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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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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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