Bad Taxidermy. Good Hair

7/29/2019 Bad Taxidermy. Good Hair.

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Long beore Cali DeVaney opened her one-o-a-kind hair salon

and barber shop in Nashville, Parlour & Juke, there stood in

her hometown o Florence, Alabama, an unassuming beauty

parlor named A Cut Above. It occupied a house near the University

o North Alabama, and Cali, then twenty, and a ew years out o cos-metology school, sized the place uphardwood oors, big windows,

lots o lightand saw what the older women who ran A Cut Above

could not see.

They wanted to make money of rich white women in Florence,

she recalls. They didnt see that they were right by the college in a

hip area, and those young people were a viable source [o income].

So Cali went to work, the youngest stylist on staf by a long shot,

her vision clear: I wanted to cash in on the college demographic,

she says. I knew all the young people would come to me, and they

did.

Cali, now thirty-three, still speaks with some wonder about that

decision. Looking back, she says, Im like, how did I think like

that then? Her early business sense can be seen now, happily, as an

auspicious beginning. In 2011, ater years o working in salons and

on her own in Nashville, Cali opened Parlour & Juke. She set about

adorning a warehouse space on Cannery Row with an astonishing

range o conversation piecesvintage curios and urniture, post-

ers, taxidermied creatures, and even a church altar that now holds

old Tab containers lled with round brushes. The result is a visual


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PARLOUR AND JUKE


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east, a three-dimensional collage that makes the set-

ting truly unlike any other, salon or otherwise.

And word about Parlour & Juke is spreading, so

much that national media outlets are knocking at its

door. Last summer, in a GQ eature on Nashville, Par-lour & Juke barber Michael Martin picked up some

major buzz or The Business, his classic straight-

razor shave and cut, and a reporter or Lucky wrote

that she couldn't stop looking around at all o the

delights that the salon had to oferI can say with ab-

solute certainty that they are setting the standard or

trendy salons. Soon Cali will bring on a second bar-

ber to help whittle down the growing waitlist, which

is made up o mostly men.

Cross-legged on a brown vinyl couch, Cali looks

around the space. With exposed, whitewashed brick

and ceiling beams, garlands o white Christmas

lightsthe room is bright and airy. Vintage palmistry

and anatomy posters, Everly Brothers 45s, and antlers

draped with ponytails grace the walls, along with an

abundance o artwork done by Bryce McCloud (o Isle

o Printing), a riend and kindred spirit o Calis who

designed the shops logo. Just outside a tall, south-

acing window, a reight train rumbles by. Though the

room isnt quite round, the ceiling architecture lends

itsel to that illusion. Cali thinks it eels a little like a

circus tent, and shes right.

Guests oten tell Cali that this doesnt look like any

salon theyve ever been to. And that is very impor-

tant to me, she says.

* * *

It all began in the 1990s at Rays University o

Beauty in Florence, a cosmetology school where, at

seventeen, Cali enrolled with a riend ten years her

senior. It was the kind o place you could smoke while

you worked, which seemed like a sweet benet at the

time. Her boss, Martha, was a decent kindwhen

"THIS IS CALI, AND

SHES GONNA DO

YOUR HAIR OR YOURE

GONNA LEAVE.


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women came in or $5 cuts and roller sets, but balked at

having their hair done by the girl with the pink hair,

Martha stood rm: This is Cali, and shes gonna do your

hair or youre gonna leave.Ater working in salons in Florence or several years,

Cali let Alabama or Nashville in 2002, and she hasnt

exactly looked back. But Parlour & Juke is layered with

artiacts rom her childhoodrusty implements rom her

parents arm, a distressed white shel made by her great-

grandather. Several cow tags, also unearthed rom the

arm, hang rom the ceiling, as do three beautiul quilts

made by her great-grandmother. On one wall, theres a

snakeskin mounted on black velvet, that her grandathermade. Its such a strong childhood memory; it was in

his house orever, she says o the snakeskin. Across the

room, beneath ags representing the home states o the

staf, stands an armadillo on his hind eet.

I love bad taxidermy, Cali says. I love the idea o

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(Note : cannot be combined with any other specials)

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901 Main Street

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putting something that looks weird in

a place thats supposed to be beautiul.

Theres just something unny about it.

When she rst started planning Par-

lour & Juke, Cali kept thinking back to

A Cut Abovean old house, high ceil-

ings, lots o light. But ater some un-

successul searching in East Nashville,

she had an agent show her the ware-

house space on Cannery Row. When

I saw the ceiling, I was like, done, she

says. The space also met two o Calis

key criteria: it lacked a storeront, and

it was nearbywell, it couldnt really

be any closer toa music venue.

I I wasnt doing this, Id be in mu-

sic, she saysand in a way, she is. She

travels to do styling on video sets (her

boyriend is Joshua Black Wilkins, thesinger-songwriter and photographer).

She keeps a tight rein on the music played

during work hours, obsessively develops

playlists, and even used to make end-o-

the-year CDs or her clients. Many o the

Cannery, Mercy Lounge, and High Watt

stafers have become clients, and in a

stroke o synergy, Parlour & Juke hosts

live music at the shop.

When Cali was planning the space,

along with style inspirations like south-

ern gothic and ea market, she says

she kept mentioning juke jointsso

much that a riend suggested she use the

word in the name. But rom the get-go,

the juke concept also meant that Parlour

& Juke would host occasional concerts.

Again, the marketing wheels were turn-

ing.

Its ree promotiona great way

to get people to come in and see the

space, she says. Parlour & Jukes own

concert series, Live Cuts, has eatured

artists like Justin Townes Earle, The

Dirt Daubers and J.D. McPherson, and

has been ully equipped with Yazoo

beer on tap and limited-edition Isle

o Printing posters or sale. At a Fat

Tuesday extravaganza earlier this year,

Halbrass, a local New Orleans-style

brass band, led a line parade down the

stairs and around the block.

* * *I Parlour & Juke seems like a salon

thats overtly positioning itsel as some-

thing other than just a salon, its not by

accident. Cali reers to it not as a sa-

lon, in act, but as a shop, a nod to the

"I LOVE THE IDEA OF

PUTTING SOMETHING

THAT LOOKS WEIRD IN A

PLACE THATS SUPPOSED

TO BE BEAUTIFUL. "


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Bad Taxidermy. Good Hair