INDY Week 1.13.16

raleigh•cary 1|13|16

EDIFICE COMPLEX Does downtown Raleigh really need a new stadium (and a mountain of debt)?

by Paul Blest, p. 8

INDYweek.com

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• Come to a free public information session: Saturday, January 23 from 10-11:30am at the Chapel Hill Public Library (1oo Library Drive, Chapel Hill).

N O R T H

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JANUARY 13, 2016

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Justice or Just Us: Who is Working to Create a More Perfect Union?

Sounds of Justice and Inclusion: MLK Concert Saturday, January 16, 2016 8:00 PM • Page Auditorium $20 (Tickets.Duke.Edu)

Shaun R. Harper,

Founder and Executive Director Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education University of Pennsylvania and President-elect, Association for the Study of Higher Education

MLK Keynote Address January 17, 3:00 pm Duke University • Page Auditorium Free and open to the public Free Parking is available in the Bryan Center Parking Garage

For more information please call (919) 684-8353 or visit mlk.duke.edu

*Students and seniors FREE

Performances by:

John Brown’s “Little Big Band” Durham Symphony Orchestra Special Guest: Rene Marie (Jazz artist and writer) 6

Sponsored by MLK Commemoration Planning Committee Office for Institutional Equity • Duke Chapel Division of Student Affairs • Durham and Regional Affairs Patient Revenue Management Organization The Graduate School • Sanford School of Public Policy FHI John Hope Franklin Afro-Diasporic Humanities Legacies For Information Contact: 919-684-8222

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RALEIGH

INSIDE NEWS & COLUMNS 6

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TRIANGULATOR: The mythical moderate unicorn, the return of DrunkTown, the living-wage bandwagon and more

CITIZEN: When work is done by robots,

what will become of workers?

A R T S , C U LT U R E , F O O D & M U S I C 16

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THEATER REVIEW: The soap opera-

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CALENDARS & EVENTS

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WHERE WE’LL BE: The best arts and

Triangle jazz revival

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ARTS CALENDAR

MUSIC: Ideas for revitalizing the careers

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FILM CALENDAR

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Edifice complex

Southland mission

Technical fouls

By Grayson Haver Currin

MUSIC: After Caltrop, Murat Dirlik is

moving on in Costa Rica

JANUARY 13, 2016

Oh, Raleigh, why can’t you keep the beer-burger-and-ball bars going?

of Scott Stapp and Aaron Lewis 20

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Tupelo Honey and P.G. Werth’s tout the South in Raleigh. Do they do it justice? By Angela Perez

culture events of the week MUSIC CALENDAR

INDYweek.com

Does downtown Raleigh really need a new stadium (and a mountain of debt)? By Paul Blest

DANCE: The intense and ugly beauty of

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MUSIC: Al Strong is at the epicenter of a

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F E AT U R E S

Compagnie Marie Chouinard

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CARY

VOLUME 33 NUMBER 2

style family drama of Common Wealth Endeavors’ Small and Tired

NEWS: Democrats think they know who

surreptitiously killed light rail last year 10

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Reel Southern shorts Local filmmakers get their moment in the spotlight on a new series airing on PBS By Hannah Pitstick

The INDY’s Act Now and Food/Farmers Markets calendars can be found at indyweek.com.

ABOVE: PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER ON THE COVER: ILLUSTRATION BY SKILLET GILMORE

The INDY’S GUIDE to ALL THINGS TRIANGLE

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#fresh #local #organic #21yearsinthemaking

INDY Week

Citizen Awards 2016 Call for Nominations

Deadline for nominations: Feb. 10 A committee of INDY writers and editors will select the winners, who will be saluted in the Feb. 24 issue.

Historic Five Points 1813 Glenwood Ave. 919-833-0226

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Raleigh Cary Durham Chapel Hill A ZM INDY, INC. COMPANY PUBLISHER Susan Harper

EDITORIAL

EDITOR IN CHIEF Jeffrey C. Billman MANAGING+MUSIC EDITOR

Grayson Haver Currin

ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR Brian Howe STAFF WRITERS

Danny Hooley, David Hudnall, Jane Porter ASSOCIATE EDITOR Allison Hussey COPY EDITOR David Klein STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS

Alex Boerner, Jeremy M. Lange OPINION Bob Geary THEATER AND DANCE COLUMNIST Byron Woods VISUAL ART COLUMNIST Chris Vitiello CHIEF CONTRIBUTORS

Spencer Griffith, Corbie Hill, David Klein, Jordan Lawrence, Craig D. Lindsey, Jill Warren Lucas, Glenn McDonald, Neil Morris, Sylvia Pfeiffenberger, Bryan C. Reed, V. Cullum Rogers, David A. Ross, Dan Schram, Zack Smith, Eric Tullis PRODUCTION MANAGER Skillet Gilmore ART DIRECTOR Maxine Mills GRAPHIC DESIGNER Christopher Williams

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OPERATIONS

BUSINESS MANAGER Alex Rogers WEB CONTENT MANAGER Reed Benjamin OFFICE MANAGER William Kumpf

PAID VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITY FOR SMOKERS AND NONSMOKERS!

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CIRCULATION

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Brenna Berry-Stewart DISTRIBUTION: Joseph Lizana, Anne Roux,

Richard David Lee, James Maness, Laura Bass, Jeff Prince, JC Lacroix, Gloria McNair, David Cameron, Chris Taylor, Timm Shaw, Freddie Simons

ADVERTISING

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Ruth Gierisch SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Dara Shain ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

Kellie Allen, Ele Roberts, Sarah Schmader CLASSIFIEDS SALES MANAGER Leslie Land P.O. Box 1772 • Durham, N.C. 27702 201 W. Main St., Suite 101 • Durham, N.C. 27701 919-286-1972 709 W. Jones St. • Raleigh, N.C. 27605 • 919-832-8774 Email addresses: first initial[no space]last name@indyweek.com

WWW.INDYWEEK.COM DISPLAY ADVERTISING SALES RALEIGH 919-832-8774 DURHAM 919-286-1972 CLASSIFIEDS ADVERTISING 919-286-6642 CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 2015 INDY WEEK

Send your nominations by email to: jbillman@indyweek.com (Please include CITIZEN AWARDS in the subject line) No phone calls, please.

All rights reserved. Material may not be reproduced without permission.

INDYweek.com

back talk No accountability

Thanks @indyweek for article on body cameras (“No watching the watchers,” Jan. 6). IMO if the public can’t access the footage, it has little chance of increasing accountability.

Durham City Council member Jillian Johnson, via Twitter

No trust

Body cameras are a necessity. Trust has been broken, and good cops should want to have their recorded professional behavior backing up their testimony. Police are public servants who are supposed to be acting in the public interest. There is no excuse for secrecy or privacy while on the job; privacy is for private citizens, not public servants on the clock (except in the bathroom).

Deleted or missing audio or video should generally be considered evidence of premeditation. There has been overwhelming video evidence in recent years that a small minority of cops lie, falsify and cover up. Others cover for them, including administrators.

Body cameras are a must. Public access (within reason) is a must. Only the details need to be ironed out. Body cameras are in the public interest, and all decent cops

PERIPHERAL VISIONS • V.C. ROGERS

should support them.

Max Rocket, via indyweek.com

Wake up

McCrory and his administration are handing the state over to any number of special interests—Duke being prevalent— for their own amusement, and that precludes them from ever handing over any documents to the public (“Delay game,” Jan. 6). And what they are doing is the only thing they can: delay. The damage done to the progress made over the last two decades is holocaust level.

Maybe the head-in-the-sand supporters on the right will get a glimpse of the lies, distortions and financial burden laid on the middle and lower classes for the benefit of the rich, and that will wake them up.

Remo, via indyweek.com

Stupid liberals

Wow, delusional much (Citizen, “White people problem,” Jan. 6)? Grow up. Oh, the mere fact that Wyoming has as much representation as California is exactly why the founders set it up that way, so states with crazy populations can’t easily railroad smaller states and states could design their own governments. If people don’t like laws

in one state, they can move. Protection in the Senate works both ways but generally protects the minority. The fact that you can’t grasp this perplexes almost as much as it terrifies me.

[The gerrymandering argument] is bull, period. My district is proof of that, as it switched three times in six years. Just grow up; seven years, four of which Democrats had almost majority control, and this is what we have. This is your progressive economy, and it stinks. Liberals are like children, full of grand ideas that are unrealistic and oppressive to those who disagree.

Scott D., via indyweek.com

Stupid white people

Shorter Bob Geary: Poor white people are stupid and should realize that slavery and racism are their fault even if they’re not racist and never owned slaves or even had ancestors who owned slaves, and these same stupid white people should keep their mouths shut when they’re discriminated against but should elect the liberal Dems who demonize them as trash.

If these stupid, poor white people don’t, they’re even more racist. Furthermore, these dumb white people should get on

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board with importing more illegals, even though these illegals are disproportionately are on welfare and drive down wages so that poor white trash (and incidentally, poor blacks) have fewer job opportunities.

Again, if these poor, white-trash rednecks don’t, they’re super-duper racist.

White people—who are the main reason why America has for so long been an economic, political and technological powerhouse, and are responsible for the abolitionist movement that ended slavery in the western world and much of the globe—are just so stupid that they don’t realize they must vote for candidates who demonize them and cater to every other identity group. Yes, white people are stupid.

We should continue to make fun of them and do what we can to ensure their numbers shrink and they lose political power and pay more money for everyone else.

Dude, via indyweek.com If you would like to respond to something that appeared in the INDY’s pages, please send an email to backtalk@indyweek.com. The INDY reserves the right to edit letters for space and clarity.

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INDYweek.com

triangulator news

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THE MYTHICAL MODERATE UNICORN

Also: Raleigh reopens the DrunkTown debate, a local school district jumps on the living wage bandwagon and an update on our public-records lawsuit

BY PAUL BLEST, DANNY HOOLEY AND JANE PORTER

I

t’s not often that you see Democratic senatorial candidates attacking their opponents for working for the ACLU, but a little more than two months out from the primary, here we are.

On Sunday, Durham businessman and U.S. Senate candidate KEVIN GRIFFIN told The News & Observer that rival DEBORAH ROSS’ “history” as the state director of the ACLU makes her unelectable. “If she wins the primary,” Griffin said, “she will spend the entire general election defending every action she took as the director of ACLU.” Then, on Monday, Spring Lake Mayor CHRIS REY piled on in ominous fashion. “We must examine each candidate’s record,” Rey said in an email blast.

“Democrats know Ross’ record will be the source of Republican attack and does not appeal to independents.”

The biggest point of contention is the ACLU’s opposition to two separate pieces of legislation while Ross ran it: one that established a sex-offender registry in North Carolina in 1997, and a 2001 bill that would have allowed public schools to display the Ten Commandments.

HOLNING LAU, the immediate past president of the state ACLU, responded to Griffin’s remarks in a statement to the INDY: “The ACLU’s mission is to protect constitutional rights for everyone, and it isn’t afraid to take up tough civil liberties issues in order to defend all people from government abuse and overreach. For almost 100 years, the ACLU has successfully defended many of the rights and liberties we all enjoy today, even when those cases were considered controversial.”

Ignore for a second that attacking someone for defending civil liberties—yes, even those of sex offenders—is asinine, and makes precious little political sense in a Democratic primary that will be decided by progressives. “Don’t vote for Deborah Ross because REPUBLICANS WILL ATTACK HER” is an exceptionally weird position for Griffin and Rey to take. After all, anyone running as a Democrat for Senate is going to be attacked.

That’s how politics works, guys.

The bigger problem is that Griffin and Rey are conflating “electability” with “pandering to moderates.”

It’s a common misconception that, because North Carolina has a very conservative Legislature, every Democrat running for statewide office has to be a moderate BLUE DOG; in reality, the moderate wings of both parties have been all but wiped out by a combination of gerrymandering and polarization. There’s no “silent majority” of independents yearning for someone who sucks up to both sides rather than one. But by pushing the narrative that working for the ACLU is something Ross should be ashamed of, that’s the unicorn Griffin and Rey apparently want to chase.

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ou’ll no doubt recall—possibly because we talked about it ad infinitum—that in August Raleigh’s City Council launched a three-month pilot program to try to rein in outdoor drinking downtown, following complaints from some residents that revelers were clogging sidewalks and generally being too raucous too late into the night.

But then in November, the council walked back the restrictions, saying the hit on bar and restaurant owners— compounded by RANDOM, DISRUPTIVE VISITS from the police and fire departments—outweighed the benefits.

Besides, council members said, having patrons seated rather than standing, as the new ordinance requires, solved most of the problems. So they voted 6–2 to extend weekend sidewalk-patio hours from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. and take another look at the 15-square-feet-per-person occupancy limit.

That second look will take the form of six meetings before the city’s APPEARANCE COMMISSION, which will then make recommendations to the council. The 14-member panel held the first of those meetings last week.

No decisions were made, of course. There was talk about other cities’ BEST PRACTICES and the proper way to delineate where a bar or restaurant ends and where a sidewalk begins and regulate the use of outdoor furniture, signage and seating. As might be expected, we left with more questions than answers.

Restaurant owners want to be clear about exactly where they can place outdoor seating: Does it have to be directly in front of their establishments, or can they place seats off to the sides? Will split layouts (i.e., layouts with furniture on both sides and a walkway in between) be allowed? Is there a way to coordinate delineation and furniture to make downtown not look like a FLEA MARKET? And how will occupancy limits, which will be based on analyses of how much space a place has, be enforced?

Underscoring all the discussion is the question of how the city will comply with the state’s ABC laws, which commission member ROLF BLIZZARD called “all over the place”—for instance, split layouts are technically prohibited, but that rule is seldom if ever enforced.

The Appearance Commission meets Wednesdays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. in Raleigh’s City Hall. Buckle up: It’s going to be an exciting few weeks. (Excitement is relative. Your mileage may vary.)

S

ometimes, a little peer pressure is a good thing.

Just two months ago, protesters gathered outside CHAPEL HILL-CARRBORO CITY SCHOOLS’ offices to protest the allegedly negligent treatment of minority students and workers. One thing CHCCS neglected to

do was pay some of its workers—such as 72-year-old custodian EUGENE FARRAR, who was featured in the INDY (“Pay it forward,” Nov. 4)—sufficient wages to live in the towns where they work.

Fortunately for him, the grassroots ORANGE COUNTY LIVING WAGE PROJECT launched around that time. The organization, modeled on a similar campaign in Durham, certifies employers, public and private, that offer their lowest-paid workers at least $12.75 an hour (or $11.25 an hour with health benefits). That certification is then publicized on the OCLW website, which plays well in progressive Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Employers are kept honest by an annual re-evaluation of what constitutes a living wage.

CHCCS officially joined the living-wage movement on Jan. 8, with a press release announcing that “72 of the school system’s employees—a combination of custodians and bus monitors—were given raises of an additional $1.30 per hour, for a combined $36,000 over the course of the year.” The school system joins 48 other certified Orange County employersthat pay living wages.

“Paying a living wage,” JAMES BARRETT, the newly elected chairman of CHCCS, said in a statement, “is, simply, the right thing to do—and the smart thing to do, from a business perspective.”

F

inally, from the updates desk: The MCCRORY ADMINISTRATION PR CRISIS that is the mediacoalition lawsuit brought against it last year for failing to provide public records promptly went to mediation on Friday. We were there, of course, but as a party to the case we’re bound by a confidentiality agreement, which means we can’t say much about what went on.

Here’s what we can tell you: In attendance on the plaintiffs’ side were our lawyers, HUGH STEVENS and MIKE TADYCH, as well as representatives from WRAL, WNCN, The News & Observer, the INDY and attorneys from the Southern Environmental Law Center and the N.C. Justice Center. The McCrory administration sent six of its own attorneys.

No resolution was reached after more than four hours, so the mediator, ELIZABETH SCOTT of the law firm Williams Mullen, continued the mediation. Depositions of four of the administration’s public information officers that were scheduled next week have been rescheduled for later this month or the beginning of February. Also throughout this month and into February, McCrory’s attorneys will depose representatives from the media outlets.

Stay tuned. s Reach the INDY’s Triangulator team at triangulator@ indyweek.com.

INDYweek.com

news

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WHO KILLED LIGHT RAIL?

Democrats blame Speaker Tim Moore’s chief of staff. Moore denies it.

Thanks to a thoroughly opaque process, we may never know for sure.

BY DAVID HUDNALL

O

n Sept. 18, Triangle residents awoke to news that the long-planned, 17-mile light-rail project connecting Durham and Orange counties was effectively dead. Worse, nobody knew who killed it.

Things had been chugging along nicely for light rail. The financing plan—which called for 25 percent from the counties, 25 percent from the state and 50 percent from the feds—was on track. Voters in Durham and Orange had levied a halfcent sales tax to cover their share. The state had chipped in a quarter of the cost of Charlotte’s light-rail system and was expected to do the same for this project.

The N.C. Department of Transportation had committed $138 million.

From there, it was a matter of getting the feds on board. That was looking up, too: Earlier that week in September, the project was awarded a $1.7 million developmental grant from the Federal Transit Administration.

Then the state budget arrived.

It was supposed to land on Gov. Pat McCrory’s desk by July 1, but House and Senate Republicans couldn’t reach an agreement. They spent 11 additional weeks arguing about it, passing three stopgap spending measures to accommodate the delay. Finally, a bill was produced. It was quickly passed by the Legislature and signed by McCrory.

Inside that 429-page budget bill, though, was a tiny provision that capped state spending on light-rail projects at a paltry $500,000. This meant that the DOT could no longer contribute the $138 million it had promised to the Durham-Orange County line. It also destabilized the request to the federal government; the feds like to know a project has its other funding secured before delivering the big money.

The provision had never been brought up for any kind of public debate, and not a single House or Senate Republican claimed credit for inserting it into the budget. It just appeared at the last minute, out of nowhere, and became law.

None of the local legislators representing the districts through which the light-rail project would pass were notified about the $500,000 cap during the backroom negotiations that produced the budget. But four separate Democratic lawmakers told the INDY last week that they believe they know who slipped the cap into the bill.

“My understanding is that [Speaker Tim Moore’s] chief of staff is the one responsible,” says Graig Meyer, D-Hillsborough.

Another Democrat in the Legislature, speaking on the condition of anonymity,

among other things, traffic congestion, noise and a lack of dedicated parking as reasons why the project should not go forward in their neighborhood. They created a website challenging GoTriangle’s planning assumptions, started an online petition and had anti-light-rail op-eds published in The News & Observer. Signs opposing light rail dotted the front yards of Downing Creek homes.

Somers declined to comment for this story. He did, however, email a short statement attributed to Moore.

“Neither I nor my staff inserted any

“The final negotiations on the budget are hammered out by a very small group of senior legislators from the majority party, and very few senators and state reps have any say in those negotiations.” says, “I have zero doubt in my mind whatsoever that it was [the Speaker’s chief of staff].”

The source adds that lawmakers heard from Republicans on the conference committee that Rep. David R. Lewis of Harnett County, the chairman of the rules committee and a lead budget negotiator, came to the GOP caucus at the 11th hour and told them the cap had to go in. The Republicans took that directive as if it had come from the speaker.

Moore’s chief of staff—and the man Democrats believe convinced Moore to insert the cap—is Clayton Somers. Formerly the executive director of the N.C. Turnpike Authority, Somers makes $158,500 per year as Moore’s top aide. He also lives in a community adjacent to Downing Creek, a well-heeled pocket of Chapel Hill that has loudly opposed light rail.

Under the light-rail plan, four street-level crossings would be created at intersections along Highway 54 near Downing Creek so that trains could pass through. Upon learning that light rail would interrupt highway access, residents of Downing Creek mobilized in opposition. They cited,

provision in the budget regarding the lightrail project,” it says.

Of course, if it’s true that Lewis inserted the provision at the behest of Moore’s office, this statement would be technically accurate but nonetheless misleading.

(Lewis, who over the weekend defeated a tea party attempt to oust him from his role as a Republican National Committeeman, did not return calls seeking comment.)

In any event, it’s hard to imagine that Moore doesn’t know who’s responsible.

But even after the provision’s existence came to light, the public remained in the dark. That’s a problem.

The deeply undemocratic process that allows a mystery person to derail years of research, planning and careful adherence to the bureaucratic process is worth noting here. Roughly, it unfolds like this: The House passes a budget plan and sends it to the Senate. The Senate doesn’t like it, comes up with its own budget and sends it back to the House. At that point the House speaker (Moore) and the Senate president pro tem (Phil Berger) appoint lawmakers to a conference committee tasked with negotiating a budget agreement.

The speaker and the president designate a handful of lawmakers to lead these negotiations. These are the individuals who end up doing the horsetrading. Once a compromise is reached, there’s no further discussion, just an up-or-down vote. And that’s how things like the light-rail cap sneak into a budget bill.

As Sen. Mike Woodard, D-Durham, puts it: “The final negotiations on the budget are hammered out by a very small group of senior legislators from the majority party, and very few senators and state reps have any say in those negotiations, even if what comes out of it affects their district.”

Following the cap’s disclosure, several Republican lawmakers, including powerful Wake County Rep. Paul Stam, publicly condemned the surreptitious move. The House voted to repeal it, but that measure stalled in the Senate. Transit advocates hope the Senate will follow through on repealing it in this year’s short session.

McCrory, who pushed light rail as mayor of Charlotte, would likely support the repeal.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that there are lawmakers who may not be great fans of mass transit but are nevertheless offended about the way this language was put into the budget,” says Sen. Floyd McKissick, D-Durham. “We have a merit-based system for evaluating our transportation needs in North Carolina. It’s meant to depoliticize that process. And moves like this put the politics right back in.”

Meyer says he asked Moore last September who inserted the cap into the budget and why. “He said he’d been hearing complaints from Orange County about light rail,” Meyer says. “Then he said to me, ‘I think your constituents will be happy,’ and gave me a knowing smile.

It wasn’t a forum where I could say what I wanted to say back to him. So I just smiled back. It was pure gamesmanship on his part. And there wasn’t anything we could do about it.” s David Hudnall is an INDY staff writer. Email him at dhudnall@indyweek.com.

INDYweek.com

news

EDIFICE COMPLEX Does downtown Raleigh really need a new stadium (and a mountain of debt)?

BY PAUL BLEST

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hat’s wrong with dreaming big?

In a Dec. 28 editorial, The News & Observer answered this painfully vague question with an unflinching, resounding no. The big dreams of which the N&O’s editorial board offered a fullthroated—if perhaps premature—endorsement are focused on the further revitalization of downtown Raleigh: specifically, a new arena or stadium on downtown’s southern edge.

“Such places have become economic catalysts in many cities where they have spurred retail and residential construction,” the paper opined. A news piece published the previous day laid out a beautiful scenario: “Imagine driving up South Saunders Street and, as you close in on downtown Raleigh, being greeted by a shiny, new athletic stadium.”

Who could argue with an “economic catalyst,” and a shiny one at that?

The idea first emerged in the city’s 10-year downtown experience plan—the final version was released in September in partnership with the Downtown Raleigh Alliance and other groups—as part of a larger revitalization package. Indeed, other downtown boosters have pitched even more upgrades, including an expansion of the performing arts center.

In the plan, the stadium/entertainment complex is cited as a “new citywide destination in the heart of the district” that would allow the city to make the area more walkable and provide easier access to parking. It’s also mentioned as a destination for “potential rail-based transit” in the corridor between the arena and several

(imagined) hotels, retail locations and office buildings.

The end result, proponents say, will be a world-class downtown with amenities that rival those of bigger cities like Austin. And the stadium could be just the catalyst downtown needs.

“This could be a great idea indeed,” the N&O argued, “providing a venue for everything from amateur sports to Carolina Hurricanes hockey to N.C. State basketball.”

One problem: Neither of those teams has any interest in relocating from the PNC Arena in the foreseeable future.

Of course, right now this is all more aspirational than concrete. “It was put in the 10-year downtown plan as an idea, and this was meant to be an idea even past the 10 years, but it’s not something I’m aware of is being worked on,” says Downtown Raleigh Alliance planning director Bill King, the plan’s primary author. “In terms of an arena, PNC has a good amount of life left in it. … There’s not any momentum to build a huge new stadium or arena downtown anytime soon.”

“We don’t have a program, we don’t have an identified end user, we don’t have any idea of how much it would cost,” echoes

ILLUSTRATION BY SKILLET GILMORE

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INDYweek.com

news city planning director Ken Bowers. “There would be much more to do before any such venue could be built in downtown Raleigh.”

That’s certainly true. But it’s also true that such venues are aspirational until they’re not. Versions of this story have played out in city after city in recent decades.

Elected officials and civic boosters decide a stadium is needed, and then they make it happen. And they’ve been remarkably successful. As Richard Florida noted in The Atlantic last year, over $12 billion of the public’s money has gone into building stadiums for NFL teams alone— not including taxpayer-subsidized NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS and college facilities.

With this new stadium or arena already championed by the media outlet with the region’s largest megaphone, it’s no stretch to say the wheels are turning. But before Raleigh gets in too deep, it’s worth asking whether we need this thing. For that matter, do we even want this thing?

When you scratch the surface, there are lots of reasons why we might not.

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his isn’t the first time there’s been a buzz about a downtown arena. In 1983, Mayor Avery C. Upchurch commissioned a group to find a new home for the 34-year-old Reynolds Coliseum. The study concluded that putting the stadium downtown was “impractical.” Since then, the city has gotten its first professional sports franchise, the Hurricanes, and, in 1999, the $158 million, 19,000seat PNC Arena was built to replace the aging coliseum. State and local taxpayers covered more than half the cost. N.C. State chipped in $22 million; the Hurricanes contributed $20 million.

If a new arena is built downtown, it’s unclear who would use it. The Hurricanes are committed to the PNC Arena through 2024, or at least until the NHL decides to pack up the team and ship it off to snowier pastures. (The team’s average attendance of 11,131 is by far the lowest in the league.) Likewise, an associate athletics director for N.C. State told the N&O that the university’s men’s basketball team “wasn’t interested” in moving.

If the city built a stadium instead of an arena, it might find an anchor tenant in the Carolina RailHawks, a team that currently sets up shop in Cary and whose owner, Steve Malik, has expressed interest in moving downtown. (The RailHawks declined to comment for this story, though a spokesperson asked the INDY to “reach out to us again in the upcoming months.”)

An MLS-ready stadium built in an innovative way that connects it to the community could be a worthwhile investment, says Matt Tomasulo, a member of the Raleigh Planning Commission and founder of Walk [Your City].

“I would argue that there could be a stadium for the RailHawks, but it doesn’t have to be exclusively a stadium,” he says. “Housing is often tied into it in order to cover the cost of that other investment, and that’s a premium

product. The cities that are going to thrive in the future are creating some really creative products and new projects that challenge the status quo.”

But that would likely require a considerable public commitment. While the San Jose Earthquakes privately funded their new $100 million stadium—and Orlando City Soccer is doing the same for its forthcoming $155 million facility—this is an anomaly. Of the first 15 stadiums built specifically for MLS teams, 12 received substantial help from state and local governments.

The fascination with shiny new toys for sports franchises is nothing new to American cities. Since the “building boom” started at the tail end of the last century, there has been an explosion of new stadiums and arenas built for nearly every team in the “Big Five”—the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and MLS. The consensus among economists, however, is that spending public money on professional sports facilities is a bad idea, and we’ve known this for some time. A Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis study commissioned in 2001 said as much, and financial nightmares like National Park—which cost Washington, D.C., nearly $700

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from one region to another.”

What he’s referring to is known as the “substitution effect.” As Matheson and a colleague explained in a 2011 paper: “While it is undeniable that sports fans around the country and around the world spend significant sums on spectator sports, in the absence of such entertainment opportunities, their spending would be directed elsewhere in the economy. A night at the ballpark means more money in the players’ and team owner’s pockets, but it also means less money in the pockets of local theater or restaurant owners.”

N

o matter who pays for the stadium, another issue is at play: These massive structures, which gobble up 15 acres or more of downtown real estate, have the potential to adversely affect people who live nearby.

Anti-gentrification activist Octavia Rainey, for instance, argues that a new stadium could displace residents of a nearby public housing project with over a hundred units.

“Where it would be located, that’s right in proximity to Heritage Park,” Rainey says. She points to Charlotte, where big downtown projects like the Time-Warner Cable Arena haven’t helped the city’s poor. “I’ve learned by example that when we build [stadiums and arenas], people of color do not benefit at all.”

Her concerns aren’t universally shared. DHIC president Gregg Warren, a member of the Downtown Plan Advisory Committee, says he thinks the impacts on impoverished east Raleigh residents would be minimal. There’s a difference between “having an impact” and “displacement,” he says. Heritage Park, he points out, is “two streets and a major intersection away” from the proposed site.

But there would be, at minimum, increased noise and congestion. In addition, if the stadium succeeds in making the properties around it more valuable, that may lead to an acceleration of gentrification.

“I support the growth of downtown, but I do not support the growth of downtown at the detriment or exclusion of people of color,” Rainey says.

Perhaps most important, there’s also the cold reality that every dollar the state, Raleigh or Wake County pours into a new stadium is a dollar that’s not being spent elsewhere.

What other public projects could the city employ to bring more life to downtown?

“In Raleigh’s case, I’d say approximately every one,” Matheson says, citing tax cuts, improved services and building better roads and new parks, for starters. “There’s tons of things that you can do that could bring greater public benefit than build a second arena in a town that already has a perfectly good arena.” ▲

“We never really see any greater effects to the region as a whole.

You’re not really generating economic activity. You’re just shifting it from one region to another.” million—have only bolstered economists’ position. (One survey from 2009 found that 85 percent of economists believe governments should discontinue stadium subsidies.)

Still, in recent decades, says sports economist Victor Matheson, a Holy Cross University professor who has written extensively about stadium financing, “95 percent of teams in the Big Five have gotten new stadiums, and on average, about two-thirds of the cost has been borne by taxpayers. [But] more recently, since the Great Recession, we saw a significant slowdown in the number of new stadiums built, and a reduction in the percentage being covered by the taxpayers.”

Nonetheless, taxpayers can still find themselves on the hook. Civic leaders tend to push these proposals by promising that the arena or stadium will bring a windfall to its new neighbors.

“If you’re talking about very, very localized neighborhood development—within, at most, a quarter mile of the stadium—we have definitely seen arenas going into cities and causing some very localized revitalization at times,” Matheson says. “That being said, we never really see any greater effects to the region as a whole. You’re not really generating economic activity. You’re just shifting it

9

Paul Blest is a Raleigh-based freelance writer. Respond to this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.

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RISE OF THE MACHINES

If future work is done by robots, what will become of future workers?

BY BOB GEARY

L

ast week, I wrote about hard times in West Virginia and that state’s turn to the Republicans. The challenge for Democrats in 2016, I concluded, is persuading white voters—as well as minorities—that progressive policies mean good jobs for them. Because, like West Virginia, most states and congressional districts are predominantly white. And while a Democrat can win the White House without a majority of white voters, economic reforms must also pass Congress. “[Let’s] assume,” I wrote, “that President Sanders or Clinton wants to restore the American dream for workingclass Americans and has a viable plan to do so ….”

At this, one indyweek.com commenter, “mike in nc,” snorted: “Thank you for my morning laugh.”

You’re welcome, Mike.

But seriously, neither party has stood for the working class since … oh, I don’t know, Lyndon Johnson? Wage stagnation dates to the 1970s. But in 1981, Ronald Reagan ruled out government action even during a recession.

“Government isn’t the solution to our problem,” Reagan said. “Government is the problem.” Bill Clinton seemed to agree in 1996. “The era of big government is over,” Clinton proclaimed.

Yet the era of giant corporations and banks “too big to fail” abides.

S

o, Mike, let’s flesh out that viable plan. I’d suggest we start with an idea from Martin Ford, who’ll be in Raleigh Feb. 8 to keynote “Future Work,” the 31stannual Emerging Issues Forum at N.C. State.

Ford is a Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur, software developer and, last year, the author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future. Its thesis is that “machine learning” is advancing dramatically in every sphere, from flipping hamburgers to self-driving cars. Think Google algorithms that seem to “learn” and

improve with experience—i.e., by crunching more data.

Soon, no truck driver’s job will be safe. Nor any rote industrial, sales or service job. Not even at McDonald’s.

Robots will do them, hence the threat.

“Machines are transitioning away from being tools and turning into workers. They’re becoming autonomous.

And rather than complementing people and making people more valuable, in many cases they’re substituting for people,” Ford told an interviewer recently. “More and more people are going to be left behind.”

An Oxford University paper by economist Carl Benedikt Frey and technologist Michael Osborne raised a similar prospect. They examined 702 occupations for susceptibility to computerization. “About 47 percent of total U.S. employment is at risk,” they determined.

At risk, yes, but perhaps about to be liberated?

The problem is that as robots become the “labor,” the gains are accruing to the relatively small percentage of Americans—the 1 percent—who own them or control them, meaning corporations and their bankers.

Human workers, meanwhile, can’t get a raise, and there are fewer of them every year, at least as a percentage of working-age adults.

This is not a new problem, of course. Machines have been displacing labor for decades. Any West Virginian who’s watched coal being mined without miners can attest to that. What is new is that as displacement picks up, so does the need for government policies to balance the scales and redistribute some of the gains to the whole of society. But since Reagan, government is failing. Tax cuts for the rich are the last thing we need.

Ford suggests a radical solution, which is to boost taxes on the wealthy and use the money to finance a guaranteed minimum annual income of $10,000 for every adult, whether working or not.

That would pump a lot of buying power into the economy,

which otherwise may collapse from a lack of aggregate demand if only the elites can buy what the robots produce.

But it misses the human side, which is our need to work for what we’re paid and contribute to the common good.

So, as robots take on the scut work, let’s turn humans loose on our most pressing problems: l Health care. We need more people caring for the aged, and more doctors, nurses and surgical facilities across the board to increase supply and drive down our soaring health-care costs. They’ll have amazing tech support in the form of instant lab results and preliminary diagnoses thanks to the algorithms. l Education. We can afford more teachers at every level, and we’ll need them, because in a future with robots, people will have more time to read, learn, explore the world and think critically, especially about how their government operates. l Infrastructure. Put people to work repairing old houses, putting solar panels on new ones and rebuilding an obselete utility grid. We can also afford more parks, more transit and other public goods that reduce our cost of living. (The solar panels can make us some money.)

And our roads are a long way from ready for self-driving vehicles, public or private. l Leisure. With robots, we’ll have more time off, so more of us can be employed in entertainment, sports, fitness, travel and tourism. And in security—running the robots—in public places and at border crossings.

As robots allow us to raise our living standards, Mike, let’s invest in these things so that everyone benefits, not just a lucky few. And yeah, we’ll need a $15-an-hour minimum wage—and maybe $5,000 a year on top of it.

It’s all viable, my friend. s Bob Geary is an INDY columnist. Email him at rjgeary@mac.com.

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Fried green tomatoes and nanner pudding?

Aww, shucks, it’s Tupelo Honey.

PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

SHOO NO MERCY

On the ground floors of nearly neighboring Raleigh apartment complexes, two restaurants stake separate claims to Southern culinary heritage. Pull up a chair, y’all. BY ANGELA PEREZ

S

itting alone at a window-side bar table at 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning, I feared I would have to wait until kingdom come for my Sunday brunch.

Friends had warned me that Raleigh’s Tupelo Honey Cafe—tucked into the ground floor of a literally brick, metaphorically beige apartment building near Cameron Village for the last year—was always slammed on weekends. To avoid waiting an hour to be seated, let alone eat, I should arrive early, they said.

In my particular social circles, food before noon on a Sunday is sacrilege—not because of Jesus, mind you, but because our antiquated blue laws won’t let you have a mimosa or Bloody Mary. And isn’t brunch just an excuse for the dawn of day drinking?

On this particular Sabbath, though, I bypassed the booze and focused on the Southern breakfast, touted as a specialty of this Asheville-based chain of a dozen restaurants. Stomach growling, head still foggy, I passed the time by marveling at a homey patio—vintage

string lights, comfy pillowy chairs, wooden tables, lush greenery—that ran the length of the restaurant along Oberlin Road. “Have cocktails on this patio at the first sign of spring,” I told myself, “even if you don’t like the food.”

But did I like the food?

Brunch, yes. Dinner the night before with several companions? Well, it’s complicated.

I

am a native Southerner, born and raised in eastern North Carolina. My grandmother—Nancy Emma, or “Granny Maw”—was a master of the lard-based arts, and I often ate her garden-fresh veggies hot off a skillet bathed in fatback. Many of today’s most famous Southern chefs assert their mastery of Southern cooking not by way of culinary school or an apprenticeship with a famous professional but, like me, through their personal experiences with a granny, mama, uncle or pawpaw and a cast-iron skillet. I considered myself prepared.

True to family-style form, once you place your order

at Tupelo Honey, either for brunch or dinner, a server promptly presents one biscuit and homemade blueberry jam. Don’t ask for the biscuits before you order, as there seems to be a rule that you must order, in case you’re planning to scam free biscuits and bolt.

Little chance for me: Dense and doughy with only the slightest bit of crispness on top, Tupelo Honey’s sad little lumps offered no joy, no return to childhood in the backcountry of the Carolinas. The only flavor came from a cracked pepper glaze. At least the thick blueberry jam—to flavorless biscuits what ketchup is to bland fries—helped me get it down.

Finally, my entrée arrived—the “famous” sweet potato pancake, Shoo Mercy style. Many of Tupelo Honey’s dishes offer Shoo Mercy upgrades, which entail a slathering of over-the-top extras. For the pancakes, Shoo Mercy meant the addition of buttermilk-marinated chicken breast and maple bacon. Fluffy and fragrant with cinnamon and nutmeg, the pancake didn’t need the poultry frippery.

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Drenched in homemade peach butter and smothered in The same went for the Ginger Pork & Cauliflower Honey’s kitchen sure has a lot of ingredients at its disposal, spiced pecans, the pancake only required the help of the Dumplings, which seems to imply a cauliflower transformed they were rarely combined with the adept Southern bacon, an ample savory foil. into a dumpling with revolutionary gusto. While the braised care that makes you feel at home—unless you live in the What’s more, the goat cheese grits are among the best in pork arrived in a perfectly balanced creamy ginger-beer apartments overhead, I presume. the area. Hot and creamy, a perfect pop of goat cheese adds gravy, I was a bit disappointed to find that the cauliflower ut does “adept Southern care” ensure a truly divine a hint of tanginess without overwhelming the grits’ own dumpling was another menu feint. culinary experience? body and taste. Too many restaurants overburden the grits, The misdirection even applied to one of my favorites of my I sought the answer at another new Raleigh a tantalizingly textured vessel meant to carry flavors with two visits—the not-Southern-at-all Beef Wellington. Served at restaurant that professes to focus on traditional Southern both aplomb and subtlety. They require a deft, caring, gentle medium-rare perfection, the beautifully seasoned filet sits in flavors, P. G. Werth’s. touch. I felt it, Tupelo Honey. a puff pastry. The menu only mentions “mushrooms,” giving When I first heard the name after it opened last year, I Not so much with dinner, though. An entrée of fried chicken no hint of the magnificent duxelles (a simple mushroom paste assumed P.G. Werth’s was a chain—a P.F. Chang’s for our and biscuits in milk gravy with Tennessee country ham arrived of olive oil, salt and black pepper) that accompanies it. I could soul food set. But friends who regularly trek over to the and left as a flatlining bore. No amount of buttermilk “brining” purchase the stuff by the gallon in the attached market, where could make that chicken breast moist. At least the you can buy Hamm’s creations to take home. chicken had seasoning; the milk gravy certainly Think of it as a less-accomplished Standard didn’t. Heaped atop the dense, doughy biscuits Foods for the other side of town. (again!), the dull sauce made for a heavy slog That’s not to say there aren’t for my fork—and I didn’t even ask them to Shoo accomplishments. The simplicity of the beet Mercy. After three or four passes, I pushed it away. salad meant the beets tasted like they came The heavily breaded fried green tomatoes, straight out of a Mason jar tucked into a doled out over a thick paste of goat-cheese grits cabinet, their earthiness allowed to shine. The and red-pepper coulis, were no better. The pimento home fries are, likewise, simple and intense brightness of unripe tomatoes doesn’t great, with hunks of crispy potatoes still moist play well with equally intense flavors, of which and steaming, covered in a pimento cheese there were two. Granny Maw would have flecked with jalapeno. The dish is hearty and frowned. The beef-and-bacon meatloaf was rustic, more suited to a down-home diner or overly rich, too, with a rosemary tomato shallot Southern picnic than P.G. Werth’s chic dining gravy on top simply suggesting fortified ketchup. room of floor-to-ceiling glass, stone walls and And mac and cheese—that classic Southern abstract paintings. staple, intended to be creamy, even if served But that’s the thing about Tupelo Honey, casserole-style with a crispy top—was bone-dry.

P.G. Werth’s and most every “new new South” The Southern Taco Trio seemed interesting— bastion like them: The quaint or quirky places flour tortillas with an odd combination of that allowed Southerners to indulge in the curried fried chicken, apple salsa and cherry P.G. Werth’s—a little like Tupelo Honey in its Southern updates, but not a regional simple foods their grandmothers made—fried pepper aioli—but tasted like something you chicken, greens cooked with pig tails, candied chain—is attached to Raleigh’s 927 West Morgan apartment complex. throw together at home if you’re desperate yams, fried corn sticks, pulled pork barbecue, PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER to clean the refrigerator. The same held banana pudding and Brunswick stew—are ground-level Morgan Street restaurant (also tucked beneath for the “Shoo Mercy” shrimp and grits, loaded with disappearing. These homespun holes-in-the wall never had a fresh set of apartments) for bottomless mimosas assured caramelized onions, spinach, mushrooms and bacon. Full to proclaim their Southerness, either on their menus or on me it was a local joint. The owner and chef, Gregg Hamm, of ingredients doesn’t mean complex, and all these intense their websites. They just existed. owns Cafe 121 in Sanford. He currently leaves the day-to-day flavors never intertwined.

My grandmother never had to tell anyone how much operations there to a long-time employee and devotes his All was not lost, at least. Another Southern staple, the she cared about her cooking, either. It was evident in the time to his capital city spot. Hamm’s thick, lilting accent hints simple and classic Southern Fried Okra, came out piping hot, way she hummed while she sifted her flour, in the way at the down-home aim of his extensive seasonal menu. perfectly crisp and golden. As we dipped it in a mayonnaiseshe smiled as she stirred the pot of collards, in the way she After surprising us with a basket of hot homemade potato based Alabama white sauce, everyone shushed. The warm hugged me when I asked for second and third helpings. chips, our waiter pointed out a new dinner-menu option— pimento cheese dip, served with house-made tortilla chips, I like to think that, on a Sunday morning, her Southern The Big Munch, a subsection of sandwiches for patrons elicited the same silent ecstasy. Pimento cheese is a simple hospitality wouldn’t have made me make up my mind before looking for something simpler and cheaper than traditional spread, easily ruined by too many ingredients. Tupelo bringing me one pepper-flecked biscuit, too doughy or not. s entrées. There’s the BBQ Belly Burger (with Cheshire pork Honey’s concoction of roasted red peppers and Dijon belly, Havarti cheese and barbecue sauce) or the Bacon, mustard nails it.

Angela Perez lives in Raleigh and blogs at doyoumuumuu.com.

Egg, & Cheese (with Applewood bacon, duck egg, Havarti As I sat back down for brunch the next day, in the full and fried green tomato). light of day, I thought about how the bright, shiny décor TUPELO HONEY CAFE Those sandwich names seem straightforward enough, reflected the previous night’s meal. At Tupelo Honey, 425 Oberlin Road, Raleigh but that doesn’t hold for the rest of the menu. The muted colors surround rows of booths and tables in a 919-723-9353, www.tupelohoneycafe.com Cauliflower Mac N’ Cheese initially made me think nondescript modern dining room, peppered with outHamm had transformed cauliflower into the basis for the of-place flourishes like antique refrigerator doors. It’s a Southern pasta. But what emerged (and, in all fairness, Disneyland version of some Dixie dive that never existed.

P.G. WERTH’S what the menu describes) was roasted, smoky cauliflower For most of my meals, the execution felt like meticulous 927 W. Morgan St., Raleigh florets covered in a creamy cheese sauce, sprinkled with corporate cooking, working hard to make you think of 984-232-0415, www.chefhamm.com crispy bits of pork. But it wasn’t mac and cheese. your own Granny Maw, if you had one. And while Tupelo

B

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FLIGHT NIGHT

Within a month, two popular beer-and-burger joints closed in downtown Raleigh.

Did they drown in the suds now surrounding them?

BY GRAYSON HAVER CURRIN

S

omeday soon, I will open a longneglected drawer and discover a gift certificate I will never use.

The credit—written, I believe, in blue ball-point on a pale green server’s slip in the amount of $25—came from Brewmasters Bar & Grill, a beer-burgerand-ball haven at one of the busiest commuter intersections in downtown Raleigh. For nearly two years, the slip languished in some corner of some drawer or another, waiting to be found and redeemed during my next visit.

But I never actually intended for that visit to come. Not long after Brewmasters opened in mid-2011, I became something of a regular. Drawn by a strong selection of North Carolina taps and interesting updates on barfood fare (vegetarian options included and on target) and a Sunday brunch, I also came for the ring of high-definition televisions wrapping above the cherry red bar. They gave the place the feeling of a small, comfortable, hometown sports bar.

In its abbreviated life, though, Brewmasters practically sailed downhill, with the food generously described as inconsistent and the atmosphere graciously dubbed awkward. The night I settled for the credit, and the last time I ever went, I don’t think I ever ate, giving up after a long wait in an empty restaurant and three failed attempts by the kitchen to ace a simple order for two. By the time Brewmasters finally shuttered for good in the middle of December, the place—once so full of promise, the floor of its entrance painted with a map of North Carolina that pinpointed the state’s every brewery—had become a social media and serviceindustry punch line.

“It’s pretty disappointing,” says Mark Cook, the owner of Brewmasters and a pair of area homebrew-supply stores.

Two days after the start of 2016, Cook rests his elbows on the empty bar and cups his chin with the palm of his hand.

The coolers still buzz, and the tap handles stand at attention, waiting to be pulled.

But Cook closed Brewmasters a month ago, a decision he says he made two years

Shut it down: Mark Cook inside Brewmasters, the downtown Raleigh bar and restaurant he closed in December

too late. Now, a passel of black-and-yellow real estate signs laminating the windows distorts the mid-morning light.

“I try not to read reviews, but I hear about them. When you hear things like ‘I’d rather eat in front of a porno shop out of a trash can,’ well, that’s disappointing,” he says, pausing to frown and sigh. “This place could have been great. I thought we were going to make money.”

Instead, after opening and closing two restaurants at the same intersection, Cook says he is in significant debt from what once seemed a no-brains venture. He shoulders most of the blame, too. Though he was a server and prep cook for brief spells before and after college, he never worked in many restaurants before owning

one. He didn’t understand how to manage Brewmasters himself, or, as he admits now, even hire people who did.

“I kept hoping Greg Hatem or G Patel would come in here and turn this place around. That was my fantasy,” Cook says, referring to two successful downtown Raleigh restaurateurs. “But people have been in worse positions than this.”

Still, there appears to be more at work inside Brewmasters’ demise than Cook’s inefficacy as an owner or organizer. Just three weeks before Cook hung the place’s farewell memo in the window, Tyler’s Restaurant & Taproom—essentially, Brewmasters with more than twice the square footage and its own bottle shop—closed its doors, too. Tyler Huntington, the restaurant’s

PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

owner and namesake, says other Raleigh restaurants that offer a high-alcohol, high-fat combination of food, beer and sports aren’t hitting their marks, either. In fact, a business day later, The Oxford—a modest “English pub” owned by Patel’s Eschelon Experiences in the city center—announced it would finish its eight-year run by the end of the month, too.

So is it getting harder to balance booze and bar food in downtown Raleigh?

Maybe, says Huntington.

“For the first three years, we were making really good money,” he says, sitting at a circular table in The Rickhouse, the rustic events space that overlooks the Durham Athletic Park. He opened it last year. Through glass walls to his left, he can

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GLAD negotiating a consolidated deal. Before making it official, however, he opted out of his lease, turning the space over to the brewers he had recruited.

Though the new team has yet to finalize the agreement, the Wisconsin transplants plan to open a 10-barrel brewpub in early May with a model much like the one Huntington envisioned. One of the partners, who cannot be named until the lease is finalized, says he selected Raleigh three years ago because the market offered competitive food and craft beer scenes but not a true brewpub. He’s confident his concept will be distinct enough to sustain the footprint.

“I’m not worried about the location,” he says. “The size and space were different in the market for what Tyler was doing, and the timing and context are completely different now. We’re going to knock it out of the park.”

Huntington had a fallback plan for Tyler’s, then, a sensible option for divesting the property before it weighed on his whole enterprise. But back at Brewmasters—where the chalkboard advertising special seasonal burgers still sadly promotes a “Holidaze” burger with ham and pineapple—Cook doesn’t know just what he’ll do.

His real estate agent says he might be forced to sit on the property for the next 18 months. A nearby restaurant owner has mentioned taking it over as a second project or even a commissary kitchen.

And he still holds the food-preparation permits through March, so he’s considering throwing a final Super Bowl party for the customers of his homebrew stores, the businesses he actually knows how to run.

Maybe, then, Brewmasters will have one last stand as intended—a low-key restaurant that, as Cook puts it, “celebrates the beer in this state and the people who make it happen.”

Even if that same surging industry is, to some extent, the reason his restaurant and bar never worked for very long. s Grayson Haver Currin is the managing+music editor of the INDY.

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see the distillery he will launch as soon as the proper parts and permits arrive. The distillery will be his third Durham business, with another one imminent.

Since launching as the state’s first completely craft beer bar in 1998 in Carrboro, Tyler’s has become one of the most successful and seemingly stable chains in the Triangle. The group’s downtown Durham restaurant is an anchor of American Tobacco Campus, its enormous space often overflowing during baseball games at Durham’s newer ballpark. But Huntington has no plans to return to the Raleigh market.

“When we opened in Raleigh four years ago, there weren’t a lot of taprooms,” Huntington says. “But in Raleigh now, you kick a cap and hit a taproom. And as that competition opened up, we started to see a thinning in our business.”

Tyler’s opened in Raleigh’s Seaboard Station in December 2011, just months after Brewmasters. Since then, nearly a dozen breweries or bottle shops have launched in or around the downtown core. Restaurants have multiplied, too, including another burger joint in the same shopping center as Tyler’s. Despite the arrival of apartment-and-condo complexes throughout downtown, including a few hundred yards from Tyler’s front door, the residential density and demand simply weren’t sufficient to offset the competition or the extreme overhead of an 11,000-square-foot space, at least not yet.

Huntington was close, he says; with a quarter less room and rent, Tyler’s would have been highly profitable in Raleigh.

In fact, Huntington designed a plan to salvage the space when he began to end some months in the red. He decided to give downtown Raleigh a new option—a true-to-name brewpub, where the beer brewing process surrounds diners and drinkers on all sides. This would have differentiated Tyler’s from the crowded brewery-and-restaurant scenes and given it a way to turn that excess space into extra money. He even found a potential partner, began imagining construction logistics and

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culture

Al Strong is at the epicenter of the Triangle’s jazz renaissance. And, at last, he’s got a dazzling debut album.

BY GRAYSON HAVER CURRIN

A

l Strong is very late.

For the last 90 minutes, while tucked in tight at a corner table at the downtown Durham club and restaurant Beyù Caffè, the trumpet player has talked about the first three decades of his life and how jazz has guided him.

How he started playing trumpet when he was 8. How his grandparents piqued his interest early on with records in their Washington, D.C., home, but how he wanted to be a pathologist. How he used to watch the city’s go-go bands and how he attended D.C.’s fabled Duke Ellington School of the Arts. How that program and its traveling bands introduced him to Wynton Marsalis and other modern gods of his chosen instrument. And how it moved him to pursue a jazz degree at N.C. Central, a master’s at Northern Illinois and onto a cruise ship that routed him and his horn through the Gulf of Mexico for six months.

But then his phone rings, and he realizes just how long he’s been talking about the past. Over in N.C. Central’s jazz studies department, there’s a kid down from Maryland, horn in hand, waiting to audition to enroll in Durham. Less than two decades ago, Strong was in exactly the same position.

He understands how pivotal the moment can be for the young player. In Strong’s absence, the kid’s simply been warming up, waiting for one of the names that lured him to Durham. Strong doesn’t want him to wear himself out, so he asks for the check.

“But we’re just getting to the good stuff, the fun parts,” says Strong, his generally stoic face breaking into a smile. He counts his cash, stands up beside the table and sets a time to meet in a few hours. “There’s a lot more to talk about.”

Strong hustles back across town to campus.

In fact, lots of what’s left to talk about stems from Strong’s travels in and between downtown Durham and N.C. Central.

During the last decade, he’s worked as a professor at Central, occasionally teaching general courses on music appreciation but largely mentoring and training successive

waves of aspiring trumpeters. He has become what department director Ira Wiggins calls “a role model.”

During the same decade, he’s also become one of the Triangle’s busiest musicians, flitting in and out of clubs and sessions as a sideman and support player for most anyone who needs the sound of valved brass. Alongside Cicely Mitchell, his former romantic and current business partner, he co-founded The Art of Cool Project, a nonprofit that’s wedged jazz, soul and R&B into Triangle rock clubs and conversations by presenting a steady stream of shows and, for the last two years, a major spring festival. Mitchell calls Strong “a connector within the music scene.”

In fact, he’s become a linchpin of it, an organizational, artistic and educational force with few peers.

And, at last, Strong, now 35, is taking care of his own recording career. Though he’s led occasional ensembles under his own name since those graduate school days in Illinois, he released his debut album, the wonderfully versatile and volatile LoveStrong Vol. 1, only last week.

All of those experiences, enthusiasms and associations power its 10 tracks, as he leads a cohort of contemporaries and N.C. Central students and alumni through spirited updates on standards such as “Blue Monk” and originals he’s been hoarding since his undergraduate days in Durham at the start of the millennium. As much as an album, it’s a showcase for the nexus Strong has become—and the possibilities his position presents.

“In many senses, I feel like I’m a late bloomer, as far as music comes. I didn’t really start studying until I was 15,” Strong says several hours later, just as the lateafternoon shadows start to grow outside of the downtown ice cream shop The Parlour.

He strokes his thick black beard, pushing stray gray hairs back toward his chin, and fidgets with the stocking cap keeping his shaved head warm.

“I could have put out something years ago, but it wouldn’t have necessarily been

something I felt good about. It would have been for posterity’s sake,” he says. “But this is big. It’s a humble offering, my first.”

Better late, at least, than never.

I

n 2010, Cicely Mitchell found Strong on match.com.

She’d seen his profile and thought his life as a jazz musician sounded interesting and exotic. He’d grown up in what he calls a tough neighborhood in D.C., while she came from a tiny town in the northwest corner of Tennessee. She loved the rock and pop on the radio and some soul, while he was transcribing solos from half-centuryold LPs. She was a biostatistician. He was a professor by day, a player by night.

“Even now, when the gig is over, I’m not

really into sticking around and socializing.

My brain is still moving, thinking about what I should have played. Meeting people is business,” he says. “She was really sweet, bright. It was such a shock to me, because I had been in Durham for so long and I hadn’t met anyone like her—a highly educated woman who was down-to-earth, too, but really passionate and fiery.”

“He came from such a different world than me,” Mitchell remembers. “And it was a nice break from my little statistics bubble.”

Jazz became a key component of their relationship almost immediately. Mitchell remembers that, when they first began to hold hands, Strong would unconsciously move his fingers as though they were

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dancing along the trumpet’s valves.

“He is always thinking about music, I realized. He is just that connected to it,” she says. “When he wakes up, he is listening and then practicing. He is always rehearsing, transcribing. All his friends are jazz musicians. You get around someone like that, and you become inspired to tell people about what they like. It’s infectious.”

Mitchell, though, was disappointed with Strong’s results, in terms of both pay and pull. His schedule was full, but many of the gigs relegated the musicians to a background hum or low takeaways. When she learned that Strong barely promoted his shows, she commandeered that aspect of his career, using social media to spread

Al Strong, playing at Durham’s Beyù Caffè PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

news of his sets weeks in advance. He confided in her that he wanted to play more bona fide concerts, too, where the music was the night’s centerpiece.

“When I began studying jazz in college, my overarching goal was to see if I could make it as a musician, whether that was playing or teaching as a musician,” says Strong. “Once I found that avenue shortly after, whether living in Chicago or moving here, I said, ‘There’s got to be more than this. This is fine and this is cool, but I don’t feel like I’m creating musically on the level that the Creator gave to us.’”

So again, Mitchell stepped in to help,

arranging for a pop-up Friday night concert with a cover charge at a local art gallery in the summer of 2011. It was a success that turned into a series. Soon enough, it turned into a money-winning pitch at a start-up summit to launch a nonprofit and music festival. Less than three years after that first concert, the pair and a team of volunteers launched the inaugural Art of Cool Music Festival, which returns in May for its third iteration.

Though Strong had played nearly every stage, open mic and jam session in the Triangle at that point, both as a student and a teacher, it was his performance at the first Art of Cool that convinced him it was time to put his own music to tape, to make a proper album. He saw there was a substantive local audience for the kind of historically anchored but fashionably updated jazz he loved and made.

“I felt there wasn’t a rush initially, because I was on a lot of other people’s records. But I really wanted Art of Cool to be legit as possible, so the co-founder should be recording, right?” he says, suddenly jolted by laughter. “I enjoyed being a facilitator for other artists, working as a sideman, but I felt that this was the next step if I wanted to work outside of rooms where I was just background music.”

A year before the first Art of Cool, Strong actually raced into a studio to record his tunes—for posterity, as he put it. He’d been diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, and the surgery required would interrupt his playing for months, possibly forever. He worried that his lung capacity would never be the same, so he needed to get his tunes on tape. After recovery, and after the first Art of Cool, he temporarily stepped back from his role as the festival’s co-organizer to focus, finally, on himself and finishing LoveStrong. (Strong has since returned to Art of Cool.) For someone so invested in other people’s performances for a decade, it may have seemed a selfish turn. But it was already late enough.

“I realized suddenly, with Art of Cool, I was drawing a lot of attention to myself, and in a minute people will be asking me where’s my album,” he says. “And now that’s OK.”

T

hree songs into the first of three sets at Beyù Caffè on a Friday night, Al Strong leaps off the stage several minutes into the piece. The band plays

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culture AL STRONG LOVESTRONG VOL. 1 (SELF-RELEASED)

Fri Jan 15

www.lincolntheatre.com JANUARY

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on, but he crouches down and races to the hallway at the side of the stage.

He finds a black towel, dabs his already sweaty face and leans against the wall, taking in the sound with his head cocked back. He glances at the crowd of 75, all seated around dinner tables in small groups as they eat and fix their eyes on the band. Heads nod. Feet tap. The occasional hand claps on beat. When the time is right, Strong crouches again, shuffles to the front of the stage and climbs onto it for the finale, towel still in hand.

LoveStrong finally arrived by post this morning, and at last, it’s available at Beyù tonight, a fact Strong repeats after every song or so. For the first time in venue history, the club added a third show at 11:30 p.m., which sold out well before the first 8 p.m. gig—“the warm-up,” someone at the show calls it—even starts. Beyù even upped its seating capacity by 25 percent for the night, and people still want in. Indeed, Strong has drawn a lot of attention to himself.

Onstage, though, he talks mostly about the ensemble around him, providing dossier-length introductions for his players early in the set, or the origin of each song, which he explains dutifully, like a teacher would. And when his players take solos, which is often, he shuffles to the side, closing his eyes and smiling. He occasionally clenches his fist, looking up briefly with delight.

Toward the end of the set, Strong tells the crowd that, somehow, the show has stayed on schedule and the band will be able to play two more songs before the 9 p.m. stopping time. It’s hard not to laugh a little at Strong’s sudden punctuality, arriving, like his album, right on time. s

Sun Mar 13

CeeLo Green

Grayson Haver Currin is the managing+music editor of the INDY.

During the last two decades, jazz trumpeter Al Strong has graduated from one of N.C. Central University’s big-band all-stars into, in various stages, a session musician, an educator, a jazz-scene curator and, at last, a bona fide recording artist. He funnels all those experiences—plus the friends he made along the way—into his debut, LoveStrong Vol. 1. Though it’s a clean, cool and virtuosic workshop of a record, Strong mostly sidesteps rigid jazz musicality for raw emotion during these 10 wide-ranging tracks. For Triangle jazz, the result is a welcome jolt of energy.

On “Blue Monk,” a gaggle of spirited speakeasy hounds, whom Strong affectionately dubs “Party Boys,” cheer Strong toward the threshold of Afrobeat ecstasy. “Here we go, horns,” he announces back, parading his horn section through the Thelonious Monk standard. Together, they unite New Orleans second lines and Nigerian funk licks, closing an international jazz gap.

LoveStrong’s chief prerogative seems to be proving that Strong is savvy both as an erudite student of the form’s history and an active composer for its future. Strong offers evidence for the latter through six originals penned with saxophonist Bluford Thompson Jr. and organist Chuckey Robinson. “Liquid” builds on an R&B essence and trails off beyond the smooth jazz wasteland, Strong and Thompson ultimately trading lush horn leads that melt into each other. “Fond of You” finds Strong wobbling with his horn, boiling in concentration, while he blows with the slow relief of deliverance during “Was.” These numbers crest alongside the four covers.

Strong primps the traditionally youthful “Itsy Bitsy Spider” with sophisticated harmonies, and guitarist JC Martin’s sonority during “Ci’s Blues” spotlights the veteran bandleader’s ability to arrange a piece that seems suitable for a variety of contexts— cabarets, concert halls, close quarters. His past powers his current versatility.

Sure, the playing of Strong and his varied ensembles here may feel a touch safe, not risky or defiant. He realigns “My Favorite Things,” for instance, but doesn’t necessarily re-imagine it, and Strong has omitted some of his more edgy fare for his debut. But on LoveStrong, he taps a deep pool of talented peers that helps animate and update his deepest jazz convictions. LoveStrong is public testimony to Strong’s powerful private leadership. —Eric Tullis

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TO SELL FIRE IN HELL

One team of unpaid interns, 25 ideas for rebranding the careers of Scott Stapp and Aaron Lewis

BY ZACHARY LIPEZ

O

Scott Stapp & Aaron Lewis: Boy Detectives? A series where the two fight crime—crimes of passion.

Scott Stapp & Aaron Lewis: Literal Sons of God. Not unlike the sure-to-be-a-hit Fox show Lucifer, but they’re both Jesus.

Long poem in the vein of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” but from the point of view of one of the mermen in Creed’s “My Sacrifice” video. Maybe pitch it to The New Yorker? Does anyone in the Stapp camp know Paul Muldoon?

“The Pearl Jam We Deserve” as a tagline for their upcoming releases. I know Lewis is a country artist now (God, do I know), but his voice remains pure Vedder. Or at least Seven Mary Three. Grunge is popular again, right?

My sources at Condé Nast say yes.

A thinkpiece (or series of them?) titled “Tribal Tattoos, Power Chords and Blouses: A Contrarian Defense of Scott Stapp and Aaron Lewis.” Sponsored content at VICE? What’s good is bad and vice versa. Millennials love that shit.

Netflix original: Power Man and Iron Fist but, you know, Scott Stapp & Aaron Lewis.

An Apology/No Apology Tour 2016: Stapp apologizes for a bunch of stuff he really doesn’t have to apologize for,

“The Real American Values Festival”? Like Gathering of the Juggalos but with a strong(er) moral center and maybe only a touch of eyeliner … for the cameras, of course. Let’s see what Seether and Live are doing.

James Franco.

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS WILLIAMS

K, fellow interns: This is it, why we got in the biz. You know what they say about power and responsibility, don’t you? This is a powerful unpaid responsibility we’ve been given.

As the volunteer in-house publicity team for Not The End Records, our task is to assist the label in rebranding two of its premier artists, Scott Stapp and Aaron Lewis, for simultaneously released solo albums. Some of you may have been conceived to the sounds of their previous bands, Creed or Staind, in the back of a pre-owned car, but the last few years have been worse for them than for you.

Big-time rock critics like to say that Stapp and Lewis have written some of the worst songs of the last 50 years. But so have a lot of people, you know? And Stapp and Lewis also raised more than a million dollars in charity between them, which a lot of people haven’t. I know I haven’t, for instance. Have you?

On one hand, our work is cut out for us. On the other, these are amiable, good Americans of limited curiosity but with strong chins and perpetually mournful gazes. They shouldn’t be that hard to sell.

There are no bad ideas, so I’ve included all the suggestions from our meetings of the last week below. Let’s run some of them up the flagpole and see who salutes.

and Lewis declines to apologize for a bunch of stuff he does. Each night ends with them both getting the national anthem exactly right.

A quiz show called Prejudice of Small Differences, where music writers must explain why Stapp and Lewis are bad while contemporary rip-offs of Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden are good. Stapp and Lewis will judge, and winners—should there be any—get to own SPIN. Movie idea! Bohunks at Calvary: Stapp and Lewis are the two thieves beside Jesus. How much baggage does Mel Gibson still have? How does he feel about post-grunge?

Really, it’s the least Jewish of all musical genres.

Something with “Been a While” in the title?

Movie Idea! Henry & Glenn Forever but straight. Who do we know at Marvel?

Aaron Lewis, naked, straddling a gun. Pretty sure he’d go for it. Yes, it can be a girl gun.

Fred Durst has reinvented himself as an indie filmmaker auteur, and people have forigiven every shitty thing that dude said. Let’s send Stapp and Lewis a few Hal Hartley movies for inspiration and see what they come up with.

(Don’t let them know about my Martin Donovan slashfiction blog, though. I don’t think they’d understand.)

John Cena is going to be out for a while?

Let’s set up a tour with Daughn Gibson.

Lewis comes from the hardscrabble backwoods of western Massachusetts. Maybe have him give a tour of its dirt roads, from Tanglewood to the Berkshire Mall Target to the dust bowl wilds of the Lanesboro mini-putt. Afterward, we can go to King Cone in Pittsfield and get some authentic country-boy soft-serve.

Let’s for sure get a lot of pictures of them leaning against walls, looking up with furrowed brows. Maybe they endorse a handmade line of small hoop earrings? Artisanal is in.

Can we patent a pained expression?

Do you think we could talk them into a duet album, maybe of standards à la Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett? Imagine those two growling “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” or even the Evan Dando songbook? Maybe just 12 versions of “Jesus Christ Pose.” I get handsome chills thinking about it.

Facial hair.

Seriously, facial hair is very big right now. Let’s look into it.

Let’s get them on Jimmy Fallon. Rumor has it, he sacrificed his sense of discernment to the devil to get his show, and our boys can get him right with the Lord.

What are the chances of getting Stapp and Lewis on the Republican ballot? Potential slogan: “Objectively speaking, not as embarrassing as the other Republican candidates.”

I’m pretty sure that a Stapp/Lewis (or vice versa) ticket could work at a brokered convention, and we’d be sure of a Kid Rock endorsement. s Zachary Lipez lives in New York. Twitter: @ZacharyLipez

SCOTT STAPP with Rockett Queen Monday, Jan. 18, 8 p.m., $20–$24 Cat’s Cradle, 300 E. Main St., Carrboro 919-967-9053, www.catscradle.com

AARON LEWIS Thursday, Jan. 14, 8 p.m., $27.50 The Ritz, 2820 Industrial Drive, Raleigh 919-424-1400, www.ritzraleigh.com

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NATURAL REMEDIES

After a bad breakup but before leaving for Costa Rican sunshine, Murat Dirlik finished a gorgeous set of heartbroken songs BY CORBIE

I

n North Carolina, it’s sweater weather.

The wind is cool and damp, the ground riddled with strata of soggy, decaying leaves. But not so along Costa Rica’s western shore, where, not far from celebrated Pacific swells, Murat Dirlik sits outside in the middle of a sunny Playa Grande afternoon.

He’s shirtless and drinking homemade wine.

“I’m totally addicted to surfing. It’s my favorite thing to do,” says Dirlik.

Until May, he lived in Hillsborough and was enmeshed in the Triangle music scene, particularly through his righteous blues-metal steamroller, Caltrop. “I miss everyone horribly, but I don’t spend my time reflecting on that. I’m super-busy and having a ton of fun.”

Dirlik guesses it’s about 90 degrees in Playa Grande, but he seems hesistant to say even this, as if quantifying the weather will ruin its magic. Behind him, subtropical plants that wouldn’t survive a North Carolina winter thrive. Tucked among them are honeymoon rental cabins, of which Dirlik is the property manager.

He fixes everything that breaks—cars, washing machines, Wi-Fi networks. A friend strolls by and calls out to Dirlik that he’s picked up some necessary motorcycle parts. They chat for a moment, Dirlik answering in Spanish, and make plans to catch up later.

Across the water in one direction, there’s the tourist-friendly town of Tamarindo, where spring break rituals certainly apply. But Dirlik lives and works inside the jungle of Las Baulas National Marine Park. His friends are locals and European expats. He’s comfortable with his adventuresome new lifestyle, not cavalier. Picture a grown-up Huck Finn, his beard graying and face grizzled but finding ways to gleefully thrive on the fringes of what’s expected.

“You get the occasional person that hates it here,” he says, a perpetual halfgrin, half-smirk on his face. “They’re the kind of people who don’t realize that Costa Rica has ants or snakes or hot weather.”

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS WILLIAMS

But Dirlik’s excellent new record, released seven months after he left North Carolina, doesn’t exactly depict a paradise.

Instead, Songs From the Last Time I Died reflects the climate of late 2014, a bleak personal stretch for Dirlik that led directly to his exit. He was in the depths of a bad breakup, and Caltrop seemed to be disintegrating. He’d had the same job for a decade and the same house on the Eno River for just as long. He loved both, but, at the age of 41, he bristled at the thought of getting stuck with them for the rest of his life. He penned a handful of tender,

heartbroken pop cuts, about as far removed from Caltrop’s viscous churn as he could get, and left for Costa Rica.

Songs stands now as a letter home from a musician who’s found a way to put out a record with no strings attached—and who is not coming back any time soon.

Huck Finn would rather surf.

S

am Taylor does not speak of Caltrop in the past tense.

“As we left it, nobody said, ‘It’s done,’” the band’s guitarist and vocalist says. “If I ended up back in a room with

HILL

those dudes playing music at some point, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Fellow guitarist Adam Nolton agrees; the four achieved machine-like tightness and intuitive chemistry, he says, and plenty of unfinished material remains.

Still, in 2012, Taylor moved back to Morehead City, where his parents, uncles, aunts and brother all live. For about two years, he made the three-hourplus commute from the port town to the Triangle for practices. Touring and recording naturally slowed, and in 2014, he and drummer John Crouch became dads.

“For over 10 years, we toured something like 80 or 90 days out of the year—not a lot for some bands, but a lot for dudes in their 40s with wives, kids, mortgages, jobs,” Nolton says. “Everyone was growing up.”

Dirlik agrees that the band could have maintained that slower pace for many more years, but he sounds less than keen on the idea of Caltrop persisting on life support. When his current employer offered him work overseeing cabins at Playa Grande—a guaranteed job and place to live on a coast known for its surfing—he jumped at the chance.

Caltrop played a blowout farewell show at Chapel Hill dive bar The Kraken in February, and a hard-drinking audience drank the place dry. Everything was wrapping up, and Dirlik was on his way out.

That lit a fire under Mike Westbrook, who had heard the songs Dirlik had written and had already decided he wanted to be the person to put them to tape.

“I was pushing just as fast as I could,” Westbrook remembers. “He could leave in two weeks. He could leave in two days.”

Westbrook and Dirlik began making music together a quarter-century ago as high school seniors. Their early songs were goofy, lightweight numbers written by teenagers drinking soda until 3 a.m.

Hip-hop numbers about suburban kids who thought they were tough existed alongside reggae songs about their friends and death metal cuts about chips and salsa at El Rodeo.

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music visual arts performance books film sports “Our musical relationship started on this awesome level of pure fun—no shows, we would just go to his parents’ garage and make whatever weird song we could come up with,” Dirlik recalls. “We were sober kids back then, having fun, making music.”

Years later, the two worked together in Kerbloki, a comedy hip-hop project that lasted until Westbrook moved to New York City in 2009. After three years, he returned, but he’d refined his focus. Eschewing the complications of performing, he shifted his attention to sound engineering. Today, he does sound design for documentaries, scores short films, and helms recording sessions.

Given their shared history and Westbrook’s new résumé, Dirlik knew he could trust no one else with these breakup songs. The results have more in common with the Beatles, America or the Beach Boys than the riff-based metal of Dirlik’s past project. Punctuated by pedal steel, “Change” is a swinging Americana ballad, rich with oohs and ahs. “Empty Room” is modern doo-wop, while “Jennjammin” adjoins Brill Building R&B to upbeat funkrock. Dirlik sounds wounded and vulnerable, as if confiding in his acoustic guitar.

“Thank you boss man/for giving me these things to build,” Dirlik sings in the opener.

“They silence my mind and my heart.”

A

fter the breakup that spawned these tunes, Dirlik told his mother he’d rather spend Thanksgiving alone, drinking a case or more of beer and fixing things around his old place in Hillsborough, than come home for the holiday. Rather than dwell on the breakup, he kept busy. It had been a long time coming, and Dirlik admits it was his fault—a recurring pattern in his life.

“It’s just heartbreak,” he says. “It’s not suffering compared to the suffering some people experience, but it is something that’s hard to escape when you’re in the midst of it.”

The first song, “Change,” came to him in a rush. He saved it as a voice memo on his phone. More followed, many of them simple four-chord numbers. Dirlik loves the Beatles, but he’d never written anything so close to rock’s basics before.

After the complexity of Caltrop, such simplicity seemed strange and exciting.

“He’s kind of a maximalist,” Crouch says. “As a bass player and artist in

general, he likes to fill in all the nooks and crannies.”

Westbrook guided Dirlik through these stages on Songs, bringing in cello, keys, pedal steel and upright bass as well as contributions from Nolton and Crouch.

The house was built on a foundation of wounded vocals and straightforward acoustic chords.

“I would go so far as to give Mike more credit than myself,” Dirlik says. “It’s a whole different complicated way to do a song.”

In a way, the end result is the ultimate expression of what Dirlik and Westbrook started a generation ago—not the comedy, mind you, but the love of recorded music for its own sake. Songs is a return to the no-obligation way Westbrook and Dirlik once made music together, a way to find some innocence even in sadness and goodbyes.

It’s not suffering compared to the suffering some people experience, but it is something that’s hard to escape when you’re in the midst of it.

—Murat Dirlik “Being in Costa Rica is a little bit of a safety blanket for him,” says Westbrook.

“I don’t know if he was here if it wouldn’t force the issue of, ‘This record’s done, let’s play some shows.’”

Westbrook, like half of Caltrop, is a family man now, while Dirlik has found a way to remain a sort of perpetual teenager—working hard and working with his hands, sure, but also chasing Pacific swells and cavorting in a tropical jungle simply because he can.

“All of my friends, they were like, ‘Man, you’d better do it. Because we can’t,’” Dirlik says, happily sitting in the heat, under the trees, not far from the sea.

That much Taylor can agree with: “Surrounding yourself with beauty never hurts.” s Corbie Hill lives in sunny, tropical Pittsboro and tweets: @afraidofthebear.

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CANDID CAMERA

Former Southern Documentary Fund director Rachel Raney brings real stories of the South to UNC-TV

BY HANNAH PITSTICK

A

fter a recent episode of Antiques Roadshow on UNCTV, Alamance County dairy farmer Randy Lewis sat in front of his television with friends and local filmmakers Jason Arthurs and Ted Richardson to watch scenes from his life in The Last Barn Dance. The 26-minute documentary, cut down from 32 minutes for television, follows Lewis’ struggle to preserve his family’s dairy farm and its traditions.

“Randy was flabbergasted to see himself on TV,” says Arthurs, co-producer of the film, which kicked off the new Reel South series on Monday, Jan. 4. “He watches a lot of TV, so to see himself on his own television set where he watches TV shows was an experience for him.”

Reel South is a collaboration between UNC-TV, the Southern Documentary Fund and South Carolina Educational Television.

Six half-hour or hour-long documentaries about the American South—exploring the environmental art of Patrick Dougherty (Bending Sticks, Jan. 25) or cotton’s journey from South Carolina farms to Chinese factories (Cotton Road, Jan. 11), for instance—are airing at 9 or 9:30 p.m. every Monday in January.

This Monday’s lineup features Can’t Stop the Water, a film about Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, and the Native American community trying to save its culture as the land washes away. It’s followed by Counter Histories: Rock Hill, which takes a look back at the nine college men who dared to stage a sit-in at a whites-only lunch counter in 1961 Rock Hill, South Carolina.

In the first episode, The Last Barn Dance was paired with Tommy! The Dreams I Keep Inside Me, a film by Durham resident Rodrigo Dorfman about Tommy Onorato, a 60-year-old Raleigh man with autism who dreams of singing in a big band.

Dorfman’s first film aired in 1998 as part of North Carolina Visions, a UNC-TV program that showed almost 300 local films, from

Randy Lewis at the premiere of The Last Barn Dance in Palm Springs, California PHOTO BY TED RICHARDSON

full-length documentaries to experimental shorts, in the course of a decade or so.

After a change in leadership in 2014, UNC-TV asked Rachel Raney and the Southern Documentary Fund to organize a series of listening sessions with independent media-makers around North Carolina between late 2014 and early 2015, exploring ways to develop and acquire original content from local producers.

Many expressed a desire for a new version of North Carolina Visions to showcase work by local filmmakers and highlight local issues. UNC-TV answered with Reel South.

“It’s exciting to have a renaissance of amazing creativity in North Carolina, and in the South in general, that is homegrown, and to see that reflected in our public institution,” Dorfman says. “That’s very important because for many years I felt fairly alienated from my local public television station.”

Integral to the creation of Reel South was Rachel Raney, former director of the

Southern Documentary Fund and soonto-be director of independent productions at UNC-TV. Raney believes Reel South will be more sustainable than North Carolina Visions because it covers the entire Southeast region, rather than just North Carolina, so there are even more films to choose from. There is also the shared commitment and resource pool of three producing partners.

“I think that the lineup we have for this pilot season is as good as anything you can see across the country on public television,” Raney says. “And if you look at a lot of the national documentary series, which I love, there are very few Southern films that get picked up. Not only are we letting people around the South see films from their backyard about their communities, but we’re also introducing the rest of the country to great, authentic Southern stories—a real counterbalance to a lot of what gets out there about the South.”

In addition to UNC-TV, the films will air on the South Carolina-based SCETV, more than a dozen public channels around the Southeast, and any other stations in the country that choose to pick up the series through the National Educational Telecommunications Association.

Many of the films are also viewable at UNC-TV’s website.

Raney says a second season of Reel South is already being discussed, though nothing is official yet.

“This first season was very much bootstrapped,” she says.

“But I think people are already looking forward to a Season Two, and we’ve been getting numerous inquiries from filmmakers around the South about how to submit.”

Dorfman and Arthurs agree that an ongoing series broadcasting Southern documentaries to a wide audience could change the game for independent producers. Right now, much of their work isn’t seen outside of film festivals and local screenings.

“It’s very time-consuming and it takes a lot of work to connect with the audience that’s going to be moved by your film,” Arthurs says. “I think what Reel South does, and could do a lot more of in the future, is offer filmmakers a way to connect with those audiences very easily.” s Hannah Pitstick is an Illinois native who recently moved to Durham, more or less on a whim. She enjoys writing about oddballs and outliers, including men with alarmingly large taxidermy collections and couples with

REEL SOUTH UNC-TV, 9 & 9:30 p.m., Mondays in January www.unctv.org/content/reelsouth

• JANUARY 13, 2016 • music visual arts performance books film sports INDYweek.com

THE WORLDS OF

FAMILY FEUD

NATURE, SCIENCE, AND IMAGINATION

BY BYRON WOODS

M. C. ESCHER

EXTENDED THROUGH JAN. 24 EAST BUILDING, MEYMANDI EXHIBITION GALLERY The most comprehensive Escher exhibition ever presented in the United States.

Featuring more than 130 works by the artist, some never before exhibited publicly.

LEONARDO DA VINCI’S

CODEX LEICESTER

AND THE CREATIVE MIND

C L O S E S J A N U A R Y 17 EAST BUILDING, GALLERY 2

The Codex Leicester is a 500-year-old notebook from inventor, scientist, and artist Leonardo da Vinci. Presented in dramatic fashion, the original manuscript offers a rare glimpse into one of the greatest minds in history.

2110 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh

T I C K E T S ncartmuseum.org or (919) 715-5923

The Worlds of M. C. Escher is organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art. The Codex Leicester is on loan from Bill Gates. In Raleigh generous support for the Codex Leicester is provided by the Ron and Jeanette Doggett Fund. Both exhibitions are made possible, in part, by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources; the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation, Inc.; and the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment for Educational Exhibitions. Research for these exhibitions was made possible by Ann and Jim Goodnight/The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fund for Curatorial and Conservation Research and Travel.

M. C. Escher, Drawing Hands, 1948, lithograph, 11 1/8 × 13 1/8 in., Private collection, Texas, © 2015 The M. C. Escher Company, The Netherlands.

All rights reserved. www.mcescher.com Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Leicester (Sheet 1A, folio 1r) (detail), 1508–10, ink on paper, 11 2/3 × 8 1/2 in., Courtesy of Bill Gates, © 1994 bgC3 PRESENTING SPONSOR

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24

In the great Small and Tired, a reminder that it could always be worse

I

now know my favorite aunt liked soap operas for the same reason I once liked horror flicks and dystopian comics: Both gave us the desired perspective that, somehow, things could be so much worse.

I picked up this insight over the holidays with the folks and the family. (We had a funeral. Hope yours were fine, thanks.) After that time with them, seeing a show like SMALL AND TIRED made me feel as if I’d never left.

Because of and despite that, I have to recommend the latest Common Wealth Endeavors production as the company’s strongest to date. Artistic director Gregor McElvogue leads a solid quintet though Australian playwright Kit Brookman’s family drama, a surprisingly deft, contemporary retelling of the Oresteia.

At first, it seems the blood debt has been lifted from the house of Atreus. Iphigenia died years ago, at home, by her own hand, and not her father’s. Agamemnon has just perished from a heart attack, and Orestes has returned from years of self-imposed exile. He’s not bent on matricide against Clytemnestra, but organizing his dad’s funeral instead. So the Furies are not pursuing Orestes.

But as details unravel over beers in a bar with new companion Pylades, or uneasy drinks in a backyard with his sister Electra, we learn that something equally implacable

SMALL AND TIRED HHHH Common Ground Theatre 4815B Hillsborough Road, Durham 919-384-7817 | cgtheatre.com Through Jan. 23

Laurel Ullman (Electra) and Justin Brent Johnson (Orestes) PHOTO BY ALEX MANESS

is in pursuit of Orestes. Jane Holding’s regal, icy Clytemnestra gives her son only the coldest of comfort upon his return.

When Orestes asks if she wishes that her family had turned out otherwise, she calmly replies, “I wish a lot of things had gone differently, darling. But they didn’t.” When she smiles while explaining her reasons for initially sending Orestes away after Iphigenia’s death, it’s clear Clytemnestra thinks she did the right thing. It’s also as obvious she still has no inkling of the toxic, true consequences of her acts.

Laurel Ullman’s magnetic and unstable Electra stands among her best performances. She is caught in a psychological quintuple-bind between love, attraction, revulsion, trauma and vengeance. Linh Schladweiler makes a solid return to the regional stage as her husband and caregiver, Jim. Under McElvogue’s direction, Justin Peoples seemed too invasive as Pylades during a rushed first encounter with Orestes in a bar, but he later found a more mellow approach. I also questioned Justin Brent Johnson’s performance as Orestes, which seemed more reactive than active.

Still, the chill in this production from a family mostly frozen by its members’ grief, anger and need remains palpable—and, to some at least, familiar. Bundle up. s Byron Woods is contributing editor for live arts.

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NUDE AWAKENING

The avant-garde dance of Marie Chouinard is painful to watch and impossible to forget

BY BRIAN HOWE

F

or all of art’s supposed real-world impact—its carriage of cultural lineage and its educational value— sometimes I think it exists simply to furnish my mind. And like any furniture, only a few pieces stick around through the movements of life.

I see a lot of exhibits and performances that, sooner or later, just slip away. No matter how admirable they might seem during the encounter, how morally flattering or consoling, what does it really mean if I don’t remember it? Maybe the true measure of art is simply that it lasts— not in canons but in individuals, leaving a psychic mark people can use for their own inspiration and insight.

Compagnie Marie Chouinard’s exquisitely traumatic Orpheus et Eurydice, a Carolina Performing Arts co-commission at Memorial Hall in 2009, left such a mark on me. Some of the images and the feelings roiling within them—contorted women pulling glittery gouts of fabric from their throats, silhouetted men in dildos bending gracefully at the knee—got stuck in my head, crumbling away at the edges, mineralizing the sediment of my inner life.

Chouinard is a French-Canadian dance artist who has been working since the late ’70s, building a rarified reputation (she was knighted in Canada in 2007) for avant-garde provocations of overclocked beauty and ugliness. This Saturday, Chouinard’s company returns with another Carolina Performing Arts co-commission, Gymnopédies, set to compositions by Erik Satie, the fin-de-siècle French pianist whose aching ruminations are equally beloved by fans of classical, minimalist and ambient music. The program also includes Henri Michaux: Mouvements, a vigorous interpretation of the drawings of the esoteric poet and painter.

Anyone who saw Orpheus should recognize in Gymnopédies Chouinard’s distinct visual style—bodies in constant sinuous motion clump in morphing, flowing friezes, with solos and duets flaking off here and there—and her conceptual terrain. A sexually charged state of play degrades toward antagonism, coercion and captivity.

But where Orpheus blared beautiful agonies with demented glamour,

Gymnopédies PHOTO COURTESY OF CAROLINA PERFORMING ARTS

Gymnopédies constrains the same shocking forces in a quieter, more elegant package.

Less outwardly wrenching, its relative delicacy only focuses the raw panic throbbing in its heart.

Creatures in states of distress so extreme they almost exult in their suffering populated Orpheus. It certainly didn’t give me hope for humanity or change my mind about anything. Was it enjoyable? Yes, in its gorgeous affront to the senses, but it was also pretty gutting—a visceral exposure of emotional truths about feeling cast out and the ways people hurt each other through desire, especially how men treat women.

Gymnopédies is another punch in the gut.

Chouinard’s work is brave in that it airs out the depths of fear, but it is not moral or proud. It is unflinchingly honest and rank with shame. It rips something open and leaves something behind, where so many other shows mark only old calendars.

At first, Gymnopédies feints toward a softer side of Chouinard. As a dancer begins to play Satie’s music, the gentle dissonance moving under the placid surface is like memory haloed in

sound, and it encircles a scene of idyllic innocence. Dancers born out of white chrysalises walk off holding hands.

The nudity that had been flushed with obscenity in Orpheus is pristine and chaste.

But then, of course, something bad happens. As the pianist begins to misplay chords, as if losing her faith in this story of sweetness, the dancers steal back in black clothes that begin to flow off their bodies.

One couple engages in some struggling floor work, the woman trying to escape the man.

The newborn creatures are awakening to desire and shedding innocence, and as the movement grows more carnal, it also becomes more deeply snarled in nets of power and submission. The piece starts to exert its inexorable emotional crush, resounding with compositions of spare, perversely classical grandeur.

A very tall woman blinded with a black sash duets en pointe with a much shorter man, whose hands keep straying up her inner thighs. Dancers cavort in clown noses, pulling dumb faces. An anguished singing woman is grasped and groped as

she tries to leap away from her partner.

Eventually, someone has sex with a keyboard, or with discord itself.

Despite the chaotic energies unleashed, the scenes are very clear in their emotional dimensions and open in their narrative content, so any feelings of self-recognition they stir up are uniquely yours to interpret.

It won’t exactly make you feel good, upstanding or secure in your relationships.

Maybe you won’t even like it. But if you can keep your gaze fixed on the dazzling obsidian mirror of Chouinard’s obsessions, you might see something you’ll never forget. s Brian Howe is the INDY’s arts and culture editor. Email him at bhowe@indyweek.com.

COMPAGNIE MARIE CHOUINARD Saturday, Jan. 16, 8 p.m., $19–$49 UNC’s Memorial Hall, 114 E. Cameron Ave., Chapel Hill 919-843-3333 www.carolinaperformingarts.org

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1.13–1.20

Where we’ll be

CALENDARS MUSIC 28 VISUAL ARTS 32 PERFORMANCE 33 BOOKS 34 FILM 34

LECTURE

FORGING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

NORTH CAROLINA MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCES, RALEIGH | THURSDAY, JAN. 14

Late last year, WRAL-TV’s chief meteorologist, Greg Fishel, caused quite the stir with an essay called “Choose science, stewardship in understanding climate change.” Fishel scolded politicians for drawing party lines around a global crisis that should be rooted in scientific reason, not vote-getting, and called for a reckoning of the overwhelming data indicating that climate change is real.

Fishel joins a town hall, dubbed “Forging a Sustainable Future,” with representatives from the United Nations and N.C. State to talk about, yes, climate change but also quests to create more sustainable social structures through scientific advances and education. They’ll also discuss local and global initiatives to slow the effects of climate change and ensure there’s a world left to love for future generations. A meet-and-greet follows, providing a chance to catch one of Fishel’s delightfully geeky puns up close.

7 p.m., free, 11 W. Jones St., Raleigh, 919-707-9800, www.naturalsciences.org. —Allison Hussey

packs just as much of a punch as ever. Expect to hear some tunes from her heavy-hitting 2014 album, The Tattooed Lady and the Alligator Man, as well as a hearty helping of songs from all across a very strong career. Durham quartet Good Rocking Sam opens.

7 p.m., $20–$25, 723 Rigsbee Ave., Durham, 919-901-0875, www.motorcomusic.com. —Jim Allen

MUSIC | RATATAT

THEATER | STICK FLY

THE RITZ, RALEIGH | TUESDAY, JAN. 19

Before the arrival of last year’s LP, Magnifique, the Brooklyn instrumental duo Ratatat had remained largely quiet for the last five years, though their influence could be felt through the increase of electronic strains within indie rock circles. Neither the silence nor the shifting musical landscape changed the band, though. During the previous decade, Ratatat honed what is unequivocally “The Ratatat Sound”—simple, stylish guitar leads backed by twirling electro-pop synths and chunky hip-hop percussion. Occasionally, foreign elements such as a talkbox solo or Wurlitzer added variety, but the band has an impressive, almost self-satisfied dedication to the singularity of its style. On Magnifique, the familiar sound palette feels like staring into a color field painting for a half-hour; whether or not you like the simplicity, restraint and particular choice of color Ratatat supplies, the material is as evocative as what you bring to it. Warp Records IDM wunderkind Jackson and His Computer Band opens. 8 p.m., $25, 2820 Industrial Drive, Raleigh, 919-424-1400, www.ritzraleigh.com. —David Ford Smith

MUSIC | MARCIA BALL

MOTORCO, DURHAM | WEDNESDAY, JAN. 20

A blues piano player couldn’t ask for a much better background than being born in Texas and bred in Louisiana. That’s exactly how Marcia Ball began her life. Heavily influenced by Professor Longhair, Ball injects a dose of New Orleans R&B into her barnstorming, barrelhouse blues piano style. She’s got a soulsoaked set of pipes to match. Ball put out her first album in 1978, and nearly four decades later, the 66-year-old blues mama

STICK FLY

RALEIGH LITTLE THEATRE, RALEIGH FRIDAY, JAN. 15–SUNDAY, JAN. 31

Playwright Lydia Diamond’s harrowing adaptation of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye challenged audiences at PlayMakers Rep in 2007. Now, at Raleigh Little Theatre, guest director Karen Dacons-Brock leads a sextet, including Thomasi McDonald, TJ Swann and Moriah Williams, in Diamond’s Stick Fly, an incendiary work that casts an unblinking eye on sexism, classism and abuses of privilege within the black community. It’s not just another idyllic summer outing to Martha’s Vineyard for an upper-class black family, the LeVays. Flip and Kent, the two brothers, have brought their smart, beautiful new girlfriends along. Too soon?

Maybe so: Kimber’s Italian—and white. Then there’s Taylor; you’ll learn what’s up with her soon enough. After meeting them both, Dr. Joe LeVay, the family patriarch, bluntly reveals he has a lesson to teach them all about the right kind of people to invite into the family—and what happens when you bring the wrong kind home. 8 p.m. Thurs.–Sat.; 3 p.m. Sun., $13–$22, 301 Pogue St., Raleigh, 919-821-4579, www.raleighlittletheatre.org.

—Byron Woods

TECH | MEET THE ROBOTS

NCSU’S HILL LIBRARY, RALEIGH | WEDNESDAY, JAN. 20

Puppets and robots are both proxies we send into otherwise impossible or dangerous spaces, whether physical or emotional.

That’s the fascinating link between Meet the Robots, a robotics demonstration at Hunt Library Jan. 20, and Life’s Little Dramas: Puppets, Proxies, and Spirits, the Gregg Museum of Art & Design’s exhibit (recently extended through Feb. 28) of its new

PHOTO BY CURTIS BROWN

016

puppet collection. The connection is already there in the exhibit, which includes the Triangle Amateur Robotics club’s working replica of a Mars rover robot among the Edwardian-era Punch and Judy figures, Sri Lankan marionettes and Indonesian shadow puppets. Prehistorically, we thought our proxies had spirits; now, we wonder if they have minds. You can muse on that in depth with KensRobots founder and N.C. State graduate Ken Boone, who will discuss and demonstrate the rover—and introduce you to a humanoid robot that shares his name. A tour of the exhibit follows the demo in the second-floor assembly room. 3 p.m., free, 2 W. Broughton Drive, Raleigh, 919-515-3364, www.lib.ncsu.edu/event/meet-robots. —Brian Howe

MUSIC | POWER TRIP

KINGS, RALEIGH | MONDAY, JAN. 18

As the guitars march in tandem and the drums lash at his back, Power Trip frontman Riley Gale delivers his band’s thesis statement in a serrated, cutting yell: “I pledge deviance from under the flag.” That sociopolitical pronouncement actually arrives at the end of “Power Trip,” a sort of self-sovereignty anthem for the young Texas thrash-and-hardcore miscreants who released it on the great 2013 debut, Manifest Decimation. A wild-eyed, antic-prone bandleader, Gale rails against the silliest systems of safe, standard society with old-school, better-than-that invective.

The mighty band behind him matches his animosity, bending the mores of metal and punk to create a beastly hybrid and delivering dense riffs heavy, hard and fast. Power Trip is the musical equivalent of a crooked middle finger, raised ecstatically and defiantly. On stage, Gale becomes a preacher, delivering a fervent sermon of solidarity. Power Trip has at last finished its second album, promised to be leaner and meaner than its predecessor.

The band stops in Raleigh during a night off from one of the year’s biggest metal tours, where it’s supporting Anthrax, Lamb of God and Deafheaven. Not a bad consolation prize for a Monday night.

With Funeral Chic, Joy, Invoke and Refocus. 8 p.m., $12, 14 W. Martin St., Raleigh, 919-833-1091, www.kingsbarcade.com.

—Grayson Haver Currin

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CAT’S CRADLE: Wacka Flocka Flame; 8 p.m., $20–$25.

See indyweek.com.

CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): Jucifer, Them Damn Bruners; 9 p.m., $10. See box, page 29.

THE CAVE: AJ Gaither; 9 p.m.

JOHNNY’S GONE FISHING: Genna & Jesse; 7 p.m., free.

LINCOLN THEATRE: Liquid Stranger, Space Jesus, Au5; 9 p.m., $12.50. See indyweek.com.

POUR HOUSE: Down By Five, The Big Takeover; 9 p.m., $5–$7.

THU, JAN 14 CARRBORO CENTURY CENTER: Michael and Earleen; noon, free.

CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM) RAINBOW KITTEN SURPRISE Boone’s Rainbow Kitten Surprise (what a fuckin’ name, right?) begins a two-night stand tonight; that both nights are sold out is a testament to the young band’s fervent fan base. By and large, the quintet mellows out the mild pop-rock of Edward Sharpe, Alt-J and Kings of Leon with a jam-rock vibe; RKS, the group’s first long-player, is an agreeable if unambitious outing, making for a wholly pleasant listen that’s not nearly as exciting as the name promises. $8–$10/9 p.m. —PW THE CAVE: Minor Moon, Ravary, S.E. Ward; 9 p.m., $5.

DEEP SOUTH: Ghosts Again, 32 Pints, The Oh Whales, The Concussion Theory, Sunnydale, Eyes Eat Suns; 7:30 p.m., $10–$15.

Contributors: Jim Allen (JA), Grant Britt (GB), Grayson Haver Currin (GC), Spencer Griffith (SG), Allison Hussey (AH), David Klein (DK), Jordan Lawrence (JL), Bryan C. Reed (BCR), Dan Ruccia (DR), Eric Tullis (ET), Patrick Wall (PW)

DUKE’S NELSON MUSIC ROOM: Alexander Technique Master Class for String Players with William Conable; 7:30 p.m., free.

IRREGARDLESS: The Commanderrs; 6:30 p.m.

KINGS: Kurtzweil, Hemingway, Paper Dolls, Fin; 8:30 p.m., $5.

PITTSBORO ROADHOUSE: Tuesday Night Music Club; 6 p.m.

POUR HOUSE LOCAL BAND LOCAL BEER: THE BRONZED CHORUS It’s been a while since Greensboro’s The Bronzed Chorus released new music, but the giddy dynamics of the post-rock duo still get the job done onstage.

The muscular drumming of Hunter Allen and spacious guitar architecture of Adam Joyce serve up a vibe that is at once tranquil and exhilarating. The expanses created by Raleigh’s Goodbye, Titan has more enormous intentions, but the tender interplay of the band’s calmer moments is as effective as its triumphant crescendos. Night Idea opens.

Free/9:30 p.m. —JL THE RITZ: Aaron Lewis; 8 p.m., $27.50. See page 19.

SLIM’S: Suppressive Fire, Eldritch Horror, Temple Crusher; 8:30 p.m., $5. See box, page 30.

UNC’S MEMORIAL HALL N.C. SYMPHONY: BEETHOVEN’S “EMPEROR” CONCERTO The first North Carolina Symphony concert of 2016 is all about the piano. Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto is symphonic in scope, with the soloist fully integrated into the ensemble and nary a cadenza to be found. The symphony pairs it with Andrew Norman’s Suspend, a 2014 fantasy on Brahms-like themes. At 36, Norman is one of the most in-demand orchestral composers. Both works will feature Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan. $18–$66/7:30 p.m. —DR

FRI, JAN 15 54 WEST: Jeremy & Kyle Unplugged; 8:30 p.m.

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JANUARY 13, 2016

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BEYÙ CAFFÈ: Dirk Quinn Band; 8 & 10 p.m., $8.

BLUE NOTE GRILL: Duke Street Dogs; 6-8 p.m., free.

BLUE NOTE GRILL LIPBONE REDDING He’s a soul man who carries his own horn section inside him.

Lipbone Redding, a Bronx native now living in North Carolina, got his nickname from the uncanny trombone impersonation he squeezes from the side of his mouth. He also dabbles in Tuvan throat singing. In less esoteric moments, Redding can replicate a soulful Curtis Mayfield falsetto, conjure up a phlegmy Dr. John impersonation and bring a Rubén Blades flavor to original compositions. $6/9 p.m. —GB

CAROLINA THEATRE BOBBY BONES & THE RAGING IDIOTS A skillful mix of words and music moves the soul, but the deft deployment of silly words within a song can elicit something else, too. What else could explain the endurance of “Weird Al” Yankovic? Bobby Bones is a popular syndicated Nashville DJ who performs under the Raging Idiots moniker. He knows well the wondrous alchemy of goofy sentiments—about Mexican food and fear of commitment, no less—delivered with pep over a sprightly beat and crisp chord changes. He’s also a skilled yarn spinner and teller of self-deprecating tales. $27–$49/7:30 p.m. —DK THE CARY THEATER: David LaMotte, Grace Adele, Keenan Wade; 8 p.m., $20.

CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): Rainbow Kitten Surprise; 9 p.m., $8–$10. See Jan. 14 listing.

THE CAVE: Drum N Bass Dance Party; 9 p.m., $5.

DEEP SOUTH FOUR FOUNDERS Raleigh’s Four Founders fold covers that span classic rock, soul and contemporary pop-rock into swampy Southern songs. The five-piece’s upbeat originals are well-suited for big outdoor bashes and warm-weather tailgates, and they should get the dance floor moving. The energetic altcountry of promising newcomers The Antique Hearts recalls the early American Aquarium album with which the quartet (almost) shares its name. $5/9 p.m. —SG DUKE’S BALDWIN AUDITORIUM: Eric Pritchard

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HAW RIVER BALLROOM RICKY SKAGGS & KENTUCKY THUNDER The original old guard of bluegrass is long gone, and the people who kept it big in the ’60s and ’70s are beginning to age out, too. The mandolin-picking, Kentucky-born Ricky Skaggs, of the latter camp, has spent his life on stages with Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, The Country Gentlemen, J.D. Crowe and the New South, and Emmylou Harris. After a foray into country music in the ’80s, Skaggs has spent the past two decades with his Kentucky Thunder, returning to bluegrass and rightfully claiming a spot as one of the genre’s best. $25–$28/8 p.m. —AH IRREGARDLESS: Tracy Shedd; 6:30 p.m.

KINGS: A/S/L, Tr!ck$; 10 p.m., $7–$10. See box, page 31.

LINCOLN THEATRE: Strutter, Shoot To Thrill; 8:30 p.m., $12–$20.

LOCAL 506: Happy Abandon, XOXOK, Sister David; 9 p.m., $5–$7.

LORRAINE’S COFFEE HOUSE: Garrett Newton Band; 7:30 p.m.

THE MAYWOOD HORSESKULL Local doom crew Horseskull headlines with heavy stoner grooves, dredging a bed of influences to build a jagged amalgamation of Sabbath swagger, Motörhead drive and Eyehategod malevolence. The band’s self-titled 2014 album remains its latest artifact, though the promise of new songs makes this gig enticing. Asheville’s The Beard, featuring ex-Confessor guitarist Shawn McCoy, offers a heady complement, with a psychedelic haze rising from a heavy metal foundation. The result suggests the lighter, more psych-rocking fare of bands like Boris or Baroness. Raleigh hard rockers Spiral Down open. $8/9:30 p.m. —BCR MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL: N.C. Symphony: Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto; 8 p.m., $18– $66. See Jan. 14 listing at UNC’s Memorial Hall.

MOTORCO: Rubber Peacock; 8 p.m., $15.

THE PINHOOK: Party Illegal; 10

voiced Taz Halloween, fellow locals Kitty Box & The Johnnys re-imagine rowdy rockabilly and scorned country ballads for the 21st century. Former leader of the Loners and current Cousins singer Eddie Taylor delivers a solo set. $6–$8/9 p.m. —SG PHOTO BY SCOTT STEWART

and William Conable; 8 p.m., free.

FAIR GAME BEVERAGE COMPANY: The Doug Largent Trio; 6-8 p.m.

JUCIFER

JUCIFER

SAT, JAN 16

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 13

CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM, CARRBORO—Jucifer does not really leave the road. Gazelle Amber Valentine, who screams and conjures brutal fuzz as the guitarist for the duo, lives in an RV with drummer Edgar Livengood. They haven’t had a house since 2000, and they own no land. For 16 years, they have toured almost nonstop with their crushingly loud, crossbred metal.

“It’s definitely a different thing to be constantly immersed in playing music and to have life pared down to just that,” Valentine says. “For us, it’s very positive, although a pretty fragmented and unpredictable day-to-day experience. We do take time off when making a record. And we try to spend a week or so with family at Thanksgiving and Christmas.”

The music they play is equally restless. On 2014’s District of Dystopia, Valentine’s deliriously caustic tones are the only true constant. Sludgy doom erupts into volatile, almosthardcore breakdowns. Soaring stretches of malevolent black metal twist into limber death metal. For Valentine, the freedom of the pair’s lifestyle helps keep them open artistically.

“It keeps us inspired and keeps us in touch with our respective instruments and our band in a really intensive way,” she says. “We can’t always devote time to writing and rehearsing as you do if you have a regular schedule and a practice space. We end up developing ideas while we’re driving. Even though that’s not the most efficient way to work, it does have the advantage of creating a high-pressure situation.”

They challenge themselves, too, by refusing to employ any loops or triggers onstage, a bare-bones approach that creates a famously visceral experience. It’s augmented by an arsenal of 15 to 35 speaker cabinets and 10 to 15 amplifiers used for each gig.

“We find massive, endless power and excitement in the riffs and beats we can do with just our two bodies, no tricks,” Valentine explains. “Our live show is the distilled, essential, most violent and vicious version of the band—and also our favorite.” With Them Damn Bruners. 9 p.m., $10, 300 E. Main St., Carrboro, 919-967-9053, www.catscradle.com.

—Jordan Lawrence

p.m., $5–$8.

PITTSBORO ROADHOUSE: Last Tuesday; 8 p.m.

POUR HOUSE MILAGRO SAINTS Led by seasoned singer, songwriter, guitarist and British expat S.D. Ineson, the Milagro Saints

SHARP NINE GALLERY: Mike Ode Quartet; 8 p.m., $10–$15.

SLIM’S: Thick Modine, Room Full of Strangers, Sam Brown Seven; 9 p.m., $5.

SOUTHLAND BALLROOM: Dealing Stan; 9 p.m., $10–$13.

trade in the expansive territory of American folk music. Tupelo— the latest full-length from the ambling Raleigh veterans—references the birthplace of Elvis, a spot near the breeding ground for many of the Southern blues and roots rock traditions the Saints freshen and hitch to Ineson’s hooks. Starring the smoky-

54 WEST: Sherman Lee Dillon & The Mississippi Sound; 9 p.m.

BEYÙ CAFFÈ: The Tre King Band; 8 & 10 p.m., $7.

BLUE NOTE GRILL: Sutter’s Gold Streak Band; 8 p.m., $10.

CAT’S CRADLE: Abbey Road LIVE!; 4 & 8:30 p.m., $10–$13.

THE CAVE: Moose Kick, Left on Franklin; 9 p.m., $5.

DEEP SOUTH: Ed E. Ruger, Samson, Tucson, Case Jones, Mallz, Kenny Mac, Seven, Sharp, Bishop, Oktober 9, DJ Phillie Phresh; 10 p.m., $5.

HAW RIVER BALLROOM BRIAN FALLON & THE CROWES Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon promises this tour’s sets will preview his upcoming solo debut, Painkillers, a couple months before the album’s release. He’ll mix the material with full-band renditions of tunes from his side project, The Horrible Crowes. Unlike that duo’s recordings, which showed a more subdued side of Fallon than the Springsteen charges of Gaslight Anthem, Painkillers lead single “A Wonderful Life” indicates the fresh material shares the same rock spirit as his main project. Cory Branan bares his feelings in the opening slot. $25/8 p.m. —SG IRREGARDLESS: Daniel Stanislawek; 11 a.m. George Knott Duo; 6 p.m. The Second Line Stompers; 9 p.m.

JOHNNY’S GONE FISHING: Rob Williams; 7-9 p.m., free.

KINGS MUSEUM MOUTH, KISSISSIPPI Museum Mouth and Kississippi draw inspiration from the same well—the nostalgic whirlwind of lump-in-the-throat emotion provided by loss. They deliver their psychic payloads in differ-

ent manners. Southport-born Museum Mouth is all gangly limbs and shattered nerves, leading to ragged pop-punk as convulsive and caustic as it is catchy. Philadelphia’s Kississippi is calmer and more intimate, built on clean electric lines, atmospheric filigrees and Zoë Allaire Reynolds’ killer voice. $5–$7/9 p.m. —PW LINCOLN THEATRE: The Breakfast Club, Supersonic; 9 p.m., $10.

LOCAL 506 WAHYAS In early November, Joshua Johnson survived an accident that nearly cost him his life. Less than three months later, he is back onstage—this time with Wahyas, his guitar-and-drums duo with former Daddy Issues firebrand Lindsey Sprague. Their songs are grimy but powerful. Take “Third Eye,” for example, which delivers lines like, “Won’t you take me to the coast?/Drink tequila and fuck a ghost” over chugging guitar licks and pounding drums. Dex Romweber opens with like-minded, devil-may-care rock. Also, The Othermen and The Trash Hats. $5/9 p.m. —AH LORRAINE’S COFFEE HOUSE: Tim Cifers; 7:30 p.m., $10.

THE MAYWOOD: five40, Inner Prolific, Elusive Groove; 9:30 p.m., $10.

MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL: N.C. Symphony: Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto; 8 p.m., $18– $66. See Jan. 14 listing at UNC’s Memorial Hall.

N.C. MUSEUM OF ART EMCEE ESCHER DANCE PARTY Some of the reality-bending play captured in M.C. Escher’s art seems inherent in the art of b-boying, what with the dancers’ acrobatic contortions, uroboric uprock rituals and infinite windmills. This weekend, those two not-so-distant worlds of form and illusion coalesce at The Worlds of M. C. Escher exhibit with local break-dance crew Raleigh Rockers. They lead the dance charge to the party favors of an all-star sound team—DJ Forge, SpclGst, Keith Ward and Thien. A selection of Escher’s 1960s black-light posters illuminate the party. Either jump in the b-boy cipher or hit your own two-step when you’re done gawking at the art. $20/8 p.m. —ET

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NIGHTLIGHT SPIDER BAGS Spider Bags has, more or less, developed a cult following on its home turf of the Triangle. The band’s rowdy 2012 record, Shake My Head, remains criminally underrated outside of local circles.

But it’s onstage—whether in the massive Dorton Arena at the state fair or just a few inches above the floor at a packed Nightlight—that their raucous, fast-and-loose rock explodes in the way it should. The band’s appearances aren’t exactly rare, but each one is always still a treat. With John Wesley Coleman III and The Kneads. $8–$10/9:30 p.m. —AH NORTH87SOUTH: Mel Melton & The Wicked Mojos; 8 p.m., $5.

THE PINHOOK: Freeze Your Balls Off Scooter Rally: Sound System Seven, DJ Midnite Cowby, DJ Lord Thomas, DJ Soulful Love; 9 p.m.

PITTSBORO ROADHOUSE: Davis, Thomas and Edwards; 8 p.m.

SCHOOLKIDS RECORDS THE SECOND WIFE Wanna get inspired early in the New Year? Go see Reese McHenry, the longtime Dirty Little Heaters belter who now stretches her oeuvre beyond that band’s soul-based rock as The Second Wife. For the last several years, McHenry fought back against a set of heart conditions that nearly killed her.

But 2015’s Tourist is a brilliant recovery, as McHenry takes oldschool rock, country and torch songs in perfect stride. She’s rightfully empowered by her own revitalization.

Free/8 p.m. —GC SHARP NINE GALLERY: Willard McKiver, Martin Eagle Trio; 8 & 10 p.m., $20.

SLIM’S INAEONA Force Rise the Sun, last year’s nine-track Prosthetic Records debut from Boston trio InAeona, offers a complicated and riverine mix of hard rock compulsion and heavy metal momentum, prog rock complexity and radio rock sheen. At the band’s helm, grandiloquent singer Bridge Laviazar aspires toward the operatic. She lifts and bends her voice above audacious arrangements that suggest months if not years of fastidious refinement and execution. If you can imagine Evanescence in a world where Opeth and King Crimson were FM royalty, you’re close to

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SOUTHLAND BALLROOM SOK MONKEE These seem to be good times for cover bands, whether it’s the eerily accomplished approximation kind, the tongue-in-cheek kind or the totally sincere kind. With ’70s arena-rock hair and stage patter, and a love of riff-based rock delivered sans irony, Sok Monkee comes from the latter camp. Fronted by open-shirted, amply tressed Dylan Setzer, Sok Monkee distinguishes itself by the specificity of its set list, which draws from a discrete slice of the post-grunge, fin de siècle U.S. alt-metal and alt-rock of the ’90s.

If Incubus, Puddle of Mudd, Alice in Chains and Collective Soul hit your sweet spot, baby, you know where to show up and let your light shine down. $7–$10/10 p.m. —DK

UNC’S KENAN MUSIC BUILDING ALL-CAROLINA INVITATIONAL MALE CHORAL FESTIVAL

Now in its 12th year, the All-Carolina Invitational Male Choral Festival, presented by the UNC Men’s Glee Club, is an opportunity for male high school singers to interact with college-age counterparts. It gathers roughly 150 singers from across the state for two days of rehearsals, culminating in a performance with the UNC Men’s Glee Club and the UNC Men’s Glee Club Alumni Chorus.

The festival chorus will sing Caccini’s “Ave Maria,” among other songs. $5/5:30 p.m. —DR

SUN, JAN 17 BEYÙ CAFFÈ: Gary Brunotte; 11 a.m.-2 p.m.

CAROLINA THEATRE CHAMBER ORCHESTRA OF THE TRIANGLE: VOICES ACROSS THE CENTURIES This tripartite bill offers choral music from distinct times and places. Josef Haydn’s “Lord Nelson Mass,” also known as “Mass For Troubled Times,” was written to soothe a populace roiled by war. Haydn even obliged the cash-starved orchestra by writing the piece with no woodwinds.

Far less earthbound, the other two works on the bill—by English

JANUARY 13, 2016

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SUPPRESSIVE FIRE | THURSDAY, JAN. 14

SLIM’S, RALEIGH—After a strong 2014 demo and a fun 2015 covers EP, Raleigh thrash gang Suppressive Fire is finally unleashing Bedlam upon the world. The trio’s full-length debut has already earned national attention, with Decibel, metal’s magazine of record, noting “Joel Grind’s always got his mitts in some killer project, and this North Carolina death-thrash trio is no exception.”

The Toxic Holocaust frontman mixed and mastered Bedlam.

He is a fitting collaborator for Suppressive Fire, whose revisionist thrash embraces speed metal forebears but swings freely into old-school death metal and prog-inflected offshoots.

Guitarist Joseph Bursey concedes the band’s inspirations but notes that the magic happens when they’re mixed.

“You can listen to Bedlam and hear a ton of influence, but it doesn’t sound exactly like any one band in particular,” he says.

“We measure ourselves against our influences in a manner that drives us to do our own thing.”

To wit, Bursey notes he favors classic rock, while drummer Brandon Smith tends toward technical death metal and bassist/ singer Aaron Schmidt favors doom. Those influences shine through Bedlam as much as any revivalist thrash tendencies.

Smith’s drumming lunges from steady D-beat into explosive blast beats. Schmidt’s growls fit neatly into riffs, and his bass finds a deliberate groove. Bursey moves easily from thrash sprints to aggressive solos that suggest Thin Lizzy covering Slayer, or vice versa. “Ceasefire” dresses a Reign In Blood assault with nimble percussion. “Crucify the Kings” digs deep into a death metal groove reminiscent of Obituary, as Smith and Bursey push the pace against Schmidt’s vocals.

“For every song, there’s probably 20 riff variations that get chiseled down to what the song wants to be,” Bursey says of

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BAND

InAeona’s surprising majesty. It’ll be interesting to see how these ostentatious studio productions translate to the stage, especially that of a spartan dive such as Slim’s. $5/9 p.m. —GC

•

SUPRESSIVE FIRE Bedlam’s construction. That careful revision pays dividends for the band. With Bedlam, Suppressive Fire fits rather nicely alongside the region’s metallic exports.

“How do you compare yourselves to a music scene that generated Corrosion of Conformity and Between the Buried and Me?” Bursey asks. “I hope one day we’re mentioned in Raleigh’s legacy, but until then, we’re just going keep doing our thing and let Raleigh’s metal scene decide where we fit.”

With the resurrected death metal horde Eldritch Horror and fellow thrashers Temple Crusher. 9 p.m., $5, 227 S. Wilmington St., Raleigh, 919-833-6557, www.slimsraleigh.com.

—Bryan C. Reed

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CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM) BAYONNE As Bayonne, Austin’s Roger Sellers crafts intricate electronic music that moves from gentle to grating, and vice versa. “Waves” starts out with shrieking, almost painful dissonance before mellow, rolling tones take over. The song then sounds like music from a children’s television show conjured in a fever dream.

“Appeals” carries some similar qualities of wonder, with shimmering, gleeful synths. Even with a few diversions, Sellers’ music is oddly comforting and warm. $8/8 p.m. —AH THE CAVE: Shannon O’Connor; 7 p.m.

THE CAVE GREAVER Durham’s Greaver introduced itself with a pair of EPs that strike a delicate balance between nimble prog and the impulsive outbursts of revivalist screamo bands like Touche Amore and Pianos Become the Teeth. With a full-length debut on the horizon, Greaver seems poised to capitalize on post-hardcore potential.

With Disparager and Irata. $5/10 p.m. —BCR DUKE’S BALDWIN AUDITORIUM: Jonathan Bagg and Inara Zandmane; 4 p.m., free.

IRREGARDLESS: Larry Hutcherson; 10 a.m. Douglas Babcock; 6 p.m.

LINCOLN THEATRE: The

Dickens; 9 p.m., $8.

LOCAL 506: 3@3: Hudson & Haw, Alex Livingstone, Matt Wilson; 3 p.m., free. Raindeer, Parafilm; 9 p.m., $5.

NEPTUNES PARLOUR: Slang, T0W3RS, Hotline, Band & The Beat; 9 p.m., $6.

PAGE-WALKER ARTS & HISTORY CENTER: Mara Shea and the Elftones; 4 p.m., $16.

PITTSBORO ROADHOUSE: Laura Jane Vincent; 11:30 a.m.

POUR HOUSE STAMMERINGS Stammerings finally commemorate last month’s release of their debut full-length. The Triangle rockers plan to play Architect in its entirety, plus some even newer material written in the interim. With aggressive alt-rock rhythms and riffs, the quartet also incorporates influences from jazz improvisation and formal music education. Proggy Greensboro trio Kindler lets theatrical vocals soar over complex grooves. Funky fusion upstarts Fonix open. $5–$7/9 p.m. —SG

SLIM’S THE ROYAL NITES, THE T’S, RICHARD BACCHUS & THE LUCKIEST GIRLS This triple-header of Raleigh rock veterans gathers like-minded scene staples. All three acts inject a vital punk energy into classic rock roar. The Royal Nites’ proto-hardcore charges their arena-size riffs. The T’s stick to rock’s fundamentals for a punchy, potent attack. Richard Bacchus, the former D-Generation guitarist, leads his band, The Luckiest Girls, through a panopticon of punk, glam, power pop and classic rock. $5/7 p.m. —BCR THE SHED JAZZ CLUB: Enjoy Sunday with Danny Grewen; 6-9 p.m., $5.

A/S/L WITH TR!CK$ FRIDAY, JAN. 15

KINGS, RALEIGH—“Jersey Club” is one of those tags that scans as both a genre description and a pejorative quip.

But the sound is worth your attention. The eclectic style has roots in the dance scenes of Baltimore and Chicago and is characterized by frenzied, relentless bass and slicedup, taste-agnostic samples such as ringtones and mattress squeaks. As tastemaking DJs like Cashmere Cat and Diplo increasingly incorporate Jersey Club music into their mixes, the form has become near-impossible to ignore in modern dance music. As is the case with many trendy microgenres, a certain amount of forgettable music has emerged as lesser producers rush to cash in. But Jersey Club seems primed for longevity, mainly because its origins lie not on Soundcloud but in the social and economic contexts of Newark and surrounding areas.

Plainfield, New Jersey’s Tr!CK$ brings smoothness to the genre’s maximalism and has established himself as one of its most promising artists. Recently, his music played prominently in a THUMP documentary about the origins of Jersey Club.

The opening lineup provides charms, too: Raleigh’s Mighty Mouze has learned from Jersey dance luminaries like DJ Sliink and Nadus and produces accordingly. In addition, there’s a Durham double-hitter with the heavy atmospheric house of Treee City and the spare, haunting electronica of Calapse. 10 p.m., $7–$10, 14 W. Martin Street, Raleigh, 919-833-1091, www.kingsbarcade.com.

—David Ford Smith

MON, JAN 18 CAT’S CRADLE: Scott Stapp, Rocket Queen; 8 p.m., $20–$24.

See page 19.

THE CAVE ERIC AND ERICA Good luck describing Bull Cityvia-Bay Area duo Eric and Erica without using the phrase “dream pop.” The airy vocals and twinkly textures of the melodic pair’s 2013 debut could be lifted to provide audio samples for the genre’s Wikipedia page, though last fall’s follow-up made bolder moves. The pair has broadened that shimmering twee foundation with garage-rock pep and dark lyrical themes. The Big Drops join. $5/9 p.m. —SG

KINGS: Power Trip, Funeral Chic, Joy, Invoke, Refocus; 8 p.m., $12.

See page 27.

POUR HOUSE: Motorbilly, Ghost Town Gospel; 9 p.m., free.

THE SHED JAZZ CLUB: Sessions at the Shed with Ernest Turner; 8 p.m., $5.

TUE, JAN 19 54 WEST: Adrian Duke & Teresa Richmond; 8 p.m.

THE CAVE: Yes Alexander; 10 p.m.

LOCAL 506 SEEPEOPLES Portland, Maine, pop crew SeepeopleS is a little like The Flaming Lips. Both bands’ ever-evolving music is rooted in discordant,

fr 1/15 sa 1/16

psychedelia-tinged garage rock but leaps headlong into disparate genres. (Both bands also feature leaders with penchants for deploying megaphones during live shows.) The Dead Souls Sessions, the band’s first since mastermind Will Bradford returned to New England after a long stay in Asheville, is overlong at two discs, 23 tracks and nearly two hours. Still, SeepeopleS’ scattershot approach probably means you’ll find at least several songs appealing. With Map The Sky and First Persons. $7/9 p.m. —PW

NEPTUNES PARLOUR HELTA SKELTA Helta Skelta, of Perth, Australia, opened last year’s Burning the Black Stump by riffing on the Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday in Cambodia” intro. Adding an undercurrent of clanging post-punk guitar and pushing the pace, Helta Skelta darkened the edges of an already dark tune. It’s a surprisingly blatant homage for a band that otherwise meshes its influences—Wire’s winding post-punk, the Buzzcocks’ big hooks, Thee Oh Sees’ psychgarage throb—into an innovative blend. Raleigh’s Davidians, who generate their own vital mix of post-punk jags and hardcore force, share the bill. $7/9:30 p.m. —BCR PITTSBORO ROADHOUSE: Tony Gallani Jazz Trio; 6:30 p.m.

POUR HOUSE SMOOTH HOUND SMITH Even though he calls himself a one-man band, Zack “Smooth Hound” Smith has some help.

Vocalist Caitlin Doyle brings an unusual taste to the usual Smooth Hound folk-and-blues mix, thanks to her Appalachian jazz version of Nina Simone’s “Be My Husband.” Doyle helps out on percussion and contributes family-style harmony with vocals

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JANUARY 13, 2016

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reminiscent of Alison Krauss.

The duo also serves up a tasty country blues take on Sam Cooke’s “Bring It on Home to Me.” $7–$10/9 p.m. —GB THE RITZ: Ratatat, Jackson and His Computerboard; 8 p.m., $25.

See page 27.

WED, JAN 20 HAW RIVER BALLROOM ROBERT EARL KEEN In his own weird way, Robert Earl Keen is as much of a Texas institution as the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders or anti-abortion zealotry, and considerably more ingratiating than either. Like his buddy Lyle Lovett, he’s part of the generation of Lone Star State country-folk singer-songwriters who emerged in the ’80s after learning at the feet of masters like Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. And Keen has a mile-wide wise-ass streak that keeps him from ever getting overly earnest. $26–$30/8 p.m. —JA

LOCAL 506 WILD ADRIATIC From upstate New York, Wild Adriatic is a power trio in the classic sense—or, really, the classic rock sense, like Rush or Cream or Grand Funk Railroad or Blue Cheer or The James Gang or Led Zeppelin, if Robert Plant and Jimmy Page combined into one singing-and-guitar-playing person. All this is to say that Wild Adriatic’s sound, as energetically riffy as it is, hasn’t really sounded fresh since 1969. The 8:59’s open. $8/9 p.m. —PW MOTORCO: Marcia Ball, Good Rocking Sam; 7 p.m., $20–$25.

See page 27.

POUR HOUSE: Input Electronic Music Series; 9:30 p.m.

THE RITZ: Papadosio; 8 p.m., $20.

‘HEAVY LINES’ ALBUM RELEASE SHOW: HAPPY ABANDON XOXOK / SISTER DAVID 9pm $5/$7 WAHYAS / DEX ROMWEBER

THE OTHERMEN / THE TRASH HATS 9pm $5 HUDSON & HAW ALEX LIVINGSTONE / MATT WILSON 3pm FREE su 1/17 RAINDEER / PARAFILM 9pm $5 su 1/17 3@3:

tu 1/19

INDYWEEK’s Volunteer Guide is coming on Jan 27!

Want to be listed in our very first guide to volunteering for area nonprofits?

Call Leslie Land at 919-286-6642 or email Leslie@indyweek.com Or go to www.indyweek.com/indyweek/VolunteerGuide/Page And fill out the questionnaire.

SEEPEOPLES

we 1/20

MAP THE SKY / THE FIRST PERSONS 9pm $7 WILD ADRIATIC / THE 8:59’S 9pm $8

th 1/21

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF BONING: SEX ED WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR 9pm $10

COMING SOON: SKYBLEW & THE DIGIDESTINED, SOCCER TEES, LOLO, VINYL THEATRE, FINISH TICKET, THE QUEERS, THE WEEKS, GREG HOLDEN

www.LOCAL506.com

www.baxterarcade.com

919.869.7486

INDYweek.com

3970, www.townofcary.org.

Galleries OPENING ARTSPACE: Jan 13-Feb 26:

Regional Emerging Artists in Residence Exhibition, work

by Kellie Bornhoft and Tedd Anderson. 201 E Davie St, Raleigh.

919-821-2787, www.artspacenc. org.

DURHAM ART GUILD: Jan

15-Mar 12: The Longitude and Latitude: Explorations of Land and Sea, work by Stephen Estrada and Tony Alderman. — Fri, Jan 15, 5-7 p.m.: Reception. 120 Morris St. 919-560-2713, www. durhamartguild.org.

GOLDEN BELT: Jan 15-Feb 2:

Beautiful, Bold and Brave, work

by Luis Franco. — Fri, Jan 15, 6-9 p.m.: Reception. 807 E Main St, Durham. www.goldenbeltarts. com.

THE SCRAP EXCHANGE:

Jan 15-Feb 13: Prospect Refuge Mystery Surprise, installation by Tom Dawson. — Fri, Jan 15, 6-9 p.m.: Reception. 2050 Chapel Hill Road, Durham. 919-688-6960, www.scrapexchange.org.

SPECTRE ARTS: Jan 15-Feb 5: Out of the Ordinary, work by Paula de Luccia and Liv Mette Larsen.

— Fri, Jan 15, 6-9 p.m.: Reception.

1004 Morning Glory Ave, Durham.

919-213-1441, www.spectrearts. org.

ONGOING THE ARTSCENTER: Thru Jan

31: Grey Area, monochromatic paintings and paper installation

by Constance Pappalardo and Erin Oliver. 919-929-2787, hgerni@artscenterlive.org, www. artscenterlive.org/exhibitions.

300-G E Main St, Carrboro. 919929-2787, www.artscenterlive.org.

ARTSPACE: Thru Jan 23: Carpe

Diem, work by Rachel Campbell, Judith Condon and Jane Paradise.

— Thru Jan 16: The Forest for the Trees. Free. 919-821-2787, info@ artspacenc.org. 201 E Davie St, Raleigh. 919-821-2787, www. artspacenc.org.

BOND PARK COMMUNITY CENTER: Thru Feb 29: Dispatch

from Vick Benson Farm—A Visual Communique from the Family Farm, work by Robert Cassanova.

150 Metro Park Dr, Cary. 919-462-

CAMERON VILLAGE REGIONAL LIBRARY: Thru

Jan 31: New Zealand: The Great Escape, works in oil by Christin Kleinstreuer. 1930 Clark Ave, Raleigh. 919-856-6723, www. wakegov.com/libraries.

CARY ARTS CENTER: Thru

Jan 24: Cary Photographic Artists.

— Thru Jan 21: Synesthesia: Connecting the Senses. 101 Dry Ave. 919-469-4069, www. townofcary.org.

CARY SENIOR CENTER: Thru

Feb 19: Musings, work by Katy Gollahon. 120 Maury O’Dell Place.

919-469-4081, www.townofcary. org.

CARY TOWN HALL: Thru Jan

25: Getting to Know Me, work from the LeTouquet and Town of Cary Children’s Cultural Exchange.

316 N Academy St. 919-469-4000, www.townofcary.org.

CEDAR CREEK GALLERY:

Thru Feb 21: CUPful: Celebrating the Daily Ritual, over 400 mugs and cups handcrafted by artists from all over the United States. Free. 1150 Fleming Rd, Creedmoor. 919-528-1041, www. cedarcreekgallery.com.

THE COTTON COMPANY:

Thru Feb 7: Patricia Velasco, paintings. 306 S White St, Wake Forest. 919-570-0087, www. thecottoncompany.net.

DUKE CENTER FOR DOCUMENTARY STUDIES:

Thru Feb 27: South Side, photographs and writings by Jon Lowenstein. — Thru Feb 28: Aunties: The Seven Summers of Alevtina and Ludmila, photographs

by Nadia Sablin. 1317 W Pettigrew St, Durham. 919-660-3663, www. cdsporch.org.

DURHAM CONVENTION CENTER: Thru Apr 14: I Want

Candy, work by Stacy Crabill. 301 W Morgan St. 919-956-9404, www.durhamconventioncenter. com.

ENO GALLERY: Thru Jan 15: Celebrating 40 Years, work by Nancy Tuttle May. — Thru Jan 15: Fine Southern Clay, studio ceramics and sculptural clay by Southern artists. 100 S Churton St, Hillsborough. 919-883-1415, www. enogallery.net.

ERUUF ART GALLERY: Thru Feb 18: Shall We Dance, paintings of dancing figures in oil and mixed media by Linda Passman. Free.

JANUARY 13, 2016

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EYES ON THE PRIZE 04

FLANDERS GALLERY: Thru Jan 18: Near Mint: In Lucas We Trust.

505 S Blount St, Raleigh. 919-7579533, www.flandersartgallery.com.

FRANK GALLERY: Thru Feb 7: The Human Touch: Portraits of Care. — Thru Feb 7: Intersections, work by Sasha Bakaric, Shelly Hehenberger and Suzanne Krill. — Thru Feb 7: Layer Upon Layer, work by Peter Filene and Linda Prager. 109 E Franklin St, Chapel Hill. 919-636-4135, www. frankisart.com.

GALLERY C: Thru Feb 10: Backroads: The Down East Photography of Watson Brown.

540 N Blount St, Raleigh. 919-8283165, www.galleryc.net.

HERBERT C YOUNG COMMUNITY CENTER: Thru

Jan 25: Serenity in the South, work

by H. Lee Dawson. 101 Wilkinson Ave, Cary. 919-460-4965, www. townofcary.org.

HILLSBOROUGH GALLERY OF ARTS: Thru Jan 24:

Resolutions 2016. Free. 121-D N Churton St. 919-732-5001, www. hillsboroughgallery.com.

HORACE WILLIAMS HOUSE:

Thru Feb 1: Letters at Play: Text in Wax, encaustic paintings by Carol Retsch-Bogart, Lew Graham and Peg Bachenheimer. 610 E Rosemary St, Chapel Hill. 919-9427818, www.chapelhillpreservation. com.

LEE HANSLEY GALLERY: Thru Jan 23: Acclaimed Artists, works by celebrated deceased North Carolina artists — Thru Jan 23: George Bireline Revisited, abstract expressionist, color field, figurative and narrative paintings by the late Raleigh artist. 225 Glenwood Ave, Raleigh. 919-828-7557, www. leehansleygallery.com.

LIGHT ART + DESIGN: Thru

Jan 16: Metal V, Annual exhibition of metal artists with works from sculpture to jewelry. 601 W Rosemary St, Chapel Hill. 919-9427077, www.lightartdesign.com.

ARTWORK BY FRANCO

visualarts

4907 Garrett Rd, Durham. 919489-2575, www.eruuf.org.

•

LOCAL COLOR GALLERY:

Thru Jan 30: New Year - New Art, watercolor, acrylic, oil, clay, glass and mixed media by twelve local women artists. 311 W. Martin Street, Raleigh. 919-819-5995, www.localcoloraleigh.com.

MEASUREMENT BUILDING:

Thru Feb 11: Cinc Hayes, paintings.

404 Hunt Street, Durham. 843475-3132, Cinchayes.com.

MIRIAM PRESTON BLOCK GALLERY: Thru Jan 14: National

Arts Program, works by City of Raleigh and Wake County employees and their families. 222 W Hargett St, Raleigh. 919-9963610, www.raleighnc.gov/arts.

FRANCO: BEAUTIFUL, BOLD AND BRAVE FRIDAY, JAN. 15, DURHAM ROOM 100 GALLERY AT GOLDEN BELT—If you happened to walk by The Republik (known to those who work there as some kind of visionary branding firm and to the rest of us as that cool glass building on Rigsbee Avenue) this winter, you couldn’t miss the eye-catching work of Durham artist FRANCO hanging on its façade. The Durham Art Guild member calls himself a visual activist who creates pop-art graphic designs that pack a social punch—the Republik show featured bold cartoon portraits of multi-ethnic women and Afro picks terminating in raised fists. Beautiful, Bold and Brave, FRANCO’s new show at Golden Belt, draws from two series. “Eyes on the Prize” features women in sunglasses—and one in an astronaut helmet with upraised fists reflected in its visor, merging professional empowerment with stylistic aspiration. And “Shero” portrays women in fighting poses wearing T-shirts for popular superheroes, a timely motif as women are exploding into mainstream comics both on and behind the pages. Tap into the work’s optimistic stance on female power through Feb. 2. 6–9 p.m., free, 807 E. Main St., Durham, 919-560-2713, www.durhamartguild.org. —Brian Howe

MORNING TIMES GALLERY:

Thru Jan 31: Britt Flood. 10 E Hargett St, Raleigh. 919-459-2348, www.morningtimes-raleigh.com.

ORANGE COUNTY MAIN LIBRARY: Thru Feb 26: Side

Roads: Folk Art from Mike’s Art Truck, folk art by nine self-taught artists. 137 W Margaret Ln, Hillsborough. 919-245-2525, www. co.orange.nc.us/library.

PAGE-WALKER ARTS & HISTORY CENTER: Thru

Feb 20: Books & Pages, work by Christine Adamczyk. — Thru Feb 20: Painting on Silence, work by Frank Myers. 119 Ambassador Loop, Cary. 919-460-4963, www. friendsofpagewalker.org.

PLEIADES GALLERY: Thru Feb 7: Deuces, multimedia work

by Pleiades member artists and a guest artist. Free. 109 E Chapel Hill St, Durham. 919-797-2706, www.

PleiadesArtDurham.com.

ROUNDABOUT ART COLLECTIVE: Thru Jan 31: Textile Topography, textile works by Joyce Watkins King. free. 305 Oberlin Rd, Raleigh. 919-747-9495, www. roundaboutartcollective.com.

Durham. 919-684-5135, nasher. duke.edu.

NC MUSEUM OF ART: Thru

Mar 20: Chisel and Forge: Works

by Peter Oakley and Elizabeth Brim. — Thru Jan 17: Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester and the Power of Observation. — Thru Jan 31: Robin Rhode Video Installations. — Thru Jan 24: The Worlds of M.C. Escher: Nature, Science, and Imagination. 2110 Blue Ridge Rd, Raleigh. Info 919839-6262, tickets 919-715-5923, www.ncartmuseum.org.

NC MUSEUM OF HISTORY:

Thru Jun 19: Treasures of Carolina: Stories from the State Archives, public records and private archival materials from the state archives.

— Thru Feb 28: Hey America!: Eastern North Carolina and the Birth of Funk. — Thru Jul 10: North Carolina’s Favorite Son: Billy Graham and His Remarkable Journey of Faith. — Jan 16-Sep 5: Made Especially for You by Willie Kay, display of one-of-a-kind dresses by the Raleigh designer.

5 E Edenton St, Raleigh. 919-8077900, www.ncmuseumofhistory. org.

TIPPING PAINT GALLERY:

Thru Jan 30: Re-Start. 311 W Martin St, Raleigh. 919-928-5279, www.tippingpaintgallery.com.

UMSTEAD HOTEL & SPA: Thru Apr 30: Constance

Pappalardo, paintings. 100 Woodland Pond, Cary. 919-4474000, www.theumstead.com.

VESPERTINE: Thru Jan 31:

Tempus Immortales, work by Anita Joice. 118 B E. Main St, Carrboro.

919-356-6825.

Museums

NASHER MUSEUM OF ART: Thru Sep 18: The New Galleries: A Collection Come to Light.

— Thru Feb 28: Reality of My Surroundings: The Contemporary Collection. 2001 Campus Dr,

Art Related

AN ARTS TRIBUTE TO MARTIN: Sat, Jan 16, 7-11 p.m.:

Free. 919-307-4377, pdefy1995@ yahoo.com, www.townofcary.org.

The Cary Theater, 122 E Chatham St.

DURHAM ARTISTS IN ILLUSTRATION AND WOOD:

Fri, Jan 15, 5:30 p.m.: pop-up show featuring work by Evan McIntyre and Shane Kassin. Free. Mercury Studio, 401 W Geer Street, Durham. 919-381-6306.

THE EL QUIXOTE FESTIVAL:

Thru Apr 23: art exhibits and more in various locations celebrating Don Quixote. See website for more details. www.iamquixote.com.

PHOTO COURTESY OF BROADWAY SERIES SOUTH

INDYweek.com

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JANUARY 13, 2016

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THEATER | RAGTIME WEDNESDAY, JAN. 13–SUNDAY, JAN. 17, RALEIGH RALEIGH MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM—Ragtime remains something of a musical-theater miracle. Though the Tony Award-winning 1988 stage adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s sprawling best seller has one of the largest casts of any musical ever staged, it’s surprisingly nimble, tuneful and faithful to the social conscience in the original text. Doctorow captured the winds of change, and the major American schisms in class, race and ethnicity at the turn of the last century, in a tale of three fatefully interconnected families. North Carolina Theatre produced its own memorable version in 2004. This time, it co-presents Phoenix Entertainment’s national touring version with Broadway Series South.

7:30 p.m. Wed.–Sun.; 2 p.m. Sat.–Sun., $25–$107, 2 E. South St., Raleigh, 919-831-6941, www.nctheatre.com. —Byron Woods

RAGTIME

performance DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER: Fri, Jan 15, 8

Comedy

THE ARTSCENTER: Sat, Jan 16, 6 p.m.: Transactors Improv: For Families!. $6–$10. — Third Saturdays, 8:30 p.m.: The Chuckle & Chortle Comedy Show, Local stand-up comics bring the laughs. $7. 300-G E Main St, Carrboro. 919929-2787, www.artscenterlive.org.

COMEDYWORX THEATRE:

Fridays, 8 p.m. & Saturdays, 4 & 8 p.m.: ComedyWorx Improv Show, 2 teams of improv comedians earn points by making the audience laugh. $6-12. — Fridays, 10 p.m. & Saturdays, 10 p.m.: The Harry Show, Ages 18+. Improv host leads latenight revelers through potentially risque games, with audience volunteers brought onstage to join in. $10. 431 Peace St, Raleigh. 919829-0822, comedyworx.com.

DSI COMEDY THEATER:

Fridays, 10 p.m.: Mister Diplomat.

Free. — Fridays, 11 p.m.: The Jam. free. — Saturdays, 10 p.m.: Pork, 5 NC comics perform. Free. 462 W Franklin St, Chapel Hill. 919-3388150, www.dsicomedytheater.com.

p.m.: Lewis Black. $40–$75. 123 Vivian St. Info 919-688-3722, Tickets 919-680-2787, www. dpacnc.com.

FLEX NIGHTCLUB: Thursdays,

midnite: Trailer Park Prize Night, comedy drag show with gag prize giveaways. 2 S West St, Raleigh.

919-832-8855, www.flex-club.com.

FULLSTEAM: Third Tuesdays,

9 p.m.: Bulltown Comedy Series.

Free. https://www.facebook. com/BulltownComedySeries. 726 Rigsbee Ave, Durham. 919-6822337, www.fullsteam.ag.

GOODNIGHTS COMEDY CLUB / THE GRILLE AT GOODNIGHTS: Saturdays, 10:30

p.m.: Anything Goes Late Show. free. — Wed, Jan 20, 8 p.m.: Comedy Roulette. $5–$13. 861 W Morgan St, Raleigh. 919-828-5233, www.goodnightscomedy.com.

KINGS: Third Fridays, 8-9:30

p.m.: The Dangling Loafer. $5. https://www.facebook.com/ TheDanglingLoafer. 14 W Martin St, Raleigh. 919-833-1091, www. kingsbarcade.com.

LONDON BRIDGE PUB:

BENEFIT | RUBBER PEACOCK! FRIDAY, JAN. 15, DURHAM MOTORCO MUSIC HALL—Story time: Once there was a girl named Jojo who didn’t identify as a girl and didn’t fit in on her family’s potato farm in West Armpit. (Wait. It gets better.) She saw some crazy things after being mysteriously transported to Dimension Q. She met Barry Manilow in a bathhouse, got up close and personal with Marlene Dietrich and marveled as Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Bayard Rustin and Pauli Murray overpowered the rock band Kiss and went on in their place.

Jennifer Evans stars in a musical journey through the glam rock era in Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern’s annual variety show to benefit the LGBTQ Center of Durham. Expect plenty of love for Bowie, too. 8 p.m., $15, 723 Rigsbee Ave., Durham, 919-901-0875, www.motorcomusic.com. —Byron Woods

Second Thursdays: Under The Bridge Comedy Night Open Mic. 110 E Hargett St, Raleigh. 919-8335599, thelondonbridgepub.com.

THE THRILL AT HECTOR’S:

Third Fridays, 9 p.m.: Funny Business Live, Pro comedy series. $5-8. www.funnybusinesslive.com.

157 E Rosemary St, Chapel Hill.

919-960-5145.

TOOTIE’S: Saturdays, 7:30 p.m.: ComedyMongers Open Mic. $5, free for comedians. 704 Rigsbee Ave, Durham. 984-439-2328.

Dance PA R T I C I PATO RY DURHAM DANCE WAVE:

Mondays, 7:30-9 p.m.: $7. www. durhamdancewave.com. The Murphey School at the Shared Visions Retreat Center, 3717 Murphy School Rd, Durham. 919616-2190, www.sharedvisions.org.

SCOTTISH COUNTRY DANCING: Wednesdays, 7:30

p.m.; Thru May 4: Glen Eden Park & Community Center, 1500 Glen Eden Dr, Raleigh.

SUNDAY SALSA SOCIAL:

Sundays, 6:30-9:30 p.m.: Every Sunday social featuring mostly Salsa with sides of Bachata, Merengue, Cha Cha, and Kizomba.

Lesson at 6:30 for beginners plus sometimes intermediate. DJ Dance at 7. $6. www.dancegumbo.com.

Triangle Dance Studio, 2603 S Miami Blvd, Durham.

TRIANGLE SINGLES DANCE CLUB: Fri, Jan 15, 8 p.m., Sat, Jan 23, 8 p.m. & Fri, Jan 29, 8 p.m.: alcohol-free dance for 40+ singles. $5–$8. Northbrook Country Club, 4905 North Hills Dr, Raleigh.

PERFORMANCE COMPAGNIE MARIE CHOUINARD: Sat, Jan 16, 8 p.m.:

$10–$49. UNC Campus: Memorial Hall, 208 E Cameron Ave, Chapel Hill. 919-843-3333, www. carolinaperformingarts.org.

SHAMROCK BREAKDANCE COMPETITION: Sun, Jan 17,

10 p.m.: Kings, 14 W Martin St, Raleigh. 919-833-1091, www. kingsbarcade.com.

Theater OPENING AN LOC: Sun, Jan 17, Fri, Jan 22

& Sat, Jan 23: Free. UNC Campus: Swain Hall, 101 E Cameron Ave, Chapel Hill.

MATILDA THE MUSICAL:

Jan 19-24: $40–$155. Durham Performing Arts Center, 123 Vivian St. Info 919-688-3722, Tickets 919680-2787, www.dpacnc.com.

STICK FLY: Fri, Jan 15, 8 p.m., Sat, Jan 16, 8 p.m., Sun, Jan 17, 3 p.m.: $13–$22. Raleigh Little Theatre, 301 Pogue St. Office 919821-4579, Tickets 919-821-3111, www.raleighlittletheatre.org.

ONGOING DOWNRANGE: VOICES FROM THE HOMEFRONT: Thu, Jan 14:

A new play about the impact of deployment on military families based on interviews with military spouses from the community.

A new work Commissioned by the Cape Fear Theatre. Free.

UNC Campus: Swain Hall, 101 E Cameron Ave, Chapel Hill.

SILHOUETTES OF SERVICE: Fri, Jan 15, 5 p.m., Sat, Jan 16, 5 p.m. & Mon, Jan 18, 5 p.m.: a new documentary theatre piece that illuminates the true stories of soldiers from the shadows of WWII to current cadets. Free.

UNC Campus: Swain Hall, 101 E Cameron Ave, Chapel Hill.

THREE SISTERS: Tuesdays-

Sundays, 7:30-9 p.m.; Starts Wed, Jan 20, Thru Feb 7: $15–$44. 919962-7529, www.playmakersrep. org. UNC Campus: Paul Green Theatre, 120 Country Club Rd, Chapel Hill. 919-962-7529, playmakersrep.org.

INDYweek.com RAGTIME: Wed, Jan 13, 7:30 p.m., Thu, Jan 14, 7:30 p.m., Fri, Jan 15, 7:30 p.m., Sat, Jan 16, 2 & 7:30 p.m. & Sun, Jan 17, 2 & 7:30 p.m.: $25–$77.

Memorial Auditorium, 2 E South St, Raleigh. 919-996-8700, www. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

SMALL AND TIRED: Thru Jan 23: Common Ground Theatre, 4815B Hillsborough Rd, Durham. 919384-7817, www.cgtheatre.com.

TIME STANDS STILL:

Thursdays-Sundays. Thru Jan 17: $16–$18. Sonorous Road Productions, 209 Oberlin Rd. Raleigh. 919-803-3798, www. sonorousroad.com.

books Readings & Signings

CARL NORDGEN: Tue, Jan 19, 7 p.m.: with novel Worlds Between.

Flyleaf Books, 752 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill. 919-9427373, www.flyleafbooks.com.

CAROLE BOSTON WEATHERFORD: Wed, Jan

13, 5 p.m.: with children’s book Freedom in Congo Square. Quail Ridge Books & Music, 3522 Wade Ave, Raleigh. 919-828-1588, www. quailridgebooks.com.

ED TARKINGTON: Wed, Jan 13, 7-8 p.m.: with novel Only Love Can

film Special showings

with A Stone for Bread and My Father Moves Through Time Like a Dirigible and Other Stories. Quail Ridge Books & Music, 3522 Wade

Film Capsules

Our rating system uses one to five stars. Signed reviews are by Brian Howe (BH), Laura Jaramillo (LJ), Kathy Justice (KJ), Craig D. Lindsey (CDL), Glenn McDonald (GM), Neil Morris (NM), Zack Smith (ZS) and Ryan Vu (RV).

BREAKDOWN: Fri, Jan 15, 5

p.m.: free. www.lecitoyen.org/ calendar/2016/1/15/breakdown.

21c Museum Hotel, 111 N. Corcoran St. Durham. 919-9566700, www.21cmuseumhotels. com/durham/.

LE ROI ET L’OISEAU (THE KING AND THE MOCKINGBIRD): Sat, Jan 16,

2 p.m.: James B. Hunt Jr. Library, 1070 Partners Way, Raleigh. 919513-7031.

Opening

13 HOURS: THE SECRET SOLDIERS OF BENGHAZI—Michael Bay directs John Krasinski and others in this action-heavy dramatization of the 2012 Benghazi attack. Rated R. RIDE ALONG 2—Police officer Ben Barber (Kevin Hart) teams up with his disapproving brotherin-law-to-be (Ice Cube) to stop a drug kingpin in Miami. Rated PG-13.

SELMA, LORD. SELMA: Sat, Jan 16, 9 p.m.: free. The Cary Theater, 122 E Chatham St.

Current Releases

 1/2 BROOKLYN—John Crowley and Nick Hornby capture

NAZEEH ABDUL-HAKEEM:

Thu, Jan 14, 7 p.m.: with The Athaan in the Bull City: Building Durham’s Islamic Community.

Regulator Bookshop, 720 Ninth St, Durham. 919-286-2700, www. regulatorbookshop.com.

Literary Related

Wednesdays, 8-10 p.m.: Poets, vocalists, musicians & lyricists welcome. All performances a cappella or acoustic. $5. www. citysoulcafe.splashthat.com.

Smokin Grooves Bar & Grill, 2253 New Hope Church Rd, Raleigh.

JOHN BERRY: Sat, Jan 16, 4 p.m.: with Life & Basketball: Life Lessons and Basketball Tips. Flyleaf Books, 752 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill. 919-942-7373, www.flyleafbooks.com.

MIRIAM HERIN AND GREGG CUSICK: Fri, Jan 15, 7 p.m.:

series. free. The Shed Jazz Club, 807 E Main St, #130, Durham. 732570-2935.

CITY SOUL CAFE POETRY & SPOKEN WORD OPEN MIC:

Break Your Heart. Flyleaf Books, 752 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Chapel Hill. 919-942-7373, www. flyleafbooks.com. — Thu, Jan 14, 7 p.m.: Quail Ridge Books & Music, 3522 Wade Ave, Raleigh. 919-8281588, www.quailridgebooks.com.

LA FRENCH (THE CONNECTION): Thu, Jan 14,

6:15 p.m.: free. NCSU Campus: Witherspoon Student Center, 2810 Cates Ave, Raleigh.

In Duke’s Little Corner Reading Series, Yale University Library poetry curator Nancy Kuhl reads from her award-winning work at The Shed with Durham poet Lightsey Darst. 807 E. Main St., Durham, 732-570-2935, www.shedjazz.com.

THE MONTI: FISH OUT OF WATER: Tue, Jan 19, 7:30 p.m.:

Ave, Raleigh. 919-828-1588, www. quailridgebooks.com.

NANCY KUHL & LIGHTSEY DARST: Sat, Jan 16, 8-10 p.m.:

part of the Little Corner poetry

the nostalgic melancholy of Colm Tóibín’s novel in this elegiac oldschool melodrama. Saoirse Ronan is Eilis, an Irish girl who goes to work in Brooklyn in the 1950s, thanks to the sponsorship of a U.S.-based priest (Jim Broadbent).

Leaving behind a mother and sister she adores, she’s initially homesick, living in an all-female boarding house. That changes when she meets a sweet-natured Italian plumber who falls for her.

Things get complicated when she starts seeing a suave Irishman (Domhnall Gleeson), turning the story into an intercontinental tornbetween-two-lovers affair. Like so many films about immigrants looking for a better life, this one lays out a wondrous and romantic (if oddly minority-free) vision of America’s past. Rated PG-13.

—CDL  CAROL—With Carol, filmmaker Todd Haynes continues to delve into forbidden love during a tense, conflicted era.

While his 2002 film Far from Heaven about interracial romance was practically a Douglas Sirk tribute in ironic quotation marks, Carol is more like a same-sex Brief Encounter. And just like that classic love story, the subject matter is handled with genuine, romantic sincerity. Once again tripping back to the beautiful

$15. raleighlittletheatre.org/ events/themonti.html. Raleigh Little Theatre, 301 Pogue St. Office 919-821-4579, Tickets 919-8213111, www.raleighlittletheatre.org.

THE MONTI: Wed, Jan 13, 7:30 p.m.: Motorco Music Hall, 723 Rigsbee Ave, Durham. 919-9010875, www.motorcomusic.com.

but hopelessly repressed ’50s, Haynes casts Rooney Mara as a single shopgirl who is drawn to the title character, a high-society dame played by Cate Blanchett.

A harmless friendship morphs into a frowned-upon affair as Carol tries to at once court her new love and keep custody of her daughter. Using Patricia

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JANUARY 13, 2016

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LECTURE

DICE & DECISIONS: THE ART OF ROLE PLAYING GAMES SATURDAY, JAN. 16, DURHAM SOUTHWEST REGIONAL LIBRARY—Tabletop role-playing games in the lineage of Dungeons & Dragons used to be considered the exclusive province of die-hard nerds.

But as “geek culture” blends more and more with the mainstream, intricate board games gain popularity and online life acclimates us all to playing virtual roles. Breaking out the graph paper for some fantasy adventuring no longer seems like such an obscure concern. Even if you don’t know a Halfling mage from a chaotic-good Paladin, the underlying systems of role-playing games are fascinating in how they model reality—as a brute clash of statistics modulated by the rogue element of chance. In an interactive talk at the Durham Public Library, award-winning game designer Jason Morningstar of Chapel Hill’s Bully Pulpit Games reveals how a pen-and-paper world is built and what makes it so immersive. And if you think role-playing is all wizards and warriors, think again: Morningstar has created games about female Soviet pilots in World War II (Night Witches) and crime gone wrong in the manner of Blood Simple or Fargo (Fiasco). His work demonstrates how, like in comics and fantasy fiction, role-playing has broadened to include something for everyone. The event is coordinated with the library’s newly expanded game collection, so you’ll be well informed to choose something to take home without it being a complete roll of the 12-sided dice. 3 p.m., free, 3605 Shannon Road, Durham, 919-560-8590, www.durhamcountylibrary.org. —Brian Howe

Highsmith’s 1952 book, The Price of Salt, as source material, Haynes returns to something he knows all too well: how to hammer through the façades of seemingly content people to get to the secrets and lies hidden underneath. He finds an ideal pair of frustrated lovebirds in Blanchett and Mara, who know how to show the pain and

confusion inside them through their eyes alone. Both give performances worthy of a nomination.

Haynes and his performers create a sophisticated story about two people trying to be together in an environment that’s quietly suffocating them. Haynes follows Highsmith’s example and ultimately provides some light at the

FILM | 42ND STREET FRIDAY, JAN. 15, RALEIGH

N.C. MUSEUM OF ART’S SECU AUDITORIUM—If you’re feeling gripped by that ineffable January air of depression, this classic Depression-era musical might be just the thing to toss some zing into S.A.D. season. Directed with grit and verve by Lloyd Bacon, 42nd Street boasts a plot that wasn’t a cliché in 1933 but has since become as familiar as, say, the crook who wants to get out of the crime business after one last score. Here, the big-name star of a Broadway musical breaks an ankle at the last minute, giving an untested chorus girl (played by Ruby Keeler) her big chance. Written before the censorious Hays Code went into effect, the film is a wonder of innuendo and bluntness (“It must have been hard on your mother, not having any children,” Ginger Rogers snaps at a hapless newbie) that’s like a breath of wonderfully toxic air. The focus of NCMA’s Winter Films series is dance, and several of these sequences, staged by the legendary Busby Berkeley, are among the greatest ever committed to celluloid. In the opening slot is Me and My Pal, a Laurel & Hardy short. Come and meet those dancing feet, and bring a pal. 8 p.m., $5–$7, 2110 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh, 919-7155923, www.ncartmuseum.org. —David Klein

INDYweek.com end of this maddening, harrowing yet exquisite love story. Rated R. —CDL  CREED—The boxing-film genre reached its narrative limits long ago. But by using conjoined character arcs, the Rocky series’ seventh film ably honors, updates and even deconstructs its legacy.

Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan), the son of late champ Apollo Creed—Rocky’s respected nemesis—is rescued from a delinquent childhood by Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad), Apollo’s widow. Haunted by her husband’s death in the ring, she discourages Adonis’ impulses. But he moves to Philadelphia to coax an aging Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) to train him. He reluctantly agrees, though his guilt over failing to prevent Apollo’s death is a motivation the film doesn’t sufficiently explicate. Ryan Coogler, who directed Jordan in Fruitvale Station, reclaims the blackness of a franchise originally framed through the prism of the Great White Hope. Jordan and Stallone, utterly at ease, conjure an alchemy of wit and poignancy.

Rated PG-13. —NM  THE DANISH GIRL—Eddie Redmayne (last year’s Oscar winner for best actor) stars as landscape painter Einar Wegener, one of the first recipients of gender reassignment surgery. Set in 1920s Copenhagen, the tale is inspired by actual events, although director Tom Hooper (Les Misérables) takes liberties to present the story as a tender portrait of a remarkable marriage. Alicia Vikander plays Einar’s wife, Gerda, and her performance is every bit as vulnerable and wrenching as Redmayne’s. As Einar begins his gradual transformation into a woman, the story becomes a psychologically complex love triangle between two people.

But Hooper’s overwrought visual strategy keeps the film from really soaring. The style is too composed and conventional for the material. Rated R. —GM  THE GOOD DINOSAUR— Disney and Pixar’s latest imagines a world where an asteroid didn’t hit Earth and dinosaurs continued to evolve. The premise is an excuse for an old-fashioned adventure story—a “boy and his dog” tale where the dog is the boy and the boy is a dinosaur. Family runt Arlo is terrified of everything and despairs of ever “making his mark.” An encounter with a loin-clothed “critter” (Jack Bright) leads to a tragedy, and then Arlo is swept downriver, where he discovers that the cave-boy he resents is a surprisingly loyal companion on the long, danger-filled trip home. There’s a darkness to

this story that contrasts with the soft, toy-like pastel dinosaurs; Arlo suffers about every physical and emotional trauma possible in a Disney flick, dead parent included. It’s all a little old-fashioned for Pixar, which has done its best work breathing fresh life into tired ideas. But it’s nice to see that oldfashioned children’s stories aren’t extinct. Rated PG. —ZS  THE HATEFUL EIGHT—The best things during the interminable three hours of Quentin Tarantino’s latest are the musical overture by Ennio Morricone and the intermission, when you can flee without bothering the rest of the audience. Set in post-Civil War Wyoming, The Hateful Eight is an ensemble Western revolving around a gaggle of miscreants forced into close quarters en route to the town of Red Rock. In all, 10 people take shelter from a blizzard in a stage stopover. As their furtive motives and backstories are gradually revealed, the plot assumes the guise of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Despite a garrulous script, few sequences are memorable.

The final chapters are a nihilistic fever dream; what’s missing is maturity and meaning. Tarantino can still be a captivating, adroit filmmaker, but his narrative predilections have become predictable, and his films are teetering on self-parody. Unless he jettisons his period revenge fantasies and returns to the wheelhouse of contemporary hyper-realities, Tarantino will soon feel as dated as his film stock. Rated R. —NM  1/2 THE REVENANT—In Alejandro González Iñárritu’s new film, stranded fur trapper Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) takes overnight shelter in the hollowed-out carcass of a horse and then slowly emerges, naked, from the grisly womb. It’s a stark visual metaphor for the theme of rebirth that permeates this epic neo-Western, based on a true story. A revenant is one who returns from the dead, as Glass seemed to after being mauled by a bear during a hunting expedition in 1820s Dakota Territory. The film features the most spectacular battle scene to open a movie since Saving Private Ryan, and the bear attack is a visceral CGI triumph. Glass’ fellow trappers leave him for dead, and the death of his part-Pawnee son further fuels his revenge quest.

His antagonist is John Fitzgerald, a bullying backwoodsman played by a mesmerizing Tom Hardy.

Iñárritu films many scenes with his tracking-shot technique from Birdman, complemented by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s natural light. Stories abound about the film’s grueling

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shoot and skyrocketing budget, but the end result is a cinematic RALEIGH tour de force, if not a rebirth.

GRANDE Rated R. —NM  1/2 SISTERS—Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are Maura and Kate Ellis, terminally immature siblings whose empty-nester 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi parents are selling their childhood Norm of the North • Ride Along 2 home. Poehler sweetly plays the Star Wars: The Force Awakens straight woman to Fey’s middleThe Revenant • Daddy’s Home • The Forest aged lady gone wild. It’s a compeThe Big Short • Sisters • The Hateful Eight tent comedy that occasionally hits Carol • Joy some very funny notes, though it mostly stays within the triedFor times please go to website and-true formula of mainstream THE RALEIGH GRANDE American comedy: toilet humor 4840 GROVE BARTON RD • RALEIGH meets family values. Directed by RALEIGHGRANDEART.COM Jason Moore, Sisters mobilizes a cadre of Saturday Night Live talent in bit parts. Unfortunately, none of them are allowed enough screen time to really let their jokes rip. The famed chemistry between Poehler and Fey is best expressed when they’re obviously going off script. The pair has an uncanny gift for physical comedy, but the script seriously hampers Fey’s comedic gifts, stifling her brainy absurdist humor and ● COUPLES FREE BEFORE 10PM! shoehorning her into the Sarah Silverman-esque territory of dick ● $5 FIRE SHOTS!!! $7 ANGRY BALL BOILERMKERS!!! and pussy jokes. Though female ● 2 FOR $40 PRIVATE DANCES EVERY HOUR ON THE HOUR! comedians have gained ground ● $6 LUNCH SPECIAL & NO COVER BEFORE 8PM in recent years, Sisters highlights how limited a category “funny” remains for women in Hollywood. capitalcabaret.com • 919.206.4040 • 6713 Mt Herman Rd • Morrisville (Located in Brier Creek, adjacent to RDU) Rated R. —LJ $6 Lunch STAR Special & NoTHE Cover Before 8pm  WARS: FORCE AWAKENS—Director J.J. Abrams has delivered a triumph by flouting the usual reboot expectations THE PARTY STRIKES BACK to make a disco remix of franchise mythology. Three decades after the events of Return of the Jedi, the collapse of the Empire has created a power vacuum. The fascist First Order has stepped in, and Luke Skywalker, the last of the Jedi, has disappeared. On the desert planet of Jakku we meet Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), a Resistance pilot who finds an ally in the morally conflicted Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega).

We also meet the resourceful scavenger Rey (Daisy Ridley). Over on the Dark Side, the mysterious Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) evokes Darth Vader. As more characters come into play, it becomes clear that Abrams isn’t creating a new Star Wars so much as retelling the original saga with all the compoPOPULAR nents mixed up. Not everything clicks into place, but it builds to COSTUME CONTESTS a satisfying crescendo, and the quiet coda is just about perfect. , It’s helpful to keep in mind the noWHERE WILL YOU BE WHEN tion that myths are stories we tell ourselves over and over again, in different guises and different eras.

Star Wars is one of the great tales of our modern mythology, and VOTED “BEST OF HEALTHY, FUN ADULT The Force Awakens successfully THE TRIANGLE” ENTERTAINMENT! re-imagines the legend for a new generation. Rated PG-13. —GM 3210 Yonkers Rd. | 919.250.9826 | MensClubRaleigh.com

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rent/ elsewhere FAIR HOUSING ACT NOTICE

All real estate advertised herein is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to advertise ìany preference, limitation, or discrimination because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.î We will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate which is in violation of the law. All persons are hereby informed that all dwellings advertised are available on an equal opportunity.

For more information or assistance, contact Legal Aid of North Carolina’s Fair Housing Project at (855) 797-3247 or visit www. fairhousingnc.org.

rent/wake co.

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You may be eligible to participate in a research study. Be a part of an educational, 18-month research study testing effective ways of helping you manage your type 2 diabetes.

Call 919-613-2635 for more info.

You will be compensated for your study participation.

misc.

HOME REPAIR SPECIAL Place an ad in the Professional Services section for 4 weeks, get 2 extra weeks FREE! Ads start at $19/week.

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SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY BENEFITS. Unable to work? Denied benefits? We Can Help! WIN or Pay Nothing! Contact Bill Gordon & Associates at 1-800-371-1734 to start your application today!

(NCPA)

Andrew C. Hefner Old Fashioned Handyman!

PRO00043325

• JANUARY 13, 2016 •

38

Do You Use Black C oho sh?

If you are a woman living in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area and take black cohosh for hot flashes, cramps or other symptoms, please join an important study on the health you cohosh are a woman livingbyinthethe Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area and(NIEHS). effects ofIf black being conducted National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences take black cohosh for hot flashes, cramps, or other symptoms, please join What’s required? an important study on the health effects of black cohosh being conducted • Only one visit to donate a of blood sample • QualifiHealth ed participants will receive up to $50 by the National Institute Environmental Sciences (NIEHS).

• Blood sample will be drawn at the NIEHS Clinical Research Unit in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina What’s Required?

Who Can Participate?

Only one visit women, to donate sample • Healthy aged a18blood years and older • Not pregnant or breastfeeding Volunteers compensated upthe to $50 For will morebeinformation about Black Cohosh Study, call: Blood sample will be drawn919-316-4976 at the NIEHS Clinical Research Unit in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina Lead Investigator: Stavros Garantziotis, M.D. Who Can Participate?

National Institute of Environmental Healthy women, aged 18 years and older Health Sciences Research Triangle Park, North Carolina Not pregnant or breastfeeding

· · · · ·

National Institutes of Health • U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services

For more information about the Black Cohosh Study, call 919-316-4976 National Institutes of Health • U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services

Lead Researcher

Stavros Garantziotis, M.D. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Research Triangle Park, North Carolina

National Institutes of Health • U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services

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Profits support Pleasant Drive Animal Rescue. Call 919-904-9025 or email ACHfixit@gmail.com

If you are a man or woman, 18-55 years old, living in the RaleighDurham-Chapel Hill area, and smoke cigarettes or use an electronic nicotine delivery system (e-cigarette), please join an important study on smokers being conducted by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).

What’s Required?

• One visit to donate blood, urine, and saliva samples • Samples will be collected at the NIEHS Clinical Research Unit in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina • Volunteers will be compensated up to $60 Who Can Participate?

• Healthy men and women aged 18-55 • Current cigarette smokers or users of nicotine-containing e-cigarettes (can be using both)

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The definition of healthy for this study means that you feel well and can perform normal activities. If you have a chronic condition, such as high blood pressure, healthy can also mean that you are being treated and the condition is under control.

For more information about this study, call 919-316-4976 Lead Researcher Stavros Garantziotis, M.D. • National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Research Triangle Park, North Carolina

INDYweek.com

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39

#1 CHAT IN RALEIGH

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JANUARY 13, 2016

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auto PHONE ACTRESSES

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Teaching Opportunities in China

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Amplify is seeking students in grades 6-9 5 7 to partner with us.

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JEWELRY APPRAISALS

While you wait. Graduate Gemologist www.ncjewelryappraiser.com

© 2013 Amplify Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

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BARTENDERS NEEDED MAKE $20-$35/HOUR

BEGIN TAI CHI & AIKIDO

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Traditional art of meditative movement for health, energy, relaxation, self-defense.

Classes/workshops throughout the Triangle.

Magic Tortoise School - Since 1979. Call Jay or Kathleen, 919-968-3936, or Lao Ma: 919-542-0688. www.magictortoise.com

BEGINNING ZEN PRACTICE

Chapel Hill Zen Center with David Guy. Monday evenings, 7:30-9. 6 weeks, Feb. 1 -March 7. $60. Scholarships available.

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HOME REPAIR SPECIAL

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You give us $20, we’ll run a 20 word ad with a color photo for 4 weeks. Call 919-286-6642 or emailclassy@indyweek.com

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SELL YOUR CAR FAST!

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For film/print work. 919-949-8330

Coalition to Unchain Dogs seeks plastic or igloo style dog houses for cold dogs in need. To donate, please contact Amanda at director@unchaindogs.net.

YOUR AD HERE

Raleigh’s Bartending School 676.0774 www.cocktailmixer.com 1-2wk class

PUBLIC SPEAKING CLASS AT BURNING COAL THEATRE

GLAMOUR MODELS NEEDED

HELP KEEP DOGS WARM!!

Starts Jan. 6. Aikido for kids M, W, Sat. Hillsborough. info@openskymartialarts.com 919-732-6367.

CERTIFIED PERSONAL TRAINER FOR WOMEN

GARDENS TO DIE FOR

Find Peace, Beauty, and Abundance in your own yard! Mark N. Jensen. 919-528-5588 GardensToDieFor.com

IS IT HARD TO IMAGINE LIFE WITHOUT WEED?

Do you want to stop, but can’t? We Can Help!

Marijuana Anonymous: www.NorthCarolinaMA.ORG 919-886-4420

LOTUS LEAF GIFTS/APPAREL

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English, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, History, Geography, Economics Enthusiastic professional with teaching certificate/university degree?

Gain career-enhancing international experience!

E-mail resume to Beijing Royal School: brshr@brs.edu.cn Mention INDY in title. Highly competitive salary, great benefits!

919.286.6642

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NOELLE PAULL- PET SITTER EXTRAORDINAIRE!!

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919-815-8956 or paullnoelle@hotmail.com

THE MARRIAGE OF BETTE & BOO

Christopher Durang’s dark comedy presented

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Jan 22nd-31st Thur/Fri/Sat @ 8pm and Sun @ 3pm. Tickets start at $10.00. Visit www.NRACT.org

LIVING MINDFULLY

RELAX. REFLECT. RESTORE. With KD KRAMER at Spira Pilates Studio, Carrboro.

Free intro classes: Jan 12, 12PM and Jan 13, 8AM. Starting Jan 19-classes every Tues. at Noon and every Wed. at 8AM.$15/ class, 6 classes for $80. mndfl.living@gmail.com

MARK KINSEY/LMBT

Feel comfy again. 919-619-NERD (6373).

Durham, on Broad Street. NC Lic. #6072.

back page

Weekly deadline 4pm Monday • classy@indyweek.com NEED HELP ASSEMBLING YOUR ONLINE ORDERS?

Call 336-227-3781 or visit SHOFFNERHOMELAND.COM. Home Repairs/ Remodeling: now offering Assembly/ Installations for Home, Patio, Yard & Garden.

Serving Orange & Alamance Co.

DANCE CLASSES IN SWING, LINDY, BLUES, CHARLESTON

At ERUUF, Durham & ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

RICHARD BADU, 919-724-1421, rbadu@aol.com

OLD FASHIONED HANDYMAN!

Appliance installation/repair; Equipment, Plumbing & Electrical repair; Fencing; HVAC ; Preventative maintenance; Roofs/Gutters.

Profits support Pleasant Drive Animal Rescue. 919-904-9025 ACHfixit@gmail.com

SHAKESPEARE & THE MYSTERY OF THE HUMAN BEING

Sat., Jan. 16, Oasis, Carr Mill, Carrboro.

3-4:30PM. Michael Burton performs a 1 hour play based on EXCERPTS FROM SHAKESPEARE w/ Q&A. INFO: 919-619-3441.

INDYWEEK’s Volunteer Guide is coming on Jan 27!

Want to be listed in our very first guide to volunteering for area nonprofits?

Call Leslie Land at 919-286-6642 or email Leslie@indyweek.com Or go to www.indyweek.com/indyweek/VolunteerGuide/Page And fill out the questionnaire.