Anyone familiar with Memphis’s Grind City Brewing Company knows that their beers are named for various aspects of the city’s music scene, particularly its soul music legacy, and the brewery has already sponsored music concerts in the past. But in April of this year they launched something much bigger, a new outdoor amphitheatre adjacent to the tasting room, featuring a stage where the downtown skyline forms a dramatic backdrop to the performers on stage.
On a gorgeous April Saturday, Grind City inaugurated their new amphitheatre with a ribbon cutting and a day of live bands and food trucks, as well as a vendor fair on the parking lot side of the building. A good crowd of people gathered, particularly as the sun began to sink, and the most notable bands were Frank McLallen and Extra Eyes and Cedric Burnside featuring his relative Garry Burnside on drums and bassist Kevin Spight, who frequently plays with a number of Hill Country bluesmen.
Cedric’s show was to be followed by a band including Memphis bassist Mononeon, but by that point, both my camera and phone batteries were nearly dead. And I wanted to get something to eat other than something from a food truck, so I left. But it was a thoroughly enjoyable day of great music, without any of the fighting or arguments that have been so frequently highlighted by the news media in public Memphis spaces.