Thank YOU, thank YOU, thank YOU. Hello Again! Welcome to another wonderful collaboration between East Side Story and The Post. Let me be the first to officially, whole-heartedly welcome you to the recap and recording of the 132nd epic edition of East Side Storytellin’! Like the 131, I repeat … 131, previous shows East Side Story has put together, we all decided to take a break from our busy schedules all over town in order to sit back and relax and get everyone cultured up just right in the form of a Nashville writer reading from original prose, followed by an amazing local musician performing and talking about their original music, and then a round-up creative conversation with all featured guests of this event to talk about their individual journeys and personal ties to Nashville. Without further ado, fulfilling the entertainment portion of your day, this is the recap and recording of East Side Storytellin’ 132. Let us begin, again.
The first featured artist of the night is probably one of my favorite people I’ve met in Nashville. Our story has a definite beginning, middle, and no-end, like the perfect TV soap opera you follow mindlessly for decades. Born in Oxford, England in the early 80’s, he hasn’t really stopped moving since. He has blazed his own creative path through several US cities you may have heard of in LA and New York, and he plans on blazing beyond Nashville soon too. He wrote for several high profile magazines at a very young age, kinda like Doogie Howser, M.D. but without the M.D. Since moving to Nashville, he has found a new love for photography and film, shooting many artist portraits and album covers for local artists, my favorite being for our mutual friend Scot Sax. Working steady on his short film, My Apocalypse, I was more than honored to help shine a light on the creative outlet of writing that first got this guy noticed before he is known far and wide for his films in years to come. Fitting that Ned would be moving to Austin, Texas, the day after this show, I thought it was so Nashville of him to plan a gig the night before leaving town instead of an ordinary goodbye for now party. That’s right, I’m talking about my good friend, the one and only, Ned Dymoke!
In typical Ned fashion, he approached the microphone and crowd filled with mostly people he didn’t know with a little bit of timidity and a lot of humble pie. I know that Ned has done his fair share of stand-up comedy in the past and that he usually apologies many times over in conversations for things he thinks he could’ve done better in past incarnations (Lord, don’t we all think that way), but it was amazing to watch Ned wake out of his personal slumber the moment one person applauded, laughed, and then heckled. Yes. That’s right. We had our first big heckler. Mind you, it was the person who I will name later in this blog as the featured musician of the night, but it was more like constructive positive reinforcement and the beginning of a budding comedy and powerhouse performing duo in the making. Point being, Ned took the heckling and the spontaneous vibe of the moment and the room in complete stride and it didn’t take him long, maybe 2 or 3 jokes and comments on the fly to feel right at home.
So, when Ned actually jumped into his reading, he also did that in typical Ned fashion. Basically, he opened his book, titled Life’s Rich Pattern, to random pages and started to share the backstory and the story at hand that was in front of him. He prefaced the book by relaying the fact that this was created in 2011 and 2 years after his dad died unexpected from a heart attack which led Ned to go into a drunken binder for about 2 years. He mentioned that he had lived in a car in the Hollywood hills for a time, and eventually got his shit together once he found more purpose and friendships that inspired him to look beyond himself. The first story Ned shared was called The Best Day of My Life. It was a poignant moment of encouragement between a remembered father and a son that involved bicycles, candid conversation, personal motivations, striving to get into better health, and an unforgettable compliment from Ned’s dad to Ned once he got to his destination. It damn near made me cry because it was so confirming to hear Ned read his dad’s words telling Ned, “You did it!” after a long, hard road of uncertainty and adversity. Everyone should be as lucky to have that kind of moment with their hero. After pulling my heartstrings to the max, Ned opted to share a few other quick stories. He read the title track of his book, diving into the self-examination of unlearning your old languages and lessons as you go further along on your journey called life. He spoke about the various conditions you are in after the more you travel, sometimes finding it easier to become hardened to strangers, finding out there is nowhere to run away to if you want to run away, and that everything eventually fades into laughter. Then Ned finished his set with a drunken stupor called Let it be known. Knowing Ned as much as I do, I felt like the tryptic of stories that Ned shared the night before his departure for the next chapter of his life (at least the next setting in his life) was a perfect reflection of the personal knowledge and self-awareness that Ned has gained the past year while living in Nashville. It’s a process with results that is less credited to Nashville as much as his new friends, his lovely wife, and the experiences he allowed himself to examine and take in by slowing the pace of the rat race mentality and capturing the moments in between the moments, the fresh breathes of air that we all need to breathe in and exhale more. I don’t want to get too meta here, but Ned is someone that Nashville will miss more than it knows. He’ll be back to visit and appreciate, but he is well on his way to being the man his dad encouraged on the bicycle to get to where he needs to go. He’s nearly there. He’s almost, almost there.
Our featured music of the night is a wonderful person and artist that I discovered by being mutual friends with the one and only Scot Sax. If you don’t know Scot, Google him. Back to the musician of tonight, this lady seemingly effortlessly creates sounds that are everything nice about roots, soul, and rock n’ roll. Dubbed by WXNA’s Gina Frary Bacon as “relatable but disarming … a POW in the face,” this young lady will make you want to get pow’d in the face every day, even if that’s not really your thing. With a childhood steeped deeply in the melodies of Motown, with the intensity and soul of rock n’ roll, this artist always has a unique presence and voice in everything she does. Present this particular night to do what she does, she prepared us for her musical set by heckling Ned like a younger sibling and everyone laughing about it. I’m talking about the amazing Molly Martin!
Never having known a stranger or a dull moment, Molly is like the sun. You sit and wait for any sign of light during your darkest times or night. Then, as quick as the skyline was pitch black, Molly pops over your horizon and everything is completely lit. If you can’t see what Molly is, then you have your eyes closed (and what fun is life walking around with your eyes closed?). Seriously, Molly is someone, at least for me, you feel like you’ve known her your entire life the moment you meet her. She has no filters but the truth and she makes you feel alive in the moment and in her presence. The second we started talking before the show, I knew the universe had some sort of formula and made sense because this lady and Scot Sax know and work with each other. And then, and then she sang. Oh My God!
As much confidence and personality Molly brings to any regular conversation, take that times 1,000 to the amount of skills she has with music and her voice. She is a unique talent that can calm a chilled café setting in one second but would easily be able to be dropped into a big arena with a full band the very next second and completely rock a sold out crowd. She moves through this world with a cool ease, making everyone around her feel more alive and cooler along the way. She’s not scared to sing any note, tell any story, or break up the monotony of your life to learn the lessons she has learned and is sharing from her own. And she does it all with an undeniable grace and force of life that I rarely encounter in public. Molly sang songs about unfaithful couples, visitations to her mom’s house and remembering her childhood, stories about getting to know someone better, a melody that included the most beautiful chord known to man (or at least her friend Annika), and even an election song. Specifically, she wrote a song about getting people to come to the conversation table from all sides of the political spectrum to learn to listen and live together. It was very cool for the time we live in these days on social media and off the internet. But one of my favorites was the final one with one person being the heard and the complimentary being the heart. I was having quite a day before this show, and this last song (much like Ned’s story about his dad) hit me at just the right spot. As with anything Molly Martin writes and sings and shares, it will inevitably leave you on the right note you need to be at to approach life again.
So when I say that Ned and Molly could be siblings or the next best comedic duo, I’m not joking. You can take a listen to the entire show in the recording below and listen to their spontaneous bantering between each other’s actions and thoughts and randomness of life together in that same spot in this same universe in this same time. It is something magical to behold. Lucky for me, I had some questions written down beforehand. Other wise, I would have been completely speechless. Much like the fly that kept on coming to the microphone during the come to the table song for Molly, buzzing around her bangs and her face and forcing her to giggle during some serious tones like someone laughing at a funeral, you can actually hear Ned recalculating his next phrases once he gets jabbed by his favorite heckler on the spot. Like most of the other East Side Storytellin’ conversations with featured artists, I truly believe I could talk (or listen) to these two humans sharing ideas and thoughts for infinity and never get bored. They both have the best of intentions with everything they do for themselves and everyone around them, and they both have more talent than is fair for single individuals to be blessed with. Sure, they struggle like the rest of us. But, like most of the people I call friends, they just need the rest of us to remind them of how strong, smart, funny, kind, and awesome they are so they can ride the waves of today, recording what this day and age and human experiment is doing for today, and then sharing it in film, song, pictures, and books for eternity. Point being, I’m so thankful that I get to live in the same space as these two and I can hear and see and love the art that they create. For both of them, this is just the beginning.
Here it is, what you’ve all been waiting for, the edited recording of East Side Storytellin’ 132. As I may or may not have mentioned above, we recorded this show at The Post East on Tuesday, June 19, 2018. Now that you can listen to this entire show again, please feel free to throw it on repeat and also share it with every single family and friend and stranger that wasn’t there to hear it live in person with us. They, and Molly and Ned, will thank you later. Enjoy!
Before I say goodbye for this round of fun, I’d like to give a big round of thanks for Ned & Molly for sharing their stories, talents, and time with us.
You can keep up with Ned’s creative musings here – www.nedtx.com
You can listen to more of Molly’s music here – mollymartinsongs.com
You can listen to this show, edited, soon, alongside the previous shows too, on our website, www.eastsidestorytn.com, at our In Our Own Words Tab – see here – www.eastsidestorytn.com/in-our-own-words
I’ll keep the gratitude going for Tom Eizonas, my lovely wife and most talented artist in Emily Harper Beard (efharper), and everyone that came out live to support the show … and to everyone who has helped continue to spread the word and support the show online afterwards.
Last, but certainly not least, I’d like to give one last shout out to Tonya and Chris for making The Post so welcoming and positively life-changing for the East Nashville community at large.
Our next show will be
East Side Storytellin’ 133
Tuesday, July 3rd
at The Post (1701 Fatherland Street) at 7pm
reading- Gary Jenkins
singing- Buddy Mondlock
That said, that’s all for East Side Storytellin’ 132 and another fabulous event at The Post with East Side Story at the helm. Thanks for coming out and sharing the good word and giving some love to all of these great Nashville artists and our creative ideas. Please remember to be nice to one another out there. I repeat, please be nice to one another out there. Thanks you and goodnight.
Much love,
mE