Tag: Shift List

Celebrate Black History Month with These 15 Artists

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

American roots music wouldn’t exist if not for the voices, stories, and musical traditions of Black Americans. Full stop. Celebrating the Black forebears of Americana, bluegrass, country, and string band music, pointing out their importance and their essential contributions to these genres we all know and love today needs to happen year-round, not just February. 

The BGS editorial team believes strongly in this idea, and though readers will be able to find several Black History Month features and articles in the coming weeks, we encourage you all to also take a dive back into our archives for stories that highlight Black creators and artists from all points across the last year. 

Mavis Staples on Live From Here

Ceaselessly relevant, Mavis Staples recently gave a keynote presentation at Folk Alliance International in New Orleans where she once again gleefully assured the audience she wouldn’t be done singing ‘til she didn’t have anything else to say. And she has plenty left to say! Watch Mavis Staples on Live From Here with Chris Thile. 

Yola’s Year of Debuts

Yola’s debut album, Walk Through Fire, landed on our BGS Class of 2019 lists for Top Albums and Top Songs — and nearly every other year-end list across the industry, too. Naturally she popped up a few times in our pages: In our in-depth interview, when she made her Opry debut, and when she dropped an blazing Elton John cover.

Liz Vice on The Show On The Road

Liz Vice is a Portland born, Brooklyn-based gospel/folk firebrand who is bringing her own vision of social justice and the powerful, playful bounce of soul back to modern religious music. She is following a rich tradition that goes back generations to powerful advocates like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sam Cooke, the Staples Singers, the Ward Sisters, Aretha Franklin, and especially Mahalia Jackson, who was the soundtrack to the civil rights movement. Listen to the Liz Vice episode of The Show On The Road.

Brittany Howard, Artist of the Month and More

Our November 2019 Artist of the Month stunned in a stripped down duet with Alicia Keys at the Grammy Awards last weekend, her well-earned musical stardom solidified by her debut solo album, Jaime. Our Artist of the Month interview anchored our coverage of Howard’s new music, but her Tiny Desk Concert really captured readers’ attention!

Steep Canyon Rangers with Boyz II Men

Yes, you read that correctly. A combination none of us knew we needed that now we can never go without. The Asheville Symphony backs up the two groups collaboration on “Be Still Moses,” a moment transcending different musical worlds and genre designations. You can watch that performance here.

Rhiannon Giddens: Booked, Busy, and Blessed

How much can an artist really accomplish in a year? A quick scroll through the BGS halls shows a Grammy-nominated album, being named Artist of the Month, scoring a ballet, playing the Tiny Desk, debuting a supergroup, and oh so much more. We are more than happy trying to keep up with Rhiannon Giddens’ prolificacy.

Ashleigh Shanti on The Shift List

The Shift List is a podcast about chefs, their kitchens, their food, and the music that powers all of it. On an episode from September we interviewed Chef Ashleigh Shanti of Benne on Eagle, an Appalachian soul food restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina. Her Shift List includes Kendrick Lamar, Nina Simone, and more.

Grammy Winners, Ranky Tanky! 

 

We spoke to Ranky Tanky about their album Good Time in August, less than six months before it would win the Grammy for Best Regional Roots Album. If you aren’t familiar with Gullah music, our interview will help you out.

Americana’s Sweethearts, The War and Treaty

Rapidly-rising folk/soul duo of  husband and wife Michael and Tanya Trotter, The War and Treaty have had a year chocked full of smashing successes. Of course the best way to catch up with them was on the road, so Z. Lupetin set up the mics for an episode of The Show On The Road.

Tui’s Old-time Tunes

Jake Blount, one half of old-time duo Tui with fiddler Libby Weitnauer, is a scholar of Black, Indigenous, and otherwise forgotten, erased, or marginalized American fiddlers in old-time and string band music. His work specifically spotlights the source musicians whenever possible, undoing generations of revisionist history in roots music. Tui’s recording of “Cookhouse Joe” was featured in Tunesday Tuesday.

A Sitch Session with Birds of Chicago

A song with a message well-timed for almost any era, “Try a Little Harder” seems especially perfect for this very moment. Birds of Chicago do an excellent job bringing that message to the world. A suitably stunning Sitch Session.

Dom Flemons Talks Black Cowboys

If you haven’t heard Dom Flemons talk about his album, Black Cowboys, and the narratives and traditions that inspired it, this episode of The Show On The Road is essential. The music is captivating on its own, a perfect demonstration of Flemons’ uncanny ability to capture timelessness and raw authenticity, but with his scholarly takes and his depth of knowledge the songs take on even more meaning and power. It’s worth a deep dive — check out our print interview, too.

Gangstagrass Set the Standard

When you read Gangstagrass’s Mixtape of standard setters the parallels that emerge between foundational bluegrass and hip-hop are certainly surprising, but they also make perfect sense. It speaks to the longevity of this boundary-pushing, genre-defying group — that has been setting their own standard as they go.

Jontavious Willis Goes Back to the Country

“Take Me to the Country” is Willis’ paean to his homeland: “No matter where I go in the world, I can’t wait to go back to the country,” He told BGS in April of last year. “For me, that special place is a rural southern town in Georgia where I grew up. It’s such a quiet and calm place, and somewhere I crave when I’m far from it.” You can hear that truth woven into the music.

Octogenarian Bluesman, Bobby Rush

At 85 years old, Bobby Rush has been playing his brand of lovably raunchy, acoustically crunchy, and soulfully rowdy blues for over six decades. After winning his first Grammy at the humble age of 83, he has no plans of slowing down. We caught up with Rush on The Show On The Road.

Photo of Yola: Daniel Jackson 

The Shift List – Jonathan Whitener (Here’s Looking At You) – Los Angeles

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on the Shift List, Jonathan Whitener — chef and co-owner of Here’s Looking At You in Los Angeles’s Koreatown. Similar to his cooking, Jonathan’s musical tastes are a reflection of his family and surrounding environment. Outlaw country from his father, ’80s metal from his brothers, and a love for Glenn Danzig that continues to this day.

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Since it opened in 2016, Here’s Looking at You has appeared on almost every ‘best of’ restaurant list around LA — and that’s due to a number of factors: Co-owner Lien Ta’s laser focus on service and comforting hospitality; top-notch tiki-adjacent bar service; the evolving playlists blending old school hip-hop and post-punk; but it’s anchored by Whitener’s anything goes approach to cooking.

Whitener grew up in Huntington Beach, CA the son of a Mexican mother and a German father. Growing up near Orange County’s thriving Vietnamese and Japanese communities, he pulls all of these influences into his “SoCal tapas-style” menu with standout dishes like the shishito peppers accompanied with an tonnato sauce — the Italian answer to hummus — sprinkled with Huamei, a preserved Chinese plum. Or for another example, frogs legs seasoned like Nashville hot chicken with a salsa negra, scallion, and lime.

Whitener cut his teeth for three years as the chef de cuisine for Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo’s restaurant Animal in Los Angeles before opening Here’s Looking At You with Lien Ta, who he met while she was serving as front-of-house manager at Animal.

Jonathan Whitener’s Shift List
Buzzcocks – “What Do I Get?”
Waylon Jennings – “I’m A Ramblin’ Man”
Waylon Jennings – “Rainy Day Women”
Danzig – “Am I A Demon”
Metallica – “Ride The Lightning”
Nick Waterhouse (Feat. Leon Bridges) – “Katchi”
Tupac (Feat. Syke) – “All Eyes On Me”

The Shift List – Nonesuch, Oklahoma City

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Colin Stringer and Jeremy Wolfe are two of the three chef/founders of Nonesuch in Oklahoma City, an intimate, 22-seat restaurant that focuses on cooking with ingredients that come exclusively from their native Oklahoma.

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In a landlocked state that rarely gets national recognition for its culinary ambition from any organization, Nonesuch was named Best New Restaurant in the country by Bon Appetit back in August, ahead of nine other concepts from food capitals like Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington D.C.

The inventiveness and inspiration for Nonesuch were set in motion when Stringer and Wolfe started running a supper club back in 2014 called Nani, in the 100-year-old Victorian house that Stringer also lived in near the heart of Oklahoma City.

Word grew around town about the semi-legal restaurant operation in Stringer’s home, and it was eventually shut down by the city for operating without a license. When Nonesuch opened back in October 2017, it wasn’t a coincidence that the dining experience felt intimate, familial, and hospitable.

As Bon Appetit’s Editor in Chief Andrew Knowlton wrote in his review of Nonesuch, the best analogy to describe the young chefs that run it are like “three guys in a band, heads down, making incredibly beautiful music together — that they doubt anyone would ever hear.”

A little over a year after their opening, Nonesuch is booked solid for the foreseeable future, and the guys are poised and focused to take on the newfound attention with a unique sense of artistry and a killer playlist.

The Shift List – Tom Harris – London (The Marskman, St. John)

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Chef Tom Harris explains what a proper English pub is, throws down some amazing jazz funk playlists (among others), and explains why recipes should be described in musical terms.

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The Marksman pub in East London has been around for over 150 years, exemplifying what a pub should be – cozy wood paneling, regulars that have been stopping in for decades, comforting food and quality local beer – English hospitality at it’s finest.

Chef Tom Harris took over the place with his co-founder and co-chef Jon Rotheram in 2015, and perhaps their greatest achievement, aside from being named Michelin’s pub of the year for 2017 (the first time a London pub was awarded the accolade), is that they kept the historic pub…a pub. 

They could have easily turned the space into a fine dining establishment only –  given that Chefs Tom and Jon met while running the St John Hotel restaurant together and worked previously at London’s legendary St John restaurant under head chef Fergus Henderson – but with the Marksman Public House, they managed to leave the bar downstairs relatively unchanged and converted the second floor into a stylish yet casual dining room to showcase their English cooking.

marksmanpublichouse.com

Chef Tom’s Shift List
Johnny “Hammond” Smith – “Shifting Gears”
Joubert Singers – “Stand on the Word”
Fela Kuti – “Mr. Follow Follow”
Idris Muhammad – “Piece of Mind”
Roy Ayers – “Everybody Loves The Sunshine”
Eddie Hazel – “California Dreamin’”
The Allman Brothers Band – “Blue Sky”
Moses Boyd – “Rye Lane Shuffle”
James Brown – “I Got The Feelin’”
Eek a Mouse – “Wa-Do-Dem”
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers – “You Don’t Love Me”
The English Beat – “Mirror in the Bathroom”
Charlie Parker – “Ko-Ko”
Neil Diamond – “Desiree”

Chef Tom’s Shit List
Arcade Fire – “Wake Up”

Theme song: Jamie Drake – “Wonder”

SHIFT LIST: Levon Wallace

Posted on by Editor

For Levon Wallace, whipping up a signature dish in the kitchen isn’t unlike songwriting.

“Some of the best cooking happens when it’s freeform, when it’s fluid, when it comes from the heart,” Wallace says. “Sure, we’re relying on things like muscle memory and technique, which any musician worth their weight would, as well. I mean, you practice and practice and practice, but some of those best songs — or some of those best dishes — really are just coming from a sense of place inside. You can’t train that. That has to be, I think, from the heart.”

Wallace exercises that same care in his current post as executive chef of Gray & Dudley, located in the 21c Museum Hotel in downtown Nashville. Housed in the historic Gray and Dudley building that dates back to 1899, the restaurant draws not only its name, but also its aesthetic from the founding tenants by focusing on communal plates and pioneering dishes.

“The Dudley family is super prominent here in Nashville. Ms. Dudley was an avid, strong activist for women’s rights in the South back in the day, and the Gray and Dudley Manufacturing Company, which was the original name of this building, was the hub for commerce. If you needed anything — whether it was a cast-iron stove, shaving kit, hunting apparel, or baby carriage — you went to Gray and Dudley. It was like the Sears, Roebuck of its time,” Wallace explains. “We came into the space and we were developing menus and developing service concepts and food concepts for this restaurant, and that name really just resonated with what’s going on with our food.”

Born in Los Angeles, Wallace dove head-first into the world of culinary arts when he moved to San Francisco at the age of 18. “I just fully immersed myself in the food culture and chef culture and restaurant culture,” he explains. “Produce, artisans, makers, cheesers, wine — you can’t walk down the street without being hit in the face with something amazing. It’s a culinary revelation. My life experience in the Bay Area was this fast and furious romance with every cuisine under the sun.”

Wallace attended school full-time and spent in-between hours working at a catering company and volunteering at any restaurant that would have him for the day. He eventually made his way down the California coast, landing as the chef de cuisine at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa, a luxury resort near Santa Barbara. The resort’s idyllic grounds boast orchards and herb gardens — a lush haven of fresh ingredients.

“I made it a part of daily preparation to use the walk to work to pick bay leaves from the bay trees for service,” says Wallace. “[I decided] whatever it is that I do, I want to make sure that the care in the attention to ingredients is there.” It’s a guiding principle that Wallace has applied throughout his career, which has taken him to Nashville by way of Martha’s Vineyard and Louisville.

“I’ve always kind of had this wanderlust, but something about this place, particularly Nashville or middle Tennessee, really truly does feel like home,” Wallace says. “I’ve been very fortunate to travel and see a lot of different places and this beautiful region we call the South, it’s absolutely consistent, you know, the welcoming, warm personalities, the hospitality. But I do feel like it’s just a little bit sweeter here in Nashville.”

In order to create heartfelt dishes that tap into Nashville’s profound sense of community, Wallace relied on his philosophies about ingredient sourcing.

“We talked about the importance of ingredients, and I’m a firm believer in supporting our local makers, our local ranchers and farmers, but I also think that it’s important to include regional accountability and regional support,” he says. “In this region, if we have seafood at all, it should come from the Gulf. We should be eating the right stuff. Chefs, especially nowadays, we have a platform which we didn’t have before where people actually give a shit about what we have to say, and so we have an opportunity to use that platform, whether it’s in menus or whether it’s in advocacy.”

Crafting a menu, Wallace says, is a creative process. “The approach to the food at Gray & Dudley is really about [being] soulful,” he explains. “I think a lot of us go through that phase where you’re trying to discover yourself and find your style and find your voice and cooking is like playing a lot of chords just to make one song … That’s kind of what we’re trying to hit — just the right chords.”

SHIFT LIST: Trae Basore’s Soundtrack of Youth and Young Manhood

Posted on by Editor

Unexpected combinations are Trae Basore’s specialty in the kitchen. The executive chef of Pearl & Ash in Manhattan’s Bowery district presents a menu full of imaginative pairings: Deep-fried sweetbreads are made even more indulgent with the addition of crawfish mousse; sour peanuts add a pop to charred rapini; and scrambled eggs get a briny boost from a few tongues of uni. An alum of Tom Colicchio’s highly regarded Colicchio & Sons, he posts his most eye-catching preparations to Instagram.

He may plate fancy, but the Arkansas native prefers more rusticated fare when it comes to his music. After an embarrassing early dalliance with Top 40 — the first CD he ever purchased was MC Hammer’s "Addams Groove” (“Watch the video,” he advises. “It’s hilarious.”), while his inaugural concert was Michael Bolton — Basore fell hard for Southern-minded music when he discovered a treasure trove of his father’s old LPs, including classics from Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Those artists continue to be the backbone of his collection, so his Shift List playlist reflects his upbringing. “It’s the music I grew up listening to,” says Baesore. “If I go into a bar — I’m a big fan of Paddy Maguire’s Ale House on Third Avenue — these are the songs I’m looking for on the jukebox.”

At the tail end of high school and during his years attending the University of Arkansas, Basore began to get into bluegrass, folk, and jam bands. He attended a slew of Yonder Mountain, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Widespread Panic gigs. “I’d bring bongos and congas to shows to play beforehand,” says the chef, who also briefly flirted with playing the fiddle and the drums, “but I wouldn’t go on tour following anyone.”

These days, Basore only gets to listen to his favorites when he’s off the clock, though he did manage to catch Devil Makes Three playing at Terminal Five earlier this year. The chef bemoans the fact that he has given his staff free rein to choose what gets played during prep — and their tastes don’t exactly match up. “Unfortunately for me, Kanye is pretty big right now,” he says. “But as long as they’re happy, I’m happy.”

Once service starts, the restaurant’s official playlist kicks in, which highlights plenty of offbeat '80s rock from Talking Heads, David Bowie, and Paul Simon. “There’s no Whitesnake or Bon Jovi,” he assures.

Right now, when it comes to music, Basore is focused on finding a bluegrass band for his wedding, which is taking place back in his home state of Arkansas in September. “After picking the food — traditional dim sum for the cocktail hour and barbeque from Penguin Ed’s in Fayetteville — it’s really my only task,” he says. “I’d better not screw it up.”

Photos courtesy of Trae Basore

SHIFT LIST: Chef Victor Albisu Proves He Is Clinically Obsessed with Pearl Jam

Posted on by Editor

Listen carefully to the soundtrack playing in Del Campo — a South American-inspired steakhouse in Washington, D.C.’s Penn Quarter that Esquire named one of the best new restaurants of 2013 — and you’ll hear a Pearl Jam song every once in a while. That’s because they’ve been chef/owner Victor Albisu’s favorite band since he first heard their debut, Ten, in high school. He related to the Seattle quintet instantly. “Being a teenager is when everything is either the greatest or the worst,” he says. “It’s the time you feel the most. Pearl Jam, as a band, reflected those extremes. I also liked that they didn’t sound like anyone else. There was a little blues underneath their Seattle sound, along with the baritone of Eddie Vedder’s voice.”

It wasn’t until the Vs. tour on April 8, 1994 that Albisu had a chance to see the band live at the Patriot Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. It turned out to be a momentous evening beyond what he could have possibly imagined. As he was making his way to the venue, he began hearing a shocking rumor: Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain had been found dead of an apparent suicide. It seemed too impossible to be true, but when the Seattle fivesome took the stage, it was confirmed. “Eddie Vedder was crying through the whole show and was clearly affected by it,” Albisu says. “It was rough, but it firmed up this bond I had with Pearl Jam.”

Since that intense inaugural experience, the award-winning chef, who has cooked for Michelle Obama on multiple occasions, has seen the band 15 times. “You know you’re going to get everything they’ve got for as long as they’ve got when you see them live,” he says. “They give back to their fans.”

To take a break from helming the kitchen at Del Campo or one of his Taco Bamba taquerias in nearby Virginia — where you’ll also hear plenty of Pearl Jam playing — Albisu has gone to shows in D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, Chicago, and Amsterdam — and he has a t-shirt from every one. In the Dutch city, he had the chance to meet bassist Jeff Ament at the Ziggo Dome in 2014. “It was a great experience for me,” he says. “I just talked to him. I didn’t ask him to sign anything; I’m not that guy.”

The best gig he may have seen was this past April at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center, when the band opened by playing Ten in its entirety to mark their 10th consecutive sold out concert at the venue. “It was the unicorn of shows,” says Albisu.

He was thinking about his favorite shows when he created this playlist. “It’s my ideal set list,” says the chef, who hopes to see the band when they play gigs in Chicago and Boston this August. “They do 32-33 song concerts, so this is in the realm of possibility. When I go to a Pearl Jam show, it’s a profound thing for me. This may be overstating it, but it’s like going to church.”

Photo credit: Rey Lopez

SHIFT LIST: Chef Carla Hall Likes a Little Rhythm in Her Blues

Posted on by Editor

Carla Hall had been on television a lot before she filmed the debut episode of The Chew, the food-focused daytime talk show she co-hosts on ABC alongside Mario Batali, Michael Symon, Clinton Kelly, and Daphne Oz. After all, she had been a finalist on Top Chef in 2008 and the fan favorite a few years later Top Chef: All-Stars, thanks to her indefatigable positivity, vibrant cooking, and cheery catchphrase — “Hootie hoo!” But reality TV hadn’t really prepared her for being filmed on stage in front of a live audience in the fall of 2011.

“I was so nervous on the first day,” she says.

Luckily for her, the DJ who was keeping the crowd entertained played something that struck a chord. (She doesn’t remember what, admitting, “I’m the worst when it comes to remembering people or their songs.”)

Whatever it was, it inspired her to run out into the crowd and begin dancing. A network executive, who was watching the scene unfold, ordered the crew to have a high-energy, Carla-specific playlist created. Now, it blares out of the speakers before almost every taping of the show. “It’s a way for me to connect with the audience, get out of my head, and loosen myself up,” says Hall, who put together this playlist to create a similar atmosphere.

Her gig at The Chew has given the Nashville-born chef a chance to hang out and cook with some of her favorite musicians, including Kimberly Schlapman of smooth-singing country quartet Little Big Town, Patti LaBelle, and Gladys Knight. “Food and music go hand in hand,” says Hall. “A lot of these guys spend a lot of time on the road, so they focus a lot on getting good food versus just having crap food from craft services.”

On this particular day, she’s prepping to tape a segment with Seal, where they’ll be cooking a blackened shrimp salad. “I’m so excited,” she says. “I can’t wait to meet him. There’s some music that reminds you of a certain time in your life. He reminds me of being in London when I was just beginning to get into food.”

Her mind is equally occupied with the upcoming debut of Carla Hall’s Southern Kitchen, which is set to open in Brooklyn, New York, in late April. Inspired by the cooking of her birthplace — she now divides her time between her home in D.C. and New York City, where The Chew is taped — the restaurant will specialize in Nashville hot chicken. “Because it’s a Nashville thing, there has to be country music,” she says. “It will range from bluegrass to country rock and country pop, as well as blues and R&B — some old; some new.”

It’s a far cry from what Hall listens to in the kitchen when she’s cooking. “I want something that’s really low-key, because I want to hear the food make sounds,” she says. “If I have something in the pan, I want to hear it sizzle. But if all the food is done and I’m plating up, that’s another story. Then the music becomes much more upbeat, as I shift into party mode.”

SHIFT LIST: Chef Amanda Cohen Reveals Her Dirt Candy Crushes

Posted on by Editor

Amanda Cohen may be a vegetarian chef, but she crafts the kind of comfort-focused, belly-orgasming food that has equal appeal for omnivores, stoners, and Saveur readers. At Dirt Candy, her award-winning restaurant on New York City’s Lower East Side, the visionary veghead serves dishes that proudly defy traditional meat-free cuisine, such as Korean fried broccoli — rightfully described on the menu as “crack in broccoli form” — and hot lava stone-charred Brussels sprouts accented with Yucatan style spices shoehorned into lettuce cups with toppings like smoked avocado and pickled jalapeño to create tasty tacos. (You can tackle some of her recipes by picking up her comic book cookbook. Yes, you read that correctly — Dirt Candy: A Cookbook: Flavor-Forward Food from the Upstart New York City Vegetarian Restaurant.) 

When it came time to create a soundtrack for her veg-centric eatery, Cohen had one goal. “I’ve wanted the restaurant to feel timeless and placeless,” she says. “You’re supposed to walk in and feel you’re on an island, in France or on a boat. You could be anywhere, anytime.”

To achieve that, the playlist is rich with globe-spanning world music, mostly of the happier, peppier variety. Cohen discovered many of the selections by listening to what New York cabbies were blasting, including tunes by Malian blues duo Amadou & Miriam and Argentinian ska band Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. The playlist is equally inspiring for the staff in the kitchen. “There are times when the restaurant is really crazy and the music makes us go a little faster,” she says.

Personally, Cohen’s tastes veer back to the '80s. Dolly Parton’s “Nine to Five” is a long-time favorite and she still holds a candle for some of the first singles she ever bought during the "Me Decade," including Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” and Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” (One of Cohen’s first concerts was the Material Girl world tour.)

Though she never had any muso crushes growing up — “No posters I kissed every day,” as she puts it — she has been overjoyed when some of her childhood favorites have dined at the restaurant. New Kids on the Block’s Jonathan Knight has been in. So has Boy George, who asked a clearly starstruck Cohen, “Do you want to take selfies together?” “Yes, yes I do,” she quickly replied.

 

A photo posted by Dirt Candy (@dirtcandynyc) on

Unlike some other chefs, Cohen has no secret musical past — perhaps fronting a riot grrl band or playing bass in a garage rock trio. “I’m the least musical person, though I love listening to it,” she says. “I have no rhythm and I cannot sing. Actually, I love to sing, but I’m terrible at it.”

However, at the end of a long shift at Dirt Candy, Cohen has no interest in belting out a song or listening to an album to unwind. She craves nothing but silence. “I want it to be as quiet as possible,” she says, “so I can go to bed and get ready for another day.”

Photo credit: Stephen Elledge

SHIFT LIST: Chef John Currence Shares the Soundtrack of his Rock ‘n’ Roll Life

Posted on by Editor

Long before John Currence won a James Beard Award for his forward-thinking Southern cooking at City Grocery in Oxford, Mississippi, and earned the nickname the Big Bad Chef, he was pursuing a far more rock ‘n’ roll career. It all started when he attended a Beatles concert in New Orleans’ City Park in 1964. “Well, I was in utero, but technically I was there,” he clarifies. “I blame that for my lifelong fascination with music.”

As a kid, he devoured an impressively diverse swath of music –- from The White Album and Johnny’s Cash’s At San Quentin to Mozart and John Philip Sousa. When he fell hard for an artist, an album, or a song, he obsessed over it. “My brother and I listened to ‘Benny and the Jets’ over and over on a five-hour trip to the beach with my mom and dad,” he says. “The cassette player was smashed before the trip was over.”

Currence played drums in high school in New Orleans, but when he attended Hampden-Sydney College in central Virginia, he picked up the mic to front a band he and three friends dubbed Chapter Two. “It was the stupidest, most flaccid name,” he says. Their first gig was all covers, including Elvis Costello’s “Welcome to the Working Week,” “I’ll Be There” by the Spinners, the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer,” a punked-up version of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” and the theme song from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Friends urged them to write original material, which culminated in an indie record deal in the mid-'80s and endless touring. It turned into “six years of riding around the country in a broken down van and sleeping on pool tables,” says Currence.

The band relocated to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where they wound up recording with legendary producer Mitch Easter, who had helmed R.E.M.’s earliest recordings. Easter’s relationship with the indie pioneers led to a surreal moment at one of Chapter Two’s own sessions. The band was at his house one day, trying to get a sound effect down on tape in his driveway, when a car pulled up. “We were in the middle of a take and we were like, ‘Who is this asshole?’” says Currence. “And then Mike Mills [of R.E.M.] gets out of the car, so our tune changed a bit.” The bassist stuck around and even helped with the session, creating a rhythm component for a song by hitting a baseball mitt with a ping-pong paddle.

Chapter Two ultimately released two now long-out-of-print albums, though copies sometimes pop up on eBay. During his time with the band, Currence worked a series of kitchen jobs. In the late '80s, his longtime friend, Larkin Selman, offered him a job as a sous chef at Gautreau’s, a restaurant he was opening back in their hometown of New Orleans. “I felt like, if I didn’t take it, I’d never leave Chapel Hill,” says Currence. From there, he helped opened Ralph Brennan’s Bacco before moving to Oxford, Mississippi, to make his own mark with City Grocery and its sister restaurants, including Big Bad Breakfast, Nacho Mama’s, and Bouré.

His musical past still echoes through his work. In his 2013 cookbook, Pickles, Pigs & Whiskey, he paired every recipe with a song. “I was always bothered by cookbooks that paired wine with the food,” he says. “Who is actually going to go out and find these esoteric wines to go along with cooking a dish? It seems stupid to me.”

When picking his Shift List playlist, he thought about the songs that hit him the hardest. “This is the soundtrack to my life, though it’s missing the Pixies and the Sex Pistols,” he says. “The best music is about honest life experience. It’s about heartbreak, vice, angst and agony. I’ve been through it all.”