THE TO-DO
LIST
BY ROBERT BELL AND BERNARD REED
WEDNESDAY 11/2
OZARK FOLK FESTIVAL
Various times. Eureka Springs. Free-$15.
Back for its 64th year, the original Ozark folk festival is taking hold of Arkansas’s quirkiest, coolest small town with up-and-coming and wellestablished musical acts from around the region playing in various venues around town. The headliners are, per usual, a who’s who of bluegrass — Big Smith (Friday) and Still on the Hill, Split Lip Rayfield and 3 Penny Acre (Saturday) — with their unique folk and country sounds that keep them swimming against the mainstream. On Friday night is the festival’s oldest tradition, the Barefoot Ball, which is as unpretentious as it sounds (although, hillbillies be warned, shoes are required for entrance). The Folk Festival Parade, with a “Eureka through the Years” theme, rolls through Saturday for the grand finale. BR.
THURSDAY 11/3
WEDNESDAY 11/2
‘BLAZE FOLEY: DUCT TAPE MESSIAH’
‘DRUNKEN ANGEL’: Stickyz screens a documentary about legendary singer/songwriter Blaze Foley and follows it with a concert.
RVIVR
8:30 p.m., Stickyz Rock N’ Roll Chicken Shack. $10 adv., $12 d.o.s.
From out of the damp, green environs of Olympia, Wash., comes the upbeat sound of RVIVR, playing punk-rock ’n’ roll a la Dillinger Four or maybe Against Me! The band crafts driving pop-punk anthems with lots of palm-muting, boygirl shout-singing and soaring, dramatic choruses rife with “whoa-ohs” and on a couple of tracks — I kid you not — horns. And it’s awesome. It’s been a ton of years since I kept up with DIY punk, but RVIVR (pronounced “reviver”) is the kind of band that makes you remember what it’s like to be excited about living for the moment, drinking too much cheap beer with your best friends, kissing this town goodbye and flipping a fat middle finger to the square community. This is music that’s earnest but not naive, skeptical but not cynical, bursting with poppy hooks but still capable of leaving a bruise. You know that cute girl with the green hair and the nose ring and the Molotov cocktail tattoo, the one who works at the grimy punk-rock pizza joint in every mid-sized city in the country? RVIVR is her favorite band. It could be yours, too. Brother Andy and No Hickeys round out what will be a bitchin’ show that you’ll be glad you went to next time your jerkwad boss has you all bummed out. RB.
Malvern-born troubadour and duct tape aficionado Blaze Foley finally gets his due in a documentary more than 20 years after he was shot to death by a friend over nothing more than a grudge. Although some of his great-
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lawyer Brad Hendricks, whose firm is sponsoring the screening at Stickyz, was one of those acquaintances; they were good friends and even shared a place one time. Multi-instrumentalist Gurf Morlix, who has collaborated with everyone from Robert Earl Keen to Lucinda Williams (whose “Drunken Angel” is a tribute to Foley), performs after the documentary screening with Triplett. BR.
FRIDAY 11/4
‘THE QUALITY OF LIFE’
7:30 p.m. The Weekend Theater. $12-$16.
It’s hard these days to avoid the ideological conflicts of our political and cultural landscape; there’s too much yelling and not enough insight, and it seems nobody can get along because nobody really wants to. TV and the Internet, for all their hopeful modernity, have turned into the stomping ground of the stupid, so perhaps it’s worth it to examine our world in a more oldfashioned way, from the stage. The Weekend Theater presents this drama about a conservative couple whose faith in God helps them cope with the death of their adult daughter, and their weekend visit to liberal, hippy-dippy cousins who live in Berkeley and smoke medical marijuana. By now these are two worldviews whose clash we are not unfamiliar with, but the stage is generally a quiet place, and it possesses a realism that might remind us that we’re all human, no matter what we believe in. The drama continues Nov. 5, 11, 12, 18 and 19. BR
BYRON TAYLOR
9 p.m. White Water Tavern. $6.
est songs are best known from the interpretations of other artists, such as Merle Haggard (“If Only I Could Fly”) and John Prine (“Clay Pigeons”), Foley’s music maintains an impressive legion of followers. He lived all over the country, from Georgia to Chicago to Austin, and his vast number of acquaintances made the film project a logistically difficult one for Texan director Kevin Triplett. Little Rock
GOD DRAMA: Alan Douglas, Fran Jameson, Stephanie Gunderman and Scott Minor star in ‘Quality of Life.’