CityBeat | Sept. 29-Oct. 12, 2021

C I N C I N N AT I ’ S N E W S A N D E N T E RTA I N M E N T W E E K LY | S E P T E M B E R 2 9 - O C T O B E R 1 2 , 2 0 2 1 | F R E E

WALK THE MOON

BY BRIAN BAKER The pandemic and a bad break-up point to the new Walk the Moon album being a bummer.

Not even close.

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NEWS

Medical centers have been concerned about staffing since the COVID Delta variant began causing caseload spikes this summer.

P H O T O : O L G A K O N O N E N KO

UC Health Chief: Greater Cincinnati Faces Healthcare Staffing Shortage Due to COVID-19 Burnout “This is above and beyond the normal demands on our healthcare system.”

BY A L L I S O N BA B K A

G

reater Cincinnati hospitals are feeling the stress from so many COVID-19 patients — especially as more and more healthcare professionals opt for less intense careers.

During a Sept. 22 briefing with Hamilton County Commissioner Denise Driehaus and Hamilton County Public Health Commissioner Greg Kesterman, Dr. Richard Lofgren — UC Health’s president and CEO — said that the region’s healthcare facilities have been overwhelmed by the current COVID-19 surge. According to the panelists, one in five people using hospital beds and one in three people in intensive care units throughout the region are COVID-19 patients.

“This is above and beyond some of the normal demands on our healthcare system,” Lofgren said.

Lofgren said that in Southwestern Ohio, there are typically about 2,400 hospital beds available on a regular basis. In December, about 800 of those were taken by the peak surge of COVID19 patients, pushing healthcare systems to the brink.

Today, Lofgren said, COVID-19 patients are using about 600 beds — a number that at first seems marginally better than last winter’s caseload but actually gives way to other problems.

Concerns in December largely centered around having enough capacity,

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NEWS

Gov. Mike DeWine Announces Vaccine Incentive Program for Ohioans Ages 12-25

BY M AG G Y M C D O N E L A N D A L L I S O N BA B K A

In a Sept. 23 COVID-19 briefing, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced a new incentive program — this one encouraging younger Ohioans to become vaccinated against the coronavirus.

The Vax-2-School program offers five $100,000 and 50 $10,000 scholarships to vaccinated residents ages 12-25 who enter the drawing. These scholarships can be used for college, job training or other education.

DeWine said the rate of COVID-19 vaccination is much lower for the younger demographics than for older adults. As of press time, only 17% of Ohioans age 19 and younger had gotten one dose of an authorized vaccine and just 15% had been fully vaccinated.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), those who are considered fully vaccinated are two weeks past their second dose of a two-shot series (Pfizer or Moderna) or two weeks past a one-shot vaccine (Johnson & Johnson).

The governor said he hoped the Vax2-School program would encourage those who are unvaccinated to get the vaccine sooner rather than later.

“This age group has the most room to grow when it comes to getting vaccinated. With the Delta variant, we are concerned they will miss class and other learning opportunities if they get

or are exposed to COVID-19,” DeWine said.

DeWine will announce Vax-2-School winners beginning the week of Oct. 11.

Full details, including how teens can register, were not available as of press time.

Vax-2-School is not Ohio’s first attempt to incentivize vaccination. In May, DeWine established the Vax-aMillion program with the Ohio Lottery.

All Ohioans who had received at least one vaccination dose were eligible to enter the program, which rewarded five adult winners with $1 million each. In addition, five vaccinated Ohio residents ages 12-17 each won a full-ride, fouryear scholarship to any public college or university within the state.

Three individuals from Greater Cincinnati were among the winners.

A study from Harvard University found that Vax-a-Million enticed more than 100,000 additional Ohioans to get vaccinated at a cost of about $49 per new Ohioan vaccinated.

DeWine’s Sept. 23 announcement of the new Vax-2-School program came as Ohio sustains a months-long spike of COVID-19 cases, primarily among the unvaccinated, according to data reported by the Ohio Department of Health. The recent surge — largely attributed to the highly transmissible

Delta variant of the coronavirus — is driven by children ages 18 and younger, who, as of press time, make up about three out of every 10 infections statewide.

About 6,700 people throughout Ohio received COVID-19 vaccines on Sept. 24, according to the Ohio Department of Health’s coronavirus dashboard. That’s a drop from about 7,000 on Aug. 21 and about 7,500 on

July 21 but slightly higher than 6,000 on June 21 when the Delta surge began to take hold. No recent dates have come close to Ohio’s peak of almost 108,000 vaccinations on March 31, which was shortly after vaccine eligibility opened up to all population groups.

of the highest volumes that they ever see,” Manning-Courtney said.

She added that the ever-increasing number of patients means that hospital officials have to make difficult decisions about deferring surgeries, turning away transfer patients and postponing outpatient visits. “That will mean affecting care for everyone — even those who don’t believe that COVID-19 is real.”

Lofgren said that many staff members simply have run out of fuel after being on duty essentially since March 2020.

“A number of things factor into it.

Quite honestly, there are a number of healthcare providers who have, as a result, really just left the field. I think that a number of people, nurses and other staff, really stepped up and did triple overtime, really extended themselves to accommodate the surge, and as I mentioned before, they’re just exhausted,” Lofgren said. “And the ability to stretch at that point has really been taxed at a level that, personally, I’ve never seen before. So I think people need to understand that the health systems right now are overwhelmed and they are strained and really are forced to try to manage the demand.”

Lofgren said that staff in area

hospitals, including UC Health facilities, have seen an increase in aggressive behavior from patients and families who don’t want to wear masks. He also said that though a small percentage of healthcare professionals have left employers that are requiring employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, most simply are exiting the industry (UC Health is one of several regional hospital systems that requires COVID19 vaccination for employees, providers, contractors and volunteers this fall).

Driehaus said that patients with COVID-19 or other ailments should carefully consider where to go for treatment so that strain on the healthcare systems is reduced.

“I want to remind people that when you’re thinking about your healthcare, you need to utilize the right level of care so that we don’t overload our emergency rooms. So if you’ve got symptoms and they’re worsening, then you think about going to the emergency room.

But up to that point, if you’ve got something that could be handled elsewhere — through an urgent care, through your primary care physician, through an FQHC (federally qualified health center) — then that is the most appropriate route for you to go so that we are not

overwhelming our EDs (emergency departments),” Driehaus said.

“Not only is the demand (for care in hospitals) of COVID, but ... we need to continue to take care of critically ill people who have non-COVID conditions,” Lofgren said.

Lofgren added added a way to support healthcare staff — by not ending up as a patient in the first place.

“The best thing if you really understand and value the work that the healthcare community (does), besides giving a high five and a distant hug, is to get vaccinated,” Lofgren said. “Really, what we can do is to wear a mask, get vaccinated so that we’re preventing this disease not only for the welfare of our community but also the ability for us to take care of not only COVID patients but critical non-COVID care, as well.”

As of Sept. 22, there were 9,000 active cases of COVID-19 and a seven-day average of 363 cases a day in Hamilton County, according to figures from Kesterman. 579 people within the region are hospitalized, 167 are in the ICU and 125 are on ventilators.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine P H OTO : G OV E R N O R . O H I O. G OV

Find COVID-19 vaccination resources and data at coronavirus.ohio.gov.

FROM PAGE 05

medications and supplies to meet the demand.

But now hospitals are worried about the exodus of healthcare staff as coronavirus cases continue to rise and vaccination rates slow to a crawl in Ohio and Kentucky.

“I can tell you that the issue right now for our ability to accommodate this onslaught of demand is really staffing.

We really do not have the individuals, the people, that we saw in the winter,” Lofgren said.

Healthcare leaders have been sounding the alarm about staffing since shortly after the Delta variant began causing caseload spikes this summer.

Dr. Patricia Manning-Courtney, chief of staff at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, told Driehaus and Kesterman during a Sept. 1 briefing that the number of children hospitalized with COVID-19 has risen sharply, straining pediatric facilities and contributing to more cases than staff can reasonably take on.

“I really want to stress that our entire pediatric healthcare system is under stress and strain right now. By that, I mean our emergency rooms, our urgent cares, our primary care practices, our community physicians are seeing some

For COVID-19 vaccine locations and information, visit coronavirus.ohio.gov in Ohio and kycovid19.ky.gov in Kentucky.

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Walk the Moon // Photo: Grant Spanier

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BY BRIAN BAKER

The pandemic and a bad break-up point to the new Walk the Moon album being a bummer.

Not even close.

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It's been a wild decade since Cincinnati's Walk the Moon became the world's Walk the Moon.

The band, formed by Nicholas Petricca at Kenyon College in 2006, was already on an upward trajectory after the 2011 success of the single “Anna Sun.” Esquire magazine touted it among the 30 Summer Songs Every Man Should Listen To, MTV and Seventeen magazine cited it as the song of the summer, and the Strokes' Albert Hammond Jr. remixed it. RCA Records came calling and Walk the Moon signed on the dotted line.

Fast forward to late summer 2014. Walk the Moon appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers to debut “Shut Up and Dance,” the first single from their third album, Talking is Hard. As credits rolled and Meyers did the show's outro, Petricca grabbed the host and humped his leg like a hormonal macaque. The song became a global phenomenon, reaching the top 5 of Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart in the United States and the top 10 in countries around the world.

The last time Walk the Moon was home for a show dates back to their MidPoint Music Festival appearance at the Taft Theatre after the release of 2017's What If Nothing. The band's gig was notable for the arrival of the fire department during rehearsal.

“Our lighting guy set off the fog early that day before they shut off the smoke detectors,” guitarist Eli Maiman tells CityBeat. “The fire engines came rolling in. It was a bad start to that day.”

Things should go more smoothly when Walk the Moon returns home for two shows at Bogart's Oct. 2 and Oct. 3, on the eve of the Nov. 12 release of their fifth album, Heights. The band has leaked several tracks ahead of Heights' release, and the best of them may be “Can You Handle My Love,” a song bristling with Walk the Moon's patented anthemic energy, in the vein of “Shut Up and Dance,” “Different Colors” and “One Foot.” Coincidentally, the song helped shape the rest of Heights.

“I think 'Can You Handle My Love' has been the boss bitch of the record,” Petricca says.

“It's been the alpha dog, the one calling the shots,” Maiman concurs. “The aesthetic of the record has radiated out from 'Can You Handle My Love.'”

By their account, Walk the Moon began preparatory work on Heights as early as 2017, which continued into the following year.

“We write a lot of songs for our records,” says Petricca. “It's not always clear when we begin recording what's going to feel right for the album. We're always pulling songs from different eras of our vault.”

The band was recording late in 2019 when they began hearing reports of a potent new flu strain that was sweeping through Asia and Europe. Like most Americans, they were unaware of how the following year would be affected.

“We were in the studio in L.A. in early March with Paul Meany of Mutemath working on a song called 'I'm Good,'” Maiman says. “These stories started filtering in about COVID-19 and maybe if you drank water it would wash the virus out of your throat and you wouldn't get it. That's how long ago we were working on this record. This really weird vibe started to creep into the room from this thing outside. When I flew home from that session, little did I know that would be the last time I would travel for, like, 18 months.”

When lockdown went from eventuality to reality, Walk the Moon decided the only way forward was to develop their individual home studio capabilities and continue working on Heights. They and their tech team spent a fair amount of 2020 creating or enhancing recording environments in their living spaces which allowed them the freedom to remain connected to each other, share musical input and create songs remotely.

“We had all these songs that we felt passionately about and really wanted to record,” says Maiman.

“Everybody committed to hunkering down and building out our home studios in a way that we could

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Walk the Moon // Photo: Grant Spanier

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Walk the Moon // Photo: Mick Management

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“Sean has this main room downstairs and there's a bedroom or two off that room, and he has mics in those rooms with the door open so you get the 'next room' sounds,” Petricca says. “We had the Bed Bath and Beyond mic at one point. Like, the classic Led Zeppelin 'mic-down-the-stairwell.' This is Sean's version.”

Based on the leaked tracks, the overall tone of Heights is a varied sonic cocktail; the lyrics of some would seem to indicate a measure of emotional distress along the way. Petricca admits there was a “dramatic/traumatic break-up situation” in his personal life and that it provided a good deal of grist for his songwriting mill, but it didn't steer the songs in a downward direction. complete this album from home. Half the songs on this record came from tones and sounds collected from our homes. The guitar sound is from a little fivewatt amplifier in my closet, and through the mastery of these wizard producers, Mike Crossey and Paul Meany, they've become these huge sounds on the record.”

Perhaps the biggest sounds on any Walk the Moon album are the tribal beats of drummer Sean Waugaman, who designed a drum laboratory in his home for Heights. In describing his set up, he sounds like he might be in favor of keeping elements of his drum studio as a major component to the Walk the Moon methodology.

“When we started, we would have a Zoom session and livestream the whole thing, but we got more comfortable doing it on our own,” Waugaman says. “It was nice to get on a conference call, discuss what's going down on a song and then turn in a bunch of takes later in the day. Being able to record at home has been a great experience, learning about recording and being able to control everything yourself.”

With the success and satisfaction the band found in their home-recording experiments, it might seem as though Walk the Moon is headed for a selfproduction future, but they're quick to point out that they definitely enjoy the input they've gotten from all of their producers over the past decade — not to mention the work they take off their hands.

“I find that our records are a little schizophrenic in terms of style and content. Maybe it's schizophrenic, maybe it's just human,” Petricca says. “I feel like our records cover the spectrum of our personal experience, and so it doesn't sound like just one lane.

There's something about this record where we feel like we're returning to the first album, like we're chasing our destinies in the summer on the road and the origins of what Walk the Moon is all about and the 'Anna Sun' days, and that feels like home to us.

And there's the inner confidence that's gained from 10 years of getting to know ourselves and owning whatever it is that we are.”

There is an old trope among creatives that misery is the catalyst for great art. It certainly can be, but artists don't need to remain in a state of perpetual unhappiness in order to access those inspirational emotions. Petricca understands the misery paradigm as well as anyone.

“My father passed away a few years ago. We had a long journey with Alzheimer's Disease,” he says. “I would never wish that experience on anyone, but I feel simultaneously indebted to that time and to my dad for deepening me as a person and therefore as an artist. The love songs that I can write now are deepened by the places I went during that time. I don't believe you have to be in a certain state to write

“There were days when I would wake up and Sean had dumped, like, gigabytes of percussion takes into our shared Dropbox,” Maiman says. “As grateful as I was for that, I was thankful that somebody else was going to comb through it and find the dopest bits, and that wasn't going to be my job for the day.”

“Every song has a different approach, and there are a lot of self-produced elements,” Waugaman adds.

“We just have a lot of elements, so it helps to have somebody help us get it all together.”

And ambient noise definitely was welcome.

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about a certain state, but I definitely believe I can tap into my past experiences, forever.”

One of Petricca's proudest moments on Heights is the just-leaked track “Fire in Our House,” a collaboration with the late South African legend Johnny Clegg — whose band Juluka was the first bi-racial musical group in the country's apartheid period — and Clegg's son, Jesse. Petricca discovered Clegg's music through a friend, who had played Walk the Moon for a co-worker who commented, “They must listen to a lot of Johnny Clegg.” The co-worker gave a Johnny Clegg disc to the friend who passed it on to Petricca.

“The last couple of years before his death, I got to know him and his family, and he and his son and I wrote 'Fire in Our House' together,” Petricca says of Clegg, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2019. “In 2017, I wrote a note to myself on New Year's Day, and I was, like, 'This year, I want to work with my heroes,' and Johnny Clegg was on the top of that list. I reached out to him and got a response. He introduced me to his son, who was playing a gig in L.A., we sent some music back and forth, and when he came through L.A., we booked some studio time.

This song is his last studio session and the last musical project he ever did.”

The obvious elephant on the Moon is the December 2020 dismissal of longtime bassist Kevin Ray for conduct “out of alignment of our values,” according to Petricca's Instagram post. The functional result is a major gap in Walk the Moon's rhythm section, but the video for “Can You Handle My Love” shows Maiman in the four-stringer role, which is how the band proceeded in the recording process. And, as he notes, he was no stranger to the position.

“I was really excited to stretch my mind in a different direction,” he says. “When I first started playing with Nic in Walk the Moon in 2010, I played fretless Jazz bass, which is completely inappropriate for the band.

Nic very subtly moved me over to guitar, but it was nice to return to the bass role. It's such a visceral experience having the bass against your body and

the vibrations. It's so fun, but people keep asking me to play guitar. I'll take it as a compliment to my guitar playing.”

On Walk the Moon's upcoming tour, longtime friend of the band Lachlan “Lucky” West will occupy the bass slot. He and the band became friends when Walk the Moon and West's band, the Griswolds, toured together several years ago and ultimately became a utility player on subsequent Walk the Moon tours.

“Lucky stepped up and started playing guitar and keys in our band, and now he's playing bass,” Maiman says. “He was the drummer for the Griswolds. He's obviously a very talented individual.”

When Walk the Moon returns to Cincinnati on this tour, their setlist might just contain an odd gem or two from the band's early days. It's not unusual for the band to fiddle with the set from city to city, but Petricca admits they will concentrate a bit harder on the hometown shows.

“Maybe that's an 'us' problem, that we can't find a setlist that works every time,” he says. “We've definitely done that in the past, like, 'Oh, this is hometown. It's Cincinnati or it's Columbus, we should amp it up.' I wonder if there's something from I Want! I Want! that we should learn.”

Walk the Moon plays Bogart’s (2621 Vine St., Corryville) Oct. 2 and 3. Tickets start at $43. All concertgoers must be vaccinated or have received a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of the event.

More info: bogarts.com.

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Walk the Moon in Tampa, Florida on Sept. 20, 2021 // Photo: Dan Schuman

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ARTS & CULTURE

Artist David Mueller drawing (clothed) figure model Dexter Harold Carpenter P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY J A N BROWN CHECCO

Top Form Cincinnati artists debut evocative nude drawings in surprising outdoor settings at Caza Sikes gallery

BY N ATA L I E C L A R E

T

he nude form has been a professional and cultural touchstone for artists for centuries, but these days, newer artists don’t always have the opportunity to closely study the human body.

A recent drawing series changed that, and the result is a new exhibit that features artists of every level and nude drawings in unexpected settings.

On Friday, Oct. 1, Caza Sikes art gallery in Oakley opens Humans Unwrapped: An Interactive Exhibit

Celebrating Art of the Nude Figure. It is the culmination of four in-person drawing sessions that took place during September. Each session was led by a Cincinnati-based master artist who guided a small group of participating artists through a two-hour figure drawing session of a nude model.

Artwork from these sessions will be on display until Oct. 6.

Caza Sikes — which is owned and operated by Reid Sikes and his sons Evan, Will and Graydon Sikes

— collaborated with Cincinnati fine artist Jan Brown Checco to ideate and organize the exhibit. Recently, Brown Checco was downsizing her art collection and working with the Sikes family to auction out pieces through the gallery. As they combed through the artwork, Evan Sikes noticed that Brown Checco had hundreds of drawings and paintings of nude figures that she had created.

“The nude sort of comes in and out of fashion. Right now, it’s a little controversial because people are not looking to see nude figurative art in galleries,” Brown Checco tells CityBeat.

“It’s sort of like rescuing the nude figure from being naked and pornographic and drawing it back into the fine art and culture realm.”

Together, they hatched the idea to hold sessions for professional artists,

emerging artists and art enthusiasts to do exactly that. Will Sikes says he views it “as a way to collaboratively pull some artists together and also as a way to celebrate the figural form and do something a little provocative and fun.”

Brown Checco connected with professional Cincinnati artists and frequent collaborators Ellina Chetverikova, David Mueller, Marlene Steele and Brad Davis to create their own renderings of a nude figure and to each lead an inperson drawing session in September.

They introduced skills and concepts, demonstrated how to pose a model and observed participants’ creative processes to offer one-on-one guidance.

“Figure drawing is not an easy thing to do,” Brown Checco says. “That’s why I chose the people that I did. Because to know the figure and to be excellent

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Where Performances Become Legend

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Artist Jo Ann Berger drawing model Lura Bentley P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY J A N B R O W N C H E C C O

FROM PAGE 29

at rendering the figure is really part of a skill set of the highest-level artists.”

Participants in the sessions ranged from novices to experts. All skill levels were welcome to register. Will Sikes says this is part of what makes Humans Unwrapped so special: “For these guests, they have access to a live figural model, which they might not always have, and then we’re going to select some works from the students to feature in the gallery space. So, it may be their very first opportunity to have a piece hanging in the gallery.”

“A lot of these folks have never done a painting, so we’re exposing them to a master teacher, and maybe we’ll spur interest in people to pursue the fine arts,” says Reid Sikes. “My two friends who are doing the last one have no art experience. They belong to art clubs, they’re art appreciators, but they’re not makers. So, that kind of excites me.”

Sessions took place at private residences throughout Cincinnati. Brown Checco notes how unintentionally comical those phone calls seemed (“We want to place a nude model in your yard, how do you feel about that?”), but the people they approached were intrigued by the idea. The sessions also took place outdoors where artists were at the whims of natural elements. It’s a far cry from the controlled lighting, even temperatures and closed atmosphere of an indoor studio, which is where figure drawing commonly takes

place. Yet while the outdoors poses challenges, it also makes room for a traditional artistic experience.

“If we take a look back at the tradition of nude figures, especially in the 19th century and early 20th century, more often than not, they’re outside.

They’re in gardens,” says Brown Checco.

“There’s nothing more natural, in fact, than a nude figure in a nude setting.”

Lura Bentley, the figure model for the session held on Sept. 11, says the experience of posing nude outdoors was rather meditative. She sat on the stone ledge of the porch, framed by vibrant greenery and awash in sunlight that filtered through trees along the property.

Above her, a large tree stretched higher than the house, dropping leaves lightly over the scene whenever the wind blew.

Before her, nine artists rendered her figure from different angles and with different media — ink, graphite, oil paint, pastel pencil and even homemade walnut ink. She alternated 20-minute sitting sessions with five-minute breaks over the course of the session.

Bentley tells CityBeat the journey of these sessions is really interesting. “I always try to keep note of the beginning of the session and the end of the session. For those first 20 minutes, I think about everything, and it’s just thoughts coming in and out — what I ate for breakfast, what song is stuck in my head, just all sorts of things. But when we get to the final one, it’s very

peaceful. I’m not thinking about much…

It becomes really quiet, which is very fascinating to me, especially in my own journey of mindfulness and meditation.”

Bentley recently graduated from the Art Academy of Cincinnati where she studied sculpture, art history and creative writing. She says figure modeling is beneficial to her own practice, and it teaches her to be more respectful of still life and nature. She models regularly at Manifest Gallery, where master artist Davis teaches drawing sessions.

“If you’ve ever tried to sit still and breathe for just five minutes, it’s impossible. Twenty minutes, it’s unbearable.

So, I’m eternally grateful to anybody that models for us,” Davis tells CityBeat.

Davis also teaches at the University of Cincinnati and the Art Academy of Cincinnati. He led the Humans Unwrapped session on Sept. 11, working on his own rendering of Bentley with pencil.

At the beginning of his session, Davis provided a brief lesson on composition and value shapes. He referenced an 1889 painting titled “Reflexer” by Anders Zorn, an artist he admires. The artwork depicts a woman wading into a calm body of water with greenery in the foreground and a serene landscape in the background.

“You always have to keep in mind that you’re doing a whole scene. It’s not just figure drawing,” says Davis when describing the lesson. “I wanted to introduce this from a perspective of

value shapes and how the figure can be embedded in the environment, not separate from it.“ Davis views Humans Unwrapped as a way to connect curious art enthusiasts to a community that already exists.

“There’s a community of us that does this, and it can be the starting point for some people to get into the community.”

Emily Maneval, a student at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, saw an opportunity to revisit her foundational artistic skills by attending the session. She’s studying illustration and works primarily on the computer, so figure drawing in nature was a welcome departure from her regular work. She worked from a straight-on angle of Bentley, seated in the grass with music streaming through her headphones. She says the experience was really peaceful and it’s inspired her to keep returning to traditional artwork.

When asked if the prospect of drawing a nude figure elicited any discomfort, Maneval said no. “I always think about that Titanic scene — I feel like that really ruined people’s perception of what figure drawing is. It’s just a nude form. There’s nothing remotely weird and uncomfortable about it.”

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Humans Unwrapped: An Interactive Exhibit Celebrating Art of the Nude Figure runs Oct.1-6 at Caza Sikes, 3078 Madison Road, Oakley. More info: cazasikes.com.

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CULTURE

The History Behind (and Where to Find) Glendale’s Famous Black Squirrels and Their Statues

BY M AC K E N Z I E M A N L E Y

Stroll through the Cincinnati suburb of Glendale, and you might notice its rambunctious mascot scurrying up trees or across lawns. And we’re not talking about a human in a costume; the black squirrel, a color morph of the species Sciurus carolinensis, aka the eastern gray squirrel, is a unique inhabitant of the village.

As the legend goes, businessman Thomas Carruthers III brought back two black squirrels from Harbor Springs, Michigan in the 1940s. The population grew in the following decades, says glendaleohioarchive.org.

And to pay tribute to this local quirk, 5-foot-tall fiberglass squirrel statues dot Glendale’s streets and yards. Twenty-five squirrel statues were revealed in 2005 as part of the village’s sesquicentennial celebration. Of those, 13 can still be viewed today; the others have been moved to private property or were sold.

Glendale is a 22-minute drive north of downtown Cincinnati, making squirrel-statue hunting the perfect afternoon romp. Need a guide? Glendale’s website has a map pinpointing the remaining statues and the various routes you can take to see them.

Decorated by local artists and placed outside businesses and community spaces, the statues depict everything from an apron-wearing, rolling-pinwielding squirrel outside of Bluebird Bakery to “Scrappy Fritz Kloth,” a firefighter squirrel guarding the fire station.

“They’ve always been a signature of this village, which makes their presence pretty special,” says Louise Allen, one of the artists who worked on the project.

Allen moved to Glendale in 1957 and has called the village home ever since.

She notes that Thomas Todd, a family physician and the town’s former mayor, spearheaded the campaign. Elected mayor in 1999, Todd died earlier this year at age 87, with his obituary noting his work renovating Glendale’s historic village square and celebrating its 150year anniversary. “For this, he added some fun by creating the ‘Squirrelly Gig,’ over two dozen giant squirrel sculptures positioned around the village, each uniquely painted by local artists,” the obituary said.

Some squirrels have been repainted since their initial installation. For example, once covered in sports balls, the squirrel on the upstairs deck of The Cock & Bull Pub now appears as a British Beefeater. And outside of Glendale Family Chiropractic, formerly the Wolff Vision Center, the squirrel has ditched its glasses to become a skeleton, making it the spookiest critter of all.

Allen says the squirrel she designed dons bright primary colors with squares outlined by black lines. Most participating artists, Allen says, already owned a business or had a person backing them.

Her statue was previously in a neighborhood on Washington Avenue before being delivered back to her.

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“Meanwhile, my husband died in 2013. And in 2016 I fell in love with another man. We’ve just moved to a house together,” Allen says. “Our squirrel is in the backyard and I love it. I love everything I do because I don’t want people to say they don’t like it. I figure if I say, ‘Oh, I made this the other day and just love it,’ everyone will feel obligated not to say, ‘Well, I think that’s stupid.’ I believe in self-protection.”

Glendale isn’t the only place in Ohio where black squirrels reside. Kent State University hosts an annual Black Squirrel Festival and a 5K race named after the little guys, which were brought to KSU from Canada in the 1960s by the college’s grounds superintendent and a tree company employee. KSU says the duo called the introduction of the species “Operation Black Squirrel.”

John L. Koprowski, a dean and professor at the University of Wyoming who grew up in Lakewood, Ohio, is a conservation biologist whose research has mostly focused on squirrels.

“Black morphs are naturally much more common in the northern part of the eastern gray squirrel’s range — they range from southern Canada to well into southern Florida — and that is due to an energetic advantage that the black color provides to individuals in winter,” Koprowski explains via email.

“The black pelage (fur) holds onto heat slightly better in winter than the lighter ‘gray’ coat, thereby giving a bit of an advantage to those that don the black coat.”

Gray and black morphs, he says, are the same species and therefore mate with each other if in the same area, having litters with both black and gray youngsters. Their fur is black due to more pigment being produced, resulting in the individual hairs getting more color when compared to their gray counterparts.

As to why towns, universities and institutions across the U.S. celebrate their squirrel populations, Koprowski says, “Civic pride often focuses on something unique about our communities, and in many areas the visibility of black or white color morphs are ‘celebrated’ around the USA... the special connection that people have with wildlife only enhances that pride.”

That especially applies to the statues standing proudly outside of community spaces in Glendale, such as “Scout Fosdick,” whose wise face gazes upon the sidewalk outside of the Harry Whiting Brown Community Center. Painted by resident Carolyn Cook, the statue grasps a walking stick as if to encourage onlookers to keep exploring.

“The Harry Whiting Brown Community (Center) has a building we call the Scout House. Scouting is really important to our community center,” says Amy Lord Flury, president of the center. “It’s troop 417 and pack 60.

‘Scout Fosdick’ is a member of 417 and has his name because Samuel Fosdick

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“Fosdick at the Pond” P H OTO : M AC K E N Z I E M A N L E Y

“Scrappy Fritz Kloth” P H OTO : M AC K E N Z I E M A N L E Y

was one of the founders of Glendale.”

Both Allen and Lord Flury mention Arlene Hoeweler’s squirrel.

Situated on the corner of Greenville and Elk avenues, Hoeweler’s work is titled “Twinkleberry Glentale.” Painted with rollicking hills, periwinkle skies and lush flowerbeds, it “Twinkleberry Glentale” appears like something P H OTO : M AC K E N Z I E M A N L E Y pulled straight from the page of a fairy tale. Lord Dairy Farmers location on Sharon Flury says the HoewelAvenue. Fit for a Jimmy Buffett concert, ers keep it polished with new floral that squirrel wears painted-on flip flops, arrangements for every holiday. a floral button-up and straw hat, living “My daughter did her senior pictures up to its name “Retire in Style.” on the square,” Lord Flury says. “There’s While the statues all feature the same this great picture of her standing on the body, how they’re painted varies widely. back of one of the squirrels watching a One thing, however, is clear: Glendale train go by. It’s hysterical. But the squirloves its unique population of squirrels. rels are just one of the (community) backdrops.”

When you stroll through Glendale to see its statues, you’re likely to see the real deal scampering about. Lord Flury See all of Glendale’s squirrel says just a few weeks ago she saw a famstatutes and find a map to their ily touring Glendale and posing with locations at glendaleheritage.org/ the squirrel statue outside of the United glendale-squirrels.

CULTURE

Eight Greater Cincinnati Fall Festivals for Pumpkin Picking, Cider Drinking and Corn Mazing

BY C IT Y B E AT STA F F

Fall has descended upon the Queen City, which means it’s time for some seasonal fun: picking pumpkins, sipping apple cider, taking hayrides, posing for cottage core photoshoots...

And you can do all of the above as local farms host special, family-friendly fall festivals to embrace the quaint and cozy essence of autumn.

Here are eight to check out.

Fall on the Farm at Blooms & Berries Farm Market This all-inclusive farm fest features an FC Cincinnati-inspired 5-acre corn maze, a pumpkin bounce pad, hayrides through the pumpkin patch, kids play area, train rides and friendly farm animals (get up close and personal with these cuties for only $1.50 extra). Sip on fresh apple cider, peruse fall decor and take a selfie in a blooming field of sunflowers (while they last). A weekend craft beer garden is open starting at noon Fridays through Sundays.

Through Oct. 31. $10.95 Monday-Friday; $14.95 Saturday-Sunday; $29.95 season pass (weekdays only); free for kids 2 and under. 9669 S. State Route 48, Loveland, bloomsandberries.com.

Fall Family Weekends at Brown’s Family Farm Market Fall Family Weekends on the farm include hayrides, barrel-train rides, food trucks and plenty of fall produce to pick from — they grow their own Indian corn, squash, mums and more.

Guests can also explore a corn maze or straw maze, pick their own pumpkin, check out farm displays or head to the play village. Through Oct. 31. Free admission. 11620 Hamilton Cleves Road, Hamilton, brownsfarmmarket.com.

Fall Fun at the Farm at Burger Farm & Garden Center Head to Burger Farm on weekends for its 48th-annual fall fest. Activities include hayrides through the pumpkin patch, a climbing wall, live music, a castle made of straw, an obstacle course, pedal karts for kids and adults, barnyard games, ziplines, a giant pillow to jump on, a sandbox filled with corn and a special walk-through Pumpkin Land, complete with storybook characters. For an additional fee, there’s even more to do: carnival games, a pumpkin chuck, pony rides, amusement-parkstyle rides and paintball. Through Oct. 31. $12 adults; $8 seniors; free for kids 2 and under. 7849 Main St., Newtown, burgerfarms.com.

Fall Festival at Country Pumpkins This Dry Ridge dairy farm features both free and ticketed events during its fall fest. Without a ticket, you can visit farm animals, explore a kiddie corn maze or hay pyramid or purchase your own pumpkins and other fall decor.

Ticketed activities include a hayride to the you-pick pumpkin patch ($10, or $4 for just a hayride); a 4-acre corn maze ($5); giant slide ($2); barrel-train ride ($2.50); and more. For $25, you can purchase the “Pumpkin Ridge” package for up to five people ($2 per person after that). It includes two carving-sized pumpkins, six pumpkin chuck launches, a petting zoo and slides. Other special ticketed experiences include a lanternlit Country Fireside night, as well as campfire rentals. Rides, you-pick and concessions are only available weekends only. Through Oct. 31. 1835 Sherman Mt. Zion Road, Dry Ridge, countrypumpkinsky.com.

Fall Fest at Kinman Farms The 15th-annual Fall Fest features a special “Fall Fest Adventure” package for $11, and includes a hayride, bonfire, a Great Pumpkin Express train ride, a 5-acre corn maze, a carnival tent, live bands, laser tag, a tunnel slide and straw pyramid. Visits with barn animals and free front-of-farm activities — including fall produce for purchase — are included. If you’re hungry, visit Kinman’s Grill for everything from bratts and funnel cake to caramel apples and s’mores kits. For something more substantial, checkout the Farmhouse Kitchen for special country ham sandwiches. Kinman is open during the week for sales of items including pumpkins, mums, gourds and straw, but Fall Fest activities only take place on weekends. Through Oct. 31. $11 Fall Fest Adventure package. 4175 Burlington Pike, Burlington, kinmanfarm.com.

Fall Fun at Niederman Family Farm Open weekends only, Fall Fun on the farm is included with a general admission wristband (wristband entry is timed, but you can stay as long as you want once you’re there). Admission gets you access to a 4-acre corn maze, hayrides, a climbing web, tiny houses for kids, duck races, tug of war, pipe swings, tetherball, foosball and animals. Niederman also rents out bonfire spaces; bring your own food or buy s’mores kits there (does not include roasting sticks).

Select your favorite pumpkin from the “Pumpkin Paradise” patch or head to the concession stand for Niederman’s famous made-fresh-daily cinnamon donuts, hand-dipped caramel apples and apple cider. Through Oct. 31. $13; free ages 2 and under. 5110 Lesourdsville West Chester Road, Liberty Township, niedermanfamilyfarm.com.

Neltner’s Farm has different activities on weekdays and weekends.

P H O T O : G R A C E L AW L E R , N E LT N E R’ S FA R M

Fall Fest at Neltner’s Farm This harvest celebration features different events on weekends and weekdays.

Weekdays, you can head to the pumpkin patch, explore a 3-acre corn maze, visit the petting zoo, ride the barrel train or shop the fall farm stand. All weekday activities are available on weekends with bonus craft vendors and artisans, horse-drawn wagon rides, live music, tastings from local wineries, homemade ice cream and food from Four Mile Pig. Concerts take place 1:30-4:30 p.m.

Fall fun is happening throughout Greater Cincinnati. and you can find P H OTO : U N S P L AS H the full schedule of performers online. Leashed pumpkins, pedal karts and live music. pets allowed. Through Oct. 31. Free Anyone can access the farm’s animals, admission weekdays with varying prices pumpkins and play areas for free, but for activities; $5 weekend admission some special fall events are ticketed. (includes activities). 6922 Four Mile The corn maze is $7; pedal karts are $4; Road, Melbourne, neltnersfarm.com. tractor-drawn hayrides are $5; horse-

Pumpkin Times at Shaw Farms Head to Shaw Farms for a 15-acre corn maze (yes, 15), both horse-drawn and tractor-drawn hayrides, playgrounds,

drawn hayrides (weekends only) are $6; and the little blue train is $4. Through Oct. 31. $46 family fun pack; $15 bundle (tractor ride, corn maze, pedal kart and barrel train). 1737 Ohio 131, Milford, shawfarmmarket.com.

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ELVIS COSTELLO & THE IMPOSTERS

"HELLO AGAIN"

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16 THE ANDREW J BRADY ICON MUSIC CENTER Elvis Costello & The Imposters will hit the road once more this October, after more than a year without concerts, in a show entitled “Hello Again.” Hear songs from the pages of his formidable songbook and see the first stage performances of songs from the future, as the band time-travels in all directions.

GET TICKETS AT TICKETMASTER.COM | ICONMUSICCENTER.COM

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FOOD & DRINK

The wedge salad, with fried green tomatoes and watermelon P H OTO : H A I L E Y B O L L I N G E R

When One Table Closes, Another Opens Chef Jean-Robert de Cavel and team revamp the menu of Walnut Hills burger bar Le Bar a Boeuf with dishes reminiscent of downtown’s Table — and the iconic Maisonette R E V I E W BY PA M A M IT C H E L L

Y

ou can take the French chef out of a fine-dining environment, but you may not be able to take a finedining orientation out of the chef. Not completely, anyhow.

Case in point: After closing his more upscale restaurants L and Table in 2020, Chef Jean-Robert de Cavel had two relatively casual restaurants in his portfolio.

French Crust Café, adjacent to Findlay Market, is a colorful establishment with

the feel of a Parisian bistro and is a perfect place for lunch or brunch. And Le Bar a Boeuf, which opened in 2015, has an emphasis on unusual burgers and several bourgeois French dishes containing ingredients like escargot and calf liver.

Located on the ground floor of a Walnut Hills condo building and drawing patrons largely from nearby neighborhoods, Le Bar a Boeuf features

a large patio with river views and one of the tiniest kitchens imaginable for a full-service restaurant. The somewhat out-of-the-way location and the menu’s focus on ground meat kept me from dining there often.

Recently, I heard that de Cavel had relocated with a core staff from Table to the aforementioned compact kitchen.

As a consequence, Le Bar a Boeuf’s menu has gotten more interesting as de Cavel and his young colleague, Chef Jordan Brauninger, have introduced a variety of dishes reminiscent of Table — and of the Maisonette, where de Cavel first wowed our city’s palates in 1993.

“It’s my place, I own it, but I’d never really spent any time there,” de Cavel said of Le Bar a Boeuf.

At the beginning of 2021, he took a couple weeks off after the closure of his other restaurants and then started work at Le Bar a Boeuf with Marilou Lind, Table’s longtime front-of-house manager, and a few other de Cavel loyalists.

“We got lucky that some of our team at Table wanted to help (at Le Bar a Boeuf ),” de Cavel told CityBeat.

“It’s a very comfortable place, a family restaurant, really,” he added.

Although he hasn’t sought publicity or done any promotion of the staff and menu changes, de Cavel says that wordof-mouth has led to more diners, at times almost overwhelming the kitchen and serving crew.

My friends and I had a choice of first or second seating on a Saturday: The first seating was from 5:30-6:15 p.m. and the later one started at 7:30 p.m.

We took the earlier option and asked whether we could have a table on the patio. “It depends on whether we have enough servers,” Lind said over the phone. As it turned out, the patio was too hot at that hour, but a few people did find tables there by the time we left around 8 p.m.

As happens pretty much everywhere

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Salmon, wrapped in bacon, and served with a soy cream sauce.

P H OTO : H A I L E Y B O L L I N G E R

FROM PAGE 35

these days, service did get slow at times, but for the most part we didn’t notice.

Our waiter, a Table veteran named Darren, said this was his first night at Le Bar a Boeuf after he had come in on short notice when de Cavel called. We lucked out with Darren, not only because of his knowledge about all of the kitchen’s culinary touches, but also thanks to his long history with de Cavel. I learned a lot from Darren.

For instance, he told us how the featured wedge salad ($12) — a collaboration by both chefs — came together, and it was a doozy. An almost paperthin slice of sweet watermelon formed the base of the salad, topped by a crispy wedge of iceberg lettuce and tangy, chunky blue cheese dressing. The dish included two or three thick, crunchy slices of fried green tomato, which made for a very filling first course.

We shared a couple of other appetizers: crab cakes and “Shrimp Maisonette Style” (each $16). The shrimp blew me away with its garlic butter and white wine sauce dotted with bits of fresh tomato and sliced mushrooms. The plentiful, perfectly cooked crustaceans benefited not only from that savory bath but also from slices of toasted brioche. I could have been happy with a whole order to myself and probably wouldn’t have needed much else. Darren said it was a recent addition to the menu, and bravo for that.

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Compared to the shrimp, the crab cakes disappointed in ways I’ve found increasingly common since the price of crabmeat skyrocketed this year. These were better than some I’ve had, but the breading/filler-to-crab ratio still favored breading.

For our entrees, a halibut special was delicious despite being lukewarm, but we did send back an overcooked rack of lamb; we’d ordered it rare.

When Darren brought back the fix, apologizing profusely and bringing the hungry diner an extra glass of wine on the house, the dish was perfect. My friend ate her lamb with “oohs” and “ahhs” after each bite. Accompanied by flageolet beans, sauteed asparagus and a sauce with mushrooms, peppers and herbs, it was an exemplary rack of lamb preparation ($38).

I loved my entrée as well: Table Salmon ($28), cooked with the fish wrapped in bacon.

Everything on the plate equaled the fish in quality, and I ate with gusto the wild rice, spring peas and shiitake mushrooms pulled together by soy cream sauce. It was a large enough portion that I took half home and finished it for lunch the next day.

In a subsequent phone conversation, de Cavel told me that he is continuing treatment for a rare soft-tissue cancer diagnosed in 2018 and spoke wistfully about his pending 60th birthday.

Retirement or even slowing down doesn’t hold much appeal, he said.

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The patio at Le Bar a Boeuf P H OTO : H A I L E Y B O L L I N G E R

“I’m enjoying myself,” de Cavel said of his role at Le Bar a Boeuf. “We have a young, inexperienced crew and it’s fun to be with them, to try to teach them what I know.”

He said he intends to reopen Table in a new location at some point but doesn’t want to hurry anything.

“I’m surrounded by people I love, it’s a treasure,” he said.

“A treasure,” he repeated with a sigh.

Le Bar a Boeuf, 2200 Victory Parkway, Walnut Hills, lebaraboeuf.com.

DRINK

Anjou Offers Easy Charm and Clever Cocktails in East Walnut Hills

BY L E Y L A S H O KO O H E

The first time I went to Anjou, an intimate cocktail bar in East Walnut Hills that opened in June, the world seemed like it might be starting to right itself in the wake of the pandemic.

Vaccines were finally widely available, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even said, “What the heck, take the mask off.”

Ah, happier days.

While I donned a mask to head to Anjou this time around, it was no less pleasant an experience.

Located in a cozy nook on Woodburn Avenue, formerly housing Woodburn Dry Cleaners, Anjou comes to us from Chris Wolfe, Andy Smith and Brad Lauck. Pre-pandemic, the trio had a different project in the works in Walnut Hills proper. When Urban Sites contacted them about the Woodburn space, they knew it had potential.

“We wanted to do something different than your average cocktail bar,” says Wolfe, whose history in the service industry includes stints with Sotto, Top Golf and Dewey’s. “We try to make our drinks approachable. The big thing we look for is familiar flavors introduced in a different way.”

Anjou’s cocktail menu lives up to that credo. The names are clever, the ingredients are interesting and, yes, they’re often familiar. What’s more, the whole thing seems fun. Cocktail bars can feel so forced sometimes, hamstrung by a theme or a concept.

Anjou has all of the charm with none of the pretension. It does have a broad conceptual underpinning: the bar’s name comes from Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI. “The building we’re in is called ‘The Henry,’” Wolfe says. “Henry VI at one point went crazy, so during that time Margaret ruled all of England and parts of France.”

The pair were central figures in the Wars of the Roses, an uprising against Henry’s reign in the 15th Century.

Margaret led armies to retrieve Henry after his capture by Richard of York.

Anjou’s decor subtly calls to mind powerful women, like Margaret herself.

The bathroom’s wallpaper features black line drawings of confident nude women, and there’s a minimalist floral component throughout the bar, with large grayscale flower wallpaper adorning the main wall and several colorful floral portraits.

“We want it to be a sexy spot,” Wolfe says. “They’re sexy women, but they also have this power about them.”

The floral motif extends to several of the drinks, if not overtly — though several of them have botanical incorporations — then certainly at least in color and composition. The She-Wolf is a delightful concoction, featuring Old Tom Gin and pear, ginger and elderflower liqueurs. It is a vivid purple color and comes served in a tumbler with a rose-shaped ice cube.

“It probably has the most pictures out

there because it’s a purple drink, it has a rose ice cube in it, but it’s called the She-Wolf because in Shakespeare’s play Henry the VI, he actually refers to Margaret of Anjou as a ‘she-wolf,’” Wolfe says. “The drink features ingredients from England and France, the color is purple, to signify royalty, and it has the rose in there to signify the Wars of the Roses.”

Anjou’s most popular drink, according to Wolfe, is the Benedetto Alfieri, Anjou is named after Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI. which remains P H OTO : H A I L E Y B O L L I N G E R the only cocktail I’ve ever had that prominently features red bell pepper. It really is a fun trip to flavortown, layered and fresh, zingy and bold. I’ve never had anything quite like it.

“It kind of expresses what we do here,” Wolfe says. “It has basil, shallots and red bell pepper — so things you’re familiar with, but maybe not in a cocktail. We boil the shallots and let them simmer and use that water and add sugar to it to make a simple syrup.

It really speaks to what we do because it’s about the fresh ingredients, about the familiar taste you might not be used to in a cocktail.”

Other cocktails I sampled include A Ghost of Time, with smoky mezcal and blood orange rooibos tea, and one that’s coming up for the fall season The Benedetto Alfieri, with red bell pepper, basil and shallots called Once An Island. This one tasted P H OTO : H A I L E Y B O L L I N G E R like the pumpkin spice latte’s sexy Mediterranean cousin, with pomegranate, chai, cardamom and, my absolute favorite, smoked cinnamon on top.

Cocktails have really leveled up in 2021.

Anjou also offers zero-proof cocktails, wine and beer. A few new cocktails are coming at the end of September, but there’s not necessarily a set seasonal menu.

“We don’t do a set spring/summer/ fall menu or anything like that. We really focus on the ingredients. Are they fresh at the time?” Wolfe says. “It’s really based on what the essence of the drink is.”

Anjou is open Tuesday through Sunday and is located at 2804 Woodburn Ave., East Walnut Hills.

More info: anjoucinci.com.

Anjou’s decor features a feminine and floral motif.

P H OTO : H A I L E Y B O L L I N G E R

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SOUND ADVICE Electric Citizen

Friday, Oct. 8 • MOTR Pub As Electric Citizen prepares to enter its 10th-anniversary year with a European tour already on the books for next fall (presumably a near carbon copy of the one that was slated for last fall and scratched for reasons all too obvious), there have been a number of changes in the band’s extended universe. The most prominent shift in Electric Citizen concerns lead vocalist Laura Dolan, who put the band on the back burner in order to take over her father’s business, Applied Imagination, in 2017, six years after his Parkinson’s diagnosis. Applied Imagination creates scale model environments out of all-natural materials for botanical gardens.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dolan and the rest of Electric Citizen — her husband and guitarist Ross Dolan, bassist Nick Vogelpohl and drummer Nate Wagner — managed to squeeze in their career-best album, 2018’s Helltown, in spite of her newly minted corporate duties and the time constraints that come with them. Christened after the original 1800s name of the Dolans’ Northside neighborhood, Helltown was Electric Citizen’s most well-received album to date, an impressive feat considering the raves that were lavished on 2014’s Sateen and the slightly more experimental and challenging Higher Time in 2016.

Electric Citizen’s secret weapon has always been a brilliant sense of melodicism, accompanied by a gift for writing concise heavy Rock songs punctuated by whipcrack riffs and powered by one of the most intensely emotive rhythm sections in the Metal-adjacent categories.

In addition to restructuring her father’s business, Dolan also used the non-touring time of the pandemic to write material for a new album and for her and Ross to construct a home studio.

For its first local show in close to two years, Electric Citizen will likely debut some of its new songs alongside the Pentagram-meets-Black-Sabbath faves from the band’s first three releases, but two things are certain: It’s going to be as loud as God’s temper tantrum and you’ll need proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test to get into MOTR Pub. (Brian Baker)

Multimagic

Saturday, Oct. 9 • Woodward Theater Cincinnati AltPop group Multimagic was slated to release its debut fulllength, Manic Daze, in April 2020.

COVID obviously had other plans, and the album drop and associated release show were canceled.

The band, fronted by singer/songwriter Coran Stetter, ended up releasing Manic Daze in September 2020, garnering positive reviews from CityBeat and other outlets. Now, the group is finally

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Electric Citizen P H O T O : FA C E B O O K . C O M / E L E C T R I C C I T I Z E N

ready to take the stage at Woodward Theater.

“Like most every band who made the decision to release music last year but not tour, our biggest concern was the safety of friends, family and fans,” Stetter says in a release emailed to CityBeat.

“Now that Manic Daze has been out for nearly a year and we’ve all been vaccinated for COVID-19, we’re excited to celebrate.”

Multimagic broke out in the middle of the last decade with a ton of buzz and promise, scoring high-profile festival spots, acclaim and plenty of fans. But the band’s path was altered when, in 2017, Stetter suffered a health crisis — the result of “a misdiagnosis and over prescription of Prednisone and Codeine” — that triggered a severe manic episode and landed the musician in the hospital.

As a result, Stetter says he lost friends and his Multimagic bandmates, leading him to scrap the album they’d been working on. But it didn’t take too long for him to rebuild the band, which now features Meg Kecskes (keys, vocals), Anthony Maley (bass), Jimmy Ruehlman (guitar) and Evan Brown on drums.

He also recaptured Multimagic’s momentum — while working on Manic Daze, the band honed its live show on a tour with Texas band Wild Moccasins and played sets at the Bellwether Music Festival and Cincinnati’s massive

SEPTEMBER 29 - OCTOBER 12, 2021

Multimagic P H O T O : FA C E B O O K . C O M / M U LT I M A G I C M U S I C

BLINK fest.

They tweaked the old songs that complemented the new ones, and

ultimately collected 10 solid tracks for Manic Daze, bristling with the muted joy and dark abandon of 1980s Synth

Pauly Shore P H O T O : L I B E R T Y. F U N N Y B O N E . C O M

Pop and contemporary Indie Rock.

The Woodward show also features solo work from Christian Nicholas Gough (Moonbeau, The Yugos) and Cincinnati producer Bershy.

Doors open at 7 p.m. Oct. 9. Woodward requires all concertgoers to provide proof of a vaccination or a negative COVID test result from within 72 hours of the show. (Maija Zummo, CityBeat Staff )

Pauly Shore

Thursday, Oct. 14 • Liberty Funny Bone Hey, buuuuuuudy.

Crusty stoners of a certain age will recognize that as one of comedian Pauly Shore’s infinite catchphrases. But the curly-haired funnyman is more than just someone who’s out to get fresh nugs.

Shore comes from comedy royalty, the son of the late Mitzi Shore who had founded The Comedy Store in West Hollywood. After breaking into his mom’s industry as a stand-up comedian at age 17, Shore became one of MTV’s most popular VJs of the ’90s (you know, back when the channel aired music videos and hosts talked about them) and cultivated his popular “Weasel” persona, aka Wiezel.

He went on to star in classic comedies like Son in Law, Encino Man and

Bio-Dome before eventually releasing Pauly Shore Is Dead in 2003.

The mockumentary — which Shore wrote, directed and starred in — featured dozens of comedians, musicians and celebrities, including Clint Howard, Corey Feldman, Britney Spears and Dr. Dre. Most of Shore’s audiences consume his act with appropriate ’90s reverence, but Shore has attention from the younger crowd, too. In 2020, Shore gave COVID-weary viewers a muchneeded refuge in his web series Pauly Shore Is Quarantined with His Ex on Maui. Shore scripted the bite-sized, 12-episode show after heading to Maui to ride out the coronavirus lockdown with friends because, honestly, why wouldn’t you try to isolate in a beautiful place with people who make you laugh?

Naturally, Shore followed up Quarantined with some heavy breathing and short-shorts, leading viewers in mini-workouts in Sweatin’ with the Wiez.

And after 19 months of COVID frustration, we were totally ready to wheeze that juice.

Pauly Shore will perform at the Funny Bone in Liberty Township at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 14. Doors open at 6 p.m., and only those ages 21 and up may enter. (Allison Babka)

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BY B R EN DA N EM M E T T Q UIG LE Y

ACROSS

1. Take out of plastic, maybe

6. “You don’t know the ___ of it” 10. Website with a “Got a tip?” action button at the top 13. Home sweet home 14. Tightly wound up

18. Apple Pay platform

15. Melancholic misery 16. One who drops a tab and then listens to John Coltrane’s “Ascension”?

THE COOKING SCHOOL

FEELING DIZZY

PUZZLE

21. “Look over here” 22. Time it takes for an ocean to form 23. British bro 24. Sign seen on the moon on July 20, 1969?

the Spanish Flu spread, briefly 54. Prefix with vision 55. Friends on the force?

57. Summer time on Nantucket: Abbr.

30. Circa

58. St. Vincent for Annie Clark

31. Captured on a Memorex

59. Drink served with mint

32. Chain in a lab

60. “Sound of Metal” actor Ahmed

35. Tease from afar 36. Turkic language 37. Old Pontiac sports cars

61. ___ City (Cairo suburb) 62. Like freshly laid lawn

6 ( 5 ( 1 $

) / 2 5 ( 6

$ 0 ) 0

5 $ 7 6 2 : + 3 , 2 & 5 + 6 & & + 8 ( ' 6

1. Turbaned VIP

39. Not as common

3. Nincompoop

12. Full of flavor 14. “Happy To Be Here” comic

DOWN 2. Israeli diplomat and scholar Abba 4. Tool that does detail work in wood

21. Something to shoot for 22. Like the water off the coast of Ibiza 23. Thing in a scrip 24. ___ California 25. App with a “Where to?” section

41. Ruthlessly tease somebody’s intellect?

6. Like SleaterKinney or Man Or Astro-Man?, in short

26. Lisa Bonet’s acting daughter

44. African nation with a star on its flag

7. Gig on the books: Abbr.

47. Historian who wrote “Ab Urbe Condita” 48. Surrealist painter Freud 51. Event when

5 2 8 1 ' 0 , , 6 . & + ( 5 ( $ & 3 $ & . 6 2 8 7 2 5 ( / 7 6

+ 8 % / + , 6 2 2 0 , 7 3 2 ; 6 ) / $ .

0 , . ( / ( $ ' 11. Animal that is a national symbol of Canada

5. Doctor’s orders for the garden variety illness

46. Paper purchase

0 , 6 / ( '

17. Chaos

38. Artifact Indiana Jones threatened to blow up with a missile launcher

40. Coffee shop that sells a (checks notes) Chicken & Waffles Sandwich ... excuse me while I go to my local one

L AST PUZ ZLE’S ANSWERS:

$ 6 . * 2 '

8. Winebottle leftovers 9. A couple day’s drive away 10. Alcoholic beverage that comes in Half & Half, Peach, and Raspberry flavors

27. Plate in church 28. Barbecue selection

0 3 $ $

+ 2 0 2 ( ' ( : & 3 2 7 6 , $ 5 ( * * 0 $ 1 $ 2 2 5 3 + $ 1 6 7 7 + ( 5 * 6 6 + 2 5 2 $ / 7 $ 5 5 2 * ( 7 3 / 8 0 ( 2 $ 7 ( 5 39. Rap producer who redid the ice cream truck jingle in 2020 % ( 1 $ 0 , 1

40. Lunchbox classics 42. “They all look great, pick one” 43. Junior of the NFL 1990s AllDecade Team 44. One using Elmers 45. Language that gave us “jungle” and “bandana” 48.

“Be-Bop-A-___” 49. Weapons with cartridges 50. Bigwig with a Russian-influenced title 51. “Mind. Blown.”

29. “Can’t say I’ve heard of ___”

52. Dispensary selection

33. “Wrong person”

53. Classic children’s game

34. The “A” of “HOA”: Abbr.

36. Spinning toon 37. Sanitizer’s victim

TODAY!

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19. Cincuenta y dos semanas 20. ACLU concern

IN PERSON! REGISTER FOR A CLASS

IS BACK

55. Prop for some bridesmaids 56. Mobb Deep or Insane Clown Posse

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