Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
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LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 4.17 145 BEHIND THE MUSIC READ CONVO Photo by Kaylee Arnett "Back when Derby was a car show." That's a line in the song "8-Ball" from rapper James Lindsey's latest album, Same Sky. Lindsey's childhood memories from the 1990s and early 2000s involve painted Monte Carlos, with rims and hydraulic systems, that would loop up and down Broadway on Derby night. Derby "cruising" would draw car and motorcycle enthusiasts from all over — Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit. It was a busy day for street vendors, barbecue masters and car washers, who would all set up along the route. "You'd see a Chevy Camaro on 30-inch rims," Lindsey says. "I was little back then, but they were so high I could almost walk underneath. It was the Cash Money/No Limit era" — a reference to the record labels that produced such artists as Lil Wayne, Master P and Juvenile — "and you would hear that blarin' out the side of cars. It was all your dreams. You would think that was everything." In 2006, following a fatal shooting the previous year, city officials largely shut down Derby cruising by regulating the traffic flow. Cruising still happens to some extent, just not on the scale that it used to. "I compare Derby cruising to the Irish festival parade (in the Highlands)," Lindsey says. "The only black parade got shut down, but you can have white people parading and drunk in front of cops and everything is hunky-dory." In "8-Ball," he looks back at a time he says was more authentic. Derby, he says, can have a stigma of "goofy dress code, elitist mentality. This was the other side of Derby, the other side of Louisville — the West End." He says he would like to see the "lost art" come back. "Actually," he says, "I have some buddies at the Mayor's Office that might be more lenient now. I'm gonna have to look into that." — Mary Chellis Ausঞn Silo and Plyler's Derby Horse Adventure is an early reader about two penguins from Antarctica on a quest to find a Thoroughbred who can win the roses. (Before you know it, you'll be teaching the kiddos about bloodlines.) Last year, Thunder Over Louisville went orchestral when Louisville's prodigious young orchestra conductor, Teddy Abrams, led his ensemble through recordings meant to sparkle — think violins bursting with Katy Perry's "Firework." This year, instead of sticking to the orchestra, Abrams put together a soundtrack of music from more than 70 different Kentucky arঞsts: big stars to small-town bards, bluegrass to pop to hard rock. (The soundtrack is a secret but Abrams said My Morning Jacket, Cage the Elephant, country artist Chris Stapleton and the Louisville Leopard Percussionists were all being considered). We sat down with Abrams and longtime Thunder producer Wayne Hettinger to hear about what's new with the show. TA: "Getting to know those artists was awesome, because (without this job) I would never have had an opportunity to just sit down for a couple of days and do nothing but just listen and listen and listen. And then, for the artist, I would think about a) What are their most famous songs?; and b) Of those, what would work best with a visual element? Because, a lot of them, it's just the tempo and pacing and even the sound quality of them, you can probably think to yourself, 'Well, that probably wouldn't work so well with fireworks.'" WH: "Oh, it's always been that way. Sometimes, you're playing it in your head, and you go, 'Boy, that's a great song.' You start thinking about programming fireworks to it and it's like, 'Love the song, but it's not gonna work.'" TA: "Well, you guys are able to do so much interesting stuff. It's not just an expected series of booms on the beat. I don't think most places have the capability to design something that goes with a more lyrical piece, or something that has a slower flow to the tempo, or even like a bluegrass number with lots of moving notes without a thumping bass or backbeat to it." WH: "And then everybody asks, 'Are the fireworks going to be as big?' Yeah. I mean, we've got a little over 50,000 shells to get off the ground. When we get to that finale, it's time to pull out the kitchen sink. Anything that we haven't ignited is going at that point."