Riverfront Times, January 24, 2024 by Big Lou Holdings

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

TABLE OF CONTENTS Owner and Chief Executive Officer Chris Keating Executive Editor Sarah Fenske

E D I T O R I A L Managing Editor Jessica Rogen Editor at Large Daniel Hill Staff Writer Ryan Krull Arts & Culture Writer Paula Tredway Audience Engagement Manager Madison Pregon Dining Critic Cheryl Baehr Theater Critic Tina Farmer Music Critic Steve Leftridge Contributors Aaron Childs, Max Bouvatte, Thomas Crone, Mike Fitzgerald, Cliff Froehlich, Eileen G’Sell, Reuben Hemmer, Braden McMakin, Tony Rehagen, Mabel Suen, Theo Welling Columnists Chris Andoe, Dan Savage

COVER

A R T

P R O D U C T I O N

Art Director Evan Sult Creative Director Haimanti Germain

Making Their Marks

Graphic Designer Aspen Smit

M U L T I M E D I A

A D V E R T I S I N G

St. Louis artists Brian Lathan, Jasmine Raskas and Sudduth Simiya are ready to break out in 2024

Directors of Business Development

Cover image: Detail of sculpture by

Circulation Manager Kevin G. Powers

JASMINE RASKAS

B I G

Publisher Colin Bell Account Manager Jennifer Samuel Tony Burton, Rachel Hoppman

C I R C U L A T I O N

L O U

H O L D I N G S

Executive Editor Sarah Fenske Vice President of Digital Services Stacy Volhein Digital Operations Coordinator Elizabeth Knapp Director of Operations Emily Fear Chief Financial Officer Guillermo Rodriguez

INSIDE Front Burner News Missouriland Feature Calendar Cafe Short Orders Reeferfront Times Culture Music Film Stage Out Every Night Savage Love

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

Chief Executive Officer Chris Keating

N A T I O N A L

A D V E R T I S I N G

VMG Advertising 1-888-278-9866, vmgadvertising.com

6 9 12 14

S U B S C R I P T I O N S Send address changes to Riverfront Times, 5257 Shaw Avenue, St. Louis, MO, 63110. Domestic subscriptions may be purchased for $78/6 months (MO add $4.74 sales tax) and $156/year (MO add $9.48 sales tax) for first class. Allow 6-10 days for standard delivery. www.riverfronttimes.com The Riverfront Times is published weekly

by Euclid Media Group | Verified Audit Member

PO Box 430033, St. Louis, MO, 63143

General information: 314-754-5966

Riverfront Times www.riverfronttimes.com

Founded by Ray Hartmann in 1977

35 36 39 41 42 44

Riverfront Times is available free of charge, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies of the current issue may be purchased for $1.00 plus postage, payable in advance at the Riverfront Times office. Riverfront Times may be distributed only by Riverfront Times authorized distributors. No person may, without prior written permission of Riverfront Times, take more than one copy of each Riverfront Times weekly issue. The entire contents of Riverfront Times are copyright 2023 by Big Lou Holdings, LLC. No portion may be reproduced in whole or in part by any means, including electronic retrieval systems, without the expressed written permission of the Publisher, Riverfront Times, PO Box 430033, St. Louis, MO, 63143. Please call the Riverfront Times office for back-issue information, 314-754-5966.

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

FRONT BURNER

MONDAY, JANUARY 15. It’s dangerously cold out there. After months of balmy skies, this Midwestern winter hurts. It’s also Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and we remember a great man killed by an Alton-born lowlife. Never forget, we have the Missouri State Penitentiary to thank for James Earl Ray’s cold-blooded assassination; they let Ray escape just one year before he murdered King in Memphis. TUESDAY, JANUARY 16. There’s snow on the ground and ice on the highways. St. Louis Public Schools close due to both extreme cold and “lack of bus drivers.” Not closed: The Iowa caucuses, which are won by that old orange guy. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17. The Clayton School Board reveals at an open house that it plans to pay $20.9 million for Caleres’ headquarters and gets chastised by the developers in attendance. “It’s not worth $20 million as it sits today, so for you to get up and say, ‘Look at the value we’re getting at $50

Previously On LAST WEEK IN ST. LOUIS a square foot,’ proves your unsophistication as real estate developers and proves that this is a very, very risky business,” says Clayco’s Jeff Tegethoff. Ouch. Also, unsurprisingly, Lamar Johnson is suing the city and the St. Louis Police over all the years he was locked up before being sprung from prison by the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office. A bit more surprising: The Post-Dispatch reports that Chesterfield-based Basketball Wives LA star Brittish Williams didn’t actually report to federal prison, despite orders to do so, and was arrested a week later. The daily notes that she’s now in jail somewhere, but “officials did not say where.” For the love of all that is holy, it better not be the City Justice Center. We wouldn’t wish that hellhole on our worst enemy!

4 QUESTIONS for demographer Ness Sándoval St. Louis’ population decline is often talked about in the context of the city’s population peaking shortly after World War II and then dropping steadily in the seven decades since. But Saint Louis University professor and demographer Ness Sándoval says that to only focus on the city is to miss the bigger issue bedeviling St. Louis, and that is people leaving the region altogether — specifically Black families. Sandoval talked to the RFT about where they’re going and why it matters. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Last year, you spoke to the Board of Alderman about the city’s population loss, saying that while St. Louis is gaining single people and couples with no kids, Black families were leaving. Where are the Black families going? They’re moving out to St. Charles, to some extent. Definitely St. Louis County. But this city-county boundary, for me as a demographer, is really a fake boundary; there’s constant movement [back and forth]. So when you see population loss in the city, and they’re just moving half a mile to the county, that’s not a concern at all. It’s when the families start leaving the region, then you have to start to realize you cannot be a major metropolitan region and say that you’re going to grow if you have a declining Black population. So the city versus county framing is perhaps not the most helpful? The city gets a bad rap. Because it’s always, “Oh, the city! The city!” But the county is smaller in 2023 than it was in 1990. And nobody talks about it at all. I think you need to hold the leadership in the county accountable. Because they have failed. I’ll tell you right now, the county is in big trouble. It leads the state in people dying compared to people being born. Missouri is showing up as losing Black population precisely because St. Louis County is losing its Black population. So the state has every reason to be concerned, or should be concerned, at what’s happened to St. Louis County because the losses are so great that it’s making the state num-

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

THURSDAY, JANUARY 18. The cost of the city’s planned MetroLink expansion is now estimated at $1.1 billion. That’s $178 million per mile, which is insane. Also, everyone’s up in arms because Clayco wanted to move a concrete company to vacant land in north St. Louis, and city officials said no. Shouldn’t the city be grateful for any shitty project our business leaders want to build — and throw tax incentives at it instead of being diffident? What’s wrong with the St. Louis Development Corporation anyway? Meanwhile, in St. Chuck, hundreds of kids walk out of Francis Howell High School to protest changes to Black studies courses and other school board actions. Whaddaya know, the kids are alright!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 19. There’s more snow and a bit more ice. But the Cardinals have a solution for their 2023 woes: Matt Carpenter! Yeah, he’s a former All-Star, and we all love him, but the fact he’s getting paid the Major League Baseball minimum suggests this is not the expenditure we were hoping for from the stingy front office. SATURDAY, JANUARY 20. The Blues win at home 3-0 on a frigid night. We’ll take it! SUNDAY, JANUARY 21. Ron DeSantis can’t even make it to New Hampshire. The Florida man drops out of the presidential race by quoting Churchill, yet another sadly hubristic act from a guy whose PAC spent $35 million to finish a very distant second in Iowa — roughly $1,500 per vote. That’s got to hurt. Also, MoDOT warns roads are going to be awful on Monday, so everyone from City Hall to your local school calls it a snow day. Perfect night to watch the Missourah Chiefs beat the Bills and maybe enjoy a Taylor Swift sighting, too.

ber look bad. You have spoken about people going to places like Dallas, Charlotte, Atlanta. Why are folks headed south? Access to opportunity. With the opening of the South — especially Atlanta, Orlando, Charlotte — when these opportunities emerged to move there, and you realize, “I don’t have to live in a segregated neighborhood. I can live in an integrated neighborhood,” I think most young SLU’s Ness Sándoval has words of warning for St. Louis people are going to say County. | COURTESY PHOTO [about St. Louis], “I’m out.” Dallas, San Antonio, Austin — these cities evolved after 1970 after the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was illegal. So there was not a history of segregation in the city and the housing market with [restricted] covenants. They started off with a very different infrastructure than St. Louis. What can we do to reverse this? We do not tell our story very well. I’m from Nebraska. I’ve lived in California and D.C. The St. Louis region itself has a lot to offer. But if you always lead with “the cost of living,” you’re going to lose the majority of people. My students graduating SLU are going to San Francisco and are willing to spend $8,000 a month to live there because it’s San Francisco. They want access to the mountains and are going to go to Denver, and they’re willing to pay for it. And so when you lead with “you can live here cheaply,” that’s not the calling card for this generation. —Ryan Krull

[

T H E D E V I L’ S I N T H E D E TA I L S

]

WEEKLY WTF?!

Poor li’l bastard. | PAULA TREDWAY

EYELESS BIRD WATCH When: 1:39 p.m. Wednesday, January 3 Where: Vandeventer and Sarpy avenues, Forest Park Southeast Who: Tweety Bird, sans peepers Why? Because he didn’t deserve this. But why rip off Tweety’s eyes? Because he’s seen too much? Matching the top of the hydrant, the poor pet tried to blend in in hopes of not being found. But his hair blowing in the wind blew his cover.

15 SECONDS OF FAME BAD WIFE OF THE WEEK

Sarah Scheffer

By day, Sarah Scheffer was a Christian schoolteacher. By night, she was apparently the spouse from hell, as prosecutors in Cole County say she mixed the potentially deadly poison from lilies of the valley straight into the smoothies she made for her husband. Scheffer’s husband described to law enforcement eight different instances when the food she prepared for him left him in severe physical distress, suffering from Don’t accept a smoothie from Sarah Scheffer. fatigue, blurred vision and nausea, | COLE COUNTY SHERIFF yet he did not go to the cops until he had proof from a hidden camera. Bizarrely, when he confronted Scheffer about one of the smoothies having a bitter taste, according to police, she explained the odd taste away by saying she had peed in the drink. (She then changed her story and said she’d mixed industrial adhesive into it, before later denying making either statement.) Why would any husband accept any food from a spouse unhinged enough to pee into it? This is one of the many questions we may never get the answer to. Let’s just say things are weird in Jefferson City and hope Sarah Scheffer does not give our spouses any ideas.

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

S I H

T A S

RIVERFRONT TIMES

D R U

! Y A

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

NEWS Neighbors Saw Suffering in Illegal Rooming Houses Dara Daugherty’s operation was well known to its Tower Grove East neighbors — and so were its victims Written by

RYAN KRULL

ast week, a bombshell lawsuit filed by the City of St. Louis limned in 57 pages the human misery brought to bear by a group of slumlords’ sprawling south city operation. The city accused its perpetrators of turning condemned buildings into illegal rooming houses, preying on vulnerable people by taking their cash in exchange for near-uninhabitable spaces. But for the residents of one block of Virginia Avenue in Tower Grove East, there was nothing new in the suit’s details. They’d had an up-close look as the nightmare unfolded for years. For the past several years, the slowly collapsing home on Virginia Avenue near Sidney Street had at any given time between six and ten people living inside — some only there a short while, others staying long enough to become fixtures in the neighborhood. Outside, the house sports a Dutch gambrel roof, a near-ancient retention wall and a boarded front door with “no trespassing” and the date 12-6-23 tagged on it. Inside, neighbors describe a house that was until recently a reservoir of human suffering. For a while, a man who used a colostomy bag and wasn’t getting proper medical care would be carted

Today, the house on Virginia Avenue is boarded up. | RYAN KRULL off by EMTs in his own excrement roughly once a month. Others living at the house huddled around an electric oven in the winter, the only way to keep warm. And then there was the landlord, Dara Daugherty. “She used to come by at all hours of the night and scream at them to pay her money,” says Brittany Marquardt, who has lived next door for four years. Daugherty and five of her associates, several of whom are her relatives, were named in the lawsuit filed by the city’s Affirmative Litigation Unit. The suit accuses them of running an illegal operation spanning 39 properties across nine south city neighborhoods. The lawsuit states that between 2018 and 2023, the city’s Building Division issued seven notices of condemnation for the property as well as notices of 159 ordinance violations, according to the lawsuit filed by the city. Yet Daugherty continued to rent it out room by room. Marquardt got to know many of the people living there. She and other neighbors seem to have genuinely cared about their welfare. They were at times hesitant to call the police for fear that people living at the house would wind up in an even worse spot. She recalls that two men told others in the neighborhood they had previously been living in a tent. “It’s almost like she was knock-

Dara Daugherty, shown in a mugshot from a previous arrest. | SLMPD ing on tents, saying, ‘Hey, I got a place for you,’” Marquardt says of Daugherty. The lawsuit filed against Daugherty claims that she sought out new tenants in homeless shelters and food pantries. It accuses her of preying on the “vulnerable and indigent” and those suffering mental illness or drug addiction. Daugherty allegedly bragged that she pulled in $40,000 a month from the scheme. The RFT reached out to Daugherty via phone and Facebook Messenger, but she did not respond to messages seeking comment. “I know these were people who

had mental issues, but they deserve better. They were humans,” says Joseph Goodman of the people living in the Virginia Avenue rental. Goodman, a nurse, shares an alley with Daugherty’s property and helps run the Tower Grove East Community Garden at the end of the block. A lack of basic services combined with untreated mental and physical ailments made for an often bleak scene inside the Virginia Avenue house. The man who lived there with the colostomy bag, whom some of the others called “dad,” referred to rats as “his babies” and had trained them to eat off his chest. One adult living there would ask neighbors for help reading basic instruction manuals. For extended periods of time the house seemed to be without functioning plumbing. Yet Daugherty still got paid. “Tenants report that Daugherty requires them to sign over their government checks to pay rent,” the suit against her says. Police records indicate they have been called to the Virginia Avenue property 42 times since 2017. City records show 17 complaints made to the Citizens’ Services Bureau in that same time period. Those complaints were for everything from bed bugs to raw garbage on the premises, cave-ins to rats. Marquardt shared with the RFT emails she exchanged with the police’s Problem Properties Unit dating back to June and messages she sent to a state elder abuse investigator in the summer of 2022. “I’d say I contact someone about that house once a month,” she says. City Hall spokesman Nick Dunne tells the RFT, “A lawsuit like this takes a long time — it started with the diligent work of impacted residents filing Citizens’ Service Bureau requests and calling 911 when necessary. While the Building Division must first give property owners the opportunity to resolve code or ordinance violations, repeated violations will then move to the Problem Properties Unit.” Dunne adds that the involvement of the city’s Affirmative Litigation Unit, which filed the lawsuit against Daugherty, demonstrates that the Problem Properties Unit had done all they could

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

Continued on pg 10

RIVERFRONT TIMES

DARA DAUGHERTY Continued from pg 9

within their scope of work. Interestingly, one of the reasons the scheme persisted so long may have to do with the way the city handles occupancy inspections, a system that is more onerous for law-abiding, ethical landlords than it is for those with fewer scruples. That’s because a city needs to issue an occupancy permit for a unit any time a new tenant moves in. But that inspection is only triggered when the utilities change hands — and if the utilities never change hands, an inspector has no reason to check things out unless a landlord proactively summons them. That’s why with so many slumlord operations, utilities are “included” in the rent. The utilities stay in the name of the landlord or their LLC, no matter how many people move in and out of their properties. That seems to be the case for Daugherty and her associates. Chris Day tells the RFT that for six months in 2022 he rented a basement on Hamburg Avenue from Daugherty’s co-defendants in the city’s lawsuit, Keith Mack. Day says that the space only had one outlet on a wall that would get soaked every time it rained. “He was never supposed to rent that basement,” Day says. Naturally, the utilities were included in the rent, and Day says

Feds Forgave Northview Village Loan Nursing homes linked to Makhlouf Suissa raked in nearly $7 million in forgiven PPP loans since 2021 Written by

MIKE FITZGERALD

hat a difference a few years can make. In April 2020, the federal government awarded a Paycheck Protection Program loan worth $1,970,487 to the partnership group that ran Northview Village Nursing Home in St. Louis. The following year, federal regulators awarded Northview its lowest rating, a single star — “much below average” — on a five-star rating system, citing the facility

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Mack tried to keep those costs as low as possible. “He put a little box over the thermostat so nobody could get to it,” says Day. Another tenant, who was living on Louisiana Avenue in Tower Grove East, said that he was renting a room in a house along with six other people and that Daugehrty takes care of the utilities. He didn’t want to give his name. Previously, in response to the RFT’s questions about substandard conditions at a different apartment complex, St. Louis Board of Aldermen President Megan Green says the board planned to soon address multiple issues surrounding housing in the city, including lack of inspections in rental units. “We know that a number of problematic landlords will include utilities in rent. It’s the changeover in utilities that triggers the city to do an occupancy inspection,” Green told the RFT in September. “We’re working on closing that loophole and requiring inspections so landlords can’t get around that.” Daugherty and her crew, however, seem to have used the loophole freely. The house on Virginia Avenue at times had no functioning toilet, Marquardt says, leaving the people living there to use a bucket for their bathroom, which they would then dump out the window on the side of the house facing Marquardt’s home. Marquardt built a berm to stop the pee from

flowing into her yard. “I would ask them, ‘Hey guys, I know your situation is dire, but could you dump the urine on the other side where there isn’t anyone living?’” she says. Goodman helped maintain a food pantry in the community garden, stocked with perishable items, put there in part with Daugherty’s tenants in mind. “If the property was livable, and had running water and electricity and AC in the summer, heat in winter, I wouldn’t have a problem with a reasonable number of those people living there,” says Goodman, who adds that he appreciated how one of the people living there, Larry, kept an eye on the alley. “It would have been fine.” At least one death has occurred at the property since 2017. The lawsuit filed by the city references an instance of “a human corpse being removed from the property by authorities.” Goodman says that when one of the people living at the house didn’t pay their rent, Daugherty turned off the electricity to the entire building. In the summer of 2022, a man whom the neighborhood knew only as Warren was living on the third floor. One day, an ambulance showed up and took Warren out in a body bag. No one knows with complete certainty, but they believe he may have died from the heat. Marquardt says that the very next day after Warren’s death, someone showed up to the house

to install a window AC unit. “I got into a shouting match,” Marquardt says, incensed that air conditioning was only being installed now. The man replied that Warren’s death was Warren’s fault — he was supposedly too “retarded” to put in a box fan. The neighbors say that around the middle of last month, after years of their complaining, the police’s Problem Properties Unit came by and cleared everyone out for good. As for the people who were living at the house, “I think they’ve been shuffled to different properties of hers,” Marquardt says. “She has so many.” The neighbor who didn’t want to give her name recalls one evening shortly before everyone in the house got kicked out when she saw Larry in the alley behind the house on Virginia Avenue. He was unusually standoffish. This neighbor had given Larry food, coats and the occasional beer. She’d bought him new waterproof boots for Christmas. Now, she asked him why he was so reluctant to have their usual chat. Daugherty had told him that she, the neighbor who bought him the waterproof boots, had called the police on him. This wasn’t true, the neighbor tried to explain. “I told him, ‘She’s lying to you,’” this neighbor recalls. “The poor man was about brought to tears,” she said. She could see what she was saying sink in, but only to an extent. And only temporarily so. n

for severe staff shortages. Regulators also documented two abuse and neglect complaints at Northview, and nine quality-of-life complaints, resulting in eight separate fines totaling $86,373, Medicare records show. Nonetheless, the U.S. Treasury Department in that year forgave the nearly $2 million PPP loan to Northview Village, federal records show. Flash forward to December 15, 2023. That afternoon, as Northview Village workers prepared for their annual holiday party, several were notified that Chicago businessman Makhlouf “Mark” Suissa, the leader of the partnership group that owns and operates Northview, would be shutting down the nursing home, located at 2415 North Kingshighway. That decision touched off a frantic overnight scramble to move the facility’s 170 residents to other nursing homes. The result: chaos. Many family members spent days looking for loved ones. Police found one mentally ill patient walking on a nearby street three days later. It took three weeks to locate the final missing resi-

dent, and the personal belongings for many, if not most, are still missing. And the facility’s 180 workers were stiffed out of their final paychecks and vacation pay one week before Christmas, forcing many to wonder how they would be able to pay their rent and utility bills. For Lenny Jones, the vice-president and Missouri state director of the healthcare division of the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, nothing about the closure of Northview Village makes sense — except greed. “Their argument … that it’s a financial thing and the state needs to pay them more is bullshit,” Jones says. Jones notes that the federal government, through the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs, paid nearly every dime of patient expenses. The forgiven PPP loan was just free money. Northview’s sudden closure was “a premeditated act that’s just a sign of how these owners milk the system so they can pad their pockets,” Jones says. “They can give a rat’s ass about what happens to residents, what happens to the workers.” Suissa did not return several messag-

es last week at the offices of Healthcare Accounting Services, the Brentwoodbased health facility management firm that Suissa owns and that operates Northview, along with other nursing homes. Sharon Tyus, the Ward 12 alderwoman who represents the district where Northview is located, has already authored a resolution calling for the Board of Aldermen to conduct its own investigation into Northview’s closure. Tyus reserved judgment as to who’s to blame for the nursing home’s closure and the chaos that followed. But news that Northview’s owners received nearly $2 million in the form of a forgiven PPP loan “angers me,” Tyus says. “It angers me how he treats the patients.” Tyus is especially incensed over the fact that Northview’s workers are still waiting for their paychecks. “And they can’t get anything from a strike fund because they’re not on strike,” says Tyus, who says she contributed $5,000 of her own money to a fund to compensate laid-off Northview employees. n

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

MISSOURILAND

To the Mat AEW Collision evoked a storied Saturday night tradition in St. Louis — with wrestling live on TV from Chaifetz Arena Words and Photos by

REUBEN HEMMER

ll Elite Wrestling brought its AEW Collision to Chaifetz Arena on Saturday, January 20, and local wrestling fans were ready to rumble live on TNT. A mixture of pyrotechnics, high-flying action and a surprise alliance kept the audience hungry for more. Adam Copeland presented an Open Challenge match where he valiantly defeated his worthy challenger, Dante Martin. Thunder Rosa outlasted a heart-stopping and jaw-dropping battle with Queen Aminata. Billy Gunn, a.k.a. Daddy Ass, formed an alliance between the Acclaimed and Bullet Club Gold called “Bang Bang Scissor Gang.” To celebrate their new supergroup, they created a unique handshake: a finger gun meeting finger scissors. But the main event of the night was Bryan Danielson and Claudio Castagnoli taking on Eddie Kingston and Ortiz. Machine gun chops to the chest were dealt and Ortiz was spun around like a rag doll, but in the end Danielson and Castagnoli came out the victors. A great night of ups and downs, wins and losses, but overall nonstop entertainment in a city rich with wrestling history. n

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

[

]

A C E L E B R AT I O N O F T H E U N I Q U E A N D FA S C I N AT I N G A S P E C T S O F O U R H O M E

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Narrative prints filled with satisfying linework and whole worlds of layered meaning. Bright murals that draw upon tarot to deliver powerful messages about healing and equality. Riotous, psychedelically colored sculptures adorned with spikes that evoke science and the body. These are the works of three of St. Louis’ next great artists: Brian Lathan, Jasmine Raskas and Simiya Sudduth. Though all have made their own successes and

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

garnered acclaim for their works to this date — like so many of the artists who are finding their way in this affordable city with its supportive networks for creatives — they’re also due much more in the coming years. And we at the RFT wanted to be able to say that we got here first, hence the story that you’re laying your eyes on right now. So read on to discover a tidbit of what they have to offer and why we’re so excited to have their artwork in our pages. —Jessica Rogen

Healing St. Louis Mural by Mural Simiya Sudduth ’s artwork explores the connection between public art and social practice

By PAULA TREDWAY which can be spotted on a variety of St. Louis buildings. They’re eyecatching, with saturated colors and simple but effective designs, and they are even more interesting when you learn the intention behind them. A Black and Indigenous (Choctaw and Chickasaw) artist, Sudduth’s work explores the intersections of healing, ecology, social justice and spirituality. “The biggest part of my work that is most important to me is public art and social-practicerelated work,” they say. “So that looks more like murals, sound

healings and social interventions because I’m really passionate about [how] accessible art and public art can reach people and transform things in a way that gallery artwork can’t.” Since 2020, Sudduth has painted nine large-scale murals, including Justice at 2311 Jefferson Avenue, which was part of last summer’s Counterpublic; From Infinity to Infinity, which is part of the Kranzberg Arts Foundation’s Walls Off Washington mural walk; Medicine at St. Louis Lambert International Airport; and more in Illinois, Minnesota and Oregon. With each piece, Sudduth hopes to bring awareness, education

Left: Love is the Highest Frequency in Belleville, Illinois. Above: Simiya Sudduth taps tarot to make a statemement in Justice. | COURTESY SIMIYA SUDDUTH

Continued on pg 19

or Simiya Sudduth, art really got started with Frida Kahlo. “I’ve always been a creative person,” Sudduth says, explaining that she’d picked up her artist mom’s Kahlo book one day. “I felt like a portal or like a door inside my brain opened up that had never been opened before. I just felt so transformed by seeing Frida Kahlo’s artwork and her creativity, and I think it kind of unlocked my creativity as a teenager.” Sudduth, 36, who is originally from Inglewood, California, has

stayed on the art beat ever since, which is how they came to St. Louis. They studied fine arts and sculptures at Webster University and then landscape architecture at Washington University. Sudduth is also working toward an MFA in visual studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art at Willamette University. After earning their undergraduate degree in 2010, Sudduth began experimenting with various media, starting with painting murals and adding on sound healing and more in 2017. Since then, they’ve become known for their murals,

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

Feeling the Moment Through his narrative prints and sculptures, Brian Lathan unearths the world ’s hidden stories By JESSICA ROGEN

one; this is why [the] figure sits in the center … on a high horse.” Another of the St. Louis printmaker and sculptor’s works depicts a boy whose head is half open; he’s sipping a cup of lemonade, and within his open skull, a figure sits on the dock of a house raised on piles, fishing right into the same cup. In another, a man has a birdcage for a head, and he grasps for the bird, which radiates light. Each blends in an aspect of magical realism and seems to hold a whole story, dark or light, within it. “There are these elements where you feel the spiritual aspect of the world,” Lathan says. “I, ultimately, just want everyone to

be able to be like, ‘I feel this moment.’” It is, indeed, easy to feel the moment while gazing at one of Lathan’s works. That’s thanks to the skill of the artist’s craft but also his devotion to the field: Since dipping his toes into the art world, Lathan has never left, not even for a moment. For Lathan, it all began when he was an artistic kid growing up in St. Louis and moving around from north city to south city to Midtown with his family. His interest and his skill seemed to belong to him and him alone. The only person in his family who was artistic was his father, and he was in prison while Lathan was growing up — though he’d sometimes send a handmade card with a car-

Brian Lathan’s narrative prints contain whole stories with layers of meaning and elements of the fantastical. | COURTESY BRIAN LATHAN

Continued on pg 20

he personal mixes with the surreal with the mythical in Brian Latham’s artwork. Take, for example, his print Know You’re No Remedy. At first glance, it’s a realistic scene. A boy sits on a stool in what’s clearly a classroom. He wears a dunce cap and behind him is a chalkboard where he’s been writing lines. “I will accept mediocrity,” he’s penned over and over again. Then things get stranger. A sea of hands point at him. Looking closely, the viewer can see that his stool is actually a wooden horse. Behind him towers a shadow, but it’s not just darkness. Within it, the boy’s inner self

kneels in a field of flowers, picking some and placing them in a bucket, a crown of flowers floating above his head. Lathan, 36, made the print’s block for the Foundry Art Center’s “block party” — where artists come together to print using a literal steamroller — and it came directly from his personal experiences as an art instructor and shop tech, and having colleagues and students second guess his every statement, often to the detriment of the print. “There was always this element of, like, ‘OK, I’ll do it your way,’” he says. “I reference this idea of dismissing someone’s expertise by making them out to be the odd

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Keeping St. Louis Weird Jasmine Raskas investigates the strange and otherworldly with riotous sculptures and installations By PAULA TREDWAY

“My initial plan was to include something from every single sense, but some things fell through, like taste,” Raskas says. “I did have a scent going when I was there. It’s kind of funny because it was like an essential oil scent, and some people really didn’t like it.” Provoking a reaction is part of the point. One of Raskas’ goals is to make St. Louis weird through her artwork. And by “weird” she means “wonderful and unique in the best kind of way.” “Weird to me means creating a safe place for all humans to thrive,” she says. “A place for selfexpression, acceptance, inclusion and respect. A weird and wonder-

ful St. Louis would support art, experimentation, non-commercial acts of creativity and interdisciplinary projects, and hopefully become an infrastructure or a hub for the types of communities that are putting in the work to change the world around them.” Raskas says she intends for her art to bring people back in touch with themselves and find the extraterrestrial spirit within them. “To me, being an artist is not about making objects,” Raskas says. “At its core, it is more about building up social spaces for empowerment, play and exploration — lighting up a fire for the energy of what’s possible. I believe our city could become the next Denver or Austin or whatever exciting spot on the map we want to cre-

Jasmine Raskas’ sculptures, like those in a recent COCA exhibit, explore microscopic and mascrospic worlds — and the weird. | COURTESY JASMINE RASKAS

Continued on pg 19

asmine Raskas first picked up a paint brush in high school, but didn’t take her skills seriously until 2016 and her first exhibition. “I had been making art my whole life and always believed I would retire as an artist, or get to it more seriously at some later point in life,” Raskas says. “It all started as just an experiment, but then once I got started I couldn’t stop, and the art just kept getting bigger and more complex. At first, I had no idea what it would mean for me to ‘be an artist,’ but I have certainly learned a lot since then and have come to appreciate the wild ride it will forever be.”

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Fast forward to 2023, when Raskas had one of her pieces from her latest collection Eternal Jungle installed at City Museum. Eternal Jungle was on display at the Center of Creative Arts late last year and was an exhibit filled with bright colors, different textures and media. Raskas’ sculptures emulate creatures and figures from out of this world, giving reference to her exploration in the microscopic universes. Her goal was to investigate feelings of awe, wonder and ethereal delight. Raskas wanted it to feel strange yet familiar and create an experience of otherworldly desires through as many of the senses as she could.

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

SIMIYA SUDDUTH Continued from pg 15

and healing. Take, for example, Justice, which takes the form of the namesake tarot card. In the mural, a Black woman in a bright red dress stands in a field of cotton plants, holding cotton in her arms. Sudduth hopes those viewing it will think about social issues and reparations. “Depending on the subject matter of the mural, I want people to have an experience of joy or ‘Wow,’ or, ‘This is interesting,’” they say. “But then some of my other pieces are like those of echinacea — that’s an Indigenous healing plant — so I want us to think about the land and how the land shows up for us.” They’ve also worked in other media, including digital illustration. An example of the latter is Sudduth’s Convergence, digital illustrations printed on the outdoor pavilion for Great Rivers Greenway’s new Chain of Rocks Park. The artwork, which will be revealed during the park’s grand opening in April, will feature the Mississippi Flyway migratory route and the unique Chain of Rocks river geology with several different birds such as the cardinal, blue jay, hummingbird and more. “The Mississippi River and adjacent wetlands and woodlands are an important source of food, water and shelter for birds along their migration route,” Sudduth says. “I created illustrations of birds and limestone on a really bright hot pink background that will surround the inside and outside of a pavilion to offer a blast of color in the space all year round, and to create a feeling of fun and

JASMINE RASKAS Continued from pg 18

ate, but we can’t do that without first taking a look at the social injustice that permeates throughout our history and present policy.” Raskas says her work is purposefully ambiguous yet simultaneously representational of the natural world, with references to both the microscopic and macroscopic universes, as well as spiritual, metaphysical dreams. “I’m fascinated by the mathematical rules that govern the emergence of physical structures and information-based systems,” Raskas says. “I’m obsessed with how patterns can be found on multiple scales, like the same repeating pattern. For example,

Simiya Sudduth’s murals adorn many corners of St. Louis and beyond. | COURTESY SIMIYA SUDDUTH whimsy in the redesigned park space.” Sudduth has participated in exhibitions at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Intersect Arts Center, the Luminary, COCA, the Contemporary Art Museum and the Chicago Urban Art Society. “I’m not really a gallery-based artist,” they say, but note that they’d like to expand this way in

the future. Sudduth has won grants from the Regional Arts Commission, the Missouri Arts Council, the Luminary, ACRE, the Sam Fox School of Design and more. But getting Justice written up in the New York Times might be the highlight for Sudduth. “[It] is the biggest win I’ve ever had in my life,” they say. “I felt

the same branching patterns are found in the distribution of rivers, networks of neurons, a strike of lightning and the growth of a tree.” Raskas’ art explores sentience and organic growth in the context of world-building through different media such as paint, sculptures and installations. The latter two are newer to Raskas. She developed a love for sculpture during the COVID-19 pandemic. An increase in her downtime allowed her to explore her artistic abilities. “COVID was a really hard moment for me, because I had two solo shows lined up,” she says. “At the time, my artwork was paintings, and both of the shows were completely canceled. That’s when I started sculpting. I’d been wanting to start sculpting for a long

time, but I had it on hold because I knew I needed to make a bunch of not structurally sound pieces to learn what I was doing.” Now that she knows how to create larger, stable sculptures, Raskas wants to experiment with making them heavier and climbable. She also plans to keep dabbling in the painting realm. “My paintings are usually described as between abstract and surreal,” she says. “I would identify as being within the category of visionary art just because of the transcendent vibe, but I don’t know if I fit into that either.” Raskas, who is originally from St. Louis, says she was the kind of kid who would build elaborate forts, make stick structures in the backyard and would redesign and reconfigure her toys.

very proud about that.” They have also explored their art through sound baths and meditation, and have created a wellness video series for the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, a living yoga studio — a collaboration with Earth Dance Farms and Yoga Buzz that exists within an old greenhouse at Earth Dance Farms, with flooring made of planted herbs and perennial plants — and the Muthaship, a pop-up mobile wellness studio centering wellness and health sovereignty for Black and indigenous individuals and other people of color. “I am also a baby DJ,” Sudduth says. “I’m really hoping I can expand in that way because I do a lot of experimental sound healing with singing bowls. … Curating sounds is another area that I’m really focusing on.” But ultimately, their goal is to continue making art, paint more murals and do more public artwork. “I’ve gotten into the habit of sending out ideas to neighborhoods being like, ‘Hey, I would like to paint a mural in this neighborhood,’” they say, adding that selffunded grants help support this work. “I think sometimes people would love a mural somewhere, but I also want to get paid for my work because art is so expensive, and it’s a huge undertaking.” n This spring, Sudduth will take part in an outdoor installation for the Bioneers Conference in Berkeley, California, and travel to New York for an art residency. They have plans to paint another tarot card mural in St. Louis. To keep up with their art, follow them on Instagram @spiritscapesss or visit spiritscapes.life. “I colored on every surface and broke things into pieces to rearrange them in new ways,” she says. “I have always had a love for playing with patterns and the experimental aspects of making work. I discovered painting in a high school art class and was drawn to it for its meditative qualities. Painting was the first area of art I explored professionally, but now I see myself as more of a ‘world builder.’” Her work has been shown across the region in almost 50 shows. She has received awards from the Luminary and the St. Louis Regional Art Commission and has graduated from RAC’s Teaching Artist Institute. Raskas previously worked as the lead art facilitator at the nonprofit studio Artists First and remains involved

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

Continued on pg 20

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Brian Lathan is very entertwined in St. Louis’ art scene and has a Luminary studio. | JESSICA ROGEN

BRIAN LATHAN Continued from pg 17

toon character he’d drawn on it. “I just kind of started drawing, and I really, really enjoyed it,” Lathan recalls. “And then I kept drawing.” But it wasn’t until Lathan got to Sumner High School that he had his eyes opened to the art world. For the first time, he had a dedicated art teacher who wasn’t also an English or math instructor. And that teacher had all their

students participate in the Pasta House Great Works of Art contest — where everyone reimagined an artwork to include pasta. Lathan took on the Pietà, which depicts Mary holding the crucified Jesus on her lap. In his version, she was using a bowl of spaghetti to try to revive him. “Weirdly, it wasn’t bad,” Lathan says. Then he got to the show and saw all the other work, in mediums that he didn’t even know existed. “I think I was like, ‘Oh, I could feel the coolness of the water, but I still had to dip my toe

in.’” That revelation brought on a bottomless hunger for art in Lathan. In turn, that propelled him to summer classes at Art Alliance and then to the University of Missouri-Columbia, where he studied art for a year before transferring to Saint Louis University. He took as many different classes as he could — drawing, painting and ceramics — picking up as many hours as possible and continuing to make his work late into the night. Then, at SLU, Lathan took a printmaking class, drawn by the idea of a practice that would tap drawing but also allow him to play with color as he created different versions of the print. “I fell in love with printmaking,” Lathan says. He found another love in sculpture after graduating SLU. Determined to stay in the art world, he started taking classes at St. Louis Community College-Meramec as a sort of homemade post-college residency. There, a sculpture on campus propelled him into sculpture class, and he discovered that the 3D aspect of the media allowed him to “present a narrative moment from various perspectives and [that] can more playfully direct or misdirect viewers.” He also began working as a shop tech in printmaking, and found that he liked teaching.

Earning his MFA at Southern Illinois University Carbondale helped Lathan develop the conceptual side of his practice and introduced him to mold making, which he views as an extension of printmaking. But after graduating, Lathan didn’t leave academia. Instead, he dove into teaching and still adjuncts at various schools around town while working out of his studio at the the Luminary on Cherokee, never leaving art behind for long. “I’m just always thinking of what I would do, or I’m thinking of ideas,” he says. “This is how my world is looking, and you might not see it. … I feel like my job is to present the world back to itself and hope that people can relate or people get a new introduction to something that they missed.” n Catch Brian Lathan’s work in person through April 9 at the annual exhibition at the Angad Arts Hotel (3550 Samuel Shepard Drive), beginning January 26 in the final art faculty exhibition at Fontbonne (6800 Wydown Boulevard) or from February 1 to March 14 at the Contemporary Colors exhibit at the Kavanagh Gallery of Fine Line Creative Arts Center (37W570 Bolcum Road, St. Charles, Illinois). Find him online at blathan.myportfolio.com.

JASMINE RASKAS Continued from pg 19

with community-based and inclusion-oriented art initiatives. Raskas is a student at Webster University pursuing a master’s degree in counseling and clinical mental health. In the future, she hopes to combine her artistic practice with mental health. Looking back at what she’s accomplished so far, Raskas feels blessed to have come full circle. “I feel like my work has been in almost all the galleries I used to visit and hang out at when I was younger, so that’s pretty cool,” she says. “I’m also getting to know all these other artists and people, and seeing what they’re doing. I’ve become more involved within the whole creative industry where I can meet and support other artists. I love supporting other people; it’s really important to me.” n To view more of Raskas artwork or to keep tabs on her next show, visit jasmineraskas.com or follow her on Instagram @unus_mundus_art.

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

Jasmine Raskas plans to incorporate her artistic practice with her studies in mental health. | COURTESY JASMINE RASKAS

riverfronttimes.com

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

CALENDAR

BY RIVERFRONT TIMES STAFF

The Arkadin presents a double feature on Stone Cold Steve Austin this week. | COVER ART

THURSDAY 01/25 And That’s the Bottom Line Get body-slammed by nostalgia at the Arkadin Cinema and Bar (5228 Gravois Avenue) this Thursday, January 25, as you celebrate the Rise of Stone Cold Steve Austin with a free viewing of the double feature Austin 3:16 Uncensored and Hell Yeah: Stone Cold’s Saga Continues, two DIY films made in the 1990s chronicling the then-future WWF superstar’s rise to fame. Organizers promise that attendees will be able to “watch as the Texas Rattlesnake drinks beer, raises hell and dishes out Stone Cold Stunners to anyone who gets in his way,” all presented in the original VHS format on which the films were released. In addition to being pieces of outsider art that are interesting in their own right, the straight-to-video documentaries capture the aesthetic of the decade in the way that only documentaries of upand-coming professional wrestlers shot for VHS can. Expect plenty of shots of Austin establishing his beer-chugging bona fides. Admission is free, and the fun comes flying off the top ropes at 7 p.m. More info at arkadincinema.com.

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Hear the stories behind the songs at Focal Point’s debut STL Songwriter Showcase on Wednesday, at which Ryan Koenig will appear. | NATE BURRELL

FRIDAY 01/26 Succ It Up

Road, with hours on Friday, January 26, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Saturday, January 27, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Full details at flyleaf.market.

Few things are as delightful in the gray chill of January as a tropical plant — and the monthly events hosted by Flyleaf are a great place to replace the one you killed last January, or even (optimistically) to expand your collection. The “popup garden center” sets up shop in Lindenwood Park this Friday and and Saturday for the Succulent & Tropical Plant Event, promising thousands of plants from cacti to ferns to euphorbia (don’t ask us, we’re not the pop-up garden impresarios), with prices as low as $4 all the way up to $50. They’ll also have a potting bench on site for those who need help getting their succulent from a temporary container to the real thing. In short, it’s everything you and your apartment needs to survive the cold, even if your purchases are doomed to be slain by your greenthumbless hand by Mardi Gras. All the fun takes place at the church building located at 4205 Watson

SATURDAY 01/27 Brunch Bunch

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

St. Louis foodies in the know may have noticed that this year’s United We Brunch event, long one of the favorite soirees presented by the Riverfront Times, is brought to you this year by our now sister publication, Sauce Magazine, following our parent company’s purchase of the latter late last year. Frankly, we couldn’t be more excited! The team at Sauce assures us that they’re thrilled to put their own Saucy spin on the highly popular brunch extravaganza, aiming to offer an elevated environment that’s slightly more intimate and upscale than years prior, which is fitting since it’s been wrested from the clutches of us alt-weekly slobs. To that end, they’re bringing a select group of some of the city’s finest brunch spots to City Winery (3730

Foundry Way) this Saturday, January 27, for an unmissable brunchtime feast where attendees will sample favorite brunch dishes from participating restaurants, drink from the event’s famous mimosa and bloody mary bars, sip on bubbles and much more. Southside Alchemy is providing the bloody mary mix for the bar, while Hello Juice & Smoothie is providing the freshly squeezed, cold-pressed orange juice for the mimosas. There will also be a bloody mary contest among the restaurants wherein guests will get to vote for their favorite. Participating restaurants include Sunday Best, Clara B’s Kitchen Table, Little Fox, Bagel Union, the Clover and the Bee, Honey Bee Tea and Social Graze. DJ Charlie Chan will keep the vibes high throughout the event, and a portion of proceeds will benefit local nonprofit Stray Rescue of St. Louis, which will have puppies on site available for adoption. The feastivities run from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tickets are just $75 and include unlimited tastes and sips from the participating restaurants. Buy yours online at unitedwebrunchstl.com.

WEEK OF JANUARY 25-31

United We Brunch returns this week, to your taste buds’ delight. | THEO WELLING

Extra Orchidinary Most of us can’t keep regular flowers alive without a lot of dedication, never mind the fanciest and fussiest of beautiful blossoms out there. Yes, we’re speaking of the rarefied orchid, a flower that we iron-plant killers wouldn’t dare pick up even momentarily from the florist’s shelf. Thankfully, there’s a way to enjoy the sometimes wild, sometimes prim beauty of these flowers without trying to grow them at home. Beginning at 9 a.m. on Saturday, January 27, St. Louisans can eat their hearts out, orchid style, at the St. Louis Orchid Show at the Missouri Botanical Garden (4344 Shaw Boulevard). The garden will have more than 5,000 plants (almost 700 unique varieties!) that will be cycled in and out throughout the duration of the show. Entry is included with a ticket to the garden ($6 to $16). Pick one up and get more information at missouribotanicalgarden.org.

See how green your thumbs are with Flyleaf’s Succulent and Tropical Plant Event. | VIA FLICKR/CHIARA COETZEE

find their way back? A tense scene unfolds as various rescue agencies get called and begin combing the woods, maybe eventually finding you — or maybe not. If so, we have just the thing: the Map & Compass Basic Navigation Clinic at the Alpine Shop (440 North Kirkwood Road, Kirkwood). Taught by an experienced navigator, the class will go over how to use a compass, how to take a bearing, the ins and outs of reading maps and other general tips and tricks on staying found in the wilderness. There’ll be a lot of no-nonsense advice, like using large landmarks such as bodies of water to navigate, as well as the all-important hike hack known as “staying on the trail.” It’s perfect for anyone who wants to get out in the wilderness and understand where they are. The knowledge you’ll gain is not just for averting disaster, though: It’s also a great first step toward more advanced activities like orienteering. The class begins at 6 p.m. on Monday, January 29, and tickets are $5 at alpineshopevents.com.

MONDAY 01/29 WEDNESDAY 01/31 On the Beaten Path In with the Locals Do you have a fear of being one of those people who wanders off trail for about five feet, gets totally discombobulated and can’t

What better way to wind down on a Wednesday night than with some of St. Louis’ best singer-song-

The Alpine Shop’s Map & Compass Clinic could literally save your life. | VIA FLICKR/COLIN ZHU writers? This Wednesday, January 31, the Focal Point (2720 Sutton Boulevard, Maplewood) hosts its first-ever STL Singer-Songwriter Showcase, a rare chance to learn the stories behind the songs in the St. Louis music scene. The Focal Point dates back to 1975, specializing in traditional and folk music around the world. Its setting — an original 1920s building with maple floors — fosters intimate listening right in the heart of Maplewood. Four acclaimed St. Louis-based singer-songwriters — Ryan Cheney, Steve Perron, Shane Devine and Ryan Koenig — will

take the stage Wednesday, each with their own stories to share. Whether you’re nostalgic for the days of provocative and emotional ’90s rock, prefer award-winning and internationally recognized songwriting or desire a new sound to tune into, this night will have it all. Come alone or bring that friend who keeps complaining about oversized concert venues. Tickets are $15, no advance sales, and cash only. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the lights dim at 7 p.m. Visit thefocalpoint.org/ event/stl-songwriters-showcase for more information. n

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

CAFE

A Beginning and an End To create the brilliant Sunday Best, owner John Perkins had to let go — and now this dining critic does the same Written by

CHERYL BAEHR Sunday Best 4101 Laclede Avenue, 314-329-7696. Wed.Fri. 11 a.m.-2 p.m. and 4-9 p.m..; Sat. 4-9 p.m.; Sun. 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m. and 4-8 p.m. (Closed Mon.-Wed.)

n July 2013, I rolled up to the then-Delmar Boulevard office of the Riverfront Times, seven months pregnant and fresh off a plane from Washington, D.C., to begin a freelance gig as the paper’s restaurant critic. People always ask how I got this job — it’s probably the most common question I get, even before where to go to eat — and I still sometimes wonder that myself. The short answer is that I had just had the offer for my dream job at the Central Intelligence Agency rescinded because I failed my security clearance (bad credit and weed), was mad at the world and hormonal, and came across the RFT’s posting for a restaurant critic. A couple of weeks later I’d quit my job, walked away from a prestigious fellowship that included six-figure tuition reimbursement (that was probably dumb) and returned home to St. Louis after six years away to embark on the journey that has been the biggest thrill of my professional life. I had no journalism experience and no professional writing credentials, but I’d spent more than a decade in the restaurant industry and had a writing-intensive background. The paper’s then-editor, the brilliant Tom Finkel, took a chance on me as an untested writer; I took a chance on a job that paid literally one-seventh of what I’d been earning. That part hasn’t been pretty, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The reason I was so willing to take the financial hit is that I

Sunday Best features the fried chicken that owner John Perkins perfected at Juniper. | MABEL SUEN

Owner John Perkins (left) and kitchen manager Pat Skiersch have teamed up again. | MABEL SUEN love restaurants. Tremendously. I love dining, hospitality, the pomp and circumstance of service and, of course, the food. However, it probably took only three or so reviews before I realized that all of those wonderful things pale in comparison to the people. I’ve

had life-changing meals during my tenure at the RFT, but the food component has never been nearly as interesting as the stories behind it. The restaurant industry is brutal on a good day, and the fact that so many wonderful folks choose to partake in this magnifi-

cent show is curious to me. What drives them became the organizing principle of my writing and the biggest joy of this job. Getting to know their stories and have them trust me to tell them has been an honor and a gift. One of those people is John Perkins. Like me, Perkins began his official foray into the St. Louis dining scene in 2013, with the opening of his much-heralded Southern kitchen, Juniper. Another thing we share is a recent major career change: This is my last review as the RFT’s dining critic, a decision that I have struggled with, much in the same way Perkins did when thinking through the future of Juniper. Last July, Perkins shuttered Juniper and reopened three months later as Sunday Best, a more casual concept centered around his much-heralded fried chicken. Closing Juniper was a tough decision for Perkins, and one that took him a while to reach, even though he’d been seeing the signs for a while. Eighty percent of the people who came to Juniper came there for the chicken, whereas he

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

Continued on pg 26

RIVERFRONT TIMES

SUNDAY BEST

Continued from pg 25

spent a great deal of time and energy on the other 20 percent of the menu. Sentimentality is difficult to overcome, though, and Perkins admits that he was holding on to something that had run its course because he just didn’t want to let go. But finally he did let go, and in doing so, Perkins has created not simply a thrilling fried chicken destination with Sunday Best but a brilliant brand that, if the universe is fair, will become a successful boutique chain and the region’s fried chicken authority. It’s hard not to be bullish on Sunday Best’s prospects when you bite into that chicken. Perkins has been tweaking his recipe for more than a decade, and though he’d never say that he’s achieved perfection, he’s come as close as humanly possible. The pressurefried bird is impossibly juicy and encased in crunchy breading that is substantial yet not overwhelming. The seasoning is magnificent, with just a subtle backbeat of pepper. The shocking thing is how crisp it remains; I had an order packed up, traveled all the way to Wildwood in rush-hour traffic and was gobsmacked that it was still crunchy nearly an hour later. It gets no better than this. The tenders, typically an obligatory kids menu offering, get the same treatment and can be ordered by grown-ups without any shame. I ordered the hot version, which is dipped in a chili-oil spice that hits you on the back palate with a cayenne wallop, yet is so complex and flavorful you can’t stop eating it, even as the heat builds. A side of rich buttermilk ranch provided a delectable, cooling antidote. Perkins may have left his Juniper era behind, but he — with the help of talented kitchen manager Pat Skiersch — approaches everything at Sunday Best with just as much care as he did at the more upscale predecessor. This applies to sandwiches, including the Sunday Club, which pairs a juicy grilled chicken thigh with bacon, lettuce, tomato and a verdant basil aioli, while the wonderful cornmeal-breaded catfish po’ boy is accented with crunchy breadand-butter pickles and piquant comeback sauce. The restaurant’s namesake sandwich, the Sunday Best, is perfection of the friedchicken sandwich form. Here, a breaded chicken thigh is placed onto a soft, toasted bun with deli-

RIVERFRONT TIMES

The Sunday Club includes a grilled or fried chicken thigh, lettuce, tomato, bacon and basil aioli, pictured here with a beet salad. | MABEL SUEN

The smokey catfish dip is served with chives, sumac and fried saltines. | MABEL SUEN ciously sticky red-pepper jelly and earthy smoked mayo, each component layering on top of one another like a beautiful symphony. Sides are worthy of standing alongside such culinary beauty. Mac and cheese is impossibly creamy, and collards deliver with just a whisper of sweetness and heat. I was blown away by the Sea Island red peas, a take on a bean salad that pairs the beans with preserved lemon and celery. The brightness was a welcome counter to the fried main courses. Equally impressive are the beets,

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

which pair the root vegetables with crème fraîche, spiced pecans, dill and orange zest, brightening the earthy dish. Fried chicken may be Perkins’ calling card, but his burger is one of the best in the city. Sauteed peppers and onions are cooked so long they break down into a wonderfully caramelized condiment the texture of tapenade. They combine with rich pimento cheese and garlic aioli, creating a mind-blowing concoction greater than the sum of its parts. It’s incredibly rich, like a cheeseburger

with 10 exclamation points behind it. I’d put it up against any other smashburger in the city. I admire Perkins for his ability to deliver such excellent food against every adversity — finances, his personal health, a pandemic, the general stressors of running a business — but mostly, I respect him for being a wonderful human being with whom I’ve had the privilege of regularly interacting over the past decade. I consider him a friend, as I consider every restaurant owner, chef, cook, server, busser, bartender, dishwasher and host I’ve had the honor of interacting with throughout my time in this role. I consider you, RFT readers, friends too. Every week — for well over 500 reviews — you’ve allowed me to yammer on about the things that I’ve found interesting and important, and hopefully you did, too. I’ve felt overwhelmingly supported by you, and I hope that you will continue to connect with me and reach out through Facebook and Instagram @cherylabaehr. It’s not the end, but it’s definitely a change — one that, like Sunday Best, will be different, but hopefully just as delicious. Thanks for the ride. n

Sunday Best Fried chicken, half bird ��$22 Chicken tenders ��$15 Burger ��$15

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

SHORT ORDERS

[FIRST SIP]

Taking Flight Jason and Nicole Thompson’s Blue Jay Brewing helps create a beer corridor in Midtown Written by

TONY REHAGEN

t was a random Saturday in mid-December 2023 when Jason and Nicole Thompson casually decided to embark on their lifelong dream. They had welcomed a small group of friends to their brand-new Midtown brewery the night before to celebrate obtaining their liquor license, the last legal formality on their checklist, and the private party had gone well. They had three beers on tap and zero employees, but they decided to tend bar themselves, quietly throw up a “we’re open” post on their business’ Facebook page and see what happened. What happened was a steady stream of about 100 to 150 people flowing in and out throughout the day. “We were like, ‘It’s working,’” says Nicole. Jason adds: “We’re terrified and excited.” Such was the auspicious soft opening of Blue Jay Brewing (2710 Locust Street, bluejaybrewing.com). But the nonchalance with which the Thompsons decided to welcome their first paying customers belies the years of work, dreaming and risk-taking it took to get here — not to mention the actual mileage. Before returning to his native St. Louis in 2011 to join the newly opened Urban Chestnut Brewing Company, Jason honed his craft in brewhouses from Los Angeles to the D.C. metro area to suburban Chicago. This cross-country career path was made possible by the fact that all three of those breweries were owned by Gordon Biersch, one of the handful of chain breweries that dominated the craft beer landscape in the 1990s and 2000s. The memory of chain breweries is disappearing almost as rapidly as the business model itself,

Blue Jay Brewing opened up in Midtown in mid-December to immediate steady business. | RYAN KRULL but it was an important part of the craft beer revolution. For decades starting in the late 1980s, upstart local alternatives to Big Beer, like Schlafly or Kansas City’s Boulevard, were relatively few and far between in the U.S. Filling those gaps, and the frosty pint glasses of the beer-curious, were places such as Gordon Biersch, Rock Bottom and RAM. These nationwide chains essentially invented what we consider a brewpub, pairing full menus of American pub grub with beer that was generally meant to be consumed on site. But just because the tap list was meant to complement the meal and adhered to corporate guidelines (i.e. each pub had a red, a brown, a stout, a hefeweizen, etc.), most of it was made locally and thus tailored to the twists and tastes of the host cities. As such, these breweries were not only havens for nascent beer nerds, but they were also a breeding ground for an entire generation of brewers looking to learn and create something outside of their insular homebrew clubs. This included Jason Thompson, who followed Nicole to Los Angeles in 2004 as she pursued a career in film and thought he might

get into brewing. Gordon Biersch, one of the few breweries in Tinseltown at the time, took him on first as a driver delivering kegs between restaurants and then as a brewer while he also enrolled in the renowned brewing science program at the University of California - Davis. “When they hired me, the talent they already had working for them was awesome,” Jason says. “I learned so much from their mentorship.” Once the Thompsons started a family, they wanted to get back to St. Louis, and the corporate structure of Gordon Biersch facilitated transfers to D.C. metro (not close, but technically closer) and Bolingbrook, Illinois (much closer). All the while, Thompson was learning to brew on different systems, focusing on European-style ales and lagers while the rest of the exploding craft-beer world was hopped up on IPAs. That passion for German-style beers dovetailed nicely with the vision of Urban Chestnut, which finally brought the Thompsons back to St. Louis. But the couple always wanted to one day have a place of their own. Jason left Urban Chestnut in 2019, and the pandemic gave the Thompsons time to hone their business plan. The sighting of a

few bright blue birds on pristine snowfall in their yard inspired the avian name (which also incorporates Jason’s nickname ‘Jay’). They picked out a 3,500-square-foot space in the JCMidtown development that came with a roomy, enclosed outdoor space, perfect for a biergarten. Now open five days a week, Wednesday through Sunday, Blue Jay Brewing has eight beers on tap, including the first beer Jason brewed here, a Bavarian-style Hefeweizen called Okay! that is more than just all right, featuring smooth notes of vanilla and a hint of spice to offset the warm banana typical in the style. There are also numerous collaborations with area breweries, like a smoked porter brewed with Wellspent and the Midtown Shuffle Cold IPA cooked up with Urban Chestnut, both just down the street. In fact, Blue Jay’s Midtown location, so near Wellspent, UCBC’s biergarten and the Schlafly Taproom, helps give St. Louis something it’s never really had before and something Jason could only have imagined back in 2004: a cluster of craft breweries to attract beer tourists and bar-hoppers that can learn from each other. n

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

[FOOD NEWS]

Black Salt Expands The Chesterfield Indian restaurant will open locations in Creve Coeur and South City later this year Written by

SHWETHA SUNDARRAJAN This story was originally published in Sauce Magazine.

fter the great success of Black Salt at 1709 Clarkson Road in Chesterfield since its doors opened last year, co-owners Raj Pandey and Sanjiv Shekhar are broadening their horizons by opening two new locations. The duo plans to open another location at 11429 Olive Boulevard in Creve Coeur around April or May. Located in the shopping center at the intersection of Craig

CHERYL BAEHR’S

FAVORITE ST. LOUIS DISHES Over the past 11 years, I’ve had the privilege of spending my work life exploring the St. Louis dining scene and being one of your lenses into that world. In my role as the RFT’s dining critic, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about where I love to eat and how I do what I do. (Yes, I am anonymous. Yes, I get to pick where I cover. No, I don’t pick my Best Of selections based on ads.) As I sign off from this role, I give to you the answer to another question I am often asked: What are my favorite dishes to eat in St. Louis? It’s been an honor and a pleasure curating this list. Happy eating, friends!

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Road and Olive Boulevard, the new location will focus its menu on serving “pan-Asian” cuisine by combining Indian fare with Japanese, Thai and Chinese influences. “We got invited there. I mean, the owner of these locations, the strip malls, they loved how we presented Black Salt in the Chesterfield location. They are the same owners [in Chesterfield], and they couldn’t wait for something to be open in the other location so that they could bring us in. So they actually initiated that whole conversation,” Pandey says. And just like its predecessor, Black Salt’s new pan-Asian menu will be reflected in the restaurant’s drink menu, as well as the decor, which will be kept consistent across Black Salt locations with earthy tones and a modern, upscale feel. “We made it a point that we don’t [want to] Americanize the food because we wanted to believe in our taste. So we wanted to put forth that taste in a presentable and modern setting. So that is what prompted us to take this to the next level as well,” Pandey says. “And again, the idea behind the decor is to make sure it’s more modern, yet Indian and authentic. And the one that we’re planning

Eggplant Parmesan at O+O Pizza There’s an odd myth in the food world that no one actually likes eggplant. BS. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been blown away by this glorious flavor sponge — the bonci pizza at Pizzeria da Gloria, the babaganoush at Al-Tarboush Deli (may it rest in peace), the babaganoush at Olympia Kebob House & Taverna (yes, there is a common theme here). However, Mike Risk’s magnificent eggplant Parmesan at O+O Pizza (102 West Lockwood Avenue, Webster Groves; oandopizza.oohosp.com) takes the crown as not only my favorite eggplant dish but also one of my favorite things to eat in all of St. Louis. Cheesy, tangy and as decadent as it comes, it’s a culinary masterpiece. Crab Cake at Wright’s Tavern I’m not a picky eater, but I am downright bitchy about crab cakes, almost as bitchy as my snobby Bostonian partner is about what he calls “inland sushi.” Wright’s Tavern (7624 Wydown Boulevard, Clayton; wrightswydown.com) is the only place outside of the DMV area I will eat them. It’s the only place in St. Louis that does them right — crab heavy, minimal binder, simple as can be. If I had to pick one chef to cook for me for the rest of my life, it would be Wright’s Tavern Executive Chef Cary McDowell. He’s a genius.

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

Black Salt’s expansion will include a ghost kitchen in the Hill and a new brick-and-mortar location in Creve Coeur. | MABEL SUEN for Creve Coeur, that might have a touch of Asian influence.” The owners also intend to open what they call a “cloud kitchen” location called Black Salt X within the Hill Food Co ghost kitchen collective at 2360 Hampton Avenue in south city, that will only offer takeout and delivery options, by mid- to late-February. “The idea behind that one was to make sure that we are also catering to the population toward more of the St.

Louis city area, Clayton area, and all of that,” Pandey says. The cloud kitchen menu will be a combination of what is offered in Chesterfield and Creve Coeur, although the menus for both new locations are still being fine-tuned and finalized; however, both are likely to have some menu items ported over from Chesterfield. Pandey and Shekhar also have plans to add a patio extension to the Chesterfield location by June. n

Gyro at Olympia Kebob House & Taverna I know. I know. There are a million other amazing gyros in St. Louis. I’ve had them, and I love them. Gyros are one of my alltime comfort foods, and I’ve never met one I don’t like. However, Olympia Kebob House & Taverna (1543 McCausland Avenue, olympiakebobandtavern.com) has held a special place in my heart for a very long time. It’s where I used to go with my “Double Trouble Club” in between back-toback lunch and dinner shifts when I was waiting tables. It’s where my ex-husband and I would go after getting immensely high and watching Sunday morning talk shows. It’s one of the last places I took my mom before her health failed and she could no longer get out to restaurants. But I also love it because it’s delicious. The meat is thicker than most, the tzatziki is creamier (I don’t care if it’s sour cream, it’s great), and the babaganoush is my favorite in the area.

(they’re a salad game changer, especially the dill). You have to make sure the dressing is tossed before you get it, though. It’s good either way, but it’s absolutely transcendent when it comes pre-coated. And that soup: so simple, yet the most roasty, flavorful soup you’ll eat. Enjoy it with crusty bread slathered in salt-coated whipped butter and the chocolate chip cookie — I guess this is a quadruple entry, but it’s my world right now.

Little Gem Salad and Chicken and Rice Soup at Union Loafers This is a double entry, and you know what? It’s my last column, so I can do what I want. The Little Gem at Union Loafers (1629 Tower Grove Avenue, unionloafers.com) is the GOAT of St. Louis salads thanks to those ridiculous bacon hunks and the liberal use of fresh herbs

The Beef Rib at Stellar Hog When asked what my last meal on Earth would be, there used to be no hesitation. Brisket. Fatty Texas brisket. The kind that has a thick, peppery bark and a generous layer of fat that yields to crumbly, pull-apart meat. That was until I had Alex Cupp’s lifechanging beef ribs, which he serves at his smokehouse the Stellar Hog (5623 Leona Street; thestellarhog.com). Available on Sundays only, they’re everything I love about Texas brisket cranked up to 11. Fatty and flawlessly cooked, these beauties jiggle when you put down your plate a little too hard, and they are so succulent and tender you could spread them on a biscuit. It’s basically meat butter, which is the most wonderful concept in the world. I thank Cupp for only serving them on Sundays because if they were available every day of the week, I would eat them too often and die of heart failure.

[FOOD NEWS]

Salt + Smoke Sued Condo association says “greasy rags” caused the fire that ravaged a block of Euclid in 2022 Written by

SARAH FENSKE

lawsuit accuses barbecue juggernaut Salt + Smoke of accidentally causing a catastrophic fire that ravaged nearly an entire block of the Central West End — and then failing to cover the costs of the condo association with whom it shared a building. The lawsuit was filed January 12 in St. Louis Circuit Court on behalf of the Euclid East Condominium Association and several related limited liability companies and board members. They say they own 11 units in the building at Euclid and McPherson. The suit says the fire was caused by the restaurant’s “greasy rags” being placed in a cart “made of

[FIRST LOOK]

The Buzz of Oakville The fourth location of Honey Bee Tea features expanded desserts, baked goods and other fare Written by

AMANDA BRETZ This story was originally published in Sauce Magazine.

oba tea shop Honey Bee Tea opened its fourth location at 5658 Telegraph Road, Suite A, in Oakville in mid-December 2023. Owned by Hai Tang and his wife Moon Duong, the couple opened the first shop at 429 Lafayette Center Drive in Manchester in early 2022 and expanded the business to include shops in St. Charles, at 2039 Zumbehl Road, and at 8558 Eager Road in Brentwood in early 2023. According to Tang, the Oakville shop is the largest to date, coming in at 2,600 square feet with seating for around 40 guests, making it more than twice the

Salt + Smoke suffered serious damage in a fire on June 24, 2022. | JAIME LEES flammable cloth and plastic, and which contained flammable soiled linens.” The cart was allegedly located just outside the restaurant in a common area of the building. “Thereafter, the Greasy Rags that Euclid Salt + Smoke placed and stored as aforesaid combusted, caught fire and started a fire which spread to other portions of the Building, causing substantial destruction of and damage – including smoke damage – to the Building, with such destruction and damage size of the other stores, which are around 1,200 square feet or less. In addition to the extra space at Oakville, the offerings have also expanded to include a larger selection of desserts, baked goods and rotating food choices that range from finger foods to full meals. “We sell Vietnamese food that varies each week: Sometimes it’s street food and other times it’s a main meal, like pork chops with rice,” Tang says. The Oakville location’s bakery-style offerings include fruit tarts, cake pops and various cakes, such as a layered ube cake. Other treats include a soft-servestyle ice cream that features made-fromscratch recipes including matcha, ube, durian and taro flavors. Another menu item exclusive to the newest location is a unique kind of freshly squeezed juice that’s often paired with various fruits. “We’re also offering fresh sugar cane juice and serving it in a few variations including with kumquat and durian,” Tang says, adding that the sugar cane juice can be served on its own or with any of the shop’s available toppings, like boba and jellies in various flavors. Inside, the color scheme is similar to the other three locations, with gold tones and black accents, a nod to the bee in the business name. Behind the counter, black subway-style tiles greet guests, and

extending to the condominium units within the Building as well as common areas,” the suit alleges. The fire that broke out in the wee hours of June 24, 2022, destroyed not only Salt + Smoke but also neighboring restaurants Mission Taco Joint and Ranoush, all of which sat on the same block of Euclid. Due to the extensive fire damage, the restaurants have yet to reopen. The lawsuit was first reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Salt

+ Smoke owner Tom Schmidt told the daily he was disappointed by the suit but would not be commenting on it. One month after the fire, the suit says, Schmidt’s landlord, Rothschild Management LLC (also known as Red Brick Management) informed Salt + Smoke that they intended to rebuild and restore the building, so the restaurant’s sevenyear lease still remained in effect. The lease, they wrote, allowed 180 days to do so. However, in January, Salt + Smoke informed the company that the time had passed, the building had not been rebuilt and the lease was now terminated. The suit alleges that, under terms of the lease, if damage was caused by the tenant, the “tenant shall pay landlord the difference between the actual cost of rebuilding and any insurance proceeds received by landlord.” The suit says the actual cost of rebuilding “substantially exceeds” the insurance funds. The condo association and its related parties are now suing Euclid Salt + Smoke LLC and Schmidt Restaurant Group for breach of lease and negligence. They’re also suing Schmidt as an individual, saying he signed a personal guaranty for the lease. The suit was filed by Gerald P. Greiman of Spencer Fane LLP. n

Honey Bee Tea offers a selection of drinks in stunning shades. | COURTESY PHOTO a golden hue adorns the walls throughout. Guests have places to pose for selfies, with a pair of large angel wings that line one wall, or can opt to stand next to an oversized boba tea light feature. Guests can expect the same boba tea and desserts that are found at the other three locations, including Hong Kong waffles, available with toppings such as boba or syrups. And, of course, the full

lineup of drinks is available, such as the signature Okinawa milk tea with toasted crème brûlée and tiger sugar boba tea made with crème brûlée pudding, as well as teas made with fruit purees like fresh passion fruit tea and strawberry-peach oolong tea. In addition to boba and fruit tea beverages, there’s also iced Vietnamese coffee and warm drinks including hot chocolate. n

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

[FOOD NEWS]

Southern Closes The hot chicken spot shut its doors after an eight-plus year run in Midtown Written by

SARAH FENSKE

he eatery Southern (3108 Olive Street) has closed its doors after more than eight years in Midtown St. Louis. The fast-casual spot pioneered Nashville-style hot chicken in St. Louis, long before national chains like Gus’ opened up in town. With rising star Rick Lewis as its opening chef, the place drew rave reviews and devoted fans, helping provide an alternative to diners thwarted by the

[FOOD NEWS]

Pasta by Design Sauci will bring build-your-own pasta bowls to St. Charles Written by

IAIN SHAW This story was originally published in Sauce Magazine.

ast-casual pasta restaurant Sauci Pasta will open in spring 2024 at 1990 First Capitol Drive in St. Charles. The restaurant is owned by the same family as Fratelli’s Ristorante, which has been a fixture in St. Charles for the past four decades. The restaurant is owned and managed principally by Ben Alagna and his brother Adam. The third partner in the restaurant is their father Tom, who founded Fratelli’s with his brother Joe in 1983. Ben Alagna says the idea for Sauci developed out of conversations he and Adam started having about 10 years ago. “He came to me and said, ‘I have this idea, we should really take our [Fratelli’s] sauces and really celebrate them through pasta in a fast-casual format,’” Alagna says. For a long time, life got in the way, but now

RIVERFRONT TIMES

Southern was located in Midtown. | LAUREN MILFORD long lines at Pappy’s Smokehouse next door and quickly drawing lines of its own. But Lewis moved on, opening Grace

the time is right and the Alagnas are getting ready to bring their plans to life. Sauci Pasta will offer a simplified, pasta-centric take on Fratelli’s approachable Italian comfort food concept. The restaurant will make its pasta in-house, and customers will be able to see the process up close by grabbing a seat at the 360-degree pasta station, where they can watch pasta being rolled, pulled and cut while they eat. Diners at Sauci will be able to build their own bowls of pasta, choosing a pasta shape (spaghetti, fettuccine, rigatoni, fusilli, canestri and a gluten-free penne) then a sauce — options will include, red, white, rosé, carbonara, basil pesto and gluten-free options including meat sauce, pomodoro, and garlic oil and herb. The basic price of a pasta bowl includes your pasta and sauce, but you’ll also be able to add to your bowl with protein, a choice of cheeses and vegetables. “It gives a bit more flexibility to those with dietary restrictions — people who may want to do more vegan or vegetarian, it gives more flexibility than something that we just put together,” Alagna says. Each bowl is cooked to order in the open kitchen, which Alagna says is an important distinction. “It’s not like I’m pointing at a steam table and saying, ‘I want that sauce, I want that chicken,’” Alagna says. Instead, the order is placed at the counter, then sent to the kitchen to be prepared as it would in any other full-service restaurant. “All those flavors get to meld together, and that’s how pasta really thrives I think,”

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

Meat + Three in the Grove, and apparently some of the fans did too. In a tweet, the restaurant simply stated that it had

closed after dinner service last week. “This was a very difficult decision,” the posting read. “We have loved sharing our food with you and encourage you to continue your support of locally owned, independent restaurants.” Reviewing the place a few months after its opening in 2015, RFT Critic Cheryl Baehr wrote, “The fast-casual eatery is a marriage between the Nashville-style hot chicken shack of your dreams (think the famous Prince’s) and a Deep South deli. The space has a haute-rustic feel, sort of like a butcher counter you’d find in the French Quarter: concrete floors, reclaimed wood and metal tables and chairs, and sepia-colored vintage photos. A bright red sign that simply says ‘Eat’ hangs from a corrugated metal wall. Diners line up — and, yes, there is typically a line — next to a glass display case that showcases various housemade foodstuffs.” The headline of her review pronounced the place “every bit as good as the hype.” RIP, Southern. We’re going to miss you. n

Sauci Pasta will open up in St. Charles sometime in the spring. | COURTESY PHOTO Alagna adds. The menu will also include some pasta dishes imported directly from Fratelli’s menu, as well as a couple of inventive twists on old favorites. The “deconstructed lasagna” is a case in point. “We weren’t really able to put in ovens to do baked pastas, but everyone loves the lasagna at Fratelli’s, so I said, ‘Why don’t we get creative and figure out a way to still offer lasagna without having to bake it?’” Alagna says. “It’s going to have all the same ingredients, and it’ll all be incorporated into a saucepan with a wide, flat fettuccine pasta.” A few salads will also be offered, and Sauci’s sweet ricotta Italian doughnuts will be the des-

sert option. “We’ve played with it at Fratelli’s, and that’s a huge hit,” Alagna says. The restaurant will offer a few single-serve wine and beer options, in addition to soft drinks. Renovations are already underway on the 2,200-square-foot space, which was formerly an AT&T store. The “open, clean and refined” design will feature white oak paneling and accent walls. Alagna says the restaurant will seat around 20 guests and will offer online ordering for togo orders in addition to counter service. Sauci Pasta is targeting a March or April opening. Follow the restaurant on Instagram to keep up with the latest updates. n

REEFERFRONT TIMES

[ L E G A L I Z AT I O N ]

Short on Green Missouri courts request an additional $2.7 million for marijuana expungements Written by

REBECCA RIVAS This story was originally published in the Missouri Independent.

issouri circuit courts have cleared more than 100,000 marijuana charges from people’s criminal records so far — a mandate that was a big selling point for those who voted to pass the constitutional amendment that legalized recreational marijuana in 2022. However, court officials said it’s hard to determine how many more charges are left because many court records are not digitized. The state initially identified digital cases that could potentially be eligible for expungement and gave that information to the circuit courts. “We’ve had about 100,000 cases expunged,” said Betsy AuBuchon, clerk of the Missouri Supreme Court, during a House appropriations committee meeting last Wednesday, “but I can’t tell you of that how many more there are to go.” She said the current rate of cases reviewed and deemed eligible is about 10 percent. AuBuchon requested another $3.7 million in the coming budget year for Missouri courts to complete marijuana expungements. By law, any revenue the state collects from taxes on recreational marijuana sales, along with fees the businesses pay, must first go toward the state’s costs of regulating the program. Then it goes to expenses incurred by the court system for expunging certain marijuana offenses from people’s criminal records. Last year lawmakers signed off on $4.5 million for state courts to

Dyllan Davault, a harvester at Robust Cannabis facility in Cuba, Missouri, tends to greenhouse plants. | REBECCA RIVAS/MISSOURI INDEPENDENT

“We’ve had about 100,000 cases expunged, but I can’t tell you of that how many more there are to go.” pay their employees overtime or to hire temp workers to complete the massive number of expungements required by law. They approved an additional $2.5 million in a supplemental budget on May 5. Circuit courts must request funds to reimburse their expenses for completing expungements from the Circuit Court Budget Committee, which oversees the special assistance program. So far, the committee has given $4.2 million to the county courts, said Beth Riggert, communica-

tions counsel of the Missouri Supreme Court. And the committee has allocated the funds to any circuit court that has requested it, she said. “Some circuit courts have advised they have not requested special assistance funds because they did not have current court clerks willing or able to work overtime,” Riggert said, “and/or have been unable to find qualified individuals to provide special assistance because the analysis required is complicated and better done by experienced personnel, such as retired clerks.” As of January 2, Missouri courts have granted 103,558 expungements. Out of all the counties, Greene County has received the most funding, nearly $940,000, and has completed the most expungements at 4,306. After Greene, the counties that have completed the most expungements are not necessarily the largest counties or the ones that have received the most money. The second highest number is 3,515 from Laclede County, which

has a population of 36,000. The county has received a little more than $35,000 from the special assistance program. In third place is St. Louis County, the state’s largest county with more than a million people, where court officials have processed 3,479 expungements. The county has received just over $135,000. The court has reviewed 11,300 files, a spokesman for the 21st Circuit Court said. Franklin County, which has a population of 104,000, is fourth, completing 3,200 expungements and receiving about $53,000. Franklin is just ahead of Jackson County, which has a population of 717,000. Jackson has completed 2,900 and received nearly $195,000. The constitution mandates the courts to expunge all marijuana-related misdemeanors by June 8 and felonies by December 8. State Rep. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Democrat from Kansas City, asked AuBuchon how long it will take the courts to work through the backlog. AuBuchon, like circuit clerks statewide,

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

Continued on pg 34

RIVERFRONT TIMES

EXPUNGEMENTS Continued from pg 33

couldn’t give an estimate. “We are doing our best,” AuBuchon said. How far along are the courts? Greene County Circuit Clerk Bryan Feemster told The Independent last week that he brought on four experienced retired clerks in February to work part-time on expungements and, “they hit the ground running.” Their work has been guided by a list of pre-screened cases, compiled by the Office of State Court Administrator. The office searched for several criminal charge codes that potentially could involve marijuana and provided that list to the courts. The clerks must read through each case on the list thoroughly, he said. “You have to look at every count in the case and see whether it actually had to do with marijuana or not,” he said. Feemster submits timesheets and supporting documentation to the office, which then provides payment to employees on their paychecks for the expungement work. He’s hired an additional two people to embark on the heavy lifting of paper boxes and going through thousands of paper files that can’t be pre-screened by the state. Those six clerks are dedicated to expungements. “They don’t do anything else,” he said. During the 2022 campaign in support of the recreational marijuana ballot measure, supporters touted “automatic expungements” — meaning people who have already served their sentences for past charges don’t have to petition the court and go through a hearing to expunge those charges from their records. The courts must locate their records and make it as if their past marijuana charges never existed. “Let me be the first to tell you there is nothing automatic about that,” AuBuchon told legislators last Wednesday. It’s a labor-intensive process, she said, that requires someone with legal experience to look through court files. That’s why most courts are relying on retired clerks. “It’s heavily frontloaded and probably not worth bringing in brand new full-time employees on the state dollar,” she said. “We really need people who know how to do that work. We are getting through

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

those as quickly as we can.” And that’s particularly the case with paper records, Feemster said, because it’s all manual. “From 1989 back, we’re going through every single criminal record to find out whether there’s something in there that might qualify,” he said. “And it is, as you might imagine, very slow and tedious.” While Greene County has a team of retired clerks whom Feemster was able to recruit, other county clerks say they have one or two extra people helping complete the task. Marcy Anderson was appointed to serve as Johnson County’s circuit clerk in July, and she inherited the expungement task. She said she has a judge and a retired clerk who come to help out as often as they can, in addition to what her regular team can accomplish. “I have not done any kind of research to see how far along we are,” Anderson said. “We just continue to do it every day.” Johnson County has a population of 54,000, and her team has completed 529 expungements, as of January 2, receiving nearly $18,000 from the special assistance program. However her office, like every other county statewide, is simultaneously working on a large redacting project that’s required now that people can access court records on CaseNet. Both the redacting and expungement processes require extra help that she currently doesn’t have, but “more funds and more people” would be helpful. In Jackson County, court clerks have reviewed more than 20,000 files that include both felony and misdemeanor drug charges, said Valerie Hartman, spokeswoman for the 16th Judicial Circuit Court. The court has expunged nearly 3,000 charges. Some of those cases reviewed were related to marijuana, but many were not, she said. The court reviewed cases from 1989 through 2022 using data provided by the Office of State Courts Administrator, the Missouri Corrections Department and the Missouri State Highway Patrol, she said. All files that contained drug charges were included in the review. Now the court is researching how to access old criminal databases, in order to identify and review additional paper case files, Hartman said. “We have no information,” she said, “nor an estimate on how many additional drug cases await our review.” n

CULTURE

[IN STYLE]

High (School) Fashion Emma Miller of Visitation Academy opened an online boutique, Style It Out, when she was only 14 years old Written by

PAULA TREDWAY

mma Miller is living every teenage fashionista’s dream with her online boutique, Style It Out. “I [started] during COVID 2020, my freshman year; I was 14,” Miller says. “I was home a lot and was really big on buying and reselling my own clothes. I just had so much free time, and then my dad actually gave me the idea for Style It Out.” He suggested that she turn her passion into an actual business with his help, as well as help from Miller’s mother. “I thought he was joking,” she says. He wasn’t. “He had started his own business, so he knew how to do all the licenses and everything. I would have been totally lost, so he kind of walked me through the entire thing. It took off from there, and then it just became my whole life.” At the moment, Style It Out offers pink and blue sweatpants, a cream sweatshort and jacket ensemble, a white hoodie, a cheetahprint jacket, a red long-sleeve shirt, tank tops in a variety of colors and textures, dresses in several colors and prints, a few skirts and shorts, a white ruffle top and black and white beanies, as well as a variety of earrings and necklaces. Miller considers her boutique to be more on the girly side, but she tries to select pieces that can go with most styles. Though Style It Out sells mostly clothing and jewelry, it recently launched its first swimwear line. “I shop at a wholesale place where I can do all the shopping in one spot,” she says. “I go through

At Style It Out, Emma Miller offers a select clothing array that includes these pink sweatpants, which also come in blue. | COURTESY STYLE IT OUT and basically shop for myself, and then I send a mass email to all my friends asking them if they’d buy it. I get my parents, my friends, everyone’s opinions and collect some votes.” When it came to choosing a name for her new business, Miller wanted something with meaning to it. “I am a huge lacrosse player, and one of my club coaches in middle school used to always yell at us on the field or when we were running around, like, ‘Figure it out,’” she says. “She would always yell it as in [a] ‘do your own thing’ kind of an idea. I always loved that because I would use it in my regular life. … I was like, ‘Wait, what if I did something with that?’ And I was like, ‘Style It Out.’” Before Style It Out, Miller was running a bustling “closet account” on Instagram where she would resell and ship clothing. “During that time I was able to discover my love for fashion and creating fun outfits,” Miller says. The first year of business was a little slow, but quickly Miller realized just how important marketing is for a business. “I did not realize how hard it would be,” she says. “I was really stupid for thinking this, but I was like, ‘Everyone’s just gonna want to buy products.’ … It was really frustrating because I [thought], ‘I have new products, they’re all great prices, but why is no one

A matching cream sweatshort and jacket ensemble. | COURTESY STYLE IT OUT buying them?’” That’s when she realized no one was seeing her brand. “No one knew I existed,” says Miller. It’s since been a process over a few years to figure out how to change that for her specific concept. With her new skills and some help from some bigger name social media ambassadors, Style It Out began to grow. “[At first,] it was mostly just my friends and family that were ordering, and then eventually I thought of doing ambassadors where you send them items and they post [online] for you,” she says. “So I found

a few people I had been following, and I was like, ‘Would you want a free item to post?’ and everyone has been so good about it. I actually sent one top to this girl, and her TikTok went viral — by viral I mean maybe 30,000 likes, but for me that was insane. So she sold me out of everything.” Style It Out now ships all over the United States, but her biggest customers tend to be in Texas, Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina. “I still also do pop-up shops in St. Louis at the local schools and stuff,” she says. “So I get a lot of sales from that as well.” Miller, who is a senior at Visitation Academy in St. Louis, plans to continue her education at University of Mississippi where she will study fashion promotion and media along with business. Her goal is to continue to run Style It Out with her mother throughout college. She hopes to open a storefront after graduating in her college town of Oxford, Mississippi, or back home in St. Louis. “Style It Out has seriously been a dream come true,” Miller says. “It is a huge blessing in my life and has gifted me amazing opportunities and friendships. I am forever grateful for all the love and support I receive from my community and our amazing customers. I hope to inspire other young girls to follow their ambitions and accomplish their dreams at any age.” n

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

MUSIC When recording and performing live, Healey will sometimes loop 15 to 20 different tracks, adding layer after layer of violin, cello, vocals, guitar and percussive elements.

[AMERICANA]

Fit as a Fiddle Molly Healey’s remarkable gifts have made her Missouri’s go-to violinist — both solo and in some high-profile bands Written by

STEVE LEFTRIDGE

t’s the coldest day of the winter, with temperatures plunging well below zero, as I talk on the phone with violinist Molly Healey, who is feeling under all that weather. “I got the flu or crud or something,” Healey tells me from her home base of Springfield, Missouri, on a good day to hunker down. Sick or not, Healey has things to do. She is busy planning this year’s Earth Day festival in Springfield, the annual allday music festival that Healey founded in 2019, and she is prepping for a February 9 show at Blue Strawberry in St. Louis. So an isolated day at home works fine for Healey. After all, she needs no outside help to write or record new music: She’s a one-woman band with remarkable gifts for playing and looping sonic layers into uniquely beautiful melodic compositions. Healey is a ubiquitous presence on the Missouri music scene, playing solo sets with her cello, violin, voice and looping pedals, but just as frequently, she has been in high-profile collaborations as a member of popular Americana bands including Big Smith, Cornmeal and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, as well as her own four-piece Molly Healey Band. Surprisingly, Healey describes herself as a “late bloomer,” despite the fact that a life in music seemed predestined for her. Raised in Jefferson City, Healey says she has been making music “pretty much since birth.” Her father, J. Patrick Healey, was conductor of both the Jefferson City Cantorum, the city’s main community choir, and the Jefferson City Symphony. Her mother was an accomplished singer, and her older brother is a pianist and music teacher. “So I had no choice,” Healey says. Still, nothing she tried instrumentally — piano, violin — took permanent hold until well after high school, focused as she was on singing and performing in theatrical productions. In high school, she starred as Maria in West Side Story; at Missouri State in Springfield (then known as Southwest Missouri State), she was Catherine in Pippin. “I thought I was

RIVERFRONT TIMES

With a four-piece namesake band, as a solo artist and with other well-known bands, Molly Healey seems to be everywhere. | MATT LOVELAND going to go to New York and make it big on Broadway,” she tells me, laughing at the thought. “I was really terrible at dancing, and I wasn’t very good at acting. All I could really do was sing.” While majoring in musical theater, Healey remembers a particularly honest appraisal that prompted her to pivot musically. “I had a pretty harsh sitdown with one of my professors, who told me that I could continue to do [musical theater] if I wanted but that I was going to struggle, and that I might want to think about changing my major to something more practical. I’ve had people tell me that it was a mean thing for a professor to say, but it might have been the best thing that could have happened because it brought me to just music.” Healey switched to majoring in vocal music and, around that time, picked up the violin again, a decision that led to her sitting in with local rock bands toward the end of her college days. “One of my first stage performances in a band was a not-very-good version of ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’ in a Primus cover band,” she says with a laugh. After graduating SMS in 2000, Healey added her violin to Barefoot Revolution, a popular jam-folk outfit in Springfield, providing her with her first taste of touring as she played regionally and hit the Colorado roots-jam scene. That exposure led to an invite in 2006 to join Big Smith, the hillbilly

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

family band that gained a loyal following in the Midwest throughout the ’00s. It was her tenure with Big Smith that forced Healey to become a high-flying fiddler who had to wing it on stage. “That’s when I cut my teeth on improvisational playing,” she says. “I had no idea what that was like. It didn’t make any sense to me. I got thrown on stage, and you just sink or swim. I started small and got better.” Having grown up with formal training, Healey was never steeped in traditional bluegrass, taking her inspiration instead from violinists like Andrew Bird and Dave Matthews Band’s Boyd Tinsley, who provided classical-music-steeped violin to rock bands. Nevertheless, Healey took a deeper dive into the jamgrass scene after the Chicago-based band Cornmeal called in 2013 asking Healey to fill the spot previously occupied by fiddler Allie Kral, who went on to join Yonder Mountain String Band (and who now lives in Webster Groves). A favorite of the bluegrass festival circuit, Cornmeal took Healey all over the country on longer tours and bigger stages, requiring Healey to stretch even further as a soloist. “Sometimes those songs would last 10, 15 minutes,” she says. “And I’d always been a bit of a purist with my instrument. I didn’t even really use reverb before, but Cornmeal was when I started to really open my world to effects and how cool that can be.”

Eventually the rigors of the road with Cornmeal proved too much for Healey, who was raising her daughter as a single mom back in Springfield. (Today, Healey’s daughter, Annabelle Moore, is a piano major at Mizzou with a burgeoning music career of her own; she occasionally jumps on stage to harmonize with her mom.) But the sonic expansions that she adopted during that time inspired a major new phase in her career around 2015. “The biggest mile marker after Cornmeal was when I started doing my solo stuff,” she says. “I got a looping pedal. After that, I went from writing a song every three years to writing a song every week.” How did Healey learn to loop tracks? “I went to YouTube University. I’m a proud graduate!” she jokes, adding, “I just learned by doing. It’s the best way to learn. After I got my first pedal, I was out performing a month later. And I wore out pedal after pedal trying to do more things.” The first time I saw Healey playing in her solo configuration, she broke out a stunning version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” using a leftfield arrangement that rendered the song unrecognizable until her vocals kicked in. That, it turns out, was intentional. “With covers, I like to arrange the songs completely upside-down,” she says slyly. When recording and performing live, Healey will sometimes loop 15 to 20 different tracks, adding layer after layer of violin, cello, vocals, guitar and percussive elements into ambiently gorgeous cascades that send melodic lines in every direction. “I think [the loop-based compositions] came from loving a lot of early music and counterpoint,” she says. “I always loved baroque and Renaissance music that is based on a lot of moving

lines, not necessarily chords, and that style of writing was really attractive to me.” The popularity of her solo work meant that suddenly Healey was everywhere, playing weekly in Springfield but also omnipresent in festivals all over Missouri. There she was busking before screenings at Columbia’s True/False Film Festival. Then she was mesmerizing crowds at Springfield’s Queen City Shout. Then her music was entertaining cyclists along the Katy Trail during Pedaler’s Jamboree. Then she was commanding the stage at Columbia’s Roots N Blues. Then she was performing as a featured musician with the Columbia Ballet. And she stretched well beyond Missouri’s boundaries, headlining shows at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, and even taking her mind-expanding soundscapes to Burning Man. (But not in 2023, thankfully.) With the frequency of her appearances in Columbia, it’s easy to assume she has made her home there. But, no, her regular involvement with Columbia-based acts the Kay Brothers, the Hipnecks and other gigs has meant burning up Highway 5 traveling between Springfield and Columbia nearly weekly for 15 years, a trek that has resulted in her totaling three cars in collisions with errant deer. The musicians who make up the Molly Healey String Project — Kyle Day (Healey’s boyfriend) on bass, Zach Harrison on electric guitar, Danny Carroll on drums — are also Columbians, and Healey’s four studio albums were all recorded at Columbia’s Centro Cellar Studio. Nightbirds, released in 2015, was a dreamy introduction to Healey’s ethereal solo-collage soundscapes; 2017’s Human added more full-band and singer-songwriter elements, including a beautiful solo-cello cover of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun”; 2019’s Circles contained more focused showcases for Healey’s gentle, mellifluous vocals and pushed her songwriting into more progressive forms; 2022’s Lotus incorporated more rock and dance elements into Healey’s unique aural alchemy. A few years ago, Healey took her next step into the big time when she was invited to play on stage with the legendary Ozark Mountain Daredevils. As one of the definitive long-haired country-rock bands of the ’70s, the Daredevils remain mainstays of classic-rock radio, although Healey at first had only casual awareness of the band. “I had heard ‘Jackie Blue’ and ‘If You Wanna to Get to Heaven,’ but I didn’t really know much about them,” she admits. “It wasn’t until I played with Big Smith that I realized how cool the Daredevils were and what they’d done.” When Big Smith opened for the Daredevils one night in 2012, Healey was invited

on stage to jam with the band. Later, what started as one or two shows a year as a guest eventually became an invitation for Healey to break into the Daredevils’ all-boys club and become an official member. “That’s something I’m super proud of,” she says. So do the Daredevils — John Dillon, Supe Granda and the rest — tell her what to play on their beloved songs? “They’re so easygoing,” she says. “They were like, ‘Just play.’ There was no studying involved.” Just last week, the Daredevils announced When It Shines: The Final Tour, which will take the band on a farewell trek through 2025, giving fans one more chance to see Healey playing fiddle breaks on “Chicken Train,” “Standin’ on the Rock” and other Daredevils classics. In the meantime, Healey is excited about Springfield’s upcoming Earth Day festival, which came out of a moment of crisis for her. “[A career in] music can have good days and bad days, and on one particular bad day, I turned to my daughter and told her that I’m not sure I can do [music] anymore and that I want to get into some environmental work so that I feel like I’m doing something more meaningful with my life,” she says. “She was 10 or 11 and said, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. You’re going to be really sad if you quit doing music, and I think you can find a way to blend your two passions.’ And she was right.” With partner Barry Rowell, Healey founded Earth Day Music and Sustainability Festival, a plastic-free festival that raises money for local and regional environmental organizations, only to see the COVID-19 pandemic cancel the planned 2020 launch. They picked the idea back up two years later, hosting the inaugural event in 2022. The fest’s third incarnation will take place on April 27 in Springfield’s Jordan Valley Park and will feature two stages with performances by Langhorne Slim, National Park Radio, Ha Ha Tonka, Molly Healey String Band, Rochara Knight and the Honey Doves, aerialist demonstrations and more. In addition, Healey continues to make original music and perform as a solo artist and with her band. The upcoming showcase at Blue Strawberry will be a full-band performance highlighting selections from Healey’s solo albums along with new material that she is eager to debut on stage. “More music is on the way,” she says. “I’m always writing. For me, it’s like a faucet. Once you turn it on, it doesn’t go off.” n Mollly Healey String Project plays Blue Strawberry (364 North Boyle Avenue) on Friday, February 9, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 to $20 at bluestrawberrystl.com.

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

FILM

[REVIEW]

Divide and Conquer In Origin, Ava DuVernay turns Isabel Wilkerson’s nonfiction exploration of racism, Caste, into a gripping feature film Written by

CHUCK WILSON Origin Directed by Ava DuVernay. Written by Ava DuVernay, based on the book by Isabel Wilkerson. Opened January 19.

atching Origin, the mindstirring new film from writer-director Ava DuVernay, I found myself leaning forward, the way you do when a friend you haven’t seen in a long time relates an intensely personal tale of loss or love or both. University students no doubt do the same when Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist and historian portrayed in the film by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, stands before them, lecturing. Wilkerson’s 2020 book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents became a surprise bestseller during the pandemic. For the unlikely film version, DuVernay, who is skilled in both documentary (13th) and docudrama (Selma, When They See Us), sets out to bring Wilkerson’s ideas to a wide audience by placing the author’s life and the history she unearths side by side. The result is both unwieldy and deeply moving. Here is a rare and excellent thing — a major dramatic feature about a Black woman intellectual. DuVernay is blessed in Ellis-Taylor, who played the Williams sisters’ mother in the tennis drama King Richard. She has a great gift for both elucidating arcane ideas and for filling Wilkerson’s many moments of solitary reflection with resonant meaning. The author suffers a great personal loss just as she’s about to begin her book project. Ellis-Taylor infuses Wilkerson’s intellectual journey with

Like its source material, Origin connects racism in America with Nazi Germany and India. | ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA, COURTESY NEON the abiding current of that loss. In the first of many historical reenactments, DuVernay begins with the February 2012 shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin (Myles Frost) by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. It’s a heartbreaking sequence. When a magazine editor (Blair Underwood) asks the film’s Isabel to write about the case, she resists, but after listening to the 911 calls from Zimmerman and a neighbor who heard Martin crying out, she knows she must dig deeper. (The film utilizes the real 911 tapes.) Isabel is troubled by the terminology we use to describe such events. Zimmerman may have been a racist, but was there something more at work? “Racism as the primary language to understand everything is insufficient,” Isabel tells her editor. She is fascinated by the story of a German factory worker (Finn Wittrock) in love with a Jewish woman (Victoria Pedretti) who was captured in a photograph crossing his arms and refusing to salute Hitler like the workers around him. In the Nazi structure, Isabel sees an example of the caste system, a social hierarchy rooted in the accepted superiority of one class of people over another. The most famous such system existed in India, where Dalits, or “untouchables,” have long been made to live in barren poverty while performing the most de-

meaning of social services. Late in the film, a scene depicting a man toiling deep into a vat of human excrement is juxtaposed against recreations of the Middle Passage of enslaved Africans, as well as Jews being separated upon arrival at a concentration camp. This quick collage of harrowing imagery, while familiar to many, feels essential to this moment of a faltering collective memory. Isabel begins her work by traveling first to Germany, where she stands one night before the shining light of The Empty Library, a public memorial to a 1933 book burning by Nazi Party university students, the reenactment of which may reverberate for moviegoers against memories of recent hate marches here in America. In Berlin, she’s shown documents revealing a 1933 meeting of Nazi lawyers who found in American Jim Crow laws all the inspiration they needed to begin preparing German society to accept “the Final Solution.” The first hour of Origin moves in fits and starts, as if the filmmaker, like Isabel, is finding her way toward a unifying structure. At the film’s midpoint, Isabel attends a family picnic and begins explaining (or over-explaining) her thesis to her loyal cousin Marion (a marvelous Niecy Nash-Betts). “One more time, in English,” Marion says. “A little less Pulitzer Prize.” She continues, “Make it plain,”

and as if heeding that call, DuVernay’s storytelling becomes more focused and direct. It’s in the rich details of the personal that Origin soars. In one beautiful scene, the presence of which seems meant to suggest that the people in our very own lives have a living history worth documenting, Isabel records the remembrance of Miss (Audra McDonald), a longtime friend. Miss’ story of a belittling high school principal contains gratitude toward her father even as its specifics fill her with both pain and anger, a range of emotions that ripple across McDonald’s face all at once. Hers is a brief, classic performance. Origin is challenging. It requires us to participate, to lean in, to listen. I’ve seen it twice and though I can see that it could be shorter and is sometimes didactic, its rewards are many, not least among them the affecting tenderness with which Isabel and those she loves approach one another. And in a season of good movies, you might be hard-pressed to find a sequence as indelible as the final story Isabel is told. It involves a nine-year-old African American baseball player (Lennox Simms) circa 1951, who isn’t allowed to celebrate a championship victory with his white teammates. Like Trayvon Martin and the faces of so many whose histories momentarily intersect with Isabel’s, he’s unforgettable. n

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

STAGE

41 7-0-7 TOUR

ELVIS COSTELLO & THE IMPOSTERS PLUS CHARLIE SEXTON

FRI, JAN 26

THE SIMON AND GARFUNKEL STORY FRI, FEB 2

BAND OF HORSES SAT, FEB 17

Hold On! tells the story of the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, and the contributions of leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King. | DUNSI DAI

[REVIEW]

Bringing History to Life The Black Rep’s world premiere of Hold On! effectively chronicles the fight for voter rights in Selma, Alabama Written by

TINA FARMER Hold On! Written by Paul Webb. Directed by Ron Himes. Presented by the Black Rep at Washington University’s Edison Theatre (6465 Forsyth Boulevard, Clayton) through Sunday, January 28. Showtimes vary, and tickets are $46.25 to $51.25.

early 100 years after the end of the Civil War, and a year after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, many Black Americans, particularly in the South, were still systematically denied the right to register and vote. World premiere play Hold On! by Paul Webb, screenwriter of the 2014 film Selma, tells the story of the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, from the perspec-

tive of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Black leaders and community activists who challenged the status quo. The compelling story builds from local action to the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge as protesters walked from Selma to Montgomery, the state capitol. The play concludes with Coretta Scott King singing at the Freedom Concert, a hopeful, forward-facing tone underscoring the historic and emotional significance of the movement. We learn of the ongoing local struggles, Dr. King’s involvement and how his imperfections affected the movement. We also see the many ways bureaucracy and racism conspired to deny Black people their rights and how everyone, from ordinary citizens to Selma’s sheriff to Governor George Wallace and even the more progressive President Johnson, were complicit. It’s an important history, and the Black Rep’s production, directed with finesse and force by Ron Himes, brings the history to life. Enoch King is commanding and charismatic as Dr. King, revealing the vulnerability, flaws and uncertainty the man wrestles to overcome to become the leader the movement needs. In pivotal moments, King almost perfectly captures the tone and cadence of Dr. King’s voice. Evann De-Bose is a formidable partner as Coretta Scott King, with a bright, rich singing voice to match. Equally committed to civil rights, Coretta often intercepted the hostilities and

threats aimed at her husband, remaining by his side despite the pain they caused. Brian Dykstra is the influential and politically astute Lyndon B. Johnson, and he and King create bristling chemistry steeped in adversarial admiration and genuine respect. Tamara Crawford-Thomas, Jeff Cummings, Greg Carr Sr., Joel Antony, Jason Little, Isaiah DiLorenzo, Thomas Riley, Eric Dean White, Tammie Holland, and Olajuwon Davis form the ensemble, quickly and convincingly adding depth and detail to history. A smart, multi-functional stage design by Dunsi Dai, captivating projections by Zach Cohn and Lamar Harris’ compelling and, at times, haunting sound design add context and emotional texture. Harris’ sound is most effective during the violent scenes, where slow, stylized movements emphasize the storytelling impact while minimizing the shock of the attacks. Hold On! tells its story in 21 different scenes and, while the sound design and smartly choreographed transitions are smooth and efficient, overlapping and letting the changeovers show might help keep the audience more fully engaged. The frequent fades to black make the show seem longer than it runs and made some audience members restless. Transitions aside, the Black Rep’s focused staging ensures the play has immediacy that resonates with audiences and brings the history we should know to life. n

SUBTRONICS PLUS WOOLI, HEDEX, SAKA, JON CASEY, SKELLYTN

THU, FEB 22 GOODBYE YELLER BRICK ROAD, THE FINAL TOUR

LEWIS BLACK FRI, FEB 23

MUSCADINE BLOODLINE PLUS BEN CHAPMAN

SAT, FEB 24 ST. PATRICK’S DAY TOUR 2024

DROPKICK MURPHYS PLUS PENNYWISE

AND THE SCRATCH

MON, FEB 26

THREE DOG NIGHT PLUS CHRIS TRAPPER

FRI, MAR 1

EXCISION PLUS ATLIENS, RAY VOLPE, ZAYZ, DRINKURWATER

tue, MAR 12

TOWER OF POWER thu, MAR 14

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

OUT EVERY NIGHT

ach week, we bring you our picks for the best concerts of the next seven days. To submit your show for consideration, visit https://bit.ly/3bgnwXZ. All events are subject to change, so check with the venue before you head out. Happy showgoing!

Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. VOODOO BOB DYLAN: 8 p.m., $20-$30. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060. WE THE KINGS: 8 p.m., $25. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. WITHOUT M.F. ORDER: w/ The Devil’s Level, Hotel Party 8 p.m., $10. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309. ZAC HART: 7:30 p.m., free. Tin Roof St. Louis, 1000 Clark Ave, St. Louis, 314-240-5400.

[CRITIC’S PICK]

THURSDAY 25

DENISE THIMES: 8 p.m., $20. Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis. DIESEL ISLAND: 8 p.m., $15-$20. Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis. EMILY WALLACE: 4:30 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS: w/ Strangelove: The Depeche Mode Experience 7:30 p.m., $30-$50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. THE HAMILTON BAND: 9 p.m., $9. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. HUNTER: 3 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565. JOHN MCVAY & TOM RAY: 8 p.m., $15-$20. Joe’s Cafe, 6014 Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis. LA BLUES BAND: 7 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565. MALI VELASQUEZ: w/ Peace Among Worms 8 p.m., $15-$17. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309. MATTIE SCHELL: 7:30 p.m., $15. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745. A REWIND TO THE 90S: 7 p.m., $20-$150. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222.

FRIDAY 26

THE BREAKDOWWNS: w/ CHRONYX, The Ricters, Daydreamer 7:30 p.m., $10-$15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. DEAF CASTLE: 8 p.m., $12. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. ELVIS COSTELLO & THE IMPOSTERS: w/ Charlie Sexton 8 p.m., $69.50-$149.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500. EXPERIMENTAL OPEN MIC: 7 p.m., free. The Sinkhole, 7423 South Broadway, St. Louis, 314-328-2309. GRYMEHEAD: w/ Ending Orion, Unknown & Sailing, Killer Burke, At My Worst 7:30 p.m., $12. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. HONKY TONK HAPPY HOUR: 4 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565. JOHN DRAKE: w/ Guy and I 6 p.m., $6. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 3143765313. JOHNNY VALENTINE AND THE BAND DIVINE: 7:30 p.m., $20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745. KEYON HARROLD NIGHT 1: 7:30 p.m., $45-$50. Jazz St. Louis, 3536 Washington Ave, St. Louis, 314-571-6000. MARTY ABDULLAH & THE EXPRESSIONS: 8 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565. PEPPERLAND: THE BEATLES REVUE: w/ Gus Page 8 p.m., $10. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. RICH MCDONOUGH & THE RHYTHM RENEGADES: 7 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. STEPHEN KELLOGG: 8 p.m., $32. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060. THEY NEED MACHINES TO FLY, SUBTROPOLIS,

RIVERFRONT TIMES

SUNDAY 28

Elvis Costello. | VIA TICKETMASTER

Elvis Costello & The Imposters w/ Charlie Sexton 8 p.m. Friday, January 26. The Factory, 17105 North Outer 40 Road, Chesterfield. $69.50 to $149.50. 314-423-8500. When Elvis Costello announced the North American dates for his 7-0-7 Tour, which hits the Factory this week, he did so via a press release that is fittingly high-diction for an artist known for his lyrics’ nerdy wit. “It is with an air of the utmost delight that we, the purveyors of the finest musical tidings, announce the resplendent return of the esteemed maestro, Elvis Costello, and his illustrious coterie, The Imposters,” the statement read. “Brace yourselves ...” And local fans may indeed want to brace themselves, as Costello has a history of doing cool stuff during his shows in St. Louis. (In 2011, for example, CHILDREN OF THE RAT TEMPLE: 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226. WESTERN DREAMLAND: A COUNTRY & DISCO PARTY: 8:30 p.m., $16-$25. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161.

SATURDAY 27

ALL ROOSTERED UP: noon, free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. AVA, WAIT: w/ This Is Falling, Isabella, Blake Richard 8 p.m., $15. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. BIG LOU: 7:30 p.m., $10. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720. CARRIE & THE CATAPULTS: 8 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. DILLON FRANCIS: 10 p.m., $25-$750. RYSE Nightclub, One Ameristar Blvd, St. Charles. EARTH AND ELSEWHERE, ENEMY OF MAGIC,

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

ALEX LOPEZ: 7 p.m., $18. City Winery St. Louis, 3730 Foundry Way, Suite 158, St. Louis, 314-678-5060. EIMEAR ARKINS ALBUM RELEASE SHOW: 2 p.m., $15. The Focal Point, 2720 Sutton Blvd., Maplewood, 314-560-2778. ERIC LYSAGHT: 9 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. ERIK BROOKS: 8 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565. THE HORSEMEN: 2 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. JACK WHITTLE: 6 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. RIVER SHARKS: w/ Lightning Wolf, Ex Cathedra, Hudai 6 p.m., $6. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. TOMMY HALLORAN: 10 a.m., free. Das Bevo Biergarten, 4749 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-224-5521.

MONDAY 29 during his Spectacular Spinning Songbook tour, the setlist was chosen by fans coming on stage and spinning a gameshow style wheel, and no less than Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder also made a guest appearance.) This week’s outing will see Costello backed by his longtime band, the Imposters, for a career-spanning set pulling from the brilliant songwriter’s expansive oeuvre. Lots of Luck: The significance behind calling the tour 7-0-7 isn’t immediately obvious. Perhaps it’s a reference to an album we’re not familiar with — after all, he has put out more than 30 in the past 40 or so years. Maybe it’s a slot machine reference, and there will be an element of luck or chance incorporated into the show again this time around? There’s only one way to find out. —Ryan Krull NIGHT PARK, REAVER: 8 p.m., $10. The Heavy Anchor, 5226 Gravois Ave., St. Louis, 314-352-5226. EVERETT DEAN REMEMBERING THE KING: 7:30 p.m., $20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745. JOHN MCVEY BAND: 8 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565. KEYON HARROLD NIGHT 2: 7:30 p.m., $45-$50. Jazz St. Louis, 3536 Washington Ave, St. Louis, 314-571-6000. MISS JUBILEE: 7 p.m., free. Yaqui’s on Cherokee, 2728 Cherokee St, St. Louis, 314-400-7712. PAUL NIEHAUS IV: 6 p.m., $6. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 3143765313. RICH MCDONOUGH & THE RHYTHM RENEGADES: 2 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565. S!CK!CK: 8 p.m., $20-$25. Bally Sports Live!, 601 Clark Ave #103, Saint Louis. SHREK RAVE: 9 p.m., $25. Off Broadway, 3509

HUNTER PEEBLES: 7 p.m., free. Yaqui’s on Cherokee, 2728 Cherokee St, St. Louis, 314-400-7712. SOULARD BLUES BAND: 9 p.m., $8. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. TIM ALBERT AND STOVEHANDLE DAN: w/ Randy 7 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565.

TUESDAY 30

EMILY WALLACE: 9 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. NAKED MIKE: 7 p.m., $5. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. OPEN MIC NIGHT: 8 p.m., free. 1860 Saloon, Game Room & Hardshell Cafe, 1860 S. Ninth St., St. Louis, 314-231-1860.

WEDNESDAY 31

ARCHERS: w/ Savage Hands 7 p.m., $20. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. BILLY CHILDS: 7:30 p.m., $40-$45. Jazz St. Louis, 3536 Washington Ave, St. Louis, (314) 571-6000. DREW LANCE: 4:30 p.m., free. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. JOHN MCVEY BAND: 7 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565. MARGARET & FRIENDS: 3 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565. MITZI MACDONALD AND THE LAWS OF MUSIC: 7:30 p.m., $15-$20. Blue Strawberry Showroom & Lounge, 364 N Boyle Ave, St. Louis, 314-256-1745. VINCENT VARVEL TRIO: 7 p.m., free. Evangeline’s, 512 N Euclid Ave, St. Louis, 314-367-3644. VOODOO HUEY LEWIS: 8:30 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. WEDNESDAY NIGHT JAZZ JAM: w/ Bob DeBoo 6 p.m., free. The Dark Room, 3610 Grandel Square inside Grandel Theatre, St. Louis, 314-776-9550.

THIS JUST IN 314 DAY PARTY: Thu., March 14, 8:30 p.m., $10. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720. BENDIGO FLETCHER: Sat., March 9, 8 p.m., $18. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444.

[CRITIC’S PICK]

Keyon Harrold. | DENEKA PENISTON

Keyon Harrold

St. Louis scores big this week as jazz trumpet prodigy Keyon Harrold celebrates the release of his third album, January 19’s Foreverland, with a string of four shows at Jazz St. Louis on Friday and Saturday. Our fine town follows only LA and NYC in holding that distinction, as Harrold debuts the album on the coasts before bringing the show to the heartland. Credit the fact that Harrold is a hometown boy. Born in Ferguson

to a musical family — one of 16 siblings whose grandfather, a former police officer, founded the Memorial Lancers Drum and Bugle Corps — Harrold decamped to New York for college and studied at the illustrious School of Jazz and Contemporary Music at Greenwich Village’s New School, where he met fellow classmate jazz icon Robert Glasper. It was Glasper who secured for Harrold his first professional gig playing the trumpet by recommending him to Chicago rapper Common, kicking off a close and ongoing collaboration that saw the pair performing together at the White House in 2016. Harrold’s work within the hip-hop and R&B communities has been expansive over the years and has seen him collab-

orate with everyone from Jay-Z to to 50 Cent to Eminem to Erykah Badu, among many others. Being that this string of shows is a celebration of his new album, it’s reasonable to surmise that Harrold may have some surprise special guests onstage with him — after all, Common does appear on the new record, and Chicago ain’t that far away. Well Advised: Harrold’s local ties go beyond just his birthplace. The talented musician is currently in the midst of a three-year stint as Jazz St. Louis’ creative advisor, a role that has seen frequent stops through town from Harrold and many of his famous jazz collaborators in recent years. St. Louis’ music scene is all the better for it. —Daniel Hill

BILLY CHILDS: Wed., Jan. 31, 7:30 p.m., $40-$45. Jazz St. Louis, 3536 Washington Ave, St. Louis, 314-571-6000. BOOGIE CHYLD: Sat., March 16, 6 p.m., $6. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 3143765313. BOOGIE T: Sat., March 23, 8 p.m., $34.50-$49.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500. BRITTANY HOWARD: Fri., April 26, 8 p.m., $46$61. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. BUSH: Sat., Aug. 10, 7 p.m., $39.50-$89.50. St. Louis Music Park, 750 Casino Center Dr., Maryland Heights, 314-451-2244.

DALE HOLLOW: Sun., March 24, 8 p.m., $12. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. DEERHOOF: Sat., April 6, 8 p.m., $20. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. THE EMO NIGHT TOUR: Sat., March 23, 8 p.m., $15. The Hawthorn, 2231 Washington Avenue, St. Louis, 314-887-0877. FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS: Sat., March 30, 6 p.m., $6. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 3143765313. FREE THROW: Wed., May 1, 7:30 p.m., $22. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. HOTEL FICTION: W/ Sean Gerty, The Whips, Sat.,

Feb. 17, 7 p.m., $12. Club Riveria, 3524 Washington Ave., St. Louis, 314-531-8663. JEREMIAH JOHNSON BAND: Fri., March 15, 6 p.m., $12. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313. THE JOHNNIE TAYLOR EXPERIENCE: Sat., March 2, 6 p.m., $25-$45. Backstreet Jazz & Blues, 610 Westport Plaza, Maryland Heights, 314-878-5800. KAMELOT: Sat., May 4, 7 p.m., $35. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. KIM DRACULA: Mon., March 18, 7:30 p.m., $32.50. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. LA LOM: Wed., April 3, 8 p.m., $20. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd.,

7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Friday, January 26, and Saturday, January 27. Jazz St. Louis, 3536 Washington Avenue. $45 to $50. 314-571-6000.

University City, 314-727-4444. MELISSA ETHERIDGE AND INDIGO GIRLS: Tue., Aug. 13, 7 p.m., $57-$101.50. St. Louis Music Park, 750 Casino Center Dr., Maryland Heights, 314-451-2244. THE MOUNTAIN GOATS: Sat., April 20, 8 p.m., $49.50. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. MYRON ELKINS: Sat., Feb. 24, 8 p.m., free. Tin Roof St. Louis, 1000 Clark Ave, St. Louis, 314-240-5400. OPEN BLUES JAM: $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. PALACE: Mon., April 29, 8 p.m., $27.50. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. PATTI LABELLE: Sat., May 11, 7 p.m., $59.50$124.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500. THE RETRONERDS: Sat., March 23, 6 p.m., $6. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313. REX MANNING DAY: Sat., March 9, 6 p.m., $6. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 3143765313. RICH MCDONOUGH & THE RHYTHM RENEGADES: Fri., Jan. 26, 7 p.m., $15. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-4365222. Sat., Jan. 27, 2 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565. RIVER SHARKS: W/ Lightning Wolf, Ex Cathedra, Hudai, Sun., Jan. 28, 6 p.m., $6. Red Flag, 3040 Locust Street, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. SIR CHLOE: Fri., March 15, 8 p.m., $23. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. SLOTHRUST: Tue., April 23, 8 p.m., $20. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. SUM 41: Wed., April 24, 7 p.m., $59.50-$69.50. The Factory, 17105 N Outer 40 Rd, Chesterfield, 314-423-8500. SUPERFUN YEAH YEAH ROCKETSHIP: Sat., March 23, 8 p.m., $15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. SYNOPTIC FREQUENCIES 8: W/ Joseph Allred and Kevin Cheli, Adam Gabbert, Elizabeth Mahood Trio, Sat., Feb. 3, 6 p.m., $10. Saint Louis University-Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA), 3700 W. Pine Mall, St. Louis, 314-977-7170. THUNDERHEAD: THE RUSH EXPERIENCE: Sat., March 30, 8 p.m., $22.50-$60. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. TRIXIE DELIGHT TRIO & CAMELA WIDAD: Fri., March 22, 6 p.m., $6. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313. UP ALL NIGHT: Fri., March 29, 6 p.m., $6. The Attic Music Bar, 4247 South Kingshighway Blvd., 2nd Floor, St. Louis, 314-376-5313. UP ALL NIGHT: A ONE DIRECTION PARTY: Sat., March 23, 9 p.m., $20. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. VALENTINE’S DAY BAWL: W/ Old Souls Revival, Nick Gusman, Mattie Schell, Wed., Feb. 14, 7 p.m., $10-$15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. VOODOO ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND: Wed., March 20, 9 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. VOODOO JIMMY BUFFETT BEACH BAND: Wed., Feb. 21, 8:30 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. VOODOO VALENTINE REQUESTS: Wed., Feb. 14, 8:30 p.m., $14. Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-621-8811. VOODOO WHO: Sat., March 23, 8 p.m., $20-$25. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. ZACH SEABAUGH: Sat., May 4, 8 p.m., $18. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. n

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

SAVAGE LOVE

Micro Nots BY DAN SAVAGE Hey Dan: I was seeing this guy for about four months. We were pretty much dating, doing all of the normal boyfriend/girlfriend stuff. Everything was going great up until last night when he told me he feels all of these feelings for me, but they don’t mean anything because he’s felt this same way about others, but nothing has ever worked out. He told me that whatever we have “isn’t enough.” I’m not sure what that even means. But last night he also told me that he loves me, and yet he still left. I’m so confused. Do you have any insight? What The Fuck Thank you for contacting Savage Love. Your question is very important to us, and one of our representatives will be with you shortly. But first … Polyamory is having a moment. The New York Times, New Yorker, New York Magazine and the New York Post have all run big stories about polyamorous relationships in the last two weeks. Hell, even the ladies on The View are arguing about it. The talk about polyamory has suddenly gotten so loud that some conservatives — not usually the kind of people prone to conspiratorial thinking (cough cough) — are convinced it’s a plot. “The memo has gone out,” Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire posted on Twitter last week. “This is the next frontier in the war on the nuclear family!” No memo went out, Matt, it was something far more banal. A book that came out: More: A Memoir of Open Marriage by Brooklyn-based writer Molly Roden Winter. There were press releases, not memos, and thanks to a big marketing push — a big and very successful marketing push (congrats to the PR team at Penguin Random House!) — polyamory is suddenly everywhere. If I were a different sort of writer — if I had one self-promoting bone in my body — I might take a victory lap. I mean, I’ve been credited with helping to mainstream the conversation about ethically non-monogamous relationships; I’ve discussed the subject in my columns and podcasts, on The View and on The Colbert Report. But instead of claiming a share of the credit for polyamory’s breakthrough moment, I’m going to offer a little counterprograming instead. While everyone else is talking about polyamorous relationships, I’m gonna talk about make monogamous relationships.

RIVERFRONT TIMES

I’m not here to run them down, I’m here to make them a little more resilient — not resilient in the face of the polyamorous conspiracy that wasn’t, but resilient in the face some deeply unhelpful bullshit that monogamous people keep trying to make happen. I’m speaking, of course, of the concept of “micro-cheating.” If monogamous people are going to define cheating as unforgivable — and most monogamous people do — then monogamous people should really define cheating as narrowly as possible. That is, if they want their marriages to be stable — which frankly, at this point, I’m not convinced they do. Which would explain why monogamous people have spent the last decade growing the list of what “counts” as cheating; everything from looking at porn to sending an ex a birthday text has had the “micro-cheating” slapped on it. If I were the conspiracy-minded type myself, if I were more of a Matt Walsh, I might see this sustained effort to make “micro-cheating” happen as a nefarious plot to undermine monogamous relationships. Anyway, while everyone was talking about polyamory this week, a memo went out — in the form of an Instagram post — by Dr. Manahil Riaz, a sometimes couples counselor based in Texas. It’s titled “21 examples of micro-cheating.” As a public service, I’m going to share Dr. Riaz’s list one-by-one and clarify what does and doesn’t count as cheating. I do this not to promote polyamory (because my work there is done) but to strengthen monogamy (because you people need all the help you can get). 1. Secretly messaging someone. Not cheating. I mean, what if your spouse is secretly messaging your best friend about the surprise birthday party they’re hosting for your 40th? Sending furtive messages while your spouse is in the room is never a good idea, as doing so can arouse the kind of suspicions that might tempt an otherwise reasonable person to start snooping. But “secret messaging” is a broad and meaningless category and declaring it a form of cheating is an invitation to insecure, controlling and abusive people to terrorize their partners over innocuous text messages. And for the record: people in relationships — even monogamously married ones — are allowed their own friends, a little privacy, stupid private jokes they share with those friends, etc. 2. Meeting with someone without you knowing. Not cheating. What if your husband is meeting up with your best friend to plan

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

your surprise 40th birthday party? Or what if your current wife is meeting up with her ex-husband to discuss co-parenting and you have a history of melting down when they meet and so your wife decided to spare you the anxiety (and herself the stress) by not telling you about this meeting right away or at all? Yes, cheaters do meet up with affair partners without their partners knowing, but like the previous example, no distinction is made between legit DL meetings and illicit DL meetings.

who are too insecure to let their spouses remain in cordial contact with their exes are always assholes — and Dr. Riaz is essentially running interference for assholes by including this on her list.

3. Complaining about you to another person. Not cheating! Also, what the actual fuck? According to Dr. Riaz’s website, she does couple’s counseling. Listening to people complain about their partners is literally her job. And I’m sorry, but if people weren’t allowed to complain about their spouses to friends, coworkers and couple’s counselors, the murder rate would skyrocket. (Here’s hoping Mrs. Matt Walsh has someone she can complain to about Mr. Matt Walsh.)

8. Creating a dating profile. OK, this one I’m willing to grant. But sometimes married people get on dating apps because they wanna feel wanted by someone else, and they don’t actually plan on meeting up with anyone else. If you find your spouse on a dating app, go for a walk around the block, listen to the “Piña Colada Song” on Spotify at least five times, then head home to discuss it.

4. Sharing knowing looks behind your back. Not cheating. Shooting someone a knowing look — pulling a Jim or a Pam — is how married people let third parties know 1. we’re aware our spouse is being unreasonable or ridiculous and 2. we will address it with them later. While a knowing look sometimes says, “We’re totally having an affair and HA HA HA my husband is an IDIOT!” more often than not a knowing looks says, “I know he’s being an asshole right now, and I’m sorry about that.” (I expect Mrs. Matt Walsh uses the latter look a dozen or more times a day, and I hoping she gets to use the former at least once in her life.) 5. Saying things like, “If I weren’t in a relationship …” Not cheating. Monogamous married people use this expression or one its many variations (“If I were single …” “If I were younger …”) to let someone know they’re unavailable. It’s a rejection wrapped in a compliment that may or may not be sincere, but it’s a rejection just the same. 6. Maintaining contact with exes. Not cheating. Kids aren’t the only reason people sometimes remain in touch with their exes. Some people stay in touch with their exes because — and I hope you’re sitting down, Dr. Riaz — they actually like their exes. It’s not a bad sign when your partner is on friendly terms an ex; it’s a good sign. People whose exes all hate them and want nothing to do with them are almost always awful; people

7. Flirtatious joking. Not cheating. People in monogamous relationships sometimes wanna feel wanted, and swapping a few flirtatious jokes with an attractive stranger or coworker or chatbot can meet that important need.

9. Trying to impress someone you have a crush on. Not cheating. Monogamously married people want the people they would fuck if they could fuck them — the people they would fuck if they were single and/ or ethically non-monogamous — to think they’re cool. Everyone wants the people they think are hot to think they’re impressive. It’s a natural human impulse and, really, how are you supposed to correct for this? Go out of your way to be disappointing asshole at all times? We all can’t be Matt Walsh. 10. Sending someone photos of themselves to someone else. Not even Grandma? 11. Discussing intimate desires with someone else. Not cheating. Women talk to their girlfriends about their intimate desires, and men talk to their buddies about their intimate desires, and monogamously partnered people get on Reddit to brag or bullshit about their intimate desires. Feeling isolated in your relationship — being told you’re not allowed to talk to complain to anyone else about your relationship or discuss your intimate desires, fears, whatever — is one sign you may be in an abusive relationship. This is terrible advice. 14. They follow inappropriate accounts on Instagram. Not cheating. Also, who gets to decide what’s inappropriate? 15. Giving their number to a stranger. Not cheating — sure, it could signal intent

to cheat and/or lead to the kind of latenight sexting that results in cheating. But it could just signal intent to swap Wordle scores or memes. 16. Stalking a crush online. Stalking is a crime — no one should stalk anyone — but a monogamously married person following someone they think is hot on Instagram is not stalking. They’re looking. And as monogamously married people who got caught looking were fond of saying before this micro-cheating bullshit came along, “Hey, I’m married, not dead!” 17. Paying special attention to a particular person. Not cheating. Monogamously married people shouldn’t pay “special attention” to other people with their genitals. But the problem with this standard is the same as so many others on this list: It can easily be weaponized by abusive or controlling partners. Because who gets to decide what “special attention” means? 18. Always commenting on and liking a different person’s pictures. Not cheating. I comment on and like my sister’s pictures all the time, and I do not want to have an affair with my sister. If policing your spouse’s likes and comments makes you unhappy, maybe don’t police your partner’s likes and comments.

I think you know — and I’m very sorry about that. Getting dumped sucks, I realize, but most people get over it, and you’ll probably get over it, too. And he was either lying about loving you when he broke up with you, which was cruel and disqualifying (you don’t want to date a guy like that), or he was telling the truth about loving you and broke up with you anyway, which was crazy and disqualifying (you don’t want to date a mess like that). P.S. I tweaked Dr. Riaz’s list for clarity. The original post — and Dr. Riaz’s defense of her list — can be found here: instagram.com/p/C2OVZzIsyVf/?img_index=1 P.P.S. The shitty-couples-counselor-todivorce-court pipeline is real, and it’s a bigger threat to the nuclear family — to all those monogamously married straight couples out there with kids — than a million features on polyamory ever could be. Maybe Matt Walsh should blow up about that instead. Send your questions to mailbox@savage.love! Podcasts, columns and more at savage.love

19. Hoping to make someone notice you in a romantic way. Not cheating. Hoping to be noticed ≠ intent to cheat; being noticed ≠ having cheated. Again, married people — even monogamously married people — are married, not dead. 20. Asking someone personal or inappropriate questions. Not cheating. And, again, isn’t this what a couple’s counselor does for a living? 21. Turning to someone else to get emotional needs met when the relationship is in a rocky patch. NOT CHEATING JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. If you can’t meet your spouse’s emotional needs for whatever reason — like you’re in a rocky patch — your spouse’s emotional needs don’t just disappear. I’m personally grateful to the people who were there for my husband and provided him with emotional support, i.e., met his emotional needs, when I couldn’t during some rocky patches of our long marriage. Thank you for your patience, WTF, here’s some advice for you from one of our specialists: You got dumped — which

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com

riverfronttimes.com JANUARY 24-30,2024

RIVERFRONT TIMES

JANUARY 24-30, 2024

riverfronttimes.com