Scene October 5, 2022

REWIND: 1999

Scene dipped its toes into science journalism for a cover story on “Lucy,” the australopithecine discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 by Dr. Donald Johanson, a paleoanthropologist for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

PHOTO BY GAGE SKIDMORE, DESIGN BY EVAN SULT

UPFRONT

HERE ARE ALL THE FILTHY RICH CLEVELANDERS GOING TO DEE AND JIMMY HASLAM’S HOUSE TO DONATE

TO J.D. VANCE

YOU’VE HEARD OF DEE AND Jimmy Haslam, surely.

The Browns owners?

Last seen vouching for the integrity and solemn remorsefulness of quarterback DeShaun Watson and lavishing upon him the largest contract in NFL history, shortly before Watson was suspended for 11 games for serial sexual misconduct with massage therapists.

Also seen accompanying their Tennessee charter-school buddy Jamie Woodson to a meeting with Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb. (If the Haslams can so easily exploit their political influence to reshape a Great Lakes lakefront with their private profit

in mind, why not reshape a region’s education system for profit, too?)

And then of course seen at the Athletic Club of Columbus, cohosting a fundraiser for Republican U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance, America’s “most famous living hillbilly.” (See this week’s cover story for more detail.)

The Haslams are trying their damnedest to get Vance elected, never mind that he is regarded by Republican strategists as one of the worst candidates in living memory. One high-dollar event simply would not do the trick. A candidate this bad needs endless reserves of cash from his wealthy donors to finance

his advertising and public relations efforts. The Haslams recognize that despite Democrat Tim Ryan’s appeals to the political center, big money and Donald Trump’s endorsement could be all the bearded bozo needs to succeed Rob Portman in Ohio.

And so the Haslams are inviting all their richest Cleveland friends to their house in Bratenahl on Oct. 12 for a big-ticket Vance event. (It is these executives and their cohort, not the mythic Appalachian working class, that represents Vance’s true constituency.)

Cleveland.com’s Andrew Tobias reported that all listed event chairs have committed to a $25,000 gift.

Many of them are highly respected luminaries in the Cleveland business community. Here’s who they are:

MONTE & USHA AHUJA: Monte Ahuja, big shot businessman, founder of Transtar Industries, global distributor of transmission parts. CSU’s School of Business and UH’s Beachwood Medical Center are named after him. Now a hobbyist golf course owner.

ART & CAROL ANTON: Art Anton, former president and CEO of Swagelok.

TERRY COYNE: Commercial real estate broker with his own goddang commercial.

ED & MARY CRAWFORD: Ed

Jimmy Haslan, J.D. Vance booster.

ERIK DROST

Crawford, supposed “icon” of the Cleveland business community, former president and CEO of Park Ohio Holdings and Trump-appointed ambassador to Ireland. Famous victim of LeBron James. (Crawford say courtside during the 2018 playoffs in a MAGA hat, and LeBron refused to toss him his towel.)

MATT & DEBORAH

CRAWFORD: Matt is Ed’s son and the current chairman and CEO of Park Ohio.

FRED DiSANTO: Chairman and CEO of Ancora, a wealth management firm. Beloved banker of the GCP set.

UMBERTO & MARY ELLEN FEDELI: Umberto is the uber rich insurance magnate, President and CEO of the Fedeli Group. Also awildcat private investor and host of the famous Fat Cat Fundraiser for Frank Jackson at his palatial multiplot property in Gates Mills in 2017.

MIKE GIBBONS: Local bigmoney finance guy. Entrepreneur and investor. Most recently U.S. Senate Candidate who lost to Vance.

developers and property managers that own Key Tower, among others.

KEVIN & KRISTEN STEIN: Kevin is the current President and CEO of TransDigm, though still compensated vastly less than his chairman Nick Howley.

FRANK SULLIVAN: Chairman and CEO of RPM International, brother of Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan.

JANE & TIM TIMKEN: Jane is the former chair of the Ohio Republican Party and another U.S. Senate Candidate who lost to Vance.

RON WEINBERG: Director and Principal of the Weinberg Capital Group, big Cleveland Clinic donor.

JIM & DEBBIE WERT: Jim is the chairman of CM Wealth Advisors.

-Sam Allard

Both Cuyahoga County Executive Candidates Strenuously Oppose New Jail Project

that they’d change course if elected and are now echoing the majority of public commenters as they urge the council to see reason.

Ronanye correctly noted in his letter that the project would be among the costliest, if not the costliest, in the county’s history. He asked that the council not enter a purchase agreement for the site at Transport Road in October, citing the high cost of remediation and the county’s liability in future legal action due to the levels of contamination. He said, moreover, that the site was not sufficiently accessible to visitors via public transit and that the size of the jail should be reviewed in concert with increased diversion efforts.

“We owe it to the citizens and taxpayers of Cuyahoga County to get this right,” he wrote.

Spotify.

New Kim Kardashian Podcast, Inspired by Scene’s 2017 Reporting, Examines Ohio’s Wrongful Conviction of Kevin Keith

A long-awaited podcast series on one of Ohio’s most dubious criminal convictions has just hit the airwaves.

DAVID & REBECCA HELLER:

DAVID & REBECCA HELLER: David is the president, CEO and founder of the NRP Group, a development firm, and outgoing chairman of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland.

LORIE & NICK HOWLEY: Nick Howley is the chairman of the aerospace parts manufacturer TransDigm, known in recent years for its recurring funny business with U.S. government contracts. He remains the most extravagantly compensated executive in Northeast Ohio by a wide margin, earning more than $60 million last year in total compensation.

DAVID JENKINS: Browns Chief Operating Officer.

BILL LENNON: Founder and CEO of Lokring Technologies, active Republican Party donor.

RON LEONHARDT: Founder and CEO of CrossCountry Mortgage, (a Browns partner.)

JAY LUCARELLI: Owner and CEO of MinuteMen Staffing and member of Cleveland’s Business Hall of Fame.

BERNIE & BRIDGET MORENO: Bernie used to sell cars, still loves blockchain. Also hilariously ran for U.S. Senate.

JON PINNEY: Managing Partner of Kohrman Jackson & Krantz law firm. Famously delivered the 2018 speech at the City Club trashing the region’s economic development ecosystem, a speech that paved the way for such glistening local efforts as Blockland and Cleveland Rising.

FRANK SINITO: Founder and CEO of the Millennia Companies,

Both candidates for Cuyahoga County Executive, Democrat Chris Ronayne and Republican Lee Weingart, sent strongly worded letters to Cuyahoga County Council last week urging them to heed public opinion and pump the brakes on the county jail project.

That project, if you hadn’t heard, is now estimated to cost in the neighborhood of $750 million, (which corresponds to a taxpayer bill of roughly $2 billion, with interest included). Council proposes financing the project with county bonds and repaying them with proceeds from a quarter-percent sales tax. That tax is currently set to expire in 2027 — it was originally used for the Huntington Convention Center complex and now funds a portion of the Q Deal — but council wants to extend it for an additional 40 years.

(Extending a sunsetting tax by 40 years, instead of extending it indefinitely, is this clown council’s version of responsible government.)

The Justice Center Steering Committee, an ad hoc advisory body, met Tuesday morning to vote on whether to approve the jail site council prefers, a former Standard Oil refinery at 2700 Transport Road. Council has made it abundantly clear that they intend to purchase that land for an inflated value of $20 million and begin building the jail as soon as possible.

They have been advised by consultant Jeff Applebaum that the project’s skyrocketing costs, which recently ballooned from $550 million, will only get higher the longer they wait.

But both Ronayne and Weingart are opposed. They have suggested

Weingart opposes the jail as well. In fact he has vocally opposed the high cost of the project since his campaign began. In his letter to council, he said it was “time to go back to the drawing board” on the project and offered a specific alternative that he said he would pursue if elected.

His plan includes renovating the current “Jail II” in the justice center complex and reducing its capacity from 770 to 650. He then wants to build new jail (what he calls Jail III) on the siteof the old juvenile detention facility with a capacity of 600-700, putting the total capacity for both jails in the 1,250-1,300 range.

That’s a good deal less than the current 1,750 capacity, but Weingart, like Ronayne, believes that increased efforts should be made to bring down the jail population, including by more fully utilizing the diversion center. Weingart has repeatedly said that the new jail in Franklin County (Columbus) only has a capacity of roughly 1,000 and that Cuyahoga County should not be building a facility to hold 1,900.

“My approach will reduce the outrageous cost of the proposed new jail, protect the health of defendants and jail staff, and ensure public safety without compromising the County’s long-term financial health,” Weingart said.

Cuyahoga County Councilman Mike Gallagher sneered at the candidates in a recent meeting. He accused Ronayne and Weingart of having “opinions without information” on the jail project and advocated “putting blinders on” in order to charge full speed ahead.

-Sam Allard

The first two episodes of Kim Kardashian’s The System: The Case of Kevin Keith are now available for streaming exclusively on Spotify. This eight-episode series will tell the in-depth story of how Kevin Keith came to be convicted of three murders in Bucyrus, Ohio, in 1994 — and sentenced to death. Implicit in the wrongful conviction narrative is also an examination of what this case means for the integrity of our criminal justice system in the U.S.

While Keith’s death sentence was commuted to life in prison at the eleventh hour in 2010, his story is illustrative of the many frustrating twists and turns a legal case can take even as the defendant at the heart of the matter remains stuck behind bars. New evidence has emerged, alternative explanations have been raised, damning affidavits have been signed, and yet the system does not allow for a reexamination of the case.

Most recently for Keith, Judge Solomon Oliver of the Northern District of Ohio’s federal court in 2021 dismissed his petition for writ of habeas corpus — a 2018 petition for the court to revisit his case in the light of newly obtained, potentially exculpatory evidence.

With little to no action expected from the courts at this point, we turn now to mass media.

Television producer Lori Rothschild Ansaldi first reached out to Scene following our 2017 feature on Keith’s case. She was interested in exploring the case as part of a bigger project.

From there, Ansaldi’s team took on a tremendous amount of investigative work — probing the many strange questions raised by Keith’s conviction and uncovering

UPFRONT

powerful new information that will likely come to light in this podcast series. Kardashian’s entrance to the project brought more resources and a level of celebrity support that would elevate Keith’s story to a degree not previously seen in other media channels. As Ansaldi wrote on Instagram yesterday, “Everyone will know your name.”

The series is slick and neatly produced, with courtroom audio and archival news media footage providing a close-up account of what happened in 1994. Interviews with Keith at Marion Correctional Institution, as well as with Ansaldi and Keith’s brother, Charles, round out the present-day narrative. Kardashian is present throughout as host, carefully walking the listener through otherwise complicated legal machinations.

Having her name in the podcast title is not a misnomer; the podcast thus far very much feels like Kardashian’s own foray into criminal justice reportage. Not for nothing, she passed California’s First-Year Law Students’ Examination in December 2021. Here, she introduces a massive audience to Keith himself and addresses the circuitous tale of his conviction as plainspoken narrative.

In this sense, The System appears to be a lens through which Kardashian and her team cast a critical eye on the very process (or lack thereof) of criminal justice in the U.S. This is likely not to be another boilerplate true-crime podcast series. Consider it an indictment against the underlying structure that purports to hold together our conception of “justice” in America. For anyone living in these times of civic duress, the basic plot points will sound distressingly familiar — even as they’re conveying a unique story about a single individual.

“I’m really hopeful with this podcast, just to get your story out there,” Kardashian tells Keith in the first episode, “because I think it’s so important for people to understand that our system is so fucked up.”

She’s not wrong.

New episodes of The System will hit Spotify every Monday. -Eric Sandy

Opinion: Cleveland City Council Must Cancel ShotSpotter

Gun violence is devastating

ShotSpotter claims to be 97% accurate, with a false positive rate of 0.5%. However, ShotSpotter has never published results of validation testing. ShotSpotter gives itself a starting grade of 100% and only decreases this number as police report mistakes, something they often aren’t told to do and cannot properly evaluate. Of departments that self-report, false positive rates are as high as 48%.

Cleveland neighborhoods, leaving elected officials scrambling for answers. This desire to save lives and end community violence has unfortunately led to desperate attempts to find a solution.

The city recently unveiled plans to spend $2,758,500 of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money on expanding its partnership with ShotSpotter, a company whose business model is reliant on this desperation. ShotSpotter claims that it is hyper-accurate, reduces gun violence, and increases police efficiency, but research and data show the opposite.

ShotSpotter is paid by the city to place microphones in secret locations (currently in Ward 4), and uses triangulation technology to locate loud, impulsive noises. When ShotSpotter sensors detect a loud noise, a recording is sent to a ShotSpotter technician who determines if it was a gunshot. If they believe it to be, then the general location of the sound is published to a local dispatch.

ShotSpotter claims to be 97% accurate, with a false positive rate of 0.5%. However, ShotSpotter has never published results of validation testing. These rates are based on the assumption that every alert is a gunshot. ShotSpotter gives itself a starting grade of 100% and only decreases this number as police report mistakes, something they often aren’t told to do and cannot properly evaluate. Of departments that self-report, false positive rates are as high as 48%. When subpoenaed for proof showing how their system works, ShotSpotter requested to be held in contempt of court rather than respond. No tool used in our criminal legal system should be used to arrest, incarcerate, and convict without proving it works.

Does ShotSpotter prevent gun violence? Their own contracts say no. From the ShotSpotter Respond Services Agreement: “ShotSpotter does not warrant or represent, expressly or implicitly, that the Software or Subscription Services or its use will: result in the prevention of crime, apprehension or conviction of any perpetrator of any crime, or

detection of any criminal.” Research studies confirm that ShotSpotter has no significant impact on violent crime — it’s not a crime-fighting tool.

Further, a recent study shows that ShotSpotter has no impact in cities with high call volumes and limited resources. Cleveland police are already stretched thin and slow to respond. Introducing a tool that inflates alert numbers in certain neighborhoods, leading to increased police presence in those areas, only slows service to the rest of the city.

Lastly, our city leaders should be aware that this technology opens Cleveland to lawsuits and liability. Even when ShotSpotter correctly labels a noise, there’s a delay between gunshot and police response. People don’t stay in place after shooting, causing police to arrest the wrong people in the area. ShotSpotter waives this liability in its contract, leaving citizens to sue the city. One Cleveland resident wrongfully arrested is too many — this technology provides the likelihood that this will happen at scale.

Cleveland’s contract with ShotSpotter expires November 2, 2022. Rather than renew this failed partnership, our city needs to invest in initiatives that reduce violent crime. Mental health & substance abuse services, recreational activities for the youth, job training, affordable housing, and access to higher education are all proven to make communities safer.

Cleveland has the opportunity to transform how we view community violence, and the ways in which we address prevention. Without putting a focus on the underlying cause of community violence, we continue to fail those impacted. Surveillance technology is not the solution to preventing gun violence. We must divest from ShotSpotter and invest in community-based solutions. Invest in people, not private corporations. -Latonya Goldsby

activist and the chapter president of BLM Cleveland.

DIGIT WIDGET

5/19/2023

Date on which Aer Lingus will begin operating its nonstop Cleveland to Dublin flight from Hopkins four times per week, thanks to at least $2.4 million in subsidies from the City of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, the Greater Cleveland Partnership, Destination Cleveland, TeamNEO and JobsOhio.

$26

Dollars per hour, new wage that Cuyahoga County intends to pay social workers to attract top talent in the aftermath of the Department of Child and Family Services scandal at the Jane Edna Hunter building.

35

RTA buses now equipped with Ezfare validators so that riders who purchase their tickets on the Transit App can scan their digital tickets as they board. (The entire fleet should have the validators by the first quarter of 2023.)

34

Minutes, length of the walk from RTA’s Tri-C Rapid Station to the proposed county jail site at Transport Road. The pedestrian experience along a high-traffic truck route is unpleasant, with cracked sidewalks and overgrowth. It would be virtually impossible for anyone with a mobility impairment.

The debasement of J.D. Vance was complete. Only a few short years before, he was a celebrated author and San Francisco venture capitalist, spending Saturday mornings volunteering at the community garden before he and his neighbors dispersed to “art gallery tours” and “day trips to wine country,” as he once put it. Now he was headlining a freak show in Youngstown.

The September event was ostensibly a Vance for Senate rally. Yet the bill was filled with J.D.’s new friends, the nation’s leading experts in attention seeking. There was human flamethrower Marjorie Taylor Greene. Pretend combat hero J.R. Majewski. MyPillow conspiracy merchant Mike Lindell.

For the past year, J.D. served as their understudy, learning how to say or do anything to plant himself within the 24-hour outrage cycle. But on this Saturday night, the true headliner was Donald Trump.

The former president was spending his golden years as a one-man jobs program for defense lawyers. Hoping to win the great man’s affections, J.D. had stuffed his self-respect in his pocket and remade himself as a culture warrior.

Yet Trump is a cruel master. He demanded servility from his yesmen, then belittled them for their weakness in

doing so. He couldn’t resist mocking J.D. for the toady he’d become.

“J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support so bad,” Trump announced to the crowd.

It had to be galling. J.D. had risen from poverty to graduate summa cum laude from Ohio State. Then Yale Law School. Then to the rarified club of Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Now he was debasing himself before Trump, the Official Mascot of People Born on Third Base Who Brag of Hitting Triples™.

Still, it was a calculated play. Rebranding oneself as a meanass redneck is a tried and tested path to the U.S. Senate — Ted Cruz (Princeton and Harvard) and Josh Hawley (Stanford and Yale) crawled through the same back door. The downside: possessing the authenticity of a $10 Rolex has a way of inviting ridicule.

“What makes Vance so awful is that he knows better,” wrote

The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols. “His intentional distancing from his earlier views shows that he is fully cognizant of what a gigantic fraud he’s become.”

Trump, the impresario of fraud, was simply mocking a lesser practitioner.

“He made J.D. Vance look like a mouse, not a man,” former Republican Congresswoman Barbara Comstock told CNN. “It was humiliating.”

Hillbilly superstar

This was supposed to be a tale of poor boy makes good. For a time it was.

In 2016, J.D. authored Hillbilly Elegy – part memoir of his hard luck youth in Middletown, Ohio, part critique of the angry white countryside that so baffled the coastal intelligentsia.

He explained the despair of a declining heartland, the punishing

capitalism that brought it to waste. Yet J.D. didn’t hesitate to note how many of these wounds were selfinflicted. From dope to laziness, chronic victimhood to suckling on the government teat, rural whitey brought this on himself.

It was a tour de force of tough love and personal responsibility. J.D., a son of these lands, had the bona fides to pull it off.

Critics were smitten. “You will not read a more important book about America this year,” gushed The Economist. The Washington Post called him the “voice of the Rust Belt.” J.D. became the nation’s leading authority on Crackerland, with a regular gig on CNN.

No one seemed to notice how all this collided with his day job.

A money changer goes pro

After Yale, J.D. did a stint in corporate law, then headed for the real money: venture capital.

It’s a simple racket, much like playing the ponies. You invest in a series of longshot startups, knowing most will come up lame. The idea is that one will eventually hit, swiftly rise to corner a new market, then use that clout to crush any competitor — or simply buy them out.

You become fabulously rich.

It’s an essential nutrient in the concentration of U.S. wealth,

Design by Evan Sult | Photo by Gage Skidmore

whereby a select few companies gobble up entire sectors of the economy, leaving little to spare for places like Middletown.

J.D.’s mentor was Peter Thiel, an unusual species in Silicon Valley: a gay libertarian and sugar daddy to the extreme right. Thiel pumped tens of millions into candidates who bashed immigrants and pumped the fraud of voter fraud.

They tended to make willing vassals in a far more important mission: deregulation and a procorporate judiciary. If Goliath could simply do as he pleased, imagine how much greater that gobbling could be.

Captain Duplicity makes his debut

There is no better platform from which to pontificate than the U.S. Senate. But getting there meant appealing to a much tougher crowd than Georgetown punditocracy. J.D. had to win the hearts of pissedoff white men, the soul of the Republican Party. This could not be done with day trips to wine country.

“I never wanted to be a public intellectual or a talking head,” he told the Washington Post. “I actually care about solving some of these things.”

So he returned to Ohio, debuting another tried and tested racket: the fake charity.

Publicly, Our Ohio Renewal would combat the opioid epidemic. Privately, it would hold a higher purpose: nursing the ambitions of J.D. Vance.

Most of the money was spent on a political advisor and polling. When he did deign to combat opioids, he hired a doctor with ties to Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin. She just happened to have a history of downplaying pharma’s role in the crisis, as coincidence would have it.

If politics is the art of empty gestures, J.D. was proving himself a prodigy.

Flyover Country capitalist

He also launched Narya, a Cincinnati venture firm. The idea was to bring the magic of Silicon Valley to the beaten hordes of the Heartland.

Though conservatives are known for doing their own research, scrutinizing J.D.’s investments wasn’t atop their list. They might be surprised to learn of his holdings in Acretrader, a company gobbling up farmland. For the low, low price of $16,290, you too can get a piece of a soybean farm in Redwood City, Minnesota. Or Vermilion County, Illinois. Or Worth County, Iowa. Because there’s nothing better for

the economy than absentee landlords buying up your neighbors.

Then there’s Strive Asset Management, dedicated to fighting corporate America’s social responsibility movement.

Believe it or not, caring about things like LGBTQ+ rights and the environment is all the rage in executive suites. It’s as much pragmatic as it is altruistic. Customers demand it — especially urbanites, who carry far more economic clout than their country brethren. CEOs have also experienced a come-to-Jesus moment on the environment. They know that hurricanes, typhoons, flooding, and drought will soon have the same impact on business that the pandemic did.

It was one thing to cuddle with climate deniers when your earnings went untouched. It’s quite another to see your Taiwanese plant crushed by a tropical cyclone.

Strive Asset Management battles against such nonsense “with the sole interest of maximizing value,” not some “divisive social and political agendas that most Americans disagree with.”

You can practically hear the people of Middletown cheering it on. “Finally! An investment firm stripped of any sense of humanity!”

Making amends with Mango Mussolini

There remained a small bar to J.D.’s appointment with destiny. Back when he was still J.D. Vance: White Trash Whisperer, he’d thrashed Trump for the buffoon he is, calling him an “idiot” and an opioid offering “easy escape from the pain” to racists and part-time Christians. Only belatedly did he discover this wasn’t the best way to win a Republican primary.

J.D.’s new mission: bury his integrity to earn Trump’s grace. So began the greatest exhibition of asskissing in Buckeye history.

Old J.D. underwent complete demolition. New J.D. would be a country club tough guy, the character de jour among conservatism’s finest thespians.

He assailed “scumbags’’ and

“elites,” claimed that “professors are the enemy,” and railed against the “corrupt.” Close your eyes, and you’d think you were listening to Josh Mandel, Ohio’s previous record holder for personal abasement. If it wasn’t so painful to watch, it would have been nice to include a laugh track.

Yet his vitriol felt mechanical, stilted. The captain of the debate team was trying to play the eighthgrade bully. Take his tweet on an upcoming trip to New York, in which J.D. pretended to face a harrowing journey:

“Serious question. I have to go to New York soon and I’m trying to figure out where to stay. I have heard it’s disgusting and violent there. But is it like Walking Dead Season 1 or Season 4?”

Intended reaction: “J.D. watches lots of TV, just like me! And he’s scared of big cities! Just like me!”

Actual reaction: “WTF?”

Fortunately, Trump is not a nuanced man. Novice actors routinely flew to Florida to audition for his favor. What mattered was that J.D. was kissing ass. With gusto.

“He said some bad things about me, but that was before he knew me,” Trump reflected on that night in Youngstown. “And then he fell in love.”

J.D. speaks the hard truths

To be a strong conservative is to speak the hard truths. To show that you’re bravely heartless, a leader for our times.

He lashed at Ukraine: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other,” he declared. The real fight was with the Mexican trimming your hedges.

He denounced divorcees who “shift spouses like they change their underwear,” women who flee “even violent” marriages, libs who have no “personal stake” in America because they don’t have kids.

His best work involved White Replacement Theory. It’s a fictional saga in which libs purposely leave our borders unguarded, brown foreigners invade to breed like rabbits, and white dominance is lost to history.

J.D. knows there are votes to be had in igniting racial fear.

“Race is definitely a part of the Trump phenomenon,” he once told PBS Newshour. But he’s positively outraged at any suggestion he’s sucking up to the GOP’s Klan faction.

When working white men “dare to complain about the southern border, or about jobs getting shipped overseas, what do they get called?” he recently asked Tucker Carlson. “They get called racists. They get called bigots, xenophobes, or idiots.”

Which leads us to J.D.’s latest iteration: professional victim.

Come to think of it, personal responsibility is way overrated

The apostle of personal responsibility is dead. The Republican Party has never been big on self-reflection. Its specialty is raking the room, shooting at everyone else to blame.

Go to J.D.’s campaign site, and you’ll find the blame game played at festival proportions. There’s no talk of the lazy white man improving himself. Instead, he offers a list of excuses under which to take shelter.

He doesn’t have much to say on how he’ll improve their lot. He’ll be “fighting,” of course. Keeping women from abortions. Barring kids from learning our history. Halting the use of our military “as a social justice side project.”

But it’s all very vague. Specifics can wait until he reaches the Senate. Or not.

None of this has made him very popular, oddly enough. His election should have been a cakewalk. Though Ohio has yet to become North Mississippi, it isn’t for lack of trying.

Party bosses accuse him of running a lazy campaign. Of preferring to rub elbows with big shots back east, rather than the throngs at the Coshocton County Fair.

While the rank-and-file might cotton to a show pony like Jim Jordan, they sense an emptiness in J.D. He believes in nothing. Stands for nothing. Wait a week, and he might be doing a Bernie Sanders impression if he thinks it will get him elected.

Yet a man so willing to torch his self-respect should not be underestimated. The new J.D. is still under renovation. His acting will improve. And with no soul to weigh him down, his options are limitless.

j.d.’s new mission: bury his integrity to earn trump ’s grace. so began the greatest exhibition of ass-kissing in buckeye history.

OUT

Everything to do in Cleveland for the next two weeks

WED

American Mariachi

Set in the 1970s and performed with live music and plenty of humor, American Mariachi offers a “heartwarming story of family, memory, and the power of song,” as it’s put in a press release. Tonight’s performance takes place at 7:30 at the Allen Theatre, where performances continue through Sunday. Tickets start at $25.

1407 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

Little Shop of Horrors

The songwriting team of Howard Ashman and Alan Menken are behind this sci-fi musical that features popular favorites such as “Suddenly, Seymour,” “Skid Row,” and “Somewhere That’s Green.” The Great Lakes Theater Festival presents the play tonight at 7:30 at the Hanna Theatre, where performances continue through Sunday. Tickets start at $20. 2067 East 14th St., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

strange things while growing up in the Bronx, and he draws upon those experiences for his standup routines. His humor ranges from his family and the First Amendment to growing up watching old TV shows and impersonating people. He performs tonight at 7:30 at the Improv. 1148 Main Ave., 216-696-IMPROV, clevelandimprov.com.

FRI 10/07

Jurassic World

Jurassic World, a traveling show that comes to Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse tonight for a four-day stand, features “captivating scenery,” including the velociraptor Blue and a Tyrannosaurus Rex that is more than 40 feet in length. The production features more than 24 film-accurate, life-sized dinosaurs, each custom-built with the latest technology to look as lifelike as possible. Performances take place at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. today and continue through Sunday. 1 Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.

Wenceslas Square

previously involved in “theatre as revolution,” Wenceslas Square, a semi-autobiographical “memory” play, offers a cautionary tale. Performances take place tonight and tomorrow night at Kennedy’s Cabaret. Tickets cost $18. 1501 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

SAT 10/08

Made in Puerto Rico

Elizardi Castro has written and performed eight one man shows including Made in Puerto Rico, which reportedly ran off-Broadway for seven sold out weeks. He brings the show to the Mimi Ohio Theatre tonight at 8. Tickets cost $39.50. 1501 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

SUN 10/09

LoveMuffinPalooza

Mallory San Marco, Flowers Love

Being Kurt, Lack of Direction and Michelle Romary are slated to perform.

2920 Detroit Ave., 216-771-6551, themusicsettlement.org.

Through the Eyes of the Artist: Henri Matisse Felicia Zavarella Stadelman presents the lecture “Through the Eyes of the Artist” today at 3 p.m. at the Fairmount Center for the Arts. The talk will center on how many consider Henri Matisse to be the greatest innovator of the 20th century.

8400 Fairmount Rd., Novelty, 440338-3171, fairmountcenter.org.

TUE 10/11

Les Miserables

Mark Viera

Comedian Mark Viera has seen some

A minimalist cautionary tale based on the political suppression of late 1960s Czech theater artists

LoveMuffinPalooza 2022, a benefit concert for the Gathering Place, a local cancer support center with locations in Beachwood and Westlake, takes place at the Bop Stop. Doors are at 4:30 p.m., and the music starts at 5 p.m. Local acts GS Harper, Brian Alan Hager,

Set against in 19th century France, Les Miserables has been one of Broadway’s biggest hits. Seen by over 130 million people worldwide in 53 countries and 22 languages, the latest incarnation of the musical comes to the State Theatre tonight at 7:30. Performances continue through Oct. 29.

1519 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

The Spooky Pooch Parade

Emanuel Wallace

WED 10/12

Cavaliers vs. Atlanta Hawks

The Cavaliers gear up for the 20222023 season with this preseason game against the Atlanta Hawks. While both teams will likely rest their starters, this offers a good chance to see what some of the Cavs new players will bring to a team that should make the playoffs. The game begins at 7 p.m. at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.

One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.

THU 10/13

Beethoven’s Eroica

Tonight at 7:30 at Mandel Concert Hall, the Cleveland Orchestra takes on Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, a piece that reportedly helped to establish just what a musical genius the composer truly was. Performances continue at Mandel Concert Hall through Sunday. 11001 Euclid Ave., 216-231-1111, clevelandorchestra.com.

FRI 10/14

Monsters vs. Syracuse Crunch

The Monsters begin their 20222023 season with this series against the Syracuse Crunch. The puck drops tonight and tmorrow night at 7 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.

One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.

SAT 10/15

12 Hours of Terror

After a two-year hiatus, this horror movie marathon returns to the Capitol Theatre. Ohio Pie Co. will be on hand for a free pizza party break, and Future Video will screen genre films in the lobby. It all starts at 2 p.m. Tickets are $30 in advance and $35 on the day of show.

1390 West 65th St., 216-651-7295, clevelandcinemas.com.

Spooky Pooch Parade

Now in its 15th year, the Spooky Pooch Parade attracts hundreds of dogs to Lakewood’s Madison Park. Scheduled to take place from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. today, the event includes a festival within Madison

Park, a parade and an awards presentation. It’s reportedly the only event of its kind within the region. lakewoodalive.com.

SUN 10/16

The Peking Acrobats

Using “graceful athleticism, daring acrobatics and contortions that appear physically impossible,” the Peking Acrobats put on one helluva show. Currently on a 30th anniversary tour, the troupe features Chinese tumblers, contortionists, jugglers, cyclists and gymnasts as well as musicians that play traditional Chinese instruments. The group performs tonight at 6 at Connor Palace. 1615 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

MON 10/17

Blue Man Group

f you’ve never caught the Blue Man Group live — hard to believe, actually, what with the permanent outposts in seven cities throughout America, plus the perpetual tour — it’s certainly worth seeing. It’s not too far-fetched to call the silent blue gag-sters a populist cultural phenomenon. God knows — what with the food spitting, the paint splashing, and the toilet-paper flinging — no one would ever call them a sophisticated theatrical ensemble. The troupe performs at 7:30 tonight and tomorrow night at Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall. 198 Hill St., Akron, 330-972-7570, ejthomashall.com.

TUE 10/18

Interface and ED/HF

In conjunction with Contact, an exhibition conceived and organized by Renée Green for moCa Cleveland as part of FRONT International 2022, Green has curated a film series expanding on the exhibition’s exploration of the poetics of relation. The series takes place in Case Western Reserve University’s Strosacker Auditorium, and it includes a wide breadth of films by Green, her peers and filmmakers who have been influential to the artist’s practice. Harun Farocki’s Interface and Green’s ED/HF screen tonight at 7. Admission is free. 2180 Adelbert Rd., 216-368-CINE, films.cwru.edu.

EAT

DAN DEAGAN’S BRUSH WITH DEATH

Owner of Deagan’s, Humble Wine Bar and local food truck parks tells the story of his Fourth of July home fire for the first time.

By Douglas Trattner

AFTER GOLFING WITH buddies, Dan Deagan returned home to help his girlfriend Jackie Ramey prepare for the following day’s Fourth of July festivities. To celebrate the holiday, the couple was hosting friends at their new “dream house” in Westlake, which they had moved into one month prior. Deagan loaded a Yeti cooler with beer and ice while Ramey brined a pork butt and pork loin bound for the smoker. It was still early – around 10:30 p.m. – when Deagan went upstairs to bed and Ramey took the dogs with her to the basement to shield them from the fireworks.

“I don’t remember waking up, but my first thought was, this is a really terrible dream,” Deagan recalls. “It’s so hot and I can’t see anything, and I can’t breathe. Then I burnt my hands and remember realizing, Oh my god, this isn’t a dream. This is

happening.”

While Deagan was sleeping and Ramey was oblivious in the dark, quiet basement, a small fire started in a trash can on the back porch. It might have been an errant spark from the firepit or a slow-smoldering ember from days prior. The small fire spread to the Yeti, which created a blaze intense enough for the neighbor to dial 911. Within minutes, the flames climbed up the backside of the home and quickly engulfed the attic directly above Deagan’s bedroom.

“I couldn’t see a foot in front of me because of the thick smoke,” Deagan says. “I was just trying to find my way out. I would have gladly jumped out of a window if I could see one.”

When the windows on the house blew out from thermal stress, Ramey awoke in the basement still clueless to the events taking place upstairs.

It was only when she climbed to the main floor and saw the smoke that she comprehended the danger and managed to flee unharmed through the front door.

Deagan recalls crawling around on his hands and knees to escape but he was blind from smoke, searing with heat and depleted of oxygen. The police were the first to arrive on scene, but it was too dangerous for them to attempt a rescue. The first fireman entered the house while he was still pulling on his second glove, which exposed his flesh long enough to sustain a severe burn. As he climbed the stairs, the fireman thought to himself that there was no chance anybody could survive the blaze. And then he heard a muffled, “I need help in here.”

Given that all the outlet covers in the bedroom melted from the heat,

the firemen pegged the temperature around 350-400°F. But at six feet –human height – those temperatures would soar to 600-700°F.

When the fireman wrapped Deagan in a fire blanket and carried him out of the house, Ramey feared the worst. But Deagan thought he escaped major trauma. Chalk it up to adrenaline or shock or whatever, he didn’t feel any pain. In truth, 50 percent of his body was covered in 2nd and 3rd degree burns and survival was anything but a certainty. His hands, knees and tops of his feet were roasted from crawling on scorching tile, while everything from his neck down to the bottom of his butt literally broiled from the intense heat above.

Deagan awoke to find his wrists restrained and a breathing tube down his throat. He was at the MetroHealth Burn Care Center, where he would remain for a full month. If he mistakenly believed that he escaped severe pain earlier, the patient quickly was disabused of that notion thanks to daily debridement procedures.

“Every morning they have to come in and change your dressings,” Deagan explains. “Even before that, you’re sitting in your room and you hear people screaming and crying while getting their dressings changed. It’s not just the worst pain I have ever felt, it’s the worst pain I can ever imagine.”

Deagan endured that and more yet managed to maintain a positive attitude throughout it all – or at least most of it. His spirit was buoyed by daily visits from Ramey and his 11 brothers and sisters. His youth, health, strength and proximity to MetroHealth all greatly increased his odds of survival and long-term success.

“We lost stuff, and I lost skin,” he says matter-of-factly. “Jackie is alive and unharmed. The dogs are fine. I would go through this 50 times before I’d want her to go through it once.”

It’s been three months since the tragedy. Deagan still wears compression sleeves over most of his body for all but one hour a day, his and Ramey’s dream house is a total loss, and the couple lost pretty much all of their personal possessions. But if you think Dan Deagan has lost his sense of humor, you’d be mistaken.

“When we bought the house, I would say to my friends that this is the house I plan on dying in,” he quips. “I didn’t mean it literally.”

Dan Deagan and Jackie Ramey

EAT

BITES

Jaja, Intro’s new “shared-plate steakhouse” to open Oct. 12

By Douglas Trattner

INTRO, THE NEW NINEstory apartment complex across the street from the West Side Market, already has unveiled Edda Coffee Roasters, the all-day café; Pioneer, the wood-fired sports bar; and Truss, the rooftop event space. Next up for the team at Harbor Bay Ventures is Jaja, which is described by president of hospitality Dan Whalen as a sexy shared-plate steakhouse with Latin American and Mediterranean influences.

When guests exit the elevator on the second level, they will be immersed in a drama-filled space that was designed to foster a fun, casual, free-spirited vibe.

“The idea was to create something that is sensory overload,” Whalen explains. “We want to transport people. We want people to walk out of that elevator and feel like they are somewhere else, in a place that doesn’t really belong in Cleveland.”

That vibe is achieved thanks to a combination of plush fabrics, natural stone, ornate decorative details, jawdropping views and lots of greenery. Above a light-trimmed lattice ceiling is a retractable glass roof that opens to the skies. With the push of a button, the airy second-floor space takes on the feel of a rooftop patio.

Unlike the spacious 175-seat Pioneer one floor down, Jaja is smaller by design, accommodating about 75 guests indoors.

“We wanted it to be intimate and to always feel full,” Whalen notes.

Executive chef Brian Whalen has devised a wide-ranging menu that is divided into categories for

vegetables, meat, fish and seafood. A large majority of the foods will be coming off the massive live-fire cooking suite at Pioneer. The 20foot wood-fired grill was designed to be large enough to support both restaurants.

Everything from the smallest snacks to the meatiest large-format steaks are built for sharing. The goal is to prepare and present high-end steakhouse fare while maintaining a relaxed, festive atmosphere.

“We want people to let their hair down and have a good time but while still serving upscale food,” adds Whalen. “We want to encourage a social, convivial dining experience.”

In the vegetable department are plates like savory spinach flans, burrata with charred bread, “burnt’ carrot with whipped goat cheese, and chanterelle pasta with Pernod cream sauce. Fish options include grouper crudo with candied blood orange, grilled head-on prawns with chili aioli, and whole split lobster with chimichurri butter. Meat eaters can start with braised and grilled pork belly and roasted marrow bones before moving on to a choice of eight different cuts of beef. They range from a small filet on up to 44-ounce dry-aged tomahawk, with prime hangars, picanhas and porterhouses in between.

The stars of the menu might just be the parilladas, large mixed platters devoted either to seafood or grilled meats. Each features a variety of items served with plenty of accompaniments and grilled

bread.

An exceptional cocktail list will be joined by wines from around the globe, including less familiar gems plucked from South America, Argentina, Chile, Spain, Slovenia and Croatia.

When it opens on Wednesday, Oct. 12, Jaja will serve dinner every night but Monday and Sunday brunch.

Now Open: Cocky’s Bagels in the Flats

Since launching Cocky’s Bagels as a food-trailer concept about five years ago, partners Keene Cockburn and fiancé Natalie Bata have since added two brick-and-mortar locations.

The first, in North Olmsted (26703 Brookpark Ext.), opened in 2019. The second, located in the heart of the Flats East Bank neighborhood (1127 Old River Rd.), opened yesterday. With each new location, the concept and offerings seem to expand in various ways.

This latest shop in the Flats is a far cry from the modest food trailer that launched the venture. The spacious new restaurant has indoor and outdoor seating and a bar. Guests can find classic bagel sandwiches like the Wake ‘N Bacon, starring bacon, egg, cheese and garlic herb cream cheese, the Lox, with smoked salmon, cream cheese, tomato and onion, and the signature Cocky’s, stacked with grilled turkey, salami, egg, cheese, lettuce and tomato.

Sandwiches are joined by

sides like fresh-cut fries, deepfried macaroni and cheese bites, and Buffalo chicken dip served with bagel chips.

New at this location is a bevy of adult beverages. The Big Mama Mary is a bloody mary garnished with bacon, sausage and a hash brown. The rim is dipped in everything bagel spice. There are mimosas, spiked coffee drinks, beers and mixed drinks like the Bees Knees and Ranch Water.

Another big win for Flats barhoppers is the addition of late-night food offerings, which will run well past 2 a.m. on weekends.

The Cocky’s team isn’t slowing down now. Already in the works is a location on S. High Street by The Ohio State University, which expected to open in early 2023.

The Home Pantry Debuts at West Side Market with Expanded Product Line

For the past five years, Alaina Caruso has been crafting highquality jams, soup and baking mixes, and spice blends under The Home Pantry label. Items such as Strawberry Rose Jam, Blackberry Lavender Jam, Spicy Black Bean Soup, Vegetable Barley Soup Mix, Classic Chocolate Chunk Cookies, Lavender Rosemary Salt Blend and Orange Bourbon Sugar Blend, which are made in a certified production space in Old Brooklyn, can be found online and at retailers and purveyors like Ohio City Provisions, Old Brooklyn Cheese, Cleveland Bagel, Heinen’s and Market District.

As of late last month, you’re also able to find Home Pantry products at the West Side Market. Caruso’s new stand (D2) is located between Coffee and Crepes and Ohio City Pasta. This new retail space will allow Caruso to expand her product line, with prepared foods being the main extension.

“My love and passion for food are found alongside the superfan I am for our city and community,” she explains. “Putting these elements together has found its place in the West Side Market all while being able to curate seasonal and rotating dishes we as Clevelanders want, and in many places need. You’ll find a variety of salads, weekly wraps and soups, grilled cheese Mondays, and a display of quick-to-go grabables like our parfaits, quiche, and some fun rotating options!”

Jaja’s dining looks like nowhere else in town.

Photo by Marina Goldi

TOTALLY COSMIC

Daniel Donato and Kitchen Dwellers bring their co-headlining tour to Beachland Tavern

By Jeff Niesel

PLAYING A STYLE OF MUSIC dubbed “galaxy grass,” Montanabased Kitchen Dwellers draw from bluegrass, folk and rock on their two studio albums — 2017’s Ghost in the Bottle and 2019’s Muir Maid In the middle of the pandemic, they even expanded their music horizons further and delivered a 2020 EP of Pink Floyd covers entitled Reheated, Vol. 2. The group continues to explore bluegrass and folk on the just-released Wise River, a release that finds the band working with Cory Wong of Vulfpeck.

Recently, the Kitchen Dwellers teamed up with singer-songwriter Daniel Donato, a proponent of “cosmic country,” for a fall tour. Donato recorded his 2020 effort, A Young Man’s Country, at Nashville’s Sound Emporium in two days with guitar ace Robben Ford. It explores country’s psychedelic side. Last year, he issued the covers album, Cosmic Country & Western Songs Donato and Kitchen Dwellers’ guitarist Max Davies recently spoke in a conference call about what to expect from the live show.

Talk about when you two first met.

Davies: We knew that we wanted Daniel to come out and do some shows with us in Montana for New Year’s Eve. He came out, but,

unfortunately, his band couldn’t make it because they had COVID. We were impressed that he was willing to do the show without them. The gig was at the Elks in Bozeman, and he walked in and was the coolest dude in the world. We knew he was someone we would get along with, and the whole weekend was awesome.

Donato: The Dwellers had two nights to ring in the New Year at the Elks. The Dwellers have really built up their crowd, and they have not sacrificed any of their art to become viral or do anything that would compromise what they do. When I walked into the soundcheck, I thought they were just a classic great band in the sense that they don’t take themselves too seriously, but they take the music seriously. I remember in soundcheck they were talking about a bridge, and I marveled about how great they were communicating as a band.

At what point did you guys decide to do this tour together?

Donato: I remember that when we met, [banjo player] Torrin [Daniels] told me he thought cosmic country was a similar concept to galaxy grass. When the opportunity for this elongated tour came out, it sounded like a no-brainer.

KITCHEN DWELLERS, DANIEL DONATO

house growing up. That was the start of it. In high school, I got into all kinds of different music. That’s where I really started branching out. That’s when I started listening to Tony Rice and Béla Fleck. I was always into rock and jam bands and then moved to Montana and half the guys on my dorm floor would have banjos and mandolins. Every night they would sit in a circle and jam. I wanted to start a band out of that nightly tradition. That’s how I learned to craft a song and how songs are formed.

Donato: My parents aren’t intense listeners of music in the sense that they sat me down and had me listen to Abbey Road or Good Vibrations

I got into Guitar Herowhen I was 12. When I was 14, I started going to Nashville and busking on the street. I got way into honky tonk and Bakersfield country and Texas country and bluegrass from Kentucky and Western swing from Texas. I was heavily immersed in it.

What will the live show be like? Do you plan to collaborate?

The Dwellers are from Montana and Daniel is from Nashville. How do you overcome those incredible cultural differences?

Donato: A lot of beef jerky, and we talk about Smith & Wesson pistols.

Davies: You’ll be surprised. We might be living in different parts of the country, but there are so many things we have in common. There are exceptions to this, but there is country rural vibe in both places. I think that’s why we both get along.

Donato: Montana has Yellowstone and Nashville has the show Nashville. We both don’t like their homogenization of culture, and we’re both equally sour in that way.

Talk about the music you first listened to while growing up.

Davies: I grew up really listening to the classics in my house. My weekend would start with four hours of nothing but the Beatles in our

Davies: There will definitely be collaboration. We already started talking about it. We’re super excited and talking about things we could do every night. Having the acoustic and full band will lend itself to cool ideas.

Donato: There’s an innate level of this yin and yang. When you have that in one evening, you’re set up for something that’s very special, just on the level of physics. Both bands are highly aware of this and you’re getting something as a consumer I’ve never seen. The Dwellers take the acoustic platform and take it to the galaxy. I’m trying to get to a similar place. The beauty of live music is that you have to be there to feel it. It’s very rare in our culture right now. Our thing is that the moment is the perfect producer. We surrender ourselves to that. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime to go on the road with these guys and learn from them.

Photo: Big Hassle

Kitchen Dwellers

MUSIC

DYNAMIC DUO

Slander brings its immersive live show to the Agora

By Jeff Niesel

RIGHT AROUND THE TIME when electronic music was having a surge in popularity, Scott Land and DerekAndersen just happened to be sitting across from one another at a dance music festival in Los Angeles. After talking a bit and getting to know one another, they realized they were both students at the University of California, Irvine. The serendipitous moment led the two of them to start writing and recording music together as SLANDER.

Both Land andAndersen would attend Icon Collective College of Music, a music production school. While at the Burbank, CA-based school, they met fellow producer NGHTMRE, who worked with them on a rollicking remix of “We Like to Party” that incorporates ratcheting percussion, distorted vocals and blaring synths.

“[‘We Like to Party’] was the first song that blew up for both of us,” says Land during a recent conference call with Andersen. SLANDER performs on Thursday, Oct. 13, at the Agora Theatre. “I still remember the room in the school where we made it. That was a pivotal moment in our careers. NGHTMRE had been producing for eight years before he got to Icon. He had a ton of knowledge, and we just became best friends. We had been DJing and knew about that, and he didn’t know how to DJ at all. We swapped skills in a way. He helped

SLANDER, EPTIC, WAVEDASH, REDLINE

us with production. We helped him on the DJing aspect. We taught him the persona of performing. That was a big part of us creating our core group. He was sharing our music, and we shared his music. We did shows together and created our own little clique. That helped us get the ball rolling and gave us a support system.”

After releasing a series of EPs and touring relentlessly, Land andAndersen started working on what would become Thrive, their first full-length. They devoted copious time to writing and recording when the pandemic shut down touring.

“Because we were DJs first, we have always changed our sound,” says Andersen when asked why it’s taken so long for the band to drop a full-length. “That’s why it was hard to make an album. We bounced around to different genres. I think in the past four or five years, we have tried all these different things and arrived at what we like making. We have these big vocals and melodic bass sound. That’s

what the majority of the album is. It’s what people expect us to make. There’s industrial techno songs on there too. It’s been a long journey of all the music we’ve made in the past. That’s been our exploration. We want to find our sound and where our home is within the whole universe of music.”

The album’s theme centers on a “cosmic love story” that traces the trials and tribulations a spaceman faces as he leaves the earth because it’s dying.

“As [the spaceman is] on this journey, he’s having flashbacks of his memory of home,” says Andersen. “That’s what all the songs in the first three-fourths represent. It’s him reliving his past memories. That’s the short version of the concept.”

The group worked out of its studio in Venice, CA and recorded some of the album at home. “Halfway Down,” one of many highlights on the album, features guest singer Ashley Drake. Drake’s evocative vocals start off the track, which then segues into the kind of sonically dense electronic music for which SLANDER is known.

“We’ve been big fans of [singersongwriter] Lewis Capaldi,” says Andersen in making a point of comparison between Draker and a more popular pop singer. “We like that really raspy, extremely

emotional voice. We were sent this song, and I remember hearing it and thinking this guy was a Lewis Capaldi clone but just as good. He was a super-new artist. He had only one or two other songs on his Spotify. It’s amazing to find something random like that and hear the level of talent. That’s one of my favorite songs on the album. There aren’t a lot of dance tracks with that tone of voice.”

Given thatThrive offers an immersive listening experience, it only makes sense that Andersenand Land would create an immersive live show that features contributions from the visual artist Roboto. A press release for the trek promises the band will create intoxicating “space-scapes” on stage.

“Roboto is a very high-level CGI artist,” says Andersen of the band’s frequent collaborator. “He does photography too. We’ve worked with him for seven years. He’s done our album covers and show visuals. He was a big part of the new visuals for this tour, and we’re bringing our ‘eye’ stage rig. It’s this giant diamond rhombus. Our logo is based on the evil eye symbol. When the pandemic hit, we were on a 15-city tour of major cities that got cut short. On this tour, we’ve expanded the dates and are now coming to some places we didn’t plan on coming to for a long time, including Cleveland. We couldn’t be more excited.”

Photo: Koury AngeloSLANDER.

MELODY MAKERS

Michigan rockers Jeremy Porter & the Tucos kick off fall tour at Happy Dog

By Jeff Niesel

SINGER-GUITARIST JEREMY

Porter, the veteran punk/garage rocker who heads up Jeremy Porter & the Tucos, got his start at an early age. By 16, he was playing in the Regulars, a legit punk group.

“It was pretty cool,” he says of the experience via phone from his Michigan home. Jeremy Porter and the Tucos perform on Thursday, Oct. 13, at the Happy Dog. “We were in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on the shore of Lake Superior. The winters were long, and there wasn’t a whole lot to do there for kids. A friend of mine’s mom worked at a record store in Ann Arbor, so he had all the newer records by the newer bands. We dug into those and played punk rock and garage covers. We were a little ahead of our time. It was a great experience. I learned a lot, and to this day, I carry a lot of that with me.”

As much as Porter infuses his

been collaborative. [Drummer] Gabriel [Doman] and I have been together since the start. We’re now on bass player No. 4 but every one of them has been a collaborator. It is my name just because I couldn’t be switching gears every few years when someone has a kid or is suddenly married to their job.”

Last year, the band released its latest studio album, Candy Coated Cannonball, and this year, it’s put out the retrospective Bottled Regrets: The First Ten Years. The best of compilation includes a greatest hits album, a live album and a rarities album.

With its raspy vocals and introspective lyrics, the new single, “Tonight Is Not the Night,” evokes the Pleased to Meet Me-era Replacements.

“It feels like a party song,” Porter says of the track. “The B-side is called ‘DTW.’ That’s an instrumental. That was written a couple of years prior for an animated series by a guy here in Detroit. You never know what to call an instrumental. Rush has a song called ‘YYZ.’ It’s the abbreviation for their airport in Toronto. We though that we could call it ‘DTW.’ Thanks to Geddy [Lee] and Alex [Lifeson] for that one.”

Porter says his band has played the Happy Dog a few times in the past, and he’s particularly excited about the lineup for the upcoming show, which features two terrific local acts.

music with a punk rock ethos, he also brings something very melodic to the table. When it comes down to it, he says the Beatles, Beach Boys and Stones all influenced him as much as anything else.

“I have Black Flag records and Dead Kennedys and a lot of metal,” he says. “But we listen to a lot of different stuff. From the very earliest days, it was those pop hooks that got me. I will never forget hearing ‘I Want You To Want Me’ from Cheap Trick for the first time and what better hook is there than that? I will never forget that moment. I just liked the way it made me feel. It could be anything. It doesn’t have to be a vocal melody either. I’m really attracted to the idea of taking a melody like that and putting it up against a distorted guitar or even a minor key or some lyrics that are dark. The melody could be bright, and the topic of the song is not. I like

that contrast, and it makes for some interesting art.”

Coming out of another punkgarage band, the Offramps, Porter formed the Tucos in 2010 with the intention of “taking the reins because nobody was on board as much as I am,” as he puts it.

“I thought that if I didn’t do that, I’d be struggling to wait for people to catch up,” he says. “I decided to do a Jeremy Porter and the fill-in-theblank band. If someone comes and goes, I don’t have to start over. I didn’t want it to be me and a couple of hired guns, either. The band has always

“We’re playing with my good friend Doug McKean,” he says. “He was in GC5 and Boys from County Hell and Bedroom Legends. I was in a Clash cover band, and we used to play with his Pogues cover band. He’s a great guy. The records he’s been putting out are just fantastic. He doesn’t get out much, so it’ll be really special to get him on stage. Duo Decibel System is also playing. They’re a two-piece, and they play dirty blues rock ‘n’ roll. It’s the first night of our tour. We’re going on a long run down South, and we’re starting it off in Cleveland. We’ll

back into the catalog. Maybe we can get Doug up to sing on a song with us. It’s going to be great.

from Candy Coated Cannonball and

JEREMY

Photo: David Kellogg

Jeremy Porter & the Tucos.

LIVEWIRE Real music in the real world

time since 2017 (as far as we know), this German industrial rock has decades of touring and recording under its belt. Its latest album, the just-released Hyena, features more of the grinding synth- and percussion-driven rock for which the group is known. Album opener

“All 4 1” careens with a real sense of intensity, and the group experiments with hip-hop on the surprisingly soulful “Rock ’N’ Roll Monster.”

The group performs tonight at 7 at the Agora.

5000 Euclid Ave., 216-881-2221, agoracleveland.com.

Of Montreal

FRI 10/07

Blackberry Smoke

Dipping into different genres is something that Blackberry Smoke singer-guitarist Charlie Starr, who grew up in the Atlanta area, has done ever since he first picked up a guitar when he was a kid. Released in 2013, Blackberry Smoke’s The Whippoorwill, is a great collection of Southern rock-inspired tunes that show off Starr’s consummate songwriting chops. The band’s been dubbed “the new face of blue-collar Southern rock” — something that sits well with Starr. The title track is a terrific jam that Starr wrote about his late grandmother. The Southern rock band’s current tour celebrates the tenth anniversary of the album. The group performs tonight at 7 at Masonic Cleveland.

3615 Euclid Ave., 216-881-6350, masoniccleveland.com.

The Killers

Formed in Las Vegas by charismatic singer-keyboardist-bassist Brandon Flowers, the Killers quickly ascended to pop stardom thanks to hits such as “Mr. Brightside” and “Somebody Told Me.” The band’s latest album, Pressure Machine,

comes off as a far more introspective affair right from the somber opening tune, “West Hills,” a ballad that features strings and sounds a bit like a dreary Nick Cave number. The group performs tonight at 7:30 at the Wolstein Center.

2000 Prospect Ave., 216-687-9292, wolsteincenter.com.

Southern Culture on the Skids

Formed nearly 40 years in Chapel Hill, Southern Culture on the Skids plays a mix of country and rockabilly tunes. Known to throw out chicken wings while performing on stage, the group returns to the Beachland Ballroom tonight with openers Jon Spencer & the HITmakers. The show starts at 8 p.m., and tickets cost $20 in advance, $25 at the door.

15711 Waterloo Rd., 216-383-1124, beachlandballroom.com.

SAT 10/08

Blues Traveler

Over the decades, Blues Traveler has played more than 2,000 live shows to some 30 million people. The group released its latest album, Traveler’s Blues, last year. It featured “reimagined” and “recharged”

classics from the American blues songbook and received a Grammy nod for Best Traditional Blues Album. The jam band brings its 35th anniversary tour to Kent Stage tonight at 6:30.

175 E. Main St., Kent, 330-677-5005, kentstage.org.

Wynton Marsalis

The 2022-2023 Tri-C Performing Arts series will open with a performance by jazz great Wynton Marsalis, who’ll perform in Cleveland for the first time since 2015. Marsalis currently serves as managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and has amassed an unrivaled number of awards and accolades, including nine Grammys and the Pulitzer Prize for Music — the first ever awarded to a jazz artist. Since 1988, he has led the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. The concert begins at 8 tonight at Tri-C’s main auditorium on its Metro campus.

2900 Community College Ave., tri-c.edu.

MON 10/10

KMFDM

Performing in the States for the first

When singer-songwriter Kevin Barnes, a Rocky River native who still thinks of himself as a lifelong fan of Cleveland sports teams, moved to Athens, Ga. some 25 years ago, he consciously wanted to embrace the city’s rich musical history. Inspired by watching Athens, Ga. Inside/Out, a documentary film about the music scene that featured performances and interviews with acts such as R.E.M., Pylon and the Flat Duo Jets, he sought out the kind of camaraderie he lacked in previous bands and formed Of Montreal. He’s steadily toured and released albums ever since; the band’s latest effort, Freewave Lucifer f<ck f^ck f>ck, is as weird and eccentric as ever.

The indie rock band is back at the Beachland Ballroom tonight at 8. Tickets cost $20 in advance, of $22 at the door.

15711 Waterloo Rd., 216-383-1124, beachlandballroom.com.

WED 10/12

Rare Americans

After staging a successful North American tour run earlier this year, the pop-punk band Rare Americans come to the Grog Shop tonight. The group’s known for its eye-catching animated music videos and TikTok engagement. The hip-hop heavy single “Run the World” really shows off the band’s ability to mix musical genres. DYLYN and Skuff Micksun open at 8 p.m. Tickets start at $15. 2785 Euclid Heights Blvd., Cleveland Heights, 216-321-5588, grogshop.gs.

Eli Winter Trio

Percussionist Tyler Damon and pedal steel guitarist Sam Wagster join Eli Winter, a self-taught jazz guitarist

Titus Andronicus comes to Mahall’s 20 Lanes in Lakewood. See: Saturday, Oct. 15.

Credit: Courtesy of Big Hassle

BLUE HOUR

By Jeff Niesel

who plays at 7 tonight at Blue Arrow. Tickets start at $5. 16001 Waterloo Rd., 216-486-2415, bluearrowrecords.com.

THU 10/13

Stephan Crump

Echo Award-winning bassist/ composer Stephan Crump has released 12 albums in addition to numerous film scoring contributions. In his solo performances, he explores his “unique musical language” through an expansive range of sounds he achieves on the acoustic bass. Tonight’s show begins at 7 at the Bop Stop. Tickets cost $20. 2920 Detroit Ave., 216-771-6551, themusicsettlement.org.

FRI 10/14

Ekoostik hookah

Formed in 1991, the Ohio-based jam band ekoostik hookah has achieved success and longevity largely without the support of mainstream media, corporate management, or even a record label. The veteran Ohio-based jam band that plays everything from folk and psychedelic rock to bluegrass and blues performs tonight at 8 at the Kent Stage. Tickets cost $20. 175 E. Main St., Kent, 330-677-5005, kentstage.org.

SAT 10/15

Celebrating David Bowie

Rock Hall inductee Todd Rundgren along with guitar whiz Adrian Belew, musician/producer Scrote, Spacehog’s Royston Langdon, Fishbone’s Angelo Moore and solo artist Jeffrey Gaines will bring their tour celebrating David Bowie’s music to the Goodyear Theater tonight. Dubbed Celebrating David Bowie, the concert will feature interpretations of Bowie’s greatest hits. The concert begins at 8. 1201 East Market St., Akron, goodyeartheater.com.

Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes Longtime friends with both Little Steven (a founding member of the Jukes) and Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny has released more than 30 albums in a career that stretches back to the early ’70s. A Cleveland favorite, the guy has fond

memories of the days when Kid Leo put him into the regular rotation on WMMS and always puts on an especially good show in Northeast Ohio. Tonight’s concert begins at 8 p.m. at MGM Northfield Park — Center Stage.

10705 Northfield Rd., Northfield, 330-908-7793, mgmnorthfieldpark. mgmresorts.com/en.html.

Titus Andronicus

“(I’m) Screwed,” the first single from The Will To Live, the latest effort from conceptual indie rockers

Titus Andronicus includes an official music video from director Ray Concepcion that finds the band performing on a flatbed truck during the Independence Day Parade in the band’s hometown of Glen Rock, NJ. The track introduces the narrator of The Will To Live at the moment he realizes the walls are closing in. It’s heady stuff. Expect the group to perform it as well as tunes from a career that dates back nearly 15 years now. The band performs tonight at 7 at Mahall’s. Tickets cost $20.

13200 Madison Ave., Lakewood, 216521-3280, mahalls20lanes.com.

TUE 10/18

Dead Boys

This Cleveland punk band brings its reunion tour to the Beachland for a concert that takes place at 8 p.m. Original guitarist Cheetah Chrome and drummer Johnny Blitz lead the band. Expect to hear punk classics such as “Sonic Reducer” and “Ain’t Nothin’ To Do.” The Briefs and Suzi Moon open.

15711 Waterloo Rd., 216-383-1124, beachlandballroom.com.

No Age

This Los Angeles-based duo — drummer-vocalist Dean Spunt and guitarist Randy Randall — comes to the Grog Shop tonight at 8 as it tours in support of its new album, People Helping People! Droning tunes such as “Andy Helping Andy” suggests the band’s esoteric approach. As a side note, the music video features a great pastiche of footage of Andy Warhol.

2785 Euclid Heights Blvd., Cleveland Heights, 216-321-5588, grogshop.gs.

A LEARNING CURVE: Mills, who grew up in the Hartville/Uniontown area and North Canton, says the first music he heard that really struck a chord with him was Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. “I also liked all those ‘90s albums that were more rock ’n’ roll,” he says. He can’t pinpoint the exact time, but in middle school, he remembers wanting to be in a band. “I definitely went through that process of failing at something and then showing other people what you made even though it was bad,” he admits. Though Mills started writing rootsy/alt-country material as Blue Hour in 2017, the present lineup didn’t come together until 2021.

A DYNAMIC SOUND: With the pandemic weighing heavy on his mind, Mills began writing the songs for the band’s new EP, A Long Time Ago, and the band recorded them at Oranjudio in Columbus, OH with audio engineer and producer Brandon MacClean. “He was a big part of showing us how we could create a dynamic sound that carries some weight,” says Mills of MacClean. “I actually didn’t really grow up on country music. Recently, I’ve dug more into the altcountry thing and started listening to people like Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell and Tyler Childers. That’s influenced the sound going forward.”

WHY YOU SHOULD HEAR

THEM: The EP’s somber opening track “The Motions” starts with deep vocals and gentle guitars before building its tempo. The song references Mills’s grandfather, who suffered from Alzeimher’s, and explores issues of mental illness.

“Way Out Past the Moon” also starts slow before shimmering guitars build into a mid-song crescendo.

“The EP’s theme is about stories from a long time ago that can relate to whatever you want,” he says. “I heard stories about what my grandpa went through with alcoholism and mental health issues. I think he was a loving person who went through hard times. [‘The Motions’] is about him.” Writing during the height of the pandemic made Mills think deeply about his life. “I just turned 28, and I’m trying to figure out what my purpose in life is,” he says. “I want to keep creating something. If you’re a woodworker, you’re constantly making things and pushing the ball forward. I want to take that approach with music.”

WHERE YOU CAN HEAR THEM: bluehour.band.

WHERE YOU CAN SEE

THEM: Blue Hour performs with the Ohio Weather Band and Anya Van Rose at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 8, at Musica in Akron and with This Summer, Dive Bombs and Social Creatures at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 12, at the Winchester in Lakewood.

MEET THE BAND: Justin Mills (vocals/guitar), Matt Modena (drums), Trevor Matthews (guitar/ pedal steel) and Kevin Vinci (bass)

Blue

Photo: Mollie Crowe (@LittleBlackbirdPhoto)

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SAVAGE LOVE DONE WRONG

By Dan Savage

There is more to this week’s Savage Love. To read the entire column, go to savage.love.

Hey Dan: I’m a gay Black man in my early 30s. When I was a teen, I was called fat and ugly by family and friends. I should also point out that I was in an all-white community with white parents. When I was coming to terms with my sexuality as a teenager, I began working out. I built a lot of muscle and have kept it on for the past 17 years, and working out really helps with my anxiety issues. I get a lot of attention from guys, and I’m frequently told how good-looking I am. I used to revel in this because I thought I was ugly.

But what I thought would bring me happiness really hasn’t. I’ve wanted to have a monogamous romantic relationship with someone where we both love and respect each other. It hasn’t happened. I’ve gone out on dates with guys who shoved their hands down my pants in public. One time when a guy asked for my number in Target, he began to fondle my nipple when I was putting it in his phone. I’ve been sexually harassed at work and pressured to have sex after saying no.

I’ve looked to some older, wiser friends and mentors for support about some of these experiences, but I am often told that I should “enjoy the attention while I’m young” or that I should expect this behavior because of how my body looks and how I dress. Some of my friends have told me not to take things so personally and that some guys just see me as their gay Black fantasy come to life. Is this really what I have to look forward to in my romantic journey? Parts of me wonder if some of my challenges are about my blackness. I know this is not always the case, and honestly there’s a feeling of shame to even bring this up as if I’m using my race as an excuse for my problems. But my experiences have been so different from my white friends and mentors that I’m unsure. I’m seeing a therapist who is a person of color who has been helping me with my blackness and sexuality. But my big question for you is this: Am I doing something wrong? Or

am I navigating the same challenges other queer people of color face? All Around Confused

Your therapist is both better qualified and in a better position to help you parse the challenges imposed on you as a queer person of color, the challenges imposed on you by your experiences growing up and the challenges you may be imposing on yourself. But

I will say this: There’s nothing shameful about wondering whether your blackness — along with other people’s racism, your own internalized antiblackness and other forces beyond your control — may be interfering with your happiness.

And I will also say this, AAC: You deserved better from your family and friends growing up; you deserve better from your friends, mentors, romantic partners, sex partners and strangers at Target now. You should be able to wear what you want without guys touching you without your consent. No one should be pressuring you to have sex you didn’t explicitly say yes to and/or have already explicitly said no to. And if being someone else’s “gay Black fantasy come to life” was something you enjoyed doing — if stepping in and out of that role was something you wanted to do for yourself — that would be one thing. But you shouldn’t be consigned to that role by strangers, AAC, and it troubles me that your friends think you should have to tolerate it, much less embrace it.

As for whether you’re doing something wrong…

There are guys out there who’ve done everything right and still haven’t managed to find — into their mid-30s — a relationship they want. Remember, AAC, it’s not as simple as finding a guy who wants the same relationship model you do, i.e., the loving and monogamous model over the loving and non-monogamous model. You have to find someone who wants what you want and that you’re

sexually compatible with. It should go without saying that sexual compatibility is hugely important in sexually exclusive relationships, but I’m saying it because people enter into sexually exclusive relationships with people they don’t click with sexually all the fucking time (Seriously, some weeks it’s half the mail.) But sexual compatibility by itself isn’t enough. You also have to find someone whose career, life and family goals align with your own. And at some point, AAC, you will have to compromise. You may find a guy who wants monogamy but also other things (kids? poodles? tit rings?) that you do not. Or you may find a guy you click with sexually, emotionally and socially but who doesn’t want monogamy or won’t want it forever. You may not want it forever. To make a relationship work over the short term, you will have to negotiate and make compromises; to make one work over the long term, you will have to renegotiate and revisit those compromises.

Two final things…

First, I’d like to invite gay or queer Black readers to jump into the comments thread online and share your experiences and insights with AAC. And if you’ve never seen the film Tongues Untied, AAC, you might want to sit down to watch it.

Marlon T. Rigg’s 1989 documentary about what it means to be Black and gay in our culture is just as relevant now as it was 30 years ago. Everyone should watch it.

Hey Dan: Would you mind reminding your gay male readers that it’s rude to take pictures of strangers in public? (I guess men do this to masturbate to them later?) I’m a straight man who has lived in Seattle for four years, and what gay men do to random male pedestrians here ranges from nuisance to battery.

It’s usually innocuous: I’m walking down the sidewalk, a gay man and his friends see me, whisper together, start giggling, then one of them pretends to take a photo of their group when they’re really taking a photo of me. This happens every half mile. Other times, gay men straight up just take my picture. Sometimes one will step directly in front of me, hoping to bump into me for a “meet cute.” Yesterday, I was walking, and I see three 50-yearold men huddling together, and when I looked up all three were taking my picture. I ignored it, but I hate it. I kept walking but three other gay men were up ahead, and they stepped directly in front of me to block my way. One of them intentionally took a big step to the side, and when I was still passing, elbowed me “accidentally,” then turned to me laughing and said, “Oh, sorry!”

I’m sure most gay men would claim to never engage in such behavior. But when they get in groups, they allow their friends to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. It’s cowardly and it needs to stop. Sneakily Taking Other People’s Pics Is Completely Shitty

Gay men in Seattle… Go to savage.love to read the rest.

Joe