By Gregory Crofton “Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted” has won the Best Music Documentary Feature award at the 55th edition of the Nashville Film Festival. Directed by Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson, the film glows with a charming creative…
Nashville Film Festival Returns to Green Hills With Heavier Focus on Music Docs
Opening night of the festival features brings two music docs to the Belcourt Theatre — “Devo” and “Rebel Country.” (Photo Credit: Nashville Film Festival) By Gregory Crofton With Nashville being the “It” city, as well as being Music City, the…
Tanya Tucker Opens the Nashville Film Festival with a Visit and a Documentary at the Belcourt Theatre
By Gregory Crofton If Tanya Tucker doesn’t get a party started right, I’m not sure what will. The rowdy, hard-drinking 63-year-old country superstar has helped lead the way for women in the music business since she was thrown into it…
Leonard Bernstein Was Unemployed, Then His Dream Came True
By Gregory Crofton At 25, after bumping around New York City without a consistently paying job, Leonard Bernstein got a call from “God.” Really it was a conductor named Artur Rodziński on the phone, and he told a young Bernstein…
Empathizing with Genius: New Doc ‘Long Promised Road’ Puts Together the Pieces of Brian Wilson
By Gregory Crofton Opening night of the 52nd Nashville Film Festival was a blast as a large group of certifiable film freaks defied the dangers of COVID-19 to meet up in person and watch “Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road.” This…
Lost Tapes of ‘Studio 17’ deliver unheard reggae music from legendary artists
By Gregory Crofton In the heart of Kingston, Jamaica, reggae took root above Randy’s Record Mart. In the late 1950s, a second-hand record store owned by Vincent “Randy” Chin became a “watering hole” for musicians and songwriters. Chin had gotten…