," the 27-year-old — who already has a pair of Grammys and a pair of CMA Awards on her mantle — has become something of a standard-bearing antidote to bro country. And she does it with a particularly radio-friendly and polished sound.

At the Ryman for four back-to-back nights (Oct. 23-26) is a songster who probably turns up more frequently on NPR than he does on country radio. Isbell, who sold out a three-night Ryman run in October of last year, returns to the venue on the heels of July's critically acclaimed Something More Than Free. The former Drive-By Trucker's story of recovery and redemption has become pretty familiar now among fans of alt-country, but 2014's Americana Honors and Awards Artist of the Year — he's up for the same title at this year's Americana Awards, which go down Wednesday night at (where else?) the Ryman — shows no signs of stopping.

Having risen even faster to Ryman-sell-out status than either Musgraves or Isbell, though, is the guy who just last year took home the Americana Award for Emerging Artist, and is this year up against defending champ Isbell for Artist of the Year: Sturgill Simpson. On the strength of 2014's weird, wonderful and well-composed cosmic-country record Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, Simpson has risen from local indie performer to industry It Guy. Just last year he opened one of Isbell's three Ryman gigs, but if anyone's earned a triple-header at the Mother Church, it's this Kentucky-bred picker. —D. PATRICK RODGERS

They're Back!

This season, feast your ears on a smorgasbord of artists who rarely visit Nashville — or rarely tour at all. Swervedriver's 1999 album 99th Dream helped cement their reputation as one of the most creative bands in the alt-rock pack. Their first record since, I Wasn't Born to Lose You, hits a sweet spot between Dream's experimental approach and the (comparatively) compact punch of 1993's Mezcal Head. (See our story on Swervedriver.)

Eagles of Death Metal is the zaniest of Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme's umpteen projects, but it gets no less tender loving care. "Complexity," the first single from EoDM's forthcoming hiatus-breaker Zipper Down, is a prime example, expertly blending Grand Funk Railroad's raunch and Devo's manic energy with a touch of Nick Offerman's humor.

If the single "No Sleeep" is any indication, Janet Jackson's Unbreakable (her first in nine years with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the production team she's made hits with for three decades) will be the tantric epic that fans have been waiting seven years for — and the catalyst for a spectacular stage show that hasn't stopped in Nashville since 2001.

The same night (cue Charlie Brown: "Auuuugh!"), German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk make an auspicious Music City debut, bringing their traveling career retrospective to the Ryman. It's as much an art exhibit as it is a concert, packed with dazzling 3D animation which will appear soon on Blu-ray.

Even before they announced their demise last year, Death Grips were unstable and white hot, a dying star in the universe of experimental hip-hop. They're now touring on their posthumous double album The Powers That B, and there's no telling if you'll ever get another chance to get sucked into their black hole of glitches and screams. —STEPHEN TRAGESER

Great Big Shows

Unfortunately, only a couple thousand Middle Tennesseans got to see the biggest show of fall 2014 — Foo Fighters at the Ryman. The Halloween night show was one of Music City's hottest tickets in recent memory, and for all the scalpers-vs.-fans-vs.-band-venue drama that lead up to the show, you'd have thought Dave Grohl & Co. were set to reanimate Johnny Cash on the Mother Church stage. While that didn't happen by night's end, what did happen was Grohl promising he'd bring his band back to town for a great big rock show that would be a little less ... exclusive. The Foos make good on that on Oct. 5, with a massive blowout at Bridgestone Arena. At recent gigs, Grohl has fronted the band while perched on a comically king-like rock throne after he took tumble off a stage in Gothenburg, Sweden, breaking his leg. And you might have to follow suit and break your own if you want to get into this show — at press time, save for a few rows of handicapped-accessible seating, the show is totally sold out.

Certainly a single Bridgestone sellout is nothing to scoff at — unless you're Taylor Swift. The former Teen Queen of Country and current reigning Queen of Pop brings her box-office-annihilating 1989 World Tour to the 'Stone for a two-night stand Sept. 25-26. That will be Swift's ninth and 10th time headlining the home of the Nashville Predators. Throughout the tour, Tay-Tay's tapped into her ever-growing list of celebrity besties for headline-grabbing guest appearances — who's it going to be in Nashville? Garth Brooks? Sheryl Crow? Kacey Musgraves? Jack White? Karl Dean? Maybe the smart money is on Keith and Nicole.

One upcoming Bridgestone show that's not sold out is "Bang Bang" singer Ariana Grande, whose show is Sept. 22. Tickets to see the world's most famous Ariana not named Huffington and the world's only pop star to make headlines for a controversy involving doughnuts are currently still available via Ticketmaster, though discount packages have sold out on Groupon.

There are still 11 shows on deck for Nashville's brand new Ascend Amphitheater. Among those rounding out the 6,800-capacity Cumberland-nestled mini-shed are appearances from Daryl Hall and John Oates (formerly known as Hall & Oates), playing Sept. 14, Grace Potter (Oct. 10) and Jackson Browne (Oct. 11).

And if nostalgia ain't your bag, but big shows by singers with big voices are, considering marking your calendar for Oct. 9. That's when anthem-prone British neo-soul breakout stars and recent Glastonbury headliners Florence + The Machine play Ascend — their first headlining show in Nashville after debuting here as U2's Vandy Stadium opener in 2011.

Looking for a big show with a little more a chill vibe? Check out chart-topping deep house duo Disclosure, who make their Nashville debut, playing hits like "Latch" and "White Noise," Oct. 4 at Carl Black Chevy Woods Amphitheater at Fontanel.

And if none of that strikes your fancy, there's always Kid Rock's Fish Fry, Oct. 9-10, also at the Woods Amphitheater. —ADAM GOLD