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WHAT A WEEK!

BY T.C. B R I T TO N

Fuckboi of the Year Arie Luyendyk Jr. proposes to his second-choice chick, Lauren P H O T O : A B C / PA U L H E B E R T

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All the Ladies If You Feel Me, Help Me Sing It Out

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March is Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day was March 8, so there’s lots of lady lovin’ in the air right now. There were numerous women’s marches around the world in support of equal rights and pay and other issues that benefit everyone. The New York Times published obituaries of some remarkable women in history who were previously overlooked by the newspaper. Wired profiled some women pioneers of the web.

Some celebrated by binging Jessica Jones, the Marvel series about a badass female private investigator with superhuman abilities. Its second season premiered on Netflix last week. Mattel launched a line of Barbies based on inspirational IRL women, including Amelia Earhart, Frida Kahlo and Katherine Johnson (a NASA mathematician portrayed in the film Hidden Figures Figures).

Across Cincinnati and the country, companies lit up their building with the female symbol — Kroger, Procter & Gamble and others participated locally.

Of course, brands love to take advantage of every holiday or any chance to appear woke, but these feeble attempts at appearing inclusive generally backfire. But in light of recent women-centered movements and issues — #MeToo, Time’s Up, the wage gap, paid family leave, I can go on — might companies want to shy away from cheap pandering? Of course not! The Freeform channel censored women making apologies onscreen and kept a tally of how many “sorrys” were bleeped.

A California McDonald’s flipped its golden arches sign upside down and the new “W” appeared on packaging and uniforms. Brawny replaced its lumberjackish paper towel man with a flannel-clad woman and invited folks to nominate a “shero” in their lives. (It’s like a hero, but with a vagina!) Kim Kardashian released

a collection of “Women’s Empowerment” Kimojis with phrases like “My Body My Choice,” “Grab America Back,” “Nasty Woman,” and, despite claiming she isn’t one, “Feminist.” And because not a week can pass without Kentucky Fried Chicken making its herbed and spicy way into this news roundup, KFC Malaysia replaced Colonel Sanders’s image with that of with his (second) wife (and mistress), Claudia.

Sure, OK! An unfortunately fitting image of IWD came from Oxford University, where an onlooker snapped a photo of a cleaning woman scrubbing “Happy International Women’s Day” from some uni building steps as a group of men watched.

Alexas Are... Aliiive!

Some users of Amazon’s cloud-based voice service Alexa were given a fright this week when their devices began maniacally talking and laughing, unprovoked.

Multiple people reported hearing a strange laugh coming from their Alexa-enabled products, either in response to a command or completely unprompted. The chuckle was described as “evil” and “witch-like.”

Others claimed Alexa has started talking nonsense — one Twitter user says it began listing off cemeteries and funeral homes out of nowhere. Amazon says they’re “working on a fix.” Welp, R.I.P. humanity!

And Fuckboi of the Year Goes To...

The Bachelor is a ridiculous concept.

Strangers must form relationships in a crazy, synthetic reality TV show environment and form lasting bonds over the course of mere weeks with the goal of getting engaged at the end. Like a lot of Bachelor/ettes, Arie Luyendyk Jr. set out to find a wife at the end of his run, reiterating throughout the season that he wanted to propose when he found his

final match. So even though he was clearly torn after dropping the L-bomb to both of the final two ladies, he sent the bland Lauren home and popped the question to the marginally less bland Becca K. But as teased throughout the THREE-HOUR final episode last week, this was about to be the most controversial, historic, life-altering episode of any show ever. And sure enough, in the weeks that passed between when that final episode was taped and now, Arie realized he missed Lauren. So he called up his fiancée — and host Chris Harrison and a camera crew, natch — to dump Becca on television. It. Was. Rough. I mean, fuck that indecisive Irish wolfhound-looking dick.

(Apologies to Irish wolfhounds.) And as if one night of torture wasn’t enough, the After the Final Rose special aired the next night — and Arie proposed to Lauren live on TV as Becca and THE WORLD watched on. She didn’t cry over spilled Dutch milk, though — Becca is our new Bachelorette, packaged complete with a broken heart and trust issues to carry an entire season’s worth of storylines!

The Most Shocking Outcome in Bachelor History was hilariously spoofed on Saturday Night Live later that week, with Cecily Strong playing Becca and Kate McKinnon as Robert Mueller, admitting he can’t commit…to nailing Trump for collusion.

Katy Perry Convent Drama Gets Dark

So this story had been going on for a while but it has recently taken a wicked turn, all in time for Katy’s debut as a judge on the revived American Idol. Since 2015, the Pop star has been trying to buy a Los Feliz, Calif. property that currently houses a convent. The nuns wanted to sell it to a restaurateur instead of that SINNER Katy, but the archdiocese said they didn’t have the right to block the sale. It was basically boring real estate news that happens to involve the Catholic church and a celebrity with whipped-cream-cannon boobs. But now the legal battle has made its way to court, and things got super dark this week.

Sister Catherine Rose Holzman, one of two nuns suing Katy and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, was in court Friday when she collapsed and died. She was 89. Now that’s pretty old, and it’s likely there were more complications than a broken heart trampled by a rich celebrity but maybe Katy should just let this shit go! Who wants to live in a creepy old church property, anyway? God knows (*thunder*) what kind of supernatural scariness would ensue (*lightening*) if she won the battle, bulldozed the place (*earth shaking*) and build her cotton candy castle in its wake.

Contact T.C. Britton: letters@citybeat.com

This Week in Questionable Decisions…

1. RuPaul says he probably won’t accept contestants who are “really transitioning” onto Drag Race. Ten or so queens have come out as transgender either during or after their time on the show. Ru later apologized.

2. A giant crocodile visited an Australian school last week as part of an educational program to warn kids about the dangers of swimming in croc-infested waterways.

3. Melanie Brown, aka Scary Spice, aka Mel B claimed her ex forced her children to watch ISIS beheading videos.

4. Betsy Devos visited Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of the Feb. 14 Florida school shooting, stayed for 90 minutes, petted a comfort dog, answered five questions and left.

Those little woke teens weren’t having it.

5. Rhode Island State legislators introduced a bill that could banish free internet porn, requiring residents to pay a one-time fee to access sexually explicit websites.

6. A Chanel fashion show in France transported models and the audience to an enchanted forest in autumn. Only problem is it’s March, so they had to cut down a ton of huge, old trees and prop them up in a tent to achieve the ~vibe~, which had environmentalist types wagging their fingers.

7. Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un are ready to meet up in person.

Somebody hold me!

8. A woman rode a live horse into a Miami nightclub this weekend and, shockingly, the sweet steed didn’t care for that shit! The horse (and dumb humans) were all OK, but the club has since been shut down.

9. A hippo named Timothy from the San Antonio Zoo hollered at Fiona on Twitter, asking to meet and maybe become boyfriend-girlfriend.

Boyyy, you better watch yourself. #TeamFiona is strong and we’ll come after you if you try anything.

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Who is in Charge as the Streetcar Struggles?

Cincinnati’s downtown rail system is lagging as others thrive. Will a single leader help the transit project’s ridership and financial difficulties?

BY N I C K SWA R T S EL L

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s Cincinnati’s streetcar ridership drops and its financial future appears murky, the transit project is struggling in a tangle of groups responsible for its operation, some officials say.

The streetcar’s struggles come after cold weather sidelined the transit vehicles multiple days this winter, but the problems go deeper than just frigid temperatures. Even as some comparable systems elsewhere thrive, Cincinnati’s controversial fixed rail gambit is lagging.

“I don’t know that things are truly going to get better the way we want them to under this management structure,” Cincinnati Assistant City Manager John Juech told a Cincinnati City Council committee March 6. That probably won’t improve until a single leader emerges to make tough decisions, he said.

Under the current structure, the city funds much of the streetcar’s operations, the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority is responsible for its overall trajectory and Transdev, the private company it contracts with, oversees day-to-day operation.

And don’t forget CAF, the Spanish company that manufactured the streetcar and is still on the hook for repairs to cars that won’t run in cold weather due to compressor problems.

Some council members groused about Transdev’s service so far. At the March 6 meeting, Councilwoman Tamaya Dennard called the company’s performance “underwhelming,” and asked how to measure their service and hold them accountable.

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But SORTA holds the Transdev contract, not the city, making it hard for council to come down hard on them directly. That’s just one example of the streetcar’s complicated web of accountability.

“The problem that we have now is that there’s not one single person day to day who can make decisions and is empowered to make this thing work. You need one neck to choke,” Juech said, repeating an aphorism he said he heard from a Cincinnati Bell executive. “If things are going wrong, you need to know who is responsible and who can get it fixed. As of now, we don’t have that and I think that’s a real constraint.”

Councilman Greg Landsman said during the meeting that most key players seem to agree that a single body should be making streetcar decisions — though who that should be is still not clear.

Efforts to figure it all out come as the streetcar faces big challenges.

In January, its ridership was half of what SORTA budgeted for: just 17,000 people.

That followed a slow slide. After months of averaging roughly 60,000 riders a month, November saw just 34,000 riders and December just 32,000.

Part of the reason for January’s precipitous drop was the multiple days during which the streetcar didn’t run. The city has been withholding more than $4 million from CAF, which now says it will have to redesign and retest the faulty parts that caused that problem, a process that could take six months. There have been more than 50 vehicle issues over past 18 months

Trial Date Set in Suit Against University of Cincinnati on Behalf of White Nationalist

BY N I C K SWA R T S EL L

A jury trial to decide whether white nationalist Richard Spencer must pay a $10,000 security fee to speak on University of Cincinnati’s campus will take place more than a year from now, according to filings from a federal judge yesterday.

The trial over a lawsuit brought by Spencer supporter Cameron Padgett, a student at Georgia State University, will begin March 18, 2019.

Padgett and other Spencer supporters say the security fee infringes on Spencer’s First Amendment rights to free speech. The university, on the other hand, points to expenses other universities have wracked up due to violence associated with Spencer’s appearances.

The University of Florida spent more than $500,000 on

chargeable to CAF. Some of those contributed to the 14 days during which vehicles didn’t run.

But even when it’s running, the streetcar has never met its contractually obligated headways — 12 minutes during peak times, 15 minutes during off times. That’s improved, but has never gotten all the way up to snuff.

“Initially, we were pretty far off, but we’ve gotten better,” Juech told council. “We’re down to 13 minutes during peak times and 16 minutes off-peak.”

Matt Jacob, a regular streetcar rider who lives in OTR and works downtown, says it’s hard to depend on the streetcar for those reasons.

“I’ve ridden the streetcar more than 230 times,” he told council. “I’m seeing the issues on a day by day basis. Frankly, it’s really inconsistent. There are a lot of days when I try to take the streetcar and it’s not there, there’s an issue. It’s really frustrating trying to be a regular streetcar user and it not work out.”

The city is working on headway, Juech says, and has made some progress. Part of that is cutting down times when the streetcar is blocked by traffic. Those numbers have dropped every month since July 2017.

The city increased fines and saw a big drop in passenger and delivery vehicles causing blockages.

Still, streetcars are stopped roughly 1.5 times per day for two minutes or more. Half of those blockages come from three locations: Rhinegeist, the School for Creative and Performing Arts and

security for a Spencer speech Oct. 19, 2017, for instance.

Protests outside led to five minor injuries and two arrests, and during the speech, a large crowd booed and heckled the white nationalist. That event was the first after the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. that Spencer helped organize. Anti-racism activist Heather Heyer died at that protest after a man drove his car into a crowd of demonstrators.

More recently, violence broke out at a Spencer speech at Michigan State University, where protests against and in support of Spencer led to a number of arrests, including eight on felony charges. Crowds blocked entrances to Spencer’s speech at the Lansing, Mich. event and shouted him down.

The upcoming jury trial is the latest in a series of court actions taken by Padgett on Spencer’s behalf. Originally, Padgett threatened to sue a number of universities, including UC, Ohio State University and others, if they refused to accommodate Spencer with a venue where he could discuss

Government Square. Why that last downtown location, Cincinnati’s bus hub?

Because Metro buses are now the biggest cause of streetcar traffic blockages, according to Juech.

One fix some council members are bullish on trying: signal prioritization, which would allow the streetcar to lead off like a base runner stealing bases, helping it with headway.

“A real solution would be to give, like almost every urban city does, signal priority to our buses and our streetcars,” said Councilman Chris Seelbach, a big proponent of that measure. “It gives them a chance to get ahead of the traffic.”

Traffic flow could get better after a long-promised, roughly $750,000 citycommissioned traffic study is completed and its recommendations are adopted. But don’t expect that study, which was initially slated to be released this spring, any time soon. It is now underway, but won’t be finished until next fall.

Council members also want to lean harder on Transdev to improve its service.

But that too is complicated by the current management structure.

SORTA measures Transdev’s service on 16 metrics and can penalize them as much as 10 percent of the overall contract amount every month they don’t meet standards. Nearly every month of Transdev’s year and a half long tenure has been marked by a penalty, according to SORTA’s Director of Rail Services Paul Grether — many times the full 10 percent.

But Transdev says it’s doing its best to resolve issues. Staff retention and recruiting for operators and management has been difficult, company representatives say.

The company’s onsite manager, Leslie Shaw, has been on the job since November. He’s the fifth person to hold that management position since the streetcar launched in September 2016. Shaw previously worked with Detroit and Atlanta’s streetcars.

his beliefs. OSU declined to host Spencer on campus, citing security concerns.

“The University determined that such an event could not be accommodated at Ohio State at this time without substantial risk to public safety and material and substantial disruption to the work and discipline of the University,” the school said in a statement after the lawsuit was filed.

Padgett later dropped the suit against OSU, but has pressed on with his claims against UC. Padgett and his attorney at the time, Kyle Bristow, requested a jury trial earlier this year over the fees. U.S. District Court Judge Susan Dlott will preside over that trial in Ohio’s Southern District Court.

Bristow has since removed himself from the case, citing negative media coverage he’s received. Suburban Cincinnati attorney James Kolenich replaced Bristow earlier this year.

Kolenich represented various far-right activists in court proceedings around the Unite the Right rally and is well known for holding white nationalist and anti-Semitic ideologies similar to Spencer’s.

‘Unfinished’ CPD Overtime Audit Spirals Into Controversy, Push to Oust City Manager

BY N I C K SWA R T S E L L Things have gotten real — or maybe more appropriately, surreal — around the Cincinnati Police Department in the past few days due to a leaked audit, a gender discrimination suit and charges by City Manager Harry Black that a small group of Cincinnati police is corrupt. That’s led to the dismissal of one of the city’s top cops and a reported push by Mayor John Cranley to oust Black.

Cincinnati’s streetcar

Sources within City Hall, confirmed by several news outlets, said March 9 that Cranley had asked Black to resign from his post, and that Black has refused.

PH OTO: NIC K SWARTSELL

Cincinnati City Council must vote on the removal of the city manager, and it’s unclear if Cranley would have the votes to do so. Councilmembers P.G. Sittenfeld and Wendell Young have expressed support for Black. Prominent civil rights groups, including the NAACP, have released statements pledging support for Black, as have the Sentinels, Cincinnati’s black police officer association.

Cranley’s office released a statement March 9 saying the mayor was out of town. There was no further comment on the city manager’s job, though the statement did note that the mayor supports Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac.

How did City Hall get so turbulent? It goes back to CPD. Chief Isaac wrote a March 7 memo to Cincinnati City Manager Black pushing back on a leaked draft of an audit of the department’s overtime policies.

The Cincinnati Enquirer published a story March 6 pulling from the allegedly unfinished audit, raising ire from Isaac and Black. That audit was the result of an earlier department-wide review in 2016 that recommended periodic district-level reports on overtime spending to correct issues with the department’s overtime system.

Bardua made roughly $80,000 on

“Though the subject of a newspaper article, this audit has not been formally released by CPD or city administration,” Black wrote in a memo to Mayor John Cranley and Cincinnati City Council. “This is because the audit remains incomplete and requires a number of caveats in order to be properly understood.”

Isaac also took issue with a central element of The Enquirer’s story — an unattributed assertion by the paper that CPD has gone $1.8 million over budget by spending $7.4 million on overtime pay.

Isaac says the department hasn’t gone over budget at all during his time as chief and called The Enquirer’s number wrong.

In a series of text messages to Cincinnati City Council members, Black called The Enquirer “complicit” in an effort by a “rogue element” of officers within the Cincinnati Police Department he says are corrupt and working to undermine CPD Chief Isaac, perhaps motivated in part by race. Black hasn’t named the CPD employees he says have gone rogue. The city manager also said in those text messages that he’s mulling getting the U.S. Attorney’s office involved in the matter.

On March 8, revelations came that assistant chief Bailey was taking a buyout and leaving CPD immediately. Fraternal Order of Police President Dan Hils charged that Bailey was being “forced out” by Isaac and Black. The city will pay Bailey’s salary, benefits and vacation time until his slated retirement date in 2020 — a package worth roughly $400,000.

Hils has said there’s no evidence of any rogue officers within CPD. Mayor Cranley asked for more evidence backing up Black’s claims. He called Bailey’s firing “sad.”

Some Cincinnati City Council members also expressed consternation at the move.

“I’ve worked with Lt. Col. David Bailey for over 6 years now,” Councilman Chris Seelbach tweeted March 8. “He’s a good guy who has served our City well. Disappointing to again see City Manager Harry Black dismiss someone with little respect for their service. The Lt. Col. and our City deserves better.”

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That audit is connected to another controversy within the department — a gender discrimination claim with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by District 5 Commander Capt.

Bridget Bardua alleging harassment from other officers, including inspections unit commander Jeff Butler, who led the audit.

According to Bardua’s gender discrimination complaint, Butler and assistant chiefs Paul Neudigate and David Bailey were working to get Isaac and Bardua removed. The involved officers have denied this assertion.

But the audit hasn’t been fact-checked by the city and CPD’s finance manager was never asked to confirm amounts included in the review, Isaac wrote in his letter to Black, who agrees with those assertions.

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technically challenging path than nowstalled efforts to take Cincinnati’s streetcar Uptown, which is separated from Queen City’s downtown by towering hills that the rail project would need to somehow surmount.

But not everyone loves the project in Kansas City, either. In August last year, 51 percent of Kansas City residents voted to keep the city from participating in expansion efforts, or any fixed rail development, without a citywide vote first. But just days earlier, voters who live along Kansas City’s Main Street corridor overwhelmingly approved a special taxing district that would fund the expansion.

In the meantime, Cincinnati’s existing streetcar faces an increasingly difficult path forward financially, and prospects for an expansion seem distant.

The city will spend $10 million on the streetcar in 2018 between debt and operations. Though Juech says this year the streetcar still has a cushion, it’s looking at deficits beginning in fiscal year 2019 (which begins July 1 this year) as fares and advertising revenue decline.

Making things more difficult: Funds from the city’s Voluntary Tax Incentive Contribution Agreement have taken longer to accrue than previously expected.

“VTICA is also delayed,” Juech told council. “Some of the projects haven’t been completed as fast. The auditor’s office hasn’t worked as fast as we would like. For this fiscal year, we’re still in a surplus. But as you start to look for the out years, we’ve got to turn around fares and advertising and collecting more or we’re going to have a structural budget issue. That’s a concern.”

Landsman asked for patience as council works to figure out the tangles and get the streetcar gliding in the right direction again.

“I know it’s been a tough few months,” he told representatives from SORTA and Transdev, as well as city officials. “But those of you who have been in the trenches and working side by side on these issues, I just want to say thank you.”

overtime and other non-salary compensation last year, according to the audit, roughly $20,000 more than other district commanders. Two sergeants in Bardua’s district together made about $90,000 in overtime last year, the audit claims.

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“The number one problem was the staff staffing,” Shaw says of his arrival in Cincinnati.

“We didn’t even have enough operators to run service. We had supervisors running service. It’s been a very difficult task finding people who are interested in running the streetcar.”

Those staffing issues have impacted service and maintenance on the city’s side, Juech says, but neither the city nor SORTA has control over day-to-day operations.

The troubles don’t seem to be endemic to all streetcars. In Kansas City, Mo., which built a streetcar around the same time Cincinnati did, the transit project is thriving. But there are some key differences that may explain that.

Kansas City’s streetcar opened in May 2016, just a few months before the Cincinnati streetcar’s September launch.

Since then, the former has averaged more than 5,800 riders a day through its first 17 months, officials say. That’s more than twice the expected daily average of 2,700.

The Kansas City Streetcar Authority says it surpassed 3 million passenger trips this fall. In a survey last year, 80 percent of small businesses in the streetcar district that responded said the streetcar had led to increased revenue and foot traffic.

Kansas City has more people than Cincinnati — roughly 480,000 to Cincinnati’s 300,000. And the streetcar there is free, while riders here must pay a dollar.

Perhaps pivotally, the streetcar there is largely run by a single organization — the Kansas City Streetcar Authority.

Kansas City’s 2.2 mile loop is smaller than Cincinnati’s streetcar’s 3.6-mile circuit. But the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority and the Kansas City Streetcar Authority are now investigating a 3.5-mile extension south to the University of Missouri Kansas City campus. The Federal Transportation Administration gave key approval for that effort last month, allowing it to move into more detailed planning efforts and making it eligible for federal grants.

That expansion faces a much less

NEWS

M

ike Oberst has the bedraggled look and swimming-in-honey reaction time of a new father. He’s already got his hands full with his 3-year-old son Willie, a rambunctious toddler who has taken a recent shine to Bob Marley, a love that Oberst is fueling with repeated exposure to the Reggae legend’s YouTube videos and music. And now with month-old Milo in the mix, The Tillers’ vocalist/guitarist/banjo wrangler radiates the glow of a man in rapturous love with his family, slightly muted by three hours of fitful sleep.

Both of Oberst’s sons arrived during the five-year gap between the Folk/Americana band’s last album, 2013’s acclaimed Hand on the Plow Plow, and their about-tobe-released self-titled new album. As guitarist/vocalist Sean Geil points out, the time between albums represents nearly half of The Tillers’ existence since their 2007 launch, a period that also encompassed Geil’s own journey into fatherhood (his son Auggie was born just before the release of Hand on the Plow Plow).

The additions to The Tillers’ actual families were mirrored in the band itself when the group expanded from a trio to a quartet when Oberst, Geil and his bassist brother Aaron were joined by fiddler Joe Macheret in 2016, which added a new and exciting element to the band’s sound.

The elation that greeted all these new beginnings was

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seriously tempered by the loss of former Tillers bassist Jason Soudrette, who died in 2014 after a battle with leukemia, and the diagnosis of Non-Hodgkin lymphoma received by Geil’s partner Anna Mouch just after the 2013 birth of their son. It was a period of wildly spiking highs and lows, all of which went into the making of the album The Tillers.

“Personally, I feel like we’ve done a lot of growing up since Hand on the Plow came out,” Oberst says over coffee at his Sayler Park home. “It’s been a lot of slogging through negative and hard, sad things that have happened, but also really joyous, life-changing, life-affi rming things as well. But we’ve always remained The Tillers. We’ve added to The Tillers, but we’ve also lost a Tiller. Now, this record feels to me like some sort of statement of ‘We’re back,’ but also ‘We never left.’ So it felt like we never even had another name for it. It’s just us and it’s in your face.”

Clearly one of the most important elements that helped shape the sound of the new album was The Tillers’ dedication to touring after the release of Hand on the Plow.

Although they curtailed a certain amount of roadwork in the wake of three births, the band has remained an active live entity, locally, regionally and nationally.

“We’ve probably toured more in the last five years than we did in the first five years, although it feels more

focused now,” Geil says. “Before, we’d go on tour for two and a half weeks and play six shows. We’d be like, ‘We’re just gonna busk in Austin during the entire South by Southwest.’ ” “The difference now is that we drive our booking agent crazy, because we make him work harder,” Oberst says.

“We need those meat-and-potatoes gigs. Tours have to make sense — we’ve got to maintain the balance of family and band.”

US Hard, Ain’t It Hard

The most tangible result from The Tillers’ diligent road ethic shows up on the new album as a fierce intensity, as well as a casual proficiency that has elevated every aspect of the musicians’ presentation. Their sharp songwriting has been honed to an even fi ner edge, their instrumental skills have matured and evolved and the chemistry between members has become richer and more complex with the addition of Macheret’s talents and the subsequent re-bonding that has taken place within the newly configured quartet.

“I feel like we have more of a sense of who we are,” Geil says. “We’re here, we’re not going anywhere and we are CONTINUES ON PAGE 10

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The Tillers document their journey with a new self-titled album — a personal testament to love, loss, sorrow and joy

BY B RIAN BAKER

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who we are. We’re not making apologies or doing anything that isn’t exactly what we want to be doing. We have more confidence in who we are as a band and that we’ve made some sort of mark on the scene of music we play in. While we’re not at the top of that scene — by any means — I feel like we’re known. Through all the hard work and the ups and downs, our band is not just tighter musically, but tighter as friends and family.”

There is an immediacy and a sonic presence on The Tillers that is palpable, which Oberst and Geil are quick to identify as the studio handiwork of producer Mike Montgomery, who guided the band through sessions at his Candyland facility in Northern Kentucky.

“Mike Montgomery is a genius,” Geil says. “One, he’s super mellow. He gives you your space and chimes in when he needs to be there. He let us work through

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(L-R): Mike Oberst, Sean Geil, Joe Macheret and Aaron Geil PHOTO: MICHAEL WILSON

our shit when we needed to work through our shit and always keeps it calm and cool.

He’s mostly produced Rock records, not Folk records, which is another thing that allowed (the album) to sound unique and have more of a Rock, in-your-face type of feel.”

Another interesting wrinkle on The Tillers is the band’s admitted return to their philosophical Punk roots for inspiration. Both Oberst and Geil logged time in blazing Punk bands before trying their hands at traditional/old-time music, and that mindset is incorporated into the new material in the form of an even greater visceral musical approach and a lyrical directness in nearly every song, including a lacerating dig at Donald Trump through a cover of Woody Guthrie’s “All You Fascists Are Bound To Lose,” with additional lyrics written by Oberst.

“Musically, it’s more aggressive,” Geil says. “I think it’s more representative of our live shows. When I listen to Hand on the Plow now, I’m like, ‘Wow, this is a mellow CD.’ When we play those songs live, they’re not like that. A lot of times when we

came out with a record, the songs weren’t really played in. We’d be like, ‘I just wrote a song. Let’s record it.’ And prior to Hand on the Plow Plow, the touring wasn’t nearly as heavy, so those songs were very fresh when we went in the studio with them.”

Beyond the laser-focused “All You Fascists Are Bound To Lose,” the new album features a number of songs as relevant as tomorrow’s headlines. Ironically, the DACA/border wall/immigrant-vetting debates were half a decade in the future when Geil first conceived the prescient “Migrant’s Lament.”

“I wrote that one a month after Hand on the Plow came out. We’ve been playing that in our shows for five years,” Geil says with a laugh. “Topically, we have ‘Revolution Road,’ ‘Dear Mother,’ ‘Migrant’s Lament,’ ‘Like a Hole in My Head.’ When Mike came to the table with ‘Like a Hole in My Head,’ I was like, ‘This is Punk Rock.’

I think it was a conscious thing because we’ve been joking for years. ‘Let’s just make the next record a Punk record.’

And people would be like, ‘Oh, the new Tillers record is out… what the hell is

this?’ We’ve touched on it in our previous records with that aggression and intensity you get from Punk Rock music. I think we’ve found our sound, this sound that embodies the Punk Rock spirit with our Folk instruments.”

Pastures of Plenty

Songs to Grow On

The Tillers’ self-titled new release PHOTO: MICHAEL WILSON

SofaBurn Records releases The Tillers’ self-titled album March 23. The band hosts a release party concert March 24 at Newport’s Southgate House Revival. More info: the-tillers.com.

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

for a handful of songs. Once Macheret’s part-time presence was established, Geil’s case for a quartet was an easier sell.

“We decided to go for it without saying, ‘You’re in the band,’ ” Geil says. “We were up front with him — ‘We want to try this out. We like playing with you, we don’t know if we can afford to bring in another guy, but we definitely want to explore.’ ” “After seven years in, you’re like, ‘This is the unit, this is the crew,’ ” Oberst says of the expansion. “You get real protective of the project and all your brothers involved.

But Joe is such an easygoing guy, he’s such a good listener and a monster fiddle player.

The fiddle players who we know and are established and around for years, they can’t believe what they hear when they hear Joe.” Perhaps Macheret’s greatest asset is the fact that he’s a songwriter in his own right and has fronted his own bands (including the local Country Blues ensemble Joe’s Truck Stop), so his input in the early stages of the new album was invaluable. But Geil’s most effective appeal for Macheret was simple pragmatism.

“I remember saying, ‘If we don’t get him, someone else will and they’re going to be really fucking good!’ ” Geil says with a

laugh. “Mike has always carried the weight of the lead instrument — banjo solos, harmonica solos — and, pre-Joe, I was playing rhythm guitar and not doing a ton of soloing. Now those two can interact — they’re playing together and making a bigger thing than they are individually, and that’s been really cool. And when I’m playing in between them and they’re syncing in, I sync in and it just becomes a tighter, more powerful unit.”

And so, Macheret has become a vital member of The Tillers’ family: a unit that has grown and become more complex over the past five years, exemplified by the fact that when Geil found out he was having a baby, he called Oberst before telling his own parents. The children’s arrivals fundamentally shifted the band’s priorities (“The last thing we want is that classic case of the musician dad whose kids hate him because he’s never around,” Geil says), and they now book tours around a whole new set of parameters.

Now cancer-free, Mouch’s health scare was an additional clarification about the most important factors in the various band/family equations.

“We can’t do a cross-country road trip right now because that means we’re going to be gone for a really long time,” Geil says. “We know musicians who are dads but aren’t really in their kids’ lives, and that’s a bummer. We want to try real hard not to let that happen and one way is by not staying out for weeks on end and leaving your lady at home to fend for herself with a baby or two babies. We’re working hard and doing what we love, but they work full-time, too, and it’s hard on them when we’re gone. They’re super supportive of us.”

And so the Tillers’ universe continues to expand outward, both personally and professionally. The quartet is looking to tour responsibly on perhaps the best album of their career to date, eager to spread the gospel of a set of songs that defines who they are at this moment, but not at the expense of the important people in their lives. As little stock as they put in backslapping and self-congratulation, they are immensely proud of and grateful for the six Cincinnati Entertainment Awards they’ve received over their 11 years of eligibility.

When Oberst summarizes his feelings about the new album, it feels like a mission statement for The Tillers’ future endeavors: “Every Tillers album is going to be organic, imperfect by some people’s standards,” he says quietly. “But it’s going to be real and it’s going to be raw, and this one is the most.”

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Adding Macheret to the Tillers’ mix was slightly more problematic. After seven years as a trio, it was hard for them to imagine a fourth member occupying a spot on stage, in the studio, in the van. Just after Soudrette left the band, Geil recalls Oberst saying on a random evening at the Crow’s Nest in Price Hill that if they ever considered bringing in a fourth, he would want it to be a great fiddler. Still, when Macheret’s

talent became apparent and Geil began to connect the potential dots, there was a little resistance.

“We weren’t looking for a new member when we met Joe, we just met,” Geil says.

“I host an open mic at the Crow’s Nest, and he was home from college one week and we hit it off. He played and he was really good. He was getting ready to finish school and move back, and I was like, ‘What do you guys think about bringing Joe into the band?’ And they were like, ‘That’s crazy talk.’ ” Ultimately, Macheret sat in for a square dance gig at Over-the-Rhine’s Washington Park and then started attending Tillers shows with fiddle in hand, joining the band

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On the personal side, the album closes with the heartfelt and moving “Another Postcard,” a stripped down ballad that not only relates a situational reality for Oberst and Geil, but it also marks an important philosophical milestone for the band going forward.

“We’ve both sent our sons postcards from the road, and Anna and (Oberst’s wife) Lynn save them in a box,” Geil says.

“Hopefully, someday they look at these things and are like, ‘Wow, this is really cool. They told me about their day via a postcard.’ Mike (recently) wrote a really beautiful song about very real things we go through all the time. We’re feeling more open to sharing who we are as people with everyone.”

In the grand Folk tradition of writing contemporaneously about real-time events, Oberst responded to the 2016 fire that leveled the Rabbit Hash General Store, a venue that hosted The Tillers countless times, by writing a heartfelt piece of music on guitar. Geil composed a similarly inspired poem of sorts, and shared his work with Oberst at a practice held the morning after the devastating fire. They merged their two spontaneous tributes into the beautiful track “The Old General Store is Burning Down.”

“I wrote that song the day after the fire, not knowing the extent of the damage, but knowing it was pretty bad and thinking how devastating it was to the community of Rabbit Hash and the musical community from all over the country,” Oberst says.

“I was like, ‘I wrote something, too, I want to share it with you,’” says Geil. “I let him read my writings because I didn’t have music to it. Then he played his song, and I was crying. I was like, ‘Dude, that is fucking beautiful. Anyone who feels this is totally going to love that song.’ He was like, ‘We can play it at Rabbit Hash or something,’ and I said, ‘No, we’re playing this song forever. This is a classic Folk ballad about something that really happened in our community.’ ” The new album is most certainly a work steered by experiential influence, and the two events that had the most profound impact on The Tillers as a band — and, consequently, on The Tillers as an album — were the loss of Soudrette in 2013 and the addition of Macheret in 2016. Although Soudrette had left the Tillers in 2010 to concentrate on his passion for sprint car racing, he remained the band’s best friend and biggest booster, and his death left an enormous void in their lives. Oberst and Geil note that their late bassist is still a constant presence in the band; the new album is dedicated to his memory.

“I used to go up and play music with him because he would get to do music therapy in the hospital,” Oberst says. “I had to suit

up and wear a mask; I even had to wear rubber gloves when I played, but it was nice to play with him again. I remember bringing him Hand on the Plow and one of the new (band) shirts. I was thinking before this one came out, ‘I wish he’d got to hear this one.’ ” “Jason helped us build this project from the beginning, and we still take a lot of things with us that he represented,” he continues. “Hard work, most definitely. He was always so full of wisdom, even though he was a younger man. He taught us.

Technically, he was the first of the Tillers dads, even though he had Ryder right after he left. He showed us what it meant to be a dad and he was a great example of a father.”

Soudrette was actually there before the beginning of The Tillers, meeting Oberst at a local skateboarder hangout just after high school graduation. The two became instant friends and began playing in Punk bands around the same time. By the time Oberst and Geil started bonding over their mutual love of old-time and Folk music, Oberst had one bassist in mind to complete their proposed triad. Geil had his doubts, but they were dispelled almost immediately.

“I didn’t know Jason before he joined the band,” Geil says. “Mike was like, ‘We should get my friend Jason to join the band.

He doesn’t know how to play upright bass but we can show him.’ I’d done this with every Bluegrass-ish band I ever started. No one knows an upright bass player, so you’re like, ‘Teach Jimmy to play the upright bass.’

The first night we met, I was like, ‘This guy’s my friend.’ You could tell, there was no question, no ‘I don’t know about this guy.’ It was just an instant thing.”

In that sense, family has been a primary focus of the Tillers from the start. When The Tillers’ star began to ascend and the band received increasingly attractive offers to play summer festivals, Aaron Geil would often tag in for Soudrette when he was indisposed due to his sprint car schedule.

When Soudrette left The Tillers, Geil all but insisted that Aaron take his place.

“Aaron started filling in on gigs we couldn’t really pass up, and Jason said, ‘Aaron should be your full-time bass player. He knows all the songs and he’s down to play music all the time. I want to do my job and race sprint cars and play music sometimes,’ ” Geil says. “Aaron was like, ‘I’m down with whatever you want to do.’ He’s always had that mindset. ‘I’m in.

I’ll be there.’ If we want to play 10 shows this year, he’ll play 10 shows. If we want to do 300 shows, he’ll do 300 shows, and he won’t have anything negative to say about any of it.”

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C I T Y B E AT. C O M

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M A R C H 1 4 – 2 0 , 2 0 18

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STUFF TO DO WEDNESDAY 14

ART: A Celebration of Frank Duveneck continues at the 124 West Pike St. Gallery in Covington. See an interview with gallery curator Suzanna Terrill on page 16.

MUSIC: Guitar hero Eric Johnson plays the Taft Theatre Ballroom. See interview on page 26.

ONSTAGE: Red Velvet It’s a step away from the usual fare at Ensemble Theatre: a play retelling a true story from 19th-century London about a brash AfricanAmerican actor who stepped into the role of Othello — when it had never before been played by an actor of color. Great Britain was wrestling with the prohibition of slavery, but the attitudes of critics and theatergoers were oh-so-traditional, and Ira Aldridge’s performance, subbing for a renowned white actor (who performed in blackface), prompted considerable outrage. In an intriguing collaboration, ETC stages this show while Cincy Shakes produces Shakespeare’s great tragedy. See a review of both plays on page 17. Through March 31. $27-$55. Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, 1127 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, ensemblecincinnati.org. — RICK PENDER

EVENT: Breakfast with Krista Tippett A former freelance correspondent for The New York Times in Cold War West

Germany, Krista Tippett is the founder of On Being: a long-running public radio show and podcast that asks big questions and steers clear of simple answers.

Since the show became widely distributed in 2003, Tippett has interviewed an impressive list of guests, including Maya Angelou, Elie Wiesel and the Dalai Lama, “thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence,” so said Barack Obama when the former president awarded her the 2013 National Humanities Medal. This Wednesday, Tippett will join a panel of local scholars from Xavier University, leading a discussion on what it means to be human. Following the event, there will be a Q&A session and an opportunity for attendees to have their copies of Tippett’s 2016 book — Becoming Wise — signed.

8-10 a.m. Wednesday. Free with registration. CincinnatiHamilton County Community Action Agency, 1740 Langdon Farm Road, Golf Manor,

facebook.com/cincinnaticathedral. — JUDE NOEL EVENT: March for Science Cincinnati: Pi Day Fundrasier Pi Day falls on March 14 annually because the mathematical constant pi can be abbreviated as 3.14. Not only does Pi Day frequently bring with it assorted adorable and mathematically themed edible pies, but it’s also a day to celebrate math, science and other STEM pursuits. Wednesday, Urban Artifact is hosting a social and fundraising event for Cincinnati’s March for Science, to be held April 14.

Visit the brewery, make a donation and eat a slice of pie while listening to speakers including Jonathan Clark, a mathematician who will reveal what boardgames can teach us, and representatives from the University of Cincinnati neuroscience program, who will talk about Brain Awareness Week. The Cincinnati Museum Center will also be there with Ozo

Bots, an interactive coding toy. 5:30-8 p.m. Wednesday. Free admission. Urban Artifact, 1660 Blue Rock St., Northside, facebook.com/ marchforsciencecincinnati.

— MAIJA ZUMMO

THURSDAY 15

EVENT: Zoogeist at Rhinegeist Things get wild at Rhinegeist during happy hour on Thursday. The taproom will be taken over by the Cincinnati Zoo for a popular event featuring animal encounters, games and activities, and limited-edition pint glasses and screen prints with zoorelated artwork. The event supports the Living Classrooms Education Access Fund, which provides opportunities for kids to attend camps, classes and overnights at the zoo. Opt for VIP tickets (if they’re still available) to get access to a private bar, complimentary light bites from Sartre and a special encounter with a zoo ambassador animal. 6-9 p.m.

Thursday. Free admission;

$40 adult VIP; $12 VIP ages 10-18. Rhinegeist, 1910 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine, cincinnatizoo.org/events/zoogeist.

— MAIJA ZUMMO EVENT: Brew and View: The Princess Bride Set the DVR for Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland Thursday night block and head over to the Video Archive’s special screening of The Princess Bride. As part of Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park’s series of “Off the Grid” interactive events, honorary Florin residents are invited to dress in character and participate in games and trivia after the film. It may not be “as you wish,” but pets, weapons and iocane powder are prohibited. While the premise of the evening may sound intense for casual Princess Bride followers (is there such a thing?) and newcomers, all are welcome to grab a drink and enjoy the show. 8-11 p.m. Thursday. Free. The Video Archive, 965 E. CONTINUES ON PAGE 14

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ONSTAGE: Kill Move Paradise Know Theatre, Overthe-Rhine (through March 24)

provided its community a well-decorated haven: a consumerist dreamscape where one can devise their ideal floorplan, admiring ottomans and handsome houseplants. To celebrate a decade of decor, the store invites you to partake in a week’s worth of deals and freebies. Through March 17, IKEA FAMILY members can grab a free(!) breakfast, score daily giveaways, receive exclusive deals and enjoy family-friendly activities. As the winter comes to a close, is there a better way to thaw your frozen heart than with new furniture — or a classic couples’ mid-store meltdown-makeup roller coaster? Now’s your chance to find out. Through Satur Saturday. Free. IKEA, 9500 Ikea Way, West Chester, ikea. com/us/en/store/west_chester. — JUDE NOEL

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Ongoing Shows

PHOTO: MIKKI SCHAFFNER PHOTOGRAPHY

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EVENT: IKEA West Chester 10th Anniversary Where would we be without IKEA? Certainly without trendy ready-to-assemble furniture, Swedish meatballs and a romcom-inspired date location that never fails. For the past 10 years, IKEA West Chester has

Red Velvet at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati

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FROM PAGE 13

McMillan St., Walnut Hills, facebook.com/videoar facebook.com/videoarchivecincinnati.

— MCKENZIE ESKRIDGE

FRIDAY 16

MUSIC: Born Ruffians play MOTR Pub with locals Blossom Hall. See Sound Advice on page 28.

EVENT: Stout Fest at Molly Malone’s Molly Malone’s in Covington turns Saint Patrick’s Day into a weekend’s worth of activities with Stout Fest on Friday and full-blown Irish celebration on Saturday. Stout Fest features live music, pipers and Irish dancers all day in the bar and an outdoor tent, in addition to a stout extravaganza. Guinness and Murphy’s may boast to be the two most famous Irish

THURSDAY 15

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WANTS YOU TO WIN STUFF!

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BARENAKED LADIES

JUNE 23 | PNC PAVILION

Visit CityBeat.com/win-stuff to enter for a chance to win tickets to this upcoming show!

DANCE: Director’s Cut: Musical Masters The Cincinnati Ballet pairs iconic choreographers with musical masterpieces for Director’s Cut: Musical Masters. Hand-selected by artistic director Victoria Morgan, the works showcase the synergistic relationship between dance and music with a centerpiece by Jerome Robbins. Robbins’ Fancy Free, featuring music

by Leonard Bernstein as performed by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was the first ballet for which the choreographer collaborated with Bernstein. The piece later inspired the Broadway show On the Town (and the film of the same name starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra) and is presented as part of the worldwide “Bernstein at 100” celebration. Also on the bill is Rubies, from George Balanchine’s ballet Jewels, set to a jazzy score by Igor Stravinsky; and Facades, a self-reflective Baroque ballet set to a compilation of music

by Phillip Glass. 7:30 p.m.

Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 6:30 p.m. Sunday. $20-$125.

Aronoff Center for the Arts, 650 Walnut St., Downtown, cballet.org. — MAIJA ZUMMO

stouts, but there’s more to love locally as Molly’s pours almost 30 rare and unique beers. There will be Man in the Moo from Darkness Brewing, Kilpatrick’s One Legged from Bircus, BA Blanton’s Ink from Rhinegeist and VIP-grade beers including Fifty West’s Ghost of Imogene Imperial Stout and MadTree’s BBA Are You Ready for Some Darkness?

Admission to Stout Fest includes six tasting tickets, a pint pour and souvenir glass.

If you level up with VIP, you get more pours of VIP beers plus all the general admission perks. Keep the party going on Saturday with kegs and eggs starting at 7 a.m. followed by a full day of live music, bagpipers, dancers and more on all three floors of Molly’s and in that same huge tent. Stout Fest 6-11 p.m. Friday; Saint Patrick’s Day noon-4 p.m.

Saturday. Stout Fest tickets range from $25 to $35 VIP (advance sales only). Saint Patrick’s Day admission is free. Molly Malone’s Irish Pub & Restaurant, 112 E. Fourth St., Covington, covington.mollymalonesirishpub.com.

— MAIJA ZUMMO

SATURDAY 17

ART: Thunder-Sky, Inc. presents You’re

Invited, an exhibit that blends personal and political with birthday memories, humor and food for thought.

See feature on page 19.

MUSIC: Country crooner Lee Brice heads to Rising Star Casino Resort. See Sound Advice on page 28.

EVENT: Macramé Plant Hangers Workshop Did you know, on average, plants live twice as long hanging up as they do sitting on a windowsill? No. That’s actually fake news, but fiber fanatic Sarah Harste is coming to College Hill plant and design boutique Fern on Saturday to lead two macramé plant hanger workshops.

FYI: Macramé is the ancient art of knotting that spread from 13th-century Arabic weavers decoratively tying up excess towel fabric to 19th-century British and American soldiers crafting hammocks and belts.

Classes start at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., run two hours long and are aimed at introlevel knotters. Tuition rounds out to $85, but includes a potted plant, snacks and drinks. Note: These small classes sell out quickly, but it’s nice to know that Fern frequently offers something interesting for creatives who want to learn a new skill. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. $85.

Fern, 6040 Hamilton Ave.,

P H O T O : A A R O N M . C O N W AY

P H OTO : DAV I D M C C L I S T E R

College Hill, fern-shop.com.

— MCKENZIE ESKRIDGE

EVENT: Saint Patrick’s Day at the Irish Heritage Center The Irish Heritage Center

of Cincinnati offers the best craic in the area as they tackle Saint Patrick’s day their way — with a noon mass followed by Irish music, Irish dance, Irish food and, of course, Irish drink. Entertainment begins after mass ends and goes long into the night. Noon-10 p.m. Satur Saturday. $5 advance; $7 door; free members. Irish Heritage Center of Greater Cincinnati, 3905 Eastern Ave., East End, irishcenterofcincinnati.com.

— MAIJA ZUMMO

TUESDAY 20

MUSIC: Hit Like a Girl brings Pop Punk with a message to Urban Artifact. See Sound Advice on page 29.

YOUR WEEKEND TO DO LIST: LOCAL.CITYBEAT.COM

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Irish-inspired music from the Roving Rogues and PartTime Gentleman, plus drink specials on Guinness, Harp and Smithwick’s and $4 Irish whiskeys. There won’t be any green beer, but there will be an Irish menu with from-scratch dishes including Ronda’s world-famous Irish stew, corned beef and cabbage, bangers and mash, colcannon and more.

11 a.m.-2:30 a.m. Saturday.

Free admission. Arnold’s Bar and Grill, 210 E. Eighth St., Downtown, facebook. com/arnoldsbar. — MAIJA ZUMMO

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EVENT: Saint Patrick’s Day at Arnold’s Celebrate the luck of the Irish at Arnold’s Bar and Grill with eight straight hours of live Americana and

MUSIC: Turnpike Troubadours Oklahoma Country Rock sextet Turnpike Troubadours is concurrently at the top of its game in terms of both creative and commercial success. When it was released last fall, the band’s latest full-length release, A Long Way from Your Heart, capitalized on the commercial breakthrough of its eponymous album two years earlier, debuting in the Top 20 on the Billboard album charts (and at No. 3 on the Country chart and No. 1 on the Independent and Folk ones), leading to rave reviews from AP, American Songwriter and other outlets, sold-out shows across the U.S. and a recent blow-out performance on PBS’s Austin City Limits (on which they were coupled with superstar Chris Stapleton). The band’s ace chops, lively songs and shows and songwriter Evan Felker’s unique talents are the main reasons for Turnpike Troubadours’ ascent in the music world, but there’s also a little bit of destiny involved: Felker is a native of (and still lives in) Okemah, Okla., which — despite its tiny population (approximately 3,000 residents according to the most recent Census) — has given the universe Grammy-nominated Americana artist John Fullbright and a certain American music icon named Woody Guthrie. 8 p.m. Saturday. $25. Bogart’s, 2621 Vine St., Corryville, bogarts.com. — MIKE BREEN

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COMEDY: Bombs Away!

Comedy Comedian Wayne Memmott has been putting together the Bombs Away!

Comedy show since 2010.

“We started at Mayday in Northside and had years of success there before they closed,” he says. “(Then) we had a year where we were looking for a home and only put on a few shows.” In 2017, he was approached by nationally headlining comic Mike Recine to organize a show. “We produced it at Listermann Brewing Company. For the past year we have been putting on shows with headliners like Chris Weir and Chris Thayer, and in December, we started producing shows at (Taft’s Brewpourium), and those shows have been a resounding success.” Comics Brooke Cartus, Mark Chalifoux and Recine will help celebrate Bombs Away!’s eighth anniversary on Saturday. “My favorite part about organizing these shows is seeing the comics do well in front of a room full of new comedy fans,” Memmott says. “I also enjoy bridging Cincinnati’s rich beer history with its booming comedy scene.”

8-10 p.m. Saturday. $5.

Taft’s Brewpourium, 4831 Spring Grove Ave., Northside, bombsawaycomedy. com. — P.F. WILSON

SATURDAY 17

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ARTS & CULTURE Suzanna Terrill’s New Canvas is Covington The gallerist embraces another neighborhood on the rise after a shattered dream in Over-the-Rhine

BY K AT H Y S C H WA R T Z

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s an ambitious woman with a modern sensibility, Suzanna Terrill prefers to focus on the present.

However, parallels to the past are hard to ignore as she encourages a new generation to buy local art.

In 1998, Terrill opened an eponymous gallery at 1315 Main St. in Over-the-Rhine, when that neighborhood was still waiting to be reborn. She had wanted to be part of a renaissance, but the 2001 riots dashed those dreams. A photo of her behind a smashed window appeared in newspapers nationwide. Fearful of more unrest, customers stopped coming to Suzanna Terrill Gallery. By 2003, she decided to step away from gallery life and moved to Tennessee.

That was then. This is now. Terrill is back in Greater Cincinnati — this time in Covington — and she’s once again running an art space in a neighborhood that’s poised for a revival. She had returned to the area last year only because her sister was ill, yet an unexpected invitation from entrepreneur/collector Ramesh Malhotra to curate his new 124 West Pike St. Gallery was meant to be, Terrill believes.

The grand opening was in August, and while Terrill continues to look for ways to build traffic, the response so far has been very receptive, she says. “The nicest compliment I’ve got is people come in and say, ‘You know, there’s not one thing in this gallery that I don’t like.’ ” Terrill prefers art with an edge. The gallery currently houses abstracts cast from rubber, airbrushed scenes of outer space and birds’ eggs painted upon a gauzy textile that hangs from the ceiling. “Primary Colors” is a mixed-media sculpture that includes splatters of dried paint atop the work’s pedestal. Its artist, Robert Fry, is one of several — including Anthony Becker, Cedric Michael Cox, Celene Hawkins, Jeff Sutherland and Liz Zorn — who Terrill

Terrill has returned to Cincy to curate a gallery.

PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER

also represented two decades ago in OTR. Being an urban trailblazer in the late 1990s was great, Terrill says. And she is feeling like a pioneer again on Pike Street.

At our interview, she even looks the part in a long denim skirt and jacket, plus lilac boots. Though she’s 77, she appears much younger.

As she did in OTR, Terrill lives above her gallery with her pets. Her new neighbors and partners include the just-opened Duveneck Square apartments at 31 W. Pike St. A few more doors away at 2 W. Pike, the nonprofit Renaissance Covington is trying to create more buzz about the emerging arts district between MainStrasse and Madison Avenue. Zorn’s paintings hang inside the Hotel Covington on Madison, and the new apartments feature photographs by Marc Wavra, another gallery artist.

“The whole idea is to bring the neighborhood together so the shops can make a living — like what we tried to do on Main,” Terrill says.

This wedge of the city’s business district was named after renowned artist Frank Duveneck, a Covington native who lived from 1848-1919. Though a statue of the “Whistling Boy” painter has stood for more than a decade in a small park bounded

by Pike, Washington and Seventh streets, Terrill quickly realized that few of her neighbors realized how influential he was.

So, she has turned him into the gallery’s

muse for March and beyond.

All month, the gallery is holding A Celebration of Frank Duveneck featuring artists influenced by the painter’s bold strokes, dark portraits, realistic style or hometown.

Author James Ott of Crescent Springs will sign copies of his book, The Greatest Brush: Love, Tragedy and Redemption of Artist Frank Duveneck.

“The thing I love about (Duveneck) is that he just never really stopped teaching or instructing or getting involved,” Terrill says. After finding fame and living a bohemian life in Europe, then losing his wife to pneumonia after just two years of marriage, Duveneck returned home and became a beloved faculty member at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

“A lot of painters like to be off doing their own thing and don’t like to share,” Terrill says. “And he was not that at all.”

Nor is she.

Terrill, a painter with a background in arts education, has opened the gallery’s small studio to other artists and conducts informal critiques. She is coaching and showing the work of Andrew Davenport, a client of The Point Arc center for people with disabilities. Soon, she also will welcome a framer to her space. “It’s going to open the doors even more,” Terrill says.

She realizes that art galleries appear intimidating to some people, and that prices over $150 can turn younger people away. But for a few dollars, someone

stopping in at 124 West Pike can still walk out with a lino-print greeting card.

“The old crowd, and I’m in that old group, that used to go out and buy art all the time — that’s changing,” Terrill says. Yet it can take years to attract a new crowd of collectors to a gallery.

“You have to make it a destination,” she says. “That’s why we titled it 124 West Pike St. Gallery. You have the street address, so you know it’s here.”

And once you are here, you might find surprises in store. A younger visitor bought one of Barbara Mayerson’s big, square abstract paintings because its geometric pattern reminded her of a board game that her grandfather had made. Passersby have stopped to inquire about a Mick Jagger portrait painted by Guy McIntosh. Terrill put it in a display window just to see what kind of response it would get.

“I’ve had three or four people ring the bell and say, ‘Is that Mick Jagger? Is that a photograph? Is that a painting?’ And they just have a fit over it. That’s the way you do it,” Terrill says.

“I don’t need to talk about what was,” she says. “It’s what’s going on now.”

A Celebration of Frank Duveneck continues through March 31, with James Ott book signings 1-5 p.m. March 16 and 17, at 124 West Pike St. Gallery, Covington. More info: 124westpikestreetgallery.com.

Two Powerful Othellos at Local Theaters

BY R I C K PEN D ER

own arrogant way. We are as appalled by the fulminations of Desdemona’s father Brabantio in Cincy Shakes’ Othello (played

by Barry Mulholland) as we are by Kean’s outbursts and the critics’ appallingly unjust descriptions of Aldridge’s onstage performance in Red Velvet. Our modern reactions to these stories are strengthened by contemporary attitudes about racism.

But both productions also highlight a second set of issues swirling in today’s world: treatment of women whose attitudes are dismissed or demeaned. In Red

William Oliver Watkins in Cincy Shakes’ Othello PHOTO: MIKKI SCHAFNER PHOTOGRAPHY

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

Othello is at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company through March 24; tickets at cincyshakes.com. Red Velvet is at Ensemble Theatre until March 31; tickets at ensemblecincinnati.org.

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Velvet Aldridge’s loving British wife (Becca Velvet, Howell) struggles to be supportive across his angry moods, his distractions and the life she must live to support his career.

Mengelkoch’s Tree is also Charles Kean’s fiancée, and he is astonished when she challenges his foolish, self-serving assessments of Aldridge’s theatrical talent.

In fact, Tree is a factor in Aldridge’s ouster when she lingers in his dressing room discussing the physical details of a scene they share as Othello and Desdemona: her presence is misinterpreted by those who want to oust Aldridge; it’s not unlike the way Iago frames Desdemona’s naïve support for Cassio as proof of her unfaithfulness.

These themes give these productions the air of contemporaneity, highlighting aspects of human behavior that still shape how we act and interact. It’s exciting to see classic works and stories of historic circumstances presented as relevant and still persistent. Thanks to the paring of these productions, Cincinnati theatergoers have a rare chance to glimpse issues of today through the filter of the past.

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An intriguing collaboration between Cincinnati Shakespeare Company and Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati is currently in full swing. The former has staged Shakespeare’s great 1603 tragedy Othello, in a production by guest director Christopher V. Edwards using a modern military setting.

Cincy Shakes’ artistic director Brian Isaac Phillips has headed two blocks east to ETC to stage Lolita Chakrabarti’s 2012 play, Red Velvet, about the first black actor to play Velvet Othello on the London stage in 1833.

A quick recap of Shakespeare’s play: Othello is a dark-skinned Moorish general who valiantly leads the armies of Venice, but runs afoul of colleagues and rulers when he secretly marries Desdemona, the daughter of a Venetian senator. Iago, perhaps Shakespeare’s most notorious villain, is Othello’s chief aide, secretly envious of his superior’s success. He undermines him with psychological deception. Deceived into believing his innocent wife is unfaithful, Othello murders Desdemona.

By the 19th-century, Othello had become a staple of the London stage, especially when portrayed by the renowned British actor Edmund Kean in blackface, a long-standing stage tradition. When Kean collapsed onstage in 1833 during a performance of Othello, another actor needed to replace him. (Kean died a few weeks later.)

Kean’s son Charles — onstage as Iago when his father took ill — was passed over for an African-American performer, Ira Aldridge, who had toured in the role in the British provinces. Many of Kean’s devotees opposed this replacement, critics unjustly condemned Aldridge’s performance with racist remarks and he was removed after just two performances. Aldridge continued to perform the role across Europe for three decades, but never returned to London.

(Chakrabarti’s retelling frames the 1833 story with scenes in 1867 near the end of Aldridge’s career.)

William Oliver Watkins plays Othello for Cincy Shakes; Ken Early brings Aldridge to life in Red Velvet. Both actors provide stately, powerful performances. Watkins is true to Othello’s “free and open nature” by trusting his advisors — and he is therefore easily duped. Early’s Aldridge is obsessive and meticulous about his onstage performances, constantly striving for perfection. Fellow actors object to his race and his “Yankee” roots (Aldridge began his career in New York). Only Ellen Tree (Kelly Mengelkoch), the actress playing Desdemona, heeds his suggestions about their onstage interactions.

At Cincy Shakes, veteran Nicholas Rose brings Iago to seething life with charismatic, chilling direct addresses to the audience. At Ensemble, Aldridge’s principal opposition comes from the bombastic Charles Kean, ably played by Jared Joplin.

He’s not a schemer; instead, he simply stomps about the stage demanding his

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CURTAIN CALL

Sister Rosetta Comes to Life

BY R I C K PEN D ER

If you’ve heard of Sister Rosetta Tharpe — the word “R-R-Rock,” with swinging hips and it’s entirely possible you haven’t — you and more than a hint of sexuality. “You might know that she influenced early really want me to sing like that?” Marie Rockers including Chuck Berry and Little asks. “That’s right,” Rosetta tells her. “I ain’t Richard. Even Elvis. Why isn’t she better made a’ china. I ain’t gonna break.” Marie known? Perhaps it’s because she straddled proves to be a quick and willing learner. two musical worlds in the 1930s and 1940s.

That truth is demonstrated over and She’d play church in the morning and The over as Marie and Rosetta connect through Cotton Club that night. She considered music and life stories, especially about her principal rival to be Mahalia Jackson, Rosetta’s “squirrels,” her series of unsatiswho stuck to the Gospel world and became fying husbands. Brant’s retelling could be famous. more dynamic. Themes and lessons are Sister Rosetta’s bluesy, sassy spirit could repeated as bridges between the dozen not be contained. She rocked and rolled or so musical numbers, ranging from the and shook her hips, even when she sang pious — “Were You There (When They in church. She played mean guitar riffs Crucified My Lord)?” and “Peace in the and early on picked up a flashy white electric guitar.

She shared her music wherever she could, and she wasn’t ashamed to mingle the secular with the sacred. She was quick to say, “Jesus forgives me seven times 70 a day. You’ll just have to believe.” She did, and she preached that to Marie Knight, who became her protégé and stage partner starting in 1946.

George Brant’s stage Chaz Hodges as Marie (left); Miche Braden as Rosetta play Marie and Rosetta, currently at the CincinPHOTO: MIKKI SCHAFFNER PHOTOGRAPHY nati Playhouse in the Park, begins in 1946 at an African-American funeral parlor in MissisValley” — to the profane — “I Want a Tall sippi. Rosetta (Miche Braden) is embarkSkinny Papa” and “Four or Five Times” ing on a tour with Marie (Chaz Hodges), (after which Rosetta exclaims, “Now we are who has been singing in a backup quartet both going to Hell”). for Jackson. Rosetta hears something in The music tells us the most about these Marie’s voice and presence that sounds women, and Braden and Hodges are like a kindred spirit. But she needs to get impressive vocalists in songs ranging beyond her uptight demeanor. from the emotional “Didn’t It Rain” to the Why a funeral home? They’re in the moving “Strange Things (Are Happening deep and segregated South, where hotels Every Day).” refused to accommodate black performHowever, they mime playing their ers so they’re readying for a concert in a instruments (the actual piano and guitar nearby warehouse, spending the night playing is handled by Katreese Barnes amid (or perhaps in) the coffins. It was a and George Naha behind a scrim). That necessity of touring widely, as much as eatmeans some of the staging (by Neil Pepe, ing whatever food was proffered, including who directed the show’s original New York “Gospel chicken,” Rosetta’s phrase for cold production) keeps distracting our attenbologna. tion from hands on a keyboard we can’t see Marie is not quite the child she initially and guitar playing that’s not quite fueled appears to be. In fact, she’s married with by genuine physicality. two children — but unhappy with her The 100-minute production takes an preacher husband. She’s ready for a new unexpected turn in its final moments to path, although her churchy demeanor is pull together threads of Rosetta’s career. at odds with Rosetta’s earthier, brash ways.

It’s a bit jarring, but it does complete a lovIt’s not that Rosetta is without faith: In fact, ing portrait of this remarkable performer. she’s certain that she has more impact on On April 14, Sister Rosetta will be inducted sinners in a concert hall than in worship into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in services. She reaches them through her Cleveland. powerful Blues tunes.

Marie And Rosetta, presented by the Marie needs some schooling. When Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, continRosetta launches into a Gospel number, ues through March 31. Tickets/more info: “Rock Me (in the Cradle of Your Love),” cincyplay.com.

Marie is shocked at her “dirty” delivery of

ART

This Art Show Takes the Cake

BY K AT H Y S C H WA R T Z

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Ready for a treat? You’re Invited at ThunderBut Butler’s celebration of the birthday Sky, Inc. gallery in Northside will fill you centerpiece takes visitors back to the pure up with birthday memories, humor and innocence of childhood. Her colorful food for thought. totem poles of Styrofoam cakes recognize Gallery co-founder Bill Ross, painter the one special day that, ideally, each of us Harry Sanchez Jr. and Sharon Butler of can claim as our own.

O’Bryonville’s BonBonerie bakery have Butler notes that her own birthday on thrown a party where both the personal Jan. 2 not only falls immediately after and the political have a seat. A cake is a Christmas and New Year’s, but while growsymbol of goodness that also can be used ing up she also had to share a party with for evil. Demagogues know that if they her brother, who was born Jan. 4. Neveroffer just one sweet theless, the birthday morsel, the audience is “the handmade will eat up every falseholiday,” she says. hood that follows.

“You cherish that Thankfully, everysomeone would actuthing that these three ally make something artists present comes with their hands for from a place of truth you.”

— particularly Ross’ Butler has col“propaganda cake” lected birthday mempaintings. ories from friends, Troubled by the 2016 employees and presidential election, customers for years.

Ross spent the last At the gallery, “you’re year producing 13 invited” to provide poster-like canvases your own traditions that serve up enticing on a questionnaire cakes layered with and draw a version of Russian and totalithe cake you always tarian images. The had while growing many flames atop one up. Perhaps it was dessert meet in a tip lovingly whipped up that resembles a turret by a grandmother, on Red Square. Other set atop the washing One of Bill Ross’ “propaganda cakes” works pair candles and machine to cool and cakes with Soviet stars, then adorned with a PHOTO: BOB SCHEADLER a tank, an anvil and Barbie doll or just the a single word such as stubs of candles that “torture” or “win.” were saved from a sibling’s cake months “I’m not a political person,” Ross says of before. his artmaking. “I’m just an absurdist and I “Simple things telling a really big story — wanted to be absurd.” Yet he has given us a that’s what my whole profession has been,” baker’s dozen that’s absolutely delicious.

Butler says. “And I still haven’t tired of the Sanchez, a baker-turned-artist who now story that’s told through a cake.” puts oil paint instead of icing inside piping Nor has Ross, if a related installation is bags, has created a similar series of “sheet any indication. Cakes have appeared in cakes” that transform the symbols of the his paintings for more than 30 years “as alt-right movement into decorations that symbols of ominous mystery,” but never are sickeningly sweet. Disturbed by the before had he created an 11-foot-tall pastry violence last year in Charlottesville, Va., out of stuffed animals.

Sanchez has chosen to tweak the white “I’d always wanted to do something big supremacists who sugar-coat their hate and just really fun and stupid,” he says. when they present their racist organizaToo tall for Thunder-Sky, Ross’ soft tions as social clubs and fraternities. He sculpture made its debut at The Art of Food borrows from their playbook by concoctfundraiser last month at The Carnegie ing his own rich lies. in Covington, with a mashup video of “You want to touch the ‘icing,’ ” the artist scenes from Night of the Living Dead and says as he lays out the metaphor between 1960s birthday parties playing inside it. his art and the marchers’ propaganda.

Called the “Dead Souls Cake,” it just got a “You want to consume it without realizing second life as part of the collection at the what’s actually underneath. It’s about Felsenhaus242 gallery on West McMicken what’s on top. As beautiful as it looks, it’s Avenue. Go see it in addition to You’re fake.”

Invited — it is the icing on top.

Sanchez continues to skewer alternative You’re Invited continues through facts in the exhibit guide. Both of the tiniApril 6 at Thunder-Sky Inc., est cakes in his installation are titled “The 4573 Hamilton Ave., Northside.

Largest Painting Ever Witnessed in Real More info: raymondthundersky.org.

Life or on Social Media. PERIOD!”

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TV

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What the World Needs Now Is ‘Queer Eye’

BY JAC K ER N

When Queer Eye for the Straight Guy first debuted 15 years ago, it was some viewers’ first exposure to real, out gay men. The premise was a perfect addition to the plethora of early millennium reality show offerings: five gay men, each with an area of expertise, make over a straight dude who’s lost his mojo. With the help of the “Fab Five” — Ted Allen (food and wine), The newly rebooted Queer Eye’s Fab Five Kyan Douglas (grooming), Thom Filicia (interior PHOTO: COURTESY OF NETFLIX design), Carson Kressley (fashion) and Jai Rodriguez (culture/relationships) — the subjects compare the black experience to that of walked away with a new confidence-boosttrained law enforcement. But the idea of ing look from head to toe to apartment. The listening to someone different from you show brought terms like “metrosexual” and really trying to value their experiand “tszuj” to the mainstream, expanded ence is a two-way street. To find common to a spinoff for “Straight Girls” and won ground despite not having identical percommercial and critical acclaim. spectives is actually more progressive than Representation is very important for the reacting with outrage or writing someone LGBTQ+ community and other groups not off. Such in-depth, heartfelt interactions regularly seen in media. While QEFTSG make this reboot a pleasant surprise. served its purpose, in 2018 it’s not at all As explained in the premiere episode, unusual or particularly noteworthy to see while the series’ first iteration was all about gay men onscreen. Today, people care less tolerance, the goal is now acceptance. And about token inclusiveness and more about it’s not just for the “straight guy” anymore: the message — how someone uses that In one particularly emotional episode, the platform — and the newly rebooted Queer guys help an incredible young man living Eye (Netflix) delivers. something of a double life come out to his The Fab Five is now comprised of Antoni family. This episode especially touches Porowski (food and wine), Jonathan van on the ideas of masculinity and presentNess (grooming), Bobby Berk (design), ing a particular image in the gay comTan France (fashion) and Karamo Brown munity. There is no one gay (or straight) (culture). Moving from New York to Geormale archetype — it’s more about being gia, Queer Eye borrows the original run’s comfortable with who you are. Not every format while boasting a brand-new feel. gay man is a flamboyant, loud, perfectly This crew is less catty and more compasmanicured, image-obsessed drama queen. sionate — they’re far less critical of the Jonathan certainly checks a few of those subjects than in the original, where they stereotypical boxes as he flips his enviwere often treated as the butt of a joke. ably shiny long locks while cheering, “Yas, What was once an over-the-top makeover queen!” But the campy quips are truly show has evolved into a feel-good therapy authentic to him — he’s not putting on session, where serious topics like racism, an act, and he can mesh with even the homophobia and religion are thoughtfully straightest arrows, offering practical and explored amid the haircuts and home body-positive advice for skin and hair. redecorating.

Queer Eye is less about changing these Some might criticize the show for only people and more about making them scratching the surface, stopping short of realize what they had all along. It’s such a taking a hard stance. Take, for instance, powerful, positive message that you really when a white Southern cop discusses don’t see anywhere else on TV right now, excessive force and police shootings with presented in a way that feels genuine. Just Karamo, who is black. Karamo explains his try and get through an episode without fear of police, revealing that his son didn’t tearing up. want to get his driver’s license because he While the series has not yet been was so afraid of getting pulled over and renewed, it seems like a shoe-in for a secpossibly killed. The officer made a “not all ond season. Creator and Cincinnati native cops” argument and renounced a fellow David Collins has said he’d love to bring officer who had recently resorted to using the Fab Five to his hometown, making over excessive force. guys from Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.

To some that might seem like the bare Fingers crossed. minimum for a decent human — and Contact Jac Kern: @jackern there’s no denying that it’s unfair to

FILM

‘Love, Simon’ a New Kind of Teen Movie

BY T T S T ER N - EN ZI

Read us on your phone instead of talking to your friends at brunch.

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It’s a bit strange that Love, Simon comes communication with another closeted from television producer extraordinaire teen, someone who refers to himself Greg Berlanti, the creative force behind as “Blue.” A third person, a blackmailer, Arrow The Flash and Supergirl.

Arrow, discovers this and threatens to out Simon.

After all, it eschews super heroics for What Simon does propels the plot forward. a very human story — it’s about a stillSimon, at every turn, makes things far closeted Atlanta-area high-school student more difficult than they need to be. But it’s learning to come to terms with his sexual understandable. When we speak of someorientation. Berlanti worked with screenone being born in the wrong time or place, writers Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker Simon’s a prime example. He has the perto adapt Becky Albertalli’s novel Simon vs. fect life and either doesn’t quite know it or the Homo Sapiens Agenda. he’s too afraid to trust it with his secret. So, This, of course, is something new for he makes choices based on his assumption mainstream teen movies.

Yet, it’s also very much part of a tradition. By 2001, Joel Gallen made a parody of teen movies, Not Another Teen Movie, set at John Hughes High School, because high school in teen movies had seemingly become the place where every outcast could rise up, reveal their true selves and find love and happiness by the final reel.

Even though the new millennium brought a self-aware, hipper variant in movies like Mean Girls (2004) and Easy A (2010), Love, Simon’s Nick Robinson they still have the sameold teen archetypes of PHOTO: BEN ROTHSTEIN / T WENTIETH CENTURY FOX earlier John Hughes films.

And how many times can we watch that? that the worst thing he could ever imagine But Love, Simon finds there’s still life is exactly what’s going to happen. in this genre. As played by Nick Robinson, There seems to be a trend in contemSimon is a typical teen with a loving and porary teen movies to lean more toward quite traditional family (Jennifer Garner drama than comedy. Recently, director and Josh Duhamel are his parents; Talitha Michael Sucsy’s Every Day — an adaptaEliana Bateman is his sister). He has tion of David Levithan’s novel — explored good friends (Katherine Langford, Jorge the mysteries of love and attraction in Lendeborg Jr. and Alexandra Shipp) and a unconventional fashion, as an awkward privileged life that’s begging for a level of teenager falls for a presence capable of complication to give it all some meaning. moving from body to body. Films like He’s a product of the age of smartphones Everything, Everything and the upcoming and social media, a creature who should Midnight Sun deal with teens forced to be accustomed to the comforts of living confront life-challenging or -threatenand speaking freely through a touchscreen. ing disorders while struggling to achieve Simon comes across like the lovechild meaningful connections. of Duckie (Jon Cryer) and Blane (Andrew And then, on the streaming side of the McCarthy) from Pretty in Pink — soulful distribution equation, Netflix has offered yet utterly ordinary. Except he’s gay. original shows like The End of the F***ing And he somehow hasn’t noticed that, World and 13 Reasons Why Why, which rush in his world, being gay isn’t quite the headlong into worst-case scenarios where dilemma it once was. So he’s secretive the consequences are far more dire than in about it, probably unnecessarily so. That many adult dramas. observation isn’t meant to take anything Once upon a time, we knew the kids away from the real-world struggles many would be all right because reel life refused endure in similar situations. But in this to challenge them. Now, as in Love, Simon, movie’s universe, coming out elicits little we can still feel reasonably certain that more than shrugs. This is the world we they will see through whatever life throws speak of in dreams, the kind evoked by their way, but it’s because the stakes are Martin Luther King Jr., but without all of so high that they have to. Fortunately, the ass-whuppings it took to realize his characters like Simon have “the character” vision. to make the right choices. (Opens Friday) In Love, Simon, Simon develops online (PG-13) Grade: B

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FOOD & DRINK

Kawaii Karaoke Tokyo Kitty capitalizes on Japanese karaoke culture and Lost in Translation to create a one-of-a-kind experience

BY M A D G E M A R I L

P

Tokyo Kitty’s main bar area and karaoke stage PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER

him as a child and now as a creator of bar experiences.

“We celebrate the intersection of Japan and America here,” he says.

It’s safe to say that Cincinnati agrees.

Before I even went to scope the place out for this story, I saw Tokyo Kitty popping up on basically all of my friends’ Instagrams — and I’m someone who prides herself on being the first to go to new places. But that’s the kind of impact that Gorilla Cinema has — the group has fans willing to jump headfirst into whatever bar experience or pop-up they create because it’s always going to be unforgettable.

The evening I went, the place was packed for industry night. I sang until my voice was sore, both in the safety of a private room as well as the main room. When I left, the stillness of my Uber home made me realize how immersive the Tokyo Kitty experience was. While there, you really feel like you’re worlds away. Not really in Japan, not really in America, but in a future world that marries the two countries seamlessly.

Tokyo Kitty is located at 575 Race St., Downtown. More info: thattokyobar.com.

FIND MORE RESTAURANT NEWS AND REVIEWS AT CITYBEAT.COM/ FOOD-DRINK

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service. He never gets tired, loves to entertain and is always online,” reads the Bbot company website. “We think that robots are for everyone, not just for people in Silicon Valley.”

The house cocktails that Bbot delivers do not disappoint. After all, if you’re crafting drinks to be delivered via robot, you have to capture a certain je ne sais quoi.

I sampled the Kumamon ($8) and Uniqulo ($9). The Kumamon is a sweetly tart drink with lemongrass-infused tequila, lime, a passion-fruit-and-hibiscus cordial and ginger beer. The Uniqulo has cucumber-infused vodka, a Midori and velvet falernum blend, lemon and soda.

Both meshed international elements I would never have thought to pair together (tequila and ginger beer?), somehow making it work. Both were all too drinkable and gone in less than 10 minutes.

If cocktails aren’t your thing, the menu also features sake bombs, beer, mocktails, and traditional Japanese spirits.

This is not just a bar created by someone who watched a few episode of Naruto and went for it. There’s passion and respect at Tokyo Kitty for Japanese culture, and how that culture gives and takes with both Cincinnati and America. Trevino himself grew up in Houston, Texas hanging out with first generation Asian-American friends. He went to karaoke bars in his hometown and Austin and saw how they brought people together. The cultural exchange inspired

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stopping by for a drink.

There are also private, themed karaoke rooms you can reserve for parties. Themes range from “anime” or “museum,” with maneki-neko lucky cat figurines, to “tea” and “Suntory,” the Japanese whiskey brand featured in Lost in Translation (the bar also has pink wigs you can wear, just like Scarlett Johansson in the film’s famous karaoke scene). Room prices range from $20-$50 per hour depending on the day, and your room theme is randomly assigned.

If you do book a private room, don’t worry about feeling ignored by the hospitality staff, because you’ll have a robot taking care of you.

Before visiting, I’d heard whispers of a magical robot that delivers drinks on a conveyor belt right to your hands and had been picturing a cross between The Jetsons’ Rosie and a Roomba vacuum with a Cosmo balanced precariously on top. While sadly faceless and not in a maid costume, Bbot will still make you feel like you’re living in the year 2062. The robot delivery system was tailored to Tokyo Kitty’s exact needs.

While sitting in any of the private rooms, simply access Bbot through the Bbot website on your phone, order whatever drink you want and soon it will come down on a tray through a hole in the ceiling. If this is something you can’t even wrap your mind around, go to Tokyo Kitty and see it for yourself.

“Bbot is the silent hero of next-level

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eople told Jacob Trevino not to open a Japanese-style karaoke bar.

“They said it was too ambitious — that Cincinnati’s not going to get it,” Trevino says with a smile. “Tons of people will tell you not to do something, you know?”

As the founder of Gorilla Cinema Presents, a local company that creates concept bars and experiences inspired by films, he had dreamt of Tokyo Kitty for three years before it opened its doors.

Much like the Video Archive, Trevino’s Quentin Tarantino-themed “video store speakeasy” in Walnut Hills, Tokyo Kitty looks unassuming from the street. Walking through the front doors, you enter a purposefully sterile airport security-themed lobby and ID check point. Once your ID is approved for lift off, you head through the only other available door, which leads you to an Alice in Wonderland-esque room decked out in neon and mirrors before entering the bar itself. The experience leaves you as dazzled as Tokyo Kitty’s interior. It’s also a nod to one of the bar’s inspirations, Lost in Translation.

Tokyo Kitty’s décor is ambitious. As is the drink menu. And the uniformed workers. And the anime playing on a huge flat screen near the front of the bar. And the mainstage karaoke podium. And the use of robots to deliver drinks. Everything about Tokyo Kitty is maximalist and futuristic, and very well something that lil ol’ Cincinnati might not “get.”

But with the success of the aforementioned Video Archive and Trevino’s The Shining-themed Overlook Lodge in Pleasant Ridge, Gorilla Cinema seems to have pulled off this fantasy dreamland almost effortlessly. Together they imagined what the future of bars and interacting with your friends could look like.

“The team makes it come to life and spurs these experiences,” Trevino says. “We want to push the envelope and make things not just amazing, cool and magical for Cincinnati but also for the country.”

The main room of Tokyo Kitty is a bar and large karaoke space, glowing with colorful neon ceiling panels, so be prepared to hear (or do) some belting if you’re just

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RECENTLY REVIEWED

BY C I T Y B E AT S TA FF

Kitchen 1883

Featuring food and drink from Axis Alley, Bakersfield, Chart House, Game Works, Mitchell's Fish Market, Sammy's Craft Burgers and beer . . . . . . and more to be announced!

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

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WED., MAY 23, 2018

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9003 US Highway 42, Union, Ky., 859-3349450, kitchen1883. com Kitchen 1883 lives up to its “New American comfort food” concept. I stopped by on a drizzly Saturday evening in February with two girlfriends in tow. The restaurant is sandwiched between a Kroger supermarket and a Kroger liquor store. This might seem strange unless you know that Kitchen 1883 is the grocery chain’s first foray into sit-down casual dining. In fact, it’s one of the first grocery-chain-affiliated restaurants in the country. Fun fact: It’s named after the year Kroger founder Barney Kroger opened his first store.

Opened in November, Kitchen 1883 is distinctly its own business. The separation of the restaurant from the neighboring Kroger is so distinct that Kitchen 1883’s food is sourced from a completely separate entity — a restaurant-grade food provider.

This is a point executive chef Christopher Bushelman (formerly of Incline Public House) makes clear.

The restaurant’s online menu features a prominent picture of some meat-andmashed-potato dish, and I correctly assumed it was the braised beef short ribs ($18) with horseradish smashed potatoes and blistered carrots; I followed my eyes with my stomach and ordered it.

The short ribs were very tender, falling apart with the slightest abrasion of my fork, and I devoured the entire plate. The horseradish potatoes were sharp but complementary, the carrots kind of superfluous, but I liked their varied colors, and the pan sauce was the perfect consistency. (Leyla Shokoohe)

The Wheel 3805 Brotherton Road, Oakley, 513271-0291, thewheeloakley.com The Wheel is an Italian takeaway restaurant housed on a well-hidden residential block in Oakley. A spinning wheel hangs above the door; inside, concert posters adorn pale blue walls, joined by personal iconography curated by owner Chrissy Antenucci.

The food provides evidence that cooking is an act of love and creativity for Antenucci, who named The Wheel after a Grateful Dead song. “I really like to cook the way (the Grateful Dead) plays: walk out onto a stage without a set list and see what happens,” she says.

On the surface, the ingredients seem simple; I ordered the rosemary roasted

carrot sandwich ($9). The first bite alone was enough to convert this Punk into a Deadhead. The carrots were tender and hearty. Within the dish, they were a vegetable transformed — I experienced a taste metamorphosis with each new bite.

As a vegetarian, it was more exploratory and creative than most other veggie sandwiches I’ve had. Kale peeked through between bites of carrot; both were covered in the perfect amount of romesco sauce and garlic yogurt, the latter of which added a surprisingly creamy touch. The bread, which Antenucci makes fresh daily, is thick — almost like foccacia — and cradled the ingredients within.

“We just want (the Wheel) to be a place where everyone feels welcome, almost as if you’re coming into our home to eat,” Antenucci says.

And the food did feel like home: simple, loving, spontaneous and hearty. With one exception — the food at The Wheel is far better than any food I could get at my actual home (sorry, ma). (Mackenzie Manley)

Sartre 1910 Elm St., Overthe-Rhine, 513-5791910, sartreotr.com Before we took a single sip or bite, and in fact before seeing a menu, I could tell that Sartre could become one of our go-to destinations. The vaulted ceilings, remarkable woodwork and indirect lighting create a feeling both majestic and intimate. Overall, you get the impression that you’re entering the grandest place in this part of town.

We were primed to try the cooking of chef Justin Uchtman, a Cincinnati native who left that Michelin-starred San Francisco gig — the restaurant is called SPQR — to take the helm here. While the name Sartre, from the French playwright and philosopher, might indicate that the menu skews completely Gallic, not all the dishes go that way. And even within the subheadings of Vegetables, Grains, Fish, Meat and French(ish), many dishes may seem unfamiliar.

I thought the grain dishes were the most successful. Along with the Brussels sprouts, my overall favorite was the farro, which came with a large cluster of maitake mushroom resting on warm grains that had been seasoned with lardo and given crunchiness with chopped pistachios.

The flavor and texture contrasts melded beautifully and the smallish portion was just right. The bulgar wheat dish was seasoned with pork belly and Green Goddess dressing and got its crunch from walnuts.

I’m all about crunch as a flavor component, which these grain dishes delivered. (Pama Mitchell)

CLASSES & EVENTS WEDNESDAY 14

Poetry and Pie — In honor of international Pi Day (3.14), Wave Pool is hosting an event with poetry and pie.

Curated by Joshua Kruer, expect pastry and perspectives provided by Corine Fairbanks, Jheri Neri, Siri Armani and Manuel Iris. 7-10 p.m. Free. Wave Pool, 2940 Colerain Ave., Camp Washington, wavepoolgallery.org.

Pi Day Cherry Pie-Eating Contest — Fibonacci Brewing Company hosts this pie-eating contest in which Urban Artifact, Brink Brewing, Lucky Turtle and Marty’s Hops & Vines will compete against them to see who wins. 5-10 p.m. Free. Fibonacci Brewing Company, 1445 Compton Road, Mount Healthy, facebook.com/ fibonaccibrewing.

Pi Day with Teeny Morris — Teen Pies’ Teeny Morris leads this class on how to make the perfect pie. She’ll be demonstrating how to make a key lime and a chocolate oatmeal pie. 6:307:30 p.m. $35. Artichoke OTR, 1824 Elm St., Overthe-Rhine, artichokeotr.com.

THURSDAY 15

Salami + Cheese Class — North Country Charcuterie and Kenny’s Farmhouse Cheese head to Share: Cheesebar to teach a class on pairing cheese and meat. Beer and wine will be available for purchase.

6-8 p.m. Share: Cheesebar, 6105 Ridge Ave., Pleasant Ridge, facebook.com/ sharecheesebar.

The Pony OTR Fish Fry — Every Friday during Lent head to The Pony for a fish, served with fries and coleslaw for only $4. The Pony OTR, 1346 Main St., Overthe-Rhine, 513-954-8415.

Fabulous Fish Friday at Bridgetown Finer Meats — Home of Fabulous Fish Friday and a biggerthan-the-bread giant fish sandwich. Menu also includes lobster bisque, lobster mac and cheese, Big John’s shrimp boat, famous green beans, homemade tartar sauce and coleslaw. 11 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Fridays through Easter.

Bridgetown Finer Meats, 6135 Bridgetown Road, Bridgetown, bridgetownfinermeats.com.

All Saints Fish Fry — Go for the fish tacos and stay for the beer. Fried cod, grilled salmon or tilapia, fish tacos, pizza, fries (sweet potato available) coleslaw, baked potatoes, mac and cheese.

And to finish it off: Beer and wine. 5 p.m. Fridays through March 23. All Saints Church, 8939 Montgomery Road, Kenwood, allsaints.cc.

Saint Francis Seraph Church Fish Fry — Grab a craft beer and fish sandwich while listening to live music at the Christian Moerlein Malt House Taproom. 5:30-9

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SATURDAY 17

Saint Patrick’s Day at Molly Malone’s — The Saint Pat’s party kicks off with kegs and eggs, and the first 100 people through the door get a free T-shirt. All three floors of the bar will be open, with a tent outside featuring Irish bands on two stages. 7 a.m. Free admission. Molly Malone’s, 11 E. Fourth St., Covington, Ky., mollymalonesirishpub.com.

Intro to Macarons Baking Class — In this three-hour program, learn the art and science behind macaron making. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. $95.

Macaron Bar, 1206 Main St., Over-the-Rhine, macaronbar.com.

Saint Patrick’s Day on the Square — Head to Fountain Square for green beer, Irish food, live Celtic rock and lots of Guinness. Noon-8 p.m.

Free. Fountain Square, Fifth and Vine streets, Downtown, myfountainsquare.com.

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Saint Patrick’s Day at the Irish Heritage Center — The day starts with mass, followed by music, dance, food and drink. Entertainment kicks off at 2 p.m. and continues in the theater and pub room. Noon-10 p.m. $5 advance; $7 door; free for members. Irish Heritage Center of Greater Cincinnati, 3905 Eastern Ave., East End, irishcenterofcincinnati.com.

TUESDAY 20

Spring Pasta — Get hands-on experience making your own pasta from scratch, including ricotta dumplings with scallions and asparagus, carrot ravioli and lemony fregola with herbs and crustaceans. 6:30-8:30 p.m. $90. Turner Farm, 7400 Given Road, Indian Hill, turnerfarm.org.

Indian-Inspired Kitchen — Take inspiration from India and learn to cook dinner with traditional ingredients. 6-9 p.m. Findlay Kitchen, 1719 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine, tablespooncookingco.com.

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

Mary, Queen of Heaven — Offered every Friday during Lent, Mary, Queen of Heaven boasts a huge menu of fried Icelandic cod including their signature Holy Haddock sandwich. Sides offered include fries, mac and cheese, coleslaw, green beans and more. 4-8 p.m.

Fridays during Lent. Mary, Queen of Heaven, 1150 Donaldson Highway, Erlanger, Ky., mqhparish.com.

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p.m. Fridays through March 23. 1621 Moore St., Overthe-Rhine, facebook.com/ SFSChurch.

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FRIDAY 16

All About Stout — Molly Malone’s in Covington celebrates St. Patrick’s day with

almost 30 rare and unique stouts — there’s more than just Guinness and Murphy’s out there. Enjoy live music, pipers, Irish dancers and more in an outdoor tent. 6 p.m. $25 advance; $30 day of (if available); $35 VIP. Molly Malone’s, 11 E. Fourth St., Covington, Ky., mollymalonesirishpub.com.

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Kombucha Cocktails + Light Bites — Muse in Mount Lookout is hosting this event with Fab Ferments serving kombucha and light bites to benefit Cincinnati Cooks. Tickets include a flight of three seasonal kombucha cocktails, plus allergen-free food fare. 6-8 p.m. $40. Muse, 1000 Delta Ave., Mount Lookout, facebook.com/musemtlookout.

Dinner 5 off 2ndEntree

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Most classes and events require registration and classes frequently sell out.

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MUSIC Going Aerial For Collage, guitar hero Eric Johnson looks through a wider lens at a variety of musical styles

BY DAV E G I L D E R U B I O

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

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or Pop artists, the idea of striking a trio of Top 10 hits is a challenging but not altogether insurmountable task.

But when that performer is a guitar instrumentalist, you’re talking rarefied air. So it went for Eric Johnson back in 1990 when his first album for Capitol Records, Ah Via Musicom, was taking him from being a Guitar Player cover darling to getting significant airplay to go with that commercial success.

Fast forward to 2018, and the Texas native is reuniting with bassist Kyle Brock and drummer Tommy Taylor to hit the road and play the hit album they created together in its entirety. But rather than rest on past laurels, Johnson is also promoting Collage, his 10th studio outing.

Split between five covers and five original numbers, Johnson’s latest album not only features the guitarist’s tasteful and fluid style of playing, but it also has a looser vibe than previous projects. In his previous work, Johnson’s own perfectionist tendencies found him getting in Dutch with music industry executives during his major label days at Capitol Records.

“Things were going pretty good because we’d put (1986’s) Tones out on Warner Brothers, but they weren’t sure if they wanted to pursue another record and decided that we should go somewhere else,” Johnson says. “So I worked super hard on ((Ah Via Musicom) and I would just do it over and over until I felt I was playing it well enough. That record was a lot of hard work to get it to be the way it was. I think when you have a responsibility or pressure to be the best at what you do or if you’re supposed to be good at this certain thing, the question is how do you interpret that?

If I interpret that as having to go into the studio and record one note at a time and make it absolutely perfect, that might not be the most (ideal) way to handle those kinds of expectations. And I think at the time, that’s how I was interpreting (what people expected).”

While the success of Ah Via Musicom gave him more leeway with the Capitol Records higher-ups, Johnson’s perfectionism found him going over budget with the follow-up, Venus Isle, which led to him getting dropped by the label. While Johnson has since released a number of albums on independent labels, in addition to working on side projects like Joe Satriani’s G3 tour and the ad-hoc group Alien Love Child, he looks back at his crossover success as a learning experience.

“I don’t have any kind of bitter attitude about record labels or that music scene, but I think it’s really important to look at it honestly,” he says. “Yes, it can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but it is what it is. But it’s temporal. One minute you’ve got the red carpet and the next minute you’ve got the locked door. It really depends on how in vogue you are. Now I think the better way to interpret expectations is to try to be a little deeper or a little more soulful. It’s a process of unlearning a lot of stuff you learned that may not have been necessary to pack on your back and carry around.”

With Collage, Johnson gives nods to The Beatles (“We Can Work It Out”), Stevie Wonder (“Uptight (Everything’s Alright)”), Surf music instrumentalists The Chantays (“Pipeline”), B.B. King (“Rock Me Baby”) and Jimi Hendrix (“One Rainy Wish”). By casting such a wide stylistic net, the former guitar prodigy was looking to loosen up his recording process while getting to honor those who came before him.

“This was just me going in and recording whatever I felt like recording with no pressure. It was just to have a little fun and to try and cut as much of it live as I could. It has more of a relaxed vibe to it,” Johnson says. “The main thing in my mind when I’m trying to record is trying to re-establish important issues of making a record, and I think that is to follow the groove, look for magic and get out of the way and have fun.

For me, it was just kind of honoring the idea that there’s such beauty in all styles of music. It’s kind of like going aerial in a plane and you look down on the topography and you realize that there’s this connectivity to it all.”

Originally inspired to play music by a guitar-playing family friend who came over to the house and played numbers by bluesmen Elmore James and Jimmy Reed, Johnson started woodshedding when he was 11. Over the next decade, his skills grew as he put in time with a Fusion/Prog group, Electromagnets, before going solo and earning his own cult following. He also wound up being a session guitarist for a number of higher profi le artists, including Christopher Cross, Cat Stevens and Carole King, which gave him creative insights to which he might not otherwise have been exposed.

“It was really cool to be around songsmiths like that and to see how important a song was to them,” he says. “That was what it was about. It was a really good learning experience for me to see that.”

Eric Johnson PHOTO: MA X CRACE

Fans coming out to see Johnson on his current tour will get to sample the guitarist’s newer, mellower side with a fi rst-half set focused on his most recent fare, while die-hards will get to experience all of Ah Via Musicom in the show’s second set. It’s the first time Johnson will be taking this kind of approach to that landmark release.

“I’ve never done it in its entirety before,” Johnson says. “I’d only do a song here and there. It’s pretty nostalgic and I’m having

fun with it. There’s a lot of parts of it that are improvisational, so it’s a little bit more liquid than if I had to go play it all note-fornote. It’s nice to play with Kyle and Tommy again. There’s a chemistry between us that’s really cool.”

Eric Johnson plays the Ballroom at the Taft Theatre on Wednesday. Tickets/more info: tafttheatre.org.

SPILL IT

From Iswhat?! to Sorg: Napoleon Returns

BY M I K E B R EEN

BY M I K E B R EE N

This Week in Karma Billy McFarland, who created the Fyre Festival — the expensive “luxury” music fest in the Bahamas that crashed and burned spectacularly before its inaugural/swan song event last spring (with slated performers like Major Lazer and blink-182) — has been ordered by a federal court to repay $26 million to the event’s investors. He still faces up to 10 years in prison (sentencing is in June). Meanwhile, punchable-faced entrepreneur Martin Shkreli — who got his start in public douchebaggery by jacking up the price of a previously affordable AIDS drug by 5,000 percent — cried as he was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud. The news was gleefully conveyed by every outlet that could remotely justify reporting on it. That includes music outlets, because of Shkreli’s collection of impossibly rare (and astronomically expensive) items like a $2 million one-off Wu-Tang Clan album and unreleased Lil Wayne music.

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Spotify Shaming Tool Timed to International Women’s Day, Spotify teamed up with a booze company to launch a weird but enlightening tool that tells you the ratio of male vs. female creators of the music you listen to. The tackily named “Smirnoff Equalizer” also includes an “Equalized Playlist” of favorite songs (or tracks you might like) that allows users to adjust that ratio to hear more women or more men (for artists that identify as non-binary, the algorithm includes them “if they match your listening habits”). Despite the crass branding, it’s a well-intentioned experiment that is mildly shaming, but also potentially illuminating for users, especially in light of the Grammy president’s controversial comments about how women need to “step up” if they want more recognition.

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Jack White has reportedly abandoned his devout analogonly approach to recording and embraced digital tools for his forthcoming album. White told Rolling Stone that part of the reason for his shift from tedious old-school techniques to contemporary technology like ProTools (which he once called “cheating”) was a comment by comedian Chris Rock, who White says told him “nobody cares” how the music was recorded.

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For the better part of the last decade, Cinsampled throughout, but the track is slowcinnati’s Napoleon Maddox — co-founder boiled in a bubbling funkiness, with new of innovative and experimental Hip Hop/ lyrics and melodies that use the original as Jazz ensemble IsWhat?!, among numerous a jumping off point. Where Hansard’s song other projects — has spent a lot of time is a dark whirl of simmering, resigned sadworking and touring in Europe. His curness over a cheating lover, Sorg and Madrent focus has been on a duo project with dox transform it into a buoyant, sensual French producer/DJ Sorg, which released a treatise of aching passion and desire. pair of EPs — 2014’s Ribbons & Razors and The inside-out “remix” closer wonder2016’s Soon, which featured “Security,” a fully illustrates Sorg & Napoleon Maddox’s track with Cincinnati MC Boogie Bang deft ability to build something exhilarat(Brian Green), the video for which was shot ing and fresh out of inspirational sources, in Over-the-Rhine. something that is pervasive on all 11 The twosome — dubbed, simply enough, Sorg & Napoleon Maddox — is currently on an extensive French tour in support of their debut full-length, Checkin Us, which was released on March 9.

Sorg is a dazzling beat-artiste, crafting a rich, layered backdrop on Checkin Us that masterfully blends Soul, Funk, Electro and other elements and vibes into something colorful and imaginatively unique. Maddox has long been a world-class MC and this latest collaboration Napoleon Maddox (left) and Sorg with Sorg shows him at the top of his game, as much a PHOTO: THOMAS FOURNIER showcase for his untouchable vocal and lyrical skills (not to mention his overall songwriting taltracks on the album. With Checkin Us, the ent) as anything he’s done up to this point. intercontinental dynamic duo has cooked Drawing discriminately from seemingly up what is certain to be one of the best Hip every major era of Hip Hop, his rhyming Hop albums of 2018, and it deserves to be schematics and flow on Checkin Us are heard far and wide. like a clinic in creative but foundationally The album is available digitally on all flawless MCing. major platforms. Visit sorgnapoleonmadThe album opens with “Shark Men,” dox.lnk.to/checkinus for links. For more which floats on a bed of world-beat info on the project visit facebook.com/ rhythms and chants and is painted in with sorgandnapoleonmaddox. throbbing bass and electronic waves and squiggles, while the sublimely head-bop‘Tiny Desk Contest’ Open ping and thoughtful title track is craftily Since its creation a decade ago, the popular padded with a collage of hypnotic vintage Tiny Desk Concert video series created by Electro atmospherics. Boogie Bang returns NPR has featured everyone from The Avett for another great feature on “Colony Falls,” Brothers and Yo Yo Ma to Moby and Run which offers one of many great examples the Jewels. Greater Cincinnati musicians of Sorg’s talent for beat textures, layering again have a chance to join Tiny Desk’s a live drum kit loop, fills and handclaps to impressive pantheon, which includes local conjure an engulfing and engaging groove. duo Dawg Yawp, who did a by-invitation A could-be radio hit, “What’s Your Joy?” Tiny Desk show last year. NPR Music has a monster vocal hook and features is hosting its fourth annual Tiny Desk philosophical lyrics about looking beyond Contest, for which it is currently accepting materialistic value to find happiness: “I video submissions. Hopefuls must upload won’t feel robbed, I won’t be mad/I won’t to YouTube a video performance of one be stressed about stuff I had/’Cause if it’s original song played at a desk (duh). The possible to have, I can get it again/Or never deadline is 11:59 p.m. on March 25. Visit lose it at all, like love or friends.” tinydeskcontest.npr.org for complete Checkin Us closes with a rewiring of submission details.

“Philander,” the first single from singer/ songwriter Glen Hansard’s debut solo Contact Mike Breen: mbreen@citybeat. album, 2012’s Rhythm and Repose. It’s com a “cover” of sorts, with Hansard’s vocals

MINIMUM GAUGE

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You have ideas in your head and they don’t always come Evanescence/Lindout the way you want sey Stirling – July 14, them to.”

Riverbend Lalonde calls this their most personal record, which is no surprise — a sense of wistful longBorn Ruffians ing permeates the with Blossom Hall proceedings. Case Friday • MOTR Pub Lee Brice in point is album Toronto’s Born Ruffians PHOTO: PROVIDED opener “Forget Me,” coalesced more than a which was inspired decade ago, riding a sound

by Lalonde’s father, equally informed by the who was battling melodious melancholy of The Shins and cancer as the band was writing what would the ragged glory of fellow Canadians The become Uncle, Duke & the Chief Chief. The song Constantines. Yet by their third full-length, opens with Lalonde strumming an acous2013’s Birthmarks, frontman Luke Lalonde tic guitar, his high-pitched voice crackadmits things had not evolved in a satisfying with emotion as he yelps the chorus, ing way — the record refined the band’s “Wait for me/’Cause I’ll be right behind more jagged edges in favor of a slicker you,” before, about halfway through, the sound and production style. rest of the band enters and then ebbs out “I think (Birthmarks) Birthmarks) is the least Born Birthmarks again. “Forget Me” possesses a newfound Ruffians of all our records,” Lalonde said emotional depth that carries through to in a recent interview with Noisey. “And I the rest of the record, the kind of evolution mean just in what the band has come to Lalonde and company seem eager to share. be, or whatever our sound is, this record (Jason Garagno) represented (it) the least.”

Enter the freshly minted Uncle, Duke Lee Brice & the Chief Chief, which reunites Lalonde and Saturday • Rising Star Casino Resort bassist Mitch Derosier with original drumLee Brice is an easy guy to place in a mer Steve Hamelin and which represents specific genre. While the “I Don’t Dance” a middle ground between the sleeker crooner has written successful songs aspects of Birthmarks and the rawer for the likes of Garth Brooks and Tim approach of their earlier stuff.

McGraw, the “singer/songwriter” label just “When we left the studio we just had the doesn’t quite cover his success. The South feeling; it was kind of like when you fall Carolina native is undeniably a Country in love,” Lalonde said in the same Noisey star — maybe even a Country legend in the interview about the making of the new making. Bands like Florida Georgia Line album. “There’s something about this and guys like Jason Aldean can’t go three record where we just got it right. And you chords without talking about drinking or don’t always do that. It’s fucking hard to We Are Scientists – June 23, MOTR Pub

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cruising, and you rarely find the same twang that filled the airwaves even just 30 years ago. They rely on Country tropes while singing something more aligned with Rock, all for the sake of attempting to nab the next “crossover hit.” But Brice’s collection of songs all sound exactly like the kind of music longtime Country fans have been missing.

Brice’s first real introduction to massive radio success came in 2009 when “Love Like Crazy” landed on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in the fall and stayed there through the summer of 2010 until the single finally found its way into the Top 10. It stayed on the charts Hit Like a Girl’s Nicolle Maroulis into September 2010, breaking Eddy Arnold’s P H O T O : H I T L I K E A G I R L . B A N D C A M P. C O M record for the longestcharting song in Hot Country Songs’ history. transition. At live shows, the band opts to The life-lesson-wrapped-up-like-a-Counsell No More Dysphoria’s official T-shirts try-song solidified Brice’s place as part of instead of their own. All proceeds go to the Country radio’s go-to crowd pleasers. organization.

His rise continued with the next album, Though You Make Sense, the project’s Hard 2 Love, which saw singles “A Woman 2017 debut LP, was recorded before MarouLike You” (a sweet but silly love song in lis was able to pull a full band together, the line with Brad Paisley’s style) and “Hard to album still feels like the product of a wellLove.” The kicker from that album was “I oiled Pop Punk machine. Tracks like “If I Drive Your Truck,” which took a swing at Could Erase You” and “The Song I Hoped paying tribute to a brother lost in the war.

You’d Never Hear” call back the muted This is America, so it should come as no moodiness of early aughts Indie Rock surprise that the song and its sentiment (think Say Hi to Your Mom or The Shins), left Brice with another massive hit. while sneaking in the math-y riffs that are Fast forward a few more years and a few all but obligatory when you’re working more big hits and you’ll find Brice in 2018 within Bandcamp’s Emo scene. Maroutackling another favorite topic of Country lis’ lyrics sketch out portraits of youngsongs — fatherhood. Full of good old boy adult-novel romances, while the guitars clichés, lessons for youngins and enough populate the background with watercolor heart to make you believe he wrote the paintings of autumn foliage. song for his own two sons (he doesn’t Hit Like a Girl’s songwriting resembles actually have songwriting credits on this a string of confessional text messages set one), “Boy” is sure to be another hit. Brice to music. Maroulis culls their inspiration tweeted the song had already passed 15 from particularly vulnerable moments, million views on YouTube. (Deirdre Kaye) and many of the record’s hardest-hitting moments take the form of questions that Hit Like a Girl with Sagermen, are more comfortably unanswered: “What Useless Fox and Jess Matthew is it about us that you don’t see?”; “Will that Higgs work for you?”; “Do you remember me from time to time?”

Tuesday • Urban Artifact Embarking on a tour that includes a As far as band names go, it’s hard to nail debut South By Southwest appearance, Hit down a description of your project as well Like a Girl has upgraded from a solo acousas Nicolle Maroulis has. The New Jersey tic act to a quartet. If the promo video the songwriter’s work is as forceful, yet lyriband posted on Facebook in January is any cally tender as the alias implies. Better yet, indication of what its live set sounds like, it’s imperative: a call to action. expect a more anthemic and immersive Hit Like a Girl is the musical extension take on You Make Sense’s material, comof Maroulis’ nonprofit, No More Dysphoplete with the occasional flourish of synth ria, which was founded to help transgenstrings. (Jude Noel) der individuals pay for aspects of their

111 E 6th St Newport, KY 41071

29

LISTINGS

CityBeat’s music listings are free. Send info to Mike Breen at mbreen@citybeat.com. Listings are subject to change.

See CityBeat.com for full music listings and all club locations. H is CityBeat staff’s stamp of approval.

WEDNESDAY 14

H

BOGART’S - Icon for Hire with Makeout. 8 p.m. Rock. $15.

CINCINNATI PUBLIC LIBRARY, MAIN BRANCH Pop Goes the Library Music Series featuring Matt Waters.

7 p.m. Pop/Rock/Various.

Free.

LIVE! AT THE LUDLOW GARAGE - Stephen Kellogg.

8 p.m. Folk. $15-$20.

H

MOTR PUB - Imaginary Tricks. 9:30 p.m. Indie Rock. Free.

NORTHSIDE YACHT CLUB - Steven King with The Ophelias and Anissa Pulcheon. 9 p.m. Indie/Rock/Pop. Free.

SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL (LOUNGE) - The Exit Strategy with Johnny Conqueroo and Jess Lamb.

8 p.m. Rock/Various. Free.

H

URBAN ARTIFACT Blue Wisp Big Band.

8:30 p.m. Big Band Jazz. $10.

THURSDAY 15

ARNOLD’S BAR AND GRILL - Dottie Warner and Friends. 7:30 p.m. Jazz.

Free.

BLIND LEMON - Dave Hawkins. 7:30 p.m. Celtic/ Folk. Free.

BROMWELL’S HÄRTH LOUNGE - Todd Hepburn and Friends. 8 p.m. Various.

Free.

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

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M A R C H 1 4 – 2 0 , 2 0 18

COLONEL POMPS TAVERN - Losing Lucky. 7 p.m.

Roots/Various. Free.

30

FRETBOARD BREWING COMPANY - Ricky Nye. 6 p.m. Blues/Boogie Woogie.

- Coal Fired Bicycle with Cookin’ Hearts. 8 p.m. Indie/ Roots/Americana. Free.

URBAN ARTIFACT - St. Mary, St. Michael, Will Wood & the Tapeworms, Charity Crowe and J Kruer. 9 p.m.

Rock/Various. Free.

FRIDAY 16

ARNOLD’S BAR AND GRILL - John Redell and Erin Coburn. 9 p.m. Blues.

Free.

BLIND LEMON - Warren Ulgh (8:30 p.m.); Tom Roll (6 p.m.). 8:30 p.m. Acoustic.

Free.

COLLEGE HILL COFFEE CO. - Ben Levin. 7:30 p.m.

Blues. Free.

COLONEL POMPS TAVERN - Out of the Blue. 7 p.m.

Various. Free.

CROW’S NEST - Joe Macheret. 10 p.m. Americana.

Free.

HILLSIDE GASTROPUB Sonny Moorman. 8:30 p.m.

Blues.

JEFF RUBY’S STEAKHOUSE - Grace Lincoln Band. 8 p.m. Soul/R&B. Free.

JIM AND JACK’S ON THE RIVER - Boe Davis and Broken Arrow. 9 p.m. Country.

Free.

KNOTTY PINE - Brownstones. 10 p.m. Rock. Cover.

MANSION HILL TAVERN Soul Pushers. 9 p.m. Blues.

Cover.

MARTY’S HOPS & VINES Bob Ross Trio. 9 p.m. Jazz.

Free.

MAURY’S TINY COVE Ricky Nye. 8 p.m. Blues/ Boogie Woogie. Free.

$20 day of show.

RICK’S TAVERN - 3 Day Rule. 10 p.m. Rock. Cover.

SCHWARTZ’S POINT JAZZ & ACOUSTIC CLUB Cleveland Dodds and Josh Strange. 9 p.m. Jazz. Cover.

SILVERTON CAFE - Modern Groove. 9 p.m. Jazz/ Funk/Pop/Rock/Various.

Free.

H

SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL (SANCTUARY) - Selwyn Birchwood. 9 p.m. Blues. $25.

STANLEY’S PUB - Quasi Kings with Rockstead. 9 p.m.

Reggae. Cover.

H

TAFT THEATRE - Rufus Wainwright. 7 p.m. Pop/Rock. $36.50-$47.50.

H

TAFT’S ALE HOUSE - “Bands & Brews: Benefitting Cincinnati Children’s” featuring Jess Lamb & The Factory. 8 p.m. Alt/Rock/ Soul/Various.

THOMPSON HOUSE - Mic Check Rap Showcase. 9 p.m. Hip Hop. $10.

H

URBAN ARTIFACT Casino Warrior, Ball of Light and Moonbow. 9 p.m.

Hard Rock/Metal.

WASHINGTON PLATFORM SALOON & RESTAURANT - Pamela Mallory Quartet. 9 p.m. Jazz. $10 (food/drink minimum).

SATURDAY 17

AMERICAN LEGION POST 484 - St. Patrick’s Day Dance with Six Pac. 8 p.m.

Country. $10.

H

LIVE! AT THE LUDLOW GARAGE - Drake Bell and Tryon. 5 p.m. Pop. $20-$45.

H

MOTR PUB - Sweet Pablo, Camps of the Sun and Season Sleep. 10 p.m. AltRock.

Free.

MOTR PUB - Born Ruffians with Blossom Hall.

10 p.m. Indie Rock. Free.

ARNOLD’S BAR AND GRILL - The Part-Time Gentlemen (9 p.m.); The Roving Rogues (5 p.m.). 5 p.m. Americana/Irish. Free.

OCTAVE - Hayley Jane and the Primates. 9:30 p.m.

Americana/Soul/Rock. Free.

BLIND LEMON - Andrew Thaus and Baba Jambe. 6 p.m. Acoustic. Free.

THE RADISSON HOTEL Basic Truth. 8 p.m. Funk/ R&B/Soul. Free (in the Fifth Lounge).

THE REDMOOR - Tim Talbert Project Band. 7 p.m.

R&B/Funk/Soul/Dance. $15,

SCHWARTZ’S POINT JAZZ & ACOUSTIC CLUB - Brandon & Carlos Double Jazz Guitar Experience. 8:30 p.m. Jazz. Cover.

H

SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL (LOUNGE)

H H

THE COMET - Blue Rock Boys. 10 p.m.

Celtic/Irish/Folk/Rock. Free.

HERZOG MUSIC - Nick Keeling & Kaily Moon Schenker. 7 p.m. Experimental. $6.

JIM AND JACK’S ON THE RIVER - Nick Netherton. 9 p.m. Country. Free.

KNOTTY PINE - “Kegs and Eggs” with 90 Proof Twang, Final Order, Wayward Son and Bloodline. 8 a.m. Country/Rock. Cover.

H

MADISON LIVE Down One, Automatic Evolution, Day Needs Night, ThunderTaker and Grieving Otis. 8 p.m. Rock. $10, $13 day of show.

MANSION HILL TAVERN Jay Jesse Johnson. 9 p.m.

Blues. Cover.

MARTY’S HOPS & VINES - Just Two Howlers. 9 p.m.

Classic Rock. Free.

H

MOTR PUB - Moonbeau with The Raquels.

10 p.m. Alt/Synth Pop. Free.

NORTHSIDE TAVERN Strange Creature and Harlot.

10 p.m. Rock/Blues/Jazz/ World/Folk/Various. Free.

OCTAVE - “UV Hippo Does Beck”. 7 p.m. Beck tribute.

H

THE REDMOOR - Rock Your ALS featuring Lost Coast, Hunting Agnes, Hot for Alice, Lena and the Moped Mafia and DJ Mowgli.

7 p.m. Rock/Roots/Dance/ DJ/Various. $10.

RICK’S TAVERN - Black Bone Cat, Whiskey Daze, Naked Karate Girls, DV8 and LDNL. 10 a.m. Rock/Pop/ Dance/Various.

SCHWARTZ’S POINT JAZZ & ACOUSTIC CLUB - Eric Lechliter Trio. 9 p.m. Jazz.

Cover.

H

SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL (SANCTUARY) - The Perfect Children, The Whiskey Shambles and When Particles Collide.

9:30 p.m. Rock/Blues/Soul/ Garage/Various. $5.

H

STANLEY’S PUB Powerful Pills with Andrew Newbold of Jerry’s Little Band. 10 p.m. Rock/ Jam/Phish/Dead. Cover.

TAFT THEATRE - Home Free. 8 p.m. A Cappella. $29.50-$199.50.

THOMPSON HOUSE - God Of Nothing with Hive. 8 p.m.

Metal. $10.

H

URBAN ARTIFACT Wed ZepWeen, Go Go Buffalo and Colors in Mind.

9 p.m. Rock/Various. Free.

WASHINGTON PLATFORM SALOON & RESTAURANT - Brandon Coleman & Mike Sharfe Quartet. 9 p.m. Jazz. $10 (food/drink minimum).

SUNDAY 18

COLLEGE HILL TOWN HALL - Slick Willie and the Kentucky Jellies. 6 p.m.

Country/Honky Tonk/Rockabilly. $10.

H

THE GREENWICH - Pat Kelly & the PsychoAcoustic Orchestra. 7:30 p.m. Jazz. $12.

MANSION HILL TAVERN Open Jam with Deb Ohlinger.

6 p.m. Various. Free.

MOTR PUB - Vibrant Troubadours with Gelatinus Cube. 8 p.m. Rock. Free.

H

NORTHSIDE YACHT CLUB - Stiff Love with Mr. Clit and the Pink Cigarettes, Waterheads and Lipstick Fiction. 9 p.m. Rock/ Punk/Various.

and Automatic Evolution. 6 p.m. Rock. $8.

H

URBAN ARTIFACT Xzela, Devin Burgess and State of Calamari plus “Production 101.” 7 p.m. Hip Hop/Rock/Various. Free.

WASHINGTON PLATFORM SALOON & RESTAURANT - Traditional New Orleans Jazz Brunch with Buffalo Ridge Jazz Trio. 11:30 a.m. Jazz. $10 (food/drink minimum).

MONDAY 19

BLIND LEMON - Ben Armstrong. 7:30 p.m. Acoustic.

Free.

THE GREENWICH - Baron Von Ohlen & the Flying Circus Big Band. 7:30 p.m.

Jazz. Cover.

MANSION HILL TAVERN - Acoustic Jam with John Redell and Friends. 8 p.m.

Acoustic. Free.

H H

MOTR PUB - Big Cat & the Showgirls with Pout.

9:30 p.m. Rock. Free.

NORTHSIDE TAVERN - The Qtet. 9:30 p.m.

Rock/Funk/Fusion/Jazz/ Various. Free.

TUESDAY 20

ARNOLD’S BAR AND GRILL - Cheryl Renée. 7 p.m. Blues. Free.

BLIND LEMON - Nick Tuttle.

8:30 p.m. Acoustic. Free.

THE COMET - The Lovers.

10 p.m. Pop/Rock/Folk/Various. Free.

THE GREENWICH - CCM Jazz “Combo Madness” Concert. 7 p.m. Jazz. Free.

THE HAMILTON - Aaron Todahl. 9 p.m. Jazz. Free.

SONNY’S ALL BLUES LOUNGE - Blues jam session featuring Sonny’s All Blues Band. 8 p.m. Blues.

Free.

H

H

SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL (LOUNGE) - Boo Ray. 9:30 p.m. Country. Free.

SONNY’S ALL JAZZ LOUNGE - The Art of Jazz featuring the music of Art Blakey. 8 p.m. Jazz. Free.

H

COLLEGE HILL COFFEE CO. - Chris Collier. 7:30 p.m.

Folk. Free.

SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL (REVIVAL ROOM) - “Noir”. 10 p.m.

Goth/New Wave/Punk/ Industrial/DJ/Dance. $5.

SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL (REVIVAL ROOM) - American Grim, The World I Knew, Ovtlier, Into The Skies, Exit Wounds

BOGART’S - Turnpike Troubadours with The Bottle Rockets. 8 p.m. Country/Rock. Cover.

SILVERTON CAFE - Quagmires. 9 p.m. Rock. Free.

SCHWARTZ’S POINT JAZZ & ACOUSTIC CLUB - Society Jazz Orchestra Plays Ed Moss.

8:30 p.m. Jazz. Cover.

SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL (REVIVAL ROOM) - A Story Told, Summer Wars and Life In Idle.

6:30 p.m. Pop/Rock. $10.

H

TAFT THEATRE - Lyle Lovett and Shawn Colvin. 8 p.m. Americana/Folk/ Pop. $29.50-$54.50.

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Starting at $500 plus court costs.

12 Hour Turnaround.

810 Sycamore St. 4th Fl, Cincinnati, OH 45202

513.651.9666