2018 Issue 48 Creative Loafing Charlotte by Creative Loafing Charlotte

CLCLT.COM | JANUARY. 18 - JANUARY. 24, 2018 VOL. 31, NO. 48

ARTS: Chaos and beauty on the rails p. 22

City responds to domestic violence p.8

A Tiny Stage Grows in the Suburbs

Louis Beelerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s got the whole world of Charlotte acoustic music in his hands by Mark Kemp 1 | DATE - DATE, 2015 | CLCLT.COM

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Nick Jamerson will be at the Evening Muse with Tyler Hatley on January 24, but he’ll (probably) have his shirt on.

We put out weekly 8

NEWS&CULTURE CHARLOTTE’S WAKE-UP CALL A recent spate of murders brings attention to domestic violence

BY RYAN PITKIN 6 EDITOR’S NOTE BY MARK KEMP 10 THE BLOTTER BY RYAN PITKIN 11 NEWS OF THE WEIRD

FOOD&DRINK A MEDITERRANEAN MEDITATION Come to the dukkah side BY ARI LEVAUX 13 THREE-COURSE SPIEL: ALISON LEININGER BY MARK KEMP

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MUSIC A TINY STAGE GROWS IN THE SUBURBS Louis Beeler documents area songwriters in his living room studio

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NEWS

EDITOR’S NOTE

STOP THE VIOLENCE We can no longer hide behind illusions of domestic bliss That’s a total of six people dead in WHEN I BEGAN my journalism career as a police reporter in Burlington in the Charlotte as a result of domestic violence. early 1980s, I was extraordinarily naïve. And that is outrageous. What’s equally outrageous is that Each morning I’d go to the Alamance County Sheriff ’s Office and Burlington Police Charlotte police respond to about 100 Department to collect arrest reports from domestic violence calls a day. Sgt. Craig the previous day. And each morning I’d see Varnum, supervisor of CMPD’s domestic the same warrants over and over: assault on violence unit, tells Pitkin in his story on a female, indecent exposure ... the number of page 8 that domestic violence is “one of the domestic violence charges and other abuses, most — if not the most — underreported crimes. Those ones we do know about, we can mainly targeting women, was staggering. I had no clue. I had been sheltered in probably double those numbers easily.” Fortunately, Charlotte has a strong an easygoing middle-class family that rarely talked about such things. Few people not community of advocates who tirelessly directly affected by domestic violence and work with victims of domestic violence, other such abuses were talking about them. and soon the city will partner with several Even those affected often kept quiet, for fear organizations to build a Family Justice Center of being hurt again or re-traumatized by a — a model that, in other cities, has resulted in an increase in convictions of domestic system that didn’t take them seriously. abusers and a decrease in the bureaucracy That was more than 20 years ago that often sends victims back into and little has changed in terms of the hands of their abusers. the staggering number of cases. I was naïve when I began But two things have changed: reporting on crime in 1) I am no longer surprised Alamance County, but I’m when I hear horrendous no longer naïve about stories of violence and the problem of domestic abuse, and 2) we all, as a violence. None of us are, society, are now talking nor should we be. We about it — a lot. Violence can’t afford to when our and harassment against wives, husbands, children women are not getting and friends continue to be swept under the carpet abused and often murdered MARK KEMP today. Women across the by family members. country and world are standing On January 20, I will be back up and saying #MeToo. in Uptown Charlotte marching beside As Charlotte women gear up for this week’s anniversary of last year’s remarkable my sisters in this city, and I hope to see many Women’s March on Charlotte, there are many of you there, too. In more pleasant domestic news, I visited more discussions to be had and much more to be outraged about. The #MeToo movement Louis Beeler and his girlfriend Karen Butler has put the issue of sexual harassment at Beeler’s home near Northlake Mall twice in the workplace front and center. The recently for this week’s cover story. A little president’s offensive comments in an Access over a year ago, the couple launched an online Hollywood clip unearthed during the 2016 video series called Tiny Stage Concerts, in election continue to resonate with each new which they’ve documented the Charlotte outrageous and demeaning thing he says area’s rich singer-songwriter scene with performances from more than 80 artists, about other groups of people. In the news section this week, we present which they’ve videotaped in their living room. The plan, Beeler tells me in the story the first in our series of stories focusing on domestic violence, which continues to rip on page 16, is to get every talented singerapart families and result in violence — often songwriter in the Charlotte area — from Americana musicians to soul singers and deadly, and most often against women. According to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg others — onto his tiny stage to perform a Police Department numbers that news editor handful of their original tunes. Modeled on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, Ryan Pitkin looks at, 23 of the 86 homicides in the county last year were the result of the idea for Beeler and Butler’s production domestic violence, and that’s an increase came after they got frustrated with not being from the year before. And now, just two weeks able to hear the songs when they went out into 2018, we’ve already seen four domestic to see local musicians at bars and breweries. We offer you domestic bliss at the Beeler violence-related homicides — two against children, one against a woman and another home and domestic violence across the against a man. What’s more, two of the city — all in one issue. Because we can’t perpetrators committed suicide afterwards appreciate the former without acknowledging — one man (suicide by cop) and one woman. and fighting against the latter. 6 | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

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NEWS

FEATURE

CHARLOTTE’S WAKE-UP CALL A recent spate of murders brings attention to domestic violence BY RYAN PITKIN

HE YEAR started off quietly enough. Through the first 10 days of 2018, there had not been one homicide in Charlotte. By comparison, there had been four in the first four days of 2017. But on January 11, that silence was shattered in Westerly Hills, a usually peaceful neighborhood on the Wilkinson Boulevard corridor. That afternoon, police responded to a call at a home on Carlyle Drive and found 24-year-old Brittany White dead of a gunshot wound. One of White’s children, 3-year-old Julianna, was in the home, but police could not find her 3-month-old sister, Journei. Homicide detectives put the word out that the children’s father, Jonathan Bennett, was wanted for White’s murder and was believed to have left the home with Journei. The infant was soon found safe, but Bennett remained on the run until he showed up at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department headquarters in Uptown just before midnight and ambushed a group of police and probation officers standing in the parking lot. Bennett shot CMPD officer Casey Shue in the leg before he was shot and killed himself. And so ended the terrifying ordeal that was Charlotte’s first homicide of 2018. Three days later, Christina Treadway violently assaulted her two children, Iliyah and Isaiah Miller, 3 and 7 years old respectively, in her home on Sebastiani Drive in northwest Charlotte before taking her own life by jumping off a nearby bridge onto I-485. The children later died at the hospital, marking the second and third homicides of the year. On Monday, the fourth killing occurred when 35-year-old James Hawkins was shot and killed by his wife, Rataba Hawkins, in University City. At the time of the shooting, both served as deputies with the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office. At CL’s press deadline, the cause for Monday’s shooting was still unclear. What was clear was that the grisly nature of these six deaths in five days was not the only thing that connected them. Each death was a product of domestic violence, an oftunspoken but ever-present plague that has recently become a more severe problem in Charlotte. Now, city leaders and advocates hope the upcoming construction of a Family 8 | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

The parking lot at CMPD headquarters, where Jonathan Bennett’s crime spree, and life, came to an end. Bennet’s victim, Brittany White [top right]. Christina Treadway [middle right] took the lives of her two children before taking her own. Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s deputy James Hawkins [bottom right] was killed in his University City home by his wife, Rataba, also a deputy. Justice Center in the city can help curb the growing violence, as the placement of similar centers in various other cities has done. According to Sgt. Craig Varnum, supervisor of CMPD’s domestic violence unit, the department responds to between 35,000 and 40,000 domestic-related calls every year, which averages out to around 100 calls a day. Of those, about 25 percent end in a criminal report being filed. “We also know that domestic violence crimes are one of the most — if not the most — underreported crimes,” Varnum said. “Those ones we do know about, we can probably double those numbers easily.” While the number of reported incidents has remained steady over the past decade, the number of domestic-related homicides has gone up. According to CMPD numbers, of the 86 homicides committed in Mecklenburg County in 2017, 23 stemmed from domestic violence, an increase from the year before. While domestic violence includes violence among any family members, such as the slaying of the Miller children by their mother, the most common form of domestic violence is intimate partner violence, or IPV. There were 15 IPV murders in Mecklenburg County in 2017, which is also an increase from the year before. According to Varnum, the percentages of total murders that were domestic violence and IPV-related also went up compared to recent years, which shows a startling trend.

Now, in a year when each of the first four homicides in Charlotte have been incidents of domestic violence, people have begun to pay attention. As tragic as these high-profile incidents are, that sort of attention often helps lead to change, said Karen Parker, president and CEO of Safe Alliance, a Charlotte-based service organization for victims of domestic violence. Parker said that when these incidents occur, they spur engagement from potential volunteers, and inspire victims to seek help. “We have a number of people call us in terms of wanting to get involved, but also victims see the stories and become more aware of how dangerous their situation might be,” Parker said. Once a victim finally steps forward, the process of taking out protective orders and following through with filing charges against an abuser can be a lengthy one that often leaves the victim vulnerable and demoralized. Advocates are hopeful, however, that a recent partnership between CMPD and Safe Alliance could make a serious dent in domestic violence rates in the Charlotte area.

PARKER BEGAN WORKING in the

domestic violence field after graduating college. She was inspired to advocate for change after becoming close with a victim of domestic violence and watching her struggle through the court system in an attempt to hold her abuser accountable. “I saw how she was just getting re-

RYAN PITKIN

traumatized and revictimized by having to deal with the same system that we’re talking about today,” Parker said. “I thought, ‘Somebody needs to do something’ — and this was over 25 years ago.” While Parker said things have improved over that time, she is now more optimistic than ever after CMPD announced in December that it will be partnering with Safe Alliance and other domestic violence organizations in Mecklenburg County to open a Family Justice Center here. Based on a multi-disciplinary model in which different agencies operate within one location, the Family Justice Center offers multiple services to domestic violence victims under one roof. The centers are meant to ease the burden placed on victims who often have to spend hours and sometimes days going from one agency to the next to fill out paperwork and keep up with court dates, a process that often leads to victims giving up and letting charges drop. Parker described an all-too-common scenario in which a victim has to bring children along while they trudge from the police department to the district attorney’s office, to the magistrate to Safe Alliance then to any number of other agencies all within business hours. “It can take days and days to access all of the services that somebody needs,” Parker said. “It’s not only demoralizing but it’s really difficult to do logistically. Even if you have a

car, those things would be difficult to do, but a lot of people don’t have transportation, and there may be a perpetrator out there who’s stalking you while you’re trying to do all this.” Parker is hopeful that a Family Justice Center in Charlotte will allow victims to come to a place where they feel welcomed, and can trust that they aren’t just a statistic or another one of countless faces that pass through a building on any given day. “It’s difficult for people when you’ve got all these barriers. But then also, who do you trust to help you when you’re in this really difficult situation?” Parker asked. “It excites me to see that we might have this place where we can actually create that kind of setting where people feel comfortable reaching out for the services and they really do feel that trusting network. It’s not just a one-time transactional kind of thing.” According to Varnum, the Family Justice Center model has been getting real results in the more than 120 cities where centers currently operate. In communities with a Family Justice Center, domestic violence prosecutions have gone up as much as 60 percent, and domestic violence homicides have fallen in some communities by between 70 and 100 percent. Varnum hopes the Mecklenburg County center will help alleviate the workload for victims, and in turn, do the same for the officers in his unit. He pointed out that domestic violence calls for service are extremely volatile situations and can be dangerous for his officers. As if to prove his point, after we spoke with Varnum, three York County Sheriff’s deputies and a York city police officer were shot in the early morning hours of January 16 after responding to a domestic violence call that turned into a manhunt in South Carolina. CMPD officers had assisted York authorities in the incident. The suspect in that case, 47-year-old Christian McCall, also shot at and hit a South Carolina law enforcement helicopter that had joined in the search. While there is real danger to officers during any given domestic violence call, most are carried out without incident. Still, the fact that domestic violence reports require more paperwork from responding officers than other incidents can lead to a sense of burnout for officers. When victims don’t follow through with protective orders or file charges against their abusers, it can make officers feel as if their work was for naught. Experiencing that scenario repeatedly can drain the morale of beat officers who don’t go through the same training as officers in the domestic violence unit. “With the rate that we see domestic violence victims not continue with prosecution, it creates a very high level of frustration for our officers — particularly for our patrol officers who may not understand the psychological dynamics that are at play,” Varnum said. “The biggest challenge for all of us is not falling into that trap of caregiver apathy,” he added. “You’ve been doing this job a very long time and you see more failures than success and it’s easy to fall into that trap.” The CMPD is part of a steering committee composed of representatives from six different agencies, including Safe Alliance, Pat’s Place Child Advocacy Center and Mecklenburg County’s Community Support Services.

“It can take days and days to access all of the services that somebody needs. It’s not only demoralizing but it’s really difficult to do logistically. KAREN PARKER, PRESIDENT/CEO, SAFE ALLIANCE Varnum believes the team can get a Family Justice Center up and running in two years. “Asheville did it in a similar timeframe, Guilford [County] did it in a similar timeframe, so that’s my goal and I think that’s extremely realistic,” he said. “Then we would be looking at dreaming big, looking at a stand-alone facility that would encompass far more agencies and would provide wraparound service to not only victims of domestic violence, but to sexual assault, crimes against children, elder abuse — any type of interpersonal violence.”

ONE ORGANIZATION in Chalrotte has already stepped up to put those big dreams in motion. On January 9, the Charlottebased Jamie Kimble Foundation for Courage pledged $50,000 toward implementing the strategic planning process to build the Family Justice Center in Mecklenburg County. “We are convinced in this county that the implementation of a Family Justice Center will reduce the number of deaths attributed to intimate partner violence, and we are also convinced that the prosecution rates and services delivered to abusers will be effective in stopping their abuse,” said Ron Kimble, founder of JKFC. “That’s why the Jamie Kimble Foundation for Courage is the first money in to a strategic plan that will result in a Mecklenburg County Family Justice Center.” Kimble, a former deputy city manager in Charlotte, co-founded JKFC in April 2013 along with his wife Jan just eight months

after their daughter, Jamie Kimble, was shot and killed by an ex-boyfriend. The foundation supports domestic violence victims through secondary prevention, helping those who are in abusive relationships get the services they need and to find safety, but also through primary prevention, educating young people about the issue in an attempt to stop domestic violence before it begins. The foundation’s primary prevention work is done in middle schools, high schools and college campuses, teaching students about healthy relationships and how to recognize signs that they are in an abusive relationship. Varnum’s unit also does school outreach programs, especially next month, as February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. “I think it’s key to really get involved with young folks because a lot of things have changed, particularly in this last generation with relationships being out there for the world on social media, the immediacy of that,” he said. “The ability of folks to track what their partners are doing in real time changes the dynamics of relationships.” “Also, what some folks grow up seeing and witnessing on a daily basis may become normal to them because that’s all they know, and we try to let folks know that their normal may not be healthy,” he added. However, the education doesn’t stop at high school or college. Varnum is constantly doing research to educate himself and his unit on domestic violence statistics, so that

officers better understand this evil that’s so seemingly inescapable in society. He pointed out that, of all the known suspects in the homicides committed in Charlotte last year, 38 percent had histories of domestic violence. “What that tells us is that folks who are dangerous to their intimate partners and abuse their intimate partners are also dangerous to other people in society,” he said. Varnum also pointed out that a recent Alliance for Hope International study showed that men who strangle women (more than half of women who experience IPV will experience near-fatal strangulation) are more likely to kill a police officer or commit mass murder. Varnum said that, following Brittany White’s killing, investigators looked at a protective order she had filed against in April of 2017, in which the victim stated that she had previously been strangled by Bennett, who would eventually kill her and try to kill police officers within Varnum’s own department. “That tragically affirms what the nationwide research has been telling us, and brings this correlation very close to home,” Varnum said. For victims, advocates and police, the second week of 2018 has brought a lot of things close to home. Now, it is time to take action. This is the first in a series about domestic violence in Charlotte. Stay tuned to upcoming issues for continued coverage. RPITKIN@CLCLT.COM CLCLT.COM | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | 9

NEWS

BLOTTER

BY RYAN PITKIN

WINNER WINNER Police responded to a

call from the manager of a Circle K on The Plaza after they recently found that one of their employees had gotten lucky … too lucky. The manager told police they had watched surveillance video from the suspect’s shift in which the employee took lottery tickets from the drawer and scanned for winners without paying for the tickets. The suspect would then find a winner and take the amount out for that ticket, as if a customer had bought it. In total, the suspect took $1,400 in “winnings” from the cash drawer in just three hours.

SUCH A DRAG A 27-year-old University

City man filed a police report after being assaulted by someone who just wanted to hold hands for a little while. The victim told officers that the suspect signaled him over to a vehicle they were driving then grabbed his hand and drove off, dragging the victim for about half a mile. It’s unclear how this could possibly be an accident, but the report was listed as a non-criminal incident and no charges were filed. The victim was hospitalized but only suffered minor injuries.

IT’S OVER On the night after Christmas, all through the neighborhood, not a one light was shining, and the neighbors felt good. A 44-year-old woman living near South Mecklenburg High School learned last month that her neighbors were not going to put up with her keeping her Christmas lights on for even 24 hours past the holiday. The woman told officers that someone cut the electrical wire leading to her lights at around 5:45 p.m. on December 26. It might have been worth it just to buy more and put them up out of spite alone, but it’s (probably) too late for that (maybe). THE SMALL SCREEN Police responded

to an assault call in west Charlotte recently after a man faced a sweeping defeat during a fight in a home. The man told police that the suspect had thrown a TV at him then hit him with a broomstick before he finally took a hint and left the house. He luckily did not suffer any injuries.

TAKE IT BACK Employees at a Rooms To

Go in southeast Charlotte were dumbstruck last week when a man came to return an item, although he had no way to prove he had ever been there in the first place. A manager eventually called police after the man came in and refused to leave until he was given a refund, but told them he had no identification to verify that he was the one who had bought the item, nor did he know any phone number or even a name that would verify his account there. Looks like you’re keeping the couch, sir.

GIVE IT BACK Two men were more successful in getting their refund recently, albeit not from a company but from a burglar in Uptown. One of the men told officers that

10 | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

an unknown suspect had broken into his car and stolen his phone. He and his friend went looking for the suspect and found him nearby. They were able to get the phone back, but this new development upset the suspect, who pulled out a knife and also showed the men that he was packing. The suspect never did pull his gun out or get close enough to stab the victims, and everyone went home with what was rightfully theirs.

KEEP IT Police responded to a robbery call

at a Family Dollar in north Charlotte last week after another man was more successful with using implications to rob someone. The clerk at the store told police that the suspect simply reached over the counter and grabbed a $20 bill and a $5 bill then ran out of the store. When the clerk chased him, the suspect turned around and reached into his waistband, implying that he had a gun, although he never showed it. The clerk decided it wasn’t worth dying over $25, and smartly let the suspect run off into a nearby apartment complex.

SACKED There aren’t many people in this

city who could face off with Cam Newton in a fight, but it’s not too difficult to swing on a cardboard cutout of him if you’re feeling upset about his recent playoff loss — just make sure it doesn’t belong to someone else. A 28-yearold man called police to his University City apartment recently after a friend got too rowdy with his memorabilia. The victim told police that the suspect damaged his “cardboard statue” of Cam Newton, and also his wooden carving of a bird, doing $100 in damage.

STASHED A 37-year-old Charlotte woman

recently received a basket of goodies that she didn’t ask for nor want. The woman reported that her car was recently stolen at a Walmart in Concord, and police there were able to ID a couple suspects through surveillance and find them driving the car elsewhere in the town. After making the arrest, they returned the car to the woman at her northeast Charlotte home, but they apparently didn’t do a great job of cleaning it out. The woman filed a report with CMPD to turn over items still in her car that she said belonged to the thieves: 10 cellphones, a tablet, books, paperwork with the suspects’ names, a laptop, six backpacks, a wallet, a knife, a purse, two handbags, keys, syringes and, of course, a chainsaw.

YIN AND YANG A man who entered a

Rite Aid in the SouthPark area last week was apparently facing a potential problem, but he was destined not to let it happen again. According to the report, the suspect came into the store and shoplifted multiple pregnancy tests, and just in case those came back negative, he also stole $217 worth of condoms, so as not to go through anymore pregnancy scares. All stories are pulled from police reports at CMPD headquarters. Suspects are innocent until proven guilty.

NEWS

NEWS OF THE WEIRD

HE STARTED IT! Tennis instructor Osmailer Torres, 30, of Miami, was arrested in July 2016 after hitting a 5-year-old with the child’s pint-sized tennis racket and causing a bruise on the boy’s arm and a lump on his eyebrow, reports the Miami Herald. But now Torres believes he has a grand-slam defense: Florida’s Stand Your Ground selfdefense law. Defense lawyer Eduardo Pereira told the Herald the child was the “initial aggressor” who had participated in “various violent altercations” against other children, and Torres had acted “reasonably in trying to prevent harm” to others. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Oscar Rodriguez-Fonts will consider the claim in an upcoming hearing. FAMILY VALUES Mazen Dayem, 36,

of Staten Island, New York, obtained a restraining order against his father-inlaw, Yunes Doleh, 62, in September after Doleh repeatedly tormented him by waving his hairpiece at Dayem, provoking Dayem’s greatest phobia — the Tasmanian Devil of Looney Tunes fame. Not easily deterred, Doleh was arrested on Nov. 5 for violating the order after he “removed his wig (and) made hand gestures” at a funeral the two attended, Dayem explained to the New York Post. “It’s just a very large fear of mine, his damn wig. ... I have nightmares.” Court papers say Doleh “proceeded to grimace, snarl, gurn and gesticulate.” He was charged with criminal mischief in Staten Island County court, and then sued his son-in-law for defamation after photos from the arrest appeared on social media.

LEAST

COMPETENT

CRIMINALS

Teller County (Colorado) Sheriff Jason Mikesell listed his SUV for sale on Craigslist in November, and he was a little perplexed when he received a response from Shawn

Langley, 39, of Vail, offering to trade the SUV for four pounds of marijuana. Langley even provided photos of his black market booty and boasted about its quality, reported The Colorado Springs Gazette. “I saw that text, and I started giggling,” Mikesell said. Detectives set up a meeting and arrested both Langley and Jane Cravens, 41, after finding the promised four pounds of marijuana in their car. Sheriff Mikesell has removed his SUV from Craigslist.

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT On Nov. 27,

27-year-old Corey Hughes, who was due to be released from prison in February after serving most of a weapons charge, walked away from a San Joaquin County sheriff’s work crew in Stockton, California, according to the Fresno Bee. It took police almost a month to track him to a home in Stockton, where they surrounded the dwelling and apprehended him without incident. The manhunt might not be so remarkable were it not for the distinctive, whole-face tattoo Hughes sports, which makes his face look like a human skull. He was booked into the San Joaquin County Jail.

GOOD DEED, PUNISHED Malcolm Whitfield of Rochester, New York, was only trying to help when he ordered a Lyft car to deliver a drunk woman home from a bar in November. But when the woman vomited in the car, Whitfield was hit with a $150 fine to cover the damage. “For a second, I was like, ‘Never do anything nice again!’” Whitfield told 13WHAM. Lyft’s terms and conditions include damage fees, which most people don’t see in the fine print. Update: Lyft later refunded Whitfield’s fine and added $100 to his Lyft account for future rides. “Mr. Whitfield absolutely did the right thing by helping someone get home safely,” said Scott Coriell, a Lyft spokesperson.

OH, DEER It was just another early

December day at the Horsetooth Store, Gas and RV Park outside Fort Collins, Colorado, as employee Lori Jones conducted inventory and restocked shelves. Suddenly, she looked up to see “Mama,” a doe deer, inside the store, “looking at the sunglasses. Then she looked at the ice cream and over at the chips,” Jones told CBS Denver. “I kind of did a double take.” When shooing the deer away didn’t work, she broke out a peanut bar and lured the doe into a nearby field. Jones then returned to work, but soon looked up to find Mama was back, this time with her three fawns in tow. It took another peanut bar to draw the family away from the store, and Jones said she has learned her lesson. “You should never feed the deer because they’re going to keep coming back.”

SWEET REVENGE A mom in Hillsboro, Oregon, came up with the perfect retaliation for a porch pirate who nabbed her baby son’s Christmas pajamas package off the front porch. Angie Boliek told KATU she wanted to get her own “passive-aggressive revenge,” so she taped up a box full of 10 to 15 dirty diapers with a note reading “Enjoy this you thief!” Boliek left the box on her porch on Dec. 3, and by the evening of Dec. 4 it was gone. Boliek alerted Hillsboro police, but they don’t have any leads in the investigation. “It was fun to come home and see that it was gone,” Boliek said. NEW WORLD ORDER Taisei Corp., a construction company based in Tokyo, announced in December that it will use autonomous drones, taking flight in April, to combat karoshi, or overwork death, reported The Independent. The drones will hover over desks of employees who have stayed at work too long and blast “Auld Lang Syne,” a tune

commonly used in Japanese shops getting ready to close. A company statement said: “It will encourage employees who are present at the drone patrol time to leave, not only to promote employee health but also to conduct internal security management.” Experts are skeptical: Scott North, professor of sociology at Osaka University, told the BBC that “to cut overtime hours, it is necessary to reduce workloads.”

IRONIES Paul Jacobs, 42, of South

Hampshire, England, ordered a roll of bubble wrap from Amazon in November to protect his plants during a coming cold snap. Soon the box of bubble wrap arrived, protected by 100 feet of brown packing paper — enough to cover his whole backyard, he told the Daily Mail. “At first I thought they’d sent me the wrong order because the box was so heavy,” Jacobs said. He expects it will take two recycling collections to get rid of all the paper packaging.

GREAT ART! At the courthouse in the

Belgian port city of Ostend, performance artist Mikes Poppe, 34, was hoping to make a statement on the weight of history when he chained his leg to a 3-ton block of Carrara marble on Nov. 10 and began slowly chipping himself free. The Straits Times reports that for 19 days, Poppe ate, slept and worked on the marble until curator Joanna De Vos ordered the chain cut “for practical reasons.” “I don’t see the fact that I was freed as a failure,” Poppe told the Flemish-language Het Laatste Nieuws. “The act of getting free in itself was not the main goal,” he added, although he admitted that doing so had been more difficult than he thought. “I really underestimated that block of marble.” COPYRIGHT 2017 ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

Local Vibes is now on Spotify! Check CLCLT.com on Jan. 18 for episode 26 of our podcast, featuring Rob Lind of the legendary ‘60s garage-rock band The Sonics.

CLCLT.COM | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | 11

FEATURE

FOOD

A MEDITERRANEAN MEDITATION Come to the dukkah side BY ARI LEVAUX

ROWING UP, I remember

thinking it rather odd that the spice traders of yesteryear would subject themselves to such danger and hardship in search of cooking supplies. But life experience, such as when I recently found myself trapped in a kitchen with a glut of tomato sauce and cauliflower, has helped me to understand. It was a perfect pantry storm, created by my having gone a bit crazy putting up frozen tomato sauce last summer. Meanwhile, my wife had gone crazy at Costco with the bagged cauliflower florets, which were not going to last forever. Luckily, tomatoes and cauliflower are a great combination, but after a few laps around the track with the likes of butter and garlic, garam masala and oyster sauce, we were ready for something new. I busted open 12 | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

a tin of dukkah spice mix, and my boring old ingredients donned a spiffy new outfit. Back in the day, making boring ingredients shine was the main point of spices (that, and making spoiled food taste safe, but thankfully that’s not relevant to our story today). The transformation of the cauliflower was remarkable. It was a brand new dish, with seemingly brand new ingredients. But the only thing different was the spices. Dukkah (pronounced doo-KAH) is an Egyptian spice mixture that comes in countless regional variations and used in innumerable family recipes. The name — in many alternative spellings, including duqqa, do’a, and characters Englishspeaking folks wouldn’t recognize — comes from the Arabic word for the verb “to pound.” This action applies to all the components

except the sesame seeds, which are left whole. And it is those seeds, as well as the pounded nuts, that set dukkah apart from most other spice mixtures. You can find all the ingredients in most Charlotte supermarkets, from Food Lion to Harris Teeter or Whole Foods — or at spice shops like Savory Spice on South Boulevard [see Three-Course Spiel, next page]. The seeds and nuts of dukkah impart more than just flavor; they also impart body, substance and texture. The spices themselves, meanwhile, accentuate the savory flavors with an aromatic baritone. Those seeds and nuts are why dukkah, in Egypt, is more than just a spice mixture. It’s sustenance. Along with yogurt and flatbread, dukkah in oil can be the basis for an entire meal. When times are especially tough, it is the entire meal.

Meanwhile, increasing numbers big city menus and bigshot chefs are exploring the dukkah side. Any dukkah worth putting up with has to contain cumin, coriander, sesame seeds, dried herbs and some kind of nut, such as peanuts, pistachios or almonds. Ana Sortum of the legendary Oleana restaurant (and younger sibling Sofra), in Cambridge, Massachusetts, prefers pumpkin seeds. Sam Risho of The Silk Road Global Tasting Experience, in Missoula, Montana, which produced the dukkah spice mix that rescued my cauliflower, swears by Oregon hazelnuts. “Roasted hazelnuts have a unique rich flavor and good oil, but aren’t overpowering like peanuts,” Risho told me. Silk Road’s rendition of dukkah also contains fennel and black pepper, as well as mint, which gives it a

FOOD

THREE-COURSE SPIEL the oils will start to evaporate. For a whole spice, you can go up to two years without losing the flavor; for a ground spice, it’s anywhere from six to 12 months. When you see spices at the grocery store, that stuff may have been sitting on the shelf for a year. Or it may have been sitting in the warehouse for a year. You have no idea. When you come here, you can taste our spices and you can smell our spices, so you know what you’re getting.

PHOTO BY MARK KEMP

Dukkah strong herbal tone. The mix is aromatic and crunchy, and not at all sweet. Alas, Risho wasn’t at liberty to share the exact recipe. “The ingredients are listed on the tin, in descending order,” he offered.

RISHO WAS more than happy to show me the secret within the secret to making any dukkah recipe. As tricks go, it’s a good one; in the world of spice, teaching someone the ways of toasting is the equivalent of teaching a man to fish. Toasting releases essential oils, increasing the intensity of the spices’ flavors and helping to preserve the powder by coating it with oil, which keeps away the oxygen. The seeds can be toasted in many ways, including in the oven. Risho recommends the stovetop for the home cook, and demonstrated by roasting a batch of seeds and spices in roughly the same proportions as they appear in his dukkah mix. First, Risho toasted the sesame seeds — not raw, but toasted sesame seeds, which are better preserved then raw thanks to their having been toasted. Risho toasted them again, working the pan actively over the high flame, keeping the seeds moving, sometimes in a circular motion, then flipping the seeds towards him from the far edge of the pan like a thousand little pancakes, until the seeds were a darker shade of brown. He dumped them onto a plate and set them aside. “The sesame seeds have to be added after everything else is ground,” Risho cautioned. “You don’t want to pulverize them or you’ll get a tahini.” There is more discretion, in terms of particle size, with the nuts, which can be crushed fine or coarse, or anywhere in between. In Australia, where dukkah is a popular bar snack, the nut pieces are kept large. Professionals like Risho will roast each spice separately to absolute perfection, but the home chef can combine the fennel, cumin and coriander seeds in the pan together, as they all toast at roughly the same rate. Risho demonstrated, his hand working the pan, by flicking the seeds from the back of the pan to the front until the seeds browned and the air smelled like an exotic bazaar. He set those aside and added the black pepper, which took

PHOTO BY ELISE RISHO

the longest at about five minutes. They were well worth the wait. As the black peppercorns toasted, they became softer and puffed out, like a very peppery rice crispy. After the roasting demo, Risho combined the toasted ingredients into a dish, added crushed toasted hazelnuts and dried mint, and presented me with a stash of unground dukkah to augment my supply of pounded dukkah powder. I took it home to my lab, where it isn’t too much of a stretch to say that, in my research, I consumed meals that could be described as dukkah-flavored dukkah sprinkled with dukkah. Loosely following a recipe for dukkahencrusted salmon with blood orange sauce from the Silk Road website, I coated a filet of wild-caught catfish with dukkah and salt (the Silk Road version of dukkah doesn’t contain salt; other recipes do). I used wild-caught catfish from Chesapeake Bay, which is a salt-water, invasive fish with a “Best Choice” rating from Seafood Watch, and doesn’t taste muddy like a lot of catfish. It’s also really oily, a characteristic that is perfectly complemented by the dukkah. As the fish fried, I added to the pan some of the deconstructed dukkah mixture Risho had given me. It sputtered pleasantly in the grease on low heat. Meanwhile, I made a sauce, mixing dukkah powder with yogurt, olive oil, salt, lime juice and minced garlic. My dukkah fish and dukkah sauce were positively dukkah-licious, but for extra dukkah-sity I sprinkled some of the crispy unground seeds from the greasy pan, and garnished them with parsley. The next morning I scrambled eggs in the greasy leftover dukkah fish pan, and served them with my leftover yogurt garlic dukkah sauce, which is so good I could pound it any time, anywhere, on anything. The next morning, more deconstructed dukkah cackled in the pan, to be followed by blanched broccoli and eggs that had been beaten with yogurt. I served it with the yogurt dukkah sauce, because I can. Now I can see why people fought and died for spice.

FLAVOR SAVOR Alison Leininger of Savory Spice Shop breaks it all down BY MARK KEMP

YOU ARE READY to cook up the dukkah

recipe in this week’s food feature by Ari LeVaux, but you need to go shopping for the ingredients. We have you covered — at least in terms of getting the freshest flavors. Savory Spice Shop at Atherton Mill in South End has been the go-to spot for the best spices in Charlotte since 2011, when then-franchise owners Scott and Amy McCabe opened its doors on a Small Business Saturday. The McCabes have since moved on, but the shop remains. We sat down to put our 3-Course Spiel questions to its current assistant manager, Alison Leininger, who also happens to be a regular CL food writer.

Creative Loafing: If someone needed to get the ingredients for our dukkah recipe, could they get them all here? Alison Leininger: Yes, and we could sell them just a small amount if they wanted to do just this one recipe. We had a gentleman come in for the holidays who has this proprietary blend he makes every holiday season for his family — he came in just to get four ounces of this and two ounces of that, according to the ratio he needed for that one recipe. You don’t have to buy a full $7 jar of something if you’re just trying it out or using something for one recipe. We can sell you an ounce, or sometimes even a half an ounce.

Savory Spice is a company based in Colorado, with stores in other cities, but this shop has a very local vibe. How have you managed to maintain that? I attribute it to the original franchise owners, Scott and Amy, who made it such a fantastic atmosphere for both shopping and working. Amy worked hard to establish relationships with a lot of local restaurants and breweries and bakeries and coffee shops and that kind of thing. Papi Queso was just in here earlier today. Haberdish was in here today. Diana Sapp, who’s opening Undercurrent Coffee on Commonwealth Avenue, recently contacted us because she’s doing a coffee festival called Pour and she wanted to do some tie-ins. She told us, “When I think of local coffee, I think of Savory Spice because everybody uses your stuff.” We are very, very plugged in to this community.

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Why would someone shop at a little store like Savory Spice instead of just getting spices at the grocery store? The primary reason is freshness. For most spices you get, the flavor’s carried on the oils, and as soon as you crush or grind that — whether it’s a seed or a nut or whatever — CLCLT.COM | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | 13

THURSDAY

ROASTING COMPANY GRAND OPENING What: Charlotte’s seen a few frigid weeks lately, so help The Roasting Company help those who help others, and have some damn good food while you do it. RoCo is opening its new location in Plaza Midwood, and staff will be collecting items for Charlotte Family Housing, an organization that helps homeless families get back on their feet. CHA is looking for household supplies — you’re looking for $4.95 chicken meals and a pint, so it’s a match. When: 5 p.m. Where: The Roasting Company, 1332-B Central Ave. More: Free. charlottefamilyhousing.org

TREE PEOPLE: AN EXHIBITION FROM FINLAND

THINGS TO DO

TOP TEN

Women’s March SATURDAY

PHOTO BY RYAN PITKIN

FRIDAY

19 COLIN QUINN

What: This exhibit centers on treerelated myths like that of the World Tree, which grows at the center of the earth and connects our planet to the sky. Two Finnish photographers, Ritva Kovalainen and Sanni Seppo, shot these pieces while travelling through Finland, Estonia and East Karelia, a rural area bordering Russia. Following opening night on Thursday, Kovalainen and Seppo will hold an informal discussion with the audience about their collaborative process.

What: You can stress non-stop about the political climate in our country or you can laugh it off, at least for an hour during Colin Quinn’s stop on his “One in Every Crowd” tour. Quinn, who followed up his big break on MTV’s Remote Control with a gig as Weekend Update anchor on Saturday Night Live in the ‘90s, is now serving up takes on the Trump administration and the rest of the assholes of the world. According to Quinn, there’s one in every social set. (Hint: If you haven’t identified the asshole in your friend group yet, you might be it.)

When: 6:30 p.m. (Both nights) Where: The Light Factory, 1817 Central Ave. More: Free. lightfactory.org

When: 8 p.m. Where: Booth Playhouse, 130 N. Tryon St. More: $25 and up. blumenthalarts.org

FRIDAY

19 QUENTIN TALLEY AND THE SOUL PROVIDERS What: Is there no limit to what Q can do? Let’s get this on the record before we go any further: Quentin Talley, the leading light of OnQ Productions, is Charlotte’s one true Renaissance man: a poet, promoter, writer, actor, theatrical impresario — and now a singer fronting a red-hot soul band. On his website Talley says, “being on stage is a privilege and our craft is a responsibility worthy of virtue.” He was talking about the theater, but those words apply to this soulful gig as well. When: 10 p.m. Where: The Evening Muse, 3227 N. Davidson St. More: $5. eveningmuse.com

SATURDAY

WOMEN’S MARCH 2018 What: On January 21 of last year, more than 10,000 marched through Uptown to stand up publicly against the misogyny and policies of newly sworn-in President Donald Trump and to show solidarity with marches throughout the country. A year later, Trump has lived up to his potential as a wannabe autocrat running the country with lies and intimidation. At the same time, the nation’s women have stood up against sexual harassment and called men to account. They and their allies return to First Ward Park to show they will not back down. When: 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Where: First Ward Park, 301 E. 7th St. More: Free. womensmarch.com

H e re. (Sorry we had to.... ) But you know what is coming soon, 14 | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

Kim Foster SATURDAY

NEWS ARTS FOOD MUSIC ODDS

They Might Be Giants WEDNESDAY PHOTO COURTESY OF FOR HARRIET

MONDAY

BLACK GIRLS GATHER

TH3 HIGHER, PHAZE GAWD, INDIGO JO

What: Hey black girls in Charlotte: Wanna spend a Saturday afternoon of intelligent conversation with your peers about the issue you face, like community building and sisterhood? Hosted by Kimberly Foster, founder of For Harriet, an online community for women of African ancestry that encourages dialogue centering on the beauty and complexities of black womanhood in America. Register for the pregathering and enjoy a wineand-chat session. When: 1 p.m. (pregathering); 2:30 4 p.m.: 3 p.m. (main event) Where: Wadsworth House, 400 S Summit Ave. More: $18-$35. forharriet.ticketleap.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF ROASTING COMPANY

PHOTO BY SHERVIN LAINEZ

SATURDAY

Roasting Company THURSDAY

WEDNESDAY

PRISON ABOLITION 101

What: With a lineup of local hiphop and rock that makes for the show of the week, you’d think the folks at Unknown Brewing could’ve come up with better marketing than a poster with a guitar on it that reads: “Bars, Bands & Brews.” Not only does it feature Th3 Higher, Phaze Gawd and Indigo Jo, but also Blu House, Hectorina, Den of Wolves, Rizzy Rapz, Izzy Mil, Cyanca Is and KM. No worries: We’re here to tell you it’s a dope lineup and you should go.

What: Some people think that when the marches stopped and the National Guard went home after September 2016, the Charlotte Uprising ended. Many of the involved organizers have continued social justice work with other organizations, and they still come together to hold collaborative teach-ins like this one, which will help attendees understand the history of prison and police abolition in the U.S., how prisons and police threaten liberation for trans folks, and alternatives to policing.

When: 5 - 9 p.m. Where: Unknown Brewing Company, 1327 S. Mint St. More: $7. tinyurl.com/

When: 7-9 p.m. Where: Midwood International and Cultural Center, 1817 Central Ave. More: Free. charlotteuprising.com

WEDNESDAY

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS

NICK JAMERSON

What: Neither as surreal as their forebears The Residents, nor as satirical as their contemporaries The Dead Milk Men, They Might be Giants are beloved. But they don’t always get the respect they deserve. Maybe it’s because their innate weirdness seems so goodnatured – it’s no accident that their new album is called I Like Fun. But TMBG are masters at messing with expectations. Their lyrics resemble cut-up collages, with a melancholy air often lurking at the borders of their absurdist scenarios.

What: Most country music on the radio today sounds like the same mumbo jumbo about trucks, beer and shooting things. Anyone who has an appreciation for the art may find themselves instantly turned off. The Evening Muse, however, is hosting two country artists this Wednesday who put meaning into the music and have a knack for good storytelling. Sundy Best frontmangone-solo Jamerson and N.C. native Tyler Hatley pull inspiration from their rural American roots and the simple, relatable experiences of their lives.

When: 8 p.m. Where: Neighborhood Theatre, 511 E. 36th St. More: $25-28. neighborhoodtheatre.com

When: 7 p.m. Where: The Evening Muse, 3227 N. Davidson St. More: $10-13. eveningmuse.com

Creative loafing’s Cool ways to keep warm and avoid the cabin fever. Stay Tuned CLCLT.COM | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | 15

FEATURE

MUSIC

A TINY STAGE GROWS IN THE SUBURBS Louis Beeler documents area songwriters in his living room studio BY MARK KEMP

HE SINGER-SONGWRITER

cracks a few gallows jokes while tuning his guitar between songs on a tiny stage near the Northlake Mall. He’s in the middle of a set of intense tunes with titles like “Let the Burning Yell,” “The Funeral Blues” and “Sometimes It Falls Apart.” I ask if it’s OK to live-stream it. “We should play something that doesn’t suck, then,” the singer, Fort Mill-based Rick Spreitzer, says. “Wow! What a concept, Rick,” guitarist Kevin Edwards chimes in. He provides the harmonies and plays the crisp acoustic leads to Spreitzer’s strumming and fingerpicking. “You and me — broadcast out to the world.” “We’re going live, mama!” Spreitzer fires back, not missing a beat. Then he announces the next tune. “Let’s see,” he says. “We played this one about a week ago. It’s a sweet song to hang yourself to.” Spreitzer and Edwards are on a roll. It’s a little after 2 p.m. on a Saturday and the two are burning up the stage. But the stage they’re performing on isn’t in some local club or restaurant or brewery — it’s in the cozy living room of a two-story suburban home at the end of a cul-de-sac. A sign taped to the front door reads: “Tiny Stage Concerts.” The words form a rudimentary illustration — the T in “tiny” is shaped like a mic stand, the word “concerts” is part of a keyboard, and the whole thing is framed by a pair of stick figure-style speakers. Tiny Stage Concerts is the brainchild of singer-songwriter Louis Beeler, who in 2016 began videotaping some of his fellow musicians who regularly play at open-mic events in the Charlotte area. Today’s session is the 83rd performance Beeler’s taped since his first one, on April 8, 2016, with Huntersville songwriter Al Lemmond. Beeler has since brought in a wide range of songwriters — from former New York City anti-folk troubadour Grey Revell (a CL contributing writer) to neo-soul singer Adayla Turner to such legends of the Charlotte Americana scene as David Childers. “We’d just moved into our new house and I decided to build a stage for friends to come over and do song circles and stuff,” Beeler says. “And then once I had the stage in, I got the idea of doing house concerts.” He motions to the stage, constructed along 16 | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

Rick Spreitzer (left) plays and sings while Louis Beeler (wearing headphones) monitors the sound. a wall just a few feet from a couch, which sits along the opposite wall. “As you can see, it’s tiny in here,” Beeler says. “There’s not enough room for more than 10 people, so doing house concerts didn’t work out. “Then we got the idea of doing virtual concerts,” he says. “It just took off from there.”

WHEN IT CAME time to name this virtual concert series, Beeler chose a clever play on Tiny Desk Concerts, the National Public Radio series that’s become massively popular since it launched on NPR’s website in 2008. TDC has featured hundreds of famous artists, mostly critical darlings, ranging from hip young singer-songwriters like Julien Baker and soul man Leon Bridges to such songwriting legends as Randy Newman and Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The mostviewed episode of Tiny Desk Concerts came this past November when the hip-hop funk singer-songwriter Anderson Paak unleashed rousing performances of his tunes “Come Down” and “Heart Don’t Stand a Chance.” As of this writing, more than 14 million people have viewed the Paak episode alone. The idea for NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts came when Bob Boilen, the host of All Songs Considered, went into a club in Austin, Texas, with his music editor Stephen Thompson during the annual South by Southwest Music Conference. They were there to see Laura Gibson, a much-buzzed-about rising young singer-songwriter based in Portland, Oregon. But Boilen and Thompson became irritated when they couldn’t hear a word of her songs over the noise.

“It was this awful bar,” Boilen told Vox Media in 2016. “The speaker was pointing out the door, people were watching basketball games and cheering for their teams.” After the performance, Thompson joked to singer Gibson that she should just come by play for him and Boilen at the NPR office. Three weeks later, Gibson arrived to perform the very first Tiny Desk Concert, and Boilen posted it online to enthusiastic engagement from NPR’s users. “We had no idea what we were doing,” Boilen’s All Songs Considered cohost Robin Hilton told Vox. Beeler’s Tiny Stage Concerts came out of the same frustration with Charlotte-area clubs and breweries. “I had a circle of local songwriters who played open mics, and we wanted to have a platform where people could hear their lyrics,” Beeler tells me, after Spreitzer and Edwards finish their set. “We had been to too many songwriter shows where you just couldn’t hear anything.” Spreitzer, still cradling his blonde David Webber MJ model acoustic, pipes in: “If you love musc, if you love lyrics — this is a great opportunity to perform in an environment where you can hear the songs,” he says. Spreitzer is well-loved on the Charlotte songwriting scene, where he’s recorded and performed consistently since he released his first album, Meanderthal, in 2002. “It’s an opportunity to put your songs out there and know they will be heard.” He turns to Edwards, who’s casually picking on his Martin D-35. “I could hear Kevin’s strings squeaking over there while we were playing. I could hear

PHOTO BY MARK KEMP

every tap on his guitar. It was that intimate and that close. And that’s the way it is when we play at home.” That’s not the way it was when Spreitzer saw a band at a NoDa club the night before. “I went to the [Evening] Muse to see Jason Houseman, and I heard this great opening band, Mirror Man,” he says, and then lets out a sigh. “I couldn’t hear one lyric. I couldn’t hear anything.” After Beeler made the decision to install the tiny stage in his suburban home, he and his girlfriend Karen Butler set about converting the living room into a full performance space and studio, using the best equipment he could afford: a Canon SX-40 camera, a 24-track TASCAM Portastudio and a set of Blue Bluebird SL condenser microphones. The choice of mics was particularly important, he says. “If we were going to make sure people could clearly hear the lyrics, we needed great microphones.” The couple then turned to decorating the space, transforming it from bland suburban to colorful island kitsch — a backdrop of sand and blue sky, with tiki record covers, a cut-out of a hula girl and other memorabilia on the walls, and a ukuleles and numerous old guitars hanging from racks flanking the stage. There’s the 20th anniversary Ovation, the ‘70s-period Yamaha FG-300 with flower engraving, and the Godin Multiac Nylon electric-acoustic. “Most of the instruments are from pawn shops,” says Beeler, who wears his signature gaudy Hawaiian shirts during every taping. He points to one of the instruments. “But that Yamaha is actually

Karen Butler and Beeler (with his first guitar, a Yamaha) pose on their Tiny Stage.

ILLUSTRATION BY MOLLIE MCGALLIARD

PHOTO BY MARK KEMP

Beeler’s signature: A Hawaiian shirt.

Todd Murray plays the blues.

the first guitar I ever bought,” he says. “And the Godin — Grey played that one when he came in.” He is referring to Grey Revell, one of the earliest artists to do a Tiny Stage session. Revell had walked into the Beeler’s living room studio one Saturday in May of 2016 with his cheap, sticker-covered no-name acoustic, and performed a five-song set of his original songs including “Gone, Gone” — which became a surprise hit for Revell in Brazil after it appeared in a 2013 HewlettPackard TV commercial — and “First Cuban Boy on the Sun.” Beeler had met Revell at Freeman’s Pub in Gastonia, and the two immediately hit it off. “And then Louis wrote me one day and said, ‘I’m doing this little thing at my house. I’ve set up a little video studio and I’d like for you to come in and do a couple of numbers,’” Revell remembers. The singer jumped at the opportunity. After all, it was a chance to perform a handful of songs in a quality video. “It was awesome,” Revell remembers. “Here was this little stage with guitars everywhere and all this kitschy stuff, like palm trees and other knickknacks.” He laughs. “I loved it.” So did the jazz-soul singer Adayla Turner, who arrived one Saturday with her guitar-playing husband Rico Nye and 5-yearold son Emilio. “I was surprised with the wall art,” she says. “And my son loved the slot machine by the door.” Turner performed a handful of her jazzy and soulful tunes including the cool and sublime “Come on Over” and the more upbeat “Summertime, Vol. 1.” She had contacted Beeler after seeing a few Tiny Stage videos online. “That’s how we’ve gotten several people more recently — they get in touch with us,” Beeler says. “And Adayla had a great voice. She was fantastic.” Early on, it wasn’t so easy getting people to come out to the suburbs to perform in some guy’s home. “When we initially started, we wanted to do a weekly series, but

that first month we had trouble getting even one person a week to come in,” he says. “But then once it got going, more people were contacting us. Now we have agents calling and people sending electronic press kits.” Like many other Charlotte-area music boosters — such as John Tosco, whose Tosco Music Parties also began in his home, and the folks at Midwood Guitar, who bring musicians into the store for video sessions — Beeler says he’s inspired by all the hardworking musicians in the Charlotte area. And he says the city needs alternatives to local clubs, many of which have closed their doors recently at an alarming rate. “Good places to play seem to be pretty few and far between these days,” says Spreitzer. “But there’s still a wealth of talent in the Charlotte area,” Beeler adds. “And I’ve found that the most talented people around here are very humble.”

GUITARS AND MUSICIANS were always

around Beeler’s home, from the time he was born in New York, in 1963, to his childhood in the border town of El Paso, Texas. That’s where he learned about all kinds of music from his older brothers who played in bands. “I was in a few bands in high school, too, then duos and solo after that,” Beeler says. He was in his early 20s when he moved east, to Austin, where he’d occasionally run into Texas music greats like Stevie Ray Vaughn, Townes Van Zandt and guitar virtuoso Eric Johnson. “I saw Eric Johnson at a local music store one time. I’d gotten off work and gone to this music store next door, and he was in there doing a little guitar clinic,” Beeler remembers. “There were only about six of us there. It was great.” Beeler, who works as a service technician, fixing printers and other office equipment, during weekdays, has always played music as a side hustle. When he relocated again in 1987, this time to Miami, Florida, he continued to gig around. He lived in Florida for six years before relocating with his then-

“I HAD A CIRCLE OF LOCAL SONGWRITERS WHO PLAYED OPEN MICS, AND WE WANTED TO HAVE A PLATFORM WHERE PEOPLE COULD HEAR THEIR LYRICS.” — LOUIS BEELER

CLCLT.COM | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | 17

Spreitzer (right) and Edwards perform their January 6 episode of TSC.

PHOTO BY MARK KEMP

Grey Revell performs his TSC in May 2016.

PHOTO COURTESY OF TINY STAGE CONCERTS

Bluegrass outfit the River Ratz perform in September 2017.

Neosoul singer Adayla Turner and Rico Nye perform in August 2017

David Childers (left) and Korey Dudley perform in June 2017. 18 | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

PHOTO COURTESY OF TINY STAGE CONCERTS

Singer-songwriter Sky Noblezada performs in July 2017.

PHOTO COURTESY OF TINY STAGE CONCERTS

MUSIC

MUSICMAKER

HEADY SOUNDS Craig Bove composes psychological narratives BY PAT MORAN

THE FIRST THING Craig Bove asks his

Before each session, Beeler chooses from his closet of gaudy shirts. wife to Charlotte, where she had landed a job. Beeler immediately immersed himself in the local singer-songwriter scene, going out to open-mic events and forming a duo, The Acoustic Brothers, along with his buddy Mark Kendrick. After he and Kendrick split, Beeler continued as a solo artist under the name The Acoustic Guy, and he still gigs around in the Lake Norman area, at spots such as the Old Town Public House, Summit Coffee in Davidson and Joe’s Sports Bar in Concord. “I try to play about once a month or so,” Beeler says. But he’s busy these days. When he’s not working his day job at Kelly Office Solutions or actually shooting the Tiny Stage Concerts, he’s sitting at his desk in a adjacent room, spending up to six hours at his digital workstation editing each episode. He’d like to get a second camera to home in on the guitar solos and capture different angles on the singers, but that would mean even more time at his workstation. “We’ve used a second camera occasionally, like when people bring in keyboards,” Beeler’s girlfriend Butler says. She handles the videography during the sessions while Beeler makes sure the sound levels are right. “We’d like to do more of that.” “Yeah, that would be nice,” Beeler adds.

IT’S THE FOLLOWING Saturday, a full

week after Spreitzer sat on the stage cracking jokes during his appearance on Tiny Stage Concerts. Beeler and Butler are back in action, awaiting the arrival of this week’s guest singer-songwriter, Todd Murray, who performs acoustic blues and folk under the name Sincerely, Iris. “They’re usually about 15 minutes early or 15 minutes late,” Beeler says, as he preps the stage and soundboard, and Butler checks the camera. When Murray eventually ambles in with an acoustic guitar and a second instrument — a cool, homemade cigar-box guitar — the three do a little chitchatting before Murray

COURTESY OF LOUIS BEELER

TINY STAGE CONCERTS SONGWRITER SHOWCASE A celebration of past TSC artists, this week featuring Gabrielle Sophia, Bauner Chafin and Michael Stefano (Junco Partner). 3:30 - 6 p.m. Sunday, January 21. $8. Triple C Brewing Company, 2900 Griffith St. tinyurl.com/TSCshowcase

hops onstage so the couple can check the sound and visuals. Murray grabs a bottleneck slide and puts it to the strings of the cigar-box guitar, whose top is an old, rusted green-and-white Colorado license plate. Murray, who once lived in Colorado, slices into about a minute or so of his new blues-based song “I’m Not the Same” as Beeler adjusts the levels. Then Murray tells me how he came into contact with Beeler and landed today’s gig. “We met at an open-mic night and it kind of snowballed from there,” says Murray, who’s now based in Charlotte. “The waiting list was pretty long, actually. I think we probably first talked in October.” He’d seen several episodes of TSC and was pumped to come in. “A lot of my friends have played in it,” Murray says. “It’s rare. There’s nothing like this in Charlotte anywhere.” Beeler, wearing headphones and standing by the soundboard, grins ear to ear. He knows that what Murray just said is the truth, and he’s happy to provide the space for Charlotte musicians to document their work. “My goal,” Beeler had told me in an earlier conversation, “is to get every talented songwriter in the Charlotte area in here for a Tiny Stage Concert.” That just may keep him busy for the rest of his life. MKEMP@CLCLT.COM

students when they show him something they’ve written is, “What is it?’” “I make them define it,” says Bove, who’s taught music theory, music history and composition at Central Piedmont Community College since 1998. Bove is a performer and composer of “new music,” contemporary compositions that challenge audiences to consider sounds not often associated with songs and melodies. It’s an experimental field, but Bove has little use for abstraction. For him, music must draw on how people sense and interpret the world. It also should tell a psychological story, and it must be realized in the real world. “Any idiot can have a fancy idea,” says Bove, who also leads the Out of Bounds Ensemble, a Charlotte-based new music quintet. “But it has to be rendered as something that is real and acoustic.” Bove builds on the groundwork laid by his mentor and former teacher Morton Feldman, a pioneer of indeterminate music — works associated with the New York avant-garde art world which also included composer John Cage and visual artist Jackson Pollack. Indeterminate music embraces chance and the choices made by the interpreter. It’s an approach that emphasizes the value of material, the acoustic reality of the composer’s environment, whether is comes from an expensive instrument, or just the sounds you hear when you open a window. “I ask [students] to find their own voice and what it means to find that voice in a contemporary environment,” says Bove, who refuses to take credit for his student’s successes and explorations. “They’re already enthusiastic when they arrive. They’re already curious. It’s incumbent upon me to maintain that enthusiasm by asking questions such as, ‘What is it?’ and ‘What else can it be?’” Creative Loafing: You’ve referred to composing as creating psychological narratives. What does that mean? Bove: The sound world that I’m writing is a metaphor for what’s going on in my head. It’s an extension of the fiber of who I am, or what’s going through me at any particular time. I try to reflect those changing states that we sense, which is how we interpret the world around us. We sense many things. We sense with our head, our eyes and our instincts. What I’m trying to do is show how those senses can be realized metaphorically through sound, and how those sounds are waves that are resonating outwardly from what’s resonating inside. It’s an awareness of what is going on intuitively. How do you

PHOTO BY LOGAN CYRUS

realize it? How do you work through it to make it tangible? What are the intervals involved? What is the color involved? What is the register involved? Your Out of Bounds Ensemble has a remarkable line-up of local musicians. What’s its primary purpose? It’s a collaborative effort between myself and [musicians and composers] Ron Parks, Tomoko Deguchi, Mark Lewis and Geoff Whitehead. At the time, 10 years ago, there was no consistent outlet for new works in Charlotte. We had been here for a while, and we had done occasional concerts here and there, but there was no fixed center. Our purpose is to find a place for new works to be realized. We’ve gotten students involved. We’ve had several concerts, which featured works by faculty composers and professional composers as well as students. How did your piece “Risen” wind up on the recent Reflections on The Firebird? The CD was just released a couple of months ago, but the recording was done in July 2015. The Bechtler Museum wanted several composers in the area to write an interpretive work that had the Firebird sculpture at its core. This is the shiny reflective sculpture outside the museum. [He’s referring to the Firebird — L’Oiseau de feu sur l’arche, or The Large Bird of Fire on an Arch — by FrenchAmerican artist Niki de Saint Phalle.] The Bechtler Ensemble played the piece. They’re another ensemble in town that now has new music at its core. It’s starting to spread a little bit at a time. What’s next on the agenda? A piece called “Chaos and Aftermath.” It started life as a chamber work for the Bechtler Ensemble, suggested by the conductor Alan Yamamoto, who is division director at CPCC. He’s putting together a concert of the Britten’s War Requiem, which will happen in April 2018. I thought of “Chaos and Aftermath” as much more than just the definition of war; I thought of it more broadly as conflict, and how conflict can be interpreted. This piece became a very personal response to the changing landscape of the past year or so — how that landscape has been divisive, and how that divisiveness is difficult to justify, negotiate or equivocate. PMORAN@CLCLT.COM

CLCLT.COM | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | 19

MUSIC

SOUNDBOARD JANUARY 18 BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL Time Sawyer Acoustic Show (Summit Coffee Co., Davidson)

COUNTRY/FOLK Beavergrass Bluegrass Jam f. Jim Garrett (Thirsty Beaver)

DJ/ELECTRONIC Le Bang (Snug Harbor)

POP/ROCK Carmen Tate Solo Acoustic (Eddie’s on Lake Norman) Musicians Open Mic (Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub) Open Mic at Studio 13 (Studio 13, Cornelius) Chuck Folds Duo (Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub) The Contenders (Evening Muse) Karaoke (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) Mary Lambert, Mal Blum (Neighborhood Theatre) Mike Strauss Trio (Comet Grill) Paint Fumes, Trouble Boys, Wildlyfe (Milestone) Shana Blake and Friends (Smokey Joe’s Cafe) Uncle Buck, Reese McHenry & The Fox, Big Brothers Brother (Petra’s)

JANUARY 19

Charlie Mars (Evening Muse) Enrage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine tribute (The Underground) Flow Tribe (Heist Brewery) Idlewild Soouth (Smokey Joe’s Cafe) Matt Bennett Band (Tin Roof) Maynard Nash Benefit: Gary Bear Ramsey, The Fried Melon Blues Band, Firebone, Maiden Shine, Southern Thunder (Keg & Cue) Native Harrow (Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub) Natty Boh (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) On The Border - The Ultimate Eagles Tribute Show (The Fillmore) A Stained Glass Romance, Beshiba, Black Fleet, Abhorrent Deformity (Snug Harbor) Unknown Hinson, Diving Board And The Deep Ends, The Penitentials (Visulite Theatre) Wicked Powers (RiRa Irish Pub)

JANUARY 20 BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL Martha Redbone Roots Project (Davis Theatre, Concord)

CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Charlotte Symphony: The Magic Flute (Knight Theater)

DJ/ELECTRONIC

Charlotte Symphony: Mozart’s Magic Flute (Knight Theater)

#24Million Tour with DJ Misbehaviour (Snug Harbor) Digital Noir featuring DJ Michael Price and DJ Spider (Milestone) DJ Overcash (RiRa Irish Pub) Tilted DJ Saturday’s (Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery)

COUNTRY/FOLK

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL Latin Night with Mofungo and more! (Petra’s)

CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH

DJ/ELECTRONIC

Bars Bands and Brews One Year Anniversary: Hectorina. PHAZE GAWD. Th3 Higher. Blu House. Indigo JO. KM. Den of Wolves. Rizzy Rapz. Izzy Mil. Cyanca. A Man With Antlers (Unknown Brewing Co.)

DJ Method (RiRa Irish Pub) Silent Disco (Rooftop 210)

POP/ROCK

David Rawlings (Neighborhood Theatre) The Lenny Federal Band (Comet Grill) Tracy Lawrence (Coyote Joe’s)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Quentin Talley and the Soul Providers (Evening Muse)

20 | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

POP/ROCK

9daytrip (Smokey Joe’s Cafe) Armory (Tin Roof) Blu House, When Particles Collide, The Lonely Jones (Petra’s)

SOUNDBOARD

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MUSIC

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SATURDAY, FEB 3

DIAMOND RIO LIMITED ADVANCE $18 ALL OTHERS $20

Bullfrog Moon (Birdsong Brewing Co.) Hard Cider (Comet Grill) Jackyl (The Underground) Josh Tesler (Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub) Juice (Evening Muse) Pluto for Planet (RiRa Irish Pub) Rebelution, Raging Fyah (The Fillmore) Tigerdog, Tyler Boone, Human Resources (Visulite Theatre) Ultrafaux, Lon Eldridge (Evening Muse) A Yams Matinee: Macseal, Retirement Party,

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Downhall, Modern Everything (Milestone)

Red Rockin’ Chair (Comet Grill)

JANUARY 21

POP/ROCK

CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Drew Dansby and Keona Rose (Davidson College Tyler-Tallman Recital Hall, Davidson)

DJ/ELECTRONIC Xander Wilson Dj and House Jams (Crown Station Coffeehouse and Pub)

#MFGD Open Mic (Apostrophe Lounge) Knocturnal (Snug Harbor)

DJ/ELECTRONIC Lost Cargo: January Edition! (Petra’s)

CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Bradford Ray Bailey (Midwood Guitar Studio)

The Nude Party, Butthole, 2 Slices (Snug Harbor) Telltale, Hang Tight, Ol’ Sport (Milestone) Uptown Unplugged (Tin Roof) Tuesday Night Jam w/ The Smokin’ Js (Smokey Joe’s Cafe) Open Mic hosted by Jarrid and Allen of Pursey Kerns (The Kilted Buffalo, Huntersville)

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

POP/ROCK

Free Hookah Wednesdays Ladies Night (Kabob House, Persian Cuisine)

Find Your Muse Open Mic welcomes back Rupert Wates (Evening Muse) Music Bingo (Tin Roof, Charlotte) Music Trivia (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern, Charlotte) Open Mic with Jade Moore (Primal Brewery, Huntersville) Open Mic with Lisa De Novo (Legion Brewing) Royal Thunder, Backwoods Payback, Space Wizard (Milestone) Ruth B, Hailey Knox (Neighborhood Theatre)

SATURDAY, FEB 17

WALKER HAYES LIMITED ADVANCE GA $12 ALL OTHER GA $15 . VIP $69

FRIDAY, MARCH 2

CODY JOHNSON

TICKETS ON SALE NOW $12

THURSDAY, MARCH 8

SOLD KANE BROWN GENERAL ADMISSION $25 OUT! VIP $99

TICKETS ON SALE NOW! FRIDAY, MARCH 9

JANUARY 24

POP/ROCK

LIMITED ADVANCE $13 ALL OTHERS $15

COUNTRY/FOLK

Bone Snugs-N-Harmony (Snug Harbor)

JANUARY 22

THE CADILLAC THREE

JANUARY 23

HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B

Misery Loves Company, Go/Ask/Alice, I Am Heir, Blackwater Drowning, The Worshiper (Milestone) Omari and The Hellhounds (Comet Grill) They Might Be Giants (Neighborhood Theatre) Willie Nile (Evening Muse) Winter Jam 2018 Tour Spectacular: Jordan Feliz, KB, Building 429, Skillet, Kari Jobe, Cody Karnes (Spectrum Center)

FRIDAY, FEB 9

COUNTRY/FOLK Open Mic/Open Jam (Comet Grill)

POP/ROCK Brandon Davidson (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) January Residency: Swim in the Wild, The Business People, Daddy’s Beemer, The Bloodworth Project (Snug Harbor) Modern Heritage Weekly Mix Tape (Snug Harbor) Nick Jamerson (of Sundy Best), Tyler Hatley (Evening Muse) Songwriter Open Mic @ Petra’s (Petra’s) Trivia & Karaoke Wednesdays (Tin Roof) Ziggy Pockets (RiRa Irish Pub)

OUT! VIP $99

DJ/ELECTRONIC Karaoke with DJ Pucci Mane (Petra’s) Cyclops Bar: Modern Heritage Weekly Mix Tape (Snug Harbor)

SOLD KANE BROWN GENERAL ADMISSION $25

1/17 DOROTHY 1/19 UNKNOWNHINSON 1/20 TIGERDOG + TYLER BOONE & HUMAN RESOURCES 2/15 THE BLACK LILLIES 2/6 G. LOVE AND SPECIAL SAUCE 2/11 WHITE BUFFALO 2/28 BRETT DENNEN 3/4 BAND OF HEATHENS 3/8 DAVID ARCHULETA 3/13 COAST MODERN 3/25 ICON FOR HIRE 4/14 TOUBAB KREWE 4/20 The OLD 97s NEED DIRECTIONS? Check out our website at clclt.

com. CL online provides addresses, maps and directions from your location. Send us your concert listings: E-mail us at mkemp@clclt. com or fax it to 704-522-8088. We need the date, venue, band name and contact name and number. The deadline is each Wednesday, one week before publication.

SATURDAY, MARCH 17

FRANK FOSTER WITH SPECIAL GUEST DENNY STRICKLAND LIMITED ADVANCE $10 ALL OTHERS $12

SATURDAY, MARCH 24

LANCO

LIMITED ADVANCE $15 ALL OTHERS $18

SATURDAY, APRIL 21

THE LACS

LIMITED ADVANCE $17 ALL OTHERS $20 ON SALE AT COYOTE JOES AND COYOTE-JOES.COM COYOTE JOE’S : 4621 WILKINSON BLVD

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CLCLT.COM | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | 21

The State of Things 1710

COURTESY OF SUSAN BRENNER

ARTS

FEATURE

CHAOS AND BEAUTY Painter Susan Brenner examines upheaval and celebrates trees BY PAT MORAN

SUSAN BRENNER, THE STATE OF THINGS Opening Reception: Jan. 17, 5 p.m. Rowe Galleries, UNC Charlotte 9201 University City Blvd. The exhibition runs Jan.17-Feb. 7. coaa.uncc.edu

22 | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

RISIS. IT’S on everybody’s minds these days. It’s certainly on Susan Brenner’s mind. She’s a painter and retired UNC Charlotte art professor whose new exhibit, The State of Things, grapples with society as it lurches to the brink. “I want to talk about our tendency towards chaos,” Brenner says of the show, which opens January at her alma mater’s Rowe Galleries and runs through February 7. “I would say that our current politics are in constant crisis. “My natural desire is to create order and beauty,” she adds, “so there’s a kind of give and take in the work between this expression of upheaval and my attempt to make sense of it — or to manage it.” As if to illustrate this point, as soon as Brenner closes The State of Things, a meditation on collapse and divisiveness, she will debut another project — one that celebrates community and the things that bring us together. Two public art pieces, which the 67-year-old artist completed for the LYNX Blue Line extension, are scheduled to be unveiled in March when the University City Boulevard and J.W. Clay light rail stations open. In her exhibition and public art, Brenner walks a tightrope between two poles. One is the shared dreams and ideals that bind us together as a people, and the other is entropy’s inexorable march to dissolution. In her work, Brenner jumbles and juxtaposes photography, digital imaging, line drawing and painting. The result is multi-textured paintings that are dense and hypnotic. Images that are either biological or mechanical — or a combination of the two — leap out at the viewer from the coiling lines of her canvasses before merging back into the labyrinthine lines of her composition. It’s an interactive effect which caused one reviewer, Joshua Peters writing for Charlotte Viewpoint, to compare Brenner’s works to an abstract Where’s Waldo? page. Brenner laughs at the comparison, though she admits, “I understand where that description is coming from.” One description of her work that she does take issue with, however, is “abstract expressionism.” She prefers the term “semiabstract,” because of her work’s illustrative aspects. “There are things that you can recognize

as well as things you can’t, but I’m [pointing] you in a direction,” Brenner says. She believes most viewers will perceive a degree of instability in the forms she paints. They will get the feeling that shapes and lines are active and in motion. There is room for interpretation, she offers, but each piece also provides a framework for that interpretation. “It’s not completely wide open,” Brenner says. The social critique inherent in The State of Things always has been a part of Brenner’s work. In 1991, after earning a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California, Brenner started creating work that was based on existing images and representations of women in the culture. “I was appropriating images that already existed and then using them to provide commentary,” she says. “There were references to books, literature and art history.” Soon she started creating her own images rather than commenting on ones that existed. “I suppose I’m still critiquing culture in a certain way,” Brenner says. “But I’m not taking something out of the media or out of art history; I’m going out to scrap metal yards and shooting pictures.” Nowadays, the artist’s process begins with those photographs Brenner takes herself. She then digitally turns them into line drawings. In a previous show, Natural Histories, which exhibited at Central Piedmont Community College in 2015, the drawings were manipulated extensively so that they bore scant resemblance to the original photographs. By contrast, the photos used in The State of Things remain in the line drawings. “It’s more or less representative of what I photographed,” Brenner says. Once she is satisfied with her digital line drawings, she then paints bold colors over them in combinations that are sometimes unsettling. In previous shows, such as Natural Histories and After Migrations, from 2007, Brenner’s shapes and lines suggested biological forms. “I think I tend toward making that type of image — things that are biomorphic,” she says. But for The State of Things, Brenner turned toward more industrial shapes. “I wanted to work with forms that are obviously manmade or machine made, things that had harder edges,” she says. “There’s a mechanical aspect to the work — all those straight lines and angles.” With lines so straight and sharp they look like light glinting off a knife’s edge, Brenner’s industrial-strength images convey a world in constant accelerating turmoil. “I pay a lot of attention to the news and what’s going on in the world,” she says. There may be growing awareness of chaos today, because of social media and the 24-hour news cycle, but there is more at play in Brenner’s work than just increasing awareness. “I think with our current politics, the world is in much more uproar than is normal,” she says.

IF BRENNER’S images in The State of

Things represent the world’s harsh and hard-edged yang, her public work for LYNX points to our supportive and cooperative yin. Brenner was contracted to start the

COURTESY OF SUSAN BRENNER

PHOTO BY JEFF CRAVOTTA Susan Brenner long-gestating project in 2009, but didn’t begin the work until the following year. It took another seven years for her to complete the project. The project is a pair of glass works Brenner did for elevator stairway towers, one at the University City Boulevard station and the other at the J.W. Clay terminal. At each location, the elevator takes LYNX riders up to a bridge that crosses the street to the parking deck. To create the glasses, Brenner followed a process similar to her methods for her paintings and drawings. “Both images are based on Charlotte’s tree canopy,” she says. “I photographed trees in winter when they were without leaves so I could focus on the structure of the branches.” The piece at J.W. Clay resembles a tree constructed from triangles, each triangle filled with intricate details containing linear elements and colors. It’s called “The Red Tree,” Brenner says, because she was inspired by North Carolina’s red clay soil. The triangle represents Charlotte’s different neighborhoods as well as the functions of the tree, Brenner explains. She likens a tree’s branching structure to public transportation, which connects different parts of the city and creates community. “The branching structure is like the circulatory system of the tree, and it’s similar to the animal and human circulatory system,” Brenner says. “So transportation is like the lifeblood of the city.” Plus, she adds, Charlotte’s trees add so much to the city’s beauty. At the University City Bouelvard station, Brenner’s glass work is called “Waterfall.” It’s also based on the tree photographs, she says, but its tree-like properties are not as obvious as they are at J.W. Clay. Here, Brenner combines the tree forms with layers of color to create a fluid and watery piece. Quite simply, it’s beautiful, she says. “With both of these, I just wanted to make pieces that were happy,” Brenner says. “I hope they will brighten the day of anybody who interacts with them.”

The State of Things 1711

“I THINK WITH OUR CURRENT POLITICS, THE WORLD IS IN MUCH MORE UPROAR THAN IS NORMAL.” SUSAN BRENNER

PMORAN@CLCLT.COM

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24 | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

FILM

ARTS

FULL-COURT PRESS Spielberg Vs. The White House BY MATT BRUNSON

THESE

TURBULENT

and trying times, a timid and largely ineffectual media is par for the course, feigning acts of hardhitting journalism when maintaining some measure of the status quo is what’s really taking place. (Latest of many cases in point: Even with that offensive “shithole” comment added to countless other affronts, the major mainstream outlets still refuse to directly call that Cretin-in-Chief Trump a racist, couching his vileness in less threatening terms like “racially tinged” and “controversial.”) Three cheers, then, for Steven Spielberg’s The Post (***1/2 out of four), which not only recalls a more honest, more efficient and more courageous period for the American newspaper but also serves as a throwing down of the gauntlet for the modern counterpart. The Post may not match the brilliance of 1976’s All the President’s Men, but it still serves as a potent reminder of the potential power of the press. As with that look at the Watergate scandal and the toppling of a U.S. president, this one also involves the Washington Post and editor Ben Bradlee. Jason Robards won an Oscar for portraying Bradlee in All the President’s Men; Tom Hanks probably won’t enjoy comparable awards glory, but he’s nevertheless excellent in the role, seen ordering his troops to find out what bombshell the New York Times plans to explode on its cover in June 1971. It turns out to be some of the pages of the Pentagon Papers, leaked by analyst and activist Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys) to alert the nation to the lies spun by several administrations in regard to the Vietnam War. Once the Nixon White House manages to obtain a temporary court injunction against the Times, preventing it from publishing any more pages, Bradlee sees this as the Post’s opportunity to pick up the baton. But to do so, he needs the approval and authorization of Post publisher Katharine “Kay” Graham (Meryl Streep), already in the spotlight as the sole female boss of a major American newspaper. Armed with a stellar screenplay by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer, Spielberg responds by serving up his best picture in 15 years. Clearly energized by the urgency and import of the piece, the director has fashioned an engrossing film that functions as both a historical record (with the usual allowances for Hollywood embellishments, of course) and a cautionary tale. He’s backed in his zeal by a note-perfect cast — Streep and Hanks, of course, but also a supporting line-up that runs especially deep. Particularly of note are Tracy Letts (also terrific in Lady Bird) as Fritz Beebe, Graham’s

sensible friend and advisor, Better Call Saul’s Bob Odenkirk as Ben Bagdikian, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who became Ellsberg’s Post liaison, and Bruce Greenwood as Robert McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense who’s seen as both combative and morally compromised. In an awards season in which most of the players are either cutting-edge endeavors or indie darlings, The Post seems comparatively old-fashioned in its content and in its execution. That’s hardly a criticism, though. Blessed with veterans on both sides of the camera, here’s a classically trained piece that manages to be both robust and rousing. Planes, Trains and Automobiles might be the name of a beloved John Hughes flick from the 1980s, but it’s also Liam Neeson’s preferred modes of transportation en route to dispatching various baddies with bonecrunching determination. Under the watchful eye of director Jaume Collet-Serra, Neeson has taken to cars in Unknown, an airplane in Non-Stop, and now a locomotive in The Commuter (**1/2 out of four). (In their joint offering Run All Night, the actor was content just to hoof it.) In The Commuter, Neeson plays Michael MacCauley, a former cop who has spent the past decade working as an insurance salesman. Unexpectedly losing his job, Michael’s in a vulnerable state, which largely explains why, on his train ride home, he accepts a mysterious offer from a complete stranger (Vera Farmiga): Locate a certain person on the train and earn an easy $100,000. Michael takes the bait, but once he realizes that the individual he’s expected to expose is being targeted for assassination, he spends the rest of the commute trying to figure out how to thwart the killers. The January-February stretch of any new year is often a dumping ground for the studios’ tax write-offs, but that’s clearly not the case when it comes to Liam Neeson action vehicles — here, it’s a matter of strategic scheduling, as most have tended to do quite well at the box office against limp competition. The Commuter similarly gets the job done, with Neeson’s committed performance providing a strong center to an increasingly outlandish storyline. The identity of the “surprise” villain was obvious before the script was even written (and the way he trips himself up is daft beyond compare), and late innings find Neeson’s Everyman engaged in death-defying activities that would give even Superman pause. But for those looking for a reasonably satisfying mix of mystery and muscle, The Commuter should be just the ticket. BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM

LIONSGATE

Colin McFarlane and Liam Neeson in ‘The Commuter.’

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Feb. 2-11, 2018

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NIGHTLIFE

NEW YEAR, SAME ME, NEW BAR Will it be the worth a ‘Daily’ visit? Dandelion Market. So when I first visited The Daily, I was dead set on one particular for us Queen City nightlife rabble rousers. menu item: crab and bacon gnocchi. Panthers season is officially over, meaning There were a few other features that no more Sunday Funday Game Days for us. caught my eye, such as beef jerky, white Hell, we might even walk into the office on cheddar biscuits and the pot pie. However, Monday bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready there weren’t many menu items that were to be productive. actually available during our visit – as was OK, let’s be honest, that’s not going to the case on other occasions as well, based on happen. the complaints of some of our other friends. While I may be licking my wounds over Blame it on beginner’s luck or locally sourced the end of the best reason to start drinking ingredients, but I would imagine the kinks in before many people are out of church, I can food availability have been ironed out over at least fondly look back at the end of this the past month. year’s Panthers season and say, “I found There were two patio areas located myself a new Charlotte drinkery.” off the main dining area. The one in the It was about a month ago, after a Panthers’ front faces toward the street and offers a win against the Green Bay Packers, that I first brighter space for dining in their relaxed stumbled into one of my new favorite Uptown atmosphere. The other, toward the rear of spots. After the game and many, many drinks, the dining space, is primarily designed someone had the fine idea that we for visitors who want to enjoy should brave the cold to check out a cigarette while standing one of the newest additions around high top tables and to the local nightlife scene – one of my favorites: heaters The Daily Tavern. to keep the cold at bay for The venue had only consistently chilly patrons been open for a week but like myself. a few friends had already Fortunately, they checked it out. They were actually had the crab and the experienced ones, bacon gnocchi for us to and if they were game, I try. I mean, who wouldn’t was game. I went to the want crab and bacon website and read their AERIN SPRUILL together?! The pungent aroma welcome: “A refined watering of parmesan may have thrown hole with a nod to the modern us off at first, but after tasting the day hangout. A cozy interior with dish, we were impressed. Someone else a laid-back patio serving up a diverse in our group had ordered The Daily Mac selection of craft beers and cocktails along — a house-ground double burger with jack with some tasty American fare. A place that cheese, LOP and a sesame seed bun with invites you to settle in and relax for a while.” a side of shoestring fries. Based on how Hmmm, that was good enough for me. quickly he scarfed down the burger, it was Located on North Church Street in the apparent that this menu item was also a hit. Fifth Third Center, The Daily has taken over the space that was previously known Wondering about the libations? While as Dillinger’s Taproom, which closed in April I’ve been on a whiskey-and-coke kick over 2014. While I didn’t get a chance to check out the past few weeks, The Daily has quite an Dillinger’s, based on what I’ve seen online, impressive cocktail menu that begged me to The Daily has made quite a few updates that expand my recently narrowed tastes. contribute to its unique atmosphere. And The long bar extends almost across the it won’t come as a surprise to anyone who entirety of the venue and features over 20 visits that the project is backed by the same draft beers, liquor by the shot, wine and craft team that operates Connolly’s Irish Pub, cocktails for $12 a piece. Of the cocktails Prohibition, Dandelion Market, Tyber Creek featured, the Old School seems most up my Pub and the Workman’s Friend. alley: Bulleit Rye, brown sugar thyme syrup, The daily’s dim lighting and spacious fresh muddled cranberries and orange. It design calls back to its predecessors was just good enough to make this spot, if throughout Uptown, South End and Plaza I’m not careful, a ‘Daily’ stop. Midwood. That in mind, The Daily seems Be sure to stop by on any day of the like it will integrate into Charlotte nightlife week (Monday – Friday 3 p.m. to 2 a.m. quite nicely. and starting at 10 a.m. on Saturdays and Naturally, the first thing I wanted to take Sundays). Did I mention they have brunch a look at was the food menu. After taking on Saturday and Sunday?! Yeah, I’ll be a long hiatus from gnocchi, I recently fell getting a peak at that menu soon. in love with the sweet potato version at BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM

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FeeLing Lonely?

CROSSWORD

9 B.C. ACROSS

1 Opera start 5 “Yes, yes, Juan!” 9 Take -- (taste some) 13 Cheeky type 19 Road, in German 20 Foretoken 21 Lovett of country 22 No longer surprised by 23 Ram forcefully? 26 Frito Lay chip 27 December mall hirees 28 Teeny 29 Greeting sent by a cosmetics company? 31 “Agnus --” 32 Cache 34 Southeast Kansas city 35 Where lots of mail deliverers scuba-dive? 40 Not at all nigh 44 Most robust 45 Kazan of film directing 46 Hilo “hello” 47 In days past 48 “Lo-o-ovely!” 49 Set crossword hints to music? 53 Prefix with pathology 56 The Big Apple, briefly 58 Fissile rock 59 Midday sleep 60 Divide by type 62 Contract out 66 TV title alien 67 Water whirl 68 Required maintenance items? 73 Face cover 76 From -- Z 77 Big fair 78 Character 82 “Scat!” 83 Prologue 85 Upsilon’s follower 88 Qdoba treats 89 Inelegant five-member band? 94 66-Across et al. 96 Salt’s “Help!” 97 Muslim palace area 98 Haul around 99 Number of magazine subscribers, e.g. 102 Writer Haley 103 Long to look at a periodic table? 107 Feng --

108 Poetry Muse 109 White-haired 110 Library cubicle in which Chablis is served? 116 Jackie O.’s “O” 117 New York state prison 120 Is wild for 121 Writes hacky computer programs? 124 Chemist’s “I” 125 Nursing school subj. 126 Bit of help 127 In awe 128 Naval units 129 Car-lot sticker abbr. 130 Barley brews 131 Guru’s discipline

DOWN

1 Essentials 2 “Fame” star Irene 3 Very loud 4 Alternatively 5 -- -chef 6 Unruly kid 7 Fit for sailing 8 Ready to be driven 9 Pugilist Muhammad 10 Harmony 11 1942 role for Ingrid 12 “The Dick Van Dyke Show” surname 13 Ballet dancer Nureyev 14 “Sitting on -- ...” (“Mrs. Robinson” lyric) 15 Blood bank fluids 16 Nero’s 404 17 Quintillionth: Prefix 18 “Crazy” bird 24 Aristide’s land 25 Eagles’ nests 30 Female deer 32 Is sporting 33 Hoagie shop 35 Its capital is Accra 36 Is very angry 37 Co. kahuna 38 -- Tin Tin 39 Tatty cloths 40 Exclusively 41 Ran across 42 In the future 43 Harsh-toned 46 Top gun 50 Spicy cuisine 51 Stop moving 52 Pixieish 54 Stone

55 -- pro nobis 57 Amigo of Fidel 61 Sedative drug, informally 63 Berg stuff 64 Stout of mysteries 65 Seer’s skill 67 This, to Pedro 69 Dying rebuke 70 “Me neither” 71 Sponge up 72 Scarf down 73 Coffee flavor 74 Auditory 75 Rubberneck 79 West Coast coll. in La Jolla 80 Hen’s perch 81 Swirly letters 83 Suffix with 90-Down 84 Being aired, in a way 86 Like religious dissenters 87 Writer Calvino 90 Gender 91 Tip of a sock 92 Suffix with major 93 Azadi Tower locale 95 Holy Fr. woman 100 Ham it up 101 City-circling route 103 Goes after 104 1921 Karel Capek play 105 Stability-improving auto part 106 Vocalist Kitt 107 Hound’s trail 110 Homeless kid 111 Sacred cow 112 Center point 113 The “E” of HOMES 114 Practically forever 115 Jet name 117 Gets the total 118 Stop up 119 Kelp, e.g. 122 Brand of motor oil 123 A single

graB Your copy today

SOLUTION FOUND ON P. 30.

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ENDS

SAVAGE LOVE

BLOODY BUSINESS Warning: You’ll never be able to un-read this BY DAN SAVAGE

RECYCLE ME, PLEASE (Only after you’re done reading me)

I’m a professional dominatrix, and I thought I’d seen everything in the last five years. But this situation completely baffled the entire dungeon. This middleaged guy, seemingly in fine health, booked an appointment with me and my colleague for one hour of some very light play and a golden shower to finish off with. We did no CBT, no cock rings, no trauma to the dick area at all, no ass play, no sounding or catheters, no turbulent masturbation, nothing that could have caused this reaction. We brought him into the bathroom, and he laid down on his back, jerking off with a condom on his penis as my buddy was standing over him and peeing and I was saying all kinds of mean/encouraging sentiments and closely observing his progress. He came and… it was entirely blood. It looked like he shat into his condom, through his penis. He did not seem alarmed or in pain. He took off his condom himself, so he was aware of the situation. He did not remark on it to either of us! He made ZERO effort to prepare either of us, either. And it was not a little blood in his ejaculate — it was entirely blood. He has never returned. Is this person a monster or a vampire? Is he dying? Seriously. MISTRESS ECHO

P.S. I went back to the bathroom with gloves on and removed the used condom from the trash and took a photo. It’s the only way to communicate just how much blood there was. “You can tell Mistress Echo that her client was not a monster or a vampire, and he is likely not dying anytime soon,” said Dr. Stephen H. King, a board-certified urologist. “What she observed is a person with hematospermia, meaning blood in the semen.” While the sight is alarming — I’ll never be able to scrape that photo off the back of my eyeballs, thanks — Dr. King assures me that it’s nothing to worry about, as hematospermia is almost always benign. And even if you had done ball play or rough CBT (cock and ball torture), or if he engaged in solo CBT prior to the session, it’s unlikely that kind of play would result in a condom full of blood. “The vast majority of the semen actually comes from the prostate and the seminal vesicles, which are located deep in the pelvis just behind and below the bladder, respectively,” said Dr. King. “Very little of the ejaculate fluid actually originates from the testicles,” which primarily pump out hormones and sperm cells. “The prostate gland and seminal vesicles (also glands) store up the fluids and can become overdistended 28 | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

with long periods of abstinence and prone — but the truth is, I’m still pretty hot to toward micro tearing and bleeding in this trot. What do I do? NOT READY FOR THE NURSING HOME circumstance.” Blowing regular loads doesn’t just lower your risk for prostate cancer, as multiple studies have shown, it also lowers your risk You could see sex workers (quickest fix), for filling condoms with blood and alarming you could look for women in their 30s or your friendly neighborhood pro-Dom. Two 40s who are attracted to guys pushing 70 good reasons for draining those balls, guys (gerontophilia is a thing), you could date — and other people with balls because, as the women in their 50s or 60s with a youthful Book of Tumblr teaches us, not all guys have appearance and/or attitude (there are lots out there, NRFTNH, and they often gather balls and not all balls have guys. “Also, these glands are lined by smooth in groups to complain about how men their muscle that contracts to force out the fluid age are only interested in much younger [during ejaculation],” Dr. King continued. “If women), or you could do all of the above. But the force of contraction is excessive — a you shouldn’t regard moving into a nursing fucking great orgasm — this may lead toward home as the end of your sex life, NRFTNH. rupture of some of the surrounding blood I’m constantly reading news reports about sexually transmitted disease epidemics in vessels and blood will enter the semen.” Your client’s blasé reaction is a good nursing homes and retirement communities. indication that he’s experienced this People may not like to think about the elderly having sex — and the elderly apparently previously, ME, because most guys don’t think about protection (or who see blood in their semen they’re denied access to it) — — or only blood when they but lots of old fuckers are still expected to see semen — fucking. (And, as astrology freak the fuck out. is bullshit, NRFTNH, being “In my practice, most a Scorpio doesn’t matter. guys who see blood in their It never has and it never ejaculate the first time will.) are sufficiently freaked out to seek immediate My husband has a foot medical attention, and fetish. The feel of his their doctors usually tell DAN SAVAGE tongue between my toes them this isn’t something when he “worships” my to worry about — unless it feet doesn’t arouse me in persists,” said Dr. King. “In cases the least. Rather, it feels like where the hematospermia persists, I’m stepping on slugs in the garden gets worse, or is associated with other symptoms such as pain, difficulty urinating, barefoot. Our sex life is fine otherwise. or general health decline, medical attention is I resolved to grin (or grimace) and bear this odd aspect of his sexuality before definitely recommended.” Back to your client, ME: If blood loads we married, but I cannot continue to do have happened to him before (hence the blasé so. When I told him this, he asked to be reaction), proper etiquette dictates that he allowed to attend “foot model” parties. should have said something to you about it There wouldn’t be intercourse, but he afterward (“I’m fine, no biggie”). If it happens would pleasure himself in the presence to him regularly, he should have warned you of these foot models (and other males!). in advance — at least that’s what it says in my This would, in my opinion, violate our monogamous commitment and our imaginary edition of Emily Post’s Etiquette. marriage vows. I enjoy your podcast I’m an old guy, 68 years old to be exact. and I know you often advocate for open (Also a Scorpio, if that matters.) I’ve relationships. But you also emphasize always been a pretty horny person, and I your respect for monogamy and the had a lot of fun from the 1960s through validity of monogamous commitments. the 1980s with a number of lovers. I We are at an impasse. Please advise. THROWING OFF EXPECTATIONS figured that as I got older, my horniness would lessen and I could think about something other than pussy. Trouble is, I don’t seem to be less horny. I find myself While “love unconditionally” sounds nice, attracted to women in their 30s or 40s, TOE, monogamy was a condition of yours but I wonder how I appear to them. going into this marriage (and a valid one), I don’t want to make an utter fool of and being able to express this aspect of his myself by making an unwanted advance sexuality was a stated or implicit condition of his (and, yes, an equally valid one). If

you’re going to unilaterally alter the terms and conditions of your marriage, TOE, then you’ll need to reopen negotiations and come to a new agreement with your husband, one that works for both of you. (Jesus, lady, let him go to the fucking party!) On the Lovecast, Dan chats with Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood: savagelovecast.com; follow @fakedansavage on Twitter; mail@savagelove.net; go to ITMFA.org.

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SOLUTION TO THIS WEEK'S PUZZLE

WHERE WE ALL REFUSE TO WEAR SOCKS.

ARIES (March 21 to April 19) You’re eager to take on that new opportunity opening up as January gives way to February. Now all you need to do is resist quitting too early. Do your best to stay with it. TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) Doff a bit of that careful, conservative outlook and let your brave Bovine self take a chance on meeting that new challenge. You could be surprised at how well you do. GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) You might not want to return to the more serious tasks facing you. But you know it’s what you must do. Cheer up. Something more pleasant soon will occupy your time. CANCER (June 21 to

July 22) As you dutifully tidy up your end-of-themonth tasks, your fun self emerges to urge you to do something special: A trip (or a cruise, maybe?) could be just what you need.

LEO (July 23 to August

22) Your achievements are admirable as you close out the month with a roar. Now you can treat yourself to some well-earned time off for fun with family or friends. (Or both!)

VIRGO (August 23 to

September 22) Be sure you know the facts before you assume someone is holding back on your project. Try to open your mind before you give someone a piece of it.

LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) You might feel comfortable in your familiar surroundings, but it might be time to venture into something new. There’s a challenge out there that’s just right for you. SCORPIO (October 23

to November 21) Your love of things that are new gets a big boost as you encounter a situation that opens up new and exciting vistas. How far you go with it depends on you.

SAGITTARIUS

(November 22 to December 21) That recent workplace shift might not seem to be paying off as you expected. But be patient. There are changes coming that could make a big difference.

CAPRICORN (December 22

to January 19) While few can match the Goat’s fiscal wizardry, you still need to be wary in your dealings. There might be a problem you should know about sooner rather than later.

AQUARIUS

(January 20 to February 18) Easy does it when it comes to love and all the other good things in life. Don’t try to force them to develop on your schedule. Best to let it happen naturally.

PISCES (February 19 to March 20) A surprise decision by someone you trust causes some stormy moments. But a frank discussion explains everything, and helps save a cherished relationship.

BORN THIS WEEK Sometimes you forget to take care of yourself, because you’re so busy caring for others. But you wouldn’t have it any other way. 30 | JAN. 18 - JAN. 24, 2018 | CLCLT.COM

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