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A NEW PRIDE FOR NEW TIMES

An LGBTQ institution in North Carolina springs back from the brink of extinction with fresh energy and a modern mission

QUEER KIDS IN JUVIE, P. 9

THE COMMISSIONER’S MISSION, P. 20

GAY TEACHER, RED STATE, P. 24

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WHAT WE LEARNED THIS WEEK RALEIGH

VOL. 35, NO. 39

DEPARTMENTS

7 As of late last week, at least three hog lagoons in eastern North Carolina had breached as a result of Hurricane Florence, and twenty-one more were inundated by floodwaters.

7 News 12 Food 14 Arts & Culture

9 There are three states that don’t explicitly protect LGBTQ youth in their juvenile justice systems from discrimination. North Carolina is one of them.

16 Pride 29 Music 38 What to Do This Week

12 When a food journalist and baker loses half her tastebuds, she must learn to eat with her eyes.

41 Music Calendar 44 Arts & Culture Calendar

17 The fight for LGBTQ equality shifted. NC Pride didn’t keep up.

20 A therapist once offered Greg Ford, now a Wake County commissioner, a life-changing diagnosis: “Dude, you’re gay.”

29 From their traditional structures to their strong North Carolina roots, jazz and bluegrass have more in common than you might think.

37 Ken Ludwig exhumes modern political relevance from a very old tale in Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Greg Ford, the first openly gay Wake County commissioner, wants to blaze a trail for the next generation of LGBTQ leaders (p. 20). PHOTO BY CAITLIN PENNA

On the cover PHOTO BY D.L. ANDERSON

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NCDOT TO HOLD TWO PUBLIC MEETINGS REGARDING PROPOSED TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENTS TO U.S. 1 (CAPITAL BOULEVARD) FROM I-540 IN RALEIGH TO PURNELL ROAD/HARRIS ROAD IN WAKE FOREST WAKE COUNTY STIP PROJECT NO: U-5307 Two public meetings will be held to present information on State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) Project No. U-5307, which proposes to make improvements to U.S. 1 (Capital Boulevard) between I-540 in Raleigh and Purnell Road (S.R. 1909)/Harris Road (S.R. 1931) in Wake Forest. The meetings will take place on Tuesday, October 9 and Thursday, October 11 between 4 and 7 p.m. The same maps and information will be presented for review at both meetings.

Tuesday, October 9, 2018: 4-7 p.m.

Lifepoint Church 9500 Durant Road, Raleigh

Thursday, October 11, 2018: 4-7 p.m.

Renaissance Center 405 Brooks Street, Wake Forest

These meetings are being held in an effort to effectively involve the public in the project planning process and the important decisions that will be made regarding the proposed improvements.

The N.C. Department of Transportation is proposing to convert U.S. 1 (Capital Boulevard) to a controlled-access facility from I-540toPurnellRoad (S.R.1909)/Harris Road (S.R.1931). Controlled access means that access to U.S. 1 would be made by use of interchanges and that no direct driveway access would be allowed. The purposeoftheprojectisto improve traffic congestionand traveltimes andmaintain regional mobility and local connectivity.

Maps of the concepts and interchange options being considered for project U-5307 are available for viewing and downloading from the NCDOT public meetings website: www.ncdot.gov/news/public-meetings/ Additional information is available and comments may be made directly by visiting NCDOT’s public engagement platform for this project: www.ncdot.publicinput.com/US-1-Capital-Boulevard.

An opportunity to discuss the project with NCDOT and Consultant team members, ask questions, and provide feedback will be available. Interested citizens may attend at any time between 4 and 7 p.m. as no formal presentation will be made. Attendees will also have the opportunity to submit written comments and questions until November 11, 2018.

For more information on project U-5307, please contact NCDOT Project Manager David Stark by email at dstark@ncdot.gov.

NCDOT will provide auxiliary aids and services under the Americans with Disabilities Act for disabled persons who wish to participate in this meeting. Anyone requiring special services should contact: Ms. Diane Wilson at (919) 707-6073 as early as possible so that arrangements can be made.

Persons who speak Spanish and do not speak English, or have a limited ability to read, speak or understand English, may receive interpretive services upon request prior to the meeting by calling 1-800-481-6494.

Aquellas personas que hablan español y no hablan inglés, o tienen limitaciones para leer, hablar o entender inglés, podrían recibir servicios de interpretación si los solicitan antes de la reunión llamando al 1-800-481-6494.

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Raleigh Durham | Chapel Hill PUBLISHER EDITORIAL

Susan Harper

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indynews Hog Hell

IN THE WAKE OF HURRICANE FLORENCE, HOG LAGOONS BREACHED AND THOUSANDS OF PIGS DIED. ADVOCATES WONDER IF THE LEGISLATURE WILL FINALLY TAKE THIS ENVIRONMENTAL THREAT SERIOUSLY.

BY LEIGH TAUSS

A hog lagoon in eastern North Carolina surrounded by floodwaters

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lying over the state’s eastern coastal region last week, it was hard to tell where the floodwaters ended and the lagoons containing millions of gallons of hog excrement began—although you could still smell the stench from a thousand feet in the air.

The waste within the lagoons is usually bright pink—the Pepto-Bismol color the result of anaerobic respiration—and jumps out among the region’s rolling green fields and lush wooded stretches. But after Hurricane Florence dumped an estimated eight trillion gallons of rain on the state, the liquid inside many of lagoons in the floodplain looked identical to the dark floodwaters surrounding it.

In the town of Harrells, where flooding appeared to have retreated, a massive hog lagoon full of this dark liquid showed a distinct opening in the corner, with black veins of waste spilling out and cutting through brush, working their way toward Little Tomahawk Creek.

“That’s one helluva breach,” said Waterkeeper Alliance cofounder Rick Dove, as the small plane he was in circled the farm.

This is one of many compromised lagoons the Alliance’s volunteers claim to have observed on daily flights since the category

PHOTO BY LEIGH TAUSS

1 storm began its crippling assault on September 14. Florence’s human toll is still being assessed, but the state has reported thirty-one deaths and thousands of damaged homes from widespread flooding, which continued to ravage coastal communities through this weekend as floodwaters crested the Neuse River at historic heights.

The southeastern region most severely affected by the storm is also home to North Carolina’s highest concentration of hog farms, where 90 percent of the state’s estimated nine million pigs are bred for slaughter. The animals live in massive holding pens, their waste dropped through slats in the floor, then liquefied and stored in nearby in Olympic swimming pool–sized open-air lagoons. Once those lagoons fill up, their contents are sprayed as fertilizer onto fields.

(In a series of lawsuits, more than five hundred neighbors of the state’s hog farms have claimed this process of waste disposal creates a nuisance that adversely affects the enjoyment of their property.)

Many poultry farms are located in the same vicinity. So far, the N.C. Department of Agriculture has reported 3.4 million chickens and 5,500 pigs killed as a result of the storm. Video footage has shown hogs wading neck-deep through floodwaters and dead

chickens floating like dirty pillows in the dark water.

At least three hog lagoons have breached, the N.C. Pork Council has reported, with two more that may have structural damage, twenty-one lagoons that are inundated by floodwaters, and seventeen lagoons that are overflowing. Those numbers represent a tiny fraction of the state’s twenty-one hundred farms and thirty-three hundred lagoons, the Pork Council points out.

“While we are dismayed by the release of some liquids from some lagoons, we also understand that what has been released from the farms is the result of a once-ina-lifetime storm and that the contents are highly diluted with rainwater,” the Council said in a release last week.

Dove and Waterkeeper Alliance attorney Will Hendrick aren’t convinced that will lessen the danger to people in flooded communities. In 2016, Hurricane Matthew delivered less rain and resulted in fewer animal deaths, yet four months after that storm, ambient water testing revealed elevated levels of fecal coliform, a bacterial indicator used to access the presence of other pathogens harmful to humans, Hendrick says.

In addition to hog waste and deceased animals, toxic coal ash from a Duke Energy

landfill reportedly contaminated the Cape Fear River on Friday after a dam breach at Sutton Lake. The ash contains arsenic and mercury, among other contaminants.

Testing on Florence’s floodwaters is underway.

Dove, who has lived on the Neuse River since the 1970s, says he’s seen this all before. Increasingly intense storms have been flooding the same lowland farms for the last two decades, he adds. Most recently, about twenty-eight hundred pigs were killed during Matthew. In 1999, Hurricane Floyd killed twenty-one thousand hogs, and subsequent investigations into working conditions and waste management practices prompted the state to buy up and relocate dozens of flood-prone farms.

Following this voluntary buyout, however, 62 flood-prone farms with 166 lagoons remain in vulnerable areas.

Still, after each storm, the flooding recedes, the news crews clear out, and nothing changes, Dove says. Inevitably, “the next storm comes through, and it’s the same thing,” Dove says.

But even under sunny skies, Hendrick argues, these industrial hog farms remain problematic, thanks to their anachronistic waste-disposal systems.

Avoiding future hazards will require mandating more environmentally friendly waste-management technology on existing hog operations and removing these facilities from the hundred-year floodplain, Hendrick says. But that’s unlikely to happen, at least in the near future, as such reforms would require legislative action and likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

In recent years, the General Assembly has sought to protect the industry from lawsuits that would hold it responsible for the alleged ill effects of its waste system—first, by limiting the amount of money plaintiffs in nuisance lawsuits can receive, then by placing further restrictions on the conditions under which hog-farm neighbors can sue.

This year, Smithfield Foods—the world’s largest pork producer—has lost three nuisance cases in federal court in Raleigh, the latest being a $473 million verdict against the company, which was reduced to about $94 million because of the state’s cap on punitive damages.

Smithfield’s contracted farmers are often underpaid and should not bear the responsibility for cleaning up the industry’s mess, Hendrick says.

“I think [Smithfield] has the means to correct his problem, and moreover has been profiting of years by externalizing costs to surrounding communities,” he says. “They should be the one to the foot this bill.” ltauss@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 7

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news

Knowledge Is Power

NORTH CAROLINA DOESN’T KNOW HOW MANY LGBTQ YOUTH ARE IN ITS JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM. THAT PUTS THEM IN DANGER. BY JORDAN WILKIE

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orth Carolina is one of just three states, along with Alaska and Oklahoma, that don’t explicitly protect LGBTQ youth in their juvenile justice systems from discrimination, according to the advocacy organization Lambda Legal. Now, a year after a reporter first began inquiring about the state’s policy, that’s about to change—somewhat.

The N.C. Department of Public Safety, which oversees the juvenile justice division, is awaiting federal approval of a new policy to protect LGBTQ youth in juvenile detention facilities or prisons. This change will likely affect hundreds of LGBTQ adolescents and teens each year, a group that is overrepresented in the country’s juvenile justice systems and whose members are targeted for physical and sexual assault, federal studies show.

Under the new policy, juvenile facilities will ask youth about their sexual orientation or gender identity at intake. The number of self-reported LGBTQ youth will then be reported to the director of facility services every month and become public record.

This information is hugely important, advocates say, because non-heterosexuals are about twice as likely as heterosexuals to be sexually assaulted by other juveniles or staff while in custody, according to a 2010 report by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. The bureau does not offer data on how often transgender youth are assaulted in juvenile facilities, but transgender adults in jails and prisons report sexual assault at thirteen times the rate of cisgender prisoners. Federal law requires juvenile facilities to screen for risk factors—and being LGBTQ is a major one.

Further, not having that data could mean that youth are being sent to inappropriate treatment, says Eric Zogry, head of the state’s juvenile public defender office.

Teenagers may be forced to participate in treatment that is irrelevant to the root problems that pushed them into the system

ILLUSTRATION BY STEVE OLIVA

in the first place—like family rejection, homelessness, or being bullied at school.

“You gotta recognize that there’s a problem,” Zogry says. “And you don’t recognize that there’s a problem unless you ask certain questions and gather certain information. I think that would be a huge step if we could just get [the juvenile justice division] to gather data. And then we could start to talk about what are some effective ways to keep LGBTQ kids out of the system.”

States with the most comprehensive protections for LGBTQ youth in the juvenile justice system—most notably California and New York—have statutes, regulations, and nondiscrimination policies, as well as staterun grievance procedures for youth who have been mistreated and an ombudsman to look into reports of misadministration.

North Carolina has none of these things.

Instead, North Carolina is playing catchup with federal law. Its new policy is a

response to a 2016 clarification of the Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA, a federal law under which all staffers who work in detentions, jails, or prisons are required to enact policies to eliminate sexual violence.

But because the policy is limited only to those in detention or juvenile prisons, it will leave out thousands of children and teens who move through juvenile courts, community treatment programs, and probation each year. And even with INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 9

it in place, North Carolina will continue to rank among the states with the fewest protections for LGBTQ youth in their juvenile justice systems.

In an email, DPS Deputy Secretary for Juvenile Justice William Lassiter pointed to the department’s Juvenile Bill of Rights, which says youth should not be discriminated against due to sex or sexual orientation. But it also says those rights “are not absolute, and may be limited to the extent reasonably necessary for the Department to discharge statutory responsibilities.”

And in any event, that bill of rights doesn’t have any legal authority, Zogry says.

In theory, DPS could create more encompassing policies to protect LGBTQ youth on its own, even without changes in state law. But as this state’s recent history makes clear, the treatment of LGBTQ people can be a contentious political matter—and one that, even when it comes to vulnerable kids, few in state government seem eager to touch.

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n North Carolina in 2016, more than 1,900 youth were placed in juvenile detention, 178 were committed to a juvenile prison, and more than 24,000 were sent to community-based treatment programs.

It’s unclear how many of them are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer; research on LGBTQ incarceration is nearnonexistent in the state, and there are very few, if any, advocates for this population who can point to how LGBTQ youth are treated. There is also no data coming out of DPS, which does not collect sexual orientation or gender identity information on the youth in its custody. And shootfrom-the-hip estimates from DPS officials on how many LGBTQ children and teens they serve doesn’t match national research on LGBTQ juvenile incarceration, further muddying the waters.

For example, Jean Steinberg, the department’s director of clinical programs for juvenile detentions and juvenile prisons, says that no transgender youth has come through a state-run juvenile prison in over a decade.

“It could be that we have had youth that have chosen to lay low, you know, while they’re with us,” Steinberg says. “But I’m not aware of anyone, any child, who’s come into a [juvenile prison], I would say in fifteen years, to be truthful, who’s identified as trans.”

From 2003–16, nearly five thousand youth were committed to a state juvenile prison. The idea that none of them were transgender “seems implausible,” says Currey Cook, a lawyer with Lambda Legal who helped write a national report on LGBTQ youth in juvenile justice systems. “If you intentionally keep your head in the sand

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about these issues, then you may be able to kid yourself that you don’t have them or that you don’t have to deal with them.

But that position is not consistent with the research on this topic.”

The state oversees four juvenile prisons, called youth development centers, and six juvenile detention facilities. Two more detention facilities are run by Guilford and Durham Counties.

Directors of the state’s juvenile prisons did not respond to requests for comment on whether they have housed LGBTQ youth.

Neither did Angela Wilson, director of the Cabarrus juvenile detention center, a facility roughly equivalent to jail for kids. Four directors of juvenile detentions responded in emails that they were aware of LGBTQ youth but provided no further information.

Two detention administrators—Eugene Hallock, director of the Cumberland detention, and Kimberly Dupree, director of the Pitt detention—said they were unaware of any LGBTQ youth in their facilities.

Throughout 2017, the Pitt detention held 232 kids, according to Dupree. The national estimate from the Bureau of Justice Statistics puts lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth at 12 percent of the juvenile detention population at any given time. Using those national averages, roughly 27 of the 232 kids served in 2017 would be expected to be lesbian, gay, or bisexual.

According to Angela Irvine of Ceres Policy Research, whose studies also account for transgender youth, the percentage of youth in juvenile detention who are LGBTQ is likely closer to 20 percent. That would mean that Pitt had housed almost fifty LGBTQ teenagers in 2017, but none came to the attention of the facility’s director.

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ight now, instead of asking, detention staffers are supposed to guess whether a young person is LGBTQ. The state’s screening tool directs them to fill out a box asking, “Are there any observed or self-disclosed non-traditional sexual orientation or gender-identity issues?” Underneath, in all caps: “(DO NOT ASK THE JUVENILE).”

That’s the opposite of smart policy, Cook says. “Basically, you’re having people engaging in stereotyping and doing their own analysis of whether someone is presenting in a way that they may be or are perceived to be LGBTQ, instead of actually asking people to self-identify, which is the only way that we actually know.”

Under the new policy, young people will be given the opportunity to disclose their sexual orientation or gender identity but will not be required to do so. If they do, their individual information will be private, only dis-

closed to certain staffers, and, in many cases, even kept from their parents. (In the aggregate, the data on the numbers of LGBTQ youth will be available to the public.)

This should all go into effect in November, DPS estimates, about a year before more sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds start entering the system due to the “Raise the Age” reform passed last year. North Carolina’s juvenile justice system already serves older teens, but only if they committed their crime before turning sixteen.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, research shows that teens tend to identify as LGBTQ at higher rates as they get older.

Federal law requires states to compile data on sexual abuse in juvenile facilities.

From 2013, when PREA was implemented, through 2017, juveniles in North Carolina lodged 43 allegations of sexual abuse or harassment against staffers and 110 against other juveniles. There is no data on how many of those allegations came from LGBTQ youth.

After investigations, just five of the 43 allegations made against staffers and nine of the 110 allegations against other juveniles were determined to be true. The rest were deemed inconclusive or false.

These rates of substantiation are just under the national average of 10 percent, says Jesse Lerner-Kinglake, spokesman for Just Detention International, an organization dedicated to ending rape in prison.

“We see this as a massive problem,” Lerner-Kinglake says. “It takes a tremendous amount of courage to come forward to report sexual abuse in any setting, and particularly when a person is confined. And we know that the rate of false reports is very low.”

Every state-run juvenile facility has been audited for compliance with the PREA, and all have passed. But those audits, which often run more than eighty pages and lend themselves to boilerplate language, aren’t perfect.

There is some information that should be unique to each audit, says Lerner-Kinglake, such as the results of resident interviews.

But you’ll often see nearly identical language like this passage, which occurs in several audits for juvenile prisons in North Carolina as well as three audits of Maryland facilities: “Residents were well informed of their right to be free from sexual abuse and harassment and how to report sexual abuse and harassment using several ways of communication such as trusted staff, administrative staff, family member, and the hotline.”

The problem, Lerner-Kinglake says, is that many auditors aren’t rigorous in their reviews. And when they become rubber

stamps, PREA compliance protects the administrators and staff at juvenile facilities more than it guarantees a child’s security.

T

he likelihood of sexual assault is not the same for everyone in juvenile facilities. Those who get assaulted most often have prior histories of being sexually abused, present as LGBTQ, have mental illness, or were convicted of sexual offenses. LGBTQ people are targeted more than other groups, and their identity is so stigmatized that even the impression that teenagers are LGBTQ—regardless of their actual identity—is enough to increase their risk of being assaulted.

Advocates point to two things states need to do for LGBTQ youth in their custody. First, staffers need to accept and affirm their sexual orientation and gender identity. Federal law prohibits discrimination, Cook says. But even if states and counties were meeting all federal requirements, it still would not be enough.

offer appropriate care, though neither how “should” will be enforced nor what is “appropriate” are laid out in the current draft. In addition, teenagers who enter a juvenile facility having already been prescribed or taking hormones will have the opportunity to see a specialist. Until now, the juvenile division had no policy about hormone treatment for transgender youth.

No training on working with LGBTQ youth is currently required. When asked, DPS spokespeople could not point to any voluntary training on LGBTQ issues juvenile detention or prison staffers may have taken.

Youth in facilities where staff members do not receive specific and effective training “are just rolling the dice,” Cook says.

The staff may be competent and affirming, or they could act unprofessionally and contrary to law.

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he state has been tracking how often African Americans are caught up in the juvenile justice system since 1988,

“You don’t recognize that there’s a problem unless you ask certain questions and gather certain information.”

“PREA doesn’t speak to all the specifics of affirming the identity of youth,” Cook says. “It says that you should be treating LGBTQI people with respect, but that is really general and vague.”

That’s why North Carolina’s new policy is only a starting point.

According to Cook, staffers need to be trained to look for and be responsive to the types of trauma that LGBTQ youth commonly face: family rejection, homelessness, sexual, physical, and verbal assault, abuse in foster care, and severe punishment by juvenile justice systems.

The department’s new policy speaks to these issues by laying out some protections for LGBTQ teenagers. It says employees cannot try to change a youth’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Staff members will be required to use preferred names and pronouns. Plus, the juvenile facilities will need to include LGBTQ materials in educational books and other reading material. The new policy also states that mental health and other medical personnel should

when the federal government amended the Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Act. The thirty years of data have been unequivocal: Black youth are cited, arrested, detained, and punished in North Carolina more often and more severely than other racial groups.

Knowledge of racial disparities in the justice system is now widespread and has spawned a number of organizations, projects, and task forces to address the problem. That’s not the case for LGBTQ youth.

None of the twenty-six LGBTQ organizations in North Carolina that could be reached for this story—including the LGBT Centers in Durham, Charlotte, Greensboro, and Raleigh; Equality NC; and the Freedom Center for Social Justice—have researched the issue or advocated for LGBTQ youth in the state’s juvenile justice system, though they have worked on related issues such as LGBTQ teen homelessness, family acceptance, LGBTQ youth in the foster care system, LGBTQ acceptance in school, and opposing discriminatory laws.

Until the new policy takes effect, LGBTQ youth in North Carolina’s juvenile justice system face four interconnected problems: There are no legally enforceable policies that protect them. The state doesn’t collect data about them. There are too few watchdogs.

And the juvenile justice system is confidential—which both keeps their records from following them their whole lives and prevents the public from talking to them about what is happening behind detention facility walls, as can be done with adult prisoners.

Just as state LGBTQ organizations haven’t crossed over into juvenile justice advocacy, groups that seek juvenile justice reform haven’t worked on LGBTQ issues in any systematic way. These partnerships, which exist elsewhere, have yet to develop in North Carolina.

Peggy Nicholson, a lawyer with the Youth Justice Project, part of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, says this advocacy doesn’t happen because there’s no data to work with. The data collected under the new policy, however, “would definitely help us better evaluate the impacts of the juvenile system on LGBTQI youth.”

Reporting the numbers of LGBTQ youth in the system may break the cycle of silence, but that in itself won’t improve the conditions those detainees face. It will simply be a tool for advocates to use. But the policies that have been enacted in the most protective states remain untested.

Both California and New York follow the trifecta of best practices: asking for sexual orientation and gender identity data, implementing policies protecting LGBTQ youth, and training staff to properly work with LGBTQ juveniles.

Because these policies are relatively new, because this is a niche concern, and because federal grant money to study this issue has all but dried up under the Trump administration, there is little research to examine whether better policy actually leads to improved outcomes for LGBTQ youth.

Zogry is skeptical that it will. Knowing the scope of the problem is important, he says. But look at what has happened with black youth: Three decades ago, federal law required states to start tracking racial disparities in their juvenile justice systems and to make “good faith efforts” to fix the problem.

Most states, including North Carolina, have drastically reduced the total number of youths in their juvenile justice systems.

But the racial disparities have gotten worse. backtalk@indyweek.com Jordan Wilkie first wrote on this issue for his master’s work in journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill.

INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 11

indyfood Tasteless

AFTER A DISASTROUS ORAL SURGERY, A BAKER AND FOOD JOURNALIST LEARNS HOW TO EAT WITH HER EYES

BY LENA GELLER

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baking competitions, recipe contests, and an miling grimly and dragging a sharp international food photography award. Last dental tool across my tongue, the oral year, my business and blog were featured on surgeon remarks that I’ve scored a the front page of The Washington Post. I’m spot on his “Top Ten Worst Reactions” list, a sophomore in college now, and even with which, he adds proudly, spans twenty-plus all my schoolwork, I still make time to bake years of extracting wisdom teeth. every day in my apartment kitchen. Food I give him a thumbs up. What an is my passion and my livelihood; it’s what accomplishment! I’d had the four pearly drives my dream of having a career in food demons ripped from my mouth at the end of journalism and opening my own bakery.

May, and in the weeks since, I’d experienced During the first month after surgery, I lost almost every complication depicted in the interest in food for the first time in six years. animated “possible risks” video I had to watch before the procedure: an infection that grotesquely bloated my face, excruciating dry sockets that sent me screaming to the ER, a bone splinter embedded in my gum, and a tiny hole in my sinus. (“Don’t blow your nose or your sinus cavity might explode,” I was advised.)

Each of these afflictions brought its own special sort of agony, but the complication giving me the most grief was painless—in fact, it was free of any feeling at all.

“Which way was that?” the surgeon asks, referring to the direction he’d pulled the pointed probe over my tongue. I shook my head; all I could feel was dull pressure.

During the surgery, an error in applying the anesthetic had fried the nerve endings in the right half of my tongue, leaving it completely numb. Now, more than three months later, I still can’t feel anything—I chomp down on my tongue when I eat or speak, frequently drawing blood; I’ve developed a slight lisp (imagine trying to talk with a piece of rubber in your mouth); ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS and I’ve lost half of my ability to taste.

I could still detect flavor with the left side of This last side effect would be a real bummy tongue, but everything just tasted less. I mer for anyone, but for me, it’s tragic on stopped baking for fun, and my blog, which another level. Since the age of thirteen, I’ve for years has served as a chronicle for recipes run my own dessert catering company and I’ve tested, developed, and perfected, went maintained a food blog, both called Lena’s dark.

Lunchbox. I’ve made desserts—custom cakes Then, one day toward the end of June, I that taste like pink champagne and amawas stalking myself on Instagram and came retto, brownies stuffed with cookie dough, across a cake I’d made the previous summer. puddings and pies and petit fours—for hunIt was a buttercream replica of Vincent dreds of birthday parties, bar and bat mitzVan Gogh’s “The Starry Night,” iced onto a vahs, weddings, and other events. I’ve won 12 | 9.26.18 | INDYweek.com

sheet cake. Momentarily inspired, I googled “famous paintings” and came across Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”—a perfect cake candidate, as the swirly Post-Impressionist style lends itself well to piped buttercream.

I got to work baking a chocolate cake, dying the buttercream frosting vibrant shades of yellow and orange and carefully piping the painting’s design, channeling my angst into the familiar baking process. When I was finished, I stepped back to admire my handiwork, feeling as though a weight had

been lifted off my shoulders. The figure on the cake was me, a pseudo-self portrait of myself over the last month, my face contorted into a scream with my hands pressed against my throbbing cheeks.

I had transferred my negative energy into the cake, and I had come to an important realization: While my sense of taste had dwindled, I was still fully capable of decorating, and seemingly had more artistic ability than I was previously aware of. After years

of obsessing over making desserts taste good, I’d amassed a collection of tried-and-true recipes that I could use as the foundation for making desserts that look good. Maybe it was time to shift my focus away from the flavororiented end of baking and concentrate on refining my own decorating style instead.

Eating with your eyes is a real phenomenon, after all.

I went on to create buttercream renditions of Pablo Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist” and a self-portrait where I’m smiling and wearing flowery sunglasses.

The doctors say my nerves may regrow over time, but even if they don’t, it’s OK. I look to chef Grant Achatz, owner of the Michelin three-star restaurant Alinea in Chicago, for reassurance. Ten years ago, Achatz was diagnosed with stage IV tongue cancer, requiring a treatment that destroyed his ability to taste and demanded a liquid-only diet. He has since recovered, but looking back, he sees a silver lining in the difficult period of his life.

“I know it sounds crazy, but I really believe that having cancer has made me a much better chef and entrepreneur and improved my life,” Achatz said in an interview with The ASCO Post. “The experience taught me it was okay to let go of some of my control in the kitchen and trust the talent of my staff.”

Lena’s Lunchbox has always been a solo endeavor, but recently, I’ve begun to branch out, asking friends for help in developing new flavor combinations. Their ideas and taste-testing skills, combined with my newfound zeal for decorating, have greatly strengthened my operation. My next cake is going to be a lemon cake with lavender buttercream, an excursion into buttercream pointillism courtesy of Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” a painting that evokes my current state: relaxed and surrounded by people, with my worries behind me. food@indyweek.com

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ust past Duke Hospital, in a strip mall off of Erwin Road, Margaritte Malfy is cooking up lively sauces and fresh, flavorful tamales. Tamales are a traditional Mexican dish made of masa, or cornmeal dough, packed with ground meat or sauces, and then wrapped and steamed in a corn husk. A North Carolina native who has been cooking in New York kitchens for many years, Malfy opened her taqueria in the East Village in 2000, inspired by her travels throughout Mexico. Now she has returned home to create tamales, tacos, and tequila cocktails in the style of the Yucatan peninsula, with locally sourced ingredients from North Carolina farmers.

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TAMALE FACTORY AND TEQUILA BAR

before whizzing off to greet the next guests or to whip something up behind the scenes.

Things slow down on weeknights, though, and you can take the time to sip your drink.

The Tamale Factory emphasizes its tightknit team as much as the traditional Yucatan recipes being used in the kitchen, making for a homey atmosphere with laid-back service.

Menu: To get the best sampling of what Tamale Factory has to offer, order several tamales or tacos rather than one main entrée.

Choices are extensive, with everything from chipotle chicken to smoky carnitas to crispy fish, and a welcome selection of flavorful vegetarian options that are anything but afterthoughts. Because the kitchen partners with local farmers for both meat and produce, seasonal specials are worth a try, in particular, their fruit margaritas. The drink menu is extensive, with both classic and creative choices in cocktails, tequila, and beers. If you don’t glance at the specials menu, you might miss the dessert section, but the plantains and churros are easily some of the best menu items on offer.

What to order: It’s hard to go wrong with any of the starters, and if you’re with a crowd, try as many as you can. Go for the creamy guacamole, served alongside a classic pico de gallo, but be sure to jazz up both with the fiery house-made salsas brought to the table. Or try platanos con crema—lightly fried sweet plantains with a drizzle of queso and crema— for something a little sweeter. If you’re in the mood to indulge, and especially if you manage to snag a table outside, be sure to get your hands on one of the house margaritas, maybe watermelon or strawberry, made with freshsqueezed juices.

For the main course, the namesake tamales stand-out, with Braza la Reina, or “The Queen’s Hand,” being my personal favorite. The dish is simple—the masa is served with a savory, spiced tomato sauce, toasted pumpkin seed, and queso fresco—but it gives the kitchen’s excellent and flavorful sauces a chance to shine. The tacos are fresh and light, with a few more options than the tamales. Try the tinga de pollo for smoky pulled chicken paired with tangy queso, or the camarones en adobo for ancho-chilespiced shrimp with sweet onion.

If you’ve saved room for dessert (and you really should), don’t miss the churros.

They’re perfectly crunchy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and are coated with enough cinnamon sugar to guarantee you’ll be licking your fingers. Dip them in the rich chocolate and caramel sauces served on the side and thank us later.

Price point: Appetizers like guacamole, loaded nachos, or chicarrones are $8. One tamale is $5, three are $12.50. Tacos and quesadillas run from $5–$7 each. Large plate specials are $14–$20. A standard margarita is $8.

Perfect for: A fun, boozy lunch or dinner with your crew; filling, vegetarian eats. food@indyweek.com

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INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 13

indyart

RURAL AVANT-GARDE: THE MOUNTAIN LAKE EXPERIENCE Through Sunday, Dec. 30 The Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh www.gregg.arts.ncsu.edu

Plain Folks

THE IMPRESSIVE OBJECTS IN THE GREGG'S EXHIBIT ON THE MOUNTAIN LAKE WORKSHOP TELL ONLY PART OF THE STORY BY MICHAELA DWYER

O

ne could argue that much canonical twentieth-century American art owes its stature to a generation of artists that reworked Thoreau’s famous claim: “I went to the mountains because I wished to make art deliberately.”

The best-known example is Black Mountain College in Buncombe County, North Carolina. Between 1933 and 1957, it attracted the likes of John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Ruth Asawa, Jacob Lawrence, M.C. Richards, and Buckminster Fuller. They taught a small student body, formed companies and collectives, and created work now housed and presented at major arts institutions around the world.

Black Mountain’s near-mythological status has propelled me, and many others, to study and ask questions about it, to humanize its undertakings and probe its context— and not just the intellectual exchanges in the art studio, but the whole constellation of its infrastructure. How did a community consisting largely of outsiders interface with people living in the rural town? Is progressive art-making possible in an assembly hall named after Robert E. Lee in the Jim Crow South? What did the North Carolina grass feel like on Cunningham’s feet when he danced outside?

I brought similar questions to an exhibit about another, more obscure mountainadjacent arts enclave where academy and community mingled: southwestern Virginia’s Mountain Lake Workshop. In Rural Avant-Garde: The Mountain Lake Experience (originally organized by Longwood University’s Center for the Visual Arts), N.C. State’s Gregg Museum of Art & Design showcases work that emerged from Mountain Lake’s conferences and workshops, led since 1980 by Virginia Tech art professor Ray Kass and Virginia Commonwealth University art historian Howard Risatti at and around Mountain Lake, near Pembroke, Virginia. (The lake itself, which was also a filming location for Dirty Dancing, is now a dry basin.)

14 | 9.26.18 | INDYweek.com

Paper smoking at a 2006 Mountain Lake Workshop Like Black Mountain College, Mountain Lake has an impressive list of guest artists, with some crossover: Cage, Cunningham, photographer Sally Mann, sculptor Okura Jiro, self-taught multi-disciplinarian Howard Finster, and painter Cy Twombly.

According to the exhibit’s minimal promotional text, Mountain Lake engaged these artists in “art experiments involving scientists, scholars, and local folks,” and the works included are concerned with “the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of art.”

Rural Avant-Garde is a testimony, in part, to the latter, but its curatorial attention to the former is less clear. For an exhibit that aims to celebrate art made through “overcoming the restrictions that emerge when art becomes only a commodity,” its reli-

PHOTO BY RAY KASS

ance on flattened designations like “local folks” and “community” is curious. Compounded by the museum’s lack of contextbuilding around Mountain Lake’s roots in southern Appalachia, this can sometimes make these art objects feel like, well, just objects—suspended in time, produced solely through intellectual exchanges in the art studio.

Wall text at least sheds some light on the mechanics of making. You get the sense that in order to construct these sculptures, paintings, and mixed-media pieces, artists and students had to move around, touch, and rearrange materials to figure things out. I’m reminded of the adage often attributed to Cunningham: “The only way to do it is to do it.”

One of the exhibit’s centerpieces is a gargantuan paper scroll representing a Cunningham-led iteration of STEPS, a 1988 Cage performance that Kass later adapted into a score. Participants dip their feet in ink and walk across paper, dragging a large brush saturated with watercolor. Two tracks form, overriding and sublimating each other, which materializes both the collective carrying forward of a movement tradition and the messiness of pinning it down.

I was also glad to see the inclusion of feminist conceptual artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who, since 1977, has been artist-

mainstream institutions and capital. And in what world are “local folks” not artists, inventors, scholars, and critics? Everyone is local to somewhere. “Guest artists” imprint the landscape, labor relations, and language of the places they visit, and vice-versa.

Curatorial attention to this exchange is often a missing link in celebratory showcases of artwork produced in communities like Black Mountain College or Mountain Lake.

Mountain Lake’s website says that these conferences aim to produce art through shared experiences “rooted in place and locale—namely, the physical, historic, and

“You get the sense that in order to construct these sculptures, paintings, and mixed-media pieces, artists and students had to move around, touch, and rearrange materials to figure things out.” in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation. Ukeles’s body-size cart was originally used in her “Methanogenesis” workshop in 1994. Participants made blind drawings on bentonite clay, which is used to line landfills and seal buried nuclear fuel.

You can picture a body inhabiting this artwork, refashioning this gurney-like vehicle as a creative conduit. The instruments feel immediately usable.

Rural Avant-Garde’s emphasis on tools and methods of artistic production— on the “how” of art—aligns with modish institutional emphases on design thinking, interdisciplinary experimentation, and the mingling of the arts and sciences. But the exhibit’s object-focused approach exalts the individually named and already famous while papering over the contributions of Mountain Lake’s core participants, the “local folks.”

To categorically separate students, practitioners, workers, and families native to the Pembroke area—who we can only assume these “local folks” must be, because there’s little at the museum or online to tell us for sure—from artists, scientists, and scholars restricts art-making and intellectual activity to people favored by

psychic spaces in which people live and work.” This exhibit might have been more robustly framed to include that space, with maps of the area, interviews with or bios on non-famous participants, and other information or documentation about the context in which this work was produced.

Perhaps this is why I was most struck by “Pathways: The Appalachian Trail Frieze,” a wall-length walking-documentary project that emerged from Mountain Lake’s 1993 workshop with the U.S. Forest Service.

Using chance methods, a central panel is collaged with participants’ black-and-white photographic images of flora in and around the Appalachian Trail—remembrances of what struck their attention while walking.

Expanding outward in every direction are their tiny mounted drawings of the same natural features: edges of rocks, baby tree buds, intersections of twigs.

The work has a paradoxical effect: It’s anonymous, collective, and expansive, yet rooted in place, time, and careful individual noticing. Its representation of the ways in which creative exchange can propose new possibilities while remaining grounded in everyday realities—this is the “why” of art. arts@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 15

A New Pride for New Times O

PRIDE2018

ver the last few years, there’s been an inescapable sense that NC Pride—which, for three decades, has been not just a Durham or a Triangle institution, but a North Carolina institution—had lost its bearings.

There were deep currents of discontent with the people running the annual event and complaints about poor communication. There was a Black Lives Matter activist who said she was assaulted by a Pride organizer in 2015 and an outright scheduling debacle in 2017, when Pride was booked on Yom Kippur. Beyond that, with at least some of the battles for rights and societal acceptance having been won, Pride seemed listless, without a clear sense of purpose.

Of course, there were other battles to fight: HB 2 and its replacement, HB 142. Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions. Neil Gorsuch and (maybe) Brett Kavanaugh. But more broadly, the fight became intersectional: Gay people didn’t just need gay rights, they needed good jobs at living wages. They needed to be free from racial discrimination. They needed to link arms with trans people and stand with the most marginalized. They needed to not become complacent and assume that hard-fought gains couldn’t be rolled back.

And they needed a new Pride to represent all of that.

So when, in June, the old NC Pride announced its demise—a shocking but not surprising development— it was probably a blessing in disguise. As Sarah Willets details in her story on Pride’s revival, the new incarnation— dubbed Pride: Durham, NC—is committed to the transparency and inclusivity this moment demands.

Elsewhere in this year’s Pride package, Leigh Tauss profiles Greg Ford, the first openly gay Wake County commissioner, who views success as both not being pigeonholed as “the gay one” and blazing a trail for LGBTQ leaders to follow. Layla Khoury-Hanold talks to an African-American same-sex couple who downplayed their personal identities when they started their catering business but have gone on to embrace it, seeing the chance to serve as role models—and, along the way, finding that corporations are much more eager to embrace diversity than they used to be.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same: teacher Dustin Britt writes about grappling with how to answer students who ask about his sexuality without getting fired in a rural part of a state that has abysmal protections for LGBTQ employees.

The Triangle’s LGBTQ community has a new set of challenges to face, a new festival from which to draw strength and solidarity, and a new platform from which to proclaim, as they did at the first Durham Pride parade in 1986, “We Are Everywhere”—and, you know, to romp around and have a good time. It is a party, after all.

—Jeffrey C. Billman

16 | 9.26.18 | INDYweek.com

PRIDE2018

Pride, Revived

THREE MONTHS BEFORE ITS THIRTY-THIRD ITERATION, NC PRIDE SHUT DOWN. BUT DURHAM’S LGBTQ COMMUNITY WAS DETERMINED TO BRING IT BACK—AND MAKE IT MORE INCLUSIVE THAN EVER. BY SARAH WILLETS Until, that is, Cragg got a call from J. Clapp, also known as Vivica C. Coxx, the matriarch of House of Coxx, whose social-justice spin on drag has become a mainstay in Durham.

Along with a diverse planning committee, Clapp and Cragg have revived the annual event as Pride: Durham, NC, scheduled for September 29 at Duke University.

It’s more than just picking up the tradition, they say. They also want to make the event more welcoming and accessible.

“I wanted to undo any questions that people had about whether or not Pride was for them,” Clapp says. “I wanted to see it become transparent—for people to not wonder what was happening. I wanted to see it organized well. I wanted to see it reinvigorated, and I wanted to pay homage to the people who had been doing it before.”

I

NC Pride has been a Durham institution since 1986.

O

n June 21, visitors to TrianglePride.com saw only a brief message in white letters on a black screen: “The 2018 Triangle PrideFest Parade and Festival is suspended.”

Confused why the event—a recent rebranding of what would have been the thirty-third annual NC Pride festival—would be suspended just three months before it was scheduled to take place, some of those people picked up the phone and called the only person they thought might have an answer:

FILE PHOTO BY D.L. ANDERSON

Helena Cragg, chairwoman of the LGBTQ Center of Durham’s board of directors.

“It hasn’t always been clear to people who ran Pride,” Cragg says. “In some respects, people sort of assumed we did.

We probably spent more time saying, ‘We don’t do Pride, but we go every year.’ When it became clear that Triangle Pride had, without much fanfare, put on its website that Pride was canceled, my phone started ringing off the hook with people saying, ‘What are we going to do?’”

Since its founding in 1986—at the height of the AIDS crisis, when same-sex marriage was a pipe dream—NC Pride had been a place for LGBTQ individuals to express themselves without fear and push an antidiscrimination agenda to the forefront of Durham politics. More recently, though, Pride has been mired in controversy and accusations that it wasn’t inclusive.

With that stark message posted on its website, it looked like NC Pride was fizzling out.

n 1981, the state’s first gay and lesbian march was held in Durham in response to the murder of a man beaten to death by a group of men who thought, incorrectly, that he was gay. But it wasn’t until five years later that the annual tradition of a Pride march began.

Betsy Barton, one of the organizers, still has the homemade sign she carried that day, bearing the words “We Are Everywhere.”

“We thought it was important because we knew then what many more people know now, which is that people don’t choose to be gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender.

It’s something that’s part of our innate biology,” Barton says. “There was so much discrimination and prejudice. We were raised in an era where people we knew were gaybashed just for holding hands on the street.

We just thought it was really important to be out and proud.”

Barton continued to organize Pride events until the 1990s, and has attended off and on ever since. In the ensuing decades, the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibited federal recognition of same-sex marriage, became federal law, and, seventeen years later, was struck down by the U.S. INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 17

Supreme Court. Three years after that, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was a constitutional right.

As LGBTQ individuals became more socially accepted, the “strong internal networks” that gave way to solidarity events, like the Pride march, faded.

“As that happened, the march became less political—and even just that, we called it a march,” Barton says. “We didn’t call it a parade. Over time, the march morphed into more of a celebration, because there wasn’t as much of a need to fight for recognition as people. It became more focused on celebrating who we were.”

In recent years, as gay rights became entrenched, social conservatives focused their attention on transgender individuals, which led to things like North Carolina’s House Bill 2, the so-called bathroom bill. Meanwhile, the number of reported murders of trans people, especially trans women of color, keeps rising.

The fight for equality is shifting and is now centered largely on intersectionality and the most marginalized members of the LGBTQ community. But, critics say, NC Pride struggled to keep up.

In 2015, a Black Lives Matter activist accused a Pride official of assaulting her as she read a statement during the parade.

18 | 9.26.18 | INDYweek.com

Last year, organizers failed to notice they had scheduled Pride on the same day as Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, prompting a coalition of organizations to sign a petition urging people to abstain from that year’s event. The petition cited the poor timing, but it made clear this was just the latest example of “exclusionary practices” by the NC Pride committee.

After a month of public pressure, organizers canceled daytime activities and decided to hold festivities after sundown, when Yom Kippur would draw to a close. But the fix excluded young people and, overall, did little to affirm that inclusivity was a priority.

Jill Madsen, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Durham-Chapel Hill, which has participated in Pride for years, says all of this happened without the committee consulting the Jewish community.

“Scheduling conflicts are not something that’s new to Jewish individuals,” Madsen says. “So I don’t think that, in isolation, was what drew the concern. I think it was the complete and utter lack of response.” (This year’s event coincides with Shabbat, which is strictly observed by fewer people than Yom Kippur).

S

uch a lack of communication was a common complaint. John Short, the

NC Pride committee director for seventeen years, often could not be reached for news articles (including this one), and information on anyone else involved in planning was virtually nonexistent. Even Cragg, who sought the blessing of the previous organizers while forming this new iteration of Pride, was unable to reach them.

Ultimately, she and Clapp decided to forge ahead rather than risk a year without Pride. With an ear tuned to community feedback, they’re hoping to build on previous Pride events, bringing more transparency and inclusivity to a tradition that hasn’t always felt inviting to everyone.

To that end, Pride: Durham has pledged to post financial disclosure forms on its website and give proceeds to the LBGTQ Center of Durham, a move that starkly contrasts with the NC Pride Committee, which lost its tax-exempt status years ago. It has also made public its planning committee, which, not coincidentally, includes Madsen as well as a former NC Pride organizer. The group is mostly people of color and represents a range of gender identities, orientations, and ages. Original Pride organizers—including Barton—will serve as the parade’s grand marshals and were consulted early on.

“I think it shows a different thought in what it means to hold a community event,” Madsen says. “If you really want it to be a community event, you need to make sure you have representation from those constituent groups in the planning, so they can be a part of the thought process of what is created.”

Pride: Durham has also looked to the results of more than one hundred community surveys for guidance. One of the main comments they’ve gotten is that Pride hasn’t previously been accessible to people of varying abilities. So this year, organizers have widened aisles to accommodate wheelchairs, provided priority parking and golf cart transportation, and expanded the visibility of the stage. (Anyone with accessibility needs should email pride@lgbtqcenterofdurham. org for information). They’ve created a lowsensory zone for a break from all the sights and sounds, two kids’ zones, and events for teens, like a lock-in at the Southwest Regional Library and a Youth Pride After-Party.

The surveys also indicated that people wanted reduced police presence, given a history of violence and discrimination against people of color and LGBTQ people. Organizers asked that officers who march do so in a personal rather than official capacity, without uniforms, badges, weapons, or squad cars—which in turn drew accusations that LGBTQ police and allies were being excluded. A Durham Police Department spokesperson says that, while officers participating in parades on an individual basis are not

allowed to wear uniforms, uniformed officers will provide security, and DPD will host a booth at the festival.

For Barton, this year’s event marks a return to the emphasis on inclusion that marked the original Pride. Until Cragg invited her to be a grand marshal, she says, she hadn’t been asked by the organizers who followed her to be a part of the annual event.

“I feel really honored. I feel like we did something that was hard, and we made a difference. It feels nice to be recognized,” says Barton, the first openly gay person on any Human Relations Commission in North Carolina. “What I was feeling when she asked us to do that is remembering all that other work we did. The march was just one of many things.”

Clapp didn’t attend Pride events until his twenties out of fear that his family would see him on the news. But as he got older, Pride became a place to find community, and his hope is that Pride: Durham will be that space for others.

“For LGBTQ people, we don’t oftentimes feel confident that the people with whom we’re interacting actually support us or know what we endure,” he says. “Pride, for me, has always been that place where I didn’t have to question whether or not I was welcome. Pride is that place where everyone should feel comfortable and feel like their experience is valid. That’s the role it played for me, and that’s why we’re doing this— because we want those people to show up.”

NC Pride, Clapp says, needed a refresh, both in technology and philosophy.

That has manifested in a new website, with not only the schedule of events and vendor and parade applications that can be paid online for the first time, but also the values of Pride: Durham. It factored into a new logo designed with as much intention as the rest of the event. It incorporates the flag for Philadelphia Pride (the city recently added black and brown stripes to the traditional rainbow flag to highlight people of color in the LGBTQ community), as well as the asexual, trans, bisexual, gender nonconforming/gender-queer, pansexual, and gender-fluid pride flags.

“Pride is about everyone,” Clapp says.

“But Pride also has the charge of welcoming a new cohort of people who have never attended Pride before. The majority of those people are under the age of thirty, and those humans are looking at technology differently. They’re also not considering marriage equality to be their number one priority. They’re considering workers’ rights to be a priority. They’re considering intersectionality to be a priority. And that’s where we focused our energy.” swillets@indyweek.com

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INDYWEEK.COM INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 19

PRIDE2018

The Meaning of Milestones

TO GREG FORD, THE IMPORTANT THING ISN’T BEING WAKE’S FIRST GAY COMMISSIONER. IT’S BEING THE FIRST OF MANY.

BY LEIGH TAUSS

Greg Ford

F

PHOTO BY CAITLIN PENNA

or Greg Ford, Wake County’s first openly gay commissioner, Pride is as much about recognizing milestones for the LGBTQ community as it is acknowledging how much of the path toward equality is left to conquer. To wit: He’s one of only twelve openly gay elected officials in North Carolina.

“I strongly believe that local governments should be reflective of the diversity of the population they serve, and I’m proud to be that person,” Ford says. “At the same time, 20 | 9.26.18 | INDYweek.com

I’m surprised, a little disheartened that it took this long.”

Progress is incremental, and Ford, meticulous by nature, knows this. While he was proud to read the Board of Commissioners’ first Pride proclamation this June, he continues to worry about state-level policies threatening the LGBTQ community. But without his predecessor, Betty Lou Ward, opening the door for him, Ford wonders if he’d have even run for office.

Shortly after Ward, a twenty-eight-year

incumbent commissioner, announced in 2015 that she wouldn’t seek reelection the next year, Ford, then the principal at Hilburn Academy, asked to meet with her.

They discussed education funding, and Ford explained that he was considering running for her seat to advocate for schools.

Ward, now eighty-one, asked about his background, career path, family. Also, what did his wife do?

“Well, actually, Anthony is my husband,” Ford told her.

Without missing a beat, Ward responded, “Well, I can’t wait to meet him.”

“My path has been one of many blessings in that people have opened doors and not closed them,” Ford says. “I have to believe if she had a different perspective on that, I would have thought twice.”

That meeting eventually led to him securing Ward’s blessing, the Democratic Party’s nomination, and ultimately winning the election.

It wasn’t an outcome Ford could have foreseen fifteen years ago when he was living in a cul-de-sac house in Wake Forest with his now ex-wife, infant son, and dog. At thirty, he had checked every box he thought he was supposed to.

Ford was born in Churchville, New York, the middle child of three boys in a middleclass Catholic family bracketed by a college professor father and mother who served on the PTA and school board. Like his parents, Ford was drawn to education. After college, he moved with his then-wife to teach in Wake schools in 1997. After six years, Ford was awarded a fellowship at UNC-Chapel Hill to study school administration.

It was then that his perfectly planned life began to derail. On campus, Ford discovered a proliferation of new ideas and attitudes—and gay people. Lots of gay people.

Professors were openly gay. Students were openly gay. It was a different world.

“Up until that point, I had been on a straight and narrow path,” Ford says. “I came to realize things about myself. It wasn’t an easy process. It was a struggle. I had to dig deep.”

A series of therapists had different prognoses: One called it an early midlife crisis, another prescribed medication, a third said Ford had never learned to make choices for himself, a fourth said the answer was to spend more money.

A fifth offered what turned out to be a life-changing response: “Dude, you’re gay.”

Ford left the Catholic church and got divorced. His ex-wife remarried and started a new family. They remain friends, he says, and have co-parented their now teenage son.

Ford met his husband, Anthony Pugliese,

in 2013 on OKCupid. It sounds cliché, but Ford says it was love at first sight.

“He pulls me out of, I’m not going to say my comfort zone, but, gosh, I love him so much,” Ford says. “He gives me a joy for life I didn’t know existed.”

Ford, Pugliese, and their adopted twin daughters had just moved to North Raleigh when Ward announced she would be stepping down. Intrigued by the possibilities, Ford looked to Pugliese for support.

“He was not going to do it if [his sexuality] was something that needed to be even remotely repressed,” Pugliese says. “We don’t make it a platform, but we don’t pause when we say, ‘This is my husband.’”

“Not only is [Ford] true to himself and his values, but he’s also just true to his word and is just a really genuine authentic advocate for the LGBT community,” says board chairwoman Jessica Holmes. “Being a woman of color, we are particularly close because we both know what it feels like to be immediately judged or have people make assumptions about who we are. We are not our titles, we are not our races, our sexual preferences— we’re so much more than that.”

Multidimensional candidates like Ford represent “the future of queer American politics,” says Raleigh LGBT Center executive director James Miller. “He champions all vulnerable populations. He has been a champion for advocating for mental health. And he just happens to be a gay man.”

In office, Ford says his main focus is fighting for better school funding. In that way, Ward believes he’s carrying on her legacy.

“He truly has been a wonderful advocate for the school system and worked hard toward that end,” she says.

But Ford has used his office to advocate for the LGBTQ community. The year Ford was elected, the legislature adopted HB 2, which mandated that transgender individuals use public facilities that conform to the gender assigned to them at birth and blocked local governments from passing nondiscrimination ordinances.

The law was repealed in 2017, but its replacement didn’t go far enough, Ford says, as local governments still can’t enact nondiscrimination ordinances until at least 2020.

Ford hopes he can continue to lead by example—up for reelection in November, he’s considered a favorite against Republican David Blackwelder—but he also knows the advancement of LGBTQ rights depends on a community united by common values.

“In many ways, it’s not about being the first,” Ford says. “For me, it’s about what can I do so there are others that come after me.

Because it’s not about being LGBT, it’s about equity and access and parity.” ltauss@indyweek.com

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We condemn acts of bigotry and hatred. We join PFLAG in celebrating the lives of those we love and admire. Acceptance and love... family values for a lifetime.”

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PRIDE2018

The Cater Family

INDULGE CATERING’S OWNERS ONCE SAW THEIR IDENTITIES AS A POTENTIAL LIABILITY. BUT WITH COURAGE AND CHANGING TIMES, THEY’VE MADE THEM AN ASSET INSTEAD. BY LAYLA KHOURY-HANOLD

F

or their first two years in business, Queen Precious-Jewel Earth Zabriskie and her wife, Jacqueline White, chose not to put their photos or an About Us section on the website of Indulge Catering, their Durham-based business.

When it started in 2014, Zabriskie and White were already out in a very public way, having appeared on Say Yes to the Dress in 2013 and 2014, during both Zabriskie’s wedding-dress fitting and the couple’s Raleigh reception. But they worried about how being a black, female-owned business might negatively sway potential clients.

So they quietly built Indulge by booking private events and weddings, earning a reputation not only for light, flavorful fare but also for the personality they brought to the catering experience. They’re both self-proclaimed foodies, so it’s easy to see why they’d be so effusive about the food, but they clearly feed off each other’s energy, too.

As Zabriskie says, “If you spend enough time with us, you’ll either wonder if we’re married or if we’re sisters.” After a couple of years, it was clear that their clients were responding as much to them as they were to the food, so it felt natural to make their names and faces more prominent in the business.

“We pride ourselves on treating our clients like family. It’s not just ‘They’re going to come in and feed us,’ it’s a whole experience that we provide from start to finish,” White says.

“People were asking about us, telling us how much they liked us and our interaction with one another. We realized that it was prime time to put our names and faces out there.”

Though the couple’s race, gender, and sexual orientation doesn’t wholly define them, they recognize that living proudly as successful black, female same-sex partners has the power to impact and inspire the next generation of LGBQT people.

It’s positively affected their business, too.

Indulge’s highlights over the past two years include catering for Moogfest, Black Wall Street Homecoming, and HBO’s The Defiant Ones screening; they also launched Titanium

Fitness Meals, a healthy meal delivery service.

In the last year, there’s also been significant uptick in corporate bookings. This is partly due to referrals, which Zabriskie says make up 90 percent of their business. But she and White also think it’s due to corporate America’s efforts to foster diversity.

At first, Zabriskie felt affronted that being a black- or female-owned business was the reason they were getting calls from companies such as IBM. But she’s embraced the way it helps inform people’s definition of success—plus, it’s good for business.

“It doesn’t matter if they call you once. You have to perform,” Zabriskie says. “It’s about what you do when your foot is in the door.”

As executive chef, Zabriskie develops and executes menus, drawing on a variety of inspirations: American, Mediterranean, and Italian cuisines; the melting pot of her native Bronx, New York; and her religion. As a Muslim, Zabriskie does not eat or cook with pork.

Indulge’s motto is “indulge in one bite, one plate, one meal at a time,” but that doesn’t mean the food is unhealthy. Zabriskie’s personal health also provides inspiration for her food; after undergoing bariatric surgery in 2012, she drastically changed her cooking.

And though they say some people assume Indulge does soul food, such as fried chicken or mac ‘n’ cheese, those in the know seek its signature dishes, such as coconut curries and lasagna rolls.

White, a Durham native, oversees communications, client intake, budgets, contracts, and event staff while also serving as Zabriskie’s sous chef, which can mean reeling her in if her ideas lean toward “caviar swinging from the ceiling” dishes. (It’s not a total exaggeration; one of Zabriskie’s favorite creations is an “invisible” ravioli.)

The pair collaborate on shopping and preparing food, too. For the past four years, they have worked out of The Cookery and recently started using a second commercial kitchen, The Kitchen Archive, to support production for their growing business.

Queen Precious-Jewel Earth Zabriskie and Jacqueline White PHOTO BY 20/20 PHOTO & VIDEO But for all their success, Zabriskie says that an event they did at the LGBQT Center of Durham was the one she’s proudest of.

“That was the first event that allowed me to call her ‘bae’ and ‘my wife’ in front of customers,” Zabriskie says. “No one batted an eye, no one [said], ‘Wait, huh, you’re gay?’”

While it was meaningful to be able to acknowledge their partnership beyond business, it’s not what defines Indulge.

“I will never deny her, but I don’t have to come in the front door like, ‘Hey, how you doing? I’m gay!’” Zabriskie says. “I think what a lot of people get confused about with pride is that I have to scream it from the rooftops, but you don’t.”

Still, the pair acknowledges that with success comes visibility—and that it’s important to embrace. They recently shared their story at Student U, a mentorship program that works to keep African American, Latinx, and low-income students in school. They also held a cooking class for StandUp-SpeakOut, which uses art therapy to support children and teens who are

victims or witnesses of domestic violence and sexual abuse.

When Zabriskie moved to Durham, she worked at the North Carolina Lambda Youth Network (NCLYN), a non-profit for LGBQT youth, and she’s floored at how perceptions are changing within that community, too.

“Now, when I see a gay youth who is blown away by the fact that we have a successful marriage, that we’re not fighting, there’s no substance abuse involved, there’s no domestic violence involved […] Now that is a whole different ball game. That’s beautiful. That’s pride for me.”

“Because you don’t see it in the community like that,” White adds. “Even though it’s legal now, you have [gay] people getting married, you have young [gay] couples getting married. But you don’t really see a lot of older, successful gay people.”

“Especially black gay people,” Zabriskie adds. “But to think there are some successful, gay, black, females out here? It’s amazing to people.” backtalk@indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 23

PRIDE2018 How to Tell

A GAY TEACHER IN A RED STATE LEARNS TO THREAD A NEEDLE BETWEEN SAFETY AND AUTHENTICITY

BY DUSTIN K. BRITT

“M

r. Britt, are you ... a homosexual ... or something?”

In the sixth century BCE, a Greek chorus member named Thespis stepped out of the pack, uninvited, and began speaking on his own. Conversing with others. Dialogue.

Now, he’s this kid. This wild, squirrely sixteen-year-old menace who just stepped out of the pack. Two points for bravery.

If I say yes, they can fire me. Hell, they can fire me for showing up to work. They can fire me for writing this essay. Not only is North Carolina an at-will employment state, there’s no law prohibiting private employers from hiring and firing on the basis of sexual orientation—though there is a law, passed last year, that prohibits local governments from passing anti-discrimination ordinances to prevent that. Welcome to the Tar Heel State.

The kids look at him like he just pulled down his pants and pissed all over the Encyclopedia Britannica. “What is he doing?” their gaping mouths seem to inquire. Nobody is supposed to actually ask that. Whisper about it, write notes about it, text about it, yes. But never say it out loud. To the teacher.

I am stupefied. Eyes wide, mouth open, fists clenched. I hope I’m not drooling. I cannot breathe, let alone respond. After four years at the chalkboard, this particular assignment is somehow both long overdue and far too early.

One of them is actually asking me.

Conventional wisdom has always been to keep your personal life out of the classroom.

Which seems logical enough. But nobody really means it. They’re fine with that framed picture of Mr. Meh’s wife and kids, Ms. Ugh’s anecdotes about her kids’ extracurricular activity, and Mrs. Blah’s cross-shaped Christmas cookies. When your district-mandated mentor says “personal life,” they mean yer sinnin’: abhorrent fetishes like atheism, queerness, and science. The only framed photos on my desk are of feline partners, not human ones.

“Mr. Britt, are you ... a homosexual ... or something?”

24 | 9.26.18 | INDYweek.com

This was my first teaching job. It was at a small, rural, public high school in central North Carolina. I knew I would never come out to these people. Maybe a teacher or two— the ones that I socialized with—or an abnormally tolerant secretary. Never the principal

Who else is supposed to give our Thespis a picture of what a gay man looks and acts like?

His straight teachers? His family? Friends?

Queer Eye? You? If I, a queer teacher, am not willing to help write the narrative of what a queer teacher is, then I’m not doing my job, as

“When your district-mandated mentor says “personal life,” they mean yer sinnin’: abhorrent fetishes like atheism, queerness, and science.” (she’d get rid of me), a student (they would mock me), or a parent (they’d accuse me of pedophilia).

I’m the quintessential Gay Teacher. You remember him. He’s kind of awkward— either too animated or too stiff. Speaks an octave higher than he should. Has a colorful and orderly classroom. Flits around his purple dry erase marker like a magic wand.

Drama club. Sweaters. No ring.

a teacher or as a queer person. If I normalize my sexuality, I humanize myself.

But that freaks kids out. Ever see your teacher at the mall? Meanwhile, the government, which I pay to protect me, fights tooth and nail to destroy the lives of queer people and our families by impeding our ability to live freely. I live in a state where queer people have no hate-crime protection. Where an NCAA boycott has bigger

political impact than the cries, pleas, and shouts of the people. A state that pays me $25,000 less than I could make elsewhere.

“Mr. Britt, are you ... a homosexual ... or something?”

I think about why I’m here. I’m here because, when my mom came to pick me up from my first day at kindergarten, I flung my Ninja Turtles backpack into the seat, leaped in behind it, and declared, “I wanna be Ms. Gibbs when I grow up!” Meaning: I want to be a teacher.

I’m here because no other boy in rural Knightdale skipped dam-building to grade papers from a game of “school” that morning.

I’m here because I sunk every dime I have into a master’s degree in special education, and I’m not qualified to do anything else.

I’m here because answering this kid’s question is hard, and it shouldn’t be. I cannot let it be. I’m not here to tell kids what they already know. I’m here to blow their minds. Wake them up. Tell them the things they don’t know they don’t know. And where better than this red state, where I’ve lived all my life, to find minds in need of opening?

They’ll say I’m brainwashing children into having gay sex. They’ll say I touch little boys. Nobody thinks more about pedophilia than a conservative Christian.

“Mr. Britt, are you ... a homosexual ... or something?”

Like a well-trained politician, I pivot.

“Well,” I stammer, “I don’t see why that matters. Will my answer affect your ability to finish this math problem?”

Since that day, five years ago, I have had only one rule about discussing my sexuality at school: I will not go out of my way to out myself, but honest questions get honest answers. Occasionally, some plucky tenth grader will ask if I am in a relationship. I say that I am. They ask what her name is.

I give my best Cheshire cat grin, tilt my head, and—with more than a little sass—I reply, “Their name is Al.” backtalk@indyweek.com

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T

his year marks an unusual confluence of major events in local music. On Friday and Saturday, two large-scale, genre-specific festivals each take over a city: The Art of Cool Festival presides over the streets of downtown Durham as Wide Open Bluegrass concludes a week of activities by the International Bluegrass Music Association in Raleigh. These festivals may seem to exist in worlds exclusive to each other, the springy twang of banjos, mandolins, and fiddles in sharp relief against the kinetic jazz universe of horns, pianos, drums, guitars, and more.

But jazz and bluegrass have more in common than even entrenched fans might expect. For one, both have rich cultural histories as distinctly American strains of music, originating from and for the poor and workingclass South: jazz in New Orleans, bluegrass in Kentucky. Each has its own unofficial songbook of “traditional” numbers handed down and re-interpreted over the years, and strong improvisational skills are a necessary credential for a player’s participation. The freewheeling jams on both sides might sound very different, but the spirit is essentially the same.

Bluegrass and jazz also share strong roots in North Carolina—bluegrass titans Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson both called the state home, and the same was true of jazz giants like John Coltrane, Nina Simone, and Thelonious Monk. And like the short stay in Durham that inspired Duke Ellington to write “In a Sentimental Mood,” Bill Monroe’s time in Raleigh with his brother, Charlie, proved fundamental to the development of his musical identity.

Jazz and bluegrass suffer from some of the same maladies, too, in the form of old-school defenders who would rather clutch to some antiquated notion of what the music “should” be rather than foster its growth in the hands of a new generation. But of course, both genres have a bright class of innovators who reject staunch, finger-wagging traditionalism. Sons of Kemet upend the British monarchy and its poisonous imperial legacy on the wild and wonderful LP Your Queen Is a Reptile, while banjo player and record label leader Alison Brown has spent the last twenty-five years creating more and more space for women in bluegrass.

In our current historical moment, it feels easier to see the world outlined in hard edges and stark divisions. And while it wouldn’t make sense to combine Wide Open Bluegrass and the Art of Cool Festival into one wacky amalgam, it is a good time to consider the common threads that tie us together. Whether you’re flatfooting in time with the Earls of Leicester or getting in the groove with Meshell Ndegeocello, you’re connecting with a long and beautiful music history—just don’t forget it’s not the only one. —Allison Hussey

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ART OF COOL

Keep Your Cool

ART OF COOL’S NEW PARTNERSHIP WITH THE BLACK WALL STREET HOMECOMING HIGHLIGHTS BLACK EXCELLENCE IN THE BULL CITY BY KYESHA JENNINGS

T

“[The] partnership is a direct reflection But another new feature of the Art of he end of September wraps up a big of what [Black Wall Street] organization is Cool Festival this year is its partnership month for North Carolina music fesabout, placing value in black founders,” says with Black Wall Street Homecoming, an tivals, concluding with the five-yearTobias Rose, who cofounded the Black Wall annual networking conference for earlyold Art of Cool Festival’s first-ever early-fall Street Homecoming with Jessica Averhart stage entrepreneurs of color. In the early iteration. Before the luxury condos, the muland Talib Manns-Grave. After a successful twentieth century, as Durham built its reptitude of ethnic restaurants, rooftop pool parfirst year, Dee McDougal joined the trio. utation for the presence of black entrepreties, and the urban trend of dockless bikes, the Attendees will have the opportunity to neurship, Parrish Street became nationally Art of Cool festival put the cool (mixed with a start their week off with talks and panels cenknown as Black Wall Street. The area was little bit of soul) in downtown Durham. tered on entrepreneurship, agriculture ecoa hub for black-owned businesses such as But this year, the Art of Cool has amped up its cool factor by partnering with the annual Black Wall Street Homecoming, which honors the legacy of black entrepreneurship in the city. Together, they’ll present a vision of black excellence to inspire present and future artists and achievers.

The Art of Cool Festival began after a series of Third Friday concerts that featured local Jazz musicians at LabourLove Gallery, curated by Cicely Mitchell and Al Strong. After generating a following of dedicated lovers of music and culture, in 2013 Mitchell and Strong founded the Art of Cool, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Since then, the two have used their platform to deliver local and national award–winning jazz-roots musicians to Durham, from Maceo Parker to Christian Scott to Kamasi Washington and George Clinton, ultimately establishing themselves as leaders in music presentation in the Triangle area. For Mitchell, year five is not only a huge milestone but also a cel- Kamasi Washington at the Art of Cool Festival in 2016 PHOTO BY ALEX BOERNER ebration that the festival has “made it.” nomics, community and social impact, and Mechanics and Farmers Banks and N.C. Earlier this year, Mitchell and Strong real estate and creativity. This year’s lineup Mutual Life Insurance. announced that the festival had been sold of speakers includes a balance of nationSince 2014, the Back Wall Street to the DOME Group, led by husband-andally recognized leaders and local influencHomecoming has honored that legacy by wife duo Sulaiman and Lesleigh Mausi, ers including Arlan Hamilton, founder and helping the next generation of innovators who have more than two decades of concert managing partner at the venture capitalist of color acquire investors and gain production experience together. Though the firm Backstage Capital; Ben Young, CEO of recognition. The leadership teams of Black company is headquartered in Detroit (with the fitness app Sworkit; Phiderika Foust, an Wall Street Homecoming and Art of Cool a Durham office), the DOME Group has investor and startup advisor; visual artist spent the past year working together to been responsible for bringing acts like Anita Candy Carver; and Angel Dozier, founder highlight all that is cool in Durham: art, Baker, Patti LaBelle, and Smokey Robinson of Be Connected and Dope Together. The culture, music, and entrepreneurship. to the Durham Performing Arts Center.

30 | 9.26.18 | INDYweek.com

goal is for attendees to leave with an expansion of their professional and personal network, and an increased understanding of the Black Wall Street legacy while simultaneously engaging with Art of Cool’s music programming.

The collaborative effort between the two organizations demonstrates “the Black Wall Street Dream,” says Lesleigh Mausi.

“It just made sense for two black-owned organizations to come together and join forces to make seamless programming that focuses on black economics, culture, and entrepreneurship. It sends a message out to the youth that anything is possible,” she adds.

The Mausis have their own personal ancestral connection to Black Wall Street, too, as Sulaiman’s great-grandfather and grandfather were instrumental in contributing to Black Wall Street’s historic narrative. In 1933, his great-grandfather, York Garrett, owned and managed Garrett’s Biltmore Drugstore on Pettigrew Street.

In 1953, he expanded the business by opening a second location on Fayetteville Street in Hayti, a predominantly African American section of Durham.

By the 1960s, the city’s urban renewal plan had destroyed both locations, so Garrett opened a third location on Fayetteville Street, which he managed until his retirement in 1995 at one hundred years old. Sulaiman’s grandfather, Nathan Garrett, started his own accounting firm in Durham in 1962, making him the first African American in North Carolina to do so.

It appears the key ingredient in this partnership is the respect and admiration the organizational leaders have for one another, with a shared goal for the impact they want to make in Durham.

“People have the tendency to think that if you’re black and doing something dope, and there’s another person that’s black and

doing something dope, the two always have to be in competition,” says Rose. “What we want to happen is for this to be able to be pulled off again.”

Their vision is to bring a SXSW feeling mixed with the sensibilities of Essence Music festival sprinkled with New Orleans Jazz Fest.

According to Sulaiman Mausi, they want to put Durham on the map as a destination for live music, for locals as well as visitors from all over the country.

Festivalgoers can expect an abundance of knowledge presented by Black Wall Street Homecoming and AOC’s free Innovate Your Cool Conference, curated by Michael English That portion of the programming aims “to leverage popular culture and STEAM-based curriculum to expose traditionally disengaged communities to opportunities within entrepreneurship and tech,” according to English.

There are workshops to introduce young peo-

ple to coding, beatmaking, and financial literacy on Friday, while Saturday’s programming connects entrepreneurship with music.

The combined forces of Art of Cool and the Black Wall Street Homecoming are a perfect pairing; the music festival is an uplifting, highenergy celebration of black American music produced by communal descendants of Durham’s Black Wall Street legacy.

“With all that’s going on in the world, to be able to take a break from [it] and come together to experience joy is what we aim to offer,” says Lesleigh Mausi.

The Art of Cool’s crossover with the Black Wall Street Homecoming isn’t just the end result of decades of hustle from current organizers and their ancestors—it solidifies the importance of black-owned businesses in Durham and provides a blueprint of excellence for a new generation of black youth. music@indyweek.com

ART OF COOL FESTIVAL

Friday, Sep. 28 & Saturday, Sep. 29, Various times, $100–$321 Various venues, Downtown Durham www.aocfestival.com

BLACK WALL STREET HOMECOMING

Wednesday, Sep. 26–Friday, Sep. 29, Various times, $100–$275 Various venues, Downtown Durham www.bwshomecoming.com

COOL B R I E F

CAN NAS GET AWAY WITH BUSINESS AS USUAL? It's hard to attach anything other than positive vibes to a jazz festival, especially one anchored by the likes of Maxwell, Erykah Badu, Damien Escobar, and Anthony Hamilton. However, aside from those headliners, one of the Art of Cool Festival’s most impressive names will also be its most controversial.

With eight platinum albums like Illmatic, It Was Written and I Am... under his belt, New York rapper Nas—né Nasir Jones—is a legendary arbiter of words. But in April, the singer Kelis, who was married to Nas from 2005 to 2010, alleged that a dark side hid behind all that powerful prose.

Kelis told Hollywood Unlocked that the photos and subsequent public reckoning surrounding Rihanna’s abuse by Chris Brown were what finally propelled her to file for divorce in April 2009. She “had bruises all over [her] body at that time,” she said, but she didn’t come forward herself out of embarrassment.

Nas stayed quiet about the accusations for a few months before issuing a seven-part rebuttal on Instagram in early September, where he refuted her account of their relationship and detailed behavior he characterized as verbal abuse. He accused Kelis of “exploiting some people’s real struggle and pain” for attention and fame before flatly denying that he beats women. But this isn’t the first time Nas has been accused of abuse: In 2006, Carmen Bryan, who has a daughter with Nas, wrote in her memoir It’s No Secret that the rapper had hit her with closed fists.

Nas and Kelis' issues unearthed during the year of #MeToo, in which victims of sexual violence have publicized their trauma in hopes that their attackers would be held accountable for their actions. Brands have been disassociating themselves from celebs even loosely connected to sexual or domestic misconduct with increasing speed—in May, for example, Visa ended its endorsement deal with actor Morgan Freeman over sexual harassment allegations. So it’s surprising that Art of Cool hasn’t pulled Nas from their lineup or even made a statement acknowledging the incident and explaining their continued support for Nas. It is of the utmost importance to believe women (and men) when they bravely speak up about seemingly hellish encounters, and it is equally important to honor the truth. Nas will eventually have to atone for his past, whether or not festivals take the allegations against him seriously. But for right now, it seems to be business as usual for both Nas and Art of Cool. —Stacy-Ann Ellis

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ART OF COOL

Sons of Anarchy

COOL B R I E F

LONDON’S SONS OF KEMET REDEFINE ROYALTY ON YOUR QUEEN IS A REPTILE

BY DAN RUCCIA

T

he words and drawings on the cover of Sons of Kemet’s Mercury Prize-nominated third album Your Queen Is a Reptile immediately throw down a gauntlet, an us-versus-them tension that animates their music. The title is printed on the front, and all of the track titles, listed on the back, follow the same format: “My Queen is Angela Davis,” “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman,” “My Queen Is Nanny of the Maroons,” an 18th-century Jamaican rebel leader. Ten total queens stand out in black against the Impulse Records orange. In South African artist Mzwandile Buthelezi’s twitching lines, each queen is adorned in traditional African finery, their long necks stacked with rings, spears in hand.

From this side of the Atlantic, all this might seem like a bit of surrealism paying homage to important figures that tend to be written out of our collective history. But then you realize that reed-player Shabaka Hutchings’s band is from London with roots in the colonies—Hutchings himself grew up in Barbados—and the context shifts. Suddenly, they’re not talking about any hypothetical queen but the Queen and, by extension, the entire British monarchy, the empire, and the historical subjugation of people of color in British society. “Your Queen is a reptile” becomes a modern variation on the Sex Pistols “God Save the Queen,” a call to action, a cry from a people whose worth the Queen and everything she stands for seems to ignore. By extension, Sons of Kemet delivers a similar shock of radical energy to jazz as punk did to the rest of rock ’n’ roll.

“We claim our right to question your obsolete systems,” they write. To say “My Queen is Ada Eastman” (Hutchings’s great-grandmother) is to claim to a forgotten history, a statement of belonging, an embrace of patois and pidgin. From their perspective, the monarchy might as well not be human since it doesn’t view them as human: “We knew the system was rigged and the only path to freedom was for the system to burn.”

32 | 9.26.18 | INDYweek.com

These polemical politics grow directly out of Sons of Kemet’s music, a vision of jazz drawing on a volatile mix of sounds from around the black diaspora as a musical version of that pidgin and patois. Their unusual lineup of saxophone, tuba, and two drummers give the group a nimble, propulsive energy. That drive starts with tuba player Theon Cross, whose deeply funky bass line and countermelodies refer

PHOTO COURTESY OF PARADIGM TALENT AGENCY

SONS OF KEMET Friday, Sep. 28, 1 a.m.

The Pinhook

to everything from brass bands and New Orleans second lines to dancehall or Balkan beats. He even makes his horn sound like a scratching record on the album-closing “My Queen Is Doreen Lawrence.”

Around this foundation, the two drummers, Tom Skinner and Eddie Hicks, skitter and clatter, creating complex, intertwining patterns on treble-heavy snare drums, cymbals, and Afro-Cuban percussion instruments. Occasionally, they pull out bass drums to go in a heavier dub or hip-hop direction, but even then there is an overriding sense of lightness in their playing.

The combination is surprisingly nimble, at

times seeming like the rhythm section could just start strutting around the room without missing a beat.

And then there’s Hutchings himself, playing twisting melodies and nimble solos in glorious counterpoint to the rhythm machine underneath. At thirty-three, he’s already a central figure in London’s burgeoning jazz scene. Sons of Kemet is one of three adventurous bands he leads; the other two are Shabaka and the Ancestors, a free jazz band with South African players, and the Comet Is Coming, whose 2016 album of spacy electronic dance music, Channel the Spirits, was also nominated for a Mercury Prize. On Your Queen Is a Reptile, his playing is simple and focused, eschewing flashy runs for tight, direct lines, sounding at times like a toasting emcee or a West Indian deejay.

All these elements come together in combustible songs like “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman.” Hutchings plays a chattering tune, occasionally soulful, occasionally clipped, in conversation with an equally fleet bass line in Cross’s tuba, bouncing across octaves at will. The tempo feels breakneck, but it’s just fast enough to compel your body into motion without flying entirely out of control. Drummers Skinner and Hicks play an impossible number of percussion instruments, always on top of the beat in a way that pushing everything forward. At a key moment, Cross drops out, leaving Hutchings to hover on a single note while the drummers explode in a delirious breakdown. The song is just under six minutes long, but it’s more than enough to leave you exhausted.

Sons of Kemet’s political, multi-diasporic jazz stands out in an Art of Cool Festival lineup dominated by soul-jazz, R&B, and hip-hop. Their music has a ferocious, unrelenting presence, perhaps inspired by the energy of the queens they invoke: “Our Queens walked among us. Our queens led by action, by example, our Queens listened.”

Thus Sons of Kemet listens, leads, combines. music@indyweek.com

UNDERDOG ROYCE DA 5’9” DESERVES HIS DUE Detroit’s Royce da 5’9” remains one of the most criminally underrated emcees in modern hip-hop, and it’s partly due to his style. He’s known for adopting drastically different vocal timbres and cadences verse to verse—even bar to bar—and therefore rarely sounds the same on the mic. Even for longtime fans, it can be difficult to identify Royce’s raps by ear and give credit where it’s due.

The general lack of credit is also thanks to his long-running association with Eminem. They’ve been sparring partners dating back to Eminem’s first album, 1999’s Slim Shady LP, when millions of American kids were introduced to Royce via the song “Bad Meets Evil.” The song is a backand-forth game of lyrical one-upmanship between two cartoonishly offensive characters doing each other’s sound effects.

They trade rapping the hook, “’Cause this is what happens when Bad meets Evil/ And we hit the trees ’til we look like Vietnamese people/ He's Evil, and I'm Bad like Steve Seagal/Against peaceful, see you in hell for the sequel.”

They both went even harder as Bad Meets Evil, issuing a full-length album in 2011, Hell: The Sequel. Royce’s flows outmatched Eminem’s throughout (though few will admit it). He’s always operated in the shadow of Slim Shady despite his dizzying technical abilities and history of producing solo music of substantial artistic merit.

His acclaimed seventh studio album, The Book of Ryan, which he released in May, is moving, soulful, and autobiographical. But most casual rap fans know it only for the fourth single, “Caterpillar,” a track on which Royce and Eminem trade verses with the over-thetop braggadocio of their early work. “My pen is like Big Ben, this shit's just a classic waiting,” Royce raps. “Your favorite rapper come at me, I just decapitate him.” Maybe we should just face it: Eminem and Royce da 5'9" bring out the best in each other, but it’s time for Royce to take a turn in the spotlight. —Howard Hardee

WIDE OPEN BLUEGRASS

The Grass Ceiling

ALISON BROWN MARKS A CRITICAL MASS OF WOMEN IN BLUEGRASS WITH A HEADLINING SHOWCASE OF SUPERSTARS BY HOLLY GLEASON

W

ith almond hair sweeping around her jawline, eyes alive and sparkling with curiosity, it’s hard to believe the amount of ground broken and history made by Alison Brown. She seems so young, yet the fifty-six-year-old Harvard grad with the quick smile was sitting in as the only woman with her banjo at bluegrass jams at twelve, touring with Alison Krauss and Michelle Shocked at critical points in both women’s careers, and founded the musically-diverse, creativity-supporting Compass Records with her husband, Garry West, twenty-five years ago.

Point out the contrasts to Brown, and she laughs. To the lithe banjo player, time is mercury—and she likes the way it flows forward, creating opportunities and opening doors.

Believing in making records with an eye on the ultimate outcome, she’s the kind of musician who understands talent will take you places you didn’t anticipate. This weekend, it takes her to a center-stage, headlining spot during bluegrass’s biggest party, leading a First Ladies of Bluegrass showcase Friday night at Red Hat Amphitheater that highlights women’s past and present contributions to the field.

One of Brown’s biggest accomplishments for bluegrass has been Compass Records, which began on a paper napkin in a coffee house in Stockholm, Sweden, while Brown was on tour with Michelle Shocked in support of Shocked’s 1992 LP, Arkansas Traveller. She concedes that she was approaching the business side of it with “utter ignorance.”

“But we believed there was a lot of room for an artist-run, artist-driven record label, having had enough frustration talking with the suits at a label who just didn’t understand what artists were dealing with, and what musicians were dealing with,” Brown says.

“It was definitely meant to be artist-driven and a haven for a lot of great musicians we found out on tour.”

Brown’s approach worked, attracting a wildly eclectic roster. Home to Grammywinning soul rocker Mike Farris, Men at

Alison Brown PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

Your Week.

Every Wednesday. indyweek.com INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 33

Work frontman Collin Haye, Indigo Girl Amy Ray, jam stalwart Nicki Bluhm, folk-pop’s The Proclaimers, songwriter Beth Neilson Chapman, legends Fairport Convention, and New Grass Revival/Doobie Brothers powervocalist John Cowan, it remains a haven for the best of bluegrass. Noam Pikelny, Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley, Mountain Heart,

her, and looking at her own body of work— eleven albums, several Vanguard repackages, a 2009 Grammy for “Under the (Five) Wire” with the Alison Brown Quartet—and the Compass Records Label Group’s output of over a thousand albums, plus overseeing the physical distribution of the No Depression quarterly, speaks volumes.

“Flatt and Scruggs is just five farm boys who discovered this music that was like punk for country people.”

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The Infamous Stringdusters and fellow First Ladies of bluegrass Missy Raines, Claire Lynch, and Molly Tuttle are all signed to the label, which also owns roots labels Green Linnet, Xenophile, and Red House Records.

Inspired by Rounder Records’ commitment to the artists and Windham Hill’s sense of aesthetics and context, Compass merged the two ideas. Having fled a lucrative job at Goldman Sachs to play music, she understands the economics must work, but believes creativity can happen on both sides of the equation.

To that end, Brown references “talking points,” or reasons for people to invest beyond just releasing a record. After pulling together the women she jokes “smashed the grass ceiling” for a video with her Deering Julia Belle banjo, she enlisted Becky Buller, Sierra Hill, and Molly Tuttle to record Laurie Lewis’s seminal “Swept Away” on Missy Raines’s Royal Traveller.

Each of the women became the first—and often only—woman to receive the IBMA’s prized Instrument of the Year award. Brown won for banjo in 1991, seven-time winner Raines captured her first bass player trophy in 1998, Buller took home her fiddle honor in 2016, as Hull also received her first of two mandolin awards. Tuttle, the first woman nominated for IBMA’s best guitar player award, won her category last year.

The reality that everyone in the First Ladies of Bluegrass is a bandleader isn’t lost on Brown, a feminist who doesn’t spend time thinking about the label. Actions define

Brown’s broad body of work (and the years she’s put into it all) gives her a uniquely seasoned perspective. From the viewpoints of both a producer and a player, Brown has understood firsthand what bringing different voices into the room can do for shaping the energy of a record.

“Flatt and Scruggs is just five farm boys who discovered this music that was like punk for country people in a whole different time,” Brown says. “But when you get men and women playing together, it’s a very positive thing. It gives the music a different edge, though, really it’s a roundness to the music.

That’s really different and really beautiful.”

When it comes to gender parity, Brown thinks bluegrass is at a tipping point. She says it’s hard to find a band that doesn’t have a woman in it anymore, and that it’s not lost on her that it wasn’t a man, but a woman— Alison Krauss—who helped Brown kick open the door toward a long and fruitful career as a musician and more. Brown wants to be that force for other women in bluegrass.

“When I was growing up in the seventies, there were no women—and all you ever heard was, ‘You sure do pick good for a girl,’” Brown recalls. “There are now women leading the charge, women scattered through the ecosystem. Women are running labels. [They are] engineers, producers, booking agents, [and they're] running venues. My strongest word to all of us in the sisterhood of this music: We need to step up and help usher it in. On the precipice of this opportunity, we really need to stand together and create opportunities.” music@indyweek.com

IBMA’S WIDE OPEN BLUEGRASS

Friday, Sep. 28 & Saturday, Sep. 29, Various times, $50–$160 Various venues, Downtown Raleigh www.worldofbluegrass.org 34 | 9.26.18 | INDYweek.com

WIDE OPEN BLUEGRASS

Reinventing the Wheel

HEY BANDS, YOU DON’T HAVE TO COVER “WAGON WHEEL” ANYMORE. HERE ARE SOME OTHER SONGS TO TRY INSTEAD. BY ALLISON HUSSEY

A

fun game to play during IBMA week every year is to keep a tally of how many different versions you hear of specific songs from buskers all the way up to the main stage at Red Hat Amphitheater. You’re guaranteed to hear the likes of “Man of Constant Sorrow,” “Banks of the Ohio,” “Knoxville Girl,” and “Pretty Polly” more than once throughout the weekend.

Such is the nature of bluegrass, where songs get passed down, handed around, and preserved by the community.

But one cover that sticks out most prominently in Raleigh is “Wagon Wheel,” Old Crow Medicine Show’s mega-hit. It’s had particular sticking power in North Carolina, both for its opening nod to “the land of the pines” and its oft-hollered declaration, “If I die in Raleigh, at least I will die free.”

But here’s the thing, ye pickers and grinners: Everybody does “Wagon Wheel.”

Sure, you may get plenty of whoops of recognition, but wouldn’t you rather earn those cries for creativity rather than leaning on an exhausted, loved-to-death tune? Here are some suggestions to help your set stand out a little differently.

Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You”: A dulcimer drives the shimmering instrumental melody of this cut from Mitchell’s classic LP, Blue, but those notes would sound just as pretty on a mandolin, too. There are even some flourishes at the end that leave room for a spry picker to show off their chops.

Ahmad Jamal’s “Poinciana”: Here’s one for the truly ambitious musicians who want to hop all the way out of the box: an eight-minute instrumental jazz number originally recorded on piano, bass, and drums. A groovy bassline slithers beneath Jamal’s playful cascades across the piano.

There’s enough happening here that everyone could take a ripping solo or two (or maybe even three?).

a fierce ode to women who do all kinds of toiling, from stay-at-home moms to those with the executive corner suite.

Lead Belly’s “Bourgeois Blues”: Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter wrote this anti-racist, anti-capitalist anthem in 1937, but its messages resonate as though it were written in 2017. It makes for a fitting nod to the classconsciousness of bluegrass’s progenitors as well as the current calamity of economic inequality in the United States.

Kacey Musgraves’s “Space Cowboy”: Musgraves’s Golden Hour is one of the best records of the year so far, so why not coast on her popularity a little bit? “Space Cowboy” is a gorgeous, clever song that pulls on twangy tropes for a refreshing new kind of kiss-off (and check out that sparkly banjo line!).

ILLUSTRATION BY STEVE OLIVA

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “Fishin’ in the Dark”: “Fishin’ in the Dark” was a No. 1 hit for The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1987, and there’s no reason why this springy and delightfully devilish tune about a nighttime romp can’t work for you, too. Get a little more mileage out of that harmonica in your back pocket by taking this song for a spin.

Randy Travis’s “Send My Body”: Not only will you get some strong throwback North Carolina cred here, but “Send My Body” hits most of the same points as a lot of other bluegrass, folk, and country tunes: trains, a miscarriage of justice, wrongful death. It’s dark but plenty peppy, chugging along like the locomotive Travis hopes will deliver him home again.

Dolly Parton’s “Working Girl”: Sure, Dolly Parton put out a bluegrass record in 1999, but why not jump for one of her incredible originals? “Working Girl” comes from the same LP that blessed us with “9 to 5,” and it’s

The Avett Brothers’ “At the Beach”: The Avetts were never quite “proper” bluegrass, and they certainly aren’t now. However, there are plenty of songs from the early part of their catalog that could fit neatly in a bluegrass set (with the added bonus of that much-desired home-state credibility). The band’s earnest celebration of the Carolina coast holds up well.

Charley Pride’s “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’”: The old adage of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is true of Pride’s 1971 hit. Its easygoing air is still charming nearly fifty years later, and this one’s bound to get you in the good graces of classic country fans.

Fiona Apple's “Extraordinary Machine”: Cheeky covers of pop songs abound in bluegrass, but this one is enough of a curiosity that it won’t elicit any groans. Apple’s original is slow, slinky, and spacious, leaving plenty of room for intrepid experimentation with a new toolkit of timbres. Maybe even try some yodeling on the bridge? (Actually, don’t do that.) ahussey@indyweek.com

BLUEGRASS

BRIEF

KINDA SORTA BLUEGRASS Like many of the best moments of IBMA’s week in Raleigh, two of this year’s highlights look to be a pair of informal shows that are unofficial byproducts of the festival itself, featuring some of the Triangle’s top young talent working in roots music. Saturday night’s “Almost Bluegrass” bill at Slim’s features songwriters Tatiana Hargreaves, Kate Rhudy, and Libby Rodenbough performing solo material and collaborating in various configurations—expect plenty of fiddle with some banjo and guitar mixed in.

Hargreaves grew up going to bluegrass jams before eventually finding her way to old-time music. Her previous IBMA gigs with Alice Gerrard and Laurie Lewis— who inspired her to circle back to bluegrass—allowed Hargreaves to explore the Triangle, helping her decide to move to Durham last year and teach bluegrass fiddle at UNC-Chapel Hill. Rodenbough began as a classical violinist, but when her modern string band Mipso made the bluegrass charts with Old Time Reverie, she began digging into the genre, a process the North Carolina native likened to genealogical research. Rhudy was also trained in the Suzuki method but later cut her teeth at fiddler’s conventions in Southwestern Virginia.

None of the three claim strict adherence to bluegrass, though Rodenbough says they all appreciate the social aspect of the music and admits to taking advantage of this fiddle-friendly occasion to play some tunes with her friends.

Rhudy and Rodenbough also perform Friday night at Kings with local supergroup Hard Tuck, which features current and former members of Bowerbirds, American Aquarium, and Look Homeward. With rare public appearances beyond a tribute to the Dixie Chicks at January’s Great Cover Up, the freewheeling crew mostly sticks to covers of the likes of Kacey Musgraves, Willie Nelson, and the Grateful Dead. Both shows have a $5 cover—Friday’s begins at 10:30 p.m. while Saturday’s starts at 9 p.m.

—Spencer Griffith INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 35

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36 | 9.26.18 | INDYweek.com

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stage

BRIEF

PLAYMAKERS ESCAPES PAUL GREEN WITH A FLEET MACBETH

Honor Among Thieves

KEN LUDWIG’S LIGHT, LIVELY RETELLING OF ROBIN HOOD HAS AN UNEXPECTEDLY MOVING POLITICAL MESSAGE FOR TODAY

BY BYRON WOODS

Joshua David Robinson as Robin Hood PHOTO BY HUTHPHOTO

G

uest director Jessie Austrian enlisted the audience’s help several times during PlayMakers Rep’s production of Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood, Ken Ludwig’s light, lively retelling of the fourteenth-century legend.

While raucous miscreants played primitive beer pong in a tavern, extras fanned out through Paul Green Theatre, recruiting dancing revelers for the ribald tunes that modern-day balladmonger Jack Herrick wrote for the show. Later, Sir Guy (Jeffrey Blair Cornell) had to repeat the line “All rise,” adding hand gestures, to get the audience on its feet for the entrance of the villainous Prince John (played like a smarmy talkshow host by Ray Dooley) before goading the crowd into doing the wave.

But during the show’s final bit of audience participation, at the top of Act Two, the putons, silliness, and slapstick evaporated, and

the room went still. We were at the Great Oak, where Robin Hood had convened a coalition of the willing to join him in resisting a fraudulent and greedy sovereign. It was time for them to swear their loyalty. Then the actors turned outward, toward us, and suddenly, we were being asked to take their oath: “Do you swear to help those in need and to protect the poor with compassion and grace? To feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the old and sick? To fight oppression and remain firm in our love of a free country for ourselves and our children?”

I saw looks of shock and uncertainty as well as expressions of resolution and delight throughout the theater, as Austrian’s actors basically asked us all, point blank, “Which side are you on?”

Though the play continued, the stakes and mood had permanently changed. In part, that’s because a strong ensemble—including

narrator Friar Tuck (Dan Toot), Little John (a puckish Rishan Dhamija), and Maid Marian (a capable Christine Mirzayan)—truly conveyed the fellow feeling of a group of activists. Joshua David Robinson’s nimble, heartfelt Robin Hood modeled the nobility a current generation hungers for from its leaders: “They follow me. I follow them. We travel together … We’re here for each other. Otherwise, we’re nothing.”

Andrea Bullock’s prop artisans and effects creators made arrows appear from nowhere across the boards and bodies on McKay Coble’s rustic, minimal set, and Herrick’s original music supported the action throughout. At evening’s end, an unexpectedly revealing production showed us where we stood, not only in the world of an old childhood story but in the present day as well. arts@indyweek.com

SHERWOOD: THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD 

Through Sunday, Sep. 30 | PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chapel Hill | www.playmakersrep.org

The production values are conspicuously modest for PlayMakers. Instead of a fabricated castle, three plastic cubes make up the set and a bank of fluorescent bulbs stand in for theatrical lighting. With no curtains or wings, the performers mostly change costumes, scenes, and characters in full view. One more unusual thing: Generally, PlayMakers uses more than five actors to stage Macbeth.

But these are the challenges a theater company faces when it takes its work somewhere that, until recently, it hadn’t been in decades: beyond the controlled confines of a professional theater and into the communities surrounding it.

PlayMakers Mobile, a touring theater initiative that artistic director Vivienne Benesch started in 2016, began its third and largest season to date Thursday with a seventy-minute Macbeth in Durham and Pittsboro. By the time its tour concludes on October 6, a quintet of gifted grad students in UNC’s Professional Actors Training Program will have performed for audiences at service organizations, private and public schools, a tech incubator, and a museum, in Chatham, Durham, Wake, and Orange Counties. (A full list of venues and dates is on PlayMakers’ website.)

For Benesch, the initiative isn’t only about what she calls “drawing our circle ever wider,” reaching out to underserved communities and other organizations in the area. The mobile production unit is an attempt to embrace the vision of professor Frederick Koch, who took the original Carolina Playmakers on the road a century ago.

“His idea of bringing our stories to the people and being a state theater in the fullest sense of the word is something we should be coming back to one hundred years later,” she says.

In a Pittsboro library meeting room, more than eighty locals, ranging from grade school to grandparents, lean forward as the ageless witches invoke Macbeth’s opening lines. As they do, it’s clear that it doesn’t take a fivefigure budget to produce compelling Shakespeare. It only takes five actors, an audience willing to believe, and a company willing to reach out to them.

—Byron Woods INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 37

WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK

9.26–10.3

Willie Raysor as Smiles in Hype PHOTO COURTESY OF HOLLAND R. GALLAGHER THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27

HYPE

In Durham, as elsewhere, history moves in a circle that changes as it goes around. In 1988, the Carolina Theatre screened the world premiere of Bull Durham, a movie that put Durham on the national map. Thirty years later, the Carolina is hosting another premiere set and filmed in Durham that also serves as a marker of how much has changed. Written and directed by Holland Randolph Gallagher and presented by fashion house Runaway, Hype is a ten-episode web series that plunges us into Durham’s contemporary rap and startup culture—a far cry from the sleepy minorleague baseball town portrayed in Bull Durham. The series centers on Smiles, a young man who gets embroiled in the city’s grassroots music and entrepreneurship worlds.

The cast features local music fixtures such as Zensofly, the soundtrack boasts the likes of Sylvan Esso and Ace Henderson, and the locations include Cocoa Cinnamon, The Durham Hotel, and Motorco. It’s a Durham you know on the big screen; see it here before it drops online sometime before the end of the year. —Brian Howe CAROLINA THEATRE, DURHAM 7:30 & 9:30 p.m., free, www.carolinatheatre.org

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27– SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14

WAKE FOREST DANCE FESTIVAL

CURVE OF DEPARTURE

Earlier in the summer, UNC-Chapel Hill’s English and Comparative Literature department announced the winner of its annual Thomas Wolfe Prize: Gillian Welch.

The honor has previously gone to the likes of esteemed writers like Pat Conroy, Elizabeth Spencer, Sandra Cisneros, and Clyde Edgerton; Welch is the first songwriter to join their ranks. Her songs are rife with all kinds of lowdown characters, whose stories of hardship Welch treats with an empathetic heart and an incisive pen. After accepting her award on campus Tuesday night, Welch takes a two-concert victory lap at the Haw River Ballroom on Wednesday and Thursday. If you’re wondering why local literary powers would bestow their accolades upon a musician, Welch will give you abundant answers from the stage. She and her partner in song, Dave Rawlings, will even throw some pretty acoustic guitar notes in there at no extra charge.

—Allison Hussey

Dance abhors a vacuum. For nine years before moving to Wake Forest in 2016, Masha Maddux performed with the Martha Graham Dance Company. During a brisk walk shortly after her arrival here, she happened upon the terraced amphitheater at the center of the town’s Joyner Park. “It struck a chord in my heart,” Maddux recalls. “There was no reason it couldn’t be a venue for dance of professional caliber.” After successfully producing the first Wake Forest Dance Festival last year, Maddux honors the American Dance Festival this year with an all-day mélange of classical and contemporary modern dance in an outdoor setting. After an open technical rehearsal in the morning, audiences can view four regional dance groups during a guided tour of the park grounds before a culminating international showcase featuring dancers from the José Limón Dance Company and New York’s DASH Ensemble, the Cuban-inflected choreography of Pedro Ruiz, and the Italian dance of Antonio Fini, with local work from Justin Tornow and Koffee Dance Company. —Byron Woods

HAW RIVER BALLROOM, SAXAPAHAW 8 p.m., $35, www.hawriverballroom.com

E. CARROLL JOYNER PARK, WAKE FOREST 9:30 a.m.–6:30 p.m., free, www.wakeforestdancefestival.org

THE FRUIT, DURHAM Various times, $10–$20, www.bulldogdurham.org

GILLIAN WELCH

38 | 9.26.18 | INDYweek.com

Most family structures resemble an intergenerational game of Jenga. As death, divorce, and other estrangements make their subtractions from its strata, new long-term relationships and marriages add strategic blocks—theoretically, at least. In Rachel Bonds’s 2017 domestic drama, it’s a delicate moment for the fractured, cross-cultural clan gathered in a Santa Fe hotel room for the funeral of Cyrus, its most problematic member. Cy’s father, the irascible, eloquent Rudy, wrote him off after the deceased abandoned his wife, Linda, when his son, Felix, turned twelve. All three are here, in need of different forms of closure, as further changes loom. The early stages of dementia threaten Rudy’s relationship with Linda, as Felix’s boyfriend, Jackson, is meeting the family for the first time. Thaddeus Edwards directs Luar Mercado Lopez, Phyllis Morrison, Marcus Zollicoffer, and stage veteran John Murphy in this inaugural production from Bulldog Ensemble Theater, formed by a group of Manbites Dog Theater expats. —Byron Woods

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29

NATHAN BOWLES TRIO

If you don’t keep a careful eye on Virginia-born, Durham-based Nathan Bowles—or even if you do—it can be tough to get a bead on him. Is he a banjo-wielding inspired instrumental stylist? An art-folk indie singer-songwriter? A good-time, back-porch Americana merchant? At various points, the answer to all of the above is “yes.” He first peeked out of the Virginia mountains in 2012 with A Bottle, A Buckeye, and ever since then he’s continually expanded his mercurial musical vision. As his new album, Plainly Mistaken, makes clear, he can either flit back and forth between these roles or somehow manage to occupy all of them simultaneously, creating some kind of new paradigm in the process. So which Bowles will you wind up meeting when he takes the stage at Nightlight with his trio? If you’re lucky, all of them. —Jim Allen NIGHTLIGHT, CHAPEL HILL 9 p.m., $10, www.nightlightclub.com

Nathan Bowles Trio

PHOTO BY BRAD BUNYEA

WHAT ELSE SHOULD I DO?

JOYCE WATKINS KING AT WEEMS GALLERY (P. 44), ART OF COOL FESTIVAL IN DOWNTOWN DURHAM (P. 30), MOHSIN HAMID AT THE NASHER (P. 48), IBMA’S WIDE OPEN BLUEGRASS IN DOWNTOWN RALEIGH (P. 33), THE REVOLUTIONISTS AT RALEIGH LITTLE THEATRE (P. 46), RURAL AVANT-GARDE: THE MOUNTAIN LAKE EXPERIENCE AT THE GREGG MUSEUM (P. 14), SHERWOOD: THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD AT PLAYMAKERS (P. 37), SICK CHICK FLICKS AT THE CARY THEATER (P. 48) INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 39

SA 9/29

MT.JOY

RECYCLE THIS PAPER

TH 9/27

CAAMP FR 9/28

@ CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM

JOSHUA HEDLEY

11/6 THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS ($30/$34)

WE 9/26 @ CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM

LOW CUT CONNIE

9/ 26 THE GROWLERS’ BEACH GOTH TOUR 2018 W/ SURFBORT, DONZII ($25/$30)

9/27 CAAMP W/ ONA ($14/ $16)

JUN @ 8:00 Recently WED Announced: TTNG, WED JUN 29 29 @ Nothing,Nowhere 8:00 PM, PM, $12/$15 $12/$15 WED 9/26

RICHIE RAMONE

9/30 CARRBORO MUSIC FESTIVAL (3 PM - MIDNIGHT; FREE SHOW)

w/ POISON ANTHEM w/ POISON ANTHEM RICHARD BACCHUS & THE LUCKIEST GIRLS RICHARD BACCHUS & THE LUCKIEST GIRLS

10/4 SKIZZY MARS THE ARE YOU OK TOUR -PHASE 2 ($20/$22)

Cat’s Cradle Presents ANDREW W.K. w/ Demon Eye

WED 9/26

ANDREW W.K. FRIDEMON 7/1 EYE LOOK HOMEWARD / THE MIDATLANTIC W/

FRI 7/1 LOOK HOMEWARD / THE MIDATLANTIC FRI TUE9/28 7/5SALES Crank It Loud: / CULTURE ABUSE w/ Moon Racer NOTHING TUE 7/5 Crank It Loud: NOTHING / CULTURE ABUSE WAILIN STORMS / HUNDREDFTFACES WAILIN STORMS / HUNDREDFTFACES FRI 7/8 SolKitchen & The Art of Cool Project: FRI 7/8 SolKitchen & The Art of Cool Project: The Art of Noise #Durham The Art of Noise #Durham MON FRI 9/287/11 RegulatorW/Bookstore MOON RACERpresents MON 7/11 Regulator Bookstore presents HAVRILESKY: Ask Polly Live SAT 9/29 Art HEATHER HEATHER HAVRILESKY: Ask Polly of Cool Fest with Dwele w/ Jus OnceLiveBand TUE 7/12 DANNY SCHMIDT / REBECCA NEWTON with WES COLLINS TUE 7/12 DANNY SCHMIDT / REBECCA NEWTON with WES COLLINS THU 7/14 Storymakers: Durham, Community Listening Event THU 7/14 Storymakers: Durham, Community Listening Event SAT 9/29 ART OF COOL FEST SAT 7/16 PINKERTON RAID / ST. ANTHONY & THE MYSTERY TRAIN SAT 7/16 PINKERTON RAID / ST. ANTHONY & THE MYSTERY TRAIN W/ JUS ONCE BAND SUN JUL 17 SUN JUL 17 @ 8:00 PM SUN 9/30 Crank It Loud Presents NOTHING THE RAGBIRDS @ 8:00 PM THE RAGBIRDS $12/$15 Swirlies / Big BIte / Smut $12/$15

SALES

DWELE

THE THE RAGBIRDS RAGBIRDS

10/ 6 BLITZEN TRAPPER

W/ OKEY DOKEY

10/9 THE STRUTS W/ WHITE REAPER AND SPIRIT ANIMAL ($24/$27) 10/10 MINUS THE BEAR: THE

FAREWELL TOUR. W/ CASPIAN

SOLD OUT

/ Caseymagic

JOHN JOHN COWAN COWAN JEFF THE BROTHERHOOD w/ DARIN & BROOKE w/ DARIN & BROOKE ALDRIDGE ALDRIDGE W/CASEYMAGIC WED 10/3

11/8 DAVE ALVIN AND JIMMIE DALE GILMORE 11/9 REAL FRIENDS W/ BOSTON

11/20 QUEEN NAIJA (MOVED UP FROM KINGS, DUE TO OVERWHELMING TICKET DEMAND) ($20/$23) 11/28 HANDS LIKE HOUSES

W/EMAROSA, DEVOUR THE DAY, YOUNG LIONS ($17/$20) 11/30 WILD CHILD ($15/$17) 12/1 AMINE W/ BUDDY ($27/$30)

10/12 NEIL DIAMOND ALLSTARS

12/8 SOUTHERN CULTURE ON THE SKIDS ($13/ $15)

W/ LESTER COALBANKS & THE SEVEN SORROWS ($10) 10/13 DIALI CISSOHKO & KAIRA BA W/ SHANA TUCKER ($10/$12) 10/14 GAELIC STORM ($26/ $29; SEATED SHOW)

10/15 BOB MOSES W/ MANSIONAIR

12/18 2ND ANNUAL HORTON’S

HOLIDAY HAYRIDE: REVEREND HORTON HEAT, JUNIOR BROWN, BLASTERS, BIG SANDY 12/19 THE WEEPIES HOLIDAY SHOW ($28/$32) 1/14/19 NONAME ($25/ $28) 1/31/19 EL TEN ELEVEN W/ JOAN OF ARC ($15/$17)

2/1/2019 JOYCE

MANOR/JEFF ROSENSTOCK W/REMEMBER SPORTS 2/16/19 MATT NATHANSON

10/24 BIG THIEF W/ THE RANGE OF LIGHT WILDERNESS ($16/ $18) 10/25 WIZARD FEST

9/26 LOW CUT CONNIE W/ RUBY BOOTS ($15)

S D R I B G A R E TH

10/30 & 10/31 HIPPO CAMPUS

9/29 ERIC BACHMANN W/ LONNIE WALKER (FREE SHOW / CMF KICKOFF)

MURDER BY DEATH w/ Tim Barry SUN JUL17 SOON: YARN, FRICOMING 10/12 SUN JUL17 NEGUINHO DA LEWIS, BEIJA-FLOR COMING SOON: JULIETTE JULIETTE LEWIS, YARN, JARED JARED && THE THE MILL, MILL, HAL KETCHUM, NRBQ, LIZ WINDHAND, Doors: 7pm SUN 10/14 HAL KETCHUM, NRBQ,Presents LIZ VICE, VICE,MATTHEW WINDHAND,PERRYMAN JONES Doors: 7pm Bob Nocek CODY CANADA & THE DEPARTED, RUSSIAN CIRCLES, BAND OF Show: 8pm THE DEPARTED, RUSSIAN CIRCLES, OF SKULLS, SKULLS, TUECODY 10/16CANADA Show: 8pm FLYNT& FLOSSY ANDBIRDS, TURQUOISE JEEPBAND / Newman SISTER SPARROW && THE DIRTY KING, $12 ADV 723 RIGSBEE AVE DURHAM, NC MOTORCOMUSIC.COM SISTER SPARROW THE DIRTY BIRDS, KING, $12 ADV 723 RIGSBEE AVE DURHAM, NC MOTORCOMUSIC.COM DOYLE LAWSON && QUICKSILVER, THE RECORD COMPANY, ADRIAN LEGG, COMING SOON: CloZee, Oddissee, TTNG, Eric Roberson, This Will Destroy You, $15 DAY OF LAWSON QUICKSILVER, THE Titus RECORD COMPANY, ADRIAN $15 DAY OFBand, AmyDOYLE Ray and Her CharleyBRIGHTEST Crockett, Andronicus, Ted Leo, Vinyl LEGG, Theatre, REBIRTH BRASS DIAMOND, KARLA BONOFF, !

W BRASS BAND, BAND,Red,MY MY Mae, BRIGHTEST DIAMOND, KARLA BONOFF, O N TheREBIRTH Ataris, Superchunk, Lyrics Born, Boulevards, (Sandy) Alex LE ! G, B OWWHY?, A TALIB KWELI, LOUDON WAINWRIGHT V A BLE A M ILA Vundabar, SavesA TheLB Day,U Kevin Devine, Demarco, Mike NCooley, AMacIL TALIB KWELI, LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III VIII A H"" W T M E R U N A E LB H A H E W Charly Bliss, Cloud H Frankie Nothings, Brother Ali, H Flotsam Jetsam RT T NECosmos, & EAand LD E O H T H S & E R LD H THRESHO HE "T T E RIGSBEE "TH723 AVE - DURHAM, NC - MOTORCOMUSIC.COM

11/1 CURSIVE W/MEAT WAVE,

9/30 CMF HIP HOP SHOWCASE HOSTED BY SKYBLEW

SAT 7/23 Girls Rock Showcase TUE TUE10/97/26Museum Motorco Night: of LifeComedy & Science Presents TUE 7/26 Motorco Comedy Night: Tinkering & Drinkering / ADAM COHEN ANDY WOODHULL ANDY WOODHULL / ADAM COHEN WED 10/10 Crank It Loud Presents DARK TRANQUILLITY, Amorphis, tt er s -P op Ma FRI 7/29 YOUNG BULL Album Release Show er s el er s" -P op Ma tt tr avRelease FRI 7/29Moonspell, YOUNG BULL Album s"Show tis tic Omnium e ar tr av el er ticGatherum mm at w/ ALIX AFF / DURTY DUB tis ar e "C on su w/ ALIX AFF / DURTY DUB su mm at on 10/11 "CTHU

The Threshold & The Hearth

W/ DILLON FENCE MAYFLIES USA

11/8 BAD BAD HATS 11/10 VETIVER (SOLO) AND FRUIT BATS (SOLO) ($14) 11/11 BAILEN ($10/$12)

MO 10/15

BOB MOSES

BATTLE LINES TOUR

10/6 ELECTRIC SIX W/ JEREMY AND THE HARLEQUINS

11/17 TALL HEIGHTS W/FRANCES CONE AND OLD SEA BRIGADE ($13/$15)

10/9 PARTICLE ($15)

11/20 MOUSE ON THE KEYS / TERA MELOS W/DUMB WAITER ($17/$21)

10/11 THE ARTISANALS W/ THE HIGH DIVERS 10/12 THE VEGABONDS W/ KENDALL STREET COMPANY ($10/ $15 FOR TWOPACK) 10/13 SEABREEZE DINER, ECHO

COURTS, AFFECTIONATES, BLUEBERRY 10/15 MIKE YUNG 10/16 MIKAELA DAVIS ($12/ $14)

10/18 SARAH SHOOK & THE DISARMERS DOCUMENTARY SCREENING

$10 $10 advance advance // $12 $12 day day of of10/3 EMILY KINNEY

11/5 PAYLAYE ROYALE W/ BONES,

DEAD POSEY

W/PAUL MCDONALD

10/4 SAM BAKER ($15/$17)

2/9/19 BRONZE RADIO RETURN ARTSCENTER (CARRBORO) 10/20 POKEY LAFARGE (SOLO) W/ THE WATSON TWINS CAROLINA THEATRE (DUR) 11/16 HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER 12/14 DELTA RAE DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

10/20 WILDERADO AND SURE SURE ($15)

9/29 JOAN BAEZ SOLD FARE THEE WELL TOUR OUT

10/21 KIKAGAKU MOYO ($12/$14)

MOTORCO (DUR) 9/26 ANDREW WK W/ DEMON EYE ($20/$24)

10/23 WIND + THE WAVE

10/25 HALLOWEEN MONSTER BASH: ELLIS DYSON & THE SHAMBLES/ THE OBLATIONS

10/27 DRIFTWOOD ($14 /$17)

11/4 POLYPHIA W/HAIL THE SUN, COVET ($17/$21)

11/30 GABRIEL KAHANE 12/3 DOUG PAISLEY $12/ $15)

& LIVE PERFORMANCE ($15)

PETER HOLSAPPLE COMBO

CELTIC-APPALACHIAN MUSIC: 2 TOUCHSTONES, LADS & A LASS + CAJAMMERS 10/2 ARSON DAILY, LAIRS AND REESE MCHENRY ($5/$7)

11/27 PHRESHER AND Q DA FOOL ($17.50/ $20)

10/19 HORSE FEATHERS

9/28 JOSHUA HEDLEY W/CALE TYSON ($15)

10/1 EVENING CONCERT OF

11/14 HIRIE ($14/$16) 11/15 BILLY RAFFOUL 11/16 BIRDS AND ARROWS W/ SURRENDER HUMAN ($10/$12)

10/27 ROKY ERICKSON W/ WHITE MYSTERY, BAT FANGS ($25/ $28)

CAMPDOGZZ 11/2 GHOSTLAND OBSERVATORY W/ GIBBZ ($25/$27) 11/3 EMMURE & STICK TO YOUR GUNS ($22/$25)

11/13 THE MERCURY PROGRAM AND DOVE LEGS ($10/$12)

10/5STOP LIGHT OBSERVATIONS W/LOCALFLORA($10/$12)

9/27 THE VELDT, THE MYSTERY

W/THE DISTRICTS

EMILY KINNEY

11/9 TYLER RAMSEY ($15)

SOUTH'S ANNUAL TRIBUTE TO THE MUSIC AND LIFE OF DUANE ALLMAN.

PLAN, LEISURE MCCORKLE

WE 10/3 @CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM

11/7 KWEKU COLLINS W/JOSEPH CHILLIAMS ($12/$15)

10/24 MIKE MATTISON AND SCRAPOMATIC ($15/$20)

10/26 ONE FOR DUANE V -- IDLEWILD

SAT10/67/23THEGirls Rockwith Showcase SAT WUSSES KB-50

THE CONNELLS

11/16 ATMOSPHERE W/ DEM ATLAS, THE LIONESS, DJ KEEZY ($25/$28)

12/7 STEVE WILSON (OF PORCUPINE TREE) ($30 ADV/ $35 DAY OF SHOW)

KNOCKED LOOSE

RESCHEDULED

SA 9/29 @ RALEIGH LITTLE THEATRE`

MANOR, GRAYSCALE, EAT YOUR HEART OUT ($21/$24) 11/10 RIVER WHYLESS W/TAKENOBU ($14/$16) 11/11 COLTER WALL 11/13 BAS ($20/$24; ON SALE 9/28)

10/11 CRANK IT LOUD PRESENTS:

10/20 GLORIETTA (DAVID RAMIREZ, NOAH GUNDERSEN, MATTHEW LOGAN VASQUEZ, KELSEY WILSON, ADRIAN QUESADA, JASON ROBERT BLUM) 10/22 WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS ($15/$17)

MON 7/18 MAIL THE HORSE NOTHING W/SWIRLIES/BIG BITE/SMUT MON 7/18 MAIL THE HORSE

Brotherhood FRI JUL 22 @ 8:00 PMJOHN COWAN @ 8:00 PMJOHN COWAN $25/$30 $25/$30

10/5 COSMIC CHARLIE ($12/$15)

10/16 WILD NOTHING W/ MEN I TRUST

SUN 9/30 CRANK IT LOUD PRESENTS

WED 10/3JUL FRI 22 The JEFF

9/28 WXYC 2000'S DANCE 9/29 MT. JOY W/ ARLIE, JULIE WILLIAMS ($15/$17)

11/7 HAKEN + LEPROUS W/ BENT KNEE ($22/$27)

10/26 GREG HUMPHREYS ELECTRIC TRIO W/ ($12/$15)

10/28 LEMURIA W/ BETHLEHEM STEEL ( $15) 10/30 ADULT MOM W/DEREK TED ($10/$12) 11/1 NICKI BLUHM W/ GILL LANDRY ($16) 11/2 JESS KLEIN, KATHERINE WHALEN'S SWEDISH WOOD PATROL, HUMBLE TRIPE ($10/$12) 11/3 MAX FROST ($15/$17) 11/5 KING BUFFALO

10/23THIS WILL DESTROY YOU($15) 10/24 AMY RAY AND HER BAND W/ H.C. MCENTIRE ($20) 11/17 SAVES THE DAY W/KEVIN DEVINE (SOLO ACOUSTIC) HAW RIVER BALLROOM 11/3 THE LEMON TWIGS 11/5 GUSTER 11/8 LANGHORNE SLIM & THE LOST AT LAST BAND ($18/$20) 11/10 MIPSO & FRIENDS: DARK

HOLLER POP REVISITED

11/30 & 12/1 MOUNTAIN GOATS W/DEAD RIDER 3/18/19 TEENAGE FANCLUB ($25/$28) RALEIGH LITTLE THEATER 9/29 RESCHEDULED FROM 9/15)

THE CONNELLS

W/ DILLON FENCE AND THE MAYFLIES USA 1PM DOOR/ 1:30 PM SHOW ($20/$25)

THE RAGBIRDS

M O 723 RIGSBEE AVEG- DURHAM, NC C- MOTORCOMUSIC.COM B I R D S. OM A G B I R D S. C W W .T H E R A W W W W .T H E R

The Threshold & The Hearth THE RAGBIRDS

40 | 9.26.18 | INDYweek.com

CATSCRADLE.COM  919.967.9053  300 E. MAIN STREET  CARRBORO

music 9.26–10.3 WED, SEP 26

BLUE NOTE GRILL: Blue Wednesday; 8 p.m.

CAT’S CRADLE: The Growlers, Surfbort, DONZII; 8 p.m., $25–$30.

CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): Low Cut Connie, Ruby Boots; 8:30 p.m., $15.

THE KRAKEN: Shake Sugaree Americana Residency with Jonathan Byrd & Friends; 7-10 p.m., free.

THE MAYWOOD: Voarm, Bastard Tongue, Night Quill; 8:30 p.m., $10.

MOTORCO: Andrew W.K., Demon Eye; 8 p.m., $20–$24.

THE PINHOOK: Bambara, Wailin’ Storms, Night Battles; 8 p.m., $10.

POUR HOUSE: IBMA Bluegrass Ramble; 6 p.m., $25–$75.

THU, SEP 27 2ND WIND: 2 fer; 7:30-9 p.m.

THE ARTSCENTER: PopUp Chorus Broadway: Les Misérables; 7 p.m., $8–$13.

BEYÙ CAFFÈ: David D’Angelo featuring Violin Remix & CJ Baker; 7 p.m., $7.

CAT’S CRADLE: CAAMP, Ona; 8 p.m., $14–$16.

CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): The Veldt, Leisure McCorkle, The Mystery Plan; 8:30 p.m., $8–$10.

THE CAVE: People of the Earth, Water Wingz; 9 p.m., $5 Suggested donation.

DUKE’S BALDWIN AUDITORIUM: Duke University Wind Symphony; 8 p.m., free.

KOKA BOOTH AMPHITHEATRE:

Vince Gill

[$45–$75/7 P.M.] Don’t hold it against Vince Gill that he’s been helping to keep the Eagles alive by lending them his guitar skills onstage.

After all, he’s a country-rock original, going back to his days with Pure Prairie League.

Rest assured that when he’s operating under his own banner, his one-of-a-kind voice, guitar, and songwriting skills make him a true triple threat capable of venturing into country, folk, rock ‘n’ roll, soul, or any combination thereof. —Jim Allen

Joshua Hedley headlines Cat’s Cradle Friday night.

LORRAINE’S COFFEE HOUSE: Lorraine’s House Band; 7:30 p.m., free.

LOVE HOUSE AND HUTCHINS FORUM: Music on the Porch: The Beast; 5:30 p.m., free.

THE PINHOOK:

Helen Money

PHOTO COURTESY OF HIGH ROAD TOURING

with the help of distortion pedals. —Josephine McRobbie POUR HOUSE: IBMA Bluegrass Ramble; 6 p.m., $25–$75.

THE WICKED WITCH:

GobbinJr

[$10/8 P.M.]

[$10–$15/8:30 P.M.]

At her lightest moments, Helen Money creates the kind of looped cello bits and sounds that Arthur Russell made so distinctive. But there isn’t much that’s light here. Her style is more akin to how Dirty Three’s Warren Ellis performs athletically on his violin, kneading into the instrument in a way that feels almost too personal to watch. Money creates a fine dirge of noise, pulling every deep and muddy sound possible out of her cello

Emo emporium Topshelf Records released Ocala Wick, the new album from Emma Witmer, aka GobbinJr, earlier this year. Their combined forces make a lot of sense, as Witmer’s music has always transversed that label’s curated world of quirky, referential indie pop and pointed, confessional songwriting that understands the inherent clichés of pointed, confessional songwriting. Local emo greats Soccer Tees are a fine pairing,

cruising through earnest, sludgy riff seepage, lightened by the humor of droll song titles like “Flannel Shorts.”

With Sunset Palette and Thelma. —David Ford Smith

FRI, SEP 28 BLUE NOTE GRILL: Duke Street Dogs; 6-8 p.m., free.

THE CARY THEATER: Russ Varnell, Farmer & Adele; 8 p.m., $15–$20.

CAT’S CRADLE:

Joshua Hedley [$15/8 P.M.]

Few contemporary country musicians have the true honkytonk chops that Joshua Hedley has—he’s got a standing Monday night gig. His songs

shine like the rhinestones that adorn his Nudie-style suit. Cale Tyson opens. —Allison Hussey THE CAVE: North Elementary, Harrison Ford Mustang; 9 p.m., $5.

DUKE’S BALDWIN AUDITORIUM:

Will Oldham [$10–$25/8 P.M.]

It’s commonplace these days for bands to trot out specialanniversary shows for different records, but it’s rare to hear a proper retrospective. But here, Duke Performances offers a doozy of a deep-dive with the inimitable singersongwriter Will Oldham. With an expansive backing band, Oldham will plumb the depths of his nearly thirty-year-old catalog, from his work as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy all the way

back to his Palace Brothers material from the early nineties. This one’s a best bet for longtime fans and Oldham newcomers alike.

—Allison Hussey KOKA BOOTH AMPHITHEATRE:

Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit [$40–$60/8 P.M.]

With all of the well-deserved praise that’s been heaped upon Jason Isbell over the course of his last few albums, you might get the feeling that this songwriting superman exists in some rarefied dimension where most mortals dare not tread. Truth is, he’s a road dog at heart, and reaching deep into that stellar song bag of his to share his carefully crafted, INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 41

straight-from-the-heart tunes with an audience seems to be his mission in life as much as making records. And with his well-oiled 400 Unit behind him, including Amanda Shires, his fiddle-playing, singersongwriter wife, his songs really come alive. —Jim Allen MOTORCO:

Sales

[$15–$17/8:30 P.M.] Orlando indie pop duo Sales first got noticed by releasing the single “Renee” on SoundCloud and Bandcamp. The song was the catalyst for a 2014 EP that displayed all the characteristics of the duo’s sonic signature— Lauren Morgan’s nonchalant style of singing, Jordan Shih’s lo-fi, machine-made beats, and their guitar parts harmonizing together. On the new forever & ever, which dropped in July, the band adopts a more dynamic, widescreen sound relative to its minimal beginnings but doesn’t lose its bedroom-project charm. —Howard Hardee

JEFF the Brotherhood convenes in Durham October 3.

WE 9/26 TH 9/27 FR 9/28 SA 9/29

SU 9/30 TU 9/2

GIRLS NIGHT OUT: CLARK STERN & CHUCK COTTON TRIPLE FRET / THE BENNYS DUKE STREET DOGS DAMON FOWLER AOCFEST: VIBEHOUSE DURHAM HIGH SCHOOL REUNION: TERRY WILEY BAND AOCFEST: ALLY J THE SPARKLERS: LESLIE LAND, SANDEE WASHINGTON & CO TUESDAY BLUES JAM WITH CLARK STERN

PHOTO BY LAURA WILLIAMS

[$27/8 P.M.]

Mexican-born jazz vocalist Magos Herrera interacts with the musical world with great enthusiasm and energy.

She has collaborated with countless artists, performs in three languages (English, Spanish, and Portuguese), and hosts a weekly music program on Mexico’s Public Radio in her spare time. For this concerts, Herrera invites in the bright sounds of New York string quartet Brooklyn Rider to augment her lush versions of classic songs from throughout Latin America.

—Josephine McRobbie UNC’S NELSON MANDELA AUDITORIUM, FEDEX GLOBAL EDUCATION CENTER: Libba Cotten Festival; 7 p.m., $20.

SAT, SEP 29 CAT’S CRADLE: Mt. Joy, Arlie; 9 p.m., $15–$17.

[FREE/VARIOUS TIMES]

Few things animate Carrboro’s official motto—”It’s Carrboro, feel free”—like the annual Carrboro Music Festival. Every year, mostly-local bands of all stripes occupy every nook and cranny of the small town for two full days of music. The free festivities peak with a show at the Cat’s Cradle Back Room from Crooked Fingers frontman and Merge Records heavyweight Erich Bachmann, and continue all through Sunday. —Allison Hussey THE CAVE: Beauty Operators; 9 p.m., $5 Suggested donation.

DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER:

Joan Baez

[SOLD OUT/8 P.M.] Having performed and recorded music for over half a century, folk singer and activist Joan Baez will retire from extended touring in 2019.

If you’ve ever wanted to hear Baez’s distinctive soprano

7P 6-8P 9P $10 1-4P 8P $8 12-2P 5-7P 7:30P

Member Admission Price (Not Valid for Special Events, expires 01-19)

YOUR WEEK. EVERY WEDNESDAY.

919-6-TEASER for directions and information

www.teasersmensclub.com 156 Ramseur St. Durham, NC

An Adult Nightclub Open 7 Days/week • Hours 7pm - 2am

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DOWNTOWN CARRBORO:

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RECYCLE THIS PAPER

POUR HOUSE: Midwood IBMA Showcase; 1:30 p.m., free.

UNC’S MEMORIAL HALL:

@TeasersDurham

MUSIC•NEWS•ARTS•FOOD INDYWEEK.COM

Valentine in the dawning nineties, only to toil in record collector obscurity for decades when shoegaze burned through the tank of ideas and flamed out. Now, the band’s entrancing, wiry noise-pop jams are finally getting some needed burn thanks to recent reissues and occasional touring. Philly’s Nothing help sweeten the old head mentality for younger fans, unleashing aggressive, hard-edged gaze rippers that bridge the chasm between bedroom Cocteau Twins acolytes and kids who already have permanent wall-of-death injuries. With Big Bite and Smut. —David Ford Smith THE PINHOOK:

OHMME [$10/8 P.M.]

OHMME performs at The Pinhook on Sunday. sweep through her catalog and many interpretations, here’s your chance. At the very least, it’s probably your best option in this decade to see Bob Dylan songs performed coherently.

—Josephine McRobbie DUKE’S BALDWIN AUDITORIUM:

Ciompi Quartet [$10–$25/8 P.M.]

For their first concert with new cellist Caroline Stinson (and their first without Fred Raimi since 1974), the Ciompi Quartet mixes tradition and innovation. Tradition: Like every season, they kick things off with Haydn, in this case one of his last. And, since it is a string quartet concert, it ends with Beethoven. Innovation: Legacy, a late-nineties work by new Durhamite Andrew Waggoner, meditating on the progress of women’s rights with glittering harmonies and driving rhythms. —Dan Ruccia

MOTORCO: Dwele; 5:30 p.m.

POUR HOUSE: Hands On Peru: The All Star Latin Jam, Tre Mars & The Phacts; 1 p.m., $8. Shakori IBMA Showcase; 8 p.m., free.

RALEIGH LITTLE THEATRE: The Connells, Dillon Fence, The Mayflies USA; 1:30 p.m., $15–$25.

SHARP NINE GALLERY: Dominican Jazz Project; 8 p.m., $10–$20.

UNC’S MEMORIAL HALL:

Buddy Guy [$62–$132/8 P.M.]

At eighty-two years old, guitar hero Buddy Guy is one of the last living links to the storied Chicago blues scene of the fifties, but anyone who’s seen him in concert recently can tell you that the title of the ageless icon’s new album, The Blues Is Alive and Well, should be taken very literally. Guy’s rich, soulful vocals, brash six-string

TUE, OCT 2

CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): Arson Daily, LAIRS, Reese McHenry; 8 p.m., $5–$7.

DUKE COFFEEHOUSE:

Shane Parish

[$5, FREE WIHT DUKE ID/8 P.M.] Guitarist Shane Parish is the rare virtuoso for whom instinct and intuition aren’t overshadowed by technical prowess. Whether whipping up whirling-dervish psychjazz freakouts with the duo Ahleuchatistas or extruding fresh vitality from centuryold folk songs, as he did on 2016’s Undertaker Please Drive Slow, Parish’s sound is radical and singular. On his latest, this month’s Child Asleep in the Rain, Parish follows his imagination toward meditative instrumental pieces for the electric guitar that fold and regenerate and re-sprout in fascinating ways. Polyorchard opens. —Patrick Wall

Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart make up the Chicago outfit Ohmme, a tidy twopiece who both play guitar and typically sing most lines of a song together. Their musical camaraderie is palpable as they vocalize around, over, and under one another with familiarity. The songs have the sharp and melodic feel of a double-tracked St. Vincent, and the group’s vocal gymnastics and arrangements have led to collaborations with every Chicago musician one can think of, from Chance the Rapper to Jeff Tweedy. With Molly Sarlé.

—Josephine McRobbie

WED, OCT 3

WEST END WINE BARDURHAM: Ally J; 9 p.m., $10.

POUR HOUSE: Nashville NonProphets, Rattle & Shakes, The Black Feathers; 1 p.m., $5.

KINGS:

SUN, SEP 30

MON, OCT 1

PHOTO BY MAREN CELEST

MAYTONN INN: 9th Annual Rock Your World Benefit Concert: Band of Brothers, Sidewinder, Davis Messina Band, Garland Mason; 5:30 p.m., free.

RUBY DELUXE: DJ Lord Redbyrd; 10 p.m.

prowess, and whisper-to-ascream dynamics all seem unmarked by the passage of time to an extent that defies the laws of physics.

—Jim Allen

CAT’S CRADLE: Carrboro Music Festival; 2:30 p.m., free.

CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): Carrboro Music Festival: Hip Hop Variety Showcase; 3:30 p.m., free.

DEEP SOUTH: Live & Loud Weekly; 9 p.m., $3.

DUKE’S NELSON MUSIC ROOM: Hsiao-mei Ku, violin & R. Larry Todd, piano; 7 p.m., free.

CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): Lads & A Lass, Cajammers; 7:30 p.m., $15–$18.

UNC’S MOESER AUDITORIUM, HILL HALL: The Dominican Jazz Project; 7:30 p.m., free.

MOTORCO: Flash Chorus; 7 p.m., $7–$10.

THE PINHOOK: Mama Played Mondays; 7 p.m., free.

CAT’S CRADLE (BACK ROOM): Emily Kinney, Paul McDonald; 8 p.m., $20.

DUKE’S BALDWIN AUDITORIUM: Duke Symphony Orchestra with Cicilia Yudha; 8 p.m., free.

HUMBLE PIE: Peter Lamb & the Wolves; 8:30 p.m.

Tatiana Heuman [$8/10 P.M.]

Fader-approved Argentinian avant-pop artist Tatiana Heuman drifts off the boundaries of any kind of easily chartable pop music map you could sketch up. Her August album, QEEI, tucks into the sort of borderless high-energy slush of electronic sounds and influences in a way that only someone raised on our modern, nauseously paced

internet could whip together.

It’s twitchy experimentation by way of the club, without sacrificing danceability or visceral enjoyment to eggheadedness. With Oak City Slums. —David Ford Smith THE KRAKEN: Shake Sugaree Americana Residency with Jonathan Byrd & Friends; 7-10 p.m., free.

MOTORCO:

JEFF the Brotherhood [$12–$15/8 P.M.]

While JEFF the Brotherhood’s rough-and-tumble early efforts mostly consisted of fuzzy, crunchy garage-rock blasts blessed with some of the most intoxicating, fist-pumping riffs this side of stoner metal, the Nashville outfit’s gradual shift towards far-out psychedelia has featured them largely abandoning hooks and melodies in favor of experimenting with krautrock and other exotic sounds. Though it’s difficult to pin down JEFF’s identity these days, their adventurous, amorphous approach may be what defines the band. Casey Magic adds mind-blowing illusions in the opening slot.

—Spencer Griffith POUR HOUSE: Downtown Abby & The Echoes, Heads Up Penny; 8 p.m., $10.

THE RITZ:

Lil Baby [$30/8 P.M.]

Lil Baby, the latest mumblerap craze out of Atlanta, only started rapping a year ago but has already hit the Billboard 200 charts this summer with his album Harder Than Ever. He skyrocketed to fame on the heels of his smash single “Yes Indeed,” featuring Drake, whose contribution lent credibility to Lil Baby’s novice songwriting. However, his latest single, “Drip Too Hard,” showcases his creative potential to avoid one-hit wonder status.

—Charles Morse

MOTORCO:

Nothing, Swirlies [$16–$18/7:30 P.M.]

Boston’s Swirlies were one of America’s first and finest responses to the crushing whammy of My Bloody

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art

9.26–10.3

submit! Got something for our calendar? Submit the details at:

posting.indyweek.com/indyweek/Events/AddEvent DEADLINE: 5 p.m. each Wednesday for the following Wednesday’s issue.

OPENING SPECIAL City and EVENT Townscapes: From Home to Far Away: Sean Bailey, William Hill, James Keul, Armen Knox, Xavier Knox, David Knox, Faye Oldham, Jackie Rimmler, Jerry Smith, Jailton Suzart, Nancy Walker, Jan Wilson, and Barbara Younger. Sep 28-Oct 21.

Reception: Fri, Sep 28, 6-9 p.m. Margaret Lane Gallery, Hillsborough. margaretlanegallery.com.

SPECIAL A Colorful Bounty: EVENT Three featured artists. Sep 29-Oct 23.

Reception: Fri, Sep 28, 6-8 p.m. Cary Gallery of Artists, Cary. carygalleryofartists.org.

East Meets West Festival: Food, cultural performances, and music celebrating Morrisville.

Sat, Sep 29, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

Park West Village, Morrisville. parkwestvillage.net.

Emotional Climate: Despair to Serentity: Chapel Hill artist Susan Leeb. Fri, Sep 28, 6-9 p.m. The Skylight Gallery, Hillsborough.

Maud Gatewood: Paintings.

Curated by Lee Hansley Gallery. Sep 26-28. Betty Ray McCain Gallery, Raleigh. dukeenergycenterraleigh.com.

Steinfest: More than two hundred contemporary ceramic beer steins by artists from across the U.S. and Canada. Fri, Sep 28, 6-9 p.m. Claymakers, Durham. www.claymakers.com.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27

FAST FASHION FIASCO: THE HIGH PRICE OF CHEAP Fast fashion can teach us a lot about the human condition, as we know full well the impact of consumption on the environment but do very little about it. (The clothing and textile industry is the second-largest polluter in the world; in 2013 alone, 15.1 million tons of textile waste was generated.) Artist Joyce Watkins King takes the issue head-on in a solo exhibit that weaves together installation, sculpture, and garment-based works in a thoughtful examination of the consequences of fast fashion for laborers, consumers, and the environment.

King—a descendant of Eli Whitney—recently earned a master’s degree in visual art at UNC-Greensboro and has worked with textiles for more than forty years, with a conceptual focus on environmental issues. The exhibit’s home stretch kicks off with this artist talk, followed by a performance by The Meredith College Dance Program.

—Sarah Edwards

MEREDITH COLLEGE’S WEEMS GALLERY, RALEIGH | 4:30–6:30 p.m., free, www.meredith.edu/art

Fast Fashion Fiasco PHOTO COURTESY OF WEEMS GALLERY 44 | 9.26.18 | INDYweek.com

ONGOING Thirtieth Annual Sculpture in the Garden: Outdoor sculpture show. Thru Dec 9. North Carolina Botanical Garden, Chapel Hill. www.ncbg.unc.edu.

LAST Achromatopsia CHANCE Panacea: The color blue teems with different emotional registers. In author Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, for example, it embodies a seductive fluidity bound up in anxiety and loss. And in William Paul Thomas’s new exhibit, a steely blue edges into subjects’ faces—a reference to

cyanosis, the discoloration that results from oxygen deprivation, a metaphor for the disenfranchisement of African Americans under white supremacy. Thomas’s work is primarily portraiture, and his oil paintings of men are squared so closely on their faces that you can almost feel their breath. This urgent intimacy is furthered by the fact that most of his subjects are friends or community members. His portraits are literally disembodied, but the effect is one of full embodiment: that which is seen, recognized, and carefully evoked. Thru Sep 30.

Horace Williams House, Chapel Hill. chapelhillpreservation.com.

—Sarah Edwards Alternative Images: Pleiades artists in conjunction with the Click! Photography Festival.

Thru Nov 5. Pleiades Gallery, Durham.

PleiadesArtDurham.com.

The Art of Travel: Pastel Paintings from the Estate of Elsie Dinsmore Popkin: Paintings by Elsie Dinsmore Popkin. Thru Oct 17. Gallery C, Raleigh. www.galleryc.net.

LAST Barns & Birds: CHANCE Pastel & oil paintings by Sharon Howard.

Thru Sep 30. Bull City Art & Frame Co, Durham. bullcityartandframecompany. com.

Cameron Village Underground Photography Exhibit: This is going to sound crazy, but did you know there used to be an underground mall under Cameron Village, and that it housed nightclubs that both incubated local rock and hosted legendary touring acts as diverse as R.E.M., Barry Manilow, Jimmy Buffet, and Chuck Mangione? In the late seventies and early eighties, before it was shut down because of concerns about safety, The Village Subway— aka the Raleigh Underground— roiled with nightclubs such as The Frog and Nightgown and The Pier, where Sonic Youth recorded the cover of “I Wanna Be Your Dog” that appears

on Confusion Is Sex. This rich history, mostly lost beyond some hazily remembered blogs, is the subject of a new exhibit at The City of Raleigh Museum, which runs through January after a sold-out, wait-listed reception with photographer Chris Seward. His dynamic black-and-white photos from the scene capture now-famous names and local, protoindie-rock bands such as The Fabulous Knobs and Arrogance in their primes. More than two hundred photos are featured in the exhibit, along with flyers, videos, and other artifacts. Thru Jan 31. Raleigh City Museum, Raleigh. cityofraleighmuseum.org.

—Brian Howe LAST Convergence: CHANCE Austin Cathey, Shelly Hehenberger, and Luna Lee Ray. Thru Sep 30. FRANK Gallery, Chapel Hill. www.frankisart.com.

Fall Corridor Exhibition: Artspace members Jason Bryant, Ryan Fox, Trish Klenow, Frank Kreacic, and Susie Silver.

Thru Oct 27. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org.

SPECIAL Fast Fashion Fiasco: EVENT The High Price of Cheap: Joyce Watkins King.

Thru Oct 2. Reception: Thu, Sep 27, 4:30 p.m. Meredith College: Gaddy-Hamrick Art Center, Raleigh. meredith.edu.

Food of the Gods: New York photographer Lydia McCarthy.

Thru Oct 27. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org.

Janks Archive: Research Triangle: Jerstin Crosby, Ben Kinsley, and Jessica Langley.

Thru Oct 6. Lump, Raleigh. www.lumpprojects.org.

LAST Journey: New CHANCE Paintings and Assemblages: Lisa Creed. Thru Sep 27. Horse & Buggy Press and Friends, Durham. www. horseandbuggypress.com.

Kindred Lines: Brenon Day and Ophelia Staton. Thru Oct 15. Little Art Gallery & Craft Collection, Raleigh. littleartgalleryandcraft.com.

Mothers, Daughters, and the Writer’s Life: Writing and photography by Elizabeth Matheson and Barbara Tyroler.

Thru Nov 23. Block Gallery, Raleigh.

Portraying Power and Identity: A Global Perspective: 21c Museum Hotel unveils a packed portraiture exhibition featuring work by forty contemporary artists, many of whom pay striking homage to classical portraiture in recasting their own images and experiences. Anthony Goicolea, a photographer interested in digital manipulation and themes of duality and the reclamation of self, nods to John Singer Sargent’s “Madame X” with “Portrait in Negative of a Boy with Harmonica as Madame Gautreau.” Miguel Ángel Rojas’s series depicting a young, injured Colombian soldier in repose gracefully gestures toward Michelangelo’s “David.” The exhibition also includes works

by Titus Kaphar, Ori Gersht, and Zanele Muholi. Thru Mar 31. 21c Museum Hotel, Durham. www.21cmuseumhotels.com/ durham. —Sarah Edwards LAST Chelsea Raflo and CHANCE Summer Rezeli: Regional Emerging Artist Residency exhibit. Thru Sep 29.

Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org.

LAST RedBall Chapel Hill: CHANCE Sculptural installation that changes location daily. Thru Sep 26.

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

Reflections of Elegance: Kenneth Paul Block & the Masters of Fashion Illustration: Original works by fashion illustrator Kenneth Paul Block. Thru Oct 20.

Alamance Arts Council, Graham. artsalamance.com.

LAST Seems Like Home: CHANCE Raleigh landmarks and landscapes. Thru Sep 29.

V L Rees Gallery, Raleigh. vlrees.com.

Strange New World: Largescale paintings by Jennifer Davis. Thru Oct 27. Artspace, Raleigh. www.artspacenc.org.

Visualizing Micro Environments: Paintings by Orr Ambrose inspired by cosmology, physics, and microbiology. Thru Oct 11. Durham Convention Center, Durham. durhamconventioncenter.com.

food & drink All Saints Artisan Faire: Food from around the world, jewelry, crafts, books, church tours, homemade ice cream. Sat, Sep 29, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. All Saints Orthodox Church, Raleigh.

Eighteenth Annual Evening of Pawsibilities: Dinner and dessert. Fundraiser for Second Chance Pet Adoptions. $89.

Sat, Sep 29, 6:30-10 p.m. North Ridge Country Club, Raleigh.

Grounds Cafe Goes French!: Free French wine and cheese tasting with author Carrie

Knowles (A Garden Wall in Provence.) Sat, Sep 29, 7-9 p.m.

Grounds Cafe, Wendell.

Second Annual Drag Brunch: Drag show and brunch hosted

by Vivica C. Coxx. $35. Sun, Sep 30, 11 a.m. Counting House, Durham.

Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding Dinner Theater: Interactive dinner theater including four-course meal by Irregardless Cafe & Catering. $88. Sat, Sep 29, 6 p.m. The Glenwood Club, Raleigh. glenwoodclub.com.

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stage

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28–SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14

THE REVOLUTIONISTS

Melanie Simmons in The Revolutionists PHOTO BY AREON MOBASHER

46 | 9.26.18 | INDYweek.com

Whom does a badass woman seek out when she needs a job done? A fellow badass. Thus, the endlessly inventive Olympe de Gouges, the only feminist playwright in Reign of Terror–era Paris, finds three women at her door one afternoon in July 1793. An old friend from the Caribbean needs a pamphlet on the abolition of slavery in the French colonies? Done.

And it shouldn’t take much time to whip up one memorable line—“something with a lot of ‘fuck you’ in it”—for assassin Charlotte Corday to say after she murders Jean-Paul Marat. But what will de Gouges do when a third guest, none other than Marie Antoinette, demands a complete rewrite of her life and public image? And what can any of them do when they realize the revolution has no interest in liberating women anyway? Lu Meeks, Tiffany Lewis, Liz Webb, and Melanie Simmons take on playwright Lauren Gunderson’s snarky, quicksilver wit. —Byron Woods

RALEIGH LITTLE THEATRE, RALEIGH | 8 p.m. Thu.–Sat./3 p.m. Sun., $15–$25, www.raleighlittletheatre.org

OPENING

ONGOING

Comedy Night: Martin Smith, Gretchen McNeely, Jennifer McGinnis, and Sam Marzany.

Hosted by Michelle MaClay. $5 suggested. Wed, Sep 26, 7 p.m. The Cave Tavern, Chapel Hill. www.caverntavern.com.

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

Curve of Departure: Bulldog Ensemble Theater. $10-$20.

Thu, Sep 27-Sun, Oct 14.

Durham Fruit Company, Durham.

Good Joke/Bad Joke Bingo: Stand-up comedy game show featuring Shawn Wickens. $12. Wed, Sep 26, 8 p.m.

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

House of Coxx Pride Family Reunion: Drag performance. $15. Sat, Sep 29, 10:30 p.m.

The Pinhook, Durham. www.thepinhook.com.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat: Musical presented by Cary Players. $20. Fri, Sep 28-Sun, Oct 7. Cary Arts Center, Cary. www.townofcary.org.

Sister Act: A Divine Musical Comedy: Musical based on the film. $15 suggested. Fri, Sep 28-Sun, Oct 7. NC Central University Theatre, Durham.

Stage Read Series: Tracey Letts: Sonorous Road fundraiser featuring Superior Donuts. $14-$18. Fri, Sep 28-Sun, Sep 30. Sonorous Road Theatre, Raleigh.

Wake Forest Dance Festival: Outdoor dance festival. Sat, Sep 29, 9:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m.

E Carroll Joyner Park, Wake Forest.

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark: A lacerating critique of racial representation in motion pictures set in a 1930s screwball comedy? If Pulitzerwinning playwright Lynn Nottage’s wicked 2011 satire stopped there, it would still be an unlikely achievement. But By the Way, Meet Vera Stark follows the title character over seventy years between 1933, when she’s a headstrong actor looking for a break in a Hollywood where African Americans are only cast in insulting, stereotypical roles, and 2003, when self-serving scholars are looking back at her career. Nottage is funny, even as she dips her pen in acid to lampoon a smarmy talkshow debacle and narcissistic academics. Tina MorrisAnderson directs and plays the title role. $15-$22. North Raleigh Arts & Creative Theatre, Raleigh. www.nract.org. —Byron Woods The Harry Show: Ages 18+.

Potentially risque games improv games with audience volunteers. $10. Fridays & Saturdays, 10 p.m.

ComedyWorx, Raleigh. www.comedyworx.com.

Improv at the Varsity: Standup, sketch, and improv comedy. $6. Saturdays, 9:30 p.m.

Varsity Theatre, Chapel Hill. improvatthevarsity.com.

Men on Boats: Chemistry can be a tricky thing on a camping trip. You start out with so much optimism, energy, and good

fellowship. Then a sudden downpour surprises you before you can set up camp, and mosquitoes establish permanent residency in your tent. You’re soaked to the bone, and the rations are cold when your tentmate first utters the phrase “night terrors.” Happily, he only snores the first night. Still, at breakfast, you notice no one’s making jokes about The Blair Witch Project or Deliverance anymore. Playwright Jacklyn Backhaus uses a cast of women to underline the fact that those daring explorers who risked life and limb to map the Grand Canyon were just a bunch white men on boats, getting on each other’s nerves over a monthlong camping trip and traversing territory previous Americans knew quite well but had sense enough to avoid. Rachel Klem directs this N.C. State University Theatre season opener. $21-$23.

Thru Sep 30. NCSU Campus: Titmus Theatre, Raleigh.

—Byron Woods  Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood: Reviewed on p. 37. $15+.

PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chapel Hill. www.playmakersrep.org.

The Six Pack Standup Show: Monthly comedy showcase.

Featuring Tank Smith, Reid Pegram, Brett Williams, Benjamin Malone, Byron Johnson, and Aaron Ransom. $5. Wed, Sep 26, 8 p.m. North Street Beer Station, Raleigh. northstreetbeerstation.com.

Transactors Family-Friendly Improv: “Back to School!” $6-$10. Sat, Sep 29, 6 p.m. The ArtsCenter, Carrboro. www.artscenterlive.org.

Style LOCAL

GUIDE

Coming 11/7

Ad Reservations due by 11/2 Contact your ad rep or advertising@indyweek.com The Wake Forest Dance Festival comes to Joyner Park on Saturday (see p. 38).

PHOTO BY MAKSYM KOLOTUN

INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 47

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SPECIAL SHOWINGS

MONDAY, OCTOBER 1

MOHSIN HAMID Since the publication of his first novel, Moth Smoke, in 2000, Mohsin Hamid has been known as a writer at once visionary and grounded, tracking themes of migration, belonging, and political crises in his sweeping novels. His work is almost uncannily zeitgeist-y: He began writing 2007’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist just months before 9/11, and last year’s Exit West was published less than a month after President Trump signed an executive order banning migrants from multiple Muslim-majority countries. (Both books were finalists for the Man Booker Prize.) This Monday, the Kenan Institute for Modern Ethics welcomes Hamid to the Nasher in its fall lecture series to deliver his talk “Embracing Impurity: Modern Migrancy and the Human Condition.” As we slouch toward the end of a year filled with breakdowns in empathy and emboldened shows of nationalism, it’s hard to imagine a timelier topic. —Sarah Edwards

THE NASHER MUSEUM OF ART, DURHAM 5:30 p.m., free, www.nasher.duke.edu

READINGS & SIGNINGS Bobbie Ann Mason: With Patchwork. Sat, Sep 29, 11 a.m.

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

North Carolina Poetry Society Reading: Steve Cushman, Michael Gaspeny, and Maura Way. Sun, Sep 30, 2 p.m.

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

Lee Zacharias: With Across the Great Lake. Sat, Sep 29, 2 p.m.

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

LECTURES ETC. Astronomy on Tap Triangle: Short talks about astronomy over beer. Tue, Oct 2, 7 p.m.

Fullsteam, Durham. www.fullsteam.ag.

Banned Books Trivia: Presented by the Durham County Library. Wed, Sep 26, 7 p.m. Fullsteam, Durham. www.fullsteam.ag.

Elements of Suspense: Lystra Books founder Nora Gaskin Esthimer on editing and writing for suspense.

Tue, Oct 2, 6 p.m. Chapel Hill 48 | 9.26.18 | INDYweek.com

Public Library, Chapel Hill. chapelhillpubliclibrary.org.

In Conversation: Branford Marsalis & Aaron Greenwald: On the evolution of the tenor saxophone in jazz. Wed, Oct 3, noon. The Pinhook, Durham. www.thepinhook.com.

NC Pride at Night: Talk by North Carolina-based LGBTQ rights activist Mandy Carter, who organized and marched in Raleigh’s first Pride celebration.

Sat, Sep 29, 4 p.m. Legends, Raleigh. www.legends-club.com.

Will Oldham: “Lecture One: Making Songs.” $10-$25. Wed, Sep 26, 7 p.m. — “Lecture Two: Recording & Performing Songs.” $10-$25. Thu, Sep 27, 7 p.m.

SoundPure, Durham. www.SoundPure.com.

Ruth Phillips: Lectures in the History of Art series. Wed, Sep 26, 6 p.m. UNC Campus: Hanes Art Center, Chapel Hill. art.unc.edu.

S/he Is Becoming Whole: Justice Theater Project season kickoff. Panel discussion on strong women in the arts, scenes from A Doll’s House and Ms. Courageous. Thu, Sep 27, 7:30 p.m. Meredith College: Jones Hall, Raleigh.

Above and Beyond: NASA’s Journey to Tomorrow: $14.

Sat, Sep 29, 12:45 p.m. & Wed, Oct 3, 7 p.m. Regal North Hills Stadium 14, Raleigh.

Blue Collar: 35mm print.

Screening as part of “Precarious Living: Recent Rediscoveries in American Independent Film.”

Thu, Sep 27, 7 p.m. Rubenstin Arts Center, Durham.

Britney Video Dance Party: $12. Fri, Sep 28, 8:45 p.m.

Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: $12.

Wed, Sep 26, 7:15 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

Friday Music Mojo: Nico 1988: $10. Fri, Sep 28, 9:30 p.m.

Chelsea Theater, Chapel Hill. www.thechelseatheater.com.

Icepick to the Moon: Documentary. Sat, Sep 29, 7 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham. www.shadowboxstudio.org.

Indigenous Futures: The Visible Spectrum: With filmmakers Adam and Zach Khalil in attendance. Tue, Oct 2, 7 p.m.

Rubenstin Arts Center - Film Theater, Durham.

Jane Eyre: Afternoon Tea: Screening with tea. $12. Sun, Sep 30, 2:15 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, Raleigh.

Movie Loft: Variety: Eighties New York dance music and hot dogs at 7. Screening at 8.

Thu, Sep 27, 7 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham. www.shadowboxstudio.org.

On the Waterfront: Hillsborough Film Society Sun, Sep 30, 3 p.m. Orange County Main Library, Hillsborough. www.co.orange.nc.us/library.

Saturday Fright Night: Poltergeist: $10. Sat, Sep 29, 9:30 p.m. Chelsea Theater, Chapel Hill. w ww.thechelseatheater.com.

State of the Climate: Carolina Stories with Miles O’Brien: Film series presented by Clean Air Carolina. Followed by a conversation on climate change, air quality, and human health. $10-$28. Thu, Sep 27, 6 p.m.

Motorco Music Hall, Durham. www.motorcomusic.com.

PHOTO TK

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 & SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 30

SICK CHICK FLICKS FILM FESTIVAL

Male directors in Hollywood have overwhelmingly outnumbered women, but more and more, women are claiming the spotlight that has been denied them, including in the realms of the dark and gruesome. The third annual Sick Chick Flicks Film Festival spotlights female independent filmmakers, from North Carolina and around the world, who are creating all kinds of horrors on both sides of the camera. The program mostly consists of shorts such as Blue Balls, in which a virgin meets a vampire, and Friendsgiving, about a Thanksgiving party for cannibals. If you don’t want to shell out the modest fee for a day or weekend pass, there’s also some free programming, including a spotlight on Sanford-based FX artist Ceirra Ayers and a screening of Charleston, South Carolina, filmmaker Michelle Iannantuono’s consummately modern feature Livescream, in which a popular video game streamer encounters a haunted game. —Zack Smith

THE CARY THEATER, CARY 3 p.m. Sat./2 p.m. Sun., $20–$35, www.sickchickflicksfilmfestival.com

OPENING Night School—Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish headline Malcolm D. Lee’s comedy centered on adults seeking GEDs. Rated PG-13.

Smallfoot—In this animated family comedy, a yeti is determined to prove the existence of humans. Rated PG.

N OW P L AY I N G The INDY uses a five-star rating scale. Read reviews of these films at indyweek.com.  Ant-Man and the Wasp—Marvel takes a goofy, low-stakes break from

existential threats.

The tone is so agreeable you hardly notice the rickety script. Rated PG-13. ½ Christopher Robin— After you get used to them being 3-D plush toys, Winnie the Pooh and friends charm, but Christopher Robin is the least interesting thing in this movie. Rated PG.  Crazy Rich Asians— This Asian-American-led rom-com is an undeniable cultural milestone, but put that aside and it’s uttery standard fare. Rated PG-13. ½ Incredibles 2— Dialing up socially progressive

themes fourteen years after the original, Pixar’s sequel is fun, funny, and timely but not quite transcendent.

Rated PG. ½ Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom—Murky morals, jump scares, and diminishing returns of digital dinos weigh on this once-mighty franchise.

Rated PG-13. ½ Mission: Impossible – Fallout—This Tom Cruise vehicle isn’t a good action film; it’s a great one, rivaling genre exemplars and drawing upon the previous entries in franchise.

Rated PG-13.

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DURHAM COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS NOTICE OF GENERAL ELECTION TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2018

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The above election will be held in Durham County, NC on 11/6/2018. All polling places will be open from 6:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. on Election Day. CONTESTS & BALLOT ITEMS U.S. House of Representatives (Districts 1, 4) N.C. Senate (Districts 20, 22) N.C. House of Representatives (Districts 29, 30, 31, 54) N.C. Supreme Court (Associate Justice, 1 seat) N.C. Court of Appeals (3 seats) N.C. Superior Court, (District 14B, 3 seats) N.C. District Court (District 14, 6 seats) District Attorney (District 16) Durham County Clerk of Superior Court Durham County Sheriff Durham Soil & Water Conservation District Supervisor N.C. State Constitutional Amendments Town of Chapel Hill Affordable Housing Bonds ONE-STOP (EARLY VOTING)

LOCATIONS Board of Elections office, 201 N. Roxboro St., Durham South Regional Library, 4505 South Alston Ave., Durham East Regional Library, 211 Lick Creek Ln., Durham North Regional Library, 221 Milton Rd., Durham Duke University Brodhead Center, 402 Chapel Dr., Durham (address for GPS/parking: 107 Union Dr., Student Wellness Parking will be marked and reserved for voters)

NC Central University Turner Law Building, 620 Nelson St., Durham SCHEDULE FOR ALL EARLY VOTING SITES: Wednesday, 10/17 through Saturday, 11/3/2018: Weekdays: 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Saturdays 10/20 and 10/27/2018: 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Sundays: Noon to 4:00 p.m.

Saturday, 11/3/2018: 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

ADVANCE VOTER REGISTRATION DEADLINE: Friday, 10/12/2018. Voters that miss the registration deadline may register during early voting (see below).

SAME-DAY REGISTRATION DURING EARLY VOTING: 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 in advance, 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 details may be obtained by contacting the Durham County Board of Elections or visiting its website.

Website: www.dconc.gov/elect Email: elections@dconc.gov Phone: 919-560-0700 PAID FOR BY DURHAM COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS

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LAND AUCTION Residential Development Acreage, Commercial Acreage, Commercial & Residential Lots from Statesville to Lexington, NC, Online Auction w/ Live Bidding Center, October 23rd at 2pm, ironhorseauction.com, 800.997.2248, NCAL 3936

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

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REAL ESTATE AUCTION 231.7± acre farm offers incredible views of the mountains and beautiful countryside. Spacious two-story farm house,barn and bold stream that runs through several tracts. Property is being offered in eight tracts with approximately 1 mile of road frontage on Black Hollow Road.

Bid Your Price! Tract 1 being sold ABSOLUTE. Auction held October 26, 5 PM at the Dublin Lions Club. For more information go to woltz.com or call 800551-3588. Woltz & Associates, Inc. (VA #321) Real Estate Brokers & Auctioneers

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INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 49

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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.

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this week’s puzzle level:

© Puzzles by Pappocom

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

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

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CLASSY AT INDYWEEK DOT COM 3 4

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

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

last week's puzzle

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

INDYweek.com | 9.26.18 | 51

HARMONIC BREATH

Yoga in Christ, Triangle, NC http://www.meetup.com/Yoga-in-Christ/

DANCE CLASSES IN LINDY HOP, SWING, BLUES

At Carrboro ArtsCenter. Private lessons available.

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back page Weekly deadline 4pm Monday classy@indyweek.com

BEGINNING ZEN PRACTICE WITH DAVID GUY

Chapel Hill Zen Center with David Guy. Monday evenings, 7:30-9. 6 weeks, October 15th to November 19th. $60.

Scholarships available. 919-641-9277 davidguy@mindspring.com www.davidguy.org

ARTIST BUSINESS MANAGER & ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT

Do you have a wide range of marketing, project management, and administrative skills--and the willingness to learn more?

Visual artist in Hillsborough is seeking a dynamic, personable, and professional marketing and business manager who can promote her art and books while keeping up with her steady flow of new ideas. Excellent opportunity for a self-starter who gets bored quickly in traditional jobs, loves doing research and finding solutions to problems, and can juggle multiple deadlines while still being open to playful and unconventional ideageneration. This job offers a high degree of autonomy, and requires a mature person capable of staying focused while working alone with minimal direction. Excellent attention to detail and time management skills are essential. Experience with social media, website management, Microsoft Office, Quickbooks, and email management required. Must be comfortable around dogs. Starting salary is $27, 456 for 32-hour work-week, plus 3% company match for retirement account.

Generous paid vacation, holidays, and personal days.

To apply, email the following to info@sudierakusin.com: cover letter, résumé, writing sample, 3 references, and links to any blogs, websites, or social media pages you manage and would like us to consider as part of your application. Also, in a separate document, describe a project you have managed from beginning to end. Include any difficulties you encountered, how you managed them, what was the final result, and describe the take-aways you got from the project.

Applications are being accepted now and submissions will be considered on a rolling basis.

CECI N’EST PAS UNE PUBLICITÉ!

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