Nashville

Dive Bar Magic As Betty’s Grill Gets Weird

by Libby Weitnauer | Mar 7, 2024 3:35 pm

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Sam Petschulat, Ziona Riley, Frank Hurricane, and The Cherry Blossoms
Betty’s Grill
Nashville
3/5/24

During Sam Petschulat’s opening set, I was mostly orienting myself to the beautiful fever dream that is Betty’s Grill. The approximately 500 square feet of dive bar magic contain a simple bar with a bartender who seemingly keeps track of every order on pen and paper, classic black-and-white checkered linoleum floors, wood paneling, silver streamers, some tables, a dart board, a ring toss, and in the corner, a performance area. This performance area, or what I guess one could call a stage, only added to a pretty surreal evening.

Betty’s casual aesthetics, and the use of a portable P.A. system, and the metal bar chairs arranged in formal concert seating felt like a neighborhood talent show in a church basement in the best way possible. On Tuesday night, Sam Petschulat, Ziona Riley, Frank Hurricane, and The Cherry Blossoms were the subjects of this mystical, slightly demented, show.

As Petschulat delivered a visceral solo performance, audience members sat in complete silence and stillness. Relentlessly thrashing acoustic guitar and piercing but sweet vocals defined the set, and a quick, ​“Thanks y’all!” into the mic before the last note had finished ringing out punctuated the end of every song. Ziona Riley (whose music I will only be brief about because I covered her at length in a previous piece) came next in the line-up. Riley performed her poem-songs with an air of near possession. With closed eyes and intent focus, it felt as if the songs were coming through her.

I was not prepared for the rest of the evening. ​“Shrymps,” ​“shrympanatti,” ​“mystic x,” ​“spiritual y,” and ​“Girthworm Jim” are not terms I would expect a reader to be familiar with, as I myself was a stranger to them until Frank Hurricane took the stage. They are seemingly part of an invented language. While never defined, Hurricane’s unique lexicon made perfect sense after listening to his set. This was a throughline of his music: His lyrics were esoteric — ​“mystical” is probably how he would describe them — but you knew exactly what he was trying to say. Hurricane was both a larger-than-life character and an Everyman. It was magic. Every song was preceded by a perfectly crafted, but also maybe improvised, partly sung story that had the whole bar in stitches, and the songs themselves had a sweetness to them with melodies and vocal moments reminiscent of musical theater delivered by his raspy voice. It was a set of paradoxes.

The Cherry Blossoms closed out the evening. They have described themselves in past interviews as ​“Middle Tennessee’s finest anarchic post neo-skiffle collective specializing in kazoo-exotica,” and that sets the scene well. Formed in the early ​‘90s, the band members are of an age that, frankly, does not get booked in many Nashville establishments, aside from old country legends. I can’t honestly say I know what any of The Cherry Blossoms’ songs were about, but that didn’t seem to be the point. Texture, sound, emotional impact, and anything of the non-material variety were more the focus of this soft-noise band’s set.

Drums did everything but keep traditional time, two acoustic guitars were loosely strummed, one was mostly tapped and plunked, and a kazoo, harmonica, and vocals made up the rest of the band. Since learning The Cherry Blossoms are a collective, the fact that two audience members in the front row were guerrilla participating on tambourine and another kazoo makes a lot more sense. ​“I made myself cry on that one,” said the lead singer. There was an element of playfulness, but they were clearly deep in what they were doing, too. These may have been the primary themes of the night: play, but also full commitment.