INDY Week 7.3.2019

Raleigh July 3, 2019

John Kane Wants Cash

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Wye Oak’s Lost Paradise P. 14 Barbecue Is Life P. 18

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WHAT WE LEARNED THIS WEEK RALEIGH

VOL. 36, NO. 27

DEPARTMENTS

5 The next time you’re in Beyú, don’t mention how much you miss open mic night.

6 News

6 In 2017, the University of Chicago asked economists whether they thought taxpayer-subsidized stadiums were a good idea. Four percent did.

17 Food 19 Music 21 Arts & Culture

9 Within the first twenty-four hours of 2019, three people had been shot to death in Durham.

22 What to Do This Week 25 Music Calendar

14 Spiritual America, one of the most astonishing New York classical records of the year, couldn’t have happened without Durham band Wye Oak.

29 Arts & Culture Calendar

17 The winner of the Fourth of July hot-dog-eating competition on Coney Island will probably consume more than eleven thousand calories.

19 When she’s not making music, Sarah Louise of House and Land is a budding herbalist.

20 “In a world of Sabbaths, we get to be Van Halen,” says Jonathan Nuñez of the heavy metal band Torche.

On the cover Wye Oak (story on page 14)

PHOTO BY ANDREA RICE, DESIGN BY ANNIE MAYNARD PHOTO COURTESY OF MERGE RECORDS

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backtalk

INDY VOICES

When Being You Isn’t Enough

GTF Out

O

ur readers have some thoughts on the Raleigh City Council’s recent vote to prevent residents from criticizing individual council members during public comment—and the brouhaha over David Cox and his supporters lashing at us for our reporting on that vote.

“These elected officials sure are acting like big babies,” Kevin writes. “Hopefully they’ll change their mind before being brought to court and wasting taxpayer dollars.”

“As much as I love Raleigh, this is stupid,” adds Chris Howell. “If you can’t take direct criticism from the people you serve, GTF out of office, you don’t belong there.”

“Please remember come October that Nicole Stewart was absent from this meeting and should not be lumped in with this absolute bullshit council overall,” writes Jake Anthony. “She is pretty much the only one worth a damn at this point.”

“Commissioner Jessica Holmes proclaimed something similar during a Wake County Board of Commissioners meeting where a bunch of angry park lovers were about to unload on the board,” writes Shaun Pollenz. “It was unconstitutional then, and it is unconstitutional now with the city council. Political speech is afforded the highest protection according to well-established case law. This is an infringement of our First Amendment rights. Throw them all into the Boston Harbor.”

“How could Raleigh City Council members unanimously vote to invoke a code of conduct that was established during the time Jessie Helms, one of the most openly racist politicians in North Carolina state history, was on the city council?” asks Black Raleigh. “My opinion on this is, unfortunately, David Cox was the fall guy in this article by the INDY to deflect from other council members.”

Finally, a contrarian of sorts: “This article just made me want to volunteer for David Cox’s campaign,” writes Aaliyah Blaylock.

Want to see your name in bold? Email us at backtalk@indyweek.com, comment on indyweek.com or our Facebook page, or hit us up on Twitter: @indyweek.

CHANGE IS INEVITABLE, BUT IS INSULTING LONGTIME PATRONS A VIABLE BUSINESS PLAN? BY BARRY SAUNDERS BARRY SAUNDERS is a former News & Observer columnist who, over his two decades at the paper, wrote extensively about Durham and other things. He now publishes thesaundersreport.com.

NEXT WEEK: Local attorney, podcaster, and criminal justice reform advocate (also Twitter celebrity) T. Greg Doucette.

A

fter you start two businesses and watch both go belly-up, you learn the importance of having a business plan.

That’s why, as much as I hated seeing Durham’s Beyú Caffé abandon its popular nightclub and live jazz performances to become solely a coffee shop, I understood.

The owner, Dorian Bolden, a former Wall Street financier and Duke graduate, patiently explained to me one day as I sat sipping an Oprah Mocha latte that, as much as he regretted doing it, the tea leaves told him that the future lay in coffee. He was understandably exasperated, since I might’ve been the 992nd person that week to decry the change to him.

Again, I hated to hear he was shutting down the open mic night, but I appreciated his explanation and adherence to the business model.

Real talk, though: Is telling customers to kick rocks, take a hike, get the $%&# out, also a part of that business model?

That is, essentially, what a manager at Beyú told me to do two weeks later.

Let me break it down for you: When a college classmate whom I’d not seen in thirty-five years came to town and asked for a good meeting spot, I suggested Beyú.

While waiting for our drinks, I mentioned to the manager behind the counter how much many of us missed the jazz club, the open mic night, and live performances.

His reply? “If you don’t like it, open your own nightclub.”

He then told me where I could find some other businesses to frequent.

I started to tell him where he could stick that latte I’d just ordered, but because the bible tells us to be slow to anger—and to never antagonize the person fixing your food or drink—I turned the other cheek.

Surely, he was jesting, right?

Nope. When he turned to look at me, there was nothing good-natured or joking in his demeanor.

That’s when I turned my other other cheek and asked him if his business model included insulting longtime customers for merely telling him they missed the old format. By now, that Oprah Mocha sitting untouched on the counter wasn’t the only thing steamin’.

It was only because my buddy Curtis was treating me to the drink that I kept my cool. By way of explanation—not apology, mind you, but explanation—the barista said he was simply tired of people talking about the previous format.

Chill, homes.

Shouldn’t he be pleased that people remember the old format with reverence?

Bolden, the owner, is. He said he shut down the performances to focus on another coffee shop, Beyu Blue, on his alma mater’s campus.

“I knew people would be disappointed,” he told me. But he says he didn’t expect the “backlash and negativity” to be as vociferous as it was.

“It was ugly,” he said. “I wish I could say I haven’t lost my cool at times. We deal with people all the time, especially the phone calls, and some people are not nice. I’ve heard all kinds of things—that I’m a sellout, I’ve sold my business to a white owner.”

But none of that is true, he said.

Bolden also added—seeming to back up his manager—that, “with all of the intellectual capital, the black wealth in Durham, the musicians, it is a viable option for someone else to open a space. We kept it going for nine years, and it was successful, but we couldn’t be all things to all people.”

In previous years, Beyú was voted the Best Place to Hear Live Jazz in the Triangle by the INDY’s readers, Retail Business of the Year by Downtown Durham Inc., and it received the Emerging Business Award by the N.C. Institute of Minority Economic Development.

If Bolden feels his new business model has the most potential, more power to him. For those of us who just wanted to hear good jazz and local performers, though, it’s sad to drive past the formerly jumping spot and see it shuttered, encased in darkness, silent, by 9:00 p.m.

A score of former Beyú patrons have contacted me to decry the change. Some were annoyed, others angry. Some swore they’d never set foot inside the joint again.

All I can tell them is that if they do go back—psst—don’t mention how much you liked it before.

That barista might just tell you “be you” someplace else. backtalk@indyweek.com INDY Voices—a rotating weekly column featuring some of the Triangle’s most compelling writers and thinkers—is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club. Visit KeepItINDY.com for more information.

INDYweek.com | 7.3.19 | 5

indynews

Bright Lights, Big City

ECONOMISTS SAY TAXPAYER-FUNDED STADIUMS ARE A TERRIBLE IDEA. WHAT MAKES JOHN KANE’S DOWNTOWN SOUTH ANY DIFFERENT? BY COLE VILLENA

T

he crowd at last Tuesday’s North Carolina Football Club stadium proposal unveiling was a far cry from the frenetic #919toMLS rally of July 2017. There were no parades, no fanfare, and no (visible) diehard supporters among the thirty or so journalists gathered on The Dillon’s ninth-floor Sky Terrace.

Instead, Dillon developer John Kane, NCFC owner Steve Malik, and TradeMark Properties founder and CEO Billie Redmond projected an air of quiet confidence.

The details of their $180 million stadium proposal—including its South Raleigh location, funding plans, and colorful renderings—had already leaked. So had the fact that the stadium would be but a piece of a massive $1.9 billion mixed-use district—Downtown South—which would also include 1.6 million square feet of office space, 1,200 hotel rooms, 1,750 residential units, and 125,000 square feet of office space.

Inviting the assembled reporters to look out over the terrace, from the bustle of the Warehouse District toward the site he wants to turn into Raleigh’s next big thing, Kane told them, “It’s going to be a gamechanger for that part of our city.”

But he wants the city’s help.

Most of the project—the mixed-use aspect—will be privately funded. But for the stadium itself, the developers are seeking $390 million in Wake County and Raleigh hospitality taxes over the next thirty years to finance construction, maintenance, and debt service. In exchange, they say, Downtown South will generate $3.8 billion in economic activity for the county over the next fifteen years.

However: “This project does not happen without a catalyst,” Malik said.

But as catalysts go, taxpayer-subsidized sports stadiums aren’t very good ones.

Economists are nearly unified in the belief that they don’t produce the promised bang for taxpayers’ buck. A 2017 University of Chicago survey found that only 4 percent of 6 | 7.3.19 | INDYweek.com

Artist rendering of Downtown South

RENDERING BY GENSLER, COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA FC

economists on the U.S. Economic Experts Panel believe the benefits of publicly funded stadium construction outweigh the costs. Eighty-three percent don’t.

The fundamental problem is that stadiums don’t generate new economic activity—and the promises made by stadium-booster-funded impact studies should be viewed skeptically. As Holy Cross economist and stadium expert Victor Matheson told The Atlantic in 2012: “Take whatever number the sports promoter says, take it and move the decimal one place to the left.

Divide it by ten, and that’s a pretty good estimate of the actual economic impact.”

Instead, stadiums suck in limited entertainment dollars that would already be spent elsewhere in the city: Your family, with its finite budget, buys tickets to an NCFC match instead of dining at a local restaurant.

The total amount of economic activity is the same, it’s just distributed differently.

And with professional sports franchises, economists also worry about the problem of

“leakage”—money leaving town after being paid to players, owners, and the league itself.

That raises another issue: NCFC isn’t part of MLS—and there’s no guarantee it will be. For the last two seasons, playing in the second-tier USL Championship, NCFC has averaged a little over forty-five hundred fans at its seventeen annual home matches in Cary; its sister team, NC Courage, which plays in the NWSL, averages about five thousand fans in its twelve home matches a year.

Even doubling those numbers would only fill half of a twenty-thousand-seat stadium twenty-nine days a year (plus playoff matches). The stadium would also host special events, such as concerts. But here, too, it would be moving money around: The band that fills a twenty-thousand-seat venue would otherwise be playing Walnut Creek or PNC Arena.

In 2017, when Kane and Malik made a stadium pitch for a different part of downtown Raleigh, an MLS bid was front and center; this time, it’s not. Last week, Malik

stressed that he’s fully invested regardless of whether his team makes it to the top level of American soccer. He sees Downtown South as an opportunity to revitalize an underdeveloped part of the city.

Depending on your perspective, that’s either a blessing or, potentially, a curse.

It’s a blessing because the mixed-use aspect—the hotels, apartments, and office space—separates the project from the standalone taxpayer-funded stadiums that economists abhor. The stadium itself might not boost the local economy, but the other pieces could, and having them surround a stadium gives the development a sense of place.

“I love the proposal because it’s more than just a stadium,” says former Raleigh City Council member and current mayoral candidate Mary-Ann Baldwin. “It opens up a lot of opportunity to create a southern gateway for our city.” (Former Wake County Commissioner Caroline Sullivan, another mayoral aspirant, calls Downtown South an “exciting project with many positives.”)

The curse is that this is, in fact, an underdeveloped part of the city, and dropping a $2 billion development bomb could add to the city’s affordability crisis. Indeed, part of the developers’ calculus is that the site is in what’s deemed an Opportunity Zone, making them eligible for federal tax benefits for investing in low-income areas.

The developers point out that there are “no current residential uses” on the Downtown South site. The project wouldn’t displace anyone—directly, at least. Tax records indicate that there are at least three singlefamily housing units on the site, but none appear occupied. The rest of the property— which Kane says is under contract—houses businesses including a flooring outlet, a CrossFit studio, a coffee shop, the headquarters for the North Carolina Rural Electrification Authority, and dirt lots filled with old cars. (The Downtown South acquisition rather conspicuously excludes an adjoining property currently used as a soup kitchen.)

A map of Raleigh including Downtown South Indirectly, however, Downtown South will have a much larger footprint.

Just on the other side of I-40 are neighborhoods that include modestly priced single-family homes and multi-family units.

The census tract that encompasses both the stadium and these neighborhoods is nearly 60 percent minority. Its median family income is less than half that of the metro area; 28 percent of residents live below the poverty line. More than half of its housing units are rentals.

Once Downtown South goes up, those land values are likely to skyrocket—and it’s possible the people who live there now might no longer be able to do so.

“The only way you can say development there would not cause an increase in property values around it is to build nothing,” says city council member Corey Branch.

The developers say workforce and affordable housing have been part of the plan from the beginning—though they haven’t yet detailed out what those plans look like.

Malik says they’ll also guarantee a percentage of minority contracts and minority labor on stadium construction.

But they need local officials to act fast.

On June 19, the city and county managers presented their recommendations for how to spend $55 million generated by this year’s hotel and food and beverage taxes, referred to as interlocal funds. By law, that money is set aside for “arts, culture, sports, and convention facilities.” It can’t be used for roads or schools. Since they were established in 1991, interlocal funds have paid for the construction of the Raleigh Convention Center, the renovation of the N.C. Museum of Art, and helped build PNC Arena, home to the Carolina Hurricanes.

Baldwin says the stadium fits perfectly into this mold. “The hotel industry agreed

IMAGE COURTESY OF NORTH CAROLINA FC

to tax themselves, as did the food and beverage industry, as long as the money was used to fund tourism projects,” she says.

“This definitely falls in that category.”

In January, Kane, Malik, and Redmond made a more skeletal pitch for a “new Downtown Entertainment and Sports Complex,” which they assured would “drive tourism and positive economic impacts.” But the local government managers didn’t include it among their top choices. Those were a PNC enhancement, an indoor youth sports facility, and various Convention Center projects.

Stadium developers were told to compete for a share of $42.1 million designated for “medium projects” over the next five years.

County officials say it’s unlikely those funds would be awarded to any single project. But even if they were, Kane says, that wouldn’t be enough to fund the stadium, and without the stadium, the whole project would tank.

“It is a little concerning,” Malik says. “But the way we do the math, there are plenty of resources available.”

The developers point out that the final decision lies with the city council and county commissioners, who will vote to spend the next cycle of interlocal funds in August or September. When they do, they’ll be committing to projects for the next several years. If the stadium isn’t one of them, it will be out of the running for this pot of money for the near future. Hence, Downtown South’s urgency.

The developers still have time to rally public support. On that score, so far, so good.

“We have not yet received formal briefing on the project,” says Wake County Commissioner Matt Calabria. “We have certainly heard from a number of constituents, especially those in the southern Raleigh area.

Most of the emails we’ve gotten so far have been in favor of it.” cvillena@indyweek.com

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news

Are Durham’s Parks Wrecked?

A NATIONAL NONPROFIT GAVE THE CITY’S PARKS SYSTEM A POOR RANKING. BUT COMPARISONS DON’T TELL THE WHOLE STORY. BY LUCAS HUBBARD

R

ankings serve many roles.

They can deliver an expert’s insight, affording consumers the capacity to make informed choices.

They let passionate people assert hot takes in a barroom debate. Mostly, they synthesize a slew of data points into a simple output.

But by their nature, they can never do these things in a manner that leaves everyone satisfied. Just ask Durham Parks and Recreation.

For the past eight years, national nonprofit The Trust for Public Land has ranked the park systems of the biggest cities in the country, considering factors like park accessibility, acreage, amenities, and investment. The exercise, its website boasts, is “the most comprehensive evaluation of park access and quality.” Durham has been included in these summaries since 2016, when the calculations expanded to include the top one hundred cities.

Last month it placed seventy-second, tying its 2017 ranking as its worst ever.

The result hasn’t generated excuses from Parks & Rec so much as it’s led to questions about the purpose of such a comparison, especially one conducted yearly.

“Park development, land acquisition, the ability to increase amenities is a very slow process,” says Annette Smith, program administrator in the department’s recreation division. With twenty people moving to Durham a day, Smith adds, “we’re not gonna be able to grow our parks or renovate our parks to the speed that the population is growing. So those benchmarks are always going to be ahead of us.”

At a more elementary level, Parks & Rec officials explain, Durham faces different funding constraints than Cincinnati (the eighth-highest score in 2019), New York (ninth), or Chicago (tenth): “All of these larger communities have a history of parks conservancies and foundations that goes much further back than the mid-Atlantic region,” says Smith.

And since the General Assembly doesn’t allow local municipalities to mandate affordable housing, explains Lindsay Smart, senior planner in the department’s planning, maintenance, and athletics division, places like Durham and Charlotte (ninety-sixth) must allocate public funds to alleviate their housing crises, creating shortfalls for parks.

“I’m not complaining about affordable housing,” Smart says. “But if we are compared, in that list of cities, to cities in other states that don’t have to put ninety-five million dollars toward affordable housing [as Durham’s proposed 8 | 7.3.19 | INDYweek.com

Forest Hills Park

PHOTO PROVIDED BY DURHAM PARKS AND RECREATION

bond initiative would do], they could put some of that money toward their park system. They’re always going to rank more highly than us because they don’t have the same competing priorities.”

That’s not to say Parks & Rec doesn’t gain anything from the Trust’s analysis. One of the key metrics considers what percentage of citizens live within a half-mile (or a ten-minute walk) of a park. (Only 51 percent of Durham’s citizens do, the eighty-fourth-best rate among the ninety-seven cities that reported data.) The easiest way to calculate this is an as-the-crow-flies measurement, which can overlook details like the locations of park entrances, or if a resident can’t get to a nearby park because a crosswalk-less section of a major roadway separates the two.

“This is a more sophisticated data set,” says Tom Dawson, assistant director in the planning, maintenance, and athletics division.

But still, Parks & Rec believes there are gaps in the picture that the Trust paints and the city’s realities.

“We’re more critical of our system than they are. We know what Durham needs. We interact with the public.

The public interacts with us,” Dawson says. “It’s helpful to get an outside perspective, but we have our own internal needs assessment.”

Much of the department’s work, Dawson admits, is “very boring”—maintaining existing assets, ensuring parking lots are accessible, and keeping trails in good repair. Nevertheless, there’s much on the horizon: an advanced aquatic sys-

tem of public pools and spraygrounds; increased capacity at Herndon Park and a new multi-purpose field at Hoover Road; myriad projects in East and South Durham; and a greater commitment to trail creation, after having completed just one in the past ten years.

Recently, Parks & Rec began working with the Durham Parks Foundation, a private nonprofit formed in 2015, to fund more high-profile projects. Last summer, with engineering students from N.C. State, they created a new Environmental Education Pavilion at West Point on the Eno, where a Piedmont Prairie is currently in the works. Collaborating with FILA and the Tamia & Grant Hill Foundation this April, the foundation aided the colorful renovation of the Hillside Park basketball courts.

Comparisons are nice, but they only convey meaning when everyone operates on level ground. Simply put, the Bull City has never prioritized parks: “Durham was developed for work, with industry in mind,” Dawson says. “Durham is one hundred and fifty years old. The parks department is ninety-five years old.

Our first director wedged parks and recreation into empty lots; he would go with baseball bats himself in the twenties in a Model-T Ford and then set up play. And I think that set the pattern for Durham Parks and Recreation. We’re wedging opportunities within a dense, urban fabric because we see the need and people see the need. So I’d say that’s a tradition that we carry today.” backtalk@indyweek.com

MURDER IN THE BULL CITY Durham saw twice as many homicides in the first six months of 2019 as it did through June of 2018.

What’s fueling the violence—if anything is? BY THOMASI MCDONALD AND CATE PITTERLE

er.” But the killings aren’t random. City council member Jillian Johnson points out that most of the victims and alleged perpetrators appear to know each other.

There’s another, more troubling commonality: More than 90 percent of the victims are black, as are most of the suspects charged in their deaths.

That prompts a question: Why are black men in Durham killing one another? And beyond herding the perps through the justice system—indeed, beyond policing and the seemingly futile hope of getting guns off the street— what can city leaders do to stem the bloodshed?

Durham County Commissioner Wendy Jacobs says the city and county need to break cycles of systemic black poverty that trace back through slavery and segregation.

While 8 percent of white children in Durham grow up

impoverished, she notes, 36 percent of African American and 37 percent of Hispanic children do.

County leaders are trying to take a holistic approach, investing in pre-K, focusing on reaching children from abusive homes, and treating violence as a public health crisis. Among the county’s programs is Violence Interrupters, which trains former gang members to return to their communities to teach conflict resolution.

But for family members who’ve already lost loved ones this year, all of this comes too late, and the situation feels hopeless.

“A lot of people’s children done went down like that, and there’s nothing we can do,” says Valerie Watson, the mother of Keith Antonio Watson, the city’s first homicide victim of 2019.

CRIMINAL HOMICIDES BY YEAR (THROUGH JUNE)

50

Total homicides

40

NUMBER OF DEATHS

D

urham’s first homicide of 2019 took place seventeen hours into the New Year, with a domestic squabble that was interrupted by a neighbor with a handgun.

The second and third homicides followed a few hours later, setting a deadly pace that hasn’t relented. Over the ensuing six months, twenty-three more people have fallen victim to homicide—i.e., a death at another human’s hands, which can include justified and police-involved killings—in the Bull City.

That’s twice as many as in this same period last year, and on track to surpass the city’s bloody 2016. As of June 22, the police department had classified twenty of these as “criminal” homicides—i.e., murder and involuntary and voluntary homicide—compared to fourteen and nine at the same points in 2018 and 2017, respectively.

Of the twenty-five victims identified by press time, the oldest victim was sixty, the youngest just ten months old.

Most had been shot, a few stabbed. All but three were black or Hispanic. All but two, a mother and daughter, were men. The killings have happened all over the city: at single-family homes, in apartment complexes, in working-class neighborhoods, in hotel rooms, in cars, outside.

These homicides are taking place against the backdrop of gentrifying neighborhoods and a revitalized downtown that hums day and night—and they’re particularly unsettling for city leaders touting Durham’s emergence on the national stage and eager to shed its dangerous reputation once and for all.

In January, after Durham recorded its sixth homicide in eleven days, Mayor Steve Schewel called the killings an “anomaly.”

“I don’t want to minimize it,” he said. “But going forward, I expect this to change.”

It didn’t.

We tend to think of crime rates in the abstract, and when the victims aren’t famous, their names and lives soon fade from our collective memory. This story, which looks at Durham’s homicide victims cumulatively, has two goals: First, to remember those the city lost and, even in a small way, to recognize their humanity. Second, to look for patterns that might speak to what’s fueling the violence—if anything is.

Police chief C.J. Davis says that “at this point, it does not appear that any particular case is related to anoth-

Homicides through June

30

20

10

0

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019*

YEAR SOURCES: CITY OF DURHAM, DURHAM POLICE DEPARTMENT *AS OF JUNE 22. DOES NOT INCLUDE A HOMICIDE REPORTED ON JUNE 24.

NOTE: A CRIMINAL HOMICIDE INCLUDES MURDER AND VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER. IT EXCLUDES HOMICIDES THAT ARE DEEMED JUSTIFIED, INCLUDING SELFDEFENSE AND SOME OFFICER-INVOLVED SHOOTINGS, ACCORDING TO THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE.

INDYweek.com | 7.3.19 | 9

NO. 1: KEITH ANTONIO WATSON AGE: 29 DIED: Jan. 1 LOCATION: 4200 block of Larchmont Road CASE STATUS: No charges filed By the time police arrived at Watson’s apartment complex, Watson was dead, and his longtime girlfriend, Lakentra Hunter, was critically wounded. Watson and Hunter had a tumultuous and often-violent relationship, Watson’s family says. On New Year’s Day at about 5:15 p.m., they had another altercation. Watson struggled to get control of Hunter’s gun. According to family members, a neighbor intervened, shooting Watson seven times and Hunter once. The neighbor has not been charged.

NO. 5 AND 6: ZHYTILA WILKINS AND RUIA REAMS AGE: 20 and 10 months DIED: Jan. 11 LOCATION: 3600 block of Suffolk Street CASE STATUS: Suspect charged

Just after 8:00 p.m., investigators sped to reports of another shooting about five miles away in West Durham. They found the bodies of Domingo and Mendoza in the street. Mendoza had one child. Little information could be found about Mendoza. The alleged gunman, twenty-year-old Jose Manuel Regino-Vargas, fled but was arrested while trying to cross the border into Mexico.

Eighteen-year-old Jonathan Cabrera was charged with two counts of accessory after the fact.

Zhytila Wilkins and her daughter, Ruia Reams, were found dead shortly before 10:00 a.m. inside of their home. Police have charged Ruia’s father, Ramir Reams, with two counts of first-degree murder in what they described as a murdersuicide attempt.

Wilkins, an animal-rights advocate who dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, was set to begin college when she became pregnant.

Wilkins’s mother, Monica Biggs, is an N.C. Central administrator who lives in the home where her daughter and granddaughter died.

“Honey was so sweet. I can’t understand why anyone would want to harm her,” Biggs says.

Shortly before the shooting, Biggs says, she called 911 when Reams tried to force her daughter into his car to leave with him. The operator asked her if he’d hit her daughter, she says. She said no. Finally, her daughter told her, “Forget it, mom. I’ll just go.”

“Maybe if the police had showed up, it would have prevented him from coming back to kill her,” she says.

NO. 4: WILLIE MOORE

NO. 7: WALLACE BERRY HAYES

AGE: 60 DIED: Jan. 8 LOCATION: 5700 block of Tomahawk Trail CASE STATUS: Suspect charged

AGE: 28 DIED: Jan. 24 LOCATION: 5000 block of N.C. Highway 55 CASE STATUS: Suspect charged

Moore was shot to death in his home just before 5:48 p.m., allegedly by his thirty-three-year-old son. Chivalry Moore was taken into custody after a five-hour standoff with police. A twentyfive-minute video in Willie Moore’s honor shows photos of him doting on his children and grandchildren. Stepdaughter Rhonda Moore says the military veteran instilled strong values in her.

“Although he was not my biological father, he added his name to my birth certificate,” she wrote in an online tribute.

Wallace Berry Hayes was fatally shot at 11:45 a.m. inside of a motel room at HomeTowne Studios on N.C. Highway 55. Investigators have not said what led to the shooting. On the website gunmemorial.org, friends and family members described him as loveable, funny, and caring, with a smile that would light up a room. He loved music, and when he was younger, he wrote music lyrics and kept a book of rhymes.

Police have charged Frank Bernard Leathers Jr. with Hayes’s death.

NO. 2 AND 3: MURILIO ZURITO DOMINGO AND BERTIN VASQUEZ MENDOZA AGES: 24 and 26 DIED: Jan. 1 LOCATION: 2000 block of House Avenue CASE STATUS: Two suspects charged

10 | 7.3.19 | INDYweek.com

NO. 8: KENYA LAMONT THOMPSON

NO. 11: GREGORY SHAW

AGE: 46 DIED: Feb. 7 LOCATION: 4300 North Roxboro Road CASE STATUS: Suspect charged

AGE: 22 DIED: March 7 LOCATION: 900 block of Fayetteville Street CASE STATUS: Suspect charged

The police found Thompson in the passenger seat of a car parked outside of Captain D’s in North Durham, though they say he was shot at a nearby intersection shortly after 7:30 p.m.; he later died at the hospital. The day after he died, someone posted on Facebook a photo of Thompson—whose nickname was “Whitefolk”— holding a gold-colored balloon and kneeling beside his daughter during her pre-school graduation. Investigators say the shooting was not random. In March, police arrested thirtyseven-year-old Willie Reginald Hart Jr. and charged him with Thompson’s death.

Shaw was fatally shot a little after 2:00 p.m. Police say Shaw and Roland Richardson, thirty-four, were fighting when Richardson went into his car, retrieved a handgun, and fired multiple rounds at Shaw. “I lost my child behind nothing,” Shaw’s mother told WRAL. Richardson turned himself the next day and was charged in connection with Shaw’s death.

NO. 9: MARQUIS SCHOFIELD AGE: 28 DIED: Feb. 22 LOCATION: 1900 block of Ivy Creek Boulevard CASE STATUS: Information unavailable Schofield, a native of Greensboro, died just before 11:00 p.m. Schofield was mentioned in a News & Record story in 2003, when, as a seventh-grader at Hairston Middle School in Guilford County, he participated in a program that helps students resolve conflict without resorting to violence.

NO. 10: MONCEL D’ANGELO GARRETT-RICHARDSON AGE: 21 DIED: March 6 LOCATION: 1700 block of Holloway Street CASE STATUS: Suspect charged Garrett-Richardson was shot to death in East Durham at about 8:00 p.m. A nineteen-year-old, Jonathan Wade White, has been charged with his killing. Police reports do not disclose a motive.

Friends and family who posted on gunmemorial. org described Garrett-Richardson as “highspirited” and “good-hearted.”

NO. 12: MARCUS JACKSON AGE: 23 DIED: March 19 LOCATION: 200 block of Remington Circle CASE STATUS: Suspect charged Jackson was shot at about 1:15 a.m. at the Lenox West apartment complex. Police have charged Shajuan Dwatray Ervin, twenty-five, with his death, but have not disclosed a motive. Jackson graduated from John A. Holmes High School in Edenton and attended the Advanced Institute of Technology in Virginia. His nicknames were “Sno” and “Big Brain.” He was the father of one child, according to posts on gunmemorial.org.

NO. 13: ONDRAE LEVADO HUTCHINSON AGE: 30 DIED: March 30 LOCATION: 9 Bevel Court CASE STATUS: Shot by police officer, no charges filed Shortly after 5:00 a.m., police received reports of a physical altercation between a man and a woman at a home on Bevel Court. The man, later identified as Hutchinson, was reportedly uncooperative and combative. A ninetysecond struggle began when Officers J.W. Lanier and E.I. Masnik attempted to handcuff Hutchinson. Police say Hutchinson grabbed Lanier’s gun with both hands, then let go of

the weapon with one hand and struck Lanier in the face with the other. Masnik used a Taser to subdue Hutchinson, “but it was ineffective in diminishing the fight,” according to a police report, so Officer R.E. Jimenez shot him. He later died at the hospital.

Last week, city officials released police bodycamera footage that showed an angry and frustrated Hutchinson repeatedly telling the police that he was “righteous” and warning the officers not to touch him. Hutchinson struggled with the officers as they tried to handcuff him. He briefly broke free and went for Officer Lanier’s gun, the footage shows.

Despite repeated commands from the officers, Hutchinson refused to let go of the weapon.

Three shots were fired, and Hutchinson fell in the home’s driveway.

District Attorney Satana Deberry announced that Jimenez would not be charged.

HEY BANDS. HEY MUSICIANS.

NO. 14: JENORYE BRITT AGE: 20 DIED: March 30 LOCATION: 1700 block of Palmer Street CASE STATUS: Charges dismissed Tall, handsome, and athletic, Jenorye Britt had just turned twenty when he was found mortally wounded at 12:15 p.m. in the parking lot of a West Durham apartment complex. He was two months away from completing his first year at North Carolina A&T. In June, Britt’s seventeen-year-old brother, Jemazze, was indicted on charges of involuntary manslaughter and discharging a weapon into an occupied property inflicting serious bodily injury; he turned himself in, but the charges against him were later dismissed.

Residents of Britt’s hometown of Enfield—a tiny hamlet about ninety-five miles east of Durham—are baffled.

“I heard so many stories about what happened. I don’t want to talk about it,” says Britt’s high school football coach, Antione Alston.

Britt was a leader on the field and in the classroom, Alston adds, recalling the “short kid, really skinny” kid who didn’t have the best athletic talent but had a great work ethic. Britt got an assist from Mother Nature during his sophomore year, when he grew six inches and stood at six-five. Alston says the rangy athlete had a “big breakout year” when he was a junior, starring on basketball and football squads that won conference championships.

“He was a vocal leader. He was a big leader.

He wanted to do everything perfect,” Alston says.

NO. 15: EMANI LETREO RICKS AGE: 22 DIED: March 31 LOCATION: 2000 block of Chapel Hill Road CASE STATUS: No suspect charged Police found Ricks shot to death on a sidewalk near the Dragon Gate Chinese restaurant in the Lakewood Shopping Center, just across the street from where Britt died the day before. Ricks, a rapper and musician from Greensboro, was the youngest of four children.

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NO. 16: DARREN DIXON AGE: 22 DIED: April 11 LOCATION: 3000 block of South Roxboro Street CASE STATUS: Suspect charged Police found Dixon found fatally shot at about 12:30 a.m. in a gazebo at Hillside Park.

Investigators charged Antonio Stanback with his murder, but police have not said what led to the shooting or if the victim and suspect were acquainted. Dixon’s obituary says that he attended Durham public schools and worked for an insulation company in Charlotte. His family described him as an outgoing person who always had a smile on his face, and said that his daughter, Za’veah, was his life.

NO. 17: THADDEUS DARNELL HOLLOWAY AGE: 38 DIED: April 15 LOCATION: 100 block of Elm Street CASE STATUS: No suspect charged Holloway was killed at about 5:15 p.m. in the 100 block of Elm Street, where he lived. According to CBS 17, he was shot while he walking home from a store in the neighborhood. His obituary called him “a happy person with a beautiful smile. He loved hats.”

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CAUSE OF DEATH

VICTIMS BY RACE

7% 7%

12%

3%

12%

84% 73% Shooting

Stabbing

Other/unidentified SOURCES: CITY OF DURHAM, DURHAM POLICE DEPARTMENT

NO. 20: ALJAWON SUMPTER

NO. 22: JAY AARON FOUST

AGE: 32 DIED: May 4 LOCATION: Linwood Avenue and Colfax Street CASE STATUS: No suspect charged

AGE: 46 DIED: May 20 LOCATION: 400 block of North Mangum Street CASE STATUS: No suspect charged

Sumpter was one of two people shot at about 10:45 p.m. near the intersection of Linwood Avenue and Colfax Street. While the other victim suffered nonlife-threatening injuries, Sumpter succumbed to his wounds. Sumpter, known as “AJ,” had three daughters. Police have not yet made an arrest.

“I truly have no words,” his mother wrote on his Facebook page. “I still can’t believe it. Lord, why my son?”

Foust was fatally shot at about 3:00 a.m. while working as an unarmed security guard just outside of a new parking garage in downtown.

The father of three daughters, Foust worked for Allied Services. He was a supporter of TROSA and loved animals. In an online obituary, family members wrote that Foust was known for his smile, positive outlook, and mellow demeanor. He enjoyed life and spending time with his daughters. Foust started working for the security company on March 20. Two days after the shooting, police announced that they were looking for a black Ford F-150 from between 1987 and 1991, with a long bed and tinted windows. The truck was last seen with an orange traffic cone and several bags in the bed, police said.

NO. 21: DWAYNE WILSON NO. 18: JOHN KENNETH MASON AGE: 58 DIED: April 28 LOCATION: South Roxboro Street and East Cornwallis Road CASE STATUS: No suspect charged

AGE: 32 DIED: May 19 LOCATION: 100 block of Hoover Road CASE STATUS: No suspect charged

Wilson died after being shot at around 8:30 p.m.

Police say Hoover and a twenty-nine-year-old man, who has not been identified, were shooting at one another. They were both struck by gunfire and taken to the hospital. The twenty-nine-yearPolice found Mason mortally stabbed just after old survived, but Wilson died. On gunmemorial.

10:00 p.m. He later died at the hospital. They have org, friends and family described Wilson as a not disclosed a motive. According to his obituary, regular guy, nicknamed “Weezy.” A GoFundMe he worked at IBM and Doug’s Seafood Restaurant until his health declined. He then worked at a local page to raise funds for his children shows convenience store. Mason had a daughter and a son. him smiling with two girls and a boy and says Wilson was active “physically and financially in “John never met a stranger,” the obituary said. his children’s lives.”

NO. 19: DAVID KELLY AGE: 31 DIED: May 4 LOCATION: 3700 block of Hillsborough Road CASE STATUS: Suspect charged Just after 9:00 a.m., police found Kelly stabbed to death inside of a room at the Quality Inn. Investigators accused an acquaintance, twentyyear-old Whitney Barbara Turner, of stabbing Kelly following a fight. Investigators have not disclosed a motive.

12 | 7.3.19 | INDYweek.com

Black

Hispanic

White

Unidentified

SOURCES: CITY OF DURHAM, DURHAM POLICE DEPARTMENT

NO. 23: DEESHAWN CATES AGE: 20 DIED: May 21 LOCATION: Dayton and Wabash Streets CASE STATUS: No suspect charged Cates was fatally shot at about 11:00 p.m. in McDougald Terrace. It was the city’s third homicide in as many days. A GoFundMe page set up to raise money for Cates’s burial expenses indicates that his mother came home that night to “a devastating tragedy.”

NO. 24: DUWAYNE CLAY JR. AGE: 16 DIED: May 27 LOCATION: 2301 Erwin Road CASE STATUS: No suspect charged It was shortly after 12:30 p.m. when Clay— whose nickname was “Weezy”—was found shot to death inside of a stolen, parked car on Emergency Drive, near the emergency room entrance of Duke University Hospital, police say. Investigators think the car had been parked there overnight, but the teen had been shot somewhere else. They believe his death may be related to gang and drug activity at an apartment complex on Junction Road, according to search warrants made public last month. Friends and family members posting on gunmemorial.org wrote that Clay was “fun to be around” and had a “big heart.”

2019 DURHAM HOMICIDES, MAPPED

4

Numbers correspond to order in which homicides occurred.

FREE TO BE FEARLESS. TO HOLD THE POWERFUL ACCOUNTABLE.

8

TO BE A VOICE FOR THE VOICELESS. 12

13

19

24 26

25

TO TELL THE TRUTH.

22

2+3

10

15 14

17

11

FREE

21

20 23

TO CELEBRATE AND CRITICIZE. TO ADVOCATE FOR THE MARGINALIZED.

18

1 9 5+6

FREE

16

TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE. FROM CORPORATE INFLUENCE. NO PAYWALLS, NO SUBSCRIPTIONS.

7

NO. 25: EDWARD TIVNAN

NO. 26: UNIDENTIFIED VICTIM

AGE: 49 DIED: June 5 LOCATION: 1007 West Main Street CASE STATUS: Suspect charged

AGE: N/A DIED: June 24 LOCATION: 1002 East Geer Street CASE STATUS: No suspects charged

At about 10:15 p.m., Daniel Peter Mohar, thirtyfour, allegedly punched Tivnan after Tivnan made what prosecutors described as a drunken “remark” to a woman who turned out to be Mohar’s girlfriend. Tivnan fell and hit his head on the patio of the Social Games and Brews.

He died two days later at a hospital. According to WNCN, Tivnan’s sister said her brother had a huge personality and wanted everyone to be happy. Mohar has been charged with murder.

An as-yet-unidentified victim was found shot to death at 9:00 a.m. in a parking lot at 1002 East Geer Street. Police say the victim was inside a dark-colored Dodge Durango. Investigators had not made any public updates by press time. tmcdonald@indyweek.com

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INDYweek.com | 7.3.19 | 13

PARADISE LOST A New York composer enlists a Durham band for a gloriously failed attempt to recover his religious childhood in rural North Carolina

BY BRIAN HOWE

O

ne of the most astonishing records of 2019 has slipped under many radars, likely because it’s hard to describe, categorize, and explain. Seven years in the making, the composer William Brittelle’s Spiritual America was co-released in May by the venerable Nonesuch Records and New Amsterdam, the new-music label that Brittelle cofounded. It features dozens of musicians, including the Brooklyn Youth Choir, New York’s protean Metropolis Ensemble, and Durham’s Wye Oak. Spiritual America is a classical record to the extent that it has sophisticated string and choral writing, but it blows away preconceived notions with “Abattoir.” As a pitcheddown voice choppily intones the ominous title, Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner sings, “I don’t know what you mean / When you say you’ll never die,” her voice sailing like the shadow of a cloud over a landscape of dreamlike vividness where swashbuckling classical strings and liquid hair-metal guitar solos somehow fuse into glossy unity. Though the 14 | 7.3.19 | INDYweek.com

Wye Oak

PHOTO COURTESY OF MERGE RECORDS

album’s musical forms remain dizzyingly malleable—interweaving classical and pop, iPhone samples and professional recordings—its hallucinatory clarity is unwavering.

Spiritual America isn’t just an album I liked right away. There was something in it I intuitively recognized. The paradoxes and mysteries polished into its surface seemed to hint at deeper ones buried within, which were somehow intimately tangled in my own emotional experience. Why did this music feel at once so human and so virtual? How could it be both so emotive and so remote?

How the hell did Wye Oak end up amid all these world-class classical musicians?

And, most of all, how to reconcile the whiff of disdain around the elevator-pitch version of its concept—Buddhist New York composer reckons with religious upbringing in rural North Carolina—with the music I heard, which felt inexplicably but stubbornly like being in a carnival as a child, more lost paradise than escaped damnation? To find out, I started right here at home, with Wye Oak. Plates keep appearing at the Durham Hotel table where Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack are meeting for lunch. As Wye Oak,

they’re one of Durham’s most nationally popular bands, though they’re still heavily associated with Baltimore. Still, now that Wasner has lived in Durham for about five years and Stack for going on two, we claim them.

Wye Oak spent years building its fan base as a dream-poppy indie rock duo before emerging, with seeming suddenness, into a sound all their own on 2018’s majestic electro-rock opus, The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs. “My Signal” features cellist Paul Wiancko and violinist Michi Wiancko, whom Wye Oak never would have met if not for performing with Brittelle. This was but one way that the collaboration opened new worlds to an ambitious band with the chops to hold their own beyond the nightclubs.

“Bill basically cold-called us while we were in New York in 2013, recording Shriek,” Wasner says. “I think he heard something in our music that made him suspect we’d be down and capable. His whole deal is bringing together classical music and pop music in a way that doesn’t suck. We’ve always been inclined to challenge ourselves, and we’d just come off two years of playing the same songs, from Civilian. Things were going well for us,

but creatively, things felt pretty stagnant.”

Wye Oak began performing with symphonies and chamber ensembles around the country. Each evening featured a half-set of Brittelle’s songs and another of his arrangements of songs from Shriek, one of which serves as a postlude on Spiritual America.

“The biggest thing I took away was that there’s this block in my brain that I’m not a real musician and these ensembles of some of the best classical musicians in the world are going to show me up,” Wasner says. “I work in a totally different way. I’m relatively self-taught. I play by ear and don’t use sheet music. But they’re as amazed by that as I am about what they can do. They’re like, ‘Wow, you just think of something and play it?’”

“These opposing ways of making music complement each other,” Stack adds. “Then we can dip into that aesthetic on our record in a way we would have been afraid to do.”

By the time Spiritual America’s recording began, Brittelle and Wye Oak had built up a great deal of trust. Wasner’s imprint is overt, as her voice suffuses the record. Stack’s is more circumspect, as he played drums and electronics and helped mix—no small role, in

a project stitching together so many musicians working independently. Proceeding from Brittelle’s MIDI demos, Wye Oak tracked all their parts at home.

“Bill’s very open with the liberties he allows you to take,” Wasner says. “He wrote the words and melodies, but he always said, ‘Take this and make it sound natural and make it work.’” The record’s patchwork method accounts for its uncanny hermetic quality, which couldn’t be achieved with a lot of live room tone; part of the magic is the sense of isolated things melting together in an imaginary space.

“It really is unlike any other music I’ve ever heard,” Stack says. “There’s elements that are so intimate and closed off, and if you record a hundred-piece group, you’re never going to get that.”

The concert premiere of Spiritual America took place in New York in February, with some ninety musicians on stage, followed by a West Coast premiere at The Hollywood Bowl with Bon Iver, whose Wisconsin studio, April Base, served as the album’s mixing headquarters. Meanwhile, Wye Oak embarked on its own journey with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, premiering a piece the group commissioned in New York in March.

In a way, Spiritual America is the meeting of a composer who left rural North Carolina years ago and a band who moved to urban North Carolina more recently, and who didn’t find it difficult to locate the emotional center of the music.

“Bill was trying to turn memory and nostalgia into sound in a way that connected with the kind of music he makes now,” Wasner says. “Knowing him and thinking about the way I use music to process William Brittelle PHOTO COURTESY OF NEW AMSTERDAM RECORDS He was raised Christian in Western North Carolina, which my experience, I can imagine that there is some sort of healimmediately suggests a familiar narrative: a young person ing that unfolded in bringing all of those sides of his experibreaking away from his family and church. But it was Britence together. Childhood is the way I related to it, this sense telle’s family that broke the church away from him, explaining of embracing nostalgia. The weight of things you remember why the album feels as much like an elegy as a purge. from that part of your life and how your memory changes “What drove a lot of this was a longing to be back under them—there’s this kind of ghostliness I wanted to capture. what I think of as a dome,” Brittelle says. “As a new father And the melodrama of youth, too. That’s what he’s going for, and a freelance artist and a Buddhist in New York, I felt like not the melodrama of adulthood, but of youth, which seems my spiritual survival strategies were breaking down rapidly. more authentic.”

I longed for feeling like there were clearer lines delineating things. There was something about knowing the captain of rittelle became interested in Wye Oak when a friend the football team was the number-one guy, that cars were who was touring with Dirty Projectors told him about cool, that this was the right kind of music.” how Wasner had picked up the band’s complex vocal Brittelle says his mother had a crisis of faith when he was arrangements by ear. around fifteen. He was abruptly severed from his church and “I always loved Jenn’s voice, and I’d been searching his Christian school when his family moved to upstate New for someone who has a pop sensibility but can learn difficult York. In his early twenties, he had what he calls a psychologimusic,” Brittelle says by phone. “There were things I wanted cal breakdown, which is incarnated in “Birds of Paradise.” to do that are hard for people who aren’t from a classical back“I was still working through my relationship with Christiground, but when you get to a certain level you transcend your anity, and I hadn’t moved to [the city] yet and turned my back background. She has perfect relative pitch. This project never on everything,” he says. “I felt a psychic break coming on and could have gotten off the ground without her.” thought, ‘I can’t meditate my way out of this.’ I started to see Brittelle works in the modern classical world, but he’s no something elitist in saying, ‘Isn’t it silly to believe these things stranger to pop, as an avowed Frank Ocean fan (an influence that people in middle America believe?’ That’s who I was detectable in faint R&B traceries on songs such as “Forbidgrowing up, and to an extent, it’s who I’ll always be. Beyond den Colors”) who used to front post-punk band The Blondes. the literal belief that Jesus died on the cross, there’s a whole But Spiritual America is about more than reconciling his other part that just has to do with our emotional structuring classical and pop sides—it’s also about reconciling his childand the way we think about love and death.” hood and adulthood. It took shape over a tumultuous, existenBrittelle realized he had to go home—not just to write the tial-crisis-laden period in his life. record, but for his own wellbeing. There were numerous “The only way I have to work through big existential crithreads tugging him toward North Carolina, from the work ses is music,” Brittelle says, confirming Wasner’s intuition.

B

with Wye Oak to a commission from the Eastern Band of the Cherokee that the North Carolina Symphony premiered last year.

Though it’s abstract, a definite narrative plays out across Spiritual America. It explores an alternate path in Brittelle’s life, one in which he stayed in Newton, got a job, bought a Trans Am, and whisked a woman he loved away from her alcoholic father.

This is how he imagined his life would go before he was uprooted to New York. To write it, he had to ensconce himself in his childhood room, with his Bible and his yearbooks, and drive around familiar streets listening to hair metal.

“The religious crisis was a catalyst for recognizing there are a lot of different ways my life could have gone,” he says. “One of the things I realized is that I’m still culturally Christian in a sense; I have a worldview that was built in that environment, and I feel comfortable when there’s a structure to death, to God, to all these different relationships we have, and that felt really beautiful and calming to me.”

Brittelle thought that in order to be a whole person, he had to integrate his childhood instead of walling it off. The poignancy coursing through the record is the realization that integrating it doesn’t mean getting it back. After all, as alluring as nostalgia can be, as “Forbidden Colors” would have it, it’s also a drug, even a poison.

“That was written after driving around North Carolina listening to Def Leppard’s Hysteria over and over and realizing I had reached an impasse,” Brittelle says. “I felt like I wasn’t up to the task of upholding all the commitments I’d made—to my family, my work, my art. Going so far into playing out this idea of “what if?” was not really helpful. In a weird way, I feel like making this album both created and solved huge problems in my life. It was so fucking impossible to do, the scale was so huge. But now I feel this sense of peace and freedom, partly because it’s done, but also because I realized that, in a sense, my religion is those commitments.”

For Brittelle, the hardest and most invaluable lesson he learned from the process was also a painful one: Some things you lose simply cannot be recovered, such as youth, innocence, and an ingenuous view of the world. You feel you might die if you can’t get it back. Then, when you give it your all and fail, you find that you’re still alive.

“I came to the conclusion that there’s essentially no way back to it,” Brittelle says. “You can have nostalgia for it, you can long for it, and you can even do what I did and live in it, play it out and ask what would have happened if I’d stayed in this direction. Instead of judgment, there’s a genuine longing for that world, which hasn’t actively been part of who I am as an adult. I’d reached an impasse being able to function with the first seventeen years of my life walled off.”

Personally, I also came to understand what I identified with in the record before I fully knew what it was about. Like Brittelle, I was raised Christian and then chose a different path. But certain stories still structure my psychology, not least the Edenic myth of being cast out of a paradise to which you can never return. Whether that’s the certainty of Christianity or the innocence of childhood, we all know how it feels to be exiled from the safety of fixed borders into infinite space and having to find our way to somewhere else. bhowe@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 7.3.19 | 15

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indyfood The INDY ’s Guide to the Triangle’s Best Hot Dogs From gourmand to gas station, beer-braised to dirty water, here’s how to do National Hot Dog Month right

By Lena Geller, Andrea Rice, and Jenn Rice

T

here might not be a food as quintessentially American as the hot dog.

Sure, the frankfurter was actually created in Germany as a way to salvage leftover bits and pieces from the butcher’s block.

But the first hot-dog stand was fashioned on Coney Island in 1871, and the wieners caught on as snacks at baseball games—and that’s an indisputably American invention.

And here’s another one: Every Fourth of July since 1916, Coney Island has hosted a ten-minute race for Mustard Belt glory—a hot-dog-eating contest that draws competitors from around the world. Last year, more than a million people tuned in to watch Joey Chestnut devour a world-record seventyfour dogs, more than eleven thousand calories. (Don’t try this at home, kids.)

From gourmet to gas station, beer-braised to dirty water, Kosher to pork to vegan, there are lots of ways to enjoy what’s become an American classic. New York and Chicago might be a top draw for hot dog enthusiasts, but the Triangle is no slouch, either.

To celebrate National Hot Dog Month— and America’s birthday (patriotism!)— we’ve compiled a list of our ten favorite franks, brats, and dogs in the Triangle. Tell us yours at food@indyweek.com.

the Accordion Club A Dive Bar Dog with Green Chile + Hot Cheese 316 West Geer Street, Durham, facebook.com/accordionclubdurham After a few shots of whiskey, there’s nothing like a down-and-dirty dive bar dog topped with green chile and hot cheese with a side of Frito pie. No drunken munchies can resist these rotisserie-style, straight-from-the-vacuum-sealed-package wieners, which rotate in a warming oven for an indeterminable amount of time, invoking memories of gas station pit stops on a cross-country road trip.

Bull City Burger and Brewery Pimento Dog 107 East Parish Street, Durham, bullcityburgerandbrewery.com Like almost everything else, BCBB makes its dogs from scratch: The brewpub grinds the meat for its all-beef hot dogs every morning and butterflies them to provide more surface area for a big scoop of creamy house-made pimento cheese and a smattering of crisp, tangy pickles.

The Cardinal Bar Beer-Braised All-Beef or Veggie Dog 713 North West Street, Raleigh, facebook.com/thecardinalbar Co-owner Jason Howard boils hot dogs in beer and slathers the bun with Duke’s mayo in lieu of butter before grilling. With toppings like pickled okra, relish, beer onions, bacon, or sriracha, you can customize your 100-percent-N.C.-beef dogs any way you want. The veggie dogs are also local—from Loma Linda in Nashville, North Carolina, which has been making plant-based foods since the 1890s.

“They come in a can soaking in a brine,” Howard says. “They are by far the tastiest.”

Cloos’ Coney Island Chicago-Style Dog 2233 Avent Ferry Road, #102, Raleigh, facebook.com/cloosconeyisland A retro-style diner with red vinyl swivel stools and black-and-white checkered floors, Cloos’ Chicago dog gets the real Windy City treatment: tomato slices, pickle spear, mustard, onions, “neon” relish, peppers, and celery salt on a poppy seed bun.

The Dog House Ol’ Yallow Dog Multiple locations, thedoghouseus.com Each dog on the menu is inspired by an actual canine. The Ol’ Yallow comes with a golden schmear of mustard, melted cheese, and bacon bits; with the Tailwagger Combo, you can add a second—a German Shepherd or Collie, perhaps?

Durham Bulls Athletic Park Ballpark Dog 409 Blackwell Street, Durham, milb.com/durham In the old days, Wool E. Bull used his hot dog-shaped launcher to shoot actual franks into the crowd. Now he shoots t-shirts, which is less exciting, but it prevents the beloved dirty water wieners and soft potato rolls from getting bruised. Besides, when you buy one yourself, you can doctor it up with all the classic condiments. For whatever reason, hot dogs are just better at the ballpark. (DBAP sells veggie dogs, too.)

Jimmy’s Famous Hot Dogs Yankee Dog Multiple locations, jimmysfamoushotdogs.com If the definitely-not-creepy life-size figurine of an anthropomorphic hot dog squirting ketchup on its head standing guard at

the door doesn’t scare you away, get the Yankee dog, which features a salty, smoky, perfectly charred frank topped with a piquant sauerkraut and spicy brown mustard.

King’s Sandwich Shop Corn Dog 701 Foster Street, Durham, kingssandwichshop.com King’s corn dog may seem like a boring choice given its selection of deluxe sandwiches, but don’t underestimate the childlike delight brought on by biting into this battered and fried frank-on-a-stick, whose simple, nostalgic flavors may transport you back to the state fair—or, if you’re an oldtimer, to King’s decades-long residency as the unofficial vendor for the old ballpark across the street.

The Roast Grill Classic “Burnt” Dog, Naked 7 South West Street, Raleigh, roastgrill.com A Raleigh institution since 1940, The Roast Grill is best-known for its “burnt” hot dog and strict ban on ketchup. Owner George Poniros’s late-grandmother was a hot dog purist; you won’t find relish, kraut, cheese, fries, or chips here either.

Sup Dogs Hawaiian Dog 107 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, supdogs.com Ranked the fifteenth best hot dog in America by Business Insider, Sup Dogs pleases just about any palate, from classic chili and slaw dogs to more inventive versions like the Hawaiian dog, served with pineapple, honey mustard, and special Sup Dog sauce. food@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 7.3.19 | 17

food

Smoke ’Em if You Got ’Em FOR CHEF AND COOKBOOK AUTHOR MATTHEW REGISTER, BARBECUE ISN’T JUST A TRADE. IT’S A WAY OF LIFE. BY ANDREA RICE

O

n a hot Saturday afternoon this spring, I entered through a distressed white wooden barn door and was greeted by that seemingly ubiquitous sign, “Beware Pickpockets and Loose Women.” Inside was a lush, shaded outdoor space lined with long rows of white tablecloths and chairs, enough to seat at least a hundred guests.

This is the backyard of Southern Smoke, the only barbecue restaurant in Garland, a single-stoplight Eastern N.C. town of about six hundred. It’s also the blood, sweat, and tears of acclaimed chef-owner Matthew Register, who was hosting a release party for his new cookbook, Southern Smoke—and who could launch a lucrative barbecue joint anywhere he wants.

So why set up shop in the middle of nowhere?

“This is home,” Register told me recently. “People always ask me, ‘Why don’t you have a place in Raleigh or Wilmington or Goldsboro?’ We want to be something that Sampson County can be proud of.”

Southern Smoke is Register’s first cookbook, but he says it won’t be his last. The self-taught cook from the evensmaller Harrells (population two hundred) wants to convince other small-town chefs that they don’t have to move to the big city to open a successful restaurant.

“Eastern North Carolina, like a lot of places across the U.S., has people that leave and never come back,” he says.

The cookbook is an expansion of Register’s seasonally based, farm-to-table restaurant, which draws locals and tourists alike. A definitive guide to Southern fare, Southern Smoke is a culinary tour of the South, from North Carolina barbecue, to dry-rub ribs from Memphis and the Delta, to a Low Country boil, to rice and okra dishes developed by the Gullah people who migrated from Sierra Leone to just outside of Savannah, to a classic peanut pie.

Register’s Eastern N.C. influences are evident in his barbecue technique. He opts for vinegar-based barbecue sauce over tomato, pork shoulder over whole hog (it’s more economical and less wasteful).

But Southern Smoke—the restaurant and the cookbook—transcends the old east-west divide. Barbecue is not just a trade but a way of life, a ritual that brings together friends and families.

“Some of my closest friends are the people I would sit up with all night long around the fire cooking barbecue,” he says. “There’s a bond that’s formed especially when cooking barbecue. We all know what really goes into it: being tired, sitting up at three a.m. telling stories; it’s such a family-oriented thing.”

18 | 7.3.19 | INDYweek.com

SMOKED CHICKEN QUARTERS WITH PAPA NIPPER’S CHURCH SAUCE Serves 6 6 chicken quarters 3 Tbsp. salt 1½ Tbsp. freshly ground black pepper ½ cup (1 stick) butter 1 cup packed brown sugar 2 Tbsp. garlic salt 3 cups Eastern North Carolina Vinegar Sauce (see below) My wife’s grandfather, Jimmy Nipper, comes from a barbecue family. Jimmy would cook whole chicken quarters over hardwood coals ’til they were almost done. Then, when the chickens were just short of finished, he would take them out of the smoker and throw them in big coolers. He poured a vinegar-based sauce over them, closed the lid, and let them finish cooking in the cooler.

While it sounds strange, what came out of the coolers was a smoky, juicy, vinegary, and somewhat sweet chicken that people couldn’t get enough of.

Prepare a grill for smoking by putting the charcoal to one side of the grill. Once the fire burns down, add oak wood, which has a mellow flavor, directly over the coals and get it smoldering. Close the lid.

Trim each chicken quarter of excess fat and skin, then season them liberally with salt and pepper. Arrange the quarters on the makeshift smoker, but don’t cook the chicken directly over the fire. Instead, set it off to the side so the wood and charcoal are on one side, and the chicken is on the other. Smoke for 2 hours at 250°F or until a digital thermometer reads 165°F when inserted deep into the meat.

While the chicken is smoking, melt the butter in a medium pot over medium heat. Add the brown sugar and whisk to combine.

Add the garlic salt and vinegar sauce, reduce the heat to medium low, and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Set the sauce aside and let it cool for 30 minutes. To finish the chicken, place the smoked chicken in a cooler and pour the sauce over the top. A smaller cooler works best so the chicken gets fully immersed in the sauce. Close the lid and let the chicken rest for 30 minutes, or until you are ready to serve. Serve hot, straight from the cooler.

EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA VINEGAR SAUCE Makes 1 gallon 1 gallon apple cider vinegar 1¼ cups salt 2 Tbsp. cayenne pepper 3½ Tbsp. paprika 1 Tbsp. red pepper flakes

Smoked Chicken Quarters PHOTO BY FELICIA PERRY TRUJILLO / SOUTHERN SMOKE

For the Fourth of July holiday, Register has shared a smoked chicken recipe that finishes in, of all things, a cooler. The longer the chicken stays in the cooler, he says, the juicier and more flavorful it becomes.

“The best part is you can have it all done an hour or two before your guests arrive, and when you’re ready to eat, just open the cooler,” he says. arice@indyweek.com

This is my recipe for a classic Eastern-style sauce. Make sure you shake it well before using it because most of the spices will settle to the bottom as it sits. You can also cut the recipe in half.

In a large stockpot, bring the vinegar and salt to a boil over high heat. When the mixture begins to boil, add the cayenne, paprika, and red pepper flakes. Stir the mixture with a ladle until combined and remove from the heat. The finished cooled sauce can be stored in the empty vinegar gallon jug. It can be stored in a dry, dark place for a month or refrigerated for slightly longer.

Reprinted and adapted for print with permission from Southern Smoke, © 2019 Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc. © 2019 Matthew Register

indymusic

FESTIVAL FOR THE ENO

Thursday, Jul. 4 & Saturday, Jul. 6, $18–$30 West Point on the Eno, Durham www.enofest.org J U LY

FR 5 THE CLARKS 7p SA 6 SECOND HELPING:

A Stitch in Time

THE LYNYRD SKYNYRD SHOW 7:30p

THE NEW MASTERSOUNDS

FOLK TRADITIONS MEET NEW SONICS IN THE CONTEMPORARY VISION OF HOUSE AND LAND BY JOSEPHINE MCROBBIE

T

he music of the British folk revivalists Dolly and Shirley Collins is often called psychedelic, although the sisters didn’t exactly align themselves with their more out-there peers of the sixties and seventies. Once, when pressured to drop acid, Dolly retorted that she didn't need psychedelics to “see” a tree. Likewise, the duo saw traditional balladry as complex enough to stand on its own, with well-studied early music instrumentation.

However, Dolly sometimes played a synthesizer; the drone of modern electronics roiling around curtals and cornetts. The combination showcased sung poetry in an open-ended way that was still reverent of its origins.

Sally Anne Morgan and Sarah Louise Henson, who make up the duo House and Land, are particularly attached to these records by the Collins sisters. While on tour before creating their latest album, Across the Field, they often listened to 1978’s For as Many as Will, eventually choosing the Collins’s version of “Blacksmith” to arrange with their own blend of drone and melody. Henson and Morgan, who both hail from Western North Carolina, have cultivated a set of favorite traditional songs over time, masterfully utilizing everything from fiddle and electric guitar to Shruti box and tin whistle.

Although they’re not related, Henson and Morgan harmonize with all the tension and love of siblings.

At fortieth-annual Festival for the Eno, there are three opportunities to catch them in action, alongside about eighty other acts, many of them also based in North Carolina, including Chatham Rabbits, Boulevards, and Blue Cactus. In addition to their performance as House and Land, Morgan will play as part of The Black Twig Pickers, and Henson will continue her experimentations with modular synthesizer and guitar during a solo set. The two fit in well at a festival crafted around environmen-

WE 7/10 • 7P

THE NEW MASTERSOUNDS FR 12 PHISH AT ALPINE VALLEY NIGHT ONE WEBCAST 7p

SA 13 GRASS IS DEAD & SONGS FROM THE ROAD BAND 8p

SU 14 PHISH AT ALPINE VALLEY

NIGHT THREE WEBCAST 7p

SU 14 YELLOWMAN 7:30p TU 16 CHARLEY CROCKETT 8p TH 18 LATE SHOW- UM AFTER PARTY. DOOM FLAMINGO 10:30p

FR 19 GREENSKY BLUEGRASS

AT KOKA BOOTH AMPHITHEATRE 5:30p

FR 19 INTERSTELLAR OVERDRIVE:

A SAUCERFUL OF PINK FLOYD W/ EYEBALL 7:30p

SA 20 LONG BEACH DUB ALLSTARS

W/ AGGROLITES / MIKE PINTO 7:30p

SU 21 AFTON MUSIC SHOWCASE

FEATURING: ELECTROMANIC, MEISTROXMUZIC, MARK DIPRIMO, AIRCRASH DETECTIVES, KEITH LEGLUE, THE GYPSY MYSTICS , THE OCEANFRONT BAND & GUEST 5:30p

SA 27 DIRTY LOGIC:

TRIBUTE TO STEELY DAN 8p AU G U ST

FR 2 COSMIC CHARLIE 8p SA 3 BENNY “THE BUTCHER” FR 9

W/ ADAM BOMB/CAPRI/ CEEZ PESO & THE BUFFET BOYS 8p STEPHEN MARLEY W/ DJ SHACIA PÄYNE & CONSTANCE BUBBLE 9p MOTHER’S FINEST 7p

SA 10 FR 16 WOODSTOCK AND BEYOND, FEATURING THE QUADRIVIUM PROJECT 7p 12TH PLANET 8p

House and Land

SA 17 WE 21 BERES HAMMOND – NEVER ENDING

PHOTO BY KATRINA OHSTROM

talism and land conservation. Though her main job outside music is as a letterpress artist, Morgan has a degree in geology, and she once worked for Clean Water for North Carolina. Henson, meanwhile, is a budding herbalist who often shares cheerful videos about her adventures in making tinctures with milky oats and nettles. In a number of ways, they are kindred spirits.

“We were drawn to each other as not just as fans of the traditional songs and ballads, but also because it’s rare, in my experience, to find people like Sarah, who love music deeply but also widely,” says Morgan. “On our first tour, we ended up at the Big Ears Festival, because I was invited to play with this Tony Conrad orchestra. That cemented our kinship in minimalism and experimental music.”

For their second House and Land album, the duo also drew inspiration from the music of Swedish heavy psychedelic group Pärson Sound and its later incarnation, Träd, Gräs och Stenar, for their version of “The Lady Of Carlisle,” sometimes styled as “Carolina Lady.” They recorded an instrumental version instead of parroting lyrics that they found troubling. This isn’t an unusual practice for the pair; they’ve often tweaked songs that bore strains of misogyny or violence, which they feel is integral to the work of interpreting traditional songs.

“I don't think of it as us imposing an agenda on songs, so much as treating them as living things that are adapting and changing through the times,” says Morgan. music@indyweek.com

W/ HARMONY HOUSE SINGERS 7p

FR 23 JIVE MOTHER MARY

W/ BROTHER HAWK / BIGGINS / SIXTEEN PENNY 7:30p

SA 24 THE MAGNIFICENT DJ JAZZY JEFF 9:30p

SA 31 METAL POLE MAYHEM

8p

CO M I N G S O O N

9/1 NIKE VS. ADIDAS PARTY

I LOVE THE 80’S / 90’S 9p

9/13 WILDER WOODS

LIVE IN CONCERT 7p

9/15 BRENT COBB AND THEM 7p 9/20 BLACK UHURU 8p 9/28 DREW HOLCOMB & THE

NEIGHBORS W/ BIRDTALKER 6:30p

9/29 NOAH KAHAN 7p 10/4 JIMMY HERRING AND THE 5 OF 7 7:30p

ADV. TICKETS @ LINCOLNTHEATRE.COM & SCHOOLKIDS RECORDS ALL SHOWS ALL AGES

126 E. Cabarrus St.• 919-821-4111 www.lincolntheatre.com INDYweek.com | 7.3.19 | 19

music

TORCHE

Wednesday, Jul. 10, 8 p.m., $15 Local 506, Chapel Hill www.local506.com

Heavy Hooks

FOR TORCHE, A SETBACK IGNITED INSPIRATION ON ITS UNPRECEDENTLY EMOTIONAL NEW ALBUM

BY BRYAN REED

L

ong embraced by a heavy metal scene in which it’s something of an awkward fit, Miami’s Torche bucks against staid notions of what metal or hard rock can be and represent.

Even though the thunderous, lumbering low end and deliberate pacing of Torche’s songs earns comparisons to sludge and doom metal, the band doesn’t have any of the dourness or misanthropy that genre often carries. They’ve been likened to stoner-rock icons Kyuss, though Torche’s arrangements are denser and more layered than the California band’s. Sonically, Torche has as much in common with shoegaze or noise rock or ‘70s stadium rock as it does with metal.

With its fifth album, Admission, Torche further expands its prismatic, emotionally complex, and—dare we say—righteously catchy catalog. Jonathan Nuñez, Torche’s longtime bassist, and now, its guitarist, might have put it best in the album’s press materials.

“In a world of Sabbaths, we get to be Van Halen,” he said.

Still, that hasn’t stopped the band from receiving acclaim from the metal scene.

Second album Meanderthal landed at number one on Decibel Magazine’s list of the “Top 40 Extreme Albums of 2008.” Restarter and Admission both bear the imprint of the reliable metal label Relapse, whose roster also includes the likes of Pig Destroyer, Incantation, and Full of Hell.

Torche has never tried to fit into any specific mold or meet any sort of expectations.

“We never know what’s coming,” Nuñez says. “We have ideas. We have songs. But the transformation that always goes on between a demo that you’re playing by yourself to the final product, there’s always this fun, like, ‘Let’s see what happens.’”

Going into the creation of Admission, that spontaneity proved even more vital. In 2016, between tours in support of Restarter, guitarist Andrew Elstner left the band with 20 | 7.3.19 | INDYweek.com

just nine days to figure out how to adjust before hitting the road again.

“It was something we dealt with in a very in-the-moment way,” says Nuñez. “There’s no time to think, we’re just doing it.” As Nuñez shifted to guitar, Eric Hernandez of noise-rockers Wrong stepped in on bass, joining the band’s core trio of Nuñez, singer/guitarist Steve Brooks, and drummer Rick Smith. Instead of a setback, the shift proved to be an inspiration.

“There was a feeling that was just ignited with that first show. From there, it got better and better,” Nuñez says. He, Brooks, and Hernandez were all bringing new ideas to the band, which spurred a sense of urgency and excitement. “There was an abundance of material. I feel like we are, collectively, the most attached to this release over anything in the past.”

Indeed, the band has touted Admission as its “most personal” and “transparent” album to date, its powerful riffs buoying nuanced and reflective lyrics. Rather than dwelling on any specific topic of state of mind, which Nuñez says is a common but limiting approach to making records, Torche aims for a full spectrum.

“This, in one record, fully encompasses up and down, heavy, sad, angry or angsty, happy, some sci-fi optimism; there’s all sorts of things,” he says.

Torche has always been as much about hooks as heft, but Admission takes it all a step further. As Brooks sings on the aggressive and atmospheric opener, “Where am I to go? / Up from here.”

The title track’s shimmering, atmospheric guitars feel as indebted to U2 as its rumbling rhythm section owes to heavy, exploratory metal bands like Baroness or Boris. Brooks’s vocal melody alone is worthy of a stadium-filling anthem.

Admission, Nuñez says, stretches the band far enough beyond its comfort zone that he was curious how it would be received by fans. Metal Injection wrote of

Torche

PHOTO BY KEANS LLAMERA

the single, “Torche is back with the title track to the album and it’s hardly another down-tuned punch to the gut. Instead, Torche breaks out their new wave influences and drops a seriously catchy one on all of our heads.”

Beyond embracing and pushing to the forefront some unexpected influences, the songwriting veers away from metal tropes as well. Whereas metal—from “Black Sabbath” to “Hammer Smashed Face,” from “Rainbow in the Dark” to “Dopesmoker”—has often dwelled in escapist fantasy, hedonism, or horror, Torche keeps things grounded in reality. As he vamps into the refrain of the title track, Brooks sings, “I said it’s fine/ You will survive/ Yes, I will pretend/ I don’t need to love again.” The heartbreak at the core of the song is palpable, but so is the triumphant resolve in its delivery.

For all the sonic density and explosive volume Torche summons, its intention is not to bludgeon or oppress, but to envelop.

“I worked on it so that it’s not harsh,” Nuñez, who also produced the album, says.

“It heightens the experience to not be totally exhausted and have ear fatigue.”

Nuñez says that, even as a child, he was drawn to sound—the way certain tones or frequencies would resonate in space and emotionally. His switch to guitar proved to be a challenge as he worked to dial in a tone that would provide the same level of “sonic comfort” he’d developed on bass.

“What I was searching for was unattainable,” he says. “I was like, ‘This is unreal.

Why’s everybody else happy? I want to be happy too.’”

The quest for the right sound led Nuñez to build his own gear, launching a line of amps and effects pedals bearing the Nuñez Amplification brand. But that search for emotional resonance within the arrangements and timbres of the new songs proved fruitful for Admission.

“I love that this record reaches out in different directions,” Nuñez says. “There’s a continuity, a very identifiable sonic signature that is us. But it’s still growing. It’s still expanding. music@indyweek.com

indypage

LITERARY TRIVIA NIGHT WITH REDBUD WRITING PROJECT Wednesday, Jul. 10, 7 p.m., free. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh www.quailridgebooks.com

Another Way Than MFA

TWO RALEIGH WRITERS WANT TO BREAK DOWN PUBLISHING BARRIERS WITH A NEW KIND OF WRITING SCHOOL

BY SARAH EDWARDS

T

he dominant narrative around Making It As A Writer has long involved a couple of standard tracks: You might move to a windowless hovel in New York City, for one, in order to be more proximate to the publishing industry. Or you might follow in the steps of many storied writers and pursue a creative writing MFA—and, potentially, a stack of debt.

This narrative is so embedded that a whole book, NYC. vs. MFA by Chad Harbach, is devoted to emphasizing, in the most polarizing terms, a dichotomy that’s unavailable to most. These options—or a trust fund—notwithstanding, popular culture suggests that you might as well shove your novel in a desk drawer and truck along in a practical career choice, resigning yourself to thumbing longingly through a Raymond Carver collection once in a blue moon.

This narrative is changing, though, thanks to the rise of the adult writing education communities that have sprung up around the country in the past decade— programs and centers that operate outside of the academy but go beyond introductory courses and informal kitchen-table writing groups. Often found in bigger urban centers, programs like GrubStreet in Boston and Sackett Street in New York City are reimagining the literary landscape with intensive writing programs for adults with day jobs.

This August, the Triangle gets its own community model in the form of the Redbud Writing Project, a series of rigorous six-week classes taught by recent N.C. State MFA graduates Arshia Simkin and Emily Cataneo. To kick off the year, five fiction and nonfiction classes will meet in Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham.

For Simkin and Cataneo, an MFA was the right step to take. Both had forged other careers before applying to graduate programs: Cataneo had worked as a journalist

Arshia Simkin and Emily Cataneo

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS

in Boston for several years, while Simkin worked as a lawyer in Ithaca, New York.

“During my lunch break, I would Google MFA programs,” she says. “I’d only learned about them in my second year as a lawyer and became sort of obsessed with them. But before then, I’d Google things like ‘sad lawyer’ and ‘leave the law.’”

Both women were accepted into N.C. State’s fiction MFA, an intimate, competitive program with a national reputation.

The experience was positive for both, but switching careers was still a big risk.

“It meant leaving something that had a very set path and traditional marker of success, which, coming from an immigrant background, was important to me and my family,” Simkin says, “It was quite a leap.”

While in the program, both Cataneo and Simkin discovered a passion for teaching writing and, with graduation on the horizon this past spring, began exploring how to translate that passion to the Triangle.

“I was talking to some friends about how people can make their own opportunities outside the structure of a university,” Cataneo says. Soon, she learned about writing schools like GrubStreet and the Gotham Writers Workshop.

“I thought about it and I was like, ‘We don’t have anything like that here, why don’t we have anything like that?’ I read that GrubStreet was started by two MFA grads who wanted to teach and put up a flyer, and now it’s this beloved institution in Boston. I thought, ‘I could be that MFA grad!’”

The Redbud Writing Project launches in August with those five core classes, but the pair hopes to expand to include different genres like poetry and science fiction as well as more scholarships. Classes will be held for both beginner and intermediate writers, with “principles of empathy, compassion and candor” guiding both.

This fall, classes will be held in both the morning and evening; the daytime offerings cater to retirees and stay-at-home parents, while evening classes are accessible to people with nine-to-fives. According to Simkin, classes will be a hybrid of craft instruction and exercises, with a workshop portion modeled after a traditional Iowastyle roundtable. Several three-day workshops begin in July, while the first section of six-week classes roll-out in August.

“I think it’s really hard to find rigor, and that’s what we want to provide—an MFA level of craft and workshop rigor, and encouragement to produce and learn from

each other, without requiring people to sequester themselves in a university for two or three years, because that’s not realistic for everyone,” Cataneo says. Ultimately, they hope to help break down some of the traditional barriers of entry around serious writing and the publishing industry, as well as to help make writing less of a solo activity and the Triangle more of a literary hub.

One of the evening classes is set to meet at So & So Books in Raleigh. Shop co-owner (as well as poet and small-press editor) Chris Tonelli says that he’s excited to see a new model introduced into the area, especially one that may potentially help connect the writing communities spread out between the Triangle, which can often have different resources and literary flavors. “[Redbud] feels comprehensive—they mean it when they say the Triangle. They don’t just mean one city and then are calling it the Triangle,” Tonelli says. “They’re doing it for their jobs, and I think that’s the kind of commitment we’ve lacked. They’re offering courses in the day and night and that’s something I haven’t seen yet. I think that the Triangle has one of the richest scenes anywhere, it’s just that there’s no umbrella or storefront.”

While running Redbud is Cataneo and Simkin’s primary gig, post-graduation, both also have their own writing projects on the burner: Simkin is working on a short-story collection that she characterizes as fiction “concerned with women in a male-dominated society and what it means to be an outsider,” while Cataneo’s novel hews most closely to speculative fiction.

In the lead-up time before the first class, they’re trying to drum up interest for the program; next week, they’re hosting the second installment of a literary trivia night at Quail Ridge Books. Ultimately, they say, they’re “very earnest nerds, not the cool kids of the writing world—but hopefully, people will see that as an advantage.” sedwards@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 7.3.19 | 21

7.3–7.10

WEDNESDAY, JULY 10– SUNDAY, JULY 14

DURHAM COMICS FEST

WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK

The Durham County Library’s annual Comics Fest has become an annual spotlight for the diversity of comics—not just in subject matter and audience, but in how comics are made. This year’s highlights on Saturday, which is the main event at the Shannon Road library, include appearances

by Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden, authors of the acclaimed dissection of comics storytelling How to Read Nancy.

Using a simple three-panel newspaper comic strip, the book analyzes its visual elements, offering a master class in the fundamentals of art, design, and comedy.

Another special guest is Jen Wang, writer and artist of the award-winning YA graphic novel The Prince and the Dressmaker. The event includes a local artists’ alley, a comics swap, and, on Sunday, a screening of the documentary Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics, with a video chat with the film’s director, Frederick Luis Aldama.

—Zack Smith VARIOUS VENUES, DURHAM Various times, free, www.durhamcomicsfest.org

SUNDAY, JULY 7

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK

One of modern dance’s most popular, playful, and marketing-savvy companies returns to the American Dance Festival for a greatest-hits retrospective spanning thirty-two years of the company’s almost half-century run. The evening begins with the 1975 classic, Untitled, in which two tall Victorian women make their delicate way through a Jungian psychosexual garden.

Gnomen, created in 1997 as a memorial to dancer Jim Blanc, who died of AIDS, discloses the contents of a Pilobolus-style book of the dead. In Rushes, the memorable 2007 multimedia collaboration with Israeli choreographers Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak, a strange man with an even stranger suitcase interrupts five monotonous rural lives one night, animating their dreams and offering one the golden possibility of escape. And Moses Pendleton’s Day Two pairs myths about the second day of creation with music from David Byrne and Brian Eno. Its nudity will be toned down Friday night, between commando runs Thursday and Saturday nights. —Byron Woods

Word to LFO, if you came up in the ‘80s era of boy-band R&B music, it made you sick to watch New Kids on the Block overshadow the foundation that their Boston predecessors, New Edition, laid since the days of “Mr. Telephone Man.” But decades later, after much scrutiny and nearly one-hundred million records sold (“Hangin’ Tough,” “Please Don’t Go Girl,” and “You Got It (The Right Stuff)” being the marquee songs), NKOTB has reconciled its white pop privilege by paying tribute to some of the originators and progenitators of their style on their recent “Boys in the Band” tribute single to groups such as Jackson 5, NSYNC, B2K, and others. The satiric video features a cameo from tourmates Naughty by Nature as well as one from the New Edition spinoff group, Bell Biv DeVoe. It’s all in fun now.

But why wouldn’t it be? These were all the poster boys of many of our adolescences (you were either a Jordan Knight or Joey McIntyre nut). But now that the posters are all rolled up and either thrown or hidden away, that doesn’t mean that you still can’t hit that Running Man dance move that Jordan used to kill. Also with Salt-N-Pepa, Naughty by Nature, Tiffany, and Debbie Gibson. —Eric Tullis

DUKE’S PAGE AUDITORIUM, DURHAM Various times, $10–$65, www.americandancefestival.org

PNC ARENA, RALEIGH 7:30 p.m., $26+, www.pncarena.com

THURSDAY, JULY 4–SATURDAY, JULY 6

PILOBOLUS

22 | 7.3.19 | INDYweek.com

Pilobolus

PHOTO BY HIBBARD NASH PHOTOGRAPHY

Wand

PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT’S CRADLE

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SUNDAY, JULY 7

WAND

Wand emerged from the SoCal psych-rock revival of the aughties that also gave us the sunny, shaggy, idea-a-minute rush of Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin. But more recently, bandleader Cory Hanson seems intent on slowing down and glowing up. A year and a half after Plum, which was stouter, clearer, and more impressive than any of the group’s prior albums, Wand cast a new kind of spell on Laughing Matter, which Drag City released in April. On it, the band frequently finds psychedelic effects in chiseled minimalism rather than headlong excess, capturing rare grooves that suggest the band Can at its most ominously syncopated (the gripping “Scarecrow”) or Clinic at its most arid—you can practically see the wavy mirage lines coming off the weird synth dunes of “xoxo.” Hanson’s downright Yorkean vocals soften the music’s rugged, entrancingly empty landscapes, which open into lush oases of acoustic folk and sweet, gushing psych-pop in the classic English style. With Dreamdecay. —Brian Howe CAT’S CRADLE, CHAPEL HILL 8 p.m., $13–$15, www.catscradle.com

WHAT ELSE SHOULD I DO? EIKO OTAKE AT THE RUBY (P. 31), HOUSE AND LAND AT WEST POINT ON THE ENO (P. 19), NATHAN BALLINGRUD AT QUAIL RIDGE BOOKS (P. 30), TORCHE AT LOCAL 506 (P. 20), TRUTH TO POWER 7 AT PLEIADES ARTS (P. 29), PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING AND MONSTER SHARK AT THE CAROLINA THEATRE (P. 32), LITERARY TRIVIA NIGHT AT QUAIL RIDGE BOOKS (P. 21)

INDYweek.com | 7.3.19 | 23

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TUESDAY, JULY 9

YEASAYER

Even for a band known for going totally bonkers in the studio, Yeasayer might throw longtime listeners for a loop with its latest release, Erotic Reruns. The Brooklyn-based trio has been guided by an exhilaratingly strange sensibility since debuting with 2007 LP All Hour Cymbals, mashing up elements of indie rock, world beat, and electronic music in the manner of Animal Collective, often warping and stretching individual sounds into otherworldly realms. When these dudes make a record, nothing is off the table, and that’s why it’s surprising for Yeasayer to put out such a conventional album. It’s conceivable that falsetto-heavy funk songs like “Ecstatic Baby” and “People I Loved” will cross over to the radio this summer, which is itself telling. And about that falsetto singing: At its best, it sounds like Midnite Vultures-era Beck, and, at its worst, like Bret from Flight of the Conchords. Either way, his new version of Yeasayer is fun. —Howard Hardee CAT’S CRADLE, CHAPEL HILL

9 p.m., $27–$30, www.catscradle.com

WED, JUL 3

THU, JUL 4

FRI, JUL 5

THE CAVE: The Couldn’t Be Happiers, Jean Caffeine, Pete Pawsey; $5. 9 p.m.

THE CAVE: Sex Negative; $5 suggested. 9 p.m.

ARCANA: Super Secret Dance Party; 10 p.m.

KINGS: Mega ColossUSA; $10. 9 p.m.

THE KRAKEN: Evil Wiener, Lud, Nanner Head; 9:30 p.m.

BLUE NOTE GRILL: Wiley Fosters; free. 9 p.m.

BYNUM FRONT PORCH: Hindsight Bluegrass; 7 p.m.

LOCAL 506: Lion & Spaniel, The River Otters; $7. 8 p.m.

NEPTUNES PARLOUR: Ok Mayday, Animalweapon; $10-$12. 10 p.m.

POUR HOUSE: Raptor Taxi Album Release with Unaka Prong; $7-$8. 9 p.m.

POUR HOUSE: Local Band Local Beer: The Up & Up, The Spectacles, Ashley Larue Band; $5. 9 p.m.

THE CAVE: Nonconnah, Small Life Form, 1970’s Film Stock; $5 suggested. 9 p.m.

KINGS: Seabreeze Diner, Matt Southern & Lost Gold, Rachel Kiel; $10. 8 p.m.

THE KRAKEN: Michaela Anne, Sad Magazine, Jefferson Hart Duo; 8 p.m.

LINCOLN THEATRE: The Clarks; $15. 8 p.m.

LOCAL 506: Brev., Blood Root, No Genre, Hank and Brendan; $8. 8 p.m.

THE PINHOOK: He is Legend, Paperback; 9 p.m.

Yeasayer

PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT’S CRADLE

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AN EVENING WITH BETTYE LAVETTE POPUP CHORUS

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM PRESENTED BY ONE SONG

8/9-11 URINETOWN: THE MUSICAL PRESENTED BY CHSMA TH 8/22

RISSI PALMER W/ XOXOK

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7/12

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TUE

7/16

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7/18

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WED

7/24

Jarren Benton / Locksmith / Ekoh Motorco and Cat’s Cradle present SUMMER SALT Dante Elephant / Motel Radio Girls Rock NC Summer Camp #4 Showcase DAN BAIRD & HOMEMADE SIN Lemon Sparks NC Modernist Houses, AIA Triangle Present A Talk by McMansion Hell’s Kate Wagner

Tatiana Hargreaves performs at The Pit on Monday, July 8.

MRG30 Opening Night Party with Rock*a*Teens / Escape-ism

RHYTHMS LIVE: Bull City Linen & Sundress Affair; $25. 8 p.m.

COMING SOON: Myq Kaplan,We’re We Promised Jetpacks, OVERSTREET, Cowboy Mouth,Tessa Violet, Junior Brown, Mac Sabbath, Okilly Dokilly, Oso Oso, Kindo, Supersuckers, Sophomore Slump Fest, BoDeans, Sinkane, Bleached, flor, Boy Harsher,This Wild Life, River Whyless,The Regrettes, Genrationals, The Way Down Wanderers, Sheer Mag, Kero Kero Bonito,Team Dresch, White Denim, Blackalicious,Warbringer, Sonata Artica, Russian Circles, Nile, Chastity Belt, Fruit Bats, Mikal Cronin, Black Atlantic

Also co-presenting at The Carolina Theatre of Durham: Criminal LIVE SHOW (on Oct 5th)

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

POUR HOUSE: The Broadcast, Erin & The Wildfire, Northerners; $10-$12. 9 p.m.

SCHOOLKIDS RECORDS RALEIGH: Icarus Airline, Chase Hicks; free. 7 p.m.

SHARP NINE GALLERY: Jarrard Harris Quartet; $20. 8 p.m.

SLIM’S: Patois Counselors, Sister Mantos, Sand Pact; $5. 9 p.m.

SAT, JUL 6

[$12. 8 P.M.]

a minute. There’s a lifetime of experience in the shape-shifting sound the guitarist has taken all over the planet. He may be a blues man of the highest order, but that doesn’t stop him from shifting into a dash of jazz, R&B, funk, or rock ‘n’ roll along the way. —Jim Allen

Maybe they call him Cool John because of his ability to tear up a fretboard and make it look easy. Don’t believe it for

THE CAVE: Mellow Swells, Indigo Drops; $5 suggested. 9 p.m.

DURHAM CENTRAL PARK: Ras Medy; 6 p.m.

ARCANA: The River Otters; 9 p.m.

BLUE NOTE GRILL:

Cool John Ferguson Band

are an especially notable pair of siblings. They each began playing the violin as children, then spent their teens racking up awards at fiddle contests around the country. Still in their twenties, they have cultivated their own wideranging projects while also supporting and collaborating with artists like Laurie Lewis and Alice Gerrard (Tatiana), and Bela Fleck and Kacey Musgraves (Alex). This Durham Beer & Banjos series show is a rare performance from the two of them.

—Josephine McRobbie

LINCOLN THEATRE: The New Mastersounds; $17. 8 p.m.

LOCAL 506: Torche; $15. 8 p.m.

POUR HOUSE: Bumpin Uglies, Treehouse!; $12-$15. 9 p.m.

SARAH P. DUKE GARDENS:

Jake Xerxes Fussell [$10. 7 P.M.]

A compassionate craftsman of traditional tunes, the Durham guitartist and folk scholar Jake

Xerxes Fussell’s recentlyreleased third album, Out of Sight, is backed by pedal steel, violin, and organ. His acoustic touch is textured, full-bodied, and honeyed—and perfect for a cool evening in the gardens.

—Sarah Edwards SLIM’S: Oculum Dei, Cadaver Creator, Antenora; $7 suggested. 9 p.m.

POUR HOUSE: Audacity Brass Band, Boom Unit Brass Band; $8-$10. 9 p.m.

TUE, JUL 9 COASTAL CREDIT UNION MUSIC PARK AT WALNUT CREEK: Tedeschi Trucks Band, Blackberry Smoke, Shovels & Rope; $30+. 7 p.m.

Cool John Ferguson performs at Blue Note Grill at Saturday, July 6.

PHOTO BY TIMOTHY DUFFY

KOKA BOOTH AMPHITHEATRE: NC Symphony: Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture; $30-$33. 7:30 p.m.

LINCOLN THEATRE: Second Helping: The Lynyrd Skynyrd Show; $12. 8:30 p.m.

LOCAL 506: 20th Century Boy: Jealous Lovers Indie Rock Dance Party; $5. 9 p.m.

THE MAYWOOD: Twisted Tower Dire, Hellstorm’s Hell On Earth, Shadowrealm; $10. 9 p.m.

NIGHTLIGHT:

Container [$10. 9:30 P.M.]

A Providence, Rhode Island techno producer whose earliest orchestrations emanated from the Carrboro-based label, Hot Releases, Ren Schofield (aka Container) has risen high in the eyes of the international synth set. The crafter of a gleefully lawless sound ideal for the site

of his homecoming, Container will take the stage supported

by Carrboro’s DJ Sponge Bath and Raleigh’s Housefire.

—Ryan Jarrell POUR HOUSE: Better Off Dead, Moon Water; $7-$10. 9 p.m.

POUR HOUSE: Day Party: Thrillkiller; $5. 2 p.m.

POUR HOUSE: Magnolia Bayou, Sid Kingsley; $7-$10. 8:30 p.m.

MON, JUL 8

ARCANA: Window Light Collectors, Sfyria Trio; 8 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM: Song Traveler’s Writer’s Night: Suzie Vinnick, Wyatt Easterling, Rod Abernethy; $20. 7 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE: Yeasayer; 9 p.m.

THE CAVE: Harrison Ford Mustang, Jim Shorts; $5 suggested. 9 p.m.

THE CAVE: The Bummers, Andrew Wilco Band, Cult Classics; $5 suggested. 9 p.m.

KINGS: Resonancy: Manas; $8. 8:30 p.m.

THE NIGHT RIDER: Tetchy, Al Riggs, Sidewalk Furniture; 8 p.m.

NEPTUNES PARLOUR: Kid Advay, DOT.S, Sonic Afternoon; $8. 9 p.m.

POUR HOUSE: People Of Earth, Grayscale Whale; $5-$8. 9 p.m.

SLIM’S: Sibannac, No Anger Control, Born Again Heathens; $5. 9 p.m.

NIGHTLIGHT: Heterofobia, Cremalleras, Dame, Vittna, Future Now; $12. 9 p.m.

SLIM’S: Flying Fish Cove, Dead Bedrooms, Mulberry; $5. 9 p.m.

SUN, JUL 7

THE PIT:

WED, JUL 10

SCHOOLKIDS RECORDS RALEIGH: Jadewick, Our Blue Lights, Spaced Angel; 7 p.m.

SHARP NINE GALLERY: Kate McGarry, Keith Ganz Duo; $25. 8 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM: Wand, Dreamdecay; $13-$15. 8 p.m.

LOCAL 506: Sadistik, Elucid, MTFR; $13-$15. 9 p.m.

PNC ARENA: New Kids on the Block; 7:30 p.m.

Alex and Tatiana Hargreaves [FREE, 7 P.M.]

While it’s not uncommon for bluegrass and old-time music to be a family affair, Alex and Tatiana Hargreaves

THE CAVE: Love and Valor; $5 suggested. 9 p.m.

KOKA BOOTH AMPHITHEATRE: Yes, Asia, J ohn Lodge, Carl Palmer’s ELP Legacy; $25+. 6 p.m.

Jake Xerxes Fussell performs at Duke Gardens on Wednesday, July 10. PHOTO BY BRAD BUNYEA

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR

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THURSDAY, JULY 4–SUNDAY, JULY 28

TRUTH TO POWER

If you value the Durham visual art scene, then Pleiades Arts’ annual Truth to Power exhibit is already established on your calendar. But you’ll want to circle this one in red, as it will be the last. As we reported Monday, the nonprofit, member-run gallery will become a “virtual entity” in August, still dedicated to creating art experiences with community partners but with no display space of its own— though, happily, it will be immediately replaced by 5 Points Gallery, run by many of the Pleiades artists and likewise dedicated to being an inclusive downtown space for local art. Still, the demise of the gallery Renee Leverty and Kim Wheaton founded on Chapel Hill Street in 2013 feels like a turning point, especially following news of The Carrack’s impending closure. This last Truth to Power showcase, dedicated to exploring issues of social justice and featuring dozens of regional artists, is the perfect time to say goodbye to what the friendly neon-fronted gallery has been, and get ready for whatever’s next.

—Brian Howe

PLEIADES ART GALLERY, CHAPEL HILL Various times, free, www.pleiadesartdurham.com

“Judgement Before the Fall (When There Are Nine)” by Linda Starr PHOTO COURTESY OF PLEIADES

Dennis Szerszen: Unstill Waters: Photos. Jul 7-Aug 27. The Community Church of Chapel Hill Unitarian Universalist, Chapel Hill. szerszen.photo.

Linda Carmel, Ellie Reinhold, Jason Smith: Full Circle: Paintings and sculpture.

Truth to Power: Juried art show on issues of social justice. Jul 4-28. Pleiades Gallery, Durham.

Cary Gallery of Artists: Color Your World: Thru Jul 23.

Cary Gallery of Artists, Cary. carygalleryofartists.org.

ONGOING 150 Faces of Durham: Photos.

Thru Sep 3. Museum of Durham History, Durham.

Elise Alexander & Sharon Hardin: Thru Jul 12. Chapel Hill Town Hall, Chapel Hill.

Ancestry of Necessity: Group show. Curator, April Childers.

Thru Aug 24. Reed Bldg, Durham.

Paolo Arao, Sam King, Jason Osborne: Like Mercury in the Wind: Paintings. Thru Jul 20. Oneoneone, Chapel Hill. oneoneone.gallery.

OPENING Cary Gallery of Artists: Color Your World: Jun 28-Jul 23.

Reception: Jun 28, 6-8 p.m.

Cary Gallery of Artists, Cary. carygalleryofartists.org.

Hurray for the Red White & Blue: Paintings. Jul 5-27.

Reception: Jul 5, 6-9 p.m. V L Rees Gallery, Raleigh. vlrees.com.

Kapow: Group show. Jul 5-27. Reception: Jul 5, 6-9:30 p.m. Local Color Gallery, Raleigh. localcoloraleigh.com.

Wim Botha: Stil Life with Discontent: Mixed media.

Additional work on view at 21c Museum Hotel. Thru Aug 4.

NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

Thru Jul 21. Hillsborough Gallery of Arts, Hillsborough.

HillsboroughGallery.com.

Avery Danziger: In the Shadow of the Moon: Photos.

End date TBA. Through This Lens, Durham.

Empirical Evidence: Group show. Thru Sep 30. Carrboro Town Hall, Carrboro. secondfridayartwalk. squarespace.com.

Evee Erb & Sydney Sogol: A Force of Nature: Textiles and sculptures. Thru Aug 3.

Durham Art Guild, Durham.

Berkeley Grimball, Jim Lux, Jim Oleson, Mary Stone Lamb, Phillip Welch: Group show. Thru Aug 3. FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill.

John James Audubon: The Birds of America: Ornithological engravings.

Thru Dec 31. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

Jim Kellough: Vine Paintings: Thru Oct 10. Durham Convention Center, Durham. durhamarts.org.

Stacey L. Kirby: The Department of Reflection: Multimedia. Thru Aug 4.

Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. ackland.org.

Michael Klauke: In So Many Words: Paintings, work on paper, and video. Thru Aug 18. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh. michaelklauke.com.

Justin LeBlanc: Probable Normal Hearing: Thru Aug 18. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh. jleblancdesign.com.

Mac McCusker: Gendered Clay: Works in clay. Thru Jul 31. Claymakers, Durham.

Christian Marclay: Surround Sounds: Synchronized silent video installation.

Thru Sep 8. Nasher Museum of Art, Durham. nasher.duke.edu.

Our House: Durham Arts Council student-instructor exhibit. Thru Jul 6. Durham Arts Council, Durham.

INDYweek.com | 7.23.19 | 29

art

page

CONT’D

Outsider Art in the Visitors Center: Group show. Works for sale. Thru Aug 30. Alexander Dickson House, Hillsborough.

Susan Harbage Page: Borderlands: Documentary photos and found objects from the US-Mexico border. Thru Jul 28. Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh. gregg.arts.ncsu.edu.

Pop América, 1965-1975: Latin American pop art. Thru Jul 21. Nasher Museum of Art, Durham. nasher.duke.edu.

Portraying Power and Identity: A Global Perspective: Thru Jan 31. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham.

21cmuseumhotels.com. reNautilus: Thru Jul 31. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham.

21cmuseumhotels.com.

Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris: Their World Is Not Our World: Video installation.

Thru Jul 7. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

Southern Oracle: We Will Tear the Roof Off: Interactive sculptures. Thru Oct 31. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

Kirsten Stoltmann: I am Sorry: Thru Jul 31.

Lump, Raleigh. lumpprojects.org.

Tilden Stone: Southern Surreal: Furniture. Thru Sep 8. Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh. gregg.arts. ncsu.edu.

Emily Hobgood Thomas: Thru Jul 12. UNC’s Hanes Art Center, Chapel Hill. art.unc.edu.

William Paul Thomas: Disrupting Homogeny: Portraits. Thru Jul 31. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham.

21cmuseumhotels.com.

Ely Urbanski: Layers: Thru Jul 6. Durham Arts Council, Durham.

Announcing the 2019 Arts and Lecture Series with Ann Patchett, Karl Marlantes w/ Wiley Cash, and Sarah Rose Etter! VIP subscriptions available.

Please see our website for more details!

7.87.12 7.9 7.10

Teen Writing Camp with John Claude Bemis Nathan Ballingrud Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell 7pm Literary Trivia Night with Redbud Writing Project 7pm

Way Out West: Celebrating the Gift of the Hugh A. McAllister Jr. Collection: Thru Aug 25. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. ackland.org.

Emily Weinstein: Under a Full Moon: Paintings.

Thru Jul 17. Bull City Art & Frame Co, Durham.

Nathan Ballingrud: Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell. Tue, Jul 9, 7 p.m.

Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. quailridgebooks.com.

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July: Community reading of Frederick Douglass’ Fourth of July address. Fri, Jul 5, 11 a.m. Stagville State Historic Site, Durham.

Christina Lorena Weisner: Explorations: Science sculptures. Thru Jul 28.

Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh. gregg.arts.ncsu.edu.

Within the Frame: Photos. Thru Jul 7. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

Marthanna Yater: Growing Together: Photos. Thru Aug 18. Horace Williams House, Chapel Hill. preservationchapelhill.org.

RECYCLE THIS PAPER TUESDAY, JULY 9

NATHAN BALLINGRUD

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

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bill.burton.lawyer@gmail.com 30 | 7.3.19 | INDYweek.com

READINGS & SIGNINGS

Asheville author Nathan Ballingrud has the imposing frame of a Louisiana oil rigger—though actually, his time off the coast of New Orleans was spent cooking, not turning wrenches. Still, the experience lends damp, gritty authenticity to his 2015 horror novella, The Visible Filth. Already critically appreciated for his debut story collection, North American Lake Monsters, Ballingrud rode the novella to greater success: It became a film called Wounds, distributed

by Annapurna Pictures and starring Armie Hammer and Dakota Johnson.

Retitled, the novella serves as the title story for Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell, new from Simon & Schuster’s speculative fiction imprint, Saga Press. Darker and more violent than the creeping unease of his first collection, it goes beyond psychological horror and well into the supernatural, exploring the territory between unquiet and disquiet and bringing back a map for fellow travelers who dare. —Samuel Montgomery-Blinn

QUAIL RIDGE BOOKS, RALEIGH 7 p.m., free, www.quailridgebooks.com

Nathan Ballingrud PHOTO COURTESY OF QUAIL RIDGE BOOKS

stage MONDAY, JULY 8–WEDNESDAY, JULY 10

EIKO OTAKE: THE DUET PROJECT: DISTANCE IS MALLEABLE There’s an element of distance even in the closest relationships.

But Eiko Otake, whose striking, butoh-influenced solo dance works have intervened in a local farmer’s market, New York’s Wall Street district, and the Fukushima nuclear disaster site in recent years, notes that the distance between people remains malleable and moldable. Otake’s latest initiative, the ADFcommissioned The Duet Project, documents her encounters with a series of collaborators, acknowledging and negotiating their physical, social, and artistic distances and differences. But as veteran dance writer Linda Belans recently reported in the INDY, Otake’s collaboration with visual artist Beverly McIver, which began around the time of Otake’s mother’s death, suggests that interpersonal distance can remain pliant even after death. In addition to her work with McIver, this performance includes multimedia collaborations with visual artist and rapper DonChristian Jones, dancer and poet Mark McCloughan, and filmmaker Alexis Moh. —Byron Woods

OPENING Bring It! Live: Dance competition. $40+. Sat, Jul 6, 8 p.m. Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham. d pacnc.com.

Bruce Bruce: Comedy. Jul 5-7. Fri-Sat: 7:30 p.m. & 10:30 p.m. Sun: 7 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. goodnightscomedy.com.

Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble: American Dance Festival. $12-$43. Wed, Jul 3, 2 p.m. Duke’s Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham. americandancefestival.org.

DUKE’S VON DER HEYDEN STUDIO THEATER, DURHAM 8 p.m., $33, www.americandancefestival.org

Eiko: The Duet Project: American Dance Festival. $33. Jul 8-10. Rubenstein Arts Center, Durham. americandancefestival.org.

Eiko Otake PHOTO BY WILLIAM JOHNSTON

Fresh Bits: Forty stand-up comedians. $10. Sat, Jul 6, 9:30 p.m. The People’s Improv Theater, Chapel Hill. thepit-chapelhill.com.

I Am My Own Wife: Theatre Raleigh. Play. Jul 10-21. Wed-Sat: 8 p.m.

Sat: 2 p.m. Sun: 3 p.m.

Kennedy Theatre, Raleigh. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

I Will Miss You When You’re Gone: Dramatic reading. Sun, Jul 7, 7 p.m. Monkey Bottom Collaborative, Durham. littlegreenpig.com.

John Leguizamo: Latin History for Morons: Comedy. $40+. Tue, Jul 9, 7:30 p.m.

Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham. dpacnc.com.

ONGOING

Pilobolus: American Dance Festival. $10-$65. Jul 4-6. 7 p.m. Duke Campus: Page Auditorium, Durham. americandancefestival.org.

Rennie Harris Puremovement: American Dance Festival. $12-$51. Jul 10-11. 8 p.m.

Carolina Theatre, Durham. americandancefestival.org.

Taylor Williamson: $15. Jul 5-7. Raleigh Improv, Raleigh. improv.com/raleigh.

The Miss Firecracker Contest: Chatham Community Players. Play.

Jul 5-14. $12. Fri: 7 p.m. Sat: 2 & 7 p.m. Sun: 4 p.m. Sweet Bee Theater & Center for the Arts, Pittsboro. pittsboroyouththeater.com.

NC’s Funniest Person: Comedy competition. $10.

Jul 9-10: 8 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. goodnightscomedy.com.

Stand-Up House Teams: Comedy. $10. Fri, Jul 5, 9:30 p.m. The People’s Improv Theater, Chapel Hill. thepit-chapelhill.com.

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR

INDYWEEK.COM

INDYweek.com | 7.23.19 | 31

screen SPECIAL SHOWINGS ActionFlix Film Series: Action movies. Full schedule online. Jun 28-30.

Carolina Theatre, Durham. carolinatheatre.org.

Bohemian Rhapsody: $8-$10.

Sat, Jun 29, 6 p.m. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. ncartmuseum.org.

Caged Heat: Mon, Jul 1, 9 a.m.

Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh drafthouse.com/raleigh.

Distance is Malleable: With Eiko Otake. Tue, Jul 2, 7 p.m.

Regulator Bookshop, Durham regulatorbookshop.com.

Do the Right Thing: Sun, Jun 30, 2:30 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh drafthouse.com/raleigh.

Dr. Strangelove: $7. Fri, Jun 28, 8:30 p.m. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh ncartmuseum.org.

E.T.: Free. Fri, Jun 28, 6:30 p.m. Orange County Main Library, Hillsborough co.orange.nc.us/library.

A Hard Day’s Night: Wed, Jun 26, 7 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh. drafthouse.com/raleigh.

Psychomania: Wed, Jun 26, 1:30 p.m. & 9 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh drafthouse.com/raleigh.

FRIDAY, JULY 5

JAMES CAMERON’S PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING & LAMBERTO BAVA’S MONSTER SHARK Jaws defined a number of new American cinematic traditions: The blockbuster movie, the career of Steven Spielberg, and dozens, possibly millions, of low-budget “don’t go in the water” movies.

Some were such unabashed copies of the original that they were literally banned (looking at you, Great White), while others achieved some kind of odd, campy cinematic grace. Decide for yourself which categories the films at this double-feature fall into. First is James Cameron’s directorial “debut” (the producer fired him after two and a half weeks of production and wouldn’t let Cameron take his name off it) Piranha II: The Spawning which deals with killer fish…that can now fly. It’s unclear whether this 2K restoration is the cut Cameron was able to re-edit for home video, but either way, there will be blood on the beach. It’s followed by Monster Shark aka “Devil Fish,” aka the original “Sharktopus,” an Italian cult classic about a shark/octopus hybrid that was once featured on the original Mystery Science Theater 3000. Supply your own snark for the shark here.

—Zack Smith

THE CAROLINA THEATRE, DURHAM 7 p.m., $9.50, www.carolinatheatre.org

James Cameron’s Piranha II: The Spawning PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CAROLINA THEATRE

32 | 7.3.19 | INDYweek.com

Remarkable Journey: Documentary. Free. Thu, Jun 27, 5:30 p.m. UNC’s FedEx Global Center, Chapel Hill Somewhere in Time: Sun, Jun 30, 2 p.m. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh ncartmuseum.org.

Thicker Than Blood: $9. Sun, Jun 30, 6 p.m.

The Cary Theater, Cary thecarytheater.com.

Way Gay: Fri, Jun 28, 9 p.m.

Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh drafthouse.com/raleigh.

OPENING Midsommar—Ari Aster’s Hereditary follow-up is set in a deranged Swedish paradise where flower crowns and mindfucks are equally at play.

Rated R.

N OW P L AY I N G The INDY uses a five-star rating scale. Read reviews of these films at indyweek.com. ½ John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum— A bloody, Buster Keaton-esque ballet meets Sam Peckinpah. Rated R.  Men in Black: International—What if Men in Black, but Morocco and Chris Hemsworth’s torso? Rated PG-13.  Toy Story 4—A spork’s severe ontological distress ballasts a half-daring, halfpredictable extension of a beloved animated franchise.

Rated G. ½ Spider-Man: Far From Home—A superhero story is only as good as its villain. Too bad the screenwriters of this second installment of the third iteration of this franchise don’t know that. Rated PG-13.

Strange Negotiations: Q&A with David Bazan to follow.

Wed, Jun 26, 6:30 p.m.

Varsity Theatre, Chapel Hill. varsityonfranklin.com.

food & drink The Beat Market: Food, music, drinks, and more. Sun, Jul 7, 1 p.m. Locopops Gourmet Frozen Pops, Durham. ilovelocopops.com.

indy classifieds employment DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR NEEDED - DURHAM Database Administrator, Oracle Applications (Durham, NC): Support Oracle R12 Enterprise Business Suite application & technology stack components for dvlpmt, test & production environments on all tiers: application, middle & d/base.

Perform environment builds, upgrades, patching, cloning, maintenance, system monitoring, performance tuning, load balancing & capacity planning.

Execute disaster recovery/high availability activities, backups, restores & flashbacks.

Manage Configuration/Release & Information Assurance.

Master’s in Info Systems or a related engg field + 3 yrs’ exp as Oracle DBA or related reqd. Resumes: Cree, Inc. Attn: Allyson Van Gorder, 4600 Silicon Dr., Durham, NC 27703, Ref. #6714.

MANAGER MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING NEEDED DURHAM Manager Manufacturing Engineering (Durham, NC): Support LED Chips bus. & Nitride Epi, Wafer Fab, & Package & Test depts. Direct work measurement. Oversee dvlpmt of plant & eqpmt layout, capacity plans, workflow, product assembly instructions & practices or accident prevention measures. Work on plant layout using AutoCAD. Select, dvlp, & eval personnel.

Perform resource planning (plant, eqpmt, labor). Lead team imprvmt projects. Facilitate fixed asset budgeting & mgmt.

Assist w/ process change integration into production.

Bachelor’s in Industrial Engg or rltd + 5 yrs’ exp as Mfg or Industrial Engr or rltd reqd.

Resumes: Cree, Inc., Attn: Allyson Van Gorder, 4600 Silicon Dr., Durham, NC 27703, Ref. #6678.

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notices NOTICE TO CREDITORS ALL PERSONS, firms and corporations having claims against JAMES E. GRAHAM Sr., deceased, of WAKE, NC, are notified to exhibit the same to the undersigned on or before OCTOBER 1, 2019, or this notice will be pleaded in bar of recovery. Debtors of the decedent are asked to make immediate payment. This THIRD day of JULY, 2019. JAMES E. GRAHAM Jr., Executor, 7304 KRUME CT., APT. 1121, RALEIGH, NC 27613. INDY Week: 7/3, 7/10, 7/17.

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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

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deep dive

for sale auctions

AUCTION Receivership Auction of Commercial & Residential Lots & Acreage in Wilkes Co. Online w/ Bid Center, Begins Closing 7/23 at 2pm, Bid Center at Holiday Inn Express in Wilkesboro, NC, ironhorseauction.com, 800.997.2248, NCAL 3936

The INDY’s monthly neighborhood guide to all things Triangle

Coming July 24:

NORTH HILLS/NORTH RALEIGH

For advertising opportunities, contact your ad rep or advertising@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 7.3.19 | 33

2 8 4 5 9 6 1 3 7

crossword 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.

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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.

4 9 7 5 3 8 3 2 2 3 5 75 3 7 7 2 2 6 6 4 1 32 5 1 9 8 4 7 17 1 7 8

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34 | 7.3.19 | INDYweek.com

# 35

2 5 8 4 9 1 7 3 6 If you just1 can’t 7 4 5 wait, 6 3 8check 2 9 out the current 6 9 3 week’s 2 8 7 answer 5 4 1 8 1 6 9 4 2 3 5 7 key at www.indyweek.com, 5 4 9 7 pages.”

3 6 1 8 2 and click “puzzle “Puzzle Pages.”

7 3 2 8 1 5 9 6 4 Best of luck, 9 8 and 7 6 have 5 4 2 fun!

1 3 3 6 5 1 2 9 4 7 8 www.sudoku.com 4 2 1 3 7 8 6 9 5

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CLASSY AT INDYWEEK DOT COM

5

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Book your ad • Email amanda: classy@indywEEk.com

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Book your ad • Email amanda: classy@indywEEk.com

INDYweek.com | 7.3.19 | 35

DANCE CLASSES IN LINDY HOP, SWING, BLUES

At Carrboro ArtsCenter. Private lessons available.

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

SMOKY MOUNTAIN WHISKEY CRACKERS ® available at: Saxapahaw General Store, Southern Season, New Hope Market, Special Treats, Heart of Carolina, Oasis Fresh Market

TELL YOUR MOM! RECYCLE THIS

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1980’s icon John Davidson (Hollywood Squares, That’s Incredible, 13 albums) performs Saturday, August 24, in an intimate Durham backyard benefit concert for rural high school drafting students. www.ncmodernist.org/johndavidson

Did that get your attention?

Place your ad or announcement on the INDY Back Page and get views.

Contact Amanda: classy@indyweek.com

919-286-1916 @hunkydorydurham We buy records.

Now serving dank beer.

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