30 Years on the Fringes

The Memphis music scene, as captured by the camera lens of Aaron Brame.

by

Culture

For 30 years now, I’ve been hanging out on the fringes of the Memphis music scene. Rock shows, punk shows, burlesques, festivals, house parties — I’ve seen them all. As a fan, I’ve paid the cover at Memphis’ many venerated venues, and as a musician I’ve played all-ages gigs in empty buildings one step ahead of the bulldozer.

And during these past 30 years, I’ve been taking my film camera along with me. I started shooting pictures in 1995, the year of my first visits to the Antenna Club, where dark and dangerous characters took my cover charge and drew black Xs on my hands. My freshman year at Rhodes College, I learned the process of photography — how to take pictures using the entire frame, develop my black-and-white film into negatives, find my favorite negatives, and then print them on 8”x10” sheets of photo paper.

Soon I was bursting with images. Some nights I’d work so late in the Clough Hall darkroom that when I left the sun was out and I had a parking ticket on my car.

Thirty years on, I’m using negative scanners and Photoshop instead of pulling all-nighters in the darkroom, but I’m still doing what I learned in Photo 101 at Rhodes. I’m still out there with my camera, chasing my inspiration in the clubs and dives of our city.

So I offer these images from the fringes of the Memphis music scene. Behold the prodigies and the weirdos, the legends and the contenders, all the daring artists who keep the flame burning in the most important city American music ever had.

First, some black-and-white favorites: Nico Jordan during the climax of a Staynless show at Barrister’s. A tableaux of Gen X lounging at a Houseflys performance. Punk girls that appear in pairs, leaning up against the wall after a show at the Void or selling their merch on the Lamplighter pool table.

I shoot in color, too. Witness Lucero at the Overton Park Shell, a band riding the high of their first album in the punishing Memphis heat. Here is the fisheye pic that I shot from behind the piano at a late-night gig at the Buccaneer, my favorite place to play until an arsonist burned it down in 2017.

I happened to have a color roll in my camera the night Alex Chilton played an unannounced show in the building behind Earnestine & Hazel’s in 2003. Hours earlier, he had fronted Big Star at the crowded Beale Street Music Fest; when I saw him he was tearing through rock-and-roll standards and even blowing off steam behind the drums. I never had the chance to see him again.

I’ve been taking photos of Memphis musicians for 30 years now, developing my own black-and-whites at home and sending color rolls off to the lab. And why would I stop? There’s another late show I want to go to tonight, and a fresh roll of color film for my camera. I’ll be in the room for something that might never happen again, and I’ll get another shot from my place on the fringes of the Memphis scene.

About the author: Aaron Brame is a writer, photographer, and educator living in East Memphis with his family. See more of his work here. 

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY AARON BRAME.