Scene may 4, 2016

GOING PLAIN Fewer than 200 outsiders have joined the Amish since1950 and stayed in the church.

Two Ohioans explain why they did just that.

By Kelsey Osgood

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| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

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- !9 s 6/ ,5 - % . O 4 4 Dedicated to Free Times founder Richard H. Siegel (1935-1993) and Scene founder Richard Kabat Publisher Chris Keating Associate Publisher Desiree Bourgeois

CONTENTS 46

Editor Vince Grzegorek

5PFRONT

Editorial Managing Editor Eric Sandy Music Editor Jeff Niesel Staff Writer Sam Allard Writer-at-large Kyle Swenson Web Editor Bliss Davis Dining Editor Douglas Trattner Contributing Dining Editor Nikki Delamotte Stage Editor Christine Howey Visual Arts Editor Josh Usmani

The fight for historic preservation of Cudell Rec Center gazebo, Cleveland Water provides health update, and more

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Our favorites photos from this past week

Advertising Senior Multimedia Account Executive John Crobar, Shayne Rose Multimedia Account Executive Kiara Hunter-Davis

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Two Ohioans explain why they joined the Amish

Business Asst. To The Publisher Angela Lott Sales Assistant/Receptionist Megan Stimac

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UPFRONT CITY DELAYS CUDELL GAZEBO DEMOLITION AS GROUPS FIGHT FOR ITS PRESERVATION Photo by Sam Allard

THIS WEEK

IN RESPONSE TO A REQUEST from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History and Culture (NMAAHC), the city of Cleveland will delay the demolition of the gazebo at Cudell Recreation Center for 30 days.

Tamir Rice was shot and killed there by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann in November 2014, and the city said last week that they’d begin disassembling the structure this week. The gazebo site was no longer required for “evidential purposes,” a press release said. And though no specific plans were in place for the site, a city spokesman told Scene that the area would revert to grass. The Rice family lawyer, Subodh Chandra, said the city informally agreed to approve a “modest” memorial for Tamir at the site.

But on Monday, senior curator William Pretzer at the NMAAHC sent a letter to Cleveland’s law department asking the city to postpone the demolition. The museum was coordinating with Black Lives Matter, the letter said, about possible preservation. Pretzer said preserving the gazebo was important, given its role in contemporary AfricanAmerican history.

Chandra confirmed that the Rice family supports the concept of historic preservation.

Shelly Gracon, who founded the Butterfly Project, a program to help kids in the Cudell neighborhood cope with Tamir’s death, said that whatever happens to the gazebo, she’s fully supportive of a memorial. She’d like to extend the garden that was built last year adjacent to the gazebo, and wants to ensure that any plans have the endorsement of the Rice family.

“My view is that this is a sacred space,” Gracon told Scene at Cudell on

6

Monday afternoon. “And it needs to be treated that way.”

The NMAAHC, which is slated to officially open its doors in Washington D.C. in September, has no plans to host the gazebo itself. It’s unclear, if the gazebo is preserved, where it would reside. The city is naturally concerned about the cost of relocation.

CLEVELAND WATER: TOXIC SEDIMENT IN LAKE ERIE IS ‘NOT A CONCERN’ James McCarty of The Plain Dealer recently reported on a “mass of toxic sediment” in Lake Erie that’s long been migrating toward shore. The story posed healthrelated questions about the quality of our local drinking water and about the ecology of the lake. On Monday afternoon, Cleveland Water leadership appeared for a press conference on the matter, brushing aside drinking water concerns.

“First and foremost, the water is safe,” Scott Moegling, water quality manager for Cleveland Water, said today. “We’ve tested the water. We have no concerns with the raw water quality or with the finished water quality from our Nottingham plant.”

Indeed, the Nottingham treatment plant and its intake valve were a point of focus in McCarty’s article.

The sediment mass is about five miles away from shore, though Cleveland Water officials will not say precisely where the Nottingham intake valve is located, citing security concerns.

If the sediment does migrate closer to shore — and historical trends show that it likely will — Moegling said that Cleveland Water has “more than adequate treatment — nothing special, just a little bit more than we normally do” — to

The gazebo where Tamir Rice was killed is at the center of a public debate right now.

counteract the sediment’s toxicity.

But, as Cleveland Water Commissioner Alex Margevicius pointed out, there are indeed broader concerns at play here. Via McCarty: “Recent tests of the sediment, located in a section of lake bottom known as Area 1, found alarmingly high concentrations of PCBs and PAHs — both highly toxic pollutants and 100 percent fatal to aquatic organisms such as worms, crustaceans and insects that live in the soil and provide vital food for fish.”

The dumping predated the Clean Water Act of 1972, during a time when industrial waste was being dredged from the Cuyahoga River and trucked out into open waters.

That waste, you’ll recall, played a role in the river catching fire several times before 1972. (Dredged waste has since been stored in lakefront dikes, McCarty notes.)

This current mass of sediment is a reminder, however, that the past will always catch up to the present.

The problems that it may pose go well beyond the already very important

LAKE FLAKE

MERRY-GO-ROUND

State EPA officials are warning of a giant toxic “blob” moving close to a Cleveland Water intake pipe in Lake Erie.

No worries: Jimmy Dimora was immediately escorted back to federal prison.

California Republicans annoyed with hourlong commute from Sandusky hotels during RNC. The upshot, according to CA GOP leadership: Valravn is right up the road.

| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

question of clean drinking water, and affect the health of the entire lake.

The Ohio EPA and Cleveland Water will continue to monitor the mass.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Great Lakes division, asked by the Ohio EPA to take action, is continuing to discuss the matter internally and with the state organization.

CAROL & JOHN’S TO HOST MASSIVE FREE COMIC BOOK DAY PARTY On Saturday, May 7, Carol & John’s hosts its annual Free Comic Book Day. Although the event takes place across the US, Carol & John’s hosts one of the largest events in the country. In addition to celebrating comics and comic book culture, Carol & John’s event celebrates Cleveland and its community through local art, history, cosplay and more. Again this year, the shop will give away more than 25,000 free comics (10 per person), as well as hundreds of graphic novels. The event actually begins Friday night with a midnight

PEDESTRIAN AT BEST

QUALITY OF LIFE

Ohio City residents are finding human poop all over the place, according to reports. Quick to capitalize on the brand, Ohio City Inc. insists that it’s a new “public art” piece.

We’re raising a Pinot Grigio to all the wonderful mothers out there this Sunday.

Invite you to celebrate:

A DRINK FOR YOUR CAUSE P lease join Campari and Imbibe in celebrating Negroni W eek 2016, w hen participating bars and restaurants w ill ma ke a donation to a lo ca l charit y for ev ery Negroni sold.

sav e the dat e June 6th-12th, 2016 #NegroniW eek negroniw eek.com

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UPFRONT release party starting at 10 p.m., and continuing until 2 a.m. FCBD continues Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. “Free Comic Book Day is a great reminder for fans that their hobby doesn’t live in a vacuum,� promises shop owner John Dudas. “There’s lots of people to physically engage whose love of collecting shines through when you talk to them. Sharing what you enjoy with someone on the day becomes the gift you can give on FCBD. Our motto is ‘Participate. Engage others. Be a friend.’�

While in California visiting Facebook’s headquarters last week, John Dudas had lunch with Joe Field, owner of Flying Colors Comics and founder of Free Comic Book Day. The visit reinforced his desire to make this year’s FCBD bigger and better than ever. “After 15 years, FCBD has become one of the classic battleďŹ elds across the planet defending the world of print media,â€? Dudas reects with a classic superhero twist. “Comics

DIGIT WIDGET 150 Years the Cleveland Police Department has existed. (The sesquicentennial was celebrated Monday with a big cake at the Justice Center.)

40 Hours of closure at the downtown Casino as it transition from Horseshoe to JACK management. It’ll be closed from May 9 to May 11.

19% City of Cleveland’s tree coverage, a dismal (and declining) rate. Happy Arbor Day!

29,000,000 Barrels of fracking wastewater injected into Ohio underground wells in 2015, four million more than in 2014. This has led to serious concerns about earthquakes and water contamination in southeastern Ohio.

are a growing medium, and it reminds us of the real strength behind the independent bookstore, its community. Comic books are visual and tactile, and best when physically shared. Like any great ďŹ ction, comic books challenge our vision of who we are and what we stand for.â€?

See a full schedule of events at clevescene.com.

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Speaking of comics, Captain America: Civil War opens Friday and is predicted to be the biggest boxofďŹ ce smash hit of 2016. (We saw the ďŹ lm at an early screening, and rest assured that it’s every bit as gritty and grand as Winter Soldier.)

Hometown boys Anthony and Joe Russo directed the ďŹ lm. It’s their second of four directorial entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They also helmed Winter Soldier and have been given the reins for InďŹ nity War Part I and II. The Russos were in Cleveland Monday night for a special screening at the new Milton and Tamar Maltz Performing Arts Center at TempleTifereth Israel. The screening was a fundraiser for Phase 2 of that project’s construction. “It’s a beautiful facility,â€? said Anthony Russo, in an interview with Scene. “It’s magniďŹ cent, and such an original concept. [Performing arts center / synagogue]. To be able to play a small part in its success is such a thrill for my brother and I.â€?

The Russos often return to Cleveland, and were instrumental in the decision to ďŹ lm much of Winter Soldier here. There’s even a nod to Cleveland in Civil War. An early scene takes place in the basement of a former soviet spy. “Clevelandâ€? ashes across the screen.

Anthony was rhapsodic in his praise for his hometown, and, in particular, for the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. He said he and Joe “devouredâ€? foreign and arthouse ďŹ lms there when they were teenagers. “Of any movie theater in the world,â€? Russo told Scene, “the Cinematheque is the most important movie theater to my brother and I, in terms of our ďŹ lm education and our passion.â€?

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FRAMED!

our best shots from last week Photos by Emanuel Wallace, Jon Lichtenberg*, Scott Sandberg**, Joe Kleon***

Spinnin’ @ Recess 2 at Red Space

Foosball is the devil @ Recess 2 at Red Space

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Never miss a beat!

See more pics @ clevescene.com Exile in Guyville @ Liz Phair at Goodyear Theater***

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Share your best shots with SCENE – just tag or mention us! ™ @ clevescene t @ cleveland_scene ` #LEVELAND3CENE s CLEVESCENE

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| clevescene.com m | May 4 - 10, 2016

FREE EVENT three stages OF live local and national bands, plus vendors and a complete kidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s zone. Look for beer & craft cocktails on Erie Street, and, of course, ribs from participating downtown Willoughby restaurants & national vendors.

FEATURE

GOING PLAIN One of the rarest religious experiences you can have in America is joining the Amish — fewer than 200 have done so since 1950 and stayed in the church.

Two Ohioans explain why they did just that and help answer the question: Can an outsider ever truly become Amish?

By Kelsey Osgood THE ROAD THAT RUNS THROUGH the main village of Berlin, Ohio, only about 90 minutes south of Cleveland, is called “Amish Country Byway” for its unusual number of non-automotive travelers. And it’s true that driving down it, you’ll have to slow down for the horse-drawn buggies that clog the right lane. But those seeking the “real” Amish experience in downtown Berlin might be disappointed. It’s more Disney than devout: a playground for tourists full of ersatz Amish “schnuck” (Pennsylvania Dutch for “cute”) stores selling woven baskets and postcards of bucolic farm scenes.

You only see the true Holmes County, which is home to the largest population of Amish-Mennonites in the world, when you turn off Route 62 and venture into the rolling green hills interrupted periodically by tiny towns with names like Charm and Big Prairie. You’ll likely lose service on your cell phone just as the manure smell starts to permeate the air. On my visit last summer, I saw Amish people — groups of children sporting round straw hats, the young women in their distinctive long dresses — spilling out of family barns, where church services are held, in the distance. The Amish don’t have any spiritual attachment to a geographical location, the way Jews have to Jerusalem or Mormons

to Salt Lake City; this spot, along with Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is probably the closest they come to an idea of God’s Country.

Earlier that morning, I was introduced to Alex Samuelson, a baby-faced 31-year-old member of the Beachy Amish-Mennonite faith who, along with his wife Rebecca, would be my guide for the day. Alex suggested that he might be better equipped to drive and he was right: He glided along the twisting back roads and gave me an orientation to the area not even the all-knowing Siri could have provided (especially considering the spotty service). As a Beachy Amish-Mennonite, Alex is permitted to drive — the church is what Alex calls “car-type” — but adheres to prohibitions against television, popular music and limitations on the internet.

(These prohibitions vary somewhat from congregation to congregation, although certain restrictions — like not owning televisions — are uniform throughout Beachy society.) Like all Mennonite and Amish groups, Beachy doctrine is firmly Anabaptist, which means that they don’t accept infant or childhood baptisms. They also believe in keeping themselves separate from the world, which is one motivation behind their Plain garb, although it’s worth noting that the style of dress

also differs between congregations.

I have arranged to meet the couple because they offer insight into one of the rarest religious experiences in America: They are established converts to an Amish-Mennonite group. It is not immediately apparent that they were not born into the culture. Alex and Rebecca look, to be simple about it, like your average Amish couple: Alex has the stereotypical facial hair of an Amish man (beard, but no mustache, a prohibition which harkens back to the days when mustaches were associated with the military) and Rebecca wears an ankle length cotton-polyester dress, her hair in a neat bun underneath her white gauze cap. Alex is an expert in Plain life because he spent years adapting to it, but also because he has a doctorate in rural sociology, and so spends much of his time studying his adopted culture, or “thinking about Plain People,” as he puts it. (He relaxes, I’ll learn later, by tending to his many aquariums.) Because of his work, he’s accustomed to interviewing others about their religious identification, which meant that frequently during the drive, the conversation swerved toward my conversion to Orthodox Judaism. When the ball came back to my court, I asked Alex what it felt like when he first attended a Mennonite church when he was 18, after a year

of nurturing a fascination with the culture. “It’s like walking into a room full of celebrities,” he said. “You’ve thought about these people for so long, and they just feel so inaccessible and remote and just, here you are! They’re all around you!”

Reverent, giddy, almost lustful: It’s the way you’d expect a teenage girl to talk about her favorite pop star, and yet it’s a tone I’ve come to expect among a certain group of people when you invoke the name of the Amish.

Before the internet, these “wishful Amish” wrote emotional missives to newspaper editors in areas with large Plain populations; one man I spoke to, who publishes a series of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania guidebooks, composed a form letter so as to minimize the time he spent replying to such requests. Now, the wishful Amish have dedicated internet forums (ironically) on which they write with the feverishness of the unrequited lover about their long-held hope to get close to the aloof objects of their spiritual desire.

Many say they’ve wanted to become Amish for “as long as [they] could remember,” though most of them say they have only seen Amish people on a few occasions and don’t know much, if anything at all, about Amish theology. Some talk about wanting to | clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

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FEATURE find an Amish partner; others, about the fear they won’t be accepted into the community because they are single parents, or divorced, or have tattoos or once dabbled in drugs. Many are hesitant that they won’t be able to fully adjust and so wonder if it might be possible to stay with an Amish family for a week or two, just to try out the lifestyle. Although a few commenters say they’ve taken the initiative to make their own lives more Plain — given up television, say, or started to dress more modestly — most of them appear to be banking on integration into the community to transform them, like alcoholics who decide to wait until detox before examining the deeper motivations behind their drinking.

The thread that runs through all the testimonies is one of dissatisfaction

uncommon, which makes sense: who actually wants to give up modern convenience for more than a week or so? For those who have made the leap, the lived experience of conversion deviates greatly from the fantasies moving across web pages every day; it’s harder, crueler, slower than the hopeful could imagine. It’s also not a static state; for most converts, the emergence of a perfect Amish self never truly occurs.

But we couldn’t get too deep into a discussion of conversion yet, because Alex began turning the car into the parking lot of the converted elementary school building where his congregation holds services every week. We were late for church.

Born in 1984 in Loudon County, Virginia, a verdant area long favored by vintners at the base of the Blue Mountain, Alex was raised in a nominally Christian family. His dad

No 49 days spent under a fig tree, contemplating the nature of meaning.

No vision of God’s Kingdom as a rural compound full of happy celibates.

No, Alex’s awakening was gradual, and in those early days, inconsistent.

He didn’t, in other words, connect his distaste for cursing and Polo Ralph Lauren shirts to a burgeoning religiosity, nor did he feel any paralyzing guilt at abandoning his children’s Bible in favor of his DOS video games. But his curiosity about religious life was strong enough that when his younger sister’s bus driver, whom the girl had befriended, offered to take the two children to his Southern Baptist Church one Sunday, Alex agreed. Alex’s sister lost interest after a few Sunday school classes, but Alex, then 13, was hooked. Every Sunday, he’d grab one of the free doughnuts and then head to Sunday school. A year later, he was baptized.

As a teenager, he was involved

“I think, while I was gone, while I was out, the world changed. It’s not the same world anymore. I haven’t actually adapted very well. People don’t cook their own food.

Mothers don’t raise their own babies. People don’t teach their own children anything.”

— Jan Edwards — at times, near disgust — with modern society. “As I see it, the world at large is doomed,” writes a single mother of five on the informational site Amish America. One word is consistently invoked to describe Amish life: “perfect.”

The wishful Amish will do what most obsessed people do these days: they’ll Google around a lot, devouring whatever articles or listicles they can get their hands on. During this selfdirected study, many will come across the website Alex founded back in 2005, when he was attending college in his home state of Virginia. (He’s currently employed as an adjunct professor of rural sociology at a local university.)

Alex built his site in order to provide access to rare documents related to Anabaptist history and culture he had discovered in his campus library (titles include “Amish-Mennonite Barns in Madison County, Ohio: The Persistence of Traditional Form Elements” and “Caesar and the Meidung [shunning].”)

“Then I began getting out-of-theblue requests from people who were interested in visiting a church, so after a while it was more directed toward an informative website,” he says.

Amish conversion is extremely

14

owned his own exterior housing repair business; the family lived on 10 acres in an old Victorian home, and attended church on Christmas and Easter some years, but otherwise didn’t talk much about religion. His family, which included his younger sister, was a mostly happy one, although beset by what Alex calls the “typical American plagues”: sibling rivalry, discord between his mother and father, his father drinking too much. To the latter, Alex was especially sensitive.

In second grade, Alex began to experience what he now refers to as “God’s early promptings,” although he didn’t see them that way at the time.

He developed an instinctual aversion to designer clothing, particularly shirts with garish logos on the chests. “I felt like it sold me out to something else I didn’t want to sell myself out to,” he said, as I mentally compare this to my unholy childhood yearning for Adidas Sambas. His friends were starting to swear and share “bad ideas” on the playground, and Alex briefly dabbled, but then decided foul language was unequivocally wrong, so he vowed to clean his up.

No voice from the heavens, beseeching him to recognize Jesus.

| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

in school theater, history club, and Civil War reenactment. Eventually, he took a job that took his love of costuming — a core difference between Amish and other Christians — to a new level. The summer before his senior year in high school, he worked at Harpers Ferry National Park, a historical village located where the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers meet.

At Harpers Ferry, Alex dressed in period garb (he had two costumes, one an 1860s shopkeeper and the other a Union Army private) and gave tours to groups of visitors, including families of Conservative Mennonites.

“I started to become obsessed with their appearance,” he remembers. “My friends learned this and they would tell me when Mennonites appeared and I would go on break, grab a root beer and find them and just kind of be near them.” When he tells me this, I remember how I used to similarly side up to Hasidim on the New York City subway in my pre-conversion days, hoping that sheer proximity would allow me to glean some spiritual energy from them.

Around that time, he was simultaneously examining the practices of the Baptist Church to

which he belonged, mostly because he felt that no one there could answer the questions he had about certain Biblical mandates, or perhaps they didn’t care enough to ask those questions themselves, which was worse. For example, he found himself particularly struck by a passage in Corinthians that states a woman should have her head covered when praying.

Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head — it is the same as having her head shaved. For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head.

Alex thought the teaching was pretty clear, and was unmoved when his pastor told him it was antiquated convention. What was the point of believing something if there was nothing you could do to actually show it? What had become of modesty or manners between genders, of embodying the values you espoused, otherwise known as “bearing witness,” in Plain terminology? Such precepts were valued in Victorian times, and in the pre-Civil War South of Harper’s Ferry.

But in this era, in his world, who cared about these things? Only the Plain.

Up until that summer at Harpers Ferry, Alex’s knowledge of the Amish was derived solely, like any ’90s child, from the Weird Al Yankovic song “Amish Paradise,” and from the few times his family drove by them while on their way to drop him off at summer camp in Northern Pennsylvania when he was a kid.

But he entered his senior year of high school after the Harpers Ferry summer with the Plain people on his mind. He bought Twenty Most Asked Questions About the Amish and Mennonites and “hauled it around with [him] everywhere;” he’d occasionally wear button-down shirts and slacks to school and when other students would ask him if he had some sort of presentation that day, he’d cheerfully respond, “Nope, I’m just dressing Mennonite!” (His wife, too, began to sneak out of her house in Plain dress late in high school, much to her parents’ chagrin. In college, she made her own dresses based on pictures of Amish women in a book she checked out of the campus library.)

There were no Amish communities near where Alex lived, but a friend of a friend lived in the hills outside Charlottesville and told him there was a Mennonite Church down the road

| clevescene.com m | May 4 - 10, 2016

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| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

FEATURE from her parents’ house. One Sunday, he woke up early to drive two hours down to a church not far from Free Union, Virginia (population: 193) and attended his first Mennonite service.

Does love inevitably draw us further into our loved one’s orbit, or can affection thrive from a distance?

Can you admire something without eventually wanting to imitate or even become it? And if you do try to become it, can you ever really belong?

Or do converts always feel a little like anthropologists, knowing that if things ever got too tribal for their tastes, they could dust off their old clothes and take up residence in their old lives?

These are the kinds of questions that arise when one hears the stories of religious conversion, especially when the conversion requires a complete overhaul of one’s life. Many idolize the Amish world, but few actually infiltrate it. According to the 2013 book The Amish by scholars Donald Kraybill, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner, and Steven Nolt, only 75 people have joined an Amish church and stayed since 1950.

One researcher estimates there may be as many as 150 to 200 converts living Plain lives today, though not all will stay Amish in the long run.

It’s unlikely, in other words, that the wishful Amish writing blog posts about desperately wanting to become Plain will ever do much more than that, let alone seriously pursue conversion.

Still, an intrepid bunch of spiritual seekers manages to go the distance.

There are a few “celebrities” among them, like David Luthy, a Notre Dame graduate who was on his way to join the priesthood when he decided to move to a settlement in Ontario and devote his life to documenting Amish history, or Marlene Miller, Holmes County resident and author of the memoir Called to Be Amish: My Journey from Head Majorette to the Old Order, who married her husband while he was living outside the community. Miller, who has now been Amish for almost 50 years, raised 10 children in the church, but will still twirl a baton to amuse visitors.

A convert’s success can be aided by the openness of the community that he or she chooses to join, as some settlements, like those in Unity, Maine, or Oakland, Maryland, which is the oldest settlement in that state, are traditionally more welcoming to seekers who may show up there.

Others, like the more established ones

in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and Holmes, Wayne, and Guernsey Counties, in Ohio, are less likely to accept outsiders.

For 14 years, Jan Edwards, now in her late 60s and living near Columbus, did what many considered the impossible: She, an outsider, lived and worked amongst the Swartzentruber Amish. Whereas the Beachy AmishMennonites believe in proselytizing, using certain technologies to their advantage, and being generally congenial to strangers, the Swartzentruber Amish are more stereotypically xenophobic and hostile to change. They’re wary of others to the point of chilliness, disdainful of “loud” colors, loathe to speak in English, and proud of their cultural and genetic impenetrability. What is different between Jan and Alex —what her “mistake” was, if one is inclined to view her Amish life as indeed a game that she could have “won” — is the element of faith, or, in Jan’s case, the lack thereof.

Jan Edwards was living with her husband and three young children in her hometown of Akron when the race riots occurred in 1968. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated, as had John and Bobby Kennedy; the nation was on edge, and Akron wasn’t spared.

One night, someone threw a Molotov cocktail threw the front window of Jan’s grandparents’ home, where they had lived for thirty years. They survived, but her grandfather’s leg was badly burned. Her grandparents never returned to collect their belongings.

After this, Jan and her husband decided it was time to get out.

“We moved to a country place. [It was] kind of exciting, like maybe we were going to go on a vacation or something.”

But life in Guernsey County, nearly 20 miles from the nearest shop, wasn’t easy. Jan was learning to farm on the job, while her husband was still commuting to work a long distance from the homestead. Even with his income, they struggled to make ends meet. The Amish lived in close proximity and Jan started to stop in to buy eggs or honey. Contrary to popular conception, she found her Swartzentruber neighbors to be very warm. “The Amish were downright friendly. Probably because they were so starved for ... you know, like the old pioneers, they’d finally see somebody coming up the landing, and they’d throw open up the door. ‘Come on in!’ Even if it was a stranger, they just missed people. They just wanted to talk to somebody and exchange an idea or a thought. A howdy-do or something.”

She and her husband were

fascinated — envious, even — of the way in which the Amish seemed to have the living-off-the-land thing down pat. Whenever Jan would go to an Amish family’s house, she would watch them closely: the way they cooked their food, the way they raised chickens, the way they chopped timber.

“You’d observe all that was going on, and take all that back with you when you go home and try to see if you’d learned anything,” she said. “I guess we were copycats to an extent.”

I went to meet Jan on a cold October Monday some months after my trip to Holmes County. Leading up to my visit, she hadn’t seemed terribly enthusiastic about me stopping in — “This is a very busy household,” she wrote in a letter — perhaps because she’d already told her story a few times, to a couple of local newspapers and on the PBS television series American Experience. But once I am there, drinking her freshly brewed coffee and enjoying some outof-this-world strawberry crumble, she seems to enjoy being faced with some tough questions, and can, like Alex, talk about the appeal of Amish life without reducing it to a starry-eyed romanticism, or, in her case, leaning solely on bitterness or soppy nostalgia.

In person, Jan gives off a host of contradictory vibes: spry and world-weary, wise and undiscerning, forthcoming and guarded. Her house is dimly lit and decorated with the odd tchotchke; some of her paintings of Amish life — equal parts charming and eerie, like a lot of art brut — lean against the walls. She has a gaggle of grandkids and great-grandkids who spend a lot of time with her and wreak happy havoc on the place. But for now, she talks of her life with the Amish, and she sounds like she’s been to war.

“I couldn’t do it again, because I was there too long, maybe. I saw too much and heard too much. I became aware.”

“It” was a slow progression into life with the Swartzentrubers, one that unfolded over the course of a decade, during which period the whole brood — Jan had six more children over the years there — began to dress Plainly, attend church services, and learn Pennsylvania Dutch, the lingua franca of the Old Order. Her children attended Amish schools, and the family participated in barn raisings, funerals and quilting circles. Eventually, she and her husband formally joined the church. Most of her children at this point were still too young to be baptized, as Amish don’t usually accept a baptism before the age of 16.

Mostly, she joined because she feared that she would never be fully accepted as one of them unless she

did. She did her best to tow the line and “reject everything that could be possibly rejected,” like toasters and windows on her buggy and the news.

She could chat in Pennsylvania Dutch to the ladies after church. “I had figured out how to grow everything and wash everything and do all the household and farm kind of things.”

She never used bright greens or deep purples in her quilt. She was in the very ordered zone. Besides, Jan had never seen the theological difference between herself and the Amish as a huge barrier — she and her husband were Methodist and Baptist, respectively, and “conservative, I guess” — so she didn’t really consider joining an act of religious renunciation and/or rebirth. The Amish were Christian, and they didn’t do “bad stuff,” and that was common enough ground for her. Most of the Amish people she knew, particularly the women, couldn’t point to the scriptural passages that were the basis for their customs; they just did as they had always done. But this resigned attitude didn’t disturb Jan too much at the time.

“It’s in the background, somewhere else. Because the day-to-day life is so engulfing. You’re just trying to keep warm and get enough to eat and all the social interaction in a settlement,” she says. “You’re just totally busy from bedtime to bedtime ... it’s not until way down the line that you think, ‘Oh, hmm.’”

After she joined the church, she remained in the zone for only a year or so. Like a frog in a pot of boiling water, she realized that the heat had been turning up while she’d been distracted.

Her older children were teenagers now and spending more times with their friends. They brought home tales of rebellion that are de rigueur for the secular world, but surprising in such a cloistered one: drinking, drugs, a little sexual experimentation. Jan and her husband hadn’t ever considered that this happened in the Amish world; they thought maybe the other parents didn’t know, and they should all get together and talk about how to solve the problem.

As even-keeled as she is in person, Jan had never really forsaken the independent part of herself that spoke out when she deemed it necessary.

“Am I a feminist? I don’t know that. I don’t even know what a feminist is,” she says. “But I have strong opinions.

And would act on them.” Whether that meant insisting she get the things she needed for the house — new plates from an auction sale, thread for darning, flour for baking — or informing on her sons’ friends, she was prepared to do it.

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17

FEATURE But there was the rub: The other parents didn’t want to know what their teenage kids were up to. To confront the problem would be to acknowledge it, which was anathema to Amish sensibility. Better to just chalk it up to kids being kids, and hope that it passes.

“But the consequences of that is disastrous,” she notes, “It’s just disastrous what happens to a lot of people. And that disillusioned us.”

Meanwhile, Jan’s eldest son, Paul, married a bishop’s daughter from down near Holmes County. From the moment she arrived, it was clear Paul’s wife was emotionally distressed, though Jan could never determine the genesis of her unhappiness. She told the family she had had a miscarriage — Jan isn’t convinced she actually did — and couldn’t help around the farm as a result. Instead, she stayed in bed for two months, occasionally waking Jan, whose youngest was 2 at the time, in the middle of the night to “pull pain from her arms and legs” in a Reiki-esque fashion. During this time, she asked her sister to come live with her, and the two would often faint simultaneously, basically on command;

once, Jan and her husband found them both lying on the floor, so they took them to the emergency room, but the doctors said they were fine. In later years, she’d hide under the chicken coop for hours when upset, or give her children vodka to drink to keep them subdued.

But despite her eccentricities, there was a sense among the Edwards family that they had to behave in front of her, because if they did something untoward — say, converse in English as opposed to Pennsylvania Dutch at the dinner table — she might tell someone. Eventually, the strain of catering to her whims and keeping up appearances became too much, and Paul and his wife moved to a rented farm on a different plot of land. After that, Jan and her husband missed two church services (Old Order Amish hold church every other Sunday); when they didn’t attend for the third one, they were excommunicated.

Overnight, what had been their communal and personal identity was swept out from under them.

That was around 26 years ago, and Jan is still struggling to adjust to life outside the Amish; her husband passed away in 2011. “I think, while I was gone, while I was out, the world changed. It’s not the same world anymore. I haven’t actually adapted

very well. People don’t cook their own food. Mothers don’t raise their own babies. People don’t teach their own children anything,” she says, her head tilted slightly downward toward the wooden kitchen table. There are many things she misses about Amish life: the camaraderie, the stillness at night, with no passing traffic or vibrating phones or even lamps to slice through the darkness. But it’s not like she spends all her time pining for the past, either; there’s a lot of stuff she doesn’t miss, like having to stifle the smallest expressions of her individuality, or sitting through incomprehensible church services in High German. It’s not that one place or another would be better; it’s that no one world is truly a home, not anymore.

“I absolutely don’t fit!” she says with a laugh, and in my head, I fill in the obvious clarifier: anywhere. I start to feel sad for her, until I notice she’s still smiling. “But you get over it.

And maybe fitting in isn’t a good goal anyway.”

The Sunday in May that I spent with Alex and Rebecca isn’t the culmination of years of pining for Amish-Mennonites, but still, I had, upon entering the church, a moment not unlike the one Alex described having 14 years prior: I became

tense, excited and in a state of neardisbelief. Like many Americans, I carry with me preconceived notions of Amish-Mennonite people, and one of these is that Amish-Mennonites exist only when they are being gazed upon by outsiders. Of course I know intellectually that this isn’t true, but some part of me has absorbed this conception of the Amish as relics, and their homelands as being, like Plymouth Village in Massachusetts or Colonial Williamsburg — or Harpers Ferry, for that matter —essentially historical reenactments, meant not for the people doing the reenacting, but for the visitors.

A room full of Amish-Mennonites in their trademark garb is enough to disabuse one of that notion. The first moment, you might think that the mannequins in a display at the American Museum of Natural History (if they had a dedicated Anabaptist Wing) have suddenly come to life; then, a child wiggles in her seat, and a person quietly clears his throat, and you realize these are flesh and blood people. Here you are! They’re all around you!

Here’s what I see: services are held in a large, unadorned room that must have been in its previous incarnation a cafegymnatorium. On the left side sit the men, and on the right, the women.

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19

FEATURE There is a long mirror on one of the walls, which I deem noteworthy. Down the middle of the room — bisecting the genders— an aisle leads to a small stage where a man stands at a lectern addressing the group. I am too busy soaking in the visuals to really listen to what he’s saying, and his voice is so quiet and measured that it doesn’t disrupt my reverie. The women are all wearing long, monochromatic dresses, and the odd one dons a sweater; the palette covers the primary colors, but no garment includes more than one pigment, or has any flourishes of any kind, like a little lace on the sleeves or a Peter Pan collar. No one wears jewelry. The adults briefly glance back at me, the resident outsider, whereas the kids turn and stare at me with deep, wide eyes like tiny lakes.

Every last one of them is stunningly beautiful.

“There was a church picnic yesterday,” Rebecca writes (in immaculate handwriting) on her notepad, which she then passes to me.

“That’s why everyone is sunburnt.”

When the devotional is over, the group rises and sings a hymn entitled “Our God, He Is Alive.” The

a lot of discussion about loving our mothers, who are the foundations of the household though they might act more behind the scenes than their hirsute counterparts. I can hear the tut-tutting of my ardently secular peers in my head — the patriarchy silences the Mennonite women! — and attune my ears to anything that might offend liberal sensibilities, but not much comes up. One speaker comments that the society is crumbling, but you hear that from all camps these days; another talks about our duty to love our fellow human beings regardless of their politics, race, or religious belief, which I think we can all get behind. At one point, a group of church ministers reads a letter of recommendation they had drafted on behalf of a former member (when a member moves, they need such a letter to join a new church).

They ask the congregation if everyone deems the letter acceptable. Everyone silently agrees that it is.

Once during the service, the congregation kneels down for prayer; this we do with our backs to the lectern and our elbows on the seat of our chairs, like we are children saying, “Now I lay me down to sleep” before getting into bed. I sneak a few furtive glances around the room, and then look up to Alex, who is kneeling

“I mean, you should see her daven,” Elizabeth said, using the Yiddish word for pray. “It’s incredible.”

After church services, Alex and Rebecca take me to pick up my rental car, and then I follow them to their abode, which is a small house sandwiched between two other small houses, just on the other side of Berlin’s main drag. Rebecca goes into the kitchen to finish preparing lunch (chicken, applesauce, coffee) while Alex and I settle in the living room to talk about adjusting to Amish-Mennonite life. Their home is so close to the road that I can hear through the open window the clip-clop of horses’ hooves as buggies approach and then pass outside, which they do often. The space contains seven enormous aquariums filled with tropical fish; there are lights throughout, but none of them are turned on, and an old laptop sits closed on a table. A small bookshelf houses a handful of Christian books, as well as a few authored by Alex himself, including a coffee table photography book of Amish-Mennonite churches, as well as his taxonomy of the different styles of head coverings worn by various Plain communities. As I flip through a copy, lingering momentarily on a photo spread, he explains that he believes the cap (think bonnet) is

In a way, Alex has come to realize what the wishful Amish of the internet haven’t fully grasped yet: that the Amish universe and its denizens are not perfect. They don’t have a vested interest in your quality of life — spiritual, technological, or otherwise — anymore than you do in theirs. singing is soft and a capella, as Amish-Mennonites frown on musical instruments and solo performances, but the hymn itself has a quick tempo and a not-uncomplicated call-andanswer chorus, which the parishioners — who don’t learn how to read music — handle with aplomb.

There is a God (There is a God), He is alive (He is alive) In Him we live (In Him we live) and we survive (and we survive) From dust our God (From dust our God) created man (created man) He is our God (He is our God), the great I Am (the great I Am)!

Church service runs maybe two hours, which isn’t trying for me, because I spend at least that long in synagogue every Saturday. There are devotionals, hymns, moments of silent prayer; it’s Mother’s Day, so there’s

20

in a back nook, where there is built-in bleacher-style seating. His eyes are closed and his hands are clasped. I wondered how natural prayer feels to him, how fervent or lyrical or intimate in tone his outpouring is, but his face betrays no fiery mental activity.

He looks serene. For a person raised religious, prayer can become routine, even robotic, but for the convert it can also be understood as a skill to be honed, and your facility in it can come to measure, for yourself and those around you, your worth as a Jew or an Amish-Mennonite or a Muslim or whatever the case may be.

Watching him there in church, I think of one time, when a friend and I — both studying to convert to Judaism — were discussing an acquaintance of ours, a woman who had converted as a teenager and had at that point been living an Orthodox life in Boro Park, Brooklyn, for around 10 years.

| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

superior to the cloth style (think scarf).

“There’s quite an undercurrent now for the church to be moving toward the cloth style,” he says. “And given that the churches hold such a revered place in the Plain peoples’ lifestyle, is the switch in covering style indicative of a shift away from the church’s importance in people’s lives?”

These might seem like petty details to an outsider, but for Alex, no aspect of life is too casual to be deemed irrelevant to Plainness. This is actually not unique to him —whereas the Amish are legitimately above all the consumerist silliness that characterizes so much of American culture, they are also in other ways more mindful of aesthetic choices than the non-Plain masses. As academic Sue Trollinger puts it in her book Selling the Amish: The Tourism of Nostalgia, “[The Amish] know better than most Americans that it matters how you

style your hair, the sort of pants you put on each morning, what kind of vehicle you drive to work.”

At 18, Alex enrolled at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, so as to be within driving distance of the church. He generally preferred the church to EMU, where he was getting a degree in geography; the school was too mainstream — “no distinctiveness whatsoever” — for Alex’s taste. He became active in the community, attending Wednesday evening and Sunday morning services faithfully, and eventually joining the youth group and the choir. He adopted a more conservative uniform, though other than that, a lot of his behavior already conformed to church standards, because he had been working since high school to give up movies, the radio, involvement in sports and television. (The last show he watched was The Simpsons, which was tough to let go of. He looks momentarily enticed when I tell him it’s still airing.)

Two years after he began attending, he formally joined. But even over the three years of membership that followed, he worried that he was doomed to always be a misfit. For one, he often felt like the social bull in the china shop of Amish-Mennonite life.

He projected his voice in choir, spoke up in meetings, and deviated from the norm in ways the community didn’t understand, like maintaining his interest in classical music. “Plain People have prescribed forms of deviance,” he explains. “If you’re going to get an instrument and be naughty, you’re going to get a guitar, but the flute? It created too much question for them.” Because he hadn’t grown up in the culture, Alex couldn’t pick up on the way the group subtly expressed their disapproval — a pregnant pause, say, or a swift glance, but never a verbal rebuke — and often felt like he was the last to know when he was doing something unacceptable.

“When I did violate some sort of norm, everyone else already knew it, and I was just set back from really being accepted by these people as one of them.”

Conflict also arose because, Schoenberg flute solos aside, Alex was in many ways a little more conservative than the group. While church officials were discussing abolishing certain sartorial codes — say, ditching a full button-up shirt for men in favor of shirts with one or two buttons at the collar–Alex was dressing consistently more conservatively. Sometimes, he would wear suspenders, and the other men would brusquely inform him that they dropped that requirement years ago, as if piqued they were

being outdone by a new kid. He was always trying to organize evening activities for the male youth — Bible study, seminars on mission work abroad — only to find out the kids were planning to go sledding instead.

After one evening when turnout was particularly disappointing, Alex was so depressed he stopped attending that church for the next three months, service-hopping from one Plain congregation to the next, hoping in vain to find somewhere that checked all his boxes. He started underperforming at his job as a transportation planner. Doubt consumed him: Do I really want to be with these people? Do these people even really want to be who they are?

If the keepers of these things don’t even value them, then what value do these things have?

The move to Ohio in 2009, precipitated by a scholarship to study for a Ph.D. in sociology at Ohio State University, proved re-invigorating.

“It was really a chance to begin taking control again of what I want to do amongst these people. How I want to be amongst these people.

Put some of what made me me back in middle school and high school to work in this setting.” In Ohio, he did join a new church, but with a greater understanding of how he would have

to compartmentalize in order to be both his autonomous, individual self and his devout Amish-Mennonite self. That old-self found its outlet in academia, whereas the devout self prays, works to yield to the authority of the group, and regularly gives speeches to the church youth about cherishing their heritage. It’s harder for them to value Plain faith and culture, he knows, because they, like most people, find it easy to take for granted what’s always been.

In a way, Alex has come to realize what the wishful Amish of the internet haven’t fully grasped yet: that the Amish universe and its denizens are not perfect. They don’t have a vested interest in your quality of life — spiritual, technological, or otherwise — anymore than you do in theirs. When the wishful Amish express disappointment at this — “Why don’t they seek to try to save this terrible world?” as one internet commenter opines — they are ignoring the fact that the Plainfrom-birth are not operating as full-time beacons of goodness, but as people whose “private convulsive selves,” as William James wrote, more often than not trump ideology.

They’re also not spending every moment musing on the purpose of community and separatism. They’re

just humans: They get tired of their lives, they skirt convention, they just want to go sledding when they should be reading. It takes someone like Alex, acutely aware of the socializing forces at work on them, enamored of and devoted to the faith they all share, a part of and yet a stranger in the community, to remind them of what they have.

Suddenly, I’m thinking about something I saw in church earlier that morning: In front of me sat a girl, maybe 10 or 12, a white cap pleated neatly around her light brown bun like a cupcake wrapper.

A few times, she reached her skinny arm back, drew a silver pin from deep within her tightly coiled hair, moved the pin a fraction of a millimeter, and pushed it back into place. A tiny motion, a meaningless one maybe, but I felt like I was watching a dance savant, moving without thinking about the next step, or about any of the technicality behind her piece, unaware, in many ways, that she was dancing at all.

This is the kind of cultural fluency Alex always wanted, but can never have. This is the warmth of effortless identity people like Alex and me will never know. But that’s okay: Though we’ll stumble over the wordings of our invocations sometimes, we’ll

make up for it in the love we feel for our little worlds, and in the ways in which, as perennial outsiders, we can proclaim their worth with a special sort of authority.

“In the early days, I would have wanted to hide the fact that I didn’t grow up this way. Now I embrace it.

Now it’s part of me.” At this, he grins and opens his arms, palms out, as if to say, here I am.

Author’s Note: “Alex” and “Rebecca” are not the real names of two people interviewed. They felt strongly that they should not be identified by name out of respect for their faith’s general belief in the body above the individual.

This article was originally published by Longreads.com in partnership with Atlas Obscura. It is reprinted here with permission.

Kelsey Osgood is the author of How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia, which was chosen for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program in 2013. She lives in London, where she is at work on a book about religious conversion.

scene@clevescene.com t@cleveland_scene

| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

21

MAY 1 - 7

FASHIONWEEKCLEVELAND.COM

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| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

everything you should do this week

GET OUT

Photo courtesy of Otomo Yoshihide

WED

5/04

MUSIC

ArtSong Last year’s FireFish Arts Festival aimed to “enhance economic and civic revitalization in downtown Lorain and all of Lorain County through visionary arts events, pioneering arts programming, youth education and workforce development initiatives.”

The festival will return in September; for now, the Lorain Historical Society and the FireFish Festival have teamed up to host ArtSong, a fundraising event offering a “one-of-a-kind multisensual experience” featuring music

by Grammy Award-winning pianist Angelin Chang and video projections by visual artist Kevin Jackson. The event takes place at 7 p.m. at the Lorain Historical Society Carnegie Center. Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres will be served before the concert begins. Attendees can explore the recently renovated Carnegie Center, and the second floor will be reshaped into a musical art installation created

by Chang and Jackson. Tickets for ArtSong are $35 and are available online or by phone. (Jeff Niesel) 329 West 10th St., Lorain, 440-245-2563, lorainhistory.org/events.

MUSIC

CIM/CWRU Joint Music Program Now in its fifth season, this monthly concert series places young musicians from the Cleveland Institute of Music and Case Western Reserve University in the galleries of the Cleveland Museum of Art, where they perform “mixed programs of chamber music” for “a unique and intimate experience.”

The concerts begin at 6 p.m. and last for about an hour. Admission is free.

(Niesel) 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7350, clevelandart.org.

BEER

Hoppin’ Frog Hoppy Hour Much like the Fat Head’s tasting room in Middleburg Heights, the Hoppin’ Frog Tasting Room in Akron is in a non-descript strip of storage facilities and warehouses, but step inside and you’ll find a cozy tasting room with a huge array of the brewery’s wonderful libations. The place features “hoppy hour” every weekday from 3 to 7 p.m.

Tonight, the brewers visit the tasting room from 5 to 7 p.m. While they don’t fill growlers, you can drink bottles on site or take ’em to go. The place

raise some serious cash to help the cause. Held from 6 to 9 tonight at Vosh Nightclub in Lakewood, the event features various games like bidding to win a “bucket of booze”, trying the odds at the 50/50 heads or tails bead game and requesting songs through donations to the dueling pianos.

All proceeds support the Epilepsy Association. Tickets are $85; visit the Epilepsy Association website, below, to purchase. (Niesel) 1414 Riverside Dr., Lakewood, 216-767-5202, epilepsyinfo.org.

Otomo Yoshihide makes his Cleveland debut at the Transformer Station.

See: Monday.

THUR

5/05

SPORTS

also offers a “Hoppin’ Frog Rare & Vintage” list as well as a guest bottle list. And you can order from a limited food menu too. (Niesel) 1680-F Waterloo Rd., Akron, 234-525-3764, hoppinfrog.com/tasting-room.

SPOKEN WORD

Cleveland Stories Dinner Party The Music Box Supper Club plays host tonight to Cleveland Stories Dinner Party, a weekly series that pairs fine food with storytelling. The series aims to help raise awareness of the mission of the Western Reserve Historical Society’s new Cleveland History Center by “bring(ing) to life some of the fun, interesting stories about Cleveland’s past — from sports, to rock ’n’ roll, to Millionaire’s Row,” as it’s put in a press release. Each week will feature a guest speaker and a custom prix fixe menu — a full three-course meal for only $20. (The talk is free, with no cover charge.) Dinner is served at 6 p.m., and the storytelling starts at 7:30 p.m. Tonight, John Grabowski, Ph.D., discusses stories from Cleveland’s “radical past.” The menu includes borsht, beef stroganoff and Neapolitan ice cream. (Niesel) 1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com.

ART

Drink & Draw Social Club Twice each month, Great Lakes Brewing Company hosts Cleveland’s Drink & Draw Social Club. The event is organized by the Rust Belt Monster Collective and sponsored by Carol and John’s Comic Book Shop. Drink & Draws are an opportunity for artists of all levels to drink, draw, socialize/

network and collaborate in a very relaxed and welcoming environment.

Events take place on the first and third Wednesday of every month, which just happens to include tonight. At the end of each Drink &Draw, prizes are awarded for various superlatives. The drawing is free, the drinking will cost you. (Josh Usmani) 2516 Market Ave., 216-771-4404, greatlakesbrewing.com.

SPOKEN WORD

Keep Talking Keep Talking is an exciting storytellers program where locals can share their real-life experiences on a theme. This month’s theme is “That Was Not Supposed to Happen.” Stories range from the insightful and sad to the funny and bizarre. Held in the Happy Dog’s basement, the Underdog, the series is your chance to grab a drink and a dog while listening to some of your Cleveland neighbors amuse you with their tales. Tonight’s edition starts at 8 and costs $5.

(Patrick Stoops) 5801 Detroit Ave., 216-651-9474, happydogcleveland.com.

FUNDRAISER

Rockin’ the Keys for a Cause!

A non-profit corporation providing support for children, adults and families in Northeast Ohio impacted by epilepsy, the Epilepsy Foundation aims to “raise awareness in the community, provide education, advocacy and direct services that lead to an increased understanding of the disorder and to better management of the condition.” Rockin’ the Keys for a Cause, a dueling piano-themed event to benefit the agency, aspires to

Indians vs. Detroit Tigers The Indians’ second series against division rivals the Detroit Tigers, a team that features star infielder Miguel Cabrera, commences tonight at 6:10 at Progressive Field. The Tribe didn’t play stellar ball in the first few weeks of the season, but it still managed to split a series against the Red Sox and White Sox and win a series against the Tampa Bay Rays.

And the Tribe swept the Tigers in a series that took place in Detroit.

Tickets start at $13, and the first 10,000 fans get a free tote bag. (Niesel) 2401 Ontario St., 216-420-4487, clevelandindians.com.

NIGHTLIFE

Sting-O De Rayo Billed as “a fishy approach to Cinco de Mayo,” Sting-O De Rayo, tonight’s Adult Swim event at the Greater Cleveland Aquarium, will provide guests with the chance to sample assorted tequilas and explore the world of stingrays. In addition to serving up shots of tequila, organizers will also offer Mexican beers. The event runs from 6 to 9 p.m. Tickets are $40, $30 for pass holders and $20 for designated drivers. In addition, “pool passes” are available for purchase online as well — they grant access to any three nights in the Adult Swim series. (Niesel) 2000 Sycamore St., 216-862-8803, greaterclevelandaquarium.com.

MUSIC

Stravinsky’s Firebird Stravinsky’s The Firebird, a groundbreaking ballet, became an instant sensation when it premiered. Based on a Russian folk legend, it features “gorgeous melodies, fierce rhythmic intensity, and one of music’s most | clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

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GET OUT breathtaking finales.” Tonight at 7:30 at Severance Hall, the Cleveland Orchestra performs the composer’s 1945 suite from The Firebird. A preconcert talk takes place an hour before the concert in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Hall. Tickets start at $29 and performances repeat at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. tomorrow and at 8 p.m. on Saturday. (Niesel) 11001 Euclid Ave., 216-231-1111, clevelandorchestra.com.

FRI

This month, as part of Walk All Over Waterloo, the gallery invites Gent back to exhibit her most recent work. Hilary Gent: Properties of Water explores the qualities of water throughout the seasons. The opening reception starts at 5 p.m. There’s also plenty more to see in neighborhood’s many galleries and arts organizations. It’s free.

(Usmani) 15813 Waterloo Rd., 216-481-7722, marianeilartproject.com.

Paula Deen, high blood pressure, Superbowl commercials and Cuban Olympic swimmers. He’s also recently been involved in a Twitter exchange joking about transgender bathroom rights. He performs tonight at 7:30 and 10 at the Improv, where he has shows scheduled through Sunday.

Tickets range from $30 to $54. (Liz Trenholme) 1148 Main Ave., 216-696-IMPROV, clevelandimprov.com.

#SonicSesh

5/06

ART

Anila Rubiku As part of the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion program, Anila Rubiku has been living and working with the folks at Zygote Press. Rubiku’s work often explores issues of social and political injustice and inequality.

As part of her residency, she has been working with the community to develop new work created in (and about) Cleveland. That work will be exhibited at Zygote Press’ gallery from May 6 to May 27. The artist will be on hand for the opening reception today from 6 to 8 p.m. It’s free. (Usmani) 1410 East 30th St., 216-621-2900, www.zygotepress.com.

MAY 9

with Murlocs

July 23

24

with

LoNdoN SoUls

with

July 29

Thaddeus Anna Greene

7 pm Doors 8 pm Show

ART

Hilary Gent: Properties of Water Although she might be better known as director of Hedge Gallery, in-house events coordinator at 78th Street Studios and curator of artwork at Severance Hall, Hilary Gent is, at heart, a painter. Shortly after the Maria Neil Art Project opened on Waterloo, John Farina and Adam Tully invited Gent to exhibit a new series of work inspired by a fire nearby 78th Street Studios. The work was powerful, and it was clear that Gent was exploring themes of memory (and its deterioration) through abstraction.

ART

Linda Ayala Opening Reception Heights Arts’ Spotlight Gallery is hosting new work by Cleveland Heights-based artist and former Walleye Gallery co-founder Linda Ayala. Ayala is a graduate of Cleveland State University. Her small, intricate drawings are fun and imaginative with serious depth and character.

These smaller works are perfectly fit for the intimacy of Heights Arts’ 100-square-foot Spotlight Gallery.

Join the artist in the gallery from 6 to 9 tonight for the opening reception.

Meantime, Things That Fly, a group exhibition exploring themes of flight and aviation, remains on view in Heights Arts’ main gallery. Admission is free. (Usmani) 2175 Lee Rd., Cleveland Hts., 216-371-3457, heightsarts.org.

SAT

SPORTS

Gladiators vs. Jacksonville Sharks With the Cleveland Browns headed toward yet another season of rebuilding, why not get your football fix with the Cleveland Gladiators, our Arena Football team that has proved to be competitive? (Back in 2014, they made it to the championship game!)

Tonight at 7, the team squares off against the Jacksonville Sharks. It’s Go Pink night so players will wear pink in honor of breast cancer awareness.

Tickets start at $10. (Niesel) 1 Center Ct., 216-420-2000, theqarena.com.

The event takes place from 5 to 9 p.m.

(Niesel) 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7350, clevelandart.org.

TICKETS: $ 5.50 (including fees)

On sale now at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame box office, or online at rockhall.com

1100 Rock and Roll Blvd., Cleveland, OH 44114 COMEDY

NIGHTLIFE

D.L. Hughley Not many people can fire off quick, witty jokes like D.L. Hughley. He can take serious matters like race relations and spin them into sidesplitting satire, tiptoeing along the edge of offensive and hilarious, yet still remaining totally loveable. Nothing is off limits for this guy. Funny subjects include

MIX at CMA The Cleveland Museum of Art’s first Friday MIX Happy Hours take place tonight, and May’s theme is Riff. The Grammy-nominated Pedrito Martinez Group will lay down some Afro-Cuban grooves, and there will be a cash bar.

Food will be available for purchase in the museum’s restaurant and cafe.

| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

5/07

FUNDRAISER

4 Miles 4 Water Local nonprofit organization Drink Local, Drink Tap aims to “inspire individuals to recognize and solve our water issues.” To that end, it will host its third annual 4 Miles 4 Water event at 1:30 p.m. today at Edgewater Park. At the event, the organization will attempt to break the Guinness World Record for “largest number of people walking with a bottle of water on their head.” A water-focused festival with a 1-mile walk, 4-mile race and interactive and educational games for both adults and children follows the world record attempt. There will also be a vegan food court and a beer and wine garden. Local reggae act Carlos Jones & the PLUS Band will perform a free concert. Registration and details can be found on the website. (Niesel) 6500 Cleveland Memorial Shoreway NW., 4miles4water.org.

MUSIC

Dueling Pianos A self-described “high-energy piano playing machine,” Brandon Crawford teams up with Columbus, native Steve Paxton for Dueling Pianos, a show that features the two playing crowdpleasing songs from the rock and pop catalog. The show starts tonight at 8 at Club Velvet at the Hard Rock Rocksino Northfield Park. Tickets are $6. (Niesel) 10705 Northfield Rd., Northfield, 330-908-7793, hrrocksinonorthfieldpark.com.

HORSE RACING

Kentucky Derby Party JACK Thistledown prides itself on being the only place in the Cleveland area that offers live thoroughbred racing. As a result, it might be the best place to watch today’s Kentucky Derby. Today from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. the racino hosts a Kentucky Derby party that features live bands, a $1,000 ladies’ hat contest, a $2 million Swipe and Win promotion, and a special Derby Day buffet featuring peachwhiskey BBQ chicken, creamy shrimp and grits and Derby Pie. The Kentucky Derby will be shown live on a 20-foot by 50-foot, high-definition screen outside on the track. (Niesel) 21501 Emery Rd., North Randall, 216-662-8600, thistledown.com.

FILM

My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away When it comes to anime, no one does it better than Japan’s Hayao Miyazaki, the director of Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro. My Neighbor Totoro centers on two sisters who move with their father to a remote country house near an enchanted forest, and Spirited Away features a young girl who must navigate a world of witches.

The two films screen tonight at 9:30 and midnight respectively at the Cedar Lee Theatre as part of the theater’s Late Shift series. Tickets are $6 for one film, $10 for both. The movies screen again tomorrow night at 7 and 9:30.

(Niesel) 2163 Lee Rd., Cleveland Heights, 216-321-5411, clevelandcinemas.com.

FILM

Film Noir From Mexico A six-film series derived from a very highly acclaimed, seven-film retrospective of the same name presented last July at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Mexico at Midnight: Film Noir From Mexican Cinema’s Golden Age consists of “tough, stylish, sexy, cynical crime films” made by the Mexican film industry during the 1940s and 1950s.

The films feature revered actors such as Dolores del Rio, María Félix, Pedro Armendáriz, and Arturo de Cordóva.

Tonight at 6 at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, the series commences with The Other One, a film about twin sisters. In the Palm of Your Hand, a 1951 film about a fake fortune teller, screens tomorrow night at 6:30.

Tickets are $9. (Niesel) 11610 Euclid Ave., 216-421-7450, cia.edu.

BEST OF CLEVELAND PARTY!

Scene Best Of Party Best of Cleveland represents Scene’s chance to recognize the people and

businesses that drive the renaissance of this amazing city. When we asked readers to help us pick the best of the best, they didn’t disappoint. The event, which will feature some of the city’s best restaurants, takes place from 6 to 10 p.m. at Lago Custom Events at Aloft Hotel on the Flats East Bank. Enjoy local bites, funky cocktails and some of our best local entertainers. Tickets are $25 on the website. (Niesel) 1091 West 10th St., 216-862-8065, bestofparty.clevescene.com.

ART

Silent Disco Off-White Party Stop by MOCA Cleveland from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. today for PNC’s Free First Saturday. Then at 10 p.m., MOCA Cleveland hosts a Silent Disco OffWhite Party. Guests will dance the night away with hundreds of fellow attendees while wearing wireless headphones featuring two live dueling DJs, DJ Anselmi or DJ Flaco Flash.

Advance tickets for the Silent Disco Off-White Dance Party are $15 for nonmembers and $10 for members; it’s $5 more the day of the event. The party also includes a photo booth and Betty’s Bomb Ass Burgers food truck serving vegetarian and vegan options and homemade tater tots. Get tickets on the website. (Usmani) 11400 Euclid Ave., 216-421-8671, mocacleveland.org.

SUN

FROM PRODUCER KATIE COURIC

ADVANCE SCREENING AND POST-FILM DISCUSSION sponsored by Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence and God Before Guns

MAY 11 @ 6PM

LA TAQUERIA AT LA FIESTA, RICHMOND HEIGHTS

FREE TICKETS: bit.ly/UTGCleveland

WE WENT OUT WHEN YOU COULDN’T. EVENT SLIDESHOWS. ONLY AT CLEVESCENE.COM

5/08

BOOKS

Book Signing Born in Rio Grande do Sul, the birthplace of churrasco, chef Evandro Caregnato has been the culinary director for Texas de Brazil, an authentic churrascaria featuring “a continuous dining experience that blends together the unique culture of Brazil with the generous hospitality of Texas,” for more than a decade.

Founded in 1998 as a family-owned business, the place now features 43 domestic and international locations. A new Texas de Brazil location recently opened in Crocker Park and to mark the occasion, Caregnato will sign his new book, Churrasco: Grilling the Brazilian Way, at 2 p.m. today at Barnes & Noble Eton on Chagrin Boulevard. (Niesel) 28801 Chagrin Blvd., Woodmere, 216-765-7520, barnesandnoble.com.

MUSIC

Gospel Brunch The monthly Gospel Brunch has been a spiritual Sunday staple for years at the House of Blues. Now curated by famed gospel singer Kirk Franklin, the current show puts a bit

INVITE YOU AND A GUEST TO A SPECIAL SCREENING OF

Wednesday, May 11 at 7:00 P.M. Cinemark Valley View Visit SonyScreenings.com and enter the code MM511SM for your chance to download a pair of passes. *No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited or restricted by law. Limit one pass per person. Each pass admits two. No phone calls, please. Seating is not guaranteed. Arrive early. Theater is not responsible for overbooking.

IN THEATERS FRIDAY MAY 13 | clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

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GET OUT more emphasis on the music. With seatings at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., the all-you-can-eat musical extravaganza features Southern classics like chicken jambalaya, biscuits and gravy, and chicken and waffles. A portion of the proceeds goes to the House of Blues Music Forward Foundation, which provides arts and music support to underserved youth. Tickets are $40.

(Niesel) 308 Euclid Ave., 216-523-2583, houseofblues.com.

COMEDY

Leonard Ouzts South Carolina native Leonard Ouzts likes to talk about his family life. He says his parents never divorced; they just argued a lot. “I didn’t mind that until it started messing up my life,” he says, adding that his mother stopped cooking, and he and his father had to eat baloney sandwiches for a week.

The portly comic also regularly jokes about his size, pointing out that he’d literally be an “unfit” parent if he were to have kids. He performs tonight at 7 at Hilarities. Tickets are $13 and $18.

(Niesel) 2035 East Fourth St., 216-241-7425, pickwickandfrolic.com.

MUSIC

Mother’s Day Trad Irish Brunch Featuring the Kilroys A veteran local act, the Kilroys have played traditional Irish music throughout the Midwest for the past 25 years.

The group, which features five brothers and two sisters, ages 26 to 40, is a family affair. Today, the group plays Music Box Supper Club as part of the venue’s Mother’s Day brunch. Seatings are at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Each $10 ticket includes entrance to the show and a chocolate dipped strawberry. A brunch menu will be available. (Niesel) 1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com.

PATIO FUN

Tropical Sundays A weekly summer celebration, Now That’s Class’s Tropical Sundays feature cornhole and basketball in the club’s back parking lot and exclusive Tropical Sunday cocktails including Pimms, Paulito’s Puerto Rican Punch, Mi’Monsters, Cucumber Bloody Marys and Bloody Tooth. The club promises “many more surprises and activities” too. Today’s tropical adventures launch at 3. Admission is free, but the cocktails will cost you. (Niesel) 11213 Detroit Ave., 216-221-8576, nowthatsclass.net.

MON

5/09

COMEDY

2016: A Political Race ODDyssey Billed as Cleveland’s answer to The Capitol Steps, Cleveland Cabaret Project’s 2016: A Political Race ODDyssey, “a politically incorrect and satiric revue,” promises to provide plenty of laughs as the Republican National Convention nears. The group performs on five Mondays leading up to the event. Lora Workman, founder and artistic director of CCP, possesses an impressive resume. A graduate of Baldwin Wallace University’s Conservatory of Music, she studied cabaret in Italy and New York and was a semi-finalist in the 2003 San Francisco Cabaret competition.

Tonight, she directs the group as it performs at 7 at Nighttown. Tickets are $15. (Niesel) 12387 Cedar Rd., Cleveland Heights, 216-795-0550, nighttowncleveland. com.

FAMILY FUN

Free Admission Day at the Zoo Looking for a fun and free way to start your week? Head on over to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, which offers free admission for all

residents of Cuyahoga County and Hinckley Township on Mondays.

You can explore the zoo’s massive collection, which includes more than 3,000 animals and 600 distinct species, including the largest primate collection in the country. Or check out the zoo’s impressive botanical garden, which has been praised for expertly illustrating the interdependent relationship between plants, animals and humans. Whatever you decide to explore, you’ll be able to get up close and personal with all your favorite exhibitions since Mondays are usually one of the least crowded days of the week. Today’s hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. This free Monday promotion is not available on holidays and unfortunately excludes access to the RainForest. (Alaina Nutile) 3900 Wildlife Way, 216-661-6500, clemetzoo.com.

FOOD

Industry Brunch Brunch isn’t just a Saturday/Sunday thing. Over at Mahall’s, you can grab a great brunch on Mondays as the club caters to industry folks who have the day off. Not that you have to work in the restaurant industry to indulge. The menu features items such as Chicken and Donuts, a dish that features three pieces of fried

Looks Like

ART

Feels Like

FUN! View Our Calendar Online & Make Your Reservation Today!

No Experience Needed!

2 hr. Class $35 & BYOB! paintingwithatwist.com/avon 440-281-5728 paintingwithatwist.com/hudson 330-324-1694

26

| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

GET OUT chicken along with two Old Hushers doughnuts. Other staples include the Everything Pretzel and the Creamy Egg Sandwich. A live DJ from WCSB will be on hand to spin cool tunes too.

It runs from noon to 4. (Niesel) 13200 Madison Ave., Lakewood, 216-521-3280, mahalls20lanes.com.

MUSIC

Music Mondays Every second, third, and fourth Monday of the month, Great Lakes Brewing Company in Ohio City kicks off its week with a little live music, craft brews and delicious pub eats (we recommend the housemade pizzas, which are half off during their 4 to 7 p.m. happy hour). Guests can grab a beer and meander down to the Beer Cellar on the basement floor to enjoy the laid-back tunes of local musicians.

Tonight, it’s local singer Becky Boyd, who adeptly alternates between blues and pop. She plays from 6 to 8 p.m., and there’s no cover. (Nutile) 2516 Market Ave., 216-771-4404, greatlakesbrewing.com.

SPOKEN WORD

Science Cafe The second Monday of each month, Music Box Supper Club hosts Science Cafe, an informal lecture series that brings scientists from throughout the region to the club so they can talk about science topics. Tonight at 7, physicians Daniel Tisch and Ronald Blanton will talk about how there’s more to mosquito-born diseases than just Zika. Admission is free. (Niesel) 1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com.

TrueNorth Cultural Arts

FOOD

Wing Ding Doodle Blues icon Howlin’ Wolf famously covered “Wang Dang Doodle,” the old blues tune penned by Willie Dixon.

Prosperity Social Club in Tremont has adopted that slogan, calling its wing night Wing Ding Doodle. The weekly event features specials on Buffalo wings and cold brews. Prosperity will not only serve up substantial, $1 whole wings, but it’ll also offering meatless Monday “wing” baskets for vegans.

Discounted drafts and a playlist of vintage-electric blues and soulful R&B curated by local musician Clint Holley will be on tap as well. Wing Ding Doodle takes place every Monday from 6 p.m. to midnight. (Niesel) 1109 Starkweather Ave., 216-937-1938, prosperitysocialclub.com.

Presents:

Mental Health

awareness month

Directed by Fred Sternfeld

May 6th- 22nd Fri & Sat at 7:30 PM and Sun at 3:00PM Educational Programming / Talk Backs After Each Show

MUSIC

Otomo Yoshihide Japanese experimental musician Otomo Yoshihide spent his teenage years in Fukushima, where he began making electrical devices.

By junior high, he started making sound collages using open-reel tape recorders. This was his first experience creating music. While at school in Tokyo, he became increasingly involved in the study of ethnomusical history, and began playing free improvisation professionally. He makes his Cleveland debut tonight at 7:30 at the Transformer Station as part of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Performing Arts series. Tickets are $25, $22 for CMA members. (Niesel) 1460 West 29th St., 216-938-5429, transformerstation.org.

TUE

• WALK-INS WELCOME • Relaxation has never been better!

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TICKETS Youth $10 / Adults $16-18 To order call (440) 949-5200 x221 or visit www.TNCArts.org

TrueNorth Cultural Arts 4530 Colorado Ave (Hwy 611) Sheffield Village, OH 44054

5/10

NIGHTLIFE

NIGHTLIFE

Trivia Pursuits Do you have tons of obscure music knowledge? Are you a student of fast food menus and their nuanced histories? What say you about the geographic evolution of Scotch whisky?

Tonight’s your chance to wow your friends, make yourself instantly more desirable to someone you’re newly dating, and hang with Cleveland’s headiest hipsters and hot dog lovers.

It’s the Happy Dog Monday Night Trivia. Starting at 8 p.m., expect themed rounds — it’s a crapshoot — and general knowledge questions that seem considerably trickier than some of the other live trivia locales in town.

Obviously, have a hot dog and a craft brew while you’re at it. And arrive early.

The tables fill up quickly. (Sam Allard) 5801 Detroit Ave., 216-651-9474, happydogcleveland.com.

Trivia Tuesdays How do you spend your Tuesday nights? If you’re not at Nano Brew in Ohio City, you’re definitely missing out. This friendly neighborhood brewpub hosts weekly trivia nights from 8 to 10 p.m. Grab some friends and head on down for a little brainstimulating trivia, freshly brewed craft beer and some seriously stellar bar grub. Better yet, bike on over. The folks at Nano Brew love bikes almost as much as they love beer, and they’re happy to share that love by giving you half off your first drink when they see your bike helmet. (Nutile) 1859 West 25th St., 216-862-6631, nanobrewcleveland.com.

Find more events @clevescene.com @cleveland_scene | clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

27

ART SCHOLASTIC HEIGHTS CSU, CIA highlight student artist achievements this week

By Josh Usmani THIS WEEK, THE LOCAL ART spotlight shines brightly on the region’s talented students. On Thursday evening from 5 to 8 p.m., the Galleries at Cleveland State University hosts a reception and awards ceremony for its 45th Student Show and Merit Scholar Exhibitions.

On Friday from 6 to 9 p.m., the focus shifts to the highly anticipated BFA Exhibitions by graduating seniors at the Cleveland Institute of Art. CSU’s Student Show features 69 works by more than 40 current CSU students. It includes drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, video and graphic design.

Awards will be announced during the reception.

The Student Shows are organized almost entirely by students. Although the gallery assists with layout and installation, the Student Organization of Fine Art (SOFA) works throughout the year to select jurors, solicit sponsors and prizes, coordinate dropoff and even orders the refreshments.

“This has been a very exciting year, and all the students worked really hard to showcase what they have learned from the amazing art faculty that Cleveland State University has to offer,” SOFA president Heather Molecke says. “I am always impressed by the socially relevant topics that the students bring forth in their pieces.

We had two incredible jurors, Liz Maugans, a brilliant artist, and the co-founder and executive director at Zygote Press, and Johnny Coleman, a remarkable sculptor/installation artist and associate professor of art and Africana studies at Oberlin. We were very lucky to have them both. I hope that everyone can make it out, because this is going to be one spectacular show.”

Maugans and Coleman selected 69 works from more than 150 submissions.

“It was a privilege to view over 150 works by students at CSU and we felt responsible to select the work that was most compelling, challenging and memorable,” the jurors said in a prepared statement. “This year’s submissions were strong and varied in media, subject and approach. We were impressed with the number of

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ambitious submissions, particularly strong in photography and works on paper. We wondered why there were not more paintings submitted.” (CSU has yet to hire a full-time replacement for retired painting professor Ken Nevadomi.)

The Merit Scholar Exhibition showcases work produced by the art department’s Merit Scholarship recipients. The exhibition is a requirement in the scholarship contract, and each student is responsible for designing and installing their section of the gallery. This year’s Merit Scholars are Elisabeth Dare, Valerie Lazar, Benjamin Rodriguez, Heather Molecke, Reese Shebel and Natalie Snodgrass.

This year, SOFA voted to move the exhibitions back a few weeks to give their fellow students more time to complete work after spring break, and to align the opening with the end of the school year. Although this gives the students more time to rush through their last-minute submissions (don’t act like you didn’t put that together at 4 a.m.), it gives viewers less time to enjoy the show before the university ostensibly shuts down for the summer. Although the exhibitions remain on view through June 11, finals begin the Monday after the opening, and students won’t be around much until summer sessions begin.

“We’ve moved the exhibition later in the semester this year, which seems to be working out well,” says Mark Slankard, associate professor of photography and faculty advisor for SOFA. “In the past work was due around midterm, so students had less time to resolve their work, and it was

Wade Gagich, “Expired Beauty,” impossible film (Polaroid) collage, 2016

the Galleries at CSU through June 11 during limited gallery hours: Friday and Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. or by appointment.

Meanwhile at CIA, graduating seniors have spent months working with faculty to develop and execute their BFA exhibitions as their capstone projects for graduation. Each student is also responsible for converting a portion of CIA’s campus into a suitable exhibition space. Following a week of faculty-reviewed BFA thesis defenses, the exhibitions open to the public for the weekend.

“Our Bachelor of Fine Arts exhibition is a joyful event that celebrates the culmination of our graduating students’ senior thesis projects and their undergraduate college careers,” says CIA president and CEO Grafton Nunes. “When you experience this work, you see

45TH STUDENT SHOW AND MERIT SCHOLAR EXHIBITIONS The Galleries at CSU, 1307 Euclid Ave., 216-687-2103, csuohio.edu/artgallery BFA EXHIBITIONS Cleveland Institute of Art, 11610 Euclid Ave., 216-421-7000, CIA.EDU

hard for some of them to get back to the studio afterwards. Having it coincide with the end of the semester is much more fitting as a finale for a great year.”

The 45th Student Show and Merit Scholar Exhibitions remain on view at

| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

the manifestation of not just a year’s worth of work. You see what students have brought to and derived from their education over four years at CIA, and all the value that our tremendous faculty members have imparted. Every year at this show,

I feel a renewed sense of optimism about the contributions these artists and designers are going to make to the creative economy and our culture during their careers.”

The BFA Exhibitions open with a free, public reception and awards ceremony this Friday, from 6 to 9 p.m. At 8 p.m., Nunes will announce the winners of the 2015 President’s Traveling Scholarships. Every year, students submit formal proposals to pursue special, post-baccalaureate projects. Six graduates will receive cash awards to enhance their education and jumpstart their careers.

Friday’s event concludes a week of oral presentations of the students’ thesis projects, which are held before faculty, students and staff at CIA. The BFA Exhibition features the thesis projects of 116 BFA candidates in 15 disciplines: painting, drawing, sculpture and expanded media, jewelry and metals, ceramics, printmaking, glass, photography and video, industrial design, interior architecture, graphic design, game design, illustration, animation and biomedical illustration.

The BFA Exhibitions remain on view Saturday, May 7 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

jusmani@clevescene.com t@cleveland_scene

STAGE BUCOLIC AND ALCOHOLIC, BUT NOT SYMBOLIC A boozy druggie leads his flock into a dead-end story in Jerusalem at Ensemble Theatre

By Christine Howey YOU HAVE TO ADMIRE A theater company that goes for the big lift, attempting a play that offers a multitude of opportunities for missteps. It is in those moments that you can see truly remarkable productions, the ones where reach exceeds grasp and something magical is created.

Ensemble Theatre is attempting such a feat with their current production of Jerusalem by the British playwright Jez Butterworth. While it doesn’t entirely succeed, there are some sparkling moments that are swept along on the sheer bravado of attempting the piece in the first place.

This script is a challenge: At nearly three hours, it requires the cast to keep the audience involved in a story that appears to have precious little depth. Johnny “Rooster” Byron is a man entering middle age who lives in a ramshackle Airstream in a patch of woods in England, teetering on the edge of urban sprawl. He spends his

days drinking and drugging with teenage pals who show up there to get high and screw around.

Rooster is a familiar nonconformist/drug dealer type, bawdy and brazen when he’s not swacked out of his mind on booze, pot, cocaine and anything else he can get his hands on. And on this day, approaching his town’s annual festival, he’s particularly agitated. You see, he used to perform as an Evel Knievel-style motorcycle

production is Mitch Rose, who plays Rooster with boozy bravado and a nice touch with the stories he spins for his adoring cadre of misfits. One prime example is the yarn he spins at the start of Act 2, tracing the journey of a fired bullet that winds up in his teeth when he emerges from his mother’s womb. (Yes, he claims he was born with a full set of chompers.) Indeed, the whole Byron clan was supposedly legendary for many things, including

JERUSALEM THROUGH MAY 21 AT ENSEMBLE THEATRE 2843 WASHINGTON BLVD., CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, 216-321-2930, ENSEMBLETHEATRECLE.ORG

daredevil, until he face-planted into one too many buses and had to retire. And he’s worried that his 29-year stay in his bucolic haven is coming to an end, with the approach of “estate housing,” a public housing development.

One of the bright spots in this

a rare and much-desired plasma that Rooster’s paid handsomely for at the local blood bank.

Unfortunately, his band of slackers never feels real or particularly interesting. An exception is James Rankin, who manages to fashion an interesting character as Ginger, a

Michael Johnson as Davey, Becca Moseley as Pea, James Rankin as Ginger, Mitch Rose as Johnny “Rooster” Byron, Kyle Huff as Lee and Leah Smith as Tanya.

dreamy and tentative young man who seems trapped inside Rooster’s endless recollections.

Rooster also has a backstory that arrives in the flesh when old flame Dawn shows up with the 6-year-old son she and Rooster conceived. Here, a question arises as to why this apparently sensible woman would have a child with this sack of addictions.

But once she starts smiling and cooing at Rooster’s rambling riffs, the answer appears. Butterworth wants us to see Rooster as a romantic ideal, an unfettered man who lives by his own rules and gives the finger to society and its expectations.

But as charming as Rose manages to make Rooster, the character never quite elevates beyond the level of a mildly diverting fellow who needs a long stretch at the Betty Ford Clinic.

When you package idealism in a package this offensive and profane, you need all the elements to work perfectly. And here, they don’t.

Director Ian Wolfgang Hinz has proven in the past that he can beautifully orchestrate large cast shows. But in this instance, there are too many carbon-copy characters and too many rushed or ignored beats. This lack of attention to detail even extends to the flask from which Rooster constantly swigs. Aside from the fact that he drinks enough to empty that flask multiple times in each act, one wonders why this walking dumpster fire would bother with such an elegant container when a full bottle of whiskey is on the set.

Clearly, the playwright has bigger fish to fry thematically, especially since the play features a fairy that is the posthumous embodiment of a teen girl who used to hang with Rooster. There are metaphors to be had comparing this raggedy outfit to Britain, or aspects of that government. But this Ensemble production, energetic as it is, is too fragmented to land those thoughts

scene@clevescene.com t@christinehowey | clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

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MOVIES SING STREET ROCKS Once director hits all the right notes in charming coming-of-age music film

By Sam Allard YOUNG LOVE, IN LITERATURE and in film — and certainly in John Carney’s new movie Sing Street, which opens Friday at the Cedar Lee — is pure joy.

Our hero is Conor Lalor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, in his big-screen debut), a 15-year-old everyboy with an awful haircut at a new state school in Dublin in 1985. It’s the year of A-Ha’s “Take on Me” and Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future, and Conor retreats to the comfort of futurist music as his parents’ marriage disintegrates at home and Brother Baxter, his principal, makes life hell at school.

In a ballsy move one afternoon, Conor confronts an aspirant model named Raphina (Lucy Boynton), who poses on the stoop of a girls’ home with an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips. He tells her that he’s in a band and invites her to appear in an upcoming music video. The only problem is the band doesn’t exist.

No matter. Conor has youth and infatuation (and pretty solid lyrical gifts) on his side, and he contrives to put a band together in the span of a few days. Bumbling their way through new instruments and a revolving door of musical influences, Conor, his virtuoso buddy Eamon (Jack McKenna) and a ragtag assortment of novice rockers

manage to record enough of a song to convince Raphina to appear in the video.

But Raphina has designs of her own. Conor is crushed when he learns that she already has a boyfriend — “an actual man, with stubble and all” — and that she intends to go to London to kickstart her modeling career. Undeterred, Conor keeps writing songs, and keeps improving, and gets closer to Raphina, who’s dealing with existential issues of her own.

Sing Street, like Carney’s earlier films Once and Begin Again, centers on the musical aspirations of its protagonist, and the romantic aspirations therefrom. Original music, inspired by such ’80s alternative rockers as Depeche Mode,

Duran Duran, Jam and Hall & Oates, is seamlessly integrated into the story. It’s often used to convey what the characters can’t say directly to each other. Every time Sing Street (the band, a play on the name of their school) records a new tune, Conor bikes across town to drop off a tape at Raphina’s doorstep. Also like in Once, the songs occasionally and unrealistically drift from conception to practice to performance-readiness in the span of three minutes, but disbelief is easily (and I might add, enthusiastically) suspended.

Remember in Once, when Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova sat down at a piano in a music shop in Dublin and played “Falling Slowly” for the first time? Or when, in the studio, the pulsing 5/4 tempo

of “When Your Mind’s Made Up” inspired the studio recordist to smile? You were smiling right along with him.

And you’ll smile right along with this lovable cast of teenage misfits too, when Conor and Eamon begin to incorporate piano in their poppy love song “Up,” or when Conor imagines a fully realized music video for the band’s flagship anthem “Drive It Like You Stole It.” That sequence, a sort of climactic flight of fancy, successfully reifies the film’s overarching conflict about pursuing dreams in the face of stark realities.

But you’ll be smiling most of all at Conor and Raphina themselves, two kids whose big innocent ambitions are so familiar and — dammit — so adorable. You might say Sing Street is “predictable” (a lame critique, in a vacuum) or that its adult characters (dad: Aiden Gillen, mom: Maria Doyle Kennedy, big bro: Jack Reynor) are broadly, stereotypically drawn, and that’s true. But the story is ultimately a love story, with music as flavor, theme and narrative device.

And with these untarnished stars, plus the incredibly groovy, catchy retro tunes, you’ll walk out of the theater with a spring in your step and a twinkle in your eye.

sallard@clevescene.com t@SceneSallard

SPOTLIGHT: THE FAMILY FANG MOST PARENTS WOULD TAKE THEIR KIDS to the Grand Canyon or Disneyland. Not Caleb (Christopher Walken) and Camille (Maryann Plunkett) Fang. They’d rather use their children Baxter and Annie as pawns in one of their elaborate pranks. They think of themselves as performance artists and put their children in awkward situations for the sake of art.

That’s the premise of The Family Fang, a dark comedy directed by actor Jason Bateman that opens on Friday at the Capitol and the Cedar Lee Theatre. The off-kilter film might stumble to the end, but it features some terrific acting performances, particularly on the part of Walken, who delivers as the slightly crazed, artfor-art’s-sake-obsessed Caleb.

In the opening scene, young Baxter delivers a bank robbery note to a bank attendant, pulling

a gun to make sure he gets all of the lollipops reserved for small children. In the process of a tussle between the security guard and the kid, the gun goes off and his sister Annie apparently gets shot. Or does she? Thing is, it’s all just an elaborate Fang family prank, making one customer wonder aloud, “What the fuck is going on?”

Suffice it to say, Baxter and his sister Annie didn’t have a typical childhood. As grownups, they’re still struggling to come to terms with it, even though Baxter (Bateman) has become a successful actor, and Annie (Nicole Kidman) works in Hollywood as an actress.

When the two return home to live with their parents, they become suspicious after the old folks mysteriously disappear in an apparent carjacking. Even though the police find blood in

the car, the kids suspect it’s another one of their parents’ pranks and set out to find evidence that they’re still alive. Given that their parents didn’t have any friends, finding someone in whom they would have confided isn’t an easy task. In the process of talking to people from their childhood and sifting through their parents’ belongings for clues, they’re forced to confront their respective pasts, revisited in a series of flashbacks.

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Davis LindsayAbaire adapted the film’s screenplay from a Kevin Wilson novel and expertly condenses the book’s material into this 105-minute movie.

While the final “discovery” doesn’t live up to the build-up and comes off as anticlimactic, the wellacted movie shows a real sense of craftsmanship and makes the most of its source material.

— Jeff Niesel | clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

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EAT HOMECOMING A Chagrin Falls grad comes home to turn the former Dink’s space into a family friendly diner

By Douglas Trattner

Photos by Emanuel Wallace

THE WAY JOHN KRISSINGER explains it, the deal was too good to refuse. After decades of working for other owners, turning around underperforming hotel restaurants nationwide, the veteran chef was ready to pull the trigger on a place of his own. He’d been scouring the business-for-sale websites looking for a Cleveland-based restaurant when a big fat cherry appeared on his screen.

“I was sitting at home one night scanning around and for some reason I put in Chagrin Falls instead of Cleveland and this popped up,” says Krissinger. “It’s Dink’s! I woke up my wife and told her Dink’s is for sale and I’m buying it.”

Well, the restaurant used to be Dink’s, but for the past seven years it was Fresh Start Diner, a spinoff of the Twinsburg-based spot of the same name. But since Dink’s Colonial Restaurant was a Chagrin Falls institution for than 50 years, that’s how this space forever will be remembered.

In his mind, Krissinger wasn’t just rescuing a historic diner, he was restoring a sense of culinary order in the community, a community that has changed since he graduated from Chagrin Falls High in 1985.

“Everybody has gone high end,” he laments. “Whatever happened to just grandma’s food? I want this to be the place where people go when they just want damn good food.”

Krissinger opened the North Main Diner this past November.

“I want this to be like Dink’s used to be — a place where everybody in town would gather,” he explains. “The

townie place, and a place you could afford to come. I’ve got five people in my family, and when I take them out to eat in Chagrin Falls, it’s $125. I can’t do that!”

The same size family could walk away from a filling meal here for 50 or 60 bucks tops, says Krissinger.

steak and pot roast. A rarity these days, Krissinger sells macaroni and cheese with zero lobster or truffle oil.

“The craziest thing that I do is put chopped herbs in my french fries.”

He also dodges shortcuts like pancake mix, biscuit mix, and frozen doughs. His breakfast staples begin

NORTH MAIN DINER 16 NORTH MAIN ST., CHAGRIN FALLS 440-893-9599 NMDINER.COM

And they’d get a square meal that was made from scratch the old-fashioned way. The motto here is good food at a fair price, a practice we can all get behind. With dishes plucked from yesteryear, the menu could just as easily have been penned in 1950.

There’s stuffed cabbage, meatloaf, spaghetti and meatballs, country fried

life in their natural form: flour, baking powder, eggs, buttermilk, butter. The maple breakfast sausage is made inhouse from ground pork and spices.

Real mashed potatoes from dinner get reworked into crispy mashed potato cakes at breakfast, which are served with eggs, bacon and pepper gravy.

A burger and fries is $5, unless you

want to make it a double and the price jumps to $7.50. These are the sort of thin diner-style burgers one would have enjoyed at legendary Cleveland places like Mawby’s. In fact, these essentially are Mawby’s burgers, right down to the paprika grilled onions.

One of the first major changes the new owner implemented was bringing back nightly dinner service.

“Dinner is a struggle because it hasn’t been offered here for a dozen years,” he says. “It’s going to take time, I understand that, but we needed to open for dinner.”

At one time or another Chagrin Falls had six soda fountains. Now it has just one, the shiny number that sits behind the counter at North Main Diner. Krissinger rescued it from a nearby estate and quickly rolled out an old-timey lineup of tasty egg creams, phosphates, malted milks and shakes, which drone away on a vintage milkshake mixer.

“That’s the sound of money,” he jokes.

For months, Krissinger has been on the hunt for the perfect jukebox, an item that is mandatory for authenticity’s sake. He also continues to restore old connections with his neighbors and classmates, many of whom he hasn’t seen or spoken to in 30 years. Now that he’s running the town diner, he’ll have plenty of time.

“If somebody would have told me 30 years ago that I would end up owning a restaurant in Chagrin Falls, I would have laughed at them,” he says.

dtrattner@clevescene.com t @dougtrattner

| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

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THERE ARE CREPES AND THERE are burritos. And then there is the Creperitto, the pillowy hybrid that could be a contender for the title of “item least expected to appear on a completely gluten-free menu.” But it’s a star at Cafe Avalaun (4640 Richmond Rd., Warrensville Heights, 216-2456666, cafeavalaun.com), where Brian Doyle turns presumptions like those on their head.

Before the pastries, artisan coffee and colorful walls, the first thing you notice when walking into the Warrensville Heights nook is a window peering into the kitchen. Avalaun may not boldly advertise itself as a gluten-free cafe, but Doyle knows the importance of transparency as a chef whose family has gluten intolerances.

He also recognizes that many eateries are reluctant to risk the health of diners with celiac disease by even attempting gluten-free dishes, which makes the offerings at Avalaun all the more rare.

Doyle, who founded the farm-totable catering operation Sowfood, knew two years ago that he wanted to open a restaurant with his wife Jennifer.

Though he’s been cooking gluten-free meals for his family for more than a decade, the chef began experimenting while running the kitchen at the Beachland Ballroom. Today, the concert club’s award-winning brunch still sources its gluten-free biscuits, breads and waffles from Doyle through Avalaun.

While traveling through Ohio, Doyle stumbled upon a restaurant serving gluten-free crepes and he knew he had a golden concept.

“Crepes were like this whole new playground,” he says. “It gives you a little bit of a license to do something different. You can really get funky with it.”

That means diners can look forward to seasonal creations with asparagus and ripe berries cropping up on the menu soon.

The cafe’s namesake crepe comes from the roots of the word “Avalon,” an island of apples in an Arthurian legend. “It’s sweet apples and savory ham with a bit of a punch from Montana Girl Mustard,” Doyle says of the crepe.

He also crafts a nut-free pesto made with pumpkin seeds for the popular

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Frenchie Fru-Fru crepe. Pierogi lovers will gravitate toward the aptly named Clevelander, which is filled with mashed potatoes, cheddar cheese, caramelized onions and one special ingredient.

“I love sneaking nutmeg into places you wouldn’t expect it,” says Doyle, who uses it to spice up the mashed potatoes.

Avalaun has also garnered a clientele of health-minded paleo followers by serving specials like tacos with braised pork and Pope’s Smoking River hot sauce on plantainbased shells from Cleveland’s Crunchy Kitchen.

Recently Doyle added Friday night dinners that feature everything from Italian foods to fried chicken to Chinese-style take-out. This month, Avalaun also launches the Fresh Meals club, a weekly subscription plan.

To satisfy gluten-free sweet teeth, Doyle enlisted the help of longtime collaborator Maggie Downey, who trained at Bonbon and Coquette Patisserie, to develop recipes for delicious items like rosemary hazelnut cookies, honey lavender scones and Boston cream pie. Tarts include apple, citron and thyme-infused chocolate ganache. Cupcakes vary from lemon curd-filled with raspberry rose buttercream to S’mores with house-made fluff and graham and marshmallow cream.

One of the bestsellers is the cream puff made with Snowville Creamery dairy.

“The whole thought process has been asking, ‘What does the glutenfree community miss the most?’”

Doyle says.

Cafe Avalaun just may be the answer.

scene@clevescene.com t@cleveland_scene

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2270 LEE ROAD | CLEVELAND HEIGHTS

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NEW BEGINNINGS Michael Symon says he will open a new concept in former Lolita spot

By Douglas Trattner LOLITA IN TREMONT HAS BEEN closed since a fire this past January ravaged most of the upper floors of the building.

Despite significant smoke and water damage, chef and owner Michael Symon vowed to rebuild the restaurant, even if it took a year to do so. Now the chef is saying that when the restaurant does reopen, it will not be as Lolita.

“It was an incredibly tough decision based on two things,” Symon explains.

“I walk into that space now and it’s completely gutted and even when I say the word ‘Lolita’ it’s just too emotional.

There’s that and the fact that, when Lolita opened 11 years ago, it was really unique and different. Now, there are a lot of restaurants like Lolita. We want to continue to be unique and different.”

That new restaurant is tentatively being called Sherla’s Chicken & Oysters, named after the mother of Liz Symon — Michael’s wife and business partner — who is from Georgia.

Symon describes the concept as “very casual and fun.”

Early plans call for a menu filled with raw oysters, smoked seafood boards, charcuterie and cheese platters, and fried and wood-roasted chicken served with sticky buns. And something that will make all those vegetarians out there happy: Sherla’s will have a large number of veggiebased dishes.

“We’ll have a ton of wood-grilled vegetables,” he says. “I think a large vegetable selection is needed in this city — and there’s not a ton of great fried chicken in these parts.”

The rebranding also allows Symon and the team to completely redo the interior, which has been around in one form or another for 20 years.

“As awesome as Lolita was, now we get to come back and do something new, which is always fun.”

Look for Sherla’s to open in about a year, says Symon, which gives them time to plan, test and tweak the concept.

Rd.) in Cleveland Heights has closed.

The restaurant relocated to the old Jimmy O’Neill’s Tavern spot after their longtime Chagrin Falls space was gutted by fire and the owners lost their lease. The restaurant group’s Solon location closed two years back after

two years in business.

Already, though, the spot along Cedar Lee’s busy “Restaurant Row” has been spoken for. Chef Eric Rogers, who opened the popular sandwich shop Black Box Fix (2307 Lee Rd., 216-383-8130) down the street last

year, will open a second restaurant.

This one, to be called The Fix, will be more along the lines of the chef’s first restaurant Nevaeh Cuisine, which was in South Euclid.

“It will be an entree-, spirits- and entertainment-driven concept,”

JOEY’S BISTRO ON LEE ROAD IS CLOSED. NEXT UP: THE FIX BY CHEF ERIC ROGERS After a little more than two years in business, Joey’s Bistro (2195 Lee | clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

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EAT bites says Rogers. “It will be a lot of the things I did at my first restaurant, Creole and soul food, but a little more refined. And new creative things I didn’t do at my first restaurant. We’ll keep the sandwich shop.”

Items like Creole salmon, buttermilk fried chicken, smoked gouda mash, and the LBJ Philly, made with filet mignon, will likely make appearances.

Rogers says that he gets the keys to the shop in mid-May and hopes to be open by the middle of June or early July. Diners can look forward to live entertainment like jazz and spoken word when it does open.

Meanwhile, down the road at Black Box Fix, the team just celebrated its one-year anniversary.

“We’re doing record numbers.

Things are great,” Rogers reports.

THE CAPITAL GRILLE AT LEGACY VILLAGE WILL OPEN IN JULY The Capital Grille, a finedining chain of restaurants known for its steaks, fresh seafood and award-winning wine list, will open its first Northeast Ohio location in time for the RNC. According to Trent Love, who will serve as executive chef/partner, the Legacy Village location will open in early July.

The free-standing 9,000-square-foot building is being erected on the former site of Claddagh Irish Pub, which abruptly closed its doors on New Year’s Eve 2014 after 11 years in operation. The concept, part of the Darden Restaurants group, features steaks that are dryaged in house for 18 to 24 days and then hand-cut by an on-site butcher.

“We use very fresh products and we take care of them,” says Love, who most recently worked with Zack Bruell to open Alley Cat in the Flats. Love also served as executive chef at Urban Farmer.

The American steakhouse menu features appetizers like crab cakes, steak tartare and raw oysters. Entrees aren’t cheap, hovering in the $50 range. A gorgonzola and truffle-crusted dry-aged New York strip steak

clocks in at $49. The dry-aged 24-ounce porterhouse cut is $50.

Pan-seared sea scallops served over asparagus risotto will be around $44. The menu changes four times per year.

The wine list features more than 350 selections and its floorto-ceiling wine kiosk regularly houses 3,500 to 5,000 bottles.

There are 50-plus Capital Grille locations in 25 states, including one in Cincinnati.

A glitzy dining room and fourseason patio will accommodate 300-plus diners.

THE WILLEYVILLE LAUNCHES 12-COURSE CHEF’S TABLE EXPERIENCE Now into its third year, The Willeyville (1051 West 10th St., 216-862-6422) in the Flats East Bank is ready to shake thing up a bit. Chef and owner Chris DiLisi has launched Table 68, a specially prepared 12-course tasting menu paired with wine and spirits.

“The idea started from the inspiration of Minibar from Jose Andres, which was a 6-seater inside the former Cafe Atlantico,” explains DiLisi. “When we opened Willeyville I wanted to do a small tasting table, but it kind of got sidetracked. So now I have the time to focus on it and I think it’s a nice addition to our restaurant.”

Like everything else at Willeyville, the dishes will made from scratch using local, seasonal ingredients. Although the menu will change frequently, the festive meals will allow the chef to take risks that he normally does not.

“We are treating it as a whole different restaurant — different china, a more personal experience from me as I will guide the guests through the meal and explain the inspiration and techniques,” says the chef. “As far as the food goes, it draws upon a lot of molecular stuff I have been wanting to learn. I’m just pushing myself again to be in that zone of not knowing how things will turn out. As a chef you can easily get in a rut and rest on your laurels.

This is me kind of taking the attitude I had 10 years ago and applying techniques that I have really been wanting to try, while still presenting an approachable, familiar flavor profile.”

Dishes diners might see on the menu are Toddler Stylin, a foie gras tasting as seen through the eyes of a 2-year-old; Pulling Curds, house-made buratta;

Bulgogi, Korean-style BBQ with local Berkshire pork; Duck, Duck…Goose!, pan-seared duck and foie gras with gooseberry sweet and sour; and Carnival, house-spun cotton candy with tropical fruit sorbet.

All courses are paired with an appropriate cocktail, beer or wine.

The tastings are hosted Monday through Thursday evenings for up to six guests.

Reservations are required. The tasting is $99.95 per person.

NOW OPEN: BLOOM ARTISAN BAKERY & CAFE IN CAMPUS DISTRICT Bloom Artisan Bakery & Cafe has opened its second location, joining the original shop at 200 Public Square that opened in March. In addition to turning out premium breads, pastries, soups and sandwiches, both Bloom bakeshops support Towards Employment’s goal of creating pathways out of poverty for thousands of individuals by providing meaningful opportunities for work, achievement and self-sufficiency.

“Bloom Bakery is pioneering the combination of a social mission with a best-in-class business model in the baking industry,” says GM Logan Fahey. “The intended outcome is threefold: changing people’s lives by providing them with jobs, elevating the Cleveland food scene, and giving back to the entire community. After opening Bloom Bakery’s Public Square location to rave reviews, we couldn’t be more excited to open our second site and give even more people the opportunity taste our delicious food.”

European baking specialist Maurice Chaplais has overseen the process from the start.

“From creating the perfect New York-style bagel to perfecting a croissant recipe that rivals any Parisian cafe, Bloom Bakery isn’t cutting corners when it comes to superior taste,” explains Chaplais.

“It has been a pleasure to work with a team that is so committed to showcasing the art of baking.”

Bloom Artisan Bakery & Cafe is at 1938 Euclid Ave. and is open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays.

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner

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Don’t let thousands of school age children in Northeast Ohio go hungry this summer. Cleveland Independents, in conjunction with The Greater Cleveland Food Bank and the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank, wants to feed our children. Buy a cookie for $2.50 and feed a child for a day.

C Last year, The Greater Cleveland Food Bank fed almost 15,300 through its Kids Cafes, Summer Feeding and Backpacks programs. This year, it is estimating to feed over 16,000 children.

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C $2.50 will cover the coast of a meal (estimated).

C Within the six county service area covered by The Greater Cleveland Food Bank, an estimated 99,550 children were food insecure in 2013. This equals more than one in five children.

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| clevescene.com m | May 4 - 10, 2016

MUSIC

BURNING DESIRE Nahko and Medicine for the People bring their vision to Pyro De Mayo at Nelson Ledges

By Eric Sandy THE LAST TIME NAHKO BEAR played Nelson Ledges Quarry Park in 2012, he was, by all accounts, a different and younger man. He was gigging solo back then — “I had a blast,” he says now — and the great wheels of fate were only just beginning to spin him toward his current musical journey. That weekend, he received a strange email from a clairvoyant who said she had met him in a dream 10 years prior.

“I was like, this is kinda weird,” he says. “First of all: How’d she get my email? But second of all: This is kind of intriguing to me.” From there, the story spans a year with Nahko traveling to Alaska, getting in touch with the woman, meeting her in Los Angeles, inquiring

further about her visions. “Over the course of that summer, I watched what she had told me come true.”

That story landed lyrically in “It Is Written,” the third cut on Nahko and Medicine for the People’s upcoming album, HOKA. Nahko returns to Nelson Ledges next weekend with his band in tow — headlining the first-ever Pyro De Mayo festival (formerly Firedance). Also on the bill: the Werks, Cas Haley, John Welton & the Awakening, the Almighty Get Down, and a hell of a lot more.

It’s a fortuitous time for the quarry to link back up with the worldly musician. Drawing on his Puerto Rican, Apache and Filipino heritage, Nahko has always infused

his music with a healthy dose of perspective and self-actualization.

Now, after having encountered synchronous tribulations and joys over the three years since his last album dropped, Nahko is beaming more brightly than ever.

Where the brilliant Dark as Night showcased Nahko’s voice as a young man on the far side of a breakup, he says he feels more mature now and more aware of his overall aim as an artist. The last album was one that reveled in the yin-yang duality of darkness and light; there’s pain and ecstasy throughout that trip (revisit “Budding Trees,” for instance).

“There were very personal stories of my coming-of-age and, you know, it’s a very in-depth look at that

journey and traveling and running away and coming back in,” he says.

This new album captures forgiving moods and forwardthinking fortitude. (“Hoka” is a Lakota word for “Let’s go!” It’s a call to action.) The first singles — “Make a Change” and “San Quentin” — portend a dynamic and expansive album, with the latter representing Nahko’s trip to San Quentin State Prison to meet the man who murdered his father.

But don’t mistake that sort of narrative fodder for wearisome, heavy introspection. Nahko’s gift has always been one of simplicity: He’s capable of stripping down some of the bigger and most universal threads of life and gilding them with | clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

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MUSIC upbeat, inventive twists on easygoing chord progressions and funky leads. You can’t listen to his stuff without smiling and dancing.

“I was just really happy to finally get to record a handful of these songs that have become favorites via Youtube and to take them into a writing circle with the guys and flesh out how to play them together as a band. I had been playing them solo for years,” he says.

With that in mind, though, there’s even more to this one: Nahko found himself writing from within the wonderful cloud of falling in love.

“I was able to finally write love songs, and that had been such a hard thing for me to do — to convince myself that I could tell a true story through the experience of love,” he says. “I was really happy that we were able to place some of those tracks on this record, to express that feeling that all of us seek and all of us live in and all of us want to know and understand more.”

In that thought is the present culmination of years of songwriting.

Nahko started playing piano at 6. He stuck with it, grew up, and began blending music into his budding surfer lifestyle on the West Coast and in Hawaii. By now, there are plenty out there who would call what he and his band are doing a “movement” — the sort of socially conscious umbrella that hangs over

paddle upriver and a run to Redding, California. There, Nahko will lead a horseback ride to the river. “In doing that, we’re basically doing what a lot of indigenous people do when they do prayer runs,” he says. “It’s a circle. We’re praying along the way for the return of the salmon.”

But before all that, Nahko and the band will arrive at Nelson Ledges.

Joe Pirtz, manager and promoter at Nelson, says this festival is shaping up to be unique in every way — a deep celebration of the pure act of artistic creation. In a sense, it’s a righteous kickoff to the venue’s always-enticing lineup of summer music fests. (Pirtz should know; he’s the cat behind Music Festival Junkie, a broad community platform for those who revel in the scene. He started promoting festivals in 1996, and he’s remained hooked.)

“The stars really just lined up for this,” Pirtz says. “I decided to do this because I really believe in Nahko’s music and message.”

The weekend itself moves way beyond that, though. Picture: three geodesic domes that will house artistic workshops, along with interactive creations that will blend into the trees at the park. There will be a silk screen press on-site, a sound wave workshop, fire spinning lessons, tie-dye workshops and video mapping across the front end of the grounds.

Throughout the weekend, a massive effigy will be built in remembrance of Norman Dimitrouleas of the Werks, who died in January, and the sculpture of fire will also serve as “a projection of the future” for all in

PYRO DE MAYO WITH NAHKO AND MEDICINE FOR THE PEOPLE, THE WERKS, CAS HALEY AND MORE MAY 6 - 8, NELSON LEDGES QUARRY PARK, 12001 STATE RT. 282, NELSON LEDGE RD., GARRETTSVILLE, 440-548-2716. TICKETS: FRIDAY - SUNDAY, $80 IN ADVANCE, $90 AT THE GATE; SATURDAY & SUNDAY, $55 IN ADVANCE, $65 AT THE GATE, NLQP.COM

a band’s music, one that calls to mind the legacy of Bob Marley and the Wailers.

They’ve toured all over the world, with dates in Europe again later this summer and a planned gathering in celebration and advocacy of the Winnemem Wintu tribe in northern California in September. That tribe has relied for generations on salmon in local waters, the population of which has been severely hurt by local producers injecting fish with pork and chicken. “Frankenfish,” Nahko says, and they grow so large that they then eat the natural salmon, depleting the tribe’s source of life.

The plan: a bike ride inland, a

44

| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

attendance, Pirtz says.

“Coming into Pyro, it’s going to be a creatively developed weekend,” he adds. “It’s an artistic gathering of all our tribes — such a monumental experience.”

“I think that last year I took some big, big steps in the direction I’ve gone,” Nahko says. “I am the master of my destiny, so what am I gonna do?”

Pyro De Mayo sounds like a great step along the way.

esandy@clevescene.com t@ericsandy

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Photo by Claire Marie Vogel

MUSIC TWEAKING A FORMULA Indie rockers Silversun Pickups broaden their sound with Better Nature

By Jeff Niesel WHEN AN INDIE ROCK BAND winds up on the fast track to fame, members often find themselves unprepared to deal with the demands.

Not Silversun Pickups.

Throughout the course of a 16year career, the band has evolved and grown at its own pace.

Singer Brian Aubert and bassist Nikki Monninger first met back in 1997 as they were on their way to an exchange program in Cambridge, England. They struck up a friendship and quickly started going to concerts together after they returned to L.A. and became roommates.

“We were going to shows all the time,” says Monninger via phone from Los Angeles, where the band was on its way to perform at Coachella. “It was Modest Mouse and Built to Spill and Wilco and Sonic Youth. They were playing all the time in L.A. We would go to shows all the time, especially when we lived in Silver Lake and we had so many friends in bands. It was a very supportive scene of going to see your friends play. We would go to [Silver Lake clubs such as] Spaceland and Silver Lake Lounge and Echo. We would go to these places and there was so much music in our lives. That subconsciously helped form what we are today.”

Though they played in separate bands at the time, they realized they had so much in common that it made sense for them to play together.

“He was in a different band, and I was in a different band, and we talked about joining the same band,” says Monninger. “It really just started in our kitchen.”

The band self-released an EP and built a following in the Silver Lake area.

“We always felt loved in Silver Lake,” says Monninger. “To make it on a national and international level, it helped to have good management behind us. I feel like we’ve been riding along. We’ve been really fortunate.

Much of our beginning was playing live and working on our sound and being comfortable with who we were.

It made it easier when we had the opportunity to get out there. We were

46

already prepared and we worked hard to make sure that when opportunities come up, we’re ready. It wasn’t part of the plan but was just what happened.”

The band’s full-length debut, 2006’s Carnavas, sold respectably well as four of its singles made Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart.

“We changed our management right after Carnavas,” says Monninger.

“We signed to Q Prime, who we’re with to this day. They upped the game for us. They took it to radio in a way that we didn’t have the opportunity to do before.”

The band had another solid hit with 2008’s Swoon, an album that delivered the haunting “Panic Switch,” a song that showcased Aubert’s androgynous vocals and the band’s dream pop sound. Bigger and better tours followed.

Last year, the group returned with Better Nature, an album that shows a willingness to tweak a formula that’s worked well to this date. Produced by Jacknife Lee (U2, Two Door Cinema Club, Crystal Castles), with whom the group collaborated on 2012’s Neck of the Woods, and mixed by Grammy award-winning engineer Alan Moulder (My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails, Royal Blood), the album broadens the band’s sound.

“I think we were all in a good spot where we were open to trying things and experimenting with new

through. We did a couple of weeks there and here. It was all within a few months’ period. We would have a week or two off. It helped to have everything sink in to see if we wanted to make changes. I think that helped us.

A plodding number that features a heavy bass riff and shimmering guitars, “Circadian Rhythm (Last Dance)” features a duet between Aubert and Monninger, who rarely sings.

Monninger says she wrote the song about a friend who passed away, so she felt comfortable singing it.

“From the beginning of the album, the guys wanted me to sing,” she says.

“I’m hesitant. In general, I’m not that outgoing. It was originally going to be something that I just sang alone.

We then thought it would be nice to do a duet together. It’s about a friend of ours who passed away last year. It was an homage to him. That inspired me to break through my fears. Jacknife helped bring out the louder vocals and to bring something that was my own to express. Everyone worked

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instruments,” Monninger says when asked about the songwriting process.

“I play a vibraphone on there, and I play a piano part too. Usually, that’s all [keyboardist] Joe [Lester’s] parts.

It was a great collaboration between us. We recorded at Jacknife’s home, where we also recorded Neck of the Woods. It was fun to go to recording every day. His house is at the top of Topanga Canyon in a remote area. It was interesting recording this time because we didn’t record all the way

| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

together on it. I think our voices work well together. I do a lot of background singing and I’ve been his double before.

Something matches in our voices. He has such a strong voice that it doesn’t seem like there’s a need, but it’s nice to sing on something. I’m really proud of that song.”

With its fluttering electronic blips and beeps and soft vocals, “Friendly Fires” has all the poignancy of a Smashing Pumpkins ballad.

“It’s a nice breath on the album,”

says Monninger when asked about the song. “When we put things together, we always think of how well the songs play together. Brian sings the vocals, so it’s hard for me to respond to what it’s about. The thing about that one is that it’s so minimal, but at the same time it includes a lot. It’s a great song to just let Brian’s vocals speak for themselves. It’s one of my favorite ones to do live. On that one, I play three instruments — the Omnichord and bass and drum pads. It gives me a chance to have fun playing other instruments too.”

The album sequencing was very intentional, and the ascendant album closer, “The Wild Kind,” works as a good way to bring the disc to a conclusion. Monninger says the group labors over the album sequencing to make sure the material works as a whole.

“It’s very important to us that the songs blend well,” she says. “We want to make an actual album. It’s fine with us if you want to buy singles.

To us, it’s meant to be listened to all the way through in order. It’s well thought out and that’s what we would hope. We have carefully thought about the album order and how things fit together. It’s all very important to us.

When we listen to albums that we like, it seems like they’re set up with that in mind.”

Monninger admits the group, which just formed its own record label to release Better Nature, has exceeded her expectations.

“We never thought up a life plan,” she says, “but so far everything is working out so we’re going with it.”

jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel

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| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

47

Photo by Justin Ostrander

MUSIC NATIVE SON Guitarist Tom Bukovac returns to town with country star Vince Gill

By Matt Wardlaw WHEN COUNTRY SINGERguitarist Vince Gill was putting together plans to go out on the road in support of his latest album, Down to My Last Bad Habit, he reached out to guitarist Tom Bukovac, who had played on all of the tracks on the new record, to see if he might want to come along.

“You know, I think Vince was surprised when I told him [I’d do this],” Bukovac says during a recent phone conversation. “He asked me to do the gig and he thought for sure I would say no and I was like, ‘Hell yeah, man.

I’d love to do it.’ Because I just respect him so much and I’m so proud to be playing with that band. It’s like an all-star band. There’s a legend in every chair.”

The Northeast Ohio native, who grew up in Willowick, has worked in the Nashville music scene since 1992.

He has fond memories of the time he spent growing up in the Cleveland area. His mother Norma owned an area bar, the Surfside Lounge in Eastlake, where he got an early musical education. “I basically would hang out there all day in the summer and went to work with her and I’d hang out and watch all of the bands playing there. It was great for me. I learned a lot.”

His sister Joyce was an additional important influence, introducing him to the music of the Beatles, a big musical gateway that eventually led him to dig further into bands and artists like David Bowie, Genesis, Yes, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Cars and Led Zeppelin — “all of the classics,” as he puts it. He spent a lot of time listening to albums, learning by ear how to play his favorite songs.

“I would just sit with records and put the needle back a million times to try to figure out licks of AC/DC and stuff like that. I was always just trying to learn how to play stuff right,” he remembers. “You develop your ear really good like that, you know, because I wasn’t learning off of YouTube videos and stuff. I look at them now, you know, because it’s great.

You can learn jazz and whatever. It’s great to watch instructional videos. I still do that.”

Bukovac admits that there was one

48

particular song that he struggled with.

“I still don’t know how to play it right, but I tried like hell, that old Steve Howe thing called ‘The Clap,’” he says.

“It was like an acoustic solo and I tried to learn that. I think I got pretty close, but I don’t think I ever quite got it exactly right.”

By the time he was 13 years old, he was playing all of the local neighborhood bars on Friday and Saturday nights, staying out until two in the morning. “It’s hard to believe that it even happened back in those days,” he says now.

During his Cleveland days, Bukovac could be found playing in bands like Fayrewether, Catch 22 and Bob Gatewood’s Calabash.

“You know, that gig with Bob was really amazing for me,” he says. “We played a lot and we had a repertoire of like 300 oldies, like ’50s, ’60s and ’70s tunes. We’d just go from one song to another in these medleys and I learned all of those wacky old songs.

It was pretty good for me to learn all of that stuff, playing in that band.

And it was the first good paying gig that I could get back in those days.

We were playing a lot and that was a big moment for me. I played bass in that band for many years before I even played guitar, because they already had a guitar player.”

Gatewood has fond memories of that time period too.

“He was on bass to start but when I heard him play guitar I immediately

Tom Bukovac has played with some of country’s biggest stars.

knew anyone in town and would try to sniff out auditions as best he could.

“I remember that it took about maybe five or six months to get my first audition once I’d moved here,” he says. “I didn’t get it, but the guy that they picked, it ended up not working out, so they called me back and then that’s how I got it. I was like second place. But you know, once you get one of those road gigs here in Nashville, it quickly can lead to another and to another and to another and you start jumping around and leap-frogging on gigs for whatever is a better paying or more prestigious gig. That’s what everybody does. You know, you get one road gig and everyone goes, ‘Oh, this guy is okay, so maybe [we can] try him for this gig.’ You keep jumping around.

It’s really hard to keep a band together in Nashville for that reason, because

VINCE GILL 8 P.M., FRIDAY, MAY 6, HARD ROCK LIVE, 10777 NORTHFIELD RD., NORTHFIELD, 855-660-7625.

TICKETS: $45-$75, HRROCKSINONORTHFIELDPARK.COM

moved him to that,” he says via email.

“On a scale from 1 to 10, I would give him about a 94. He loved playing at Put-in-Bay with us but we all knew he was destined for bigger things. He’s produced and played on all my albums since then. He’s what you call a ‘track maker.’”

When he eventually made that decision to move to Nashville, it was a leap of faith that, with a lot of hard work, paid off in a big way. He hardly

| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

everybody’s always just jumping gigs.”

Within a couple of years, he found himself out on the road with Wynonna Judd and in the midst of the next phase of his developing career, which included additional road work with John Fogerty and Faith Hill.

“That was pretty serious business, back in those days, because Wynonna was pretty big still,” he says. “[She had] a killer band and I did that for like four years and met a lot of people

doing that. That’s when I kind of slowly started working my way into the studio scene. It’s really hard to break into the studio scene here. You’ve really got to work hard and be really good to kick ass in the studio scene around here. It’s very, very difficult to do. It’s way harder than getting a live gig. The credentials of playing with her and other people really helped me break into the studio thing. Right around 2000, I made a totally conscious effort to quit the road and be a fulltime studio guy, which I knew is what I wanted to do. I wanted to stay home.

I’ve never been really big on touring anyway, honestly. I never really liked it that much.”

When the Gill tour rolls into the Hard Rock Live on May 6, it will give Bukovac the chance to play his first hometown gig in a while — he’s played shows at Quicken Loans Arena with Faith Hill and Blossom Music Center with Wynonna in the past — and he’s looking forward to being back in town.

“You know, I was 24 when I left there, so a lot of the stuff that happened in Cleveland [after that], I don’t know anything about, honestly.

I miss a lot of it. But I remember that back in those days, Cleveland was a big rock and roll town and there was a lot of cool acts playing there. We’re going to be playing there in Northfield and I’m excited about that. It’s always good to get the family out and see everybody.”

music@clevescene.com t@cleveland_scene

| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

49

LIVEWIRE

all the live music you should see this week Photo by Vanessa Heins/Press Here

WED

5/04

The Black Lips/Obnox/Nox Boys: Emerging during the umpteenth garage-rock revival of the late ’90s/ early 2000s, the Black Lips quickly became a staple of the 50-yearold genre. The band has avoided relegation to the generic indie rock bleacher seats through the sheer depth and diversity of their work.

Their albums move from Pebbles/ Nuggets-era schoolboy garage to buzzing drag-race rock to Bob Dylan-style ramblings, all while maintaining a Rolling Stones bad boy snarl. Legendary Bomp!

Records was the first to pick them up; they moved to Vice Records in 2006. Eight albums later, the band hasn’t slowed their quest for new territory: 2014’s Underneath the Rainbow veers towards sultry country western on more than one occasion. The band is now recording new material under the guidance of Beatle baby Sean Ono Lennon.

If you’re looking to get a taste of what you might hear at the show, classic tracks such as “Katrina” and “Family Tree” will rev your motor.

(Brittany Kaufman) 8:30 p.m., $14 ADV, $15 DOS. Grog Shop.

Night Demon/Visigoth/Vandallus: A heavy metal act outta California, Night Demon started back in 2011 when it recorded its first EP. It played its first-ever live show in 2012 and have relentlessly toured for seven to eight months a year ever since. The band has adopted Cleveland as its second home because of the great support it has received, and its latest album, Curse of the Damned, won the No. 1 spot for Best Albums of 2015 on WJCU’s “Metal on Metal” radio program. The band’s latest effort, Curse of the Damned, centers on a series of murders that plague a small suburban town. On “Screams in the Night,” the album’s opening track, the band channels old-school metal with gang-style chants. On the current tour, the band performs the album in its entirety, though the group plays the songs in reverse order simply because they translate better that way. (Jeff Niesel) 7:30 p.m., $10. Maple Grove.

10 X 3 Hosted by Brent Kirby (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

Moises Borges & Paul Ferguson: 7 p.m., $15. Nighttown.

Boy=Girl/Bob Frank: 8 p.m. Barking Spider Tavern.

50

The Sheepdogs roll into town to play the Kent Stage. See: Sunday.

Brian Jonestown Massacre/Weird Owl/DJ Party Sweat and DJ Dorian Sway: 8:30 p.m., $20 ADV, $22 DOS. Beachland Ballroom.

Keigo Hirakawa: 7 p.m., free. BLU Jazz+.

Palm: 9 p.m., $8. Now That’s Class.

THU

5/05

The New Mastersounds/Moon Hooch: From funky note one of the New Mastersounds’ latest album, Made for Pleasure, it’s clear that the band has remained tight as hell and fully intent on delivering the aural goods.

Since the turn of the millennium, this Leeds-based jazz fusion outfit set itself apart by throwing down classed-up, danceable funk. Their tunes are often stripped down (see “Enough is Enough,” which still packs a punch worthy of a night full of hip swerves), but that’s sort of the point: The band is aware of the space between notes. Take a listen to this whole album and tune into each musician; they’re all letting the songs breathe, and we in turn can move in time to the music that much more. (Eric Sandy) 8:30 p.m., $18 ADV, $20 DOS. Beachland Ballroom.

Frankie Ballard: 7 p.m., $19-$32.50.

House of Blues.

Blu Jazz Big Band Residency with the Sam Blakeslee Large Group: 8 p.m., $10. BLU Jazz+.

Cleveland Cello Quartet: 7 p.m., $10.

Bop Stop.

Craic Bros: 7 p.m. Packy Malley’s Bar. Curren$y/Phil Morgan: 6 p.m., $32.40. The Agora Theatre.

Mitch Frohman Latin Jazz Quartet: 7 p.m., $20. Nighttown.

Hank Wood & the Hammerheads/ Perverts Again/The Cowboy/ Rubber Mate: 9 p.m., $7. Now That’s Class.

Chris Hatton’s Musical Circus (in

| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

the Wine Bar): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

Hollow Earth: A Bent Crayon Records Curated DJ Night (in the Underdog): 8 p.m., free. Happy Dog. Jam for Justice: 6 p.m. The Euclid Tavern.

Jam Night with the Bad Boys of Blues: 9 p.m., free. Brothers Lounge.

Jantsen & Dirt Monkey/Glockwize/ Nasty Blade Gamez/Akuma/Jessse Trillet: 9 p.m., $12 ADV, $15 DOS. Beachland Tavern.

Joshua Radin/Lauren Shera: 8 p.m., $30 ADV, $35 DOS. Music Box Supper Club.

The Rat Pack Featuring Frank, Sammy and Dean: 10 p.m., $5.

Vosh Club.

Seafair/Jesus on the Mainline/Ohio Weather Band/The Kickback: 7:30 p.m., $8. Grog Shop.

Slingshot Dakota/Two Hand Fools/ Heart & Lung/Bullfighter (in the Locker Room): 8 p.m., $6. Mahall’s 20 Lanes.

Spyder Stompers/Swap Meet: 8 p.m.

Barking Spider Tavern.

The Tough Shits/White Lighter/ Birthday Noose: 9 p.m., $5. Happy Dog.

FRI

5/06

Cheap Trick/Years & Years: Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen, a founding member of the group, once described the band as “America’s greatest pop/rock garage band.” Some would argue that after they conquered Budokan, they instantly nabbed international status as perhaps the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band. The Rock Hall finally inducted the group this year. More than four decades into their journey, Cheap Trick remains one of the hardest working bands in the business: They still remain

fiercely dedicated to making sure that people are knocked out by each and every live performance. (Matt Wardlaw) 9 p.m., $17.50-$55. Public Hall.

Imarhan/Relaxer/Obnox/Original Soundtrack: Upon first listen, one might not know what to make of the surprisingly funky sound of Tuareg’s latest musical export, but that’s exactly what Imarhan is shooting for. Mixing modern Western pop melodies with panAfrican rhythms that draw from traditional Saharan sounds, the quintet’s music is a fresh blend of distinctly different origins.

Although an American audience will probably have a hard time understanding the words to their songs, which are spoken in the band’s native language, there will be plenty of variety in the set to keep those on Musica floor dancing through the night. Guitarists in the crowd will have the chance to walk away with a new piece of hardware, too, as the concert’s host, EarthQuaker Devices, will raffle off a new pedal. (Jacob DeSmit) 9 p.m., $10. Musica.

Soulfly/Suffocation/Battlecross/ Abnormality/Lody Kong: Way back in the 1980s, Brazilian-born singerguitarist Max Cavalera started Sepultura when he and his brother Igor were still teenagers. That band left an incredible legacy (and the group still exists but without the Cavaleras). Cavalera explored his heritage with Sepultura and then with Soulfly. The group initially formed in 1998 after Cavalera left Sepultura in 1996; Soulfly issued its self-titled debut in 1998, and it immediately caught fire. Calavera started writing the songs for the band’s latest album, Archangel, in September 2014. After he wrote the riffs, he laid down drum tracks with the assistance of his son.

He decided to call it Archangel because of its biblical theme. As he has put it, the album details a “biblical apocalyptical atmosphere.”

The hoarse vocals in plodding tunes such as “Shamash” and “Bethlehem’s Blood” speak to the album’s dark theme. And the eerie bonus track “Soulfly X” recalls the work he did on Roots, the Sepultura album that explored his Brazilian background. Expect to hear those tunes and more at tonight’s show.

(Niesel) 5 p.m., $20.80. Agora Ballroom.

100 Mile Haul: 9 p.m., $5. The Euclid

BOP STOP

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5/8 | 7:30PM PATCHWORK AND DANA JESSEN

5/11 | 8PM TWIN TALK $10

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5/12 | 8PM SPYDER STOMPERS AND SUGAR PIE $10

5/13 | 9PM FIVEONE EXPERIMENTAL ORCHESTRA

5/14, 5:30PM EVENING IN OHIO CITY

5/15 | 3PM NORTHERN OHIO YOUTH ORCHESTRA

5/17 | 9PM OUTLAB JAM SESSION

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5/18 | 7PM UNIVERSITY SCHOOL WITH SAM MORRISON

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Food provided by Cleveland Culinary Launch and Kitchen!

| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

51

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52

Tavern.

666 De Mayo! Halfway to Halloween Party: 8:30 p.m., $5 ADV, $8 DOS. Beachland Tavern.

Blue Lunch/Cuyahoga Valley Frackers/George Foley & Friends: 5:30 p.m. Barking Spider Tavern.

Bluestone Union: 9 p.m., $5. Vosh Club.

Blair Crimmins & the Hookers (in the Supper Club): 8 p.m., $12 ADV, $15 DOS. Music Box Supper Club.

DJ Lawrence Caswell: 6 p.m., free.

Happy Dog. An Evening with Vince Gill: 8 p.m.

Hard Rock Rocksino.

Festivus: 9:30 p.m., $5. Brothers Lounge.

Charles Gil & His Ghost Band: 9 p.m. Packy Malleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bar. Home for Fall/Boy Meets World/ Coming Back Kelly: 7 p.m., $8 ADV, $10 DOS. Mahallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 20 Lanes.

Horns & Things: 8:30 p.m., $20.

Nighttown.

Maria Jacobs: 8 p.m., $12. BLU Jazz+.

Jivviden/Trios/Handsome Jack: 9 p.m., $8. Beachland Ballroom.

Dennis Lewin: 10:30 p.m., free.

Nighttown.

The Nod Factor Featuring Vice Soulectric/Zooka Joe/DJ Know1: 10 p.m., free. Now Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Class.

Part Time Lovers/Queen of Hell/Pack Wolf: 9 p.m., $5. Happy Dog. Buffy Sainte-Marie: 8 p.m., $30-$45.

The Kent Stage.

Jeff Sherman (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

Tokyo Police Club/From Indian Lakes/These Knees: 9 p.m., $16 ADV, $18 DOS. Grog Shop.

YMusicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Youth Music Awareness Concert: 8 p.m., $10-$20. Bop Stop.

| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

1414 RIVERSIDE DRIVE LAKEWOOD Ă&#x201C;ÂŁĂ&#x2C6;Â&#x2021;Ă&#x2021;Ă&#x2C6;Ă&#x2021;Â&#x2021;xĂ&#x201C;äĂ&#x201C;Ă&#x160;UĂ&#x160;6Â&#x153;Ă&#x192;Â&#x2026;VÂ?Ă&#x2022;L°VÂ&#x153;Â&#x201C;

SAT

5/07

Besnard Lakes/Turn to Crime/ Stems: Headed by husband/wife songwriting team Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, this six-piece from Montreal regularly draws inspiration for its music from its namesake, a Canadian camping and ďŹ shing site. The band was formed after its wedded core returned from a getaway trip to Besnard Lake with demos that would become the bandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s earliest recorded material.

Throughout its 15-year history, the duo has used that location as annual inspiration for their atmospheric music, which has evolved as the band has expanded to accommodate more members

for its most recent releases. On the groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s latest, A Coliseum Complex Museum, the spacey vocal harmonies of Lasek and Goreas are grounded by stringy guitars and epic synth, forming the groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most balanced and engrossing sound yet. (DeSmit) 8 p.m., $12 ADV, $14 DOS. Beachland Tavern.

Ellie Goulding: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Love me like you do,â&#x20AC;?

Ellie Goulding croons on â&#x20AC;&#x153;Love Me Like You Do,â&#x20AC;? the monster hit from last yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Delirium. Placement in the ďŹ lm Fifty Shades of Grey gave the saccharine tune a good boost.

Elsewhere, Goulding embraces EDM with the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Need Nobodyâ&#x20AC;? and â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Greatest.â&#x20AC;? Tonightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s concert marks the opening of the summer season at Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica.

While Gouldingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s electronic-heavy tunes probably work best at Vegaslike nightclubs, they possess upbeat tempos that should make for a festive atmosphere. (Niesel) Nautica Center.

Local H â&#x20AC;&#x201D; As Good As Dead 20th Anniversary Tour: Local H singerguitarist Scott Lucas grew up in Zion, Illinois â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a place that isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t exactly teeming with rock bands â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and looked to acts like R.E.M. for inspiration. After all, those guys had come out of another small American town (Athens, Georgia) and ascended to international fame after being embraced by college radio. Ironically enough, Local H, a duo that plays heavy, grungy rock that straddles the line between metal and indie, is still going strong while R.E.M. has called it quits.

Originally, the band self-released a 7-inch EP as well as a few cassettes; it would become a two-piece by default after an original guitarist and bassist quit. And back then, two-pieces werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t as cool as they are now. The band signed to a major label in 1995 and its sophomore effort, As Good as Dead, became a huge hit as â&#x20AC;&#x153;Bound for the Floor,â&#x20AC;? a song with sneering vocals that sounded like a distant cousin of Nirvanaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;Smells Like Teen Spirit,â&#x20AC;? became a hit on commercial radio.

The band celebrates that albumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s anniversary with tonightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s show.

(Niesel) 9 p.m., $15. Musica.

Sinatra Night with Michael Sonata (in the Supper Club): Canton native Michael Sonata was a member of the University of Notre Dame Glee Club.

In 2004, he auditioned for a role in a Sopranos spoof that required a character based on Frank Sinatra.

Sonata got the part and has been imitating Olâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Blue Eyes ever since.

He includes some 90 songs in his repertoire and covers all eras, including the Columbia years and

HAVE A PICNIC, RELAX & ENJOY

NO COVER

LIVE MUSIC b a r k i n g s p i d e r t a ve r n . c o m

Thursday May 5 Swap Meet 8:00 (americana, jazz) Spyder Stompers 10:00 (americana, blues)

Friday May 6 George Foley & Friends 5:30 (jazz) The Cuyahoga Valley Frackers 8:00 (americana) Blue Lunch 10:00 (blues, jazz, rhythm and blues)

Saturday May 7 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest Reading 3:00 (poetry) Matt Harmon 8:00 (singer/ songwriter) Bill Lestock 10:00 (bluegrass, folk)

Sunday May 8 Night Owls 3:00 (jazz) Jim Schafer & Friends 6:00 (singer/ songwriter , americana) GGIGF `kd_f[h hZDB Yb[l[bWdZ © 216.421.2863

THURS., MAY 5

Austin Walkin’ Cane 8PM

FRI., MAY 6

The Hollywood Slim Band 9PM

SAT., MAY 7

Blues Chronicles

LIVEWIRE the Capitol years. He even takes requests from the audience. (Niesel) 8 p.m., $10. Music Box Supper Club.

All Keyed Up Dueling Pianos: 9 p.m., $5. Vosh Club.

Bobby Caldwell: 8:30 p.m., $40$82.50. The Tangier.

George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic: 8 p.m., $29.50-$45.

House of Blues.

Cracker/Whiskey Daredevils: 8:30 p.m., $22 ADV, $25 DOS. Beachland Ballroom.

The Down-Fi/Great Plains/The Tufted Puffins: 8:30 p.m., $7. Grog Shop.

Drowning Pool/Saliva: 7 p.m., $15 ADV, $20 DOS. Odeon.

Dominick Farinacci & Spirit of the Groove: 8:30 p.m., $15. Nighttown.

Glass Harp: 8 p.m., $37.50-$50. The Kent Stage.

Demi Devils/Kriadiaz/Bonesaw/ Konipshun Phit/The Monster Dolls/Fran the Magic Man: 6 p.m., $6.24. Agora Ballroom.

Honey: 9 p.m., $5. The Euclid Tavern.

Les Délices: Concertos Comiques: 8 p.m., $25. Bop Stop.

Bill Lestock/Matt Harmon: 8 p.m.

Barking Spider Tavern.

Magically Delicious: The Music of Mingus: 8 p.m., $12. BLU Jazz+.

Re-Evolution: 9 p.m., $5. Happy Dog. That 80’s Band: 9:30 p.m., $5.

Brothers Lounge.

Tropical Cleveland: A Tribute to Celia Cruz: 9:30 p.m. Music Box Supper Club.

Jeff Varga (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m.

Brothers Lounge.

Jackie Warren: 10:30 p.m., free.

Nighttown.

Waterloo Boogaloo: 9 p.m. Packy Malley’s Bar.

9PM

SUN., MAY 8

School of Rock 2PM

MON., MAY 9 Open Jam Night Ft.

Good Energy 8PM

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Engelbert Humperdinck: One of the last of the old-school lounge/ soft rock singers who sings about romantic love like it’s something precious, Engelbert Humperdinck hammed it up when he appeared at at the Hard Rock Rocksino back in 2014. And yet Humperdinck, who returns to the venue tonight at 7:30, still took soft rock seriously enough that older members of the crowd didn’t think he was just phoning it in and goofing around.

Humperdinck devoted most of the second half of that 2014 show to playing material from 2014’s Engelbert Calling, an album of duets that debuted in the U.K. Top| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

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40 Album Charts at No. 31. The album features duets with Charles Aznavour, Elton John, Il Divo, Johnny Mathis, Lulu, Willie Nelson, Olivia Newton-John, Gene Simmons and others. At 80, the singer shows no signs of slowing down and comes to town as a part of a world tour that will take him to Cairo, Singapore and the Philippines.

(Niesel) 7:30 p.m., $25-$75. Hard Rock Rocksino.

The Sheepdogs/Mail the Horse: The Sheepdogs hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been on the road too long before they started picking up international acclaim.

The Saskatoon band found itself adorning major festival bills all over the continent, and the ensuing albums â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a 2012 self-titled release and 2015â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Future Nostalgia â&#x20AC;&#x201D; evinced a conďŹ dent rock â&#x20AC;&#x2122;nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; roll band, no chaser required. The more recent album is a fully blossomed ďŹ&#x201A;ower of scorching garage rockmeets-arena rock. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dynamic and alive, ďŹ lled with enough hooks to keep even the most jaded millennial listener engaged. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I Really Wanna Be Your Man,â&#x20AC;? and its drums will get stuck in your head, and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not the only example at play here.

(Sandy) 8 p.m., $15 ADV, $18 DOS. The Kent Stage.

Thelma and the Sleaze/Munin/ Punch Drunk Tagalogs: Nashvilleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Thelma and the Sleaze play sledgehammer-hard rock custommade for slow-motion â&#x20AC;&#x153;taking of the townâ&#x20AC;? Hollywood scenes. Founded in 2010, the band tours heavily in support of self-released singles and EPs. Slathering Nazareth or Motorhead riffage with the moans and wails of Janis Joplin, the trio shows that the â&#x20AC;&#x153;sex, drugs, and rock â&#x20AC;&#x2122;nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; rollâ&#x20AC;? club isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just for old boys. They have yet to announce a label for their forthcoming full-length, but you can expect to hear some songs from it tonight.

(Kaufman) 9 p.m., $5. Happy Dog. David Wax Museum/Darlingside: 8 p.m., $15 ADV, $18 DOS. Beachland Tavern.

Klaus Johann Grobe/Elias and the Error/Key to the Mint: 9 p.m., $8.

Now Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Class.

Jeff the Brotherhood/Diarrhea Planet: 8:30 p.m., $15. Grog Shop.

Night Owls: 3 p.m. Barking Spider Tavern.

Patchwork and Dana Jessen: 7:30 p.m., $10. Bop Stop.

Mike Petrone (in the Wine Bar): 5:30 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

Jim Schafer & Friends: 6 p.m.

5/09

Snarky Puppy: Grammy-winning Snarky Puppy formed in 2004, but it seems like the band has always lurked in the background of this centuryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dynamic jazz-fusion scene. Led by composer Michael Teague, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s full of musical wizards all capable of moving as one. (In all, there are some 40 musicians involved with the collective.) The new album, Culcha Vulcha, gets into the bandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s patented high weirdness quickly; opener â&#x20AC;&#x153;Tarovaâ&#x20AC;? spares no emotional jolt and highlights the brass section with excitement. From there, things donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t let up. Onstage, the effect is even more dazzling. (Sandy) 8 p.m., $32 ADV, $35 DOS. Beachland Ballroom.

Skatch Anderssen Orchestra: 8 p.m., $10. Brothers Lounge.

Chain and the Gang: 5 p.m., $5. Now Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Class.

Cleveland Blues Society Jam Night: 9 p.m. Packy Malleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bar. Grassroots Bluegrass Jam: 7:30 p.m., free. The Euclid Tavern.

Sonic Sessions: King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard: 8 p.m., $5.50. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum and Archives.

Velvet Voyage (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

TUE

5/10

After Hours with AARP: 8 p.m., $10.

Music Box Supper Club.

Enemy Planes/Blaka Watra: 8:30 p.m., $8 ADV, $10 DOS. Beachland Tavern.

Golden Streets of Paradise/Jennifer Hall/Morgan Mecaskey: 8:30 p.m., $5. Grog Shop.

Ernie Krivda Jazz Workshop/Fred Gillen Jr.: 7 p.m. Barking Spider Tavern.

Rogue Wave/Hey Marseilles/ Corduroy Season: 8 p.m., $15 ADV, $17 DOS. Beachland Ballroom.

Say Anything/mewithoutyou/Teen Suicide/Museum Mouth: 6:30 p.m., $19. House of Blues.

Two-Set Tuesday Featuring Tom Brady: 7 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

Who & the Fucks/Cucumber & the Suntans/Methodrones: 9 p.m., $5.

Now Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Class.

Dan Zola Orchestra Big Band: 7:30 p.m., $10. Vosh Club.

scene@clevescene.com t@cleveland_scene

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“Coolest local live band venue I’ve seen in a long time” - Slash

SATURDAY MAY 7

MICHELLE ROMARY BAND

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JESUS ON THE MAINLINE

By Jeff Niesel MEET THE BAND: Andrew Neesley (vocals), Mel Flannery (vocals), Amanda Brecker (vocals), Tim Emmerick (vocals, guitar, banjo), Tomek Miernowski (bass), Dave Scalia (drums), Pascal Le Beouf (keyboards, organ), Andrew Miramonti (guitars), Simon Kafka (guitars), Mike Gorham (trumpet), Augie Haas (trumpet), Natalie Cressman (Trombone), Frank Cohen (Trombone), Mark McGinnis (Tuba), Jake Goldbas (Percussion).

really inspired by a certain sound or rhythm or even just a guitar sound or an organ sound or a brass sound.

We’ll just go down the rabbit hole in pursuit of that certain sound.

We like to borrow ideas from other people as long as it goes through the filter and becomes our own.

The range is so broad, it’s had to narrow it down. The band is really a discovery project. We don’t try to keep it too close to one particular sound.”

A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND: In 2013, Neesley, who lives in Harlem, transitioned out of a band he had been in and started writing some new tunes. “The nature of my writing gravitates toward a larger ensemble,” he says. “The group kept getting bigger and bigger.

Tim started writing some songs for the group and now it’s a co-writing process. We write a large portion of the songs.”

WHY YOU SHOULD HEAR THEM: Last year, the band released its acclaimed debut EP. With its heavy blues guitar riffs, “Sister City, Brother Bone” possesses a classic rock vibe — think the Black Keys with an old school horn section. The band has started to assemble tunes for a fulllength, which it hopes to record this summer. “We’re most proud of the new music, which comes from an incredibly collaborative perspective,” says Neesley, adding that the group will be playing festivals and touring extensively during the summer as well.

A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING: The band’s music recalls any number of bands, including the Black Keys, Mumford and Sons, the Black Crowes, Joe Cocker and Janis Joplin. “I think the names that we have listed as touchpoints for how the band sounds all apply at certain times,” says Emmerick. “Those were things that other people have heard.

We applied them retroactively.

Andrew and I really love the same music. We have varying tastes, but we’ll send links of songs back and forth all the time. We tend to love the same kind of stuff. We’ll get

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| clevescene.com | May 4 - 10, 2016

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Dear Dan, I’m a 31-year-old straight woman. I have a good job, great friends, and average attractiveness. I’ve dated close to 30 men at this point, and I can’t wrap my head around this: I’ve never had a boyfriend or dated anyone for more than a couple months. It’s really starting to wear on my self-esteem. I don’t believe anything is wrong with me, but the more time goes on, the more I think I have to be doing something wrong. The guys ghost me or things fizzle out or we’re not at the same point in our lives. This is particularly true for one guy I’ve remained friends with (common social circle) who is struggling with his career, though things are still awkward because it’s clear there’s still something there. Another area of concern: I’m still a virgin. Catholic guilt resulted in me being a late bloomer, with my first kiss at 21. Once I got more into dating, my low self-esteem coupled with the fact that I’ve basically decided I want to be in a monogamous committed relationship with a guy before having sex, relationships just never happened. I don’t have unrealistic expectations that I’ll marry the first dick that sticks itself into me — but I’ve waited this long, so I’m not going to jump into the sack with just anyone without knowing that I can at least trust them. The only guy I really do trust is Somewhat Depressed Guy, but propositioning him could further complicate our already awkward friendship. Is something wrong with me, and what the hell should I do?

What’s Wrong With Me? I get variations on the first half of your question — is something wrong with me? — all the time. But it’s not a question I’m in a position to answer, WWWM, as I would need to depose a random sampling of the guys you’ve dated, interrogate your friends, and grill you under a bare lightbulb for a few days to figure out what’s wrong with you.

And you know what? Nothing could be wrong with you. You may have pulled the short straw 30 times in a row, and you just need to keep getting out there and eventually you’ll pull a guy who won’t ghost or fizzle on you.

As for the second half of your question …

What the hell should you do? Well, gee.

What you’ve been doing hasn’t worked, WWWM, so maybe it’s time to do something else. Like fuck some dude on the first date.

Or if that’s too drastic, fuck some dude on the second date. Or better yet, go to Somewhat Depressed Guy and say: “I don’t think you want a relationship right now, and I’m not sure I do either. But I like you and trust you, and I could really use your help with something … .”

While the commitment-and-monogamy-first approach has worked for some, WWWM, it hasn’t worked for you. And being a virgin at 31 isn’t boosting your self-esteem. There are lots

of people out there who jumped in the sack and did a little dick-sticking with people they barely knew but had a good feeling about. The jumping/ sticking/dicking approach doesn’t always lead to committed and/or monogamous relationships, but it can and it has and it does.

Somewhat Depressed Guy might be somewhat less depressed if he was getting some, you might have higher self-esteem if you finally got some, and dispensing with your virginity might make dating after you part ways — if you part ways with him (you never know) — seem a lot less fraught.

Dear Dan, I’m a virgin in my late 20s. I’m not waiting until marriage, just for the right person. I’ve dated enough and had enough fun to continue being a happy, normal, socially competent guy, much to the disbelief of my various knuckledragging, vagina-blinded pals. I’ve been dating this gal for a few months. She’s special — we have tons of chemistry and she cares about me.

We had a brief conversation about my lack of sexperience when we first started dating, and she was very cool about it. I really like this girl, but I’m not sure yet if she’s the future Mrs. I am a worrier (thanks, mom!), and I find myself thinking that if I share this with her and somewhere down the road we end up breaking up, she’s going to be even more devastated because I shared my first time with her. Am I just having silly virgin worries? Not only am I concerned about her feelings if things don’t work out, but I’m also concerned that I might become vagina-blinded — that I might immediately tell this girl I want to spend my life with her just because she’s having sex with me only to find myself a few years down the road feeling trapped. What should I do?

Very Indecisive, Really Gettin’ Naughty You should fuck this girl already — provided, of course, this girl wants to fuck you.

You could wind up saying things you come to regret or have to walk back — her vagina might be that bedazzling — but that’s an unavoidable risk, and not one that’s unique to virgins. The right vagina, ass, face, skill set, or bank balance can blind a fucker with decades of experience. The only way to avoid vaginablindness — or ass-blindness, etc. — is to never have sex with anyone. And I don’t think you’re interested in celibacy, so stop freaking out about the risk that you’ll imprint, duckling-like, on the first vagina your pee-pee sees the inside of.

You must also eliminate “sexperience” from your vocabulary, VIRGN, as it’s equal parts cloying and annoying.

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%QUAL /PPORTUNITY !FlRMATIVE !CTION %MPLOYER - & $ 6 #OMMITED 4O ! $IVERSE 7ORKFORCE

&EDEX COM US CAREERS

CASH PAID FOR ALL JUNK CARS

AVAILABLE NOW Âą20,000 SF FOR LEASE 737 Bolivar Road | Cleveland, OH

We pay cash for junk or unwanted cars.

We tow them for free!

440-231-8114 Rich

Â&#x2021; Ideal Temp Space For The 2016

RNC

Â&#x2021; Across The Street From Quicken Loans Arena & Security Entrance Â&#x2021; Unique Open Floor Plan, High Ceilings & Exposed Brick Walls Â&#x2021; Suites Range From 3,500 SF To 25,000 SF Â&#x2021; Dedicated & Secured Indoor Parking For Leasing Information Contact: CONOR M. COAKLEY +1 216 687 1800 conor.coakley@cbre.com

$200 & UP