German Rolling Stone Article, November 16, 2004


The alt-country boom made EAST NASHVILLE popular. An on-site visit.

Text and images (German): Jörg Feyer (Rolling Stone, German edition) Translation into English: www.wordplay.de

((Image caption)) Americana paradise for songwriters: Ben Folds is already there, Grant Lee Phillips is sure to follow.

You know that old joke about Nashville? The one about every waiter being songwriter? Well, I told you the joke was an old one. The new one goes: In the meantime, the songwriters have taken over the bars they used to work at. "We got so rich here we just had to do something, simply because of taxes," remarks Greg Troopers drily. He doesn't laugh. Still, it was meant to be a joke. His wife Claire Mullally, a former music industry lawyer, is now in charge of business at "Bobbie's Diary Dip" (sic) on Charlotte Avenue, where young and old alike enjoy ice cream and burgers. Bubbie's has become "the quintessential warm weather dining experience", claims Molly Nagel of Sugar Hill Records in Harp Magazine's "Nashville Guide". Hopefully not just because Greg Trooper just released his first album for her label. Be that as it may, things aren't going to become quite so quintessential today. Endless rain also prevents the free Sunday concert with Paul Burch on the small patio. The jukebox plays Elvis, CCR and Otis Redding to help ease the disappointment.

To be really hip, this renovated retro jewel of a place with it's "American Graffiti" charm is far too far on the West side of town anyway. 20 minutes to the east, on the other side of the Cumberland River, Paul Burch can be seen three days later maneuvering a baby carriage through the "Red Wagon". The songwriter, formerly active with Lambchop and currently on a tour of England with bluegrass icon Ralph Stanley to promote his fifth solo album, is on (emergency) shift at his wife Meg's restaurant together with his son Henry. Usually, says Burch, he prefers to stay "behind the scenes". Office work, maybe some shopping for vegetables. "Because you know, this is hard work", laughts Burch. "I'd never have time to write any songs." Meg snagged one of them, "Your Red Wagon" from his 1996 solo debut "PanAmerican Flash", for her first gastronomical "baby". With its bright, modern interior, the well-visited lunch and meeting spot on Woodland Street in East Nashville is about as far removed from a shady Western Saloon as Loretta Lynn is from Shania Twain. The colorful walls display photorealistic Pop Art by a friend, painter Kelly Williams. Regulars such as Ben Folds enjoy the vegetarian "Zen Bowl": Rice, veggies of the day and black beans. Folds just recently moved to East Nashville. Grant Lee Phillips might follow suit. "I'm sure it would do my music good, there aren't as many distractions here as there are in L.A.," says the former head of Grant Lee Buffalo before he heads for the airport with girlfriend Denise. She's already cast her eyes on a house here, while Phillips "still has a bit of a queasy feeling about it". Or at least that's what his host Duane Jarvis claims to have observed. Together with his wife Denise, he runs the "Cats Pajamas", a Bed and Breakfast with special rates for musicians and sympathizers three blocks west of the Red Wagon in the second story of their lovingly renovated house built in 1918. Next to the sofa in front of the fireplace, a small but select library of music books is on display, in the hallway glows Duane's gold record for "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road". A guitar player of long standing and Lucinda Williams' cowriter has been working solo for a long time, but has remained active in soul-shouter Ellis Hooks' band. In the nearby "Tone Chaparral" studio, Jarvis is currently producing Markus Rill's new album. "Markus is probably more American than all of us put together," says Jarvis and laughs, but wants this to be understood as a compliment to the songwriter from Würzburg/Germany - they met by chance during Duane's last tour of Germany.

((Image caption 1)) Lunch meeting sports: "Bobbie's Dairy Dip", Paul Burch in front of the popular "Red Wagon".

((Image caption 2)) East Nashville fans: Grant Lee Buffalo head Phillips (l.) and guitarist Duane Jarvis

The "Red Wagon" and the "Cats' Pajamas" are only two focal points, albeit important ones, in the renaissance of a neighborhood that for a long time was considered to be "a kind of no-man's-land, like the end of the world" by the rest of Nashville, says Duane Jarvis. When he came here eight years ago, one of the first to do so, "everybody asked: "What on earth are you doing over there?" Bud Jarvis, who had previously survived eleven years in L.A., immediately liked it, and not just because of the old architecture - by US standards - and the cheap rent. "To me, it just had soul. Because this is where people of completely different backgrounds come together. Blue-collar workers and artists. Poor people and architects. Black and white."

"Funky" is an attribute frequently used to characterize East Nashville. Paul Burch, who came to Nashville in the mid-Nineties from Mississippi via Indiana came "because I wanted to learn how to play country music", just to find out later that "the Nashville I had in mind didn't exist any more", even talks about how good it is to live "where that bit of romance is still alive, because it allows you to be a bit more extravagant and eccentric". Which seems easier in a part of Nashville that "is part of Nashville after all, but also the part that was ignored by the rest of the city for a long time." Where Guy Clark set up shop in the Seventies, in the territory of the "lonely songwriter wolves", where young Rodney Crowell met Townes Van Zandt. Today, Rodney Crowell laughs and calls East Nashville "our Reeperbahn". And then tells of a friend who lives there "and also complains. It's black and it's white - great on the one hand, not so great on the other, when they break into your house. Crime, after all."

Mystical things need history. And East Nashville certainly has history. That's also a big draw: A piece of palpable history of a city that can more than make a good living off tourists because of its rich music history - and yet seems to be trying to run away from it all as quickly and thoroughly of possible with the platitudes of New Country. Becauser really - and paradoxically - East Nashville did nothing more than return to its roots. At the beginning of the 20th century, this part of the city was the premier suburb of downtown Nashville - anyone who was able to afford it moved to the suburb praised as "a rural idyll" on the other side of the river. That was when the villas and residences that have now again become the objects of desire of a renovation-enthused Bohemian crowd were built. If they're still standing, that is. Several fires raged here, the biggest one in 1916, eradicating entire streets. 1998, a hurricane did severe damage to the neighborhood - some of the many churches are still not properly reparied, many trees were lost.

But it was more than just the powers of nature that made East Nashville go bad. More fatal because they affect the bad image of the area to this very day were the "urban renewal" programs of the government. As in other US cities, hastily assembled low-income housing created a heavily charged inner city ghetto. The results and lingering effects can still be seen just a few blocks away from "Red Wagon", between 5th and 6th Avenue, where those in need of help - for the most part African-Americans - find refuge at the East Park Community Center. But in principle, the historic Edgefield district, bounded by Woodland on the north side and Shelby Avenue on the south side, is still a relatively affluent enclave.

Only a few blocks away, things get truly grim. Doug Hoekstra is one of those who regularly makes his way there, to the projects. The songwriter is one of the few not in the gastronomy business, but instead researches and writes grants for an aid center in order to raise a few dollars more from private foundations and companies for those who on average hardly earn more than 4,000 dollars. A year. "And things are getting worse," says Hoekstra."Because the economy here is bad anyway, and in addition, welfare programs have been cut to pay for the war." Literacy programs for the city's poorest residents were intended to take some of the momentum out of the downward spiral of drugs and violence. But even someone as liberal and as free of any suspicion of conservatism as Duane Jarvis says - in view of the highest crime rate of all of Nashville practically at his doorstep - that: "A bit more police presence certainly couldn't hurt." He laughs. For now.

((Image caption 1)) Roger Moutenot at Woodland Studios, now owned by Gillian Welch

((Image caption 2)) 60 types of beer, and the hat is still passed during concerts: The Family Wash.

What successful urban renewal can look like is visible on the north side of Woodland Street and a little further to the East. Past Lipstick Lounge on 14th , a lesbian bar where owners Jonda Valentine and Ronda Landers pound out their garage R'n'B every Friday night, and not just for a gay crowd, either. And past two prime examples of the new East Nashville dining culture, Chapel Bistro and Rose Pepper. Crossing Eastland Avenue, we make our way to the "Family Wash". The name says it all: Across from a dilapidated gas station, the bar-restaurant with its small corner stage and its wide selection of beers (approx. 60 variations) was created from the ruins of a washateria. Voluminous exhaust pipes still shine under the high ceilings. The walls are decorated with original posters from Bill Graham's Winterland Productions, Pink Floyd and Otis Redding concert posters. Just like in the old days, there's never a cover charge - the hat is still passed here.

Reanimations à la Family Wash are typical for the pragmatic "turn old into new" attitude of the young East Nashville. The same thing happened when Roger Moutenot lost his Woodland Studios, in which he had produced a bit of country, but mainly Yo La Tengo and Josh Rouse - because of severe hurricane damage, but also because the building was not paying for itself in the highly competitive Nashville recording studio market. Finally, the entire complex came up for sale. "We were afraid Wal-Marts (sic) would buy it, tear it down and open the next supermarket."

Enter Gillian Welch. The songwriter invested the additional dollars earned as "Associate Music Producer" of the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack that sold nearly eight million copies into purchasing Woodland Studios. Moutenot is glad: "Her love for the history of music is so tremendous that it's reflected in her own music and that she thought: I love this room, I have the money, I'm going to preserve this. And she did the right thing."