Your Memphis weekend: the Candlelight Vigil, John Legend, and a 102-degree Sunday

Hey Memphis 👋 It's Thursday. Mostly sunny, 99, with a heat index reaching for 111 — and that makes today the coolest of the next four days. Five things tonight below, then a weekend built around one free candle.

🌙 Tonight

Peabody Rooftop Party: Neon Mooners — The Peabody rooftop, 6–10 PM, $15 general admission or $40 VIP, 21 and up. A band on the roof above Union, and if the heat wins the Peabody moves it into the Skyway Ballroom. Details

Wooden Silhouette Heads — Bartlett Library, 5–7 PM, free, ages 18 and up. Two hours making something odd and wooden, no experience required, nobody's children in the room. Details

Free yoga at the Dixon — Dixon Gallery & Gardens, 6–6:45 PM, free. Laura Gray McCann adapts it to whoever turns up, it's drop-in, and the Dixon's admission is free for good anyway. Details

Maxlee James & Alex Wells, with The Tennessee Star-Lighters — Hernando's Hide-A-Way, doors 6, show 7, $10–15. Three acts in the South Memphis juke joint Jerry Lee Lewis used to close down. Details

Zumba — Raleigh Library, 6:30–7:30 PM, free. An hour of moving fast in a building somebody else air-conditions. Register ahead. Details

☀️ Your Weekend in Memphis

Friday

Live at the Garden: John Legend — Radians Amphitheater at Memphis Botanic Garden, gates 5:30, show 8 PM. Songs and stories, BYOB permitted, parking and shuttle free. The Garden closes at 3 PM that day to set up, so don't plan a normal visit around it. Details

FedEx St. Jude Championship, second round — TPC Southwind. Worth repeating from Wednesday, because it's the best family arithmetic in town this weekend: every ticketed adult brings two kids 15 and under in free. Details

Dash Rip Rock — Hernando's Hide-A-Way, doors 7, show 8, $10–15. Forty years of Louisiana cowpunk in a room that's never asked a band to turn down. Details

Saturday

Memphis Farmers Market — 567 South Front Street, 8 AM–1 PM. Go at eight. Saturday is forecast to hit 102, and eight is the last civilized hour outdoors all weekend. Details

Cardi-O Fitness at the Shell — Overton Park Shell, 9–10 AM, free. A bootcamp on the lawn, part of Baptist's free wellness series, and the only outdoor workout this weekend that starts before the pavement gives up. Details

Sounds from the Stacks: Memphis Youth Symphony — Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, 1–2 PM, free. A youth orchestra playing in the middle of the library: a free concert and an excellent reason to be indoors at one in the afternoon. Details

Junk Journal Jam — Orange Mound Library, 3–5 PM, free. Like Really Creative brings two hours of cutting paper up and gluing it back down better, with a DJ set from Mala Leche and a pop-up from journal maker Prologue Journals if you want supplies. Details

Jam in the House! Part 2 — The Green Room at Crosstown Arts, 7:30–9:30 PM, $20 in advance plus fees, $30 at the door. The best-sounding small room in the city, used for what it's for. Details

Stargazing at Beale Street Landing — 251 Riverside Drive, 7–9:30 PM, free. Somebody else's telescopes, rooftop views over the Mississippi, and the one patch of downtown that cools off after dark. Details

Elvis Week Candlelight Vigil — the gates of Graceland, 8:30 PM, free. This is the one. After a ceremony at the gates, the line walks up the drive to the grave and back holding candles, and it keeps walking into the early hours of the 16th. No pass, no wristband, no ticket, and if you turn up without a candle Graceland hands you one. The early queue forms at the taxi pavilion across the street. Graceland's free evening walk-ups to the Meditation Garden run 6:30–8 PM on the 13th, 14th and 16th — none Saturday, because of this, and the 7:30–8:30 AM morning walk-ups may not run Sunday either. Details

Sunday

FedEx St. Jude Championship, final round — TPC Southwind. Somebody lifts a trophy in Memphis this afternoon, and the playoffs move on without us until next August. Details

Strictly Jazz: The Music of Pat Martino and Pat Metheny, featuring Gerard Harris — The Green Room at Crosstown Arts, 6–8 PM, $20 in advance plus fees, $30 at the door. Two of the great Pats of jazz guitar, handled by a Memphian who can carry both. Details

Chicken Sh*t Bingo with Hillbilly Mojo Memphis — Hernando's Hide-A-Way, no cover. A live band, a chicken, and a numbered grid, precisely as advertised. Hernando's hasn't posted a start time, so call before you drive out. Details

Want the whole verified list, updated daily? It lives at heymemphis.co/events.

📰 The Rundown

The airport has a new name. Memphis International is now Frederick W. Smith International Airport, after the FedEx founder, and the airport's own site already carries it. The code stays MEM, and nobody here is going to start saying the whole thing out loud. (via Action News 5) · Fly Memphis

Christian Brothers University just got $6.2 million from Bob and Paula McEniry, and its business school has a new name to match: the McEniry School of Business, Education and Humanities. The money is pointed at the MBA and accounting programs. (via CBU)

If this heat is more than an inconvenience for someone you know: the Hospitality Hub at 590 Washington Avenue is the city's cooling center for people without housing when temperatures turn dangerous, and MATA will provide a ride — 901-486-0939. Hours shift with the forecast, so call ahead. (via Action News 5) · Hospitality Hub

🍽️ Food & Drink

Crack of Dawn is getting a front door — the breakfast-and-brunch truck has filed to take 2,000 square feet at 929 Porter Street in South Memphis, mid-September the target. Owner Tamara Lee made the point rather than the milestone: they're proud, she said, to become "a permanent fixture in the South Memphis area, continuing our work to fight against food disparities." Until the walls are up, the truck is still the answer. (via WhatNow Memphis)

🎟️ Looking Ahead

Cooper-Young Festival — Saturday, September 19, 9 AM to 7 PM. The one weekend a year the neighborhood closes the streets. Mark it now; admission details aren't posted yet. Details

The rest of Live at the Garden — Alabama plays Thursday, September 3 on its rescheduled date, and Kool & the Gang with Patti LaBelle close the season Friday, September 18. Details

Elmwood's fall season — the cemetery's after-hours season resumes September 3, 6–7 PM, with novelist Rachel Harrison in conversation; the history programming follows September 10 and 12. Nothing on their calendar between now and then, which is the most honest thing a venue can tell you in August. Details

🏡 Community Corner

Saturday night, thousands of people will walk up a driveway in Whitehaven holding candles, some having flown in from other continents to do it. If you grew up here, the vigil is either something you've done or something you've driven past for years meaning to. So: have you ever gone? Hit reply and tell us about your first one, or why you never have. We'll run the best of both.

The tip line never closes — a pop-up, a band, a Sunday night we missed — no gatekeeping — send it to hey@heymemphis.co.

That's it for today — see you tomorrow at 6.

— Josh