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RAW: natural born artists Coming to Nashville

Jan 13th, 2011
by Jason Kirk.
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Mercy Lounge is the place for artists this weekend.

One of the toughest things about being an independent artist is getting yourself, and your work, in front of a significant audience. This weekend a big opportunity will present itself to Nashville artists in the form of a visit from the California-based independent arts organization RAW: natural born artists.

Founded in March 2009 by Heidi Luerra, who has worked in the arts and fashion industries for eight years, RAW’s mission is to provide independent artists of all creative genres with the tools, resources and exposure needed to inspire and cultivate creativity. After a year of discovering and showcasing artists in California, the RAW crew is heading out to 17 cities this year to pursue its mission across the country.

“With a changing industry in every way I really see a response to grassroots efforts more than mass media,” says Luerra. “I believe people and artists are really beginning to realize the power they have. Why not just D.I.Y? RAW is here to really incubate and support that individual mission.”

This weekend Luerra and the RAW crew will be bringing their vision to Nashville, and they’re looking for artists who are interested in participating in future monthly RAW showcases here in our city. To that end they’re hosting a meet-and-greet session this Saturday at Mercy Lounge. They hope to attract like-minded individuals here in the city who are interested in supporting creativity of all types. While they’re at Mercy Lounge they’ll also be filming for a documentary they’re producing about independent arts around the country. If you’re involved in the arts in Nashville, RAW hopes you’ll stop by and talk to them about the local arts community, and how social media has influenced and affected independent artists.

The meet-and-greet session will take place this Saturday, January 15, 2011, from 7pm-9pm at Mercy Lounge. Learn more about RAW: natural born artists and stop in to say hello this weekend.

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New Year’s Eve in East Nashville (and Beyond!)

Dec 18th, 2010
by Jason Kirk.
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If you don’t have your New Year’s Eve plans nailed down just yet, never fear – we’re here with a few East Nashville suggestions to help you avoid being anywhere near a television showing prerecorded footage of Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest.

Roaring 2011 at The 5 Spot

Flappers and speakeasies and cocktails, oh my!

Over here in East Nashville, The 5 Spot is firing up its time machine and sending everybody back 90 years to the Boardwalk Empire era with Roaring 2011. Billed as “A Swingin’ New Year’s Eve Celebration,” this one-of-a-kind party will take you back with elaborate 1920s decor, 1920s dance music from Chubby and The Dots, Prohibition-era cocktails, champagne and more. The crew behind the party is none other than Jacob Jones and Reno Bo of Electric Western Productions, the same pair that keep The 5 Spot hopping every week with Keep On Movin’: The Monday Night Dance Party. You can order discounted tickets for $13 beforehand by clicking here, or get them on New Year’s Eve for $15. Doors open at 7:30pm and the party goes until 3am.

Bobby Bare Jr. and Caitlin Rose at The Basement

East Nashville's own Bobby Bare Jr. takes over The Basement with Caitlin Rose. (Photo: Joshua Black Wilkens)

If you’re looking to catch a live performance from some of your musical East Nashville neighbors on New Year’s Eve, you’re in luck. Bobby Bare Jr. & The Young Criminals Starvation League are playing at The Basement with Caitlin Rose . You probably already know a bit about Mr. Bare Jr., who has recorded with the Silver Jews and Will Oldham and toured with Bob Dylan, Dr. Dog, The Walkmen, The Black Crowes, The Decemberists, Aerosmith, My Morning Jacket, The Drive By Truckers and The Old 97′s and whose projects have inspired a post or two here on the blog. You’ve also probably heard about Caitlin Rose, whose new album Own Side Now is already out in the UK has garnered all sorts of praise on that side of the pond ahead of its US release next March. You can get your tickets in advance for $15 online by going here – probably a good idea since The Basement is on the smaller side. Show starts at 9pm.

18 South at Station Inn

18 South bring their southern roots sound (and collective millenium of stage experience) to Station Inn this New Year's Eve.

Also on the other side of the river, East Nashvillian Jimmy Wallace and his southern roots band 18 South will headline New Year’s Eve at Station Inn. We’ve already told you all about Jimmy’s pedigree. Well, the other five members of the band – Jon Randall Stewart (guitar, vocals), Larry Atamanuik (drums), Mike Bub (bass), Guthrie Trapp (guitar) and Jessi Alexander (vocals) - have resumes to match, having played with Emmylou Harris, Sam Bush, Allison Krauss, Patty Loveless, Vince Gill, The Del McCoury Band and co-written Billboard chart-toppers like Brad Paisley‘s “Whiskey Lullaby”. They’ll be joined for the evening by special guests Shawn Camp and Seth Walker. Tickets are $30 and are available on a first come, first served basis, so you’ll want to be there when the doors open at 7pm. Show begins at 9pm.

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East Nashville Beer Festival In The Works

Nov 24th, 2010
by Jason Kirk.
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As if East Nashvillians didn’t already have enough to be thankful for, there’s more great news from the neighborhood: we’ll be getting our very own beer festival early next year.

Let's raise a glass to our very own neighborhood beer festival!

The man behind the new East Nashville Beer Festival is Matt Leff, an East Nashville resident who says he was inspired to create the new festival by both his love of beer and the challenge of putting together an event. “I enjoy all the components that make something like this a reality,” says Leff. “I truly feel that our community and the greater Nashville community can help create a unique and successful beer festival. I was inspired also put this together when I realized the only large scale beer fest in Nashville was the Music City Brew Festival. I personally feel our city can support more than one.”

Leff’s plans are on a pretty big scale for a first-time festival, which should give all our neighborhood beer aficionados something to look forward to all winter. There will be some 30 breweries represented, including a number of operations that don’t currently distribute here in Nashville. In addition to all the beer, there will also be home brewing sections with demonstrations and brewing education, live music, and food and craft vendors hailing from here in East Nashville as well as the rest of the city. And while you’re feeling good drinking all that excellent beer in one place, you can also feel good knowing that 50 percent of the festival’s proceeds will go to the Ride For Reading charity.

What's better than one local beer festival? TWO local beer festivals!

Right now the festival is still running the gauntlet of city approval so location and dates are subject to change, but the current plans call for it to be held at East Park on April 9, 2011, from 12pm-5pm. General admission tickets will be $35. There will also be $10 tickets available for designated drivers – Leff says he hopes to be able to offer DDs drink tickets that they can later redeem at local bars. Of course, having a beer festival in our own neighborhood means a lot of us will be able to forgo cars altogether, perhaps opting for the luxury of a taxi ride home at the end of the day.

The East Nashville Beer Festival has a number of confirmed and committed sponsors already in place, but there is still room for more. “Being a new festival, we are tailoring agreements for each sponsor, but we do have some basic guidelines and offers,” says Leff. “Basically it’s a tiered system. We understand the need to be flexible in this first year, so we look forward to working with anyone in the community who’s interested in coming on board.” With plans calling for somewhere in the region of 1,000 to 1,500 guests, local businesses really couldn’t ask for better exposure in the community. For more details on sponsorship options, send an email to sponsorship@eastnashvillebeerfest.com.

You can keep up with all the latest details on the upcoming East Nashville Beer Festival through the festival’s Facebook and Twitter pages.

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De-stress Your Holidays With The Art of Cordials at TPAC

Nov 23rd, 2010
by Jason Kirk.
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Last month we had the pleasure of attending The Art of Jack Daniel’s, where we got the chance to learn all about how fresh ingredients become Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey straight from one of the world’s foremost sources on the stuff, Lynne Tolley. With a loose, casual environment and a thoroughly enjoyable mix of history, food catered by The Mad Platter, samples of all three varieties of Jack and the opportunity to meet a few East Nashville Blog readers, the event was one of the highlights of our October.

Tim Laird will teach you all you need to know about cordials

It’s no surprise, then, that we’re looking forward to The Art of Cordials, the second installment in TPAC’s The Art Of series. The focus this time around will be on three spirits that mix well with the holidays: Southern Comfort, Tuaca and Chambord. Leading the festivities for the evening will be Tim Laird, the connoisseur of fine wines and spirits known as “America’s Chief Entertaining Officer.” Laird will talk about the history of cocktails, how to make entertaining during the holiday season less stressful, and how to use cordials to make tasty cocktails that will get your guests into the spirit of the season. He will also be available for book signings after he’s done walking you through the best ways to ditch your reliance on cocktail bars and do it yourself over the holidays.

Sponsored by Brown-Forman and the Lipman companies, The Art of Cordials will be held at the War Memorial Auditorium in downtown Nashville on Tuesday, December 7, at 6:00pm. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased online, at the TPAC Box Office downtown, or by calling 615-782-4040. All proceeds from the event benefit TPAC Education.

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Woodbine Community Organization Benefit at Billups Art

Nov 19th, 2010
by Jason Kirk.
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This weekend Billups Art features more art for a good cause

East Nashville has yet another chance to take in some art for a good cause this weekend with the Gifted Energy show at Billups Art.

Gifted Energy benefits Mimi’s Fund, a project of the Woodbine Community Organization. WCO has been in operation here in Nashville for 20 years, serving the community in various ways as their grant-based funds have changed over the years. Right now they offer a number of services, but their housing programs are the driving force behind the Gifted Energy benefit show.

“We have a number of rental properties called living centers,” says Kim Bradshaw, a housing specialist at WCO who helped to organize the benefit. “These units are for individuals who are living off Social Security, or maybe a pension or disability. They’re very low-income individuals, and so we pay the utility costs on 13 of these living center houses. That way their rent stays fixed – it’s a very low price. Their rent includes the utility bills, because in a lot of places the energy costs just keep creeping up and a lot of people can’t afford their rent because they have to pay their utility bills. So we pay those costs in order to keep the rent consistent for them, because their checks aren’t going up. So the Gifted Energy fundraiser is to help cover these costs to keep these individuals safe and housed and keep them from becoming homeless.”

Bradshaw reached out to a number of local artists to participate in the art benefit and the response was overwhelmingly positive. The end result is this weekend’s show featuring the art of Olga Alexeeva, Jade Bradshaw, Laurie Poole, Jairo Prado, Molly Rich, Southern Stained Glass, Holly “Raventalker” Stokes, Turnbull Pottery and Belinda Yandell. The show runs from 1pm-6pm on Saturday, November 20, at Billups Art here in East Nashville. Cost is a $10 donation at the door, and a silent auction, which concludes at 5:30pm, will help to raise more money to keep Woodbine’s clients warm this winter.

In addition to its low-income housing initiatives, Woodbine Community Organization also offers a varied lineup of other programs, including mortgage counseling, first-time homebuyer classes, Spanish classes, English-as-a-second-language classes, and rental assistance programs. For more information on Woodbine, visit their website at www.woodbinecommunity.org.

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Nashville Rock Block Showcase This Saturday

Nov 17th, 2010
by Jason Kirk.
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Those of you who are regular East Nashville Blog readers will recall a post we did this past April about the Tennessee Teens Rock and Roll Camp. A project of Murfreesboro’s Youth Empowerment Through the Arts and Humanities organization, the camp gave local kids a chance to explore their inner rock stars and, at the end of the one-week camp, to perform their original music at the camp’s closing showcase.

Come see the future of Nashville rock this weekend at Riverside Village

Since that time the folks at YEAH have expanded up here to East Nashville with a new project, Nashville Rock Block. Like the Tennessee Teens Rock and Roll Camp, NRB gives local kids aged 10-17 of all skill levels the chance to form their own bands and write their own original material. Instead of only being a one-week affair, NRB goes on for eight weeks at its home in the East Nashville Performing Artists Co-op. Under the guidance of professional musician and YEAH volunteer Tiffany Minton, the program’s participants get to learn to play their instrument of choice, explore their creative potential and have a great time in a safe environment. It’s exactly the kind of thing that we wish had existed when we were kids writing three-chord punk songs on our knock-off Stratocasters.

Well, the initial run of the eight-week program is nearing completion and that means the first Nashville Rock Block Saturday Night Showcase is coming up this weekend. Appropriately, this four-band showcase is an all-ages affair, so everyone from your infant kids to your grandparents is welcome to come see Nashville’s newest crop of future rock stars. Cover for the show, which takes place from 6pm-8pm at Riverside Village in Inglewood on November 20, is $5.

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Mayor Karl Dean to Dedicate Martha O’Bryan Center Program at Stratford High School Today

Nov 1st, 2010
by Jason Kirk.
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Nashville Mayor Karl Dean will help dedicate the Martha O’Bryan Center’’s new OST (Out of School Time) program site at Stratford High School – right down the street from EastNashvilleBlog.com HQ – during a grand opening celebration today from 4pm-6pm.

The Martha O’Bryan Center has moved its support program for high school students into a renovated space at Stratford High through a partnership with Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools and a generous gift from Stratford alumnus Milton Johnson, Chief Financial Officer at HCA Healthcare. Students call the space “The “Top Floor.”” The Top Floor is available immediately after school until 6 p.m., with a late bus available to take students home.

There's more for students to do after school at Stratford these days. (Photo: MNPS)

Services the Top Floor will provide include drop-in homework help; specialized tutoring in math, science and reading; assistance with college search, application and financial aid; ACT prep; job training and job placement; a computer lab; an art gallery; and a recording studio.

More than 5,000 square feet, including four idle classrooms, were transformed because of the collaborative mindset of new Principal Michael Steele and the hard work of volunteers from Project Redesign, HCA and Stratford High School students. The site has been operating on a limited basis since Oct. 1st. Martha O’Bryan Center tutors have been assisting students after school in the core subjects of math, English language arts, science and foreign language (Spanish).

“The new space at Stratford will quadruple the number of students who can receive immediate after-school access to academic services, including science and integrated arts,” said Kent Miller, Martha O’Bryan’’s High School and College Director. “”It is more than an after-school program. It is an academic muse mixing culturally relevant programming with hope, enrichment and opportunities for success.””

At the same time, the Martha O’Bryan Center space, formerly occupied by the high school students, has been dedicated to serving more middle school students.

Martha O’’Bryan Center’’s acclaimed youth program, called THRIVE, blends academic study with active learning outside the classroom. THRIVE students have a 100% on-time graduation rate, low suspension records and leave high school with a life plan for college, the military or a career.

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Haunted Historic Edgefield Home Tour This Weekend

Oct 23rd, 2010
by Jason Kirk.
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Historic Edgefield hosts its haunted home tour this weekend

There once was a time when this side of the river was a separate entity from the rest of Nashville. Known back then as Edgefield, the east side of the river stayed independent until it was incorporated into Nashville in 1880. These days Edgefield is a more sharply defined neighborhood occupying the space between 10th and 5th Streets and Shelby and Woodland Avenues. Zoned as a historic district since 1978, it is composed of homes built both before and after the East Nashville Fire of 1916. In recent years the neighborhood has been spotlighted on a number of television programs, including HGTV’s Restore America with Bob Vila.

This weekend the residents of Edgefield are inviting friends from near and far to come out for the Haunted Historic Edgefield Home Tour, featuring five neighborhood homes and a neighborhood church. This year’s tour is sponsored by a raft of East Nashville businesses, including local mainstays Village Real Estate and Bongo Java Roasting Company and friends of the blog East Side Smiles (Dr. Thomas Hadley) and Red Rover Pet Services. If all the history and the chance to maybe spot an East Nashville ghost or two in time for Halloween isn’t enough to convince you to come on down, come for the goodies – Halloween treat bags with coupons and other items from local businesses will be given out to the first 250 attendees.

You can check out the spooky tour this Saturday from 5pm-9pm by candlelight, or by the light of day on Sunday from 1pm-5pm. The folks in Historic Edgefield have been doing historic home tours longer than anybody else in our fair city, so you can be sure this is a tour worth checking out. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at Edgefield Baptist Church, 700 Russell Street. If you have questions you can contact either of the tour’s co-chairs, Angela McCorkle Wilson (almccorkle@gmail.com) or Leslie Key (leslie.key@hotmail.com).

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