INDY Week 8.9.17

Raleigh 8I9 I 2017

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is h s e s s a p o t t e h g Je o t s u i n e g t e p p pu e h t d n a s e s s a m the – next generation n. o s s i h g n i d u l c n i

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BY BRI AN HO WE page

A Brief History of N.C. Racial Politics p. 6

Resistance Isn’t Futile p.10

12

Brews, Bites, Books, and Buds p. 20

indy week’s

s u p m Ca e d i u G everything you need to know to get your semester started right

on stands 2 | 8.9.17 | INDYweek.com

now!

WHAT WE LEARNED THIS WEEK 6 From 1876–1964, only one Republican won North Carolina’s electoral votes. Since 1968, only two Democrats have. Wonder what changed?

8 “We’re just trying to save the native plants.

We’re racing the bulldozers.”

9 The same conservative legal group that challenged the University of Texas at Austin’s affirmative action policy before the Supreme Court is behind a similar lawsuit against UNC. 12 Most puppeteers keep the engineering of their puppets hidden under painted surfaces, but Jeghetto proudly shows off the jointure of his creations.

20 Dim sum are often likened to “Chinese tapas,” but the small plates at Brewery Bhavana are far more complex than that label implies.

24 NCMA is the only art museum in the country with a three-thousand-person-capacity stage attached to it.

25 A central tenet of the recent Yes and No: Allies in Comedy Assembly forum is that what requires consent in real life requires consent in the improv world.

VOL. 34, NO. 30

DEPARTMENTS 6 Triangulator 8 News 10 Soapboxer 20 Food 22 Music 25 Arts & Culture 26 What to Do This Week 29 Music Calendar 33 Arts & Culture Calendar

ON THE COVER: Tarish Pipkins, (Jeghetto) with his son, Tarin PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

The space at Brewery Bhavana is a mix of light and dark, with a bar, bookstore, flower shop, and dining area (see page 20). PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

FINDER THE INDY'S GUIDE TO THE TRIANGLE

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backtalk Bang the Drum Softly

Last week, we ran a feature on Batalá Durham, which, after a series of complaints from a resident of Liberty Warehouse and three visits from the cops, may have to quit practicing at Durham Central Park. Writer Katie Jane Fernelius said this is “a case of rubber meeting the road with Durham gentrification.”

Dane Miller says the story was “overblown.” “A single noise complainer does not a front-page ‘gentrification’ article make,” he writes. “You could just have easily written the exact opposite piece, celebrating the harmony of the new development and local artists—especially since multiple people have shown up to support Batalá and, again, only one person complained.

INDY Week is a great community resource, but when you go fishing for a flimsy story to justify a clickbait headline you undermine the rest of your publication’s solid local journalism.”

Scott Harmon offers a similar critique: “This is not gentrification in motion. This is damaging sensational press in motion. There’s one guy who complained, and the remaining residents at Liberty Warehouse shut him down hard. Residents and businesses and cultural events have been figuring out how to live in a vibrant urban environment for a long time, and sometimes there are conflicts. When downtown first started thriving, all of the existing residents (who were here before the restaurants and bars) complained. Was that gentrification, when the people who had been here for years felt like the new businesses moving in were changing their way of life?

“The community told those people the same thing. Downtown is going to be a vibrant, mixed-use environment, not a quiet, bucolic suburban enclave. And that’s what the residents and management of Liberty Warehouse told the one guy who complained.

If you want to be a responsible member of the community and the press, you should do your homework and not write incendiary stories that make it harder for the community to work together.”

“I live at Liberty Warehouse, and I just

want to say that all this hubbub has been generated by one resident,” adds Kirk Royal.

“Yes, I said one. And the rest of us have made it clear on our community message board that we think this resident is being unreasonable. The reason 99 percent of us moved into this building was to be in the thick of all these wonderful reminders (and the sounds that come with them) of the culturally and socially vibrant city we live in. To the one resident who moved here expecting a bland suburban lifestyle: you’ve gotta be kidding me! Clearly this person isn’t terribly gifted at making wise life decisions. I, for one, am going to be royally pissed if this one person’s quixotic pursuit of bland, white-bread suburban ‘bliss’ in the middle of downtown Durham gets Batalá Durham (or anyone else, for that matter) banned from using the park. Batalá was here first. We moved onto their turf, not the other way around. This neighborhood— and all of Durham—has a rich history. Moving into a new building doesn’t mean any of us get to ignore, erase, or otherwise disrespect it.”

Chris Allen calls for fairness: “I’d think Durham has a noise ordinance for a reason, so police can respond fairly to a standard and not at the whims of one person’s complaint. If it’s before eleven p.m., the drums should be fine.

On the other side of the coin, somehow Surf Club can have an outdoor d.j. party until two a.m. without any enforcement from the noise ordinance. The area is becoming more mixed commercial and residential (as it should), people on all sides need to be reasonable and accommodating, and the law needs to be consistent.”

Commenter marcushe says this is all the city’s fault: “Unfortunately, the Batalá group will have to respect the noise complaints and find a new venue. It’s the city of Durham’s fault for zoning residences so close to Central Park.”

“We moved onto their turf, not the other way around.”

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 A BRIEF HISTORY OF N.C. RACIAL POLITICS (FOR MR. DALLAS WOODHOUSE ) It started innocuously enough. On Sunday, the N.C. Democratic Party tweeted about the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, saying, “Let’s celebrate how far we’ve come but remember the we must fight to keep moving forward.”

Pretty innocuous, right?

Not to Dallas Woodhouse, executive director of the NCGOP, who responded via tweetstorm: “After they murdered blacks in Wilmington, [Democrats] passed what they called the White Declaration of Independence.” Another tweet: “From the party that ran a racist campaign of murder and closed the polls to blacks who were republicans, gaining power for 100 years.” Another: “[The Democrats] murdered black people and created the grandfather clause to keep the survivors from voting.” Woodhouse also said the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot was “the result of a long-range campaign strategy

by Democratic Party leaders to regain political control of Wilmington, at that time the state’s most populous city.”

Woodhouse isn’t wrong. The Wilmington riot of November 10, 1898—in which a mob of white supremacists overthrew a local government, burned a black newspaper, and murdered dozens of black residents—was part of an orga-

nized plot to solidify Democratic control and suppress black voting.

But Woodhouse’s implication—that Democrats are the party of racism—would be accurate only if time froze in 1898. It didn’t. The fact is, many of the racial resentments that took root among Southern Democrats have simply migrated over to the Party of Lincoln, which— ironically but not coincidentally—now reigns supreme in the Old Confederacy.

To help educate Woodhouse about this history, here’s a timeline.

2017: The Republicans have supermajorities in both the state House and Senate. Every Republican legislator is white.

2016: Federal judges throw out those legislative and congressional districts as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders, drawn to minimize the power of the black vote. In addition, a court rejects the state’s voter ID law, saying voting restrictions “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.” Also, the NCGOP ousts Hasan Harnett, its first black chairman, who writes Woodhouse an email asking, “Am I not white enough for you?”

2010: Republicans take control of

1898:

the General Assembly for the first time in more than a century. Two years later, Republican Pat McCrory is elected governor (and Obama loses the state). The Republicans start drawing new congressional and legislative districts.

The Wilmington Race Riot.

1928: Herbert Hoover wins North Carolina’s electoral votes, the only time a Republican will do so from 1876 until 1968.

2008: Barack Obama ekes out a victory in North Carolina, the first Democrat to do so since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

1948: Dixiecrats break away from the Dem-

ocratic Party in opposition to Harry Truman’s policies on civil rights and instead throw their weight behind South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond, who receives less than 9 percent of the vote in North Carolina.

1964: On July 2, President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, after a bipartisan coalition broke a fiftyseven-day filibuster from Southern Democrats. Nearly all Southern Dems voted against it, including B. Everett Jordan and Sam Ervin of North Carolina. After signing the bill, Johnson tells a press aide, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.” The next year, LBJ signs the Voting Rights Act.

6 | 8.9.17 | INDYweek.com

1981: Republican strategist Lee

1968: Richard Nixon wins North Carolina, the second Republican to do so since Reconstruction. Democrat Hubert Humphrey comes in third, behind segregationist George Wallace.

1972: Jesse Helms, who start-

ed out in politics working for pro-segregation Democrats, becomes the first popularly elected Republican senator from North Carolina.

Atwater explains how he wooed Southern whites: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

1990: Helms airs the infamous “Hands” ad, which criticizes opponent Harvey Gant, the first black mayor of Charlotte, for supporting “racial quotas.” A narrator says: “You needed that job, and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.

Is that really fair?” Helms wins the election 53–47.

+SHORTFALLS

The needs of people in Wake County with behavioral health problems far outstrip the county’s ability to pay for their care, Wake County commissioners were told Monday.

A discussion arose as commissioners discussed and approved a $10.7 million funding agreement with Alliance Behavioral Healthcare for UNC Health Care to continue behavioral health services at the WakeBrook mental health facility. (Alliance is the local management area agency that pays out money it receives from Wake to behavioral health care providers.)

One section of the agreement caught commissioners’ eyes: “It is anticipated that there will not be enough funds to cover the costs of the programs; UNC Health Care will cover the budget shortfall.”

Wake County spends more than $26 million annually on behavioral health care. UNC Health Care committed $40 million when it entered into an agreement with Wake County to operate WakeBrook in 2013, but it has spent about half that amount.

“We are proud of the work we do at WakeBrook, but it’s not enough,” said Glenn George, senior vice president and general counsel of the UNC Health Care system.

If more than $10 million isn’t enough to cover WakeBrook’s crisis, assessment, addiction treatment, and inpatient functions, how much would it take, Commissioner Erv Portman wondered. “What is the full need?” Portman said.

Rob Robinson, CEO of Alliance Behavioral Healthcare, had an answer: $366 million for uninsured and underinsured people in Wake to get the same package

of benefits they would get from Medicaid. Had the North Carolina legislature expanded Medicaid and not made cuts to mental health care, the cost would have been far less.

“We need to make sure that the people understand that these kinds of problems are arising not from this building, but from three blocks down the street,” said Commissioner John Burns, referring to the General Assembly.

Commissioners have planned an August 28 work session to look into the county’s mental health funding in detail.

+ORGANIZED NOISE

On Monday evening, the community-oriented samba-reggae percussion ensemble Batalá Durham once again held its weekly rehearsal at Durham Central Park. And once again, there was a noise complaint, and the cops showed up.

As the INDY reported last week, complaints from one resident of Liberty Warehouse Apartments have resulted in the Durham Police Department shutting down Batalá’s rehearsals on two previous occasions in June and July. After the story ran, a handful of Liberty residents chimed in with their support of Batalá Durham, and several appeared at Monday night’s gathering.

Most of the rehearsal went on without incident. But at 7:15, DPD officer B.K. Mincey pulled up and approached the group.

He spoke with Caique Vidal, Batalá Durham’s musical director, and Justin Anderson-Pomeroy, its cofounder. As the officer wrapped up the conversation, Vidal gently asked if the group had to end its rehears-

al. Mincey scoffed, shook his head, and bid them a good night before he walked away.

Around 7:42, two police SUVs arrived, and heavy rain began shortly thereafter.

Officers J.S. Tyler and N.T. Thorpe met with Joy Vidal, a member of Batalá Durham (she’s married to Caique Vidal). They explained that they were responding to a noise complaint and were there to end the rehearsal. (The officers didn’t actually stop the rehearsal, but Caique Vidal elected to bring it to a halt.)

Officer Tyler said the complaint wasn’t based on specific decibel levels—in fact, the department’s decibel meter is currently out of service. (Durham’s noise ordinance dictates that no nighttime noise—between eleven p.m. and eight a.m.—should exceed fifty decibels, and daytime noise should not exceed sixty decibels.) Tyler told the group that it could be in violation of other ordinances, but he did not specify which ones.

“We have to use our reasonable senses,” he said, adding that that the single complainer’s concern was “just as valid as anybody else’s.”

The officers explained that the group’s best route was to get a permit with a variance, which only the city manager can issue.

Thorpe told Batalá that any further complaints would lead to a citation, resulting in a $35 fine, plus $173 in court costs.

Now Batalá will have to decide whether to show up again next week and risk a citation. All signs point to yes. triangulator@indyweek.com

RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE RECYCLE

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS

PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER PAPER

This week’s report by Jeffrey C. Billman, Thomas Goldsmith, Erica Hellerstein, and Allison Hussey.

PERIPHERAL VISIONS | V.C. ROGERS

INDYweek.com | 8.9.17 | 7

indynews

Going Native

BEFORE THE BULLDOZERS COME, THEY TRY TO RESCUE THE PLANTS

BY AMANDA ABRAMS A knot of about eight people is slowly progressing through dense forest, making their way through blackberry and greenbrier vines, over mossy logs, and under loblolly pines and sweetgum trees.

Suddenly there’s a shout.

“Guess what we found?” yells John Clarke, who’s in charge of today’s group.

“Aristolochia!”

There’s a sharp intake of breaths, and people gather around a tiny plant with long, narrow leaves rising from the forest floor.

It’s Aristolochia serpentaria, or Virginia snakeroot, a tenacious plant beloved by swallowtail butterflies, whose larvae will decimate its foliage but not kill it.

And it’s native to this area, which makes it valuable today. Someone procures a shovel, quickly digs it up, and deposits it into a bag.

This is what’s known as a plant rescue. The participants are combing a plot of land slated for development, identifying the native plants they deem worthy, and digging them up for their own gardens and other uses.

“We’re just trying to save native plants,” says Tom Harville, a leader of the Triangle’s plant rescue movement. “We’re racing the bulldozers—the cutters and the graders.”

He and his colleagues have organized plant rescues all over the area: prior to new construction in Research Triangle Park, before the development of the toll road that connects N.C. 147 to I-540, and during the creation of greenways in Cary. They spent months clearing out a site that was flooded to create Randleman Lake near Greensboro.

Most of the people who do this are members of the N.C. Native Plant Society, a group of about seven hundred around the state whose goal is to preserve plants native to this region. Rather than a xenophobic impulse, it’s an effort to aid the underdog: many of the area’s invasive plants, like Japanese stiltgrass and Russian olive, are aggressive and can quickly take over, throwing the fragile ecosystem out of balance.

The philosophy isn’t new; plant rescues have been occurring in the state since the 8 | 8.9.17 | INDYweek.com

LEFT: North Carolina Native Plant Society members Diane Laslie, Dee Clark, and John Clarke (left to right). RIGHT: Diane Laslie digs up a Downy rattlesnake plantain while on a plant rescue outing at a Chatham Park development site near Pittsboro.

PHOTOS BY ALEX BOERNER

1960s. The fruits of many of those early efforts populated the N.C. Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill, which opened its doors in 1966, as well as Duke Gardens and botanical gardens in Greensboro and Charlotte. And the best specimens of the current rescues wind up in some of those collections, too.

Today—June 9—the group is working a sixty-six-acre plot off Eubanks Road near Pittsboro that’s part of the giant Chatham Park. Though the development has largely faded from the headlines, its construction is continuing; Preston Development, the company building Chatham Park, now owns over eight thousand acres just east of Pittsboro.

Not every developer is comfortable allowing plant rescues on its land.

“They think, You’re just trying to find something rare to stop my development,” explains Harville, a former Native Plant Society president who lives in Cary.

He contacted the Chatham Park people via email several years ago and didn’t get much of a response. But he had a stroke of luck one night after dining in downtown Pittsboro.

Spying Julian “Bubba” Rawl and Tim Smith,

the owners of Preston Development, on the town’s main drag, he introduced himself and told them about the plant rescues.

“And Tim Smith said, ‘Oh, that’s a marvelous idea,’” remembers Harville.

That was in early 2016. Since then, the native plant people have been spending months at each parcel—there are many— before it’s declared off-limits and the construction vehicles move in. Last summer, they explored an area about a half mile to the west of this one and found quite a few notable plants, including the lily-leaved Twayblade orchid and hundreds of ferns. A year later, the property is a giant, treeless red-clay gash in the earth.

During today’s rescue, Clarke and the others muse about how the land will be used in the future—this section is slated to become a power substation—but there’s no resentment in their voices; they’re plant nerds, not activists. Still, the difference between this site and the flattened parcel is almost unfathomable.

This one is teeming with life so dense that one can barely see a hundred feet ahead; it’s a few orders of magnitude beyond walking in

Duke Forest or Umstead Park.

And yet the native plants—small, shadeloving flora with subtle characteristics— are almost impossible to spot. Which is why this group of mostly self-trained aficionados is helpful.

“Oh look, black snakeroot,” says Clarke, the plant society’s vice president and a Chatham County resident.

“No, that’s not black snakeroot,” says Judy West, a retired teacher who lives near High Point and seems to be the resident expert on this outing. Like everyone else, she wears a hat, long sleeves, and long pants tucked into socks to keep the ticks at bay.

In the end, the plant rescuers find partridgeberry, Jack-in-the-pulpit, lobelia, and wild ginger, but none of those plants is particularly notable.

Some sites are more fruitful, though.

The land that became Randleman Lake, for example, had thousands of trillium, a delicate plant that flowers in the spring. But they couldn’t be rescued.

“They’re all underwater now,” says Harville. backtalk@indyweek.com

news L

ast week, The New York Times reported that the Department of Justice is preparing to investigate universities over their affirmative action policies.

The news ricocheted across the Internet, in part because it seemed like a singular representation of President Trump’s messaging around race: playing into fears that minorities are taking away a limited resource—in this case, college admissions—from whites.

The DOJ later insisted that it did not issue any “directive, memorandum, initiative, or policy related to university admissions in general,” but that’s cold comfort to legal observers concerned about efforts to roll back affirmative action under a department led by Jeff Sessions, a former Alabama senator who was denied a federal judgeship in 1986 over accusations of racism. The news is especially troubling to advocates of diversity in education, who worry that the DOJ could end up discouraging universities from using race as a factor in their admissions policies.

And it’s particularly relevant to North Carolina, where a lawsuit has been filed against UNC-Chapel Hill by the same conservative legal defense fund, the Project on Fair Representation, behind a landmark affirmative action case that made it to the Supreme Court case last year, Fisher v. University of Texas.

In that case, Abigail Fisher sued the University of Texas at Austin for denying her admission to the school, arguing that the school’s admissions policy discriminated against her because she was white. In a 4–3 decision, the court rejected Fisher’s claim, ruling that universities can have race-conscious admissions policies as long as they help achieve a diverse student body.

“These are challenges that are led by conservative groups that are really just trying to end any consideration of race in educational policymaking,” says Liliana M. Garces, an associate professor of higher education at UT-Austin. “So you have the weight of this White House involved in this way, it’s not unreasonable for educators to see it as an intimidation tactic to try to bypass that Supreme Court precedent.”

While Fisher was a victory for affirmative action proponents, the decision was also narrow. UT-Austin offers admission to students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school class. About 80 percent of students at UT-Austin are granted admission

Colorblind

Injustice

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION WANTS TO GO AFTER SCHOOLS WITH AFFIRMATIVE ACTION POLICIES. HOW WILL THAT AFFECT UNC?

BY ERICA HELLERSTEIN through the top 10 program, says Erika Wilson, a professor at the UNC School of Law. For the rest, race was one of a number of factors that could give an applicant a boost.

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion upheld the program, but he also noted that a university “must tailor its approach in light of changing circumstances, ensuring that race plays no greater role than is necessary to meet its compelling interest.” Which is to say, an admissions policy that passes muster now might not do so in the future.

Like Fisher, the UNC lawsuit—filed in 2014 by the Project on Fair Representation on behalf of the nonprofit Students for Fair Admissions—argues that the school’s admission policies are unconstitutional.

UNC includes race among more than forty critiera used to evaluate applicants, accord-

ing to the lawsuit, including grades, test scores, and the application essay.

While UNC says it does not use race as a “tie-breaker,” the lawsuit argues that UNCChapel Hill’s “admissions decisions are attributable to a sizable racial preference for underrepresented minorities.”

The suit, Students for Fair Admissions v.

University of North Carolina, argues that UNC-Chapel Hill’s race-conscious admissions policies are harmful to Asian-American and white students. (A similar suit, filed against Harvard University by the Project on Fair Representation, focuses exclusively on Asian Americans.) According to the lawsuit, if UNC were to adopt the top 10 program utilized by UT-Austin, its percentage of nonwhite and underrepresented students would increase from 15 percent to 16 percent.

The unnamed applicant at the center of the UNC case, who was denied entry to UNC’s 2014 class, is white, with a 4.48 GPA and an SAT score of 2180, and was a member of the varsity cross-country team, according the lawsuit. Yet the student didn’t make the cut.

The lawsuit’s architect—and the founder of Project on Fair Representation—is Edward Blum, a conservative legal activist who Mother Jones called “the brains behind the effort to get the Supreme Court to rethink civil rights.” Blum, a visiting fellow at the Koch-funded American Enterprise Institute, is not an attorney; he is a selfdescribed “legal yenta” who uses the courts to challenge race-based policies and protections such as affirmative action and voting rights, recruiting plaintiffs and then connecting them with lawyers.

To recruit plaintiffs for the UNC cases, Blum created a website, uncnotfair.org, which features a photo of an Asian student on its homepage along with the question, “Were you denied admission to the University of North Carolina? It may be because you’re the wrong race.” (Blum did not respond to the INDY’s request for comment.)

After being put on hold to await the outcome of Fisher, the UNC case is currently before the U.S. District Court. It hasn’t yet gone to trial. The DOJ hasn’t weighed in on the case, and it’s unclear what impact the department’s reported plans to investigate universities over affirmative action could have on UNC. Wilson believes such an approach could dissuade universities from pursuing admissions policies that take race into account— especially schools in conservative states like Texas or North Carolina. And the fights over affirmative action will keep coming, Wilson predicts, until people are “honest about the history of racial exclusion” and opportunity gaps in schools.

“Most supporters of affirmative action would say, ‘We’d like to see the day where we don’t have to rely on affirmative action,’” she says. “But that day is not going to come until we’re honest about the state of our schools, the history of our schools, and how that contributes to what we see today. People only oppose affirmative action if they presume that the baseline is neutral or fair. People like me understand that the baseline is neither neutral nor fair.” ehellerstein@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 8.9.17 | 9

on stands now!

indy week’s guide to everything you need to know to start your semester right

Campus Guide 10 | 8.9.17 | INDYweek.com

soapboxer

When the Wheels Came Off

THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY IS A MESS. PROGRESSIVES MUST BE READY TO CAPITALIZE.

BY JEFFREY C. BILLMAN The train has derailed.

Over the last two weeks, the failures and scandals and incompetence and general chaos of the first seven months of the Trump administration have become manifest and undeniable: the inability to advance even the slightest health care reform, despite Republicans controlling both houses of Congress; the hiring of loudmouthed hedge-funder Anthony Scaramucci as communications director and the subsequent resignation of press secretary Sean Spicer and firing of chief of staff Reince Priebus, followed by the firing of Scaramucci by new chief of staff John Kelly; the leaking of embarrassing transcripts of phone calls between Trump and world leaders, in which the president begged the Mexican president not to tell the media he wouldn’t pay for the wall and behaved like a petulant preteen while talking to the Australian prime minister; a story in The New York Times suggesting that Vice President Pence is quietly readying a White House bid for 2020, should President Trump be unavailable; and the president’s rock-bottom approval ratings, despite a decent economy and an unemployment rate at 4.3 percent.

Perhaps most alarming for Team Trump, last week brought news that special counsel Robert Mueller has convened a grand jury in Washington, D.C., to investigate the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia during the 2016 election, and subpoenas have started going out.

A grand jury was an inevitable and logical next step. But there’s nonetheless an unavoidable sense that the noose is tightening. The president, meanwhile, is reduced to holding rallies in the friendliest of territories to prop up his fragile ego.

Congress is now in recess for the summer, having left town without delivering any major legislative victories for the new president. When it returns, GOP leaders are promising to tackle an overhaul of the tax system, a task no less complicated or daunting than health care. Soon, the midterm election season will be upon us, and Congress

will be more interested in self-preservation than in passing controversial legislation at the behest of an unpopular president.

In other words, if you thought that first two hundred days were a godawful muddle, just wait; it’s not going to get any easier for

Trump. And if Democrats retake the House in 2018—a distinct possibility—the president can expect to be mired in investigations into Russia and God knows what else, all leading into 2020.

All of which is to say, Trump’s window for effecting big, lasting change is closing, and he’s done precious little with it.

The resistance, those who took to the streets and besieged senators with angry phone calls, succeeded. The question now is whether progressives can keep their feet on the administration’s throat and turn anger and action in the first half of 2017 into victories over the next fifteen months—and just as important, whether they can recruit and fund and propel a next generation of progressives into elected office.

That I’m less sure of.

People voting against Trump may be enough for Democrats to succeed. That’s how Republicans gained power, by being against Obama and then against Clinton, not on the strength of their own agenda. But as Republicans are learning, if you want to stay in power, and if you want to get things done, you need to give voters something to support, a proactive agenda. And you need to develop a new, inspiring generation of leaders to champion it.

The Dems’ recently unveiled “Better Deal” agenda marks a turn toward economic populism (antitrust regulations, $1 trillion for infrastructure, $15-an-hour minimum wage), a naked appeal to the suburban and Rust Belt whites who supposedly abandoned the Dems for Trump because they were “economically anxious.” It’s also a recycling of shopworn, incremental-minded Democratic policy ideas from the last twenty years—hardly exciting stuff.

Then there’s the question of who’s going to be selling it. Barack Obama was a singularly talented politician, but under his presidency the Democratic bench was eviscerated.

Democrats lost statehouses all over the country, including in North Carolina, where our recently elected moderate Democratic governor’s power is checked by the legislature’s Republican supermajority.

Even as the progressive movement continues to resist a flailing Trump agenda, it needs to also focus on the state and local levels. In the Triangle, there are a number of smart, engaging progressives worthy of promotion: Wake County commissioners Jessica Holmes, John Burns, and Matt Calabria, as well as Durham City Council member Jillian Johnson come to mind. (There are certainly others.)

The point is, after Trump’s inevitable collapse, progressives must have the infrastructure, ideas, and leaders in place to pick up the pieces and move forward. And that work should begin now. As the saying goes, you don’t beat something with nothing. jbillman@indyweek.com

INDYweek.com | 8.9.17 | 11

MR. PIPKINS’S

NEIGHBORHOOD

12 | 8.9.17 | INDYweek.com

Puppet genius Jeghetto bequeaths fantastical creatures and Afrofuturist themes to national TV and local kids

I

BY BRIAN HOWE PHOTOS BY ALEX BOERNER

t’s unlikely that any of the children who were there, not to mention their adult minders, will ever forget the day the monsters came to life at the Chapel Hill Public Library, as if they’d crawled out of the stiff pages of the picture books, suddenly inhabited by a strange, sinuous soul.

As futuristic music and a vocoder voice-over begin to weave a tale of time travel and brotherly love, two robots, one big and one small, converge upon a silver time machine at the center of a black-draped table. The time machine is a cardboard box; the robots are made of skeletal, featureless wood. At rest, they look more like poseable anatomy models than finished puppets. But they spring to life the instant they start moving, and not in the broad way of the world’s most famous puppets, the Muppets. They don’t caper or pratfall. Their motions are exquisitely deliberate, expressing subtle gestures in their prodigiously jointed frames. Though the theme is sci-fi, the theater is classical—its slowness has echoes of Japanese Noh, while the visibility of the puppeteers harks back to bunraku. The children are so enthralled by the robots that they hardly notice the boy and the man, dressed all in black, who stand silently behind the table, manipulating the marionettes with strings.

The boy is Tarin Pipkins, a nine-year-old puppeteer. The man is his father, Tarish Pipkins, who is forty-five but looks much younger. He says that when a puppeteer reaches a certain skill level, he can vanish in plain view. Pipkins’s unassuming demeanor serves this cause—his calm, quiet way of speaking and his deep, warm laugh, which slowly rumbles up his slim frame. But his laid-back personality belies his confidence and drive: this is someone who makes connections, follows through, and gets things done, qualities that don’t always come along with such outsize artistic inspiration.

Pipkins is also able to disappear because the puppets he builds and controls as Jeghetto—a self-styled hip-hop Geppetto, the creator-father of Pinocchio—are so awesome. The effortless way he makes a finely articulated sea serpent ripple through the air turns a library activity room into the ocean floor. His pièce de résistance, a thighhigh Tyrannosaurus rex, strides with more bouncing weight and ferocious grace than anything in Jurassic Park.

The children sitting on the floor murmur and jockey for position during the robot section of the show, which is called Time Machine. But the entrance of the T. rex raises the pitch in the room to something bordering on anarchy. None of them seem afraid as the dinosaur approaches them and lifts its head to unleash a mighty roar. They reach out to pet it as the back rows start to surge forward, though a few kids lose their nerve when they get too close.

In this modest setting, you wouldn’t guess that Pipkins has reached the upper echelon of his profession. But he knows it, and says so with the earned assurance of someone who has gone from barbering and busking to working with Chapel Hill’s Paperhand Puppet Intervention; from there to national TV alongside the likes of Missy Elliott, Pharrell Williams, Steve Harvey, and Alec Baldwin; and onward, earning a Jim Henson Foundation grant to develop 5P1N0K10, his hip-hopera with The Beast bandleader and Durham mayoral candidate Pierce Freelon.

“I can always improve on it,” Pipkins says of his puppetry. “But I think there’s a level where you can only be so good at something, and I think I’m in that group. My fans call me a master, so I’m going to go ahead and go with that.”

Pipkins can say things like this without sounding cocky both because he’s so good and because he says it so quietly. He created his artistry from scratch, the evidence right there in his puppets, which are made from recycled materials, delicately wrought but left raw and open to show the magic of their jointure, where the uncanny illusion of life resides. But even as Pipkins’s genius gains rightful recognition on the national landscape, his most important work is still passing it along, charged with an Afrocentric perspective that stands out in his field, to a generation of kids who can see themselves in it more fully than they can in either hiphop or Sesame Street alone.

A mighty roar: Tarish "Jeghetto" Pipkins controls his T. rex.

INDYweek.com | 8.9.17 | 13

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I

t’s 1981, and nine-year-old Tarish Pipkins is collecting discarded popsicle sticks off the street to fashion into arrows. He and his friends are going to shoot them at one another using straws and rubber bands for bows. The sticks are plentiful; an ice cream truck passes through his neighborhood in Clairton, Pennsylvania, a steel-mill town south of Pittsburgh.

The mill is right across the street from the housing project where Pipkins lives with his mother. Across an ocean of parking lot, he can see the smokestacks in the distance, the Monongahela River lost somewhere behind them.

“I was always creating, as young as I can remember,” Pipkins says, recalling that game of bows and arrows. He also recalls a fourth-grade substitute teacher offering to buy a picture of a condor he drew, though he kept it for his mom. “My friends always came to me when we needed something made. I wouldn’t trade my childhood for anything. We had a lot of fun.”

But by the end of Pipkins’s teens, Big Steel had left Clairton, eviscerating its economy, and gangs had filled the void. He was never involved with them, he says, but they profoundly affected him.

“I’ve seen from when everybody had money to nothing,” he says. “I’ve seen the crack epidemic forced onto our community, people getting turned out. Wakes and funerals became a big part of my life, to the point where I got burned out on them. But back then, people looked out for each other.

My grandmother lived in the next building, I had an aunt that retired from the mill and moved in. We had community—resources between each other.”

As early as high school, when he moved to Pittsburgh, Pipkins was a neighborhood barber in high demand. No one showed him how to cut hair. He just looked at it and figured it out. He was also an emcee and a spoken-word performer, and his puppetry would flower from those complementary impulses for craft and storytelling. In his early twenties, he fell in with Bridge Spotters, an artist collective in Pittsburgh, and started performing in its freewheeling events. He met his future wife, Robin Brown, at one, and created his first puppet, around 2004, to emcee a poetry event.

“I used to do these wire sculptures— make a shape, twist it around until I got forms,” he says. “I called it 3-D scribble. My first puppet was made of the twisted wire body, a marionette about two and a half feet tall. I just put clothes on it. That was a hit.

People took to it; they laughed.”

A restless artist, Pipkins found in puppetry a way to integrate all his abilities, galvanized by two events: seeing Being John

Malkovich and meeting Fred Rogers, better known to several generations as Mr. Rogers.

First, a neighbor in the artist loft where Pipkins lived gave him a VHS tape of the Spike Jonze film, in which Pipkins discovered one part of his art’s appeal: spectacle.

“That opening scene, where the marionette is knocked off the dresser and did a front roll—I was like, I want to do that,” he says.

Then he got to meet Rogers at his Pittsburgh studio, where Pipkins was recording a live-painting performance with Bridge Spotters for public television. It was just a couple of months before the beloved children’s show host died. Rogers embodied the crucial element with which Pipkins holds spectacle in balance: heart.

“He was everything he is on the show, and more,” he says. “He just radiated love, that’s the only way I can explain it. Looking back on how he used puppets, it all came together: I can educate kids and do adult puppetry.

Back then, people would say, What do you do? I would say I’m a muralist, I do portraits, paint, draw, build. Now I can just say I’m a puppeteer, and their eyebrows go up.”

When Robin—now Robin Brown-Pipkins—got a job in the area through AmeriCorps in 2005, they moved to Carrboro.

That was when Pipkins began to take puppetry seriously, learning about things he’d already figured out on his own.

“My clients wouldn’t let me quit cutting hair, but when I moved here, I got to reinvent myself,” he says. “Nobody knew who I was. That gave me a lot more time to focus on puppetry and art, building and working with different materials—and the Internet was getting big, so that’s when I started doing research. I discovered that most puppeteers don’t build and perform their puppets, they do either-or. So I figured in that respect I was ahead of the game.”

I

t’s 2007, and thirty-five-year-old Tarish Pipkins is collecting discarded cardboard, wood, PVC, plastic, cloth, beads, marbles, and anything else he gets his hands on to build his increasingly elaborate marionettes. He busks with them at Spotted Dog, one of his two workplaces. He spreads his menagerie around the bench outside the flatiron-shaped restaurant—his T. rex, his lion, his dreadlocked cellists— and stops all kinds of passersby in their tracks. Street performance is showing him the universal appeal of puppets; even animals are drawn in.

“Basically, I was rehearsing in public and people were tipping me for it. My lion actually got his tail sniffed by a dog, and that’s when I knew I was that good,” he says with

Nine-year-old Tarin Pipkins practices with a robot puppet. Some of his homemade action figures can be seen at bottom left. a laugh. Word inevitably reached Donovan Zimmerman, who codirects Paperhand Puppet Intervention, a puppet theater institution known for spiritual and environmental themes, with Jan Burger.

“As the puppet guy, people kept asking me, Have you met Tarish?” Zimmerman says, zipping between projects amid the exuberant clutter of Paperhand’s workshop in Saxapahaw. One day, they happened to meet at The ArtsCenter, where Pipkins was working in the box office, and struck up a conversation he’d been eager to have.

The first Paperhand show Pipkins worked on was The Hungry Ghost in the winter of 2008, followed by the next winter’s puppet rock opera, Love and Robots. He contributed to his first summer show last

year in The Beautiful Beast, creating a lifesize wolf marionette made of ersatz bones and a caterpillar that required three people to operate. He portrayed the character Enkidu, wearing a great, furry head by Zimmerman. The pair also collaborates outside of Paperhand, touring a mask and puppet show for school groups and even going to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands to create a giant sea turtle, which they performed with in a Carnivale parade for kids.

Pipkins’s use of recycled materials fits with the ethos of Paperhand, an unconventional and eclectic company, as does his inclination to build each puppet with different forms and control mechanisms. Still, the raw finish and exposed joints, tied with fishing line or stereo wire, stand out from

the huge, smoothly painted puppets with which the theater is most identified.

“We’re always trying to present as much of the diversity of puppetry as possible— stilt walking and shadow puppetry and masks and giant puppets and rod puppets and painted flats,” Zimmerman says. “Tarish definitely brings his own unique style, but I think it blends beautifully.”

For current show Of Wings and Feet (see sidebar), one of Pipkins’s creations is the snake-stomping Secretary Bird, a handand-rod puppet fully in his own style. He controls the legs, Zimmerman the head and body.

“I don’t even have the skill set he has with tying together the fishing line,” Zimmerman says. “I’d get frustrated. But there’s a

natural ease to Tarish, he’s got a really even keel. He sits there and ties those little knots and cuts little pieces of wood and PVC until it works. Sometimes, when I see him starting something, it’s so different than how I would start that I have to throw my hands in the air, like, it’s going to be amazing, but I have no idea what you’re doing right now.

He just engineers on the fly.”

Pipkins’s puppets don’t begin with a blueprint, even in his head.

“Plain and simple, the word just pops into my head,” he says. “T. rex, lion. I approach all my art the same—when I paint, I don’t sketch it out first, I just go right into the shapes and the shading. With the T. rex, I built his mouth first to get the scale, then extended the spine from the mouth, then INDYweek.com | 8.9.17 | 15

Jeghetto demonstrates his lion marionette for children at the Chapel Hill Public Library. down to the legs. It creates itself, and I don’t know how it’s going to come out.”

At first he used recycled material simply because it was available, but with time, necessity became an aesthetic—one that simulates life through movement instead of surface.

“I like the raw look. I like to show the mechanics,” he says. “I leave parts open because I’m more into the movement than the cosmetic stuff. I can sit and make a beautiful puppet, but I like abstract puppets that are so fluent that it fools people.

People use steel bolts and screws, but fishing line is my secret. It falls into motion with the loose connections, and I think that’s the advantage I have. It’s the flexibility of a rigid material that pulls it into that uncanny valley.”

If Pipkins brings a high level of technical ability to Paperhand, for which he is paid as a commissioned builder, he also brings a perspective that puppetry in general is short on, as demonstrated by his work on the massive Resistance Goddess puppet.

“Jan sculpted the face and one of the 16 | 8.9.17 | INDYweek.com

interns made the hands,” Zimmerman says.

“But Tarish painted it and realized the hair.

He got really excited about that, because he’s a great barber. And the character is African American. We wanted him to take it on and make it his own.”

Pipkins says he considers Zimmerman a mentor. He also predicts that Zimmerman would swat away the compliment, which is true. He has to be nudged to admit that Paperhand has had any impact on Pipkins’s preternatural aptitude.

“When we first met him, he was making these twisted wire things that were awesome. But I’ve definitely watched his puppets get more sophisticated,” Zimmerman concedes. “He just solves problems with these visual elements. I think he’s gotten more into cardboard since working with us—we’re cardboard cowboys.”

“Donovan exposed me to how a puppet theater is run,” Pipkins says. “After working with them for a few years, it was time for me to have my own show, which debuted at the Nasher and was huge.”

That was 5P1N0K10 (it rhymes with

Pinocchio), the hip-hopera Pipkins created with Pierce Freelon, the emcee of Durham jazz-rap band The Beast. After two performances at the Nasher in 2015 and one at an African-American sci-fi expo in Atlanta last year, it earned the pair a Jim Henson Foundation grant to develop the show.

Like everyone who first met Pipkins as Jeghetto, Freelon will never forget it. He was showing a visiting Syrian-American hip-hop artist, Omar Offendum, around Durham before they shared a bill at Duke Coffeehouse that night. They stopped at a maker’s market beside Motorco, where Freelon noticed a man performing music with what looked like a child in his lap. Perplexed, he moved closer. It took him a few moments to realize it wasn’t a child but a puppet, playing a violin scaled like a cello.

“I was just blown away. I had never seen anything like it,” Freelon says. “It had cardboard dreadlocks. It was beautiful and bizarre and awesome. I took his card and I was like, Bro, we’re going to collaborate one day. He came to our show that night and brought this b-boy puppet, and it was the

live-est show ever.”

When Freelon left the Chapel Hill location of Blackspace, the multidisciplinary youth arts collective he founded, to start a tech-focused second outpost in Durham last year, he hired Pipkins to be the creative director in Chapel Hill. Pipkins had been talking to Freelon about the video-andpuppet show 5P1N0K10 since they met.

“It confronts urban issues, police brutality, and asks questions like, What is humanity? What are human rights?” Pipkins says. Blackspace’s annual children’s show at the Nasher seemed like the perfect chance to debut it.

“Blackspace’s whole ethos is couched in Afrofuturism, and Jeghetto by all means is an Afrofuturist,” Freelon says. “Like Sun Ra and George Clinton and Octavia Butler, he’s living on a different planet than the rest of us. He sees a pile of wood and cardboard and PVC pipes as bones and flesh and sinew, and he crafts it into something I didn’t realize wasn’t human at first.

In 5P1N0K10, we’re talking about a b-boy robot that wants to be human at a time when ‘black lives matter’ is a sentence that needs to be uttered for people to take seriously our full humanity, and us trying to claim our own humanity through hip-hop.”

While Pipkins’s puppetry speaks to all children, it is especially relatable to African-American kids who have hip-hop and black progressivism as a lingua franca.

Some of the art students at Blackspace made in response to 5P1N0K10 was integrated into the second Nasher performance.

“These puppets, a lot of them are black,” Freelon says. “They have locks, cowrie shells for eyes. They’re rapping and telling stories in verse. They move like we move, look like we look, talk like we talk. You’re not necessarily going to see that on The Muppet Show or even at Paperhand. That fluency is what’s familiar.”

One young woman in a Blackspace “woke-shop” wrote a response poem about how society treats black bodies. “‘They acting like we puppets, they acting like we nothing,’” Freelon spits intensely, remembering. “With all of his authenticity and grounding in Pan-African black culture, there’s surprising familiarity after you get over the shock. Like, oh, this is as old as my ancestors. It really is about storytelling, and we’ve been doing that for a hot minute.”

Pipkins has also used his puppets as an educator for children with special needs, a role he held at Just Right Academy in Chapel Hill for six years until June.

“He is able to communicate with children on the autism spectrum that are otherwise nonverbal,” Freelon says. “They talk to his puppets. He’s a genius. He’s a magician.”

5

P1N0K10 has an episodic format, supplemented by a comic book of which one issue has been printed so far. With the Henson grant, Pipkins and Freelon hope to add episodes and branch out into videos, performances, perhaps even video games. They opened for rap legends Camp Lo in April, which ties into another realm where Pipkins is spreading his art: mainstream music videos and TV. In 2015, Terry Davis, aka Izza Kizza, an old friend from Pittsburgh hip-hop circles whom Pipkins hadn’t talked to in years, called him out of the blue.

“Long story short, he said, man, I’m signed with Timbaland and I know Missy Elliott, and she wants puppets in her next video,” Pipkins recalls. “He calls me on three-way with her, I’m talking to Missy while I’m at work.”

At first, nothing came of the meeting.

The producers of “WTF (Where They From),” by Elliott and Pharrell Williams, opted to hire a top plastic-molding shop to create the puppets for the video. According to Pipkins, they auditioned puppeteers in the L.A. area but couldn’t find anyone who could make them move the way they want-

ed them to. That’s when he got another call and was flown out to L.A., where he worked with a Jamaican puppeteer named Richard Atkinson to salvage the concept.

“When I met the puppets, I was like, They’re too tight, they need to be loosened up,” he says. “I’m telling this to Missy. For ten days we would come to the studio, and I learned a lot from her work ethic. She was first to be there and the last to leave, always on it. We went back to the studio and I took the puppet apart, rebuilt the torso, cut a quarter-inch off the thigh. Rich was working on making them dance. In an article, the director said I saved the puppet aspect; they were about to scrap it.”

Pipkins wound up manipulating the Pharrell puppet in the video, which led him to an Amazon Echo commercial with Elliott and Alec Baldwin as well as an appearance working the Pharrell puppet again—offscreen, though his hand once dropped into frame—on The Voice.

“The set design was crazy,” Pipkins says.

“Riding around in golf carts in Universal Studios, a whole hangar of just wardrobe.

Pharrell’s super awesome in person, too. He has that Mr. Rogers energy, mad cool.”

CONFIDENCE GAME Some performances begin with indications of just how confident the artists are.

A magician rolls both sleeves up before a sleight-of-hand routine; a conventional theater leaves the proscenium and border curtains pulled back, exposing the stage, lighting rig, and wings. In both cases, the performers are signaling that they don’t need the crutch of a hidden superstructure to achieve their effects. Even with the artifice stripped bare, they’ll still overcome our disbelief.

Paperhand Puppet Intervention starts Of Wings and Feet, its eighteenth-annual summer show, in just this way. One by one, a small, multigenerational group of performers dressed in basic black walk onto the Forest Theatre stage, just plain folks who acknowledge one another before gathering around a green footlocker at center stage. Inside, the group discovers and then dons lifelike papiermâché bird masks. Their body language and gestures subtly change until we’re no longer in the presence of humans—or birds, for that matter—but some strange amalgam of both.

With whimsy and gravitas, company cofounders Donovan Zimmerman and Jan Burger look at modern American culture through an avian eye in the opening section, “Learning to Fly.” The vivid procession includes herons and terns, vain flamingos and purposeful pigeons in power suits. (All movement stops the moment one pauses to take a selfie.) The changelings from the opening, strangers in a strange land, try to make sense of these and other odd behaviors before imaginative engineer Chris Carter ultimately gives them flight.

Paperhand’s trademark political advocacy is evident in the second section, as a ragtag old-time circus troupe stages a slapstick sideshow celebrating dubious achievements including the taming of the wild and the marriage of big business and democracy. The activism continues in the final portion, as multistory, stagewide puppets portray air, waters, and land threatened by overdevelopment and pollution, before the rise of resistance—a convincing story, gently told.

—Byron Woods

OF WINGS AND FEET

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Pipkins’s skill as a builder is such that it can overshadow his separate but complementary skill as a puppeteer, but not to people like Hobey Ford.

“He’s intuitive at both of them, and you can tell right off the bat,” says Ford, an Asheville-based puppet artist Pipkins befriended at a festival several years ago. “You either have that or you don’t.

The way he’s building puppets, they’re so mechanical that the two are sort of combined. As you’re working with one, you figure out the other.”

Ford, who has four decades of experience and several Henson grants and major industry awards, is about as accomplished as a puppeteer can be. He also has a knack for both building and performing, though he came to it differently than Pipkins did.

At art school in New York, Ford met Bill Baird, who performed the famous puppet sequence for “The Lonely Goatherd” in the movie version of The Sound of Music.

After receiving some guidance from Baird, who knew Ford’s grandfather, he eventually moved to North Carolina and apprenticed with Clyde Hollifield, who toured his Appalachian Puppet Theatre across the country.

“I saw Tarish’s marionettes constructed out of laminated pieces of wood,” Ford says.

“I liked, first of all, that he was not really derivative of anyone else. He got his own ideas and developed them to fruition, and they function really well. You can see the engineering built into the puppet, there’s nothing hidden. His puppets are pretty sophisticated, while a lot of people come at it from a hand-puppets, Muppets style, which doesn’t require the same technical skill set. When I got started, I wanted nothing more than to emulate the work that I liked, and in a couple of years I got my own inspirations and didn’t need to copy.”

Pipkins, more or less, did that in reverse, beginning with his inspirations and then assimilating other influences, so his own vision stays fixed at the core.

I

t’s 2017, and nine-year-old Tarin Pipkins is collecting discarded materials from around his home, in a cozily wooded suburb on the edge of Chapel Hill, to build his own action figures.

He tapes unidentifiable bits of multicolored plastic (is that a toothbrush?) into an undeniably humanoid form. He wraps woolly orange yarn around a body of twisted wire. He makes his own puppets, too. He’s often up before anyone else on Saturday mornings, with his glue gun, his wire and cardboard, and old puppet parts his dad gives him. He’s not a child who needs to be bought toys.

Tarish Pipkins has just come inside 18 | 8.9.17 | INDYweek.com

Pipkins in one of his favorite places: the hardware store from his new workshop in the garden, a shed in which a realistic-looking businessman and a firefighter, both African American, hang on a fresh particleboard wall beside a detailed robot. The Steve Harvey Show bought him the shed after he and Robin recently appeared on the penultimate episode, in a comedic segment called “I Love My Man But …,” before Harvey moved on to a new venture.

“My wife went behind my back and emailed the show,” Pipkins explains.

“She wrote in that I love my man but he’s obsessed with puppets. [Harvey] was like, Since you have puppets all over the house, you need your own space.”

Pipkins is about to fly to Pittsburgh to paint a mural at the August Wilson Center, then to Minneapolis to teach a workshop at an African-American puppet festival next month. But today, he settles down for a moment on the couch where Tarin is sitting, shy but watchful. Noa Rayne, who’ll be four in a week, wiggles in Pipkins’s lap, while fourteen-year-old Divine plays an Uncharted game on a massive projection screen. Meanwhile, Robin tends to the edges of her nest like her namesake.

“I guess you could say I’m the family manager,” she says. “I manage Tarish’s back-end stuff. I also do freelance web

design and just got into photography, taking pictures of newborns, and started a blog called Wear in the Triangle, because Tarish and I are both creatives trying to connect the Triangle through handmade indie and vintage fashions.”

“She’s also a visual artist, she does fabric art, she makes jewelry,” Pipkins chimes in.

“And she’s an ex-model, beautiful.”

“Tarish,” she chides, with a soft laugh.

A family with this much talent certainly needs a manager. Divine used to sing with the North Carolina Boys Choir and is now an actor with representation; he was recently in a Wake Media Films feature called There’s My Angel. He’s always thought his dad’s puppetry was cool but was never drawn to try it himself, and Pipkins never pushed him to.

Tarin, though, is another story. He says he remembers seeing his dad perform in Love and Robots when he was three.

“I had Tarin on my lap, and I’ve never seen a child sit still for that long,” Robin says. “He was mesmerized.”

“He was totally fixated the whole time,” Pipkins says. “It was real cute. I had made him a robot suit out of cardboard and the hosing you get out of the back of the dryer, a hat with lights in it and a heart that lit up.

We got a DVD, and he would reenact the

whole show in the living room with toys and puppets. He knew it line for line. I was like, wow, he’s really into this, and I started making him puppets. Then he started making his own.”

Tarin made his informal debut at Artsplosure in Raleigh when he was five.

Pipkins was performing with his cellist puppet, which also comes in a smaller version. He looked down and Tarin had pulled up a chair beside him with the small one, playing along. In the last year or so, he’s been performing with his dad officially, at library gigs and street performances.

“I didn’t pull him in; he jumped in,” Pipkins says. “If he asks for help, I’ll help him, but I deliberately pulled back and let him develop his own style. I’ll give him a puppet I think works one way and he’ll string it a completely different way, and I’m like, wow, I never though of that.”

“Dad kind of helped me figure out how to make them walk,” Tarin says, with a nineyear-old’s instinctive equivocation. “I kind of enjoy performing, but the first time I was really nervous.”

But there’s no equivocation when he’s asked if he’s just having fun or wants to be a puppeteer like his dad when he grows up.

“I want to be like my dad,” he replies. bhowe@indyweek.com

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INDYweek.com | 8.9.17 | 19

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BREWERY BHAVANA

218 South Blount Street, Raleigh www.brewerybhavana.com

Full Flower

RESTAURANT, BOOKSTORE, FLOWER SHOP—RALEIGH’S BHAVANA IS SO MUCH MORE THAN A BREWERY

BY EMMA LAPERRUQUE The space at Brewery Bhavana is a mix of light and dark, with a bar, bookstore, flower shop, and dining room. PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

W

e slurp soup dumplings between bookshelves and fig trees. It’s Thursday, just past six. Through a skylight, the sun can be glimpsed, making its way toward sleep. It shimmers around the room, casting its light onto tulip vases and chili oil jars, beer glasses and bamboo steamers, and fingers dancing with chopsticks, slowly and closely, like a waltz.

Will you be near the fig trees, too? Or over there, past the sheer, ceiling-to-floor curtains, at one of the bar’s twenty-two seats? Maybe the other direction, at the family-reunion-size round table, beneath the chandelier-sculpture that sort of 20 | 8.9.17 | INDYweek.com

knocks the wind out of you. Maybe somewhere I never even saw. Brewery Bhavana is that big, both in its footprint and concept: a brewery, restaurant, bookstore, and flower shop.

Follow everyone inside and you might end up drinking fig beer next to that fig tree, or eating shrimp shumai with a borrowed copy of Goldfinger, or having a Tiki Old Fashioned or two and wondering, Wait, what fig tree? What books? It all depends on where you sit.

And that makes sense. Location tells a lot about Bhavana.

Take, for instance, its site in Raleigh—by

Moore Square Park, beside Bhavana cofounders Vansana and Vanvisa Nolintha’s first venture, Bida Manda, a Laotian restaurant that opened almost five years ago.

Bhavana opened five months ago and is already collecting accolades. Bon Appétit magazine just named it one of its fifty best new restaurants of the year, and it was the only restaurant in the state to make the list.

From the start, the most significant aspect of the Nolinthas’ approach was intimacy. Stop in for a bowl of pad Thai and you couldn’t swing a noodle without hitting Vansana or Vanvisa. And their staff,

many of whom have graduated into leaders at Bhavana, treated the place as if it were their own.

By expanding next door, the Nolinthas made it possible, somehow, to be in two places at once. On my second visit, Vansana floated by to refill water and said hello.

(We have met via work, though this meal’s nature was undisclosed.) When I began to introduce him to my partner, Vansana remembered not only who he was, but also where we sat and what we ate at Bida Manda almost two years ago. To the Nolinthas, this attention to detail is just basic hospitality. As they wander through the space, they seem to know everyone.

And by the time everyone leaves, they usually do.

You won’t find them behind the stove or bar. Bhavana’s third cofounder, Patrick Woodson, serves as head brewer, while beverage director Jordan Hester continues to bring the creativity he showed at Bida Manda. Executive chef Lon Bounsanga holds the same position at both places.

And Chun Shi joined the team as executive dim sum chef.

Bhavana’s menu is dim-sum-driven.

There are sixteen items under “A Little Something,” slightly fewer under “Something Larger.” Dim sum is often reduced to “Chinese tapas,” but this is comparable to calling tacos “Mexican sandwiches.” It’s more complicated than that.

Dim sum started along the Silk Road in China, where teahouses served small plates for travelers. Today, it’s a vital component of the vast cuisine. Visit any Chinatown across the States and you’ll find a dim sum restaurant where servers wheel carts around the dining room, inviting you to try this or that. The recipe canon is boundless.

This is why certain Chinese chefs, like Shi, specialize in it.

There are no carts here, so the menu will guide you. Between the dim sum, beer, cocktails, and flowers—you can order them right to your table—plus annotations from the staff, it’s almost twenty pages long. It includes a range of dumplings, buns, and egg rolls, as well as some stand-alones like crispy pig ears, steamed spareribs, and turnip cakes. You would be remiss (or vegetarian) to forgo the scallion pancakes, which double as blankets to bundle up marrowfatty oxtail.

Xiao long bao are especially cherished among dumpling lovers. Also known as soup dumplings, they’re filled with gelatinous broth and crimped like beggars’ purses. I’m told the number of crimps says a lot about the crimper. I counted almost twenty on each. Another steamed dumpling—less famous but as good—is the char siu bao. They’re little buns, light and fluffy as marshmallows, stuffed with Cantonesestyle barbecue pork.

All are served with a pitcher of dumpling sauce, but ask for chili oil, too. It is studded with Szechuan peppercorns, peanuts, and fermented bean curd, the sort of condiment you want to put on everything: dumplings and pork buns, scrambled eggs and spaghetti, bruises and bad days.

One way to make Bhavana’s initially overwhelming menu more approachable is to get one small plate and one large, say dumplings to start and fried rice as a main. The larger plates offer standard Western fare: fried rice, lo mein, Peking duck, steamed fish, and General Tso’s.

The execution exceeds expectations.

Fried rice is crammed with crab meat and shrouded in an egg crepe. The duck takes three days to prepare. Black bass arrives whole and wide-eyed, like you, served with a gingery scallion relish. And the Gener-

Clockwise from left: Brewery Bhavana’s crab fried rice, vegetable dumplings, steamed fish, congee, and soup dumplings PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER al Tso’s achieves its signature rusty color from, of all things, hibiscus.

This isn’t the only menu item to borrow inspiration from the flower shop. The core beers evoke the earth in name (Sow, Sprout,

Wilt) and flavor. Chamomile IPA is the first of a series, subtly floral and citrusy, like a lemon tree just beginning to bloom.

The menu currently includes ten core and ten provisional beers. You’ll find a

lot of IPAs, which makes sense with the food offerings. Hoppy, bitter beers flock to spicy, rich, umami-laden foods like a Leo to Sagittarius. And if bitter isn’t your thing, there’s a wide range of other options, including several saisons, fundamentals like American-style pale ale and summery, low-alcohol sour, and novelties like a mango peppercorn saison and chocolate rye stout. If twenty beers is intimidating to you—as it was, at first, to me—ask to sample any variety.

Indeed, Bhavana calls itself a brewery, but it is as much a restaurant, a bookstore, and a flower shop. Or Bhavana is none of those things—just as beer is and is not grain, hops, yeast, and water. Bhavana means cultivating in Sanskrit, which can only make me wonder, What exactly Bhavana and its patrons are cultivating?

It seems like more than egg rolls and IPAs, cookbooks and carnations, Bhavana wants to cultivate community, to grow our ideas of what gathering spaces could be. Like a tulip that you plant, water, and tend to, only to cut from the ground, transplant to a vase, and place on a table, so someone who sits there with some soup dumplings pauses, if only for a second, to say, “How beautiful.” food@indyweek.com

VALID ANYTIME

INDYweek.com | 8.9.17 | 21

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music

Heavy Heart

SCENES

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MAKE’S SPENCER LEE KEEPS EXPANDING UPON HIS BELOVED METAL FOUNDATIONS

BY DAVID FORD SMITH

C

hapel Hill post-metal monoliths MAKE can safely be categorized as lifers. After more than a decade of consistent releases and gloriously chaotic shows, it feels difficult to imagine a Triangle where guitarist Scott Endres, bassist Spencer Lee, and drummer Luke Herbst aren’t constantly tweaking their idiosyncratic doom metal machine.

The music has never felt constricted by genre limitations. On last year’s excellent Pilgrimage of Loathing, MAKE constructed plenty of bleak landscapes for doom fans to curl up in. It also reveled in inventive stoner sludge and post-rock ambience and other bits that hinted at influences beyond the band’s obvious heavy metal lineage.

Fittingly, Lee is doing a residency of improvisational music at The Cave each Wednesday this August, with a unique guest musician featured each week. This week’s iteration features Lee collaborating with Natural Causes’ Ian Rose. On a recent Thursday, Lee was happy to chat about the band’s performance philosophy, his thoughts on the Triangle’s music ecosystem, and chasing trends.

PERFOR

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TREND Spencer Lee performs an improvised set with Clark Blomquist, right, and Scott McConnell (not pictured) at The Cave in Chapel Hill. Lee’s weekly residency at The Cave extends through the end of the month. PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER

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SPENCER LEE

Wednesday, August 16, 9 p.m., $5 The Cave, Chapel Hill www.caverntavern.com

“I think we all have an innate compulsion to play music.”

SCENES

Like everything, they have upsides and downsides. The upside is that they create an easy way to share art and find your people. Especially within heavy metal, which has such a distinct aesthetic. To be able to spot someone out and be like, Oh, sick Sunn O))) shirt and relate to them is great.

When those scenes become insular, it can be hard for people to bring outside elements in or even disseminate the music beyond that scene.

The Triangle is a small place with an abnormally metropolitan mind-set for a place of its size, and I think there’s value to how the scenes here are set up. I think the vast majority of people like far more art than just their genre. As much as I like metal, if I could only listen to metal for the rest of my life, I would go crazy. We have played on bills with folk bands before and it’s been a great time.

PERFORMANCE

We have always wanted to create a performance experience that is in line with the emotion that we’re putting into the music as we’re writing. Meaning that when we’re playing, whether in the studio or in a live setting, the idea is to encompass what we are feeling and experiencing in our performance.

We try to make our art a communal experience to try to understand ourselves and make sense of what’s going on inside and around us. I can’t speak for everyone in the band, but I personally love playing live. I look forward to the catharsis of those moments quite a bit.

TRENDS

Trends can be exhausting, but I think a lot of it is unintentional. They can be equal parts fact and fiction. Many of them can be the byproduct of the media, a journal-

ist connecting a few dots. It might not be that every band is doing it. It might be that a band blows up and people are into them, so the writers want to find other bands that sound like them. It isn’t always a bad thing. Trends aren’t something we actively engage with or necessarily avoid either. We take a lot of influence from other artists and we wear that on our sleeve. In a genre like metal, there is a huge body of subgenres, and sometimes if you aren’t looking outside the umbrella genre of metal, things can get stale.

CARRBORO

My family moved to Durham when I was thirteen. From the day we got here until the time I was about to graduate from UNC, I was like, I have to get out of here, first opportunity.

That moment came and went, MAKE was already going and I was in another band called Systems, so I figured I would stick around. The more time I’ve spent here, the more I love it, and Carrboro as a town feels like my place in the Triangle. A few of my best buds are involved in the Nightlight circle. I’m working on getting out more.

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MOTIVATION

It’s definitely not financial. [laughs] We break even, not a lot of bands even have that opportunity. At this point, being able to make a record and have it pay for itself is the main thing we care about.

As long as we aren’t going totally broke doing it, awesome. Otherwise I think we all have an innate compulsion to play music. I know that the earliest photos of me as a toddler are with toy guitars.

It’s always naturally been what I’ve been drawn to. We love doing it, but also it feels like what we need to do to maintain our sanity.

music@indyweek.com

INDYweek.com | 8.9.17 | 23

music

SUPERCHUNK, WAXAHATCHEE, EX HEX

Saturday, August 12, 7 p.m., $18–$33 North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh www.ncartmuseum.org

Ear to the Grounds

AS THE NORTH CAROLINA MUSEUM OF ART HAS GROWN AND CHANGED, SO HAS ITS ESTEEMED SUMMER MUSIC SERIES

BY DAVID KLEIN Think of a great concert you’ve seen; it was in a club or a stadium or a theater, right? But last Monday, it’s safe to conjecture, somebody walked away from the amphitheater at the North Carolina Museum of Art, saying, “That was the best concert I ever saw.”

High art and pop music have only begun rubbing shoulders relatively recently. In 1964, when conservative pundit William F. Buckley sneered that the Beatles were “crowned heads of anti-music,” his assessment reflected a commonly held view among the general public and museum heads alike, that only certain types of artistic expression belong in museums. But the release of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band just three years later brought on a seismic shift, and pop music began to be viewed as art.

Last week’s appearance by Belle and Sebastian, a revered Scottish indie band that rarely tours, before a rapturous house at the NCMA, isn’t unprecedented. But that billing—and others featuring big names this season, like Jason Isbell and Superchunk— speaks both to the strength of the series’ reputation and its dynamic growth over twenty years, mirroring the direction that the museum is embracing as whole.

Much credit for the success of the NCMA’s concert series goes to George Holt, the director of performing arts and film, who has curated the series since it began in 1997. After a slow start, Holt has made a tradition of featuring acts loved just as passionately as last week’s stars (Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch, and Wilco among them) to play in the amphitheater that is his to fill—not only with music in summer, but with creative film programming in cooler months.

This year’s slate of shows by marquee names shows the extent to which the series has taken root. But when Holt came aboard, it was far from clear how to go about mixing museums and music. Holt says the museum itself lacked a clear vision about what a performing arts program would even look like, much less one on this scale.

“There is no other art museum in the U.S. that has a twenty-eight-hundred-to-three24 | 8.9.17 | INDYweek.com

George Holt watches the American Acoustic show, one of a handful of sold-out concerts at the North Carolina Museum of Art this year. PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER thousand-person capacity stage attached to it,” he says. “It’s a unique animal and there were really no roadmaps.”

Holt didn’t immediately upend things.

Initially, museum director Larry Wheeler gave him access to some tried-and-true performers, the stuff you would expect to encounter at a museum of art: the N.C. Symphony, the American Dance Festival with Bill T. Jones. But high art doesn’t necessarily fill seats.

“Great programs,” says Holt. “But they didn’t bring in a lot of money.”

At that point, Holt’s previous work organizing roots music festivals—one of the reasons he’d been brought in—kicked in. Knowing that the programming had to attract enough of an audience to support the series with ticket revenue, he went with what he knew.

Having served as director of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, a venerable event that still lights up the National Mall every summer, he knew something about putting bills together. More than that, the experience had

stoked his appreciation for indigenous art forms and the musicians he’d met in curating the festival, people from humble beginnings who didn’t even consider themselves artists but who were nonetheless fulfilling that role.

In short, the kind of artists and traditions that run deep in North Carolina.

His approach synced up perfectly with Wheeler’s vision for the growth of the museum. Wheeler was eager to counter the perception of the museum as an elitist institution. Knowing that bringing in crowds to take in popular music would benefit the museum as a whole, he gave Holt free rein to book the series as he saw fit. So instead of the symphony, Holt brought in Los Lobos—a critically acclaimed Tex-Mex institution and a rollicking party band. He booked The Connells, Raleigh-bred compatriots of R.E.M., and others more interested in making a joyful noise than a deep artistic statement.

The music’s growth has reflected that of the museum during the same period. Just as

the museum has actively sought out the work of artists of diverse backgrounds, the series has long echoed that sentiment, beginning with its Africa Fete 99. Just as the museum has made a commitment to exhibiting experimental and cutting-edge works, the music series has featured artists of a truly modern pedigree. And just as the museum has begun to bring in world-class exhibits from artists like Calder and da Vinci, the series has brought in acts with international followings, such as Sheryl Crow.

Holt says the museum’s programming and curatorial decisions down the line are undergirded by the notion that, in order to interest the next generation in art, you have to provide young people with a good experience at a museum.

With six sold-out shows so far this year and an ever-growing reputation within the music industry and among musicians, the series is at its peak. Still, despite all the success, Holt’s default setting is to operate as if this is the last year, taking every step to ensure that the current season is the best it can possibly be. Even so, Holt’s ultimate goal still isn’t simply selling out shows.

“It’s really nice when it happens, but our goal is to provide a really wonderful encounter with performers and artists that really deserve it, and hopefully broaden people’s perceptions a little bit—and not to lose money,” he says with a laugh.

Holt is quick to point out that the recent uptick in big names for the series is the result of various factors, including a partnership with Cat’s Cradle. He also admits there’s been some luck and serendipity involved in keeping the series tip-top. For example, this year, rather than North Carolina’s typical summer swelter, the temperate evening air has provided an ideal accompaniment for some magical musical moments.

The stars have all aligned this summer, but Holt remains cautiously optimistic about the future.

“Every year is going to vary,” he says, “but we hope we are on a new plateau.” dklein@indyweek.com

indystage E

nding sexual harassment in the improv-comedy world is more complicated than merely removing bad actors—and even the professionals in major metro areas aren’t much closer than we are to solving the problem. Those were among the urgent messages from a Chicago-based expert on sexual violence and activists who have witnessed its effects in Minneapolis at a gathering on Sunday of local comedy performers, producers, and supporters in Durham.

Seven regional comedy presenters, teachers, and companies cosponsored the forum, Yes and No: Allies in Comedy Assembly, after multiple women came forward last month alleging patterns of sexual misconduct and harassment at DSI Comedy Theater, a Chapel Hill-based comedy venue and training site. Owner Zach Ward, who was the focus of the allegations, has announced that the facility will close at the end of August, shuttering what had been one of the region’s premiere comedy clubs.

The gathering was an effort by those in the local improv scene to solicit outside expertise in moving forward.

But the professional comedy community has only begun to seriously address those problems within the last two years.

In scenarios similar to the one in North Carolina, comedians Bella Cosper and Beth Stelling came forward within days at the start of 2016 with separate allegations of sexual harassment and assault against practitioners in Chicago and Los Angeles. The firestorm of publicity sparked calls to boycott venues where women have been unsafe and spawned online clearinghouse initiatives such as womenincomedy.com and madfunnywomen.com. It’s led to major comics being banned from marquee venues in Los Angeles and New York.

It’s also forced major improv companies, venues, and schools across the country to institute strong antiharassment policies, many for the first time.

“We’re still learning how to do it,” Jill Bernard, founder of HUGE Improv Theater in Minneapolis, said at the forum Sunday.

“Our harassment policy is now posted on the wall in every classroom; so is what we call an ‘improv student bill of rights.’ When someone files a complaint, we investigate and take whatever action’s appropriate.”

But equally important are the practices

while a very small percentage of the general population are sexual predators, improv comedy gives them “a great place to hide.”

The comic culture of “Yes and ...”—saying yes to everybody’s ideas—“has a builtin trap to anyone who’s vulnerable,” Stern said. “Comedy’s already about pushing boundaries, raising the stakes. It’s an easy thing to exploit.”

Though there are no simple fixes, Stern cited recent research showing that permitting sexually demeaning comments or gestures led to a threefold increase in the likelihood of rape. When such remarks go unchallenged, predators take permission to have, and sometimes act on, those views.

Stern encouraged comics to “punch up and not punch down” in their work. “We can do great comedy without sacrificing the vulnerable at the altar of the laugh.” bwoods@indyweek.com

Inside Jokes

IN THE WAKE OF THE DSI SCANDAL, THE LOCAL IMPROV SCENE TAKES AIM AT A CULTURE THAT ENABLES SEXUAL MISCONDUCT

BY BYRON WOODS

THE VARSITY OPENS TO IMPROV COMEDY

Gail Stern PHOTO COURTESY OF CATHARSIS PRODUCTIONS instilled in students at the start of HUGE’s classes. Teachers clearly state what level of physical contact will be allowed and identify options each student has to immediately halt and address any scene work that violates established boundaries. Students “check in” at the start of classes and rehearsals about physical or personal issues that may be influencing their participation that day, and “check out” at the end.

Activist and teacher Gubby Kubik shared the physical and content boundary guidelines established by Fair Play Minnesota, a resource that emerged after the 2016 Chicago controversy. The words at the top of a sheet of recommended practices are unambiguous: “If it requires consent in the real world, it requires consent in the improv world.”

Keynote speaker Gail Stern noted that

The oldest movie theater on Franklin Street is opening its doors to another kind of entertainment starting August 12, aiming to fill the void left by the closure of DSI Comedy Theater.

The Varsity Theater, a landmark in Chapel Hill for more than fifty years, is slated to host Improv at the Varsity on Saturday nights, just in time for the return of UNC-Chapel Hill students and faculty for the fall semester.

According to Kit FitzSimons, a former DSI company member who is now the organizer and talent recruiter for Improv at the Varsity, the Triangle has a huge up-and-coming comedy community that still needs a home on Franklin.

“There are a lot of improvisers and comedians in the community who are taking this as an opportunity to selfstart, to make their own voices into their own shows, and to make possibilities around the Triangle that they wouldn’t have taken the time to make happen previously,” FitzSimons says.

Tickets for the shows are $5 and can be bought at the Varsity box office on the night of the show, which will start at 9:30 p.m. every Saturday.

—Aditi Dholakia INDYweek.com | 8.9.17 | 25

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WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK Dumpstaphunk PHOTO

BY JIM MIMNA

SATURDAY, AUGUST 12

DUMPSTAPHUNK

Keyboard player Ivan Neville has a pretty impressive pedigree. Not only does his family’s musical legacy go back to The Meters and The Neville Brothers, Ivan himself has been a member of the latter. But Dumpstaphunk, which has been in business since 2003, is his real passion project. The New Orleans-based band combines thick, sweaty funk grooves with a rocking side (they’ve been known to cover Zeppelin) and a tendency toward hot and heavy jamming. Dumpstaphunk’s sound has proven pliable enough to allow for collaborations with everyone from Flea to Ani DiFranco. And as the recent single “Justice” with guest Trombone Shorty makes clear, it’s more than just a party band—the music has a message, too. There’s always plenty of partying to be found whenever these Crescent City funkmeisters take the stage. —Jim Allen LINCOLN THEATRE, RALEIGH

9 p.m., $17, www.lincolntheatre.com 26 | 8.9.17 | INDYweek.com

THURSDAY, AUGUST 10–SUNDAY, AUGUST 20

MISS LULU BETT

What happens in the 1920s when a servant simply stops serving, and a spinster—an unmarried woman in her early thirties—elects to give her life a different spin? The intriguing historical comedy Miss Lulu Bett was a work ahead of its time, winning the first Pulitzer Prize for a female playwright in 1921 when Zona Gale adapted it from her own best-selling novel. One of its endings was so controversial that the playwright created a different one; we don’t know which version we’ll see at Walltown Children’s Theatre. Director NaTasha Thompson extends this barbed examination of power dynamics in relationships to include gender and race, in the final production of this year’s Women’s Theatre Festival. Kieya Reddish, Jim O’Brien, and Gerard Williams star. —Byron Woods WALLTOWN CHILDREN’S THEATRE, DURHAM

8 p.m. Thu.–Sat./3 p.m. Sun., $17–$20 www.womenstheatrefestival.com

SATURDAY, AUGUST 12

YOUNGER BROTHER PRODUCTIONS FIFTH-ANNIVERSARY PARTY

For five years, Craig Reed has used his Younger Brother Productions booking agency for plenty of one-off bills, but he’s also steered the long-running Local Band Local Beer series and developed the daylong Music in the Gardens mini-festival at Raleigh Little Theatre. To celebrate the anniversary of the enterprise, he’s put together another Pour House party.

Topping the bill is the Ghostt Bllonde, promising a potent dose of surfy, lo-fi tunes. There’s also Gray Young and Blanko Basnet, which both trade in complementary strains of cerebral rock music; where Raleigh’s Gray Young goes for brooding introspection, Durham’s Blanko Basnet veers toward a more airy approach. Kate Rhudy, who issued her debut LP, Rock ‘N’ Roll Ain’t For Me, earlier this summer, sticks out a bit from these rock-inclined dudes, but her tidy, folksy tunes will shine nonetheless. —Allison Hussey THE POUR HOUSE, RALEIGH

$7–$10, 8:30 p.m., www.thepourhousemusichall.com

8.

A Very So

THURSDAY, AUGUST 10–SUNDAY, AUGUST 13

N.C. GAY + LESBIAN FILM FESTIVAL

In our regressive political climate, having safe spaces to recognize and, better yet, celebrate queer culture is more important than it has been in years. The North Carolina Gay + Lesbian Film Festival, celebrating its twenty-second anniversary this year, aims to do just that, with a wide selection of fictional and nonfictional films centered around the lives and stories of gay, lesbian, transgender, and other queer-identifying individuals. Although the film industry has a long way to go regarding tragic tropes and closeted clichés, independent films made by queer people, for queer people, are introducing the world to the idea that queer people have lives, triumphs, and problems beyond those relating to their sexual or gender identity, just like everyone else. Pushing Dead, Russian Doll, and In a Heartbeat, among other films, chronicle the great, the good, the bad, and even the ugly parts of queer life through the ages, in ways that are relatable to anyone who identifies as queer, and sometimes even to allies of the LGBTQ+ community. —Aditi Dholakia

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CAROLINA THEATRE, DURHAM

Various times, $10–$85, www.carolinatheatre.org

WHAT ELSE SHOULD I DO?

THE ALLEN BOYS AT DURHAM CENTRAL PARK (P. 31), CHRISTER BERG AT BETTY RAY MCCAIN GALLERY (P. 35), MARY J. BLIGE AT RED HAT AMPHITHEATER (P. 29), CELEBRATING GEORGE BIRELINE AT LEE HANSLEY GALLERY (P. 33), FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM AT KOKA BOOTH AMPHITHEATRE (P. 36), THE SECRET GARDEN AT FLETCHER OPERA THEATER (P. 34), OF WINGS AND FEET AT FOREST THEATRE (P. 17), SPENCER LEE AT THE CAVE (P. 22)

YOUR WEEK. EVERY WEDNESDAY.

8.9–8.16

A Very Sordid Wedding is screening at the N.C. Gay + Lesbian Film Festival.

MUSIC•NEWS•ARTS•FOOD INDYWEEK.COM INDYweek.com | 8.9.17 | 27

s u p m a C e d i u G 11/18 CULTS ($19/$21)

8/9 THE MELVINS W/ SPOTLIGHTS ($20/$22)

5/25/18 PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT ($28/$31)

8/25 BE LOUD! '17 DRIVIN' N CRYIN', THE BACKSLIDERS, BOOM UNIT BRASS BAND ($25)

CAT'S CRADLE BACK ROOM

8/26 BE LOUD! '17 SPRESSIALS 'BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE PRESSURE BOYS' HEGE V, BILLY WARDEN AND THE FLOATING CHILDREN ($20) 9/1 ROKY ERICKSON W/ DEATH VALLEY GIRLS ($25/$28)

9/2 ELLIS DYSON & THE SHAMBLES ALBUM RELEASE PARTY ($10)

9/8 LAST PODCAST ON THE LEFT ($25/$28) 9/10 TANK AND THE SO BANGAS LD W/ SWEET CRUDE OUT 9/14 SWERVEDRIVER ($20)

9/16 ACLU BENEFIT: THE WHISKEY HONEYS, TOO MUCH FUN, CYRIL LANCE BAND, THE ALLEN BOYS, BUTCHER AND THE TIN MAN

8/9 SLAUGHTER BEACH, DOG W/ SHANNEN MOSER, DOWNHAUL ($10/$12) 8/10 WYATT EASTERLING ('DIVINING ROD" LP RELEASE PARTY) W/ ROD ABERNETHY ($15, SEATED SHOW)

SA 8/12 @NC MUSEUM OF ART AN EVENING WITH

MERGE RECORDS FEAT. WAXAHATCHEE

8/11 CRANK IT LOUD PRESENTS THE SECOND AFTER CD RELEASE PARTY W/ DEAR DESOLATE, SWING FIRST, BEAR WITH ME, FROM THE FALL ($10/$12)

10/13 WITT LOWRY W/ BO RANSOM

8/17 THE SEVEN DEADLY BIBS, DURHAM UKULELE ORCHESTRA, SHANE COOLEY & THE MIDNIGHT GIRLS ($8/$10)

10/15 THE NATIONAL PARKS W/ RIVVRS

8/18 BRICK + MORTAR W/ THE MOMS, LONNIE WALKER ($10/$12)

10/23 TREVOR SENSOR ($10/$12)

10/12 HOLLY BOWLING ($15/$17) 10/14 MATT POND PA W/ WILD PINK ($25/$28)

10/22 PICKWICK ($12/$15)

8/19 THE ROOSEVELTS W/ KATIE ROSE

10/24 JESSICA LEA MAYFIELD W/ BLANK RANGE ($15)

8/20 JAM ROC JAM SESSION: RAPSODY, HEATHER VICTORIA, ZOO CRU, THE MATERIALS ($10/$15)

10/25 THE ALTERNATE ROUTES W/ NICK FRADIANI

everything you need to know to get your semester started right

9/21 QUICKSAND W/ NO JOY ($20/$24) 9/22 UGLY GOD ($25/$28) 9/23 LIARS ($17/$19)

9/24 CARRBORO MUSIC FESTIVAL

8/22 DURAND JONES & THE INDICATIONS W/ TRIKE ($10/$12)

11/3 ALL THEM WITCHES W/ KING BUFFALO

11/4 THE HOTELIER W/ OSO OSO, ALEX NAPPING ($13/$15)

on stands now!

9/27 PSYCHEDELIC FURS W/ BASH & POP ($28/$30)

8/25 ALL GET OUT W/ RATBOYS, WILD PINK ($10/$12)

8/26 THE ORANGE COUNTY OPRY FT. PERFORMANCES BY LESTER COALBANKS & THE SEVEN SORROWS, JOHN HOWIE JR., BLUE CACTUS, THE APPLE CHILL CLOGGERS & MORE ($10)

9/29 PINBACK AUTUMN OF THE SERAPHS 10TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR 9/30 TIMEFLIES: TOO MUCH TO DREAM TOUR W/ DAWIN, LOOTE ($25/$28)

8/28 SHABAZZ PALACES W/ PORTER RAY ($17/$19)

10/2 RAC ($22/$25)

8/31 SAUL ZONANA

11/5 TERA MELOS W/ SPEEDY ORTIZ 11/11 ARKELLS ($15)

11/12 OVERCOATS ($10/$12) 11/13 DAVID BAZAN W/ MICHAEL NAU ($15)

12/1 ALLAN RAYMAN ($18/$20) 12/5 DAVID RAMIREZ: WE’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE ($15/$17)

10/4 CAMERON ESPOSITO AND RHEA BUTCHER: BACK2BACK $32.50 (SEATED SHOW)

9/1 THE OLD CEREMONY W/ BEAUTY WORLD ($10/$12)

10/7 LANY THE LANY TOUR PART 2 W/ DAGNY ($20/$23)

9/2 MCCAFFERTY AND REMO DRIVE W/ ALMOST PEOPLE ($10/$12)

12/6 THE MOUNTAIN GOATS

10/10 MURA MASA W/ JOEY PURP ($17/$20)

9/8 THE OBLATIONS CD RELEASE SHOW W/ DARK WATER RISING

11/25 ST. VINCENT

CAROLINA THEATRE (DUR) DPAC (DUR)

e d i u G s Campu indy week’s

10/12 TURNOVER W/ ELVIS DEPRESSEDLY, EMMA RUTH RUNDLE ($17/$20) 10/13 CHELSEA WOLFE** W/ YOUTH CODE ($20/$23)

9/13 FRANKIE ROSE W/ SUBURBAN LIVING ($10/$12)

9/14 JESS KLEIN AND DAVID WIMBISH ($10/$12)

10/14 RIVER WHYLESS ($14/$16)

MOTORCO (DUR)

9/12 BLACK JOE LEWIS & THE HONEYBEARS W/ LIGHTNIN MALCOLM ($15/$17)

11/4 BORIS “DEAR/25TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR” W/ MUTOID MAN, ENDON ($18/$20)

10/16 KALI UCHIS W/ PHONY PPL ($15/$18)

9/16 CRANK IT LOUD PRESENTS: JASON RICHARDSON W/THE REIGN OF KINDO, STOLAS ($13/$15)

10/20-21 YEP ROC 20 YEAR CELEBRATION ($14/$16)

9/17 CAAMP W/ DOC ROBINSON ($10/$12)

10/2 THE HEAD AND THE HEART W/ THE SHELTERS

10/24 TED LEO AND THE PHARMACISTS ($16/$18)

9/21 COLTER WALL AND TYLER CHILDERS ($12/$15)

LINCOLN THEATRE (RAL)

10/25 JOSH RITTER & THE ROYAL CITY BAND W/GOOD OLD WAR ($27.50; INCLUDES ALBUM DOWNLOAD)

9/22 STOP LIGHT OBSERVATIONS ($10/$12)

10/26 SAN FERMIN W/ GRACIE AND RACHEL ($15)

9/23 CMF KICKOFF EVENT URBAN SOIL (FREE SHOW)

9/24 CARRBORO MUSIC FESTIVAL HIP HOP SHOWCASE!

10/27 AMINE W/ TOWKIO ($22/$25) 10/29 GRYFFIN W/ AUTOGRAF (DJ SET), AYOKAY ($17/$20)

9/25 THE CRIBS ($18/$20)

RED HAT AMPH. (RAL)

8./26 DELTA RAE W/ THE CHURCH SITTERS

NC MUSEUM OF ART (RAL) 8/12 AN EVENING WITH MERGE RECORDS: SUPERCHUNK, WAXAHATCHEE, EX HEX 8/19 TIFT MERRITT AND FRIENDS W/ MC TAYLOR OF HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER, ERIC SLICK OF DR. DOG, ALEXANDRA SAUSER MONNING, AMY HELM, AND THE SUITCASE JUNKET

everything you need to know SYLVAN ESSO to get your semester started right 10/31 JR JR ($16/$18)

9/27 TOGETHER PANGEA W/DADDY ISSUES, LALA LALA ($12/$14)

11/3 JD MCPHERSON ($16/$18)

10/1 ELECTRIC SIX ($13/$15)

11/4 KNUCKLE PUCK W/ MOVEMENTS WITH CONFIDENCE, HOMESAFE

10/4 TROUT STEAK REVIVAL ($12/$15) 10/5 GREAT PEACOCK W/ THE HIGH DIVERS ($10)

HAW RIVER BALLROOM

10/7 MAX FROST ($12)

10/13 JULIEN BAKER ($16/$18)

10/10 BANDITOS W/CALEB CAUDLE ($10/$12)

10/20 EMILY SALIERS

11/7THE STRUMBELLAS W/ NOAH KAHAN ($22/$25)

SHAKORI HILLS COMM. ARTS CTR.

9/30

W/ TUNE-YARDS, WYE OAK, HELADO NEGRO & MORE

★ 300 E. MAIN STREET ★ CARRBORO on stands CATSCRADLE.COM ★ 919.967.9053now!

11/11 SAINT MOTEL ($22/$25) 11/12 LUNA W/ ELEANOR FRIEDBERGER ($20/$23) 11/14 COUSIN STIZZ W/SWOOSH, BIG LEANO ($15/$18)

**Asterisks denote advance tickets @ schoolkids records in raleigh & chapel hill order tix online at ticketfly.com ★ we serve carolina brewery beer on tap! ★ we are a non-smoking club

e d i u G s u Camp indy week’s

everything you need to know to get your semester started right

28 | 8.9.17 | INDYweek.com

on stands now!

us

indy week’s guide to everything you need

Your Week.

Every Wednesday. indyweek.com

music

8.9 – 8.16

FOR OUR COMPLETE COMMUNITY CALENDAR

CONTRIBUTORS: Jim Allen (JA), Timothy Bracy (TB), Grant Britt (GB), Charlie Burnett (CB), Kat Harding (KH), Allison Hussey (AH), David Klein (DK), Charles Morse (CM), David Ford Smith (DS), Patrick Wall (PW)

WWW.INDYWEEK.COM THURSDAY, AUGUST 10

MARY J. BLIGE

The opening track of Mary J. Blige’s 1992 debut record, What’s the 411?—recorded when the burgeoning R&B singer was all of twenty-one—consists of an unhurried beat, a winsome synth line, and a series of heavy industry hitters ranging from Puff Daddy to Biggie Smalls calling to bend the knee, beg her attention, and otherwise lavish her with the sort of adoration befitting ascendant royalty. Blige never bothers picking up the phone on “Leave a Message.” As befits a queen, she’ll engage with her subjects when the mood suits her.

So it has largely gone for the Bronx-born prodigy, a brilliant songwriter and vocalist whose run of classic albums throughout the nineties and early aughts provided a bridge between the beguiling Quiet Storm confections of Anita Baker and Chaka Khan and the harder-edged, hip-hop-infused emotional, full-court press of Destiny’s Child.

What’s the 411? placed the spotlight on Blige’s voice and uncanny acumen for choosing great material, prematurely situating her in the estimable lineage of Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra as vocal interpreters capable of making a merely good song into a legendary event. On her second proper album, 1994’s My Life, Blige turned inward, demonstrating her own songwriting chops on a profoundly confessional record that addressed her personal demons in a no-holds-barred emotional bloodletting.

From there, Blige continued to release a flurry of excellent material, ranging from the gauzy, Fugees-like neo-soul of 1997’s Share My World to the 2001 classic No More Drama, with its indelible, Sly-quoting ode to ice-in-the-veins cool, “Family Affair.” As her legend grew, so did her public profile. Blige ratified her effervescent star power through a successful acting career in roles ranging from an early stint on The Jamie Foxx Show to a memorable turn in the gleefully demented 2012 Hollywood musical Rock Star.

As she coasts into the quarter-century mark of her storied career, Blige has lost nothing of her singular talent or her hold on a mass audience. This year’s tough-minded Strength of a Woman was her most focused and ferocious work in years, resulting in a No. 3 Billboard showing and a raft of glowing critical appreciation. With her capacity to shed musical skins and remain steps ahead of the zeitgeist, there is no telling what she might accomplish in the future. Her subjects await. —Elizabeth Bracy RED HAT AMPHITHEATER, RALEIGH $87–$200, www.redhatamphitheater.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF LIVE NATION

WED, AUG 9 2ND WIND: Yeaux Katz; 7-9 p.m., free.

• CAT’S CRADLE: The Melvins, Spotlights; 9 p.m., $20–$22. • CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): Slaughter Beach, Dog, Shannen Moser and Downhaul; 8 p.m., $10–$12. • THE CAVE: August Residency: Spencer Lee; 9 p.m., $5. See page 22. • EMPRESS ROOM: Chris Keller; 7:30-10 p.m. • HUMBLE PIE: Sidecar Social Club; 8:30 p.m., free. • IRREGARDLESS: Mysti Mayhem; 6:30 p.m. • KINGS: Homeshake, Blueberry, Ignatius; 9 p.m., $12. • NC MUSEUM OF ART: Rhiannon Giddens; 8 p.m., $27–$45. • OLD MILBURNIE FARM: Olivia Rudeen and Madeleine; 6 a.m.-9 p.m., $20.

• THE PINHOOK: The Gotobeds, The Procedure Club; 9 p.m., $10. • POUR HOUSE: NC Spirit ‘17 Music Festival; 8:30 p.m. • RALEIGH CITY MARKET: Music on Market; 5-6:30 p.m. • RUBY DELUXE: RRRiot Rock with DNLTMS; 10 p.m. • THE STATION: Nanner Head, Del Rios, Phatlynx; 8 p.m., $7.

THU, AUG 10

Local Band Local Beer: Magma Opus

Wyatt Easterling

MORE This week’s LOCALS edition of Local Band Local Beer, which has quietly parted ways with WKNC, is headlined by the sometimes-hazy, sometimes-funky blues-rock of Raleigh’s Magma Opus.

Asheville duo Albert Adams brings a kinetic, frenetic brand of noise rock in the middle slot, and Helichopter opens. —CB [POUR HOUSE. $3–$5/9 P.M.]

SUPERB Wyatt Easterling SONGS celebrates his newest album, Divining Rod, with a seated show at the Cat’s Cradle Back Room.

Easterling has an interesting music industry history: a missed record deal eventually yielded to a publishing deal, and Easterling went on to serve a spell as head of A&R at Atlantic Records before owning his own publishing house. He knows good music and, even better, good songwriting. It shows through his soft, folky tunes and thought-provoking lyrics.

Featuring guest Rod Abernethy. —KH [CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM, $15/8 P.M.]

Parafilm ROCK On its Bandcamp STRAINS page, Parafilm aptly describes itself as “three dudes playing catchy rock outside of Chapel Hill.”

Brooklyn’s Big Bliss offers up moody post-punk that recalls

Interpol, while fellow Brooklynites Big Quiet brings summery indie pop with occasional surf-rock grooves.

Raleigh’s Fruit Snack round out the bill with lo-fi, no-frills indie rock. —CB [THE CAVE, $5/9 P.M.]

acid-techno purveyor Faster Detail and Carrboro’s Tegucigalpan. Live music starts at nine-thirty, but show up early for Ryan Martin’s deejaying between sets, which starts at nine.

—DS [NIGHTLIGHT, $7/9 P.M.]

Solid State Entity

ALSO ON THURSDAY

FUTURE The neuroscienFORCE tist and noted dolphin researcher John C. Lilly once theorized a “solid state entity,” an alien force that compels technological evolution with the ultimate goal of independence from human control. Naturally, raw, amorphous techno is Patrick Chaney’s specialty as Solid State Entity, which boasts an appropriately dystopian mood throughout.

Opening sounds come courtesy of Greensboro

2ND WIND: 2 fer; 7:30-9 p.m.

• BLUE NOTE GRILL: Doc Branch Band; 7-9 p.m. • DEEP SOUTH: Mike Garrigan, Zubris; 8:30 p.m., $5. • EMPRESS ROOM: Ricky Bugel; 7:30-10 p.m.

• IRREGARDLESS: Retro Candy; 6-9 p.m. • LINCOLN THEATRE: Badfish: Sublime Tribute; Treehouse; 8:30 p.m., $13.

• NEPTUNES PARLOUR: Zoocru; 10 p.m., $10–$12. • RED HAT AMPHITHEATER: Mary J. Blige, Lalah Hathaway; 7:30 p.m. See box, this page. • SLIM’S: Chimes at Midnight, 1970s Film Stock, Spookstina; 9 p.m., $5.

FRI, AUG 11 The Grass Is Dead NOT The Grass Is Dead?

QUITE Well, not really. The band offers a heavy dose of bluegrass, mostly Dead covers with a lot more jamming than you’re likely to find in most high and lonesome outfits. But outsiders get in occasionally. A typical set list may include a Deadly bluegrass take on Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” sandwiched between “Alabama Getaway” and “Sugaree.” With Brothers Egg. —GB [POUR HOUSE, $8–$10/9 P.M.]

Hunter Hayes COUNTRY Louisiana-born CROONER country sweetheart Hunter Hayes has a couple of No. 1 hits to his name, as well as INDYweek.com | 8.9.17 | 29

eroberts@indyweek.com a slew of CMT, BMI, and Teen Choice awards, and CMA and Grammy nominations. His music is the antidote to bro-country, and his sweet, earnest tunes might restore your faith in country music for a bit. Get there early to see up-and-comer Maggie Rose, a talented force with a classic voice. —KH [THE RITZ, $37.50/8 P.M.]

GUITAR LESSONS Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced - all ages

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Davy Knowles To advertise or feature a pet for adoption, please contact eroberts@indyweek.com

8/108/12 SA 9/9

TH 9/14

TH 9/28

FR 9/29

WAITING FOR GODOT PRESENTED BY ENO RIVER PLAYERS

TRANSACTORS IMPROV: FOR FAMILIES! BILL FRISELL: HARMONY

FT. PETRA HADEN, HANK ROBERTS & LUKE BERGMAN

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CO-PRESENTED WITH THE NATIONAL HUMANITIES CENTER SA 9/30

THE HOT AT NIGHTS & MATTHEW STEVENS

10/510/6 10/8

MANHATTAN SHORT FILM FESTIVAL

TH 10/12

THE JAMES HUNTER SIX BUSTER KEATON’S THE GENERAL

SA 10/14

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RECYCLE THIS PAPER 30 | 8.9.17 | INDYweek.com

YOUNG Growing up in the MASTER Isle of Man, Davy Knowles’s chief guitar influences were Mark Knopfler and Rory Gallagher. But Knowles also paid homage to Woody Guthrie’s “Pastures of Plenty” and Johnny Cash’s “Ain’t No Grave” on his first solo album, 2015’s The Outsider. His latest, last year’s Three Miles From Avalon, is a blues journey from the back alleys of Chicago to deep in the Delta. The twenty-seven-yearold plays with a depth and feel way beyond his years. —GB [BLUE NOTE GRILL, $15/9 P.M.]

The Lonely Biscuits SUMMER Poppy, psychedelic SONGS Nashville band The Lonely Biscuits is an interesting bunch. With alternative rock, reggae, and hip hop influences, the band is a smaller-font staple at many national festivals.

Blissfully chilled out, with sung-spoken lyrics, The Lonely Biscuits make for a great summertime show. Lairs open.

—KH [MOTORCO, $10–$12/9 P.M.]

The Second After OLD Durham’s The GLORY Second After doesn’t bother with trying to hide its ambitions. The band’s mallcore pop-punk strikes the same poses—right down to the bleating, nasal vocals—that made Warped Tour also-rans of Hawthorne Heights and Save the Lost Boys and A Simple Plan.

They’re thieves, sure, but at least they’re first-rate ones.

—PW [CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM, $10–$12/7 P.M.]

The Tan and Sober Gentlemen PUNK If you’re looking to GRASS? dance a jig and drink some whiskey, look no further than The Tan and Sober

Gentlemen, who combine punk, bluegrass, and Celtic music into a combination reminiscent of Flogging Molly and company.

It’s a striking combination that has the capacity to ruin a good pint of Guinness. Or would you drink an IPA at this show?

Tinderbox Circus Sideshow opens. —KH [LOCAL 506, $10/9 P.M.]

D.R.I.; Sunlord; Slugnut Reunion; 8:30 p.m., $15–$17. • NIGHTLIGHT: Local Hip Hop: Lebrown, Water Wingz, Zoomo; 9 p.m. • THE PINHOOK: Hawt Sauce: A Queer Dance Party; 10 p.m., $7–$20. • ROCK HARBOR GRILL: Bruce Clark Trio; 9 p.m.midnite, free. • RUBY DELUXE: Tavishi, Spookstina, De_Plata; 8 p.m. DJ DNLTMS; 10 p.m. • SHARP NINE GALLERY: Ernest Turner Trio; 8 p.m., $10–$20.

Umphrey’s McGee

SAT, AUG 12

WISE These MidwesternGUYS ers started out nearly twenty years ago as a proggy, jazzy jam band, but over the years their sound has evolved to incorporate everything from pop to alt rock.

As the band’s most recent album, Zonkey, proves, it’s also got a sharp enough sense of humor to fill an entire record with its homegrown mash-ups: Radiohead and Beck, Frank Zappa and Bob Marley, and so on. So whichever version of itself the band decides to show onstage at any given point, it’s bound to be worthy of attention.

With Aqueous. —JA [RED HAT AMPHITHEATER, $23–$67/6:30 P.M.]

Zomboy EDM English d.j. and TRENDS producer Joshua Mellody has carved out a unique niche in the glutted EDM market with his marriage of dubstep’s slow-burning dancehall sensibilities and the kitchen-sink approach of more obviously populist contemporaries like Skrillex. Most recently, he has been seen remixing songs for the execrable bro-losers Chainsmokers and mounting his own self-styled “Rott n’ Roll” tour. Here’s hoping his evident talent eventually overrides his questionable taste. Spag Heddy and Dr. Oz! open. —TB [LINCOLN THEATRE, $20–$25/9 P.M.]

Dim Delights DEE-LITE There’s are Birds of Avalon connections to Raleigh’s Dim Delights, some tangible and some tenuous: Each member of Dim Delights works for a member of Birds of Avalon, and both bands deploy a visual accompaniment to their music. But Dim Delights don’t take themselves too seriously. At a Halloween show, the trio burst open a piñata filled with blunt wraps and condoms. Neither does Coke Dares, who trade in strutting, hooky, minute-long power-pop blasts. The weed-loving Dinwiddies take the middle slot.

—PW [KINGS, $5/9 P.M.]

In the Valley Below BIG Echo Park’s In the WHOOP Valley Below isn’t particularly reminiscent of any band insofar as it’s reminiscent of every band. The duo’s noirish guy-girl electro-folk sounds kinda like The xx, kinda like Cold Cave, kinda like The Kills—OK, maybe a lot like The Kills.

Absent the vintage clothing shtick, the duo sits in a sort of Uncanny Valley, where the likeness is too great but too foreign to any real strong feelings at all. Flagship opens.

—PW [MOTORCO, $12–$15/9 P.M.]

ALSO ON FRIDAY

Eddie Money

618 BISTRO: Randy Reed; 7-9:30 p.m. • BEYÙ CAFFÈ: Akua Allright; 7 & 9 p.m., $16.50. • BLUE NOTE GRILL: Duke Street Dogs; 6-8 p.m., free. • BYNUM FRONT PORCH: Gospel Jubilators; 7-9 p.m. • THE CAVE: Roar the Engines, Eyeball; 9 p.m., $5. • DEEP SOUTH: The Fat Catz; 10:30 p.m. • DURHAM CENTRAL PARK: The Allen Boys; 6-8 p.m. See box, page 31. • IRREGARDLESS: Take Two with Jyl Clay; 6:30 p.m. • THE MAYWOOD:

TAKE HIM Born of the same HOME working-class, tristate origins as Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Money has long possessed the Boss’s everyman appeal, uncanny ear for ecstatic hooks, and fetishistic preoccupation with the early rock splendor of Phil Spector. While Money never experienced the geometric growth in ambition that made Springsteen an enduring legend,

FRIDAY, AUGUST 11

THE ALLEN BOYS

The Allen Boys PHOTO

Money’s signature hits “Take Me Home Tonight” and “Baby Hold On to Me” hold their own well-earned place as populist monuments of escapist rock.

—TB [KOKA BOOTH AMPHITHEATER, $25–$75/6 P.M.]

overlook the occasional unflattering digressions into nu metal tropes and ill-fitting, indulgent prog excess. Gringo and Michael Daughtry Band open. —TB [DEEP SOUTH, $7/9 P.M.]

Pauline Pisano

Hank Williams Jr., Lynyrd Skynyrd

TOUCH New York City OF TORI singer-songwriter Pauline Pisano has a lot going on, including side projects with a synth duo and a female trio, providing music classes to very young urbanites, and activism.

But her tenure as keyboardist in an annual Tori Amos tribute concert in Brooklyn is probably the most telling. Her various musical inclinations find expression on her upcoming LP, Inside the Wheel. —DK [CAFFE DRIADE, FREE/8 P.M.]

Veronica V RIFF A Raleigh-based ROCK five-piece featuring an aggressive, riff-heavy aesthetic and a nineties throwback sensibility, Veronica V features enough memorably anthemic choruses and agreeably shredding guitar solos on tunes like “Too Late” to

SOUTH Bolstered by “PRIDE” founding member Gary Rossington, Lynyrd Skynyrd are true survivors. With Ronnie Van Zant’s brother Johnny at the mic for the last thirty years, they’ve kept the Southern rock legend alive. They’re sharing the stage with another Southern icon, Hank Williams Jr., who once worked up a credible mix of outlaw country and rock ‘n’ roll before he eventually outed himself as a hard-right reactionary blowhard. —JA [COASTAL CREDIT UNION MUSIC PARK AT WALNUT CREEK, $89–$370/7 P.M.]

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

6-9 p.m. The Boulevard Ensemble; 9 p.m. • LINCOLN THEATRE: Dumpstaphunk; 9 p.m., $17. See page 26. • THE MAYWOOD: Apes with Fire, Meatbox, Sell Outs Inc.; 8 p.m., $10. • NC MUSEUM OF ART: Superchunk, Waxahatchee, Ex Hex; 7 p.m., $18–$33. See page 24.• NEUSE RIVER BREWING COMPANY: Sleepy Tom; 2-5 p.m. • NIGHTLIGHT: Pressure; 10 p.m.-2 a.m., $7. • POUR HOUSE: Ghostt Bllonde, Blanko Basnet, Gray Young, Kate Rhudy; 8:30 p.m., $7–$10. See page 26. • QUAIL RIDGE BOOKS: Coffin Pines; noon. • THE RITZ: Tesla, The Cringe, Voices of Extreme; 8 p.m. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ Luxe Posh; 10 p.m. • SHARP NINE GALLERY: Avante; 8 p.m., $10–$20. • SLIM’S: Suppressive Fire, Nemesis, Sadistic Ritual, Gates of Endor; 9 p.m., $5. • THE STATION: Blues and Barbecue: David Russell & The Port City Blues, Lee Gildersleeve & The Bad Dogs; 7 p.m., $6–$8. Jazz Saturdays; 2 p.m., free.

SUN, AUG 13

ALSO ON SATURDAY

Coma Kids

BEYÙ CAFFÈ: Russell Taylor; 7 & 9 p.m., $15. • THE CAVE: Jason Herring & The Mystery Plan, Winfield; 9 p.m., $5. • IMURJ: Love Like Ruby, The Dead Bedrooms; 9-11:30 p.m., $5–$10.

• IRREGARDLESS: Workbook;

WIDE Tallahassee trio AWAKE The Coma Kids combine a driving guitardrums-bass instrumental attack with the wailing vocals of Daniel Love and Mike Roy,

In the 1930s, Willie Easton brought a pedal steel and an electric guitar to his House of God church and swapped them with the church’s traditional organ. Since then, “sacred steel,” as it’s called, has become its own gospel niche. The music has hopped the fence into the secular world, too, popularized by disciples including the Campbell Brothers and Robert Randolph.

Mount Airy sacred steel quartet The Allen Boys bears witness to its faith in secular venues, but the presentation has a unique twist: bluegrass flavor seeps into some of the music.

Pedal steel player Dashawn Hickman grew up a fan of bluegrass, playing dobro in a bluegrass band and never losing his love for the genre. The band covers songs like “Rocky Top” straight-up, but gives some hymns a bluegrass makeover, too.

“We turn some of the old traditional Southern gospel songs, ‘I’ll Fly Away,’ ‘When the Saints Go Marching In,’ into a bluegrass type feel,” Hickman says.

The real mind-benders are the Michael Jackson covers, “Thriller” and “Black or White.”

But don’t look for the band to don zombie makeup or prance around surrounded by dancers.

“Its nothing choreographed,” Hickman says. recalling the rawer, less-sleek emo of the early aughts.

Carrboro’s Cosmic Punk use the same guitar-drums-bass setup, albeit for charming indie pop songs highlighted by the gliding vocals of Elayna Madden. —CB [THE CAVE, $5/9 P.M.]

Crete FREAK Raleigh’s Crete SHOW features some of Raleigh’s best punk players, comprising members of No Love, Whatever Brains, and Black Zinfandel. In Crete, the punks get weird, trading hard-and-fast hardcore for synthy, gothy post-punk.

Richmond’s VV gets weird, too, unleashing untamed noise-punk.

Winston-Salem’s Bolmongani drops spacey psych weird-andwildness. —PW [SLIM’S, $5/8 P.M.]

King Fresco RADIO Most North READY Carolina emcees focus on lyricism and heavy songwriting, but sometimes catchy music about smoking weed, getting money, and lousy exes does the trick.

“There’s not a whole lot of jumpin’ around, but we have fun with it.”

And The Allen Boys throw yet another curveball with songs like Tom Petty’s “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” Hickman explains that Petty was also an important part of his youth. He and his cousins—who are also his bandmates—all attended high school together and played football.

“Our coach was a Tom Petty fan, so every Friday night, during warm-ups, all we would hear was Tom Petty. I never knew nothing about the man, just knew he has some great-sounding music,” he says.

When it comes to performing, Hickman says the band has a “blanket trust” with the church and chooses secular venues carefully.

“You can’t limit yourself to who you go to.

Everybody might not be able to come to you, to the church. Take the church to them, just be true to who you are,” he says, adding, “Have fun in the process, but stay true to the message.”

—Grant Britt DURHAM CENTRAL PARK, DURHAM 6 p.m., free, www.durhamcentralpark.org

Enter King Fresco, a twentyfour-year-old rapper who embodies the sound of Wiz Khalifa from his Kush & OJ era, but with production geared toward current radio trends.

Fresco’s music is designed for pure fun in the club, so don’t look for anything groundbreaking, but expect to dance pretty hard. —CM [DEEP SOUTH, $7–$12/7 P.M.]

Lindsay Lou and the Flatbellys FINE FOLK Lindsay Lou leads a band of Americana musicians, bringing mostly upbeat and sweet sensations. All the usual suspects are here: gently strummed acoustic guitar, fiddle, standup bass, a fierce steel guitar, men with beards and buns, pleasant harmonized vocals, and a charming leading lady.

Lindsay and her band are talented songwriters, penning relatable lyrics and matching them with familiar folk sounds, for an altogether enjoyable listening experience. The Hill Country Cosmopolitans open. —KH [MOTORCO, $12–$15/8 P.M.]

Planned Parenthood Benefit Pt. II COME AS This second U ARE installment of a benefit in support of Planned Parenthood draws on Kings’ storied Cover-Up tradition with some incredible simulations of classic bands. Various talented crews will summon the righteous fury of Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age, and Pearl Jam in solidarity with women’s health care. —DK [KINGS, $10/4:30 P.M.] ALSO ON SUNDAY IRREGARDLESS: John William Carlson; 6 p.m. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ Rotisserie Gold; 10 p.m. • WEST END WINE BAR-DURHAM: Eric Meyer, Noah Sager & Friends; 4-6 p.m., free.

MON, AUG 14 The Beast GET In July, Durham WOKE hip-hop and jazz ensemble The Beast released Woke, its second LP in a decade-long career. It’s a sharp, polished record that deftly addresses inequality and social justice over clever, creative

INDYweek.com | 8.9.17 | 31

instrumentation. On Monday, the band holds court at N.C. State’s Music on the Lawn series, with Zoocrü opening.

—AH [NCSU’S HARRIS FIELD, FREE/5 P.M.]

rock, from the piano-laden melancholy of the Radioheadesque “Spirit” to the detached post-punk of “Mundane.” Easter Island takes the opening slot.

—CB [THE CAVE, $5/9 P.M.]

ALSO ON MONDAY

ALSO ON TUESDAY

BEYÙ CAFFÈ: Verses and Versus DJ Series; 6-9 p.m. • THE CAVE: As Shadows Collapse, Black River Township, Zestrah, Terra Sick; 8 p.m., $5. • EMPRESS ROOM: Gary Brunotte plays and sings from The Great American Songbook; 8-10 p.m.

• IMBIBE: Grewen and Griffin; 7-10 p.m., free. • MOTORCO: Flash Chorus; 7 p.m., $7–$10. • RUBY DELUXE: DJ Lord Redbyrd; 10 p.m.

• THE SHED JAZZ CLUB: Sessions at the Shed with Ernest Turner; 8 p.m., $5.

THE CARRACK: Polyorchard: The Exsufflation Series; 8 p.m. • IRREGARDLESS: Heath Tuttle; 6:30 p.m. • POUR HOUSE: Universal Sigh; 9 p.m. • THE RALEIGH TIMES BAR: Beer and Banjos: Swift Creek; 7:30 p.m. • RUBY DELUXE: Experimental Tuesday: Marselle; 11 p.m.

Girls Guns and Glory BOSTON Boston-based ROWDY country rockers Girls Guns and Glory feature a compelling, rakish frontman in Ward Hayden and a roots music fetish that veers far closer in attitude to the rockabilly revivalist impulses of Dwight Yoakam or the Sun Studios fixations of nineties-era Chris Isaak then anything currently found on New

Oak House GEORGIA Oak House, of ROCK Athens, Georgia, trades one college town for another tonight. The trio’s debut album, Hot or Mood, released in the spring, recalls various modern purveyors of exploratory

NANNER HEAD

W/ DEL RIOS, PHATLYNX

7:30, $7, 21+

JAZZ SATURDAY W/ GARY BRUNETTE, GLEN INGRAM, BOB JACKSON

2PM, FREE, ALL AGES

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SA 8/19

ensemble shares the avian nomenclature, improvisational bent, and, most crucial, three members of long-running jam band The Black Crowes, including cofounder Rich Robinson and guitarist Marc Ford.

Featuring several vocalists, the

WED, AUG 16

TUE, AUG 15

WE 8/9

Country radio. The sound is good and the songs are better, especially the contemplative “Rockin’ Chair Money” and the reverbed-out Commander Cody-like “Sweet Nothings.” —TB [LOCAL 506, $12/9 P.M.]

BLUES & BARBECUE W/ DAVID RUSSELL & THE PORT CITY BLUES, LEE GILDERSLEEVE & THE BAD DOGS

The Beast PHOTO

The Magpie Salute MORE This sprawling CROWES ten-member

RECYCLE THIS PAPER

ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX BOERNER

group pulls from a slew of influences from outside the Crowes’ sweet spot, including spirituals and R&B, but at the

WE 8/9 TH 8/10

6:30PM, $6/$8, 21+*

FR 8/11

JAZZ SATURDAY

SA 8/12

W/ HAL ENGLER QUARTET

2PM, FREE, ALL AGES *ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE ON OUR WEBSITE

SU 8/13 TU 8/15

heart the group is about good old, life-affirming rock ’n’ roll, from classic Crowes tunes to rip-roaring covers of tunes by the Velvet Underground and Small Faces. —DK [THE RITZ, $11–$29/8 P.M.]

John Mayer HEY Oh, John Mayer.

GIRL...

Once a prettyboy crooner , he’s now a dude in his late thirties whose songwriting is adolescent as ever (he’s also busied himself with the Dead and Co., a half-revival, half-tribute to the Grateful Dead). “Still Feel Like Your Man,” from Mayer’s new The Search for Everything, is immediately gag-inducing. as Mayer sings, “The prettiest girl in the room, she wants me/I know because she told me so.”

Even if he’s always been a tremendous guitar player, those skills hardly make up for his many other sins.

—AH [COASTAL CREDIT UNION MUSIC PARK AT WALNUT CREEK, $24.75–$180/ 7 P.M.]

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ALBERT CUMMINGS LABOR DAY BLOWOUT: SA 9/2 THE NIGHTHAWKS WITH REV. BILLY C. WIRTZ TH 9/21 RANDY MCALLISTER TH 9/28 ANA POPOVIC WE 10/4 TAS CRU FR 10/13 CHRIS O’LEARY WE 10/18 TOMMY CASTRO WE 8/16

LIVE MUSIC • OPEN TUESDAY—SUNDAY THEBLUENOTEGRILL.COM 709 WASHINGTON STREET • DURHAM

Shimmer FRIGHT Supergroups are ROCK sort of a funny concept in DIY, yet Shimmer features members of Cloud Becomes Your Hand, plus two-thirds of acclaimed experimental trio Palberta, which should clue you in to the superb no-wave art punk weirdness they dish out.

Openers Secret Boyfriend and Chinchorro make this a must-attend for fans of the far-out. —DS [NIGHTLIGHT, $7/9:30 P.M.] ALSO ON WEDNESDAY 2ND WIND: Yeaux Katz; 7-9 p.m., free. • BLUE NOTE GRILL: Albert Cummings Band; 8 p.m., $15–$20. The Herded Cats; 8 p.m.

• THE CAVE: August Residency: Spencer Lee; 9 p.m., $5. See page 22. • HUMBLE PIE: Peter Lamb & the Wolves; 8:30 p.m. • IRREGARDLESS: The New Macedon Rangers; 6:30 p.m. • POUR HOUSE: The Elovaters, Sensi Trails, Sons of Paradise; 9 p.m.

• RALEIGH CITY MARKET: Music on Market; 5-6:30 p.m. • RUBY DELUXE: Goth Night with DJ Play Play; 10 p.m.

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 12

CELEBRATING GEORGE BIRELINE Much of the Triangle’s gallery scene is focused on the new, but it’s apt—and important—that one of our oldest galleries is just as consistent in keeping great North Carolina artists of the twentieth century in the public eye. On what would have been George Bireline’s ninety-fourth birthday, Raleigh’s Lee Hansley Gallery is opening a retrospective exhibit of the key N.C. painter, whose work has been collected by the Smithsonian, the Hirshhorn, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, but who has not had a major retrospective in his home state in two decades. A native of Illinois, Bireline moved to Raleigh in

1950 to design scenery for Raleigh Little Theatre; he earned a master’s degree in art at UNC-Chapel Hill and then taught painting at N.C. State’s design school for thirty years. Representation by André Emmerich Gallery in New York put Bireline in complementary dialogue with postwar abstract expressionists and color-field painters; he also explored trompe l’oeil and narrative painting. All phases of his distinguished career are represented in the Lee Hansley exhibit, which runs through October 28 after this opening reception. —Brian Howe

LEE HANSLEY GALLERY, RALEIGH

3–6 p.m., free, www.leehansleygallery.com

“Resurrection” (1989) by George Bireline PHOTO COURTESY OF LEE HANSLEY GALLERY

OPENING SPECIAL Austin Cathey: EVENT Drawings in the Michael and Laura BraderAraje Community Outreach Gallery. Reception: Fri, Aug 11, 6-9 p.m. FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill. www.frankisart.com.

SPECIAL Keul and Hardt: EVENT Paintings by Chrystal Hardt and James Keul. Aug 12-Sep 4.

Reception: Fri, Aug 12, 6-9 p.m. This and That Gift Gallery, Carrboro.

SPECIAL August EVENT Exhibitions: Special guest Lynn Bregman Blass of Asheville joins FRANK artists Peg Bachenheimer, Mirinda Kossoff, and Emily Lees for mixed media, paintings, ceramics and jewelry.

Reception: Fri, Aug 11, 6-9 p.m. FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill. www.frankisart.com.

SPECIAL Sara Reynolds: EVENT Charcoal, ink, paint, mixed media and sculpture.

Aug 11-31. Reception: Fri, Aug 11, 6-8 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro. www.artscenterlive.org.

SPECIAL Jennifer Strickland: EVENT Fused glass.

Reception: Fri, Aug 11, 6-9 p.m. Womancraft Fine Handcrafted Gifts, Carrboro. www.womancraftgifts.com.

SPECIAL What’s in the Box? EVENT Places: Activities incorporating art in the museum. $3-$6. Fri, Aug 11, 10:15 a.m. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www. ncartmuseum.org.

Barely Civilized: Folk art

by Cher Shaffer. Thru Aug 24. Alexander Dickson House, Hillsborough. www. historichillsborough.org.

but he needed five people to bring it to virtual life: Fabian Marquez, Alisha Hawkins, Doug Kinnison, Derick Childress, and Alex Davis. To explore it, you don VR goggles and grip a haptic-feedback wand. You find yourself immersed in a shadowy, seemingly cavernous space, standing before a table.

Touching the various objects it holds allows you to enter different scenes, adumbrating if not spelling out a story about life and death as seen from some liminal place. When you lean out of a window and see the woods spreading into your peripheral vision, or you look down and see a rope ladder dangling vertiginously into streaming clouds beneath your feet, the sense of having entered another world is profound.

For gamers, it will be instantly familiar. For non-gamers, it will be like nothing they’ve ever experienced before. Thru Sep 16.

Lump, Raleigh. www.teamlump. org. —Brian Howe

Before the War: Virtual reality is the next frontier for artists, and Tyler Jackson is scouting it.

The abstract storyline in his VR exhibit developed in his history as a painter and an animator,

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

ONGOING Abstract Vision: Paintings

by Sam Ezell. Thru Aug 25. Whitted Building, Hillsborough.

Around the Blue Ridge: Photography by The Focus Group. Thru Aug 30. Seaboard Wine & Tasting Bar, Raleigh. www.seaboardwine.com.

LAST A Cat-like Whimsy: CHANCE Mixed-media drawings on repurposed material by Rio Aubry Taylor.

Thru Aug 12. The Scrap Exchange, Durham. www. scrapexchange.org.

Cedar Creek Gallery National Teapot Show X: Thru Sep 5. Cedar Creek Gallery, Creedmoor. www. cedarcreekgallery.com.

Coastscapes: Paintings by Nancy Hughes Miller in the Artspace corridor. Thru Oct 28. Artspace, Raleigh. www. artspacenc.org.

Collections: Leah Sobsey. Thru Sep 30. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham. www.21cmuseumhotels.com/ durham.

Court and Capital: Art from Asia’s Greatest Cities: Thru Dec 10. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. www.ackland.org.

Fluid: Paintings by MyLoan Dinh. Thru Oct 15. Durham Convention Center, Durham. www. durhamconventioncenter.com.

SPECIAL Group Show: EVENT Twenty-five artists and craftspersons. Thru Aug 25.

Reception: Thu, Aug 10, 5-8 p.m.

Horse & Buggy Press and Friends, Durham. www. horseandbuggypress.com.

Harry Fenn is in the Bathroom Again: Drawings, photographs, and videos by David Politzer.

Thru Aug 26. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org.

The Long Goodbye...: Sitespecific installation by Eric Yahnker. Thru Sep 10. CAM Raleigh, Raleigh. camraleigh.org.

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

Exploring Water’s Edges: Lori White. Thru Aug 26. Tipping Paint Gallery, Raleigh. www. tippingpaintgallery.com.

Marks of Clarity: Drawings and paintings by Kiki Farish and Erin Oliver. Thru Sep 15. Miriam Preston Block Gallery, Raleigh. www.raleighnc.gov/arts.

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

Thru Feb 1. UNC Campus: Davis Library, Chapel Hill. www.lib. unc.edu/davis.

A Morir: Video installation by Miguel Angel Rios. Thru Sep 17.

Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. www.ackland.org.

Natura Technica: Paintings by Matt Zigler. Thru Aug 27. N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh. www.naturalsciences.org.

One is a Crowd: Collaborative self portraits by Ursula Gullow.

Thru Sep 30. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org.

One of Many: Prints. Thru Sep 10. Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill. www.ackland.org.

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

Rabbits: In April, the INDY reported on Catherine Edgerton’s Carrack exhibit of art journals and kaleidoscopes, which represented different but complementary approaches to the issue of mental health.

It’s one of the artist’s key areas of activism within the Durham Artists Movement, the multivalent, socialjustice-oriented collective she cofounded. As such, Edgerton’s new exhibit, Rabbits, benefits Art Asylum, which employs creative practices to destigmatize and empower people INDYweek.com | 8.9.17 | 33

with mental-health and addiction challenges. The collage-based, limitededition prints on view and on sale at Urban Durham Realty use the image of the white rabbit to peel back and palpate the layers of white supremacy, a climate in which mentalhealth struggles, especially for people of color and queer people, naturally flourish. Thru Aug 31.

Urban Durham Realty. www. urbandurhamrealty.com.

—Brian Howe Serious Fun: Jewelry by Nell Chandler, fiber art by Ali Givens, paintings by Michele Yellin. Thru Aug 20. Hillsborough Gallery of Arts, Hillsborough. www. hillsboroughgallery.com.

Small to Large: Delight in the Practice of Painting: Paintings by Margie Stewart.

Thru Oct 23. Durham Arts Council, Durham. www. durhamarts.org.

Paul Spinak: Metal and wood. Thru Aug 26. Imurj, Raleigh. imurj.com.

Studio and Porch Paintings: Joan Vandermeer. Thru Oct 27. Mad Hatter Bakeshop & Cafe, Durham. www. madhatterbakeshop.com.

stage TUESDAY, AUGUST 15– SUNDAY, AUGUST 20

THE SECRET GARDEN There’s something about librettist Marsha Norman and composer Lucy Simon’s enigmatic opening for the Tony Award-winning 1991 musical The Secret Garden that registers on the hairs on the back of your neck. The sublimated loss and desire in those beguiling opening moments evokes a world in Edwardian England in which an eleven-yearold orphan solves a mystery and helps another shattered family find renewal and healing in what lies beyond the locked iron gates of the forbidden grove of the title. Skyla Woodard, Keegan Story, and Michael Halling anchor the Theatre Raleigh production of this classic of children’s literature.

—Byron Woods

FLETCHER OPERA THEATER, RALEIGH Various times, $25–$150, www.dukeenergycenterraleigh.com

Teens, Inspired: Juried exhibition by N.C. high school students. Thru Sep 10.

NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www.ncartmuseum.org.

Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days: Paintings by Chieko Murasugi. Thru Sep 18.

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

Threading Colors: Works

by Nora Phillips. Thru Sep 18.

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

Under Pressure: Prints and performance art. Mondays thru Aug 27. Visual Art Exchange, Raleigh. www. visualartexchange.org.

Watercolor Society of North Carolina: Molly Cassidy: Thru Sep 1. Halle Cultural Arts Center, Apex. www. thehalle.org.

You + Me: Photographs from various artists. Thru Sep 4.

NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www.ncartmuseum.org.

OPENING

Waiting for Godot: Play. $10$12. Aug 10-12, 7 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro. www. artscenterlive.org.

Bruce Bruce: Standup comedy. Aug 10-13.

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

ONGOING

Comics Against Humanity: Improv comedy. $12. Wed, Aug 16, 8 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www. goodnightscomedy.com.

Miss Lulu Bett: Play. $17-$20. Aug 10-20.

Walltown Children’s Theatre, Durham. www. walltownchildrenstheatre.org.

See p. 26.

Reclamation: Short plays.

Donation. Sat, Aug 12, 6 p.m. Mordecai Historic Park, Raleigh. www.raleighnc.gov/ mordecai.

Anything Goes Late Show: Saturdays, 10:30 p.m. Goodnights Comedy Club, Raleigh. www. goodnightscomedy.com.

Bulltown Comedy Series: Tues, Aug 15, 9 p.m. Fullsteam, Durham. www.facebook.com/ BulltownComedySeries.

Eyes Up Here Comedy: Stand-up comedy. $5.

Thu, Aug 10, 8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham. www. thepinhook.com. — $7.

Fri, Aug 11, 8 p.m. Imurj, Raleigh. imurj.com.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THEATRE RALEIGH

34 | 8.9.17 | INDYweek.com

LAST ½ Honour: CHANCE This is no thriller or murder mystery. But early on, its almost-title character makes it clear that a literary imagination is nothing to be trifled with. Claudia (Katie Sheffield), an ambitious young journalist, is interviewing Honor (Nancy Ellis), a middle-aged writer and poet, for a story on her husband, Gus (Tom Stackhouse), a veteran journalist. Gus has told Honor he’s leaving her for Claudia, ending a thirty-twoyear marriage. When someone sees deeper into the human psyche than you do, it’s unwise to quickly renounce all claims to her sanctuary or hospitality.

Despite Claudia’s emotional

blind spots, Honor ultimately must acknowledge the direct challenges she raises about her choices in her literary and domestic life. But the exceedingly tough love cuts both ways when Claudia cannot begin to answer Honor’s incisive questions about the human heart.

Never challenge a poet on her native ground. Playwright Joanna Murray-Smith’s potentially prosaic narrative of infidelity and betrayal extends into a clear-eyed investigation of how differently millennial women measure their relationships and careers. Unfortunately, a directorial miscalculation mars this inquiry into modern relationships. In her successful attempt to avoid

emotional overstatements, director Wendy Ward overcorrects Stackhouse and Sheffield toward performances that remain too internalized. $25. Thru Aug 12. Ward Theatre, Durham. wardtheatrecompany.com.

—Byron Woods Hush Hush: Summer Brews: Interactive comedy. Thu, Aug 10, 8 p.m.Beer Study, Durham. www. thisismettlesome.com.

No Poetry Comedy Deluxe: Comedy. Thu, Aug 10, 9 p.m. Ruby Deluxe, Raleigh. www.facebook.com/ RubyDeluxeRaleigh.  Of Wings and Feet: Reviewed on p. 17. $10-$15.

Thru Sep 4. UNC Campus: Forest Theatre, Chapel Hill. ncbg.unc.edu.

page

THURSDAY, AUGUST 10

THE FABRIC OF RALEIGH/THE FABRIC OF DURHAM “You were just a face in the crowd,” Tom Petty once sang. “Out in the street, walking around.” If Petty captured the alchemy of a face among many turning specific and significant, professional photographer Christer Berg, who moved to Raleigh from Sweden in 1995, does it dozens of times in his new photo book, The Fabric of Raleigh/The Fabric of Durham. Firefighters and preachers, cobblers and baristas, dancers and construction workers—all leap out of the daily pedestrian flow before Berg’s energetic lens. “I wanted to skip the planning, styling, and scheduling that’s common with portrait projects, instead capturing people in the moment, going about what they do in an unscripted and authentic way,” Berg says. “So I loaded my car with a camera, a lens, a flash, and a backdrop and set out to explore.” His exhibit of the portraits at the Betty Ray McCain Gallery, which runs through October 1 after this opening reception, doubles as a release party for the book, a 120-page hardcover designed by Dave Wofford at Horse & Buggy Press—so you know it’s looking good. —Brian Howe

BETTY RAY MCCAIN GALLERY, RALEIGH 5:30 p.m., free www.dukeenergycenterraleigh.com

READING & SIGNINGS Boozy Poetry Night: local poets read their work. Second Mondays, 8:30 p.m. The Stag’s Head, Raleigh.

Daniel Magariel: One of the Boys. Wed, Aug 9, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www. quailridgebooks.com.

Carolina African American Writers’ Collective: Poetry reading with DeLana R.A. Dameron, Lenard D. Moore, and L. Teresa Church.

Wed, Aug 16, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www. quailridgebooks.com.

Nadie McDermott, Tema Flanagan: Savor the South cookbooks Corn and Fruit.

Thu, Aug 10, 7 p.m. Regulator Bookshop, Durham. www. regulatorbookshop.com.

— Fri, Aug 11, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www. quailridgebooks.com.

E.C. Hanes: Justice By Another Name. Sat, Aug 12, 11 a.m.

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

Joseph Wheelan: Midnight in the Pacific. Tue, Aug 15, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh. www. quailridgebooks.com.

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screen THURSDAY, AUGUST 10

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM J.K. Rowling’s script, adapted from the 2001 footnote to the Harry Potter series, returns us to her richly imagined world of wizardry and witchcraft.

Eddie Redmayne is our new hero, Newt Scamander, an eccentric British mage who has sailed to America with his marvelous, magical suitcase, filled with all manner of fantastic beasts. The trouble begins when several of them escape into old New York. Director David Yates, who helmed the last four Potter movies, brings a lighter tone to this one, which is entirely welcome.

Redmayne is a compelling hero, and his performance is a delight of oddball physicality. This group of childlike adults can plausibly fit into the shoes of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. But Rowling’s expansive mythmaking can get unwieldy. Beasts starts out confusing, then stays that way. Still, Muggles who appreciate grand modern mythology should not miss this promising start to a new series packed with imaginative ideas and political allegories. —Glenn McDonald

KOKA BOOTH AMPHITHEATRE, CARY 8:30 p.m., free–$5 www.boothamphitheatre.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF WARNER BROS.

SPECIAL SHOWINGS Choose Your Own 16mm Adventure: Presented by the AV Geeks. $5. Tue, Aug 15, 8 p.m. Kings, Raleigh. www.kingsraleigh.com.

Film Festival Series: Fluchkes: $3. Tue, Aug 15, 7 p.m. Levin Jewish Community Center, Durham. www.levinjcc.org.

Hidden Figures: Movies in the Garden series. Thu, Aug 10, 7 p.m. Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh. www. raleighlittletheatre.org.

Kubo and the Two Strings: Outdoor movie. $6. Fri, Aug 11, 9 p.m. NC Museum of Art, Raleigh. www. ncartmuseum.org.

Twice Upon a Caravan: Fri, Aug 11, 7 p.m. Townsend Bertram & Co, Carrboro.

36 | 8.9.17 | INDYweek.com

OPENING

A L S O P L AY I N G

Annabelle: Creation—Like playing with dolls? You might not after the fourth installment of the Conjuring horror franchise. Rated R.

The INDY uses a five-star rating scale. Read reviews of these films at indyweek.com.

Brigsby Bear—A young man who knows life only through the fake children’s show his parents make for him meets the world.

Rated PG-13.

The Midwife—Great French actors Catherine Deneuve and Catherine Frot appear together for the first time in this learning-to-liveagain drama. NR. Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature—Well, Will Arnett ... but no. Just no.

Rated PG. Step—Amanda Lipitz’s doc is about a high school dance team in Baltimore.

Rated PG.

 Atomic Blonde— Despite flourishes of ferocity, this Cold War thriller by John Wick codirector David Leitch often seems to coast on its own glib, quirky coolness.

Rated R.  The Beguiled— Psychological subtleties make Sofia Coppola’s Civil War dream a challenging film, but some storytelling vigor would have made it a better one. Rated R. ½ The Big Sick— Married screenwriters Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon’s autobiographical rom-com truthfully portrays the shifting cultural and romantic landscape of the U.S. Rated R.

 Cars 3—Pixar’s latest is a smooth ride because it mainly runs on cruise control and Rocky references. Rated G. ½ Despicable Me 3— This franchise feels just about washed up, but your kids won’t care, because Minions! Rated PG. ½ Detroit—In a way, Kathryn Bigelow’s bracing take on the 1967 Detroit riots completes a trilogy of war films. Rated R. ½ Dunkirk— Christopher Nolan’s WWII picture is very British and, for better and worse, very Terrence Malick—epic, meditative, and portentous.

Rated PG-13.  A Ghost Story— David Lowery explores deep themes in this odd, ominous film starring Casey Affleck as a ghost damned to spend eternity

in the place where he died.

Rated R.  Landline—Obvious Child’s Gillian Robespierre and Jenny Slate reunite for an ode to nineties anxiety and optimism.

Rated R. ½ Maudie—This biopic of the Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis doesn’t go too deep but shines with the light of creativity.

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. ½ The Mummy— Tom Cruise’s increasing creepiness is the biggest impediment to a serviceable creature feature.

Rated PG-13.

 Spider-Man: Homecoming—Getting back to basics, a fifty-five-yearold superhero feels like a kid again. Rated PG-13. ½ Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets—Luc Besson breaks the bank for a visually extravagant, emotionally hollow spiritual successor of The Fifth Element.

Rated PG-13.  War for the Planet of the Apes—A conspicuous phrase scrawled on a tunnel wall beneath the Colonel’s compound says it all: this is basically “Ape-pocalypse Now.” Rated PG-13. ½ Wonder Woman— This origin story doesn’t shrink from its hero’s beauty or brawn. Gal Gadot strikes the right balance as an idealist who relishes the battle but not the war.

Rated PG-13.

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music

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BARTENDERS NEEDED MAKE $20-$35/HOUR

lessons ROBERT GRIFFIN IS ACCEPTING PIANO STUDENTS AGAIN!

See the teaching page of: www.griffanzo.com Adult beginners welcome.

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body • mind • spirit counseling/ therapy

STRUGGLING WITH DRUGS OR ALCOHOL? ADDICTED TO PILLS? Talk to someone who cares.

Call The Addiction Hope & Help Line for a free assessment. 800-978- 6674 (AAN CAN)

classes & instruction DANCE CLASSES IN SWING, LINDY, BLUES, TAI CHI At ERUUF, Durham & ArtsCenter, Carrboro.

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INTRO TO IMPROVISATION August 5th at 12pm-3pm and August 6th 2pm-5pm.

Be funny, be quick, be confident. 919-829-0822 or www. comedyworx.com

TAI CHI Traditional art of meditative movement for health, energy, relaxation, self-defense.

Classes/workshops throughout the Triangle. Magic Tortoise School - Since 1979. Call Jay or Kathleen, 919-968-3936 or www.magictortoise.com

massage FULL BODY MASSAGE by a Male Russian Massage Therapist with strong and gentle hands to make you feel good from head to toe.

Schedule an appointment with Pavel Sapojnikov, NC LMBT. #1184. Call: 919-790-9750.

MASSAGE BY MARK KINSEY Ten years helping clients feel at home in their bodies. Swedish & deep tissue massage for stress relief. Near Duke.

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medical services

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products

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ACORN STAIRLIFTS The AFFORDABLE solution to your stairs! **Limited time -$250 Off Your Stairlift Purchase!** Buy Direct & SAVE. Please call 1-800-291-2712 for FREE DVD and brochure.

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EMAIL MIKE FOR ADS CLASSY AT INDYWEEK DOT COM

Book your ad • Email mikE: classy@indywEEk.com

for sale

critters

stuff

KEEP DOGS SHELTERED Coalition to Unchain Dogs seeks plastic or igloo style dog houses for dogs in need, as well as indoor metal crates.

To donate, please contact Amanda at director@unchaindogs.net.

1-ACRE LOTS in eco-community, includes 7-acre nature preserve.

Ferns, creeping cedar, nature trails, footbridges, beaver pond, creek, heavily wooded, beautiful. $49,900/ lot (Efland). Text Tom at 919932-0704.

To adopt: 919-403-2221 or visit animalrescue.net

Tachi

is graceful and athletic!

DOWNTOWN DURHAM COMMERCIAL PROPERTY Open House: Saturday, August 12th, 2-4PM 311 Oakwood Avenue +/- 4,346 Sq. Ft. Building On .4 Acre. Built in 1900.

Flexible DS2 Zoning Ian Kipp, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices NC Real Estate Broker Lic#268085 MLS# 2143773 (919) 229-3533

SAFE STEP WALK-IN TUB ALERT FOR SENIORS. Bathroom falls can be fatal.

Approved by Arthritis Foundation. Therapeutic Jets.

Less Than 4 Inch Step-In. Wide Door. Anti-Slip Floors.

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Find the perfect roommate to complement your personality and lifestyle at RentMates.com!

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notices events

FORAGING CLASSES www.frankhyman.com

GARDENING CLASSES www.frankhyman.com

services getaways

COMING TO ASHEVILLE?

Upscale Spa. private outdoor hot tubs, 26 massage therapists, overnight accommodations, sauna and more. Starting at $42. Shojiretreats.com 828-299-0999

renovations ROOF REPAIR and gutter cleaning. Over twenty years experience.

References available. Call Dan at: 919-395-6882.

misc.

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INDYweek.com | 8.9.17 | 37

EEK ★ I

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★★★★★★★

HIGHLIGHT! ★★★★★★★

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Who:

Mighty Neighborly

6 3 4 5 4 7

8 1

5

2 3 9 5 What: 7 2 3 Mighty Neighborly is a not-for-profit or8 4 North Carolina 1 ganization strengthening communities by uniting citizens through 7 6 open dialogue and education. We connect you with like-minded people 6 3 8 7 to amplify your political voice to impact our shared 6 4 democracy.

7 Give: MEDIUM mightyneighborly.org/donate-now/ # 34

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TO BE FEATURED IN A GIVE! GUIDE HIGHLIGHT, CONTACT CLASSY@INDYWEEK.COM

2016

D ★ IN Y W

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crossword If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “Diversions” at the bottom of our webpage.

this week’s puzzle level:

© Puzzles by Pappocom

There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box.

The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered.

Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above.

4 8

9

81

7

5 6

3 86 3 41

4 7

3 4

5 2 89 2 8 1 3 5 2 1 7 8 6 2 5 7 27 6 9 27

8

# 36

MEDIUM 4 6 7 9 3 1 5 2 8

9 1 5 4 8 2 6 7 3

# 35

# 85

4 3 7 2 5 1 9 8 6 5 1 2 9 6 8 4 7 3 9 8 6 7 4 3 5 2 1 8 6 5 4 7 2 3 1 9 2 4 3 8 1 9 6 5 7 1 7 9 5 3 6 2 4 8 3 5 8 6 2 7 1 9 4 7 2 1 3 9 4 8 6 5 6 9 4 1 8 5 7 3 2 solution to last week’s puzzle

6

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# 86

# 36

4 3 7 9 1 2 8 5 6 If you just 8can’t 9 1 wait, 7 5 6 check 3 2 4 2 5 week’s 6 3 8 answer 4 7 9 1 out the current 5 8 4 6 2 7 1 3 9 key at www.indyweek.com, 1 7 3 4 9 5 2 6 8 and click “Diversions”.

6 2 9 1 3 8 4 7 5 Best of luck, 9 4and 5 2have 7 1 fun!

6 8 3 3 1 2 8 6 9 5 4 7 www.sudoku.com 7 6 8 5 4 3 9 1 2

9 1 3 3 6 7 2

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8.9.17

30/10/2005

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EMAIL MIKE FOR ADS CLASSY AT INDYWEEK DOT COM

2 5 9

6 7

Book your ad • CALL Sarah at 919-286-6642 • EMAIL

5

3

6

1

claSSy@indyweek.com

please contact eroberts@indyweek.com

bang for your buck! classy at indyweek To advertise or feature a pet for adoption, dot com please contact eroberts@indyweek.com

advertise

To advertise or feature a pet for adoption, please contact eroberts@indyweek.com

To advertise or feature a pet for adoption, please contact eroberts@indyweek.com

last week's puzzle

on this page!

reserve this space for $100! classy@indyweek.com

RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER COMEDYWORX INTRO TO IMPROV RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER 6/17 12-3PM AND 6/21 7-10PM 919-829-0822 OR COMEDYWORX.COM RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER RECYCLE THIS PAPER Bolinwood Condominiums RECYCLE THIS PAPER Affordability without compromise RECYCLE Convenient to UNC on NTHIS bus line PAPER 2 & 3 bedroom condominiums for lease RECYCLE THIS PAPER www.bolinwoodcondos.com • 919-942-7806 RECYCLE THIS PAPER Pathways for People, Inc. RECYCLE THIS PAPER is looking for energetic individuals who are RECYCLE THIS PAPER interested in gaining experience while making RECYCLE THIS PAPER a difference! Positions available are: Day Program Instructors Art and general instructor needed for Day Program. Monday through Friday from 9:00am to 4:00pm. Experience with individuals with Intellectual Disabilities required and college degree preferred. Please submit resume with cover letter to Rachael Edens at rachael@pathwaysforpeople.org.

No phone inquiries please.

Adult male with Moderate Intellectual Disability and Down’s syndrome in Raleigh. Monday-Friday from 8:00am6:00pm and occasional weekends. Transportation needed to and from community based activities and the Day Program in Cary (2 days a week). Behavioral experience preferred. Call and ask for Rebecca.

Adult male with Autism in Raleigh. Monday through Friday from 7:30am-6pm and occasional weekends.

Transportation needed to and from community based activities and the Day Program in Cary (3 days week).

Experience with Autism preferred. Call and ask for Michele.

For a list of other open positions please go to:

www.pathwaysforpeople.org

Book your ad • CALL Sarah at 919-286-6642 • EMAIL

claSSy@indyweek.com

INDYweek.com | 8.9.17 | 39

Earn $8.60 to $12.00 per hour working at NCSU, Duke and ECU football games. Be part of the game!

You must be at least 16 years of age for ushers and ticket taker jobs and at least 18 for security.

Interview Anywhere, Work Everywhere Upcoming Job fairs: • Duke - Coombs Field (Baseball Stadium) on Whitford Dr. Aug 3 & Aug 10- 5pm-8pm Aug 5 & Aug 12- 10am-3pm

• NCSU-Carter Finley Stadium Gate 4, off Trinity Rd: Aug 2 & Aug 9- 5pm-8pm Aug 12- 12pm-5pm

Join the Staff-1 Event Services TEAM! Visit our website at www.staff-1.com or call 919-237-1232

THE INDY'S GUIDE TO THE TRIANGLE

Now Hiring Ushers, Ticket Takers and Security

FINDER

COLLEGE FOOTBALL & BASKETBALL JOBS

RESERVE NOW! Publication date:

October 4 Deadline: August 30

Contact your INDY ad rep or advertising@indyweek.com for more info

TO A DV E R T I S E I N T H E I N DY: 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