12-16-15 issue by Indy Week

durhamâ&#x20AC;˘chapel hill 12|16|15

After two guards were fired for alleged abuse, former Durham County jail inmates protest what they call horrid conditions. By Billy Ball p.12

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

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2015

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DURHAM

INSIDE 22

NEWS & COLUMNS 5

TRIANGULATOR: Save The Pinhook, Durham’s search for a new police chief continues, and Raleigh’s bike-share program may finally be happening NEWS: N.C. Democrats’ road to relevance runs straight through Wake County NEWS: PPP director Tom Jensen dishes on

a weird election season 10

A R T S , C U LT U R E , F O O D & M U S I C 17

THEATER REVIEWS: The Wiz and

WHERE WE’LL BE: The best arts and

ARTS CALENDAR

FILM: Which of the Triangle’s new upscale

FILM CALENDAR

The INDY’s Act Now and Food/Farmers Markets calendars can be found at indyweek.com.

Chapel Hill’s favorite Mexican restaurant now has a second location!

TRADITIONAL MEXICAN FAVORITES M ALL ABCS M CATERING CHAPEL HILL 227 S. Elliott Rd. • 919.969.8750 M CARRBORO Hwy 55, Suite FF • 919.903.9919

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

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Insult and injury

Land of nog Outside of Hillsborough, Maple View Farm makes the Triangle’s eggnog—plus, what local chefs do with it

culture events of the week

into the pie-making business cinemas has the most panache for your extra cash?

CALENDARS & EVENTS

MUSIC CALENDAR

INDYweek.com

After two guards were fired over allegations of abuse, former Durham County jail inmates protest the conditions By Billy Ball

DANCE: Berlin and Durham connect at the

FOOD: How cancer led one Durham chef

Carrack Modern Art

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F E AT U R E S

MUSIC: After an extended but

Grounded in Raleigh

CITIZEN: Teenagers help underprivileged

preschoolers in Southeast Raleigh, and Bob Geary gets all the feels

MUSIC: With one of the area’s best indie

unavoidable break, Naked Gods returns with an excellent LP 28

CHAPEL HILL

VOLUME 32 NUMBER 50

rock records this year, The Charming Youngsters should stick around 25

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Everything all at once On burnthemasters, Housefire delivers big, breaking bits

By Grayson Haver Currin

The Charming Youngsters. See story, p. 22.

Making the play

PHOTO BY JEREMY M. LANGE

How will new artistic director Vivienne Benesch change PlayMakers? By Byron Woods

On the cover: ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS WILLIAMS The INDY’s Act Now and Food/Farmers Markets calendars can be found at indyweek.com.

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back talk

Refund, please

The new North Carolina logo with the tree looks like an unsuccessful high-school art project (Triangulator, Dec. 9). The capital N and C are just plain awful. No competent typographer would distort those letters like that. And as for the tree, take a look at the Stanford University logo. Looks pretty similar to me. Four hundred and fifty thousand dollars? Maybe the state can get its money back. John Fitz

First draft

The [logo’s] gradient is too distracting and the proportions are uneven (Triangulator, Dec. 9). When I first design a logo, I take everything the client says they’d like represented and try to fit it in there, just to get an idea of my options. This feels like that, a first draft, just something put together to get things started. Which is sad because it has the makings of a great logo. Cori Cartwright, via Facebook

GLAD Study

The Frohlich Lab at UNC-Chapel Hill is looking for individuals who would be interested in participating in a clinical research study. This study is testing the effect of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) on mood symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder. Transcranial current stimulation is a technique that delivers a very weak current to the scalp. Treatment has been well tolerated with no serious side-effects reported. This intervention is aimed at restoring normal brain activity and function which may reduce mood symptoms experienced with Major Depressive Disorder. We are looking for individuals between the ages of 18 and 65, diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder currently not taking benzodiazepines or antiepileptic drugs. You can earn a total of $280 for completing this study. If you are interested in learning more, contact our study coordinator at: courtney_lugo@med.unc.edu Or call us at (919)962-5271

Something’s missing

A gradient, three fonts, a tagline and three graphic elements (Triangulator, Dec. 9). They forgot the kitchen sink. Sarah Herr, via Facebook

Dull, crammed, unattractive

I saw [the logo] on a billboard near Wilkesboro yesterday. It is dull-colored, too jammed together and not attractive at all (Triangulator, Dec. 9). The font is too thick and the tree in the middle is disproportionate. Had I not already seen it on the Internet last week, I doubt I would have known exactly what it was. And I was not speeding, so I got as good a look as anyone there would have. I have no art degree, but I could have managed to get a better job done for $1.5 million [the cost of the promotional campaign]. I support promoting the state and grew up in the tourist business. This does nothing for us. Bill Bush, via Facebook

Open-ended

“Nothing” refers to raises for state employees and experienced school teachers (Triangulator, Dec. 9). “Compares” is open-

ended. North Carolina could compare favorably or unfavorably, as in Nothing Compares with being ranked 46th in the nation in teacher pay. Dave Connelly, via indyweek.com

Hate mongers

I was at this [Donald Trump] rally as well (Citizen, Dec. 9). I met plenty of protesters who were awesome people. People drove by us calling us n***ers. People barred me from entering and called me a terrorist. Trump is a hate monger and so is his crowd. Galo Balbuena, via indyweek.com

Spoiling for a fight

When someone shows up spoiling for a fight—including in that quest verbal jousting and flipping the bird, and then gets punched—I am not too concerned one way or the other (Citizen, Dec. 9). Jes was bruised but nothing broken; that is fine, she egged it on and a fist flew. Oh well. The cops did a good job by not arresting anyone, showing wise discretion and judgment in my view. After all, it is a bit unseemly to start a fracas and then whine about getting hurt in the aftermath. But it was kind of entertaining , so I don’t mind seeing it happen again. But we are going to have to see people bring a whole lot more than this to stop The Donald. ProudlyUnaffiliated, via indyweek.com

Trump is different

I was interruption no. 6, and I would never normally protest at a political rally for a candidate just because I don’t agree with what they are saying (Citizen, Dec. 9). What Donald Trump is promoting is different. Good people cannot stay silent in the face of this fascist rhetoric. This rhetoric is made even more dangerous because of Trump’s push for a very active gun culture that offers Second Amendment solutions. The people in the arena were so angry and filled with hate. I worry for the safety of any of the groups that Trump is targeting. This is not the kind of America I want to live in. I proudly held up my sign that said “Say No to Hate— Dump Trump,” and I would do it again. rcerese, via indyweek.com

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

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Raleigh Cary Durham Chapel Hill A ZM INDY, INC. COMPANY PUBLISHER Susan Harper

EDITORIAL

EDITOR IN CHIEF Jeffrey C. Billman MANAGING+MUSIC EDITOR

Grayson Haver Currin

ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR Brian Howe STAFF WRITERS

Billy Ball, David Hudnall, Jane Porter CALENDAR EDITOR Allison Hussey COPY EDITOR David Klein STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS

Alex Boerner, Jeremy M. Lange OPINION Bob Geary THEATER AND DANCE COLUMNIST Byron Woods VISUAL ART COLUMNIST Chris Vitiello CHIEF CONTRIBUTORS

Spencer Griffith, Corbie Hill, David Klein, Jordan Lawrence, Craig D. Lindsey, Jill Warren Lucas, Glenn McDonald, Neil Morris, Sylvia Pfeiffenberger, Bryan C. Reed, V. Cullum Rogers, David A. Ross, Dan Schram, Zack Smith, Eric Tullis

ART+DESIGN

PRODUCTION MANAGER Skillet Gilmore ART DIRECTOR Maxine Mills GRAPHIC DESIGNER Christopher Williams

OPERATIONS

BUSINESS MANAGER Alex Rogers WEB CONTENT MANAGER Reed Benjamin OFFICE MANAGER William Kumpf

CIRCULATION

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Brenna Berry-Stewart DISTRIBUTION: Joseph Lizana, Anne Roux,

Richard David Lee, James Maness, Laura Bass, Jeff Prince, JC Lacroix, Gloria McNair, David Cameron, Chris Taylor, Timm Shaw, Freddie Simons

ADVERTISING

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Ruth Gierisch SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Dara Shain ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

Kellie Allen, Ele Roberts, Sarah Schmader CLASSIFIEDS SALES MANAGER Leslie Land P.O. Box 1772 • Durham, N.C. 27702 201 W. Main St., Suite 101 • Durham, N.C. 27701 919-286-1972 709 W. Jones St. • Raleigh, N.C. 27605 • 919-832-8774 Email addresses: first initial[no space]last name@indyweek.com

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triangulator

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

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SAVE THE PINHOOK!

Also: The search for Durham’s next police chief, and Raleigh’s bike share might actually, finally happen B Y GRAYSON HAVER CURRIN, DAVID HUDNALL AND JANE PORTER

or seven years, THE PINHOOK has ranked among the Triangle’s premier rock clubs and community spaces, a place that staked its claim before downtown Durham was cool—or expensive. But last Friday, co-founder KYM REGISTER and her staff posted an unexpected plea on the crowdfunding website Fundly: They need to raise $80,000 to pay back the state of North Carolina for missed sales taxes. And they need to do it soon. “I am hopeful,” Register says. “It really is our last option, our LAST-DITCH EFFORT, which is why we are crowdfunding. I tried to get loans, and I am still looking at some loan options, but we don’t have much collateral.” The tab with the state stems from a mistake made by a previous co-owner (Register now owns the business by herself) and an accountant. Several months ago, Register says, that co-owner told her about it. Thinking that the club would get a break if it self-reported, Register informed the N.C. DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE of the problem. At first, it seemed like the club might have some time to come up with the money. Three weeks ago, however, she was told that The Pinhook had only a year. Register was reluctant to go the crowdfunding route. “I tried to find other ways to do this, to raise this money,” says Register. “I felt that was appropriate because we’re a business.” Register and a set of angel investors bought the club’s property at 117 W. MAIN ST. in 2013. She owns 20 percent of that property, but the group still owes $400,000 on the loan. That makes it difficult to secure a loan to pay off the state. Register is optimistic that, in a rapidly evolving Durham, the community that has come to depend on the space will rally to support it. She might be right: By Tuesday morning, they were north of 200 DONORS and $14,500 in contributions.

iven the Durham Police Department’s scandalplagued recent history—accusations of racial profiling, the mysterious shooting of a teenager in the back of a squad car, the forced resignation of POLICE CHIEF JOSE LOPEZ in September—you’d think the first public forum seeking input on Lopez’s replacement would be teeming with fire-breathing protesters. Nope. Instead, about 30-odd citizens—a third of them either local media or politicians—turned up Monday night at the Holton Resource Center in East Durham. A representative from DEVELOPMENTAL ASSOCIATES, the firm tapped to manage the selection process, had to ask the crowd to move to the front of the auditorium, like a

lead singer on a weeknight in Duluth. Developmental Associates president STEVE STRAUS opened things up by explaining, in fairly satisfying detail, how things will move forward between now and April, when Lopez’s successor is expected to be named. There will be a multi-stage screening process that will include government officials, police chiefs from other cities in the region and even regular citizens, he promised. It all sounded rigorous and logical. Next, former N.C. Central police chief WILLIE WILLIAMS, now a senior consultant with Developmental Associates, roamed the room with a microphone, allowing those who wished to speak three minutes to say their peace. Most simply voiced displeasure with the current state of the DPD—implicit bias, rumors of checkpoints aimed at Hispanics, MARIJUANA ENFORCEMENT and other strains of overzealous policing. Others spoke of the necessary characteristics of a new chief: emotional intelligence, communication skills, a proven track record of changing good-ol’-boy police cultures. So far, so good. But then, toward the end of the forum, Straus revealed that a CLOSED-DOOR MEETING was planned at City Hall the following day with some “associates” from the community. No, he wouldn’t say who. Just some “folks” who had worked with the DPD. And some business “folks.” He assured the crowd that their input would count just the same as the input gathered Tuesday with these unnamed folks. Even so, it became clear that several grassroots organizations that have been active in police-reform efforts—FADE, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, SpiritHouse and others—weren’t on the invite list. And that didn’t go over well. SpritiHouse executive director NIA WILSON told the INDY Tuesday that she’s worried about the lack of transparency. “It’s not just that we were left out,” she says. “It’s the way the information came out, like we weren’t supposed to know about it.” At the forum Monday, new City Council member JILLIAN JOHNSON echoed Wilson’s unease. “I’m concerned that you guys are not asking all the right questions,” she said. “I think the community should have been involved in shaping what the questions were tonight, rather than just being asked to answer your questions.”

here are good things on the horizon for those who want to walk, bike and run Raleigh in 2016, including a (half) day for carless streets and the long-awaited bike-share program. At a meeting of Raleigh’s BIKE AND PEDESTRIAN ADVISORY COMMISSION on Monday, downtown resident MOLLY STUART pitched her idea to take a half day next October and close city streets to cars, beginning at Chavis Park and running through downtown and down to Glenwood South. That would give joggers, cyclists and families a chance to enjoy streets they might normally avoid. “To make the streets for one half of one day a place that isn’t scary can be pretty magical,” Stuart said. “It’s just fun to walk or ride at your own pace, and at a place that we’ve been taught to fear since we were kids.” Other U.S. cities have versions of open streets under different names, like Atlanta’s Streets Alive or Austin’s Viva Streets (and you know how RALEIGH HEARTS AUSTIN). AUSTIN Stuart emphasized that the streets would only be closed to cars, so people wandering around would still be able to visit shops and eat at restaurants (unlike during road races). Stuart already has support from advocacy group WAKEUP WAKE COUNTY and local health care organizations. The commission seemed receptive to the idea—though, because this is Raleigh, you can bank on a whole lot of red tape that will need unraveling. “There would be a high level of logistics associated with this,” said ERIC LAMB, Raleigh’s transportation planning manager. Still, he said October 2016 would be a realistic time frame. Then, Wake County Commissioner SIG HUTCHINSON gave BPAC an update on the bike-share program. Hutchinson said private and federal funds are already in place, or at least will be soon; now it’s just a matter of convincing the City Council to match those private dollars, about $250,000. Lamb said the city still has grant money it can put toward a bike-share program, even though Council chose not to fund it during its last budget cycle. Raleigh has until April to get a plan in place before the city loses the federal dollars. “This really does SPEAK TO THE COOLNESS that [Raleigh is],” Hutchinson said, “and also, it really speaks to a 21st-century concept of wellness and healthy communities which is so, so important to us.” ▲ Reach the INDY’s Triangulator team at triangulator@ indyweek.com.

INDYweek.com

news

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

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COUNTING TO FOUR

State Democrats’ plan to eliminate the GOP’s supermajority runs right through Wake County

ot often in his first term has Gov. Pat McCrory stood up to his own party. But on three occasions since the Republicans took power in the General Assembly in 2013—far-right bills to drug-test people applying for welfare benefits, grant magistrates the “religious freedom” not to perform single-sex weddings and essentially criminalize workplace whistleblowers at the behest of Big Agriculture—the governor inked up his stamp and issued vetoes. All were promptly overridden. Republicans in both legislative chambers hold the supermajorities—60 percent plus one—they need to render the governor’s veto pen irrelevant. In 2016, while it’s unlikely that state Democrats will reclaim the House or Senate, they do have a chance to win back some power. They only need to flip four

BY JANE PORTER seats in the House to be able to uphold a veto—which will become key if either of the Democratic candidates for governor, Roy Cooper or Ken Spaulding, wins next year. Wake County, where five Republican-

across the state, but Wake is obviously going to be a big part of this strategy.” In 2014—a very good Republican year— Republicans won House districts 35, 36, 40 and 49 by relatively narrow margins. In

“We don’t have to get all of these seats from Wake, but because I like to win, I’m aiming to make sure we get at least four of them.” held House seats are likely to be competitive, will be a key battleground. “We don’t have to get all of these seats from Wake, but because I like to win, I’m aiming to make sure we get at least four of them,” says Brian Fitzsimmons, the chairman of the Wake County Democratic Party. “There are other opportunities

addition, Rep. Paul Stam, R-Apex, who ran unopposed in District 37 last year, is not seeking reelection. In District 49, Democrat Kim Hanchette lost to Rep. Gary Pendleton by just 1,300 votes. Cynthia Ball, the Democrat running against Pendleton in 2016, has already started campaigning. “I will knock on every door to speak to every constituent that I can,” she says. “I’m not going to try to appeal to just Democrats. Obviously registered Democrats are more likely to agree with me, but I want to reach out to all people and let them know I want to listen.” With a presidential election in 2016— which typically boosts turnout—Wake County’s significant growth and changing demographics, and the Legislature’s polarizing behavior, Democrats are targeting the 30 percent of county voters who are unaffiliated. “For Democrats to win in Wake County and statewide, we have to carry out what we call the three Ms,” says Jay Chaudhuri, a candidate for Senate District 16. (Incumbent Democrat Josh Stein is running for attorney general.) “That’s mobilizing and messaging voters and raising money.” Another piece of the Democrats’ strategy in Wake, Fitzsimmons says, is finding highly qualified female candidates. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, women comprised 22 percent of Tar Heel lawmakers in 2015. That’s lower than the national average, a similarly meager 24 percent. “It goes without saying that we need more representation at all levels of government by women, and we need to

hear women’s viewpoints more strongly,” says Susan Evans, a Wake school board member and candidate for Senate District 17, another Democratic target. “Women tend to have their finger on the pulse with family and health issues, and women bring a sense of intuitiveness to their leadership that I think we need more of.” Evans and Ball could both be formidable candidates, as might former county commissioner Lindy Brown, a progressive African-American running in House District 37—Stam’s seat. “For however many cycles Stam was there, he entrenched himself in the district pretty hard,” Fitzsimmons says. “But now we have a stronger opportunity than we’ve ever had in the past.” Taking four House seats won’t be easy. Well-funded incumbents are seldom easy to beat, especially when district lines have been gerrymandered to secure their victory. Political observers say all five districts lean slightly Republican, and coming into the third election cycle under the redrawn districts, Democrats have had limited success flipping seats in Wake. The Republicans won’t take the assault lying down, either: “Our strategy,” Wake GOP chairman John Walter Bryant told the INDY in an email Monday, “is to continue to recruit and encourage the most qualified candidates to offer to serve in our General Assembly as well as all other elective offices, whether they are elected locally or statewide.” Still, despite the Democrats’ fund-raising and other structural disadvantages, success isn’t outside the realm of possibility, especially if they can reach enough of the county’s new voters. “It would be nice to see a Legislature that looked like the state of North Carolina,” says Ball. “But we have districts drawn that are going to make it more difficult for certain kinds of people to get elected. The Legislature should represent our population in all aspects. I just don’t think it has been listening.” s Jane Porter is an INDY staff writer. Email her at jporter@indyweek.com.

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

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2015

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news

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

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POLL POSITION

With the Iowa caucuses looming and his firm once again in the national spotlight, Public Policy Polling director Tom Jensen offers his thoughts on the elections ahead BY DAVID HUDNALL

he Late Show With Stephen Colbert ran a four-minute bit last month highlighting a recent poll that found a sharp division over President Obama’s decision to pardon not one but two turkeys for Thanksgiving. Just 11 percent of Republicans were on board. The organization responsible for that poll was, of course, Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling. It’s not the first time the firm— founded in 2001 by Dean Debnam, most recently of DrunkTown fame—has injected some levity into its surveys. Previous polls have examined whether hipsters should be taxed for being annoying and whether Obama would be taken in the rapture. At Ann Coulter’s urging, PPP also asked New Hampshire Democrats whether Christianity should be legal. With the 2016 campaign ramping up and the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary on the horizon, we called PPP director Tom Jensen to get his take on how this weird election season will play out.

INDY: PPP has carved out a niche doing serious polls with some humor thrown in. What led you down that path? TOM JENSEN: I think that American politics has gotten increasingly nasty and unpleasant over the last seven or so years, and our attitude is that it doesn’t have to be so serious. Which sometimes means polling stuff that more traditional pollsters wouldn’t poll. Like, this year we polled how Deez Nuts was doing in Iowa. The other thing is, a lot of these ideas we don’t come up with ourselves. We think of ourselves as a polling company of the social-media age, so before every poll we go on Facebook and Twitter and ask our followers what they want to know. News reports often insert the phrase “left-leaning” before “PPP.” Do you think being seen as a liberal pollster damages your credibility? We’re fine with the label. Even though what we’re now best known for is these public polls, we’re primarily a commercial

business that does polls for clients. And we exclusively work for Democratic clients. But if you go back and look at our polling from 2012, you’ll see that our numbers are ever-so-slightly skewed in favor of Republicans. So if you dig in, you’ll see that we’re really just trying to get it right.

percent of Trump supporters were walking around mad that Arabs in New Jersey supposedly cheered about 9/11. They may have been inclined to think that happened before Trump, but certainly Trump saying it leads them to believing it and agreeing with it.

On to Donald Trump. You guys have been tracking Trump’s Islamophobia for months now. Do you have any particular insight here? I still think once it’s time to vote, some Trump supporters will be like, “Eh, I’m not so sure this is a great idea.” But as long as

Is it possible that Trump polls well because the only people who answer their landlines are old people with nothing better to do? Well, first of all, the polls are weighted for gender, race and age, so that’s taken into account. I would maybe tend to agree with

“I think that American politics has gotten increasingly nasty and unpleasant over the last seven years or so, and our attitude is that it doesn’t have to be so serious.” we’re still several months away, I don’t think there’s much he could say that will cut into his support. Do you think these xenophobic positions that Trump supporters appear to embrace have always been around in such large numbers? Or do you think Trump is changing minds by stoking this stuff at rallies? That’s a good question. I think it’s a combination. When you go back, what launched Trump politically is his birtherism, his challenging Obama’s status as a real American. Even before Trump, we were finding that this was a view held by a lot of Republicans, the birtherism. And Trump built on that. But I also think that, to some extent, what we are seeing with Trump now is a cult-like aspect among his supporters, where pretty much no matter what he says some people are going to enthusiastically agree. For example, I don’t think 42

what you said if it weren’t for the fact that Trump actually has stronger support in Internet polls than telephone polls. That’s an interesting thing about this election, actually: It’s the first where online polls are part of the package. Polling organizations that might have thumbed their nose at online polls four years ago are using them this election. So 2016 will be the first test of online polls in a national election. What are the biggest challenges of polling in 2016? The challenges for the polling industry are about the same as they’ve been the last five or 10 years, but they are getting more challenging. A generation ago, 30 or 40 percent of people responded to polls. Now it’s more like 5 percent—19 out of 20 people don’t respond. That’s partly because of landlines but also because people have so many more distractions. If you were sitting at home 15 years ago watching Wheel of Fortune, maybe answering a poll might

have seemed more interesting than the show. That’s not as likely to be true today. The North Carolina governor’s race: What are you seeing? We’ve consistently found that to be a tossup race. [Gov. Pat] McCory is unpopular, but despite 15 years as the attorney general, [Roy] Cooper is still pretty unknown. Fifty percent of voters aren’t familiar with Roy Cooper’s name. So you have a situation where voters are open to the thought of replacing McCory but don’t know Cooper well enough yet. In terms of the presidential race, what’s surprised you most in recent months? I think the most interesting thing right now is the utter failure of Jeb as a candidate. And it’s not just that people don’t support him. It’s also that primary voters—nationally and here in North Carolina—actually have a negative opinion of him. I find it somewhat amazing just how weak he has been, especially since his brother is very popular. George W. Bush is around 80 percent in terms of [Republicans] liking him. Jeb is down between 30 and 40 percent. What else? The rise of Cruz is significant. At this point, he has completely supplanted [Ben] Carson for next-in-line honors behind Trump. He’s a super-conservative candidate that is a little easier to see as the nominee—a politician in a slightly more traditional package than Trump, a little less inflammatory. If Trump falls apart, Cruz is very well positioned to pick up Trump voters. I think it’s also important to remember that this month four years ago, Newt Gingrich was up on Romney nationally, and by 37 points in North Carolina. So obviously things are very much up in the air. s David Hudnall is an INDY staff writer. Email him at dhudnall@indyweek.com. Twitter: @davidhudnall.

news PERIPHERAL VISIONS • V.C. ROGERS

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

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citizen

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

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A JOYFUL NOISE

Need to get in the holiday spirit? Here’s a story about high school students helping special-needs preschoolers in Southeast Raleigh. BY BOB GEARY

was so far from feeling the spirit of the holidays. Then the note came from Nate Barilich. It led me to Learning Together, a wonderful preschool in Southeast Raleigh where, for an hour, I was Mr. Bob to the children. It also led me to Enloe High School’s charity ball, a showcase for the promise of youth. The ball’s climax was a moment of drama. Each year, the Enloe Student Council raises money for—and Enloe students work with—a selected nonprofit serving the Southeast Raleigh community. This year the council chose Learning Together, an “inclusion preschool” that teaches kids with special needs in the same classrooms as, well, other kids. The ball, at Marbles Museum, culminated the fundraising drive. Tickets were $30–$50; 1,200 were sold. So Marbles was packed, and the noise was joyous. But the question remained whether the council, through ticket sales and other efforts, had reached its announced fundraising goal of $100,000. That’s not a typo. The council raised $92,000 last year for the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, but even so, a six-figure fundraising target for high-school students? I found that extraordinary. And the last I’d heard, they were short. Then Emma O’Brien, council vice president, took the microphone. “Our relationship with Learning Together will continue to grow and develop,” O’Brien said. Marbles fell silent. Behind her, Barilich, an English teacher and council adviser, held a giant check covered in paper. “I was truly inspired by every staff member, teacher and child at Learning Together,” O’Brien continued. “I was inspired by all of you,” a nod to the Enloe students who’ve helped at Learning Together after school. “And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. I’m honored to present the check to Learning Together for $118,000 …” Marbles exploded. Enloe had done it.

earning Together is in its 40th year. Nell Barnes, the dynamic executive director, has been there for 33. The

Enloe gift, Barnes says, is the largest in its history aside from major foundation grants. Enloe students have been “incredible, determined, passionate, creative—it’s hard to describe what they have done and the heart they have given.” Heart and a few tears, says Barilich, who’s watched teenage students, especially some of the boys, wiping their eyes after falling in love with the children. The basic Learning Together formula is nine special-needs kids, ages 3–5, in a classroom with nine others of similar age. Federal, state and county funds support the kids in the first group, as well as some of the others whose families are poor. But the subsidies aren’t nearly enough to pay for the full range of teaching, therapeutic and food services the kids need. Add the fact that LT is expanding, with eight classrooms in two Southeast Raleigh locations and two more in Cary operated in conjunction with the federal Head Start program, plus an outreach program for children with mental health needs living in homeless shelters or hotels. “We really want to take our services out there where the needs are,” Barnes says. The need for high-quality preschools for kids with disabilities or from disadvantaged backgrounds far exceeds the supply, which is why Barnes and her board are in constant fundraising mode—and why they went all-out to be chosen by Enloe. When their application came in, Barilich says, the student council embraced it immediately, ending the selection process. The preschool needed money, and in exchange it was offering something that Enloe coveted—an opportunity for students to give back to, and learn about, the community that surrounds them. Learning Together would be a veritable lesson plan on the value of inclusive education, with a detailed plan for every member of Enloe’s dozens of clubs encouraged to come share their interests with the kids. When I visited, the astronomy club was there, and kids were learning about the stars with club president Charlie Gowland.

In another room, Enloe students DaVinci Campbell and Akeelah Lockhart were helping the 4-year-olds make music with their drums and tambourine while we all sang “Jingle Bells”—repeatedly! I must’ve said hello to 50 children and seven or eight teachers. It was all a blur— exhilarating and physical (lots of bending down), and the kids were terrific. Many hugs. No crying. I had trouble figuring out which kids had disabilities. They all seemed to be learning how to get along with everyone else—which should be the point of every school. At the preschool level, LT assistant director Jan Baker says, the focus is on socialization and communications skills. In short, LT strives to help every child, regardless of problems at home or specific ability deficits, become comfortable

around other kids and adults. “Once a child feels safe and loved,” Baker says, “then they’re going to learn.” That’s where the big kids from Enloe come in. Not that long ago, they were little kids. Barilich says he reminds his students that Enloe is a magnet school, and its fundamental purpose is to bring diverse elements of the community together in one place. And there’s a public policy lesson: For every $1 invested in good preschools, the community benefits add up to $10. “At Enloe, we have kind of the same goal as Learning Together,” Barilich says. “Everyone is valued. Everyone is respected.” On that note, my holiday season begins. s Bob Geary is an INDY columnist. Reach him at rjgeary@mac.com.

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

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INSULT AND INJURY

After two guards were fired over allegations of abuse, former inmates of the Durham County jail protest what they call horrid conditions BY BILLY BALL

PHOTO BY JEREMY M. LANGE

he top bunk is ideal for stretching out your orange, jailissued jumper to dry in the fleeting sunlight after you wash the garment in the toilet. Given that prisoners at the Durham County Detention Center don’t have washing facilities for the two outfits they’re given when jailed, this humiliating ritual is sometimes the only option. “It was hell,” says Rick Alston, 36, who spent more than a month behind bars this year for a probation violation. “I wouldn’t put anyone through that.” His stay in the county jail—which mostly houses prisoners awaiting trial—came during the facility’s controversial seven-month “lockback,” a crackdown ordered by Sheriff Mike Andrews in early March that, at its

worst, confined detainees to their cells for all but two hours a day, every other day. Andrews said he was responding to gang threats and increased violence in the jail, which housed 487 prisoners as of last week. It was a necessary measure, he argued. Perhaps, but Alston remembers the sheer humiliation of the toilet scrubs, and how he was forced to use a small sink to bathe himself when he was confined to his cell. He says he spent each day lying on the top bunk, gazing out the window. The guards, he says, mocked prisoners and ignored detainees with mental illness. “Fuck them Confederate bastards down there at the jailhouse,” he says. “They treat you like slaves.”

The allegedly unsanitary conditions are just one of many complaints lobbed these days at the detention center, a draconian frown of a building that, for the past year, has been beset weekly by protesters demanding reform. When the protests began this spring, at the onset of the lockback, only a handful were in attendance. But last Thursday, the movement seemed to be gaining momentum. More than three dozen gathered, holding handmade signs and banging drums. One sign read, “We believe the prisoners.” Above, on multiple floors of the spare, stone building, orange-clad detainees huddled at clouded, barred windows, waving down at protesters. One of the protesters, Rafiq Zaidi of Durham, waved

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news back, then urged on a pair of activists clattering on homemade drums. Bang loud enough to be heard at the opulent Durham Performing Arts Center across the street, he told them. “Let it affect sales for The Lion King. They’ll jump then.” This protest came just three days after two Durham detention officers were accused of pinning down a handcuffed prisoner and beating her in the head with closed fists. Although the prisoner acknowledged starting the scuffle, officers Anita Louise Alston (no relation to Rick) and Rachel L. Smith were both fired and charged with assault and misdemeanor obstruction of justice, according to the Durham County Sheriff’s Office, which oversees the facility. (The INDY has requested a report of the incident from the sheriff ’s office, but spokeswoman Tamara Gibbs said this week that her office would not be able to turn over any information, as the case was being investigated by the District Attorney’s office.) “Detention Officers work in a very difficult and complex environment,” Andrews said in a statement. “Many times they work in a Pod and supervise 50 or more persons, some of whom are hostile and suffer from mental difficulties. It is important that detention officers follow Sheriff’s Office guidelines when interacting with the inmate population.” This altercation, which took place in September, was an isolated, momentary lapse, the sheriff ’s office says. But for the protesters, it was affirmation that something is awry at Durham’s county jail. “Folks in Durham are required to treat their pets better than we treat folks here,” says newly elected Durham City Councilwoman Jillian Johnson, who joined last week’s protest. For months, prisoners’ rights advocates have complained about conditions within the county jail, the alleged abuse by guards and the long hours prisoners were sequestered in their cold cells, all in a facility that primarily houses pretrial defendants who haven’t been convicted of anything. Andrews, citing improving conditions, ended the lockback in October. But protesters say it’s not enough. Last week, they announced the formation of a “jail investigation team,” made up of prisoners’ rights advocates and past inmates and their family members. The group is demanding a full inspection of the jail, including its medical care, dining facilities, cells and showers, as well as in-person visits with at least 100 inmates to administer a survey. Protesters are also calling for monthly revenue reports from the jail’s contracted medical, phone and food vendors—whom they’ve accused of bilking prisoners with unfair prices, such as $11 for a care-package cheeseburger— and all guard-inmate grievance reports filed in the jail. (The INDY requested those reports, too. The sheriff’s office was unable to produce them by press time).

The group says county-contracted services at the jail, provided by companies like the Pennsylvania-based food distributor Aramark, take advantage of the detainees, relying on unpaid prisoners working in the cafeteria without pay. Additionally, prisoners in need of medical or mental health services say their requests for assistance often go unanswered. If a response does come, protesters say, inmates receive a short visit from a doctor, which typically ends with the doctor offering a $20 tablet of Tylenol. Prisoners who can’t pay are offered nothing. In addition, activists point out, this year county officials agreed to a $2 million budget increase for the facility at Andrews’ request, in part to help make jail cells “suicideresistant,” although no additional funds were allotted for mental health treatment. The sheriff’s office points out that prisoners’ mental health is governed by the Durham County Department of Public Health, not the DCSO. Protesters counter that mental health was especially important during the lockback, and that is the DCSO’s responsibility. Although county jail inmates typically

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

Andrews’ office, however, has been relatively quiet. The sheriff would not agree to an interview last week, but in a statement, Andrews pointed out the facility is subject to multiple scheduled inspections each year by state and federal officials. Andrews also said he has requested a “thorough inspection” of the jail early next year by the National Institute of Corrections, a federal agency under the U.S. Department of Justice. He added that the Department of Public Health will also investigate the nutritional value of jail meals. “This is a difficult season for our community as it works to address violent crime,” Andrews said in a statement. “The incarcerated are my responsibility. I would encourage the community to join me and other law enforcement agencies in our fight to prevent such crime and to eliminate the need for detention facilities.” Andrews’ office did not say, however, whether it would allow protesters and activists to inspect the detention center. Umar Muhammad, a community organizer for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, says Durham residents are right to be concerned about the jail. “There are brothers and sisters here who need us,” Muhammad says. “People take a plea bargain so they can hurry up and get to the state pen, just so they can get some salt and pepper.” Durham resident Cynthia Fox, whose son spent more than a year in the jail on robbery charges for which he was later convicted, says her son told her of filthy, unkempt cells, unwashed showers and verbally abusive guards. Fox chides local leaders and law enforcement for failing to take any action despite months of public protests. “The sheriff and county commissioners have shown that they don’t believe prisoners,” Fox says. “We do.” Durham resident Deborah Chapman says she had a similar experience in the detention center in 2006, when she was held for seven months on assault charges. Detention officers, she says, scoffed at prisoners and were overly aggressive during altercations. “They come in ready to attack like they’re attacking animals,” Chapman says. Chapman recalls the unwashed prison jumpers, too. “I remember women walking around with bloodstains on their clothes.” But what Alston remembers most is the feeling. He says the Durham County Detention Center changed him, and not for the better. “It makes you feel like a pit bull being trained to kill,” he says. “People talk to you. I don’t care if it’s your mother, a guard or the president of the United States. I don’t care what the fuck someone’s saying. You just want to attack them.” s

“Fuck them Confederate bastards down there at the jailhouse. They treat you like slaves.” share cells and state law only mandates that prisoners be allowed out of their cells for one hour at a time at least three days a week, activists likened the lockback to solitary confinement, a controversial practice often associated with deteriorating mental health. Prisoners, including Alston, say they witnessed multiple suicide attempts in the jail, with detainees leaping from a second-floor railing. Jail officials reported 12 suicide attempts at the detention center this year. None were successful. Councilwoman Johnson says the allegations at the jail, if true, are a fundamental violation of the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.” On Friday, Durham County Board of Commissioners Chairman Michael Page told the INDY he would propose an investigation of the jail to his board in the coming weeks, although he declined to say who would lead such a probe. “We have not been able to determine any wrongdoing,” Page says. “But we have to talk seriously about an independent investigation.” Still, Page stops short of openly criticizing Andrews’ office. “I have no reason to believe [the sheriff’s office is] not telling us what is going on over there,” he says. “And this is not a Hilton. It’s not an Embassy Suite hotel. This is a jail.”

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Billy Ball is an INDY staff writer. Email him at bball@indyweek.com. Twitter: @billy_k_ball.

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

DAIRY CHRISTMAS

A morning inside Maple View Farm’s eggnog room—the smell, the taste and the time’s tension

he sun has finally risen through a small rectangular window inside Maple View Farm’s milk-processing room, and Luis Velasquez already needs a drink. For the last 20 minutes, Velasquez has methodically unpacked new glass bottles from heavy cardboard boxes and routed them, one row at a time, through a hulking, customized dishwasher that looks a little like an industrial trash compactor. Between boxes, he steps through a doorway, lifts a little plastic cup from a short desk and reaches for a near-full quart bottle, spinning steadily on a carousel-like bottling machine. He nabs the glass just before a bright yellow cap seals it. Velasquez pours an ounce or so into the cup, wedges the bottle into place alongside those already in the queue and returns to his post a few feet away. He lifts the cup to his lips, takes a sip, sits it down and then smiles to no one in particular. It’s a Thursday outside of Hillsborough in early December—that is, eggnogmaking day on Maple View Farm. Velasquez approves of the morning’s yield. Since 1996, eggnog has been a staple of Maple View Farm’s annual output, becoming an area holiday tradition as trustworthy as the Christmas tree on the Capitol lawn or Ira David Wood III’s yearly turn in A Christmas Carol. In 2015, if the temperatures finally dip, Maple View may sell more than 7,000 gallons of eggnog, up by nearly 1,000 gallons from last year. But it’s not just a seasonal tiding for Roger Nutter, a sixth-generation dairy farmer who lives a few hundred yards up Dairyland Road (where else?) on the 400-plus-acre farm his family acquired in 1963. In the two decades since Maple View started bottling its own milk, the farm has become an anomaly, as almost all of its neighbors have shut down and sold cattle and resources off to dairy conglomerates. Like the ice cream Maple View sells during the summer, eggnog is not only a revenue source but an essential bit of brand identity, a late-year reminder of the milk, butter and cream that Nutter and a team of 12 employees produce before dawn every day. “A lot of these big companies have stopped picking up milk from small

BY GRAYSON HAVER CURRIN

Maple View Farm’s Ann Israel and Roger Nutter, posing with eggnog and Red PHOTO BY JEREMY M. LANGE

farms like ours,” says the 54-year-old Nutter, who resembles a broad-shouldered version of Dale Earnhardt Sr. and speaks in a quiet manner that suggests this problem matters too much to broadcast loudly. “Our goal,” he continues, “is to be able to sustain the farm and the family and the animals.” At 6:07 a.m., Nutter looks on calmly as his team prepares the day’s output. It’s still dark outside, but the processing room is incredibly bright, the overhead beams

bouncing off the water-covered concrete floor and pale yellow walls so faded that they, too, have started to resemble eggnog. The air is thick and warm and spiced with cinnamon and sugar and nutmeg—like an eggnog sauna, really, but more comforting and embryonic than nauseating. Shep Stearns hovers over a large, square stainless steel mixer, pushing the contents back and forth with a spatula the size of an oar. Nearby, Leonard Bergey has already started disassembling the plant’s separator,

a Dalek-like device that opens to reveal an array of nested metal discs. These work together to pull cream from whole milk. To make eggnog, Maple View actually adds cream to its whole milk, but the separator still cleans the milk one last time before it empties into the mixer that Stearns tends. For the last 40 minutes, Bergey, who relocated nine years ago from a defunct family dairy farm in Virginia to take this job, has been routing the eggnog into a labyrinth of overhead pipes that lead to a pasteurizing machine. There, heated elements hold the eggnog above 183 degrees—or 15 degrees beyond the government-mandated requirement for milk—for 15 seconds before cooling it and pushing it through another series of pipes into a towering storage tank. From its short-term holding cell, the new eggnog passes into the lines of a compact and wondrous bottling station, led today by Nutter’s partner of 12 years, Ann Israel. Clad in a Christmas sweatshirt emblazoned with two teddy bears holding candy canes and smiling, Israel moves like a machine herself behind the line. She inspects most every bottle, rarely dropping the near-constant conversation she keeps with Nutter and a rotation of employees. “Have you tried it yet?” she yells to me over the industrial din, looking up briefly. “Reach in any time.” Maple View is a family farm with an assembly line, a facility that uses modern production techniques to preserve an antiquated agricultural model. Likewise, the eggnog’s ingredients encapsulate the modern tension of a place like Maple View at a moment when more consumers are interested in the organic, sustainable and handmade, but most consumers still want the affordable. Every eight hours, beginning at 4 each morning, workers milk about 170 of Maple View’s 450 cattle. The milk that becomes Thursday’s eggnog was gathered on Wednesday, for instance, and pumped underground from a nearby storage tank and into the processing room. No, the milk is not organic, but for it to be any fresher, you’d need two hands and a little steel pail. The five-gallon buckets of cream that continued on page 16

DECEMBER 16, 2015

eat music& drink GETTING YOUR HANDS ON SUGARLAND’S EGGNOG MARTINI— — the Noggatini, at least I’m told—requires a Christmas miracle. The bakery’s Raleigh location no longer serves martinis, due, I assume, to too many fender-benders in Harris Teeter’s Cameron Village parking lot. The clerk behind the bar of the original Chapel Hill location wasn’t sure what I was talking about, either. If the Noggatini can’t be found (Sugarland’s marketing director swears it can), here’s a tip: During December, Sugarland whips up a delicious eggnog gelato that’s thick enough to stand in perky peaks in a bowl or a freezer case. This gelato may be inserted into any boozy concoction already on the menu, like the Mochatini’s makeup of chocolate liqueur, Irish cream and vodka. When blended, it tastes like traditional eggnog and rum, if eggnog and rum were made out of ice cream. Looking for a non-alcoholic treat? Consider Sugarland’s “Noggy but Nice” cheesecake. A base of vanilla sponge comes loaded with nutmeg and an eggnog pastry cream filling, topped generously with silky eggnog buttercream. Held together by a crumbly brown crust, the cake is soft, chewy and not overly sweet. The simple color of the main ingredients means the cake is not nearly as festive-looking as some of Sugarland’s other seasonal offerings, but this deceptively plain delicacy doesn’t need red and green sprinkles to wow. Instead, Noggy is a cake for true eggnog lovers who want to experience heavy cream and frothed eggs in as many ways as possible. —Tina Haver Currin

Joyless almond

A LOVE OF EGGNOG nearly necessitates New Year’s resolutions. Loaded with saturated fat and sugar, a one-cup, non-spiked serving squeezes in as many as 350 calories—that is, about four slices of loaf bread or five sheets of Kraft Singles. But the low calorie count and relatively nonexistent sugar-and-fat stats of vegan nog—that is, eggnog approximations made by pairing almond milk, coconut milk or the like with thickeners and spices—make the alternative so appealing. You can chug an entire 48-ounce bottle of Califia Farms’ “Holiday Nog” and gain only 600 calories (and, most likely, a bellyache). That felt like quite the bargain when I uncapped the almondbased Califia Farms concoction after a firm shake; it certainly smelled like nog, a slightly sour sweetness countered by the warm aroma of nutmeg. But when I began to pour, I balked; the stuff ran like a liquid river, not a viscous and pale volcanic flow. If eggnog is thin custard, almond nog is thick water, almost too easy to drink. The taste, though, doesn’t go down quite as nice. Though a swallow is smooth, the spices arrive at once and too hard, as though someone has just dropped a dry tablet of cinnamon and nutmeg on your tongue. As the jolt decays, a putrid aftertaste suggests a shot of harsh cough syrup. Alcohol won’t save you, either. Cutting it with Mount Gay Black Barrel rum only masked the seasonal flavors, suggesting spiked skim milk. A quarter-hour later, I kept smacking my tongue against the roof of my mouth, like a dejected dog that had licked a lemon. Congratulations, nutrition: You’ve got the season off. —Grayson Haver Currin

NOGGED OUT LOADED

IN THE PAST TWO WEEKS, I have imbibed or eaten the following items: Maple View Farm eggnog, Homeland Creamery eggnog, Organic Valley eggnog, all of these eggnogs with rum, all of these eggnogs with whiskey, eggnog cheesecake, an eggnog milkshake, almond-based “holiday nog,” almond-based “holiday nog” with rum, eggnog gelato, an eggnog martini, eggnog cookies, an eggnog donut, an eggnog latte and eggnog flan topped with bourbon caramel. Though I like eggnog quite a bit, I wouldn’t consider myself a zealot. Instead, a team of INDY food writers was curious about ways in which local kitchens were incorporating the Christmas concoction into their menu, other than by simply spiking it. Not all of these dishes wowed; the flan never really worked. Others made me sit still in a silent stupor, gazing at a plate, waiting for the next piece of eggnog cheesecake to appear by magic. Without exception, at least, they surprised me—and made me feel incredibly heavy, like Santa Claus in need of a motorized sleigh. —Grayson Haver Currin

Nog innovation

AT GUGLHUPF, DURHAM’S GERMAN BAKERY AND CAFE, you can celebrate the holidays with such traditional delights as Christmas stollen and cookies. Or this year, you can add an eggnog éclair to the seasonal offerings. “People love éclairs,” says owner Claudia Cooper. “We did a pumpkin one for Thanksgiving that was very popular—so popular that we had the idea to give an eggnog flavor a try for Christmas.” Starting with a classic pate au choux dough, bakers pipe the log-shaped pastry with a rich crème diplomat filling flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg and a splash of brandy. They top it with a shiny chocolate swipe—a new holiday tradition at a Durham institution, I hope. —Jill Warren Lucas

ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHRIS WILLIAMS

A spirited quest

Just glaze

THE END OF NOVEMBER brought the season’s first eggnog donut from Monuts—and, most likely, not the last. The Eggnog Gingersnap donut features local eggnog from Maple View Farms and Homeland Creamery in its glaze, which is mixed with a bit of extra nutmeg. Crumbled gingersnaps top the donut. “Our menu changes so frequently that we’re always looking for seasonal inspiration,” says Lindsay Moriarty, chef and co-owner at Monuts. “As the weather cools down and fresh produce starts to become more scarce, locally produced items like eggnog become a great alternative.” Moriarty has experimented with eggnog inside the donut, but she says the flavor hits best when it’s used in the glaze. (Rise’s eggnog donut, by the way, is very similar to this one.) Before the end of the season, Moriarty expects to make a spiced-cake donut topped by a whiskey-eggnog glaze. Well, ’tis the season... —Iza Wojciechowska

Coconog

RALEIGH ARTIST CLAUDIA CORLETTO grew up in a Dominican household in Houston, where the holidays meant merengue and company. Among the invitees? A bottle of homemade Puerto Rican coquito. Her mother’s Puerto Rican friend, Prin, would show up to the Corletto home with a blend of coconut milk and coconut cream, egg yolk, condensed milk, cinnamon and a generous dose of white rum. “It was the first sip of an adult beverage I had as a child during a very joyful time of year,” she remembers. “The house was filled with the scent of Mami’s cooking and the sounds of records. None of us had to rush to anything.” A few years ago, Corletto’s sister called Prin for the recipe. Now, as Christmas sneaks into balmy North Carolina winters, Corletto whips up coquito for friends. “This tradition is extremely important to me, because every winter it roots me in the memory of the love my family raised me in,” she says. “When I pass that on to my friends, I know I’m doing something right.” —Victoria Bouloubasis

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music& drink eat DAIRY CHRISTMAS continued from page 14

Bergey dumps into the mixer are strained from the reduced-fat milk they make every day of the week except Thursday. But the rest, Nutter admits, is largely outside of Maple View’s purview. To wit, for this 345-gallon batch, Stearns cuts five 50-pound bags of white Dixie Crystals sugar and dumps them, one by one, into an electric funnel; a dozen years ago, Nutter says, ceding to grocer demands, Maple View stopped using high-fructose corn syrup. Meanwhile, Bergey splits open two white bags of “Egg Nog Base” at their seams. Containing a tallow-colored mix of powdered-and-pasteurized egg yolks, whey, spices, sugars and thickeners, these sacks come from Dairy Ingredients, a Michiganbased company that ships such mixes to at least two continents. Asked about the eggs’ origin, the president—a quick-talking and guarded man named Greg Nielsen— will only say that the sources are indeed governed by the USDA. “If we were doing small batches of eggnog, we’d probably supply our own eggs,” Nutter says with a furtive smile. “But as much as we’d like to do that now, that would be a lot of eggs to crack, I guess.” Nielsen is dismissive, too, about his company’s “Natural Egg Nog Flavor,” a viscous brown syrup that Bergey pours directly from plastic gallon jugs into the mixer. Distributed by Dairy Ingredients but developed by a partner whose name Nielsen will not disclose, the concoction consists of water, ethyl alcohol and the presumably broad category of “natural flavors.” Smelling it from the bottle’s mouth stings the nostrils, as if you’d snorted eggnog spices rather than swallowed them. I ask Nutter if he’s ever tried it by itself, and he allows his first real chuckle of the very early morning. “No, no, not at all,” he says, smiling and wincing at once. I nod. But I temporarily forget all this when, at last, I follow Velasquez’ lead, take Israel’s advice and fill my own little plastic cup with the morning’s new eggnog. It is thick and smooth, and the warmth of the spices feels like a blanket above the sharp cold of the fresh milk. Finished, I stare down into my cup and, like Velasquez, smile to no one in particular. It’s a Thursday outside of Hillsborough in early December—eggnogmaking day on Maple View Farm. ▲ Grayson Haver Currin is the managing+music editor of the INDY.

Seasonal flake

TANYA ANDREWS DIDN’T THINK THE HOLIDAY SWEET she debuted last year at Yellow Dog Bread Company—a flaky pastry snowman filled with luscious eggnog cream—made much of an impression. But days before it returned to the shelves last weekend, customers began asking for it, like bright-eyed children appealing to Santa. “It must have created a cult following,” says Andrews. “I have to admit, they are quite cute.” While she disliked eggnog in her youth, Andrews now appreciates the drink’s silky richness. She’s especially keen on the eggnog made by Homeland Creamery, which Yellow Dog uses as a substitute for standard cream for the snowman’s velvety filling. “It reminds me of boiled custard, which is kind of an Eastern North Carolina thing,” says Andrews, who grew up near Rocky Mount. “It’s not as spicy as eggnog, but it’s also one of those custardy, wonderful treats we love this time of year.” Like any North Carolina snowman, the eggnog pastry variety, which is sold on Saturdays, is a fleeting thing. “We’ll make somewhere between 60 and 100 for a Saturday,” Andrews says. “But when they’re gone, they’re gone.” —Jill Warren Lucas

Porch-aged

JENNIFER NOBLE KELLY FEELS BAD FOR FOLKS who resort to buying eggnog from the refrigerator aisle. “To me, that’s just not eggnog,” says Kelly, a food publicist who represents Lionel Vatinet of La Farm Bakery and chef Scott Crawford of Standard Foods. “My first taste of real, aged eggnog came from the family holiday parties of my closest friend growing up. Her dad made it every year. He gave us the recipe as a wedding gift.” This will be the tenth year that Kelly will make the decadent drink, which starts with 24 eggs. The secret recipe also calls for sugar and heavy cream, as well as great glugs of brandy, bourbon and rum. Kelly usually makes her recipe at least two weeks before Christmas, mixing it directly in a cooler that resides on her front porch in Raleigh during the holiday season. “It really does get better the longer it sits,” says Kelly, who has yet to make this year’s batch due to unseasonably warm conditions. “I usually keep a ladle out there so we can dip into it any time.” Kelly has never had a batch go bad; she agrees with food scientists who have declared that aged eggnog is actually safer to drink than a just-made recipe calling for raw eggs. “There’s enough alcohol to take care of any concerns,” she says. “It’s serious stuff.” —Jill Warren Lucas

Nog means no

I’VE ALWAYS REGARDED EGGNOG as one of those seasonal staples that, like candy corn, is nice to have around for decoration but shouldn’t be eaten. Recently, though, when trying to remember the details of my own eggnogcalypse—that is, the scenario that made me loathe it so—I couldn’t. Was it possible I’d never had eggnog at all? What if I liked it? I needed to know. For the experiment, I opted for the most generic office-party-punchbowl swill I could find—32 ounces of ultra-pasteurized “Original Eggnog,” for less than $5. The

designation “rich and creamy” made me shudder. Unsure if I was supposed to shake it, I sort of half-shook it before studying the dietary facts. I could drink four servings a day, I learned, and get all the fat and cholesterol I needed. Running out of ways to stall, I twisted off the cap, unleashing a syrupy bouquet of custard, paste and salmonella. I used a wine glass because that was how it was served in the picture on the carton, but I was out of cinnamon sticks. The liquid had the grayish pallor of a kneaded rubber eraser and didn’t pour so much as reluctantly drizzle. The odor was sickly sweet. Wary, I quaffed.

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

Latte art

DANIEL BENJAMIN HAS A SECRET: Though his Raleigh sweetshop lucettegrace makes both an eggnog latte and an eggnog macaron, he doesn’t actually enjoy the drink—particularly the nutmeg that powers it. Perhaps that explains why neither the latte nor the cookie contains eggnog. Instead, Helen Barnes, lucettegrace’s “syrup guru,” has perfected a cream-based approximation of the drink, made from a precise blend of sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and, yes, even some nutmeg. The baristas originally tried to steam just that blend to make a latte, but the result was like a hot-and-spiced coffee custard, far too rich and heavy to be sipped. So they cut the cream with whole or skim milk and steam 10 ounces after dropping two shots of espresso into the bottom of a wide-mouthed mug. Finally, they sprinkle a little nutmeg on top. (Sorry, Mr. Benjamin.) The results taste like a coffee drink suited for the season, not a cloying Christmas concoction that’s too heavy to finish. The cream means it’s a bit thicker than a typical latte, giving the espresso more body and a smoother swallow. Those added flavors hit the palate just as the espresso taste starts to fade, the cinnamon and vanilla dancing on your tongue as you prepare for the next taste. If eggnog is known to overpower, lucettegrace’s egg-less eggnog latte tempers the flavors just enough for you to enjoy its fellow ingredients. —Grayson Haver Currin Something like wet plaster spiked with vanilla extract filled my head, and I let out a pathetic little groan. I angry-swallowed the second mouthful just in time to sneeze twice. By the fifth sip, the shock lessened, but I still wondered why I was drinking violently sugared half-and-half. Was there ever any taste in this world but sweet? I felt as full as if I’d eaten a large baked potato. There was a monster living in my mouth, a ropy blob that coated everything he touched with saccharine egg slime. His name was Nog. I could swear I heard a tiny scream as I poured the rest down the drain. —Brian Howe

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

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LIFE OF PIE

A doctor’s appointment sent one Durham baker back into the kitchen—and into the pie-making business

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The INDY’S GUIDE to ALL THINGS TRIANGLE

From scratch again: East Durham Pie Company’s Ali Rudel

li Rudel felt good about life last summer. The married mother of two daughters had decided to return to the mainstream workforce, taking a job in July with a nonprofit whose mission she respected. When she asked if she could start work a day later than expected in order to keep a doctor’s appointment for her annual physical, the new boss didn’t mind. But when she went into the office the next day, it was only the start of a very short stint. “They found a nodule on my thyroid but made it sound like it was nothing to be concerned about,” Rudel says of the doctors. “I’ve learned that’s what they do: keep things really positive until they know for certain you have cancer.”

So began the surreal odyssey that resulted in the removal of Rudel’s thyroid in September, ongoing therapy to ensure that that cancer is gone and, unexpectedly, a pie company that is shaping up to be a success for the Durham baker. Just a few months after launching East Durham Pie Company, and while still battling cancer, Rudel is already talking about a storefront. Weeks of uncertainty, surgery and recovery made a full-time job impossible for Rudel. She worked, however, to identify a manageable career that would make her happy. After numbing fatigue finally lifted, she decided the perfect occupation would allow her to both exercise her creativity and engage with the Triangle’s local food movement, which she had once done as

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music& drink eat the manager of the Chapel Hill Farmers Market. She wanted to do it all from her Durham home, too, a requirement meant to minimize time away from family. The answer was the one-woman business she started in October. Before her diagnosis, Rudel had already corralled her entrepreneurial ambitions and established East Durham Pie Company as an LLC in March. Her plan was to build the business slowly, developing it as her new job allowed. By April, the kitchen of the family’s current home was certified for food production. She and her husband, Ben Filippo, were familiar with the rigors of getting a home kitchen certified by the state for production of food to be sold wholesale or to private consumers. They’d gone through the process in 2012 when they launched the erstwhile This & That Jam, the Triangle’s first jam subscription service. But making preserves was Filippo’s thing; Rudel’s jam, so to speak, is pie. “I figured I’d start the business when I had the time and resources. I had made a lot of great connections with farmers and producers, which would make

things easier,” she remembers. “But then everything changed.” Rudel devoted herself to learning about her thyroid and what life would be like without it. Still, during her treatment and recovery, she found baking the occasional pie to be comforting. The act of turning flour and butter into flaky dough was a welcome distraction from her situation, and it allowed her to be creative with seasonal ingredients and to repay friends and family members who were helping her. “I love the baking, but it’s hard right now because I’m on a diet for my treatment where I can’t have any dairy—no butter, no eggs, no iodized salt. I can’t event eat my own pies right now,” she says with a wry laugh. “But I’ll make up for it soon.” Rudel learned her craft at Four & Twenty Blackbirds, the renowned New York bakery where she took a job after college. She began as a barista but quickly became fascinated by the pie-making process. After her shifts, she’d stick around to watch and learn. She eventually asked to help. Several years later, her recipe for Salt Pork Apple Pie landed in The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book.

Put a little Kitchen in your life!

“I wriggled my way in and started baking full time,” says Rudel. “It was my introduction to working with farmers and cooking with seasonal ingredients. I ate a lot of fast food back then, and it really opened my eyes to the importance of healthy food grown by local farmers.” In fact, she and Filippo felt such a connection to the idea of local foodways that they decided to move to the Triangle, sight unseen, in 2011. They’d heard of its burgeoning reputation as a hub for sustainable farming. They have both since built careers connected to that passion: Filippo, formerly with the USDA and Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, was director of sustainability at Foster Caviness, a leading supplier of wholesale produce; last week, Preservation Durham named him as its new executive director. And now, Rudel hopes to grow East Durham Pie Company into a storefront pie-and-coffee shop. “That’s my ultimate goal,” she says. “If things continue to go well, I may have to shift operations to a commissary kitchen before opening a shop.” Rudel launched the business just before Thanksgiving so she might leverage her

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

reputation in local food circles to score orders for her 10-inch, $28 pies. It worked. The maple sweet potato, ginger apple, malted pumpkin and bourbon pecan pies also caught the attention of The Parlour in Durham; the ice cream shop invited her to bake a few more for a ticketed “dessert flight” night in early December. The sold-out event boosted awareness for Rudel’s brand, helping her build toward that storefront dream. Until then, her single-serving pies will remain at Respite and Cocoa Cinnamon in Durham. She’s in talks with other potential providers, but, right now, she’s got smaller concerns— dozens of them, actually. “Right now, I’m taking orders for minimincemeat pies for Christmas Eve delivery. I’m planning to add something with chocolate and citrus for New Year’s, but I haven’t completely decided,” she says. “My life is a bit manic right now, but it’s all good.” s Jill Warren Lucas is a Raleigh writer who blogs at Eating My Words. Follow her at @jwlucasnc.

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culture

CONCESSIONS TO LUXURY

Which of the Triangle’s new high-end cinemas has the most panache for your extra cash? BY ALLISON HUSSEY

y idea of luxury is probably a little stunted. I have no Champagne wishes or caviar dreams. A cold Miller High Life and some Haribo gummy frogs are enough to make me happy. Still, I’m a big fan of the “treat yourself ” mantra when the occasion calls for it: a new book, a cocktail that isn’t made with well liquor, a few records if I’m feeling really flush. Going to a movie alone is among my permissible self-care indulgences, but even then, I often take the cheap route, hitting one of the Carolina Theatre’s $9 Retrofantasma double features or a $6 matinee at a Carmike theater, splurging on popcorn and soda but sneaking in candy in my purse. So going to a theater like Silverspot Cinema in Chapel Hill or CinéBistro in Cary is generally out of my league. Both are part of a nationwide trend of cinema presenters trying to turn a creature comfort into a luxury experience, in a battle being waged against Redbox, Hulu, Netflix and torrent sites. Silverspot, which opened in October, is one of three locations—the other two are in Florida. Cary’s CinéBistro, in the updated Waverly Place, began service in early September, and is one of 10 such venues across the country, four of them also in Florida. Ticket prices at both theaters are $14.50, higher than the $10-to-$11 average for standard evening showings. Neither strays far from other local onscreen offerings, mixing one or two prestige pictures (Brooklyn at Silverspot, The Letters at CinéBistro) with blockbusters (Spectre, Creed and The Hunger Games at both). They differentiate themselves through ambiance and dining options. Both theaters follow through on the enhanced cinema concept they promise, but each executes it differently. To me, only one feels truly high-quality. A cozy restaurant sits just inside Silverspot’s entrance at University Place, formerly University Mall. It doesn’t offer

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The lobby and concession stand at Chapel Hill’s Silverspot BOTTOM

In-theater dinner service at Cary’s CinéBistro

in-theater food service; rather, you slide into a table at the restaurant, Trilogy, which takes up a big corner of the main lobby. But if you order 15 to 20 minutes before show-time, the staff will box and bag your meal so you can take it into the theater. The menu has a lot of slightly upscale American cuisine, with burgers, a lobster roll, catfish tacos and a fried chicken biscuit among the entrée options. A pepperoni or cheese pizza will run you $12 (the Hawaiian is $14), and if none of those suit your fancy, you could opt for glazed salmon ($22), baby back pork ribs ($26), a few simple salads or shrimp and grits. Before a 7:40 p.m. screening of Spotlight, I’m sitting at the long, slick bar, sipping a strange drink, the $13 Kitty Hawk

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Kocktail. A concoction of orange juice and tequila with jalapeño and tarragon, it’s sweet, spicy and tangy—a little outside of my whiskey-flooded wheelhouse but mixed no differently than a similar drink at a regular bar. I’m tempted by the “cheesecake lollipop tree for two” with bubblegum whipped cream (how does that even work?), but being just one, I pass on the challenge. Silverspot’s 14 theaters are laid out in stadium fashion, with wide, thick armchairs. When purchasing your ticket from an automated teller—no more mumbling through Plexiglass!—you select your desired seats, eliminating the search-and-stakeout. Depending on what you’ve ordered, the lack of tray tables can make eating tricky, but there’s enough room in and around the seats to accommodate

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culture the maneuver. The aisle width is a dream for a long-legged person like myself. Cross your legs, slouch, practice Rockettes kicks: There’s room to do it all. My $14 Caesar salad is middling, but the $6 truffle fries are a worthwhile treat. They’re perfectly soft on the inside and just crisp enough on the outside—I could have eaten a popcorn bag of them. The picture is beautifully sharp, and the screen isn’t as large as I’d anticipated for an upscale theater. It’s plenty big, but it isn’t a neckstraining IMAX monstrosity. For a lowaction film like Spotlight, the smaller screen makes it easier to focus on the tension and dialogue. Without going over the top with luxury, Silverspot is a significantly more comfortable, enjoyable experience than a traditional multiplex, well worth the extra few dollars.

ompared with Silverspot, Cary’s CinéBistro feels ludicrously decadent. It, too, has a bar in its front lobby, but its seating options also include cocktail tables and a cushy lounge area that boasts a gas fireplace. It’s much smaller, with five screens, nine fewer than Silverspot. You can order appetizers, drinks and desserts at the lobby bar, but your dinner isn’t served until you make your way into the theater. Before an 8 p.m. screening of The Night Before, a screen in the lobby is locked on the It’s a Wonderful Life DVD menu for the few minutes I wait before getting seated. Like Silverspot, CinéBistro features self-reserved seating, but instead of stadium style, the seats are flat rows of recliners in front of a massively wide screen, where I watch Joseph Gordon-Levitt and his friends romp across New York in the sly Christmas comedy. While Silverspot offers a thoughtfully enhanced night at the movies, CinéBistro is more about the overall dinner-and-a-movie experience, with upgrades at every turn. Everything is bigger, but not necessarily better. My seat reclines to my liking at the touch of a button, but the picture on the enormous screen is often blurry around the edges—even in scenes outside of Seth Rogen’s drug haze. CinéBistro offers popcorn and a few different candies, but these are more of a footnote on its grandiose menu. For in-theater service, you’re called to your seat about half an hour before the movie starts (this ensures servers aren’t distractingly coming in and out during the movie). You

have a few minutes to look over the menu that waits, along with silverware rolled in a cloth napkin, at your chosen seat. Then a solicitous server, armed with an iPad and dressed in standard black-and-white high-end service garb, arrives to take your order. Appetizers, entrées, drinks and desserts arrive all at once. Candy selections are limited to six basics: Twizzlers, Peanut M&Ms, Reese’s Pieces, Buncha Crunch, Milk Duds and, inexplicably, Sun-Maid chocolate-covered raisins. Silverspot, on the other hand, has a classic-looking (if very shiny) concession stand that’s stocked with many sorts of snacks. There’s the classic popcorn, but you can also order nachos, a hotdog or one of about 20 candies as well as wine and beer. They’re the same sort of snacks you’d find at any theater, just with better presentation, and not significantly more expensive than the usual markup on movie fare. The two theaters’ menus overlap occasionally in their offerings: burgers, salads, a couple of miscellaneous sandwiches. Silverspot’s wide variety of options makes it easy to choose a culinary adventure for almost any palate or price. It seems to have more veggie options, including steamed edamame, fried green tomatoes and grilled broccolini. CinéBistro’s menu is heavier on meat, including crab cakes, a New York strip steak and North Carolina trout. My bacon mac-and-cheese, with chicken subbed for shrimp, is thick and smoky, but not so spectacular as to merit the $17 price. Across the board, the food was good but hardly extraordinary—with a little planning, you could find a pre-movie dinner that’s just as good and much cheaper. At one point during The Night Before, I catch myself fully reclined, sipping a delicious if ridiculous cocktail (the generously sized $9 ginger peach whiskey punch) and pondering my next bite of a chocolate cake so rich it takes me all night to get through it. It feels like some serious onepercenter living, which is fun but, ultimately, not that fulfilling. It winds up costing more than $60 for one person, but the bottomline movie experience isn’t markedly better. With its balance between cinematic staples and upgraded comfort, Silverspot hits the spot. Next time I decide to treat myself, I’ll make room for it on my list. s Allison Hussey is the INDY’s calendar editor. Email her at ahussey@indyweek.com.

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After nearly a decade as a band, The Charming Youngsters released one of the area’s best indie rock offerings this year. But are they already gone for good?

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t’s a Monday night in Durham, and Nolan Smock is tired. In recent weeks, the 31-year-old singer-songwriter has been sorting through the logistics of his January wedding to his bandmate Kathryn Jackson—KJ, as he calls her. Smock has been working shifts at Bull City Records. And now he’s at the storageunit practice space of his band, The Charming Youngsters, demoing new ideas. Some of these sketches may become songs on a solo release, or they may become Charming Youngsters tunes. In the latter case, Smock had better hurry: Drummer Lloyd Newman will soon head to San Francisco for a five-month programming stint at Apple. It isn’t necessarily a permanent move, but it will put the band on hold at least until the summer of 2016. “Lloyd’s packing up to go to San Francisco [for programming]. KJ’s about to go to programming school,” a drowsy Smock says. “I’m not doing anything except for kind of writing another album. I’m not totally unstable at the moment.” The band has survived worse and weirder circumstances, though, thanks to its formation in the churning wilderness of the same Greenville, North Carolina, underground that spawned Future Islands and Valient Thorr. Now a fully pragmatic band, they just issued their second LP, the terrific Middleweights, digital-only, with a vinyl release expected sometime next year. And rather than hit the road in support, the band is hitting the pause button for six months at least. Middleweights might seem to have been delivered offhandedly, yet the LP represents remarkable growth. Previous albums overflowed with cute moments, playful songs about dinosaurs or sexually frustrated roosters. But the latest is the band at its fuzziest and most propulsive. With its blistering tempo and multiple pop-punk hooks, “Skinny Idiots” is a fun song, yes, but its air of nervousness and the aim the band takes at kids stuck too long in partying mode suggest that The Charming Youngsters aren’t

as lightweight as they once were. “We’re changing our name,” Smock jokes, “to the Functioning Adults.”

t the start, they really were youngsters. In 2007, when Smock arrived in Greenville to study photography at East Carolina University, he brought the name “Nolan Smock and the Charming Youngsters” with him. That identity was attached to little more than a collection of solo demos, guitar-and-Casio curios with infectious melodies. He’d been experimenting with home studio software, but college and photography became the focus—temporarily, anyway. “The Spazz was like a light switch,” he says, referring to the illegal music venue that was the beating heart of Greenville’s underground. Inside the dilapidated storefront, Smock found a rich and shifting mélange of touring acts on the rise and locals with names like Blue Destroy, Lonnie Walker and Hot John Stockton. The space’s free-for-all atmosphere especially excited Smock. Many of the bands were unpracticed one-offs, seemingly random assemblages of local musicians playing free-form sets. These short-lived groups helped Smock abandon the idea that live music requires traditional concepts of practice and preparation. Soon, Smock was hooked: He dropped out of ECU quickly enough to get his money back. “That was my downfall in Greenville— dropping out of school for good times,” he says. He began playing bright-eyed pop at the Spazz and house shows with his drummer and roommate Eric Von Kopp. They were so unprepared they were forced to improvise. Von Kopp was a natural, while Smock was a little fussier. Eventually, he learned to embrace musical chaos. “We kind of just played a bunch of grimy shows,” Smock remembers. “That was such & and Satnot know a huge growth, to goFri out there & party.” 6 what we were goingFeb to play5 at this

American Aquarium

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

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Newman was in Greenville, too, playing in local rock act Hot John Stockton with bassist Andrew Sean Koenig. Several nights a week, he’d show up at the Spazz mock or the beer store and show space 21 Eleven ” without checking to see who was playing. “What I took out of the Greenville scene was a sense of adventure,” he says. Smock When one of the main show houses dy in town came up for rent, Newman and versity, Koenig moved in and renamed it “the ck and Stockholm House.” It already had a m. That reputation for uncommon rowdiness, e than a having figured strongly in Future Islands’ nd-Casio early years. (Look closely, and you can e’d been spot Smock and Koenig in Future Islands’ oftware, 2010 video for “Tin Man.”) Knowing this me the history, Newman and Koenig happily took over the lease. They had no intention of ch,” he getting their deposit back, says Newman, venue laughing at the memory. nville’s “We hosted some bands that have gone ed on to big things,” he says. “Future Islands d shifting basically broke the house. It was kind of e and scary—wall-to-wall people, inside and out.” oy, Koenig and Newman soon joined The kton. Charming Youngsters, with Von Kopp here drumming and Newman playing guitar. f (He took over on the drums just last year). ffs, They practiced at the 11th Street House. f local It was a quieter scene, Smock recalls, but These there were still plenty of oddball moments, abandon like an allegedly naked performance on the aditional roof by The Love Language’s Stu McLamb. on. But it didn’t last. Von Kopp, who split ropped amicably from the band in 2014, is the his only former member who remains in Greenville. Everyone else now lives in enville— Raleigh or Durham. mes,” “Places were closing, and people were leaving,” Smock says. “It would be op at the interesting to see that parallel universe, with rummer The Charming Youngsters still in Greenville.” ey It was time to get out and grow up. ced to l, while t’s a Thursday night in Raleigh, and The ally, he Charming Youngsters are playing their last . show until, at the earliest, summer of 2016. of grimy It’s mild out, but it’s quite warm inside was such Neptunes. The crowd of three dozen people not know includes several Greenville expats. There’s party.” Billy Barnes, Ghostt Bllonde’s chipper,

See you next summer: The Charming Youngsters are Kathryn Jackson, Nolan Smock, Lloyd Newman and Andrew Sean Koenig. PHOTO BY JEREMY M. LANGE

animated drummer, who went to shows at the Spazz as a high-school kid. There’s John Massengill, too, the singer and songwriter for country drifters Old Quarter. The Charming Youngsters’ new guitarist, Brandon Sowers, is another Greenville survivor. He isn’t playing this show, because he’s at home prepping to earn his realtor’s license. The 32-year-old is expecting his first child in February. Smock and Jackson are getting married in a little over a month, and then they’re taking a Mexico City honeymoon. Koenig isn’t a planner (he’ll play with whatever projects crop up in the interim, he says), while Newman just received confirmation of his extended-stay hotel in San Francisco. “There’s a possibility that this show is our final one ever, because we have no idea what’s going to happen,” Newman says. “At the same time, this could be the start of a much longer process.” There comes a time, Newman says, when musicians at all professional levels reach a

crossroads. They wonder how much time and energy they can put into playing in a band. Sometimes bands break up. Some stick around forever. Others linger in limbo. So far, The Charming Youngsters’ solution has been to not take anything too seriously. Maybe it’s a fault, Newman admits. “The band has been a pleasurable experience from day one,” he says. “I don’t think a lot of bands can say that.” Newman and the others will perhaps collaborate remotely while he’s in San Francisco, but they may never record again. The band has outlasted worse impasses, anyway, such as the year Jackson and Smock broke up but didn’t quit the band. Newman and Koenig endured some awkward, intimate practices. “They grew up through that with us,” Smock says. “Those dudes have really been through it.” If the Neptunes show is bittersweet for the players, it doesn’t show until the end. At the start of “Walls,” Smock mutters that

it’s their last live date for some time. The propulsive pop-rock obscures his words, which seem out of place for a band born of free-form house-show sets and cheerfully stubborn survival. The set’s end is an instrumental, the closing track to a Valentine’s Day album Smock made for Jackson; her copy is the only one that exists. Smock says the song doesn’t even have a permanent name. Still, the tune crackles with frayed energy and a mournful air. The performance is dynamic, emotive, raw and real. After the set, Smock admits they’d only loosely practiced the song, tacking it on to the set at the last minute. For The Charming Youngsters, that finale felt more apt than a few words delivered through the din. It was an unplanned farewell—for now, at least. s Corbie Hill is a parent, musician, teacher and freelance writer. He lives in Pittsboro.

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Green Burial:

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uci Waldrup has waited a dozen years for this surreal sight. On a Friday night, standing beside a photocopier at a FedEx Office on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, Waldrup pops the thick, gray plastic bands wrapped around the square box she’s been toting all evening. She flips the cardboard corners down, reaches inside and pulls out one of the box’s 20 copies of burnthemasters, her beguiling five-track vinyl debut under the name Housefire. She scans the track titles on one side and then eagerly flips the LP. She glances up and grins. “This is exactly what it’s supposed to look like,” she says, her eyes beaming beneath a slate-gray stocking cap. Waldrup holds up the record. In the grainy black-and-white shot, printed on the circular sticker that surrounds the album’s spindle hole, a man lords over a seated woman, his hands digging into her forehead. Someone else reaches in from outside the frame, holding her jaw still with a towel that also absorbs the blood streaming down her face. The woman seems to offer a wan smile. Waldrup cut the picture from a book called Psychic Surgery, which explores the practice of digging into someone’s skin to extract the evil beneath. “I’ve been holding onto this image for so long,” she says, “waiting for the right time.” Judging by the exceptional burnthemasters, just issued by the Carrboro-based experimental syndicate Hot Releases, this is a particularly fortuitous time for Waldrup. During these five pieces, Waldrup lets titanic rhythms spiral toward their doom. On opener “4thwayschooldanceoftheneophyte,” a techno-ready rhythm seems to be swallowed in a conflagration of distortion. On “moodswing,” a soft house beat pulses beneath an electronic din, like a signal eternally stuck trying to break the noise. Waldrup loves horror films and comic books and confesses that she finds a certain comfort in gore; her music, like the sticker that now sits on top of it, betrays that same fondness for slow ruin. “I like to watch systems crumble and things fall in on themselves,” she says later

at a sports bar farther down the collegiate strip. “I like to feel that happening. And then I like carrying out the residue of the sounds, peeling back those layers at the very end.” Waldrup moved from Asheville to Durham in October, drawn in part by a long-standing relationship with the area’s experimental music network. But she started making music around 1999, she says, while living on a New Mexico commune that included a recording studio. She wanted to learn how to make music, but the studio’s digital options seemed limitless and complex to the point of being counterproductive. Instead, she asked to use a four-track to capture the sounds of static and

HOUSEFIRE with Liquid Asset, Lack, Virusse, Mille, Yohimbe and Karl Raymar Friday, Dec. 18, 9 p.m., $7 Nightlight, 405 W. Rosemary St., Chapel Hill 919-960-6101, www.nightlightclub.com

household items before slowly building those into systems she could map and even reproduce. Nearly two decades later, she’s still exploring that method. During burnthemasters, you can hear beats, melodies and textures sampled and spliced from pop songs, a Disney tune, thunderstorms, movies and YouTube clips. “Once people find whatever their thing is, they can speak through it more eloquently than the language of the tongue. There are no limits,” she says. “I always wanted to find the hardest, craziest, most intense sound, but I’ve always had this refusal to learn how to play an actual instrument. I had to find another way to do what I wanted to do.” For Waldrup, these pieces are dense composites of “subliminal messages,” with each layer and its meaning wedged inside and against another. As Nicki Minaj’s “The Night Is Still Young” booms through the room, Waldrup argues that’s the true

nature of the modern world, anyway—a barrage of competing messages and images, all with different goals. “I go into this music with different intentions, but they’re all geared toward a deprogramming or scrambling message,” she says. For the last several years, Waldrup has worked as a professional baker, picking up a job at Scratch after moving to Durham. She rises well before dawn most days to go to work, and she speaks slowly and deliberately, as though she’s considered this aspect of her music during isolated working hours. “If you hear the fact that you’re being bombarded subliminally, it becomes more evident it’s happening around you all the time,” she continues. “I’m not trying to raise awareness of that, necessarily; it’s just the angle I’m coming from.” In fact, Waldrup’s music feels insular and inquisitive at once, as though she were asking these questions in the privacy of her own thoughts. The dimly lit, savagely manipulated beats on burnthemasters position Housefire alongside a legion of modern producers interested in dark but lively combinations—the squads of au courant labels like Hospital Productions, Tri Angle Records and Blackest Ever Black, for instance. But when she talks about her music, it’s never part of a scene or some bigger artistic picture. Ryan Martin, who runs Hot Releases and helped convince her it was finally time to assemble a proper vinyl release, says this is the music Waldrup makes when she’s hanging out alone in her room, “creating the stuff she’d want to listen to all the time.” And when she thinks about how she fits in to any larger picture, she doesn’t equivocate: She doesn’t need to. “It builds a certain character to do something with no frame of reference, a confidence,” Waldrup says. “This music didn’t have any trouble on its own getting out there, and I wasn’t worried about it then. I probably shouldn’t worry about it now.” s Grayson Haver Currin is the managing+music editor of the INDY.

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BAND TOGETHER

After an extended but unavoidable break, Naked Gods returns from Boone with renewed vigor BY JORDAN LAWRENCE

hen Naked Gods took to the stage in its hometown of Boone on July 31, on the very night the band issued its first album in four years, nearly 15 months had passed since its last show. The band was down a guitarist, too; Christian Smith, Brian Knox’s guitarharmony partner in Naked Gods, had relocated to New York. Being onstage seemed new again. But less than two months later, crammed into the corner of a congested upstairs rock club in Raleigh during the Hopscotch Music Festival, the taut, terrific quartet had already grown into the configuration. Knox embraced his newfound musical space, filling the elastic, ricocheting grooves with fuzz. Singer Seth Sullivan banged his tambourine hard and threw himself against the happy crowd. “We’re excited to be playing music again together,” says bassist Chris Hutelmyer. “Hopefully, it shows. I’m sure most people outside of Boone have no idea all the shit that has happened to us over the past two years, and that’s A-OK.” When asked about “the shit that has happened” since Naked Gods’ last burst of activity, Sullivan and drummer Derek Wycoff pause and sputter, struggling to list all the life-changing events. They pepper subsequent answers with ones they forgot earlier. Smith moved away and amicably split with the group. Hutelmyer had his second child. Wycoff got married earlier this year, while Sullivan tied the knot in September, the week after Naked Gods’ Hopscotch performance. And Sullivan’s house burnt down, a detail Wycoff mentions casually. That flippant attitude makes sense considering the most wrenching news of the period: After passing out and being taken to the hospital in June 2014, guitarist Brian Knox was diagnosed with a grade 3 anaplastic astrocytoma, a life-threatening brain tumor that had to be removed and followed by aggressive treatment—33 rounds of radiation, then chemotherapy. Knox, now 33, has only recently finished his last round. “Initially, it was thought I would lose all my vision,” Knox says. “Luckily, that

early prediction was wrong and most of my vision has returned—all except the top right corner of both eyes. The part of the brain that interprets vision was damaged in one of several strokes I had due to the tumor pressing my brain against my skull. Before the surgery, I had been having severe headaches every day for about six months. Now I rarely have a headache, so that is a nice change.” Another nice change is that Naked Gods is back in action at all: After the pains, travails and changes the band survived since the release of 2011’s No Jams, it’s hard to believe Naked Gods not only returned but did so with its most compelling new set of songs to date. From the beginning, music played a large role in Knox’s recovery. His bandmates, for instance, gathered at the hospital during that first emergency visit. They organized a dance party and an auction to raise funds for his expenses. They also leaned on their dedicated network of musical friends. The jovial Gods had long hosted other regional rock bands in Boone, establishing a rapport with many of the Southeast’s most exciting outfits, particularly a clutch from Virginia that includes Borrowed Beams of Light and Invisible Hand. When these and other groups asked to help Knox, the Gods parlayed the friendship into the 23-track David Lazer Fundraizer benefit compilation. “As opposed to just sending a get-wellsoon card and crossing our fingers, we did what we’re best at and used music,” says Invisible Hand leader Adam Smith. “We tried to alleviate at least some of the financial burden; by using only tracks by all the buddy bands in our scene, it also kinda doubled as that get-well-soon card.” Even before Knox got sick, the Gods’ hiatus seemed inevitable. Knox had planned to relocate to Charlottesville,

Whole again: Naked Gods ILLUSTRATION COURTESY OF NAKED GODS

Virginia. (And during his recovery, he has.) Smith, the other half of the dizzying duo whose interplay once coursed through the band’s live sets, had already moved away and joined another act. “There’s been extreme ups and extreme ups and extreme downs,” Sullivan says with a sigh. “There hasn’t been a lot of time for, you know, playing music.” The time away wasn’t wasted, at least. The self-titled follow-up to 2011’s No Jams, which the band released at that return show in Boone in July, pushes past the sharp songcraft and understated anxiety of earlier efforts. Its 10 studio constructions are rich but concise. Some are delicate and hallucinatory, others tangled and grimy. These songs share the same aggressively positive energy and eager melodic touch that drove the band’s previous efforts, even though that wasn’t the original intention. After a busy year touring behind No Jams in 2012, the band was anxious for change. “We wanted a more live and energetic feel than No Jams and some roughness and rawness,” Wycoff recalls. “We wanted it to be big, sprawling, like a Wowee Zowee, where it’s just an epically long album where there’s just no cohesive sense to it. We just wanted to throw a bunch of different ideas at the wall.” That spirit remains, albeit filtered through a series of painstaking recording

sessions and revisions. Before Knox’s diagnosis, the members took their time tracking the basic parts in a succession of different houses and practice spaces in both North Carolina and Virginia. They applied new, intricate touches—vocal layering, additional percussion, subtle keyboard inflections. Knox later used his stint recovering at his parents’ house to dive deep into the record’s mixing, adding “little guitar flourishes and experimenting with structure, taking away things and rearranging parts.” The result is Naked Gods’ most boisterous album and its most intricately composed one. “Picture in a Picture” opens with lulling keys and pillowy vocals before catching fire with a barrage of guitar-and-synth riffs. “Psychic Summer” fills the space between its precise beats with sparkling walls of guitar. It doesn’t bring the ruckus that Naked Gods offers live, a deliberate decision that shows Naked Gods doesn’t need to be in your face to be convincing. “What sounds best recorded doesn’t always work live, and Seth is so good at what he does, it makes it easier for the rest of us,” Hutelmyer says. “We’ve always been very conscious about separating our album sound from our live sound.” And to some extent, Naked Gods is simply excited for the chance to have both onstage and offstage opportunities again at all. s Jordan Lawrence tweets at @JordanLawrence.

NAKED GODS

with The North Country Friday, Dec. 18, 9 p.m., $5 The Cave, 452 1/2 W. Franklin St. Chapel Hill, 919-968-9308 www.caverntavern.com

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PLAYHOUSE ON THE HILL

New artistic director Vivienne Benesch wants to break down PlayMakers’ reclusive reputation BY BYRON WOODS

hough Vivienne Benesch’s official first day as PlayMakers Repertory Company’s new artistic director is January 1, she was already on the job last week, visiting Chapel Hill from New York to catch a performance of Peter and the Starcatcher, discuss her January PlayMakers production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters with company personnel and confer on pre-existing plans for next season. Benesch, artistic director of Chautauqua Theater Company and a faculty member at Juilliard, replaces outgoing director Joseph Haj after he was cherry-picked by the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. We met with her and learned about her bold plans to shake up the region’s leading professional theater company, courting a broader community by breaking down PlayMakers’ reputation as a cloistered institution prescribing theatrical medicine.

Vivienne Benesch replaces Joseph Haj as the artistic director of PlayMakers Repertory Company. PHOTO BY ALISON SHEEHY

In addition to community, diversity and new works, many local theater artists we spoke with think PlayMakers needs further emphasis on education as well. To me, they’re all connected. In fact, I don’t see those as four different points. Each is a point of entry to the same place—to relevance.

INDY: So, what are you going to do?

VIVIENNE BENESCH: I have every intention of leading PlayMakers as a theater of engagement. Engagement has been a motto in my career as an actor, director, producer and teacher. I want to shake up how PlayMakers is seen. It has a certain reputation of being a closed community—a house on the hill. While Joseph Haj and [associate artistic director] Jeffrey Meanza did a lot to reach out, I feel there’s a huge opportunity to have PlayMakers go out in order to bring more people in. I’m really eager to have our company taking work out to our communities. An equivalent of Mobile Shakespeare at the Public [Theater], not just to underserved communities, but to prisons, hospitals, mental institutions—parts of our community that don’t have access. Not only is that a great service to provide, if we are asking our young artists to think more globally, we must provide them with opportunities to do that. I hope I can make PlayMakers not only the LORT [League of Resident Theatres] professional theater of the region, but our

theater, this community’s theater. I don’t say I can do it instantly. But this should be a meeting ground, a home for the region’s artists to feel they take pride and ownership as a part of it. I don’t want to come in and co-opt what others are doing. But I do want PlayMakers’ doors to feel more open. A number of community members we spoke with for an article about what PlayMakers’ new director should do [“Casting Call,” Mar. 4] had concerns about diversity. There’s no question that I’m coming here at a time when diversity and inclusion are at the center of the conversation in American theater. We’re at a boiling point. And I’m both challenged and excited by the responsibility of being an arts leader at this moment. I want us to be a center of diverse engagement. And that absolutely starts with what we’re presenting here: diversity in worldview, artists on stage and parity of gender. In your time at Chautauqua Theater Company you championed new works,

instituting a new play festival. What are your plans here? It’s one of the main things I talked about in my candidacy: to bring new play development more into focus. New work is how we speak to our changing socioeconomic and political topography. Of course, we understand our history through classics and modern work; I’m a big proponent of that. But I also know that PlayMakers, over the years, had a reputation for “take your medicine” kind of theater, where people come and take their dose of culture. Some people want that. But I think we have a long way to go to ensure that there’s substance and also innovation. I don’t want PlayMakers to fall behind in being able to tell the stories of today, and that has to do with diversity and inclusion as well. It’s not necessarily new, but I’m going to make sure that PlayMakers is a home for the best of new art, established art and veteran art and artists as well. In order to do that, we are going to have to put our attention to it, raise money and do a huge amount of outreach. We have to do that to remain relevant.

The General Assembly and UNC’s board of governors have stepped up their scrutiny of public voices on campus in recent years, eliminating programs some have found politically distasteful or inconvenient. To what degree do you have the freedom to pursue your goals? I think I have a responsibility to exercise my freedom. Now add the word “responsibly” to that. It is any good cultural institution’s obligation to be the voice of not only the status quo but those who feel marginalized and underrepresented, to push the envelope in having us look at ourselves and how we look at the world. If we are not asking ourselves those questions, which are often uncomfortable, we are not doing our job as artists. Theater can no longer just be a mirror unto ourselves. If we’re reflecting only the community that is coming into the theater, we are not a relevant organization. If that makes certain people uncomfortable, good. Do I want to push them away so that they don’t want to come and share in dialogue with us? No. That’s where the fine line is. But there is a way to instigate and inspire conversation and dialogue through good art that is more necessary today than it has ever been. s Byron Woods is the INDY’s theater and dance columnist. Twitter: @ByronWoods

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POWER STRIPPED

The Wiz and Grounded are both minimalist productions. Only one should be. BY BYRON WOODS

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ometimes, when directors strip a script to the essentials, new insights come to light. Then there are shows like Burning Coal Theatre Company’s THE WIZ, whose opening night coincided, in a strategically questionable move, with the ultra-hyped NBC broadcast of The Wiz Live! Though director Randolph Curtis Rand has hit pay dirt with alternative stagings before, this is a far more qualified success, along the lines of his (Three Man) Tempest, which also reduced the cast and design elements of a fantastical text—at times, to the point of diminishing returns. Spectacle has been mostly excised from this take on the 1975 black musical version of The Wizard of Oz. Instead of a Kansas farm, we find three mic stands on a bare yellow stage floor at the opening. Scene titles and setting notes are read aloud, in lieu of actual sets, as if we were watching a staged reading. Multiple corners seem to have been cut, from Julie Florin’s three-piece band to the rolling office chairs that create the fateful twister. It’s the second consecutive Burning Coal show this season where an old overhead projector provides cheap lighting effects. With no other visual reference onstage, it’s Dorothy’s butt that flattens the Wicked Witch of the East. Amid relentlessly minimal production choices, two elements dependably take us into the outlandish: actor Aaron Wright’s unhinged, incandescent smile, a special effect unto itself in his work as the narcissistic title character, and Kima Baffour’s vivid costumes. Carly Jones convinces as Dorothy, and Juan Isler’s Lion steals a scene as the temperamental lead singer in a soul revue. Demetrius Jackson fully animates Avis Hatcher-Puzzo’s choreography in “Slide Some Oil to Me” and the plaintive “What Would I Do If I Could Feel.” Brittany Nicole Timmons effortlessly conveys the diva stature of Glinda in “Believe in Yourself.” But the night we saw it, momentary pitch snags recurred, and the sound design made singers muted and canned at some points, crystal clear at others. Though the cast’s abundant energy and commitment kept The Wiz afloat, that magic seemed at odds with a version determined to

Emelia “Me-Me” Cowans-Taylor is Evilene in Burning Coal Theatre Company’s The Wiz. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE RIGHT IMAGE PHOTOGRAPHY, INC.

disenchant in other ways. Burning Coal leader Jerome Davis is also directing a show in Raleigh, GROUNDED, which is even more stripped down. The difference? It’s supposed to be. Piloting a fighter jet is a lot like staging a one-person show; though logistics and ground support play a major part in both, they’re ultimately solitary activities. In the second production in Sonorous Road’s premiere season, actor and company founder Michelle Murray Wells ably navigates a maze of conflicting emotions and schismatic perceptions. Playwright George Brant’s 2013 drama is a gripping first-person tale of war in our time. Wells captures the machismo of an elite fighter pilot before her pregnancy forces her reassignment, flying drones half a world away. We then see her character undergo multiple changes as she deals with the stress and sensory deprivation of 12-hour shifts spent staring at a gray video monitor. As Grounded unfolds, that grayness slowly seeps into her domestic life. Soldiers have tragically brought war home with them since time immemorial. But when this pilot does

so every night, commuting from battlefield to suburban home, coping mechanisms fray, then start to fail. Aided by Matthew Adelson’s atmospheric lighting, Wells keeps us strapped into this nightmarish odyssey all the way. Recommended. s Byron Woods is the INDY’s theater and dance columnist. Twitter: @ByronWoods

THE WIZ HHH Burning Coal Theatre Company @ Murphey School Auditorium 224 Polk St., Raleigh 919-834-4001 www.burningcoal.org Through Dec. 20

GROUNDED HHHH Sonorous Road Productions 209 Oberlin Road, Raleigh 919-803-3798 www.sonorousroad.com Through Dec. 20

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FIRST THEY TAKE BERLIN, THEN THEY TAKE DURHAM

be. Culture Mill directors Tommy Noonan and Murielle Elizéon reunite with Anja Müller at the Carrack BY CHRIS VITIELLO

or the Carrack Modern Art, it’s a great way to fill the gallery in a fallow holiday week. But for dance artists Tommy Noonan, Murielle Elizéon and Anja Müller, it’s a cross-continental reunion. Noonan and Elizéon, who direct the arts organization Culture Mill in Saxapahaw, developed What Doesn’t Work while they were living in Berlin in 2013 and ’14, around the same time Müller, who performed in the piece, also debuted her La Mula. Both pieces were responses to the insular bustle of the Berlin performance scene. Both performances are part of Durham Independent Dance Artists’ second season and grow out of Müller’s current residency at Culture Mill. Recast in Durham at a moment when consumerist hipsterism threatens to price out cultural producers, the pieces take on new political layers. Though Durham is much smaller than Berlin, Noonan sees some similarities. There’s more going on The Wiz. in the arts than one can keep track of, and the population is increasingly transient, dispersed and diverse. That’s exciting, but ttlefield it can erode the substance, leaving only the sms flash behind. thew “People love visiting Berlin, especially lls keeps artists or hipsters or those who fashion dyssey all themselves lovers of culture and creativity,” Noonan says. “It’s a bit of a wonderland because it’s so oversaturated and dance with stuff. It’s a great place to be fed with ideas. But a lot of my friends there were starting to ask ‘What is this really about? Who am I making work for?’ Everyone’s competing for funding and attention, but pany for what, really?” um That self-examination led to the creation of What Doesn’t Work, a playfully subversive rejoinder to the highly conceptual Berlin performance scene. Physically rigorous improvisation is presented with bare staging and no soundtrack, forcing the audience to meet the performers as living, breathing bodies s in real time—and to recognize themselves as such, too. Although Müller joined them in the original version of the piece, Noonan and Elizéon will stage it as a duo at the Carrack. They hope the audience will relate to their

ABOVE

Anja Müller, Murielle Elizéon and Tommy Noonan

BELOW

Anja Müller

work in the same way that they bring their own memories and emotions to a piece of music, instead of looking for coded meaning, like in a text. While What Doesn’t Work seems to reject an analytical Berlin scene, Müller’s La Mula exaggerates and parodies it. The garish one-woman show crosses music with performance art to critique the commodification of cultural expressions, all with a hip-hop inflection.

PHOTO BY MAURICE KORBEL

PHOTO BY ANDRÉ WUNSDORF

“As an artist in Berlin, you are really underpaid, but everyone’s still going to very fancy, hip restaurants, wearing great clothes, moving in glamorous circles. Really, in Berlin, artists are more like workers, but they still keep this shininess up,” she says—sentences in which “Berlin” could easily be swapped with “Durham.” Müller describes her La Mula persona— sweaty and scowling in a black T-shirt, ball cap and masses of gold necklaces—as a

version of herself that is free to embody a contradictory attraction and repulsion. She revels in the thumping beat from two large speakers onstage while recognizing that the fantasy has been manufactured and sold to her. “I wanted to create an alter ego, someone who comes from the streets, not so reflective in what she’s saying, bolder,” Müller says. “She’s daring in terms of putting all her desires on the stage and not being afraid of failing in front of the audience. She really wants to entertain and bring people together in that moment.” Müller’s movement ranges from dancing to gestural acting, occasionally approaching visceral body art. As choreography, it draws on cinematic and advertising traditions at least as much as dance. “I’m eating gold and I’m puking it out,” she says, “and the way I’m puking it out is choreographed.” Ultimately, Müller hopes that the work will prompt viewers to examine their relationship to “this entertainment industry that’s a desire machinery.” In one sequence, La Mula sings that she’d like to be a golden hoofprint on the ceiling of people’s minds. It’s a tangled, impossible wish that her persona’s relative freedom allows, and Müller appreciates La Mula for that. “I’m too controlled sometimes,” she says. “I have to work hard to be not that controlled in that character. Maybe La Mula is my movements and thoughts that I stop before they come out of my mouth. For me, it’s liberating. I hope that the audience will think so, too.” s Chris Vitiello is the INDY’s visual art columnist. Twitter: @ChrisVitiello

ANJA MÜLLER Dec. 17–18, 8 p.m., $15

TOMMY NOONAN AND MURIELLE ELIZÉON Dec. 19, 8 p.m.–Dec. 20, 3 p.m., $15 The Carrack Modern Art 111 W. Parrish St., Durham 919-294-8605 www.thecarrack.org

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MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL, RALEIGH

Cirque Musica Holiday Spectacular FRI, DEC 18 | 8PM SAT, DEC 19 | 3PM & 8PM Your favorite holiday music graces the spell-binding, gravity-defying feats of today’s greatest circus performers!

THIS WEEK

Weekend Sponsor: Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina

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New Year’s Eve in Vienna THUR, DEC 31 | 8PM

Kick off 2016 with classic Viennese waltzes and Big Band favorites from Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller and more!

A Rodgers and Hammerstein Celebration™ FRI, JAN 22 | 8PM SAT, JAN 23 | 3PM & 8PM Oscar Andy Hammerstein III, host Teri Hansen, soprano Sean MacLaughlin, baritone Featuring music from South Pacific, The Sound of Music, State Fair, The King and I, Oklahoma! and Carousel!

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INDYweek.com spirit of punk in the hands of a top-notch bar band, while, in a rare appearance, The Dynamite Brothers sing soul music with Led Zeppelin-sized aplomb. And Jphono1 offers solo singersongwriter musings. This is a premier local bill, fitting for any season but spruced up with a welcome, seasonally charitable twist. 8:30 p.m., $10, 506 W. Franklin St., Chapel Hill, 919-942-5506, www.local506.com. —Grayson Haver Currin

12.16–12.23

Where we’ll be

MUSIC | PUNCH BROTHERS THE CAROLINA THEATRE, DURHAM THURSDAY, DEC. 17

The modern string quintet the Punch Brothers arrived early with an album-of-the-year contender in January’s The Phosphorescent Blues. They employed banjo, mandolin, fiddle, acoustic guitar and bass to splendid new ends. The record explores themes of isolation in this digital age, from the intricate opener “Familiarity” to closer “Little Lights.” The band’s November EP, The Wireless, provided additional offerings from the Phosphorescent sessions, from PUNCH BROTHERS the scintillating instrumental “The Hops of Guldenberg” to a reimagined version of Elliott Smith’s “Clementine.” On this round of winter dates, Punch Brothers perform with a single microphone, adding another dimension to the band’s already engaging live show. Anaïs Mitchell opens. 8 p.m., $37–$79, 309 W. Morgan St., Durham, 919-560-3030, www.carolinatheatre.org. —Allison Hussey

CALENDARS MUSIC 33 VISUAL ARTS 38 PERFORMANCE 39 BOOKS 40 FILM 41

MUSIC

TATSUYA NAKATANI & MICHEL DONEDA NEPTUNES, RALEIGH THURSDAY, DEC. 17

Both Tatsuya Nakatani and Michel Doneda turn seemingly ordinary instruments into alien sound sources. The Japaneseborn, Pennsylvania-based Nakatani refashions a mere drum kit into a microtonal orchestra. By tossing metal bowls onto his tom-toms or scraping cymbals with customized bows and found objects, Nakatani elicits long, textural drones and squawking, maddened outbursts from his kit. The French saxophonist Doneda, meanwhile, is an ace of circular breathing—that is, taking in new air while pushing old air into the instrument at the same time. The technique enables him to create full, luminous, eerie sustains, where notes begin to run together into a slow, old river. Together, these longtime collaborators seem to turn a secret, internal musical codex into an engrossing, vivified world of sound. Melody and rhythm stretch and morph into a sonic environment that operates by its own rules—slightly spooky, perhaps, but incredibly intriguing all the same. With Reflex Arc. 9:30 p.m., $10, 14 W. Martin St., Raleigh, 919-833-1091, www.kingsbarcade.com. —Grayson Haver Currin

THEATER | BLACK NATIVITY

STEWART THEATRE, RALEIGH SATURDAY, DEC. 19–TUESDAY, DEC. 22

MUSIC

BITTER RESOLVE, PIPE, DYNAMITE BROTHERS

KI D DA VI AM AD BY O

In these waning days of the year, finding an honest-to-goodness rock show can be a bit of a challenge. Everyone wants to throw a holiday party, offer a night of carols and standards or even try some new concept on a club stage when the national touring cycle has slowed. But with this benefit for Toys for Tots, Local 506 has you—and a whole lot of alternate rock ’n’ roll looks—covered. Headliners Bitter Resolve make stoner metal that balances the idea of crushing its audience with weighty riffs and rhythms and lifting it up through high-climbing, unspooling solos. Pipe puts the

When a plant outgrows a planter, you just repot it. When a show outgrows a venue— twice, in four short years—it’s not that simple. After Black Nativity, Justice Theater Project’s annual holiday production, filled the St. Mary’s School auditorium PIPE in 2011 and 2012, it moved to N.C. State’s Titmus Theatre in 2013 and 2014. The entire run still sold out a month in advance. Moving the production to the much larger Stewart Theatre this year required major recalibration, with a cast of 99 actors, singers, dancers and musicians— nearly twice the size of last year’s troupe. Langston Hughes’ 1961 play with music plunges us into a Christmas revival at an African-American church from long ago, as congregants dance, sing, praise and ponder the mystery of the Nativity story. As the play’s creators intended, the songs and choreography vary each year; as always, mighty music director Carolyn Colquitt and beloved African American Dance Ensemble founder Chuck Davis put some change-ups in the mix. Artistic director Deb Royals directs. 8 p.m. Mon.–Tues.; 7 p.m. Sat.–Sun.; 4 p.m. Sun., $22–$27, 2610 Cates Ave., Raleigh, 919-264-7089, www.thejusticetheaterproject.org. —Byron Woods K

LOCAL 506, CHAPEL HILL FRIDAY, DEC. 18

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COMEDY

THE DANGLING LOAFER FOURTH ANNIVERSARY KINGS, RALEIGH FRIDAY, DEC. 18, RALEIGH

Raleigh comedians Adam Cohen and Shane Smith are celebrating four years, the last two of them at Raleigh rock club Kings, of their peculiarly named monthly stand-up series. One of the area’s top comics, Thomas Dixson, headlines the showcase. Knowing Dixson, there’s a good chance he’ll actually lay down onstage and riff with the audience—especially if he just got through smoking a fat one. There’s also a visiting special guest, the Asheville-bred and LA-based YouTube flash animator Crazy Boris, who’ll likely have his accordion and a load of nutty-ass one-liners in tow. Gretchen McNeely, John Boni, Zack Levine and Sam Prickett bring the funny for the rest of the evening. The fact that this show is still going strong after all these years proves that The Dangling Loafer is hanging on by much PHOTO COURTESY OF PARADIGM TALENT AGENCY more than a thread. 8 p.m. $5, 14 W. Martin St., Raleigh, 919-833-1091, www.kingsbarcade.com. —Craig D. Lindsey

FILM | SING-A-LONG WHITE CHRISTMAS THE CARY THEATER, CARY SATURDAY, DEC. 19–SUNDAY, DEC. 20

“A jackdaw with a cleft palate could have sung it successfully,” goes the widely cited, seldom sourced quote from Bing Crosby. He was talking about Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” thought to be the best-selling Christmas single (or single, period) of all time—one of those rare songs that is almost objectively good. Is any sentimental holiday fare as kind to secular ears? It contains no metaphysics, hosannas or desperate gaiety, only longing for snow and nostalgia for childhood. It makes its emotional appeal through melody, orchestration and Crosby’s indelible vocal performance, so sad and comforting. The canny crooner first brought it to the screen in 1942’s black-and-white Holiday Inn (yes, that’s where the hotel chain got its name) before coming back for more, now in the “brilliance, clarity and beauty” of VistaVision, in 1954’s White Christmas. Crosby and Danny Kaye play nightclub performers who travel to Vermont at Christmastime to visit their old army general and get all romantical with a sister act played by Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. But it isn’t snowing in Vermont and the retired general’s inn is in trouble, so the whole gang decides to put on a big fundraiser show. The dance sequences are charming if overlong; the songs are mostly glorious (if you can grit your teeth through “I’d Rather See a Minstrel Show”); the plot is contrived from misheard conversations, faked injuries and phony engagements. It’s streaming on Netflix if you need to refresh your memory, though if you don’t know “Sisters” now, don’t worry—you will, as it seems to be the only song in Betty and Judy’s act. Anyway, the Cary Theater will provide lyrics, and even props. For a movie that’s mostly singing, dancing and banter, it’s hard to imagine what the props might be. Big blue feathered fans? Jackdaws? Dancin’ canes? I really, really hope it’s dancin’ canes. 2 and 7 p.m. Sat.; 2 p.m. Sun., $3–$7.50, 122 E. Chatham St., Cary, 919-462-2051, www.thecarytheater.com. —Brian Howe

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DECEMBER 16, 2015

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INDYweek.com

music WED, DEC 16

BLUE NOTE GRILL: Newtonanny; 7 p.m. The Herded Cats; 8 p.m. CAT’S CRADLE: The Get Up Kids, Into It. Over It., Rozwell Kid; 8 p.m., $19.50–$23. See indyweek.com. DURHAM ARMORY: Durham Community Concert Band; 7-8:30 p.m., free. IRREGARDLESS: Magnolia Still; 6:30 p.m. LINCOLN THEATRE: Holiday RAWk; 7 p.m., $15–$20. LOCAL 506: Jesse Marchant, Heather Woods Broderick, Mike V; 8 p.m., $10. See indyweek. com. MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL: The Army Ground Forces Band: Home for the Holidays; 2 & 7 p.m. MOTORCO: PopUp Chorus; 7 p.m., $8. NEPTUNES PARLOUR: Songs from Downstairs Year-End Bash; 8:30 p.m., $5. See indyweek.com.

Contributors Jim Allen (JA), Grant Britt (GB), Grayson Haver Currin (GC), Spencer Griffith (SG), Allison Hussey (AH), David Klein (DK), Karlie Justus Marlowe (KM), Jordan Lawrence (JL), Bryan C. Reed (BCR), Dan Ruccia (DR), David Ford Smith (DS), Eric Tullis (ET), Chris Vitiello (CV), Patrick Wall (PW)

POUR HOUSE INPUT ELECTRONIC MUSIC SERIES Input celebrates the holiday season with another packed local lineup, this one featuring the smooth funk of DJ Nick Neptune. Wear your dancing shoes, as Nick—often found spinning for local R&B stalwart Boulevards— has an ear for deep grooves. Also on deck are Chocolate Rice, new soul duo Brass/Abs and the debut of Fat Boi, who promises Dilla-esque chops. Free/9:30 p.m. —DS STATION AT SOUTHERN RAIL: Stephen Conrad; 9 p.m. Yeaux Katz Trio; 6 p.m.

THU, DEC 17 2ND WIND: 2 fer; 7:30-9 p.m. 4020 LOUNGE: African Rhythms; 10 p.m., $5.

THE ARTSCENTER ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL For 45 years, Ray Benson has been Asleep At the Wheel. Personnel have come and gone, but Benson remains in the driver’s seat to spin out Western swing, blues, honky-tonk and old-school country. “We were too country for the rock folks and too long-haired for the country folks,” Benson says of the band’s beginnings in Paw Paw, West Virginia. The band successfully blends old and new, preserving the music and spirit of Bob Wills but adding original tunes built during years of being a tireless road-dog dance band. $35–$40/8 p.m. —GB

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BEYÙ CAFFÈ: Thomas Taylor Trio; 7 p.m. BLUE NOTE GRILL: Carolina Lightnin’; 7-9 p.m., free. CAROLINA THEATRE: Punch Brothers, Anaïs Mitchell; 8 p.m., $37–$79. See page 31. THE CAVE: Alec Farell, S.E. Ward, Roy Bourne; 7 p.m. DEEP SOUTH: FKB$, Hazz, Ghost Dog, Dille2Step, Drozy Jay Illestrate, The Gatekeeper; 9 p.m., $5. FAIRMONT UNITED METHODIST CHURCH: Unity Choir: Glory of Christmas; 7:30 p.m., $10–$20. IRREGARDLESS: Frankie Alexander; 6:30 p.m.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

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AMY BLACK’S MUSCLE SHOALS MUSIC REVUE FRIDAY, DEC. 18

MOTORCO, DURHAM—The deep soul sounds we’ve come to associate with Muscle Shoals, Alabama, were a crucial part of America’s 20th-century musical identity. Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, The Staple Singers and a who’s who of others cut historic recordings there, alongside storied session players such as Spooner Oldham, David Hood and Barry Beckett. In recent years, interest in the town’s legacy of sweetly swampy soul has spiked, thanks in large part to a documentary about music made at the legendary FAME Studios. What better time, then, for someone like Amy Black to egg on that renaissance with her Muscle Shoals Music Revue? Black is a Boston-based singer-songwriter, but both of her parents hail from Muscle Shoals. She spent lots of time there growing up, letting the town’s history inform her musical development. Not long ago, Black started cutting an EP of Muscle Shoals-associated covers; the eventual involvement of keyboard master Oldham inspired her to turn it into a full-length album. Released in June, The Muscle Shoals Sessions finds Black putting her own musical fingerprints on tunes like Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On,” Otis Redding’s “You Left the Water Running” and Laura Lee’s “Uptight Good Man.” And with her touring Muscle Shoals Music Revue and Sarah Borges, she brings those tunes—and songs outside the R&B realm that were cut within FAME’s walls by legends like The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan—back to the stage. Black certainly brings her own sensibility to the material rather than striving for an obsessively retro re-creation, but she undeniably honors the source of the sounds, too. They have, after all, played an integral role in her—and America’s—musical life. 8 p.m., $12–$15, 723 Rigsbee Ave., Durham, 919-901-0875, www.motorcomusic.com. —Jim Allen

LINCOLN THEATRE THE BLUES FOR BABIES Blues music draws joy from earthbound pain and suffering. Through its work, the Hope for Haiti Foundation aims to assist a similar transformation in the epically troubled Caribbean nation. Tonight’s benefit features the lived-in rock-n-blues stylings of Peak City Blues Project and the edgier People’s Blues of Richmond, along with rising country singer Kasey Tyndall. $15/7 p.m. —DK NEPTUNES PARLOUR: Tatsuya Nakatani & Michel Doneda, Reflex Arc; 9:30 p.m., $10. See page 31.

NIGHTLIGHT SOON, BLANKO BASNET, NO EYES On the surface, these three featured bands have little in common. SOON summons a propulsive hybrid of doom metal that’s heavy on psych-rock and ebullient pop, while Blanko Basnet dresses insistent post-punk with tightly woven guitar melodies. No Eyes spin garage rock bluster from noisy psych-rock. All three, though, share a knack for

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momentum and genre-prodding. $5/10 p.m. —BCR

THE PINHOOK KENNETH WHALUM The “glue guys” on sports teams don’t rack up big stats or hit highlight reels, but you can’t win without them. The musical equivalent of the glue guy is someone like saxophonist Kenneth Whalum, who also composes, produces and sings background vocals. Now he’s attempting to step into the starting lineup with his second album, Through Hell & High Water. It teases jazz out of hip-hop (with occasional gospel gestures) and features rhymes by rapper and producer Big K.R.I.T. North Carolina-based jazz collective Zoocrü joins. $12–$15/8 p.m. —CV

POUR HOUSE NOAH GUTHRIE With just his voice, guitar and a YouTube channel, this prodigious South Carolinian has racked up millions of views with his covers of pop hits by the likes of LMFAO and Adele. Guthrie sings with verve and has an uncanny ability to conjure contemporary styles. But he’s a songwriter too, and having done an opening slot for Ed Sheeran, Guthrie seems headed for bigger stages. With Radio Birds. and Sam Burchfield. $10–$15/8:30 p.m. —DK

SOUTHLAND BALLROOM THE AMATEURS Since the mid-’80s, local reggae crew The Amateurs have spiked relaxed island grooves with a bit of a rock bite. Tonight, they’ll host “An Irie Reggae Christmas Party,” serving up a cocktail of originals, genre standards and reimagined covers like “Johnny B. Goode.” $5–$10/10 p.m. —SG STATION AT SOUTHERN RAIL: Happy Abandon, Parafilm, Matt Wilson; 9 p.m.

• DECEMBER 16, 2015 •

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

INDYweek.com

CHATHAM COUNTY LINE ELECTRIC HOLIDAY TOUR SATURDAY, DEC. 19

HAW RIVER BALLROOM, SAXAPAHAW—During the last decade, Raleigh acoustic favorites Chatham County Line have developed a spirited seasonal tradition—a special run of electric holiday shows, meant to end each year with an exclamation mark. It started as a single celebratory gig in 2003 but has grown into an annual mini-tour of the region. This year, the band skips its hometown and instead wraps up the run in Saxapahaw after passing through Asheville, Wilmington and Southern Pines. While Haw River Ballroom lacks the intimacy of those Decembers when The Pour House would seem to burst at the seams, at least everyone will have room to breathe— and maybe hear the music, too. The first set will feature fare more fitting of Chatham County Line’s modern string band style; expect a small preview of the band’s self-produced seventh album, too, planned for a fall 2016 release. Early indications suggest the band continues to find fertile territory beyond the typical boundaries of Americana, which it has challenged more or less since releasing its self-titled debut in 2003. But following the intermission, Chatham County Line will crank up the volume and lean more on classic rock influences. “It gives us a chance to plug in once a year and let our freak flag fly,” explains John Teer, who typically trades his fiddle and mandolin for electric guitar during the amped-up second set. “I love playing electric guitar but don’t get a chance to that often. Plus, we get to have our good friends along to jam.” Those friends—singer/guitarist Johnny Irion, bassist Jay Brown, drummer Zeke Hutchins—help back the electrified CCL. Each member of the expanded outfit selects a song to cover, too. “I think we all have pretty good taste in tunes,” Teer says, “so it sets up a killer set of material.” 8 p.m., $20–$22, 1711 Saxapahaw Bethlehem Church Road, Saxapahaw, 336-525-2314, www.hawriverballrom.com. —Spencer Griffith

FRI, DEC 18 618 BISTRO: Randy Reed; 7-9:30 p.m. BERKELEY CAFÉ: Kenny Roby; 8 p.m. BEYÙ CAFFÈ: La Fiesta Latin Jazz Band; 8 & 10 p.m., $8. BLUE NOTE GRILL: Jeff Jensen Band; 6 p.m. CARY SENIOR CENTER: Cary Town Band: Winterfest ‘15; 7:30 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM) WYATT EASTERLING Chapel Hill native Wyatt Easterling is working with Mandolin

DEEP SOUTH: Chrome Scene, The Remarks, Pet Names; 9 p.m., $5. FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: Vocal Arts Ensemble; 8 p.m., donations. IRREGARDLESS: Stephen Anderson; 6:30 p.m. KINGS: Fives; 10:15 p.m., $5. THE KRAKEN: Too Much Fun, The High Bushy Tails, Lynn Blakey, Ecki Heins, Glenn Jones; 8 p.m. LINCOLN THEATRE: Rebel Son, Dave Schneider Band, Ashley Nell; 8:30 p.m., $10. See indyweek.com. LOCAL 506: Bitter Resolve, Pipe, Dynamite Brothers, JPhono1, Beau Bennett; 9 p.m., $10. See page 31.

MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL N.C. SYMPHONY: CIRQUE MUSICA HOLIDAY SPECTACULAR Is the Nutcracker ballet just a little too staid for you? Is your Christmas music lacking highflying pizzazz? Have you ever wondered what would happen if you brought the circus into an orchestra concert? If so, this is the show for you. Cirque Musica is a Cirque du Soleil facsimile, complete with gravity-defying acrobatics, tight choreography, lots of showmanship and all the Christmas music you can shake a stick-that-appears-to-be-magically-hanging-in-the-air at. See page 29. $30–$89/8 p.m. —DR MOTORCO: Amy Black & Sarah Borges; 8 p.m., $12–$15. See box, page 33. NIGHTLIGHT: Housefire, Lack, Mille, Virusse, TraciBeats, Karl Raymar; 8 p.m. See page 22. THE OXFORD: Night Shift; 10:30 p.m.

Orange’s Andrew Marlin on an album; days after the early December recording session, he posted a track straight to Soundcloud. The spare “Some Day”—featuring the simple question of “Why can’t we all get along today?”— feels especially timely in light of recent headlines. Easterling hit the ’90s country trifecta with songwriting and production credits for era poster boys Joe Diffie, John Michael Montgomery and Neal McCoy. He has since busied himself in the music publishing and management worlds. He returns home with opener and fellow North Carolinian Laurelyn Dossett. $20/8 p.m. —KM

THE PINHOOK PINK FLAG

THE CAVE: Naked Gods, The North Country; 9 p.m., $5. See page 23.

PITTSBORO ROADHOUSE: Dan Blaisdell; 8 p.m., $5.

This Gift of Knives, which Pink Flag releases tonight, is the Durham punk trio’s newest fulllength LP, even if it isn’t exactly new. They recorded it between 2009 and 2010 before taking a short hiatus. Like SleaterKinney’s Kill Rock Stars output, Knives forges taut melodicism and bracing complexity out of barbed-wire emotional potency. Singer Betsy Shane’s voice is the naked aggression at the edge of the songs’ polemical power. The Wigg Report and City of Medicine open. $7/11 p.m. —PW

INDYweek.com singer alleged to have done time for vampirism and grave robbing. Sure, you can call his Dale Watson-in-a-Tim-Burton-movie persona satirical if you want to, but if you get too close to the stage when this honky-tonk bloodsucker is doing his thing, you may wind up in his thrall. Of course, you’re liable to soak up some killer country tunes along the way, too, but you’d better be prepared to take the “killer” part in stride. With Hank Sinatra. $20–$23/9 p.m. —JA

POUR HOUSE RAIMEE One imagines Raimee is tired of Evanescence comparisons. The Greensboro hard rock crew is, after all, fronted by a woman with an operatic voice and a preference for gothic attire. But Rei Haycraft provides more delicacy and nuance than Amy Lee, and her band prefers thoughtful melodies and atmospheric textures to crunchy breakdowns. With Knightmare, The Hell No and The Seduction. $5/9 p.m. —JL

ST PHILIP’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH: Angela Easterling & Brandon Turner; 7 p.m., $10. STATION AT SOUTHERN RAIL: Rod Abernethy; 7 p.m. TEMPLE BAPTIST CHURCH: Croasdaile Chorale, Durham Children’s Choir and Forest Singers Holiday Concert; 4:30 p.m., free.

RAAGA: Viswas Chitnis; 6-9 p.m.

THE RITZ G105 HOLIDAY SPECIAL: ANDY GRAMMER

SLIM’S LILAC SHADOWS Following this show and tomorrow’s stop at The Cave, Lilac Shadows will go temporarily quiet, its members devoting time to their other projects (like the acts Calapse, The Dinwiddies and Jenny Besetzt). Pleasing on record, especially on this year’s Brutalism, the band’s ambient post-punk is best delivered live and loud, the wall of sound pounding at your chest. The ramshackle songs of Raleigh’s excellent Beverly Tender unfold and reveal themselves slowly, like early Modest Mouse. They open both shows, and Ogetto joins this bill. $5/9 p.m. —PW

SOUTHLAND BALLROOM UNKNOWN HINSON Plenty of country heroes have been in and out of the pen for various offenses, but it’s a pretty safe bet that Unknown Hinson is the only old-school country

DECEMBER 16, 2015

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THE SHED JAZZ CLUB: Rissi Palmer; 8 p.m. WOODY’S @ CITY MARKET: Jake Dean Band; 10 p.m. WOODY’S SPORTS TAVERN: Brad Benson; 9:30 p.m.

SAT, DEC 19 BERKELEY CAFÉ: Jeff Hart and the Ghosts of the Old North State: Tom Petty’s Damn the Torpedoes, Jeff Mullins: Tom Petty’s Wildflowers; 8 p.m. BEYÙ CAFFÈ: Julia Nixon; 8 & 10 p.m., $10. BIG EASY-RALEIGH: Glen Ingram; 6 p.m. BLUE NOTE GRILL: Armand & Bluesology; 8 p.m., $8. BRASA STEAKHOUSE: Ed Stephenson & The Paco Band; 7 p.m.

The INDY’s Guide to Dining in the Triangle

PUBLICATION DATE

MAY 26, 2016 RESERVE YOUR SPACE NOW!

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Local radio stations have been getting back into the concertpromoting mix in recent years, what with 95X’s Big Shindig and the annual free show at Red Hat Amphitheater. For its seasonal turn, G105 taps one B-list pop dude and two more interesting upstarts. Andy Grammer just released a horrid new single, “Good to Be Alive (Hallelujah),” but the parenthetical has no seasonal tie-in; it’s about being young and dumb and having fun. His set will peak with the handclaps and harmonies of “Honey I’m Good.” In the bill’s middle, Tori Kelly is an American Idol reject with a decent if undecided Max Martin-produced debut, topped by the Lorde-like “Should’ve Been Us.” Arrive early for the highlight, Andra Day, an old-school soul singer with a modern flair. $27.50/8 p.m. —GC

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A CELEBRATION OF HOLIDAY MUSIC & SONG SATURDAY, DEC. 19

THE ARTSCENTER, CARRBORO—“We are bereft of saxophone,” Tim Carless admits of the cadre of musicians he will soon lead through a set of Christmas standards and obscurities, some inspired by Christianity and others by commercialism. The group would need a reed for its take on “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” inspired by Bruce Springsteen’s own E Street-abetted version. “But I’m sure someone will step up,” Carless continues, “and take care of that solo.” That spirit is an animating principle for the ad hoc groups of musicians that Carless leads for special projects like this, a full-length re-creation of Dylan’s Slow Train Coming or the live score he and a band offered for It’s a Wonderful Life a year ago. This holiday show actually started with Brad Porter, The ArtsCenter’s managing director and the drummer for a stellar house band that also includes Mount Moriah’s Casey Toll and veteran sideman James Wallace. Carless will direct them all but turn over the microphone to a set of singers that includes Skylar Gudasz, Jeff Crawford, Christa Wells and Mark Williams, who will offer up his Boss-like “Santa Claus.” For Carless, who is neither religious nor was raised in a household where much emphasis was placed on the holiday, it’s an inspiring chance to see his fellow musicians interact with their beliefs—or their sheer enjoyment of the season. “It’s more coincidental that, two years in a row, you find me doing a Christmas show, I think,” he says. “But I do enjoy that everyone seems to be in a good mood this time of year.” 8 p.m., $12–$15, 300-G E. Main St., Carrboro,919-929-2787, www.artscenterlive.org. —Grayson Haver Currin

THE NEW SCHEMATICS / THE RIFLERY / WAKING APRIL GALLOWS BOUND/ OLD SALT UNION

DEVON ALLMÄN BAND

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INDYweek.com CAROLINA THEATRE REJOICE THIS NIGHT! The extended parade of holiday concerts continues with Chapel Hill’s long-running Voices choir. For the Rejoice This Night! program, the group will sing plenty of carols, of course, though you can expect a variety of additional choral pieces that fit the seasonal theme, too. $7–$20, 12 and under free/8 p.m. —AH

CAT’S CRADLE BOMBADIL Bombadil co-founder Stuart Robinson left the band early this year, but that hasn’t done much to slow the reconfigured duo down. Daniel Michalak and James Phillips have spent much of their time this year touring in support of March’s Hold On, a strong LP that expanded on the band’s pop-leaning rock. Now a steady four-piece, Bombadil closes out its year on home turf. Kingsley Flood opens. $13–$15/8 p.m. —AH

CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM) RED COLLAR Once a regular headliner and ascendant export, the Durham post-punk band Red Collar has performed only in spurts since releasing Welcome Home more than three years ago. Red Collar always managed to turn resignation into defiant optimism, earning a sweaty crowd ready to shout back at the stage. Like a friend who moved away, Red Collar’s occasional visits are, at this point, tinged with nostalgia. But rather than dwell on the past, the band seems ever ready to just pick up where they left off. Hammer No More The Fingers, whose idiosyncratic and playful indie rock followed much the same arc, returns, too. Charlotte pub rockers Temperance League open with Springsteen/ Strummer bombast. $10/9 p.m. —BCR THE CAVE: Lilac Shadows, Beverly Tender, SMLH; 8 p.m., $5. See Dec. 18 listing at Slim’s. DEEP SOUTH: Superlove Highway, Mike Daughtry Band, Autumn To May; 9 p.m., $7. FAIRMONT UNITED METHODIST CHURCH: Unity Choir: Glory of Christmas; 5 p.m., $10–$20. HALLE CULTURAL ARTS CENTER: The Concert Singers of Cary and the N.C. Baroque Orchestra: Handel’s Messiah: Part I; 7:30 p.m., $25.

• DECEMBER 16, 2015 •

HAW RIVER BALLROOM: Chatham County Line, Johnny Irion, Jay Brown, Zeke Hutchins; 8 p.m., $20–$22. See box, page 34. IRREGARDLESS: Brien Barbour; 11 a.m. Carolyn Mitchell; 6 p.m. Bobby Moody; 9 p.m. JOHNNY’S GONE FISHING: Tom Nielson with Machai St. Rain; 7-9 p.m., free.

KINGS GIRL UNIT Girl Unit’s brilliant 2010 single, “Wut,” announced itself with the subtlety of a roadside bomb. Euphoric and frightening, the track familiarized listeners with the London producer’s maximalist sound: kitschy, cut-to-shit samples stretched over sinister trance pads, airhorns and cavernous bass. It’s gaudy, visceral dance music that begs to be heard in a club, not through YouTube at 3 a.m. while stoned. Try not to miss the openers: Durham producer GRRL plays a selection of fantastic, forward-thinking dance cuts. There’s also experimental Carrboro duo Earthly and Raleigh electronic torchbearer Eyes Low. $10–$12/10 p.m. —DS THE KRAKEN: Lud, The Dirty Little Heaters; 9 p.m.

LINCOLN THEATRE YARN Brooklyn’s Yarn brings its Christmas Yarn Ball down south. The act pairs Blake Christiana’s warm croon with a blend of amicable bluegrass and citified country rock. The Dune Dogs piggyback with a party-ready portfolio of swampy originals and covers for its own holiday extravaganza, now in its 11th year. $12/8:30 p.m. —SG

LOCAL 506 THE AFFECTIONATES The Affectionates’ strong poprock threatens to burst at the seams, an active rhythm section and all manner of strings and keys pushing beneath and on Jeremy Blair’s melodies until they have no option but to spring up and out. Chapel Hill’s Seabreeze Diner is more stripped-down and straightforward, with nervy, jangling songs that seem to shimmer in the sun. From Asheville, Fashion Bath floods the bill’s middle with psychedelic rock that likes to feign meekness and then roar. $8/9 p.m. —GC

THE MAYWOOD ATTRACTING THE FALL

SOUTHLA CRAVIN’ M

Though it appeared online in Oc- Cravin’ Mel tober, tonight marks the official mid-’90s ro celebration for the release of made the S Attracting the Fall’s Limitless. The popular reg Raleigh quintet’s debut EP hingeseven landed on the belligerence of djent major-label and prog-metal flourishes, but of upbeat ro shades of new-school death met-Tea” once h al brighten the spaces between give genre k breakdowns. Extinction Level Blowfish a r Event and Enemy in Disguise Raleigh’s Th open. $8–$10/9:30 p.m. —BCR quintet of lo Colourslide MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL: featuring tw N.C. Symphony: Cirque Musica Melon—wo Holiday Spectacular; 3 & 8 p.m., into its atm $30–$89. See Dec. 18 listing. $10–$13/9

STATION A RAIL: Lee G The Bad Do This month’s Party Illegal install- Green; 10 p ment brings two of Raleigh’s finest DJs—the genre-bouncing turntablist SPCLGST and the unpredictably explosive Thien— BERKELEY to Durham. Maybe it would have made more sense for Illegal Howell, Car Lynn Blakey organizers Durty Durham to close out the year with an out- p.m. of-state bang similar to that of BEYÙ CAF last month’s guest UNIIQU3, but 11 a.m.-2 p maybe it’s just best to end the year with a gesture of solidarity among local dance scenes and BEYÙ CA the DJs who are often too busy YOLANDA gigging to make those 30-minute Beyù owne treks to check out each other’s recently ran sets. Each DJ should be eager to Kickstarter show off new tricks and tracks. close to $45 With PlayPlay and DJ RNB. relocation o $5–$8/10 p.m. —ET jazz club to two doors d PITTSBORO ROADHOUSE: location. Up completion Backbeat; 8 p.m., $6. POUR HOUSE: Better Off Dead, “Beyù 2.0” Idlewild South; 9 p.m., $8–$10. it—will hav and a broad THE RITZ: Trial By Fire; 9 p.m., cal acts like $10–$15. guest, voca SACRED GROUNDS COFFEE will be able HOUSE: Dackel; 7:30 p.m., free. their audien reach. $20/ SCHOOLKIDS RECORDS: Hank Sinatra, Sarah Shook and the Disarmers; 8 p.m., free. BLUE NO ADRIAN D SHARP NINE GALLERY: Adrian Duke; 8 p.m., $10–$15. RICHMON As Adrian D THE SHED JAZZ CLUB: CJ Boyd, Benjamin SiskO))), Bryce jawed soul Winwood a Eiman; 8 p.m., $5. he issues im between gr SLIM’S vocalist The SHAKE IT LIKE A CAVEMANblast-furnac soul stands Tennessee’s Shake It Like a Caveman isn’t quite so primitive during a set as the name might suggest. Yes, from Louis J this one-man band very often Longhair. Fr stomps and shakes. But he also digs deep into deliciously drony CAROLIN electric riffs and moans, sliding CHERISH through reverb like a bluesbased Kurt Vile. With Oak Town It’s easy to d in a flurry o Strutters. $5/9 p.m. —JL the women put an inter

THE PINHOOK PARTY ILLEGAL

SUN, D

INDYweek.com SOUTHLAND BALLROOM CRAVIN’ MELON Cravin’ Melon resurrects the mid-’90s roots-pop sound that made the South Carolinians a popular regional touring act and even landed the five-piece a major-label deal. The easy hooks of upbeat rockers like “Sweet Tea” once helped Cravin’ Melon give genre kingpins Hootie & The Blowfish a run for all that money. Raleigh’s The Roman Spring—a quintet of local vets fronted by Colourslide’s Alex Lawhon and featuring two-fifths of Cravin’ Melon—works a little Americana into its atmospheric indie rock. $10–$13/9 p.m. —SG STATION AT SOUTHERN RAIL: Lee Gildersleeve and The Bad Dogs; 7 p.m. DJ Petey Green; 10 p.m.

SUN, DEC 20 BERKELEY CAFÉ: Steve Howell, Caroline Mamoulides, Lynn Blakey and Ecki Heins; 4 p.m. BEYÙ CAFFÈ: Ed Paolantonio; 11 a.m.-2 p.m.

BEYÙ CAFFÈ YOLANDA RABUN Beyù owner Dorian Bolden recently ran a successful Kickstarter campaign, securing close to $45,000 to help fund the relocation of his restaurant and jazz club to a larger space just two doors down from its current location. Upon its early 2016 completion, the new cafe—or “Beyù 2.0” as Bolden refers to it—will have 30 additional seats and a broader layout. Musical acts like tonight’s returning guest, vocalist Yolanda Rabun, will be able to see a rise in both their audience and their voice’s reach. $20/5 & 7:30 p.m. —ET

BLUE NOTE GRILL ADRIAN DUKE & TERESA RICHMOND As Adrian Duke grinds out lockjawed soul that blends Steve Winwood and Ray Charles, he issues impassioned moans between gritted teeth. Covocalist Theresa Richmond has a blast-furnace delivery, but Duke’s soul stands up to her onslaught during a setlist that may range from Louis Jordan to Professor Longhair. Free/5 p.m. —GB

CAROLINA THEATRE CHERISH THE LADIES It’s easy to dismiss Celtic music in a flurry of stereotypes. But the women of Cherish the Ladies put an interesting spin on the

music, imbuing this traditionally male-dominated ethos with something that approaches a kind of girl power. They’ve been at it for 30 years now, and they bring fiery virtuosity to this complicated body of music. This Christmas show will feature a mix of standard carols with jigs, reels and airs. $20–$74/8 p.m. —DR THE CAVE: Evil Wiener; 9 p.m.

DEEP SOUTH MEDIAN, CESAR COMANCHE, THE REAL LAWW DJ Flash is on this bill alongside Median and Cesar Comanche, which means it kind of qualifies as a little Justus League reunion. But we’ve moved on, right? Still, anticipating these two scene architects performing on the same stage does make one want to break out their early The Path to Relief and Paper Gods records. You’ll get pieces of the old as well as the new, including some stuff from The Real Laww’s upcoming LP, Accidental Masterpiece. Konvo the Mutant and Dialek Dubai open. $6–$9/9 p.m. —ET IRREGARDLESS: Larry Hutcherson; 10 a.m. Whit Grumhaus; 6 p.m. LOCAL 506: 3@3: Joy On Fire, Paper Dolls, Kurtzweil; 3 p.m., free. PITTSBORO ROADHOUSE: Dan Blaisdell; 10:30 am. POUR HOUSE: Brandon Hughes, Castle Wild; 9 p.m., free. STATION AT SOUTHERN RAIL: Hal Engler Trio; 7 p.m.

MON, DEC 21

THE CAVE GOLD LIGHT There’s a cinematic quality to Gold Light’s songs, a trait doubtless derived from the experiences that leader and former film-school student Joe Chang had in writing, directing and producing a few low-budget movies. A bit like a mumblecore film, Chang’s ’50s pop-and-doowop-informed songs shuffle and stammer to sweetly sung tunes about the romantic intrigues of characters. Casey Williams opens. $5/9 p.m. —PW STATION AT SOUTHERN RAIL: SHAM (Tiger Room); 8 p.m., free.

TUE, DEC 22 THE CAVE JIM WATSON Christmas traditions vary widely. Jim Watson’s yearly yuletide show is The Cave’s Christmas bash. For 30 years now, the founding Red Clay Rambler has taken to the basement dive bar to spread a little holiday cheer. He passes out lyric sheets and leads beer-swilling patrons in rounds of “Jingle Bells,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and other seasonal standards. $8/8 p.m. —PW IRREGARDLESS: Cole Koffi; 6:30 p.m.

WED, DEC 23 BLUE NOTE GRILL: Clark Stern & Chuck Cotton; 8 p.m. HUMBLE PIE: Sidecar Social Club; 8:30 p.m., free. IRREGARDLESS: David McKnight and Bruce Emery; 6:30 p.m.

BEYÙ CAFFÈ: Bo Lankenau; 7 p.m.

SLIM’S NOCTOMB

CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM) BIG FAT GAP

On last year’s Obulus for Charon, Raleigh’s Noctomb resurrected the grit and grime of first-generation death metal. The band’s lo-fi approach foils the comparatively elegant black metal of Raleigh’s Château. The latter’s October EP, Amissus, conjures widescreen melodies between high shrieks and percussive gusts. $5/9 p.m. —BCR

After weeks of forced postThanksgiving group cheer comes the annual Big Fat Gap holiday homecoming, a Christmas party you’ll actually enjoy. (It’s a literal take on “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” too, as the bluegrass band’s name comes from one of North Carolina’s last remaining virgin forests.) The homecoming’s more-is-more, who’s who approach seems to grow each year, with guest appearances from an extensive pickin’ network. $10/8 p.m. —KM

STATION AT SOUTHERN RAIL: The Arcadian Project; 8:30 p.m. Yeaux Katz Trio; 6 p.m.

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OPENING THE SCRAP EXCHANGE: Dec 18-Jan 9: $24 Art Show. — Fri, Dec 18, 6-9 p.m.: Reception. 2050 Chapel Hill Road, Durham. 919-6886960, www.scrapexchange.org.

ONGOING 311 GALLERY & STUDIOS:

Ongoing: View From the Other Side, surrealist abstracts by Alex Waddell. Free. 311 W Martin St, Raleigh. 919-436-6987, www.311westmartinstreetgallery. com.

THE ARTSCENTER: Thru

Dec 31: Amy Keenan-Amago, collages. — Thru Dec 30: Annual Community Art Exhibit, photography, ceramics, paintings, fiber art and more. free. 300-G E Main St, Carrboro. 919-929-2787, www.artscenterlive.org.

ARTSOURCE FINE ART GALLERY: Thru Dec 31:

ArtSource 25th Year Celebration, new works by James P. Kerr. 4351107 The Circle at North Hills St, Raleigh. 919-787-9533, www. artsource-raleigh.com. INDYPICK

ARTSPACE: Thru

Jan 23, 2016: Carpe Diem, work by Rachel Campbell, Judith Condon and Jane Paradise. — Thru Dec 26: Crossing the Lines: A Collaboration

Jewelry by Local Artists, works by in-house gold designer Melissa Booth, local artists Ben Dyer & Michele LeVett. 116 S Churton St, Hillsborough. 919-643-2600.

MIRIAM PRESTON BLOCK GALLERY: Thru Jan 14, 2016:

National Arts Program, works by City of Raleigh and Wake County employees and their families. 222 W Hargett St, Raleigh. 919-9963610, www.raleighnc.gov/arts.

BOND PARK COMMUNITY CENTER: Thru Dec 31: A View of

MORNING TIMES GALLERY: Thru Dec 30: I give up., photos by rkOliver. 10 E Hargett St, Raleigh. 919-459-2348, www. morningtimes-raleigh.com.

My Favorite Things, work by Jane Hopkins. 150 Metro Park Dr, Cary. 919-462-3970, www.townofcary. org.

School Inspired Pottery, work by Peter Dugan. 401-B1 Foster St, Durham. 919-949-4847, www. bullcityarts.org.

NAOMI GALLERY AND STUDIO: Thru Dec 19:

Maready Evergreen’s 2015 Durham Art Guild residency culminates in the 20-footlong installation The Spirit of Lolong. It has a Third Friday reception at Golden Belt’s Room 100 Gallery from 6 to 9 p.m. Dec. 18 and remains on view through Jan. 3. 807 E. Main St., Durham, 919-560-2713, www.durhamartguild.org.

CAPTAIN JAMES & EMMA HOLT WHITE HOUSE: Thru

Dec 24: Christmas at Captain White’s, multimedia art by various artists. 213 S Main St, Graham.

CARY ARTS CENTER: Thru

Jan 21, 2016: Synesthesia: Connecting the Senses. — Thru Jan 24, 2016: Cary Photographic Artists. 101 Dry Ave. 919-4694069, www.townofcary.org.

CARY GALLERY OF ARTISTS: Thru Dec 31: Celebrating Color, Nuanced and Bold, work by Dan Rice and Donna Schultz. 200 S Academy St #120. 919-462-2035, www.carygalleryofartists.org.

CARY TOWN HALL: Thru Jan 25, 2016: Getting to Know Me, work from the LeTouquet and

VISUAL ART

OFF THE RADAR: HOOKED FRIDAY, DEC. 18, DURHAM GOLDEN BELT—Rug hooking is an artisanal technique where strips of fabric are pulled through a woven base to create patterns, often figurative (flowers are perennial subjects). But Celia Gray, who recently moved to Chapel Hill after earning her MFA at Rutgers, uses the craft in concert with abstract painting to unravel the seam between the pleasantly decorative and creatively declarative. Her works have the rich surface of textile art and the delicate, openended color schemes of abstract painting, the forms pursued stitch by intuitive stitch rather than pre-imagined. The thoughtful, warming pieces are on view in Golden Belt’s Off the Radar series of pop-up exhibits this Third Friday, but unlike some Off the Radar offerings, they’ll stick around for a while, giving you the rest of December to get hooked. 6–9 p.m., free, 807 E. Main St., Durham, 919-967-7700, www.goldenbeltarts.com. —Brian Howe

MELISSA DESIGNER JEWELRY: Ongoing: Handcrafted

Project with Max McMichaels, work by Carrie Alter. — Thru Jan 16, 2016: The Forest for the Trees. Free. 919-821-2787, info@ artspacenc.org. 201 E Davie St, Raleigh. 919-821-2787, www. artspacenc.org.

BULL CITY ARTS COLLABORATIVE: UPFRONT GALLERY: Thru Dec 25: Penland

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INDYPICK LUMP: Thru Dec 28: Urchins, work by Amanda Barr, Kelie Bowman, Archie Lee Coates and more. 505 S Blount St, Raleigh. 919-889-2927, www.teamlump.org.

visualarts Galleries

DECEMBER 16, 2015

Town of Cary Children’s Cultural Exchange. 316 N Academy St. 919469-4000, www.townofcary.org. INDYPICK

CRAVEN ALLEN

GALLERY: Thru Jan 9, 2016:

Illustrations for the Volcano Book, illustrations from I Built My House on a Volcano by Stacye Leanza. 120 Morris St. 919-560-2787, www.durhamarts.org.

Moving Pictures/Figure and Forest, work by Dan Gottlieb. — Thru Jan 9, 2016: Animal, Vegetable, Mandible, work by Iris Gottlieb. 1106 1/2 Broad St, Durham. 919286-4837, www.cravenallengallery. com.

DURHAM CONVENTION CENTER: Thru Apr 14, 2016: I

DUKE CENTER FOR DOCUMENTARY STUDIES: Thru Feb 27, 2016:

2016: Celebrating 40 Years, work by Nancy Tuttle May. — Thru Jan 15, 2016: Fine Southern Clay, studio ceramics and sculptural clay by Southern artists. 100 S Churton St, Hillsborough. 919-883-1415, www.enogallery.net.

INDYPICK

South Side, photographs and writings by Jon Lowenstein. — Thru Feb 28, 2016: Aunties: The Seven Summers of Alevtina and Ludmila, photographs by Nadia Sablin. 1317 W Pettigrew St, Durham. 919-660-3663, www. cdsporch.org.

DURHAM ART GUILD: Thru

Jan 9, 2016: 2015 Members’ Holiday Market. 120 Morris St. 919-560-2713, www. durhamartguild.org.

DURHAM ARTS COUNCIL:

Thru Jan 3, 2016: I Am Quixote - Yo Soy Quijote, work by North Carolina artists celebrating the 400th anniversary of El Quixote. Free. 919-995-9763. — Thru Jan 3, 2016: I Am Quixote - Yo Soy Quijote, multimedia work from North Carolina artists exploring themes from Don Quixote de la Mancha. Free. 919-560-2787, iamquixote.com — Thru Dec 26:

Jan 25, 2016: Serenity in the South, work by H. Lee Dawson. 101 Wilkinson Ave, Cary. 919-4604965, www.townofcary.org.

HILLSBOROUGH GALLERY OF ARTS: Thru Jan 3, 2016:

Want Candy, work by Stacy Crabill. 301 W Morgan St. 919-956-9404, www.durhamconventioncenter. com.

The Art of Giving, art for the holiday season by HGA’s 22 member artists. 121-D N Churton St. 919-732-5001, www. hillsboroughgallery.com.

ENO GALLERY: Thru Jan 15,

LEE HANSLEY GALLERY: Thru

FRANK GALLERY: Thru Feb 7, 2016: The Human Touch: Portraits of Care. — Thru Feb 7, 2016: Intersections, work by Sasha Bakaric, Shelly Hehenberger and Suzanne Krill. 109 E Franklin St, Chapel Hill. 919-636-4135, www. frankisart.com. GALLERY C: Thru Dec 31: A NeOn NOel, works by Louis St. Lewis and Nate Sheaffer. 540 N Blount St, Raleigh. 919-828-3165, www.galleryc.net. INDYPICK

GOLDEN BELT:

Thru Jan 3, 2016: The Spirit of Lolong, work by Maready Evergreen. — Fri, Dec 18, 6-9 p.m.: Reception. 807 E Main St, Durham. www.goldenbeltarts.com.

HERBERT C YOUNG COMMUNITY CENTER: Thru

Jan 23, 2016: Acclaimed Artists, works by celebrated deceased North Carolina artists — Thru Jan 23, 2016: George Bireline Revisited, abstract expressionist, color field, figurative and narrative paintings by the late Raleigh artist. 225 Glenwood Ave, Raleigh. 919-828-7557, www. leehansleygallery.com.

LIGHT ART + DESIGN: Thru

Jan 16, 2016: Metal V, Annual exhibition of metal artists with works from sculpture to jewelry. 919-942-7077, info@ lightartdesign.com, www. lightartdesign.com. 601 W Rosemary St, Chapel Hill. 919-9427077, www.lightartdesign.com.

Amistad, work by Emily Eve Weinstein and Trudy Thomson. 0. 711 Iredell St, Durham. www. naomistudioandgallery.com/.

NCSU DH HILL LIBRARY:

Thru Jan 4, 2016: Life’s Little Dramas: Puppets, Proxies, and Spirits. 2 Broughton Dr, Raleigh. 919-515-3364, www.lib.ncsu.edu.

PAGE-WALKER ARTS & HISTORY CENTER: Thru Jan 2,

2016: Fine Arts League of Cary’s Annual Member Exhibition. — Thru Jan 2, 2016: Functional Art Pottery, work by Kenneth Neilsen. 119 Ambassador Loop, Cary. 919-460-4963, www. friendsofpagewalker.org.

ROUNDABOUT ART COLLECTIVE: Thru Dec

31: King Nobuyoshi Godwin, paintings. free. 305 Oberlin Rd, Raleigh. 919-747-9495, www. roundaboutartcollective.com.

SOVEROART: GALLERY STUDIO: Ongoing: David Sovero,

oil paintings & jewelry. 121 N Churton St, Hillsborough. 919-6195616, www.soveroart.com.

SUNFLOWER STUDIO & GALLERY: Ongoing: Resident

Artists’ New Works, including jewelry, collage, watercolor, acrylic & fabric art. 214 E Jones Ave, Wake Forest. 919-570-0765, www. sunflowerstudiowf.com.

THROUGH THIS LENS:

LITTLE ART GALLERY & CRAFT COLLECTION: Thru

Dec 31: The Classics, work by Stephen White. 432 Daniels St, Raleigh. 919-890-4111, littleartgalleryandcraft.com.

Thru Jan 9, 2016: Industrial Blues, photographs by Gunther Cartwright. — Thru Jan 9, 2016: Trees, photographs by JJ Raia. 303 E Chapel Hill St, Durham. 919-6870250, www.throughthislens.com.

LOCAL COLOR GALLERY:

TIPPING PAINT GALLERY:

Thru Dec 31: Let It Snow!. 311 W. Martin Street, Raleigh. 919-8195995, www.localcoloraleigh.com.

Thru Dec 31: Y’alltide. 311 W Martin St, Raleigh. 919-928-5279, www.tippingpaintgallery.com.

INDYweek.com TYNDALL GALLERIES: Thru Dec 31: Lynn Boggess, new landscape paintings. 201 S Estes Dr, Chapel Hill. 919-942-2290, www.tyndallgalleries.com.

VILLAGE ART CIRCLE: Thru Dec 31: Art for the Holidays. 200 S Academy St #130, Cary. www. villageartcircle.com.

UMSTEAD HOTEL & SPA:

Thru Dec 31: Orr Ambrose, paintings. 100 Woodland Pond, Cary. 919-447-4000, www. theumstead.com.

UNC WILSON SPECIAL COLLECTIONS LIBRARY: Thru

Jan 10, 2016: Chronicles of Empire: Spain in the Americas, featuring more than 50 early printed volumes from UNC’s Rare Book Collection. 201 South Rd, Chapel Hill. www.lib.unc.edu/wilson.

Museums

ACKLAND ART MUSEUM:

Thru Jan 3, 2016: Testing Testing, survey of paintings and sculpture since 1960. 101 S Columbia St, Chapel Hill. 919-843-1611, www. ackland.org.

CAM RALEIGH: Thru Jan 3,

2016: The Imaginary Architecture

of Love, mural by Sarah Cain. 409 W Martin St. 919-261-5920, camraleigh.org.

NASHER MUSEUM OF ART:

Thru Sep 18, 2016: The New Galleries: A Collection Come to Light. — Thru Feb 28, 2016: Reality of My Surroundings: The Contemporary Collection. — Thru Jan 10, 2016: Richard Mosse: The Enclave. — Thursdays, 5-9 p.m.: Free Thursday Nights, Admission is free to all. 2001 Campus Dr, Durham. 919-684-5135, nasher.duke.edu.

NC MUSEUM OF ART: Thru Mar 20, 2016: Chisel and Forge: Works by Peter Oakley and Elizabeth Brim. — Thru Jan 17,

2016: Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester and the Creative Mind. — Thru Jan 17, 2016: The Worlds of M.C. Escher: Nature, Science, and Imagination. 2110 Blue Ridge Rd, Raleigh. Info 919-839-6262, tickets 919-715-5923, www. ncartmuseum.org.

NC MUSEUM OF HISTORY:

Thru Jun 19, 2016: Treasures of Carolina: Stories from the State Archives, public records and private archival materials from the state archives. — Thru Feb 28, 2016: Hey America!: Eastern North Carolina and the Birth of Funk. — Thru Jul 10, 2016: North Carolina’s Favorite Son: Billy Graham and His

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Remarkable Journey of Faith. 5 E Edenton St, Raleigh. 919-807-7900, www.ncmuseumofhistory.org.

Art Related

THE EL QUIXOTE FESTIVAL:

Thru Apr 23, 2016: art exhibits, performances and more in various locations celebrating Don Quixote. See website for more details. www.iamquixote.com.

DECEMBER 16, 2015

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goods, linens and other art. Roundabout Art Collective, 305 Oberlin Rd, Raleigh. 919-747-9495, www.roundaboutartcollective. com.

MATTERS OF TASTE: Fri, Dec

18, 6-8 p.m.: artist demos paired with tastings of selected food and drink. ArtSource Fine Art Gallery, 4351-107 The Circle at North Hills St, Raleigh. 919-787-9533, www. artsource-raleigh.com.

FOUNTAINARTS RECEPTION: Sat, Dec 19, 3-7 p.m.: leather

PERFORMANCE

performance

CIRQUE MUSICA HOLIDAY SPECTACULAR FRIDAY, DEC. 18–SATURDAY, DEC. 19, RALEIGH MEYMANDI CONCERT HALL—Synesthetes can already experience visual stimuli when hearing music; the rest of us have to rely on shows like the touring Cirque Musica’s holiday team-up with the North Carolina Symphony to crosswire the senses. Death-defying European-style balancing routines, lariat work (to Aaron Copland’s Rodeo, naturally), comedy from Punky the Bad Elf and other specialty acts unfold as the orchestra spins through Christmas carols both ancient and contemporary, classics from Pachelbel and Tchaikovsky and pop music, including the inevitable three-story aerial silk interpretation of—what else?— Frozen’s “Let It Go.” Maestro David Glover conducts. 8 p.m. Fri.–Sat.; 3 p.m. Sat., $30–$89, 2 E. South St., Raleigh, 919-733-2750, www.cirquemusica.com. —Byron Woods

OPENING

Thu., Dec. 10, 7:30 p.m., FridaysSundays, 7:30 p.m. and Sundays, 2 p.m. Continues through Dec. 20 $18-$22. Sonorous Road Productions, 209 Oberlin Rd. Raleigh. 919-803-3798, www. sonorousroad.com. See p. 28.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL: Thu,

NUNCRACKERS: Thursdays-

Theater Dec 17, 7 p.m., Fri, Dec 18, 7 p.m., Sat, Dec 19, 2 & 7 p.m. & Sun, Dec 20, 2 p.m.: $31-$95. Durham Performing Arts Center, 123 Vivian St. Info 919-688-3722, Tickets 919680-2787, www.dpacnc.com. — Thu, Dec 17, 7:30 p.m. & Fri, Dec 18, 7:30 p.m.: $20. St Matthews Episcopal Church, 210 St Marys Rd, Hillsborough. 919-732-9308, www. stmatthewshillsborough.org.

ONGOING INDYPICK THE EMOTIONS OF NORMAL PEOPLE:

Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Thru Dec 19: $8-$15. UNC Campus: Swain Hall, 101 E Cameron Ave, Chapel Hill. INDYPICK

GROUNDED:

Saturdays, 8 p.m. and Sun., Dec. 6, 3 p.m. Continues through Dec. 20 North Raleigh Arts & Creative Theatre, 7713-51 Leadmine Rd. 919-866-0228, www.nract.org.

RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER: Thu, Dec 17, 6:30

p.m., Fri, Dec 18, 6:30 p.m., Sat, Dec 19, 11 a.m., 2 & 6:30 p.m., Sun, Dec 20, 11 a.m., 2 & 6:30 p.m., Mon, Dec 21, 11 a.m. & 2 p.m., Tue, Dec 22, 11 a.m. & 2 p.m., Wed, Dec 23, 11 a.m.: $23-$55. Fletcher Opera Theater, 2 E South St, Raleigh. 919-996-8700, www. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

SANTALAND DIARIES: Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m. & Sundays, 3 p.m.; Thru Dec 20: $18-$24. Theatre In The Park, 107 Pullen

Rd, Raleigh. Office 919-831-6936, Tickets 919-831-6058, www. theatreinthepark.com.

A TRAILER PARK CHRISTMAS: Thru Dec 20:

Common Ground Theatre, 4815-B Hillsborough Rd, Durham. 919-3847817, www.cgtheatre.com.

INDYPICK THE TRAMP’S NEW WORLD: Thru Dec 19:

$5-$25. Manbites Dog Theater, 703 Foster St, Durham. Tickets 919-6823343; Office 919-682-4974, www. manbitesdogtheater.org.

THE WIZ: Thru Dec 20, 7:30 p.m.: $5-$25. Burning Coal Theatre at the Murphey School, 224 Polk St, Raleigh. 919-834-4001, www. burningcoal.org. See p. 28.

Comedy

THE ARTSCENTER: Third

Saturdays, 8:30 p.m.: The Chuckle

& Chortle Comedy Show, Local stand-up comics bring the laughs. $7. 300-G E Main St, Carrboro. 919-929-2787, www.artscenterlive. org.

THE CARY THEATER: Fri,

Dec 18, 8 p.m.: Dean Napolitano. $13-$15. 919-462-2051, thecarytheater.com. 122 E Chatham St.

COMEDYWORX THEATRE:

details/the-tall-and-lanky-comedytour-with-ashley-strand-andkrish-mohan/. — Fridays, 10 p.m.: Mister Diplomat. Free. — Fridays, 11 p.m.: The Jam. free. — Saturdays, 10 p.m.: Pork, 5 NC comics perform. Free. 462 W Franklin St, Chapel Hill. 919-3388150, www.dsicomedytheater. com.

McNeely, John Boni, Zack Levine, Sam Prickett. $5. 14 W Martin St, Raleigh. 919-833-1091, www. kingsbarcade.com.

FLEX NIGHTCLUB: Thursdays,

TOOTIE’S: Saturdays, 7:30 p.m.:

midnite: Trailer Park Prize Night, comedy drag show with gag prize giveaways. 2 S West St, Raleigh. 919-832-8855, www.flex-club.com.

Fridays, 8 p.m. & Saturdays, 4 & 8 p.m.: ComedyWorx Improv Show, 2 teams of improv comedians earn points by making the audience laugh. $6-12. — Fridays, 10 p.m. & Saturdays, 10 p.m.: The Harry Show, Ages 18+. Improv host leads late-night revelers through potentially risque games, with audience volunteers brought onstage to join in. $10. 431 Peace St, Raleigh. 919-829-0822, comedyworx.com.

8 p.m.: Best of Raleigh RoundUp. $10-$18. — Saturdays, 10:30 p.m.: Anything Goes Late Show. free. 861 W Morgan St, Raleigh. 919-828-5233, www. goodnightscomedy.com.

DSI COMEDY THEATER:

KINGS: Fri, Dec 18, 8 p.m.:

Wed, Dec 16, 8:30 p.m.: Ashley Strand, Krish Mohan. $10. www. dsicomedytheater.com/shows/

GOODNIGHTS COMEDY CLUB / THE GRILLE AT GOODNIGHTS: Wed, Dec 16,

The Fourth Anniversary Loafer: Thomas Dixson, Crazy Boris, Adam Cohen, Shane Smith, Gretchen

THE THRILL AT HECTOR’S:

Third Fridays, 9 p.m.: Funny Business Live, Pro comedy series. $5-8. www.funnybusinesslive.com. 157 E Rosemary St, Chapel Hill. 919-960-5145. ComedyMongers Open Mic. $5, free for comedians. 704 Rigsbee Ave, Durham. 984-439-2328.

Dance PA R T I C I PATO RY DURHAM DANCE WAVE:

Mondays, 7:30-9 p.m.: $7. www. durhamdancewave.com. The Murphey School at the Shared Visions Retreat Center, 3717 Murphy School Rd, Durham. 919-

616-2190, www.sharedvisions.org.

SUNDAY SALSA SOCIAL:

Sundays, 6:30-9:30 p.m.: Every Sunday social featuring mostly Salsa with sides of Bachata, Merengue, Cha Cha, and Kizomba. Lesson at 6:30 for beginners plus sometimes intermediate. DJ Dance at 7. $6. www.dancegumbo.com. Triangle Dance Studio, 2603 S Miami Blvd, Durham.

PERFORMANCE INDYPICK CAROLINA BALLET: NUTCRACKER: Fri,

Dec 18, 7 p.m., Sat, Dec 19, 2 & 7 p.m., Sun, Dec 20, 1 & 5 p.m., Mon, Dec 21, 2 p.m., Tue, Dec 22, 2 & 7 p.m., Wed, Dec 23, 2 & 7 p.m., Sat, Dec 26, 1 & 5 p.m. & Sun, Dec 27, 1 & 5 p.m.: $23-$105. Memorial Auditorium, 2 E South St, Raleigh. 919-996-8700, www. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

FOOTNOTES HOLIDAY TAP SHOW: Wed, Dec 16, 7-8 p.m.:

St, Raleigh. 919-996-8700, www. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

JOURNEY TO THE NUTCRACKER SUITE: Mon,

Dec 21, 7 p.m. & Tue, Dec 22, 7 p.m.: by Campaneria Ballet Company. Cary Arts Center, 101 Dry Ave. 919-469-4069, www. townofcary.org.

books

INDYPICK LA MULA: A BEATMUSICAL: Fri, Dec 18, 8

p.m. & Sat, Dec 19, 8 p.m.: $15. The Carrack Modern Art, 111 W Parrish St, Durham. www. thecarrack.org. See story, p. 29.

A VERY CARY CHRISTMAS:

Fri, Dec 18, 7 p.m., Sat, Dec 19, 10 a.m., 2 & 7 p.m. & Sun, Dec 20, 3 p.m.: presented by Cary Ballet Company. Cary Arts Center, 101 Dry Ave. 919-469-4069, www. townofcary.org.

INDYPICK WHAT DOESN’T WORK: Sat, Dec 19, 8 p.m. & Sun,

Dec 20, 3 p.m.: $15. The Carrack Modern Art, 111 W Parrish St, Durham. www.thecarrack.org. See story, p. 29.

Free. Carolina Inn, 211 Pittsboro St, Chapel Hill. 919-933-2001, www.carolinainn.com.

AN IRISH CHRISTMAS: Wed, Dec 16, 7:30 p.m.: $27-$52. Memorial Auditorium, 2 E South

READING | DONALD DAVIS SATURDAY, DEC. 19–SUNDAY, DEC. 20, PITTSBORO THE BARN AT FEARRINGTON— Once you hear Donald Davis speak into a microphone, it’s clear why he is celebrated as a master storyteller. The author-minister, a native of Southern Appalachia, has a voice that is rich and un-ignorable, and the bearing and sure cadence of a charismatic cleric. Davis has honed his knack for telling warm, homespun tales for decades, both at humble storytelling festivals and in highbrow settings such as the Smithsonian Institution, a TED Conference and on NPR. The Barn at Fearrington has been a frequent venue for him. His return engagement, courtesy of McIntyre’s Books, is sure to be a treat for fans and newcomers alike. You can bring canned goods or kids’ books in decent shape for donations to CORA and Book Harvest. 11 a.m. Sat.; 2 p.m. Sun., free, 2000 Fearrington Village Center, Pittsboro, 919-542-3030, www.fearrington.com. —David Klein

INDYweek.com

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Readings & Signings

SARA FOSTER: Sun, Dec 20, noon: signing cookbooks. Free. Southern Season, 201 S Estes Dr, Chapel Hill. 919-929-7133, www. southernseason.com. SHERI CASTLE: Sun, Dec 20, 2 p.m.: signing cookbooks. Free. Southern Season, 201 S Estes Dr, Chapel Hill. 919-929-7133, www. southernseason.com. INDYPICK

DONALD DAVIS:

Sat, Dec 19, 11 am & Sun, Dec 20, 2 p.m.: telling stories. For admission, bring cans of food for CORA. McIntyre’s Books, 2000 Fearrington Village Center, Pittsboro. 919-542-3030, www. mcintyresbooks.com.

Literary Related

CITY SOUL CAFE POETRY & SPOKEN WORD OPEN MIC:

DECEMBER 16, 2015

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welcome. All performances a cappella or acoustic. $5. www. citysoulcafe.splashthat.com. Smokin Grooves Bar & Grill, 2253 New Hope Church Rd, Raleigh.

CURRYBLOSSOM CONVERSATIONS: Third

Thursdays, 6-8 p.m.: Sacrificial Poets host an open mic event for works of music, poetry or anything in-between. The aim is a relaxing & enjoyable night out where you can eat, drink & connect through creativity. Vimala’s Curryblossom Cafe, 431 W Franklin St, Chapel Hill. 919-929-3833, www. curryblossom.com.

SET IT OFF: THE RETURN OF CONSCIOUSNESS OPEN MIC: Fri, Dec 18, 8 p.m.: hosted

by Zayd Malik. $7-$10. Vegan Flava Cafe, 4125 Durham-Chapel Hill Boulevard, Durham. 919960-1832, www.veganflavacafe. com/.

WRITING FOR CAREGIVERS: A READING:

Fri, Dec 18, noon: readings from members of the group in the UNC Hospitals Chapel.

Wednesdays, 8-10 p.m.: Poets, vocalists, musicians & lyricists

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INDYweek.com SISTERS—Tina Fey and Amy Poehler team up as siblings throwing one last house party in this comedy directed by Paula Pell. Rated R. STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS—Three decades after toppling the Galactic Empire in Return of the Jedi, Han Solo and a band of young allies face the villainous Kylo Ren. Rated PG-13.

film Special Showings

Current Releases

WHITE CHRISTMAS: See p. 31.

 1/2 BRIDGE OF SPIES—In Steven Spielberg’s true-story spy film, co-written by Ethan and Joel Coen, Berlin’s Glienicke Bridge is the site of the 1962 prisoner trade involving captured American spy-plane pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) and convicted Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance). At first, it plays out like To Kill a Mockingbird, with attorney James Donovan (Tom Hanks) as a Cold War Atticus Finch, defending the vilified Abel before later negotiating the prisoner swap. Donovan is righteous, droll and likable. In other words, he’s Tom Hanks. Rylance shapes a reed-thin role into an awardworthy performance. Seeing Germans being gunned down trying to scale the Berlin Wall indicts

Film Capsules

Our rating system uses one to five stars. Signed reviews are by Brian Howe (BH), Laura Jaramillo (LJ), Kathy Justice (KJ), Craig D. Lindsey (CDL), Glenn McDonald (GM), Neil Morris (NM), Zack Smith (ZS) and Ryan Vu (RV).

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SATURDAY, DEC. 19, CHAPEL HILL CHAPEL HILL PUBLIC LIBRARY— Bill Pohlad’s biopic of Brian Wilson drops two talented actors into the enigmatic Beach Boys leader’s troubled waters, but even their combined efforts can only go so deep. Paul Dano (convincingly doughy, bright-eyed and vulnerable) plays Wilson in his ’60s heyday, as he steers his reluctant bandmates away from catchy songs about surfing, toward Beatles-challenging pop of symphonic intricacy. He already shows signs of trouble: panic attacks, withdrawal from touring and an ambition too large to be satisfied. John Cusack (convincingly twitchy, at once vacant and alert) is the lost, isolated Wilson of the ’80s, now in the grips of a quack psychologist who subdues him with medication. Wilson starts a halting courtship with Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks), seemingly the only person around who sees psychologist Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti) for the charlatan he is. The movie cuts back and forth between these periods, gathering clues to Wilson’s downfall. There is the cruel manager-father and a related crippling perfectionism; the drowning death of Wilson’s brother and bandmate, Dennis; the corrosive care of Landy and the effects of psychedelics on the fragile psyche of someone prone to hearing unwelcome voices and overly acute sounds. But the film seems more interested in the historical record than imaginative verisimilitude, and a certain phoniness creeps in. There is little candid or idle talk; the dialogue is often expository, laden with tacit footnotes. The symbolism eventually becomes garish, as in a late scene where Wilson flounders in the deep end of a pool while his bandmates crouch in the shallow end—a visual metaphor that might have been more elegant if one of them didn’t actually remark upon it. But the cinematography of Southern California is a dream, and whenever the music swells, we forget the movie’s flaws and bask in the kaleidoscopic magnitude of Wilson’s talent, from the revved-up doo-wop that made him famous to the druggy key changes and modal scales that he was then able to plug in to pop culture. 2:30 p.m., free, 100 Library Drive, Chapel Hill, 919-969-2028, www.chapelhillpubliclibrary.org. —Brian Howe

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today’s immigration debates, and the legal plight of Abel alludes to our current treatment of “enemy combatants.” The U-2 overflights of yesterday are the drones of today. This modern relevance is enhanced by grand, sometimes sentimental filmmaking. That this will be regarded as minor Spielberg testifies to his enduring talent. Rated PG-13. —NM  1/2 BROOKLYN—Irish director John Crowley and screenwriter Nick Hornby capture the melancholy and nostalgia of Colm Tóibín’s novel in the kind of elegiac old-school melodrama that is seldom made anymore. Saoirse Ronan is Eilis, an Irish girl who goes to work in Brooklyn in the 1950s, thanks to the sponsorship of a U.S.-based priest (Jim Broadbent). Leaving behind a mother and sister she adores, she’s initially homesick, living in an all-female boarding house. That changes when she meets a sweetnatured Italian plumber who immediately falls for her good-girl ways. This is a colorful, confident portrait of the American Dream, with Eilis serving as a walking beacon of hope and optimism. Striking work by cinematographer Yves Bélanger and costumer Odile Dicks-Mireaux makes Ronan— with her moony, wholesome looks—the brightest thing in the

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movie. Things get complicated when she starts seeing a suave Irishman (Domhnall Gleeson), turning the story into an intercontinental torn-betweentwo-lovers affair. Like so many films about immigrants looking for a better life, this one lays out a wondrous and romantic (if oddly minority-free) vision of America’s past. Rated PG-13. —CDL  CREED—The boxing-film genre reached its narrative limits long ago. But by using conjoined character arcs, the Rocky series’ seventh film ably honors, updates and even deconstructs its legacy. Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordan), the son of late champ Apollo Creed—Rocky’s respected nemesis—is rescued from a delinquent childhood by Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad), Apollo’s widow. Haunted by her husband’s death in the ring, she discourages Adonis’ impulses. But he moves to Philadelphia to coax an aging Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) to train him. Balboa runs an Italian restaurant and doesn’t visit Mickey’s gym anymore. Still, he reluctantly agrees to train Adonis, though his guilt over failing to prevent Apollo’s death is a motivation the film doesn’t sufficiently explicate. Ryan Coogler, who also directed Jordan in Fruitvale Station, reclaims the blackness of a franchise originally framed through the prism of the Great White Hope. It’s not only the first Rocky film in which Rocky doesn’t fight, but also the first that doesn’t spotlight a white boxer. Jordan and Stallone, utterly at ease, conjure an alchemy of wit and poignancy. The film doesn’t conclude with a celebration in the ring. Instead, a movie icon haltingly climbs the same steps he once galloped up to glory, in an elegy for a cultural phenomenon. Rated PG-13. —NM  THE GOOD DINOSAUR— The publicity materials for Disney and Pixar’s latest focus on the fact that it’s set in a world where an asteroid didn’t hit Earth and dinosaurs continued to evolve. What goes unmentioned is that the premise is an excuse for an old-fashioned children’s adventure story—a “boy and his dog” tale where the dog is the boy and the boy is a dinosaur. Set in an untouched American West, The Good Dinosaur is a simple story of a dino homestead where a four-legged Apatosaurus family is apparently quite good at irrigation and growing corn despite a lack of opposable thumbs. Family runt Arlo (voiced by Raymond Ochoa) is terrified of everything and despairs of never “making his mark,” a point the film illustrates literally. An encounter with a loin-clothed “critter” (Jack Bright)

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leads to a tragedy, and then Arlo is swept downriver, where he discovers that the cave-boy he resents is a surprisingly loyal companion on the long, dangerfilled trip home. Like the Cars films, this one seems aimed at a tradition-loving Middle American audience. But there’s a darkness to this story that contrasts with the soft, toy-like pastel dinosaurs; Arlo suffers about every physical and emotional trauma possible in a Disney flick, dead parent included. It’s all a little old-fashioned for Pixar, which has done its best work breathing fresh life into tired ideas. It doesn’t feel particularly innovative, or even interested in exploring the dinosaur-based society it’s created. But it’s nice to see that old-fashioned children’s adventure stories aren’t, well, extinct. Rated PG. —ZS  THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY – PART 2— Drenched in violence and darkness, this last installment of the teenage wasteland franchise finds our heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) wearily slouching to her final bloody victory over the Capitol. Bombs shred refugees, cannibals devour soldiers and children kill children in what is essentially a war picture marketed as YA sci-fi adventure. The heaviness that worked so well in Part 1, released last year, is unbalanced and off-kilter here. Lawrence is her usual bad-ass self and manages to hold the center for a while, but the story finally collapses under its own weight. That PG-13 rating has nothing to do with viewer discretion. It’s a marketing tag that says the Hunger Games are open for business one last time, to all teenagers and their parents’ credit cards. Rated PG-13. —GM  1/2 THE MARTIAN— Director Ridley Scott’s latest is one nerdy-ass science fiction movie—in a good way. In a recognizable near future, NASA sends interplanetary space ships on regular trips to Mars. Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is separated, presumed dead and left behind by his crew. But he survives, and most of the movie documents his ingenuity in gathering and creating what he needs to stay alive. As you get swept up in the story, it’s easy to forget how amazing Scott’s visuals are—he has created a new world onscreen. The film has a few weak spots: Some dodgy cloakand-dagger elements toward the end strain credulity. But overall, the film delivers what it should. A thinking person’s big-budget sci-fi movie, it’s talky and intelligent. The filmmakers worked with NASA to make the science as accurate as possible. The story

DECEMBER 16, 2015

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is compelling, the visuals are spectacular and the movie even manages to make math exhilarating. Rated PG-13. —GM  SPECTRE—Until now, Ernst Stavro Blofeld and the rest of the SPECTRE global crime syndicate hadn’t appeared in a James Bond film since 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever. But after decades of rights-wrangling, MGM and the estate of film producer Kevin McClory finally reached a legal settlement, allowing Bond’s original infamous foes to return to the franchise. The 24th Bond film is overeager to reintegrate its birthright, shoehorning it into the narrative reboot that began with Daniel Craig and temporarily rejuvenated the franchise. But the slapdash Spectre is a nostalgic deviation that rolls back the Craig films from a reinvention to a mere rehash. A power struggle threatens to render the 00 section obsolete. With the help of Q (Ben Whishaw) and Moneypenny (Naomie Harris), Bond (Craig) goes rogue (again) on a globe-trotting search for the mastermind behind the worldwide tentacles of criminal mayhem dogging him. A few moments prove memorable: An extended tracking shot through Mexico’s Day of the Dead festivities, a train-car brawl between Bond and henchman du jour Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista). Otherwise, the action scenes fall flat. The film has a basic appeal for aficionados, with its copious callbacks to Bond lore, but this distended 140-minute themepark ride doesn’t leave us shaken or stirred.Rated PG-13. —NM  TRUMBO—This is the story of the infamous Hollywood blacklist seen through the biography of its most interesting victim. Bryan Cranston stars as the great screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who, in the late 1940s, was kicked out of Hollywood and served time in prison for being a member of the Communist Party. The drab first half of the film plays like a History Channel dramatization, but things pick up after that, thanks to the high-voltage supporting cast, including John Goodman, Louis C.K. and Helen Mirren. The second half is like a whole different movie, and it’s worth sticking around for. As Trumbo makes his triumphant comeback, he uses a kind of political jujitsu against his tormentors, leveraging Washington gutlessness and Hollywood greed for his own crafty purposes. Rated R. —GM Find times and locations in our Film Calendar at www.indyweek.com.