Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill August 25, 2021
BY LENA GELLER, P. 14
Meet the beekeepers bringing hives to backyards like yours
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Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill VOL. 38 NO. 32
CONTENTS NEWS 6
As Raleigh considers a "wild animal" ordinance, folks who feed feral cats (like Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin) could already be violating city codes.
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Legacies of Lincoln: Part II of The Legends of Lions Park.
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A look back at INDY photographs of Maple View Farm, now closing after 25 years. BY SARAH EDWARDS
BY LEIGH TAUSS BY JOEL SRONCE
The Veldt's Danny Chavis and Daniel Chavis, p. 15 PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
ARTS & CULTURE 12 14
Paperhand Puppet Intervention celebrates 20 years. BY BYRON WOODS Would you put a beehive in your backyard? A local host-a-hive program is here to help. BY LENA GELLER 15 An evolving psychedelic music festival celebrates not fitting in. BY BRIAN HOWE
Contributors Will Atkinson, Madeline Crone, Grant Golden, Lena Geller, Spencer Griffith, Lucas Hubbard, Layla Khoury-Hanold, Brian Howe, Lewis Kendall, Kyesha Jennings, Glenn McDonald, Anna Mudd, Dan Ruccia, Jake Sheridan
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Local artists remember the late Carrboro musician Tim Carless. BY SPENCER GRIFFITH
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BACK TA L K
Last week for the web, writer Leigh Tauss reported on the Raleigh City Council’s consideration of an ordinance that would ban ownership of wild animals—anything from big cats to alligators to venomous snakes—but would also rein in what residents could do with slightly less wild animals; for instance, under the ordinance, you could no longer feed wild ducks or feral cats. You better believe our readers had thoughts.
“Some of this is going a little too far!!,” wrote Facebook commenter JACKIE JACKIE. “Ducks? Feeding feral cats? Why not increase the TNR funding for your feral cat program instead of hoping we starve them to death.” “Needs a bit of tightened draftsmanship and more careful thought,” wrote commenter KATHLEEN PEPI SOUTHERN. “Trending toward ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’ so to speak.” “OMG, I’m so terrified of ducks and all their quacking and egg laying,” wrote commenter ELISE ORAS. “And opossums with their game of playing dead -- how scary! Hide your kids!” “Wtf did the ducks do?,” asks commenter TOM MCDONALD. A reasonable question. Other readers found the whole debate to be a distraction from the real problems plaguing the city. Commenter PAM BASS took issue with City Council member David Knight calling Raleigh “not a farm.” “I know it’s not a farm, you keep building shit to help us remember!!,” Pam said. “All that extra time the city has not focusing on sorting out the affordable housing crisis just goes to non-issues like outlawing ducks and opossums,” wrote commenter LAURA BROOKE. “What she said,” agreed commenter VANESSA BRYAN. “How about if you all address making housing more affordable I promise not to run a possum sanctuary out of my house.” The debate over the “wild animal” ordinance promises to remain riveting. Check out Tauss’s print story this week (page 6) where she tries to get to the bottom of whether Raleigh Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin has been violating any city laws currently on the books by feeding a feral cat that roams around her downtown condo.
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Durham
15 MINUTES Ripken O’Donnell, Age 5 Durham Bulls Bat Dog BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com
As told by Michael O’Donnell, Ripken’s owner. PHOTO COURTESY OF OWNER
How was the big debut night? We were nervous at first, or, I was very nervous, but he’s done this quite a bit. He was the bat dog for the Holly Spring Salamanders to start, and then we got called up last year to the Durham Bulls, but then, with COVID, the season got canceled. So we’ve been waiting for the opportunity to get on the field, and everything went exactly how we planned. On the first night, no mistakes. He jumped right out and fetched every bat perfectly.
Where was Ripken when he first found out that he had been called up? We were probably at work. We own Sit Means Sit dog training in Apex and so he goes to work with me every day and we work on a little bit of everything, from his retrieving drills to his obedience. We were probably sitting in the office, working together.
What is his training regimen? He wakes up and eats breakfast. And then we go outside. I have an acre that we can do a lot of retriever drills in. We set up bumpers all over the yard and I work on teaching straight lines and making sure he’s not getting distracted by anything. I also like to add a lot of distractions. I’ve had kids in the neighborhood come out and play Wiffle ball and stuff. They’ll drop the bat and I’ll practice with him to go get their bat while they’re playing with a ball and running around screaming. Every day is a little different. I take him out in public and make sure he stays
with me and ignores the people until I say, ‘Go say hi.’ He likes to go to Lowe’s quite a bit.
Does Ripken have any sports heroes or favorite baseball movies? Obviously, Bull Durham is going to be one of his favorite movies, because he’s always dreamed of being part of that team. Cal Ripken would be his baseball hero, which is who he’s named after—Cal Ripken, Jr.
Does Ripken have any advice for dogs with dreams of the minor leagues? Making sure you’re ready for all the attention, all the love and pets is a big thing. But staying focused and working hard every day would be his advice. I think he stays focused on his job and his task when he’s out at work, but he also knows how to have fun when we’re off work, as well, and enjoys a good fire pit on Friday night.
That’s great. It’s important to unwind. Yeah! But when he’s in work mode, he’s super driven and focused on what he’s doing at that moment.W
Q UIC KBA I T
Warm Over BY GEOFF WEST gwest@indyweek.com
Y
ou may have read: July was the hottest month in the history of the Earth (or at least since tracking began in the late 19th century). You might have sweated a few pounds last month. But it turns out, the heat wasn’t so bad in the Triangle. Meteorologists attributed the modest monthly temperatures—0.2 degrees warmer than average in Wake County; 0.6 degrees above average in Orange and Durham counties—to Tropical Storm Elsa and other weather fronts that brought much-needed rainfall. Here’s a local and global rundown from our (nonexistent) weather desk.
86% the percentage of Fox News climate segments that involved climate change denials (circa 2019).
105°F the record daily high in Raleigh for July, recorded in 2012 and 1952 .
1976 the last time Earth had a cooler month of July than the 20th century average.
88.7°F
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the average temperature at RDU in July, or 1.3 degrees cooler than normal.
the number of Julys in a row that have set a global heat record for the month.
2.52 inches
142 years
the daily rainfall total at RDU on July 8, courtesy of Tropical Storm Elsa. That broke the previous rainfall record for a July 8 of 1.88 inches, set in 1887.
how long meteorologists have systematically tracked global temperatures.
DR AWN OUT BY STEVE DAUGHERTY
INDYweek.com
August 25, 2021
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N E WS
Raleigh ILLUSTRATION BY JON FULLER
Cat Got Your Tongue? Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin confessed to feeding a feral cat last week while debating a proposed wild and dangerous animal policy—and said she wouldn’t stop even if fined. It turns out, she may already be violating city code. BY LEIGH TAUSS ltauss@indyweek.com
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ayor Mary-Ann Baldwin jokingly invited the city’s animal control unit to fine her for feeding a feral cat outside her ritzy downtown Raleigh condo during the City Council meeting last week while discussing a proposed ordinance that would ban the ownership of “wild and dangerous animals,” as well as the feeding of local wildlife. Turns out, she may have to pay up. Baldwin is already violating city code, two Raleigh public safety officials told the INDY, and could face a fine of up to $500 or even a court summons as a result of feeding her furry friend. The cat may have caught Baldwin’s tongue: in a text to the INDY, Baldwin said city attorney Robin Tatum advised 6
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her “that there are no ordinances that prohibit feeding feral cats.” Tatum emailed the INDY reiterating that, and stating, “I know of no facts that would indicate that the Mayor has violated any City Code provision.” Tatum might be half right: the policy doesn’t explicitly ban folks from feeding ferals, but three sources within city government say Baldwin’s activity would violate at least three existing policies because residents who feed feral cats are considered harboring them on their properties and therefore assume de facto ownership responsibilities that bring them in violation of other city rules prohibiting animals from roaming “at large” and requiring residents provide the animal with adequate shelter and vaccines.
Animal Control dishes out fines in these scenarios frequently, sources say. The INDY asked Tatum if she believed Animal Control was illegally fining residents. Tatum replied, “My email to you from yesterday remains correct, but that is all we can comment on at this time.” The proposed policy would outlaw residents in the city from owning an ark-full of menacing beasts, including big cats, crocodiles, and venomous snakes. But it also goes on to ban residents from owning or feeding more run-of-themill critters like opossums, squirrels, raccoons, and ducks. Baldwin, among others on the council, felt the draft policy went too far. “You’ll be fining me at my house every day. I have my favorite feral cat and he is like one of the family,” Baldwin said. “That, to me, goes a little too far.” “But I’ll tell you what: I will still feed that feral cat and let you fine me. So there,” Baldwin added with a chuckle. Baldwin might have been joking, but it wasn’t funny to Animal Control Officer Lauren Mulleady, who is also an owner and rehabilitator of exotic animals. After watching the virtual meeting, Mulleady fired off an email to Baldwin and the council informing them she’s already breaking city code. Feral cats are actually a big problem in Raleigh that Mulleady’s department deals with regularly, and yes, officers do fine people for feeding them. Not only can feral cats be a public health hazard—Animal Control responds to several feral cat bites each year —but they also spread disease and wreak havoc on local wildlife. Feral cats “pose and already inflict more damage than any of the exotic animal owners’ pets combined in Raleigh,” Mulleady wrote. “It is extremely upsetting to hear you say that it is ‘taking it too far’ to not allow feeding of feral cats, and that your feral cat is ‘part of the family,’ while the exact potential ordinance being discussed, is what will require owners such as myself to rid of their very own animals, animals that WE consider our beloved family members,” Mulleady wrote. “My animals that will be considered ‘dangerous’ under this potential ban, are also part of my family.” Mulleady told the INDY she wrote the email as a concerned citizen and didn’t wish to comment further. How did we go from talking about zebra cobras to feral cats? Has the council, in trying to fix an imaginary problem, stumbled onto a real one? More on that later. Here’s how we got here: In July, a deadly zebra cobra slithered loose from an enclosure in North Raleigh, eluding capture while capturing headlines, and striking fear into the hearts of neighbors. Everybody freaked out. The snake was eventually caught and its owner, 21-year-old Christopher Gifford, pleaded guilty in court to several charges and was ordered to turn over 74 other venomous snakes in his possession and pay more than $13,000 in fines. Some would call that the system working, but not City Council member David Knight, who immediately spear-
headed an ordinance that would prevent any more deadly creatures from running loose in the city ever again. But Knight’s policy goes a lot further than banning just venomous snakes. It does that, and prohibits folks from owning creatures such as big cats, bears, and crocodiles, but also pretty common local critters, like opossums, raccoons, squirrels, and ducks. The definition of a “wild and dangerous” animal is any “non-domesticated animal” that is “inherently dangerous to humans or property.” The ordinance also specifies animals banned are “including, but not limited to,” the aforementioned list. It also says you can’t feed undomesticated animals. The existing city code doesn’t directly ban the feeding of feral cats, but residents who do can be fined for up to three violations by Animal Control. When a resident feeds a feral feline for three consecutive days, they assume de facto ownership of it and can be fined for having it leave their property, failing to provide a proper shelter for it, and failing to have the animal vaccinated for rabies. Making matters worse, as one city employee told the INDY, during the COVID-19 pandemic the city was instructed to stop placing traps for residents calling in to report feral cats on their properties, reducing their capacity to combat local feral populations. As a result, the city’s feral cat problem has likely exploded in the last year thanks to decreased enforcement. “We don’t track it, it’s very hard to estimate that,” said the employee, who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation, “but I am 100 percent sure it’s increased tenfold just because there is no one removing the cats.” To be fair: Animal Control doesn’t appear to have immediate plans to fine Baldwin (that’d be awkward) but her comments highlight certain hypocrisy in local government. The public safety threat of exotic animals, including venomous snakes, is mostly imaginary. Only about five people die from snakebites each year in the United States, or about one in 64 million people. Statistically, you are way more likely to get bitten by a feral cat. Most of the people that get attacked by exotic animals are the owners themselves and these attacks grab headlines precisely because they are so novel and rare. Banning exotic animals won’t stop people from owning them, as local wildlife educator Dan Breeding pointed out at the council meeting, it “will just drive people underground.”
What could create a problem, however, is a regulatory overreach in the form of an overzealous ban on “wild and dangerous” animals that would force a tiny city department—Raleigh has just eight Animal Control Officers—to dedicate their already thin resources to seizing people’s pets. The ordinance specifies residents will have just 90 days to come into compliance. Then what? Will an Animal Control officer have to come remove a panther from someone’s basement? The employee I spoke to assured me officers do not want to do that, nor do they have the resources. Seventy-five snakes were more than enough. “I hope not, but I would not be surprised if in a city of our size there may be somebody out there that has possession of some large cat,” Knight said. “The question is, should the rest of us be put at risk for a very small population doing what they want to do?” Meanwhile, the city’s very real feral cat problem was somehow turned into a punchline. As Knight pointed out, ask any wildlife expert if you should feed wild animals. They will tell you no: it’s often bad for the animal and disrupts local ecosystems. It’s a truth many residents won’t want to hear, including Raleigh resident Martha Brock, who has fallen in love with feeding a flock of wild ducks in the pond behind her apartment. Brock, a 71-yearold retiree, has done her research—she knows bread is bad for ducks so she feeds them corn. And, policy or not, Brock says she doesn’t want to stop feeding her ducks. “They can come after me with their nets, I don’t care,” Brock says. “Just as long as they don’t come after the ducks with the nets.” Government policy is tasked with cutting the difference between ideals and the realities of human behavior. In a perfect world, everyone would listen to experts and no one would feed wildlife. But we love our bird feeders and furry friends, so the “wild and dangerous” animal ordinance was referred to the Growth and Natural Resources Committee for further debate. Mayor Pro Tem Nicole Stewart, who chairs that committee, said she wasn’t in support of the ordinance in its current form. “During these incredibly stressful times, we need to really consider all the ways that people find joy that aren’t harming anyone else,” Stewart said. “I believe this type of pet ownership is bringing people a source of joy.” The INDY asked if Baldwin still intended to cough up a $500 fine to feed her furry friend. We’re awaiting a response. W
NOTICE OF CITY OF DURHAM MUNICIPAL PRIMARY ELECTION
Tuesday, October 5, 2021 The Primary Election for Durham City Council will be held in Durham County, NC on Tuesday October 5th. All City of Durham precincts will be open from 6:30 am until 7:30 pm. Precinct 26– Rougemont will not be open because no city area lies within this precinct. 17-year-old City of Durham voters who are registered and will be 18 years old on or before Nov. 2, 2021 may vote in Durham’s Primary. The following contests will be on the City of Durham ballot: •Durham City Mayor •Durham City Council Ward I •Durham City Council Ward II •Durham City Council Ward III Early voting schedule: Thursday, Sept. 16th through Saturday, Oct. 2, 2021. Hours will be consistent at all early voting locations. •Weekdays: 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. •First two Saturdays: 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. •Final Saturday: 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. •Sundays: 12:00 to 4:00 p.m. VOTER REGISTRATION DEADLINE: The voter registration deadline for the October 5, 2021 Primary Election is Friday, September 10, 2021 (25 days prior). Voters that miss the registration deadline may register and vote during the early voting period. Voters who are currently registered need not re-register. Registered voters who have moved or changed other information since the last election should notify the Board of Elections of that change by Sept. 10, 2021. SAME DAY REGISTRATION: Voters are allowed to register and vote during early voting. It is quicker and easier to register in advance, but if you have not registered you can do so during early voting with proper identification. This same day registration is not allowed at polling places on Election Day. Information regarding registration, polling locations, absentee voting, or other election matters may be obtained by contacting the Board of Elections. Website: www.dcovotes.com | Email: elections@dconc.gov Phone: 919-560-0700 | Fax: 919-560-0688 PAID FOR BY DURHAM COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS INDYweek.com
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NEWS
LEGACIES OF
LINCOLN
Part II: Passing the Torch
How the legacy of Lincoln has passed to students in the struggle today BY JOEL SRONCE backtalk@indyweek.com
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ILLUSTRATION BY JON FULLER
Part I of “Legacies of Lincoln” shines a light on the Mighty Tigers football team from Chapel Hill-Carrboro’s segregated Lincoln High School, and its role during the first wave of the towns’ movement for civil rights in 1960 and '61.
The Second Wave: 1963-64 “The real reason the Lincoln Tigers can’t lose is that they won’t,” J.A.C. Dunn wrote in The Chapel Hill Weekly. It was November 1963, and Thomas Bell was running again. But this time he was grown, and he was fearless. This time, he wasn’t alone. Bell was now a star on the Mighty Tigers, and his first-quarter rushing touchdown, as well as a 100-yard pick-six on the defensive side in the fourth quarter, helped Lincoln demolish Nash County High in Nashville, N.C., 36-0. Under the leadership of quarterback Fred Baldwin, Lincoln headed into the Eastern District playoffs not only undefeated, but also without giving up a single point all season. Williamston’s Hayes High finally scored on the Tigers in the Eastern District final, but Baldwin and Bell led Lincoln over Hayes, 25-12. The undefeated team was back in the championship game. Like the Tigers ’63 football season, the desegregation movement in Chapel Hill was reaching a fever pitch. In late December alone, around 200 people were arrested at protests and sit-ins, including eight arrests on December 20 for blocking the sidewalk in front of the Tar Heel Sandwich Shop. The direct action took place only a couple of weeks after the championship game, which Lincoln lost to Winston-Salem’s Anderson High. But though the season was over, the Tigers’ fullback had made The Chapel Hill Weekly again: “Those arrested, in addition to the three leaders: … Thomas E. Bell, Negro.” Eight days later, a group gathered at Carlton’s Rock Pile, a convenience store and gas station on East Franklin Street. They sat on the floor when they were refused service. The owner, Carlton Mize, locked the doors from the inside. Knowing the demonstrators’ vows of passive nonviolence, Mize brought out bottles of Clorox and ammonia and poured them onto the heads of those gathered. Several protesters were taken to the hospital. After their stomachs were pumped and ointment was given for their burns, they were thrown in jail. James Foushee, a former Mighty Tiger and the brother of movement leader Braxton Foushee, was one. Mize was never prosecuted. The struggle continued to escalate early the following year. On February 1, 1964, on the four-year anniversary of the Greensboro sit-in, 75 people were arrested in Chapel Hill at various sit-downs in streets and at restaurants. A week later, Braxton Foushee helped organize the largest demonstration yet. Immediately following a UNC men’s basketball home game against Wake Forest, hundreds of protestors choreographed synchronized waves of sitting or lying in the streets. They blocked the intersection of Franklin and Columbia Streets, as well as many of the roads out of town. With thousands leaving the game, chaos ensued. The police threw demonstrators into a used bread truck that became a makeshift paddy wagon.
Lincoln High School in 1966, before desegregation. And the pot continued to boil. A month later, James Foushee, along with three others, held an eight-day fast in front of the Franklin Street post office. The fast honored anyone charged with trespassing or obstruction, now up to 1,500 people. The New York Times reported on it daily. On the north edge of Chapel Hill, the Ku Klux Klan rallied 700 people. Three months later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing segregation in public places. But denial of service and physical violence continued in at least two restaurants in Chapel Hill. Though tensions simmered all summer and into the fall, football carried on. It was Fred Baldwin’s senior year, and the Mighty Tigers gave up only eight points the entire season, in an 8-7 loss to Durham’s Merrick-Moore High, which went on to win the state title. From the St. Joseph C.M.E. Church basement this July, I sat with Fred Baldwin and Jimmy Weaver as they remembered (and lamented) the name of the Merrick-Moore player—Kenny Davis—who scored the final points to beat the Tigers. Weaver recalled Baldwin running the ball on a desperate option play, and missing the end zone by inches. As an upperclassman in high school, Fred Baldwin received a scholarship to North Carolina College, which is now N.C. Central University. Just like at Lincoln, he did the improbable: He started at quarterback as a freshman.
Thrown away By some measures, rays of light began to penetrate one of the darker periods
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVES AT THE CHAPEL HILL HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
in Chapel Hill’s—and the country’s—history. In 1968, Albert Williams, a former Mighty Tiger fullback and one of the Chapel Hill Nine, became the town’s first Black firefighter. The following year, Braxton Foushee was elected the first Black alderman in Carrboro, serving until 1981. Also in 1969, his friend Howard Lee became not only the first Black mayor elected in Chapel Hill, but the first in a majority-white municipality in the South. But where some lights shone, others were extinguished. In 1966, two years after the Civil Rights Act, the doors of Lincoln High School were closed to the community that once thrived within them. Not long after, the once-bright lights at Lions Park were switched off for the last time, taken down, and disassembled. The field was paved over and developed, making room for new apartments. In Chapel Hill throughout the decades that have followed the Civil Rights Act, the difference between desegregation and integration became increasingly clear. Mismanaged integration, intentional or not, has kept equity at bay. On a stormy morning in late June, I met Braxton Foushee at Weaver Street Market in Carrboro. As we talked, he’d howl with laughter or swell with pride, retelling stories of agitating all the right people in every decade from his Mighty Tigers days to the present. But when I asked about the new home for Lincoln’s football trophies after all the students were moved to the new Chapel Hill High School miles from town, he stopped and looked me dead in the eye: “Everything at Lincoln was thrown away.”
Desegregation over integration When the doors to Chapel Hill High School (CHHS), the same one that sits off of Homestead Road today, opened in 1966, all students in town attended. But for those who came over from Lincoln High, nothing was familiar. Very few students walked to school anymore. Whereas Lincoln High was less than a mile from many Black neighborhoods and churches, the new high school was almost five miles away. The award-winning Lincoln band could no longer gather on its campus and march down Franklin and Rosemary Streets for homecoming games or Christmas parades. What’s more, by nearly every measure, CHHS remained a white school. While it might have been desegregated, Black students had to assimilate. It kept the name of the white high school, the Wildcats mascot remained for several years, and students sported the same school colors as when the high school was all-white. Coach W.D. Peerman, who had led the Mighty Tigers to its undefeated state championship in 1961, was now an assistant to a white head coach. Lincoln’s beloved principal, Mr. McDougle, was also an assistant to a less-qualified white person. The teachers were overwhelmingly white, and many held prejudices against their new Black students. Lincoln’s student newspaper, The Lincoln Echo, was gone. The Black community’s Parent-Teacher-Student Association was gone. And so were the trophies. When the Lincoln building became the school district office after its students left, Braxton Foushee remembers one day
when word spread that the Lincoln trophies were sitting in a dumpster behind the school. Only a few were recovered. Yet the most damaging consequences were not the material ones—not the school’s new location, nor the Wildcat mascot, nor the abandoned trophies. Mismanaged integration creates a haunting legacy. In late June, I met Dave Mason Jr., one of the Chapel Hill Nine and a former statistician for the Mighty Tigers, at the Chapel Hill Public Library with his daughter, Danita. His Lincoln recollections were clear and proud, and his laughter easy. But so was his anger. “Our schools were desegregated in 1966,” Mason Jr. said. “But we have, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the second-highest achievement gap, and one of the highest economical gaps, in the country! Now how can this happen in Chapel Hill?” When the systemic reproductions of structural racism are allowed to endure, the barriers to racial equity bob and weave like the heads of a hydra. The monster survives any solitary beheading. Racial caste is reconfigured. But even in the wake of racism, erasure, and neglect, many people have sustained the spirit that flourished at Lincoln, and have maintained its history. Trophies may get thrown away, but some lights cannot be extinguished. The Marian Cheek Jackson Center, in the building next to the church basement where Baldwin, Weaver, and I sat in July, preserves the struggles of history. Similarly, Mason Jr.’s daughter, Danita Mason-Hogans, lights innumerable new candles as she now carries the torch for progress.
Not if but how Mason-Hogans, whose Chapel Hill roots go back seven generations on both sides of her family, is an activist and community historian, two roles that come as no surprise to her. “A lot of the people on the 1961 Mighty Tigers football team were mentors; they were like uncles to me,” Mason-Hogans told me. “And a lot of the values and things that went on from that team were passed on to me and informed my activism in the ’80s and the ’90s. So it was never a thought of if I should become involved with social-justice efforts. It’s how. It was a continuation of that legacy.” The legacy to which she refers—her father’s generation’s—might have already INDYweek.com
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“Everything is not as it should be." ... "And you wouldn't know about it unless somebody raises some hell." had its heyday. But their fire is not extinguished, either. Dave Mason Jr. isn’t done fighting: “As far as I’m concerned, it’s good to call attention to the fact that you see something wrong and protest it,” he said of today’s young people who are working towards equity. “I’m saying, ‘Hell, do something about it. OK?’ Don’t just talk about it. Let’s do something.” From the church basement, Baldwin and Weaver agreed that the fight must go on. “Everything is not as it should be,” Baldwin remarked. “And you wouldn’t know about it unless somebody raises some hell,” Weaver added. Baldwin sees the same patterns— perceived supremacy, prescribed social order—enduring in the world around him, particularly via the will of older white generations. “They think they’re supposed to have superiority,” he said, “and that you’re still supposed to stay where you are and stay in your class and don’t ever progress. Just stay where you are. That’s the sad part. We’re constantly living in today’s world from yesterday’s world. It’s still there. It hasn’t gone anywhere.”
then mismanaged integration. In Reardon’s research, parents’ income, their education, and the degree of segregation in the neighborhoods they live in predict a large part of their children’s test scores. These barriers are unknowingly upheld by the people who thrive in the system that perpetuates them.” The authors aren’t academics or professionals. At the time of the publication, they were two students at Carrboro High School, located less than two miles away from where the building that housed Lincoln still stands. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder last spring, and frustrated by the enduring systemic inequality around them, the two students co-founded the school’s Black and Brown Student Coalition (BBSC). Sixty years after the Mighty Tigers’ undefeated season, students of color at Carrboro High School still face institutional racism, including an achievement gap that’s a bastion of white supremacy. With an intention that would make Mason Jr. proud, this generation is doing something about it. And until his graduation in May, one of the authors and BBSC co-founders— Phoenix Garayùa-Tudryn—was a quarterback at Carrboro High. W
Taking up the torch
In this three-part series, Joel Sronce documents the role that the Mighty Tigers football team from Chapel Hill-Carrboro’s segregated Lincoln High School played in the movement for civil rights. Their struggle still resonates today as systemic racism endures. Sixty years later, a youth-led movement grows anew, and is once again shouldered by stars of a Carrboro gridiron.
This April, Education Week, a national platform for education news and information, published a story that echoes Mason Jr.’s frustration and anger, and cites research behind the figures that he mentioned. The authors write: “So if Chapel Hill is so progressive, then why does our district have the second largest achievement gap nationally for Black students and the fifth largest for Latinx students, when compared with white students, as recently described by Stanford University researcher Sean F. Reardon and his colleagues. “Barriers like the achievement gap are rooted in slavery, then segregation, and 10
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In Part III next week: Six decades after the movement for civil rights in Chapel Hill-Carrboro, in the absence of solutions provided by other means, young people once again have to shoulder the burdens of the reality they face. Bringing the legacies of Lincoln into the present, Part III tells the story of the football players who help lead the BBSC and continue the local struggle for social justice today.
PHOTO SERIES
from the archives
The Cows Come Home BY SARAH EDWARDS
Last week, Maple View Farm & Milk Company in Hillsborough announced that it was discontinuing its milk production and bottling after 25 years. The popular ice cream shop and country store will remain open, with ice cream made with a dairy base sourced from Simply Natural Creamery in Ayden, North Carolina. Maple View Farm finds its origin story back in 1963, when Robert “Bob” Nutter, a fifth-generation Maine farmer, relocated to Hillsborough and purchased 477 acres; legend has it he began milking cows the day he arrived. Since 1996, when the farm began bottling its own milk, Maple View’s slender glass bottles have stocked refrigerators around the Triangle. In the announcement post, Maple View wrote that closing had been “a very hard decision” and that “the cattle are all going to a good home and will be missed immensely.” To commemorate Maple View’s 25 years as a farm, here is a selection of photos by former INDY photographer Jeremy Lange from 2015. 2
INDYweek.com
August 25, 2021
11
STAGE
PAPERHAND: PUPPET INTERVENTIONS IN CARDBOARD, CLOTH, AND CLAY
By Donovan Zimmerman and Jan Burger | Paperhand Press
UNFOLDING SEEDS: INVOCATIONS OF TRANSFORMATION
Paperhand Puppet Intervention | Aug. 27–Sep. 26 | Forest Theatre, Chapel Hill Oct. 1–3 | NC Museum of Art, Raleigh | Paperhand.org
From left: Jan Burger and Donovan Zimmerman, co-founders of Paperhand Puppet Intervention PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
The first copies arrived two weeks ago at the group’s studio in Saxapahaw. It puts a capstone on a year-and-ahalf effort to collect and chronicle the company’s prolific output since its creators’ first collaborations in the 1990s at the Haw River Festival. “It’s total eye candy,” says Virginia Chambers, a global health consultant and life coach who helped assemble the team that worked on the book. “[It’s] a visual stroll through this amazing body of work that they’ve nurtured, cultivated, and brought into being,”
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Paper Trail A new documentary, book, and show celebrate 20 years of vibrant local theatre troupe Paperhand Puppet Interventions BY BYRON WOODS arts@indyweek.com
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20th anniversary is a major milestone for a theater troupe; most don’t make it to their fifth or tenth. But 2020 was no celebration year for Paperhand Puppet Intervention, the venerated collective of artist-activists who’ve staged thought-provoking—and conscience-challenging— pageants with giant puppets since the turn of the century. The group’s annual output has long hinged on a single show each summer, traditionally opening in August at Chapel Hill’s Forest Theatre before closing the following month at Raleigh’s North Carolina Museum of Art. But the pandemic posed an existential threat to the group when it forced it to cancel that season last summer. With little to no incoming revenue over two years—between the close of We Are Here in September 2019 and a hopedfor show this August—how could a collective of some 30 to 40 artisans possibly stay together? “It was very hard at first, feeling like your whole career was crumbling away, like an illusion,” says co-founder Donovan Zimmerman. But a number of supporters met the challenge by becoming subscribers to the group’s Patreon account. 12
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“We had a sustaining amount that wasn’t going to let us go away forever,” Zimmerman says. “That was amazing.” With the group’s survival more assured, the mandatory furlough gave Zimmerman and co-founder Jan Burger the time they’d never had before to devote to a long-desired project: a book documenting their first two decades of work. Paperhand Puppet: Interventions in Cardboard, Cloth, and Clay, a 256-page, coffee-table tome available in hardback and softcover, is not only coming out as the group debuts its latest show this week at the Forest Theatre. It appears as We Are Here, filmmaker Marc Levy’s probing documentary of the group’s 2019 season, is screening in local venues. An exhibition of puppets at Carrboro’s ArtsCenter fills out an unlikely foursome, serving as a true celebration of the company’s achievements. “Without the pandemic, the book would not have come into existence,” Zimmerman says. “There’s no way we would have been able to write it and get all the pictures compiled without that space.”
he handsome volume is also a triumph against the subtle forces that always threaten the legacy of the live arts. Often, scripts and photographs become theatrical productions’ only surviving records. And despite their awesome presence on stage, the beautiful, giant hand-painted puppets that are Paperhand’s primary physical artifacts are particularly perishable because they’re mostly made of pâpier-maché, fabric, and clay. In one chapter, the authors speak with pride of the dings and damage their works collect in various forms of community activism. Since the group routinely reuses old puppets to make new ones, often all that’s left of the projects are pictures and sketchbook drawings. But even those can be scarce to come by. “Archiving is one of the things that has fallen through the cracks for us,” Zimmerman admits. The search for artifacts and photos took the team into attics, the backs of old drawers and filing cabinets, and unused studio and office space. “It took us half the year, at least.” “The need for an organized body of work generally doesn’t come up until you already have a disorganized body,” archivist Judith Winkler notes dryly. “Everybody has tons of old, unorganized photographs. But you have to collect them; that’s the first step of history. And unless you organize your creative work and how it’s produced, it will be lost.” Winkler ultimately managed the archiving and curation of more than 7,000 images on the project. “Judith did an amazing job, not only curating the photos in the book, but figuring out how to move Donovan and Jan from the oral tradition they’re accustomed to, as storytellers, to words on a page,” Chambers says. Based on work at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, Winkler interviewed Burger and Zimmerman over Zoom about old shows. “She got us to dive into the pool of memory and bring the shows back to life,” Zimmerman says. Chambers also interviewed cast and crew members, and the results “really helped create a flow to the text very similar to the way they speak and think,” she concludes. Designer Chris Crochetière brought Paperhand’s ideas to life, says David Perry, UNC Press’s long-time editor-in-chief
WE ARE HERE: A DOCUMENTARY FILM
Marc Levy | Sep. 9 | Varsity Theatre, Chapel Hill | Paperhandfilm.com
AUG 25 – SEPT 5
Paperhand puppets PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA who also worked on the project. Perry and Chambers both conclude the finished work conveys the ethos of its authors. “Those three strands—their artistry, community building, and eco-activism—really shine throughout the book,” Chambers says. All through the book, a cascade of vivid full-page images and illustrations feature an astonishing array of larger-than-life mythic, iconic, and archetypal figures drawn from indigenous folk tales across the globe. Dragons and phoenixes fly across its pages. Representations of the Earth goddess and the Green Man calmly preside over a world populated by kinetic fire demons and elemental totems representing the deep peace of clear water and good earth. Comic naïfs and inquisitive, good-hearted children are juxtaposed against grotesques representing the horrors of unchecked climate change, corporate capitalism, and war. The range of stories told in 20 years impresses as well, from a breathtaking tableau vivant of Picasso’s “Guernica” (after Colin Powell covered up the original at a 2003 press conference on the Iraq War) to the enlightenment of the Buddha. In that time, the tales of Gilgamesh and Mesopotamian creation myth have been staged alongside an improbable panorama of world thought leaders, from Thoreau and Darwin to naturalist Henri Fabre and Subcomandante Marcos.
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or Paperhand’s new show, Unfolding Seeds: Invocations of Transformation, Donovan Zimmerman knew an artform—
outside of puppetry—that could eloquently speak to a time of worldwide loss and brokenness, not only from the pandemic but other social and political stressors. It’s Kintsugi, the Japanese art of ornamenting pieces of broken pottery by repairing them with bands of silver or gold. The name means golden joinery, but Zimmerman notes that “it could also be translated as the art of being broken. It’s just a way of carrying our brokenness in a way that has some regenerative possibility within it.” The new production features collaborations with choreographer Tommy Noonan, poets C.J. Suitt and Gary Philips, and Lizzy Ross and Omar Ruiz-Lopez from Violet Bell, Andy Stack of Wye Oak, and meditative musician Daniel Chambo. Another sequence in the work contemplates changes in the world suggested by words that are added—and taken away— each year in the Oxford Junior Dictionary. Meadow and magpie have been removed from this year’s edition, Zimmerman notes. In their place: broadband and chat room. Finally, a third section focuses on what Zimmerman calls “tiny essential workers”: pollinators, soil creators like cicadas, butterflies, and bees. “They’re all part of this interlacing web of life,” Zimmerman says. “They form this network of connectivity; they remind us to connect to each other and to our community, to connect to our own hearts, our own stories, and to the Earth. That’s the way we just might survive, as a species.” W INDYweek.com
August 25, 2021
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FO O D & D R I N K
BUDDHA BEE APIARY buddhabeeapiary.com
Hive Mind Buddha Bee Apiary is bringing bees—and a lively education on sustainability—to local backyards BY LENA GELLER food@indyweek.com
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o my left, Jackson Brinkley has just paused a reverent soliloquy on “the queen” to hand me a jar full of what looks like Turkish delight. For a moment, it feels like I might be in Narnia, not standing next to a beehive in a balmy Watt-Hillandale backyard. It’s not uncommon to get a sense of otherworldliness when you’re around a beehive, according to beekeepers Brinkley and Alfredo Salkeld. “People have been watching bees since ancient times,” Brinkley says. “It’s very magical, the way they all work together.” Brinkley and Salkeld make up two-thirds of the team behind Buddha Bee Apiary, a company with a “Host-a-Hive” program that allows people with no beekeeping experience to house beehives in their backyards. Founded in 2019 by Justin Maness, Buddha Bee aims to show folks the value of beekeeping without forcing them to commit to the rigorous, complex care that the hobby usually requires. For a monthly fee of $150, the Buddha Bee crew will install a hive, care for the bees, and harvest the honey while using the hive as a living laboratory to educate hosts on sustainability and beekeeping tactics during their triweekly inspections. And while Maness is currently away doing remote management—he’s traveling cross-country with his family in a school bus that he renovated into a mobile home— he’s found devoted co-workers in Brinkley and Salkeld, who do the day-to-day management. Before starting at Buddha Bee, Salkeld didn’t have his own hives, but he was so interested in beekeeping that “anytime I was traveling, like visiting friends in New York, I would look up #beekeeping on Insta14
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gram and message random people like, ‘This is weird but can I come see your hives?’” Brinkley, meanwhile, has been beekeeping on his own for five years, and has 12 hives in his backyard. He asked his friend to make custom beekeeping pants that have a holster for his hive tool and elastic near the ankles to keep the bees from crawling up his legs. Today, I’m accompanying Brinkley and Salkeld on one of the 90 inspections they’ll perform in the Triangle this month. At this time of year, Brinkley tells me, hive inspections primarily involve monitoring for parasites called varroa mites, which transmit 30 different diseases among bees. If left untreated, the mites can wipe out an entire hive in a week. I peer through the grated lid of the jar I’m holding. It’s not full of candy; rather, bees wriggle, covered in powdered sugar. Brinkley explains that this is part of the “mite test.” “We take a scoop of about 300 bees and put some sugar on them, which makes them clean each other, which makes the mites fall off,” he says. The mites fit through the holes in the lid, but the bees don’t, he continues, so he can shake the jar, count how many mites fall out, and use that number to deduce the number of mites in the whole hive. If the mites look to be overly pervasive, he’ll treat them with an insecticide. “Mites are one of the main reasons we’re losing a very large percentage of our bees today,” Maness says. “We’re replenishing the populations when resources are abundant, but making more bees in preparation for these losses isn’t necessarily a long-term solution.” Beekeepers have yet to figure out a sustainable remedy to the mite problem, he
From left: Beekeepers Alfredo Salkeld & Jackson Brinkley of Buddha Bee Apiary PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
says, but raising colonies locally instead of purchasing them from out of state— something that Buddha Bee is on track to accomplish by next year—is a step in the right direction. “Varroa mites spread so quickly because we’re constantly shipping bees around the country,” Maness says. “Raising your own bees combats that problem, and it makes for a stronger, healthier honeybee, because they’re more acclimated to your area.” Educating hosts on the challenges that honeybees face is part of the Buddha Bee team’s mission during inspections. “Beekeeping is a gateway drug to caring about the environment,” Salkeld says. “I’ve seen people spraying mosquito spray all over their yard; that just kills butterflies and everything else. But then they get a beehive and suddenly they’re like ‘wait, I’m invested in not killing the things around me,’ and they switch to more natural alternatives.” And, as Brinkley adds, fostering a sustainable environment for pollinators can have an “actual quantifiable effect.” “We have a host who runs a garden for a Catholic church,” Brinkley says. “The year before they had a hive, I believe it was 20,000 pounds of produce that they gave
away. The year after getting a hive, it was 45,000 pounds.” Durham resident Robin Kirk, who hosts the hive that I observed in person, says the bees helped to spark inspiration for the second book in her fantasy trilogy, The Hive Queen, which came out in September 2020. “I didn’t realize at first that honeybees are actually not native; they’re cultivated,” Kirk says. “So as someone who also writes science fiction, that’s really cool. We’ve engineered nature in so many ways, even in so-called wild places, which almost makes climate change feel more addressable, because if we’ve created nature then maybe we continue to think about it creatively so we don’t kill ourselves.” Kirk splits the monthly fee with three of her neighbors. The hive benefits all of them, from a pollination and educational standpoint, she says, and they all get a cut of the honey. “My neighbor actually uses the honey for baking. I mainly use it for hot toddies,” Kirk says. “It’s a nice little benefit, but as we have said to each other, it’s the most expensive honey in the world, so that’s not why we do it. We do it because it’s a way of keeping in touch with the world around us.” W
M U SIC
THE NORTH CAROLINA FESTIVAL OF PSYCHEDELIA
Friday, Aug. 27, 8 p.m., $7 | Local 506, Chapel Hill | local506.com
From left: Daniel and Danny Chavis PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA
The Paisley Overground Daniel Chavis of The Veldt’s evolving psychedelic music festival celebrates not fitting in BY BRIAN HOWE music@indyweek.com
H
ippies, free spirits, and trippers, rejoice: The North Carolina Festival of Psychedelia returns this week for one more round of mind-expanding local music before it morphs into n o i r b i z z a r e, a pan-bohemian, all-inclusive, Black-centered multimedia affair from the paisley-spotted mind of Daniel Chavis. With his twin brother, Danny, Chavis plays in The Veldt, the inimitable shoegaze-soul band that broke out of the Triangle indie scene to make a major-label record in the alt-rock nineties and eventually returned for a second act in Raleigh, where they grew up. “When I went to Crabtree Valley looking for NME or Melody Maker, reading about The Pixies or Cocteau
Twins or The Jesus and Mary Chain, I didn’t know that five years later I’d be performing with them,” says Chavis, who leapt onto a Trailways bus after high school to follow the eighties psych-rock revival known as the “Paisley Underground.” The idea for the NCFP was planted when the neopsych band The Brian Jonestown Massacre took The Veldt on some European tour dates, including a festival in Portugal. “We were never able to get into any kind of festivals for most of our career—we didn’t fit in, being Afropunk and anything else,” Chavis says. “I thought, why do we have to go out of the United States to get on a festival?”
Chavis staged the first NCFP, which featured bands like Stray Owls and Night Battles, at Kings, The Pour House, and Wicked Witch in 2016. He had booked the second on the roof of a Holiday Inn, transforming it into “The Holiday Love Inn.” Then COVID came. Instead, he did a small version at Local 506 in May, working with Wendy Mann, an owner of both the Midway block and the music venue, and Luva Zacharyj, another Local 506 co-owner. “There were some amazing kids there who were really looking for this kind of music,” Chavis says. “Music that’s not Americana, which I do like, but there’s no avenue for it here. I’m really grateful that Wendy’s been getting the Midway area up and jumping.” Featuring The Veldt, Candy Coffins, Pretty Odd, The Mystery Plan, and TRIPLE X SNAXXX, the NCFP returns to the 506 on Friday, August 27, the night after it opens at Charlotte’s Visulite Theatre and before it closes at Winston-Salem’s Monstercade. There, the name will be retired as Chavis shifts toward an exciting venture called n o i r b i z z a r e. “Not being included as a kid, you grow up with a sense of not belonging. I know what that’s like, because I was the guy in the middle of the lunchroom with my guitar, not on the white or the Black side,” Chavis says. “There was never really any place for my brother and I when we first started playing music, because we were Black and never fit into the hardcore scene. So I thought, what if we had kind of a Black hippie fest between Hopscotch and IBMA?” If COVID allows—“We stand on the side of science,” Chavis says—n o i r b i z z a r e will piggyback on Hopscotch and debut September 11 in the former Taz’s grocery space at the bottom of the SkyHouse apartment building in Raleigh. For the first n o i r b i z z a r e, The Veldt is teaming with Burnt Sugar, an Afrofuturist jazz-punk ensemble featuring Greg Tate, the famed Village Voice writer who was also a narrator in the documentary Summer of Soul, which Chavis says captures the vibe he’s going for. The bands will blend into The Imploding Black Inevitable to rewire Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable with Black culture. It’s one example of how Chavis’s music-industry friendships will fuel n o i r b i z z a r e events, where eventually we might see iconic acts like Fishbone and Living Colour sharing stages with young local bands of all races and genders for whom the Summer of Love never ended, all not fitting in together. W INDYweek.com
August 25, 2021
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Beginnings and Endings Lilac Shadows lets in the light with its final release, while SSSSSSS begins a new chapter of wild-eyed punk with its debut BY WILL ATKINSON AND JORDAN LAWRENCE music@indyweek.com
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When The Other Side of Night begins, Lilac Shadows’ Sam Logan is glued to the screen. “I woke up in a familiar zone / Spinning wheels and reading phones,” he sings on “Novacaition,” a scene that’s nauseatingly familiar for anyone whose first move in the morning is to reach for the nearest social media feed. Caught between doomscrolling and an uncomfortable investment in the lives of strangers, he asks, does it ever get better than this? This isn’t a surprising sentiment for Lilac Shadows, who took an extended hiatus after 2015’s Brutalism, a decision that Logan has said was influenced, in part, by the unremitting stream of bad news that came with Trump’s inauguration. Looking back, after a year and a half in a pandemic, that era almost feels quaint in comparison. But whether you start the clock in November 2016 or in March 2020, it’s this collective mood of anxious, overstimulated waiting— illuminated by the numbing glow of the phone screen—that concerns Logan, who is now based in Greensboro, on his third (and, he says, final) LP as Lilac Shadows. With song titles like “Modern Terror” and “MK-Ultra” telegraphing this certain kind of angst, one might expect the shadowy post-punk of Brutalism to be a natural fit for the record. On the contrary, The Other Side of Night lets in more light than any Lilac Shadows release to date. Where Brutalism found the group recording in the former warehouse of Durham’s Scrap Exchange, filling every crevice with its shoegaze squall, The Other Side of Night scales back on the noise while bringing new elements into focus, from the Casiotone daydream of the instrumental “(content)” to the motorik jangle-pop of “What Comes Next” and “True Ever After.” (The former features backing vocals from Jacki Huntington, a.k.a. Teevee Nicks; the latter features Alli Rogers, who has lent her mixing talents to many a local release.) By the final stretch of the album, Lilac Shadows seems to have summoned a determination to move beyond despair, toward something more hopeful than the anxious paralysis of “Modern Terror.” For a project that now goes back 10 years in the Triangle music
scene, The Other Side of Night marks the end of a chapter, but it leaves with the promise of a new dawn. —Will Atkinson SSSSSSS: SSSSSSS HHH1/2 [Self-released; Aug. 27]
The debut release from SSSSSSS is a scuzzy blur of omnivorous, wild-eyed punk. The vocals are rarely and barely intelligible. Every riff, bassline, and drum hit is loaded down with gobs of serrated fuzz. And yet, the most impressive thing about this release is its attention to detail. Guitarist/bassist/drummer/ synth player Clark Blomquist (The Kingsbury Manx, Spider Bags, Dan Melchior Band) and vocalist/lyricist Owen FitzGerald (Jokes&Jokes&Jokes, Salt Palace) are skilled musical chameleons. And they lean into that here, sprinting through hardcore both brutalizing (opener “The Sibilance”) and mischievous (“The Balloons”) on their way to overdriven Suicide strutting (“Is The”) and grinningly low-rent black metal (“From All”) across 10 largely one-to-two-minute songs. The breathless chaos is united by the consistently thoughtful way they assemble their subtly varied textures. The blaring distortion applied to the stoner riffs on “In Town” mounts gradually until the end, when it condenses into a colossal swell of feedback. All manner of skittering, fluttering background textures complicate the clobbering riff and hyperventilating drums on “Is The,” giving the song a headiness disembodied from its manic propulsion, like blacking out on a roller coaster. The lyrics aren’t discernible enough to make much of an impact, but FitzGerald’s vocals are key. He brings something different to each song—sneering confidently on the bouncy but burly “Take,” growling bestially through static on the metallic “From All,” mustering a righteously strained holler on the hardcore gut check “Best Value.” SSSSSSS is likely too potent to win over newcomers to such extreme sounds. But those who have a taste for it should be able to kill hours exploring the intricacies of its 15 minutes. —Jordan Lawrence W
M U SIC
Remembering Tim Carless After the Carrboro musician passed away in June local musicians look for ways to celebrate his life BY SPENCER GRIFFITH
O
music@indyweek.com
n June 14, Carrboro musician Tim Carless passed away at age 55 after a month-long battle with an aggressive esophageal cancer. He leaves behind a family, including two daughters, Pema and Seraphina. Born in England, Carless was a professional musician for many years before settling down in the Triangle, 15 years ago, where he worked as a producer and music teacher. He frequently performed live scores for silent films at The ArtsCenter and played in tributes to the likes of Leonard Cohen and Emmylou Harris, though he also worked alongside actual icons like Paul McCartney. Though I did not know Carless personally, his lasting impact on the Triangle’s music scene is undeniable, shining through in remembrances from the many area musicians whom he called friends. “I may not have stayed in the music industry if it weren’t for meeting Tim,” says music veteran Jeff Crawford, who was shifting into engineering and production when he met Carless. “He always encouraged me to just start without getting overwhelmed about whether I knew enough or how I compared to someone else.” Like many I spoke with, Crawford mentioned Carless’ numerous, personalized recommendations of music, art, film, and literature. “I have so many emails for books and records and movies that he’s recommended to me over the years that were tailored to my relationship with him,” says Casey Toll, who often collaborated with Carless on silent film scores. “He had such a broad knowledge and love of art that he shared with so many people, and I think that’s one of the things that connected us all together.”
Toll was one of the organizers, alongside co-organizer Joshua Busmanan and a crew of local musicians and friends, who had planned a memorial concert at Cat’s Cradle, “Tim Carless Among Friends,” that would celebrate Carless’s life—in conjunction with an exhibition of his abstract paintings—on August 29. Due to the resurgence of COVID-19, the event has been postponed indefinitely. But those close to Carless still have plenty to share. “The way he perceived the world was inspiring—whenever we would spend time together, I left feeling rejuvenated and creative,” says Daniel Fields, who remained friends with Carless after taking lessons with him for a couple of years, more than a decade ago. “I frequently feel like I am still learning from him. To me, Tim was more than a guitar teacher—I always felt that his presence alone was instructional.” Casey Toll says that Carless had a “special talent” for keeping connections going with his friends, often sparking a conversation back to life with another recommendation. If weeks or months had passed, some gentle ribbing from Carless could revive a conversation, leading to a catch-up in person over coffee or walk. “I’ll remember Tim as a generous, open-hearted friend and a legendary conversationalist,” adds Brad Porter, who managed The ArtsCenter during many of Carless’s performances and was razzed by Carless for his distaste of Dire Straits. “He could pull from any array of arenas to frame his take on your or someone else’s work, but he could also deftly undercut your opinion on a matter with his dry, sardonic wit—which may have been my favorite part about his personality.”
Tim Carless
PHOTO BY KATRINA WILLIAMS OF FIFTY TWO HUNDRED PHOTO
The day after Carless laid down guitar for Rachel Kiel’s 2016 album, Shot From A Cannon, he followed up with an email recommending more than a dozen artists for her to explore and listing his five favorite songs, the first of which—American Music Club’s “Johnny Mathis’ Feet”—he declared would be played at his funeral. The pair bonded over Bob Dylan—whose name graced Carless’ vanity plate—and planned an Oh Mercy tribute last March that was derailed by the pandemic. “Tim created community by finding others who loved music as much as he did, then by being unafraid to reach out and connect with them in a truly open-hearted, curious, and enthusiastic way,” Kiel says. She credits Carless for helping inspire her to write “Ava Gardner,” thanks to his persistent recommendation of a Paul Buchanan solo album. “It’s one of the songs I’m most proud of and I don’t think I could have written it without hearing Mid Air— something Tim knew I needed to hear and kept bugging me until I did.” Over the past year, Carless released a pair of songs—including the particularly poignant “I Want To Grow Old With You”—and Toll is hopeful that the rest
of Carless’ solo recordings from the pandemic will be able to be released. “He was immensely generous with me, giving me lessons in recording music, playing piano, and appreciating music, film, and art,” agrees Angela Winter, whose 2018 album, Hollow, featured production and contributions from Carless. She remembers Carless insisting that she play as many live shows— particularly in hostile rooms—as she could. “As painful as that was at the time, I think he wanted me to find my wings and my own way forward,” she says. “He was forever encouraging me to skirt the edges of what seemed impossible until it became possible.” The memorial concert would have served as a public celebration of Carless’s influence in the community. An outdoor gathering will still be held on August 29—it’s set for 3 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Park—and concert organizers hope to also celebrate Carless’s life at Cat’s Cradle one day soon. When that happens, Toll says, “Johnny Mathis’ Feet,” the song that Carless told Kiel should be played at his funeral, years before his diagnosis, will be on the setlist. A GoFundMe to raise money in support of Tim’s daughters is ongoing. W INDYweek.com
August 25, 2021
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