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CONTENTS
AUGUST 10-23, 2022 • VOL. 53 NO 3 Upfront .......................................6
Eat ............................................ 15
Feature .......................................8
Music ........................................ 19
Get Out ..................................... 12
Savage Love .............................. 31
Dedicated to Free Times founder Richard H. Siegel (1935-1993) and Scene founder Richard Kabat Publisher Andrew Zelman Editor Vince Grzegorek Editorial Music Editor Jeff Niesel Senior Writer Sam Allard Staff Writer Brett Zelman Dining Editor Douglas Trattner Visual Arts Writer Shawn Mishak Stage Editor Christine Howey Advertising Senior Multimedia Account Executive John Crobar, Shayne Rose Creative Services Creative Director Haimanti Germain Art Director Evan Sult Production Manager Sean Bieri Graphic Designer Aspen Smit Staff Photographer Emanuel Wallace Business Business & Sales Support Specialist Megan Stimac Controller Kristy Cramer Circulation Circulation Director Burt Sender
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REWIND: 1982 40 years ago Toto graced the Scene cover the same week we set up a pool inside a bar for a threeday bash, an event that undoubtedly went as swimmingly as expected
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SCENE with you with the Issuu app! “Cleveland Scene Magazine” COVER PHOTO BY ANASTASIA PANTSIOS
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UPFRONT COUNTY COUNCIL CHARGING AHEAD WITH GLOBAL CENTER OVERHAUL THE PRICE TAG ON A PROPOSED overhaul at the Global Center for Health Innovation that nobody wants, which was initially ballparked at $46 million, has now leaped to $54 million, according to those with a vested professional and financial interest in the project. A baffled Cuyahoga County Council labored to understand the vagaries of the proposed budget at a meeting last week. Though most of their questions remained unanswered by meeting’s end, they saw fit to move the legislation forward. They will likely pass it on a third reading next month and might as well do so while wearing giant foam middle fingers. Councilwomen Yvonne Conwell and Cheryl Stephens voted no on the allocation Tuesday, arguing that more time is needed to deliberate. To be fair, others had reservations too, but that didn’t stop them from siding with the convention and tourism industry and the county’s own fiscal advisors, who persuaded them that an increased portion of the public’s money must be spent as soon as possible for the Global Center’s makeover, lest the county fall victim to rising interest rates. County Council did take the courageous step of greenlighting only about $40 million of the total budget, $30.6 million of which the county will allocate via bond issue and will pay back over the next 20 years in partnership with the Convention Facilities Development Corporation (CCCFDC). The county will also contribute $1.4 million from the Huntington Convention Center naming rights proceeds. The CCCFDC will contribute $9 million from its reserves, which, as councilman Jack Schron noted, is simply money that the county has already paid to the CCCFDC — “It’s all our money, directly or indirectly,” Schron said. (Bingo!) But the council decided only to authorize $8 million from its general fund, as opposed to the $13 million envisioned by CCCFDC attorney Jeff Applebaum and the county’s fiscal officer Mike Chambers. The general fund contribution had ballooned from an initial $5 million ARPA designation, and Council was confused about why.
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Would a boondoggle by any other name smell as sweet?
It came to light that this increase included $5 million for a proposed sky bridge connecting the Global Center and the downtown Marriott hotel (a placeholder value, assuming that Marriott will contribute a portion of the total cost), and a $3 million surcharge due to “inflation” and “the supply chain” that everyone on council simply accepted at face value. Three million dollars! Sure! Sounds fair! (It is needless to note that there were no line items or even a general cost breakdown for the council members to peruse.) Council held back the $5 million for the sky bridge and was no doubt impressed with their restraint. They said they would revisit that allocation once more information — like whether or not the city planning commission will even allow it — becomes available. The whole meeting was astonishing to watch unfold, given the vehemence with which the public opposes the spending and the multitude of ways the taxpayer bounty could be more effectively deployed. As is generally the case in the poorest big city in the United States, the argument for converting the Global Center into a formal component of the Huntington Convention Center (thereby making the convention center bigger, fancier, and more “flexible”), was made on the grounds of regional
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competitiveness and economic impact. Destination Cleveland’s David Gilbert said the enhancements would put Cleveland in the “middle of the pack” for convention business and suggested that every year enhancements aren’t made, Cleveland falls further behind. That argument would seem to be defeated by Destination Cleveland’s own numbers. Gilbert proudly reported that travel and tourism is one of only two consistently growing industries in Cleveland (the other being healthcare) and has in fact increased each of the last nine years, relative to state and national averages, in terms of number of visitors. (We note dryly that the industry’s miraculous resilience has occurred in spite of the lack of multi-million dollar enhancements at the Global Center. ) The arguments for the enhancements themselves were even more absurd. One of the major upgrades will be expanding the junior ballroom from 10,000 square feet to 20,000 square feet, for example. And during multiple rounds of questioning, Councilwoman Nan Baker kept trying to understand why. The Global Center already has a 30,000 square-foot ballroom, the largest in downtown Cleveland, which can be subdivided into three smaller ballrooms. Was there really
Cuyahoga County council presentation
a market for a 20,000 square-foot space, she wondered. Both Gilbert and Ron King, the convention center GM, stressed that the chief benefit of the expanded ballroom would be its flexibility; indeed, the fact that this new, bigger ballroom would be modular and subdivisible into eight smaller ballrooms. So the county is preparing to spend millions of dollars to build a larger ballroom in order to create smaller ballrooms? Nan Baker asked, genuinely confused. Yes, she was told. This is what the industry demands. One’s head spins. Why not just add a few more dividers in the big ballroom and save taxpayers 20 million dollars or so? Alas. The budget additionally contemplates new escalators and stairways in the main atrium, and a revamp to the meeting room layout on the second and third floors. An outdoor terrace space would be created on the rooftop of the expanded ballroom, too. Talk about a scenic cocktail hour! The wildest moment of Tuesday’s meeting — putting the arguments for the sky bridge aside — was when Gilbert noted with a straight face that converting the Global Center into the Huntington Convention Center was “cost-effective.” That’s right. The now $54 million
UPFRONT project, which is wildly unpopular among voters, is “cost-effective” when compared to the cost of constructing a new convention center / convention center annex, which Gilbert pegged at between $150-$200 million. The chutzpah to make this argument! Residents will recognize that this is the identical line trotted out by the pro sports teams and their chamber-of-commerce attaches when they’re selling local legislators on costly renovations to the stadiums — it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than building a new one, they say — but it’s especially specious here. The alternative is not, nor was it ever, on the table. The project’s proponents can barely articulate why the enhancements are a value-add — More modular space? Are they serious? — and in any case, there is no threat of any negative outcome whatsoever if these enhancements are not made. Recall that some of the biggest conventions in the country, including the so-called Super Bowl of Conventions, are coming to Cleveland in the next few years and made plans to do so without any knowledge of the Global Center overhaul. These bozos and their imaginary numbers should have been laughed out of the room. -Sam Allard
Cleveland Councilwoman Rebecca Maurer is the Real Freaking Deal When Ward 12 Cleveland City Councilperson Rebecca Maurer arrived at City Hall in January to begin her first term, she hadn’t thought much about constituent services. She understood that councilpeople were often residents’ first call when they wanted to complain about broken streetlights, potholes or noisy neighbors. But she envisioned this direct service work as only one component of the job. Equally important, she thought, should be shepherding ward development projects and working on citywide policy and legislation. Six months into the gig, Maurer now understands the enormous burden of responding to daily phone calls and emails from constituents. The ceaseless work of putting out fires means that a councilperson rarely has time to take meetings about ward projects or to research and draft legislation. According to Maurer, it doesn’t have to be this way.
Maurer and her staff recently released a report that analyzed constituent calls they’ve received over the past six months. The report illustrates how a city councilperson spends their day and proposes straightforward changes at City Hall that could, Maurer said, make life easier for City Council and city workers while also providing services to residents more effectively. The fact that only months into her four-year term, Maurer is not only identifying systemic problems, but also explaining to residents why they exist and how they might be solved, is the most radical departure from the city council status quo we’ve seen in years. (The report is an example of what actual transparency and proactive leadership look like.) Maurer’s office has already received 1,000 calls for service in 2022, the report said, averaging about nine per day. Some of these are handled almost instantly, redirecting a caller to a more appropriate city department. Others can drag on for months, like the case of lamppost replacement referenced in the report, which Maurer said required 26 emails and communication with six different city offices. (One imagines a restaurant’s kitchen with a nonstop flow of orders, meals being assembled on the fly, all while key ingredients are running low and most of the staff has called in sick.) The report said Maurer’s office usually had 100 “open tickets” at any given time. By comparison, the city’s 311 line has received only 5.5 calls per day from Ward 12 over the same time span. Analyzing the call data, Maurer found that more than 90% of the calls to her office were related to issues that did not require direct council involvement. “While we are happy to hear from our residents, these calls put a huge strain on the small staff at council offices,” Maurer said in a press release announcing the report. “Ultimately, managing this high of a volume limits our ability to serve residents better. We need to look at systemic changes that can modernize and improve City Hall and provide a better experience for residents.” The report dovetails with Mayor Justin Bibb’s rhetoric about modernizing City Hall. And its suggestions for systemic changes, largely related to communication and resource allocation, are made in the context of specific cases. Take garbage bins. The report notes that thousands of Cleveland residents are on a waiting list to receive new plastic garbage bins from the city, a
backlog recently exacerbated by what are referred to as supply chain issues. For years, Cleveland council members have encouraged residents to reach out to them directly about broken bins. Council members then email Waste Management administrators on their constituents’ behalf. This is a grossly inefficient system, Maurer argues. On the communications front, Maurer suggests that the city send a mailer to all residents currently waiting for new bins explaining the delay and encouraging them to call 311 in the future for new bins. Council members, too, should refer bin replacement requests to 311 and only provide “ombudsman services” after lengthy delays. These improvements should be made in tandem with improved resource allocation, Maurer suggested. Council should be in communication with Public Works to ensure regular bin appropriations so that the department always has a sufficient supply on hand. “Beginning to move some basic city services off of Council’s plate will begin to improve the balance of time within Council offices and will have positive effects for Council, the Administration, and residents,” the report concludes. Accomplishing this is not rocket science. The report prescribes a coordinated campaign to promote the 311 line and the sorts of specific services residents can call about. And it recommends starting small, tackling “a handful of high-volume constituent issues where we can make an impact in the next 12 months.” A number of Maurer’s colleagues on city council quickly corroborated the report’s findings Wednesday morning, based on their own experiences. Council President Blaine Griffin, however, told Cleveland. com that he saw value in council members providing these services to residents, and that residents often call their councilperson because they trust them. He said individual council members should be allowed to approach constituent services how they see fit. Council people are indeed an important conduit to City Hall for many residents, but Maurer is correct that she and her colleagues spend far too much time on constituent calls, an imbalance which has lead directly, in recent years, to rubber stamp legislation and painstakingly slow progress on popular reforms. What’s also
scene@clevescene.com @clevelandscene
no doubt true is that some elected legislators prefer it that way. We wrote last year that a fetish for constituent service, as exemplified by former City Council President Marty Sweeney, benefits Cleveland lawmakers “because they can keep winning elections by cutting grass instead of crafting policies that support the wellbeing of residents citywide.” It also benefits local corporations and real estate interests, we noted, “because they can craft policies that support their clients’ wellbeing, knowing that council members are far too busy with constituent phone calls to think critically about their votes.” -Sam Allard
DIGIT WIDGET 56-44 Margin of victory for Bride Sweeney against Monique Smith in the hottest Democratic primary matchup of Aug. 2, (as covered in the previous issue of Scene.)
19% Percentage of vote County Executive Armond Budish secured in his race for the Democratic Party’s state central committee. He lost badly to State Rep. Kent Smith (40%), who also won the primary in the 21st State Senate District, and to Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin (29%).
$1.4 million Amount Cleveland City Council’s utilities committee has greenlit for the purchase of electric vehicle charging stations. The legislation anticipates new electric vehicles in the Cleveland Water Department and Cleveland Public Power fleets.
72% Percentage of millennials (born 1984-1992) born and raised in Cleveland who stayed in Cleveland by the time they turned 26, higher than the national average of 66%.
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How the Heartland rockers built a regional following so big they drew 74,404 fans to the Cuyahoga Falls venue for a four-night stand in 1982 BY M AT T M I T C H E L L BEFORE CLEVELAND HAD Bernie Kosar, LeBron or Drew Carey, the city’s beloved hero was Michael Stanley, a Rocky River kid turned local legend, a rockstar who found stints of national fame during his decades-long career but who captured the hearts and minds of Northeast Ohio so fully that, for us, there was, for a time, no bigger star. Part of what makes Stanley’s lore so proverbial was how he did for Cleveland what Bruce Springsteen was doing for New Jersey, but better. His songs were almost always written with the city in mind – genesized by what he knew. He was a hometown boy who never left home. “He loved Cleveland and Cleveland loved him,” former Michael Stanley Band drummer Tommy Dobeck told Scene. “Never did we take anything for granted with our Cleveland crowd. We never played a show that didn’t last almost three hours. Michael always insisted the fans get their money’s worth, where we play every song that they know. He was very big into that, making it right.” Fans might argue over when the Michael Stanley Band’s apex was, but, commercially, it was their run Photo by Anastasia Pantsios
from 1980 until 1983, where they released Heartland, North Coast, MSB and You Can’t Fight Fashion consecutively. And while that commercial success spread beyond the borders of Cleveland – “He Can’t Love You,” from Heartland, featuring Clarence Clemons, who asked only for a bottle of vodka upon his arrival at the studio in Beachwood before recording his solo, peaked at No. 33 on the Billboard Hot 100 – its epicenter was in Ohio and the heart of the Midwest. “When I would walk into a station within 200 miles of Cleveland, it was like I was walking in with the latest Springsteen album,” Chris Maduri, the former national promotional director for Belkin-Maduri Music, told Scene. “The reception was huge, because Michael was a monster back then.”
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what they heard and invited him to Stanley’s house in Chagrin Falls for an audition. He brought his entire rig – a five-keyboard stack – and went through the band’s setlist. “I guess I passed the test,” Pelander said. “I was invited to sing background vocals on Ladies’ Choice. I sang on ‘Strike Up the Band,’ but didn’t play a damn note.” Koslen cites the band’s breakthrough coinciding with Pelander’s addition and 1977 would become a defining year for the quintet, as they recorded their third album, Stagepass, live at the Agora Ballroom and had marquee acts such as Billy Joel open for them at the Allen Theatre. Stagepass went gold, produced a Top 100 hit in Koslen’s “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Mind,” and signaled a swell in the band’s momentum. “We were a true rock band by then,” Koslen said. “What you hear [us] playing on Stagepass, you could draw parallels between our jams and the Allman Brothers Band’s jams. We had all these flavors of what was going on in the ’70s and it all translated into our sound. We’d come into our own.”
The early 1980s were also a big time for Blossom, and 1982 in particular, when the serene, exurban amphitheater built and owned by the Cleveland Orchestra drew a thenrecord 635,000 fans over 150 days of events, including shows from Elton John, James Taylor, the Blue Oyster Cult and the Go-Go’s that brought in good numbers. But more than 10 percent of those fans – some 74,404 – belonged to one act alone: The Michael Stanley Band. THE KID FROM ROCKY RIVER ended up at Hiram College on a baseball scholarship in the late 1960s. While there, he performed under his birth name, Michael Gee, in a cover band called the Tree Stumps before playing bass in a local band called Silk. The soft-rock, Bread-like quartet, composed of Stanley, Randy Sabo and Courtney and Chris Johns, put out their only LP, Smooth as Raw Silk, through ABC Records in 1969. It came to life by way of Bill Szymczyk’s direction behind the boards. (Szmyczyk would eventually go on to helm the production on Stanley’s first two solo records, his self-titled debut and Friends and Legends, and then, eventually, LPs by the J. Geils Band, Eagles, Rick Derringer and, of course, the Michael Stanley Band.) When the Michael Stanley Band arrived in 1974, it was through a partnership between Stanley and Beachwood native Jonah Koslen. They were both singer-songwriter types, getting stoked on the soft rock tunes dominating the Billboard Charts but imbuing their own takes with a Midwestern flair. The pair welcomed David Spiro in as their manager and eventually teamed up with Daniel Pecchio, who was a bassist in Youngstown’s Glass Harp, to form the first iteration of the Michael Stanley Band. (In the early days of Glass Harp, the band considered Joe Walsh, a friend and collaborator of Stanley’s, as their lead guitarist, but he eventually found his footing in the James Gang.) As soon as the trio came together, they hit the road, opening for the Eagles on their On the Border tour. When they saw another local group, Circus, play at the Agora, they saw Tommy Dobeck man the drumkit and fell in love with his playing right away. “I just had wrist surgery, so it was pretty funny [because] my left hand was in a bandage,” Dobeck said. “But [Stanley, Koslen and Pecchio] came up to me and introduced themselves. The three of them kept hanging out around the drumset. I said, ‘Well, something’s
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1976 Scene cover.
a little weird. They’re putting their ear[s] toward me.’” After the show, Stanley invited Dobeck out and the guys ended up at a nearby Denny’s talking shop. “They said to me, ‘You know, we’re putting the band together and we need a drummer and we’d like you to try it out,’” he said. Once Dobeck was fully in the picture, the guys were tinkering with the beginnings of a real rock band, opening for pre-Neil Peart Rush and Bruce Springsteen before he went big. Cleveland’s music scene, at the time, was peaking, with bands like the James Gang, the Raspberries, Mirrors, Electric Eels and the Styrenes helming the city’s sonic alchemy. Everything from power pop to protopunk to folk rock was embedded in its DNA. “Cleveland was just a great rock town, there were a lot of very good bands playing,” Koslen said. “It was terrific and a very exciting time. [Everyone] had a lot of support from John Gorman at WMMS and all the jocks over there. It was great for a young guy to be in a scene like that, to have all that energy around the bands.” On the first two Michael Stanley Band albums, You Break It…You
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Bought It! and Ladies’ Choice, the guys were trying to replicate what the Eagles had already perfected: a southern-tinged, soft rock charm. But Stanley and company were only at the genesis of their songwriting and considered themselves to still be a garage band. “When I go back and listen [to the first two albums], I can listen to the acoustic stuff, the singer/songwriter stuff where we did a lot of harmonies, and I’ll really, really enjoy it,” Koslen said. “But some of the rock stuff we did at the time, even though it was consistent with what was going on [in popular music] at the time, it sounds really dated to me.” In 1976, the band was putting the final mixes on Ladies’ Choice and needed a keyboard player to do the organ and piano parts live. Bob Pelander was playing in a funk band while attending Baldwin Wallace with Phil Alexander, the lead singer of Circus. “That’s how I got to hook up with [Dobeck],” Pelander said. “We were playing at an old penthouse, way up on the top floor, and I’d gotten a call from David Spiro. He’d mentioned to [Dobeck] that Stanley was looking for a keyboard player.” Spiro, Koslen and Dobeck showed up at one of Pelander’s gigs, liked
THOUGH THAT MOMENTUM would carry on until the band’s eventual dissolution in 1987, Koslen would be gone by the end of 1977 and Spiro was traded in for Mike Belkin Sr., a local concert promoter who managed the James Gang, Wild Cherry and Donnie Iris & the Cruisers, and who created the World Series of Rock at Municipal Stadium. With Koslen off making his own music, keyboardist Kevin Raleigh and guitarist Gary Markasky stepped in to help make Cabin Fever in 1978. Stanley and company continued touring rigorously, playing shows at legacy venues across the country, like the Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles and The Palladium in New York, opening up for Styx, Journey, REO Speedwagon and Foreigner. But it was in Northeast Ohio where the most noise was made. “There were pockets [of fans] here and there,” Dobeck said. “But then we’d come back home and find ourselves headlining.” Though the records were charting and, regionally, the group’s following was surging, the Michael Stanley Band was far from a household name outside of the Midwest. “In Cleveland, they knew every song. We could play anything,” Dobeck said. “But one time we played in front of a big crowd at the [Richfield] Colosseum and then, the next night in Chicago, we played a club concert for about 25
people.” The band rarely flew to shows, opting to drive state to state. According to Pelander, they were always leveling up to the next, most-accessible, form of wheels, progressing from station wagons to motorhomes and the occasional limousine. Pelander and Stanley found themselves at the forefront of a very noticeable gust of local stardom, which arrived, in part, due to Stanley’s growing legend on-stage. “Michael was very charismatic and I think he had always been that way,” Pelander said. “He learned to become a frontman. I don’t think he always wanted to be that guy, but he picked it up pretty quick.” It’s part of what had hometowners making the trek to shows around the country. As the band traveled far and wide to places like St. Louis, Milwaukee and Long Beach, the fans followed. It was Northeast Ohio’s own rendition of Dead Heads. “We did one tour where we were just doing club shows throughout the country,” Dobeck said. “And, every night, I remember Michael commenting, ‘Is anybody left in Cleveland?’” STANLEY’S STARDOM IN Northeast Ohio became fully realized when he linked up with Mike Belkin Sr. in the mid-1970s, the beginning of a relationship that lasted more than 40 years, spanning across multiple record label changes, the Michael Stanley Band’s ending, Stanley’s time at WNCX and his eventual resurgence with the Resonators. “They never had a hiccup,” Belkin’s son, Mike Jr., said. “You know, careers go up and careers go down, but their relationship never wavered. It was probably one of the two or three most important things in [my dad’s] entire professional career.” Mike Sr. and his brother Jules aimed to make Stanley the biggest musical act in Cleveland and succeeded with flying colors. According to Maduri, they wanted to go out and break attendance records at venues across the city. On December 31st, 1981 and January 1st, 1982, the band did just that, drawing a record two-night audience of 40,529 people at the Richfield Coliseum. Afterwards, they pivoted their focus to August 1982, when MSB was slated for release. Blossom Music Center, the pavilion in Cuyahoga Falls owned by the Musical Arts Association, handled the bevy of local summer
shows because it was Cleveland’s premiere outdoor venue. Though the booking agents at Blossom had excellent relationships with the management of the major touring artists, the venue actively competed commercially with Belkin Productions, because the pavilion only had five months of good weather to present live music, as opposed to Belkin’s year-round promotional capacity. Most of those summer Blossom dates were occupied by the Cleveland Orchestra, too, so availability sometimes ran thin. But for Michael Stanley, the two sides worked together. When the Belkins met with representatives from Blossom, they laid their agenda out firmly: book as many days as possible, because it meant so much to Stanley to do all of his shows there. The more dates added, the more visibility it would bring to the band altogether. “That decision was made with the expectation that Blossom would do very well,” Chris Abood, Blossom’s PR Director in 1982, said. “Michael had sold out, or been close to capacity, the other shows he had done there, and there was also new music the band had been making. While I think it might have been considered a risk, it was certainly something that [Blossom] and Belkin Productions both agreed, ‘Yeah, let’s knock this thing out of the park.’” They scheduled the band for four nights – August 25th, 26th, 30th and 31st – and got to pumping the promos, which wasn’t a hard sell in Cleveland. At the time, the group was no longer the quintet that rocked the Agora over and over, but a sevenpiece machine filling out arenas, with a lineup that featured Stanley, Dobeck, Pelander, Markasky, Raleigh, Michael Gismondi and Rick Bell. The year prior, North Coast found good chart success, peaking at 79 on the Billboard Top 200, setting the band up well for another year of touring. 1982 would be not just the most important year in the mythology of the Michael Stanley Band, but it would be an untoppable chapter in the hearts of many fans. As the stretch arrived, the weather forecast looked great and the buzz from early ticket sale numbers warned of a packed house
were too young to really appreciate what a big deal the record-breaking shows were at Blossom, but we have so many wonderful memories of running around the pavilion during soundcheck and hearing the roar of the crowd each night as the band made their way onto the stage. It was magical.” In his interview with Stanley, Scene writer Marc Holan broached the topic of the frontman’s success in Cleveland by posing the question: “Does anything surprise you anymore?” Stanley responded humbly, saying that he never took anything for granted and expected no one to like the band’s albums. “I’m surprised that we’re doing four nights at Blossom,” he said. “I’ll be surprised if all four of them sell out. I’ll be surprised if Photo by Anastasia Pantsios three of them sell out. I’m surprised at all this stuff. It’s still very surprising to me.” for the first two performances. Not knowing that a record(Those who attended remembered breaking week was on the horizon, gnarly traffic, even for Blossom, and Stanley’s words now ring loudly, as recalled cars stranded all over the both an affectionate document of rolling terrain with people chilling a regional phenom’s humility and with strangers, because no one could a gratitude for his hometown fans move.) that never withered. Even during Prior to 1982, the band would shows, as the band ripped through drive to the venue themselves the classics of their catalog, Stanley whenever they had a gig there. But never leaned into his own stardom. to kick off the record-setting run, “My father asked me what it’s like management wanted to send the being up there onstage in front of guys to Blossom in style and had 22,000 people, and I say, ‘At the time, them all show up in limousines. I really don’t know…’ You don’t have Everyone who was close with the the time to stop and think about it.” guys in the band and wanted a When the band would come out guest pass got one. The backstage for those Blossom nights, it was area was filled every night with all hands on deck, minus Stanley. friends, employees and family, The frontman had his own special including Stanley’s dad, who Abood moment, where he’d grace the stage affectionately refers to as “Mr. under a spotlight. Gee,” his wife Libby and his twin “It was deafening. He was really daughters, Anna Sary and Sarah a rock star then,” Maduri said. “I Sharp. remember I was standing down in When Scene interviewed Stanley the pavilion area. It was emotional a week before the shows for a cover for all of us who were working for story in advance of the four-night him, to have that kind of success, stretch, he tucked his daughters when that first song started.” into bed before sitting down with Maduri remembers one touching Marc Holan to talk about MSB. The moment from a ride home during the frontman was a part-time superstar run. and full-time dad, and, sometimes, “Somehow, someway, I ended up those parts of him overlapped. in the limo with Michael, my brother While Stanley warmed up with the Carl and Mike Belkin Sr. The four band before each set, his daughters of us were racing up I-271, back to were always nearby, playing by the the Chagrin area. I have no idea stage and taking advantage of the how that happened. There was a car energetic, summertime excitement on the side of the freeway next to that washed over the venue. us, beeping, hitting their horn. The “We were in elementary school guy put his window down and mine when our dad was at the height of was cracked. He was screaming, his career,” Sarah Sharp said. “We ‘Michael! Michael! Can I get your August 10-23, 2022 | clevescene.com |
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autograph?’ We’re clipping along at 70 miles per hour on I-271 North and Michael wanted to do it! So the limo driver just kept pace with that car. I remember it was on my side, we put the window down. It was very dangerous and almost stupid, but Michael was trying to do it. “The window went down and he was reaching to try and get the paper from the guy. The limo driver was just trying to keep parallel with the guy and it didn’t work out, because we were going so fast. The guy in the car mistook it as Michael was ignoring it, so he started to yell a lot of profanity at Michael. It was this weird little cool moment that turned dark. Michael just dropped back in the seat, we put the windows up and he got really upset because he cared about every fan. He really got upset that he couldn’t give that guy an autograph and that he’d probably never come to another show. He just felt really, really bad. And then everything got quiet in the limo for the rest of the trip up to Chagrin Boulevard. It was something only four of us witnessed and it said a lot about the attitude he had towards interacting with his fans.” That connection endured even through critiques by his longtime supporters. In its Aug. 26 - Sept. 1, 1982 issue, Scene ran a letter from Stacey Sharp, a local fan who felt “betrayed” by the band after the publication’s “MSB Opening Act” contest (co-hosted by WMMS) promised Eddie Money would strike up his band before Stanley’s at the August 25 show, which didn’t happen. “I am sure that Wednesday night will nevertheless, be a good time and a good show,” Sharp wrote. “But as I sit here listening to Eddie Money I can’t help but feel deceived, as well as $10 poorer.” (In the same issue, Money was interviewed by Scene’s Keith Rathbun and proclaimed: “[Michael Stanley’s] a nice cat and he’s got a real great band. But when I come through Cleveland I’m going to do the ‘Eddie Money Show.’ I want to headline there.”) The following week, Stanley empathetically responded to Sharp with a letter of his own, providing a backstory to Money’s cancellation with the hope of making things right. “It was Eddie’s choice to turn down the dates, and I am truly sorry Stacey that you feel ‘betrayed’ and ‘taken,’” he wrote. “I hope this letter clears up some of your assumptions. We try to make each MSB show one that you will remember. I hope this year’s Blossom shows made up for Mr. Money’s absence.”
Dobeck said that after one of the shows, his ride left him at Blossom and he didn’t have a way back to downtown, before jokingly suggesting that, if it had been up to Belkin Productions, there would have been six shows in total. And though Pelander called it a “nightmare,” the drummer joyously recounted the night a rainstorm nearly flooded the lawn area. “They had a mudslide on the side of Blossom,” Dobeck said. “I was sitting up [on my riser] watching the kids slide down this hill and a cop tried to grab the kid at the top of the hill. The cop didn’t want the kids to ruin the grass, but he ended up going down the hill with them.” Dobeck’s favorite memory, however, came later that night, by way of Stanley falling on his ass when he ran across the stage. “It was the funniest thing I ever saw,” he said “Michael was far more animated in those days, and he slipped and, literally, did this roll [across stage]. He got up right after. We were all surprised he could even stand after that. We thought he broke something. We kept playing and were like, ‘Oh my God, he’s still alive. Is he going to do that tomorrow night, too?’” The shows endured even after the stage lights went out in Cuyahoga Falls, as The Plain Dealer and Scene reported extensively on the milestone. In the August 27 edition of The Plain Dealer, longtime rock critic Jane Scott likened the excitement of the band’s August 25 performance to when the Beatles played Public Hall in September 1964. Scott noted that the sea of 19,000 fans was almost four times the size of Stanley’s hometown of Chagrin Falls and that the crowd’s screams began around 8:45 p.m., when the band walked out on-stage. She praised the first chapter of the Blossom run, highlighting the mammoth, 29-song setlist and how wonderfully the Michael Stanley Band had evolved as a group. Scott even gave a nod to the uptick in production value. “This concert also had the band’s first use of lasers, done sparingly and tastefully,” she wrote. “The shows continue tonight, Monday and Tuesday. I can’t think of a better way to spend those nights.” ON FACEBOOK, A NUMBER OF Michael Stanley Band groups and fanbases share memories from throughout the years. Koslen and Gismondi are no strangers to those pages, as they often join in on the reminiscing. Though the local support remains strong, which is emphasized through tribute shows
selling out the MGM at Northfield Park, a question still lingers 40 years after the fact: How did the Michael Stanley Band manage to pack over 70,000 people onto Blossom’s grounds in one week? Koslen said it’s a mix of Stanley’s artistry and the Belkins’ firepower in the industry. “Mike Belkin, in particular, he was the real force in Cleveland,” he said. “They had a lot of clout and they put their muscle behind Michael. When I left the band, Michael had that momentum. He was a terrific musician and songwriter. He was. When he stopped working with David Spiro and went on to work with the Belkins, that was what he needed to push him over, at least locally. And it worked really, really well and really fast.” The Belkins were the missing piece for Stanley and they built off of the essential foundation Spiro had started. Their influence in the music business got the band on stages all around the country, but it was the band’s chemistry that sold the tickets. “It wasn’t that hard to get people in there to see Michael and to see the band, because it was really good,” Koslen said. “It was a really good band all around.” Mike Belkin Jr. noted that Cleveland was the peak marketplace for Stanley’s career. “To this day, nobody’s done four shows [in a row] there,” he said. “The fact that he was able to play here until he passed away shows the loyalty of those fans and the quality of his material.” The Belkins believed in the Blossom shows and knew it could change the history of rock and roll in the city. “I used to sit in that room while the Belkins and Blossom were negotiating,” Abood said. “I was a newbie there, but Mike Belkin looked at me and said, ‘You better advertise the hell out of this show. I want to sell every single seat,’ and, thankfully, we did.” Afterward, each band member got a glass trophy commemorating the feat, but it took awhile for the impact of the shows to really sink in. “We went about our business and started working on the next batch of songs,” Pelander said. “It didn’t sink in until years and years later. It was like a dream. Obviously the people on the business end had an idea of past ticket sales and all the metrics, but I don’t think we ever expected to do 74,000 people.” The band had approached the shows like they would any and brought with them the same mantra: give the people their money’s worth and ride the excitement until the wheels fall off.
“It’s something that, when you’re in the moment, you don’t realize how special it is,” Pelander said, echoing what Stanley said before the shows. “Even something that special.” THE MICHAEL STANLEY BAND would put out two more studio albums together, You Can’t Fight Fashion (1983) and Inside Moves (1986), before dissolving. On the former, Stanley wrote his grandest ode to the city that loved him beyond words: “My Town.” “The lyrics were so Cleveland,” Dobeck said. “If you were from Cleveland, you got it real quick.” It remains a perfect epilogue to the Blossom shows, when a city showed out en masse for their favorite son. Though the band was getting radio play in every major market, 50% of their records were sold within 100 miles of Cleveland. “He was happy to be here and [Cleveland] was happy to have him. I think that’ll last a long time,” Dobeck said. “It was his charisma onstage and his songwriting. He was able to write a lyric that people could identify with a part of their life or a story they were going through. I hate to say it was all him, but it was all him. I was lucky to be on the ride.” On May 29th, 2022, at the Robins Theatre in Warren, Ohio, a few hundred longtime fans of Stanley packed into the seats to watch the Resonators and Koslen pay tribute to their late friend, one of a slate of tribute concerts organized after Stanley’s death. Parents, who used to have Michael Stanley Band records in their tape decks in high school, brought their kids along, passing the musical communion down to them. The songs still endure and you could see so brightly that Stanley is as deeply missed as he is eternally loved. But no matter how loud the music plays, there’s still a hole in the stage where he used to stand. “There’s nobody that can take Michael’s place. He was with the people in Cleveland every single day,” Koslen said. “The audience still wants to come out and be around the experience again, even after Michael’s gone. He’s created this community of people that gather around him. Yes, they gathered for the music, but they also gathered in a very personal way. They felt this connection between each other, too, and with Michael. And that still remains today.”
scene@clevescene.com @clevelandscene
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THURSDAY AUG. 11 | 6-10 PM
FRIDAY AUG. 12 | 7-11 PM
VINYL ARCADE
BAD JUJU
SATURDAY AUG. 13 | 1-5 PM
SATURDAY AUG. 13 |7-11 PM
CATS ON HOLIDAY
FILMORE EAST
SUNDAY AUG. 14 | 2-6 PM
WEDNESDAY AUG. 17 | 6-10 PM
BOATERHEAD
BARCODE
THURSDAY AUG. 18 | 6-10 PM
FRIDAY AUG. 19 | 7-11 PM
JUKEBOX HEROES
SUMRADA
SATURDAY AUG. 20 | 1-5 PM
SATURDAY AUG. 20 | 7-11 PM
ROCK RADIO
COUNTRY REDFORD
SUNDAY AUG. 21 | 2-6 PM
WEDNESDAY AUG. 24 | 6-10 PM
56 DAZE
BILLY LIKES SODA
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GET OUT
Everything to do in Cleveland for the next two weeks Apollo Theatre, Cedar Lee Theatre and Chagrin Cinemas. Additional charges apply for 3-D movies. clevelandcinemas.com.
TUE 08/16 Open Turntable Tuesday Tonight from 7 to 9, the Winchester hosts its weekly Open Turntable Tuesday. Jason Gokorsch will book guest DJs and offer slots to people who want to bring their own vinyl and spin their favorite songs or deep tracks. First time DJs are encouraged, and equipment is provided. Patrons can also bring records for the night’s DJ to add to their set. Sign up on Northeast Ohio Vinyl Club’s Facebook page. 12112 Madison Ave., Lakewood, 216-600-5338, facebook.com/ TheWinchesterMusicTavern.
The feast returns to Little Italy. See Friday
WED 08/10
Photo: Emanuel Wallace
Wade Oval Wednesdays
FRI 08/12
The Sixth City Comedy Festival
Feast of the Assumption
The Sixth City Comedy Festival returns this summer for its second year in a row. A kickoff party takes place tonight at 8 at Lakewood Village Tavern, and performances go down at several venues around town through Sunday. The main stage is at Bop Stop, and showcases will go down at Great Lakes Brewing Company, Lakewood Village Tavern, Hatfield’s Goode Grub, Grindstone Tap House and Market Avenue Wine Bar. This year’s festival features more than 70 local, national and international comedians. Consult the website for a complete schedule. sixthcitycomedy.com.
The annual Feast of the Assumption takes place today through Saturday in Little Italy. Once again, Holy Rosary Church’s parish hosts this free, family-friendly festival. Starting and ending with religious processions celebrating the Virgin Mary being taken into Heaven, the Feast includes classic festival staples as well as fireworks, a raffle and observances and services for those who celebrate the Catholic Holy Day. Restaurants in the area as well as specialty vendors are set to have stands lining the streets, offering traditional Italian foods, desserts and beverages for purchase. Carnival rides and games, live music (including opera, Italian choirs and local bands) and a casino in the church’s lower level are all available for entertainment during the fest. The Feast’s hours are 6 p.m. to midnight today, noon to midnight tomorrow, noon to midnight on Sunday and noon to 10 p.m. on Monday. holy-rosary.org.
THU 08/11 Disney’s Frozen Dubbed “a can’t miss Broadway event,” Disney’s Frozen joins The Lion King and Aladdin as other Disney musicals that have hit the road on nation-wide tours. The story centers on two princesses and features a slew of memorable songs. Tonight’s performance takes place at 7:30 at the State Theatre. Consult the Playhouse Square website for more info. 1519 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.
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SAT 08/13 Trifonov Plays Rachmaninoff Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto was a hit as soon it was
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first composed. Tonight, Cleveland favorite Danill Trifonov joins the Cleveland Orchestra for a performance of the piece at Blossom. The concert begins at 7. Check the orchestra’s website for more info. 1145 W. Steels Corners Rd., Cuyahoga Falls, 216-231-1111, clevelandorchestra.com.
SUN 08/14 Reggae Sundays This special Reggae Sunday Happy Hour Concert series is a summertime tradition at the Music Box Supper Club The indoor/outdoor concert series will take place rain or shine with live music from 4 to 7 p.m. Music Box will also offer food and drink specials exclusive to the series. 1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com.
MON 08/15 Movie Mondays Every Monday, Cleveland Cinemas hosts $5 Movie Mondays, where film fans can catch up on the latest Hollywood flicks for significantly reduced prices. Bring your friends and family and make Movie Mondays a weekly tradition — many theaters even offer discounted concession stand items. Participating theaters include
A summer tradition continues tonight from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Wade Oval in University Circle. It’s Wade Oval Wednesday, and there will be local food vendors, a beer and wine tent, a farmers market and free kids’ activities — all laid out on the Wade Oval lawn, adjacent to Cleveland Botanical Garden, the Cleveland Art Museum, and the Cleveland Natural History Museum. Some museums will stay open late too. Details are on the website. universitycircle.org.
THU 08/18 Taste of Black Cleveland The top Black chefs/owners of local Cleveland restaurants, food trucks and catering businesses will be on hand for this event that takes place at 6 p.m. at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. Chefs will prepare their signature dishes for guests to sample and vote on with prizes awarded to the winning participants. Local Black mixologists and musicians will also provide drinks and entertainment for the night. The full experience is $85 and includes access to food and drink tasting from 20+ local Black chefs and six local Black mixologists. A general admission ticket will also be available for $45. One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.
Wade Oval Wednesdays: See 8/17
FRI 08/19 Guardians vs. Chicago White Sox In a series that should have implications for the upcoming playoffs, the Chicago White Sox arrive at Progressive Field tonight for the start of a three-game series. The White Sox stumbled out of the gate but have rebounded to remain in contention. Tonight’s game will feature fireworks as part of a Rock ‘N Blast promotion. 2401 Ontario St., 216-420-4487, mlb. com/guardians.
SAT 08/20 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in Concert In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, trees fight and a mysterious house elf visits Harry at the start of his second year at Hogwarts. Tonight and tomorrow night at 7 at Blossom, the Cleveland Orchestra performs the score live while the film shows. Check the orchestra website for ticket prices. 1145 W. Steels Corners Rd., Cuyahoga Falls, 216-231-1111, clevelandorchestra.com.
SUN 08/21 Ryan Dalton A product of Cleveland, standup comedian Ryan Dalton has played locally and toured nationally for about the past 20 years. He regularly
Photo: Emanuel Wallace
appears on Bob and Tom Radio Show and has released several comedy albums. He performs tonight at 7 at Hilarities. Check the club’s website for more info. 2035 East Fourth St., 216-241-7425, pickwickandfrolic.com.
MON 08/22 Vegan Monday Each Monday, the Winchester chef puts together a special vegan menu featuring items such as comfort burgers, Philly burgers and peach cobbler. The kitchen opens up at 4 p.m. and stays open until midnight. Check the website for more info. 12112 Madison Ave., Lakewood, 216-600-5338, facebook.com/ TheWinchesterMusicTavern.
TUE 08/23 Lyrical Rhythms Open Mic and Chill This long-running open mic night at the B Side allows some of the city’s best rappers and poets to strut their stuff. The event begins at 8 with a comedy session dubbed 2 Drinks & a Joke with host Ant Morrow. The open mic performances begin at 10 p.m. Tickets cost $5 in advance, $10 at the door., $5. 2785 Euclid Heights Blvd., Cleveland Heights, 216-932-1966, bsideliquorlounge.com.
scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene August 10-23, 2022 | clevescene.com |
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EAT THE TOTAL PACKAGE
Amba delivers an adventurous, joyous and exciting experience for all the senses
For two decades, Doug Katz made things easy for his posh east-side followers. Guests who rolled up to Fire, his Shaker Square bistro, simply handed the keys to their late-model cars over to the valet attendant. At the host stand, those same diners could relax in the knowledge that a table with their name on it was at the ready thanks to a well-placed reservation. Fire’s seasonal American menu always managed to delight – if not surprise, thrill or challenge – guests, who didn’t even need to pull out a phone or penlight to read it thanks to museum-quality lighting. Perhaps it’s the restaurant operator version of a midlife crisis, but for his latest venture, Katz elected to move in an entirely new direction. Located in a quiet corner of Ohio City, Amba ditches suburban for urban, rewards spontaneity over preparation, and presents diners with a menu that pushes just as much as it pleases. So much has been said about Amba in the two-plus months it’s been open that one could assume they have the place pegged. But until you experience it in person, as I finally did a few weeks back, it’s all just words on a page or screen. Diners are ripped out of their comfort zones the moment they swap the sunlit sidewalk for the shadowy interior. A walk down a trim passageway to the host stand is just long enough for your eyes to begin to adjust. Depending on your luck and timing, you’ll either be shown to a table or given an estimate for when one will be available. If it’s the latter, another short stroll lands a diner in Bar Amba, an intimate cocktail lounge in the rear that is worthy of its own visit. Once seated, either on the dimly lit perimeter of the dining room or smack dab in the (slightly more illuminated) middle, diners can better take in the surroundings. It’s a theatrical space that weaves light and shadow, music and conversation, materials and artsy details into an atmospheric feast for the senses, including smell thanks to the aromas that float around the room. Though Amba has its roots in a former ghost kitchen of the same
Photo by Tiffany Joy Photo
By Douglas Trattner
name, this fully realized version has little in common with that take-outonly operation. Katz and executive chef Cameron Pishnery have crafted a tantalizing menu of Indianinspired dishes that range from finger foods on up to full entrees. Like Zhug in Cleveland Heights, Amba all but demands the passing and sharing of plates, which need not be ordered all at once. If charting
nine separate dishes, many of them too large to finish. Before starting our tasting dinner, we ordered a few snacks like warm naan ($5), dark and crunchy chickpea fritters ($11) with green papaya slaw, and a bowl of colorful mixed pickled veggies ($8). Soon, food began appearing in waves, all arranged like jewels on fine ceramic. Chestnut-hued cubes of paneer are dotted with mustard
AMBA 1430 W. 28 ST., CLEVELAND 216-417-6718, AMBACLE.COM
a course from a roster of 25 or so uncommon items seems daunting, lean on the servers, who are keen guides for the journey. Better still, consider ordering a chef’s tasting for two, four, six or eight people. Our party of four went that route and was treated to course after course of stunning food for the more-than-reasonable amount of $123 (total, not each). For less than the price of a single steak and side at a fancy chophouse, the table enjoyed
seeds and arranged in creamy dal. Fat prawns glisten with ghee beneath a shower of perfectly toasted coconut. Crispy puri cups look like mini UFOs filled with potato, raita and tamarind. Long slivers of fried zucchini get dunked into yogurt dip. Ground venison keema is spooned over basmati rice studded with raisins, almonds and fried onions. Spice levels ranged from tame to tongue-tingling. When it comes to
beverages, Katz and business partner Todd Thompson rarely go the predictable route. The whiteand sparkling-heavy wine list is loaded with spiced food-appropriate selections from Italy, France, Spain, Germany and Austria. Bar manager Noah Biddle blends bespoke ingredients like butterfly pea powder, lapsang tea jaggery, cardamom agave, black pepper honey syrup, and curry leaf bitters with spirits to create distinctive cocktails. Dining out is often described as a well-choreographed dinner party, but few restaurants manage to cultivate a truly loose and joyous vibe. At Amba, the table-hopping never seems to stop, with introductions and food recommendations filling the air with a jubilant buzz. The fact that this is all taking place in a nondescript cinder-block bunker in Hingetown that very recently housed a machine shop makes it all the more improbable.
dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner
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Photo by Morgan Yagi
EAT BITES
First look: Bartleby in Ohio City, now open By Douglas Trattner IT’S BEEN MORE THAN A YEAR since Morgan Yagi announced his plans to convert the former Crop Bistro space in Ohio City to Bartleby (2537 Lorain Ave., 216-417-2224). But finally, following a week or so of private events, the restaurant officially opened its doors to the public in early August. Yagi spent much of the past 15 months gently reshaping the interior of the historic United Bank Building, a 1920s-era property with soaring ceilings, bronze light fixtures and a run of arched windows that flood the space with natural light. Newly constructed shelving serves to divide the interior into three somewhat equal zones. The towering U-shaped structures combine to create a distinct bar and lounge area, main dining room, and “bonus” space that can be used for overflow dining or private events. But because they aren’t solid walls, energy can flow from zone to zone. “The idea is to have some visual transmission so there will be some activity between, but hopefully not feel that there’s this cavernous, empty space,” Yagi explains. “I think it’s working; it already feels more manageable.” Another tactic that Yagi employed was the reliance on soft seating areas with richly upholstered furniture, plush built-in booths and banquettes, boldly colored carpet and other attractive fixtures that add visual appeal. “I think this kind of seating is more forgiving when the room’s not completely full,” notes Yagi. “Like when you walk into a hotel lobby with a lot of soft seating; you can walk through it and not notice. We’ll see if my theory proves to be true.” While Crop Bistro leaned more to fine dining, Bartleby aims to be more approachable and accessible in its offerings. Chef Matt DePante, most recently from The Dutch in Miami, has worked alongside consulting chef Dante Boccuzzi to develop a menu that offers a broad mix of tastes. Diners can look forward to items like burgers, pizzas and bowls of pasta, but also a great grilled ribeye, all dished up in a supper club-style environment. The formerly
open kitchen has been sealed off from the main room. Other notable partners in the project include general manager Ryan Britton, Stephen Taylor of Emerging Concepts and Spotted Owl owner Will Hollingsworth, who is putting together the beverage program. Lounge lizards will enjoy sumptuous seating, a gold-flecked black quartz bartop and top-flight cocktails. What they won’t see behind the bar is the 100-year-old mural by local artist Glenn Shaw. It has been covered up (but protected and preserved) by a new backbar. For Yagi, who also operates Hibachi Japan Steak House restaurants in Cuyahoga Falls and Solon, and is a partner in Boccuzzi’s DBA in Akron, Bartleby presents a foothold into one of his favorite neighborhoods. “Ohio City is more of a neighborhood,” he says. “It feels different if people live around you. I’ve always thought that’s what makes Ohio City – and Tremont – different from other entertainment districts. There’s more staying power and it feels different.”
Now Open: Nubeigel Bagel Shop in Cleveland Heights It just got easier to score a bag of fresh-baked bagels on Cleveland’s east side thanks to Nubeigel (2254 Lee Rd.), which opened last month on Lee Road in Cleveland Heights. The bakery/café is owned by Josh Admon, a chef who recently relocated from Jerusalem to University Heights. The bright, minimal shop keeps things blissfully uncomplicated, offering a streamlined menu of bagels, bagels and schmears, and coffee drinks. Admon’s plain, sesame, poppy, everything and everything spicy bagels are hand-rolled, boiled and baked, giving them that characteristic sheen and chew. But don’t bother making comparisons between Nubeigel’s bagels and those from other shops, either locally or regionally, says the owner. “Kind of reflective of the name, I’m not going to categorize my product and I’m not down to any sort of rules or regulations of different
Bartleby.
style bagels,” Admon explains. “I wouldn’t even call them a hybrid. I’m not going to call it anything other than my product.” Bagels can be purchased individually ($2), by the dozen ($21), or as sandwiches filled with cream cheese schmears of various flavors. In addition to plain cream cheese, Nubeigel sells versions with kalamata olives; capers and red onion; Sriracha; and horseradish dill (all $4). Add-ons like smoked salmon, kimchi, capers, tomato and cucumber can be tacked on for a fee. The coffee hails from Edda Coffee Roasters, “that Pour guy” Charlie Eisenstat’s new roastery in Ohio City. Nubeigel is open Monday through Friday.
Jack Frost Donuts Opens Satellite Shop at the West Side Market For the better part of 85 years, Jack Frost has been luring people to Old Brooklyn for some of Cleveland’s best donuts. The shop (4960 Pearl Rd., 216351-3638), largely rebuilt from scratch five years ago, offers more than 200 flavors of donuts throughout the year. But good luck finding those donuts anywhere but there. Now, many of those signature flavors and styles are available at Jack Frost’s new satellite shop at the West Side Market. Donut lovers can find the goods at stand B-4, B-5, in the former home of Pinzone’s Meats, which left the market in 2020 after 44 years. You can find the stand just inside the doors on the Lorain Avenue side.
Cleveland Garlic Festival Returns to Shaker Square Aug. 27-28 If you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at growing garlic, which is one of life’s most rewarding endeavors, there is no better event to attend than the Cleveland Garlic Festival. The annual affair, which benefits the North Union Farmers Market, is a veritable roundup of growers, product and wisdom when it comes to the “stinking rose.” On offer from numerous farmers is a dizzying array of garlic cultivars, all ideal for planting here in Northeast Ohio. In these parts, garlic is planted in fall and harvested sometime around midJuly. Each individual clove that’s planted develops into an entire head. Most growers reserve their biggest bulbs from the previous crop for planting, but for many others, it’s off to market we go for seed. This year’s event at Shaker Square will take place from noon to 8 p.m. Saturday, August 27, and noon-6 p.m. Sunday, August 28. In addition to the garlic growers, there are tons of garlic-themed foods like garlic olive oil, garlic fries, garlic ice cream and garlic beer. A highlight each year is the Top Chef Grill Offs, when local chefs go head-to-head preparing garlic-themed foods for the judges. There also is live music throughout the weekend, as well as a craft beer tent, kid’s activities, and the crowning of Miss Garlic.
dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner
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MUSIC
Dispatch. Photo: Mike Smith
REFLECTING THE TIMES
Dispatch addresses social issues on latest effort, Break Our Fall By Jeff Niesel THE ROOTS ROCK/JAM BAND Dispatch initially intended to release an EP in 2020 that would’ve coincided with a summer tour in support of the album. When the pandemic hit, the group decided to take some more time with it and tweak the album, adding some new songs and rewriting some lyrics for the songs it already recorded. The result, the sprawling Break Our Fall, speaks rather passionately to what the last two years have been like. “We recorded the bulk of the record in January 2020 before everything went to hell,” says singermulti-instrumentalist Chadwick Stokes in a recent Zoom call from Martha’s Vineyard, where he was vacationing prior to hitting the road for a summer tour that brings Dispatch and O.A.R. to Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica on Friday, Aug. 12. Singer-songwriter G. Love also shares the bill. “[After we decided to revisit the album,] George Floyd was killed and there was this pandemic and [former President] Trump was being an idiot and there was the continuing story of cops killing people of color. It was all coming to a head. Some of our songs had that reflected in it. We went in and thankfully had the time to fine-tune some stuff and rewrote some lyrics. It wound up being okay to have that additional time to work on the album. I realize it’s now a big ask for people to listen to it from start to finish.” Break Our Fall represents the third album that the band has
DISPATCH, O.A.R., G. LOVE 7 P.M. FRIDAY, AUG. 12, JACOBS PAVILION AT NAUTICA, 216-662-6557. TICKETS: $20+, JACOBSPAVILION.COM.
recorded with the same production team at Stinson Beach, an artist/ musician retreat located just north of San Francisco. “Some of the stuff I was writing on the original demos wasn’t necessarily what we thought we would record — but you can’t really control what comes out,” says Stokes when asked about the high-energy rocker “May We All,” a careening tune that’s one of the album’s many highlights. “Songs like ‘May We All’ had an ’80s feel with chugging guitars like a Cars’ song. That isn’t exactly Dispatch’s MO. We wanted to do songs that take us where we haven’t gone before. We wanted to go toward the songs that were interesting for us and more of a stretch for us. ‘May we all be forsaken’ was all I had for the chorus [for ‘May We All’], and I had about 50 things that you could say after that. I had so many options for that means and where the song is going. That was one of the songs where the lyrics changed after George Floyd was killed.” Singer-songwriter White Buffalo, someone Stokes has known for years, shares vocal duties on the folk-y “All This Time,” another album highlight.
“We toured together when I was in State Radio, and I fell in love with the guy,” says Stokes when asked about White Buffalo. “We crossed the country together many times and any time we have guests for albums or concerts, we call on him because he’s a dear friend. With that song, it’s almost impossible to do it without him because he leaves such a void. I love the guy and love his voice, and he’s so much fun to be around.” The band recently released an acoustic re-recording of one of its most beloved singles, “The General,” in Russian to show its support of Ukraine. Stokes worked on learning the language with an activist based in Poland, who eventually told him his Russian was passable. “Sadly, that song hasn’t lost its relevance,” says Stokes when asked about the track. “We heard stories of the soldiers being told this or that story and that the Ukrainians would welcome them in as liberators. The reality had stories of Russian soldiers defecting. Someone on Instagram wrote that we should do the song in Ukrainian. It was a good idea, and we asked him to send us the translation. It went silent until someone said I should do it in Russian, and then we decided to make it happen.” Ever the activist, Stokes says his charity Calling All Crows will devote its attention to the high incarceration rate in the U.S. To date, the charity has raised more than half a million
dollars for a variety of causes. “This summer, we are focusing on the incarceration program in our country and raising money for ending mass incarceration,” he says. “We are doing some events in different cities where people can come and learn about how to get their records restricted, so that coming out of prison they can actually get jobs. We’re helping with the re-entry of those who were incarcerated. All the money is going toward changing this narrative of incarceration gone wild. It’s crazy what’s happened since the ’70s. Reading and looking back and seeing how exponential the lock-up rate is, it’s so incredibly sad. We’re five percent of the world’s population, but we have 25 percent of the incarcerations. ‘Land of the free’ is such a fucking lie.” Stokes says he’s particularly excited that the tour with O.A.R. will finally come to fruition after a false start in 2020. “In the ’90s, we played maybe just once with them,” he says of O.A.R. “I think we were direct support for them. People have grouped us together over the years, and we stayed friends. We just haven’t crossed paths in years. This was planned for 2020, and it’s good to finally get out there with our friends. It’s going to be great.”
jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel
August 10-23, 2022 | clevescene.com |
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Photo: Emma Delevante
MUSIC
Arlo McKinley.
JUST A LITTLE BIT LOUDER
Singer-songwriter Arlo McKinley brings his retooled band to the Winchester By Jeff Niesel EARLIER THIS YEAR, in advance of the release of his new album, This Mess We’re In, singer-songwriter Arlo McKinley jetted off to Europe, where he played in eight different countries in the span of about three weeks. “I’m just now getting my feet back under me,” he says via phone from his Cincinnati home. Arlo McKinley performs on Wednesday, Aug. 17, at the Winchester in Lakewood. “It was amazing. It was a good experience. I’m still kind of processing it all. It’s a little different pace, and you have to get used to it, but it was great, and I loved it.” The recent European tour signifies the way McKinley’s profile has risen, but it certainly hasn’t been an easy climb. McKinley initially began singing with his Baptist church when he was 8. He then started playing in punk bands when he became a teenager. “I have two older brothers, and they were into punk and metal and hardcore,” he says, adding that he played some gigs in Cleveland with locally based hardcore acts such as Integrity and Ringworm. “My dad had a crazy bluegrass and country
vinyl collection. If my brothers weren’t home, I was in their rooms going through all their records. And when my brothers kicked me out of their rooms, I would go into my dad’s room.” In 2019, singer-songwriter John Prine came to one of McKinley’s Nashville shows. Impressed, he signed McKinley to his Oh Boy label. “That show ended up being the final audition, I guess” says McKinley. “I got signed on my birthday in 2019.” When it came time to record 2020’s Die Midwestern, his first record for Oh Boy, he traveled to Memphis to work with producer Matt Ross-Spang (Margo Price, Jason Isbell, St. Paul & the Broken Bones). “He steered the ship,” says McKinley when asked about RossSpang. “He got a good band together for me for Die Midwestern. It just worked. I didn’t want to switch it up [for This Mess We’re In]. Die Midwestern was recorded in seven days. We did it pretty quickly. When we came back for This Mess, we spent 14 days. That was a long time for me. We were more comfortable
ARLO MCKINLEY, JUSTIN WELLS 8 P.M., WEDNESDAY, AUG. 17, THE WINCHESTER, 12112 MADISON AVE, LAKEWOOD, 216-600-5338. TICKETS: $15, WINCHESTERMUSICTAVERN.COM.
with one another. It was more relaxed. We took a little more time.” McKinley says he mostly recorded the album live and used very few overdubs. “For the most part, that’s how I like to record,” he says. “I want to get that energy. I want a record to sound like it’s people in a room playing. Most of the overdubbing is me doing harmonies on my vocals.” Even though it’s a track McKinley says he was working on for a while before recording it for This Mess We’re In, the album opener suggests a departure from Die Midwestern if only because a string arrangement dominates the tune. “I was listening to Nick Cave and Nick Drake, and both get string heavy,” says McKinley. “I think the only thing I said walking into the
studio was that I didn’t want another Die Midwestern, and I didn’t want to make a straight-up country album. I think we succeeded.” “Back Home,” another song McKinley pulled out of his back pocket of half-written tunes, centers on his love/hate relationship with his hometown. “‘Back Home’ was one of the first songs I wrote when I started my solo project,” McKinley says. “I just never recorded it. As I was getting the songs together, I looked back to some of the old ones and grabbed it. It’s my view on some things here in Cincinnati. It’s a place I love, but there are some things I feel like I should get away from. But it’s always been home. As much as I’d like to get out, I always find myself back here.” A beefy organ riff drives “To Die For,” another album highlight. “That’s the song that I knew would be the biggest leap from Die Midwestern,” McKinley says of the tune. “I wanted to put out a rock song and have music that matched the lyric content. It was great watching Rick [Steff] play in the studio. I was set up right next to him. Watching him play was amazing. He’d be doing one thing on organ and something else on piano and moving all over the place. It’s like a mad scientist in his lab doing his stuff. Rick is a good friend of mine and having him there as a mentor and musician is great. When he speaks, I know I should be listening and it’s going to be something I should hang onto.” Last year, McKinley revamped his band and retooled his live show, so it rocks more than it has in the past. He says the volume might surprise some of his longtime fans. “The shows used to be more laid back and what the album sounds like,” he says. “Now, it’s more of a rock show. I try to even it out. In the middle, I play a few songs by myself or with the pedal steel player. We do these songs pretty much how they are on the record — only a little louder. It’s fun. We’ve experimented with horn sections and different sounds and sometimes I don’t even play guitar. I just sing and be the frontman. It keeps it interesting and fun. The live show wasn’t lacking that, but I wanted it to be a different experience from the record.”
jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel
August 10-23, 2022 | clevescene.com |
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MUSIC
Charity Cunningham.
A MUSICAL JOURNEY
Photo: Isaac Bixel
Local singer-songwriter Charity Cunningham challenges conventional doctrines on new album By Shawn Mishak CHARITY CUNNINGHAM, a former member of Cleveland’s Samfox, is set to release her first solo full-length album, Existential Crisis. It follows her 2021 EP, Pour Les Hantés. Using a collection of samples, MIDI and real instruments, Cunningham, along with collaborators John Chips, Nathaniel Hunt and several different artists, put together this groove-studded, 11-song album. A Twinsburg native, Cunningham grew up traveling frequently with a musical family. Her father taught her how to play piano and sing harmonies, and she played and sang in church in her youth. Branching out from the church has allowed her to stretch her wings musically and experiment more. Samfox made waves in Cleveland over their four-year run. The group included Cunningham on vocals and piano, Braxton Taylor on guitar and vocals, Randall Hoyal on guitar and trumpet, Josh Montgomery
on drums and a revolving door of bassists. Cunningham mentions Patsy Cline on her new album but says that ABBA, Tame Impala, the Marías and BRONCHO were on the forefront of her mind while recording Existential Crisis, a departure from Samfox’s bluesinfused rock that embraces more of an electro-synth pop vibe. The music has variety, though; with “Heavy” one can’t help but feel the syphoning of Debbie Harry with its infectious disco swagger while songs like “Ohno!” summon a Caroline Rose sardonic narrative with a bouncy beat. The song “Woman” casts a seductive and sensual spell over the listener, much like a War Paint song might. “‘Woman’ has a lot of religious themes, as do a few of the songs on this record, because as I was working on this record, I was on the journey of challenging the doctrine I was taught and leaving that all
CHARITY CUNNINGHAM, TREVOR ADAMS, GRACE SULLIVAN 8 P.M., SATURDAY, AUG. 13, LAKE AFFECT STUDIOS, 1615 E. 25TH ST., 216-298-9018. TICKETS: $15, LAKEAFFECTSTUDIOS.COM.
behind me,” explains Cunningham, who performs on Saturday, Aug. 13, at Lake Affect Studios. “So if I sound confused and a little bitter in this song, that’s why. Like in the lyrics ‘If we truly are the fall of man, we might as well have a little fun destroying God’s plan. If my short skirt and high heels change the way that you feel, take my hand, I’ll show you the real promise land.’ I am basically poking fun at the religious men that used to scream at me from the pulpit. It’s my attempt at trying to get some fun out of these deeply sexist ideals and misplaced responsibilities put on women in the church — or any woman in general.
The idea of ‘What was she wearing? Oh, she was asking for it.’ News flash: I just thought I looked cute. I wasn’t asking for anything. Leave me alone.” Cunningham’s narratives aren’t only seductive and birdflipping to the pulpit (she has a song called “God?”), but they also leave her vulnerable in their candidness. Although much of it can be perceived as playful in a way that is empowering, there are also times when she reveals her fears and anxieties and tenderness. In “Ohno!” she sings, “Gotta face myself and be alone.” “I am by nature an avid people pleaser,” continues Cunningham. “I always thought it was normal to take everyone else’s feelings into consideration before your own and to adjust according to other people to keep them happy while you suffer in silence.” The writing process for this album was a collaborative exercise between her and her producers, Hunt and Chips. Hunt (AKA Muzzy Fossa) designed the architecture for the majority of the songs with Chips working on a couple tunes as well. Cunningham listened to these tracks and began to construct her vocal parts just above the surface of the finely-honed arrangements. “With Nate [Hunt], it was a whole new ballgame. He would send me a track of music usually finished, that he had been working on, and I would listen to it over and over and over until I got to know it really well, and then I’d get an idea for the storyline and the lyrics. I really wanted the song to tell me what it wanted to be about. I wanted to really diagnose what feelings it was giving me while listening. Then, we would meet up at his home studio, get a bottle of wine or two and get to work! He is such a visionary and such a talent to work with.” The production on this album is top-notch; Cunningham’s voice is stellar, and the songs are fun and danceable. Also, there is a genuine spirt of self-reflection with openness to share her story. The release is rife with empowerment for women without the heavy-handedness and served with a sidecar of sex appeal. I could see her on stage at Coachella for sure, hats off to her.
smishak@clevescene.com t@smishak
August 10-23, 2022 | clevescene.com |
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LIVEWIRE SAT
Real music in the real world
08/13
Steep Canyon Rangers Known for frequently collaborating with a certain Steve Martin (the comedian is a legit banjo player), this Asheville-based bluegrass band has had a solid 20-year career that includes a Grammy win. The band performs at 8 tonight at the Kent Stage. Check the venue’s website for ticket prices and more info. 175 E. Main St., Kent, 330-677-5005, kentstage.org.
SUN 08/14 LANY With its programmed drumbeats and synthesizer loops, gg bb xx, the latest effort from LANY, revels in modern pop sensibilities without anything particularly distinctive. And yet, nearly ten years into its career, the indie pop group has staying power. The band comes to Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica tonight at 7. Consult the venue’s website for more info. 2014 Sycamore St., 216-861-4080, jacobspavilion.com.
TUE
08/16
WED 08/17 Elevation Worship Summer Tour Kari Jobe and Cody Carnes will perform tonight at 7 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse as the Elevation Worship Summer Tour rolls into town. Tickets start at $29.75. One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.
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Credit: Jody Domingue
Matisyahu A reggae-singing Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn who got his first big break appearing with Phish at Bonnaroo several years ago, Matisyahu has proven to be more than a novelty act. He comes to town tonight in support of his latest album, a selftitled affair that features a mix of reggae/hip-hop-infused ballads (“Not Regular”) and inspirational pop (“Keep Coming Back for More”). The show begins at 7 at House of Blues. Consult the club’s website for more info. 308 Euclid Ave., 216-523-2583, houseofblues.com.
Country singer Paul Cauthen comes to House of Blues. See: Friday, Aug. 19.
THU 08/18 Curtis Salgado With a career spanning more than three decades, Curtis Salgado, a seven-time winner of the Blues Music Award for Soul Blues Male Artist of the Year (most recently in 2022), has co-fronted the Robert Cray Band and led his own band (and recorded nine solo albums). He’ll perform with his band tonight at 7:30 at the Music Box Supper Club as he brings his tour in
| clevescene.com | August 10-23, 2022
support of his latest album, Damage Control, to town. 1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com.
FRI
08/19
Paul Cauthen Country Coming Down, the latest effort from country singer Paul Cauthen, was a hit out of the gates thanks to its boisterous first single “Country as Fuck,” a track that mixes hip-hop and honky-tonk.
On tour in support of the album, Cauthen performs tonight at 8 at House of Blues. 308 Euclid Ave., 216-523-2583, houseofblues.com.
The Dear Hunter Earlier this year, this indie rock band released its latest effort, Antimai, reportedly the first album in sci-fi saga. Trippy and strange and often driven by horns, the album features off-kilter harmonies and echoing vocals. Each song is dubbed a “ring” and alludes to a futuristic
city. The group performs at 7:30 p.m. at the Beachland Ballroom. The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die and Tanner Merritt open. Tickets cost $24 in advance, $29 at the door. 15711 Waterloo Rd., 216-383-1124, beachlandballroom.com.
Alicia Keys Originally slated to play Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica back in 2020 in support of that year’s ALICIA, the talented singer-songwriter finally comes to the venue tonight in a make-up for the 2020 date. ALICIA, which begins with the dissonant “Truth Without Love,” finds Keys exploring a bit of everything, including soul, R&B and pop. Tonight’s concert begins at 8. Check the venue website for more info. 2014 Sycamore St., 216-861-4080, jacobspavilion.com.
SUN 08/21 The Wallflowers Led by singer-guitarist Jakob Dylan, the Wallflowers, a ‘90s band that’s kept chugging along, comes to the Kent Stage tonight at 6:30 as part of a tour in support of last year’s Exit Wounds, the band’s first studio release in nearly ten years. A rootsy affair, the album finds the group in good form (and the raspy-voiced Dylan even sounds like his father on album opener “Maybe Your Hearts Not in It Anymore”). 175 E. Main St., Kent, 330-677-5005, kentstage.org.
WED 08/24 Men at Work The ‘80s act Men at Work has sold over 30 million albums in the course of its lengthy career. The band had two No. 1 singles in the States with “Down Under” and “Who Can It Be Now.” The original band splintered in 1985, but singer Colin Hay, who also has a solo career and is presently part of Ringo Starr’s All Starr Band, has continued to play under the Men at Work banner with his L.A.-based group of musicians. He’ll bring that version of Men at Work to MGM Northfield Park — Center Stage tonight. 10705 Northfield Rd., Northfield, 330-908-7793, mgmnorthfieldpark. mgmresorts.com/en.html.
THU 08/25 Bass Extremes Bass Extremes — Victor Wooten and Steve Bailey — come to Music Box
Supper Club tonight at 8 in support of their new album, S’Low Down. The 10-track album that arks the duo’s 30th anniversary features an array of top bassists and musicians, including Ron Carter, Bootsy Collins, Marcus Miller, Oteil Burbridge, Justin Chancellor, Linda Oh, Edgar Meyer, John Patitucci, Billy Sheehan and Joe Dart. It also includes some unexpected collaborations, including banjoist Béla Fleck on bass banjo, jazz guitarist Mike Stern on 6-string bass, Howard Levy on bass harmonica, and Jeff Coffin on both bass clarinet and bass flute. 1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com.
FRI
08/26
Z 107.9 Summer Jam Lil Durk, Kodak Black and Bleu will perform tonight at 7 as part of the Z 107.9 Summer Jam concert that comes to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. Tickets start at $45. One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.
TUE
08/30
Twenty One Pilots The guys in Twenty One Pilots delivered one helluva racket when they performed at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse back in 2018. The theatricality of the concert, which included numerous outfit changes and a stripped-down segment on a satellite stage, meant that it was regularly engaging and kept the band’s ardent fans on their feet for the entire set. Expect something similar when the band returns to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse tonight at 8 as part of a tour that supports last year’s Scaled and Icy. Peter McPoland opens the show. One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com. Why Don’t We Out on a summer tour in support of its new single, “How Do You Love Somebody,” the pop band Why Don’t We comes to Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica tonight at 7. Co-written/ produced by the band alongside Grey (Zedd & Maren Morris’s “The Middle”), “How Do You Love Somebody” features the kind of pop hooks for which the band is known. Consult the venue’s website for ticket prices and more info. 2014 Sycamore St., 216-861-4080, jacobspavilion.com.
Steep Canyon Rangers Sat. Aug. 13
Beausoleil avec Michael Doucet
Al Stewart
GREATEST HITS TOUR
with Empty Pockets
Wed. Aug. 17
Hayes Carll Sat. Sept. 3
Sat. Aug. 27
The Wallflowers
with Marc Lee Shannon
Sat. Aug. 21
Duane Betts Johnny Stachela Barry Duane Oakley
Thurs. Sept. 8
ALSO COMING IN 2022
Friday, Sept. 9 | The Fixx with Jill Sobule Saturday Sept. 10 | Jimmy Carter of Blind Boys of Alabama Sunday, Sept. 11 | An Evening with Al Di Meola Wednesday, Sept. 21 | Watkins Family Hour Friday, Sept. 23 | Steve Kimock & Friends Sunday Sept. 25 | Jim Messina Saturday Oct. 8 | Blues Traveler 35th Anniv. Show! Friday & Saturday | Jonah Koslen/Tommy Dobeck/ Oct. 21 & 22 Daniel Pecchio Songs & stories from the first three MSB albums Sunday, Oct. 23 | Martin Sexton Thursday, Oct. 27 | Jon McLaughlin with Kris Allen Wednesday Nov. 2 | Sophie B. Hawkins Thursday, Nov. 3 | Tab Benoit Friday Nov. 4 | Tim O’Brien/Jan Fribicius/ Chris Smither Saturday Nov. 5 | John McCutcheon’s Pete Seeger 100th B-Day Celebration NEW! Saturday Nov. 12 | Lucy Kaplansky
AT THE GOODYEAR THEATER
Get tix at goodyeartheater.com or ticketmaster.com
Don McLean
American Pie 50th Anniversary Tour Fri., Sept. 2
The Sixties Show A 1960s Musical Re-Creation Sat., Nov. 5
scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene August 10-23, 2022 | clevescene.com |
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| clevescene.com | August 10-23, 2022
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SAVAGE LOVE CHOKE HOLD By Dan Savage This is a preview of this week’s Savage Love. The full version is now exclusively available on Dan’s website Savage.Love.
Hey Dan: I have a question about choking. Or should that be simulated choking? I’ve recently discovered that being pinned down by my neck is a huge turn on for me. I love the feeling of being dominated and controlled, and of feeling my partner’s strength on this part of my body. I’m much more interested in this feeling than in actual breath control or oxygen deprivation. I’ve been reading up on choking because I’m trying to make sure I can be manhandled in the way I like as safely as possible. However, all the advice about choking is about how dangerous it is. But most of the advice concentrates on the dangers of restricting oxygen (which is not what I am going for) or on damaging the windpipe by putting pressure on the front of the throat (which my partners avoid). So, my question is… how dangerous is this kind of simulated choking play really? Please I Need More Expertise “Choking and other forms of breath play used to be very uncommon,” said Dr. Debby Herbenick. “But over the past decade, choking has become extremely common, especially among people under 40.” Dr. Herbenick is a professor at Indiana University School of Public Health. A few years ago, Dr. Herbenick’s students began asking her about choking, with some sharing harrowing stories of being choked by sex partners without their consent. There was very little data out there about choking, which was all over porn sites, and that inspired Dr. Herbenick and some colleagues to undertake the first serious and scientifically rigorous studies of sexual choking. Disturbingly, Dr. Herbenick found that a lot of people—mostly male people—were choking their partners during sex without discussing it first. “The reason that so many sites say choking is dangerous is because it is dangerous,” said Dr. Herbenick. “Although rare, people do
occasionally die from being choked, which is technically a form of strangulation, and people have gone to jail for accidentally injuring or killing a partner during consensual choking.” “Because most people experiment with choking without any obvious negative repercussions, they often think they’re doing it ‘safely,’ and that may not be the case,” said Dr. Herbenick. “And because people sometimes engage in choking frequently, there may be cumulative effects on the brain—in other words, negative effects that build up over time rather than from a single incident of being choked. Cumulative incidents are difficult to notice as they’re happening. However, even mild pressure on the neck/ throat is likely to reduce oxygen to the brain because it involves compressing blood vessels. The kinds of cumulative effects that may occur include greater likelihood of depression, anxiety, ringing in the ears, headaches, and memory issues, among others, though we need more research to say for sure.” So, is there a safe way to create the sensation of being choked—or pinned down by your neck—without the risk? “Some people who are into choking but who don’t want to take on these risks ask their partner to lightly press against their collarbone but not their throat,” said Dr. Herbenick. “And PINME is correct that any pressure to the front of the throat is particularly risky, given how vulnerable the windpipe is to injury. Other people decide to ask their partner to choke them anyway but only rarely, to reduce the likelihood of cumulative risk. If mild pressure is being used, make sure she can fully breathe, speak, has a safe word AND gesture—in case she does lose ability to speak—and that her desire for mild pressure—very mild pressure—is clearly understood by her partner,” said Dr. Herbenick. Go to Savage.Love to read the rest.
mail@savagelove.net t@fakedansavage www.savagelovecast.com August 10-23, 2022 | clevescene.com |
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