Alex Greene

1 week ago | memphisflyer.com | Alex Greene

he opening scenes of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, the latest production by Tennessee Shakespeare Company, may be disarmingly light for some theatergoers. Many of us, myself included, tend to imagine the story of Joan of Arc in the direst possible terms — we all know it ends with her being burned alive, after all. And the first few minutes of the play depict just that, as if to remind us what’s at stake before the narrative begins in earnest.

1 week ago | memphisflyer.com | Alex Greene

CAKE will always be with us. I’ve gleaned this insight after more than 30 years of listening to the band, ever since my days in Dixon, California, when they were merely regional favorites, not international headliners. One indication of their longevity is the simple fact that the interview I conducted with lead singer/songwriter John McCrea for a Graceland Soundstage concert scheduled for five years ago still holds just as true today as it did then.

2 weeks ago | memphisflyer.com | Alex Greene

Even as many are eyeing their favorite bands in the three-day blow-out known as the RiverBeat Music Festival, another music fest is just over the horizon, perhaps obscured by the delicious clouds of barbecue that enshroud it. That would be SmokeSlam, aka “The World’s Ultimate BBQ Showdown,” yet another production by Mempho Presents. This year, the festival at Tom Lee Park will be held May 15-17th.

2 weeks ago | memphisflyer.com | Alex Greene

It’s appropriate that when ZZ Top’s Billy F. Gibbons makes his appearance at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale this Wednesday, April 9th, he will be celebrating both the creation of the “Muddywood” guitar, in honor of Muddy Waters, and the longevity of the museum itself. His vision of commissioning a guitar paying tribute to Muddy Waters went hand-in-hand with his discovery of the museum some 37 years ago.

3 weeks ago | memphisflyer.com | Alex Greene

If there’s one thing Preston Lauterbach excels at, it’s creating an almost novelistic sense of place in which his thoroughly researched histories can play out. It’s something many noted about his ambitious surveys of Memphis in the 19th and 20th centuries, Beale Street Dynasty: Sex, Song, and the Struggle for the Soul of Memphis and Bluff City: The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers, which conjure up scenes of a city buzzing on every corner, before zooming in to the subjects at hand.