INDY Week 8.30.17 by INDY

WHAT GERRYMAN

DERING LOOKS LIK

ENDORSEMENT

OR DONATION?

THING O N O T S E Y L A IC S U M PUNK-ROCK O T N O D N O L M O R F S IT TRANSPORTS THE SLEST. BUT MUSIC-SCENE THE AMERICAN MIDW L. SEXISM IS UNIVERSA

P. 24

PINACH S F O E NS IN DEFE

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WHAT WE LEARNED THIS WEEK 6 Donald Trump would have won thirty-three of the state’s Senate districts under the legislature’s new maps, despite only winning North Carolina by four points. 8 Someone left a tiki torch bearing the message, “See You Soon,” near a Silent Sam sit-in. 9 The blogger William Needham Finley IV believes his endorsement of a Raleigh City Council candidate is worth five hundred bucks. 11 Cohousing doesn’t mean showering together. It’s more about shared living space.

VOL. 34, NO. 33

DEPARTMENTS 6 Triangulator 8 News 16 Music 20 Arts & Culture 26 What to Do This Week 29 Music Calendar 33 Arts & Culture Calendar

14 The “copper pennies” at The Lakewood are delicious, but for the same price, a family could buy dinner. 16 David Liebe Hart based one of his most famous songs on an encounter he says he had with a space alien at the La Brea Tar Pits.

ON THE COVER:

20 The News & Observer’s decision to cater to the public’s interests contradicts a newspaper’s obligation to serve the public interest.

DURHAM/CHAPEL HILL: PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

RALEIGH: PHOTO BY KIM BLACK, DESIGN BY SHAN STUMPF

The Silent Sam sit-in (see page 8)

PHOTO BY SARAH WILLETS

INDYweek.com | 8.30.17 | 3

NCDOT TO HOLD A PUBLIC MEETING REGARDING THE PROPOSED WIDENING OF I-40 AND THE PROPOSED IMPROVEMENTS AT I-40 AND N.C. 42 INTERCHANGE STIP Project Nos: I-5111 & I-4739 The N.C. Department of Transportation will hold a public meeting regarding two projects to make improvements to Interstate 40 in Wake and Johnston Counties. Project I-5111 proposes to widen I-40 between exit 301 in Raleigh and exit 312 in Johnston County. The purpose of widening I-40 in this area is to improve the level of service throughout the length of the 11-mile project. Project I-4739 proposes to improve the interchange at I-40 and N.C. 42 (exit 312) in Johnston County. The purpose of the work is to improve the function of the interchange and its ability to handle large volumes of traffic in the Cleveland area of Johnston County.

The meeting will take place on Thursday, September 14, at the Garner United Methodist Church, located at 201 Methodist Drive from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. The public may attend at any time during those hours. NCDOT representatives will be available to answer questions and listen to comments regarding the project. The opportunity to submit written comments will also be provided at the meeting or via phone, email, or mail by October 6, 2017. Comments received will be taken into consideration as the project develops. Please note that no formal presentation will be made. Project information and materials can be viewed as they become available online at http://www.ncdot.gov/projects/publicmeetings. For additional information, contact Robert Deaton, NCDOT Project Development Engineer by mail: 1548 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699 by phone: (919) 707-6017, or via email: rdeaton@ncdot.gov. NCDOT will provide auxiliary aids and services under the Americans with Disabilities Act for disabled persons who wish to participate in this meeting. Anyone requiring special services should contact Tamara Makhlouf, Human Environment Section via e-mail at tmakhlouf@ncdot. gov or by phone (919) 707-6072 as early as possible so that arrangements can be made. Persons who speak Spanish and do not speak English, or have a limited ability to read, speak or understand English, may receive interpretive services upon request prior to the meeting by calling 1-800-481-6494. Aquellas personas que hablan español y no hablan inglés, o tienen limitaciones para leer, hablar o entender inglés, podrían recibir servicios de interpretación si los solicitan antes de la reunión llamando al 1-800-481-6494.

4 | 8.30.17 | INDYweek.com

Raleigh Durham | Chapel Hill

PUBLISHER Susan Harper EDITORIAL

EDITOR IN CHIEF Jeffrey C. Billman MANAGING EDITOR FOR ARTS+CULTURE Brian Howe DESIGN DIRECTOR Shan Stumpf STAFF WRITERS Thomas Goldsmith,

Erica Hellerstein, Sarah Willets

MUSIC EDITOR Allison Hussey COPY EDITOR David Klein FOOD EDITOR Victoria Bouloubasis LISTINGS COORDINATOR Kate Thompson THEATER AND DANCE CRITIC Byron Woods RESTAURANT CRITIC Emma Laperruque STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Alex Boerner CHIEF CONTRIBUTORS Drew Adamek, Elizabeth

Bracy, Timothy Bracy, Michaela Dwyer, Spencer Griffith, Corbie Hill, Jill Warren Lucas, Sayaka Matsuoka, Glenn McDonald, Neil Morris, Angela Perez, Hannah Pitstick, Noah Rawlings, Bryan C. Reed, V. Cullum Rogers, Dan Ruccia, David Ford Smith, Zack Smith, Chris Vitiello, Patrick Wall INTERN Maddy Sweitzer-Lammé

PRODUCTION+DESIGN

PRODUCTION MANAGER Christopher Williams GRAPHIC+EDITORIAL DESIGNER Steve Oliva

OPERATIONS

BUSINESS MANAGER Alex Rogers

CIRCULATION

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Brenna Berry-Stewart DISTRIBUTION Laura Bass, David Cameron,

Michael Griswold, JC Lacroix, Richard David Lee, Joseph Lizana, James Maness, Gloria McNair, Jeff Prince, Timm Shaw, Freddie Simons, Marshall Wade, Gerald Weeks

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backtalk Mob Rule

Last week, the INDY reported on allegations of misogyny leveled against promoter and Downtown Raleigh Association director of events Craig Reed. Those allegations led to Reed leaving the DRA and several businesses and bands announcing they would no longer do business with his production company. James Olin Oden believes Reed didn’t get a fair shake: “Could we possibly have talked about how one scathing accusation took out a person’s livelihood with no investigation at all to support it? Had any of this been brought to a court of law, I seriously doubt the end result would have been the loss of both his business and his job. This was literally mob rule, and a very ugly thing that occurred. The rule of law was not served, and neither was the community. The community for its part acted immaturely and mercilessly. The ramifications in my opinion exceeded anything remotely related to justice.” Commenter JayDubz concurs, saying it’s “disappointing (but not shocking) that the journalists who charged themselves with reporting on this pursued it with the same bias, not citing the frustrated professional partnership between [Kings show manager Kate] VanVorst”—who made the allegations on Facebook—“and Reed at Younger Brother Productions that lasted several years and ended abruptly, giving at least a possible reason to employ hyperbole in an angry purposeful Facebook post.” Commenter AALIYAH says the story overlooked a key point: “The writer so quickly pointed out how misogynistic Reed was in his treatment of women, but she left out a detail that should have been included if the INDY wanted to write an article about equal treatment of people not based on gender. Why stop there when the obvious was in the writer’s face? In the comments that spurred the article, Reed was also accused of being a gentrification sympathizer, as his accuser also spoke about his views of cleaning up southeast Raleigh without care of the trickledown housing effects he and his cool uptown friends are having on communities of color. “How can such a progressive news outlet leave out such an important part of the char-

acter breakdown of a man who, as it seems, had so much influence on what’s happening downtown in Raleigh, where there are fewer and fewer outlets available for creative black expression or business? Many of Reed’s business partners cut ties after the initial Facebook post, but I wonder how that would have played out had his issue only been about his views on southeast Raleigh and the displacement of longtime southeast Raleigh residents? Would they have even cared, or would they have asked him for real estate tips?” “I don’t think that was the main point of the article,” responds ToniTwoTimes. “I have never heard him speak negatively about people of color, but I have heard him on many occasions make disparaging remarks regarding women and local music. I’m not saying he never has, but I have never heard it. I know lots of bands that have refused to play Local Band Local Beer or use his booking services long before this article came out.” We also noted last week that The News & Observer was dramatically reducing its performing arts reviews because they don’t get clicks. (See more on the subject in Brian Howe’s Artificer column this week.) “How shortsighted and wrongheaded,” writes Lisa Huggins Towle. “How very sad that in the search for financial salvation a basic mission of the paper is slashed.” Ellen Dagenhart asks, “OK, I can understand how they can track what gets the most readership online, but how do they track what gets read in the actual newspaper that some of us still read? I didn’t see them peeping over my shoulder at breakfast.” Finally, Carolina Performing Arts writes on Facebook: “This is a very disappointing development. All I can say is thank goodness for the INDY. We are very fortunate to have an extremely diverse and vibrant arts scene in the Triangle—an arts scene that benefits and enriches the entire community in so many ways.”

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“How shortsighted and wrongheaded.”

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

INDYweek.com | 8.30.17 | 5

triangulator WHAT GERRYMANDERING LOOKS LIKE

he trick to gerrymandering a purple state isn’t to give your party huge, unassailable margins in already friendly terrain; that’s actually counterproductive. Rather, the goal is to cram your opponents into a handful of districts, then give yourself smaller margins in more districts, thus enabling you to maximize your representation in Congress or the legislature. That’s how you get a situation in which a Republican president narrowly wins North Carolina and a Republican governor loses by a smidgen, but the Republicans win supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature and have 10–3 dominance in the state’s congressional delegation. The maps that helped decide the current General Assembly were, of course, found to be unconstitutional

racial gerrymanders by the U.S. Supreme Court. This week, the legislature is approving new maps—drawn by the same GOP consultant who crafted the racial gerrymanders in 2011—ahead of a September 1 deadline from a federal court. And while lawmakers say they’ve taken race completely out of the equation, the new districts nonetheless seem to ensure Republican supermajorities, albeit perhaps slightly smaller ones than the existing supermajorities. Take the state Senate, where Republicans control thirty-five of fifty seats. Using the presidential vote as a proxy—since split tickets are largely a remnant of a bygone, less partisan era, this is the best indication of how a district will vote in most cases—we see that, under the districts the Senate preliminarily approved

Monday, Democrat Hillary Clinton would have prevailed in seventeen districts to Republican Donald Trump’s thirty-three, though Trump won the state by less than four percentage points. What’s more striking, though, is that only a scant handful of districts can be deemed even remotely competitive. Only five districts were won by less than five percentage points; of those, only one went for Clinton. So even if Clinton tied Trump in North Carolina, and her extra vote was evenly distributed throughout the state, the Democrats would have netted nothing. Meanwhile, the Dems have several districts that went for Clinton by 66, 59, 56, 55, and 48 points, all larger than Trump’s friendliest district. That’s how you lock in a home-court advantage.

2016 Presidential Results by Proposed District >50

26 to 50

10 Swing to 24

10 to 24

26 to 50

>50

30 45

30 27 29

46 49

34 42

47 44

31 33

41 38 40 37 39

22 28

14 15

32 25

20 16

2 6

35 13

1: Trump 2: Trump 3: Clinton 4: Clinton 5: Clinton 6: Trump 7: Trump 8: Trump 9: Trump

+12 +24 +8 +18 +6 +33 +9 +23 +5

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10: Trump 11: Trump 12: Trump 13: Trump 14: Clinton 15: Clinton 16: Clinton 17: Trump 18: Trump

+22 +15 +22 +11 +30 +42 +26 +4 +5

19: Trump 20: Clinton 21: Clinton 22: Clinton 23: Clinton 24: Trump 25: Trump 26: Trump 27: Trump

+8 +66 +38 +18 +37 +14 +15 +33 +8

28: Clinton 29: Clinton 30: Trump 31: Trump 32: Trump 33: Trump 34: Trump 35: Trump 36: Trump

+59 +42 +37 +27 +45 +41 +41 +29 +22

37: Clinton +55 38: Clinton +56 39: Trump +4

SOURCE: 6 Senate Floor Redistricting Plan, Second Reading

40: Clinton +48 41: Clinton +5 42: Trump +41

43: Trump 44: Trump 45: Trump 46: Trump 47: Trump 48: Trump 49: Clinton 50: Trump

8+31

+39 +35 +45 9 +42 +20 +28 +34

+OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE?

Three more people wanted in connection with the toppling of a Confederate monument in Durham earlier this month turned themselves in at the county jail Monday night. About thirty people joined Qasima Wideman, Jessica Jude, and Joseph Karlik as a show of solidarity. Their arrests bring the total of people charged to eleven. Just hours before they turned themselves in, Durham Sheriff’s Major Paul Martin issued a statement to The Herald-Sun saying local elected officials were creating “absolute anarchy” by questioning the charges filed in the August 14 protest. Demonstrators have been charged with misdemeanors for damaging the statue, as well as felony charges of inciting a riot. Several county and city officials have questioned publicly whether the felony charges are warranted. In the statement, Martin says “some of the political leadership in Durham is in the process of establishing a dangerous precedent” and a climate that “encourages anarchistic and destructive actions as long as the political leadership agrees with the underlying philosophy of those engaged in such activities.” “Is it alright [sic] for the left to destroy or deface a monument but not the right?” Martin continued. “Are statements concerning the severity of criminal charges by county commissioners an effort to obstruct justice since they control the budget for the Sheriff as well as raises for the Sheriff and all his personnel?” In an email to the INDY, Martin said the statement reflects his personal beliefs. “I am only speaking for myself,” he wrote.

Perhaps, but it’s still hard to believe that a high-ranking member of the DCSO would have suggested that county commissioners are obstructing justice without Sheriff Mike Andrews’s OK. (The Sheriff’s Office referred the INDY’s questions to Martin.) Of course, the District Attorney’s Office will ultimately decide what charges are prosecuted. In a press conference, DA Roger Echols announced he would only prosecute people directly involved in dismantling the statue and that he will take into account “the pain of recent events in Charlottesville and the pain in Durham and the nation.”

+SIX FIGURES, NINE YEARS

Wake County officials say about $2.3 million went missing from the Register of Deeds office between 2008 and 2017, according to a new insurance claim. The official amount that’s missing—$2.333,591.30—puts an exclamation point on the ongoing Wake County scandal involving the apparent embezzlement of wads of cash, on a near-daily basis, for nearly a decade. In part of the 266-page document dated August 24, director of internal audit John Stephenson lays out the yearby-year trail of missing revenue. An investigation showed amounts in the six figures missing for nine straight years—$124,911.04 in 2008, the earliest year for which records remain, and a peak of $326,743.31 in 2012. The “proof of loss” statement signed by county manager Jim Hartmann is designed to tell the insurance company “how the loss was caused, when the loss occurred,” and

other details of the claim. A Wake County investigation and subsequent State Bureau of Investigation probe have found that the register’s office, under the direction of former register Laura Riddick, failed to keep accurate records and handled cash loosely. Riddick, initially elected in 1996, retired in March, at the same time Hartmann and Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman announced that the SBI would investigate the missing funds. The officials attributed Riddick’s departure to poor health, not the missing funds. Riddick has not been available for comment since her retirement. (Hartmann has since announced that he, too, will be leaving his post at the end of October, to move to Florida and be closer to his family.) Warren sent the proof-of-loss account to a Travelers Casualty and Surety Co. office in Charlotte. A two-page narrative says the discovery of the losses began with a move to automate the office’s monthly reports. The goal was to track numbers of documents as well as the amount of money received by the office. But office staff soon noticed substantial amounts of missing cash were going undetected. These discoveries started a chain of events that led to internal audits, the announcement of the state investigation, and an employee named Tray Ellis confessing to stealing $50,000. The county is undergoing an outside audit by the accounting firm Elliot Davis, to be submitted to the county on Friday, officials say. Meanwhile, the criminal probe continues. triangulator@indyweek.com This week’s report by Jeffrey C. Billman, Thomas Goldsmith, and Sarah Willets.

PERIPHERAL VISIONS | V.C. ROGERS

INDYweek.com | 8.30.17 | 7

indynews

Shut Up, Silent Sam

ON THE LAWN WITH STUDENTS WHO SAY THEY WON’T END THEIR SIT-IN UNTIL UNC’S CONFEDERATE MONUMENT DISAPPEARS BY SARAH WILLETS

round the base of a Confederate statue on the UNC campus, a small community has cropped up. On ledges beneath the figure of a soldier known as Silent Sam sit poster-board signs reading “No Hate” and “No Fear,” a box of powdered donut holes, Capri Sun juice, and four hand-sewn cloth dolls, each holding little signs that spell out “Fuck the patriarchy and racists.” Even at two a.m. on Friday, during the first week of the fall semester, a small crowd of students is here. The group has fluctuated in number since last Tuesday night, when hundreds of people came to the Chapel Hill campus to protest Silent Sam and some vowed not to leave until the monument was gone. They’re sitting on blankets on the damp ground and in lawn chairs with their backs to the statue, keeping an eye on the open, grassy space between them and Franklin Street. The approach of any new person is greeted with a mix of curiosity, excitement, and suspicion. After all, the group has been visited in the dead of night by an American flagwearing duo using a late-night Wiffle ball game as a cover to start trouble, has had their only shelter (a tent) seized by campus police, and, on Sunday, found a tiki torch like those carried by white supremacists in Charlottesville earlier this month, bearing an ominous message in cut-out magazine letters: “See you soon.” But early Friday morning, most visits are friendly. One student drops off a handful of Reese’s. “Thanks for what you’re doing,” he says. “This is awesome.” Another hands over a bag of warm French fries and says, “You guys need these more than I do.” A poloshirted guy on a bike stops to ask about the gathering. “So you guys have been camping out to make the monument go away? Very college, very cool,” he says. Throughout the week, mini-history lessons have been given here, as well as prayer services. A sort of exhibit has popped up where people can write on cardboard signs how they have been affected by white 8 | 8.30.17 | INDYweek.com

Four hand-sewn cloth dolls at the base of Silent Sam PHOTO BY SARAH WILLETS supremacy, both overt and covert. Debate over whether to remove Silent Sam has been simmering since at least 1965 (as evidenced by a letter to the editor of the Daily Tar Heel that year, in which Al Ribak argued that the memorial’s goal was to “associate a fictitious ‘honor’ with the darkest blot on American history”) and has reached a fever pitch in the wake of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the toppling of a Confederate monument by protesters in downtown Durham, and the removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee from the entrance of Duke Chapel. “It just was, like, expected then that we would come on campus at the beginning of the school year and we’d be watching as this gets taken down,” says junior Tahj Warren, who has spent several nights camped out by

Silent Sam. “And the fact that that didn’t happen, it was just a shock and it was kind of a slap in the face, especially when Duke takes down their statue.” The university says its hands are tied by a 2015 state law that prohibits the removal of “objects of remembrance” without approval from the N.C. Historical Commission. Last week, Governor Cooper said the school could “take immediate measures” if the statue posed a public safety threat, but Chancellor Carol Folt and the UNC Board of Trustees disagree that the school has the legal authority to remove the monument, which is dedicated to students who fought for the Confederacy. (The mayor of Chapel Hill and several town council members have called for its removal.) Although Folt has said she would take

down the statue if she could, inaction by the university over the years is akin to “being reminded over and over again that your safety isn’t valued,” said a junior participating in the sit-in Friday who only gave the first name Suad. “It’s a lot of mental, physical, and emotional danger.” All of this culminated last Tuesday with a rally calling for removal of the monument, which was guarded by metal barricades and police. That rally launched this week’s sitin (“Let’s try something different,” Warren explains) and a few reactionary appearances by those who see Silent Sam as a noble tribute to veterans and Southern heritage. But for those participating in the protests, particularly students of color, Silent Sam, with its towering stature and prominent place on campus, sends a dif-

ferent message. “Nine-B. That’s what this statue says to me,” says Warren, referring to part of industrialist Julian Carr’s speech dedicating the monument in 1913. In it, Carr launches into a horrifying anecdote about a time he “horse-whipped a negro wench” who had “maligned a Southern lady” and sought refuge on the UNC campus. It’s an excerpt that has been invoked several times as passersby stop to ask protesters what they’re doing and why. Gabrielle Johnson, a junior, thinks these conversations, as well as the larger action, have convinced some people that Sam should come down. University officials, however, have been less receptive to dialogue about moving or adding context to the statue, she says. “As long as it comes down, I don’t care what happens to it really,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be destroyed. It doesn’t have to be burnt. It can be put in a museum somewhere. Chancellor Folt can keep it in her bedroom. But it has no place being glorified on our campus out here in this central location, as if we’re proud, because it’s nothing to be proud about. It’s a part of history that is terrible, that is wrong, that has caused pain and suffering— that still continues to do so for many.” On Saturday afternoon, the presence of a handful of young men waving Confederate flags prompted about seventy people to answer a call from sit-in organizers for support. Among them were twelve-year-old Isaac Janiak-Stein and his little brother, Saul, who saw the crowd while going to lunch with their family. They believe the statue should be moved to a museum, where it can be understood in the context of history. “We don’t want to be represented as that,” said nine-year-old Saul, “but we want to know it existed and that there are two different beliefs.” The counterprotesters, who drove about an hour to campus, said they support having a “rededication” to clarify what the monument represents. To the chagrin of some protesters, they said their experience Saturday was “enlightening” for both sides and would consider coming back. Meanwhile, sit-in participants say they won’t leave until Silent Sam does. While students and members of the community have been generous with supplies and retweets, they’d like to see more people join them at the statue. “There are a lot of people who aren’t out here because they don’t feel comfortable and they are scared, but no protest is going to be comfortable,” said Johnson, sitting on a slightly deflated air mattress just before two on Friday morning. “And nothing is going to change by being comfortable.” swillets@indyweek.com

Full Discloure

WHEN IS AN ENDORSEMENT ACTUALLY A CAMPAIGN DONATION? A CASE IN RALEIGH BLURS THE LINES. BY THOMAS GOLDSMITH The writer and satirist who identifies himself as William Needham Finley IV presented an enthusiastic post in his ITB Insider blog on March 28, announcing the Raleigh City Council candidacy of lawyer Stacy Miller. Calling Miller’s entry into the race “great news for a number of reasons,” Finley wrote, “We have the chance to add another Broughton [High] graduate to the council, and he’s got some great ideas for Raleigh. Plus, he let me announce this decision, which further legitimizes ITB Insider as a media empire and source for real news.” The post is topped by an image of Miller riding a bright-green dinosaur splashed with the LaCroix logo, surrounded by schoolchildren and a cop and firefighter giving thumbs-up. Using his real name, Seth Crossno, the blogger then submitted the post as a $500 inkind donation to Miller’s campaign, as seen in documents filed July 28 with the Wake County Board of Elections. ITB Insider adroitly pokes fun at everything that’s pompous and self-involved about old Raleigh society, while also reporting on development inside the Beltline. However, posting the article praising Miller, then claiming it as a campaign donation, raises questions about the sometimes murky line between traditional journalism and online speech. Crossno says in an email that everything was right and proper about the donation to Miller, and another he made to candidate Gaylord Bonner. “Considering the fact that I took extreme caution to fill out the appropriate paperwork and made sure I was following the rules, it’s insulting to insinuate that I'm intentionally trying to mislead readers of my satirical blog,” Crossno writes. “The in-kind donation form I filled out stated the donation came from me as an individual. This means that I personally reimbursed [his media company] XNO, LLC for these two blog posts.” Blannie Cheng Miller, an attorney advising Miller’s campaign, says that Crossno sometimes sells blog posts to sponsors. Out of an abundance of caution, Cheng advised him to put a fair market value on the post, pay his company for it, and disclose the inkind donation. Election finance officials and experts, however, say that listing a blog post as a campaign donation is highly unusual. Sabra

Faires, a Raleigh attorney whose specialties include elections and political law, asks whether the $500 value represents Crossno’s work in writing the post, or the act of putting it on the ITB Insider site. “Is this really an individual donation as opposed to a donation from the site itself?” Faires says. “That would be illegal, because it would be a contribution from a business, since he is in effect advertising for that guy. If this is his personal view, you wonder why he counts that as a paid contribution.” “It seems to me that’s confusing the line,” says Meredith University political science professor David McLennan. “That'd be like the N&O’s endorsement being considered a contribution. It’s pushing the envelope of what we consider campaign finance reporting.” Jonathan Jones, director of the N.C. Open Government Coalition, asks whether a positive article should be valued in the same manner as more typical in-kind contributions, such as food at a reception.

“You’d never see a disclosure saying INDY Week endorsed us,” Jones said. “My question is, Was this done out of a belief that that disclosure was necessary to cover everyone’s behind?” The Miller Law Firm—Stacy Miller’s firm—is listed as an ITB Insider sponsor. Crossno says the law firm’s contribution had nothing to do with his in-kind donation. An announcement of candidate Bonner’s candidacy was labeled as humor. Crossno says the in-kind donation for that story has been submitted and will be listed on a future disclosure form. Crossno, who attended Broughton, gained international prominence by tweeting out details and photographs of the failed Fyre Festival in the Bahamas. In May, Crossno and another plaintiff sued the festival to reclaim damages allegedly incurred during their attendance at the April event. The Miller Law Firm represents the plaintiffs, according to court records. tgoldsmith@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 8.30.17 | 9

10 | 8.30.17 | INDYweek.com

HOW THE TRIANGLE BECAME GROUND ZERO FOR THE COHOUSING MOVEMENT

DON’T CALL IT A

COMMUNE BY COLE DEL CHARCO

PHOTOS BY ALEX BOERNER

Durham Central Park Cohousing resident David Scheidt walks down the street to listen to live music at DCP.

ee Anderson stands on a small mulch path, garden hose in hand, watering plants in a garden partially funded by grants from the city of Durham. One of his seven housemates, Tony Simpson, stands right behind him, admiring the size of the growing watermelons and cantaloupes.

Simpson is ecstatic. “Those are some weird-looking tomatoes. They look like cucumbers,” he says. “Yeah, those are some weird-looking tomatoes,” Anderson replies. Anderson and Simpson live in the corner house of the North Street Neighborhood, an intentional community—a planned residential complex designed to have a high degree of social interaction. The neighborhood comprises ninety-nine people, with and without disabilities, who live in sixteen owner-occupied buildings and an apartment. It’s filled with families, young and old single people, and Duke

Divinity School students. In the house where Anderson and Simpson live, there’s a chapel for prayer, a room for nonpermanent residents that has housed refugees, and a long dining room table where different residents serve dinner for the others five nights a week. During college, Anderson lived with several other male students in a house in Chapel Hill. “I had always kind of had this craving for community, and that was the first place where I really got to live that out and experience community life and sharing life with people and all the different flavors people bring, and just had a lot of fun,” he says. “That’s a lot of what I love about this neighborhood; it’s just, like, a lot of fun-loving people, too.” Before the North Street Neighborhood was formed in 2012, Anderson had volunteered with Reality Ministries in Durham, a Christian organization focused on giving opportunities to teens and adults with developmental disabilities. There, he says, he was “around people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and you realize they have so

much to offer and so much to teach.” That’s where many of the ninety-nine neighbors met— helping with weekly programming at Reality. But then they started thinking, What if ? That was the subject line of an email sent by future North Street resident Traci Hoover in 2009, which went out to twenty-nine people who were considering forming a neighborhood together. Instead of living in houses with random neighbors, they could live in proximity to their friends. It arose out of a need for good housing options, and the North Street Neighborhood was more than a solution to that problem—it aligned with values they shared. That’s what intentional community is all about, Anderson says. And that’s why it looks different everywhere it exists. North Street offers communal living (though residents stress that it’s not a commune). But until recently, the people who live here didn’t know that what they had created was part of a national movement: cohousing. The basis of cohousing is that each household maintains its own personal property INDYweek.com | 8.30.17 | 11

while sharing a common house and extensive common spaces, like gardens, walking paths, or music rooms. They also share things like washers and dryers and lawnmowers—whatever the community decides. Residents often gather weekly or monthly to share meals and spend time together through organized or spontaneous events based on common interests. The thing that qualifies North Street as cohousing is the shared monthly meals, says resident Margot Starbuck, as well as shared space in at least one house and the option to join in other community events, such as daily prayer at North Street or, in the case of Durham Central Park Cohousing, a weekly movie night. But North Street isn’t part of the American Cohousing Association—and until 2015, its residents didn’t know they qualified. “A cohousing conference was happening in Durham, and they had just maybe three or four folks who came over to look at the neighborhood,” says Starbuck. “I think that’s when most of us learned the word, when they said, ‘Oh yeah, you’re that.’” With no knowledge of the larger movement, the members of the North Street Neighborhood arrived at the exact same solution as the rest of the national cohousing group to what they view as a key societal problem: it’s hard to find a group of people who have your back. While the majority of Triangle residents may not have heard of cohousing—only a tenth of 1 percent of people in the Triangle live in an official cohousing community— the Triangle has the second-most cohousing residents per capita in major metropolitan areas, beating out greater Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle, and trailing only Portland. There are 165 cohousing communities operating and another 140 forming in the United States, as counted by the Cohousing Association of the United States. Most are in areas that are growing economically, highly educated, and liberal leaning—like the Triangle. Of those 165 communities, five are here, and three more are on the way. The upside of cohousing? Shared resources, a social community, and help when you need it. The downside? Less privacy, independence, and silence. For some, it’s all about finding and re-creating what they grew up with. For a cofounder of cohousing in the U.S.—and half of McCamant & Durrett Architects—the real issue is the way society has changed. “I grew up in a neighborhood where kids were running in and out of the houses and kids were just running through the doors,” says Kathryn McCamant. “I think that’s very, very hard for you to find these days.” 12 | 8.30.17 | INDYweek.com

going from this building where apparently nobody lives, but everybody lives, and I stop and ask somebody, ‘What’s going on here?’” he recalls. A woman told him that she and her husband had grown up in good neighborhoods, and “they wanted their kids to live in a functional neighborhood,” he continues. So they designed and joined a cohousing community based on the neighborhoods they knew. Durrett and McCamant, now married, had the same goals for their children. They started by building their own cohousing development in San Francisco. Later, in conjunction with an already forming cohousing group, they built the Triangle’s first cohousing community in 1997: Arcadia Cohousing, which straddles the border between Carrboro and Chapel Hill. Since then, five other cohousing developments have opened. By 2020, three more will join them, bringing the number of area people living in cohousing to more than three hundred. Cohousing is growing, McCamant says, because modern society forgoes a close-knit style of living communities. People want that connectivity.

Residents of DCPC gather for happy hour on the balcony of their building.

he first cohousing development opened in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1972. Sixteen years later, McCamant and Charles Durrett, who met at the elite architecture school at the University of Copenhagen, published what amounts to the movement’s English-language Bible: Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves. McCamant and Durrett coined the term “cohousing” from the Danish word bofoellesskaber, which translates to “living communities.” Unlike the communes that became popular during the 1970s, cohousing allows par-

ticipants to maintain their private property while incorporating community into their lives. (The financial setup is just like a condominium.) Residents don’t put their money in a pot, and they don’t shower together. But they do share a lot of living space, which is what caught Durrett’s eye. One day in 1980, Durrett says, he was on his way to class when he noticed a different kind of housing development. “There are two apartments, and a lot between that, and then there’s this one neighborhood where people are stopping to interact with each other, people are sitting at picnic tables, people are coming and

ust past the covered front porch of the shiny four-floor complex of Durham Central Park Cohousing lies the mailroom. It’s right by the door, with a view of the street from a large window. Each black metal mailbox has a lock, but many aren’t secured. Keys sit in about 80 percent of them, allowing other members to access the mail, ideally to help retrieve it for someone going out of town. Still, there’s a certain amount of trust that goes into such an arrangement. “Who’s going to take our mail? Nobody that lives here,” says Tim Hunter, a sixtyfour-year-old resident with glasses and a thick gray moustache. He’s been living in the building since it opened in 2014. Every afternoon at five thirty is happy hour, a community get-together open to whoever wants to come. Hunter is almost always there. Sometimes, three residents show up, other times thirty. But for whoever is there, it’s a time to talk about life—“The same thing that you might do with all your buds,” Hunter says. Sitting just across from Hunter is Richard Jamison, also sixty-four, dressed in a suit and tie. If the two hadn’t joined the DCPC, they likely wouldn’t have met. But now that they’ve helped design a building they both live in, it’s impossible for them not to be close. “It’s like I say, we ought to be calling each other cousins, because really it’s like a family,” Hunter says. Not everyone is into this kind of community, of course. “A friend I had lunch with

t Arcadia Cohousing, there’s a bulletin board in the common house. It’s covered in fliers and pamphlets, including a folder with projections of financial returns on the monthly dues members pay. The community tries to be open with its financial records, which are available at any time to residents. Those funds go to things like keeping the paths and walkways in good shape and meet-and-greets to welcome new members. The common house sits at the end of sev-

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That freedom to roam, Elijah says, epitomizes the benefits of cohousing. For a college application essay, he wrote about how he was able to ride his scooter up and down walking paths in the neighborhood without fear of being hit by a car. But much of Arcadia’s distinctiveness was lost on him until he visited other neighborhoods. One of the biggest differences he saw was the environmental footprint. While typical neighborhoods have two garbage bins per house, Arcadia has only eight garbage bins for all thirtythree houses. As a shared value, the community takes every opportunity to recycle and compost. But while Elijah values the environmental aspect, the most important thing to him is the group’s sharing nature. “I think it’s kind Architect Charles Durrett gives a presentation on cohousing of like the pie is at the Durham County library. getting bigger for everyone,” he says. “It’s not like this zero sum thing, where if you Two decades later, her son, Elijah Lastake from me then I have less; it's like we’re kody, lives in Arcadia—at least for now. He sharing and the pie is getting bigger.” graduated from UNC in May and recently While attending UNC, he studied abroad interviewed for an advertising job in Seattle. in Italy for seven months and plans to move Dressed in a flannel shirt, navy shorts, and to a big city in the near future—hopefully Adidas slides, he looks like an advertising Seattle. That may seem like a stark contrast major. He has a hint of scruff on his face and to the semi-isolated, tree-laden neighbora streak of wild, yet somehow tame, brown hood he’s grown up in, but he sees it as an hair. As he stands outside on one of the many opportunity—and his time in cohousing as paths leading out from the common house, preparation. birds chirp. They don’t stop for the rest of the “In a way, I had some training experience morning. in kind of a separate world from the broader Lined with trees and filled with gardens workings of society,” he says, “but ended up spread among the thirty-three residential integrating that public school education in houses, Arcadia is distinct from the subdia way that parallels my experience with the visions on either side. There’s only one road fact that the people who live here are intethat residents park on, and the houses face grated with society and do understand how one another, not the road. At the entrance, things work, and are using that knowledge squirrels run happily, and two deer timidly to try to make the world better in the ways cross the street. that they can.” “That’s pretty standard,” says Elijah, who Explaining cohousing is difficult, since it moved into Arcadia at the age of one. He varies so much from community to commudidn’t have much of a say in the matter, but nity, Elijah says. “If I was going to sum it all now he looks back fondly on his time in up in one word, I’d say understanding.” cohousing. A mutual understanding of ideals and pur“When I grew up here, I knew all my pose—and a place where people really know neighbors on a first-name basis,” Elijah one another. But to live in cohousing, one has says. “This was very odd for people outside to relinquish the normal way of American the community, who didn’t grow up with life, with all its individuality and comforts. this and were used to it being trespassing And that’s kind of the whole point. if you were on someone else’s property or backtalk@indyweek.com something like that.” eral walking paths that span the property and hosts shared weekly meals. Initially, explains founding resident Becky Laskody, the community shared meals three times a week. Back then, almost all residents always came; now, not so much. Regardless, a minimum level of involvement is expected. And with that expectation comes trust. That basic value is why Laskody was so keen on raising her son in the community— to have people around him she could trust.

yesterday, he just can't even stand the idea,” Hunter says. “He wants to live out in Garner, in the middle of his big four-acre property, you know, and the notion of living in this place just makes him feel sort of creepy.” Two people who tried to found a cohousing community called Raleigh Cohousing— a project abandoned last week—say they admire how tight-knit DCPC is. But that kind of community doesn’t just happen; it takes work. For Reverend Kayelily Middleton and Dona McNeill, who are seventy-three and sixty-six years old, respectively, replicating it was a welcome challenge, because they see cohousing as their only viable option as they continue to age. “I think our particular generation, the Boomers, and those who are just on the edge, we really like to control things and to control our lives. And a lot of us have been taking care of our parents and dealing with the old system of assisted living and nursing care, and we don’t find it very appealing,” McNeill says. “So if we can create a community where each of us are looking out for each other, and if we need some nursing services, we can do a contract so we can have someone working in our community, we’ll do the things that we can to keep people in their community and to keep them healthy. Healthy until you check out.” Despite years of work, Raleigh Cohousing broke apart over disagreements over what kind of property to build on. When cohousing groups form, they often don’t reach their end goal, McNeill says. She was more saddened that people she had grown close to won’t be living in her community. “We got down to four families, and I was part of one of the four families, and at that point some of the [ten] families that had left had been very dear to me, and so it sort of took my heart out of the project.” McNeill will be joining Village Hearth Cohousing in Durham, which is further along in the process of forming than Raleigh Cohousing was and has already selected a property and gotten approval from the city council. Middleton and her husband are still deciding whether they will do so as well.

804 W. Peace St. • Raleigh • 834-7070

INDYweek.com | 8.30.17 | 13

Lakewood and

The Lakewood A HIGH-END RESTAURANT OPENS IN A WORKINGCLASS NEIGHBORHOOD. ITS RESIDENTS AREN’T SURE WHAT TO THINK. By Victoria Bouloubasis Photos by Alex Boerner

s Chapel Hill Road curves just past the Lakewood Shopping Center, the soft beams of street lamps shine through the windows of the old Davis Baking building, blending in with the dapple of candlelight inside the new restaurant now occupying it. The Lakewood is literally illuminating that corner of the neighborhood by the same name. At a table reserved for five toward the back, where there used to be shelves of powdery Mexican pastries and breads, Sandro Mendoza, twenty-four, sits on a bench bolted to a whitewashed wall. He quickly spots the menu item with the most irony. “Elote?” he says, laughing. “Every time I see something in Spanish, I order it because I know it’s going to be bad.” He goes back to translating the menu into Spanish for his mother, Juana Xotenco, who is sitting at the head of our table. “So this comes with a cheese supposedly from a farm. This is … basil? What’s that again?” 14 | 8.30.17 | INDYweek.com

The Lakewood’s bar

“Es albahaca, mijo,” she clarifies. I invited the mother and son to dinner to get their perspective on The Lakewood. The family has been living in Lakewood for more than twenty years. Mendoza and I share the bench seating; across from us sit Victor Resendiz Apolonio and his sister, Alicia. Their family owns Azteca Grill, a Michoacan-style Mexican restaurant down the street. I didn’t want to review The Lakewood the way the INDY normally reviews restaurants. I wanted to address something else, an uneasiness that’s gnawed at me for the last several years: food is touted as an equalizer, yet the idea is rarely challenged. In Durham, food is an element of great pride, and the gateway drug for newcomers to experience a new South hallucination, free of complexities. So we tend to separate stories of fancy food from those of whatever else we’ve deemed trendy, cheap, and kitsch: the tacos, the chicken and waffles, the dumplings. That distance results in disparate worlds—one less accessible than the other.

Still, when our world has gone to shit, a meal at a nice restaurant provides us with an escape, one we tell ourselves we deserve. But who is we? The beast of gentrification is all around Durham: its pros, its cons, its overuse as a blanket term for all of the city’s problems, its inevitability. We’ve criticized the lavish bars, the newest rooftop pool, and the purple neon hotel lights now speckling our sunsets. But on some level, we’ve also embraced it. So why aren’t we talking about this in food media? I can’t ignore it, especially when thinking about The Lakewood, the second endeavor by Scratch chef-owner Phoebe Lawless. I was excited about The Lakewood opening when I heard it was Lawless’s project, but that wasn’t the neighborhood’s reaction. At least not the folks I know. “They replaced our panaderia,” says Resendiz Apolonio. The thirty-two-year-old has been in Durham half of his life. He works full-time at A Southern Season’s warehouse and at the family restaurant on weekends. His

sister Alicia cooks in the Azteca kitchen with their parents six days a week. “Bread and tortillas is essentially life for many Latinos. When you take that away …” Alicia finishes his sentence. “The community resented it for a while.” These are the foodies I wanted to talk to, our city’s construction workers and cooks and immigrant mothers and first-generation sons—the residents of Lakewood. In conversations about gentrification and food, the media often ignores the residents, many of whom also work in our food worlds, amid the upheaval they’re caught up in. Alicia lives just a couple of blocks away. Recently, her landlord decided to sell the two-bedroom house she rents with her husband and three young children. Given a month to leave, they still hadn’t found an affordable home two weeks in. “We used to have everything close by, and it was a welcoming place for us who came here from other countries,” she tells me later. But a slow shift of business closings, like laundromats and Hispanic tiendas, marked a cultural transformation. “Everything that has always been downtown is now moving over here,” says Alicia. “And it’s displacing the Hispanic community.”

“T

his is something I’ve been hyperaware of since I started this project,” says Lawless, who opened The Lakewood three months ago. Two years ago, Lawless says, she began reaching out to community members to see how they felt about the restaurant. She met with church leaders next door. She spoke to local businesses and residents. “To do the food that I want to do with the understanding of the community—that’s a significant challenge to navigate,” she says. “It’s not over by any means. It’s essentially a journey.” When we talk about immigrants and food, we usually focus on their contributions as workers or participants in bringing a new food to us. Rarely, if ever, is it the other way around. But they are eaters, too. We order the copper pennies, a $7 starter of pickled carrots, and Resendiz Apolonio jokes that they even eat money here. The Lakewood’s prices are high. A steak plate with broccoli and homemade gnocchi with hollandaise puts you back $25. Lawless, who’s been cooking for fifteen years in Durham, realizes this. “The choice that I’ve made is, Do I charge people what

THE LAKEWOOD

2022 Chapel Hill Road, Durham 919-402-8059, thelakewooddurham.com

2000–15—from $622 to $854 a month. But the rapid rate of inflation and development could mean just as much of a price gouge in the last two years. And our food scene might be contributing to that—forcing immigrants to migrate yet again, perpetuating a state of transience that contradicts the signs sprouting a welcoming message through manicured garden beds. “There are neighbors with those signs in their yards,” says Mendoza. “But I don’t see them at the protests. They barely even wave at me. For a lot of Hispanic immigrants, we don’t stay in one spot. We move a lot because rent gets higher. But I finally feel now like Lakewood is home, because we’ve been lucky enough to stay.”

A Victor Resendiz Apolonio needs to be charged for this beautiful food? Or do I serve commodity proteins and cheese and seafood to accommodate a community? I’ve chosen to source my ingredients from local producers who I have built relationships with.” Take that steak entrée (which both Resendiz Apolonio and Mendoza loved). Lawless says she buys the protein for about $6 “without anything else on the plate, without paying my staff fifteen dollars an hour minimum. There’s an idea that people who do this food want to make a lot of money. That’s not the case.” None of my fellow diners complained about Lawless making money. “To be honest, I’m not even sure if it’s the restaurant,” Mendoza says. “She’s just trying to get her business going, just like everyone else. It’s the way the town is growing. It starts with fancy restaurants, then new houses around, then people you don’t usually see in this area—white people. It’s fine, and now it’s, like, more diverse, but the housing prices are increasing. That’s why people are leaving—a lot of people can’t afford living in a spot that’s one thousand dollars for two rooms.” The most recent U.S. Census data shows that in the census tract encompassing Lakewood, the average median household income was $43,509. For Hispanics, the median drops to $34,286. “I doubt that’s accurate,” says Resendiz Apolonio. “It could be a lot lower. Latinos don’t always participate in the census.” Lakewood has traditionally been an affordable neighborhood for low-income communities; median rents in its census tract increased a little more than $200 from

s we sit at the table that Friday night, Mendoza cuts into his steak and surveys the room. “White people stare too much,” he says. Every other diner in that room is white. His mother, Juana, says she’s been curious about the restaurant but didn’t feel welcome. Alicia says she’s never seen a Latino walk in, and she wasn’t sure what kind of place it was. “It’s named after the neighborhood, but it’s definitely not overly welcoming to us,” says Resendiz Apolonio. I relate this conversation to Lawless. “I know how lucky I am to be able to do what I do,” she replies. “To have the luxury of sourcing locally and a customer base who’s willing to pay what those real costs are. I like that the two pastors from the church next door come in for supper or brunch, and that some of the kids in the neighborhoods are getting their first jobs at The Lakewood.” Once “baby Scratch” opens at this location in a few weeks—with coffee and pastries— she hopes “more people in the neighborhood will feel more comfortable coming in.” Discomfort in these conversations exists when we have trouble listening to others’ opinions without taking offense. But perhaps the food—which we all enjoyed—provided a semblance of comfort. Juana noted that for $7, the price of the copper pennies, she could buy a bag of carnitas from Azteca and feed her family. Still, she stabbed a slice of carrot with her fork, carefully examining it, nibbling and savoring the flavors, investigating them with her palate. “They’re a lot like the carrots we make, too, but just sweeter. Maybe there’s thyme in there? But no spice.” “Kind of like the elote,” Mendoza says. “No pica nada. But you know, it’s better than we thought.” “See,” says his mother. “You just have to try things!” vbouloubasis@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 8.30.17 | 15

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Isn’t It Ironic?

DAVID LIEBE HART’S COMEDY AND MUSIC IS FAR, FAR OUT—BUT HIS APPROACH IS DELIGHTFULLY SINCERE BY DAVID FORD SMITH

t sixty-two years old, cult puppeteer, actor, and musician David Liebe Hart has inspired and frustrated his fan base for years. His personal mythology runs detailed and deep, and he’s a walking compendium of incredible and bizarre stories. That said, getting the famed fringe artist to talk in any concise way can be troublesome. He’s particularly prone to long, winding digressions about his personal life and experiences in the entertainment industry, most of which involve being unfairly slighted or ripped off. He complains about “immoral” Photoshop images of him that have appeared online, and how a female fan supposedly manipulated him romantically to secure an internship at Adult Swim. He laments missed tour opportunities and chastises another fan he recently invited to his apartment who “betrayed” him and stole his laptop.

David Liebe Hart, with one of his furry friends PHOTO BY CHAD COOPER For all his admittedly sad personal stories and kvetching, Hart doesn’t come off as a curmudgeon or nihilist at heart. Beneath his eccentricities, he seems to be a kind, good-natured man whose brand of earnest, oddball performance is not rooted in irony or anti-humor. That his art espouses endless optimism in the face of the surrealist world he exists in might help to explain such contradictions. Hart’s biography is strewn with a great deal of wild, unverifiable info—he claims that Jim Henson was his Sunday school teacher—but the actual facts are almost equally strange. In the seventies, he was a Hollywood hopeful who later appeared in bit parts on several prominent television shows, including Wings, Good Times, and The Golden Girls. By the late eighties, his outcast reputation blossomed as the star of a nightmarish Christian-themed Los Angeles public access

show, The Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Program. Through a variety of puppets, he promoted the values of abstinence and Christian theology, albeit in a psychedelic, heavily chroma-keyed style. The show made the rounds in underground VHS tape trading rings, decades before his clips would rack up tens of thousands of views on YouTube. He remained a fixture on that program for the next two decades, until legislation shut down most of the public access studios in L.A. in the late 2000s. He now has a small but loyal following of twentysomethings, most of whom know him from the Adult Swim altcomedy staple Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!. On the show and its spinoff, Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule, Hart is notorious for his oblique song segments. His sincere nature and bizarre lyrics about emails, milk, and extraterrestrial life fit seamlessly within the

show’s utterly grotesque mesh of the strange and the banal. The most famous song from that batch, “Salame,” is, by Hart’s explanation, based on a real-life encounter he had in the La Brea Tar Pits of Los Angeles with an alien named Jezebel Bordious. According to Hart, she “looks like Bettie Page” and has “a big toe, not in the normal location but in the middle of her foot.” The word “Salame” comes from her extraterrestrial language, and means “the word when two UFO’s meet each other.” As Hart woefully explains, his alien love eventually left in a spacecraft and “wanted to come back to earth to marry me, but she never came back.” Hart’s success on both shows gave him leverage to rekindle his career, manifested in a multimedia performance act that Hart frequently takes on tour. Since 2014, he’s teamed up with bandmate and manager Jonah Mociun for a revue that features puppets, performance art, original animation, standup comedy, and of course, more heartfelt songs about the paranormal. Hart explains a recent track, “Ghost Frog,” is about pet frogs who “accidentally died while I was on tour because no one fed them.” They appeared to him one late night as ghosts, promising to “haunt the shit out of him forever.” For a while, he was also touring the amusing “punk rock” version of his music, which

is mostly a simple palette swap from his beloved keyboard backing to upbeat poppunk instrumentals. His current musical focus is hymns, he says. In typical David Liebe Hart fashion, he follows this assertion by voicing his displeasure with several other Christian denominations for “not returning [his] emails” about including his songs in new hymnal editions. Hart’s bizarre claims and personality have naturally led some people to question whether his handlers are exploiting his quirks. It’s not a phenomenon unique to Hart. Many famed “outsider” artists like Wesley Willis and Daniel Johnston have developed huge followings off their left-field talents, while their closest colleagues catch allegations of running a “freak show.” But the term “outsider” itself seems to imply a separate class, an easy way of othering artists who deal with mental illness or come from atypical backgrounds and placing them in their own league. The conversation around these artists is evolving, with no clear or convenient fix. For now, perhaps the best solution is to view artists like Hart free of bad faith or irony. It’s a tricky line to walk in 2017 comedy, but an important one. Ideally, one should approach this kind of work with all the sincerity of someone like Hart himself. music@indyweek.com

MUSIC BRIEF

FAIR FARE Over the past few years, the North Carolina State Fair has adjusted its music programming after mismanaged booking translated to poor attendance and the loss of over $900,0000 (who, in this decade, really cares about seeing Vanilla Ice, who performed at the 2014 fair?). Happily, that reorganization translated to strong, compelling bookings over the past two years—last year alone featured indie rock titans Superchunk, hardcore heavyweights Corrosion of Conformity, and funk pioneer Maceo Parker. By comparison, the big headliners for this year’s fair feel like a bit of a backslide toward the mediocre fare of yore. This year’s Dorton Arena lineup features the Eagles tribute band On the Border, the bland country-rock of North Carolina’s Parmalee, and Marcy Playground, whose hit single “Sex and Candy” you may remember from the year 1997. On the lest lackluster end is a reunited Dillon Fence, the Chapel Hill band that tore up the town in the late eighties and early nineties with its particular, punchy strain of rock. Slightly younger nostalgia seekers will appreciate the return of the

regional cult favorite Jump, Little Children. You’ll also have a chance to see Ronnie Milsap, the native North Carolinian and country music star whose career is well into its sixth decade.

Marcy Playground PHOTO COURTESY OF TKO And plenty of excellent artists are taking to smaller outdoor stages during the day. G Yamazawa, Zoocrü, and ZenSoFly lead a hip-hop charge, and local go-go outfit Project 919 ought to be a blast. Bruxes shows up with shimmery, intimate rock, Big Ron Hunter brings the blues, and Greensboro duo The Bronzed Chorus will get nice and loud late one Saturday afternoon, to name but a few more. You can check out the full lineup and schedule of the Homegrown Music Fest series at ncstatefair.org. —Allison Hussey

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music

CHUCK JOHNSON

Wednesday, September 6, 7:30 p.m., $12 Nightlight, Chapel Hill www.nightlightclub.com

Steel Your Face

WITH HIS LATEST LP, BASALMS, CHUCK JOHNSON CRAFTS A PEACEFUL PEDAL STEEL PARADISE BY NOAH RAWLINGS

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huck Johnson’s work as a composer and musician—whether scoring a film, playing in a post-rock band, or carefully crafting an experimental record—has been marked by the desire to explore a host of instruments and genres and an eagerness to investigate new musical possibilities. Once a part of Chapel Hill’s fertile indie rock scene in the early nineties, Johnson has spent recent years turning outheady fingerpicked guitar efforts. But before returning to his old stomping grounds, Johnson refreshed us on the latest iteration of his musical evolution: Balsams, an ethereal album composed almost entirely on the pedal steel guitar. The pedal steel is strongly associated with country music, yet on Balsams, Johnson employs it in a radical fashion, crafting heavenly, nigh-psychedelic soundscapes. INDY: The pedal steel guitar is an instrument with a specific sound, which almost unavoidably evokes the spirit of country music. How does the history of the pedal

steel and its highly specific sound impact your writing? CHUCK JOHNSON: [On Balsams] I kind of consciously steered away from playing parts that make you think of windy country ballads or something like that. I love country music; I grew up on it, and I think it comes through on a lot of music I’ve done. But the interesting thing about the pedal steel is that it was invented to play that music. It’s related to lap steel and other kinds of steel guitar, and it kind of evolved over time. But the whole idea of having this machinery—a string instrument that lets you bend notes in a certain way—was completely developed to play country music, and to meet the needs of steel players in that genre. Doing anything too far outside that is kind of a stretch for the instrument. But it is a really flexible instrument because you can customize it and tune it in all these different ways. I marvel at it. I don’t do anything terribly dissonant or use extended techniques or try to make weird sounds with it. I do basically play it

using the techniques that you would use to play country music. But what I like about it is just the sustain and the sound of it, and the expressive potential of being able to push and pull the notes in combination with each other. That’s what drew me to it in the first place and that’s what I try to get from it when I play it. One of the most striking things about Balsams is how vast it sounds—the word "cinematic" comes easily to mind. To what extent does film music influence your songwriting? That’s actually more or less what I do for a living—I compose for film and TV. I’ve been doing it for about fifteen years and within the last few years it’s really picked up. This year, I’m doing it full time. It’s a great job. I’m certainly lucky to be able to do that. Have you always been attracted to cinematic music, and is that what initially brought you to work on films? Or were you a musician first and foremost, who

discovered that his music would work well with films? At that time [circa 2002] I had been playing in bands, and I’d mostly done instrumental rock music, and that was before I was putting out solo guitar records. But I was primarily interested in making music that was instrumental, and because of that I think a lot of people told me, “Oh, your music would work well as soundtrack music,” which I think is sometimes something people say when they don’t know how else to describe instrumental music. But in that time I thought, Yeah, I think that could be a fun, interesting thing to do. It wasn’t until an opportunity came my way back then, through a filmmaker in North Carolina who I still work a lot with, named Cynthia Hill, working on her first feature-length documentary, that I realized, Oh, this is something that I could actually be good at. It just felt like work that I was meant to be doing. Once I had a little taste of it I realized, This is what I’d really like to do all the time if I could. What drew you in the first place to instrumental music over more structured pop or rock music, or music driven by vocals? Well, I didn’t really like to sing. And I don’t think about words. Writing words is a talent and a skill that I admire, that I don’t have. I’ve never considered myself a lyric writer, and I’ve always been drawn to music that can tell a story without words as well. When I was young I was listening to a lot of music that was rock music, in the “indie” universe, but had long song structures and was maybe reaching for something a little bit beyond what rock music was, like Slint’s Spiderland. While words can complement or guide music in interesting ways, they can also limit our immediate experience of sound. Are you drawn to a more abstract and immediate way of experiencing music? I think when we hear language—a language that we understand—a different part of our brain turns on. There’s a composer in New York named David First and he had a really great way of describing this: Music that has lyrics takes on a quality of “aboutness”—it then becomes about whatever the lyricist is saying. And music that’s instrumental has a different quality, which is “isness”—it’s not about anything, it just is, so it doesn’t go through this layer of interpretation. You don’t necessarily hear a song without lyrics and think, Oh, this must be about this. You can project all kinds of things onto it. You can just be in the sound of a moment if you’re not trying to process someone’s language. music@indyweek.com

MUSIC BRIEF

RECYCLE THIS PAPER YOUTH LEAGUE

Second EP Cardigan Records HHH½ In rock’s formative decades, bands cultivated a signature sound, but these days it’s not uncommon for groups to take an almost perverse pride in their wacky mix of influences. But you don’t have to go on SoundCloud and check out the latest EDMKlezmer-field holler-jam band to know that more does not always equal better. Youth League purveys an industrialstrength mash-up of post-rock, math rock, shoegaze, emo, and alt rock that could easily go off the rails, but instead the music stays vital and visceral. That owes to the sense of commitment evident in the music and the band’s rejection of the temporal excesses of its easy-to-spot forebears. It’s the project of Mike Large, who sings and plays guitar, and his brother Zach Large on drums. Before settling in Durham, the pair led Wilmington’s Virgin Lung, a prog outfit that mostly played instrumentals. Some of that approach remains in the intricately constructed passages of Youth League, a trio with bassist Jaffar Castillon-Martinez since 2015. The self-explanatory Second EP, released in July on Cardigan Records, is marked by antic energy, widescreen atmosphere, and admirable concision: of six songs, three are under three minutes. The band works up a head of steam, sometimes with pummeling force, sometimes with glinting guitar webs, and always with a palpable sense of purpose. Youth League delights in messing with traditional song structure, but the occasionally drastic shifts in tempo and mood don’t get in the way of the music’s propulsive momentum. The rousing opener “Eat Trash Be Free” rides a serpentine tapped guitar figure and explodes in the manner of a Foo Fighters blast, replete with urgent drums and an anthemic join-in chorus. Up next, the EP’s single, “Stay Lame,” is propelled by an insinuating vocal melody, a significant step beyond the gang vocals of the previous EP. Bursting with glinting guitar interplay, “D-” ends the EP on a gorgeous note of triumph, appropriate for a promising band that’s hitting its stride. —David Klein

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INDYweek.com | 8.30.17 | 19

artificer

The Algorithm Method

RECENT DECISIONS IN THE NEWS & OBSERVER’’S ARTS JOURNALISM EXPOSE THE DOWNSIDE OF “READER-FOCUSED COVERAGE” BY BRIAN HOWE

he News & Observer is right about one thing: theater reviews don’t get clicks. That doesn’t mean a public-service institution shouldn’t do them. But let’s back up. On August 8, the N&O’s executive editor, John Drescher, published a column titled “On the new N&O menu: Less spinach, more reader-focused coverage.” Drescher writes that, through the magic of the Internet, the paper now knows exactly what its readers want. He promises to serve no more spinach, “the boring stories that few people read,” and to fill your plate with only—what’s the opposite of spinach? Cronuts? It remains to be seen how eschewing “obligatory stories about government process” will play out in the paper’s reporting, but its all-cronut strategy had some immediate consequences. The N&O dropped some features that weren’t performing online, some of them fluff (the archival Past Times column), some substantial (the metro column), and some with quarter-century local legacies (poor Barry Saunders, feted on his departure in July, dumped on the compost heap with the rest of the spinach by August). “Reader-focused”—it’s such a pleasant euphemism. What could be wrong with giving readers what they want? But there’s a revealing problem with Drescher’s analogy. He uses “spinach” as shorthand for something you don’t want to consume but ignores what else it’s shorthand for: something good for you. “Reader-focused” reduces readers to the subset of people who click most ardently and simplifies what they want into what they click. Two of the paper’s recent decisions about arts journalism illustrate the double-sided danger of this approach: it can lead you not to do things you should, as in a major change to the N&O’s theater coverage. Or it can lead you to do things you probably shouldn’t, as in a recent column asking if Confederate monuments are art. 20 | 8.30.17 | INDYweek.com

the local theater world, thereby growing the audience that supports it. Those stories are also important because our readers want them, and we listen to that. But there’s a fine balance between tailoring content to demand and nourishing the ecosystem of presenters, performers, followers, and casual theatergoers behind all the content. That’s why the INDY has no intention of giving up on theater reviews in the digital-first age. Even if a given review gets a small number of page views, they’re coming from the core group of practitioners and audiences whose activity ensures there’s anything to tell stories about. Theater is an enduring form of play that everyone should have access to, and independent performers provide it to those who can’t afford, or feel they don’t fit in at, say, DPAC. I’ve heard from these local performers time and again that they rely on documentation—that is, reviews—to grow as artists, to sell tickets in local theaters, and to book their work in other markets. We have to serve them in order to serve you. That’s why arts criticism’s public-service value can’t be measured in clicks. It isn’t a vegetable you harvest. It’s a seed you plant.

Arts criticism isn’t a vegetable you harvest. It’s a seed you plant.

ILLUSTRATION BY SHAN STUMPF

he week after Drescher’s editorial was published, Roy C. Dicks, the N&O’s longtime theater critic, sent an alarming email to theater insiders. As of September 1, he said, the paper would no longer publish performing arts reviews, focusing on previews, profiles, and trend pieces instead. Jessica Banov, the N&O’s culture editor, told the INDY there was no plan to eliminate reviews entirely. “We know how important the performing arts scene is to the Triangle, and we will continue to write stories about local theater and the arts,” she said. But you’ll notice that she said “stories.” Dicks clarified that, in his understanding, theater reviews would drop from around seventy per year to one or two.

In Byron Woods, the INDY has as reputable and followed a theater critic as anyone. Yet it’s true for us, as for the N&O, that theater reviews don’t generate much traffic online—though we trust they reach a wide audience in the print edition. Previews of theater productions, Q and As with directors and playwrights, and especially reporting on contretemps, closings, and controversies, do much better. I like this kind of coverage, too. A good story speaks to readers regardless of whether they’re invested in theater. As a free paper that blankets the streets, we have a responsibility to serve as broad an audience as we can. Accessible, narrativedriven stories can show people a way into

he N&O is one of twenty-nine dailies owned by The McClatchy Company, and the paper’s recent shifts are just the effectuation of a company-wide digital-first directive. By all appearances, the mandate to keep cranking out content on whatever is hot until it goes cold seems to form the backdrop for an August 17 post by David Menconi, the paper’s respected longtime music critic, with a headline asking, “Are Confederate statues considered art, or history worth preserving?” The answer that follows is an unequivocal no, voiced not by Menconi but by art professionals whose chagrin at having to answer such a question faintly radiates from the page. It’s difficult to imagine that Menconi, who declined to comment on this story, would have written such a post if he had

been pursuing his interest and the public’s more than “Charlottesville” and “monument” searches, because he is clearly not very interested in the question. Without genuine curiosity, he comes up with a superficial answer to an inquiry relevant to a vital protest movement surging through the Triangle and the country. Menconi’s main approach is to ask if Confederate monuments look pretty or not. But any serious attempt to consider their art status would have to ask entirely different questions, such as who made them, how, and why. Catherine Bishir, an architecture historian at N.C. State libraries, almost says as much, but the brief column ends there. After a Confederate monument came crashing down in downtown Durham and another at Duke was defaced and then removed, Silent Sam, raised in 1913 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, still stands at UNC-Chapel Hill. Menconi might have contrasted its means of production with that of other kinds of public art. Or he might have weighed it against the works of Richard Serra, who demonstrates a compelling answer to how monuments can be art: by being abstract and open to interpretation. Personally, I think that even if Confederate monuments were art, it wouldn’t matter, because it would be art of bad faith with actual power. And some things, like people’s right to feel included in public space, are more important than creative expression. If enshrining the mythic structure of a racist past is art, it probably isn’t art we want. It’s important to remember that art is a made-up thing, and we get to choose. The N&O’s all-cronut menu doesn’t mean it will turn into BuzzFeed, as Drescher takes pains to point out. Editors will still vet what the algorithms spit out against the public interest, and the revamp includes some worthy initiatives, like more reporting on the state legislature. It’s probably a sound business decision, at least in the short term, until a click-happy readership goes lolloping off somewhere else—or until the arts that fuel the stories dry up for want of reviews. But a newspaper, more than other businesses, has a special mandate to serve the public interest, which is something bigger than the public’s interests. When people select what they want from an ever slimmer, more tailored menu of options, how will they ever voice or discover what else they need? So we’ll keep tossing up a cornucopia of veggies and desserts, and, hopefully, everyone will eat well. bhowe@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 8.30.18 | 21

indyart

DONALD MARTINY & CELIA JOHNSON: JUXTAPOSITION Friday, Sep. 1, 6–10 p.m., free Artspace, Raleigh www.artspacenc.org

Positive Joy

TAKING DIFFERENT BUT COMPLEMENTARY ROUTES, MARRIED ARTISTS DONALD MARTINY AND CELIA JOHNSON MEET AT THE INTERSECTION OF COLOR AND FORM BY LINDA KRAMER Donald Martiny, a renowned abstract expressionist artist who lives in Chapel Hill, is represented by galleries in the U.S., Europe, and Australia and is collected around the world. In 2015, two of his works were permanently installed at One World Trade Center. Too large to fit through the doors, they had to be created onsite while thousands of visitors watched. For a more intimate view of Martiny’s unique work, Triangle residents can visit Juxtaposition, a new exhibit with Celia Johnson, which runs at Artspace through October after an opening reception Friday night. Together, the married couple is creating a sprawling installation with a profound visual language. Martiny describes himself as a gestural abstractionist. His works are nonrepresentational, heavily textured threedimensional shapes that he creates on the floor. It’s a physically taxing process. Martiny uses brushes, brooms, mops, and his hands to push paint into abstract swoops. The power of pure paint, combined with simple but strong, emotive strokes, is a dazzling convergence that immediately connects with viewers, unbound and unrestricted by the shape of a canvas. Johnson has her own following. She is represented by the Giampietro Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut, and has shown in New York City and Paris. Yet this is only her third showing in North Carolina, and only her second joint showing with her husband. Since childhood, Johnson has been intrigued by moving around shapes and colors to create puzzles. Her well-organized geometric compositions blend modern sophistication with clarity and economy. Her brightly colored encaustic works of pigmented hot wax are layered onto wood 22 | 8.30.17 | INDYweek.com

An encaustic painting from "Cycels" by Celia Johnson (left) and "Kpati" by Donald Martiny (right) PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS

panels as inlays. The flat, layered color fields reflect the minimalist images of the sixties. In his book How to Paint Sunlight, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti quotes Edward Hopper as saying, “All I wanted to do was paint sunlight on the side of a house.” Johnson pulls this concept off ingeniously with bright compositions that spring from her inner self, armed with a brush loaded with light. “I have a modernist interest in the play of color and form through the application of liquid paints, hot glowing wax, and inks,”

Johnson says. “Many influences blend simultaneously in my works, although no single reference is immediate. I am directly influenced by nothing, yet feed on everything.” Martiny and Johnson practice strict personal discipline in their art. Their routine is to get up every day and go to work, ten hours a day, seven days a week. As Chuck Close once said, “Inspiration is for amateurs.” These artists don’t wait for it; they do it. Through their works, the couple hopes to inspire the healing, meditative joy that only art can provide. “If art can change one’s

mood, it can change behavior, which can result in both personal and social change,” Martiny says. His work, though conceptual, is also simple: see, feel, and respond. “[Juxtaposition] celebrates a mutual and joyful color palette of compatible hues that we selected to use as an anchor point for a conversation between our works,” Johnson says. Though the couple has different approaches—his work is large and textural, hers smooth and exacting—they reach for a similar experience: the positive joy of color. arts@indyweek.com

TION

which can l change,â€? onceptual, d. utual and hues that oint for a Johnson different d textural, each for a of color. yweek.com

RECYCLE THIS PAPER Queer ISSue

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indystage

YES TO NOTHING

Aug. 31–Sept. 16, 8 p.m. Thu.–Sat., $10–$15 Slim’s, Raleigh/Nightlight, Chapel Hill/ Pinhook, Durham www.littlegreenpig.com

Sexism Pistols

IN PUNK-ROCK MUSICAL YES TO NOTHING, A FEMALE PUNK BAND FROM THE EIGHTIES FACES MUSIC-SCENE MISOGYNY WE STILL KNOW ALL TOO WELL BY BRIAN HOWE

“I

t’s about an all-female punk band in the eighties, the daily grind of touring and the dynamics between them, and what happens twenty years later when they have a reunion show,” Caitlin Wells says, sitting outside Scratch sporting dark glasses and a punkish shock of yellow hair. She’s talking about Yes to Nothing, the first show of Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern’s new season, which also marks Wells’s debut as a solo director and her last show in the Triangle before moving to New York City. Written by Little Green Pig member Mara Thomas, the punk-rock musical focuses on a band called The Rags, partly based on The Slits, who faced music-scene sexism while coming up in London alongside The Clash and The Sex Pistols yet still ferociously strummed their way into music history. Staged like an actual concert, the show also runs in actual rock venues, starting at Slim’s in Raleigh this weekend before moving on to Nightlight in Chapel Hill and the Pinhook in Durham. Before the premiere, we caught up with Wells to talk about setting it in the American Midwest instead of the U.K., striking out on her own as a director, and how the issues at play remain sadly relevant today. INDY: Tell us about the origins of this play. CAITLIN WELLS: Mara Thomas has been playing in punk bands for a long time. She read Viv Albertine from the Slits’ memoir, Clothes. Music. Boys., and it resonated with her as a woman who’s really into the punk scene. She and [Little Green Pig artistic director] Jaybird [O’Berski] are tight, and he encouraged her to make the show. It’s her first play. Tamara Kissane and Richard Butner have both been kind of mentoring her. It was a really rad process because she would bring me chunks and we would riff off each other. We’ve gotten to guide it together. 24 | 8.30.17 | INDYweek.com

real, and there are moments when who knows what’s going to happen. Casting was obviously really important. I was really intentional when I put out the call to try to rope in local musicians. Dana Marks plays with local bands, and Nelle Dunlap from Gown is a cellist and bassist but had to learn guitar. Meredith Sause, I think, played drums when she was a kid. William Dawson from Squirrel Nut Zippers got them set on their instruments and taught them the songs, and Owen Fitzgerald from PROM jumped in as music director, which was really important.

Meet The Rags PHOTO BY KIM BLACK What drew you to this script? I love live music, and the idea of not doing it in a stereotypical theatrical way, grounding it in the reality of live music and from the perspective of women. I have a lot of friends who are women in music, and they have a lot of stories about the bullshit they deal with in that realm because of their gender identity. Because the play is set in 1982 and 2002, you see how things have changed and not changed. There is some optimism; it’s not hopeless, but we do have constant garbage to deal with, and that comes through so intensely in the book. The Slits were coming up with The Clash and The Sex Pistols, but they received very different treatment because they were women. Viv doesn’t paint anything in an ideal way—in and of itself, a women being real is political. And to have nine women onstage being real, playing intense music and getting gross and being aggressive, feels, again, like a really political act.

Are you or were you ever into punk music? I got into punk when I was living in Spain. I fell in with a bunch of skaters and surfers who kind of opened my eyes musically. We transposed the show from London to the Twin Cities, to drop it more in Mara’s reality—she’s from the Midwest—and I went to school in the Twin Cities, so getting back into Hüsker Dü and The Replacements and all these venues has been fun as well. All of the actors had to learn to play instruments. How do you prevent a theatrical performance like this from turning into a concert? There was no pushing back against that. The whole thing is staged in real time. First, they’re loading in; they have their amps on skateboards and they’re sound checking. And the show ends with them playing their set. They’re running through the venues, jumping offstage, grabbing beers from the bar, maybe hitting on an audience member or arguing with a heckler. It’s very scripted, but it’s all very

This is your first outing as a director. Why now and this play? Well, with Delta Boys, we’re all directing and acting, so it doesn’t feel like that much of a jump. To do your best work, you have to trust your collaborators and make a safe space where anything can happen and everybody feels empowered, and I felt really set on creating that space for this show in particular. It would feel against the point of this show to do it any other way, or, to be honest, have a man do it. And I’m about to move, so this is the bookend of my time in the Triangle. It feels right because it mixes all my loves—theater and live music and activism, being real and raw and pushing the boundaries. Folks should be ready to stand, unless they have mobility issues, because it’s a rock show, and bring ear protection, maybe, because it’s loud dang music. And it seems especially timely after Downtown Raleigh Alliance event director Craig Reed just resigned over accusations of misogyny. Yep. There’s one guy who plays all the male roles in the show, and a friend who saw it said she knows all those guys. It feels good to put it out as a tribute to all my female friends who have to roll with that in music. bhowe@indyweek.com

stage

CROWNS

HHHH½ Through Sunday, Sep. 17 Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh www.raleighlittletheatre.org

Chanda Branch as Velma in Crowns PHOTO BY BRENNA LILA JANE BERRY-STEWART

Say Grace

ONE OF THOSE RARE NIGHTS AT THE THEATER WITH GOSPEL MUSICAL AND “HAT QUEEN” ODE CROWNS BY BYRON WOODS You can tell when an audience isn’t just enjoying a show, but is in communion with it. They don’t wait for the end of the scene to applaud; instead, it happens spontaneously, mid-line, as refreshing as cool rain. When actors tell the undisputed truth about our lives, notice is returned in an audible chorus of laughs or an animated call and response. And the music—it starts onstage but it doesn’t end there. Not when the house takes up the clapping and singing with authority, a fully vested partner in the work. No, every night in a theater isn’t like this. And that’s what makes shows like the opening night of Crowns so special. Director Terra Hodge, musical director Carolyn Colquitt, choreographer Brenda Hayes, costume designer Vicki Olson, and a septet of actors breathed life into Regina Taylor’s gospel musical, an adaptation of a best-selling book of photo ethnography on the “hat queens” of the African-American church. Clearly, many in the audience at Raleigh Little Theatre saw their own lives and beliefs reflected in the collected wisdom of a quintet of women from the rural South, as they worked to impart their folkways and faith to the musical’s resistant central character, Yolanda (Chelsey Moore), a teenager forc-

ibly transplanted to South Carolina after her brother was killed by a gang in Brooklyn. That cultural crash-landing is intensified when Yolanda finds herself living with Mother Shaw, a figure of authority—a “prayer warrior”—in the local Pentecostal church. After Lynnette Barber belts out the sober “I’m On the Battlefield for My Lord” and an ecstatic “That’s All Right,” it’s hard to argue when another character observes, “Nobody can usher in the Spirit like Mother Shaw.” At first, the different ways of praise—and what counts as acceptable or unacceptable headwear, deportment, and liturgical dance—form a barricade for the estranged Yolanda, made all but literal in the troubling last moments of the first act. But when resolution comes, traditions and beliefs are carried forward—in a different style perhaps, but fundamentally intact. Solid performances convey the stern but loving small-town faith community with integrity. Joshua Johnson carried the authority of the preacher in song and speech, and India Williams laid down the hat queens’ laws as Mabel, the preacher’s wife. Church can happen in the strangest places. A theatrical revival took place Friday night at Raleigh Little Theatre. bwoods@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 8.30.17 | 25

WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

A Giant Dog PHOTO

BY POONEH GANA

COME OUT AND PLAY

This outdoor sculpture exhibit has taken place annually, on a seventeen-acre horse farm outside Carrboro, since 2002, when four sculptors installed their work there as a healing gesture for those whose lives were lost or irrevocably changed by 9/11. Come Out and Play has since become a tradition that provides an opportunity for Triangle-area sculptors to share and sell their creations in a wide-open space. Free “picnic” receptions run on Saturday afternoons well into September, when the furnace of late summer is abating, making conditions ideal for gamboling among the works (perhaps even with your leashed dog in tow) and enjoying some eats. The offerings from more than eighty participants include everything from elegantly rendered Lowland gorillas wrought from interconnected metal squares to abstract representations and whimsical found-object creations. They all acquire an additional dimension when viewed in splendid natural light, and the artists hold on to every dollar they earn for the work they sell. —David Klein JIMGIN FARM, PITTSBORO Noon–dark, free, www.carrboro.com/comeoutandplay

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3

OCSC CUSTOMER APPRECIATION PARTY

Whether you’re a ten-year regular or a firsttime visitor to Orange County Social Club, one of Carrboro’s core community bars, its annual customer appreciation day is an unmissable afternoon of music. Gown kicks it off with unapologetically aggressive, cello-driven metal, followed by the hazy, psychedelic rock of Sunny Slopes and Flash Car’s cheerful vintage poprock. Cold Cream, which features members of Pipe and Flesh Wounds, headlines. It’s a varied and satisfying slate—and the lineup features plenty of band members who are OCSC regulars themselves. A longtime fixture of downtown Carrboro, the bar is a cozy, colorful hub with a personality that’s only outdone by its consistently tasty drink specials. On top of the free music, there’s free food, too, but be sure to tip your bartenders well as you keep yourself hydrated. —Allison Hussey ORANGE COUNTY SOCIAL CLUB, CARRBORO 4 p.m., free, www.facebook.com/ocsc.carrboro

26 | 8.30.17 | INDYweek.com

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

A GIANT DOG

Few bands are doing as much to carry the banner for rock ‘n’ roll as Austin, Texas’s A Giant Dog. Pile was one of the best records of last year, a bright spot of fearless, high-octane vocals and magnificent guitar riffs. The band followed it with Toy, released just last week on Merge Records. Toy feels slightly more reserved than Pile, but only marginally; A Giant Dog still delivers a healthy dose of boisterous, driving rock energy, with frontwoman Sabrina Ellis steering the ship toward party time. Onstage, the band’s songs explode with even more impressive force. Bat Fangs, featuring Carrboro drummer Laura King and Ex Hex bassist Betsy Wright, opens with a likeminded take-no-prisoners attitude. With Slime. —Allison Hussey THE PINHOOK, DURHAM | 9 p.m., $10, www.thepinhook.com

8.30–9.6

indyweek.com

Still from “Kung Fu” by Hugh Walton, included in Up All Night

PHOTO COURTESY OF FLANDERS GALLERY

Your week. Every Wednesday. News • Music • Arts • Food

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1

GEORGE JENNE: UP ALL NIGHT

If you caught artist and filmmaker George Jenne’s unforgettable “Spooky Understands” in Southern Accent at the Nasher, then you already know what funny, ominous effects the UNC-Chapel Hill grad can achieve with video he staged and shot. In Up All Night, we’ll find out what he can do with videos by others. Jenne explores the dialogue between art videos and music videos by licensing a number of both and running them on monitors throughout the gallery. His artist statement situates the exhibit against the polyglot insanity that used to be found on public-access TV and the USA network’s Night Flight, a media world with porous avant-garde and commercial boundaries. The art-video side of the show includes big names like Vito Acconci and distinguished locals like Harrison Haynes, while the music-video side finds the seam where promotion meets vision, in works by the likes of Michel Gondry (Cibo Matto’s “Sugar Water”) and Gerald V. Casale (Devo’s “Whip It”). For the month of September in Lump, it’s almost like MTV never happened. —Brian Howe LUMP, RALEIGH | 6–9 p.m., free, www.lumpprojects.org

WHAT ELSE SHOULD I DO?

THE ARTIST AS RESEARCHER AT POWER PLANT GALLERY (P. 33), CROWNS AT RALEIGH LITTLE THEATRE (P. 25), ELLIS DYSON & THE SHAMBLES AT CAT’S CRADLE (P. 29), ROKY ERICKSON AT CAT’S CRADLE (P. 31), EYES UP HERE COMEDY SHOWCASE AT NEPTUNES (P. 34), DAVID LIEBE HART AT KINGS (P. 16), CHUCK JOHNSON AT NIGHTLIGHT (P. 18), DONALD MARTINY & CELIA JOHNSON AT ARTSPACE (P. 22), HOLLY GODDARD JONES AT FLYLEAF BOOKS (P. 36), THE ROOM AT KINGS (P. 36), YES TO NOTHING AT SLIM’S (P. 24)

INDYweek.com | 8.30.17 | 27

FR 9/1

ROKY ERICKSON 9/1 ROKY ERICKSON W/ DEATH VALLEY GIRLS ($25/$28) 9/2 ELLIS DYSON & THE SHAMBLES ALBUM RELEASE PARTY W/ KATHARINE WHALEN'S SWEDISH WOOD PATROL, YEAUX KATZ, PLUS BULLTOWN STRUTTERS, AND IMAGINE CIRCUS ($10) ON 9/8 LAST PODCAST SOLD THE LEFT OUT 9/10 TANK AND THE SO BANGAS LD W/ SWEET CRUDE OUT 9/14 SWERVEDRIVER ($20) 9/16 ACLU BENEFIT

SA 9/2 @CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM

MCCAFFERTY AND

REMO DRIVE

9/23 LIARS ($17/$19) 9/24 CARRBORO MUSIC FESTIVAL 9/26 BONE THUGS N HARMONY ($27/$30) 9/27 PSYCHEDELIC FURS W/ BASH & POP ($28/$30)

11/18 CULTS ($19/$21) 11/30 CUT COPY 12/17 REVEREND HORTON HEAT W/ THE BLASTERS, JUNIOR BROWN, BIG SANDY ($25/$28)

1/27/18: TENNIS 5/25 PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT ($28/$31)

Your week. Every Wednesday.

10/7 LANY THE LANY TOUR PART 2 W/ DAGNY ($20/$23) 10/9 BERMUDA TRIANGLE ($20)

9/1 THE OLD CEREMONY W/ BEAUTY WORLD ($10/$12)

9/9 RIPE ($10/$12) 9/13 FRANKIE ROSE W/ SUBURBAN LIVING, WILLIAM HINSON ($10/$12) 9/14 JESS KLEIN AND DAVID WIMBISH ($10/$12) 9/15 VIOLET BELL LP RELEASE SHOW W/ ROBINSON EARLE & CRAICDOWN 9/16 CRANK IT LOUD PRESENTS: JASON RICHARDSON W/ THE REIGN OF KINDO, STOLAS ($13/$15)

10/10 MURA MASA W/ JOEY PURP ($17/$20)

9/17 CAAMP W/ DOC ROBINSON ($10/$12)

10/12 TURNOVER W/ ELVIS DEPRESSEDLY, EMMA RUTH RUNDLE ($17/$20)

9/18 BANDITS ON THE RUN, MAGNOLIA PROJECT, HONEY MAGPIE ($10)

10/13 CHELSEA WOLFE** W/ YOUTH CODE ($20/$23)

9/19 ARTISANALS, NORTH ELEMENTARY, THE RATTLE & SHAKES ($8)

10/14 RIVER WHYLESS W/ THE GRAND SHELL GAME ($14/$16) 10/16 KALI UCHIS W/ PHONY PPL ($15/$18)

10/24 TED LEO AND THE PHARMACISTS ($16/$18) 10/25 JOSH RITTER & THE ROYAL CITY BAND W/GOOD OLD WAR ($27.50; INCLUDES ALBUM DOWNLOAD) 10/26 SAN FERMIN W/ GRACIE AND RACHEL ($15)

AND 9/21 COLTER WALLSO LD TYLER CHILDERS OUT 9/22 STOP LIGHT OBSERVATIONS ($10/$12) 9/23 CMF KICKOFF EVENT URBAN SOIL W/ CHRISTIANE (FREE) 9/24 CARRBORO MUSIC FESTIVAL HIP HOP/ VARIETY SHOWCASE (FREE) 9/25 THE CRIBS W/ PAWS ($18/$20) 9/27 TOGETHER PANGEA W/ DADDY ISSUES, LALA LALA ($12/$14) 9/28 DRIFTWOOD ($12/$14)

10/27 AMINE W/ TOWKIO ($22/$25)

9/29 LAIRS, ARSON DAILY, NOISE LIGHTS ($7/$8)

10/28 COSMIC CHARLIE

9/30 SWEET SPIRIT W/ TINNAROSE

10/29 GRYFFIN W/ AUTOGRAF (DJ SET), AYOKAY ($17/$20)

10/1 ELECTRIC SIX W/ GROVES ($13/$15)

10/31 JR JR W/ CHAD VALLEY ($16/$18) 11/1 CRANK IT LOUD PRESENTS: CITIZEN W/SORORITY NOISE, GREAT GRANDPA 11/3 JD MCPHERSON W/ NICOLE ATKINS ($16/$18) 11/4 KNUCKLE PUCK W/ MOVEMENTS WITH CONFIDENCE, HOMESAFE 11/6 WAX TAILOR: SOLO SET & GUESTS W/ DIRTY ART CLUB ($20/$23) 11/7THE STRUMBELLAS W/ NOAH KAHAN ($22/$25)

28 | 8.30.17 | INDYweek.com

8/31 SAUL ZONANA W/ TROY BATEY

9/8 THE OBLATIONS CD RELEASE SHOW W/ DARK WATER RISING

10/20-21 YEP ROC 20 YEAR CELEBRATION ($14/$16)

INDYWEEK.COM

CAT'S CRADLE BACK ROOM 8/30 MC CHRIS W/ SKYBLEW & DJ SUBLIMECLOUD ($14/$16)

9/30 TIMEFLIES: TOO MUCH TO DREAM TOUR W/ DAWIN, LOOTE ($25/$28)

10/5 LIQUID STRANGER AND MANIC FOCUS ($17/$20)

11/11 SAINT MOTEL ($22/$25) 11/12 LUNA W/ ELEANOR FRIEDBERGER ($20/$23) 11/14 COUSIN STIZZ W/SWOOSH, BIG LEANO ($15/$18)

QUICKSAND

TWO

9/2 MCCAFFERTY AND REMO DRIVE W/ ALMOST PEOPLE ($10/$12) 9/7 MILLIE MCGUIRE W/ MADDIE WEINER ($6/$8)

10/4 CAMERON ESPOSITO AND RHEA BUTCHER: BACK TO BACK $32.50 (SEATED SHOW)

TH 9/21

1/22 AND 1/23/18 SHOWS! SAY ANYTHING ($22/$27; $40 FOR 2-NIGHT PASS)

9/29 PINBACK AUTUMN OF THE SERAPHS 10TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR W/ MESSTHETICS ($20)

10/2 RAC ($22/$25)

THE OLD CEREMONY

11/16 YELAWOLF ($25/$28)

9/21 QUICKSAND W/NO JOY ($20/$24) 9/22 UGLY GOD ($25/$28)

FR 9/1 @CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM

10/4 TROUT STEAK REVIVAL W/ DEAD HORSES ($12/ $15) 10/5 GREAT PEACOCK W/ THE HIGH DIVERS ($10) 10/7 MAX FROST W/ NAWAS ($12)

TU 9/26

BONE THUGS N HARMONY 10/16 THE NATIONAL PARKS W/ RIVVRS 10/22 PICKWICK W/ THE ELWINS ($12/$15) 10/23 TREVOR SENSOR ($10/$12) 10/24 JESSICA LEA MAYFIELD W/ BLANK RANGE ($15) 10/25 THE ALTERNATE ROUTES W/ NICK FRADIANI 10/27 THE MOVIELIFE W/IRON CHIC 11/2 LARRY KEEL EXPERIENCE W/ JON STICKLEY TRIO ($!6/$20) 11/3 ALL THEM WITCHES W/ KING BUFFALO 11/4 THE HOTELIER W/ OSO OSO, ALEX NAPPING ($13/$15) 11/5 TERA MELOS W/ SPEEDY ORTIZ 11/7 THE WORLD IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE AND I AM NO LONGER AFRAID TO DIE W/ ROZWELL KID, ADJY ($15) 11/11 ARKELLS W/ IRONTOM ($15) 11/12 OVERCOATS ($10/$12) 11/13 DAVID BAZAN W/ MICHAEL NAU ($15) 11/15 MO LOWDA & THE HUMBLE 11/30 THE WEATHER STATION W/ JAMES ELKINGTON 12/1 ALLAN RAYMAN ($18/$20) 12/5 DAVID RAMIREZ: WE’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE ($15/$17) CAROLINA THEATRE (DUR) 12/6 THE MOUNTAIN GOATS MOTORCO (DUR) 9/12 BLACK JOE LEWIS & THE HONEYBEARS W/ LIGHTNIN MALCOLM ($15/$17) 11/4 BORIS W/MUTOID MAN, ENDON ($18/$20) 11/30 THE DISTRICTS ($15/$17) DPAC (DUR) 11/13-14 BON IVER (11/13 SOLD OUT; 11/14 ON SALE 9/1) 11/25 ST. VINCENT THE RITZ (RAL) 10/26 PORTUGAL.THE MAN W/LIDO RED HAT AMPH (RAL) 10/2 THE HEAD AND THE HEART W/ THE SHELTERS HAW RIVER BALLROOM 10/13 JULIEN BAKER W/ HALF WAIF ($16/$18)

10/10 BANDITOS W/CALEB CAUDLE

10/20 EMILY SALIERS

10/11 NOW, NOW W/DEM YUUT ($13/$15)

11/30 AND 12/1 SHOWS! HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER (BOTH ON SALE 9/1)

10/12 HOLLY BOWLING ($15/$17) 10/13 WITT LOWRY W/ BO RANSOM 10/14 MATT POND PA W/ WILD PINK ($15/$17)

TWO

SHAKORI HILLS COMM. CTR. 9/30 SYLVAN ESSO W/ TUNE-YARDS, WYE OAK, HELADO NEGRO, THE DEAD TONGUES & MORE

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

**Asterisks denote advance tickets @ schoolkids records in raleigh & chapel hill order tix online at ticketfly.com ★ we serve carolina brewery beer on tap! ★ we are a non-smoking club

WED, AUG 30 2ND WIND: Yeaux Katz; 7-9 p.m., free. • C GRACE: Bryan McCune Quartet; 9 p.m.-midnite. • CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): MC Chris; 8:30 p.m., $14–$16. • THE CAVE: August Residency: Spencer Lee; 9 p.m., $5. • EMPRESS ROOM: Michael Pelz-Sherman; 7:30-10 p.m. • IRREGARDLESS: The Long Leaf Pine Nuts; 6:30 p.m. • KINGS: Hanz, Gudiya, Chucha, Floor Model; 9 p.m., $10. • LOCAL 506: The Winter Sounds, Pinky Doodle Poodle, Henbrain; 9 p.m., $7. • NEPTUNES PARLOUR: Naan Violence, Gudiya; 10 p.m., $5. • NIGHTLIGHT: 919 Noise August Showcase; 8:30 p.m. • THE PINHOOK: Sextile; Sister, Brother; 9 p.m., $10. • POUR HOUSE: Cranford Hollow, C2 & The Brothers Reed; 9 p.m. • RALEIGH CITY MARKET: Music on Market; 5-6:30 p.m. • RUBY DELUXE: BPM Deluxe: 120 Curated by Calapse; 10 p.m. • THE OAK: Live Music Wednesdays; 6:30 p.m. • WAVERLY PLACE: End-of-Summer Concert: The Embers; 6-9 p.m., free.

THU, AUG 31

8.30 – 9.6

trap rap with all the deep 808s and Auto-Tuned vocals you could want if you’re a fan of that genre, but nothing innovative. With a door VIP ticket price of $35, Nueve’s art is probably best consumed on SoundCloud. With Vestgang and Durtybuntal. —CM [LINCOLN THEATRE, $10–$35/8 P.M.]

Roman Polanski’s Baby PUNK Hailing from POWER Nashville, Roman Polanski’s Baby is a marvelous punk outfit. The band’s loud and brash vocalist evokes riot grrrl tropes, sounding alternately bored, angry, and desperate, then back to bored while her bandmates bash away on drums and feverishly shredded guitars. The group’s energetic, sweaty performances are not to be missed. Konvoi opens. —KH [KINGS, $5–$7/10 P.M.]

Dr. Copter

The Seldom Scene

MISRaleigh’s Dr. MATCH Copter, with its loose, solo-taking, sometimes-drifting, sometimesdriving sound, could aptly fall under the “jam band” umbrella. That makes the thrash metal of MechaBull and the punk rock of The Chemical Lizards odd choices for openers. Come prepared to start the night banging your head and end with it in the clouds. Plus Creatio. —CB [DEEP SOUTH, $5/8:30 P.M.]

SCENE & Formed in HEARD Maryland in 1971, The Seldom Scene helped usher in a new wave of bluegrass music for a younger generation. It was one of the first groups to fold contemporary influences like rock and pop into the traditional style developed by Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, Lester Flatt, and their cohorts. Nearly fifty years and a few lineup changes later, the band is still going strong. Georgia’s Cicada Rhythm opens. —AH [AMERICAN TOBACCO CAMPUS, FREE/6 P.M.]

The Introduction WEAK The headlining act START for this event, Cloudy Nueve, is a talented emcee, but his sound needs some fleshing out to become something special. Right now, it’s cut-and-paste Internet

Saul Zonana FIERY Having toured LICKS with big names like Adrian Belew and Ace

WWW.INDYWEEK.COM

CONTRIBUTORS: Grant Britt (GB), Zoe Camp (ZC), Annalise Domenighini (AD), Kat Harding (KH), Allison Hussey (AH), David Klein (DK), Charles Morse (CM), Dan Ruccia (DR), David Ford Smith (DS), Patrick Wall (PW)

Frehley, Saul Zonana has established his bona fides as a guitarist’s guitarist, but the composer, singer, producer, and performer sees himself primarily as songwriter. And while the Queens native is a gearhead who’s keen on stretching the sonic vocabulary of his instrument, his solo work is sturdy but unspectacular rock that spotlights his six-string flights of fancy without doing much envelope pushing. —DK [CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM, $10/8 P.M.]

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

music

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR

ALSO ON THURSDAY 2ND WIND: 2 fer; 7:30-9 p.m. • THE CAVE: Krosis, Consonance, Discoveries; 9 p.m., $5. • EMPRESS ROOM: Fred Westbrook; 7:30-10 p.m. • IRREGARDLESS: Bo Lankenau & Steve Coon; 6-9 p.m. • LOCAL 506: The Ongoing Concept, Eidola, Save Us from the Archon; 7:30 p.m., $12. • THE PINHOOK: Hardworker, Wood Robinson’s New Formal; 9 p.m., $12. • POUR HOUSE: Local Band Local Beer: Blueberry, Arson Daily, Tomato Dodgers, Barefoot Monty; 9 p.m., $5.

FRI, SEP 1 Cowboy Mouth PEPPED Some bands UP bristle at being saddled with a signature song, but Cowboy Mouth, which made its mark in 1997 with a live version of “Jenny Says” and ritualistically ends each of its shows with a rendition, is evidently at peace with it. Sung by Fred LeBlanc with twitchy, too-many-Red Bulls bravado, this ode to a capricious girlfriend had been kicking around since 1989, so the number of performances is quite possibly incalculable. With Blue Frequency —DK [MOTORCO, $20–$30/9 P.M.]

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

ELLIS DYSON & THE SHAMBLES If ever a musical outfit was itching for an excuse to have an all-out blowout, Ellis Dyson & the Shambles certainly fits the bill. The Chapel Hill sextet has plenty of reason to celebrate tonight. This homecoming fete concludes the end of a two-week East Coast tour while also serving as the hometown release show for Henhouse—the Shambles’ second full-length record, released last month—and marking five years since the band’s beginning as a banjo and saxophone duo. Breathing new life into a bygone era of party music, the dapper dudes splice horn-laden swing, ragtime, Dixieland, jump blues, and oldtime influences into original, whiskey-fueled concoctions that are at once raucous, theatrical, and jocular. Henhouse’s wild opener, “Often Wrong, But Always Right,” is an apt archetype of the group’s unique style. Woozy trumpet and clarinet, rapid guitar runs, and hefty doses of jazz violin conjure late-night vaudeville vibes over a frenzied rhythm as Dyson tries to recall the events of an evening that left him broken down and busted. Making use of an obvious metaphor for the lovelorn narrator’s romantic pursuits, lead single “Circlin’ the Henhouse” similarly careens along to thumps of upright bass before a dramatic vocal breakdown that borders on doo-wop, while the final chorus of the considerably more relaxed “Broken Record” playfully imitates the locked groove of a skipping record.

As the breezy “Broken Record” attests, Henhouse isn’t entirely conducted at breakneck speed. The Shambles shift gears to showcase their versatility throughout the album. As “Looking Low and Getting High” ambles along, the slinky, jazzy groove aptly underscores Dyson’s lonesome lyrics. Closing ballad “Shaky Knees” is a sparse and plaintive ode in which the narrator pines for the dogwoods of Carolina after following his lover to a new home. Katharine Whalen’s Swedish Wood Patrol— the newest venture of the cofounding vocalist and multi-instrumentalist for the Squirrel Nut Zippers—enchants with even more hornstudded hybrids of jazz and folk, mixing sultry numbers suggestive of a smoky speakeasy with breezy, Tropicalia-tinged tunes that conjure a mid-century tiki bar. Also opening is Carrboro jazz quartet Yeaux Katz, a supergroup of sorts featuring Red Clay Ramblers multiinstrumentalist Chris Frank, fellow Rambler and rock drummer Rob Ladd, Ben Folds Five bassist Robert Sledge, and busy trombone sideman Danny Grewen. Prior to doors, Bulltown Strutters will provide a second-line soundtrack for a crew of stilt-walking and firebreathing entertainers from Imagine Circus. —Spencer Griffith CAT’S CRADLE, CARRBORO 9 p.m., $10, www.catscradle.com

INDYweek.com | 8.30.17 | 29

DOPE: A Hip-Hop Night MULTI The art of hosting MEDIA shows is a craft often overlooked, but stand-up comic and cohost to the popular Internet series Intelligently Ratchet, Bishop Omega, has secured his spot in the Triangle as the area’s official hip-hop jester. Laughs are guaranteed as he playfully roasts anyone who piques his interest. The lineup for this event is stacked with hip-hop vets like Samson and Kenny Macguyver, so come for the music and stay for the jokes. —CM [DEEP SOUTH, $5/10 P.M.]

George Freeman Jr. SMOOTH There’s something KEYS gloriously retro about George Freeman Jr.’s approach to jazz. His 2014 album, Make It Happen, is full of layer upon layer of lush synthesizers, R&B beats, string and horn pads, and an abiding love of eighties Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. His keyboard playing is smooth and melodic, and

FR 9/1

nothing ever quite challenges your ear. Instead, he prefers to envelop you in a warm wash of sound, letting the groove do its thing for you. —DR [BEYÙ CAFFÈ, $15/7 & 9 P.M.]

Green Day TIME OF Long before 2004’s YR LIFE American Idiot, Green Day had already become an oxymoron in the eyes of their original fans. After all, a punk rock band that goes triple platinum on a major label ceases to be a punk rock band, right? But that’s ancient history; just make the best of this test and don’t ask why. Catfish and the Bottlemen open. —DK [COASTAL CREDIT UNION MUSIC PARK AT WALNUT CREEK, $30–$120/7 P.M.]

The Old Ceremony VINTAGE The Old CeremoPOP ny, from Chapel Hill, deals in electric-guitarbased pop music with a sixties touch and a bit of organ. Frontman Django

BOOM UNIT BRASS BAND

WE 9/6

W/ THE SPECTACLES

9PM, $6, 21+

SA 9/2

FR 9/8

JAZZ SATURDAY

W/ JAMES GILMORE TRIO

SA 9/9

2PM, FREE, ALL AGES

SU 9/3

FR 9/8

HANNAH HUDSON, GEORGE PETTIS, MOSES NESH, JACOB MORRIS 7:30, $6, 21+

TH 9/14

WELL RESPECTED MEN: KINKS TRIBUTE

TH 9/28

7PM, $7, 21+

FR 9/29

Haskins’s smooth croon lends an R & B touch to some songs; others have a speakeasy jazzy feel. Some are circus-y and mysterious; all are interesting in their execution. Beauty World opens with sparkling, sweet pop. —KH [CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM, $10–$12/8:30 P.M.]

The Smith Street Band ARE YOU Melbourne, SCARED? Australia’s The Smith Street Band’s April LP, More Scared of You Than You Are of Me, is yet another in a long line of releases over the past few years helping to restore emo back to more than just a three-letter punch line. With a sense of urgency, Wil Wagner sings genuinely sincere lyrics regarding the everyday struggles of just being a human, his compelling voice retaining much of his Aussie accent. Astronautalis opens. —CB [LOCAL 506, $13–$15/7:30 P.M.]

Tropidelic STAYTropidelic is CATION certainly an interesting name for this Cleveland group, whose post-Sublime sound recalls neither tropical nor psychedelic music. Chord progressions you’ve heard a thousand times meet half-rapped, half-sung lyrics and the occasional requisite horns, adding up to a flaccid, reggae-rock mush. With Bumpin Uglies and Sons of Paradise. —CB [POUR HOUSE, $7–$10/9 P.M.]

WE 8/30 TH 8/31 FR 9/1 SA 9/2 SU 9/3 TU 9/5

BLUE WED: TAD WALTERS & JOHN DEE HOLEMAN TOMMY HARTLEY & JASON BARKER DUKE STREET DOGS TBA LABOR DAY BLOWOUT: THE NIGHTHAWKS / REV. BILLY C. WIRTZ TBS 1ST SUNDAY OPEN BLUES JAM: GATOR & THE GROOVETONES TUESDAY BLUES JAM

8PM 7PM 6-8PM 9PM $8 8PM $25 SEATED/ $20 STANDING

6-9PM 7:30PM

NO COVER UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED LIVE MUSIC • OPEN TUESDAY—SUNDAY THEBLUENOTEGRILL.COM 709 WASHINGTON STREET • DURHAM

30 | 8.30.17 | INDYweek.com

10/510/6 10/8 TH 10/12 SA 10/14

SAT, SEP 2 Africa Unplugged

ALSO ON FRIDAY 618 BISTRO: Randy Reed; 7-9:30 p.m. • BLUE NOTE GRILL: Duke Street Dogs; 6-8 p.m., free. • CAT’S CRADLE: Roky Erickson, Death Valley Girls; 8:30 p.m., $25–$28. See box, page 31.• THE CAVE: 404NF, DJ Bitchcraft; 9 p.m., $5. • FORTNIGHT BREWING COMPANY: You Knew Me When; 8 p.m., free. • IMURJ: Smonder Island; 9:30-midnite. • IRREGARDLESS: Foscoe Philharmonic; 6:30 p.m. • LINCOLN THEATRE: Pulse: Electronic Dance Party; 9 p.m., $12– $15. • MYSTERY BREWING PUBLIC HOUSE: Pretend

DISAPO- All of the sounds RADICAL of the African diaspora can be heard in the Greensboro ensemble Africa Unplugged, whose music has heavy influences of not only traditional sub-Saharan music in its drum section, but blues in its songwriting, and folky acoustic guitar. With a sound that’s heavily layered and busy at times, the band is best experienced live. Following the West African tradition of community participation, the group is adept at getting audiences dancing. —CM [BEYÙ CAFFÈ, $15/7 P.M.]

McCafferty, Remo Drive POPPop-punk comes to PUNK Cat’s Cradle with this lineup. Remo Drive is a throwback to nasally, whiny white-guy rock over constantly strummed guitars and rolling drums. McCafferty also feels like going back to middle school, with vocals that recall blink-182. Almost People opens. —KH [CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM, $10–$12/7:30 P.M.]

Mobley INDIE Mobley’s April 2016 R&B release, Some Other Country, combines soaring Coldplay pianos and electro beats, an effective avant-garde approach to creating R & B-tinged indie that sound something like Muse, if Muse started biting Radiohead even harder. Lucky for Mobley, it works. As a live act Mobley is a literal one-man band, playing every instrument and programming each sound when on stage. If you’re still doubtful, listen to last August’s Audiotree Live. Professor Toon opens. —AD [LOCAL 506, $10–$12/9 P.M.]

BIG BAND NIGHT

WITH THE TRIANGLE JAZZ ORCHESTRA

THE MONTI TRANSACTORS IMPROV: FOR FAMILIES! BILL FRISELL: HARMONY

WE 8/30

FT. PETRA HADEN, HANK ROBERTS & LUKE BERGMAN

TH 8/31

MYKKI BLANCO W/ ZENSOFLY

FR 9/1

JAKE XERXES FUSSELL & NATHAN BOWLES

SA 9/2

THE WINTER SOUNDS / PINKY DOODLE POODLE w/ Henbrain THE ONGOING CONCEPT / EIDOLA w/ Save Us From The Archon

THE SMITH STREET BAND w/ Astronautalis

CO-PRESENTED WITH THE NATIONAL HUMANITIES CENTER

CARDIGAN

W/ HOUSE AND LAND AND TRIO HURACAN HIDALGUENSE

CO-PRESENTED WITH THE NATIONAL HUMANITIES CENTER SA 9/30

I’m a Genius; 8-11:30 p.m. • THE PINHOOK: Dreaming of the 90s Dance Party; 10 p.m., $5. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ DNLTMS; 10 p.m. • SHARP NINE GALLERY: Jo Lawry, Kate McGarry, Keith Ganz; 8 p.m., $25. • THE STATION: Boom Unit Brass Band, The Spectacles; 9:30 p.m., $6.

THE HOT AT NIGHTS & MATTHEW STEVENS MANHATTAN SHORT FILM FESTIVAL THE JAMES HUNTER SIX BUSTER KEATON’S THE GENERAL

LIVE FILM RE-SCORING BY TIM CARLESS Find out More at

ArtsCenterLive.org

300-G East Main St., Carrboro, NC Find us on Social Media: @ArtsCenterLive

AND

SA 9/2 LOCAL 506 PRESENT:

MOBLEY

W/ PROFESSOR TOON

SU 9/3

THE MINKS / LIZ COOPER AND THE STAMPEDE WE 9/6

SPACEFACE

w/ Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands COMING SOON: BIRDTALKER, SLAVES, VARSITY, WOVEHAND, JAKE CLEMONS, PAUL CAUTHE, VERITE, JAY SOM, WILSEN

www.LOCAL506.com

Present this coupon for

Member Admission Price (Not Valid for Special Events, expires 01-18)

919-6-TEASER for directions and information

www.teasersmensclub.com 156 Ramseur St. Durham, NC

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

TeasersMensClub

@TeasersDurham

THURSDAY, AUGUST 31

ROKY ERICKSON Cult garage rock icon Roger Kynard Erickson—he goes by Roky and turned seventy last month— was, for a spell, one of rock ’n’ roll’s most tragic heroes. In the mid-sixties, he formed The 13th Floor Elevators, the pioneering psychedelic rock band that influenced acid rock superstars such as Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead and, later, a broad swath of seminal eighties rock acts, including R.E.M. and The Jesus and Mary Chain. The Elevators intuitively synthesized blues, rock, country, soul, and gospel into primal, primordial garage-psych; “You’re Gonna Miss Me” was only a minor hit in 1966, but the searing breakup song remains probably Erickson’s best-known work. Sadly, like some of his psychedelic contemporaries (see: Peter Green and Syd Barrett), Erickson was perhaps more famous for losing his mind. He had an affinity for drugs, particularly LSD. He wound up in a maximumsecurity state hospital in a tiny town in East Texas by the end of the sixties, where he was doped up with Thorazine and given electroshock treatment. If the acid and heroin hadn’t fried his brain, the time in the psych ward did. He spent the next few decades haunted by ghouls and ghosts. He became convinced that he was an alien, and

The Nighthawks HOUSE “When we started ROCKERS out in the early seventies, it was seemingly impossible for a couple of white boys playing bluesoriented rock and roll to get any recognition. We certainly managed to achieve a great deal against all odds,” says Mark Wenner, the frontman and harmonica player for The Nighthawks. Gregg Allman and Warren Haynes sat in for a spell, but the Hawks and their fiery interpretations of Elvis Presley, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, and Otis Redding never needed guest stars. —GB [BLUE NOTE GRILL, $20–$25/8 P.M.]

Ed Sheeran SHEER With his mop of DRIVEL flame-red hair, dopey grin, and a crop of tattoos that look like the work of an ambitious kindergartener armed with a magic marker, twenty-six-year-old Ed Sheeran looks a good decade younger than he actually is. His music doesn’t do much to prove he’s not an adolescent, either. Look

no further than “Galway Girl” and “Shape of You,” from March’s ÷ (“divide”). The former is a mess of half-baked Irish stereotypes and the latter is an weak, semitropical appreciation of female bodies; both will have you cringing harder than you ever thought possible. —AH [PNC ARENA, $35.50–$85.50/7:30 P.M.]

Small House YOUNG There is no shortage FUNK of funk fusion bands in the Triangle, and after a while they all start to sound the same. Small House is no exception. The ensemble from Elon University recorded its 2016 album, Purple Funk, in two days, and the end-product sounds like a jam session separated into ten tracks. That’s not to say the instrumentalists aren’t talented—they just need some time away from school to develop a unique sound. N’Kognito and Mark G. Meadows open. —CM [DEEP SOUTH, $10/9 P.M.] ALSO ON SATURDAY CAT’S CRADLE: Ellis Dyson & The Shambles, Katherine Whalen’s Swedish Wood Patrol, Yeaux Katz; 9

even had a notarized document stipulating that he was. He made music during those lost years, marked by an overzealous enthusiasm for horror B-movies. Of these, The Evil One is the jewel in Roky’s starry crown. With the help of his brother, who took legal guardianship of Erickson in 2001, and his son, who brought him back to performing in the mid-aughts, Erickson turned his life around. Fittingly, the music he’s made in his career’s second act has been some of his best. Erickson seems to reference— and maybe even search for some sort of salve in—his hard-knock life in his songs nowadays. On “Ain’t Blues Too Sad,” a gospel-tinged blues ballad from True Love Cast Out All Evil, cut in 2011 with Okkervil River, he bleats, “The electricity hammered me through my head/’Til nothing at all is backward instead.” Erickson can’t help but use his painted history as a palette, and with them he’s crafted remarkable self-portraits, revealing himself as a man whose trials have made him hold life all the more dearly. He may have lost his soul to rock ’n’ roll, but Erickson, unlike so many similarly troubled souls, got it back. —Patrick Wall PHOTO COURTESY OF ANTI- RECORDS

p.m., $10. See box, page 29.• IMURJ: Retro Candy, Cody Daniel; 7-11:30 p.m. • IRREGARDLESS: Noah Powell Quartet; 9 p.m. • LINCOLN THEATRE: Nevermind with Joe Hero; 9 p.m., $10. • THE PINHOOK: A Giant Dog, Bat Fangs; 9 p.m., $10. See page 26. • POUR HOUSE: Jason Adamo Band, The New Schematics; 9 p.m. • REBUS WORKS: Charly Lowry, Daniel Chavis; 7:30-11 p.m. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ Luxe Posh; 10 p.m. • THE STATION: Jazz Saturdays; 2 p.m., free.

SUN, SEP 3 Alex Aff TIME TO Being an indepenSHINE dent artist in a growing scene sometimes means that you must patiently wait your turn for a dance in the spotlight—and no one is more deserving of that dance than Alex Aff. The rapper and producer has been active for years with an everyman style similar to early Kanye West. He takes the stage at Pinhook with Danny Blaze, another Bull City heavy hitter, whose track “California Dreaming” has gained national attention.

CAT’S CRADLE, CARRBORO 8:30 P.M., $25–$28, CATSCRADLE.COM

They’re joined by Jooselord Magnus, $wank, and Ernest Third. —CM [THE PINHOOK, $10/8 P.M.]

robots crooning. Electric Soul Pandemic opens. —KH [POUR HOUSE, $6-8/9 P.M.]

The Minks

DEEP SOUTH: Live & Loud Weekly; 9 p.m., $3. • DUKE’S EAST CAMPUS QUAD: Duke Symphony Orchestra: Pops Concert; 6 p.m., free. • DURHAM CENTRAL PARK: Wood Robinson’s New Formal; 12:30 p.m. • IRREGARDLESS: Great Father Whale; 6 p.m. • KINGS: David Liebe Hart, Magician’s Hand Practice; 7:30 p.m., $10–$12. See page 16. Shamrock BBoy and Bgirl Battle; 10 p.m., $10. • MOTORCO: Brazilian Day Party with Caique Vidal, Batala Durham, NC Brazilian Arts Project; 9 p.m., $10–$12. • RUBY DELUXE: Immaterial Possession, Evil English, Fruit Snack; 8 p.m. DJ Glen Koko; 11 p.m. • THE STATION: Hannah Hudson, George Pettis, Moses Nesh, Jacob Morris; 8 p.m., $6. • WEST END WINE BARDURHAM: Eric Meyer, Noah Sager & Friends; 4-6 p.m., free.

NASH Operating as The PSYCH Minks, Nikki Barber and a roving band of musicians create a bluesy, psychedelic take on rock ’n’ roll based on sixties-era elements, including pop art, rebellion, and Dylan-esque folk music. American audiences are clamoring for more blues-inspired, rocksaturated folk, and this band knows it. They mean business and they demand that you do, too. Liz Cooper and The Stampede open.—AD [LOCAL 506, $8–$10/9 P.M.]

Tweed JAMS & Tweed is a DANCE “funktronica” jam band, meaning it combines funky beats with looping synths and endless guitar riffs. The group’s few vocals are heavily filtered through distortion and sound like

ALSO ON SUNDAY

MON, SEP 4 Fairbanks & the Lonesome Light OK Led by Erik Flores FOLK and Amelia Rose, this ensemble has the guy-gal

harmonies, strummed guitars, sprinkling of mandolin, and drums, bass, and pedal steel you expect from a folk band, along with sad and thoughtful lyrics. It’s not breaking any new ground, but the crew has the talent to deliver a solid show. Evel Arc opens. —KH [THE CAVE, $5/9 P.M.]

Witchtrap THRASH Witchtrap is the METAL brainchild of Hugo “Witchhammer” Uribe and Carlos “Ripper” Uribe, two Colombian metalheads with a deep appreciation for the genre’s sonic and thematic touchstones: arcane lyrics (witchcraft and blood feuds run rampant), brutish solos, and freewheeling tempos. For over a quarter-century, the band—now a trio—has been proffering up thunderous fare in the Big Four spirit, by way of black metal’s jagged, icy instrumentation. Plus Murdersome. —ZC [SLIM’S, $5/9 P.M.] ALSO ON MONDAY BEYÙ CAFFÈ: Verses and Versus DJ Series; 6-9 p.m. • EMPRESS ROOM: Gary Brunotte plays and INDYweek.com | 8.30.17 | 31

sings from The Great American Songbook; 8-10 p.m. • IMBIBE: Grewen and Griffin; 7-10 p.m., free. • MOTORCO: Flash Chorus; 7 p.m., $7–$10. • NEPTUNES PARLOUR: The Atomic Rhythm All Stars September Residency; 8:30 p.m., $5. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ Lord Redbyrd; 10 p.m.

TUE, SEP 5 Downtown Boys TO THE More than any STREETS punk collective

courageous: the group’s most recent record, last year’s Affinity, defied the genre’s guitar-obsessed paradigms by making the synthesizer the star, with a resultant sound landing somewhere between Toto and Rush. Having recently opened for Dream Theater (otherwise known as the Beatles for the prog-metal set), the band continues its winning streak with this stop on its tenth-anniversary tour. Sithu Aye and Stammerings open. —ZC [MOTORCO, $20–$25/ 7:30 P.M.]

Roots of Creation JAH WILL White men singing GET BY reggae look weird, but then again, fans of bands like Roots of Creation aren’t uncomfortable with weird. The group’s new crowdfunded project, Grateful Dub, sticks to its reggae/dub roots, but uses that sound to translate its own versions of Grateful Dead songs in true jam band fashion. Plus Crane and Oogee Wawa. —CM [POUR HOUSE, $10–$12/8 P.M.]

Spaceface LIPS TRIP Of the many musical traditions one associates with Memphis, psychedelia does not come swiftly to mind. Yet the city of Elvis and Stax Records had a rich underground psych scene in the sixties and early seventies, a tradition that Spaceface proudly carries forward. With frontman Jake Ingalls of the Flaming Lips and others from the Lips universe, Spaceface’s music evokes acid’s euphoric sense of wonder while avoiding the darkness. Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands open. —DK [LOCAL 506, $8–$10/9 P.M.]

s u p m Ca ide Gu indy week’s

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Downtown Boys PHOTO

BY MIGUEL ROSARIO

currently operating, Downtown Boys capture and capsulize the exhausting whiplash of the current political climate. “A Wall,” the first track from their excellent new LP, Cost of Living, oscillates between righteous ire (“You can’t ball the fuck on us,” Victoria Ruiz hollers), indignant frustration (“Fuck it fuck it fuck it fuck it!” guitarist Joey La Neve DeFrancesco shouts), and calls for radical empathy (When you see him there / I hope you you see yourself”) over slicing, slashing proto-punk (more Xray Spex than The Clash). Yes, it’s a philippic against the Donald’s dumbass border wall idea, but it demands examination the larger bigotries and injustices that allow for such an idea to exist in the first place. Raleigh’s Pie Face Girls open. —PW [THE PINHOOK, $10/9 P.M.]

Haken PROG The London-based ROCK progressive metal outfit Haken is nothing if not

ALSO ON TUESDAY POUR HOUSE: The Magic Beans, After Funk; 9 p.m., $7–$10. • RUBY DELUXE: Experimental Tuesday: Xambuca; 11 p.m.

WED, SEP 6 GBH ORIGINAL At the dawn of PUNK the eighties, in jolly old Thatcher-era London, the kids weren’t all right— least of all the eventual members of GBH, one of the most legendary punk bands of all time. Through a winning combination of acerbic wit and even more acrid riffs, the Brits defied the looming specters of middle-class angst and unshakable cynicism, taking back control through the most violent— and thrilling—means possible. This fall, the band releases Momentum, its first new album in over a decade. With Skemata. —ZC [MOTORCO, $20–$25/ 7 P.M.]

Tank ROLLING In the nineties and R&B 2000s, Tank enjoyed marginal success, peaking with his successful 2010 project Now or Never. The R & B crooner’s popularity always existed in the shadow of mega-stars of his era, like R. Kelly and Usher, despite his exceptional singing abilities. Amid the controversies surrounding the latter, R & B needs a hero among its vets—perhaps that can take the form of a Tank. Sammie and Dante, Dontay, Duntea open. —CM [LINCOLN THEATRE, $25–$99/7 P.M.] ALSO ON WEDNESDAY 2ND WIND: Yeaux Katz; 7-9 p.m., free. • THE ARTSCENTER: Big Band Night with the Triangle Jazz Orchestra; 7:30 p.m., $5 donation. • HUMBLE PIE: Peter Lamb & the Wolves; 8:30 p.m. • IRREGARDLESS: The Piedmont Pea Pickers; 6:30 p.m. Stevan Jackson; 6:30 p.m. • NIGHTLIGHT: Chuck Johnson, Readings from Local Writers, Simple Machines; 7:30 p.m., $12. See page 18. • RALEIGH CITY MARKET: Music on Market; 5-6:30 p.m.

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8.30 – 9.6

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THURSDAY, AUGUST 31

THE ARTIST AS RESEARCHER At best, when we behold or hear the things artists make, we feel more than perceive the research and labor that went into their creation. But this panel discussion at Power Plant Gallery, at which a light lunch will be served, draws that background into the foreground for an illuminating look at the workings of artist-scholars. The panelists are current Power Plant artistin-residence Julia Gartrell, a contemporary sculptor rooted in Appalachian craft; M.C. Taylor (aka Hiss Golden Messenger), a musician who has previously drawn on photo archives of rural life to inform his neo-rustic songs; Howard L. Craft, a playwright and poet who explores black American history in works such as Freight; and Aya Shabu, a choreographer and dancer with expertise in African diaspora traditions. Learn about the research methods behind their works in a talk that might inspire you to crack the books yourself. —Brian Howe

POWER PLANT GALLERY, DURHAM

Noon, free, www.powerplantgallery.com

The tobacco industry in Durham is one area of interest represented in The Artist as Researcher. PHOTO COURTESY OF FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

OPENING Carefully Cut: Tin can collage by Thomas Graham. Sep 1-Nov 2. Alexander Dickson House, Hillsborough. www. historichillsborough.org. SPECIAL Celebrating 15 EVENT Years: Eleven artists. Reception: Fri, Sep 1, 6-9:30 p.m. Local Color Gallery, Raleigh. www. localcoloraleigh.com. SPECIAL Clay for the Wall: EVENT Sculpture by Shannon Bueker. Sep 3-Oct 1. Reception: Sun, Sep 3, noon-4 p.m. Joyful Jewel, Pittsboro. www.joyfuljewel.com.

SPECIAL The End of Endless EVENT Summer: Diana Coidan, Lynda Harris, Judy Crane, Rocky Alexander, Kim Maselli, David Oakley, Jean Grunewald, Nicole Kennedy. Reception: Fri, Sep 1, 6-8 p.m. Nicole’s Studio & Art Gallery, Raleigh. www.nicolestudio. com. SPECIAL Fabric of Space and EVENT Time: Ann Harwell. Sep 1-24. Reception: Sat, Sep 2, 2-4 p.m. NC Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh. www. naturalsciences.org. Hearsay: Group show. Sep 1- 21. Visual Art Exchange, Raleigh. www.visualartexchange.org.

Dark Humor: Paintings by Peter Williams. Thru Sep 28. UNC Campus: Hanes Art Center, Chapel Hill. art.unc.edu. Seen Not Heard: Photography by Heather Evans Smith. Sep 3-24. Horace Williams House, Chapel Hill. www. chapelhillpreservation.com. LAST Free Lunch: Mixed CHANCE media painting and assemblage sculpture by Lamar Whidbee. Closing reception: Fri, Sep 1, 6-9 p.m. Anchorlight, Raleigh. www.anchorlightraleigh. com. SPECIAL Two by Two: EVENT Watercolors by Amy Beshgetoorian. Thru Sep 30.

Reception: Fri., Sep 1, 6-9 p.m. Tipping Paint Gallery, Raleigh. www.tippingpaintgallery.com.

ONGOING SPECIAL August Featured EVENT Artists + Austin Cathey: Artist talks: Thu, Aug 31, 6-9 p.m. FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill. www.frankisart. com. Before the War: Virtual reality is the next frontier for artists, and Tyler Jackson is scouting it. The abstract storyline in his VR exhibit developed in his history as a painter and an animator, but he needed five people to

bring it to virtual life: Fabian Marquez, Alisha Hawkins, Doug Kinnison, Derick Childress, and Alex Davis. To explore it, you don VR goggles and grip a haptic-feedback wand. You find yourself immersed in a shadowy, seemingly cavernous space, standing before a table. Touching the various objects it holds allows you to enter different scenes, adumbrating if not spelling out a story about life and death as seen from some liminal place. When you lean out of a window and see the woods spreading into your peripheral vision, or you look down and see a rope ladder dangling vertiginously into streaming

clouds beneath your feet, the sense of having entered another world is profound. For gamers, it will be instantly familiar. For nongamers, it will be like nothing they’ve ever experienced before. Thru Sep 16. Lump, Raleigh. www. teamlump.org. —Brian Howe Beyond the Front Porch 2017: Exhibition by twelve senior undergraduates. Thru Nov 12. Duke Campus: Center for Documentary Studies, Durham. www.cdsporch.org. LAST Cedar Creek Gallery CHANCE National Teapot Show X: Thru Sep 5. Cedar Creek Gallery, Creedmoor. www.cedarcreekgallery.com. INDYweek.com | 8.30.17 | 33

Coastscapes: Paintings by Nancy Hughes Miller. Thru Oct 28. Artspace, Raleigh. www. artspacenc.org. Collections: Leah Sobsey. Thru Sep 30. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham. www.21cmuseumhotels.com/ durham. Court and Capital: Art from Asia’s Greatest Cities: Thru Dec 10. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. www.ackland.org. The Fabric of Raleigh/The Fabric of Durham: “You were just a face in the crowd,” Tom Petty once sang. “Out in the street, walking around.” If Petty captured the alchemy of a face among many turning specific and significant, photographer Christer Berg, who moved to Raleigh from Sweden in 1995, does it dozens of times in his new photo book, The Fabric of Raleigh/The Fabric of Durham. Firefighters and preachers, cobblers and baristas, dancers and construction workers— all leap out of the daily pedestrian flow before Berg’s energetic lens. “I wanted to skip the planning, styling, and scheduling that’s common with portrait projects, instead capturing people in the moment, going about what they do in an unscripted and authentic way,” Berg says. This exhibit of the portraits doubles as a release party for the book, a 120-page hardcover designed by Dave Wofford at Horse & Buggy Press—so you know it’s looking good. Thru Oct 1. Betty Ray McCain Gallery, Raleigh. www.dukeenergycenterraleigh. com. —Brian Howe The Fence: Durham is one of seven cities across the nation— the smallest, compared with the likes of Brooklyn, Boston, and Houston—to host this touring, public photography exhibit, curated from submissions from around the world and based on themes such as “home,” “nature,” and “food.” While Lori Vrba is the only local artist among the fifty included in the touring exhibit, nine area photographers, including Bryce Lankard, Leah Sobsey, Gesche Würfel, and Warren Hicks, are featured in a regional showcase. The exhibit wraps the block around the Chapel Hill Street parking garage in a temporary fence and banner of photos, where it will be a part of pedestrians’ 34 | 8.30.17 | INDYweek.com

lives through November. Thru Nov 30. Chapel Hill Street, Durham. —Brian Howe Fluid: Paintings by MyLoan Dinh. Thru Oct 15. Durham Convention Center, Durham. www. durhamconventioncenter.com. LAST Keul and Hardt: CHANCE Paintings by Chrystal Hardt and James Keul. Thru Sep 4. This and That Gift Gallery, Carrboro. A Kiss of the Earth: Apt for a work about a season of fecundity, the epochal modernist ballet The Rite of Spring just keeps on giving, more than a century after its legendarily tempestuous premiere. It supplies the inspiration for this experimental video installation by UNCChapel Hill associate art professor Sabine Gruffat, whose interactive threechannel video projection remixes the story of a pagan tribe’s maiden sacrifice with stochastic elements: realtime weather data from Paris affects the weather in the animation, and viewers can text to a number on the wall to further alter the proceedings. When you consider the contemporary implications, in a world of virtual warfare, of deciding someone’s fate with a command on a screen, you start to scratch the larger issues Gruffat is probing. Thru Jan 28. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www.ncartmuseum.org. —Brian Howe LAST The Locker Project: CHANCE Mixed media prints by Jack Watson. Thru Sep 1. SPECTRE Arts, Durham. www. spectrearts.org. The Long Goodbye...: Sitespecific installation by Eric Yahnker. Thru Sep 10. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh. wcamraleigh.org. LAST Looking South: CHANCE Photography by Eudora Welty. Thru Sep 4. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www. ncartmuseum.org. Marks of Clarity: Drawings and paintings by Kiki Farish and Erin Oliver. Thru Sep 15. Miriam Preston Block Gallery, Raleigh. www.raleighnc.gov/arts. More than One Story | Mas de una historia: Photography. Thru Feb 1. UNC Campus: Davis Library, Chapel Hill. www.lib. unc.edu/davis.

A Morir: Video installation by Miguel Angel Rios. Thru Sep 17. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. www.ackland.org. One Is a Crowd: Collaborative self-portraits by Ursula Gullow. Thru Sep 30. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org. One of Many: Prints. Thru Sep 10. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. www.ackland.org. LAST Rabbits: In April, CHANCE the INDY reported on Catherine Edgerton’s Carrack exhibit of art journals and kaleidoscopes, which represented different but complementary approaches to the issue of mental health. It’s one of the artist’s key areas of activism within the Durham Artists Movement, the multivalent, social-justiceoriented collective she cofounded. As such, Edgerton’s new exhibit, Rabbits, benefits Art Asylum, which employs creative practices to destigmatize and empower people with mental-health and addiction challenges. The collage-based, limited-edition prints on view and on sale at Urban Durham Realty use the image of the white rabbit to peel back and palpate the layers of white supremacy, a climate in which mental-health struggles, especially for people of color and queer people, naturally flourish. Thru Aug 31. Urban Durham Realty. urbandurhamrealty.com. —Brian Howe LAST Sara Reynolds: CHANCE Charcoal, ink, paint, mixed media, and sculpture. Thru Aug 31. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro. www. artscenterlive.org. Seed to Soil to Seed: Ad Infinitum: It’s said that some authors continue to speak to our times long after their deaths, and that’s certainly the case with Henry David Thoreau—literally. The transcendentalist essayist died in 1862 but has continued to publish new works in modern times, such as The Dispersion of Seeds. Thoreau’s final research project, dealing with the natural selection of plants through a Darwinian lens, it was brought out for the first time in the 1990s. The 150-year-old seeds Thoreau dispersed in it continue to blow around and find fertile soil, now sprouting in an installation in

the Scrap Exchange’s Cameron Gallery. Taking inspiration from Thoreau’s treatment of “fly-away seeds,” installation artist Sara Good, of Memphis, Tennessee, festoons the gallery with botanical, found, and handmade matter to illustrate the intersecting loops and lines along which biological life elegantly destroys and creates itself. Thru Sep 9. The Scrap Exchange, Durham. www. scrapexchange.org. —Brian Howe

stage

Small to Large: Delight in the Practice of Painting: Margie Stewart. Thru Oct 23. Durham Arts Council, Durham. www. durhamarts.org. Some Assembly Required: Can You Build It?: 3-D paintings and sculpture. Thru Oct 10. Pleiades Gallery, Durham. www. PleiadesArtDurham.com. Studio and Porch Paintings: Joan Vandermeer. Thru Oct 27. Mad Hatter Bakeshop & Cafe, Durham. www. madhatterbakeshop.com. Teens, Inspired: Juried exhibition by N.C. high school students. Thru Sep 10. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www. ncartmuseum.org. Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days: Paintings by Chieko Murasugi. Thru Sep 18. Durham Arts Council, Durham. www. durhamarts.org. Threading Colors: Works by Nora Phillips. Thru Sep 18. Durham Arts Council, Durham. www.durhamarts.org. Three Perspectives: Paintings by Lolette Guthrie, photography by Eric Saunders, blown glass by Pringle Teetor. Thru Sep 24. Hillsborough Gallery of Arts, Hillsborough. www. hillsboroughgallery.com. Transformation & Contrast: Jewelry by Linda Azar. Thru Sep 24. Melissa Designer Jewelry, Hillsborough. LAST Watercolor Society CHANCE of North Carolina: Molly Cassidy. Thru Sep 1. Halle Cultural Arts Center, Apex. www.thehalle.org. We’ve Met Before: Cloth and ink by Andrea Donnelly. Thru Jan 28. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www.ncartmuseum.org. LAST You + Me: CHANCE Photographs by various artists. Thru Sep 4. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www. ncartmuseum.org.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1

EYES UP HERE COMEDY SHOWCASE The Eyes Up Here Comedy showcase has been at it for awhile (the joke of the name lands when you learn it’s a series devoted to stand-up comedy exclusively by women), but its outing at Neptunes this week seems especially profound and necessary, for the local comedy scene in general and for women in it in particular. It follows the rather sudden closing, on August 28, of Chapel Hill’s long-running DSI Comedy Theater, the outcome of an outpouring of pent-up accusations of manipulation, sexism, sexual harassment, and even sexual assault against founder Zach Ward. At a time when the local scene, especially its female members, is healing and regrouping, spaces for female performers are all the more important, as counterexamples to a comedy world that, even at its most progressive, tends to be dominated by white men. Hosted by Erin Terry and Brittany Spruill, the lineup features Shari Díaz, Catherine Collison, Alejandra Márquez, Jody Oakley, and Gretchen McNeely. —Brian Howe

NEPTUNES PARLOUR, RALEIGH

8 p.m., $5, www.neptunesparlour.com

OPENING John Evans: Stand-up comedy. $12-$20. Wed, Aug 30, 8 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www. goodnightscomedy.com.

Yes to Nothing: Play. Aug 31-Sep 2. Slim’s Downtown, Raleigh. www.slimsraleigh.com. See story, p. 24.

ONGOING

The Ryan Higgins Crowdwork Show: Stand-up comedy with Adam Cohen, Dejahzh Hedrick, Tori Chaffee. $5. Sat, Sep 2, 8 p.m. Neptunes Parlour, Raleigh. www.neptunesparlour.com.

Anything Goes Late Show: Comedy. Sat, Sep 2, 10:30 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www. goodnightscomedy.com.

Tony Roberts: Stand-up comedy. Thu, Aug 31-Sat, Sep 2. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www. goodnightscomedy.com.

Comedy Overload: Stand-up comedy. $5. Fri, Sep 1, 7:30 p.m. Deep South the Bar, Raleigh.www. DeepSouthTheBar.com.

 Conversations with Hitler: Playwright Steven R. Bond, a winner of two PEN America Prison Writing awards, easily persuades us of his intimacy with cellblock conversations and negotiations of respect, which can spell the difference between walking or being carried out of prison. Roberto Diaz equally convinces in the lead role of Hagel, a sharp writer in a bogus prison-playwriting class led by a pompous local director (a rewarding John Paul Middlesworth). Bond rejects the big-house clichés enshrined in actionadventure flicks like The Longest Yard. But we still get lost in a psychological labyrinth that winds between the scripted scenarios Hagel and others gin up for their class; real-life exchanges with real stakes in prison corridors; and Hagel’s ultimate showdown with an enigmatic shadow character known only as the Fuhrer. Director Julya Mirro appears to still be navigating this maze as well. Though she elicits vivid performances, her staging choices, including some awkward mobile backdrops, don’t help us distinguish between the functional and dysfunctional ambiguities here. But the dramatic tension and payoff in the final sequences are, well, arresting. $10-$15. Thru Sep 2. Sonorous Road Theatre, Raleigh. www.sonorousroad.com.— Byron Woods

½ Crowns: Reviewed on p. 25. $15-$28. Thru Sep 10. Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh. www.raleighlittletheatre.org. The Harry Show: Ages 18+. Improv host leads late-night revelers through potentially risque games with audience participation. $10. Fri, Sep 2 & Sat, Sep 3, 10 p.m. ComedyWorx Theatre, Raleigh. comedyworx.com. Hot Comedy with Brian Burns: Stand-up comedy presented by No Poetry Comedy. Wed, Sep 6, 8 p.m. The Cave Tavern, Chapel Hill. www.caverntavern.com. Hush Hush: Summer Brews: Interactive comedy. Thu, Aug 31, 8 p.m. Beer Study, Durham. www.thisismettlesome.com Hush Hush: Secret’s Out: Improv. $8-$10. Sat, Sep 2, 8 p.m. Kings, Raleigh. www. kingsraleigh.com.  Of Wings and Feet: As Paperhand Puppet Intervention’s eighteenthannual summer show begins, a multigenerational group of performers casually walk onstage and don papiermâché bird masks. Their body language and gestures subtly change until we’re no longer in the presence of humans or birds, but of some strange amalgam. With whimsy and gravitas, Donovan Zimmerman and Jan Burger look at American culture through an avian eye: a vivid procession includes herons and terns, vain flamingos and purposeful pigeons in power suits. The changelings

from the opening try to make sense of these odd behaviors before imaginative engineer Chris Carter ultimately gives them flight. And Paperhand’s trademark political advocacy is evident as a ragtag oldtime circus troupe stages a slapstick sideshow celebrating dubious achievements including the taming of the wild and the marriage of big business and democracy. $10-$15. Thru Sept. 4. UNC Campus: Forest Theatre, Chapel Hill. www.ncbg.unc.edu. —Byron Woods ShakesBEER: Sir John Falstaff walks into a bar. So do Andrew Aguecheek, Sir Toby Belch, and a certain inebriated porter employed by Lord and Lady Macbeth, among others. No, it isn’t the setup for a gag in a stand-up routine; it’s the production concept of the latest itinerant show from Bare Theatre. Adaptor Chuck Keith rounds up six of Shakespeare’s most beloved drunkards and sets them loose in an offbeat series of Monday-throughWednesday shows. Director Dustin Britt insists he’s in full fidelity with the original scripts: “There is no fabrication. Every single one of them was shit-faced in Shakespeare’s texts.” But wait—then why’s the Twelfth Night scene being played by boozy pirates? And is that really Peter Lorre in Othello? Hmm. This could take more than one round to figure out. Bartender? Free (donations accepted). Wed, Aug 30 & Wed, Sep 6. Imurj, Raleigh. imurj.com. — Byron Woods

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

967-6159

Tarish Pipkins, aka Jeghetto, works on a large puppet at the Paperhand Puppet Intervention workshop in Saxapahaw, NC. PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

(919) 967-6159

bill.burton.lawyer@gmail.com INDYweek.com | 8.30.17 | 35

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THURSDAY, AUGUST 31

THE ROOM

There are good movies, there are bad movies, and then there’s The Room. If you’ve never experienced the 2003 “masterpiece,” this screening is a good primer for the upcoming The Disaster Artist, the film about the making of the film, with James Franco as auteur Tommy Wiseau. Even Franco’s weirdness will have to stretch to capture the bizarre Wiseau, whose craggy features and unplaceable accent form the epicenter of this fever-dream melodrama. The plot, such as it is, has writer/director/star Wiseau’s character, Johnny, dealing with his future wife Lisa cheating on him with his best friend—plus numerous scenes and subplots that go nowhere, featuring a drug dealer, a game of alleyway touch football in tuxedos, and one character randomly announcing she has breast cancer, which is neither acknowledged nor followed up. No blurb can convey the intonation of such immortal lines as, “You are tearing me apart, Lisa!” or “How’s your sex life, Mark?” The Room is not so much watched as it is experienced. Its utterly inept acting, pacing, green-screening, and internal consistency have no relation to things humans do and say. But Wiseau is so utterly committed to his brazen, Johnny-centric universe that he achieves a kind of transcendence. Maybe take your bathroom break during one of the four sex scenes; at least one recycles footage from another. And note that you get a dollar off admission if you come dressed as Wiseau or bring a plastic spoon, like the one visible, inexplicably, in several framed pictures throughout the film. —Zack Smith

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6

HOLLY GODDARD JONES: THE SALT LINE Imagining terrible futures just comes naturally these days, if a bumper crop of dystopian fiction both literary and YA is any indication. The Salt Line, the latest novel by Holly Goddard Jones, is an acclaimed entry in the former camp. America lives in a state of perpetual fear and it’s always tick season. The demarcation of the title refers to the zone that no sane person dares cross, save for the book’s protagonists, who are intent on seeing the world beyond it, even though it puts them at the mercy of ravenous insects whose bite means death. Their thrill seeking lands them in a new kind of danger when they’re captured by a survivor community. Ultimately the book assays freedom and the lengths people will go to secure it. Goddard Jones, who teaches creative writing at UNC-Greensboro, imbues her mind-bending scenario with literary grace. She will be on hand to discuss the book, and crossing the book-signing line poses no known risks. —David Klein

FLYLEAF BOOKS, CHAPEL HILL

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

READINGS & SIGNINGS Nancie McDermott: Fruit. Sat, Sep 2, 2 p.m. McIntyre’s Books, Pittsboro. www.mcintyresbooks.com. Jocelyn Olcott: International Women’s Year: The Greatest Consciousness-Raising Event in History. Thu, Aug 31, 7 p.m. Regulator Bookshop, Durham. www. regulatorbookshop.com. 36 | 8.30.17 | INDYweek.com

Mary Otto: Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America. Wed, Sep 6, 7 p.m. Regulator Bookshop, Durham. www.regulatorbookshop.com.

KINGS, RALEIGH

8:30 p.m., $5, www.kingsraleigh.com

SPECIAL SHOWINGS School Life: Thu, Aug 31, 7 p.m. Full Frame Theater, Durham.

OPENING 13 Minutes—This German drama tells the true story of a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in 1939. Rated R. Patti Cake$—A young white women from New Jersey vies for a rap career in this stinker. Rated R. The Trip to Spain—Following The Trip to Italy, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon take another bantering road trip. Unrated.

LECTURES ETC.

A L S O P L AY I N G

Town Hall: (W)Rap on Race: Where Do We Go From Here?: Moderated by Greg Fishel. Thu, Aug 31, 7 p.m. NC Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh. www. naturalsciences.org.

The INDY uses a five-star rating scale. Read reviews of these films at indyweek.com. ½ Annabelle: Creation—The new Conjuring film is an adequate scary

movie if you’re in a theater packed with people yelling advice at the screen, but genre connoisseurs might be bored. Rated R.

½ Despicable Me 3— This franchise feels just about washed up, but your kids won’t care, because Minions! Rated PG.

 Atomic Blonde— Despite flourishes of ferocity, this Cold War thriller by John Wick codirector David Leitch often seems to coast on its own glib, quirky coolness. Rated R.

½ Detroit—In a way, Kathryn Bigelow’s bracing take on the 1967 Detroit riots completes a trilogy of war films. Rated R.

½ The Big Sick— Married screenwriters Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon’s autobiographical romcom truthfully portrays the shifting cultural and romantic landscape of the U.S. Rated R.  Brigsby Bear—A sweet deception veils an acid point about mass entertainment in this offbeat comedy starring SNL’s Kyle Moody. Rated PG-13.

½ Dunkirk— Christopher Nolan’s WWII picture is very British and, for better and worse, very Terrence Malick—epic, meditative, and portentous. Rated PG-13.  Good Time—This crime caper by the up-andcoming Safdie brothers is a high-voltage power play that leaves a neon ache behind your eyes. Rated R. ½ Maudie—This biopic of the Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis doesn’t go too deep but shines with the light of creativity. Rated PG-13.

½ The Mummy— Tom Cruise’s increasing creepiness is the biggest impediment to a serviceable creature feature. Rated PG-13.  Spider-Man: Homecoming—Getting back to basics, a fifty-five-yearold superhero feels like a kid again. Rated PG-13. ½ Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets— Luc Besson breaks the bank for a visually extravagant, emotionally hollow spiritual successor of The Fifth Element. Rated PG-13.  War for the Planet of the Apes— A conspicuous phrase scrawled on a tunnel wall beneath the Colonel’s compound says it all: this is basically “Ape-pocalypse Now.” Rated PG-13.  Whose Streets?— Reviewed at www. indyweek.com. Rated R.

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FTCC FAYETTEVILLE TECHNICAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE is now accepting applications for the following positions: Assistant Director of Financial Aid Operations, Communication Instructor, Criminal Justice Technology Instructor, Cyber Security/ COMPTIA Certified Instructor, Health & Physical Education Instructor, Paramedic Instructor, Spanish Instructor (10-month contract), For detailed information and to apply, please visit our employment portal at: https:// faytechcc.peopleadmin.com/, Human Resources Office Phone: (910) 678-7342 Internet: http://www.faytechcc.edu An Equal Opportunity Employer

NC WARN seeks full-time Youth Climate Justice Organizer in the Triangle. We encourage women, people of color, LGBTQ to apply. ncwarn. org/jobs

employment assistance

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Learn Taoist Tai Chi for improved relaxation, health and energy. Classes offered in Raleigh, Cary, Durham and Chapel Hill. Call 919-787-9600 or visit northcarolina.usa.taoist.orgOn the Back PageTaoist Tai ChiRaleigh, Cary, Durham and Chapel Hill email: northcarolina@taoist.org 919 787-9600 web: northcarolina.usa.taoist.org

classes & instruction 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, 919-968-3936 or www.magictortoise.com

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medical services

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KEEP DOGS SHELTERED

getaways

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

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misc. notices

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