People have all sorts of dreams. It’s the reason many go to college, but it isn’t enough to simply go through the motions. The dream is the plan. The work is the act.
Southward: Fare & Libations was one of Memphis’ latest promising restaurants until an ironically beautiful, cosmic accident of a tree kept its sign out of view of its well thought of locale on Poplar, one of the busiest streets in Memphis. There was a time when one could visit the Shops of Regalia, walk through the doors of Southward, pass its lovely hostess going the same direction as the ducks in the painting on the wall behind her flew, and walk through the double doors of the kitchen and see its’ 22-year-old sous chef, Jacob Behnke. It’s almost hard to believe that the second in command in such an extravagant establishment was 22, and has neither gone to college, nor even culinary school. Behnke has been with Trimm since the start. In 2010 he worked part-time for the restaurateur as a chef at Sweetgrass while still working at Interim, another of Memphis’ finer locations, for whom he’d been cooking since 2006. Since he was a child Behnke has known that he wanted to cook, and the young man hit the ground running. The texture of the walls, the compass in the bar window, and the cool bluesy sounds coming from above were all premeditated. “We wanted something that reeked of southern culture,” said Trimm. “The architecture is deconstructed antebellum. The exposed wood has a class of its’ own, and so does the marble bar.” The company specialized in wines. Trimm, who also owns Cooper-Young’s Sweetgrass, said, “I wanted people to try new wines at Sweetgrass, but I wanted this [Southward] to be a wine bar.” With a selection of literally dozens of wines just on tap, that particular feat had been accomplished, but that isn’t all. When Owner Ryan Trimm was asked to talk about Behnke, he said, “What can I say? His work speaks for himself.” If Behnke’s work reflected the beauty of the building, it said a lot. The food he cooked at Southward was “a breath of the south” as Trimm put it. Southward took southern staples and put its own twist to them. Behnke’s favorite item was the Country Pâté: forcemeat and ground pork with livers, pistachios, and prunes, wrapped in bacon, baked in a tureen, and pressed overnight, forcing the moisture and fat out of the meat. Life in the kitchen is demanding, it’s dangerous, and it’s seemingly never ending. At Southward, Behnke worked 10-12 hour days six days a week usually, and the man definitely has his share of kitchen horror stories (like burning most of the flesh off of his forearm once at Sweetgrass). When asked how it felt to be so young and in such a prominent position, he replied, “I feel honored, but at the same time I feel a great deal of responsibility. It’s stressful to have to know what’s going on around me at all times, but it’s an honor nonetheless.” Dreams are not stagnant things. They are amoebas thT, once grasped, shift like a clown’s balloon, billowing out at the top. They are shapeless things given form by the will of man. When asked about the next form his amoeba would assume, Behnke answered, “I’d like to own my own business. I want to try what Ryan’s been doing with local, organic foods, but really the goal is just to be 100 percent sustainable.” Behnke left Southward on good terms with Trimm near the end of its stint, and settled into Flight working day hours for the first time in about five years. Though he could’ve gone back to Sweetgrass full time again he said, “I’d been working under Ryan for just so long. I just felt I needed something different.” Currently, Behnke is the sous chef at the recently opened Maui’s Pizza a pizzeria with a gluten-free menu at Poplar and Exeter. Caesar salads, passionfruit vinaigrette dressings and Kahlua pig pizza to boot (that’s braised pork butt, with a house-made barbecue pizza sauce and caramelized red onions.) His favorite dish: the sauce-like B-Bim-Bap, an alliteratively alchemical name and recipe concocted after several long meetings and restless nights, consisting of basmati rice, fried egg and pickled kim chee made with a ginger-dashi broth. He couldn’t choose just one item however, and said both the pollo bowl, and the margherita pizza-- featuring buffalo mozzarella balls-- are noteworthy. “He’s very high speed, he moves at a very fast pace and sometimes it’s hard to keep up with him, but he has his way of helping you along when you’re working on a new project and keeping you up to speed,” Stephen Ibosh the 34 year old cook who has worked alongside Behnke at Sweetgrass, and beneath him at Southward and now Maui’s,. “He’s a good boss. He’s level headed, he knows what needs to get done and he has no problem delegating the right people to the right job. He has extensive food knowledge, and I don’t know that his confidence matches it sometimes, but he’s getting there with his confidence, and he’s doing a damned good job.” Behnke doesn’t own the place, but he’s certainly learning the trade. Not every path will be the same, and not every road will be smooth, but rest assured if you hit the ground running, whether by plane, train, or automobile, or just the soles of your feet, you’ll reach your destination. The destination he’s brewing up in his head smells a little like bacon, and he says he can’t wait to hear the rooster crow for that morning.
How did you get your name?
Woodrow Savage: Savage is my dad’s last name, and everyone thinks it’s from [Woodrow Wilson], but my parents found it in a name book, and they really liked it. It was between that and Hedgerow. Are you still ranked nationally in unicycling? WS: I haven’t been able to ride as much recently because I hurt my wrist unicycling really bad, and now every time I ride it flairs up. How does unicycling affect your wrist? WS: To grind handrails or to hit a set, or anything with a hopping aspect. I can’t switch hands. The handle is right there on the front of the seat, and whenever you are jumping you just yank up on it; it yanks my wrist along with it. Can you unicycle at Al Town? WS: Before I took my hiatus there wasn’t any street there, it was just a bunch of transition. it doesn’t coast, so you can’t do much there. Tell me the gnarliest story you know. WS: Thankfully I never have broken a bone in my body (knocks on coconut), but I do have some gnarly stories. WS: I have a buddy named Chris who is one of the gnarliest skaters I know, a real old-school dude. One time he was he was going to drop in on the high wall at Altown and he just slammed straight into his fucking head. The video is on YouTube, and it’s one of the gnarliest shits I’ve ever seen. WS: And here is another one. One time Chris was skating a ditch a couple of years back. He came up to a grassy patch and decided to just ram through it, but he didn’t see a piece of concrete sticking out and hit it at full speed and slams onto his chest and cracks his sternum. I forget the technical term but we called it the “unicorn tit.” Basically the blood was seeping out and forming a growth, and it looked like a tit on the center of his chest. He had to lance it himself, and one time he accidently dropped the scalpel on the bathroom floor, didn’t decontaminate it and ended up getting staph. He kept ignoring it until he started getting a fevers. When he finally went to the doctor it turns out that it was so bad that if he waited another week he would have died. It was so bad that they were bringing in med students to study him. It has healed up pretty nice, but now he has an indent where it’s just skin over his sternum. And that’s my gnarliest story. After an Afghani tour, Mad Mik (pronounced Mick) is ready to grow up. To Mik, a lot of rappers continue talking about childish things and refuse to move on to the next step. That’s the kind of music he’s looking to make: hip-hop up. After three years of marriage, and five months as a father, he’s ready to make that step. “I want to make hip-hop music for adults: passionate, intellectual, emotional music for adults,” he said. It’s ska, rock n’ roll, Memphis and soul all wrapped into one. The song “Changes” swaying you into a song you’ve felt before, and it stings so sweetly. It’s like that goodbye moment that you must have, but don’t really want to. But that isn’t the start of it. It’s the whole story “With a Rocky Mountain High.” It’s the love that’s felt long before the fall. It’s being unstoppable; “You can call it a fury. You could call it a train.” Gilliam’s guitar work tells you where he’s from with the slightly sloppy twang that marks many modern local artists. It’s great stuff, a bit of Jimi, a little Stevie Ray, and a whole lot of blues. It’s not prominent, but it’s all over like the intestine on a dumpling… delicious. The beginning of “What You Said” is reminiscent of Heart riffs, played with a crunchy guitar sound that could likely be eaten were the volume up loud enough. “Well she got money, and I got time. Well I want hers, but she needs mine,” sings Gilliam. “That’s why they call me… uh… Well they call me Beastmaster.” Funk just oozing out that damn bass, I tell you what, and boy is it heavy. “I just want to set you off,” said Gilliam in the song Changes. So allow him to do so December 14 at 10pm at Newby’s, 539 S. Highland. Tickets are $8 at the door and 5$ in advance at NewbysMemphis.com. Judging on what this EP sounds like, it should be well worth it. With Logan Todd of Impeccable MiscreantsWith a fusion of funk and blues, Impeccable Miscreants shared in a musical obscurity that spanned three years.
"I think it starts with Will calling me," said Logan Todd, drummer of the band. "He says, 'There's this band. We're playing a show. We've got like 15 songs. Can you do it?'" After learning that Aaron Floyd, Will's guitarist from his former band Mud Pie, was involved in the project, Todd jumped on the opportunity. "They show up and they've got Freddy (Hodges) with them," Todd said. At the time, Todd wasn't too fond of Hodges. "I think I tried to take his girl at a party once," Hodges said. When the crew of four got up to Logan's garage-loft practice-room and Hodges opened his mouth for the band to try their hand for the very first time, all qualms were forgotten. "I think it was Whole Lotta Love," said Todd. "No, I'm sure it was, because the next day at the (Edge Coffee House) show we tried to sing it and they (Frank James) shut the power off!" Currently, the band is split in half as Todd and bassist Will McGee live in Nashville, while going to school at Belmont. Guitarist Aaron Floyd and lead vocalist Freddy Hodges are in Memphis going to Southwest and the University of Memphis, respectively. It isn't sure if the group will come back together after a dispute between the bassist and drummer has caused to band to cancel what would have been their third annual New Year's Eve show at the Cordova Flying Saucer. "Man, I really hate what's happening between Will and I, but he has other stuff on his plate right now anyway, "Todd said. "Freddy, Aaron and I will be working with my brother Mic in January on a new rock hip-hop fusion record, so it'll all work out if it's meant to be." After praise in GoMemphis from Sun Studio producer Matt Ross-Spang, and by nature of him writing the feature, Commercial appeal writer Michael Donahue, a recording session with the late Roland Janes and helping to raise money for both the Ronald McDonald House and more frequently Le Bonheur it can only be hoped that it'll all work out, and it's meant to be. With Zach Gilliam of the Soul ThievesThe Soul Thieves started back in 2010 or 1011. It's not certain which. Zach Gilliam had been gigging as a guitarist, and found the people he was working with to be a bit unreliable, and the work as a guitar-for-hire was inconsistent. He thought it stemmed from a lack of a real sense of unity and thought he'd do his own singing, start his own band. "It originally started as an acoustic duo (with Hank Parks)," Gilliam said, "We wanted to expand our sound. I knew a drummer (Rusty Dodd), and that's how it got started. Gilliam has known affiliations with local young entrepreneur Jack Simon, and it all started when, "I was with some friends at a party at some frat house on Brister," Gilliam said. According to him, he heard the siren call of the Chinese Dub Embassy's reggae, and wafted over like Tom Cat smelling a pie. He wasn't smacked in the face with a pan however, he was simply greeted warmly by home-owner Simon and the other party-goers. Cops ultimately came, but it didn't tear a seam in the new relationship. Quite the contrary, the two became closer, and have worked with each other since. This has been an "In The Beginning" segment. Come back next week for a peek at local band Impeccable Miscreants The Fifth Estate--Journo-nerds and historians alike may sit at the edge of their seats for this informative bio-pic, but the commonwealth may find this one to be a bore. “The Fifth Estate” begins with Assange and Berg speaking via a very 90s-looking closed chat room, its' archaic nature stemming from the need for secrecy and privacy between what some may call the two greatest leaders of the transparency movement to date. Absolute freedom of information is Assange's goal, and the movie does a good job of showing that. In fact, when it comes to delivery of information the movie is a bit of a journalistic gold mine. Founder Julian Assange, played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the film, created the site with the intent of releasing unabridged and unedited information. The film is an interpretation of the book “Inside WiiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website,” written by WikiLeaks co-founder Daniel Domscheit-Berg. The film is shot from Domscheit-Berg’s perspective, and at times portrays the man, played by Daniel Bruhl, as being bullied and manipulated by Assange in seemingly exaggerated displays. Not exaggerated in the sense that they could never happen, but the story doesn’t look deep enough into the backgrounds and characters of the two men enough to accurately describe the dynamic between the two. With almost each on-screen appearance, Assange's character seems to be a slightly exaggerated version of the real thing, and it has everything to do with editing, and how it can show bias. The story is a slice of life film, but at the same time it wants to condense an enormous amount of time data into the span of a few hours. Again, the movie is loaded with information, but Hollywood’s attempt to bring the verbosely complex relationship between Assange and Berg, their backgrounds and what they meant to one another was more information than the film could give in the time it allotted. The first thing one must remember upon entering the theatre is that this is Hollywood. The movie is a bore. Seriously, without the quick-witted personality that Cumberbatch actually did do a good job of portraying, this film was like watching Warhol’s “Empire” in its’ entirety. What Hollywood realized was, that this is a biographic picture. So, a compromise was made to “Hollywood” the acting up a bit, and in exchange Assange would be able to take a moment to defend himself without a filter. Ultimately, however it is left up to the viewer to decide how they feel about the characters involved personally. What the film did best was detailing the information released by the website WikiLeaks like showing the “Collateral Murder” video which gained popularity after an edited version was released on YouTube in 2010. The site, which now features editorials and op-ed pieces about the movie, released formally classified documents, like those submitted by Manning, in their purest form, unedited and unabridged, although the film shows Berg to have personally vetted every one by travelling to the supposed sources of the information uploaded to the site and discover if the information could have actually come from the destination. “The Fifth Estate is an ironically stylized piece chronicling the period of WikiLeaks from its' founding up to its' temporary shutdown after the Pvt. Bradley Manning papers. Is it one of the best films of all time? No, but should it be seen by everyone? It most definitely should. Why? Activist Robin Morgan said, “Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility.” The streets were packed and jumping last Saturday at Cooper-Young Festival. With locals on the streets and on stage it was undoubtedly Memphis, and it almost seemed, for one afternoon, Beale Street packed up and moved. Jack Simon of Brister Street Productions was excited even before the festival began about the two stages his brainchild had helped produce, and equally so about the video feed Brister was going to have at the studio’s first Cooper Young Festival. Otis Faithful opened up the festivities on Brister’s Midtown Market stage, playing that “Old Delta Dirty Blues,” as they called it, and as it sounded, with vocals reminiscent of Marc Bolan at times. "I was really excited. We were looking for a way to get on one of those stages and Jack called the morning before," said Otis Faithful harmonica player Kyle Bors-Koefoed. There had been a mix-up, a clash of scheduling, and Simon's original opener Perfekt Daze couldn't make it. When Simon learned this information he told Kyle that Otis Faithful was the first to pop into his head. "It's not the first time I've been there, but it's the first time I played, " Bors-Koefoed said, "I started off rough, didn't shower in time, a bit hungover from the gig before, but once we started paying it all smoothed out." When asked what the day would be like, Jack Simon simply pointed at Otis Faithful and smiled, wearing his aviator shades and long hair, it was understood that he meant “Rock n’ Roll.” University of Memphis student Zach Gilliam, guitarist and vocalist for the Soul Thieves, was there laying down that soulful Rock n Roll sound. “That the whole thing even happened was cool. On both stages, it was just a variety of Memphis Music: Jazz Reggae, Rock n’ Roll, blues and bluegrass," said Gilliam, pleased about his performance and the success of Brister. Goner Records, Memphis vinyl shop and Cooper Young resident, certainly agreed with Simon. They hosted a stage of their own with Jack Oblivian headlining. “He’s got an album coming out with Big Legal Mess a subsidiary of Fat Possum,” and the kicker is he started with local Memphis record label Goner Records. Gilliam says, “This was my favorite Cooper-Young yet. It was the best representation of Memphis culture I’ve seen from it so far.” My personal favorite part of the day was Devil Train, however. It was like being in the middle of a Grateful Dead show in 1974. I die a little inside knowing that I didn’t get to talk to them, that I didn’t get their information in order to pick their skulls like the petals of a sunflower. The day was amazing, one of those gorgeous summer Memphis days when the sun’s decided to calm down and not beat on the city so hard. A slight breeze in the air and a room temperature Guinness Draft in my mug, bought specifically to be kept warm, right on my back, that very morning. I sang with Kid Ego’s bassist on the lawn next to House of Mews, and left a bit early because, I’d had my fill, I’d gotten a great story, and it was someone else’s turn to party and explore. This is Led Lip's Music City. Well, it's Memphis, and if it's anyone's music city it's Elvis', or possibly one of the many black blues men he "borrowed" much of his music from. In any case, this blog is about music: the historic, the current, the local, the good, and the bad. As of yet, this blog is little more than an idea, a formless amoeba of what it should be, but go ahead and meet the administrator, check out a few of the blogs that are on the roll, and, what the heck, learn a bit about the band that's plastered all over the site. Good things should be to come. Hope they're enjoyed.
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AuthorFreddy Hodges is a University of Memphis student, and a reporter for the Daily Helmsman. He's writes about the very world he is a part of, moonlighting as a singer. Knowing the plight of a musician, he empathizes, doing what he can to ease it. BloGRoll
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December 2014
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