INDY Week 6.14.17

raleigh

6|14|17

HEART TO HEART

CHALK Victor Ekpuk’s divine new mural at the North Carolina Museum of Art heralds new life for its African galleries

BY CHRIS VITIELLO How to Win Friends and Gerrymander People, p. 6

p. 26

Sanctuary in a Sanctuary, p. 8

Sonorous Road Version 2.0, p. 27

2 | 6.14.17 | INDYweek.com

WHAT WE LEARNED THIS WEEK | RALEIGH VOL. 34, NO. 22

6 It’s been six years and eleven months since the General Assembly created unconstitutionally gerrymandered legislative districts.

8 The day before Ezequiel Chicas graduates from fifth grade, his father is scheduled to be deported.

20 It took a new biography for the gifted, troubled musician Jason Molina’s loved ones to finally get closure.

26 Nigerian-American artist Victor Ekpuk wants you to make what you will of the symbols stuffed into his new wall mural at NCMA. 27 A few lingering tech glitches on opening night didn’t dim Sonorous Road Theatre’s bright prospects in its new location.

28 Raleigh anime convention Animazement can be overwhelming but also reassuring that there are still so many wonders to discover in the world.

29 Locally produced documentary Farmer/Veteran shows how those who’ve experienced war never truly leave the battlefield behind.

DEPARTMENTS 5 Backtalk 6 Triangulator 8 News 18 Food

Artist Victor Epkuk works on a chalk mural at the N.C. Museum of Art in Raleigh (see page 26).

PHOTO BY BEN MCKEOWN

20 Music 26 Arts & Culture 30 What to Do This Week

On the cover:

PHOTO BY BEN MCKEOWN

33 Music Calendar 37 Arts & Culture Calendar

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backtalk

Release the Hounds!

The bulk of last week’s issue was, of course, dedicated to the massive Best of the Triangle section. But we also ran a story by Thomas Goldsmith looking at the contentious issues surrounding hunting deer with hounds and HB 648, a bill designed to regulate the traditional practice [“That Dog Don’t Hunt”].

Roger Hinde writes: “Unfortunately, the experience that many landowners in North Carolina and Virginia experience is a shocking disrespect for their land rights and/or landowners themselves under the guise of tradition or heritage. Both of these arguments are meant to somehow supersede your rights, which you have earned when you paid for your land, and they have not. These ‘tradition and heritage’ arguments lend themselves well to the Southern ear, but sadly it is without merit or weight in light of the many similar arguments for slavery, Jim Crow laws, or blue laws.

Just because it has been our past practice does not grant them rights to this in the future.

“Once the discussion moves from a demand by virtue of past usage to one of who has the superseding legal authority, the dog hunters know that their arguments are without merit. Their only recourse is to now shout and thump their collective chests while trying to intimidate the legislatures with their loud voices but minuscule voting numbers. If they truly want the right to have their dogs to cross anyone else’s land, let them negotiate those contracts with full compensation. My bet is that they want it for free and at your expense.”

Hunter and commenter DRS, however, argues that “there are some nontruths in this article. The hounds are fit and trim just like any athlete. The hounds could not perform their best if they are not well cared for. Most deer hounds I know of are kept in kennels. There are some that have so much desire to pursue game that it is difficult to keep them in kennels. These hounds may have to be tethered for their own safety. I

will also say keeping up with the hounds and working to keep them off property that is not ours is a long way from being a lazy hunter. It is a quite active form of hunting.

Every property I hunt and most other people who hunt with dogs lease or own large acreage, usually in the thousands of contiguous acres. GPS and other tools available to us now are used to reduce conflict with adjoining land owners.”

“The post by DRS is way out there in terms of being factual,” counters Carl Demarais.

“There are very few dog hunters east of I-95 hunting property with hundreds, let alone the thousands he mentions, of contiguous acres under their control, as he states. The vast majority of these hunters drop their hounds off on a few acres they may control, then allow the hounds to run all over the private property of others, using the age old adage ‘my dog can’t read.’

This is what pisses off those of us who actually do own our land and manage it all year so we can still hunt and enjoy it, only to have that enjoyment taken away because rogue dog gangs feel they can do whatever they want with another person’s land.

“This bill”—referring to HB 648—“was right on the money and a commonsense approach to keeping dogs off property they don’t belong on. Contrary to the dog-group hype, it did not make a criminal out of anyone for one offense and simply escalated the charges for repeat offenders, as obviously they are doing it intentionally. That’s the dirty little secret the dog gangs don’t want you to know. They fully understand they are running dogs all over the private property of others who don’t want them there, but as long as current law remains, they have the right to do so.”

“Just because it has been our past practice does not grant them rights to this in the future.”

Want to see your name in bold? Email us at backtalk@indyweek.com, comment on our Facebook page or indyweek.com, or hit us up on Twitter: @indyweek.

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triangulator presents:

R E I N D G N : A A TIM M Y R ELIN R E G L E! ast week, after the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a lower court’s ruling that North Carolina’s legislative districts constitute racial gerrymanders, Governor Cooper ordered the General Assembly into special session to draw new maps. The Republican-led legislation responded by essentially giving Cooper the finger and refusing to convene said special session. Now the mess is back with the district court. So we wait. In the meantime, let’s take a trip down Memory Lane and see how we got here.

May 19, 2015: A federal lawsuit, Covington et al. v. North Carolina, claims that lawmakers unconstitutionally packed black voters into a handful of legislative districts.

April 20, 2015: The U.S. Supreme Court orders the N.C. Supreme Court to reconsider the Dickson case.

Dec. 18, 2015: The N.C. Supreme Court affirms its previous decision in Dickson.

Feb. 5, 2016: The U.S. District Court rules in Harris that congressional districts 1 and 12 violate the Equal Protection Clause.

The court orders new maps.

June 9, 2017: In a memo, the U.S. District Court tells lawmakers it “intends to act promptly” and could order special elections by the end of the year.

Feb. 19, 2016: The legislature approves new maps. New congressional primaries are set for June.

Nov. 3, 2011: The maps are challenged in a case known as Dickson v.

Rucho, in part because they allegedly “isolated the State’s Black citizens in a small number of districts.”

Oct. 24, 2013: A federal lawsuit known as Harris v. McCrory claims that congressional districts 1 and 12 are unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.

July 8, 2013: The superior court rejects that claim. In December 2014, the N.C. Supreme Court agrees.

Aug. 11, 2016: In the Covington case, the U.S. District Court rules the state’s legislative districts unconstitutional as well.

June 8, 2017: Lawmakers refuse Cooper’s order.

Nov. 29, 2016: The district court rules that the General Assembly must draw new legislative districts by March 15 and hold new elections by the end of 2017. The legislature appeals to the Supreme Court.

June 5, 2017: The U.S. Supreme Court affirms the district court’s ruling in Covington that the state’s legislative districts are unconstitutional, though it vacates the court’s order for a special election.

Jan. 10, 2017: The U.S. Supreme Court puts the new districts and elections on hold.

May 30, 2017: In light of its decision on the congressional districts, the Supreme Court sends Dixon back to the N.C. Supreme Court yet again.

May 22, 2017: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the state’s congressional districts are unconstitutional. Since the maps have already been redrawn, nothing changes.

June 7, 2017: Governor Cooper orders a special session for lawmakers to draw new legislative maps.

GRAPHIC: SHAN STUMPF

6 | 6.14.17 | INDYweek.com

July 27, 2011: The General Assembly approves new congressional and legislative maps.

RESEARCH: COLE DEL CHARCO, SAMMY HANF, SHELDON KOPPENHOFER, AND LYDIA MCINNES

+ANTI-SHARIA GROUP SAD NO ONE CARES

Far-right groups converged on the grounds of the State Capitol in Raleigh Saturday for an anti-sharia law rally, part of a nationwide string of events hosted by the antiMuslim organization ACT for America.

The national organizers attempted to distance the rallies from overt white supremacy. Two days earlier, ACT for America issued a statement disavowing the “March Against Sharia” in Bentonville, Arkansas, organized by neo-Nazi Billy Roper.

“There are no KKK here, there are no Nazis here,” said Peter Boykin, president of Gays for Trump and the local coordinator for the Raleigh anti-sharia rally. Still, Boykin publicly thanked Identity Evropa, a group that openly espouses white supremacy, after members in matching white dress shirts punctuated speeches with chants of “Sharia-free USA” and “We will not be silenced.”

Boykin’s thank-you list also included the Oath Keepers militia, as well as the III Percenters and other militias, Bikers for Trump, Knights Templar, Soldiers of Odin, and Proud Boys—a group that, according to its Facebook page, is “antimasturbation” in addition to “venerating housewives” and supporting “Western chauvinism.”

Although exact counts were difficult to gauge, the fifty or so people gathered for the anti-sharia event were outnumbered by counterprotesters by a factor of five or six.

While ACT for America held its rally on

PERIPHERAL VISIONS | V.C. ROGERS

the south side of the Capitol, counterprotesters gathered at Halifax Mall near the General Assembly complex for an event billed as United Against Islamophobia & Racism. Around noon, some 250 counterprotesters, including Muslims and other people of faith, anarchists, and communists, converged at the southeast corner of the Capitol grounds.

Yelling at the top of their lungs, they drowned out the anti-sharia rally.

Lane Reynolds, state coordinator for the N.C. Oath Keepers, later expressed disappointment in the relatively low turnout.

“It is a crying shame that there is not a million people here on this ground right now,” he said. “When I was in the Marine Corps for twenty years, one of the things the Marine Corps made sure to teach us was to know our enemy. Guess what, people? Go read the Koran for yourself. This is not a joke. Go read the Koran. See what’s in it. The Koran itself teaches hate. It’s in there. So I call out anybody that sees me on video or anything else: it is evil. I’ll say it and I’ll say it again: radical Islam is evil, and it’s here on our ground today.”

+ON YOUR MARKS

Since last we gathered over craft beer to recap the Raleigh City Council races, more incumbents and challengers have joined the October 10 ballot.

Bonner Gaylord, the voice on council since 2009 for North Hills and what some folks call Midtown, will be in the running for a fifth term in District E. Gaylord is focusing his campaign on “transportation, affordable housing, and keeping Raleigh a

great city for all people, new and old.” (Not sure exactly what “people, new and old” means in this context: Perhaps new and current residents? Infants and old people?)

As he did two years ago, Gaylord faces opposition from small-growth advocate Edie Jeffreys, who’s emphasizing “quality growth that protects neighborhoods and smart planning to ensure that our quality of life is not compromised.”

In southeast Raleigh’s District C, Corey Branch, an AT&T senior technical director who scored an upset in 2015 against incumbent Eugene Weeks, is running as the incumbent, promoting “more sidewalks, safer intersections, and civic participation throughout the city, but especially in Southeast Raleigh.” He’s got a challenger in construction company owner Olen Watson.

As previously mentioned, incumbent Mayor Nancy McFarlane will run for a fifth term. And at-large member Russ Stephenson, District A councilman Dickie Anderson, District D representative Kay Crowder, and District C councilman David Cox will run to retain their seats as well.

In competition with Stephenson for the two at-large seats are former council member Stacy Miller, an attorney, and newcomer Nicole Stewart, the N.C. Conservation Network’s development director. The other at-large incumbent, Mary-Ann Baldwin, remains a question mark. Will she seek reelection? Run for another office? Tell us, Mary-Ann! triangulator@indyweek.com This week’s report by Jeffrey C. Billman, Thomas Goldsmith, and Jordan Green.

YOUR WEEK. EVERY WEDNESDAY. FOOD • NEWS • ARTS • MUSIC

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indynews

The Actual Sin of Sodom AT A PRO-IMMIGRANT RALLY, REVEREND BARBER OFFERS REFUGE TO A FAMILY FACING DEPORTATION

BY THOMAS GOLDSMITH

Within the space of a few minutes Thursday, Raleigh ten-year-old Ezequiel Chicas became a bright light in immigration-rights circles in North Carolina.

Giving a speech near the General Assembly and seeking a safe haven from deportation for his father, he found what seemed to be a way out of his family’s dilemma. The Reverend William J. Barber II, a civil rights leader with a growing national profile, found himself picking up where Ezequiel’s story of his father’s threatened deportation left off.

It all happened at a Faith Advocacy rally on Bicentennial Mall, designed to show opposition to what participants called antiimmigrant legislation, including a bill that would deny tax revenue to cities that accept nongovernment IDs. Ezequiel stood with his father, Jose Chicas, and mother, Sandra, behind him, and told a moving story in which one fact loomed: Jose Chicas is slated to be deported to Mexico June 28, the day before Ezequiel graduates from fifth grade.

“Without your mom and dad, you cannot know what is good and bad,” he told a crowd of about three dozen people who had been lobbying legislators. “I hope you can help me with my father not leaving me.”

Barber, the former head of the state NAACP, listened as Ezequiel spoke, then embarked on a talk rooted in the Book of Ezekiel.

“Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of the leaders’ arrogance and their refusal to take care of the poor and the immigrants,” Barber said, rejecting the commonly held idea that the city was doomed because of its tolerance of homosexuality. (Ezekiel 16:49: “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”)

To legislators, Barber said, “Your future is wrapped up in how you treat Ezequiel, his mother, his father, and others like him.”

Finally, Barber offered Jose Chicas and 8 | 6.14.17 | INDYweek.com

The Reverend William J. Barber II and Ezequiel Chicas PHOTO BY THOMAS GOLDSMITH his family refuge. “If it is feasible and practical, I happen to know the pastor of Greenleaf Church,” he said, referring to the Goldsboro congregation he leads. “That church can be your sanctuary until it is worked out in the courts. Let them come into the house of God and try to seize a child of God!” As the hour-plus meeting wrapped up, the Chicas family was considering Barber’s offer. On Sunday, civil rights lawyer Al McSurely said an immigration attorney is working with the family to help fend off Jose’s deportation.

The chief target of the demonstrators was Senate Bill 145, sponsored by Senator Norman W. Sanderson, an Arapahoe Republican. The bill would make it illegal for a “justice, judge, clerk, magistrate, law enforcement officer, or other government official” to accept an ID from a consulate or “any document issued by a consulate or embassy.” In addition, SB 145 would prohibit the acceptance of an ID created by any person, group, county, or city, unless the General Assembly has approved the form of identification.

Under the bill, local governments and state universities that violated state immigration laws or were deemed sanctuary

cities could stand to lose millions in tax revenues. SB 145 passed the Senate in April and was referred to the House rules committee, where it has sat ever since. A call to Sanderson’s office was not returned by press time.

Rally speaker David Fraccaro, executive director of FaithAction International House in Greensboro, supplies the kind of IDs referenced in the bill. Fraccaro’s organization has issued Faith IDs to more than nine thousand people. In some cases, that means supplying them to people living in the United States who have a hard time obtaining a government-issued ID. “It should be something that the state is proud of,” said Fraccaro, noting that other cities have modeled similar programs on the Faith ID. Additional speakers represented Hispanic, Muslim, and African-American involvement in the movement to oppose anti-immigrant legislation.

“There’s an attack on families—sometimes with weapons, sometimes with words, and, yes, sometimes with laws,” said the Reverend Portia Rochelle, representing the Raleigh-Apex chapter of the NAACP. tgoldsmith@indyweek.com

N E WS B RI E F

MCFARLANE BACKS DOWN ON CACs Droves of supporters of Raleigh’s citizen advisory committees descended upon last Tuesday night’s city council session to speak out in opposition to a new community engagement board created by the council May 2. And in the end, Mayor Nancy McFarlane—a chief proponent of this new system— appeared to back down.

McFarlane, part of a 5–3 majority that created the CEB, showed in her opening remarks that she had already heard clearly that the CACs, which have advised the city council on zoning and other matters for decades, felt sidestepped by the proposed new layers of committees.

“I do want to take a few moments now and acknowledge the concerns that have been circulating in the community regarding the future of the CACs,” McFarlane told the packed council chambers. “The CACs have not been disbanded or changed in any way. I believe every member of this city council understands and values the important role the CACs have had and continue to play in citizen engagement.”

The mayor called for a reboot of the process that took into account the decades of work members had put into CACs. Specifically, McFarlane suggested a council work session that would get help in smoothing out the process from an outside consultant.

This appeared to be a different stance from the one that mayor had taken in May, when she described the advisory councils as representing far too few members of the city’s burgeoning population.

“What we’re doing now is starting a community-wide discussion on how we can better communicate and engage with the public now that we are a community that is approaching a half a million people,” she said. “And I apologize that our communication efforts have failed in conveying that message.” —Thomas Goldsmith

INDYweek.com | 6.14.17 | 9

When Bill Bell became mayor sixteen years ago, he pledged to revitalize Durham’s inner-city neighborhoods.

Since then, the Bull City’s seen a renaissance —but the poverty rate has gone up.

ONE CITY, T WO STOR IES

10 | 6.14.17 | INDYweek.com

Durham Mayor Bill Bell

Thank you to everyone who voted!

BY SARAH WILLETS

I

n the spring of 2001, Bill Bell boarded a bus des-

tined for some of Durham’s struggling neighborhoods. The soon-to-be mayor rode past West End streets that had all the infrastructure for houses, yet remained full of vacant lots. He passed the former site of the Few Gardens housing complex, where, while Bell served as a Durham County commissioner, a two-year-old girl had been killed in a drive-by shooting.

“What I saw was the need for a largescale neighborhood revitalization. It didn’t mean going in and repairing housing one at a time,” Bell recalls. “To me, it was almost like a barrel of apples. You can have some good apples. Put a bad apple in a barrel, pretty soon the whole barrel becomes affected.”

In his sixteen years at the city’s helm, an era that will end in December, Bell has taken aim at the sort of endemic poverty he viewed on the bus tour. During his 2003 State of the City address, Bell announced the first target of a sweeping effort to revitalize inner-city neighborhoods: Northeast Central Durham, especially Barnes Avenue, a residential area across from the former Few Gardens. He stressed the need to replace dilapidated homes with new, affordable ones, reduce crime, and attract businesses.

In that same speech, Bell also described the beginnings of a different revitalization project. He cheered the fact that renovations had “kicked off” at the American Tobacco campus, a sprawling complex that had been the heart of Durham’s once-thriving manufacturing industry until it closed in 1987.

Since Bell took office, Durham’s downtown has seen a stunning renaissance. According to data compiled by Downtown Durham Inc., since December 2001, when Bell was sworn in, $1.7 billion in

public and private investments have flooded the 0.8-square-mile area in the form of tech start-ups, world-class restaurants, and trendy hotels. Downtown will add thirteen hundred new housing units in the next few years—ten times the number of units that existed in 1995. Many have already been snatched up.

In short, downtown Durham has gone from a place to be avoided to a place to be celebrated: the tastiest town in the South, the number one housing market in the U.S., America’s fifth geekiest city, to name a few recent accolades.

But while Bell would deliver his 2004 State of the City speech from American Tobacco’s Fowler Building, he wouldn’t announce the completion of Eastway Village, as the Barnes Avenue affordable housing development would be known, until 2010. And today, fourteen years after Bell identified it as a priority, Northeast Central Durham remains ground zero of the city’s poverty-reduction efforts.

“This is unlike anything else I think we have done,” Bell says. “When we talk about the revitalization of downtown Durham, we knew what the goals were—to readapt the tobacco factories into places that are livable, for jobs, etcetera—and you knew after a certain period of time if that has been accomplished. Poverty is different. To me, it’s an ongoing effort. It’s not suddenly that this number of people have risen out of pov-

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POVERTY IN THE BULL CITY The map on the right shows the poverty rate by census tract, using data from the 2015 American Community Survey’s five-year estimates. (One note: the area around Duke University shows high poverty because its residents are largely students with low or no incomes.)

Below is the 1937 redlining map from the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, showing in red the African-American neighborhoods where banks refused to lend money. Some redlined neighborhoods still struggle with high poverty and low homeownership rates today.

COURTESY N.C. STATE ARCHIVES © 2017 MAPS FOR NEWS, HERE

erty and you can say goal accomplished.”

Despite these efforts, the city’s poverty rate ticked up from 15 percent in 2000 to 19.2 percent in 2015—more than forty-five thousand residents living at or below the poverty line, which in 2015 meant an annual income of $24,036 for a family of four.

Lost in this figure are the massive disparities from neighborhood to neighborhood.

While some parts of Durham have singledigit and even less-than-1-percent poverty rates, in other neighborhoods, half the residents struggle to make ends meet.

And so, as the seventy-six-year-old Bell enters the final months of his final term, the city is grappling with this dichotomy of simultaneously being a “best place to live” and a locale that is out of reach for so many. Bell will doubtless be remembered for his leadership in transforming 12 | 6.14.17 | INDYweek.com

downtown. But for those who didn’t share in that growth, the past sixteen years are perhaps better summed up by the fact that poverty rates in some neighborhoods have more than doubled.

Put simply, the poor are being pushed outward—north and east, specifically— from a flourishing downtown, says Melissa Norton, a senior researcher at Duke who studies gentrification in Durham.

“Over the past fifty years, poverty has been, in terms of density, very much concentrated in the central city, in particular the south and eastern sides of downtown,” she says. “What we’re seeing right now is a lot of dynamic change in the central city and the geography of poverty.” Thus, she continues, a situation exists in which poverty is “massively concentrated in certain parts of the city, and there are certain parts

SOURCE: U.S. CENSUS BUREAU. GRAPHIC BY SHAN STUMPF

of the city where you’re really insulated from having to see real poverty.”

n many ways, this story begins with Durham’s incorporation in 1869. From the outset, a divide existed between the wealthy landowners who built the city’s textile and tobacco factories and the people who worked in them. Those at the top accumulated wealth through their businesses and assets, while those at the bottom lived paycheck to paycheck.

“If you multiply that over one hundred and fifty years, you have some sense of why, say, in terms of housing, how hard it was for people who made really minimal wages,” says Robert Korstad, a history and public policy professor at Duke University.

When Durham’s factories began their slow decline in the 1950s and manufac-

I

turing jobs moved to other North Carolina cities, it was easier for the laid-off white workers to find new jobs. Segregation, discrimination, and policies like redlining, in which banks refused to give loans in black neighborhoods, reinforced the divide between working-class blacks and whites.

Areas redlined by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation in 1937—including Hayti, Northeast Central Durham, and West End—still have some of the highest rates of poverty and lowest homeownership rates in Durham.

Other than the shutdown of Durham’s factories, perhaps no single event has had as much of an impact on shaping the city’s economic landscape as the construction of the Durham Freeway. Beginning in the late 1950s, scores of homes and largely blackowned businesses were torn down to make

Left, dowtown Durham; right, the Lofts at Southside way for N.C. 147, chopping existing communities with concrete and separating those residents from the growth that prompted their removal.

Along with the Durham Freeway came urban renewal, a program in which cities nationwide were given federal money to clear so-called blighted areas. In Durham, many of the demolished structures were never replaced; black residents were often displaced into inner-city, low-cost apartments and public housing, and many white residents retreated to the suburbs.

If you ask Bell, downtown Durham’s revitalization began with the 1981 opening of Brightleaf Square—former tobacco warehouses renovated for restaurants and retail—and the construction of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park in 1995. But little was taking place besides those projects.

“There was no life in terms of people, no life in terms of the building structure,” Bell says.

With the reopening of American Tobacco in 2004 came a surge of investment in office space, tech start-ups, and restaurants—and new, better educated, wealthier residents who wanted to live within walking distance of it all.

“What we’ve seen in the last ten years is Durham really position itself as a winner in this new economy,” Norton says. “You have to be really educated to take part in that economy.”

It’s a transformation that has made Durham North Carolina’s “hippest” city in the eyes of Vogue magazine and the “Silicon

Valley of the South.” But it’s also left portions of the Bull City’s population in the dust. The city’s poverty rate is higher than that of the state (17.4 percent) and the country (13.5 percent). And according to census data, 48.7 percent of Durham residents living below poverty level are black.

“We’re building for the whiter, richer new people that are moving to town,” says Durham City Council member Jillian Johnson. “We’re not building grocery stores and pharmacies and banks in east Durham, and that’s what we need to be building.”

n a sweltering Thursday afternoon in downtown Durham, those braving the heat outside seem only to be in transit, rushing from one place to another. They’re pouring out of the county human services complexes near Dillard Street, waiting in the shade for buses, relishing that first kiss of air-conditioning after walking through the doors of The Parlour ice cream shop on Market Street.

There’s a hum of trucks idling, bass and reggaeton bumping from cars at stoplights, the tinny thud of construction workers banging on metal, a lone trombonist in the parking lot of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church. In the rare quiet moment, one can detect a slow, low whir, like an elevator steadily ascending. It’s a crane, periodically rotating atop the under-construction One City Center, a twenty-seven-story tower of retail, office, and apartment space being built at the corner of Main and Corcoran. Half a mile down Main Street,

O

construction continues on a new $71 million police headquarters, a gray behemoth that, for now, seems to mark the edge of downtown development.

The Golden Belt and Cleveland-Holloway neighborhoods are on the front lines of this outward push from downtown.

With development looming, Golden Belt residents in 2010 lobbied the city council to designate the area a local historic district. Much of the area had already been listed in the National Register of Historic Places before the district was approved last

“WE’RE BUILDING FOR THE WHITER, RICHER NEW PEOPLE THAT ARE MOVING TO TOWN.”

year, creating another layer of approval for demolition, construction, or modification.

Like downtown, Golden Belt’s roots lie in the city’s manufacturing heyday, taking its name from the Golden Belt Manufacturing Co., which initially made cotton tobacco bags. The warehouses reopened in 2008 with lofts, artist space, and retail. Scientific Properties, which bought most of the factory in 2006, has also rehabbed several of the remaining mill houses, along with Habitat for Humanity.

“These were boarded-up houses,” says DeDreana Freeman, president of the Golden Belt neighborhood association and InterNeighborhood Council of Durham. When Freeman moved into her Worth Street home in 2007, she says, the house next door was leaning and had to be propped up. “The revitalization that happened—you could call it gentrification if Habitat hadn’t gotten involved and some of the homeowners hadn’t stayed,” she says.

Contrast that with the nearby ClevelandHolloway neighborhood, where intense investor activity pushed home prices up by 490 percent from 2005–15, according to a real estate analysis by Norton. In a presentation called “The Big ‘G’: Gentrification and the Dynamics of Neighborhood Change,” she says this neighborhood was the “most shocking” of the six she studied.

Tammi Brooks, president-elect of the Durham Regional Association of Realtors, says Durham real estate prices “are on this sort of upward escalator right now.”

While Cleveland-Holloway (along with Old INDYweek.com | 6.14.17 | 13

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“PEOPLE ARE POURING IN HERE, AND THE DYNAMIC THAT’S MAINLY DRIVING GENTRIFICATION IS DEMAND.” East Durham, Old North Durham, Duke Park, and Forest Hills) is experiencing high demand, “we’re seeing a lot of pressure in all neighborhoods.”

“People are pouring in here, and the dynamic that’s mainly driving gentrification is demand,” says Steve Schewel, who has lived in Durham for more than forty years and served on its city council since 2011. (Disclosure: Schewel founded the Independent Weekly in 1983; he sold the publication in 2012.)

According to a 2015 report by Enterprise Community Partners Inc., which studied the city’s housing stock, from 2000–11, median rents in Durham went up by 22 percent and median home values by 42 percent. The result has been an affordable housing crisis.

According to the Enterprise report, there were forty-two thousand lowincome households in Durham in 2013, meaning they earn 80 percent or less of the area’s median income of $73,300 for a family of four. The same report identified 6,100 income-restricted, subsidized homes in Durham, 1,240 of which could exit affordability agreements by 2021.

The situation is particularly dire for extremely low-income residents, who earn 30 percent or less of the area median income, or just $21,990 for a family of four.

According to Enterprise, for every hundred very low-income households (of which there are about twelve thousand in Durham), just thirty-eight affordable units are available.

The city has dedicated one penny of its 56.07-cent property tax rate to affordable housing, generating $12.5 million since 2013. But as city manager Tom Bonfield has put it, “there’s not enough money to solve the city’s affordable housing problem.”

“We’re adding another penny to the housing fund this year. We need like five to even start making a dent,” Johnson says.

“We’re just really in a difficult situation, and I think that a big part of the reason for that is that the forward thinking that

14 | 6.14.17 | INDYweek.com

happened was around how to make development happen. It wasn’t about how economic development is going to affect the low-income people in these neighborhoods going forward.”

lthough he doesn’t remember the year—sometime in the 1960s— John “Skeepie” Scarborough remembers the day that urban renewal reached his family’s business at 522 Pettigrew Street in the then-vibrant Hayti neighborhood. A man came to the funeral home and told Scarborough’s grandfather he’d be “coming through” to build a freeway.

“You’re going to be coming through here?” Scarborough remembers his grandfather asking.

The man replied, “Me and a lot of other people.”

“Well, when you come through here, I’ll be sitting right there with my double-barreled shotgun.”

Sitting in a meeting room in Scarborough and Hargett Funeral Home’s current location off Fayetteville Street, Scarborough recounts all the times the family business has been forced to move in the name of progress. From Hayti to downtown, then, to make way for a new courthouse, back to the other side of N.C. 147. Before urban renewal, Scarborough says, Hayti had its own stores, school, lawyers, contractors, and restaurants. Residents “only crossed the tracks to pay bills,” Scarborough says.

But that cohesiveness was “knocked out.”

It’s been estimated that forty-five hundred homes and businesses were demolished to make way for the Durham Freeway and six corresponding urban renewal projects.

Now the city is attempting to undo some of that damage through affordable-housing and homeownership-assistance programs.

This is most visible in the Southside neighborhood, where the city has worked with developers since the early 2000s to build mixed-income housing. One hundred thirty-two units in the Lofts at Southside sit atop a hill behind a towering water foun-

A

tain. This used to be Rolling Hills, land the city repossessed twice following failed development deals in the nineties and again in 2003.

Eighty units at the Lofts at Southside are income-restricted and reserved for people with varying incomes below the area median. The developer declined to provide a breakdown of how many units were rented at each income threshold, but 98 percent of the subsidized units are occupied. According to the developer, of the fifty-two market rate apartments, 86 percent are leased.

While the Lofts at Southside are more affordable than many apartments in Durham, they still may be out of reach for some. According to guidelines from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the development can charge a person earning 60 percent of the median income up to $825 for a one-bedroom apartment, just $9 below what HUD says the fair market rate would be.

As of 2015, 48.2 percent of residents in this area lived below the poverty line. The homeownership rate is just over 11 percent, according to 2015 census data, compared to nearly 54 percent countywide.

Across Roxboro Street, colorful houses sit snugly side by side, occasionally broken up by homes under construction or for sale. Twenty-five of forty-eight homes in The Bungalows at Southside must be affordable, per federal guidelines. The city offers financing options to lower the cost for buyers earning less than the median income.

On the edge of this new construction sits a tiny convenience store at the corner of South and Enterprise streets. Omar Ali has been the manager at Raheeb Market for about ten years, but the building itself has been around since 1930.

Change in the neighborhood happened at a breakneck speed, says his daughter, Naimah Alshade.

“It was, like, superfast,” she says, sitting behind the counter one afternoon in May. “It seems like overnight all these buildings were knocked down.”

Ali says that when the new homes started going up in 2013, his customers worried they would have to move because they’d no longer be able to afford to live there.

He doesn’t know of anyone who ended up leaving for that reason, but property values have indeed gone up.

Last year, when Durham properties underwent a routine revaluation, the average property tax bill in Southside went up $314. It was enough to make Southside residents appeal to the city for help, prompting discussion of a tax relief program for

residents affected by city-driven neighborhood revitalization.

“If not for us having done Southside and the Lofts at Southside, those houses wouldn’t have appreciated as much as they had,” Bell says. “Then the question is, does that mean we shouldn’t have done it? I think it’s a far greater benefit having done it than it would have been to neglect it.”

T

.J. McDermott’s view through the small windows of King’s Sandwich Shop has changed significantly since 2009, when he bought the Foster Street burger stand, which has existed since 1942. Then, vacant, dilapidated buildings occupied two of the other three corners of Foster and Geer.

In those early days, McDermott remembers seeing a gun-toting woman chase two men across the street near what is now Motorco. When he stopped for a Gatorade at a nearby convenience store, a prostitute jumped in his car and tried to steal the change from his glovebox. Eight years later, he’s drinking iced coffee outside, surrounded by women pushing strollers and guys in suits comparing the price of office space in Durham and New York City.

King’s has managed to stay relevant in this neighborhood partly because it’s a relic of the past. McDermott hasn’t really adapted the restaurant to its changing surroundings, but he recognizes that a time is likely coming when he’ll have no choice but to raise prices and cater to new tastes. The value of the shop’s 450 square feet doubled last year. According to Norton’s research, the average price per square foot for houses in Old North Durham grew from $76 in 2000 to $160 in 2015.

Keep going east on Geer Street toward North Miami Boulevard and a much different picture emerges. In census tract 10.02, which encompasses Sherwood Park and Wellons Village, 51.5 percent of residents live below the poverty line—3,050 people— up from 29.5 percent in 2000.

Fast food, chain stores, and auto shops comprise many of the businesses in Wellons Village. It’s not walkable. Parts of the neighborhood are almost rural, such as an unpaved residential street where an orange chicken sprints from a front yard into the street.

Carlos Aguilera, a cashier at the Don Fily food truck, which is parked in front of the Moroleon Supermarket on North Miami Boulevard on a May afternoon, says he doesn’t see gentrification coming this far out.

“New people, they’re scared,” he says.

Just the day before, he says, someone

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DeDreana Freeman, president of the Golden Belt neighborhood association pulled a gun at the food mart next door.

Across the street is The Village, the shopping center that gave this neighborhood its name when it opened as a residential and retail development called Wellons Village in 1959. Durham sheriff and police cruisers sit in the parking lot all day.

“You get used to hearing the police sirens every single day,” Aguilera says.

Aguilera and his friend Mawfak Tawfiq are surprised to learn that almost twice as many people are living in poverty in this neighborhood than fifteen years before.

They say they haven’t noticed much change in the six and eight years they’ve lived here, respectively. But they aren’t shocked to hear that there’s so much poverty.

“Seeing the number of homeless people, you can put two and two together,” Aguilera says.

Others who live and work here are similarly hard-pressed to explain what’s changed since 2000. They venture to guess that the cost of living has gone up while wages have stagnated, that the population is aging and is increasingly reliant on fixed incomes, or that the stock of older, more affordable apartments has drawn lower-income renters to the area.

According to census data, the median monthly rent in tract 10.02 has gone from $518 in 2000 to $682 by 2015 (most occupied units in this area are rentals).

In the same period, the median household income only rose $453, to $26,272.

Unemployment has gone up from about 9 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2015.

Twenty-four percent of households earn less than $10,000 a year.

16 | 6.14.17 | INDYweek.com

S

amuel Jenkins is a product of the city’s poverty-reduction efforts.

Without a matching grant from the city, Samuel and Sons Barbershop on Angier Avenue wouldn’t exist as it does today.

The space used to house Positivity Cuts, where Jenkins started working in 2004. He eventually rented the building in 2009 and bought it two years later. After the building burned down in 2011, a building improvement grant from the city helped him renovate and reopen.

Jenkins, sometimes called the Mayor of Angier Avenue, helped drive the revitalization of this block along with the Angier Avenue Business Association and the city.

Among empty storefronts, the small strip seems inviting and lively. There’s a food truck and a small outdoor seating area.

Jenkins’s business is located in census tract 10.01, an east Durham neighborhood anchored around the Angier-Driver corridor that is the focus of the city’s Poverty Reduction Initiative, which was recently renamed Transformation in Ten. Bell announced the program in his 2014 State of the City address, saying he wanted to take a data-driven approach to “reduce poverty in our city, neighborhood by neighborhood, year by year.”

Bell says the initiative marks the first time that city, county, and community leaders have made a coordinated effort to address the causes and symptoms of poverty: housing, finance, jobs, public safety, health, and education.

He doesn’t think the initiative could have successfully launched any sooner.

“Prior to that, we were trying to rebrand ourselves, trying to deal with a downtown

Samuel Jenkins at Samuel and Sons Barbershop that was literally broken,” Bell says. “We had just gotten to the point now where we had had the renaissance in the downtown area, and I felt that the city—and when I say the city, I mean the community—could really turn its attention to this issue of poverty.”

Tract 10.01 was identified in a 2014 report by the UNC Center for Urban and Regional Studies as a “distressed urban tract,” characterized by high poverty rates, high unemployment, and low per-capita income. According to the report, Durham was home to eight of the Triangle’s twelve distressed tracts.

The report showed that poverty in urban areas is particularly pervasive and can be obscured by wealthier areas in countywide data. According to the report, per capita income in distressed urban tracts is lower than in distressed rural tracts, and poverty and unemployment in distressed urban tracts, like 10.01, can be double that of the county.

Transformation in Ten focuses on two census blocks within tract 10.01, which together are home to about twenty-four hundred people. (A third census block is home to the mixed-income Eastway Ave-

“PUBLIC POLICY RIGHT NOW IS FOCUSED ON POVERTY CREATION, NOT POVERTY REDUCTION.”

T.J. McDermott, owner of King’s Sandwich Shop nue housing development.)

It’s too early to assess the initiative’s success. The first year was spent largely on gathering data, surveying residents, and planning goals for targeted task forces.

The first so-called action year was 2015.

The 2016–17 fiscal year was the first that money from the city budget has been dedicated to the program.

The city, the county health department, and the Durham Police Department have each dedicated staff to the initiative. The city has also expanded job training at the Holton Career and Resource Center, implemented financial literacy programs, and partnered with community organizations to set up college savings accounts for students at Y.E. Smith Elementary School.

Jenkins says the changes are noticeable.

When he moved here from New York in the eighties, Driver Street had restaurants, banks, and a drug store. But by the mid2000s, that was all disappearing—even the post office mailbox.

“That was the weirdest thing,” he says.

“East Durham was left alone for like seven years in a dormant state.”

Jenkins says the neighborhood is coming back, with investments from the city, SelfHelp Ventures, and Habitat for Humanity.

But he says it would be unrealistic to expect that the city could totally eradicate poverty.

It’s too embedded in Durham—and besides, in a capitalist society, “somebody has to be on the bottom.”

“With what they’ve got to work with, I think they’ve done the best they could,” he says. “All they can do is fix it to an extent.”

Transformation in Ten has been criticized for its timing and effectiveness.

Camryn Smith, director of implementation and community education at REAL Durham—an organization Bell announced as a partner upon the program’s launch— says the initiative has been little more than a stalling tactic.

“My perspective is that poverty has not been an issue for the mayor until the [UNC] data came out,” she says. In the meantime, residents are displaced “to bring in other people who aren’t connected to the community.”

“It’s another example of institutions coming and saying, ‘We know what’s best for the community,’” adds her husband, Ernest Smith.

Looking back, Bell concedes that more could have been done to make sure residents were “at the table.”

“We were treading new ground, entirely new ground,” he says.

I

n many ways, Durham is stunted in what it can do to address poverty on a large scale. Cities in North Carolina are prohibited from requiring developers to include affordable units. The city also cannot stabilize rent or compel employers to pay a living wage. Instead, Durham must largely rely on things like private partnerships and housing tax credits.

“We live in a political environment that is antithetical to this idea of government involving itself and trying to change those structures,” says Korstad, the Duke professor. “Public policy right now is focused on poverty creation, not poverty reduction.

There is nothing our state government is doing, or our federal government, to address issues of poverty. It’s doing plenty of things to create poverty, and it’s intentional.”

City officials and anti-poverty groups say getting land in public hands and land trusts will be key, particularly downtown near public transit and in Old East Durham, where relatively stable and low home prices make the area ripe for gentrification.

Johnson, the council member, likens the city’s efforts to control gentrification now to chasing a ball that has “already started rolling down the hill.”

“When I have asked people, ‘Was there a

consideration of issues like gentrification and displacement and racial equity when this city decided to start pouring a ton of public money into revitalizing downtown,’ what folks have told me is, ‘Well, at the time we just wanted to get anyone to invest anything in downtown,’” she says. “As if they didn’t have the luxury of thinking about things like racial equity and people being displaced down the line.”

Bell says this line of criticism is “absolutely not true,” noting the work done on Barnes Avenue early in his tenure. But like the pockets of poverty obscured in this otherwise booming city, this part of his legacy—improving the lives of Durham’s poor—is harder to see than the construction, crowds, and accolades that serve as proof of downtown’s transformation.

Ask Bell what he thinks his legacy is, and he’ll shake his head and say, “Please. That’s in the eyes of the beholder.”

But ask what accomplishments he’s proudest to have been a part of, and he’ll point to downtown and Southside. Where Transformation in Ten fits in is harder for him to say. He’s measured but optimistic when he talks about what the program will accomplish, and he says he’s disappointed he “won’t be around to be a part of the leadership for it.”

“I’ve obviously gotten attached to it,” he says. “But if you make a decision to stay in this job until the next thing gets accomplished, you’ll never get out, because there’s always a next thing to accomplish. What I hope is that the city is now on better footing in terms of experience, desires, and commitment to want to move in these areas, and I think that is the case now.” swillets@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 6.14.17 | 17

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Uprise and Shine

CHICKEN BRIDGE BAKERY FEEDS BODIES AND MINDS WITH BAKED-IN MESSAGES OF RESISTANCE AND SOLIDARITY

BY KATHERINE HYSMITH

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Finding home and common ground in a loaf of bread PHOTO BY KATHERINE HYSMITH

I

t beckoned like a porch light in a thunderstorm, across a row of market stalls heaped high with greens and crates of tomatoes on a humble little table spread with a crumb-covered cloth: a perfectly round loaf of bread, delicately stenciled with the shape of North Carolina, my new home.

Flour and ash dusted my palms as I carried the miche back home, careful to keep it flat and not muss the design on top. Nearly

a foot wide, this loaf would keep my small family fed for weeks, but I dreaded making the first cut. What would the first bread to break in our new kitchen hold? Will it taste the same as what I knew before?

More loaves bearing ideas of home caught my eye at that Carrboro farmers market table for Chicken Bridge Bakery (chickenbridgebakery.weebly.com). Another round, crusty miche was dusted with a flour relief in the shape of barbed wire and the words

“un mundo sin fronteras.” Three rectangular loaves were propped up to make an edible sign that read “bread not bombs.” An entire rack of whole wheat bread was baked with flour outlines of safety pins to show solidarity with the oppressed.

These messages are meant for consumption, for slathering with butter or dipping into bowls of soup, and for starting a conversation using something that connects us all: food.

This bread functions as a political platform,

expressed through the expert combination of salt, water, yeast, and flour—a medium deftly kneaded by Rob and Monica Segovia-Welsh and their two children, Simon and Milo, in their family-run business.

Their path to Chicken Bridge Road, the bakery’s namesake and the location of their first handmade wood-fired oven, took a few turns. Rob and Monica met at Northland College, an institution focused on environmental liberal arts and sustainability in rural Ashland, Wisconsin. He studied philosophy, religion, and history; she worked on conflict and peacemaking. They both took jobs at a local bakery and, as Rob says, “only baked to pay rent and student loans.” Expecting their first child, they settled in Carrboro after traveling in Central America. Rob landed in construction at first, while Monica worked as a head pastry baker at Weaver Street Market. Rob followed suit, taking a job at a local bakery.

“I was hired to fill a bakery position, but also to speak Spanish with their staff,” he says. The management did not speak Spanish and asked him to translate, creating a “really awkward” situation, one that placed him in an unwelcomed power dynamic based on language and ethnicity.

Instead, he made two best friends, both thirdgeneration bakers from Mexico who often spoke warmly of the “wood-fired ovens that their grandparents used back home.” One of his new friends was clearly homesick as he told stories about these ovens, his family, and their bread.

Rob then took a job at Weaver Street, where he made more friends, a family from Oaxaca, who shared more stories of baking bread back in Mexico. He also worked at the North Carolina Department of Labor, traveling the state talking to migrant farm workers about their needs. He hoped that by “working on the inside” he might help improve their working and living conditions. Despite his empathy and ability to communicate in Spanish, Rob questioned his value as a white man in that space after a few years of struggling with the workers’ demoralizing reality. He returned to baking in an effort to give back to the community in a more meaningful way..

That’s when the couple built their woodfired oven. “Two loaves takes three days,” says Rob. “The oven is a living thing, and you have to feed it to create the fire and energy that will bake everything.” They created a community sourced bakery among their friends, but word spread quickly, and suddenly, Chicken Bridge Bakery was born.

The family now lives in Pittsboro in another old house with a retrofitted basement as its certified home bakery.

“Being at home adds an interesting flux,”

says Rob. “There are no shifts.”

After a successful career as a pastry chef, including a stint at Lantern in Chapel Hill, Monica joined Rob. “The needs of the bakery and the rhythm of our family’s life have become completely interwoven,” she says. “From the long firing of the oven, shaping of the dough, and slow fermentation process, to the late nights baking, we strive to create a sustainable living for our family. It takes all our hands.”

As Rob puts it, each bread has a “particular reason for being.” The Danish Seeded Rye, for instance, was baked for a homesick Danish woman that approached Rob with her old family recipe one day at the market.

“Baking is alienating, but the stencils help you feel less alienated,” says Rob. The designs range from delicate lacework and bold shapes to messages of love and political protests in Arabic and Spanish. They are rallying cries etched in flour: a raised fist for Standing Rock, the words “Fight HB 2” next to a figure waving a heart-printed flag, and the phrase “bread not bombs” supporting the refugees of the Syrian war. Rob posts photos online to activate his Facebook and Instagram networks, too.

“This is my community,” Rob says. “If they disagree with me, maybe we can talk about it.

Isn’t that the point?”

Monica explains that she is more practical: “Rob is the dreamer.” She believes in donating bread or money whenever people need it, like weekly donations to Farmer Foodshare, which distributes fresh food (not canned goods) to the hungry. Monica also started a fund for the Standing Rock legal defense team using proceeds from their market sales.

“The bread art is a reflection of what’s going on in society,” she says.

On top of a recent loaf, plain and rectangular, Rob stenciled the phrase “Work is love made visible,” a famous quote by the Lebanese-American poet Kahlil Gibran. It’s a universal truth, says Rob. “This is our labor and this is our love and it all goes into these loaves.”

Back at home with my miche, two days passed before I reached for a serrated knife.

Unsure of how to proceed, I sheathed it and walked away, thinking over the ingredients I needed to whip up a homemade mayonnaise. Hours later I returned, newly steeled to slice the loaf, when a colander of green tomatoes caught my eye. I had closed up the house for the night and put the baby to bed, and suddenly realized a gnawing pit had hollowed out my stomach. Without thinking, the knife and I made quick work of the loaf, cutting long thin slices poked through with holes where yeast lived and died. It was time, I was hungry, and I finally felt at home. food@indyweek.com

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ight Kitchen Bakehouse & Cafe opened in November of 2014 rather quietly. “We didn’t have much time or extra cash to have a big to-do,” says owner Helen Pfann, “My Dad brought some wine for a soft opening party, and then we were off.”

These days, there’s a lot more buzz about Night Kitchen.

European classics such as croissant, scones, and french macarons have received high marks; as well as more American items such as brownies or the bread pudding, a muffin-shaped treat with caramelized sugar on top.

The breads at Night Kitchen, however, are the real focus.

“I got started as a bread baker,” explains Pfann, “...and though I enjoy pastry work, making bread is what I love most.” Night Kitchen sells Sourdough, 9-Grain, and French bread everyday, and features daily specials. The bakery supplies bread to several local restaurants, including Farina, J Betski’s, and Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar. “I designed the kitchen so we could do wholesale and have room to grow. We’ve just started working with the Produce Box, so folks statewide can try our breads.”

The final piece of the pie is the cafe at Night Kitchen.

Exchange and fine teas from Tin Roof Teas, it’s a great space to meet a friend or have a small gathering at one of the larger farm tables. A selection of sandwiches, daily soup and quiche specials round out the menu.

The breads at Night Kitchen, however, are the real focus.

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indymusic

Mourning Becomes Electric

FOUR YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH, JASON MOLINA LIVES ON THROUGH A NEW BOOK AND A REVIVED REUNION

BY ALLISON HUSSEY

W

hen the news broke on March 16, 2013, that Jason Molina had died, a shockwave of grief reverberated among everyone who knew him, either personally or through his music as Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co. He’d seemed to be on the upswing in his final few months, recovering from a decade-long struggle with alcoholism and hopping among numerous treatment facilities. His mournful, gorgeous songs, which mostly less fell on the scrappier end of the folk-rock spectrum, were deeply adored by a passionate following; artists from Glen Hansard to The Avett Brothers have cited Molina as a hugely important influence.

A little less than a year after Molina’s death, a handful of his former bandmates from Magnolia Electric Co. reconvened for a brief run of shows under the title Songs: Molina – A Memorial Electric Co., celebrating Molina and his impactful oeuvre. Now, nearly three and a half years after its original run, Songs: Molina rides again, propelled largely by the release of Jason Molina: Riding with the Ghost, a biography by Erin Osmon.

“When Jason died, I felt the need, like a lot of people, to do something. People wrote tributes and played covers. As a researcher and a writer, I wanted to know what happened,” Osmon says.

The project began as a longform article for the Pitchfork Review, but as she interviewed Molina’s friends and family members, Osmon was struck by their testimony about his life. Osmon’s project blossomed into a full-blown book, which was published

by Rowman & Littlefield on May 15. When it came time for a promotional tour, it felt only natural for Songs: Molina to come, too.

In early January 2014, the first string of Songs: Molina shows began at The Pinhook 20 | 6.14.17 | INDYweek.com

SONGS: MOLINA – A MEMORIAL ELECTRIC CO. Wednesday, June 21, 8 p.m., $12–$15 Motorco Music Hall, Durham www.motorcomusic.com

in Durham before hitting Asheville, Indianapolis, and Chicago. Though Molina never lived in North Carolina, it was a starting point that made sense: Jason Groth, who played guitar in Magnolia Electric Co. from 2002 until 2009, was in Raleigh, and in Durham was Hiss Golden Messenger’s M.C. Taylor, who stepped in on vocal duties. He had become close to Molina after Taylor’s band The Court and Spark toured extensively alongside Magnolia Electric Co. (He’ll rejoin the band for its Durham date on Wednesday.) It was convenient, too, for another band mate who based in Philadelphia. The shows were at times heavy and joyous, cathartic for audiences and band members alike.

“There was an acknowledged heaviness everywhere, but people were happy to be there. It felt like a relief somehow,” says Groth. Pete Schreiner played bass in the band for the same stretch as Groth, and Joseph O’Connell, who makes music as Elephant Micah, knew Molina through their mutual involvement in Bloomington, Indiana’s music communities. Both have returned to the fold for the second round of Songs: Molina, along with Mike Brenner, Mark Rice, and Mikey Kapinus.

When its initial run ended, the group agreed that, if they had a good reason to do it again, they would—they’re not interested in becoming a “state fair cover band,” Groth says. They all returned home, though Schreiner and O’Connell would eventually

join Groth in Raleigh. O’Connell moved to town with his partner after she landed a job at N.C. State in early 2014, and Schreiner arrived in June of last year for a fellowship at N.C. State’s D.H. Hill library.

The release of Osmon’s book, however, felt like an appropriate time to start up “the Magnolia machine” again, as O’Connell puts it. Molina was a prolific songwriter whose output slowed only when his illness worsened. He was so enthusiastic about performing new material that older songs quickly fell by the wayside; fans who came to shows wanting to hear cuts from the back catalog were left disappointed. There were still many tunes, like “Lioness,” that Molina wouldn’t play and that the band never got to relish. The memorial shows are an opportunity to revive onstage some of those less celebrated pieces of Molina’s vast body of work.

“Engines want to run. They don’t want to start and stop— they don’t want to stop, for sure,” Schreiner says. “We did build a big engine that did a lot of stuff.

There’s inertia.”

Beyond offering another opportunity for the return of Songs: Molina, Osmon’s book has revealed even more for Molina’s surviving associates: affirmations, explanations, and, in some ways, closure about a man who was brilliant and complicated.

“If there’s one thing that’s really come across in all of the testimony that I’ve heard people give about their friendships with Jason and their relationships with him, it’s just that he was really kind of hard to figure ILLUSTRATION out,” O’Connell says.

Osmon found that to be true as she conducted interviews for Riding with the Ghost. Molina excelled at being different things to different people.

“Jason could show many sides of himself, and he often showed you the side that he felt like you needed, or the side that he wanted to show you,” she says. He could be a painin-the-ass trickster, a cryptic thinker, a collaborative mentor, a sentimental romantic; it was possible to know one or some of these Molinas, but rarely all of them.

Reading Osmon’s book helped Groth better understand his own relationship with

BY STEVE OLIVA

Molina, especially the period toward the end of Molina’s life when friends and family were taking sometimes drastic measures to help him. More than once, Groth and others had to dragoon Molina into going to a hospital.

“Even though he would tell us thank you, or it seemed like he was grateful, it was hard to tell, because he was so sick,” Groth says.

But Osmon’s other interviews revealed that Molina had, in fact, told his wife and other friends how grateful he was for their help. Knowing that, Groth says, has helped him find some peace.

“I don’t think I would have known it had someone not put the time into talking to everybody about it. I would have tried to feel it. Now I can at least know that it was written down, and feel a little bit better about it,” he says. These discoveries about who Molina was as a person— not merely assigning meaning and analysis to his songs—were the most important part of the project for Osmon.

“The intent was always to tell a holistic story about this person who I felt was really fascinating, and the scene and the friends who helped him in his meteoric life,” she says.

Groth, O’Connell, and Schriener all still carry lessons they learned from Molina as a musician and a man. In preparing for this next string of shows, O’Connell says, he’s realized Molina’s uncanny knack for improvisation .

“The music, even the recordings, sounds like there’s this real unplanned quality to it. I think that’s really amazing to behold— somebody who is comfortable and competent enough in what they do to let it unfold in real time. That speaks volumes about the magnitude of who he was,” he says.

The pain of losing Molina still hasn’t completely evaporated.

The memory of him remains an active presence among those closest to him.

“He and other friends that have passed away, I still kind of talk to. I don’t know how to think about somebody who’s dead, really,” Schreiner says. Groth, meanwhile, still has vivid dreams about Molina, usually involving some sort of Keystone Kops-esque rigamarole as they try to get to a show.

He says he misses Molina now even more than he did four years ago.

“I was really just kind of angry, upset, and weirded out. I felt like I had to grow up real fast,” he says.

No one can replace Molina’s spirit or completely recreate his gifts; to even attempt it would fly in the face of his nature. But even away from spotlights and stages—through plastic and paper, through songs, stories, and memories—the machinery he engineered keeps on humming. music@indyweek.com

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music

ANDREW WEATHERS WITH POLYORCHARD

Tuesday, June 20, 8 p.m., donations The Carrack, Durham www.thecarrack.org

Astral Plains

A CHAPEL HILL NATIVE HOPS FROM OAKLAND TO A TINY TEXAS TOWN IN PURSUIT OF NEW MUSICAL EXPERIMENTS

BY CORBIE HILL Next door to the J Bar N Boot Shop in Littlefield, Texas, and behind two conjoined storefronts, a visual artist and a modern composer are hard at work.

The couple’s new space in northwest Texas needs some work: they’ve already had to repair a leaky roof. A row of sinks, a holdover from when one storefront was a barbershop, needs to come out. Their end goal is that one side will be a commercial recording studio and the other will be the brick-and-mortar store of their experimental music label, Full Spectrum Records.

“Everything is more physical now,” artist Gretchen Korsmo says. “There’s a lot less sitting down. I don’t chill here. I feel relaxed, but I don’t get on my couch and chill.”

“Because we don’t have a couch,” composer Andrew Weathers adds with a laugh.

In early 2017, Korsmo and Weathers left Oakland, the Bay Area’s storied hub for art, music, and progressive thought, for this obscure Texas town of about six thousand people, and they’re thrilled about their new life. Korsmo is from Rochester, Minnesota, while Weathers is a Chapel Hill native and UNG-Greensboro alum who sustains close ties to the Triangle.

Weathers, who holds music degrees from both UNC-G and Oakland’s esteemed Mills College, crafts drone-descended compositions that draw from both folk and new music traditions. He’s an inventive recording artist and collaborator, but that isn’t Full Spectrum’s sole purpose: the label also issues records by like-minded contemporaries and reissues of forgotten experimental albums.

Tuesday, Weathers returns to his home state to perform with the experimental collective Polyorchard in Durham.

But his and Korsmo’s more long-term future is in a town they probably wouldn’t have heard of otherwise, in a building they found on Craigslist. The cost of living is low, enabling the recording and touring Weathers craves, and the locals they’ve spoken to are simply glad to see newcomers set up shop in Littlefield’s blighted downtown.

24 | 6.14.17 | INDYweek.com

Andrew Weathers PHOTO BY GRETCHEN KORSMO “Hopefully we can be something beyond two weirdos in town trying to do their own thing,” Weathers says. “I would like to be a fixture in the community and be something that is useful and valuable to people that isn’t here otherwise.”

The story of Littlefield has happened so many times and to so many towns that it’s entered American folklore: a bypass is built around a small town, and a highway (in Littlefield’s instance, Highway 84) that once funneled travelers through the town now swings them around it. Downtown used to buzz with activity, locals recall, but now it’s in an advanced state of decay.

Weathers and Korsmo harbor no illusions about becoming a bustling business in their new town—serious foot traffic simply doesn’t exist here. On top of running the Full Spectrum label, they already make extra money selling records and vintage clothes online and

aren’t worried about sustaining themselves.

Because the overhead cost of living in Littlefield is so low, Weathers can tour in a way that was prohibitive in high-rent Oakland.

“Being on the road is the full expression of the music I make,” Weathers says. But he couldn’t go on the road for more than a week at a time—any longer, and he’d would come home flat broke. It was unsustainable.

After weighing their options for a few years— Southern California, New Mexico, Arizona—Korsmo and Weathers settled on a small town where they could afford to work, tour, and focus on their art.

Weathers doesn’t need any hip amenities, but he does need music. It helps him define the world around him and the way he wants it to be. And as he explains, he has a utopic vision of what music is.

“We can use music and art, how we make it, and how we allow it to exist in the world

as a model for the actual functioning of the world and our lives,” he says. “We can test and develop processes and systems with music and art, and then we can see how they work with people and as economic systems [and] social structures. It’s very powerful.”

To Weathers and Korsmo, art a way to envision what we want out of the future, even if the present, as they point out, is pretty dark.

Making art, Korsmo says, is a way to channel her energy into something that doesn’t contribute to broken or destructive institutions.

It’s impossible for art to exist outside of politics, Weathers maintains, and neither of them wants their work to be apolitical. Rather, they want to respond to this dark moment in American history with optimistic alternatives.

“When everything is so bleak, you kind up put your hands up and say, ‘OK, I’ll try not to be bleak and try to make connections with people around me,’” Korsmo says. “Just to exist operating at this higher frequency feels important right now. I’m super-privileged, and I know people who have a lot more fear than I do right now. If you have enough of it at all to share, then it’s important to do.”

In Littlefield, Korsmo and Weathers are working to bring such lofty ideals to life, one structural repair at a time. They can make their music and visual art, but the upcoming Full Spectrum brick-and-mortar store is especially exciting, in that it’ll let them completely engage with their new town. They don’t picture the store as a de facto youth center, but they’ve noticed how many teenagers there are, and how quickly many of them depart for Lubbock, Littlefield’s “city,” after they finish high school. Korsmo doesn’t know what these kids even do for fun, but she hopes the Full Spectrum store can be a way for them to engage with something new.

“Our being here for us is just a tactic to have an affordable lifestyle and be able to work on our art,” Weathers says. “I wouldn’t want to be here doing that if I wasn’t also creating something for other people who want to have a similar future for themselves.” music@indyweek.com

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indyart Symbol Crash

VICTOR EKPUK'S NEW MURAL LEADS THE WAY FOR NCMA'S AFRICAN ART EXPANSION

BY CHRIS VITIELLO One of the best ways to see the Washington, D.C.-based Nigerian-American artist Victor Ekpuk’s large chalk mural at the North Carolina Museum of Art is to turn your back on it and look around the rest of the gallery it’s in.

Ekpuk’s work covers a thirty-by-eighteenfoot wall in one of NCMA’s new African art galleries, which have been expanded in the museum’s East Building to include works from across the continent spanning sixteen centuries. Opening to the public by the end of June, the galleries will almost double the number of African works on display, including never-before-seen textiles and works on paper in light-controlled areas.

El Anatsui’s “Lines that Link Humanity,” a quilt-like sculpture of aluminum and copper wire, hangs on a wall adjacent to Ekpuk’s work. Valises opposite the mural contain objects including a Yoruba divination board and ornately carved totems. Approaching this commission with no preconceived composition, Ekpuk sat in the space for a day considering the neighboring works before he pulled out his iPad to begin sketching.

“It’s more about the aura of the objects that were pulling me as I got closer to some of them,” Ekpuk says. “Some of them I’m familiar with. Some of them not so much. The power and aura of the objects themselves created an atmosphere where I felt a sense of divinity.”

Rendered in white chalk on a black wall, Ekpuk’s composition forms an abstracted figure wrapping long arms around the perimeter. Hundreds of signs and symbols are densely packed within the arms, which are themselves filled with little circles. The large figure has a placid, stylized face at the top, and its distended arms terminate in huge hands that gather the chaos of the symbols together.

The mural has a presence and an intri26 | 6.14.17 | INDYweek.com

Victor Ekpuk's new mural at NCMA was commissioned to augment the museum's expanded African art gallery. PHOTO BY BEN MCKEOWN cate density comparable to that of Anatsui’s sculpture. Ekpuk counts Anatsui as an elder, and they’ve shown together in a 1994 group exhibit in Lagos. Ekpuk was one of five upand-coming Nigerian artists paired with a trio of established African artists.

The Yoruba divination board, however, inspired the mural’s form. Ekpuk talks about how a diviner shakes objects in the tray-like board in order to answer questions or make predictions by interpreting their proximities.

Instead of objects, Ekpuk fills his mural with symbols that draw upon nsibidi, a Nigerian system of ideograms. But the symbols are so crowded and intertwined that any attempted reading will be foiled. It’s hard to focus on one sign to see what it might refer to or depict.

Instead, one’s vision darts around and takes in the overall density.

“I know it teases your brain to think that

you could read it,” Ekpuk laughs, “but it’s not writing that tells you A or B or C. I never try to analyze them or say that they are any one particular thing. I open it up so that people can just see what they see in it.” Echoing this semiotic openness, Ekpuk deflects talk of any overt political message in the work. But neither is it apolitical.

“I walked into the space and, initially, I thought, Let’s not just do another socialpolitical thing. At the same time, I’ve found that art is always politics. Sometimes I don’t think about politics, but once I start making art, this feeling starts coming out in the work.

After I made this, I thought, Oh, I’m actually responding to this siege that I feel right now in the political climate in America.’”

Ekpuk describes the composition as a divine embrace, but the arms could be read as a crowded space of containment, like a ref-

ugee camp or border wall. The empty zeros might exude the banal homogeneity of power.

Ekpuk won’t say it’s a wrong reading, just that he sees something different. He’s inclined to cede the artist’s intention by making a willfully undetermined work. He’s leaning toward leaving the mural untitled so that a visitor can react to what it is rather than what it means. [Editor’s note: Ekpuk ultimately decided to title the work “Divinity.”]

“It forces you to abandon what you know and have an opportunity to be aware of something else,” he says. “Not everything has to be explained. If you want to bring what you know, then you’re just going to hit the wall.

Perhaps it’s sort of a comfort work, rather than an angry work. It’s a reminder that, whether we believe in it or not, there is a divine source of our strength. It’s beyond us.” arts@indyweek.com

indystage

EVERSCAPE

HHH ½ Saturday, June 3 Sonorous Road Theatre, Raleigh www.sonorousroadtheatre.com

Music to Our Ears

A FEW TECH GLITCHES LINGERING ON OPENING NIGHT DIDN’T DIM SONOROUS ROAD’S BRIGHT PROSPECTS IN ITS NEW THEATER

BY BYRON WOODS

Sonorous Road's Michelle and Josh Wells in their new theater PHOTO BY BEN MCKOWEN You make a lot of discoveries the first month you’re in a new place: the sticky door you have to doublecheck, the key you have to jiggle to turn the deadbolt, and the faucet you have to set in a certain position so it doesn’t drip.

Michelle and Josh Wells, the directors of Sonorous Road Productions, were still making such discoveries up to and after the curtain time of the June 3 debut production in their theater and film studio’s beautiful new space on Hillsborough Street, Bare Theatre’s Everscape, Allan Maule’s 2016 online gaming drama.

After signing a lease on the Royal Bakery building in February, the Wells led a small army of designers, contractors, and volunteers on a dead run to overhaul the former Edible Art Bakery space in time for its opening.

The intimate, ninety-five-seat black box theater is noticeably wider than the former Oberlin Road site, which Sonorous Road left after N.C. State bought its building. Its new upholstered seats are a comfortable upgrade from the old plastic chairs. The spacious lobby, which the Wells want to make an “artists’ hangout,” is already an inviting place; its cozy nooks and crannies have couches and chairs, tables, bookshelves, and a bar that will soon sell coffee, snacks, and alcoholic beverages. An even cozier thirty-seat theater and a film studio stand beyond an art deco-influenced box office area.

Still, the company was putting the finishing touches on—and dealing with last-minute glitches from—various parts of its new room on Saturday night. Theatri-

cal drapes only partially blocked external light from the back of the room, and the performance’s start was delayed by ten minutes when technicians had to bring out a ladder to reset a frozen dimmer pack above the front row. As the audience chatted, the lighting design made latecomers take a fully illuminated walk of shame to their seats—a bug that Sonorous Road might consider making a feature.

We were much more troubled by the insistent lowfrequency thumping from a wedding d.j. at the banquet center next door, which intruded on the first half of the production. Sonorous Road spent thousands of dollars constructing soundproof walls to prevent such interference. But, at the end of the evening, a visibly relieved technician advised us that the d.j.’s signal had been picked up and transmitted through the theater’s own subwoofers rather than bleeding through the walls.

Unsurprisingly, the returning cast from last October’s production of Everscape seemed entirely at home in their roles as a group of millennials seeking escape from humdrum lives in the world of online games.

Maule’s meditations on the trials of early adulthood seemed pithier when the author spoke them himself, as the enigmatic coder, Foster. Sean Brosnahan had ripened in the role of the compassionate Devo. Chris Hinton sharpened the edges of the anarchic Gil. If all the shows to follow have this much integrity, the new Sonorous Road has a bright path ahead. bwoods@indyweek.com

STAG E B R I E FS FULL GALLOP | HHHH ½ Through June 24 Kennedy-McIlwee Studio Theatre, Raleigh As Lynda Clark stalked across the stage in a slinky black top and trousers made by director and costume designer John McIlwee, her stunning solo performance as controversial fashion editor Diana Vreeland seemed half concert, half acting master class. There was more than a note of Judy Garland’s brassy confidence in the animated musicality of Clark’s voice, especially in her delighted octave jumps when she greeted an old friend on the phone or praised one of her many passions.

Full Gallop, running in N.C. State's TheatreFEST 2017, is the right title for both this production and the vivid life of its subject. Vreeland imperiously holds court in her Park Avenue apartment in 1971 after a fourmonth European tour. (“The usual,” she tells a friend. “London, Milano, Madrid, Paris.”) But as “the Oscar Wilde of fashion” namedrops European designers and artists, details of a devastating career reversal unfold.

Vreeland embarked on that tour after Vogue, where she was editor-inchief in the tumultuous sixties, fired her, sending shockwaves through the fashion industry. Back in New York, her future is anything but clear.

Clark conveys the jackknife turns of a quicksilver mind with precision and panache. In one moment, her self-made tastemaker unshakably asserts, “Give ’em what they never knew they wanted!” In the next, when Vreeland’s trademark near-kabuki facial makeup slips, we glimpse a deeper vulnerability. Clark knows a one-person show is a conversation with the audience; she quizzes and confides in us as a lexicon of facial expressions immediately communicate exasperating news received remotely from a comically long-suffering French assistant (JoAnne Dickinson, in an offstage role). When an actor handles a character with this much style, her subject would have to approve. —Byron Woods AVENUE Q | HHH ½ Through June 25 Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh After a production in 2012, we wondered if Avenue Q, 2003’s Tony-winning Sesame Street knockoff, risked becoming a period piece. At the end of the first Obama administration, our culture seemed to have made so much progress on the issues facing the human and puppet cast of twentysomethings that the musical’s continuing relevance was open to debate.

But after the country’s recent lurch to the right, that optimistic assessment seems silly. The song “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” lands differently since we’ve learned that many people are still an awful lot more. Given recent attempts at rollbacks on marriage equality, Republican banker puppet Rod’s closeted position in “If You Were Gay” is a lot more understandable.

Director Jesse Gephart completes the argument for Avenue Q’s modern pertinence in a brisk, ruefully witty production. With imaginative set designers Duncan Jenner and Miyuki Su and puppet-maker Kevin Roberge, he literally opens up the titled avenue to give us glimpses of his characters’ apartments and private lives and adds entertaining new characters. In the show’s second week, individual performances remained a mixed bag.

Aaron Boles convinced as central character Princeton and Brett Williams telegraphed Kate Monster’s delight in “Mixtape.” We didn’t fully buy Bradley Waelbroeck’s Rod, and Brandi Parker didn’t sell what should have been a first-act rave-up. But the audience roared for Lydia D. Kinton’s torchsong showstopper, “Special.” Katherine Anderson’s band was surefooted and animator Kat Randle’s brief projected cartoons added fun to the mix.

Overall, current times make us wonder exactly how many cultural woes are truly, in the last song’s words, just “For Now.” —Byron Woods INDYweek.com | 6.14.17 | 27

indypage +screen

Dazed and Animazed

ANIMAZEMENT, RALEIGH’S JAPANESE POP-CULTURE CONVENTION, HAPPILY OVERWHELMS US WITH HOW MANY UNKNOWN WONDERS REMAIN IN THE WORLD

BY ZACK SMITH “I don’t know why I didn’t think that existed, but I didn’t think that existed,” I overheard someone say as I sat with a few friends at the Raleigh Convention Center, noshing on little snack cakes imported from Japan.

At Animazement, the anime convention held annually in Raleigh since the late nineties, this statement could apply to almost anything. At this year’s event on Memorial Day weekend, a Santa, a giant blueberry, and a Japanese death god all passed by me in one five-minute span.

No one was quite sure who the blueberry was supposed to be; the logical answer is Violet from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but it could be some Japanese cartoon we haven’t seen.

This uncertainty is actually kind of comforting. Every time I go to Animazement, the variety of fandom for Japanese cartoons and comics and the density of knowledge present overwhelm me. After two decades, the convention has attained a massive presence in downtown Raleigh.

Even those without a ticket to the often sold-out show still get to take in a visual feast of cosplayers, elaborately dressed up as their favorite characters (or dressed down—this year I witnessed a larger percentage of shirtless guys than ever before).

It’s good to have a smartphone handy; panels I attended with friends often threw out names and terms that are not for the uninitiated. When the crowd roared with laughter over a clip from a live-action Japanese show where the punch line was “Hideaki Anno,” it took me a moment to confirm that it referred to the creator of the series Neon Genesis Evangelion, the subject of the panel. Ah. It was still a good panel, though, partly because I got to see a copyright-violating animation the people who went on to form Evangelion’s production studio made for a convention they 28 | 6.14.17 | INDYweek.com

gle Anime Society, where expensive laserdiscs had to be ordered from Japan to watch new anime at N.C. State.

“These days, you can just watch anime on your phone!” they told the audience. “You don’t know how good you have it.”

They were only half-joking.

I remember getting my dad to take me to one of the old Triangle Anime Society screenings in the early nineties, when most Japanese comics collections cost about $20 apiece after shipping, directly from the publisher, and you Spotted at Animazement: really sweet mecha PHOTO BY ZACK SMITH were lucky if a VHS tape for the same price contained two episodes of a held in the eighties, in which a Playboy half-hour show. The screening turned out Bunny throws down on Darth Vader and to be Otaku no Video, an in-joke-filled parthe alien from Alien to the tune of the ody of anime obsessives. Everyone I talk to E.L.O.’s “Twilight.” agrees it was probably not the best starting At a panel about the history of Animazepoint, though I was later startled to find out ment on Saturday night, two of the people that it contained the aforementioned video responsible for establishing and building from the future Evangelion people, which I the convention addressed a crowd whose must have forgotten. numbers rivaled the line for the “Peep At any rate, it was perhaps better that I Show” a few doors over. (“I’m afraid we got Dad to take me to that screening than can only compete with pornography so another, recalled by the founders, which much,” they said.) They recalled the humapparently drew three hundred people to ble origins of Animazement as the Trian-

an N.C. State auditorium to watch a Street Fighter II anime in which the winsome fighter Chun-Li takes a shower.

“Why are we still here?” one of the founders asked. “I don’t know.”

I have an idea: it’s the sense of community. I saw more deep, warm hugs between Animazement attendees than at any other sci-fi or comic-book convention I’ve ever attended. When you talk about trying to get more into anime, people listen specifically to what you like and then come up with shows attuned to your tastes, as opposed to simply saying, “You gotta see the new Iron Man!” I walked away with not only a dozen solid recommendations, but also with tips on where to watch them, ranging from such services as Hulu and the animecentered Crunchyroll to those of the less, ahem, copyright-honoring variety.

As my friends and I supped on the Japanese snack cakes, my thoughts drifted back to past Animazement events, lonely nights of anime on VHS giving way to packed screenings of Akira and Miyazaki films at the Carolina Theatre, and friends, like the ones I’m with, gained through what once seemed like a strange niche obsession.

It might not be Proust’s madeleine, but as I bite into the snack cake, I know a history is contained therein: of the decades when Animazement grew from a few people packed into a room at State into thousands of costumed fans joyfully shouting their obsessions throughout the Raleigh Convention Center. A place where you can wonder if the giant blueberry suit you just saw is from Willy Wonka and then realize that it doesn’t matter. It’s just cool that someone made it.

The lyrics of the E.L.O. song from earlier echo in my head: “It’s either real or it’s a dream/ There’s nothing that is in between.”

But they haven’t been to Animazement. arts@indyweek.com

indyscreen

FARMER/VETERAN HHHH Streaming at www.pbs.org through June 30

SCR E E N B R I E FS PARIS CAN WAIT HHH Opening Friday, June 16

Alex Sutton in Farmer/Veteran

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE FILMMAKERS

War in Peacetime

FARMER/VETERAN SHOULD BE MANDATORY VIEWING FOR POLITICIANS AND OTHERS WHO USE AMERICAN SOLDIERS FOR POLITICAL FOOTBALL

BY DAVID KLEIN The issue of caring for war veterans is often used as a political football, but those who conduct these skirmishes may be blissfully distant from veterans themselves. Farmer/Veteran, the poignant documentary by local filmmakers Alix Blair, Jeremy Lange, and D.L. Anderson (disclosure: Lange and Anderson are former INDY staff photographers), should be mandatory viewing for politicians as well as anyone with an interest in the realities and aftermath of armed conflict.

Witnessing the struggles of the film’s subject, Alex Sutton, as he tries to readjust to life in rural North Carolina after three combat tours in Iraq brings home just how devastating the experience of war is and how it leaves no one unchanged. The film begins with Sutton and his fiancée, Jessica, on the farm where they are trying to start a new life. Her declaration that things are never what they seem sets the viewer up to reconsider what he or she believes about war and the people who fight it.

When we first see Sutton, a husky, genial man with big brown eyes, he’s caring for his farm animals with a gentle patience. As the film progresses, we learn how his war experience devastated his first marriage and left him with sometimes-debilitating PTSD: nightmares, paranoia, anxiety, delusions, and other symptoms that

he treats with an astounding collection of prescription medications. We see him discussing pain meds with another solider, and when he’s asked about their effects, he says he feels tranquilized a lot of the time. Throughout the film, Sutton is often wearing a sidearm, but toward the end, he makes an effort to minimize the presence of guns in his house because of his children.

Still, it’s clear that the transition from war to domestic life is one that Sutton may never fully complete. He may now be a farmer, but the veteran in him, and all it entails, is ever-present.

The years of personal commitment that the filmmakers invested in the project are apparent onscreen—and in the healthy collection of festival awards the film has already gathered. The long arc of time it captures follows Sutton through crucial events such as his marriage to Jessica and the birth of their two children.

And a final, unsettling sequence ends the film on an appropriate note of caution, one that tempers the upbeat tempo with a vital reality check and sends an unambiguous message: those who have experienced wartime trauma can never truly be said to have left the battlefield behind. dklein@indyweek.com

Very pretty and very slight, Paris Can Wait is the first narrative feature directed by Eleanor Coppola, the eighty-one-year-old photographer and documentary filmmaker who is married to Francis Ford Coppola. Diane Lane stars as Anne, the wife of a busy Hollywood filmmaker, and there’s a scent of autobiography throughout.

Frustrated with her inattentive husband, Anne agrees to travel through the south of France with Jacques (Arnaud Viard), a business associate and rakish Gallic gentleman intent on attaining the finer things in life: food, wine, roses, and expensive cigarettes. Paris chronicles a two-day trip with a procession of gorgeous images— landscapes and foodie portraits, mostly—wrapped around a lightweight narrative as Anne proceeds to get the remainder of her groove back. We've seen Lane in this mode before (Under the Tuscan Sun), and she’s as lovely and likeable as ever. En route to Paris, Anne comes to admire the spontaneous Frenchman and his unhurried approach to life. Will Anne and Jacques seal the deal?

Best known for her 1991 doc Hearts of Darkness, Coppola is an accomplished visual artist. Her carefully composed images are the best reason to tour Paris, an otherwise thin story of One Percenters in mild crisis. —Glenn McDonald THE BOOK OF HENRY HH ½ Opening Friday, June 16 The Book of Henry raises several questions. What’s the kid from Room doing these days? What does Colin Trevorrow do between Jurassic Park sequels? Is this sort of work why Bobby Moynihan left Saturday Night Live? Did Gregg Hurwitz really write this?!

Henry (Jaeden Lieberher) is a precocious eleven-year-old who spends his days pining for the girl next door, Christina (Maddie Ziegler); protecting his little brother, Peter (Room’s Jacob Tremblay), from bullies; and diversifying his family’s financial portfolio while his single mom, Susan (Naomi Watts), hangs with her boozy BFF (Sarah Silverman). Henry becomes convinced that Christina’s stepfather (Breaking Bad’s Dean Norris), the town’s police commissioner, is abusing her. He plays Encyclopedia Brown, scribbling his findings in a red leather journal. After he’s struck with terminal brain cancer, he bequeaths to Susan his notebook and cassettes, which contain his grim conclusion on how to save Christina.

This glorified TV thriller spends its latter half steeped in Henry’s clairvoyant recordings, all in the service of an ultimately useless solution. Instead of a binder full of convoluted musings, he should have just told his mom to train her camera phone on the neighbor’s upstairs window and press “send.” Instead, crime novelist Hurwitz passes the time with a diversionary subplot before a denouement revolving around a school talent show that could have occurred thirty minutes earlier. The Book of Henry is a blatant tearjerker. Like the Rube Goldberg machines Henry constructs, his death supposedly sets into motion a chain of events that ends with better lives for his loved ones. But the only thing it triggers that couldn’t have happened otherwise is Susan finding love with Henry’s neurosurgeon (Lee Pace). Talk about bedside manner. —Neil Morris

INDYweek.com | 6.14.17 | 29

6.14–6.21 STAGE

THURSDAY, JUNE 15

LOUIE ANDERSON

Over the past three decades, comedian Louie Anderson has enjoyed a long, steady career as a stand-up comic in addition to popping up in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Family Feud, and a smattering of one-off TV roles. More recently, though, Anderson has appeared alongside Zach Galifianakis in Baskets, a dark and borderline surreal FX comedy. Galifianakis plays a failed French-trained clown who’s trying to get back on his feet; Anderson plays his fussy mother. The two squabble and butt heads, but their codependent, dysfunctional relationship is often as tender as it is comical. Anderson won an Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series Emmy for the role last year. He probably won’t be in character in Raleigh, but perhaps he’ll have some intriguing insights on his gender-bending new gig.

—Allison Hussey FLETCHER OPERA THEATER, RALEIGH 8 p.m., $38, www.dukeenergycenterraleigh.com

ART

FRIDAY, JUNE 16

RON LIBERTI: BACK HOME

In Ron Liberti’s new exhibit of prints, paintings, and mixedmedia pieces at SPECTRE Arts, home is where the art is—or, more specifically, the homeshaped hole we all must figure out how to fill as the things that felt so permanent in our youth reveal themselves as irrecoverably transient. In the past three years, Liberti, known for charismatically fronting veteran Chapel Hill poppunk band Pipe as well as for his iconic poster art for nightclub concerts, reckoned with the passing of both his parents and the sale of his childhood home in Toms River, New Jersey.

The resultant body of work tries to close the gap between where home was and where it is in Liberti’s bold, striking style. The exhibit runs through the end of June, but with music by “Tears for Beers” by Ron Liberti PHOTO another inimitable local fixture, Billy Sugarfix, this opening reception is the time to see it. —Brian Howe SPECTRE ARTS, DURHAM 6–9 p.m., free, www.spectrearts.org

30 | 6.14.17 | INDYweek.com

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK

What Cheer? Brigade

MUSIC

PHOTO BY WES MCQUILLEN

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21

STAGE

FRIDAY, JUNE 16–FRIDAY, JUNE 23

MUSIC

THURSDAY, JUNE 15

WHAT CHEER? BRIGADE

THE STONEWATER RAPTURE

HOUSE AND LAND

THE PINHOOK, DURHAM 9 p.m., $10, www.thepinhook.com

IMURJ, RALEIGH Various times, $10–$15, www.aggregatetheatre.com

NIGHTLIGHT, CHAPEL HILL 9:30 p.m., $10, www.nightlightclub.com

Hailing from Providence, Rhode Island, the twenty-piece What Cheer? Brigade will not fit on The Pinhook’s stage. It’s for the best, though, as it means you’ll enjoy a full immersion in the band’s ebullient, massive sound. Trumpets and trombones wail and squeal while drums and tubas rumble and roar, forces made all the more powerful in the round. The group leans heavily on Balkan influences but laces them with a punk sensibility and a fearless DIY spirit, which all translates into magnificently boisterous live sets. “Iahabibi,” the first track from the band’s new album, You Can’t See Inside of Me, is a restless, rollicking number carried by wriggly calland-response horns. It doesn’t matter what might be ailing you—work stress, world stress, whatever—the What Cheer?

Brigade will gleefully blow it all away. With BARB. —Allison Hussey

When you’re the p.k. (preacher’s kid) at the most rock-ribbed fundamentalist Baptist church in Stonewater, Texas—hey, good luck working on them night moves. Whitney, eighteen years old, is just starting to break free from the religious repression of his conservative town. His longtime friend Carlyle is in the same boat; bewildered by her emerging sexuality and saddled by the demands of her mother’s even more imposing faith. Separate crises force these two into a deeper, more dangerous alliance as they try to find breathing space between force-fed religious dogma and a far more complicated world. Jaybird O’Berski directs Lexie Braverman and Matthew Hager in this inaugural production from Aggregate Theatre. —Byron Woods

For all the bad stuff that came out of 2016, it also delivered House and Land, a collaboration between Sally Anne Morgan, the Black Twig Pickers fiddler, and Sarah Louise, a preternaturally skilled fingerpicking guitarist. The duo stops in Chapel Hill to celebrate the release of its self-titled debut record, out this week on the heavy-hitting Thrill Jockey Records. It’s a splendid collection of tunes built on an old-time foundation that keeps one foot in the past and another in the present, deftly threading together haunting fundamentals with forward-looking experimentation. The duo proves that there’s fertile middle ground between two seemingly disparate eras. Kansas singer-songwriter Wallace Cochran opens and guest d.j.s will spin even more songs between sets. —Allison Hussey

WHAT ELSE SHOULD I DO?

AVENUE Q AT RALEIGH LITTLE THEATRE (P. 27), FROGGY FRESH AT MOTORCO (P. 33), FULL GALLOP AT N.C. STATE (P. 27), PORGY & BESS AT UMSTEAD PARK UCC (P. 39), THE REAL MAYBERRY AT SILVERSPOT (P. 40), THE REGRETTES AT LOCAL 506 (P. 35), RICHARD RUSSO AT THE REGULATOR (P. 40), SONGS: MOLINA AT MOTORCO (P. 20), TO CUT IS TO THINK AT THE SCRAP EXCHANGE (P. 37), ANDREW WEATHERS AND POLYORCHARD AT THE CARRACK (P. 24) INDYweek.com | 6.14.17 | 31

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6/15 ABBEY ROAD LIVE! PERFORMING SGT PEPPER LP WITH HORNS, STRINGS, AND SITAR! ($12/$15) 6/17 MISTERWIVES SOLD W/ THE GREETING COMMITTEE OUT 6/21 LIZZO W/ BROOKE CANDY ($18/$30) 6/22 CHON W/ TERA MELOS, COVET, LITTLE TYBEE ($17/$21) 6/23 IDLEWILD SOUTH AND FRIENDS : "A TRIBUTE TO GREGG ALLMAN" (BENEFITING THE ALLMAN BROTHERS MUSEUM-THE BIG HOUSE) ($7/$10) 6/29 WEEDEATER W/ BLACK WIZARD, SERIAL HAWK ($20/$23) 7/9 WASHED

OUT ($25) 7/14 KASEY CHAMBERS W/ GARRET CATO ($22/$25) 7/16 RAEKWON ($25) 7/19 JOHN MORELAND W/TRAVISLINVILLESEATEDSHOW($13/$15) 7/22 CROWN THE EMPIRE W/ I SEE STARS, PALAYE ROYALE, OUT CAME THE WOLVES ( $18/$20) 8/4 TOWN MOUNTAIN ($12/$15) 8/9 THE

MELVINS ($20/$22) ERICKSON ($25/$28) 9/14 SWERVEDRIVER ($20) 9/27 PSYCHEDELIC FURS W/

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9/30 TIMEFLIES: TOO MUCH TO DREAM TOUR ($25/$28) 10/2 RAC ($22/$25)

9/16 CRANK IT LOUD PRESENTS:

JASON RICHARDSON

ABBEY ROAD LIVE

9/17 CAAMP ( $10 / $12 ) 10/7 MAX FROST($12) ARTSCENTER (CARRBORO)

PERFORMING‘SGT PEPPER’LP WITH HORNS,STRINGS,AND SITAR!

6/14 STEVE GUNN AND LEE RANALDO W/ MEG BAIRD ($18/$20) CAROLINA THEATRE (DURHAM)

CAT'S CRADLE BACK ROOM

6/14 JOAN SHELLEY W/ JAKE XERXES FUSSELL ($13/$15) 6/15 MARSHALL CRENSHAW

Y LOS STRAITJACKETS

W/ DOUG EDMONDS (OF STARS EXPLODE) SOLO ($20) 6/17 BARNS COURTNEY W/ FOXTRAXX ($14/$16) 6/22 JOEY WATSON BENEFIT W/ BEAU BENNETT, SCRIBLIN’, BITTER RESOLVE, RUSCHA, SERVER, M IS WE.(FREE SHOW / DONATIONS REQUESTED) 6/24 NINETIES NIGHT W/ JOE HERO ($8/$10) 6/27 SPIRAL STAIRS (FROM PAVEMENT) W/ MAC MCCAUGHAN 6/29 JOHN PAUL WHITE W/ LERA LYNN ($25) 6/30 THE CHORUS PROJECT

SUMMER SHOWCASE 7/6 MATT PHILLIPS /

12/6 THE MOUNTAIN GOATS

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LIZZO 7/21 HARDWORKER ALBUM RELEASE SHOW W/ ANNE-CLAIRE, RUN COME SEE ($8/$10) 7/26 CYMBALS EAT GUITARS W/ ACTIVE BIRD COMMUNITY 7/30 ROZWELL KID W/ VUNDABAR, GREAT GRANDPA 8/4 RASPUTINA W/ELIZA RICKMAN ($18/$20) 8/8 LAETITIA SADIER SOURCE ENSEMBLE 8/9 SLAUGHTER BEACH, DOG W/ SHANNEN MOSER ($10/$12)

8/11 THE SECOND AFTER CD RELEASE PARTY 8/18 BRICK + MORTAR ($10/$12)

YOUNG MISTER

8/19 THE ROOSEVELTS

7/7: SHWIFTY CAT KUNG-FU

8/25 ALL GET OUT ($10/$12) 8/28 SHABAZZ PALACES W/ PORTER RAY ($17/$19)

W/ CHRIS FRISINA

FUNK OF JULY FIRE AND DANCE PARTY ($7/$10)

7/8 SWEAR AND SHAKE ($10/$12)

11/7THE STRUMBELLAS($22/$25)

7/13 RAVENEYE

MOTEL ($22/$25)

W/THE REIGN OF KINDO, STOLAS ($13/$15)

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10/7 LANY THE LANY TOUR PART 2 ($20 ADV/ $23 DAY OF SHOW) 11/11 SAINT

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7/14 JENNIFER KNAPP ($15/$18)

9/10 TANK THE BANGS W/ SWEET CRUDE 9/13 FRANKIE ROSE W/ SPLASHH ( $10 / $12 )

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7/16 HISS GOLDEN

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6/18 JASON ISBELL & THE 400 LD UNIT W/ AMANDA SHIRES SO OUT 6/24 SHERYL CROW LD W/ AARON LEE TASJAN SO OUT 7/22 MANDOLIN ORANGE W/ JOE PUG 7/31 BELLE AND SEBASTIAN AND ANDREW BIRD 8/1 AMERICAN ACOUSTIC TOUR W/ PUNCH BROTHERS AND

I’M WITH HER

8/12 SUPERCHUNK W/ WAXAHATCHEE, EX HEX 8/19 TIFT MERRITT AND FRIENDS W/ MC TAYLOR OF HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER, ERIC SLICK OF DR. DOG, ALEXANDRA SAUSER MONNING, AND THE SUITCASE JUNKET SHAKORI HILLS COMM. CTR. 6/22

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music

6.14 – 6.21

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR

WWW.INDYWEEK.COM

CONTRIBUTORS: Jim Allen (JA), Elizabeth Bracy (EB), Timothy Bracy (TB), Grant Britt (GB), Zoe Camp (ZC), Spencer Griffith (SG), Kat Harding (KH), Allison Hussey (AH), Charles Morse (CM), Dan Ruccia (DR), David Ford Smith (DS), Patrick Wall (PW)

WED, JUN 14 THE ARTSCENTER: Steve Gunn, Lee Ranaldo, Meg Baird; 8 p.m., $18– $20. • CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): Joan Shelley, Jake Xerxes Fussell; 8 p.m., $13–$15. • THE CAVE: Dan Montgomery, Peter Holsapple; 9 p.m., $5. • DUKE GARDENS: Music in the Gardens: Robert Finley; 7 p.m., $5–$10, 12 and under free. • HUMBLE PIE: Sidecar Social Club; 8:30 p.m., free. • IRREGARDLESS: The Piedmont Pea Pickers; 6:30 p.m.

• LOCAL 506: Melissa Swingle Duo, Johnny Dowd, Ben De La Cour; 8:30 p.m., $8–$10. • MOTORCO: Jarabe de Palo; 8 p.m., $30–$40.

• NEPTUNES PARLOUR: Davidians, Mind Dweller, ZZ Corpse; 10 p.m., $5. • THE PINHOOK: Great Good Fine OK; 9 p.m., $12–$14.

• POUR HOUSE: Sun-Dried Vibes; 9 p.m., $7–$10. • RED HAT AMPHITHEATER: Dirty Heads, Soja; 6 p.m. • RUBY DELUXE: Riot Rock: All Riot Grrl Era Music with DJ DNLTMS; 10 p.m. • WAVERLY PLACE: Wind Down Wednesday Concerts; 6-9 p.m., free.

THU, JUN 15 Aaron Burdett GENUINE Hailing from the tiny COUNTRY town of Saluda, North Carolina, Aaron Burdett is the kind of small town singersongwriter that today’s country stars pretend to be, his heartfelt vocals and homespun lyricism expected of the mountain hamlet’s hometown hero. Dwight Hawkins and the Piedmont Highballers headline with pre-war string band music, fiddle tunes, and mandolin rags. —SG [DEEP SOUTH, $5/8:30 P.M.]

Marshall Crenshaw y Los Straitjackets STILL GOT It’s been thirty-five HITS years since Marshall Crenshaw’s jangly, peppy “Someday, Someway” made a splash on the Top 40 chart, but the Michigan-born singer-songwriter has maintained a steady

musical output over the years. The luchador-masked Los Straitjackets, meanwhile, are on the road touting their new What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Los Straitjackets, an all-instrumental collection of Nick Lowe covers. If you really love Yep Roc Records, here’s your chance to let it all hang out. —AH [CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM, $20/8 P.M.]

Les Dudek SIDE STAR Jamming with Dickie Betts got Les Dudek his first pro gig playing half the lead on “Ramblin’ Man.” He was set to tour with Bobby Womack when his manager told him Boz Scaggs needed a guitar player.

Tourmate Steve Miller liked Dudek’s playing so much he used Dudek for four albums. He turned down gigs with Bob Dylan and Chicago, but said yes to Cher and Stevie Nicks. In Durham, though, he’ll be front and center. —GB [BLUE NOTE GRILL, $15–$20/8 P.M.]

Flynt Flossy and Turquoise Jeep STILL Remember Tay SMANGIN Zonday’s sold out worldwide tour for his 2007 YouTube megahit “Chocolate Rain?” What about YN Richkids’ fruitful career after “Hot Cheetos and Takis”? You don’t, because like many early YouTube viral stars, both acts struggled to generate viable careers out of upvotes.

There are exceptions though. Flynt Flossy’s long-running Turquoise Jeep collective has evolved into a consistent, modestly successful touring operation, long past their brief 2010s YouTube moment. If your eardrums haven’t been blessed with “Lemme Smang It” recently, the nostalgia might be worth the ticket price alone. With Juan Huevos. —DS [KINGS, $13–$15/9:30 P.M.]

Lady Antebellum MEGA Questions about the TRIO continuation of Lady Antebellum aren’t unwarranted: two-thirds of the trio, Hillary Scott and Charles Kelly, each issued solo albums last year, and the band’s last two records haven’t sold quite as well. But with the arrival of the new album, Heart Break, and its hit single “You Look Good,” country’s answer to Fleetwood Mac is alive and well. Kelsea Ballerini and Brett Young open. —JA [COASTAL CREDIT UNION MUSIC PAVILION AT WALNUT CREEK, $30–$159/7:30 P.M.]

The Quebe Sisters SWINGIN’ They bill themselves FIDDLES as sounding like the 1940s crooners The Andrews Sisters, but in person, The Quebe Sisters’ sound is more high and lonesome. The trio of sisters were all individual Texas fiddle champs when Ricky Skaggs suggested they try singing, too. Influenced by artists as diverse as Merle Haggard, Ella Fitzgerald, and the Mills Brothers, the Quebes’ goal is to emulate the idols of earlier generations while adding their own innovative flourishes. With Dissimilar South. —GB [MOTORCO, $17–$20/8 P.M.] ALSO ON THURSDAY 2ND WIND: 2 fer; 7:30-9 p.m. • 4020 LOUNGE: African Rhythms; 10 p.m., $5. • AMERICAN TOBACCO AMPHITHEATER: Jim Lauderdale, Fireside Collective; 6-9 p.m. • ARCANA: Mamis and Papis; 7-10 p.m., free. • CAT’S CRADLE: Abbey Road Live! presents: Sgt. Pepper 50th Anniversary; 8:30 p.m., $12–$15. • IRREGARDLESS: Anna Rose Beck; 6-9 p.m. • LINCOLN THEATRE: Summer Splash with Special Guests; 8 p.m., $12. • LOCAL 506: Strawberry Girls, Comrades, Belle Noir; 7:30 p.m., $10–$12. • NIGHTLIGHT: House & Land, Wallace Cochran, DJs; 9:30 p.m., $10. See page 30. • POUR HOUSE: Local Band Local Beer: Young Cardinals, Thick Modine, Barren Graves; 8 p.m. • RUBY DELUXE: Coping Skills, Blois and Fruit Snack; 9:30 p.m. • SLIM’S: Lara Americo, Spookstina; 9 p.m., $5.

FRIDAY, JUNE 16

FROGGY FRESH Even if you don’t recognize the names Tyler Cassidy or Froggy Fresh, it’s likely you’re still familiar with his work: Initially known as Krispy Kreme before he received threats of legal action from everyone else’s favorite hot doughnut purveyor, the rapper quickly went viral five years ago with his first YouTube upload, a music video for his rap song “The Baddest.” Netting more than eleven million views in a matter of months and eventually leading to an appearance on Tosh.0, the mockingly braggadocious debut showed an inexplicably (and literally) snot-nosed lyricist boasting that he’s “made out with every girl in the world” and “beat up every single person in jail” while brandishing firearms with his bespectacled buddy Money Maker Mike in what looked to be his parents’ basement.

Questions about his legitimacy followed as Froggy Fresh continued to churn out videos for simple, silly songs like “Christmas”—in which he rattles off a wish list of John Cena memorabilia, a box of brownie mix, and another copy of Illmatic—and “Dunked On,” which recounted a basketball court showdown with his perpetual enemy James. The fulllength collection Money Maker (Reloaded) proves the songs are often legitimately catchy even when lacking their goofy visual accompaniment.

Over the last couple years, Froggy Fresh’s upload rate slowed, his singles getting marginally more serious as his videos grew in length—while still low-budget and quirky, his approach was closer to cinematic storytelling. Take the six-minute prologue to “Fun Trip,” where Froggy sets the stage for the saga of Mike getting addicted Fun Dip, dealt (of course) by the evil James. Like the rest of his catalog, it takes a certain sense of humor to not dismiss the track offhand before getting to the worthy hook.

In February, Cassidy resurfaced after nearly a year of silence with a lengthy video that pulled back the curtain on Froggy Fresh, explaining that he developed the persona after struggling to establish himself as serious rapper. But he’s since grown tired of the act, and many of the guest stars from his videos have also grown up and moved on. With plans to pursue a career as a comedic actor, Cassidy decided to book a month-long live tour to let fans bid farewell to the Froggy Fresh character, at least until their next click.

Assisting the bill in fully tapping the Internet geek market, Wilmington’s D&D Sluggers open with danceable indie pop ditties that mesh chiptune production with impassioned vocals. —Spencer Griffith MOTORCO, DURHAM 9 p.m., $15–$18, www.motorcomusic.com INDYweek.com | 6.14.17 | 33

FRI, JUN 16

night, the band returns to the room where much of its journey began.

—AH [THE PINHOOK, $20/9 P.M.]

919Werkz

Scotty’s Half Century Harsh Noise Bash

BREAK Break dancing seems DANCE like a lost and forgotten art at times, but the Raleigh Rockers crew keeps this pillar of hip-hop culture alive and well in the Triangle. Its 919Werkz throwdown at Kings brings together DJ Paypal, Orange Julius, DJ Hank, and Chocolate Rice together to provide jams for a dance party and open dance battle with cash prizes and merch from Runaway. —CM [KINGS, $10–$12/10 P.M.]

NOISE Scotty Irving is such a CHURCH rare treasure in eastern North Carolina. For several decades, he’s channeled love, hate, fear and joy through Clang Quartet, his bizarre, visceral, endlessly compelling Christian noise project. His sets are a bit difficult to describe. There are abstract hypercolor masks, broken cymbals, and a giant electronic guitar string cross. It’s better just to see it live. Housefire, Secret Boyfriend, Sam Lohman/Jon Simler, Lily & Horn Horse, Spookstina, and Cornelius F Von Strafin III are along for the party, celebrating a true iconoclast. —DS [NIGHTLIGHT, $7/9:30 P.M.]

Hiss Golden Messenger MESSIN’ The past few years AROUND have found Durham’s Hiss Golden Messenger on a significant rise: it’s moved up from spottily attended club gigs to packing out Cat’s Cradle last fall.

The folk-rock ensemble has grown in magnitude, too, expanding from intimate solo gigs by M.C. Taylor to a lively band that includes Phil Cook and Ryan Gustafson. Friday

Turnpike Troubadours TURNED Somehow, when CORNER nobody was looking, this raw, rootsy alt-country outfit’s

WE 6/14

STEVE GUNN AND LEE RANALDO

SA 6/17 SA 6/17

NO SHAME THEATRE - CARRBORO

SA 6/24

last couple of albums snuck into the upper rungs of the mainstream country charts. Don’t try to figure out why, just be glad their success continues to give frontman Evan Felker’s poetic lyrics and lonesome pipes a place in this world.

Frenchie’s Blues Destroyers open.

—JA [LINCOLN THEATRE, $22.50/8:30 P.M.] ALSO ON FRIDAY ARCANA: The Floor; 9 p.m., $5.

Vespertine; 10 p.m., $5. • BEYÙ CAFFÈ: Banda Magda; 7 & 9 p.m., $16.50. • BLUE NOTE GRILL: Jimmy Weaver Trio; 9 p.m., free. Duke Street Dogs; 6-8 p.m., free. • BYNUM FRONT PORCH: Holland Bros.; 7 p.m., $10. • THE CAVE: Natural Causes, Golden Pelicans, The Reys, Egon; 9 p.m., $8. • DEEP SOUTH: Superlove Highway, Jared Place Band, Autumn to May; 9 p.m., $7. • LOCAL 506: JULIA., Kill the Clock, Lyra; 8 p.m., $8–$10. • THE MAYWOOD: Station, Last Call Messiahs, Axis Five; 9 p.m., $10. • MOTORCO: Froggy Fresh, D&D Sluggers; 9 p.m., $15–$50. See box, page 33. • NASH STREET TAVERN: Andy Coats and the Bank Walkers; 8-11 p.m. • POUR HOUSE: Big Mean Sound Machine; 9 p.m., $10–$12. • THE RITZ: Biz Markie: 80s vs. 90s; 8 p.m.

• RUBY DELUXE: DJ DNLTMS; 10 p.m. • SCHOOLKIDS RECORDS (RALEIGH): Shurwood; 7 p.m. • SHARP NINE GALLERY: Ringel Jazz Collective; 8 p.m., $10–$15. • SLIM’S: Gabriel David, Paper Dolls, Americanize; 9 p.m., $5. • SPECTRE ARTS: Billy Sugarfix and the Early Girls; 6 p.m.

SAT, JUN 17 Fuck Up the Void: House and Techno Party

MisterWives DANCEY With its second INDIE record, Connect the Dots, MisterWives showcases another set of upbeat, pop dance tracks. Folky synths and Mandy Lee’s slightly gritty voice will get you moving, so while the world burns around us, at least we can go get sweaty with some strangers. The Greeting Committee opens. —KH [CAT’S CRADLE, $20–$23/8 P.M.]

No Labels Fit

BEEP In the introduction to BOOP Simon Reynolds’ dance music chronicle Generation Ecstacy, the author mentions that one reason he became fascinated with dance music is that he found it “endlessly thought provoking,” and that the minimal, repetitive nature propelled him “outside of time and history.” This release party for DJ One Duran’s C90 mixtape is gunning for similar bliss.

The night features an assortment of electronic talent including Jack Ward, Magical Body, and the live acid techno duo J.Rez. —DS [NIGHTLIGHT, $10/7 P.M.]

YES THEY Despite its name, this DO Wilmington band are very easy to peg; No Labels Fit specializes in skate-friendly hardcore in the vein of New York bands like Terror and Madball, served up with a shot of Southern garage rock adrenaline. After a long period of inactivity, the quartet bounced back last year with “Incomparison,” an infectious barnstormer that’s sure to stir up the pit. Its Raleigh show is as much a re-awakening as a homecoming.

American Dischord, Sibannac, and Few Good Things open. —ZC [THE MAYWOOD, $8/8:30 P.M.]

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The Shakedown Performs Prince PURPLE For the last couple REIGN years, The Shakedown has taken breaks from its private typical party gigs for one-night-only performances in a tribute series that’s included Sam Cooke, Frank Sinatra, and Van Morrison. Tonight, the massive, horn-studded Raleigh ensemble plays two sets of The Purple One’s best. N’Kogniito opens with jazzy, pop-inflected neo-soul originals.

—SG [POUR HOUSE, $17–$20/9 P.M.]

Sidewalk Chalk HIT THE Jazz-infused rap and STREETS soul music performed by live instrumentalists is having its own moment with hip-hop, and Sidewalk Chalk fits that aesthetic perfectly. The Art of Cool Project brings the sevenpiece band to town on the heels of its fourth studio album, An Orchid Is Born, produced by super-producer and Snarky Puppy drummer Robert “Sput” Searight. Zoocrü opens. —CM [THE PINHOOK, $10–$12/7 P.M.]

Third Eye Blind SEMI As purveyors of CHARM some of the nineties’ more memorable, mopey hits, Los Angeles’s Third Eye Blind were amongst the most commercially successful bands to follow from the gloomy wake of grunge. Love them or hate them, Stephan Jenkins and company managed an unorthodox success. Tracks like “Semi-Charmed Life” and “Jumper” are aggravatingly catchy, even chirpy odes to self-abuse and misery whose unceasing domination of mainstream radio seems weirdly subversive in retrospect. Silversun Pickups and Ocean Park Standoff open. —EB [RED HAT AMPHITHEATER, $27–$198/7 P.M.] ALSO ON SATURDAY

PHOTO BY JEN ROSENSTEIN

SUNDAY, JUNE 18

THE REGRETTES The first facts you are likely to hear about the ascendant Los Angeles-based garage punks The Regrettes is that they are remarkably good and barely of age.

Most of the members are narrowly past high school, and captivating frontwoman and principal songwriter Lydia Night is but sixteen. This development is extraordinary but not without precedent: Buddy Holly, Alex Chilton, and Tommy Stinson all achieved iconic status before the age of twenty, and rock music history is littered with the too-much-too-soon causalities of an industry that eats its young.

The latter fate seems unlikely to befall a band this gifted and self-aware, but renown may well prove to be in the cards.

Armed with a bounty of melodic gifts and a precociously articulate feminist sensibility, the four-piece band delivers charged anthems that alternately lampoon and co-opt commercial culture’s deeply exploitative impulses and unstable relationship to personal vanity. Tracks like the no-bullshit “A Living Human Girl” and the lusty “Hey Now” signal Night’s emergence as a burgeoning songwriter of considerable dimension. Like Chrissie Hynde, Night seems disinterested in being typecast as a vixen but unwilling to cede her agency or sublimate her desires.

The Regrettes set their forward-looking politics against a decidedly throwback musical aesthetic, one that references

seventies pub rock, sixties garage, and fifties doo-wop with devotion and irreverence. The band’s deep fascination with mid-century sonics and trash culture contributes to its offbeat charm. In last year’s video for “Hey Now,” the Regrettes brutally parody the chauvinistic teenthemed bandstand shows of yore, though it seems entirely plausible that the band would fit in just fine in that setting. In lesser hands, the retro vibe could rapidly devolve into kitsch, but the Regrettes have proven adept at integrating both seminal and silly Kennedy-era touchstones into a fresh and vibrant aesthetic.

With a recent record deal with Warner Brothers, the Regrettes stand on the brink of legitimate stardom. The attendant rewards and pressures would be a lot to handle for even the most seasoned of music veterans, so it’s fair to wonder how this young band will cope. For Night, who has continuously emphasized a commitment to authenticity and an unwillingness to be packaged and disposable fodder, the pitfalls seem particularly precarious. But so far, The Regrettes seem to be far better equipped than most to understand the inherent contradictions of their position. Fingers crossed, greatness awaits.

—Elizabeth Bracy LOCAL 506, CHAPEL HILL 7:30 p.m., $10, www.local506.com

BEYÙ CAFFÈ: Donovan Cheatham; 7 & 9 p.m., $12. • BLUE NOTE GRILL: Bill Toms & Hard Rain; 8 p.m., $8. • CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): Barns Courtney, Foxtrax; 8 p.m., $14–$16. • THE CAVE: Stray Owls, Cameron Stenger, Majestic Vistas; 9 p.m., $5. • DEEP SOUTH: Down

By Five; 10:30 p.m., free. • GROWLER GRLZ: Martin Eagle, Ben Palmer; 7 p.m. • IRREGARDLESS: Michael Jones Duo; 6-9 p.m. Zen Poets; 9 p.m. • KOKA BOOTH AMPHITHEATRE: An Evening in France; 7:30 p.m., $30–$33. • LINCOLN THEATRE: Barcode Silent Party 2.0 / Coast to Coast; 10 p.m., $14.50–$25. • LOCAL 506: Hudson Falcons, The Beatdowns, Poison Anthem; 9 p.m., $8. • THE RITZ: On the Border: Eagles Tribute; 8 p.m. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ Play Play; 10 p.m. • SCHOOLKIDS RECORDS (RALEIGH): Roar the Engines, Poinsettia; 7 p.m. • SLIM’S: Nevernauts, Snake and the Plisskens, Sissypants; 9 p.m., $5. • THE STATION: CMP Student Band Album Release Show; 6:30 p.m., $10.

Dance Hits with Luxe Posh; 10 p.m. Jazz Saturdays; 2 p.m., free. • THE SHED JAZZ CLUB: Bstfrnd with miniluv, Sarah, The Illstrumentalist, Mr Lonewolf; 9 p.m.-midnite, $5.

SUN, JUN 18 Coastal Collective COASTAL A conglomeration of CRAFT gifted Wilmington based performers, Coastal Collective plays jazz infused hip-hop, and the band’s fluid virtuosity, devil-may-care energy and penchant for sober societal inventories place them in the tradition of legends like the Roots and A Tribe Called Quest. Each

member of the unit carries their weight, but the elaborate, soulful interplay between saxophonists Sean Meade and Tristan Burns is the band’s most potent weapon, elevating the Coastal Collective to near-transcendence at points.

Super Yamba Band opens, plus a Charley Pride tribute set from Durham’s Durty Dub open. —TB [THE PINHOOK, $5–$7/8 P.M.]

Deftones SO SO Saying that Deftones DEF were the most critically revered of the late-nineties nü-metal groups is kinda like saying the small hamburger is the healthiest burger at Hardee’s—it’s true, sure, but it ain’t exactly clearing a high bar. Still, the California quintet critically separated itself from the pack by underpinning delicate, arching melodies to aggro metal. Last year’s Gore proves that, nearly three decades after their inception, Deftones haven’t lost their creative spark. Rise Against opens. —PW [RED HAT AMPHITHEATER, $38–$48/6 P.M.]

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit WOKE It’s a safe bet that COUNTRY when Jason Isbell makes his sold-out stop at the N.C. Museum of Art on Sunday, he’ll be in a celebratory mood. Friday marks the release of The Nashville Sound, another breathtaking effort from the former Drive-By Trucker.

Isbell’s songwriting has long been pointed and poignant, but onThe Nashville Sound, he explores ideas of empathy and identity as they apply to being a white Southern man. “Cumberland Gap” is a dark, fast-paced number about trying to escape the plights that many rural Southerners face—”Maybe the Cumberland Gap just swallowed you whole,” he belts in the chorus—while “White Man’s World” directly reckons with white privilege. Where many of his country-inclined peers go for obtuse metaphors or outright silence on social issues, Isbell instead offers a necessary and refreshing directness. Amanda Shires opens. —AH [N.C. MUSEUM OF ART, $40–$55/8 P.M.] ALSO ON SUNDAY APEX NATURE PARK: The Music of Drum Corps; 7 p.m., free. • ARCANA: Kenneth David Stewart; 7-9 p.m., free. • BLUE NOTE GRILL: James, Pace & Preslar; 5 p.m., free. •

THE CAVE: OK Computer Tribute; 9 p.m. • DEEP SOUTH: Down By Five; 10:30 p.m., free. • IRREGARDLESS: Great Father Whale; 6-9 p.m. • LOCAL 506: The Regrettes, Stef Chura; 7:30 p.m., $10. See box, this page. • POUR HOUSE: A Benefit for Jon McClain; 4 p.m., $10 donation. • RUBY DELUXE: Natural Velvet, Konvoi, Jenny Besetzt; 9:30 p.m. DJ Stone Zone; 11 p.m. • THE STATION: Mini Instro Summit: Blair Pongracic Band, Phatlynx, El Mirage; 8 p.m., $8.

MON, JUN 19 B Boys PSYCHO Not to be confused KILLERS with the Danish pop trio, Brooklyn trio B Boys describe themselves as “three psychos that came to be through fate by way of necessity.” Self-stated madness aside, the group’s music is far from a portrait of insanity—after all, they’re signed to Captured Tracks, the New York label slacker icon Mac Demarco calls home. Instead, B Boys go off a trippy post-punk playbook, interpreting the frenetic jams of Wire and Talking Heads as a lush, danceable paradise. —ZC [THE PINHOOK, $10/9 P.M.]

Give REVOWashington, D.C.’s LUTION famous Revolution Summer of 1985—a reaction to how hyperviolent the district’s punk scene had become—birthed a more personal and introspective interpretation of punk. Give, a classicist D.C. post-hardcore band, would have fit right in with the Embraces and Rites of Springs during Revolution Summer, its snaking melodies and explosive rhythms built using the Dischord blueprint and augmented with a touch of Fucked Up’s forwardthinking hardcore. Protester, Breach, PYS, Substance, and Search for Purpose open up this stacked bill. —PW [NIGHTLIGHT, $8/8 P.M.]

Mutoid Man SUPER Mutoid Man is a SLUDGE New York-based supergroup featuring members of Cave In, Converge, and All Pigs Must Die, three of the most fearsome bands in hardcore.

Despite its members’ abrasive résumés, the project resembles an exercise in sludgy bliss, all sticky tremolos and muffled blast-beats.

The band’s new album, War Moans, weaponizes the muck as a INDYweek.com | 6.14.17 | 35

WE 6/14 TH 6/15

FR 6/16 SA 6/17 SU 6/18 TU 6/20

BLUE WED: THE HERDED CATS LES DUDEK DUKE STREET DOGS JIMMY WEAVER TRIO BILL TOMS & HARD RAIN JAMES PACE & PRESLAR TUESDAY BLUES JAM

political panorama—not just the swamps of Washington, but humanity writ large. Helms Alee and Lazerwulf open. —ZC [KINGS, $15/8:30 P.M.]

8PM 7:30PM $20 SEATED/ $15 STANDING 6-8PM

ALSO ON MONDAY EMPRESS ROOM: Gary Brunotte plays and sings from The Great American Songbook; 8-10 p.m. • PITTSBORO ROADHOUSE: Big Band Night with the Triangle Jazz Orchestra; 7 p.m., $10. • POUR HOUSE: Marc Scibilia, Devon Gilfillian; 7 p.m. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ Lord Redbyrd; 10 p.m. • THE SHED JAZZ CLUB: Sessions at the Shed with Ernest Turner; 8 p.m., $5.

9PM 8PM $8 5-7PM 7:30PM

NO COVER UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED LIVE MUSIC • OPEN TUESDAY—SUNDAY THEBLUENOTEGRILL.COM 709 WASHINGTON STREET • DURHAM

TUE, JUN 20 Chris Childs Trio

YOUR WEEK. EVERY WEDNESDAY. FOOD • NEWS • ARTS • MUSIC

GAUZY This show is built LINES around Childs’ new piece “If I Were a Little Boy, I’d Be a Girl” for piano, English horn, and cello. The ensemble is unusual, with the pinched pungency of the English horn competing with the warm resonance of the cello.

Childs endeavors to explore how those instruments interact lyrically, though the results often sound like misremembered Debussy or Ravel over a bed of gossamer minimalist piano. With Bloodworth.—DR [THE SHED, $5/6 P.M.]

The Controller ACID The Controller COLLAB describes itself online as “dirge-psych.” That might not sound appealing at first glance to non-heads, but the pot gets sweeter when you learn that the band is a collaboration between members of Acid Chaperone and No Eyes. Locals Acid Reign and Bloomington’s Thee Open Sex fill out the night.

—DS [NEPTUNES PARLOUR, $5/10 P.M.]

Darwin Deez

INDYWEEK.COM 36 | 6.14.17 | INDYweek.com

A BIT TOO A gifted melodicist MUCH who fancies himself droll, Brooklyn singer-songwriter Darwin Deez delivers his amiably glib slice-of-hipster-life narratives in an energetic near-falsetto, assuming an ironic posture that makes it difficult at times to understand how seriously anyone is supposed to take his tales of bad breakups and unrequited love.

Regardless, his tunes are uniformly bright, flashy and sufficiently

unrelenting in their hook-driven eagerness to please, to override his too-clever-by-half tendencies.

Just Jess opens. —TB [THE PINHOOK, $13–$15/9 P.M.]

Shatterproof VIOLIN This Fort Collins, ROCK Colorado five-piece tempers its tendency towards formulaic hard rock and emo with oddball, violin-driven digressions into art rock and riff-heavy jams, suggesting the prog-band lying just beneath the surface of its angsty exterior. The sooner Shatterproof more fully engages that side of its muse, the better.

Never Let This Go and Magnolia open, plus The Ivory. —TB [NEPTUNES PARLOUR, $8/8 P.M.]

Jon Stickley Trio SHAPE The forward-thinking SHIFTERS concoctions of the Asheville adventurers in the Jon Stickley Trio explore the intersections between bluegrass, jazz, and influences as far flung as punk, hip-hop, and classical—their collective skill somehow making unlikely combinations of seemingly disjointed genres seamless. Both playful and virtuosic, the eclectic trio underlays nimble flatpicking and fiery fiddling with versatile percussion. As Beauty World, Leah Gibson and Duncan Webster bring their knack for engaging melodies to charming, textured orchestral pop gems. —SG [MOTORCO, $10–$12/8 P.M.]

plenty impressive early in his career when he was an alt-country smart aleck, but as he’s gotten more “serious” over the years, he’s gained an even greater gravitas.

—JA [DUKE GARDENS, $5–$10/7 P.M.]

Lizzo MPLS The truly singular MIGHT Minneapolis based hip-hop and R&B artist Lizzo has built a robust and richly deserved following on the strength of her vocal talent, commanding delivery, and a series of highly ingratiating tracks like the universally relatable “Phone” (“Where the hell is my phone?”), the gospel tinged relationship handbook “Good as Hell” and the joyfully affirming “Let ‘Em Say,” a sonic callback to the classic nineties Twin City sound of producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Brooke Candy opens. —EB [CAT’S CRADLE, $18–$20/8 P.M.]

Dave Mason CLASSIC As a member of ROCK VET Traffic in the sixties and a solo success in the seventies, the man who wrote “Feelin’ Alright” (among other distinctions) has earned an undeniable place in rock ‘n’ roll history. But Mason’s story isn’t only in the past tense; he’s never stopped bringing his soulful vocals and lacerating guitar licks to the people. —JA [CAROLINA THEATRE, $32–$50/8 P.M.]

ALSO ON TUESDAY

ALSO ON WEDNESDAY

ARCANA: Schwartzelder; 8 p.m., free.

• THE CARRACK: Polyorchard with Andrew Weathers; 8 p.m. See page 24.

• IRREGARDLESS: Brien Barbour; 6:30-9:30 p.m. • LOCAL 506: Free Throw, Homesafe, Heart Attack Man; 7 p.m., $12–$14. • POUR HOUSE: Los Colognes, Roadkill Ghost Choir, Kris Lager Band; 9 p.m., $10–$12. • RUBY DELUXE: Experimental Tuesday: Birth Names; 11 p.m. • SLIM’S: Hollow Leg, Squall, Sludgemuffin; 9 p.m., $5.

ARCANA: Midsummer’s Night Music Solstice Event; 8 p.m., free. • BLUE NOTE GRILL: The Herded Cats; 8 p.m. • THE CAVE: The By Gods, Sad Baxter, Milk and Honey; 9 p.m., $5. • HUMBLE PIE: Peter Lamb & the Wolves; 8:30 p.m. • IRREGARDLESS: Mebanesville; 6:30-9:30 p.m. • LOCAL 506: Bella’s Bartok; 9 p.m., $7. • MOTORCO: Songs: Molina — A Memorial Electric Co.; 8 p.m., $12–$15. See page 20. • NEPTUNES PARLOUR: Valley Maker, Those Lavender Whales, SE Ward; 10 p.m., $8. • THE PINHOOK: What Cheer? Brigade, Barb; 9 p.m., $10. See page 30. • POUR HOUSE: Cory Henry and the Funk Apostles; 9 p.m., $20–$50. • RUBY DELUXE: Goth Night with DJ Bela Lugosi’s Dad; 10 p.m. • SLIM’S: Antichrist, Vorator, Gorbash; 9 p.m., $8. • THE STATION: Prom, The Diamond Center, Dragon Drop; 8 p.m., $7.

WED, JUN 21 Robbie Fulks COUNTRY In the wake of Robbie CULT Fulks’ two Grammy nominations for 2016’s Upland Stories, more people have been paying attention to him lately, and it’s about time. He was already

art

6.14 – 6.21

OPENING

SPECIAL Queers in Nature: EVENT Photography by Ariyah April, plus, other pop-up exhibits. Friday, June 16, 6-9 p.m. Golden Belt, Durham. www.goldenbeltarts.com.

SPECIAL Back Home: Prints, EVENT paintings, and mixed media by Ron Liberti. Jun 16-30.

Reception: June 16, 6-9 p.m.

SPECTRE Arts, Durham. www. spectrearts.org. See p. 30.

SPECIAL Pop Up Show: Work EVENT from the Emerging Durham Art Scene. $5 suggested. Tuesday, June 20, 8-11 p.m. Pleiades Gallery, Durham. www.

PleiadesArtDurham.com.

SPECIAL West Virginia EVENT Spring: Landscape paintings by Lynn Boggess. Jun 15-Jul 15. Reception: Thursday, June 15, 7-9 p.m. Tyndall Galleries, Chapel Hill. www. tyndallgalleries.com.

ART

FRIDAY, JUNE 16

TO CUT IS TO THINK A collage show in the Cameron Gallery is a no-brainer for the Scrap Exchange— the creative reuse center already focues, in its everyday activities, on repurposing sundry cultural detritus in useful, vibrant new lives. To Cut Is to Think brings together twentythree local X-Acto knife and Mod Podge wielders to show off the infinite recombinant variety of their chosen medium, which alchemizes mass culture into personal style. The exhibit runs through July 15, but at this opening reception, you can have a little nosh and then take the inspiration you’ve gleaned into the Scrap Exchange’s Make N Take Room to find out what sort of thoughts you can cut. —Brian Howe THE SCRAP EXCHANGE, DURHAM 6–9 p.m., free, www.scrapexchange.org

ONGOING 17 Feet Away: Works by Carmen Neely. Thru Jul 1. Lump, Raleigh. www. teamlump.org.

LAST Abstract Vision: CHANCE Paintings by Sam

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“Lasso” by Cade Carlson PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SCRAP EXCHANGE Ezell. Thru Jun 15. Whitted Building, Hillsborough.

American Landscapes in 4/3 Time + Natural Attraction & Personal Work: The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. This pair of exhibits by a father and daughter is concerned with ensuring that future generations have enough natural world left to recognize the meaning of the cliché. Dan Gottlieb combines photography and painting in American Landscapes in 4/3 Time, referring both to his camera and to a jazzy time signature he perceives in nature’s improvisations.

Iris Gottlieb shows work related to her new book, Natural Attraction, which explores the relationships between animals and people through quirky watercolors

and text. It’s supplemented

by Personal Work, in which Iris probes “having mental illnesses, my queerness, and ways to visually explore intimate and vulnerable experiences.” Thru Jul 1. Craven Allen Gallery, Durham. www. cravenallengallery.com.

—Brian Howe Beyond the Front Porch 2017: Exhibition of work by twelve senior undergraduates. Thru Nov 12. Duke Campus: Center for Documentary Studies, Durham. www.cdsporch.org.

Careful to Carefree: Watercolors by Carol Liz Fynn. Thru Jun 29. ERUUF Art Gallery, Durham. www.eruuf. org.

Cedar Creek Gallery National Teapot Show X: Thru Sep 5. Cedar Creek

Gallery, Creedmoor. www. cedarcreekgallery.com.

Collections: Leah Sobsey.

Thru Sep 30. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham. www.21cmuseumhotels.com/ durham.

The Coloring Book: Life Size Adult Coloring Experience: Life-size coloring pages, d.j., food, drinks. $15. Sun, Jun 18, 6-9 p.m. Pleiades Gallery, Durham. www.

PleiadesArtDurham.com.

Disproduction: Collaboration

by Kimberly English and Carley Zarzeka. Thru June 22. UNC Campus: Hanes Art Center, Chapel Hill. art.unc.edu.

Eye Scapes: Photography

by Eric Raddatz. Thru Jul 9.

Through This Lens, Durham. www.throughthislens.com.

Featured Artists: Mixed media by Catherine Gregory and Marguerite Jay Gignoux; ceramics from Linda Prager. Thru Jul 8.

FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill. www.frankisart.com.

SPECIAL Finished with EVENT Flame: Stoneware

by Julie Jones, Matt Hallyburton, and Curry Wilkinson. Thru Jul 15.

Reception: June 16, 6-9 p.m.

Claymakers, Durham. www. claymakers.com.

Fluid: At a glance, some of MyLoan Dinh’s paintings might look like simple summer-home confections of sand and sea.

But look again. At the end of the Vietnam War, Dinh’s family fled its native Saigon and wound up at “Tent City” in California, one of the U.S.’s largest Vietnamese refugee

camps, before migrating to North Carolina. After a time at UNC-Chapel Hill, Dinh studied art in Australia and spent a decade in theatrical design before returning to painting.

This life of comings and goings furnishes images of legs running into and out of seas with underlying emotion and gravity. Thru Oct 15. Durham Convention Center, Durham. www.durhamconventioncenter. com. —Brian Howe Forecasts and Other Disturbances: Mixed media screenprints and cut paper by Julie Anne Greenberg. Thru Jul 7. Durham Arts Council, Durham. www.durhamarts.org.

From Here to Eternity: Quilted tapestries by Ann Harwell.

Thru Jul 25. Betty Ray McCain Gallery, Raleigh. www. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

INDYweek.com | 6.14.17 | 37

LAST Glory of Venice: CHANCE Renaissance Paintings 1470–1520: Thru Jun 18. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www. ncartmuseum.org.

Julie Anne Greenberg: Paintings.

Thru Jul 7. Durham Arts Council, Durham. www.durhamarts.org.

Group Show: Twenty-five artists and craftspeople. Thru Aug 25. Horse & Buggy Press and Friends, Durham. www.horseandbuggypress.com.

LAST Just Flowers: Paintings by CHANCE Sam Ezell. Thru Jun 15.

Alexander Dickson House, Hillsborough. www. historichillsborough.org.

Little Boxes: Metal sculpture by Robert Harper. Thru Jun 27. Cary Gallery of Artists, Cary. www. carygalleryofartists.org.

Livin’ Is Easy: Interpretations of summer. Thru July 1. Tipping Paint Gallery, Raleigh. www. tippingpaintgallery.com.

Looking South: Photography by Eudora Welty. Thru Sep 4. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www. ncartmuseum.org.

SPECIAL Mark Abercrombie: EVENT Abstract expressionist paintings. Thru Jul 1. Reception:

Friday, June 16, 6-9 p.m. Pleiades Gallery, Durham. www.

PleiadesArtDurham.com.

LAST A Moment in Time: CHANCE Paintings by Angela Nesbit and Sharon Bass. Thru Jun 17.

ArtSource Fine Art Gallery, Raleigh. www.artsource-raleigh.com.

More than One Story | Mas de una historia: Photography. Thru Feb 1.

UNC Campus: Davis Library, Chapel Hill. www.lib.unc.edu/davis.

SPECIAL The Music Makers: Work EVENT by Pleiades members.

Thru Jul 9. Reception: Friday, June 16, 6-9 p.m. Pleiades Gallery, Durham. www.PleiadesArtDurham. com.

New Paintings and Assemblages, Celebrating 50 Years of Art Making: Paintings by Gerry Lynch. Thru Jul 1.

Lee Hansley Gallery, Raleigh. www. leehansleygallery.com.

Other Nature: John Bowman, Olivia Ciummo, Renee Delosh, Ippis Halme, Jessica Langley, Lovid, Esther Ruiz, and Christina Van Der Merwe.

Thru Jun 24. Lump, Raleigh. www. teamlump.org.

Our House: Student and instructor exhibition. Thru Jul 7. Durham Arts Council, Durham. www. durhamarts.org.

CARE MATTERS

Long Term Care coverage Domestic partner and Civil Unions no problem.

Call Josh or Jeff 336-266-0187

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SPECIAL Place of Sense:The EVENT Creative Mentorship Program of the Durham Art Guild teams high school students with visual artists to present the results of twenty-week collaborations between five students and mentor artists. The results demonstrate a diversity of artistic visions, from a mixed-media work that examines the notion of home to a combination of photography and painting that explores female empowerment and cultural heritage. Elsewhere, one young artist and his mentor incorporated the nontraditional elements of role-play and narrative while another team looked at the concept of courage through adversity by means of iconography from graphic novels. Thru Jun 24.

Reception: Friday, June 16, 6-9 p.m.

Golden Belt, Durham. www. goldenbeltarts.com. —David Klein Preservation Chapel Hill: Photography by Dawn Surratt.

Thru Jun 26. Horace Williams House, Chapel Hill. www. chapelhillpreservation.com.

Pleasant Places: Digital paintings by Quayola. Thru Aug 13. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www.ncartmuseum. org.

Site-Specific Installation: Fiber art

by Gabrielle Duggan. Thru Jun 24.

Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc. org.

Small to Large: Delight in the Practice of Painting: Paintings

by Margie Stewart. Thru Oct 23.

Durham Arts Council, Durham. www.durhamarts.org.

Southern Light: Paintings by Chad Smith. Thru Jun 24. Eno Gallery, Hillsborough. www.enogallery.net.

Teens, Inspired: Juried exhibition

by N.C. high school students. Thru Sep 10. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www.ncartmuseum.org.

Under Pressure: Prints and performance art. Thru Aug 27.

Visual Art Exchange, Raleigh. www. visualartexchange.org. ...with white, black and brown: Drawings by Shib Basu. Thru Jun 27.

Cary Gallery of Artists, Cary. www. carygalleryofartists.org.

You + Me: Photographs from various artists. Thru Sep 4. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www.ncartmuseum.org.

food Chefs for Change: Chefs Seth Gross, Cece Lopez and Joe LaPorteare from Pompieri Pizza and Bull City Burger and Brewery.

Dinner series benefits Durham’s homeless. $75. Mon, Jun 19, 6-9 p.m. The Rickhouse, Durham. www.rickhousedurham.com.

Lees, Malo, and Oak Wine Class: Includes wine and tasting plate. $40. Thu, Jun 15, 6-8 p.m.The Fearrington Granary, Pittsboro. www.fearrington.com.

Sundae!: Free ice cream sundaes with Maple View ice cream. DJs Lady Fingers, Aldo Gibran, Tay Houchens. Sun, Jun 18, 2-6 p.m.

Nightlight, Chapel Hill. www. nightlightclub.com.

Wine Tasting: With Fearrington sommeliers and the occasional guest. Saturdays, 3-5 p.m. thru Jul 30. The Goat, Pittsboro. www. fearrington.com/eateries/the-goat.

screen

stage STAGE

THROUGH SUNDAY, JUNE 25

PORGY AND BESS

SPECIAL SHOWINGS

If ever a masterpiece needed to be tampered with, Porgy and Bess, which debuted on Broadway in 1935, was the one. It’s too long and logistically problematic to be staged very often, not to mention controversial for its operatic aspirations and dodgy racial stereotypes. A theatrical dream team including director Diane Paulus, playwright Suzan Lori-Parks, and composer Diedre Murray decided in the early 2000s that a fundamental revision of the script and score was needed. The result drew mixed reviews and a public letter of condemnation from Stephen Sondheim.

But it also introduced millions of new theatergoers to an American classic made more relevant to contemporary culture. Deb Royals directs this Justice Theater Project production starring Danielle J. Long and Phillip Bernard Smith in the title roles. —Byron Woods

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Summer film series. Sat, Jun 17, 9 p.m. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www. ncartmuseum.org.

UMSTEAD PARK UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST, RALEIGH 8 p.m., $20–$27, www.thejusticetheaterproject.org

OPENING Louie Anderson: Stand-up comedy presented by Bob Nocek. Thu, Jun 15, 8 p.m. Fletcher Opera Theater, Raleigh. www.dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

See p. 30.

Comedy Workshop and Open Mic: Wed, Jun 21, 7-10 p.m. Imurj, Raleigh. imurj.com.

The Curious Savage: Play. $13-$15. Jun 16-26. Forest Moon Theater, Wake Forest.

DAN TDM: YouTube personality. Sun, Jun 18, 2 p.m. Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham. www.dpacnc.com.

Hay Fever: Farce directed by John C. McIlwee. $12-$20. June 15-25. NCSU Campus: Titmus Theatre, Raleigh.

Hot Comedy with Brian Burns: Standup presented by No Poetry Comedy.

Thu, Jun 15, 8 p.m. The Cave Tavern, Chapel Hill. www.caverntavern.com.

Hillel Kogan: Dance, humor. $27. Jun 14-17. The Cary Theater, Cary. www. americandancefestival.org Ice and Fire Bellydance: Presented by The League of Extraordinary Dancers.

Wed, Jun 21, 7:30 p.m. Legends, Raleigh. www.legends-club.com.

The Lectern: American Dance Festival: Claire Porter & Sara Juli. $27. Jun 20 & 21, 8 p.m. Duke Campus: Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham. www. americandancefestival.org Miss North Carolina Pageant: Jun 21-24. Memorial Auditorium, Raleigh. www.dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

The Monti: Season Finale: Storytelling. $20-$22. Sat, Jun 17, 8 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro. www. artscenterlive.org.

Hell or High Water: Summer film series. Fri, Jun 16, 9 p.m. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www. ncartmuseum.org.

Phillip Bernard Smith as Porgy and Danielle J. Long as Bess PHOTO COURTESY OF THE JUSTICE THEATER PROJECT

Tommy Noonan: $22. Sun, Jun 18 & Mon, Jun 19. Duke Campus: Sheafer Lab Theater, Durham. www. americandancefestival.org

The Dangling Loafer: $5. Third Fridays, 8-9:30 p.m. Kings, Raleigh. www. kingsraleigh.com. www.facebook.com/ TheDanglingLoafer.

Opening Night Performance: The African American Dance Ensemble, Charlotte Ballet, tap dancers Elizabeth Burke and Luke Hickey. $14-$43. Thu, Jun 15, 6:30 p.m. Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham. www.dpacnc. com. www.americandancefestival.org.

Finding Patience: The Story of Holly Springs: Play. $19. Thru Jun 17. Holly Springs Cultural Center, Holly Springs. www.hollyspringsnc.us.

Porgy and Bess: Play. $20-$27. Thru Jun 25. Umstead Park United Church of Christ, Raleigh. www.upucc.org.

Shaping Sound, After the Curtain: Choreographer Travis Wall. Thu, Jun 15, 8 p.m. Memorial Auditorium, Raleigh. www.dukeenergycenterraleigh. com.

Struck: Play. Jun 21-Jul 2.

Kennedy Theater, Raleigh. www. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com/venue/ kennedy-theatre.

Steve Trevino: Stand-up. Jun 15-17.

Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www.goodnightscomedy.com.

ONGOING Anything Goes Late Show: Saturdays, 10:30 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www.goodnightscomedy.com ½ Avenue Q: Reviewed on p.

27. $15-$28. Thru Jun 25. Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh. www. raleighlittletheatre.org.

Bulltown Comedy Series: Third Tuesdays, 9 p.m. Fullsteam, Durham. www.fullsteam.ag. www.facebook. com/BulltownComedySeries The Chuckle & Chortle Comedy Show: Local stand-up comics. $7. Third Saturdays, 8:30 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro. www.artscenterlive.org.

Fool for Love: Play by McQueen & Company. $10–$20. Thru June 24.

Research Triangle High School Theatre, Durham. www.mcqueenandcompany. com LAST ½ Full Gallop: CHANCE Reviewed on p. 27. $50.

Thru Jun 17. NCSU Campus: KennedyMcIlwee Studio Theatre, Raleigh.

Funny Business Live: Pro comedy series. $5-8. Third Fridays, 9 p.m. The Thrill at Hector’s, Chapel Hill. www. funnybusinesslive.com.

The Greeks: Autocracy, hubris, immigrants denied sanctuary: these modern-day dilemmas remind us that the classics have never been out of style since the Greeks grappled with them in the fifth century BCE. In adapting Sophocles’s three Theban plays for Burning Coal Theatre Company, playwright Ian Finley and director Alex Tobey discovered odd resonances with the present. Students performing Antigone last summer were convinced it was about Hillary Clinton versus Bernie Sanders; in an age of arbitrary travel bans, Oedipus at Colonus now shows us that home and hospitality are the greatest gifts we can receive or give. $10. Thru Jun 25. www. burningcoal.org. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh. camraleigh.org. —Byron Woods The Harry Show: Ages 18+. Improv host leads audience in potentially risque improv games. $10. Fri & Sat, 10

p.m. ComedyWorx Theatre, Raleigh. comedyworx.com.

Hush Hush: Improv comedy based on secrets. Presented by Mettlesome.

Thursdays, 8 p.m. Thru Jun 29. Beer Study, Durham.

No Poetry Comedy Open Mic: Thu, Jun 15, 8:30 p.m. Neptunes Parlour, Raleigh. www.neptunesparlour.com.

No Shame Theatre: Open performances. $5. Sat, Jun 17, 8 p.m.

The ArtsCenter, Carrboro. www. artscenterlive.org.

North Carolina’s Funniest Person Contest: Jun 20-22, 7 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www. goodnightscomedy.com.

The Stonewater Rapture: Two-person play. $10-$15. Thur Jun 23. Imurj, Raleigh. imurj.com. See p. 31.

LAST Tea with Edie & Fitz: On a CHANCE summer’s day in 1925, Edith Wharton invited F. Scott Fitzgerald to her estate for tea.

According to eyewitnesses, the meeting was an absolute disaster, and the two never spoke or met again. At best, they would have made an improbable pair; at sixty-three, Wharton was the severe, meticulous, old-money moralist of The Age of Innocence, while Fitzgerald was a brash, undisciplined twenty-nine-year-old wunderkind intent on documenting the decadence of the Jazz Age. But Chicago playwright Adam Pasen finds the deeper similarities in the lives and loves of two literary lions in this biographical play, which opens N.C. State’s TheatreFest 2017. Mia Self directs. $6-$20. Thru Jun 18. NCSU Campus: Kennedy-McIlwee Studio Theatre, Raleigh. —Byron Woods

Movies Under the Stars: Family-friendly movies and free popcorn. Thu, Jun 15. Wallace Plaza, Chapel Hill.

The Real Mayberry: Documentary followed by Q and A with Bill Hayes. Mon, Jun 19, 7:30 p.m. Silverspot Cinema, Chapel Hill. www.silverspot.net.

The Secret Life of Pets: Movies

by Moonlight series. $5. Fri, Jun 16, 8:30 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary. www. boothamphitheatre.com.

OPENING 47 Meters Down—Just in time for beach season, it’s Mandy Moore versus sharks in this survival-horror film. Rated PG-13. ½ The Book of Henry— Reviewed on p. 29. Rated PG-13.

Cars 3—Pixar wheels out its Fast-and-the-Furious-for-tots franchise for a third spin around the track. Rated G.  Paris Can Wait— Reviewed on p. 29. Rated PG. Rough Night—Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer, and Zoë Kravitz fill out this The Hangover-style dark comedy.

Rated R. The Wedding Plan—An Orthodox Jewish woman whose fiancé gets cold feet refuses to cancel the wedding, trusting that God will deliver a husband. Rated PG.

ALS O PLAYIN G The INDY uses a five-star rating scale. Read reviews of these films at www.indyweek.com.  Alien: Covenant—This is easily the best Alien since the first two, and the is the darkest sci-fi vision yet of our INDYweek.com | 6.14.17 | 39

evolving cultural anxieties about machines and artificial intelligence. Rated R.

as Peter Quill discovers his father is a living planet called Ego. Rated PG-13.

 Baywatch—Only some sort of vile satanic pact could account for Zac Efron’s inexplicable success as an actor. Rated R.

It Comes at Night— This family apocalypse survival saga is precise and measured but could use a dash of M. Night. Rated R.

 Beauty and the Beast—This live-action remake is an effective piece of fan service but certainly won’t replace the animated classic. Rated PG.

½ Kong: Skull Island— Set before 2014’s Godzilla, this reboot makes Kong’s origin feel like Apocalypse Now meets Starship Troopers.

Rated PG-13.

½ The Fate of the Furious—The latest Fast & Furious film is outlandish and refreshingly self-aware, giddily embracing both elements of the label “dumb fun.” Rated PG-13.

 Megan Leavey—The film lavishes love on the bond of a Marine and her bomb-sniffing dog but undersells everything else.

Rated PG-13.

 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2—A muddier story and zestier jokes balance out to a perfectly worthy sequel to Marvel’s spacefaring success story, now with an Oedipal twist,

½ The Mummy— Tom Cruise’s increasing creepiness is the biggest impediment to a serviceable creature feature and reboot of the Brendan Fraser franchise. Rated PG-13.

SCREEN MONDAY, JUNE 19

THE REAL MAYBERRY The mythical television town of Mayberry, a peaceful, folksy burg presided over by the amiable, homily-dropping Sheriff Andy Taylor, was based on Mount Airy, in Surry County, N.C., the hometown of Andy Griffith. It’s also the hometown of Bill Hayes, the producer-director of this documentary about Mount Airy and its residents, both past and present. While Mayberry was almost always a picture of law and order, redolent of small-town charms and peopled by (mostly) charming eccentrics, the reality for its model is far more complex.

The roiling U.S. economy has taken its toll in the past decade; manufacturing jobs have been lost and many among its millennial population see pulling up roots as the only option. But the film also captures the ways in which the townspeople are employing the old-fashioned yet never dated notion of mutual cooperation to help Mount Airy regain its vitality.

—David Klein

SILVERSPOT CINEMA, CHAPEL HILL 7:30 p.m., $9–$15, www.silverspot.net

40 | 6.14.17 | INDYweek.com

½ Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales—An improvment over its dire predecessor, this sequel still features Jack Sparrow literally jumping a shark. Rated PG-13.  Wakefield—Director Robin Swicord struggles to sustain momentum in a story that’s almost entirely about a guy in a room, after a lawyer (Bryan Cranston) ghosts on his whole life. Rated R. ½ Wonder Woman— The long-overdue Wonder Woman film is an origin story that doesn’t shrink from the beauty or brawn of a hero in whom the parallels of ancient mythology and modern superhero fiction become literal. Gal Gadot strikes the right balance as an idealist who relishes the battle but not the war. Rated PG-13.

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MONDAY, JUNE 19

RICHARD RUSSO: TRAJECTORY In a recent interview, Richard Russo likened himself to his father, “an old man telling stories in the bar.” And while Russo is the celebrated author of nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire Falls, his outlook remains unpretentious and steadfastly informed by his personal origins. Russo situates his novels and short fiction in a milieu based on the fading mill town in New York State where he grew up. His characters are mostly blue-collar people in towns that are shadows of their former selves. His latest, Trajectory: Stories, consists of four long stories whose protagonists—a professor, a realtor, a Hollywood leading man in his twilight years—enjoy greater social status than in typical Russo. Still, they remain vulnerable to the vicissitudes of life. The collection’s sole previously unpublished story, “Milton and Marcus,” is a biting portrait whose subject is apparently based on Robert Redford. —David Klein THE REGULATOR BOOKSHOP, DURHAM 7 p.m., free, www.regulatorbookshop.com

READINGS & SIGNINGS Art Chanksy: Game Changers.

Thu, Jun 15, noon. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www. quailridgebooks.com.

Steve Compton: Jugtown Pottery 1917-2017: A Century of Art & Craft in Clay. Thu, Jun 15, 7 p.m. Regulator Bookshop, Durham. www. regulatorbookshop.com.

Margaret Dardess: Brutal Silence. Sat, Jun 17, 11 a.m.

McIntyre’s Books, Pittsboro. www.mcintyresbooks.com.

James Dodson: The Range Bucket List. Sat, Jun 17, 3 p.m.

Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www.quailridgebooks.com.

Kathleen Flynn: The Jane Austen Project. Sun, Jun 18, 2 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www.quailridgebooks.com.

Randy Johnson: Hiking the Blue Ridge Parkway; Best Day Hikes BRP. Wed, Jun 21, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www. quailridgebooks.com.

Cate Lineberry: Be Free or Die: The Amazing Story of Robert Smalls. Tue, Jun 20, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www. quailridgebooks.com.

Carolyn Parkhurst: Harmony.

Mon, Jun 19, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www. quailridgebooks.com.

LITERARY R E L AT E D Green Burial: Anne Weston.

Mon, Jun 19, 7 p.m. South Regional Library, Durham. www.durhamcountylibrary.org.

Nonfiction Authors Association: Wed, Jun 21, 6:15-7:45 p.m. Regulator Bookshop, Durham. www. regulatorbookshop.com.

Summer Reading 2017 Kickoff Party: Music, food, games.

Sat, Jun 17, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

Northgate Mall, Durham. www. northgatemall.com.

TO A DV E R T I S E O N T H E B AC K PAG E : C A L L 9 1 9. 2 6 8 .1 9 7 2 ( D U R H A M /C H A P E L H I L L ) O R 9 1 9. 8 3 2 . 8 7 74 ( R A L E I G H ) • E M A I L : A DV E R T I S I N G @ I N DY W E E K .C O M