8 minute read
THE TO-DO LIST
BY STEPHANIE SMITTLE
ALYSSE GAFKJEN
JASON ISBELL AND THE 400 UNIT, LUCINDA WILLIAMS
WEDNESDAY 8/4. FIRST SECURITY AMPHITHEATER. 8 P.M. $45-$125.
Were it two different venues that Jason Isbell and Lucinda Williams were playing at this particular August night, they’d force a difficult decision. As it stands, you’re spared. Isbell, whose biting wit on Twitter nearly rivals that on his post-Drive-By Truckers solo album “Southeastern,” is bringing his all-star band, named the 400 Unit after a psychiatric ward in his native Alabama, to Little Rock ahead of his run at Austin City Limits. For the uninitiated, you don’t need to go deep in the catalogs to learn why he’s hailed as one of the greatest songwriters of our time; the Grammy-winning “24 Frames” or “If We Were Vampires” should do the trick. (Or, for more of a sense of the pathos that likely got him cast in Martin Scorsese’s upcoming “Killers of the Flower Moon,” see “Yvette” or “Alabama Pines.”) He’s joined by Lucinda Williams — daughter of an Arkansas poet and immutable bender of sung syllables, and someone who we should have fallen in love with the moment Mary Chapin Carpenter recorded “Passionate Kisses” in 1993, but who instead won us over slowly and irrevocably in subsequent decades. And hey, Isbell’s former bandmate Patterson Hood showed up at this tour’s Montana stop; anything can happen. Get tickets at jasonisbell.com.
COREY HOWELL
BLOOM: A LITTLE ROCK SEASONAL FASHION SHOWCASE
FRIDAY 8/6. OAK STREET VINTAGE. 6 P.M. $10 GENERAL ADMISSION, $20 RESERVED SEATING.
Dazzmin Murry’s not much for sitting still; the multi-instrumentalist from rock ’n’ soul outfit Dazz & Brie (our winner for Best Rock Band in the 2021 Best of Arkansas readers’ poll) established a nonprofit called Creators’ Village that works with rising artists in underserved communities in Arkansas. Now, Creators’ Village is partnering with La Rosa Antigua, a local clothing company helmed by Maxi Dominguez and dedicated to, its mission statement says, “destroying fast fashion and unchaining individuality.” Expect a focus on sustainability and upcycling at this downtown Little Rock fashion show, which features designs and styles from Murry, Dominguez, Taylor Compton of Oak Forest Vintage, Talesha Little of A Little Thriftee and Taylor Alexis of Noble Clothing.
ASHLEY MCBRYDE
SATURDAY 8/7. ROBINSON CENTER PERFORMANCE HALL. 8 P.M. $28-$200.
Double dare anyone who thinks they’re not a fan of radio country to listen all the way through Ashley McBryde’s 2020 record “Never Will” and remain unfazed. Her characters are instantly recognizable to anyone who grew up disenchanted and rural — the girl on the side of the road in “Hang In There Girl,” the nagging puritan in “Shut Up Sheila.” Born in Waldron and raised on a 400-acre farm near Mammoth Spring, McBryde started playing mandolin when she was 3, and because, as she told us in 2020, “there was nothing in any direction except whatever you wanted to do” in Mammoth Spring, she became a great player. She’s since made her mark as a sort of Nashville anti-princess or, as she puts it, the kind of country singer you want to have a beer with. Get tickets at ashleymcbryde.com.
SUMMER SOULSTICE X
SATURDAY 8/7. THE REP WAREHOUSE, 714 S. STATE ST. 4 P.M.-11:30 P.M. $20-$45.
Quiet Contender, a record label launched by Seth Baldy and Joshua Asante early in the pandemic, is celebrating an especially hard-earned anniversary of the pair’s “Soulstice” parties, a series of winter and summer solstice concerts held every year at the White Water Tavern. This year, the label is partnering on that concert with the Center for Cultural Community, a local nonprofit that aims to link up artists and musicians with access to things like practice space, mentorship, business savvy and health care. Plan on sets from Asante’s soul outfit the Velvet Kente Arkestra, St. Louis-based BLVCK SPVDE, the jazzdriven Cleveland trio The Katy, and St. Louis-based DJ Makeda Kravitz; plus food from Lili’s Mexican Street Food; and goods from local vendors and artists. The VIP ticket price gets you access to drinks, snacks and a gift bag; get tickets at quietcontender.com.
ARKANSAS REPERTORY THEATRE: ‘PRIMATING’
SATURDAY 8/10-THURSDAY 8/29. THE CIVITAN PAVILION, LITTLE ROCK ZOO.
Yes, you read that right, the Arkansas Repertory Theatre is staging a show at the Little Rock Zoo, and with good reason. Jennifer Vanderbes’ romantic comedy is, quite literally, monkey business, illuminating the reunion of two of the world’s leading primatologists, who also happen to be ex-lovers. Ari Edelson, a Yale University grad and decorated director who leads a prolific theater lab company called The Orchard Project, directs. The play is part of the 2021 “The Rep Outdoors” series, a bridge between the pandemic and a time when theatergoers can safely gather indoors. Get tickets at therep.org.
PROFESSIONAL BULL RIDERS: BAD BOY MOWERS MOWDOWN
SATURDAY 8/14-SUNDAY 8/15. SIMMONS BANK ARENA. 6:45 P.M. SAT., 1:45 P.M. SUN. $19-$109.
Hamburg, Arkansas’s own Chase Outlaw will be among the riders taking on “the world’s rankest bulls,” as a press release says, for this throwdown at Simmons Bank Arena. Outlaw (that’s his real name) shattered 30 bones in his face when a 2,000-pound bull named War Cloud trampled him in 2018, and his triumphant return to the sport — 68 metal surgical screws later — has him at the top of his game. As Outlaw told the Arkansas Times in 2019, he’s “taking it one bull at a time. … You just have to have faith in God.” Get tickets at pbrtix.com.
AARON CALVERT, COURTESY OF HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM
THROUGH 8/22. TRINITY GALLERY, HISTORIC ARKANSAS MUSEUM.
When it comes to nature and humans, we tend to think we’re the ones controlling the narrative, but then again, we’re the ones living at the mercy of our daily doses of oxygen to usher us onward to an eventual return to the soil, so who’s really in charge? Maybe the complexity of that cycle is why “Gone to Seed” makes so much sense for this exhibit, despite its verdant glow and vibrant palette. Painter Susan Chambers of Little Rock and ceramicist Aaron Calvert of Russellville turn their eyes (and their hands) to the mystery of nature in “Gone to Seed,” a dual exhibit in the Historic Arkansas Museum’s Trinity Gallery this summer. The works within portray nature not as something placid, but truly wild and, the museum’s description says, “subtly communicate our profound entanglement with the natural world, and the importance of (at least occasionally) relinquishing control and allowing things to go to seed.” Visit 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat.; or 1-5 p.m. Sun.
THROUGH THURSDAY 8/29. ESSE PURSE MUSEUM. $10.
COURTESY ESSE PURSE MUSEUM
Oh, you thought Pride Month was over? Good news: It’s here, it’s queer and it lasts all damn year. ESSE Purse Museum art director Steven Otis has curated an exhibit that is gay as hell and historical to boot, with photos of RuPaul and Candy Darling, nods to LGBTQIA+ history and a vintage beaded purse modeled by none other than Bert, the felted gay icon of “Sesame Street” that we didn’t even know we had until 2018. (But, I mean, we knew.) The exhibit, ESSE said in a release, is “lively, loving and fact filled, featuring photos and artifacts carefully curated in cases in the colors of the gay pride flag. And, of course, because ESSE is a purse museum, parts of the rainbow flag are created with purses.” Museum hours are 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sun., Tue. and Wed.; 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Thu.-Sat.
FRIDAY 8/20-SATURDAY 8/28. ARGENTA COMMUNITY THEATER. 7:30 P.M. TUE.-SAT; 2 P.M. SUN. $25-$35.
For lots of theater fans in Little Rock, Argenta Community Theater’s biting, triumphant production of “Ragtime” in February 2020 was the last show seen before lockdown set in. The company is back with “Pippin,” an extended metaphor brought to Broadway with the effervescent Ben Vereen at its center, back in 1972, when its fourth-wall-breaking sensibility raised a few more eyebrows than it might now; still, leave it to this North Little Rock company to up the ante on the show’s already rapidfire pace. Vereen will, by the way, speak at the company’s outdoor gala dinner on Aug. 17 at Argenta Plaza, the night preceding preview performances of “Pippin”. Get tickets for the gala or the play at argentacommunitytheater.org.
TUESDAY 8/27-THURSDAY 8/29. 7:30 P.M. FRI., 2:30 P.M. AND 7:30 P.M. SAT., 2:30 P.M. SUN. CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CENTER.
Look closely at opera and you’ll find that there’s almost always some element of the legal and the political, though the titles rarely tell you as overtly as this one does. Derrick Wang’s 2015 gem explores the unlikely friendship that sprang up between U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, a friendship about which The Notorious spoke when she visited Little Rock in September of 2019. Of the opera, the Los Angeles Times asked, “Could we please make it a constitutional requirement that no one can be sworn into office in the White House or Congress without having first seen Scalia/Ginsburg?” Ginsburg herself called Wang’s work “a dream come true.” For this performance from Opera in the Rock, Shannon Rookey sings the role of RBG, Matthew Tatuś sings the role of Antonin Scalia and Michael Colman sings as “The Commentator.” Ella Marchment — director of the Opera Festival of Chicago, director of Opera at Shenandoah Conservatory and director of the International Opera Awards since 2017 — directs the show. Get tickets and details at oitr.org.
CITY GARDEN: BEER & ICE CREAM FAMILY SOCIAL
SUNDAY 8/29. CURRAN HALL, 615 E. CAPITOL ST. 4-7 P.M. $15-$25.
Stone’s Throw Brewing and Loblolly Creamery join forces for this Quapaw Quarter Association social. Named for the beer garden that the George Brothers opened in the neighborhood in 1841, the event celebrates the German heritage of early Little Rock settlers with a beer fit for history nerds, Stone’s Throw’s George Bros. Historical Arkansas Ale. Get tickets by searching for “Curran Hall” at tix.com.
