Musical Magnetism

Sonic waves attract musical minds from far and wide to the Bluff City.

by

Culture

We in Memphis compulsively remind the world of our native sons’ and daughters’ musical achievements, and rightly so. From Big Star to Boo Mitchell, the degree to which locals’ sonic combinations have impacted the broader world is truly remarkable. But not all of the innovators at work in this town are homegrown. The musical dynamo that is Memphis seemingly radiates waves of sonic goodness that inexorably pull new talent into its orbit.  

A quick look at the most famous names to emerge from the city confirms this. W.C. Handy, Sam Phillips, Al Green, B.B. King, Elvis Presley, Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and many others came here from elsewhere, usually with the goal of improving their musical fortunes. Who among the musical migrants of today will be the next Otis, the next Elvis?

It may surprise casual fans just how many of the current mainstays of the local scene are transplants. Amy LaVere (from Michigan) and Will Sexton (from Texas) are musicians who have seemingly always been here, as are John Paul Keith (East Tennessee), Mark Edgar Stuart (Arkansas), and Hi Rhythm’s Lina Beach (Central Tennessee). And then there are the many artists from Mississippi who consider Memphis a second home. Here, we’re casting a wider net, focusing on five artists who’ve come from even farther afield, hoping to understand just why they moved here and where they’re going. 

John Németh

It’s an indication of how powerful and pervasive the blues have become that one of the city’s greatest blues singers grew up in Idaho. There’s no telling where or when some new youngster’s imagination will be fired by the form. As a young teenager in Boise, John Németh was galvanized by mix tapes of blues music that a friend made him, blasting them from his car stereo. “I had this old 1964 Comet, and I was just pumping Hoodoo Man Blues and singing along with it,” Németh told the Memphis Flyer in 2017, “and the friend who loaned [the tape] to me said, ‘Man, you kind of sound like Junior Wells.’”

He taught himself harmonica and started a band, which served him well when he moved to San Francisco with his fiancé and fell in with the likes of Junior Watson from Canned Heat and Elvin Bishop from the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Németh recorded albums with them and others, began taking his own band on the road, and made a full-fledged career out of music.

Today, he reflects on the choices he faced at the time. “In San Francisco, the cost of living was getting crazier and crazier, and their clubs were shutting down, because kids there don’t go out to see music.” He would tour for 10 weeks at a time, but that was increasingly challenging. “I started a family. I had my first kid in 2010 and so she was about two and a half, and I was like, ‘I’d like to spend a lot more time with my kid, and have another kid, and spend some more time with my family.’

“So that’s why I came to the middle of the country. I could have moved to a lot of different places. I could have moved to Nashville. People were like, ‘Oh, wow, why didn’t you move to Nashville? You’re insane for not moving to Nashville.’ But the area from Chicago, down to Memphis, down to New Orleans has always been my favorite musical and rhythmic region. I always loved that kind of stuff. So, when I was looking for a place to move, Memphis was my number one.”

The decision paid off immediately. “I moved here, and then within three or four days, I cut my record, Memphis Grease,” he says. “I already knew Scott Bomar, who was a fan and wanted to produce a record for me, so that was already in the works. We had a great cast of musicians on that album: Howard Grimes, Scott Bomar, Joe Restivo, Percy Wiggins, Kirk Smothers, Susan Marshall, Al Gamble, Reba Russell, Art Edmaiston, Marc Franklin.” (And those last four names are also transplants.)

The next year, Németh won a Blues Music Award in the Soul Blues Male Artist of the Year category; the next chapter of his life had begun. He’s remained here ever since, releasing four more albums so far (plus two more fronting the Love Light Orchestra) and continuing to tour nationally and internationally with his group, The Blue Dreamers.  

Marcella Simien

As the daughter of Grammy-winning zydeco luminary Terrance Simien, music was etched into Marcella Simien’s heart and soul from the start. And, as one of the first Creole families to settle St. Landry Parish, the Simiens strongly identified with Mallet, Louisiana, a small community outside of Opelousas. Though her father often played New Orleans, young Marcella was equally taken with her semi-rural heritage, especially the tradition known as Mardi Gras Run. 

“In the country, they start drinking really early on Mardi Gras day, she told the Memphis Flyer in 2022. “People would be on horseback, in pickups with truck beds full of hay, and instruments on the truck beds, playing music. And you’d go down these trails out in the country and just party! Everyone’s together. It’s a big tradition. That’s how the Prairie Creoles would do it.”

With such a vibrant milieu, and with New Orleans only a stone’s throw away, you might wonder why a young musician would leave home. But, Simien says today, “By the time I was 18, I really wanted to leave and get an experience farther away from home. Memphis was just far enough, and I thought, ‘I can really start my adulthood in a really interesting new place.’”

For the teenaged Simien, the Bluff City had always seemed full of promise. “My family spent a fair amount of time in Memphis — when my parents would have a Recording Academy meeting, for instance, because they served on the board for a long time in different ways and positions, and they would take me out of school for those trips. So I always identified Memphis with that sort of fun escape as a kid.”

That was only compounded when a college recruiter led her to consider attending the Memphis College of Art, which she then visited at age 17. “That moment when we visited MCA for the first time, I’ll never forget it,” she recalls. “I got chills when I walked in, and even when we drove into Overton Park, it was, like, chills! I felt like I needed to be here.”

Simien was pursuing her interest in visual art, but music was never far away. “I knew that I wanted to be performing in some way, and even though there wasn’t a music program at MCA, I knew that I would be in the right place,” she says. “I thought, ‘They’re my tribe of people, they’re artists, they’re creatives, they’re doing something exciting and different.’ Then, once I got here, I realized very quickly, within a month or two, that I wanted to sing.”

Things snowballed from there, as her naturally soulful voice, blended with her accordion playing and musical tastes ranging from Nina Simone to The Troggs, led her to coin her own genre “Psychedelic Swamp Soul.” Marcella & Her Lovers, at one time featuring the late, great Dave Cousar on guitar, have been regulars on the Memphis scene ever since, even as Simien continues to join her father on stage, or play with Anne Harris, a Chicago-based fiddle player, as Magnolias. Soon, she says, she’ll release some archival material featuring Cousar from the sessions for her Got You Found album, to be titled Got You Lost.

Reflecting on the life she’s built here, Simien says, “Memphis has a way of just getting all over you in a good way. Just the soul of it. If you’re any sort of intuitive, sentient being, you’re going to feel what’s happening here.”

Kid Maestro

“Historically, my family comes from Mississippi. They all migrated two generations ago to the Chicago Heights area,” says Kid Maestro, born Keynan Harden II. Growing up on the margins of the Windy City, the young Maestro was into music, but not necessarily tuned in to where his favorite artists came from. “I was not tapped into anything that was happening specifically regionally here,” he recalls. “I knew of Three 6 Mafia, but as far as the artists I loved, I really didn’t look into where they were from. I don’t think that I held on to regional pride, even living in Chicago, super strongly.”

That made sense because music, as Maestro developed his skills as a DJ while attending Prairie State College in his hometown, was a thing made of plastic. It lived in the records, CDs, and other media he was spinning at parties. What did geography have to do with it? Yet that all changed when Maestro’s father decided to move to Memphis. 

“He wanted a fresh start, and since he worked at the railroad, BNSF, at the time, he was able to transfer his job,” says Maestro. “And he has a detail shop that he’s been running since we lived in Illinois.” Family played a role in the move. “As long as I’ve been alive, my grandmother has been living in Memphis,” he says. “I’d visited Memphis back when I was growing up. So we moved in with my grandmother when we drove down here. And on August 1st, the day we were driving down, I got a call from admissions saying I got accepted to the University of Memphis.”

His interest in DJing and beats having developed at Prairie State, Maestro decided to focus on recording engineering. As luck would have it, his family was moving to a city with one of the few universities offering courses in the subject. And right off the bat, he met a variety of players and producers who still figure heavily in his life. 

“That first year, I think because I was so focused, I was meeting all the right people,” he says. “We took a tour of the school’s studio during my program orientation, and, because there was this huge recording session that happened to be happening that day, I volunteered to help out. Right away I met IMAKEMADEBEATS. I met PreauXX, the first rapper I heard in Memphis, and I just remember saying to myself, ‘One day I’m going to work with him.’ I met Aaron James playing flag football, and he became my best friend — and we’ve been collaborators ever since.”

Indeed, all the artists he met on his first day would go on to form the core of a music, media, and fashion collective known as UNAPOLOGETIC. Founded by the returning Memphis native IMAKEMADEBEATS, aka James Dukes, it’s evolved into one of the city’s powerhouse production companies in hip-hop, soul, and indie rock. 

Since 2021, Maestro has been the collective’s president. Beyond that, he’s parlayed his experience there as a producer into greater recognition in the hip-hop world, serving as the playback engineer (controlling backing tracks during onstage performances) for Lauryn Hill. Moreover, Maestro’s now learned what it is to identify with our town’s music. As he notes, “Moving to Memphis, I observed that there’s a lot of pride in being from here.”

Matt and Nikki Hill

Unlike the other artists highlighted here, Matt and Nikki Hill didn’t move straight to Memphis when seeking a musical home. They tried a few other cities first. 

“We’re both from North Carolina,” says Matt, who sometimes leads his own group, The Heartbreak Hill Trio, and sometimes backs his wife, Nikki, who specializes in rock and blues. “We met there and then lived in St. Louis. We lasted two winters there, and then we were in New Orleans for about seven years. Then we moved to Memphis at the end of 2020, right in the middle of Covid. We both just dug it immediately. It just instantly had a very homey vibe.”

Because the couple was already touring and releasing records, the Bluff City’s legendary studios were an added draw. “There are so many great studios, that’s always been a pull for us,” says Matt. “When Nikki first recorded in Memphis, she did an EP with the Bo-Keys years ago. They did a country-meets-soul record here, and that’s how we initially linked up with Scott Bomar. He’s been a big supporter of both of us for a long time. In fact, Nikki has been working on a new record over at Sam Phillips with Scott just recently.”

As with John Németh, the couple has found Memphis to be a good base from which to launch tours, both nationally and internationally. To be sure, they’ve found a receptive audience here for their very eclectic aesthetic. But the most powerful draw, Matt emphasizes, was the plethora of vintage studios here. “I mean, getting to be friends with Boo Mitchell, and you go into Royal, and there are Ann Peebles’ master tapes, just sitting there on the shelf. Oh, and here’s the microphone that Al Green used. I love how so much of any Memphis studio’s approach is, ‘Don’t mess with it. There’s nothing wrong with it. Don’t mess with it.’ That’s not the case in so many other places.”

And of course, there were the people. “We both feel that Memphis has embraced us so quickly,” says Matt. “As soon as we needed help or asked for anything, someone was always there, and that’s a beautiful thing here. I tell people all the time, Memphis’s only downfall is that so many Memphians don’t know how great it is.”