Bar DKDC in Midtown Memphis will glow with old-school CRT televisions and projected visuals Friday night for DKTV², an immersive showcase built around more than 20 music videos by Memphis musicians and videographers. The event, which starts at 8 p.m. and costs $15 to attend, doubles as the capstone project for two interns finishing a workforce program designed to launch careers in live music production.
Kolby Tipler and Kierstyn Laird are completing internships at Bar DKDC through the National Independent Venue Foundation's VOX program, according to the Memphis Flyer. Tipler worked at the venue over the summer and wanted to create an event that placed music, video, and visual art on equal footing, per the same account. He said he hopes the showcase gives both newcomers and longtime musicians a chance to be seen, and that it should involve more musicians and creatives while being more inclusive.
A Statewide Push Behind Two Local Careers
The VOX Workforce Development Program behind Tipler and Laird's placements offers 12-week paid internships at $20 an hour for emerging live music professionals from under-represented communities, backed by a $300,000 statewide effort unlocked by Inherit the Music, the nonprofit co-founded by Kings of Leon, according to MusicRow. Nationally, 87 percent of VOX participants secure jobs in live entertainment, while 60 percent of Tennessee participants across 13 venue hosts land industry work after their placements, MusicRow reports.
Tipler wants audiences to be surprised by local creativity and inspired to create and collaborate themselves, the Memphis Flyer notes. DKTV² will spotlight not just the musicians in the videos but the videographers, filmmakers, directors, and editors behind them, giving credit to a side of the local scene that rarely gets its own stage.
Karen Carrier's Midtown Institution Sets the Scene
Bar DKDC, located at 964 South Cooper St. in the Cooper-Young neighborhood, opened in January 2013 when owner Karen Carrier replaced her former Dō Sushi restaurant with an intimate spot built around rotating international street food and live music, according to the Memphis Flyer. The name stands for “Don't Know, Don't Care,” a nod to the venue's casual neighborhood aesthetic, which mixes Indian textiles, Mexican masks, and vintage Southern furnishings, per the I Love Memphis Blog.
Carrier returned to Memphis in 1987 and went on to build a local restaurant empire that also includes The Beauty Shop Restaurant, Mollie Fontaine Lounge, and Another Roadside Attraction catering, according to Le Bonheur Children's Hospital. That history of supporting local arts and experimental programming makes the bar a natural fit for an event blending career development with DIY culture.
CRT Screens and an MTV-Era Visual Language
The visual backbone of DKTV² comes from Infinity Stairs, the duo of Graham Burks Jr. and Corbin Linebarier, who will transform the room with projections, original visuals, and old-school CRT televisions. Infinity Stairs has called Bar DKDC home base over the years, and Burks described the event as a cross-section of an active, thriving Memphis music scene, per the Memphis Flyer.
Burks and Linebarier draw inspiration from the MTV and VH1 era, and the CRT aesthetic is intended to evoke the experience of watching music videos glow on old box television screens. Linebarier is also a collage artist and musician behind the synth-punk project General Labor, who has previously composed original live film scores for Crosstown Arts, according to Spacecase Records. Burks, meanwhile, is a multi-instrumentalist producer behind Loose Opinions and plays guitar in the garage-rock group The Drip Edges alongside former Reigning Sound bassist Jeremy Scott, per Add To Wantlist.
Live Sets From Recent Future and Aquarian Blood
DKTV² will feature live performances from Recent Future and headliners Aquarian Blood, adding a band-driven counterpart to the video installations. Recent Future is a synth-punk duo formed during the pandemic by Charlie Davis and David Johnson, who first met in 1998 at the Tennessee Governor's School for the Arts before playing together in Memphis bands Trash Goblin and James and the Ultrasounds, according to Crosstown Arts. The duo previously worked an analog CRT television aesthetic into its March 2025 music video “Top of the Moon,” using split-screen box-TV effects that line up with DKTV²'s visual design, per the Memphis Flyer.
Aquarian Blood began as a home-recording project by Memphis husband-and-wife duo J.B. Horrell of Ex-Cult and Laurel Horrell of NOTS before growing into an avant-punk quintet with multiple LP releases on Memphis-based Goner Records, according to Forced Exposure. Between the VOX interns' career stakes, Infinity Stairs' glowing CRT installations, and sets from two bands steeped in the city's underground history, DKTV² is shaping up as a rare night where Memphis's music-video makers share equal billing with the musicians themselves.
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