The late Dr. Paul Kwami was the music director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers for 28 years. He passed away in September 2022. Before his death, Dr. Kwami recorded an interview for a documentary project about Nashville music venues, which has not been heard until now. This week's episode, drawn from Banner Executive Producer Demetria Kalodimos' archives, also features the Fisk Jubilee Singers in their first-ever performance at the Bluebird Cafe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/a...
Jun 22, 2025•27 min•Ep. 64
When the Banner needed someone to sketch the recent trial of Glen Casada and Cade Cothren in federal court — where no cameras or digital devices of any kind are allowed — we turned to artist Paul Collins. His courtroom sketches, created on paper with pencil, marker and other dry materials, brought the trial to life for our coverage, along with several other Nashville outlets. Paul knew from a young age that he wanted to be an artist, but his parents didn't necessarily agree with that choice. Sti...
Jun 15, 2025•38 min•Ep. 63
Phil Bredesen is a big believer in the public good. As mayor of Nashville, he pushed to create more public spaces, like the downtown public library. He also sought to invigorate the core of the city, in part by bringing big-time sports to town. (Wait until you hear the story of how he got to the final handshake on an NFL franchise.) As governor of Tennessee, Phil worked to acquire and preserving public land. These days, fishing and grandchildren occupy more of his time than they once did, but he...
Jun 08, 2025•34 min•Ep. 62
Music historian Don Cusic has played many roles — songwriter, producer, novelist, professor. (Not to mention putting in a stint at a newspaper in Cookeville many years ago.) Decades ago, he pulled into Nashville in an old VW bus that doubled as his home until he found his footing writing about music. Since then, Don has written 28 books, ranging from a biography of Roger Miller to an encyclopedia of cowboys. His latest delves into the life of one of Nashville's most influential figures. Chet Atk...
Jun 01, 2025•38 min•Ep. 61
Five years ago this week, Watkins School of Art, Design & Film held a socially distanced commencement ceremony amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It would the last in the school's 185-year history, as it later merged with Belmont University. Steven Womack taught at Watkins for 25 years, and he details his time there — and the school's demise — in a memoir titled Death of a College. Before he ever stepped into a college classroom, Steven was a writer (inspired first by Robert Penn Warren) of multipl...
May 25, 2025•39 min•Ep. 60
With the state of Tennessee set to restart executions this month, federal public defender Kelley Henry is even more busy than usual. Her client Oscar Smith is the first man scheduled to be killed at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Her team has exhausted its legal options, and Smith is set to be executed on May 22. He will spend 14 days on death watch, instead of the customary three. The drug that will be used to carry out that execution, pentobarbital, is not without controv...
May 18, 2025•40 min•Ep. 59
This week, the Metropolitan Social Services department released a report based on its annual community needs evaluation. The title of this year's report: "The High Cost of Low Wages in Nashville." Coinciding with the release of the report, the department hosted a community gathering at West End Community Church, featuring a panel discussion on the report's findings and possible solutions. Guests Stephanie Coleman, Nashville Chamber of Commerce CEO Courtney Johnston, District 26 Councilmember Har...
May 16, 2025•51 min
This week, Tennessee Highway Patrol said it made close to 500 traffic stops — coordinating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a sweeping effort to find undocumented immigrants along state roads. Troopers made 12 arrests, and 94 people were detained for reasons related to immigration. The enforcement actions created anxiety and uncertainty in Nashville's Latino communities and raised questions about what Nashville officials knew, and when. Banner reporters have spent the week ...
May 11, 2025•36 min•Ep. 58
Major Jackson is the author of six poetry collections, including, most recently, Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems. He is a professor at Vanderbilt University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Coming to Nashville to teach was a homecoming of sorts — he spent many summers here as a child. For two years, spanning 443 episodes, Major was the host of the podcast The Slowdown, which gave him the space to introduce new poems and poets to a devoted audience on a daily bas...
May 04, 2025•39 min•Ep. 57
Michael Shane Neal knew from an early age he wanted to be an artist. But there were no artists in his family, so he wasn't sure how he'd turn that into a career. After taking classes in the basement of a dormitory at Lipscomb University, he had a chance meeting with someone who knew the famed portrait artist Raymond Kinstler. And after a trip to New York, a mentorship was born. Shane credits Kinstler with showing him the way to an artist's life. And since then, he's painted everyone from John Le...
Apr 27, 2025•41 min•Ep. 56
Rev. Matt Steinhauer was among the dozen or so clergy who interrupted a House committee meeting earlier this week by reciting the Lord's Prayer. He was eventually escorted out by Tennessee State Troopers. What brought Matt to the Cordell Hull State Office Building that day was a belief that public education is for everyone, and that the bill under consideration — which would allow school districts to turn away or charge tuition to undocumented children — goes against the teachings of Jesus. Matt...
Apr 20, 2025•37 min•Ep. 55
Middle Tennessee weather can be unpredictable — and dangerous. When things get iffy, a trio of "suburban dads" keeps the information flowing. But once the watches turn to warnings, they really get serious: That's when they start livestreaming on YouTube, tracking storms in real time and letting their audience know when to shelter and when it's safe to carry on. Nashville Severe Weather started as a Twitter account to keep locals informed of potential rainouts and worse. It's grown into a high-te...
Apr 13, 2025•39 min•Ep. 54
Growing up in Johnson City, Tenn., Mo Sabri could look out the window of his parents' house and see cows. He grew up listening to Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. He played baseball and football. It was an all-American childhood in many ways. Add a guitar, and all of this sounds like the perfect backstory for a country music singer — except for a detail or two. Mo's parents immigrated from Pakistan, and he grew up Muslim. Neither of those facts can take away his love for country music, or his prid...
Apr 06, 2025•38 min•Ep. 53
Born to working-class parents in Massachusetts, Linda Rose came to Nashville in the 1990s — by way of Hawaii, where she first began working in immigration law. When she relocated to Tennessee for her then-husband's career, she didn't think there'd be much for her to do. But her practice took off. These days, Linda's as busy as she's ever been, and the political climate has her anxious for her clients. To stay centered, she finds solace in her longtime karate practice — she's a third-degree black...
Mar 30, 2025•38 min•Ep. 52
The banjo was Mike Bub's first love, but not long after arriving in Nashville he discovered he could find more work playing the bass. He found himself onstage at the Grand Ole Opry, on tour with the likes of Bill Monroe, and in studios across Nashville. He played in Del McCurry's band for years. He's got some stories. Mike also became a regular at the Station Inn, what the calls the "last bastion" of the Music City he first encountered in the 1980s — full of legends and upstarts making a go at t...
Mar 23, 2025•38 min•Ep. 51
When you can hear gibbons shouting out from treetops during office hours, you know your job is a bit off the beaten path. As marketing director for the Nashville Zoo, Jim Bartoo gets to spend a lot of time with the noisy, fuzzy, slimy — and just about everything in between — critters that call the South Nashville property home. Maybe it's not too much of a stretch that Jim once worked in television news — or that his experience in the media helped him land one of his first zoo jobs. He's been at...
Mar 16, 2025•37 min•Ep. 50
Sixty years ago this week, activists marched for civil rights in Selma, Ala., including many, like John Lewis and Diane Nash, who had trained in Nashville. In his role as overseer of the Civil Rights Room at the downtown Nashville Public Library, Elliott Robinson keeps watch over the history that was made here and reverberated across the country. A "math kid" turned history major, Elliott has a gift for singing and a knack for the stage he discovered later in life than some. (He portrayed Joseph...
Mar 09, 2025•34 min•Ep. 49
As a musician, Ellen Angelico plays many instruments well, but her first love is still her go-to: the guitar. You can hear her play on albums by Lola Kirke and Adeem the Artist. She's backed up the likes of Mickey Guyton and Brandy Clark. She writes her own music as Uncle Ellen, and writes a column for Premier Guitar magazine. In short, she's living the dream that started when she got her first real six-string at age 4. It was the Music City dream that attracted both Ellen and one of her former ...
Mar 02, 2025•38 min•Ep. 48
Content warning: This episode contains references to sexual assault and murder. Nine-year-old Marcia Trimble was delivering Girl Scout cookies in the affluent Green Hills neighborhood when she went missing on Feb. 25, 1975. Thirty-three days later, on Easter Sunday, her body was discovered not far from her family home. She had been sexually assaulted. The early investigation focused on 15-year-old Jeffrey Womack, who lived near the Trimbles and was one of the last people to see Marcia alive. He ...
Feb 23, 2025•39 min•Ep. 47
The first time Rebecca Haw Allensworth attended a licensing board meeting, she could hardly believe what she was seeing: A physician with a long malpractice history, including sexual misconduct and giving drugs to patients off the books, was trying to get his medical license reinstated. And to Rebecca's disbelief, the Tennessee Medical Examiners Board did just that. And so the book she thought was writing changed instantly. Now, several years and many, many public meetings later, that book has b...
Feb 16, 2025•37 min•Ep. 46
When the other kids wanted to watch Indiana Jones, Willie Steele took a chance on a baseball movie instead. He didn't know it at the time, but watching Field of Dreams by himself in 1989 would alter the trajectory of his life. He would go on to write his master's thesis about Shoeless Joe, the novel the film was based on, and then, in an unlikely turn, write the biography of that book's author, W.P. Kinsella. These days, Willie is working on a new book about how Major League Baseball reacted to ...
Feb 09, 2025•36 min•Ep. 45
Dr. Agenia Clark's path to becoming president of Fisk University is not a typical one. She didn't come up through academia. She had led the Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee; she had worked in the corporate world and even nearly launched a tech startup after getting her MBA. But her somewhat unusual path had also given her the tools she needed. And more importantly, she had a passion for this historic institution. Growing up in Alabama, Agenia learned early on the importance of education. It was d...
Feb 02, 2025•41 min•Ep. 44
Giancarlo Guerrero has been the Nashville Symphony's music director since 2008. Under his direction, the symphony has risen in prominence and reputation, premiering important compositions and taking home 14 Grammy awards. Maestro Guerrero also helped guide the symphony through difficult times: The 2010 flood damaged the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, and the COVID-19 pandemic shut it down for an entire concert season. Were it not for a revolution in his home country, Giancarlo's parents may have ...
Jan 26, 2025•38 min•Ep. 43
When you think of television, you probably think of the visual image first. But the sound quality — and the variety of sounds you're able to hear as you watch — can add a lot to the experience. Over a decades-long career, Marty Slutsky has been at the sound board for some of TV's biggest events: the Olympics, the Kentucky Derby and, for nearly 30 years, live presidential debates. During his time at ABC, there was an internal term for the multiple-microphone, catch-all sound recording approach: "...
Jan 19, 2025•45 min•Ep. 42
Alisha Haddock believes in the power of community. With a resume filled with service-oriented work, Alisha stays committed to the idea that Nashville can be better — if we all work together. That's what landed her at the helm of the community nonprofit Neighbor 2 Neighbor, and on Nashville's Community Review Board overseeing Metro police. Alisha's Nashville roots run deep: There's a portrait of her grandmother Nora Ransom on display in Elizabeth Park. Ms. Ransom was a pillar of the community who...
Jan 12, 2025•37 min•Ep. 41
A familiar face to many, Joe West is the "house band" at Nashville International Airport. In this role, he performs regularly for ever-changing crowds as they arrive in the city for the first time, or return home from far-flung travels. His regular gigs at the airport have also earned him high-profile spots on other stages in Nashville and beyond. Joe comes from a musical lineage. His parents, Sarge and Shirley West of Fayetteville, Ark., formed the first African American country music duo, and ...
Jan 05, 2025•34 min•Ep. 40
As we wind down the year, we've been looking back at some of our best episodes, and we noticed one common thread between several of our favorite interviews: books. In 2024, those included: a cookbook brimming with both recipes and great stories from the South; a unique and kaleidoscopic look at a musical great; a dive into three still-unsolved integration-era bombings in Nashville; a firsthand account of visiting Tennessee's death row and the people there; a fight for justice in the wake of a hi...
Dec 29, 2024•44 min•Ep. 39
Attorney Rose Palermo still keeps an office on Music Row, where she got her start in the ’70s representing musicians. When some of those musicians started getting divorced, she took on that work, too. It helps to know the business, after all. Eventually there was so much divorce work she had to choose, and she chose divorce — though not for herself. (She and fellow attorney Denty Cheatham remain happily married, as they have been for 50-plus years.) In the intervening decades, Rose has built a r...
Dec 22, 2024•38 min•Ep. 38
Long before Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter album re-ignited the conversation, Frankie Staton was booking showcases aimed at highlighting Nashville's Black country music talent, which remained hidden in the mix. "I knew that I was not the only Black person that was being treated the way I was being treated," she says. A North Carolina native inspired to move to Music City by the likes of Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, Frankie has toiled in the shadows for decades, but not long ago she finally made it on...
Dec 15, 2024•47 min•Ep. 37
Elisheba Mrozik is probably best known as a tattooer: She made an appearance on the TV show Inkmaster and owns her own shop in North Nashville. But she’s also a painter, muralist and textile artist who uses whatever medium she’s working in to explore community and cultural interconnectedness. And yes, some of that work involves fermenting mud. An artist from an early age — including an elementary school-era side gig selling her drawings — Elisheba credits a trip to Japan for unlocking her potent...
Dec 08, 2024•42 min•Ep. 36
