INDY Week 11.15.17

What’s the first thing you think of when you see Raleigh’s new logo? p. 6

What’s next for Nancy McFarlane? p. 10

Where in the world is Ivan Howard? p. 20

The Sidewalk Cracks p. 7 Where’s Ashley’s Pig Cooker? p. 14 DSI Comedy Festival p. 17 Lee Weisarts’ Granular Wall p. 29

Mexican

raleigh 11|15|17

Spirit

Tamales and mezcal at WillCo embody our southern neighbors’ happy hospitality

BY VICTORIA BOULOUBASIS P. 19

2 | 11.15.17 | INDYweek.com

WHAT WE LEARNED THIS WEEK VOL. 34, NO. 45

DEPARTMENTS

6 Raleigh’s new logo “looks like a bud of weed.”

6 Triangulator

8 Durham officials talk a lot about affordable housing.

Actually building it is much more difficult.

8 News 19 Food

10 After the election, Mayor Nancy McFarlane realizes that big swaths of the city feel left out of Raleigh’s boom.

20 Music 24 Arts & Culture

12 ICE knows where Jose Chicas is, but agents won’t come after him in a church.

26 What to Do This Week 29 Music Calendar

16 Deep Listening is like yoga for the ears.

33 Arts & Culture Calendar

19 Activated charcoal is becoming trendy on cocktail lists, including that of William & Company.

20 After the demise of his long-running Raleigh band, The Rosebuds, Ivan Howard discovered singing was actually fun.

24 An African-American teenager with “hyperempathy syndrome” starts her own religion in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.

ON THE COVER PHOTO BY CAITLIN PENNA

These ingredients may be infused into your drink at William & Company in Raleigh. PHOTO BY CAITLIN PENNA

INDYweek.com | 11.15.17 | 3

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backtalk

The Crown of Civilization

hood and individuality and personal power We’ll begin with Adele, who writes disapof women.” provingly about last week’s Triangulator Moving on. In last week’s paper, Michael graphic on abortion statistics: “I am an avid Burrows reviewed Pour Taproom, a new Durreader of INDY Week and appreciate your ham beer spot with a self-serve model. Cocaliber of reporting on social issues and owner and general manager Dan Enarson community. I do regret your forceful push on writes that he was “very disappointed to read the pro-abortion focus as the primary factor Michael Burrows’s review since many of his in assessing the quality of women’s rights. assertions about our model were based on “Abortion is not pro-women. While some assumption, rather than journalistic due dilimay deem it a right due to rape or incest, gence. The entire piece was seemingly writit is certainly never an easy choice, nor to ten without him speaking to management or be glamorized as, ‘I am woman, hear me any of our staff. Had he endeavored to do so, roar.’ It represents a fracture in our society he would have found that our staff receive and a culture of death, instead of nurturing above what the Durham Living Wage Project life from the least among us to the fittest sets as its hourly rate for employees making of the fit. Every life has value, and whether tips. Mr. Burrows incorrectly assumes that you believe that life begins at conception just because Pour isn’t yet signed up with the or not—the tissues will become a baby—a Durham Living Wage Project, we therefore heartbeat is a sign of life that will grow into a underpay our staff. It would be as incorrect human person. That is science, and the mysfor me to assume the same terious beauty of life. Many of the INDY’s employee comDemocrats, progressives, pensation, which, according and independents are feeling to the Durham Living Wage isolated because the Demo“A bar isn’t Project website, is not a cercratic Party equates womtified member. Neither are en’s rights with abortion. just about the many downtown bars, for “When discussing wombeer; it’s about that matter, but this seems en’s rights, it always goes to be the proof for Mr. Burback to the pro-choice topic the people rows that we are inadequateof abortion, where what ly compensating our staff. women really need is a whole servicing it.”

“Mr. Burrows incorrectly life support and empowerassumes that because of the ment through respect and automated aspect of a selflove. It is demeaning to disserve beer wall, that somehow our customcuss women’s rights through the lens of ers don’t engage in a centuries-old social abortion. Women need access to health exchange between patron and bartender. care—not just health care related to contraOn the contrary, because our staff memceptives—which is the primary topic when bers aren’t pouring drinks, it frees them discussing women’s health. We need supup to engage customers creatively around port with our families and communities that beer styles, getting to know them personsupport families, because families help to ally and their drink preferences, much like build strong communities. We need women’s a bartender. rights to support our education, our nurses, “As Mr. Burrows inferred, a bar isn’t just and all careers for women’s empowerment. about the beer; it’s about the people servicing Women’s rights are about more than aborit. We have an excellent team of ten individution. Women need to be individuals—fiery als who care about people, know their beer, and dynamic and fearfully and wonderfully and enjoy getting to know our regular patrons. made by their creator.

They may not stand behind a traditional struc“Motherhood is the crown of civilization. ture, but they’re roaming and know regular Whether we have children or not, I argue customers and their tastes by name.” that all women are ‘mothers’ called to that maternal care of fostering relationships, creWant to see your name in bold? Email us at ativity, love of neighbor, and being leaders backtalk@indyweek.com, comment on our in community. To deny that motherhood Facebook page or indyweek.com, or hit us up on and children are an important fabric in our Twitter: @indyweek. society completely devastates the person-

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triangulator

WHAT’S THE FIRST THING THAT COMES TO MIND?

“The city should have appealed to all these innovative companies that call Raleigh home to see what they could come up with.”

Cerla Merritt, Wake Forest

Last week, the city of Raleigh unveiled its new logo, for which it paid the princely sum of $226,000—$83,000 to Oklahoma-based consultants to do research, and $143,000 to the local design firm The Assembly to actually make the thing. Perhaps inevitably, there were, shall we say, mixed reviews on the internet. But since we’re not art critics, we’ll leave be the question of whether it’s good or not. (For the record, INDY design director

Shan Stumpf says: “It’s not bad. Minimalist. The oak tree transforms from being composed of more organic shapes to modern, hard-edged shapes. It is a bit corporate-looking.”) Instead, we wanted to know the first thing that came to people’s minds when they saw it.

So we put the question out there on Facebook and Twitter and sent our photographer to downtown Raleigh to gauge the vox populi. Here’s what we heard.

“It’s not bad, but for the amount of money they spent on it, is a little crazy.”

Seth Ballance, Raleigh

PHOTOS BY CAITLIN PENNA

“A company should have volunteered to do that, and the city should have donated some of that money to a charity.”

Doug Odom, Wake Forest

@pharrashley: Payday loans are back!

Jake Battles: Did they ask LEGO [for] permission to use their tree?

Sarah Torchinsky: WebMD type app from 2008.

@Faceitfacials: Raleigh, we’re not as boring as our logo.

@ProfilgateGrace: Looks like the BP logo.

Dave M. Klemp: Looks like a great logo for a pesticide company

@mightymimsy: The destruction of humankind and the rise of an alien army of Transformer trees.

@onebitpixel: Context is everything and a brand isn’t just a single logo. It’s a bit too far removed for it to be identified with old Raleigh, but here’s hoping for future/ progressive Raleigh.

@RogerTheGeek: Why?

“It’s too modern.

Raleigh is the City of Oaks, and I don’t see any oaks.”

Kennedy Fowle, Holly Springs

@NCRacialEd: A landscaping company that bought their logo online and picked a font from dafont @kindagrae: RU fucking kidding? And, it’s WEAK taboot.

Glad I’m a Durhamite.

Chris Jay: The kids in the public school system could have done better and it wouldn’t have cost $225K. @kgailes: DIVERSITY oak tree … some oval leaves, some rectangular. :-) we are not all the same. Together we can grow something magical and majestic.

“It looks like the logo after the BP oil spill.

You know, the go-green one. I like it.”

Phil Martindale, Durham

6 | 11.15.17 | INDYweek.com

Mike Sellers: Don’t blame the designer. This has “committee” all over it.

Bill Davis: Is that a potato stamp? Looks like a bud of weed.

@lodebole: Artichoke.

Heather Sarik: Looks like the logo for a biotech startup, designed by the CEO’s 13-year-old nephew.

Heather Sarik: Looks like the logo for a biotech Kathleen Pepi Southern: Very visually weak and there is a distinct disconnect between the lettering and the “tree” symbol. Also has overtones of a corporate logo for an agricultural fertilizer.

@rebekahmiel: Its near symmetry misses the mark + it just looks like a mistake. I find it deeply uncomfortable. Interesting concept, poor execution.

“Having the old historic logo seems to fit Raleigh better. It just doesn’t look like a city logo. It looks like a business logo.”

Kayde Fowle, Holly Springs.

“It’s very boring.

It needs to be more vibrant.”

Jessica Crespo, Durham

@snvnc: life, growth, harmony, energy, renewal, urban, modern, environment, nature … love the logo! @it_is_alex: Neoliberal

@MaripatHinders: Growth!

Organic and Humangenerated. Integrated.

“It’s interesting. I kind of get the binary look, but at the same time, it looks like agriculture.

I think it’s pretty cool.”

Matt Jones, Raleigh

+ TO THE JURY

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Earl Britt ruled that the twenty-six federal nuisance lawsuits filed against the pork giant Murphy-Brown LLC can finally go to trial—an important turning point in a high-profile and potentially game-changing case in a state where hog farming is serious business.

The lawsuits were filed by more than five hundred plaintiffs living near Murphy-Brown’s industrial hog farms in eastern North Carolina. The neighbors contend that the farms’ waste-management systems, which consist of storing excess excrement in massive open-air cesspools and liquifying and spraying the remaining waste onto nearby fields, negatively affect their health and quality of life. They argue that Murphy-Brown’s multibillion-dollar parent company, Smithfield Foods, has the resources to manage the pigs’ waste in a way that minimizes the odor and nuisance to nearby property owners.

The issue gained notoriety this spring after state Representative Jimmy Dixon, a pork-friendly Republican from Duplin County who has received more than $100,000 from the industry through his political career, introduced a bill that capped the amount of money that property owners living near hog farms could collect in nuisance lawsuits. (Dixon argued that the law should be applied retroactively, essentially nullifying the twenty-six federal lawsuits against Murphy-Brown, but that provision was removed from the final bill.) In May, after the legislature overrode Governor Cooper’s veto, the bill became law.

Judge Britt’s thirty-three-page ruling

PERIPHERAL VISIONS | V.C. ROGERS

dealt with various motions filed by Murphy-Brown. Per the company’s request, he agreed to seal various documents and to hear a motion that would separate the trials on December 4.

But he rejected Murphy-Brown’s argument that North Carolina’s right-to-farm law would protect the company’s farms from nuisance litigation. In total, he wholly denied eight of the company’s sixteen motions, and denied two others in part.

+ EVERYONE, GET ALONG

Wake County’s school board and Board of Commissioners share responsibility for spending more than a billion taxpayer dollars every year. But they have a hard time agreeing on where the money should go, as witnessed by the battle over funding for this fiscal year that ended in June.

The purse-string-holders at the county commission, most notably, turned down the schools’ request for $10 million for counselors and social workers to help marginalized students succeed. The commission did pass a five-cent tax increase that helped fund other Wake County Public Schools System goals.

During the past week, tensions flared again when commission chairman Sig Hutchinson criticized the school system for deciding that students would not take part in a statewide, eighteen-year-old study of tobacco use.

Hutchinson raised the topic again at the Monday work session that preceded his State of the County address.

“Tobacco use is on the rise,” Hutchinson said. “Obviously, tobacco is the number one

risk factor in preventable diseases.”

Hutchinson said the loss of Wake County’s data, representing one-tenth of North Carolina students, would endanger the quality of the long-running study.

School board members said last week that students were too often asked to take part in such surveys and would be better off concentrating on their studies.

In budget discussions on Monday, with no school board members present, several county commissioners—sounding a familiar theme—claimed that the schools routinely surprise commissioners with unexpected requests for funding. (In a recent joint meeting of both boards, school board member Jim Martin hotly disputed that notion.)

Commissioner Matt Calabria called for “a lot more inter-board communication.”

“We’re going to have to get comfortable, as a combination of boards, with making choices,” he said.

His colleague Erv Portman had asked for Monday’s meeting to advance his goal of establishing firm expectations of school spending for several years at a time. That could enable the boards to ask the public for one comprehensive tax increase instead of a series ofsmaller ones, Portman said.

School board members have noted that their budget is prone to uncertainty because they usually don’t know while they’re crafting it how much funding—and how many demands—may come their way from the General Assembly. triangulator@indyweek.com This week’s report by Jeffrey C. Billman, Thomas Goldsmith, and Erica Hellerstein.

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indynews Easier Said Than Done TALKING ABOUT AFFORDABLE HOUSING IS EASY. BUILDING IT IS HARDER, AS THE NEW DURHAM CITY COUNCIL WILL SOON DISCOVER.

BY SARAH WILLETS

The Southside Lofts, under construction south of downtown Durham

I

f you paid any attention to Durham’s recent municipal elections, you probably heard the phrase “affordable housing” dozens of times—and for good reason. According to real estate website Zillow, median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Durham has gone from just over $1,100 per month in 2012 to nearly $1,400 per month as of this fall.

Last month, the city council voted to use a prime city-owned lot at the intersection of Jackson and Pettigrew streets, next to Durham Station, for eighty units of affordable housing, along with office and retail space to bring in rent and help subsidize building costs. Now the council is deciding how to use a similarly desirable property downtown— the current headquarters for the Durham Police Department—to address the city’s affordable housing needs.

8 | 11.15.17 | INDYweek.com

FILE PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

Both discussions have centered on a sort of balancing act, leveraging low-income housing tax credits, city money, and revenue from uses other than housing to support the most affordable units. At the Jackson Street site, it turned out that market-rate apartments—typically seen as a way to subsidize affordable units—only widened the funding gap because those units would not be able to command as much rent as higher-end apartments nearby. The math was made more complicated still by a small, odd-shaped lot and design considerations necessitated by the nearby bus terminal.

The DPD site has more space to work with—about four acres as opposed to two— but throws in the wrinkle of whether to restore or demolish the existing building, a midcentury relic designed by acclaimed modernist architect Milton Small.

In short, creating affordable housing is easier said than done, as the new city council, which will be sworn in next month, will soon discover. Here are some (but surely not all) of the hurdles the city faces:

SECURING LOW-INCOME HOUSING TAX CREDITS

“The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) is the most important resource for creating affordable housing in the United States today,” says the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Under LIHTC, the IRS distributes a certain amount of tax credits to state and local agencies, which pass them on to developers.

Developers then typically sell them to banks and investors to create equity. There are two types of tax credits: 9 percent, which will subsidize much of a project but are harder

to come by; and 4 percent, which are much easier to secure but cover fewer costs.

Because the coveted 9 percent tax credits are competitive (the city estimates it can only get one such project awarded each year), Durham needs to spread out its applications to avoid competing with other developments initiated by the city or the Durham Housing Authority, which is seeking to redevelop its properties in coming years. A 9 percent LIHTC application is already planned for the Jackson Street project.

The scale of affordable housing projects is effectively capped by the program, says Karen Lado, assistant director of strategy for the city’s community development department, because there is a limit to the amount of tax credits that can be awarded per project and per unit. Usually, this works out to a maximum of about eighty affordable units, as was the case with Jackson Street.

“Once you get to about eighty, you’re basically not getting any additional tax credit,” Lado says. “It just adds costs to your project, for which there is no offset subsidy.”

Four percent credits are also not wellsuited for urban projects, particularly new construction. Because the subsidy is smaller, they work better for large, low-density rehabilitation projects, Lado says.

As prevalent as it is, the LIHTC program isn’t perfect. Earlier this year, an investigation by NPR and PBS’s Frontline found the program lacked oversight and was building fewer units at a higher cost to taxpayers.

BALANCING COSTS AND REVENUE

Beyond tax credits, the city can help fund affordable housing developments. The city dedicates two pennies of the property taxes —which adds up to about $5.4 million per year—to housing, but additional sources are likely needed.

One way to offset those costs is to add rent-generating office and commercial space to a development.

That’s the plan for Jackson Street, partly to create revenue but also to address the city’s need for downtown office space and fully utilize a prime site that would not have been filled by the maximum eighty affordable housing units. Office and retail are also being considered for the DPD site.

But placing too many conditions on how a city-owned site must be used can cut into a developer’s profit margins and

NEWS BRIEF

Will Defend Durham Charges Be Dropped?

Attorney Scott Holmes said Tuesday morning that the Durham County district attorney was dropping felony charges of inciting a riot against a group of activists who toppled a Confederate monument in downtown Durham this summer.

However, on Tuesday afternoon, District Attorney Roger Echols said in an email, “All charges remain pending.

I wasn’t in court, but I understand [Holmes] made comments about felonies being dismissed or off the table or something to that effect. Mr. Holmes may be responding to or speaking about what he expects to be the case based on conversations with this office.”

Echols added that he couldn’t comment on or confirm the the accuracy of Holmes’s announcement.

Seven protesters charged in connection with the August 14 demonstration appeared in court Tuesday morning. They also face misdemeanor property-damage charges.

“We’ve been asking for that all along, and we think that's a reasonable decision,” Holmes said.

Three people have already seen the charges against them dropped because there was “no visual evidence” that they participated in damaging the statue.

Twelve people had been charged with damaging the statue, and another three are facing charges related to a

in turn decrease the sale price of the land.

The amount of affordable housing and the income levels served by those units also affect how much revenue a property will generate—and thus, again, the land price.

“There is a point at which you essentially use up all the value,” Lado says.

The city owns both the Jackson Street and DPD sites. In the case of Jackson Street, the city will sell the property for $1 to a nonprofit development team. The city plans to sell the DPD property, with proceeds from the sale going toward construction of the new headquarters opening on Main Street next fall.

PREEMPTION

Municipalities in North Carolina cannot require developers to include a certain amount of affordable housing, a practice known as inclusionary zoning.

The city can, however, place conditions on the sale of city-owned property requiring affordable housing and other uses to be built.

Durham can also offer what are called density bonuses. Right now, that means allowing developers to build one market-rate unit over density limits for every affordable unit they

spontaneous rally against an expected KKK appearance on August 18.

The cases have been continued until December 5.

The group, which calls itself Defend Durham, also announced that it is launching its own “commission of inquiry” to investigate what it called obstruction of justice by the General Assembly in passing a 2015 law that protects Confederate monuments; collusion by elected officials to target poor communities and communities of color; and negligent homicide by Sheriff Mike Andrews for multiple deaths in the jail.

The group says it plans to gather testimony and evidence and present it to a “people’s tribunal,” where those accused “will be given a full opportunity to present their own defense.”

According to a press release, “The Commission of Inquiry seeks to shed light on crimes against the people, including repression and intimidation of organizers and other vulnerable communities impacted by police brutality, immigration raids and deportations, low-wage work, LGBTQ discrimination, and more— which are the true crimes being committed by the general assembly, the Trump administration, local sheriff's department, and others in power.”

—Sarah Willets

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build. But no one is taking the bait. The council is considering upping its incentives—for example, allowing developers to build higher.

UNCERTAINTY

Further complicating things, the U.S. House’s tax-reform proposal would eliminate taxexempt private-activity bonds and “gut” 4 percent tax credits, Lado says.

There’s also a concern that if the Trump administration lowers the corporate tax rate, there would be a corresponding dip in how much companies—which buy up lowincome housing tax credits to offset their corporate tax obligation—will pay for equity for the credits.

Lastly, the city can’t be sure how developers will respond to projects requiring affordable housing.

“The biggest challenge we have is that there is a sort of unknown stigma toward affordable housing,” Lado says. “There could be none. We don’t know how the need to provide affordable housing or the sense that there will be affordable housing on the site could impact developers.” swillets@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 11.15.17 | 9

news

Learning Curve

COMING OFF HER STIFFEST ELECTORAL CHALLENGE YET, MAYOR MCFARLANE GRAPPLES WITH THE FACT THAT A BIG PART OF RALEIGH FEELS LEFT BEHIND

BY THOMAS GOLDSMITH

Your Week.

Every Wednesday. indyweek.com 10 | 11.15.17 | INDYweek.com

On election night, Mayor Nancy McFarlane got a call from Charles Francis, her Democratic challenger.

From the time the first precincts reported that night, it was obvious McFarlane had prevailed over Francis. Unofficial totals showed the mayor, who is unaffiliated politically, with roughly 58 percent of the vote.

“He told me he was calling to congratulate me,” McFarlane told the INDY. “Then he said it was not the end for him.”

Nor was it the end for the issues that Francis had raised, especially economic inequity. Precinct results revealed a tale of two cities, with the prosperous west side choosing McFarlane and the mostly lower-income east side overwhelmingly picking Francis.

“I don’t recall using exactly those words,” Francis says. “What I intended to say was that I hoped the campaign would lead to discussion of some of the issues I raised.

My campaign was about including people that have been left out, it was about increasing access to housing, it was about treating city workers more fairly, it was about including everyone in growth.”

With the hard-fought election over, McFarlane will begin her fourth term on December 1. She’ll be presiding over a city council with two new, younger members, Nicole Stewart and Stefanie Mendell, both with a neighborhood-friendly orientation.

Meanwhile, the city McFarlane represents has had a new light cast on it— both on the shining edifices of downtown and on the areas where Raleigh’s booming growth can create problems, not wealth.

In one example, older neighborhoods near downtown are rapidly being replaced by apartment towers and renovated or replaced homes.

“I think what we took away from the election is what we already knew—people don’t feel included,” McFarlane says.

“You obviously have a section of the city

that is disengaged.”

McFarlane and the current council had worked on the issues that Francis raised, from passing a penny sales tax increase to fund affordable housing, to instituting— after a glitch—a raise and increased benefits for city workers, to expanded transit opportunities. But especially early in the campaign, McFarlane had focused on points of pride: most Raleigh residents’ apparent approval of the way things are going, the development of Dix Park, the near-completion of Union Station and its effect on the western edge of downtown, and increased private investment throughout the city.

“People don’t feel included.

You obviously have a section of the city that is disengaged.”

As Francis’s relative success in October—earning enough votes to force a runoff—showed, not everyone feels that way.

Zainab Baloch, a twenty-six-year-old candidate who made an unsuccessful bid for an at-large seat on the city council, says the election helped energize a segment of the population.

“I think after this election we are going to see more people engaged in the issues and being more vocal, more involved in the citizens advisory councils, thinking of other ways to be involved,” says Baloch, who backed Francis. “I’m definitely disappointed but very proud of what Charles Francis accomplished. I think, regardless

of how the election went, we all have the same goal. That comes down to looking at issues with affordable housing and public transportation, to just being aware that the city has these issues.”

Francis says his campaign should have several lasting effects: helping change the city’s approach to citizen engagement, highlighting the effects of displacement of longtime residents through gentrification, pointing out the lack of diversity in city leadership, and shifting Raleigh’s focus from “constant self-congratulation” about growth to questions about its overall effect.

Francis notes that his campaign reached voters all over the city. But McFarlane’s support also defied stereotypes. Indicative of an emerging, more diverse Raleigh were the nearly even votes at Brier Creek Country Club—McFarlane, 353, and Francis, 333. And at Powell Elementary, in a growing, diverse east Raleigh neighborhood, Francis outpolled McFarlane by only 26 votes, 437–411.

City council member Corey Branch, who represents southeast Raleigh’s District C, says a voice came out of the election that represents concerns about fairness in the city.

“It says that we have been marginalized and ignored,” Branch says. “I think you’re going to see us really try to develop realistic approaches to affordable housing and focusing on the environment around universities and making sure that there’s growth there.” (Branch’s district includes St. Augustine, Shaw, and William Peace universities.)

In line with the growing focus on community engagement, Branch will start a series of monthly District C meetings in January.

“It’s for the community to develop a plan on what it wants,” he says. “You can’t fix a problem if you don’t recognize that it exists.” tgoldsmith@indyweek.com

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INDYweek.com | 11.15.17 | 11

A

MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY

WITH A DEPORTATION ORDER HANGING OVER HIS HEAD, JOSE CHICAS HAS SPENT THE LAST FIVE MONTHS DODGING IMMIGRATION OFFICIALS INSIDE A SMALL RELIGIOUS CENTER IN DURHAM.

BY ERICA HELLERSTEIN PHOTOS BY CAITLIN PENNA

Jose Chicas 12 | 11.15.17 | INDYweek.com

bout a month ago, a fifty-twoyear-old evangelical pastor named Jose Chicas was overcome with an inexplicable craving.

For months, he’d been secluded inside a small religious space in Durham, and suddenly he had the urge to sink his teeth into a McDonald’s pancake. The thought of it hovered in front of his eyes like a mirage. Chicas hesitated, peered outside his front porch, and considered, for a fleeting moment, succumbing to the temptation.

But then, just as quickly, reality hit.

Chicas is undocumented, and since late June, Durham’s School for Conversion, a religious education center on the property of St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church, has provided him with cover from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. A deportation order brought Chicas to the church grounds the day he was supposed to board a one-way flight to El Salvador, June 27. Since then, he hasn’t taken a step outside, remaining holed up inside the modest, two-bedroom center’s comfy but tight confines.

The pancake presented a dilemma. As a matter of policy, immigration officials typically avoid conducting raids on religious spaces, which is why Chicas took up residence at the School for Conversion in the first place. An inch beyond the invisible ring of safety etched around the facility could have ended Chicas’s life as he knew it, sending him thousands of miles from the quiet, tree-lined street that now greets him every morning. Rationally, he knew that the risk wasn’t worth it.

So Chicas reconsidered his options, peeking outside once again. Perhaps he could recruit a generous passerby willing to bring back the coveted pancake—McDonald’s was only a few minutes away, after all, and surely any good American could understand a pancake craving.

Chicas waited, but no one showed up.

“There wasn’t anyone” he says. “And then I felt sad. It was a drive, so it wasn’t worth it. And then I think, When will I leave here?”

C

hicas’s McDonald’s calculation is hard for most people to imagine. But for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States—and the 350,000 in North Carolina—it’s just one example of the routine tradeoffs you make to get through the day when the specter of deportation is always lurking. That’s especially true now, in what Chicas’s wife, Sandra, describes as an increasingly hostile political environment that is “harder for immigrants. There’s fear and intimidation. I think if Donald Trump wasn’t president, it would be different.”

Trump promised during the presidential campaign to restrict immigration, build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Since the inauguration, he’s begun to make good on those promises. ICE arrests are up 43 percent this year, compared with 2016, and more than a quarter of those arrested have no criminal history. Trump has also expanded the groups prioritized for deportation to immigrants who “have committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense”—meaning anybody who entered the country illegally.

Chicas was caught up in this new mandate. In 1985, he fled El Salvador’s violent civil war and crossed into Texas through the U.S.-Mexico border, where he was appre-

“IF HIS WIFE CAN FORGIVE HIM, SHOULDN’T OUR CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM FORGIVE HIM? AND SHOULDN’T OUR IMMIGRATION SYSTEM FORGIVE HIM?”

hended by immigration officials. He was released on bail but never turned up for his immigration court date, a decision he chalks up to bad legal advice. As a consequence, he was given a deportation order but was able to remain in the country through an approved application for asylum and, when that ran out, stays of removal. He eventually settled in Raleigh and traveled regularly to the Charlotte ICE field office for check-ins. He was given a social security number, work permit, and driver’s license; he also paid taxes.

But last spring, at Chicas’s annual ICE check-in, he finally ran out of luck. His deportation would no longer be put on hold, he learned. As Sandra tells it, this was collateral damage from the administration’s expanded deportation priorities.

“They told him, ‘Mr. Chicas, I’m sorry about the new administration. You need to go back to El Salvador,’” Sandra says. “And they explained to him, ‘It’s not you, it’s every-

one with a deportation order.’”

He also may have been prioritized because of DUI and domestic violence charges from the 1990s. (The family says he wasn’t convicted.) He says he’s a changed person now— he struggled with alcoholism then but got sober in 2002, had a spiritual awakening, found God, became a pastor, and reconciled with Sandra.

Chicas’s supporters push back on the notion that his past disqualifies his future, saying his story is a testament to the faith community’s principles of transformation and second chances.

“I think most importantly we believe in forgiveness,” says the Reverend Noel Andersen, the national grassroots coordinator for Church World Service, which works with refugee and immigrant populations.

“We believe in the reality that we have the opportunity to repent our wrongdoings and change. Which is what I understand pastor Jose Chicas’s story is all about. And if his wife can forgive him of his wrongdoings of the past, shouldn’t our criminal justice system forgive him? And shouldn’t our immigration system forgive him?”

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ess than a decade after Chicas arrived in the United States, he met Sandra. The two got married in 1998 and had four children.

They moved to a home on a quiet street in Raleigh and created a life together. Sandra landed a gig cleaning at N.C. State, which she’s had for the past seventeen years, and Jose worked as a custodian at a church.

His path to the ministry came out of his own experiences, his family says—especially the people who extended a hand to him when he was struggling with alcoholism.

“God put it in his heart,” Sandra says.

“So he could help people, like the people who helped him when he needed it, to overcome his own vices.” In 2015, he got ordained and became a pastor of the fortymember Iglesia Evangélica Jesús el Pan de Vida in Raleigh.

Now, however, Chicas is in a different church for the foreseeable future.

The stocky, quiet Chicas has developed a routine for himself amid the uncertainty: up at dawn, wander outside to the balcony and take in the fresh air, read the Bible, doze off, wait for Sandra to drive the thirty minutes from Raleigh to the church around six thirty with dinner and food for the following day in tow.

On a visit in late September, Chicas sits bleary-eyed on a green sofa in a blue dress shirt and black jeans. There’s an old TV in the room, a stack of books, and a black-andwhite poster tacked on the wall that reads, “Stop separating families.” Behind Chicas, INDYweek.com | 11.15.17 | 13

THE INDY'S GUIDE TO THE TRIANGLE

FINDER 14 | 11.15.17 | INDYweek.com

on stands

NOW!

on a small wooden table, sits a crumpled McDonald’s bag.

He had a handful of visitors that afternoon, but sometimes long stretches of time go by without hearing from anyone other than his immediate family. Still, Chicas has found some allies among the Triangle’s faith communities. The family has also gained the support of the Reverend William J. Barber II, formerly of the North Carolina NAACP, who was touched by a speech made by Chicas’s eleven-year-old son, Ezequiel, at an immigration rally near the legislature in June. The family hadn’t planned on having one of their own speak, but, after a reporter asked them to share their story, Ezequiel stepped forward.

“Without your mom and dad, you cannot know what is good and bad,” he told the crowd of about three dozen people. “I hope you can help me with my father not leaving me.”

Barber, who had never met the family, was moved.

“He said that he felt God touched him, and he called my husband ‘my brother’ and said, ‘I have to help him,’” Sandra says. “And then this lady told me, ‘Reverend Barber offered sanctuary.’ I said, ‘What is this?’ She said, ‘I’ll explain to you later.’”

T

he Chicas family eventually found out what she was talking about. School for Conversion, led by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, the associate pastor of St. John’s, would offer Chicas safe haven in the form of sanctuary.

The sanctuary movement rose to prominence in the U.S. in the 1980s, when churches opened their doors to Central American refugees fleeing civil wars. It was the Cold War era, and the Reagan administration famously denied their asylum claims, arguing that they were economic, not political, refugees.

“People were fleeing, coming with torture marks, and our government was saying, ‘No, this isn’t an asylum case,’” says Anderson of CWS. “Clearly it was. So people took it upon themselves to essentially do the work of refugee resettlement without any help from the government and advocated for reforms.”

The movement has seen a resurgence as of late, Anderson says, but with a slightly different objective. In the eighties, it was about getting refugees fleeing war into the country; now, he says, “we’re trying to protect people who are already here.”

According to data from ICE, deportations reached a peak in 2012, when more than four hundred thousand people were removed from the country, earning President Obama the dubious nickname “deporter in chief.”

Counterintuitively, perhaps, deportations have actually fallen under Trump’s presidency thus far, despite an increase in ICE arrests. According to federal data, the agency deported 211,068 immigrants in the 2017 fiscal year, down from 240,255 in 2016.

Despite this decline, sanctuary cases have risen.

In 2016, there were five public sanctuary cases in the U.S.; today, there are thirty, in states ranging from Arizona to Illinois, Anderson says. Two are in North Carolina. (That number is down from three, after Minerva Garcia, a Mexican mother who was taking sanctuary at a church in Greensboro, left after her deportation order was vacated last month.)

Anderson speculates that part of the spike may be related to changing ICE protocol: “A lot of these people [who were deported] would have been victims of what we know as silent raids, where they go to their check-in, and they’ve been going to their check-in for years, and all of a sudden they’re gone.” Now, he says, ICE often tries “to give at least some orderly removal. They’ll say, ‘OK, come back in a month with a plane ticket,’ and then we know what’s going to happen. And so a lot more people are going into sanctuary precisely because of these scenarios.”

That’s what happened to Chicas.

“HE CRIES EVERY DAY. HE MISSES HIS FATHER. HE SAYS, ‘IT’S NOT FAIR WHAT’S HAPPENING. IT’S NOT FAIR.’” In offering sanctuary, Wilson-Hartgrove was animated by what he believes is a moral case for Chicas to stay in the country: to pastor his church, remain with his family, and be part of the community he’s been involved with for decades. As long as Chicas remains in the church, he will likely be shielded from deportation, due to a self-imposed ICE “sensitive locations” policy, which generally avoids immigration enforcement at medical facilities, public demonstrations, and places of worship.

The agency is aware of Chicas’s decision. In an email, ICE spokesman Bryan

Cox acknowledged that ICE has not “taken action to arrest Mr. Chicas at the church in accordance with its sensitive locations policy” but added that the agency wouldn’t be precluded from action should Chicas leave the grounds: “A final order of removal issued by a federal judge does not expire. That judicial order would remain in effect at whatever point any person exits a sensitive location.”

Chicas’s friends, family, and allies are hoping it doesn’t come to that. Wilson-Hartgrove is prepared to provide sanctuary to Chicas for as long as he needs, until his case is resolved—years, perhaps. But it’s unclear if his family is ready for that scenario.

When asked, Sandra sighs. “I don’t want to be negative,” she says. “But if they don’t help us, give any relief to him, I tell him, OK, I have to support you for the next three years. The years Donald Trump will be in the White House. And I don’t know if he’s ready for that. It’s a small space. This situation is very difficult.”

Sandra is more comfortable talking about the impacts on the economic and psychological well-being of her family, including their four children, who range in age from eleven to twenty-three. Ezequiel, their youngest, has been deeply affected, she says.

He was once a high-performing and wellbehaved student, but his grades started to slip in the spring, right after Chicas learned of his deportation.

“He is affected a lot,” Sandra says. “His life.

His grades. He used to be one of the smart boys, very good in the school. Now he’s seeing a psychologist because he cries every day. He misses his father. He says, ‘It’s not fair what’s happening. It’s not fair.’”

Their eighteen-year-old daughter has struggled with depression. “She had to be hospitalized because of depression,” Sandra says. “And it’s like nobody cares. They don’t care how she is suffering. She was born in this country and needs my husband here.”

When Sandra goes to work at N.C. State, she doesn’t want to leave her daughter at home.

But there’s not much she can do, because she has to work—in fact, she’s currently looking for a weekend job, too. Jose, stuck inside the church, can no longer work, so Sandra has become the family’s breadwinner.

“The emotional and economic pain they’re causing is too much,” she says. “Because I leave a daughter who needs me. If my husband was working, I could stay here with her.

But I can’t. And I leave her in God’s hands.

I say, ‘God, take care of her, because I don’t have another choice.’”

A

lthough the Chicas family has tried to make noise about the case, they sometimes can’t help but feel forgotten—by other churches, by members of their own community, and by people hesitant to jump to

the defense of someone with a less-thansterling past.

Durham, of course, has rallied around undocumented immigrants before. In January 2016, Wildin Acosta, an undocumented student from Honduras, was detained on his way to Riverside High School and sent to an immigration detention center in Georgia. His case sparked a massive public outcry. After months in detention, ICE released him in August 2016. (Last month, his asylum case was postponed until December.)

“I was hoping, waiting that all the people I knew were going to come and support me,” says Chicas. “When days go by and I haven’t had any contact with anyone, any phone calls, I can feel like they’ve left me. There was one time where almost two weeks passed when I didn’t have contact with anyone other than my family. I was wondering, What happened? I felt sad.”

Sandra says she’s sought aid from community pastors from a range of congregations, to no avail. She hoped they’d come to Chicas’s defense and speak out in support of his plight.

“Maybe they’re scared, or maybe it’s because a lot of pastors think that Trump is the best,” she says. “I don’t know.”

The Chicases were also hoping to get support from state lawmakers, but the list of people who have signed on to help is not very long. So far, they’ve gotten letters of sup-

port from Durham Mayor Bill Bell, council member Cora Cole-McFadden, and Chapel Hill Town Council member Maria Palmer.

(Bell will step down next month, and ColeMcFadden and Palmer both lost their reelection bids last week.)

Looking for higher-profile allies, Sandra says the family also reached out to Republican Senator Thom Tillis, whom she says “didn’t support us,” and to U.S. Representative David Price, a Democrat whose district covers parts of Raleigh. Tillis’s office did not respond to the INDY’s request for comment. But the freshman senator has emerged as a new face in the immigration debate. In September, he introduced a “conservative Dream Act” that would create a pathway to citizenship for millions of young undocumented immigrants but has stricter requirements than Democratic alternatives and would involve “extreme vetting” for applicants.

Price’s communications director, Sawyer Hackett, declined to comment on Chicas’s case but provided the INDY with the following statement: “Congressman Price is aware of the growing number of individuals in North Carolina and across the country who have chosen to seek refuge in a community of faith instead of facing likely deportation. He shares the concern expressed by many of his constituents about the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, and he has urged the administration to prioritize the removal of individuals who pose an actual threat to their communities instead of those who pose no threat and have strong ties to this country.”

The family was also disappointed by the response from Governor Roy Cooper. Sandi Velez, a family friend, says she contacted Cooper’s office to ask for a letter of support.

In a subsequent conversation with one of Cooper’s staffers, Velez says, she was told they “support our moral efforts but cannot show advocacy” and “will not cross the line because it is a federal issue.”

Sandra says politicians’ tepid support for Jose has given her new insight into the ways of the world. She uses herself as an example. Historically, she always supported Republicans, because she believed that they represented the “party of God.” Now things look different.

“It opened my eyes,” she says. “I used to be like, I love God, I’m a Christian, I’m going to support Republicans. It’s the party of God. But they have shown me that’s not true.”

As an example, she points to Donald Trump.

“He says he loves evangelical pastors.

Well, there’s an evangelical pastor in Durham. He’s my husband. Trump doesn’t care.” ehellerstein@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 11.15.17 | 15

AURAL ASANAS IF DEEP LISTENING IS YOGA FOR THE EAR, THEN YOGA IS DEEP LISTENING FOR THE BODY. THE HALVES UNITE AT DURHAM’S GLOBAL BREATH STUDIO.

BY A D A M S O B S E Y

YOUR WEEK. EVERY WEDNESDAY. FOOD • NEWS • ARTS • MUSIC

W INDYWEEK.COM 16 | 11.15.17 | INDYweek.com

hat’s the difference between hearing and listening? That’s the question Lindsay “L. Cooper” McKenzie explores in her Deep Listening workshops at Durham’s Global Breath Studio. Deep Listening is derived from the praxis of experimental music pioneer Pauline Oliveros, evolving from its inception as her performance group into a pedagogy at the Center for Deep Listening, a multidisciplinary program at New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

McKenzie, one of the first to receive

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS

certification, is now a keeper of the legacy of Oliveros, who passed away in 2016. After leading workshops at Moogfest in May, McKenzie was invited to lead a series at Global Breath.

Much of the experience of Deep Listening depends on where the listening is done.

Global Breath, which opened in 2013, is on the top floor of an old building downtown (previously home to the thumping Xscape Club). It’s sunny, airy, and comfortable, like a well-loved loft home. During yoga, the windows give glimpses of rooftop and skyline.

The studio is compelling to the ear, too. For part of the two-hour workshop, McKenzie

has attendees simply lie on the floor with eyes closed and ears open. This exercise goes well beyond involuntary hearing and into the true practice of Deep Listening: it’s a deliberate, attentive engagement with sound. In this space, that includes variations in the soft trickle and burble of a fish tank, occasional piercing street noises, breath, digestion. Rolling onto one’s side creaks an old floorboard, and the position introduces dim murmurs from the hair salon below.

Stray words form and drift across the mind like clouds. On the ceiling, the HVAC ducts come to life. After a few minutes, their ambient sound reveals itself as two discrete

S

tones: the whoosh of air from the vents and the drone of the motor.

What’s deep about this listening is how it reconnects the auditory sense to a more primal, elemental kind of hearing. The mass of noise is separated into its components. Rather than organizing them hierarchically—interpreting language, warning sounds, musical notes, and so on—the mind instead moves among them, curious and active, near to dreaming but awake and steady, at once indwelling and exploring. It’s yoga for the ear.

Deep Listening at Global Breath calls to mind George Eliot’s famous line from Middlemarch: “If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

“Bart has a very intense practice,” Be says, but it is drawn from his tempered introversion. Be, a natural performer, calls herself “more extreme.” Their yin-yang partnership contains a multitude of dual engagements: love and business, society and spirit, industriousness and meditation.

These multitudes are also legible in the name Global Breath, and on the sign outside the studio invoking yoga, mindfulness, and community. Its location in the middle of downtown is purposeful.

The yoga here is in and of the world.

The muted racket of One City Center’s construction sometimes adds a Deep Listening element to asanas; in August, rather than conducting class as the anti-KKK protest march commenced in front of the building, Be and Westdorp took students down to the street to bear witness. They also operate Live Globally,

DEEP LISTENING WORKSHOP

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a nonprofit foundation that supports a The studio’s easeful calm belies the chaos school in Kenya and local charity work. of its origins: it was born out of Hurricane (It was inspired by a conversation Be Katrina. Studio owners Bart Westdorp and had with one of her yoga students, Nina Be (formerly romantic partners, now who was Kenyan.) Some of the studio’s amicably split), were living together in New revenue goes to Live Globally, which Orleans when the disaster struck in 2005. has a grant from Duke Interdisciplinary Their home was ruined and their lives Social Innovators to develop funding and utterly leveled. They moved to the Triangle, organizational strategy. where Be had family—although when asked Be cites the Hindu concept of seva, about her upbringing, she’s quick to give a selfless service, “which is at the core of mischievous smile and say, “Oh, I’m not from yoga,” she says. “We’re in service. What this planet.” Westdorp is American-born does that look like as a system, as culbut was raised in the Netherlands. Their ture?” Yet even that question has an routes to and lives in New Orleans were inner impulsion. “This is a very personal complicated in history and spirit: dancing project,” Westdorp says. professionally in New York City, raising Deep Listening, for all its pedagogical children, divorce, carpentry, dumpster HER WILLIAMSdiving, running marathons and restaurants development, boils down to the immediate: “What am I actually hearing right now?” and an underground performance space. loor with McKenzie says. Her workshop is at home And, of course, yoga. Be developed a pracexercise in a yoga studio, with its emphasis on tice she calls Mindbody Centering Yoga aring and yoking movement to breath and intention (MBCY), and was training teachers. ResetListening: toa asana, convolved in the moment. tled in Raleigh afterTo Katrina, Westdorp advertise or feature pet foralladoption, ment with If Deep Listening is yoga for the ear, built Be a studio space for her training please contact eroberts@indyweek.com variations then yoga is also Deep Listening for the programs, and she cajoled him, then only fish tank, body. Of Global Breath’s MBCY teacha casual practitioner, into participating. s, breath, er training, which adheres to no single Soon, he was leading the training sessions. creaks an To advertise or feature a pet yoga tradition, and which all the studio’s A few years later, attracted to Durham’s ntroduces instructors undergo, unifying their pracmulticulturalism, they found the space that for adoption, please contact on below. tices not in style but in spirit, Be says: became Global Breath, which Westdorp’s eroberts@indyweek.com the mind “We have no agenda to push. You have to carpentry and repair skills allowed him to VAC ducts be kind. And a good listener.” restore almost singlehandedly—and singletes, their arts@indyweek.com mindedly, with months of labor. o discrete

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four for dinner) but packed with ast week, only four bottles enough chicken to feel like the of mezcal remained protein fuels you for your next behind the bar at William drink, while the dough absorbs & Company—or WillCo as it’s any potential hangover. The known on North Person Street. chicken tamales are made tra“We were depleted after Day ditionally, with lard, but that’s of the Dead,” bartender Carrie swapped for oil in the cheese Gephart tells me. Most of the version. time the bar offers at least eight Mezcal works with spice, to ten brands of the Mexican bringing out savory notes to spirit, one that’s enjoying a the chile-forward mole Castro trendy moment on American uses as a base for her chicken cocktail menus. But WillCo’s not tamales. flashy about it.

“You know that our Oaxacan Liliana Contreras opened mole is very different, right?” the bar after building a career she asks me. in the service industry. She still I’ve tried eight different shows up as a guest bartender Oaxacan-style moles myself at Five Star, where she got her (and only attempted to replicate start. Contreras was an original two recipes, which took half a co-owner of Lucha Tigre in day each to make). But I can Chapel Hill and Raleigh’s first only begin to understand its iteration of Calavera. complexities.

WillCo celebrated two years Castro won’t reveal many in May, and that’s where Conof her cooking secrets. Except treras found her footing as a bar she does divulge that the laboowner true to her roots. The bar rious process requires a blend glows with details of her native of ancho, guajillo, and chile de Mexico City, reminiscent of the Oaxacan tamales and mezcal-focused drinks are served at William & Company. PHOTO BY CAITLIN PENNA arbol—and she doesn’t remove curated hipster vibes found in the the seeds. It all goes into the mix, bars and cafes of La Condesa and giving the tamales a super hard kick.

Roma Norte combined with the more old-school touches of That’s how WillCo truly echoes the motto you hear at My favorite combination right now is a tamal enjoyed historic neighborhoods like Navarte, where the occasional any bar, restaurant, or cafe in Mexico: para servirle. with the Naked and Famous, a grapefruit-focused drink calavera is less kitsch and more built-in tradition.

“A tamalito with a mezcalito, it’s very delcious,” says that balances with a nice acidity. Activated charcoal is Without making a big fuss, Contreras is introducing grinCoco Castro, who makes WillCo’s tamales. Castro is a trending on cocktail lists. It’s not my thing—the charcoal gos like us to approachable mezcal cocktails that employ full-time prep cook at Five Star restaurant. She makes the subdues flavors. Plus, with mezcal the smoky complement the all-natural techniques used in the bars of Mexico— tamales a few times a week either before her shift, around is too on-the-nose. But WillCo’s Smoke Signal may have fresh juices, homemade tinctures, and lots of herbaceous five-thirty a.m., or afterward in the early evenings. me jumping on the bandwagon. It’s muddled with lemon and fruity details.

She’s from the small town of El Carrizal de Galeana in and fresh basil, complementing the Mezcal Vago Espadín.

The bar uses mezcal as a base, experimenting with the the state of Oaxaca (where a current statistic claims just On any given day, the scene at WillCo could start with a above ingredients and seasonal fruit, like prickly pear or eighty-three residents). With a laugh, she swears that sidewalk space turned parking spot for strollers as moms sour orange. Contreras likes to play with infusions, too, you can’t find tamales like hers elsewhere in Raleigh. And take a break (Contreras named the bar after her son) and using the most temperate mezcal style (Vida is a common she’s right, because I don’t know where else to get a simple roll into the night with packs of American Spirits clutbrand) and letting it steep with heavy-hitting flavors like tamalito with a little mezcal (or a lot) at any other neightering outdoor tabletops and friends canoodling on the ginger or ancho chiles. The resulting concoctions are rotatborhood bar. The tamales come with zero frills, individualcouches. Tamales are the perfect complement to this ing cocktails scrawled in chalk on the specials board. ly packaged in aluminum foil and wrapped in banana leaf. already cozy neighborhood bar.

And there, in the bottom right corner, a permanent The four-cheese version is indulgent, but my favorite food@indyweek.com special: “Tamales! $2” are Castro’s chicken tamales. They are slim (I could eat INDYweek.com | 11.15.17 | 19

indymusic Howard’s Hour of Power

WITH THE ROSEBUDS, IVAN HOWARD INSPIRED A GENERATION OF TRIANGLE MUSICIANS. SO WHERE DID HE GO?

BY GRAYSON HAVER CURRIN

Ivan Howard PHOTOS BY TAYLOR BOLDING

I

van Howard grins when he talks about crossing over Kanye West.

Early in October 2014, Howard— the cofounder of longtime Raleigh pop favorites The Rosebuds and a native of city suburb Fuquay-Varina—was about to wrap up weeknight band practice for an annual Halloween-themed crew he’d assembled in Portland, Oregon. Howard had lived in Portland for a year, moving there following stints in Wilmington and New York after fleeing Raleigh in 2010.

But an old pal he’d met in Raleigh was on the phone. Justin Vernon, the leader of Bon Iver and a former Rosebud himself, had an unexpected request.

“He was like, ‘Come to Eau Claire tonight. Kanye is here, and he wants you to do what I did on his record,’” Howard remembers on a Friday night from the rear table of a dim Chinese restaurant near his Portland home. His round, congenial Southern accent supplies the perfect dash of doubt.

20 | 11.15.17 | INDYweek.com

“I actually had to call the studio manager up, because I didn’t know if Justin was telling the truth. Maybe he was stoned,” Howard says, laughing. “And he wasn’t buying my ticket. But it was real.”

An hour later, Howard was on a budget flight to Minneapolis, where he rented a car and drove the final hundred miles to Vernon’s sprawling estate and studio, arriving long after midnight. Vernon had contributed heavily to West’s previous three records, from supplying samples and singing hooks to cowriting several songs on 2013’s Yeezus. That night in Eau Claire, Vernon’s compound had become an unlikely nexus of producers, singers, and rappers—Kendrick Lamar, The Arcade Fire’s Win Butler, Cody Chesnutt—all working on bits and pieces of what would become 2016’s The Life of Pablo.

A few hours after Howard walked in, though, nearly everyone disappeared from the studio, as if Howard had suddenly woken on the wrong side of this dream.

He found them all outside on the basket-

ball court, where Vernon’s team of three was falling to West’s trio. Howard, a highschool basketball star, recruited a pickup squad, called “Next,” and crossed over West several times during a fast break.

Howard lost the ball out of bounds, but he suddenly won West’s respect.

“He screamed, ‘Oh, shit, I see what you were about to do to me. Oh, shit!’” Howard says. “After that, he was my friend. I wasn’t just some random white dude from Eau Claire, hanging out.”

Howard spent the next twelve hours writing and singing for West. He penned a tune with Chesnutt and lent his honeyed sensibilities to beats already in progress. He left twenty-four hours after he arrived, catching another red-eye flight to Texas, where The Rosebuds played what remain their final shows to date at Austin City Limits. His contributions didn’t make The Life of Pablo, but at least his trio won the game.

The crossover, the late-night collaborations, even the Halloween band back in Portland: for Howard, they are all pieces of

a nearly decade-long process to rearrange his life and reimagine his music after The Rosebuds stalled and the marriage at its core splintered. In the interim, he’s gotten a divorce, moved across the country, supported his soft-rock supergroup on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, remarried, and purchased a cozy midcentury ranch home in Northeast Portland. And in October, he released Beautiful Tired Bodies, his debut album under the playful name Howard Ivans. A surprising set of expertly rendered modern soul, disco, and funk, it is one of the best and most honest records Howard has ever made and a clear break from his pop-rock pedigree.

“Back in the day, I would have never sung a line like, ‘They don’t know how it feels to love you, baby.’ Coming from an indie rock background, those lines would have been cheesy to my friends,” he says. “But the name change gave me permission to say anything I wanted to say. I am able to do what I want to do. I don’t really have anything to lose.”

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or a spell, just after the start of the millennium, The Rosebuds seemed like the Triangle’s next hit. Howard and Kelly Crisp met in 2001, started the band on a lark, wed, and signed to Merge Records a year later.

Their debut, the effervescent The Rosebuds Make Out!, earned instant acclaim, with Spin praising it as “garage music stripped to its essence.”

As a band, Crisp and Howard proved perennially restless; the subsequent Birds Make Good Neighbors shuffled slowly through bittersweet, twilit songs that twinkled with a hint of country, while 2007’s Night of the Furies veered into dark dance territory. They toured constantly, seemingly stuck at the threshold between next big thing and actual big thing.

“There weren’t really any role models for what we were trying to do in Raleigh as a band,” Howard says. “We were trying to step it up, and at that time there was no one else taking those steps.”

As The Rosebuds seemed to plateau, many of their collaborators joined or started bands that often did become the next big thing.

Former Rosebuds include members of Sylvan Esso, Roman Candle, the Mountain Goats, and St. Vincent, plus three eventual pieces of Bon Iver. Vernon’s star as Bon Iver even began to rise while he was The Rosebuds’ touring guitarist.

The exigencies of life in a touring band steadily took their toll on Crisp and Howard’s relationship, the very center of The Rosebuds. Privately, they separated, but, publicly, they put on a happy face, continuing to tour and write new songs.

During that spell, Howard and I lived together in a house that served as a sort of hostel for a string of musicians and writers.

He was, as he admits now, in a dark place, looking for enough inspiration to overcome his nascent frustrations. Around that time, though, Howard stumbled into Gayngs, a psychedelic soft-rock supergroup built by Vernon and two dozen old friends. On a joint tour with Megafaun through the Midwest, The Rosebuds stopped for a few days at Vernon’s house, where the songs that became Gayngs’ only album were taking shape. Howard heard the material and offered a melody or two. If Gayngs were pure soft-rock candy, Howard’s voice became its sweet center.

The entire experience, including a latenight television appearance in a white suit and heavy shades, gave him newfound confidence. And during one Gayngs tour stop, he even met his wife, Brooke-Lynn.

“Honestly, that was when I realized I liked singing,” he says. “In The Rosebuds, I was playing the guitar, and I had to sing. But with Gayngs, it became, Holy shit, singing is fun.

And I’m pretty good at it, too.”

HOWARD IVANS

Friday, Nov. 17, 8:30 p.m., $12 Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro www.catscradle.com

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hat realization is the core of Beautiful Tired Bodies, on which Howard does nothing but sing. Since the heyday of Gayngs, Howard has written thirty songs in the softrock-meets-soul milieu, tunes that he knew would make little sense for an eventual Rosebuds record. (They released Sand + Silence in 2014, and Howard won’t rule out another album.)

Last year, he handed them over to Trey Pollard and Cameron Ralston, cofounders of the vibrant Richmond label and production house Spacebomb. The troika combed through them all, picking ten favorites. They built a shared Spotify playlist of musical touchstones, including Luther Vandross and Michael Jackson, an aural mood board for the aesthetic they wanted to capture. They turned Howard’s demos into full charts, with horns and strings and an ambitious rhythm section. Howard arrived in Richmond last December, and they cut the record in a week.

“It was mind-boggling, all in one or two takes,” he says. “They could create the exact atmosphere I was going for with each song in ways I would have no idea how to do. I would have to do that accidentally, but they could interpret what I was saying in five minutes.”

The playing is stupendous, with the elements of old soul and disco given a modern glow. It is the tightest band Howard has ever

had, with every twisted rhythm or sharp guitar line situated in just the right space. But it’s his natural musical ease that steps fully into the spotlight here, dancing as it does through the peppy “Back to the Life” or slinking through the string-swept D’Angelo nod of “They Don’t Know How it Feels.”

As for the notion that Beautiful Tired Bodies has any grand lyrical conceit, Howard demurs, noting that he finalized and even wrote most of the words during the sessions themselves; premeditation, he says, was limited, driven more by the fragments he found in his journals and the sound of the songs themselves than some master plan.

But he’s selling himself short. These ten songs are a seesaw of feelings, of sadness countered by self-reliance, of hope facing off with hesitation. A mannered self-confidence pulses beneath the muted disco gem “King of Careless,” in which Howard suggests he’s more comfortable being alone than alienated. On the stunning “Second Spring,” Howard hits the town in search of something that feels like redemption. “My doubt is a demon,” he confesses, his voice dropping toward Barry White lows.

Howard at last asserts himself during “Come On,” where his hurt starts to bloom into something like luck and belief.

He sounds every bit like someone who has

emerged on the other side of a very dark spell, finally finding new faith in himself and love.

Talking to him now, that change is clear.

He laughs a lot and expresses gratitude and curiosity. He talks about self-help books without shame, his future with casual grace.

He’s not trying to be the next big thing; he’s simply trying to be.

For the first time in more than a decade, Howard, now forty-two, has a day job, mostly doing landscaping for lavish suburban homes near Portland. He likes the predictability and the paycheck. He doesn’t mind waking up before dawn, and he doesn’t seem bitter that this is where life on the road has led. He made music for an Air Jordan commercial and is venturing into film scores. He works with other Portland musicians in his small home studio and is considering finishing the degree that life as a Rosebud interrupted.

“Getting a job was a stretch. My wife, Brooke-Lynn, said, ‘Can you even get a job?’” he says, his voice stuck somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “But when I figured out I was looking for a real job, it was like, Wow, I’ve got fifteen years of touring experience, but that doesn’t relate to real life. Still, I can figure out my way through most things.”

Like crossing over Kanye West, even if you lose the ball out of bounds. music@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 11.15.17 | 21

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Saturday, Nov. 18, 8 p.m., $19–$21 Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro www.catscradle.com

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or some music fans, a band intentionally shooting for catchiness is, on principle, a cheap move. But another school of thought holds that producing a truly original, memorable melody can be just as challenging—and worthwhile—as composing some crazy prog-rock symphony.

Brian Oblivion subscribes to the latter philosophy. He plays guitar in the indiepop duo Cults, which, with the release of its new record, Offering, has produced three albums of sweet but insidious melodies, the sort of hooks that bury themselves in your mind and stay there for weeks. He says the trick to writing good pop is being unafraid of how people will react when you go out and play it. For instance, he recalls playing an early version of the duo’s 2011 breakout hit, “Go Outside,” for singer Madeline Follin’s brother, who is also a musician.

Cults PHOTO BY SHAWN BRACKBILL “He laughed and said it was, like, comically sing-songy, and he actually recommended changing a couple of notes,” he says. “We just said, ‘No, we like it this way,’” he says. “We don’t have any sort of adversarial relationship with writing catchy tunes. A lot of people make things too complicated. I’m working on being catchy while doing less.”

Follin is the main driver behind Cults’ brand of bubblegum, Oblivion says: “When I come up with a little chord progression and ask her whether it’s too cheesy, her instincts are always, No, it’s great; it’s awesome. That pushes me into places I wouldn’t go by myself.”

Oblivion says that he and Follin both have shortcomings as musicians, but they play up each other’s strengths.

He’s always aiming to provide a fitting musical backdrop for her high, taut singing voice.

“I’m not the most talented musician, and she’s not the most classically trained singer, but Madeline can do something with her voice that sounds really pure and innocent and true,” Oblivion says. “I’m always kind of blown away by it, and those are my favorite kinds of singers—people who just sound like themselves and accept their flaws. That’s part of the character that makes something unique to me.”

Leading up to the release of the group’s eponymous debut record in 2011, the duo (formerly a couple, but now just friends) approached its music as an art project that combined modern electronic elements with the pop of The Shangri-Las and other midcentury girl groups (complete with glockenspiel). The followup, 2013’s Static, took that formula and flipped it, adding darkness, tension, and some standouts like the aggravatingly catchy “Always Forever.”

Despite never being released as a single, that song has steadily gained popularity and now gets some of the biggest crowd reactions in the set list, Oblivion says.

While recording Offering, Follin and Oblivion didn’t try to harken back to oldies or think of the music in conceptual terms; they just wrote songs. Of course, they had the luxury of recording with top-end gear and the time and freedom to follow wherever their muses led. The result is a plush mix of warm sounds rendered in high definition, with no trace of the lo-fi haze that marked Cults’ earlier work.

It’s the sort of record you can crank over big speakers without it becoming too harsh, which was by design, Oblivion says.

“I feel like a lot of music sounds great coming through an iPhone speaker, but when you put it on headphones you can’t turn it up more than halfway without burning your ears,” he says. “All of my favorite records from the seventies sound so clean and open when they’re loud, and somehow everybody, like, forgot how to do that. So, we kind of broke out some old tricks.”

Despite the retro sounds, Cults has always been an electronic band at its core, and Offering makes no effort to hide that fact.

Oblivion’s real musical strength is as a programmer. He’s far more adept at structuring and manipulating digital noises than, say, playing guitar. Using music production software, he builds Cults’ songs from the ground up, starting with drums and bass, and they lay out almost all of the vocal melodies on keyboard before Follin writes lyrics.

“We don’t just sit around with a guitar and sing, which is probably why the vocals end up being so acrobatic at times,” Oblivion muses.

“It’s funny, but on every record, the hardest song to sing is the single.”

The pair has a bag full of slick recording techniques to come up with hummable tunes. During the recording of “Always Forever,” Follin laid down her first vocal take, and then she and Oblivion double-tracked her an octave higher; they ended up using the higher take as the lead.

“Other times, we’ll have a melody and she comes up with a harmony for it on the fly,” Oblivion says. “Then we’ll solo the harmony and be like, ‘Wait—now that’s the main melody.’ That seems like a trick that would get used a lot, but we’d never thought of it before.”

In the case of Offering, the “just write songs” approach often produced familiar results. After recording the sticky-sweet “Right Words,” for example, they realized they were back to sounding like they did at the beginning of their careers, just a little more polished. Oblivion is cool with that.

After all, even the most winding journeys can end where they started. music@indyweek.com

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Every Wednesday.

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indystage

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER’S PARABLE OF THE SOWER Thursday, Nov. 16 (7:30 p.m.) & Friday, Nov. 17 (8 p.m.), $15 UNC’s Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill www.carolinaperformingarts.org

Star Roots

PIONEERING AFRICAN-AMERICAN SCI-FI WRITER OCTAVIA BUTLER’S EMPATHY AND FORESIGHT TAKE THE STAGE IN PARABLE OF THE SOWER

BY NICOLE BERLAND

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o fans of Octavia Butler, the 2016 election seemed to come straight out of science fiction. Those of us acquainted with Butler’s Parable series watched with familiar trepidation as our compatriots pledged their votes toward making America “great again.” We’d heard this slogan before, in the exhortations of one of Butler’s characters—a charismatic xenophobe who rides a crest of fear and desperation to the American presidency.

During her life, Butler published twelve novels and nine short stories, but this was in addition to thousands of unpublished pages.

Butler’s dedication to her craft earned her Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, a lifetime achievement award from the PEN American Center, and the first MacArthur Foundation Fellowship ever granted to a science fiction writer. Her achievement is especially notable in light of the historical paucity of African-American women in science fiction, and her insistence on writing them into her fiction has made her an icon of Afrofuturism.

Carolina Performing Arts co-commissioned Toshi and Bernice Johnson Reagon’s musical adaptation of Butler’s Parable of the Sower, which has its U.S. premiere at Memorial Hall this week. Like the novel, the show is set in a near-future dystopian United States, where a diverse band of dispossessed, increasingly interdependent survivors unite under the leadership of a precocious black teenager named Lauren Olamina. Lauren suffers from “hyperempathy syndrome,” a condition that causes her to feel other people’s pain. According to Toshi Reagon, this is central to Parable’s message.

“Here is a person who, in her time, is definitely going to feel more pain than pleasure, but it is not a deterrent to moving forward,” Reagon says. “She accepts the fact that any weapons she carries, if she uses them, will make her feel whatever she does to anybody else.”

24 | 11.15.17 | INDYweek.com

Lauren brands herself a religious visionary, collecting acolytes among the ruins of a country weakened by income inequality and environmental degradation. Her religion, Earthseed, is based on the assertion that change is the only constant, and that humanity’s destiny is to “take root among the stars.”

undertaking, but talking to Reagon makes it feel not just logical, but inevitable. The process of adapting Parable began near the end of the nineties. Toshi Reagon— an accomplished librettist, songwriter, and guitarist—and Bernice Johnson Reagon, the founder of legendary African-American

Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower PHOTO COURTESY OF CAROLINA PERFORMING ARTS The novel’s contemporary political resonance invests it with renewed urgency, and Lauren’s religiosity enhances its aura of prophecy. “It’s a big alarm,” says Reagon. “A lot of young people started sharing this book during the election cycle and the Black Lives Matter movement because they understood that somebody had already seen this trajectory much earlier. This is a country that has committed a lot of devastating, violent acts against entire systems of living, and we need to think our way to something other than destruction.”

Science fiction and opera may not seem the most likely pairing for such an

women’s singing group Sweet Honey in the Rock, used the book as source material for a semester-long workshop on AfricanAmerican a cappella singing, coordinated

by Toni Morrison at Princeton.

“We tried to sing mostly to the conditions in the book, and when we finished we realized, one, this is an important story to tell, and two, it’s really singable,” Toshi Reagon says. “It’s almost as if [Butler] were writing lyrics, and the story is so inviting, so it just deeply resonated with us.”

The opera elaborates on the Reagons’ earlier interpretation by tapping into two centuries of African-American musical

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Ar De

BEOWU BUT L

traditions in the United States. But, Reagon insists, Parable is about more than blackness.BY BYR “I don’t personally know many black women who haven’t read this book,” she says, “but it’s not just a book for black women. Part of my collaboration with the institutions presenting this work is toBobby (C remind them that this is a human storyny (Ame about the complex collaboration of all kindsweird to f of families, told in the voice of a young blackadaptatio ry Old E girl within her diverse community.”

Whether Butler’s story is prophetic orquished b just keenly observant, it merits ongoingis Matt D circulation and adaptation. The mandateachievem behind Parable’s utopian strivings, whichthe first tempers its bleak constitution, comes fromtions with Earthseed itself: we must adapt to survive. The sta In this way, producing Parable for the stagehave been modern u answers the novel’s call to action.

“We’re activating the spirit of human-has trans ness on another level, and we really wanthall wher people to access their best and most expan-into a two sive place,” Reagon says. “And why not?with mov Doing this piece—that’s me operating outvintage n of that expansive place. This is a story fullsound sys of hopefulness and tools to move people,not by th so no matter who you are, you are welcomeGarth (To guy in a B into this space.”

In a 1998 address at MIT, Butler said shescheduled had read “that Robert A. Heinlein had theseened by h three categories of science fiction stories:named Gr the what-if category, the if-only category, Just w and the if-this-goes-on category, [and Par-Gagnier’s able] is definitely an if-this-goes-on story.”exuberan No one knows how Butler would have react-with an o ed to some of the contemporary tragediesroommat her stories anticipated, but her novels stillGrendelst his gradsuggest how we might move forward.

“I met Octavia Butler a few times, andRiddick), she knew we wanted to do this and gave uscalls hims her blessing, but I would’ve loved for her toas he’s sol still be on the planet to see it,” says Reagon. But the While Butler has departed from the planet,troll dow she left a window open behind her to help ussica Ham lang), an learn to sing to the stars. arts@indyweek.comis a dark-s

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stage

BEOWULF, LORD OF THE BROS HHH Through Sunday, Nov. 19 N.C. State’s Titmus Theatre, Raleigh www.theatre.arts.ncsu.edu

Arrested Development

BEOWULF MEETS BRO CULTURE IN A HIGH-SPIRITED BUT LOW-STAKES NEW PLAY AT N.C. STATE

BY BYRON WOODS

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e’ve encountered man-children in musicals before: the winsome Peter Pan, the urbane Bobby (Company), and the raging Johnny (American Idiot). But it’s just plain weird to find one—actually, two—in a stage adaptation of Beowulf, the eighth-century Old English epic about monsters vanquished by warriors brave. That, however, is Matt Deitchman and Jed Feder’s dubious achievement in Beowulf, Lord of the Bros, the first in a planned series of collaborations with N.C. State’s University Theatre.

The stakes, and nearly everything else, have been noticeably lowered in this comical modern update. Designer Jayme Mellema has transformed Heorot, the ancient mead hall where a people’s champions gathered, into a two-story college crash pad, festooned with movie posters, more than a dozen vintage neon beer signs, and a pro-quality sound system. This pleasure dump is ruled not by the monarch Hrothgar, but by Ross Garth (Tony Courville), a life-of-the-party guy in a Burger King crown whose regularly scheduled ragers are increasingly threatened by his neighbor, a techno-goth nerd named Grendelstein (a dour Justin Heald).

Just when all hope seems lost, Parker Gagnier’s convincing title character, an exuberant uber-bro who comes complete with an oversize gong, swoops in as a new roommate who seemingly vanquishes Grendelstein. But in short order, Ross and his grad-school girlfriend, Cass (Molly Riddick), begin to realize that Beo (as he calls himself ) is creating as many problems as he’s solving.

But the true villain here isn’t the internet troll downstairs, his MILF-y mother (Jessica Hamm), or the Dragon (Miranda Millang), an underworld figure whose costume is a dark-side tribute to supervillain cosplay.

PHOTO COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY THEATRE

Instead, it’s the extended adolescence that the two male leads are spending on increasingly borrowed time. Ross is still clinging to a fratboy lifestyle after graduation, which frustrates Cass, who is thinking more and more about the future. By the second-act rave-up “Get Me Out,” all are actively questioning the sustainability of their relationships and their way of life, interrogating the supposed code that bros live by—at least, up to point.

When a gratuitous onstage shout-out to Alison Bechdel underlines the degree to which Beowulf, Lord of the Bros fails the “Bechdel test,” it’s unclear how much growth has actually taken place among any of the principals. After a far-fetched intervention, has Ross really changed in order to reconcile with the estranged Cass? Is moving back in with his parents actually a triumph for Beo? It’s hard to say what’s ultimately being celebrated in the final rager, beyond a return to the status quo. Though we’re told adolescence is curable in the American male, the evidence remains inconclusive in Beowulf, Lord of the Bros. bwoods@indyweek.com

YOUR WEEK. EVERY WEDNESDAY. MUSIC•NEWS•ARTS•FOOD INDYWEEK.COM INDYweek.com | 11.15.17 | 25

WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK Bully PHOTO BY ALYSSE GAFKJEN

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18

BULLY

Neil deGrasse Tyson wants to make America smart again. And he wants to do it in a fun, engaging way. The astrophysicist and popular pundit returns to Durham for what will likely be another sold-out show at DPAC, presenting his lecture “The Search for Life in the Universe.” It’s a tour through the quest to find life on other planets, starting with Mars, and the possibility of a habitable frontier beyond Earth. The appearance follows Tyson’s latest book, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, released in May. It’s a quick jaunt around the universe, from the Big Bang to black holes, in twelve essays—essentially, a contemporary version of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time by the person whom Todd Boyette, the director of Morehead Planetarium (a copresenter of the event), calls “our generation’s Carl Sagan.” —Hannah Pitstick

Feminine anger has long been demonized and dismissed; we ladies are just too hysterical, too prone to dramatic emotional vacillations for anyone to take it seriously. More often than not, though, it’s a righteous force. It’s also the not-sosecret sauce that makes Bully’s latest LP, October’s Losering, so powerful. Across a dozen songs, frontwoman Alicia Bognanno wields her anger and frustration like a battleax, obliterating everything in her path. Her songs are frank and unapologetic; she sings about feeling stuck and stagnant on “Feel the Same,” but her bellow of “I get anxious too” on “Running” is cathartic. Bognanno’s guitar riffs seethe along, adding extra edge to her confessions and reflections. If you need to blow off some steam to one of the year’s best rock bands, Bully is your best bet. Aye Nako opens.

—Allison Hussey

DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DURHAM | 7:30 p.m., $53–98, www.dpacnc.com

MOTORCO MUSIC HALL, DURHAM | 9 p.m., $14–$16, www.motorcomusic.com

26 | 11.15.17 | INDYweek.com

11.15–11.22

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16

LA VIE NOUVELLE

Philippe Grandrieux’s La Vie Nouvelle (2002) defies straightforward explanation or summary. In simple terms, the avant-garde film distortedly follows an American who becomes entranced by a European woman. More aptly, it is an experiment in aural and visual texture set amid the rubble and chaos of an Eastern European city. Grandrieux’s fever dream of overlaid, blurred, sensuously colored images swims in the deep ocean of an ambient discotheque score. The cinematography and narrative development inhabit a mesmerizing stream of consciousness, funneling us through an investigation of what it might mean to inhabit a new way of being, a new life. This screening at Duke is preceded by a dinner and followed by a response from Ben Crais, a doctoral student in literature, as well as a discussion. RSVP to nathan.l.smith@duke.edu. —Luke Hicks EAST DUKE BUILDING ROOM 209, DURHAM 7 p.m., free, www.ami.duke.edu

La Vie Nouvelle PHOTO COURTESY OF WWW.AMI.DUKE.EDU

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16

SCIENCE CAFÉ: ART IN THE LABORATORY

The scientific method—hypothesis, experiment, conclusion—is the artistic process, too. So it makes sense that Raleigh-based fiber artist Gabrielle Duggan has both been in residence at the Rob Dunn Lab at N.C. State and created an installation in entomologist Adrian Smith’s lab at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. Now, in the museum’s Science Café series, Duggan and Smith discuss the relationship of art and science through the lens of their collaborative installation, “Architectural Intersections: Ants, Art, and Science,” which deals with how the structure of ant nests relates to ant behavior and social structures. Created by Duggan from Smith’s research, it also teases out parallels between the stunning amount of labor involved in ant architecture and the lifetime of skills deployed in the work, for which Duggan drew upon weaving and crochet traditions. After the talk, you can visit Smith’s lab to see the work, which is up through January. —Chris Vitiello N.C. MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCES, RALEIGH 7 p.m., free, www.naturalsciences.org

Gabrielle Duggan PHOTO COURTESY OF NC MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCES

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16–SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19

THE MAVERICKS

THE WILD PARTY

CAROLINA THEATRE, DURHAM | 8 p.m., $40–$70, www.carolinatheatre.org

PEACE UNIVERSITY’S LEGGETT THEATRE, RALEIGH Various times, $5–$15, www.peace.edu

There have always been mavericks in Nashville—outlaws who didn’t fit the template, plowing up conventional country and planting wild and woolly seeds that grow into hybrids, uprooting the conventional Music City crop. The Mavericks carry on that tradition, sowing an eclectic mix of garage, world, honky-tonk, and Western swing styles. Frontman Raul Malo has said that, despite living in Nashville, he’s as Cuban as he would be if he lived in Miami.

But while his Latinx heritage is an important part of the band’s music, it doesn’t define it. On this year’s Brand New Day, “Easy as It Seems” has Cuban rhythm roots, but the backing chorus sounds like sixties-era Nashville pop-country over the Latin beat. “Rolling Along” features a blend of Tex-Mex, Appalachia, and Western swing—equally influenced by Doug Sahm, Earl Scruggs, and Bob Wills. Cuba may be the point of origin, but The Mavericks’ journey has soil from all over entangled in their dusty roots. —Grant Britt

Joseph Moncure March was a 1920s antecedent of William S. Burroughs. After Robert Frost mentored him in poetry at Amherst College, March became equally fluent in the less genteel argot of boxing parlors, vaudeville houses, and Prohibition-era speakeasies, which he frequented in New York’s Tenderloin district.

After quitting an upstart magazine called The New Yorker in 1926, March began work on a hardboiled tale of the hellified bacchanal thrown by two jaded variety performers after they get sick enough of each other to do something permanent about it. The weird thing? The Wild Party was a book-length poem, with syncopated couplets reflecting the lurid tabloids of the day and the fascinatin’ rhythms of the Jazz Age. Andrew Lippa adapted the banned-in-Boston book into an award-winning off-Broadway musical in 2000; Amy White directs this William Peace University production. —Byron Woods

WHAT ELSE SHOULD I DO?

JOHN BEERMAN AT CRAVEN ALLEN GALLERY (P. 33), BEOWULF, LORD OF THE BROS AT TITMUS THEATRE (P. 25), CARRBORO FILM FESTIVAL AT THE ARTSCENTER (P. 36), CULTS AT CAT’S CRADLE (P. 22), DEEP LISTENING WORKSHOP AT GLOBAL BREATH STUDIO (P. 16), FOUR UNDERWEAR MODELS OF THE APOCALYPSE AT UNC’S SWAIN HALL (P. 34), HOWARD IVANS AT CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM (P. 20), MICHAEL PARKER AT QUAIL RIDGE BOOKS (P. 36), OCTAVIA E. BUTLER’S PARABLE OF THE SOWER AT UNC’S MEMORIAL HALL (P. 24), RODRIGO Y GABRIELA AT DPAC (P. 29) INDYweek.com | 11.15.17 | 27

CUT COPY SU 11/25 @DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER TH 11/16

YELAWOLF

ST.VINCENT

11/15 THE STORY SO FAR

W/TURNSTILE, DRUG CHURCH ($22.50/$25)

11/16 YELAWOLF W/MIKEY MIKE, BIG HENRI, COOKUP BOSS ($25/$28) 11/17 WXYC 90'S DANCE ($5 UNC STUDENTS/ $8 GA) 11/18 CULTS W/SHE-DEVILS, HOLDOUT ($19/$21) 11/25 PHILSTOCK '17: BENEFIT CONCERT FEAT. MR POTATO HEAD, WYATT EASTERLING, HONEY PUMPKINS, THE WOOS, UNIONTOWN, THE HIGH WINDS (FREE SHOW; DONATIONS ENCOURAGED) 11/30 CUT COPY

W/PALMBOMEN II 12/2 POKEY LAFARGE

TH 11/30 & FR 12/1 @HAW RIVER BALLROOM

HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER 3/7/18 LP (ON SALE 11/17) 3/13/18 J BOOG

W/JESSE ROYAL, ETANA

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3/27/18 OUR LAST NIGHT (ON SALE 11/17)

2/7/18 WILLIE WATSON ($18/$20)

12/9 SOUTHERN CULTURE ON

4/27/18 SUPERCHUNK ($16/ $18)

DEX ROMWEBER ($13/$15)

5/8/18 BAHAMAS ($16/$18)

12/15 HEARTBROKEN: A TOM

PETTY TRIBUTE TO BENEFIT THE VICTIMS OF THE LAS VEGAS SHOOTING* ($10 SUGGESTED DONATION)

12/17 HORTON’S HOLIDAY

HAYRIDE STARRING REVEREND HORTON HEAT, WITH THE BLASTERS, JUNIOR BROWN, BIG SANDY ($25/ $28)

1/12/18 YONDER MOUNTAIN

STRING BAND W/ THE

5/25/18 PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT ($28/$31)

11/15 MO LOWDA & THE HUMBLE / ATLAS ROAD CREW / LEFT ON FRANKLIN

($22/$27; $40 FOR 2-NIGHT PASS) 1/26 ENTER SHIKARI W/MILK TEETH ($18/$20) 1/27/18 TENNIS W/ OVERCOATS 1/30/18 DESTROYER W/ MEGA BOG ($20/$23 2/1/18 TYPHOON ($18/$20) 2/10/18 WHY? ($16/$18) 2/11/18 NOAH GUNDERSEN ($15/$17) 2/20/18 PHILLIP PHILLIPS ($27.50/$30) 2/22/18 LIGHTS

W/CHASE ATLANTIC, DCF ($20/$23) 2/24/18 ANDREA GIBSON

W/CHASTITY BROWN ($18/$21) 3/1/18 QUINN XCII W/ CHELSEA CUTLER (ON SALE 11/17) 3/2/18 JOYWAVE (ON SALE 11/17) 3/6/18 WALLOWS ($15)

28 | 11.15.17 | INDYweek.com

4/26/18 DURAND JONES & THE

INDICATIONS

($13/$15; ON SALE 11/16) CAROLINA THEATRE (DUR)

11/17 HOWARD IVANS (ROSEBUDS, GAYNGS) AND SKYLAR GUDASZ

3/24/18 LUCIUS ARTSCENTER (CARRBORO)

11/18 MODERN ENGLISH W/ THE VELDT, ENTERTAINMENT ($20/$23)

TWO SHOWS!

3/7/18 SONREAL 3/26/18 S CAREY W/ GORDI

12/6 THE MOUNTAIN GOATS W/ JENNY BESETZT

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SAY ANYTHING

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11/16 CITY OF THE SUN W/ FAMILY VISION ($10/$12)

1/15 THE WOMBATS ($22/$25)

1/22 AND 1/23/18

2/20/18 MAGIC GIANT W/ THE BREVET ($12/ $14; ON SALE 11/17)

4/6/18 GRIFFIN HOUSE CAT'S CRADLE BACK ROOM

SOUTHERN BELLES (ON SALE 11/17) 1/18 THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS ($25/$28)

1/10/18 BEN GERBER (COMEDY) 1/13/18 THE STRAY BIRDS

($20; ON SALE 11/17)

4/2/18 UDO DIRKSCHNEIDER

12/10 KRS-ONE ($26/ $30)'

CULTS

3/16/18 DIALI CISSOKHO & KAIRA BA ($10/$12)

W/ THE EASY LEAVES ($17/$20)

THE SKIDS W/ IT'S SNAKES!,

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11/24 THE GRAND SHELL GAME W/ EMILY MUSOLINO TRIO, KERISHA ROI ($8/$10) 11/25 PHILSTOCK '17 BENEFIT CONCERT 11/30 THE WEATHER STATION W/ JAMES ELKINGTON 12/1 ALLAN RAYMAN($18/$20) 12/3 CHRISTMAS AT THE CRADLE TABLE BENEFIT FEAT. DELTA SON, LEE ANDERSON (FROM LOOK HOMEWARD) AND DUSTIN AHKUOI ($10)

3/3/18 COWBOY JUNKIES (ON SALE 11/17)

4/20/18 GREG BROWN ($28/ $30) MOTORCO (DUR) 11/30 THE DISTRICTS W/ SUN SEEKER ($15/$17) DPAC (DUR) 11/25 ST. VINCENT THE RITZ (RAL) 2/17/18 SNARKY PUPPY

HAW RIVER BALLROOM TWO 11/30 AND 12/1 SHOWS!

HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER

12/16 CHATHAM COUNTY LINE ELECTRIC HOLIDAY TOUR

12/5 DAVID RAMIREZ: WE’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE W/ MOLLY PARDEN ($15/$17)

2/1/18 THE DEVIL MAKES

12/9 COLESLAW W/ RAGWEED BRASS ($7)

BLACK EMPEROR

12/15 LYDIA LOVELESS (SOLO) $15 12/16 LYDIA LOVELESS(SOLO) $15 1/4/18 MELODIME W/ THE BREVET ($12/$14)

THREE

3/23/18 GODSPEED YOU! ($27/$30)

NORTH CHARLESTON PAC (CHARLESTON, SC) 2/25/18 STEVE MARTIN & MARTIN SHORT W/ THE STEEP CANYON RANGERS AND JEFF BABKO

CATSCRADLE.COM ★ 919.967.9053 ★ 300 E. MAIN STREET ★ CARRBORO

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THE INDY'S GUIDE TO THE TRIANGLE

FINDER

TH 11/30

on stands

NOW!

music 11.15– 11.22 WED, NOV 15

BLUE NOTE GRILL: Skyla Burrell Blues Band; 8 p.m., $8.

• CAROLINA THEATRE: Squeeze; 8 p.m., $40–$50. • CAT’S CRADLE: The Story So Far, Turnstile; 8 p.m., $23–$25.

• CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): Mo Lowda & The Humble, Atlas Road Crew; 8 p.m., $8–$10.

• THE CAVE: Crowmeat Bob Residency; 9 p.m., $5. • LINCOLN THEATRE: Ekali, Josh Pan, Y2K; 8 p.m., $16–$18. • LOCAL 506: Moon Tooth, Husbandry; 8 p.m., $12. • NEPTUNES PARLOUR: Overlake, Lacy Jags; 10 p.m., $5. • POUR HOUSE: Hot Buttered Rum, The Plate Scrapers; 9 p.m., $12–$15. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ Play Play; 10 p.m. • SLIM’S: Car Crash Star, Florida Man, Retro Candy; 9 p.m., $5. • THE STATION: Jason Narducy, Anya Marina; 7:30 p.m.

THU, NOV 16 Benjamin Damage Benjamin MODE SELEKTED Damage’s roots lie firmly in the U.K. underground; the innovative electronic musician, who was the first signee to Modeselektor’s now-shuttered 50 Weapons label, draws on early rave, nineties house, jungle, and grime. His eclectic approach produces forward-thinking techno marked by an energy and emotion not often found in modern electronic music.

—PW [DUKE COFFEEHOUSE, $5, FREE WITH DUKE ID/9 P.M.]

Judy Collins A mineral element in the folk-rock movement of the early sixties and a bona-fide commercial force well into the seventies, Judy Collins is a gifted and eclectic performer. Her interpretations provided early windows into the genius of Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, whose songs “Both Sides Now” and “Chelsea Morning” she turned into indelible hits. Her later excursions into jazz, show

FINE FOLK

tunes, and the American Songbook have demonstrated versatility and yielded consistently pleasing results.

—EB [CAROLINA THEATRE, $37–$86/8 P.M.]

Little Coyote Toronto’s Little O, CANADA Coyote sounds like a pastiche of its Canadian contemporaries.

There’s Sloan’s piano-based power-pop approach, Feist’s beguiling charm, the vocal delivery of Land of Talk’s Elizabeth Powell, Arcade Fire’s latent darkness. It’s at times maybe a bit too familiar to be striking, but the trio’s The Trouble With Teeth is mostly an engaging debut. —PW [THE CAVE, $5/9 P.M.]

Soccer Mommy Although the KICKY SONGS cover of Soccer Mommy’s most recent record, Collection, is a photograph of lead songwriter Sophie Allison lying on a bed beside a Casio keyboard, the songs on Collection are big, studio recorded tracks that reach beyond bedroom pop’s boundaries. The band’s nostalgia-tinged songs often call to mind Liz Phair, in that snark and sincerity run parallel to each other. —NR [THE PINHOOK, $8–$10/9 P.M.]

Yelawolf ALABA- Unabashedly MA ACE Southern and steeped in the fundamentals of hip-hop storytelling, YelaWolf’s new Trial by Fire shows the Mississippi rapper melding rap with its countryblues ancestral roots. Trial by Fire shows Yelawolf being frank and candid about his battles with alcoholism after a trip to rehab last year, especially on the track “Daylight.” Mikey Mike, Cookup Boss, and Big Henri open. —CM [CAT’S CRADLE,$25/8 P.M.]

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR

WWW.INDYWEEK.COM ALSO ON THURSDAY CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): City of the Sun; 8 p.m., $10–$12. • DUKE’S BALDWIN AUDITORIUM: Songs of Journey: Migrations; Songs of a Wayfarer; 8 p.m.

• LINCOLN THEATRE: Dopapod & The Motet; 9 p.m. • LOCAL 506: Airpark, Stray Owls; 9 p.m., $8. • RUBY DELUXE: Beats Feast with DJ Vespertine and Luxe Posh; 10 p.m. • SLIM’S: Drag Sounds, Konvoi, Boytoy; 9 p.m., $7.

CONTRIBUTORS: Elizabeth Bracy (EB), Timothy Bracy (TB), Kat Harding (KH), Allison Hussey (AH), David Klein (DK), Charles Morse (CM), Noah Rawlings (NR), David Ford Smith (DS), Patrick Wall (PW)

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19

RODRIGO Y GABRIELA

FRI, NOV 17 A King & A Prince DJ Mad Skillz PARTY DOWN returns to North Carolina for another Sol Kitchen party, and this time, the theme is the music of Michael Jackson and Prince.

The dance party will feature covers, remixes, and original songs of both legends, spun

by Mad Skillz. —CM [CAT’S CRADLE, $15/9 P.M.]

Benefit for Brian Skilton Brian Skilton is an GOOD HEARTS area musician who, along with other family members, is battling chronic Lyme disease. This Deep South show aims to help offset some of those medical costs, with performances by local music scene vets including tuneful rocker Jason Adamo, harmonizing duo McCullers Crossroad, singer-songwriter Zak Claxton, and others. —DK [DEEP SOUTH, $6/8:30 P.M.]

Benjamin Grosvenor Concert pianist PIANO PRODIGY Benjamin Grosvenor has been the “youngest-ever” recipient of many awards: at eleven he won BBC’s Young Musician of the Year award for keyboard; at eighteen he became the youngest musician to sign a deal with Decca Records.

Now at the still-youthful age of twenty-four, Grosvenor has reached a level of musical

PHOTO BY TINA KORHONEN

Among the most unlikely commercial breakthroughs in recent memory, the runaway success of Mexican acoustic rock duo Rodrigo y Gabriela is a startling testimony to talent, good timing, and perhaps the presence of broader mainstream tastes than is conventionally thought to be the case. The duo’s upward trajectory began just over a decade ago, after its self-titled 2006 release gained unexpected commercial traction in North America and abroad. Produced by former Radiohead and Stone Roses producer John Leckie, “The Crocodile Album,” as it’s known colloquially, represented a unique confluence of the reverential and the adventurous. Its songs blended familiar classical and folk music tropes with a stark and energetic performance style that drew from hard rock and heavy metal influences.

The duo has achieved such success by appealing to a unique coalition of music enthusiasts, including fans of classical, metal, traditional folk, and prog. Staples of their catalog, like the urgent, ebullient “Tamacun” or the hypnotically riffing “Savitri,” play like supercharged updates of flamenco’s florid pleasures, deferential in their painstaking technical acuity but pulsing with the overdriven momentum of modern city life. Elsewhere, the ominous minor-key riffing of “The Pirate That Should Not Be” and the precision assault of “The Russian Messenger” betray a clear debt to thrash metal icons like Megadeth and Metallica (whose “One” Rodrigo y Gabriela subject to a remarkable acoustic reinterpretation).

With an approach that is esoteric in the extreme, Rodrigo y Gabriela is not the sort of thing that could be contrived in board rooms by music business executives desperately attempting to curate the next big thing. But given the ever more risk-averse nature of an industry clawing at an ever-shrinking audience share, their success is a breath of fresh air in an often-depressing sea of carbon-copy retreads. The pair’s growing popularity and critical esteem has been enormous to behold, as the duo has become festival headliners, staples of late-night television, and frequent contributors to popular movie soundtracks. In 2010, they performed for President Obama at the White House, and have taken on the stature of musical ambassadors, exporting their intoxicating hybrid throughout America, Europe, and the Far East.

In Durham, Rodrigo y Gabriela will revisit “The Crocodile Album” to commemorate its tenyear anniversary. The back-to-beginnings theme makes the show a nostalgic treat for longtime fans and an ideal starting point for those not yet in the know. —Elizabeth Bracy DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, DURHAM | $40–$285, 7:30 p.m., www.dpacnc.com INDYweek.com | 11.15.17 | 29

maturity achievable, for most, only in a lifetime. —NR [DUKE’S BALDWIN AUDITORIUM $10–$42/8 P.M.]

Happy Abandon Fresh off the release of its debut LP, Facepaint, Chapel Hill’s Happy Abandon excels at an ambitious, melodic dream pop that manifests traces of everything from the baroque chamber moves of John Cale to the panoramic, widescreen vistas of Radiohead to the light burlesque of Rufus Wainwright. Case Sensitive opens.

—TB [THE PINHOOK, $8–$10/9 P.M.]

INDIE POP

Leah Kaufman In Carrboro, Leah FRONT PORCH Kaufman celebrates the release of On to Something Fine, her second solo album—and first in nearly two decades—full of gentle folk gems. Her soothing vocals pair with clever songwriting—the jaunty “Ruby Shoes” is from the perspective of a post-Oz

Dorothy—and simple yet sharp acoustic arrangements.

Kaufman will be backed by a slew of familiar faces from the Triangle’s Americana scene. —SG [THE ARTSCENTER, $10/8 P.M.]

Kelela BUMP & Following years of GRIND buzz and acclaim, Kelela at last released her debut LP, Take Me Apart, in early October. Songs like “Blue Light” are richly detailed and intimate, and her explorations of herself and intimacy are keen and striking. “Don’t say you love me, baby, until you learn to take me apart,” she sings on the record’s title track. Kelela blends jazz, pop, and R&B into an unforgettable amalgam that seeps into your marrow and stops you in your tracks. With Lafawndah.

—AH [MOTORCO,$15–$18/9 P.M.]

Maldora Maladora is the NOT STINKY name of the University of California’s

malodorous corpse flower; the Raleigh electric Americana outfit of almost-thesame name is, outwardly, much more pleasant. The quartet bleats with plenty of twang but rollicks with a little oomph taken from protoindie rock and early-nineties alt-pop. —PW [SLIM’S, $5/9 P.M.]

Mipso STRING Mipso plays its STARS last Triangle show of 2017 after releasing one of this year’s best Americana albums, April’s Coming Down the Mountain. The band returns to its home state near the end of its cross-country Campfire Caravan tour with pals The Lil Smokies and The Brothers Comatose, both of which share modern updates on string band music, with “spontaneous collaborations” between sets. The hometown heroes are the highlight, though, thanks to diverse, rootsy charms with consistently stellar songwriting and splendid harmonies. Mipso and The Lil Smokies also perform at 3:30 p.m. at

Raleigh’s Great Outdoor Provision Company. —SG [LINCOLN THEATRE, $22/9 P.M.]

• CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): Howard Ivans, Skylar Gudasz, Sean Thomas Gerard; 8:30 p.m., $12.

See page 20. • THE CAVE: The GTVs, The Woolly Bushmen, Codeine Haze; 9 p.m., $5. • LOCAL 506: MKR, Charlie Brown; 9 p.m., $7. • THE MAYWOOD: Piece of Time; 8:30 p.m., $10. • NIGHTLIGHT: Alice Gerrard and Friends, Ruth Perry, Susan Pepper; 8-10:30 p.m., $20. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ DNLTMS; 10 p.m. • SHARP NINE GALLERY: Keith Ganz Quartet; 8 p.m., $10–$20. • THE STATION: Mega Colossus, Night Sweats, Youth League; 9 p.m., $8.

N.C. Symphony: Mozart Requiem MASS & The Catholic Mass FORCE for the dead has long inspired majestic classical music, invoking the talents of religious devotees and composers of questionable orthodoxy alike. Faith aside, Mozart’s take on the requiem is unusually complicated in that it was commissioned to be passed off as the work of a wealthy, dilettantish count, and it was only completed posthumously by several composers who were enlisted by Mozart’s wife. Nonetheless, it bears Mozart’s name, and much of his musical genius. —NR [MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL $49–$79/8 P.M.]

SAT, NOV 18 A Far Cry Boston’s A Far Cry NEW CLASSIC has performed the works of composers most readily evoked by the phrase “classical music”—your familiar assembly of dead European men—but the ensemble’s latest concert series features the newly created The Blue Hour. A piece for strings and voice, it’s the work of five contemporary composers and one contemporary poet—six

ALSO ON FRIDAY BEYÙ CAFFÈ: Jon Bibbs; 7 & 9 p.m., $12. • CAROLINA THEATRE: The Mavericks; 8 p.m., $40+. See page 27.

• CAT’S CRADLE: Semi-Annual WXYC 90s Dance; 9:30 p.m., $5–$8.

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exceptionally talented women. It promises to be music steeped in a rich classical tradition, but which also brings forth renewed relevance and diversity. —NR [DUKE’S BALDWIN AUDITORIUM $10–38/8 P.M.]

Fitness Womxn HEAR ‘EM This week, ROAR Carrboro’s Fitness Womxn releases Macho City, a strong contender for one of the year’s best local records.

Over scuzzy guitar riffs, the trio reckons with misogyny, identity, self-determination, and more, snarling and sneering all the way. Macho City is fearless, ferocious, and utterly necessary for these times. Chucha, de_Plata, and Sister, Brother open. —AH [NIGHTLIGHT, $7/9 P.M.]

Harpooner Nashville art-poppers Harpooner channel the open sky melancholy of Schmilssonera Harry Nilsson, by way of the cheerfully convoluted melodic inversions of

ART POP

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TH HILL)

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ID: Warez Charlotte dubstep EDM PARTY practitioner Warez headlines the very first ID, a new EDM-related monthly party at Raleigh’s Lincoln Theatre. All proceeds from the first outing will be donated to Interact Wake County, a nonprofit dedicated to ending domestic violence.

Come party for a good cause.

With DOMii and Violinx.

—DS [LINCOLN THEATRE, $5–$15/9 P.M.]

Mile Twelve Boston’s freshNEW & OLD faced, bluegrassbased quintet Mile Twelve serves up spunky tunes marked by frequent lead vocal swaps, shining harmonies, and the crafty musicianship of fiddler Bronwyn Keith-Hynes and banjo player BB Bowness. Though the youngsters’ moody, progressive originals are far from conventional, their fondness for Bill Monroe is apparent between hard-driving takes on “Why Did You Wander” and “In Despair” that’d make even the most buttoned-up traditionalists tip their hats. —SG [THE ARTSCENTER, $18/8 P.M.]

Modern English

Though the band MELT WITH U is mostly known RBORO stateside for the hit “I Melt With You,” Essex’s Modern English were crucial movers and shakers in the earlyE SHOW eighties British rock, where the LPs Mesh & Lace and After YE PARTY the Snow provided a link between Joy Division’s brittle menace and Duran Duran’s BAND New Romantic swagger.

Reunited in various iterations over the years, Modern RBORO English continues to push out More at past its unfair one-hit-wonreputation. The Veldt and ve.org der Entertainment open. —TB arrboro, NC sCenterLive [CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM, $20–$23/8:30 P.M.]

Noctomb DARK & Noctomb likes its HEAVY metal like it likes its barbecue cooked: low and slow. The band blends a melange of styles into its sonic slaw—death metal’s raspy distorted tones, black metal’s acid-puking growl, doom’s misanthropy—but slow Southern sludge, gnarled like cypress roots and thick as pluff mud, forms the Raleigh trio’s foundation.

With Druid Lord, Killing Addiction, Waft, Darth Kannabyss. —PW [THE MAYWOOD, $8/8:30 P.M.]

The O’Jays They originated in R&B LEGENDS Ohio in 1958, but the O’Jays came to embody the Philly Soul sound of the early seventies with an indelible streak of impassioned singles that ran the gamut from the upbeat, Motown-inspired “Love Train,” the funky, Latin-tinged “I Love Music” and the dire “For the Love of Money,” whose indictment of greed never gets old (or any less danceable). The Dramatics open. —DK [DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, $55–$125/8 P.M.]

Onyx Club Boys JANGLE With a vigorous JAZZ love of the stylings of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli, the Onyx Club Boys devoted tribute to the musical styles of the thirties vibrates with a winsome enthusiasm, buttressed by the chops to pull it off. —EB [THE STATION, $8–$10/8:30 P.M.]

QDR Hometown Throwdown COUNTRY With proceeds FOR KIDS benefitting UNC Children’s Hospital, this big bill rounds up five Carolina acts plying commercial country. Garner idol Scotty McCreery self-released “Five More Minutes” this summer, another of his sentimental, small-town anthems, while more than a decade later, Jason Michael Carroll’s debut single, “Alyssa Lies,” is still a heartbreaking depiction of

unreported child abuse.

Parmalee cranks out soaring, twangy rock. Kasey Tyndall adds attitude to her Southern love songs, while Delta Rae’s orchestral folk-pop falls outside of WQDR’s normal fare. —SG [THE RITZ, $32/7:30 P.M.]

The Shakedown: Phil Collins Between hoursNO COLLINS long wedding gigs and single-night tributes to the likes of Prince, Frank Sinatra, and Van Morrison, Raleigh rockers The Shakedown demonstrate the versatility required to pull off Phil Collins, the next act in its cover show series. Expect the massive, rotating cast to add a few Genesis tunes to Collins’s solo classics. —SG [POUR HOUSE, $10–$12/9 P.M.]

PHOTO COURTESY OF RED LIGHT MANAGEMENT

SHOW –

late-period XTC. With an unmistakable talent for a first-class melody combined with a barely suppressed subversive streak, frontman Scott Schmadeke is a significant talent on tracks like the astringent near-jazz of “Immigration” and the knottily insistent “Carolines.”

Wild Fur opens. —EB [KINGS, $10/9 P.M.]

The Two Youths HillsboroughLOCAL ELECTRO based electronic outfit The Two Youths demonstrates an evocative flair for the moody and danceable on tracks like the insinuating, Depeche Mode-like “Chewing Gum” and the subtly funky “Gossip (phase 1),” which suggests something on the order of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark as produced by Nile Rodgers. Light Beams, Manner Manners, and Silent Piece open. —EB [LOCAL 506, $8/8 P.M.]

YXplainIt Three accomplished musicians with impressive stand-alone credentials, Washington, D.C.’s fusion trio YXplainIt represents a kind of all-star team of D.C. jazz. Together, the band has garnered a well-earned reputation for a propulsive take on modern sounds, suggesting by turns the avant-tinged rave-ups of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the measured, atonal reveries of McCoy Tyner, and the ingratiating neo-soul of Herbie Hancock. Supple percussionist Chris “Biscuit” Bynum serves as the group’s MVP. —EB [BEYÙ CAFFÈ, $12/7 & 9 P.M.]

D.C. JAZZ

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19

PUDDLES PITY PARTY Fletcher Opera Theater is the kind of sumptuous, upscale venue that’s beyond the reach of your average big-voiced vocalist who likes to sing popular songs of the day in a quirky melodramatic style.

But next week, when Puddles Pity Party stars as the main attraction, we will know, once and for all, that if a big-voiced vocalist who likes to sing popular songs of the day in a quirky, melodramatic style gets up on stage and sings them while dressed up as a sad clown, to paraphrase from Field of Dreams, they will come.

Scary clown sightings, John Wayne Gacy Jr., the unprecedented success of Stephen King’s It, and the popularity of the phrase “clown car” are just some of the factors that have led to a heretofore unimaginable level of clown consciousness in America. Seen in that garish light, Puddles Pity Party might just be the clown-vocalist for our times, or, at least, the clown-vocalist we deserve. He has already introduced the “sad clown cover” into the musical lexicon, and one feels justified in fearing that his breakout success cannot help but inspire others to follow in his large, oblong footsteps.

Born Mike Geier into a family of extremely tall people in Richmond, Virginia, Puddles is the same height as LeBron James and does not speak onstage. Nor does need to: his shtick is that solid, and the makeup is that good. And while the perennially downcast, bright-red-nosed baritone has built his audience by wowing crowds on crucial platforms like America’s Got Talent, he’s no overnight sensation, having paid numerous dues in the rough-and-tumble musical and theatrical worlds since 1990. So let’s give him that.

On his 2013 cover of Lorde’s “Royals,” Puddles belts out the young New Zealander’s self-aware lyrics with a bravura befitting a Broadway showstopper. Sung with the same Meatloavian intensity by a man street clothes, it might elicit boos or chuckles. But delivered with clown makeup, you might say it suffers a sea change into something rich and strange. You might.

He likes to goof around, too, as any clown would, such as when he sings “Pinball Wizard” like it’s a Johnny Cash song. But, like any sad clown worth his seltzer, he’s more about wringing pathos. And this he does on his awkward and tender rendering of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” which, at least in the opinion of a writer for Huffington Post, conjures “a strange kind of beautiful.” —David Klein FLETCHER OPERA THEATER, RALEIGH | Sold out, 8 p.m., www.dukeenergycenterraleigh.com INDYweek.com | 11.15.17 | 31

ALSO ON SATURDAY

WE 11/15 TH 11/16 FR 11/17 SA 11/18 SU 11/19 TU 11/21

BLUE WED: SKYLA BURRELL BLUES BAND CAROLINA LIGHTNIN’ DUKE STREET DOGS PAUL NELSON BAND NOV BIRTHDAY PARTY: GOOD ROCKING SAM DOC BRANCH BAND TUESDAY BLUES JAM

8PM $8 7PM 6-8PM 9PM 8PM $8

5-7PM 7:30PM

THE INDY'S GUIDE TO THE TRIANGLE

BLUE NOTE GRILL: Good Rocking Sam; 8 p.m., $8. • CARY ARTS CENTER: S.O.S.—Surprising Overtures and Symphonies; 7:30 p.m., $5–$15. • CAT’S CRADLE: Cults, Shedevils, Hideout; 8 p.m., $19–$21.

See page 22. • IMURJ: Cesar Comanche, DJ Ragz, Phantom Blade, Poe Mack, Nacyzne; 8 p.m., $7–$10.

• MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL: Mozart Requiem; 8 p.m. • MOTORCO: Bully, Aye Nako; 9 p.m., $14–$16. See page 26. • THE MURPHEY SCHOOL AT THE SHARED VISIONS RETREAT CENTER: The Murphey School Radio Show; 3 & 7 p.m. • THE PINHOOK: Tennis Rodman, James Bangura, Gemynii, RGB, Ty Lake; 9 p.m., $7. • RUBY DELUXE: Agua Viva, S the Supplicant, Discotono; 8 p.m. DJ LuxePosh; 11 p.m. • SHARP NINE GALLERY: Miho Hazama with the Brad Linde Expanded Ensemble: MONK at 100; 8 p.m., $10–$20. • SLIM’S: Manzara, Serqet; 9 p.m., $5.

SUN, NOV 19 Cory Branan Cory Branan’s DEATH JAMS latest album, Adios, is all about death, but it’s not at all gloomy. He sings his stories with a country twang over electric guitars and rock-inclined drums. His songs are like short stories, so pay attention to the moral at the end. —KH [THE PINHOOK, $15/8 P.M.]

Sarah Jones

s d n a t s n o

! w o n

32 | 11.15.17 | INDYweek.com

This stacked, HOME GROWN all-ages lineup features Sarah Jones, The Steelbenders, Burning Desire, AirCrash Detectives, TISHMONE’, Sam Shirley, Lilstar, and Mike’s Left Arm. Jones has been in Nashville writing and recording and is bringing her work back to her hometown. Expect polished, sweet, acoustic folk music from Jones. —KH [POUR HOUSE, $12–$15/6 P.M.]

Sadistik You might not EMO RAP clock Equal Vision, the same label that put out emo stalwarts like Say Anything and Circa Survive, as a hotbed of indie rap. The gloomily voiced

Sadistik hails from Seattle and busts despondently utopian emo raps along the “backpack rap” lines of Atmosphere and the late battle rap prodigy Eyedea. It’s not bad, offering trenchant confessional raps where a lot of current “emo” rappers seem like cartoonish pop-punk frontmen. Opener Nacho Picasso eases things up with a humorous, lysergic drawl he uses to spit game about his nerd culture obsessions. With Rafael Vigilantics, Upgrade. —DS [LOCAL 506, $12–$14/9 P.M.] ALSO ON SUNDAY CAROLINA THEATRE: Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle; 3 p.m., $30.

• DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER: Rodrigo y Gabriela, Marc Scibilia; 7:30 p.m., $40+. See box, page 29. • FEARRINGTON BARN: Bluegrass Experience 46th Anniversary Concert; 3 p.m., $16–$20. • FLETCHER OPERA THEATER: Puddles Pity Party; 8 p.m. See box, page 31. • IMURJ: Afton Productions Concert; 6:30 p.m., $15. • MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL: Triangle Youth Philharmonic Fall Concert; 3 p.m. • MOTORCO: The Black Heart Procession; 8 p.m., $15–$18.

MON, NOV 20 The Lady Comes First SHANTY Have you ever ROCK wondered what a sea shanty led by a ukulele chord progression would sound like? You need wonder no more, as The Lady Comes First has concocted such songs. Bearing the vaudevillian stylings of Tom Waits, the group packs its tracks with snarls and syllables stretched to unnecessary lengths. —NR [THE CAVE $5/9 P.M.]

Walk the Moon Irritating and undeniable in equal measure, Walk the Moon specializes in painfully insipid but undeniably catchy dance-floor fare like the almost brain-dead “Kamikaze” and the clearly lobotomized “Shut Up and Dance with Me,” the latter of which seems to have been cribbed almost entirely from T-shirt slogans and ad campaigns. You can’t say it

POP MESS

doesn’t have a certain Pavlovian appeal, but we’re not really this bad, are we?

Ghostt Bllonde opens. —EB [THE RITZ, $35/8 P.M.] ALSO ON MONDAY IMBIBE: Grewen and Griffin; 7 p.m., free. • MOTORCO: Flash Chorus; 7 p.m., $7–$10. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ Lord Redbyrd; 10 p.m.

TUE, NOV 21 Triangle Youth Orchestra and Symphony FUTURE Triangle Youth STARS Music oversees ten different ensembles of area students at various levels of proficiency. Two of the group’s most accomplished groups get their chance to show what they’ve learned tonight, with performances of such lively, seasonally appropriate classics as Winter from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, the Russian Dance from The Nutcracker, and works by Rimsky-Korsakov and Mozart.

—DK [MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL, $5–$20/8 P.M.] ALSO ON TUESDAY THE CARRACK: Polyorchard’s Exsufflation Series; 8 p.m., $5 donation.

• RUBY DELUXE: Deep Sleeper; 11 p.m.

WED, NOV 22 Smell the Glove GOES TO If your typical ELEVEN Thanksgiving concert full of seasonal fare is too tasteful for your liking, consider this long-running throwdown by a band named for a famously black-covered Spinal Tap LP. Expect a party-friendly array of cover tunes delivered with the dogged urgency of the band’s (fictional) metal heroes.

—DK [POUR HOUSE, $8–$10/8 P.M.] ALSO ON WEDNESDAY THE CAVE: Crowmeat Bob Residency; 9 p.m., $5. • MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL: N.C. Symphony: Polar Express; 3 p.m. • RUBY DELUXE: GREENBEANSPOTATOES with DJ Luxeposh; 10 p.m.

art

11.15 – 11.22

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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18

JOHN BEERMAN: A FIELD, A WORLD Charlotte native John Beerman spent three decades living and painting in the Hudson Valley, the former holy land for the painters of the Hudson River School. Six years ago, he returned to his native North Carolina, bringing with him the delicate way of dealing with light he honed in New York.

Beerman’s paintings, while indebted to the light-obsessed Hudson Valley painters of the nineteenth century, convey less overtly grandiose visions. His eye directs itself toward nature and landscapes, but he often frames only fragments of them, fixating upon uncommon angles of perception. In some of his recent paintings, segments of tree trunks are foregrounded, the earth in which they are rooted and their leaves overhead unseen, with the background only sky or an indistinct landscape. This photograph-like framing, along with a gentle way of abstracting away shadow, lends his work stillness and softness. After this opening reception, the exhibit is on view through January 20. —Noah Rawlings

CRAVEN ALLEN GALLERY, DURHAM

5–7 p.m., free, www.cravenallengallery.com

John Beerman: “Six-Acre Parcel Looking East, Later Afternoon with Telephone Poles” PHOTO COURTESY OF CRAVEN ALLEN GALLERY

OPENING

ONGOING

SPECIAL A Field, A World: EVENT Paintings by John Beerman. Nov 18-Jan 20.

Reception: Sat, Nov 18, 5-7 p.m. Craven Allen Gallery, Durham. cravenallengallery.com.

And Then the Sun Swallowed Me: Black tape and video installation by Heather Gordon.

Thru Feb 4. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh. camraleigh.org.

It’s Our Voice: Photographs of Girls Rock NC: By Kelley Bennett.

Nov 15-26. The Carrack Modern Art, Durham. thecarrack.org.

SPECIAL Simple Elegance: EVENT Paintings by Stephen White. Nov 18-Dec 31.

Reception: Sat, Nov 18, 3-5 p.m. Little Art Gallery & Craft Collection, Raleigh. littleartgalleryandcraft.com.

SPECIAL Triangle Visual EVENT Artists Exposition: Paintings, photography, weavings. Nov 17-Dec 15.

Reception: Fri, Nov 17, 5-7 p.m. The Frontier, RTP. SPECIAL We are greater than EVENT the sum of our parts: Collaboration around the Durham Bull. Nov 16-Dec 23.

Reception: Fri, Nov 17, 6-9 p.m. Pleiades Gallery, Durham. www.PleiadesArtDurham.com.

Anything Goes 2017: Juried exhibit of forty-four artists. Thru Dec 1. Litmus Gallery, Raleigh. www.litmusgallery.com.

LAST Artspace Collectors CHANCE Gala Art Preview: Thru Nov 17. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org.

Black on Black V2: Performances and art. Thru Nov 25. VAE Raleigh, Raleigh. www.visualartexchange.org.

The Boomer List: Photography

by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.

Thru Dec 31. NC Museum of History, Raleigh. www. ncmuseumofhistory.org.

Concept to Gallery: Six photographers. Thru Nov 30.

FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill. www.frankisart.com.

Court and Capital: Art from Asia’s Greatest Cities: Thru Dec 10. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. www.ackland.org.

The Disaster Paintings: Donald Sultan. Thru Dec 31. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www.ncartmuseum.org.

Don’t Quit: The Nello Teer Sr. Story: History of the Teer family in Durham. Thru Dec 15.

Durham History Hub. www. museumofdurhamhistory.org.

Drawn Together: Mixed media drawings and ceramics by Kiki Farish, Jean LeCluyse, Aggie Zed. Thru Dec 22. FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill. www.frankisart.com.

Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Space: Photography by Natalie Ammarell. Thru Nov 30.

Chatham Hill Winery, Cary. www.chathamhillwine.com.

Envision Saint Agnes Hospital: Community and student artists.

Thru Jan 5. Miriam Preston Block Gallery, Raleigh. www.raleighnc.gov/arts.

The Fence: Durham is one of seven cities across the nation— the smallest, compared with the likes of Brooklyn, Boston, and Houston—to host this touring, public photography exhibit, curated from submissions from around the

world and based on themes such as “home,” “nature,” and “food.” While Lori Vrba is the only local artist among the fifty included in the touring exhibit, nine area photographers, including Bryce Lankard, Leah Sobsey, Gesche Würfel, and Warren Hicks, are featured in a regional showcase. The exhibit wraps the block around the Chapel Hill Street parking garage in a temporary fence and banner of photos. Thru Nov 30. Chapel Hill Street, Durham.

—Brian Howe Flash of Light, Fog of War: Japanese military prints 18941905. Thru Jan 7. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. www. ackland.org.

Footnotes (revisions): Mixed media from various artists. Thru Dec 5. UNC Campus: Hanes Art Center, Chapel Hill. art.unc.edu.

Freeze!: Installation by Mary Carter Taub. Thru Jan 5. Miriam Preston Block Gallery, Raleigh. www.raleighnc.gov/arts.

Guardians of the Forest: Photography by Susan Jones.

Thru Nov 25.

Tipping Paint Gallery, Raleigh. www.tippingpaintgallery.com.

LAST Hidden Patterns: CHANCE Wooden art by Gene Presson. Thru Nov 21. ERUUF Art Gallery, Durham. www.eruuf.org.

Holiday Salon & Craft Exhibition: Pottery, glass, jewelry, photography, painting, fibers, books and printmaking by twenty-five artists. Thru Dec 30. Horse & Buggy Press and Friends, Durham. www. horseandbuggypress.com.

Homebound: Brenda Brokke, Leatha Koefler, Amy Friend. Thru Nov 25. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org.

Image of Ukraine: Exploring Ukrainian Culture through Embroidery and Painting: Olena Zintchouk. Thru Dec 8. UNC Campus: FedEx Global Education Center, Chapel Hill. www.global.unc.edu.

A Kiss of the Earth: Apt for a work about a season of fecundity, the epochal modernist ballet The Rite of Spring just keeps on giving, more than a century after its legendary

premiere. It’s the inspiration for this experiment by UNCChapel Hill associate art professor Sabine Gruffat, whose interactive three-channel video projection remixes the story of a pagan tribe’s maiden sacrifice with stochastic elements: real-time weather data from Paris affects the weather in the animation, and viewers can text to a number on the wall to further alter the proceedings.

Thru Jan 28. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www.ncartmuseum.org.

—Brian Howe Landscapes and Seascapes: Photography. Thru Nov 25. 311 Gallery, Raleigh.

Louis C. Tiffany: Art and Innovation from the Wester Collection: Stained glass windows, vases, lamps.

Thru Mar 4. NC Museum of History, Raleigh. www. ncmuseumofhistory.org.

Low Country Life: Paintings by Irene Tison. Thru Jan 4. Mike’s Art Truck, Hillsborough.

SPECIAL Majestic Incognito: EVENT Paintings by Yuko Nogami Taylor. Thru Nov 30.

Reception: Fri, Nov 17, 6-9 p.m. Pleiades Gallery, Durham. www.PleiadesArtDurham.com.

More than One Story | Mas de una historia: Photography.

Thru Feb 1. UNC Campus: Davis Library, Chapel Hill. www.lib.unc.edu/davis.

Nature’s Enchantment: Rita Baldwin. Thru Nov 26. NC Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh. naturalsciences.org.

Nevertheless She Persisted: Mixed media by Elissa Farrow Savos. Thru Nov 28. Gallery C, Raleigh. www.galleryc.net.

Night, Day, Night: Deconstruction and reconstruction by Jeff Bell. Thru Dec 2. Lump, Raleigh. www.teamlump.org.

LAST Reflections Within CHANCE the Transitioning Grid: Laser-cut photography by Merrill Shatzman and libi rose.

Thru Nov 22. Power Plant Gallery, Durham.

Overtones/Undercurrents: Paintings by Donald Martiny.

Thru Nov 26. Horace Williams INDYweek.com | 11.15.17 | 33

House, Chapel Hill. www. chapelhillpreservation.com.

Penelope’s Room: Fiber art installation. Thru Dec 2. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham. www.21cmuseumhotels.com/ durham.

The Shape of Fashion: Dress trends from 1800s to 1900s.

Thru May 6. NC Museum of History, Raleigh. www.ncmuseumofhistory.org.

Shifting Tides: Bringing the NC Coastal Life to Durham: Tony Alderman. Thru Nov 30. Bull City Art & Frame Co, Durham. www. bullcityartandframecompany. com.

David Shingler & Jimmy Craig Womble: You don’t have to go to the countryside or the museum to look at landscapes—you live in one, even if it doesn’t match the bucolic associations of the term. Oil painters David Shingler and Jimmy Craig Womble remind us that there is more to landscapes than rolling meadows and hazy mountains. On your way to

the gallery, you might pass through views presented in Shingler’s energetic impressions of downtown Raleigh, while Womble’s softer, dreamier hues extend the exhibit’s purview to include Outer Banks docks and Blue Ridge waterfalls. Expect the show to color your perspective for the rest of the evening—after seeing art that looks like the city, the city should look more like art. Thru Dec 23. Adam Cave Fine Art, Raleigh. adamcavefineart.com.

—Brian Howe Simple/Complex: Weavings

by Ann Roth. Thru Dec 10.

Meymandi Concert Hall, Raleigh. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

Step Right Up: Sculpture by Patrick Dougherty. Thru Aug 31.

Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. www.ackland.org.

The SuperNatural: We’ve lost sight of the seams, once considered inviolable, between nature, technology, and commerce—though we sometimes imagine we are crossing a boundary when we take thousand-dollar bikes into

deceptively wild woods with our smartphones and moisture wicking socks. The SuperNatural wades into this liminal zone, exploring how we see and shape the contours of our planet as the physical refuse of the industrial age shades into the digital refuse of the present. The show includes a generative digital video by Tabor Robak, a virtual reality installation by Jakob Kudsk Steensen, and photos by Lars Jan, among many others.

Brooklyn artist Chris Doyle created “Dreams of Infinite Luster,” a digital animation, for the exterior vitrines. In it, “All the elements are rendered in gold, the color of lucre—the product, engine, and goal of capitalism.” Is a luxury hotel an odd site for post-capitalist critique? Sure. But, as we’ve said, what seams? Thru Jul 1.

21c Museum Hotel, Durham. www.21cmuseumhotels.com/ durham. —Brian Howe SPECIAL Test of Faith: Signs, EVENT Serpents, Salvation: Photographs by Lauren Pond.

Thru Feb 4.

Reception: Thu, Nov 16, 5:307:30 p.m. Duke Campus: Rubenstein Library, Durham.

Tethered to the Zeitgeist: Mary Ann Anderson. Thru Nov 25. Artspace, Raleigh. www. artspacenc.org.

Triangle Weavers Art Exhibition: Fiber art. Thru Jan 6. Carrboro Branch Library, Carrboro. www.co.orange.nc.us/ library/carrboro.

Under the Same Sky: The idea of global communication through art is often a convenient abstraction, but the Mahler Fine Art in Raleigh puts it into concrete practice with its Moroccan/American Artists Residency Exchange. Next spring, five Triangle-based artists—Thomas Sayre, Pete Sack, Luke Buchanan, Susan Woodson, and Kathleen Rieder—will travel to Morocco to create and live alongside artists there, five of whom will then come to Raleigh and the Mahler in the fall. The program is directed by Moroccan-born painter Ghany Belmaachi, a

stage THE FOUR UNDERWEAR MODELS OF THE APOCALYPSE

Rob Hamilton is a seldom-seen theatrical polymath whose broadranging adaptations, sets, and puppet designs have explored a Chinese mountain village town during the Cultural Revolution, a run-down Pittsburgh garage, a shadowed attic play space, and a carnival in decline. His direction of a five-star production of Holy Hell produced ten minutes of true suspense that remain etched in my memory more than a decade later. His latest exploit probes the proposition that the world will end in neither fire nor ice, but in an abundance of frilly little undergarments. (Don’t look so surprised.

We told you the Kardashians were taking the world to hell in a handbag.) Plague, War, Famine, and Death have never looked more fetching than in this dance cycle incorporating Heather Tatreau’s choreography with Hamilton’s masks, puppetry, and video, an absurdist fantasia on the eschatology of lingerie (and vice versa) set to music from Sparrow Quartet, Hildegard von Bingen, and Frank Zappa, among others. Catch you on the catwalk.

—Byron Woods PHOTO COURTESY OF UNC’S DEPT. OF COMMUNICATIONS

34 | 11.15.17 | INDYweek.com

War Experience: Personal artifacts, medals, uniforms, maps, letters, photographs, and more. Thru Nov 29. Raleigh City Museum, Raleigh. www.cityofraleighmuseum.org.

Wanderers: Paintings by Jeff Joyce. Thru Dec 2. Light Art + Design, Chapel Hill. www. lightartdesign.com.

We’ve Met Before: Hand-woven cloth has a certain rigor, a requirement for stitches to interact with structural integrity rather than spontaneity. Ink, meanwhile, has a quicksilver impulsiveness, a tendency to slip and run unbounded.

OPENING THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16–SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19

The Four Underwear Models of the Apocalypse

former Raleigh resident, whose current solo exhibit at the Mahler is called Under the Same Sky. Aptly for someone who is building a bridge from Raleigh to Morocco, Belmaachi’s striking designs capture universalist themes in bright, flat colors, singing a quiet song of oneness in divisive times. Thru Dec 2.

The Mahler Fine Art, Raleigh. www.themahlerfineart.com.

—Brian Howe

UNC’S SWAIN HALL, CHAPEL HILL

8 p.m. Thurs.–Sat./2 p.m. Sun., $5–$10, www.comm.unc.edu

Babe, the Sheep-Pig: Play. Nov 16-19. Wake Forest Renaissance Center, Wake Forest. www. wakeforestnc/renaissancecentre.aspx.

Lewis Black: Lewis Black arrives in Durham just in time for the one-year anniversary of the election of Trump. His belligerent style has made him so famous for being angry that he played “Anger” in Inside Out, but to see his comedy as mere ranting is to ignore its incisive, biting humor. Black is as wry a social commentator as any cable pundit working these days. His performance is sure to be cathartic for a sympathetic audience looking for an excuse to laugh not only at the state of our country but also at how we all perform our anger during these times. $40+. Fri, Nov 17, 8 p.m. Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham. www.dpacnc. com. —Katie Jane Fernelius Dawn’s Early Light: Play. $12$15. Fri, Nov 17-Sun, Nov 19. The Cary Theater, Cary.

Dot: Play. $15+. Weds, Nov 22-Mon, Dec. 11. PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chapel Hill. www.playmakersrep.org.

Andrea Donnelly holds this contrast in tension. “Cloth, in its infinite variety and varied significance, is deeply linked to our histories and emotions through the body,” she writes in her artist statement.

“Whether it’s woven to hang on the wall or to grace the neck and shoulders, I make cloth that creates connection.” The images on these large textile pieces evoke bodies, Rorschach blots, abstract flora, and, most of all, memory. Dyed, woven, unwoven, and rewoven, the work contains “a literal record of its own making.” Thru Jan 28.

N.C. Museum of Art, Raleigh. www.ncartmuseum.org.

—Brian Howe When War Comes to a Gallery: Photography by Sarah Dale. Thru Nov 30. Golden Belt, Durham. goldenbeltarts.com.

Winter Corridor Artists Exhibition: Dana Ayscue, Cynthia Bickley Green, Stephen Cefalo, Eileen Hendren, Kelly Murray. Thru Jan 27. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org.

Darren Knight: Stand-up comedy. $30. Sat, Nov 18, 7:30 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham. www.carolinatheatre.org.

Messiah: Carolina Ballet. Wed, Nov 22-Sun, Nov 26. Memorial Auditorium, Raleigh. www. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

Mello Mike: Stand-up comedy. Wed, Nov 22, 8 p.m.

Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www.goodnightscomedy.com.

Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower: Opera. Thu, Nov 16 & Fri, Nov 17. UNC Campus: Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill.

See story, p. 24.

The Thanksgiving Play Reading: Women’s Theatre Festival Script Reading Club. Mon, Nov 20, 6-7:30 p.m. Imurj, Raleigh. imurj.com.

Third Date Holiday Fundraiser: Improv comedy to benefit The Food Bank of Eastern and Central North Carolina. $14.

Sat, Nov 18, 8 p.m. Walltown Children’s Theatre, Durham. walltownchildrenstheatre.org.

The Wild Party: Play. $5-$15.

Thu, Nov 16-Sun, Nov 19.

William Peace University: Kenan Recital Hall, Raleigh. www.peace.edu. See p. 27.

John Witherspoon: Stand-up comedy. Thu, Nov 16-Sat, Nov 18. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www.goodnightscomedy.com.

ONGOING

Anything Goes Late Show: Sat, Nov 18, 10:30 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www.goodnightscomedy.com.

LAST Bar Plays 3.0: A CHANCE bunch of playwrights walk into a bar in Cary Playwrights Forum’s beery theatrical happening, which features seven short plays set in drinking establishments. Some seem pensive; in Mark Cornell’s Endings, two unlikely contemporaries, Henrik Ibsen and Abraham Lincoln, meet on a fateful night. Then there’s the fanciful In Heaven There Is No Beer, in which Marie Curie gives Dionysus, Athena, and Artemis a good talking to about the dangers of alcohol. Ambivalence in relationships is examined in Finally—in which two moms with differing views on their sons’ upcoming wedding lock horns at the reception site—and in Timing

food

Cider-Pairing Dinner for TxotxFest: Mattie Beason of the Black Twig Cider House kicks off second TxotxFest with a five-course, cider-paired dinner featuring Asheville chef Steven Goff of Brinehaus Meat & Provisions and ciders from Urban Orchard Cider Co., Appalachian Mountain Cidery, and James Creek Ciderhouse. $50. Fri, Nov 17, 7 p.m. Black

page

READINGS & SIGNINGS Ellery Adams: The Secret, Book & Scone Society. Sat, Nov 18, 11 a.m. McIntyre’s Books, Pittsboro. www. mcintyresbooks.com.

Linda Ashman: Winter Nap. With a pajama party and refreshments. Fri, Nov 17, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill. www.flyleafbooks.com.

Jeffery Beam & Friends: With Thom Craven,

Is Everything, in which two longtime will-they-or-won’ttheys finally come to a decision (sort of). And comedy’s on tap when a lack of eligible spouses forces a woman to examine other options in The Donor Agency.

Familiar names on stage and in the directors’ chairs include Laurel Ullman, Kirsten Ehlert, Doug Kapp, Noelle Barnard Azzarello, and Michael Parker.

Check, please? $10 suggested.

Thru Nov 16. Fortnight Brewing Company, Cary. www.fortnightbrewing.com.

—Byron Woods LAST  Beowulf, Lord CHANCE of the Bros: Reviewed on p. 25. $27. Thru Nov 19. NCSU Campus: Titmus Theatre, Raleigh. www.theatre. arts.ncsu.edu.

Bulltown Comedy Series: Tue, Nov 21, 9 p.m. Fullsteam, Durham. www.fullsteam.ag.

The Chuckle & Chortle Comedy Show: Local stand-up comics. $7. Sat, Nov 18, 8:30 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro. www. artscenterlive.org.

Twig Cider House, Durham. www.blacktwigciderhouse.com.

Fork + Bottle: Mas de Daumas Gassac French Wines: Drink pairings for tasting menus by executive chef Thomas Card. $75. Thu, Nov 16, 6-9 p.m.

Counting House, Durham. www.countinghousenc.com Free Wine Tasting: Mon, Nov, 20, 5:15-7:15 p.m. Bottle Rev Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill. www.bottlerev.com.

Neal Hutcheson, Elizabeth Matheson, and Michael McFee. Sat, Nov 18, 3 p.m. Regulator Bookshop, Durham. www. regulatorbookshop.com.

Janet Crowther: A WellCrafted Home: Inspiration and 60 Projects for Personalizing Your Space. Sun, Nov 19, 3 p.m.

Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill. flyleafbooks.com.

Jamie DeMent: The Farmhouse Chef: Recipes and Stories from My Carolina Farm. Sat, Nov 18, 2 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. quailridgebooks.com.

The Dangling Loafer: $5.

Fri, Nov 17, 8 p.m. Kings, Raleigh. www.kingsraleigh.com.

Funny Business Live: Pro comedy series. $5-8. Fri, Nov 17, 9 p.m. The Thrill at Hector’s, Chapel Hill. www.funnybusinesslive.com.

LAST Gypsy: Musical CHANCE comedy. $25+.

Thru Nov 19. Memorial Auditorium, Raleigh. www.nctheatre.com The Harry Show: Ages 18+.

Improv host leads late-night revelers through potentially risque games with audience volunteers. $10. Fri, Nov 17 & Sat, Nov 18, 10 p.m.

ComedyWorx, Raleigh. www.comedyworx.com.

6713 Mt Herman Rd, Morrisville, NC www.capitalcabaret.com To advertise or feature a pet for adoption, please contact eroberts@indyweek.com

To advertise or feature a pet for adoption, please contact eroberts@indyweek.com

Hush Hush: Secret Brew: Interactive improv comedy.

Thu, Nov 16, 8 p.m. Beer Study-Durham, Durham.

LAST Vinegar Tom: Play.

CHANCE $15. Thru Nov 19.

Duke Campus: Sheafer Lab Theater, Durham. www.theaterstudies.duke.

Stone Soup Supper: Triangle chefs soup competition. Guests also receive one piece of artisan pottery by the Triangle Potters Guild. $30. Wed, Nov 15, 6:30-8 p.m. NCSU Campus: McKimmon Center, Raleigh. www.urbanmin.org.

Oysters & Bubbles Wine Dinner: Four courses. $65.

Wed, Nov 15, 7-9 p.m.

Blu Seafood & Bar, Durham. www.bluseafoodandbar.com.

Dreamory: The Writings and Music of Eugene Chadbourne: Two-part event with writings and music, including the 13 Society. Free-$2. Wed, Nov 15, 7 p.m. Nightlight, Chapel Hill. www.nightlightclub.com.

David Goldfield: The Gifted Generation: When Government was Good. Thu, Nov 16, 7 p.m.

Regulator Bookshop, Durham. www.regulatorbookshop.com.

Kelly Starling Lyons: Jada Jones.

Sat, Nov 18, 2 p.m. McIntyre’s Books, Pittsboro. www.mcintyresbooks.com.

BILL BURTON ATTORNEY AT LAW Un c o n t e s t e d Di vo rc e Bu s i n e s s L a w UNCONTESTED In c o r p o r a t i o n / L LC / DIVORCE Pa r t n e r s h i p MUSIC BUSINESS LAW Wi l l s INCORPORATION/LLC WILLS C o l l e c t i o n s SEPARATION AGREEMENTS Mu s i c

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bill.burton.lawyer@gmail.com INDYweek.com | 11.15.17 | 35

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CONT’D

Shannon Messenger: Nightfall.

Fri, Nov 17, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www.quailridgebooks.com.

Michael Parker: Everything, Then and Since. Wed, Nov 15, 7 p.m.

Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill. www. flyleafbooks.com. — Thu, Nov 16, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. quailridgebooks.com.

Nancy Pearl: As NPR’s books correspondent, Nancy Pearl is known as “America’s librarian.”

So it’s high time she added something of her own to the stacks. George & Lizzie, her first novel, asks with empathy and humor whether the imperfections in a marriage between a happy husband and an unfulfilled wife are the result of their joined present or their private pasts. Fri, Nov 17, 6:30 p.m. McIntyre’s Books, Pittsboro. www.mcintyresbooks.com. — Brian Howe Katie Rose Guest Pryal, Kristy Woodson Harvey, and Susan

Bishop Crispell: How to Stay; Slightly South of Simple; The Secret Ingredient of Wishes. Thu, Nov 16, 7 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill. flyleafbooks.com.

in Musicology with Mary Sue Morrow. Wed, Nov 22, 4 p.m.

Duke Campus: Biddle Music Building, Durham. music.duke.edu.

LECTURES ETC.

Akram Khater: Ancient and Modern World Lecture Series: Future of the Middle East. Sun, Nov 19, 7 p.m. NC Museum of History, Raleigh. www.ncmuseumofhistory.org.

Benefit Storytelling Show for Anita Woodley’s African King Rites of Passage Ceremony in Cameroon: $10-$100. Fri, Nov 17, 7 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro. artscenterlive.org.

Black Space Making and the Built Environment: 2017 Charleston Lecture in Southern Affairs by Philip and Pierce Freelon. Thu, Nov 16, 7 p.m.

UNC Campus: Sonja Haynes Stone Center, Chapel Hill.. sonjahaynesstonectr.unc.edu.

Grammartopia!: Game show style panel. Sun, Nov 19, 3 p.m.

South Regional Library, Durham. www.durhamcountylibrary.org.

Joseph Haydn and the Business of Music in Late EighteenthCentruy Austria: Lecture Series

Neil Degrasse Tyson: Thu, Nov 16, 7:30 p.m. Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham. www.dpacnc.com.

See p. 26.

A Special Evening with Nancy Pearl: Discussion about her writing career. Thu, Nov 16, 7 p.m. Chapel Hill Public Library, Chapel Hill. chapelhillpubliclibrary.org.

The Raleigh Literacy Expo: Presented by The African American Author Literacy Awareness Campaign.

Sat, Nov 18, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

Dog-Eared Bookstore, Raleigh

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16

MICHAEL PARKER: EVERYTHING, THEN AND SINCE: STORIES Durham’s Bull City Press specializes in poetry, but it has also been quietly creeping into fiction since last summer, acquiring and reissuing titles from St. Louis, Missouri’s Origami Zoo Press. Now BCP is publishing its first book of new fiction, Michael Parker’s Everything, Then and Since: Stories. Parker, a professor in the graduate writing program at UNCGreensboro, is best known for his six novels, though he also has two short-story collections.

But even if you have followed him assiduously, the flash fiction in Everything is something new. It proffers twenty-three fleet, poignant glimpses of a ferry trawling North Carolina rivers, of hands reaching for speeding trains, of wedding crashers bearing dubious gifts, and of a scandal at a community college. All the stories are “elegies for the parts of ourselves we’ve forgotten and testimonies to the wonders of restlessness.” (Note that Parker also has a reading at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill the night before this Quail Ridge Books appearance.)

—Brian Howe

QUAIL RIDGE BOOKS, RALEIGH

7 p.m., free, www.quailridgebooks.com

Michael Parker PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR 36 | 11.15.17 | INDYweek.com

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18 & SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19

CARRBORO FILM FESTIVAL

The long-running Carrboro Film Festival is transparent about its motivations. This is a “celebration of Film ART, NOT Film Business,” the PHOTO COURTESY OF CARRBORO FILM FESTIVAL website states. Following suit, with the same indie spirit that sets Carrboro apart, the festival will introduce you to filmmakers you’ve never heard of, films you’ve never seen, and, most likely, forms of filmic expression you’ve never experienced. The schedule is a healthy balance of short and feature-length films and a whirlwind combination of genres and styles. You’ll see a sci-fi depiction of Trump’s border wall, Buster Keaton in Sherlock Jr. (newly scored by a UNC student), the devolution of a family into near-madness, and a dark feminist comedy based on the story of Frankenstein.

There are wonderful coffee shops, breweries, bars, and restaurants all within walking distance, but, above all, there is a film community bound by the purest intention: a love for film. —Luke Hicks THE ARTSCENTER, CARRBORO | Various times, $15–$20, www.thecarrborofilmfestival.com

SPECIAL SHOWINGS Banana Panel Movie Night: Son in Law. Mon, Nov 20, 9 p.m. Ruby Deluxe, Raleigh. www.facebook.com/ RubyDeluxeRaleigh.

Carrboro Film Festival: $15-$20. Nov 18-19. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro. www.artscenterlive.org.

Holiday Inn, The Broadway Musical: Festival of the Arts on Screen. $16-$25. Thu, Nov 16, 7 p.m. Silverspot Cinema, Chapel Hill. www.silverspot.net.

The Room: Sponsored by the Alamo Drafthouse. Mon, Nov 20, 8 p.m. NCSU Campus Cinema, Raleigh.

Straws: Documentary followed by live music. $5. Thu, Nov 16, 7 p.m. Deep South the Bar, Raleigh. www.DeepSouthTheBar.com.

While I Breathe, I Hope: Fri, Nov 17, 7 p.m. Duke Campus: Center for Documentary Studies, Durham. www.cdsporch.org.

OPENING Justice League—The DC Extended Universe gets an Avengers of its own, gathering all its marquee heroes into one super-team. Rated PG-13.

Lady Bird—Greta Gerwig wrote and directed this semi-autobiographical film about a year in the life of a young woman in Northern California. Rated R.

The Star—This computeranimated Christian film looks at the birth of Jesus from the perspectives of the animals in the manger. Rated PG.

Things and you get this scary, heart-filled new version of Stephen King’s classic horror novel.

Rated R.

Wonder—Julia Roberts returns to the big screen for this heart-tugger about a boy with physical abnormalities trying to fit in at a new school. Rated PG.

 The Killing of a Sacred Deer—The latest from the director of The Lobster is an enigmatic, merciless ethical thought experiment powered by enthralling performances and pressurized pacing.

Rated R.

A L S O P L AY I N G The INDY uses a five-star rating scale. Read reviews of these films at indyweek.com. ½ American Made—It’s Top Gun with Tom Cruise flying for cocaine instead of country—fun enough, but it mostly rides on Cruise’s resilient charm. Rated R.  Blade Runner 2049—This satisfying sequel to Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi noir reminds us that it works best to mess with the classics when there’s actually something wrong with them. Rated R.  The Florida Project—Tangerine creator Sean Baker chases sparks of vitality on the neglected margins of the Magic Kingdom. Rated R.  Goodbye Christopher Robin—A biopic of Winnie the Pooh creator A. A. Milne should be expected to be sentimental, but this one is just too squishy to bear. Rated PG.  It—Blend classic Spielberg with Stranger

 The LEGO Ninjago Movie—Expect weak puns, weary pop-culture references, and a waning sense of discovery from this Ninjago-branded minor entry in the LEGO franchise.

Rated PG. ½ Loving Vincent— The first fully painted animated film is a sort of prodedural about Vincent van Gogh that is visually stunning but weak on story.

Rated PG-13.  The Snowman—Less a whodunit than a “who cares,” this senseless adaptation of one of Norwegian crime author Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole books is truly abominable.

Rated R.  Thor: Ragnarok—A stodgy, self-serious franchise springs to life with demigods delightfully out of their element, as Thor squares off against the Hulk and tries to stop Hela from destroying Asgard. Rated PG-13.

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Classes/workshops throughout the Triangle. Magic Tortoise School - Since 1979. Call Jay or Kathleen, 919-968-3936 or www.magictortoise.com

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Page 10 of 25 7 # 92 3 2 6 8 9

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MEDIUM

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