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Contents

EDITORIAL

VOL. 28 | NO. 17 | APRIL 28-MAY 4, 2016

STAFF WRITERS Meagan Flynn, Craig Malisow, Dianna Wray FELLOW Leif Reigstad EDITORIAL OPERATIONS MANAGER Richard Hebert CONTRIBUTORS Abbey Bender, Sherilyn Connelly, Phaedra Cook, Willie D,

Serena Donadoni, Alexandra Doyle, D.L. Groover, Clint Hale, Steve Jansen, Kristy Loye, Josef Molnar, Sean Pendergast, Steve Rangel, Bob Ruggiero, Alan Scherstuhl, Vic Shuttee, William Michael Smith, Randy Tibbits WEB CONTRIBUTORS Jeff Balke, Sam Byrd, Ashley Clos, Phaedra Cook, Willie D, Alexandra Doyle, Jef With One F, Catherine Gillespie, Jack Gorman, Clint Hale, Nicholas L. Hall, Whitney Hodgin, Alexandra Irrera, Matthew Keever, Erika Kwee, Chris Lane, Kristy Loye, Francisco Montes, Adam P. Newton, Joanna O’Leary, Jeremy Parzen, Sean Pendergast, Mai Pham, Steve Rangel, John Royal, Bob Ruggiero, David Sackllah, Ericka Schiche, Bill Simpson, Eric Smith, Nathan Smith, William Michael Smith, Matt Stieb, Katie Sullivan, Valerie Sweeten, Randy Tibbits, Marco Torres, Brooke Viggiano, Pete Vonder Haar ART ART DIRECTOR Monica Fuentes PRODUCTION PRODUCTION MANAGER Brian Cook LAYOUT EDITOR Mya Dale CORPORATE MARKETING GRAPHIC DESIGNER Natalie Silva GRAPHIC DESIGNER Sarah Wall ADVERTISING RETAIL SALES DIRECTOR Allisen Picos CLASSIFIED SALES DIRECTOR Juan Rojas OPERATIONS MANAGER Dana Donovan SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Joe Espelage, Char Koehler ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Karinn Brenes, Joshua Brettschneider, Joel Cirilo,

Arielle Lipsen, Courtney Mitchell, Jennifer Smith, Leslie Taylor HOUSE ACCOUNT MANAGER Sophie Cole DIGITAL OPERATIONS COORDINATOR Jessica Candler DIGITAL MARKETING AND SALES COORDINATOR Lisa Fegen REGIONAL MARKETING DIRECTOR Jennifer Robinson MARKETING MANAGER Jordan Taylor PROMOTIONS COORDINATOR Colleen Sexton MARKETING INTERN Tessa Chronister

L-Can Turkyilmaz, R-Troy Fields

Cover Story ▼

Done With Oil?

With the boom days gone and no relief in sight, young workers and college students scramble for a backup plan. DIANNA WRAY |

PAGE 11

Featured Stories ▼

What Next, Houston?

COMPUTER SYSTEMS SYSTEMS MANAGER Larry Parks

Night & Day

Film

Stage Capsules

Art Capsules

Cafe

HOUSTON PRESS STAFF |

PAGE 6

A Bit Confusing

Music Playbill .................................... 38 Listings ................................... 40

46 Employment 47

On the Cover:

Photograph by Can Turkyilmaz

Houston Press is published weekly, 52 times a year, by Houston Press LP, 2603 La Branch, Houston, TX 77004. All rights reserved. First copy of this publication is free. Each additional copy costs $2. Houston Press assumes no responsibility for the care and return of unsolicited materials. Return postage must accompany any material to be returned. In no event shall unsolicited material subject this publication to any claim for holding fees or similar charges.

PHAEDRA COOK |

PAGE 31

The entire contents of Houston Press are Copyright 2016 by Houston Press LP. No portion may be reproduced in whole or in part by any means, including electronic retrieval systems, without the express written permission of the publisher, Houston Press LP, 2603 La Branch, Houston, TX 77004. Please call the Houston Press office for back-issue information: 713-280-2400. Application to Mail at Periodicals Postage Rates is pending at Houston, Texas.

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POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Houston Press, 2603 La Branch, Houston, TX 77004. Subscriptions may be purchased for $80 (one year) for third-class mail in the United States. Payable in U.S. currency. Mail to: Subscriptions/Houston Press, 2603 La Branch, Houston, TX 77004. Delivery may take one week.

Executive Assistant Needed Part-time position available.

The Houston Press newsroom is looking for a part-time executive assistant who will be responsible for a variety of clerical duties and will report directly to the editor-inchief. Applicants should be available to work 20 hours a week, have computer skills, be accurate and organized, and have the ability to work well with both internal and external customers. Interested candidates should send a résumé and cover letter to margaret.downing@houstonpress.com.

April 28 - May 4, 2016

DISTRIBUTION

Revolve Kitchen + Bar at Hotel Derek may be a good place to hang out, but it’s not quite a restaurant.

The Houston Press is looking for a Food Editor who will work with our lead food critic and other food writers to craft our restaurant and food coverage both online and in print. Candidates should be knowledgeable about food, write and report well, and be very organized and accurate. Knowledge of photography is a plus. The position is full-time and on staff with benefits. The Food Editor will report directly to the Editor-in-Chief. Interested applicants should email a résumé, cover letter and samples of their own food writing to margaret.downing@ houstonpress.com. No phone calls.

Medical Research

VMG National

Food Editor Opening

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As the flood waters clear away, leaving behind lessons in destruction and death, who’s got a better plan?

N AT I O N A L A D V E R T I S I N G

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Pendergast

Eating...Our Words ............... 32

NEW MEDIA DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT Kevin Spidel EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL SALES Stuart Folb WEB SUPPORT MANAGER Michael Uchtman NATIONAL DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGIST Jenna Corday

VMG Advertising 1-888-278-9866, www.vmgadvertising.com SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT Sue Belair SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES OPERATIONS Joe Larkin FOR GENERAL INFORMATION, CALL: 713-280-2400 FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION, CALL: 713-280-2410 FOR CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING, CALL: 713-280-2800 FOR NATIONAL ADVERTISING, CALL: 888-278-9866

VOICE MEDIA GROUP

I N F O R M AT I O N T E C H N O L O G Y EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL OPERATIONS Gerard Goroski DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS SYSTEMS Lee-ann Dunton PRODUCT DIRECTOR James Hamilton IT DIRECTOR Dave Marcon OPERATIONS MANAGER Brian Heimert INFRASTRUCTURE ARCHITECT David Fearn

Houston News

Capsules ................................. 23

BUSINESS BUSINESS MANAGER Joseph Ferrara FINANCIAL ACCOUNTANT David Huffman STAFF ACCOUNTANT Abrahán Garza PUBLISHER Stuart Folb EXECUTIVE EDITOR Christine Brennan EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE EDITOR Andy Van De Voorde EDITORIAL DIGITAL DIRECTOR Kelsey Whipple DIGITAL DESIGN DIRECTOR Darrick Rainey EDITORIAL DESIGN DIRECTOR Tom Carlson NATIONAL CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Curt Sanders CORPORATE CONTROLLER Beth Cook LEGAL COUNSEL Steve Suskin CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Jeff Mars CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Scott Tobias

EDITOR Margaret Downing MANAGING EDITOR Michael Barajas WEB EDITOR Cory Garcia ARTS EDITOR Margaret Downing FOOD EDITOR Margaret Downing MUSIC EDITOR Chris Gray NEWS EDITOR Michael Barajas MUSIC LISTINGS EDITOR Tex Kerschen NIGHT & DAY EDITOR Susie Tommaney

4/26/16 5:17 PM

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| HOUSTON NEWS |

Sitting DuckS Is Meyerland now a

detentIon pond for the texas MedIcal center?

April 28 - May 4, 2016

Houston Press

STEVE JANSEN

Sylvester Turner vowed to expedite funding for the severely delayed project. “The unfortunate citizens of Meyerland have apparently been preordained to become a detention pond for the Texas Medical Center,” says Scott.

fter the Memorial Day floods of 2015, many Meyerland residents, heeding statements from Harris County and City of Houston officials that they’d been hit by biblical-like rains, were either in a panic or in business mode. for people dIsplaced Now they’re just pissed off. by last week’s hIstorIc “It’s ridiculous at this point,” says flood, It’s a long, Natalie Monzon, who, after last MonuncertaIn road to Sheldon Weisfeld day’s rains, has been forced to live in recovery. MEAGAN FLYNN the upstairs of her Meyerland residence The Meyerland home of Sheldon Weisfeld during Monday’s floods. ilda Perla thought the wafor the second time in 11 months. ter would be gone last That changed somewhere along the line, Last May, 12 inches of floodwater destroyed week when she returned says Scott, and now homes are flooding on a the downstairs of her Braesvalley Drive home, to her bottom-floor apartment the morning semi-regular basis. located on the north side of Brays Bayou. Durafter it flooded. She lived in Imperial Oaks “The people of Meyerland have lived in ing last Monday’s storms, she said, anywhere apartments, just across the street from Arbor their homes safe and secure for generafrom a half-inch to two inches of water made its Court in Greenspoint, among the areas worst tions. All of a sudden, their homes are being hit by last week’s historic flooding. Roughly way into the downstairs. destroyed. Fort Bend County government When the Houston Press spoke to Monzon 350 residents in those apartments had to be has approved development that’s not conlast Tuesday, crews had already ripped out the rescued on boats and brought to a nearby sistent with the principle of the 100-year sheetrock so that mold wouldn’t climb up the shelter. Some battled the high waters on top floodplain of ‘do no harm,’” says Scott. “By walls and cause further grossness. “If it’s one of flat-screen TVs or even refrigerators. doing developments that aren’t consistent inch or 12 inches,” says Monzon, “it doesn’t But that day, Hilda Perla stayed put, praying with ‘do no harm,’ they have devastated the matter when it gets into the sheetrock.” everything would be okay in the morning. More heartbreaking: Monzon says that aside community of Meyerland. Harris County’s While she stayed the night with her secondrole in this atrocity is yet to be determined, from one under-construction bathroom, her floor neighbors, she sent her children off to but the homeowners of Meyerland have home was back to the way it had been before stay with their aunt, away from all the wet been screwed and tattooed by Fort Bend the Memorial Day storms destroyed it. wreckage. When Perla woke up the next day to Sheldon Weisfeld is in the same nightmarish County government.” assess the damage, the water was still there. “It’s beyond human comprehension,” conboat/canoe/kayak. His low-lying Endicott Lane Her bed and her three children’s beds were tinues Scott. “It’s evil. It’s sinister. Something is home is prone to flooding, but he had never soaked in sewage. The kitchen had been dewrong. The only mistake the homeowners of seen anything like what happened during the stroyed. The food, all perished. The smell, Memorial Day floods, which ransacked his two- Meyerland have made is to own a home built in nearly unbearable. the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.” story home south of Brays Bayou with an estiLast Wednesday, Perla gave a tour of Though the downstream impact of storm mated 44 inches. what was left, as she and her family began water runoff remains an inexact science, a deLast Monday, he estimated that his home, hauling out all their belongings that had belayed flood-reduction which was only days away from becoming like new, took in 26 to 27 inches of floodwater. project hasn’t thwarted flooding havoc in com“It had all the sheetrock installed and it was munities such as Meyerfully insulated. The contractor was actually land, Westbury and going to show up today to finish the job,” WeWillow Meadows. isfeld told the Press. Project Brays, an arduous project that will widen and improve 21VISIT HOUSTONPRESS.COM mile Brays Bayou, is beFOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF hind schedule because THE FLOODS AND AFTERMATH of funding delays. After the United States Army “There’s clearly gross negligence in how we Corps of Engineers and manage our water control,” adds a frustrated, fed-up Weisfeld. Houston homes that had never the Harris County Flood Control District flooded in the past are getting nailed with widened the Brays inches — and sometimes feet — of water. There’s a reason for that, says George Scott, a Bayou section that incorporated the Texas former newspaper owner and reporter who’s Medical Center, they running for a spot on the Katy Independent ditched the Meyerland School District Board. portion of the channel In the 1970s, when more and more farmand built a retention baland succumbed to urban development and sin by Highway 6. 100-year floodplains came into existence, The Meyerland secFort Bend County enacted flood protections, tion of Project Brays had says Scott. If a developer’s planned subdivian original completion sion would negatively affect downstream year of 2013. Since then, communities in Fort Bend and Harris counties, government officials wouldn’t sign off on the area has flooded twice. Last week, Mayor Greenspoint residents evacuate on a neighbor’s boat. the development.

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What next?

come debris. She spoke quickly, in Spanish, about what the storm had taken from her. She pressed the back of her palm to her cheek to mime sleeping when she said she had nowhere to rest her head at night. She gestured to the empty living room and the clutter on the kitchen table, bound for the garbage, when she said, “No tengo dinero. No tengo nada.” Perla and her family are among hundreds of residents in the Greenspoint area who lost everything and are simply waiting in limbo for the city’s help. Her story has echoes across the Houston area. In Katy, residents reported water waist-deep on some city streets after 12 to 17 inches of rain fell during Monday morning’s storm. While most school districts across the region had opened by last Wednesday, Katy and Cypress-Fairbanks ISDs closed for the entire week. Over in Meyerland, where hundreds of homes were flooded by the storm, personnel from the city’s Department of Neighborhoods went door to door to ask residents about their first impresRESIDENTS sions of the damage. WHO LOST EVERyTHING “We’re going to do to try to ARE WAITING everything convince you to stay IN LIMbO FOR in your home, beTHE CITy’S cause this community is very important to HELP. the city of Houston,” Turner said, bringing to mind the Memorial Day floods that the homeowners had just finished recovering from. Up in Greenspoint, Turner promised a room full of hundreds of displaced residents, many now living in the M.O. Campbell Education Center shelter, that this was not a “here today, gone tomorrow” scenario. Turner said the top

Lisandro Sanchez

4/26/16 5:17 PM

departMent dIdn’t Install barrIers at flooded underpasses because It assuMed drIvers would Ignore theM. MEAGAN FLYNN

ver the past year, Houston could have installed 27 mechanical-arm barriers at some of the most flood-prone underpasses in the city. Since the city never installed those gates, designed to swing down in high water, we have no idea what difference they could have made during the major storm that caused Houston’s historic flooding last week. That’s because last fall, within a matter of weeks, two reckless drivers ruined

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that the city uses to manually block off flooded roads was a better strategy than automatic gates that block traffic. Generally, how it works now is that Public Works will go out and place barricades after a Good Samaritan calls 311 and warns of high water at a specific location. At the underpasses where the city installed the flashing warning lights, the underground sensors also alert Public Works about the flooding so workers can rush out to set up barricades. (Eight of these 26 flood-warning systems are still under construction.) But Gilbert said that sometimes it doesn’t matter — people still go around them. And so thanks to those people, the kind of system that warns you when a train’s coming — that warns you when an intersection’s too dangerous to cross — won’t exist on Houston’s most flooded streets.

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it for everybody, crashing into the very first gate’s control box. The gate never even had a single test trial during heavy rain. So the Department of Public Works and Engineering decided it wasn’t even worth fixing the gate a third time, nor was it worth installing the 26 others. Instead, Public Works has opted to install signs that say “DANGER HIGH WATER GO BACK” with flashing lights, which are triggered by automatic sensors in the ground once water rises six inches above the gutter. It’s a curious decision, considering how dangerous flooded underpasses can be. Eight people and potentially more died underwater in their cars last week. Those people did not drown at underpasses where Public Works had planned to install these gates; most people died near highway underpasses, and three died at one on 610 near the Galleria, prompt-

@mfahfilms

Houston Press

Meagan Flynn

Good thing the flashing warning lights at the yale and Center Street location are blocked by a tree.

fb.com/mfahfilms |

Do not PaSS houston’s publIc works

ing Harris County Judge Ed Emmett to pledge to develop a barrier system with state and county transportation officials. But as for the city’s own abandoned automatic barrier system, what we don’t really know is if anyone would have been prevented from driving through high water had those gates been in place — or, for that matter, whether anyone ruined or even lost cars on those roads before Public Works manually blocked off the underpasses. In explaining why the department decided not to go forward with the mechanical arms, Public Works spokeswoman Julie Gilbert compared them to the arms at railroad crossings — which exist on most major thoroughfares that see regular train traffic. “The point is that the arms, we know, just like the railroad crossing arms, people go through them,” Gilbert told the Press last week. “People go around barricades. People run red lights. [The arms] are not designed to be barricades. They’re designed to be deterrents. But based on driver behavior, it’s just not going to work with that type of arm.” Gilbert said Public Works decided that driver education — the “turn around, don’t drown” campaign — in combination with the flashing-light warning signs and the barriers

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priority was finding temporary housing for everyone in the Greenspoint area. About 350 people had been taken to live in a large gymnasium-turned-shelter. Dozens raised their hands when Turner asked who was still living in their current, semi-uninhabitable units and felt unsafe. Dozens more raised their hands when Turner asked if the city had not yet made it to their doorstep to offer help. Turner said his goal was to relocate everyone by the end of last week.

4/26/16 5:17 PM

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Cord Cuts

as viewers move away from cable to watch live sports, watch the dominoes fall.

April 28 - May 4, 2016 Sig 1 1-10.indd 8

Cord-cutting cable customers turning to the Internet for their TV content are a problem for ESPN and possibly for sports leagues.

Photo illustration/Thinkstock.com

However, the television viewing landscape has changed dramatically in the past five years, with the rise of streaming, on-demand services like Hulu and Netflix, and streaming television packages like Sling TV, which carries more than 20 cable channels for about $20 per month, including ESPN. Cable subscribers, and specifically sports fans, can now leverage the power of the Internet to walk away from cable, stream their shows over the web and still get nearly everything they had watched as cable subscribers. Houstonian Chris Brantner founded CutCableToday.com, a website that educates sports fans on how they can leave cable behind but still be able to consume all the big sporting events. “For the longest time, sports was the No. 1 thing holding people back from cutting the cord, because you need to see the action live as it occurs,” said Brantner. “But in the last year or so, a lot has changed for sports fans. It really started in January 2015 when Sling TV launched with the ESPN networks. Suddenly, cord cutters had access to all of ESPN’s programming live. That gets you Monday Night Football, NBA basketball [Sling also carries TNT], MLB on Monday, Wednesday and Sunday nights…the list goes on.” A high-definition antenna, Brantner’s website will tell you, is able to capture the overthe-air channels like CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX crystal clear, and thus fills in much of the remaining sports-viewing gap after cable is cut. When it’s all said and done, depending on how many streaming services a cord cutter subscribes to, the typical monthly savings can be anywhere from $50 to $100, says Brantner. Also, the cord-cutting approach is flexible. “Cord cutting brings you freedom,” Brantner exclaimed. “Unlike cable, there are no contracts. You have the option to add and subtract services whenever you want.”

And while in the end consumers seemingly win, this is how the sports television rights fee bubble gets popped. For every cable subscriber who cuts the cord, that’s $6.61 in pure profit per month that leaves ESPN, not to mention smaller but significant amounts of revenue for other sports outlets such as the NFL Network ($1.31 per subscriber), FOX Sports 1 (99 cents), ESPN2 (83 cents) and NBC Sports Network (30 cents). When it’s described that way, it sounds like only a few bucks here and there, but the fact is, the fiscal earth is shifting slowly under cable television, and the tremors are already being felt. In the past two years alone, ESPN has lost more than 7 million subscribers to cord cutting, which equates to more than half a billion dollars lost straight to ESPN’s bottom line. With the number of cable subscribers continuing to drop each year, this is a terrifying trend for ESPN and, in turn, a growing concern for sports owners and major universities. The ripple effect of cord cutting on our sports landscape has the potential to be profound. In professional sports, player salaries are driven by revenue, and revenue is driven primarily by tickets and television rights fees. For years, the annual increase in all those numbers was a given. Everyone got rich — players, coaches, owners — and we wondered where the ceiling would be. The gradual implosion of cable television might be that ceiling, in which case, future work stoppages in professional sports will be almost a given. Hell, there were strikes and lockouts when salaries were increasing. If they stagnate or decrease, look out. Also, the truth on valuations of professional sports franchises will most certainly be vetted over the next few years. Television has been the driving force that’s made every NFL team worth anywhere from $1.4 billion to $4 billion,

Month XX–Month XX, 2014

n team sports, to fans and spectators, ultimate victory is a simple concept. One winner takes home one trophy each season in each sport. Peyton Manning’s hoisting of the Lombardi Trophy, confetti raining down onto the Villanova basketball team after their title-winning buzzer beater — to fans, those are the images of success. Behind the scenes, though, to the power brokers and franchise owners who move the chess pieces in our sports universe, true “victory” is far more inclusive. To them, success is measured in dollars, and while only one team can lift the trophy at the end of each season, for several years now, the money has piled up sky-high for every single team owner and major college president, regardless of how good or bad their teams have been. Yes, big-time sports are a cash machine in which even the worst teams on the field are wildly profitable. According to Forbes, the Buffalo Bills are the least valuable team in the NFL. They’re worth $1.4 billion. The Milwaukee Bucks are the least valuable team in the NBA. They recently sold for nearly $600 million. Auburn and South Carolina combined to win three SEC football games last season. Their athletics departments combined to bring in $235 million in revenue last year. You get the idea. Precious few are lifting trophies, but everyone is swimming in cash, and the fuel driving this money-printing engine is television rights contracts whose values have skyrocketed into the stratosphere. The 32 teams in the NFL split roughly $7 billion in television money each year before they even sell one ticket to a game. The NBA’s new media rights contract with ESPN and Turner starts next season. It’s a nine-year deal worth $24 billion. Major League Baseball, college football, the NCAA basketball tournaments, all of these are smoking-hot television properties. Where is the TV money coming from? Largely from ESPN, which has its hand in carrying virtually every major sport, and whose astronomical per-subscriber fees that it charges to cable providers to carry its content — roughly four times those of its closest cable competitor — allow it to spend on sports broadcast rights like a drunken sailor. According to Clay Travis of Outkick The Coverage, ESPN spends around $6 billion per year on rights fees for professional and collegiate sports. FOX, NBCSN and a few other cable entities factor in, as do regular overthe-air entities like NBC and CBS, but it’s mostly ESPN’s money that’s fueling this boom. Why is ESPN able to spend so voraciously on sports television content? Because cable and satellite providers pay ESPN a relative king’s ransom for the right to carry its network. For just the main ESPN channel (not including ESPN2, ESPNU and other ESPN properties), cable providers pay Disney (ESPN’s parent company) $6.61 per cable subscriber. With

ESPN in around 93 million homes, that’s about $7 billion in revenue before ESPN even takes in one dollar of advertising. For some perspective, the next most expensive cable network behind ESPN is TNT at $1.65 per subscriber. When you consider that, according to a 2013 Needham & Company report, only 20 percent of cable subscribers would pay for ESPN if the cost were unbundled, that’s a lot of non-sports viewers indirectly paying sports leagues for their TV rights. Ironically, though, the very thing that has driven the value of sports television rights through the roof could ultimately be the pin that pops this gluttonous bubble — the evolving television consumption habits of this generation of viewers, specifically the advent of the DVR and consumers’ choosing to sever ties with cable and satellite providers altogether. The former is what has spawned the golden goose, and the latter could kill it. I’ll explain. With more and more cable subscribers using their DVR functionality to binge-watch shows and skip commercials, live programming that is considered “DVR-proof” has never been more valuable. Sports is the last bastion of content in this category and, therefore, the most sought after by advertisers. So it stands to reason that ESPN and every other sports outlet (but especially ESPN, because it can) would overpay for the rights to broadcast games, since it’s easily the category of programming in which viewers are most likely to sit through commercials. Advertisers love sports. This is how sports rights fees balloon. However, if the “live,” DVR-proof aspect of sports on TV is the air inside the sports TV rights bubble, then the sword of Damocles hanging over the bubble is the very real trend of people eschewing cable altogether, or “cutting the cord,” as they say. Indeed, there are a growing number of people looking at their monthly cable bill of anywhere from $100 to $200 and realizing they rarely watch most of the channels. In fact, on average, cable subscribers watch only 17 of the nearly 200 channels they’re paying for. Cable programming, with its bundled, “single price for hundreds of channels” approach, has always been accepted as a kind of weighted socialism in which we’re all paying various semisecretive amounts for channels that we rarely watch. We’ve never been allowed to really unbundle our cable bills and pay for what we actually use.

Houston Press

By Sean PendergaSt

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| PenDerGAst |

4/26/16 5:17 PM

Houston Press April 28 - May 4, 2016

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Listen to Sean Pendergast on SportsRadio 610 from 2 to 6 p.m. weekdays. Also follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/SeanCablinasian or email him at sean.pendergast@cbsradio.com.

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with similar exponential gains in the NBA and MLB. Locally, the Texans ($2.5 billion) and the Rockets ($1.5 billion) are among the eight most valuable teams in their leagues. How much of that value is at risk, subject to the whims of millions of Americans who’d just as soon stream Netflix and Hulu than pay AT&T or Comcast? In college sports, of the 20 richest athletics departments, 17 of them are in the SEC or the Big Ten, conferences that both have their own networks, backed by ESPN and FOX, respectively, that generate more than $30 million in annual revenue per school. These networks are subsidized by monthly per-subscriber fees (66 cents for the SEC, 39 cents for the Big Ten) that are way above the range they should be for such a small, regionally driven niche viewership. Cord cutting could decimate these revenue streams and severely affect collegiate athletics departments. Perhaps the biggest albatross in sports television is the University of Texas’s Longhorn Network, another ESPN venture for which the Worldwide Leader overpaid to keep competitors out. Texas is cashing $15 million checks annually from ESPN for another 15 years for a network that has only 20 million subscribers and has lost $50 million so far, in part because, outside of football and men’s basketball, there’s no compelling content. (And honestly, is UT football even considered “compelling” right now?) The rest of Texas’s Big XII cohorts would love to create a lucrative Big XII Network the same way the SEC and Big Ten did in their conferences. However, to do that, they would need to make Texas whole by folding the Longhorn Network, and there’s little chance ESPN (or any suitor) can guarantee that kind of money to the Big XII in this shrinking cable environment. So, in a weird way, cord cutters are actually contributing to the continued unrest in the Big XII. Aren’t college sports awesome? To their credit, the cable networks are not merely standing pat and watching the earth move beneath them. Brantner says that they’ve taken steps to protect themselves. “The sports networks are slowly coming on board because they realize there’s a shift occurring that they can’t stop,” claimed Brantner. “Even the ‘big, bad cable companies’ are creating their own skinny bundles that stream via the Internet to try and keep up with the new trends. There’s even rumor of ESPN offering a standalone over-the-top service.” The leagues are taking measures as well, ensuring that broadcast rights contracts include streaming packages and plenty of Internet-related revenue, since the Internet appears to be where this is all going. The NFL, for the first time in its history, sold the exclusive broadcast rights to a regular-season game to Yahoo! last season, and just a few weeks ago, it sold non-exclusive streaming rights to ten Thursday night games to Twitter. For decades now, sports owners and collegiate athletics directors have been undefeated in the game of profitability, but they now face an unwieldy foe — a wiser consumer driving a new business model into uncharted territory in sports’ most important revenue stream. Pretty scary stuff.

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y the time Jerid Rinehart got the phone call informing him he’d been laid off in February, he almost felt relieved. For weeks his stomach would start churning and his jaw would clench every time his phone rang. The company, Dynamic Drilling Solutions, had already gone through two or three rounds of layoffs. Back in December, he’d even been told he no longer had a job, and then his boss called about five hours later to tell him there had been a mistake and he should come back to work shoveling drilling mud as soon as he could. Still, even with less than two years of experience in the oil field, Rinehart knew the work wasn’t going to last forever. Growing up in East Texas, he’d never worked in the oil industry before a friend approached him in 2014 and offered Rinehart a job in which he would make more than twice what the college dropout was pulling in as a waiter and bartender at local country clubs. Rinehart wanted to marry his childhood friend, Lauren, and the oil field position would make that possible. There was a boom on, and his friend reassured Rinehart he didn’t need experience as much as the company needed workers. “It was all about keeping those rigs running,” Rinehart says. The first job brought in more than $8,000 a month and by September, he and his new wife were living in a trailer in Odessa while he worked at rig sites across West Texas. “I wouldn’t give up those first months of our marriage out in Odessa for anything,” Lauren says now. “Even with the layoff, it was still worth it to get that time just with us.” In November 2014, the friend who got him the job cautioned him to start saving money. Rinehart was aware oil prices had been falling since July, but the warning didn’t resonate until he was cut. He got another oil field gig. It meant more physical work and longer hours, but he was still making $4,000 a month and Lauren was pregnant with their first child, so he was thankful to be earning a steady paycheck. Elizabeth May was born in December 2015 with Down syndrome — meaning surgeries, medical care and special care requirements — and the couple were finally able to bring her home from the hospital on February 1. The next day, Rinehart got the phone call he’d been dreading. This time, it was his boss’s boss on the phone. A softspoken man, he asked Rinehart about the baby, chatted about how oil prices were at a record low, dropping below $30 a barrel for the first time in years, and seemed to be struggling to get to the point. Rinehart sucked in his breath and exhaled slowly as he waited on the other end of the line, trying to keep his pulse low. “As soon as I heard him fumbling around and talking about how everyone is struggling, how they needed to tighten their belt and how I was a really good worker and this had nothing to do with the work I’d done, I knew,” Rinehart says now. It was his second oil field layoff in less than two years. Right now countless people across Texas are having to rethink their plans because of the oil industry downturn. Fueled by technological innovation in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, the U.S. shale plays sparked an oil industry renaissance as oil prices soared past $100 per barrel and stayed high for years. All that time, the heart >> p12

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backup plans. And it’s not only those already in the industry, the oil field, or the oil field service business who are having to reassess. College students now nearing graduation started school when the oil industry was robust and jobs were plentiful, but now are scrambling to find alternative options. Last summer, Cory Caron, a senior at Texas A&M studying business and accounting, competed in an annual industry analysis contest sponsored by Halliburton. Caron, 23, and his team won second place for their analysis that found the situation in the oil industry bore a strong resemblance to the climate of the 1980s. “I could look things over and connect it to the 1980s bust, and it wasn’t that big a deal to me. I’ve heard of the bust, of course, but I wasn’t alive for it.” By the time Caron started his internship at a major accounting firm this spring, he knew better than to bring up low oil prices, the infa-

rom the moment he strode into the Shamrock Ballroom at the University of Houston Hilton Hotel, everyone in of the shale boom was in Texas, where boomthe crowded room was watching Stetowns sprang up on top of oil-rich plays like phen Greenlee, president of ExxonMobil Exthe Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas and the ploration Company. Greenlee towered over Wolfcamp Shale in West Texas, and the busy most of the geophysics students and profesoil fields buoyed the state’s economy even as sors in the room, but he laughed a lot and was the rest of the country struggled through the always smiling as he moved through the room Great Recession. And then the boom that even sipping Scotch, casually pulling a crowd of old-timers in the industry had claimed would admirers in his wake. never end abruptly went bust. Graduate student Lucia Torrado put a smile Deborah Byers, the Houston managing on her face, stretched her spine to stand taller partner for accounting giant Ernst & Young, and angled herself toward Greenlee as she consays everyone underestimated the U.S. shale tinued her project presentation on potential oil plays, and when prices started to sink, everyformations in her native Colombia. She emitted one expected Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader a tiny sigh as Greenlee moved past without of the Organization of the Petroleum Exportstopping. Torrado wants to work in the U.S. oil ing Countries, to step in as the “swing proindustry after she gets her master’s in geophysducer” and regulate its output to stabilize the ics, but she’s already worried about the lack of price. But that didn’t happen. “Nothing played jobs. “When I started school here, I was sure I out as expected,” Byers says. would find something easily. The downturn has changed that. I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she says. Tony Torlucci, a geophysics graduate student, wedged his body into the circle around Greenlee, wriggled until he was next to the man and then introduced himself, giving Greenlee a firm handshake. Torlucci, 27, has already been laid off from one oil field job, but he’s determined to make it in the industry. He went to work in the oil field when oil was just cresting above $70 per barrel, and he liked the work so much that he went back to school to become a geophysicist. Can Turkyilmaz “Things were busy then, and when it hit Jerid and Lauren Rinehart had their first child, Elizabeth May, just as the downturn was leading to layoffs. $100 a barrel a year mous 1980s downturn or any news of layoffs at later, it was even crazier, but when prices sank, It’s taken months to become apparent that other companies when he was helping perthe jobs started going away too,” he says. And this isn’t a temporary downturn, Bill Gilmer, form external audits of oil companies. “It’s not when prices dropped, he was soon without a director of the Institute for Regional Forecastexactly a tension in the air inside the compajob. That worked out all right, though, Torlucci ing at the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the nies; it’s just this feeling you get even with the says, because he’d already decided he wanted to University of Houston, says. “I’m done making ones who are doing well. I knew not to talk move in another direction. As a researcher, he’ll predictions about this downturn in the indusabout it,” he says. Despite his own fascination still be in the oil field. try anymore. I’ve joined everyone else now in with energy, Caron is not going into the oil inNow — he’s optimistic — Torlucci’s applyterms of saying I really don’t know what’s godustry when he graduates in a year and a half. ing for the geophysics Ph.D. program, and he ing to happen next.” He’ll start work at an accounting firm. “They thinks he’ll get out of school just in time for an The number of active rigs in the United haven’t had layoffs at any of the big accounting upturn, when he believes some company will States fell from about 1,600 at the height of firms yet,” he says. hire him to be a researcher. “Some people get activity, in October 2014, to about 350 in the What was supposed to be a blip, a bump, a into this and the goal is to make six figures, but field in March, the lowest number in use stumble has turned into an extended crisis that that’s not what it’s about for me. The money is since oil field services company Baker is much bigger and is affecting the lives of far good when things are good, of course, but I Hughes started tracking rig numbers, in more people than just those in the oil field. The love this. I want to be a real researcher for one 1944. A recent study by Rice University has question is, why did almost everyone in the inof these companies.” found there are more than 200 oil industry The ballroom was buzzing with more than jobs tied to each rig. So far, the downturn has dustry fail to see the bust coming? Now Rinehart is working as a plumber, 100 people who had gathered to hear Greenlee translated to more than 20,000 layoffs in Houston, more than 50,000 job losses across which doesn’t quite cover his family’s expenses. speak on a muggy Tuesday night in late March. “It was something I was using as a plan B,” Hotel employees rapidly set up more chairs as the state and more than 250,000 oil industry Rinehart says. “It was frustrating to need the job he took the stage. “Wouldn’t it be great if we jobs cut worldwide. and to start back at square one again, but I know could know when these boom-and-bust cycles Young people who have never been I’m lucky to have it.” were going to occur?” he asked the audience through an oil bust are having to develop

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with a rueful grin. “Then we could always invest at the right times! It would be perfect! Well, we never know. That never happens, and these cycles are so manic that it’s impossible to ever know and it drives you crazy.” Greenlee explained to the audience that the U.S. shale oil boom took most people by surprise. After the oil industry went bust in the 1980s, the decline and eventual end of Texas and U.S. oil production was accepted by most in the industry as a fact of life. But the shale plays proved everyone wrong. In the early 2000s, drillers started using technology pioneered and improved by famed Texas oil man George Mitchell to employ slant drilling and hydraulic fracturing to access the dense, brittle shale formations. They dug horizontal wells along the shale formations and then shattered them by blasting the shale with water, sand and chemicals to release the hydrocarbons trapped beneath the rock. In just a few years, U.S. oil production numbers nearly doubled from about 5 million barrels per day in 2008 to more than 9.4 million barrels per day in 2015, the highest level of U.S. production since 1972. However, while U.S. shale oil was flooding the world market, an unanticipated economic slowdown in China, the nation that previously had a seemingly bottomless appetite for oil, meant that there was nowhere for the oil to go. At the same time, there was an unexpected problem with OPEC, a cartel-like group of nations that work together to try to control oil prices. For years, Saudi Arabia had stepped in and adjusted its own output to keep prices high. But this time around, the Saudis and other OPEC leaders declined to intervene after prices started sagging. The Saudis were the main force behind this decision, and they did it for myriad reasons — because they were irked

So far, the downturn has translated to more than 20,000 layoffs in Houston, more than 50,000 job losses across the state. by the amount of oil the United States was producing; because they were irritated by the U.S. negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, one result of which would be the lifting of oil sanctions against the Iranians; and because tanking prices provided an opportunity to hit Russia and ISIS, since both depend on high crude prices to fund their operations. In November 2014, OPEC announced a decision to let the market run its course. Most people didn’t realize how these different issues would work together to crush the U.S. oil industry, according to Byers. “It’s hard for people to see a downturn coming,” Byers says. This time, many in the U.S. oil industry missed the signs be- >> p14

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Done With oil? from p12

cause they assumed demand for crude oil would continue to rise. On a global level, the leading oil producers simply missed the indications that U.S. shale plays were capable of producing enough to make a dent on the world market and carve out their own niche of the business. The Saudis in particular were frustrated by this, since it sliced into their portion of the industry. “Then China slows, the Saudis don’t step up and no one realizes that this is the way it’s going until it’s all in motion,” she says. “Almost no one thought OPEC would do what they did. By the time everyone clued in on all these factors, it was too late.” But there’s always something unanticipated that influences the industry, Gilmer says. “There are more than 1,000 things that could go wrong, but you can’t bet on any single one of those possibilities occurring because the odds are too high that the one you bet on won’t happen,” Gilmer explains. “At the same time, to make a projection about the future in oil a year from now and be right, a thousand things have to go right. Every prediction you make, there’s a two-out-of-three chance that over the next year, something you never thought of will happen somewhere you’ve never even heard of and it will change everything.” Aside from the difficulty involved in predicting how things will play out in the oil industry, most people are unwilling to risk predicting the end of a boom. “There are a lot of things that are too expensive to bet against, whether you’re betting your reputation or your money, and saying the boom was going to end would have been an expensive bet to make,” Gilmer says. “Even if

you ended up right and everything happened the way you’d said it would six months ago, by then everyone has forgotten and you’ve been ridiculed to the point you may not stand up and say anything like that again.” Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston, was one of the few to predict three years ago that this boom would play out, naming OPEC as the likely culprit to blame for the oncoming bust a full year before the downturn. “If OPEC hopes to maintain any semblance of its cartel pricing power, now would be the time for its members to boost their oil output, drive prices down, bankrupt marginal American producers and regain market share for the long term,” Hirs told Forbes in Courtesy of the University of Houston June 2013. “In short, if OPEC simply declines to reduce its own production Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of quotas in the face of growing U.S. oil vol- Houston, was one of the first to predict that the oil umes, the American producers could boom would bust. grow themselves right out of the money.” in the industry including ExxonMobil had to His take didn’t go over well in the industry, cut the fat and figure out how to run a lean operHirs says now. “I was vilified and ridiculed for ation, Greenlee told the audience. Some of the saying it by so many people in the industry. smaller companies, the ones with more bank Right up until the actual bust happened, just as loans and risk, have struggled to figure out how I’d said it would, of course.” to survive, and dozens have failed — more than Now companies are continuing to deal with 50 energy companies have declared bankruptcy the fallout. The shale boom led them to become in the first four months of 2016 alone. complacent and “bloated,” Greenlee explained The problem of reduced capital expendito his audience. Even adjusting for inflation, tures means companies don’t have money for capital expenditures in 2014 were double what exploration or innovation, let alone for hiring, they’d been in 1982, just before the 1980s oil Greenlee says. The energy downturn has even bust, and hiring was at record numbers. hit the banks, so it’s become difficult for smaller When oil prices started tumbling in July companies to get loans. Earlier this month 2014, $100 per barrel oil was gone and everyone

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JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, three of the largest banks in the United States, all reported first-quarter profit losses due to the energy companies who have been struggling to make loan payments because of the downturn. “When you look back at the banks’ predictions from even a year ago, it’s amazing to see how wrong JPMorgan, the Suisse Bank, Wells Fargo and all of these banks were,” Gilmer says. “Nothing is sure and nobody is capable of being sure.” Meanwhile, U.S. production isn’t dropping as quickly as anticipated, and the global oil supply is expected to continue to exceed demand this year and in 2017, according to the March 2016 report by the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based intergovernmental organization that analyzes and reports on the global energy industry. Everyone, including Exxon, is figuring out how to function in this new environment, Greenlee says. “My advice for y’all isn’t to get out of the oil business,” Greenlee told the audience. “But if you’re going to school right now, I wouldn’t rush things. Don’t graduate right away. Take a couple of years if you can.”

arah Williamson, 30, stood in front of a mirror, smoothing down the lines of the sleek gray wool, her “interview dress.” She’s worn it to countless University of Houston job fairs over the past six months because it makes her feel as if she really looks the part of a petroleum engineer. As she scrutinized her reflection, adjusting her hair and slipping on the cream-colored sweater she always wears with the dress, she

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Some people are going back to school, the time-honored hideout, Stewart says.

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Texas, says. “We’re not going to be on the bottom forever. When the price is down, the transition that is happening now is the most painful part. It’s hard but it’s all part of the cycle.” After his second layoff, Rinehart swore he was done with the oil industry, but now he keeps thinking of calling his friend and asking if there might be another oil field job available. Maybe it would bring only a few months of work and would end with another layoff, but he’d still be making more money, and at this point he knows how to handle a layoff. But he won’t get an energy degree if he goes back to school, he says. “The whole field is just too unreliable.”

Houston in 2007 from Detroit, intent on getting away from the crippling economic hardships of the Great Recession. He’s been making the rounds of different companies, going through the interview process. “I do well and I’ll be in the running, but then I don’t get the internship,” Printz says. “At this point I’m open to anything. You need experience with this kind of job, and I just want to go to work.” Nobody knows when the industry will turn around. A meeting in mid-April in Doha, Qatar, between OPEC leaders and non-OPEC leaders to try to negotiate a freeze on the rate of oil production to stabilize the industry ended without an agreement. Forecasts call for oil prices anywhere between $30 and about $40 per barrel in 2016 and 2017, according to recent reports from both the International Energy Agency and the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Eventually prices will probably go back up, and then they’ll go down, Jon Olson, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of

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fascinated with dinosaurs. He was in middle school when the shale boom started. By the time he graduated high school and was admitted to Rice University, his plan was to study finance and get a job at one of the big oil companies. In the face of the industry’s decline, he’s decided to focus on banking instead. “Now finance makes more sense.” Yue Du, a University of Houston Ph.D. graduate in geophysics, won an internship at one of the largest oil companies in the country in the fall of 2014. At the end of her internship, in December 2014, the company extended Du an offer to start a job once she graduated in the spring. In May 2015, Du, 29, began work. “I feel lucky and thankful the job was still there and that I still have the job now,” Troy Fields she says. “Since then, some Sarah Williamson decided to become a petroleum engineer at the peak of the oil boom, but now industry jobs people have graduated and the offers have been taken are scarce. back. Worse, people who graduated after me, only a little younger than so I really needed to start considering other considered stopping by the teaching booths me, cannot find a job. People blame themselves, options,” she says now. as well. “Maybe it’s worth checking it out,” but it’s not their fault. It’s timing. I was lucky.” The downturn has already prompted a brief she told herself, “just in case.” Even though Still, every time a major company has layoffs, uptick in enrollment in higher-level energy-reWilliamson left elementary school teaching a everyone in her office talks about it and Du will lated degrees at the University of Houston, UH few years ago to go back to school and get a catch herself worrying about the low prices, baccalaureate in petroleum engineering, she’s geophysics professor Rob Stewart says, but evwondering how long the bust will last. Du is eryone is expecting a drop in energy program graduating in May and she still doesn’t have a from Tianjing, a city in northern China, and class sizes this fall, much like the decline in enjob lined up. At the job fair, Williamson chatted with el- ergy studies in the mid-1980s that led to a gener- she’s in the United States on a work visa. If she were laid off, she’d have to return home, and ational hole in the workforce. “Our enrollment ementary school representatives who were Chinese oil companies aren’t doing any better, really does follow the price of oil,” Stewart says. thrilled to see that she had extensive science People are going into banking and the down- she says. She’s thought about it, and even and math skills on her résumé. “It’ll be fine,” though she loves her job, she would probably go stream, refinery side of the business (which is she told herself. “I like teaching, and this will back to school to develop her skills so she can doing well because of cheap oil), and some are help me get through until industry jobs open going back to school, the time-honored hideout, work in other industries if she needs to. “I think up again.” that’s fine, to change. In your life you should try he says. Right now, it’s all about finding other That night at dinner, her father, who has different things,” she says. “Oil is here now, but ways to use the skills you gained readying yourmore than 30 years of experience in oil and is it will be replaced one day. Maybe not tomorself to work in the oil industry. “I’ve written the one who encouraged her to go into petrorow, but in 150 years it will be replaced and so more letters of recommendation in the past six leum engineering, told her she was smart to be one day we will have no jobs in this industry months than I have in the last decade. We’ve looking at teaching positions until things imanyway, and we’ll all have to learn new skills proved for the upstream oil industry. Her mom had a fair number of people changing positions, and new things.” changing industries. I tell them to explore all chimed in, suggesting Williamson might start Others are determined to stick with it. Bryan working on a graduate degree while she taught the avenues in the technical world and to be Printz, 29, is graduating next spring with a deopen. After all, a geophysicist invented Autoand waited for the industry to turn around. “I gree in petroleum engineering from UH, and Tune. Anything can happen,” Stewart says. was aware of the downturn before then, but I has a wife and baby daughter. He hasn’t been Growing up in Houston, Alex Huang, 23, stayed optimistic, or at least really tried to, but able to get a single internship. He moved to was obsessed with oil the way other kids are after that I realized this isn’t getting any better,

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All StringS AttAched

Imagine the pressure of becoming the first new member of an internationally known group that hasn’t changed its lineup in 34 years. If so, you’d be living the life of cellist Paul Watkins, who says the other three members of Emerson String Quartet have been welcoming and flexible. “I’ve had to learn a lot of new repertoire,” says the upbeat, friendly Watkins, who came on board for the 20132014 season. When founding member David Finckel left the nine-time Grammy Award-winning group (which is already in the Classical Music Hall of Fame) to spend more time with his family, the Wales-born Watkins stepped right in. For its Houston performance, presented by Chamber Music Houston, the quartet is performing works by Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and

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awkward and self-conscious, but she doesn’t care what other people think. She’s very easy to manipulate.” Equally important is the character of J.D., the mysterious newcomer to the school (played by Mason Butler) who spirals more and more out of control as Veronica careens from one mishap to the next and bodies start piling up. And they sing about it in the best tradition (we hope) of Sweeney Todd. With music, lyr-

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that huge applause break and you earn the right to go get some water.” The younger brother of fellow comedians Damon Wayans and Shawn Wayans, Marlon has kept busy touring across the country and around the world. “You hope your [jokes] will play everywhere,” Wayans says. “But [everywhere] is different. You just gotta try it out. Forfeit some “There’s a lot of audience, a lot of adrenaline, material; bring in others off the bench. The and there’s always the possibility it could all go whole while you’re doing stand-up, you’re wrong.” That’s the appeal of live stand-up for hunting for that perfect joke that can make the whole world laugh.” 8 pm. “Mark Flood: Gratest Hits” Friday. House of Blues. 1204 Caroline. is at Contemporary Arts For information, call 888-402-5837 or Museum Houston. visit houseofblues.com/houston. $17 to $39.75. VIC SHUTTEE

MArlon WAyAnS goeS Solo

ics and book by Kevin Murphy (Reefer Madness, Desperate Housewives) and Laurence O’Keefe (Bat Boy, Legally Blonde), audiences can expect to go beyond the purely comfortable in this send-up of teenage hierarchies and the characters in power. 7:30 p.m. Thursday and May 5; 8 p.m. April 29 and May 6; 3 and 8:30 p.m. April 30 and May 7; 3 p.m. May 1. 800 Bagby. For information, call 713-558-8887 or visit tuts.com/ underground. $25 to $54. MARGARET DOWNING

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In spite of local artist Mark Flood’s distaste for “the machinations of the art world,” he and Bill Arning, director of Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, have found common ground. “We’re very like-minded people, almost the same age; [we] both started off having rock bands,” says Arning. “When I looked at [Flood’s] early Culturecide records that ‘the museums are concentration camps for art,’ I can hear his voice within me still.” Expect a mixed bag in the 30-year retrospective titled Mark Flood: Gratest Hits, ranging from the crude (his Eat Human Flesh paintings upset the cops in the ’80s) to his highly-coveted-at-auction lace paintings. “I think what’s going to happen when people see the show, they’ll say, ‘Oh, right, this is why I fell in love with art,’” says Arning. There’s an opening reception 6:30 to 9 p.m. Friday; an exhibition walk-through at 2 p.m. April 30; and a screening of Flood’s film, Art Fair Fever, at 6:30 p.m. May 12. Regular viewing hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursdays; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays; noon to 6 p.m. Sundays. Through Courtesy of CAMH August 7. 5216 Montrose. For informacomedian, writer and producer Marlon Wayans, tion, call 713-284-8250 or visit camh.org. Free. who is bringing his Scandal-Less tour to Hous- SUSIE TOMMANEY ton. The star of commercially successful films Scary Movie, White Chicks and Fifty Shades of Black, Wayans has been performing stand-up since his late teens. “It’s always a game of instincts,” he says. “Just because one joke works, doesn’t guarantee that joke’ll work next time. You’ve gotta build an audience in your head, just to know what’s funny and what’s not.” For When Havana-based Malpaso Dance Company Wayans, a bit is not complete until “you get makes its Houston debut, the ten-member

Houston Press Houston Press

Beethoven. “I’m proud to say that, as of about a month ago, I’ve completed the Beethoven string quartets,” says Watkins, who adds that Deutsche Grammophon is set to release a 52-disc box set featuring Emerson performing every Beethoven string quartet piece. (Yes, 52 CDs. Completely insane.) “It’s the pinnacle of someone’s repertoire and a remarkable body of work. I can see why people who have played with string quartets for 30, 40 years keep coming back to these.” 7:30 p.m. Thursday. Rice University, Stude Concert Hall, 6100 Main. For information, call 713348-5400 or visit chambermusichouston. org. $20 to $80. STEVE JANSEN

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It’s teen angst with more than a touch of blood and guts and death attached; a different kind of high school musical. Based on the late-’80s cult film Heathers (starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater), Heathers the Musical, about to be produced at the Hobby courtesy of TUTS Underground, tells the story of Veronica Sawyer, who breaks into the best girls clique — Heathers — at her high school and then wants out. McKenna Marmolejo, who plays the Veronica role, describes her character as “very

w w w . h O U S t O N P R E S S . c O m / c a l E N D a R

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WelcoMe to the Jungle

Nothing says “charity” like slithering into something slinky and performing a striptease, right? The ladies and gentlemen of the Benefit Betties (Ruby Joule, Honey Moonpie, Stella Peaks and others) are throwing a tiki-themed burlesque show to support their main areas of interest: military members, animals, and women’s and children’s causes. The event, appropriately titled 4th Annual Benefit Betties Ball: Jiggle in the Jungle, features dancers, circus art, DJ Tropicana Joe, prizes, games, food and an auction. Al E. Cat, president and founder, says the event gets larger every year. “We have performers who are eager to come perform and raise money for charity. It’s a really cool opportunity for this niche of the performing community.” The cover charge helps the organization assemble hundreds of care packages for deployed military members. Sounds like a little bit of jiggle might go a long way this weekend! 7 to 11 p.m. Saturday. Last Concert Café, 1403 Nance. For information, visit benefitbetties.org. $20 to $2,500. SAM BYRD

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looking good At 45

We spoke; they listened. Organizers of the biannual festival (held at Memorial Park in the spring and downtown in the fall) have reduced the number of participating artists at the Bayou City Art Festival Memorial Park 2016, making way for wider pedestrian pathways and more food trucks (Yay!). Other upgrades include more frequent bus schedules and shorter lines at the entrance. “It’s much smaller this year and is more conducive to the artists and the public,” says Bridget Anderson, executive director of Art Colony Association, Inc., organizer of the festival, which is celebrating its 45th year. “We’re going to open it up and have it be more of a festive atmosphere.” View whimsical and colorful animal paintings by featured artist April Murphy, plus work by more than 350 emerging and established artists, while enjoying DJ riffs and enormous soap bubbles. “We’ve decided to do something fun and different this year, and I’ll bet people are going to love it,” Anderson says. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday and April 30; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. April 29. Memorial Park, 6501 Memorial. For information, call 713-521-0133 or visit bayoucityartfestival. com. $15 to $65. JOSEF MOLNAR

MON

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thAt Would be connick

In the four years since Grammy- and Emmyaward winner Harry Connick Jr. last performed here, the actor-singer-philanthropist closed out American Idol’s 15-year-run as a judge, was booked to deliver the commencement speech at Loyola University New Orleans next month, and followed up his Every Man Should Know album with a new CD. “He has a new album that came out last year, That Would Be Me,” says Marcus Powers, public relations manager for presenter Society for the Performing Arts. It’s the first time Connick has worked with outside producers — Eg White and Butch Walker — and the 11 new songs feature a few surprises, including an Society for the Performing Arts presents Harry Connick Jr.

April 28 - May 4, 2016

Houston Press

company will perform works from 2013 — Ocaso and 24 horas y un perro (24 Hours and a Dog) — while also adding a new piece by Trey McIntyre (formerly of the Houston Ballet and our pick for Best Choreographer in 2000). We checked in with Fernando Saéz, one of Malpaso’s original founders (along with Osnel Delgado and Dailedys Carrazana), about the genesis for McIntyre’s Under Fire. “[McIntyre] went into the yard at night and set the bonfire, the papers throughout the professional life over ten years. Somehow he wanted to turn the page, finish that chapter and move forward with the new movement. He remained there until the end; when the bonfire was over, he took a stick, moved the ashes, [and] at the core of the bonfire — he was so gratified — some documents and papers remained.” Saéz says the dance is a metaphor for the human condition: The farther away you go, the closer you want to get. Grammy Award-winning pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill and members of his Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble perform alongside in this Society for the Performing Arts production. 8 p.m. Saturday. Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. For information, call 713-227-4772 or visit spahouston.org. $23 to $63. SUSIE TOMMANEY

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Courtesy of Harry Connick Jr.

impromptu hand clap and some unique scatrap vocals. The consummate showman is hard to define, with numerous music, film, television and theater credits, but his dedication to charitable work and ongoing public service make him one of the most likable performers to grace the stage. In addition to covering a few jazz standards during the tour, Powers says Connick is also known for bantering with the audience. 8 p.m. Monday. Jones Hall, 615 Louisiana. For information, call 713-227-4772 or visit spahouston.org. $43 to $93. SUSIE TOMMANEY

TUE

doors, just, of course, missing each other. “The way it’s staged, it brings down the house every single night,” Massey says. 8 p.m. Wednesday. Continuing 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Through May 15. Hobby Center, 800 Bagby. For information, call 713-558-8887 or visit tuts.com. $37.75 to $138.50. MARGARET DOWNING

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Juice box bAttle

The Minnesota Twins were one of the most pleasant surprises of the 2015 MLB season. Not much was expected from Paul Molitor’s bunch, but they scratched and clawed their way to a winning record and a second-place finish in the AL Central, behind only eventual World Series champs the Kansas City Royals. The first chapter of this season hasn’t quite gone according to plan, but if recent history has proven anything, it’s that you can never count this team out. Joe Mauer and Eduardo Escobar are off to rousing starts, and they’ll be leading a motivated club to battle the Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park. The ’Stros have struggled a bit to find their mojo in 2016, but, as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications Anita Sehgal points out, Houston will be ready for some home cooking when the Twins arrive. “The Astros will be coming off a stretch of just three home games in a two-week span leading into the series with Minnesota, which will kick off one of our two longest home stands of the season at ten games,” says Sehgal. A return to the hometown faithful on Teacher Appreciation Night might be just what the doctor ordered. 7:10 p.m. Tuesday and May 2 and 4. 501 Crawford. For information, call 877-927-8767 or visit astros. com. $5 to $75. STEVE RANGEL

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Winner of four Tony awards, including one for Best Musical, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, now on national tour, is headed for the Hobby Center courtesy of Theatre Under The Stars. This is the musical comedy about Monty Navarro, a man juggling a mistress and a fiancée, without too many prospects for prosperity or advancement in his own life. That’s until he finds out he’s a very, very distant relative of a royal family and could become an earl — if only a lot of people ahead of him in line were dead. Which is when Monty decides to clear his path, employing a variety of methods. Kevin Massey plays Monty, and says, “Even though he’s a killer, you end up rooting for him because these people are awful people.” One of the biggest songs and scenes is “I’ve Decided to Marry You,” when, in classic farce form, both of Monty’s loves come to visit him at the same time and take turns going in and out of two

TUTS presents A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. Joan Marcus

coMe together

A teenage boy comes over to a teenage girl’s house to go over a homework assignment: Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass poetry. She has a debilitating and chronic illness and cannot attend school. “They don’t know each other at all. He to some degree resents having to show up,” says visiting director Seth Gordon (a Houston Theater award winner). “She resents his presence there, and slowly they learn to work together and they learn more about each other. [I and You] becomes more and more about what the poem is about, which is the tension people have — and that to some degree our nation has — between the personal strength of the individual and the need for us to survive as a community.” Playwright Lauren Gunderson, who has made a habit of regional premieres to get her works before the audience, has introduced a twist that adds a sense of mystery and makes the pair’s work to get along all the more crucial. Poetry is quoted left and right, but don’t let any hesitation about that stop you, Gordon says. “I think it will appeal to anybody. Young people because they will see themselves up there. Poetry lovers. Anyone who appreciates humanity.” 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays and May 7 and 21. Through May 22. 3201 Allen Parkway. For information, call 713-527-0123 or visit stagestheatre.com. $15 to $54. MARGARET DOWNING

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Film

Tragically, Prince’s best film is not commercially available.

BY ALAN SCHERSTUHL

April 28 - May 4, 2016 MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014

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Nobody’s Fault but Theirs

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n ’81 he accessorized his trench coat with high heels and bikini briefs. In ‘84 that coat got dandified, high-collared and famously purple, Edwardian formalwear over a frilled tuxedo shirt over that wicked slick of chest hair. It was the getup of a perv or a president, a look that by now could only be more familiar if it had been minted onto money. In one way, the trench coat ensemble he debuted in 1987 might be more audacious still. Prince opens his concert film Sign o’ the Times in black leather, which is no shock. But above the coat he’s genteelly bespectacled, and underneath it he’s in something like an orange-sherbet pantsuit, his top a box-cut, blouselike jacket Katharine Hepburn might have worn, complete with a black tuft of hanky sewn to the pocket. It’s refined, even tasteful, perhaps a sign that he wanted us to see him as an artist rather than an image. For the first time in his on-video life, Prince doesn’t look like he’s wearing a costume. Soon, though, he doffs the coat and jacket to strut about in the first of several impossible chest-bearing leotardish sex-onesies. Later, he slinks about in a fluffy fur, crooning the immortal “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” He was still Prince, after all — just a Prince striving to subordinate the outlandish to his artistry. That all suits the double LP feast that the Sign o’ the Times film honors. The record plays like some other great’s cherry-picked, careerspanning box set. He’d never before composed with such audacity, flouted genre with such coherence, sung with such resonance, written lyrics with such depth. But the pop world prefers horndog provocateurs to polymath geniuses, and the only cut to strike big with crossover radio was “U Got the Look,” the chintziest and dirtiest, the one that reveals itself fully on first listen. Purple Rain notwithstanding, masterpieces tend to take some effort on the part of the audience. The Sign o’ the Times album is a lot to wrap a brain around, a day-filling showcase for all his musical selves — balladeer, soul singer, big-beat minimalist, rock craftsman, one-man funk band, fussy arranger, master of complex curios and amphibious come-ons. The only skill of his that’s missing: that ability to straddle the zeitgeist and hump it until it gets off, too. For Prince, Sign o’ the Times was a disappointment. He had imagined it as a triple album to be titled Crystal Ball, played by him and the Revolution and including a suite’s worth of tracks sung by Camille, a female identity he had experimented with. It wound up a (mostly) solo double, his greatest achievement in DIY recording. Key song “Forever in My Life” promised a lifelong commitment not unrelated

to what this sprawling, restless album itself demands and rewards. Like all the best Prince projects, both Sign o’ the Timeses — the film and the LP — are rich with contradictions. The most memorable groove on this genius-alone-in-the-studio record comes on a live number cut with the Revolution. The extended highlight of the full-band Cineplex-Odeon Films concert movie, meanwhile, hits when the musi- Like the best Prince projects, Sign o’ the Times is rich with contradictions. cians put down their making it all hit. He would reduce his name to a emphasize light-bathed fog and dramatic silinstruments to clap and sing with him over a regender-pretzeled symbol, but he would never houettes; more pressingly, they mostly focus cording of his homemade groove. That’s “Forreduce his self to any one thing, no matter how on what you want to see just when you want to ever in My Life,” a guitar gospel stomper, as much easier that might make it to sell him. see it, a surprisingly rare trait for in-performoving a marriage song as you’ll ever hear. But The fate of the Sign o’ the Times film hints at mance documentaries. in the film Prince — now wearing a bedazzled the marketplace struggles he and Warner Bros. At peak moments, Prince created the sense jean jacket! — complicates the sentiment by infaced. Released the same month Jackson dazthat all of pop history had been building up to terpolating lines from “It,” another Sign track, zled with the easier pleasures of “The Way You what he was doing now — and would be topped one of his best obsessive concupiscent miniaMake Me Feel,” Sign o’ the Times screened in by whatever he’d dare to do next. Of course, by tures: “I wanna do it to you all the time,” he desome 250 American theaters and soon van’87, pop history was moving past him. Prince’s clares, and then soon he’s shriek-singing it, his ished. To date, it’s unavailable to stream from beats seemed thin compared to hip-hop, his cries equal parts James Brown and Robert any legal source, and it has never seen a statePlant. The sex song is now about fidelity and the best new rock and roll songs had gone too bubside DVD or Blu-ray release. For most people, blegum, and his lover-man soul gems had the fidelity song is now about fucking. This imthis film, the premier document of this multitufeel of glittering throwbacks. The retro-futurist proves them both. dinous talent at the height of his powers, cannot punk of 1999 stood revealed, by ’87, as an adult The concert film often bests the LP. Prince be viewed without resorting to piracy. Right formalist, prince of his kingdom but not of the worked fast in the studio, but in revisiting songs now, when we need it most, that’s a travesty. culture. He never again demonstrated anything he’d already waxed — onstage or in remixes — like Michael Jackson’s willful momentousness he often found new possibilities. The movie or Madonna’s savviness about image — Prince band had been playing Sign o’ the Times on tour Sign o’ the Times had too much music in him to get hung up on for months, and it shows. The rococo James Directed by Prince and Albert Mangoli. Brown throwdown “Housequake” is thicker and twistier, tricked out with chewy new jazz chords, a Sheila E. drum breakdown, the gyraknife.) The letter-writer includes a cassette retions of dancer Cat, and Prince’s own consummate splits and twirls. cording of herself at a piano, striking the stark The leering “Hot Thing” opens with what chords of Simone’s 1966 masterpiece “Four could be a parody of Michael Jackson if the Women.” The woman sings Simone’s blunt devideo for “The Way You Make Me Feel” had claratives — “My skin is black,” “My hair is Nina botches the truth of come out just a few months earlier: A beauty wooly,” “My back is strong” — and, at last in a great. hip-sways down a stark city street, drawing the Nina, it doesn’t matter that the voice is wrong: attention of a catcalling star. Unlike Jackson, This is a woman inspired by Simone, and she’s BY ALAN SCHERSTUHL who settles for a kiss, Prince winds up grinding not meant to be Simone herself. athletically with her through a chain-link fence As that letter-writer plays on, Simone herself eep into her earnest, uncertain Nina after snatching away her tutu with his mouth — Nina , writer-director — or the movie’s guess at her — listens, smiles, Simone drama all as the band lays into brilliantly spare and sinCynthia Mort at last musters up a seeven sings along a little herself. Like her fans, like ister funk. Miko Weaver’s guitar is all neon quence of gravity and power. The inimitable the filmmakers, like anyone discovering her chicken-scratch; Alan Leeds’s popcorning sax Miss Simone — imitated here by Zoe Saldana — work today, she’s awed by that song, by that solo makes you forget he’s wearing some kind of Dungeon Master’s robes; and Prince’s own reads a letter from a woman who has recently sound, by how Simone honored the everyday churchy keyboard intro proves there’s more lost her mother, a great Simone fan. truth of black women’s lives in this music of gethan one organ on his mind. It’s the mid ’90s, decades after Simone’s nius. Saldana’s Simone moves over to the SteinPrince directed the film with Albert Manbest work, and this towering performer is way in her French hideaway and, by verse two, goli, mostly on a Paisley Park soundstage, and drinking hard, off her meds and impossible to is striking those chords herself. She, too, wants they’re generous in showing off the band, the >> p22 book. (She slashed a paying customer with a to be like Nina Simone. dancers, the celebratory act of creation. They

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The movie plays like some million-dollar version of the tape that woman made and mailed: an amateur tribute that gets the familiar chords down but moves mostly by reminding us of the original. At the story level, Nina strains to be a study of Simone in the ’90s, a star in exile, rarely performing and facing a cancer diagnosis. For all her wounded fury, she’s headed for a triumphant comeback, of course, and she sometimes gets caught up in flashbacks to 30 years earlier. In that This Nina Simone sense the film resembles has no pores. Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead, another movie about one of the greatest of American artists that sets itself in a late, fallow period rather than examine the art or its origins. But Nina’s true, accidental subject quickly reveals itself as the irreducibility of Simone herself: Little of her genius and complexity have been squeezed into this film’s familiar three-act structure of friendship and redemption. “She has to deliver truth again,” says David Oyelowo as Simone’s late-life nurse and friend. The film itself struggles to hit that mark. The scene-craft is undistin-

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guished TV-movie stuff — a scene about a phone call will open with a close-up of a phone; one about an arrival and departure opens with a close-up on the door. The score often sinks into tinkly piano mush that Simone, trained on Bach, would never abide. (Mort has sued the film’s producers, alleging, among other things, that their cuts and changes to her script and film constitute a breach of contract.) Saldana herself sings, a choice every bit as baffling as when the filmmakers behind I Saw the

Light put “Lovesick Blues” in the mouth of an actor who can’t yodel. Saldana boasts a strong voice, but not one of Simone’s epochal resonance. Simone’s can stop you in your tracks, start a revolution, stir and salve despair in your heart. Why deny us its force and pleasure? Nobody expected Cheadle to play his own trumpet in Miles Ahead; isn’t simply acting as Nina Simone work enough for an actor? Saldana, as you may have heard, has been outfitted with facial prosthetics and skin-dark-

ening makeup for the role. This is a distraction: This Nina Simone has no pores. A scene where she wanders her home covering herself with a white bedsheet becomes comically tense: Will her body makeup rub off on it? Whatever you make of the issues of representation involved in the casting and slathering of Saldana, it’s undeniable that, especially when blown up to moviescreen size, it often doesn’t work, no matter how skillful the performance. The filmmakers have denied us their subject’s voice and then sunk their lead by adding distancing layers between the audience and her chief instrument, her face. Even the script exhibits little confidence in this Nina’s ability to communicate to us what matters. “What happened, Nina?” Oyelowo’s nurse has to ask. “Why are you here and not in America? Why do you keep your money in a mattress rather than a bank account?” And he goes on like that, a sort of FAQ of things the film wonders about rather than dramatizes.

Nina Courtesy of RLJ Entertainment

Written and directed by Cynthia Mort.

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| film capsules |

Film

OPENING April and the Extraordinary World (Avril et le monde truqué) —

VisiT HOusTONpRess.cOm fOR aDDiTiONal film cOVeRaGe of her vanished-scientist parents to create an invincibility serum, while the bumbling, Javert-esque police inspector Pizoni (Bouli Lanners) pursues them. And then things get weird. April and the Extraordinary World is based on the work and style of French graphic novelist Jacques Tardi, though not any specific book, and the script is by the creators of the original Snowpiercer graphic novel; the result is an all-too-rare example of steampunk done right, while also acknowledging that however pretty such industrial imagery might seem from afar, actually living in such a world would be kind of horrible. (Watch for the Dalek cameo.) Perhaps most importantly, the cat talks! And though there’s a good story reason for it, like many other things in the film, it’s downright extraordinary. Rated PG. (Sherilyn Connelly)

ONGOING Born to Be Blue — The Chet Baker portrayed by Ethan Hawke in

Hamlet: View a filmed version of the sell-out run at Manchester’s

Royal Exchange Theatre, with BAFTA nominee Maxine Peake in the title role, directed by Sarah Frankcom and film director Margaret Williams. Three hours, 28 minutes. Monday, May 2, 7 p.m., $15. Landmark River Oaks Theatre, 2009 West Gray, 713-866-8881, landmarktheatres.com. Houston Asian American Film Showcase: Good Ol’ Boy: The Foundation for Asian American Independent Media and 14 Pews present the Texas premiere of this film about a ten-year-old boy in a small town in America, who tries to embrace the American dream while also honoring his Indian heritage. Directed by Frank Lotito. Friday, April 29, 6:30 p.m., $8 to $10, 773-899-3985, huutly@gmail.com, faaim.org/houston. 14 Pews, 800 Aurora. Latin Wave Film Festival: View new contemporary films from Latin America: Our Last Tango, From Afar, The Second Mother, Volcano, I Promise You Anarchy, Boy and the World, The Pearl Button, Semana santa, Embrace of the Serpent and Absence. Thursday, April 28, 7 and 9 p.m.; Friday, April 29, 5, 7:15 and 9 p.m.; Saturday, April 30, 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 p.m.; Sunday, May 1, 1, 3, 5 and 7 p.m., $10. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston - Brown Auditorium Theater, 1001 Bissonnet, 713639-7515, mfah.org/films. The Met: Live in HD - Elektra: The broadcast will be presented live from the Metropolitan Opera on April 30, followed by an encore presentation on May 4. Soprano Nina Stemme portrays Elektra’s primal quest for vengeance, and mezzosoprano Waltraud Meier is Klytämnestra. Price varies by location; visit fathomevents.com for participating venues. Saturday, April 30, 11:55 a.m.; Wednesday, May 4, 6:30 p.m., $28.15. Edwards Houston Marq’e Stadium 23 & IMAX, 7620 Katy Freeway, 713-263-7843, regmovies.com. Screen Asia: Japan CineFest.: Enjoy four short films by emerging Japanese and Japanese-American filmmakers: Confession Ranking of Girlfriend, Tadaima, Tsuyako, Monk by Blood and Reflection. Presented in partnership with MarCreation, all films are either in English or with English subtitles. Thursday, April 28, 7 p.m., $5 to $10. Asia Society Texas Center, 1370 Southmore Boulevard, Suite 205, 713-496-9901, asiasociety.org/texas.

We know you’ll get BEER’ED at Brewfest BUT will you have BEARD at Brewfest? Meet at the 805 Beer Lounge at 5:30pm on Saturday, April 30th at BrewFest to Enter the Best Beard Contest! Winner to receive prize pack provided by The Argyle League, 805 Beer & Houston Press!

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Robert Budreau’s misty biopic Born to Be Blue is midway between beauty and ruin. Behind him are the 1950s, when his easy virtuosity and matinee-idol looks swiftly took Baker from Charlie Parker’s sideman to major player on Dick Bock’s Pacific Jazz label. Ahead are two peripatetic decades of scattershot gigs and recording sessions, and the heroin addiction that would transform Baker’s face into a hollow-eyed mask of deep lines and sunken cheeks. In Born to Be Blue, writer and director Budreau weaves a fictional romance around Baker’s mid-career struggle to orchestrate a comeback after landing in prison on drug charges. In a promising meta-narrative that introduces actress Jane Azuka (Carmen Ejogo), Hawke’s Chet has been cast in a Hollywood version of his life (inspired by a never-made Dino de Laurentiis project). This movie-withina-movie, with its cherry-picked details and glossed-over sins, acknowledges the pitfalls of the musician biopic and signals that Born to Be Blue isn’t going to be a note-for-note recreation. But Budreau’s variation on the theme of Chet Baker doesn’t play out as an inspired improvisation, settling instead into familiar grooves of a redemptive melodrama, with Jane as the embittered savior whose pure heart and clear head could save the tortured genius from himself. Budreau has obvious affection for Baker, and pinpoints the musician’s tragic flaw as the belief that heroin elevates his talent. Hawke’s Chet is an unrepentant junkie and manipulator whose claim that he only hurts himself is belied by Jane, a stand-in for all the relationships Baker sacrificed. Their Baker values his transcendent trumpet at the cost of everything else. Rated R. (Serena Donadoni) Miles Ahead — Set in that bad patch of the late ‘70s when Miles Davis didn’t much bother leaving his brownstone, Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead is named for the first of the trumpeter’s epochal collaborations with the arranger Gil Evans, from 1957. But a more accurate title might have come the brace of casually brilliant records Davis knocked out with his first great quintet a year earlier, in 1956: Steamin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet. Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet. To his credit, Cheadle (who directed, co-wrote and stars) chucks away everything false about the standard musician biopic and instead goes all-in on his subject’s prickly, elusive presence. This could have been named Hangin’ with Miles. The film’s heart, though, is in the basement of Davis’ brownstone, where the musician snorts coke, works his heavy punching bag and waits out the (literal and figurative) disco party raging upstairs. Still,

Best Beard

Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci’s animated April and the Extraordinary World is a rollicking, old-timey pulp adventure full of chases and the occasional cliffhanger. The picture is set in an alternate history in which the mysterious disappearance of scientists in the late 19th century has resulted in a gray, polluted Paris running on coal and steam rather than still-untamed electricity, and where most scientific advances are in chemistry. In 1941, teenage April (Marion Cotillard) and her talking cat, Darwin (Philippe Katerine), continue the work

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even guttered, Davis fascinates, and Cheadle’s tender eyes and scraped-raw whisper prove potent. Sometimes Davis’ attention slackens and the film vaults into his past, to memories centered on Frances Taylor, the ballerina and Broadway star who married Davis in 1958. Early flashbacks celebrate her dancing, kick at the racism of the uptown arts world and — in a scene of strong, earthy passion — honor these icons’ lovemaking. History demands that Miles Ahead move on from that reverie, and soon, with too little context, we see Davis turn controlling, paranoid and violent toward her. In the present Ewan McGregor turns up as an eager-beaver reporter who gets caught up in chases with goons hired by a Columbia Records exec. The worst of these scenes plays out like Adventures in Babysitting: Miles Davis Edition. Rated R. (Alan Scherstuhl) Our Last Tango (Un tango más) — Juan Carlos Copes and María Nieves Rego, now in their eighties, met as teenagers and spent decades as a celebrated tango couple. They tell their stories in Our Last Tango, a documentary that both celebrates and challenges the passions of dance, and viewers will sense that the history of these compelling figures entails more frustration and complexity than can be examined in a short running time. Juan is dapper and still tries to dance every day, though he seems to have a caddish side, while María, with her short hair and a cigarette in a long holder, radiates hard-won sass. Thankfully, the film does not rely on other talking heads, leaving the exposition to the charismatic protagonists: María evocatively describes growing up in poverty, pretending a bottle was a doll as a child and finding refuge in dance as a young teenager. Describing her frustration with Juan’s betrayals, she says, “You have to use men and throw them away,” a striking statement delivered without apology. María is forthright -- she has lived and learned, and we can learn from her. Less effective is the film’s frequent use of scenes of young dancers recreating Juan and María’s routines and key moments in their lives. While these vignettes are lovingly, carefully performed and have an aesthetic appeal, they feel a bit too much like the sepia-tinged photos of attractive couples included in picture frames. The little footage of Juan and María shown in the film is far more compelling, and when they talk about seeing Singin’ in the Rain multiple times and feeling inspired by it, the dance reenactment feels unnecessary. Not Rated. (Abbey Bender)

4/25/16 5:56 PM

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| Stage CapSuleS |

Stage

Capsule reviews by D.L. Groover Carousel When Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel (1945)

opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre, their smash hit Oklahoma (1943), the team’s first collaboration, was still running and breaking box-office records right across the street at the St. James. How do you top that? They did what they knew best: something completely different. Skillfully adapting their show from Frederic Molnar’s dark drama Liliom, American musical theater’s most innovative collaborators kept the Hungarian playwright’s depression and fantasy, abetted with a more hopeful ending, and irrevocably changed the face of Broadway — again. Carousel is more pulled together, more fully integrated, more musical than Oklahoma, and that’s saying something. They dispense with the overture, starting the play right in the middle of the bustling action with an extended pantomime scene that introduces all the major characters, which sets the tone immediately and throws us right into the telling. That this opener is scored to one of Rodgers’s most haunting and lush melodies, “The Carousel Waltz,” a merrygo-round gone mad with its diapason harmonies and chromatic climax, was designed not so much to startle the audience as it was to get the show going in the best possible dramatic way. It might be somewhat old hat these days since the team’s innovations were universally copied forever after, but it’s still a wondrous surprise when the curtain swoops open to reveal a carnival in full swing. Carnival bad boy Billy (baritone Duncan Rock, solid and rock-like) exits the wagon of Mrs. Mullins (Helen Anker), widowed owner of the traveling circus, disheveled and smoking a cigarette. Anker, platinum blond like Harlow, adjusts her kimono and takes his cigarette. We know immediately what they’ve been up to. Around them, the New England mill town gawks at the exotic attractions. Girls are drawn to the allure of Billy, now attired in barker’s mufti. He runs the carousel, a rather puny-looking affair considering it’s the iconic star of the show — symbol of fun and freedom. (The mini carousel revolves, but the pale horses don’t even move up and down. Small-town hicks wouldn’t look twice at this colorless little machine. It makes much more of an

| art CapSuleS |

Art

“High Society: The Portraits of Franz X. Winterhalter” may

April 28 - May 4, 2016

Houston Press

Capsule reviews by Randy Tibbits and Susie Tommaney

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make even butch guys think about putting on dresses and waltzing in the flicker of candlelight. Dressing up would certainly be worth it to be remembered the way Winterhalter’s sitters are depicted — but even in 19thcentury Paris, where he flourished, his brush was reserved for kings and queens, emperors and empresses — and occasionally for the merely very, very rich. Though he was born a humble German provincial with a shady background, by mid-century he’d become the virtual court painter of Emperor Napoleon III and his beautiful Spanish Empress, Eugénie. He’d already painted scores of portraits for Queen Victoria of England and her family. He joined a rare group of ultimate portraitists that includes Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Velázquez and, more recently, John Singer Sargent and maybe Andy Warhol — artists whose portraits defined their age. Painting after painting in the exhibition makes clear why, especially those flowing with miles of satin and silk, ribbons and lace, flowers and jewels, executed with a near magical brush, able to make even the — as some might say — plain Victoria, if not beautiful, at least charming. It was an ability that left him much in demand in all the royal courts of Europe. And what becomes a Winterhalter sitter most? A gown by Worth, of course. That would be Charles Frederick Worth, an Englishman who moved to Paris in the 1850s and founded haute couture fashion. The two foreigners worked in tandem, if not quite hand in hand, to give

impression when it appears in the dream sequence, brightened by lights, maneuvered by the chorus and given a Cabaret makeover. Throughout, designer Paolo Ventura gives the show the minimal, attractive look of a pop-up book.) But this carousel is certainly going to give young Julie (soprano Andrea Carroll) the ride of her life. She and Billy exchange wary glances as he lifts her on a horse and puts his arm around her. Desire and a

Soprano Lauren Snouffer, as conventional hausfrau-to-be Carrie; tenor Alexander Lewis, as Carrie’s fish-redolent beau, Mr. Snow; baritone Ben Edquist, as criminal lowlife Jigger Craigin; and Stephanie Blythe, as neutral earth mother Nettie Fowler — privileged to sing the show’s glorious anthem, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” — all make more of an impression than the leads. The show’s other showpiece is Act II’s “Billy Makes a Journey,” the Big Ballet that was once a staple of any serious musical play. Agnes deMille choreographed the original, and here Ashford retains a taste of her atypical movement and expressionistic gesture in his own distinctive, if full of big ballet moves, Broadway style. Abigail Simon, as young Louise, and Marty Lawson, a veteran gypsy, as potential seducer, are mighty persuasive in dancing Louise’s hardscrabble life. If the heart of the show doesn’t grab, there are always, forever, those songs! Using the original orchestrations by Don Walker and Robert Russell Bennett (that old pro is responsible for the iconic texture of “The Carousel Waltz”), these classics of the American Songbook sound resplendently alive and fresh: the love duet “If I Loved You”; the sensual choral “June is Bustin’ Out All Over”; Carrie and Snow’s “When the Children Are Asleep”; Jigger’s rowdy “Blow High, Blow Low” and “There’s Nothin’ So Bad For a Woman”; and Julie’s plaintive and resigned “What’s the Use of Wond’rin’.” The songs are in fine vocal hands, even if under maestro Lynn Lane Richard Bado, they, too, could use more oomph. Carousel These guys and dolls are going to a clambake, not a sewing bee. This was Rodgers’s favorite palpable sexual tension infuse the flowing pulse-of-life score, and it certainly sounds it. Because the themes opening. Continuing the growing trend of opera houses are weighty — life, love, redemption — even the fun to stage Broadway shows (Show Boat; A Little Night numbers are crafted with exquisite skill. Each is precise Music) basically to help the bottom line, Houston Grand and fits nowhere else, helping move the piece inexorably Opera does all right by this co-production with Chicago forward or, usually, giving us more info than dialogue. Lyric Opera, but the heat left the fairground long ago. We know these people by the songs they sing. Perhaps Rock, handsome, and Carroll, lush of voice, never catch this seamless integration is the lasting legacy of R&H. up to their characters. There’s not much chemistry; he Maybe not, though. These songs are in their own special hardly seems dangerous or irresponsible enough for pantheon. April 29, 30; May 6, 7. Wortham Theater feisty and independent Julie to lose her heart — and her Center, 501 Texas. 713-546-0200. — DLG Siegfried The marvelous third opera in Wagner’s titanic job — for this lug. He’s a much better fit for Mrs. Mullins, The Ring of the Nibelung, referred to as the mighty who in Anker’s commanding interpretation is ready to cycle’s “scherzo” movement, Siegfried is all about eat him alive. Solo, Rock is commanding indeed. His young Siegfried, and it’s a killer role. A production can famous “Soliloquy,” though momentarily marred under withstand a less-than-stellar Mime, Alberich, Fafner, director Rob Ashford’s intrusive set change, in which Erda, even Wotan or Brünnhilde, but without a riveting Billy commits to fatherhood, is powerfully conveyed. heldentenor in the part, there’s no opera. He’s the reason The secondary characters are somewhat better situated.

royalty (and wealth in general) a look befitting its status; how nice that their creations are being shown together in the galleries. It’s worth noting that a Spanish empress, a German painter and an English dressmaker gave the look to the French Second Empire. Just goes to show that globalism isn’t anything new, and has never looked better. Through August 14. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet, 713-639-7300, mfah.org. — RT “Hypnotic Void” The ’60s are back, and not just because all seven seasons of Mad Men are available for binge watching on Netflix. San Antonio artist Kelly O’Conner, known for her candy-colored collages that incorporate Disneyland, mid-century advertising images and the race for space, is back for her third solo exhibition at David Shelton Gallery. We see the return of the hex shapes, stalactites and stalagmites that form backgrounds and frames for her multilayered collages, as well as the sparkling rays and starbursts so familiar in the ’50s and ’60s. Some of her works incorporate a generous dose of gerbera daisies — almost as if O’Connor embarked on a frenzied cutting session with her Cricut and just couldn’t stop — but the results are quite lovely, especially when forming a floral hammock for her aerosol-can-armed model in Spray. Printed on archival paper, the 46-inch by 72-inch piece incorporates a generous amount of negative space, judiciously placing the scrapbook paper, vintage record cover paper and wool felt daisies in such a way as to suggest that the model is spraying her support in place. There are nine other portraits of models with daisies in their hair, on their faces or both — as if their flower-topped swimmer’s caps had come alive — with subtle nods to advertising for cosmetics or a healthy glass of milk. Look closely and see Mia Farrow, the original earth mother, in No Man’s Land No. 8. Fond childhood memories of amusement parks are evoked in both Insured, with the happy family in the Skyway cable

cars, and Calcified Curtain, from the Dumbo the Flying Elephant ride at Disneyland Park. O’Connor’s trademark starbursts take center stage in Free Ride (Small World), emulating the park’s famous fireworks by dominating the canvas with the exploding rays. Through May 28. 4411 Montrose, 713-393-7319, davidsheltongallery.com. — ST “In the Wake” We’re still talking about 2010’s BP oil spill disaster — the massive blowout that killed 11 people and sent millions of barrels of crude oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico — resulting in the largest marine oil spill in United States history. One of the photographers at the scene was Madrid-born, Seattle-based Daniel Beltrá, who photographed the disaster from the air, capturing both the beauty of the deep blue ocean and the horror of the wide swaths of red pollutant spreading out from its toxic source. For that work, he was named 2011 Wildlife

VISIt HOuStONpreSS.COM FOr aDDItIONal art aND Stage COVerage Photographer of the Year, an award given annually by London’s Natural History Museum. Five pieces from Beltrá’s “Spill” series are on display at Houston Center for Photography in a group show exploring our impact on water, as well as our attempts to make good on the damage done by humanity. The Stockholm-based artist duo Bigert & Bergström, known for their large-scale public works, have four UV-printed photographic sculptures from their “The Drought” series in the show; the trio of multifaceted acrylic sculptures that glow from within would make a puzzler proud. Anaïs Tondeur has an interesting short film about the mysterious disappearance of the volcanic island Nuuk; we know it existed in

for the show, its drive, impulse, heart. There’s no other role in all of opera as demanding as this “stupid boy” who doesn’t know fear. Houston Grand Opera has nothing to fear. Not only does it give us a dream cast for all the sundry characters — human, god, beast — with which this opera’s packed, but it gives us a dream Siegfried in Jay Hunter Morris. He may have lost a bit of his stentorian oomph from seasons past and at times disappears under Wagner’s swirling orchestral maelstrom instead of riding over it, but he remains the most competent surfer in the international opera world. He’s the best Siegfried there is today, and that’s saying everything, because Siegfrieds don’t come around every generation. Sometimes they skip decades. Riveting, Morris is prime. Most heldentenors dread the challenge. Not only do you have to pretend you’re some young dumb hunk — the übermensch, Nietzsche’s Superman, Germany’s Golden Boy — but you also have to sing full out for almost four solid hours. You’ve got to be lyric, heroic, a little boy lost, an intrepid warrior, a lover of nature, an impetuous fool and, during the half-hour finale, the most ardent of lovers. A complete stage artist, Morris pulls off this prestigious feat with the dexterity of Gypsy Rose Lee. Although saddled with the most god-awful costume — greasy blond dreadlocks, some torn and ragged leather straps for a tunic, with a comic wolf’s tail hanging from his ass — he’s a picture-book avatar of youthful strength and boy’s adventure comic. Best of all, he never tires or loses steam. He gathers more strength as the long night progresses. At the end, with former warrior goddess Brünnhilde within reach (a radiant and rock-solid Christine Goerke, pretty picture-book herself), his eyes did truly gleam. He has found his match, an equal partner in a fiery love that will bring down the gods. Embracing, they laugh at the coming conflagration. During his curtain call, the audience rose as one to burst into clamorous ovation. He deserved it. The HGO orchestra has never sounded so lush, so much in love with the score. We may not like what we see, but what we hear is sublime and glorious. Wagner breathes deep and true, and that is a rare show by itself. Morris, Goerke, Rodell Rosel (oily and creepy as evil dwarf Mime), Andrea Silvestrelli (showing off his great bass as dragon Fafner), Mane Galoyan (twittery and precise as the Forest Bird), Richard Paul Fink (a scene-stealing Alberich) and Meredith Arwady (a deep-dish subterranean Erda, earth goddess deluxe) lead the way with banners unfurled. Siegfried triumphant! April 28; May 1m. Houston Grand Opera, 550 Prairie, 713-228-6737. — DLG

2012 and it has since completely vanished beneath the ocean surface. Also on view are works by Caleb Cain Marcus, Leah Dyjak, Lori Hepner, Constance Hockaday and Ian van Coller. Through May 8. 1441 West Alabama, 713-529-4755, hcponline.org. Free. — ST “Once Upon A Timeless” A visit is worth a thousand words, or at least that’s the case when viewing works by Ingrid Dee Magidson in her solo exhibit at UNIX Gallery Houston. The artist — who grew up in Dallas and, after a winding life’s journey, ended up in Colorado — has been bringing the deceased back to life through her layered, ghostly portraits that reveal so much more in person than through photographs. The exhibit contains the layered-in-frames pieces that she seems to have mastered, as well as some newer experimentation with constructed layers of objects, fabrics and resin, and a few abstract canvases. These are not paintings that the viewer can absorb in a glance; the more time spent gazing, the more to divine. Set in deep, ornate frames with jewels, fabrics, textures and all the accoutrements that befit nobility, the faint gestures of eyes or mouth almost float like an elusive hologram. In Delivering Destiny, the feminine muse gazes upon a knight atop a horse (a jumble of wires represent its mane and tail) while a compass guides the way. Magidson incorporates butterflies in almost all of her works, symbolic of the fragility and beauty of life and our brief time here on earth. Musical notes appear where the eyes should be in the ethereal face of Tosca’s Lost Love 2016, with the fabric arm appearing truly three-dimensional, and bejeweled with beadwork, dried flowers and a brooch. Something not often seen, a painting walking a painting, demonstrates the affection between the nobleman holding a leash (yes, those are actual dog tags) while his faithful companion looks up obediently in BFF. Through May 31. 4411 Montrose, 713-874-1770, unixgallery.com. — ST

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▼

Cafe

A Bit Confusing

revolve Kitchen + Bar at Hotel Derek may be a good place to hang out, but it’s not quite a restaurant. he first warning that a trippy time awaits diners who seek out revolve kitchen + Bar at hotel derek is the swirling magenta light pattern projected on the floor and the pink-and-purple cowhide lounger just outside in the lobby. Maybe this place started with a good idea but became something of a mishmash as it evolved to meet the needs of hotel guests who visit for everything from breakfast to late-night cocktails. It’s unclear at first where the actual restaurant is, though. There is no sign and no doors, only a big, open bar area with high-top tables and tall bar stools. There’s a coffee table adorned with a metal tic-tac-toe set and surrounded by upholstered chairs. A large adjacent

restaurant. There’s Daniel Boulud’s db Brasserie in The Venetian, CarneVino in The Palazzo and Joël Robuchon at the MGM Grand, just to name a few. In New York, there’s The NoMad, Covina at Park South and Locanda Verde in The Greenwich Hotel. Similar examples could be cited in other major metropolitans. Houstonians, though, seem to have a cool, uninterested attitude toward most hotel restaurants, and, conversely, hotel restaurants don’t seem all that interested in attracting local diners. Houston is a city of drivers, and the cost and inconvenience of having to valet or park in a garage is a big damper. On our visits, Revolve validated for valet service, which dropped the price from a hefty $19 to a still-hefty $7 plus gratuity. Revolve also validated garage parking, but the exit meter was malfunctioning, so it took ten minutes to get some help and escape.

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Another reason for the lack of diner interest is that hotel food is often more expensive than what’s served at offsite restaurants but the value proposition isn’t clear. There seems to be an assumption that the diners at hotels are a captive audience, guests who are willing to pay for convenience. Often, hotels seem less interested in having a top-notch restaurant than in having an adequate cash cow. (Speaking of cows, there are painted bovines in Revolve’s lobby, too. It’s really a rather artsy, colorful place.) And so it goes at Revolve, which has a $45 tenderloin, a $32 pork chop and $18 pizzas. There have been a few breakthrough hotel restaurants in Houston over the years.

revolve kitchen + Bar at hotel derek 2525 West Loop South, 713-961-3000. Hours: 6 a.m. to midnight, daily.

Chicken-fried short rib bites $8 Chile güero poppers $9 Lamb and pepperoni pizza $18 Queso fresco-crusted tenderloin $45 Old-fashioned $14 St. Bernardus Beer (bomber) $19.50

April 28 - May 4, 2016 Month XX–Month XX, 2014

room features comfortable booths along the walls, which is where we chose to be seated, thinking it was the actual dining room. It’s not exactly that, although it may have been that at one point. Running right down the middle aisle were not one but two pool tables. We wondered if some of the guys drinking at the bar would eventually wander over and spoil our quiet dinner by playing a few rounds right in front of our table. Should diners be warned about the potential hazard of flying cue balls? In other big cities — especially those with highly walkable areas — some of the best restaurants in the world are found in hotels. It’s simply expected in Las Vegas, land of the celebrity chef

the cheese and blackened it in spots. The surprisingly lush experience was enhanced with brothy rice decked out to an ardent green with cilantro and elegant spears of asparagus. The chile güero poppers were interesting, and it was just a Revolve could RefeR shame there were only two on the plate. Fat, to the pale green peppers Revolving were stuffed with a dooR of Res stretchy blend of mantauRants chego and Boursin cheese, wrapped in that have existed heRe. prosciutto and roasted until the tops of the peppers turned brown and the meat became crispy. These were served atop a dramatic, orange-red swath of romesco. The sauce incorporates roasted red peppers, and was a soulful companion for the pale green ones. The menu has a selection of house cocktails, including a few classics like the oldfashioned. That particular drink is always a good test of a bar’s abilities. It’s a classic, it’s simple and every bartender should know how to make a good one. It arrived with a bright, pinkish hue thanks to the neon-red maraschino cherries that had been muddled into the glass. (Real maraschino cherries are naturally dark red.) As for the flavor, though, there was a much better balance between the bourbon and the sweet elements than was indicated by the cocktail’s appearance alone. There were a few craft beers on the list, but Revolve was out of the first one we ordered, 8th Wonder Brewery’s Rocket Fuel. Import bottles were listed as $6.50 each and included St. Bernardus Abt 12, an outstanding Belgian Quadrupel ale. That price of $6.50, of course, was incorrect for a bomber-size bottle. “This is $19.50. Is that okay?” asked the server when he returned. We pointed out the error on the menu, and he said, “That’s why I asked before I opened it.” We suggested it might be a good idea to update the drink list. Revolve Kitchen + Bar’s setup might work for hotel guests who mainly seek a bar and a place to hang out with their friends. However, it doesn’t function well as a restaurant, and as it stands now, there’s not much incentive for Houstonians to go out of their way to visit. Should you find yourself there, though, try the tenderloin.

Houston Press Houston Press

the queso frescocrusted tenderloin was a surprise hit.

Deville at Four Seasons Houston enjoyed a heyday that included chef Tim Keating’s being named a James Beard semifinalist multiple times, then it was rebranded as Italian restaurant Quattro. At one time there was a good French restaurant in Hotel Sofitel. World-renowned chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten opened Bank in Hotel Icon. When he decided to end his involvement in that project, it became Voice and retained a high level of esteem under chef Michael Kramer. That closed and the restaurant was rebranded yet again, as Line & Lariat. It’s been a similar scenario at Hotel Derek. Revolve could refer to the revolving door of restaurants that have existed here. Initially there was French chef Philippe Schmit’s first Houston restaurant, Bistro Moderne. When it closed, the follow-up was Valentino, a fine Italian place helmed by chef Cunninghame West that featured exquisite house-made pasta. Revolve has none of the culinary ambition of its predecessors. It’s a sad, weird, confused place that serves milky lattes to dine-in guests in paper Starbucks cups. In one case, the weirdness extends to the food. The chicken-fried short rib bites arrive injected with plastic pipettes filled with gravy. The chunks of short rib, encased in a crunchy crust, are actually tender and tasty. The fatty layers of the meat absorb the gravy rather well when it’s injected. Still, it’s hard to get past the dish’s resemblance to Pinhead in the Hellraiser movies. Creativity should not involve sticking plasPhaedra Cook tic vials into food. Sometimes, there’s a dish filled with promise that’s thwarted by a single element. The spicy lamb and pepperoni pizza is complemented with toppings of roasted tomatoes, jalapeños, feta and mozzarella cheese. It’s a terrific combination that punches the palate with heat, saltiness and umami. Alas, the crust was so flat, boring, pale and lifeless that it could have come out of a box. The dubious-sounding queso fresco-crusted tenderloin was the surprise hit. “Topped” might be a more apt term than “crusted,” but either way, a satisfying, stubby column of beef arrived at the table topped with a scarlet chile ancho-infused butter and a thick layer of snowy white queso fresco. The time under the broiler roasted

By Phaedra Cook

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| EatIng...our wordS |

Cafe

AMikeCup of Comfort SaMMonS of MongooSe vS

April 28 - May 4, 2016

Houston Press

Cobra WantS to Serve a Cup of iriSh Coffee to You. Phaedra Cook

“Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.” — Alex Levine, Irish actor and musician

here’s something utterly meditative about a properly made Irish coffee served in a clear glass. Initially, there’s

The kindly bartender didn’t even charge the young man, who obviously didn’t have much money and just needed a place to sleep. “It’s a lasting memory,” said Sammons. “When I think on it, I feel like a kid again. Everyone on that trip had been extremely nice and generous. I am sort of this sentimental guy and I get nostalgic about things. I try to not do that so much anymore, and look to the future instead of the past. But I can’t escape some memories.” Good memories shouldn’t be escaped, though. Sammons is channeling his experience into a new Irish coffee program at Mongoose vs Cobra. From 4 to 6 p.m. every day except Sunday, he plans to make every glass himself. (On Sundays, head bartender Andy Charlton will likely take care of the Irish coffee service.) “I whip the cream myself; I make the coffee my-

Chuck Cook Photography

Mike Sammons of Mongoose vs Cobra pours a stream of housemade whipped cream atop a glass of Irish coffee.

the dichotomy of the pale whipped cream and the deep brown coffee. Soon, the bottom layer of the cream starts to filter down in wavering strands, lightening the coffee to the color of a warm praline. On a sip, there’s first the silken touch of the cream, then the warmth of the coffee, followed by the bracing strength of Irish whiskey. It’s a balm and one of the most perfect, simple drinks ever invented. Mike Sammons is one of the owners of Mongoose vs Cobra, and he says a kind stranger once provided this comfort to him when he was a young man. Now, he seeks to establish an Irish coffee service at the bar. Sammons had his first Irish coffee when he was about to catch a flight back to the United States after living in Ireland for three years. He had only five dollars left when he went to the airport in Dublin. When he arrived, his flight was delayed, everything was closed and he couldn’t afford a hotel. “I thought, ‘I’ve got to find a place to sleep,’ and I snuck into this closed bar and went to sleep in a booth,” he said. When he woke up the next morning, a bartender had arrived to open the bar for the day’s business. “Can I get you something?” called the bartender. The groggy Sammons asked for coffee. “Irish coffee?” asked the bartender. Sammons assumed it was just coffee roasted in Ireland. “Sure,” he replied.

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self. There are no shortcuts. I’m just trying to make an honest drink,” said Sammons. Mongoose vs Cobra uses beans from local roaster Amaya Coffee. Soon, Mongoose vs Cobra will offer iced Irish coffee on nitro, which will be perfect for summer. Aerating the coffee with nitrogen will give it a smooth, creamy character. Sammons hopes people will take the opportunity to stop and catch a moment for themselves. The caffeine provides a second wind to get through the rest of the evening, while the whiskey calms the nerves. “I think we’re missing that culture in Houston,” he said. “I know it won’t change the world, but it might make a difference for a couple of people. This town is a place to work, and sometimes it’s good to just hang out for a while.” The cost of the coffee and whiskey therapy is only $5 per glass from 4 to 6 p.m.

openings & Closings after the floodS, SoMe neW

iMaginingS. alexandra doyle

he recent floodwaters affected several businesses, including Corkscrew BBQ at 26608 Keith, which was without power last week; the restaurant

hoped to open last Friday, April 22. Lucky’s Pub at 2520 Houston in The Heights took

on quite a bit of water and will probably be closed awhile for repairs. Also, many food trucks, such as Custom Confections, have reported extensive damage to their vehicles, so you may see fewer food trucks on the streets for a bit. We encourage you to call ahead to your favorite eateries before visiting to ensure that they are not closed because of water damage or power outages. (Also, many restaurants are holding flood-relief events, so keep an eye out for those, too.) It’s finally here! Biskit Junkie, 403 Westheimer in the former Mango’s, is ready to supply you with all the biscuits you could ever desire. The menu includes open-face biscuits with huevos rancheros or shrimp, sausage and grits, as well as closed biscuit sandwiches like the Presley, which is loaded with peanut butter, tempura chicken, bacon, tempura-fried green tomato and strawberry preserves. Who could come up with a concept like that? The same people who brought you Jus’ Mac, of course! Be aware that the restaurant doesn’t accept cash, so make sure you’ve got a card in tow. Midtown Barbecue, the collaboration between chef Eric Aldis and pitmaster Brett Jackson, is now open at 2708 Bagby. While the brisket and links will be smokin’, be on the lookout for more unusual specials from the creative chef, too. Like many barbecue joints, Midtown will be open daily until the meat runs out. Mikoto Ramen, 12155 Katy Freeway, is also open. According to its website, the restaurant slow-brews its broth for up to 12 hours, and the executive chef was trained in the art of top-notch ramen-making in Japan. The eatery also offers sushi, sashimi and a variety of Japanese fare. Cypress has a new brunch eatery; the aptly named Breakfast Brunch Cafe (or BBC for short) is ready to serve up brunch dishes such as peaches and cream, crème brûlée-battered French toast, and steak and eggs. You’ll find it at 12904 Fry near the Blackhorse Golf Club. Alice Levitt of Houstonia says that Kwality Ice Cream is now open at 5636 Hillcroft; she says she anxiously awaited the newest location of the NewJersey-based ice cream chain, which specializes in Indian flavors.

1500 Research Forest in The Woodlands, that’s ready to help brighten up your early-morning commute (or lazy Sunday mornings). Kuma Burgers, 3 Greenway Plaza, is now open, and the lone Yelp reviews couldn’t get enough of it. The style is à la Which Wich, where you order by checking off toppings on a piece of paper. Burgers are about $7 each, and the gourmet toppings include kimchi relish, charred jalapeños, fried eggs and sambal mayo. The restaurant formerly known as Mission Burrito and now known as Überrito has a new location, at 7705 Westheimer. A few notable restaurants have expanded their hours: MAX’s Wine Dive, 214 Fairview, now offers lunch Tuesday through Friday, and The Tasting Room, 1660 West Lake Houston Parkway in Kingwood, has begun serving lunch on Friday and Saturday. Pluckers Wing Bar announced a second location coming this fall, to 10407 Katy Freeway in Memorial, which is just in time to let you enjoy football on its big-screen TVs. We have an update to last week’s report on the new Goode Co. concept coming soon to 8865 Six Pines in The Woodlands; it turns out that it will actually be two separate but side-by-side concepts, one of which is the classic Goode Co. Barbecue, while the other is the Goode Co. Kitchen + Cantina, a Mexican food restaurant. The rumor mill has been whispering of a Ramen Tatsu Ya location coming to Houston, and it looks as if that is finally coming to pass; Ramen Tatsu Ya III, owned by Tatsu Aikawa, submitted an application for building permits for the former Zenobia’s spot at 1722 California in Montrose, so there might be yet another top-notch ramen eatery in Houston very soon. Also, AGU Ramen has confirmed plans to open a Houston shop by summer, as well as long-term plans for locations in Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. It’s unclear if Hisashi Uehara, owner of the Hawaiibased restaurant group, has already picked a location for the Houston outpost, but he was in town for the recent Japan Festival, so it’s possible that he was also scoping out the best place for a new ramen shop, too.

Snap Kitchen

now has a kiosk inside the Whole Foods at 1925 Hughes Landing in The Woodlands, where you’ll find many of Snap Kitchen’s favorite offerings, including meals, snacks, desserts and coldpressed juices. There’s a new Kolache Factory, at

Chuck Cook Photography

this willie’s Icehouse looked more like a water-house during the recent floods, if you ask us. Many restaurants ended up with floodwater inside and out, and they may still be recovering.

4/25/16 5:57 PM

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Houston Press

HOUSTON

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| rocks off |

Music

Down In the FlooD The heavy rains of april 17 and

LIVE MUSIC EVEry NIght! thur, apr 29 Houston Blues Society Blues Jam Musicians Welcome!

Fri, apr 29 Tommy Dardar

sat, apr 30 Alan Haynes

Todd Longenecker

Dees. “He’s always been real supportive of the musicians out here [in the scene].” The benefit will feature a range of local acts who will play to raise money for lost equipment and other flood victims. Longenecker expressed concern for other Houstonians who lost far more than amps, drums and guitars. “I’m thinking of giving all the money we make from our show to the flood victims of Houston,” he says. Rev Skelton is considering giving their portion of the total proceeds to the Houston chapter of the Red Cross, adds Longenecker. After speaking with Dees and the other band members, it was not surprising to hear these men put the needs of others before their own. Asked if the bands had yet started an account for donations to replace their lost equipment through GoFundMe or similar crowdfunding sites, Dees was adamant that wouldn’t happen. “I would not be comfortable with that,” he says. “I mean, a benefit where people can come out, you know, come together like a community, I could see that.” These men recoiled at the thought of asking for money, perceiving it as akin to a handout. Dees absolutely refused to consider any outright fundraising. “We were hit hard, no doubt, especially Hold On Hollywood, but we will recover,” he says. That recovery can’t come soon enough, as both Rev Skelton and Hold On Hollywood had committed to shows the next weekend: Admire praised the local music community for the offers of loaned equipment and practice space. “Right now we’re getting a lot of help from a lot of people,” he says. “The guys from Theory of Thieves, some tribute bands, Escape. The rock and roll community of Houston is really stepping up. What we can’t replace or have repaired by then will be on loan.” “We were almost not going to play [last Saturday’s show],” Admire adds. “But when so many people came forward to help, we just said, ‘We’re not gonna let this bring us down.’” He laughs. “Fuck the flood.’”

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francisco studios North on April 18

HOUSTON PRESS

ast week’s historic flooding left people across Houston attempting to dry out, assess damage and rethink what it means to live in a floodplain. But one thing is for sure: Natural disasters are a great equalizer. No matter your race, gender or income level, it seems every Houstonian was either affected or knows someone who was. Even some local Houston musicians felt the brunt of Mother Nature’s damaging wrath when at least a foot of water submerged Francisco Studios North off Little York and Beltway 8. Several local bands are facing thousands upon thousands of dollars in lost equipment, practice spaces and irreplaceable rare items. regions, it is not required in this case, nor “At first we weren’t concerned,” Todd does Texas require businesses like FrancisLongenecker, bass player for Rev Skelton, co’s to carry it. says of the heavy rains. “We had never heard As for exactly what kind of insurance of [Francisco’s] flooding.” Not until LongeFrancisco’s did have, Longenecker says he necker went to check for himself did he realspoke to the building’s caretaker the day after ize there was plenty to worry about. the flooding and was told, “We don’t have “Nothing but bad news…the water crested flood insurance; no one can afford it.” inside the studio at 13 inches,” says the band’s Calls and messages to Francisco’s relead singer, Kevin Admire, about Longeneckmained unanswered at press time. er’s initial texts to the band assessing the Asked if the lease at Francisco Studios indamage. “What you see in the pictures is four cluded a renter’s insurance agreement or inches. So, we were pretty much devastated.” rider, Dees indicated the tenant-landlord reRev Skelton lost plenty of equipment, inlationship was much more casual. cluding drummer Craig LeMay’s rare kit that “We never signed any lease agreement,” was built by Alex Van Halen’s personal drum he says. “We paid rent and were given access technician, Admire explains. to the room. The owner has always been Admire estimates the band’s collective very cool to us. We have no complaints losses at somewhere around $10,000. against him.” Word got out quickly, and many bands Dees went on to say that Francisco’s who share practice space at Francisco’s agreed to refund this month’s rental payment, North learned they were also affected. Jeff and would be repairing the rehearsal rooms Dees, manager of Hold On Hollywood, estiso they could be used in the future. mates his bands are also dealing with losses If there was ever a time for the Houston into the thousands of dollars. When asked if music community to come together, it’s now. any of his bands carried insurance, he admitUpon hearing about the devastation and loss ted he had only considered a personal policy of equipment, BFE Rock Club owner Frank against theft. Aluotto reached out to Dees with the offer of “We just didn’t think about it flooding out a benefit show at the venue, tentatively here,” says Dees. scheduled for June 11. Longenecker and Admire echo Dees’s “He called me up and said, ‘How’s it looksentiment. ing, man? What can I do to help?’,” relays “You don’t think about these things until they happen,” Longenecker admits. According to an insurance-industry insider who asked to remain anonymous, each insurance case varies. But if Francisco’s did carry flood insurance, it certainly would have covered the building and the damage. A personal renter’s policy could have covered the musicians’ equipment if the policy included damage by flood. While the federal Todd Longnecker government insists on flood insurance in certain Inside rev skelton’s flooded practice space.

18 lefT some local musicians wiThouT gear and rehearsal space. KRISTY LOYE

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April 28 - May 4, 2016

Houston Press

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PlayIng Possum The laTe, greaT george “no show”

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Jones is presenT and accounTed for in a deTailed new biography.

BOB RUGGIERO

tuesday may 3rd MONsTer TruCk

wednesday may 4th MeMphis May Fire

ince his 2013 passing, George Jones of course no longer holds the frequently bestowed title of “Greatest Living County Music Singer,” the “Living” part in deference to Hank Williams Sr. But in longtime music scribe Rich Kienzle’s brief but richly written new biography, The Grand Tour: The Life and Music of George Jones, we get the most comprehensive look to date at the wild life, musical career and, most important, inner workings of the Possum — a nickname, we see, he alternately hated and cherished. Of course, Kienzle retells some of the more offbeat trials and tribulations that have become part of Jones lore: the time his wife took away his car keys, so he drove a tractor to the liquor store; car crashes and cocaine binges; his bizarre “Duck” and “Old Man” voices and personas; a stormy marriage to singer Tammy Wynette; and the scores of drunken performances and missed concerts that earned him the moniker “No Show Jones.”

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But he also unearths even more stories with research and original interviews. Like the time early in Jones’s career when — in order to cool down a non-air-conditioned bus — he shot a few holes in the floor, but failed to realize that only served to suck in the vehicle’s exhaust fumes. Or when, drunk, Jones passed out in a shower stall; with his naked ass covering the drain, the quick-thinking Faron Young’s pulling him out likely saved Jones from drowning. “Sober, he had [mother] Clara’s noblest attributes,” Kienzle writes of Jones’s early drinking, a pattern he held for decades. “A binge summoned forth the obnoxious, abusive spirit of George

ImPerFect matches a pair of couples have some

Washington Jones. If he realized what he’d done after sobering up, remorse set in and apologies flowed — until the next whiskey was poured.” But thankfully, Kienzle also gives ample pages to the story and development of Jones’s musical life. And while he started off singing in the styles of heroes like Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, Roy Acuff and Bill Monroe (Jones was, by all accounts, a gifted mimic), he eventually found his own voice — one awash in deep heartache and regret. Like Frank Sinatra, George Jones could really live inside and interpret a lyric in songs like “She Thinks I Still Care”; “The Window Up Above”; “The Grand Tour”; “A Picture of Me (Without You)”; “The Race Is On”; and also what many consider his finest song, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” That last title tells a movie-worthy story in which the protagonist’s pining for a woman ends only with his death and a funeral that she attends. Kienzle also details Jones’s frustration with and disdain for the creeping influence of pop into the country music of the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. While hugely successful commercially, the music’s similarities to bland soft rock turned off many more “hardcore” country fans. Jones did appreciate members of the “New Traditionalist” movement — most specifically Alan Jackson, who became a close friend — for swinging the pendulum back a bit. There are also stories of financial chaos and mismanagement that Jones himself was largely responsible for, and his fractious relationships with his children. Because Jones was born and raised in the Beaumont area, Houston appears in the book throughout the narrative, mostly in Jones’s work recording for Harold “Pappy” Daily and his Starday Records. Jones also appeared at numerous Bayou City venues (Cooke’s Hoedown, City Auditorium, Amma Dee’s, Dancetown USA), and is remembered by several friends and fellow musicians from the area. And then there’s the tragic 1965 incident after a show near a club called Shelley’s in La Porte (later the site of the original Gilley’s), where the president of his fan club was found beaten and strangled to death a short distance away. As Jones and his band were the last people seen with her, they were under a cloud of suspicion until a transient admitted to the crime. The Grand Tour is an apt title for this deep survey of George Jones, who with the help of fourth wife Nancy sobered up and spent the last 20 years of his life basking in the accolades of his legacy. And with a movie of his life in the planning stages, there’s still some Show left in this No Show yet.

Dating Down: When I hear the phrase “dating down,” the first thing that comes to mind is, someone is settling. That’s not my idea of love, nor is it indicative of a healthy relationship because the person dating down will always feel superior, and the person dating up will always feel inferior in the relationship. Which is the case with you and your guy. This isn’t fixable. Both of you are on a journey for love. But you’re on different planes headed in different directions.

The Grand Tour is available from Dey Street Books for $27.99.

Ask Willie D appears Thursdays on houstonpress.com/music.

serious compaTibiliTy issues. WILLIE D Dear Willie D: Both my girl and I are 27 years old. We are both driven, her more so than me. She has always been a straight-A student and overachiever, whereas I have to work harder to get what I want. I understand people who are driven are extremely focused, but that drive should end when you walk into the door at home with your significant other. If I’m eating, she has something to say about how I hold my fork. She is always trying to upgrade my clothes. When we are around people in her industry of work, without fail she has to make a comment at some point during the night about what I said or how I said it. I’m sick of it. I want to be with her, but not like this. How do I get her to stop correcting me?

Driven by Perfection: Your girl isn’t a perfectionist. She’s a control freak. No matter how much you change to accommodate her, it will never be enough because deep down inside, she thinks she’s better than you. Talk to your girlfriend about her controlling attitude. Tell her to knock it off, or you’re out. Having a significant other who complements your attributes and pushes you to be better is one thing. But being with someone who views you as a project rather than a person is something totally different. I vote that you find someone who can appreciate you as is. No sense in wasting precious time in a dead-end relationship. This will get worse before it gets better. Dear Willie D: I’m an attractive 35-year-old professional woman with my own business. I have dated men with money and access my whole life. After witnessing a friend have success, and believing that men with money presented an array of problems (self-entitlement comes to mind), I decided to give dating down a shot. All I can say is dating down isn’t for me. The guy I’m dating never has any money, and often makes sly comments about my income as if he wants me to feel bad about being successful. I can’t take him anywhere nice without him pointing out how snobbish and fake other people in the room are, so I have resolved to leave him at home when I go out. I don’t like not being able to have my man accompany me to functions, but I don’t like feeling guilty about having a good time and enjoying the fruits of my labor, either. Is this fixable?

4/26/16 11:59 AM

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Music

My Morning Jacket

With the Barr Brothers, 8 p.m. thursday, april 28 at revention music center, 520 texas, 713-520-1300 or reventionmusiccenter.com.

Considering the band has been around since the late ’90s, and during that time has managed to chart exactly one song (“I’m Amazed”) on Billboard’s U.S. Rock chart, it’s an impressive feat that My Morning Jacket continues to sell out large venues and headline major festivals. If anything, enigmatic front man Jim James and his bandmates have proven that lack of radio play doesn’t necessarily beget commercial failure. Or maybe MMJ is simply the new Phish, a band that never really resonated commercially but whose live shows are those of legend. The quintet is similarly known for its jam-band ways, often rolling one ten-minute song into another, making for a catalog that’s among the most unique in rock over the past 15 years. Some tracks scream for mainstream acceptance, some couldn’t care less and others, to put it mildly, are bizarre as hell. clint hale

Lucinda Williams

thursday, april 28 at house of Blues, 1204 caroline, 888-402-5837 or hoB.com/houston.

Already descended from Southern literary royalty — Clinton-era U.S. poet laureate Miller Williams — Lucinda Williams has lately assumed another title: Empress of Americana. Last year, the long-ago Houstonian won Album of the Year at the Americana Music Awards for 2014’s Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone, a leisurely but emotionally knotty double album that showcases Williams, now 63, at the peak of her abundant talents. But Spirit was also the inaugural release on Williams’s label Highway 20 Records, meaning that after a lifetime of sometimes butting heads with more business-minded music-industry folks, now Williams calls all the creative shots. Look no further than February’s followup, Ghosts of Highway 20, another double-length effort that finds Williams’s vocals a little throatier; the arrangements a

little more haunting than usual (no easy feat); and her stripped-bare vignettes about thorny romantic entanglements, hardcore grieving and naked loneliness shining brighter than ever. chris Gray

Bonnie Raitt

8 p.m. friday, april 29 at revention music center, 520 texas, 713-520-1300 or reventionmusiccenter.com.

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thus instantly conjuring memories of one of O’Brien’s greatest clients, the Black Crowes — BBS have made a career record with 2015’s Holding All the Roses. Only their fourth fulllength LP since 2004 (which should be a clue how much time they spend on tour), Roses is a little hazy, a little rude, and loaded with swaggering guitars and good-ole-boy attitude. In other words, it’s everything great Southern rock should be. chris Gray

Local roots-music fans will have to wait till next time for that Blackberry Smoke’s dream Lucinda WilHolding All the Roses liams/Bonnie Raitt smells pretty sweet. double bill, but backto-back nights ain’t so bad, either. Raitt is coming off a scenestealing appearance at February’s Grammy B.B. King tribute alongside Chris Stapleton and Gary Clark Jr., plus a new record: Dig In Deep, her first since 2012’s Slipstream and sixth since 1989’s Webster PR Grammy-sweeping “comeback” Nick of Time. No reason for The Jon Crain Band Raitt to reinvent the wheel since then, so Dig 6 p.m. saturday, april 30 at the continental In delivers another reliable mix of subtly cluB, 3700 main, 713-529-9899 or funky soft-rockers, gritty R&B shuffles with continentalcluB.com/houston. plenty of B-3 and a last-call lament or two Songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist Jon Crain (“Undone”) that proves consistency is its has the ideal dual citizenship — he splits own reward. She’s not above tucking in neat time between his hometown of Houston and surprise covers of INXS’s “Need You ToAustin — and he’s used it to good advantage night” and Los Lobos’ “Shakin’ Shakin’ on his latest album, Part of My Days, which Shakes” to draw a few extra smiles, too. he is releasing via a special early show at the Continental. Crain, who owns a construcchris Gray tion company, has been making records (“one every ten years”) since the eighties; his Blackberry Smoke latest is a bone-jarring mess of blues-funk 6 p.m. saturday, april 30 at sam houston featuring Austin aces like bassist Yoggie race park, 7575 north sam houston Musgraves and drummer Brannen Temple parkWay West or shrp.com. locking down the bottom. Crain can burn After some pretty bleak years, bands like Blackberry Smoke are helping restore the good name the strings, but his songwriting deserves equal attention. Crain is backing out of his of old-school Southern rock with none of the day job to concentrate on music, and plans messy political baggage tied up in certain symto be playing Houston more in the future. If bols employed by their brethren a generation or two ago. Long-haired, mostly bearded and in he can keep this band together, look for him to make waves around town wherever peolove with every Rolling Stones album between ple are rocking — to the blues and the funk. Beggar’s Banquet and Black and Blue, the Atlanta quintet is practically country music these William michael smith days, and so much the better. Enlisting the services of top producer Brendan O’Brien — and Silversun Pickups, Foals Lucinda Williams

April 28 - May 4, 2016

Houston Press

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| PLAYBILL |

David McClister

With JoyWave, 7 p.m. monday, may 2 at revention music center, 520 texas, 713-520-1300 or reventionmusiccenter.com.

Never the flashiest, angstiest or most derivative band on the radio, Silversun Pickups have nonetheless developed into one of the 21st century’s most successful modern-rock bands. Formed in the hipster mecca of L.A.’s Silverlake neighborhood (once basically Williamsburg West), the four-piece had a runaway hit straight out of the gate with 2006’s “Lazy Eye,” establishing a sophisticated but accessible sound that instead of wilting returned them to the Modern Rock Top 10 several more times with songs such as “The Pitch” and “Panic Switch.” Last year’s Better Nature, their fifth LP, showed no signs of letting up, thanks to highlights “Latchkey Kids,” “Pins and Needles” and “Nightlight,” among others. Sweetening the pot is an opening spot by indie favorites Foals, the UK quintet whose snappy post-punk 2.0 gets nice and sweaty on last year’s What Went Down. chris Gray

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Music

@PEGSTARCONCERTS Eleanor Friedberger, Icewater 4/22 @ The Raven Tower

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4/22 @ Warehouse Live

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4/23 @ Rudyards

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Half Moon Run, Jesse Mac Cormack 4/27 @ The Raven Tower The Bronx, We Were Wolves 4/28 @ The Raven Tower

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Houston Press

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| listings |

4/29 @ The Lawn at White Oak Music Hall

Music listings are offered as a free service to Press readers and are subject to space restrictions. Send listings information by e-mail (musiclistings@houstonpress.com), fax (713-280-2496) or mail (2603 LaBranch, Houston, TX 77004). To change an ongoing listing, call 713-280-2486. Deadline is noon Thursday for the following week’s issue. Listings rotate regularly, as space allows. Our complete listing of shows is available online. For addresses, phone numbers and descriptions of venues, see our online listings at houstonpress.com/directory/clubs.

T H I S J U ST I N Alabama Shakes: With Corinne Bailey Rae., Sat., Sept. 24, 8

p.m., TBA. Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, 2005 Lake Robbins, The Woodlands. Bun B at Thursday Concerts presented by UHD: Thu., May 19, 7 p.m., Free. Discovery Green Conservancy, 1500 McKinney, Houston. CJ Ramone: With Broken Gold, Thrill., Sat., May 21, 8 p.m., $15. Continental Club, 3700 Main, Houston. Deerhoof: With Cowtown, Tele Novella., Sun., Aug. 14, 8 p.m., $12 to $15. Walters Downtown, 1120 Naylor, Houston. Drake: With Future., Sept. 3-4, 7 p.m., TBA. Toyota Center, 1510 Polk, Houston. Fantasia & Anthony Hamilton: Sun., June 12, 7:30 p.m., $49.50-$85. NRG Park - Main Street Yellow Lot, One NRG Park, Houston. Fathers And Sons: With Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Colin Gilmore, Butch Hancock, Rory Hancock., Sat., June 18, 7 & 9:30 p.m., $30 to $33. McGonigel’s Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk, Houston. Giant Kitty: With Sailor Poon, Ancient Gods., Sat., Aug. 27, 8 p.m., TBA. Satellite, 6922 Harrisburg, Houston. John Evans: Sat., May 14, 7:30 p.m., $15. Raven Tower, 310 N., Houston. Kansas: Fri., Oct. 14, 8 p.m., $46-$126. University of Houston, 4800 Calhoun Rd., Houston. Meat Beat Manifesto: With Clock DVA, Underground Netwerk Intelligence., Sat., Oct. 1, 8 p.m., TBA. Numbers, 300 Westheimer, Houston. MNYNMS: With FM Attack, Nite, Hydra Melody., Thu., April 28, 7 p.m., $8. The Nightingale Room, 308 Main, Houston. Moths: With B L A C K I E, Gillian Carter, Mouthing, Ruiners., Sun., May 29, 8 p.m., $5 to $10. Walters Downtown, 1120 Naylor, Houston. Muhammadali: With 404 Not Found., Thu., May 12, 8 p.m., TBA. Super Happy Fun Land, 3801 Polk, Houston. New Edition: Thu., June 30, 8 p.m., $99.50. Arena Theatre, 7326 Southwest Freeway, Houston. Razormaid: Sat., Aug. 6, 8 p.m., $10 to $12. Numbers, 300 Westheimer, Houston. Really Dabbin’: With 2Stoned, LilSicc., Thu., April 28, 9 p.m., $10 to $15. Club Riddims, 8220 W. Bellfort, Houston. Robby Krieger of The Doors: Fri., June 10, 8 p.m., $30 to $35. Scout Bar, 18307 Egret Bay, Houston. Texas Taco Music Fest: Sat., April 30, 12-9 p.m. 2600 Navigation, 2600 Navigation Blvd, Houston. Wheeler Walker Jr.: Sat., June 18, 7 p.m., $15. House of Blues, 1204 Caroline, Houston.

C LU B S L I ST I N G S

April 28 - May 4, 2016

ROCK

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Acadia Bar & Grill: 3939 Cypress Creek, Houston. Last Judge-

ment, with Remnants of IzanagI, Sift Through the Ashes, ETSAI, Last Judgement, Depths of Bermuda., Thu., April 28, 8 p.m., $5 to $8. The Glass, with Carranzam, BombaChica, Viola Wilde., Fri., April 29, 8 p.m., $8 to $12. Underage, with Klodine., Sat., April 30, 7 p.m., TBA. BFE Rock Club: 11528 Jones, Houston. The Devil In California, with Tame Fury., Fri., April 29, 7 & 8 p.m., $10. Crank Case, with Key Flight Captains, Saints of Ashcroft, Chaotic Justice., Sat., April 30, 8 p.m., TBA. Big Top Lounge: 3714 Main, Houston. Buenos Diaz, Sat., April 30, 10 p.m., Free. Continental Club: 3700 Main, Houston. Tino and Jose The Rock N’ Roll Mariachis, Thu., April 28, 10 p.m., Free. The Allen Oldies Band, Fri., April 29, 7 p.m., Free.

Dan Electro’s Guitar Bar: 1031 E. 24th, Houston. Black Water

Mountain, Sat., April 30, 9 p.m., TBA. Dosey Doe: 25911 I-45 N., Spring. The English Beat, Thu., April 28, 8:30 p.m., $68 to $108. Eastdown Warehouse: 850 Mckee, Houston. The Black Dahlia Murder, with Fallujah, Disentomb., Fri., April 29, 7 p.m., $20 to $22. Fitzgerald’s: 2706 White Oak, Houston. Parquet Courts, with Video., Mon., May 2, 8 p.m., $15 to $20. House of Blues: 1204 Caroline, Houston. Blue October, Thu., April 28, 6:30 p.m., $37.50-$67.50. Butch Trucks, Wed., May 4, 7 p.m., $25. Last Concert Cafe: 1403 Nance, Houston. The Hightailers, Thursdays, 8 p.m., Free to $10. Brunch’N, Sun., May 1, 1-4 p.m., $10 online $15 at the door; Brando Kingz, Sun., May 1, 8 p.m., $5. McGonigel’s Mucky Duck: 2425 Norfolk, Houston. Bobby Whitlock and Coco Carmel, Sat., April 30, 9:30 p.m., $25 to $27. The Nightingale Room: 308 Main, Houston. Canvas People, with Golden Sombrero., Fri., April 29, 7 p.m., Free. The Merry Men, with Dustin Prinz., Tue., May 3, 7 p.m., Free. Notsuoh: 314 Main, Houston. MURDERBOSS DEATHKING, with Civeta Dei, Carmecí, Mind Shrine., Fri., April 29, 8 p.m., Free. Raven Tower: 310 N., Houston. The Bronx, Thu., April 28, 7 p.m., $3 to $10.

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Revention Music Center: 52

with the California Hone

Rudyard’s: 2010 Waugh, Ho

Nathan Taylor, Philip Al April 29, 9 p.m., $8. Studio @ Warehouse Live: 8 Truck, Wed., May 4, 9 p. Super Happy Fun Land: 380 28, 8 p.m., TBA. COUNTRY 18th Street Pier Bar & Grill:

Coe, Sat., April 30, 8 p.m

Big Top Lounge: 3714 Main

Thu., April 28, 10 p.m., F 29, 10 p.m., Free. Dosey Doe: 25911 I-45 N., S 29, 8:30 p.m., $28 to $3 Dosey Doe Music Cafe: 463 F Sat., April 30, 8:30 p.m.

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Jacket, with The Barr Brothers., Thu., April 28, 8 p.m., $45. Electric Dreams, Sat., April 30, 8 p.m., $68.25-$113.25. Silversun Pickups, with Foals., Mon., May 2, 7 p.m., $35. Rudyard’s: 2010 Waugh, Houston. Boogarins, with The Human Circuit., Thu., April 28, 8 p.m., $10 to $13. Purson, with Project Armageddon, PuraPharm., Sat., April 30, 9 p.m., $10 to $13. Opie Hendrix, with Jazz Radio., Sun., May 1, 8 p.m., $10. Satellite: 6922 Harrisburg, Houston. The Villettes, with Cool Moon, Elaine Greer., Fri., April 29, 7 p.m., TBA. Kingdom of the Holy Sun, with Mantra Love, Mother Ghost., Mon., May 2, 8 p.m., TBA. Scout Bar: 18307 Egret Bay, Houston. Enter Shikari, with Hands Like Houses, The White Noise., Thu., April 28, 7 p.m., $16 to $18. Black Stone Cherry, with Cilver., Fri., April 29, 8:30 p.m., $18 to $22. Davey Suicide, with Deadstar Assembly, The Funeral Portrait., Tue., May 3, 7 p.m., $10 to $13. Stafford Centre: 10505 Cash Rd., Stafford. Graham Nash, Wed., May 4, 8 p.m., $41 to $101. Studio @ Warehouse Live: 813 St Emanuel, Houston. Jonny Craig, with Tillian, Kurt Travis, Myke Terry., Fri., April 29, 8 p.m., $17 to $20. Super Happy Fun Land: 3801 Polk, Houston. Silvery Shakes, Sun., May 1, 8 p.m., TBA. The Green Room -- Warehouse Live: 813 St. Emanuel, Houston. The Cover Letter, with Sik Mule, Second Lovers, Sherita Perez., Fri., April 29, 8 p.m., $5. Walters Downtown: 1120 Naylor, Houston. Parachute, Fri., April 29, 6:30 p.m., $21 to $25. Death Valley Girls, with Massenger, Jealous Creatures., Sat., April 30, 8 p.m., $7 to $10. L.A. Witch, with Sugar Candy Mountain, Mojave Red., Mon., May 2, 8 p.m., $7 to $10. Peach Kelli, with Giant Kitty, Rose Ette., Wed., May 4, 8 p.m., $7 to $10. Warehouse Live: 813 St. Emanuel, Houston. Memphis May Fire, with We Came As Romans, Miss May I, For Today., Wed., May 4, 7 p.m., $20 to $23. White Oak Music Hall: 2915 N. Main, Houston. CHVRCHES, with Alvvays., Fri., April 29, 7 p.m., $28 to $31.50. White Swan: 4419 Navigation, Houston. Written Hearts, with Your Greatest Obsession, Four Bedroom Republic, Imperial Affliction, In One Breath, Relive The Crisis, Suicidal Impulse., Fri., April 29, 5:15 p.m., Free. Die Young, with Reserving Dirtnaps, Mind Kill, Seventh Realm, Bitter Taste., Sat., April 30, 8 p.m., $8. In Dying Arms, with Convictions, A Wake In Providence, Phantoms., Wed., May 4, 8 p.m., TBA.

with Buick Six., Thu., Ap Kelley - The Driver Tour 7 p.m., $27.50-$45. The MATCH: 3400 Main, Hou 8-10 p.m., $35 - $40. McGonigel’s Mucky Duck: 2 Rose, Sat., April 30, 7 p. Redneck Country Club: 11110 Fri., April 29, 7 p.m., $1 April 30, 7 p.m., $40 to 7:30 p.m., TBA. Sam Houston Race Park: 75 Houston. Blackberry S p.m., $7 to $20. Stampede Houston: 11925 Ea Fri., April 29, 9:30 p.m., BLUES

McGonigel’s Mucky Duck: 242

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Shakespeare Pub: 14129 M

Orq Solo, Fridays, 6 p.m Honeymakers Blues Jam Three with Matt Johnso 9 p.m., Free.

The Big Easy Social and Ple

Houston Blues Society B month, 8 p.m., Free; Lu 9:30 p.m., Free. Tommy Alan Haynes, Sat., April 3 8 p.m., Free. The Big Eas Big & Easy Blues Jam, W

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tySoo, Fri., April 29, 7:3 April 30, 8:45 p.m., TBA Cactus Music: 2110 Portsmo April 30, 1 p.m., Free. Jos Josh Kelley, Sun., May 1, Dosey Doe: 25911 I-45 N., S 4, 8:30 p.m., $18 to $35 Dosey Doe Music Cafe: 463 F April 29, 8:30 p.m., $15. McGonigel’s Mucky Duck: 24 Tue., May 3, 7 p.m., $25 CLASSICAL

AMERICANA Continental Club: 3700 Main, Houston. Adam Bricks cd release,

with Buxton, Tapajenga., Fri., April 29, 9:30 p.m., $10. The Jon Crain Band, Sat., April 30, 6 p.m., $10; Ragged Hearts, with Nic Morales., Sat., April 30, 10 p.m., Free. Dosey Doe Music Cafe: 463 Fm 1488, Conroe. Nathan McEuen, Thu., April 28, 8:30 p.m., $10. McGonigel’s Mucky Duck: 2425 Norfolk, Houston. Bob Schneider, Thu., April 28, 7 & 9:30 p.m., $28 to $30. The Bluebonnets, Fri., April 29, 7 p.m., $20 to $22. Shake Russell, Sundays, 6 p.m., $25 to $30.

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Music

Music listings are offered as a free service to Press andVillettes, are subjectCool to space restrictions. Send listings 4-readers 29 The Moon, Cavern information by e-mail (musiclistings@houstonpress.com), Hymnal, & Elaine Greer fax (713-280-2496) or mail (2603 LaBranch, Houston, TX 77004). To change an ongoing listing, call 713-280-2486. 4-30 Art isTalk over 20 artists, Deadline noon3D! Thursday for the following week’s issue. tenListings bands, & more!! rotate regularly, as space allows. Our complete listing of shows is available online. For addresses, phone numbers and descriptions of venues, see our online listings 5-2 Kingdom of the Holy Sun, Mantra at houstonpress.com/directory/clubs. Love, Mind Shrine, & Mother Ghost

T H I S J U ST I N

5-3 Cut Up (San Francisco), The Ancient Gods, , & 54 Reasons

Dan Electro’s Guitar Bar: 1031 E. 24th, Houston. Black Water

Alabama Shakes: With Corinne Bailey Rae., Sat., Sept. 24, 8 5-5 p.m., U.S.TBA. BASTARDS (Members of GWAR) Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, 2005 Lake Human Ottoman, OMOTAI Robbins, The Woodlands. Bun B at Thursday Concerts presented by UHD: Thu., May 19, 7 Free. Discovery GreenBlood Conservancy, 1500 McKin5-6 p.m., Scattered Guts (Az), Royale ney, Houston. (Atx), Fuck The Fire, The Scourge CJ Ramone: With Broken Gold, Thrill., Sat., May 21, 8 p.m., Visit HOUstOnPREss.COM & Hell's Engine $15. Continental Club, 3700 Main, Houston. FOR ADDitiOnAl MUsiC Deerhoof: With Cowtown, Tele Novella., Sun., Aug. 14, 8 p.m., 5-7 Fea of Girl in 1120 a Coma), $12 to(members $15. Walters Downtown, Naylor, Houston. COVERAgE Kristeen Young, Frank Drake: With Future.,Action Sept. 3-4, 7 p.m., TBA. Toyota Center, 1510 Polk, Houston. Revention Music Center: 520 Texas, Houston. My Morning 6412 MainThu., Street Jacket, with TheNorth Barr Brothers., April 28, 8 p.m., $45. Fantasia & Anthony Sun., June 12, 7:30 p.m., 5-12 A Giant Dog,Hamilton: Frog Hair Electric Dreams, Sat., April 8 p.m., $68.25-$113.25. $49.50-$85. NRG Park - Main Street Yellow Lot, One Houston, TX 30, 77006 Silversun Pickups, with Foals., Mon., May 2, 7 p.m., $35. NRG Park, Houston. Coming Soon: Richie Ramone, Fathers And Sons: With Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Colin Gilmore, Rudyard’s: 2010 Waugh, Houston. Boogarins, with The Human The Murder Junkies, Hoods, Noi!se, Butch Hancock, Rory Hancock., Sat., June 18, 7 & 9:30 Circuit., Thu., April 28, 8 p.m., $10 to $13. Purson, with Project HEIGHTSHEAD@GMAIL.COM The Greyhounds, & Ringo Deathstar p.m., $30 to $33. McGonigel’s Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk, Armageddon, PuraPharm., Sat., April 30, 9 p.m., $10 to $13. www.heightsheadsmokeshop.com Houston. Opie Hendrix, with Jazz Radio., Sun., May 1, 8 p.m., $10. Giant Kitty: With Sailor Poon, Ancient Gods., Sat., Aug. 27, 8 Satellite: 6922 Harrisburg, Houston. The Villettes, with Cool Moon, Visit www.satellitehtx.com p.m., TBA. Satellite, 6922 Harrisburg, Houston. Elaine Greer., Fri., April 29, 7 p.m., TBA. Kingdom of the Holy for more information Sun, with Mantra Love, Mother Ghost., Mon., May 2, 8 p.m., TBA. John Evans: Sat., May 14, 7:30 p.m., $15. Raven Tower, 310 to book your band! N.,& Houston. Scout Bar: 18307 Egret Bay, Houston. Enter Shikari, with Hands Kansas: Fri., Oct. 14, 8 p.m., $46-$126. University of Houston, Like Houses, The White Noise., Thu., April 28, 7 p.m., $16 4800 Calhoun Rd., Houston. to $18. Black Stone Cherry, with Cilver., Fri., April 29, 8:30 Meat Beat Manifesto: With Clock DVA, Underground Netwerk p.m., $18 to $22. Davey Suicide, with Deadstar Assembly, Intelligence., Sat., Oct. 1, 8 p.m., TBA. Numbers, 300 The Funeral Portrait., Tue., May 3, 7 p.m., $10 to $13. Stafford Centre: 10505 Cash Rd., Stafford. Graham Nash, Wed., Westheimer, Houston. May 4, 8 p.m., $41 to $101. MNYNMS: With FM Attack, Nite, Hydra Melody., Thu., April 28, 7 p.m., $8. The Nightingale Room, 308 Main, Houston. Studio @ Warehouse Live: 813 St Emanuel, Houston. Jonny Craig, with Tillian, Kurt Travis, Myke Terry., Fri., April 29, Moths: With B L A C K I E, Gillian Carter, Mouthing, Ruiners., 8 p.m., $17 to $20. Sun., May 29, 8 p.m., $5 to $10. Walters Downtown, 1120 Super Happy Fun Land: 3801 Polk, Houston. Silvery Shakes, Naylor, Houston. night Sun.,steaK May 1, 8 p.m., TBA. Muhammadali: With 404 Not Found., Thu., May 12, 8 p.m., TBA. Super Happy Fun Land, 3801 Polk, Houston. The Green Room -- Warehouse Live: 813 St. Emanuel, Houston. New Edition: Thu., June 30, 8 p.m., $99.50. Arena Theatre, The Cover Letter, with Sik Mule, Second Lovers, Sherita 7326 Southwest Freeway, Houston. Perez., Fri., April 29, 8 p.m., $5. Razormaid: Sat., Aug. 6, 8 p.m., $10 to $12. Numbers, 300 Walters Downtown: 1120 Naylor, Houston. Parachute, Fri., KaraoKe Westheimer, Houston. April 29, 6:30 p.m., $21 to $25. Death Valley Girls, with Really Dabbin’: With 2Stoned, LilSicc., Thu., April 28, 9 p.m., Massenger, Jealous Creatures., Sat., April 30, 8 p.m., $7 to $10 to $15. Club Riddims, 8220 W. Bellfort, Houston. $10. L.A. Witch, with Sugar Candy Mountain, Mojave Red., voted #12 by thechive.com Robby Krieger of The Doors: Fri., June 10, 8 p.m., $30 to $35. Mon., May 2, 8 p.m., $7 to $10. Peach Kelli, with Giant Kitty, Scout Bar, 18307 Egret Bay, Houston. Rose Ette., Wed., May 4, 8 p.m., $7 to $10. PLaYoffs! Texas Taco Musicwest Fest: Sat., April 30, 12-9 p.m. 2600 Navigation, Warehouse Live: 813 St. Emanuel, Houston. Memphis May Fire, 614 gray NOW SERVING PIZZA & TAMALES 2600 Navigation Blvd, Houston. We • Came As Romans, Miss FACEBOOK May I, For Today., Wed., FREE with WIFI VISIT US ON 713-520-1748 May 4, 7 p.m., $20 to $23. Wheeler Walker Jr.: Sat., June 18, 7 p.m., $15. House of Blues, White Oak Music Hall: 2915 N. Main, Houston. CHVRCHES, with 1204 Caroline, Houston. Alvvays., Fri., April 29, 7 p.m., $28 to $31.50. White Swan: 4419 Navigation, Houston. Written Hearts, with Your Greatest Obsession, Four Bedroom Republic, Imperial Affliction, In One Breath, Relive The Crisis, Suicidal Impulse., Fri., April 29, 5:15 p.m., Free. Die Young, with Reserving ROCK Dirtnaps, Mind Kill, Seventh Realm, Bitter Taste., Sat., Acadia Bar & Grill: 3939 Cypress Creek, Houston. Last JudgeApril 30, 8 p.m., $8. In Dying Arms, with Convictions, A ment, with Remnants of IzanagI, Sift Through the Ashes, Wake In Providence, Phantoms., Wed., May 4, 8 p.m., TBA. ETSAI, Last Judgement, Depths of Bermuda., Thu., April 28, 8 p.m., $5 to $8. The Glass, with Carranzam, BombaChica, AMERICANA Viola Wilde., Fri., April 29, 8 p.m., $8 to $12. Underage, Continental Club: 3700 Main, Houston. Adam Bricks cd release, with Klodine., Sat., April 30, 7 p.m., TBA. with Buxton, Tapajenga., Fri., April 29, 9:30 p.m., $10. The BFE Rock Club: 11528 Jones, Houston. The Devil In California, Jon Crain Band, Sat., April 30, 6 p.m., $10; Ragged Hearts, with Tame Fury., Fri., April 29, 7 & 8 p.m., $10. Crank Case, with Nic Morales., Sat., April 30, 10 p.m., Free. with Key Flight Captains, Saints of Ashcroft, Chaotic Dosey Doe Music Cafe: 463 Fm 1488, Conroe. Nathan McEuen, Justice., Sat., April 30, 8 p.m., TBA. Thu., April 28, 8:30 p.m., $10. Big Top Lounge: 3714 Main, Houston. Buenos Diaz, Sat., April McGonigel’s Mucky Duck: 2425 Norfolk, Houston. Bob Schnei30, 10 p.m., Free. der, Thu., April 28, 7 & 9:30 p.m., $28 to $30. The BlueContinental Club: 3700 Main, Houston. Tino and Jose The Rock bonnets, Fri., April 29, 7 p.m., $20 to $22. Shake Russell, N’ Roll Mariachis, Thu., April 28, 10 p.m., Free. The Allen Sundays, 6 p.m., $25 to $30. Oldies Band, Fri., April 29, 7 p.m., Free.

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C LU B S L I ST I N G S

Re:HAB Bar on the Bayou: 1658 Enid, Houston. Fahl & Folk, Fri.,

April 29, 9 p.m., Free. Revention Music Center: 520 Texas, Houston. Bonnie Raitt, with the California Honeydrops., Fri., April 29, 8 p.m., TBA. Rudyard’s: 2010 Waugh, Houston. Cody Jasper, with Robert Nathan Taylor, Philip Allan Zimmerle, Mike Wither., Fri., April 29, 9 p.m., $8. Studio @ Warehouse Live: 813 St Emanuel, Houston. Monster Truck, Wed., May 4, 9 p.m., $12. Super Happy Fun Land: 3801 Polk, Houston. Aep, Thu., April 28, 8 p.m., TBA. COUNTRY 18th Street Pier Bar & Grill: 101 18th, Dickinson. David Allen

Coe, Sat., April 30, 8 p.m., $27.

Big Top Lounge: 3714 Main, Houston. The Broken Spokes,

Thu., April 28, 10 p.m., Free. The Pettit Brothers, Fri., April 29, 10 p.m., Free. Dosey Doe: 25911 I-45 N., Spring. John Fullbright, Fri., April 29, 8:30 p.m., $28 to $34. Dosey Doe Music Cafe: 463 Fm 1488, Conroe. Cameran Nelson, Sat., April 30, 8:30 p.m., $15. Floyd’s Cajun Seafood - Sugarland: 16549 Southwest Freeway, Sugarland. Robert Hartye, Fri., April 29, 7 p.m., Free. House of Blues: 1204 Caroline, Houston. Lucinda Williams, with Buick Six., Thu., April 28, 7 p.m., $30-$60. Charles Kelley - The Driver Tour, with Maren Morris., Sun., May 1, 7 p.m., $27.50-$45. The MATCH: 3400 Main, Houston. Jimmy Webb, Fri., April 29, 8-10 p.m., $35 - $40. McGonigel’s Mucky Duck: 2425 Norfolk, Houston. Whitney Rose, Sat., April 30, 7 p.m., $20 to $22. Redneck Country Club: 11110 W Airport, Stafford. Gary P Nunn, Fri., April 29, 7 p.m., $15 to $25. Bellamy Brothers, Sat., April 30, 7 p.m., $40 to $50. Bo Brumble, Wed., May 4, 7:30 p.m., TBA. Sam Houston Race Park: 7575 N. Sam Houston Parkway W., Houston. Blackberry Smoke, Sat., April 30, 4:30 & 8 p.m., $7 to $20. Stampede Houston: 11925 Eastex Freeway, Houston. Lee Brice, Fri., April 29, 9:30 p.m., $25 to $75. BLUES McGonigel’s Mucky Duck: 2425 Norfolk, Houston. Texas Johnny

Boy, Fri., April 29, 9:30 p.m., $15 to $17.

Shakespeare Pub: 14129 Memorial, Houston. The Mighty

Orq Solo, Fridays, 6 p.m., Free. Sparetime Murray & the Honeymakers Blues Jam, Sundays, 9 p.m., Free. The Eazy Three with Matt Johnson and James Wilhite, Mondays, 9 p.m., Free. The Big Easy Social and Pleasure Club: 5731 Kirby, Houston. Houston Blues Society Blues Jam, Last Thursday of every month, 8 p.m., Free; Luther and the Healers, Thursdays, 9:30 p.m., Free. Tommy Dardar, Fri., April 29, 8 p.m., $5. Alan Haynes, Sat., April 30, 8 p.m., $5. John Egan, Mondays, 8 p.m., Free. The Big Easy Quartet, Tuesdays, 8 p.m., Free. Big & Easy Blues Jam, Wednesdays, 9 p.m., Free. SINGER- SONGWRITER Anderson Fair Retail Restaurant: 2007 Grant, Houston. Bet-

tySoo, Fri., April 29, 7:30 p.m., $15. Cozy Sheridan, Sat., April 30, 8:45 p.m., TBA. Cactus Music: 2110 Portsmouth, Houston. Adam Bricks, Sat., April 30, 1 p.m., Free. Josh Kelley, Sun., May 1, 3 p.m., Free; Josh Kelley, Sun., May 1, 3 p.m., Free. Dosey Doe: 25911 I-45 N., Spring. Wade Bowen, Wed., May 4, 8:30 p.m., $18 to $35. Dosey Doe Music Cafe: 463 Fm 1488, Conroe. Scott Miller, Fri., April 29, 8:30 p.m., $15. McGonigel’s Mucky Duck: 2425 Norfolk, Houston. BJ Barham, Tue., May 3, 7 p.m., $25 to $27. CLASSICAL Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion: 2005 Lake Robbins, The

Woodlands. A Classical Mystery Tour, Fri., April 29, 8 p.m., Free to $20. Morris Cultural Arts Center - Houston Baptist University: 7502 Fondren Rd, Houston. Houston Civic Symphony Concert, Fri., April 29, 8 p.m., Free. DJ Arlo’s Ballroom: 2119 Leeland, Houston. Obi&Orosco, Thu.,

April 28, 9 p.m., Free.

Boondocks: 1417 Westheimer, Houston. Kinda Super Disco

presents Marc Romboy, Fri., April 29, 9 p.m., TBA.

Etro Lounge: 1424 Westheimer, Houston. The Cure Tribute, with

Marc Nicholson aka E-nertia., Fri., April 29, 8 p.m., Free.

The Flat: 1701 Commonwealth, Houston. The Kitchen Thurs-

days, with Noey Lopez, Patrick Drew, Brotha Jibril., Thursdays, 9 p.m., Free. Flight 1701, With DJ Sun & Friends., Fridays, 10 p.m., Free. BLACK ? MAGIC presents Kai Alce, with Kai ALce, Henry Chow, Noey Lopez., Sat., April 30, 10 p.m., Free. The Butterfly Effect, with Angelo, Eriko, Tomahawk Bang., Sundays, 4-8 p.m., Free. House of Blues: 1204 Caroline, Houston. Beer N Beats, Tuesdays, 10 p.m., Free. KAPERS Houston: 13655 Bissonnet St., Houston. International Thursdays, Thursdays, 3 p.m.-2 a.m., Free. MKT BAR: 1001 Austin, Houston. DJ DelSur, Thu., April 28, 5 p.m., Free. Soul Sessions with DJ Tempty, Saturdays, 8 p.m., Free. Vinyl Night with Kristy Loye, with Kristy Loye., Wed., May 4, 7 p.m., Free. The Nightingale Room: 308 Main, Houston. MNYNMS, with FM Attack, Nite, Hydra Melody., Thu., April 28, 7 p.m., $8. Notsuoh: 314 Main, Houston. Antidote on Main Street, with DJ Mz Rico, DJ Charlee Brown., Thu., April 28, 8 p.m., Free. Pure Houston: 505 Main, Houston. La Pista, with Spettro, Bobby Blyss., Sat., April 30, 10 p.m., TBA. Stereo Live: 6400 Richmond, Houston. Mija, Fri., April 29, 9 p.m., TBA. Sander Van Doorn, Sat., April 30, 9 p.m., TBA. E X P E R I M E N TA L Lawndale Art Center: 4912 Main St., Houston. Speakeasy, with

David Dove, Jawwaad Taylor, Charalambides, Helen Money., Fri., April 29, 7-10 p.m.; Sat., April 30, 7-10 p.m., $18-$35. Super Happy Fun Land: 3801 Polk, Houston. Other Girls, Sat., April 30, 8 p.m., TBA. F E S T I VA L 2600 Navigation: 2600 Navigation Blvd, Houston. Texas Taco

Music Fest, Sat., April 30, 12-9 p.m.

HIP-HOP Club Riddims: 8220 W. Bellfort, Houston. Yung Tide, Thu., April

28, 8 p.m., TBA; Really Dabbin’, with 2Stoned, LilSicc., Thu., April 28, 9 p.m., $10 to $15. House of Blues: 1204 Caroline, Houston. Loumuzik, Sat., April 30, 8:30 p.m., $15. The Green Room -- Warehouse Live: 813 St. Emanuel, Houston. Texas Made Texas Wave, Sun., May 1, 8 p.m., $5. L AT I N Fitzgerald’s: 2706 White Oak, Houston. Bidi Bidi Banda

(Selena Tribute), with Los Guerreros de la Musica., Sat., April 30, 8 p.m., TBA. Warehouse Live: 813 St. Emanuel, Houston. Victor Munoz and Nacho, Sat., April 30, 8 p.m., $40 to $85. M E TA L Acadia Bar & Grill: 3939 Cypress Creek, Houston. Iron Kingdom,

with Cremator, Thorium Reactor, Pyre Ship., Sun., May 1, 7 p.m., $10 to $15. Scout Bar: 18307 Egret Bay, Houston. Prong, with Green As Emerald, Force Fed, Orr, Dread Pixels., Sat., April 30, 9 p.m., $12.50 to $15. NOISE Notsuoh: 314 Main, Houston. Rubber O Cement, with Ullatec,

Aunt’s Analog, T.E.F., Joseph Gates, Future Blondes dj., Sat., April 30, 8 p.m., $8 to $10.

PUNK Satellite: 6922 Harrisburg, Houston. Cut Up, with 54 Reasons.,

Tue., May 3, 7 p.m., TBA.

Walters Downtown: 1120 Naylor, Houston. Macgrudergrind,

with Yautja, Holy Money, Gyste., Thu., April 28, 8 p.m., $10.

R&B Arena Theatre: 7326 Southwest Freeway, Houston. Jeffrey

Osborne, with After 7, Christopher Williams., Sat., April 30, 8 p.m., $55 to $75. Revention Music Center: 520 Texas, Houston. Ms. Lauryn Hill, Sun., May 1, 8:30 p.m., $50-$85.

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THE STATE OF TEXAS County of Harris

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NOTICE TO DEFENDANT: “You have been sued. You may employ an attorney. If you or your attorney do not file a written answer with the clerk who issued this citation by 10:00 am on the Monday next following the expiration of 42 days after the date this citation was issued, a default judgment may be taken against you.”

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April 28 - May 4, 2016 46

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145 Management/Professional

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The Anxiety and Health Research Laboratory/ Substance Use Treatment Clinic at the University of Houston is recruiting adult cigarette smokers ages 18-65 to participate in a treatmentbased study. ■ Receive free smoking cessation AND nicotine replacement therapy (patches) ■ Earn up to $120.00 in cash You might be eligible, contact our clinic at (713) 743-8056 for more information or a confidential pre-screen.

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PROJECT COST CONTROLLER needed in Houston, TX to utilize principles of industrial engineering and work with engineers and project management to evaluate cost, margins and deviations of various projects. Applicants must have the minimum of a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering or a related field plus at least two years of experience preparing and maintaining engineering project cost reports, analysis of data, and cost forecasting for gas processing and gas storage engineering projects. Will accept an educational equivalency prepared by a qualified evaluation service. Must have legal authority to work in the U.S. Send resume/references to: Leslie Reynolds, Human Resources Manager, ATTN: Recruiter for The Houston Press, Linde Engineering North America, Inc., 6100 South Yale Avenue, Suite 1200, Tulsa, OK 74136. EOE.

125 Domestic Livein female house sitter, over 18, over 5' 9", Blonde, up to $925./mth , plus car ,tuition assit.,one child ok, to work in a christian home, 713-647-0460

127 Education Elem. Bilingual Teacher: Amigos Por Vida, Friends for Life Housing & Education Corp.; Houston, TX 77081. Plan & teach curricula according to state and dist. mandates for Pre-K bil. students. Bachl's from Accrd Uni. Valid TX Edu Cert from State Board of Educator Cert Bil Edu. or enrolled in an accrd alternative certification bil. program. Spanish language req. Email CV: FDelgado@ amigosporvida.com

Spec. Edu. Bil. Teacher: Amigos Por Vida, Friends for Life Housing & Education Corp.; Houston, TX 77081. Focus, plan & teach program to edu. & phys. challenged, bil. students identified to have a disability. Bachl's from Accrd Uni. +12 mos exp as Bil Teacher. Valid TX Edu Cert from State Board of Edu. Cert Bil Generalist & Spec. Edu. Spanish req. Email: BDinkel@amigosporvida.com

SUBSTITUTE & ASSISTANTS NEEDED! For Montessori school in Museum District. Call Melissa at 713-520-0738

145 Management/Professional Construction Manager, Develop: Master Schedule & Planning: residential and comm. projects based on CPM & PERT; Material Take-off SH, Cost Es., Bidding Documents, CBA, mag. Milestones, Deliverables & resources; design OBS, WBS & PCS; Quality Mage. & cont.; risk mage. & analysis; contract admin. ; MS/Construction Mage. & 2 yrs exp.; Steel Crete, Houston, TX, cv@281-741-2068.

Graphic Designer (Houston, TX) - Unity Signs Systems Inc. dba Unity Signs - Prep illustrations with computer, det. size and layout, Review final layout, Maintain archives, prepare instructions for workers. Candidate should have H.S. Diploma or Frgn equiv. and 2 yrs exp in job offered. 40hrs/wk. Resume: Hunaid Munniwala, 1718 Fry Road, Suite 120, Houston, TX 77084.

Reliability Engineer – Houston, TX. Evaluate Mechanical and Electromechanical wind and solar systems by designing and conducting research programs and provide continuous first response engineering support; root cause analysis and implement critical and continuous improvements for wind turbine components. Write test plans and coordinate through execution by anticipating potential problems and implementing required controls. 60 months experience; 36 months experience as a reliability or design engineer in wind or power generation; B.S. degree in Mechanical or Mechatronics Eng. (20% in U.S. – 3% International travel req’d). Send resume to: Nicola Quilligan, Human Resources Manager, Pattern Energy Group, Inc., Pier 1, Bay 3, San Francisco, CA 94111. Senior Specialist (SIS FEL) Houston, TX. Provide process safety consulting & safety sys engg. support for multiple industries. Req. Master's (or for. equiv. degree) in electrical/mechanical/chemical/safety engg. and 3 yrs process safety engg. exper. & rltd skills. Will also accept a Bach degree in stated fields and 5 yrs stated exper. & rltd skills. Travel: 10-20%. Send resume to: C. O'Malley, aeSolutions, 250 Commonwealth Drive, Suite 200, Greenville, SC 29615. SPEECH LANGUAGE PATHOLOGIST ASSISTANT min. B.A. in Communication Sciences and Disorders and (1) yr. Exp. in Assisting and administering hearing/speech & language evaluations, tests, or exams to congenitally handicapped pediatric patients, collect info on type and degree of impairments, using written and oral tests and special instruments. Bilingual Spanish-English a must in order to handle our predominantly Spanish speaking Pediatric Medicaid patients. Texas license required. Foreign degree equivalency acceptable. Please E-mail resumes to: elda@ winterpediatrictherapy.com. Equal Opportunity Employer SYSTEMS ANALYST LEAD Weatherford in Houston TX seeks Systems Analyst Lead to translate tax processes & procedures into applic. SharePoint workflow functionality. Requires BS in CS, MIS, Engnrg or Bus. + 9 yrs. exp. in-job or as Solutions Architect/Programmer/Systems Analyst using State Machine Workflows, Business Intelligence toolsets to develop software systems & procedures utilizing SharePoint 2007/2010/2013, SharePoint Designer 2007/2010/2013, InfoPath 2007/2010/2013, K2, Nintex, .Net framework, SQL Server & various related third party tools & technologies w/5yrs (w/in 9) translating tax processes & procedures into applicable SharePoint functionality. Please apply on-line at www.weatherford.com under Careers and reference Job ID #56462.

167 Restaurants/Hotels/Clubs SERVERS

The isMelting Pot looking for Experienced Servers

Flexible schedules in a fun and unique environment. Accepting applications every day after 12PMNoon. 6100 Westheimer Rd. (Briargrove Plaza)

PANERA BREAD NOW HIRING DELIVERY DRIVERS Email resume to PaneraDrivers@gmail.com, or apply online at www.panerapeople.com/jobs

4/26/16 6:28 PM

527 Legal Notices

CHEF AND SOUS CHEF WANTED - We have an openings for a talented chef and sous chef full-time for local nightclub. Call Mitch or Brian at 713-629-6200 weekdays. The pay rate for these two positions is $10.00 to $18.00 per hour.

"QUITE TITLE" i lashonda-necole: slaughter age of majority, the only lawful entitlement holder, of the intellectual private property, evidenced by the Authenticated security issued by the Department of State, issued pursuant to CHXIV, state of Sept.15, 1789. 1 stat.-68-69:22 USC 2657;22 USC 2651a; 5 USC 301;28 USC 1733 et. seq; 8 USC 1433(F): RULE 44 FEDERAL RULES OF CIVIL PROCEDURE. i claim All rights to all property mistaken from me, lashonda-necole: slaughter; waiverfrom the beginning with God, as my witness, i lashonda, a true woman of God, acknowledge all blessings given by God; repent all transgressions against God; and waive all claims without God. i gave intellectual substance to i uradanielle: bailey jr age of majority, the only lawful entitlement holder, of the intellectual private property, evidenced by the Authenticated security issued by the Department of State, issued pursuant to CHXIV, state of Sept.15,1789.1stat.-68-69:22 USC 2657;22 USC 2651a; 5 USC 301;28 USC 1733 et. seq; 8 USC 1433(F): RULE 44 FEDERAL RULES OF CIVIL PROCEDURE. i claim All rights to all property mistaken from me, ura-danielle: bailey jr ; waiverfrom the beginning with God, as my witness, i ura, a true man of God, acknowledge all blessings given by God; repent all transgressions against God; and waive all claims without God.

LEGAL NOTICE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY Proposed Flood Hazard Determinations for the City of Houston, Harris County, Texas, Case No. 16-06-1652P. The Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) solicits technical information or comments on proposed flood hazard determinations for the Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM), and where applicable, the Flood Insurance Study (FIS) report for your community. These flood hazard determinations may include the addition or modification of Base Flood Elevations, base flood depths, Special Flood Hazard Area boundaries or zone designations, or the regulatory floodway. The FIRM and, if applicable, the FIS report have been revised to reflect these flood hazard determinations through issuance of a Letter of Map Revision (LOMR), in accordance with Title 44, Part 65 of the Code of Federal Regulations. These determinations are the basis for the floodplain management measures that your community is required to adopt or show evidence of having in effect to qualify or remain qualified for participation in the National Flood Insurance Program. For more information on the proposed flood hazard determinations and information on the statutory 90-day period provided for appeals, please visit FEMA's website at www.fema.gov/plan/prevent/fhm/bfe, or call the FEMA Map Information eXchange (FMIX) toll free at 1-877-FEMA MAP (1-877-336-2627).

COUNTER SALES / CASHIER Need a friendly, outgoing person for a bakery/deli. Full Time. Day Shift. Apply in person.

Stone Mill Bakers 2518 Kirby Dr. at Westheimer

170 Retail

NOW HIRING

Montrose Novelty & Smoke Shop Looking for someone to work nights & weekends. Email resume to montroseretail@yahoo.com. Must provide references, only emailed resumes will be accepted.

177 Salons

Exp'd Barbers Wanted $30/hr or MORE! Upscale shop seeks EXP'D Barbers. Vacation, bonuses & 401(k) after 1 yr. Excellent customer service skills, strong work ethic. Bellaire, Katy, Pearland. E-mail resume to john.santanella@ regisfranchise.com

185 Miscellaneous

QUITE TITLE i christopher-jerrod: zenon age of majority, the only lawful entitlement holder, of the intellectual private property, evidenced by the Authenticated security issued by the Department of State, issued pursuant to CHXIV, state of Sept.15, 1789. 1 stat.-68-69:22 USC 2657;22 USC 2651a; 5 USC 301;28 USC 1733 et. seq; 8 USC 1433(F): rule 44 FEDERAL RULES OF CIVIL PROCEDURE. i claim All rights to all property mistaken from me, christopher-jerrod: zenon; waiverfrom the beginning with God, as my witness, i christopher, a true man of God, acknowledge all blessings given by God; repent all transgressions against God; and waive all claims without God.

DATE OF SALE: Saturday, May 7, 2016 At 11:00 AM BEST STORAGE 1810 N. FRY RD. CONTENTS: FURNITURE, APPLIANCES; ELECTRONICS; LUGGAGE; LAMPS; HOUSEHOLD GOODS; TOOLS; SPORTING GOODS; TOYS; & MANY MORE MISC. ITEMS ENRIQUE JUAREZ, TERENCE JONES, MARIA GARCIA,GWENDOLYN NASH, KATY CLEMONS, GABRIELA GUZMAN, JAMES KING, SHARON HARRISON, TRAVIS COLLINS, SHERRY ANNETTE FINCHE, KARIM ABUARAFA, SHARON HARRISON, DANIEL MIRANDA.

Research Volunteers Wanted

There is no cost to you. If eligible, you will be compensated for your time.

Call TODAY: 713-794-4763

Sig 1 43-52.indd 47

Having trouble going to the bathroom? Don’t be embarrassed - explore your options Researchers are evaluating an investigational medication among people with irritable bowel syndrome with constipation. You may qualify for a research study if you experience any of the following: • Infrequent bowel movements • Abdominal pain or discomfort • Hard or lumpy stools All study-related care will be provided at no cost. Insurance is not needed. To learn more call: 832-967-7568 Southwest Clinical Trials 5900 Chimney Rock Suite X Houston, TX 77081 southwestclinicaltrials.com

Have you been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes for at least 90 days? Are you 18 years of age or older? Are you currently treated with Metformin alone or Metformin and sulfonylureas? If you answer is yes to these questions, then you may qualify for a Diabetes Clinical Trial PIONEER 3. To learn more, please contact Dr. Zeeshan Shaikh 832-967-7568

April 28 - May 4, 2016

•Are you at least 18 years old? •Are you a smoker who does not want to quit? •Do you want to participate in research?

Irritable Bowel Syndrome with Constipation

Houston Press

WAREHOUSE HELP/DELIVERY DRIVER needed for Liquor Distributor in West University area Call 713-520-9777 Fax 713-520-1024

NOTICE OF PUBLIC SALE Pursuant to Chapter 59 of the Texas property code the goods stored at the listed facility bellow will be sold to satisfy a landlord's lien. Sale will be held on the designated time and address. Goods will be sold to the highest bidder. Seller reserves the right to refuse any bid and to withdraw any item(s) from the sale.

527 Legal Notices

527 Legal Notices

houstonpress.com

167 Restaurants/Hotels/Clubs

4/26/16 6:28 PM

FREE MONEY!!

Houston Press

houstonpress.com

WE PAY THE MOST FOR USED LP's, DVD's & CD's! SOUNDWAVES, 3509 Montrose. 713.520.9283

Custom Interior Services Auto/Boat/Commercial Upholstery Superior Interior 832-770-9075

Are you a cigarette smoker? You may be eligible for a research study. Please see our medical research ad in the classified section.

ARE YOU READY TO QUIT SMOKING?

See our ad in Medical Research Section The Anxiety and Health Research Laboratory/Substance Use Treatment Clinic at the University of Houston 713-743-8056

HAIL to the RAIL---MED CTR /MIDTOWN -NEW 1-1 $1470 6 wks FREE 2-2 $2448 8 wks FREE stainless,H/W,granite,Amazing fitness & pool --call Agt 24/7 832-881-4594 EARN YOUR HS DIPLOMA TODAY - For more info call 1.800.470.4723 Or visit our website: www.diplomaathome.com

HEIGHTS

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306 North St. 77009. Remodeled unit, fresh paint, central a/c. 1 bdrm $900 - gas & water paid. Must see location. Downtown view. Please call 832.640.7739 or 832.646.0222.

WANTS TO purchase minerals and other oil & gas interests. Send details to P.O. Box 13557, Denver, Co 80201

EARN YOUR HS DIPLOMA TODAY - For more info call 1.800.470.4723 Or visit our website: www.diplomaathome.com

Using our special Body Glory Sculpting cream to help diminish fat & toxins for a firmer you. Call Healing Haven Massage at 832.296.6513 & schedule your sessions today.

Need To Sell Your House? I am Buying!

Any Situation - Any Condition. Call today! 832-640-1011

Visit us at: Headachehomebuyers.net

UNPLANNED PREGNANCY? QUESTIONS ABOUT ADOPTION? Call now for support/ learn more about your adoption options. Expenses paid. Call Adoption United 24/7 1-888-617-1470(void where prohibited)

MASSAGE - Package Price, $28/hr!!

New Lipo Massage -

Using our special Body Glory Sculpting cream to help diminish fat & toxins for a firmer you. Call Healing Haven Massage at 832.296.6513 & schedule your sessions today.

The Justice Law Firm

WANTS TO purchase minerals and other oil & gas interests. Send details to P.O. Box 13557, Denver, Co 80201

Harris County Felony cases fees starting at $1750 Misdemeanors starting at $850 Federal Health Care Fraud / Welfare Fraud Auto Accident Cases Personal Injury

Student Spa Treatments Now Available!! Courtesy of Phoenix School of Massage Students. SW & NW locations. Call Today, 713-974-5976.

THE OCEAN Corp. 10840 Rockley Road, Houston, Texas 77099. Train for a new career. Underwater Welder. Commercial Diver. *NDT/Weld Inspector. Job Placement Assistance. Financial Aid avail for those who qualify 1.800.321.0298 HEIGHTS-- brand NEW interiors, 1-1 $1075, 1 + DEN $1188, stainless, granite,H/W tile ,gates call Agt 24/7 ask for SPECIALS 832-881-4594

Need To Sell Your House? I am Buying!

Any Situation - Any Condition. Call today! 832-640-1011

Visit us at: Headachehomebuyers.net

5450 Northwest Central Dr., Ste. 240, Houston, TX 77092

Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Get Hammered... Get Justice! Get the Justice Law Firm! 24 hr hot line - 832.436.7578

UNPLANNED PREGNANCY? QUESTIONS ABOUT ADOPTION? Call now for support/ learn more about your adoption options. Expenses paid. Call Adoption United 24/7 1-888-617-1470(void where prohibited)

ARE YOU A CIGARETTE SMOKER?

April 28 - May 4, 2016

You may be eligible for a research study

Sig 1 43-52.indd 48

at Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center involving e-cigarettes and virtual reality cues. *Participants must be willing to visit the clinic 4 times.*

For more information call 877-228-5777 or email sarp@bcm.edu

4/26/16 6:28 PM