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How Benton native Bruce ‘Sunpie’ Barnes found his way to New Orleans and became a zydeco music star BY DAVID RAMSEY
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COMMENT
From the web In response to Max Brantley’s June 12 column, “Drastic measures for Little Rock Schools”: I couldn’t agree more. Something has to change. The LRSD has run off the rails and cannot right itself all the while the children suffer. Those who can afford to leave the district do, particularly after elementary school. Those who cannot afford to are stuck, and it’s not fair. It’s not fair to any of those children. If they start in the LRSD, they should be able to and want to graduate from the LRSD. Just Someone’s Mom Has the “new” superintendent really been unable “to form a consensus on the school board” or has he rather lost the consensus he had a year ago when he began? Might investigating beyond skin color yield more insight? Have grievances and contract disputes been without merit? Have district actions been fair to those affected? Have makeover plans been based on evidence of their educational successes or instead on hopes, revealed knowledge, or urgency for just doing something whether it does any good or not? Have proposals actually addressed what students need to succeed and make good decisions for themselves and their community? Jim Wohlleb Even if the state takes over, there’s no easy solution. Max suggests a new school for SWLR, but then talks of trying to “work some failing schools off the state list.” So some neighborhoods are to be “rewarded” with a new school, and then some neighborhoods are to be “punished” for failing to come off the “list.” And you wonder why the black school board members are concerned? Are you saying that the local school board’s voices should be silenced for expressing differing concerns so that a state appointed board could take over? Does anyone think this will promote community support? One example sited for progress under the state for Pulaski County was a reduction in the disciplinary rate for black students. Often what happens is that teachers are instructed to “handle” the problems on their own and reduce the number of referrals that are reported, so the number of incidents are not reduced, just the number of reports on them. Also note the suggestion for changing district lines. All of the county south of the river would be one district with 4
JUNE 19, 2014
ARKANSAS TIMES
most of the tax base. But the cities of North Little Rock, Jacksonville, Sherwood and Maumelle could have their own separate districts; they would also have a lower tax base. This sounds like the plan for Shelby County where the suburban cities like Germantown around Memphis have been allowed to withdraw from the county school system to set up separate districts. This makes those people in those neighborhoods happy, but what effect will it have on neighborhoods like Franklin to have a reduced tax base? Is it any wonder that the black mem-
bers of the Little Rock School Board are reluctant to trust the promises sounding like “forty acres and a mule”? aqua blue In response to the June 16 Arkansas Blog post, “Domestic violence in Berryville; searching for help for battered women”: Researching why victims return to their abusers is not blaming the victim. It’s an important piece of a layered approach to reducing domestic violence. Police, courts, community programs, and research and edu-
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cation for both the perpetrator and the victim are necessary to make any significant dent in the problem. The roots of abuse are diverse and the ability to identify the warning signs is imperfect so no one “silver bullet” will eliminate it. Use all the tools we have at our disposal. Research is one of them. Rutrow Law enforcement blaming women for being murdered is insulting, dangerous and misinformed. Women return to abusers for a variety of reasons, including threats again them/their children if they leave, lack of alternatives (housing, income) etc. Domestic violence is complex and varies on a case-bycase basis. Much research shows an increase in violence/lethality when women assert themselves/leave their abusers. I guess even when women are able to leave, it’s still their fault they get killed? Fact is, our culture has a big problem with violence against women. Law enforcement, medical, mental health and school professionals all need training on how to recognize the signs and refer for help. Boys should be raised to respect women as equals, and men who abuse should be held fully accountable. Check out thehotline.org for more info. kateicl I hate to be categorized as agreeing with those who blame the victim, but I think at least some of the problem is a woman going back, at least without some consistent long-term evidence that he — usually “he” — has changed. I also suspect such evidence is vanishingly rare. I suppose it’s a self-perpetuating cycle, with the children of both sexes growing up to accept violence. I’m also concerned that both people involved in a violent domestic argument are sometimes arrested. It’s happened down this way and, I suspect, in many other places. While it’s not always clear exactly what happened, I tend to support anyone who is attacked defending themselves. I know I would, probably with the closest heavy object at hand. Doigotta
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JUNE 19, 2014
5
THE WEEK THAT WAS
EYE ON ARKANSAS
Last week, participants in the Delta Grassroots Caucus meeting in Little Rock asked a lot of questions of Republican Senate candidate Rep. Tom Cotton via Skype and he owned up proudly to his record of opposition to popular program after popular program. Yes, he opposed the farm bill. Too much money for food stamps. Yes, he thinks food stamps are a bad investment. If people starve, maybe they’ll get off their butts and work. He opposes spending money on highway beautification. Aesthetics? Blah. He likes highway spending but he doesn’t want to spend money on mass transit in big cities. Sure. It makes far more sense to spend millions on rural freeways in Arkansas that serve a small number of people at high cost rather than efficient mass transit that takes pollution machines off the road. He’s a proud opponent of the paycheck fairness act. Why should women be paid the same as men for the same job? The men who make these pay decisions have good reason for them and that’s good enough for Tom Cotton. Oh sure. He supports the concept of equal pay for equal work. Just not an avenue in the courts to get it. Cotton may be right. The long efforts of the Kochs and others to instill in voters the belief that strangling government will be good for them might result in election of a strangler. If so, there’ll be a rude awakening for a lot of voters.
The bigotry to come The Arkansas Legislative Council meets at 9 a.m. Friday, June 20. Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway) will be back with his demagogic resolution to reaffirm legislative support for Amendment 83 and its legalized discrimination against gay people who wish marriage equality and to otherwise ignorantly proclaim that Circuit Judge Chris Piazza abused his oath of office by doing precisely what judges are empowered to do — indeed are sworn to do — uphold both the state and U.S. Constitutions. Will a majority of the legislative council really declare judges in Arkansas have no power to interpret the Constitution? Mind you, this isn’t expression of a difference of opinion on interpretation. The Rapert resolution flatly states the judge has abused his authority and violated the separation of powers doctrine. If that’s so, Piazza has joined dozens of judges around the country who’ve reached precisely the same constitutional decision on the constitutionality of attempting to legalize discrimination against a group of people on account of their sexual orientation. It is a precise parallel to the judges who overrode the “will of the people” and said states could no longer segregate black children or prevent mixed-race couples from marrying. They, too, in the Rapert School of Law violated their oaths and defied the separation of powers doctrine. 6
JUNE 19, 2014
ARKANSAS TIMES
BRIAN CHILSON
The strangler
THE BEAUTIFUL GAME: Fans piled in to Dugan's Pub in downtown Little Rock to watch the U.S. soccer team defeat Ghana 2-1 in its World Cup opener.
Ross vs. Hutchinson: Clear choices
T
he general election is almost four months away but the major party candidates for governor last week gave voters ample ground to make a decision. Democrat Mike Ross and Republican Asa Hutchinson appeared before the Delta Grassroots Caucus at the Clinton Presidential Library. Mike Ross stood firmly for proposals — health insurance, early childhood education, a minimum wage increase -- that would help hundreds of thousands of struggling Arkansans. Where Hutchinson wasn’t flatly opposed, he dodged. Voters thus may already decide where the state’s most important official would stand on these big issues: • HEALTH INSURANCE: Mike Ross said he supported the private option version of Medicaid expansion approved by a bipartisan supermajority of the Arkansas legislature in 2013 and reapproved in 2014. He said he saw expanding health care as a Christian thing to do. Hutchinson waffled. “I’m optimistic that our legislators and our state will do the right thing with the 150,000 that have enrolled in the private option. We’ll do the right thing in terms of making the adjustments that are needed to reflect the values of Arkansas and to make sure this program is an incentive for people to work.” What does that mean exactly? Is he with those who want to kill it? Or simply wreck it? It was one of several times that Hutchinson smeared a program for working people by suggesting it was a welfare handout. He even suggested charities can do the job, despite overwhelming evidence that existing charitable efforts, however well intentioned, are insufficient for the need. Ross knows better. He said that the private option helped working families. Indeed, a significant portion of the nearly 200,000 people who’ll benefit ARE workers. They just make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but too little to buy health insurance. • MINIMUM WAGE: Ross supports the ballot initiative that would raise Arkansas’s $6.25-an-hour mini-
mum wage, the country’s lowest, to $8.50 over two years. Hutchinson opposes the ballot initiative. Hutchinson attempted a straddle. He said he’d rather the legislature set the minimum wage. MAX But this is the same as saying he BRANTLEY doesn’t want the minimum wage maxbrantley@arktimes.com increased. The Republican-majority legislature killed a minimum wage increase the last time it had a chance in 2013. It’s a reasonable bet it would do so again. Hutchinson doesn’t trust the voters most likely because every poll shows it enjoys broad popular support. • EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION: Mike Ross has a proposal to ensure that no child would be denied a pre-K education program. He would provide some state assistance for poor families. If you really believe in education advancement, you have to believe in starting earlier. Too many kids start behind and never catch up. Hutchinson has called Ross’ plan “silly.” Again, he suggests it’s a welfare program for the undeserving. When education becomes described as charity, we have reached a crimped and selfish view of how to promote the general welfare of citizens, once a bedrock of our government. It’s simple then. Ross likes the bipartisan plan to provide the economic stability and family values of broader health care coverage. He’d like to see working people paid something closer to a living wage. He thinks, like even scarlet Red Oklahoma leaders do, that the state has an interest in helping kids get started early on education. Asa Hutchinson agrees with none of these propositions. The choice is up to voters. Whatever they decide, they can’t say they couldn’t tell the difference. All the millions in ads soon to inundate us are just so much noise against such definitive distinctions.
OPINION
Warnings still false from corporate polluters
T
he opening act is always shopworn and the ending is always a boring anticlimax, but the audience never fails to eat it up. It is the industry lobby’s well-staged propaganda campaign against any new government effort to control, phase out or reform an activity that has proved harmful to the American people. People are warned that the regulation will bring hardship, suffering and ruin, its only fruit being a bigger, meaner government that will make Barack Obama happy by taking away more personal freedoms. This spring it is the campaign against the new regulations to lower carbondioxide and other dangerous greenhouses gases emitted principally by coalburning power plants and boilers. The rules were issued by the Environmental Protection Agency but, as everyone knows, the important thing is that President Obama backs them. They’ve got to
be bad, right? After several states (not Arkansas) sued the EPA in the early Bush II years for refusERNEST ing to take steps to DUMAS control the greenhouses gases that were warming the planet and causing thousands of deaths and millions of illnesses annually, the Supreme Court in 2007 ruled that the federal Clean Air Act indeed required the EPA to do something to curb carbon dioxide and the other pollutants if scientific evidence indicated they were harmful. Bush’s EPA had tarried on that and everything else by holding, like the rest of the administration, that the best government is one that doesn’t function. Candidate Obama in 2008 promised that his government would act, and the next year the EPA produced a massive
Obama action a step forward, but …
L
GBT rights advocates celebrated Monday’s news that President Obama is now committed to taking one step more toward a more inclusive America by signing an executive order in the near future extending employment discrimination protection to LGBT employees of federal contractors and subcontractors (approximately 28 million total workers fall in that category). Not only did the announcement fail to detail when the order would be handed down, it lacked other specifics that would normally accompany such an announcement. It is those details, especially as it relates to the scope of a religious exemption for employers, that will determine just how big a step forward the action truly represents. In negotiations leading to its comfortable U.S. Senate passage, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act’s exemption for religious employers became so broad that key groups committed to expanding LGBT rights decided it had moved beyond compromise to capitulation. Not only did that exemption completely exempt most religiously affiliated educational institutions, it also would
have allowed employers with ties to religious organizations to require employees to abide by strict JAY religious tenets. BARTH For instance, a religiously affiliated health clinic could choose to require all nurses to follow a set of religious tenets including a bar on involvement in a same-sex relationship. While protecting core religious liberties is a crucial part of the First Amendment, such religious exemptions have never been used to drive such a hole through civil rights legislation for employees in non-ministerial positions. Knowing that any ENDA that could pass the House of Representatives would not improve, this has left many civil rights groups less than enthusiastic about the passage of a law that would, at least in name, cover all employers. With the announcement that the Obama administration will move forward with an executive order covering contractors and subcontractors, the battle now turns to the scope of its reli-
report concluding that, yes, greenhouse gases endangered health and were the biggest factor in global warming. The industry campaign, including commercials, orchestrated condemnations by politicians and massive election spending by the Koch brothers and organizations like Americans for Prosperity and Club for Growth, started back then but picked up this spring with the anticipated rollout of the new EPA rules on power-plant emissions. Arkansas is not the worst of the polluting states — they are mainly in the Midwest — but the worst in another way. While CO2 emissions have been going down in other states, we have actually increased our production of CO2 in recent years, thanks to American Electric Power’s giant new coal-burning plant at McNab (Hempstead County), which went into production in spite of unanimous decisions from both of the state’s (elected) appellate courts that it never got lawful approval from the state to build it. When the EPA issued its draft rules this month, the entire Arkansas congressional delegation denounced them and vowed to fight to protect Arkansans
from the joblessness, skyrocketing utility rates and economic decline that the coal industry and the chamber of commerce say are sure to come. It even gave Sen. Mark Pryor a chance to show his disregard again for Barack Obama. No one talked about the consequences to people’s health and the future of the planet. Arkansas plants are puffing more than 32 billion tons of CO2 into the air annually along with hundreds of millions of tons of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury compounds, which had sent asthma, lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease soaring when the coalgeneration era began. Years ago, the EPA ended the growing threat of acid rain on forests from the Ohio Valley to the eastern seaboard by issuing tougher rules on sulfur and nitrogen emissions. But Arkansas did not force its coal-burning plants to install the units to eliminate poisonous flue-gas emissions. Back in 1974, when Arkansas Power and Light wanted to build its first coal plants, Attorney General Jim Guy Tucker insisted that they build scrubbers to reduce the
gious exemption. Activists for LGBT rights are turning their attention to lobbying for limiting the exemption to cover only employees in roles involving the teaching of religion or governance of religious institutions. On the other hand, conservatives working to limit the impact of an executive order hope that a pro-employer Supreme Court ruling in the forthcoming Hobby Lobby case will make the Obama administration gun-shy about narrowing the religious exemption so sharply. The avoidance of details in Monday’s announcement means that lobbying from both sides will be intense in the coming weeks. Along with the demise of the ban on gays, lesbians and bisexuals in the military and major advances in marriage equality (through the courts and through expansive federal recognition of marriages), clear action on equality in the workplace is seen as “the third leg of the stool” that is Obama’s transformative record on LGBT issues. The breadth of the religious exemption in the executive order will tell us just how solid or wobbly that leg is and will set a vitally important precedent for a future passage of a federal law covering all employers.
butions in making public radio in Central Arkansas a real force in newsgathering. Health challenges had made Ron unable to continue work several years back and they led to his death at a young age, 54. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Ron on both KUAR’s political coverage as well as on Arkansas Week. Ron was a master of radio news. Moreover, in a media market where the close relationships between journalists and those whom they cover sometimes create an impediment to aggressive journalism, he was at his best in asking the tough questions of politicians. Because Ron’s heyday in the news business overlapped with Mike Huckabee’s governorship, Huckabee received the lion’s share of Ron’s fair but persistent questioning. The thin-skinned Huckabee’s reaction to them showed that, whatever the governor’s significant political skills, playing on the national stage was going to be a struggle for him. In his 2008 presidential campaign and in the years since, national observers of Huckabee have experienced what Ron Breeding had helped Arkansans see for years before by simply doing a journalist's job so well. In all his work, Ron made Arkansas government and politics better. The continued good work of the reporters at KUAR serves as his legacy.
♦♦♦ Last Friday brought the news of the passing of longtime radio newsman Ron Breeding, who made important contri-
CONTINUED ON PAGE 12
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JUNE 19, 2014
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OPINION
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have long appreciated the balanced and fair reporting of the Arkansas Times and Max Brantley regarding public education in general and the Little Rock School District in particular. My perspective is, however, quite different from that recently expressed in Brantley’s June 12 column about the present and future of the LRSD. The worries, fears and doubts expressed by Brantley and others in the community are real and understandable. As one who is up close and personal to the district and whose position is to take the bigpicture perspective, I see a more hopeful and yet reality-based narrative. Beginning in 2013, a litany of significant progressive changes has occurred. A reform-minded superintendent was hired and land was purchased for a needed middle school in West Little Rock and a new and improved high school facility in Southwest Little Rock. An aggressive community outreach effort was begun with stakeholders across the district and leaders from government, business and service organizations. We already are seeing positive results from this effort as evidenced by a revived Public Education Foundation and new business partnerships in our Career and Technical Education programs. The first phase of an ambitious 1:1 technology program for fourth and fifth graders was started in 2013. Two underperforming schools were approved for transformation to innovative, needed, unique-in-the-state schools in the forms of Forest Heights K-8 STEM Academy and Geyer Springs Gifted and Talented Academy. Against very long odds, LRSD initiated new negotiations in the longrunning desegregation case, which led to a new overall agreement that allows for an orderly end to the case and increased control of the district’s own future. Finally, a facilities study is being completed in preparation of a districtwide facilities improvement plan where the needs of the whole district are identified and addressed rising above narrow parochial concerns. This is a very impressive list of accomplishments in a fairly short time, and it is only the beginning. For those who have seen superintendents, board members and new programs come and go and feel naturally skeptical about potential for real progress, there are three factors that make this time different from before. These
three factors present high-stakes GREG ADAMS pressures and GUEST COLUMNIST risks that can be harnessed as effective motivators for areas where needed change has been resisted and difficult to achieve. The first factor is the reality of competition in the education marketplace. Now that LRSD is under the School Choice Act, LRSD students have increased choices to attend neighboring school districts, several of which are improving and/or expanding their facilities. Private school and charter school options also continue to expand. Secondly, school districts can now be found in academic distress when a single school in the district is in academic distress. In the past, the risk for state takeover for academic distress was only if the whole district met the criteria. Lastly, there is the risk of state takeover due to financial distress. With the upcoming loss of desegregation funds, the district must significantly reduce expenses, and with nearly 90 percent of the budget committed to salaries and benefits, it is in this area where most of the savings must come. Avoiding the hard budgetary choices will risk being found in financial distress in just a few years. The pressures to dramatically improve academic performance and to develop a more sustainable budget have been present before but never to the intensity that they are now, and these pressures will continue to increase. These increased pressures provide us with a new and unique opportunity to make bigger and more innovative changes in the district both academically and financially. In reality, those changes have already begun, as described above. What the LRSD is attempting is something that is very difficult to do — find common ground and vision for reform in a large multicultural organization with a multicultural board. There are not many examples of such organizations and even fewer that demonstrate great success at reform. What is at stake is the education of over 25,000 students per year and the economic vitality of Little Rock and Central Arkansas. So, with all the pressures, challenges and risks, why be hopeful? I am a social worker by trade and have spent most of my career in the CONTINUED ON PAGE 12
NOTES ON THE PASSING SCENE
Racing 80 FRANCES BARGER DOESN’T MAKE a big fuss over her running records. She says she’s never been a real fast runner. She’s even thinking of pitching some of her trophies and plaques, and keeping only the “special” ones in her display case. (She says her kids can have the rest if they want them.) She also doesn’t like to train in the rain. She’s laying off that. But that doesn’t mean she’s not competitive. She hopes to do well this Saturday in Benton, the Arkansas Runner 2 Mile sponsored by the Saline County Striders, maybe as well as she did last Saturday at Burns Park, when she set a state record. Frances Barger, it should probably be noted, is 80. You’re probably feeling a little useless right now, aren’t you? She ran the Go Mile run, sponsored by Go! Running, in a time of 10 minutes, 43 seconds. That’s a record in her gender and age group for Go! Running races. She also holds the record for the 75 to 79 age group, 10 minutes and a half second. So maybe that’s not impressive enough. Would you be more impressed if you knew she’s a regular competitor in the national Senior Olympics? She’s never brought home gold, she laments, but silver and bronze, yes. She runs the 400 meter, 800 meter, 1500 meter, 5K and 10K events. Over two days. “I’d like to be faster,” said Barger, a member of the Arkansas Running Klub who runs a couple of miles or more five days a week, except for race weeks. She’s run injury-free except for a pulled hamstring in 2007, the day before she left for San Francisco to run in the Senior Olympics there. She was able to get to a doctor before taking off, and still brought home the silver. Barger has been running since she was 51, an age at which some people stop, stilled by wonky knees or ligaments, or just the fear of them getting wonky. She’d had a big life change and she just took up running. “I started out
2014
THE OBSERVER
just doing 5K races, and then as you get involved and start maybe coming in the top, you just start wanting to run more.” As a member of the Grand Prix series, she enters their races “that count toward Grand Prix points,” and shorter ones. Barger kind of wishes she’d kept a record of all the races she’s run. So does athleticism in older years run in her family? No, she says. Does she know of other 80-year-old runners? Well, yes, there’s a lady from Hot Springs who will be 80 this year. “We’re good friends,” Barger said, “but competitors.” How’s her bone density? “I had a little bit of osteopenia a few years ago, but I increased my Vitamin B intake,” and it’s gone. Still, she’s not taking any chances on slipping on wet ground, hence her “fair weather” status. Barger retired three years ago — at the age of 77 — from the state Department of Finance and Administration, where she worked in the motor fuel tax division for 31 or 32 years. She quit because of problems with her eyesight. That’s also kept her from training with the marathon group, since they start at 6 a.m., when driving is difficult for her. “It was fun, though.” She’s done a few marathons and half marathons, but like running in the rain, she’s given that up. You’ve got to slow down sometime. She even took a few months off after the last national Senior Olympics, in Cleveland. She plans to compete this fall in Arkansas’s Senior Olympics. When she’s not running, Barger is hiking. She belongs to a hiking group and has hiked all over the country and Canada. “I don’t want to sit down and do nothing,” she said. The Observer would love to go for a run with Barger. But we know we couldn’t keep up, though we’ve got a couple of decades on her. Too much sitting down, too much doing nothing. Journalism does nothing for the old bones, or young ones for that matter.
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Next up, the faked moon landing The widely accepted story is that 20 children and six staff members were slain in December 2012 at Sandy Hook, Conn., elementary school, the worst school massacre in U.S. history. We say “widely accepted” story because the nut fringe has developed a theory that this was a hoax invented by the Obama administration to encourage the anti-gun movement. A Facebook video is at the root of this. Snopes has debunked it at some length. Now the local angle: At least two candidates for state House of Representative seem to have bought into the hoax theory, based on Facebook postings June 16. First there’s Wayne Willems, a Libertarian from Glen Rose, who started a long string of Facebook debate by posting an article that claims the shooting was a hoax and no one was killed. When asked pointedly on Facebook, “Do you share the view that no children died in the Sandy Hook incident and that it was done to promote an anti-gun agenda?” Willems replied that he was simply passing along the article, “But from all the evidence I’ve viewed about this incident … I’m kind of in the grey area.” Another candidate, Eddie Moser, of Bella Vista chimed in, “I am running for office also and I personally believe it was a hoax.” Jessica Bearden Paxton, chair of the Arkansas Libertarian Party, responded to a version of this story, which first appeared on the Arkansas Blog: “We strongly disavow the comments expressed by two Libertarian candidates concerning the terrible tragedy in Sandy Hook. Those views are not representative of the Libertarian Party of Arkansas and should not be construed as such. “ The offending Facebook comment string has apparently been taken down.
Bleeding red In the tax year ending June 30, 2013, the Razorback Foundation, the secretive, university-controlled putative nonprofit that supports athletics at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, ran a deficit. The foundation had $28 million in total revenue, versus $37.7 million the year before. Expenses exceeded revenue by $9.3 million, versus a $20.7 million surplus the year before. The foundation spent $30.6 million in support of UA sports — scholarships, construction and similar. That was a substantial increase over the previous year, CONTINUED ON PAGE 11 10
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The devil’s in the dollars UALR survey finds lack of basic ‘financial literacy’ among inmates. BY DAVID KOON
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or years, study after study has borne out the idea that if you want to fix the problem of crime and recidivism in America, figuring out the puzzle of poverty, desperation and why some people can’t seem to get ahead might be a good place to start. A group of researchers at UALR has recently taken a step toward a better understanding of the issue, revealing the preliminary findings of a survey of basic “financial literacy” among currently incarcerated Arkansas inmates. The results of that survey show a widespread lack of knowledge about banking, finance and predatory lending among inmates, and may eventually lay the groundwork for a new approach to combating recidivism: teaching inmates how to hold on to their money so they don’t get desperate enough to return to crime. A report on the survey, titled “Racial Differences in Financial Literacy Among Prisoners in Arkansas’s Correctional Institutions,” was presented to the UALR Institute of Race and Ethnicity this month. A joint project of the UALR Department of Economics and Finance and the UALR Department of Criminal Justice, the
survey was funded by a grant from the UALR Institute on Race and Ethnicity. The 43-question surveys were filled out by 299 male prisoners at correctional facilities in Pine Bluff, Wrightsville and Malvern. Collected between September 2013 to March 2014, the survey includes questions about the inmates’ educational background, past incarcerations, basic understanding of banking, lending and finance, and their history of borrowing, salary, “predatory lending” participation and income. The results were compared to a control group of financial literacy surveys completed by 200 non-incarcerated Arkansas males, drawn from a nationwide financial literacy survey conducted by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA, a private, nonprofit investor protection agency. A sample of the inmate survey results reveal: • 27 percent of inmates surveyed had never opened a checking account, while only 10.4 percent of non-inmates had never opened one. • 56.2 percent of inmates surveyed had never had a credit card, compared to 27.5
percent of non-incarcerated Arkansas males. • 32.8 percent of white inmates had owned a home, compared to only 16.9 percent of non-white inmates who had. • 16.8 percent of inmates were “nonbanked,” meaning they’d never opened an account of any kind at a bank. Only 8 percent of non-inmates had never opened a checking or savings account. • The percentage of incarcerated men who have utilized a payday lender in the past is almost exactly double that of nonincarcerated Arkansas men: 11.1 percent versus 22.5 percent in inmates. Racially, 29.3 percent of white inmates in the survey had sought a loan from a payday lender, compared to 17.4 percent of non-whites. • The percentage of inmates who have ever pawned an item is over three times that of the non-incarcerated: 21.9 percent versus 75.4 percent of inmates. • The percentage of inmates who have ever bought something from a “rent-toown” store was more than four times that of non-incarcerated people: 11.1 percent versus 45.1 percent of inmates, with 48.4 percent of whites and 42.7 percent of nonwhites saying they had bought something “rent to own.” • Only 33.1 percent of inmates in the survey could correctly answer this question: “If you put $100 in a bank account paying 5 percent interest, how much will you have in your account after one year?” 79.6 percent of non-incarcerated males got the same question right. • Asked the average yearly income in their last job, the average for white inmates was $24,482, while the average for nonwhites was $17,381 per year. Dr. Kenneth Galchus with the UALR Department of Economics and Finance is the lead author of the study. Director of the university’s Kenneth Pat Wilson Center for Economic Education, one of Galchus’ duties is teaching financial literacy courses for K-12 teachers. He was looking to bring similar information to other groups three years ago, when a chaplain with a minimum-security Department of Community Correction facility approached him about teaching basic finance to inmates. Three times a year — March, June and October — he teaches three one-hour workshops to incarcerated men. Early on, Galchus said, it became obvious that most of the men in his classes had CONTINUED ON PAGE 12
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BIG PICTURE
SPEAK, ARKANSAS: Daniel Lilly In the latest edition of “Speak, Arkansas,” in which everyday Arkansans tell their stories in their own words, we hear from Daniel Lilly, a professional dog-walker and familiar presence in the River Market district. Find him at facebook.com/Corporal.K9.
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was born in Springfield, Ill., and went to 10 schools in 12 years before I graduated. I was a military brat; we moved around a lot. My mom was a computer programmer, and I had three step-fathers: Two of them worked for the post office and the middle one was just a pile of crap. My first pet was a dachshund mutt named Frisky. And then she got a brother named Caesar, who was a full-bred dachshund. Caesar was this hyper, spastic dog, and Frisky would just look at him and roll her eyes, like, “Oh God, why am I stuck on this planet with this douchebag.” I was 8 or 9. It was before my parents got divorced, because we couldn’t afford pets after that. I went to Walt Disney World after my first year of college and worked there for three years as a VIP tour guide. I speak 11 languages and am fluent in five. I took them all in school. Languages are just easy for me. Growing up the way that I did — we were poor. We were governmentcheese, donated-foodfrom-the-church poor. And there was no way that somebody growing up the way I did was ever going to see a passport or a trip to Europe or anything like that. So learning languages was a way for me to travel vicariously. After Disney World, Clinton had taken office and promised to lift the ban on gays in the military. That ban was the only reason I’d never joined to Marine Corps, something I’d always wanted to do, so I joined and shipped out the Parris Island, S.C., in 1993. Boot camp takes 13 weeks, but I developed tendonitis in my knees, so I ended up breaking the all-time record of a recruit at Paris Island and spent 319 days in boot camp there. I was thinking I was going to have to manufacture fake girlfriends, but it wasn’t like that at all. And that was way back in ’95. Even then, in the testosterone-fueled Marine Corps, it was totally fine, until it became not fine. It became not fine one night when I had sex with two Marines in a hotel room off-base while two other Marines watched. The two Marines who watched were so “psychologically
traumatized” that they turned us in the following Monday and all five of us got kicked out for homosexuality, which is what it says on my discharge papers. That was Super Bowl Sunday 1995. I then got the opportunity to live rent-free with an openly gay neurosurgeon in some podunk backwater called North Little Rock, Arkansas. And that’s how I landed here. Two weeks after I landed in Arkansas, Southwest Airlines opened up a reservation call center at the airport. I walked in off the street, they loved my 11 languages and didn’t give a crap about the homosexuality thing, and so I got the job and was there for nine and a half years, until they closed the center. Two weeks into the layoff, I’m sitting at home watching “Oprah,” and she says, “Well, if you’re making a change in your life — if you’ve been laid off or something — don’t just sit around watching daytime TV and eating bonbons.” I’m sitting there watching at 3:30 in the afternoon with a Whitman’s Chocolate Sampler on my lap and I say, “OK, Oprah. I get it. I’m listening.” She said to get a dog, get a hobby and get off your ass. And so I got a dog and started walking it through my neighborhood. Now, nine years later, it’s been 246 dogs. I walk up to 11 at once, around the clock, 24 hours a day. I’ve been bitten before. Twice, dogs have gotten out of their collars and taken off running down the street. Once it was a Chow mix and the other time it was a Pomeranian named Satan. I chased them. We got both of them, thank God. Satan is the one I really remember. I really get a kick out of overhearing people say, “Oh look, there’s the dog-walker.” I’ve overheard people saying, “I saw him walking 17 dogs, 23 dogs, 109 dogs,” and I’m not going to go out of my way to squelch those rumors. I’m just going to let the urban legend go forward. I don’t know if Oprah saved my life, but I think the dogs did. But I’m sure glad I listened to Oprah. — As told to Will Stephenson
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INSIDER, CONT. likely a product of the big construction needs. The foundation relied on reserves to cover the spending. At the end of the year, it had about $39 million in assets versus $47 million the year before. Some highlights from the foundation’s 990 for the tax year ending June 2013: INDIVIDUAL COMPENSATION (all figures below rounded off): Norm DeBriyn, associate director, $126,000 Sean Rochelle, executive director, $121,000 Billye Veteto, chief financial officer, $106,000 Harold Horton, former foundation director, $158,000 PAYMENT TO INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS Mike Anderson, basketball coach, $700,000 for “speaking engagements.” Frank Broyles, former athletic director, $417,000 for “speaking engagements.” (His emeritus status with the UA and foundation ends June 30, 2014.) John Pelphrey, former basketball coach, $410,000 for contract buyout. John L. Smith, former football coach, $300,000 for “speaking engagements.” Bobby Petrino, former football coach fired in April 2012, $291,000 for “speaking engagements.” TRANSACTIONS WITH “INTERESTED PARTIES” Jeff Long, UA athletic director, $400,000 loan from the foundation (balance due said to be $454,000) for life insurance.
Marching for inequality On Thursday, the National Organization for Marriage, an anti-gay group, will hold a March for Marriage in Washington, D.C., that’s transparently intended to put pressure on the U.S. Supreme Court. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the nation’s leading opportunist, will be front-line marcher in the demonstration for continued legal discrimination against gay people. He’ll speak Thursday. He’s even out-Raperted Br’er Jason Rapert by flatly calling for the impeachment of Pulaski Circuit Judge Chris Piazza, who held that constitutional guarantees of equal rights and due process also applied to gay people. “When members of the judiciary act as if they were entitled to the power of all three branches of government, it creates a disturbing abuse of power,” Huckabee said recently. www.arktimes.com
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DUMAS, CONT. Continued from page 10
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no clue about even the most rudimentary aspects of handling money. “I’d get questions like: How do I balance a checkbook? ‘How do I open a savings account at a bank, or a checking account?’ ” Galchus said. “One question that floored me — this was about two years ago — this guy asked me, ‘When you get a credit card bill in the mail, can you pay it off at one time, or do you have to pay it off over time?’ ... I began thinking, ‘We release these people back into society, and if they have no clue about things dealing with personal finance, we’re setting them up for failure from the beginning.’ ” Last year, Galchus was talking to colleagues about the issue, which led to the collaboration with the Department of Criminal Justice. Galchus said that a search of the academic literature on the subject found that no one had ever looked into the level of fiscal knowledge among inmates. Dr. Timothy Brown is an assistant professor in the UALR Department of Criminal Justice, and a co-author of the project. He said the connection between recidivism and financial hardship is well established,
with desperation often forcing people back into criminality. Brown believes the survey shows why inmates often fall into that desperation trap after they’re released. “It’s important to get a job when you get out, but it’s also important to utilize money in the best way possible,” he said. “What financial literacy is talking about is looking at the ways people use money incorrectly, or not getting the most use out of it. Instead of having a bank account, they might go cash checks at a supermarket, or use payday loans.” Brown said the figure he found most surprising in the survey was the number of inmates who said they had never opened a savings or checking account at a bank, something that he said could possibly be attributed to mistrust or a lack of “cultural capital” — financial role models to show them how to do basic financial tasks. “If they go to a pawn shop,” Brown said, “they understand how a pawn shop makes money. ... But if they go to a bank and they put their money in a savings account, they don’t necessarily understand how the bank makes money and so they don’t necessarily trust it. They never had that cultural capital from their parents to teach them how that works.”
Brown and his colleges plan to formally publish results from the survey in academic journals soon. While the results of the survey will not answer the recidivism question, Brown said, they can contribute to an answer, including attempts to teach basic finance to inmates to help them better manage their money on the outside. “We can make sure that they have the tools when they get out,” he said. “Not only the tools to gain a job, but the tools to sustain income and grow assets.” Galchus said he hopes to apply for grants to devise a financial literacy program to be taught in prisons all over the state. He believes the level of financial illiteracy would likely be similar in prisons all over the country, and that a program in Arkansas could serve as a model that could be replicated elsewhere. “If we turn these people loose with job skills, but lacking in financial literacy,” Galchus said, “we’re just setting them up for failure. A lot of people might say, ‘They committed crimes. Why should we do anything for them?’ But that’s just going to increase the recidivism rate. We need to give these people support when they get out of prison, or they’ll wind up back in prison.”
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sulfur and nitrogen emissions, but the Public Service Commission concluded that Arkansas’s air probably would still be under the existing Clean Air Act ceilings without them. Arkansas now hosts two of the dirtiest power plants in the nation. The power plant in Independence County is the 35th dirtiest, the one in Jefferson County 42nd. You should ignore the scaremongering about soaring electric bills, business closings, blackouts and economic
decline because the electric industry must reduce its reliance on coal by using cleaner Arkansas natural gas, converting to clean renewable power sources and/or improving household energy efficiency. California and a consortium of eastern states jumped the gun on the EPA a few years ago and forced the changes. The result: lower consumer power prices, faster economic growth, more jobs, better health. We’ll eventually experience that in Arkansas, too, but it will not be a story. After the bipartisan enactment of the Clean Air and Water Acts under Richard
Nixon, every time the EPA adopted rules to control an environmental hazard, you heard the same cries. It happened each time Congress passed a law regulating some abuse, from occupational safety to consumer product safety to financial regulation to affordable health care. Cataclysm was predicted but when the good works became evident, like drastically reduced workplace deaths and injuries, it wasn’t a story any longer. Government working and doing good is not a story. The papers and the politicians don’t even take notice. That’s the last act of this play, too.
ADAMS, CONT. Continued from page 8 areas of serious illness, grief and loss. I have seen firsthand how the pressures of a crisis can lead people to find strengths never found before and to adjust in ways they (and others) never thought possible. This is also seen more broadly as Americans, and perhaps people around the world, are better responding to a crisis than they are constructively responding to chronic problems. Writer and therapist David Seaburn says, “to be hopeful is to believe that the
story can change and that we can be the ones to change it.” Such a perspective is a core value in education. We believe that the student met on the first day of school will not be the same student on the last day of school. In between there will be learning and growth. Since hiring a new superintendent and the ending of the long-running desegregation case, the district is like a new student in the first quarter of the school year working to adjust to a much higher level of rigor and consequences. It is no surprise that at times there are struggles and messiness.
But big change is coming and has already begun, and it has a chance to succeed like never before because the pressures and risks are greater than ever before. We are changing the story and will continue if we don’t lose our focus and lose our heart. And there are over 25,000 good reasons why we must continue.
Greg Adams is president of the Little Rock School District Board. His views are not meant to represent those of the board or the LRSD.
CASEY COLEMAN
BON TEMPS
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The life and times of Bruce ‘Sunpie’ Barnes — zydeco star, naturalist, park ranger, former NFL player. The Benton native followed his dreams to New Orleans. BY DAVID RAMSEY
PASSING ON TRADITIONS: Barnes leads music education programming for New Orleans youths.
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CASEY COLEMAN
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hen Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes arrived in New Orleans almost 20 years ago, he felt an uncanny recognition when he heard people speaking Creole French. “I picked it up right away,” Barnes said. “When I was a kid I used to have all these dreams in Creole. I didn’t know what it was, I just knew it was some kind of different language. When I moved to Louisiana, I knew.” Barnes has always been attuned to dreams. He was born in Benton in 1963 under a prophet sign, according to his grandmother, a Louisiana-born “fix-it lady” who did traditional healings and read stars for people in their community. “She told me I would have dreams and visions, and she taught me how to interpret them,” Barnes said. Laughing, he added, “and she told me not everyone would believe me, or understand.” Whatever the cause, it’s hard to deny that Barnes has found his path. Nowadays the boy who used to dream in Creole in Benton sings in Creole in New Orleans as one of the most prominent musicians in zydeco, a traditional music form originating in southwest Louisiana. Barnes — a multi-instrumentalist who plays accordion, harmonica, rub board, piano, talking drum and more — fronts Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots. Though Sunpie is a popular mainstay on the zydeco circuit, Barnes’ music isn’t contained by a single genre — he mixes in Delta blues, gospel, boogie woogie, R&B, and West African and Caribbean influences. He calls it “Afro-Louisiana.” Barnes, in addition to being a musician and composer, is a naturalist, a full-time National Park ranger, a black-and-white portrait photographer, a television and film actor and a former professional football player with the Kansas City Chiefs. “I’m not interested in being restricted,” Barnes said. “I’m interested in life.”
Bruce Barnes, 51, grew up in Benton’s Gravel Hill community, the 10th of 11 children. His family traces their roots across southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana. His parents were sharecroppers who worked various farms in southern Arkansas and the Delta before escaping from a plantation in the middle of the night to take work at an aluminum plant in Bauxite, working openpit aluminum ore mines. They initially lived in tarpaper shacks along with Hispanic migrant workers in what was known as Mexico Camp, but later settled in Gravel Hill, along with others who had escaped sharecropping plantations. Barnes’ parents often helped other sharecroppers escape, in what amounted to a post-bellum underground railroad. “They created a whole community by stealing people off the plantation,” Barnes said. “Gravel Hill was our little community. Pretty much the all-black section, south of the tracks, you know how it is in Arkansas.” Barnes spent a lot of time hunting and fishing, or just playing all day in the woods. “We used to always fantasize about being out in the world on some kind of adventure,” Barnes said. As a kid, he would climb out the window at 1 or 2 in the morning and take walks in the woods for miles. “I’d just sit down and listen and see all the animals that were moving and coming through,” he said. “I just felt like I needed to be out in the world. That was a driving force for me for whatever reason, to devise a plan to get out in the world.” Barnes’ father, Willie Barnes Sr., was a blues harmonica player. “He was raised around people like Roosevelt Sykes and Bill Broonzy — they lived and worked in the same plantations he did,” Barnes said. “That’s what he was exposed to and that’s what he loved to play.” Bruce Barnes loved it, too. “I had a very firm idea in my head even when I was 4 or 5 years old that I was going to make music,” Barnes said. “I thought music was magic. I’d see my father play, he used to play this old song called ‘The Coon and the Hound’ on the harmonica, he was barking like a dog and all that. He played a lot of old country blues. I was like, man, I can’t wait to get old enough to make some magic. That’s what really got me hooked on it, just sitting on his knee and listening to him play that tune.” Barnes begged for piano lessons, but his father was skeptical. He had paid for piano lessons for Bruce’s older siblings. “You’d go to piano lessons across the tracks in Benton over there and you would learn to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” the “Leftbridge Overture,” something like that. Back home, he wanted some blues coming out of it.” None of his older siblings had stuck with the instrument, so by the time Bruce showed interest, “He decided he wasn’t wasting no more money on piano lessons.” CONTINUED ON PAGE 16 www.arktimes.com
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DELTA BLUES ROOTS: Barnes with blues legend Willie Dixon.
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Bruce started teaching himself at home, partly inspired by his uncle, who would come up from Bastrop, La., and play blues piano. Half Blackfoot Indian, this uncle went by the name Sunpie. He had lost the top half of his fingers in a sawmill accident, but that didn’t stop him on the piano. “He’d be working these nubs, wearing the piano out,” Barnes said. “His face was completely shaved clean. No eyebrows, eyelashes, nothing. He was an interesting character. I thought he was fascinating.” Barnes followed him around so much that his aunt started calling him “little Sunpie.” The name stuck: “When I got older, I kept the Sunpie, just not the little,” Barnes said. In junior high, Barnes started working night jobs at an ice plant to save up money for a trombone so he could play in the band. Barnes discovered he had an ear for music, and by high school he made first chair. He was also a track and football
the fire for it, for sure,” he said. For Barnes, it’s a connection that runs deep, rooted in generations before him. His father’s father — born in 1847 in Oak Grove, La. — played violin, accordion and pipe organ. “My people have been playing music for years and years,” he said. “I knew I would play music for the rest of my life.” After graduating high school, Barnes went to Henderson State on a football scholarship. He was a star on the field — an NAIA All-American as a defensive end — and also formed a blues band, playing for tips in Arkadelphia and Little Rock. Meanwhile, he studied biology, with a focus on ichthyology (the study of fishes), doing fieldwork in lakes, rivers and streams across the state, including the Saline River, where he used to fish as a boy. Like music, Barnes’ lifelong passion for nature sprung from his years growing up in Gravel Hill. He loved to set traps in the woods and hunt for
star. At football games, Barnes never got a rest: He played offense, defense and special teams — then at halftime he would take off his shoulder pads and helmet and march with the band. Toward the end of high school, Barnes approached his father, then almost 80 years old, wanting to learn blues harmonica. “He thought I was crazy,” he said. “The only place he knew about blues being played was in juke joints, in pretty dangerous places. He said, ‘I’m not going to teach you how to play no blues so you can go out and get yourself killed.’ Eventually I convinced him, and he found out I could play a little bit.” His father was crazy about Sonny Boy Williamson, the legendary blues singer and harmonica player who had lived in the Arkansas Delta not too far away. The younger Barnes got hooked on Sonny Boy, too — Williamson remains one of his strongest musical influences. Barnes began to develop his chops as a blues harmonica player, and a knowledge and love of Delta blues music that stays with him today, even as he has added musical elements a long way from the Delta to his eclectic style. “My father gave me the passion and
birds. To make money, he would dig up a particular pink ribbon clay that black and Indian women in his community would eat as a kind of natural supplement. He also caught poisonous snakes to sell them — $20 a snake — to venom hospitals. “Being from Arkansas, it’s all in the back yard,” Barnes said. “In Saline County, we had all these unique geological formations together. Gulf coastal plain, Mississippi Delta, Ouachita Mountains, Ozark Mountains. We’d find strange things out in the field. A giant clam shell or conch shell — we didn’t know why they were there. We used to dig up crystals all the time. For me, I became somebody who was inquisitive and wanted to investigate that kind of thing.” “I loved catching fish, but I wasn’t only catching them to eat. I had to know what fish it was, where the fish lived, what its habitat was, the whole nine yards. Later, when I got to university, I didn’t realize how much I knew. I found out when I took my first zoology course, I knew a lot of these animals.” While in college, he got his first job with the National Park Service, working three seasons on the Buffalo River, stationed out of Buffalo Point. He was doing canoe tours when word came that
ARKANSAS TIMES
the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League offered him a contract. The team was a bit taken aback when he didn’t immediately head up to sign. “I said, man, just send it to me in the mail — I’ll sign the thing and send it back,” Barnes said. “I can’t come up there because I got a canoe tour on Saturday. So they sent it to the ranger station at Buffalo Point.” Barnes lasted a season with the Chiefs (during which time he continued playing the blues, picking up gigs in Kansas City). The following year, his agent said he had lined up a spot for him in the Canadian Football League. “He said, ‘You can go to Saskatchewan or Winnipeg, take your pick,” Barnes said. “I looked at it, thought about it — I said, ‘You know what, I’m going to go back to canoeing.’ “I decided right there that football wasn’t really my dream. I had dreamed about playing music. And my dream was to work in nature.” To be precise, his first big dream, since he was in second grade, was to work with Jacques Cousteau. “I was going to be the first brother on the Calypso. I had studied fish in school, took a 21-month course in scuba diving, night diving, open-water diving, you name it. I’d done it all. I either wanted to work for Jacques Cousteau or Marlon Perkins [the zoologist and host of “Wild Kingdom”]. The one faulty part of my plan — by the time I was done with university, those dudes were in their 80s.” With Cousteau and Perkins no longer hiring, Barnes turned back to the National Park Service. He wanted to land somewhere where he could play music. Barnes blindfolded himself and threw a dart at a map of the United States three times. Two out of three hit New Orleans, right on the dot. When a job offer came to work at Jean Lafitte National Park, working as a park ranger and naturalist in the Barataria Preserve just outside of New Orleans, he took the gig. Barnes arrived in the city in 1987, on the Sunday before Mardi Gras. “I had no clue of anything about what Mardi Gras was, what Carnival was. There were parades everywhere, people all over town. I was like, damn, I don’t know if I can handle this town.” Barnes settled in to a new routine: During the day he’d put on his hip waders and get in his canoe, doing tours and educational programming over 23,000 acres of wetlands. At night, he went out in search of music and soon became as enamored with zydeco and New Orleans R&B as he was with the blues. “I would take a lot of adventures,” he said. “You could go to Clifton’s [as in Chenier — the “King of Zydeco”] house, you could go to Boozoo’s [as in Chavis — another zydeco legend] house — these people would just open their door up for you. If you were really interested in the music, they would show you.” “I loved to dance and I was in heaven,” Barnes said. “I would go listen to Fats Domino play Sunday night at the Grease or you name it — Ernie K-Doe, Jessie Hill, Johnny Adams. They all would play
these little bars on Basin Street. It was free and the food was free. They would have a huge buffet with everything — gumbo, yaka mein, turkey necks, meat loaf. All that was free, beer was 50 cents and mixed drinks a dollar fifty. That fit my poor humble park service budget.” At the time, there weren’t many harmonica players in New Orleans, so local musicians took a shine to the new guy in town from Arkansas. “I became good friends with Fats Domino and all those folks because I was playing straight-up blues,” Barnes said. “It was all I knew, and they loved that. There were just very few harmonica players around or people who had that Delta sound.” Barnes started playing rub board and harmonica in some zydeco bands but at that time he didn’t know the first thing about the instrument he’s probably most known for today: the accordion. He had been in New Orleans for two years when he started having a dream that he was playing an accordion, the same dream five nights in a row. One day, he wandered into a music store to buy a new harmonica. On the wall was the very same accordion he had seen in his dreams. He had $200 to his name at the time, but he knew he had to have it and bought the $1,500 instrument on a finance plan, with an interest rate liable to make him broke. That night he started fiddling with it; the keyboard came naturally, but he wasn’t sure what to do with all the little buttons. A buddy called to tell him about a Sprite television commercial to audition for the next day. When Barnes mentioned his new accordion, his buddy said, “Oh, bring it, they love those.” Barnes stayed up all night teaching himself a song. He got the part, which came with a $2,000 check that allowed him to pay off the accordion right away. That one led to another job for Barnes later that same week, a McDonald’s commercial looking for an accordion player.
SUNPIE: “I never put the blues down because what I realized is that zydeco had all the blues in it.”
CONTINUED ON PAGE 18
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JUNE 19, 2014
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“That one paid another $2,000,” Barnes said. “All of a sudden, my poor broke self — I was like damn, I couldn’t believe it. I gotta go and learn how to play this thing!” Barnes is mostly self-taught, but he went to Cajun country in Lafayette Parish to get some lessons from Clayton Sampy, the legendary French Creole accordion player. “At first, he kept looking at me sideways,” Barnes said. “He said, ‘Man, I can’t show you nothing — you got it upside down!’ ” Sunpie, left-handed, had been playing the accordion upside down and backwards for several months before Sampy set him straight; he had to train himself to play right-handed (accordions are only built one way). Barnes found that he had a knack for accordion, and, perhaps remembering the dreams of his childhood, singing in Creole French came easily to him. By 1991, he formed Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots, one of the only zydeco bands based in New Orleans at the time. Even as he moved more toward zydeco, Barnes stayed anchored in the music that his father had taught him back in Arkansas. “I never put the blues down because what I realized is that zydeco had all this blues in it,” Barnes said. “That’s what I loved about Clifton Chenier, Boozoo Chavis, John Delafose. Everybody was playing blues and a lot of it, they just do it the Creole way.”
“My music is still based off of the blues. That’s what it’s rooted in. It’s a combination of music from the Delta, music from the city of New Orleans, and the rural Creole sound. I do them all.” The result is a music as rich and diverse and adventurous as Sunpie’s life. Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots have become a fixture at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and the Louisiana Cajun-Zydeco Festival. They’ve put out six albums and played in more than 30 countries, from Europe to Africa to Central America. Recently, Sunpie was asked to accompany Paul Simon and Sting on a two-month tour (when Simon called him to ask him to come, Barnes initially thought it must be someone playing a prank). “Bruce is without doubt the best-known zydeco bandleader who calls New Orleans home,” said Scott Aiges, director of programs, marketing and communications for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation. “He travels the world playing both blues and zydeco — sometimes in the same set … and he’s one of the more popular musicians in New Orleans.” Barnes still works as a park ranger by day (the National Park Service was nice enough to grant him a sabbatical for the tour with Paul Simon and Sting). After more than 12 years on the Barataria Preserve, in 1999 he moved to the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park in the heart of the French Quarter, where he does education and pro-
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gramming related to the music and cultural history of his adopted home. He developed a program to teach young people traditional New Orleans jazz and brass band music; his latest project is a forthcoming book with conversations between the students and their mentors about how to have a life in traditional music (and features photographs by Barnes of both students and mentors, taken wherever they started playing music). If Barnes has a passion for preserving traditions — whether it’s the endangered language of Creole French or the etiquette and rules of playing a jazz funeral — it is clear from his music that he means to stake a claim for new traditions of his own. “The thing I try to do is, I love to try to take the traditional sound and move it in different ways,” Barnes said. “I want to keep it alive and pass it on, but my main thing is to bring something to the table that will have some staying power and that will last. That’s what all my elders taught me. My daddy and my Uncle Sunpie, my mama, grandma, grandpa. To create something that is simply yours.” That attitude — preserving cultural traditions but insisting on making them funky and singular — makes a pretty good manifesto for New Orleans. Those darts Barnes threw at the map years ago seem to have landed in the right spot. His dreams seem to be pointing him in the right direction. “I think I’m at home now,” Barnes said. “This is a good place for me.”
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2014 Got an opinion? It’s time to choose the Best of Arkansas. Cast your votes on this ballot or vote online at www.arktimes.com/bestofarkansas2014. We’ll announce the winners in July. We’ll award a randomly selected winner $250. To be included in the drawing, you must complete at least half of the poll and provide your email address.
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ENTERTAINMENT Musician Or Band _________________________ DJ ______________________________________ Comedian ________________________________ Place For Live Music ______________________ Place To Dance ___________________________ Live Music Festival ________________________ Neighborhood Festival _____________________ Late Night Spot ___________________________ Gay Bar _________________________________ Sports Bar _______________________________ Movie Theater ____________________________ Museum _________________________________ Performing Arts Group _____________________ Place To Gamble __________________________ Place To See Someone Famous _____________ Food And Drink ___________________________ Food Festival _____________________________
French Fries _____________________________ Onion Rings ______________________________ Cheese Dip ______________________________ Ribs ____________________________________ Arkansas-Brewed Beer _____________________ Happy Hour ______________________________ Wine List ________________________________ Liquor Store _____________________________ Sushi ___________________________________ Salad ___________________________________ Business Lunch __________________________ Brunch __________________________________ Cocktail _________________________________ Milkshake _______________________________ Vegetarian _______________________________ Bread ___________________________________ Caterer __________________________________ Outdoor Dining ___________________________
PEOPLE AND POLITICS Artist ___________________________________ Photographer ____________________________ Politician ________________________________ Athlete __________________________________ Celebrity _________________________________ Liberal __________________________________ Conservative _____________________________ Worst Arkansan __________________________ Charity __________________________________ Misuse Of Taxpayer Funds _________________ Media ___________________________________ Radio Station ____________________________ Radio Personality _________________________ TV Station _______________________________ TV News Person __________________________ TV Weatherman __________________________ TV Sports Person _________________________ Newspaper Writer ________________________ Blog ____________________________________ Website _________________________________ Twitter Feed ______________________________ Instagram Feed ___________________________ Author (Of Books) ________________________
Deadline for entry is June 22. Duplicate entries, faxes, e-mail or photocopies will not be accepted. The judges reserve the right to disqualify obvious ballot-box stuffing.
Drop off entries or mail them to: Arkansas Times, 201 E. Markham, Suite 200, Little Rock, AR 72201. NAME ________________________________________________________ EMAIL* _______________________________________________________ SIGNATURE ___________________________________________________ * By providing your email address, you’re agreeing to allow us to add you to our daily email newsletter. www.arktimes.com
JUNE 12, 2014
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Arts Entertainment AND
THE 1,000 EYES OF DOC MABUSE Avant-garde musician and builder of synths comes to Little Rock. BY WILL STEPHENSON
D
oc Mabuse, a.k.a. Mike Murphy, is a St. Louis native and founding member of that city’s HEARding Cats artists’ collective. He makes a living designing software and hardware (“wares, soft to firm to hard,” as he puts it) but spends most of his time building synthesizers, which he uses to make wild and entirely left-field improvised music. The instruments, which he labels either “modules” or “electroniums” (meaning “a synthesizer that acts suspiciously like it’s broken”), have names like The Jackelope, The Femi20
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ARKANSAS TIMES
nine Prerogative-Based Control-Voltage Generator and il Viaggio di Marconi, the last of which is a gorgeous object built from a box of chocolates he once received for Christmas. Murphy will be in Little Rock Sunday, June 22, presenting a night of free improvisation at the Oxford American Annex alongside his fellow HEARding Cats co-founder Rich O’Donnell (a former percussionist with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and music director of the St. Louis New Music Circle), Davey Williams (an avantgarde guitarist and co-founder of The CONTINUED ON PAGE 26
IN HIS ELEMENT: Doc Mabuse performing live.
ROCK CANDY Check out the Times’ A&E blog arktimes.com
A&E NEWS IF YOU HAVEN’T BOUGHT YOUR COPY of the great and long-awaited debut single from The Canehilll Engagement, the Little Rock all-star league rock group featuring Burt Taggart from The Big Cats (etc.), Mulehead’s Kevin Kerby, Jeremy Brasher and Brian Rodgers from The Moving Front and Jay Calhoun of Free Micah, you still have time. The 7-inch, issued on gorgeous red vinyl, is shipping now from Max Recordings. Brasher described the band’s sound to this paper two years ago: “In the sort of American folk tradition, The Canehill Engagement basically borrows a lot from Southern ’80s college rock, as well as aspects of ‘cowpunk,’ which is a label music magazine people used to stick on the band X.” LOCALS GINSU WIVES, who we noted in last week’s paper will almost definitely give you nightmares, played a record release show last Saturday at White Water Tavern, and here’s one more reason you should have gone: The EP, titled “Panic,” comes in the form of a prescription bottle containing a pill-shaped USB flash drive that includes the EP in three formats, music videos for each track and other stuff. Check out their infomercial on our blog. The album will be available online July 1 at Thick Syrup Records. THIS YEAR’S 2014 PBS ONLINE FILM FESTIVAL features two Arkansas-made independent films produced by the Arkansas Education Television Network. The Festival runs through July 31 and voting is open now (winners receive a “people’s choice” award). The Arkansas films include “Westland” (about the Winslow artist Tim West, whose work is featured at the Museum of Modern Art and in the Louvre) and “Diamond John” (a period comedy about a gold prospector, based on a true story). Watch them at pbs.org/filmfestival. ACTRESS MARY STEENBURGEN, a native of North Little Rock, has been cast in the third season of the hit Netflix comedy “Orange Is the New Black,” the second season of which just premiered to an enthusiastic reception. Production is already underway.
2600 Cantrell Rd 501-296-9955 | riverdale10.com Featuring Digital Light Projection & Dolby Digital Sound
Show TimeS: Fri, June 20 – Thur, June 26 Think Like a Man TOO (Digital) 22 Jump Street (Digital) PG13 | 2:00 4:30 7:00 9:35 R | 1:45 4:20 7:00 9:30 Words and Pictures (Digital) PG13 | 1:30 4:00 6:45 9:20
The Immigrant (Digital) R | 1:30 4:00 6:45 9:15
Ida (Digital) PG13 | 2:15 4:25 7:15 9:20
The Fault in Our Stars (Digital) PG13 | 1:30 6:45
The Grand Seduction (Digital) Fading Gigolo (Digital) PG13 | 1:45 4:15 6:45 9:20 R | 2:15 4:15 7:15 9:15
Belle (Digital) PG | 1:45 4:15 7:00 9:30
How To Train Your Dragon 2 (Digital) PG | 2:00 4:20 7:15 9:30
Edge of Tomorrow (Digital) PG13 | 4:00 9:20
SUPPORT OUR COMMUNITY.
EAT LOCAL
Family Films Tues 6/24 & Wed 6/25 11:30 Turbo PG only $2
“The humor ranges from the unapologetically slapstick to the slyly literary... It’s possible you’ll come away with a new appreciation of the possibilities of Shakespearean theater...” — Arkansas Times
“...A rollercoaster of fun for the whole audience... an entertaining
comedy for just about everybody.” ’
— Soire’e Magazine
“...physical shtick, exaggerated wordplay,
a touch of improvisation and general goofiness...” — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Ethan Paulini, Avery Clark and Patrick Halley in Arkansas Repertory Theatre’s production of The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged). Photography by John David Pittman.
JUNE 6 – JUNE 29
Tickets at therep.org or call (501) 378-0405 ARKANSAS REPERTORY T H E AT R E www.arktimes.com
JUNE 19, 2014
21
THE TO-DO
LIST
BY WILL STEPHENSON
FRIDAY 6/20
JAZZLIGHTS IN THE PARK
6 p.m. First Security Amphitheater. $25$45.
This year’s Jazzlights in the Park, a particularly urbane benefit for the Boys and Girls Club at the First Security Amphitheater, will feature iconic jazz fusion group The Yellowjackets (est. 1977; maybe you’ll recognize them from the soundtrack to 1986’s “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”), local favorites Rodney Block and The Real Music Lovers, The Julia Buckingham Group, Twice Sax and That Arkansas Weather. Standing room, general admission is $25 in advance or $34 day of show (bring your own blankets); seating at the front of the amphitheater is $35 in advance and $45 on the day. VIP tickets are also available, with table options ($250-$2,500), featuring waiters, food and beverages, and what the festival calls the “ultimate experience,” which is apparently a table that’s on stage.
'HITTIN THAT JUG': Sonny Burgess and The Legendary Pacers will celebrate Burgess's 85th birthday 7 p.m. Friday at the Ron Robinson Theater, $10.
FRIDAY 6/20
SONNY BURGESS’ 85TH BIRTHDAY BASH
7 p.m. Ron Robinson Theater. $10.
Eighty-five years ago, Albert Austin “Sonny” Burgess, rockabilly legend and now co-host of the Jonesboro weekly radio pro-
gram “We Wanna Boogie” (on 91.9 FM), was born on a farm near Newport. After some time in the military and some tips from Sun Records head Sam Phillips, he formed The Pacers and started making records in Memphis. Now called The Legendary Pacers, Burgess’ group will perform at the Ron
Robinson Theater Friday night to celebrate Burgess’ birthday, alongside a venerable Little Rock lineup that includes Rodney Block (presumably teleporting over after his set at Jazzlights in the Park), Bonnie Montgomery, Kevin Kerby and members of the Salty Dogs.
FRIDAY 6/20
NIGHT OF THE PROMS
7:30 p.m. Verizon Arena. $19.90-$99.
This isn’t going to be easy to explain, so please have patience. There is an orchestra from Belgium called Il Novecento, and they will be in town this Friday at the Verizon Arena. But 22
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it’s not just that; that would be too simple. There will also be a 24-voice choir called Fine Fleur and an 8-piece “electric band” headed by a British guy named John “Music” Miles. The press materials call Miles a “pop star,” but I had never heard of him, so I looked him
up (so I could pretend that I had) and it turns out he had a Top 3 hit single in the U.K. in 1976 called “Music.” It was produced by Alan Parsons and opens with the line, “Music was my first love, and it will be my last.” John “Music” Miles. The show will also feature “come-
dic opera diva” Natalie Choquette, and headlining this concert, strangely, will be Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, The Pointer Sisters and Chic. The whole thing, which I really have trouble envisioning, is called “Night of the Proms” and is apparently a big deal in Europe.
IN BRIEF
THURSDAY 6/19
FRIDAY 6/20
THE BODY
9 p.m. Vino’s.
Lee Buford and Chip King of The Body are Little Rock exiles who for several years now have been making a kind of boundary-pushing doom metal that is utterly chilling and resonant and intelligent. Their music doesn’t induce despair, exactly, but it certainly complements it. The effect of albums like “All the Waters of Earth Turn To Blood” and “Master, We Perish” was sort of the inverse of awe-inspiring: They evoked the depths and textures of absolute noth-
I SHALL DIE HERE: The Body will be at Vino's 9 p.m. Friday.
ingness, and there’s something valuable about that. Their new record, “I Shall Die Here,” is a collaboration
with the British electronic producer The Haxan Cloak (an idea suggested by fellow Little Rock exile Matt Werth, who released the album on his label, RVNG Intl.), and it is possibly the most intense and sonically disconcerting Arkansas-affiliated release of the year. Track titles include “Alone All the Way,” “Hail To Thee, Everlasting Pain” and “Darkness Surrounds Us,” and if you listen to the album these are sentiments you’ll relate to. The great Iron Tongue will open, along with Laser Flames on the Great Big News.
SATURDAY 6/21
JUNETEENTH 2014
11 a.m. W. 9th and Broadway. Free.
Juneteenth, a.k.a. Emancipation Day, a.k.a. the anniversary of the day Union Gen. Gordon Granger posted up in Galveston, Texas, and read the order to free the state’s slaves, is the oldest continuously celebrated holiday observing the end of slavery in this
country. The Mosaic Templars Cultural (with Irie Soul), Big Piph and the Big John Center is once again the place to be in Lit- Miller Band. Also check out the center’s tle Rock to commemorate the day (over new exhibit, “Arkansas African American 1,000 people to came to last year’s event), Legislators” and the 1 p.m. premiere of the hosting a block party that will include ven- new film “American Experience: Freedom dors, food and entertainment, with a lineup Summer” produced by the Arkansas Eduthat includes Ricky Howard, Delya Russell, cational Television Network and the UniForeign Tongues, Steven Young, Butterfly versity of Arkansas at Little Rock.
BLAKE SHELTON
On April 23, as many of you probably know — maybe it’s all you’ve been thinking about in recent weeks — Blake Shelton tweeted the following message out to his over 6.5 million Twitter followers: “Doing vocals today on my last album ...” Not his “new” album, that is, but his “last” album. Could Shelton, who won us over in 2006
ORSON WELLES’ ‘THE TRIAL’
Orson Welles’ career was in a strange place when he wrote and directed his adaptation of Kafka’s “The Trial,” which the folks at Splice Microcinema will screen Wednesday night at Vino’s. A few years before, he’d made “Touch of Evil,” a stone classic today but a commercial dud at the time (as most of his post-“Citizen Kane” output tended to be), and it hadn’t done much for his profile; he’d been writ-
Famous person Darius Rucker will be at the Walmart AMP in Fayetteville at 7 p.m. with special guests Pat Green and A Thousand Horses, $27-$79. Whitecollar, cigar-smoking comedy stalwart Ron White will start a two-night stand at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, 7 p.m., $48-$78. Opera in the Ozarks will present Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” at Inspiration Point in Eureka Springs, 7:30 p.m., $20-$25 (followed by Puccini’s “Suor Angelica” and “Gianni Schicchi” the following night). Dallas power pop band BOBGOBLIN will be at Stickyz with locals Glittercore and The Talking Liberties, 9 p.m., $6. Local metal favorites Enchiridion will host a record release show at Revolution at 9 p.m. with At War’s End and Space Mother, $7. The stylish and consistently great Memphis songwriter John Paul Keith will be back in Little Rock at the White Water Tavern at 10 p.m., $7.
with “Austin” and has done it every year since, even wearing us down last summer with the unavoidable, lachrymose schlock-classic “Mine Would Be You,” really be wrapping up his recording career at age 37? Many of us eyed his Twitter timeline in the following weeks with a mixture of fear and exhaustion, but he gave us no further hints. “Well,” he said on May 13, “the good news is my truck
doesn’t smell like weed anymore.” Later that same day, he seemed in good spirits. “@Pizzahut named a pizza after me,” he announced. “Blake’s Smokehouse BBQ ... Can y’all believe it?” Of course we could, it was only a matter of time, but what about his career? So far, he’s kept us in the dark. All we can do is wait, hope, follow him on Twitter (@BlakeShelton) and go see him this weekend at Verizon Arena.
R&B singer and onetime Tommy Boy Records act Calvin Richardson (formerly of the group Undacova) will be at Club Elevations will Tim Brown and Star at 8 p.m., $20-$35. Sherwood metal group Deadspell will be at Vino’s with A Sight To See, the incredibly named Buried Under Texas and A Traitor’s Funeral, 9 p.m., $7. Garage pop group SW/MM/NG will be at The Lightbulb Club in Fayetteville with Oils, 9 p.m. Country duo Thompson Square will be at Magic Springs’ Timberwood Amphitheater, $49.99-$54.99 or free with a season pass.
ten off, exiled, trapped in the amber of his early wunderkind status and considered an obscenely self-indulgent, underperforming menace to the studio way of life. They loved him abroad, though, and he still wanted to make films, so he picked “The Trial” (public domain, so no copyright issues) and trusted a producer who’d later abandon the project, leaving Welles to pay the actors out of his own pocket so they wouldn’t walk off the set (in a recent book of interviews with the director, he claimed he could never
go back to Zagreb because he couldn’t afford to pay his hotel bill from this shoot). Given the budget (low) and the circumstances, the film is more or less astonishingly great. Visually imaginative, stark and paranoid, it feels homemade and claustrophobic. Don’t trust anyone who calls “Citizen Kane” his best film, especially if you haven’t seen “Chimes at Midnight” or “The Trial.” No popular filmmaking myth is more wrong than that Welles burned out young. The opposite is true: He got better with age.
The 63rd National Square Dance Convention will kick off at the Statehouse Convention Center, $5 (runs through June 28). The Museum of Discovery will host “Science After Dark: The Science of Cinema,” with food and refreshments from Damgoode Pies and Stones Throw Brewing, 6 p.m., $5. Americana family trio Posey Hill will be at South on Main at 7:30 p.m. as part of the restaurant’s free Local Live series. Archnemesis will be at Revolution with Whitman Bransford, Explicit and Jordan van der Bergh, 8 p.m., $8 adv., $10 day of.
WEDNESDAY 6/25 8 p.m. Vino’s. Donations.
FRIDAY 6/20
SATURDAY 6/21
SUNDAY 6/22 7 p.m. Verizon Arena. $42.50-$69.
At 7 p.m., Australian soft-rock legends Air Supply will play at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, $30-$40. Mind-bending noise metal crew Wreck and Reference will be at Revolution with Sumokem and The Awareness Affliction, 9 p.m., $7. Local favorites (and 2014 Arkansas Times Musicians Showcase participants) Peckerwolf and Duckstronaut will be at The Joint at 9:30 p.m., and Two Cow Garage will be at White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m.
WEDNESDAY 6/25
www.arktimes.com
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AFTER DARK All events are in the Greater Little Rock area unless otherwise noted. To place an event in the Arkansas Times calendar, please email the listing and all pertinent information, including date, time, location, price and contact information, to calendar@arktimes.com.
THURSDAY, JUNE 19
MUSIC
Air Supply. Oaklawn Park, 7 p.m., $30-$40. 2705 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-623-4411. www. oaklawn.com. Alisyn Reid, Cons of Format, Oh Jeremiah. Vino’s, 9 p.m., $7. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com. Danny Santos. Faulkner County Library, 7 p.m., Free. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-327-7482. www. fcl.org. “Inferno.” DJs play pop, electro, house and more, plus drink specials and $1 cover before 11 p.m. Sway, 9 p.m. 412 Louisiana. 501-907-2582. Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com. Krush Thursdays with DJ Kavaleer. Club Climax, free before 11 p.m. 824 W. Capitol. 501-554-3437. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 Clinton Ave. 501-372-4782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Michael Eubanks. Newk’s Express Cafe, 6:30 p.m. 4317 Warden Road, NLR. 501-753-8559. newks.com. Open jam with The Port Arthur Band. Parrot Beach Cafe, 9 p.m. 9611 MacArthur Drive, NLR. 771-2994. Peckerwolf, Duckstronaut. The Joint, 9:30 p.m. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com. RockUsaurus. Senor Tequila, 7-9 p.m. 10300 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-224-5505. www. senor-tequila.com. Summer Soulstice Dance Party. With Baldego and DJ G Force. White Water Tavern, 9 p.m., $5. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 7:30 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-374-7474. www.capitalhotel.com/CBG. Two Cow Garage. White Water Tavern, 9:30 p.m. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com. Wreck and Reference, Sumokem, The Awareness Affliction. Revolution, 9 p.m., $7. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. revroom.com.
COMEDY
Tony Tone. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m. $7-$10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-228-5555. www. loonybincomedy.com.
EVENTS
Antique/Boutique Walk. Shopping and live entertainment. Downtown Hot Springs, third Thursday of every month, 4 p.m., free. 100 Central Ave., Hot Springs. Around the World Thursday: Baracoa, Cuba. Forty Two, 6:30 p.m., $27.95. 1200 President Clinton Ave. 501-537-0042. www.dineatfortytwo. com. Geocaching. Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center, 8:30 a.m. 602 President Clinton Ave. 501-907-0636. www.centralarkansasnaturecenter.com. 24
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ARKANSAS TIMES
THE MAN THAT TIME FORGOT: John Paul Keith will be at White Water Tavern 10 p.m. Friday, $7.
POETRY
POETluck. Literary salon and potluck. The Writer’s Colony at Dairy Hollow, third Thursday of every month, 6 p.m. 515 Spring St., Eureka Springs. 479-253-7444.
SPORTS
Arkansas Travelers vs. Springfield. DickeyStephens Park, 7:10 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs. com.
CLASSES
Professional Business Etiquette. Pulaski Technical College, 9 a.m., $110. 3000 W. Scenic Drive, NLR. 501-907-6670.
FRIDAY, JUNE 20
MUSIC
Archbuilders, Move Orchestra, Bloody Knives. The Lightbulb Club, 9 p.m. 21 N. Block Ave., Fayetteville. 479-444-6100. Bobgoblin, Glittercore, The Talking Liberties. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $6. 107 Commerce St. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz. com. The Body, Iron Tongue, Laser Flames on the Great Big News. Vino’s, 9 p.m. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com. Club Nights at 1620 Savoy. Dance night, with DJs, drink specials and bar menu, until 2 a.m. 1620 Savoy, 10 p.m. 1620 Market St. 501-221-
1620. www.1620savoy.com. Crisis. West End Smokehouse and Tavern, $5. 215 N. Shackleford. 501-224-7665. www.westendsmokehouse.net. Darius Rucker. Arkansas Music Pavilion, 7 p.m., $27-$79. 2536 N. McConnell Ave., Fayetteville. 479-443-5600. www.arkansasmusicpavilion.com. Enchiridion, At War’s End, Space Mother. Revolution, 9 p.m., $7. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. revroom.com. Jazzlights in the Park. First Security Amphitheater, 6 p.m., $25-$35. 400 President Clinton Ave. Jim Lauderdale. George’s Majestic Lounge. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-442-4226. John Paul Keith. White Water Tavern, 10 p.m., $7. 2500 W. 7th St. 501-375-8400. www.whitewatertavern.com. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 Clinton Ave. 501-372-4782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Margo Rey. Walton Arts Center, 9 p.m., $20. 495 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-443-5600. Night of the Proms. Featuring Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, The Pointer Sisters and Nile Rodgers. Verizon Arena, 7:30 p.m., $19.90-$99. 1 Alltel Arena Way, NLR. 501-9759001. verizonarena.com. Opera in the Ozarks Presents Mozart’s ”Cosi fan tutte.“ Inspiration Point, 7:30 p.m., $20-$25. 16311 Hwy. 62 W., Eureka Springs. Sonny Burgess’ 85th Birthday Bash. Also featuring Rodney Block, Bonnie Montgomery, Kevin Kerby, and Brad Williams and Nick Devlin of the
Salty Dogs. Ron Robinson Theater, 7 p.m., $10. 1 Pulaski Way. 501-320-5703. www.cals.lib.ar.us/ ron-robinson-theater.aspx. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 9 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-374-7474. www.capitalhotel.com/CBG.
COMEDY
“Just Shut Up and Drive.” Original comedy by The Main Thing. The Joint, through June 28: 8 p.m., $20. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-3720205. thejointinlittlerock.com. Ron White. Walton Arts Center, 7 p.m., $48-$78. 495 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-443-5600. Tony Tone. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m., 10 p.m., $7-$10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.
DANCE
“Salsa Night.” Begins with a one-hour salsa lesson. Juanita’s, 9 p.m., $8. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www.littlerocksalsa.com.
EVENTS
9th Annual Ozark Mountain Transformation Conference. Keynote speakers include Robert Bauval and Dolores Cannon. Holiday Inn Convention Center, June 20-22, $35-$195. 1500 S 48th St, Springdale. www.transformation-conference.com/home.html. Geocaching. Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center, 8:30 a.m. 602 President Clinton Ave. 501-907-0636. www.centralarkansasnatu-
PARTY AT OUR PLACE!
Downton Abbey Afternoon Tea. Pulaski Technical College - South Campus, 10 a.m., $80. Exit 128, I-30.
SATURDAY, JUNE 21
MUSIC
Calvin Richardson, Tim Brown and Star. Club Elevations, 8 p.m., $20-$35. 7200 Colonel Glenn Road. 501-562-3317. Club Nights at 1620 Savoy. See June 20. Deadspell, A Sight to See, Buried Under Texas, A Traitor’s Funeral. Vino’s, 9 p.m., $7. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com. Four On The Floor, The Revolutioners. Stickyz Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicken Shack, 9 p.m., $5. 107 Commerce St. 501-372-7707. www.stickyz.com. Karaoke at Khalil’s. Khalil’s Pub, 7 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com. Karaoke. Casa Mexicana, 7 p.m. 6929 JFK Blvd., NLR. 501-835-7876. Karaoke with Kevin & Cara. All ages, on the restaurant side. Revolution, 9 p.m.-12:45 a.m., free. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. revroom.com. K.I.S.S. Saturdays. Featuring DJ Silky Slim. Dress code enforced. Sway, 10 p.m. 412 Louisiana. 501-492-9802. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 Clinton Ave. 501-372-4782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Margo Rey. Walton Arts Center, 11 p.m., $20. 495 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-443-5600. Opera in the Ozarks Presents Puccini’s "Suor Angelica" and "Gianni Schicchi." Inspiration Point, 7:30 p.m., $20-$25. 16311 Hwy. 62 W., Eureka Springs. Pickin’ Porch. Bring your instrument. All ages welcome. Faulkner County Library, 9:30 a.m. 1900 Tyler St., Conway. 501-327-7482. www.fcl.org. Samantha Fish. Revolution, 8:30 p.m., $10 adv., $13 day of. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-8230090. revroom.com. Seth Freeman. West End Smokehouse and Tavern, $5. 215 N. Shackleford. 501-224-7665. www.westendsmokehouse.net. Singer/Songwriters Showcase. Parrot Beach Cafe, 2-7 p.m., free. 9611 MacArthur Drive, NLR. 771-2994. Space Camp, Fractal Sky. George’s Majestic Lounge. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479442-4226. SW/MM/NG, Oils. The Lightbulb Club, 9 p.m. 21 N. Block Ave., Fayetteville. 479-444-6100. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 9 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-374-7474. www.capitalhotel.com/CBG. Thompson Square. Magic Springs’ Timberwood Amphitheater, $49.99-$54.99. 1701 E. Grand
DANCE
Trim: 2.125x5.5 Bleed: none Live: 1.875x5.25
All American Food & Great Place to Watch Your Favorite Event
Little Rock West Coast Dance Club. Dance lessons. Singles welcome. Ernie Biggs, 7 p.m., $2. 307 Clinton Ave. 501-247-5240. www. arstreetswing.com.
EVENTS
9th Annual Ozark Mountain Transformation Conference. See June 20. 40th Annual Little Rock Farmers’ Market. River Market Pavilions, through Aug. 26: 7 a.m. 400 President Clinton Ave. 375-2552. www.rivermarket.info. Argenta Farmers Market. Argenta Farmers Market, 7 a.m. 6th and Main St., NLR. 501-8317881. www.argentaartsdistrict.org/argenta-farmers-market. Falun Gong meditation. Allsopp Park, 9 a.m., free. Cantrell & Cedar Hill Roads. Geocaching. Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center, 8:30 a.m. 602 President Clinton Ave. 501-907-0636. www.centralarkansasnaturecenter.com. Gluten and Allergen Free Wellness Event. Presentations on and samples of gluten free foods. Clear Channel Metroplex, 10 a.m., $10. 10800 Colonel Glenn Road. Hillcrest Farmers Market. Pulaski Heights Baptist Church, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. 2200 Kavanaugh Blvd. Historic Neighborhoods Tour. Bike tour of historic neighborhoods includes bike, guide, helmets and maps. Bobby’s Bike Hike, 9 a.m., $8-$28. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-613-7001. Juneteenth 2014. Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, 11 a.m. 501 W. 9th St. 501-683-3593. www.mosaictemplarscenter.com/get-involved/ juneteenth-2014.aspx. Pork & Bourbon Tour. Bike tour includes bicycle, guide, helmets and maps. Bobby’s Bike Hike, 11:30 a.m., $35-$45. 400 President Clinton Ave. 501-613-7001.
FILM
“American Experience: Freedom Summer.” A 2014 Official Sundance Selection followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Stanley Nelson. Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, 1 p.m., Free. 501 W. 9th St. 501-683-3593. www.mosaictemplarscenter.com.
SPORTS
Arkansas Travelers vs. Springfield. DickeyStephens Park, 7:10 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs. com.
SUNDAY, JUNE 22
MUSIC
Barnstorm. Featuring Davey Williams, Chris Parker, Rich O’Donnell and Doc Mabuse. Oxford CONTINUED ON PAGE 28
Publication: Arkansas Times
CLASSES
COMEDY
“Just Shut Up and Drive.” Original comedy by The Main Thing. The Joint, 8 p.m., $20. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com. Ron White. Walton Arts Center, 7 p.m., $48-$78. 495 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479-443-5600. Tony Tone. The Loony Bin, 7:30 p.m., 10 p.m. $7-$10. 10301 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501228-5555. www.loonybincomedy.com.
Closing Date: 6/13/14 QC: CS
SPORTS
Arkansas Travelers vs. Springfield. DickeyStephens Park, 7:10 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs. com.
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25
THE 1,000 EYES OF DOC MABUSE, CONT. Continued from page 20 Improviser, a journal of experimental music) and the jazz pianist and North Little Rock native Chris Parker.
THE HARMONIC VALVE
THE VIAGGIO DI MARCONI
THE EXALTED BIRDS 26
JUNE 19, 2014
ARKANSAS TIMES
How did you get the name Doc Mabuse? The nutshell version of it is that I got involved in a band in St. Louis called The Tory Starbuck Project, where Tory used stage names for everyone. Are you familiar with the character Dr. Mabuse, from German Expressionist cinema? Well I wasn’t, I had no idea. What I knew was that there was a band in Los Angeles called the Roto Rooter Good Time Christmas Band, who did things like marching band arrangements of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.” And on one of their records, they introduced this face-shredding tenor sax solo, which sounded sort of like a guy feeding a tenor slowly into a wood-chipper, and then they introduced him after the solo as “More golden tones from Dr. Mabuse.” I wasn’t used to using stage names but I thought of that and in the spur of the moment I said I’d be Dr. Mabuse. Very soon, more people knew me as Dr. Mabuse or “Doc” than knew my driver’s license name. How did you get into building synths? I was a NASA fetishist as a kid. This was Kennedy era, I’m old. And the coolest stuff in the world to me was spaceships. The closest thing you could get at the time was electronic equipment, that was what you saw those guys at NASA doing. So I had an erector set, and I was a science nerd. Then I learned about HAM radio: God bless Radio Shack. I have nothing but gall and vinegar for Radio Shack now, because they’ve changed from being the gateway for kids into electronics to being just another place trying to sell you a cell phone plan. But between Radio Shack and Popular Electronics magazine, I got closer and closer to realizing that I could actually build radios and use them, and eventually be the kid who was trying to talk his mom into letting him put a 50-foot antenna mast on his house. I insisted on building my own gear. And when you build your own gear, you don’t really have the commercial restrictions on how powerful you can make it. And I was a 13-year-old boy, the testosterone was just coursing, so I just made it as big as I could afford to make it. I didn’t understand that in between the legal bands for HAM radio, there are other users, and that Belleville, Ill., my
hometown, was home to Scott Air Force Base. According to them, I blanked their radar three times tuning up a homebrew transmitter for the first time. They found me within 20 minutes. They had triangulated my position and showed up on a Saturday morning, three guys in Air Force gray asking for the “radio operator at this address.” My mom hauled me out there by the scruff of the neck and they claimed my license right there. Thirteen years old. They weren’t dicks about it. After they took my HAM license, I built guitar amplifiers. In the Boy Scout book, for the electronics merit badge, they had plans and schematics for intercoms, so I took those and tried to figure out how I could make them louder and louder and louder. I couldn’t credit the Boy Scouts as a big influence, but they definitely helped out with a couple of fundamental skills. One was to provide me with schematics and the other was to sort of get my parents off my back, because I could say I was doing it for a merit badge. I built a fretless bass guitar when I was 18, mainly because they were ruinously expensive then and I didn’t have the money. The first electronic instrument I built would have been from a kit, from an outfit in Oklahoma City called Paia Electronics. That’s where I started with synthesizers. It seems like there’s a science-fiction influence to what you do. It’s kind of difficult to explain the romance of science fiction, but it was the exoticness of it, especially in the ’60s, when LIFE magazine had pictures of colonies on the moon. Kids my age, a lot of us, had this vision of the future, where we thought we might decide to live on Mars or the moon. That kind of romantic optimism was promoted in the culture back then. Like, I’m really pissed off that I’m going to be driving to Little Rock on roads; according to my 8-yearold self, I should be able to get in the jet car and 20 minutes later be in Little Rock. Or, at the very least, take the monorail. I remember watching “Forbidden Planet” as a kid very clearly. That and “War of the Worlds” were two of the scariest things I could imagine back then. It’s like that [J.B.S. Haldane] quote: “My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” It gave me my first taste of the idea that there might already be something up there. Also many people associate avantgarde music with sci-fi or horror movies. That’s understandable, because that’s the No. 1 place where you’re going to hear abstract intervals and rhythms in
THE 1,000 EYES OF DOC MABUSE, CONT.
4 lovestruck Italians
THE K-POD
popular culture. I don’t find anything particularly upsetting about abstract music, but my first taste of it was in its cinematic use, where the director was really trying to disorient the audience, or give them a sense of something alien. That appealed to me. Once again, that put me even further from suburbia. You seem more interested in live performance than recording. There’s that John Cage quote, “a record is not faithful to the nature of music.” Do you agree? I don’t know that live music is superior, but I would definitely agree with Cage that it’s distinct. A recording is an artifact, and it’s a thing, and a performance is an artifact and a separate thing. A recording of a performance, in my opinion, is a separate thing altogether. It’s not the same as being there. I’m seminary-educated, by Jesuits, so I got philosophy beaten into me at an early age. The notion of the nature of a thing is something I still think about. And among technicians, they hold the idea that technology will get closer and closer to the experience of being there in the room, and I disagree. I think there’s an actual phenomenological line between those things. I don’t go out of my way to get recordings of live performances even though that’s my primary expressive mode. If the audience knows that the only way they’ll have the experience is if they’ll go there, and that the experience belongs to them exclusively, I think that’s of value. It makes you think very differently, as a performer, if you know that you’re not going to be able to fix it in post. If you screw up in a performance you can’t take it back, you can’t wind the tape back and fix it. It’s sort of like if you’re going to recite all of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” to a live audience, and if you screw up on
page 672, you’re going to have to start over. You’ve said that “the practice of free improvisation in music or poetry can be applied to making a circuit without a ‘plan.’ ” How do you improvise when building a synthesizer? Electronics is a science. You have to know the basics, you can’t just be doing stupid stuff. Or basically all you’re doing is setting stuff on fire. The problem with most commercial synthesizers is, No. 1, they’re designed by committee, and No. 2, a lot of them are designed by engineers. And engineers, just like priests, have orthodoxies: There’s a right way to do this. The only way to get away from that is to go down one rabbit hole and then another rabbit hole and another, and not exactly remember where you are, and then take a shortcut straight up and see where you pop out of the ground. I’ve done that. I do that electronically. Ninety-nine percent of it doesn’t work; you go to ground and you’ve got silence. But with that other 1 percent, you make discoveries. The discoveries are modest, but they sound really good. Is abstraction the goal? I do aim for abstraction, but we’re designed, between our ears, to find patterns. And I see abstract music as music that challenges the mind to find patterns in more subtle ways. You’ve done concerts underwater and in total darkness. Can we expect something like that this time? Little Rock will be somewhat less ambitious because we only have a day to set up, so I’m afraid we won’t be doing anything too terribly environmental. So no, we won’t be underwater. No molten lava or chlorine gas this time.
JUNE 19-22
Outdoors at the Argenta Branch, William F. Laman Library ALL TWO GENTS PERFORMANCES ARE “PAY WHAT YOU CAN” PIPPIN JUNE 11-27 Reynolds Performance Hall, UCA, Conway
HAMLET JUNE 20-29 Reynolds Performance Hall, UCA, Conway
Enjoy our
2014
season!
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS A SPECIAL ADAPTATION FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES
JUNE 24-28 Reynolds Performance Hall, UCA, Conway
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AFTER DARK, CONT.
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American, 7 p.m., $5. 1300 Main St. Blake Shelton. Verizon Arena, 7 p.m., $42.50$69. 1 Alltel Arena Way, NLR. 501-975-9001. verizonarena.com. Karaoke with DJ Sara. Hardrider Bar & Grill, 7 p.m., free. 6613 John Harden Drive, Cabot. 501-982-1939. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 Clinton Ave. 501-372-4782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Mickey Avalon. Juanita’s, 8 p.m., $15. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-1228. www. juanitas.com. The Sounds of Gospel. Robinson Center Music Hall, 6 p.m., $20. Markham and Broadway. www. littlerockmeetings.com/conv-centers/robinson. Stardust Big Band. Arlington Hotel, 3 p.m., $8. 239 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-623-7771. Successful Sunday. The Italian Kitchen at Lulav, 8 p.m., $5-$10. 220 A W. 6th St. 501-374-5100. www.lulaveatery.com.
Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 Clinton Ave. 501-372-4782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Lucious Spiller Band. Copeland’s Restaurant of Little Rock, 6-9 p.m. 2602 S. Shackleford Road. 501-312-1616. www.copelandsrestaurantlittlerock.com. Music Jam. Hosted by Elliott Griffen and Joseph Fuller. The Joint, 8-11 p.m., free. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501-372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com. Tuesday Jam Session with Carl Mouton. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbar.com.
EVENTS
“Latin Night.” Revolution, 7:30 p.m., $5 regular, $7 under 21. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501823-0090. www.littlerocksalsa.com.
9th Annual Ozark Mountain Transformation Conference. See June 20. Bernice Garden Farmer’s Market. Bernice Garden, 10 a.m. 1401 S. Main St. www.thebernicegarden.org. Geocaching. Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center, 8:30 a.m. 602 President Clinton Ave. 501-907-0636. www.centralarkansasnaturecenter.com. “Live from the Back Room.” Spoken word event. Vino’s, 7 p.m. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www. vinosbrewpub.com.
SPORTS
Arkansas Travelers vs. Springfield. DickeyStephens Park, 2:10 p.m., $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-664-1555. www.travs. com.
MONDAY, JUNE 23
MUSIC
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Hot Springs Concert Band. The band will perform a program titled “Talk to the Animals.” Whittington Park, 6:30 p.m., Free. Whittington Ave., Hot Springs. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 Clinton Ave. 501-372-4782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Monday Night Jazz. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., $5. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbar.com. Richie Johnson. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com.
TUESDAY, JUNE 24
MUSIC
Frances Flower Shop, Inc. In downtown Little Rock two blocks from the State Capitol. We send flowers worldwide through Teleflora. 1222 West Capitol little RoCk • 501.372.2203 fRanCesfloWeRshop.Com 28
JUNE 19, 2014
ARKANSAS TIMES
wmichaelabstract.com With Works available at
Stephano’S Fine art Gallery 1813 n. GRant (Ba fRameR shoWRoom) (501) 563-4218 • stephanostudios.Com
Becoming Elephants, Mainland Divide, The Sound of the Mountain. Juanita’s, 9 p.m., $8 adv., $10 day of. 614 President Clinton Ave. 501372-1228. www.juanitas.com. Brian and Nick. Cajun’s Wharf, 5:30 p.m. 2400 Cantrell Road. 501-375-5351. www.cajunswharf. com. Irish Traditional Music Sessions. Hibernia Irish Tavern, second and fourth Tuesday of every month, 7-9 p.m. 9700 N. Rodney Parham Road. 501-246-4340. www.hiberniairishtavern.com. Jeff Ling. Khalil’s Pub, 6 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com. Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com. Karaoke Tuesday. Prost, 8 p.m., free. 322 President Clinton Blvd. 501-244-9550.
COMEDY
Stand-Up Tuesday. Hosted by Adam Hogg. The Joint, 8 p.m., $5. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.
DANCE
EVENTS
40th Annual Little Rock Farmers’ Market. River Market Pavilions, 7 a.m. 400 President Clinton Ave. 375-2552. www.rivermarket.info. Geocaching. Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center, 8:30 a.m. 602 President Clinton Ave. 501-907-0636. www.centralarkansasnaturecenter.com. Trivia Bowl. Flying Saucer, 8:30 p.m. 323 President Clinton Ave. 501-372-8032. www.beerknurd. com/stores/littlerock.
FILM
“Smokey and the Bandit.” Vino’s, 8 p.m. 923 W. 7th St. 501-375-8466. www.vinosbrewpub.com.
SPORTS
Texas League All-Star Game. Dickey-Stephens Park, $6-$12. 400 W. Broadway St., NLR. 501-6641555. www.travs.com.
BOOKS
Jane F. Hankins. The author discusses her book “The Thirty-Foot Elvis.” Laman Library, 7 p.m. 2801 Orange St., NLR. 501-758-1720. www. lamanlibrary.org.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25
MUSIC
Acoustic Open Mic. Afterthought Bistro & Bar, 8 p.m., free. 2721 Kavanaugh Blvd. 501-663-1196. www.afterthoughtbar.com. Archnemesis, Whitman Bransford, Explicit, Jordan van der Bergh. Revolution, 8 p.m., $8 adv., $10 day of. Revolution, 8 p.m., $8 adv., $10 day of. 300 President Clinton Ave. 501-823-0090. revroom.com. The Domestic, Holy Smoke. George’s Majestic Lounge. 519 W. Dickson St., Fayetteville. 479442-4226. Jim Dickerson. Sonny Williams’ Steak Room, 7 p.m. 500 President Clinton Ave. 501-324-2999. www.sonnywilliamssteakroom.com. Karaoke at Khalil’s. Khalil’s Pub, 7 p.m. 110 S. Shackleford Road. 501-224-0224. www.khalilspub.com. Live music. No cover charge Sun.-Tue. and Thu. Ernie Biggs. 307 Clinton Ave. 501-372-4782. littlerock.erniebiggs.com. Open Mic Nite with Deuce. Thirst n’ Howl, 7:30 p.m., free. 14710 Cantrell Road. 501-379-8189. www.thirst-n-howl.com. Posey Hill. South on Main, 7:30 p.m., Free. 1304 Main St. 501-244-9660. https://www.facebook.
AFTER DARK, CONT. com/SouthonMainLR. Ted Ludwig Trio. Capital Bar and Grill, 7:30 p.m., free. 111 Markham St. 501-374-7474. www.capitalhotel.com/CBG.
COMEDY
The Joint Venture. Improv comedy group. The Joint, 8 p.m., $7. 301 Main St. No. 102, NLR. 501372-0205. thejointinlittlerock.com.
DANCE
Little Rock Bop Club. Beginning dance lessons for ages 10 and older. Singles welcome. Bess Chisum Stephens Community Center, 7 p.m., $4 for members, $7 for guests. 12th & Cleveland streets. 501-350-4712. www.littlerockbopclub.
EVENTS
63rd National Square Dance Convention. Statehouse Convention Center, June 25-28, $5. 7 Statehouse Plaza. Geocaching. Witt Stephens Jr. Central Arkansas Nature Center, 8:30 a.m. 602 President Clinton Ave. 501-907-0636. www.centralarkansasnaturecenter.com. Science After Dark: The Science of Cinema. With food and refreshments from Damgoode Pies and Stones Throw Brewing. Museum of Discovery, 6 p.m., $5. 500 Clinton Ave. 396-7050, 1-800-880-6475. www.amod.org.
FILM
“Eat, Pray, Love.” Movies in the Park. Riverfront Park, 8:30 p.m., Free. 400 President Clinton Avenue. Orson Welles’ “The Trial.” Splice Microcinema. Vino’s, 8 p.m., Donations. 923 W. 7th St. 501-3758466. www.vinosbrewpub.com.
POETRY
Wednesday Night Poetry. 21-and-older show. Maxine’s, 7 p.m., free. 700 Central Ave., Hot Springs. 501-321-0909. maxineslive.com/shows. html.
KIDS
Agri-Adventure Day Camp. Plantation Agriculture Museum, June 25-27, 9 a.m., $30. Plantation Agriculture Museum, June 25-27, 9 a.m., $30. 4815 Hwy. 161 S., Scott. 961-1409. www.arkansasstateparks.com/plantationagriculturemuseum.
THIS WEEK IN THEATER
“Caroline, or Change.” The Weekend Theater, through June 22: Fri., Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Sun., 2:30 p.m., $20. 1001 W. 7th St. 501-374-3761. www. weekendtheater.org. The Compleat Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged). Arkansas Repertory Theatre, through June 29: Sun., 2 p.m.; Wed., Sun., 7 p.m.; Fri., Sat., 8 p.m., $30-$35. 601 Main St. 501-378-0405. www. therep.org. “Hamlet.” Reynolds Performance Hall, University of Central Arkansas, through June 28: Fri., June 20, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., June 21, 2 p.m.; Tue., Thu., Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Sun., June 29, 2 p.m., $28. 201 Donaghey Ave., Conway. Opera in the Ozarks Presents “Sondheim’s Into the Woods.” Inspiration Point, Tue., June 24, 7:30 p.m., $20-$25. 16311 Hwy. 62 W., Eureka Springs. “Pippin.” Reynolds Performance Hall, University of Central Arkansas, Sun., June 22, 2 p.m.; Wed., June 25, 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Fri., June 27, 2 and 7:30 p.m., $28. 201 Donaghey Ave., Conway. uca.edu.ticketforce.com/eventperformances. asp?evt=175. “A Second Helping: The Church Basement Ladies Sequel.” Murry’s Dinner Playhouse,
through June 21: Tue.-Sat., 7:35 p.m., $25-$35. 6323 Col. Glenn Road. 501-562-3131. murrysdinnerplayhouse.com. “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” Studio Theatre, through June 28: Thu.-Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Sun., June 22, 5 p.m., $18. Studio Theatre, through June 28: Thu.-Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Sun., June 22, 5 p.m., $18. 320 W. 7th St.
GALLERIES, MUSEUMS
NEW EXHIBITS, EVENTS
ARGENTA COMMUNITY THEATER, 405 Main St.: Ninth annual “Arkansas Sculpture Invitational Show and Sale,” preview 6-9 p.m. June 20, Argenta ArtWalk, also 9 a.m.-6 p.m. June 21, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. June 22 with silent auction noon-4 p.m. 501-353-1443. LAMAN LIBRARY ARGENTA BRANCH, 420 Main St.: Jewelry demonstration by Christy Young, 5-8 p.m. June 20, Argenta ArtWalk. 687-1061. L&L BECK ART GALLERY, 5705 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Go West, Young Man!” June exhibit, giclee giveaway 7 p.m. June 19. 660-4006. MOSAIC TEMPLARS CULTURAL CENTER, 501 W. 9th St.: Juneteenth celebration with music, vendors, new exhibit “Arkansas’ African American Legislators,” premiere of “American Experience: Freedom Summer” (1 p.m.), 11 a.m.-5 p.m. June 21, permanent and changing exhibits on black entrepreneurship in Arkansas. 683-3593. MUGS CAFE, 515 Main St., NLR: “Explore Arkansas,” juried “phoneography” (Instagram photographs taken and edited on mobile devices) exhibit, reception 5-8 p.m. June 20, Argenta ArtWalk, show through July 15. 3799101. PLANTATION AGRICULTURE MUSEUM, U.S. 165 S and Hwy. 161: 24th anniversary party with Dutch-oven desserts and homemade ice cream, 2-4 p.m. June 21; Artifacts and interactive exhibits on farming in the Arkansas Delta. $4 adults, $3 ages 6-12. Open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 501-961-1409. UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS AT LITTLE ROCK, 2801 S. University Ave.: “Recent Work by Laura Raborn and Sandra Sell,” paintings and woodwork, M.A. thesis exhibition, through June 26, gallery talk by the artists noon June 20. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 569-8977. BATESVILLE BATESVILLE AREA ARTS COUNCIL GALLERY, 226 E. Main St.: “Small Works on Paper,” through June 27. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Fri. 879793-3382.
by That Arkansas Weather
FAYETTEVILLE BACKSPACE, 541 Meadow St.: Video installation by Sondra Perry and artist’s talk, 8 p.m. June 26. www.facebook.com/backspacearts/info.
CALL FOR ARTISTS
The Palette Art League is accepting entries for its 6th annual Art Expo to be held July 7-11. All work must be two-dimensional and not entered in a previous Expo show. For more information, go to paletteartleague.org or call 870-656-2057. Deadline to apply to Artist INC Live Argenta, a professional development program for artists, is July 7. The program will be held Mondays Sept. 15, 22, 29, Oct. 6, 13, 20, 27 and Nov. 3. Read more and find a link to register at www. argentaartsdistrict.org. The Arkansas Arts Council is accepting nominations for the 2015 Governor’s Arts Awards to be made in February 2015. Deadline for nominaCONTINUED ON PAGE 30 www.arktimes.com
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AFTER DARK, CONT. tions is Aug. 1. Nominees will be accepted in seven categories: arts community development, arts in education, corporate sponsorship of the arts, individual artist, folklife, patron and lifetime achievement. Nomination forms are available at arkansasarts.org or by contacting Cheri Leffew at 324-9767 or cheri@arkansasheritage.org.
CONTINUING GALLERY EXHIBITS
ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, MacArthur Park: “Woodworking Instructors Exhibition,” Museum School Gallery, through July 6; “Young Arkansas Artists,” artwork by Arkansas students K-12, through July 27; “InCiteful Clay,” 35 ceramic sculptures that offer social commentary, through June 29, Winthrop Rockefeller Gallery. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. 372-4000. BOSWELL-MOUROT FINE ART, 5815 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Everyday Details,” new work by Dennis McCann and Jason McCann, through June 21. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. 664-0030. BOULEVARD BREAD, River Market: Paintings by members of Co-Op Art, through June. BUTLER CENTER GALLERIES, Arkansas Studies Institute, 401 President Clinton Ave.: “State Youth Art Show 2014: An Exhibition by the Arkansas Art Educators,” through Aug. 30; “Drawn In: New Art from WWII Camps at Rohwer and Jerome,” through Aug. 23; “Detachment: Work by Robert Reep,” through July 24; “2nd annual Arkansas Printmakers Membership Exhibition,” through June 28. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 320-5790. CANTRELL GALLERY, 8206 Cantrell Road: “Painting Arkansas — Finale,” new work by John Wooldridge, through June 21. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 224-1335. CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 509 Scott St.: Paintings by Dee Schulten, Dr. Lacy Frasier and Sue Henley. 375-2342. CHROMA GALLERY, 5707 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Work by Robert Reep and other Arkansas artists. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sat. 664-0880. THE EDGE, 301B President Clinton Ave.: Paintings by Avila (Fernando Gomez), Eric Freeman, James Hayes, Jerry Colburn, St. Joseph Thomason and Stephen Drive. 992-1099. ELLEN GOLDEN ANTIQUES, 5701 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Paintings by Barry Thomas and Arden Boyce. 664-7746. GALLERY 221 & ART STUDIOS 221, Pyramid Place: New work by Jennifer “Emile” Freeman. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sat. 801-0211. GALLERY 26, 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd.: “Recent Works by Arkansas Society of Printmakers,” including Robert Bean, Warren Criswell, Debi Fendley, Melissa Gill, Jorey May Greene, Diane Harper, Neal Harrington, Tammy Harrington, Samantha Kosakowski, David O’Brien, Sherry O’Rorke, Jessi Perren, Shannon Rogers, Dominique Simmons, Tom Sullivan and David Warren, through July 12. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tue.Sat. 664-8996. GINO HOLLANDER GALLERY, 2nd and Center: Paintings and works on paper by Gino Hollander. 801-0211. LAMAN LIBRARY, 2801 Orange St.: “Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow: Living with the Atomic Bomb,” objects, film, graphics about American culture of 1940s, ’50s and ’60s and the bomb, through Aug. 11. 758-1720. LOCAL COLOUR, 5811 Kavanaugh Blvd.: Rotating work by 27 artists in collective. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 265-0422. ST. MARK’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 1000 N. Mississippi St.: “Icons in Transformation,” 100 30
JUNE 19, 2014
ARKANSAS TIMES
expressionist works by Ludmila Pawlowska, through Aug. 17, percentage of sales proceeds to Artist-in-Residence program at Arkansas Children’s Hospital. 225-4203. STUDIOMAIN, 1423 S. Main St.: “Community Center Design Competition.” www.facebook. com/studio.main.ar.
CONTINUING MUSEUM EXHIBITS ARKANSAS INLAND MARITIME MUSEUM, North Little Rock: 371-8320. ARKANSAS SPORTS HALL OF FAME MUSEUM, Verizon Arena, NLR: 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 663-4328. CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL MUSEUM VISITOR CENTER, Bates and Park: Exhibits on the 1957 desegregation of Central and the civil rights movement. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. daily. 374-1957. CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CENTER, 1200 President Clinton Ave.: “Chihuly,” studio glass, through Jan. 5, 2015; permanent exhibits on the Clinton administration. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $7 adults; $5 college students, seniors, retired military; $3 ages 6-17. 370-8000. ESSE, 1510 S. Main St.: “What’s Inside: A Century of Women and Handbags (1900-1999),” purses from the collection of Anita Davis, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Sun., $10-$8. 916-9022. HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM, 200 E. 3rd St.: “So What! It’s the Least I Can Do …,” paintings by Ray Wittenberg, through Sept. 7, “Co-Opt,” work by UALR student artists Taimur Cleary, Jennifer Perren and Mesilla Smith, through July 6; “A Sure Defense: The Bowie Knife in America,” through June 22; “Arkansas Made,” ongoing. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9351. MacARTHUR MUSEUM OF ARKANSAS M I L I TA R Y H I S T O R Y , M a c A r t h u r Park: “American Posters of World War I”; permanent exhibits. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-4 p.m. Sun. 376-4602. MUSEUM OF DISCOVERY, 500 President Clinton Ave.: “Wiggle Worms,” science program for pre-K children 10 a.m.-10:30 a.m. every Tue., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $10 ages 13 and older, $8 ages 1-12, free to members and children under 1. 396-7050. OLD STATE HOUSE MUSEUM, 300 W. Markham: “Lights! Camera! Arkansas!”, the state’s ties to Hollywood, including costumes, scripts, film footage, photographs and more, through March 1, 2015. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. 324-9685. WITT STEPHENS JR. CENTRAL ARKANSAS NATURE CENTER, Riverfront Park: Exhibits on wildlife and the state Game and Fish Commission. 907-0636.
GALLERIES AROUND ARKANSAS
CONTINUING EXHIBITS
BENTON DIANNE ROBERTS ART STUDIO AND GALLERY, 110 N. Market St.: Work by Dianne Roberts, classes. 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. 860-7467. BENTONVILLE CRYSTAL BRIDGES MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART, One Museum Way: “Global Citizen: The Architecture of Moshe Safdie,” drawings, sketches, videos, photographs and scale models, through Sept. 1; “Anglo-American Portraiture in an Age of Revolution,” five paintings, including works from the Musee de
Louvre, the High Museum of Art and the Terra Foundation, through Sept. 15; “The William S. Paley Collection: A Taste for Modernism,” works by Paul Gaugin, Andre Derain, Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso and others, through July 7; permanent collection of American masterworks spanning four centuries. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon., Thu.; 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Wed., Fri.; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat.-Sun., closed Tue. 479-418-5700. CALICO ROCK CALICO ROCK ARTISTS COOPERATIVE, Hwy. 5 at White River Bridge: Paintings, photographs, jewelry, fiber art, wood, ceramics and other crafts. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Thu., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Fri.-Sat., noon-4 p.m. Sun. calicorocket. org/artists. EL DORADO SOUTH ARKANSAS ARTS CENTER, 110 E. 5th St.: “Tides and Currents: Contemporary Art Along the Gulf Coast,” works in many media by 15 artists, through June 28; closing reception 6-8 p.m. June 28. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. 479-862-5474. FAYETTEVILLE BOTTLE ROCKET GALLERY, 1495 Finger Road: “Makeshift Theatre,” photographs by Logan Rollins. 479-466-7406. THE DEPOT, 548 W. Dickson St.: “Natural Synchronicity,” paintings by Colleen Poplawski, Natalie Brown and Jessica Westhafer, through June. 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Sun. 479-443-9900. LALALAND, 641 Martin Luther King Blvd.: “Women of DAPA (Drawing and Painting Association of the UA),” Raven Halfmoon, Ashley Byers, Carrie Gibson, Mia Buonaiuto, Ashley Lindsey, Jessica Lynnlani Westhafer, Emily Chase, and Natalie Brown. WALTON ARTS CENTER: “Translating Earth, Transforming Sea,” sculpture by Shawn Bitters and Joan Hall and 3-D painting by Laura Moriarity, through June 21, Joy Pratt Markham Gallery. FORT SMITH REGIONAL ART MUSEUM, 1601 Rogers Ave.: 66th annual “River Valley Invitational,” through Sept. 14; “Carol Dickie: An Artist’s Journey,” through Aug. 10. 479-784-2787. HARRISON ARTISTS OF THE OZARKS, 124½ N. Willow St.: Work by Amelia Renkel, Ann Graffy, Christy Dillard, Helen McAllister, Sandy Williams and D. Savannah George. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Thu.-Sat., noon-4 p.m. Sun. 870-429-1683. HELENA DELTA CULTURAL CENTER, 141 Cherry St.: “Songs from the Fields,” exhibit about Delta music; “We Must Stand or Fall Alone: The Civil War in Arkansas,” women’s journals, slave narratives, letters from soldiers, uniforms and weapons, through June 28. 870-338-4350. HOT SPRINGS ALISON PARSONS GALLERY, 802 Central Ave.: “In Perfect Balance — Metals in Motion,” kinetic sculptures by Gerald Lee Delvan. 501655-0604. ARTISTS WORKSHOP GALLERY, 610 A Central Ave.: Jan Briggs, Pat Langewis, watercolors, through June. 623-6401. BLUE MOON GALLERY, 718 Central Ave.: Kay Aclin, Suzi Dennis, Thad Flenniken, Caren Garner and others. 318-2787.
EMERGENT ARTS, 341-A Whittington Ave.: “OVOLUTION: Paper Dolls,” group exhibit by female artists, through June 20. 501-655-0836 GALLERY CENTRAL, 800 Central Ave.: Dennis McCann, paintings. 318-4278. JUSTUS FINE ART, 827 Central Ave.: “See the Sound,” music-inspired graphite and acrylic on wood by Emily Wood, through June, also work by Taimur Cleary, Matthew Hasty, Robyn Horn, Dolores Justus, Dan Thornhill, Rebecca Thompson and others. 501-321-2335. PERRYVILLE SUDS GALLERY, Courthouse Square: Paintings by Dottie Morrissey, Alma Gipson, Al Garrett Jr., Phyllis Loftin, Alene Otts, Mauretta Frantz, Raylene Finkbeiner, Kathy Williams and Evelyn Garrett. Noon-6 p.m. Wed.-Fri, noon-4 p.m. Sat. 501-766-7584. PINE BLUFF THE ARTS AND SCIENCE CENTER, 701 Main St.: “I come from Women Who Could Fly: New Work by Delita Martin,” through August; “Shaping Our World,” science exhibit on acts of nature, through August. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.Fri., 1-4 p.m. Sat. 870-536-3375.
MUSEUMS AROUND ARKANSAS
CONTINUING EXHIBITS
ENGLAND TOLTEC MOUNDS STATE PARK, U.S. Hwy. 165: Major prehistoric Indian site with visitors’ center and museum. 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat., noon-5 p.m. Sun., closed Mon. $3 for adults, $2 for ages 6-12. 961-9442. JACKSONVILLE JACKSONVILLE MUSEUM OF MILITARY HISTORY, 100 Veterans Circle: Exhibits on D-Day; F-105, Vietnam era plane (“The Thud”); the Civil War Battle of Reed’s Bridge, Arkansas Ordnance Plant (AOP) and other military history. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun. $3 adults; $2 seniors, military; $1 students. 501-241-1943. MORRILTON MUSEUM OF AUTOMOBILES, Petit Jean Mountain: Permanent exhibit of more than 50 cars from 1904-1967 depicting the evolution of the automobile. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. 7 days. 501-727-5427. POTTSVILLE POTTS INN, 25 E. Ash St.: Preserved 1850s stagecoach station on the Butterfield Overland Mail Route, with period furnishings, log structures, hat museum, doll museum, doctor’s office, antique farm equipment. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Wed.-Sat. $5 adults, $2 students, 5 and under free. 479-968-9369. ROGERS ROGERS HISTORICAL MUSEUM, 322 S. Second St.: “Regional Foodways,” foodrelated artifacts, “Hog Wild: Our Area’s Love Affair with the Pig,” farm tools, sausage-making gadgets, folk art, books, through Aug. 9. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 479-6210-1154. SCOTT SCOTT PLANTATION SETTLEMENT: 1840s log cabin, one-room school house, tenant houses, smokehouse and artifacts on plantation life. 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Thu.-Sat. 351-0300. www.scottconnections.org.
MOVIE REVIEW
Dragon Slayer Award Dinner June 21, 2014
Speaker Governor Mike Beebe
'22 JUMP STREET': Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum star.
‘Jump Street’ goes to college
Honoring Brownie W. Ledbetter Dragon Slayer Award Winner Margarita Solorzano Ms. Solorzano has been a trail-blazing activist and advocate for immigrants in Arkansas for over two decades.
Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum return.
EJ Miller Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Dr. Thomas Bruce
BY SAM EIFLING
By engaging communities with institutions, Dr. Bruce has improved public health, education and philanthropic infrastructure nationwide.
And Outstanding Arkansas Activists of the Year Rosemary Brown-Britton — Omni Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology WAND (Women’s Action for New Directions) — Give AR A Raise Campaign Kate Altoff — Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families — Barry Haas Concerned Citizens of Huttig — Arkansas Education Association For more information call: Beth — 870-688-6527.
THE UNIQUE NEIGHBORHOODS OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS Full of interesting voices and colorful portraits of 17 Little Rock and North Little Rock neighborhoods, this book gives an intimate, block-by-block, native’s view of the place more than 250,000 Arkansans call home. Created from interviews with residents and largely written by writers who actually live in the neighborhoods they’re writing about, the book features over 90 full color photos by Little Rock photographer Brian Chilson.
Payment: CHECK OR CREDIT CARD Order by Mail: ARKANSAS TIMES BOOKS, P.O. BOX 34010, LITTLE ROCK, AR 72203 Phone: 501-375-2985 Fax: 501-375-3623 Email: JACK@ARKTIMES.COM Send _______ book(s) of The Unique Neighborhoods of Central Arkansas @ $19.95
ALSO AVAILABLE
Send _______ book(s) of A History Of Arkansas @ $10.95 Send _______ book(s) of Almanac Of Arkansas History @ $18.95 Shipping and handling $3 per book
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thrown against the wall. The sturdiest of these legs is the chemistry between the two leads, whose friendship is tested in ways that you’d predict by merely looking at them. Hill and Tatum apparently are buds in real life, and on-screen they clearly get a kick out of working with one another. We spend money to see movies for many reasons, not least among them to watch interesting people who seem like friends say hilarious things to one another, and to have adventures. ’Cause maybe that could be us! Hill’s a decorated talent, with a couple of Oscar nominations on his CV, and he gets some of the better lines in “22.” But Tatum owns more of the laughs. His GQ cover notwithstanding, we still aren’t giving Tatum his due as a performer. His physique is straight out of a risque Renaissance painting, so it’s easy to assume he’s only on the big screen because he looks the part. But he is also really effing funny. I’ve seen hundreds of movies in theaters, and I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed louder in public than watching Tatum in “22” after he realizes (no spoilers) that his partner and his boss have an unlikely connection. Tatum was solid in his semiautobiographical “Magic Mike” alongside a spectacular Matthew McConaughey, who, despite the low-brow sleaze of his role, absolutely went for the gold. McConaughey didn’t get an Oscar for “Magic Mike” but he did a year later, for “Dallas Buyers Club.” You gotta imagine Tatum noticed the progression. Lay out for the part, every part, no matter the role, and good things happen. Acting chops are one thing, and it’s not clear that Tatum’s ever going to join that upper tier of talents. However, consistently being one of the best things about hilarious films is not at all a bad niche.
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t’s probably impossible for an English speaker between the ages of 4 and 87 to watch “22 Jump Street” without laughing at some damn thing or other. The sequel to the 2012 quasi-adaptation of late-’80s TV cop drama “21 Jump Street” sprays jokes across a wider range of tastes than maybe any comedy you’ve seen. For every pratfall, or bodily fluid reference, or octopus attack, or gratuitous explosion, or tripping-balls druggie sequence, you might notice sly references to old BBC farces and gangsta rap, deadpan double entendre, and some deft physical comedy by stars Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum. This movie begs to be loved, so you might as well indulge it. The plot is a self-conscious reprise of “21,” so much so that the movie falls into one of its few overstretched jokes, a fourthwall-cracking bit of banter about how similar the sequel seems. But here we go: Hill and Tatum, back as undercover cops who would rather rage at a kegger than use a notebook or probe a database, have to pose as undergrads to infiltrate a possible drug ring at a university. Tatum falls in with a Greek-lettered football crowd that embraces him with a frat-tastic fervor, while Hill stumbles through the nerd scene with an arts-major lady friend (Amber Stevens). The flagrantly evil Peter Stormare plays a villain. Ice Cube, whose seminal hip-hop group N.W.A. sang “Fuck Tha Police,” again plays a boss cop. Between these “Jump Street” installments, the directing team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller pulled off an equally madcap gem with “The Lego Movie,” which, though almost fully animated, was scarcely more cartoonish than “22.” At times it hews to strait-laced police comedy formula before swerving gleefully into psychedelia, hall-of-mirrors self-referentialism, and whatever else might stick when
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Dining WHAT’S COOKIN’ VINO’S BREWMASTER JOSIAH MOODY is leaving the brewpub to brew his own beer. He’s calling it Moody Brews and has a deal in place to brew and bottle his new beer at Choc Brewing Co., a popular regional craft beer producer from Krebs, Okla. — a set-up known as “gypsy brewing” and made famous by ever-mobile Evil Twin brewing. Moody’s first run of beer will be distributed by Glidewell distributors in Arkansas only. The first official Moody Brews beer will be an Imperial IPA, which will be sold in four-pack bottles and by the keg. After that, he plans to pay tribute to his Arkansas roots by brewing a so-called “wild” ale using yeast isolated at Dunbar Garden (a longtime partner in Moody’s brewing). And he’s not leaving Arkansas permanently — while his brewing trips will keep him in Krebs for a time, he has made a decision to keep his permanent residence in Arkansas. Moody is hoping to have his first Moody Brews beer available in late summer or early fall.
Bar Louie
11525 Cantrell Road Suite 924, Pleasant Ridge Town Center 228-0444 barlouieamerica.com QUICK BITE Brunch is our favorite meal at Bar Louie, and fare is only part of the reason. It’s hard not to like a $2 mimosa, particularly one poured with fairly decent bubbly and the ratio of bubbly to juice way higher than what you’d expect for the price tag. HOURS 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Saturday, 11 a.m. to midnight Sunday. OTHER INFO Full bar, all credit cards accepted.
LITTLE ROCK/ NORTH LITTLE ROCK
AMERICAN
1620 SAVOY Fine dining in a swank space. The scallops are especially nice. 1620 Market St. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-221-1620. D Mon.-Sat. ADAMS CATFISH & CATERING Catering company with carry-out restaurant in Little Rock and carry-out trailers in Russellville and Perryville. 215 N. Cross St. All CC. $-$$. 501-3744265. LD Tue.-Fri. ALL ABOARD RESTAURANT & GRILL Burgers, catfish, chicken tenders and such in this trainthemed restaurant, where an elaborately engineered mini-locomotive delivers patrons meals. 6813 Cantrell Road. No alcohol. 501-975-7401. LD daily. ALLEY OOPS The restaurant at Creekwood Plaza (near the Kanis-Bowman intersection) is a neighborhood feedbag for major medical institutions with the likes of plate lunches, burgers and homemade desserts. Remarkable Chess Pie. 11900 Kanis Road. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-221-9400. LD Mon.-Sat. ASHER DAIRY BAR An old-line dairy bar that serves up made-to-order burgers, foot-long “Royal” hotdogs and old-fashioned shakes and malts. 7105 Colonel Glenn Road. No alcohol, No CC, CC. $-$$. 501-562-1085. BLD Mon.-Sat., D Fri.-Sat. B-SIDE The little breakfast place in the former party room of Lilly’s DimSum Then Some turns tradition on its ear, offering French toast wrapped in bacon on a stick, a must-have dish called “biscuit mountain” and beignets with 32
JUNE 19, 2014
ARKANSAS TIMES
ASHLI AHRENS
BRIAN CHILSON
DINING CAPSULES
BIG, BEEFY: Bar Louie's signature Fried Louie burger.
Bar Louie goes broad But largely succeeds.
T
here is much to like about Bar Louie, especially if huge portions and almost mind-boggling variety are important to you. We also like Bar Louie because it is a little saucy and sassy from a corporate branding/slogan perspective. If you like martinis, we hope you are reading this on Thursday, June 19, because it’s National Martini Day. (Who knew?) The poster touting the celebration — which includes half-price signature martinis all day — points out that
“there is no problem that can’t be solved over a great martini.” We spotted that poster while at Sunday brunch at Bar Louie, where the menu notes “brunch without booze is just a sad late breakfast,” which forced our hands into accepting the offer of a $2 mimosa. Assuming the website (barlouieamerica.com) is up to date, there are 85 Bar Louies in 24 states, and the popular spot in the Pleasant Ridge Town Center on Cantrell just west of Interstate
BRUNCH AT THE BAR: Bar Louie's Eggs Bennie.
430 is the only one in Arkansas. The restaurant/bar tries to be all things to all people, and it’s pretty successful at that challenging feat. There is generally a good crowd of working folks at lunch. There’s a bustling happy hour scene (with arguably best-in-town drink prices), a family and couples crowd at dinner and a livelier bunch as the night stretches on. At brunch (served 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday) there were families with kids, young couples and oldsters, which brings us back to that $2 mimosa. At that price, expectations should be fairly low, but Bar Louie uses decent bubbly, offers a selection of juices beyond orange and a few other flavorings. And the mimosas come out pleasantly pale, meaning the bubbly to juice ratio is higher than usual. CONTINUED ON PAGE 34
Information in our restaurant capsules reflects the opinions of the newspaper staff and its reviewers. The newspaper accepts no advertising or other considerations in exchange for reviews, which are conducted anonymously. We invite the opinions of readers who think we are in error.
lemon curd. 11121 Rodney Parham Road. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-716-2700. B-BR Sat.-Sun. BIG WHISKEY’S AMERICAN BAR AND GRILL A modern grill pub in the River Market with all the bells and whistles — 30 flat-screen TVs, whiskey on tap, plus boneless wings, burgers, steaks, soups and salads. 225 E Markham St. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-324-2449. LD daily. BOBBY’S COUNTRY COOKIN’ One of the better plate lunch spots in the area, with some of the best fried chicken and pot roast around, a changing daily casserole and wonderful homemade pies. 301 N. Shackleford Road, Suite E1. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-224-9500. L Mon.-Fri. BOGIE’S BAR AND GRILL The former Bennigan’s retains a similar theme: a menu filled with burgers, salads and giant desserts, plus a few steak, fish and chicken main courses. There are big-screen TVs for sports fans and lots to drink, more reason to return than the food. 120 W. Pershing Blvd. NLR. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-812-0019. D daily. BOOKENDS CAFE A great spot to enjoy lunch with friends or a casual cup of coffee and a favorite book. Serving coffee and pastries early and sandwiches, soups and salads available after 11 a.m. Cox Creative Center. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501- 918-3091. BL Mon.-Sat. THE BOX Cheeseburgers and french fries are greasy and wonderful and not like their fastfood cousins. 1023 W. Seventh St. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-372-8735. L Mon.-Fri. BUFFALO GRILL A great crispy-off-the-griddle cheeseburger and hand-cut fries star at this family-friendly stop. 1611 Rebsamen Park Road. Full bar, CC. $$. 501-296-9535. LD daily. CATFISH CITY AND BBQ GRILL Basic fried fish and sides, including green tomato pickles, and now with tasty ribs and sandwiches in beef, pork and sausage. 1817 S. University Ave. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-663-7224. LD Tue.-Sat. CHEERS Good burgers and sandwiches, vegetarian offerings and salads at lunch and fish specials, and good steaks in the evening. 2010 N. Van Buren. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-6635937. LD Mon.-Sat. 1901 Club Manor Drive. Maumelle. Full bar, All CC. 501-851-6200. LD daily, BR Sun. CHICKEN KING Arguably Central Arkansas’s best wings. 5213 W 65th St. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-562-5573. LD Mon.-Sat. CHICKEN WANG & CAFE Regular, barbecue, spicy, lemon, garlic pepper, honey mustard and Buffalo wings. Open late. 8320 Colonel Glenn Road. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-562-1303. LD Mon.-Sat. DAVE AND RAY’S DOWNTOWN DINER Breakfast buffet daily featuring biscuits and gravy, home fries, sausage and made-to-order omelets. Lunch buffet with four choices of meats and eight veggies. 824 W. Capitol Ave. No alcohol. $. 501-372-8816. BL Mon.-Fri. DAVID’S BURGERS Serious hamburgers, steak salads, homemade custard. 101 S. Bowman Road. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-227-8333. LD Mon.-Sat. 1100 Highway 65 N. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. (501) 327-3333 4000 McCain Blvd. NLR. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-353-0387. LD Mon.-Sat. E’S BISTRO Despite the name, think tearoom
BELLY UP
B Breakfast L Lunch D Dinner $ Inexpensive (under $8/person) $$ Moderate ($8-$20/person) $$$ Expensive (over $20/person) CC Accepts credit cards
Check out the Times’ food blog, Eat Arkansas arktimes.com
rather than bistro — there’s no wine, for one thing, and there is tea. But there’s nothing tearoomy about the portions here. Try the heaping grilled salmon BLT on a buttery croissant. 3812 JFK Boulevard. NLR. No alcohol, All CC. $$. 501-771-6900. L Tue.-Sun., D Thu.-Sat. FLIGHT DECK A not-your-typical daily lunch special highlights this spot, which also features inventive sandwiches, salads and a popular burger. Central Flying Service at Adams Field. Beer, Wine, All CC. $-$$. 501-975-9315. BL Mon.-Sat. HILLCREST ARTISAN MEATS A fancy charcuterie and butcher shop with excellent daily soup and sandwich specials. Limited seating is available. 2807 Kavanaugh Blvd. Suite B.
No alcohol, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-671-6328. L Mon.-Sat. THE HOP DINER The downtown incarnation of the old dairy bar, with excellent burgers, onion rings, shakes, daily specials and breakfast. 201 E. Markham. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-2440975. KITCHEN EXPRESS Delicious “meat and three” restaurant offering big servings of homemade soul food. Maybe Little Rock’s best fried chicken. 4600 Asher Ave. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-666-3500. BLD Mon.-Sat., LD Sun. LASSIS INN One of the state’s oldest restaurants still in the same location and one of the best for catfish and buffalo fish. 518 E 27th St. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$. 501-372-8714. LD Tue.-Sat.
*
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MADDIE’S PLACE Owner/chef Brian Deloney has built quite a thriving business with a pretty simple formula – making almost everything from scratch and matching hefty portions with reasonable prices in a fun, upbeat atmosphere. Maddie’s offers a stellar selection of draft beers and a larger, better wine list than you might expect. 1615 Rebsamen Park Road. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-660-4040. LD Tue.-Sat. MARIE’S MILFORD TRACK II Healthy and tasty are the key words at this deli/grill, featuring hot entrees, soups, sandwiches, salads and killer desserts. 9813 W Markham St. No alcohol, CC. $-$$. 501-225-4500. BL Mon.-Sat. MASON’S DELI AND GRILL Heaven for those who believe everything is better with sauerkraut on top. The Bavarian Reuben, a traditional Reuben made with Boar’s Head corned beef, spicy mustard, sauerkraut, Muenster cheese and marble rye, is among the best we’ve had in town. 400 Clinton Ave. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-376-3354. LD Mon.-Sat. SADDLE CREEK WOODFIRED GRILL Upscale chain dining in Lakewood, with a menu full of appetizers, burgers, chicken, fish and other fare. It’s the smoke-kissed steaks, however, that make it a winner — even in Little Rock’s beef-heavy restaurant market. 2703 Lakewood Village. NLR. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-812-0883. SIMPLY NAJIYYAH’S FISHBOAT & MORE Good catfish and corn fritters. 1717 Wright Ave. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-562-3474. LD Tue.-Sat. SLICK’S SANDWICH SHOP & DELI Meatand-two plate lunches in state office building. 101 E. Capitol Ave. No alcohol. 501-375-3420. BL Mon.-Fri. SPECTATORS GRILL AND PUB Burgers, soups, salads and other beer food, plus live music on weekends. 1012 W. 34th St. NLR. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-791-0990. LD Mon.-Sat. SPORTS PAGE One of the largest, juiciest, most flavorful burgers in town. Grilled turkey and hot cheese on sourdough gets praise, too. Now with lunch specials. 414 Louisiana St. Beer, Wine, All CC. $-$$. 501-372-9316. LD Mon.-Fri. SUFFICIENT GROUNDS Great coffee, good bagels and pastries, and a limited lunch menu. 124 W. Capitol. No alcohol, CC. $. 501-372-1009. BL Mon.-Fri. 425 W. Capitol. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-372-4594. BL Mon.-Fri. SUGIE’S Catfish and all the trimmings. 4729 Baseline Road. No alcohol, All CC. $. 501-5700414. LD daily. THE TAVERN SPORTS GRILL Burgers, barbecue and more. 17815 Chenal Parkway. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-830-2100. LD daily. VICTORIAN GARDEN We’ve found the fare quite tasty and somewhat daring and different with its healthy, balanced entrees and crepes. 4801 North Hills Blvd. NLR. $-$$. 501-758-4299. L Mon.-Sat. WHITE WATER TAVERN Excellent, locally sourced bar food. 2500 W. 7th St. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-375-8400. D Tue., Thu., Fri., Sat.
ASIAN
BENIHANA JAPANESE STEAKHOUSE Enjoy the cooking show, make sure you get a little filet with your meal, and do plenty of dunking CONTINUED ON PAGE 36 www.arktimes.com
JUNE 19, 2014
33
BRIAN CHILSON
DINING REVIEW, CONT.
MASSIVE APPS: Bar Louie's Meatballs Al Fornio.
Yes, there’s also food at brunch, and lots of it. Everyone starts with complimentary “donut holes,” though they are more like beignets — sugary and crunchy on the outside with a bit-too-bready and not-quite-cakey middle. You’ll get one per person, and they’re served with two cups of syrup, one Hershey’s and the other a more subtle vanilla. There are three signature omelets but we went for the build-your-own, choosing chorizo, onion, mushroom and cheddar ($7 + $2 + .50 + .50 +.50 = $10.50). Bar Louie cooks the ingredients into the eggs rather than teaming them in a pocket inside. That treatment is reserved for the gooey cheese. We couldn’t get much out of the chorizo flecks, though there were plenty of mushroom slices encased. All in all it was a little overcooked and tough, a disappointment at $10.50. More pleasing was the “Eggs Bennie” ($8), two properly runny poached eggs with ham on untoasted English muffin halves (though the menu touted a brioche bun). The Hollandaise was not as rich as usual, but all in all it was a good dish, particularly because it came with a huge portion of properly crisped-up, properly greasy tater tots. (Tots are a staple at Bar Louie — at every meal.) We love pancakes and saw a short stack on the menu. Our friendly waiter told us there was nothing short about that stack and said he’d be happy to let us order the $3.99 kids portion. No wonder more kids in America today are obese! What emerged were three normal-size cakes, a full adult order by anyone’s standards. And they were damn fine pancakes — rich, flavorful and moist. Note that you also can order from the regular menu at brunch, a nice touch in this customer-is-always right world that 34
JUNE 19, 2014
ARKANSAS TIMES
few restaurants abide. We were back for lunch later in the week. We started with Adobo Shrimp Skewers ($11), 16 smallish, spicy, tender shrimp spread across four skewers and teamed with cubes of ripe avocado, tomato and mango. Very tasty, not overpoweringly spiced and altogether pleasant. We’re glad we chose the Meatballs Al Fornio appetizer ($12) as a main course, because it is massive — five golf ball-size meatballs swimming in marinara and topped with a thick blanket of melted mozzarella and served with nine (NINE!) huge garlic toast points. The meatballs surely aren’t homemade, but they’re still of fine quality. Burgers are big at Bar Louie (you can get a basic one for $5 on Tuesday nights), and we went for the signature Fried Louie ($12 with tots or fries) — an ample burger, cooked just to medium as ordered, topped with bacon, cheddar and a sunny side up egg. We didn’t bother with the top bun, nor the shredded lettuce, tomato or pickle. We just took a fork to the rest of the gooey mess and loved every minute of it. Our third choice was a turkey, brie and ham sandwich ($9.25) on a nicely buttered, griddled bun. It was a more easily handled sandwich but also had a nice gooiness. It included blackberry jam and Dijon mustard, which melded the flavors nicely. Don’t want a burger or sandwich? There are six entree-sized salads, nine plates — including fish and chips, pasta, tacos, chicken and ribeye — plus flatbreads, almost 20 apps and a couple of desserts. Bar Louie isn’t gourmet, but it does a very solid job across the board, and you’ll have fun there.
Celebrate Arkansas Artisans! Beautiful handmade quality products by Arkansas artists!
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ARKANSAS TIMES
Arkansas Grown Products www.arktimes.com FEBRUARY www.arktimes.com JUNE 20, 19, 2014 2014
17 35
DINING CAPSULES, CONT. in that fabulous ginger sauce. 2 Riverfront Place. NLR. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-374-8081. LD Sun.-Fri., D Sat. CHI’S DIMSUM & BISTRO A huge menu spans the Chinese provinces and offers a few twists on the usual local offerings, plus there’s authentic Hong Kong dimsum available. 6 Shackleford Drive. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-221-7737. LD daily. 17200 Chenal Parkway. No alcohol, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-821-8000. LD Mon.-Sat., D Sun. 3421 Old Cantrell Road. 501-916-9973. FAR EAST ASIAN CUISINE Old favorites such as orange beef or chicken and Hunan green beans are still prepared with care at what used to be Hunan out west. 11610 Pleasant Ridge Road. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-219-9399. LD daily. FORBIDDEN GARDEN Classic, American-ized
Chinese food in a modern setting. Try the Basil Chicken. 14810 Cantrell Road. Beer, Wine, All CC. $-$$. 501-868-8149. LD daily. FU LIN Quality in the made-to-order entrees is high, as is the quantity. 200 N. Bowman Road. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-225-8989. LD daily, BR Sun. IGIBON JAPANESE RESTAURANT It’s a complex place, where the food is almost always good and the ambiance and service never fail to please. The Bento box with tempura shrimp and California rolls and other delights stand out. 11121 N. Rodney Parham Road. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$. 501-217-8888. LD Mon.-Sat. KIYEN’S SEAFOOD STEAK AND SUSHI Sushi, steak and other Japanese fare. 17200 Chenal Pkwy., Suite 100. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$.
501-821-7272. LD daily. KOBE JAPANESE STEAKHOUSE & SUSHI Though answering the need for more hibachis in Little Rock, Kobe stands taller in its sushi offerings than at the grill. 11401 Financial Centre Parkway. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-225-5999. L Mon.-Sat. D daily. NEW FUN REE Reliable staples, plenty of hot and spicy options and dependable delivery. 418 W. 7th St. No alcohol, All CC. $. 501-664-6657. LD Mon.-Sat. STAR OF INDIA The best Indian restaurant in the region, with a unique buffet at lunch and some fabulous dishes at night (spicy curried dishes, tandoori chicken, lamb and veal, vegetarian). 301 N. Shackleford. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$. 501-227-9900. LD daily.
Yellow Fever, Malaria, Tuberculosis, Cholera, Flu and Hookworm A Fascinating History of Arkansas’s 200 Year Battle Against Disease and Pestilence
Health THE
PUBLIC’S
STory of a narraTIvE HI nSaS aS SE E In arka HEaLTH and dI Art, M.D. by Sam Tagg
tes, M.D. Joseph H. Ba Preface by
This is a great Arkansas history showing that tells how public attitudes toward medicine, politics and race have shaped the public health battle against deadly and debilitating disease in the state. From the illnesses that plagued the states earliest residents to the creation of what became the Arkansas Department of Health, Sam Taggart’s “The Public’s Health: A Narrative History of Health and Disease in Arkansas” tells the fascinating medical history of Arkansas. Published by the Arkansas Times.
$1995
Payment: Check Or Credit Card Order By Mail: Arkansas Times Books P.O. Box 34010, Little Rock, AR 72203 Phone: 501-375-2985 Fax: 501-375-3623 Email:jack@arktimes.com 96 PP. Soft Cover • Shipping And Handling: $3 36
JUNE 19, 2014
ARKANSAS TIMES
THE SOUTHERN GOURMASIAN Delicious Southern-Asian fusion. We crave the pork buns constantly. Various. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-954-0888. L Mon.-Fri. VAN LANG CUISINE Terrific Vietnamese cuisine, particularly the way the pork dishes and the assortment of rolls are presented. Great prices, too. Massive menu, but it’s user-friendly for locals with full English descriptions and numbers for easy ordering. 3600 S. University Ave. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-570-7700. LD daily.
BARBECUE
CAPITOL SMOKEHOUSE AND GRILL Beef, pork and chicken, all smoked to melting tenderness and doused with a choice of sauces. The crusty but tender backribs star. Side dishes are top quality. A plate lunch special is now available. 915 W. Capitol Ave. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-372-4227. L Mon.-Fri. CROSS EYED PIG BBQ COMPANY Traditional barbecue favorites smoked well such as pork ribs, beef brisket and smoked chicken. Miss Mary’s famous potato salad is full of bacon and other goodness. Smoked items such as ham and turkeys available seasonally. 1701 Rebsamen Park Road. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-265-0000. L Mon.-Sat., D Tue.-Fri. FATBOY’S KILLER BAR-B-Q This Landmark neighborhood strip center restaurant in the far southern reaches of Pulaski County features tender ribs and pork by a contest pitmaster. Skip the regular sauce and risk the hot variety, it’s far better. 14611 Arch Street. No alcohol, All CC. $$. 501-888-4998. L Mon.-Wed. and Fri.; L Thu. HB’S BBQ Great slabs of meat with a vinegarbased barbecue sauce, but ribs are served on Tuesday only. Other days, try the tasty pork sandwich. 6010 Lancaster. No alcohol, No CC. $-$$. 501-565-1930. LD Mon.-Fri. MICK’S BBQ, CATFISH AND GRILL Good burgers, picnic-worth deviled eggs and heaping barbecue sandwiches topped with sweet sauce. 3609 MacArthur Dr. NLR. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-791-2773. LD Mon.-Sun. SIMS BAR-B-QUE Great spare ribs, sandwiches, beef, half and whole chicken and an addictive vinegar-mustard-brown sugar sauce unique for this part of the country. 2415 Broadway. Beer, CC. $-$$. 501-372-6868. LD Mon.-Sat. 1307 John Barrow Road. Beer, All CC. $-$$. 501-2242057. LD Mon.-Sat. 7601 Geyer Springs Road. Beer, All CC. $$. 501-562-8844. LD Mon.-Sat.
EUROPEAN / ETHNIC
ALI BABA A Middle Eastern restaurant and grocery. 3400 S University Ave. No alcohol, All CC. 501-570-0577. LD Mon.-Sat. KHALIL’S PUB Widely varied menu with European, Mexican and American influences. Go for the Bierocks, rolls filled with onions and beef. 110 S. Shackleford Road. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-224-0224. LD daily. BR Sun. THE PANTRY Owner and self-proclaimed “food evangelist” Tomas Bohm does things the right way — buying local, making almost everything from scratch and focusing on simple preparations of classic dishes. The menu stays relatively true to his Czechoslovakian roots, but there’s plenty of choices to suit all tastes. There’s also a nice happy-hour vibe. 11401 Rodney Parham Road. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-353-1875. LD Mon.-Fri., D Sat.
ITALIAN
DAMGOODE PIES A somewhat different Italian/pizza place, largely because of a spicy garlic white sauce that’s offered as an alterna-
DINING CAPSULES, CONT. tive to the traditional red sauce. Good bread, too. 2701 Kavanaugh Blvd. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-664-2239. LD daily. 6706 Cantrell Road. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-6642239. LD daily. 10720 Rodney Parham Road. Beer, Wine, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-664-2239. LD daily. 37 East Center St. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 479-444-7437. LD daily. GUSANO’S They make the tomatoey Chicagostyle deep-dish pizza the way it’s done in the Windy City. It takes a little longer to come out of the oven, but it’s worth the wait. 313 President Clinton Ave. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-374-1441. LD daily. 2915 Dave Ward Drive. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-329-1100. LD daily. JAY’S PIZZA New York-style pizza by the slice. 400 President Clinton Ave. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-313-8611. L Mon.-Sat. NYPD PIZZA Plenty of tasty choices in the obvious New York police-like setting, but it’s fun. Only the pizza is cheesy. Even the personal pizzas come in impressive combinations, and baked ziti, salads and more also are available. Cheap slice specials at lunch. 6015 Chenonceau Blvd., Suite 1. Beer, Wine, All CC. $-$$. 501-8683911. LD daily. VESUVIO Arguably Little Rock’s best Italian restaurant. 1315 Breckenridge Drive. Full bar, All CC. $$$. 501-246-5422. D daily.
LATINO
CASA MANANA Great guacamole and garlic beans, superlative chips and salsa (red and green) and a broad selection of fresh seafood, plus a deck out back. 6820 Cantrell Road. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-280-9888. LD daily 18321 Cantrell Road. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-8688822. LD daily 400 President Clinton Ave. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. BL Mon.-Sat. CASA MEXICANA Familiar Tex-Mex style items all shine, in ample portions, and the steakcentered dishes are uniformly excellent. 6929 JFK Blvd. NLR. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-835-7876. LD daily. EL PORTON Good Mex for the price and a wide-ranging menu of dinner plates, some tasty cheese dip, and great service as well. 12111 W. Markham St. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-223-8588. LD daily. 5201 Warden Road. NLR. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-753-4630. LD daily. ELIELLA You’ll find perhaps the widest variety of street style tacos in Central Arkansas here — everything from cabeza (steamed beef head) to lengua (beef tongue) to suadero (thin-sliced beef brisket). The Torta Cubano is a belly-buster. It’s a sandwich made with chorizo, pastor, grilled hot dogs and a fried egg. The menu is in Spanish, but the waitstaff is accomodating to gringos. 7700 Baseline Road. Beer, All CC. $. 501-539-5355. L Mon.-Sat. THE FOLD BOTANAS BAR Gourmet tacos and botanas, or small plates. Try the cholula pescada taco. 3501 Old Cantrell Road. Full bar, CC. $$-$$$. 501-916-9706. LD daily. LA HACIENDA Creative, fresh-tasting entrees and traditional favorites, all painstakingly prepared in a festive atmosphere. Great taco salad, nachos, and maybe the best fajitas around. 3024 Cantrell Road. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-661-0600. LD daily. 200 Highway 65 N. All CC. $$. 501-327-6077. LD daily. LAS DELICIAS Levy-area mercado with a taqueria and a handful of booths in the back of the store. 3401 Pike Ave. NLR. Beer, All CC. $. 501-812-4876. BLD daily. LAS PALMAS Mexican chain with a massive menu of choices. 10402 Stagecoach Road. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-455-8500. LD daily 4154 E. McCain Blvd. NLR. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. LD daily.
MARISCOS EL JAROCHO Try the Camarones a la Diabla (grilled shrimp in a smoky pepper sauce) or the Cocktail de Campechana (shrimp, octopus and oyster in a cilantro and onionlaced tomato sauce). 7319 Baseline Road. Beer, All CC. $-$$. 501-565-3535. Serving BLD Fri.-Wed. MERCADO SAN JOSE From the outside, it appears to just be another Mexican grocery store. Inside, you’ll find one of Little Rock’s best Mexican bakeries and a restaurant in back serving tortas and tacos for lunch. 7411 Geyer Springs Road. Beer, CC. $. 501-565-4246. BLD daily. MEXICO CHIQUITO Some suggest cheese dip was born at this Central Arkansas staple, where you’ll find hearty platters of boldly spiced, inexpensive food that compete well with those at the “authentic” joints. 13924 Cantrell Road. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-217-0700. LD daily. 11406 W. Markham. No alcohol, All CC. $$. 501-217-0647. LD daily.; 4511 Camp Robinson Road. NLR. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-771-1604. LD daily. MOE’S SOUTHWEST GRILL A “build-yourown-burrito” place, with several tacos and nachos to choose from as well. Wash it down with a beer from their large selection. 12312 Chenal Pkwy. Beer, All CC. $-$$. 501-223-3378. LD daily. RIVIERA MAYA Typical Mexican fare for the area, though the portions are on the large side. 801 Fair Park Blvd. Full bar, All CC. $$. 501-663-4800. LD daily. ROCK ’N TACOS California-style cuisine that’s noticeably better than others in its class. Fish tacos are treated with the respect they deserve, served fresh and hot. Tamales are a house specialty and are worth sampling as well; both pork and beef warrant attention. 11121 North Rodney Parham Road. No alcohol, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-812-3461. LD Mon.-Sat. SUPER 7 GROCERY STORE This Mexican grocery/video store/taqueria has a great daily buffet featuring a changing assortment of real Mexican cooking. Fresh tortillas pressed by hand and grilled, homemade salsas, beans as good as beans get. Plus soup every day. 1415 Barrow Road. Beer, No CC. $. 501-219-2373. BLD daily. SUPERMERCADO SIN FRONTERAS Shiny, large Mexican grocery with a bakery and restaurant attached. 4918 Baseline Road. Beer, All CC. $$. 501-562-4206. BLD daily. TAQUERIA Y CARNICERIA GUADALAJARA Cheap, delicious tacos, tamales and more. Always bustling. 3811 Camp Robinson Road. NLR. Beer, All CC. $-$$. 501-753-9991. BLD daily.
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BROWN’S COUNTRY STORE AND RESTAURANT The multitude of offerings on Brown’s 100-foot-long buffet range from better than adequate to pretty good. 18718 I-30 North. No alcohol, All CC. $$. 501-778-5033. BLD daily. SMOKEY JOE’S BAR-B-QUE A steady supplier of smoked meat for many a moon. 824 Military Road. All CC. 501-315-8333. LD Mon.-Sat. L Sun.
BENTONVILLE
THE HIVE The chef describes the menu as “High South,” with offerings like pimento cheese, “Arkansas Trail Mix” of pecans, soybeans, black walnuts and cheddar straws, grits, etc. You must have the frisee, egg or no. The pork chop is great. 200 N.E. A St. Full bar, All CC. $$$-$$$$. 479-286-6575. BD daily, L Mon.-Fri. CONTINUED ON PAGE 38
YOUR MONEY CAN GO TWICE AS FAR HERE, TOO!* RESTAURANTS
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3 Flamingos Far East Asian Cuisine Lilly's Dim Sum, Then Some NYPD Pizza Delicatessen Salut Italian Bistro Stycky’s Rock N’ Roll Chicken Shack Vesuvio Bistro Zin Urban Wine & Beer Bar
Arkansas Skatium Rock Town Distillery Splash Zone
HEALTH & BEAUTY
SERVICES
Pyramid Art, Books & Custom Framing
Ava Bella Day Spa IMX Pilates Little Rock
Cantrell Gallery Crowne Plaza Hotel Little Rock
* People love supporting local businesses, so some deals go fast! Be sure to check the website for our current list of deals.
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JUNE 19, 2014
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DINING CAPSULES, CONT.
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hearsay ➥ BOX TURTLE has some gorgeous new jewelry that’s just arrived. The items feature colorful stones like turquoise and pink lapis. They’ve also got lots of fun serving pieces perfect for summer entertaining. Stop by and take a look. ➥ School uniforms are 10 percent off through the end of June at THE TOGGERY. If you’re by the Pleasant Ridge Town Center location with your kids on June 28, check out the free kids yoga event from 11 a.m. to noon. While you’re there, sign up for The Toggery’s book club – if you buy five books, you get the sixth one 50 percent off. ➥ The YARN MART will host a yarn swap from June 19-21. The consignment sale features yarns, needles, kits and other knitting supplies that Yarn Mart customers have decided to clear from their stash. They’ll only be accepting cash and checks for yarn swap items. If you’re looking for something brand new, then the Yarn Mart has new, super cute cotton knitting bags in stock. ➥ WHITE GOAT’S summer sale is underway, with select items marked down 30 percent. ➥ JUST DOGS GOURMET has opened a spot in the Shoppes at Woodlawn, and is offering treats, toys, leashes and collars for the pampered pooch in your life. ➥ The second annual ROCK THE RUNWAY is scheduled for June 19 at the River Market Pavilions and will benefit patient support services at the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and Fighting Fancy, a nonprofit organization that gives chemo bags to women ages 15-39 going through chemotherapy. Things kick off with a reception at 6:30 p.m., followed by the fashion show at 7:30 and an after party at 9 at cache. Tickets are $125, which gets you into all of the festivities. After party-only tickets are $75. Buy tickets at www. RocktheRunwayLR.com. 38
JUNE 19, 2014
ARKANSAS TIMES
PETIT BISTRO Owner Dario Amini and chef Dane Mane serve haute cuisine in a little cobblestone house transformed into chic eatery outside Bentonville. 2702 N. Walton Blvd. Full bar, All CC. 479-464-9278. LD Mon.-Fri, D Sat.
CABOT
THE DINER The waitresses will crack you up at this red and white classic country diner. Madeto-order breakfasts and lunch plates, hot coffee served in logo mugs and gentle chiding from the wait staff make this a must-stop. 3286 S Second St. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. (501) 941-0904. BL Daily. SOUTHFORK GRILL This new establishment on Cabot’s south side serves up sandwiches, burgers and plate dinners as well as appetizers and big desserts. 2797 Southfork Dr. All CC. $$. (501) 941-7500. LD Mon.-Sat.
CONWAY
EL ACAPULCO Tex-Mex served in hefty portions in a colorful atmosphere. 201 Highway 65 N. No alcohol, All CC. $$. 501-327-8445. LD Mon.-Sun. EL HUASTECO Reasonably priced Mexican fare. 720 S. Salem Road. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-764-1665. LD Mon.-Sun. EL PARIAN Traditional Mexican and Tex-Mex favorites are offered by this Arkansas restaurant chain. 2585 Donaghey. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-513-1313. LD Mon.-Sun. FABY’S RESTAURANT Nuevo Mexican and Continental cuisine meet and shake hands at Faby’s. The hand-patted, housemade tortillas are worth the visit alone. 2915 Dave Ward. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-329-5151. LD Mon.-Sun. LA HUERTA MEXICAN RESTAURANT Standard Mexican fare with an emphasis on family favorites. 1052 Harrison Street. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-762-0202. LD Mon.-Fri. MARKETPLACE GRILL Big servings of steak, seafood, chicken, pasta, pizza and other rich comfort-style foods. 600 Skyline Dr. No alcohol, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-336-0011. LD Daily. MIKE’S PLACE Delicious New Orleansinspired steaks and seafood, plus wood-fired pizzas, served in a soaring, beautifully restored building in downtown 808 Front St. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-269-6493. LD daily. NEW CHINA Another buffet in the chain. 2104 Harkrider. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. 501-7641888. LD Mon.-Sun. SLIM CHICKENS Chicken in all shapes and sizes with sauces. 550 Salem Road. All CC. $$-$$$. 501-450-7546. LD Mon.-Sun.
DEVALLS BLUFF
CRAIG’S A tiny, no-frills barbecue joint where the meat attracts people from all over, and the hot sauce means business. U.S. Highway 70 west of town. 998-2616. LD. FAMILY PIE SHOP Mary Thomas is deservedly famous for the pies she’s been selling out of a backyard kitchen since 1977. The $6 chocolate pie we bought there lately was deeply, heart-breakingly chocolate. You can get fried pies (usually apple), coconut pie and egg custard pie regularly. If you want a pecan pie — or, in the fall, mincemeat or pumpkin — call a day ahead. U.S. Hwy. 70 West. 870-998-2279. MS. LENA’S FRIED PIES After closing down for the summer, Ms. Lena’s Whole Pies reopens with all the favorites — always Chocolate, Coconut Cream, 1/2 & 1/2 and Vanilla and sometimes Apple, Caramel, Egg Custard, Pineapple, Cherry Cream Cheese, Lemon Ice Box, Karo Nut Pie (Pecan), Buttermilk, Sour Cream Apple, Lemon &
Raisin Cream. Highway 33 at Highway 70. No alcohol, No CC. $. 870-998-7217. BL Thu.-Sat.
EL DORADO
FAYRAY’S Elegant but unstuffy dining experience in the nicely renovated downtown. Quality and price combine to make it an excellent value. 110 E. Elm St. El Dorado. 870-863-4000. D. GOOD TIMES GRILL Steaks, pasta, Mexican fare and big burgers all share the menu at this ecclectic El Dorado eatery. There really is something for everyone on the menu, and the prices aren’t too bad. 415 N West Ave. El Dorado. All CC. $$. 870-862-6922. LD daily.
EUREKA SPRINGS
DEVITO’S You absolutely cannot go wrong with the trout here — whether it’s the decadent Trout Italiano, the smoky Chargrilled Trout or the cornmeal encrusted Trout Fingers. DeVito’s housemade marinara is also a winner. 5 Center St. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 479-253-6807. D. ERMILIO’S Great mix-and-match pasta and sauces, all done with fresh ingredients and creativity. Warm service in a classy atmosphere. 26 White St. 479-253-8806. LD. GASKINS’ CABIN Solid American food highlighted by the fish specials and prime rib. Highway 23 North. 479-253-5466. D. MYRTIE MAE’S Hearty country breakfasts, sandwiches and Arkansas-style dinner plates. May be the second best fried chicken in the state. 207 W. Van Buren. No alcohol, All CC. $$. 479-253-9768. BLD.
FAYETTEVILLE
A TASTE OF THAI Terrific Thai food, from the appetizers to the entrees to the desserts. Only the brave should venture into the “rated 5” hot sauce realm. 31 E. Center St. All CC. $$-$$$. 479-251-1800. LD Mon.-Sat. ARSAGA’S FAYETTEVILLE COFFEE ROASTERS A locally owned and operated chain of Fayetteville-area coffeeshops featuring hot coffee and chai, sweet pastries, sandwiches and live performances by area musicians. 1852 N. Crossover Road. No alcohol, All CC. $-$$. (479) 527-0690. BLD daily. DAMGOODE PIES A somewhat different Italian/pizza place, largely because of a spicy garlic white sauce that’s offered as an alternative to the traditional red sauce. Good bread, too. 37 East Center St. Full bar, All CC. $$-$$$. 479-444-7437. LD daily. HERMAN’S RIBHOUSE Filets, not ribs, are the big seller at this classic, friendly, dumpy spot. The barbecue chicken is another winner. 2901 N. College Ave. 479-442-9671. MARKETPLACE GRILL Appetizers set on fire, Italian chips, funky low-fat dressings, prime rib and pasta in big ceramic bowls, the fare is a combination of old standbys and new-age twists. Also at 3000 Pinnacle Hills in Rogers. 4201 N. Shiloh. No alcohol. 479-750-5200. LD 600 Skyline Dr. No alcohol, All CC. $$-$$$. 501-3360011. LD Daily.
FORT SMITH
NEUMEIER’S RIB ROOM They cook up Memphis-style “dry” ribs that some say compare favorably to any in the Bluff City. 817 Garrison Ave. Fort Smith. 479-494-7427. LD. THE LIGHTHOUSE INN Alaskan king crab, lobster, shrimp, oysters, snapper, scallops and more. 6000 Midland. Fort Smith. 479-783-9420. LD.
HOT SPRINGS
ARLINGTON HOTEL Massive seafood buffet on Friday nights, breakfast buffet daily, served
in the splendor of a grand old hotel. 239 Central Ave. 501-623-7771. BLD. BAMBINO’S This little corner eatery is an intimate breakfast and lunch place, featuring Italian/American entrees. 432 Ouachita Ave. No alcohol, All CC. $$. 501-627-0541. THE BLEU MONKEY GRILL High end, artfully prepared pastas, salads, sandwiches and appetizers are one of the hallmarks of this classy/casual restaurant. Stay for the interesting dessert menu. 4263 Central Ave. Full bar, All CC. 501-520-4800. LD daily. CAJUN BOILERS Expertly prepared boiled shrimp, crawfish and such, served in a fun atmosphere. 2806 Albert Pike. Beer, Wine, All CC. $-$$. 501-767-5695. D Tue.-Sat. LA HACIENDA Authentic Mexican food; array of entrees. 3836 Central Ave. 501-5258203. LD. OHIO CLUB Great atmosphere and a standout burger highlight what claims to be the state’s oldest bar. 336 Central Ave. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-627-0702. LD daily. ROD’S PIZZA CELLAR Terrific handmade pizzas highlighted by the Godfather, a whopper. Lunch specials are a steal, especially the buffet. 3350 Central Ave. Beer, Wine, All CC. $-$$. 501-321-2313. LD Tue.-Sun. TACO MAMA Fresh, creative, homemade Mexican treats created with a Southwest flair. The menu is not huge, but there’s not a dud in the bunch. Truly a treasure for Hot Springs. 1209 Malvern Ave. Full bar, All CC. $-$$. 501-624-6262. LD Mon.-Sat.
JACKSONVILLE
THE ORIGINAL FRIED PIE SHOP Fried pies for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 1321 T.P. White Drive. Jacksonville. $-$$. 501-9850508.
JONESBORO
JOSIE’S The decor may be roadhouse, but the steaks are nothing but uptown in this tiny crossroads town about 20 miles from Jonesboro. The steaks alone justify the drive from Little Rock, but the ambiance is great too. Highway 49 and 14, Waldenburg.
KEO
CHARLOTTE’S EATS AND SWEETS SHOPPE This country restaurant, in a quaint old storefront decorated with teapots and such, answers all kinds of cravings, from fruit salads to hamburgers to catfish to cake. But no matter the entree, it’s the cakes and pies that have made Charlotte’s famous, so save room. 290 Main St. Keo. $-$$. 501-842-2123. L.
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