This Saturday I’ll be at Red Arrow Gallery in East Nashville for the opening of Jodi Hays’ new painting exhibition, Keeper. The show provides an impressionistic, diaristic profile of the people and places that shape the artist’s day-to-day life in our neighborhood. I went to a soft opening for the show tonight only to find that the whole block was out of power. Hays was unflappable, making a quick trip to a shop up the street to by a handful of dollar key chain flashlights. Between these and smartphone flashlight apps guests created an illuminated procession circling the walls of the gallery like a religious rite celebrating the dark nights of Autumn. It was one of the most memorable openings I’ve ever been too.

The official public opening on Saturday night will also feature the release of the new art book project, Keeper, featuring Hays’ watercolor paintings, my text and David King’s book design for his Extended Play Press.

Check out Hays’ work here. Check out the gallery here. Come see the show and pick up your own copy of the book on Saturday night.

See you there.

Stay awake!

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We had a great show down at Bearded Iris Brewing on Saturday night during the Germantown Art Crawl. My pal — and our host — Tom Schreck played a short solo set before introducing us. We played some of the brand new songs I wrote in Arizona at the Sedona Summer Colony in July. We also added songs we haven’t played in awhile along with the spoken word piece, “Serenade.”

We’ll be playing a similar set Tuesday night at the East Side Storytellin’ event at The Post East on Fatherland Street. Here’s the word from East Side Storytellin’ founder and host, Chuck Beard…

Come join the fun as we celebrate the 115th round of East Side Storytellin’, y’all! This show we are honored to feature the likes of Aaron Joel Lain & Joe Nolan!

We love hosting this epic show at The Post East (1701 Fatherland Street). This will go down on Tuesday, September 19th, at 7pm, and it’s FREE to attend. BYOB for any adult beverages, and see you soon!

On the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of every month in East Nashville, Chuck Beard brings together and hosts local writers and musicians in a spectacular show, East Side Storytellin’. Launched in November of 2012, East Side Storytellin’ has consistently showcased the best of what Nashville is about everyone taking a break from their busy lives to join in the fun.

Lain will kick off the evening reading some of his recent fiction, and we’ll play a 30 minute set before Lain, Beard and myself all kick into a Q&A. Come ask me questions about music, Nashville’s art scene, my Pikes Project photos or anything else you’d like to know more about.

Here are some more details and a few songs from my rehearsal earlier today…

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I was supposed to be doing a gallery talk with Daniel Holland at Red Arrow tonight, but the bad weather in Nashville found me on a text-go-round with the artist and the gallery last night, convincing ourselves that delaying the talk until 4:30 this Sunday afternoon was the best decision given the weather forecast. I’m writing this post on Wednesday night, watching the falling, freezing drizzle.

I’m preoccupied the talk because I’m really looking forward to sharing my recent correspondences and chats with Daniel, with the bigger audience we’ve been inviting to the event. Daniel and I have been in touch since last year — I highlighted his work in a review of a group show and spent the better part of a First Saturday evening chatting with him about his paintings at his solo show at Fort Houston. The exhibition at Red Arrow signals his biggest gallery exposure and it’s arguably his best show yet. We’ve been emailing each other cryptic notes, poems, questions and answers for weeks now.

Last Friday night we met-up in The Pharmacy’s beer garden where Daniel pays some bills as a bartender. Daniel is eloquent when he talks about craft beer, but he’s also that rare artist who can speak eloquently about his work and his creative career. As I mentioned in a recent Facebook post, during our 90ish minute chat Daniel and I discussed the Mayan empire, automotive paint, sweet porter pints, East Nashville, Julian Schnabel, secret journals, poetic messages, Tom Waits, cigarettes, Kansas, Nashville, Detroit, South Carolina, Robert Rauschenberg, the black void of death, the futility of nihilism, house paint primers, rental trucks, the utility of mops, and the love of work.

Julian Schnabel isn’t an artist I think of immediately when I look at Daniel’s paintings, but he’s an important influence and a timely one: After leading the pack in the New York art market explosion of the 1980′s, Schnabel’s fortunes have risen and fallen. During that time he’s become an outrageously successful filmmaker and recent retrospectives of his paintings find him getting the last laugh on critics who dismissed him in the last decades as a product of his own voluminous hype.

In lieu of my talk with Holland I offer this video that captures Julian Schnabel installing a recent retrospective in Italy, looking back on his career and his life with all of the hubris, humor, energy, criticism, ego, insight and insecurity one might expect from any artist playing the game decades into an iconic career…

Stay Awake!

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We don’t always appreciate the beauty we’re surrounded by during these busy days. It’s easy to overlook the strange and wonderful in our own neighborhoods, cities and local countrysides. But the truth is there are strange and compelling scenes all around us if we only have eyes to see them.

Many of us who are in touch online on Facebook and Twitter have already seen this post, but if you haven’t seen this photo essay of East Nashville streetscapes I put together for WPLN, Nashville’s Public Radio station, this is for you…

Gallatin Pike is gritty, but it’s also groovy — and even gorgeous if you know where to look. It’s the main vein of the beating heart of one of the city’s most dynamic communities, the East Nashville and Inglewood neighborhoods. The pike’s used tire shops, fast food chains, vintage boutiques, music venues, bars and markets are as diverse as the neighbors they serve.

The roadside is decorated with hand-painted and vintage signs that speak to its past as well as to the entrepreneurial spirit of the mom-and-pop businesses that call it home. More than its dynamic past or its uncertain future, what catches my attention is the weird beauty of the pike right now, today.

I made the trip up Gallatin Pike — from East Nashville Magnet School to the Madison/Inglewood Market, taking more than 60 photographs.

Here are a 20 of them, and a little bit about why each caught my eye.

Check out all of my photographs and the radio interview I did with WPLN right here.

Stay Awake!

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