CityBeat | April 6-19, 2022

OVER THE OVERDOSE Armed with fentanyl detection strips and Narcan training, Cincinnati bartenders are a line of defense against bad-batch drugs

BY MADELINE FENING APRIL 6, 2022 - APRIL 19, 2022 |

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OVER THE OVERDOSE Armed with fentanyl detection strips and Narcan training, Cincinnati bartenders are a line of defense against bad-batch drugs

BY MADELINE FENING

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April APR 7 APR 8 APR 9 APR 9 APR 10 APR 13 APR 13 APR 17 APR 21 APR 22 APR 23 APR 25 APR 26 APR 27 APR 27 APR 28 APR 29 APR 29 APR 30

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NEWS

Cincinnati City Council member Reggie Harris speaks before the city raises the transgender pride flag on March 31, 2022.

P H O T O : FA C E B O O K . C O M / C I T YO F C I N C Y

Cincinnati Officials Say More LGBTQ+ Protections Are Coming to the Municipal Code On International Transgender Day of Visibility, Cincinnati raised the transgender pride flag for the first time

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

A

special event on International Transgender Day of Visibility could herald even more good things for Cincinnati.

On March 31, the city raised the trans pride flag at City Hall for the first time in Cincinnati’s history in recognition of International Transgender Day of Visibility. The flag features horizontal pink, blue and white stripes to symbolize people who identify as women and men as well as those who do not have a defined gender, are transitioning or identify as intersex.

Since 2009, International Transgender Day of Visibility celebrates transgender people and raises awareness about trans discrimination, crimes against the trans community and other trans experiences.

Cincinnati officials gathered with representatives of LGBTQ+ organizations to raise the city’s flag, acknowledge the progress that has been made and look ahead to what still needs to happen to protect and affirm trans individuals. That work could include new language in Cincinnati’s nondiscrimination codes, officials said.

“Here in Cincinnati and across the world, fear, unfortunately — particularly in our transgender community — still exists,” Cincinnati mayor Aftab Pureval said. “Our transgender neighbors have faced generations of hate, discrimination and violence, and yet they have remained dedicated in the face of oppression to push for a better life for the generations to come.”

Reggie Harris, a Cincinnati City

Council member who worked with other municipal departments to organize the flying of Cincinnati’s first trans pride flag, said that a positive change in the city’s non-discrimination protections is coming soon.

“Cincinnati was a leader in our ‘nondiscrim code,’ but that was a while ago.

Things have changed,” Harris said. “We know that our concepts around gender identity and expression have changed and evolved, and we need to reflect that.”

Harris said that municipal code language will be updated to directly protect transgender, non-binary and other LGBTQ+ individuals. The new legislation is expected in the coming weeks or months, he said.

“We have to do both symbolic gestures and policy gestures, and that is the way we move forward,” Harris said.

“I think it’s wonderful to be an openly gay council member and know that the administration that runs our beautiful city is with us every step of the way.”

Vice Mayor Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney said that there were at least 45 murders of trans or non-binary people across the United States in 2021, with Black transgender women the most frequent target. She called out Ohio and other states for passing or considering a

variety of anti-trans legislation, including laws that affect students.

“There are more than 20 states across our country that have passed laws to criminalize gender-affirming care. I want you to look out for Ohio House (of Representatives) bill 454, because that is in the pipe. It’s coming down, and we’ve got to fight it,” Lemon Kearney said.

“And even though the American Medical Association and the American Pediatric Association have said that these laws endanger the health and well-being of our youth, we are still looking at fighting a House bill here, right on our turf.”

“And note that receiving genderaffirming healthcare has been associated with a 60% lower odds of moderate or severe depression and a 73% lower odds of suicidal ideation and suicide itself,” Lemon Kearney added.

HB 454, titled the “Enact the Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act,” would prohibit offering minors any kind of gender-affirming treatment, from hormones to surgery. The bill also would put the onus on healthcare providers by defining that treatment as “unprofessional conduct” for state licensing boards, plus it would make “actual or threatened violations” of the bill grounds for a lawsuit.

Ohio Republicans Gary Click and Diane V. Grendell are the primary sponsors of the

APRIL 6, 2022 - APRIL 19, 2022 |

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bill, which was introduced in October, has about two dozen Republican co-sponsors and has been referred to the Families, Aging and Human Services committee.

“Despite the advances we’ve made both nationally and in this city in LGBTQIA equality, we find ourselves beating back a barrage of anti-LGBTQIA legislation around the state, and specifically legislation that targets and seeks to erase trans people,” Harris said. “Now, we know historically any effort made to erase and to oppress and discriminate (against) any group of people does not end well. And so we find ourselves at this crossroads, this juxtaposition of progress and fear, progress and regression.”

“What we are here to do today is take that symbolic step in saying while the rest of our state may be interested in moving backward, here in Cincinnati we are moving forward,” Harris continued.

Sheryl Long, assistant city manager, concurred.

“While today is about celebration, it’s also about the work still needed to save trans lives. In Cincinnati, we have added gender identity as a protected class, and as an employer we cover gender-affirming procedures. But there is always, always more work to be done,” Long said. “In 2022, across the U.S., there are dozens of cities and states considering legislation that adversely affects transgender youth and the LGBTQIA+ community. I’m a mom, and I can tell you that breaks my heart to think of those parents begging and pleading to their legislators and school boards to protect, not target, their babies.”

Elliot Kesse, board member for the Transgender Advocacy Council and Heartland Trans Wellness, said that members of the trans community

— particularly youth — indeed are at risk.

“Visibility without protection is a trap,” Kesse said. “It requires us to risk harm and harassment without the guarantee that our cisgender — or cis — parents won’t disown us, our cis bosses won’t fire us, our cis doctors won’t refuse to treat us or our cis politicians won’t pass laws that kill us.”

Before the raising of the transgender pride flag, City Council member Mark Jeffreys revealed publicly for the first time that his oldest child, who is 20, recently shared that they are trans.

“It’s a beautiful moment in a person’s life when they’re able to acknowledge their authentic self. No one should live their life pretending to be someone else, but when that authentic self is different from the societal norm and coming out carries risks not just of personal rejection but potential violence, that takes courage,” Jeffreys said. “As we’ve approached these

discussions with Emery, we’ve done it wrapped in love and seeing them for who they truly are.”

Moments before the trans flag was hoisted into the air, Harris took a breath and glanced at those around him, remarking that he didn’t expect to feel as emotional as he had.

“I do feel a bit of emotion because my colleagues raised facts and experiences of LGBTQIA folks that, typically when you are part of a community you feel the burden of saying, ‘This is everything we need to know.’ And to know that I don’t have to do this alone, to know that my vice mayor knows the statistics, our mayor understands what this all means, there’s a deep moment of gratitude that I have,” Harris said.

Baseball Hall of Famer Barry Larkin to Serve as Grand Marshal of the Cincinnati Reds’ Opening Day Parade

BY M A I JA Z U M M O The Cincinnati Reds’ Opening Day Parade is back for 2022, and a fan favorite has been declared the Grand Marshal.

Baseball Hall of Famer and former Red Barry Larkin will lead the procession — officially called the “Findlay Market Opening Day Parade” — through the streets of downtown before the Reds take on the Cleveland Guardians at Great American Ball Park during the home opener on April 12.

“I am truly honored to be selected as the Grand Marshal of this year’s Findlay Market Opening Day Parade,” Larkin said. “As someone born and raised in Cincinnati, I know what a major role the parade plays in making Opening Day such a special experience here in our city. I look forward to being part of renewing that tradition with Reds fans this year.”

Organizers said this year’s parade will include “appearances by Cincinnati Olympians, former Bengals players, the Hamilton West Side All Stars and the Taft High School Boys Basketball State Champions.” Attendees can also expect all the usual fanfare, floats, marching bands and dance teams, plus sporty celebrities like Nick Goepper — the Fort Wayne, Indiana native who took home a silver medal for slopestyle skiing in the 2018 and 2022 Winter Olympics — and former Bengals stars Anthony Muñoz

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and Ickey Woods.

And while organizers are touting big plans for the parade, it’s still not quite a return to normal.

After two years of COVID-related cancellations or delays, this year’s Opening Day Parade was pushed from its original March 31 date to April 12 after Major League Baseball canceled the first few series of the 2022 season due to the league-initiated lockout.

MLB and members of the Major League Baseball Players Association finally came to terms on a new five-year collective bargaining agreement in March, pushing the beginning of the season to April 7, with the Reds visiting the Atlanta Braves on that day.

Born in Cincinnati, Larkin played shortstop for the Reds from 1986 to 2004, serving as captain in 1997.

Despite injuries, Larkin was considered one of the best players of his era, racking up plenty of hardware over the years, including three Gold Gloves, nine Silver Sluggers, National League MVP, a Roberto Clemente Award and a Lou Gehrig Award. He helped lead the Reds to a World Series victory in 1990.

Before that, Larkin was selected to play for the 1984 U.S. Olympic baseball team, performing alongside Mark McGwire, Will Clark and other future MLB stars.

Larkin announced his retirement

APRIL 6, 2022 - APRIL 19, 2022

Barry Larkin P H OTO : GAG E S K I D M O R E , W I K I M E D I A C O M M O N S

from the game in 2005, with a career batting average of .295, 2,340 hits, 1,329 runs scored and 379 stolen bases.

In 2012, Larkin was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. In 2021, he joined the Cincinnati Reds’ broadcast team as a color analyst, having already

provided commentary for ESPN and MLB Network.

For Cincinnati Reds tickets, visit reds.com. For details about the Findlay Market Opening Day Parade, visit findlaymarketparade.com.

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OVER THE OVERDOSE Armed with fentanyl detection strips and Narcan training, Cincinnati bartenders are a line of defense against bad-batch drugs

BY MADELINE FENING

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Fentanyl test strips P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY H A R M R E D U C T I O N O H I O

N

oam Barnard saved someone from dying of a drug overdose just 45 minutes before being interviewed for this story.

“It’s been a day,” he tells CityBeat.

“Fortunately my neighbor saw what was going on and called me. I was having lunch with my girlfriend and we ran over quickly, and that person is alive right now.”

Barnard is an organizer for the Coalition for Community Safety (CCS) in Cincinnati. He’s the go-to guy on his street in Clifton Heights for naloxone (brand name Narcan), the nasal spray used to stop a drug overdose.

But he doesn’t just keep an eye on the people struggling with substance abuse disorders in the park; Barnard also is leading an effort to arm the city’s bartenders with the tools and training needed to stop accidental drug overdoses.

“The real issue right now is that party drugs of all sorts are being cut with fentanyl,” he says. “The risk is so high, especially if you’re buying from someone you don’t know or you vaguely know. Unless you’ve been following that stuff since Bogotá, it’s not safe.” (Colombia, which is where

Bogotá is located, produces 90% of the cocaine in the United States, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.)

In February, a message went out on the SOAR app alerting users to a bad batch of cocaine laced with fentanyl going around in downtown Cincinnati (SOAR stands for “Safety, Outreach, Autonomy, Respect”). The app, which was developed by Ohio State students in 2019, offers an anonymous route to reporting laced drugs in Ohio. It also sends push alerts detailing bad batches of nearly every illicit drug, all laced with an unknown level of fentanyl.

According to Harm Reduction Ohio, a nonprofit that tracks Ohio drug data, 35.9% of Ohio’s illicit drugs contained fentanyl in the last quarter of 2021 — a 10% increase from earlier in the year. AmandaLynn Reese, director of outreach and engagement for Harm Reduction Ohio, said supplies of common party drugs — like cocaine — laced with fentanyl have been sneaking up on those who casually take hits.

“There are people hitting key bumps in the bathroom in OTR and hitting the floor,” she says.

Officials from Harm Reduction Ohio say that around 5,300 Ohioans died of

CCS’ Noam Barnard (far left) at a harm reduction training class for bartenders P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY C O A L I T I O N F O R C O M M U N I T Y S A F E T Y

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an overdose in 2021, and 1,497 of those deaths were cocaine related. Data from the Ohio Department of Health on mortality shows that at least 1,083 of those cocaine deaths were caused by laced fentanyl.

“That’s a lot,” Reese says. “That’s a lot of Ohioans, and that’s a lot of people who loved those people.”

Hamilton County is one of Ohio’s top 10 counties for overdose deaths as a result of cocaine, according to data analyzed by Harm Reduction Ohio.

Reese says that at least 15.2% of the cocaine examined by the state’s crime lab contained fentanyl in 2021, so there is no way to know what you’re buying without testing.

“If you have a baggie of powdered sugar and flour and you shake that baggy up and you draw it out into lines like you would cocaine, you’re not going to know how much sugar or flour is in those lines,” she says.

Reese theorizes the pandemic lockdown at the nation’s borders caused changes to the drug supply chain, forcing domestic dealers to bulk up with synthetics like fentanyl.

“I saw a huge increase after the pandemic hit and the borders were closed,” she says. “When the borders closed and other drugs struggled to get into the United States, you could make (fentanyl). You could make it right here.”

The data from Ohio’s crime lab shows an uptick in fentanyl appearing in other drugs right at the onset of the pandemic, jumping from 21.8% to 29.5% in the second quarter of 2020. That number remained steady until the end of 2021, when lacing hit a record high of 35.9%.

But Reese says Ohio’s high overdose death rate gives the state a false image of heavy drug usage.

“Ohio, specifically, does not have a drug use problem,” she says. “We actually are very, very low on the drug users per capita compared to other states.”

The overdose numbers and drug use figures seem at odds with each other at first glance. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists Ohio as having the fourth highest overdose death rate in the country, while a national survey on drug use from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration finds that Ohio ranks 25th in the nation for drug usage.

But to Reese, this means Ohio has one of the most fentanyl-laced drug supplies in the country.

“We are seeing it in pressed pills that look very real,” Reese says. “We’re seeing Adderall and Xanax and pain pills of every variety that are laced with fentanyl. Cocaine is often laced with fentanyl, meth is often laced with fentanyl. People don’t know that’s what

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they’re using. People who have smoked crack-cocaine for 30 years are being introduced to fentanyl totally unaware.”

Fentanyl is tasteless and colorless, with no smell or discernible features, which is why Reese encourages those who use drugs to test their batches before using.

“People are always going to use drugs; we just want them to know how to use them safely,” she says. “Everyone is always preaching about recovery or abstinence, and the reality is that people are going to use drugs. People have autonomy. It’s just about teaching people the skills they need to stay safe.”

The standard protocol to test a batch of drugs for fentanyl involves dissolving a small amount of the drug in water and dipping a detection strip into it for 15 seconds. The strip then is placed on a flat surface for five minutes, when colored lines will indicate whether or not fentanyl is present. Typically, one line indicates that there is fentanyl in the drug and two lines means there isn’t, but packaging will show instructions and how to determine if the test was valid.

Harm Reduction Ohio supplies fentanyl test strips to Barnard at the Coalition for Community Safety, who then distributes the testing supplies, along with naloxone, to anyone in the city who wants it.

At first, CCS approached bars in 2021 to propose Narcan training. But lately, the bars have been reaching out to them, Barnard says.

“I’m not going to stop people from doing drugs in the bathrooms of bars and nightclubs,” Barnard says. “If we can put test strips out there and make the stigma go away about people being afraid of that, I think a lot of people might stay alive.”

One of the latest bars to go through training is Somerset in Over-the-Rhine, where Emma Robinson is a manager.

She says that in order to save lives, staff members have to be realistic about what intoxicated people do.

“What people do to chill out and have a good time is not our business, but it’s becoming our business because our friends are dying,” she says. “And it is so prevalent and it does go hand-inhand with drinking culture and alcohol culture.”

Robinson initially was nervous about being responsible for giving someone naloxone, but she says the CCS training was easy for the entire Somerset staff.

“I was so anxious about doing the Narcan training,” Robinson says. “But afterward I was like, ‘Oh? That’s it? Well yeah, let’s fuckin’ do this.’”

During Narcan training, participants learn what an overdose looks like, how to watch for signs of a potential overdose and what to do in such an emergency. Guides walk bartenders

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An Overdose Awareness Day vigil in Clermont County P H O T O : K E L S E Y C A I T L I N B AT E S , P R OV I D E D BY H A R M R E D U C T I O N O H I O

Fentanyl test strips available at OTR Chili P H OTO : M A D E L I N E F E N I N G

An upcoming CCS training session for bartenders and the general public will take place at Somerset in Over-the-Rhine P H OTO : H A I L E Y B O L L I N G E R

Narcan nasal spray P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY H A R M R E D U C T I O N O H I O

through how to administer both nasal spray naloxone and injectable naloxone, no matter which form they’ll have on hand.

The bartenders then learn what types of reactions to prepare for and are told to call 911. They also get a rundown on how to use fentanyl testing strips.

While Harm Reduction Ohio and CCS require a quick training session for those who stock up on naloxone, Barnard says people should not hesitate to use it, even if they’re not totally sure a person is overdosing.

“Narcan is not going to hurt you otherwise,” he says. “I could physically spray some in my nose right now, and while it might be uncomfortable, it would not affect me in any way, shape or form.”

Identifying an overdose might not be obvious to everyone, but Barnard says there are signs to look for.

“They’re going to have extremely dilated pupils, even in dark light their pupils will be very small,” Barnard says.

“Another thing to look out for is lips

turning blue. What happens with opiate overdoses is it kind of shuts down your respiratory system and ultimately you choke to death, which is horrifying, but it’s an obvious sign when you see discoloration in the skin. They might have a hard time breathing. Even if they don’t smoke cigarettes, it might sound like they smoke two packs a day.”

Naloxone is the only thing that will stop an overdose that’s in progress, but Barnard says fentanyl test strips are the other necessary piece of the harm reduction equation. ”There’s been situations where someone is secretly doing party drugs where they aren’t supposed to, and suddenly someone’s experiencing a fentanyl overdose,” he says. “The test strips are there so if you happen to be engaging in an activity like that, at least take a few minutes and test it and make sure you’re not going to accidentally die.”

Some restaurants and bars are providing fentanyl detection strips to encourage safety. A sign in the restroom

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A sign in the bathroom at OTR Chili directing patrons to free fentanyl test strips P H OTO : M A D E L I N E F E N I N G

at OTR Chili points to where guests can grab some.

“We did this the weekend after the Super Bowl,” says Aspen Barbro, head server and bartender at OTR Chili.

“We get a late-night crowd on the weekend, and it is kind of more like an industry crowd where drug use is more common. I just wanted to make sure we’re keeping our city and our industry safe.”

The bathroom at OTR Chili is open to the public and is often used by people waiting in line to get into Rhinegeist Brewery, which Barbro says adds to the need for test strips.

Barbro says the signs in the restroom have raised a few eyebrows during the daytime hours, but the business has fielded no complaints so far.

“A couple suburban moms have asked, but no one’s really pushed back and been negative about it,” she says.

Across Elm street at e19 Lounge Bar & Discothèque, management has removed fentanyl test strips from the restrooms until new staff members can go through Narcan training.

Zach Shumate, the club’s new general manager, says the strips will be back.

“We are prepared for it,” he says.

“None of us are strangers to hearing about overdoses.”

“Obviously, we don’t allow illicit substances on the premises. That is not something that is a part of the culture that we just accept about this business.

We’re trained to prohibit that use in

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our establishment,” Shumate added.

“Fentanyl is going to be in something one way or another. We would just be ignorant to not have access to (testing).”

Managers at Comfort Station in Walnut Hills — a zip code with the highest overdose death rate in the state for Black men, according to data collected by Harm Reduction Ohio in collaboration with researchers at Ohio State University — are anxious to get their bar staff trained on Narcan administration.

“I would feel better having (Narcan) after knowing the training,” says Aaron Boyle, bar manager at Comfort Station.

Boyle says he has accepted the reality of drug use in bars.

“How many times have you heard somebody say, ‘I only smoke when I drink, I only do this when I drink?’”

Boyle asks. “If the bar doesn’t have the testing supplies at the ready at that moment, you can always find somebody who has access to it.”

The demand for training and supplies is higher than ever for the Coalition for Community Safety, Barnard says. He is planning an event where more than 100 Cincinnati bartenders will receive naloxone training at once, adding that you don’t have to be a bartender or business owner to get the CCS training if you want to carry Narcan.

“The important thing is that as many people who can carry Narcan have it and know how to use it,” Barnard says.

“In 10 years or so, I’ve seen a huge

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amount of personal friends of mine get taken away as a result of the opioid crisis. It’s disturbed me in such a way that I feel like something needs to be done.”

The free training session, which will take place on April 25 at Somerset (139 E. McMicken Ave., Over-the-Rhine), is aimed at those in the hospitality industry, but Harm Reduction Ohio’s Reese says anyone is welcome to join.

It will include information on how to administer Narcan, basic CPR and anti-stigma information, per the event description from CCS. Learn more and find out how to register at instagram. com/cincyccs.

Robinson at Somerset says there is a cultural shift happening within the service industry in Cincinnati, and bartenders are largely on the same page about being the first line of defense against drug overdoses.

“We have a solution. It’s a short-term solution to something that’s a much larger and more complicated issue, but it’s here,” Robinson says. “I think where we’re at now in Cincinnati, because we’ve seen so much loss and so many issues and so much sadness from laced party drugs, I think so many people in our community and in our city of Cincinnati are saying, ‘You know what, we’ve had enough.’”

Harm Reduction Ohio offers free naloxone and fentanyl test strips on its website. Participants must complete a training video to place an order.

Those who are looking for in-person training and supplies can email CCS at ccscincy@gmail.com.

Naloxone and test strips are also available through other local organizations and even pharmacies.

Greater Cincinnati HIV/AIDs service organization Caracole has a harm reduction supply vending machine available 24/7 at its Northside headquarters that dispenses naloxone and test strips for free. First-time users need to fill out a survey before getting a 90-day access code. The aforementioned SOAR program will also mail out five free fentanyl test strips via their website thesoarinitiative.org.

Drug stores such as CVS and Walgreens also dispense naloxone, though it is not free. Many insurance companies will pay for or reimburse people for brand-name and generic naloxone, but those without insurance are on the hook for a $90-$140 charge, pharmacists tell CityBeat.

For more information on Harm Reduction Ohio, visit harmreductionohio.org. Follow the Coalition for Community Safety at instagram.com/cincyccs.

APRIL 6, 2022 - APRIL 19, 2022 |

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ARTS & CULTURE

“aCORdo” is choreographed

by Alice Ripoll and Cia REC. P H O T O : R E N AT O M A N G O L I N

Tomorrow Today

The Contemporary Arts Center’s This Time Tomorrow festival weaves universal themes into performance art

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

A

fter a slimmed-down offering in 2021 and a canceled iteration in 2020, the performance art festival This Time Tomorrow is returning to venues across Cincinnati April 6-10.

A project of the Contemporary Arts Center, This Time Tomorrow (TTT) expands on the potential of broad-reaching performance art, commissioning a variety of artists, interweaving different mediums

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and asking big questions of its audiences. Events take place daily at locations including the CAC, The Carnegie, the 21c Museum Hotel and The Mercantile Library, with a nightly “Late Night Hub” at the CAC serving as a sort of afterparty location and the “Goetta-Institut” offering lunchtime conversations with artists at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Tickets are available online for individual

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performances and start at $5; COVID requirements can vary for each event or venue and are listed on the CAC website.

“I think any contemporary arts center that’s worth a damn needs to not just be a place for vetted brilliance, but also a breeding ground for cultural thought,” Drew Klein, the TTT curator who first made performance art synonymous with the CAC with the inaugural Black Box Series in 2011, tells CityBeat. “We want to be a laboratory for artists to come through to collaborate with us to develop new projects that speak to the times, the themes that are relevant within our community but also around the world.”

The artists span that geography, too, with local, regional, national and international representation. Britni Bicknaver, a seventh-generation Cincinnatian, is trained in sculpture.

Her piece “Special Collections: Reflections on the Mercantile Library,” however, is a new work centered on

sound art, commissioned by the CAC and the Mercantile and presented at the latter.

“How we translate history, the idiosyncrasy of places, the synchronicities of this world, are all topics that I’m interested in and that, really, the Mercantile piece is about,” Bicknaver says.

Originally on the roster for the unrealized 2020 TTT, Bicknaver found the extra two years’ worth of time a boon for further research and rumination. John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost proved to be especially inspirational, she says.

“I realized the correlation between me being obsessed with this text and what I was experiencing, as a person in a pandemic, literally getting pushed out of a co-created world, a paradise, our 21st-century Eden,” she says. “The other side of this, and the other thesis I explore in the piece, is really about the idea of our world especially not being a paradise for many excluded groups of

“Akal” by Radouan Mriziga P H OTO : S E N DA J E BA L I

people within our world.”

Formatted as a 30-minute audiobook narrated by Bicknaver — who also references herself as the artist and creator of the piece — “Special Collections” features 13 chapters, with different voice actors ranging in age from 9 to 70 appearing in each chapter. As the work progresses, the audience moves through the Mercantile Library, itself woven into the fabric of the sound art piece. References to the original indigenous residents of the region, Galileo, space, books in the Mercantile’s collection and the Apollo 8 mission are sprinkled throughout, and Bicknaver hired local singer-songwriter Brianna Kelly to create a musical accompaniment.

“What I want people to take away is an understanding of how connected everything is,” she says. “Being a Cincinnatian, I love this city, and I’ve made a lot of artwork about this city, too. I think an appreciation for the history of this city that gets lost, and also, this piece is a love letter to the Mercantile.”

New York-based artists Steffani Jemison and Justin Hicks perform collaborative musical works under the banner Mikrokosmos. Their offering at TTT also deals with the auditory experience: “One Giant Step,” presented at the CAC, builds off the melody found in Nina Simone’s 1969 Morehouse College performance of “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.”

In video of Simone’s historic

performance, she deftly plays the piano, pleasure evident in her body language and that of the band. When the camera pans over the huge audience later in the video, they are jubilant and celebratory. Simone tells the audience about the black orchid corsage on her wrist, which she preserved and brought with her to Atlanta from the previous night’s show in New Jersey.

The orchid became for Jemison and Hicks a symbol that grew into the ethos of their work.

“We could imagine the care involved with bringing this item to another group of people that feels relevant or useful to them,” Hicks says. “To imagine, if she cared for that orchid, what am I caring for, that I’m then sharing with the world in (that) way? How are we actually picking up that orchid from Nina Simone and bringing it to another group of people?”

Simone’s friendship with author Lorraine Hansberry plus Hansberry’s own respective work also proved integral for Mikrokosmos. In particular, they looked to Hansberry’s speculative play What Use Are Flowers? (unpublished in her lifetime), which grapples with the concepts of beauty and value.

“While our research is extensive, the framework of the performance is very straightforward,” Jemison says.

“It doesn’t require reading or preparation to enter. The way our live work unfolds is really staging an experience

“Boy mother / faceless” performed by Juni One Set P H OTO : B RU C E TO M

“100 Keyboards” by ASUNA P H O T O : R I T S U KO S A K ATA

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Kabareh Cheikhats make their regional premiere during TTT’s Late Night Hub P H OTO : L A Ï D

of learning and growing together that unfolds among the players.”

The CAC describes the experience of “One Giant Step” as performers moving through “a series of conversations, tutorials, exercises, and musical tasks that lead them, dramatically, to a place of knowing and understanding in real time.”

Belgium-based choreographer Radouan Mriziga, whose commissioned work “Akal” premieres at TTT at the CAC, also takes a non-prescriptive approach. “Akal” is the final work in a trilogy, though it can be experienced independently. Mriziga here focuses on exploring female goddesses in Imazighen culture — the indigenous people of North Africa — and how their mythology and lineage transcends geography and perspective, moving from deities like Neith and Athena and locales like Libya and the Western world.

“I’m not trying to write a new history,” Mriziga says. “It’s more how we can experience history together

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through choreography. It allows us to experience history more than just reading it or deciding what the narrative should be.”

Rwandan dancer, singer and choreographer Dorothée Munyaneza brings the non-linear performance narrative to life with song, Rap and dance. The multisensory depth of the work is Mriziga’s hallmark.

“I start from the body and then it can expand from the body to an imaginary space, passing through that into the real space, passing through the text and the words,” Mriziga says. “I always try to find a way to also make the audience experience the same. I believe we are mediums of certain knowledge, and for me, it’s always beautiful when art can be also a source of knowledge.”

Other performances slated for TTT include regional and world premieres, as well as additional CAC commissions.

The North American premiere of “aCORdo” by Brazilian choreographer Alice Ripoll and dance company Cia REC explores race, prejudice, politics

APRIL 6, 2022 - APRIL 19, 2022

and policing through movement. “100 Keyboards” from Japanese artist ASUNA uses keyboards, arranged in circles around the performer, to “create waves of overlapping notes,” says the CAC. “As each electronic note joins the others, the effect is choral — unceasing voices in a fluid mass of beautiful noise.”

Kentucky artist Jay Bolotin presents the world premiere of “The Darktown Sermons,” a CAC commission that blends animation, original song and performance. According to a description, in Bolotin’s animation, which features hand-carved woodblock characters, “A somewhat confused Preacher (voice of Will Oldham, aka Bonnie Prince Billy) descends a ladder from heaven where he visited the angels. They were not what he expected.”

Juni One Set — a collaboration between artists Senga Nengudi, eddy kwon and Degenerate Art Ensemble’s Haruko Crow Nishimura and Joshua Kohl — will perform the CAC commission “Boy mother / faceless,”

an interdisciplinary work that presents “diverse lineages of queer, anticolonial, and care-based artistic practices,” per the description.

And Columbus, Ohio-based pianist and singer Sharon Udoh will present the premiere of “Black Gold: A Lullaby,” another TTT work inspired by Nina Simone. Udoh examines the impact of Simone and her music, as well as the death of Breonna Taylor, to ask “How do Black women thrive, push, grow, and trust? And how do we rest?” says the CAC. “We love that there’s this sense of discovery in this festival, not just for the audiences but for the artists as well,” curator Klein says. “Artists and audiences are sparring partners in a way and require each other in order to better understand the work.”

The This Time Tomorrow festival takes place April 6-10. Find tickets, a schedule and more information at contemporaryartscenter.org.

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VISUAL ART

Lloyd Library’s ‘On the Wing’ Exhibit Is a Birder’s Paradise

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

Alex (left) and Shae Warnick have paintings on display in the On the Wing exhibit at the Lloyd Library and Museum.

P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY T H E A R T I S T S

As birds migrate back to Greater Cincinnati for spring and summer, they’ve also taken over downtown’s Lloyd Library and Museum.

On the Wing: An Illustrated Chapter on Birds highlights the Lloyd’s treasure trove of ornithology books and bird field guides — an often-overlooked part of their collection — that date back as early as the 1600s. From illustrations of the extinct dodo to a book by Ferdinand Schuyler Mathews transcribing birds’ vocalizations into sheet music, the exhibition is a birder’s dream. Also on display are taxidermied bird specimens, some extinct and others still around, from the Cincinnati Museum Center. An on-site gallery features modern paintings from twin sisters and naturalists Alex and Shae Warnick from Columbus, Indiana, the latter of whom served as an artist in residence at the Lloyd in 2020.

Like the exhibition itself, much of the Warnicks’ work pays homage to ornithologists throughout history

whose contributions have led to a better understanding of various bird species and their habitats. Many of the books on display at the Lloyd are ones Shae pulled for research and inspiration during her month-long residency.

Speaking over Zoom, Shae gestures at hanging prints of illustrations by Alexander Wilson, aka the “father of ornithology.” They’re from his 1831 book American Ornithology, which she gushes about poring over.

“The Lloyd has some of the famous books by naturalists that I had always heard about,” she says. “There are some famous ones that I had seen the images of many times on the internet but then to be able to go and actually see the real prints in those books was such a neat experience. I absolutely loved it.”

The Queen City and the surrounding region served as a hotspot for many famed naturalists, including John James Audubon, whose brief stay here in 1819 saw him as the first taxidermist at what

“The Parrot of Carolina” by Mark Catesby from his 18th-century book The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY L L OY D L I B R A R Y A N D M U S E U M

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An illustration of a king fisher from Eleazar Albin’s 18th-century The Natural History of Birds P H O T O : L L OY D L I B R A R Y A N D M U S E U M

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became the Cincinnati Museum Center.

The placard accompanying the display of Audubon’s The Birds of America in On the Wing reads: “Arguably the most famous bird book in the world, the original ‘double elephant’ edition was published in 1827-1828 and contained 435 life-size watercolors of North American birds. Audubon drew dead birds so that he could pose them artistically.”

Other artists and naturalists featured in the show include William Bartram, Thomas George Gentry, Hugh Edwin Strickland, Mark Catesby, John Cassin and more.

Shae says her stay at the Lloyd gave her the chance to look at how the field of ornithology evolved century-to-century in terms of its visuals, language and views from the 1500s all the way to the 1900s. Those early books, she explains, very much tied nature to religion before moving into the romantic eras and later more scientific, objective depictions.

While Shae’s work has focused heavily on the field’s early days up to the late 1800s, Alex’s leans more toward the modern naturalists of the late 1800s and 1900s.

“We always say that we walk parallel paths, but not the same path,” Alex says during the same Zoom call. “We are very similar, share a lot of the same interests in subject matter but our methods of depicting them are different.”

Their initial interest in the field goes back to childhood, but it was Alex who first fell into ornithology after reading a book describing the profession at age

10. From there, she dragged the entire family “one by one” into loving birds, she says, including Shae.

With a background in science illustration for field guides, books and magazines, Alex’s paintings tend to have more three-dimensional depth of field and are representational. She works mainly in watercolor and with subjects in nature.

Shae, whose paintings are more flat, uses oil- and acrylic-based mediums and draws experience from working inside museums, with research collections and specimen birds.

“I’m really interested in the ways people view nature, so there’s a human aura in my paintings,” Shae says, “like someone was pressing the plants or arranging the specimens. You can tell there’s something unnatural about it.

And Alex, her depictions of nature are more of those natural scenes we love so much when we’re actually out in nature.”

Through their work, they aim to encourage people to foster an appreciation of nature and conservation efforts, albeit in different ways, even if it’s in their backyard or other small spaces.

“Even when I’m not working directly with scientific organizations, all my art, I’m always trying to highlight and show people what I think is wonderful about birds,” Alex says. “And hopefully do them enough justice that it sparks something in other people.”

When asked what they love about each other’s art, Shae says that while she doesn’t necessarily try to emulate

the naturalists from history, Alex is the modern version of those figures. Of Shae, Alex admires the concepts, deep level of research and thought process that goes into her sister’s paintings, which she says brings whimsy to what most would see as an academic subject matter.

“We say all the time that we’re each other’s favorite artists,” Alex says, “not necessarily because we think the other one is the best artist but because obviously if it’s your twin, you have the same tastes and you love what they’re doing.”

On the Wing runs through June 18.

Several related programs focused on topics including conservation efforts, technology and social justice will accompany the exhibition. The lineup includes: “Bird Monitoring Technology for Migrant Bird Conservation” with David Russell on April 21; “Bird Migration Field Trip with Cincinnati’s Audubon Society” on May 15; “Freedom Birders: Birding for Freedom and Justice” with Tykee James and Jeffery Train on June 2; and “The Power of Nature Photography for Bird Conservation” with Jim McCormac on June 8.

“Turtledoves in Angel Trumpets” by Shae Warnick

On the Wing is on display at Lloyd Library (917 Plum St., Downtown) through June 18. More info: lloydlibrary.org.

P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY L L OY D L I B R A RY A N D M U S E U M A N D S H A E W A R N I C K

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Double Bill at Ensemble Theatre Explores Equity, Equality and the Black Experience

ONSTAGE

BY R I C K P E N D E R

Samantha Russell stars as Betty Daniels Rosemond during a rehearsal for I Shall Not Be Moved.

P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY E N S E M B L E T H E AT R E C I N C I N N AT I

Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati (ETC) continues its longtime commitment to socially conscious and thoughtprovoking contemporary theater with a pair of one-act, solo-performance plays about Black women: the newly commissioned world premiere of Isaiah Reaves’ I Shall Not Be Moved and the updated revival of Your Negro Tour Guide, based on Kathy Y. Wilson’s former CityBeat column and commentaries for National Public Radio, collected in Your Negro Tour Guide: Truths in Black & White, published in 2004.

Reaves, a playwright recently graduated from Northern Kentucky University and now enrolled in the University of Iowa’s Playwrights Workshop, has written a script about his grandmother, Betty Daniels Rosemond, a trailblazing Freedom Rider who fought for civil rights in the American South in the 1960s. Your Negro Tour Guide was created by actor Torie Wiggins and director Jeff Griffin in 2008, presented at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival that year, subsequently in New York and Texas,

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and then at ETC in 2012. A decade later it has been updated by Wilson and assembled into a fully staged production that will again feature Wiggins, who is also staging Reaves’ piece.

“I am both personally and professionally grateful to have an opportunity at Ensemble to bring these two playwrights together and their vision of what was and what can be for our country and our world,” ETC’s Producing Artistic Director D. Lynn Meyers says in a statement about the plays. “I have the utmost respect for what Kathy Y. Wilson has done in her career to enhance our vision, to strengthen the connections between people, and to call it the way it is. She’s uncompromising, and that’s what I always want Ensemble to be.

“Isaiah Reaves is an inspiration.

It’s amazing how he wrote his grandmother’s story using her words and his influence as a young Black man in this world. Having these shows to look forward to during the dark days of the pandemic always kept light shining at ETC.”

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Reaves drew inspiration from his grandmother’s diaries to tell the story of a young Black woman’s fearless battle for equity and equality.

“She was the center of my life,” Reaves tells CityBeat. “I grew up admiring her, and her Freedom Rider’s story was something I didn’t at first understand. When I started writing plays when I was younger, my dream was to tell her story.”

But he felt he wasn’t ready to write it.

“I wanted to wait until I was confident enough in my craft,” he says. “I wanted to wait for the right opportunity to present itself. This is really 13 years in the making. It’s taken me that long to do this.”

Reaves is just 24.

ETC encouraged him by commissioning the work and giving I Shall Not Be Moved a workshop reading to refine the script two years ago.

Betty Daniels Rosemond’s activism was motivated when her mother was denied the right to vote in Louisiana.

Rosemond witnessed the beginning

of the Civil Rights movement as it was portrayed in the media. Living in New Orleans, she paid attention and felt she had something to accomplish.

“She was not happy with Jim Crow laws,” Reaves says. “There were people who were very comfortable not disturbing the peace, but my grandmother was not one of those people.”

Rosemond was one of the first Black students to enroll at Louisiana State University. She studied writing and English, but her activism cut short her formal education. She eventually came to live in Cincinnati and had a family. Her grandson is the first person in his immediate family to earn a college degree, something Rosemond encouraged and supported.

Reaves had not previously written a one-person show.

“I have not enjoyed solo theater, but the story kept coming to me as a solo piece. It was the best creative challenge in the world for me to investigate,” he says.

His script portrays Rosemond on

Torie Wiggins rehearses for Your Negro Tour Guide.

P H O T O : E N S E M B L E T H E AT R E C I N C I N N AT I

a single night as she’s “packing to go on a Freedom Ride while she decides whether or not to continue,” he says.

The work is a monologue about her experiences. The central conflict of the story is whether or not to continue her work as a Freedom Rider, knowing she could be risking her life.

“The audience helps her make that decision,” Reaves says.

Actor Samantha Russell, a member of ETC’s Professional Acting Apprenticeship Program in 2016-2017, portrays Reaves’ grandmother.

Wiggins, who is staging Reaves’ oneact play, is doing double-duty: She’s also the solo actor performing Your Negro Tour Guide. She has a history with the material, dating back to the early 2000s. She and director Griffin were drama students at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music when Wilson’s sassy, passionate columns — rants about race, gender and class issues in America — were published in CityBeat. They partnered with Wilson to develop a script for Wiggins to perform, and they have worked with Wilson to update the material for the ETC presentation.

Wilson, now in her late fifties, says references to Black culture, music and rappers had to be brought into the present. She’s added a section about “gay runaway slaves,” one unruly and outspoken — like Wilson herself — and another who’s the slave owner’s untouchable offspring.

“There’s a soliloquy that uses every euphemism to refer to lesbian sex,” Wilson tells CityBeat. She admits that she’s invented some of the terms while some of it is real language.

Wilson marvels at Wiggins’ acting skills, saying she has to voice what both the Black overseer is saying as well as the two women.

“And it has to end on some weird punchline,” Wilson says.

Wilson says working with Wiggins and Griffin has been an education for her in theater and she’s been reading plays and taking notes.

“I take notes like I’m a graduate student. You have to study whatever you want to be excellent at,” she says.

ETC warns that Wilson’s piece contains mature language and content, including themes of racism and racial slurs, physical assault, sexual identity, homophobia and misogyny, and adds that it’s “not suitable for young audiences.”

But ETC’s double-bill promises an evening of provocative, moving performances that will certainly be stimulating for the rest of us.

I Shall Not Be Moved and Your Negro Tour Guide will be presented as a double bill at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati (1127 Vine St., Overthe-Rhine) from April 9 through May 7. Tickets and more info: ensemblecincinnati.org.

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NICHOLSON’S

FINE FOOD & WHISK(E)Y

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FOOD & DRINK

Bartender Cambria Moreo at Bar Bar OTR P H O T O : K AT I E G R I F F I T H

New Spot to Drink Drink Bar Bar OTR aims to connect two lively corners of Over-the-Rhine without pretension

BY K AT I E G R I F F IT H

C

incinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood offers a seemingly endless assortment of entertainment options. Findlay Market defines the northernmost corner, with veins of one-way streets and historic buildings embellished by colorful murals

pulsing outward from the market. Every night, Cincinnatians and outsiders alike descend upon the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood to indulge in dinner and drinks from area restaurants and bars.

But from Findlay Market toward Liberty Street, local developers Chris

Reckman and Casey Coston of Urban Expansion see a lack of nightlife options. More specifically, the stretch was in need of a no-frills establishment to enjoy a few adult beverages after a long day.

“In that area, there are some bars,” says Coston, vice president of Urban Expansion. “La Ofrenda, the tequila bar, or Cosmic Gorilla, the comic book bar. But there really isn’t a bar bar, you know?”

Coston and Reckman are betting that repetition of the word “bar” will speak for itself.

Coston and his partners opened Bar

Bar OTR at 1709 Race St. in December with plans to be extremely normal.

Even if the name is a little too on the nose for some, it’s catchy enough to attract wonder. A standard place that exists between blah and boisterous, the bar exists as a go-to respite that has no agenda other than to be there for thirsty patrons or neighbors.

“It’s just a bar bar. The non-theme is that sometimes you just want a bar, not a carnival ride or the Taj Mahal or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or whatever. So we sort of focused on a comfy vibe, no pretensions,” Coston tells CityBeat. “It’s a dive bar, but dive

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bar doesn’t mean it has to be a dump. It can be a nice dive bar.”

Even the shabbiest dive bar with the stickiest floor and the most unbothered bartender will gain a little extra attention in OTR compared to what it might in other neighborhoods.

With that in mind, patrons should expect upscale comfort, like the approachability of Milton’s Prospect Hill Tavern meets Longfellow’s trendybut-cool and simple essence.

Urban Expansion — an OTR real estate and development company that also owns and operates Queen City Radio — acquired Bar Bar’s Race Street property in late 2019. Reckman, the owner of Urban Expansion, and Coston shared the vision for Bar Bar and during a year’s worth of pandemic setbacks oversaw the construction and renovations.

Creating Bar Bar was quite a different task than they were used to, as the business’s entire footprint probably could fit within Queen City Radio’s bar area alone. Other than sharing owners, the two bars don’t have much else in common — except for one very large decor item, that is.

A moose head wall mount oversees the shotgun-style Bar Bar. The stoic, scarf-wearing mascot’s backside

originally was supposed to hang on the other side of the wall, where a short hallway leads to restrooms, but the butt was too big for Bar Bar’s humble square footage.

Instead, Bar Bar’s moose rear found a permanent seat at Queen City Radio, a large indoor/outdoor spot at the border of OTR and the West End that’s an unofficial rally site for FC Cincinnati fans.

Bar Bar has room for about 14 bar stools, a few tables and a modest patio area that Coston says soon will transform into a streatery. A fresh coat of black paint atop the brick facade is complemented by sleek white trim. Two large front windows allow the ambiance to stretch outside, hopefully gaining the attention of passersby, which is pretty much the whole point of the location, Coston says.

“I don’t think there’s any bar like it in the neighborhood. There are breweries, there are restaurants, but there’s no place to hang or meet people for happy hour and that’s what I think we are trying to fill there,” Coston says. “And also to help the connection between Findlay Market and the south of Liberty, which sort of are thriving, but then it peters out once you head north.”

As Findlay Market’s neighbor, Coston is looking forward to warmer weather,

when the seasonal revival of the area promises more foot traffic.

Above Bar Bar, Urban Expansion houses two residential sites, one with a full-time resident and the other an Airbnb unit. Below the apartments, Bar Bar energizes the space while yielding a cool intimacy. Coston says they kept the decor to a minimum, allowing the Art Deco-style bar and Wurlitzer Americana Jukebox, both of which provide a permeating pink glow, to be icons of the atmosphere.

Coston hand-picked every 45-inch vinyl record in the jukebox, selecting tunes from the ’70s and ’80s, which, when added to the bar’s ambiance, somehow cultivates a timeless feel.

The jukebox is free to play, and the collection is changed out regularly.

In true dive bar fashion, Bar Bar’s menu offers a selection of boilermakers (a shot paired with a beer) and in-house crafted cocktails. The Lavender Besito is a smoky, subtly sweet mix of Del Maguey Vida mezcal, El Jimador Anejo, Luxardo and lavender simple syrup.

Coston suggests the Wild Delight, a boilermaker that pairs Hudy Delight and a shot of Wild Turkey 101.

“I think that it’s gone really well so far, recognizing that it’s been January, February, March basically that we’ve

been open,” Coston says. “It’s given us a chance to get our legs under us and develop our system and work out the kinks. We’ve been really happy with it so far. It’s an intimate hang and a good vibe.”

Coston says a plan for an official grand opening is in the works, and patrons can look forward to the event sometime in April after events surrounding the Cincinnati Reds’ Opening Day celebrations occur.

Bar Bar OTR is located at 1709 Race St., Over-the-Rhine. Get more info at barbarotr.com.

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MUSIC

Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield P H O T O : M O L LY M ATA L O N

Silver Lining

Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield talks the surprising upside of the pandemic and new album Saint Cloud ahead of her Cincinnati show

BY J E F F N I E S E L

W

axahatchee — the band moniker of singer-songwriter Katie Crutchfield — released its latest studio album, 2020’s Saint Cloud, just as the pandemic hit, canceling tours and essentially bringing the music business to a standstill. At the time, Crutchfield found the shutdown particularly upsetting.

“I had worked so hard and had this big plan (for the album),” she says in a phone interview from her Kansas City home ahead of her April 13 show at the Woodward Theater with Madi Diaz.

“It felt like it would be this big breakthrough for me. I had a good fan base before Saint Cloud, but I could tell it would be a big moment and a big shift for me. To have all that happen as I was ready to go out and promote the record and tour and do press, and all that was shocking and really disappointing.”

But because the songs on Saint Cloud

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address the feelings of isolation and anxiety that many felt as the pandemic hit, the album resonated on a deep level with listeners and likely expanded Crutchfield’s fan base, albeit in an unconventional manner.

“In hindsight, I feel like (the release) happened as it was supposed to happen,” Crutchfield says. “The themes of the record struck a chord with more people because of the pandemic.”

“The record is about my journey getting sober, which is a pretty isolating experience or can be,” she continues.

“When I was younger, my lyrics were really explicit and exactly about my experience. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve skewed toward more universal sounding lyrics, and I try to be more poetic in the way I describe my experience, so it can apply to more people. I feel like doing that on Saint Cloud meant that the record would be applicable

APRIL 6, 2022 - APRIL 19, 2022

to people’s experiences during the pandemic.”

Throughout the album, Crutchfield makes reference to various cities where something significant happened in her life. Album opener “Oxbow,” a tender ballad with hiccuping vocals and gentle keyboards, takes place in Barcelona, Spain, where Crutchfield stopped drinking.

“I’m walking through different parts of my life,” she says of the tunes. “It’s rather undeniable and been talked about a lot that (singer-songwriter) Lucinda Williams is such a huge influence on this album. I really studied her songwriting and something she always does is she describes the setting and puts you in the physical places she’s in as a way of describing the emotions.

I tried that out a little bit. I’ve always done that a little bit, but I really did it on Saint Cloud. I wanted to get myself into the headspace. It’s like, ‘I’m 17 in Alabama or in New York City.’ I did that to get into those places. It’s kind of an experiment.”

As much as many of Saint Cloud’s tunes have a somberness to them, the lilting “Can’t Do Much,” possesses a celebratory vibe and the same goes for the careening “War.” “‘Can’t Do Much’ is about falling

in love, and the ups and downs and shifting from the honeymoon stage into a long-term relationship,” Crutchfield says. “It’s the stuff that comes with that. I was in that transition. I wanted to write an unromantic love song. It’s about real love and the good, the bad and the ugly.”

Earlier this year, Crutchfield released “Tomorrow,” a tune she cut for the animated kids’ program El Deafo that airs on Apple TV. When the folks at Apple originally approached Crutchfield about writing music for the show, she didn’t think it was something she could pull off.

“I maybe take myself too seriously because I said that I didn’t think I could write children’s songs,” she says.

“When I met with one of the creators and Cece Bell, the creator of the book, who narrates the show and basically is the show, I loved them and identified with them and the tone of the story. I thought it was super unique and that I had to do it. I thought it was perfect.

“They gave me the scripts and a bunch of prompts indicating where they needed songs. With the help of my friend Rob Barbato, I wrote the songs, and he and I put them together. It was so fun. I’m so used to having a vision for an album and working so hard to

Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield P H O T O : M O L LY M ATA L O N

see it through, and it was cool to serve somebody else’s vision.”

She says the single’s perky melody was one she had in her “back pocket.”

“Every so often, I’ll write a song that I don’t see as a Waxahatchee song, and I don’t know how to work it into my record,” she says. “One of the first prompts was something like ‘write a radio Pop melody.’ I told them I thought I already had something. That’s what became ‘Tomorrow.’”

Crutchfield, who grew up in Alabama, has said Saint Cloud represents a return to her musical roots. “(Country) was the first music I fell in love with,” she says. “That love of Country music led me to Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, the people I think are the greatest songwriters who ever lived. One thing led to another. I think that coming up in Alabama as a teenager in the early 2000s, I rebelled against that type of stuff. I didn’t want to be seen as Southern and Country. I was so Punk Rock. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve circled back to my true roots, which feels really good.”

Just as Saint Cloud veers into Americana territory, the live show now features a bit of a twang.

“In my live show, I had started to lean more in that (Alt-Country) direction,”

Crutchfield says. “I was getting good feedback from that. Everyone who saw me perform in that way said it felt closer to my truth and was more natural than the loud guitars.

“On this tour I have coming up, I shifted it around a little bit. The two guys that play guitar (in the live band) played on Saint Cloud. They are of the band Bonny Doon based in Detroit.

They’re one of my favorite bands. If you haven’t heard their album, go listen.

We are old friends. My touring bass player is Eliana Athyade, and she is super talented. And, for the first time, I’m touring with a new drummer, Eric Slick, from (the Indie Rock act) Dr. Dog. He’s this amazing jack-of-all-trades drummer who’s playing with me. I feel really excited about this lineup. It’s going to be really good.”

Waxahatchee plays the Woodward Theater (1404 Main St., Over-theRhine) at 7:30 p.m. April 13. Proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test are required for entry. Learn more at woodwardtheater.com.

This interview was originally published by CityBeat sister paper Cleveland Scene

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Peter Rother Stephanie Barnard Rachael Katz Suzana Waterhlus Rachel Colyer Suzanne Sifri FREE Randall Reese Tana Weingartner 650 Walnut St., Cincinnati, OH 45202 / www.WestonArtGallery.com Richard Sarason Aronoff Center for the Arts /Tim Breen Richard Wills 2021-22 Season Sponsor:TimDeeSpence and Tom Stegman Robert Coats Tim Strom Robin Igney Tricia Bath Russell Hausfeld Valerie Zummo APRIL 6, 2022 - APRIL 19, 2022 | CITYBEAT.COM 45 S. Bradley Gillaugh Vicky Mary Sean Derry, Historical Drift, 2022, aluminum Jon boat, bugle, military socks, basketballs, Mountain Dew, umbrellas, steel, s. steel, soft brick and misc. hardware, 10’ x 13’ x 5’

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SOUND ADVICE alt-J with Portugal. The Man and Cherry Glazerr

Friday, April 8 • PromoWest Pavilion at OVATION alt-J’s newly minted fourth studio album, The Dream, is well titled — its dozen songs over 49 minutes engulf the listener in a wave of narcotic, laid-back bliss. As ever, atmospheric sonic oddities abound, as do lyrics at once memorable and perplexing. Try “Dumbfounded by the sizzle of the bubbles on the tongue/Sixty-six times underwater somersault” from albumopener “Bane,” which lingers on the sensation of drinking Coca-Cola, or “The smell of burning cattle hangs on the westerly/Sweeping up through the ferns” from “Happier When You’re Gone,” which seems wistful for a oncefruitful relationship. alt-J formed in 2007 at England’s Leeds University, with each of its members — which includes vocalist/ guitarist Joe Newman, drummer Thom Sonny Green and keyboardist Gus Unger-Hamilton — studying one artistic medium or another. The band’s 2012 debut, An Awesome Wave, won Britain’s esteemed Mercury Prize, which helped expand its reach exponentially and drew comparisons to Radiohead’s artier fare.

“We’ve always seen ourselves as cowboy writers,” Newman said in a recent interview with Apple Music. “We don’t know how to write a Pop song, but we know that we have catchy ideas. So, we just sew them together, regardless of whether it makes much sense structurally. Maybe in this album (The Dream), we’re also mastering the craft of writing more traditionally.”

Cue “The Actor,” the Hollywood story of a coked-up thespian who observes during yet another unsuccessful audition, “All-American jawlines/One room going over same lines/Grind the script like teeth/Why do I keep returning to you?/Cocaine, cocaine.” It’s backed by a slinky, relatively straightforward arrangement, replete with tasty backing vocals, and brings to mind a less fussy Steely Dan filtered through 21st-century European sensibilities. alt-J headlines a triple bill that also includes Portugal. The Man, which hasn’t released a new studio album since 2017’s Woodstock, and L.A.-based Cherry Glazerr, whose move from Garage Rock upstarts to St. Vincentesque Art Pop practitioners is nearly complete.

Doors open at 6 p.m. Tickets start at $69. More info: promowestlive.com.

(Jason Gargano)

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alt-J P H OTO : G E O R G E M U N C E Y

Jack White

Wednesday, April 13 • Andrew J Brady Music Center Jack White is one of the most curious cultural figures of the last 20 years, a vampiric Blues-man savant with oldfashioned notions about music and modes of living. The Detroit native has also been one of the busiest — initially with The White Stripes, the duo he created with former wife/drummer Meg White, and the last decade-plus with a variety of music-related projects both in the spotlight and out.

White’s fourth solo album, Fear of the Dawn, is set for an April 8 release on his own Third Man Records. A second album of new material, Entering Heaven Alive, hits in July. In a January 2022 interview with Los Angeles radio station ALT 98.7, White said the former record features “hard hitting” Rock & Roll, while the latter is “very mellow — almost sort of like a Sunday morning album to me.”

The sonic dichotomy wasn’t necessarily intentional.

“I usually just write and record, and then eventually it starts to tell me what it is,” he said. “I usually don’t say, ‘This is the kind of record I’m going to make.’ I didn’t in this case either. I just kept writing and recording as it was

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Jack White P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY B I G H A S S L E M E D I A

happening, with no real urgency to it, because of the lockdown. I was like, ‘Well, who knows if we’re going to be playing shows or when a good time for another record to come out would be anyway?’”

Three of Fear of the Dawn’s 12 songs have dropped thus far, the most intriguing of which is “Hi-De-Ho.” It opens with White’s trademark guitar run through some sort of distortion/reverb

pedal, which yields a ghostly, dirge-like feel that wouldn’t be out of place as the score to an Italian horror movie. A voice that might or might not be White’s then enters singing operatically in a foreign language before Q-Tip — yes, of Hip Hop masters A Tribe Called Quest — enters, his rapid-fire delivery waxing poetic about Cab Calloway, the iconic Jazz man who is the originator of the “hi-de-ho” phrase in his 1931

Olivia Rodrigo P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY U M U S I C

song “Minnie the Moocher.” The jagged, high-stepping tune concludes with an unexpectedly tone-altering keyboard outro, yet another eccentric turn in White’s evolving musical journey.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Tickets start at $85. More info: bradymusiccenter. com. (JG)

Olivia Rodrigo

Friday, April 22 • Andrew J Brady Music Center It’s been a crazy year for Olivia Rodrigo, the Disney actress-turnedmusical-powerhouse. The 19-year-old singer/songwriter’s debut album, Sour, which dropped last May, catapulted her into the spotlight alongside such bigwigs as Adele, Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish in exposure (it was No. 2 on Billboard’s “total equivalent album units” list in 2021), critical adoration (the album finished No. 2 on the Uproxx critics’ poll) and cultural cachet (she wowed everyone from pre-teens to Robert Christgau, the 79-year-old “Dean” of music criticism).

Rodrigo’s first tour, which kicked off in March, sold out within minutes of going on sale.

“A really beautiful thing about songwriting is watching songs that are so personal to you go out into the world and kind of take on another life,” Rodrigo said in a recent interview with Billboard. “So, performing the songs now is even more special than

it was when I was writing them in my bedroom, because they now have so many other people’s stories intertwined within them, too. I’m really excited to experience that firsthand on tour.”

The bedroom thing can be a cliché, but it seems legit in Rodrigo’s case — Sour mines the songwriter’s admittedly short romantic history with uncommon insight and emotional resonance. It’s a concise, exquisitely crafted break-up record marked by experiences at once personal and universal. Or, as Christgau wrote, “Again and again dainty melodies meet big drums and are only stronger for it as every simple word comes clear. She doesn’t drink yet but knows how he like his coffee and let’s bet her own; she says ‘fuck’ and ‘bullshit,’ the latter to modify ‘eternal love.’ ” And, of course, everyone is now asking how she can possibly follow up such an explosive opening salvo.

“It’s definitely a different experience writing a second album after having a debut that was so well received,” she told Billboard. “I still write so much of my music in my bedroom, though, and I don’t think that experience will ever change. Writing songs will hopefully always be an outlet for me to process my feelings before anything else.”

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are sold out as of press time. More info: bradymusiccenter.com. (JG)

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RIVERFRONT LIVE PRESENTS: RIVERFRONT LIVE PRESENTS:

UPCOMING SHOWS UPCOMING SHOWS Dark Star Orchestra Hellzapoppin Circus Sideshow Hyryder Wednesday, May 25, 2022 Friday, April (The 15, 2022 Dark Star Orchestra Grateful Dead Experience) (Indoor Show) (TheSeptember Grateful Dead 24thExperience) & 25th(Indoor Show) September 24th & 25th

Muscadine Bloodline Trevor Hall Horseshoes & Hand Grenades Thursday, June 9, 2022 Gone Gone Beyond Horseshoes & Hand Grenades w/ Kyle Tuttle Band, The Tillers (Indoor Show) Saturday, April 16, 2022 w/ Kyle Tuttle Band, The Tillers and Restless Leg String Band (Indoor Show) and Restless Leg String Band October 1st Phil Vassar Lit October 1st Friday, June 24, 2022 (Indoor Show) Heart Attack // Tuk Smith // Settle Your The Lacs Scores // Pilot Around The Stars The Lacs October 8th Friday, May 6, 2022 One Nation Under A Groove Tour: October 8th George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic (Indoor Show) Samantha Fish The Motet Pimps Of Joytime Samantha Fish October 21st Sunday, June 26, 2022 Rivergrass Music Festival October 21st (Outdoor Show) Yonder Mountain // Lil Smokes // SteelDrivers Armchair Boogie // Stirngus Kahn Saturday, May 7, 2022 November SteelDrivers 6th Perpetual Groove (Outdoor Show) November 6th Friday, July 8, 2022 (Indoor Show) Sticky – Indoor Late Set Buckcherry

Buckcherry March 19th

The Dead South Rivergrass Music Festival March 19th Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band & Yonder Mountain // Lil Smokes // Tejon Street Corner Thieves Armchair Boogie // Stirngus Kahn STAY MORE August 11, 2022 Sunday, May 8, 2022 TUNED FOR Thursday, (Outdoor Show) (Outdoor Show) STAY TUNED FOR MORE ANNOUNCEMENTS COMING SOON!

ANNOUNCEMENTS COMING SOON!

Master Of Tributes Saturday, May 14, 2022 (Indoor Show)

Mimosa Fest Sunday, August 21, 2022 (Outdoor Show)

FOR TUNED MORE INFORMATION ON TICKETS, SHOWS & POLICY, PLEASE SOON! VISIT: STAY FOR MORE ANNOUNCEMENTS COMING FOR MORE INFORMATION @RIVERFRONTLIVE ON TICKETS, SHOWS & POLICY, PLEASE VISIT: RIVERFRONTLIVECINCY.COM @RIVERFRONTLIVE For more information on tickets, shows & policy, please visit: (513) 417-4555 RIVERFRONTLIVECINCY.COM (513) 417-4555 @RiverfrontLive

Where RiverfrontLiveCincy.Com Performances Become Legend (513) 417-4555 Where Performances Become Legend

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