Music City Mondays

May the 4th be with you. Always. The Rebels scatter after the Empire attacks their base on the ice planet Hoth. Han Solo and Princess Leia are pursued by Imperials, while Luke trains with Jedi Master Yoda. But when Luke battles Darth Vader, he learns the shocking truth of his past. Iconic score from John Williams + May 4th = an otherworldly edition of Music City Mondays.

In the wake of the 2023 shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Ketch Secor, lead singer of the popular country-bluegrass band Old Crow Medicine Show felt compelled to write an op-ed in the New York Times titled, “Country Music Can Lead America Out of Its Obsession with Guns.” This caught the attention of Ketch’s friend, public radio journalist David Greene — and the two set out to kickstart productive and open dialogue about gun rights and gun violence in America.

Lifelong friends and Torontonians Steve “Lips” Kudlow and Robb Reiner founded Anvil in 1978, bridging the era of 70s hard rock and 80s metal. As bands they’d influenced rose to icon status, Anvil struggled in relative obscurity and yet their dedication to their craft and to each other never once wavered. Documented in the ensuing decades by their friend and roadie, this documentary was born, the band toured with it and brought it here for one night only.

Of the Talking Heads’ 1984 concert film, Jim Ridley wrote, “The first concert I ever saw was the Talking Heads’ Speaking in Tongues tour at Municipal Auditorium in 1983; it made me a concertgoer for life, but I’m not sure I got as much out of it live as I did reliving it through Jonathan Demme’s peerless performance film.” STOP MAKING SENSE screens in Jim’s honor.

On Sunday, March 15, 2020, the emergence of a worldwide pandemic forced the long-term closure of the Belcourt for the foreseeable future. The film that we were scheduled to open on the following Friday was Kelly Reichardt’s FIRST COW. Evoking an authentically hardscrabble early 19th century way of life, two westward travellers in the Oregon Territory start a successful business selling “oily cakes” (scones), but its longevity is reliant upon the clandestine participation of a nearby wealthy landowner’s prized milking cow.