Banner & Company
Banner & Company is a weekly interview podcast from the Nashville Banner hosted by Nashville media legend Demetria Kalodimos.
Episodes
July 20, 2025 • 33 mins
Not many people have held Hank Williams demo recordings with his handwriting on them. But Alan Stoker has. He recently retired from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, where he worked for 50 years, much of it spent preserving and archiving rare — and sometimes fragile — recordings. He was there long enough that some of the recordings he archived he returned to a second time in order to digitize.
Alan was born into a musical...
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July 13, 2025 • 33 mins
"I guess I'm a completist," artist Wendy Murray says of herself. And right now she has an appropriately ambitious project under way: drawing every building on Gallatin Pike. Or, as she likes to say, "the Gallatin Pike" (an homage to Ed Ruscha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip). Maybe you've seen her out with pens and museum board, sketching that day's subject.
Originally from New Zealand, Wendy has taught art at Sydney Universi...
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July 6, 2025 • 34 mins
This month marks 100 years since the Scopes "monkey" trial in Dayton, Tenn. The simple version is that a 24-year-old teacher had been charged with breaking a state law forbidding the teaching of evolution. But as national press descended on this small Tennessee town — at least 150 reporters and photographers in all — it soon became clear that this was bigger than a simple criminal trial. It was as if science itself stood accused.
...
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June 29, 2025 • 38 mins
Maryam Abolfazli was born and raised in Nashville, into what she describes as a "a big and loving Iranian family." Some members of that family still live in Iran, where, already contending with a repressive government, they have also lived in a time of war and now, lingering uncertainty.
All of this hits close to home for Maryam, who has worked in the Middle East and retains close ties with her extended family. As a fragile cease...
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June 22, 2025 • 26 mins
The late Dr. Paul Kwami was the music director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers for 28 years. He passed away in September 2022. Before his death, Dr. Kwami recorded an interview for a documentary project about Nashville music venues, which has not been heard until now. This week's episode, drawn from Banner Executive Producer Demetria Kalodimos' archives, also features the Fisk Jubilee Singers in their first-ever performance at the Blue...
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June 15, 2025 • 37 mins
When the Banner needed someone to sketch the recent trial of Glen Casada and Cade Cothren in federal court — where no cameras or digital devices of any kind are allowed — we turned to artist Paul Collins. His courtroom sketches, created on paper with pencil, marker and other dry materials, brought the trial to life for our coverage, along with several other Nashville outlets.
Paul knew from a young age that he wanted to be an arti...
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June 8, 2025 • 34 mins
Phil Bredesen is a big believer in the public good. As mayor of Nashville, he pushed to create more public spaces, like the downtown public library. He also sought to invigorate the core of the city, in part by bringing big-time sports to town. (Wait until you hear the story of how he got to the final handshake on an NFL franchise.) As governor of Tennessee, Phil worked to acquire and preserving public land.
These days, fishing an...
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June 1, 2025 • 37 mins
Music historian Don Cusic has played many roles — songwriter, producer, novelist, professor. (Not to mention putting in a stint at a newspaper in Cookeville many years ago.) Decades ago, he pulled into Nashville in an old VW bus that doubled as his home until he found his footing writing about music.
Since then, Don has written 28 books, ranging from a biography of Roger Miller to an encyclopedia of cowboys. His latest delves into...
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May 25, 2025 • 38 mins
Five years ago this week, Watkins School of Art, Design & Film held a socially distanced commencement ceremony amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It would the last in the school's 185-year history, as it later merged with Belmont University. Steven Womack taught at Watkins for 25 years, and he details his time there — and the school's demise — in a memoir titled Death of a College.
Before he ever stepped into a college classroom, Steven ...
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May 18, 2025 • 39 mins
With the state of Tennessee set to restart executions this month, federal public defender Kelley Henry is even more busy than usual. Her client Oscar Smith is the first man scheduled to be killed at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. Her team has exhausted its legal options, and Smith is set to be executed on May 22. He will spend 14 days on death watch, instead of the customary three.
The drug that will be used ...
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May 16, 2025 • 51 mins
This week, the Metropolitan Social Services department released a report based on its annual community needs evaluation. The title of this year's report: "The High Cost of Low Wages in Nashville." Coinciding with the release of the report, the department hosted a community gathering at West End Community Church, featuring a panel discussion on the report's findings and possible solutions.
Guests
Stephanie Coleman, Nashville Ch...
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May 11, 2025 • 36 mins
This week, Tennessee Highway Patrol said it made close to 500 traffic stops — coordinating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a sweeping effort to find undocumented immigrants along state roads. Troopers made 12 arrests, and 94 people were detained for reasons related to immigration. The enforcement actions created anxiety and uncertainty in Nashville's Latino communities and raised questions about what Nashvill...
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May 4, 2025 • 38 mins
Major Jackson is the author of six poetry collections, including, most recently, Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems. He is a professor at Vanderbilt University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Coming to Nashville to teach was a homecoming of sorts — he spent many summers here as a child.
For two years, spanning 443 episodes, Major was the host of the podcast The Slowdown, which gave him the space to intr...
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April 27, 2025 • 40 mins
Michael Shane Neal knew from an early age he wanted to be an artist. But there were no artists in his family, so he wasn't sure how he'd turn that into a career. After taking classes in the basement of a dormitory at Lipscomb University, he had a chance meeting with someone who knew the famed portrait artist Raymond Kinstler. And after a trip to New York, a mentorship was born.
Shane credits Kinstler with showing him the way to an...
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April 20, 2025 • 37 mins
Rev. Matt Steinhauer was among the dozen or so clergy who interrupted a House committee meeting earlier this week by reciting the Lord's Prayer. He was eventually escorted out by Tennessee State Troopers. What brought Matt to the Cordell Hull State Office Building that day was a belief that public education is for everyone, and that the bill under consideration — which would allow school districts to turn away or charge tuition to ...
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April 13, 2025 • 39 mins
Middle Tennessee weather can be unpredictable — and dangerous. When things get iffy, a trio of "suburban dads" keeps the information flowing. But once the watches turn to warnings, they really get serious: That's when they start livestreaming on YouTube, tracking storms in real time and letting their audience know when to shelter and when it's safe to carry on.
Nashville Severe Weather started as a Twitter account to keep locals i...
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April 6, 2025 • 38 mins
Growing up in Johnson City, Tenn., Mo Sabri could look out the window of his parents' house and see cows. He grew up listening to Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. He played baseball and football. It was an all-American childhood in many ways. Add a guitar, and all of this sounds like the perfect backstory for a country music singer — except for a detail or two.
Mo's parents immigrated from Pakistan, and he grew up Muslim. Neither of...
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March 30, 2025 • 37 mins
Born to working-class parents in Massachusetts, Linda Rose came to Nashville in the 1990s — by way of Hawaii, where she first began working in immigration law. When she relocated to Tennessee for her then-husband's career, she didn't think there'd be much for her to do. But her practice took off.
These days, Linda's as busy as she's ever been, and the political climate has her anxious for her clients. To stay centered, she finds ...
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March 23, 2025 • 38 mins
The banjo was Mike Bub's first love, but not long after arriving in Nashville he discovered he could find more work playing the bass. He found himself onstage at the Grand Ole Opry, on tour with the likes of Bill Monroe, and in studios across Nashville. He played in Del McCurry's band for years. He's got some stories.
Mike also became a regular at the Station Inn, what the calls the "last bastion" of the Music City he first encoun...
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March 16, 2025 • 36 mins
When you can hear gibbons shouting out from treetops during office hours, you know your job is a bit off the beaten path. As marketing director for the Nashville Zoo, Jim Bartoo gets to spend a lot of time with the noisy, fuzzy, slimy — and just about everything in between — critters that call the South Nashville property home.
Maybe it's not too much of a stretch that Jim once worked in television news — or that his experience in ...
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