Riverfront Times - January 17, 2018

JANUARY 17–23, 2018 I VOLUME 41 I NUMBER 02

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College Try Malachi Duncan cobbled together a life as a career college student. The feds weren’t having it

BY DOYLE MURPHY

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TABLE OF CONTENTS FEATURE

13.

College Try

Malachi Duncan cobbled together a life as a career college student. The feds weren’t having it

Written by

DOYLE MURPHY

Cover illustration by

SUSANNAH LOHR

NEWS

CULTURE

DINING

MUSIC

5

21

27

37

The Lede

Calendar

Your friend or neighbor, captured on camera

Seven days worth of great stuff to see and do

9

23

Riding the 97 Into the Sunset

Paul Friswold is happy to ride the bus

9

Film

Greg Barker’s documentary about three Obama-era diplomats shows us how much things have changed since The Final Year, Robert Hunt writes

Dogtown Burglars Open Fire

Homespun

Side Dish

Ryan McDonald’s Good Fortune is to be in the kitchen

Ellen Prinzi visits Stone Turtle, while Sara Graham checks out Billie-Jean

40

Various Artists 17 in 17

42

Out Every Night

The best concerts in St. Louis every night of the week

43

This Just In

This week’s new concert announcements

Op-Ed

Sarah Fenske weighs in on the troubles facing Governor Greitens — and the spurned ex behind the explosive story

JANUARY 17-23, 2018

32

First Look

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Three Simple Words

Lee Ann Womack’s latest release proves that heartache never goes out of style

33

The burglars who broke into Patrick Wrzeskinski’s liquor store weren’t going down without a fight

6

One on One

Cheryl Baehr reviews Soup Dumplings STL, where a top chef devotes his new restaurant to a single dish

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On the 97, Riding Into the Sunset Written by

PAUL FRISWOLD

T

wice a day, five days a week, I ride the mighty 97 bus from county to city and back again.

I walk a brisk mile to avoid a transfer and the occasional delay, but walking’s good for you; besides, I have a seat waiting, hopefully with a view. I pay $80 a month for my ride and I’m all right with that; if I couldn’t afford it there are several reduced rates for those who need them.

I don’t wear headphones while on the bus — I like to look out the window and watch as the neighborhoods slide by. Some have seen better days, but others are doing better. The terrain changes with the time of day and the amount of daylight. People are quiet in the morning, thumbing through screens on their phones or scanning the sports page to get the lowdown. The real show happens at the back, in what I consider the lounge.

That’s where the conversation takes place. Some days you get a philosopher loudly telling his neighbor, “If you Google ‘who wrote the Bible,’ the very first answer is ‘Shakespeare.’ That’s John Shakespeare — you know the Rastafarians? That’s why they say ‘jah’ all the time, they’re saying ‘Jesus.’”

“Mister, I put my faith in Jesus,” his neighbor answers.

“His greatest character,” comes the response.

It’s not all fun and games on the 97.

One gray morning traffic is snarled by a collision at Kingshighway.

Emergency workers have closed a lane and it’s playing havoc with the schedule. A somber woman in the back wails softly as she misses her transfer. “That’s my bus!” she sobs.

Moments later she apologizes. This is the third of four funerals she’s heading to this week. Grief has stretched her to the brink.

Every once in a while there’s a Continued on pg 11

Riding the bus from the county to the city, our essayist keeps his headphones off and his eyes open. | PAUL SABLEMAN

Locked In, Dogtown Burglars Open Fire

A

pair of burglars narrowly escaped from a St. Louis liquor store last week after the owner locked them inside.

Patrick Wrzesinski, owner of Patrick’s Dogtown Liquors, lives above the store and heard the thieves early Thursday morning.

He checked the monitor of his video surveillance and spotted a couple of strangers, their faces wrapped up in scarves and hoods.

“I ran down and locked the door,” he says.

When the crooks figured out they were trapped, they panicked.

Wrzesinski says they climbed on top of a cooler and started trying to bust out the front window, but the tempered glass was too strong.

“They tried to kick out the window and bounced back,” he says.

“I heard a ‘ka-thunk’” as they hit the floor.

The situation took a frightening turn when one of the burglars pulled out a gun and blasted through the window, the bullets rocketing across the street and into a second building. They were then able to smash their way outside and escape.

No one was hit during the gunfire.

Police say they responded about 5:30 a.m. After fleeing the store at Tamm and West Park avenues, riverfronttimes.com

the suspects got in a maroon Ford SUV and drove south on Tamm.

The shop reopened the same day. The front window is now boarded up, but Wrzesinski was back behind the counter Friday morning. He’s the fourth owner of the neighborhood market, a fixture in Dogtown since 1957.

It’s not clear how the burglars got inside, but Wrzesinski is confident police will find them.

In their haste to escape, the men dropped everything they were trying to steal: liquor, lottery scratch-off tickets and three packs of Parliaments. Wrzesinski was also left with a couple of t-shirts from his window display, now bearing a pair of bullet holes.

“I sold one of them yesterday,” he says.

—Doyle Murphy

JANUARY 17-23, 2018

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Governor Eric Greitens stands accused by his former paramour’s ex-husband. The woman herself isn’t speaking publicly. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI

[OP-ED]

The Angry Ex and Greitens’ Rough Week Written by

SARAH FENSKE

L

ast week, KMOV dropped the bombshell that everyone who’s anyone in Missouri politics has been whispering about for more than a year: Governor Eric Greitens had an affair. He confirmed it. First Lady Sheena Greitens made a brief statement acknowledging that she now knows about it, and asking everyone to leave the family alone. The only thing more predictable than the couple’s humiliation was the glee everyone took in talking about it.

But KMOV’s piece was unusually ugly, for a reason that initially generated very little discussion: Its sole source for the affair was the ex-husband.

Yes, in this case, the reason we found out about this three-year-

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old personal matter between a politician and his paramour is because the governor’s girlfriend was married to an asshole — the kind of rat who not only secretly tapes her during the moment she confesses the affair, but repeatedly tweets about his righteous anger in hopes someone will reach out and then, later, gives that tape to a TV news station. This peach of a man not only shared this intimate and incredibly sad moment with a reporter, but gave an interview in which his identity was carefully cloaked to opine about just how terrible the governor was.

Oh, and this shy violet, naturally, hired the most media-savvy lawyer in town to help push his interests.

Because when you’re only reluctantly coming forward, the attorney you hire is Albert Watkins.

There is, one must acknowledge, a very disturbing component to the story he’s telling. Did Greitens — then a candidate for governor — take a nude pic of the woman when she was blindfolded during their first assignation and tell her the photo would be released if she ever told anyone about their affair? The woman told her husband as such, although a transcript of the conversation shows she also told him that Greitens apologized

JANUARY 17-23, 2018

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that day and told her he’d erased it. (Greitens’ lawyer, James Bennett, has denied both the photo and the blackmail threat; the woman continued to see Greitens after the incident.) Still, if true, it speaks to a level of cold calculation that’s horrifying even to those who’ve long suspected the worst about the governor.

And yet there is something even more disturbing, to me, about giving the floor to a man who surreptitiously records his wife at her lowest — and then insists on telling the story that is only hers to tell.

It’s easy to forget this in 2018, but revenge isn’t just about sharing nudes. Revenge can also be a matter of forcing someone else’s private story to become public. It can be about fanning the flames and still trying to claim plausible deniability as you watch your exwife’s privacy go up in flames.

In a statement through his attorney, the man says he cares “only for my children and the reputation of their mother in their eyes.

Therefore I went to exhaustive efforts to keep this information out of the spotlight. I now understand that this information is out there from other sources and won’t go away.” He says he only decided to proactively seek a reporter to

talk to because a “young, inexperienced” member of the national media called his fifteen-year-old child and began asking questions.

At that point, he felt he had no choice but to go public.

“My client did everything within his power to get this behind him to protect his kids,” Watkins says.

“And part of that, he wanted to protect the woman he loved. If he wanted this out there, why wait three years? His agenda would have been much better served if he’d done this three years ago.”

I don’t buy it. This story has been the single worst-kept secret in St. Louis, thanks almost entirely to his efforts. He may have only played the recording for one political operative, Democrat Roy Temple, back in 2016, but Temple talked to plenty of people who, yes, talked to people. The man also tweeted angrily about the matter, tweets that he never deleted. He was hardly hiding. And as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch acknowledged, it too interviewed the ex-husband (it decided against running a story because “the woman in question has consistently declined to be interviewed”).

On Friday, the woman issued a statement through her attorney, pleading for privacy and making it clear she never wanted the story in the media. By releasing a tape of her most private moment — a conversation he badgered her into having, promising “it will never leave the car,” her ex decided otherwise for her.

Most people who are upset about Greitens’ conduct have said, carefully, that it’s not about the adultery, that it’s about the allegation of blackmail, about the woman’s lack of consent for the photo allegedly taken of her. They’ve said this is a “me too” moment for Missouri. But a man dragging intimate details of his ex-wife’s life into the public discourse against her will is the opposite of what “me too” is about, and the opposite of consent. If this woman is indeed a victim, she’s now a victim twice over — and KMOV is complicit in the second violation. After all, it didn’t just carry the guy’s water. The station let him tell the story without even making him go on the record under his own name.

If Greitens’ ex-lover wants to tell her story, to law enforcement or to the media, that’s up to her. But until that happens, I’d argue we should all look away. No more pretending to feel sympathy for Sheena

Greitens, no more clucking sadly for the poor children. I know it’s hard to give up the moral high ground, but by giving the floor to a spurned husband, KMOV lost it.

It’s clear from the immediate, and visceral, reaction the story has gotten that I’m living in a pipe dream. Of course we’re going to talk about this. The Post-Dispatch itself relented and published a story within hours, as did every other media outlet that had previously taken a pass. You can’t even blame them — now that Greitens has confirmed the affair, even while denying the disconcerting details that have quickly made this a national story, it’s news. We all have to acknowledge it.

Greitens is now on the ropes, with legislators calling for his hide and a criminal inquiry by Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner.

The arrogant governor has pissed off the political establishment and pissed off the media, and both groups are now pushing to keep this a big story, even if none of the promised “other shoes” ever drops.

And that’s how angry exes win.

Sure, plenty of well-meaning people are among those enthusing over Greitens’ downfall. But we’d be wise to remember how we’re getting these details: a man has given us access to a woman’s words when she had no desire for us to hear them.

In a transcript of the very tape he’d later release to KMOV, the man begins to rant about how Greitens’ actions don’t match his public image. The man has just gotten confirmation of the sexual interaction he’s long suspected, and he’s livid. “This motherfucker is running for governor,” he says. “... He comes off as this motherfucking manly hero and it’s all about resilience and honor and all that.”

“I knew you would obsess,” the woman tells her ex in the transcript he’s given the media of her confession. “You’re obsessed.”

Later, the man warns, “I could destroy his career in half an hour.”

“If you do that, then I would hate you,” she says.

It took him more than half an hour. But it’s pretty clear the cheated-upon husband got his revenge.

Sarah Fenske is the editor in chief of the Riverfront Times. Follow her on Twitter @sarahfenske

ON THE 97 Continued from pg 9 personal problem. A woman and young man go at it too loudly, and our driver keeps a watchful eye on them in his rear-view mirror. He’s responsible for our safety and he doesn’t take that duty lightly.

She disembarks through the back door with another man, but she’s still reading her opponent the riot act. Just before the doors shut she heaves her drink at her foe, but her companion deftly steps in front of her, blocking her throwing arm.

There are conversations, too. A man in his 30s is showing a couple of would-be bad boys the scars from a serious surgery where the shotgun pellets perforated his artery. “You gotta get clean and get a job; don’t make the mistakes I done. I moved across the city and I’m doing all right.

I got mine.”

There are moments of unexpected beauty. A young couple hold hands and stare into each other’s eyes the whole way, talking quietly. As Ike and Tina sang, he loves her like the flowers need the spring. They’re so locked on each other that he leaves something on the seat as they walk off into the morning. The driver locks the bus and steps half-way out the door to shout after him to come get his phone. An older gent tells a neighbor he hasn’t seen in a while, “He put it on me, and I’m going to carry it down the road a while.” A young father and two kids are heading to day care, and he’s harried by multiple bags. He leaves quickly with the pumpkin seat in hand, but he’s left the diaper bag behind. A helpful fellow gathers it up and runs after them down Union — our chipper driver Keith telling him, “I’ll wait for ya.”

This morning our driver isn’t blessed with great height, but she handles the bus with rare grace.

We turn from Barack Obama onto Compton with geometrical precision, Compton’s rounded curb a ghostly fulcrum that doesn’t even get to kiss the back wheels. Out the back doors I can see it hang still for an instant and then it’s gone. If she drives the bus long enough, she can progress up the system to a MetroLink train, but the city would be poorer for want of her arcs.

And on we roll, beating the running edge of a thunderstorm in the morning and pursuing the setting sun in the evening, to home, or school, or third shift.

Paul Friswold is the RFT’s arts & culture editor

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College Try Malachi Duncan cobbled together a life as a career college student. The feds weren’t having it

M

By Doyle Murphy

alachi Duncan slips out of a dark corner of the community college theater and onto the stage.

He is in full costume. A white jacket fits crisply over his skinny, sixfoot-two frame. A matching white shirt and black bow tie add to the formal air of the butler’s uniform.

The play is Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a tale of desperation and deceit within a family of schemers. The main characters are complex and intriguing, but Duncan does not have one of those roles. He plays Lacey, a black servant who, in some adaptations of Tennessee Williams’ drama, is reduced to an unseen voice piped in from off stage. His job is to prop up the main players, serve as an under-drawn reminder of the family’s casual racism.

“I’m coming!” he cries and hurries across the stage during possibly his most dynamic scene. “I’m coming!”

Appearing here, even in a limited role, seems like a crazy risk in retrospect.

Duncan should be lying low. He enrolled at Jefferson College for the 2013-14 school year using the name of a friend with whom he is sharing his ill-gotten financial aid checks. He wrote the friend’s social security number on the applications and will use it to set up bank accounts, obtain a fraudulent driver’s license and even get a job at a campus day care.

These are federal crimes, and he could be exposed with a minimal amount of scrutiny. But here he is, literally stepping into the spotlight, conducting a performance within a performance.

Duncan is friendly with the other actors but not close. He has felt like an outsider his entire life, and he does not have much in common with the rest of the cast. They all come from placid small towns within twenty miles of the college’s Hillsboro campus. Duncan grew up in East St. Louis, raised primarily by foster parents as a protection against a mother whose history of neglect and abuse made national news before he was even born. Even today, people of a certain age in his hometown trace his lineage to one of the worst tragedies the city has ever seen.

In Hillsboro, they don’t even know his real name.

The production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ends after a four-show run in October 2013. Duncan auditions for the next semester’s show but is not cast.

Michael Booker, the college’s division chair of fine arts, remembers only the barest of details about him. An experienced actor himself, Booker played the role of Big Daddy, a dying patriarch whose duplicitous children are trying to undercut Continued on pg 14

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Malachi Duncan played a butler in a Jefferson College production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. | COURTESY OF JEFFERSON COLLEGE

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each other as they compete for his fortune.

“I’m very proud of the quality of the show,” Booker says in an email. “We had a strong cast.”

Duncan seemed to have little experience, but that’s where a lot of students begin, Booker says.

One of Booker’s favorite things about performing with the college’s theater department is seeing newcomers grow into larger, more complex roles through the course of several plays. But he never worked with Duncan again.

He never really had any cause to think about him again until more than two years later when visitors arrived on campus.

“I can assure you that we were all shocked when [federal agents] came by asking about him,” Booker says. “We had no reason to think that he was involved with the crimes he’s been accused of.”

A college spokesman says they have seen cases of fraud before.

Students are granted financial aid and never show up to campus, or they drop out after a couple of weeks and pocket the loan checks. Duncan’s situation was different. He studied English and worked at the day care. After living off campus with his friend for his first semester, he moved into one of the college’s dorms, just up the hill from the theater. If anything, Duncan was trying to embed himself even further into the college life.

“He wanted to play the part, if you will, of being a student,” says Roger Barrentine, the college’s director of public relations. “Eventually, his deeds caught up with him.”

Technically, it was the U.S. Marshals who caught up with Duncan.

The Justice Department’s human bloodhounds had been searching more than a year before they cornered Duncan in front of a Tennessee apartment complex. They missed him in Indiana, where agents arrested the friend who’d lent Duncan his identity, and in Mississippi, where he contemplated turning himself in.

By the time they found him in March, he was in his third semester at the University of Memphis, enrolled under the name of his youngest sister’s boyfriend. It was one of more than a dozen colleges he attended over a fifteen-year period, using at least three different identities in the process. The financial aid he obtained under his own name was no crime, but federal prosecutors say he ran up a bill of more than $50,000 with the U.S. Department of Education while masquerading as others.

Duncan remembers it was raining the morning of his arrest, and the deputy Marshals had brought with them a fifteen-year-old photo

to aid in identification. After brief stops at jails in Tennessee and Oklahoma, they hauled him back to Missouri, where he spent the better part of a year in the Ste. Genevieve County Detention Center, about an hour south of St. Louis.

“I never wanted to be back in here, ever,” Duncan says. “I was doing everything I could.”

By “here,” he means any jail anywhere. He had been locked up multiple times in the past on small-time fraud cases and probation violations, but never for more than a month or so.

Now he is 33, and more than four years have passed since he took the stage at Jefferson College.

He wears a Ste. Genevieve County orange jumpsuit, the graying sleeves of a once-white long-underwear shirt stretching toward his thin wrists and long fingers.

He was sentenced in November to three years and nine months in prison after pleading guilty to federal charges of student loan fraud and aggravated identity theft stemming from his time at Jefferson College. Prosecutors say he conspired with his friend to falsely obtain federal financial aid, enroll in classes, apply for student housing and land a campus job.

His sentence includes a demand for $57,139 in restitution, which includes $2,000 to the state of Tennessee and $4,529 for a fraudently paid car repair. It might as well be $57 million in light of Duncan’s ability to pay it all back.

Someday soon, the Bureau of Prisons will ship him to one of the federal holding facilities it has scattered across the country.

Duncan does not know when or where. He tries not to think too far into the future when it comes to things like that.

The past can be a little hazy, too, he says. Suppressing old memories of abuse makes it easier to handle the daily life: “I try to put things in the back of my mind.”

But he remembers the play. It was his therapist’s idea, he says.

He should try doing something fun that was just for himself, she suggested. He had always wanted to be a filmmaker and had done a little acting and writing in high school. When he saw there were open auditions for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, he decided to try out.

“It felt good,” Duncan says, his nose wrinkling as he smiles. “I hate to say this, but it felt normal.

I don’t get a lot of chances to do things that a lot of normal people

do — things that normal college students do.”

A normal life would have been a small miracle for Duncan.

He is one of Virginia Williams’ eighteen children and one of seven who are still alive. He was born three years after a fire torched the family’s two-story East St. Louis house and killed eleven of the kids who would have been his older brothers and sisters.

Newspaper stories about the January 11, 1981, tragedy described a blaze that burned with such violence that frantic neighbors and firefighters had no hope of reaching the children, who ranged in age from ten months to eleven years old.

“By then, there was still a little screaming, and I heard what sounded like footsteps,” a neighbor told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in the aftermath. “But the fire was too bad and no one came out. By that time, there was no way to get them out.”

At the time, Williams had twelve kids. The oldest, who was living with relatives in Mississippi, was the only one left. Williams had left the children alone for hours while she was out gambling with her boyfriend, Will Arthur Jones, who was the father of seven of the dead kids. The doomed siblings suffocated in the smoke.

Nearly 40 years later, the funeral photos of eleven little white caskets arranged side by side are as heart-wrenching as ever.

Williams ultimately pleaded guilty to neglect. A merciful judge, concluding that she had endured enough, sentenced her to a year probation. Williams was pregnant at the time with the first of six children she would give birth to after the fire. Duncan was the youngest of four boys, followed by two sisters.

“I don’t know that she’s mentally able to really comprehend the effect she’s had on us,” Duncan says of his mother. “I believe in her mind, she did what she thinks is best.”

Williams had a gambling problem and a history of mental illness. Even before the fire, she had been investigated by child welfare agencies, and the horrors of losing eleven of her first twelve children only made things worse.

Duncan avoided the worst of it for years; shortly before his first birthday, he was placed with foster parents. A few months later, in

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1985, Williams was sentenced to prison in Illinois for child abuse, records show. When Duncan mentions his “mom” and “dad,” he is speaking about Alice and Willie Duncan. Born Matthew Jones, he took their name when he turned eighteen. Alice Duncan still remembers when he asked what she would have named her son if she’d had another boy. “Malachi,” she answered, thinking little of it. He changed his name the same day.

But Duncan’s life with Alice and Willie was marred by lengthy interruptions. The state of Illinois was eager to reunite foster kids with their biological families, and so Duncan started visiting his mother’s home on weekends when he was eight or nine. He remembers his father beating his mother on his first night in the house. The culture of violence and abuse in his mother’s home was a shock to him.

“It was bad then, but it got worse when I eventually moved in with her,” he says.

By the time he was ten, he was living with his biological mother full time. He remembers her whipping him and his brothers with an air conditioner’s cord, punching and stomping on them. She would erupt over minor offenses or just a bad night gambling.

“Me and my youngest brother, we were getting beat so much we didn’t think we would survive,”

Duncan says.

They eventually plotted to poison her to death by mixing boric acid into her coffee creamer, he says. “I had it in my head, if we didn’t get rid of her, she was going to get rid of us.”

The scheme backfired when she discovered the toxic concoction and forced Duncan to eat it, he says. He got sick but survived. Williams declined through a daughter to be interviewed for this story, but she discussed the poisoning incident with a Post-Dispatch reporter in 2001.

“I don’t remember,” she told the paper. “Maybe that’s true… I could have. I probably did to see if [the boys were telling the truth].”

She admitted that she was rough with her boys.

“I whipped them with whatever I got my hands on,” she said in the interview. “I didn’t want them to come up like me, poor, uneducated and living on the state.”

The Post-Dispatch story, which came twenty years after the deadly fire, detailed years of abuse and the toll it had taken on Duncan’s brothers, who had lived with her much of their lives. Duncan, however, had returned to the home of his foster parents and, as the story told it, seemed to have escaped their fate.

“Of the four sons, only [Duncan] appears to have emerged relatively unscathed,” the paper wrote. “Except for a brief, tumultuous stint with Williams, [Duncan] has lived nearly all of his life

so she connected the two.

Officer hired Duncan at his family’s funeral home and was so impressed with his sharp, young employee that he helped him win a full scholarship to Talladega College, a historically black college in Alabama.

But Duncan left Talladega after a few months. He says now he was homesick.

Everyone who knew Duncan as a kid had thought he managed to escape his mother’s legacy unscathed, but Lawson says she now realizes that was not the case.

“It’s just been a sad situation,” she says. “In some ways, the lives of [Duncan] and his brothers were as destroyed as the ones she buried.”

Alice and Willie Duncan say they don’t understand how Duncan went from a smart, polite child to a felon. | DOYLE MURPHY

“He felt comfortable around adults, because he was an outsider.” in the same foster home, where, he said, he has received guidance, discipline and support. He is a straight-A student with aspirations of going to Yale University.”

Duncan just likes school. As a child, along with the physical abuse and mental abuse, he says he was sexually abused, although he refuses to discuss that in detail.

Even during the worst days, he could find a refuge in the classroom.

Linda Lawson first noticed him while working as a substitute teacher at George Rogers Clark Junior High School, now a burnedout shell on State Street in East St. Louis. He stood out because he was well-mannered and smart, but he also seemed to be by himself.

“He felt comfortable around adults, because he was an outsider,” Lawson remembers. “He was in a rough-and-tumble area.

There was something that made me want to help him or protect him.”

At the time, she did not know

much about his background, other than he was a foster child and the other kids would pick on him. When she asked him why he did not fight back, he replied, “I’m going to let God fight my battles.”

Other teachers also recognized something in the skinny boy and gently guided him toward after-school writing programs, where he began to work on stories and plays. He loved fantasies most of all — superheroes and Star Wars — but also tales about kids with seemingly normal lives.

Deborah Granger, an East St. Louis native who now publishes an arts magazine in Los Angeles, returned to her hometown for a couple years in the early 2000s and spearheaded the Miles Davis Arts Festival in honor of the 75th birthday of the city’s famous son.

While she was in town, Granger helped teach one of the writing programs that had become Duncan’s outlet. She lost contact with him in the years that followed.

Her voice softens when she learns he is in jail.

“He was a very talented young man,” she says, later adding, “That’s so sad.”

Alice and Willie Duncan still wonder how exactly his path has led to prison.

“As a kid, I never had a problem out of him,” Alice Duncan says.

“That’s why I can’t understand.”

He spent most of his time in his room reading or watching movies.

He tried writing some of his superhero fantasies and made a short

film recorded on VHS. The Duncans, both in their 80s now, fostered 42 children over 34 years by their count. Some stayed only briefly, others for years. Willie Duncan worked as a laborer for Midwest Rubber, and Alice Duncan did a little of everything from warehouse work to selling Avon and caring for senior citizens. It was a solid, middle-class life with occasional vacations. Once, when Duncan was still a young teen, they even went to Disneyland.

Duncan recalls his years in their house as the best in his life, but he grew more rebellious as he reached his later teens. He eventually moved out. During a low point, he stole $8,000 from his foster parents. He says now that he had reconnected with his biological mother and younger sisters and had begun writing bad checks; he says he was trying to help cover the bills. The Duncans were hurt but ultimately forgave him. “[Alice Duncan] knew what kind of person I was,” he says. “She was mostly upset that I hadn’t told her what was going on.”

In the end, the incident seemed like a lapse from which Duncan would learn a lesson. He had a stroke of luck when his old teacher reached out to him. Lawson had read the Post-Dispatch story about Williams’ children after the fire and realized for the first time he was one of those kids.

Lawson had worked with East St. Louis Mayor Carl Officer, and riverfronttimes.com

Duncan racked up a few convictions for writing bad checks after dropping out of Talladega.

It was the beginning of snowballing legal and financial troubles.

“Trying to stretch a dollar is what I was doing,” he says.

He wrote bad checks to his dentist, the eye doctor and his landlord for rent. One of his first, in March 2010, was for $279.58 worth of groceries at a Schnucks in Illinois.

They were a string of short-term solutions, and they led to lasting problems. It was not long before his criminal record made it impossible to find a job, he says. Duncan had worked for nonprofit social work organizations, using his experience to counsel kids from rough backgrounds. But those avenues were drying up, and even low-level jobs in restaurants had begun to seem out of reach. So he made a deal with an old friend from the East Side named DeMarcus Brewster.

Brewster had his own problems growing up, and he had lived with Duncan off and on when he got older and had nowhere to go.

Duncan claims he hatched the plan after he returned home from one of his bouts in jail and found his possessions had been stolen.

He blamed Brewster and says they worked out an arrangement to settle up.

“I said, ‘DeMarcus, look, you owe money. I will work under your name. I will give you half the money, and you can stay with me for free,’” Duncan recalls.

Duncan had continued to pursue college after Talladega, but he was running into problems there, too. Arrests and jail time meant missing classes and often dropping out all Continued on pg 18

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COLLEGE TRY Continued from pg 17 together as bounced from one school to another. A probation investigator would later count five colleges and trade schools Duncan had to abandon because of repeated jailings.

He says he wrote his first bad checks to help his younger sister with groceries, and when his biological mother found out, she urged him to write more for cash.

To this day, he says he does not know how many he wrote over the years. He did it recklessly, willing the consequences from his mind even as he wrote bad checks to pay court fines for writing bad checks. He was smart enough to know he would get caught but did not see much hope for anything better.

“One might think well as many times as I been locked up how do I get by?” he muses in a letter. “Well I don’t.”

The bad checks kept popping up like tiny landmines he had buried and temporarily forgotten.

All it took was a pissed-off creditor to call the cops. “In my head, I thought I could put the money back, but I kept getting farther and farther behind,” he says.

Making things even harder, he had cases on both sides of the Mississippi River. At one one point, his foster parents cashed out bonds they’d saved for his college tuition to settle a case in St. Louis, only to see him delivered directly to jail in Illinois for violating probation, he says. If he was supposed to be staying in Missouri, he was in violation for going home to Illinois, records show. And each time he was locked up, he risked losing whatever job he had managed to get.

“I was trying so hard to turn my life around, and I realized I couldn’t do it,” he says. “I never was going to make enough money.”

Hillsboro seemed like a place where he could escape, at least for a while.

He and Brewster got an apartment together, using the money from student financial aid and whatever Duncan could make working to cover their bills. Duncan went to class and Brewster had a free place to live. Later, they repeated the process in Indiana.

Duncan had been convicted in 2015 for writing a bad check in Illinois and sentenced to eighteen months behind bars. Instead of reporting to prison as ordered, he

moved to Indianapolis where he rented a place in Brewster’s name, worked as an Uber driver and enrolled in a trade school.

But in early 2016, Duncan was tipped off by a notice from Yahoo! that his email account records had been subpoenaed. He skipped town, and when federal agents knocked on the door in February, it was clear to Brewster the gig was up.

Fed up with his ex-roommate by then, Brewster says he had no problem telling the investigators what he knew. They left, and he figured that was it. But they returned the next day. “They threw me on the floor in my Walking Dead pajamas and slippers,” he says.

Brewster was charged with being a co-conspirator in the identity fraud scheme. He pleaded guilty in June 2016 and was sentenced to seven months in prison and ordered to pay $14,159 in restitution.

He says he prayed a lot in prison, and God has answered. He has a new life. He says he doesn’t hang out in the streets anymore and doesn’t even smoke marijuana.

“In the Bible it says the truth can set you free,” he says. “That’s why I’m free.”

Today, Brewster is a 31-year-old minister-in-training at Shekinah Glory Church in Granite City. After he got out of prison in October 2016, he reconnected with a woman he had known since they were teens and got married. They had a son — DeMarcus Brewster, Jr. — in December. Everything is going well, and he wants nothing to do with Duncan anymore.

“I’m trying to get as far away from him as possible,” he says.

That is difficult considering they were one person, at least on paper, for so long. “DeMarcus Brewster” got a driver’s license from the DMV and set up bank accounts. He rented apartments in Hillsboro and Indianapolis. He worked for Uber and LongHorn Steakhouse and maybe a CarMax, judging by one of the letters that have continued to arrive. He even played Lacey several years ago in a college performance of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Brewster says Duncan’s version of the story is a lie. He claims he never stole his stuff (though he concedes that someone did). And while he admits that he did let his former friend use his name and information, he says Duncan took it much further than he ever realized, signing him up for

Malachi Duncan is serving a 45-month federal prison term. | COURTESY OF STE. GENEVIEVE COUNTY SHERIFF

“I was trying so hard to turn my life around, and I realized I couldn’t do it. I never was going to make enough money.” schools and applying for jobs he knew nothing about. A year before either of them went to Hillsboro, Duncan even enrolled at an online school called National American University and collected a $5,505 refund check after paying the tuition. Investigators say he didn’t give any of that money to Brewster.

“Malachi — he lies,” Brewster says. “He lies.”

Beyond that, he says, Duncan wasn’t just using the funds to go to college. He was feeding a gambling habit, he alleges, accompanying his biological mom to casinos around St. Louis.

Duncan acknowledges he did gamble, though he says it wasn’t nearly as bad as authorities or his old roommate have alleged. Investigators found he spent $147,622 at three St. Louis-area casinos between 2012 and 2015, although Duncan correctly points out that figure includes money he won and

pumped back into the machines.

He also says he let other people play on his cards, although he does not say who.

Regardless, he says he made bad decisions. He knows his deal with Brewster was never going to work in the long run. You cannot be someone else forever. But Duncan says he was not thinking long-term.

“I’ve never done anything thinking I’m going to get away with it,” he says. “I’m going to do what I can to get from one day to the next.”

Brewster had already served his time and was out of prison by the time law enforcement finally arrested Duncan in March 2017 in Memphis, where he was taking English classes under another name and working in a computer lab.

He pleaded guilty in July. The judge in his federal case took pity on him and arranged his sentence to run simultaneously to any punishment he might receive in a trio of pending state court cases in Missouri and Illinois. But he will still serve nearly four years in prison and owe more money than he can imagine ever paying back.

His attorney, Jason Korner, says it wasn’t as if Duncan was just using the financial aid for an easy payday. After all, he went to class and got involved on campus. He was using the money to be a college student. His crime is that he lied about who he was in order

to obtain it. “I’m no psychologist, but you could see he wanted an escape from his life,” Korner says.

“He’s not knocking over banks.

He’s somebody who wants to be someone else.”

If anyone understands that impulse, it’s Duncan’s oldest biological sister, Elizabeth Williams.

Now 50, she was the only one of her twelve siblings then alive who survived the fire that consumed their home.

In many ways, their childhoods were quite different. “I was the product of twelve children, and then all of a sudden I was alone,” she explains. “That’s where we were divided.”

Lately, though, they’ve been growing closer. Williams has been writing to Duncan every week while he’s locked up. He pens his responses in careful, handwritten pages. In other jails, he has typically landed in protective custody as a result of being attacked by other inmates or on suicide watch.

But he says he has worked to avoid that in Ste. Genevieve in order to keep his mail privileges.

His sister understands that Duncan is upset with their mother.

She says she had a lot of anger and acted out on it for years, but she eventually got her GED, went to college and got a master’s. She is now a social worker and has been writing a book about what she’s experienced.

She has never really made peace with what happened, she says, but she realized she had to move forward. She’s not sure Duncan is there yet.

“In his world, he probably feels like my mom is the reason for everything in his life,” she says. “It’s easy to blame her for our whole, entire life, but at some point as an adult, you have to take accountability for what you’ve done.”

That does not mean it is easy, or that she feels any less of a connection to him. “We’ve both been through hell and high water, and we’re still standing.”

And Duncan, too, is writing a book. Unlike his sister’s, though, his is fiction, a novel called Shogun Ninjas. It is about a superhero from a broken home who learns he has three brothers. The boys end up in foster care and briefly turn to a life of crime. The twist comes when they repent and learn to use their powers for good.

“They all get the chance to do better with their lives,” he says.

Like all his favorite stories, it is a fantasy. n riverfronttimes.com

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CALENDAR

WEEK OF JANUARY 18-24

Trenton Doyle Hancock, Coloration Coronation, 2016. Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 90 x 132 inches. © Trenton Doyle Hancock. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York

BY PAUL FRISWOLD

THURSDAY 01/18 Dance for Food The holiday season is over, but hunger never takes a break. A host of professional and amateur dance companies have banded together with Artists for a Cause to support Operation Food Search and Food Outreach with Dance for Food.

MADCO, Ashleyliane Dance Company, Dance Society of Kirkwood and the students of Grand Center Arts Academy take the stage at 7 p.m. Thursday, January 18, at the Grandel Theatre (3610 Grandel Square; www.kranzbergartsfoundation.org). Admission is any donation of nonperishable food (maybe be generous). At 7 p.m. the fol-

lowing Thursday, January 25, Big Muddy Dance Company, WUDance Collective, Convergence and others show you their stuff; again, bring more nonperishable foodstuffs.

FRIDAY 01/19 The Re-Evolving Door to the Moundverse Drawing inspiration from the morality tales of cartoons (a cat is always bad, but birds or mice are good; dogs also are heroes), comic books (equally flamboyant bad guys and good guys), video

games and films, Trenton Doyle Hancock created his own private universe, one in which the Mounds (half-plant, half-animal, all-good living forest) and the Vegans (they eat Mounds!) endlessly battle it out for supremacy. Both Coonbear and Bringback, a henchman in a striped unitard, are part of the battle, because they’re also some part of Hancock. Politics, race, class, identity and issues of social justice are hidden in these stories, just like Sun Ra’s own fully scored space operas in the jazz world. Trenton Doyle Hancock: The Re-Evolving Door to the Moundverse is a collection of these drawings, sculptures and prints that show part of the eternal struggle of good and evil, right and wrong, moral and immoral. The Re-Evolving Door to riverfronttimes.com

the Moundverse opens with a free reception at 7 p.m. Friday, January 19, at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (3750 Washington Boulevard; www.camstl.org). Hancock will discuss the Moundverse and his work at 11 a.m. Saturday, January 19. The show continues through April 22, and the gallery is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Admission is free.

Mane ’n Tail For young black women, beauty supply shops provide their first real creative outlet. Keeping up with the latest trends allows them

JANUARY 17-23, 2018

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CALENDAR Continued from pg 21 her prosecutor, a Harvard-educated lawyer who lives and breathes her Muslim faith. How can Susie prove Claire is doing Islam the wrong way? Can Claire show Susie the error of her ways — and mete out punishment at the same time? Encounters like this happen between Christians every day; Susie is in for a whole new realm of terror. Chicago playwright Selina Fillinger’s Faceless is a legal thriller with two souls at stake: prosecutor and defendant. The Repertory Theatre St. Louis presents Faceless at the Loretto-Hilton Center (130 Edgar Road; www.repstl.org). Performances are Tuesday through Sunday (January 19 to February 4). Tickets are $45 to $69.50.

Rachel and Zelda (Sophia Brown and Amy Loui) get down to The How and the Why. | ERIC WOOLSEY to learn how to protect and care, use makeup and get pointers from older women. It’s a communal experience that the rest of us seldom, if ever, experience. In her art, Katherine Simóne Reynolds explores how commerce and her community meet in these shops every Friday night. Her new exhibition, Mane ’n Tail, shows her work and also has artists LaKela Brown, Narcissister and Rachel Youn interpreting this idea. Mane ’n Tail opens with a free reception from 7 to 10 p.m. Friday, January 19, at the the Luminary (2701 Cherokee Street; www.theluminaryarts.com) and continues through March 8.

SATURDAY 01/20 Django Django Reinhardt broke new ground in the 1930s. The Romani guitarist had just three fingers (his chording hand was injured in a fire), but he played like he had six. Filmmaker Étienne Comar shows how Django’s “hot jazz” got France swinging, even as the Nazis advanced and minorities like him were doomed to the concentration camps. The movie Django recreates this era and Django’s auda22

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cious escape out of Paris. It screens at 7:30 p.m. Friday through Sunday (January 19 to 21) at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood Avenue; www. webster.edu/film-series). Tickets are $5 to $7.

Winter Luau Aloha, ohana. If the cold sleet and gray days have got you down, you need to get lei’d. The Winter Luau from from 8 to 11 p.m. tonight at the Budweiser Brew House at Ballpark Village (601 Clark Avenue; www.stlballparkvillage.com) might be just the ticket. Admission is free, and there are drink specials on Bud Light and Blue Hawaiians, along with deadly shot selections all night long. You get a lei if you arrive early; if you stay late, you’ll want to make sure you stretch out your legs and back for the midnight limbo contest.

SUNDAY 01/21 Wolpertinger Urban Chestnut hosts the seventh iteration of its wildly popular Wolpertinger festival, which this

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year offers samplin’ beers from more than 35 local breweries (how strong is our craft brewery scene?

It’s Hulking huge, maaaaan!) and special guest stars La Cumbre Brewing Company from Albuquerque. You like a deep flavor profile?

Check out the New Mexico visitor’s lineup at www.lacumbrebrewing.com. And of course Wolpi the Wolpertinger, who is something like a Deutsche jackalope and is a cute li’l fella, will arrive from the Black Forest to crack open this year’s special brew. The party takes place from 1 to 5 p.m. today at the Urban Chestnut Grove Brewery & Bierhall (4465 Manchester Avenue; www.urbanchestnut.com). Tickets are $40.

TUESDAY 01/23 Faceless It’s been said that no one is more zealous than a convert. Susie Glenn bears out the truth of that. Glenn is your typical white, eighteen-yearold girl. But then she does some online reading in the wrong forums and becomes a radicalized Muslim, deeply committed to perpetrating acts of terrorism on American soil.

And then she meets Claire Fathi,

WEDNESDAY 01/24 The How and the Why Rachel is an evolutionary biologist who has some cutting-edge theories about the nature of sex — and the facts to back them up. She keeps butting heads with the acknowledged leader in the field, Zelda Kahn, who is 38 years older. Sarah Treem’s drama The How and the Why shows how these two women fight to establish their findings in a scientific field without many women. Eschewing scientific jargon in order to explore the relationship between them, the drama explores how women of different generations reconcile the choices they make in a man’s world. The How and the Why runs 7:30 p.m.

Wednesday and Thursday, 8 p.m.

Friday and 2 p.m. Sunday (January 24 to February 11) at the Jewish Community Center (2 Millstone Campus Drive, Creve Coeur; www. newjewishtheatre.org). Tickets are $41 to $44.

Planning an event, exhibiting your art or putting on a play? Let us know and we’ll include it in the calendar section or publish a listing on our website — for free! Send details via e-mail (calendar@riverfronttimes.com), fax (314-754-6416) or mail (308 N. 21st Street, Suite 300, St. Louis, MO 63103, attn: Calendar). Include the date, time, price, contact information and location (including ZIP code). Please submit information three weeks prior to the date of your event. No telephone submissions will be accepted.

Find more events online at www.riverfronttimes.com.

FILM

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[REVIEW]

Don’t Know What You’ve Got Greg Barker’s documentary about three Obama-era diplomats shows paradise being paved for reasons of dumb vanity Written by

ROBERT HUNT The Final Year

Directed by Greg Barker. With John Kerry, Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama. Opens Friday, January 19, at the Landmark Tivoli Theatre.

T

he Final Year should have been the sort of documentary that practically creates itself, a brisk look at key players in the Obama administration as they complete their last year in the service of the president. Filmmaker Greg Barker seems to have been given almost total access to the inner circles of the White House as he filmed three of its major figures — Secretary of State John Kerry, UN Ambassador Samantha Power and Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes — at their homes, in their offices and on diplomatic business around the world (with occasional cameos

by Obama himself). Although the film works its way through a few important international events, it’s also light and personal; you don’t feel like you’ll need to memorize a year’s worth of U.S. News & World Report to keep up.

The trio makes an interesting team. That Kerry, the war hero turned anti-war organizer turned politician, simply exudes experience, should surprise no one. The lesser-known Rhodes is a smooth political player (we see him easily deflect a minor public relations crisis when a newspaper quotes him belittling the intelligence of the White House press), while Power seems calmer, more in-

Ben Rhodes, Samantha Power, John Kerry and Barack Obama used competence and diplomacy to forge a better world — what happened next will shock you. | COURTESY MAGNOLIA PICTURES

We can’t help but see the film from two perspectives: as a story of achievement and a story of lost opportunities. clined toward empathy with the people she meets. Finally, casting a shadow over them even when he’s off-screen is the president himself, an analytical, inquisitive figure still engaged with the duties of his job after seven years.

I suspect that Barker intended the film to be a kind of victory lap for the Obama administration, an intimate look at the personalities behind our foreign policy and a behind-the-scenes glimpse of international deal-making in action. Kerry, Power and Rhodes are on top of their games and making progress on several key issues: opening dip-

lomatic relations with Cuba, limiting nuclear development in Iran and getting the rest of the world to take part in an agreement on climate change. On one level, The Final Year is a movie about taking action in difficult situations; it’s a pleasure to watch competent, compassionate people applying their skills to real-world problems. In that respect, this is a film about people actually getting things done, a rare subject in the real world.

If only that were the whole story.

The Final Year moves steadily through various foreign issues and encounters, but then suddenly something happens that throws both the figures in the film and the filmmaker for a loop. The 2016 election gives the film a shock, an unexpected ending.

They continue to travel and practice diplomacy, but the rest of the world is suddenly getting nervous about the U.S. election and the unstable figure threatening to take center stage. Who is this newcomer on the rise and why are his Twitter ramblings getting more attention than the real accomplishments of Obama’s diplomatic staff? Rhodes, riverfronttimes.com

Power and Kerry are shaken, but so is the rest of the world.

It’s a strange thing to watch The Final Year in the same week as reading Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff’s inside account of the first year (more or less) of the turbulent administration currently in power.

One can’t help but contrast the chaos, infighting and general ineptitude the author describes with the casual skill and simple competence of the film’s subjects. One also can’t help but notice that nearly all of the issues where they made progress have been reversed or threatened with reversal by their successors for no reason other than spite or resentment of Obama’s legacy.

Recent headlines make the accomplishments shown in The Final Year bittersweet, like a lost cause or a contest where the rules keep changing and the finish line is moved. We can’t help but see the film from two perspectives: as a story of achievement and as a story of lost opportunities. It’s a strange question to ask, but we live in strange times: Can you be nostalgic for a world that we lived in only fifteen months ago? n

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Soup Dumplings STL specializes in exactly what its name promises, offering options stuffed with pork, chicken and even shrimp and cheese. | MABEL SUEN

[REVIEW]

One on One At his new eatery, acclaimed chef Lawrence Chen turns his focus to a single item: soup dumplings Written by

CHERYL BAEHR Soup Dumplings STL

8110 Olive Boulevard, University City; 314445-4605. Wed.-Sun. 11 a.m.-8 p.m. (Closed Monday and Tuesday.)

O

n a small shelf, just behind Soup Dumplings STL’s display case and order counter, sits a small golden statue that looks uncannily like the Bo-

cuse d’Or. Standing roughly ten inches tall, the shiny gilded figure of a chef clad in formal whites and toque, arms folded across his chest, is the food world’s equivalent of an Oscar — an award bestowed at the world’s most prestigious chef competition, held biennially in Lyon, France.

And here was what appeared to be that coveted statue, displayed unassumingly in the middle of a bare-bones soup-dumplings shop on University City’s Chinatown strip. The woman behind the counter sensed my incredulity and asked if I wanted to see it. As she pulled it down, I realized that it was, in fact, not real, but rather a replica statue with an inscription that read “Best Chef in My Heart.”

“He got it as a joke,” the woman laughed, but the fact that I was momentarily convinced that Soup Dumplings STL chef Lawrence

Chen had received the top culinary award on the planet speaks volumes about his talent.

In just a few short years, Chen has gone from an unknown cook at the Americanized mainstay Yen Ching to one of the city’s best chefs, an ascent driven by the success of his groundbreaking tasting-menu restaurant, Private Kitchen. When Chen opened Private Kitchen in early 2015, the words “tasting menu” were reserved for the sort of Continental-influenced restaurants that consider the namesake of the Bocuse d’Or as their founding father — at least in St. Louis.

To put it bluntly, if you wanted to go out for a white-tablecloth dinner, chances are, your chef would match the color of the linens. Chen shattered that conception with Private Kitchen, pushing us to see Chinese cuisine in a light outside of Americanized dishes, traditional riverfronttimes.com

fare and dim sum.

It’s not clear whether this was his original intention, though, or whether he was simply looking to run a fine-dining restaurant for the city’s Mandarin speakers. When the restaurant first opened, the only way to secure a reservation was by sending a text message to Chen through the Wei Chat app, then waiting for him to respond with a screenshot of a menu. Not only did you have to reserve your spot in advance, but you also had to select your dishes. Chen would then head to the store, buy exactly what he needed and create a meal based on your preferences.

It’s a creative way of doing business, but it has one drawback: It makes Private Kitchen seem inaccessible to the casual diner — because, in a sense, it is. A dinner at Private Kitchen involves some

JANUARY 17-23, 2018

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SOUP DUMPLINGS STL Continued from pg 27 level of production. It’s worth it, but it’s also a hassle. And while it’s only a slightly annoying one for a first-time guest, for anyone who’d tasted Chen’s legendary soup dumplings, our inability to devour them whenever the craving hit felt positively painful.

Last September, Chen decided to give his loyal guests what they wanted, opening Soup Dumplings STL in the storefront adjacent to Private Kitchen. Unlike its elegant older sister, Soup Dumplings STL is a casual spot designed for walkins and carryout. The design of the restaurant drives home this difference. Unlike his other restaurant’s formal dining room, complete with posh, upholstered chairs and elegant tableware, the Soup Dumplings STL space is sparsely appointed, bordering on unfinished. The room is outfitted with cement floors, wooden tables, a long bench, plastic chairs and white drywall; an orange mural with a soup-dumpling theme is the only decoration, save the wooden lanterns that hang from the ceilings. It’s comfortable enough, but the feel is austere, and the setup is fast casual. Guests order at a small wooden counter near the back of the restaurant, then wait for their food to be delivered.

By food, I should just say dumplings. For his sophomore effort, Chen’s menu is as sparse as his décor, limited to five different types of soup dumplings and a couple of prepackaged cold appetizers in a display case next to the order counter. You might not want for anything more. Chen’s soup dumplings are delivered to the table in traditional wooden baskets within minutes of ordering. They are dazzling, pearlescent beauties,

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Marinated spicy radishes are among the prepared cold appetizers on offer. | MABEL SUEN their texture so delicate, it makes you wonder how the exterior skin holds in all the liquid and filling.

If you’ve never had a soup dumpling, eating them can seem tricky at first, but do not be intimidated. Simply pluck one out of the basket with your chopsticks, then pierce a hole near the top of the dumpling to let out the steam and slurp out the savory nectar before eating the skin and filling.

Depending on the variety you choose, this might be tender pork, filled with a delicate sweet-and-savory jus that tastes as if a brown-

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sugar soy glaze were turned into a consommé, or one filled with ground chicken and a deep, roasty chicken broth that is nutty and slightly sweet.

If the pork and chicken dumplings are understated, the beef version delivers a wallop of intensely savory flavor. For these, it’s as if Chen packed the entire essence of pot roast and bone marrow gravy into a meatball and broth. The beef flavor is so concentrated, it renders any spices or herbs positively unnoticeable. If you had worried about making a meal simply from

an order of dumplings, this hearty dish will leave you wholly satisfied.

Chen’s crab-and-pork dumpling might seem like a questionable pairing, but the two ingredients work together beautifully. Small shreds of the shellfish add a subtle sweetness to the savory pork without taking over. In this broth, Chen adds just a whisper of truffle oil, infusing the liquid with a rich, earthy pop of umami that lingers even after the last bite — haunting you so much that you might feel compelled to order a second round.

Continued on pg 30

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SOUP DUMPLINGS STL Continued from pg 28

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Another interesting, and successful, combination comes inside Chen’s shrimp-and-cheese dumplings. Typically, pairing seafood and cheese raises my eyebrow, but these prove to be an exception.

Rather than being a cheese-filled goo-bomb, the dumplings contain only a touch of mozzarella. It’s mixed in with the ground shrimp to make the filling creamy and has the added bonus of absorbing the shrimp’s delicate flavor. The result is a rich, sea-like flavor that has just a punch of funk. It’s masterful.

For dine-in guests, every order of soup dumplings comes with a small bowl of chicken broth, garnished with a few shreds of nori, that is meant to be more of an amuse bouche than a first course. If you want something more substantial to pair with the dumplings, your choices are limited to a couple of prepared cold appetizers like smoked fish, a tofu-and-mushroom mixture, or a delectable tray of cold radishes whose soy-forward sauce belies a punch of red chile heat that creeps up and coats the entire mouth. This crisp, spicy dish provides a pleasant contrast to the main course of soft, umami-heavy dumplings.

People begged Chen to give them another outlet for these superb dumplings, and he took them lit-

erally. However, his acquiescence may be Soup Dumplings STL’s only real flaw. The menu is so limited that the concept seems better suited to a food stall in a pedestrian area or a dense Chinatown neighborhood, not a restaurant in a part of University City that nearly every single patron is getting to by car. Even with the handful of cold dishes available from the display case, it seems incomplete. I found myself unsure as to whether I had eaten a full meal or just some appetizers for a main course that would not come. Knowing the glory coming out of the shared kitchen for the diners next door at Private Kitchen, I wanted more. The success of Soup Dumpings STL could depend on Chen’s willingness to give us that.

This seems to be a theme for Chen. He’s a man so talented, so good at whetting our appetite that he leaves us begging him to do more — and even when he does, we still aren’t satisfied. This is the curse of his greatness, but it also ensures he will be the “Best Chef in Our Hearts” for many years to come. n Soup Dumplings STL

Pork soup dumplings ��������������������������$8 Beef soup dumplings ��������������������������$9 Crab-and-pork soup dumplings ������� $12

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SHORT ORDERS

[SIDE DISH]

to focus on proper protein sizes.

You’re not going to get a twelveounce piece of meat. Your body isn’t supposed to eat that way,” McDonald says. “Eating for wellness may be a new thing here, but that is what Chinese food is.

It’s about investing in and eating good food and finding interesting ways to do that.”

McDonald recognizes that focusing on the health benefits of his cooking might turn off some diners — especially those that are used to the hearty Southern fare they’ve come to expect from him at Juniper or Byrd & Barrel. Still, he insists that, fundamentally, his focus is on making delicious, real food, and finding creative ways to do so that will nourish both the body and spirit.

“My favorite thing about cooking is watching people eat and seeing the looks on their faces and the excitement when they try something new,” McDonald says.

“It’s an instant reward.”

McDonald took a break from his Good Fortune R&D to share his thoughts on the St. Louis food scene, the one type of food he’d like to see more of in town and why it doesn’t matter what’s on the table — it’s who’s around it that counts.

His Good Fortune Is to Be in the Kitchen Written by

CHERYL BAEHR

R

yan McDonald, chef of the forthcoming Good Fortune (1641 Tower Grove Avenue), always knew he wanted to spend his life taking care of people. He just didn’t know it would be in a restaurant.

“Right out of high school, I was planning on going to nursing school,” McDonald explains.

“Then I worked in a nursing home and realized it wasn’t for me. I had been cooking all through high school and college, so I decided to do that instead.

But I think everyone has something in them. For me it’s wanting to take care of people.”

McDonald started in the restaurant business at fourteen, working his way up from dishwasher to prep cook to line cook in a matter of months. His love of the industry was instant; McDonald found himself drawn to the energy of the kitchen, the lifestyle and the camaraderie that came from working a tough shift with the same crew day in and day out.

However, when he ended up working for Cary McDowell at the Wolfgang Puck restaurant inside the Saint Louis Art Museum, McDonald realized that his interest in the kitchen went beyond the lifestyle. “Cary McDowell was the first chef who opened my eyes to what cooking could be,” recalls McDonald. “Working for him I got to understand the professionalism, high standards and all of the small details that went into it. I figured out I was 32

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Ryan McDonald was recruited to helm the kitchen at the upcoming Good Fortune. | CORY MILLER passionate — and that I wasn’t all that terrible a cook.”

McDonald left Puck’s restaurant for the now-shuttered Sleek steakhouse inside Lumiere Place before being recruited to work at the esteemed Monarch by Josh Galliano. When Monarch closed, McDonald left town briefly to live in Costa Rica. Upon returning to St. Louis, he worked with John Perkins on his Entree underground dinners and then Juniper.

Eventually, McDonald hooked up with Bob Brazell for his friedchicken restaurant, Byrd & Barrell. From there, Corey Smale, the co-founder of Strange Donuts, tapped McDonald to help realize his vision for a Chinese/American restaurant called Good Fortune (Brazell is a consultant). McDonald admits that being tapped to lead the kitchen at the Chi-

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nese-inspired kitchen has been a steep learning curve, but he has embraced it, with nearly two years of research.

“I’ve read a ton of books, tried a ton of recipes, did a ton of research and cooked a ton of food,” McDonald laughs about his near-obsessive studies. “I’ve spent so many years cooking French and Italian and Southern food where people rely on fat for flavor. Here, we are doing healthy food, but it’s tasty. It’s a win-win.”

In that spirit, McDonald says to expect to see fermented items and spices used to imbue Good Fortune’s food with flavor. There will be a Midwestern twist on classic dishes, but McDonald says that does not extend to the mammoth portion sizes we often see in the heartland. “We’re going

What is one thing people don’t know about you that you wish they did?

I have a love affair with music.

Right now I’m into blues, bluegrass, jazz and everything Jerry Garcia. I like to play as well.

What daily ritual is non-negotiable for you?

Spending time with my fiancee Ashley and two-year-old son Charlie.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

The ability to be multiple places at once would be pretty great. If I could be at home, work and camping in the mountains at the same time, I wouldn’t be mad about it.

What is the most positive thing in food, wine or cocktails that you’ve noticed in St. Louis over the past year?

I’ve really enjoyed watching the food scene grow over the

years, but the most positive thing for me has never changed. For me, it’s always been the camaraderie, love and support that is shared in our industry. It’s amazing to work in a world filled with so many awesome, talented people.

What is something missing in the local food, wine or cocktail scene that you’d like to see?

I would like to see more high-quality, late-night street food.

Who is your St. Louis food crush?

I have a lot of food crushes, but recently I’ve had the pleasure of hanging around chef Cary McDowell of Pi Pizzeria and Matt McGuire of Louie.

These two guys have more wisdom and experience than most ever will. It’s unbelievable what you can learn from just having a conversation with them.

Who’s the one person to watch right now in the St. Louis dining scene?

I haven’t had the chance to experience Square 1 Project yet, but it looks like Logan Ely is up to some pretty cool stuff.

Can’t wait to eat his food.

Which ingredient is most representative of your personality?

Probably an onion. I can fit into just about any situation.

If you weren’t working in the restaurant business, what would you be doing?

I would probably be a conservation agent or historic renovation contractor.

Name an ingredient never allowed in your restaurant.

Margarine.

What is your after-work hangout?

These days, I like to go home most nights and spend time with family.

What’s your food or beverage guilty pleasure?

Fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, and Old Grand-Dad Bonded bourbon.

What would be your last meal on earth?

My last meal on earth would have to be a buffet, because there are too many delicious things, but as long as I’m surrounded by the people I love, I could eat grilled cheese and n be happy.

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DOGTOWN GETS AN UPSCALE SPOT Written by

ELLEN PRINZI

D

ining in Dogtown is a laidback affair, dominated by cozy pubs and dive bars. The Irish roots of the community are strongly represented by many casual establishments serving your fill of Guinness and fish and chips. One thing the neighborhood isn’t known for is anything resembling fine dining or offering a more sophisticated, upscale menu. That opening was just what co-owner Nick Funke saw when developing his new American concept, Stone Turtle (6335 Clayton Avenue, 314-349-1933).

Funke returned to St. Louis in 2017 after eight years in New York City, dreaming of opening his own place.

When he saw the storefront vacated by Felix Pizza Pub, which moved to a bigger location one door down in December 2014 after a successful ten-year run, he know he had a chance to give Dogtown something new.

“I wanted to create a warm place for whiskey and cocktails and bring a sexier vibe to the neighborhood,” Funke says. The name is an ode to the famous stone turtles of Turtle Park that grace

the side of Highway 64/40 near the restaurant.

The Friday before Christmas, his vision came to life when Stone Turtle opened its doors. Situated on the corner of Tamm and Clayton, the interior is cozy, with wooden tables, warm, dim lighting and a large mahogany bar. True to the neighborhood, Stone Turtle leads with an impressive whiskey selection, currently serving more than 80 whiskey varieties ranging from scotch from the Highlands to ryes from the Bourbon Trail. The collection will ultimately offer more than 150 bottles as the restaurant grows.

Funke’s New York experience pays off in some killer cocktails. The signature drink, the “Smoked Old Fashion,” is already on our (imaginary) “best Old Fashioned in St. Louis” list. After mixing the rye, simple syrup and bitters, Funke seals the liquid in a jar with applewood smoke, then shakes it up and pours it over ice. Another standout was “The Fencer,” made with gin, Bruto Americano, dry vermouth, grapefruit shrub and lemon.

Dogtown is definitely a beer-and-ashot kind of place, so this excellently curated list of cocktails is a welcome addition. The beer list is primarily local and craft, with sixteen drafts ranging from Busch to Urban Chestnut.

For the food program, Funke turned to chef and partner Todd Bale. Like Funke, Bale also spent eight years working

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STONE TURTLE Continued from pg 33

Innovative cocktails. | SPENCER PERNIKOFF

Chef Ny Vongsaly’s menu for Billie-Jean includes some hits from Café Zoë, including mahogany-glazed spare ribs. | SUZY GORMAN [FIRST LOOK]

Billie-Jean Continues the Wydown Magic Written by

SARA GRAHAM

I

f you’re a fan of the romantic siblings Bar Les Frères and I Fratellini, you might want to take a look at their sexy little sister: Billie-Jean (7610 Wydown Boulevard, Clayton; 314-797-8484), the seventh restaurant for owner Zoë Robinson, opened its doors two weeks ago.

The Mediterranean-inspired menu harkens back to Robinson’s first restaurant, Café Zoë, a muchloved (and much-lamented) Lafayette Square spot that featured contemporary American cuisine with Asian influences. Executive chef Ny Vongsaly has even updated a few of the dishes from that first venture, such as the mahogany-glazed spare ribs.

The small menu is big on flavor and presentation and designed to evolve as the kitchen gets established.

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Baked quail eggs are served in elegant copper pans topped with roasted tomatoes on the vine, eggplant relish and microgreens with brioche toast. Whole-roasted red snapper is prepared simply with lime leaves and a cilantro salsa verde. A lemongrass-and-lime-leaf pork-dumpling soup is rich with Asian flavor.

The “Seoul 75” features Korean grapefruit soju in lieu of Champagne, alongside gin and lemon juice. The “Oaxacan Old Fashioned” swaps whiskey for the expected tequila and mezcal. “Manhattan’s Rebellion” is slightly sweeter than a traditional Manhattan with rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, cappelletti and orange bitters, while the “Old Pal” offers a spin on the negroni with rye whiskey, dry vermouth and cappelletti.

A brief, but broad, wine list focuses on New World wines from California, Washington, Oregon, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and Australia.

Beverage program manager Will Brawley describes the selection as “fun stuff from off the beaten path.”

Brawley is especially excited about the sipping menu, which features exclusive small-batch, artisanal spirits for enjoying slowly before, during or after a meal. The carefully curated menu includes aged tequila and mezcal, madeira, Japanese single malt whiskey and other singular offerings. “We hope the menu will inspire people to explore things they haven’t heard of or previously tried,” explains Brawley.

JANUARY 17-23, 2018

riverfronttimes.com

As with Robinson’s other restaurants, the food, drinks, ambiance and service work together to create a transformative dining experience.

“I don’t just want to feed people,” explains Robinson. “I want to take diners somewhere for the evening, to make them feel like they’ve experienced something.”

The 32-seat eatery is located just down the street from Robinson’s two other restaurants (she sold off her third, Bobo Noodle House, to an employee in 2015). “I had coveted the space for years, begging the landlord to sell,” admits Robinson. “There’s a window in the back that is very New York. I knew I could create something around that and make it feel like it felt to me.”

That window inspired a warm, contemporary design Robinson describes as “dark, mysterious and sexy.” The walls are lined with prints from acclaimed New York modern artist Robin Motherwell and celebrity photographer Harry Benson.

Soft spotlights shine on each table to create intimacy and a private little world.

But while the Michael Jackson song of the same name might be a suitably seductive namesake, Billie-Jean is named in tribute to Robinson’s parents — her mother Billie and her father Jean — just as Bar Les Frères (“little sons” in French) and I Fratellini (“the little brothers” in Italian) are named for her sons.

Billie-Jean is open Tuesday through Saturday beginning at 5 p.m. n

in kitchens on the East Coast before moving back to St. Louis and spending time at Annie Gunn’s.

The menu they set out to create offers “modernized American staples at an affordable price point,” such as the generously portioned pork chop with creamy grits and a seasonal vegetable, as well as a perfect-for-winter mushroom gnocchi. And in a neighborhood known for burgers, Stone Turtle has another contender in its house burger, served with beer cheese and bacon-onion jam.

If you’re just looking for something lighter to help soak up the cocktails, there are bar snacks like spicy roasted chickpeas and apps that include mango habanero chicken wings, t-ravs and fried burrata. Served with a romesco sauce, the burrata is the grown-up answer to mozzarella sticks you have been searching for.

Currently the restaurant is open for dinner every day except Tuesday, with plans to roll out lunch in the near future. Brunch is served on Sundays, and offers both bottle mimosa service and a build-your-own bloody mary. For those with little ones, the restaurant is indeed family friendly and offers a children’s menu with childhood delicacies like chicken nuggets and mac and cheese.

Residents of Dogtown generally had to go to either the Central West End or Clayton to find the kind of food being served at Stone Turtle. Now it’s just a stroll down the block.

Ellen Prinzi is our bar and nightlife writer; she likes strong drinks and has strong opinions. You can catch more of her writing via Olio City, a city-guide app she started last year.

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thepageant.com // 6161 delmar blvd. / St. Louis, MO 63112 // 314.726.6161

36

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 17-23, 2018

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MUSIC

37

[PREVIEW]

Three Simple Words Country star Lee Ann Womack’s latest release proves that heartache never goes out of style Written by

ROY KASTEN Lee Ann Womack 8 p.m. Friday, January 19. Old Rock House, 1200 South Seventh Street. $30 to $50.

314-588-0505.

L

ee Ann Womack chose three words for the title of her most recent album: The Lonely, the Lonesome & the Gone. It’s also the name of a song written by close friends and collaborators Adam Wright and Jay Knowles.

It’s a perfect song for a perfect country album, one that’s both very much of this time and transformative for a deep tradition.

Across her three-decades-long career, the Texas native has written, selected and sung country songs with a singular power and aching grace. Of living country singers, only her hero Dolly Parton continues to sear and soar so powerfully. Womack’s biggest hit remains the gloriously inspirational “I Hope You Dance.” On her new album, she still dances — she steps light and sure through gospel-inflected tunes and twostep-ready honky-tonk classics like “Bottom of the Barrel,” as well as a final porch-burning cover of another hero, George Jones — but she does so through the most spare and intimate of atmospheres. And while she still lives in Nashville, Womack knew she had to get back home to Texas and set up in the legendary SugarHill Recording Studios in Houston to make this one.

“The studio is very old, and it hasn’t changed a lot over the years,” Womack says on the phone from her home between festival dates. “It’s a funky old place. It’s a Gold Star studio,

Lee Ann Womack’s power to move audiences is as potent as ever on The Lonely, the Lonesome & the Gone. | PHOTO BY EBRU YILDIZ which is famous for these echo chambers under the ground.

George Jones is my favorite artist of all time. He’s an East Texas guy, and he did his early records there. Willie Nelson, 13th Floor Elevators and Lightnin’ Hopkins all recorded there. I wanted to go to East Texas and make a record that reflected the music I grew up on, to capture that environment.”

The intimacy that suffuses The Lonely, the Lonesome & the Gone is also a family affair. The album was produced and sequenced by her husband Frank Liddell, who has become a major force in Music City. Along with close Nashville friends and ringers such as fiddler Glen Duncan and steel player Paul Franklin, Womack is joined by her youngest daughter, Annalise Liddell, on acoustic guitar.

“It’s a family business for us now,” Womack says. “My older

daughter [Aubrie Sellers] is on Warner Brothers, and she’s making a record and touring. My husband produces a lot of other artists and has songwriters that write for him. Anna is bringing up the rear; she’s the youngest and is doing a great job. She’s gone out with me for festival dates. I’ve relied a lot on her.”

Womack’s own connection to country music formed so early she can’t even say exactly when.

“Most people have this moment when they know they’re going to pursue music,” she says. “I don’t remember a time, even as a little girl, when I didn’t know that this was what I was going to do. My dad worked at a country radio station. I was around it a lot. I knew that people made records as a job. I remember watching Hee Haw and things on TV. I just knew that I was going to do that.

I was very driven internally.” riverfronttimes.com

While Womack is an extraordinary singer, with a paradoxically crystalline yet smoky voice that’s only gotten richer with time, she’s also a keen songcatcher and composer. Since leaving major labels behind five years ago, her process for finding songs has evolved into something that’s not really a process at all.

“The song selection process never stops,” she explains. “As a producer, my husband Frank is constantly hearing new writers and new songs. It’s not a process that starts or ends with a certain record. We have a pile of songs around here that I might not cut for three or four more records.

I’m constantly writing, and we all are. It’s not a machine. I’ve seen that. I was on a major label for fifteen years, so I know about those pitch meetings. Now it’s more organic. We have songwriters in and out of Continued on pg 39

JANUARY 17-23, 2018

RIVERFRONT TIMES

37

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our house constantly. They might just sit down at the dinner table and say, ‘Here’s a song I started today.’ It’s just become part of our lives. We live and breathe it constantly.”

When it comes to collaborating with other songwriters, Womack trusts her instincts and the intimate bonds of creativity, bonds that can form even when least expected.

“I usually have something I want to say, and writers like Adam Wright and Waylon Payne or Dean Dillon will help me get to the point more directly. When I was between festival dates, I had Adam and Waylon come out to a house, just to hole up and write. Sometimes I just had an idea. With the song ‘Mama Lost Her Smile,’ I was looking at family photos. I noticed that at one point my grandmother’s facial expression started to change. That’s where the song came from. Adam and Waylon are like family to me.

But sometimes I can sit in a room with someone I’ve never worked with before. I can feel like I know them. Our hearts are in the same place because we’re creative people, we’re writers. Sometimes I can click with someone I’ve never written with before.”

To intensify the intimacy of the album, Womack recorded one of the most beloved songs in country history, “Long Black Veil,” and she did it just as she would sing it at home with family and friends.

“I wanted to do that song because Lefty Frizzell did it, and he’s an East Texas musician, and one of the writers, Marijohn Wilkin, is from Texas. There’s a lot of darkness in that East Texas scene. I thought it would help paint my picture. We have a lot of guitar pulls around here. I wanted that vibe of people sitting in my living room, and we just have a couple of guitars and we’re doing old songs that I love.”

Country music remains many things to Womack, but with The Lonely, the Lonesome & the Gone, it’s clearly the deep well of feeling, a well that she taps with every breath, every effortless, tingling phrase, that matters most of all.

“People still have heartache,” she says. “It’s not all a party. We still feel loss and heartache, just like Hank did back in the day.” n

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39

40

HOMESPUN

VA R IO U S A RT ISTS 17 in 17 stlouisbluessociety.org

P

aul Niehaus IV graduated in 2009 from Truman State University with a degree in music. That makes sense; a horn player since fourth grade, Niehaus mastered valve instruments before moving on to guitar, bass and keys and, eventually, finding work as a touring sideman. But his other field of study — he received a minor in folklore — informs his work as a musician as much as his mastery of music theory.

According to Niehaus, it was the connection to the stories and the people singing the songs that sparked his love of blues and other forms of American folk music. He grew up hearing his grandmother sing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” and in college he would participate in bluegrass jams with local cattle ranchers.

“I like earnest music that is from the heart, and folk music is nothing but that,” Niehaus says. He has transferred that passion out of academia and into the city’s living, breathing live music community, both as performer and, increasingly, as a producer and studio owner.

For the past few years, Niehaus has taken the lead on the St. Louis Blues Society’s annual compilation album, designed to bring new ears and eyes to the city’s diverse and storied blues heritage. Like the past few collections, this year’s comp, 17 in 17, was recorded in Niehaus’ south-city basement studio, Blue Lotus.

“It’s a great project for me because it’s a chance to work with all of these amazing artists that I’ve always wanted to work with, who are so well respected,” says Niehaus from Blue Lotus’ cozy control room. “People like Kim Massie — the chance to help make her first original song ever come to life, I just cherish that. I am so blessed for that opportunity.”

Massie, who is arguably this city’s best-loved soul singer, collaborated with Niehaus on the track “Little Girl Lost” for 17 in 17. It’s a personal song, based on her relationship as the primary caregiver to her great-granddaughter.

“She had some ideas and lyrics and little melodies about that, so she and I collaborated on that,” says Niehaus. His regular partner in composition and performance, Kevin O’Connor, contributed drums and a stirring string arrangement. Together, the two act as Blue Lotus’ house band and arrangers. “He’s brilliant at scoring horns and strings to add the icing on the cake,” Niehaus says of O’Connor.

Working and writing with talents like Massie has been Niehaus’ m.o. the past few years; he has helped write and record original albums with Roland Johnson and Gene Jackson, giving those singers a bigger platform and heightened recognition in and out of town.

“If you want to be recognized outside of St. Louis, you have to do original music,” Niehaus says. “There are so many amazing people doing the same songs

40

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 17-23, 2018

riverfronttimes.com

every night of the week down on Broadway — and I mean no disrespect to that; I love it. But to set yourself apart and be celebrated outside of St. Louis, you have to do your own music.

“Roland Johnson could be a name like Charles Bradley, but not if he just keeps singing in the same club once a week,” he continues. “You gotta step it up and bring it to a new level.”

Any good compilation must act not only as a roster of established acts but also as a tip sheet for up-andcomers; by that metric, 17 in 17 provides a nice split.

The album kicks off with Devil’s Elbow, the new trio fronted by Mat Wilson and featuring David Jafari, his bandmate in Tortuga, on drums. The song “Got Conviction” has a little more muscle behind it than Wilson’s work with the Rum Drum Ramblers, and this lead-off track introduces the public to some familiar players in a new context.

“It’s definitely traditional blues,” Niehaus says of the track. “I chose this one to be first because it’s so raw and real. It’s just so concise and nice — it sets it off in an old-school, raw, low-down way.”

Later, Matt “The Rattlesnake” Lesch provides his own creation myth with “Rattlin’,” a slice of electric blues and wah-wah guitar lines and perky organ. His vocal chops are tentative in places, but Lesch seems to have carved out a little piece of electric blues tradition for himself already.

Another young band uses its track to broaden the borders of the genre. Annie & the Fur Trappers, a tradjazz combo built around ukulele, brass and makeshift percussion, sounds more like New Orleans than St. Louis, but Niehaus looks at their song “You Break It, You Buy It” as an important piece of the whole.

“I’m very glad we have bands like this,” he says of the Fur Trappers. “There’s a resurgence of this style of traditional jazz going on.

“Overall, with the whole album, we want it to be stylistically diverse as possible,” Neihaus adds. “I really like that we try to represent everybody at the table.”

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42

OUT EVERY NIGHT

THURSDAY 18

SATURDAY 20

$5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway,

SUNDAY 21

BROTHER JEFFERSON DUO: 7 p.m., $5. BB’s

ALABAMA: 7 p.m., $39.50-$165. Family Arena,

St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

CREED BRATTON: 8 p.m., $25-$30. Fubar, 3108

Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St.

2002 Arena Parkway, St Charles, 636-896-4200.

SCHOOL OF ROCK: 6 p.m., $8. The Firebird,

Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

Louis, 314-436-5222.

ALL-STARS OF HIP-HOP: w/ DMX, E-40, Scarface,

2706 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-0353.

JUSTIN HOSKINS & THE MOVIE: 5 p.m., $15.

CUCO: w/ Helado Negro, Lido Pimienta 8 p.m.,

MC Lyte, Young Bloodz, Murphy Lee and

STORY OF THE YEAR RECORD RELEASE: 8 p.m.,

BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St.

$15. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave,

Kyjuan, Tela 7 p.m., $43-$108. Chaifetz Arena,

$18-$20. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St.

Louis, 314-436-5222.

St. Louis, 314-833-3929.

1 S. Compton Ave., St. Louis, 314-977-5000.

Louis, 314-726-6161.

KEVIN GRIFFIN: 8 p.m., $27.50-$30. Blueberry

HINDS: w/ Sleepy Kitty, Middle Class Fashion 8

DIANE COFFEE: w/ Ratboys, The Potomac

TIM AKBERT & THE BOOGIEMEN: 9 p.m., $3.

Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd.,

p.m., $16-$18. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St.,

University City, 314-727-4444.

St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

LOVE JONES “THE BAND”: 9 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz,

KIM MASSIE: 10:30 p.m., $10. Beale on Broad-

Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis,

way, 701 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-

314-436-5222.

7880.

MARGO PRICE: 8 p.m., $20-$22. The Ready

MOBILE DEATHCAMP: w/ Nethersphere, Dead

Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-

and Devoured 7 p.m., $12. Fubar, 3108 Locust

833-3929.

St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

SOUL REUNION: 10:30 p.m., $7. Beale on

NATE LOWERY: 4 p.m., free. Hammerstone’s,

Broadway, 701 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-

2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

621-7880.

RAYLAND BAXTER: 8 p.m., $12-$15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

MONDAY 22

TODD MOSBY NEW HORIZONS ENSEMBLE: 7:30

CODY MITCHELL: w/ Spatula, Holy Posers 9

p.m., $15. Sky Music Lounge, 930 Kehrs Mill

p.m., free. The Bootleg, 4140 Manchester

Road, Ballwin, 636-527-6909.

Ave., St. Louis, 314-775-0775.

TORREY CASEY & THE SOUTHSIDE HUSTLE: 10

ROCKY MANTIA & THE KILLER COMBO: 8:30

p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S.

p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S.

Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

THE WOMBATS: w/ Blaenavon, courtship. 8

SOULARD BLUES BAND: 9 p.m., $5. Broadway

p.m., $20-$25. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar

Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-

Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

621-8811.

FRIDAY 19

TUESDAY 23

BRUISER QUEEN AND TRISTEN: w/ Summer

BOB “BUMBLE BEE” KAMOSKE: 8 p.m., $5. BB’s

Magic 8 p.m., $10-$12. Off Broadway, 3509

The 3rd Annual

R UNITED

Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

DAVID DEE & THE HOT TRACKS: 9 p.m., $3.

Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis,

we

314-773-5565.

JOSH HOYER & SOUL COLOSSAL: 10 p.m., $10.

BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

BRUNCH

THE KILLERS: w/ Alex Cameron 7 p.m., $25$95. Chaifetz Arena, 1 S. Compton Ave., St. Louis, 314-977-5000.

THE KNUCKLES: w/ Mathias and the Pirates 8 p.m., $12. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929.

LEE ANN WOMACK: 8 p.m., $30-$50. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

LEROY JODIE PIERSON: 7 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz,

Saturday, January 27 at Union Station

Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis,

Tickets & info: RFTBRUNCH.com

314-436-5222.

SOCIAL REPOSE: w/ September Mourning, Night Argent 7 p.m., $16-$20. The Firebird,

Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

ERIC GALES: 8 p.m., $15. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

ETHAN LEINWAND & FRIENDS: 7 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

JAMAICA LIVE TUESDAYS: w/ Ital K, Mr. Roots, DJ Witz, $5/$10. Elmo’s Love Lounge, 7828 Olive Blvd, University City, 314-282-5561.

KIM MASSIE: 10:30 p.m., $10. Beale on Broadway, 701 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-7880.

THE SCANDALEROS: 9 p.m., free. The Bootleg, 4140 Manchester Ave., St. Louis, 314-7750775.

SILVERSTEIN: w/ Tonight Alive, Broadside, Picturesque 7 p.m., $20-$22. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929.

THESE FADING VISIONS: w/ Dreaming Awake, Anima Animus, Bridges, Jacob Veninga 7 p.m., $10-$13. The Firebird, 2706 Olive St., St.

2706 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-0353.

Accord 8 p.m., $10-$12. The Ready Room, 4195

Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-

ST. LOUIS AMERICANA FESTIVAL: w/ Zack Sloan,

Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929.

773-5565.

Nick Gusman, Elliott Pearson & the Passing

HALLQUIST BROTHERS CD RELEASE SHOW: 5

TOM HALL: 7 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups,

WEDNESDAY 24

Lane, Cole Bridges, Les Gruff and the Billy

p.m., free. Stagger Inn Again, 104 E. Vandalia,

700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

BIG RICH MCDONOUGH & RHYTHM RENEGADES:

Goat, Christy Hays, River Kittens, Cara Louise

Edwardsville, 618-656-4221.

TWO HOUSES: w/ Hardaway, Breakmouth

7 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S.

Band, The Sleepy Rubies, The Dock Ellis Band

HEARTLAND MUSIC: 3 p.m., free. Hammer-

Annie, Guy Morgan 8 p.m., $8. The Heavy

Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

6 p.m., $12. The Bootleg, 4140 Manchester

stone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-

GOLDEN CURLS: w/ Babe Lords, Le’Ponds,

Ave., St. Louis, 314-775-0775.

JASON BOLAND AND THE STRAGGLERS: 8 p.m.,

5226.

Honeydew 9 p.m., $5. The Ready Room, 4195

TREE ONE FOUR: w/ After Wednesday, Synthet-

$17-$30. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St.

WINTER JAZZ FEST: w/ Yellowjackets, Eric Mari-

Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929.

ic Sun 8 p.m., $5. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar

Louis, 314-498-6989.

enthal 6 p.m., $25-$100. Grandel Theatre, 3610

MARTY SPIKENER & ON CALL BLUES BAND:

Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

ROLAND JOHNSON & SOUL ENDEAVOR: 10 p.m.,

Grandel Square, St. Louis, 314-533-0367.

10 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S.

42

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 17-23, 2018

riverfronttimes.com

Louis, 314-535-0353.

[CRITIC’S PICK]

St. Louis Americana Festival 6:30 p.m. Friday, January 19.

The Bootleg at Atomic Cowboy, 4140 Manchester Avenue. $12. 314-775-0775.

It may be cold outside, and the golden days of music festivals may feel very far away, but the past few weeks have seen the annual ritual of big-name festival announcements — the shuffle-a-headliner roulette of Coachella, Bonnaroo and the rest have primed the pump for the 2018 season. You can get a head-start on honing your festival chops with a home-grown celebration of home-grown music at this Friday’s St. Louis Americana Festival. Ten

local acts will play from the early evening into the wee hours, including absurdist country pranksters the Dock Ellis Band, the sister-led, harmony-laden folk of the Sleepy Rubies, the riverside soul of the River Kittens and several more. In any case, it’s cheaper than a trip to Indio, California, or Manchester, Tennessee, and the risk of music-festival trench foot is almost zero.

Young Guns: Relative newcomers Nick Gusman, Zack Sloan and Cole Bridges will play early in the evening and are worth arriving early to catch.

Be where the PARTY is

–Christian Schaeffer

[CRITIC’S PICK]

The Knuckles 8 p.m. Friday, January 19.

The Art of Live Festival, now in its fourth year, once again takes over several local venues this week for a string of can’t-miss performances.

Since its inception, Art of Live’s organizers have been sure to show love to St. Louis artists in addition to the out-of-town talent shipped in, with the all-local bill at the Ready Room Friday standing out as a particularly strong example. The Knuckles combines the considerable wordsmithery of longtime St. Louis rapper Rockwell Knuckles with the powerful, soul-filled voice of R&B singer Aloha Misho.

Joining the duo on the bill is Mathias & the Pirates, fresh off the release of its ‘90s-rap influenced new album Sadie the Goat. Rounding out the lineup is Bates, the hard-hitting local rapper whose September release Strange Woman garnered praise from critics and fans both in and outside of St. Louis. In all, this is a perfect lineup for die-hard fans of local hip-hop and newcomers alike.

77’s a Charm: Here at the RFT, we chose all three acts in this show last June for our inaugural STL 77 music awards, honoring 77 local acts on the rise. In other words, it should come as no surprise that we think you should go to this show.

––Daniel Hill

Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

THIS JUST IN

MISS JUBILEE & THE HUMDINGERS: w/ Gaslight

AGENT ORANGE: W/ Fea, Lysergik, Wed., Aug.

Squares 9 p.m., free. The Bootleg, 4140 Man-

1, 8 p.m., $15. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis,

chester Ave., St. Louis, 314-775-0775.

314-289-9050.

MOD SUN: 7 p.m., $18-$20. Pop’s Nightclub,

ALTERBEAST: W/ The Grindmother, Inferi,

401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-

Aethere, Thu., March 1, 6 p.m., $15. Fubar,

6720.

3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

SONGBIRD CAFE: 7 p.m., $15-$20. The Focal

ALVVAYS: W/ Frankie Rose, Fri., April 27, 8 p.m.,

Point, 2720 Sutton Blvd, St. Louis, 314-560-

$15-$18. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester

2778.

Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929.

STICK FIGURE: w/ Twiddle, Iya Terra 8 p.m.,

ATMOSPHERE: W/ Evidence, Fri., March 23, 8

$21-$26. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St.

p.m., $25-$30. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd.,

Louis, 314-726-6161.

St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

TRAVIS MEADOWS: 8 p.m., free. Off Broadway,

BLVCK SPVDE: W/ Civil Writes, Sat., Feb. 3, 9

3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

p.m., $7-$10. Blank

The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Avenue. $12.

314-833-3929.

DJ DAN-C DJ FRIZZY

DUKE’S STREET PARTY & DUKE’S TENT

You are FREE to party this Mardi Gras !

ALL THE INFO IS ON FACEBOOK & INSTAGRAM @dukesinsoulard

Continued on pg 44

riverfronttimes.com

JANUARY 17-23, 2018

RIVERFRONT TIMES

43

OUT EVERY NIGHT Continued from pg 43

THIS W [CRITIC’S PICK]

ALABAMA

Family Ar

636-896-4

ALL-STARS

Margo Price 8 p.m. Sunday, January 21.

The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Avenue. $20 to $22. 314-833-3929.

“Sometimes I’m Virginia Woolf, sometimes I’m James Dean.” If you don’t know what Margo Price is singing about, you’ve missed one of the most original voices in country music. With or without champion Jack White, Price would have gotten her due, though prior to her affiliation with White’s Third Man Records, the Aledo, Illinois, native toiled in obscurity. This year’s All American Made builds on her penchant for vulnerable ache and outlaw

cheek by sharpening its class- and feminist-conscious edge. On the TexMex-styled “Pay Gap” she sings, “We are all the same in the eyes of God/But in the eyes of rich white men/No more than a maid to be owned like a dog/A second-class citizen.” Virginia and James and Loretta would be proud.

Lavender Country Revisited: Following in the openly gay (if not quite so activist) bootsteps of Patrick Haggerty, Little Bandit and frontman Alex Caress open with classic honky-tonk that connects with all orientations.

–Roy Kasten

face, MC L

Kyjuan, T

Chaifetz A

314-977-5

BIG RICH M

Wed., Jan

Soups, 700 5222.

BOB “BUM

p.m., $5. B

way, St. Lo BROTHER

$5. BB’s Ja St. Louis,

BRUISER Q

ic, Fri., Jan

3509 Lem

CODY MITC Jan. 22, 9

chester Av

CREED BR Space, 2847 Cherokee St., St. Louis.

March 27, 8 p.m., $30-$35. The Pageant, 6161

Fubar, 31

BOBBY STEVENS: W/ Dan Sullivan, Nick

Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

CUCO: W/

Gusman, Sat., Jan. 27, 9 p.m., $7. The Heavy

MERCYME: W/ Tenth Avenue North, Sat., April

Jan. 18, 8

Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-

7, 7 p.m., $26-$66. Family Arena, 2002 Arena

Manchest

5226.

Parkway, St Charles, 636-896-4200.

DAVID DEE

BRANDI CARLILE: W/ Shovels and Rope, Fri.,

MGMT: Mon., March 5, 8 p.m., $26.50-$43. Pea-

p.m., $3. H

June 22, 7 p.m., $27-$83. Peabody Opera House,

body Opera House, 1400 Market St, St. Louis,

Louis, 314

1400 Market St, St. Louis, 314-499-7600.

314-499-7600.

DIANE COF

CHARLOTTE CARDIN: Sat., April 21, 8 p.m.,

MISSISSIPPI NIGHTS REUNION: Thu., March 29, 8

Accord, Sa

$12-$15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504

p.m., $10. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St.

Room, 419

Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

Louis, 314-726-6161.

833-3929.

CURTIS J BREWER VINYL RELEASE: W/ Whoa

NEW FOUND GLORY: W/ Bayside, The Movielife,

ERIC GALE

Thunder, brotherfather, Thu., Feb. 8, 8 p.m.,

William Ryan Key, Wed., June 6, 7 p.m., $24-

House, 12

$10. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis,

$28. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis,

ETHAN LEI

314-498-6989.

314-726-6161.

p.m., $5. B

DAVID BYRNE: Fri., June 8, 6 p.m., $40-$175. Pea-

PREOCCUPATIONS: Thu., May 24, 8 p.m., $13-

way, St. Lo

body Opera House, 1400 Market St, St. Louis,

$15. The Firebird, 2706 Olive St., St. Louis,

GOLDEN C

314-499-7600.

314-535-0353.

Honeydew

DAVID COOK: Fri., Feb. 16, 8 p.m., $25-$28.

PRIMITIVE MAN: W/ Spectral Voice, Grand

Room, 419

Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-

Inquisitor, Fri., April 6, 8 p.m., $15. Fubar, 3108

833-3929.

726-6161.

Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

HALLQUIST

FLEET FOXES: Tue., May 15, 8 p.m., $35.50-$71.

REGGIE AND THE FULL EFFECT: Wed., April 4, 7

Jan. 20, 5

The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis,

p.m., $15-$18. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis,

Vandalia,

314-726-6161.

314-289-9050.

HEARTLAN

FROGGY FRESH: Mon., April 9, 7 p.m., $18-$50.

ROGER GUTH: Sat., Jan. 27, 8 p.m., $20. Blueber-

Hammers

Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.

ry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd.,

773-5565.

I GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

University City, 314-727-4444.

HINDS: W/

II: W/ Lamar Harris, The Domino Effect, Monkh

ROGUE WAVE: Sat., April 28, 8 p.m., $17.50-$20.

Thu., Jan.

and the People, DJ Mahf, Former Members of

Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-

1200 S. 7t

Big Brother Thunder & the Master Blasters,

726-6161.

JAMAICA L

Sat., Feb. 3, 7 p.m., $10. Old Rock House, 1200

THAT ‘90S JAM: W/ DJ Nico, DJ Agile One, James

Witz, Tue

S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505.

Biko, Fri., Feb. 2, 9 p.m., $6-$10. The Ready

7828 Olive

JACK WHITE: Wed., April 25, 8 p.m., $53-$79.50.

Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-

JASON BOL

Chaifetz Arena, 1 S. Compton Ave., St. Louis,

833-3929.

20, 8 p.m.

314-977-5000.

TUNE-YARDS: Fri., March 16, 8 p.m., $18-$21.

Ave., St. L

JORDAN DAVIS: W/ Jillian Jacqueline, Thu.,

The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St.

JOSH HOYE

March 22, 8 p.m., $15-$45. The Ready Room,

Louis, 314-833-3929.

10 p.m., $

4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929.

TYLER BRYANT AND THE SHAKEDOWN: Thu., April

Broadway

LOOPRAT: W/ Monkh & the People, Le Ponds,

19, 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave.,

JUSTIN HO

Tonina Saputo, Fri., Feb. 23, 8 p.m., $10. Off

St. Louis, 314-498-6989.

5 p.m., $1

Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-

WAKER: Fri., April 20, 8 p.m., $12-$15. Blueber-

Broadway

6989.

ry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd.,

KEVIN GRI

MATT AND KIM: W/ CRUISR, TWINKIDS, Tue.,

University City, 314-727-4444.

Blueberry

Blvd., Uni

44

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 17-23, 2018

riverfronttimes.com

SAVAGE LOVE BLOODY BUSINESS

BY DAN SAVAGE Hey, Dan: I’m a professional dominatrix, and I thought I’d seen everything.

But this situation completely baffled the entire dungeon. This middle-aged guy, seemingly in fine health, booked an appointment with me and my colleague for one hour of some very light play and a golden shower to finish off with. We did no CBT, no cock rings, no trauma to the dick area at all. We brought him into the bathroom, and he laid down on his back, jerking off with a condom on his penis as my buddy was standing over him and peeing and I was saying all kinds of mean/encouraging sentiments. He came and… it was entirely blood. He took off his condom himself, so he was aware of the situation. He did not remark on it to either of us! He made ZERO effort to prepare either of us, either. And it was not a little blood in his ejaculate — it was entirely blood. He has never returned. Is this person a monster or a vampire? Is he dying? Seriously.

Mistress Echo “You can tell Mistress Echo that her client was not a monster or a vampire, and he is likely not dying anytime soon,” said Dr. Stephen H. King, a board-certified urologist. “What she observed is a person with hematospermia, meaning blood in the semen.”

While the sight is alarming, Dr. King assures me that it’s nothing to worry about, as hematospermia is almost always benign. And even if you had done ball play, it’s unlikely that kind of play would result in a condom full of blood.

“The vast majority of the semen ac-

tually comes from the prostate and the seminal vesicles, which are located deep in the pelvis just behind and below the bladder, respectively,” said Dr. King. “Very little of the ejaculate fluid actually originates from the testicles,” which primarily pump out hormones and sperm cells. “The prostate gland and seminal vesicles (also glands) store up the fluids and can become overdistended with long periods of abstinence and prone toward micro tearing and bleeding in this circumstance.”

Blowing regular loads doesn’t just lower your risk for prostate cancer, it also lowers your risk for filling condoms with blood and alarming your friendly neighborhood pro-Dom. “Also, these glands are lined by smooth muscle that contracts to force out the fluid [during ejaculation],” Dr. King continued. “If the force of contraction is excessive — a fucking great orgasm — this may lead toward rupture of some of the surrounding blood vessels and blood will enter the semen.”

Your client’s blasé reaction is a good indication that he’s experienced this previously, ME, because most guys who see blood in their semen freak the fuck out.

“In my practice, most guys who see blood in their ejaculate the first time are sufficiently freaked out to seek immediate medical attention, and their doctors usually tell them this isn’t something to worry about — unless it persists,” said Dr. King.

“In cases where the hematospermia persists, gets worse, or is associated with other symptoms such as pain, difficulty urinating, or general health decline, medical attention is definitely recommended.”

Back to your client, ME: If blood

loads have happened to him before, proper etiquette dictates that he should have said something to you about it afterward. If it happens to him regularly, he should have warned you in advance — at least that’s what it says in my imaginary edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette.

Hey, Dan: I’m an old guy, 68 years old to be exact. (Also a Scorpio, if that matters.) I’ve always been a pretty horny person, and I had a lot of fun from the 1960s through the 1980s with a number of lovers. I figured that as I got older, my horniness would lessen and I could think about something other than pussy.

Trouble is, I don’t seem to be less horny.

I find myself attracted to women in their 30s or 40s, but I wonder how I appear to them. I don’t want to make an utter fool of myself by making an unwanted advance — but the truth is, I’m still pretty hot to trot. What do I do?

Not Ready For The Nursing Home You could see sex workers (quickest fix), you could look for women in their 30s or 40s who are attracted to guys pushing 70 (gerontophilia is a thing), you could date women in their 50s or 60s with a youthful appearance and/ or attitude, or you could do all of the above. But you shouldn’t regard moving into a nursing home as the end of your sex life, NRFTNH. I’m constantly reading news reports about sexually transmitted disease epidemics in nursing homes and retirement communities. People may not like to think about the elderly having sex, but lots of old fuckers are still fucking. (And, as astrology is bullshit, NRFTNH, being a Scorpio doesn’t matter. It never has and it never will.)

45

Hey, Dan: My husband has a foot fetish. The feel of his tongue between my toes when he “worships” my feet doesn’t arouse me in the least. Rather, it feels like I’m stepping on slugs in the garden barefoot. Our sex life is fine otherwise. I resolved to grin (or grimace) and bear this odd aspect of his sexuality before we married, but I cannot continue to do so. When I told him this, he asked to be allowed to attend “foot model” parties. There wouldn’t be intercourse, but he would pleasure himself in the presence of these foot models (and other males!). This would, in my opinion, violate our monogamous commitment and our marriage vows. I know you often advocate for open relationships.

But you also emphasize your respect for monogamy and the validity of monogamous commitments. We are at an impasse. Please advise.

Throwing Off Expectations While “love unconditionally” sounds nice, TOE, monogamy was a condition of yours going into this marriage (and a valid one), and being able to express this aspect of his sexuality was a stated or implicit condition of his (and, yes, an equally valid one). If you’re going to unilaterally alter the terms and conditions of your marriage, TOE, then you’ll need to reopen negotiations and come to a new agreement with your husband, one that works for both of you. (Jesus, lady, let him go to the fucking party!)

Listen to Dan’s podcast at savagelovecast.com. mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter ITMFA.org

STREAK’S CORNER • by Bob Stretch

riverfronttimes.com

JANUARY 17-23, 2018

RIVERFRONT TIMES

45

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Safe and affordable.

H H H WINTER SPECIAL H H H FIRST MONTH FREE!

OVERLAND/ST. ANN $585-$625 314-995-1912 SPECIAL-1 MONTH FREE! Great location near Hwys 170, 64, 70 & 270.

10 minutes to Clayton.

Clean, Safe, Quiet.

RICHMOND-HEIGHTS-MAPLEWOOD $555-$645 314-995-1912

SPECIAL-1 MONTH FREE! Great location near Hwys 170, 64, 70 & 270.

10 minutes to Clayton.

Clean, Safe, Quiet.

RICHMOND-HEIGHTS-MAPLEWOOD $555-$645 314-995-1912 SPECIAL-1 MONTH FREE! Near Metrolink, Hwys 40 & 44 & Clayton.

Clean, Safe, Quiet!

365 Comm Rentals

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY! GRAY SUMMIT-VILLA RIDGE, MO

Building & 8 acres for lease at I-44 & Hwy 100 West (Washington Exit).

Perfect for retail or beer and music venue.

636-451-5333

SPECIAL-1 MONTH FREE! Near Metrolink, Hwys 40 & 44 & Clayton.

Clean, Safe, Quiet!

SOUTH CITY $400-$850 314-771-4222 1-3 BR Apts. Many different units.

NO CREDIT, NO PROBLEM! www.stlrr.com UNIVERSITY CITY $795 314-727-1444 2BR, new kitch, bath & carpet, C/A & heat. No pets.

WESTPORT/LINDBERGH/PAGE $595-$635 314-995-1912 SPECIAL-1 MONTH FREE! Nice Area near Hwys 64, 270, 170, 70 & Clayton.

Patio, laundry, great landlord!

Clean, Safe, Quiet.

NORTH-COUNTY $510 314-521-0388 Newly renovated 1BR apts for SENIOR LIVING 55+.

Safe and affordable.

245 RE Services

TAX SEASON SPECIAL stststststststst

Can get you up to $13,000 in down pymt/closing cost assistance.

Call to get a FREE list of homes with no money down. stststststststst

Fresh Start Realty CALL NOW! 314-337-1230

H H H WINTER SPECIAL H H H FIRST MONTH FREE!

You’ll Come Away Feeling Refreshed & Rejuvenated.

Call 314-972-9998

Musicians Available Do you need...

A Musician? A Band?

String Quartet?

CALL THE

Musicians Association of St. Louis

(314)781-6612

Mon-Fri, 10:00-4:30

FILE BANKRUPTCY NOW! CALL ANGELA JANSEN 314-645-5900 BANKRUPTCYSHOPSTL.COM THE CHOICE OF A L AWYER IS AN IMPORTANT DECISION AND SHOULD NOT BE BASED SOLELY ON ADVERTISING.

MUSICIANS Do you have a band?

We have bookings Call for information (314)781-6612 Mon-Fri, 10:00-4:30 FIRST MONTH FREE! WINTER SPECIAL! FIRST MONTH FREE! AFFORDABLE

AFFORDABLE SENIOR LIVING (55+)

SENIOR1 Bedroom LIVINGApartments (55+) $510 Newly Renovated Newly Renovated 1 Bedroom Apartments $510 Appliances • Energy Efficient Appliances • Energy Efficient Laundry On-Site Laundry On-Site HERITAGE SENIOR APARTMENTS HERITAGE SENIOR NORTH COUNTYAPARTMENTS AREA

NORTH COUNTY AREA 314-521-0388 314-521-0388

MEN 4 MEN MEN 4 MEN PERSONALIZE YOUR MASSAGE

PERSONALIZE YOUR MASSAGE BODY EXFOLIATION & GROOMING FOR MEN! Time for Summer • FULL BODY MASSAGE

• FULL BODY MASSAGE Body • SOFTGrooming!

SENSUAL TOUCH TANTRIC • FULL•BODY MASSAGE

• INCALLS • OUTCALLS TO YOUR HOTEL/MOTEL, HOME & OFFICE • TANTRIC

• SOFT SENSUAL TOUCH

NOW HIRING PASTA COOKS & SALAD COOKS APPLY IN PERSON 9942 WATSON ROAD 4487 LEMAY FERRY ROAD OR ONLINE RICHANDCHARLIES.COM

314-236-7060 • INCALLS LIKEITXXXHOTT@AOL.COM • OUTCALLS TO YOUR r i vHOTEL/MOTEL, e r f r o n t t i m eHOME s . c o&mOFFICE JANUARY 17-23, 2018 314-236-7060 LIKEITXXXHOTT@AOL.COM

RIVERFRONT TIMES

47

IN SEARCH OF CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY

DATING MADE EASY... LOCAL SINGLES! Listen & Reply FREE! 314-739-7777 FREE PROMO CODE: 9512 Telemates

EarthCircleRecycling.com

Earth Circle’s mission is to creatively assist businesses and residents with their recycling efforts while providing the friendliest and most reliable service in the area. llll

Call Today!

314-664-1450

Involving Corruption & Illegal Incarceration in St. Louis County Please respond to: 3427 Washington Ave, Apt 413 St. Louis, MO 63103

The Changing Pointe

llll

EVANGELINE’S

TAX SEASON SPECIAL

Bistro & Music House

stststststststst

Can get you up to $13,000 in down pymt/closing cost assistance.

Call to get a FREE list of homes with no money down.

lllllllll Sunday Swing Jazz Brunch!

Features performances from local Swing Jazz artists, such as, Miss Jubilee and Dr. Bob’s “Be Nice or Leave” Bloody Mary Bar.

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evangelinesstl.com

File Bankruptcy Now!

Fresh Start Realty CALL NOW! 314-337-1230

Hope for a bright future

Call Angela Jansen ~314-645-5900~ Bankruptcyshopstl.com

VALENTINE’S ONE STOP SHOP!

The choice of a lawyer is an important decision and should not be based solely on advertising.

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GET READY FOR THE NEW YEAR! FFF Lose weight permanently with Ultrasonic Cavitation, a non-invasive procedure that melts fat away.

FFF For more info call

Shop Patricia’s TTTTTTTTTTT

South City 3552 Gravois at Grand Mid County 10210 Page Ave (3 mi East of Westport) St. Peters 1034 Venture Dr (70 & Cave Springs-Outer Rd)

patriciasgiftshop.com

WINTER SPECIAL

AUDIO EXPRESS!

Lowest Installed Price In Town — Every Time!

Custom Sound From Factory Decks!

314-236-7060 If You Witness An Overdose

DON’T RUN, CALL 911

AccuBASS Correction!

Save $30*

Missouri’s “Good Samaritan” law protects people who call 911 from arrest & prosecution for possession of drugs or paraphernalia.

9999

$

Save More When We Install It!

Add Compact Bass!

2-channel processor reverses bass roll-off for richer sound.

Six-Channel Correction!

Turns factory Save $40* radio output $ 99 into clean signal for the Save More When best music ever! We Install It!

189

Built-In Time Correction!

37999

$ Ultimate Massage by

Summer!

Save $30*

Save More When We Install It!

•

314-620-6386 # 2006003746

48

RIVERFRONT TIMES

99

Two-For-One Subs!

5-channel amp, two 10” subs, 2 pair of speakers.

69999

$

Package Price …

Car Full Of JL Sound!

Five-channel amp. two 10” subs, choice of 2 pair speakers.

Package Price …

114999

$

SOUTH: 5616 S. Lindbergh • (314) 842-1242 WEST: 14633 Manchester • (636) 527-26811 HAZELWOOD: 233 Village Square Center • (314) 731-1212 Mon. - Sat. 9 AM - 7 PM; Sunday Noon - 5 PM

some weekends

South County/Lemay Area

299

$

Either One …

Package prices include only components shown. Kits, wiring, enclosures and supplies additional.

SWEDISH & DEEP TISSUE FULL BODY MASSAGE mon - fri 10 am - 5 pm

Eight-channel inputs clean signals from factory radio for full control with digital EQ and more.

“Hideaway” bass or 12” sub in compact box with amp.

Unless otherwise limited, prices are good through Tuesday following publication date. Installed price offers are for product purchased from Audio Express installed in factory-ready locations. Custom work at added cost. Kits, antennas and cables additional. Added charges for shop supplies and environmental disposal where mandated. Illustrations similar. Video pictures may be simulated. Not responsible for typographic errors. Savings off MSRP or our original sales price, may include install savings. Intermediate markdowns may have been taken. Details, conditions and restrictions of manufacturer promotional offers at respective websites. Price match applies to new, non-promotional items from authorized sellers; excludes “shopping cart” or other hidden specials. © 2018, Audio Express.

JANUARY 17-23, 2018

riverfronttimes.com

AUDIO EXPRESS!

Lowest Installed Price In Town — Every Time!

FIRST MONTH FREE SL Riverfront Times

AFFORDABLE SENIOR LIVING 55+

Newly renovated 1 bedroom apartments in North County.

Heritage Senior Apartments 314-521-0388 BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY! GRAY SUMMIT-VILLA RIDGE, MO

Building & 8 acres for lease at I-44 & Hwy 100 West (Washington Exit).

Perfect for retail or beer and music venue.

636-451-5333