11.02 Indy Week

Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill

CONTENTS

6 North Carolina's two supreme court races could shape outcomes for abortion access, public education funding, and the future of free and fair elections.

BY JASMINE GALLUP

8 A Q&A with Duke professor Asher Hildebrand on the significance of this month's election. BY JASMINE GALLUP

10 North Carolina's appellate court races may fly under the radar, but the court can be the last stop for some significant cases. BY LENA GELLER

12 A look at Durham's bond referenda. BY THOMASI MCDONALD

14 Four seats in Wake County could determine whether Republicans retake supermajority. BY JASMINE GALLUP

ARTS & CULTURE

16 Chatham County Line goes to Hollywood.

BY KYESHA JENNINGS

BY DAN RUCCIA & BRIAN HOWE

Rock Europa performs at Local 506 on Sunday, November 6.

Culture

A couple of weeks ago, we ran an op-ed from Durham resident Frank Hyman about why voters should maybe skip casting a ballot for third-party candidates this election cycle. Reader JANIE EKERE, a volunteer with Green Party candidate Matt Hoh’s U.S. Senate campaign, took issue with Hyman’s points and wrote us the following email:

[The op-ed] explicitly discouraged potential voters from supporting the Green Party, with no regard as to whether our platform aligned with voters' values. We believe that this is not only unfair to our campaign, but that it ultimately does a disservice to voters.

As members of the Green Party, we believe that this op-ed unfairly and uncritically casts us as responsible for helping Republicans take office. It makes no mention of the role of the Electoral College in either the 2000 or 2016 presidential election, placing the blame for Bush and Trump's victories solely on the mere presence of Green candidates. It also neglects to mention that Greens have long run cam-

paigns at the local level in various states, but we are required to run for races like governor, U.S. Senate, and president in order to maintain ballot access and to have enough resources to reach voters effectively.

The op-ed also characterizes our supporters as simply “making a statement,” or “just helping Republicans.” This suggests that their support for us is thoughtless or pointless. As a party that encourages all voters to vote according to their beliefs and their values, this kind of attitude comes across as disrespectful and counterproductive to the practice of democracy. It's a myth that all Green voters are bound to vote for Democrats if there's no

Green option on the ballot. In 2016, a CBS report on exit polls showed that 61% of Jill Stein voters said they would have abstained from voting for President if they didn't have the choice to vote for her. We still have a large portion of the population that doesn't vote, not because they're apathetic, but because they feel alienated from the political process and don't believe there are candidates to vote for who truly represent their interests.

Having Green Party candidates on the ballot provides the public with the opportunity to vote for candidates who reflect their values. That choice is vital to a healthy and vibrant democracy.

SPENCER GRIFFITH

18 How local producer collective The Genius Party is building a community.

20 Music Reviews: Leaf by Dreamroot and Good Job by Treee City.

22 A preview of Bulldog Ensemble Theater's The Garbologists and Theatre Raleigh's Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 BY BYRON WOODS

23 Talking with Jess Williamson of country music duo Plains. BY SARAH EDWARDS

BY JASMINE GALLUP

BY JASMINE GALLUP

Orange County is ahead in turnout, with about 22.6 percent of

The turnout in Wake and Durham

turnout is

as it was in the 2018 midterm elections. One major difference is the number of ballots cast by mail. After COVID, the

of mail-in ballots has increased by 120 percent.

OneStop

also above the

average, at 16.4 percent and 20 percent,

The Backstop for Our Democracy

Why North Carolina’s judicial elections matter as much as the fight for the statehouse

BY GRAIG MEYER backtalk@indyweek.com

If you want good policies that allow all North Carolinians to thrive, you first need fair elec tions. To get there, we need good courts. My Democratic colleagues and I know how to make North Carolina stronger. We want to invest money in clean technologies to boost our economy and stop polluting our climate. We want to better fund our schools and create opportunities for our children. We want to ensure every woman has the right to make her own health care decisions. We want to ensure that no person in our state goes broke under the weight of medical debt.

The ideas we have are supported by the majority of North Carolinians. But we can only make them reality when every voice in the state is heard through free and fair elections. This year our courts have shown just what can be done to protect our democracy. For the first time ever in North Carolina, parti san gerrymandering was declared to be illegal. Our state supreme court threw out maps that Republicans had drawn to give themselves an unfair electoral advantage and demanded that more fair maps replace them.

Thanks to our courts, this year over 55,000 former felons can exercise their right to vote for the very first time since their convictions.

And, thanks to our courts, Republi cans’ repeated attempt to install a voter ID requirement they know would limit the voices of Black and brown voters, as well as trans North Carolinians, have been struck down time after time.

In short, courts are the backstop for our democracy. As The American Indepen dent put it, “For the past several years, the state’s highest court has prevented some Republican lawmakers’ ploys from taking permanent partisan control of the state Legislature, including ongoing attempts to gerrymander and disenfranchise many of the state’s Black voters.”

For years, special interests have spent millions to elect a GOP-controlled legisla ture that favors big business and corporate

polluters over the needs of hard-working North Carolinians.

They are not stopping there. This year they are taking aim at our democracy itself by funding judicial candidates who have vowed to slash away at protections for fair elections before they have even ascended to the bench.

With one hand, the current leaders of the GOP accuse judges with whom they disagree of carrying out a partisan agenda, while with the other they have worked since 2013 to construct a judicial system that is more overtly partisan. Why? So that they can flood judicial races and candidates with partisan money—and thus exert more influ ence over those would-be judges.

To be clear, we don’t need ideologues. We don’t need judges who have made up their minds about legal cases before they’ve even been presented with facts and law. We don’t need judges who will vote in lockstep with others. We don’t need judges who will protect Democrats—we need judges who will protect democracy.

We need judges who recognize that our job as legislators is to serve the people, as our constitution states: “All political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government of right originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole” (NC Const. Art I. Sec. 2).

There are two seats up for election to the supreme court and four to the court of appeals. These are vital positions. Those who win them will have eight-year terms and will see cases that will shape every thing from how our elections are run to how our laws are interpreted. I encourage everyone to learn their platforms and get involved in their campaigns.

Let’s ensure the will of the people of North Carolina can be done. W

Graig Meyer is a North Carolina state repre sentative from Orange County. He is currently running for the state Senate District 23 seat.

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Carolina

High Court, High Stakes

North Carolina’s two supreme court races could shape outcomes for abortion access, public education funding, redistricting, and the future of free and fair elections.

BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

I

n less than a week, North Carolina vot ers will decide the future of abortion rights, election maps, and even education spending. Will these issues be decided in the race for U.S. Congress? No. In votes for state senators? No.

In fact, many major policy decisions in the next few years will be made by candi dates historically overlooked by voters: the justices of the NC Supreme Court.

With a divided government, namely the Republican-controlled General Assem bly versus Democratic governor Roy Coo per, disputes often come before the state supreme court to mediate.

“Our legislature has gotten more extreme, and it’s necessitated the court stepping up and protecting rights under the state con stitution,” says Billy Corriher, a political analyst and writer.

“You see a similar dynamic at the feder al level. How often do [Congress and the president] actually get together and pass an important bill? It’s pretty rare, and that’s left the U.S. Supreme Court as the source of change when it comes to our policies.”

On the NC Supreme Court, Democrats currently hold a narrow 4-3 majority, which has resulted in a host of decisions preserv ing voting rights, striking down abortion bans, and mandating better education fund ing. But if Republicans flip just one seat on the court this November, they will retake the majority and are expected to uphold abortion restrictions, gerrymandered maps, and other GOP-passed measures.

“We need a court system that is going to rule by the [state] constitution and provide fair decisions based on the law … rather than based on their own political affilia

tion,” says Dr. Bobbie Richardson, chair of the state Democratic Party.

“Our supreme court has been the back stop for political gerrymandering and barri ers Republicans have tried to put in the way of African Americans having access to the polls,” she adds. “[If we lose the majority], we will lose the power of voting rights and perhaps even other rights. We will not have any backstop for women’s right to choose their own medical care.”

What’s at stake?

Over the next few years, the NC Supreme Court could certainly weigh in on abortion rights. When the U.S. Supreme Court over turned Roe v. Wade in June, it left it up to states to make decisions on when and how abortions can take place.

North Carolina’s 20-week abortion ban has already been upheld by a federal court, but Republicans have promised to pass more stringent restrictions if they can override Cooper’s veto. And now they no longer have to consider the protections of Roe. If those laws were challenged, they would move to the courts, where the state supreme court would be the ulti mate authority, says Tara Romano, exec utive director of Pro-Choice NC.

“We don’t know what kind of laws the General Assembly might come up with … but there could be protections [in the state constitution] around privacy, nondiscrimi nation … [so] some of these laws could land in front of the NC Supreme Court,” Romano says. “For a long time, the courts have been a backstop against legislative and execu tive branch overreach. We still need to have

that sort of fair and balanced makeup on the court.”

North Carolina is one of the few south eastern states where abortion is still legal, albeit with a lot of restrictions. Roma no says she’s worried about Republicans potentially passing laws they’ve seen enact ed in other states since Roe was overturned.

“We’re seeing anti-abortion lawmakers say they want to pass laws that say you can’t share any information about abortion, or that people can’t travel out of state to access abortion,” Romano says. “Those are the types of laws that could end up before state supreme courts. Not just being unable to access abortion but [not] being able to travel, being able to share information.”

Another big issue is voting rights, which encompasses issues like voter ID and gerrymandering.

Since 2010, North Carolina legislators have been embroiled in what seems like an endless parade of legislation around elec tion maps. Most recently, the state supreme court threw out a set of Republican-drawn maps, arguing they were unconstitutional because of partisan gerrymandering. The case was decided by the slim 4-3 Demo cratic majority.

Now, that case has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will decide whether the North Carolina legislature has

absolute authority to over redistricting or if state courts can weigh in. The court’s rul ing in the case, Moore v. Harper, will deter mine whether new maps are drawn solely by the legislature or if they’ll continue to end up before the state court, with nation al implications. Regardless, issues of gerry mandering and voting rights could continue to be disputed in the North Carolina judi cial system.

The court is also set to hear challeng es to North Carolina’s controversial 2018 voter ID law, which could disenfranchise Black voters. In addition, it will soon consid er whether thousands of people on parole or probation should have their voting rights restored.

“I think if you look at the recent deci sions from the supreme court, they large ly upheld individual and civil rights,” says Bri Brough, an advocate with All on the Line, a national anti-gerrymandering organization. “In the recent redistricting case, [the supreme court] found that we have a right to vote in free elections and extreme partisan gerrymandering is a vio lation of that.

“[Those issues] are likely to come up again. People should be aware of that when they’re voting. Look at the judges and see who you feel is going to uphold voting rights and civil rights.”

PHOTO VIA UNSPLASH

More money than ever in judicial races

Although judicial candidates most ly stay away from hot-button political issues—instead touting their qualifications and independence—the races for the NC Supreme Court are clearly partisan. Millions of dollars have already poured in from polit ical organizations and PACs fighting to get conservative judges elected.

The North Carolina GOP (and others) is supporting Trey Allen, a Republican chal lenger to Democratic incumbent Justice Sam Ervin IV, as well as Republican Rich ard Dietz, who is running against Democrat Lucy Inman for an open seat.

The amount of money pouring into these races “is increasing with every election,” says Corriher. This year, the issues of abor tion and redistricting have drawn national political organizations into the election.

In Washington, DC, a conservative Super PAC called Fair Courts America pledged to spend a record-breaking $22 million on high court races in key states, includ ing North Carolina, according to Corriher.

The Republican State Leadership Commit tee also planned to spend more than $5 million—a record amount for the group— on supreme court races in North Caroli na, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio. Spokesman Andrew Romeo said the group’s focus is on redistricting.

On the Democratic side, Planned Par enthood pledged to spend $1 million to support Ervin and Inman, noting the court could soon weigh in on abortion rights, Cor riher says. The ACLU of North Carolina also pledged $1.1 million toward “a campaign to educate voters on the importance of the [NC] Supreme Court elections this Novem ber” using “grassroots outreach, direct mail and digital ads,” the website states.

“There is no doubt that politicians in the legislature will attempt to ban abor tion in North Carolina, and we need a state supreme court that will protect our free doms and our state constitution,” Chantal Stevens, executive director of the ACLU of North Carolina, said in a news release.

The National Democratic Redistrict

ing Committee has also spent more than $2 million on races across the country, including in North Carolina, according to FEC reports.

Inside North Carolina, one GOP cam paign donor launched Stop Liberal Judges, a political committee that has $850,000 on hand, according to state finance reports.

Former U.S. congressman Mark Walker, a Republican, also created Win the Courts, a political committee campaigning on behalf of Allen, Dietz, and North Carolina’s other conservative judicial candidates. The group spent about $1,500 through October 6; finance reports for the weeks leading up to Election Day are not yet available.

Corriher says these groups, and others, could potentially drop millions of dollars on ads in the final days of the election.

“Some of these groups don’t even start spending money until the final week of the election,” he says. “Most of the attack ads that you see in these elections are coming from independent groups; they’re not com ing from the candidates themselves.”

While liberals are giving directly to candidates—Ervin and Inman have each reported raising more than $1 million, about twice as much as their Republi can opponents—conservatives seem more focused on campaigning independently for their picks, according to Corriher.

“I’m seeing ads pop up on my TV all the time, mostly backing the Republican can didates. It seems like the Democrats are focused a lot more on candidate fundrais ing. The Republicans aren’t as focused on raising money for the campaigns as they are bringing in these independent spending groups to back them up,” he says.

“We have [also] seen some progressive groups spending money in this election in a way that they haven’t before … Planned Parenthood and the ACLU …. I don’t know how that’s going to impact the race.” W

See our endorsements for more infor mation about the judicial candidates we support, Democrats Sam Ervin IV and Lucy Inman.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Lucy Inman PHOTO COURTESY OF CANDIDATE

Sam Ervin IV PHOTO FROM NCCOURTS.GOV

“These issues are likely to come up again. People should be aware of that when they’re voting. Look at the judges and see who you feel is going to uphold voting rights and civil rights.”

Every Seat Matters

A Q&A with Asher Hildebrand, associate professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy

BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

We spoke with Hildebrand last week about North Carolina’s new congressional swing district, MAGA candidates, the short lives of the state’s new maps—and the significance of the upcoming election.

INDY Week: What does the 2022 con gressional redistricting in North Caro lina mean for the election?

Asher Hildebrand: Well, the current [North Carolina] congressional delega tion includes 13 members, eight Republi cans and five Democrats. North Carolina, because of its population growth, received a 14th seat after the reapportionment.

Through a long saga of map drawing and legal challenges … [we got] a map drawn not by the General Assembly but by a bipar tisan panel of so-called “special masters” appointed by a state court. [The map] is very likely to produce seven Republican seats, six Democratic seats, and one true toss-up in the 13th District.

Now, in terms of partisan fairness, this is probably the fairest map we’ve had in the history of the state. The court took great pains to make sure that the balance of districts reflected the overall balance of political preferences in the state. That came a bit at the expense of competitiveness in that you really see only the one district [the 13th District] … that’s up for grabs. That’s where Wiley Nickel and Bo Hines are running against each other in the south Raleigh suburbs and exurbs.

What do you think will happen in the 13th District?

I think Wiley [Nickel] has a very good chance at the seat. He’s been a candidate who is far more in touch with the needs of the district. After all, he actually lives there, as opposed to Bo Hines, who has picked up

and moved there.

On the other hand, it’s such a narrow ly divided district that I think a lot will depend on the national environment, on the outcome of the U.S. Senate race in North Carolina. Wiley Nickel could poten tially overperform the national ticket, so to speak, because of his fit with the district and because of Bo Hines’s kind of uniquely extreme character.

Bo Hines is being backed by former president Donald Trump. Will that work to his advantage?

This race is a microcosm of what you see happening around the country. Democrats nominate a candidate who is progressive but very much in the mainstream Democratic tradition. Whereas Republicans, despite there being more moderate candidates in the primary field, nominate someone who is very extreme ideologically and very much aligned with the kind of aggressive, anti-Democratic, pro-Trump wing of the party. Whether that’s an effective strategy or not, well, 2022 will be a big test of that.

It’s in part a test of how supportive Repub lican voters are of that kind of extremism. But it’s also kind of a test of just how far polarization has advanced. Have we come to the point where voters … whatever doubts they might have about someone like Bo Hines, would still rather elect him than stick their nose out and vote for a Democrat? If we’ve gotten to the point where the qualities of the candidate don’t matter all that much, and all that matters is the letter next to their name on the ballot, then I think that’s a pretty ominous sign for the future.

How important are the North Carolina seats in the overall struggle for control over the U.S. House?

The short answer is that every seat matters,

given how narrow the margin is. Repub licans are still favored overall to win the House for the simple reason that they don’t have to win a single Democratic district to do that. All they have to do is win the dis tricts that Donald Trump carried in 2020.

But insofar as Democrats are able to buck the trend, to win swing districts, to continue to carry at least some of those seats that Donald Trump carried, that starts to really put the focus on seats like that 13th Dis trict in North Carolina that could swing the majority. So there’s a reason a lot of nation al leaders have been focused on that seat.

Even not including that seat, North Car olina will have one more likely Democratic seat in the new Congress relative to how it was before, because we moved from five likely Democratic seats to six [with the redistricting]. That sixth one is down in Charlotte and parts west, where Jeff Jack son is running. It’s not a shoo-in for Jeff, but I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t win it.

It’s refreshing to hear that the redistricting has made the election more balanced. Usually it goes to one extreme or another. Well, let me depress you for a second. Because of the way it turned out, this is an interim map that will only be in existence for this election. The courts have been clear that the General Assembly will have to redraw the congressional map for the next election. And Republicans in the Gen eral Assembly, who are just irate at how the courts handled this … they’ve been pretty clear that they’re going to take every oppor tunity to exact revenge and draw a map that highly favors Republicans.

Plus, the Supreme Court is now hearing

the Moore v. Harper case, which, if they rule in favor of Moore, will take the state courts out of the business of policing redistricting altogether. [It] will essentially be an invita tion for every legislature to pursue extreme redistricting. So, the current map is maybe the fairest in history, but it’s also not long for this world.

What are some of the big issues voters are paying attention to in North Carolina? Well, the two that rise to the top are the economy, which this year has included inflation and rising prices, and abortion rights.

Abortion rights are much more clearly defined, because the impact of the Dobbs decision for everybody, especially women and birth parents, is very present. In North Carolina, even though it’s not directly on the ballot in the form of a constitutional amendment or a referendum, it is indirect ly on the ballot, because if Republicans win a supermajority in the General Assembly, they’ve been pretty clear about their inten tions to enact additional restrictions.

That said, there’s been a lot of really inter esting polls that are showing voters are con cerned about issues of American democracy to a greater extent than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. In fact, [they are] sometimes rank ing it as their number one issue of concern at the polls, which is just striking.

The January 6 hearings and other criminal investigations around Trump, as well as just the broader debate we’re having about voting rights and election integrity, are contributing to that. Voters very strongly see Democrats as more committed to democracy, although that breaks down on partisan lines. W

Duke professor Asher Hildebrand CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

N O V E M B E R

E L E C T

O N

At a meeting duly called and held on the 18th day of October 2022, at 2445 S. Alston Avenue in Durham, North Carolina, the Durham County Board of Elections passed the following resolution:

WHEREAS the county board of elections is authorized upon adoption of a resolution to begin counting all absentee ballots between the hours of 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. on Election Day;

WHEREAS such resolution also may provide for an additional meeting following the day of the election and prior to the day of canvass to count absentee ballots received pursuant to N.C. Gen. Stat. §163-231(b)(1) or (2);

WHEREAS the times for these meetings will be at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 8th and Thursday, November 17th for the purpose of counting absentee ballots;

WHEREAS the location of these meetings shall be held at the BOE warehouse, located at 2445 S. Alston Avenue, Durham, NC 27713;

WHEREAS the Board shall not announce the results of the count before 7:30 p.m. on Election Day;

WHEREAS these meetings are open to all who may want to attend; and,

WHEREAS the adoption of this resolution is in compliance with N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 163-234 (2) and (11) and will be published in a newspaper of general circulation in the county within the statutory time frame.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Durham County Board of Elections hereby unanimously approves the time for Counting of Absentee Ballots as set forth above.

This the 18th day of October 2022.

Dawn Y. Baxton, Chairwoman Durham County Board of Elections

North Carolina

End of the Line

The Court of Appeals races are low profile, but the court— often the final stop for significant cases—plays an important role in the state’s judiciary.

BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com

If North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race—a neck-and-neck contest that could see the election of the state’s first Black sen ator or the ascendance of a gun-slinging, abortion-rights-denying, MAGA-aligned congressman—has stirred so little buzz compared to other contests that nation al news outlets have labeled it a “sleeper race,” the four races for the NC Court of Appeals are straight up comatose.

The eight candidates vying for state appellate seats haven’t aired many ads, nor have they received much attention from the press; as in most years, media coverage surrounding the elections has amounted to little beyond candidate questionnaires, with contenders offering nearly identical responses about their judicial philosophies and camouflaging any significant differ ences in legalese.

And while it’s always hard to get voters excited about judicial elections, this year’s midterms—which will likely be decided by the public’s stances on hot-button issues like abortion, gun safety reform, and eco nomic policy—have elicited a particularly low amount of enthusiasm for appellate candidates, who usually do not disclose where they stand on such matters and who, compared to the contenders for the state’s highest court, seem to be running for less consequential positions.

But while the NC Supreme Court races are certainly momentous (see our story on page 6 for more on that), the state’s oft-overlooked appellate elections also carry weight.

The NC Court of Appeals, which deter mines whether trial courts have correctly applied the law, is perhaps best known for pushing cases down the line.

And its error-correcting role is an important one. In 2020, for instance, after hearing a case that had been appealed from a Wake County district court, state appellate judges ruled 2-1 to allow peo ple in same-sex relationships to obtain

emergency restraining orders against abu sive partners—a protection that the dis trict court had denied—and effectively passed the case off to the state supreme court, which voted to uphold the appellate court’s decision.

But most of the time, the appellate court, which hears around 60 cases every two weeks, is actually the end of the line.

“A very high percentage of cases that are appealed from lower courts end in the court of appeals, meaning that the court of appeals makes the final decision,” says Don ald Beskind, a trial lawyer and Duke Univer sity law professor. “Many important matters never reach the [state] supreme court.”

When appellate judges—who serve in rotating panels of three—rule unanimous ly, it almost always brings an end to a case, Beskind continues, except in rare situations when the state supreme court wants input.

In the past year, appellate judges have had the final say on cases ranging from education to rezoning and environmental justice, issuing decisions that have allowed students to sue the UNC system over fees they paid for on-campus services that were closed during the pandemic, prevented the city of Charlotte from using a rezoning dispute as a precedent in future court pro ceedings, and granted state legislators the authority to make it nearly impossible for people to sue hog farms for nuisance.

These decisions may sound boring, but important ones often do.

So while the biggest, buzziest cases of the next few years, such as those involving redistricting and abortion, will undoubtedly be heard by the state supreme court, hun dreds of others—involving climate action, workplace rights, and public health, among other issues—will be decided by appellate judges, and appellate judges alone.

Which is to say: the makeup of the appellate court matters.

In 2020, Republicans swept all eight

statewide judicial races in North Caroli na, winning or retaining three seats on the supreme court and five on the court of appeals.

If Republicans perform similarly this year, they could win two additional seats on the appellate court, which is currently com posed of 10 Republicans and five Demo crats. If Dems sweep the appellate races, the court will shift to a near-even split.

Of course, electing judicial candidates on a partisan basis is contradictory to the impartial positions they’re running for.

“A case should be decided on the law and the facts and not on people’s ideological views,” Beskind says. “The cornerstone, the protective bumper, the place we have to rely on if things are going badly, is the court.”

Since the state legislature switched all judicial elections from nonpartisan to par tisan in 2018, Beskind has noticed a shift in the neutrality of judicial candidates.

“[Partisan judicial elections] have brought out more people who have very strong ideological views as candidates,” Beskind says. “And so when I look at the candidates in this particular election, there are a few of them that I think have pretty clear and pretty strong ideological views. Which, in my opinion, is a very bad thing.”

Beskind doesn’t name names, but he could be referencing Donna Stroud, a Republican incumbent who proudly iden

tifies as the “first conservative to serve as Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals,” or John Tyson, another Republican incum bent whose website says he “maintains a conservative judicial philosophy” that protects “self-defense” and “parental and rights of the unborn,” among other “indi vidual freedoms” touted by the GOP.

In questionnaires submitted to the INDY and The Fayetteville Observer, all four Republican appellate candidates describe themselves as “textualists”—a mode of interpretation that focuses on the plain meaning of a legal text, with no consideration of the context in which it was written.

“Textualism is code for ‘we’re not going to legislate,’” Beskind says. “And there’s something good to be said about that. But textualism doesn’t solve all the problems.

A problem may arise after a law is written, and the problem itself could not have been contemplated by the drafters of the text. How does a legislature in 1920 envision, you know, computers?”

Oftentimes, Beskind adds, a case reach es the appellate court because there’s a controversy about what the text means, so it’s crucial that judges have the ability to be open-minded in their interpretations.

“When I’m arguing a case in front of the court of appeals,” he says, “I want a fair shot.” W

PHOTO COURTESY OF ISTOCK

COURT OF APPEALS CANDIDATES

An attorney at the state court of appeals, Republican Julee Tate Flood is facing off against Democrat Carolyn Jennings Thompson, an attorney and former district and superior court judge, in this race to fill the vacant seat of Lucy Inman, who is currently running for the state supreme court.

9

The incumbent chief justice of the court of appeals, Republican Donna Stroud worked as an attorney and served as a district judge before being elected to the appellate court, where she’s held her seat for the past 15 years. Her opponent, Democrat Brad A. Salmon, is a district judge who previously worked as an attorney and served as a state representative.

10

Republican incumbent John M. Tyson, who has served two nonconsecu tive terms on the court of appeals, is up against Democrat Gale Mur ray Adams, a veteran who formerly worked as a public defender and an assistant DA.

SEAT 11

Republican Michael J. Stading , a judge advocate officer with the U.S. Air Force who previously worked as a prosecutor and district court judge, is challenging Democratic incumbent Darren Jackson, a former NC House minority leader who was appointed to the appellate court in 2020.

A Place at the Table

We are serving

We believe that all people deserve dignity to eat

and

affordable

you are welcome to

Wherever you may

We hope you will.

Julee Tate Flood Carolyn Jennings Thompson

Donna Stroud Brad A. Salmon

John M. Tyson Gale Murray Adams

Michael J. Stading Darren Jackson

Durham

Bond on the Ballot

Durham voters will be asked to approve $550.24 million in new funding in this year’s bond referenda.

BY THOMASI MCDONALD tmcdonald@indyweek.com

In 2019, Durham voters overwhelmingly approved a $95 million affordable hous ing bond that was touted as the largest in the state’s history.

During this election cycle, Durham coun ty residents will consider $550.24 million in education-related bond referenda that will, among other things, build new schools, expand its community college campus, and modernize the Museum of Life and Science.

The Durham County Board of Commis sioners first approved resolutions in sup port of the bond referenda in July.

“Durham is growing, and we must sup port education,” Brenda Howerton, chair of the county’s board of commissioners, told the INDY this week.

Wendy Jacobs, the county’s cochair, told the INDY that the education bond is the first approved by the board since 2016, when the elected leaders put forth a $170 mil lion bond for Durham Public Schools (DPS), including $91 million for the construction of a new Northern High School and existing school needs, along with improvements for Durham Technical Community College, the Durham Museum of Life and Science, and the county library system.

“That bond was approved by the voters,” Jacobs says of the 2016 referendum. “It is important for us to have safe, healthy, up-to-date schools for our children.”

The lion’s share of funding for the cur rent bond referenda that voters will con sider on November 8—$423.5 million— has been earmarked for remodeling DPS’s existing buildings and plant facilities, new schools, and land acquisition.

Jacobs says the funding will pay for the Murray-Massenburg Elementary School and a new Jordan High School.

Bettina Umstead, chair of the Durham County Board of Education, echoed the county commissioners: the proposed fund ing from the bond will provide educational resources that are needed to keep up with the county’s growing population.

“Durham County is certainly growing,” Umstead said in late September while appearing on the county’s online In Touch with Durham show.

“You can drive down the street and see there are new housing developments. There are new businesses coming into our com munity, and so we know with all that new housing development comes new families with children, and we want to make sure with Durham Public Schools that we have space to welcome them with open arms.”

Meanwhile, $112.74 million of the com munity college funding will support the construction of an 86,000-square-foot Allied Health Building to house simulation and classroom labs “to meet local require ments for nurses, medical assistants, nursing assistants, pharmacy technicians and other health professions,” according to a pamphlet that reached Durham residents’ mailboxes late last week.

The community college portion of the bond referenda also calls for the construc tion of a 36,000-square-foot Life Science Training Facility and Classroom Building, along with the additional land acquisition “to address future expansion,” according to the mailer from the county government’s administrative offices.

For Durham Tech, community college officials point to “major growth in the life sciences sector with 45 new companies and 7,000 new jobs announced in the last five years with 50 percent” of the activity in Durham.

On the community college’s website, offi cials note that the school is the only one in the state in close proximity to two care-lev el hospitals—UNC and Duke Health—along with the Durham VA and long-term facili ties. The school wants to respond to labor demand by making available a trained work force in a regional health industry that’s “projected for double digit growth in the years ahead,” according to the community college website.

“With booming career opportunities in these sectors, Durham Tech is well-posi tioned to prepare local residents for great jobs and provide a diverse workforce pipe line to area companies,” community col lege officials state.

“If we want Durham County residents to move into those jobs, we need the facilities and equipment they can train on to be pre pared to move into these jobs,” Durham Tech president J.B. Buxton said in September on the county’s online show.

“These are good jobs with good wages and good career opportunities,” he added.

Another bond referendum would also allo cate $13,995,000 to one of the city’s crown jewels, the Durham Museum of Life and Sci ence, which first opened its doors in 1946. The relatively modest chunk of funding will modernize the facility’s learning spaces, where generations of school-age youngsters received their first meaningful exposure to science, from dinosaurs and weather to the random sounds of percussion instruments or chemistry sets from the gift shop.

In addition to “significant sustainability upgrades,” the proposed funding will sup port new exhibits at the museum that are “focused on climate change, technological innovation and health science,” along with improvements to the museum’s indoor and outdoor learning spaces, as well as renova tions to its meeting room.

Museum officials note that the North Durham facility is a nonprofit that receives lit tle funding and support from the state’s coffers.

Carrie Heinonen, the museum’s chief executive officer and president, in a press release credited the community’s support over the decades as being critical to the

facility’s growth and expansion.

“We want our museum to continue inspiring the next generation of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders right here in Durham,” Heinonen stated in a release posted in October on the museum’s website.

Indeed, the less than $14 million price tag to improve one of the city’s educational mainstays that’s devoted to science sounds like a bargain in a political atmosphere where climate change has been derided as a hoax and scientific inquiry has been diminished.

“Voters will have the chance to help Durham make a major commitment to edu cation for all generations,” Kate Senner, the museum’s vice president for development, stated in a press release made public on October 20. “And at the same time, they can help create a greener, more sustainable museum that will offer a more welcoming experience to all visitors.”

The museum, Heinonen noted in Sep tember, has been an educational and cul tural resource in the city for 75 years.

“We are an informal educational insti tution. We see ourselves working in paral lel and in partnership with Durham Public Schools,” she said.

While speaking of the museum’s role in the city’s educational ecosystem, Heinonen encapsulated the vision driving all three ele ments of the bond referenda.

“We think of ourselves as building that pipeline of curious learners and curious work ers who are going to be filling the pipeline for workers that we need to feed the industry that we are building here in North Carolina,” she said. “So that’s how we see ourselves: as part of that continuum in that community.”

The proposed funding will support new exhibits at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. PHOTO BY JESSE ORRICO VIA UNSPLASH

INDY Week

voter guide (clip-out!) voter guide

Federal & North Carolina

U.S. Senate Cheri Beasley

Judicial races

Supreme Court Justices Seat 3 Lucy Inman Seat 5 Sam J. Ervin IV nc court of appeals Seat 8 Carolyn J. Thompson Seat 9 Brad A. Salmon Seat 10 Gale M. Adams Seat 11 Darren Jackson

Local Races

Durham County

U.S. House 4 Valerie P. Foushee nc senate District 20 Natalie S. Murdock District 22 Mike Woodard nc house District 2 Ray Je ers District 29 Vernetta Alston District 30 Marcia Morey District 31 Zack Hawkins

Durham DA Satana Deberry

Durham Clerk of Superior Court Aminah Thompson Durham Sheriff Clarence Birkhead Durham Soil & Water District Supervisor David Harris

NC Superior Court Judge District 14B, Seat 1 Brian C. Wilks nc district court 14 Seat 1 Dave Hall Seat 2 Doretta L. Walker Seat 3 Kevin E. Jones Seat 4 Dorothy H. Mitchell Seat 5 Clayton Jones Seat 6 Amanda L. Maris

Durham County School Bonds Vote YES Durham County Community College Bonds Vote YES Durham County Museum Bonds Vote YES Orange County U.S. House 4 Valerie P. Foushee nc senate District 23 Graig R. Meyer

nc house District 50 Renee Price District 56 Allen Buansi

Orange DA Je Nieman

Orange Sheriff Charles Blackwood

Orange Clerk of Superior Court Mark Kleinschmidt Orange Register of Deeds Mark H. Chilton NC Superior Court 15B, Seat 1 Alyson A. Grine NC Superior Court 15B, Seat 2 Allen Baddour NC District Court 15B, Seat 1 C. Todd Roper

orange board of commissioners At Large Sally Greene District 1 Jamezetta R. Bedford District 1 (unexpired term) Anna Richards District 2 Earl McKee

Orange Soil & Water District Supervisor W. Chris Hogan

Wake County

U.S. House 2 Deborah K. Ross U.S. House 13 Wiley Nickel

nc senate District 13 Lisa Grafstein District 14 Dan Blue District 15 Jay J. Chaudhuri District 16 Gale Adcock District 17 Sydney Batch District 18 Mary Wills Bode nc house District 11 Allison A. Dahle District 21 Ya Liu District 33 Rosa U. Gill District 34 Tim Longest District 35 Terence Everitt District 36 Julie von Haefen District 37 Christine Kelly District 38 Abe Jones District 39 James A. Roberson District 40 Joe John District 41 Maria Cervania District 49 Cynthia Ball District 66 Sarah Crawford Wake DA Nancy (Lorrin) Freeman Wake Sheriff Willie Rowe Wake Clerk of Superior Court Blair Williams

TheINDY’s 2022Midterms Endorsements

Wake board of county commissioners District 1 Donald Mial District 2 Matt Calabria District 3 Cheryl Stallings District 7 Vickie Adamson

Wake Soil & Water Conservation District Supervisor Jenna Wadsworth Alex Baldwin

Wake county board of education District 1 Ben Clapsaddle District 2 Monika JohnsonHostler District 3 Doug Hammack District 4 Tara Waters District 5 Lynn Edmonds District 6 Sam Hershey District 7 Chris Heagarty District 8 Lindsay Maha ey District 9 Tyler Swanson

Wake School Bonds Vote YES

Wake Tech Bonds Vote YES NC Superior Court District 10A, Seat 1 Paul C. Ridgeway

nc district court District 10A, Seat 3 (unexpired term) Cynthia B. Kenney District 10B, Seat 1 David K. Baker District 10D, Seat 1 Margaret Eagles District 10D, Seat 4 (unexpired term) Rhonda Graham Young District 10E, Seat 1 Sam Hamadani District 10E, Seat 2 Louis Meyer District 10F, Seat 1 Jennifer Bedford

raleigh city council Mayor No Endorsement District A Mary Black-Branch District B Megan Patton District C Corey Branch District D Jane Harrison and Jennifer Truman District E David Knight At Large Jonathan Melton and Stormie Forte or Anne Franklin

City of Raleigh Parks Bonds Vote YES

Wake County

Swing Seats

Four seats in Wake County could determine whether Republicans will recapture a supermajority in the General Assembly.

BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

I

n southern Wake County, it’s easy to see the rural roots of North Carolina. Wide expanses of trees and fields are dotted with simple, one-story homes, churches, and schools. Cruising down Fayetteville Road, I see a lot of pickup trucks, along with a Trump 2024 flag.

North Carolina’s House District 37—which includes Fuquay-Varina and parts of Holly Springs and extends north to Lake Wheeler—is one of four swing districts in Wake County this year.

These are districts where the number of people expected to vote for a Republican is almost equal to the number expected to vote Democrat. The close divide between the two parties will likely result in some close races where the winner is determined by only a few thousand votes.

This could have significant impacts on the balance of power in the state legislature. Republicans are aiming to secure a supermajority in the General Assembly this year so they can override Democratic governor Roy Cooper’s veto. In order to attain a supermajority, the GOP needs to pick up two seats in the senate and three in the house, as well as hold on to the seats they already have. And with issues ranging from access to abortion to public school funding hanging in the balance, these are seats Democrats cannot afford to lose.

The swing districts

In Wake County, House Districts 35 and 37 are two of about 18 races in the state that are genuinely competitive, according to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. Wake County’s two senate swing districts—17 and 18—are even more important, given there are only about eight competitive senate districts statewide.

“The problem for Democrats in North Carolina is the way Democratic coalition is so heavily concentrated within the cities and with the Black vote in college towns,” says Mac McCorkle, a professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.

“These places in Wake County, [like] Wake Forest, these are swing districts where Democrats need to win, and if Republicans are making inroads, that’s a real problem for Democrats.”

House District 35, which includes Wake Forest and parts

of northern Wake County, has become slightly more competitive this year thanks to the 2020 redistricting, says McCorkle. Democrat Terence Everitt, the incumbent, is facing a challenge from Republican Fred Von Canon.

Of course, we’re also keeping a close eye on House District 37, where Republican incumbent Erin Paré is defending her seat against Democratic challenger Christine Kelly. Paré won her seat in 2020 from Democrat Sydney Batch, who is now running in state Senate District 17, with the help of unexpectedly high turnout from Republican voters.

The district, home to mostly white, middle-class families, farmers, and veterans, is the most conservative in Wake County. It’s also the only swing district in Wake to lean toward the GOP, with Republicans making up about 52 percent of the vote share, according to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. Wake County’s three other swing districts all lean Democratic.

“If Everitt loses, it’s gonna be a very bad night for Democrats, and Republicans probably would have gained a supermajority,” McCorkle says. “On the other hand, if Kelly wins in [District] 37 … it’s going to be a surprising good night for Democrats.”

As an incumbent, Paré will likely have an edge in the coming election, according to McCorkle. She may also have an advantage with Joe Biden as president, since midterms are historically unkind to the party that holds the White House.

A Democratic win in District 37 will likely depend on turnout, which could be driven by the issue of abortion rights. McCorkle cites the “Kansas Effect,” where Democratic voters turned out in record numbers to shoot down an abortion ban. Although the vote was expected to be close in the historically red state, Democrats secured existing abortion access in a landslide 59-41 vote.

Unaffiliated voters could also influence the election. Earlier this year, for the first time in history, the number of unaffiliated voters in North Carolina overtook the number of registered Democrats and Republicans. Wake County had one of the largest increases in unaffiliated voters, going

from 159,810 in 2010 to 321,751 in 2022, a jump of more than 100 percent.

Unaffiliated voters aren’t necessarily the same thing as independent or undecided voters, says Asher Hildebrand, an associate professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.

“There are a lot of voters who, for whatever reason, want to be unaffiliated, want to think of themselves as independent, but still very reliably vote for one party or the other,” he says. “That said, independents or unaffiliated voters are statistically more likely to split their tickets and be willing to vote for members of either party.”

Where most voters are likely to vote straight Democrat or Republican all the way down the ticket, independent voters are more likely to cross party lines if they know something particularly good or bad about a candidate, McCorkle says. Polarization is high, but so is the number of independent voters.

“When I see turnout projections as high as they are, that scrambles my confidence that the polling can really pick up all that’s going on,” McCorkle says. “I don’t know whether history is a good predictor. The game’s got to be played out.”

The economy

In District 37, the issues voters care about are the ones people are debating statewide: the economy, education, and abortion.

The higher prices of gas and groceries, brought on by inflation, is on the minds of a lot of voters, according to Hildebrand. The fact that Democrat Joe Biden is the president as the economy worsens has put Democrats in an unenviable position. Paré and other Republicans are attacking their opponents on the issue, saying Democrats support raising taxes and increasing spending.

Kelly, Paré’s opponent, says Republicans are “intentionally misdirecting voters with the long-used claim that Democrats

will irresponsibly spend and tax at the expense of working families. It’s false.” If elected, Kelly promises to raise taxes on “corporate special interests and the ultra-wealthy,” who have enjoyed years of tax breaks thanks to Republicans.

The economy is especially important to David Smith, a Republican who cast his vote in Fuquay-Varina on Friday.

“I’d say I’m more of a fiscal conservative, neutral on social stuff,” Smith says. “The economy is one of my main concerns, the reckless spending.”

Smith’s wife, Sharon, is also worried about how money is being spent. She’s a retired teacher, and she’s concerned that the school board is wasting money, she says.

“The teacher pay is there, but I think there’s a lot of waste. [Administrators] don’t ask teachers what should be in a school building before they build a school building,” Sharon says. “I’ve opened Mills Park Middle School before, it was brand new. We had a list 10 pages long, just from career and technical education, of things that should have been done.”

Sharon is also worried about how the board will spend the COVID relief funds it received after the pandemic.

“A lot of that money they got from COVID, they have to spend it by a certain time, so there’s limits on what they can even do,” she says. “You don’t have time to make a long-term game plan.”

Education

On education, Sharon’s main worry is the learning loss students suffered during the coronavirus pandemic. A recent report from the state Department of Public Instruction shows students are behind in almost every subject, especially math and science.

It’s a practical concern everyone acknowledges, although Democrats and Republicans disagree on what to do about it. One of the linchpins of Kelly’s campaign is her promise to support fully funding public education through the Leandro plan. Kelly talks about closing not only the learning gap but also gaps in social and emotional support.

“We need a nurse in every school. We need access to

health services, and the ratio of 1:2,500 students is just not feasible,” Kelly says. “We know that, emotionally, kids are trying to figure out how to catch up with the isolation of COVID. We know that [the mortality rate for] suicide is now higher than car accidents. It’s a huge problem.”

Paré, on the other hand, has embraced a very different strategy. Her comments on education focus mainly on inflammatory campaign issues like “critical race theory” and “age-innapropriate classroom materials” that include LGBTQ themes and characters. Paré is a devout supporter of the right-wing parental rights movement, which has made discussions of race in classrooms taboo and attempted to remove inclusive books from library shelves.

Unfortunately, this fear-based rhetoric is connecting with some voters. Douglas Hall, 67, says one of the things that brought him out to vote is the “gender issue in schools,” suggesting teachers may be influencing young children to identify as transgender.

“[It’s] the idea that we have books that are available in the libraries at young-level schools that discuss sex. [Children] just don’t need that. That’s up to the parents to teach,” Hall says.

“Then to make such an issue out of what their gender should or shouldn’t be at a young age when they’re confused to begin with. They’re more apt to think, ‘Oh, well, maybe I’m this or that,’ and they’re just not ready to make those decisions at that age.”

Crime

Hall is also worried about increases in crime, which Republicans have blamed on Democrats supportive of the “Defund the Police” movement. One tactic Republicans are using is a tried and true focus on crime and immigration, Hildebrand says. Thinly veiled racist tactics help scare voters and motivate the Republican base.

“There’s a reason that they’re tried and true, because they’ve used them in the past and they’ve been effective in the past,” Hildebrand says.

On gun safety, Kelly and Paré are once again on opposite sides of the spectrum. Where Kelly, supported by Moms Demand Action, has worked to ban the open carry of guns in public parks and government buildings, Paré has voted at least once to repeal the requirement to obtain a permit for pistols.

Ultimately, even though Hall is frustrated with the political divide and partisanship, he’s voting a straight Republican ticket “to make sure there’s all the strength possible in the Republican party to oust this [Cooper] administration,” he says.

Abortion

Likewise, Democrats are expected to turn out in strong numbers to prevent the Republicans from gaining a supermajority. Their number one worry? “The abortion situation,” says Diane Luparello, 74. “If you don’t have a vagina, you should not tell somebody what to do with theirs.”

Luparello was in her forties when abortion was legalized in 1973 through Roe v. Wade. When she heard about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn that right earlier this year, “my stomach sank,” she says.

Although abortion is still legal in North Carolina, Republicans have been clear about their intent to change that if they win a supermajority. Paré, like many of her Republican colleagues, is a supportive of an almost-total abortion ban. In response to a question from The News & Observer, Paré says, “Abortion should be banned starting at some point during the first trimester.”

Kelly, on the other hand, says she will defend abortion rights, describing it as part of a comprehensive health-care plan. Kelly has been endorsed by Pro-Choice North Carolina and Vote Pro-Choice, something Paré has characterized as a negative. Luparello’s feelings are clear, however.

“In my opinion, [the Supreme Court decision] was a giant step backwards,” Luparello says. “I went to high school with a girl who died from a botched, back-street abortion. If abortion had been legal at that time, she would still be alive.”

Northampton

Stars Aligned

With George & Tammy, Chatham County Line goes to Hollywood.

BY SPENCER GRIFFITH music@indyweek.com

The lengthy résumé of venerable Triangle roots act Cha tham County Line includes releasing 10 albums of topnotch string band tunes, penning the unofficial anthem of IBMA’s Raleigh run, and collaborating with the likes of Judy Collins, Steve Martin, and Jonas Fjeld.

Now, they can add another line to that résumé: acting. Earlier this year, the band was cast as musicians in the six-episode George Jones and Tammy Wynette miniseries George & Tammy starring Michael Shannon and Oscar-win ner Jessica Chastain. The show will begin streaming later this year on Paramount+.

While mandolin and fiddle player John Teer jokes that they’ll probably be “just blobs in the background that you won’t be able to see,” Teer—along with singer and guitarist Dave Wilson, bass and pedal steel player Greg Readling, and touring drummer Dan Hall—logged enough background work for eligibility in the Screen Actors Guild.

Ahead of the show’s release, Teer and Wilson spoke with the INDY about their George Jones fandom, how they inhabited their roles as members of The Nashville A-Team, and highlights of their experience on set in Wilmington early this year.

INDY Week: What was your relationship with George Jones and Tammy Wynette’s music before shooting the miniseries?

John Teer: I’ve been a huge George fan for a long time, going back to the late ’90s right before Chatham County Line started. I was in Burgeon when I first heard George Jones, and his voice just completely destroyed me. I thought it was the greatest thing I’d ever heard in my life and became obsessed.

That was before I was really singing, so I didn’t have a singing voice at the time. My buddy had given me all these George Jones cassette tapes, which helped me develop my voice because I would be driving around singing along with George while trying to emulate his style and his phrasing. He was such a big impact on me as a vocal presence—he’s the best country singer there ever was. I really admire what he and Tammy did together throughout their careers, and all the stories were amazing. Once this opportunity came up, I said yes faster than I could think it.

Dave Wilson: George is like an actor when he sings because he’s delivering the story from the perspective of the person in the song, which is a magical quality in a singer. Few singers really have that ability to inhabit the character in the song that’s telling the story, and that’s what you learn from George.

How did this opportunity come up?

DW: Zeke Hutchins, who used to play drums with us on our Electric Holiday tours, manages some big acts now and knows Zach Dawes, who facilitates T Bone Burnett’s television work and reached out to Zeke looking for musicians in the area. T Bone’s a realist and wants real musicians to play musicians on film and TV because they understand how to inhabit the physicality and the mannerisms and can mime the parts a lot better than an actor.

Can you talk about your roles?

JT: We were cast as The [Nashville] A-Team, and they did a re-creation of the Quonset Hut Studio that was pretty dead-on accurate to what it looked like back in the day. Inhabiting these all-star players and learning about their history, along with the history of the Quonset Hut and the Nashville scene, was so cool. I played Harold Bradley and Dave played Pig Robbins. Our touring drummer, Dan Hall, played Buddy Harman, then Dennis Crouch played Bob Moore and Russ Pahl played Pete Drake. So on the show, every time George and Tammy go into the studio to record, we’re in the background.

DW: I’m a guitar player and barely know how to play piano, but I was playing the role of one of the world’s greatest country piano players, who was also blind, so I had a challenge. It was actually pretty fun because it kept me

busy for a while. I spent hours playing along with the tracks and trying to do it so that I could play them blindfolded.

JT: Every take, Jessica and Michael would be singing live, but we had these tiny earpieces to listen to the track and would mime playing along as lightly as possible while still looking like we were really playing. I spent hours really diving deep to make sure it was spot-on with the recording every time there was a chord change.

What was the most interesting part about filming?

JT: My little corner of the studio set was the closest to the lead actors, so it was amazing to have this frontrow seat to these superstars singing and acting, like when George was drunk or coked up in the ’70s and Michael embraced that dark period, it was emotional. There was a cool moment between takes when Michael came over and we started messing around on guitar and played an impromptu version of The Rolling Stones’ “Dead Flowers”—that was a highlight.

Just being on set and seeing everything behind the scenes to make a show was fucking fascinating to me. I loved seeing that process and learning about it.

DW: I’ll never talk smack about an actor ever again. It’s a really difficult job and they have to work 15-hour days, then the hardest part is that they go from sitting around waiting on a camera or some technical stuff to some crazy emotional part of their inner being as soon as someone says “action.” The actors will say they know when they made a good mistake that it’s the take [they’ll use] because it just makes it more real. There’s so much acting you watch on television but getting to see the happy accidents that occur—a lot like musicians in the studio—those little accidents are kind of the best part. W

Chatham County County Line on the set of George & Tammy PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS

BOOKS PRESENTS TRACY DEONN

11/9 ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS EUGENE MIRMAN

11/12 PHILLIP PHILLIPS W/ AMERICAN AUTHORS

11/13 BE GOOD TO YOURSELF PRESENTS ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO ALL STAR BAND

JONATHAN BYRD + JESS KLEIN

11/17 SENSES FAIL W/ MAGNOLIA PARK, CAN'T SWIM FR 11/18 THE STEWS

11/19 CARBON LEAF W/ CARRIE WELLING SU 11/20 MEECHY DARKO FR 11/25 CRAZY CHESTER (LAST WALTZ TRIBUTE) W/ SCHOOL OF ROCK CH HOUSE BAND SU 11/27 THE MENZINGERS: ON THE IMPOSSIBLE PAST 10 YR ANNIVERSARY TOUR W/ TOUCHE AMORE, SCREAMING FEMALES

TH 12/1 LESS THAN JAKE W/ CLIFFDIVE, KEEP FLYING

FR 12/2 VIOLET BELL ALBUM RELEASE SHOW W/ ALLISON DEGROOT & TATIANA

SA 12/10 SOUTHERN CULTURE ON THE SKIDS

TU 12/13 THE HAPPY FITS WE 12/14 MCLUSKY TH 12/15 TURNOVER

FR 12/16 5YRS OF GET SAD Y'ALL: EMO POP PUNK PARTY!

FR 1/6/23 BILLY PRINE AND THE PRINE TIME BAND PRESENT: SONGS OF JOHN PRINE

SA 1/14/23 MAGIC CITY HIPPIES W/ CAPYAC

FR 1/20/23 TOWN MOUNTAIN FR 1/27/23 RUBBLEBUCKET

TU 2/1/23 SUKI WATERHOUSE

WE 2/9/23 WARREN ZEIDERS (ON SALE 11/4) SA 2/11/23 KIMBRA W/ TEI SHI (ON SALE 11/4) FR 2/17/23 ADAM MELCHOR WE 2/25/23 WEYES BLOOD MO 2/27/23 JUNIOR BOYS WE 3/22/23 WHITE REAPER W/ MILITARIE GUN, MAMALARKY TU 3/28/23 IBEYI (RESCHEDULED)

WE 3/29/23 CRANK IT LOUD PRESENTS OUR LAST NIGHT W/ FAME ON FIRE MO 4/3/23 JAWNY W/ WALLICE SU 4/16/23 CAROLINE ROSE TU 5/9/23 HOODOO GURUS 6/29/23 EELS

WE 11/9 LEVEN KALI

TH 11/10 THE RED PEARS

SA 11/12 BIG POOH (CANCELLED)

SU 11/13 THE BREVET MO 11/14 FIELD MEDIC W/ SADURN

TU 11/15 DON DIXON

WE 11/16 COURTNEY MARIE ANDREWS

TH 11/17 STOP

Production Mode

How local producer collective The Genius Party brings people together.

BY KYESHA JENNINGS arts@indyweek.com

In the world of hip-hop, North Carolina might seem a geographical outlier, fringe to major urban hip-hop centers like New York City and Atlanta.

But the broad talent that exists across our state is remarkable. And while the focus and attention are often on the rappers with impressive lyrical abilities or those who have gained mainstream success, it’s the producers whose talents shape our sound and scene.

Here in the Triangle area, we’ve watched The Soul Council flourish both together and independently. The Jamla-signed col lective of producers has contributed soul ful sample-filled beats to a wide range of artists including Rapsody, Skyzoo, and Reu ben Vincent. And then there’s Raund Haus, a collective of instrumental hip-hop and electronic beat makers, who garnered a large following after curating a niche scene for producers and creatives. Their efforts landed them a partnership with Redeye Worldwide that birthed the collective’s label Raund Haus Records. In the past few years, we’ve also seen an increase in musi cal partnerships from producer collectives like Pelham and Junior, The Mercenaries, FRGN-SPCMN, and The Genius Party.

Pelham and Junior is made up of artist/ producer Pat Junior and multi-instrumen talist musician Justin Pelham. The Merce naries most recently landed a placement on Rapper Big Pooh and Jeezy’s latest proj

ect and are signed to Miami-based produc tion legends Cool and Dre’s Epidemic Music Group. Made up of Ronnie Belle and André Jones, FRGN-SPCMN has landed place ments for Raleigh’s own Ace Henny, TDE’s Lance Skiiiwalker, and Issa Rae’s Insecure Season 5 soundtrack.

Raleigh’s newest producer collective, The Genius Party, is made up of found ing members Ampersand, Strizzy, Millie Vaughn, and Ace Dizzy Flow. Founded in January 2021 via a group chat, the collec tive’s goal is to cultivate a collaborative community for North Carolina producers where producers can showcase their beat making abilities and network.

INDY Week: How did the idea of The Genius Party come together?

Ampersand: The idea came about when I was living in Oakland, California. I was just trying to find pockets of other producers. I started meeting other people and began thinking to myself, “Why isn’t anybody coming together and freely collaborating?”

We’ve always had an issue with uniting the music scene here, which doesn’t really make it much of a music scene at all. You have your boom-bap cliques and you have your trap cliques. R&B is probably one of the stron gest communities out in North Carolina now. So, I thought of this idea just to bring more people together. Collaboration and commu

nity are how we grow. The mission of The Genius Party is to create, collaborate, and build up the producer culture in Raleigh.

Strizzy: When Ampersand told me about his idea, I saw the vision as far as, like, bridging the gap within the hip-hop community. We can all come together. It’s a lot of artists out here that just go on YouTube and pick out random beats when there’s massive talent right here in the city. Why not just keep it all homegrown? It’s all about collaboration and creativity for us.

What are the goals of The Genius Party?

Ace Dizzy: Without the community, what is The Genius Party? We want to continue to create spaces where people can make connections to collaborate together. So far, our Genius Parties, which are artists and producer showcases, have been successful. We want to continue to curate live events that connect talented creatives across North Carolina. We would also like to get involved with North Carolina’s public school system. It would be an honor to work with at-risk youth who don’t really have much to keep them entertained and provide them with certain skills that they can, you know, build upon, whether it’s, like, music, videography, crypto, currency, just anything that’s going to add to the kid’s lives.

Millie Vaughn: I’d like to add that we are an online source for positive feedback

for any producer who would like to share their content online. We have launched The Genius Party Radio, a YouTube series where producers are allotted 45 minutes to showcase their beats, and we provide the background visuals.

What hip-hop collectives have inspired you, either collectively or even individually?

Mille Vaughn: The Beat Club. They’re a collective of producers who are from Boston, and their mission is very similar to ours—give producers a platform to shine.

Ampersand: I would start off by saying that Young Guru once said, “The best music that is ever made, is made by a small pocket of people in the community, in the same building, coming together with the same mind-set.” So I would say definitely the Justice League and Wu-Tang.

Strizzy: I’m a fan of Cypher Univercity. I kind of feel like we are the production version of what they built.

Where can people follow you guys or join the community?

Ampersand: The Genius Party is on all social media platforms: Facebook, Insta gram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube. We have an active group on Facebook where we are building a thriving producer community for North Carolina. W

ILLUSTRATION BY JON FULLER

Branching Out

Durham-based quartet Dreamroot embraces the possibilities of studio production on Leaf, and prolific deejay Treee City releases Good Job, a full-length debut with a vivid emotional center.

BY DAN RUCCIA AND BRIAN HOWE music@indyweek.com

There’s a moment at the beginning of “Get Better,” the fifth track on Dream root’s second album, Leaf, that seems to neatly encapsulate the record’s overall mood. Over a bed of warm, washed-out synths, keyboardist Joe MacPhail rolls a gentle four-chord progression on what sounds like a Fender Rhodes. Drummer Theous Jones lays down the barest skel eton of a beat while Lynn Grissett layers down multiple, burbling trumpet lines that seem to echo to infinity. After about 30 seconds, Ittai Korman brings in a thick, R&B bass line and for a moment, the song snaps into gear.

But the draw of that reverberating sta sis, that feeling of almost pure vibes, proves too strong to resist, and the band returns to it often throughout the album’s six songs.

Unlike on their last album, 2020’s Phases, the Durham-based quartet seem to fully embrace the possibilities of studio production here. Everything is built in lay ers, something that Grissett in particular takes full advantage of. Now the group’s sole horn player, he plays both trumpet and saxophone, sometimes adding muted trumpet countermelodies; sometimes recreating the tight, ebullient charts he played as part of the New Power Gener ation; and sometimes constructing dia logues with himself. The layer from other band members is a little more subtle—an extra bowed bass line here, an extra synth pad there—but the overall effect is to make their sound that much more capacious than before. Even the songs where they act as a “traditional” jazz combo hide little studio flourishes here and there.

What’s more surprising is that they man age to do all of this while still maintaining the logic of a four-minute pop song. Each tune is crisply constructed and easy to fol low, and Grissett’s and Jones’s solos are both concise and melodic. It’s an impres sive combination, though I sometimes wish they would push on the possibili ties of their various moods a little harder and maybe gesture more toward the weird jazz/pop/funk eclecticism of folks like Rob ert Glasper or Thundercat.

As with their last album, they’re still occasionally closer to background music than I’d like, but they’re a bit farther from that line than before, and the choice to go fully instrumental here serves them well. I’ll be curious to see how they continue to develop and expand their sound going forward. —D.R.

There are some genre traits that Durham’s Patrick Phelps-McKeown, who deejays and produces electronic music as Treee City, seems to especially like: the soft, soulful contours of deep house and the hard, threshing edges of techno, the tricky internal time of drum ‘n’ bass and the rising terraces of trance.

But the qualities that have devel oped in his prior EPs and singles—his fluid blend of these styles and others; his fine balance of detailed grooves, riffy bass, and expansive free expression; his big crayon box of synths and virtual instruments; and his collaborative spir it—converge into something special and complete on his first full-length album, which has a release party at the Pinhook on November 4 and comes out on Raund Haus a week later.

Though it’s filled with dance-floor heaters, Good Job is atmospheric enough to satisfy living-room dwellers too. The only thing wrong with the gorgeous, grip ping, beatless opener, “In Media Res,” is its copy-editor-taunting title (stet!); it’s like one of those Burial songs that verge on musique concrète, all dark running water, moaning texture, and string-quartet bass.

On “Feel That,” a blossoming pia no-house bouncer with some dubstep aerobics cinching the middle, Treee chops a line from a minor late ’90s house hit into a chanting refrain: “If you feel that you can’t take no more.” “I get up,” insists the vocal sample on the next song, “Every Day,” a molten anthem that would go well with the “Sandstorm” video. “I work hard.”

These sparing words and others lend the record its vivid emotional center of pressed but inspired resilience.

Then come the collabs: “Your Face,” with Funkleberry and Chris Martz, is gleamy R&B, like a prelapsarian James Blake or a warmer Andy Stott; “Running at the Speed of Light,” with PlayPlay, is a neon-lined night ride out of Tron There are practically fucking guitar solos in “Home Now,” the dexterous FootRock et feature, and this is skipping over a massive, jazzy, cosmic solo production, “Moon Bounce.”

By the time you’re carving the crys talline surf of “Echo Beach,” late in the album, you realize its restless motivation isn’t going to flag. That title is literal and too modest; Treee has been putting in work. —B.H. W

DREAMROOT: LEAF | HHH1/2 [Self-released; October 28]

TREEE CITY: GOOD JOB | HHHH1/2 [Raund Haus; November 11]

STAG E

Nov. 3-13 | bulldogdurham.org

Wide Range

A preview of Bulldog Ensemble Theater’s The Garbologists and a review of Theatre Raleigh’s dazzling Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.

BY BYRON WOODS arts@indyweek.com

Say you know your mail carrier, your gro cer, or the farmer at the local farmers’ market well enough to have a conversation with them.

Odds are you don’t have the same rela tionship with the sanitation workers who take away your garbage and recycling each week. Among the essential labor required to keep a community or a civilization viable, sanitation is bedrock. It’s also undeniably a site for social stigma as well.

But the depth of the divisions among dif ferent races, genders, and classes in our cul ture are reexamined when a Columbia Uni versity graduate takes a job on a New York garbage truck in The Garbologists. When it opens this weekend, the latest work from Bulldog Ensemble Theater will be the first show in the intimate new theater that Met tlesome, the longtime Durham comedy collective, has built in Golden Belt’s Ware house building, behind Hi-Wire Brewing.

In the dramatic comedy, two characters who in most other circumstances would have been hard-pressed to spend five min utes in each other’s company are forced to work through their differences in real-time, in the cab of a 19-ton Mack truck as it trun dles the streets of Manhattan at six a.m. on the coldest mornings of the year.

Things have a way of getting pretty real pretty fast in a gig like that.

Marlowe’s a taciturn Black woman from a wealthy, well-educated family with a gradu ate degree in art history. For some reason, she’s choosing to be here, as a rookie being grudgingly shown the ropes by Danny, a white, rough-edged, blue-collar worker with street savvy, what playwright Lindsay Joelle

terms run-of-the-mill machismo, and little in the way of emotional filtration.

“They’re coming from completely dif ferent worlds,” says Mettlesome comedi an and actor Lauren Foster-Lee, who plays Marlowe. “But their meeting ground opens when honesty starts to come in.”

“I like plays about people who make the choice to let other people into their lives,” says director Marshall Botvinick. For him, The Garbologists “is about two people who make kind of an unexpected choice to let the other one in.”

Coming out of the pandemic, Botvinick notes that people in white-collar profes sions “are actually living much more siloed existences. The ways we’re able to curate the very limited number of people we inter act with minimizes the range of possible experiences we can encounter.”

While The Garbologists doesn’t paper over the profound differences between the odd couple, “it also doesn’t see difference as an insurmountable barrier to relationship and human connection,” Botvinick says. “It’s important that two people can become a part of each other’s lives by listening to each other and doing each other kindness es. Coming out of so much isolation during the pandemic, that kind of story feels right.”

I t takes chutzpah to state your script’s short suit in the opening moments of a show. Damned if that doesn’t work, for the most part, though, in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, the brisk, kinetic, and sprawling 2016 Broadway musical that represents a high-water mark not only in Theatre Raleigh’s current season but in the

company’s 17-year history.

David Toole’s first words as the dour Pierre and a poignant, silent, cirque-tinged tableau set up the central separation of sweethearts Natasha and Andrey during the French Invasion of 1812. Immediately after that, a boisterous company of char acters from various strata of Russian soci ety spills from the promenades and plat forms of Benedict Fancy’s Cyrillic-inscribed cabaret set. Under Tim Seib’s irrepressible direction, they not only front-load 10 of the show’s characters but help us remem ber them through stacked one-line descrip tions. The result is raucous and fun.

During the initial data dump, the chorus cheerfully advises us to keep our playbills close: “Gonna have to study up a little bit / If you want to keep with the plot / Cuz it’s a compli cated Russian novel / … So look it up in your program / We’d appreciate it, thanks a lot!”

But David Malloy’s sung-through semi-op era libretto, which packs in some 70 pages of Tolstoy’s War and Peace in a little under two hours, doesn’t just omit details that are included in the printed show notes. It also shorts, drastically in places, the backsto ries and character development needed for us to key into its central, title characters.

Malloy’s sketchbook approach works well in supporting characters’ numbers like “The Private and Intimate Life of the House,” detailing the miseries of dutiful daughter Mary (Rebekah Holland) with the wretched

Prince Andrey Bolkonsky (Derek Robinson), and the hellzapoppin act 2 showcase devot ed to the ne’er-do-well Balaga (Tedd Szeto).

To varying degrees, this choice leaves Pierre’s, Andrey’s, and Natasha’s charac ters underfunded. Toole and Robinson struggle to convey their characters’ pasts and their major changes in the present in the brief, thin lyrics of their songs. Manna Nichols is more successful in her numbers as the overprotected young woman from the provinces foolishly lets loose in the predatory society of Moscow.

Still, Malloy, Seib, and choreographer Lisette Glodowski succeed in keeping us swept up in the panoramic whirl of this world, and the dazzling, ever-shifting influ ences in an imaginative electropop opera score that careens from Russian folk song through klezmer, punk, and club music before doubling back to Broadway ballads.

Joanna Li’s superb musical direction over came set logistics that split the band in two, with actor/musicians adding from spots in the audience and on stage. With that many moving parts, amazing sound designer Eric Alexander Collins faced a major challenge in keeping vocalists always audible.

The result? A professional-grade produc tion of an entertaining and supremely dif ficult work, one that gives us a glimpse of what the future of musical theater—and achievement in theater in this region— might look like. See it before it closes. W

Tedd Szeto and ensemble in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 PHOTO COURTESY OF THEATRE RALEIGH

THE GARBOLOGISTS

Bulldog Ensemble Theater | Mettlesome | Golden Belt, Durham

NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 | HHHH1/2 Theatre Raleigh Through Nov. 6 | theatreraleigh.com

New Horizons

Talking ‘90s country music videos and guardian angels with Jess Williamson, one-half of the spirited, sure-footed duo Plains.

BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com

When the musicians Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) and Jess Williamson announced this past summer that they’d joined forces as country music duo Plains, it was news that just made gut-level sense, as if it had always been meant to be so. With voices twining in distinctive harmonies— waltzy and twangy, earthy and diaphanous— the pair evokes the familiar, storied sound of decades ago, when Wynonna Judd, Martina McBride, and Shania Twain ruled supreme. Not coincidentally, that era was also when Crutchfield and Williamson, who grew up in Alabama and Texas, respective ly, were first falling in love with music, in adolescence, before setting out to build impressive careers in indie-rock. Plains—a one-off collaboration, the pair says—rep resents a spirited, surefooted reentry into the genre, a door creaked wide open to the plains and horizon beyond.

Ahead of the band’s performance at the Haw River Ballroom, where both Crutch field and Williamson have performed as solo artists, INDY Week spoke with Wil liamson about ’90s music videos, perform ing as a duo, and finding a way back into country music. This interview has been edit ed and condensed for clarity; a longer ver sion is available online.

INDY WEEK: Now that you’ve been on the road for a few weeks, what’s it like performing as a duo?

JESS WILLIAMSON: It’s so much fun. Going into this tour, me and Katie had the intention of having the shows feel light and fun like a party. The nature of it being a

collaboration inherently takes some of the pressure off.

How did you choose the album name I Walked with You a Ways?

Well, the album name is the name of the last song. I wrote that song and knew it was going to be on the record, and it was Katie’s idea—she was like, “What if we name the album I Walked with You a Ways?” and I loved it. It makes so much sense with the tenor of the album. It’s a lot about leaving, it’s about things not working out and kind of trusting yourself.

Ending the album with that song and titling the record leaves it on a positive note, because that song is about how not everyone is going to stay in your life, but that doesn’t mean it’s a mistake. We learn and grow from those people that come in and out of our lives, and they’re there for a reason.

Something I haven’t gotten to talk about yet in an interview is that the song is inspired by a labyrinth in Santa Fe. There’s this church with a labyrinth in front of it, [and] there’s a starting point and you go all around it. It’s a walking meditation, and you end at the center and it speaks metaphori cally to the path of life, how you can think you’re getting close to your destination but you veer seemingly off course and then end up right where you’re supposed to be.

I feel like the music video y’all did for “Abilene” speaks to that—you and Katie are both in it like background angels. What was the vision for that video?

We were inspired by ’90s country music videos, where you see the story being acted out, like in the music video for “Goodbye Earl” that The Chicks did. The band is just there singing, and being into it, but you also see this other story unfold. And what you picked up on, of us being these guardian angels watching everything go down, really feeling for the central character and hav ing her back—that was absolutely the vibe.

How did you get connected to Adriene Mishler [who stars in the “Abilene” video]?

She’s a good friend of mine. I lived in Aus tin for like a decade—that’s my hometown and where I started to play music in a seri ous way. Adriene and I became friends, and not only are we good friends but I do her other videos all the time. And when we were recording the album, I was doing her yoga videos every day.

It’s funny because, especially with the pandemic, she’s been like a guardian angel for other people with her yoga videos.

I love that. And she cried real tears when we were shooting—that’s how good she is.

What was the experience of writing more character-driven songs?

It was really freeing. In the past, when I’ve been writing for my own records, I get hung

up on keeping the details aligned with what really happened. But when I was writing this with Katie, the details of our individu al lives were less important than speaking to a greater truth of what happened, that anyone can connect to.

“Abilene” is a great example because it is my story; it’s something I lived through. But the details have changed. I found out that “Abilene” means “city of the plains,” and I just love the way that it sounds. My story happened in a different small town in Texas, and some of the details are different, but in writing this song I thought, “What can I do with my story to make it feel universal but also special?”

You and Katie have talked about growing up with country music. What drew you back into it?

That’s such a good question—I think it was gradual. The experience of making my last record, Sorceress, was the first time I leaned into country textures. There’s a lot of pedal steel on it, for example. I felt like I had unfin ished business. I had a blast incorporating more country sounds, even just in the way I was writing it. I was thinking that the next album I wrote would go even farther in that direction, and then when Katie and I started talking about working together, it felt like, “OK, this is a chance to go all the way in.” W

PLAINS The Haw River Ballroom | Monday, Nov. 7, 8 p.m.

Plains bandmates Jess Williamson and Katie Crutchfield

PHOTO BY MOLLY MATALON

C U LT U R E CA L E N DA R

Please check with local venues for their health and safety protocols.

music

Rock Eupora Band $10. Sun, Nov. 6, 8 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Shane Smith and the Saints $21. Sun, Nov. 6, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Strawberry Runners $10. Sun, Nov. 6, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Tigers Jaw $22. Mon, Nov. 7, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Blends with Friends (Open Decks) Wed, Nov. 2, 6 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Evolution of American Music with Jonathan Blanchard $8. Wed, Nov. 2, 9:45 and 11:20 a.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

gloomy june / Maxine Eloi / Fruit Snack $10. Wed, Nov. 2, 7 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

Russian Circles $20. Wed, Nov. 2, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Tropical Fuck Storm SOLD OUT. Wed, Nov. 2, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Michael Manring / Michael Gulezian / Red Nucleus $35. Thurs, Nov. 2, 7 p.m. The Eno House, Hillsborough.

Reba McEntire $88+. Thurs, Nov. 3, 7:30 p.m. PNC Arena, Raleigh.

Scowl $15. Thurs, Nov. 3, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham. Superorganism $22. Thurs, Nov. 3, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

¡Tumbao! $12. Thurs, Nov. 3, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Cosmic Charlie $18. Fri, Nov. 4, 9 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Isaac Hadden Organ Trio $10. Fri, Nov. 4, 7 p.m. Transfer Food Co. Food Hall Ballroom, Raleigh.

Jim Ketch Swingtet $25. Fri, Nov. 4, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Matthew Shipp, Ivo Perelman, Jeff Cosgrove Trio $20. Fri, Nov. 4, 7:30 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

Monica & Friends $96+. Fri, Nov. 4, 8 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

NNAMDÏ $15. Fri, Nov. 4, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

North Carolina Symphony: Barber Violin Concerto $22+. Nov. 4-5, 8 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Jooselord $20. Sat, Nov. 5, 7 p.m. Transfer Food Co. Food Hall Ballroom, Raleigh.

Kate McGarry and Keith Ganz $25. Sat, Nov. 5, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Maze and Frankie Beverly Live In Concert $113+. Sat, Nov. 5, 7 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas $27. Sun, Nov. 6, 8 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

Eastside Bluegrass Sun, Nov. 6, 4 p.m. Bond Brothers Eastside, Cary.

The Legendary Pink Dots $20. Sun, Nov. 6, 8:30 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Michael W. Smith: The WayMaker Tour $30+. Sun, Nov. 6, 7:30 p.m. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Oso Oso $19. Sun, Nov. 6, 8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Sing Out NC: A Concert for Reproductive Rights hosted by Tift Merritt $25+. Sun, Nov. 6, 5 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Yard, Carrboro.

A Tribute to Miles Davis and the Jazz Trumpet Greats $20. Sun, Nov. 6, 3 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

Plains $27. Mon, Nov. 7, 8 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.

Mysti Mayhem Tues, Nov. 8, 7 p.m. The Oak House, Durham.

Stan Comer Tues, Nov. 8, 7 p.m. Imbibe, Chapel Hill.

Tonstartssbandht $15. Tues, Nov. 8, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Reba McEntire performs at PNC Arena on Thursday, November 3.

PHOTO COURTESY OF VENUE

NNAMDÏ performs at the Pinhook on Friday, November 4.

PHOTO COURTESY OF VENUE

stage

Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 $35. Oct. 26–Nov. 6, various times. Theatre Raleigh Arts Center, Raleigh.

Dear Evan Hansen $45+. Nov. 1-6, various times. DPAC, Durham.

The Garbologists $20. Nov. 3-13, various times. Golden Belt Campus, Durham.

BIG BEATS Thurs, Nov. 3, 6 and 7 p.m. The Nasher, Durham.

Steel Magnolias $70+. Nov. 4-13, various times. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Beth Stelling $30. Fri, Nov. 4, 9 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

The Samhain Shimmy: Burlesque and Variety Show $15. Sat, Nov. 5, 7:30 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

screen

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla $8. Wed, Nov. 2, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Duran Duran: A Hollywood High $12. Thurs, Nov. 3, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Sundance Institute: Indigenous Short Film Tour $6. Thurs, Nov. 3, 7 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

Foul Play and What’s Up, Doc? $10. Fri, Nov. 4, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Twilight All Night $12. Fri, Nov. 4, 5 p.m. Varsity Theatre, Chapel Hill.

art

Away for the Day: Serritella Studio Tour $12. Thurs, Nov. 3, 10 a.m. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. Artist in Residence Gallery Talk: JP Jermaine Powell Sat, Nov. 5, 2 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh.

Durham Murals by Bike Tour Sat, Nov. 5, 10 a.m. Major the Bull Sculpture, Durham.

Pre-order upcoming books

Madeline Miller, Galatea: A Short Story

Steve Martin, Number One is Walking

Misty Copeland, Wind at My Back

Billy Collins, Musical Tables

Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry

page

William deBuys: The Trail to Kanjiroba Thurs, Nov. 3, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Janet Evanovich: Going Rogue Tues, Nov. 8, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Tracy Deonn: Bloodmarked SOLD OUT. Tues, Nov. 8, 5:30 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

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“Art Title” by Eric Serritella is currently on view at Ackland Art Museum in the exhibition Away for the Day: Serritella Studio Tour. PHOTO COURTESY OF VENUE