INDY Week 3.11.20

Durham | Chapel Hill March 11, 2020

RAPSODY'S

WISDOM

BY KYESHA JENNINGS, P. 12

FROM SNOW HILL TO RALEIGH TO THE BILLBOARD CHARTS, A HOMEGROWN RAP STAR REDEFINES SUCCESS

INDY WEEK CORPORATE PRESS CLUB These companies and institutions proudly support free, independent local journalism in the Triangle. Please support our mission—and our community—by supporting them.

Sonia A. Rapaport, MD

Haven Medical

A premier functional and integrative medical practice treating mold toxicity, Tick-borne diseases, and complex conditions including early to mid-stage neurodegenerative diseases.

919-969-1414 havenmedicalnc.com | info@havenmedicalnc.com Like us on Facebook

©2020 Haven Medical. All Rights Reserved.

2

March 11, 2020

INDYweek.com

The ArtsCenter Arts NC State Carolina Theatre of Durham Carolina Performing Arts Cat’s Cradle Duke Performances Dr. Jodi Foy, DDS, PA GoRaleigh Haven Medical Kane Realty Corporation Kenan Institute of Ethics MotorCo Music Hall Nasher Museum NC Museum of Art Peace Street Playmakers Repertory Company Quail Ridge Books & Music The Regulator Bookshop Teaser’s Men’s Club Unscripted Hotel Contact advertising@indyweek.com today to learn how you can become a member of the INDY Corporate Press Club.

B

port .

you b.

Durham W Chapel Hill

The R-Word

VOL. 37 NO. 11

T

The reckoning that’s taken place over the last decade was bound to happen sooner or later. Even before the Great Recession, newspapers were clinging to an outdated model, and many conglomerates were weighed down by enormous debt and mounting pension obligations.

CONTENTS NEWS 9

Raleigh wants to buy a bunch of fancy red bus shelters.

BY LEIGH TAUSS

10 A Durham pilot project replaces discontinued bus routes with Lyft vouchers.

BY THOMASI MCDONALD

FEATURES 12

his industry never recovered from the last recession.

With fame and experience, Rapsody redefines success.

BY KYESHA JENNINGS

FOOD + DRINK 16

Can Wegmans’ in-store meal options live up to the hype?

18

Vivian Howard’s new series will tell nuanced stories about Southern foodways.

BY NICK WILLIAMS

BY SARAH EDWARDS

MUSIC 20 Drag Sounds closes a long chapter with IV.

BY HARRIS WHELESS

ARTS + CULTURE 28 Al Riggs takes on the Marquis de Sade.

BY BYRON WOODS

29 ShaLeigh Comerford does it all for the love of her dancers.

BY BRIAN HOWE

When the economy collapses, businesses cut costs, and the first place they look is advertising. (Some other time, I’ll show you my PowerPoint on why this is a bad idea.)

Revenue cratered. Newsrooms were cut in half, then in half again. As dailies became shells of their former selves, readers canceled subscriptions; they could read what they wanted for free online, anyway. Papers tried to replace lost print revenue with digital revenue, but it never quite worked. They erected paywalls, which helped, but then they lost digital advertising to behemoths like Facebook and Google. (Many altweeklies have faced the same advertising issues but without the option of a paywall.)

If there’s one good thing about the Trump presidency, it’s that his constant gaslighting and authoritarian tendencies have made clear the necessity of a free press to a threatened democracy. This urgency, however, has generally worked out better for national outlets—The Washington Post and The New York Times—that have racked up millions of digital subscribers by competing for Hot Trump Scoops than for local ones digging into zoning issues at City Hall.

And now, after an 11-year expansion, with local journalism still precarious, we find ourselves on the precipice of another recession, with the coronavirus poised to lay bare the underlying fragility of an economy propped up by consumer spending: declining growth, overleveraged corporations, low-wage hospitality jobs, a trade war that crushed manufacturing and led corporations to slash investment.

Compounding matters, there’s little room for the government to act: Thanks to Trump’s tax cuts, the deficit already exceeds a trillion bucks a year, and the Fed can’t cut rates much lower than it already has. The White House is considering a payroll tax cut and bailouts for airlines and hotels. Who knows if that will be enough to stave off what’s coming when consumers stop spending.

DEPARTMENTS 17

First Draught

5 15 Minutes

19

Where to Eat and Drink This Week

6 Quickbait

23 Music Calendar

7 A Week in the Life

30 Culture Calendar

4 Voices

Then the bottom fell out.

This industry never recovered from the last recession. I fear what will happen to it after the next one.

—Jeffrey C. Billman (jbillman@indyweek.com)

COVER Photo by Todd Cooper | Design by Annie Maynard

WE M A DE THIS PUBLISHER Susan Harper

Staff Writer Thomasi McDonald

EDITORIAL

Digital Content Manager Sara Pequeño

Editor in Chief Jeffrey C. Billman Arts + Culture Editor Brian Howe Raleigh News Editor Leigh Tauss Deputy A+C Editor Sarah Edwards

Contributing Food Editor Nick Williams Theater+Dance Critic Byron Woods Voices Columnists T. Greg Doucette, Chika Gujarathi, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Courtney Napier,

Barry Saunders, Jonathan Weiler Contributors Jameela F. Dallis, Michaela Dwyer, Spencer Griffith, Layla Khoury-Hanold, Howard Hardee, Sam Haw, Laura Jaramillo, Kyesha Jennings, Glenn McDonald, Josephine McRobbie, Neil Morris, James Michael Nichols, Marta Nuñez Pouzols, Bryan C. Reed, Dan Ruccia, David Ford Smith, Eric Tullis, Michael VenutoloMantovani, Ryan Vu

Interns Sindhoor Ambati, Elena Durvas

C R E AT I V E Creative Director

Annie Maynard Graphic Designer

Jon Fuller Staff Photographer

P.S.: Help us survive the coronavirus apocalypse. Join the INDY Press Club at KeepItINDY.com.

ADVERTISING

INDY Week | indyweek.com

A D V E R T I S I N G SA L E S

Director of Sales John Hurld

P.O. Box 1772 • Durham, N.C. 27702 Durham: 320 East Chapel Hill Street, #200 Durham, N.C. 27701 | 919-286-1972

advertising@indyweek.com Raleigh 919-832-8774 Durham 919-286-1972 Classifieds 919-286-6642

Raleigh Sales Manager MaryAnn Kearns Account Executive Magnolia Wang Classifieds Account Executive Amanda Blanchard

Raleigh: 227 Fayetteville Street, #105 Raleigh, N.C. 27601 | 919-832-8774

E M A I L A D D R E SS E S first initial[no space]last name@indyweek.com

Contents © 2020 INDY Week All rights reserved. Material may not be reproduced without permission.

Jade Wilson C I R C U L AT I O N Berry Media Group

KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

3

BACKTALK

As you’re aware, former VP Joe Biden cleaned house in last week’s North Carolina primaries, helping set the stage for a two-old-white-man contest

voices

How to block the vote and sow mistrust in elections

for the Democratic nomination.

HOLLY OLSON is not thrilled with the result: “I don’t want to see Trump get another SCOTUS pick, and there will be two seats opening, but I’m not voting for Joe Biden. He’s not a liberal. I will be one of the folks who stay home. If Democrats don’t want to be liberals, cool, but the country doesn’t change one bit with Biden, and that’s just disgusting.”

“We need an actual progressive party,” adds JARED CATES. “That hasn’t been the Dems for a long time. I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed.

How can we actually break this two-party system?”

“Tonight, essentially two different parties ran within the same primary,” writes OLIVIA CB. “It’s absurd.”

Switching to a local race: In our roundup of Durham County elections, we mentioned that incoming school board member Alexandra Valladares had been endorsed by the People’s Alliance PAC. CARL KENNEY says we overlooked something: “It should be noted that Alexandra Valladares was endorsed by the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, and her win is the result of a strong black/brown coalition set to redefine politics in Durham. Naming it as a win for People’s Alliance fails to tell the entire story. It was a broad base of support with the Durham Association of Educators as the only opposition.”

Finally, if you’ll permit us a bit of self-promotion, DEB L. subscribed to our morning newsletter, Primer, and says she got hooked immediately: “My goal was to become more informed about local issues, which I have achieved. But even more importantly, I am more informed on national issues as they relate to North Carolina. While I read the NPR newsfeed throughout the day, they rarely link national happenings to North Carolina. And they don’t have the witty style I’ve come to appreciate from reading the INDY. I’m excited every time I see a notification on my phone that Primer has arrived. Keep it up. I’m spreading the good word.”

Thanks, Deb. If you’d like to subscribe—or you’re wondering what she’s talking about—go to INDYprimer.com and sign up. It’s quick and free and delivered right to your inbox every weekday morning.

Wake up with us—and get smarter, faster.

The Plot to Control America, Part 2

BY JONATHAN WEILER @jonweiler

Part 1 of this column ran in last week’s paper.

I

n June 2013, in a case called Shelby County vs.

Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 of the landmark law, passed in 1965, required that states with a history of voting discrimination get preclearance from the Justice Department before making changes to their election laws. Congress had reauthorized the VRA regularly since its original passage, most recently in 2006, when a bipartisan majority re-upped it for 25 years, and President George W. Bush signed it into law.

But writing for the court in a 5–4 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts argued for the conservative bloc that preclearance was outdated, both because the problems that animated the VRA had been greatly ameliorated and because changes since 1965 would require a new preclearance coverage formula, which Congress was welcome to try its hand at (it hasn’t).

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed that “throwing out preclearance when it has worked and continues to work … is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you’re not getting wet.”

As sure as day follows night, a deluge of new laws began appearing within days of the removal of that umbrella. In Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and elsewhere, legislators approved new impediments to voter registration, making it easier to purge voter rolls, and, of course, imposing new photo ID requirements.

North Carolina passed one of the furthest-reaching of those laws. Its provisions included more limited early voting, elimination of same-day registration, and new voter photo ID requirements that excluded those for students at state universities (college students, for obvious reasons, are a common target of such legislation), government workers, and those on public assistance.

In 2016, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the law, ruling that it tried to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.” The court noted that the law’s backers had “failed to identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing in-person voter fraud in North Carolina.”

These bills aren’t the only means by which Republican officeholders are trying to winnow and cull the electorate.

In 2018, by a two-thirds majority, Floridians approved a ballot measure to restore voting rights to state residents who had completed felony sentences. Florida was one of a handful of states that permanently barred convicted felons from voting even after they did their time. It’s also the largest such state by far, meaning it has the most such disenfranchised individuals, over a million people, a disproportionate share of whom are black.

In an attempt to overturn the referendum results, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a law that would deny people the right to vote until they paid all “restitution,” including court fees accrued during their imprisonment. As of now, the law has been invalidated—a federal judge ruled earlier this year that it amounted to a poll tax since it made voting rights dependent on one’s ability to pay. Florida is, of course, appealing.

All of this is arguably a prelude to an even more insidious development.

Since the 2016 election, President Trump has insisted—without evidence, naturally—that the only reason he didn’t win the popular vote (he lost by nearly 3 million votes) was that “millions” of non-citizens voted illegally.

He has also repeatedly denounced the “birthright citizenship” clause of the 14th Amendment, which stipulates that any person born in the United States, essentially regardless of their parents’ status, is a citizen.

Two failed Trump efforts are noteworthy in this context.

One was his attempt to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census, which, because its insidious political motivations were so obvious that even a clearly sympathetic Roberts Court couldn’t ignore them, ended in a legal defeat. The other was the “election integrity” commission he convened and filled with voting fraud conspiracy theorists, which collapsed under the weight of its own bad faith and incompetence last year.

These efforts, whatever their immediate effects on election outcomes, sow mistrust about the integrity of American elections. Whether or not they fail, what motivates them is clear—to cast doubt on the validity of claims to citizenship, including the right to vote, by certain kinds of people.

This is a standing threat to our democracy. 2 Voices is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club. Join today at KeepItINDY.com.

WANT TO SEE YOUR NAME IN BOLD?

indyweek.com backtalk@indyweek.com @IndependentWeekly @indyweek 4

March 11, 2020

INDYweek.com

JONATHAN WEILER is a teaching professor in global studies at UNC-Chapel Hill and co-author of Prius or Pickup? How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide and Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics.

15

How

It w mac info surp lear anyt

Wh do

It w beca and ple an a thin the doin

Wh to g

Tatt dud stor app men thei com allo

15 MINUTES Ayden Love, 32 Tattoo artist, Tiny Fire Studio, Hillsborough

BY SARA PEQUEÑO spequeno@indyweek.com

How did you get into tattooing?

It was kind of an accident. I had a partner give me a tattoo machine for Christmas and started out just tattooing friends informally, and they just wouldn’t let me stop. It was a complete surprise. Traditionally, people go through apprenticeships to learn how to tattoo. So the idea of somebody who doesn’t know anything about tattooing getting a tattoo machine is very risqué.

When did you decide it was something you wanted to do longer-term?

It was always a dream of mine when I was younger. But because of the way the industry is, it’s really hard for women and queer folks and gender-nonconforming folks and people of color—all of that stuff plays into whether you get an apprenticeship. So as a queer woman, I just didn’t ever think that I would find a way in. But I felt so supported by the people who were asking me to do it, even when I wasn’t doing it professionally.

When you talk about it being hard as a queer woman to get into the industry, what do you mean?

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

Tattooing in the States, it’s really dominated by cis white dudes, and not always the kindest ones. I hear a lot of stories from clients about being sexually assaulted during appointments or at least having really inappropriate comments made or being touched or asked to expose parts of their body unnecessarily. It can just be incredibly unwelcoming, even if you’re not straight-up being told you’re not allowed in. It’s definitely a boys’ club. W KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

5

Bloomberg

Sanders

Warren

Biden

Ad spending1

Total votes2

15

(in millions of dollars)

M

ore than 1.3 million votes and $20 million later, our state’s Democratic presidential primary ended with a quick call and decisive victory for Joe Biden, whose dominant win in South Carolina, followed by a slew of high-profile endorsements, subsequent rout of 10 of 14 Super Tuesday states, and more high-profile endorsements propelled him into pole position last week. But you didn’t see many Biden ads on TV or clogging up your Facebook feed. You didn’t see that many Bernie Sanders ads either, let alone anything from Elizabeth Warren.

Every-freaking-where you looked, it was Mike Bloomberg, Mike Bloomberg, Mike Goddamn Bloomberg.

As it turns out, Mike could not get it done. He claimed 13 percent of the vote, and, having already spent north of a half-billion bucks on what amounted to a social science experiment to see whether it’s actually possible to buy an election, he dropped out and endorsed Biden. (Warren soon departed, too.)

But that got us thinking: How much did Bloomberg pay for his (relative) pittance of votes—and delegates? For that matter, how much did they all pay, and who got the most bang for their buck?

Here’s a hint: not Mike Bloomberg.

KEY

(in hundreds of thousands)

Q UICKBA I T

Bang for Your Buck

12 9 6 3 0

Ad spend per vote

6

$85.60

5 4 3 2 $5.33 $3.39 $0.59

1 0

Ad spend per pledged delegate3 Bloomberg $4.9M

Warren

$235K

Sanders

$45K

Biden

$5K

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$ $

Estimated pledged delegate total4 Bloomberg: 3 Sanders: 38 Warren: 2

Biden: 67

1. Includes outside funding benefitting Sanders, Biden, and Warren. Numbers rounded. Source: Advertising Analytics as reported by NPR and NBC. Assumes higher total in cases of discrepancies. 2. Source: State Board of Elections, 2:30 p.m., March 4, with 100% of precincts reporting. 3. Numbers rounded. 4. North Carolina has 122 delegates. Of those, 110 are allocated based on the results of the primary, and 12 are unpledged party leaders and officials. Source: The Green Papers, March 4.

The Good, The Bad & The Awful d goo

Women (of Color) in the Triangle

Come December, the Durham County Board of Commissioners will comprise five women, three of whom are women of color, including the first Muslim woman elected in North Carolina, Nida Allam. Alexandra Valladares will become the first Latinx person on Durham County’s Board of Education.

Natalie Murdock won the Democratic primary for the District 20 state Senate seat. Wake County elected a Latina, Maria Cervania, to its Board of Commissioners.

Wake County Commissioner Jessica Holmes—whom Cervania will replace—should make a strong bid for labor commissioner this fall, and Yvonne Holley led a crowded field last week in the primary for lieutenant governor, though she may face a runoff in May.

6

March 11, 2020

INDYweek.com

Young (Non-)Voters bad

If you were surprised at Joe Biden’s 19-point romp in North Carolina last week, look no further than who showed up—and who didn’t.

Between the 2016 election and September 2019, 1.1 million people registered to vote in North Carolina; 61 percent of them were under 30. According to exit polls, Bernie Sanders trounced the field among 17–29-year-olds, pulling 57 percent to Biden’s 19 percent. Even among everyone under 45, Bernie beat Biden 42–29. However, the under-30s comprised just 14 percent of voters, while the under-45s made up only 36 percent. The other 64 percent—those 45 and up—went for Biden 49–14. And that’s how youth-fueled political movements die.

ful

Coronavirus

Since the first confirmation that COVID-19 had reached North Carolina last week, we’ve vacillated between fits of panic and wondering if everyone is raiding Costco’s toilet paper supply for no good reason. Here’s what we know: The coronavirus can be serious, especially for the elderly and those with compromised immune systems. Because the U.S. is so far behind in testing, there are likely thousands of additional cases we’ve yet to confirm.

The further it spreads, the more it will disrupt daily life. (The Italian government just placed the entire country—60 million people!—on lockdown.) The more that happens, the more likely it is to lead to a recession. Here’s what we hope: Some viruses peter out in warmer weather, so it’s possible that spring and summer will slow COVID-19’s advance. Fingers crossed.

aw

A WEEK IN THE LIFE 3/3

North Carolina officials confirmed the state’s first CORONAVIRUS CASE, a man in Wake County who had returned from Washington state 10 days earlier.

In the presidential primary, JOE BIDEN won 43 percent of the vote to Bernie Sanders’s 24 percent.

3/4

For the first time, no public schools in North Carolina reported using CORPORAL PUNISHMENT, according to the state’s Consolidated Data Report.

THOM TILLIS began the first day of the general election campaign with an ad attacking Cal Cunningham for pledging to support his party’s nominee, who might be … Bernie Sanders … who is a … socialist. (Tillis has no qualms about tying himself to a white supremacist.)

3/5

A federal jury found Durham billionaire GREG LINDBERG guilty of trying to bribe Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey to reassign a senior regulator overseeing Lindberg’s businesses.

Members of the East Carolina University chancellor search committee reportedly said that HOUSE SPEAKER TIM MOORE is “considering the role.”

3/6

North Carolina reported its SECOND CORONAVIRUS CASE, this time a man in Chatham County who recently returned from Italy.

Parents and students at GREEN HOPE HIGH SCHOOL have gathered nearly 1,500 signatures on a petition to remove principal Camille Hendrick, who was the North Carolina PTA Principal of the Year at a different school in 2017.

Durham’s city and county governments were hit with a cyberattack using RUSSIAN MALWARE. Trump named North Carolina congressman MARK MEADOWS his fourth chief of staff in three years.

3/9

After Austin canceled South by Southwest on account of coronavirus, Raleigh officials said they were weighing their options for DREAMVILLE and other upcoming events.

Wake County announced that five more residents had tested positive for CORONAVIRUS. They had all attended a Biogen conference in Boston in late February.

Durham identified the malware used in the cyberattack as RYUK, ransomware that usually leads to demands for large payments. Officials said no data was compromised, and they haven’t received any ransom demands.

Mark Meadows, Trump’s new chief of staff, announced that he would SELFQUARANTINE for up to 14 days after coming into contact with a person who had tested positive for coronavirus at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Meadows’s office said he had tested negative.

3/10

(Here’s what’s happened since the INDY went to press last week)

Governor Cooper declared a coronavirus-related STATE OF EMERGENCY. He encouraged workers in Wake County to telecommute to work if possible and for high-risk populations not to travel and to avoid large gatherings.

Delta and American Airlines, which together carry more than 56 percent of passengers who fly into or out of RDU INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, announced that they would significantly reduce their domestic capacity in response to declining demand.

KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

7

PRESEN

T

ED

BY

Nominations Ballot Now Live VISIT INDYWEEK.COM FOR MORE INFORMATION

NOMINATION PERIOD

February 17 – March 15 Every year the Triangle votes on yearly favorites from coffee shops to orthodontists.

The top nominees in each category make it to the final ballot for voting from March 29 – April 26.

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for updates and mentions.

8

March 11, 2020

INDYweek.com

N E WS

Raleigh

Paint the Town Red Raleigh plans to spend an extra $720K to fancify its bus shelters.

Is that a waste?

BY LEIGH TAUSS ltauss@indyweek.com

Y

ou won’t be able to miss Raleigh’s new bus shelters.

That’s the point.

Over the next four years, the city plans to spend $5.7 million installing the bright-red, modern-looking shelters at 200 bus stops across the city. The goal isn’t just to keep riders dry while they wait but to draw more people to GoRaleigh.

But the city has more pressing needs, says council member David Cox, and it could have saved $720,000 by going with a standard black option.

“We need to provide great service and not branding,” Cox told the INDY via text message. “There are better uses for the money—there are many.”

Cox was the lone dissenter last week when the council voted on the project’s first phase, which will construct 30 shelters.

The shelter project has been in the pipeline since 2016 but got delayed in 2018 when the previous council requested more time to review design options. The council reviewed the final designs and the cheaper option last week. The latter would cost about $4,700 per shelter; the model the council selected comes in at $8,300 a pop.

That’s a difference of about $3,600 per shelter.

“I’m not saying it’s a small amount. The figures you are seeing are not small numbers, I agree,” assistant transportation director David Eatman told the council. “But in the grand scheme of the total cost of nearly $30,000 on average, it’s not as large as you would think about in that context.”

That’s because three-quarters of the cost of installing shelters is the groundwork necessary to install them and make them ADA-compliant—about $20,000. So, in total, the more expensive option comes out to $28,300 per shelter, while the standard design is $24,700.

The city conducted an online survey in December to vet the new design. Forty-seven percent of the 758 respondents liked the new look; 41 percent said they didn’t.

GoRaleigh’s new branding was created to foster a more cohesive, user-friendly image—and thus lure more new riders. But the transit system also wanted to provide a

Artist’s rendering of new GoRaleigh shelters

better experience for current riders, says Nathan Spencer, the GoRaleigh board’s vice chairman. They deserve nice things, too.

“We’re talking about spending a little extra on shelters, and people are very upset, and the truth is we’ve been doing this for cars for a long time,” Spencer says. “We need to be focused on the investments we’re making for riders because they push this economy every day.”

Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin believes the updated design is worth the price tag. “This has been in the works for four years,” she says. “A lot of thought and intentionality has gone into this. I think not moving forward sends the wrong message to the community about the value of design.”

Although council member Saige Martin criticized the shelter’s defensive design elements—including bars on the bench to prevent people from lying down—he supports the overall project.

“Not only does this put us on the map, you are not

IMAGE COURTESY OF CITY OF RALEIGH

going to miss this bus stop,” Martin said during the council meeting.

Waiting for a bus without a place to sit or shelter from a storm can be a “dehumanizing experience,” council member Patrick Buffkin added. He hopes businesses that employ residents who depend on the bus system will become sponsors to help offset the cost.

Still, Cox takes issue with the council’s priorities.

“So far, we’ve created a fund for the homeless with $25,000,” says Cox, who is said to be mulling a run for mayor next year. “I think the contrast in what we are spending on ‘branding’ speaks volumes.”

Diverting transportation funds to other purposes isn’t that simple, and the compassion fund to which Cox is referring—created in February—uses the council’s contingency money. But perhaps he has a point about who these shiny new shelters are meant for: The defensive design elements, after all, are there to keep the homeless from using the benches as beds. W KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

9

N E WS

Durham

The Bus Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore GoDurham wants some former riders to take a Lyft.

This might work out better for everyone.

BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com

R

ashad Williams can cook his ass off.

The 33-year-old head chef at Bralie’s Sports Bar and Grill on Hillsborough Road didn’t attend culinary school. He learned at his grandmother’s knee. In addition to the burger and fries on the menu, he prepares on-demand dishes like a Shepherd’s pie with rich, brown gravy drizzling down its modulated sides and a chicken pot pie with a puffed pastry—one of his favorites.

He’s been working at Brailee’s for a little over a year, making $14 an hour. He doesn’t own a car because he has epilepsy. So each morning, he took GoDurham’s 11B bus, which stopped in front of his apartment on Chapel Hill Street, near the ghost bike memorial, at 9:30 a.m. The bus dropped him off at an intersection a few yards from work just before his 10:00 a.m. shift. It cost him a dollar.

But one morning in late January, the 11B didn’t show up. It didn’t show up the next day, either.

On January 25, with little or no notice, GoDurham discontinued the route. Williams had to start using Uber. That first trip cost $10, he says. But the prices have gone up. Earlier this week, he says, he paid $16.

“A one-way trip, $26,” he says. “Let me get some groceries with that.”

Sean Egan, Durham’s new director of transportation, says the city rerouted about 20 lines because of low ridership.

The Hillsborough Road line, for instance, made 12 trips each weekday, but only averaged two boardings each trip, Egan says.

To accommodate riders inconvenienced 10

March 11, 2020

INDYweek.com

by the changes, the city began piloting a new program on February 5: East Durham Connect. If it works, the city says, it could make transportation both easier for residents and cheaper for the city.

Instead of waiting for hourly bus boardings, riders in a few East Durham neighborhoods with disrupted service can use their phones to immediately summon a Lyft six days a week. With an access code, the Lyft will take them to work and other destinations—including bus stops and shopping centers—along the discontinued route for free.

City spokeswoman Beverly Thompson says the pilot program is expected to run through June and perhaps into next year. Egan says GoDurham is considering deploying the program in other areas— including the old 11B route, which now stops at a subdivision entrance off of Neal Road, more than a mile from Braile’s.

None of that helps Rashad Williams right now.

To catch the bus these days, he has to wake up an hour early and walk a mile to a bus stop near downtown. He huffs a little over a mile again when the bus that used to stop yards from his gig drops him off at Neal Road. Sometimes Braile’s owner Leslie Crabtree gives Williams and a co-worker a ride to the bus stop.

“I don’t want them to have to walk,” Crabtree says.

T

he pilot program is part of an emerging policy Mayor Steve Schewel laid out in his State of the City address last

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

week. In that speech, Schewel connected the legacy of racism to the climate crisis, poverty, housing, crime, racial equity, and public transit in Durham.

Already, Schewel said, climate change has hit Durham’s black residents the hardest in several ways. Historically redlined black neighborhoods are still bereft of tree cover, and African Americans are more likely than white to be poor, unhealthy, and lack access to medical care, which means they’re also more susceptible to the effects of extreme heat.

The death of light rail last year, Schewel continued, was a “severe blow” to the region’s efforts to create an environmentally sustainable transit system. But he acknowledged that rail would have primarily served whiter, wealthier residents. Most of the city’s nearly 21,000 bus boardings each weekday, on the other hand, come from people of color.

“We must prioritize our bus system and the people who ride it,” Schewel said. Even under “the most optimistic scenarios, we will not see regional transportation on the ground for at least 10 years.”

After Duke University pulled the plug on light rail, one question has lingered: What’s going to happen to the $30 million in annual sales tax revenue the county collected for the ill-fated project? About $3 million has been set aside to develop

“I think it would be more convenient if the bus stops here.

Right now, I’m being inconvenienced and having to come out of pocket, but my taxes are being used to pay for service and salaries.”

one of that helps Teddy Hall right now either.

Hall, a 51-year-old cook at Braile’s, is on his feet all day. To catch the 11B at Neal Road, he has to walk more than a mile down Bennett Memorial Road, a rural stretch that doesn’t have sidewalks. He walks on the shoulder or out on the street.

“Which is pretty darn dangerous,” Hall says. “Especially when I leave here at 10 o’clock at night.”

He says the Lyft vouchers sound cool, but

YOU WOULDN’T

BELIEVE ALL THE WAYS

POOR

ORAL

HEALTH

CAN AFFECT

YOUR BODY, FROM DIABETES TO HEART DISEASE. LET’S NIP THAT NONSENSE IN THE BUD. [217 W. MILLBROOK RD., 919-787-9894]

!

N

he doesn’t think they’re the best solution.

“I think it would be more convenient if the bus stops here,” he says. “That would be more convenient for me. Right now I’m being inconvenienced and having to come out of pocket, but my taxes are being used to pay for service and salaries. But we’re the ones being inconvenienced.”

Before Route 11B was discontinued, a GoDurham bus stopped near the Vocational Rehabilitation Center on Western Park Place, where residents with physical, mental, learning disabilities, or emotional impairments are given training that helps them obtain or maintain employment.

Now the center’s clients, many of whom have mobility limitations or use adaptive equipment, have an additional challenge: They can’t make it to a bus stop that’s over a mile away, says Kelly Haight, a spokeswoman with the state Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the center.

Consequently, they’ve missed appointments and orientation sessions “and now must rely on email and phone calls, which can be frustrating and more difficult for the population we serve,” Haight told the INDY in an email.

Haight says the vocational services staff has made adjustments, but the route changes resulted in “an increase in missed appointments,” with staffers “spending more time traveling, which limits the number of persons that can be served in a day.”

The center has been in the same location for 40 years, Haight says.

“The population here already has a number of obstacles to overcome in trying to obtain and achieve employment,” she says, “and restricted access to services makes it more difficult for them to achieve their goals.” W

!

plans for a commuter rail between Raleigh and Durham. City transportation officials have asked the Board of Commissioners that another $26 million be dedicated to improving GoDurham.

Egan says that prior to creating a bus-service improvement plan, the city conducted on-board surveys with riders traveling to and from their destinations.

Officials followed up by hosting about 80 events across the city—with a particular eye toward engaging hard-to-reach Latinx residents—where they listened to concerns about bus service.

The big takeaway, Egan says: People want improvements now.

There will be “more requests [from the transportation department] than there is money” in the Capital Transit Fund, he adds.

The city’s request includes $10 million from the fund for improvements along Fayetteville Street such as increasing frequency so that buses arrive every 15 minutes, adding more shelters and benches, and creating boarding areas large enough for strollers and wheelchairs. Another $6 million will go to purchase electric buses, and $1.1 million will be allocated to add service during off-peak times.

The city has 1,000 bus stops, Egan says, and the city wants to improve all of them, 50 at a time.

Visit us at www.drjodifoy.com

Don’t miss your favorite band in town.

Follow @INDYWeek on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for breaking news.

KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

11

RAPSODY'S

WISDOM

THE NORTH CAROLINA RAP STARʼS TOUR IS A LOVE LETTER TO BLACK WOMEN, FROM BLACK WOMEN

BY KYESHA JENNINGS music@indyweek.com

Rapsody

“E

PHOTO BY TODD COOPER

verywhere I look, I’m surrounded by amazing black women,” Rapsody says.

She’s calling from the road, in the middle of “A Black Woman Created This Tour,” which began in Philadelphia in February and ends with a homecoming show at Lincoln Theatre in Raleigh on March 13.

The tour is a victory lap for Eve, Rapsody’s critically acclaimed third album, which was released in August 2019. The Snow Hill, North Carolina native began her music career in Raleigh with Kooley High and 9th Wonder before going on to earn Jay-Z cosigns, Grammy nominations, and Kendrick Lamar collaborations as a solo artist.

Like Eve, which paid homage to black women—with titles like “Nina” (as in Simone), “Oprah” (as in Winfrey), and “Aaliyah” (as in Aaliyah)—the title of the tour evokes a sense 12

March 11, 2020

INDYweek.com

of pride and sass that is specific to black women.

Right now, Rapsody’s tribe of #ProfessionalBlackGirls includes booking agent Yves Pierre, tour manager Felicia Bennett, photographer and videographer LaTroya Brooks, Jamla Records vice president Tia Watlington, and Rapsody’s stylist, the legendary hip-hop architect Misa Hylton.

“Not only do I speak about it in the music, but I walk it in my real life,” Rapsody says. “I make sure that we support our sisters, so throughout the tour we’ve been highlighting black businesses owned by black women. It’s been amazing all the way around.”

From her nail art and her gold accessories to her classic kicks and her popping cornrows—sometimes with beads added—Rapsody’s collaboration with Hylton amplifies her black-woman aesthetic while matching her sonic and lyrical vibe. The two first met in 2016, when Hylton was assigned to style Rapsody for an event hosted by Puma.

Rapsody admired the way Hylton advocated for her to always be herself. In an industry filled with unrealistic expectations for women, a host of gimmicks, and an excessive amount of plastic surgery, Hylton’s support was crucial. When it was time for Rapsody to hire a permanent stylist, Hylton was the first person she thought of.

“She’s been like another big sister,” Rapsody says. “She not only styles me and helps me grow in that aspect, but she’s also taught me so much about myself as a person.”

For Rapsody, getting to connect with her fans on a more intimate level throughout the tour has also been amazing. Through meet and greets, she interacts with dozens of fans at each show. As an artist, she finds it inspiring and fulfilling to see firsthand the impact of her talents. Her authentic, down-to-earth homegirl vibe is a breath of fresh air.

“Everybody has a story to tell, and I’m so thankful,” Rapsody says. “I’ve heard stories from women, like, ‘You’ve inspired me to go for this promotion that I’ve been wanting to go for, and I’m the only black woman at my job,’ or, ‘Yo, in my business, being a black woman is challenging for me every day, and your music keeps me from snapping.’”

The music industry in general and hip-

RAPSODY: A BLACK WOMAN CREATED THIS TOUR

With Sa-Roc and Heather Victoria Friday, Mar. 13, 9 p.m., $23+ Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh

hop in particular have a history of making the journey more challenging for black women. Since the days of Roxanne Shanté and Sparky D, women have been paid less, blatantly ignored, placed in narrow lanes, and pitted against one another.

With a solid decade of experience under her belt, Rapsody acknowledges that the industry is “more intense” for black women.

With this tour, she’s intentionally creating opportunities for other women to win.

“I’m making sure I have black women around me,” she says. “When it’s all said and done, I want to be able to say I’ve made it easier for the women coming after me.

I want them to know that however they wanna show up, they can show up. They don’t have to be a carbon copy of anybody to be successful.”

In the beginning of her career, like most aspiring artists, Rapsody associated suc-

cess with a label deal, national radio spins, platinum plaques, and award shows. But with experience comes wisdom.

“I now understand that success is waking up and being able to do what you love and still have peace of mind,” Rapsody says.

Success is about inspiring others, whether or not she sells a million records or wins a certain number of awards. (Her second album, Laila’s Wisdom, was nominated for two Grammys, but Eve was controversially snubbed.)

“Regardless of any award, I touched people, impacted people, and inspired people,” she says. “I want to be able to look back and say I brought somebody with me. I opened doors; I supported this person, the same way Queen Latifah and Rah Digga supported me. At the end of the day, that is what we are here for—to gain knowledge and share knowledge and create change.” W

Rapsody performing at Raleigh’s Dreamville Festival in 2019

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

PEACE STREET MARKET Big Enough to SErvE You Small Enough to Know You! THIS WEEK’S SPECIALS Yield Sessions IPA $10.99 / 6 pk

NoDa Brewing Co. Radio Haze

NoDa Brewing Co. Hop Drop & Roll IPA $12.99 / 6 pk

$12.99 / 6 pk

Ancillary Fermentation

NoDa Brewing Co. Jam Sessions

Murphy’s Stout

$9.99 / 6 pk

6pk $6.99

6pk $6.99

We have KEGS! A fantastic assortment of Craft Beers, Imported Beers, and Domestics with Special Pricing.

1/6, 1/4 and 1/2 sizes available.

Be sure to check out our impressive wine selection.

There’s plenty of grab & go chilled wine available!

804 W. Peace St. • Raleigh • 834-7070 KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

13

INDYpendent LOCAL CRAFT Beer festival RECAP

T

here are few finer ways to spend a chilly, sunny Sunday afternoon than at Durty Bull Brewing Company, with a lot of beer and a bunch of adorable (and adoptable!) puppies. (Check out Hope Animal Rescue.)

On March 1, the first INDYpendent Local Craft Beer Festival gathered 12 of the area’s top brewers and a hundred folks to judge two of their finest concoctions.

The competition worked like this: Our tasters rated each of the 24 beers on hand. The six beers with the highest scores moved on to the final round. After a bit more indulgence, our tasters collectively decided on a winner. We’ll get to that in a minute.

First, we want to thank our breweries: Barrel Culture Brewing and Blending, Bombshell Beer Company, Bond Brothers Beer Co., Bull City Burger and Brewery, Clouds Brewing, Durty Bull Brewing Company, Fullsteam Brewery, Gizmo Brew Works, The Glass Jug Beer Lab, Ponysaurus Brewing Company, Steel String Brewery, and Vecino Brewing Co. Our six finalists: Barrel Culture’s In Reality, a sour IPA; Bombshell’s Galactic Invasion Hazy IPA; BCBB’s The Golden Pickle; Ponysaurus’s Reserve Ale and its Cherry Sour; and Steel String’s French Freakness, a French toast imperial stout.

Before we get to the winner, a special shoutout to Bond Brothers, which brought 4th Estate, the very excellent quad they’ve made to benefit for the INDY Press Club.

And now … drumroll … envelope, please … and the winner is …

Bombshell’s Galactic Invasion.

PHOTOS BY DALVIN NICHOLS

14

March 11, 2020

INDYweek.com

INDYpendent LOCAL CRAFT Beer festival RECAP

KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

15

FOO D & D R I N K

Eat This

PHOTO BY JADE WILSON

One Hell of a Sandwich No grocery chain is more beloved than Wegmans.

Can its in-store meal options live up to the hype?

BY NICK WILLIAMS food@indyweek.com

I

first heard of Wegmans while watching the episode of The Jinx where Robert Durst gets arrested for shoplifting a sandwich from the grocery chain. The uber-wealthy alleged murderer—whose trial, coincidentally, began last week—was on a nationwide bail-jumping odyssey, had $500 in his pocket, and still felt the need to swipe a chicken salad on rye.

Must be one hell of a sandwich, I thought.

Last September, Wegmans opened its first location in Raleigh’s Midtown to a line 3,000 people deep. (Another one, in Cary, is scheduled to open in August.) Such super-fandom, of course, was met with side-eye on the internet, but no matter. The heart wants what it wants, and the people wanted Wegmans. Six months later, they haven’t stopped wanting Wegmans.

And I wanted to see if Wegmans could possibly live up to this much hype.

First thing to know: The Raleigh Wegmans is massive. It’s not exactly aesthetically pleasing. It looms over a double-stacked parking deck like a suburban Kremlin. The interior is no better, a low-lit massing of browns, brownish greens, and bad fonts, like a desaturated 1980s mall food court.

But you’re not here for the graphic design. You’re not even here for the vast grocery selection—OK, maybe you are—or the legitimately excellent cheese and charcuterie options.

16

March 11, 2020

INDYweek.com

WEGMANS

1200 Wake Towne Dr., Raleigh | 984-960-5600 | wegmans.com

You’ve come for the staggering array of meal options and prepared foods: a sub shop, a pizza parlor, a burger joint, a bakery, a sushi counter, a labyrinthine hot bar, and a phalanx of neatly packaged ready-to-eat meals, all housed in a cavernous antechamber in the store’s northern wing.

This is what makes Wegmans famous— and what turns millionaire (alleged!) murderers into common thieves.

I wanted to find out whether this stuff was any good. So one afternoon, my wife, Kate, and I crept through the sea of nigh-unmanageable traffic surrounding the store to try to assemble a meal from its intimidating assortment of fresh comestibles.

Loyalists speak in hushed tones of Wegmans sushi, promising quality and selection to rival any raw fish restaurant. Perhaps my first pick—a spicy scallop volcano roll— was too ambitious, because while it looked enticing, it tasted revolting. Fishy scallops piled atop unidentifiable “rolls,” the two elements joined only by a slick of pink, watery mayonnaise. The bivalves themselves had the texture of pencil erasers. It was awful.

A tray of nigiri, on the other hand, was way better than grocery store sushi has any right to be—deft slices of salmon, tuna, and yellowtail laid with care on expertly cooked rice. The fish was fresher than what you’d find at 90 percent of the Triangle’s sushi bars, and it only cost $10 for eight stout pieces.

Onward to pizza, fired in a hulking glazedbrick behemoth and laid out in the style of an NYC slice shop. The Margherita was OK—they cooked the basil with the pie, which is a great way to ruin basil. Slightly better was the cheese slice, beautifully greasy and nostalgically satisfying, a highend version of the pizza served at the roller-rink birthday parties of my childhood.

Kate perused the hot bar’s seemingly infinite options before ladling up a tray with a weird global fusion tableau. The potstickers were unmemorable. We both enjoyed the delightfully trashy stir-fry of slippery udon and tough-yet-peppery beef, although the paneer curry was worryingly cold.

I also hit the sub shop, which, to the employees at the checkout station, cemented my status as a glutton. “Oh, you got a sandwich, too?” a cashier asked as he rang up our hail. He looked concerned.

He needn’t have worried. I’m a professional—a professional who now loves Wegmans sandwiches.

If anything could turn me into a Wegmans regular, it’s Danny’s Favorite, a sandwich named after—I don’t know—the kid from The Shining, maybe. It’s a piece of work, this sandwich, with spicy ham, capicola, salami, and provolone on a sub roll that glistens with its own barely contained supply of lipids. I got mine with banana peppers and brown mustard. It absolutely made my day. It made my next day, too, when I hauled the uneaten half out of the fridge and devoured it cold.

Unctuous and processed and jammed with nitrates, this is not a good sandwich, but it is a great one.

A completist assay of Wegmans is impossible outside of a multi-volume tome, but I couldn’t make a game attempt without sampling a few more items, which took the form of some attractively jewel-boxed ready-to-eat meals brought home to the fam.

The “spicy” General Tso’s chicken was depressing, though I found its guileless idea of what the word “spicy” means to be sort of funny. I also picked up a tray of meatballs and another of ravioli, and it was here, in these “Italian-like” specialties, that I located the heart of Wegmans’ appeal.

They tasted fake, but that doesn’t mean “bad.” More like an aristocrat’s attempt to recreate the oeuvre of Chef Boyardee, drenched in sugar and sodium but innately pleasing in a lizard-brain sort of way.

The meatballs—dense and humming with dried herbs—proved a big hit with our twoyear-old, who solemnly declared them “very good.” (This from a kid who once described meatballs I spent an entire afternoon fussing over as “yucky.”)

Oh, and the cannoli are amazing. Definitely pick up a box to rage-eat while trying to get out of the parking lot. W

F I R ST D R A U G H T Born to Be Mild Session beers are all the rage.

What does that term even mean?

BY JULIE JOHNSON food@indyweek.com

Brewers, creative and savvy, have promoted new beers by building on popular styles, tweaking a feature or two, then appending a helpful descriptor. Revised craft styles may be tagged double, imperial, fruited, New England, wild, experimental, smoked—but what about “session”?

A session beer is defined by its low alcohol strength.

But “session” also refers to a period of time spent drinking. English historian Martyn Cornell isn’t certain about the origin of the term, but he notes how common it is to refer to “a session down at the pub.” A session beer, he says, is a beer of low-enough ABV that it can be consumed, pint after pint, over several hours. Brewers in the UK typically offer more low-alcohol options than their American counterparts, so session-strength there, when defined, is usually capped at 4 percent.

Although mainstream American lagers and their light/lite siblings, at 4–5 percent, fall into a plausible session range, the term “session beer” didn’t really have a function in this country until craft beer was well established.

Craft brewers introduced consumers to flavorful styles from other traditions that were, as part of their character, stronger in alcohol. Soon, we were tipping back potent Belgian dubbels, Scottish wee heavies, and German doppelbocks.

And, with our national propensity to take a good thing and make it bigger, we became infatuated with extreme beers, which often meant boozier.

In 2012, Pennsylvania beer writer Lew Bryson, seeking to counter the “slow, persistent rise in the alcohol content of craft beers,” challenged brewers to develop full-flavored beers at lower ABVs. He launched Session Beer Day, devoted to beers under 4.5 percent ABV. Naturally, there were arguments about an arbitrary cap, but, hey, Lew’s day, Lew’s rules. The term “session” was adopted and folded into formal beer names or categories, though not all examples adhered strictly to strength parameters.

Eight years on, Bryson says, “Session Beer Day has largely faded, but for the best reasons. I declared victory and moved on.”

Though the limit has crept above 4.5 percent, and most sessions are some variation of an IPA, Bryson celebrates the expanded choice in lower-ABV choices—a trend that dovetails neatly with the current interest in low-to-no-alcohol selections. A number of styles that are inherently low in alcohol, such as gose, traditional bitter, and some sour beers, have become increasingly popular.

A few breweries, like Notch in Massachusetts, have made low-ABV brewing key to their identity, and dominant craft players, including Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada, have embraced the challenge of delivering complexity without depending on that reliable carrier of flavor, alcohol.

Confession: My session beer of choice is a classic whose origin predates the dawn of the American craft industry by about 210 years: Guinness. It boasts a modest 4.2 percent ABV, its robust flavor based on deeply roasted grains, and its creamy, satisfying quality derived from the nitrogen used for its pour. I’ve tested it during hours-long sessions in Ireland, where it promoted camaraderie and not boorishness, and woken up the next morning right as rain.

The perfect session choice.

Wake up with us.

Sign up for Primer, our daily email newsletter indyweek.com/newsletter-signup KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

17

p.m.

FOO D & D R I N K

SOMEWHERE SOUTH PREMIERE

Sun., March 15, 4:30 p.m. | The Carolina Theatre, Durham | $15

Unfamiliar Narratives Vivian Howard’s new series explores the foodways of the American South with candor and nuance

BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com

E

pisode 2 of Somewhere South begins with a simple montage: An instant grits packet is torn open, poured into a ubiquitous-looking yellow bowl, and slid into the microwave. Voilà: Porridge 101.

But like most of the food examined on Vivian Howard’s new PBS show, the dish is not as straightforward as it seems.

Where A Chef’s Life, the documentary series that Howard hosted for five seasons, zeroed in on specific ingredients, Somewhere South fixes a wider lens on Southern foodways. Over six episodes, Howard explores foods that cut across cultures and experiences. The show, produced by the Durham-based Markay Media, premieres this week at the Carolina Theatre.

Triangle viewers will recognize a number of familiar faces, including chefs Cheetie Kumar, Ricky Moore, and Michael Lee. The porridge episode is particularly characteristic of the show’s commitment to candor. Instant grits turn into a conversation about slavery and racial injustice when Howard travels to Charleston to celebrate the late chef Edna Lewis and sits down with African American food writers and chefs to discuss the history of soul food.

It’s not a manicured discussion, and at times the pauses are viscerally uncomfortable. Howard doesn’t rush to fill the silence: sure, she identifies as a storyteller, but she’s there to listen.

But this is what makes Somewhere South so valuable: Nuance has a place at the table. Simple dishes co-mingle with complex ones and familiar narratives with ones that are less celebrated or that have been erased from discourse about the American South altogether.

18

March 11, 2020

INDYweek.com

Beyond the show, which will air Fridays on PBS between March 27 and May 1, Howard has other projects on the burner. In February, she announced that she’ll expand from North Carolina to Charleston, where she’ll open the new restaurant Lenoir and establish a brick-and-mortar for her mail-order baking business, Handy + Hot. Ahead of the Somewhere South premiere, the INDY spoke with Howard about the foods that, as she puts it, “soften the edges around the way we feel about our neighbors.”

Vivian Howard with chef Mashama Bailey at Bailey’s restaurant, The Grey, in Savannah.

INDY: A Chef’s Life was airing during the 2016 election, and you talked about bridging the urban-rural divide. How has this filmmaking process been different— do you feel the media narrative around those places has changed?

VIVIAN HOWARD: I think it would be hard to argue that the media perspective has stayed the same. But really, our goal is to make content that softens the edges around the way we feel about our neighbors. I had that mission in 2016, and I have the same one now. We certainly are mindful of this because the whole goal of the show was to broaden the definition of Southern food. A Chef’s Life told a narrow version of that story, and in an effort to be more inclusive and transparent and curious, we wanted to dig deeper and learn more and share that.

What surprised you the most while filming?

There’s so much. I learned so much about actual human history through food—seeing the common threads between the way we eat. We filmed in Clarkston, Georgia, for this episode on greens. Every culture has their way of cooking greens, and we learned a lot from several refugee communities there. Clarkston is one of the most diverse square miles in the whole nation.

We ate at a woman’s house from Burundi, and she cooked this feast for us, and while the ingredients were very different— we had Fufu and Okazi leaves and meat that was braised in red palm oil.

I had never seen any of those ingredients, but it was very much the way that the Southern table looks like. When my family sat down to eat, there was a pot of beans, there was a piece of bread you ate with your hands that was used to sop up the grease from those beans, there was a messy-looking piece of braised meat. It was the same.

It made me feel connected in a way I hadn’t realized that I was.

On that note, what has this show allowed you to explore that you weren’t able to explore in A Chef’s Life?

[A Chef’s Life] was really very much about my personal life and my professional life and my restaurants. The premise behind

PHOTO BY JOSH WOLL

this is that every episode is about a dish that every culture shares, and it’s about looking at all types of communities in the South and showing us how the South is really just a microcosm of the rest of the nation.

Shifting gears, you have these new outposts in Charleston. What’s your connection with the city?

I lived in Charleston one summer during college and was a server at Sticky Fingers, like two blocks from where the restaurants will be. As a Southern chef, I’ve traveled to Charleston for far more festivals than I’d like to mention. I always said that if I were to open more restaurants, that would be somewhere that I want to spend more time, and I find Charleston incredibly charming. All that being said, I opened a restaurant in Kinston 14 years ago in an economically depressed region. Kingston has evolved somewhat; it’s a tourist destination. But it still has a lot of challenges.

The opportunity to open a restaurant in a city that’s growing, that has a thriving dining scene, and a city that I love—it’s not an opportunity to pass up.

Can you tell me about the restaurant name Lenoir?

I live in Lenoir County. And, you know, names are so hard. Several people pressured me to name it Vivian’s, and I was like, no, I will never, I will not do that. But Lenoir—the word itself is pretty, it makes you question [if] it’s French. I love having the idea of something really sophisticated-sounding tied to this rural agriculture, tobacco-focused county in Eastern North Carolina. W

Love the indy?

e Support th businesses that ... support us

HOPS & BLUES

S hop local!

RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS

PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER

FESTIVAL

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

SATURDAY, MAY 2, 2020 4-8PM Unlimited beer samples 15 amazing hoppy beer producers 2 phenomenal blues performances Cockadoodlemoo food truck Full details on Facebook and Eventbrite.

Limited tickets. Available now.

On Eventbrite at bit.ly/hops-blues

INDYWEEK.COM

5410 NC 55, SUITE #V, DURHAM NC 27713 | WWW.GL ASS-JUG.COM KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

19

M U SIC

Trevor Reece, Lee Hinshaw, and Mike Wallace

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS

Rock Steady With the excellent album IV, Drag Sounds closes a long chapter and starts a stripped-down new story BY HARRIS WHELESS music@indyweek.com

A

s the train lurched onto the track, Trevor Reece settled down, headphones in, thumbs on his phone, to make the best of the short ride from D.C. to Baltimore, where he lived at the time. “The best” would be to pull into the station with a completed song.

Reece, half of the core duo of the rock band Drag Sounds, was heading home from tour, reflecting on all the hours spent hunched over the wheel of a van, his eyes glazing as the centerline stared back, unblinking.

This was several years ago, when Reece and his Triangle-based bandmate, Mike Wallace, were working on the songs that would 20

March 11, 2020

INDYweek.com

eventually compose Drag Sounds’ long-gestating album IV. On tour in Memphis, they had visited the Stax Museum, where they gleefully beheld the mixing board that Alex Chilton used to record three Big Star LPs and his solo debut, Like Flies on Sherbert. Back in the van, Reece gazed absently at a Chills record on the floor, and the pieces of a song started falling into place. As the train barreled through the countryside, he stared at the lines typed on his screen: “Flies on the board, Chills on the floor …” What next?

“I was looking at the lyrics, I was listening

to music, and the train was rocking,” Reece says. “So it was like, hell yeah, ‘We’re all rocking, side by side, we’re all rocking.’”

A few more verses and revisions later, the song became “Like Flies on the Board.” It appears on IV, which was released in October 2019 and also features drummer Lee Hinshaw. The music was culled from separate songwriting sessions, voice demos sent between Reece and Wallace, and all the rails and highways ridden between Maryland and North Carolina for weekend practices. Like its persona, the band’s songwriting process is loose and off-the-cuff, yet the songs have

a sustained heartbeat to which the duo’s chemistry and work ethic give shape. Where stripped-down meets unpretentious, great ideas collide and gel into elemental songs.

But Drag Sounds’ days of remote collaboration are over: Reece now lives in Durham, Wallace in Raleigh. Sitting at Reece’s kitchen table, the two longtime friends and bandmates swap stories and crack beers as they reminisce about the good, the bad, and the just-plain-awful times endured over the band’s nine years of existence, which include several LPs and live releases, long tours, lineup changes, and all kinds of logistical acrobatics. Throughout it all, Drag Sounds has been a fortifying constant in their lives.

“We had a point where it was like, ‘The worst thing we can do is stop doing this,’” Reece says. “We had toured and kept playing and moving around enough to be like, ‘Man, I’ve spent too many hours on the train and the bus to fuck this up.’”

The goal was never to play arenas, or even necessarily to make a living as career musicians; it was to play raw, straightforward rock ‘n’ roll. If they had a little success along the way, so be it.

It all started when they first performed as a covers act in their hometown of Greensboro at a New Year’s Eve party in 2011. They played a few more shows and cycled through some band names, but nothing stuck. With an upcoming gig, they racked their brains for something to put on the flyer. Mark Wingfield, the band’s original bassist, suggested Drag Sounds. It would go on the flyer for that night, and all those from then on.

Drag Sounds has developed a flexible, ragged garage-rock sound that flirts with every corner of the punk and rock canon. Reece and Wallace have played in many bands together—Rough Hands, Ghost Beach, Estrangers, Pistol Crash—but Drag Sounds has outlasted them all. They’ve paid their dues in small venues across the state, shrinking from a quartet to a trio to a duo, embracing roughand-ready guitar minimalism. Their influences, too, are fading into the background of a mature, confident sound all their own.

After touring the same batch of songs for years, Wallace and Reece decided it was time to put something down on tape. But the initial sessions for IV didn’t do justice to the material and were scrapped. They booked another recording session with Missy Thangs at the Fidelitorium and came

away with something that felt right: an aural summation of half a decade on the road.

IV opens with a lull of studio noise that bursts apart as sharp guitar lines and slurred verses careen into each other in quick succession. From opener “That Stuff’s Illegal,” the band flits from short, taut punk songs to extended slow-burners, their trademark dual-guitar sleaze occasionally punctuated

Your week. Every Wednesday.

“We can do what we want. None of your business.

How about that?” by volleys of horns, keys, and drums, supplied by Hinshaw and horn players Crowmeat Bob and David Schwentker.

Masters of understatement, Wallace and Reece spin anthemic yarns full of wit, homage, wordplay, and self-parody on IV. With their alternately brash and self-deprecating sense of humor, the band favors cheeky song titles like “Let It Me.” That’s one that Reece had jokingly stuck onto a few scattered guitar parts. A few weeks later, Wallace “woke up in a crucial daze” with a hangover at a stranger’s house, with “the sunshine so full of shit.” He found his glasses under the couch, saw 30 missed calls on his phone, and pulled up his GPS, wondering, “Where the hell am I?” Sometimes, the lyrics just write themselves.

“Now we’re moving on,” says Reece. “That’s a chapter. Put the bookmark in. We’re starting another short story.”

After so many lineup changes, they’ve decided to simplify rather than complicate.

So they’re carrying on as a two-piece, weaving in and out of the stuttery, contained beat of a drum machine. New songs, new riffs, and new arrangements continue to shoot out of the duo’s fiery creative dynamo.

“This next shit might not have any guitars,” Wallace says. “Might be like keys and bass. I fucking just bought a bass. I’m digging playing this fucking bass. Synthesizer-bass-drum-machine record—guess what?

That’s also Drag Sounds. We can do what we want. None of your business. How about that?” W

News • Music • Arts • Food

indyweek.com KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

21

Chocolate Lounge & Wine Bar Fri 3/13

Dead Souls Gothic Lounge 9pm

Sat 3/14

Alice Osborn with Carol Parker Schafer

Sun 3/15

Triangle Songwriters Competition

Tues 3/17

St Patrick’s Day with High Clouds

2pm

CAT'S CRADLE WE 3/11 DESTROYER W/NAP EYES ($20/$23) SA 3/14 RADICAL FACE W/AXEL FLÓVENT ($25/$28) WE 3/18 WHITE

FR 3/20 CEDAR

RIDGE HIGH SCHOOL

7pm

Music Performed from 6pm to 10pm Beer & Wine Served Daily Timberlyne Shopping Center, Chapel Hill 1129 Weaver Dairy Rd • specialtreatsnc.com

REAPER

W/YOUNG GUV, BUDDY CRIME ($15/$17)

SA 3/14 @ CAT’S CRADLE

BATTLE OF THE BANDS ($8/$10)

SU 7/26

FR 7/31 THAO & THE GET DOWN STAY DOWN ($22/$25) (on sale 3/13)

W/ TOMBERLIN ($18/$20)

SA 8/8 WUNC MUSIC PRESENTS

ANTIBALAS ($18/$22) FR 4/3 SHOVELS & ROPE

W/ANA ROXANNE ($17/$20)

WEYES BLOOD

SA 3/28

W/INDIANOLA ($25/$28)

TU 4/7 ATERCIOPELADOS AND LOS AMIGOS INVISIBLES ($32/$35) WE 4/8 STEPHEN MALKMUS

W/QAIS ESSAR & THE MAGIK CARPET ($20/$23) FR 4/10 BROTHER

FRI

3/13

LEE FIELDS & THE EXPRESSIONS

Durty Dub’s Tribute to Charley Pride (with Phil Cook)

3/18

ALI OPEN MIKE EAGLE, DJ LAST WORD ($18/$20) MO 4/20 REAL ESTATE ($25/$28)

TREE OF CLUES TOUR ($15/$17) SA 5/2 GUIDED BY VOICES ($30/$35) SU 5/3

SU 5/10 GREG

MDOU 75 Dollar Bill

MO 5/11 BARNS COURTNEY W/WILDERADO, CHAZ CARDIGAN ($22/$25)

THU

3/26 The Monti StorySLAM: Growing Pains

4/3

COLLAPSIS Cage Bird Fancier

SCHNEIDER (SOLO) ($20/$23) TH 5/14 YOLA WALK THROUGH FIRE

WORLD TOUR W/AMYTHYST KIAH ($20/23) FR 5/29 HANK,

PATTIE & THE CURRENT

FR 6/5 24-7

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

March 11, 2020

TU 5/12 JOJO GOOD TO KNOW TOUR ($30/$33) WE 5/13 BOB

W/DIRTY GRASS PLAYERS ($12/$15)

COMING SOON: Laura Marling, Dance With The Dead, Magic aura Marling, Dance With The Dead, Magic Sword, Black Atlantic, Caspian, Deafheaven, Vundabar, Shannon & the Clams, Kevin Morby, Sebadoh, Okilly Dokilly, Harley Poe, Oso Oso, Prince Daddy & The Heyena, CBDB, The Lemon Twigs, The Sounds, Napalm Death, Fu Manchu, Neil Hamburger, Todd Barry, The Cybertronic Spree, Diet Cig, Stephen Lynch, Risk!, Greer, Nile

22

DULLI

W/JOSEPH ARTHUR ($33/$38)

Cat’s Cradle presents 3/25 TINY MOVING PARTS Belmont / Capstan / Jetty Bones

THU

SHAUF

SA 5/9 POOLSIDE ($20/ $25)

WED

4/2

W/DERADOORIAN ($35/$38) TU 5/5 ANDY

Khushi

THU

THE RESIDENTS ($30/$35) MO 5/4 STEREOLAB

W/ FAYE WEBSTER ($18/$20)

WXDU presents

ASGEIR TUE 3/24

SOUL ($20/$23) GECS

WE 4/29: 100

SAT

INDYweek.com

FR 10/2 SLEAFORD

MODS ($23/$26) THE AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT $25/$28 SA 11/14 HOODOO GURUS TU 10/27

($25/$28)

CAT'S CRADLE BACK ROOM

TH 3/12 SONG TRAVELER'S WRITERS NIGHT BARRY GRAY,

NOTHING, NOWHERE.

SOLD OUT

3/21

FR 9/21 ADHOC PRESENTS OH SEES W/ MR. ELEVATOR ($25/$28)

W/DANGER INCORPORATED, RO RANSOM, BOGUES ($18/$22)

TU 4/28 47

TWEN

MO 9/18 ADHOC PRESENTS ($29.50/ $35)

BIKINI KILL

WE 3/11 HEART BONES W/COLD CREAM ($10/$12)

Cat’s Cradle presents

POST ANIMAL

SOLD OUT

WE 4/22 CRANK IT LOUD PRESENTS:

MO 4/27 WAVVES KING OF THE BEACH 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY USA TOUR W/SADGIRL ($22/$25)

WED

W/NÜ MANGOS

BUILT TO SPILL ($25/$29)

FR 3/27 WUNC MUSIC PRESENTS

SOCCER MOMMY

RECENTLY ANNOUNCED: Man Man, YFN Lucci

OF ALABAMA SHAKES

W/AXEL FLÓVENT

TU 3/24 PORCHES W/SASSY 009 ($16/$18) TH 3/26 REBIRTH BRASS BAND ($20/$23)

723 RIGSBEE AVENUE • DURHAM, NC 27701

SU 4/26 @ NC MUSEUM OF ART

BRITTANY HOWARD

RADICAL FACE

SA 3/21 BEST COAST THE ALWAYS TOMORROW TOUR W/MANNEQUIN PUSSY ($25/$27)

SPYZ ($15) SA 6/6 BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB

KARYN OLIVER, WYATT EASTERLING ($20) FR 3/13 SONGS FROM THE ROAD BAND W/BIG FAT GAP ($12/$15) SA 3/14 VERSUS W/SUNNY SLOPES ($15) SU 3/15 CALL ME KARIZMA W/CYRUS, MXRCUS ALEXIS, STICKY ARROW ($15/$18) MO 3/16 GRADUATING LIFE W/KING OF HECK ($13/$15) TU 3/19 CAROLINA ($5/$7)

JUNK JAM

TU 3/19 BAMBARA W/BLACK SURFER, GRAY YOUNG ($10/$12) FR 3/20 THE OLD CEREMONY W/REESE MCHENRY ( $10/$12) SA 3/21 MELLOW SWELLS ALBUM RELEASE SHOW W/RODES AND POCKET ENVY ($7) TU 3/24 STEVE GUNN, MARY LATTIMORE, & WILLIAM TYLER ($20/$22) TH 3/26 CONSIDER THE SOURCE W/EMMA'S LOUNGE ($10/$12)

FR 3/27 "OH MERCY" RACHEL KIEL, TIM CARLESS FRIENDS PERFORM BOB DYLAN'S CLASSIC ALBUM! ($10/$12)

SU 3/29 THE JACKS W/THE CUCKOOS ($10) MO 3/30 VILRAY ($12)

TH 6/11 BAYSIDE

TH 4/2 VAGABON W/ANGELICA GARCIA ($14/$16)

THE GROWLERS ($30) SA 6/20 THE REGRETTES

MO 6/15

W/LUNAR VACATION ($17/19) (ON SALE 3/13)

W/YOUNG GUV, BUDDY CRIME

FR 4/3 HONEY MAGPIE ALBUM RELEASE W/RODES AND ENO RIVER RATS ($8/$10) SA 4/4 CHERRY POOLS W/JET BLACK ALLEY CAT, SMALL TALKS, MOBS ($13/$15)

TU 3/18 @ MOTORCO

POST ANIMAL W/TWEN

SU 4/5 CALEB

CAUDLE ALBUM RELEASE TOUR

W/WILD PONIES AND DAWN LANDES ($15/$20) MO 4/6 MIGHTY

OAKS ($12/$14) WE 4/8 VETIVER ($15/ $18) TH 4/9 THE NATIONAL PARKS ACOUSTIC SET ($12/$15)

MATTIEL ($10/$12) 4/12 JACUZZI BOYS

FR 4/10

W/ THE COWBOYS ($13 / $15) TU 4/14 ALLAN

RAYMAN ($22/$25) BENT KNEE ($15) TH 4/16 INDIGO DE SOUZA WE 4/15

W/ TRUTH CLUB ($10/$12)

FR 4/17 AN EVENING WITH

JILL ANDREWS ($14/$17) SA 4/18 JOHN CRAIGIE W/HONEYSUCKLE ($12/$15)

MO 4/19 DYLAN

LEBLANC ($14) TU 4/21 KATIE PRUITT W/WILLIAM PRINCE ($10) TH 4/23 ONA ($10/$12)

FR 4/24 ALESSANA W/DEAD RABBITS, OVTLIER, A LIGHT DIVIDED ($18/$20)

SAMMY RAE & THE FRIENDS ($12/$15) FR 5/1 KEVIN KRAUTER SA 5/2 JUMPSTARTS WE 5/6 MAPACHE ($15/$17) FR 5/8 THANK YOU SCIENTIST SU 4/26

($15/$18)

SA 5/23 THE

LIL SMOKIES ($17/$20) SA 5/23 FRANCES QUINLAN ($16/$18)

OLD 3/28 LAUREN SANDERSON SSA T OUMIDWEST KIDS CAN MAKE IT BIG TOUR

W/LIZA ANN ($32/$35)

W/SENSES FAIL, HAWTHORNE HEIGHTS, CAN'T SWIM ($25/$29)

WE 3/18 @ CAT’S CRADLE

WHITE REAPER

SA 3/14 @ CAT’S CRADLE BACKROOM

VERSUS W/SUNNY SLOPES TU 7/28 BLUES TRAVELLER/

JJ GREY & MOFRO ARTSCENTER (CARRBORO) TU 3/24 JAMES MCMURTRY W/BONNIE WHITMORE ($22/$25) MOTORCO (DUR) TU 3/18 POST ANIMAL W/TWEN ($15/$17) WE 3/25 TINY MOVING PARTS W/BELMONT, CAPSTAN, JETTY BONES ($18/$22) TU 4/14 DEAFHEAVEN W/INTER ARMGREET DEATH, ALL YOUR SISTERS ( $25/$28) WE 4/29 LEMON TWIGS ($17/$20) FR 6/5 DIET CIG W/SAD13 ($15/$17) THE RITZ (RAL) CAT’S CRADLE AND LIVE NATION PRESENT TU 6/16 CAR SEAT HEADREST W/TWIN PEAKS HAW RIVER BALLROOM LD TU 3/24 JOHN MORELAND SO OUT W/S.G.GOODMAN ($15/$18) SOLD MO 4/20 SHARON VAN ETTEN OUT W/JAY SOM ($28/$31)

FR 4/24 WAXAHATCHEE W/OHMME ($18 ADV/ $20) FR 5/1 TENNIS W/MOLLY BURCH ($18/$20) SU 5/3 SNAIL MAIL W/ HOTLINE TNT ($20 / $22) SOLDSU 6/21 GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV OUT W/ CHE APACHE ($36)

MO 6/22 GREGORY ALAN ISAKOV W/ CHE APACHE (36) THE CAROLINA THEATER (DURHAM) WE 4/15 ANGEL OLSEN W/MADI DIAZ ($32.50/$35)

NC MUSEUM OF ART (RAL) TU 4/21 BIG BAD VOODOO DADDY/

JAKE SHIMABUKURO

TH 4/30

BEN GIBBARD ($32.70+)

DPAC (DURHAM)

TH 8/27* CODY KO & NOEL MILLER

(OF ALABAMA SHAKES)

TINY MEAT GANG - GLOBAL DOMINATION ($24.50+) *rescheduled from april FLETCHER HALL (RAL)

SA 6/6 CHATHAM COUNTY LINE

TH 5/14 BRUCE COCKBURN ($37-$50)

SU 4/26 BRITTANY HOWARD W/ NÜ MANGOS ($35-$60)

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

D OW N T H E ROA D *

*Be on the lookout for these big names coming through the Triangle

Michael Bublé performs at PNC Arena on Friday, March 20.

Mar. 12 Billie Eilish PNC Arena, 7:30 p.m., SOLD OUT Mar. 13 Omarion, Bow Wow, Ashanti, Ying Yang Twins, Lloyd, Sammie, Pretty Ricky, Soulja Boy PNC Arena, 8 p.m., $60+ Mar. 20 Michael Bublé PNC Arena, 8 p.m., $65+ Mar. 21 Best Coast Cat’s Cradle, 8 p.m., $25–$27 Mar. 27 Soccer Mommy Cat’s Cradle, 8 p.m., $18–$20 Mar. 30 Mandy Moore DPAC, 8 p.m., $30+ Apr. 2 Vagabon Cat’s Cradle, 8 p.m., $14–$16 Apr. 15 Angel Olsen Carolina Theatre, 8 p.m., $31+

Apr. 18 Jimmy Buffett, The Coral Reefer Band Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 8 p.m., $82+ Apr. 22 Lake Street Dive DPAC, 7:30 p.m., $35+ May 12 JoJo Cat’s Cradle, 8 p.m., $30+ May 24 Ozuna PNC Arena, 8 p.m., $40+ Jun. 2 Local Natives Red Hat Amphitheatre, 6:30 p.m., $25+ Jun. 2 The Lumineers Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7 p.m., $35+ Jun. 19 Nickleback Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 6:30 p.m., $25+

PHOTO BY EVAAN KHERAJ

Jun. 20 The Doobie Brothers Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7:30 p.m., $30+

Aug. 8 Chris Stapleton Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7 p.m., $40+

Jun. 23 Alanis Morissette Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7 p.m., $55+

Aug. 10 Journey, The Pretenders Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7 p.m., $35+

Jul. 4 The Black Crowes Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 8 p.m., $29+

Aug. 25 Goo Goo Dolls Red Hat Amphitheatre, 6:30 p.m., $25+

Jul. 10 Thomas Rhett Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7:30 p.m., $44+ Jul. 11 Tedeschi Trucks Band Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 6:30 p.m., $45+ Jul. 24 Dave Matthews Band Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7:30 p.m. $46+ Aug. 1 Harry Styles PNC Arena, 8 p.m., $36+

Aug. 30 The Black Keys Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7 p.m., $61+

~~

Sep. 9 KISS Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7:30 p.m., $40+ Sep. 12 Maroon 5, Meghan Trainor Walnut Creek Amphitheatre, 7 p.m., $50+ Sep. 18 Bikini Kill Cat’s Cradle, 7 p.m., SOLD OUT

Looking for Answers?

Follow @INDYWeek on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for breaking news.

KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

23

M U SIC CA L E N DA R

MARCH 11– MARCH 18

FRIDAY, MARCH 13

Friendship From the city of brotherly love comes Friendship, whose latest offering Dreamin’ is a hazy meditation on the beauty and evil of human nature. On this record, Friendship departs from its previous use of electronic drum programming for a more traditional alt-country sound while maintaining its friendly, ambient appeal. Dan Wriggins’ songwriting matches the somber wit of Stephin Merritt with the fragile simplicity of Wayne Coyne. Durham’s prolific songwriter Al Riggs will open, as will Karly Hartzman from Asheville’s Wednesday. —Sam Haw The Pinhook, Durham 7 p.m., $10–$12

FRIDAY, MARCH 13

Madison McFerrin

pick FRIDAY, MARCH 13

Lee Fields & The Expressions

Lee Fields & The Expressions

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

The funk and soul singer Lee Fields is forever linked to Daptone Records stars Charles Bradley and Sharon Jones, whose halted careers he helped shepherd into the 2000s, and with whom he shared the distinction (or burden) of near-constant comparisons to James Brown. Fields was nicknamed “Little J.B.” early in his 50-year career and provided vocals for a recent Brown biopic, while Bradley was often coined “James Brown, Jr.” and Jones “The Female James Brown.” It’s heartbreaking yet fitting that Fields now carries the torch for this whole lineage of hyper-magnetic, sweat-dripping, soul-screaming legends. The Wilson native does it with style, a tightly-coiled ball of energy with a timelessly tough, echoey voice. On this tour, he showcases his 2019 album It Rains Love. Durty Dub’s Tribute to Charley Pride, with Phil Cook, open the show. —Josephine McRobbie Motorco Music Hall, Durham 9 p.m., $20–$30

24

March 11, 2020

INDYweek.com

Brooklyn’s Madison McFerrin has both the heritage (her father is the Grammy-winning vocalist Bobby McFerrin of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” fame) and celebrity endorsements (Questlove praised her unique “soul-apella” style) to demand attention.

She’s also got the goods to back it up, layering her alluring voice against bare backdrops of handclaps and ethereal soundscapes crafted on a laptop.

Alternately personal and political, the intoxicating results blur the lines between pop, soul, electronica, and jazz. DJ VSPRTN spins before and after.

—Spencer Griffith NorthStar Church of the Arts, Durham 7 p.m., $15

FRIDAY, MARCH 13

The Millennium Tour Catch Ashanti alongside a whole host of other R&B and hip-hop acts that preach both how to “Get Low” (Ying Yang Twins) and “Crank That” (Soulja Boy). Former Face Off recording buddies Omarion and Bow Wow are headlining this tour, so expect a fanfare of screaming ladies pumped for Pretty Ricky, Lloyd, and Sammie. —Eric Tullis PNC Arena, Raleigh 8 p.m., $60+

M U SIC CA L E N DA R

review

SATURDAY, MARCH 14

Kooley High The story of Kooley High’s splintering and reconciling could very well be summed up on a song from Charlie Smarts’ latest solo album, We Had a Good Thing Going.

“Switch Siders” addresses his feelings of isolation amidst operating within a band.

Co-emcee Tab-One, meanwhile, has his hands full with kids and a new album, Balancing Act, which drops later this month. When the group is in full force, however, none of their singular agendas matter: Their commitment to each other shines through. Also with Nance, Reuben Vincent, and LestheGenius. —Eric Tullis Kings, Raleigh 9 p.m., $14–$18

SUNDAY, MARCH 15

Country Soul Songbook Kamara Thomas’s new Country Soul Songbook initiative is a quarterly, Durhamfocused concert-documentary-potluck series that highlights the ways that country, soul, and Americana share a history of a “multi-race/multi-identiy American soup.”

At this rendition, an all-star roster of local roots musicians—Rissi Palmer, Libby Rodenough of Mipso, Kym Register of Loamlands, Phil Cook, and Thomas—come together for a Sunday songbook afternoon. —Sarah Edwards NorthStar Church of the Arts, Durham 2–6 p.m., $15+

Thu. 3/12 Blues Beatles Blue Note Grill, 8 p.m. $20-$25.

Bluewreck, Poinsettia, Art Critic Ruby Deluxe, 8 p.m. $8.

Brandy And The Butcher, Super City The Cave Tavern, 9 p.m. $5 suggested.

Celtic Woman Memorial Auditorium, 7:30 p.m. $39+.

Kooley High performs at Kings on Saturday, March 14.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS

Wed. 3/11 Cygnus X-2 Pour House Music Hall, 8 p.m. $10.

Destroyer, Nap Eyes Cat’s Cradle, 8 p.m. $20-$23.

North Carolina Street Heat Pour House Music Hall, 1 p.m.

The Other Band Nightlight, 8:30 p.m. $10.

DJ Jess K: Lilith Flair Ruby Deluxe, 9 p.m. $5.

Slump, Zaat, Seanmustache, B.L.E.W. The Night Rider, 7 p.m.

Donation suggested.

Governance, CEVRA, Tescon Pol Neptunes Parlour, 10 p.m. $10.

The Veldt, Micah Gaugh Slim’s Downtown, 9 p.m. $5.

Heart Bones, Cold Cream Cat’s Cradle Back Room, 8 p.m. $10-$12.

Eight Bit Disaster, StrangeLady, Steamroom Etiquette, Rookie of the Year Pour House Music Hall, 9 p.m. $5.

Billie Eilish PNC Arena, 7:30 p.m. Sold out.

Hoofprint, Snow Days, Long Relief Slim’s Downtown, 9 p.m. $5.

King Flower Arcana, 8:45 p.m.

Richie Nelson, Dirty White, Davaun, Exhale, Icey, Blakk Trell, Jooselord Local 506, 7:45 p.m. $5.

HHH1/2

Matt Southern’s Temporary Paradise

BY WILL ATKINSON music@indyweek.com

Valleys in bloom, stars falling into the sea, poppies and lovers and crows—such pastoral visions abound in Ural Mt. Valley, the new EP that Raleigh musician Matt Southern will celebrate with a free release show at The Pour House on Saturday afternoon.

Even its title—which refers to the mountain range that cuts through the heart of Russia, a blurry boundary between Europe and Asia— suggests a faraway, perhaps Edenic refuge in the tundra.

Over five tracks, Southern crafts this mood with crisp yet languorous arrangements beneath dreamlike narrations. Double-tracked acoustic guitars pick and strum around the edges of the mix, brightening the landscape, while low distortion occasionally threatens to well up from below, as it does on the centerpiece, “Rosa,” which hints at a darkness behind the paradise: “The moon will lay you bare, and the crows will pick you clean,” Southern warns.

But for the most part, Ural Mt. Valley is about finding a brief reprieve from harsh reality. “Older Together” is a tender country ballad dedicated to growing old with a partner, while “Million Little Wheels,” with its droning, John Fahey-style fingerpicking and Laurel Canyon harmonies, gives us permission to feel a little lost: “It’s all right to live without an answer,” Southern sings. “There’s plenty of light to go around.”

There is hope in the valley, but it’s born from exhaustion, and sometimes, the best thing you can do is to “turn out the lights and call it a day.” Southern acknowledges that these respites may be temporary, even illusory. But that doesn’t stop them from being necessary.

Matt Southern: Ural Mt. Valley [Potluck Foundation; Feb. 28] Release show: Saturday, Mar. 14, 3 p.m., The Pour House

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Dee White Carolina Theatre, 8 p.m. $35-$55.

KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

25

M U SIC CA L E N DA R MONDAY, MARCH 16

Meklit In her 2015 TED Talk, the songwriter and scholar Meklit Hadero uses bird calls, the clanking of cooking pots, John Cage, and the melodic language of Amharic to highlight what she calls “the unexpected beauty of everyday sounds.” While mapping her own “sonic lineage” of the everyday, she’s developed a style that draws on Ethio-jazz and soul, as well as experimental and collage recordings. —Josephine McRobbie UNC’s Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill 7:30 p.m., $27

Sarah Siskind Wake Forest Listening Room, 7 p.m. $12.

Meklit performs at UNC’s Memorial Hall on Monday, March 16.

Diana Rein Nash Street Tavern, 8 p.m.

DJ Yve Ruby Deluxe, 10 p.m.

Song Traveler’s Writer’s Night: Barry Gray, Karyn Oliver, Wyatt Easterling Cat’s Cradle Back Room, 7 p.m. $20.

Fireside Collective, Barefoot Manner Pour House Music Hall, 9 p.m. $8-$12.

Suburban Living, Korine Neptunes Parlour, 10 p.m. $10.

XOXOK, Janelle Symone Kings, 9 p.m. $10-$12.

Fri. 3/13 Belcea Quartet: Beethoven Cycle Duke Campus: Baldwin Auditorium, 8 p.m. $36-$42.

Car Crash Star, Stone Eye, Darth Kannabyss Schoolkids Records Raleigh, 7 p.m.

Deau Eyes, Noah Cross, Maneka, Andrew Wilco’s American Band Slim’s Downtown, 8 p.m. $5.

DJ PlayPlay, DJ Shahzad The Pinhook, 10:30 p.m. $5.

26

March 11, 2020

Friendship, Al Riggs The Pinhook, 7 p.m. $10-$12.

Icarus Airline, The Pseudo Cowboys, Harbors The Cave Tavern, 9 p.m. $5 suggested.

Ty Lake, Cenote, Subterrene, 80 LB. Test The Night Rider, 7:30 p.m.

Donation suggested.

PHOTO BY JOHN NILSEN

Madison McFerrin NorthStar Church of the Arts, 8 p.m. $15.

Eric Williams and Liam Trawick Quintet Sharp Nine Gallery, 8 p.m. $15.

Millie, Floor Model Lump, 8 p.m.

YATRA, Lair, Doomsday Profit Local 506, 9 p.m. $8.

Momma Molasses Wake Forest Listening Room, 7 p.m.

North Carolina Symphony Friday Favorites: An American in Paris Meymandi Concert Hall, 12 p.m. $33.

Sat. 3/14 2nd Annual Bull City Lip Sync Battle Motorco Music Hall, 7 p.m. Vivica C. Coxx and Gemynii. $5-$81.

Harm, Frontside, Mere, Paperback, Wrigleyville Local 506, 7:30 p.m. $10.

John Jorgenson Bluegrass Band The ArtsCenter, 8 p.m. $24.

Kooley High, Nance, Reuben Vincent, Les The Genius Kings, 9 p.m. $14-$18.

Little River Creek Police, The Wigg Report, Conner Frost The Cave Tavern, 9 p.m. $5 suggested.

Omarion, Bow Wow, Ashanti, Ying Yang Twins, Lloyd, Sammie, Pretty Ricky, Soulja Boy PNC Arena, 8 p.m. $70+.

Belcea Quartet: Beethoven Cycle Duke Campus: Baldwin Auditorium, 8 p.m. $36-$42.

Lee Fields & The Expressions, Durty Dub’s Tribute to Charley Pride Motorco Music Hall, 9 p.m. $20-$30.

Rapsody Lincoln Theatre, 9 p.m. $23-$69.

Carouse 9 Nightlight, 9:30 p.m. $5.

The Mantras, April B., The Cool Pour House Music Hall, 9 p.m. $12-$15.

Salt Palace, Majjin Boo, Rafael Green Nightlight, 9 p.m. $8.

DJ Luxe Posh Ruby Deluxe, 10 p.m. $5.

Matt Southern Pour House Music Hall, 3 p.m.

Cory Luetjen, The Traveling Blues Band Blue Note Grill, 9 p.m.

Shoot To Thrill The Ritz, 7 p.m. $10.

DJ Sand Pact: Queer Kink Play Party The Night Rider, 9 p.m. $10-$15.

Monsters of Maywood: AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, Judas Priest, Megadeth Tribute The Maywood, 8 p.m.

Leahy The ArtsCenter, 8 p.m. $34.

The Mauskovic Dance Band, Dreamless Kings, 9 p.m. $12-$15.

INDYweek.com

Songs From The Road Band, Big Fat Gap Cat’s Cradle Back Room, 8:30 p.m. $12-$15.

Brian Fallon, The Howling Weather, Justin Townes Earl, The Worriers Lincoln Theatre, 7:30 p.m. $30.

Slippery When Wet The Ritz, 7:30 p.m. $5-$10.

Killswitch Engage, August Burns Red The Ritz, 7:30 p.m. $37.

Swansgate, The Phacts, Planet Legato Slim’s Downtown, 9 p.m. $5.

The Moneys, Year of October The Cave Tavern, 9 p.m. $5 suggested.

Christian Tamburr, Ariel Pocock, Keith Ganz Sharp Nine Gallery, 7 p.m. & 9 p.m. $20.

Soul Miners Union Pour House Music Hall, 5 p.m.

Uniform, The Body The Pinhook, 9 p.m.

Amy Grant Carolina Theatre, 8 p.m. $60-$75.

Radical Face, Axel Flovent Cat’s Cradle, 8 p.m. $25-$28.

Whitney Fenimore Pour House Music Hall, 7 p.m.

Versus, Sunny Slopes Cat’s Cradle Back Room, 9 p.m. $15.

Johnny White, The Elite Band Blue Note Grill, 8 p.m. $10.

Sun. 3/15 Awen Family Band, The North Country, Alo Ver Neptunes Parlour, 9 p.m. $10.

Belcea Quartet: Beethoven Cycle Duke Campus: Baldwin Auditorium, 7 p.m. $36-$42.

Call Me Karizma, Cyrus, MxRCUS ALEXIS, Sticky Arrow Cat’s Cradle Back Room, 7:30 p.m. $15-$18.

David Quick’s Jazz Combo Blue Note Grill, 5 p.m.

DM Rorshach, Hypnagogue, Greathumor Slim’s Downtown, 7 p.m. $5.

Downhill, Green Aisles, Condado The Night Rider, 8 p.m. Donation suggested.

Stranded Bandits, King Moody, Spaced Angel Kings, 8 p.m. $8-$10.

Mon. 3/16 Graduating Life, King Of Heck Cat’s Cradle Back Room, 7 p.m. $13-$15.

Shena Groger The Cave Tavern, 9 p.m. $5 suggested.

Meklit UNC Campus: Memorial Hall, 7:30 p.m. $27.

Tue. 3/17 Bambara, Black Surfer, Gray Young Cat’s Cradle Back Room, 8 p.m. $10$12.

Annie Blech, Lily & Horn Horse, Desert Secretary, Streak of Tigers Nightlight, 9:30 p.m. $8.

Clavicles Arcana, 8:30 p.m.

Duke Chorale Spring Tour Concert Baldwin Auditorium, 7:30 p.m.

Steve Hackett Carolina Theatre, 8 p.m. $50-$75.

Hippie Sabotage The Ritz, 8 p.m. $30.

Jazz Vespers Duke Campus: Duke Chapel, 7:30 p.m.

The Prof.Fuzz 63, Love Child, Lazarus Pit, and Ophelia The Cave Tavern, 9 p.m.

Wed. 3/18 Bilmuri, Embracer, Keyse Local 506, 7:30 p.m. $12$14.

Light Sound Arcana, 8 p.m.

Post Animal, Twen Motorco Music Hall, 8 p.m. $15-$17.

Propersleep, Come Clean, Lunchbox Hero Pour House Music Hall, 9 p.m. $7-$10.

Upward Dogs The Cave Tavern, 9 p.m. $5 suggested.

White Reaper, Young Guv, Buddy Crime Cat’s Cradle, 7:30 p.m. $15-$17.

KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

27

STAGE

Riggs (center) with members of the Marat/Sade ensemble

MARAT/SADE

Saturday, Mar. 14–Sunday, Mar. 29, 7:30 p.m. | $15–$18 | Durham Friends Meeting, Durham

PHOTO COURTESY OF BARE THEATRE

Glutton for Punishment A prolific Durham songwriter embarks on a musical theater adventure with the Marquis de Sade

BY BYRON WOODS arts@indyweek.com

F

or a musician who’s already plumbed humanity through a dizzying array of lenses, from tardigrades and silver bears to Dracula by way of Hegel, perhaps it was inevitable that al Riggs (who uses a lowercase “a” in their performance name) would eventually wind up writing music for the Marquis de Sade.

Now, thanks to a licensing hiccup that Bare Theatre encountered while Riggs was serendipitously working on an album of Stephen Sondheim covers, that moment has come.

The Marquis de Sade, an 18th-century writer and mind-games grandmaster whose extreme sexual proclivities inspired the word “sadism,” was immortalized in the notorious play Marat/Sade. Bare Theatre, which is producing the play at a Quaker meeting house in Durham March 14–29, discovered that Richard Peaslee’s original score cost far more to license and rent than playwright Peter Weiss’s script.

So director Dustin Britt called in Riggs to write new music, which would also clear the way for a considerably different production than the one originally produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1964.

“If I used that music, I was never going to be able to escape from that production,” Britt says. “I was going to be stuck.”

In Weiss’s text, Sade, who was imprisoned in a French asylum during the last decade of his life, persuades its administrators to let him direct his fellow inmates in a musical history play about the French Revolution, as a supposedly noble experiment in art therapy.

Too late, his true agenda of revenge stands revealed when his play inflicts psychological damage specifically tailored to each member of the cast.

Though Riggs is a prolific songwriter and a musical theater fan, they’d never writ28

March 11, 2020

INDYweek.com

ten music for others to perform. The theatrical assignment gave them a chance to flex their musical muscles in several new directions.

“I wanted to prove to myself—and to the phantom people who would care, and don’t exist—that I could write something other than guitar-based folk music and rock music,” Riggs says.

The temptation to take up Weiss’s work was reinforced by shortcomings Riggs found in the original score.

“Looking at it contextually, you’ve got an asylum filled with people with mental health issues,” Riggs says. “There’s absolutely no way in hell any of them would have been able to pull off those needlessly complex and obtuse previous arrangements. They’re almost Zappa-esque.”

Though they’d seen the film version years before, Riggs made it a point not to consult the original score—“not even to check if I was ripping anything off”—while setting Adrian Mitchell’s lyrics to new music.

“I only had the physical script in front of me; I just wanted this to be a very pure thing that totally came from the words first,” Riggs says. “A lot of times, I was guided by the contextual mood of the scene, and I collaborated with Dustin Britt in figuring out the tone. And a lot of times, I was told to abandon the tone and mood and kind of create something in a bubble that would then inspire the mood of the actual scene.”

The influences in Riggs’s cycle range from vaudeville and Kurt Weill to East German church music and beyond; a song for the character Jacques Roux, a radical priest, has “dissonant chords, performed with the same kind of joy and energy as a tent revival,” Riggs says.

But they’re quick to credit three specific inspirations: the heavy, intricate guitar drones of Sunn O)))); obscure Scottish songwriter Ivor Cutler, whose sardonic satires Riggs calls “proto-Magnetic Fields;” and British songwriter Richard Dawson, whose 2017 album Peasant included a forbidding song called “Ogre.” Riggs and Britt both

thought of it when talking about what the show would sound like.

“The contrast between horror and celebration screamed Marat/Sade to me,” Britt says.

Still, writing the music was complicated by the fact that the band didn’t exist yet.

The actors, who were still being cast, would play the instruments and sing the songs.

As they worked through the score, Riggs feared an ensemble that “could only play ukuleles and guitars.”

That didn’t turn out to be the case, though the cast still makes for some unconventional orchestration. Simon Kaplan (Sade) plays the clarinet, while Natalie Sherwood (Marat) jams on cowbell.

Elena Montero Mulligan (Polpoch) plays piano, and music director Mark Werdel (Rossignol) plays guitar. Jessica Flemming (Kokol/Lavoisier) covers the trumpet, though it must be said that she and drummer Emily Levinstone (Cucurucu) both play ukulele.

Germôna Sharp has Riggs’s favorite instrument in the ensemble: a bible that her character, Roux, inexorably thumps as a percussion instrument.

Other cast members fill in on miscellaneous objects, from an empty instrument case to a bag of Bananagrams tiles—whatever Riggs had at hand. The hodgepodge instrumentation suits the music.

“What landed in my lap was a series of songs that sound like they come from completely different shows,” Britt says.

“The varieties of styles, timbres, tempos and influences—every song is a score unto itself.”

Gentle or loud, each note pushes matters toward the breaking point, as people imprisoned for years are finally given a chance to say—and act on—exactly what they’re thinking.

“When you open that door,” Britt says, “what do the floodwaters do?”

A dangerous question gets a musical answer in Durham this week. W

STAGE

SHALEIGH DANCE WORKS: THE IN-BETWEEN

Friday, Mar. 13–Sunday, Mar. 15, 8 p.m. | $15–$20 | The Fruit, Durham

Going ShaGa For Durham dance teacher and choreographer ShaLeigh Comerford, the personal is pedagogical

BY BRIAN HOWE | bhowe@indyweek.com

T

he contemporary choreographer ShaLeigh Comerford made quite a leap from her first big show, at the Greensboro Fringe Festival in 2005, to her second, two years later, at New York City’s Judson Memorial Church, a historic flashpoint for dance theater.

“I decided to apply for Judson Church and somehow got it, which was beyond me, because I didn’t have a company, I didn’t have money,” Comerford says. At the urging of her mentor, Tere O’Connor, she started frantically roping in dance and theater artists she knew, which included the late playwright and actor Richard Kirkwood.

The resultant piece, Dedicated to [ ] because of [ ] (and vice versa), explored gender and violence through the lens of pop culture and politics. Its warm reception in New York opened doors for the new company called ShaLeigh Dance Works, which has made its home in Durham since 2014; Dedicated to served as its major local introduction at the 2015 American Dance Festival.

Seven works later, Comerford is established as a dance teacher whose “ShaGa” style is her somatic twist on Ohad Naharin’s Gaga dance vocabulary, and ShaLeigh Dance Works is premiering The In-Between at The Fruit this weekend. Like much of Comerford’s prior work, it combines a broad social inquiry—into the “complexity of identity, feminism, race, and queerness as the embodiment of what it means to be human”—with emotional movement and multimedia staging. We recently chatted with Comerford about the influence of theater upon her dance and the challenges of making independent work in Durham.

INDY: To someone who’d never seen it, how would you describe the ShaLeigh Dance Works aesthetic? What’s its tradition, and what does it value?

SHALEIGH COMERFORD: Being socially conscious with the thematic material that I choose is really important to me. We’re very interested in underserved and suppressed populations, so that’s always a part of either our engagement work or our thematic work inside the show.

As for movement, sometimes people think that we’re modern dance, but we’re really dance theater, and the movement that we do comes from a very personal and engaged place. We’re not the kind of company where I am just going to go into a residency and come back and ask the dancers to do it how I do it.

I love diversity on stage. I like different body types. I like for people to feel like they have a platform for who

ShaLeigh Dance Works: The In-Between

PHOTO BY SHALEIGH COMERFORD

they are, rather than be just a part of my vision. So there’s usually layered stories within any one inquiry. I think that will reach more people, and that is important to me; I do make work with my audience in mind.

When I was really little, I started acting, so theater will always be a part of me. I was working with [playwright] Richard Kirkwood in the first several pieces I ever created, and that aesthetic is still present in my work today. Unfortunately, the only reason I’m not working with Richard anymore is he passed away a year and a half ago, which was devastating, but I can still feel him with us. But text was a big part of my work, and now, with my movers, it is a big part of how we create. We do a lot of writing, a lot of talking, even if it doesn’t always make it into the final piece.

I don’t need to tell you that making independent dance in Durham is challenging. You seem to do better than many in consistently staging work and getting people there to see it. Can you tell me about how you build that kind of consistent community around your work?

Well, I gave up sleeping. [laughs] I drink more coffee and wine than ever before.

I can’t say that it’s easy by any stretch of the imagination.

I mean, we’re essentially creating work in an economy that doesn’t support artists beyond entertainment value. One of the things that keeps me going is, I’m incredibly in love with my dancers, and I want them to be valued as much off stage as they are on stage. I hope I succeed, but even if I don’t, maybe I carve a path for that to happen one day, and that would feel like a major success to me.

But I look at all of this very much like participating in the dialogue of the value of the arts, the value of our dancers, and wanting to give them a real revenue stream, a real sense of worth. I think that we started doing that

by showing more of our behind-the-scenes process [at shaleighdanceworks.com/blog]. I thought that would help people see what goes into self-producing, what goes into building a team.

Fortunately, we’ve just had a lot of support surrounding us, and that has helped keep me going in the moments that I just thought I couldn’t go anymore. But I often have to ask myself the singular question, “Could you not do this?” Because it is that hard. Until I answer, “OK, yes, I cannot do this,” I’m going to keep going.

It feels so important to me to participate in a larger dialogue about dance because, as dancers, we’re not supposed to think about or talk about money. It’s kind of this hidden, secret thing. Yeah, we would do it without getting paid, because that’s how much we love it. But I think that if we can bring the creativity that we put on stage to our finances, then maybe something palpable can happen for the better.

How does The In-Between build on your prior works?

I’m completely excited about the composers that we’re working with. The cool thing about this particular work, bringing in [DJ duo] Sand Pact, and also bringing Stephanie Sevilla for costumes, it’s been incredible to be bouncing off of collaborators that have influenced the direction of the work. That’s something that I’ve been hungry for for a long time. I’m excited about a kind of clearer aesthetic that can emerge from those kinds of relationships, because we definitely took a risk: This show is more vignette-ish than anything I’ve ever made before, and I feel that the music and the costuming help enhance a through line. In terms of Jeremy Kumin’s lighting design, too, it feels a bit more like a unified front, as opposed to separate parts coming together. W KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

29

C U LT U R E CA L E N DA R

MARCH 11– MARCH 18

SUBMIT! Submit your event details at indyweek.com/submit#cals by 5 p.m.

Wednesday for the following week’s issue. QUESTIONS? spequeno@indyweek.com

Slow Money NC Funds to Farms Gathering Mon., Mar. 16, 6 p.m. Chelsea Theater, Chapel Hill.

Sorcerer $7. Wed., Mar. 18, 7 p.m. Carolina Theatre, Durham.

The Spook Who Sat By The Door Thu., Mar. 12, 8 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.

Steamboat Bill Jr. $10.

Sun., Mar. 15, 2 p.m. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh.

supervillain Harley Quinn.

Rated R. Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island—The twisted fantasies offered by a remote tropical resort slowly twist into nightmares—who knew? Lucy Hale stars.

Rated PG-13.

Brahms: The Boy II—Katie Holmes stars in this sequel to The Boy; in this film, a

young boy crafts an unsettling friendship with a doll named Brahms. PG-13.

Jr. plays the eccentric veterinarian in this fantasy action reprisal. Rated PG.

The Call of the Wild— Harrison Ford shares the screen with a CGI Great Bernard, in this adaptation of the classic Jack London adventure novel.

Rated PG.

½ Downhill— A bleak comedy from a talented team, Downhill is a real conundrum, with some things done very well and others completely botched. Rated R.

Dolittle—Robert Downey

Emma—Jane Austen’s regency romance Emma

Toklomati Tue. & Thu. 2:45 p.m. $10. Mar. 10-12. Chelsea Theater, Chapel Hill.

Still from Look & See

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE FILMMAKERS

film

MONDAY, MARCH 16

Opening

Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry

Bloodshot— A marine is murdered, resurrected by a team of scientists, and made into a biotech killing machine. Rated PG-13.

In 1965, the environmental activist Wendell Berry moved back home to Port Royal, a small farming community in Henry County, Kentucky. There, he began to compose an eloquent, anti-capitalist body of work devoted to love of, and responsibility for, the land. A tribute to Berry and his birthplace, the documentary Look & See follows several residents of Henry County across four seasons as they navigate the agrarian struggles that Berry has written about for decades. This Slow Money NC “Fund to Farms” event starts with a 6 p.m. mingle with refreshments at Joe Van Gogh before moving to the adjacent theater for a 6:30 p.m. screening and presentation by area farmers.

—Sarah Edwards Chelsea Theater, Chapel Hill 6–9 p.m., $10

Special Showings The Apology Tue., Mar. 17, 7 p.m. Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall, Durham.

Bridesmaids Fri. 7 p.m. & Sat. 9 p.m. $15. Mar. 13-14. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

Chef Vivian Howard: Somewhere South $16.

Sun., Mar. 15, 4:30 p.m.

Carolina Theatre, Durham.

The Departed $15. Tue., Mar. 17, 7 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

FantasticRealm Film Series See full schedule online. $5. Mar. 13-15.

Carolina Theatre, Durham.

A Fistful of Dollars $7.

Sat., Mar. 14, 1:45 p.m.

Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

The Flintstones $12. Sat., Mar. 14, 11 a.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

Frankenhooker $7. Wed., Mar. 18, 9 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

Friday the 13th $8. Fri., Mar. 13, 9:30 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

The Grandmaster Mon., Mar. 16, 7 p.m. Varsity Theatre, Chapel Hill.

Labyrinth, Beetlejuice $10. Fri., Mar. 13, 7 p.m.

Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Lost in Translation $6.

Wed., Mar. 18, 7 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

The Nutty Professor $7.

Wed., Mar. 18, 7 p.m.

Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

The Postman Always Rings Twice 7 p.m. & 9:30 p.m. $6. Sat., Mar. 14, The Cary Theater, Cary.

True Grit $5. Mon., Mar. 16, 7 p.m. Rialto Theatre, Raleigh.

REEL Israel 2020 See full schedule online. $10.

Mar. 8-12. Chelsea Theater, Chapel Hill.

Royal Opera House: La Bohème $15. Sun., Mar. 15, 1 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

The Hunt—This controversial satire centers on a group of “deplorables” (aka Republicans) who are rounded up and hunted for sport. Rated R. I Still Believe—The song “I Still Believe” shot the Christian musician Jeremy Camp to fame, although its subject was a sad one—resilience and trust, following the cancer diagnosis of his wife. I Still Believe is based on their love story. Rated PG. Wendy—A fantasy film spinoff of the classic Peter Pan story. Rated PG-13.

Now Playing The INDY uses a five-star rating scale. Unstarred films have not been reviewed by our writers.

Royal Opera House: La Bohéme $15. Sun., Mar. 15, 2 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

1917—Epic war drama about two soldiers tasked with sending a message that could save 1,600 soldiers. Rated R.

Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise $8. Sun., Mar. 15, 6 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

Bad Boys for Life—Buddy cop comedy about a midlife crisis. Produced by Will Smith. Rated R. Birds of Prey—Irreverent superhero flick about the

A still from The Green Book: Guide to Freedom PHOTO COURTESY THE GREEN BOOK: GUIDE TO FREEDOM / LAKE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY

SATURDAY, MARCH 14

The Green Book: Guide to Freedom One of the more curious byproducts of segregation in America was the Negro Motorist Green Book, a directory of black-owned establishments published between 1936 and 1966 by a New York City postal carrier named Victor Hugo Green. During the middle of the twentieth century, at the height of Jim Crow, the Green Book was an invaluable guide for an emerging middle-class of African American travelers who wanted to avoid racial discrimination while traveling. The travel guide was discovered by the American mainstream with the Oscar-winning 2018 film, The Green Book, and its re-emergence has spurred new scholarship.

This week, the Hayti Heritage Center hosts a screening of the Smithsonian Channel documentary, The Green Book: Guide To Freedom. The Hayti event—in tandem with the state’s department of cultural resources—will also feature a standing exhibit and an 8 p.m. musical performance, “The Chitlin’ Circuit Revue,” with The Hamiltones, a Grammy-nominated vocal group that hails from North Carolina; The Hamiltones will be joined by award-winning Durham songstress Mavis Swan Poole on the Hayti stage.

—Thomasi McDonald Hayti Heritage Center, Durham 3 p.m., FREE

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR: INDYWEEK.COM 30

March 11, 2020

INDYweek.com

C U LT U R E CA L E N DA R 3/13

LEAHY 3/14 3/14 3/14

F I L M C O N T.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18

has been translated to screen many times—but never before by stylish luminary Autumn de Wilde. Rated PG. Frozen 2— In search of the origins of her powers, Elsa and her sister Anna strike out beyond their frosty homeland. Rated PG.  The Gentleman—Guy Ritchie, the undisputed kingpin of the British gangster film, is back with a high-energy action-comedy. Rated PG-13. —Glenn McDonald

3/19 3/20

Sex Ed Storytelling

FAMILY-FRIENDLY TRANSACTORS IMPROV NO SHAME THEATRE CARRBORO JOHN JORGENSON BLUEGRASS BAND POPUP CHORUS (Sinead O’Connor, U2, Van Morrison) DOM FLEMONS WITH CHRIS FRISINA

Get tickets at artscenterlive.org

Follow us: @artscenterlive • 300-G East Main St., Carrboro, NC

The training and advocacy group SHIFT NC is working hard to reduce the horror stories from sex education classes in North Carolina schools. But, after a history of teaching abstinence-only until (heterosexual) marriage with little acknowledgment of LGBTQ students— alongside an ongoing absence of standards uniformly applied across the state—the field reports from sex-ed trainers, teachers, and students included in this storytelling showcase range from hilarious to harrowing. This time, comedian Lauren Faber, who taught sex education while doing international development work abroad, shares the Pinhook stage with Stormie Daie, Jang Yoon, Don Shiffrin, Jessica Blanpied, and Lisa Garland in a sextet of funny and frank real-life stories; proceeds go to SHIFT NC. —Byron Woods

stage

Greed—Satirical film about the crumbling empire of a rag-trade billionaire. Rated R.  The Invisible Man—A horror movie for our time; The Invisible Man redirects classic thriller tropes toward contemporary anxieties about amoral technology companies, anonymous online predators, gaslighting narcissist men in power, and sudden gun violence. Rated R. Jojo Rabbit—Black comedy about a German boy who discovers that his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in the attic. Rated PG-13.

The Pinhook, Durham 7:30 p.m., $12

3.11 3.14 3.15 3.17 3.19

Grant Llewellyn on Gershwin’s An American in Paris 7pm The Scrumptious Plate Cookbook Club (Inaugural Meeting, Everyone Welcome!) 2pm Jan Eliasberg Hannah's War 2pm A NC BOOK FESTIVAL and QUAIL RIDGE BOOKS ARTS & LECTURE SERIES EVENT James McBride Deacon King Kong 7pm A NC BOOK FESTIVAL and QUAIL RIDGE BOOKS ARTS & LECTURE SERIES EVENT Valeria Luiselli Lost Children Archive 7pm at NCSU’s Hunt Library

www.quailridgebooks.com • 919.828.1588 • North Hills 4209-100 Lassiter Mill Road, Raleigh, NC 27609 CHECK OUT OUR PODCAST: BOOKIN’ w/Jason Jefferies

Jumanji: The Next Level—This adventure comedy picks up where the 1995 flick left off. Rated PG-13. ½ Just Mercy—Based on the book of the same name, this film tells the story of Bryan Stevenson, a young lawyer defending a client who is unjustly on death row. Rated PG-13.

Onward—Pixar’s latest feature film takes on the tale of two elvish teen brothers living in a suburban fantasy. Rated PG  Parasite—This Oscar-winning social satire from filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho is crammed with dark twists and intricate metaphors. Rated R. —Sarah Edwards The Photograph—Issa Rae plays the estranged daughter of a famous photographer whose life is turned upside-down by a handsome journalist, played by LaKeith Stanfield, who wants to tell its story. Rated PG-13.

Sonic the Hedgehog—Sega’s video game mascot hits the silver screen, now with less-scary teeth and legs after fan outcry over its trailer. Rated PG.  Uncut Gems— Loud and brash, with extreme close-ups and a discordant score ratcheting up the unease, this Safdie brothers flick stars Adam Sandler as a jeweler who places a high-stakes bet.

Rated R. —Neil Morris The Way Back—Ben Affleck plays a widowed basketball all-star looking for a second chance. Rated R.

Opening Jeff Allen Comedy. $25.

Sun., Mar. 15, 5 p.m.

Raleigh Improv, Raleigh.

Blood Done Sign My Name Play. $15. Sun., Mar. 15, 3 p.m. St. Matthews Episcopal Church, Hillsborough.

Bud, not Buddy Play.

Mar. 13-29. Kennedy Theatre, Raleigh.

Comedy In A Cave: Michelle Maclay, Brent Blakeny, Shane Smith, Andrew Gleason, Joanne Rutter $5 donation suggested. Wed., Mar. 18, 7 p.m. The Cave Tavern, Chapel Hill.

Creativity Out Of Context: Let’s Get Freaky Fri., Mar. 13, 8 p.m. The Maywood, Raleigh.

Trae Crowder, Drew Morgan, Corey Ryan Forrester Comedy.

Showtimes: Thu.: 8 p.m. Fri. & Sat.: 7:30 p.m. & 10 p.m. $25-50.

Mar. 12-14. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh.

Eyes Up Here Comedy. $5.

Thu., Mar. 12, 8:30 p.m.

The Pinhook, Durham.

Family-Friendly Transactors Improv: March Madness Comedy. $10. Sat., Mar. 14, 6 p.m.

The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

Spring Works by Cary Ballet Company 2 p.m. & 7 p.m. showtimes. $13$20. Sat., Mar. 14, Cary Arts Center, Cary.

GCA Stand-Up 130 Graduation Showcase Comedy. $10. Wed., Mar. 11, 8 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh.

The Thunderstone Variety Show Sat., Mar. 14, 8 p.m.

Arcana, Durham.

Julius Caesar Play.

Showtimes: Mar. 4-7, 10-13, 17-21: 7:30 p.m.

Mar. 8, 15 and 22: 2 p.m.

Mar. 14: 2 p.m. & 7:30 p.m. $15-$64. Through Mar. 22, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chapel Hill.

Freaky Friday The Musical Showtimes: March 13-14, 20-21, 27-28: 8 p.m., March 15, 22, 29: 3 p.m. $15-$22. Mar. 13-29.

North Raleigh Arts & Creative Theatre, Raleigh.

Sheryl Underwood Comedy. Showtimes: Fri. 7 p.m. & 9:15 p.m. Sat. 6:30 p.m. & 9 p.m. $27+. Mar. 13-14. Raleigh Improv, Raleigh.

Harlem Globetrotters Variety show. $23+. Sun., Mar. 15, 3 p.m. PNC Arena, Raleigh.

Ongoing

Marat/Sade Play.

Showtimes: March 14-15, 18, 20, 22, 25, 27-29: 7:30 p.m. $15-$18. Mar. 14-29. Durham Friends Meeting House, Durham.

ShaLeigh Dance Works: The In-Between Fri., Sat. & Sun. 8 p.m. $20.

Mar. 13-15. Durham Fruit Company, Durham.

The Snow White Variety Show Sat., Mar. 14, 2 p.m.

Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh.

Nick Cannon Variety show. $25+. Wed., Mar. 11, 8:30 p.m. PNC Arena, Raleigh.

Carolina Ballet: A Celebration of Female Choreographers Showtimes: Thu. & Fri.: 8 p.m. Sat.: 2 p.m. & 8 p.m. Sun.: 2 p.m. $37-93.

Through Mar. 22 Fletcher Opera Theater, Raleigh.

Deleted Scenes Comedy. $5. Wed., Mar. 11, 8 p.m. The People’s Improv Theater (PIT), Chapel Hill.

Les Misérables Musical.

Showtimes: Tue.-Thu.: 7:30 p.m. Fri.: 8 p.m. Sat.: 2 p.m. & 8 p.m. Sun.: 1 p.m. & 7 p.m. $40+.

Through Mar. 15. Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham.

Talk About Funny Comedy. $10. Wed., Mar. 11, 8 p.m. The People’s Improv Theater (PIT), Chapel Hill.

Venus in Fur Play.

Showtimes: Thu.: 7:30 p.m. Fri.: 7:30 p.m. & 10:30 p.m. Sat.: 8 p.m. $15. Mar. 5-14. Moonlight Stage Company, Raleigh.

Get your culture fix.

Follow @INDYWeek on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for breaking news.

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR: INDYWEEK.COM KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

31

C U LT U R E CA L E N DA R

etc.

Opening Back Burner: Paintings by Ben Bridgers Mar. 14-May 2. Craven Allen Gallery, Durham.

All is Possible: Mary Ann Scherr’s Legacy in Metal Jewelry and design.

Through Sep. 6. Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh.

Closing Reception: Meditative Obsessive Sat., Mar. 14. 4 p.m. Horse & Buggy Press and Friends, Durham.

Art in Translation: Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook Video and photography.

Through Jul. 26. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh.

Dance in the Galleries Part of Yayoi Kusama Exhibition. Sun., Mar. 15. 2 p.m. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill.

Art’s Work in the Age of Biotechnology Other exhibits at NC State Libraries and GES Center. Through Mar. 15.

Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh.

The Designs of Nature: Form, Matter, and the Making of Art in Early Modern Europe Lecture series. Showtimes: March 17, 19, 24 & 26, 5:30 p.m. Mar. 17-26. UNC Campus: Hanes Art Center, Chapel Hill.

Plant Sale Prints

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE LIVING ROOM DURHAM

SUNDAY, MARCH 15

Plant Sale Fundraiser Add this to your Sunday errands: a stop by The Living Room for a new houseplant. TLR, a new community space as cozy as its name suggests, is helmed by community-engaged filmmakers Kelly Creedon and Ligaiya Romero. Sunday’s plant sale benefits the NC Women’s Prison Book Project, a Durham-based, volunteer-run organization that provides books to incarcerated women across the state. Plants and plant-adjacent goods will be available on a sliding scale, and all proceeds go directly to the project. To donate books, check out the Facebook event page for NCWPBP. —Anna Cassell The Living Room Durhan, Durham Noon–4 p.m., FREE

Drawn Together: Dogs, Art, Inmates Pop-up.

Showtimes: Fri.: 5:30 p.m., Sat.: 10 a.m., Sun.: 12 p.m. Mar. 13-15.

FRANK’s Outreach Gallery, Chapel Hill.

The Miniature Show Mar. 13-Apr. 5. Galerie Pied-aTerre, Carrboro.

Opening Reception: Back Burner Sat., Mar. 14. 5 p.m. Craven Allen Gallery, Durham.

Opening Reception: Belonging by Sean T. Bailey Photography.

Fri., Mar. 13. 6 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

Opening Reception: Paradise of Pleasure by Mike Keaveney Fri., Mar. 13. 6 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

Opening: Duke MFA|EDA Thesis Exhibitions Mon., Mar. 16. 5 p.m. Power Plant Gallery, Durham.

John James Audubon: The Birds of America Ornithological engravings.

Through Dec. 31. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh.

The Bacchus Conservation Project: The Story of a Sculpture Focus exhibition. Through Sep. 27. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh.

Alun Be Solo exhibit. Through Apr. 25.

Artspace, Raleigh.

Cornelio Campos: My Roots Paintings. Through Mar. 12. Durham Arts Council, Durham.

Common Thread: Pete Sack, Alia El-Bermani Portraits. Through Apr. 4. The Mahler Fine Art, Raleigh.

Consensual Hallucination: Dara Morgenstern Through Mar. 20. Holy Mountain Printing, Durham.

A Creative Protest: MLK Comes to Durham Through Apr. 5. Museum of Durham History, Durham.

Ongoing

Cultures of the Sea: Art of the Ancient Americas Mixed media. Through May. 31. Nasher Museum of Art, Durham.

Josef Albers and Homage to the Square Paintings.

Through Aug. 30. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh.

Design By Time Group Show. Through May 17.

Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh.

All That Glitters: Spark and Dazzle from the Permanent Collection Costumes. Through May 17. Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh.

Domestic Demise: Elizabeth Alexander, Patty Carroll Group show.

Through Apr. 11. Artspace, Raleigh.

Front Burner: Highlights in Contemporary North Carolina Painting Through Jul. 26. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh.

Maintenance and Obsolescence: The Art Historians’ House Through May 10. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh.

The Future is Female Group show. Through Dec. 31. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham.

Many Moons Solo exhibit.

Through Mar. 28. Local Color Gallery, Raleigh.

Gifts of Earth and Intimacy Copper works.

Through Dec. 31. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham.

Eleanor Mills: Wildflowers of Crested Butte, Colorado Photography. Through Apr. 18. Duke Campus: Lilly Library, Durham.

Christopher Holt: Contemporary Frescoes/ Faith and Community Drawings and studies.

Through Jul. 26. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh.

Horse & Buggy and Friends: Satellite Parrish Street Gallery Group show. Through Apr. 1.

Horse & Buggy Press PopUp Shop, Durham.

In Front Of The Mirror Through Jul. 28. Triangle Community Foundation, Durham.

Instruments of Divination in Africa: Works from the Collection of Rhonda Morgan Wilkerson, Ph.D. Sculpture and objects used in divination.

Through Jun. 7. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill.

Jeana Eve Klein & Anne Hill: Meditative Obsessive Mixed media.

Through Mar. 14. Horse & Buggy Press and Friends, Durham.

Jane Kraike: Serigraphs Prints. Through Mar. 28.

Adam Cave Fine Art, Raleigh.

Yayoi Kusama: Open the Shape Called Love Solo exhibit. Through Apr. 12.

Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill.

Carroll Lassiter, Nerys Levy, John Parkinson Group show. Through May 2. FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill.

Law and Justice: The Supreme Court of North Carolina, 1819- 2019 Artifacts, images, texts.

Through May 31. NC Museum of History, Raleigh.

Chance Murray: Rubber Donkey Party Mixed media. Through Apr. 25.

Artspace, Raleigh.

North Carolina Artists Exhibition 2020 Group show. Through Jun. 14.

CAM Raleigh, Raleigh.

Ali Osborn: Macadam Drawings. Through Apr. 11.

Oneoneone, Chapel Hill.

Past Lives Mixed media.

Through Mar. 14. The Scrap Exchange, Durham.

Ebony G. Patterson: ... while the dew is still on the roses ... Mixed Media.

Through Jul. 12. Nasher Museum of Art, Durham.

Corey Pemberton: creature, comfort Paintings. Solo exhibition.

Through May. 10. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh.

Quiet Moments Photography. Through Mar. 22. Skylight Gallery, Hillsborough.

Radiance of Nature: Grace Li Wang Solo exhibit. Through Apr. 26.

The Community Church of Chapel Hill Unitarian Universalist, Chapel Hill.

The Right Angle, the Meander, & the Star Maps. Through Mar. 16.

Durham Arts Council, Durham.

Smoke Sculptures Photography. Sun., Through Mar. 22.

Skylight Gallery, Hillsborough.

Billy Strayhorn Solo exhibit. Through Mar. 22.

Hillsborough Gallery of Arts, Hillsborough.

Sarah Jane Tart: The Wonder Collection Paintings. Through Apr. 29. Urban Durham Realty, Durham.

Short Stories Mother Nature Taught Me Paintings. Through Mar. 29. NC Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh.

Think Big!—A Small Works Exhibition Group show. Through Mar. 16. 5 Points Gallery, Durham.

Cheryl Thurber: Documenting Gravel Springs, Mississippi, in the 1970s Photography.

Through Mar. 31. UNC Campus: Wilson Special Collections Library, Chapel Hill.

Toriawase: A Special Installation of Modern Japanese Art and Ceramics Through Apr. 12. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill.

JP Trostle: Quantum Flux Photography. Through Jul. 14. Durham Convention Center, Durham.

Urban Saga Group show.

Through Mar. 18. Litmus Gallery, Raleigh.

Louis Watts: Sequoyaland Drawings. Through Mar. 22. Horace Williams House, Chapel Hill.

Michael Weitzman: Natural Beauty Photography. Through Mar. 21. Herbert C Young Community Center, Cary.

Jeff Whetstone: Species Complex Photos. Through Mar. 14. Lump, Raleigh.

Wearing o’ the Green Oil paintings. Through Mar. 28. V L Rees Gallery, Raleigh.

William C. Wright: New Works Paintings. Through Mar. 22. Gallery C, Raleigh.

Sydney Steen: Fault Lines Vignettes. Through Oct. 25. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham.

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR: INDYWEEK.COM 32

March 11, 2020

INDYweek.com

C U LT U R E CA L E N DA R

page

Readings Navin A. Bapat Monsters to Destroy: Understanding the War On Terror. Thu., Mar. 12, 7 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Dennis Blair Warfare, Society, and the Military: American Military Operations Since the Cold War. Wed., Mar. 18, 2 p.m.

Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Adam Davidson, Harold Hill The Passion Economy: The New Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century (Davidson). Thu., Mar. 12, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Jan Eliasberg Hannah’s War. Sun., Mar. 15, 2 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Mary Floyd-Wilson Great Books Reading Group: Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Wed., Mar. 18, 10 a.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Lisa Gornick, Krista Bremer The Peacock Feast (Gornick). Sun., Mar. 15, 3 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Mark Katz Capturing Sound: How Technology has Changed Music. Tue., Mar. 17, 4:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Live from Death Row Crimson Letters: Voices From Death Row. Sun., Mar. 15, 4 p.m. So & So Books, Raleigh.

Grant Llewellyn, Joe A. Mobley An American in Paris (Gershwin). Wed., Mar. 11, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

James McBride Deacon King Kong. $33. Tue., Mar. 17, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Brian Platzer The Body Politic. Wed., Mar. 18, 7 p.m.

Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Tenora J. Simonez, Suzan Strader A Legacy of Hate (Simonez). Incident, Not Accident (Strader). Mon., Mar. 16, 7 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Lectures Book Discussion: Convenience Store Woman $30 Fri., Mar. 13, 6:30 p.m. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill.

Stuart Dischell, Michael Chitwood, Abigail Lee Thu., Mar. 12, 7 p.m. Regulator Bookshop, Durham.

The Future of Public Education in North Carolina Sun., Mar. 15, 3 p.m. East Chapel Hill High School, Chapel Hill.

Sex Ed Storytelling $12.

Wed., Mar. 18, 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.Periodic Tables: Pet Tabbies, Not Tigers $5. Tue., Mar. 10, 7 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

“All Things Must Pass”

by Thad Kellstadt PHOTO COURTESY OF THE

arts

CONCERN NEWSSTAND

FRIDAY, MARCH 13

Thad Kellstadt

BILL BURTON

Over the course of a long Wisconsin winter, the multi-disciplinary artist Thad Kellstadt began thumbing through books of antique collections. An interest in objects which have become more “muted or useless” yet more valuable spurred Kellstadt to begin drawing the antiques. The result is a collection of sketches, “Talking Sense to a Drunken Pyramid,” which will be on display for a full solo show at Attic 506, alongside Kellstadt’s performative video piece, “Act II,” which will play on the Acid Raid monitor.

While you’re there, be sure to peruse The Concern Newsstand’s curated stock of zines or poetry books and maybe take one home.

—Sarah Edwards

ATTORNEY AT LAW Un c o n t e s t e d Di vo rc e

SEPARATION AGREEMENTS Mu s i c Bu s i n eDIVORCE ss Law UNCONTESTED In c o r p oBUSINESS r a t i o n / LLAW LC / MUSIC Pa r t n e r s h i p INCORPORATION/LLC Wi lls WILLS

C o l l967-6159 ections (919)

967-6159

bill.burton.lawyer@gmail.com

919-6-TEASER for directions and information

www.teasersmensclub.com

Attic 506, Chapel Hill 6-9 p.m., FREE

156 Ramseur St. Durham, NC

PRESENT THIS COUPON FOR

Member Admission Price (Not Valid for Special Events, expires 01-21)

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR: INDYWEEK.COM

TeasersMensClub

An Adult Nightclub Open 7 Days/week | Hours 7pm - 2am

@TeasersDurham

KeepItINDY.com

March 11, 2020

33

C L AS S I F I E D S FOR SALE AUCTIONS Auction Scotland County 214+/-Acres Divided in Scotland County, NC on Calhoun Rd., Online w/Bid Center, Begins Closing 3/24/2020 at 2pm, Inspections at Buyer’s Leisure & Liability, ironhorseauction.com, 800.997.2248, NCAL 3936 Online Real Estate Auction Lake Wylie, Laurinburg, Marston, Peachland, Norwood, Raeford & Red Springs, NC, Begins Closing 3/19/2020 at 2pm, Check our website for Inspection times and days, ironhorseauction.com, 800.997.2248, NCAL 3936

M I S C.

HEALTH & WELL BEING

Is Your Home SMART Yet? Get a FREE quote from Vivint, the #1 HomeAutomation Company!

Fast & Affordable! $100 VISA giftcard w/installation! Restrictions Apply.

Call 855-589-7053 New Authors Wanted!

Page Publishing will help you self-publish your own book. FREE author submission kit! Limited offer!

Why wait? Call now: 888-910-2201 Work with Kindred Spirits Who are dedicated to guiding you to higher awareness, passion + purpose.

Get UNstuck with certified Conscious Coaches - www. mysoulrenity.com - (202) 643-6396 (AAN CAN)

HOUSING

919-416-0675

www.harmonygate.com HOLISTIC HEALTH Tai Chi Traditional art of meditative movement for health, energy, relaxation, self-defense.

Classes/workshops throughout the Triangle. Magic Tortoise School - Since 1979.

Call Jay or Kathleen, 919-360-6419 or www.magictortoise.com Energy Healing Lynne C. Johnson, Ed.D. Red Hat Qi Gong Practitioner Lynnecjohnson.com 919.928.4100

Bolinwood Condominiums Affordability without compromise

Convenient to UNC on N bus line 2 & 3 bedroom condominiums for lease

www.bolinwoodcondos.com • 919-942-7806

FOR RENT WAKE COUNTY

VACATION RENTALS

Room for Rent West Raleigh Large room with private bath, private entrance, and fireplace. Furnished, has new flooring. Opens onto small fenced yard.

Near REX Hospital and Meredith College. Nice for female grad student or professional. $575/mo, including utilities. If interested, please email me at oomiedog@gmail.com

Spring Travel Special!

7 Day / 6 Night Orlando + Daytona Beach Vacation with Hertz Rental Car Included. Only $398.00.

Call 855-898-8912 to Reserve. 12 Months to use.

(AAN CAN)

34

March 11, 2020

MEDICAL SERVICES Attention Diabetics!

Save money on your diabetic supplies! Convenient home shipping for monitors, test strips, insulin pumps, catheters and more! To learn more, call now! 855-667-9944 A Place for Mom The nation’s largest senior living referral service.

Contact our trusted, local experts today! Our service is FREE/no obligation.

CALL 1-888-609-2550 Dental Insurance from Physicians Mutual Insurance Company NOT just a discount plan, REAL coverage for 350 procedures. Call 1-844496-8601 for details. www.dental50plus.com/ ncpress 6118-0219

INDYweek.com

PRODUCTS Stay in Your Home Longer With an American Standard Walk-In Bathtub. Receive up to $1,500 off, including a free toilet, and a lifetime warranty on the tub and installation! Call us at 1-855-393-3307 or visit www.walkintubquote.com/nc

CLINICAL STUDIES Trouble sleeping?

Elevated blood pressure?

If you: - are 30-60 years old - have had trouble sleeping for over 3 months - have elevated blood pressure (systolic > 130) - are not on blood pressure medications You may be eligible to receive 6 sessions with a sleep specialist. Compensation provided.

Email catherine.wu@ duke.edu or call 919668-3885

EMPLOYMENT Senior QA Analyst Needed - Durham Senior QA Analyst sought

by LabCorp in Durham, NC to identify, plan & execute testing activities in Agile/Scrum environment to ensure high quality s/ ware & ensure compliance according to regulatory statutes, policies & procedures. Reqs a Bach’s deg or foreign equiv in Comp Sci, Comp Info Systems, Comp Engg + 5 yrs of exp as a Sr Systems Analyst, QA Analyst, or Sr QA Engineer. To apply, go to jobs.Labcorp.com & search for req# 20-78369.

Software Engineer Needed - Raleigh Software Engineer– System Test (SEST-NSV) in Raleigh, NC: Design, develop & implement automated tests for functional SW & User Interface verification for intricate robotic surgical systems. MS+2 yrs exp.

Send resumes to Intuitive Surgical Operations, Inc., Attn: Hien Nguyen, 1020 Kifer Rd, Sunnyvale, CA 94086. Must ref title & code.

FTCC - Positiions Available Fayetteville Technical Community College is now accepting applications for the following positions: Cloud Systems Analyst, Information Technology (IT) Security Engineer, Grant Coordinator. For detailed information and to apply, please visit our employment portal at: https://faytechcc.peopleadmin.com/ Human Resources Office Phone: (910) 678-7342 Internet: http://www.faytechcc. edu. An Equal Opportunity Employer

Book your ad Email Amanda: classy@indyweek.com

SERVICES FINANCIAL Save Big on Home Insurance!

Compare 20 A-rated insurances companies.

Get a quote within minutes. Average savings of $444/year! Call 844-712-6153! (M-F 8am-8pm Central) (AAN CAN) Struggling with your Private Student Loan Payment?

New relief programs can reduce your payments.

Learn your options.

Good credit not necessary. Call the Helpline 888-670-5631 (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm Eastern) (AAN CAN)

AUTO

HOME IMPROVEMENT Eliminate gutter cleaning forever!

LeafFilter, the most advanced debris-blocking gutter protection. Schedule a FREE LeafFilter estimate today. 15% off and 0% financing for those who qualify. PLUS Senior & Military Discounts. Call 1-877-649-1190

LEGAL

Donate Your Car to Charity Receive maximum value of write-off for your taxes. Running or not! All conditions accepted. Free pickup. Call for details: 866-412-0719 Auto Insurance Starting at $49/Month!

Call for your fee rate comparison to see how much you can save! Call: 855569-1909. (AAN CAN)

Recently Diagnosed with LUNG CANCER and 60+ Years Old? Call now! You and your family may be entitled to a SIGNIFICANT CASH AWARD. Call 844-2691881 (AAN CAN) today.

Free Consultation. No Risk.

LAST WEEK’S PUZZLE

sites.duke.edu/ sleepright IRB PRO00102036

INDY CLASSIFIEDS classy@indyweek.com

PUZZLES

If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzle pages” at the bottom of our webpage.

Community & Scholars Series

SUNDAY MARCH 15

2:00 p.m.

720 9th St, Durham, NC 27705

Laurent Dubois

Lorem ipsum Richard Lee Turits

in conversation with Duke Professor Adriane Lentz-Smith

su | do | ku

this week’s puzzle level:

© 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.

If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzle pages.”

Best of luck, and have fun! www.sudoku.com solution to last week’s puzzle

INDY CLASSIFIEDS classy@indyweek.com

KeepItINDY.com

3.11.20 March 11, 2020

35

E SCAPE TO ASHEVILLE FOR THE

OF

JAPANESE ART D E E P R E L A X AT I O N

DANCE CLASSES IN LINDY HOP, SWING, BLUES

HISTORY TRIVIA:

At Carrboro ArtsCenter. Private lessons available.

RICHARD BADU, 919-724-1421, rbadudance@gmail.com

• On March 13, 1953, WUNC had its first FM broadcast. WUNC started as an AM station led by UNC-CH students in the 1940s.

• On March 17, 1967, Winston-Salem State University became the first historically black college to win a national championship, when the Rams beat the Southwest Missouri State University Bears 77-74.

Courtesy of the Museum of Durham History

919-286-1916 @hunkydorydurham We buy records.

Now serving dank beer.

ONLY 3 HOMES LEFT!

WHAT IS THIS? Well, it’s not an ad, but you’re still reading it!

Contact Amanda at classy@indyweek.com to place YOUR ad

T H E U LT I M A T E

OUTDOOR SPA P R I V A T E S A LT T U B S , MASSAGE, CEDAR SAUNA, TUB SIDE TEA SERVICE, OV E R N I G H T AC C O M M O DAT I O N S

USA’s first LGBT-focused 55+ Cohousing Community Cohousing is "good for the planet, our economy, our security, and most importantly, our happiness” VillageHearthCohousing.com

Follow @INDYWeek on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for breaking news.

828•299•0999 S H OJ I R E T R E AT S .C O M

Contact advertising@indyweek.com or John Hurld at 919-286-1972

Upcoming Special Issues Mar 25

Camp Guide #2

Apr 1

Full Frame

Apr 22

Food & Drink Almanac (annual glossy magazine)

May 6

Triangle Finds: DT. Raleigh/Hillsborough St.

May 13

Business Spotlight:Small Business

back page

ADVERT I S I N G

ADVERTISE WITH

Need News Fast?

919-286-1916 @hunkydorydurham We buy records.

Now serving dank beer.

Weekly deadline 4pm Friday

classy@indyweek.com