Jim Ridley, 1965-2016

Jack Silverman and Jim Ridley

We reached out to current and former Scene family for memories about Jim Ridley. The response was overwhelming.


D. Patrick Rodgers, Scene managing editor The first time I ever filed a film review for the Scene as a staffer, Jim called me into his office afterward to discuss my copy. He effectively interviewed me about what I'd given him, probed me for deeper insights and analysis. I didn't realize it at the time, but he was coaxing a better review out of me. Rather than simply rewriting the article, Jim took the patience and foresight to show me — a green 23-year-old critic and journalist — how to view a piece of art with precision and care. He showed me how to hold myself to a higher standard, to trust my instincts and my opinions, when it would have been faster and easier to rewrite the piece himself — undoubtedly coming up with something multitudes better than what I ultimately wrote.

Jim Ridley was my editor, my mentor, my role model and my friend. I worked under him for 400 issues, and beyond showing me how to be a keen and skillful writer and editor, he showed me how to retain compassion and earnestness. No matter the story, no matter the issue, no matter the problem that needed to be solved, Jim never once resorted to cynicism. I've never seen anyone else be such a masterful critic and reporter while simultaneously balancing an inexhaustible passion for the things he or she is writing about. Jim never once phoned it in, never once copped out, never once took the easier path.

The trust, respect and love of Jim Ridley means absolutely everything to me. I love Jim, and I'll remember the things he taught me for the rest of my life. I will miss giggling with him until we spit out our coffee over our mutually horrible puns. I will miss his infectious excitement, and the way he championed the successes of those he cared about. I will miss the way he made the Price Is Right sad-trombone noise every time someone told a joke that bombed. I will miss his bear hugs. I will miss his enormous heart.


John Pitcher, Scene contributor Jim Ridley was quite simply the most brilliant man I ever met. He could have done anything he wanted, anywhere in the world, and been a huge success at it. But if I may borrow a phrase from the movies, Jim decided to become the richest man in Bedford Falls instead. And each and every one of us benefited greatly from that choice. We now have a better city. I love you Jim Ridley, and I'm going to miss you.


Harmony Korine, filmmaker Jim was one of the greatest film writers in the country. I was always so proud that he was from Nashville. His criticism should be studied and enjoyed by future generations of writers. He did it the right way: He was a critic as populist, he allowed for love to creep in, he said if you give yourself over to cinema it will return the magic tenfold, and that there is more to it than meets the eye. He understood that all of life's wonderments and riddles were gifted in film. He was attracted to the strangeness and magic, the folly of it all. He loved both high and low culture — it all had merit. He pushed past all the surfaces and embraced the pathology and myths of the cinema and he wrote from inside of it. Jim had the touch and the grace; the poetry was in him. There was a beautiful sweetness and humor to both the man and his writing, a golden feel for the words. He tapped into the humanity, and you could always tell he loved the movies deeply — the life, the stories, the characters. Jim was a dreamer, a beautiful dreamer. I am proud to have known him and been a friend. I will miss his voice and sweet face. Jim was the real deal, a soldier of cinema and champion of the underground. I will miss him greatly.


Brantley Hargrove, former Scene staff writer Nearly five years have passed since I left the Scene, and it's telling that I have yet to work with a more talented editor, or a finer human, than Jim Ridley. We crafted long-form narratives and investigative features together for some two years, during which I was awestruck by his insight into human nature, and his ability to strike on the right narrative structure in a way that looked effortless. There was far more to his talent than the ability to turn a crackling-good phrase, though some of his were trenchant enough to strip the paint off the walls. Jim saw through to the heart of the story when I was blind to it. This was his great strength. The defining trait of a true storyteller, I believe, is empathy, and Jim's streak ran deeper than the Cumberland. 


Ashley Spurgeon, Scene contributor A handful of Saturdays ago, Jim Ridley spotted me window-shopping as he drove down Eighth Avenue. He turned his car around, pulled over, hopped out and gave me a colossal hug. He had just been thinking, he said, that he should spend more time telling his friends they are appreciated. That Jim, a man who made every person around him feel like the best version of themselves, looked in his heart and found room for extra love and extra kindness is astounding.

We spoke for a few minutes about my new job, my new house, my goals for the future — goals that feel attainable, frankly, because of his faith in my abilities as a writer. He had to get going, but those few moments of his time really brightened my day. I'm incredibly grateful to have been in his field of vision that afternoon, because his actions — literally stopping whatever errand he was on to tell me that he loved me — gave me the chance to tell him that I love him, too.


Christine Kreyling, Scene contributor: Jim Ridley is why critics and the newspapers they write for matter. With his luminous words and his deft editorial hand, Jim helped to build the city. (In my mind I can hear him now: Lay off the adjectives!)

On the occasion of the Scene's 25th anniversary in 2014, the founding-father-and-mother writers reminisced a bit by email. Jim's loving contribution to the back and forth was typically, and wildly inaccurately, self-deprecating: "All this has reminded me how much pleasure I've had reading all of you over the years, and how delighted I am to know you. Among you I always felt like the mailroom boy on Mount Olympus, and I still do. Speaking of which, ever thought of writing for a paper? The pay's lousy, but you can't beat the company."

Jim's was the best of the company we kept.


Betsy Phillips, Scene contributor The last time I talked to Jim Ridley, I was sitting on the low couch in his office, trying to convince him that I needed to quit blogging for him. He sat behind his desk, his kind face set in a concerned frown. "What you're doing matters," he said, which is, I think, what all writers want to hear and wish we could believe. The magic about Jim was, when he told you something — "Hey, nice to see you," "Good story" or "What you're doing matters" — you knew it was true. He had ecumenical tastes, but he had good taste. You could trust his opinions.

The last time I saw him was a few weeks after that meeting. I was driving across the Demonbreun Street bridge. He was walking, his face turned up toward the warm March sun. He was smiling to himself, lost in some thought. I hit my brakes, honked and waved. He waved back. I thought how awesome it is that Nashville is the kind of place where you can run into Jim Ridley anywhere in it.

It's funny. I keep thinking, if I had known those were going to be my last moments with Jim, would they have gone that much differently? And I think not. I still would have been a weepy mess. He still would have sat there with his big, kind heart trying to make me feel better. I still would have stopped in the middle of the street for him. Everything people are saying about what a good guy he was is the truth. He was preternaturally decent. He was a once-in-a-lifetime guy. That breaks my heart.


Jim Ridley, 1965-2016

Jim Ridley with Jamie Ridley, Abby White and Santa

Abby White, Scene contributor and former staffer At last year's Best of Nashville party, Jim asked me to introduce him to Santa — also known as Denzel Irwin, proprietor of Santa's Pub — whom he greeted with genuine exuberance, like a little boy meeting Santa Claus.

Jim greeted everybody that way. When he asked you a question, he really listened to your response, fully taking in who you are. He was eternally curious and abundantly empathetic, which is probably why he knew so much about so many different things. He also had the sharpest — yet kindest — critical eye, both as a writer and an editor.

When I first started writing for the Nashville Scene, I was terrified. Coming off a stint as editor for SouthComm's now-defunct women's magazine Her Nashville, I felt like I needed to prove that I deserved a place on the Scene masthead among writers I'd admired for years. I was worried they'd think I was too soft, which, in turn, made me try too hard, something that rarely begets good writing.

Working within the same company, I was certainly aware of Jim's almost supernatural ability as both a writer and an editor. I'd compare his edit with my original one, studying his changes, as if I could somehow absorb his witty turn of phrase or delve into his bottomless grab bag of historic and pop culture references that so beautifully illustrated his work. I was fearful of the limits of my own mind, and he inspired me to broaden my process, finding my own references that were hiding in dark corners of my brain. When I used cheap jokes as a crutch or neglected to paint the full picture for the reader, he'd patiently ask me about the subject, showing me how important it was to include all the tiny details integral to a well-written story. He helped me find my own voice.

He pushed me — gently — to do things I didn't think I could do, whether it was tackling an intimidating investigative piece about abortion legislature or a humiliating personal tale about heartbreak. He made space in the Scene for women to share stories they hoped others could relate to in the Vodka Yonic column, which he championed from Day 1.

He was our leader, our mentor and — above all — our friend. He championed all of us, but the truth is, he was the true champion — of the world.


Margaret Renkl, Scene contributor and Chapter 16 editor In 1996, on the day I met him at my first Scene event, I told him he made The New Yorker's Anthony Lane look like an amateur from the farthest reaches of the provinces. First Jim laughed, and then he turned the whole conversation into an extravagant explanation of how lucky the Scene was to have me on board. Jim had the kind of linguistic gifts that defy mortal explanation, but one of the most amazing was his ability to turn a compliment into a mirror: Any light that shined his way was light he immediately deflected, and in deflecting somehow magnified.

Jim loved everything about the world of writers. He loved libraries. He loved university creative-writing programs. He loved bookstores, new and used. He especially loved the Southern Festival of Books, and his introduction to the Scene's coverage of it was something I looked forward to all year long. He would go through the schedule day by day, pointing out the reasons readers shouldn't miss anything, even if they had to duck out of one session early to make it to another that was scheduled at the same time. These lavish overviews often ran to more than 4,000 words, but they were so lively and fresh and funny that reading one was like reading a work of literary art in its own right.


Carrington Fox, Scene contributor and restaurant critic Of countless meals I shared with Jim, I'll never forget one at a picnic table on Gallatin Road, when we all strained our faces to fit our lips around giant fried-fish-and-white-bread sandwiches. Jim opened his eyes wider than his mouth, taking it all in, and once again I got the feeling that he could taste and see and feel more than I could. That adjectives were overwhelming him — yellow mustard, cool pickles, sweet orange soda. That there was so much more than food to savor at this summer lunch. That he could have sat on that splintery bench all day, laughing with friends in a sweltering Nashville parking lot. But deadline was coming soon, and there was so little time left to write it all down.


Jim Ridley, 1965-2016

Nancy Floyd, Nfocus editor It's impossible to choose my favorite Jim Ridley story when — as anyone who has ever spent time with him can attest — each moment with the man felt like something special. Nearly every memory of him that populates my mind, even the most mundane interactions, showcases the kindness and humility that marked his life. 

I could write for days about sitting beside him in our weekly managers' meetings and the awe I felt as he made every upcoming issue of the Scene sound like the most brilliant masterpiece ever to be created, all the while never taking credit for a single part of it. Or how I always knew when he was moved by something I had written because he would resolutely march into my office and pull me into one of his famous bear hugs, often without saying a word. Or the way our after-hours cleaning lady, Raquel, wept when she heard the news of his death because she had taken to calling him her knight in shining armor after he gave her a valentine this past February.

But the story I have to share is about the photo, because it's just so quintessentially Jim. A year ago this week, Jim showed up in my doorway in the middle of the afternoon. He seemed nervous to enter, which was unusual for him (see above about the unsolicited bear-hug attacks), and very sheepishly inquired if I owned a camera. When I told him the only one I had was on my iPhone, he insisted that was fine and asked if I could take a photo of him. "I need a headshot for something my school is doing," he said. "They've been hounding me for weeks."

I offered to get one of our staff photographers to take one for him since I, as an editor, have no business snapping headshots on my cellphone, but he stressed it wasn't a big deal. Sensing his discomfort with the whole ordeal, I obliged. He stood against my gray wall and let me snap two photos — one with his head cocked a little to the side and a sweet, gentle grin pulling at the corners of his mouth and one with his head tipped forward as he peered intently at me over the rim of his glasses. 

Jim Ridley, 1965-2016

Jim Ridley at the MTSU College of Mass Communications Wall of Fame ceremony

About 10 days later, I learned that the "something" MTSU was doing was inducting him into the College of Mass Communications Wall of Fame, an honor he tried desperately to keep from our staff. I gave him so much grief that my crummy, slightly out-of-focus, poorly lit iPhone photo will forever grace the halls of his alma mater.

These past few days, as I've seen that same photo used in deferential news articles and heartfelt social media posts around the country, it's brought a smile to my face, because it reminds me that the most brilliant man I've ever known was also the most humble. 


Tracy Moore, former Scene culture editor Like so many other writers from Nashville, Jim is the reason my career ever got off the ground. He mentored anyone who showed the slightest glimmer of interest in a journalism career. Before I met him or was hired by the Scene, I had read his feature story "The Mysterious, Mundane Magic of Waffle House" in a feature writing class at MTSU. It was the first time I saw a path right in front of me of the sorts of stories I'd hoped to do, and the exact sort of place I hoped to do them. His gift for writing is beyond enthusiasm, it's that he sees every detail in a person or place, the kind most of us gloss right past, and what's more, finds it as fascinating as any piece of art. Here was a shit-hole truck stop hang for haggard waitresses, drunks and rednecks being treated like it was as interesting as the Louvre. I believe he did the same thing for Nashville as a city, covering it these last 25 years, that he did for Waffle House in that feature: He saw a place many had failed to notice for a long time as the mysterious, mundane, magical place it really was, and it changed the city more than it will ever know.

I told Jim in passing one day that I'd always wanted to know more about French New Wave movies: I'd only seen a few hallmarks and really didn't know much else. The next morning on my desk was his entire DVD collection, a history-spanning chronicle of the best of the genre, with a note to take the summer to work through them at my leisure. He was like that. Most people who know as much as he does about art and music and movies would be smug about it; instead he was the opposite, a true proselytizer for the cause of art. But what's maybe even more striking is the joyous way he'd talk about it with you afterward, as if he never forgot what it was like to experience a song or record or film for the first time, as if it weren't possible for him to be blasé about things he loved, even when he'd heard or seen it easily dozens of times over. I've never known anyone else like that in my life; when it came to art, or life, complacency just wasn't part of his makeup.


Mayor Megan Barry The loss of Jim Ridley is a profound one, and only in part because of his exceptional contributions as a journalist, critic and editor to the civic and cultural fabric of Nashville. Jim also was one of those rare individuals who effortlessly coupled genius and insight with infectious enthusiasm and unbridled generosity of spirit, and he did it with grace. He touched a lot of lives in this city, and we are all going to miss him terribly.


Kay West, Scene contributor In print journalism, value is measured in inches, each one composed of about 40 words. For writers, every inch is a pot of gold, every word a precious pearl. In the 27 years I've contributed to the Scene, I've written a few million words, the majority of them for the weekly food column that was my lane from 1992-2007, but also in cover stories, sports stories, personal essays, Best of Nashville items and seasonal guides.

By far, the most personally meaningful stories were the ones for the Scene's annual In Memoriam issue. Sitting with grieving survivors, then compressing a life into a few inches of space that would pay them regard was difficult and produced anxiety. It was an honor that Jim Ridley — the Scene's most talented writer by far — trusted me with so many of them every year.

Jim knew my habit of reading obituaries of people I knew and had never met and that I keep a folder in my home office of Nashville-related obituaries torn out of the daily paper. Every year around the end of November he would send me his working list of community members who had passed away, noting the ones he wanted me to do, and he'd say, "Check your folder for anyone we're missing." In my file were not only well-known city leaders, artists, entertainers, business people, philanthropists and politicians, but people known by no one but their own family and friends. Jim's great big tender heart always found room for them too — even when it meant giving up priceless inches for someone known by all — and he let me write them. Thanks to Jim, alongside luminaries like John Seigenthaler, Frances Preston, Steve McNair, Alyne Massey and Donna Summer, the Scene memorialized the homeless man murdered while sleeping on a park bench, the Magdalene graduate whose eight years of sobriety could not overcome the physical abuse of decades of street prostitution, the suicide victim whose last gift was hand-carving the wooden studs for his church's pews, the janitor who lived under Jim Crow laws in the South but spoke fluent French thanks to his service in World War II, and the teenage boy who pushed his brother out of the way to safety before an approaching car killed him.

As every writer who ever had the good fortune to submit a piece to Jim Ridley has noted, no one was a more careful guardian of our voice, no one could cut inches so gently and imperceptibly. No one treated every individual's life with such respect and their death with such dignity.

But Jim found the humor in everything. A year or so ago, I told him I wanted to do a cover story on the post-death experience and its options: the morgue, the funeral home, medical donation, embalmment, caskets, cemeteries, cremation and the newest trend in body disposal — natural burial. He loved the story idea, and whenever we talked, he asked me if I had started it yet. We always got a laugh out of the working title: "You're dead. Now what?"

It's the ironic and wrenching question I never dreamed would come to this pass, rippling through his many worlds, reverberating in countless lives he touched, searing the spirit of all who held him dear, none more so than the three in the house he called home, where his great big tender heart lived and loved most of all.


Ron Wynn, Scene contributor and former staff writer Issues of diversity and inclusion are extremely divisive in 21st century America, and publications are constantly under the microscope in terms of how they handle them. So are people, and saying things like, "I don't notice race" or "I don't care about gender or sexual orientation or ethnicity or age," no matter how well-meaning, can often be interpreted as being more offensive than deliberate slurs.

But Jim Ridley was one person who understood both the importance of recognizing distinctiveness and the necessity for treating every story and every writer individually.

He and I often discussed racial issues in film and TV, and he had no problem telling me if he didn't agree with me or understand an issue, nor with allowing writers to state their case without worry of censorship or editorial cowardice. We would both delight in folks who either didn't get the point or were so sure they knew what a filmmaker or writer was saying when it was clear from what they said that they didn't. "Informed ignorance" was what he used to call it.

Unlike some critics who feel their opinions come from on high, Jim enjoyed hearing why you didn't think a film or TV show that he liked was so good. Of course, most of the time his views and opinions would be so much more well-developed and insightful than yours that you'd end up agreeing with him and wondering how you missed all that he managed to see in the same project.

I've never met someone who enjoyed life, family and work as much as Jim. Whenever we met in his office he'd ask if I wanted a cup of coffee, and then we would get down to business, talking about this and that movie or show or book or music. He was always way more interested in what you were reading and watching and hearing than what he was, because he cared about your interests and also hoped you had heard or seen something he hadn't, and wondered what you thought about it.

As an editor, he was superb. There was never a story he couldn't improve. He could make an average story great and a great story magnificent. When you got copy back from him it was always better than when he got it, though he never altered or distorted or abandoned your original vision. He just had that special knack for rewriting a phrase here or there, substituting a word or moving around a sequence while retaining the overall sensibility of the writer. Plus he was always careful and cautious in his editing approach. "Make sure you are OK with this" was usually the last thing he said when he sent back your copy. It was always better than when he initially received it.

But none of that surpasses the kind of person he was. He was always congenial and warm, happy to see you and willing to take time away from an impossibly busy day to just talk about this and that. I've been fortunate to meet and talk to some famous folks in my lifetime. None of them ever enriched my life as much as Jim Ridley.


Adam Gold, Scene music editor I was still a green writer in early 2010, when Jim Ridley — clearly having more faith in me than I had in myself — assigned me my first and second cover stories, which would run on back-to-back weeks. And like most green writers (and many seasoned writers), I overshot my assigned word-count by an outrageous margin on at least one (probably both) of those stories.

"Listen," he told me, dangerously offering up an allowance I'd take him up on time and time again in the years to follow, "don't ever apologize to me for turning in a story that's too long. I'm the master of cutting a story by 2,000 words."

That might have been only time I heard Jim — the most humble man who ever lived — boast about his abilities. And it was still an understatement.

The edit I got back was about 1,500 words shorter than the draft I filed. I couldn't tell you what the cuts were, because when I read the story back I couldn't even tell what was missing. But I immediately noticed that the 1,500 words I would have cut — some quotes that added shades of color here and context clues capturing elements I didn't realize were crucial there — were still in the story, unearthed from where I buried them and shuffled to the top of the text. Then there were the words he added — finishing a joke with a punch line I couldn't quite pull off, reducing overcooked paragraphs to quick turn-of-phrase transitions and adding analogies that trumped Wiki-like dry explanations. They're the ones readers complimented the most. That edit I got back wasn't just a better story — polished, tweaked and fit for human consumption — it was a road map for how to write a story.

Jim Ridley was a man who led by example. Ask him about his editing style and he would've told you, perhaps sheepishly, "If I see a way to make something better, I just do it."

It's a great editor's job to pull a writer's best work out of them. Jim Ridley did a helluva lot more than that for those of us who were lucky enough to work with him. Through his talents — which were boundless beyond words — he showed us how to reach beyond our potential. And as a person — through his wide-eyed love of art and music and how they shed light on the world, his compassion, kindness, and his innate ability to wring every drop of humanity from a story — he showed us how to be better people.


Steven Hale, Scene staff writer For maybe the past year or so, Jim Ridley had a 10-by-13-inch Nashville Scene mailing envelope taped to the wall of his office with four all-caps, underlined words scrawled across it: "THAT'S WHAT I'VE GOT."

Appropriately, it comes from a movie. And last summer, on a day we were both feeling particularly discouraged, he explained it to me.

In the 1959 Western Rio Bravo, John Wayne plays John T. Chance, a small-town Texas sheriff who calls on a lawman with a drinking problem (Dean Martin) and an old coot with a limp (Walter Brennan) to help him fend off the bad guys. They don't exactly look up to it, and at one point in the film, a friend says as much to Chance.

"A game-legged old man and a drunk. That's all you got?" he says.

Chance responds (and read this in your best John Wayne voice): "That's WHAT I got."

The reference was more appropriate than Jim could've known. I've lost count of the times I walked into his office, feeling like the weak link, the drunk deputy who might well be more of a liability than an asset — but I never walked out of his office feeling that way. Not just because Jim could take scattershot copy and work it until it was right on target, but because he never once made me feel deficient in the process. He would've had more than enough reason to do so, too. Jim once hugged me through a panic attack, on deadline, and he saw our copy in its occasionally messy pre-publication form. It didn't matter. He went into each new week, surrounded by a ragtag bunch of staffers, daring anyone to take us on. Jim told me he had put that sign on his wall to remind him not to give into the discouragement that could come from being short-staffed and under-resourced. I have no doubt that he wrestled with those frustrations, but Jim Ridley never needed a reminder to make the people he worked with feel good enough.

He made you believe that in a pickup game of journalism, with everyone on the field to choose from, he'd want you on his team. I'm afraid that sometimes he didn't believe he deserved to be the captain, but he was wrong. Jim Ridley was what we had. And he was more than enough.


J.R. Lind, Scene staff writer I'd always listen for the cackle.

About a half-hour after turning in my copy for the week, I'd prick my ears toward Jim's office and wait. 

And when that laugh would come — at once deep and boyish — I knew I had a hit.

If a line was really good, I could hear him repeating it through his giggle. If it was great, he would cut and paste it and send it to me in an email.

Jim and I shared an affection for wordplay. He preferred the fiendish pun, at once broad and sharp, like a claymore. I am more inclined to scattershot metaphor and allusion, like a rococo collage from a feverish Wikipedia editor. 

Jim's gift as an editor was an incredible ability to improve a piece using the writer's voice, resisting the temptation to force everything through a meat grinder. Our writing would come back thousands of times better, but so note-perfect that a reader would never know how much Jim did to it.

Only once did he slot in an allusion I disputed. In a cover story about Seth Jones, Jim added a line comparing an onrush of hockey players to a scene from Clash of Clans. 

I poked my head in his office and said "Jim, would I ever make a reference to a smartphone game?"

He rested his hands on his belly and thoughtfully gazed at the ceiling.

"No. I guess you wouldn't."

He looked up again and said "How about 'Bülow at Waterloo'?"

A perfect J.R. line, the product of another J.R.

Beyond initials, we shared a love for Jason and the Scorchers. Jim and I met up at Exit/In for the band's show in honor of their late drummer, Perry Baggs. Between sets, we went across the street. Eating a bean roll at The Gold Rush with Jim Ridley while waiting for the Scorchers is one of the most Nashville things imaginable. Not the Nashville of the glittering condo towers and airline magazine profiles, but the Nashville that Jim loved. The Nashville he championed for a quarter-century. At that show, I watched Jim hop like a crazed cow-punk pogo stick, his curly hair keeping the time. 

Jim, of course, loved film, and I cherish the conversations we had about Robert Altman and about TCM Underground, the channel's late-night series of the wackadoodle and bizarre. Jim made sure I stayed up the night House was showing, because he knew my wife shared his fascination with weirdo genre film. I tweeted our reactions and Jim would tweet back, urging us two then-bleary-eyed new parents to stay awake for just one more scene. He was like an older brother putting the needle down on Sheik Yerbouti, delighting in the reactions of a first-time listener.

And that's what Jim was, really, not just for those of us who knew and loved him, but for the city he knew and loved. He was an ambassador and a sherpa. He knew what was great, and he knew what you would think was great. And he knew, even if you didn't, what you could do that would be great. It was Jim who begged me to start writing sports for the Scene, something not every alt-weekly editor would consider and certainly not something I'd ever considered. Someone sent me a message this week that they started reading me because they knew I had Jim's imprimatur. Jim would consider that the highest compliment.

But my highest compliments were those cackles from him.

I'll still be listening for them. I just may have to listen a little harder.


Jonathan Marx, former Scene managing editor As I sit here facing the computer, trying to figure out some way to pay tribute to Jim Ridley, the task seems so monumental that I feel wholly unsuited and unworthy. How to honor this remarkable human being, my colleague and collaborator at the Nashville Scene for 16 years, whose astounding skill as a writer and editor, whose passion for art in every form, and whose unwavering conviction made our community a far better place? Honestly, I just don't know if I'm capable.

And then I realize: This is what Jim himself often felt as he sat down to write one of the countless film reviews he contributed to this newspaper. I saw him struggle many times. He would wrestle for hours, sometimes quietly at his desk, other times diving into lively and engrossing discourses about the movie he was critiquing. The process of reckoning with a great work of art — or sometimes an utterly lousy one — could be daunting at times, and there would be moments when it seemed as though he might be defeated by that process.

Unless there was an election or breaking news, his film reviews often would be the last piece of editorial to be submitted for that week's issue. The afternoon would pass into the evening ... and I confess I wasn't always patient with the process. Yet each time, he would turn in a piece of writing so magnificently crafted, so precisely argued, there was nothing for me to do but tweak a comma and pass the piece along to our art director for layout. It was like getting to watch Athena spring fully formed from the head of Zeus every Tuesday night. The process felt that dramatic, the result that miraculous.

But to call them "film reviews" does no justice to the insight, conviction and savage humor that went into each one of these critical essays, so worthy of comparison to his revered Pauline Kael. But good luck telling Jim that: Anytime he received a compliment on his work, he'd find a way to duck out from under the praise, to deflect it onto someone else.

Anyone who's worked with Jim will tell you just how modest and unassuming he could be — it was one of his defining traits. He conducted himself with more humility than anyone I've known. He would always tell me that I helped make him a better writer, and I would always feel humbled myself, because I felt as though all I'd done was just to sit there tapping my watch every Tuesday afternoon. And maybe move around a comma or two.

But over the past two weeks, as I've joined numerous friends, former colleagues and fellow Nashvillians in reflecting on the enormous influence Jim has had on each of us, I've realized that Jim wasn't just being modest, and he wasn't trying to make us feel better about ourselves. Jim fundamentally believed that the collaborative process — the trading of ideas, sharing of drafts, and coming together to make something that amounted to more than the sum of its parts — really did make him a stronger writer and editor. He was one of the most brilliant, most incisive thinkers I will ever have the honor of knowing, but he drew vast and genuine inspiration from his colleagues and friends, and we from him.

Jim's love for film was infectious, and it shaped my own love and understanding of the medium. Like the beloved movie theater owner who helped open Jim's mind to the wondrous possibilities of cinema when he was growing up in Murfreesboro, Jim did much the same for me, introducing me to my favorite filmmakers, chief among them John Cassavetes and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, artists for whom the dividing line between art and life is permeable, if not invisible.

This was one of the great joys of working with him and being his friend: his bottomless enthusiasm for sharing and promoting the things he loved. Like some kind of art pusher, he was constantly supplying people around him with movies, music and books. Even though it would be far easier to stream it or watch it on DVD, I will always hold on to my VHS copy of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, because it was a gift from Jim.

Underlying Jim's exuberant zeal was the deeply held belief that art has the infinite capacity to inspire us and transform us — and that our response should be to awaken to all those possibilities. For years, Jim's work space was defined by two sayings he had posted in direct view, twin guideposts that informed everything he poured into the newspaper and into his life. The first was, "Can you say it as plain as Hank Williams?" The second he lifted from Woody Guthrie's guitar and taped to his computer monitor, so he would always see it whenever he worked: "This machine kills fascists."

In his criticism, Jim would channel his rage at bad art into some of the most wickedly funny reviews I've ever read. His two-word assessment of the Matthew Modine sailing vehicle Wind? "Blow me." His response to the Sandra Bullock-Harry Connick Jr. romance Hope Floats? "So does crap." And when he wrote about the 1995 stinker Showgirls, he topped off his razor-sharp evisceration of the film with one of the best headlines ever written: "A Sale of Two Titties." (And anyone who worked with Jim will attest that no one delivered better headlines than he did.)

But far, far more often, Jim celebrated good art, and not just through his writing. On a daily basis, from morning till the late, late night, Jim showed up for the world — even and especially after he'd deservedly assumed the editorship of the Nashville Scene. You could always, of course, count on seeing him at The Belcourt. Or he'd be in the audience to support an up-and-coming band he'd just written or read about in the paper. And whenever people applauded, his would be the loudest. But the best and purest of Jim's expressions, as so many people have recalled this past week, were his hugs. In a life in which he accomplished so very much, one of Jim's greatest achievements was that he made people feel genuinely loved, over and over again.

His loss is devastating, but eventually we will get to a place where we know and feel that it is our privilege and our honor to keep Jim's passion, creativity, kindness, wisdom, incomparable sense of humor, and his boundless love and generosity alive in this world. And we will continue to make our community a better place, through actions both modest and ambitious, because we will always have such an amazing inspiration in Jim.


Liz Garrigan, former Scene editor Jim Ridley was probably the only newspaper editor in history without a single enemy, and I can think of no other person, living or dead, who could possibly pull off such a feat. He was uniquely brilliant with a boundless talent that more than once made me wonder why he didn't seek more cachet or higher-paying jobs elsewhere. But his greatest attributes were his unique kindness, humility and noble unwillingness to put expediency, or anything else for that matter, above human decency and love.


Adam Ross, author and former Scene staffer In December 1999, I took a job answering the phones at the Nashville Scene (my title was operations assistant) hoping I might someday write for the paper. My interest in working there, my primary impetus and inspiration — the gravitational force that drew me to the place — was Jim Ridley. More accurately, it was his writing that compelled me to show up at the Scene's Cummins Station office and apply. Be around a writer that good, I figured, and I was bound to get better.

In the four years since my wife and I had moved to Nashville, I'd become such a devout reader of the Scene in general, but Jim in particular, that I not only knew the exact time of its delivery to my workplace but could turn, in a single flip, right to the movie section. Oh, I'd been riveted by Willy Stern's multipart investigative exposé on the Janet March murder case; had reveled in Walter Jowers' burly rhythms that seemed so authentically good-ole-boyish you forgot a serious comic writer was at work; I delighted in glamorous Kay West's refusal, in one eviscerating review after another, to cut Nashville's then-feeble food scene an ounce of culinary slack. But towering above these and other terrific Scene scribes was Ridley. Reading Jim, I suffered that odd brand of admiration that falls somewhere between delight and envy any aspiring writer experiences when they recognize a major talent. Here's Jim, in February 1999, writing on one of his all-time favorite films, Rushmore:

"At the moment, Rushmore's competition for that lucrative 18-25 youth demo includes Jawbreaker, a vile Heathers clone about some popular high school girls who accidentally kill a friend and decide to make it look like a rape — this is a comedy — and She's All That, in which "plain" teen artist Rachael Leigh Cook is persuaded by soccer jock Freddie Prinze Jr. to become a generic hottie. Jawbreaker alone sends a veritable Western Union of mixed messages, from anorexic body typing to snobbery, but both movies hold up bland normalcy as a holy grail. With their mall-bound fashions and radio-tailored soundtracks, they're like the glossy magazines in John Carpenter's They Live, which bear subliminal messages like 'Conform!' and 'Obey!' "

Examine any sentence from the above and note, among other things, how Jim's adjectival precision freights his nouns with ideas, with values ("mall-bound," "radio-tailored," "bland normalcy"), raging, by sly semantics, against mass market capitalism's stultifying sameness and high school's built-in hierarchical violence while revealing himself to be champion of the overlooked, the oppressed, the underdog. Jim could turn a micro-review into a political act. It was writing of the highest order.

Rereading this now, I still aspire to be as direct in my own work, a lesson I learned from Jim. ("Can you say it as straight as Hank Williams?" was the question he had taped to his computer screen.) Back then I merely hoped to be good enough to publish. Imagine, then, what it was like in my first months at the paper to witness Jim become an agent of civic change. It is one thing to arrive at the offices of a newspaper whose stable includes Christine Kreyling, Margaret Renkl, Michael Sims, Liz Garrigan, Matt Pulle, Jonathan Marx, Bill Friskics-Warren, Randy Horick and Bruce Dobie — writers scribbling a growing city's secret history, acting as both its conscience and its mirror, so that it may hopefully become a better version of itself. It is quite another when your alt-weekly's movie critic singlehandedly starts a citywide effort to rescue its local arthouse theater.

It was Jim's seminal article "Fade to Black" — a cover story about The Belcourt Theatre's imminent closing he wrote as a protest and plea to Nashville's better cultural angels — that inspired the Save the Belcourt movement. That movement subsequently ensured our theater's survival. In the nearly two decades since that article went to press, movie lovers have been able to enjoy everything from Hitchcock retrospectives to Skype talks with movie directors and authors. Parents have taken their kids to countless weekend matinees featuring The Olde Worlde Theatre Company. Music lovers have enjoyed the greatest acts up close and personal. Now The Belcourt is enjoying a major renovation. In short, Jim saved one of the city's pillars by force of his pen. He made Nashville a better place.

Keep this in mind, and Mr. Ridley in your heart, the next time you sit in that theater. And when you struggle to contemplate his tragic loss, take comfort in the fact that he's right there, next to you. I know I will.


John Spragens, Scene contributor and former staff writer For 27 years, with mischievous prose, effortless wit, a ceaseless work ethic and a heart overflowing with love, Jim wrote and directed his masterpiece. It was shot in brilliant Technicolor and produced for a song. It featured a cast of thousands. Everyone involved with the picture volunteered — and, improbably enough, everyone thought they had a starring role. Even more improbably, everyone gave the performance of a lifetime.

It was Jim Ridley's Nashville — a weird, creative, deviously brilliant, unfailingly generous ensemble piece, and the common thread weaved throughout it was Jim. He loved our basement-tinkering creativity, our eccentric characters, our parochial fights, our beautiful songs, our Southern kindness, our secret ambitions, our hot chicken. He listened with purpose and observed with critical clarity; he radiated enthusiasm, all of it sincere; and when Jim shined his loving spotlight on the most interesting, talented and underappreciated parts of our town, what he revealed — what he conjured, really — was beauty.

If his legacy were only his decades of brilliant film criticism, it would be awe-inspiring. But Jim's legacy is so much more. Because before everyone else discovered Nashville, he helped Nashville discover itself. And we — devout Jim Ridley readers since 1989 — decided we loved all of those same things he saw and loved in us, the facets of our cultural identity that he polished one film capsule, one Critic's Pick, one restaurant review, one Pith post, one Boner Award, one Zen-like pun, one tweak of a sentence under someone else's byline, at a time. It can be prosaic work, writing and editing, but Jim wrote poetry. And his voice, at once authoritative and impish, gave voice to others: writers, creators, performers, players, teachers, poets, neighbors, and ultimately, an entire city.

He was the self-effacing cultural curator of modern Nashville. 

But you can know all that and still miss so much of the man. Because Jim was also, without a doubt, the most encouraging friend and mentor a person could have. No email exchange or visit passed without him taking the opportunity to tell you how happy he was to have your byline in the paper, or how excited he was about the creative work of a mutual acquaintance (usually someone you'd recently discovered but whom he had quietly known and nurtured for years). The weekend before he collapsed, he called, out of the blue, just to tell me how pleased he was with a recent story I had written. I am so grateful I stopped my bicycle that morning, hours after my grandmother's death, to answer the phone. So many times had I associated that voice with kindness; just hearing it was a salve.

Jim was also hilarious. Rest assured that the punniest headlines and wittiest unsigned words that you've ever read in the Scene sprang fully formed, Athena-like, from his head. And his relentless, mischievous creativity found outlets large and small — who else would write an exquisitely crafted, side-splitting 300-word email daring brave souls to enter his haunted cubicle, all to offer Halloween candy to his co-workers? Whether writing a five-word email reply or tucking a winking line into a published piece, Jim left people smiling, dazzled by his wit and surprised to find joy in such an unlikely place.

Egoless and unpretentious, doing what he loved alongside — and for — people he loved, Jim imbued even his highest-minded critical work with a proletarian conscience. He appreciated underdogs and felled bullies with his slingshot wit. He could poke fun with the best of them, but woe be to outsiders taking cheap shots at his people. (Behold him slyly demolishing Yankee Rex Reed's take on Robert Altman's Nashville: " '[The film] floats like navel lint into the vulgar Vegas of country and Western music, that plunking, planking citadel of bad taste called Nashville, Tenn.,' wrote the former star of Myra Breckinridge." Zing!)

Ten years ago, when I traded Nashville, and journalism, for a stint in Washington, D.C., Jim showed up at my house with a vinyl copy of Bruce Springsteen's then-new Seeger Sessions album. It was beautiful, rambunctious, workingman's music; Jim's friend (and Scene contributor) Noel Murray once called it "a reminder of how community sustains and uplifts us." And of course, that's exactly the subtle message Jim intended when he gave me this farewell-for-now gift. A few years later, having exorcised some wanderlust, I came back home to that sustaining community. Jim welcomed me with a trademark full-Ridley hug and solicitations to write for the paper. "Even if your answer to both is no, I'm still really glad you're coming back," he wrote. Lately, that album has been working overtime sustaining and uplifting.

It is because of a million stories like these that, on a too-soon Saturday morning in spring, we will gather in Murfreesboro to celebrate the life of Alicia's lifelong soulmate, Kat and Jamie's unbearably proud and loving father, our loyal and big-hearted friend, and everyone's number one fan, Jim Ridley — a man who contained multitudes, enough for a whole city. And in those pews, weeping, laughing, and then weeping some more, will sit that cast of thousands, grateful every one.

It will be — as one amazing film critic, and even better man, wrote of a town you might know — "a cross section of the city as broad and colorful as any Altman could have devised."

"If we're looking for the beauty and color and glamour in Hollywood films, it's around us all the time. All we have to do is open our eyes to it."

Jim Ridley

(1965-2016)

"I've always got time for hot chicken. And you."

Mr. Pink

(Eternal)


Bruce Barry, Scene contributor Journalism (and life) is a team sport, and on great teams the star doesn't just showcase his own talents, he makes everyone around him better. That's Jim, both on and off the field.


Matt Pulle, former Scene staffer In 1995 I was a young, fumbling political reporter at Nashville In Review, a startup alt-weekly that aimed to be a rival of the Nashville Scene. In fact, we never posed much of a threat, and so instead I looked at their writers as examples of how to do the job. By reading Liz Garrigan and Bruce Dobie, I came to understand that political reporting should be tough, relentless, impeccably sourced and immediate. From Willy Stern, I learned that investigative reporting should be thorough, definitive and devastating.

Then there was Jim Ridley. On the surface, it wouldn't seem like a film critic would have much of an influence on a fledgling political reporter, but Jim taught me the best lesson of all, that journalism could be beautiful, that the flurry of deadlines didn't weaken your writing, but gave it urgency and clarity. I was never, ever going to emulate Jim as a writer, but he at least showed me what was possible: that even while the ice cubes in your Coke were melting over the sounds of your editor pestering you to rush in your copy, you should still try to play with every last word to make sure your story connected and resonated with your readers. Jim's talent was hard to fathom, but he could still inspire the rest of us to do more than empty out our notebooks — to put care and a bit of art into our work.

When I joined the Scene in 1999, I soon realized that Jim's brilliance as a writer was eclipsed only by the generosity of his friendships. It was always remarkable to me that while Jim was never my editor, he could still recall in the middle of a conversation arcane passages of mundane stories I had written years earlier. And anytime I needed help with a piece, I could always turn it over to Jim and have it come back to me as a much better version of its former self. Often he'd do this (I'd later find out) while he himself was on a tight deadline. There are other acts of warmth I can recount as well (taking nearly brotherly pride when I got a job offer from the Dallas Observer is one that comes to mind), but even with David Remnick's word count I couldn't do Jim justice. Funny that the only disappointing thing about having Jim as a friend was finding out that he showed the same good nature to everyone else. 

Jim would later become editor of the Scene, and I've since become a lawyer who tries play at journalism in my free time. Last summer I sent Jim an email critical of the Scene's coverage of the mayor's race. I thought the mayor's race was uncommonly nasty and important and deserved more vigilance from the city's alt-weekly. Jim's reply to my email was terse. He was always going to be supportive of his writers, and I respected that. For weeks now, I've been meaning to email him to have lunch and make sure there were no hard feelings. I'll always regret not following up, but considering how perceptive he was a writer and as a friend, I think he knew how much he meant to me.


Amanda Haggard, Scene staff writer Most journalists would probably agree: Election Day sucks. It's a lot of hurry-up-and-wait, a lot of driving from one place to another and a whole bunch of trying, typically in vain, to get something a little more out of the box than every other reporter in the city.

So when I was hired at the Scene this past August, and the news staff actually seemed eager when the words Election Day came out of their mouths — uttered in Mayor Quimby-esque tones of delight — imagine my confusion.

It's easy to become jaded during election season. And the 2015 mayoral election in Nashville had become particularly brutal. A month after seven candidates had been whittled to two, the runoff election between now Mayor Megan Barry and her opponent David Fox was upon us.

About 4 p.m., another Scene staffer got a tip that the polling location at the Martha O'Bryan Center had opened late. Friends of Megan Barry had filed an unprecedented last-minute lawsuit against the Davidson County Election Commission asking to keep the site open later for the time lost that morning.

I rushed down to the courthouse, minutes before the doors closed, and wound up being the only reporter to make it into an emergency hearing that resulted in the center staying open an extra 40 minutes. High on reporting, but exhausted from a day of nonstop election coverage, I walked into the office to greet none other than a beaming Jim Ridley, already holding the office's "Pith helmet" — a beige safari hat by anyone else's estimation.

"Wow. Just wow!" he said, placing the hat on my head as he picked me up in a robust and lengthy bear hug. I was no longer feeling jaded, nor tired. I put my hand up in a salute so Jim could take one of his signature photos — all flash and red eyes and half out of focus.

In that moment, I thought back to June 2015, both of us sitting on the squat, armless couch in his office, having early discussions about me coming on board at the paper.

I naively, shortsightedly asked him if there would be professional development at the Nashville Scene. "No," he said, a tinge of guilt in his voice — his rote honesty unable to forsake him.

A few months later, my head topped by that ridiculous beige safari hat, enveloped in a sweet Jim Ridley squeeze, I realized what I should have known from a few years of freelancing for the paper: Jim was the professional development at the Nashville Scene. I only wish I'd realized sooner, and remembered more often.


Bruce Dobie, former Scene editor When we moved to our offices on Eighth Avenue, we put editorial on the first floor, which was the floor that had a lot of offices. So that meant the lowly writers, who were not used to nice things, got offices, not cubicles. They weren't all big corner suites or anything, but they were spaces big enough where visitors could sit in chairs, books could be put on shelves, and doors could be shut so you could break out the bottle of Maker's Mark late on deadline night and rev up your creative juices.

Well, about two years into this living arrangement, with everyone in editorial feeling all comfy in their walled-off spaces, there came a situation. Ridley's office, which was right next to the office of his editor, Jonathan Marx, had started to grow full. It was turning into an overwhelming jungle of stuff. There were stacks of books and CDs and press releases and notebooks and movie posters — I'm talking mounds of stuff two and three feet high. It had gotten to where only a trail lead to Jim's desk.

A lot of reporters can be messy. I get that. But to understand Jim's situation, you had to understand Jim. His office had evolved, really, into a physical manifestation of his mind — a vast and voracious exhibition of culture, of any kind, high and low, printed or taped, recorded or filmed, found on the street or fallen from heaven. The pipes that ran into Jim's large and absorbent and curious mind were so large and so fast that it was only natural his office was going to fill up. This wasn't a case of hoarding. This was a case of a brain that was processing and gathering and engaging with a world's worth of creativity. Four walls could scarcely contain.

But it was problematic. So a meeting was held between Marx, then-managing editor Liz Garrigan and me. I'd guess you'd call it the first step in an intervention. Marx — whose toughness I deeply respect and whom I never saw shirk from a hard conversation, quickly emerged as the point man. Jonathan is fiendishly organized, to the point that right now I bet he could tell you the exact position, location and angle of all the ink pens on his desk. He stepped right up. "I'll talk to Jim. I think the way to go about it is I'll help him do what needs to be done."

Ridley and Marx talked. The purge began.

You could hear the two of them in succeeding weeks as they went about their work for hours at a time — it was all very friendly and civil with no snapping or arguing about whether to throw something away, like your average middle-aged couple trying to downsize. You could overhear the tangential conversations that would shoot out as they plowed through yet another pile, only to find, say, a 1955 French film DVD that would have them raging about how marvelous the movie was, and didn't the lead actress also appear in a Truffaut flick later or was that in some other Swedish production?

It was an archaeological dig through Jim's mind. It lasted forever.

Marx stayed strong, Jim remained rigorous, and by the end of it all, I would wager hundreds of CDs and hardcover books and at least a dozen trash bags of who knows what else got tossed.

I walked in to chat with Jim when it was all over, not expecting what I would find, and it was so shocking to see Jim again, full and in person, rather exposed without all that stuff interfering with one's view of him, sitting at his barren and uncluttered and wiped-clean desk, appearing a little lonely in fact with all his friendly possessions in the dumpster. Something seemed to have been lost, but Jim was just so upbeat. "Thank you all for making me do this," he said. "I love it."

There was never a kinder, nicer, more generous guy than Jim Ridley. This is part of the moral of the story. More importantly, I think Jim could have existed just fine in a messy world, because he was smart enough to be able to control the chaos. He chose to get organized because he thought it was important to us and he loved us.

I worked with Jim from 1989 to 2004, when I was the Scene's editor, but really Marx was much closer to him on a day-to-day basis. I say this because my nose was in the front of the book, with politics and urban planning and local government and investigative stories.

BUT: When the paper came out, and readers got halfway through the book, they then encountered a writing animal the likes of which God has made very few. There, with a command and control of the English language shared by no one I've ever known before or since, and with an ease of execution that truly did seem divinely sourced, was Jim Ridley. If the lens through which he saw the world was film, his portfolio was broader: a city, its people and its culture. To encounter a Ridley-bylined story was, at a sentence-by-sentence level, to witness the most verbally agile writing imaginable. And when you'd finished all those sentences and were left with the totality of his creation, you were confronted with the stark reality that this man's grip on the arts, the Scene's community of readers, and the city as a whole was consummate and perfect. He could write. And he could tell.

Jim gave his life to the Scene. And the Scene was about giving up, every week, the best it had to the city. It was no wonder Nashville loved him so.


Michelle Jones, former Scene staffer There were two sides to Jim; on the one hand, there was the warm, sunny guy with the signature curly brown hair and fiendish giggle. The man who mock-tormented me nearly every day of my Scene tenure with one of his legendary bear hugs. ("Oh, I know what's wrong, you haven't had your hug today," he'd say.) That was pure Jim, but the other side of Jim was the writer who could skewer a bad film or highlight political folly in a splay of words that was full of panache, but never cruel. His relish for language and ferocious talent for composing everything from cover stories to "Best of Nashville" blurbs to profiles was awe-inspiring.

I doubt if anyone is surprised by the outpouring of love and respect for Jim, because going anywhere with him was an adventure. He seemed to know everyone, and there was always a parade of people stopping by to say hello or shake his hand whether at a movie, concert or restaurant.

Jim's impact on Nashville's cultural and media landscape is huge, but if we could also manage a modicum of his grace, our city will be a better place.


Geert De Lombaerde, Nashville Post editor Making difficult decisions about where to devote resources comes with the territory when you're leading a team. Many great people struggle in such situations. Some even truly agonize.

But no one I know ever hurt like Jim did.

Starting in the fall of 2009, after SouthComm had bought the Scene, Jim regularly huddled with me and other leaders to strategize, make hiring decisions or wrestle with the occasional budget adjustment. Not once during these conversations — formal or informal, with his bosses or with his peers — do I recall Jim pleading for more resources for "the Scene."

Instead, each and every chance he had, he fought like a lion very specifically for his writers and editors themselves — whether they were full-timers or freelancers. Always, he was effusive in his praise for them and sketching out visions for their next phase of growth. And nearly always, it only took until halfway through the first sentence of his advocacy for his voice to get a little shaky and for his hands to become a little agitated as he struggled to contain his anguish.

Jim ached when his people faced hardship — to the point where he recently emptied his wallet of its last $20 for a longtime freelancer. He couldn't hide his torment the times he needed to cut back on the amount of work or resources he was able to provide them. And in baring his pain — again and again — to the others in the room, he injected a very necessary dose of humanity into conversations that too often devolve into being only about numbers.

So many people have rightly praised Jim's gentle, giving soul. But every time I worked directly alongside him, I also saw a ferocious fighter. I saw a man who battled for his team and never for himself. And I learned more about what it means to be a leader.


Rob Simbeck, Scene contributor I met Jim Ridley when I started freelancing for the Scene in 1991 or so. It was at first hard to believe the paper's astoundingly cogent and learned film critic was this guy in his mid-20s. Then I had to wrap my mind around that wonderful combination of mind and heart. He was interested in and knowledgeable about everything related to the arts, and he was wonderful to be around. He has been the one piece of editorial continuity in the paper from that day to this, and I can say without hesitation that he was one of the finest examples of talent and humanity I have ever met. He was kind, humble, funny, capable, gentle, quick, genuinely loving and unfailingly professional in all his dealings. Every conversation I had with him left me better. Yes, I love his writing, but that's the least of it. I loved the man more.


Alex Hubbard, former Scene contributor Many, many people knew Jim Ridley much better and much longer than I did. I only worked for Jim for a few months, and the total number of stories of mine that he edited or that passed through him to the Nashville Post probably numbered less than 10, yet I have so many memories.

To start with, I had always heard that I should talk to Jim about work. I was having a very tough time finding work or finding enough work, and although it wasn't my style to say so, I felt like the reason wasn't what I could do, but what I couldn't. One friend told me, "Jim won't care about anything but your reporting."

When I finally made it to his office last year, I hadn't been working very much. I wasn't making enough money, and my health was bothering me. I was ready to quit journalism. I can't tell you that enough. I was about to quit. Probably the only reason I hadn't already was I couldn't figure out what the hell else to do.

Jim said he had always wanted somebody to cover courts for the Scene. I was happy to do it. To cover courts the right way, and it isn't done very much these days, you've got to have some intellectual curiosity. I guess I had enough of it for him. The thing that made me so proud was when I accidently — or maybe he meant for me to — found out that he was telling other people how hard I pushed to get the details.

It had nothing to do with me, actually. I was just proud that I made him happy. He had that kind of thing about him. He was a giant in his writing and his people skills, yet he was not a scary person at all. It wasn't like pleasing a master; it was like pleasing your favorite uncle.

Jim was the first editor I ever told explicitly about my health — really the first person outside of my close friends. "Do you still want to do this?" he asked me. I told him I did. "Then we'll find a way for you to do it."

When my grandmother died, Jim didn't just say he was sorry and leave it at that, as someone who was just a work acquaintance and had only known me for two months might have. He told me about losing his own grandmother in almost the same circumstance. And I actually did feel better.

I was nervous when The Tennessean came calling. It wasn't something I felt like I could turn down. I was just a freelancer for the Scene, though a regular one. I hated to leave Jim. That was the hardest part. I will never understand exactly how he could inspire such loyalty without even seeming to try, or even realizing that he had done it.

Though I was leaving for the competition, and a place that the Scene enjoys skewering no end, Jim was all smiles for me. He was just glad I found a place to make regular paychecks. He understood my relief completely.

When I found out almost two weeks ago that he was in the hospital and the outlook was grim, it was like somebody had punched me in the stomach.

I said this in a text message to a friend: "I feel silly sometimes because I don't know him like you do, or many people do, but I've been very upset. He was so nice to me and I felt like he really trusted me. ... I'd eat fire for him."

I'll never forget him.


Jim Ridley, 1965-2016

Jim Ridley with wife Alicia Adkerson, daughter Kat Ridley, son Jamie Ridley and dog Biscuit

Stephen Trageser, Scene staffer For two years, I have had the privilege to know the powerhouse wordsmith, the razor-sharp yet astoundingly generous editor, the winking wit, and the kind, kind man that was Jim Ridley. What can you say about someone who delighted in building up the confidence of so many different people, making us believe that we could someday tell a story half as good as he could? And when you'd thank him for it, he'd just say "Oh, hush" and clap you on the back.

Jim gave, and gave, and gave some more. One of the few things that comforts me is that the things he gave, aside from delectable cookies and birthday lunches, are permanent. One of his favorite songs was John Prine's "Please Don't Bury Me," which he once wrote "contains a half-dozen of the finest lines ever written in English." It's a rich, darkly comic little story, and it's about giving. A few of those lines:

"Give my stomach to Milwaukee / If they run out of beer / Put my socks in a cedar box / Just get 'em outta here."

Rarely did I see Jim drink anything stronger than a cup of coffee, so that first bit is a wash. As for the rest, he got dapper when the occasion called for it, but most days he set the tone in the office with a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, usually bearing the logo of something he cared deeply about. That was the ultimate thing with Jim — your story, the thing you cared enough to write about, is worth caring about.

"Venus de Milo can have my arms"

A hug from Jim was serious business. You knew he meant it.

"Look out! I've got your nose"

I saw Jim smile often, especially at the terrible puns we fired off around the newsroom, but never bigger than when I saw him with his kids.

"Sell my heart to the junkman"

Ugh.

"And give my love to Rose."

Through everything he did for me, and my colleagues, and many, many others, he showed us all an awful lot of love, and we always wanted to follow his example. We always will. Thank you, Jim.


Collin Wade Monk, former Scene contributor

Jim Ridley Moved Like a Dancer

James Allison (Jim) Ridley V appeared fully formed in my consciousness at the age of 12 when we met at my neighbor's house. Not unlike the disco dancing lessons he would have to endure a few years later, this playdate at a schoolmate's house had been engineered by his mother, Polly, to get his nose out of a book and to improve Jim's social skills. Somehow this spawn of Pauline Kael and Lester Bangs was already a little larger than life to me. I had advance knowledge of him and was a little in awe. I think he had already published something in the local paper, Murfreesboro's Daily News Journal. Much like Mick and Keith, the first introduction has little value except to be the starting point of a grand adventure. I would not lay eyes on him again for another seven years.

The significance of Murfreesboro cannot be underestimated in the nurturing of Jim's talent and personality. It was a fairly mellow place. There was a small but growing university with its cultural extensions, and by 1970 local school integration was complete with a minimum of hubbub. Jim could read and dream of a bigger world from within the quiet comforts of his family's antebellum house.

The house, and the family within, played a large part in creating Jim Ridley. It had tall white columns, a long winding driveway, ancient boxwoods, mint juleps and peacocks, but its single-story floor plan eliminated it from "mansion" status. Flannery O'Connor would have gotten a couple of stories out of the setting. The fact that the fastest way into the kitchen of the house was through Jim's bedroom probably gave him good practice with finding ways to shut out distractions. The obvious psychological implication of a teenage boy's bedroom being a household thoroughfare is not one I am qualified to explore.

One of my favorite stories comes across almost as an O'Connor/Big Lebowski mash-up. Jim and I were at his house checking on a peacock nest when we noticed a large snake inching its way towards the eggs. Neither Ridley nor I were of the snake-handling inclination, religiously or scientifically, so we did the next-best Southern native move: We went and got the man of the house. Jim's dad (James IV) came storming out of the house, mint julep in his fist, and with his free hand grabbed the offending serpent by the tail. My worry immediately shifted from the loss of a couple peacock eggs to Mr. Ridley dying on the lawn from a snakebite, but there was no time to scream, "THAT'S NOT HOW YOU DO IT, MR. RIDLEY."

Mr. Ridley began to slowly but forcefully spin, with the snake venom in his left hand balanced by the sweet liquor in his right. He whirled like a dervish across the wide lawn, between the huge cedars, with the snake now centrifugally parallel to the ground. Cinematically, this is a single-take wide-angle shot in which a great director allows the audience (Jim and me) to watch in all its graceful insanity. When finally reaching the main road, Mr. Ridley smoothly released the snake, watching it twirl baton-like onto the golf course across the road, and then walked calmly back to the house without a word. As for the mint julep, he never spilled a drop.

Why tell a story about his father in a tribute to the magic that was Jim Ridley? I want to paint in details. The cuddly pumpkin with golden typing fingers was a man with a fully lived life. For reasons that span things like the crushing sadness of not being able to return to Vanderbilt for his sophomore year to the senseless murder of his friend Laura Salmon within a short period of time, this sensitive Southern boy could have been provoked into the nerve-deadening safety of liquor and a lifetime position at the Linebaugh Public Library in Murfreesboro. But Jim chose a different path that made a better world for all of us. The historical portrait of Jim Ridley is better with the details.

Personally, we spent a lot of prime oat-sowing years dateless and without specific bearings. We spent hours bashing around ideas on long drives through the Tennessee countryside that I believe shaped us to become husbands of wonderful wives, fathers of amazing children and involved citizens of the adopted cities we called home. Just the experience of hearing Jim belt out Ted Hawkins' "Sorry You're Sick" a cappella on the road somewhere between Murfreesboro and Woodbury with the hot summer breeze rushing through the car windows and empty Yoo-Hoo bottles clinking around on the floor made the case for me that life was to be lived and not simply endured.

The contradictions that rolled around inside that beautiful soul must also be addressed. The lover of truth and beauty held a deep affection for scalawags and cardsharps like Ricky Jay. Ridley once lost $50 in New York on a three-card monte hustle but was perversely proud of having had the experience. The warmhearted soul who wept bitter tears when he accidentally ran over a baby rabbit while mowing the lawn was sincerely disappointed when the angry overflow crowd outside the 1990 SXSW Jackofficers show didn't actually turn into a brick-throwing riot. The man who made his living writing about movies slept through the film appreciation class we had together at MTSU. This was no surreptitious siesta but a full snore sack-out. I asked why he always slept there, and his answer was, "It's warm, dark and I'm comfortable. Besides, I have already seen all these films." Of course he had. Imagine Jack Silverman in Guitar 101.

Once we both got married and our obligations expanded, time together became more sporadic. I bought us tickets for The Rolling Stones at Vanderbilt, and he sprung for tickets to Tom Waits at the Ryman. Once when I needed some money, he let me (pretend to) help him write a cover story for the Scene. It was a twofer. I made some dollars, got to meet Cowboy Jack Clement and, unexpectedly, Johnny Cash. (Cash just appeared in the doorway in the middle of our interview with Clements. Cash proceeded to wander restlessly around the room and hallway outside until Clements said, "John, what do you need?" Cash responded, "A new career." This was the year before Rick Rubin called.) I was only there because of Jim Ridley.

My Jim Ridley experience has been cut short and I am angry about it. The anger does not overwhelm the joy of knowing him but in some ways sharpens it. Several years ago I had stopped by Andy Warhol's grave outside Pittsburgh and made a crayon rubbing of the headstone and sent it to Jim and Alicia. They seemed so happy with the gift that when I go to Boston in June, I plan to stop at a cemetery in New York where Thelonious Monk, James Baldwin, Malcolm X and Jam Master Jay are all laid to rest. I am sure he would have gotten a kick out of a collection of those grave markers mashed up onto one sheet of paper. I won't get the thrill of making plans to make my friend happy like that anymore. I have other friends, but there are no other Jim Ridleys.

Ultimately, the thing for which I am most thankful, and something I got to share with countless others, was the joy of watching Jim Ridley navigate through this wonderful and wicked world, and realize he always moved like a dancer.


Stephen George, former Scene news editor Over the weekend, thinking about the two or so years I spent working with Jim, I searched my email for any correspondence I might still have with him. Most of our back-and-forths left my hands when I departed the Scene and City Paper in 2011. But I still had four emails from him in my personal account, one each from 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015. In all four, he was paying me compliments. This was not because I had done anything to deserve them. It was because he was replying to emails I'd sent him, each praising something the Scene had done. This was how Jim took a compliment: He returned fire. And he had an awful lot of practice at it.

Our last exchange, in the fall, came because Jim had written something nice about me. It was out of nowhere — we hadn't seen each other in a couple years — so I sent him a thank-you. And I told him the entire issue was superb, which it was. His response was this: "Man. Thank you. Much needed."

It was that last part — "much needed" — that was the kind of tweak I'd seen him do to make my copy better when he was my editor. It torqued the thing forward, made you know he'd thought about it.

Then and now, I find it hard to believe Jim ever needed someone to tell him he was so good. He just liked to keep the compliments tilted in your favor, and for you to know that whatever you'd done had left an impression on him. And that was just the best compliment.


Pat Embry, communications director at The Community Foundation of Middle

Tennessee and longtime journalist

I tried to hire Jim at the Nashville Banner on several occasions. He graciously — and graciously always was the modifier for Jim — declined the offers. Twenty years ago and forever more, Jim remained loyal to the Scene. It's the only time I heard him say the word "no," actually. 

Jim's journalism chops as both a writer and editor were unsurpassed. He could have and should have been a nationally known movie critic and interviewer. His stuff was that good. But I could say the same about his dashed-off blurbs about obscure chicken-wing joints. Or Ella Fitzgerald standards albums. Or Warner Hodges guitar licks. Or Mitchell Leisen screwball comedy videos. 

Fact is, if Jim Ridley thought something was cool, it was cool.


Grace Renshaw, friend of the Scene My husband Randy Horick and I first met Jim Ridley in winter 1990. We had talked Scene editor Bruce Dobie into letting us compile a list of the stupidest things people, especially politicians, in Nashville and Tennessee had done over the past year as the cover story for the year's final edition. We hoped to start an annual tradition, as we knew there would never be a shortage of material.

1990 was the year Nashville Mayor Bill Boner became engaged to his fourth wife before divorcing his third. He and his fiancée, Traci Peel, had appeared on The Phil Donahue Show, where Traci bragged about Bill's seven-hour sexual stamina. So we titled our list "The Year's Biggest Boners" and convened a meeting of Scene writers at the Scene's offices at the time, downtown in an old bank building, to start the first draft. Bruce suggested we invite the Scene's young film critic, Jim Ridley.

We already loved Jim's writing and couldn't wait to meet him. But he had a day job in Murfreesboro then and missed most of the meeting. When he finally got there, it was like meeting an old friend. Working with him and other Scene writers to write the first Boner Awards issue was the most fun I've ever had doing paid work.

For years, we enjoyed the annual summer party Jim and Alicia hosted in the backyard of the beautiful old bungalow they bought after they married; it was our chief means of keeping in touch with the vast network of Scene writers, who include some of the most thoughtful and influential minds in Nashville.

I will miss Jim's great joy and enthusiasm for life, his sense of humor and his kind spirit — and the sense of community he created by the simple act of being a friend to almost everyone he met.


Andrea Zelinski, former Scene staff writer Like many in this city, Jim Ridley touched my life in ways he never knew. After The City Paper was laid to rest, I began writing for its surviving sister papers, including the Nashville Scene. This meant writing for Pith in the Wind, a blog I relished reading but was too terrified to fathom I could write for. How could I compare to the wit and skill of those who had come before me? These people were such good writers, like your snarky, super-cool smart older brother, while I was more like the little sister dutifully spending hours catching up on homework. There was some serious imposter syndrome going on there. Months went by, I Pithed, and the world didn't end. I wrote the hell out of stories, and Jim became my cheerleader, showering me with praise more times than I can remember.

Months later, Jim and I were talking about the deep sea of male reporters in this town, which progressed to a conversation about how women perceive themselves. I confessed my secret misgivings, which through his support had all but vanished. To Jim, the idea that I wasn't good enough was utterly absurd. He looked at me as if I'd said I was a duck. And in that moment of vulnerability, Jim filled it up by putting me on a pedestal and in excruciating detail, gushing about why I deserved to be up there. I saw him perform the same magic to other reporters, people he wrote about, people he had only just met but heard much of. He did the same when people would pay him a compliment, and to borrow from Margaret Renkl, he would reflect that praise back on you. He could make a deep connection with people and make them walk away feeling priceless. And upon hearing the volumes of stories in the past few weeks about Jim, I hope it gives this city comfort that many people have experienced the love that comes from Jim Ridley. He's made us all better people, more willing to take on the world, which has made us better to each other. You see, Jim will always live on, and it's through us.


Roger Abramson, former Scene contributor From the early to mid-2000s, I had the privilege of writing for the Nashville Scene. During that time, I would visit the Scene's offices on almost a weekly basis, largely because it was a fun bunch to be around.

Now before I go further, I have a confession to make: I originally thought Jim Ridley was kind of a jerk. This was because I only knew him through his movie reviews, which could be as mean and snarky as the best movie reviews often are, and so I just assumed that their author was a stereotypical snide, too-cool-for-school hipster you might find at any alt-weekly anywhere.

Then one day during one of my visits to the office, this guy I'd never met before came up to in the hallway and said, "Hey, Roger, I just want to say how much I appreciate your writing for us. I love reading your stuff. It's great."

"Wow, thanks," I replied, and I truly meant it, because, at that stage I wasn't really sure I had any business writing for the Scene, or anywhere else for that matter.

Then a phone rang and he ducked back into to his office before I could ask him his name. So I asked a Scene staffer (I don't remember who) who it was.

"Jim Ridley" was the response.

"That was Jim Ridley? No way," I replied.

"Yeah, why?"

"Um...well, he's a really nice guy."

Yes: "A really nice guy." That's what I said. Lame, I know, but there it is. I was completely thrown off. The Jim Ridley I had created in my head was nothing like the real Jim Ridley.

And as I soon learned, it wasn't an act. That was indeed the real Jim Ridley, all of the time. Jim was one of the most engaging people I had ever known, and I soon made it a point to talk to him every week.

Which is funny, come to think of it, because he and I really didn't have a lot in common, at least on the surface. But that didn't matter, of course, because Jim got along with everyone, as all of the stories in this edition of the Scene demonstrate.

We did share one important trait, however: We were both fathers of small children. And that brings me to my very-own-all-mine-and-you-can't-have-it Jim Ridley story.

In 2005, the Walt Disney Co. released Pooh's Heffalump Movie, and Jim gave it a very favorable review in the Scene. As it happened I had taken my son, Thomas, to see the movie when it opened, and I didn't care for it.

The problem, as I told Jim in his office later that week, was that I didn't care for what I called "Disney-fied Pooh." Nothing against Disney — I'm a Disney fan in general — but I've always much preferred the Winnie-the-Pooh characters in the original A. A. Milne books much more than the Disney versions. So, in effect, Pooh's Heffalump Movie really never stood a chance with me.

Anyway, this got us talking about the books, and I said that it was impossible for me to read the last chapter of the second book (A House at Pooh Corner) without tearing up. For those not familiar, Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin part ways in that chapter, because Christopher Robin is on the verge of growing up.

This can put a lump in the throat of any parent, and, right on cue, my eyes welled up as I started talking about it to Jim. I was a tad embarrassed, but then I realized he was on the verge of tears himself. Because he was also a dad.

Well, we may have been within the offices of an alternative weekly newspaper, but there's only so much Sensitive New Age Guydom even those folks can take, so we composed ourselves and did what almost all guys do when our emotions get the best of us: Divert quickly.

"Roger, you've got to hear this," he said, and he fiddled with something on his computer.

And then, suddenly, his speakers blared a song from the soundtrack of Team America: World Police, which was a favorite for both of us.

"Amerrrrrica ... FUCK YEAH! Comin' again to save the motherfuckin' day now ..."

He started singing it, and so did I. It was great.

And now he's gone. But I will always have that memory, and on second thought, I guess you can have it, too.


Pete Holland, Scene wine columnist Since I was pitching a piece of writing, I was thrilled to see an unknown number pop up on my phone. It turned out to be Jim Ridley, and he was very interested in my piece. His name sounded all business, and I pictured a profane and mustachioed old newspaperman. I assumed his gentle tone was just weaponized kindness, deployed to rook upstart writers into giving up their work on the cheap.

I did give Jim my piece on the cheap, but I was dead wrong about him: He was cherubic, and nothing about his kindness was contrived or calculating. As his name came up in conversations I had around town, I quickly learned that Jim’s good nature was like the Lennon/McCartney catalog: so broadly regarded as stellar that it was beyond simple praise.

I became uncomfortably familiar with Jim’s skill as a writer when I was applying to a choosy graduate program and he agreed to write a letter of recommendation on my behalf. In an accidental breach of protocol, Jim sent the letter to me instead of directly to the program. I started reading with a proud smile that melted as it dawned on me that Jim’s letter was better-written than the sample with which I was applying. I sat dazed, like a guy realizing that the hunky wingman he had brought to the bar as an ally might just be making him look like an ogre.

I will always be grateful for the opportunity that Jim Ridley gave me, and for the short time I was privy to his wit, generosity and guidance. As this town considers its soul in terms of which buildings stand and which are razed, we should all be aware of the treasures that are preserved in Jim Ridley’s work, and the treasure we lost in the man himself.


Willy Stern, former Scene staffer The old adage holds that there are only two world-class acts in Nashville, those being health care and music. Let's add Jim Ridley to the list. It was e.e. cummings who held that nothing measurable matters. Has anyone ever done the immeasurables as well as the late great Jim Ridley? If you ordered an entire trainload full of empathy, compassion, humility, wit, kindness, brilliance, hugs, authenticity, gentility, uncommon decency and love, and when the train pulled into the station, only Jim Ridley got off, you'd still be over-shipped. Who knows if there are saints on earth, but surely Jim is as close as there ever has been or will be. Jim was my friend and much more. He was the soul of a city. RIP. Love you, buddy. I know wherever you are, there's quality hot chicken, and you have a big ol' smile on your face.

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