JUNE 1–7, 2016 I VOLUME 40 I NUMBER 22
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The City Museum founder considered it his master work. But was it also the site of his murder? BY SARAH FENSKE
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THE LEDE
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PHOTO BY THEO WELLING
“I figure I’ve seen everything I want to see. My will’s drawn up, and the kid knows she’s inheriting this. I don’t think they’ll keep it going. They’re making their $50,000 to $60,000 a year. They’re not gonna piddle in this $30,000 a year job.” RonohlemeyeR,photogRaphedathisshopthegoldenKilninComptonheightsonmay25,2016 —
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TABLE OF CONTENTS FEATURE
12.
It Ain’t Over til the Sitar Sings The making of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’ world premiere of Shalimar the Clown Written by
KRYSTIN ARNESON Cover by
KELLY GLUECK
NEWS
CULTURE
DINING
MUSIC
5
17
23
33
The Lede
Calendar
Your friend or neighbor, captured on camera
Seven days worth of great stuff to see and do
8
20
Probing the Secrets of Cementland
Giovanna Cassilly is convinced that her husband’s death was no accident — and she’s begging for help.
Film
The Dying of the Light pays tribute to the lost art of movie projection
21
Galleries
Art on display in St. Louis this week
This Magic Moment
Ain’t That Americana
Cheryl Baehr checks out the Chase Park Plaza’s new (and improved) restaurant, the Preston
In its twentieth year, Twangfest is going stronger than ever, Richard Moriarty reports
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36
Expert Opinion
Chef Kevin Nashan details his ten favorite places in Benton Park — his own restaurants not included
26
First Look
Kavahn Mansouri visits the first-ever Whole Foods Market to open within St. Louis city limits
Homespun
Sleepy Kitty Flux
37
Out Every Night
The best concerts in St. Louis every night of the week
37
This Just In
This week’s new concert announcements
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Publisher Chris Keating Editor in Chief Sarah Fenske E D I T O R I A L Arts & Culture Editor Paul Friswold Music Editor Daniel Hill Digital Editor Elizabeth Semko Staff Writers Doyle Murphy, Danny Wicentowski Restaurant Critic Cheryl Baehr Film Critic Robert Hunt Editorial Interns Katelyn Mae Petrin, Emily Higginbotham, Harlan McCarthy Contributing Writers Mike Appelstein, Allison Babka, Sara Graham, Roy Kasten, Jaime Lees, Joseph Hess, Kevin Korinek, Bob McMahon, Nicholas Phillips, Tef Poe, Christian Schaeffer, Mabel Suen, Lauren Milford, Thomas Crone, MaryAnn Johanson, Jenn DeRose
A R T Art Director Kelly Glueck Contributing Photographers Abby Gillardi, Robert Rohe, Mabel Suen, Steve Truesdell, Eric Frazier Micah Usher, Theo Welling, Corey Woodruff, Tim Lane
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NEWS
“This Was No Accident,” Bob Cassilly’s Widow Says Written by
SARAH FENSKE
N
early five years after St. Louis artist and City Museum founder Bob Cassilly died in what police termed a bulldozer mishap, his widow is speaking out, saying she’s become convinced his death was not an accident. Giovanna Cassilly, who’d been married to the prolific artist for seven years at the time of his death, has been working with attorney Albert Watkins to persuade law enforcement to reopen the case. Watkins confirms they have spoken with the FBI and are also seeking the involvement of the St. Louis County Police Department’s major case squad. Giovanna believes that a cursory investigation on the part of local law enforcement failed to get at the truth of what happened to her husband — and that a series of strange events, including an earlier incident where he was beaten up, as well as a subsequent fire that appears to have been deliberately set — may be connected. She’s begging anyone with information to step up. “I do believe someone is going to come forward with substantial information,” she says. “People know things, but no one has had a place to go. I had no place to go! This has been on me, eating me alive. And I want to encourage anyone who has seen any kind of suspicious actions — to call. As silly as they may think it is. Please call. Please come forward. “People have information, and that’s all I want.” The noted sculptor was found in his bulldozer on Monday, September 26, 2011, around 8 a.m. The grisly discovery was made by 8
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Giovanna Cassilly with her husband Bob. They were married for seven years before his untimely death. | MIKE DIFILIPPO/COURTESY OF GIOVANNA CASSILLY a member of Cassilly’s crew who had reported for work at Cementland, Cassilly’s unfinished 56-acre masterwork along the Mississippi River north of downtown. His body was slumped in the cab of the upright dozer as it rested on the hillside. From a distance, a neighbor recalls, it looked like he was napping, or had fainted. Giovanna Cassilly had been in Los Angeles for the weekend, and she’d started worrying when her husband failed to meet her parents for a planned hand-off of their two young sons on Sunday. She’d tried calling, tried texting. Nothing. That Sunday evening, increasingly alarmed, she called their neighbor and asked her to go look at Cementland. The neighbor (who asked that her name not be used) tells the RFT that she vividly recalls standing at the gate. It was dark and rainy; there was no sound of Bob’s bulldozer, and the gate was padlocked. Nothing, she reported back. He’s
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not there. The next morning Giovanna began calling again, this time asking her husband’s crew members if they could look for him on the property. What they found was her worst fear: Her husband was dead. Within hours, the media would report there had been an accident, the result of a bulldozer rollover that had apparently sent the machine tumbling down a steep hill, fracturing Cassilly’s skull. Everything that followed was a blur, a terrible period of mourning even in the midst of legal chaos. Because Bob Cassilly died with no will and an exceptionally complicated estate (part ownership in the City Museum and full ownership of Cementland; two kids from a previous marriage, plus a wife and two more kids), years would follow in probate court — years of stress and great sadness. It was only after a fire ravaged the work garage at Cementland where her husband’s art was kept,
and only in the midst of the chaos of Ferguson, that Cassilly’s widow found herself jolted to everything that had been nagging at her, subconsciously, for years. How had her husband, an experienced operator of heavy machinery, somehow sent a 32,585-pound bulldozer tumbling over and over with such velocity that it landed almost fully upright — not throwing him from the machine, but still killing him? Why had no one in law enforcement ever even asked her about all the strange events of that summer of 2011? And how was it possible that Cementland’s gates were locked the night before her husband’s body was found? When Bob was working he never locked himself in, as crew members confirm to the RFT; his hands were too big to reach around from the inside and unlock the gate. Instead he would set the padlock so it looked closed, but wasn’t.
And yet their neighbor, who knew the difference, was sure it had been locked that Sunday. Had someone else been at Cementland that Saturday or Sunday? Did that someone lock the gate behind them? “It all hit me at once,” Giovanna says. “This was no accident.” At that point, in the summer of 2014, Giovanna first got in touch with the FBI. When they contacted her to say they were opening an investigation, she asked them to repeat what they’d told her: “I just want to make sure I heard that right.” Hearing it a second time, she sank to the floor. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything like this,” she says. “I felt complete happiness, complete sadness — I was laughing and crying. I felt like Bob had tackled me to the ground. “It was the best feeling of the most intense pain I’ve ever felt. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I did the right thing.’ And I’ve been waiting since then.” The fact that Bob Cassilly died at Cementland has time and again proven a complication. Beyond the difficulties of its topography, the site straddles the city/county line. Attorney Watkins says the spot where Cassilly was found was actually located in the St. Louis County municipality of Riverview — giving Riverview Police jurisdiction. (A spokeswoman for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, which instead handled the investigation, disagrees, saying the street address was in St. Louis city.) The St. Louis police investigation was minimal. They never interviewed Cassilly’s widow. They never established whether the death occurred on Saturday or Sunday. A spokeswoman defending the police investigation notes that OSHA also looked at the scene, as well as the medical examiner’s office. But OSHA’s two reports are almost laughable in their brevity. A one-line summary in the first report makes it clear just how unprepared the agency was to deal with the unusual circumstances: “A museum piece fell on an employee killing the employee during the erection of a museum piece.” In the second report, that’s been changed to “a sole proprietor was killed during construction of a private property.” The report notes that “no inspection” is planned.
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Bob Cassilly at Cementland, an old cement plant he was turning into a wonderland. | GIOVANNA CASSILLY The medical examiner’s office was more thorough. By the time its investigator arrived, the news media was already there, but emergency personnel assured the staffer that the bulldozer had not been moved. It was “in a mostly upright position, leaning to the right” at the bottom of a steep hillside. “On initial examination, the exterior of the equipment was noted to have some damage which could be consistent with rolling down the hillside,” the investigator wrote, theorizing that the dozer must have tumbled over at least once and then landed upright. The top of the cab compartment was dented; the side mirror was cracked. Orange-colored ear protectors midway up the hillside must have slipped out along the way. But there were plenty of questions that no one seems to have answered. “I was unable to obtain information at the scene at the time of the investigation about the known previous condition of the equipment being operated by the deceased,” the investigator wrote. “It was unknown if it was owned or a rental. How much, if any, experience the deceased had on this piece of equipment was unknown to anyone interviewed by this Investigator at the scene.” It’s an odd statement, since Cassilly’s experience with the dozer — his 1999 model John Deere 750J — was well-documented. More critically, had the roof been dented before the weekend in question? The report doesn’t spend any more
time on the question, much less consider whether the machine could have suffered only a “dent” by tumbling down a hillside. And while bulldozers can, and do, roll over, fatalities are rare. One of the few studies that looks at the phenomenon was done in 2001, with the Centers for Disease Control surveying OSHA data on “mining accidents while operating a bulldozer” from 1988 to 1997. In those ten years, across the nation, the study found just fourteen deaths attributable to the dozers “rolling over, falling over an edge or falling into a hidden void.” Seven were caused by the operator being thrown from the dozer; the other seven were caused by asphyxiation or drowning. None matches the description of Cassilly’s death scene. John Deere’s spokesman was not aware of any studies that look at bulldozer rollovers, nor was a spokeswoman for the larger Association of Equipment Manufacturers. John Deere confirmed that a rollover protection device would have come standard on the model operated by Cassilly — making it less likely that he could have been crushed while in the bulldozer’s cab. But “crushed” doesn’t match what the medical examiner found. Cassilly’s spine did not snap, the report shows. Instead, there was a skull fracture, “multiple contusions of the right neck” and “multiple contusions and abrasions present on the upper back.” Numerous ribs were fractured. Continued on pg 10 riverfronttimes.com
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CASSILY’S DEATH Continued from pg 9 To Cassilly’s widow, the findings are horrifying. “They told me in the morgue it was quick and painless, that he didn’t feel a thing,” she says. “That is not what happened here. I come from a place of common sense — I challenge anyone to come look at this and read this report and come to the conclusion it was an accident.” She’s convinced the crime scene was staged — or at minimum misinterpreted. She believes her husband was beaten to death: “Look at it yourself and read the report. This man was brutally beaten from behind.” Dr. Michael Graham, the chief medical examiner for the city of St. Louis, acknowledges that the report didn’t attempt to answer numerous questions you might be familiar with from CSI, including the time of death. And that’s for a simple reason: Nothing contradicted the idea of it being an accident. “We approach the scene neutrally,” he says. “When you get all this information together, you’ve got a guy in the caged portion of a bulldozer with the kind of injuries you’d expect when something rolls over. Unless there’s solid information suggesting otherwise, as far as I’m concerned, you’ve got the answer.” Graham also says he believes Cassilly’s injuries are not typical from what you’d see in a beating, mainly because “his head and neck injuries are all on one side.” But, he says, a case is never fully closed. “We may be at a stopping point, but we’ve sometimes come back to cases twenty years later,” he says. “There’s nothing that makes me go back here to say that the initial scenario was not correct. But, given new information, we can always go back and look at a case again.” There are a few reasons Giovanna Cassilly has found herself wondering, time and again, if her husband was beaten to death at Cementland — and one reason is that he’d been beaten there before. While Giovanna was in Portugal that May before her husband’s death, she says, he told her he’d been beaten up at the site. Her second-hand recollection is the kind of maddening detail you run into repeatedly when you’re 10
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Cassilly’s body was found slumped in his bulldozer, almost as if he were napping. | COURTESY OF ALBERT WATKINS probing a five-year-old incident that never got a full contemporaneous investigation. Giovanna remembers Bob telling her that he’d been jumped, that it was three white guys, and that it happened at Cementland. “I thought I was dead,” he told her. He fought them off, he said, with some kind of piece of scrap metal. Richard Fortner, a member of the Cementland crew, says he has no memory of Bob mentioning such an attack. But while it might be easy to dismiss a distraught widow, confirmation comes from both the couple’s neighbor (who remembers being told of the incident at the time) and Cassilly’s longtime massage therapist (who also spoke to the RFT on the condition that his full name not be used). The masseur says he worked on Cassilly soon after the beating. He remembers scuffed-up hands and a bruised back and arms. “I asked him what happened, and he said something like, ‘You should see the other three guys,’” the therapist recalls. “He said, ‘I got some good clumps on them too.’” He remembers Cassilly saying that he hadn’t called the cops, which wasn’t surprising. It wasn’t his style. The beating wasn’t the Cassilly family’s only violent incident in the year before Bob’s death. In December 2010, Giovanna had taken out a restraining order against Bob’s son
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from a previous marriage, Max, after the 27-year-old left a voice mail threatening to kill her in her sleep and calling her a “dumb fucking whore.” (“Hey! And Dad! You go fuck yourself too,” he says on the message.) Eight months later, just one month before Bob’s death, Max Cassilly was shot repeatedly with an AK-47 in his south-city apartment. According to the prosecutor’s sentencing memorandum, a “persistent offender involved in illegal drug and gun activity” named John Blake went to Max’s home in south St. Louis with another man “under the guise of buying marijuana from [Cassilly’s] roommate.” But instead of buying pot, the two men forced their way in, the memo says, with the unnamed man asking where Max Cassilly and his dogs were. “The gunman demanded [Cassilly’s] money and started shooting,” the memo says. Reached by phone at the Northeast Correctional Center in Bowling Green, Missouri, Blake describes a chilling scene, albeit one different than the one in court files. He confirms that he was a drug dealer, and was there to buy pot from Cassilly’s roommate. But while he was making the purchase, Blake says, another man forced his way into the apartment with an AK-47 and demanded money. He asked for Max — and he began
shooting. Blake fled the scene. Apprehended by police after he crashed his Hummer, he was charged as an accomplice. He pled guilty, he says, because he knows he shouldn’t have fled (on probation at the time, he was worried about getting in trouble). But he wasn’t in cahoots with the other guy, he says: “I couldn’t tell you who he was if I saw him today.” The shooter has never been apprehended. Max made a surprisingly swift recovery from the semi-automatic blasts, and by all accounts, the incident brought him closer to his father. In fact, Max and his father met for lunch on the Saturday before his death. The police report notes he was likely the last person to see his father alive. Max is now married and running the rooftop cafe at City Museum. He is also running for a Democratic Party committee seat. He credits the terrible events of that summer for helping him get his life together: “It set my ass straight.” The way he describes it, his roommate had been tempted by the ease of getting pot in Colorado, where it had recently been legalized, and got in over his head. “He wanted to make a whole bunch of money for no work, and people in the industry don’t like that,” he says.
But Max says that’s not what led to his shooting — instead, he believes, his roommate was too trusting, and an acquaintance saw their apartment as a ripe target for armed robbery. What happened to him, he insists, is in no way connected to his father’s death. He saw the accident scene, and in light of Cementland’s topography, it made sense. “If it was an inside job, they were amazing at what they did,” he says. If it was murder, he adds, “It would be fucking awesome — it would answer so many questions. Unfortunately, the shittiness of the world is to blame, not some secret society.”
determine the fire at Cementland was arson, several pieces to the proverbial puzzle fell into place, including the reality that the fire was set to obscure the theft of priceless and irreplaceable artistic molds created by the hands of Bob Cassilly. “The sequence of events leading up to the sudden death of Robert Cassilly Jr. is otherworldly. The events following the sudden death of Robert Cassilly, Jr. are otherworldly. Given the otherworldly nature of Cementland itself, there is a certain sense of poetic justice which enshrouds the saga,” he says. Of his client, he says, “Giovanna’s punctilious attention to detail has been invaluable to those seeking to reconcile the events. Giovanna and her lawyers will continue to assist all law enforcement agencies, bureaus and forces involved. This obviously includes sharing findings arising out of Giovanna’s self-funded investigative undertakings. I pity those who until recently may have felt their actions would forever go undetected.” Giovanna has set up a hotline and an email address in hopes that anyone with information about her husband, Cementland or the warehouse fire will get in touch. She’s asking people to email justiceforbobcassilly@gmail.com or call 314-578-5347. She’s willing to share reports with anyone who wants to read them. And if anyone wants to examine it, she still has the bulldozer. She recently completed the purchase of Cementland from her husband’s estate, a long process thanks to the probate court’s involvement. She wants to preserve her husband’s legacy by finding a way to finish his master work. But she also wants to preserve what she’s convinced is a crime scene. “I’m sick to my stomach thinking there are murderers out there who thought they got away with this,” she says. “I will gladly let somebody, anybody, come and see this, and read these reports. We need help.” n
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“I’m sick to my stomach thinking there are murderers out there who thought they got away with this.”
On August 22, 2014, there was a fire at Cementland, and the 40,000-square-foot building that held much of Bob Cassilly’s commercial artwork (as well as some larger pieces of fine art) burned. Because the administrator appointed by probate court had allowed property insurance to lapse, there was never a formal investigation into what caused the blaze. Until, that is, this spring. That’s when Giovanna Cassilly hired attorney Watkins to help her with the ongoing probate case, as well as assistance pushing her concerns about her husband’s death. Watkins hired a certified fire inspector named John L. Scheper. In a two-page report, Scheper concluded that the fire was no accident. An accelerant had been used, leading to “uniform and catastrophic damage thru-out the structure.” Additionally, Scheper wrote, some of Bob Cassilly’s most valuable molds had been removed from the warehouse prior to the blaze. “Based upon the provided inventory of the room contents, and the eye-witness accounts of the property care takers, nearly 50 percent of the molds were removed prior to the fire,” he concluded. To Watkins, the blaze is just one more suspicious incident in a long list. “Once the expert-laden investigation was able to conclusively
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It Ain’t Over til the Sitar Sings
The making of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’ world premiere of Shalimar the Clown
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n October 17, 2015, in a churchturned-eventspace that only recently had a tree growing out of it, an opera was being built. Shalimar the Clown, a new work based on the eponymous Salman Rushdie novel, would make a quiet, public-facing debut that night after ten days of intensive workshopping. The workshop, held in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Cincinnati, was part of a joint venture between the Cincinnati Opera and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music called “Opera Fusion: New Works,” which offers composer-librettist teams a chance to workshop in-progress compositions — and conservatory students a chance to learn and perform opera. Shalimar, as it happens, was ramping up to make its world debut with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL) on June 11. OTSL artistic director James Robinson was also in attendance. It’s exactly the type of workshop that he likes sitting in on: young singers “presenting material so you can actually hear it,” he says. “That kind of workshop isn’t about the performance of the piece but how the opera itself is working,” he adds. “You learn a great deal about the pacing of the piece, how works sound in certain registers of the voice, whether scenes seem too slow or too fast.” Unlike him, I hadn’t been on hand for more than a week of fivehour evening rehearsals (doubles on the weekends) and note-taking and revisions, followed by the performers re-learning parts as things got added and subtracted. I was there to watch, to see what happened when it came to life. As
A sketch showing a costume for one of Shalimar’s key characters. BY JAMES SCHUETTE
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Written by KRYSTIN ARNESON staffers bustled around, tuning a piano and setting up heavy wooden chairs for the audience and risers for the singers, I noticed a rug at the front of the stage — a spot, I was told, for the sitar player. I was intrigued. If you’re like me — passably familiar with opera but no Juilliard grad — you don’t hate opera. You’re open to it, but maybe you see it as a little antiquated. A little dusty. You really liked the absurdist modernity of last year’s OTSL production of Barber of Seville because it was so obviously appealing, but the more traditional La rondine was a little slow. Or maybe opera just seems too highbrow or bougie or fusty to you. Shalimar isn’t set in a royal court, and there’s not a powdered wig or breastplate to be found. It springs from a novel by one of modern literature’s greats. It’s mainly set between 1989 and 1990 in a remote village in Kashmir (“It’s not just a sweater,” as librettist Rajiv Joseph quipped before the debut). To greatly simplify a complicated history, the region has been under dispute since 1947, when the modern shapes of India and Pakistan were drawn along Hindu and Muslim lines. After war in 1965 led to a U.N.-negotiated ceasefire, tensions remained high (another war in 1971; allegations of election rigging in 1987). In 1989, proPakistan and pro-independence guerrillas struck, ushering in a lingering conflict and driving almost all the Hindus out of the region. The setting is a far cry from the Eurocentrism you associate with many classic operas. Like much of Rushdie’s work, magical realism permeates the plot. A celebration in the opera’s village, inhabited by dancers and acrobats, is interrupted by a man Rushdie calls the Iron Mullah (in
the opera, he’s called Bulbul Fakh) — who’s made completely out of scrap metal. But as badly as magical realism sometimes translates to film, in opera it seems almost perfectly at home. “He has this mechanical voice, and he’s terrifying, and he’s interrupting this choice occasion to warn people that they’re infidels and that there’s a war about to begin,” says Joseph. “It’s very chilling and striking, but also it’s born to be an aria. It’s amazing — it’s like this perfect moment in the opera.” The workshop was the first time that the creative team had heard the opera sung straight through. Joseph had previously heard the music, of course: Composer Jack Perla had sent recordings to him, but the synthesizer used on them, while adequate, wasn’t exactly the same as a live sitar. And though Joseph and Perla both knew the words, they’d never heard them sung by a full chorus. “I remember the first day and hearing it and thinking, ‘Wow, this is complex’ — and that was the first thought,” Joseph says. “Then after about ten minutes into it, it was like, ‘Wow, this is beautiful.’ My own rhythm had to kind of adjust to hearing opera, but once I kind of sank into it, it was magical.” I felt the same way during the performance. It took me a second to align with it — watching an opera is more active and more involved than, you know, streaming Netflix. But then something shifts and clicks into gear, and suddenly opera doesn’t seem so strange at all. It sweeps you along with it.
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halimar the Clown was the first opera Jack Perla ever pitched when he set about on his madcap plan — his words — to be a known opera composer. It was also the last to be commissioned. Fresh off a three-year stint writing music (more than 1,000 pieces) and directing voiceovers for the educational entertainment company LeapFrog, Perla threw the idea out in 2007 to a some major companies and opera-scene folks while living in San Francisco. It got a warm reception, he says, “but they had other things.” But the opera world — at least the
The public reading of Shalimar the Clown took place in Cincinnati in October 2015. | PHILIP GROSHONG AND CINCINNATI OPERA part of it that develops new works — is a small one, and eventually his treatment found its way to Robinson. The story is a lesson in sticking to great ideas: Nine years after its initial conception, Shalimar is about to find its way, fully realized, onto the stage at OTSL. The company, which mounts a full season of shows each year at the Loretto-Hilton Center on the campus of Webster University, has built a national reputation for its commitment to producing new operas, including 27 (2014), Champion (2013), The Golden Ticket (2010) and Loss of Eden (2002). According to Opera Fusion: New Works’ co-artistic director Marcus Küchle, OTSL is an ideal company for premiering new works: Midsized companies seem to be more agile when it comes to changing business models. And while larger institutions like the Met in New York do produce (excellent) new works, there’s something about being located in a middle ground — in a “second city” with a medium-sized company — that lends itself to being unbound by venerable tradition, to taking
risks and to pushing the envelope creatively. Minnesota Opera, for example, has just produced an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining. “At least in North America, it’s a golden period for opera because there’s so much new work being created that just picks up where old opera already was,” says Küchle. In Europe, he adds, the focus is instead on reinterpreting older works in increasingly conceptual ways — an approach that in the U.S. is “met with a certain sense of disapproval” by audiences. Küchle adds that ambition like Perla’s is not an anomaly: There’s no shortage of singing talent coming out of schools or of composers who want to write opera. For Perla, the lag time between his initial Shalimar pitch and actually writing it proved to be a blessing, in a way. Of all his ideas, he says, “it’s the biggest and the most ambitious.” It was also a work where he could exercise the full range of his compositional capabilities. With solid source material — the plot surges with classic soap-opera elements:
sex, political intrigue, ideological clashes — he divided the novel up into scenes, sketching out a libretto (the opera’s “script”) and developing a synopsis. But an opera needs both music and words, and, once OTSL picked up Shalimar for production, the hunt turned to finding a strong librettist — something the opera world is a little short on at the moment, Küchle says. One was secured, Perla says, but dropped off the project after a year and a half due to geographical challenges (he was in the U.K.) and a busy schedule. So it was back to the beginning. And then Joseph came on board. The playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, 2010) had never written an opera before, but bring Rushdie into the mix, and the opportunity to write an opera based on Shalimar was a no-brainer. “Immediately, I was like, ‘Yeah, I’d like to do anything that’s Rushdie-related,’” he says. Besides plays, he’s also written for Nurse Jackie and co-wrote the script for Army of One, a feature film due out this year starring NicoContinued on pg 14
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MAKING OF THE OPERA Continued from pg 13 las Cage and Rainn Wilson. “The first meeting we had was amazing because I was so tempted to tell him all the ideas,” Perla says. “I had so many ideas at that point, and [Robinson] advised me … he said, ‘See what he’s thinking.’ … [Joseph] had many ideas I never would have thought of, but there were several big key items that we were absolutely on the same page… There were things that really grabbed him in the book, specific pages and passages that to me, too,
were just incredibly powerful.” Joseph hadn’t seen a ton of opera before he started writing the libretto. “I’m not this ‘opera expert,’ so I feel like many people, I think, who aren’t used to opera,” he says. “I find it a challenging art form. “It was a totally different experience than writing a play — or even writing a musical, which I’ve done also,” Joseph adds. In opera, the libretto and score are so closely intertwined that you can’t really blame a novice for not knowing where to start: “When I asked [Perla] what comes first, he looked at me like I was crazy and
said, ‘Well, the libretto! I can’t do anything until I have the libretto!’” So Joseph gave himself a crash course: He began seeing more opera and listening to it a lot, and his brother, a classical musician, gave him advice and more operas to listen to. Robinson and Perla chimed in with their own suggestions, too, as well as librettos to read — “and that’s when it started making sense to me,” Joseph says. But his task wasn’t just to write an opera: It was to turn a nearly 400-page novel about a disputed region in Asia into an opera. “Whenever I’d be on a subway
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or on a trip, or at the gym, I’d be listening to it to get the words and the language into my bones a little more,” Joseph says (he also read Shalimar twice and listened to it on audiobook while writing). First, he pared down the source material, letting the narrative shine through. He agrees that he and Perla were on the same page from the beginning — well, pages. “When I met [Perla], it was great because we clearly had thought about the book the same way,” says Joseph. “We saw the moments in the book that seemed theatrical and dramatic. Because the difficulty is that it’s a very complex and sweeping novel, and to work that down into a magical size for a performance is difficult.” Joseph got a big sketchpad — he uses a different type of notebook for each project — and began to write down ideas. Perla and Robinson sat him down to warn him that a sung sentence winds up about about ten times as long as a spoken sentence. “So the key to writing a libretto is … you want it to be as spare and short as possible,” Joseph says. “That’s a different sort of artistic approach to creating dialogue than the one I’m used to.” Eventually, the ideas turned into the dialogue he needed to carry the opera. He started writing in December 2013 and finished six months later. From there, there was a back and forth between Joseph and Perla and Robinson: phone calls and emails to bounce ideas off each other, refining and refining and refining. “I’d hone it, and hone it, and hone it, and then I had a libretto,” Joseph says. Meanwhile, Robinson would help facilitate the creative process, asking questions, keeping an eye on dramatic pacing and making sure that ideas that can be expressed in ten seconds of music don’t take two minutes. He also teased out clarity and made sure the team stayed collaborative — which, with a different creative team that had more ego, could have been difficult. “We all have our eyes on the same target: The goal is to have the piece work,” says Robinson. “It’s not like anyone gets territorial — they maintain the integrity of what they’re doing … it’s not like everyone’s digging in and drawing lines. The most important thing is to collaborate.” The team also met with Rushdie during the writing process, sitting down to talk with him for about three hours one day, Joseph says. He now counts the New York-based
novelist among his friends, though Rushdie was pretty hands-off, letting the team take his story and run with it. “He didn’t want to kind of really interfere,” says Joseph. “He was very happy that we were doing it. He was very supportive. … Again, since the book is so big, we had a bunch of ideas and he would be able to gently say, ‘Well, don’t lose track of Shalimar. The book is called Shalimar.’ “And I’d be like, ‘Oh yeah, you’re right. We’ve lost track of the main character of the story. We’ve been obsessed with these two other characters,’” says Joseph. “He was helpful, but since then he’s happily stayed out of it and he’s excited to come in here. He’s listened to some of it and he’s very supportive, which I was very happy about. “One of the fears is that he would hate what I did, and I could see and understand why he would, because — I’m not proud of it — I had to change the story,” he says. The cutting room floor inevitably saw some casualties during the adaptation process. “There’s a couple of characters that I cannot believe are not in this, but you can’t go down that road because you want every character to be fully alive,” says Joseph. “The audience would be sitting there for two days.” Meanwhile, as Joseph wrote the libretto in L.A. and Brooklyn, Perla was working on the score for the long-awaited opera from San Francisco, calling up musical knowledge that he’d first started developing more than a decade before. Before his LeapFrog stint, he’d been involved with projects in San Francisco’s Bay Area, crossing paths with world-class Indian musicians like Zakir Hussain, Aashish Khan and Sultan Khan. “I had been thrown into the midst of that group and learning a bit really by osmosis and just on the job,” Perla says. There was also a project with Arjun Verma, a Bay Area sitarist: a small one-act opera that involved Indian music. While Perla composed the words, rather than the music, it’s how, he says, he got his “feet wet.” Perla drew on the vastness of Indian musical tradition — “incredibly rich and multi-layered,” he says — to build out his score. He did it most notably through the use of raga, a melodic mode used in Indian classical music. For those not familiar, “raga is like a collection of melodic ideas, do’s and don’ts,” Perla says, adding that “it’s been really interesting and powerful
Jack Perla (left), with Rajiv Joseph (middle) during a press conference. | ERIC WOOLSEY to see how those materials can enhance the drama enormously — and challenging to make it work.” Part of the challenge was creating a bridge between two cultures’ musical traditions. In Western music, he explains, there’s a “love of harmony and the movement of harmony,” whereas Indian music is “intensely melodic” and can bring the listener to a different place from where they began. “There are parts that are really dense and barely tonal,” Perla continues. “They are dissonant and clustery and strange and then there are things that are utterly simple, all the way down to major and minor triads and spare textures.” But there’s also the audience to consider: The debut, after all, is not taking place in India but in the American Midwest. “Some parts of the opera it’s really ‘Indian music lite,’ and other places it’s quite thorough going,” he admits. “There are one or two scenes that were really much more a thorough working-out of a raga and working in all its components and parts.”
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ut there’s always a middle ground, and when I spoke to Perla the first time, the weekend of the workshop’s performance, he was finishing the last part of the opera — and found it there: “We’ve taken themes and melodic ideas from these ragas that have been now used throughout the opera, but now I’m making them modulated and move through all those harmonic pathways and it’s really interesting. It’s very powerful,” he says. “There are parts that are really
dense and barely tonal,” Perla continues. “They are dissonant and clustery and strange and then there are things that are utterly simple, all the way down to major and minor triads and spare textures.” The day after the performance, Joseph and Perla and Robinson got together for a huddle. They talked through the previous night’s debut, going over what worked well and what didn’t work as well as they thought. Although they were getting closer to the final version — certainly further along than they had been at the beginning of the workshop — they had notes to take home for a few cosmetic changes, as Joseph says. “This is one of those challenges of adapting a book: We know the story in our heads, but then we don’t know if that story is necessarily coming out,” he says. When you know something like the back of your hand, you can almost get bogged down in the knowing of it — and it might not translate to the audience, who haven’t heard it at all. So the team reworked and refined, had a recording session, workshopped it again in San Francisco in January. Work was done, as it always had been, over Skype and email and the occasional instances where everyone happened to be in the same city at once. “It’s not like sitting in a room and creating a musical or creating the theme song to Oklahoma!,” says Robinson, who was based in Brooklyn while Shalimar was being written. “What we do is look at things and respond to what’s being written and share our reactions and that’s how the process goes. We don’t riverfronttimes.com
need to all be together to make the process work.” And then there were more revisions and more tweaks, and finally, by the beginning of May, singers were arriving in St. Louis and rehearsals were about to kick off. By that point, Robinson says, the opera was pretty much in its final form. “Once you start rehearsing, you don’t get a lot of time to make significant changes. It’s not like a Broadway musical or something where you have 30 previews and can keep working on it,” he says. Instead, he says, the hope is that with the workshopping and reworking, problem areas are resolved before rehearsals for the premiere begin. Before I came to Cincinnati, I’d had the general feeling that opera was “old,” that a work like this was rare because it was modern. When I thought of the plots and themes of the few I was familiar with, I pictured them wrapped alongside some wigs and tucked away firmly in the past until the next performance. But that’s looking back to these classic operas from where we stand now — and in doing so, we forget just how contemporary (and edgy) those older productions were in their own time. Somehow, this seems so much less obvious with opera than, say, with literature. But after watching Shalimar, after realizing just how contemporary its themes were and how much they spoke to us (and how understandable the singing was), I thought back to an earlier conversation with Küchle. “The use of modern themes and modern circumstances that are newsworthy in art is not necessarily a new thing,” he said. “It’s just something that continues in opera.” I wondered if Joseph, who told me that he previously “didn’t know anything about opera,” had found himself equally swept away. What’s next? I asked him. Would he do an opera all over again? “Now I’m hooked,” Joseph replied. “I feel like I would love to get another chance to write a new one and use what I’ve learned to my advantage. I love working with [Perla] and [Robinson], and it’s very exciting — because it can be a fast process, it’s all the more interesting.” Dream project? “I’d love to find something that you’d never think would be an opera and then go for that — something really low culture and then elevate it.” I suggested Friends. n
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THURSDAY 0602 Atomic Leo Szilard is a Hungarian Jew who has an uncanny gift for both physics and prognostication. He left Europe for America in 1938 because he predicted the coming World War, and then correctly predicted that the Germans were working on a nuclear weapon. His friend in physics, Albert Einstein, helped Szilard apprise FDR of his suspicions, which leads to the creation of the Manhattan Project, with Szilard as a member. Joined by Enrico Fermi, Robert Oppenheimer, Arthur Compton and Leona Woods, Szilard creates the bombs that are dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. But what he doesn’t foresee was the nagging guilt he suffered as they got closer to success. Building the bomb is bad enough, but the thought of using it on human beings is more than he could handle. Danny Ginges, Gregory Bonsignore and Philip Foxman’s musical Atomic is about Szilard and his terrible knowledge: He helped save the free world, but perhaps doomed us all in the process. New Line Theatre presents Atomic at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday (June 2 to 25) at the Marcelle Theater (3310 Samuel Shepard Drive; www.newlinetheatre. com). Tickets are $10 to $25.
FRIDAY 0603 A Midsummer Night’s Dream You’re unlikely to find a better date night than Shakespeare Festival St. Louis. Imagine sitting on a blanket on a hillside while the stars emerge, with crickets chirping and the sounds of two sets of bickering lovers rattling out of the nearby Athenian woods. Don’t worry, the faerie King and Queen will work out their troubles in the end, but not before having a little fun at the expense of mortals Helena, Demetrius, Hermia and
In 2014 it was Henry V. This year’s Shakespeare Festival St. Louis will feature A Midsummer Night’s Dream. | COURTESY SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL ST. LOUIS
BY PAUL FRISWOLD Lysander. A Midsummer Night’s Dream returns to Shakespeare Glen with some new features. For starters, there are the new songs composed jointly by Peter Mark Kendall and the Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra. You can also enjoy Schlafly’s newest beer, 1616, especially brewed for the festival. Picnics are welcome, but if you prefer to wing it, the festival sells food and drinks on-site — and that will be your only expense for the evening, because admission is free. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is performed at 8 p.m. every night except Tuesday (June 3 to 26) at Shakespeare Glen in Forest Park, just off Art Hill (www.sfstl.com). Admission is free.
Bring Back Firefly Firefly is not just a short-lived TV show: It’s a state of mind. Joss Whedon’s post-Civil-War-in-space
drama showed us a non-utopian future where humans still had the same failings, but were also fortified by the same dreams. It also had a good-looking cast (Nathan Fillion! Gina Torres! Ron Glass!) and a legitimate sense of humor, something that’s often missing from sci-fi. With all this going for it, Firefly was canceled after eleven episodes — but that hasn’t stopped its fanatical following from agitating for a new series. Tonight from 6 p.m. to midnight, the Saint Louis Science Center (5050 Oakland Avenue; www.slsc.org) gives the fans a voice with First Friday: Bring Back Firefly! The evening starts and ends with free screenings of the pilot episode (“Serenity”) and the feature film (also Serenity), and in between you can rock out the music of Firefly band the Browncoats, check out some new board games and do a little cosplay. Admission to First Friday is free, but some activities require a small fee. riverfronttimes.com
SATURDAY 0604 It Shoulda Been You Weddings are chaos with a built-in documentarian. On Rebecca and Brian’s wedding day, no photographer could hope to capture everything that goes wrong. Brian’s WASPy mother and Rebecca’s Jewish mother keep slinging insults, Brian’s dad thinks it’s not too late to get Rebecca to sign a pre-nup and the bride’s sister has called the bride’s ex and inadvertently invited him to the wedding. And let’s not forget about eavesdroppin’ Aunt Sheila and her habit of listening in on private conversations. Barbara Anselmi and Brian Hargrove’s musical It Shoulda Been You is a fast-paced and
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CALENDAR Continued from pg 17 E S T. 1 9 9 4 Tye-Dyes • Tobacco Products • Band Memorabilia Men & Womens Bohemian Clothing • Incense Jewelry • Crystals • Home Decor • Glassware and much much more...
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Circus Flora’s Alex Wallenda. | COURTESY CIRCUS FLORA funny trip down the aisle, which is why Stages St. Louis opens its new season with the comedy. It Shoulda Been You is performed at 4 and 8 p.m. Saturday, June 4, at the Robert G. Reim Theatre (111 South Geyer Road, Kirkwood; www.stagesstlouis.org). The show is performed every day except Monday through July 3. Tickets are $46 to $62.
The Dying of the Light Digital’s triumph is almost complete. The vast majority of films are not technically films anymore; they’re shot on HD digital cameras, which makes them data. But nobody says, “Which data do you want to see tonight?” As film slowly fades away, so do projectionists, the men and women who know how to handle film and deal with a projector’s quirks and many requirements. Peter Flynn’s documentary The Dying of the Light takes you into the projection booth to meet the last of the career projectionists. These casters of light discuss the job, the nature of photochemical film and why these things matter to them. The Dying of the Light screens at 8 p.m. Friday through Tuesday (June 3 to 7) at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood Av e n u e ; w w w. w e b s t e r . e d u / film-series). Tickets are $4 to $6. 18
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Circus Flora: Pastime In the old days a 30th anniversary was celebrated with the gift of pearls. In the modern era, the gift is diamonds. Circus Flora is clearly a modern bunch, because for its 30th anniversary the one-ring circus will become a diamond: Pastime, this year’s show, is a celebration of baseball. The tumbling St. Louis Arches, the high-wire-walking Flying Wallendas and those daring young men on the flying trapeze are a stand-up triple, but the air-conditioned tent is like stealing home. Circus Flora: Pastime is performed 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 1 and 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 1 and 5:30 p.m. Sunday (June 2 through July 3) at the Circus Flora Big Top (3511 Samuel Shepard Drive; www.circusflora. org). Tickets are $10 to $48.
SUNDAY 0605 Ariadne on Naxos Being an opening act is tough, but it becomes even more onerous when you’re a headliner who might have to perform in the warm-up slot. Richard Strauss’ comic opera Ariadne on Naxos is about two stars who are faced with the task of performing first. A wealthy man has
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Fri. June 10: OPEN HOUSE 5:30-8:30PM Sat. June 11: DEMOSTRATION OF CLASSES10AM-4PM Sun. June 12: DEMOSTRATION OF CLASSES12-4Pm
weaving/spinning • stained glass ceramics • sewing and more The roof raised in Raise the Roof. | TRILLIUM STUDIOS hired a commedia dell’arte group and an opera company to perform following his dinner party. Unfortunately dinner runs long and the fireworks are set to go off exactly at 9 p.m., so the artists are ordered to go on at the same time — you don’t become wealthy by not getting your money’s worth. After some bickering a compromise is reached: The comedy troupe will incorporate its act into the opera, which is a weeper about Ariadne, who was abandoned by her lover and is currently moping around the island of Naxos. What could go wrong? Opera Theatre of Saint Louis presents Ariadne on Naxos at 7 p.m. Sunday, June 5, at Webster University’s Loretto-Hilton Center (130 Edgar Road; 314-961-0644 or www.opera-stl.org). Ariadne is performed in repertory five more times through June 24. Tickets are $25 to $129.
TUESDAY 0607 RuPaul’s Drag Race: Battle of the Seasons The days are getting longer and the weather’s heating up, which can only mean the queens are on their way. RuPaul’s Drag Race: Battle of the Seasons tour features winners and fan-favorites from the Logo TV show bringing their best stuff to stages across the country under the auspices of host Michelle Visage. Jinkx Monsoon, Ginger Minj, Violet Chachki, Sharon Needles and the terminally delightful BenDeLaCreme are all
scheduled to perform at 8:30 p.m. tonight at the Pageant (6161 Delmar Boulevard; www.thepageant. com), although the participating stars may change without notice. Tickets are $37.50.
CRAFTSTL.COM 8500 DELMAR BLVD. | 314-736-4803
WEDNESDAY 0608 Raise the Roof The St. Louis Jewish Film Festival presents a double bill at 8 p.m. at the Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema (1701 South Lindbergh Boulevard, Frontenac; www.stljewishfilmfestival.org). First up is Hal Rikin’s Blue Like Me: The Art of Siona Benjamin, a documentary about the Jewish-Indian artist. Benjamin was raised in Mumbai and surrounded by Hindus, Christians and Muslims, and her teachers were Zoroastrians and Catholic nuns. The second film, Yari and Cary Wolinsky’s Raise the Roof, documents the reconstruction of the roof of the Gwozdziec synagogue, which was destroyed by the Nazis. Eighteenth-century Polish synagogues had fantastic murals. Can 300 artisans and numerous student volunteers recreate something beautiful destroyed by hatred? Tickets for the films are $8 to $12. Planning an event, exhibiting your art or putting on a play? Let us know and we’ll include it in the Night & Day section or publish a listing in the online calendar — for free! Send details via e-mail (calendar@ riverfronttimes.com), fax (314-754-6416) or mail (6358 Delmar Boulevard, Suite 200, St. Louis, MO 63130, attn: Calendar). Include the date, time, price, contact information and location (including ZIP code). Please submit information three weeks prior to the date of your event. No telephone submissions will be accepted. Find more events online at www.riverfronttimes.com.
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FILM
[REVIEW]
Blackout A new documentary recalls a forgotten art form as the digital age turns out the lights on film projectionists Written by
ROBERT HUNT The Dying of the Light
Directed and written by Peter Flynn. Starring Chapin Cutler, Dorman Bermingham, James F. Murray Jr. and Raber Umphenour. Screens Friday through Tuesday (June 3 to 7) at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium.
L
ook at ads for any movie-related enterprise and you’re likely to find strips of sprocket-holed film or metal reels. The logo for Wehrenberg Theatres, for example, shows two unwinding film reels. The opening trailer for every IFC Films release is accompanied by the whir of film moving through a projector gate. How many people sitting in a Wehrenberg auditorium or watching the latest IFC release realize that there’s probably not a single film reel or strip of celluloid anywhere in the building, or that at most theaters the hum of a projector hasn’t been heard in years? Allow me a digression: When I worked in a movie theater — many years ago — I met projectionists who could detail the history and technical specifications of every piece of equipment in the building. We had an array of ancient and dangerous electrical panels that would not have looked out of place on the set of Frankenstein, and the switch that powered our sound system had a handwritten note stating that it had been installed in 1929 — less than two years after the New York premiere of The Jazz Singer brought the silent era to an end. That equipment was part of a process that, aside from a few improvements to the sound system and the expanded aspect ratios that appeared in the 1950s, had survived from Citizen Kane to Star Wars with minimal change. A century after the films of Edison and the Lumières,
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Projectionist David Kornfeld of the Somerville Theatre in Massachusetts. | FIRST RUN FEATURES the basic technology behind what we think of as the movies was still being used in thousands of theaters around the world. That long-standing technology changed rapidly and abruptly when the exhibition business, under pressure from the major film studios, converted to digital projection. First tested publicly seventeen years ago, digital equipment is now used in more than 95 percent of U.S. theaters. Most film studios discontinued offering even the option of a 35mm print about two years ago. The Dying of the Light, directed by film historian Peter Flynn, is both a celebration of the nuts-andbolts apparatus behind screening a movie and an elegy for its departure. Drawing our attention to the activity that usually goes on unnoticed behind our backs, Flynn tells an engrossing story: The history of cinema told not in terms of stars and studios but in tubes, shutters and sprockets. Flynn speaks to projectionists with decades of experience: Some now retired, some hammering away at revival houses, film festivals or anyplace else where
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35mm prints are still in use. He digs around through the rubble of old projection booths and movie palaces, many abandoned more than three decades ago. Sharing the enthusiasm of his subjects, he lingers on the mechanical details, the buzzing start-up engines, the threading of the reels, the lighting of the carbons. You can forgive the occasional dips into sentimentality by the old hands as they return to their work. There is something magical about the process that turns a strip of static images into a living, moving world, and Flynn’s look behind the curtain only enhances it. Film projection is, as Flynn and his subjects state many times, a link to the past, a combination of old traditions and old equipment, but the film also covers more recent developments, which may be useful in providing a perspective for audiences who have never known anything but the multiplex. We see how changes to the projection system (like putting entire feature films on a single platter instead of multiple reels) gradually reduced the numbers of working operators, how modern
theater owners faced the challenge (and expense) of digital conversion (the answer: give in or give up), how film continues to be used in large formats like IMAX, and, in an up-to-the-minute coda, even fits in the recent restoration of 100 old 70mm projectors, resurrected at the whim of Quentin Tarantino for the release of The Hateful Eight last December. Ultimately, Flynn and the onscreen projectionists know that the battle has been lost, that the rush to digitalization has already changed the way movies are seen and shown. Smaller theaters, especially those in less populated areas, are dwindling. Revival houses will have a harder time getting prints of old films. Projectionists, whose number has been dwindling for the last few decades, have been replaced by computer operators. Ironically, as The Dying of the Light points out more than once, talented projectionists operated in a kind of invisibility. If you noticed the reel changes or the adjustments to the light and focus, they weren’t doing it right. Flynn’s film draws overdue attention to their craft just as it turns into a disappearing act. n
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GOOD JUST GOT SUPER
Alexandria Eregbu Black Object / White Smoke IV, 2015, archival pigment print, 24 x 30 in.
Géothermie: Stéphane Margolis Projects+Gallery 4733 McPherson Ave. | www.projects-gallery.com Opens 5-8 p.m. Fri., Jun. 3. Continues through Jul. 30.
Stéphane Margolis grew up in the south of France, surrounded by plants and flowers. He later trained in the Japanese art of ikebana, which arranges flower stems and branches in a minimalist fashion. His petrified sculptural work combines both of these ideals, featuring the lush force of life hemmed in by stark compositions. Margolis begins with live plants and painstakingly subjects them to a steady bath of calcium-rich water, which slowly coats their shoots and blooms in a stoney skin. His careful arrangement of these altered forms serves as a liminal point between animal, vegetable and mineral.
Charles P. Reay Strats/DADADADA/ Complications Bruno David Gallery 3721 Washington Blvd. | www.brunodavidgallery.com Opens 6-9 p.m. Fri., Jun. 3. Continues through Jul. 9.
Charles P. Reay’s second solo exhibit at Bruno David Gallery comprises three groups of small works. Strats imagines how Picasso and Braque’s various works featuring guitars would have looked if the Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster electric guitars had existed in their time. DADADADA is a collection of small
collages that features key people and pieces of the DADA movement (Man Ray, Tristan Tzara) reworked, reimagined and re-DADAed. The final piece, Complications, is a series of small collages that increase in complexity. Denizen No. 1 is a close-up leaf with sparkling googly eyes — Denizen No. 9 shows the whole leaf (still with the eyes) floating against a hazy backdrop.
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The psychic space of Black America is the current that charges Alexandria Eregbu’s new solo show. In her series Black Object/ White Smoke she constructs precise installations of magazines, photographs, food, packaging, incense and records on black backgrounds that are then wreathed in smoke and photographed. The faces and forms of black women are juxtaposed with a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth’s, a carton of Domino’s dark brown sugar, the cover of Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool and a copy of Marlon Riggs’ Black Is … Black Ain’t, all slightly obscured by the smoke. It’s an unmistakable metaphor for the black experience in America, but also a potent composition that draws in the viewer, challenging us to rethink how these objects are related, as well as who gets to decide what they represent. riverfronttimes.com
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CAFE
23
[REVIEW]
This Magic Moment The Preston provides a muchneeded dining update to the Chase Park Plaza Written by
CHERYL BAEHR The Preston
212 North Kingshighway Boulevard; 314633-7800. Mon.-Thurs. 5-11 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 5 p.m.-12 a.m.; Sun. 5-11 p.m.
E
au Bistro, the Preston’s predecessor in the venerable Chase Park Plaza hotel, was the epitome of style. With a bright palette of red and yellow, paisley banquettes and a contemporary American menu, there was no better place in town to feel like a sophisticated jetsetter and throw back a mango-tini. In 1999. There’s no question that a rebrand of the Chase’s flagship restaurant was long overdue. Just consider the St. Louis dining scene at the turn of the millennium. Harvest, Cardwell’s and, in the Central West End, Balaban’s and Duff’s were high points of contemporary cuisine. Sidney Street Cafe, still in its days before Kevin Nashan’s takeover, was following the “meatstarch-veg” routine. Niche was yet to be even a glimmer in Gerard Craft’s eye, and any server handing a guest a kitchen towel to use as a napkin would draw a harsh reprimand from the general manager. My, how times changed, and yet Eau Bistro remained the same. Sure, there were menu updates here and chef changes there. And to be fair, executive chef Kyle Lipetzky, who took over the culinary operations in 2012, even made substantial menu updates that kept the restaurant’s food offerings au courant. Still, the outdated image remained — what should have been the crown jewel of a grand hotel had overstayed its reservation.
The Preston’s menu is all small plates, including Korean-style chicken wings, a New York strip steak and charred shishito peppers. | MABEL SUEN That is, until last November, when Eau Bistro quietly shut its doors and underwent a complete overhaul. The result of the rebrand is the Preston, a handsome small plates and craft cocktail destination whose aesthetic flows seamlessly into the vintage feel of the Chase — more bow tie and bourbon than the white linen trousers and pinot grigio of the former concept. The restaurant, named after the architect who designed the Chase, Preston J. Bradshaw, looks like a Restoration Hardware showroom. The bold colors of the past have been replaced with muted taupes. Rustic hardwood floors, mismatched framed artwork and antiques, and plaid semi-circle booths decorate the space. The bar, naturally, has been given an Art Deco-inspired green-and-white tiled floor and marble top to go with the black-vested bartenders. It’s stunningly of-the-moment — so much so that if we look back at the Preston ten years from now, the way we now look at Eau Bistro, we may see it as a time capsule of what it meant to dine in 2016 in all of its craft cocktail, shareable
plates and gingham glory. But in giving the place a muchneeded update, has the Chase overcorrected? On a night when I sat in the bar, the concept felt refreshing and entirely appropriate. Sitting in the middle of the large, elegant dining room, however, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. It wasn’t the food, service or décor — all, for the most part, were successful. It was more that the restaurant, with its cavernous dining room, private dining space and massive open kitchen, seemed too grand a space for a strictly small plates operation. I wouldn’t have batted an eye if this were the reinvention of the old Café Eau across the hall. Here, however, I wanted my server to take my order for an entrée. My hesitation, I think, is that the retooled cuisine is as elegant as the venue, which befits a more formal, coursed treatment. This is not the small plates fare you’d get at a tapas bar; the dishes offered here are more like miniature versions of entrées, such as braised pork belly and a smaller cut of a New riverfronttimes.com
York strip. They’ve been carefully positioned to have a lower price point, but are they really meant for sharing? I’ll give him this: They’re certainly well-executed. The pork belly is all-American on the surface, with succulent pork and crispy roasted Brussels sprouts, but it gets an Asian inflection from crushed peanuts and hints of ginger and soy in the caramel-sweet braising liquid. The peanuts and crunchy cabbage leaves give texture to an otherwise melt-in-themouth selection. A salad of cubed golden beets, creamy goat cheese and arugula gets a subtly sweet pop from the excellent Champagne vanilla vinaigrette. Though the menu indicated a pine nut garnish, the salad on my visit was topped with sunflower seeds. It was adequate for crunch, but I would have preferred the aromatic taste of pine nuts as a pairing with the dressing. Plump Blue Bay Mussels, steamed in coconut red curry, are a pleasant departure from
June 1-7, 2016
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THE PRESTON Continued from pg 23 the usual white wine and shallot preparation. The Preston’s red wine-braised short ribs are exactly what you are looking for when you order such a dish: fork-tender, swimming in rich gravy and sprinkled with gremolata to brighten the plate. The only misstep was the butternut squash puree; served room temperature, it had the off-putting effect of suggesting the plate had been sitting for a while before being finished with the main components. It detracted from an otherwise delicious dish. Peppery lamb t-bones paired with goat cheese spaetzle and mushrooms were cooked to a juicy medium-rare, with such a wonderful mild flavor that I couldn’t resist chewing every last piece off the bones. Of the three red meat dishes, though, the New York strip was the standout. Black pepper- and char-crusted, the succulent slice of locally sourced meat seemed more like the final course in a tasting menu than simply a selection from a small plates menu. The beef dripped with foie gras butter that seeped into a side of a buttery, chiveflecked potato puree like an elegant gravy. A few pearl onions and a swoosh of a red wine demi reduction deepened the overall flavor. The only dish that did not succeed as a whole was the smoked duck confit and spring onion croquettes. The croquettes — basically high-end hush puppies — were fine enough on their own, but the accompanying kimchi puree overwhelmed the dish with an odd, unappetizing flavor. I would have expected kimchi to be bright and spicy. This dull melange simply did not taste like
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The “Tropical Delight”: One of the city’s more unusual desserts. | MABEL SUEN kimchi — and masked anything else going on with the dish. The charred octopus, however, more than made up for the croquettes. In fact, this spectacular offering could even make up for, say, a server angrily throwing a plate of hot soup in my face. The firm, yet tender, meat was kissed with robust char and placed atop a puree of sunchokes that tasted both nutty and floral. Pillow-soft brown-butter gnocchi would have been a fantastic dish
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on their own; here, they picked up the delightful bitterness of the char with the smoke from a paprika vinaigrette. The result was a glorious symphony of flavor that shows how the Preston can make a name for itself as a dining destination. Pastry chef David Laufer’s confections are less dessert than edible artwork. At times, they get overly conceptual — something you’d appreciate at a culinary competition more than after a
night of savory indulgence. The “Tropical Delight,” for instance, was a hodgepodge of pineapple sorbet, white chocolate mousse and coconut nougatine, all drizzled with mango-passion fruit cremeux. The piece de resistance, however, was a garnish of neon orange and pink spun sugar that can only be described (in polite company, at least) as having the look and mouthfeel of a fiber optic hairball. At least it photographs well. The chocolate sphere is better. A chocolate shell melts as caramel is poured over the top, revealing a scoop of peanut gelato. Crushed peanut brittle was scattered all over the plate. The entire concoction tasted like a Butterfinger. Last week, chef Lipetzky left the Chase for a position out of state, and his chef de cuisine Colin Smelser, who was instrumental in the relaunch, is now running the kitchen. (His new title is Executive Sous Chef.) But the menu remains the same, and so my final piece of advice does as well: Order the housecrafted breads. A cheddar biscuit and honey wheat loaf are excellent vehicles for the house-made jam, maple butter and tapenade, but the show-stopper is the pretzel croissant. Flaky and malty, it may have been the best thing I ate at the Preston. That croissant will never go out of style. Like the dated décor of Eau Bistro, however, the Preston’s small plates probably will. That’s fine. The food is good enough to outlast the current trends. And maybe the next time the space needs an update, they’ll give us bigger portions of it. n The Preston
House-crafted breads ���������������������� $10 Charred octopus ������������������������������ $10 Creekstone Farms New York strip �������������������������������� $18
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䌀椀琀礀ᤠ猀 䈀攀猀琀 匀瀀漀爀琀猀 倀愀琀椀漀 䈀愀爀 riverfronttimes.com 䌀伀刀一䔀刀 伀䘀 匀䤀䐀一䔀夀 ☀ 䰀䔀䴀倀 ⴀ 䈀䔀一吀伀一 倀䄀刀䬀⼀匀伀唀䰀䄀刀䐀
䘀刀䔀䔀 匀䠀唀吀吀䰀䔀 吀伀 䄀䰀䰀 䠀伀䴀䔀 䜀䄀䴀䔀匀
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SHORT ORDERS
[EXPERT OPINION]
[FIRST LOOK]
Kevin Nashan’s 10 Favorite Spots in Benton Park
WHOLE FOODS OPENS IN THE CWE Written by
KAVAHN MANSOURI
T
Park mainstay that is perpetually packed on the weekends. “I get a breakfast sandwich.” 4. Gus’ Pretzels 1820 Arsenal Street; 314-664-4010 “They have three different variations of a hot-dog wrapped in a pretzel,” Nashan explains. “You can either get a hot dog, a bratwurst or a salsiccia, which is like a spicy hot dog. It’s delicious. Once a month we get a whole bunch and bring them to Sidney Street and Peacemaker for everyone.” 5. Blues City Deli 2438 McNair Avenue; 314-773-8225 “Vince [Valenza] is great — he’s done such wonderful things for the neighborhood,” Nashan says. “He’s always so accommodating and the food is consistent. I like a lot of his stuff, but the pork sandwich on a pretzel roll is hard to beat. This place has been such an anchor for the neighborhood.” 6. Melo’s Pizzeria 2438 McNair Avenue (rear); 314833-4489
he first Whole Foods Market within St. Louis city limits opened its doors in the Central West End last Wednesday with music, gifts for customers and booze. The grand opening kicked off at 8:45 a.m., with doors opening fifteen minutes later. The first 500 customers through the doors got store gift cards ranging from $5 to $50, with one $500 gift card to be given out at random. Local favorite Bruiser Queen, which was recently announced as part of this summer’s LouFest lineup, supplied the tunes. Store manager Shawn Milford says he believes the new location will be perfect for the Central West End’s foot traffic and overall atmosphere. “If someone is in a hurry, we can get them in and out,” Milford says. “Our entrees and appetizers will be perfect if you want to grab something and have a picnic in Forest Park.” Dinners for one, two or an entire family are offered throughout the market’s main carry-out area, alongside made-at-order pizza, sushi, sandwich and taqueria stations. A salad bar, bakery, hot food and soup area, and candy bar also line the front of the market. And if you’re looking for a drink, alcoholic or otherwise, you’re in luck. This grocery has a built-in beer and coffee bar stocked with local favorites. The market’s bar, “The Central Brew,” hosted an Urban Chestnut tap takeover on opening day, featuring ten of the local brewery’s beers, all priced at $3. One month after the grand opening, 4 Hands Brewery will take over the taps. Outside of the bar, the location will feature more than 700 wines
Continued on pg 27
Continued on pg 28
Written by
CHERYL BAEHR
W
hen chef Kevin Nashan thinks back to 2003, the year he took over Sidney Street Cafe (2000 Sidney Street; 314-771-5777) from its original owners, he can’t help but muse on how much has changed. It’s not just the format of his restaurant, which transitioned from a meat and potatoes spot to a bastion of modern American cuisine. It’s the Benton Park neighborhood itself. Gone are the days when the area boasted a handful of restaurants and one local watering hole. Now Benton Park is a thriving culinary destination that angles for honors as one of St. Louis’ hottest dining districts. We asked Nashan for his picks for some of Benton Park’s mustvisit eateries — humbly, he didn’t mention Sidney Street Cafe or Peacemaker Lobster & Crab Co. (1831 Sidney Street; 314-772-8858), though there’s no question his two restaurants should be high on that list. Instead, he gave us nine of his favorite places to dine when he’s off the clock — plus one non-restaurant as a bonus. Clip, save and use this as your guide to explore the neighborhood and its surrounding environs. 1. Sump Coffee 3700 S. Jefferson Avenue; 314-4125670 “I guess it’s technically not Benton Park, but this is some of the best coffee in the world, right within our reach,” Nashan says. “I’m a creature of habit, so I always get either an iced coffee or a cappuccino. I get it to-go, and then end up talking to 26
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Above: Chef Kevin Nashan. Below: The Maine lobster boil at Peacemaker. | JENNIFER SILVERBERG
Scott [Carey] until I finish it. That’s really wasteful — I’ll have to change that!” 2. Venice Cafe 1903 Pestalozzi Street; 314-7725994 “I went to Saint Louis University in the ‘90s, and this was my old hangout,” says Nashan of this Benton Park institution. “I just love going there to grab a beer.” 3. Benton Park Cafe 1900 Arsenal Street; 314-771-7200 “This is such a fun spot for breakfast,” Nashan says of the Benton
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NEW LUNCH AND DINNER FITNESS MENUS Lunch Fitness Menu Lunch Fitness Menu
CHICKEN AND VEGETABLE SALAD Chicken and Vegetable Salad Lunch Fitness Menu SPINACH,spinach, ZUCCHINI, YELLOW SQUASH, zucchini, yellow squash, onion,ONION, carrot Lunch Fitness Menu Chicken and Vegetable Salad
CARROT, ALMOND, STRAWBERRY VINAIGRETTE spinach, zucchini, yellowvinaigrette squash, onion, carrot almond, strawberry almond, strawberry vinaigrette 16 16
GRILLED ATLANTIC SALMON
Chicken and Vegetable Salad
spinach, zucchini, yellow squash, onion, carrot Chicken and Vegetable Salad Grilled Atlantic Salmon Grilled Atlantic Salmon TOMATO, ONION, STRAWBERRY, PEPPERS, tomato, onion, strawberry, peppers, basil,BASIL, almond, strawberry vinaigrette spinach, zucchini, yellow squash, onion, carrot
Lunch Fitness Menu
with strawberry-red pepper reduction 16tomato, onion, strawberry, peppers, basil, WITH STRAWBERRY-RED PEPPER REDUCTION almond, strawberry18vinaigrette with strawberry-red 16 pepper reduction 18 Spicy Shrimp Goulash Grilled Atlantic Salmon Chicken and Vegetable Salad blackend shrimp, zucchini, carrot, yellow squash tomato, onion, strawberry, peppers, basil, BLACKEND SHRIMP , ZUCCHINI, CARROT, in a rosemary lobster jus Grilled Atlantic Salmon spinach, zucchini, yellow squash, onion, carrot with strawberry-red pepper reduction 15 Spicy Shrimp Goulash YELLOW 18 SQUASH IN A ROSEMARY LOBSTER tomato, onion, strawberry, peppers, almond, strawberry vinaigrette basil, JUS blackend zucchini, carrot,reduction yellow squash Selections from Melo’s (top), Lona’s Lil Eats (right) and Ernesto’s. | MABEL SUEN/JENNIFER SILVERBERG withshrimp, strawberry-red 16 pepper in a rosemary 18 lobster jus 15 to go there for a beer and a snack.Spicy Shrimp Goulash NASHAN’S FAVES It’s really done wonderful things Atlantic Salmon Continued from pg 26 blackend shrimp, zucchini,Grilled carrot, yellow squash for the neighborhood.” onion, strawberry, peppers, basil, Spicy Goulash in a rosemarytomato, lobster jus Shrimp In the garage tucked just be9. Lona’s Lil Eats
SPICY SHRIMP GOULASH
hind Blue’s City Deli sits its sister concept, Melo’s Pizzeria. The year-old spot is quickly becoming a destination for authentic Neapolitan pies, and Nashan approves: “This is a new joint, really tiny and fun.” 7. Ernesto’s Wine Bar 2730 McNair Avenue; 314-664-4511 “This cool little wine bar opened not long after Gerard [Craft] opened Niche,” recalls Nashan. “It’s a great place to go for a glass of wine.” 8. Frazer’s Restaurant & Lounge 1811 Pestalozzi Street; 314-7738646 “They do a great job with the patio here,” Nashan says. “I like
2199 California Avenue; 314-9251888 Though technically in Fox Park, Nashan can’t leave out one of his favorite spots in the blocks surrounding Benton Park. “This place is phenomenal,” he says of the tiny restaurant’s unique Asian soul food. “I eat here at least once a week.” 10. R. Ege Antiques 1304 Sidney Street; 314-773-8500 “It’s not a restaurant, but can I add R. Ege antiques to the list?” Nashan asks. “It’s a fantastic shop — really the best in town. I’ve gotten so much there for Peacemaker.” n
strawberry-red 15 withshrimp, blackend zucchini,pepper carrot,reduction yellow squash 18 in a rosemary lobster jus
15
Spicy Shrimp Goulash
blackend shrimp, zucchini, carrot, yellow squash in a rosemary lobster jus
15
44 N. BRENTWOOD DRIVE 314-721-9400 OCEANOBISTRO.COM riverfronttimes.com
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CWE WHOLE FOODS Continued from pg 26 and 200 beers, with an option to build your own six pack. A cheese section and olive bar is also featured with a staff of experts to provide recommendations for wine and cheese pairings. The market, like most Whole Foods, strives to use local providers. Throughout the store, local products are marked with tags noting that the product was made or grown in Missouri. In the meat section, signs designate the animal’s point of origin. The store also touts a beauty section, plus a smaller area with Missouri and Central West End merch and several other local non-food products. Central West End-themed grocery bags are available for purchase. The market sits on the ground floor of a seven-story apartment building, giving the market 28,470 square feet, which is just slightly smaller than St. Louis’ other Whole Food locations. The parking garage’s lower floors are reserved for Whole Food customers to ensure easy access. This marks the area’s third Whole Foods location, joining stores in Brentwood and Town and Country. Milford says the store has hired 100 new workn ers for the location.
Clockwise from top left: A selection of beer, cheese and olives at the city’s first-ever Whole Foods Market. | KAVAHN MANSOURI
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20 S Belt W Belleville, IL 62220 618.257.9000 Hours: MTWT - 11am - sell out, or 9p FRI & SAT- 11am - sell out, or 10p SUN - 11a - sell out, or 9p riverfronttimes.com
June 1-7, 2016
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30
DINING GUIDE
The Dining Guide lists only restaurants recommended by RFT food critics. The print listings below rotate regularly, as space allows. Our complete Dining Guide is available online; view menus and search local restaurants by name or neighborhood.
Price Guide (based on a three-course meal for one, excluding tax, tip and beverages): $ up to $15 per person $$ $15 - $25 $$$ $25 - $40 $$$$ more than $40
Juniper’s chicken and waffles. | MABEL SUEN
[CENTRAL WEST END]
The BBQ Saloon
4900 Laclede Avenue; 314-833-6666
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The BBQ Saloon’s Phil and Tracy Czarnec may seem like the new kids on the block when it comes to St. Louis’ barbecue scene, but they’ve actually been doing it for decades. Every Fourth of July, the Czarnecs would fire up the grill on the patio of their Wild Flower Restaurant, and turn it into a holiday barbecue. Now they’ve opened a smokehouse directly across the street from where it all began -- on the Central West End Corner that used to house The Majestic. The Czarnecs gutted the old diner and turned it into a restaurant that sets itself apart from the crowd in two ways. First, it offers the largest whiskey selection -- 520 bottles -- in the region. Second, The BBQ Saloon grills up exotic game in addition to the traditional offerings. Alligator, emu, kangaroo and ostrich are served alongside the more traditional pork and beef ribs. The restaurant’s signature item is the pulled pork. It’s the best you’ll find in town.
Evangeline’s
512 N Euclid Avenue; 314-367-3644 Evangeline’s Bistro & Music House comes from the mind of a musician. Don Bailey, who got his start in the food business while running a concert venue named Three1-Three in Belleville, Illinois, brings his latest venture to the Central West End. There, he presents Southern-style dishes alongside live blues, jazz and singer-songwriters. Eats include appetizers like the “Crawfish Carolyn” made with Louisiana crawfish tails, Brandy cream sauce and Parmesan cheese. For a more filling meal, supplement that with entrée options including gumbo, red beans and rice, chicken and sausage jambalaya, Louisiana shrimp creole and etouffée. A drink menu features wine by the glass or bottle, several beer options, classic cocktails and Champagne cocktails to drink the night away New Orleans style. $$
Gamlin Whiskey House 236 North Euclid Avenue; 314-875-9500
Gamlin is unapologetically masculine with rustic décor, a hearty menu and what seems like every brown liquor under the sun. The spirits list includes selections from every major whiskey producer as part of a flight or in a craft cocktail. Signature drinks like the “Bees Knees,” a delicious blend of Knob Creek Rye and ginger ale over honey-laced ice cubes, showcase Gamlin’s cocktail creativity.
Ask one of the expert bartenders for a quick lesson on the nuances between Kentucky Bourbon, Tennessee whiskey, and Irish and Scotish whiskey, single-barrel bourbon, 12-year single malt Scotch, 20-year old bourbon, smallbatch whiskey and rye, or just dive in solo. Whiskey may be the theme, but Gamlin does not skimp on the food. The menu is unfussy, with items like rib eye, pork steak and bourbon-brined chicken providing hearty comfort. The “Moon Dance Farm Pot Pie” is especially noteworthy, its beef-laden tomato broth made rich with tender meat, vegetables and creamy mashed potatoes. Sure, Gamlin is a little indulgent, but after a few Manhattans, we don’t really care. $$$
Juniper
360 North Boyle Avenue; 314-329-7696 Pop-up and underground-dining star John Perkins puts down some roots at Juniper: A Southern Table and Bar. Juniper’s menu draws its down-home, Americana dishes from Appalachia to Louisiana, with such dishes as Zapp’s potato-chip-crusted fried catfish, “pork-n-beans” and Southern fried chicken. Juniper’s signature is its fried chicken and waffles, with each season bringing a different iteration. Appetizers, or “Snackies,” include standouts such as pimento grilled cheese with bacon and Brussels sprouts jam and a Mason jar of smoked trout and country ham rillettes. The cocktail menu keeps with the Southern theme and leans heavily on rum and bourbon, and the thoughtfully crafted highballs, such as the hibiscus liquor with Mexican Coke, should not be overlooked. The cozy, refurbished-barn-like interior makes this an ideal spot to eat some unapologetically fried food and sip a stiff drink. $$$
Mary Ann’s Tea Room
4732 McPherson Avenue; 314-361-5303 Located in the large greenhouse in the back of the boutique Enchanting Embellishments, Mary Ann’s Tea Room is an ostentatious scene — think Scarlett O’Hara meets Marie Antoinette. The Central West End lunchtime eatery is named after Mary Ann Allison, the late socialite and building’s former owner who tragically passed away in 2009 while trying to save her pets from a house fire. Mary Ann’s Tea Room serves classic “ladies who lunch” fare, such as chicken salad with grapes on a croissant, quiche and smoked salmon. The restaurant excels at soups, including the must-try crab bisque that is loaded with lump crabmeat and garnished with caviar. The savory chicken pie and smoked-salmon duo are also noteworthy options, as are the boozy tea infusions. Take your mom and grandmother on a lunch date, and they will be impressed. $$
Our Story: Location? DIY
A 1920’s Speakeasy - Modern Twist Dining • Cocktails • Burlesque Shows Corporate & Private Events
The only good thing about this place is that it’s a stand alone on Manchester
No ceiling No walls
Located in downtown St. Louis
No HVAC No plumbing
www.TheBoomBoomRoomSTL.com - 314-436-7000 500 N. 14th Street, St. Louis Mo. 63103
No power line
For previous versions, visit www.forttaco.com/about-us
Fresh Pressed Sandwiches Homemade Soups Wood Fired Pizza Local Beer • Local Wine Ice Cream • Snacks
NOW SERVING SUNDAY BRUNCH
Thank you, St. Louis! BEST COMFORT FOOD - Reader’s Choice 2015
BEST DELI/SANDWICH SHOP - Editor’s Pick 2015
Part 3 of 10
The building was dirty, old, dingy, and gray, but our founder saw that it could be a vibrant, successful restaurant.
TOWER GROVE EAST Open 11 a.m. - 8 p.m. 3101 Arsenal
Authentic Hong Kong Style Cuisine
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8116 olive blvd. • (314) 567-9997 • wontonkingstl.com • wifi available
food R I V ER F R O N T T IM ES. C OM riverfronttimes.com
June 1-7, 2016
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®
SAT. 9/17
ON SALE 6.3 AT 10AM
WEDNESDAY 6/1
FRIDAY 6/3
MONDAY 6/6
TUESDAY 6/7
SATURDAY 6/11
SUNDAY 6/12
SATURDAY 6/25
SUNDAY 6/26
UPCOMING SHOWS 7.12 GARBAGE
8.23 KURT VILE AND THE VIOLATORS
7.16 COREY SMITH
9.9 O.A.R.
7.19 AWOLNATION/DEATH FROM ABOVE
9.22 SLAYER
7.22 GLASS ANIMALS
9.29 YOUNG THE GIANT
7.25 M83.
10.8 BOYCE AVENUE
7.26 KIAN ‘N’ JC
10.21 LOREENA MCKENNITT
8.4 LAKE STREET DIVE
10.22 TEGAN AND SARA
8.5 MARIANAS TRENCH
10.31 TROYE SIVAN
8.9 HIATUS KAIYOTE
visit us online for complete show information facebook.com/ThePageantSTL
@ThePageantSTL
thepageantstl.tumblr.com
thepageant.com // 6161 delmar blvd. / St. Louis, MO 63112 // 314.726.6161
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riverfronttimes.com
MUSIC
33
Austin singer-songwriter James McMurtry will kick off this year’s Twangfest with a show June 8 at Off Broadway. | SHANE MCCAULEY
Ain’t That America Twangfest 20 kicks off the summer with four nights of expertly curated Americana Written by
RICHARD MORIARTY Twangfest 20
Wednesday, June 8 through Saturday, June 11. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Avenue. $22$175. Tickets at twangfest.com/tickets/
T
wangfest, which celebrates its twentieth year with a fournight festival at Off Broadway starting Wednesday, June 8, is a St. Louis celebration of Americana — that amorphous genre that mixes elements of folk, country, blues and rock & roll to create something new and vital. It’s been a long road to get to
this point. Twangfest started as an independent festival in 1997 and remained so for a decade before partnering with KDHX for the following eight years. Before last year’s festival, the two parties made a mutual decision to go their separate ways, so Twangfest 20 will be the organization’s second year in its second term of independence. “It was an amicable split,” says Rick Wood, a longtime Twangfest board member and current lead booking agent. “Not much has changed from the festivalgoer perspective. The main difference now is that we’re in charge of the entire process of booking performers, which begins by compiling wish lists from each board director.” Those “board directors” are all actually seven unpaid volunteers. They include radio hosts, musicians and business people all united by a passion for the St. Louis music scene. Wood, for example, is an architectural modelmaker, but he and his wife, Nancy, host monthly concerts in their home. The other
two veterans are John Wendland, who works as a purchaser of telecom equipment by day but also plays in the St. Louis roots band Rough Shop and hosts KDHX’s Memphis to Manchester program, and Roy Kasten, a writer and teacher who hosts Feel Like Going Home, also on KDHX. (Kasten is also a frequent RFT contributor.) Both Kasten and Wendland were on board for the very first Twangfest; Wood is a relative newcomer who joined the board just prior to Twangfest 8. Judging by this year’s lineup, the septet’s wish lists led to some A-list booking. James McMurtry will take a break from his Wednesday night residency at the Continental Club in Austin to kick off this year’s festivities with classics such as “Choctaw Bingo” and “Just Us Kids,” as well as songs from his recently released album, Complicated Game. J.D. McPherson headlines the Friday ticket as he returns to Off Broadway after lighting up that same stage last October, treating the audience to an assortment of songs riverfronttimes.com
from both of his solo albums as well as a few from his earlier days leading the Starkweather Boys. Saturday night’s finale includes a full night of local favorites, starting with the Sovines and the Waco Brothers (both of which include members who played at the inaugural Twangfest in ‘97) and finishing with Alejandro Escovedo, who has worked extensively over the past decade with Tony Visconti, a longtime producer for the late David Bowie. But the supporting cast, too, shines, clearly indicating the festival’s commitment to embracing a wide range of genres. The parameters of Americana can be “nebulous,” Wood says. “It’s important that we’re including all kinds of music.” The Thursday night lineup includes country singer Nikki Lane, who worked with the Black Keys’ frontman Dan Auerbach to produce her most recent album, All or Nothin’. And opening for J.D. McPherson on Friday night is Nikki Hill, whose Continued on pg 34
June 1-7, 2016
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TWANGFEST Continued from pg 33 S T.
LOUIS’
Get in The Grove for exciting Drinking, Dining, Dancing, & Shopping!
CRAWFISH, SHRIMP, MUSIC AND TIKI!
SATURDAY, JUNE 11 AT 2 PM live music, special beer and cocktail prices, 1/2 lb of shrimp and 1/2 lb of crawfish, corn, potatoes, and honey cajun cornbread! Purchase Tickets Online at: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2552278 Limited tickets available (must have ticket to participate) Ticket sales end Wednesday June 7. 21+ Event
4199 Manchester Ave in The Grove 314-202-8300
New Happy Hour Additions $2 SLIDERS & FRY BASKETS $3 WELLS 4-7PM DAILY
r e stau r an t s 2016
WInner 34
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4317 Manchester Rd in the Grove 314.553.9252 laylastl.com
riverfronttimes.com
sound Southern soul with O N LY T I K Iblends BAR ! hard-driving rock rhythms. Jon Langford, co-founder of the Waco Brothers, played the inaugural Twangfest and has been impressed by the festival’s continued success. The collective of artists, he says, is “probably less badly behaved than [they] were in the early days, but not by so much you’d really notice.” The level of camaraderie among the musicians borders on fraternal. “Personally I look forward to giving Alejandro Escovedo a firm little hug,” Langford adds. The Waco Brothers will give a house concert Saturday afternoon at the Woods’ home in addition to the band’s show that night at Off Broadway: The four-night “Friends of Twangfest” pass, which includes an invitation to an opening reception plus VIP seating throughout the festival, will function as a ticket to the afternoon show. Langford is also a renowned visual artist, and his paintings inspired the Twangfest 20 poster, as well as designs for Dogfish Head beer bottles. The Sovines’ co-founder Matt Benz, whose band also played the inaugural festival, was a Twangfest board member for its first eleven years. He remembers when it began in 1997 as just “a get-together of friends with some bands.” The fact it’s still going strong two decades later is “a testament to its true strengths, that of music and community,” he says. It helps, too, that its organizers understand that “success may not be defined as getting the bigger venues and chasing expansion.” Twangfest hosts a few other events each year in addition to the festival. In 2016, that’s included a February Neil Young tribute show at Off Broadway, as well as a full day of music at an Austin venue as part of South by Southwest. The organization’s weekly Saturday Sessions kicked off for the year on May 14 and will continue through October, bringing local and national artists for free shows at the West Pool Pavilion in Tower Grove Park. In its twentieth year, the festival hasn’t quite reached legal drinking age, but don’t expect that to stop fans from enjoying some cold beverages — musicians definitely included. Benz, for one, admits that he “might even stay up really late all four nights.” n
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THUR. JUNE 2 9PM Davina and the Vagabonds
FRI. JUNE 3 10PM Rhythm Section Road Show presents Big Mike & The Blue City
SAT. JUNE 4 10PM Old Shoe with guests TBA
sun. JUNE 5 10PM Through The Roots Reggae from California with Special Guests Common Jones
wed. JUNE 8 9:30PM Voodoo Players Tribute to Bob Marley
thur. JUNE 9 10PM Aaron Kamm and the One Drops
fri. JUNE 10 10PM The New Orleans Suspects with Special Guests Funky Butt Brass Band
736 S Broadway St. Louis, MO 63102 (314) 621-8811 riverfronttimes.com
June 1-7, 2016
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36
HOMESPUN
SLEEPY KITTY Flux (http://sleepykitty.bandcamp.com)
I
t seems hard to believe, but there was a time before Sleepy Kitty became ubiquitous in St. Louis’ music scene. Years before Paige Brubeck and Evan Sult peppered concert halls with their fuzzy, nail-bomb pop songs or their Day-Glo poster art, and well before the pair took over publishing and editorial control of Eleven magazine, the pair was introducing itself with a modest fivesong EP. That 2009 release, What I Learned This Summer, found the two at twin poles of their creative process, comprising two sharp, barbed tunes and three 30-second nuggets of sound collage and snippets of roughedout jams. It’s instructive to revisit that first release in light of the brand-new Flux EP, released June 3 on Euclid Records. After two full-lengths, Flux operates principally in short bursts: Penultimate track “Right Words” fuses Sult’s go-go beat with Brubeck’s surf/punk chord progression, communicating all it needs to before 90 seconds have passed. The final cut, the instrumental waltz “Honore,” mixes playground noise and what sounds like the wheezing of your grandma’s old parlor organ. For a band whose last LP, 2014’s Projection Room, was a more measured artistic statement, Flux is a transitional release, but one that doesn’t shirk potency or politics. “A lot of this stuff was written after Projection Room and a lot of it was written in the van,” says lyricist and vocalist Brubeck. “We were recording when we could, and we weren’t even thinking about a new album. All these songs were piling up, and I pitched it to Evan that we make our What I Learned This Summer of right now. I was realizing that we were going to outgrow this stuff unless we actually look at it and let ourselves play it.” As visual artists well-versed in collage, stitching together the fourteen-minute program came naturally. Brubeck assembled the snippets one evening and found that the EP tied together several strands of the band’s 2016 identity. “We weren’t intentionally thinking of it as a body of work, but on close listen I realized that it was, without us really trying,” Brubeck continues. “So I made a sequence and did some transitions with some of the demos.” When Sleepy Kitty eases back into three- and four-minute pop songs, Brubeck is able to stretch out and make sly, trenchant social commentary. Opening song “Math Class Is Tough” manages to tackle gender, identity and P.C. over-correction through the lens of a childhood toy. In 1992, Mattel’s Teen Talk Barbie was released, and the doll uttered a host of phrases including the then-controversial complaint that gives the song its title. A young Brubeck had that doll in second grade; she remembers relating to the sentiment and being baffled by the backlash. “Combining science, technology, engineering and math — I get it and I get that they’re all related, but I hated math and I loved science,” says Brubeck. “To
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me, there’s nothing wrong with hating math. I don’t feel like Barbie is the reason I hate math, or that I’m stupid enough to be brainwashed by a doll. “Really, what the song is about to me is that when a bunch of adults said, ‘This doll can’t say this,’ they’re telling me that it’s wrong to think that math class is tough and that there’s something wrong with me for having a hard time with math and relating to Barbie,” she continues. For Brubeck, the decades-old kerfuffle underlines what she sees as a still-constant belittling of women. “I don’t understand why society feels the need to protect women so much; that’s the biggest way to have dominance over someone is to be over-protective in a way,” she says. The EP’s lead single, “Summer,” is the set’s most conventional pop song, though it too was born of Brubeck’s self-described millennial angst. An NPR story about her generation’s unwillingness or inability to amass the typical trappings of adulthood — steady job, home, car, retirement plan — brought to relief Brubeck’s existence as a member of a touring band and the stress of trying to create and promote your art when racing against the ever-dwindling calendar. “Booking a tour and deciding how to spend your time as a touring band, being like ‘Where do we need to get?’” she says. “Sometimes I get so anxious just trying to figure out how to cram it all in. That anxiety and that relief — we’re right at the front of it, we can figure this out. There’s enough time to get everything done — I think!” “The Flux EP came out as an exponent of that realization: we have all these things happening and how are we going to do it?” says Sult. “We’re already thinking about what we’re going to do for next March or April. Putting a release in the middle of 2016 helped us think about the year differently and be able to break it up into different units, and not just disappear in the rabbit hole of writing.” –Christian Schaeffer
37
OUT EVERY NIGHT WEDNESDAY 1
MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK: w/ Have Mercy, Let
773-3363.
SARAH SILVERMAN: w/ Liza Winstead 8 p.m.,
AMY LAVERE: 9 p.m., $10-$12. Off Broadway,
It Happen 8 p.m., $25-$27.50. The Pageant,
MARC BROUSSARD: 8 p.m., $22-$25. Old Rock
$45. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis,
3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-773-3363.
6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.
House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.
314-726-6161.
BIG RICH & THE RHYTHM RENEGADES: 7 p.m.,
PULSE: w/ D-Railed (acoustic set), Revelation
ROOTS OF A REBELLION: w/ The Driftaways, Uni-
SOULARD BLUES BAND: 9 p.m., $5. Broadway
free. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway,
Seven, Rise Above Zero 7 p.m., $10. Fubar,
fyah 9 p.m., $8-$10. The Demo, 4191 Manches-
Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-
St. Louis, 314-436-5222.
3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.
ter Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-5532.
621-8811.
BOB “BUMBLE BEE” KAMOSKE: 8 p.m. Beale on
THE SHEEPDOGS: 8 p.m., $16-$18. Off Broadway,
Broadway, 701 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-
3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-773-3363.
SUNDAY 5
7880.
SUBHUMANS: w/ Pears 8 p.m., $15. The Fire-
C.W. STONKEING: 7 p.m., $13-$15. Off Broadway,
Louis, 314-833-3929.
THE FEYZA EREN GROUP: 7 p.m., free. Missouri
bird, 2706 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-0353.
3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-773-3363.
THEORIES: w/ Immortal Bird, Path of Might 7
FISHBONE: 8 p.m., $25. Blueberry Hill - The
p.m., $10-$12. The Demo, 4191 Manchester
Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City,
Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-5532.
Botanical Garden, 4344 Shaw Blvd., St. Louis,
SUNN 0))): w/ Big Brave, Hissing 8 p.m., $25-$28. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St.
314-577-9400.
SATURDAY 4
HOWARD JONES: 8 p.m., $30. Old Rock House,
CITY OF GHOSTS: 7 p.m., $10. Fubar, 3108 Locust
314-727-4444.
1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.
St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.
LEE ROY PARNELL: 8 p.m., $23-$25. Old Rock
TUESDAY 7
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD: 8 p.m., $30-$35. The
THE FADED TRUTH: w/ Roses Unread, OneDay,
House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.
JAMAICA LIVE TUESDAYS: w/ Ital K, Mr. Roots, DJ
Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-
Toddler Fight Club, The Broadcast Obscura,
PURE BATHING CULTURE: 7 p.m., $10. The Demo,
Witz, $5/$10. Elmo’s Love Lounge, 7828 Olive
6161.
Struck Down By Sound, Pirate Signal 5 p.m.,
4191 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-5532.
Blvd, University City, 314-282-5561.
OPTIMUS REX: w/ Pirate Signal, Midnight Giant,
$10. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-
RED JUMPSUIT APPARATUS: 8 p.m., $17-$20. The
OH WONDER: 8 p.m., $16-$18. The Ready Room,
Steadfast and Foolhardy 7 p.m., $7. The Demo,
9050.
Firebird, 2706 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-0353.
4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929.
4191 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-5532.
THE FOREIGN EXCHANGE: 9 p.m., $25. The Fire-
POLYENSO: w/ Animals in Hindsight, The Mono-
bird, 2706 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-0353.
MONDAY 6
cles 7 p.m., $12-$15. The Demo, 4191 Manches-
JOHN HARTFORD TRIBUTE: w/ Dugout Canoe,
FLAG: w/ Off With Their Heads, The Dirty Nil 8
773-3363.
ter Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-5532.
Lonesome Pines, Root Diggers 8 p.m., $10-$12.
p.m., $25-$30. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis,
SIRONA: w/ Call It Home, Mustache, You Me The
ROLAND JOHNSON SOUL ENDEAVOUR: 10:30 p.m.,
Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-
314-289-9050.
American Dream, Out of Sequence, WILL F.M.
ROBERT ELLIS: w/ Tom Brosseau 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-
free. Beale on Broadway, 701 S. Broadway, St.
7 p.m., $10-$12. The Demo, 4191 Manchester
Louis, 314-621-7880.
Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-5532.
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED: w/ Megosh 6 p.m.,
TWIN PEAKS: 8 p.m., $12-$14. The Firebird, 2706
$12-$14. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314289-9050.
Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-0353.
[CRITIC’S PICK]
THURSDAY 2
THIS JUST IN
GRIEVES: 8 p.m., $12-$14. The Firebird, 2706
ALEXANDER JEAN: Mon., July 11, 7:30 p.m.,
Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-0353.
$15-$18. The Firebird, 2706 Olive St., St. Louis,
MORNING IN MAY: w/ Last Plane Out, You Me
314-535-0353.
and The American Dream, Last Plane Out 6
AVA, WAIT: W/ Last Night’s Vice, New Lingo, City
p.m., $8-$10. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis,
of Parks, Sat., Aug. 27, 8:30 p.m., $10-$12. The
314-289-9050.
Firebird, 2706 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-0353.
ROGER CREAGER: 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway,
BACKSLIDER: W/ The Warden, Kingston Family
3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-773-3363.
Singers, Wed., June 8, 9:30 p.m., $7. Blank Space, 2847 Cherokee St., St. Louis.
FRIDAY 3
BETH HART: Sat., Sept. 17, 8 p.m., $35-$55. The
BEN SOLLEE: 8 p.m., $15. The Demo, 4191 Man-
Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-
chester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-5532.
6161.
BOSTON: w/ Blue Oyster Cult, Gary Hoey 7 p.m.,
Ben Sollee. | WINDISH AGENCY
$23-$98. Family Arena, 2002 Arena Parkway, St
$7. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226. JAMES MCCARTNEY: 8 p.m., $15-$20. The Bootleg, 4140 Manchester Ave., St. Louis, 314775-0775. JR. CLOONEY: w/ Staghorn, Mariner 9 p.m., free. Schlafly Tap Room, 2100 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-2337. KEITH URBAN: w/ Brett Eldredge, Maren Morris 6 p.m., TBA. Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, I-70 & Earth City Expwy., Maryland Heights, 314-298-9944. KEKE WYATT: 9 p.m., $20-$40. The Marquee Restaurant & Lounge, 1911 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-436-8889. THE MIGHTY PINES: 9 p.m., $10. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.
Drops, Sat., July 9, 7 p.m., TBA. The Bootleg, 4140 Manchester Ave., St. Louis, 314-775-0775.
Charles, 636-896-4200. BUTTERCUP: w/ Van Buren, Forteana 9 p.m.,
THE BIG WU: W/ Aaron Kamm and the One
Ben Sollee 8 p.m. Friday, June 3. The Demo, 4191 Manchester Avenue. $15. 314-8335532.
As a conceit, it may not seem like that big of a deal that Kentucky-born cellist and singer Ben Sollee treats his instrument as much like a fiddle as a cello, imbuing his performance with Appalachian overtones as well as classical filigrees. But his technique goes a long way in transmitting the soul of his native soil; on the just-released two-song single, Sollee takes a sonorous pass at
“My Old Kentucky Home,” bowing his instrument with droning resonance one moment, then striking his strings in rhythmic counterpoint the next. He tells his own tale of the Bluegrass State in the next track, “Shade of the Spires,” a tale of the Sport of Kings that was released just in time for the Kentucky Derby. What’s the Score: Sollee splits his time these days between his singer-songwriter work and composing scores for films, including Fall to Rise and Maidentrip.
BOYCE AVENUE: Sat., Oct. 8, 8 p.m., $25/$27.50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. BROKEN GOLD: W/ the Humanoids, Grave Neighbors, Thu., June 16, 8 p.m., $5. San Loo, 3211 Cherokee St., St. Louis, 314-696-2888. BRUXISM #18: W/ the Lonely Procession, Perihelion Duo, Das, Thu., June 23, 9 p.m., free. Schlafly Tap Room, 2100 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-2337. BUILT TO SPILL: W/ Hop Along, Alex G, Mon., Sept. 26, 8 p.m., $25-$27. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929. CAR SEAT HEADREST: Mon., Sept. 5, 8 p.m., $15$17. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929. THE CONFORMISTS: W/ Muscle Brain, Skin Tags,
Continued on pg 38
riverfronttimes.com
June 1-7, 2016
RIVERFRON T TIMES
37
OUT EVERY NIGHT Continued from pg 37
[CRITIC’S PICK]
Leon Bridges. | COURTESY OF CHALK PRESS AGENCY
Leon Bridges
With all due respect to Aretha, Otis, Marvin and the Reverend Al, Sam Cooke was the greatest pure soul singer to ever draw a sanctified and sensual breath. Born 25 years after Cooke’s death, Leon Bridges, a native of Fort Worth, Texas, channels almost everything about that legend: the creamy tone, the nonchalant swing breaking into R&B bounce, the irreversible gospel drive and the
sinewy phrasing that tells a story no matter the lyrics. Of course Bridges isn’t Cooke’s equal (not remotely), but by setting his sights so high and letting his irresistible voice and disciplined band do the talking, he has, at the tender age of 26 and with only one album to his name, become a massive star on the soul revival scene. Indie connection: Bridges’ career, surprisingly, took off thanks to experimental garage rockers White Denim, who helped him record his debut album for Columbia.
Van Buren, Sat., July 16, 9 p.m., free. Schlafly
21, 6:30 p.m., $14. The Firebird, 2706 Olive St.,
Tap Room, 2100 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-
St. Louis, 314-535-0353.
2337.
HOUSE OF BRUNETTES: W/ the Jans Project, Ti-
DANIEL WYCHE: W/ Eric Hall, Alex Cunningham,
gerbeat, Sat., July 30, 9 p.m., free. Schlafly Tap
Joseph Hess, Wed., June 15, 8 p.m., $5. Kismet
Room, 2100 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-2337.
Creative Center, 3409 Iowa Ave., St. Louis,
I ACTUALLY: W/ LifeWithout, Yellow Belly, Fri.,
314-696-8177.
July 22, 9 p.m., free. Schlafly Tap Room, 2100
DAVID LIEBE HART: W/ Hardbody, Tue., July 12, 8
Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-2337.
p.m., $10-$12. 2720 Cherokee Performing Arts
ILLPHONICS: W/ Native Sun, Fri., July 15, 9 p.m.,
Center, 2720 Cherokee St, St. Louis, 314-276-
free. Schlafly Tap Room, 2100 Locust St., St.
2700.
Louis, 314-241-2337.
DE LOS MUERTOS: W/ Daniel C. Roth, Jon Valley,
KEY GRIP: W/ Musth Bardo, Syna So Pro, 3 of 5,
Sat., July 9, 9 p.m., free. Schlafly Tap Room,
Sat., July 9, 9 p.m., $7. The Heavy Anchor, 5226
TH
2100 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-2337.
Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226.
Hymns of the Republic, Foe Cat, and Falling with Style - Rock - 8pm - $8 adv/$10 door
DOUBLIN DOWN 7.0: W/ Tim Zawada, Hal
KIAN ‘N’ JC: Tue., July 26, 8 p.m., $32.50. The
Greens, Mister Melvin, Fri., June 10, 9 p.m., $5.
Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-
Blank Space, 2847 Cherokee St., St. Louis.
6161.
FALSETTO BOY: W/ Heavy Weather, I Could
KURT VILE AND THE VIOLATORS: W/ The Sadies,
Sleep In The Clouds, Fri., July 22, 8 p.m., $5.
Tue., Aug. 23, 8 p.m., $22.50/$25. The Pageant,
Kismet Creative Center, 3409 Iowa Ave., St.
6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.
Louis, 314-696-8177.
LACEY STURM: Thu., Aug. 11, 7:30 p.m., $16-$18.
FINAL VEIL: W/ Raw Earth, Sat., June 18, 9 p.m.,
The Firebird, 2706 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-
free. Schlafly Tap Room, 2100 Locust St., St.
0353.
Louis, 314-241-2337.
LAKE STREET DRIVE: W/ Aoife O’Donovan, Thu.,
GUITAR WOLF: W/ Hans Condor, Tue., Aug. 30, 8
Aug. 4, 8 p.m., $25/$27.50. The Pageant, 6161
p.m., $15-$18. The Firebird, 2706 Olive St., St.
Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.
Louis, 314-535-0353.
THE LANGALEERS EP RELEASE SHOW: W/ Tok,
8 p.m. Wednesday, June 8. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Boulevard. All ages: $29.50-$35. 314-726-6161.
“St. Louis pioneers of craft beer and live music” THURSDAY, JUNE 2ND
Inner Outlines, Keys & Corridors, Earth To Sender, 3 On The Tree - Pop/Punk/Rock - 7pm - $7 adv/$10 door
FRIDAY, JUNE 3 RD
An Evening with Crystal Lady - Rock- 9pm - $10 adv/$15 door
SATURDAY, JUNE 4
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8 TH
Geeks Who Drink - Trivia - 8:30pm - FREE
UPCOMING SHOWS
6/10 CD Release w/ The Few 6/18 Charge The Atlantic 6/24 Slumfest Pre-Party
6691 Delmar
In the University City Loop
314.862.0009 • www.ciceros-stl.com 38
RIVERFRONT TIMES
J u ne 1 - 7 , 2 0 1 6
HAIL THE SUN: W/ Eidola, Belle Noire, Thu., July
riverfronttimes.com
Continued on pg 40
riverfronttimes.com
June 1-7, 2016
RIVERFRON T TIMES
39
VATS: W/ P
THIS JUST IN Continued from pg 38
Coffee & B
314-772-21
WEAKWICK
[CRITIC’S PICK]
Flag
4’3”
e of pol g swingin spice
314-696-81
WHOA THU
Gather ‘round, young punks, for a tale of two Flags. The year was 2013, and Greg Ginn, guitarist of the legendary Black Flag, announced that he would be reforming the band with one-time vocalist Ron Reyes, best known for his work on the Jealous Again EP. Around the same time, former members Keith Morris, Chuck Dukowski, Bill Stevenson and Dez Cadena joined with Descendants guitarist Stephen Egerton to form Flag, also touring and performing the songs of Black Flag. Ginn brought legal action against all parties involved, even
lobbing a lawsuit at another former member, Henry Rollins, who was not even involved in either reformed band. Ginn lost, released a dismally received album under the Black Flag name and then kicked Reyes out, replacing him with pro skateboarder Mike Vallely. Despite promises of new material, Black Flag has been quiet since the completion of its 2014 tour. Flag, meanwhile, has continued touring and performing the band’s classic songs, finding great success and a universally warm reception from fans. Don’t Be Late: Minneapolis’ Off with Their Heads, beloved in St. Louis and parts beyond, will kick things off. You’d do well not to miss them.
Bucko Toby, Fri., July 1, 9 p.m., free. Schlafly
PSYCHIC HEAT: W/ Casual Burn, Cave Lizard,
Off Broad
Tap Room, 2100 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-
Berdella, Sun., June 19, 8 p.m., $7. Foam Coffee
773-3363.
2337.
& Beer, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-
CITY OF GH
LOREENA MCKENNITT: Fri., Oct. 21, 8 p.m., $45-
2100.
3108 Locu
$65. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis,
RADICAL TWERK: RECLAIMING UR BLK BDY: Fri.,
THE FADED
314-726-6161.
June 17, 7 p.m., $10. Blank Space, 2847 Chero-
Toddler Fi
LOVELY LITTLE GIRLS: W/ Hardbody, Demon-
kee St., St. Louis.
Struck Do
lover, Fri., July 22, 9 p.m., $7. Foam Coffee &
RAMONA DEFLOWERED: W/ Accelerando, Kristin
4, 5 p.m., $
Beer, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-
Cobos, Thu., July 7, 9 p.m., free. Schlafly Tap
314-289-90
2100.
Room, 2100 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-2337.
THE FEYZA
THE MANESS BROTHERS: W/ Miss Molly Simms
SHARON HAZEL TOWNSHIP: W/ Witchy, Flying
free. Miss
Band, Sat., July 2, 9 p.m. Schlafly Tap Room,
House, Sat., June 11, 9 p.m., free. Schlafly Tap
Blvd., St. L
2100 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-2337.
Room, 2100 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-2337.
FISHBONE:
MARIANAS TRENCH: Fri., Aug. 5, 8 p.m., $20/$23.
SOFT KILL: W/ Underpass, DJ Ghost Ice, Sat.,
ry Hill - Th
The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis,
June 18, 9 p.m., $7. Foam Coffee & Beer, 3359
University
314-726-6161.
Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100.
FLAG: W/ O
MURPHY LEE: W/ Tef Poe, Thu., June 16, 7 p.m.,
SOMEBODY TO LOVE: A TRIBUTE TO QUEEN: W/
Mon., June
TBA. 2720 Cherokee Performing Arts Center,
Jackson Howard, Fri., July 22, 9 p.m., $10-$15.
Locust St,
2720 Cherokee St, St. Louis, 314-276-2700.
The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St.
THE FOREI
NEW TONGUES: W/ This City of Takers, the
Louis, 314-833-3929.
$25. The F
Pachyderms, Sat., June 25, 9 p.m., free. Schlafly
STRONG FORCE: W/ True Sportsmanship, Herr/
314-535-03
Tap Room, 2100 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-
Bobo Duo, Fri., July 29, 9 p.m., free. Schlafly
GRIEVES: T
2337.
Tap Room, 2100 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-
bird, 2706
PÜ F3ST BENEFIT: W/ the Conformists, Kanna-
2337.
HOWARD J
pell/Herr Duo, Sweat, Deep Set, Posture, Sat.,
TIGER RIDER: W/ Guts, We Should Have Been
Rock Hous
June 25, 9 p.m., $5. CBGB, 3163 S. Grand Blvd.,
DJs, Banjo Rat, Thu., June 16, 9 p.m., free.
0505.
St. Louis.
Schlafly Tap Room, 2100 Locust St., St. Louis,
JAMAICA L
PARTY STATIC: Thu., July 21, 9 p.m., $5. Foam
314-241-2337.
Witz, Tues
Coffee & Beer, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis,
TOUPEE: W/ Glued, Sun., July 17, 9 p.m., $5.
7828 Olive
314-772-2100.
Foam Coffee & Beer, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St.
JAMES MC
PAUL DE JONG: W/ Golden Curls, Sun., June 26,
Louis, 314-772-2100.
The Bootle
7:30 p.m., $10/$12. Foam Coffee & Beer, 3359
TUNIC: Sun., July 24, 9 p.m., $5. Foam Coffee &
314-775-07
Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100.
Beer, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-
JOHN HART
PEARL EARL: W/ Abacaba, Art School, Babe
2100.
Lonesome
Lords, Sun., June 12, 8 p.m., $5. Foam Coffee &
VANDALION: W/ Posture, Malady, Thu., July 14, 9
p.m., $10-
Beer, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-
p.m., free. Schlafly Tap Room, 2100 Locust St.,
St. Louis, 3
2100.
St. Louis, 314-241-2337.
JR. CLOONE
POPULAR MECHANICS: W/ the Complaint Line,
THE VANILLA BEANS: W/ Spoken Nerd, Superfun
3, 9 p.m., f
Aquitaine, Fri., June 24, 9 p.m., free. Schlafly
Yeah Yeah Rocketship, Thu., June 30, 9 p.m.,
St., St. Lou
Tap Room, 2100 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-
free. Schlafly Tap Room, 2100 Locust St., St.
KEITH URB
2337.
Louis, 314-241-2337.
Fri., June
8 p.m. Monday, June 6.
PINT SIZED
met Creat
Fubar, 3108 Locust Street. $25 to $30. 314-2899050.
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40
RIVERFRONT TIMES
J u ne 1 - 7 , 2 0 1 6
riverfronttimes.com
SAVAGE LOVE THE KID BY DAN SAVAGE Hey, Dan: There’s this boy — he’s 29; I’m 46 and female. We met when we were 23 and 41. I was not and am not into little boys. The Kid chased me, and I turned him down for months — until I got drunk one night and caved. It was supposed to be a one-night stand, but it isn’t anymore. We’ve never been “together,” because the Kid wants kids and happily ever after and all that horseshit, and I don’t (and I’m too old even if I did). The Kid has been in several relationships over the years, looking for The One, and I genuinely hope he finds her. In my wildest dreams, I’m invited to their wedding and their children call me auntie. But in the meantime, the Kid runs to me when he hits a hiccup in a relationship, and I let him — meaning, he gets mad at her and fucks me madly. Afterward, I get him to talk about it — he tells me what happened, and I always try to advise him how to make it work. But so far it hasn’t, and we’re “us” again until he meets another girl. I do love this Kid, for what it’s worth. But I’m afraid I’m ruining his chances. I’m afraid that by being an escape hatch, I’m giving him a reason not to work on these relationships and he will never find the kids/forever thing he’s looking for. Should I let him go for his own sake?
If I tell him honestly why, he won’t accept it, so I’d have to just vanish. I’d hate that. It would be worth it if I knew he met someone and got to live happily ever after. But I’d spend my life feeling bad for disappearing on him, and I’d always wonder if the Kid wound up alone. Don’t Call Me Cougar I don’t see any conflict between what the Kid says he wants in the long run — kids and happily ever after and all that horseshit — and the things his actions indicate he wants now, i.e., your rear and your ear. He’s young, he hasn’t met a woman he could see himself with for the long haul, and he appears to be in no rush — he can have his first kid next year or twenty years from now. And the meantime, DCMC, he has you. Here’s where I detect some conflict between statements and actions: The fact that you keep fucking the Kid while he’s technically still with other women — first you fuck him (madly) and then you advise him (sagely) — is a pretty good indication that you’re not ready to let go of him, either. Fucking someone who has a girlfriend — especially someone who has a girlfriend he’s supposed to be with exclusively — doesn’t exactly telegraph “I think you two should work it out.” So going for-
ward, maybe you should offer the Kid your advice when he’s seeing someone, fuck the shit out of him when he’s single and don’t waste too much time worrying about whether fucking you incentivizes being single. Because single/you may be what he wants right now. Hey, Dan: I despised your advice to LIBIDOS, the poly married woman who you counseled to have sex with her husband even though she has zero desire to do so. You came close to telling her to throw away her consent. Somewhere between a third and half of women have been sexually assaulted. Would it be possible for most of them to suck it up and sleep with someone they had no desire for without ending up resenting or hating that person? Even if LIBIDOS won life’s coin toss on sexual assault, she would most likely come to resent her husband if she had passionless sex with him. From the husband’s perspective, wouldn’t being lied to in this way ruin him? I also don’t think you would’ve given this advice to a gay man — to let his husband fuck him the ass, even if he didn’t want to get fucked. The truth is really the only solution here. The road you set this woman down leads only to bitterness and divorce. Seriously Horrified About That LIBIDOS, a poly woman with a boyfriend (who she’s fucking) and
riverfronttimes.com
41
a husband (who no one is fucking), asked me if she should “force” herself to fuck her husband. She also mentioned having a kid and not wanting to get divorced. And it was my opinion — an opinion she sought out — that she might wanna fuck her husband once in a while. Advice isn’t binding arbitration, SHAT, and if fucking her husband is a traumatizing ordeal, as opposed to a dispiriting chore, she should ignore my advice and keep not fucking her husband. And seeing as LIBIDOS asked me if she should fuck her husband, it seemed safe to assume that she was open to the idea. You weren’t the only reader to take me to task for my advice to LIBIDOS. Apparently, there are lots of people out there who don’t realize how many long-marrieds — men and women, gay and straight, poly and mono — fuck their spouses out of a grim sense of duty. It seems a bit extreme to describe that kind of sex as a consent-free/sexual-assault-adjacent trauma. Choosing in the absence of coercion to go through the marital motions to keep your spouse happy is rarely great sex—for either party—but slapping the nonconsensual label on joyless-but-traumafree marital sex is neither helpful nor accurate. Listen to Dan’s podcast at savagelovecast.com mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter
June 1-7, 2016
RIVERFRON T TIMES
41
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RIVERFRONT TIMES
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100 Employment 105 Career/Training/Schools THE OCEAN CORP. 10840 Rockley Road, Houston, Texas 77099. Train for a new career. *Underwater Welder. Commercial Diver. *NDT/Weld Inspector. Job Placement Assistance. Financial Aid avail for those who qualify 1.800.321.0298
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Tues-Sun 10-2:30 11939 Olive Blvd. Creve Coeur 314-997-4224
190 Business Opportunities Avon Full Time/Part Time, $15 Fee. Call Carla: 314-665-4585 For Appointment or Details Independent Avon Rep.
193 Employment Information CDL-A DRIVERS and Owner Operators: $2,000.00 sign on, company safety bonuses. Home weekly, regional runs. Great benefits. 1-888-300-993
525 Legal Services
File Bankruptcy Now! Call Angela Jansen 314-645-5900 Bankruptcyshopstl. com The choice of a lawyer is an important decision and should not be based solely on advertising.
Personal Injury, Workers Comp, DWI, Traffic 314-621-0500
ATTORNEY BRUCE E. HOPSON
The choice of a lawyer is an important decision & should not be based solely on advertising.
167 Restaurants/Hotels/Clubs
WANTED: DISHWASHER
500 Services
AmandasMiniDaySpa.com 510 E. Chain of Rocks Rd Granite City, IL. • $70/hr
314-467-0766 Escape the Stresses of Life with a relaxing Oriental MASSAGE & Reflexolog You’ll Come Away Feeling Refreshed & Rejuvenated. Call 314-972-9998
530 Misc. Services WANTS TO purchase minerals and other oil & gas interests. Send details to P.O. Box 13557, Denver, Co 80201
400 Buy-Sell-Trade 450 Pets, Pet Supplies AKC GERMAN Rottweiler Puppies Purebreds $600 text or call 978-706-0938 or visit raymondpetshop. com
600 Music 610 Musicians Services MUSICIANS Do you have a band? We have bookings. Call (314)781-6612 for information Mon-Fri, 10:00-4:30 MUSICIANS AVAILABLE Do you need musicians? A Band? A String Quartet? Call the Musicians Association of St. Louis (314)781-6612, M-F, 10:00-4:30
SOUTHERN MISSOURI TRUCK DRIVING SCHOOL P.O. Box 545 • Malden, MO 63863 • 1.888.276.3860 • www.smtds.com
Flexible Appointments
ARE YOU ADDICTED TO PAIN MEDICATIONS OR HEROIN? Suboxone can help. Covered by most insurance. Free & confidential assessments Outpatient Services. Center Pointe Hospital 314-292-7323 or 800-345-5407 763 S. New Ballas Rd, Ste. 310
ST-JOHN
ST. CHARLES COUNTY 314-579-1201 or 636-939-3808 1 & 2 BR apts for rent. www.eatonproperties.com. Sec. 8 welcome
BROADWAY-BLUFFS $550 314-223-8067 Spacious 1+BR (bonus room), Hdwd floors, A/C, stove, fridge W/D hookup, off street parking, near bus and shopping. Clean, quiet.
WESTPORT/LINDBERGH/PAGE $525-$575 314-995-1912 1 MO FREE!-1BR ($525) & 2BR ($575) SPECIALS! Clean, safe, quiet. Patio, laundry, great landlord! Nice Area near hwys 64, 270, 170, 70 or Clayton.
CARONDELET-PARK! $475 314-309-2043 Clean 1 bedroom, all appliances, hardwood floors, extra storage some utilities paid, no application fee! rs-stl.com RHITS CENTRAL-WEST-END! $550 314-309-2043 Nice apartment, central heat/air, loaded kitchen, hardwood floors pets, pool access, clubhouse, fitness cent , must see! rs-stl.com RHITU DELMAR! $420 314-309-2043 Nice 1 bedroom, appliances included, cold central air, newer carpet, pets allowed, walk to shop & dine!! rs-stl.com RHITV DOGTOWN! $550 314-309-2043 Updated 1br duplex, kitchen appliances, hardwood floors, ce tral heat/air, some utilities paid, recent updates! rs-stl.com RHITT DOWNTOWN Cityside-Apts 314-231-6806 Bring in ad & application fee waived! Gated prkng, onsite laundry. Controlled access bldgs, pool, fitness, business ctr. Pets welcome HALLS-FERRY! $425 314-309-2043 Updated 1 bedroom, frosty a/c, kitchen appliances, hardwood floors, w/d hookups, plenty of storage! rs-stl.com RHIT HAMPTON! $675 314-309-2043 Roomy 2 bedroom, full basement, thermal windows, hardwood floors, all appliances, plenty of storage, call for details rs-stl.com RHITX LAFAYETTE-SQUARE $685 314-968-5035 2030 Lafayette: 2BR/1BA, appls, C/A, Hdwd Fl
RICHMOND-HEIGHTS $525-$565-SPECIAL 314-995-1912 1 MONTH FREE! 1BR, all elec off Big Bend. Near Metrolink, hwys 40 & 44, Clayton. SOUTH CITY $400-$850 314-771-4222 Many different units www.stlrr.com 1-3 BR, no credit no problem
IF YOU DESIRE TO MAKE MORE MONEY AND NEED A NEW JOB EARNING
SOUTH ST. LOUIS CITY 314-579-1201 or 636-939-3808 1, 2 & 3 BR apts for rent. www.eatonproperties.com. Sec. 8 welcome
$45-$50 thousand the 1st year, great benefits, call SMTDS, Financial assistance available if you qualify. Free living quarters. 6 students max per class. 4 wks. 192 hours.
SOUTH-CITY $608-$465 314-277-0204 3400 S Spring. Lg 2 BR, hardwood floors, fireplace, dining room. 3901 Keokuk - 1BR, hardwood floors, appliances, blind
• More driving time than any other school in the state •
SOUTH-CITY 314-504-6797 37XX Chippewa: 3 rms, 1BR. all elec exc. heat. C/A, appls, at bus stop SOUTH-CITY! $750 314-309-2034 Large 4 bedroom duplex, central air/heat, fenced yard, appliances, pets, washer/dryer included, ready now! rs-stl.com RHITY SOUTH-COUNTY! $325 314-309-2043 Updated apartment, kitchen appliances, central air, newer carpet & hardwood floors, bad c edit ok, ready to rent! rs-stl.com RHITZ ST-JOHN
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1-800-345-5407 Hope for a bright future
$495-$595 314-443-4478 8700 Crocus: Near 170 & St.Charles Rock Rd Special! 1BR.$495 & 2BR.$595.
BENTON-PARK $750 314-223-8067 Beautiful, large 1 plus BR, original Wood fls, high ceilings, hug closet, new Electric CA/Furn, kitchen Appls, 1st Fl, W/D hookup.
OVERLAND/ST-ANN $535-$575-SPECIAL 314-995-1912 1 MO FREE! 1BR & 2BR-garage. Clean, safe, quiet. Great location near hwys 170, 64, 70 & 270.
Relax, Rejuvenate & Refresh!
810 Health & Wellness General
317 Apartments for Rent
MAPLEWOOD! $525 314-309-2043 All-electric 1 bedroom, newer carpet, kitchen appliances, pets, extra storage, frosty a/c, off street parking! rs-stl.com RHIT0
Health Therapy Massage Monday Thru Sunday (Walk-ins welcome) 320 Brooke’s Drive, 63042 Call Cheryl. 314-895-1616 or 314-258-2860 LET#200101083 Now Hiring...Therapists
WESTPORT/LINDBERGH/PAGE $525-$575 314-995-1912 1 MO FREE!-1BR ($525) & 2BR ($575) SPECIALS! Clean, safe, quiet. Patio, laundry, great landlord! Nice Area near hwys 64, 270, 170, 70 or Clayton.
300 Rentals
$495-$595 314-443-4478 8700 Crocus: Near 170 & St.Charles Rock Rd Special! 1BR.$495 & 2BR.$595.
www.LiveInTheGrove.com 320 Houses for Rent DUTCH-TOWN $790 314-223-8067 Spacious 2 BR House, Natural wood floors 1st Fl., Side by sid Fridge, gas stove, new CA, W/D hookup, Lots of closets, large yard, garage and off street parking, fenced yard. FLORISSANT! $825 314-309-2043 Rent to own 4 bed, 2 bath house, finished basement, central ai , hardwood floors, garage, all appliances, pets, o f street parking! rs-stl.com RHIUE NORTH ST. LOUIS COUNTY 314-579-1201 or 636-939-3808 2, 3 & 4BR homes for rent. eatonproperties.com. Sec. 8 welcome OVERLAND! $850 314-309-2043 Redone 3 bedroom bungalow, central air, all appliances, kitchen island, nice hardwood floors, pets, possible ent to own! rs-stl.com RHIT9 SOUTH-CITY! $700 314-309-2043 Big 2 bedroom house, full basement, central air, fenced yard, all appliances, hardwood floors, pets, flexible deposit! rs-st com RHIUB SOUTH-CITY! $795 314-309-2043 Stylish 3 bedroom house, walk-out basement, central heat/ air, nice hardwood floors, fenced ya d, loaded kitchen, recent upgrades! rs-stl.com RHIUC SOUTH-COUNTY! $875 314-309-2043 Private 3 bedroom house, garage, fenced yard, appliances included, pets welcome, nice screened in porch for entertaining! rs-stl.com RHIUD DUTCH-TOWN $790 314-223-8067 Spacious 2 BR House, Natural wood floors 1st Fl., Side by sid Fridge, gas stove, new CA, W/D hookup, Lots of closets, large yard, garage and off street parking, fenced yard. FLORISSANT! $825 314-309-2043 Rent to own 4 bed, 2 bath house, finished basement, central ai , hardwood floors, garage, all appliances, pets, o f street parking! rs-stl.com RHIUE NORTH ST. LOUIS COUNTY 314-579-1201 or 636-939-3808 2, 3 & 4BR homes for rent. eatonproperties.com. Sec. 8 welcome OVERLAND! $850 314-309-2043 Redone 3 bedroom bungalow, central air, all appliances, kitchen island, nice hardwood floors, pets, possible ent to own! rs-stl.com RHIT9 SOUTH-CITY! $700 314-309-2043 Big 2 bedroom house, full basement, central air, fenced yard, all appliances, hardwood floors, pets, flexible deposit! rs-st com RHIUB SOUTH-CITY! $795 314-309-2043 Stylish 3 bedroom house, walk-out basement, central heat/ air, nice hardwood floors, fenced ya d, loaded kitchen, recent upgrades! rs-stl.com RHIUC SOUTH-COUNTY! $875 314-309-2043 Private 3 bedroom house, garage, fenced yard, appliances included, pets welcome, nice screened in porch for entertaining! rs-stl.com RHIUD
ST. CHARLES COUNTY 314-579-1201 or 636-939-3808 1 & 2 BR apts for rent. www.eatonproperties.com. Sec. 8 welcome
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