Banner & Company

From 2003-2023, Jim Cooper represented Tennessee in Congress — most recently from the reliably Democratic District 5, which included Nashville. But when the Tennessee legislature redrew the congressional maps, splitting Nashville across three new heavily Republican districts, it didn't take him long to do the math, and he did not seek re-election. Born into a political family in Nashville and rais...

For Nashville attorney John Day, there is no overstating how important the rule of law is to our everyday lives — not just when it comes to our personal freedoms, but also in making the economy work in a predictable fashion. He compares it to oxygen: You don't notice it until it starts to go way. John was recently named president of the American College of Trial Lawyers, a nationwide group that ha...

Throughout his career, Mark Deutschmann has tried to balance preservation — he worked to develop the historick Werthan Mills complex into lofts — with progress. He's a big advocate for the development of the city's greenway system, and hopes for more ways to build attainable (rather than "affordable") housing. Mark had a winding path to Music City — one that included working with orcas, nearly get...

Raised in a military family and a graduate of Vanderbilt University Law School, Sharon K. Roberson has drawn on years in the corporate world to lead the YWCA of Nashville & Middle Tennessee (not to be confused with a similarly named but unrelated organization that you might associate with workout equipment). Moving in to the nonprofit world was an adjustment, but in a way she's returned to her roo...

Steve Norris had never set foot inside a prison when became commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction. And he had only been on the job three months when he was suddenly thrust into one of the biggest crises in the state's history: an inmate uprising, including a "full on riot," across multiple prisons. Five correction officers were taken hostage. Inmates were allowed to give a live pr...

For a long time, Barry Mazor (along with fellow music writers) puzzled over what struck them as a glaring omission: There was no dependable, carefully sourced book on one of music's most important groups, The Everly Brothers. Eventually, Barry's agent asked a question that seems somewhat obvious in hindsight: "Why don't you write it?" That is the origin story of Blood Harmony: The Everly Brothers...

This week, Bob Bernstein announced that beloved Hillsboro Village coffee shop Fido will be closing — three years from now, on June 1, 2028. In the announcement, which was posted below a digital countdown clock, he wrote: "As leases expired, many of those who put their savings and dreams into their small businesses and created the look, feel and taste of Nashville became victims of their own succes...

Growing up, Stephen Bargatze got into plenty of trouble. He wasn't a very good student. His home life was rocky at best, and he had a terrible relationship with his mother. But with some help from family, he got a chance to turn his life around. And when he found he had some skill at magic tricks, his world brightened a bit. Then he discovered that with clown make-up on, "talking funny" was actual...

Liz McLaurin looks at the landscape a little different than the rest of us. As the head of the nonprofit Land Trust for Tennessee, she works with landowners who want to set aside some (or all) of their property for conservation. So when she sees forests and farmlands, she's not just thinking about what's there now; she's also thinking about what that land might look like decades or even centuries...

Shane Caldwell got his start on public access television as "kind of a goof," after watching a comedy show and thinking he and his fellow bartender friends could do much better. What they came up with, The Sylvan Brothers, became an underground sensation. That led to a local sketch comedy show called Cuts that aired right after Saturday Night Live. The first musical guest? Vince Gill. The child of...

You should never meet your heroes, the old saying goes. But for Jim McGuire, it has turned out pretty well. Jim grew up listening to country radio, and then — after a roundabout path took him to an Army base in Oklahoma, then to Vietnam and eventually to Nashville — he made a career capturing photos of some of the stars he had once only known through their music. He started out in an old grocery s...

Tamara Saviano has worked in radio, been a publicist — Kris Kristofferson was a client — served as president of the Americana Music Association (the first woman to do so), and produced albums and award shows at the Ryman Auditorium. All of this has given her an inside view of the Americana scene from the very start. If that sounds like a singularly winding career path, you can now read about it in...

Shortly after the end of the Civil War, formerly enslaved African Americans established and settled Promise Land in Dickson County. They came from farms around Charlotte, Tennessee, and from Cumberland Furnace, the nearby ironworks town. Some of the first settlers, like Ed Vanleer and John Nesbitt served with the United States Colored Troops during the war. The town remained independent, and actua...

Aaron Gray found peace after enduring the unthinkable. His 5-month-old son Joel died in August 2012 after Gray’s then wife accidentally left the baby in the back seat of the family car. But Gray didn’t allow Joel’s death to shatter his life forever — he found peace in nature as he learned to untangle and release his trauma. Gray used the worst moment in his life as a catalyst to help him help othe...

From the time she job-shadowed at the Jackson Sun in 8th grade, Becca Andrews knew she wanted to be a journalist. This aspiration took her from Tennessee to California and back again as she began an award-winning career as an investigative reporter. Andrews’ extensive coverage of reproductive healthcare and right-wing extremism prepared her for her latest project, American Shrapnel. As co-writer a...

On Tuesday, the state of Tennessee executed Byron Black, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1989 for the murders of his then-girlfriend Angela Clay and her two daughters, nine-year-old Latoya and six-year-old Lakeisha. Black, who was intellectually disabled, had an implanted defibrillator that his attorney argued could cause undue suffering if it attempted to shock his heart as execution...

What started as an ordinary ride home from a track meet changed Cathy Carillo's life. When Metro Police stopped her father for a broken taillight in 2009, they arrested him, and he was later deported. Cathy, who was 14 years old at the time, was left stranded on the side of the road and wondering: “Is this really home?” That night set Cathy on a 15-year path that recently led to helping found The...

When he first arrived in Nashville sight unseen, Ron Brice was just here for a job — running a video arcade. So how did a Michigander with no background in music aside from being a fan end up owning one of the city's most important independent venues? That story involves a gym, a professional wrestler, a Mexican restaurant and a whole lot of sweat equity. The club Ron eventually opened up, Third &...

Not many people have held Hank Williams demo recordings with his handwriting on them. But Alan Stoker has. He recently retired from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, where he worked for 50 years, much of it spent preserving and archiving rare — and sometimes fragile — recordings. He was there long enough that some of the recordings he archived he returned to a second time in order to digi...

"I guess I'm a completist," artist Wendy Murray says of herself. And right now she has an appropriately ambitious project under way: drawing every building on Gallatin Pike. Or, as she likes to say, "the Gallatin Pike" (an homage to Ed Ruscha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip). Maybe you've seen her out with pens and museum board, sketching that day's subject. Originally from New Zealand, Wendy...

This month marks 100 years since the Scopes "monkey" trial in Dayton, Tenn. The simple version is that a 24-year-old teacher had been charged with breaking a state law forbidding the teaching of evolution. But as national press descended on this small Tennessee town — at least 150 reporters and photographers in all — it soon became clear that this was bigger than a simple criminal trial. It was as...

Maryam Abolfazli was born and raised in Nashville, into what she describes as a "a big and loving Iranian family." Some members of that family still live in Iran, where, already contending with a repressive government, they have also lived in a time of war and now, lingering uncertainty. All of this hits close to home for Maryam, who has worked in the Middle East and retains close ties with her ex...

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...

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 youn...

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 p...