CLCLT.COM | APRIL 6 - APRIL 12, 2017 VOL. 31, NO. 7
1 | DATE - DATE, 2015 | CLCLT.COM
2 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 3
4 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 5
CREATIVE LOAFING IS PUBLISHED BY WOMACK NEWSPAPERS, INC. CHARLOTTE, NC 28206. OFFICE: 704-522-8334 WWW.CLCLT.COM FACEBOOK: /CLCLT TWITTER: @CL_CHARLOTTE INSTAGRAM: @CREATIVELOAFINGCHARLOTTE
STAFF PUBLISHER • Charles A. Womack III publisher@yesweekly.com EDITOR • Mark Kemp mkemp@clclt.com
EDITORIAL
NEWS EDITOR • Ryan Pitkin rpitkin@clclt.com FILM CRITIC • Matt Brunson mattonmovies@gmail.com THEATER CRITIC • Perry Tannenbaum perrytannenbaum@gmail.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS • Jasmin Herrera, Corbie Hill, Erin Tracy-Blackwood, Vivian Carol, Charles Easley, Chrissie Nelson, Page Leggett, Alison Leininger, Sherrell Dorsey, Dan Savage, Aerin Spruill, Chuck Shepherd, Jeff Hahne, Samir Shukla, Courtney Mihocik, Debra Renee Seth, Vanessa Infanzon, Matt Comer
ART/DESIGN
GRAPHIC DESIGNER • Dana Vindigni dvindigni@clclt.com CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS • Justin Driscoll, Brian Twitty, Zach Nesmith
ADVERTISING
To place an ad, please call 704-522-8334. SALES MANAGER Aaron Stamey • astamey@clclt.com ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Candice Andrews • candrews@clclt.com Melissa McHugh • mmchugh@clclt.com ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Pat Moran • pmoran@clclt.com
Creative Loafing © is published by CL, LLC 1000 NC Music Factory Blvd., Suite C-2, Charlotte, NC 28206. Periodicals Postage Paid at Charlotte, NC.
FREE STUFF! CLCLT.COM/CHARLOTTE/FREESTUFF
Creative Loafing welcomes submissions of all kinds. Efforts will be made to return those with a self-addressed stamped envelope; however Creative Loafing assumes no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. Creative Loafing is published every Wednesday by Womack Newspapers, Inc. No portion may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. First copy is free, all additional copies are $1. Copyright 2015 Womack Newspapers, Inc. CREATIVE LOAFING IS PRINTED ON A 90% RECYCLED STOCK. IT MAY BE RECYCLED FURTHER; PLEASE DO YOUR PART.
A MEMBER OF:
6 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
PHOTO COURTESY OF RED LIGHT MANAGEMENT.
20
10
Gogol Bordello will be at The Fillmore on April 12.
NEWS&CULTURE GILLESPIE’S GLORY DAY Homer Thief hailed as hero in new tee design BY RYAN PITKIN 9 EDITOR’S NOTE 13 NEWS OF THE WEIRD 14 THE BLOTTER 15 NEWSMAKER: KEN BUCK BY RYAN PITKIN
16
FOOD BE GONE, BAD JUJU Will the Factory Café beat
the curse?
BY JASMIN HERRERA 19 THREE-COURSE SPIEL: DEACON OVALL BY DEBRA RENEE SETH
22
ARTS&ENT CASTING THE RUNES Ben Shropshire turns magic, dreams (and bugs) into art
BY PAT MORAN 20 TOP 10 THINGS TO D0 25 ARTSPEAK: CIRCUS INNOVATIONS BY RYAN PITKIN 26 FILM REVIEWS BY MATT BRUNSON
28
MUSIC MERCURY RISES Charlotte fashion prodigy Kevin Carter finds his true voice in music
BY MARK KEMP 32 SOUNDBOARD
34
ODDS&ENDS 34 MARKETPLACE 34 NIGHTLIFE BY AERIN SPRUILL 35 CROSSWORD 36 SAVAGE LOVE 38 HOROSCOPE BY VIVIAN CAROL
Go to clclt.com for videos and more!!
COVER DESIGN BY DANA VINDIGNI PHOTO BY PRESTON NORALES CLCLT.COM | APRIL 6 - APRIL 12, 2017 VOL. 31, NO. 7
Website: www.clclt.com Facebook: /clclt Pinterest: @clclt Twitter: @cl_charlotte Instagram: @creativeloafingcharlotte YouTube: /qccreativeloafing 1 | DATE - DATE, 2015 | CLCLT.COM
CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 7
8 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
VIEWS
EDITOR’S NOTE
PRINCE OF A MAN A Charlotte fashion maven turns to music What I heard blew my mind in ways A YEAR AGO this month, the music world I hadn’t experienced since Fiona Apple’s lost Prince, who was arguably the most producer brought a few early tracks of the important artist of the 1980s. Three months still-unknown singer’s debut album Tidal to earlier, Charlotte’s Kevin Carter posted a play for me in my office at Rolling Stone in video of himself to his Facebook page singing the mid-’90s. Or when I first listened to an a track from Mercury, the homemade EP he’d advance copy of Radiohead’s OK Computer. just released on Soundcloud. I won’t say From the speakers of Kevin’s car came the there’s any connection between these two most beautiful sounds I have experienced in events; any transference of spirit. But I will years: layered harmonies, swirling in a sea of suggest it. reverb, on a Gregorian-like chant with lyrics The first time I heard Kevin Carter was about a profound romantic loss. in a video of the singer performing at the The song was “Temple,” the first track on Blumenthal’s Charlotte Does Aretha tribute. Kevin’s six-song EP. Creative Loafing’s news editor, Ryan Pitkin, He played other tracks: the rudimentary had tipped me off. “You might want to take electronic beats and Prince-like vocals of a look at this,” he said. “This guy’s pretty “Falling Shadows”; the spooky, almost junglegood.” like sounds introducing “Whispers,” with its Pretty good, to say the least. Amazing unusual melody and harmonies, and a rap was more like it. I Facebook-friended Kevin part halfway in that pans from speaker to and we chatted about getting together for an speaker. To say Kevin’s experimental interview. I thought he’d make a good song cycle is special would be to subject for our little MusicMaker do it a disservice. Mercury is Q&A column, where we catch positively stunning. up with veteran musicians I realized my little Q&A that we haven’t talked to with Kevin needed to be in a while, or chat with bigger, and we decided to interesting new musicians postpone the cover story we think might bubble up we had scheduled for this some day. week to shoehorn into Kevin and I met at this issue a cover story on Cabo Fish Taco in NoDa Kevin Mercury Carter, a one afternoon, and he was singer we all will be hearing delightful. He told me of his MARK KEMP much more from in the next childhood years studying under few years. On page 28, you can the celebrated Northwest School read about Kevin’s journey from his of the Arts music-theater instructor childhood as a precocious pianist to his teen Corey Mitchell. He told me of his teen years years as hot young fashion designer to his as a fashion prodigy whose Kevin Vain line current young adulthood as a singer ready to got a lot of attention in Charlotte a few years take on the world. Kevin may not be Prince ago. And we talked about his cover versions reincarnated, but that’s only because his is of songs by Aretha Franklin and other artists totally and completely himself. that he posts on Facebook. You can also read about a new film starring I was still thinking our chat would make Kevin’s early instructor Corey Mitchell, for a nice short piece on a young singer with whose students at Northwest became the an ungodly voice that soars from deep lows to heavenly highs. I figured he might blossom second troupe of high school thespians into a real contender one day. Heck, he may ever to stage the musical version of Alice even turn out to be a star on Broadway. Walker’s The Color Purple. Their experience Then he mentioned the EP of original was documented in Purple Dreams, a film by songs that he’d recorded and put up on Charlotte producer Robin Grey and director Soundcloud. I didn’t know about it at the Joanne Hock that makes its world premiere time. I hadn’t heard it. He was proud of the this week at the Full Frame Documentary project, he told me, and planned to make Film Festival in Durham. videos to go along with it — sort of like There’s lots more in this issue, including Beyoncé did with Lemonade. Nice, I thought. an update on a guy who got drunk a few years Would I like to hear it?, he asked. ago, stole the Charlotte Knights’ Homer Sure, I said. costume and took to the streets of Uptown, Kevin took me to his car, which was and an arts piece on a local chef who also parked on North Davidson Street across makes rune art and plans to prepare a meal from the Johnston YMCA. He got out his of bugs for rich people in upstate New York. I iPhone and plugged it into the sound system. will say no more. Just go read about it. And the earth stood still. MKEMP@CLCLT.COM CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 9
10 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
NEWS
FEATURE
GILLESPIE’S GLORY DAY Homer thief hailed as hero in new tee design BY RYAN PITKIN
J
D HARRIS WANTS to make it clear that he doesn’t want you to steal from Charlotte’s most esteemed sports institutions. That being said, if you do, you might make it on one of his T-shirts. Last year, Harris’ company Glory Days Apparel released its Selwyn Avenue Golf Cart Valet T-shirt, which references an infamous story from 2015 in which two men apparently got bored at the Wells Fargo Championship and stole a golf cart from Quail Hollow Country Club, then drove it five miles from the golf course to Selwyn Avenue Pub. This week, Glory Days followed up on that popular design with the release of a shirt paying homage to another one of Charlotte’s most infamous sports-related
the country and even running in the UK’s Daily Mail. Now, Gillespie’s legend in this town is even further cemented by the release of Homertown Hero, a Glory Days T-shirt designed by Harris and local graphic designer Robert Wildermuth that depicts Gillespie in all his mulleted glory, beer in one hand, Homer’s head in the other, and dressed partially as the mascot while dodging police. It’s an idea Harris had brewing in the back of his mind for nearly a year, and he’s chosen the week of Opening Knight (the Knights’ first home game) to finally make the release. While he’s as big a fan of Charlotte’s fun-loving-criminal folklore as you’ll find, he emphasizes that he doesn’t want to see “I’m gonna get on a Glory Days T-shirt!” become a drunken expression that
But that’s not the Joe that Creative Loafing knows. “I thought it had to have been destiny,” Gillespie says of the call he got from Harris. “Because about a month prior to when he had actually reached out to me, I told my girlfriend, I was like, ‘I think I’m growing the mullet back,’ which she wasn’t real thrilled about. He hit me up about a month later. I was like, ‘Ahhh, definitely man, I’m down 100 percent.” We reached out to Kristi Drake, Gillespie’s girlfriend, to see if she’s really against the hairdo seen ‘round the world. When she answered our inquiry over text, she seemed to be coming around. “Thankfully I love him, so mullet or not I’m super excited about the shirt, and if anyone is going to rock a mullet.. it’s him!”
definitely didn’t mean any harm by what he did. It was a decision that got him in some trouble, but he definitely meant no harm by it. It was just fun. I got more excited about the project because of his personality.” Wildermuth was equally impressed after having a few beers with the infamous Homer thief. In fact, the simple question of whether he had met Joe yet sent him into a healthy laugh, which is often the reaction of those recalling a night out with Joe. “He really had nothing bad to say the whole time I was hanging out with him,” Wildermuth says. “He’s really cool with the whole situation. Even though he did get in trouble, you feel like he would do it again in a heartbeat.” Although there’s always the prospect of some fun adventure jumping off when
“I thought it had to have been destiny, because about a month prior to when he had actually reached out to me, I told my girlfriend, ‘I think I’m growing the mullet back.’” -JOE GILLESPIE
drunken capers, the Homer theft. Homertown Hero is a design inspired by Joe Gillespie, whose story went viral after we told it in our Best of Charlotte 2015 issue. Long story short (definitely go read the long story), Joe woke up in a drunken stupor following a beer festival at BB&T Ballpark one September day that year only to find himself behind the scenes at the empty stadium. While looking for an exit, he stumbled across the dressing room of Charlotte Knights mascot Homer and threw on his costume without missing a beat. Gillespie partied as Homer throughout Uptown into the early morning hours, but was picked up by the police the next day at his Indian Trail home. Nevertheless, his hilarious retelling of the story in our paper went viral, getting picked up throughout
leads to arrest. “That’s where you have to put the Jackass disclaimer up before the show starts,” Harris says, laughing. “We’re not encouraging for you to do something to get your way onto a shirt, there are other good ways to get on a Glory Days T-shirt.” Harris became aware of Gillespie’s story through our now-famous and oft-quoted Q&A with him in 2015. He friended Gillespie on Facebook shortly thereafter but hadn’t met him until two months ago when he finally decided to put his Homertown Hero T-shirt plan into action. He had some concerns that Gillespie, who’s currently serving 18 months of probation for his Homer hijinks, had put it all behind him and wouldn’t want any part of the shirt.
she wrote. “As it’s getting more ‘luscious,’ as he would say, it’s growing on me.” Gillespie and Drake met with Harris and Wildermuth to check out the original sketches and give their input, and Gillespie later met up with Harris at the scene of the crime to shoot some promo videos and pose for pictures with the tee, which he was able to keep. Getting to finally meet Gillespie made Harris all the more proud of Glory Days’ newest design. “I kind of just wanted to know who Joe was, because I want to make this more than a shirt, I wanted to make this part of the urban legend,” Harris says. “One of the reasons I was so blown away when I met him, he’s just one of the most easy-going, friendly guys. He
Gillespie is around, chances are he won’t be committing any capers at BB&T again any time soon. He’s still a Knights fan, and has attended a couple of games since the incident in 2015, but he has not been able to speak with anyone from the organization to offer an official apology, despite reaching out multiple times to do so. He hopes the shirt can be another opportunity to shed light on the situation and help him put any animosity between him and the real Homer to rest. “I’m still trying. I want to extend my hand for peace,” Gillespie says. “I’d love to put the water under the bridge, but there’s only so much I can do. JB has definitely helped the cause a lot.” Harris himself has not been in touch CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 11
NEWS
FEATURE
with anyone at the Knights organization, but his plan is to help mend things by offering a potion of the proceeds from the Homertown Hero shirt to Charlotte Knights Charities, the team’s charitable arm that awards grants to charitable organizations in the Charlotte area with the goal of advancing education, care and to promote recreational activities to disadvantaged and underprivileged adults and children, according to the Knights’ website. He hopes the shirt can help the Knights organization look back on the 2015 Homer theft incident with a “no harm, no foul” attitude. “There’s no denying that this is a part of Charlotte’s history. People know it. I guarantee you couldn’t tell me one person’s name from the 2015 roster but you can tell me this story. And that’s not knocking the Knights, it’s just that people know this story,” Harris says.” The donation is our way of saying that we’re not trying to promote what he did, but this is a way that maybe we can say ‘Hey, water under the bridge,’ or to show that there’s still some good to come of this situation.’ The Knights did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
THE HOMERTOWN HERO shirt fits well into the Glory Days roster, as it was Harris’ goal for the vintage T-shirt company to release shirts that start a conversation. And those shirts don’t just focus on Charlotte’s mischievous miscreants, but also represent other Queen City interests, from hangouts and dives to sports teams and day drinking. Harris, who is basically the entire staff of Glory Days (he calls himself a one-man shop), sells most of his shirts at pop-up events throughout the city, which lend themselves to the conversational topics on his shirts. “I would say where we see the biggest impact is when we’re out and about doing pop-ups. I really think that’s one of the strengths of the brand is — whether it’s me or one of my friends out there with me doing events — I think our personality comes through in the brand,” Harris says. “I think it’s been one of the key points of success is that people take to it and appreciate it. I get blown away just talking to people, especially someone’s who comes back and has been a fan and says, ‘Oh, I love this shirt’ and, ‘Tell me the story about this shirt,’ or, ‘I got the Dean’s Dream Team shirt because I was born this year and that’s my favorite team.’” As with the aforementioned Dean’s Dream Team shirt, which refers to the 1982 UNC Tar Heels men’s basketball team, nostalgia also plays a large role in the Glory Days brand, especially with the sports-related gear. Harris, who was named Best Dressed in his senior year of high school, grew up loving vintage t-shirts. In 2015, after nearly a decade in the local financial game, he decided he had to get out of the cubicle life and soon decided he would turn his passion for the nostalgic style into a brand. “I was just so unhappy. The problem wasn’t the company I was with, the problem 12 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
“There’s no denying that this is a part of Charlotte’s history. People know it. I guarantee you couldn’t tell me one person’s name from the 2015 roster but you can tell me this story.” -JD HARRIS, THIRD FROM LEFT, PICTURED WITH (FROM LEFT) KRISTI DRAKE, JOE GILLESPIE AND ROBERT WILDERMUTH
was I just didn’t belong in that world in general. I was always saying how I wanted to update my resume and find a new job,” he says. “I’ve just always had this nerdy appreciation and obsession with that vintage shirt or thrift store t-shirt. There’s been some companies back home in Ohio that have been successful in doing that look, and I’ve always admired what they do as far as really capturing the nostalgia and throwback.” The idea was right in front of him, but never truly struck him until he visited Kansas City for a wedding and saw a company there that was making shirts based on random things that only locals would truly know about. “I thought, I really think Charlotte, there’s so much history, so many people that love the city, there’s so much there to be told and do,” Harris recalls. “Being that I don’t have a wife, I don’t have kids, I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to try it. Now is the time.’” After about six months of research and business planning, he launched in March 2016. Now, just a week after his company’s first anniversary, he says he’s still learning every day, but the company is coming along as well as he could have ever imagined. Some of the design lessons he’s learned? Well, it’s clear to see that young Charlotteans love their alcohol. His Day Drinking and Boozy Brunch tees are two of the most popular ones on the roster. They also love their sports teams. A recent release called the CLT Autobot mixes the Knights, Charlotte Hornets and Carolina Panthers’ logos to make one Transformerinspired hybrid mascot. Harris was worried about going too far with that one — he usually likes to keep it simple — but it’s outperformed almost every other shirt since. Perhaps the most popular of all his designs was nearly another throwaway idea. The simplistic shirt just says “Charlotte Vs. All Y’all” rounded across the chest and belly. He made it as an Ohio kid playfully poking fun at Southern slang and planned to just run it as a one-off, but it’s turned into one of the company’s most consistent sellers and inspired other designs, like a “Carolina Vs. All Y’all” Panthers design. “I think one of the biggest obstacles is when you start to learn what your customer base is,” Harris says. “To figure out what the look is, what they’re looking for in a product. I try to run things by my friends, especially ones that are going to give me the honest truth, not just say yes to everything. I want to hear when it sucks, I want to know. I’d rather know then before I put it out.” Judging from the reaction Creative Loafing gets any time Joe Gillespie is involved in a story, it’s safe to say the Homertown Hero will be one of Harris’ best sellers yet, and both Harris and Charlotte Knights Charities will both reap the benefits. As for the man who inspired all this, Gillespie is already looking past baseball. In December, he will have served his full 18 months of probation. His first thought when asked about that? “Then I can get my pistols back,” he says with a roguish chuckle. Well, we all have our priorities. RPITKIN@CLCLT.COM
NEWS
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
BY CHUCK SHEPHERD
WORLD’S COOLEST CITY Recently, in Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, Dubai Civil Defense started using water jetpacks that lift firefighters off the ground to hover in advantageous positions as they work the hoses. Also, using jet skis, rescuers can avoid traffic altogether by using the city’s rivers to arrive at fires and, if close enough to a waterway, pump water without hydrants. Even more spectacularly, as early as this summer, Dubai will authorize the already tested one-person, “Jetsons”-type taxis for ordinary travel in the city. The Ehang 184 model flies about 30 minutes on an electrical charge, carrying up to 220 pounds at about 60 mph.
SECOND CHANCE In March, star soccer goalkeeper Bruno Fernandes de Souza signed a two-year contract to play for Brazil’s Boa Esporte club while he awaits the outcome of his appealed conviction for the 2010 murder of his girlfriend. He had also fed her body to his dogs. He had been sentenced to 22 years in prison, but was released by a judge after seven, based on the judge’s exasperation at the years-long delays in appeals in Brazil’s sluggish legal system. AWESOME! At press time, The Cleveland
(Ohio) Street Department still had not identified the man who, dressed as a road worker, had wandered stealthily along Franklin Boulevard during March and removed more than 20 standard “35 mph” speed limit signs — replacing all with official-looking “25 mph” signs that he presumably financed himself. Residents along those two miles of Franklin have long complained, but the city kept rejecting pleas for a lowered limit.
ONLINE MATING The Apenheul primate park in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, is engaged in a four-year experiment, offering female orangutans an iPad loaded with photos of male orangutans now housed at zoos around the world, with the females able to express interest or disinterest, similar to swiping right or left on the human dating app Tinder. Researchers admit results have been mixed, that some males have to be returned home, and once, a female handed the iPad with a potential suitor showing, merely crushed the tablet. Apps are not quite to the point of offering animals the ability to digitally smell each other. LEARN SOMETHING NEW Peacocks are
known to flash their erect, sometimes-6-foothigh rack of colorful tail feathers to attract mating opportunities. However, as researchers in Texas recently found, the display might not be important. Body cameras placed on peahens at eye level to learn how they check out strutting males revealed that the females gazed mostly at the lowest level of feathers as if attracted only to certain colors rather than the awesomeness of the towering flourish.
SPECTACULAR ERRORS (1) In March, jurors in Norfolk, Virginia, found Allen
Cochran, 49, not guilty of attempted shoplifting, but he was nowhere to be seen when the verdict was announced. Apparently predicting doom, since he had also been charged with fleeing court during a previous case, he once again skipped out. The jury then re-retired to the jury room, found him guilty on the earlier count and sentenced him to the five-year maximum. Because of time already served, he could have walked away legally if he hadn’t walked away illegally. (2) In March, Ghanian soccer player Mohammed Anas earned a “man of the match” award after his two goals led the Free State Stars to a 2-2 draw, but botched the acceptance speech by thanking both his wife and his girlfriend. Reportedly, Anas “stumbled for a second” until he could correct himself. “I’m so sorry,” he attempted to clarify. “My wife! I love you so much from my heart.”
LEADING ECONOMIC INDICATORS It
turns out that Layne Hardin’s sperm is worth only $1,900 — and not the $870,000 a jury had awarded him after finding that former girlfriend Tobie Devall had, without Hardin’s permission, obtained a vial of it without authorization and inseminated herself to produce her son, now age 6. Initially Hardin tried to gain partial custody of the boy, but Devall continually rebuffed him, provoking the lawsuit — which also named the sperm bank Texas Andrology a defendant — and the challenge in Houston’s First Court of Appeal.
MOST COMPETENT CRIMINAL An
astonished woman unnamed in news reports called police in Coleshill, England, in February to report that a car exactly like her silver Ford Kuga was parked at Melbicks garden center with the very same license plate as hers. Police figured out that a silver Ford Kuga had been stolen nearby in 2016, and to disguise that it was stolen, the thief had looked for an identical, not-stolen Ford Kuga and then replicated its license plate, allowing the thief to drive the stolen car without suspicion.
LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINALS (1) Thieves
once again attempted a fruitless smash-and-grab of an ATM at Mike and Reggie’s Beverages in Maple Heights, Ohio, in March despite the owner’s having left the ATM’s door wide open with a sign reading “ATM emptied nightly.” Police are investigating. (2) Boca Raton, Florida, jeweler “Bobby” Yampolsky said he was suspicious that the “customer” who asked to examine diamonds worth $6 million carried no tools of the examination trade. After the lady made several obvious attempts to distract Yampolsky, he ended the charade by locking her in his vault and calling the police, who arrested her after discovering she had a package of fake diamonds in her purse that she likely intended to switch.
OPENING WEEKEND! Charlotte Knights vs. Norfolk Tides
THURSDAY
THIRSTY THURSDAY
presented by presented by
$3 DOMESTIC DRAFT BEER $1 SODA presented by presented by
GAME AT 7:05 PM
FRIDAY
FRIDAY NIGHT FIREWORKS AT BB&T BALLPARK!
GAME AT 7:05 PM
SATURDAY
BENEFIT BEDS FOR KIDS COLLECTING NEW SHEETS, PILLOWS, BLANKETS AND COMFORTERS
GAME AT 7:05 PM
SUNDAY
HOMER’S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION WITH AREA MASCOTS
GAME AT 2:05 PM
TO PURCHASE TICKETS VISIT:
charlotteknights.com CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 13
NEWS
BLOTTER
BY RYAN PITKIN
DANGEROUS GAME A 27-year-old
woman near Uptown filed a police report after someone tried to sabotage her backyard toys, either in order to get to her or her children. The woman told officers that known suspects sliced through the bottom of a trampoline in her yard, possibly hoping someone would try to jump and go straight through to the ground.
AVON BARKSDALE Warrants are being sought on a known suspect after they stole a small amount of candy from a hospital coffee kiosk. According to the report, the suspect walked off with the candy that he took from a kiosk in Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center in the Elizabeth neighborhood. Probably believing that he was being overcharged for some procedure elsewhere in the hospital, or maybe even thinking that his health insurance plan covered unhealthy foods, the man allegedly left with $20 worth of candy. ON THE ‘HOOD A 68-year-old man in
southeast Charlotte learned last week that standing on his porch yelling, “Get off my lawn,” won’t be enough for him as he enters his golden years — he’ll also need to keep those damn kids off his car. The man filed a
14 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
report with police last week stating that $100 of damage had been done to the hood of his car by neighborhood kids playing on the vehicle, apparently for lack of a playground.
WELCOME BACK Management at Royal
Inn and Suites near the airport were ready for a couple of their tenants to get the hell out last week, but ended up having to let them stay just a little longer. According to a report, officers responded to the west Charlotte hotel in response to a request to escort the tenants off the property, but “based on documents presented by both parties and dialogue with all parties,” a decision was made to let them stay for one more night. That’s going to make for an awkward free breakfast in the morning.
SCHOOL DAZE A student is facing
possession of marijuana charges and school disciplinary action after unexpectedly walking into a surprise search situation and not being able to ditch his stash. According to a report, students at Turning Point Academy were being searched on a stage when a blunt — or marijuana wrapped in a cigar, for the reefer ignorant — dropped to the stage floor. The kid wasn’t as sneaky as he thought, however, as the school resource officer and another witness both saw him drop it. While he suffers through/enjoys his suspension, he’ll at least have plenty of time to read
our upcoming 4/20 issue. In an unrelated incident, a Carmel Middle School student was found to be on another level of stoner from anyone we’d ever met in junior high. The kid was found in possession of five weed brownies and 250 milligrams of cannabis oils made for a vape pen.
himself breakfast after a long graveyard shift, however, he turned it into property control as found property and filed a report.
CLEAN GETAWAY A thief in South End
the right thing last week when he caught a pervert in the act in east Charlotte. According to the police report, the witness caught a man peeping into the window of a 10-year-old girl’s bedroom while she was inside. While we wouldn’t usually include a sex offense in this relatively lighthearted column, we would like to cheer the person who caught him, as the report states that the suspect had to be transported to Novant Presbyterian before he could be taken to jail, due to “injuries incurred by the witness” while he detained the suspect and waited for police to arrive.
last week has a new wardrobe after taking the trend of stealing packages off the porches of victims to another level. A 27-year-old man told police that someone stole 10 to 15 dress shirts off his front porch that had been delivered there by his dry cleaner. He said the shirts were custom-fit at the neck, so it’s unlikely the thief will even be able to fit into them. In an unrelated incident, a woman learned that her new apartment complex may not be as safe as she had hoped. She told police that she sat her brown leather sofa on the bottom floor of the complex for just 20 minutes while she waited for the movers to arrive to put it into her apartment, but when they got there someone had already taken it away.
HONESTY AS POLICY Being a police
THREAT OF THE WEEK A 38-year-old
KARMIC JUSTICE A Good Samaritan did
officer can be a tough gig, especially when you’re refused the little joys in life, such as finding money on the ground. A police officer filed a report last week stating that they were responding to an assault with a deadly weapon call in a parking lot on The Plaza. While helping the victim, the officer found a $20 in the parking lot that nobody on the scene claimed. Instead of buying
teacher filed a police report last week after being threatened by one of her students through proxy. She said the suspect told her he was going to have his sister come to the school and “handle her,” and also threatened that he himself was going to “snatch her nappy wig off her head.” Worth mentioning: the victim works at an elementary school.
stand,” or whatever.
NEWS
NEWSMAKER
How do people not make that connection over three days? I at some point asked myself — and I ask myself this a lot — I find it amusing that people on either sides of the fence will go after a politician that you don’t even know what they look like in an avatar. In my avatar, I’ve got dark brown hair, he’s got a head full of white hair. Anyone who would spend a second looking at the avatar would go, “Well, wait a minute this doesn’t add up.”
THE BUCK DOESN’T STOP HERE Charlotte man plays along with his unwanted political following RYAN PITKIN
KEN BUCK IS just a simple man, trying to
live a simple social media existence. As stated in his Twitter bio, Buck’s interests include photography, football, food and family. Not included in that list are politics — especially not Colorado politics — yet the south Charlotte resident can’t seem to escape them. See, Buck has the unfortunate luck of sharing his name with a politician: U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, R-CO. And in this age of political vitriol and social media networks that allow folks to spew that vitriol at will, the wrong Buck has gained some unwanted attention. See, Buck got into Twitter at the beginning, allowing him to land the @KenBuck handle that has confused followers of Colorado politics since Rep. Buck’s first unsuccessful Senate campaign in 2010. A recent look at Charlottean Buck’s timeline finds him sparring sarcastically with folks on both sides of the aisle; folks wanting him to investigate leaks in the Trump administration, or vote against Trumpcare and not be a #GOPSheep, or to promise that the Bundy bunch will receive a fair trial. His responses? That he usually uses Depends to resolve leaks; that he’s no sheep, but does enjoy a plate of grilled lamb; and that he’s simply not interested in any Bundy trial. The desperate Bundy troll couldn’t take no for an answer on the latter one, and continued to plead with Buck to raise awareness for the ranchers in his home state even after realizing he was far from a Colorado representative. And such is the social media life led by Buck, who has taken the whole thing in stride and continues to playfully prod at the Midwestern meddlers. He says most people have fun with him right back, however, every once in a while there’s that person who just doesn’t understand that this man is not a politician — Bette Midler, for example (yes, you read that right). We recently chatted with Buck about what being “the other Ken Buck” has taught him about politics. Creative Loafing: When did you first hear of this Colorodoan Ken Buck? Ken Buck: He ran for the House of Representatives in Colorado [in 2010], and that’s the first time I heard about it. He did not win his initial House bid, so he came back the next time they had a cycle of elections in Colorado [in 2014] and ran for Senate and did win. When did the Twitter posts start? I started getting some when he ran for that initial seat, but for the most part they were somewhat benign because he didn’t hold any office. There was no one with a specific
axe to grind for someone who was merely a candidate. There were some things but it wasn’t anything that was as divisive as I’d say they are now. From what I can tell, I don’t even think that he’s any sort of a major player — he’s not a Paul Ryan or anything of that nature. But I simply think that’s just because of the divisive nature of politics, particularly if you live in that part of the country. Initially they were benign things like, “We’re inviting you to come to this campaign event,” and I largely ignored those because there wasn’t a whole lot to them, and my response was, “Hey, you’ve got the wrong guy.” And it picked up when he won his Senate seat in 2014? At that point, then people with a political axe to grind or an agenda began to reach out to him — in some cases directly to him, in other cases he would just be on a list of maybe five or six representatives that they were sending messages to about, “Oppose this bill,” or “Favor this bill,” those types of things. Initially, I was either ignoring it or would politely tell the person, “You’ve got the wrong person.” At some point I decided, and I’m not exactly sure why, I began to get a little snarky with it, because some of the comments were just so loaded that they were leaving themselves open. That’s when I decided that, hey, I’m just going to be this guy’s alter ego and have some fun with it. How do those conversations usually go? Recently I put up something snarky and someone retweeted it and said, “I can’t believe someone in the Senate would talk like that.” I recall a couple of my friends responded with, “It’s almost as if he’s not even an elected official.” Then she finally figured it out. Some people will get very angry when they find out that I’m messing with them. People say to me that I’m trolling, but I say, “You know, to be honest, they’re trolling me. I have nothing to do with this bill that they’re going after.” I will tell you though; most of the time when someone realizes it they have a good sense of humor about it and let it go. For example, there was the whole Meals on Wheels thing recently. Someone sent a message to him, but it actually of course came to me, that said, “He doesn’t believe in Meals on Wheels,” to which I responded, “No, I believe meals belong on a plate.” As soon as she realized it she said, “Oh I’m sorry, wrong person, but to your point I do agree with you that meals are better on plates.” So most people have a pretty good sense of humor about it.
“I’ve got dark brown hair, he’s got a head full of white hair. Anyone who would spend a second looking at the avatar would go, ‘Well, wait a minute this doesn’t add up.’” -NON-POLITICIAN KEN BUCK (TOP)
And what about those who don’t? I had one situation with Bette Midler. Everybody knows what Bette’s politics are and, I can’t recall, there was something that he was supporting that would be considered conservative politics. Bette Midler being ideologically opposite of that, went after him on Twitter for it. I had some snarky comments about it, she’s got a lot of followers, they jumped in on it, this thing went on for three days and she was involved in it the whole time. It went on with her for three days and then at some point either she or one of her social media handlers got it. Then she proceeded to issue a Twitter apology, “Sorry, the wrong guy, for all I can tell this is a good guy that lives in Charlotte that has nothing to do with this guy in Colorado that we can’t
Do you think it’s just indicative of the larger political picture in this country, where people don’t stop to think before screaming at whomever is closest? Social media tends to be a bit of a magnifying glass. I think the extremes of the left or the right get magnified through social media. You eluded to the fact that people really aren’t stopping to think. Occasionally, the response I give to someone who has the wrong person is so over the top that if they would just slow down or read it they’d go, “This doesn’t even make sense for a politician to say.” They would immediately go, “Oh, I’ve got the wrong person.” And again, that usually happens with most people. But every once in a while, just like that whole three-day thing with Bette Midler and her people, I kept trying to make it as outlandish as possible, kind of just trying to put an end to it. There’s just no way that you’re really believing that a politician is saying these things. But they couldn’t get out of their own head, they couldn’t get out of their own perception of what they assumed someone from the other side might be like, to the point where they couldn’t even stop and think about it. In the truest sense of the word it’s been a bit bemusing to me, to see either side. It sounds like this whole experience hasn’t exactly inspired you to run for political office anytime soon. The funny thing is that somebody told me the other day — one of the people I was toying around with a little bit — wrote back to me, “Well, you should run for office, I’d vote for ya.” To which my first thought was, “Well what does one have to do with the other?” Their point was, “Well obviously it’s because you really don’t seem to care, and you should know.” Well, now you’re looking for an anti-politician. But the short answer to your question is no, not really. If I were to be very serious about it and look at it, on both sides of the spectrum this guy is getting all this hate mail, he can’t even do anything right. The vast majority of it doesn’t appear to be things he can control, he’s just one of a lot of senators. The people are now using social media platforms the way 20 years ago you picked up the phone and called his office. They used to never hear it because it was left on a voicemail and probably was never even heard by a staffer, and now they’re on these social media platforms all day at any time. In some respects it gives me a new sense of appreciation of how difficult it must be to be for anyone in an elected office right now, because you can’t do anything that pleases the majority of people. This guy can’t seem to win for losing based on the tweets I’ve seen. CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 15
FOOD
FEATURE
BE GONE, BAD JUJU Will the Factory Café beat the curse? BY JASMIN HERRERA
W
ITH ITS MIX of music, comedy, bars, clubs and restaurants, the NC Music Factory has always managed to attract Charlotte’s night owls. But there were some things that sisters-in-law Tracy Ford and Jacquette Land noticed were missing on the boulevard, one being a restaurant serving breakfast foods to the tipsy late-night crowd. Ford and Land aim to fix that as they put the final touches to Factory Café, a new restaurant in the heart of the Music Factory that’s set to open this week. The café will offer breakfast until 4 a.m., filling the void left when Mattie’s Diner closed in 2015. From low-cal smoothies and protein drinks to a patio newly equipped with flat-screen TVs, Ford and Land hope to bring life to a spot in the AvidXchange complex that other restaurateurs have had a hard time keeping open. It’s the space at the corner of the circle directly across from La Revolucion. “This area is really growing and we thought it was a good location for the type of menu that we’re opening,” says Ford, citing full-service menu that includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, late-night treats and a kids’ menu. Abby Johnson, director of catering of Factory Café, describes the cuisine as “American with a Southern flare.” On tap will be soul food staples like shrimp and grits, fried green tomatoes, biscuits and gravy, mac and cheese, ribs and pork chops, as well as such non-Southern classics as Philly cheesesteaks, cold cuts, burgers and grilled salmon. The restaurant will also open for weekend brunch (with a build-your-own crepe option), which will include live jazz music. “It’ll have an upscale feel with an affordable price,” the restaurant’s manager, Cecil Dowdell, says. “And the menu’s just ridiculous — meaning great.” The Factory Café held a soft open on Saturday, March 31; the official grand opening is Friday, April 7. FORD, THE CAFÉ’S co-owner and general
manager, is sitting under a cascade of ship rope that covers half the restaurant’s ceiling and holds the plank wine shelves on the wall behind the bar. The interior has an urban design, with exposed brick walls and hanging Edison bulb light fixtures. Asian-style art covers the bar area from the floor to the countertop to the wall behind it, a holdover from Eight Sushi, the last restaurant to hold 16 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
PHOTOS BY JASMIN HERRERA
SEE
JUJU
P. 17
u
“THE MENU’S JUST RIDICULOUS — MEANING GREAT.” -FACTORY CAFÉ MANAGER CECIL DOWDELL (RIGHT)
FOOD
THREE-COURSE SPIEL
A CHEF GROWS UP Three questions for Chef Deacon Ovall of Tavolo Restaurant BY DEBRA RENEE SETH
JUJU FROM
P.16
t
this space. On the wall behind Ford sits a large, custom-made sign built from aluminum sheets, flat driftwood-like panels and a black circle with the Factory Café logo at the center. The concept, she says, was inspired by the News Café, a famous restaurant in Miami. “We pretty much did a little spin-off here, thinking it would be nice for this area,” Ford says. The space Factory Café occupies has a rocky history, having seen several restaurants fail over the past few years. But that doesn’t scare the two women. Ford, who holds a bachelor’s degree in home economics, says she and Land will ensure the restaurant’s success by employing good customer service and offering what the people in the immediate area want in an eatery. “We got a lot of suggestions from [locals] as to what they would like to see here,” Ford says, citing the low-cal smoothies as well as cappuccino and espresso. She also believes the late-night breakfasts will be a big draw. More than that, says Johnson, Factory Café’s ace in the hole is executive chef Jamarr Shular, a California native with years of experience in catering and kitchen work. “He’s fabulous,” Johnson says. “He’s the only chef I’ve worked with in my 20 years that doesn’t get angry or have a temper in the kitchen.” And, she adds with a touch of braggadocio, “He was an executive chef for Apple in Silicon Valley.” Johnson says she has a few marketing ideas in the pipeline, too, one of which is a Music Factory crawl. “What that will entail is having a drink at Wet Willie’s, going to La Revolucion and having nachos, coming here for their main course.” Another special offering? “We are also going to do cooking classes at the cafe,” she says. As Music Factory tenants ourselves, Creative Loafing will be the ones most rooting for their success in a space once seen as cursed.
THE FACTORY CAFÉ Mon. - Thurs. 7 a.m. - 2 a.m.; Fri. Sun. 7 a.m. - 4 a.m. 1000 NC Music Factory Blvd. 980-237-1232. factorycafeclt.com
60 MINUTES to ESCAPE...
CAN YOU DO IT? Tickets are $25/person Book your room at:
racecityescapes.com
Use our mystery discount code: CL0217
149C Rolling Hill Rd Mooresville, NC 28117 (828) 461-1534
DEACON OVALL only ever wanted one thing — to be a chef. As a child, he’d watch old cooking shows like The Frugal Gourmet and The Cajun Cook, fascinated by life inside the kitchen. Now, as executive chef at Charlotte’s new Tavolo Italian Restaurant, Ovall has accomplished his goal but along the way came to realized there’s a lot more to being a chef than just making great food. Life inside the restaurant industry can be extremely fast-paced and hectic. Time is always a factor and there’s a strict hierarchy. Only the strong survive, and the only measurables of success are respect and results. What’s more, the pressures don’t stop once you clock out. Underlying pitfalls like drugs and alcohol have been known to sidetrack the careers of many young chefs. But not Ovall. He’s pushed passed the pressures to become one of the top chefs in the city and is now serving delicious Italian food at one of Uptown’s newest gems. We chopped it up with Ovall to find out what he thinks is the difference between a good cook and a great chef. Creative Loafing: You’ve worked as a chef in several other restaurants before landing at Tavolo. What’s different this time around? Deacon: The diffence is my maturity. I literally started cooking when I was in fifth grade, trained in food service in high school and then straight from high school started cooking professionally. In that time I learned a lot of technical skills and was making great food but I lacked a lot of maturity and confidence in what I was doing. We all know the kind of asshole cook on the line, cussing out the servers. I hate to say it, but I was that guy. I was cooking but I wasn’t satisfied. I knew I wanted to do something different so that’s when I decided to go back to school and formally train in culinary arts. School was pretty easy for me because I’d already been working professionally, so I had that advantage, but at the same time it gave me more skills and increased my knowledge and palette. From there my perception changed. My confidence grew, which made me a better leader. Before, I wasn’t quite there yet. This time around I’m more mature
and I’m more confident, which has made me a better leader and a better chef. What can people expect when they visit Tavolo for the first time? Is it anything like Cosmos was? Tavolo is a full-service, family-friendly, traditional Italian restaurant serving all your favorites like spagetti and meatballs and lasagna and other classics, as well as fresh, handmade craft beverages right in the heart of Uptown. As executive chef, I helped create our menu and we are really excited to offer the delicious traditional Italian food people grew up with in an area where it wasn’t available before. Our restaurant is a totally separate concept from our predecessors and gives Charlotteans a new choice for their next family meal, special occasion or event. We’re looking forward to a great spring and summer and will be offering special seasonal dishes along with refreshing cocktails as the tempratures rise. It’s kind of a taboo topic but you’ve witnessed some of the pitfalls behind the scenes in the culinary world — like drug and alcohol abuse. What advice would you give to aspiring culinary pros on avoiding those things? Unfortunately, some people do get caught up in that stuff. Every industry has its pros and cons but it goes back to maturity and setting goals for yourself. I had no idea I’d be an executive chef in Charlotte when I was a young kid in Ohio. I just knew I wanted to cook. I set a goal early and I accomplished it and grew in the process. My advice would be: Get your priorities right. Don’t lose sight of your ending goals and don’t get lost in the demons that lie underneath the restaurant industry. CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 17
18 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 19
THURSDAY
6
FRIDAY
7
LEELA JAMES & DALEY
SHADOWGRAPHS
What: R&B singer Kehlani’s Charlotte show was rescheduled from this night at The Fillmore, but no worrys, you can go right next door to The Underground for your fill of soul. NAACP Image and Soul Train award-winner Leela James brings her husky, swaggering, old-school voice along with fellow soul singer Daley to town for their Undeniable Tour. “Baby Etta,” as James was nicknamed as a child, just released her new album, Did It For Love, so hear the tracks while they’re still hot off the presses.
What: Shadowgraphs founder Bryan Olsen is an artist noted for his retro-psychedelic collages that recall 1970s album art — think the beam-splitting prism on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. His psych-rock band Shadowgraphs is the musical analog for those images, in which a swirling organ entwines with trippy guitars and ’60s Summer of Love harmonies to transport listeners into deep space. The show is an album release party for the band’s latest vinyl and digital LP, Venomous Blossoms.
When: 7 p.m. Where: The Underground, 820 Hamilton St. More: $27.50. fillmorenc.com.
When: 9 p.m. Where: Snug Harbor, 1228 Gordon St. More: $5. snugrock.com.
20 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
THINGS TO DO
TOP TEN
Leela James & Daley THURSDAY COURTESY OF THE FILLMORE
FRIDAY
7
CHAOS, CONFUSION, OR COMMUNITY What: Step inside your own head for a minute — or, rather, three hours. This show looks to explore how our public, private and forced dualities create justified anxiety and paranoia. The multimedia collaborative exhibition includes drawings, photography, poetry, sculpture and video installations from artists like de’Angelo Dia, David Scott Sackett, Laura Sussman-Randall and Lillya Zalevskaya that explore why we can never stop analyzing people. When: 6-9 p.m. Where: Goodyear Arts, 516 N. College St. More: Free. goodyeararts.com.
SATURDAY
8
SATURDAY
8
MOVING SPIRITS
MINNESOTA
What: This new, monthly, community-intensive dance workshop aims to move rhythmically through the African diaspora from spring into summer. On Saturday, Vera Passos teaches the movements of Samba Afro, a style born out of Afro-Brazilian resistance in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The dances highlight the rich culture of movement, music and history of black Brazilians, bringing positive attention to Afro-Brazilian contributions to society.
What: Known to his parents as the bespectacled, mild-mannered millennial Christian Bauhofer, as the melodic dubstep maestro Minnesota he bubbled up in 2011 with his Panda Snatching Tycoon EP, featuring the dancefloor epic “Push It.” Besides collaborating with trance fusionist Seven Lions and singer-songwriter Mimi Page, he’s making waves with a monster remix of the Mamas & the Papas’ “California Dreaming.” Also on the bill: ill.Gates, Luzcid and lilanthropy.
When: 2-3 p.m. Where: Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts & Culture, 551 S. Tryon St. More: $5. ganttcenter.org.
When: 8 p.m. Where: Neighborhood Theatre, 511 E 36th St. More: $10-40. neighborhoodtheatre.com.
Doug Stanhope MONDAY
Hedwig and the Angry Inch TUESDAY
NEWS ARTS FOOD MUSIC ODDS
Shadowgraphs FRIDAY PHOTO BY JUSTIN SMITH
SATURDAY
8
SUNDAY
9
COURTESY OF THE COMEDY ZONE
MONDAY
10
WANDERLUST 108
ARAB-AMERICAN FESTIVAL
DOUG STANHOPE
What: Get ready for the most Zeninfused day of outdoor activities that you could ever experience in the Queen City. This triathalon starts with a 5K run/walk, followed by a DJ-powered yoga flow class led by top instructors, then wraps up with 30 minutes of soul-reviving mediation right there in the park. End the day with one of any number of activities to be offered, including aerial yoga, acroyoga or hooping, or just shop at the Kula Market if you please.
What: Come by to celebrate your heritage or get a better understanding of a number of cultures that are among the most misunderstood in our country. Activities throughout the day will include Middle Eastern music from the Waves Band; Palestinian folk dances; pastries and Mediterranean cuisine; henna tattoo art; jewelry; a fashion show; kids’ games; backgammon; and artifacts. This event is hosted by the Arab American Council of the Carolinas.
What: Doug Stanhope has been making some folks laugh and pissing everyone else off for nearly three decades, and is known among stand-up comics as one of the best doing it. Those not familiar with comedy culture might recognize Stanhope from his short stint as host of The Man Show on Comedy Central, or a more recent appearance as Louie C.K.s suicidal former friend in Louie. But he’s most at home on the stage, and that’s where you need to see him.
When: 7:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Where: Romare Bearden Park, 300 S. Church St. More: $29-50. wanderlust. com/108-events/charlotte.
When: 12-5 p.m. Where: Queens University, 1900 Selwyn Ave. More: $3, kids under 5 are free. aaccnc.org.
When: 7 p.m. Where: The Comedy Zone, 900 NC Music Factory Blvd. More: $35. cltcomedyzone.com.
JOAN MARCUS
TUESDAY
11
HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH What: This landmark genre- and gender-bending musical from John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask tells the story of one of the most unique characters to ever hit the stage. The Broadway bestseller, directed by Tony Award-winner Michael Mayer and starring Tony Award-nominee Euan Morton, will bring its pulsing, glam-heavy music and electrifying performances to the Queen City for a full week. So get ready, Sugar Daddy. When: April 11-16; times vary Where: Knight Theater, 430 S. Tryon St. More: $25-94.50. blumenthalarts. org.
WEDNESDAY
12
GOGOL BORDELLO What: Gogol Bordello is the antiTrump! Hear us out: While the gypsy punks roll up with their rock ‘n’ roll sideshow, Trump rolls out his shock and awe shitshow. GB frontman Eugene Hütz escaped Russia’s ecological disaster at Chernobyl to come to America. Trump encouraged Russia’s electoral disaster to screw up America. Hütz is a showman at the center of a multi-ethnic musical carnival. Trump is a conman at the center of an anti-ethnic tyrannical cabal. We rest our case. When: 8 p.m. Where: Fillmore, 820 Hamilton St. More: $11-22. fillmorecharlottenc. com.
CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 21
COURTESY OF BEN SHROPSHIRE
Sometimes all you want to do is help people and you wind up dead on a cross
22 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
FEATURE
ARTS
CASTING THE RUNES Ben Shropshire turns magic, dreams (and bugs) into art BY PAT MORAN
O
N A MARCH AFTERNOON
after a freak snowfall, the back room at Jim McGuire’s “Happening” at Studio 1212 is filling up with artists, performers and onlookers. There’s a lot going on: Hula hoopers twist beside a psychedelic school bus blasting dance music. Aerialists swing from the rafters, practicing a routine. A “bubbleologist” blows smoke into concentric soap bubble domes encased within larger geometric shapes. Amid this riot of artsy activity, my gaze is drawn to Ben Shropshire sitting behind a table filled with colorful squares of paper. Some of his artwork looks like letters — the big ones inscribed with filigree and scrollwork that I’ve seen in pictures of illuminated medieval manuscripts. Others look organic and alien at the same time. It turns out that they’re runes — Elder Futhark runes, Shropshire tells me. Though the designs are Shropshire’s, the runes are Scandinavian. They are the oldest letters from northern Europe, dating from 150 to 800 AD. They were once used in a runic alphabet for language, and have since been used as art and decoration. They are also magic. “I like to lay the runes out on a table and see which ones people are drawn to,” Shropshire says. “People like runes for all sorts of reasons. But I’m not tricking them into liking the one that is meant for them. The runes do that on their own.” We’re holding this mystical, metaphysical conversation a month later over the phone. I ask the 31-year old artist and chef how rune magic is supposed to work. Is it like tarot cards, where answers await in the spreads and patterns? Is it like the manifestationthrough-intention approach of oracle cards, where focusing on an image brings about a specific outcome? The answers are “Yes” and “No.” “Just sitting down and drawing is magic in my eyes,” Shropshire says. “An artist brings something into existence that no one would have ever seen otherwise. That’s magic.” Shropshire is a self-trained artist who started drawing when he was a kid. A few years ago he started sketching free-form designs in ink and oil pastels. The designs came straight from the subconscious. “I had a really intense dream, and I wanted to get it down on paper,” Shropshire explains. “I wrote it out, but then I decided to draw what I saw.” Eventually he was able to access the place where he saw the images without the aid of dreams.
“Now the line work comes quickly, like automatic writing,” he says. As Shropshire continued to create his own original designs, he began to be drawn to the runes. “I’ve always been very interested in history, and I started reading about Scandinavian runes,” he says. “I like sci-fi and fantasy, and Norse mythology is based on fantasy. “The runes can help people,” he continues. “In Norse mythology, Odin, who is the father of all, found the runes and sacrificed himself to get them to give them to humanity. I’m not trying to be like Odin, but I give away a lot of artwork to friends. I know the runes will be beneficial for people, based on who they are and what they’re after.” Shropshire’s designs can currently be seen at Central Coffee on Louise Avenue. He plans to share more of his rune work in the fall in a split show with fellow Charlotte artist James Jeffries. The show will be based on magic and the esoteric, and it won’t have a name. “When people see our work, they may be drawn to some things and repelled by others,” Shropshire says. “The show could easily have ten different names. We want to throw a veil of mystery and confusion over the show to make it more intentional. “It’s like when you give someone a plate of food, something they’ve never tried before,” he explains. “You don’t say anything before you give them the plate. You watch them eat it, and you wait for their opinion.” If you say the dish will be salty, he says, your guest will invariably find the food salty; if you suggest it will be crispy, then crispy it will seem.
Crystal Synapses
COURTESY OF BEN SHROPSHIRE
IT TURNS OUT Shropshire knows what
he’s talking about when he employs his extended food metaphor about this art. He’s been a professional chef for 10 years, and soon he’s going to apply his experiments with form and content to his day job, particularly during a summer-long gig at an exclusive estate in western New York. “Last summer I was hired as private chef for the president of the Chautauqua Institution,” Shropshire says. “I’m going to do it again this year.” Established in 1874, the Chautauqua Institution is a not-for-profit, 750-acre community on Chautauqua Lake in New York State. On any given day throughout the summer, up to 7,500 people reside on campus. The institute’s president lives in a swanky cottage on the property. SEE
RUNES P. 24 u
Joy in the Vast Green
COURTESY OF BEN SHROPSHIRE
CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 23
Some say there is a man living up there on that dusty plateau
COURTESY OF BEN SHROPSHIRE
Ben Shropshire
PHOTO BY JEFF LAFFERTY RUNE SPOON CREATED BY JOHN BRASCH
“AN ARTIST BRINGS SOMETHING INTO EXISTENCE THAT NO ONE WOULD HAVE EVER SEEN OTHERWISE. THAT’S MAGIC.” -BEN SHROPSHIRE
RUNES FROM P.23 t “It’s an old mansion on this lake,” Shropshire says. “They cater and host all of the speakers, artists and musicians who come through there. They have a sit-down dinner at the president’s cottage once they arrive. I cater those meals.” Shropshire has been thinking about what he’s going to say to the president when he sees him this year, “I’m going to tell him that I’m 24 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
going to serve him bugs, basically.” The notion of getting world-renowned artists and philanthropists to eat insects started as a private joke for Shropshire, but now he’s run with the idea with almost evangelical zeal. “So I started researching it, and it makes total sense,” he says. “Almost half the world’s population eats bugs on a daily basis already. They’re nutritious and tasty. Bugs taste like all sorts of different things that people like already, like nuts and citrus. They’re also incredibly sustainable.”
Shropshire points out that there are plenty of reasons to incorporate insects into a daily diet. They’re gluten free, and incredibly high in protein, he says. Now, he just has to convince his summer clientele. “They’re a self-proclaimed open-minded, liberal arts community, who pride themselves on being open to new ideas,” he says. Shropshire knows that his diners will ultimately determine the palatability of his insect-based cuisine. The tastiness of bugs, like the efficacy of rune magic, lies in the eye of the beholder.
BEN SHROPSHIRE: ARTWORK Onging. Monday-Saturday, 6 a.m. - 8 p.m.; Sunday, 8 a.m. - 6 p.m.. FREE. Central Coffee Co., 719 Louise Ave. 704-335-7288. facebook.com/Central CoffeeCo/.
ARTS
ARTSPEAK
AN ART FORM ON THE ROPES Charlotte duo helps rejuvenate onceforgotten ancient art BY RYAN PITKIN
EACH MORNING, BETWEEN 7 and 8 a.m., Uday Deshpande holds court in a small field in Shivaji Park on the Mahim Bay in Mumbai, India. For that hour, he instructs any willing student between the ages of 5 and 85 in the ancient art of Mallakhamb, a gymnastic sport in which a gymnast or gymnasts strike poses while balancing on a pole or rope. Deshpande has been described as a oneman army in the fight to keep the art of Mallakhamb alive. Later this year, two Charlotteans will travel to Mumbai to train under him with plans to return and make their home city a national training base from which Americans can learn the centuries-old art form. Linus Matusik has been practicing aerial arts for about three years. A little over a year ago, he introduced his girlfriend Rachel MacNab to aerial arts, specifically on ropes, which he had recently picked up, and the two have been performing together since. In January, the pair launched Circus Innovations, a performance troupe/training company aimed to spread the popularity of circus arts throughout Charlotte and the surrounding areas. Much of their founding year will be focused on Mallakhamb. The duo are spending this week in New Jersey for intensive Mallakhamb training that will end with them receiving certification from the Mallakhamb Federation USA to become trainers themselves. Then later this year, they’ll take the trip to meet Deshpande and learn more about the cultural significance of Mallakhamb in the region, something they say is of utmost importance to them as performers and teachers. Creative Loafing sat down with the aerial artists before their trip to New Jersey to hang out (we stayed off the ropes, though) and talk circus shop. Creative Loafing: How did you get involved with aerial arts? Linus Matusik: My first introduction to it was at a music festival in Michigan. I hung out with some people and they seemed to really encourage me. It was something that just seemed very interesting. They encouraged me to give it a shot and I did and I found a studio when I moved here to Charlotte. Rachel MacNab: I met this fellow last year and previous to that I had never done anything aerial at all. I was really into rock climbing, so I already had the upper body
Rachel MacNab (top) and Linus Matusik strike a pose. strength for it. He invited me to a project to just come try it out and I fell in love with rope completely. What do you hope to accomplish with Circus Innovations? Matusik: What we’re looking to do is completely change the way people are doing movement and everything in the arts. We’re looking to do things people aren’t doing at all. We want to merge it all. We’re just looking to bring in people that maybe don’t have access to the arts, or who feel like maybe this isn’t for them because it’s only for a certain elite few. We’re trying to completely break down those barriers. MacNab: This year we want to get established more in the community. We’re already well on our way to doing that, just as far as people knowing that we’re here, and we’re willing to teach anyone. We want to help people explore the different areas of circus arts. It’s about allowing people that freedom to explore the circus arts in a structured, safe environment, but also so that they can try out whatever they want to do. Matusik: We want accessibility, that’s really important to us, and freedom. We don’t want to restrict people. We believe in safety, but we also believe that safety shouldn’t restrict a person. We want people to get to that next level, and that for me had been a problem in training in some studios here. It’s just something where they hold your hand through everything. At the end of the day, we’re adults, someone else is going to know their body better than me. So we like to give people the benefit of the doubt and let them trust themselves.
How did you two get interested in Mallakhamb? Matusik: On New Year’s Eve [2016] we were at an Indian restaurant called King of Spicy on Albemarle Road. We were just having a conversation with people there, and I had known about Mallakhamb and seen it before but I’d never really thought of it as a connection to the circus world, even though it’s literally the origins of everything we do. I’d never really connected the dots, and we got to talking and we just kind of decided we could actually do this. MacNab: We were talking about how it’s the history of circus, and I was like, Why have I never heard of this? Teach me everything. What have you learned? MacNab: It started in the 12th century as a training practice for wrestlers, then it just disappeared. Matusik: Legend has it, the monkey god Hanuman passed down his powers and imbued warriors to have these powers to fight off outside invaders, which is just such a cool fucking story to me. But then it kind of disappeared for about 600 years, all these moves, until it had a resurgence when British imperialism was being fought back against in the 18th century. There was a big resurgence in Indian culture, people were proud of this thing. Cricket was a British sport, and it was really forced upon Indian people, and around that time, that’s when Mallakhamb was seen as a way to fight back. MacNab: People started to get really into it because they were like, “This is India. This is Indian.” So after 600 years of just not even existing, it all of a sudden came back. What does this upcoming trip to Mumbai
MUHSAIN “MOOSE” COPPER
mean to you both as aspiring Mallakhamb teachers? Matusik: I really like finding the origins of everything we do. After performing for years, this has become my passion, this is becoming my life. I’m going all the way into this, and I like the ideas of finding the origins of it, because a lot of times you just don’t hear about that, where it came from. You hear about Barnum & Bailey in the 19th century, but even that’s gone. I don’t want to lose things. I think cultural preservation is very important and we can learn a lot from it. MacNab: It’s a life goal for me that [Uday Deshpande] teach me and I train with him. He’s been doing this for 40 years, and competitively practiced it before that. He runs a school right now for children around age 4 who are blind, and he’s teaching them Mallakhamb. That part of it just floors me because it ties my two passions together of circus arts and all of this cool stuff I can do, and I’m professionally a therapist for kids with special needs, so it just brings it all together for me. And what does it mean to be able to bring that experience back to Charlotte? Matusik: We really want to see circus arts and the arts in general grow in this city. I feel like there’s plenty of room for growth there and that’s what we’re looking to do. MacNab: Even people we know who start off in Charlotte and get into art — not even necessarily circus arts —they get good and they leave. We want to get good and stay. Matusik: As soon as they get talent, they’re off. That’s not what we’re looking to do. We want to build it up here, and that’s our goal is to be here. CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 25
Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell (Photo: Paramount)
ARTS
FILM
ENHANCED EXPERIENCE Heady sci-fi deserves Ghost of a chance BY MATT BRUNSON
I
T’S REACHED A POINT
where CGI is so been-theredone-that, it’s hard to ever locate anything new in Hollywood’s oversized slate of fantasy flicks. But then here comes Ghost in the Shell (*** out of four), with its stream of images that manage to be at once familiar and revolutionary. While the general aesthetic recalls Blade Runner, the particulars bring to mind The Matrix — specifically the manner in which something old, like a gun battle or a mad dash around a room, becomes something new. Simply stated, the visual effects are 26 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
superb — sometimes chilly, sometimes creepy, but always fascinating to behold. If visual vibrancy turned out to be the sole positive attribute regarding Ghost in the Shell, that would only be a partial victory. Instead, this adaptation of the popular manga is effective as both an action flick and, more impressively, a sociopolitical piece that casts a wary eye toward the future. The Japanese property created by Masamune Shirow may date back to 1989, but this film version is so very 2017 and beyond. Scarlett Johansson, no stranger to essaying roles in which the human form
(or “shell”) plays a significant part in the proceedings (Under the Skin, Lucy, even Her), stars as The Major, a cyber-enhanced agent for an organization devoted to fighting global terrorism. The Major’s background is murky: Surviving a nautical disaster that killed her immigrant parents, she was selected to have her brain put inside cyborg trappings, so that her human essence remains even as her physical form has been taken to the next level. But this naturally leads to all sorts of questions regarding self-identity and self-worth, and her confusion only grows more paramount after she confronts a cyber-terrorist named Kuze
(Michael Pitt), a shadowy figure who’s been assassinating all the top scientists at the corporation which created The Major. What’s particularly fascinating about the world of Ghost in the Shell is that it appears to be one in which there are no borders or, ahem, walls of any sort — in this future world, complete globalization and a thorough meshing of cultures are already givens, and it doesn’t seem out of place for, say, the head of the antiterrorist outfit (celebrated Japanese star “Beat” Takeshi Kitano) to speak in Japanese to his team members and have them all answer in English. Robotic enhancement
Jessica Chastain in The Zookeeper’s Wife (Photo: Focus Features)
also seems to be a wave of the future, with folks receiving upgrades in the same manner as people today pay for tattoos, facelifts, lip enhancement, and the like. In one scene, a character flatly states that he’s happy to be all human while another humorously reveals that he had a liver enhancement solely so he can spend more nights getting drunk. The global theme of Ghost in the Shell also ties directly into the casting of Johansson in the central role. While the makers of the original franchise have endorsed the selection of the actress, many in this country have denounced the choice as yet another example of Hollywood whitewashing. Certainly, as attested by such films as Doctor Strange and Exodus: Gods and Kings, this remains a dire problem, yet that’s not necessarily what’s going on with this picture. Without unleashing any spoilers, let’s just say that the selection of Johansson to play what’s essentially a fabricated being makes sense within the context of the story, and the Japanese roots ultimately are not discarded. A quick scan of the negative reviews on Rotten Tomatoes reveals that approximately
1,024 of the critics have employed a pull quote stating that the film itself is merely “a shell of a movie.” Given my own proclivity for puns, I would doubtless have followed suit had I similarly seen nothing of merit. Instead, I’ll for once leave the quipping to others and merely note that, for those willing to look beneath its surface dazzle, Ghost in the Shell proves to be an unexpectedly complex and surprisingly humanistic endeavor. While the title might bring to mind a ‘40s flick like The Farmer’s Daughter or a Something Weird Video release like The Farmer’s Other Daughter, The Zookeeper’s Wife (*** out of four) is in reality a harrowing World War II drama based on the bestselling book by Diane Ackerman. Directed by Niki Caro (Whale Rider), it tells the true-life story of Jan and Antonina Zabinski (Johan Heldenbergh and Jessica Chastain), a married couple in charge of the Warsaw Zoo during the 1930s. The zoo’s stellar reputation throughout Europe of course doesn’t help it when the Nazis come a-calling, and even the benevolence of Lutz
Heck (Daniel Brühl), the head of the Berlin Zoo, is curtailed once he becomes Hitler’s chief zoologist and begins to care more about killing Jews than saving animals. The Zabinskis, on the other hand, want to save all types of lives. Using the remains of their bombed-out zoo as cover — they wisely offer it up to the Germans as a pig farm to provide food for the troops — they become an integral part of the underground movement, hiding Jews within their house for indeterminate amounts of time and moving them to safety when possible. The Zookeeper’s Wife is rated PG-13, but don’t be fooled into thinking that designation means the movie is two hours of Chastain pulling a Doctor Dolittle and talking to the animals while blissfully unaware of the atrocities surrounding her. On the contrary, the picture is brutal in its implications if not always in its visuals, and Caro is able to fully telegraph the horrors of the conflict without exploiting them. Some have criticized the film for being too tasteful, but c’mon, do we really need to see a young Jewish girl (a representational fictional character
hauntingly played by Shira Haas) being raped by two German soldiers to understand what happened to her? Her appearance and shellshocked demeanor following the incident speaks volumes. The picture only loses its footing during the final chunk, when the steady pace and believable scenarios give way to a woefully truncated timeline and a few narrative whoppers (for instance, I’m still trying to figure out how a woman walking miles through thick-as-molasses crowds can reach a specific locale before a convoy of jeeps and trucks, considering both left from the same spot at roughly the same time). For the most part, though, The Zookeeper’s Wife is an accomplished picture, offering a fascinating history lesson even as it remains wholly topical. With its unique zoo setting, it should appeal to animal lovers all over the world. And with its narrative involving the fight against Nazis, it should appeal to at least 48.2% of this nation’s population.
CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 27
ALL PHOTOS OF KEVIN CARTER BY PRESTON NORALES
MUSIC
COVER STORY
MERCURY RISES Charlotte fashion prodigy Kevin Carter finds his true voice in music BY MARK KEMP
K
EVIN CARTER WAS 19 when
he decided he’d had enough of fashion. He’d been designing clothes since ninth grade and was so talented by 15 that his bold and flashy Kevin Vain line made it onto a runway during Charlotte Fashion Week 2010. Two years later, a pair of Kevin Vain dresses were featured in an exhibit at the Mint Museum. Within another two years, his fashion line was appearing on TV, in newspaper and magazine spreads, and on runways in Atlanta. But fashion was no longer scratching Carter’s creative itch, and he began to look back to his first love: singing. His father, Kevin Carter Sr., lets out a husky chuckle when he recalls that fateful decision. He and Kevin’s mother Angelia knew their son had musical talent, but they had long assumed he was on his way to becoming a mover and shaker in the world of haute couture. “Then he started doing karaoke nights, and singing around at different venues,” the elder Carter says. “And I’m thinking to myself: ‘He sounds like he’s really getting this thing. I think he might be able to sing a little bit.’” That just may be the understatement of the 21st century. As wildly talented as the teenaged Kevin was as Kevin Vain the fashion designer, 22-year-old Kevin is even more talented as Mercury Carter the singer. Last year, he released a homemade six-song EP on Soundcloud, Mercury, that reveals a vocalist of uncommon abilities. Not only does his extraordinary range rival those of Prince, Mariah Carey and Queen’s Freddie Mercury, but Carter’s nuanced sense of tone and dynamics, the melodic creativity of his arrangements, and his mature lyrical abilities are as remarkable as his voice. Carter smiles bashfully when confronted with what seem like over-the-top accolades. “Thank you!” he says with a gleeful chirp, drawing out the “ooo” in you. The two of us are having nachos on the patio of Cabo Fish Taco in NoDa. It’s a weekday afternoon, and Carter is dressed casually in jeans, a sweater, and a vintage black jacket with snakeskin patches that he found at Goodwill. His big ginger afro, sharp sense of style and archedeyebrow humor give him the look of Prince, circa 1978, but with lighter, softer features and a much more accessible and disarming personality. “I know Kevin probably gets tired of being compared to Prince,” Corey Mitchell, Carter’s former teacher at Northwest School 28 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
of the Arts, tells me later by phone. “But there are certain people who just hear music on a very different level than what the average person does. Prince was one of those people. And I equate Kevin with that. I will sit and scroll though Kevin’s Facebook page and watch five or six videos in a row — just to be in that atmosphere where he is. Kevin is that good.” And he’s ramping up his game. Carter is currently at work on a visual element to go along with the tracks from his EP, which documents a romantic breakup in brutally confessional songs like “Invisible” (“You make me feel like I’m not here”), “Belladonna” (“Creatures tried to pluck you and feast on your fruit”), and “Whispers” (“Your skin was so close but you never felt me”). Although the EP is currently available on Soundcloud, he says the project won’t be complete until listeners can see his music as well as hear it. “I’m doing video for four of the songs,” Carter says, “but it will be just one film — kind of like Beyoncé did with Lemonade: multiple songs, one video.” He laughs, having caught himself comparing his work with Queen Bey’s. “I mean, it won’t be anything like hers, but the same idea. I’ve already purchased white backdrops that I painted myself. And I’m very excited about it.” The romantic breakup Carter sings about on Mercury is what brought him back to music after spending so much of his teens in the fashion world. “It was just horrible,” he remembers of the split. “I was very depressed and I would sing in the car and around my friends and around the house all the time.” He furrows his brow, pouts and picks at his food. “My two best friends at the time were like, ‘OK, look, we need to at least put a video up on YouTube.’ And then they started bugging me about doing an EP.” Carter downloaded a music-making app on his iPad, bought a microphone with one of his paychecks from his day job as an insurance verifier, and started recording. “I did it all in one week and everything in one take,” he says. “I just made the beats and sang the songs and posted it. On some songs you can even hear me crying. It’s just literally like” — he lets out a big sigh — “Uh! Each song is like a page from my diary. If you listen carefully to the whole thing, you can tell it’s just one big story.” His pout returns to a bright smile. “And I’ve been so pleasantly surprised,” he exclaims. “It’s gotten a lot of attention.” Not nearly enough. As of early April, the numbers of listens to the tracks on Mercury
AIN THERE ARE CERTMUSIC R PEOPLE WHO HEAERENT ON A VERY DIFF AS ONE W LEVEL . . . PRINCELE. AND I OF THOSE PEOP H THAT.” IT EQUATE KEVIN WELL -COREY MITCH
average at about 2,500. In an ideal world, hundreds of thousands of music lovers who appreciate the more experimental works of artists ranging from Prince, Bjork and Queen to Imogen Heap or even Holly Herndon should be flocking to Mercury Carter’s Soundcloud page to listen to his finely tuned tapestry of layered vocals, melodies that walk a tightrope between pop and opera, and just the right hints of hip-hop and funk. In addition to creating a video element for some of the tracks from the debut EP, Carter is also currently working with an outside producer and full band on a follow-up. The video element to Mercury is scheduled for a June 1 release, and the new EP will come shortly thereafter. “It’s very deep stuff,” Carter says, almost apolgetically, of the tracks on Mercury. “So I can understand why it’s not really radio potential, or why it’s not like, ‘Oh you need a record deal right now.’ It’s more like, ‘Wow. I need to sit here and think about this for a while after listening to it.’ Which is kind of what I wanted.”
“MUSICAL GENIUS” and “renaissance
man” are way-overused superlatives in arts writing, but sometimes they apply. Kevin Carter was taking piano lessons and attending Reedy Creek Elementary School when his parents first noticed their son’s exceptional creative aptitude. They enrolled him into Northwest School of the Arts, the magnet school on Beatties Ford Road for artistically inclined children, to study piano. “We realized he was very interested in the arts,” his father says. “So we just wanted to do whatever we could to help him get further along and really discover what he liked to do.” The younger Carter says his parents were a little apprehensive at first. “When they heard that you had to audition to get in and that you had to keep a certain GPA to stay in the school, they were afraid that it might overshadow the cultivation of my artistic side,” he says. “They were worried that if I didn’t get in, it might actually hinder my drive to be a pianist.” But he thrived at Northwest. In addition to studying piano, Carter signed up for chorus and musical theater. The encouragement of two
k e y instructors — the late Michael Washington, his chorus teacher, and Mitchell, who still teaches musical theater at Northwest — made a lasting impact. “They’re the ones who made me realize I could sing; I guess I didn’t realize it on my own,” Carter says. “They were the ones who told me, ‘Whoa! Are you sure you want to do piano? Because you have an amazing voice.” Mitchell remembers seeing something special in Carter early on. “I’m a little bit blown away that he remembers me saying that,” Mitchell says. “I think it’s a tremendous honor. But being able to single a student out and help push them in the right direction is kind of how I see my function as a teacher.” Carter was part of a larger group of talented students who attended Northwest around the same time — students like pianist Luther Allison; trumpet player Braxton Bateman; brothers Nick and Jeremy Cousar, both singers; Will “Saxman” Smith; and saxophonist Adrian Crutchfield, who had come through the curriculum earlier and went on to perform and record with numerous artists including CeeLo Green and Prince. “What happens,” Mitchell says, “is that genius needs to breed with other geniuses, where you have a collective of people who are working together, creating together, and pushing each other to be better and to work harder.” Though Carter looks back fondly on those heady early years at Northwest, by eighth grade he was itching to attend a public school with regular kids. “I wanted to see how it was in real life,” he says. Little did he know how cruel “real life” could be. He gazes out the window of the restaurant onto North Davidson, where shops like Pura Vida Worldly Art and Fu’s Custom Tattoo line the opposite side of the street. NoDa is a world away from West Mecklenburg High School. “I’m sure you can imagine how difficult that was for an artistic person,” Carter says of his high school years. “People just didn’t understand me, and the bullying was brutal.” High school is when Carter began to experiment with clothing design. “I used fashion as a way to cope with all the bullying,” he says. The more he saw other kids falling SEE RISES P. 30
Corey Mitchell (center) with his students.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GREYHAWK FILMS
REAL-LIFE ‘GLEE’ ‘Purple Dreams,’ starring Corey Mitchell, premieres this week at the Full Frame Festival “WE’VE GOT GAY, straight, black, white, Hispanic. This is what Glee looks like in real life,” Corey Mitchell says of his students at Charlotte’s Northwest School of the Arts, the magnet school on Beatties Ford Road where singer Kevin Mercury Carter got his start. Mitchell’s quote comes from Purple Dreams, a new film directed by Joanne Hock and produced by Robin Grey of the Charlotte indie GreyHawk Films. The movie documents the school’s production of The Color Purple. Northwest was the second high school in the U.S. to stage the Broadway musical version of Alice Walker’s classic novel focusing on AfricanAmerican women in the South of the 1930s. Purple Dreams makes its world premiere at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham this weekend, screening at 7:40 p.m. Friday, April 7, at The Carolina Theatre. “We spent five years so far on our Purple Dreams documentary because it is a true passion project for both Joanne and I,” Grey says. “It speaks to causes that Joanne and I have each volunteered for separately throughout our lives.” Among those causes is motivating at-risk youth to achieve their dreams. In the case of Mitchell’s students at Northwest, those dreams are artistic. “Corey is a mentor, arts advocate and amazing theater director,” Grey says. During the filming of Purple Dreams, Grey and Hock also produced a short film to submit with an application to nominate Mitchell for a Tony award. In 2015, the Tony Awards and Carnegie Mellon University announced that Mitchell had won its first-ever Excellence in Theatre Education award. Grey was not surprised. “Corey is a consummate professional with incredible motivation and creative savvy that is hard to duplicate,” she says. Purple Dreams dramatically follows Mitchell and his students on a reality-TV like journey from the beginning of the production of The Color Purple to its opening. Along the way, Mitchell talks about his own motivations to do the play and his hopes for his students. “I want this to be a transformative production for these kids,” Mitchell says in the documentary. Grey hopes the film “will be used as a tool by a variety of organizations to expose the urgent need to expand meaningful arts education as well as to inspire at-risk students to stay in school and understand that higher education is possible regardless of their circumstances.” Mitchell puts it more succinctly in the documentary when he raises his hand to explain the wrongheaded priorities of many educational institutions. “There is football,” he says, then lowers his hand slightly, “and there’s basketball,” he continues, and then lowers his hand way down, “and then there’s theater.” Purple Dreams — the title itself an appropriate mashup of two other classic films, Purple Rain and Hoop Dreams — aims to change those educational priorities. — Mark Kemp
u CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 29
MUSIC
COVER STORY
RISES FROM P. 29 t in line with media images of what clothing brands they should wear, the more radical Kevin got with his own designs. If other kids wore Nike Air Jordans, he would come to school in big boots with silver spikes. “There was no box for Kevin. He was completely his own person,” his high school apparel teacher, Tammy Reynolds, told The Charlotte Observer in a 2014 story on his Kevin Vain fashion line. “There was never a day when I saw him in anything that would be typical standard teenager clothing.” Carter’s designs became so outrageous that he was suspended from school for some of his outfits. “That was a real tough time, to be honest with you,” his father remembers. “Because when you’re different, when you have your own creative vision, sometimes you get misunderstood. At school — and I don’t think they really meant any harm — but you know how kids are with their fads and their trends: If you’re not into their style or their particular look, you get misunderstood. And then it carries over to being picked at and bullied. You’re the oddball. So that was my concern more than Kevin wanting to stand by what he believed in, which was his look.” Kevin’s parents tried to balance being supportive of their son’s creative vision with making sure he was safe. “The school came in when . . .” His father trails off, then begins again: “There’s an edge where you can cross over the line, and I think the school felt like maybe some things just weren’t appropriate for school.” After high school, the Carters continued to finance Kevin’s fashion career, and they made sure he had everything he needed to feel OK about himself. “They have been supportive of everything I’ve ever done,” Kevin says. “They’ve always been my 100-percent, No. 1 fans. They support me financially, physically, emotionally, all that good stuff.” The year 2014 was huge for Kevin Vain — more fashion shows, print and TV features, a beautifully shot and scored wordless avantgarde short film on him and his work. He was making it. But he wasn’t happy. When he wasn’t sewing or planning events, he was at home rummaging through his father’s collection of old vinyl records, listening to an eclectic mix of jazz- and R&B-based music from the ’70s: Funkadelic, Cameo, Lonnie Liston Smith, Phoebe Snow, Patti Austin. “He would see me playing that music around the home,” his father says, “and you know, Kevin is just amazing: He will get interested in something and then he’ll start finding all these interesting things about the artists and the craft and everything. He’s so inquisitive, he’ll take that and then go back and discover people like Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan. He’ll take what I listen to and then learn more about it than I ever knew. I don’t get that deep. But he does.” By 2015, music was taking precedence over the Kevin Vain line. His short-cropped, 30 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
fashion-icon hairstyle began to sprout into an afro. He began singing at open-mic events, transforming familiar songs into his own creations, just as he’d done with fabric. “Fashion just wasn’t fun for me anymore,” he says. “Being hunched over a sewing machine, having models stand you up at a fashion show, spending months preparing for a show and getting no return.” At home, he spent quality time with his faithful Shih Tzu, Carmelo, and delved more deeply into his other hobby, gardening. He uses the language of gardening to describe his
about to perform. He isn’t the only singer on the bill tonight, but he’s the only one whose vocal range soars from Freddie Mercury-like highs to deep, guttural purrs. He’s the only one who scats. And he’s the only one who sheds real tears. Not only that, but Mercury Carter — sporting dark blue trousers and a white, baby blue and navy knitted Polo with a zipper — is the only singer at Morehead Tavern tonight who boldly covers songs ranging from Beyoncé’s “Naughty Girl” to the jazz standard “I’ll Be Seeing You,” the song Sarah Vaughan
“PEOPLE JUST DIDN’T UNDERSTAND ME, AND THE BULLYING WAS BRUTAL.” -KEVIN CARTER
feelings at the time: “The whole fashion thing had just become draining, and it was never replenishing for me.” And then came the breakup. He wrote poems about it, turned them into songs, and posted them to Soundcloud under his new name, Mercury. On January 16 of last year, he put a video up on his Facebook page with the words, “Hey everyone! I made this video of me covering my song ‘Invisible.’ Y’all should watch and enjoy my awkward singing faces! lol.” It was done. Mercury was out for the world to hear. Finishing the song cycle, Kevin says, was “a complete out-of-body release for me.”
IT’S A THURSDAY at Morehead Tavern in late March of this year, and Mercury Carter is
recorded with such exquisite nuance in 1960. It’s the Vaughan song that brings tears to his eyes. The moment he sings the opening line, “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places,” his emotions take over. He had dedicated the song to Carmelo, his beloved Shih Tzu who died in October at 16 years old. Kevin barely remembers a time when Carmelo wasn’t in his life. “I dedicated that song to him because it was Global Pet Day, and because the lyrics literally paint how I feel about him,” he tells me later. “My parents purchased him for me as a gift for completing elementary school. He literally was an emotional support system for me during a lot of intense moments in my life, and of course he was my confidant during my long period of chronic depression from
bullying in high school.” He had found Carmelo’s lifeless body at the bottom of a staircase upon returning home from his day job. It was a trauma he says he’ll never get over. “The first line [of “I’ll Be Seeing You”] is when I started to lose it,” he says of his performance. “After having him for so long and after transferring so much infinite, honest love between the two of us, when he died, it definitely was, to this date, the hardest loss I’ve ever experienced. Honestly, no matter where I am or who I’m with or what I’m doing, if I think of him longer than five minutes I’ll get emotional, because I miss him so very much.” When Carter finishes his set at Morehead Tavern, the audience jumps to its feet in an extended standing ovation. His vocal mentor, singer Blanche Johnson, joins him onstage. His parents Angelia and Kevin Sr., sit at a table near the front, beaming. “We’re just as shocked as everybody else at how far Kevin has come with his singing,” his father says. “It’s amazing, it really is.” All that emotion, all that talent, all that creativity and drive — these are the things that will put Mercury Carter squarely into a national spotlight within the next few years. To this veteran music journalist, his imminent success is a given. It’s also a given to his former teacher, Corey Mitchell, whose own talent won him a Tony award in 2015 and a starring role in the new documentary Purple Dreams [see “Real-life Glee” sidebar on the previous page]. “I’m excited for what Kevin’s career is going to do in the next two or three years,” Mitchell says. “What I’m hoping, what I believe, is that he’s going to have a career where lots of people are paying attention, because I look at Kevin as being a better artist than a lot of the pop people we see, like The Weeknd and other artists that my students love so much.” As for Kevin Mercury Carter, he just hopes to make a living doing what he loves. And he’s in no hurry to leave his hometown. “I love Charlotte, and I feel like you should conquer home before you go try to conquer somewhere else,” he says. “My ultimate goal is to have a sold-out show at Blumenthal, because that’s my kind of scene versus a club,” he continues. “I like theater — Carnegie Hall. And I mean, it would be nice to go to New York City and get on Broadway, but” — he reaches for another gardening metaphor — “I just feel like you should ground your roots first before you try to re-pot your plant.” One thing Carter vows not to do is sell out to pop’s lowest common denominator just to achieve some meaningless measure of success. “I don’t really listen to music that doesn’t have substance. I don’t listen to music that just talks about drugs or sex or money all the time,” he says. “I want to make music that’s honest. Sometimes I want to feel, sometimes I want to dance, and sometimes I just want to get lost.” Kevin Mercury Carter may be tired of all the Prince comparisons, but what he’s just described, in a nutshell, is Prince’s entire career. MKEMP@CLCLT.COM
CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 31
APRIL 28
❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
MUSIC
SOUNDBOARD
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
JON LANGSTON ALL TICKETS $12 MAY 6
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
AARON WATSON ALL TICKETS $12 MAY 20
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
DYLAN SCOTT LIMITED ADVANCE $12 ALL OTHERS $10
WILD 1-2-3 NIGHTS APRIL 7, 15, 21, 29
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
MAY 5,13,19 &27
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
ON SALE AT COYOTE JOES AND COYOTE-JOES.COM COYOTE JOE’S : 4621 WILKINSON BLVD
704-399-4946
❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈ ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈❈
32 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
APRIL 6 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH John Alexander Jazz Trio (Blue Restaurant)
HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Leela James, Daley (The Underground)
POP/ROCK Anne McCue, Me and Molly (The Evening Muse) Citizen Cope (McGlohon Theater at Spirit Square) The Devyl Nellys (The Evening Muse) Faye, Thelma, Ernie (Petra’s) Jack Toft, Lil Skritt, B-Villainous, Joules (The Station) Jason Moss and the Ruckus (Comet Grill) Karaoke with DJ ShayNanigans (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) Moses Jones, Caroline Keller Band, The Grassbillies, Jordan Middleton (Visulite Theatre) Power-Take-Off, Street Sects, Konvoi, Planet Creep (Milestone) Rusted Root, Nicholas David (Neighborhood Theatre) Shiprocked (Snug Harbor) Songwriter Open Mic (Petra’s) Supatight, Viva La Hop (The Rabbit Hole) Wild Planes (Tin Roof)
APRIL 7 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Charlotte Symphony: Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 1 (Belk Theater) Jazzy Fridays (Freshwaters Restaurant)
BLUES/ROOTS/INTERNATIONAL Mika Singh (Ovens Auditorium) Steven Engler Band (Blue Restaurant & Bar)
COUNTRY/FOLK The Lenny Federal Band (Comet Grill) Oak Grove String Band, Charlie Carpenter, Ashley Heath and Bryon McMurry (Don Gibson Theatre, Shelby) Taylor Hicks (Neighborhood Theatre)
DJ/ELECTRONIC Herobust (Label)
HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Chief Keef (The Underground) Electric Relaxation f. DJ Skillz (‘Stache House Bar & Lounge)
POP/ROCK
Abbey Road LIVE! (Visulite Theatre) An-Ten-Nae, Esseks, Perkulat0r (Rabbit Hole) The Bald Brotherhood (Tin Roof) Brandon Stiles (Tin Roof) Dash Grass (Thomas Street Tavern) Don Telling’s Island Mysteries, High Cube, Chócala (Petra’s) Kairos., Annabel Lee, SkinKage, Undrask, Low Earth (Milestone) Kari Jobe (The Fillmore Charlotte) The Light Within: The Gay Men’s Chorus of Charlotte (Duke Energy Theater) Mary Fahl (Stage Door Theater) Parsonsfield (The Evening Muse) Richard Shindell (The Evening Muse) Shadowgraphs, more (Snug Harbor) White Lightnin Burlesque and Sideshow Spectacular (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern)
APRIL 8 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Charlotte Symphony: Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 1 (Belk Theater)
DJ/ELECTRONIC DJ Shadow from Dubai (Label) Minnesota w/ ill.Gates & Luzcid ill.Gates, Luzcid, Illanthropy, Skawt. (Neighborhood Theatre)
POP/ROCK Alt Nation’s Advanced Placement Tour: Missio, 888, Coast Modern, (The Underground) Blue Monday (Tin Roof) Bonnie Bishop (The Evening Muse) Brook Pridemore, Camping (Milestone) Demon Eye w/ No Anger Control, Horseburner, The Stonecutters (Snug Harbor) Gimme Hendrix (Thomas Street Tavern) The Light Within: The Gay Men’s Chorus of Charlotte (Duke Energy Theater) Pen15, Alternative Champs, It’s Snakes (Petra’s) Primal Static (The Evening Muse) Tollman Randall (Hattie’s Tap & Tavern) Tosco Music Party: Mark O’Connor, Sean McGowan, and many more (Knight Theater) Turnstiles (Comet Grill) Almost Famous (City Tavern) Unlikely Candidates, more (The Rabbit Hole)
APRIL 9 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Chamber Music 4 All: Calin Lupanu, Monica Boboc (Matthews United Methodist Church) Jazz Workshop and Improv featuring John Shaughnessy (Petra’s)
Losing Teeth, The Second After (The Rabbit Hole) Sexy Dex & the Fresh, Sext Message, Joshua Cotterino, Koosh (Milestone) Omari and The Hellrasiers (Comet Grill, Charlotte)
Green Fiend w/ Valient Thorr, Black Fleet, Funeral Chic, Old Scratch (Snug Harbor) Karaoke with DJ Pucci Mane (Petra’s) Modern Heritage Weekly Mix Tape (Snug Harbor) Open Mic Night (Comet Grill, Charlotte) Open mic w/ Jared Allen (Jack Beagles) Valient Thorr, The Seduction, Minimums, Van Huskins (Milestone) Trivia & Karaoke Wednesdays (Tin Roof)
APRIL 10
COMING SOON
HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B
Dark Star Orchestra (April 15, The Fillmore) Red Hot Chilli Peppers (April 17, Spectrum Center) Periphery (April 20, The Underground) The Weeks (April 20, Visulite) Steve Martin, Martin Short, Steep Canyon Rangers (April 22, Ovens Auditorium) Diet Cig (April 22, Snug Harbor) Lauryn Hill (April 28, CMCU Amphitheater) Neil Diamond (April 28, Spectrum Center) Dawes (May 3, The Fillmore) Sean Rowe (May 4, The Evening Muse) Carolina Rebellion (May 5-7, Charlotte Motor Speedway) Bastille (May 6, CMCU Amphitheater) X (May 8, Neighborhood Theatre) San Fermin (May 9, Visulite) Sara Watkins (May 12, Neighborhood Theatre) Brandy (May 19, The Fillmore) Franz Ferdinand (May 23, The Underground) Bela Fleck, Chris Thile (May 24, Knight)
HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B Marsha Ambrosius, Eric Benet (The Fillmore)
POP/ROCK
Knocturnal (Snug Harbor) Motown on Mondays (Morehead Street Tavern) #MFGD Open Mic (Apostrophe Lounge)
POP/ROCK Locals Live: The Best in Local Live Music & Local Craft Beers (Tin Roof) The Monday Night Allstars (Visulite Theatre)
APRIL 11 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Bill Hanna Jazz Jam (Morehead Tavern)
COUNTRY/FOLK Red Rockin’ Chair (Comet Grill) Tuesday Night Jam w/ The Smokin’ Js (Smokey Joe’s Cafe)
POP/ROCK The Bald Brotherhood (Tin Roof) Cracked Motherfucker w/ Those Lavender Whales, The Duskwhales (Snug Harbor) Don Gallardo, Christian Lopez (Evening Muse) Sue Foley (The Rabbit Hole) Terry Malts, The Bleeps, Business Of Dreams, Dollhands (Milestone)
APRIL 12 CLASSICAL/JAZZ/SMOOTH Clarence Palmer & Friends (Morehead Tavern)
COUNTRY/FOLK Open Mic (Comet Grill)
HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B
4/5 JD MCPHERSON 4/7Abbey Road LIVE! 4/8 BIG MAMMAS HOUSE OF BURLESQUE 4/14 PIGEONS PLAYING PING PONG 5/21 DEAD MAN WINTER 5/24 6/11 JOSEPH 6/16 ALL THEM WITCHES 6/22 OLD 97's 7/20 JOHN MORELAND
JC Touch One (Nile Theater)
POP/ROCK Coco Montoya (The Rabbit Hole) Evening Muse and Tosco Music Present The Tosco Music Open Mic (The Evening Muse) Gogol Bordello (The Fillmore Charlotte)
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. CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 33
ENDS
MARKETPLACE
ENDS
JOBS | POSTINGS | LISTINGS | RENTALS
TECHNOLOGY Enterprise Services State and Local, Inc. is accepting resumes for the position of Services Information Developer in Charlotte, NC (Ref. #ESSLCHAKENP1). Conceptualize, design, develop, unit-test, configure, or implement portions of new or enhanced (upgrades or conversions) business and technical software solutions through application of appropriate standard software development life cycle methodologies and processes. Mail resume to Enterprise Services State and Local, Inc., 5400 Legacy Drive, MS H1-2F-25, Plano, TX 75024. Resume must include Ref. #, full name, email address & mailing address. No phone calls. Must be legally authorized to work in U.S. without sponsorship. EOE.
LEGAL NOTICE TO CREDITORS is hereby given that El, Tracey A. Has a priority claim against the assets to include but not limited to all accounts, goods, chattel paper, Inventory, equipment, instruments or promissory notes, investments, general intangibles and all Proceeds thereof, now owned that are identified in the
TRACEY AMOR EL BANKRUPTCY ESTATE
(dated 03/2017), for payment of Labour and services performed, material and wages provided. 34 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
PHOTOGRAPHY Family Engagement Real Estate Events and more
www.JeffHahnePhotography.com
704-737-2145
NIGHTLIFE
ARE YOU SMARTER THAN AN EIGHTH GRADER A buzzed spelling bee could help you figure out It seemed like everyone was wearing glasses. TWO SATURDAYS AGO, the Call us hipsters or nerds, I didn’t care, I’d boyfriend and I decided to go to Petra’s found my eighth-grade class all over again. Bar in Plaza Midwood for Su Casa. If you didn’t catch one of my past articles on the Before getting started, the “sultry” male event, search Creative Loafing’s website host laid out the rules of engagement. If for for the tag line, “The monthly oasis for any reason, a speller couldn’t spell a word, Charlotte’s culturally starved.” What does they had three lifelines they could use: chug it look like, you may ask? Afrobeats, natural a drink, spell an easier word backward or hair and chocolatey goodness! If diversity is a secret option. (Forgive me if those are something you’re missing in the Q.C., this incorrect, I did my best to take thorough event, which takes place on the last Saturday notes, but in my defense, I had to establish a of every month, is one you won’t want to “buzz” in order to participate. Wink, wink.) miss. My first word: meanwhile. I knew I had After a trip to the bathroom, the this one, so my friends encouraged me to boyfriend turns to me and says, “They have ask for the definition and origin. This was a buzzed spelling bee here. There’s one next most definitely commonplace for the first Tuesday.” And that was all I needed to hear. What most people don’t know about round, as spellers used the opportunity me is that I’m a total nerd. I loved to “own the stage.” I kept asking multiplication shootout and myself, “Is this a spelling bee spelling bees in elementary or stand-up?” Everyone and and middle school. So you their mama ended up taking can imagine how my five minutes to spell their excitement must have words. Nevertheless, I been overflowing as I walked away victorious made plans for “goin’ up after the first round. on a Tuesday” knowing I What’d I get for my would have to go to work efforts? A tall-boy PBR the next day. that I would later regret. On Tuesday morning, After every participant March 28, I started my AERIN SPRUILL recruiting of coworkers. took their first turn, there was “Would you be down to go to a a “redemption round” in which drunken spelling bee?” I asked. One those who’d been kicked out could try of them laughed when I showed her the flier. again to restore their honor. The second “So what?,” she said. “They’re going to round began, and I could feel myself going be like, ‘Spell hippopotamus?’ OK, H-I-P-P… to “buzz city.” hip, hop, otamus…hmm.” As soon as she I don’t even know what my second word realized she may not be able to spell the was, so I went for a lifeline. Of course, I word, she bought in. didn’t think about any of the lifelines except So we made plans to go to The Corner for chug a drink. Yeah, I had three quarters Pub for $3 wine night and then migrate over of a tall boy left and had to chug the entire to Petra’s for signups between 8:30 and 9:30 thing. p.m. The crowd watched in uncomfortable I ended up having to get my hair done, so when the boyfriend and I arrived, two of amusement, wondering if I’d vom with every my coworkers were sitting there “buzzed” as burp. [Spoiler alert, I didn’t. However, by can be with huge smiles on their faces. The the third round, when I received either reason for the smiles? “’subjugation” or “crescendo,” I don’t think I They’d only signed me up for the spelling could’ve even spelled my name.] bee and my fun fact was, “I bring cat food What did I learn? I spelled much better with me to bars.” Great. I’d picked up some in the eighth grade, when I couldn’t consume food for my cat and left it at Corner Pub; alcohol. Oh, and get this: Someone got the they had to bring it with them to Petra’s, and word “hippopotamus!” Thank goodness it now I was the “cat lady.” Sigh. I rushed to the wasn’t me. Be on the lookout for the next bar to grab liquid courage in the form of an Buzzed Spelling Bee at Petra’s scheduled for RBV before the competition began. April 25! It most definitely is a blast from I scanned the crowd. I’ve never been the past. so comfortable bringing my backpack and BACKTALK@CLCLT.COM wearing my thick-prescription glasses. Why?
ENDS
CROSSWORD
SPLITTING THE LAND ACROSS
1 Bullfights 9 Taft or Tell 16 Artistic work 20 Natural balm 21 Pundit Huffington 22 One of four on a diamond 23 Lightning rod inventor 25 Partly open 26 Yoko who married John 27 Chant syllables 28 One paying dues: Abbr. 29 Photo, e.g. 30 Pop or jazz, in Germany 33 Throw with force 35 Biblical “verily” 37 Like much deep-dish pizza 40 Arctic slab 41 Pretty -- picture 42 Roadwork marker 43 Morales of “Rapa Nui” 44 Name a price of 46 Shaming cluck 48 Gleeful laugh 50 Remotely 57 Old TV’s “-- Na Na” 58 Zee preceder 59 City just west of Sparks 60 Former coin of Italy 61 The norm 64 Orem’s place 66 -- Marcus (high-end retailer) 69 Male and female 70 Org. for cavity fixers 71 Korea, e.g. (or any of eight lands split literally in this puzzle) 74 Horace work 75 Numbers on clothing tags 77 Apprehend 78 Sub in a deli 79 Motion “yes” 80 First-time driver, often 81 SI mass unit 82 Apt., e.g. 84 Manet works 86 Old Brooke Shields sitcom 90 “Good goin’, kid!” 94 Egg opener?
95 R-V link 96 With 8-Down and 113-Across, big Baja resort 98 City east of Wichita 99 Peculiar 102 AFB truant 105 Earthworm 108 Verdant spot in an urban area 111 Hits hard 112 An inert gas 113 See 96-Across 114 Archaic verb suffix 115 Stifle legally 116 Back-to-sch. day 117 Kuwaiti VIP 118 Social networks or video games 125 Uncourteous 126 Virgin Mary’s mother: Abbr. 127 Groups of spreadsheet figures 128 Went hastily 129 Kitchen scourers 130 Kind of
DOWN
1 Jitney cousin 2 Cry at 1-Across 3 Actor Palillo 4 Ones crying “Hallelujah!” 5 Daughter of Donald Trump 6 Test version 7 Onassis’ nickname 8 See 96-Across 9 In a kind way 10 Investments for later yrs. 11 Hoopster Jeremy 12 Leo Delibes opera 13 Covered with foliage 14 Creature 15 Dude 16 First lady Michelle 17 -- party (sleepover) 18 Applications 19 Tennis great Williams 24 Beef up 29 That is, to Livy 30 Livy’s 1,300 31 “This looks very bad” 32 Relating to China: Prefix 33 Wash (down)
34 Uncle Sam’s land 35 Rural assent to a lady 36 “That’s a lie” 38 Italian ice creams 39 China’s -- -tzu 45 Merited fate 47 Frilly veggie 49 Sounds upon impact 51 Zellweger of the screen 52 Video game losses 53 Navel variety 54 Watergate president 55 Belief system 56 Simplified 58 Having rapid rotation 61 Histories 62 “Goodbye” 63 Tore down 65 Be of help to 67 Pub. staffers 68 IV part 69 Sty noise 72 Smeltery residue 73 One elocuting 76 Within: Prefix 81 Is sure about 83 Spellbind 85 Like Keelung residents 87 Dale riding Buttermilk 88 -- Reader (quarterly digest) 89 Anna of fashion 90 Basics 91 Audacious 92 Roll topping 93 Knitter’s ball 97 It spits out moola 99 Leering sorts 100 Solicit, as business 101 Opt 103 Receptive regarding 104 Cafe drinks 106 Adorns 107 Cafe lures 109 Dog- -110 Cut-rate 115 Wedding ring 116 Prefix with carpal 118 Mag. edition 119 Virusoid material 120 Cruel Amin 121 Atlas vehicle 122 Wildcat’s lair 123 “FWIW” part 124 Enzyme ending
SOLUTION FOUND ON P. 38.
CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 35
Always FREE to listen and reply to ads!
ENDS
SAVAGE LOVE
DOMME AND DOMMER You’re pushing too hard BY DAN SAVAGE
WHO ARE YOU AFTER DARK?
Try FREE: 704-943-0057 More Local Numbers: 1-800-700-6666
redhotdateline.com 18+ FREE TRIAL
Discreet Chat Guy to Guy
980.224.4669
Always FREE to listen and reply to ads!
Playmates or soul mates, you’ll find them on MegaMates Dating Made Easy Charlotte:
(980) 321-7692
Charlotte:
(980) 224-4667 www.megamates.com 18+
www.megamates.com 18+
Meet sexy friends who really get your vibe...
Try FREE: 704-731-0113 More Local Numbers: 1-800-811-1633
vibeline.com 18+
36 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN.
Try FREE: 704-943-0050 More Local Numbers: 1-800-926-6000
Ahora español Livelinks.com 18+
disappointment. Because if you don’t click I’m a woman in my late 40s. In my during play — if your style of BDSM doesn’t early 20s, I married a much older man. do it for them or vice versa — there are really We did all the requisite things: kids, no “benefits” in continuing. house, intercourse once a week. When I suspect that was the case with your last the sex fell off due to his declining three gents. But instead of ghosting you or health, he surprised me by suggesting saying something that could be construed as we open our marriage. He said I was critical or unkind, all three heaped praise on too young to be limited and he didn’t you instead. It was, indeed, a kinder, gentler, want me to leave him for sex. I spent subbier way of saying, “It’s not you, it’s me.” time contemplating how to truly fulfill my desires. I read a lot of erotica, Dominant women are in such short indulged in porn, and discovered that supply relative to demand that submissive what turned me on was Dominance. men will submit to endless vetting. During Not intercourse particularly, but power that process, submissive guys open to play with me as the Queen controlling something long-term will say so, DOMME, a slave. I like chastity, face-sitting, and but submissive guys who aren’t looking for light bondage. I have found that this something long-term will say so, too, if they type of play appeals to smart and kinky sense that’s what you want to hear. In order gents. to be safe while avoiding avoidable But I am finding that, despite heartache, you’ll want to invest a gentleman’s declaration a little time in getting to of “wanting something know guys before you long-term,” perhaps a play — again, for your f r i e nd s - w i t h - b e ne f i t s safety — but not so arrangement, they tend much emotional energy to drop out in short you’ll be devastated if it order. Three times doesn’t work out. in the past two years I have spent a great deal Last night, the GF was of time getting to know on the receiving end DAN SAVAGE someone before there was of a session of oral sex, any play — a lot of time but maybe because we chatting online, several vanilla were in her sister’s spare dates. In each of these instances, bedroom, or for whatever I felt that I had found a good friend. reason, she would repeatedly Each of these three men dumped me get within a whisker of coming only in exactly the same way. Each said I to say, “STOP! Too intense!” But I am was too overwhelmingly beautiful and persistent if nothing else, and on the powerful, and that their obsession with fourth try, we got there. Boy, did we get me took up too much room in their lives. there! I can’t ask for personal insights, This is very frustrating because I feel Dan, since performing oral sex on like I give someone the space they need. women isn’t your thing. But perhaps I think this is likely BS. Could “I’m your readers have a few surefire tricks overwhelmed” be the new “It’s not you, that work when all else fails? PERHAPS EVERYONE REALLY SAYS IT’S SOME TRICK it’s me”? I am tired of having my feelings hurt. Must I hang up my crop forever? Your first three attempts got the GF close, DONE OFFERING MY MENTAL ENERGY PERSIST, and the fourth got her off. You Forever hanging up your crop because a few obviously know what works for your guys tactfully ended things over a two-year girlfriend and don’t really need tricks or period seems a bit melodramatic. So hang tips. You just keep doing what you’re doing, in there, DOMME, and hold on to that crop. and next time you want to brag about your The mistake you’re making, if I may be so ability to get your GF there, send me an bold as to offer some constructive criticism honest brag. There’s no need to phrase your to the Queen, is investing too much time bragging in the form of a question — this is and energy up front, i.e., you’re making large Savage Love, not Sex Jeopardy. emotional investments in these guys before you get around to the play. You’ll want to On the Lovecast: the science of monogamous screen guys for your own safety, of course, vs. nonmonogamous happiness: savagelovecast. but spending “a great deal of time getting to com. Follow @fakedansavage on Twitter; email know” a potential kinky FWB is a recipe for mail@savagelove.net; go to ITMFA.org.
CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 37
LILLY SPA
ENDS
STARGAZER
704-392-8099 MON-SUN 9AM-11PM LOCATED NEAR THE AIRPORT EXIT 37 OFF I-85 WE ACCEPT ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS
SOUTH ON BEATTIES FORD ROAD THEN FIRST RIGHT ON MONTANA DRIVE (LOCATED 1/2 MILE ON THE LEFT | 714-G MONTANA DR)
SOLUTION TO THIS WEEK'S PUZZLE
60 MINUTES FREE TRIAL
THE HOTTEST GAY CHATLINE
1-704-943-0051 More Local Numbers: 800-777-8000
www.guyspyvoice.com
Ahora en Español/18+
FOR ALL SIGNS Mercury, ancient god of travel, messages and routine business, turns retrograde on Sunday, April 9. This phenomenon occurs three times per year, and lasts approximately 3.5 weeks. Those whose work involves appointments can be prepared for a flurry of phone calls and changes in schedule. If your work is related to publishing, travel or the communications industry, be prepared for last minute changes and potential computer snafus. Avoid signing contracts while Mercury is retrograde because you may change your mind later. If you must settle an issue legally now, be sure you thoroughly understand what you sign. Nuisance complications arise during these periods because our culture is out of touch with the natural cycles of life. The Mercury retrograde is intended to be a time of quiet thinking and reflection, gathering (but not acting on) information, and finishing old or forgotten projects. Most of us have a hard time making final decisions during these periods because we know instinctively that conclusions are premature, requiring more data or gestation time. Therefore, we are “destined” during this time to experience temporary snags, hang-ups and detours. ARIES THE RAM (Mar 20—Apr 19th) A
plan or agreement to move forward early in the week may be reversed or detoured by the week’s end. There is a sense of general chaos among corporate bodies and it appears to include you in a personal way.
TAURUS Please note lead paragraph. This time Mercury is changing direction in your sign, emphasizing the overall shift in your direction as well. You could be changing your mind this week about speaking up on your behalf. This is likely not permanent. You may be realizing the timing is just not “right” yet. GEMINI Mercury is your ruling avatar
planet. As he slows down to turn retrograde, you may be rethinking a previous plan. There is a shift of your attention to matters of your personal history that may go way back. You will be looking inside yourself for meditative peace, answers to serious questions, and encouragement from your source.
WE ALL REFUSE TO WEAR SOCKS. CLCLT.COM
38 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM
CANCER You may have a minor struggle with yourself about whether to take care of others or yourself. Helping others may look good, but it isn’t what you want to do right now. Because Mercury is turning retrograde this week, you may be splitting your time and attention between both.
LEO You are in a handicapped spot right now. You may have legal or ethical issues on your plate. The Powers That Be are running the show and almost any move you make outside of the box will be challenged. For the time being you are surrounded. Accept this with grace for the present.
VIRGO Your ruling planet is changing
directions in the territory which deals with education, publishing, travel, public speaking, the law, and philosophy. Therefore any of these activities are subject to shifts, changes, or sudden deceleration due to lack of decision. Maybe the right solution just is not available yet. Have a sense of humor. You know Mercury is retrograding.
LIBRA Venus retrograde will cause you to
focus on your health unless that is normal for you. For those who are routinely conscious of fitness, you may be surprised that you are prone to let good habits slide. Don’t beat yourself to pieces. A retrograding planet in this territory asks us to make positive health decisions again and again.
SCORPIO An agreement is reached between you and another early in the week. Life looks like it will move forward at an agreeable pace. However, something or someone out of your control steps in to throw a wrench in things on or about Mar. 8. A vehicle may not cooperate. SAGITTARIUS This is a time in which
your exuberance and enthusiasm may carry you farther than you really intended to go. You will certainly have more energy to do whatever you choose, but take care that you don’t promise way more than you can deliver. Your warm and generous heart could get you in trouble.
CAPRICORN A new project or person that began at the first of this year is now up for review. The time has come to grow it or let go. If you wish it to grow, you must put considerably more resources into it. This week your planetary avatar, Saturn, is turning retrograde. You may wish to opt out of this one.
AQUARIUS Necessary expenses (not the
“fun” type) may develop this week. If not that, you could just be having a little blue mood. It is one of those times when we become aware that our loved ones can never know or understand fully what is inside of us. This is an existential dilemma everyone encounters now and then. It will pass quickly.
PISCES Be careful with your spending
this week. Over-optimism may drive you to spend too much or blow away a chunk of change on something you don’t really need. If a thing looks too good to be true, it probably is. Beware of vampires. You tend to attract them. Disengage as soon as you recognize it. Are you interested in a personal horoscope? Vivian Carol may be reached at 704-3663777 for private psychotherapy or astrology appointments. You may also visit her at www. horoscopesbyvivian.com.
CLCLT.COM | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | 39
40 | APR. 6 - APR. 12, 2017 | CLCLT.COM