Just a Little Ol’ Left-Wing Blog Here p. 7 Judge Not, Lest the NCGA Judge You p. 8
raleigh 12|20|17
Bacon Cotton Candy? Yes, Please. p. 17
All Roads Lead to
Raleigh
Before finding a place in blues and folk history books, renowned guitarist Lead Belly made a little stop in the state capital by Thomas Goldsmith pa g e 1 3
2 | 12.20.17 | INDYweek.com
WHAT WE LEARNED THIS WEEK VOL. 34, NO. 50
8 “Republicans are rigging the system, not creating a better system of selecting judges.”
DEPARTMENTS
10 Protest a right-wing speaker at UNC too vigorously? You could get suspended.
8 News
6 Triangulator 16 Food 18 Music
11 The state GOP has returned to Wake County government $383 the disgraced former Register of Deeds Laura Riddick gave the party.
19 Arts & Culture 24 What to Do This Week 27 Music Calendar
13 The seminal musical figure Lead Belly earned his release from prison in 1925 by writing a song about the governor of Texas.
29 Arts & Culture Calendar
17 The crucial notes of Southeastern cooking—salty, spicy, sour, sweet—all show up in City Club Raleigh’s bacon cotton candy. ON THE COVER
19 Until The Beatles, Charles Dickens was the biggest British popular entertainer to hit North America. 22 History remembers Winston Churchill as bold and heroic, but behind the scenes he was demonstrably human.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN FOLKLIFE CENTER, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Angel Bennett shops at The Scrap Exchange Thrift.
PHOTO BY CAITLIN PENNA
INDYweek.com | 12.20.17 | 3
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EDITOR IN CHIEF Jeffrey C. Billman MANAGING EDITOR FOR ARTS+CULTURE Brian Howe DESIGN DIRECTOR Shan Stumpf STAFF WRITERS Thomas Goldsmith,
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backtalk
Witch Hunt Last month, we wrote about whether The PIT would replicate the toxic atmosphere of its predecessor, DSI Comedy. This piece generated a vitriolic response from fritzbw: “The PIT is indeed suffering from a toxic atmosphere, but not the kind described in the article by Katie Fernelius. The PIT is suffering from the toxicity of a witch hunt, in which mudslingers are given free rein and not held to any standards of rational thinking. Just as Stalin’s atrocities and abuses of power and didn’t justify McCarthyism, Harvey Weinstein’s horrible abuses don’t justify the pillorying of [owner] Ali Farahnakian. “In 2010, Ali made a joke during an improv class: ‘Sometimes when my wife and I have sex, she seems so reluctant that I feel kind of rapey.’ (That’s right, he employed the very phrase that his accuser has now coopted for her jokey description of the PIT.) In other words, he did his job. I don’t know if such a joke would be appropriate in other work environments, but at an improv school, if you can’t make a joke without being compared six years later to a man like the previous owner of DSI (who has been accused of actual sexual abuse), that would constitute a toxic environment, a censorious environment in which comedy can’t possibly flourish.” Last week’s Triangulator item on the Raleigh City Council described new Stefanie Mendell as “slow-growth.” She takes exception to that description: “Once again I must take exception to being labelled as ‘slowgrowth.’ I ran on a platform of responsible growth, smart growth, or planned growth— growth that is compatible with surroundings, respects the environment, and has appropriate infrastructure in place. “Nicole Stewart’s platform, if you check her campaign website, also talked about growth in Raleigh ‘straining our natural resources.’ So having me serve on the Growth & Natural Resources Committee is not necessarily going to have ‘ramifications down the line.’ I’d also like to know what is considered the opposite of ‘slow-growth’—is it “fast growth”?—and what does that imply? “Admittedly I am new to politics, but I
am confounded and disappointed that both the N&O and the INDY continue to advance this ‘slow-growth’ narrative, seemingly in the interests of stirring up controversy and dissension. The current council was sworn in just over a week ago. How about giving us some time to coalesce as a governing body under the leadership of Mayor McFarlane? And how about giving us the benefit of the doubt on ‘slow growth’ versus ‘fast growth’ until you see some results?” In response to Sarah Willets’s story on a Durham church that is offering sanctuary to an undocumented immigrant facing deportation, john1050 writes the following: “What part of illegal don’t they understand? Congress is considering the DACAs plus all other illegal aliens in a bill in Congress. “The illegal-alien DACAs were minors smuggled in by their illegal alien parents in violation of immigration laws. The DACAs are now twenty to thirty-six years old. The DACAs demand a ‘clean’ act to pass Congress. The ‘clean’ act includes citizenship for their family, chain migration, and basically the end to immigration laws. [Fact check: Not really.] Current U.S. law gives the DACA children (the anchor babies) born in the U.S. instant citizenship, so in many cases the anchor babies have dual citizenship from their mothers’ homeland and U.S. citizenship. The adult DACAs are now having children that get instant citizenship. One estimate is that the DACAs have had over three hundred thousand anchor babies. “The DACA program is only a small portion of the number of illegal aliens that will become the majority of voters in the U.S. Ask the taxpayers what they think another forty million illegal aliens who become citizens will do to the economy and their children’s and grandchildren’s future employment in competition with the twenty-to-thirty-sixyear-old DACAs and other illegal aliens. Enforce the immigration laws.”
“Mudslingers are given free rein and not held to any standards of rational thinking.”
Want to see your name in bold? Email us at backtalk@indyweek.com, comment on our Facebook page or indyweek.com, or hit us up on Twitter: @indyweek. INDYweek.com | 12.20.17 | 5
10. EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999)
Watch this movie a dozen times and try to convince yourself that it’s not terrible. Pros: Darth Maul, Liam Neeson Cons: Jar-Jar Binks, midichlorians, Jake Lloyd, podracing, racial stereotypes, battle droids Memorable line: Nothing comes to mind. Box office gross: (adjusted for inflation, rounded): $860 million
9. THE CLONE WARS (ANIMATED, 2008)
The TV series of the same name improved as it aged, but its kickoff movie was forgettable and generally derided by critics as one of the worst flicks of 2008, right up there with the made-for-TV Ewok movie and the infamous holiday special. Pros: The TV series ended up being good! Cons: Everything else Memorable line: “The desert is merciless. It takes everything from you.” Box office gross: N/A
8. EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES (2002)
An awkward love story about a sullen teenager with a rat tail and an older ex-queen. Pros: Yoda’s mad lightsaber skills, less Jar-Jar Cons: Obi-Wan in a space diner, Hayden Christensen Memorable line: “I don’t like sand.” Box office gross: $477 million
7. EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH (2005)
“Best of the prequels” is a dubious honor, but here we are. Pros: The lightsaber battle on Mustafar, Samuel L. Jackson Cons: Padme literally died of a broken heart, “Nooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooo!” Memorable quote: “So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.” Box office gross: $530 million
6. EPISODE VII: THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015)
Fun, to be sure, but I liked it better when it was called A New Hope. Pros: Harrison Ford punching the clock one more time, Daisy Ridley being awesome Cons: Starkiller Base makes zero sense, don’t even try Memorable quote: “Chewie, we’re home.” Box office gross: $965 million
ILLUSTRATIONS BY SHAN STUMPF
6 | 12.20.17 | INDYweek.com
triangulator
THE INDY’S OFFICIAL, DEFINITIVE, INCONTROVERTIBLE RANKING OF
STAR WARS MOVIES
Worst to first, according to me. Ready? By Jeffrey C. Billman Illustrations by Shan Stumpf
+LEFT 5. EPISODE VI: RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983)
Our heroes get a happy, if predictable, ending. Pros: Palpatine in the flesh, Luke vs. the rancor Cons: Ewoks Memorable quote: “It’s a trap.” Box office gross: $840 million
4. EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI (2017)
The opposite of The Force Awakens, Rian Johnson’s subversive take on the franchise works better the more you think about it. Pros: Adam Driver, Mark Hamill, Laura Freaking Dern, the scene with Snoke, that ending Cons: That weird Finn subplot, the last of Carrie Fisher Memorable quote: “Amazing. Every word of what you just said is wrong.” Box office gross: $220 million on opening weekend
3. EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE (1977)
In just 125 minutes, George Lucas introduced us to a whole new universe. Pros: Alec Guinness, the Mos Eisley Cantina, Luke and Han vs. the TIE fighters Cons: All of the dumb changes George Lucas retconned into later versions Memorable quote: “That’s no moon.” Box office gross: $1.59 billion
2. ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (2016)
The first Star Wars movie to not star a Skywalker—or even a Jedi—shows the Rebellion at its scrappy best. Pros: That scene with Vader Cons: The weird CGI of Grand Moff Tarkin Memorable quote: “I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me.” Box office gross: $540 million
1. EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980)
It’s universally acclaimed as the best of the saga for a reason. Pros: The big Vader reveal, the battle on Hoth Cons: How long was Luke training with Yoda, anyway? And how long did it take the Millenium Falcon to make it to Bespin without a working hyperdrive? Memorable quote: “I know.” Box office gross: $877 million
More call ciary Com of Raleigh eral benc North Ca As th month, F had not er-suppre Helms ca sought to a postca Hebert, tice attor the INDY in planni On Sun rial boar Senate no WRAL’s that, whe spokespe Farr was posted on want abo we’re a bi Meanw acting he sion und Monday f withdraw Trump n answer b during he Farr’s ate Judic party-line the full S
PERIPHERA
+LEFT-WING BLOG
More calls are coming for the Senate Judiciary Committee to reexamine its approval of Raleigh attorney Thomas Farr to the federal bench in the district court of eastern North Carolina. As the INDY first reported last month, Farr told the committee that he had not been involved with a 1990 voter-suppression case in which the Jesse Helms campaign, for whom Farr worked, sought to intimidate black voters through a postcard campaign. However, Gerald Hebert, a former Department of Justice attorney who worked the case, told the INDY that Farr was actually involved in planning that campaign. On Sunday, The Washington Post editorial board again urged that the full U.S. Senate not confirm Farr. Then, on Monday, WRAL’s Thomas Fain posted on Twitter that, when asked about Farr’s statements, a spokesperson for Senator Thom Tillis said Farr was the victim of a “baseless claim posted on a left-wing blog.” (Say what you want about this newspaper’s politics, but we’re a bit more than a blog.) Meanwhile, Vanita Gupta, the former acting head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division under President Obama, also called Monday for Farr’s withdrawal following the withdrawal of Matthew Petersen, another Trump nominee, after Petersen couldn’t answer basic questions on legal procedure during hearings last week. Farr’s nomination passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in October on a party-line vote. As of Monday, no vote by the full Senate had been announced. Farr
has not responded to repeated efforts by the INDY to reach him for comment.
+THE MACHINERY OF DEATH
For the third time since 2012, no jury in North Carolina sentenced a convicted murderer to die in 2017, according to the Center for Death Penalty Litigation. There were four cases, in fact, in which prosecutors sought capital punishment, and jurors rejected them all. Combined with the fact that North Carolina has not executed anyone since 2006 and the reality that only one person has been sentenced to die in more than three years, you’d think capital punishment was going extinct in the Tar Heel State. Not if Senate leader Phil Berger can help it. In a letter to Governor Cooper and Josh Stein last week, Berger urged the Democratic officials to restart the death penalty process, citing the case of four inmates charged with murdering prison officials; the Pasquotank County district attorney has announced that he intends to seek lethal injection. “We read with interest Governor Cooper’s spokeswoman’s response that, ‘Capital punishment remains the law of the state, and Governor Cooper has a long history of upholding it,’ and Attorney General Stein’s spokeswoman’s response that he plans to ‘uphold the law of North Carolina,’” Berger wrote in part. “Respectfully, actions—or rather inactions—speak louder than words. In your capacities as attorneys general, have you taken any serious action to fast-track the legal proceedings to ensure that the victims’
families can see justice served?” North Carolina’s trend away from the death penalty mirrors what’s happening nationally. In 2017, according to NBC News, only twenty-three people were executed and fewer than forty people were sentenced to death nationwide, the second-lowest number in each category since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in the late seventies. What’s more, public support for the death penalty has reached an alltime low. In an October Gallup poll, just 55 percent of Americans said they supported executing murderers, down from 80 percent in 1994. Still, North Carolina has 140 men and three women on death row—most of whom were sentenced at least fifteen years ago, according to the CDPL, when state laws forced prosecutors to seek the death penalty in almost every first-degree murder case, and none of whom are likely to be put to death anytime soon, as the state has been tied up in litigation over execution procedures. Meanwhile, the death row population is aging; this year, five inmates died of natural causes. “There are some elected officials in North Carolina who still like to talk about the death penalty for political purposes, but that’s about the only way it’s being used anymore,” CDPL executive director Gretchen M. Engel said in a statement. “The reality is most citizens of North Carolina no longer have any use for the death penalty, not after seeing an innocent man like Henry McCollum [who was exonerated in 2014] spend thirty years there.” triangulator@indyweek.com This week’s report by Jeffrey C. Billman and Thomas Goldsmith.
PERIPHERAL VISIONS | V.C. ROGERS
Your Week. Every Wednesday. indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 12.20.17 | 7
indynews Judicial Madness WHAT’S BEHIND THE LEGISLATURE’S PLAN TO OVERHAUL THE STATE’S COURT SYSTEM? BY ERICA HELLERSTEIN
Your week. Every Wednesday.
S
INDYWEEK.COM 8 | 12.20.17 | INDYweek.com
tate Democrats and fair courts groups are sounding the alarm over a string of recent proposals from the GOP-led General Assembly that would dramatically reshape the judiciary—a brazen attempt, they say, to politicize the judicial branch and change the makeup of the courts in Republicans’ favor. The reconfiguration coincides with a series of legislative setbacks for Republicans at the hands of the courts. Advocacy groups say that’s hardly a coincidence. “This legislature is unhappy with the system of checks and balances that our government has created, and they’re wanting to do something to change the checks and balances on our system,” says Melissa Price Kromm, the director of North Carolina Voters for Clean Elections. “It’s alarming.”
The saga dates back to 2013, when the legislature repealed public financing for judicial races. Since then, what fair courts advocates call an attack on the judiciary has only accelerated. Several bills have been introduced that could significantly change the makeup of the courts, and tension between Democrats and Republicans, as well as public pressure, is mounting. Last week, the North Carolina Democratic Party sued the legislature over a recently passed law that, among other things, eliminates judicial primaries—a move that opponents said effectively strips North Carolinians of the right to vote. “Legislative Republicans are rigging the system, not creating a better system of selecting judges,” NCDP chairman Wayne Goodwin said in a statement announc-
ing the lawsuit. “North Carolinians have a right to make an informed decision about who they want as their judicial nominee. This move unjustly eliminates that right and should be immediately struck down.” The day after the NCDP filed suit, Democrats walked out of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in protest after Don Stephens, a retired Wake County Superior Court judge and representative of Governor Cooper, was barred from testifying. During the hearing, lawmakers were debating changing the judge-selection process from an election, which is how they are currently chosen, to an appointment, which opponents say is a transparent attempt by the GOP to stack the bench with judges who will rule in their favor. (Over the past few years, the courts—fed-
“Has the legislature simply declared the quality of the judiciary to be poor because some judges have disagreed with the legislature?”
eral courts, predominantly—have consistently gotten in the way of Republican ambitions, overruling more than a dozen laws passed by the GOP.) Stephens was slated to talk about Republicans’ tinkering with the judiciary but was prevented from doing so by Senator Dan Bishop, the committee’s chairman, who argued that Stephens couldn’t speak because he isn’t employed by Governor Cooper’s office. In response, the three Democrats on the nineteen-member committee—Senators Jay Chaudhuri of Raleigh, Floyd McKissick of Durham, and Joel Ford of Charlotte— walked out of the room in silent protest. The hearing continued without them, and ns have a Republicans proceeded to introduce a new on about set of proposed election maps for judges nominee. and district attorneys—an issue that the hat right Democratic lawmakers hadn’t anticipated k down.” because it was not on the meeting’s public uit, Dem- agenda. Bishop said the new maps were Judiciary drawn to address possible problems with fter Don a set of maps proposed by House RepubliSuperior cans that could lead to legal challenges. of Gov- Stephens summarily shared his prem testify- pared testimony with The News & Observers were er: “Has the legislature simply declared selection the quality of the judiciary to be poor h is how because some judges have disagreed with appoint- the legislature in their decisions?” it reads. transpar- “The fact that we are having this conversahe bench tion impugns the integrity of every sitting eir favor. judge in North Carolina, be they Republirts—fed- can or Democrat.”
As we try to make sense of the latest partisan spat, let’s consider the context. The bill the Democrats sued the legislature over last week, the Electoral Freedom Act, is just one of a number of Republican proposals to significantly reshape the courts. There’s also HB 717, a controversial judicial redistricting bill passed by the House that critics say would gerrymander the judicial districts (according to the coalition Fair Courts NC, the bill would pack nearly half of all African-American judges into districts with another incumbent); SB 698, which would slash all judges’ terms to two years, forcing them to be in a near-constant state of fundraising and campaigning (if passed, it would make North Carolina the only state in the nation with two-year terms for elected supreme and district court judges); and a yet-to-be-introduced proposal floating around the General Assembly that would eliminate the state’s judicial elections altogether, likely replacing them with a process that would allow politicians to pick their own umpires. What’s more, beginning this year, judges must also disclose their party affiliation on their ballots—making it the first state in a century to go from nonpartisan judicial elections to partisan judicial elections. Taken together, critics say the spate of legislation is a naked attempt to bend the judiciary to the will of Republican lawmakers, who have in recent years been bruised by rejections from the courts, ranging from a state court rejecting the repeal of teacher tenure to voter ID and redistricting decisions at the federal level. “I believe the legislature is looking at ways to change the makeup of the judiciary for partisan reasons and that’s dangerous public policy,” says Price Kromm. “The courts have overturned many laws that this legislature has passed, and you can tell that they’re upset about it and they want to make changes to the judiciary for those reasons.” For those wary of the Republicans’ latest judicial gambit, the takeaway is clear: if you don’t like the courts ruling against you, just change the judiciary. And, as the prospect of redistricting hovers in the near future, it’s possible that new legislative districts could end up favoring some Democrats, ending the Republican supermajorities in the General Assembly and, with them, the era of unfettered GOP dominance. With that possibility looming, the motives behind the legislature’s judicial scheming aren’t hard to divine: for now, judges wear black robes, but imagine what could be done if they wore red. ehellerstein@indyweek.com
PEt of the WEEK
SEAN is our pet of the week! Hey there, terrier lovers! I may seem timid at first, but throw a ball for me and watch me go! I’m an active guy who loves to run and play. If you’re looking for a friend to toss a ball around with, I’m your man! And I LOVE other dogs! My adoption fee has been waived due to the generosity of a donor! For more information: http://www.apsofdurham.org/ dogs/sean/ If you’re interested in featuring a pet for adoption, please contact advertising@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 12.20.17 | 9
news
Muzzling Dissent
UNDER A NEW UNC POLICY, ZEALOUSLY PROTESTING A CONTROVERSIAL SPEAKER COULD GET YOU SUSPENDED—OR WORSE BY SARAH WILLETS
L
ast month, when former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka made an appearance at UNC-Chapel Hill, protesters gathered outside, chanting, “Fascist scum has got to go.” According to news reports, the chants at times could be heard inside. Under a new policy adopted by the UNC Board of Governors last week, those protesters could have faced warnings, suspensions, or even expulsion had their chants substantially disrupted Gorka’s ability to give his talk on U.S.-Israel relations. Effective immediately, the policy applies to all seventeen campuses in the UNC system and was required by a state law passed earlier this year. Across the country, legislatures have passed laws requiring campus free-speech policies. Many, including North Carolina’s, are patterned after a model put forth by the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank, in response to the proliferation of campus “safe zones” and protests against speakers like Gorka. The policy calls for UNC schools to “implement and enforce a range of disciplinary sanctions, up to and including dismissal or expulsion, for anyone … who materially and substantially disrupts the functioning of UNC General Administration, constituent institution or any other entity or unit of the university, or substantially interferes with the protected free expression rights of others.” The board of governors consulted the Association of Student Governments, the Staff Assembly, and the Faculty Assembly in crafting the policy. The final policy, passed by the full board Friday without discussion, does not differ substantially from one approved by a board committee last month. “We’re not going to see anything that causes major heartburn on campuses,” predicted UNC system president Margaret Spellings. But the ACLU of North Carolina is wor10 | 12.20.17 | INDYweek.com
“It could chill free speech on campuses across the state.” ried that the definition of what is considered a “disruption” is too broad and that potential sanctions are too harsh. “The UNC Board of Governors passed a new policy about campus speech. They ignored our recommendations and the hundreds of people who spoke out against this policy. Now it could chill free speech on campuses across the state,” the organization posted on Facebook after the vote. The policy lays out minimum punishments for repeat offenders but says individual campuses can impose different sanctions if warranted. The policy suggests at least suspension for a second offense and expulsion for a third offense. Guests on campus who violate the policy can be barred from campus, and people who disrupt public meetings may be banned from meetings or campus or face criminal charges.
The definition of what constitutes a disruption is broad, including anything that would be considered a disruption or disorderly conduct under state law. “We don’t usually have substantial disruptions,” said board member Steven Long, who chairs the University Governance Committee. “We’re not talking about small things. We’re talking about material and substantial disruptions where basically someone is really intending to block proceedings or someone from being heard.” The North Carolina chapter of the Association of American University Professors also came out against the policy. An AAUP petition opposing it had garnered 460 signatures by Monday afternoon. In addition to the possibility of chilling free speech, the AAUP points out that the policy suggests UNC schools should be neutral on public issues (“Constituent institutions may not take action on public policy controversies of the day in such a way as to require students, faculty or administrators to publicly express a given view of social policy”) and that state law calls for a Committee on Free Expression, made up of BOG members, to report annually on “disruptions of free expression” and any resulting disciplinary action. The UNC Faculty Assembly had also voiced concerns during the drafting of the policy. The group advocated that individual schools be able to determine sanctions. Gabriel Lugo, who chairs the UNC Faculty Assembly, said after Friday’s meeting that while the group understands that the board of governors had to pass the policy, the First Amendment already “completely satisfies” the need to protect free speech. He said the group is pleased campuses will be able to determine sanctions locally but argues that the policy goes unnecessarily beyond what was required by the law, which makes no mention of specific sanctions. Whether that will be felt by faculty members depends on how UNC schools
implement the policy and determine what constitutes a disruption, he said. The move comes amid protests at campuses nationwide, including at UNC-Chapel Hill, where students and faculty are renewing decades-old calls for the removal of the Confederate monument known as Silent Sam. Protesters have been known to disrupt board of governors meetings, and last year four demonstrators were arrested while calling for Spellings’s firing. It also comes during a perceived power struggle between the largely Republican board of governors and the more liberal Chapel Hill campus. About three months ago, the board of governors barred UNC-Chapel Hill’s progressive Center for Civil Rights from litigating, causing (you guessed it) protests. Two years ago, the board closed the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity. Last month, there was talk of moving the system’s general administration away from Chapel Hill because its current location conflates the two. But more recently, the board has shown interest in opening a more conservative center at the Chapel Hill campus. Officials this fall toured Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and heard from its director, professor Robert P. George (whom The New York Times once called the “reigning brain of the Christian right”) about civil discourse during their meeting Friday. George describes the program not as conservative but as a conduit for differing viewpoints to engage in meaningful debate. UNC officials on Friday asked how they could apply the model in a larger, public university setting. “Our faculty are finding it tougher to introduce uncomfortable ideas in the classroom,” Spellings told The News & Observer, “and our policymakers are finding it harder to see the kind of intellectual diversity our institutions promise.” swillets@indyweek.com
The Politics of Impropriety NORTH CAROLINA REPUBLICANS ARE RUNNING AWAY FROM LAURA RIDDICK BY THOMAS GOLDSMITH Just as Bob Dylan said, “We live in a political world.” Dylan’s 1989 lyrics rang true again following the December 12 indictment of former Wake County Register of Deeds Laura Riddick and three other employees of the office. A grand jury brought charges against Riddick including embezzlement of more than $100,000 by a public official—a class C felony.
Perry Woods, a Democratic political strategist, says Republicans would have pounced if a Democrat had been accused of similar charges. “They would certainly make political hay out of it,” Woods says. “But the truth is, it’s a very tragic situation all around.” With no prior record, Riddick faces a sentence of up to seven years per count, officials say.
2020. After Riddick stepped down—near the time the investigation of her office was announced, but also because of recurring episodes of bad health—the Wake County Republican Party met behind closed doors to appoint former Wake County District Court Judge Charles Gilliam to the post. Woods argues that Gilliam shouldn’t be allowed to hold the post that long. “We wouldn’t have a county commis-
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Left: Laura Riddick’s mug shot. Right: Riddick in happier times. The indictments stated that she converted money to her own use that belonged to the office she formerly headed. A series of six indictments charged Riddick with taking $926,615 from the office between 2010 and 2017. Riddick, a Republican first elected in 1996 and reelected most recently in 2016, remains innocent under the law, but that presumption didn’t still the voices of politics. “While not completely unexpected the news about FORMER Wake Register of Deeds Laura Riddick is heartbreaking,” tweeted Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the state Republican Party. “Many @WakeCountyGOP people worked to elect her and fully trusted her. Simply a tragedy.” The all-caps “former” may speak to the GOP’s desire to draw lines between the Riddick awaiting trial and Riddick the popular public official elected six times under the Republican banner.
“Clearly these indictments today come at the end of a lengthy, detailed investigation, but it’s just the beginning of a long court process,” says District Attorney Lorrin Freeman. “We are intent on seeing it through so that justice can be served.” Riddick had long enjoyed the status of a Republican whom many mainstream Democrats could accept. Still, in recent years, her donations to candidates often went to conservatives, including Paul Stam, Tony Gurley, Marilyn Avila, Tamara Barringer, Chad Barefoot, and Paul Coble in 2012 alone. State Republicans announced they would turn over to the Wake County manager $383 that Riddick had donated to the party since 2003, part of more than $23,000 she gave to candidates and state and local party organizations. Under state law, Wake County Republicans get to maintain control of the Register of Deeds post through the election of
sion seat stay open for three years,” Woods says. “It would be in the public interest if there were a special election for the post.” Given the way Wake County is trending, it’s likely that a Democrat would win that post were such an election to happen. As the INDY previously reported, Wake County officials had not performed a detailed audit of the Register of Deeds office in recent years. According to longstanding practice, elected officials such as the county sheriff and register of deeds had not been subject to the same scrutiny as other departments—scrutiny that may have headed off any fraud long before now. According to a claim the county submitted to its insurance company, the Register of Deeds office lost more than $2.3 million in cash, with money walking out the door nearly every day for nearly a decade. Riddick has not been available for comment since her retirement. tgoldsmith@indyweek.com
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B
efore Johnny Cash recorded “Rock Island Line,” before Pete Seeger sang about studying war no more, and before Nirvana did a harrowing version of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” on MTV Unplugged, there was Lead Belly. Mentored by the titanic bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lead Belly was a singer, guitarist, and storyteller, one whose work helped define these artists and American vernacular music in the twentieth century.
All Roads Lead to
Raleigh Before finding a place in blues and folk history books, renowned guitarist Lead Belly made a short stop in the state capital by Thomas Goldsmith
But before he was even Lead Belly, he was Huddie Ledbetter, born in 1889 to an independent farming family near Mooringsport, Louisiana. In December 1934, Ledbetter rolled into Raleigh along with two famous music collectors. The trio spent four days just before Christmas in Raleigh, gathering songs as part of a longlasting effort to preserve and promote American music. An early inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Lead Belly stands today as an overarching figure of American music. He used his deep, rangey voice and powerful guitar playing to render blues, field hollers, country-style tunes, hymns, storysongs, and, later on, songs of social protest. Although he may lack the mythological cachet of a Robert Johnson, Lead Belly produced a body of work at least as fundamental to roots music. And he came to Raleigh at the peak of his powers. Songs such as “Midnight Special,” “Goodnight Irene,” “Cottonfields,” and “Black Girl (Where Did You Sleep Last Night?),” and his propulsive performance style made Ledbetter a fixture of the New York and national folk scene; he befriended Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and enjoyed modest success as a record and radio artist. However, at the time he visited Raleigh, he had been released only about six months earlier from a second prison term for vioHuddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN FOLKLIFE CENTER, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
INDYweek.com | 12.20.17 | 13
lent crime. The mighty twelve-string guitarist from Louisiana was on the brink of fame at age forty-five. But all that came after Raleigh. In 1934, Ledbetter was working as a driver for a father-son team of folklorists and song collectors: sixty-seven-year-old John A. Lomax and nineteen-year-old Alan Lomax. They were traversing the South with Ledbetter serving as a savvy intermediary during stops at prisons to record inmates’ blues, ballads, field hollers, and gospel tunes. The Lomaxes had met Ledbetter while collecting songs in a Texas prison in 1933. In later documentary footage, Alan Lomax, who died in 2002, says that his father had the idea that “all the sinful people” were in jail. He noted that turning to prisons as sources yielded incredible pieces of vernacular music. Lead Belly had spent from 1918 to 1925 in prison in Sugarland, Texas, on a homicide charge, winning a famous release based on a song he wrote about then-governor Pat Neff. From 1930 to 1934, Ledbetter sat in Louisiana’s Angola Prison on an assault charge. It was there that he met the Lomaxes, about a year before his release, and conceived the idea of working for them. When John Lomax hired Ledbetter in fall 1934, the musician’s role paved the way for the white collectors and their recording equipment in the Southern towns they visited. In their 1992 biography of Lead Belly, The Life and Legend of Leadbelly, music scholars Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell wrote that Ledbetter “continued to ‘prime the pump’ at prisons by playing and singing the kinds of songs that Lomax wanted and stimulating the local singers to come forward.”
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he remarkable journey the Lomaxes and Ledbetter made in late 1934 can be tracked by the recordings they made along the way toward the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. They started the first week of December in Sugarland, Texas, where Ledbetter had once been a prisoner. The party turned northeast to Baton Rouge, then east to prisons in Atlanta and Milledgeville, Georgia, and in Boykin, South Carolina. The trek totaled about 1,350 miles during about two weeks on rough, undivided highways. After recording a few tunes in Boykin on December 19, the group made the twohundred-mile trip to Raleigh the same day, arriving in time to capture more music at the Central Prison. They cut more discs on December 22, with Ledbetter even accompanying an inmate on a song with his unmistakeable, rumbling guitar style. A reporter’s scan of the period’s Raleigh 14 | 12.20.17 | INDYweek.com
of songs included hardcore blues, including the tune later known as “Matchbox Blues,” the Gene Autry weeper “Silver Haired Daddy of Mine,” gospel numbers like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” work songs such as “Linin’ Track,” and prison numbers, notably the later success, “Midnight Special.”
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Ledbetter and his wife, Martha Promise Ledbetter, in February 1935 PHOTO COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, LOMAX COLLECTION, LC-DIG-PPMSC-00660
Times and News & Observer editions on microfilm in the State Library didn’t produce any mention of these notable figures in American music. Instead, the rival papers portrayed a Depression-era Raleigh steeped in society and crime, church and government, parties and poverty. A wealth of downtown stores offered Christmas fare. African-American people were identified as Negroes in the paper, whether teachers or convicts. The exploits of Louisiana Senator Huey Long, along with a sex trafficking trial in Smithfield, dominated the week’s front pages. Into this environment Lead Belly drove the Lomaxes, who were notable in their own rights. Texas banker and music lover John A. Lomax started collecting folk songs in the early twentieth century, issuing a collection of cowboy songs in 1910, with an introduction by President Theodore Roosevelt. His foundational book, American Ballads and Folk Songs, was published in October of the same year he visited Raleigh. Alan Lomax would spend the rest of the century collecting and preserving music from all over the United States, as well as in Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean. His archives are preserved digitally at the Smithsonian Institution, with many songs and photographs available online. But why were they all in Raleigh? As far as can be determined, the travelers simply found the City of Oaks in their path, just as Chuck Berry did in “Promised Land” and James Brown in “Night Train.” Even though the party spent much of their time lugging around a disc cutter and tracking down singers and storytellers,
John Lomax often found time to get out in the communities they visited. John Lomax III, a journalist and producer in Nashville, Tennessee, described what he knew of the era during an interview this month. “They could visit prisons, and Grandfather would lecture at various places,” he says. “He would talk about collecting and songs and a lot of times, when he had Lead Belly with him, Lead Belly would sing.” It’s tantalizing to think of these famous men holding forth in 1934 at a college, in Carolina’s folk-collecting scene, or at a Raleigh academic or social gathering. However, a reasonably diligent search has not uncovered such an event.
h
uddie Ledbetter, born in 1889, came from a stable family but had walked a rough and sometimes violent path before joining the Lomaxes, doing farm work and other hard labor as he traveled through the South and West. But he was also a brilliantly talented musician who must have practiced and played at great length to achieve his mastery of playing and singing. “That wasn’t anything unusual for blacks to do—to leave home at an early age—because they were running away from that pressure and that hard labor they were under,” Tiny Robinson, Ledbetter’s niece, told me in 1990 in Brentwood, Tennessee. For Ledbetter and other black musicians on the road, the guitar was more than a musical instrument. “It was company to them. The guitar was all they had. It was their life,” Robinson said. Ledbetter already had a substantial repertoire before he came to Raleigh. His bag
n December 22, 1934, at North Carolina State Prison on Western Boulevard, Ledbetter played his twelve-string guitar behind an inmate named George W. Smith. Out of several George Smiths imprisoned during that era, the singer was likely a forty-seven-year-old prisoner from Avery County, according Doug Brown, public services unit manager at the North Carolina State Archives. “Little Willie’s My Darlin’,” a sprightly, country-tinged number with similarities to “Birmingham Jail,” has an accomplished guitar part from Lead Belly, including a few of his ragtime-y bass runs. It’s a rare instance of his playing guitar as the lone backer of another singer. It’s not known what the three men did between the recording sessions of December 19 and 22. Lead Belly might have met with discriminatory treatment under the Jim Crow rules of the day. The Negro Motorist Green Book, a resource for African-American travelers in search of a room or a meal, listed in 1941 Raleigh only the Arcade and Lewis hotels, the L.B. Yeargan Tourist Home on Cabarrus Street, and the Savoy tavern at 410 South Blount Street. What is sure, though, is that Ledbetter could have heard some of the same country, blues, and sentimental songs he played performed by white regional musicians, such as the Tobacco Tags, over the powerful radio station WPTF.
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ith the stint in Raleigh complete, the party headed up the East Coast, arriving in Washington, D.C., on Christmas Eve, where Ledbetter gave a private performance and Christmas morning press interviews, according to a chronology on the website for the Association for Cultural Equity, which Alan Lomax founded in 1983. The institution still manages the Alan Lomax Archive and the younger Lomax’s efforts to document, preserve, and celebrate folk cultures around the world. In the days after Christmas, Lomax introduced Ledbetter to the scholars at the fifty-first annual meeting of the prestigious Modern Language Association, which was Ledbetter’s first major performance before a white audience. After more interviews and a stop at Bryn Mawr College, it was
DECE M B E R
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on to New York City for New Year’s Eve and more press, with a sensationalized story titled “Sweet Singer of the Swamplands” appearing in the New York Herald Tribune. But in the years since those adventures, some champions of Ledbetter, including members of his family, have criticized what they considered the patriarchal, exploitive approach John A. Lomax took toward the musician. “He felt that Uncle Huddie was like a child: he could handle him the way he wanted, he must do what he says do. It gradually went out the window. He wasn’t a boy any more,” Robinson, Ledbetter’s niece, said. However, descendants of the singer and of the Lomaxes tend to agree that it was the folk collectors’ assistance that brought Ledbetter to widespread recognition. “I truly say, I don’t know if Lead Belly would have gotten the exposure among the world if he hadn’t been with old man Lomax,” Robinson added. Ledbetter built an outsize reputation, even after he ultimately had an acrimonious split with John Lomax. The recordings he made with the Lomaxes, along with hundreds of others for commercial labels and, with Alan Lomax assisting, the Library of Congress, carved into history his reputation as a great songman, musician, and storyteller. He would continue to sing and entertain until not long before his death of ALS in 1949. The stop in Raleigh came at the tail end of Ledbetter’s life as a musical journeyman, mostly known in African-American communities in Texas and Louisiana. Just a few days later, his fame caught fire and continues into the present era. In April 2015, musicians including Van Morrison, Alison Krauss, and Robert Plant joined tribute concerts to Lead Belly in New York and London. Terika Dean, Ledbetter’s great-greatniece, manages the Lead Belly Foundation near Nashville, Tennessee, and took part in organizing the concerts. “We had some younger performers that came in and did tributes to him; it kind of helped open him up to a new generation,”
FR 22 LIQUID PLEASURE 8P SA 23 SMELL THE GLOVE 9:30P
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W/ TRAVERS BROTHERSHIP A dust jacket for one of the Lomaxes’ Raleigh recordings with Ledbetter
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Dean says. “Some of these younger performers were saying their exposure to Lead Belly changed everything about the way they played music.” One likes to think Ledbetter somehow still had time while in Raleigh to entertain children, as he often did in private and public life. After all, his repertoire contained several Christmas songs, one alluding to the folk tale that animals can talk and even pray on Christmas Eve. “Children get so happy on a Christmas Day,” he used to sing. “Chickens crow for midnight on a Christmas Day.” Today, the Lead Belly Foundation aims not only to preserve the singer’s legacy but also to increase educational opportunities for young people. “We want to keep finding ways to introduce him to young children,” Dean says. In the end, Lead Belly remains an artist worth listening to and discussing for people of any age, for anyone who cares about the musical history of the United State. He came from a different America, the one before radio and records tended to standardize music styles across the nation. Although he was a magnificent blues player, he wasn’t limited to blues, or any style, but ranged freely through—and sometimes merged—types of music associated with both black and white Americans. Although he left little mark on Raleigh at the time, Lead Belly went on to make an imprint on America’s cultural consciousness that ought never to fade. tgoldsmith@indyweek.com
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indyfood
POSTAL FISH COMPANY
75 West Salisbury Street, Pittsboro www.postalfishcompany.com
Building a Dream
THREE CHEFS OPEN A FISH HOUSE IN THE MOST UNLIKELY PLACE: A FORMER POST OFFICE AND BATTING CAGE. BY DEBBIE MATTHEWS
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onstructing a dream from brick and mortar: If you’re a rancher that might mean a stable. A hotelier puts up a resort. A carpenter creates a fully decked-out woodworking shop. And a trio of chefs in Pittsboro opens the Postal Fish Company, named after the venue’s previous life as a post office. After twenty years of marriage, chefs James and Marcey Clark have finally married their interests in this new project. The Clarks met at the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont, where James studied culinary arts and Marcey became a pastry chef. James was raised in the South, with much of his time spent on the Pasquotank River and frequent trips to the coast. The third chef, Bill Hartley, comes from Westwood, New Jersey. From a young age he was lured by the siren song down the shore. Marcey is a native of New Hampshire, a place that also breeds a love of seafood and very high standards for it. She’s quick to call shenanigans on any jumped-up, inauthentic New England fare, including a bastardized lobster roll that James once contemplated serving. The Clarks and Hartley met in 2008 when James took the helm of the Grande Dunes in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The men have cooked together since then, with a fouryear stint at Crossroads Chapel Hill at The Carolina Inn, where they expanded the seafood menu and introduced a range of under utilized, less familiar fare. These fish, often disparaged as “trash fish,” are more sustainable, and far less over-fished, than their more popular, glamorous cousins. So, what do three saltwater-soaked chefs who practically have gills want to do when they grow up? Open a fish house. They knocked the idea around for years before finally taking steps to make it happen. In the summer of 2016, James and Hartley went all in and left their positions as executive chef and sous chef, respectively, at the Carolina Inn. 16 | 12.20.17 | INDYweek.com
Seafood is the focus at Pittsboro’s Postal Fish Company. PHOTO BY CAITLIN PENNA They chose Pittsboro because they liked the vibe of the quirky, artsy village, and the only nearby seafood joints were the kind with drive-through windows. They also happened to live there and relished abandoning a commute. The Clarks have two daughters—Paige, ten, and Madison, almost seventeen—so being close to home and being their own bosses meant more family time in an industry notoriously selfish with the lives of its practitioners. They crowdsourced on Kickstarter to get seed money for the project. In less than thirty days they reached their goal and got to work. Since 2014, they’d been eyeing the old post office just off the main drag in Pittsboro. It was a sleek mid-century modern building with good bones and not much else. After the post office moved in the late nineties, the building fell into neglect, and the history becomes sad, and a little murky. At one point it might have been
an illegally run Indian restaurant. But its final function is not in dispute—it was used as batting cages. The restrooms were left in horrific condition. Marcey says she would never have let a child use those frightening facilities. They, along with the rest of the interior, were gutted. The chefs did the demolition work themselves, with nothing more than sledgehammers and reciprocating saws. In six weeks they had completely cleared the space. Asked if they’d had fun doling out the destruction, Bill answers in his customary laconic way, “The first day we did.” That is, until they woke up on day two “sore as hell.” They drew up plans with architect Taylor Hobbs. After a remarkably worry-free construction, completed within budget and almost on time, the team had a clean, open space flooded with lots of natural light. The plans also includ-
ed a small private dining space in the back corner. Soon, with the addition of a barn door, the corner can be completely closed off from the main dining room for private events. The interior decoration features pieces from various sources including the tin roof from the Clark family’s hunting cabin in both oyster and cocktail bars. Hanging in the private dining room are copies of prints made during the last Carolina Inn renovation, from a set of late-sixteenth-century drawings by John White. White was one of the first English colonists in the Americas and governor of the Lost Colony. The prints depict fish that he observed on the coast. Hartley’s mother designed much of the rest of the interior. Each chef insisted on certain must-have items for the building and furnishing of the fish house. James wanted windows in the kitchen after decades of cooking in spaces with no visible hint if it was noon or midnight, April or September. Hartley wanted an open kitchen. Their cooking is entertaining for the main dining room, and especially intimate for those seated at the oyster bar, which fronts the cooking space. Both chefs were adamant about a wood-fired grill. The medieval-looking wood grill has a metal wheel, which lowers and raises the food to regulate cooking temperatures. Marcey’s dream machine is the Hobart twelve-quart, two-hundred-pound commercial mixer. New ones go for around $4,500. For now, she’s brought her personal seven-quart Kitchenaid Pro to the restaurant. Marcey’s signature key lime pie has become a permanent menu fixture, and her coconut cake has won rave reviews. The restaurant is open Tuesday through Saturday for dinner, and brunch on Sundays. The chefs are planning to open for lunch by summer. Even after more than two months, it is still, and will continue to be, a dream in progress. food@indyweek.com
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Bacon cotton candy is City Club Raleigh’s most fun dish.
T
roy Stauffer is wiping wisps of sugar off of his face. “I never thought [that by] going to culinary school I’d be out here making cotton candy,” he says. He stands over the Flufftastic Floss Machine, supported at elbow level by a butcher’s block in the back of his industrial kitchen. We walk through two large dining rooms (with a seating capacity of one hundred and sixty) to get to the celestial blue and bubblegum pink carnival machine, past high-backed leather armchairs and regal holiday decor. Stauffer mentions prepping for the Wake County mayor’s office holiday party later that evening as he zooms past the prep tables and a whiteboard with a grocery list of normal things needed in a restaurant kitchen: vanilla beans, truffle oil, short ribs. Stauffer crossed “cotton candy machine” off that list on Monday. “Three have blown up on us.” Stauffer is the executive chef at City Club Raleigh, a members-only business club at the top of the Wells Fargo building that’s quickly flourishing into a place for professionals looking to cut a deal at lunch while letting loose—at least with
PHOTO BY CAITLIN PENNA
their lunch choices. That’s why Stauffer invested in at least four cotton candy machines since 2014, when the club opened. The restaurant’s most popular appetizer for lunch or dinner is “bacon + cotton candy,” as the menu simply puts it. He says he sells up to ten every day at lunch, and twenty for dinner. “My perception of club food is stuffy, pretentious, formal dining,” says Stauffer, who used to run the kitchen at the now-defunct CITY CLUB Capital City Club, RALEIGH 150 Fayetteville Street, owned by the same Club Corp that Floor 28, Raleigh www.clubcorp.com/ owns City Club Clubs/City-ClubRaleigh. “DownRaleigh town Raleigh is awesome. So do I just sit back and serve regular club food? Chicken wings and hot dogs? That sucks, and it’s just boring.” The bacon cotton candy isn’t at all what you’d expect. It’s not the kitsch bacon item du jour you find down an online shopping rabbit hole or in a mail-order catalog. Stauffer highlights the in-house bacon— his team smokes about thirty pounds a
week—made from pork raised on Heritage Farms in Virginia. He sears five thick-cut slices and splays them out onto a wooden board made by local designer (and club member) Thomas Holt. Beside it he sprinkles a healthy mound of crushed piment d’Espelette, a Basque pepper, forming it into a line next to the bacon. Then comes a giant puff of cotton candy to the side, made from maple-flecked sugar spun into a pure white cloud. “The Southeast flavor profile is salty, spicy, sour, sweet. You strike a balance or hit on all of that, and it’s a success.” How do you eat this thing? Start with a seared piece of bacon, then wrap it in a hefty tear of cotton candy. Dip it into the piment d’Espellete, which is smoky like paprika, finishing sneakily with some heat. Garnish with a bit of microgreens if you feel inclined (I prefer mine without). Stauffer calls it whimsical and unctuous. The sugar melts into the bacon fat just a little, and you’re left with a weird umami circus doing back flips on your tongue. Beg a friend to take you as a guest like I did, or sign up for your own card. This decadent treat just might be worth the investment. food@indyweek.com
YOUR WEEK. EVERY WEDNESDAY. FOOD • NEWS • ARTS • MUSIC
INDYWEEK.COM INDYweek.com | 12.20.17 | 17
indymusic
Double Daggers
COLIN SNEED PLAYS ROCK ROMPS FAST AND LOOSE, WHILE BOULEVARDS’ LATEST FUNK JAMS MIGHT JUST MAKE YOU CRY
COLIN SNEED
Empty and Open All Night Bull City Records Presents HHHH
Durham transplant Colin Sneed has married a mischievous literary sensibility to an uncanny knack for big-ticket hooks and snarling guitars, a cocktail he renders with the insouciant panache of a gutterrat intellectual. These proclivities date back to Sneed’s days fronting the Oxford, Mississippi, power-pop terrors Unwed Teenaged Mothers, and they’ve stayed consistent throughout the course of a prolific and frequently thrilling solo career. On his newest effort, Empty and Open All Night, Sneed hones his melodic and lyrical gifts to a razor’s edge sharpness, all slash-and-burn riffs and outré-digressions, weaponized to precision over the course of nine tracks running under twenty-five minutes. Sneed makes his intentions known from the gate, opening with the one-two punch of the Small Faces-played-on-78 stomp of ’ “5/13/1931” followed by the pop moves of the gleefully unhinged “Plane.” While hooks are plentiful, tracks like the woozy, drum-machine-backed “Bleeder” and the ominous closer, “Drug Dead,” hint at the anxiety resting just beneath the surface of this largely genial collection. 18 | 12.20.17 | INDYweek.com
Part of that barely sublimated anxiety may have to do with the Reverend Jim Jones. After reading Jeff Guinn’s 2017 book, The Road to Jonestown, Sneed became fascinated by the infamous 1978 cult massacre, and several songs on Empty and Open All Night reference those events in all of their macabre ecstasy and terror. “Marceline” in particular is chilling in this regard, with its reverse “Jumping Jack Flash”-riff ringing out like an incantation to the doomed. Following Empty and Open All Night— Sneed’s best release yet—it will be fun to see where his unique surfeit of talents takes him. With a pop sensibility that largely runs traditional competing with an emotional attraction to chaos, he could end up being Johnny Thunders or Tom Petty. One way or the other, he’s going to end up being something. —Timothy Bracy
BOULEVARDS Hurtown, USA Self-released HHH½
Smuggling heartbreak into feel-good pop is a delicate art. There are the classic examples: Morrissey’s doom and gloom over
Johnny Marr’s sunny guitar lines, or Mark Morrison’s scorned confidence on “Return of the Mack.” Raleigh’s Jamil Rashad is certainly inching his way toward timeless classics in this vein. Hurtown, USA, his new record as synth-funk alter ego Boulevards, will set any party on fire if you let it. It might also make you cry. As with past releases, Hurtown, USA works because Rashad is the real article, a mini-superstar. His ability to deliver golden hooks, his ostentatious fashion, his athletic live shows—everything about him demonstrates an effortless charisma. On this record, he takes things deeper than ever. The track “Hurtown” in particular is a disorienting rush of R&B radio gold. Over a thick disco bass line and bright Chic guitars, Rashad conveys emotional distress via the image of driving blackout drunk one night. In a surprising turn, Alan Palomo, of synth-pop outfit Neon Indian, handles production duties on “Nu Burn Ave (Intercruise).” In case the pile of other local allusions on the record don’t alert you, the title is a reference to Raleigh’s New Bern Avenue. Palomo’s music has long been steeped in the Nile Rodgers land of the good groove, and here, his slinky post-disco production drops in effortlessly. Elsewhere, producers Adam Rich (aka Rollergirl) and Secret Attraction deliver pitch-perfect funk accompaniment, not to mention Raleigh vocalist Laura Reed, who gives an electrifying performance on several songs. Is there room for improvement for Rashad? A little. Occasionally the loose, seemingly improvisational bridges, like the one toward the end of the otherwise excellent “Hurtown,” can feel undercooked and out of step with the rest of the song. But it’s not enough to derail Boulevards’ boogie. At this rate, Rashad is on schedule to deliver a classic record before we know it. —David Ford Smith
indystage
A CHRISTMAS CAROL HHHH Through Saturday, Dec. 23 UNC’s Kenan Theatre, Chapel Hill www.playmakersrep.org
Ghost Recon
RAY DOOLEY RESURRECTS DICKENS THE RACONTEUR, NOT JUST THE NOVELIST, IN HIS INCISIVE A CHRISTMAS CAROL BY BYRON WOODS
Ray Dooley in A Christmas Carol PHOTO BY HUTHPHOTO As a genial Ray Dooley stepped onstage last Thursday night, there were two distinct theatrical echoes in Kenan Theatre. The first was from 1998, the last time local audiences saw him in this one-person version of A Christmas Carol. The other was a century older. Charles Dickens wasn’t just a triumphant nineteenth-century novelist. He was also the biggest British popular entertainer to hit North America until The Beatles. Dickens’s sold-out solo performances of his own works, including an abridged A Christmas Carol, wrapped ticket lines around blocks in New York and Boston. He presented them on unadorned stages, much like we see in the minimal but effective set in this production. Designer Jan Chambers’s tasteful charcoal-colored dais pays understated tribute to the “platform performers” who kept audiences spellbound with their sto-
rytelling abilities alone. We’d say it’s unsurprising that Dooley, a PlayMakers veteran, achieves similar results here, but that would criminally minimize several feats. It wasn’t enough for Dooley to just memorize the nearly thirteen thousand words in Milwaukee actor William Leach’s adaptation. Dooley and director Michael Perlman then had to craft a ninety-minute show that didn’t feel like a recital of fortythree single-spaced pages of text. That’s tricky, and the pace slows at several points as Dooley negotiates Dickens’s rich, descriptive prose. The beginning of the show underlines the calculated risk Dickens took when he wrote his novella in 1843. With his family struggling, in desperate need of a hit, he chose a novel departure from the norm: a gothic ghost story with a Christmas twist. We can hear the author’s barely sublimat-
ed anxiety in Dooley’s measured voice as he utters the first words of Dickens’s prologue, trying to reassure the readers of his time—and himself—that the “Ghost of an idea” in his “Ghostly little book” won’t put his audience “out of humor with themselves … the season, or with me.” With expert vocal and physical changes, Dooley shifts between his warm, anonymous narrator and a host of characters in the text. We meet a lean, vinegary Scrooge, a boisterous Ghost of Christmas Past, and an ambiguous Ghost of Christmas Present. Leach and Dooley’s reading is deep enough to reacquaint us with vivid details lost in flimsier adaptations of this text, including the wider variety of spirits Marley rejoins, the warmth of Scrooge’s past (contrasted by the coldness of his unmourned funeral), and other things that stir the soul in this often haunting production. bwoods@indyweek.com
STAGE BRIEF I PROMISE HHH½ Closed Sunday, Dec. 17 The Fruit, Durham www.didaseason.com I didn’t expect to see less of ShaLeigh Dance Works’ I Promise on opening night than I had during a rehearsal the weekend before it opened. But Friday’s premiere at The Fruit showed the degree to which technical elements can alter—and even obscure—an emerging work of art. Alex Maness’s unconventional lighting designs have enhanced shows throughout the region for a decade. His amber Fresnels and low footlights gave I Promise the golden glow of a tent show. But in places, the lighting—and the pastel-tocrème-colored costumes that gave ShaLeigh Comerford’s dancers a designer-fashion gloss—significantly softened and occasionally erased the social struggles, coercion, and violence she said were at the heart of her striking choreography. As it begins, the piece directly addresses imbalances in interpersonal and intercultural relationships. Megan Rindoks, a white woman, singlehandedly stares down a larger, racially diverse group, forcing them backward into a corner. But that crucial establishing dynamic was lost in shadows behind Dana Livermore and Anthony Nelson’s mid-stage pas de deux. Also obscured was Livermore’s distress at the start of a sequence set on a commuter train—so much so that her eventual collapse seemed to come out of nowhere. Talented dancers struggled to recapture the authenticity and desperation I had witnessed in the rehearsal of a scene depicting endless falling through relationships. But it remained deeply disturbing when a solemn Majid Bastani appeared to be grimly writing, with both index fingers, on Rindoks’s compliant visage as well as his own. I have now seen two different faces of I Promise. In rehearsal, its nuanced social metaphors and raw emotional realism reminded me of Pina Bausch. In the performance, design elements smoothed over some of the starkest verities Comerford and her ensemble had discovered. Which is the true face of this work? Most likely, the answer lies somewhere between the two. —Byron Woods INDYweek.com | 12.20.17 | 19
indyart
SCRAP THRIFT
2020 Chapel Hill Rd., Ste. 31 919-688-6960 www.scrapexchange.org
Waste Not
A NEW THRIFT STORE AT THE SCRAP EXCHANGE MIGHT SEEM REDUNDANT, BUT IT’S GOOD FOR THE FUTURE OF THE NONPROFIT—AND THE TRIANGLE BY AMANDA ABRAMS Scrap Exchange executive director Ann Woodward at the grand opening of Scrap Thrift PHOTO BY CAITLIN PENNA
On Thursday, December 14, the Scrap Exchange opened a new conventional thrift store at its Lakewood headquarters. Occupying eighteen thousand square feet in a space across the parking lot from the main building—a spot formerly occupied by Thrift World and the Durham Economic Resource Center’s secondhand store—Scrap Thrift sells clothing, housewares, furniture, and everything else you’d expect. As of January, it will also have a full bookstore, thanks to the inventory left over from the closure of Durham’s Nice Price Books last year. Even though Durham already has a surfeit of secondhand stores—TROSA, the Durham Rescue Mission, the Salvation Army—the place was packed for the opening. Shoppers clustered around cash registers in lines of ten or more while others squeezed down crowded aisles holding cooking utensils and knickknacks. Perhaps this was because of the community respect 20 | 12.20.17 | INDYweek.com
the creative reuse center has built in Durham since 1991. “I’m a huge supporter of the Scrap Exchange,” said Durham resident Margo Scott, adding that she’d hoped to arrive at the store just as it opened. Its hours are eleven a.m. to seven p.m. Sundays through Fridays; it opens an hour earlier on Saturdays. Scrap Thrift was the result of a recommendation from the Cascade Alliance, a group that helps nonprofits turn discarded items into income and jobs. The alliance suggested that, as a way of increasing its revenue, the Scrap Exchange could add traditional thrift items to its offerings of reusable materials like scientific glassware, fabric scraps, and leftover paper products. For an organization already devoted to collecting and repurposing refuse, it’s a nobrainer. Thrift stores are almost always profitable, according to NARTS: The Association of Resale Professionals.
According to Diana Shark, the Scrap Exchange’s marketing and special events coordinator, the center has more than doubled its sales since adding traditional thrift items to its main store two years ago. But it’s not just a money issue. Thrift stores tend to be very environmentally friendly, which aligns with a major part of the Scrap Exchange’s mission: to promote sustainable economic development. After all, the inventory is all local. No CO2-belching tractor trailer is delivering giant shipments on a regular basis. Donations come from Triangle residents, and there’s a constant flow of stuff. “If you were to visit the processing area, they’re hopping,” says Shark. It’s a win-win: the store is making money off our castoffs and, in return, it’s providing us with a cheap, sustainable alternative to new clothes. It’s also good for the local economy. “This is a labor-intense industry,” says
Adele Meyer, executive director of NARTS. All those discarded items have to be sorted and tagged by humans. Even before it expanded, the Scrap Exchange had eight to ten people working in the processing room at any given time. That number will increase by several factors with the new store. There’s just one problem when it comes to retailing secondhand goods: What to do with the excess? Our society is drowning in a surplus of low-quality crap, and most thrift businesses can’t sell everything they collect. Many, including Goodwill and the Salvation Army, sell the leftovers overseas, where the ocean of cheap clothing winds up destabilizing local textile industries. That’s definitely not a victory in the “sustainable” column. The other main alternative is sending it to landfills—another unsavory option. Some businesses find another way. TROSA, for example, is able to get rid of all of its inventory locally, starting with markdowns, moving to lower markdowns, and ending with a giant giveaway in the store parking lot. “The last time we did that, everything there got taken,” says Jeff Stern, TROSA’s director of business operations. Maybe the Scrap Exchange, with its broad customer base and network of likeminded companies, will be able to do something similar; it has so far. But the company says it may decide to sell leftover goods to offshore brokers in the future, rather than sending the excess to landfills. The thrift store is the first step in an ambitious plan to develop the rest of the shopping center, which it bought last year, into a “reuse arts district.” That will include maker spaces, a bigger community garden, bicycle repair and rebuilding shops, a black box theater, and much more. It will be the first complex of its kind in the country, working entirely with secondhand, reusable items and designed to create local jobs, act as a community hub, and spur creativity and entrepreneurship. Those plans will be subsidized, in part, by the thrift store’s almost certain profits, making Scrap Thrift not too different from Durham’s other nonprofit thrift stores. Those help people with substance abuse and support homeless folks. But this one is set to do good, too, just in a different way. arts@indyweek.com
indyscreen
Downsizing
PHOTO COURTESY OF PARAMOUNT PICTURES
Five Thousand Movies
THAT’S HOW MANY THE AVERAGE AMERICAN WILL SEE IN A LIFETIME. HALF OF THEM COME OUT THIS WEEK. BY GLENN MCDONALD AND NEIL MORRIS
A
ccording to research by the kiosk retailer Redbox, the average American will watch more than five thousand movies over the course of a lifetime. If you consider yourself a film lover, you can go ahead and double that, no problem. So, when a movie comes along that genuinely surprises you—that doesn’t behave like any of the thousands of movies you’ve already seen—well, that’s cause for celebration. Such is the case with DOWNSIZING, the
rollicking genre mash-up from director Alexander Payne, best known for meticulously crafted comedy-dramas like Election, Sideways, and Nebraska. Downsizing starts in familiar territory, with a schlubby everyman named Paul (Matt Damon) trying to navigate some minor midlife crises. Paul and his wife, Audrey (Kristin Wiig), can’t seem to improve their middle-class lot in life, and find themselves in that uniquely Ameri-
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Darkest Hour PHOTO COURTESY OF FOCUS FEATURES even if it’s essentially a dollhouse in a miniacan dilemma of having everything they ture village called Leisure Land Estates. need yet still wanting more, a perennial Payne plays everything in a key of slightPayne theme. The tone here is gently satirly heightened realism, fitting Downsizing ical, but he has real empathy for his charinto a tradition of wicked social satire acters, who are genuinely unhappy, maybe that dates to Jonathan even soul sick, from living Swift. The special effects in a culture that tells them are understated and conthey’re not enough. DOWNSIZING vincing, but the real thrill Starting from this premHHHH is the unpredictability of ise, the film gleefully Opening the film’s cleverly braided sprints off into the wideFriday, Dec. 22 plot lines. Intriguing new open vistas of pulpy science characters drop in, includfiction, that most liberatDARKEST HOUR ing Christoph Waltz as a ing of storytelling genres. HHH ½ Eurotrash hedonist and By way of space-age miniaOpening newcomer Hong Chau as a turization technology, Paul Friday, Dec. 22 good-hearted activist from and Audrey join a commerthe wrong side of Leisure cialized subculture moveLand’s tiny tracks. ment known as “downsizing,” or being The film also works as a sly ecologiphysically shrunk to around six inches tall. cal parable with some unsettling insights Thanks to certain economies of scale, and sci-fi prognostications. Its gleeful downsizers find that their assets are worth a appropriation of science fiction is simihundred times more. Paul can finally afford lar to how this year’s best movie, Jorto buy that McMansion he’s always wanted, 22 | 12.20.17 | INDYweek.com
dan Peele’s Get Out, crossed the wires of horror and satire to generate something new. Downsizing is a real delight, and a reminder that courageous filmmakers can still make movies that surprise. —Glenn McDonald
W
inston Churchill’s “We shall fight on the beaches” speech closes two films released in 2017. The first was Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s paean to the 1940 evacuation of more than three hundred thousand British troops stranded on the shores of France. Its unofficial companion piece is DARKEST HOUR, which chronicles Churchill’s tumultuous first month as prime minister of the United Kingdom. We remember Churchill today as the British lion who ferociously led his country, and even the world, against Nazi Germany during World War II. Director Joe Wright—who recreated stunning sequences of war-torn Dunkirk for his
2007 film, Atonement—reveals a more suspect Churchill (Gary Oldman), whose checkered military and political career made him a compromise choice for prime minister. He’s no one’s first option, including King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn), still smarting from Churchill’s backing of his brother during the abdication crisis. Churchill is steadfastly opposed to brokering any peace with Adolf Hitler. While that position was on the right side of history, Wright illuminates its contemporary complexities, particularly as Germany steamrolled across France and pushed the whole British army onto the beaches of Dunkirk with no planned escape route. Churchill seems willing to sacrifice his countrymen for the sake of his stubbornness, bellowing that there will be “no surrender” and rejecting so much as an inquiry into the terms of an armistice, as is advocated by foreign secretary Viscount Halifax (Stephen Dillane) and former prime minister Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup). Wright shrewdly uses lighting to accentuate Churchill’s encroaching loneliness and isolation, shrouding the far corners of underground war rooms and the upper galleries of the House of Commons in darkness to sharpen the spotlight. That device wouldn’t work if the actor weren’t up to the task, but Oldman turns in a tour de force. Through layers of prosthetics and a halo of cigar smoke, he channels Churchill’s public bombast and private doubts. He’s charming and bellicose, doddering and domineering. His oratory soars, yet his conversations are humanized by Oldman’s dead-on impersonation of his distinctive low-pitched voice. He angrily lambastes the timidity of his advisors, then phones Franklin Roosevelt to meekly—and unsuccessfully—plead for airplanes Britain has already purchased from America. Oldman is a one-man show, and the film is more a historical snapshot than a biopic. It reserves little room for developing its supporting cast, particularly Churchill’s wife, Clementine (Kristin Scott Thomas), and his secretary, Elizabeth Layton (Lily James), who pop up any time the old man needs some encouragement. Churchill’s children appear only long enough to hint at his absentee fatherhood. The lead-up to the climactic speech is overly mythologized, the supposed product of divine providence and a British stiff upper lip. But what a stemwinder it is. Wright’s film is both bright and slight, but his Darkest Hour is Oldman’s finest hour. —Neil Morris arts@indyweek.com
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Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle PHOTO BY FRANK MASI/COURTESY OF SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
MOLLY’S GAME HHHH Opening Monday, Dec. 25 You either dig Aaron Sorkin’s distinctive voice or you don’t. The acclaimed screenwriter makes his directorial debut in Molly’s Game, and the removal of that creative check allows Sorkin to mainline his rapidfire prose. The result is a heady high-wire act with dialogue that constantly twists and turns, triggering the adrenaline rush that comes from being entertained while fearing the entire enterprise could collapse at any moment. Thankfully, all the participants are up to the task. In the past decade, Sorkin has specialized in spinning intricate yarns around true stories: Charlie Wilson’s War, The Social Network, Moneyball, and Steve Jobs. Real-life “poker princess” Molly Bloom (impressively portrayed by Jessica Chastain) is Sorkin’s first female protagonist, a hard-nosed former skier whose Olympic dreams were thwarted by injury and a domineering dad (Kevin Costner). After dropping out of law school, she lands in Los Angeles and, eventually, its notorious card games. Molly’s Game darts between timelines. Bloom rises to acclaim as a glamorous hostess in the world of underground poker, an exclusive playground for movie stars, business tycoons, card sharps, and shady mobsters. But Bloom’s high-stakes lifestyle gives way to addiction. After she is charged with running an illegal gambling den, she’s left with only one ally: her attorney, Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba, in fine form). The film, like the memoir it’s based on, conceals the identities of famous players, which detracts a bit from the intoxicating air of the card games. The conspicuous absence of friends and romance in Bloom’s story makes her seem incomplete as a character. But narrative deficits in Sorkin’s script are filled in by the crackling byplay between Bloom and Jaffey, not to mention Bloom’s constant narration.
In the end, her refusal to name names is what passes for virtue in Molly’s Game, a sole shred of integrity when everything else has fallen apart. —Neil Morris
JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE HH Opening Wednesday, Dec. 20 A reboot of the 1995 adventure pic starring Robin Williams, the new Jumanji revisits the world of the first story, but with a twist. Once again, a group of kids get magically zapped into a game world, but the gimmick is that each kid assumes the role of an archetypal action-adventure character. The skinny nerd becomes the hunky Dr. Xander Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson). The football jock becomes the pipsqueak sidekick (Kevin Hart). The pretty, popular girl gets gender-switched into a frumpy archaeologist (Jack Black). Like that. What follows in an utterly generic jungle adventure story, with CGI fauna crashing through CGI flora and Bobby Cannavale as evildom's least interesting villain. Director Jake Kasdan inserts some Breakfast Club dynamics among the characters, and it can be fun to see what each performer does with the assigned shtick. Alas, six different writers are credited with the script, and the story-by-committee approach results in a boring string of alternating comedy and action sequences. Nothing surprising happens, and the film has exactly one good joke at the beginning, before any action starts, concerning modern parenting. As one of the kids leaves for school, his mom kisses him goodbye and issues her daily advice: “The world is a terrifying place, be afraid of everything!” There's a whole other movie in that one line. Anyway, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is about what you'd expect: A warmed over serving of profitable intellectual property inserted into the holiday family movie season. It's competent, intermittently fun, and totally disposable. —Glenn McDonald
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Jesse Gephart as Crumpet the Elf in The Santaland Diaries PHOTO BY STEPHEN J. LARSON
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22–SUNDAY, DECEMBER 24
THE SANTALAND DIARIES
In the theater, few are the slights that can’t be overcome by regular royalty checks and full houses. One case in point is Theatre in the Park’s The Santaland Diaries. You wouldn’t necessarily expect the show to be an annual offering after 1997, when author David Sedaris, the Raleighite whose story provides the play’s source material, skewered TIP artistic director Ira David Wood III’s acting and directing in Naked, Sedaris’s autobiographical best-seller. Nevertheless, Jesse Gephart returns once more as the snide, gay New York newbie who watches his big-city dream—writing for a soap opera!—swiftly evaporate before he gets a job as a Christmas elf at Macy’s. It only enhances the familiar tale’s jaded verities to know that, each year, a playwright grants performance rights for his most famous work to a director he maligned, and that director, in turn, writes the man who mocked him a generous check for the privilege. Now that’s the true meaning of Christmas. —Byron Woods THEATRE IN THE PARK, RALEGH 8 p.m. Fri. & Sat./3 p.m. Sun., $18–$24, www.theatreinthepark.com
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23
EVIL WIENER CHRISTMAS SHOW
Weirdo rock band Evil Wiener is the creation of Billy Sugarfix, a longtime local artist and prankster whose musical proclivities lean toward the offbeat and quirky. Once a consistent Triangle staple, Evil Wiener now mainly sticks to holiday-centric appearances, two times per year. “Somebody has to encourage Evil Wiener. It doesn’t do anything on its own,” Sugarfix said in an interview last summer. On the Fourth of July, you can find the band conjuring mischief and merriment in the name of our nation’s independence. But this week, Evil Wiener fills The Cave with good cheer for its annual Christmas shindig. The evening could go anywhere: Will Sugarfix lead the crowd in a rousing, drawn-out rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”? Will he play the theremin? Will The Cave have a hot pot of buttered rum punch on hand to help loosen everybody up? Will Santa himself slide down the stairs for a visit? There’s only one way to find out. —Allison Hussey THE CAVE, CHAPEL HILL | 9 p.m., $5, www.caverntavern.com
24 | 12.20.17 | INDYweek.com
WHAT TO DO
THIS WEEK
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21
BEAUTY WORLD
This year’s winter solstice—the shortest day of the year—falls on December 21. But don’t let the extra time in the chilly dark discourage you; instead, consider letting Beauty World warm you up. The Durham duo has but two EPs to its name, 2014’s Beauty World and 2016’s Joypop Turbo. The first was a pleasant collection of sweet songs, but on Joypop Turbo, Beauty World brought itself to bold new heights. Building from a base of cello and guitar, the duo added layers of percussion and electronics and built colorful little micro-worlds inside each song. Every number is a substantial delight, from the lithe meandering of “Silky Drip” to the bubbling current of the EP’s title track. Three Body Problem opens with wiggly, woozy rock, and the fairly new trio Woodvamp offers melodic post-rock tunes in the evening’s first slot. —Allison Hussey THE PINHOOK, DURHAM 9 p.m., $5, www.thepinhook.com
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 20
VANYA IN LOS FELIZ
This has shaped up to be a year when the Triangle theater community just won’t let Anton Chekhov rest in peace. In May, Bartlett Theater trotted out Anya Reiss’s 2012 adaptation of The Seagull, set in the present day, and gave it a vivid staging on the grounds of a country house near the Eno River. Then, in November, Manbites Dog Theater put on Aaron Posner’s Life Sucks., an irreverent postmodern take on Uncle Vanya. Now Aggregate Theatre is getting in on the contemporizing act with this staged reading of Jonathan Fitts’s Vanya in Los Feliz, billed as “a party play for hipsters and those who hate them.” Instead of simply observing the soiree, audience members will be a part of it as the play roils around them, helping to develop and shape the production for a full production this spring. Who knew the Russian aristocracy had such relevance to contemporary American life? Oh, wait … —Brian Howe IMURJ, RALEIGH 8 p.m., $10, www.imurj.com
Beauty World FILE PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER INDYweek.com | 12.20.17 | 25
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2/17/18 SNARKY PUPPY W/ SIRINTIP KINGS (RAL) 2/17/18 PHOEBE BRIDGERS W/ SOCCER MOMMY ($10) 3/30/18 SORORITY NOISE W/ REMO DRIVE, JELANI SEI ($17/$20) HAW RIVER BALLROOM 2/1/18 THE DEVIL MAKES THREE 3/3/18 BRETT DENNEN ($22/$26) 3/23/18 GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR W/KGD ($27/$30) NORTH CHARLESTON PAC (CHARLESTON, SC) 2/25/18 STEVE MARTIN &
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W/ I THE MIGHTY, DON BROCO, JULE VERA order tix online at ticketfly.com ★ we serve carolina brewery beer on tap! ★ we are a non-smoking club
26 | 12.20.17 | INDYweek.com
music 12.20– 12.27 WED, DEC 20
BLUE NOTE GRILL: 9th Annual Newtonanny; 7 p.m. The Herded Cats; 8 p.m. • THE CAVE: Nest Egg Residency; 9 p.m. • HUMBLE PIE: Peter Lamb & the Wolves; 8:30 p.m. • IRREGARDLESS: Nixon, Blevins & Gage; 6:30 p.m. • NEPTUNES PARLOUR: Sidecar Social Club’s Holidays with Friends; 8:30 p.m., $5–$10 donation. • THE PINHOOK: Saving Space Showcase: North Elementary, Thick Modine, Reese McHenry & the Fox; 8 p.m., $7. • POUR HOUSE: Morning Bells Band, Dana Kletter, Regina Hexaphone; 8:30 p.m. • RUBY DELUXE: Goth Night; 10 p.m., free. • THE HAYMAKER: Rookie of the Year & Jeremy Menard; 7 p.m., free.
THU, DEC 21 Lit Music Fest RALEIGH This mini music RAPS festival, focusing on an array of local hip-hop, will be host to the sincere, staccato lyricism of Madison Jay, as well as the playful, meandering voice of Marley Je$u$. With Zipz, Billz & Gink, Tourbus, and T.I.M.E. The Artist. —NR [DEEP SOUTH, $10–$15/8 P.M.]
Local Band Local Beer: Dim Delights MERRY & Dim Delights—as DIM in “stupid fun,” “simple pleasures,” “cheap thrills”—take their cues from the barest of bare-bones acts from the annals of rock ’n’ roll. There’s a punky pep in their step that’s reminiscent of Glenn Danzig’s post-Misfits output. There’s a swagger lifted straight from T. Rex’s Marc Bolan. There’s a sense of danger the same as fifties kids listening to Link Wray must’ve felt. With 300 Dog Night, Chimes at Midnight. —PW [POUR HOUSE, FREE/9 P.M.]
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Seize the Stage: Simone Finally
FRI, DEC 22
FRONT & Simone Finally’s CENTER lilting voice soothes as she strips away pretense and embellishments, baring her soul on gentle jangles. MKR gets similarly introspective and reflective on sparse, intimate folk with gorgeous, sighing melodies and plaintive vocals. Straddling punk and Americana, Severed Fingers’ ramshackle roots tunes are struck with a charged spirit. —SG [RUBY DELUXE, $5/9 P.M.]
The Beast
Triangle Brass Band: Russian Christmas The first half of BRASS BELLS this concert is the only properly Russian part. Its three selections tumble out of the gate with clanging bells, Eastern Orthodox chants, and a stately sense of reserve. After intermission, things come back to the U.S. with some selections from Frozen and all the carols you can shake a euphonium at. Come early to hear the hundred-piece Brassmas ensemble play a few extra holiday favorites. —DR [MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL, $5–$10/7 P.M.] ALSO ON THURSDAY 2ND WIND: 2 fer; 7:30-9 p.m. • 4020 LOUNGE: African Rhythms; 10 p.m., $5. • BLUE NOTE GRILL: Carolina Lightnin’; 7-9 p.m., free. • THE CAVE: Canine Heart Sounds Residency; 9 p.m., $5–$10. • IRREGARDLESS: Cityfolk; 6 p.m. • NIGHTLIGHT: Secret Boyfriend, Julia Santoli, Chinchorro, Widow, Mille; 9 p.m., $7. • THE PINHOOK: Beauty World, Three Body Problem, Woodvamp; 9 p.m., $5. • ST. MATTHEW’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH: Jim Watson; 7:30 p.m., $10. • THE STATION: Andrew Marlin Residency; 8:30 p.m., $8–$10.
CONTRIBUTORS: Elizabeth Bracy (EB), Timothy Bracy (TB), Grant Britt (GB), Spencer Griffith (SG), Allison Hussey (AH), David Klein (DK), Noah Rawlings (NR), Dan Ruccia (DR), David Ford Smith (DS)
After ending his WOKE BARS bid to become Durham’s next mayor, Pierce Freelon returns to the spotlight in a familiar role as the front man of his band, The Beast. The group dropped Woke, its latest LP, this summer, and it’s full of unsettling and insightful political and personal commentary. Zensofly and Defacto Thezpian share the stage in what will be a great show to end the year. —CM [MOTORCO, $12–$15/8 P.M.]
The Dinwiddies Despite the GREEN STUFF chilly weather, greenery abounds in December: there are the traditional hues of all sorts of species of Christmas trees, the candles of Kwanzaa, and Dr. Seuss’s famous Grinch, among other complementary shades. But Raleigh’s Dinwiddies celebrate a different sort of greenery, one that still might get you feeling festive: weed. The band’s songs celebrate cannabis, its many strains, and its attendant side effects. It’s definitely a shtick, but it’s a pretty fun one; bring some extra cookies, just in case. The Whom, the Who-interpreting offspring from Kings’ annual Great Cover Up, opens, and so does Lonnie Walker’s Brian Corum. —AH [KINGS, $8/8:30 P.M.]
Holiday Rescue Jam DO SOME For the second GOOD consecutive year, The Pour House hosts a food and toy drive, to benefit the Raleigh Rescue Mission. Admission is free to those who bring canned foods and unopened toys to donate at the door. Come for the good karma, stay for the house band, which
Shea Broussard, singing at last year’s Berlin Brothers shindig
PHOTO BY ROSS DAWSON
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22 & SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23
BERLIN BROTHERS CHRISTMAS ORCHESTRA Birthed in New Orleans, Dixieland begat jazz, that singularly American musical form. But a century-plus since its heyday, it has become a style that is mostly consigned to the nostalgic past despite the proliferation of modern brass bands that have updated the genre’s basic template. That nostalgic association, along with its brassy timbres and the percolating warmth of the music, is part of the reason why Dixieland feels so right around the holiday season, where thoughts turn to seasonal memories of family, friends, and bygone days. From its name, the Berlin Brothers Orchestra might give you visions of a Teutonic philharmonic, but it skews closer to the man named Irving, not the city’s famed wall. In fact, the orchestra has saluted that great American songwriter, an indication of its sophisticated level of discernment as well as its versatility. The group has made a tradition of playing a Christmas concert at Hillsborough’s Mystery Brewing, a convivial venue whose frequent music events speak to the owners’ deep
passion for traditional sounds. And while the Berlin Brothers Orchestra is very much in that category, it gives a new twist to the Dixieland setup with its lushness. Along with a full brass band and a full complement of guitar, standup bass, vibraphone, and more, this year’s iteration features the Irvettes, a ten-person vocal group. Participants this year also include an array of beloved Triangle-area ensembles from past and present, from Squirrel Nut Zippers to Boom Unit Brass Band and Tres Chicas. The full sound adds layers of subtly visceral detail to swinging renditions of favorites like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and oddities like Shirley Temple’s “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.” And just because the vibe is relaxed and retro doesn’t mean they won’t toss in a little Run-DMC, just to keep things lively. —David Klein MYSTERY BREWING, HILLSBOROUGH 8 P.M. FRIDAY, 4 & 8 P.M. SATURDAY, $10, www.mysterybrewing.com INDYweek.com | 12.20.17 | 27
includes Eric Chesson and Gregory Meckley of Urban Soil, Al Ingram on bass, as well as Ben Vinograd of BIG Something and Sweet Nasty. —EB [POUR HOUSE, DONATIONS/9 P.M.]
violin add a refined touch to dulcet three-part harmonies, the hallmark of charming Chapel Hill quartet Honey Magpie’s woodsy folk-pop elegance. —SG [THE STATION, $7/8:30 P.M.]
Armand Lenchek, Carter Minor, and F.J. Ventre
The Pink Spiders
BLUESY Armand Lenchek’s SOUL latest power trio, with F.J. Ventre on bass and Carter Minor on sax, harmonica, and vocals, whips up a heaping, healing helping of down-home blues. Put in a request for Minor to sing Percy Mayfield’s “Please Send Me Somebody to Love” for an extra dose of deepdish soul. —GB [BLUE NOTE GRILL, FREE/9 P.M.]
Liquid Pleasure A showcase revue R&B REVUE of the sort rarely seen since the days of Motown’s traveling tours, the indefatigable Liquid Pleasure won’t stop until you get enough, or possibly until you get too much. Nevertheless, the band’s insistent horn and gospel backing makes its survey of R&B from Ike and Tina to Bruno Mars genuinely exhilarating. —EB [LINCOLN THEATRE, $6/9 P.M.]
Jeanette Lynne Philadelphia’s PHILLY GRACE Jeanette Lynne sets earnest storytelling to soft strums and simple melodies, bolstering her originals with a diverse repertoire of covers spanning Wheatus to Kacey Musgraves. Classical cello and
Is 2000s MORE EMO! pink-striped-shirt pop-rock à la Panic! at The Disco or Head Automatica your thing? Check out Nashville’s The Pink Spiders. About a decade on from their Ric Ocasek-produced power pop nugget, Teenage Graffiti, the band hits the road for a short reunion tour, which includes this Durham stop. Scope the campy time capsule that is “Little Razorblade” on YouTube if you need further convincing of their emo credentials. —DS [THE PINHOOK, $12–$15/9 P.M.]
Shamu Garçon There are no OH WHALE French killer whale waiters in Shamu Garçon, just a loose knot of local musicians with a love for Cajun music. As Cajuns are inclined to do, the line blurs between Acadian French-Canadian music and American country for a loose-limbed, two steppin’ excursion into yee-haw territory, juxtaposed with cheek-to-cheek Cajun waltzes. —GB [THE BULLPEN, FREE/8:30 P.M.]
Jim Watson Jim Watson, SING ALONGS cofounding guitarist of the renowned Red Clay Ramblers, has been
The Pink Spiders
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
hosting his annual, singalong-heavy Christmas show for over thirty-five years. Arrive ready to join in on some classic songs, and perhaps you’ll learn a few new-to-you tunes, too. If you don’t know the words, there may be some lyric sheets around to help you out. —AH [THE CAVE, $8/8:30 P.M.]
The Nick White Band FOLKSY Carrboro’s Nick DRAMA White Band specializes in folk melodramas that veer occasionally into the heavily mannered and cringe-inducing terrain of The Lumineers. Still, there’s a freshness and vaguely unhinged sense of
intent here that suggests better, or at least more promising, possibilities. Joe Romeo & the Juliets and Mia Shelton open. —EB [LOCAL 506, $5–$8/9 P.M.] ALSO ON FRIDAY ARCANA: Peachelope, NYM; 9 p.m. • BEYÙ CAFFÈ: The Jondoe; 7 & 9 p.m., $12. • BLUE NOTE GRILL: Duke Street Dogs; 6-8
p.m., free. • DEEP SOUTH: 120 Minutes, Eric Scholz; 8 p.m., free. • IRREGARDLESS: Blue T; 6:30 p.m. • MYSTERY BREWING PUBLIC HOUSE: The Berlin Brothers Christmas Orchestra; 8 p.m., $10. • NIGHTLIGHT: Task Ham, Tegucigalpan, Kosmonauta, Borodin; 9:30 p.m., $7. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ DNLTMS; Dec 22, 10 p.m.
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SAT, DEC 23 Butcher Brown GROOVE- Hailing from A-DELIC Richmond, Virginia, Butcher Brown likes all things funky. Rooted in the hard fusion of Weather Report, the proggiest moments of Frank Zappa, and the heavy bass lines of Earth, Wind & Fire or Funkadelic, this five-piece group credibly updates all things seventies. They can spin out blistering guitar solos, ride endless Afrobeat grooves, unleash flowing jazz solos, or carve out cavernous, dub-inflected spaces with just a whiff of hip-hop hiding in the background. —DR [BEYÙ CAFFÈ, $12/7 & 9 P.M.]
The Beauty Operators BLUESY Durham’s PARTY diabolical Beauty Operators possess a can-do spirit and a loose moral attitude, the better to abet their anything-goes cabaret of Chicago blues, Mardi Gras zydeco, and lusty disco. Musical polymaths as likely to reinterpret Petula Clark’s “Downtown” on the fly as to find themselves deep in a Butterfield Band-worthy jam, these are renegades worth watching closely and imitating often. —EB [BLUE NOTE GRILL, $8/8 P.M.]
Benji Hughes Some labels are YULE FREAK inevitable, and Benji Hughes carries “critical favorite,” “musician’s musician,” and “cult hero” with shaggy grace. His psychedelically soulful take on indie rock brings to mind Midnite Vultures-era Beck, from the vintage R&B vibe to the tendency to get goofy. This Xmas show should be a banger. —DK [LOCAL 506, $12/9 P.M.]
MGL & the Rev Triangle-based JAZZY FRESH composer and performer Mark Gabriel Little has long been a stalwart of the local jazz and R&B scene. Benefiting from a
voracious musical appetite and an encyclopedic knowledge of the genre, MGL has evolved into an irresistibly agile group, as likely to dip into a looselimbed standard as to push the envelope into the rough and modern. The Rev is an appropriately caustic sidekick: irreverent without cruelty, and respectful without deference. —EB [DEEP SOUTH, $5/8:30 P.M.]
The Wusses One of the SOFT SOUNDS Triangle’s best-kept secrets, The Wusses claim to have written cheeseball anthems like Pablo Cruise’s “Love Will Find a Way,” the entire yacht rock canon, and all of Christopher Cross’s songs. But when you hear these true believers in person, to paraphrase the classic song associated with Bread but “actually” written by the Wusses: It won’t matter to you. With the Beauty Operators and Billy Sugarfix & the Early Girls. —DK [MOTORCO, $10/8:30 P.M.] ALSO ON SATURDAY THE BULLPEN: Thomas Rhyant’s Soul Christmas; 8:30 p.m. • THE CAVE: Evil Wiener; 9 p.m., $5. • IRREGARDLESS: Bruce Emery; 11:30 a.m.. Zen Poets; 6 p.m. Lauren Meehan Quintet; 9 p.m. • LINCOLN THEATRE: Smell the Glove; 10:30 p.m., $8. • MYSTERY BREWING PUBLIC HOUSE: The Berlin Brothers Christmas Orchestra; 4 & 8 p.m., $10. • POUR HOUSE: Zoocrü, The Wright Ave, Twisted River Junction; 9 p.m., $7–$10. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ Luxe Posh; 10 p.m. • THE STATION: Jazz Saturdays; 2 p.m., free.
SUN, DEC 24 IRREGARDLESS: Gene O’Neill; 10 a.m.. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ Jenilla Ice; 10 p.m.
MON, DEC 25 Terry Anderson & the Olympic Ass Kicking Team Since the dawn of time—or at least for most of recent memory— Terry Anderson & the Olympic Ass Kicking Team
KICK ASS
have hosted a Christmas Day throwdown at Raleigh’s Pour House. The band’s loose and easygoing tunes will help you shake off anything that might ail you, or at least break up any stayat-home lulls. —AH [POUR HOUSE, $5–$10/9 P.M.]
art
12.20 – 12.27
ALSO ON MONDAY IRREGARDLESS: Gene O’Neill; noon. Elmer Gibson; 4:15 p.m. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ Lord Redbyrd; 10 p.m.
TUE, DEC 26 The Merch Holiday Dance Party MERCH Looking for a way MAGIC to keep postChristmas blues at bay? Carrboro printing company The Merch is hosting its annual free dance party to keep holiday spirits in full swing up until the New Year, with DJ One Duran keeping everyone dancing along. —NR [CAT’S CRADLE, FREE/9 P.M.] ALSO ON TUESDAY IRREGARDLESS: Stevan Jackson; 6:30 p.m. • RUBY DELUXE: Experimental Tuesday: Facility; 11 p.m.
WED, DEC 27 Roots of a Rebellion REGGAE With lines like, RIFFING “Forget that stress, and let us give you that comfort and remedy,” Roots of a Rebellion solidly situate themselves within a tradition of relief-conferring reggae music. Simultaneously, the group’s name and songs like “Fixman” and “No Control” suggest slightly heavier content. With Sons of a Paradise and Six Shots Later. —NR [POUR HOUSE $8–$10/9 P.M.] ALSO ON WEDNESDAY 2ND WIND: Yeaux Katz; 7-9 p.m., free. • BLUE NOTE GRILL: Blue Wednesday; 8 p.m. • THE CAVE: Nest Egg Residency; 9 p.m. • HUMBLE PIE: Sidecar Social Club; 8:30 p.m., free. • IRREGARDLESS: The Holland Bros.; 6:30 p.m.
“Chatwood Trees and Poppy” by John Beerman is on view in A Field, a World at Craven Allen Gallery. PHOTO COURTESY OF CRAVEN ALLEN GALLERY
OPENING
ONGOING
installation by Heather Gordon. Thru Feb 4. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh. camraleigh.org. LAST Annual Community CHANCE Art Exhibit: Various artists. Thru Dec 22. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro. www. artscenterlive.org.
And Then the Sun Swallowed Me: Black tape and video
Annual Holiday Show: Artwork and jewelry. Thru Dec 29.
LYE Apparel Launch Party: Fri, Dec 22, 5:30 p.m. Arcana, Durham. www.arcanadurham. com.
Gallery C, Raleigh. www.galleryc. net. Annual Members Exhibition: The Fine Arts League of Cary. Thru Dec 30. Page-Walker Arts & History Center, Cary. www. friendsofpagewalker.org. Art of Paper: Mary Ann Anderson, Pauline Galiana, Shiho K. Rice, Terry Schupbach-
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Gordon. Thru Jan 12. Durham Arts Council, Durham. www. durhamarts.org.
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 UNC-Chapel Hill associate art professor Sabine Gruffat, whose interactive three-channel video projection remixes the story of a pagan tribe’s maiden sacrifice: 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.ncartmuseum.org. —Brian Howe LAST Landscapes and CHANCE Dreamscapes: Melanie See. Thru Dec 22. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro. www. artscenterlive.org.
The Boomer List: Photography by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. Thru Dec 31. NC Museum of History, Raleigh. www. ncmuseumofhistory.org. Character Space: Text-based art by Scott Hazard and Stephanie Strange. Thru Jan 27. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org. The Disaster Paintings: Donald Sultan. Thru Dec 31. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www. ncartmuseum.org. LAST Drawn Together: CHANCE Mixed media drawings and ceramics by Kiki Farish, Jean LeCluyse, Aggie Zed. Thru Dec 22. FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill. www. frankisart.com. LAST Tom Dunne: CHANCE Paintings. Thru Dec 24. Pleiades Gallery, Durham. www.PleiadesArtDurham.com. Envision Saint Agnes Hospital: Community and student artists. Thru Jan 5. Miriam Preston Block Gallery, Raleigh. www.raleighnc. gov/arts. Exterminati Sunt Mechanica: John Elliott. Thru Jan 28. NC Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh. www.naturalsciences. org. A Field, A World: Charlotte native John Beerman spent three decades living and painting in the Hudson Valley. Six years ago, he returned to his native North Carolina, bringing with him a delicate way of dealing with light. Beerman’s paintings, while indebted to the light-obsessed Hudson Valley painters of the nineteenth century, are less grandiose visions. His eye directs itself toward nature and landscapes, but he often frames only
“Gas Light” by Jimmy Craig Womble is on view at Adam Cave Fine Art. PHOTO COURTESY OF ADAM CAVE FINE ART
fragments of them, fixating upon uncommon angles of perception. Segments of tree trunks are foregrounded, the earth in which they are rooted and their leaves overhead unseen. This photographlike framing, along with a gentle way of abstracting away shadow, lends his work stillness and softness. Thru Jan 20. Craven Allen Gallery, Durham. cravenallengallery.com. —Noah Rawlings Fine Contemporary Craft Exhibition: Juried by Roger Manley. Thru Jan 13. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org. Flash of Light, Fog of War: Japanese military prints 18941905. Thru Jan 7. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. www. ackland.org. Freeze!: Installation by Mary Carter Taub. Thru Jan 5. Miriam Preston Block Gallery, Raleigh.
www.raleighnc.gov/arts. Gutter Box: Translatio Imperii North Korea, 1950: Painting by Lien Truong. Thru Jan 4. Lump, Raleigh. www.teamlump.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. Imprinted: When she lived in Japan, the Durhambased artist Ely Urbanski lacked access to a studio, so she adapted to meet her circumstances instead of fighting them. She turned from human models to pieces of their clothing, devising her own printmaking method of soaking the clothes in ink or bleach and then pressing them onto fabric with her
body weight. Obliquely but poignantly, the prints hint at the stories their former owners relate in accompanying videos; when Urbanski deconstructs the clothes rather than printing them whole, they also capture something of memory’s degradation. And they are weirdly, simply beautiful. Not only can you see some of the work in Urbanski’s exhibit at Duke’s Bryan Center, but you can also contribute to it. Bring a piece of clothing you can stand to part with to the gallery between three and five p.m. on Dec. 21 to tell its story to the camera and indelibly commit its form to Urbanski’s monoprints. Thru Jan 5. Duke Campus: Louise Jones Brown Gallery, Durham. duke.edu. —Brian Howe A Kiss of the Earth: Apt for a work about a season of fecundity, the epochal
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. Alexander Dickson House, Hillsborough. www. historichillsborough.org. Mike’s Attic: Partnership with Mike’s Art Truck. Self-taught artists. Thru Feb 28. Durham Technical Community College (Orange County Campus), Hillsborough. www.durhamtech. edu/orangecountycampus.htm. More Than One Story | Mas de una historia: Photography. Thru Feb 1. UNC Campus: Davis Library, Chapel Hill. www.lib.unc. edu/davis. New Works: Kenia Brea. Thru Dec 30. Artspace, Raleigh. www. artspacenc.org. Pop Realism: Paintings by Robert Box. Thru Dec 31. Gallery C, Raleigh. www.galleryc.net.
Painted Medicine: A Ceremony of Color: Ashley Spero. Thru Apr 12. Durham Convention Center, Durham. www. durhamconventioncenter.com. Barbara Rhode: Watercolors. Thru Dec 31. Bull City Art & Frame Co, Durham. www. bullcityartandframecompany. com. Richer Than Gold: Stephen Hayes. Thru Jan 3. Durham Art Guild, Durham. www. durhamartguild.org. The Shape of Fashion: Dress trends from the 1800s to the 1900s. Thru May 6. NC Museum of History, Raleigh. www.ncmuseumofhistory.org. LAST David Shingler & CHANCE 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 LAST Signs of the Times: A CHANCE Single Lady’s Life in Neon: Neon signs by Danielle James. Thru Dec 22. Glas, Raleigh. Simple Elegance: Paintings
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by Stephen White. Thru Dec 31. Little Art Gallery & Craft Collection, Raleigh. littleartgalleryandcraft.com.
Salvation: Photographs by Lauren Pond. Thru Feb 4. Duke Campus: Rubenstein Library, Durham.
Sleeper: Art Box exhibit by Mollie Earls and Lincoln Hancock. Thru Nov 1. North Hills, Raleigh.
Triangle Weavers Art Exhibition: Fiber art. Thru Jan 6. Carrboro Branch Library, Carrboro. www.co.orange.nc.us/ library/carrboro. LAST We are greater than CHANCE the sum of our parts: Collaboration around the Durham Bull. Thru Dec 23. Pleiades Gallery, Durham. www. PleiadesArtDurham.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 Test of Faith: Signs, Serpents,
We’ve Met Before: Handwoven 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. Andrea Donnelly holds this contrast in tension. The images on her 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 Winter Corridor Artists Exhibition: Dana Ayscue, Cynthia Bickley Green, Stephen Cefalo, Eileen Hendren, Kelly Murray. Thru Jan 27. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org. The Woman Who Made Snow: Photography by Anna Exum Snow. Thru Mar 31. Durham History Hub, Durham. www. museumofdurhamhistory.org.
food Christmas Dinner—A Joyful Holiday Feast: Holiday fare and Southern classics along with traditional sides in the Presidents Ballroom. $25-$85. Mon, Dec 25, noon, 3 & 6 p.m. Washington Duke Inn & Golf Club, Durham. www. washingtondukeinn.com. Christmas Eve Dinner: A Merry Meal in the Fairview Dining Room: Four course Christmastime dinner. $25-
$82. Sun, Dec 24, 5:30-9 p.m. Fairview at Washington Duke Inn, Durham. www. washingtondukeinn.com/ Dining/fairview.asp. Sugar Plum Tea: A Festive Christmas Eve Tea: Featuring hot cider, hot chocolate, traditional tea selections, and a dessert table in the Vista Restaurant. $18-$35. Sun, Dec 24, noon-3:30 p.m. Washington Duke Inn & Golf Club, Durham. www.washingtondukeinn.com.
stage
Carolina Ballet’s The Nutcracker runs at Raleigh Memorial Auditorium through Dec. 24. PHOTO BY ARMES PHOTOGRAPHY
OPENING Vanya in Los Feliz: Staged Reading. Wed, Dec 20, 8-10 p.m. Imurj, Raleigh. imurj.com. See p. 25.
ONGOING
Anything Goes Late Show: Sat, Dec 23, 10:30 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www. goodnightscomedy.com. A Christmas Carol: Reviewed on p. 19. $15$58. UNC Campus: Kenan Theatre, Chapel Hill. www. playmakersrep.org. ½ The Gift of the Magi: The first question any stage adaptation of The Gift of The Magi must answer is how to make it an evening-length work. It would scarcely take twenty minutes to enact the three brief scenes in O. Henry’s most famous short story, especially because two of them play out in the same modest flat on a New York side street, where young married couple Jim and Della Young are struggling. Jim lost his last job, and his pay has just been cut by a third at his current one. Now it is Christmas, and the young couple has very little money for celebration. In this
clever, immersive adaptation, Michelle Murray Wells and her cast answer the question by adding new details to a small world. Then she bids intimate audiences—eighteen at the most for each show—to walk in the Youngs’ shoes. After grabbing a drink in a Jazz Age speakeasy where Jim (a sterling Jonathan King) tends bar while Stella (A.C. Donohue) sings the blues, we follow him down a street of carolers and into his apartment. Then we split up when the couple does, after an argument. One group follows Jim as he seeks the counsel of a friend, while the other stays with the pensive Della (Wells) and witnesses her subsequent decisions. Director Zachary Roberts admirably conveys the tensions in this young marriage; at moments, the silences in the flat suggest the joyless urban canvases of Edward Hopper. But even with added subplots involving friends and children, one carol too many, and a dilatory hands-on arts-andcrafts sequence, the production feels a bit padded. Its greatest triumphs come in its humblest moments: the crumpled brown paper in which true treasures are wrapped, the plain vintage
The Gift of the Magi runs at Sonorous Road through Dec. 23. PHOTO BY HAPPY PHOTO-BOT PHOTOGRAPHY Christmas lights that bring the group such joy, and the shelter two young loves finally find in each other. Those are the real gifts of these Magi, and they’re not insubstantial ones. $5-$25. Various times. Sonorous Road Theatre, Raleigh. —Byron Woods The Harry Show: Ages 18+. Improv host leads potentially risque games with audience participation. $10. Fri, Dec 22 & Sat, Dec 23, 10 p.m. ComedyWorx, Raleigh. www. comedyworx.com. Horrible People: Stand-up comedy. $12. Wed, Dec 20, 8 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www.
goodnightscomedy.com. Nutcracker: Carolina Ballet. Thru Dec 24. Memorial Auditorium, Raleigh. www. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Musical: Broadway Series South. Thru Dec 24. Fletcher Opera Theater, Raleigh. www. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com. The Santaland Diaries: Based on the David Sedaris story. Mature audiences. Thru Dec 24. Theatre In The Park, Raleigh. www.theatreinthepark. com. See p. 24. INDYweek.com | 12.20.17 | 31
screen Rated R. The LEGO Ninjago Movie—Expect weak puns, weary pop-culture references, and a waning sense of discovery from this Ninjagobranded minor entry in the LEGO franchise. Rated PG. ½ The Man Who Invented Christmas—Charles Dickens and his famous A Christmas Carol characters come to life in this pleasant holiday surprise from across the pond. Rated PG. Novitiate—Maggie Betts’s quietly stunning historical drama is about nuns trying to keep the faith against an encroaching modern world. Rated R. The Shape of Water— For better and worse, Guillermo del Toro’s fable of the love between a mute janitor and a strange undersea creature is like a children’s book for adults, beautiful but morally simplistic. Rated R. Thor: Ragnarok—A stodgy, self-serious franchise springs to life with demigods delightfully out of their element. Rated PG-13.
Read our review of Molly’s Game, starring Idris Elba and Jessica Chastain, on p. 23.
SPECIAL SHOWINGS
Molly’s Game— Reviewed on p. 23. Rated R.
Durham Cinematheque’s Microcinema: Program changes monthly. $5. Saturdays, Sundays. Durham Cinematheque, Durham.
Pitch Perfect 3—In the third musical comedy about a disreputable women’s acapella group, the Bellas retunite overseas for a USO tour and more bad choices. Rated R.
OPENING
N OW P L AY I N G
½ Darkest Hour— Reviewed on p. 22. Rated PG-13.
The INDY uses a five-star rating scale. Read reviews of these films at indyweek.com.
Downsizing— Reviewed on p. 21. 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.
Father Figures—Owen Wilson and Ed Helms play fraternal twins searching for their biological father in this buddy comedy. Rated R. The Greatest Showman—Hugh Jackman sheathes his claws to play larger-than-life American circus founder P. T. Barnum. Rated PG. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle—Reviewed on p. 23. Rated PG-13. 32 | 12.20.17 | INDYweek.com
½ Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri— Maybe the Coen brothers could have pulled it off, but Martin McDonagh has tonal problems with the weighty themes and discordant plot of this vengeful-mother tale. Rated R.
PHOTO BY MICHAEL GIBSON
Coco—This Day of the Dead-themed animated fantasy has one of Pixar’s richest worlds and weakest stories. Rated PG. The Disaster Artist— James Franco does a suspiciously good impression
page READINGS & SIGNINGS
The Greatest Showman opens Wednesday, Dec. 20. of a bad artist, The Room writer-director Tommy Wiseau, but the point eludes us. Rated R. It—Blend vintage Spielberg with Stranger Things and you get this scary, heart-
PHOTO COURTESY OF 20TH CENTURY FOX
filled new version of Stephen King’s horror classic. Rated R.
Whedon’s wit actually kind of works. Rated PG-13.
½ Justice League— Uneven but much better than Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, this collision of Zack Snyder’s bombast and Joss
Lady Bird—Greta Gerwig’s nostalgic comingof-age debut as a writerdirector is winning and alert to class but falters on race.
Dan Ariely: Dollars and Sense: How We Misthink Money and How to Spend Smarter. Wed, Dec 20, 7 p.m. Regulator Bookshop, Durham. www. regulatorbookshop.com. Children’s Storytime: Chill Out!: Join children’s book buyer Sarah for storytime with babies, toddlers and preschoolers. Tue, Dec 26, 10:30 a.m. McIntyre’s Books, Pittsboro. www. mcintyresbooks.com.
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RECYCLE THIS PAPER crossword RECYCLE THIS PAPER If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “Diversions” at the bottom of our webpage. RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER 5 4 9 RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER 1 2 9 7 1 9 6 RECYCLE THIS PAPER 1 4 9 2 7 8 RECYCLE THIS PAPER 9 5 7 RECYCLE THIS PAPER5 6 7 9 3 1 4 RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER 5 8 3 7 1 RECYCLE THIS PAPER 6 8 9 8 6 5 3 RECYCLE THIS PAPER 5 8 3 4 5 2 RECYCLE THIS PAPER 7 RECYCLE THIS2 PAPER # 93 MEDIUM # 94 RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER THIS PAPER su | do | kuRECYCLE this week’s puzzle level: RECYCLE THIS PAPER © Puzzles by Pappocom There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box. The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered. Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above.
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34 | 12.20.17 | INDYweek.com
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solution to last week’s puzzle
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CLASSY AT INDYWEEK DOT COM 7 30/10/2005 3 9 6 4 6 2 4
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