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JACKSONIAN AMULET STRANGE

B efore travelling to Jackson earlier this year, Amulet Strange had never stepped foot in Mississippi, and yet she had been preparing most of her

life for a job here. Strange spent her childhood in Dallas, where she picked up the instrument that even-tually became her career: flute. At the time, she didn’t have the same attachment to it that she does now. “In fifth grade, I knew I wanted to be in band and didn’t really care what instru-ment it was,” she says. “I just wanted to be in band, just like any other dorky Texas kid.” By the time she entered Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, Strange developed a passion for the flute. She found something she enjoyed and could do well, and she wanted to run with that, she says. For her ju-nior and senior years, she decided to further her music education at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Mich. After graduating from the academy in 2008, Strange enrolled at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and studied under flautist Timothy Day, earning her bachelor’s degree in flute in 2012. Then, she moved to Houston, where she attended Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, graduating with a master’s degree in the instrument in 2014. Whereas many of her colleagues chose to follow up with doctoral programs, Strange was ready to put her training to use.

After seeing an audition listing to become the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra’s principal flautist in May, Strange made the seven-hour drive to Jackson in hopes of winning it. About 30 musicians vied for the slot over the course of the audition, which involved two “blind” rounds where the flautists performed excerpts from required orchestra solos behind screens, testing skills such as sight-reading. The few that made it to the final non-screened round per-formed alongside the MSO’s woodwind quin-tet. By that night, she had the job. “It’s terrifying but also kind of exciting,” Strange says. “I felt like I had prepared well, I was having a good day, and that all falls into place—not only just having good preparation, already knowing the music.” Before settling in Jackson in September, Strange, 25, had a whirlwind summer. She played for the Spoleto Festival USA in Charles-ton, S.C., and went on a retreat with her flute, viola and harp group, Deciduous Trio, at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute in Boscawen, N.H. She also performed a special concert of original music from living Houston-based composers, which didn’t require her to stick to performance-practice guidelines of a piece’s era of origin like most classical music. Strange says it was nice to interact with the composers, to ask them questions and make sure she cor-rectly interprets their vision. “It’s that, and you can be like, ‘No, that doesn’t work; please fix it,’” she jokes. —Micah Smith

OCTOBER 14 - 20, 2015 | VOL. 14 NO. 6

4 ............................. EDITOR’S NOTE

6 ............................................ TALKS

12 ................................ EDITORIAL

13 .................................... OPINION

15 ............................ COVER STORY

24 ....................... MUSIC LISTINGS

26 ......................................... FOOD

29 ....................................... 8 DAYS

30 ...................................... EVENTS

31 .......................................... ARTS

32 ..................................... SPORTS

35 .................................... PUZZLES

37 ....................................... ASTRO

38 ..................... HOME DECOR DIY

cover photo of L. Jones of Sonic Signatureby Imani KhayyamC O N T E N T S

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6 Round and RoundA recent change in operators for JATRAN, the capital-city’s mass-transit service, has been a bit bumpy, bus drivers and riders say.

26 “We all hope to see something great spring forth with your stamp on it in the future.” —Jeff Good, “Food News”

38 Have a DIY HalloweenIf you want some door décor that’s a little more personalized to you, check out this tutorial.

4

E very once in a long while, a great per-former appears from the rock ‘n’ roll ether who can command the stage like he or she was born to it, whether

it’s the signature movements of Michael Jackson or unmatched energy of Freddie Mercury. These musicians make their nat-ural-born and painstakingly honed stage presence a separate instrument unto itself and cause fans to rethink the way we’ve cast music culture. Then, for everyone else, there are YouTube tutorials. Call me nerdy—because I certainly am—but I love to read articles and watch videos on how to improve my live musi-cal performances. Less often than I would like, I get to play with a band called Empty Atlas at some of the great venues around the metro Jackson area, and with each set, I try to apply some of the stage-presence proverbs that I’ve collected over the past few years. For instance, keep your set-up time short, keep your preface before each song shorter, and for goodness sake, don’t let your bassist dedicate every song in memory of Tony Clifton. Most recently, though, one idea has stuck out for me more than any other. I follow a blog that Portland-based music-selling platform CD Baby operates called “DIY Musician,” and a few weeks ago, I came across an old entry about common stage-presence problems for young bands and realized that the Jackson music scene often commits one in particular: We don’t pause for applause. As a listener, there are a few ways in which you can show your appreciation for something you enjoy. You can walk up to a merch table and buy a shirt or CD, or you can even pat the perform-ers on the back and throw out a quick, “Great show,” before slipping out. But that’s all after the fact. In the immediacy

of music, the only thing you can do is ap-plaud, and trust me, that makes a world of difference. It sounds weird to suggest, especial-ly in the current creative culture where it’s decidedly “un-hip” to admit that one would want his or her work to appeal to others. I saw a fantastic band from North Carolina play at Big Sleepy’s on West Capitol Street a few months ago that took a strong stance against this idea. During the show, the vocalist even

took a few minutes to apologize for his “self-aggrandizing need to pervert our art” by wanting the audience to applaud the group’s performance. The bitter iro-ny: That statement, for whatever reason, elicited an even louder ovation. While working on the cover story for this issue, “The Recording Conundrum” (pp. 15-18), I had the opportunity to speak to a few producers, engineers and studio owners in the area who work with local musicians most days of the week, and interestingly enough, each industry professional had an identical need—more clients—and an identical solution to that need: a Jackson act to explode on the national music scene and draw busi-ness back home. The good news is that I think we’re incredibly close to both. Nearly every local show I attend, I find another new pairing of musicians that is creating

something with a wide audience appeal, something that could stretch far beyond Mississippi. Sadly, that’s often where the danger lies. Once the national fan base begins to flourish and pockets of the record industry begin to take notice, it starts looking more viable for bands or solo artists to ditch their hometowns and try their luck in one of the predeter-mined music capitals of America, instead of pushing against that urge. What’s odd is that we’ve seen that

standing your ground can work. People often credit the success of independent re-cord labels, such as Jagjaguwar of Bloom-ington, Ind., or Fat Possum Records of Oxford, Miss., for single-handedly bring-ing better scenes to their surrounding ar-eas, but in nearly every instance, a roster of game-changing local artists led the way. But each time, things change when either drops the other in search of bigger game. It’s easy to see the surface appeal of moving to a music hub for an on-the-rise artist. By definition, a larger city means a larger potential audience. Then, there’s the added bonus of automatically having one’s stage name coupled with the suc-cessful acts that came before. The obvious problem is that when all musicians move to one of those major cities, that hype they benefited from in their hometown doesn’t move with them. It vaporizes the instant they unpack their bags.

Getting noticed in a setting like Jack-son with a population of about 173,000 is infinitely easier than getting noticed somewhere like Nashville, with its popula-tion of 659,000, a great portion of which is made up of music hopefuls. More often than not, artists will discover that fact too late, and with the amount of stress already weighing on any-one launching a music career, it can be in-credibly difficult to recover after dragging yourself back home in defeat. Salvation lies with local fans, who only need to give their favorite acts enough reason to stay. Now, that blog entry I mentioned above didn’t resonate with me because our band could use a breather between songs. Truthfully, the takeaway wasn’t about me as a musician but as a lover of local music. Our city is a rarity, in some ways. Seattle has its grunge, Memphis has its blues, and Nashville has its country, but Jackson has yet to meet its “sound.” However, a signature sound is more a product of its surroundings than the artists that fill them, and whether we like to admit that or not, an audience’s reaction has an extraordinary impact on those surroundings. It’s as simple as this: Give your support to the art that reaches you, and you’ll get more. All that you’re required to do is to ask yourself what you want to see in Jackson and, once you’ve found it, respond. The next time you find yourself watching a local act, up-and-coming or entirely unknown, take the time to listen. If you hear something you like, don’t for-get to pause for applause. Music Editor Micah Smith is a gradu-ate of Mississippi College. When not writ-ing or editing music stories, he performs with the band Empty Atlas. Email him music and books story ideas at micah@jacksonfreepress.com.

CONTRIBUTORS

Pause for Applause

Staff Photographer Imani Khayyam is an art lover and a native of Jackson. He loves to be behind the camera and capture the true essence of his subjects. He took the cover photo and many oth-ers, smiling the whole time.

Editorial Assistant Adria Walker likes existentialism and astro-physics. She enjoys debating “Star Wars,” reading Camus, Kafka and Kundera, and learn-ing about people’s belief sys-tems. She wrote an Artist to Watch piece on The CUT.

Freelance writer Fallon Brewster owns Pen Percep-tions LLC and the Call Me Mrs. Blog, and is both cre-atively and musically inclined. She wrote an Artist to Watch piece on Stevie Cain.

Business writer Scott Prather is a Jackson native who co-founded indie label Esperanza Plantation. He recently returned home after doctoral work in eth-ics and theology in Scotland. He wrote a news story about the downtown YMCA renovations.

News Editor R.L. Nave is a native Missourian who roots for St. Louis (and the Mizzou Tigers)—and for Jackson. Send him news tips at rlnave@jacksonfreepress.com or call him at 601-362-6121 ext. 12. He wrote two news stories.

Freelance writer Julie Skipper practices law by day and gets out and about in Jackson the rest of the time. She fancies art, fashion and travel, and rarely encounters a stiletto she doesn’t like. She wrote a story about the CAET Supper Club.

Web Editor Dustin Cardon is a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi. He enjoys reading fantasy novels and wants to write them him-self one day. He wrote food blurbs and edits jfpdaily.com five days a week.

Assistant Editor Amber Hel-sel graduated from the Uni-versity of Mississippi with a bachelor’s in journalism. She is short, always hungry and always thinking. She wrote the DIY and helped edit and coordinate the entire issue.

by Micah Smith, Music EditorEDITOR’S note

Give your support to the art that reaches you, and you’ll get more.

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BROADWAYIN JACKSON

PRESENTED BY

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W ith the City of Jackson in the middle of a marketing blitz for recent and proposed changes to the capital city’s mass-tran-

sit service, JATRAN, a chorus of discontent is growing among the bus system’s operators and riders who say the rollout has gone less than smoothly. “It’s just been chaos,” said Alphonso Burns Jr., a JATRAN operator and president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1208, which represents about 80 drivers and mechanics, told the Jackson Free Press. The turmoil Burns describes stems from the City changing the way it pays for JATRAN’s opera-tions, which city officials call a necessary cost-saving measure but, according to Burns, has hung a ques-tion mark over the ATU’s collective-bargaining agreement. From his per-spective, the agreement remains in effect—he just doesn’t know with whom. On Oct. 1, an opera-tions contract between the City of Jackson and U.K.-based National Express Transit Services became effective. The three-year contract requires the City to pay a monthly fixed fee for National Express to run most JATRAN operations, including salaries,

overtime and other cost overruns. Previously, the City had a management contract with Lombard, Ill.-based Transdev North America, which did business locally as PTM of Jackson Inc. Under that agreement, the City was responsible for most costs, in-

cluding JATRAN salaries. Burns, a 40-year-old Detroit, Mich., native who has worked for JATRAN for nine years, said when he and fellow drivers got wind of the new contract, he reached out to city hall, PTM and National Express

hoping to ensure that the City would honor ATU’s contract after the switchover. As the deadline to finalize to finalize a deal with an operations firm grew closer, Burns said he grew increasingly concerned by a lack of commitments from either the city or the

companies involved. What alarmed Burns the most, he said, was a notice from PTM stating that the company planned to cash employees out on accrued vacation, sick time and personal leave. Burns said union members, some of whom have decades of service, wanted the time to roll over to the new operator instead of taking the cash payouts. Burns outlined his griev-ances in a Sept. 22 email to then-PTM General Manager Elvin Tobin and said PTM, the City and National Express would be in violation of the ATU’s contract in the event members’ accrued time is cashed out. In all, Burns estimates that members’ accrued time is worth between $400,000 and $600,000. In a Sept. 26 letter, Tobin referred to language in the col-lective-bargaining agreement

between PTM and ATU that states the company would pay 40 percent of accrued time to employees with at least 10 years of service. Tobin denied the grievance and rec-

Wednesday, October 7 Mississippi state auditor candidate Joce Pritchett’s campaign launches a new website, pickeringsgarage.com, detailing allegations against the incumbent audi-tor, Stacey Pickering, that he used cam-paign finances to pay for a garage door and personal vehicles.

Thursday, October 8 U.S. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who had been the favored candidate to replace John Boehner as speaker, withdraws his candidacy just be-fore a meeting of House Republicans to select their nominee was set to begin.

Friday, October 9 The Obama administration an-nounces plans to abandon a failed Pen-tagon effort to build a new ground force of moderate rebels to fight ISIS in Syria, instead partnering with established rebel groups. … U.S. Sens. Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker announce a bill that would authorize a study on the national significance of the Medgar Evers home in Jackson as part of an effort to make it part of the National Park Service.

Saturday, October 10 Hattiesburg Unified Southern Fried Pride—a weekend of events including music, a march and a tea dance—marks the city’s first gay-pride festival.

Sunday, October 11 Civil-rights leader Myrlie Evers-Williams, Mississippi-born rapper David Banner and Republican state Rep. Jenny Horne of South Carolina lead about 400 people in a rally outside the Mississippi Capitol calling for the removal of the Confederate battle emblem from the Mississippi state flag.

Monday, October 12 Officials with the Stone Mountain Memorial Association announce plans to place a Liberty Bell replica atop Stone Mountain near Atlanta, Ga., as a me-morial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that recalls a famous line from his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Tuesday, October 13 Planned Parenthood announces it will maintain programs at some clinics that make fetal tissue available for re-search, but will no longer accept payment to cover the costs of those programs. Get breaking news at jfpdaily.com.

Bus Union Decries ‘Outsourcing’ of JATRANby R.L. Nave

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Alphonso Burns Jr., 40, has been the president of JATRAN’s bus

Muddy Waters, director of water-treatment systems

Jimmy Buffett, director of Alcohol Beverage Control division

Howlin’ Wolf, animal-control unit manager

Faith Hill, secretary of religious elevated landforms

Elvis Presley, Mississippi Department of Corrections dance instructor

Lance Bass, fish hatchery program coordinator

Cassandra Wilson, international jazz ambassador

David Banner, PR director of the state hip-hop trail

Kudzu Kings, secretaries of annoying agriculture

MISSISSIPPI’S MUSICAL CABINETHail to the chief—er, secretary of state. In September, the Mississippi Blues Commission announced that it had selected late blues legend B.B. King as Mississippi’s “secretary of state of the blues.” Here are a few more Mississippi musicians that should take on political positions without the political responsibilities.

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Torshel Storm Shelters · BankPlus · Star Health Care Registry · Lady Luck Casino Vicksburg· Jackson State University · Salsa Mississippi

8

TALK | city

ommended that Burns take up the issue with the City and National Express, saying that he was leaving the company. John Andoh, the transit-services man-ager for the City who has been front and center during for many of this year’s changes at JATRAN since moving from Hawaii in April to take the position, referred questions and interview requests to mayoral spokes-woman Shelia Byrd, who emailed a two-sentence statement. “This matter is a contractual issue be-tween the contractor and the union. The City is hopeful that the two entities can re-solve this amicably,” Byrd wrote.

A Question of ‘Outsourcing’ In August, the Jackson City Council ap-proved the recommendation of a committee of JATRAN officials and bus riders to accept the National Express’ operations proposal for approximately $4.5 million per year. Other proposals came from Transdev and Austin-based 1st Transit, but city officials said the National Express proposal would save the city $2 million in the upcoming fis-

cal year, when Mayor Tony Yarber’s adminis-tration projected a $15-million deficit. The anticipated savings from moving JATRAN off the City’s books would eventually be built into the 2016 fiscal-year budget, which the council approved in mid-September. These negotiations came amid other big moves quietly made at JATRAN, includ-ing fare increases, new routes, the decision to install video-surveillance cameras and auto-mated fare boxes. Officials also announced that the years-long construction on the JA-TRAN administrative offices is also close to completion. The $6.8-million facility replaces the old municipal public-transit of-fice on Terry Road. The federal government provided the brunt of the funding. Days before the new contract was to take effect, the transit-services division an-nounced a contest to rename the whole sys-tem. Among the suggested contenders are: Jackson Jazz, Jackson Area Express, Jackson Metro, Pearl RiverRunner, CityBus Cit-yLink, JBus, The J and Magnolia Ride. “I think you should change (the name) to JATRAN,” quipped Sheila O’Flaherty, a JATRAN rider and mass-transit advocate, of the rebranding effort. “It’s unique.” But there were other snags that, for O’Flaherty and other riders, were more con-cerning. For example, even though proposed

fare increases were announced through the City’s website and press releases, O’Flaherty saw no signs about the coming hikes posted on the buses themselves. The proposed in-crease would increase basic one-way fares from $1.50 to $1.75 in fiscal-year 2016 and then go up $.25 every year until 2019. O’Flaherty also said the hours when riders could start purchasing bus passes from Union Station downtown initially changed from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m., which would make it difficult for early-morning riders who work outside downtown during those hours to buy passes. In the past week, she tells the Jackson Free Press, Union Station has started selling passes at 7 a.m. Burns said merging the formerly City-run HandiLift paratransit service for senior citizens with JATRAN resulted in long waits for elderly riders the first week after the Oct. 1 switchover, but the second week went smoother. His union’s international offices also decry the rough transition. In an Oct. 14 news release from ATU’s Washington, D.C.-based international of-fices, union officials say what they consider the “outsourcing” of JATRAN “jeopardizes transit service and safety.” “In all of the this, the shame part of it is that it’s so disorganized. Who it’s hurting is the passengers and the citizens of Jackson. It’s

just ridiculous,” Burns told JFP. In the meantime, the next phase of Burns’ grievance process takes place when he and Transdev officials meet to select arbitra-tors, a process similar to jury selection, where Burns and company representatives cull a list of potential arbitrators down to a three-member panel who will hear the grievance. Carina Noble, a spokeswoman for National Express, said the company is still working out the details of a contract with ATU. “As is standard procedure when there is a change in operators, we are working with the union to make adjustments to the agreement. We are currently recognizing the union and at this point we are just trying to determine scheduling to meet in person and finalize the contract. We are optimistic that this will be resolved in the near future,” No-ble said through a statement to the Jackson Free Press. Burns says he’s also hopeful even as more uncertainty looms. This week, JA-TRAN employees will receive their last pay-checks from PTM of Jackson, on Oct. 16. And after six months on the job, Andoh, the city’s transit-service manager, announced his departure at the end of October. Comment at www.jfp.ms. Email R.L. Nave at rlnave@jacksonfreepress.com.

J ackson’s downtown YMCA is under-taking a life-saving effort involving major renovations, reinvestment, and downsizing of the facility’s financially

draining programs and activities. An early casualty of this process is the Y’s basketball courts. The Metropolitan YMCAs of Mississippi’s board of directors voted Sept. 30 to renovate the courts into workout space in the wake of the news that the Deville YMCA in north Jackson is closing at the end of the year, leaving four locations in the metro area, at least in the short term. The process of converting the current court space into a fully functional fitness area is already under way, said Metropoli-tan YMCAs of Mississippi President David Reeves. That will mean an end to all basket-ball for members, as well as local groups who rent the downtown Y courts, within the next couple of months. “I hate it for those players,” Reeves told the Jackson Free Press, “just like I hated it for those racquetball players who lost their court space.” Two years ago, the Y converted those courts into the I.S. Sanders Early Child Learning and Enrichment Center, which currently serves more than 50 kids with day-care and preschool programs. The downtown Y, which oper-

ated at a loss of around $185,000 last year, needs “members, not users,” Reeves said. Every YMCA association is indepen-dently run and financed with each facil-ity paying a small fee—for the five YMCAs now in the metro association, it’s less than 2 percent of their total budget—to bear the YMCA brand and reap whatever indirect

financial benefits come with the name. While all staff and payroll costs are paid directly from membership dues, fundraising and fees from various family programs and sports activities are the other two major sources of revenue keeping local YMCAs afloat. In all, the metro association’s fundraising needs stand at around $650,000 a year, but generally come in at about $400,000. Even with that deficit, and with no direct finan-

cial support from the YMCA organization, the ability to devote such a large amount of resources to scholarships and grants is one upside of financial independence and local ownership. Even though the downtown Y is the only property the association actually owns, its losses in recent years have been subsidized

through the association’s more profitable YMCAs, such as the Deville Y, which ex-ceeded its revenue goals but recently closed due to the New York-based owners of Deville Plaza wanting to bring in a Planet Fitness. “Unfortunately, with the competition continuing to grow, and all the discount gyms that don’t offer the family activities that we do, we don’t have that margin of error anymore,” Reeves said.

“So we’ve got to do something to try to get more families, more people in there, so we don’t have to close the doors of the down-town Y, too. Because otherwise we’re not go-ing to have a presence in Jackson at all.” This competitive environment is why Reeves said he and the board are set on re-investing in the downtown Y, focusing on those family-friendly and community en-riching “extras” that make the YMCA more than just a gym. “We’re hoping (this reinvestment) will be good for everybody,” Reeves said, “bring-ing in families from the Belhaven, Fondren and north Jackson areas, so that we can re-gain that membership, and hopefully the downtown Y can start paying for itself.” With a new parking lot about to break ground this coming weekend and a com-plete family-friendly overhaul in the works, the Jackson community should start seeing real changes to the downtown Y immedi-ately, Reeves said. The Y hosts the “East River Rock Out!” fundraiser at Hal & Mal’s on Oct. 22 Doors open at 6:45 p.m., music kicks off at 7:30 p.m., and tickets are $20, with all proceeds going directly to the costs of the Y’s day care and preschool programs. Comment at jfp.ms.

Downtown YMCA Slashes Hoops in Face of Competitionby Scott Prather

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A young man plays basketball at the downtown Jackson YMCA. The

court’s days are numbered.

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TALK | activism

Sharon Brown isn’t waiting for the Legislature to start the process to change the Mississippi flag. Brown has submitted ballot Initia-

tive 55 with the offices of the state attorney general and the secretary of state to remove the Confederate battle emblem from Missis-sippi’s state flag. State officials validated the initiative language on Friday, Oct. 9. Now, Brown is tasked with gathering more than 107,000 certified signatures in the next year to get it on the 2018 ballot. Brown was born and raised in Jackson by her mother, Flora, and grew up with her sister, Valerie. The Browns, who are African American, recently started an ongoing con-versation with their mother about their past and the state flag. Flora was also raised in Mississippi, and fought for national welfare reform in the 1960s and even went to jail for her activism. The spirit of advocacy and activ-ism lives on in the family. Brown said her mother told her at a young age what the Confederate battle emblem in the state flag stood for and the main reason that Missis-sippi seceded in the first place—slavery. One recent night across the table Flora told her daughters, “You girls better stand up and do something.”

Brown said her mother’s challenge led her to file ballot initiative 55 to re-move the Confederate battle flag and any symbols of the Confederacy from the Mississippi state flag. Valerie is also help-ing with the initiative. “We need a flag that shows unity and peace and love,” Sharon said. “And we shouldn’t be an outlier to the other states.” Initiative 55 is titled: “Should the Confederate battle flag or any reference to the Confederacy be removed from the State Flag?” The initiative would add the state-

ment: “The flag of the State of Mississippi shall not contain or include any reference to the Confederate army’s battle flag or to the Confederacy” to the state’s Constitution. Currently, ballot Initiative 54 is under way proposing an amendment to Missis-sippi’s constitution to make the current flag, adopted in 1894, the permanent state flag. Brown, 43, said she considers herself a “helper bee” in the Jackson community. She is working as an independent-advocacy con-sultant, most recently consulting with HIV/AIDS organizations. Brown has always lived in Mississippi, mostly in Jackson. She said she hands out lunches to homeless people in Poindexter Park in west Jackson, and she donates school supplies to local schools. “Until you can understand why things are the way they are, it’s hard to find so-lutions to those problems (in society),” Brown said. “You don’t need a degree to figure that out, you just need a passion for the people you live with and the people in (your) state.” Brown is partially through a bachelor’s degree program in criminal justice at Jack-son State University. She plans to continue going to classes next year and also add a political-science degree to her studies. She said that reading and wanting to make a

difference has brought her this far. “You have to have the thirst for knowl-edge and learning and wanting to make where you live a better place,” she said. Brown helped coordinate the 1 Flag for All rally that marched from Lynch Street to downtown Jackson on Oct. 11, inviting civil-rights advocates, community leaders, pastors and politicians. More than 400 people came out for the rally. The event drew participants from throughout Mississippi, including celebri-ties like Mississippi natives hip-hop artist

and actor David Banner and civil-rights activist Myrlie Evers-Williams. Banner and Evers-Williams pointed to the legacy of slavery as the main reason to bring down the state flag. Evers-Williams mentioned Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee who would not even attend Civil War commemorations and distanced himself from Confederate symbols. “If a former Confederate general rec-ognizes the divisiveness of a symbol of dis-unity, we must do so, also,” Evers-Williams said at the rally. Banner said Mississippi is not fully recognizing its troubled history by flying a state flag with the Confederate emblem—which he sees as an insult. “What was the Civil War fought over?” Banner said. “Be honest—slavery.” Out-of-state guests included South Carolina state Rep. Jenny Horne, a white Republican who made waves in July when she pushed the South Carolina House of Representatives to take the flag down from the capitol grounds immediately rather than go through the constitutional amend-ment process. “I have heard enough about heritage. I have a heritage—I am a lifelong South Carolinian, OK?” Horne said on the South Carolina House floor. “I am a descendant of (Confederacy President) Jefferson Davis, but that does not matter. It’s not about Jenny Horne, it’s about the people of South Caro-lina who have demanded that this symbol of hate come off of the statehouse grounds.” Brown said she started calling friends and family a month in advance of the rally, as she prepared to submit her ballot initiative. The Rev. Clyde Tate of Jackson is in support of the Initiative and said he will help collect signatures.

“We are all made of one God and live of one accord: black, white, yellow, red, we are all one people,” Tate said. He believes that the majority opinion of Mississippians should determine what happens with the flag, and Tate said the flag is offending a lot more people than it is not. “Change is good,” Tate said. “At some point we have to change, and our flag should not represent a group but one na-tion under God.” Brown agrees. She said that while she respects the “heritage” argument, the flag should be a “more unified” representation of Mississippi and does not represent every-one in the state’s heritage. Brown said the Confederate symbol on the flag hurts all Mississippians, including white people. “It’s hurting us socially and economi-cally,” she said. Even if Brown’s initiative gets more than 107,000 signatures, it would not go on a ballot until 2018. Brown hopes the state won’t have to wait that long. “In January, I have faith that our legis-lators are going to do what is right because the world is watching now,” she said. “The rally we did on Sunday was covered by (about) 30 different media outlets.” In the meantime, Brown is taking a little time to rest before she starts planning for another rally at some point in the next few months. She said she cannot stop the work she’s started. “I cannot stop because for me to stop would be a disappointment to my mom,” Brown said. “I would never do that because she didn’t stop, and she didn’t give up.” Read more flag stories at jfp.ms/slavery and a gallery of this rally at jfp.ms/oneflag. See new flag designs at #msflagdiy on Instagram.

A Woman on a Mission to Change the State Flagby Arielle Dreher

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TALK | education

T he war is on against public-education funding with large political advocacy groups and GOP donors’ dollars pouring into anti-Initiative 42 Politi-

cal Initiative Committees (PICs). The Kids-First and Improve Mississippi committees alone have raised more than $300,000 to de-feat the citizens’ initiative to force state law-makers to follow the law and fund the Mis-sissippi Adequate Education Program. Improve Mississippi has launched the most visible anti-Initiative 42 campaign, sponsoring a television ad and a new web-site, 42truth.com. After document filings on Oct. 9, the source of the money is more clear. The PIC reports donations of just over $200,000 in 2015, and claims to have spent almost none of it, although TV ads bearing the group’s name started in early October. The PIC’s $25,000 donors include PACs run by the Mississippi Manufacturers Association, Mississippi Bankers Association, Mississippi Poultry Association, Mississippi Homebuilders Association and Mississippi Realtors Association; smaller donors include the PACs for the Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association, Independent Insur-ance Agents of Mississippi and the Missis-sippi Malt Beverage Association. The Improve Mississippi political initia-tive committee originally surfaced in leaked emails from Jones County Junior College President Jesse Smith, who urged other pres-idents to donate to the PIC in September. Donors are mainly state Republicans and industry groups, including the campaigns of Gov. Phil Bryant, Lt. Gov. Reeves, House Appropriations Chairman Herb Frierson and House Speaker Philip Gunn. As of Oct. 9, each campaign had donat-ed $10,000 to Improve Mississippi. Empow-er MS PAC, the political arm of the “school choice” foundation by the same name, con-tributed $10,000 to Improve Mississippi. The Empower PAC and the American Fed-eration for Children funded campaigns in the DeSoto County primary election in August, ousting four Republicans who did not sup-port “school choice” legislation, which critics say is a privatization agenda. The Empower PAC had $127,000 on hand as of Oct. 9.

Staying in the Shadows Van White is Improve Mississippi’s treasurer, but did not respond to messages. White, a Moss Point native who graduated from Ole Miss in 1986, became president of the Business and Industry Political Edu-cation Committee, or BIPEC, in 2008, the Mississippi Business Journal reported. BIPEC, which scores legislators on con-servative business ideals, is not set up as a po-litical action committee, and MBJ reported

that it does not lobby or campaign, although its representatives meet with legislators to as-certain and evaluate their positions on issues that concern its members, as well as moni-tors the election of members of the Missis-sippi Supreme Court and other state judges. White’s group does have a PAC arm, however. “The Improve Mississippi Political

Action Committee, or IMPAC, is a politi-cal campaign sister of BIPEC and often uses these grades and information to identify and target and assist business-friendly candi-dates,” former Mississippi Republican Party Political Director Brian Perry wrote in a col-umn in 2013. “But BIPEC itself does not get involved in campaigns directly.” The Improve Mississippi PAC reported $20,000 on hand and no disbursements as of Oct. 9. The PAC files a separate campaign-finance report from the PIC. What’s not clear from Improve Mis-sissippi PIC’s Oct. 9 disclosure is how it has spent its money so far. WLBT FCC disclo-sure forms and advertising contracts listed “American Media & Advocacy Group” as the media buyer for Improve Mississippi adver-tisements that aired Oct. 2-11 during shows ranging from the NBC Nightly News to Sunday Night Football. Total cost for those nine days of ads was invoiced at $13,800. The Improve Mississippi’s Oct. 9 secre-tary of state disclosure form showed a total of $150.16 in disbursements for the entire calendar year through the end of September. American Media and Advocacy Group LLC emerged in 2012 as a top media buyer for a bevy of conservative-issues advertisers in the 2012 election. The group seems to prefer staying in the shadows, as it appears to have

no Web presence. A 2013 NBC investiga-tion found that American Media and Advo-cacy Group came in No. 5 in media-buyer expenditures ($27 million) in the 2012 pres-idential election. Data searches show that American Me-dia and Advocacy Group is housed in the of-fice of Robin Roberts’ political-media firm,

National Media Inc., in Alexandria, Va. The media buyer who signed the WLBT order for the television ads of Improve Mississippi, Ben Angle, is listed on the National Media website as an employee of that company. Sourcewatch.org, a transparency web-site, reported that CEO Roberts, whose LinkedIn page says has owned the firm since 1981, was the media buyer for the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. Sourcewatch re-ported that the firm has also produced many ads for Citizens for Better Medicare, which supported the pharmaceutical lobby’s effort to avoid lower prescription-drug prices.

Enter the Koch Brothers While Improve Mississippi seems to be the local bundler for cash committed against Initiative 42, the KidsFirst Mississippi Politi-cal Initiative Committee, formed on July 31, 2015, is financed by exactly two donors. Its director, Russ Latino, put in $3,176.62 this year, and the Koch brothers’ national advocacy organization, Americans for Prosperity, donated $119,370.38 be-tween Sept. 16, 2015 and Sept. 30, 2015. KidsFirst has reported only $159.50 in total expenditures as of its September report, but shows only $110,285.00 cash on hand; a difference of $12,102.50. Latino, the Mississippi director for

Americans for Prosperity, is also the direc-tor for KidsFirst Mississippi and two other PACs, Forward Mississippi, which donates only to Republican candidates, and Russ PAC, formed in 2010, which has two reports in 2011 on the Secretary of State’s website. Latino did not respond to the JFP for this story. His stance on Initiative 42 is clear, however, in recent columns on bamsouth.com and the Madison County Journal. On Oct. 6, Latino wrote in the Madison County Journal, focusing on the lone Hinds County judge the initiative’s opponents claim will control MAEP money: “Because of how broad this new judicial power is, a judge will have limitless authority to engage in education decisions that will affect our children, our schools and our economy.” In reality, the issue would go to Hinds County Chancery Court because the Leg-islature is in Jackson, and only if legislators continued to ignore the law after the initia-tive passed. That court’s decision could be appealed to the Mississippi Supreme Court. In August, the KidsFirst Mississippi PIC received $1,000 from Americans for Prosperity, enough to pay for a Phil Bryant radio spot. In the 30-second radio ad Bryant says: “If 42 passes, a judge in Hinds County will control our schools. Our children’s fu-ture and billions of taxpayer dollars hang in the balance—Deborah and I are deeply committed to public education, but 42 is bad for our kids and bad for our economy.” Expenditures for the Bryant ad do not appear on the KidsFirst August or Septem-ber reports on the secretary of state’s website. Brothers Charles and David Koch, the principal owners of the oil and chemi-cal conglomerate Koch Industries, founded Americans for Prosperity in 2004 and have had heavy hands in other education-related elections across the United States. In Denver, Colo., the organization has funded candi-dates for county school-board positions in an effort to effect changes to curricula and to support “school choice.” The “school re-form” agenda of organizations like Ameri-cans for Prosperity is affecting policies in Nashville, Tenn., as well. There the Charles Koch Foundation held an event in 2014 ti-tled, “Education Opportunities: A Path For-ward for Students in Tennessee,” to provide an “in-depth policy discussion” about public education and other issues. The pro-Initiative 42 campaign, Bet-ter Schools Better Jobs, has raised a total of $1.292 million in 2015. Read about the do-nors at jfp.ms/pro42funds. The next date for campaign-finance filings is Oct. 27 for PICs and PACs, a week before the election. See the JFP’s full archive on Initiative 42 and MAEP at jfp.ms/maep.

Public-Ed Foes Swooping In to Block Ed Fundingby Arielle Dreher

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Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, helped start Americans for Prosperity, an ultra-conservative national group that is funding efforts to block Initiative 42.

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DISH | candidate

W hen listening to Brent Bailey extol the virtues of alternative energy, biofuels and improved efficiency standards, it’s easy

to forget that he’s a Republican running for the Mississippi Public Service Commission from the Central District. “I see it as a tremendous opportunity to increase our energy security and diversity. I see it as a great way to build and create jobs and to give individuals choice. That’s the base of free-market conservative principles,” Bailey, 44, told the Jackson Free Press. A Madison County resident, Bailey has never held or run for office before this year. In November, Bailey faces retired financial investment adviser and veteran legislator Rep. Cecil Brown, D-Jackson, to represent 18 counties on the PSC, which regulates utility companies in the state. Bailey is the southern region representa-tive for the 25 x ‘25 Alliance, which advocates for sustainable energy policies in the face of global climate change and, specifically, to get 25 percent of America’s energy from renew-able resources like wind, solar, and biofuels by the year 2025. Bailey recently talked with the JFP about his candidacy, the Kemper County en-ergy facility and Mississippi’s energy future.

Tell me about your work with the 25 x ‘25 initiative I’ve been with 25 x ’25 for 10 years now. The initiative focuses on advancing clean en-ergy solutions with a focus on rural America, providing the tools, programs (and) services that allow our nation’s farmers, ranchers, and foresters to invest in clean energy and pro-vide new technology opportunities. Also, (to consider) if there’s an oppor-tunity to potentially take a waste stream or a liability and turn it into an asset that gener-ates revenue on site. We look at it like (this): If it grows from the land, shines light upon the land, flows across the land, blows across the land, we’re able to capture those natural resource opportunities.

Is this initiative specific to Mississippi? We’re based out of (Washington) D.C., and I represent our nation’s forestry and (agricultural) producers to try to educate them and help build awareness on how they can invest in clean energy and contribute to our nation’s energy portfolio.

What are the renewables trends? (With) biofuels, we’re still in the first phase ... which is corn ethanol and soybean oil to biodiesel. The next generations are beginning to come along. The technologies

are becoming much more mature. There’s still that financial aspect—given where price margins are now, with oil (prices) down—where (energy producers) are having to be-come more efficient in their operations. We’re talking about technologies that are just in the last few years moving from laboratory to demonstration-scale to full-

commercial scale. You’re starting to see these open up in Iowa, in Kansas, other places around the U.S. that are just getting to these commercial-scale applications of second-generation and even third-generation tech-nologies. We’re moving beyond corn ethanol. While (ethanol is) really the foundation of biofuels in the U.S. and created an awareness for consumers, the next generation provides a much smaller carbon footprint and greater efficiency and more opportunities.

Do you think that negative experiences with failed companies like KiOR and Solyndra have tainted people on alternative energy investments in the future? Some of these were risky ventures, risky technologies. Sometimes, you bet big, and it might not work out. The big question is: Are you using government dollars to fund those risky investments, or is this coming from the private sector? Are they putting their finan-cial interests on the line? I guess that’s what may taint the average citizen or taxpayer. Net metering and some of these other

things are creating choice for consumers to decide if they want to invest themselves in these applications—whether it’s rooftop so-lar, small-scale biomass (or) combined heat and power applications to create efficiencies in their use. There are proven ap-plications that, in my view, are winners and create positive impacts.

Should the government have a role in these kinds of investments? I definitely believe there is a role, but I think we need to be careful in our due dili-gence in how we evaluate the technologies, to what level of investment we’re willing to look at and (whether) the market’s truly there for the finished product, and what are the overall benefits for the citizens of Mississippi going forward. Is our goal diversification? Is our goal new business opportunities? Job cre-ation? And how does that all factor in the cost benefits of what ventures we’re assessing.

There’s been a lot of second-guessing of the Baseload Act. Does it need more review? The intentions were to help reduce the financing costs of reliable off-the-shelf tech-nologies that provide immediate benefits as far as expanding capacity, providing new generation resources. I don’t think it should be applied in a manner such as we’re seeing right now over in east-central Mississippi (with the Kemper County power plant). We’re talking about a very risky technol-ogy, and (with) advanced cost recovery you’re

putting more of the burden and the risk on the consumer with a technology that’s not been proven. So I see the pros and cons. If used wisely, the Baseload Act may be a use-ful mechanism to reduce the overall burdens and costs of consumers. In a case like this, I believe it’s been used unwisely to facilitate a risky investment and venture. It definitely doesn’t appear to be a wise application of policy in this matter.

What are the most concerning aspects of the Kemper project? I’ve been concerned about it since day one when I first heard about it. I’ve never felt the technology was ready, particularly for commercialization. I always thought there were more cost effective alternatives and op-portunities out there that were not explored and not part of the conversation—investing in energy efficiency being one of those. If we truly needed new capacity, we could achieve that by freeing up capac-ity with much smaller, targeted, smarter investments in energy efficiency—whether it’s helping our residential, business, or in-dustrial in reducing their needs and saving them money and saving capacity on the grid that doesn’t require expensive investments in brick-and-mortar-based generation. It’s been proven time and time again that smart investments in energy efficiency provides re-turns on investments three to four times the initial investment. We’ve seen construction delays, significant cost overruns. It was never in my view the right choice for consumers and in the best interests of consumers.

How would you vote today—is Kemper prudent or not? In my view, at this time, no.

What do you want the PSC to focus on when Kemper is off its plate? I don’t know that Kemper will ever truly be off the plate. I think there will always been lingering impacts. There’ll always be—as mentioned earlier—that Solyndra hangover as it relates to clean-energy technologies, that KiOR hangover as it relates to advanced bio-fuels. Kemper will always have that hangover effect on true planning going forward. I would like to engage in integrated re-source planning: you put everything out on the table ... for the public to see. Is it smart investing in natural gas generation? Nuclear? Clean-coal technology? Renewables? Effi-ciencies? How do (we) provide reliable en-ergy at affordable prices that are accessible to everybody looking five, 10 and 20 years down the road? Comment and read more election cover-age at www.jfp.ms/2015elections.

Bailey: Energy Security and Diversity Vitalby R.L. Nave

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Brent Bailey, 44, wants the Mississippi Public Service Commission to consider the future of energy production now—and a generation from now.

12

Backroom Anti-42 Politics Counterproductive for Employers

Buenos Días, My Fellow Hustlers

M ississippi Manufacturers Association, Mississippi Bankers Association, Mississippi Poultry Association, Mis-sissippi Homebuilders Association

and Mississippi Realtors Association—those are the $25,000 PAC donors to the Improve Mis-sissippi Political Initiative Committee, formed at the urging of GOP “leadership” in Mississippi to fi ght Initiative 42, the people’s ballot initiative to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program. They helped the PIC get to $200,000—one dollar for each citizen signature that got 42 on the ballot—by joining key GOP campaigns. The campaigns of Gov. Phil Bryant, Lt. Gov. Reeves, House Appropriations Chairman Herb Frierson, House Speaker Philip Gunn and the Empower MS PAC, which promotes school choice, all donated $10,000 each to fi ght the initiative. (See page 10.) This is what you get when the smoke clears from the smoke-fi lled backrooms of business-as-usual with the GOP majority. Are all of these industry groups really against full funding of adequate education? Wouldn’t it benefi t the manufacturers to have better educated workers? After all, Mississippi has been known to lose bids for major company relocations to other states because we can’t pull together the trained

workforce necessary for modern manufacturing. Likewise for the homebuilders and realtors and bankers—wouldn’t their jobs of building homes, selling homes and selling mortgages be that much easier if school districts across the state were well-funded and, at the very least, adequate? Now, we know … given the company being kept in this PIC, most likely those associations’ lobbyists are just knuckling under to pressure that could come to bear in the next legislative session. They’re lobbyists; it’s their job to curry favor with the powerful. But the members of these groups—and the general public—should offer the directors of these associations feedback as well. It’s time for them to come out of the shadows and face a public deter-mined not to continue holding Mississippi hostage to the narrow political agendas of Bryant, Reeves, Frierson, Gunn and Empower MS. Improving education in Mississippi should be the priority of manufacturers and bankers and insurance agents and realtors and restaurateurs. If you’re one of those people, it’s time to tell your respective association that it’s time to quit carrying water for the politicians who keep letting us down and to help create a better future for Mississippi’s schools—and, by extension, its workforce.

B rother Hustle: “Welcome to another Compensatory Investment Re-quest Support Group meeting. I invited a very special guest to attend our meeting and provide inspiring words to new and senior group members.

“A week ago, I explored a new street corner to sell refreshing Juicy Juice on Ice to the people. Out of nowhere, a Latino gentleman approached me to buy my product and to have a nice conversation about hustling in an uncertain economy. We exchanged business cards and immediately became associates. “So allow me to present to you Senior Handy Man Juan Jorge Val-dez, our newest member of the Compensatory Investment Request Sup-port Group.” Juan Jorge Valdez: “Buenos días, my fellow hustlers. I am honored to be a part of your group. Gracias to Brother Hustle. In Spanish, I would call him Prisa Del Hermano. “Unfortunately, a divide exists between race, sex, class and culture. This divide has forced the common man and woman to become unwilling participants in the cycle of fear and oppression. As I endure this grueling existence, I have discovered my purpose to serve, encourage, teach and in-spire others. Also, like the common individual, I must do my best to take care of and feed my family. “I suggest to this group to do what you have to do to become a survi-vor of oppression, hatred and fear. Sharpen your skills, develop confi dence, and make alliances with those who will respect and support you. “Vaya con dios, mi hermanos and hermanas. Remember: Hustle to survive.”

‘legacy’

Why it Stinks: With Sen. Cochran’s checkered history on civil rights, it’s a good move for the Senate Appropriations Chairman to place the landmark under federal stewardship and, hopefully, provide a steadier stream of funding support than it’s received in the past. If Cochran is truly a student of Evers’ contributions, he should also understand that Medgar, like his widow, Myrlie, would not have tolerated Mississippi’s offensive state fl ag. We know, we know—Cochran has expressed support for changing the fl ag. But couldn’t he just as easily push for legislation that wouldn’t send federal dollars to any states still using Confederate symbols? Shouldn’t he? Do that, and you’ll convince us that you believe in Medgar Evers’ true legacy.

JAM

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I n March 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John Adams, who was in Philadelphia, Pa., helping to craft a con-stitution for the fledgling nation. In her

letter, Abigail urged John to give women the rights that men held as God-given: “I de-sire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors,” she implored. Women didn’t gain suffrage for another 144 years, and it took even longer for them to become economically independent from their hus-bands. Laws allowing white widows to in-herit property were first instituted in 1839 in Mis-sissippi to allow them to inherit slaves. For black women, the struggle for equality had a sharper edge. They first had to gain the right to be seen as human. Biddy Mason was born in 1818, probably in Georgia. Mason was a wedding gift to Mississippi plantation owner Robert Marion Smith when she was 18. She was a skilled midwife and cook. The Smiths moved to Salt Lake City in 1848, in a caravan of 56 white Mormon converts and 34 slaves, including Mason and her three daughters, likely all fathered by Smith, qua-drupling his property. Ellen was 10, Ann, 4, and Harriet was barely 6 weeks old. During the seven-month, 2,000-mile journey, Ma-son carried her nursing baby and walked with Ellen and Ann behind the wagons carrying Smith and his white family, and behind the caravan’s livestock with the rest of the slaves. They walked again in 1851 to California, a free state. There, Smith’s slaves sued for freedom, winning it in 1856. At 34, Biddy Mason was no longer property. Ten years later, she was the first black woman to purchase land in Los An-geles. Mason leveraged her talents and real estate into a sizable fortune by the time she died in 1891. “Wherever there is a racial issue, there’s a gender issue,” said Anita Hill, keynote speaker at the Mississippi Women’s Eco-nomic Security Policy Summit, held Oct. 10. Hill told Abigail and Biddy’s stories to illustrate that point. Hill came to national attention in 1991 when she accused her former supervi-sor, Clarence Thomas (then a U.S. Supreme Court nominee), of sexual harassment. Today, Hill is a professor at Brandeis Uni-versity’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Her 2011 book, “Reimagin-ing Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home,” focuses on how the sub-prime mortgage and housing crises dispro-portionately affected women—particularly African American women.

Prior to the crises, women were the largest growth market for home sales in the U.S., Hill said. Unscrupulous lenders tar-geted low-income people, including people of color and women, for zero-down, high-interest and high-risk mortgages. The Great Recession wiped out billions in property as-sets, hitting women particularly hard. “Even when controlling for credit score, income, and wealth, women are 30 percent more likely than their male peers to own a risky mortgage, and single black women are 259 times more likely than white men with

the same financial char-acteristics to have a risky subprime loan” reported the Women’s Media Cen-ter in 2014. “… Single women, of all ages, were ideal targets for risky loans because they are often the heads of households in the neighborhoods where

subprime loans were heavily marketed.” Black single women are three time more likely to be heads of households than single white women and twice as likely than Hispanics. The continuing racial and gender inequalities in lending means that women of color are also more likely to be caught in foreclosures. African American women are 256 percent more likely than white men to re-ceive subprime loans, and upper-income black women are nearly five times more likely than white men to have high-cost mortgages, reported the National Coun-cil of Jewish Women in “Losing Ground: Women and the Foreclosure Crises.” Home ownership is a primary driver of household wealth, and Hill cited Pew Re-search showing that white families now have 13 times the wealth of black families. “All the gains that had been made in communi-ties of color in two-and-a-half decades were lost in the financial crisis,” she said. Hill evoked the sitcom “The Jeffer-sons” when she urged women to live and work within their communities even as they achieve a measure of success. “We need to have a different vision” for economic equal-ity than “Moving On Up” and out, she said. Women’s success must extend to bring-ing others along. To be safe, women must achieve economic security. Questions of safety, whether that means equal pay, raising healthy children or surviving an abusive re-lationship, are wrapped up in economic and property issues. With “the ladies” still several steps behind the men economically, Abigail and Biddy are surely restless in their graves. Ronni Mott is a freelance writer and ed-itor, and an experienced yoga teacher. She is dedicated to social justice and speaking truth to power. 13

Remembering the Ladies, Black and White

RONNI MOTT

Editor-in-Chief Donna LaddPublisher Todd Stauffer

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The  School  With  A  Difference,  Giving  Wings  To  The  Mind  

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A udio engineer Leroy Jones Jr. leaned back in his leather office chair, as vocalist Los Brown sang layers upon layers of vocal tracks in a sep-arate room. Two-feet-tall speakers funneled the

background “oohs” and “bum-bums” of the R&B art-ist’s latest single, “Fight for Love,” into the mixing suite. A mutual friend, Nicholas Ratliff, filmed the session on his smartphone via Periscope so that Brown’s fans could watch the process. Each recorded harmony appeared as a different-colored rectangle, spanning the length of a wall-mounted flat-screen monitor, which Jones controlled with a smaller second monitor, keyboard and mouse pad on a rolling apparatus. A red bar enveloped a yellow bar as Brown sang over the knock of a click track—a tem-po-keeping layer of the recording that is removed from the final song. Jones leaned his chin on his hand while he listened, comparing the in-stu-dio vocals to a previous raw recording that Brown brought him to mix. After Jones began working with that version, though, he found artifacts—accidental qualities within a song that can be result of data compression or other manipulations of the sound. The two worked out a price and decided to record from scratch. “All right,” Jones said, hitting the space bar to stop the click. “I’m lost. This doesn’t sound like the same song.” Brown agreed. He had plenty of vocal ideas but was having trouble picturing how they blended. Jones suggested that they make a scratch track—a temporary track that provides a base for recording permanent ele-ments of the song—of only the lead vocals to make sure each harmony would contribute to the final product. As Brown sang the lyrics over the harmonies from behind the wall, the song took shape, and the errors became clearer. At times, Jones jotted notes and time markers for himself—things to fix. At others, he just let his head sway with the soulful melody. “See, now we’re getting somewhere,” he said, smiling.

Get Out, Don’t Leave Jones, the owner of recording studio Sonic Signature, has lived in Jackson his whole life and has produced music for a large amount of that time. In 1999, while Jones was in the ninth grade at Murrah High School, an upperclassman who had access to a studio invited him to come try his hand at engineering. He proved to have an aptitude for it and began

working in the studio during his free time. In 2003, Jones began recording professionally at 17 years old, and a year later, he opened his first commercial studio off North State Street. He launched Sonic Signature in 2006 and has moved the studio numerous times, most recently from a space off Highway 80 to its current home at 1859 S. West St. in April 2015. “I outgrew it,” Jones says. “I dealt with probably 300 people in one year’s time the last year I was in that building. … That was the plan. It was a temporary location until I found something bigger. This building has been great, hon-estly. We’re probably going to be here for four or maybe five years, but I don’t plan on stopping here.” Thanks to a background in construction that stems from his contractor father, Leroy Jones Sr., Jones has done extensive work to update his location for well under $2,500.

“That’s kind of a slight advantage I may have because I can make it into whatever I want it to be versus I know other people, once they get in a spot, they’re paying someone, and they probably have to stay there,” he says. While Jones is capable of recording everything from full rock bands to solo rappers at Sonic Signature, he isn’t a stationary enterprise. In fact, half of his production and en-gineering projects take place outside Mississippi. Clients of-

ten pay to fly him out all over the South to work on projects. He enjoys the travel, of course, but it also makes practical sense. “It keeps me from having to figure out a way to put all the tools I need in a mar-ket that really can’t support the amount of money I’d have to put here,” Jones says. “You know, I can go to Atlanta, go to a stu-dio that has millions invested into it and do what it is I need to do, for a fraction of what I’d have to pay to put it here.” For example, if he were to purchase a Solid State Logic console, he would spend around $500,000. Even some smaller items such as Pultec equalizers cost about $4,000 each. So, Jones asks, if someone already has those amenities and only charges $1,500 to use them for a session, why waste money? That doesn’t make it cheap for the re-

cording artist. Jones admits that his prices are steep for Jack-son, even higher than local industry staple Malaco Records. But charging more helps “weed through the nonsense,” he says, and it also makes time for better-paying, non-music projects in film, TV and spoken audio. Sonic Signature is a far leap from Jones’ first studio, which only charged $25 to $35 per hour. However, this even-tually opened the door to working with rising local acts like Dolla Black, Recognition and Storage 24, with whom Jones is currently recording an album. “I don’t regret charging that amount because it helped me get to where I am,” he says. “I was 18, and that was a time when there weren’t a lot of people recording their own music, so with me being young, I was probably the cheapest

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The Recording

Conundrumby Micah Smith

the music issue

Audio engineer Leroy Jones Jr. at work in his Jackson studio, Sonic Signature.

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studio in the entire city. … But now, anybody as far as urban is concerned or R&B is concerned, they know who I am.” With his increased profi le, Jones receives more calls than ever from acts that don’t understand the role that studios play in the recording industry. Many of these callers say they don’t have any money but plead for a chance. Now, if only he could call his power company and say the same thing, Jones jokes. “They feel like this is a record label,” he says. “I believe that if we had some type of way to get people to understand the structure of the music industry, even people who don’t aspire to be an artist, they would understand it is a business. … It has a struc-ture just like any other industry. You have a re-cord label. You have a stu-dio. They’re two separate things. Some record labels own a studio where they can send their artists, but they’re two separate things. I’m not Puff Daddy.” That isn’t the only misinformation fl oating around the music scene. He often hears people say they need to get out of Mississippi to succeed. He agrees, but not in the way others think. Instead, Jones urges industry hope-fuls to travel and to make connections with established professionals around the country and the world. “Get out of the state as much as you can,” he says. “Don’t leave the state; I would never tell anybody to leave the state. This is your foundation. This is your support be-cause if you leave the state, it’s like you’re starting all the way over at age 1.”

Home Base Producer Casey Combest has plenty of incentive for keeping the local recording industry thriving, as well. For many years, it’s been his home, in more ways than one. In 2002, he began recording music in his dorm during his freshman year at Mississippi College, which allowed him

to explore his interest in recording gear and to demo music for his now-defunct band, Captain & Company. Combest maintained that home-studio milieu when he opened Blue Sky Studios, but his reasons for recording have changed. Growing up in the music scene, he had plenty of friends who would travel to major music hubs like Los Angeles to record at high-priced studios. The tracks would sound good, but more often than not, his friends would come back frus-trated with the process and a producer’s unfulfi lled promises. “I wanted to be able to help people do something that was full of integrity on the business side but also excellent sounding,” Combest says. He concedes that there was a level of naïveté in begin-ning a studio hoping to be better than much more expen-sive and experienced producers, and there were situations in which he had to learn from mistakes. He remembers plenty of equipment purchases that he thought would impress cli-

ents only to be all but ignored. Instead, he has realized that people more often respond to the stu-dio space itself and how it affects their creativity. “It’s easy when you fi rst start to get confused and think recording is about the gear or even about the end product,” Combest says. “While that’s vastly important, what’s most important is the people and helping them tell their story, help-ing them achieve what they want to achieve.” Thankfully, most cli-ents don’t expect the same results from Blue Sky as

they would from a studio that charges $10,000 per song. “I hope that I’m narrowing the gap some as I continue to improve my craft,” he says. “I think that’s the big thing: Those people see it as their craft. They’ve been doing it lon-ger, and their ears are more attuned to what’s going on. I think that’s one side of it, the craft, and the other side is savvi-ness to the market and realizing what trends are going on.” While Combest has produced music under the Blue Sky Studios moniker since 2009, he decided to focus on re-cording full time in 2013, shortly after he and his wife of four years, Ryen Combest, moved to Jackson. These days, he has a steady stream of studio projects, both in and outside of music, which he divvies between himself and his part-time employees, engineer Justin Patterson and editor Bobby Han-sford, based on their different sensibilities.

Leaving a position at Madison’s Ridgecrest Baptist Church, where he assisted with worship and youth, for a ca-reer in recording wasn’t without risk, but his studio workload began to take more time than he could devote to it. “It got to the point where I had to choose between do-ing my full-time gig well or doing my part-time gig well, and I enjoyed the part-time, which was recording, a lot more,” Combest says. So far, he says, people’s reactions to learning about his career decision often fall into two categories. “If they have no idea about the music industry, they as-sume it’s a lot more glamorous than it really is, like there’s more money, or I just set up a mic and sit on a couch once a week,” he says. “Or there’s the opposite, where it’s, ‘What are you thinking? You have a family. You should get a real job.’” Since he and his wife had their fi rst child, daughter Ad-dison, in August of this year, the latter response has been on his mind more often, especially given that his home studio puts his work right in front of him at all times. “I think it would be similar to if you were working late in the offi ce and wanted to go do something social or take

17

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Formulating a Planby Micah Smith

In May of this year, Andrew Graeme, audio-media writer and owner of The Byre Recording Studio in Scotland, created a formula that gives an estimate of

how much a music-only commercial studio can make from local recording artists in a smaller city like Jack-son: (Population/1000) x (GDP per capita/1000) x 2=Annual profi t.

Here’s what that looks like when applied to Jackson:

(171.155/1000) x (28.211/1000) x 2=$9,656.91

If that number looks low, that’s because it is. By the formula, Jackson isn’t capable of supporting a single commercial studio that focuses solely on music recorded in-house. Thankfully, most local studio owners have already solved this problem, taking on additional projects for support income, including mixing or mastering work from other companies, engineering TV and fi lm audio and renting studio time to other producers and engineers.

*NUMBERS BASED ON 2013 REPORTS FROM THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE BUREAU OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS.

Casey Combest operates Blue Sky Studio out of his home in Jackson.

Interested in interviewing musicians, reviewing albums and networking within Jackson’s music community?

The Jackson Free Press is looking for

interested in covering the city’s music scene.

MUSIC WRITING

Please e-mail inquiries to micah@jacksonfreepress.com

networking within Jackson’s music community?

The Jackson Free Press is looking for

interested in covering the city’s music scene.

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off,” he says. “But the way it would be different is that your wife isn’t sitting in the cubicle next to you.” However, his wife’s support of his work, even with a newborn, has been one of the strongest factors in keeping Blue Sky together. “Seriously, it wouldn’t be possible with-out her being so understanding and loving music and … allowing me to do what I love, my dream,” Combest says. Since entering the Jackson recording arena, he’s seen his family grow in other ways, too. Combest says there’s a surprising level of cooperation between studios in the area. He often rents studio time from Mal-aco Records, and recently, he even helped Kamel King, the director of operations at Terminal Recording Studios in Ridgeland, to develop triplet bluegrass trio Long Time Coming, one of the winners of Terminal’s talent-scouting event “The Search.” “I think competition can be a good thing because it makes you work harder, but it can be bad (when) it makes you lose sight of your clients and who you want to serve,” Combest says. “And I don’t think that happens here.” One thing that Combest says keeps competition in the metro area healthy is that each studio has areas in which it most excels. To him, Blue Sky is best at working alongside artists to create something for a target market. But that doesn’t mean that all the work falls on the producer. “There’s not a plug-in for everything,” he says. “You can’t fix bad playing. … If you play like crap, I can make you sound 20 percent better.”

Opening Shop For many fans of blues, soul, and gospel, Malaco is still one of the most significant names in the Jackson music scene. Tommy Couch, his brother-in-law Mitchell Malouf and college friend Gerald “Wolf” Stephen-son founded the company first as a show-promotion business called Malaco Attractions in 1962 before opening a recording studio at 3023 W. Northside Drive five years later. Through-out the’70s and ’80s, artists such as Dorothy Moore, Johnnie Taylor, Z.Z. Hill and Denise LaSalle filed through the studio, dishing out a number of hit songs. The company, now Malaco Music Group, owns 11 sub-sidiary record labels and six distributed labels, and has mostly moved toward distribution, as well as licensing for television,

film and samples. However, a talk with Chief Engineer and Head of Studio Operations Kent Bruce reveals that Malaco hasn’t stepped as far from the spotlight as one might think. “They shot some of the James Brown movie here, and I’ve been, you know, not just making records,” he says. “I did voiceovers for ‘Blue Bloods’ on CBS, a couple ADR (au-tomated dialogue replacement) sessions for some movies, where the talent, whoever was in the movie, is in this loca-tion. … It’s a whole big mix, but we do everything.” Bruce, a Jackson native, began pursuing a career in the

music industry after high school. He knew that he and his friends weren’t going to be rock stars but loved music, so he left Mississippi in 1989 and worked at studios in cities such as Nashville and Seattle, doing whatever chores he could find to stick around. Soon, he got more involved with recording, even assisting on albums for Widespread Panic and Lynyrd Skynyrd before deciding to return to Jackson in 1995. “You sort of have to figure out in your life what you want to do,” he says. “Rock and roll is fun, you know, and I’ve done it, but at some point, you start getting older and you start going, ‘OK, I’ve got to get some more permanence.’” Shortly before moving back, Bruce approached his high-

school friend Tommy Couch Jr., the current president of Malaco Music Group and son of founder Couch Sr., about a job, and he has worked there ever since. For the last few years, that has included plenty of new music from local acts, but only a short while ago, that wouldn’t have been true. When Bruce joined Malaco in 1995, the studio had already been “closed-shop,” he says, recording only projects from the company’s own artists since the mid-1970s. Then, in April 2011, a tornado destroyed much of the studio and Malaco’s adjacent business offices. “After the tornado, everybody was debating about what we were going to do—‘Are we going to rebuild the studio?’ This, that and the other,” Bruce says. “We all decided that if we did this, rebuilt the studio, then we were going to open up and be commercial. That’s just what we needed to do.” Malaco reopened in the summer of 2012, and ever since, Bruce has brought countless Jackson artists into the studio, either for tracking or just to hang out and see the process. The studio, which currently houses more than $500,000 in recording equipment, is outfitted to serve everything from a solo acoustic act to a gospel choir. Although the space is best suited for a large-scale, full-band project, Bruce says those days are largely over. Record-ing budgets are smaller than they once were, due in apart to the decline of album sales but also the rise of workstations—digital interfaces for recording and editing audio that are more affordable than physical mixing consoles. There are benefits to that technology, with some tasks that once took Bruce a day of work now taking 15 minutes. But it’s kind of like Photoshop, he says. In the right hands, it can facilitate amazing art. In the wrong hands, it’s just a bunch of funny pictures on the Internet. “When I came up, there was no GarageBand, there was no Pro Tools, Cubase, Sonar or any of the digital audio stuff,” he says. “You had to go to a studio and sort of camp out. I mean, that’s what you did. You’d go in for a week or three weeks and make a record. … But at the end of the day, it’s all good. It gives somebody who never would have the opportunity (a way) to do something that may be great.” With the shifts in the music industry, Bruce says, the only solution for studios like Malaco is to adapt and to plan ahead, and thankfully, he feels like he’s gotten good at both of those things. He regularly rents studio time to other pro-ducers in the area and accepts mixing and mastering projects for all forms of audio, while keeping an eye on the horizon. At the same time, he knows that things could always

improve. For him, that starts with a Jackson musician who can be a successful artist without running to a bigger city to make that happen. Other musicians pay attention to that, he says. They scan through the liner notes on their favorite records and travel to the city responsible for that sound. “When that happens, then I think the whole commu-nity—Terminal (Recording Studios in Ridgeland), TRS in Pearl, Casey, myself—we’ll all benefit,” Bruce says. “When the music scene starts really gelling and something’s happen-ing and everybody doesn’t think they need to flee to Austin to do whatever, that, to me, would make everything great.” Comment at jfp.ms.

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RECORDING from page 17

the music issue

Kent Bruce is the chief engineer and head of studio operations

for Malaco Records.

• Know your music. The most expensive phrase a musician can say is, “I’ll write my parts in the stu-dio.” While a few Jackson studios charge per song, it’s much more common to pay by the hour. Being prepared shows you value the produc-er’s time and your own.

• Have too much material. If you’re recording a 10-song project, don’t walk in with 10 songs. It’s a standard record-label practice to re-quire anywhere between 25 to 50 songs or partial songs because, unfortunately, not every track that works great live will sound good on tape.

• Kill your darlings. The William Faulkner-attribut-ed quote about writing goes double for songwriting. Any recording decisions, from lyrics to production choices, should serve the greater good of the song. Be willing to step back from your work and be critical.

• Ask the hard questions. Chief among these should be, “Am I ready to record?” Con-sider whether your budget and goals match up, whether the studio or producer is the right fit, and whether you’ll follow through with the pro-motion needed to make your release successful.

Quick Studio Wisdomby Micah Smith

For any musical artist planning on making his or her own album in the future, know that the process starts long before you step foot in a studio. Here are

a few tips on how to prepare.

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Indie-rock outfit Rafiki Grove may be new to the Jackson area, but guitarist and vocalist Daniel Norris and guitar-ist Cody Warren have been writing together for nearly six

years. They first formed as The Collared Shirts in 2012 but didn’t seriously pursue the project until drummer Steven Tad-lock joined after graduating from the University of Southern Mississippi in December 2014. They brought in bassist Van Doren Lee soon after, completing the current line-up. The band just began booking its first shows last February, but it has already opened for local favorites including Light Beam Rider,

Fides, Living Together and Dream Cult. “It’s been pretty amazing,” Norris says. “Everything’s blown up really fast. We didn’t expect that we’d be playing so many shows this soon and being asked to come in and join bands. It’s encouraging.” The band’s style ranges from pop-infused surf-rock to grungy alternative. While most Rafiki Grove songs are new compositions, others are a result of Norris and Warren re-working earlier tracks, which can be challenging. “It’s a long process—a lot of stress,” Norris says. “It’s hard to pick apart a song, and you know, most of these were

written on an acoustic guitar, but we’re trying to turn them into electric songs. It takes a lot of sitting down, tinkering and thinking about … how we’re going to basically reshape it for an electric world.” Although Rafiki Grove has demos and several videos of live performances available online, the group is currently in the process of raising money for its first studio project, which the musicians hope to release before the end of 2015. For more information, visit rafikigrove.com or find the band on Facebook.

—Micah Smith22

You’ll find a solid musical center to Jackson Top 40s cover band Deez Notez. Vocalist Nikki Reed, bassist Anthony Daniels, keyboardist Marvin Curtis and drummer Steve Smith formed the group in May 2015 after first play-

ing together in the Chad Wesley Band, later adding vocalist Kendrick Vivians. In a short time, Deez Notez has already created a solid fan base with its ever-

adapting set list. Crowd-favorite tracks in-clude Ginuwine’s “Pony,” Awol-nation’s “Sail” and Tina Turner’s classic “Proud Mary,” but don’t expect to hear beat-for-beat imitations. For the musicians of Deez Notez, part of the fun is providing a new angle on famil-iar songs. Reed says that variety also helps the band cater to its mixed audience, which includes everyone from energetic college kids to veteran blues-heads. “My job is to keep the crowd interested and keep them on their toes,” Reed says. “We have a thing where we don’t re-ally like to play two slow songs close together, and we may play

a hip-hop song like (Trey Songz’s) ‘Bottoms Up’ and then go into a country song. Whenever I make a set list, I don’t ever want the crowd’s ears to get used to what’s going on. It always needs to shock them.” Even with all those variables in play, Reed says listeners can anticipate one constant. “They should expect one hell of a show,” she says. “They should bring their dancing shoes, they should bring their booties, and they should bring their grooves. It’s an experience. You never know what you’re going to get on any given night.” For more information, find Deez Notez on Facebook and Instagram.

—Micah Smith

G rowing up, music was a constant for Jackson-based hip-hop artist Tony Lofton, known to fans as Tlo da Champ. When family members would babysit him, they would lis-ten to Tupac, Biggie Smalls and Do or Die, and other times, Lofton’s dad would play

one of his favorites, R. Kelly. That soon translated to Lofton making music himself. After becoming fascinated with the wordplay on Lil Wayne’s 2004 album, “The Carter,” Lofton graduated from freestyling with friends to pursuing a hip-hop career. El-ements of that early influence have become part of his foundation as Tlo da Champ, with rhetorical devices such as double enten-dres being a regular occurrence. “I think it makes it more interesting when you can use words like that and paint a whole picture, paint portraits because it’s all art,” he says. “… I want people to hear my music and be listening to it for a minute, and every time they hear it, they catch something new.” Despite releasing a handful of success-ful singles, opening for Afroman in 2011 and working with up-and-coming hip-hop names like Joey Bada$$ and producer Chuck Strangers, Lofton hadn’t released a full-length record until recently. After working on two debut albums for about four years and recording more than 200 tracks, Lofton released the first, “Lucid Dreamzzz’s,” on Spinrilla and Soundcloud on Friday, Sept. 11. He plans to release the

second record, “Originality,” before the end of the year. “I feel like I definitely gained a lot from building attention because I performed a lot of places around here,” he says. “I met a lot of different people and let them hear my music, and everybody’s been waiting. But I also had the time to grow, to develop and feel comfortable enough to put it out.” For more information, find Tlo da Champ on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

—Micah Smith

Deez Notez

Rafiki Grove

Tlo da Champ

the music issueArtists to WatchIM

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(Left to right) Marvin Curtis, Anthony Daniels, Nikki Reed, Kendrick Vivians and Steve Smith are Jackson Top 40s cover band Deez Notez.

(Left to right) Cody Warren, Steven Tadlock, Daniel Norris and Van Doren Lee are indie-rock

Jackson hip-hop artist Tlo da Champ released his debut mixtape, “Lucid Dreamzzz’s,” on Friday, Sept. 11.

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COMING UP WEDNESDAY 10/14

NEW BOURBON STREET JAZZ BANDRestaurant 6:00-8:30pm

THURSDAY 10/15

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE BAND

Restaurant 7:00-10:00pm

SATURDAY 10/17

CROOKED CREEK

Restaurant

MONDAY 10/19CENTRAL MS BLUES SOCIETY PRESENTS: BLUE MONDAY

Restaurant - 8pm - $5

TUESDAY 10/20

BAR SMARTSWITH TOM ZUGARestaurant - 7:30pm - $2 to Play

WEDNESDAY 10/21JAMIE WEEMS AND

MARK ROEMERRestaurant 5:00-8:00pm

UPCOMING10/22: East River Rock Out featuring

Southern Komfort Brass Band

doors at 6:45 $20/per person

10/23: Ardenland presents: Andre Delano’s Jackson Homecoming Show

tickets available at www.ardenland.net

dulinghall.com

Friday, October 23

Thursday, October 15

Thursday, October 22

Tuesday, October 13

Tuesday, October 27

Thursday, November 5

Thursday, October 29

Friday, October 30

Friday, November 6

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When Lan Tolleson, vocalist of pop trio Brick City Gentlemen, wanted an opening act for a show

in May 2013, he asked keyboardist Vincent McMurtery to throw one together. Vincent approached his friend, guitarist Ben Atkin-son, and the other two members of Brick City—his twin brother, drummer Vin-son McMurtery, and saxophonist Judson Wright—about collaborating. A few short weeks later, The CUT made its debut. Since then, the Madison-based group has performed in cities across the state, in-cluding in Oxford, where Atkinson attends the University of Mississippi, and Hatties-burg, where the other band members study at the University of Southern Mississippi. Even for the musicians themselves, The CUT can be difficult to describe. Every band member provides vocals at different times, and the songs often incorporate their affinity for a variety of genres. “Depending on what song you listen

to, we incorporate funk, jazz elements, rock … and even more mainstream or poppy contemporary music,” Wright says. “We like to think of it as full circle. All these different types of music that were born out of blues and old, classic rock, I think we’re Mississippi artists trying now to bring that music back and mix it all together. It’s a big mixture of a lot of different genres.” The CUT is in the process of recording its first record, which is yet to be titled. “It’s very satisfying, but you know, at this point, we’re really just excited to give something to the people who appreciate what we’re doing,” Wright says. “At live shows, there’s such a great reaction, so it pains us to tell people that we have some demos on SoundCloud but don’t have a professional album they can listen to. But just knowing that’s on the horizon is exciting.” For more information, find the band on Facebook, Instagram and SoundCloud.

—Adria Walker

the music issueArtists to WatchC

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B aton Rouge native Stevie Cain is well acquainted with music. She learned to play violin at age 5, around the same

time that her family relocated to Jackson, and at age 12, she taught herself to play gui-tar, which helped to develop her songwriting. Cain has an intimate relationship with her music and prefers not to let elaborate bands or over-production interrupt that link. “I like to create raw and real music, just me and my guitar, which makes it easy for people to connect to, and I like to tell stories,” Cain says. In pursuit of a career as a fitness instruc-tor, she set her music aside in 2013 to focus her attention on physical training. After a workout injury landed her in a wheelchair for about four months, though, Cain de-cided to reevaluate her decision. “While in the wheelchair, I picked my music back up, and we’ve been together ever since,” she says. Since then, Cain has released a num-ber of popular song covers and is currently working on a full-length album, scheduled for release in early 2016, which she says is a result of her experiences and self-realization. “I’ve learned that time doesn’t last forev-

er, so if there’s something you need to do in life, start today,” she says. “Don’t let anything stop you and get in your way, but try to help as many people as you can along the way.” While she’s a regular around the Jackson scene, the 25-year-old singer-songwriter says she hopes to tour overseas one day, sharing her passion with an international audience. “It would be nice to be able to tour in other countries,” she says. “I want people to be touched by my music and spark a posi-tive change, where they can listen to it and be helped with something … in their lives.” For more information, find her on Face-book or visit steviecain.com.

—Fallon Brewster

Stevie Cain

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Jackson-based singer-songwriter Stevie Cain

(Left to right) Judson Wright, Vincent McMurtery, Ben Atkinson and Vinson McMurtery are Madison-based R&B-funk fusion group The CUT.

The CUT

MUSIC | live

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Two of my favorite things are wine and a patio. CAET Wine Bar in Fondren combines both, along with hospitality and good food, and all were on display on a fall evening at its latest install-

ment of Supper Club, a monthly private dining event. Each Supper Club event includes a four-to-six course menu that chef Derek Emerson designs, with wine pairings that wine director Dave Grenley chooses. In September, winemaker Paris Driggers of Sika Wines by Forgotten Barrel attended and brought selections from his Napa Valley winery for the occasion. At the beginning of the event, we were greeted with sparkling wine and raw oysters and got a chance to mingle as we found our places at three long family-style tables. I was lucky enough to be at the table where Driggers sat. To start the evening, he gave an over-view of his pedigree and of Forgotten Barrel. It’s a boutique winery that makes a few hundred cases each of about 15 wines, including the Sika label, and sells its products only in California and Mis-sissippi. After working as a wine retailer for years, Driggers started Forgotten Barrel in 2009. He says he doesn’t make wine unless it’s a “compelling” one and a bottle that he would drink himself if it didn’t sell.

Adding that the company considers its environmental im-pact a core value, he related that all the grapes he uses are organically grown and described some of the techniques of the growing process that minimize water use. With that, we moved on to the main event, which con-

sisted of five courses. With each course, Driggers spoke a bit about the wine selected. The meal started with a crisp white chardonnay that paired well with the chef’s shellfish broth and grilled bread.

Seafood, wine and family-style seating made the first course reminiscent of a low country boil, and we settled in comfortably to conversation with new friends that continued as we moved on to a pompano with basil risotto and tomato-lemon butter sauce paired with another chardonnay. As the courses progressed, both the proteins and their pairings grew bolder and more substantial. For course three, a cabernet Franc was served with a leg of lamb with olive-caper feta couscous and minted pesto. The last course before dessert ended up having my favorite wine of the night, a cabernet sauvignon. The course could have been a study in reds; the rich red was served with duck breast and braised red cabbage with a dried cherry compote. Rounding out the evening was a goat-cheese cheesecake and dried fruit paired with Forgotten Barrel Red Lot #5150. Driggers shared that the wine’s name is a nod to the police code number for a call involving a mentally unstable person, because other winemakers called him crazy for creating the wine by blending grapes from one of the oldest and most pedigreed vineyards in Napa Valley with a Zinfandel. When Driggers talks about this wine, and the others, his pride in his work and the care with which he makes his wines shines through, but it’s also clear that he has a lot of fun. For more information on Supper Club at CAET Wine Bar (3100 N. State St., Suite 102, 601.321.9169), visit caetwine-bar.com or find the bar on Facebook.

Fro-Yo, Yo Anthony Ritter, owner of GLO De-sign Studio in Fondren, is bringing a new dessert option to Jackson in the form of Fondren Fro-Yo, a frozen-yogurt shop un-der construction in a space Ritter rents at the Woodland Hills Shopping Center. A few months ago, Fondren Renais-sance Foundation Executive Director Jim Wilkirson approached him about bring-ing in a fun, family-oriented business to fill an empty storefront. Ritter looked at the local businesses in the area and found that Jackson lacked any kind of self-serve yogurt destination, despite the suburban areas having many. “We don’t have a lot of things that many suburbs do,” Ritter said. “Something like this in Fondren would benefit from the foot traffic we al-ready have while also increasing that traffic in a positive way and adding great things that nobody else in Jackson has.” Ritter learned about the frozen yo-gurt business from Laurie Dahlam, who owned the now-closed Millie D’s inside the Belhaven building. She sold Ritter her

equipment and will continue to train him through the shop’s first days. Once com-plete, Fondren Fro-Yo will offer 15 flavors, including cookies and cream with Reese’s Peanut Butter cups and hot fudge. The shop will also have seasonal flavors such as eggnog and weekly special flavors like Cali-fornia tart, a Greek-style sour yogurt. Ritter hopes to open by Nov. 19, in time for the annual Fondren Unwrapped event. If that date falls through, he will open by January 2016 and time the opening with a neighborhood event, such as Fondren’s First Thursday. Ritter will continue to run GLO and has hired a full-time manager to oversee Fondren Fro-Yo. Hours of op-eration for the shop are still undecided. For more information, contact Ritter at GLO Design Studio (2951 Old Canton Road, glodesignstudio.com) at 601-368-9755.

Restaurant Closures Sadly, it seems Jackson will have to say farewell to La Finestra (120 N. Con-gress St., Suite 3). Its lease recently ran out, and owner Tom Ramsey has chosen not to renew it. The restaurant will serve its final meal on Sunday, Oct. 18. One thing Ramsey is interested in doing is continuing to host pop-up din-ners in Jackson, such as his ongoing Stäge series at Taste of the Island Carib-bean (436 E. Capitol St., 601-360-5900, tasteoftheisland.net), which will continue throughout October. He is looking into

doing pop-ups at more local Jackson res-taurants, as well as the possibility of tak-ing things on the road and bringing his cuisine to restaurants in other states. Julep Restaurant and Bar—the sis-ter establishment of Mint the Restaurant at the Renaissance in Ridgeland, which filed for bankruptcy in June—has now closed, as well. Many Jacksonians, including res-taurateur Jeff Good, have been mourning

the loss of Patrick and Mary Kelly’s fre-quent Best of Jackson award-winning bar on social media. “Saddened to learn of the closing of Ju-lep, our 13-year-plus neighbor in Highland Village Shopping Center,” Good posted on Facebook. “From the day they opened, Patrick

Kelly and Mary Arnold Kelly pushed the boundaries offering a unique twist on Southern/American food with a healthy serving of fun. They built a corporate culture second to none ... their staff a true family ... they even got their own hashtag, #julepnation. “You ran the race very well, Patrick and Mary. You provided an extraordinary place for sustenance of the body and the soul. Thank you for what you did for Jackson. We all hope to see something great spring forth with your stamp on it in the future.” Members of Julep’s staff also spoke out about their sadness over the Kellys’ establishment departing the Jackson restaurant scene. “Working at Julep has been, without a doubt, the most rewarding and positive ex-periences yet,” Mallory Lewis posted on Fa-cebook. “I absolutely love everyone I have met and all the opportunities I have been blessed with while working here. Thank you to all that have made this place home, the amazing regulars and, of course, the in-credible kitchen staff! Love you all!” The Islander Seafood and Oys-ter House (1220 E. Northside Drive) is closing, although owner Chris Jacobs declined to comment on the matter. The Ridgeland location of Applebee’s (900 E. County Line Road) has also closed, but Applebee’s media relations could not be reached for comment. Email news to dustin@jacksonfreepress.com.

Wine, a Patio and a Supper Club by Julie Skipper

FoodNewsby Dustin Cardon

LIFE&STYLE | food&drink

JULIE SK

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CAET Wine Bar hosts its supper clubs each month.

Julep Restaurant’s fried chicken

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UPCOMING SHOWS10/23 - Futurebirds w/ Young Valley

10/24 - Col. Bruce Hampton

10/25 - Tom Hamilton’s American Babies featuring Tom Hamilton of Phil & Friends, Billy & The Kids (Bill Kreutzmann), Joe Russo’s Almost Dead and Electron

10/31 - Halloween Bash (Contest, Prizes, Giveaways) with Mr. Sipp11/8 - The Magic Beans

11/21 - Earphunk12/19 - Mike Dillon Band

12/25 - Martins Annual Christmas Show w/ Robby Peoples & Friends

12/26 - Young Valley

Wednesday, October 14

HOWARD JONES JAZZ6:30 PM

Thursday, October 15

STEVIE CAIN5:30 PM

Friday, October 16

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Tuesday, October 20

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10-30 SOUTHERN KOMFORT BRASS BAND @9PM

10-31 GHOST TOWN BLUES BAND@9PM

11-6 BRANDON SANTINI 11-7 EDDIE COTTON

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AMERICAN/SOUTHERN CUISINEBasil’s (2906 N State St #104, Jackson, 601-982-2100) Paninis pizza, pasta, soups and salads. They’ve got it all on the menu.Broad Street Bakery (4465 Interstate 55 N. 601-362-2900) Hot breakfast, coffee drinks, fresh breads & pastries, gourmet deli sandwiches.The Feathered Cow (4760 I-55 North 769-233-8366) Simple and homemade equal quality and freshness every time. You never leave The Cow hungry!Primos Cafe (2323 Lakeland 601-936-3398/ 515 Lake Harbour 601-898-3400)A Jackson institution for breakfast, blue-plates, catfish, burgers, prime rib, oysters, po-boys & wraps. Famous bakery!Rooster’s (2906 N State St, Jackson, 601-982-2001)You haven’t had a burger until you’ve had a Rooster’s burger. Pair it with their seasoned fries and you’re in heaven. Two Sisters Kitchen (707 N. Congress St. 601-353-1180) Lunch. Mon-Fri, Sun.

PIZZASal & Mookie’s (565 Taylor St. 601-368-1919) Pizzas of all kinds plus pasta, eggplant Parmesan, fried ravioli & ice cream for the kids!Mellow Mushroom (275 Dogwood Blvd, Flowood, 601-992-7499) More than just great pizza and beer. Open Monday - Friday 11-10 and Saturday 11-11.

ITALIANBRAVO! (4500 Interstate 55 N., Jackson, 601-982-8111) Award-winning wine list, Jackson’s see-and-be-seen casual/upscale dining. Fratesi’s (910 Lake Harbour, Ridgeland, 601-956-2929) Fratesi’s has been a staple in Jackson for years, offering great Italian favorites with loving care. The tiramisu is a must-have! La Finestra (120 N Congress St #3, Jackson, 601-345-8735) Chef Tom Ramsey’s downtown Jackson hot-spot offers authentic Italian cuisine in cozy, inviting environment.

STEAK, SEAFOOD & FINE DININGThe Islander Seafood and Oyster House (1220 E Northside Drive, Suite 100, 601-366-5441)Oyster bar, seafood, gumbo, po’boys, crawfish and plenty of Gulf Coast delights in a laid-back Buffet-style atmosphere. The Manship Wood Fired Kitchen (1200 North State St. #100 601-398-4562) Transforms the essence of Mediterranean food and southern classics.The Penguin (1100 John R Lynch Street, 769-251-5222) Fine dining at its best.Rocky’s (1046 Warrington Road, Vicksburg 601-634-0100) Enjoy choice steaks, fresh seafood, great salads, hearty sandwiches.Sal and Phil’s Seafood (6600 Old Canton Rd, Ridgeland 601-957-1188)Great Seafood, Poboys, Lunch Specials, Boiled Seafood, Full Bar, Happy Hour Specials Saltine Oyster Bar (622 Duling Avenue 601-982-2899) Creative seafood classics. One of Jackson’s Best New Restaurants.

MEDITERRANEAN/GREEKAladdin Mediterranean Grill (730 Lakeland Drive 601-366-6033) Delicious authentic dishes including lamb dishes, hummus, falafel, kababs, shwarma.Vasilios Greek Cusine (828 Hwy 51, Madison 601-853-0028) Authentic greek cuisine since 1994, specializing in gyros, greek salads, baklava cheesecake & fresh daily seafood. Zeek’s House of Gyros (132 Lakeland Heights Suite P, Flowood 601.992.9498) Jackson’s Newest Greek Restaurant, offering authentic gyros, hummus, and wide selection of craft beers.

BARBEQUEChimneyville (970 High St, Jackson 601-354-4665 www.chimneyville.com) Family style barbeque restaurant and catering service in the heart of downtown Jackson.Hickory Pit Barbecue (1491 Canton Mart Rd. 601-956-7079) The “Best Butts in Town” features BBQ chicken, beef and pork along with burgers and po’boys. Pig and Pint (3139 N State St, Jackson, 601-326-6070) Serving up competition style barbecue along with one of the of best beer selections in metro.

COFFEE HOUSESCups Espresso Café (Multiple Locations, www.cupsespressocafe.com)Jackson’s local group of coffeehouses offer a wide variety of espresso drinks. Wi-fi.

BARS, PUBS & BURGERSBonny Blair’s (1149 Old Fannin Rd 769-251-0692) Traditional Irish pub food and live entertainment. Open 11am daily. Burgers and Blues (1060 E. County Line Rd. 601-899-0038) Best Burger of 2013, plus live music and entertainment!Fenian’s Pub (901 E. Fortification St. 601-948-0055) Classic Irish pub featuring a menu of traditional food, pub sandwiches & Irish beers on tap.Hal and Mal’s (200 S. Commerce St. 601-948-0888) Pub favorites meet Gulf Coast and Cajun specialties like red beans and rice, the Oyster Platter or daily specials.ISH Grill & Bar (5105 I 55 N Frontage Rd. 769-257-5204) Jackson’s newest hot spot offering classic foods and cocktails in a refined and elegant atmosphere.Legends Grill (5352 Lakeland Dr. 601-919-1165) Your neighborhood Sports Bar and Grill.Martin’s Restaurant and Lounge (214 South State Street 601-354-9712) Lunch specials, pub appetizers or order from the full menu of po-boys and entrees. Full bar, beer selection.Ole Tavern on George Street (416 George St. 601-960-2700) Pub food with a southern flair: beer-battered onion rings, chicken & sausage gumbo, salads, sandwiches.One Block East ( 642 Tombigbee St. 601-944-0203)Burger joint and dive bar located in downtown Jackson. Great music, tasty beverages and Bad Ass Burgers is what we do.Underground 119 (119 South President St. 601-352-2322) Upscale Southern cuisine, gumbo, red beans and rice, fried green tomatoes, grilled or fried shrimp, catfish, kitchen open with full menu till 1 am on Friday and Saturday night.

ASIAN AND INDIANFusion Japanese and Thai Cuisine (1002 Treetops Blvd, Flowood 601-664-7588/1030-A Hwy 51, Madison 601-790-7999)Specializing in fresh Japanese and Thai cuisine, an extensive menu features everything from curries to fresh sushi.Ichiban Chinese (359 Ridge Way - Dogwood Promenade, Flowood 601-919-8879) Asian food with subtle and surprising flavors from all across the Far East! Surin of Thailand (3000 Old Canton Road, Suite 105, Jackson 601-981-3205) Jackson’s Newest Authentic Thai & Sushi Bar with 26 signature martini’s and extensive wine list.

VEGETARIANHigh Noon Café (2807 Old Canton Road in Rainbow Plaza 601-366-1513) Jackson’s own strict vegetarian (and very-vegan-friendly) restaurant adjacent to Rainbow Whole Foods.

WEDNESDAY 10/14 The Jackson 2000 October Luncheon is 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Arts Center of Mississippi (201 E. Pascagoula St.). Members of the Latin American Business Association (LABA) of Mississippi will provide an update on the state of the Hispanic community and present a Latin dance dem-onstration. RSVP. $12, $10 members; call 960-1500; email todd@jacksonfreepress.com; jackson2000.org.

THURSDAY 10/15 The Women’s Foundation of Mississippi Annual Meeting is from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Old Capitol Inn (226 N. State St.). Speakers include Laurene Jobs, Donna Barksdale and Toni Cooley. Includes lunch. Lim-ited seating. RSVP. Free; call 601-326-3001; email kathy@womensfoundationms.org; womensfoundationms.org. … The Dirty Dozen Brass Band performs at 7:30 p.m. at Dul-ing Hall (622 Duling Ave.). The New Orleans-style jazz band has been performing for 35 years. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. $15 in advance, $20 at the door, $3 surcharge for patrons under 21; call 601-292-7121; email arden@ardenland.net; ardenland.net. … “The Rocky Horror Show” is at 7:30 p.m. at the Alamo Theater (333 N. Farish St.). For mature audiences. Free parking adjacent to theater; security patrols provided. Additional dates: Oct. 16-18, 7:30 p.m. $25-$35; call 601-301-2281; fondrentheatreworkshop.org.

FRIDAY 10/16 Jacktoberfest is from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Con-gress Street between Amite and Capitol streets. The annual event features craft beer, brats and other Ger-man street food, and music from Ethel, Brotherly Love, Fides, European Theater and more. Free; email jack@jacktoberfest.com; jacktoberfest.com. … The Japan Mass Choir performs at 7:30 p.m. at The Church Tri-umphant Global (6531 Dogwood View Parkway). The gospel choir performs to promote its latest album, “Powerful: Living in His Body As One.” Reservation includes two free tickets; call 977-0007; request tickets at pastor@thechurchtriumphant.info; triumphant.tv.

SATURDAY 10/17 “3rd Eye Cypher, Part 1 (Illmatic Sessions)” is from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Historic Farish Street District (Farish Street). The concert and live video recording features 10 hip-hop artists and instrumentals. Free; find the event on Facebook. … “The Joking Around Comedy Series: The Domestic Vio-lence Awareness Show” is from 8 to 10:30 p.m. at The Hide-away (Deville Plaza, 5100 Interstate 55 N. Frontage Road). $15-$20; call 601-709-7894.

SUNDAY 10/18 Art Bar Pop Trivia is at 7 p.m. at the Mississippi Museum of Art (380 S. Lamar St.). daniel johnson, art-ist and MMA Director of Engagement and Learning, is the host. Teams are challenged to an art and pop culture inspired game of trivia. Cash bar included. Free; call 601-960-1515; msmuseumart.org.

MONDAY 10/19 Author Garth Risk Hallberg signs copies of his best-selling novel, “City on Fire,” at 5 p.m. at Lemuria Books (Banner Hall, 4465 Interstate 55 N., Suite 202). Reading at 5:30 p.m. $30 book; call 601-366-7619; email info@le-muriabooks.com; lemuriabooks.com. … The Stäge Pop-up Dinner is from 6:30 to 11 p.m. at Taste of the Island Carib-bean (436 E. Capitol St.). Enjoy an exotic seven-course din-ner from La Finestra owner Tom Ramsey. Ticket required. BYOB. $50; call 601-624-7267; stagepopup.com.

TUESDAY 10/20 “A Monster of A Murder Mystery” Dinner The-ater is at 7 p.m. at Biaggi’s (970 Highland Colony Park-way, Ridgeland). Fringe Dinner Theatre show includes a three-course meal, Thriller/Time Warp-themed dance lessons and costume contest. RSVP. $45 plus tax and tip; call 601-941-3816; fringedinnertheatre.com.

WEDNESDAY 10/21 Country and Blues Rock for Recovery is from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at Duling Hall (622 Duling Ave.). Performers include Todd Thompson and the Lucky Hand Blues Band. Also in-cludes live and silent auctions, refreshments and door prizes. Benefits the McCoy House for Sober Living. $20 in advance, $25 at the door; call 946-0578; themccoyhouse.com. 29

THURSDAY 10/15’sipp Sourced with Chef Nick Wallace is at the Mississippi Museum of Art.

WEDNESDAY 10/14The Mississippi State Fair is at the Mississippi State Fairgrounds.

SATURDAY 10/17“Pops I: Symphantastic” is at Thalia Mara Hall.

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The Dirty Dozen Brass Band performs at Duling Hall on Thursday, Dec. 15.

BY MICAH SMITH

EVENTS@JACKSONFREEPRESS.COM

FAX: 601-510-9019DAILY UPDATES AT

JFPEVENTS.COM Producer Jett Edwards brings the Japan Mass Choir to The Church Triumphant Global on Friday, Oct. 16.

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Jackson 2000 October Luncheon Oct. 14, 11:45 a.m.-1 p.m., at Arts Center of Mississippi (201 E. Pascagoula St.). Members of the Latin American Business Association (LABA) of Mississippi will provide an update on the state of the Hispanic community and present a Latin dance demonstra-tion. RSVP. Attire is casual or business casual. $12, $10 members; call 960-1500; email todd@jacksonfreepress.com; jackson2000.org.

“The Rocky Horror Show” Oct. 15-18, 7:30 p.m., at Alamo Theater (333 N. Farish St.). Fondren Theatre Workshop presents Richard O’Brien’s Broadway musical. For mature audi-ences; feel free to dress in costumes; no props or callbacks please. Free parking adjacent to theater; security patrols provided. $25-$35; call 601-301-2281; fondrentheatreworkshop.org.

Jacktoberfest Oct. 16, 11 a.m.-11 p.m., on Con-gress Street between Amite and Capitol streets. The annual event features craft beer, brats and other German street food, and music from Ethel, Brotherly Love, Fides, European Theater and more. Free; email jack@jacktoberfest.com; jacktoberfest.com.

Women’s Foundation of Mississippi Annual Meeting Oct. 15, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., at Old Capitol Inn (226 N. State St.). Speakers include Laurene Jobs, Donna Barksdale and Toni Cooley. Includes lunch. Limited seating. RSVP. Free; call 601-326-3001; email kathy@womensfounda-tionms.org; womensfoundationms.org.

Events at Jackson Convention Complex (105 E. Pascagoula St.)

Oct. 15, 6-9 p.m. The Mississippi Center for Justice is the host. Honorees include outgoing University of Mississippi Chancellor Dan Jones and award-winning poet Natasha Trethewey. RSVP. $100; call 601-709-0859; mscenterforjustice.org.

Oct. 19-20, 8 a.m.-6:30 p.m., Oct. 21, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. The annual conference is for nonprofits and mission-based agencies. Topics include com-munity engagement, money matters, leadership and volunteering. Registration required. $189 through Aug. 26, $249 after; call 601-407-2747 or 601-665-3975; email info@positionedfor-progress.com; positionedforprogress.com.

Millsaps Friday Forum Oct. 16, 12:30 p.m., at Millsaps College, Ford Academic Complex (1701 N. State St.). In room 215. Rev. Ed King speaks on the topic, “Race War and Genocide: A Histori-cal Perspective from the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement.” Free; call 601-974-1061; email ken-neth.townsend@millsaps.edu; millsaps.edu.

Oct. 17, 10 a.m., at Willie Morris Library (4912 Old Canton Road). The league meets to discuss a study under way regarding the extent to which political campaigns are protected speech under the First Amendment. Open to the public. Free; call 601-352-4616.

Events at Mississippi Museum of Art (380 S. Lamar St.)

Oct. 16, 10:30 a.m. This educational opportunity ages 5 and under and their parents features a hands-on art activity and story time. Please dress for mess. Free; call 601-960-1515; msmuseumart.org.

Oct. 18, 2-4 p.m. School teacher Lesley Collins guides families in conversations around works from the permanent collection and relat-ed studio projects in the classroom. $30 for one child and parents, $15 each additional child; call 601-960-1515; msmuseumart.org.

‘sipp Sourced with Chef Nick Wallace Oct. 15, 11 a.m.-2 p.m., Oct. 15, 5:30 p.m., Oct. 16-17, 11 a.m.-2 p.m., at Mississippi Museum of Art (380 S. Lamar St.). Order from a pop-up menu featuring products from Mississippi sources. Food prices vary; call 601-960-1515; msmuseumart.org.

Oct. 19, 6:30-11 p.m., at Taste of the Island Caribbean (436 E. Capitol St.). Enjoy an exotic seven-course dinner from La Fin-estra owner Tom Ramsey. Ticket required. BYOB. $50; call 601-624-7267; stagepopup.com.

Zombie Run Oct. 17, 8-10 p.m., at Traceway Park (200 Soccer Row, Clinton). The run/walk includes a one-mile route for “zombies” only, and a 5K for humans and “zombies.” Winners get coupon priz-es. Costumes encouraged. Registration required. Free entry with donation of a 3.5-pound bag of candy; call 924-6082; clintonparksandrec.com.

Climate Movement Film Festival Oct. 16, 6-9 p.m., Oct. 17, 4-8 p.m., at Chokwe Lumumba Center for Economic Democracy (939 W. Capi-tol St.). Films include “A Fierce Green Fire” and “10 Years After Katrina.” Benefits Cooperation Jackson’s “Freedom Road” delegation to Paris for the COP21 Climate Negotiations and Global Convergence for Climate Justice. $10-$15; call 208-0090; cooperationjackson.org.

Oct. 17, 7 p.m., at Madison Central High School (1417 Highland Colony Parkway, Madison). The play is about three wom-en who are affected by breast cancer in different ways. A portion of proceeds goes to the American Cancer Society. $10 in advance, $15; call 601-946-6328; email theneylands@bellsouth.net.

Mississippi State Fair Oct. 14-15, 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Oct. 16, 11 a.m.-1 a.m., Oct. 17, 9 a.m., Oct. 18, 11 a.m.-10 p.m., at Mississippi State Fairgrounds (1207 Mississippi St.). Includes livestock shows, rides, food, games and concerts. Performers include Bell Biv DeVoe, Cory Smith and Joe Nichols. $5, children under 6 free; call 601-961-4000 or 601-353-0603; msfair.net.

Oct. 15, 7:30 p.m., at Duling Hall (622 Duling Ave.). $15 in advance, $20 at the door, $3 surcharge for patrons under 21; call 601-292-7121; email arden@arden-land.net; ardenland.net.

cert Oct. 15, 7:30 p.m., at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral (305 E. Capitol St.). Barry Hause, guitar, and John Paul, piano, perform Beethoven sonatas for cello and piano. $20; call 594-5584; email info@ancientmusic.org; ancientmusic.org.

Oct. 17, 7-9 p.m., at Historic Farish Street District (Farish Street). The concert features 10 hip-hop artists. Free; find the event on Facebook.

Japan Mass Choir Oct. 16, 7:30 p.m., at The

Church Triumphant Global (6531 Dogwood View Parkway). The internationally-known gospel choir performs to promote their latest album, “Powerful: Living in His Body As One.” RSVP recommended. Reservation includes two free tick-ets; call 601-977-0007; request tickets at pastor@thechurchtriumphant.info; triumphant.tv.

Oct. 17, 7:30 p.m., at Thalia Mara Hall (255 E. Pascagoula St.). The Mississippi Symphony Orchestra presents music from “Downton Abbey,” “The Piano,” “Love Actually,” “Jurassic Park,” “Shawshank Redemp-tion,” Mannheim Steamroller and the Beatles. $18 and up; call 601-960-1565; msorchestra.com.

(Banner Hall, 4465 Interstate 55 N., Suite 202)

Oct. 15, 4:30 p.m. Mike Curato signs books. $17.99 book; call 601-366-7619; email info@lemuriabooks.com; lemuriabooks.com.

Oct. 19, 5 p.m. Garth Risk Hallberg signs books. Reading at 5:30 p.m. $30 book; call 601-366-7619; email info@lemuria-books.com; lemuriabooks.com.

Author Nikki Skies Oct. 15, 6-7:30 p.m., at Jackson State University’s Margaret Walker Center (Ayer Hall, 1400 John R. Lynch St.). The Atlanta poet, author and playwright reads from her novel, “The Town Dance.” Free; call 601-979-3935.

Seasoned Students Oct. 15, 10:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m., at Mississippi Museum of Art (380 S. Lamar St.). Participants ages 55 and older tour the exhibi-tions and do a hands-on art project. Lunch sold separately. Registration required. $12; call 601-960-1515; msmuseumart.org.

Oct. 15, 5:30-8 p.m., at Mississippi Museum of Art (380 S. Lamar St.). See works that the late artist Marie Hull influenced and purchase cuisine from Chef Nick Wallace. Includes cash bar. Free; call 601-960-1515; msmuseumart.org.

Oct. 15, 7-9 p.m., at Blaylock Fine Art Photography Studio and Gallery (3017 N. State St.). See Polaroid photography from Maude Schuyler Clay, Langdon Clay, Richard McCabe, Ashley Gates, Anne Bryant, Jackie Losset and David McCa-rty. Free; call 601-874-0721; email dnmlaw@gmail.com; find the event Best Before: Instant Photography on Facebook.

Oct. 21, 6:30-9 p.m., at Duling Hall (622 Duling Ave.). Performers include Todd Thompson and the Lucky Hand Blues Band. Also live and silent auctions, refreshments, door prizes. Proceeds benefit McCoy House for Sober Living. $20 advance, $25 at door; call 601-946-0578; email arden@ardenland.net; themccoyhouse.com.

Check jfpevents.com for updates and more listings, or to add your own events online. You can also email event details to events@jacksonfreepress.com to be added to the calendar. The deadline is noon the Wednesday prior to the week of publication.

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31

F or the Oct. 1 Fondren’s First Thurs-day, you may have noticed Fondren Theatre Workshop players dressed in black 50s-style clothes, singing and

dancing on Salsa Mississippi’s portable dance fl oor. They were promoting the company’s production of “The Rocky Horror Show.” The original play tells the story of Janet and Brad (played by Jessica Rahaim and Josh Harris, respectively, in FTW’s current pro-duction), a newly engaged couple, who fi nd themselves mixed up with mad transsexual scientist Frank N. Furter (Chad King), his creation, Rocky Horror (Chris Mason), who is a Frankenstein-esque man, and a horde of other quirky characters. Written by Richard O’Brien in the early 1970s, “The Rocky Horror Show” initially premiered in 1973 at the Royal Court Theatre in London. On Aug. 14, 1975, the fi lm adaptation of the play, called “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” premiered in London. Thirty-three years after the play’s pre-mier in England, FTW put on its initial pro-duction of it in 2006. J.C. Patterson, who is directing this year’s play, also directed the fi rst one. The troupe did the play every other year until 2014, when interests in other works took precedence. It was then decided that “The Rocky Horror Show” would be performed in odd years. “It’s been a three-year hiatus this time, but it’s just something we like to do,” Howell says. Locations have moved from the Pix/Capri Theatre in Fondren to Hal & Mal’s, and this year, it’s at the Alamo Theater on Farish Street. FTW was founded in 2003. Howell says that year, a group of theater friends got together and decided they wanted to do some theater in their own backyard. The group hosted an organizational meet-ing to see who would be interested in par-ticipating. About 40 people attended, and FTW was born.

“Our very fi rst show was ‘Through the Looking Glass,’” Howell says. “We did it in the old Duling School before it was reno-vated. It sort of took off from there.” While some actors in the FTW pro-duction of “The Rocky Horror Show” have had years of experience, others are novices. “Every show, every cast that we do is usually a good mix of people who have done a lot of done a lot of things locally with people who have never done any-thing,” Howell says. “Some of the best performances come out of people that have never done a single show.” Fondren Theatre Workshops’ produc-tion of “The Rocky Horror Show” tends to draw larger audiences, about 100 to 200 attendees. The venue itself seats 535 people and has a stage the size of the one at New Stage Theatre. Those familiar with the play’s experi-ence will be used to seeing audience mem-bers dressed up like characters from the original play and fi lm. “We encourage audi-ence members to dress up, but not act out,” Howell says. “It’s a live performance that’s ac-tually structured a little differently from the fi lm, and people memorize the fi lm. There’s certain lines in the fi lm that aren’t even in the play. ... We discourage bringing props and stuff like that, and the callbacks too, because you have live actors, and it’s a distraction.” Patterson encourages audience and cast members alike to have fun. “It’s Halloween season and we’re doing it very close to Halloween,” he says. “That’s what it’s all about. When you think about ‘Rocky Horror’ and Halloween, it’s time to dress up and ... have a good time.”

Fondren Theatre Workshop’s produc-tion of “The Rocky Horror Show” is Oct. 15-18 at the Alamo Theater (333 N. Farish St., 601-352-3365). Performances begin at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $35, and all seating is reserved. For more information, visit fondrentheatreworkshop.org.

DIVERSIONS | arts

Do the Time Warpby Adria Walker

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Chad King, who plays Frank N. Furter in Fondren Theatre Workshop’s production of “The Rocky Horror Show,” rehearses for the performance as other cast members look on.

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W hen Jackson State Uni-versity let go of Rick Comegy after the 2013 season, it was a shocking

move for a program coming off two appearances in the SWAC Champion-ship Game, even though the team lost both times. Comegy made JSU one of the more consistent programs in the SWAC. The university made another shocking decision when it decided to name former star player Harold Jack-son as the new head coach. Jackson had plenty of assistant-coaching experience but not much in the way of being a head coach. Nonetheless, the Tigers reached back into their storied history with him in hopes that he could keep them near the top of the SWAC. That plan failed badly, as JSU let Jackson go last week after just 17 games as the head football coach. Comegy coached 91 games at the school with a record of 56-35. Jackson, on the other hand, was let go with a 6-11 record during a bye week in the middle of the season. It isn’t just the football head coach position that is causing an uproar at Jackson State. Vivian Fuller once filled the athletic-director position, but she recently became the associate vice pro-vost for student affairs. Robert Walker was interim ath-letic director after her, but he stepped down a few weeks before Jackson was fired. Now, two of the most important positions in the JSU athletic depart-ment are vacant. JSU fans expect to have a winning football season, and why shouldn’t they? The Tigers have a long and proud tradition of being one of the best teams in the SWAC. Fans questioned the hiring of Jackson but were ready to rally behind him for the success of the team. Fans quickly began to rumble when he got off to a bad start last season, but they quieted down when the Tigers ended that year with a win against Alcorn State University. This season was supposed to be one of promise as JSU battled Alcorn State for the SWAC East title. Instead, the Tigers’ defense is Swiss cheese, as the offense couldn’t keep up in shootouts, even with star quarterback LaMontiez Ivy. The Tigers now turn to wide receivers coach, who JSU named interim head coach, Der-

rick McCall, to finish out this season. This year looks to be lost for Jack-son State, as the team currently sits at 1-4 overall with 1-2 in SWAC play. But the next few months might be some of the most important in the Tigers’

football history. JSU needs to find a new ath-letic director quickly so it can begin a coaching search. And the new athletic director and the head coach must be on the same page. The new head coach doesn’t nec-essarily need to have head coaching ex-perience, but he has to be the best man for the job. Alcorn State made waves when it hired current head coach Jay

Hopson, since he also had no previous experience with head coaching (and he’s the first white SWAC coach in the his-tory of the conference), but the athletic department felt like it hired the best candidate for the job.

The JSU new coach will need time. The university can’t keep firing coaches quickly and ever hope to turn things around. That doesn’t mean letting go of Jackson was a wrong move. He was the wrong choice, and the new coach will have to fix his mistakes. The next few months will have a long effect over the Tigers’ program. Jackson State has to get these next two hires right the first time.

32

Turmoil at Jackson State

DIVERSIONS | jfp sportsC

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JAC

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Jackson State University has some tough decisions to make after Robert

Head Coach Harold Jackson (pictured).

by Amber Helsel

THURSDAY, OCT 15 NFL (7:25-11 p.m., CBS/NFLN): At 1-4, it looks like the New Orleans Saints are playing for next season but can ruin the perfect record of their archrivals, the Atlanta Falcons, with a win.

FRIDAY, OCT 16 College football (8-10:15 p.m., ES-PNU): The Houston Cougars look to stay undefeated as they head east to face the Tu-lane Green Wave.

SATURDAY, OCT 17 College football (11 a.m.-2:30 p.m., ABC): The University of Mississippi Reb-els could face a stiff test on the road against the undefeated Memphis Tigers. … Col-lege football (11 a.m.-2:30 p.m., SECN): Mississippi State looks to win against Louisiana Tech. … (6-9 p.m., WLOO): Southern Miss celebrates its homecoming with a game against UTSA.

SUNDAY OCT 18 NFL (7:30-11 p.m., NBC): Plenty of players with Mississippi football ties will be on the field when the Indianapolis Colts host the New England Patriots.

MONDAY, OCT 19 NFL (7:30-11 p.m., ESPN): Eli Manning leads the New York Giants on the road against division rival, the Philadelphia Eagles.

TUESDAY, OCT 20 College football (7-10 p.m., ESPN2): Arkansas State and Louisiana-Lafayette rosters have several players with Missis-sippi ties. Watch as the teams battle against each other.

WEDNESDAY, OCT 21 NBA (7-9:30 p.m., ESPN): If the foot-ball season isn’t going your way, get ready for some basketball with preseason NBA action as the Washington Wizards face the Miami Heat. Ohio State (102) passes Oklahoma (101) for times most times the AP college-football poll has ranked a team No. 1. Eight teams have had that ranking 60 or more times.

Jackson State returns to the field for the first time since head coach Harold Jackson was dismissed last week. The question is, how will the Tigers will respond against Alabama A&M?

by Bryan FlynnSLATE

the best in sports over the next seven days

Follow Bryan Flynn at jfpsports.com, @jfpsports and at facebook.com/jfpsports.

33

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SCARY GOOD CREEPY CUTSThursday, October 15 - Saturday, October 17

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In recent weeks, it’s occurred to me that since I now live on my own, I can decorate for every holiday I want. For me, that means Halloween.

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Directions.Using a piece of sandpaper, sand down the side of your shelving you want to paint. Make sure all 1. the finish is off the wood before you do anything else to it. If it’s not, the paint will bead up.Once the piece is sanded down, paint it black or white, depending on the design you want. Once 2. that layer is dry, give it another coat. Then, once that’s dry, paint your design. I did the Slytherin house crest for mine.3. When the paint is dry, flip the shelving over. Starting about an inch and a half below the top, 4. measure the width. Divide that measurement in half. Make a mark in the middle. Go out an inch on each side and make a mark. Drill small holes where you made those marks and then put the screws in, leaving them a little bit out to have a place for your string.Measure the space between the holes and then triple the number. This is the measurement for 5. the string.Wrap the string around the screws three times and then tie it at each end. Hang it on your door. 6.

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WE ALSO CATER!VISIT OUR GROCERY STORE NEXT DOOR.

ORDER OUR ORDER OUR ORDER OUR

Best Barbecue in Jackson

Come try our AWARD

WINNING BBQ

and see why we keep getting voted for Best BBQ not only in

Jackson but in the State!

C! ole and the Coolhands

Providing the perfect blend of music for all occasions! We cover genres including but not limited to classic rock, country, soft rock, blues and jazz. We have

played at Underground 119, Pelican Cove, Georgia Blue, and More.

Perfect entertainment for birthday parties, weddings,

corporate events, restaurants and more!

Call Carole today and book Carole and the Coolhands for your next event no matter the size we are the

perfect fi t for any crowd.

601-506-3289 broker011958@yahoo.com

Follow us on Facebook to see where we are playing next.www.facebook.com/caroleandthecoolhands

Be Your Own Boss, Go FartherWhen you become a WoodmenLife Represen-tative, you’ll be in business for yourself. You’ll set your own schedule. Your own effort determines your income.

And if you think you’ve plateaued in your current position, a WoodmenLife sales career is for you. There are numerous opportunities to advance into management or mentoring positions.

Why stay where you are and settle for less? Contact me for more information or visit

JoinUs.woodmen.org/banking.

Phillip Pace, CFP ChFC CLU Regional Director 499 Keywood Circle, Ste A Flowood MS 39232 601-932-0800 pmpace@woodmen.org

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Before - April 2014 After - September 2015 64lbs lost and maintaining

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Before - April 2014 After - September 2015

Le-Vel Independent Brand PromoterLV-242467

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