PROFILES

Kate Crowder

Her music: Kate Crowder, 28, of Two-Way Radio, began forming the band's brand of keyboard-driven power pop in 2004. The outfit's first release, Proud Giraffe Walking Tall, was followed with 2007's Residential Llama. The latter caught the attention of $5 Cover creator Craig Brewer after gaining notice locally.


In $5 Cover: As her fictional husband (played by Michael Khanlarian) is cast from home for failing to support her rock-band ambitions, Crowder mans both the espresso maker at Java Cabana and the keyboard of her band. Along the way, she innocently sets ablaze the heart of fellow musician Muck Sticky. Featured songs: "Carrie Rodgers," "Run Away."


In $5 Cover Amplified: Inside her Shelby County schools classroom, teacher Crowder spirits her fourth-grade students through each day with enthusiasm. The mother of two explains that it would be nice to think bullies are confined to the schoolyard. But as her revenge tune "Carrie Rodgers" attests, some adults never grow up.


On Memphis music: "Everybody here is doing something. When I go out to work (east of Midtown), you talk to people and they ask you what you're doing -- and their mouths drop open. They're just like 'Wow, who does that?' Everybody I know does it. Midtown is just this great place of creative energy and birth."


Latest news: Two-Way Radio's forthcoming album, P.D.'s Pocket Rescue, is scheduled for summer release. The band's first tour is expected to follow.


—John Hubbell


Two Way Radio's website



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$5 Cover Amplified Summary:

Intimate, thoughtful, always entertaining and often formally daring, the 12 documentaries that comprise the anthology "$5 Cover Amplified" reveal a modern Memphis music scene that is as creative, passionate and vibrant as in the city's commercial heyday, when Elvis, Isaac Hayes and Al Green demonstrated that visionary art and popular culture could be inseparable as the 'A' and 'B' sides of a vinyl record.

Produced as a complement to Craig Brewer's episodic MTV drama series/ new media experiment, "$5 Cover," the "Amplified" series of documentary portraits chronicles the rousing art, uncertain careers and sometimes problematic home lives of a diverse, distinctive and often eccentric group of Memphis music-makers.

Mesmerizing Valerie June croons confessional lyrics from beneath a Medusan tangle of dreadlocks that's as thick as her family ties and her musical roots. The puckish Tommy Chong-meets-Pippi Longstocking "clown prince of rap," Muck Sticky, proves to be as dedicated to the welfare of his mother and sister as to his own pursuit of happiness. Punk rock pioneer Jack Oblivian, who plays to sell-out nightclub crowds in Europe, makes ends meet in Memphis by cleaning houses. "Crunk" hip-hop artist Al Kapone is shown to be a tough but loving father, bringing new urgency to the concept of rapper as "role model." Troubadour of heartbreak Harlan T. Bobo is portrayed impressionistically, through stop-motion animation, allegorical fantasy and other conceits.

Whatever the focus or style, the direction of Alan Spearman, an award-winning photographer/filmmaker with The Commercial Appeal, ensures that each segment is as visually assured as it is musically irresistible. "$5 Cover Amplified" was co-produced by Spearman, Andria Lisle and John Hubbell, and edited by Eileen Meyer; their familiarity with the Memphis "scene" ensures unprecedented authenticity as well as access.

John Beifuss- The Commercial Appeal