No’Ala Huntsville, May/June 2016 by No’Ala Studios

STARS FELL ON ALABAMA | BEER NERDS | 50 YEARS OF THEATRE IN HUNTSVILLE

BANDS, BEER, & BACON:

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A SUMMER PLAYLIST

820 Monte Sano Boulevard Huntsville, AL 35801 256-539-9699 | thelittlegreenstore.net  | noalastudios.com | may/june 

Kitchen + Bar Essentials | Events | Catering | Goods for the Home Monday – Friday: 10am – 5pm · Saturday: 10am – 3pm Weekday Lunch: 11am – 2pm · Saturday Brunch: 10am – 2pm 462 Lane Drive · Florence, AL 35630 · 256.760.1090 · www.alabamachanin.com

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

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MUSCLE SHOALS SOUND “Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers.” Names like Aretha Franklin, The Rolling Stones and Jason Isbell are also associated with the Muscle Shoals sound. Discover the South’s hidden music gem when you visit the Marriott Shoal Hotel & Spa and enjoy live music in Swampers Bar & Grille every night. Located less than three hours from Nashville, Memphis, Birmingham and other major cities, Muscle Shoals is just a short, scenic drive away.

MARRIOTT SHOALS HOTEL & SPA 10 Hightower Place, Florence, AL 35630 MarriottShoals.com, facebook.com/MarriottShoals A part of the Resort Collection on Alabama’s Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail

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May/June

features

Stars Fell on Alabama

Summer Playlist

A summer sound track of Americana, rock, bluegrass, Southern rock, and pop, from seven of the Valley’s most innovative and diverse musicians. Meet the bands here; then stream their original tracks at noalastudios.com. text by roy hall and sara wright covington photos by abraham rowe assisted by evan billiter

Eight of our most glamorous friends play dress up as eight of our most inﬂuential style icons.

photos by robert rausch intro by roy hall

Three Huntsville brewmasters on the art and commerce behind your favorite local beers.

Beer Nerds

by sara wright covington photos by abraham rowe

54 Behind the Scenes Take a backstage tour of Huntsville community theatre’s thrilling past and promising future

84 A Dining Room with a View

by roy hall photos by patrick hood

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Peek inside an exclusive dinner party in the sky, and learn how to plan your own summer soiree.

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editor’s letter « Allen Tomlinson

no’ala huntsville advisory board Osie Adelfang ARC Design-Build, Inc. Lynne Berry HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology Sarah Brewer Click Photo Designs by Sarah Brewer Kimberly Casey Lowe Mill Arts & Entertainment Donna Castellano Historic Huntsville Foundation Aissa Castillo aislerchic.com Dan Halcomb Huntsville Symphony Orchestra Lauren McCaul deptofagraculture.com Guy McClure, Jr. Athens State University Tom Patterson knowhuntsville.com Dr. Holly Powe Calhoun Community College Olivia Reed Olivia Reed Photography Patrick Robbins Huntsville Hospital Ashley Ryals Homegrown Huntsville Jennifer Swoboda Hagerman & Company Junior League of Huntsville Lauren Tomasella Carney Lauren Tomasella Photography Ashley Vaughn White Rabbit Studios/Vertical House Records Charles Vaughn Vaughn Lumber Company Andrew Wilmon Broadway Theatre League

New Beginnings. Cherished Traditions. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or at least that’s what they say. That’s our intent for this magazine. Beginning with this issue, Roy Hall begins his tenure as editor in chief of No’Ala and No’Ala Huntsville, replacing me and doing the job he pretty much has been doing for the past year or so anyway. You know Roy: he’s the sharp, witty writer, the guy with the quick sense of humor and the eye for detail. For quite a while now, he’s organized us and kept us in line, basically issuing marching orders for me, so it’s appropriate that he take the reins. You’ll love him; we do. For those of you who follow David Sims and me personally on Facebook, you know that we are relocating to the Paciﬁc Northwest. David will continue to design the magazines from there, overseeing the creative work that comes from our agency and these pubMatt Liles Roy Hall lications. That’s a cherished tradition that isn’t changing; the new beginning is my role as director of marketing and communications for the Knight Cancer Institute in Portland, an organization with a billion dollars in the bank to invest in cancer research. It’s a breathtaking challenge, Jamie Noles David Sims one I could not pass up, although leaving the best spot in the world for the second best spot in the world has its bittersweet moments. Matt Liles, the president of No’Ala Studios, has spent the last two years training to replace me on the agency side, and he has better marketing instincts than I have. You’ll love him; we do. Jamie Noles will continue to be the liaison between the magazines and the creative staﬀ ; our stable of artists, writers, and creators remains intact. After all, the more things change, the more they remain the same. We’ve been so humbled by the response and support our communities have given these magazines, and our pledge is to continue to give you the very best glimpse into the lives of the people who make these communities so special. You might not see me as much, but that won’t matter. What matters is that you live in a great spot, you have retailers who deserve your support, and everything moves toward good. Thank you for being such a loyal supporter. We love you for that. Allen Tomlinson Publisher

contents

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Pigging Out

Have Bacon, Will Travel: Have a seat behind the wheel of the I Love Bacon food truck. by sarah gaede » photos by patrick hood

everything else 10 12

No’Ala Huntsville is published six times annually by No’Ala Studios PO Box 2530, Florence, AL 35630 Phone: (256) 766-4222 | Fax: (256) 766-4106 Toll-free: (800) 779-4222 Web: noalastudios.com

Calendar Selected Events for May/June 2016

Standard postage paid at Huntsville, AL. A one-year subscription is $19.95 for delivery in the United States. Signed articles reﬂect only the views of the authors and do not necessarily reﬂect the views of the editors. Advertisers are solely responsible for the content of their advertisements.

Cryin’ Out Loud The Princess and the Peanut Butter by sara wright covington

Old School Honky-Tonks: A Love Story

by chris paysinger

Send all correspondence to Roy Hall, Editor, at the postal address above, or by e-mail to roy@noalastudios.com. Letters may be edited for space and style.

ShopGirls

Food for Thought Light and Springy by sarah gaede

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by aissa castillo, lauren mccaul photos by lauren tomasella carney

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Parting Shot by robert rausch

MAY/JUNE 2016 Volume 5: Issue 3 ••• Publisher » C. Allen Tomlinson Editor-in-Chief » Roy Hall President » Matthew Liles Creative Director » David Sims Advertising Director » Jamie Noles Graphic Designer » Rowan Finnegan Web Designer » Justin Hall Shopgirls » Aissa Castillo, Lauren McCaul Proofreader » Carole Maynard Distribution » Duell Aldridge ••• Contributing Writers Sara Wright Covington, Sarah Gaede, Roy Hall, Chris Paysinger, Allen Tomlinson ••• Contributing Photographers Lauren Tomasella Carney, Patrick Hood, Robert Rausch, Olivia Reed, Abraham Rowe, Susan Rowe •••

To advertise, contact us at (256) 766-4222 or sales@noalastudios.com. The editor will provide writer’s guidelines upon request. Prospective authors should not submit unsolicited manuscripts; please query the editor ﬁrst. No’Ala Huntsville is printed with vegetable-based inks. Please recycle.

Rocket City Sound Check Talent agent and concert promoter Justin Tidwell on his bold vision for Huntsville’s live music future. by sara wright covington photos by olivia reed

Connect with us on Facebook: No’Ala Studios Instagram: noalastudios, Pinterest: NoAlaStudios, and Twitter: @NoAla_Magazine

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

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calendar

Now – Wednesday, September 14 (Wednesdays only) Homegrown Huntsville’s Dine & Dash Join fellow foodies every second Wednesday from April through September on the Dine & Dash trolley, as it whisks you to four downtown establishments. Dine on hors d’oeuvres, sip on cocktails, and dash to the next location. Exact tour departure times and locations provided upon registration. Every second Wednesday; Admission charged; Location provided at registration; (256) 850-3231; homegrownhuntsville.com Now – Thursday, October 20 (Thursdays Only) Biergarten Enjoy a festive atmosphere with imported and domestic beers and German wine. It’s family friendly, and leashed dogs are welcome. Rain or shine. 4:30pm-7:30pm; Free—Food and beverages available for purchase; U.S. Space & Rocket Center, One Tranquility Base, Saturn V Hall; rocketcenter.com Monday, May 2 – Friday, September 30 The Purdy Butterfly House Be entertained by the turtles, stunning floral displays, and twelve native species of colorful butterflies at one of the largest butterfly houses in the country. In addition to the live plants and animals that call the Purdy Butterfly House home, giant sculptures of a honey bee and orchid add to the colorful display. Mon-Sat 9:00am-6:00pm, Thu 9:00am-8:00pm, Sun noon-6:00pm; Admission charged; Huntsville Botanical Garden, 4747 Bob Wallace Ave; (256) 833-4447; hsvbg.org Thursday, May 5 – Thursday, May 26 (Thursdays only) Maypril Music on the Square Enjoy live music on the square as you shop, dine, sit, or stroll throughout beautiful downtown Huntsville. Thursdays, 5:00pm-8:00pm; Free; Downtown Huntsville Square; downtownhuntsville.org Thursday, May 5 – Thursday, June 30 (Thursdays only) Greene Street Outdoor Market at Nativity Visit this downtown open-air market to find locally grown fruits and vegetables, freshly prepared meals, traditionally made relishes and jams, plus breads, teas, and artwork. Listen to live music as you browse or borrow a bike to cruise around the historic districts. The Market has been expanded this year to include Art at Greene Street, which will feature artists, artisans, and prepared food vendors. Thursdays, 4:00pm-8:00pm; Free to enter; 208 Eustis Ave; greenstreetmarket.com

Friday, May 6 – Friday, June 10 (Fridays only) Lowe Mill’s Concerts on the Dock Concerts on the Dock has grown from a small gathering of music lovers to an institution in the Huntsville music scene since 2008. This free, family friendly series is all about creating a laid-back atmosphere for friends of Lowe Mill to enjoy original content and interesting new acts. Fridays, 6:00pm-9:00pm; Free; 2211 Seminole Dr; lowemill.net Friday, May 13 – Saturday, May 21 Forever Plaid When four young singers are killed in a car crash, they posthumously take the stage for one final gig in this goofy 1950s nostalgia trip. This deliciously fun revue is chockfull of classic barbershop quartet harmonies and pitchperfect melodies. Fri-Sat 7:30pm, Sun 2:00pm and ThursSat 7:30pm, Sat 2:00pm; Admission charged; Von Braun Playhouse; (256) 536-0807; theatrehsv.org Friday, May 13 – Friday, June 10 (Every other Friday) City Lights and Stars Pack a picnic, dress casually, bring a blanket or lawn chair, and enjoy a spectacular view of the city while listening to great music. Featuring Mambo Gris Gris (5/13), Eric Essex (5/27), and the Winslow Davis Ensemble (6/10). Gates open at 6:30pm, Music begins at 7:30pm; Admission charged; Burritt on the Mountain, 3101 Burritt Dr; (256) 536-2882; burrittonthemountain.com Saturday, May 14 Fido Fest Calling all dogs (and their humans) for a fun afternoon of live entertainment, pet photos, dog adoptions, a silent auction, and a four-legged friend marketplace. Bring your furry bestie to Bridge Street Town Centre, just outside Monaco Pictures. Benefitting the Greater Huntsville Humane Society. 11:00am-3:00pm; Free; Bridge Street Town Centre; (256) 327-8400; bridgestreethuntsville.com Saturday, June 4 Taste the Spirit of Madison Presented by the Madison Chamber of Commerce, Taste the Spirit of Madison brings together food trucks, local businesses, and live music for a fun day the whole family can enjoy. 10:00am-3:00pm; Free; 100 Skate Park Dr, Madison; (256) 325-8317; madisonalchamber.com Thursday, June 9 Voices of our Times: Bunny Williams One of the leading interior designers working today, Bunny Williams has a modern vision, a sense of history, and the confidence to take an unexpected path. A tastemaker and a trailblazer, Williams’ style is classic but never predictable. She will share tips and advice on home décor and garden design. 11:45am; Admission charged; Huntsville Museum of Art, 300 Church St; (256) 535-4350; hsvmuseum.org

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

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cryin’ out loud » Sara Wright Covington In this sea of pink propaganda, it can become diﬃcult to manage a little girl’s expectations for life when the majority of these princess characters end up with Prince Charming, living in a palace.

THE PRINCESS AND THE PEANUT BUTTER I’m not sure who started cutting the crusts off her bread. All I know is that one day Princess Kate went from a smiling PB & J enthusiast, happily eating her sandwiches in all their crusted glory, to a demanding picky eater, refusing all bread set before her not sans crust. And no, the princess to which I refer is not the current Duchess of Cambridge, but my four-year-old, Katherine—also referenced as the former, from the moment she practically pranced out of my womb, speaking in perfect sentences, turning her tiny nose up to anything but breast milk, and sleeping a maximum of two hours a night. For me, the grand mystery of child rearing is likely no diﬀerent than it was centuries ago, as I imagine parents have always pondered the ancient argument of nature versus nurture. So like any responsible parent questioning their child’s behavior, I stare at her across the table and wonder who has created this picky eater. Is it her surroundings or just her DNA? Are we spoiling her or has she truly developed a crust aversion? And although I personally believe it is likely a combination of both, if I can’t pin it on my husband, a grandparent, or one of her fellow picky friends, I go to my other default source of pretty much all blame—the Disney Princess Franchise. It might be reckless journalism to make this claim without proper sourcing/research, but I feel fairly certain that even if you don’t have small children, watch television, listen to the radio, or bother to climb out from under the rock where you’ve been living for the last decade or so, you’ve heard of at least one or more of these little animated monarchs. Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty have all been on the scene for well over 50 years, so I feel fairly certain you’ve at least heard of those, while The Little Mermaid’s Princess Ariel, Beauty and the Beast’s Princess Belle, and Tangled’s Princess Rapunzel have arrived in more recent years, along with a slew of others. The one thing all these ladies have in common? They all end up with a prince. Every. Last. One. When you are a mom of girls, you realize early on that Disney is omnipotent, and these famed females are in your life whether you like it or not. Their pink presences begin arriving when those baby girls are still in utero at baby showers and then at birthdays and holidays, via supermarket checkouts, television, movies, books, and more. And it’s not that I mind so much really, as I also grew up with a few of these characters; it’s just that when I was growing up, these characters didn’t permeate the marketplace as they do now, with theme parks, cruise ships, multiple entertainment networks, and endless merchandise lining the aisles of retail stores. My point is that in this sea of pink propaganda, it can become diﬃcult to manage a little girl’s expectations for life when the majority of these princess characters end up with Prince Charming, living in a palace. “But mommy, princesses do not wear pants, or the color black.” “Mommy, princesses DO NOT have to brush their teeth.” “How old am I going to be when I marry a prince, Mommy?” We argue over these things, while on the television in the background Belle from Beauty and the Beast bellows loudly from a hilltop in France that she “wants adventure in the greatwide somewhere,” after rejecting a proposal from the roguishly handsome town brute that would no doubt destine her for a life of childbearing and husband servitude. Then, in what I can assume is only a matter of days, Belle has shacked up with a beast and fallen in love with him as he seems to magically transform into a nice guy overnight.

My daughter, distracted from the no-pants fight, stops to swoon as she watches, and I have to bite my tongue not to say, “Sweetie, nobody with that bad of a temper changes over night. When a man, er a beast, locks you in a room and tells you ‘if you don’t eat with me you don’t eat at all,’ RUN LIKE HELL.” It truly would be reckless journalism for me not to point out, to Disney’s credit, they have in recent years introduced a few more modern female protagonists—strong leading ladies who aren’t waiting around to be rescued by a prince— demonstrating that girls really can do anything they set their minds too, whether it’s shooting arrows or going to war. And recent box office record breaker Frozen is also a bit more relatable. Main character Princess Elsa is born with ice in her veins and learns at an early age that getting emotional or angry causes her to physically freeze everything around her. She means no harm to anyone, and chooses to live her life behind the seclusion of a closed door, lest she get provoked—a wise decision. Frozen clearly takes place long before the medical marvels of mood elevators via medication, and poor Princess Elsa just wants to be left alone to manage her likely manic depressive disposition, but a meddling sister just won’t let her be, and Elsa ends up unintentionally freezing her entire kingdom. To Frozen’s credit, the curse-breaking resolution turns out to be true love—and not in a romantic form, but in the unconditional love of the two sisters. Bravo, Frozen— you’ve at least encouraged my two daughters to try and get along for Frozen’s sake. So the irony, as I obligingly cut the crusts off Princess Kate’s bread, is that I have to remind myself that it is not my job to create a palace for my daughters, fussing over their happiness and catering to their every whim. It is my job to make them realize that true happiness has to come from within. It is my job to teach them fairy tales can look like many different things, and that sometimes even the strongest magic can’t change a person or place. Princesses do wear pants, and lab coats, and scrubs, and suits, and army fatigues. Not all stories end with a prince at the end, and there is no magical trident to transport them into another world. One princess’s happy ending may look completely different from another, and Prince Charming may or may not be in the equation at all. And so we turn off the TV and read books, and take walks, and fold laundry, and have living room floor picnics with saltines and orange juice. We talk about having good friends, and dreams, and why God painted the grass green, and how smart, kind, independent girls can rule the world without a crown, or even a prince. Walt Disney himself famously said, “I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.” Life is complex, but childhood is enchanting, and we can never go back to it once we are all grown up. So I bite my lip and try to leave the tiaras and the magic, and hope against all hope, that my little princesses are listening to me.

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

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scene

Chad & Collier Cannon, and Brenda Courtney Campbell Berger, Lena Murray, Kylie Donovan, and William Guo Ayden Snyder Emerson Meﬀord

Talon & Landon Swantner Beth, Clara Leta & Tucker Monroe, Turner Rammage, and Bella Grace Monroe

Above: Bunny Brunch and Easter Egg Hunt march ,  · huntsville

Grant Holden

Janie Johnson

Below: Folk Fusion: Where Fashion Meets Folk Art Opening Event april ,  · huntsville museum of art

Steve and Denise Murphree, Laura Vann, and Cheryl and Jim Matthews Amanda Weaver, Laura Moss, Paula Winfroe, and Russ and Emily Stone Lauren Knox and Anna Braden Lierin Achord and Justin Pociask

Chris and Susan Lindsey

Leka Medenback, and Joe and Marie Newberry

* Names for photos are provided by the organization or business featured.

Beth Griggs and Radhika Kakani Laura Moss, Brandy Smith, Lindsay Rice, Laura Reynolds, and Sasha Sealy © Jeﬀ White

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may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

photos by abraham rowe assisted by evan billiter text by roy hall and

sara wright covington

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

To paraphrase an old chestnut, beauty is in the ears of the beholder. And beautiful songs—the ones that move us and get us moving—stick around forever, and for as many reasons as there are ears. For this year’s Entertainment issue, we asked our friend, AdTran graphic designer, web developer, and host of The Valley CW’s Know Huntsville, Tom Patterson, to be our musical ears and eyes. Tom scoured the Huntsville music scene, listened to who-knows-how-many demos, and returned with a track list that just won’t leave him alone. Tom’s sonic scouting has turned up seven original songs from seven local bands. Together, they represent an impressive breadth of genres, styles, and subject matters that reﬂect the diversity of the Valley’s music scene. And while each song reﬂects one particular beholder’s taste, we think their appeal is universal. Hear for yourself, by visiting noalastudios.com.

A note from Tom

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Each band has been photographed by Huntsville native Abraham Rowe, whose music portfolio includes the Alabama Shakes, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, and Jason Isbell, and whose work has appeared numerous times in n No’Ala, as well as Elle, Elle Decor, Dec ecor or, r, and and The New York Times es Magazine. Ma agazi ziine nee.

First, let me clear my throat by saying there are a handful of my local friends and acquaintances, and, of course, musicians I believe would have done a great job (possibly a better job than I) at putting forth a solid representation of the Huntsville music scene. I was obsessively aware of this and kept that knowledge in the back of my head when narrowing down the musician and song list. My approach was simple: I drafted a couple local bands I respect and asked what their Huntsville music list would consist of. I took the bands that got mentioned over and over again, added my personal tastes from interviewing and watching them play live, and made sure they captured a wide range of genres and styles that would represent Huntsville in a positive and accurate way, and voila! Though I think we need three or four times as many bands added to truly represent the vast talent that is in this town, I think this is a good start. Enjoy.

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

F OUR FEATURED

Amy McCarley

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

Industry giant BMI Nashville calls Amy McCarley “the best new female Americana artist you’ve never heard.” That kind of high praise is nothing new for McCarley, a former all-state girls’ basketball team player, whose Grissom jersey was retired after graduation. “That experience taught me what it takes to get really good at something.” McCarley grew up in Spruce Pine, where she developed her love for music at church and while playing guitar on the front porch with her dad. College followed, where McCarley took the safe road, graduating with a degree in economics. But music just kept calling her name. McCarley’s wrote No’Ala track “Smart Man” during a transition period between full-time NASA contractor and professional musician. “The song is about the kind of argument I have between what’s logical and rational versus what feels passionate and authentic.” It’s a message that resonates with her fans, who often request it. “I think it’s just the vulnerability and honesty that people respond too,” she says. “It was written about a moment where I felt if I didn’t go all in and give my music a shot, I would always feel that I didn’t really try and I would never know what might have been.” For almost three years now, McCarley has been pursuing music full-time. Currently, she’s on the road, performing all over the county. When she’s home, she’s in the studio, with fellow guitarists and co-producers Kenny Vaughan and George Bradfute, or writing with Pat Algera, who has written songs for Garth Brooks and Tricia Yearwood.

Shot at AM Booth’s Lumberyard Hair and makeup by Jeanne Shrader, Attitudes Salon

As for what she loves the most about her new day job, McCarley says writing and performing are a duality and she can’t imagine one without the other. “I love the quiet, introspective side of writing, where I get to say things that are important to me,” she says. “And then there is the other side where I am performing and getting a reaction from the audience and the people I meet. Music just really transcends boundaries.” Facebook: Amy McCarley

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

seminole strut

The Seminole Strut’s influences predate its members’ ages by at least a generation. “We have a very strong southern rock feel,” says vocalist and bassist Mark Williams. That southern rock sound automatically summons the ‘70s, and, not surprisingly, many of the usual sonic suspects, like the Allman Brothers, make cameos in Seminole Strut’s songs. But there are some decidedly non-southern influences in the mix, too, notably Zeppelin and the Stones. There’s even some Kings of Leon tossed into the mix. Strut’s diversity is a reflection of the band’s continuous musical evolution, a process that continues on their No’Ala track, “Spur,” which evokes a bit of Pink Floyd, particularly in the airy space that leads the song into silence. “Spur” is about summoning the courage to talk to a sexy woman, a kind of flirtatious carpe diem. But courage, of the romantic variety or otherwise, isn’t necessarily the primary lyrical thrust of Seminole Strut’s steadily growing catalog, which often deals with denser subjects and metaphors, like the Civil War and Native American issues. Strut is in its fourth year, but its members, all Huntsvillians, have known each other since childhood. That familiarity facilitates the collaborative songwriting process the band prefers. It also gives them courage to explore and improvise while performing. Their live gigs—and the Seminole Strut plays a ton of them—are part slickly calibrated performance, part workshop. It works for them, and it works for their audiences. Give “Spur” a listen; you’ll hear why. Tyson Parker: Guitar, Vocals Jonathan Byham: Guitar, Vocals Mark Williams: Bass, Vocals Drew Pope: Guitar, Mandolin Steven Maksimowski: Drums Wes Raven Hudson: Keys Facebook: Seminole Strut

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

Shot at Lowe Mill Arts & Entertainment

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

Tony Perdue and the TMFP band

Shot at AM Booth’s Lumberyard

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

When GIs the world over know your dad as the “Alabama Wild Man,” odds are, you aren’t gonna grow up to play the harp. And so it goes with Tony Perdue, whose father, a disc jockey with American Forces Network, passed along an abiding love for rockabilly to his musically impressionable son. “I like songs with an underlying soulfulness to them,” Perdue says of the taste in music his dad imparted. “The kind of sincerity you just can’t fake.” The Cullman native, along with his bandmates—Andy Clark, Freddy Faust, and Michael Kilpatrick—incorporates the rockabilly sound Perdue came by honestly with the twangy edge of what he calls “’70s outlaw vibe.” It’s part country, part rockabilly, part ragtime, with some Waylon and Django Reinhart inﬂuence mixed in there, too—a sound Perdue refers to as Gypsy Jazz. (And if that’s a new one for you, you’re not alone.) Tony’s been playing music since he was a tender 17, although he characterizes those early years as less performance, more “performance art.” He eventually got the hang of it (and then some), and a punk faze followed. Post-punk Perdue spent some time as a thrash metal head before settling in for the long haul, back where he began, with the kind of soulful songs his dad introduced him to. “I’ve been listening to Billy Lee Riley and Carl Perkins since I was seven,” Perdue says. With those inﬂuences, the spiked hair never had a chance. “Stubborn as a Mule,” the band’s No’Ala track, has been part of Perdue’s repertoire for a while, as almost pure rockabilly. But then lead guitarist Clark came along, played around with it, and now it has a kind of “trucker country vibe.” Great song, either way. Oh, and just in case you heard a rumor to the contrary, the acronym in the band’s name totally stands for “Tony’s My Friend Perdue Band.” Tony Perdue: Vocals, Guitar Andy Clark: Lead Guitar Freddy Faust: Upright Bass Michael Kilpatrick: Drums Facebook: Tony Perdue and the TMFP Band

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

King’s Haze

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

“The Route,” by progressive rockers King’s Haze, is the sonic consequence of its songwriters’ stir-craziness. “I was in the middle of selling my house,” explains lead singer Jason Humphress of a space that served double duty as rehearsal studio. With nothing but a refrigerator and some recording equipment left over, Humphress and his bandmates, bassist and vocalist Sean Hopkins and drummer and vocalist Rashard Phillips, took advantage of the distraction-free environment to indulge in one long jam session. “I started playing the intro riff,” Humphress says of an early rehearsal of what would become “The Route.” “Our bass player, Sean Hopkins, came up with some cord movement.” Then, suddenly, some sort of island-inspired rhythm stuck its head in the door. “I don’t know what happened, but in the middle of jamming, we all just went into this reggae beat.” The rock-metal riff into a reggae one drop was completely unplanned. “The way we play requires a lot of trust in each other,” says Humphress of the band’s improvisational style, which extends into their live performances. That’s been their trademark from the start, even when King’s Haze was essentially a cover band. “We’d do two or three songs in a row, and then come back to the first song,” Humphress says. “And we don’t make set lists. We just completely trust each other, watch the crowd, and never leave each other hanging.” That means audiences never get exactly the same show twice, reflective of a philosophy King’s Haze adopted from art-rock soothsayer Frank Zappa, who insisted that bands should never duplicate their records in concert. “We want a different show every time you come out to see King’s Haze,” says Humphress. When they aren’t playing live, King’s Haze is writing new material and, when time allows, supporting other live acts. “We’ve actually done show swapping where we bring in bands from out of town and just share shows with them,” he says. “It helps to build a community when musicians network and make a cooperative effort. Most of all, we just believe in supporting live, local music.”

Shot near Lincoln Mill

Jason Humphress: Guitar, Vocals Sean Hopkins: Bass Rashard Phillips: Drums Facebook: King’s Haze

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

Them Damn Dogs

“Brandon (Holmes: guitar and vocals) is really into fast-paced metal. Chris (Salib: bass) is a laidback, classic rocker dude with some heavy ’90s influences. And I (Jerome Villareal: guiatarist, songwriter, spokes-rocker for Them Damn Dogs) am into all genres, from early rock to jazz.” Brandon, Chris, and Jerome started playing separately in high school. They started playing together as Them Damn Dogs a few years ago, while all were students at UAH. All the band’s material is original, and the title of their inaugural album, Let Loose, offers a pretty apt description of the band’s songwriting process. “I write. The others add stuff,” Villareal says of the band’s informal process. There’s way more to the alchemy than that, of course. The band records all their jams, then plays them back, with an ear out for the interesting stuff that emerges. And since the trio started while each member was still in college—Villareal is the only one still at UAH—their material has tended to revolve around “bright-eyed, young adult” fare, in Villareal’s words. No’Ala track “Bloody Knuckles” included. “Bloody Knuckles” is classic, hook-filled, catchy pop-rock, which, these days, may actually qualify as retro. And yes, a band member was harmed in the recording of this song. “We were jamming, looking for a structure, when Brandon noticed blood on his drum set,” Villareal says. Rock and roll: don’t try it at home, kids. Jerome Villarreal: Guitar, Vocals Brandon Holmes: Drums Chris Salib: Bass Facebook: Them Damn Dogs

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

Shot at Goldsmith-Schiﬀman Wildlife Sanctuary

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

Ugly Houses

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

“Growing up, I was deeply influenced by a band called Cap’n Jazz,” says Ugly House lead vocalist and guitarist Jonathan Shrout. Of particular resonance, Shrout points to a lyric from Can’n Jazz’s “Tokyo,” which he says stayed with him long past childhood: “Some ugly houses sprout up in rows. They look like structures of sad accidents and broken happy plans.” Those misfortunes and disappointments—the cracks in the sidewalk of life—are the stuff Shrout, along with bandmates Philip Dougherty and Nathan Barnett, credits as the inspiration for their sometimes misanthropic lyrics, as well as their hybrid progressive/punk rock/ jazz-infused sound. For a band that credits an ode to obstacles and blunders for its very existence, it’s a bit ironic that No’Ala track “The Route” is the first song Shrout ever wrote, back in 2011, and became a sort of template by which they built their band’s sound. Shrout says the song is a proclamation of who they are, and how they’ve sometimes found themselves circumscribed within Huntsville’s music scene. “Our style isn’t one that we have in common with many other bands,” he says. “We don’t have choruses or verses. We just write in free form, with no real hook. We set out to be a band’s band.” Ugly Houses struggled to fit in initially within Huntsville’s often exclusive music scene, and although Shrout says some of his band’s material may seem a bit dark, ultimately, it’s really about how those hardships shaped them into the band they are now. At the end of the day, Shrout says it’s those ugly house experiences that continue to shape who they are and make them a better band. They remain unpretentious, insisting that they just want to make good music and have a good time. “We’ve never tried to make this our full-time job,” he says. “It has to remain pure and fun for us. The day it becomes work is the day we will stop. This is a passion project for us.”

Shot at Kildare Mansion

Nathan Barnett: Bass, Vocals Philip Dougherty: Drums, Theremin Jonathan Shrout: Guitar, Vocals Facebook: Ugly Houses

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

The Dawn Osborne band

Dawn Osborne’s musical tastes do not reflect her earliest childhood influences. And since those influences were primarily bad German pop, that’s probably for the best. The band’s namesake spent her formative years on a Deutschland military base, returning to her birthplace of Huntsville, aged 11, with a headful of Teutonic tunes, classical records (thanks, Mom!), and Rogers and Hammerstein, courtesy of military radio. And a notion to become a singer. “I always thought I could sing,” Osborne says. That sounds like a no-brainer to us, but her high school friends thought differently. “People told me to shut up.” Eh, everyone ist ein critic… Critics these days are singing a different tune. The consensus is that The Dawn Osborne Band’s melodic mélange of styles—they’re somewhere on the musical spectrum between Americana, jazz, soul, and folk, with some bluegrass fusion thrown in for good measure—is authentic, soulful goodness. We agree. Of the wistful outlook that informs the band’s lyrics, including the No’Ala track, “Twisted Fool,” Osborne says, “We’re a bunch of big ol’ sappy dreamers.” But they’re not Pollyannas by any stretch. “There’s a touch of ‘the world has worn down around the edges, and taken the shine off the penny,’” in Osborne’s words. “Twisted Fool,” from their sophomore album, Slow the World Down, reflects a bit of that forlornness with its story of unrequited love—not that the much ballyhooed Dawn Osborne Band would know much about that sort of thing. Dawn Osborne: Vocals Andrew Sharpe: Bass, Vocals Newt Johnson: Keys, Organ, Vocals Jason Humphress: Guitar Solomon Grable: Drums Jeff Woods: Percussion Facebook: The Dawn Osborne Band

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

Shot on Monte Sano

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

Don’t you wish you were here? You could be. Our annual home and garden issue is one of our most popular issues. Reserve your space today!

Contact Jamie Noles (256) 762-7965, jamie@noalastudios.com

Ad reservation deadline: June 6, 2016  | noalastudios.com | may/june 

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

“If I have someone who believes in me, I can move mountains.” —Diana Ross

SHONTAE JOHNSON AS DIANA ROSS

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

photos by robert rausch » assisted by anna lyle styling by tara bullington makeup by janae burnside » hair by dwight cox special thanks to sommer hamilton, trinity episcopal church, rick wooten, morgan price candy company, court street market, muscle shoals sound studio, yummies bakery and deli, thread

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

DIVAS FOR A DAY Recently, we invited eight of our most ravishing friends to play dress-up as eight of our most timeless style icons. Chic and sophisticated, sassy and outrageous, the eight women portrayed here represent the most inﬂuential looks from the past eight decades. Their portraits, each inspired by an iconic photograph, are the work of GAS Studio founder and New York Times-contributing photographer Robert Rausch, to whom we are immensely grateful. As always, every element—clothing, gems, jewels, makeup, hair, styling, and photography—represent the talent and diversity of local artists, businesses, and boutiques. Stars may fall on north Alabama. But North Alabama launches just as many stars.

See page 46 for where to buy

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

“The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some annoying virtues.” —Elizabeth Taylor

ASHLEY BEADLE AS ELIZABETH TAYLOR

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

“God gave women intuition and femininity. Used properly, the combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I’ve ever met.” —Farrah Fawcett

LYNDSIE MCCLURE AS FARRAH FAWCETT

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

“If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.” —Katharine Hepburn

BRANDI MCGUYER AS KATHARINE HEPBURN

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

“Elegance is the only beauty that never fades.” —Audrey Hepburn

JORDYN DEAN AS AUDREY HEPBURN

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

While Catherine Middleton’s marital vow to remain true to Prince William “for richer or poorer” may sound a bit quaint, her oath is more remarkable for a word it doesn’t contain: obey. Middleton is the ﬁrst consort in British history not to swear obedience to her husband and future king.

ASHLEY HASELTON AS CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF CAMBRIDGE

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

Besides my children, work has kept me comparatively sane after living through some appalling times. —Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

JEANNE REID AS JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

If you could turn back time, you’d see that Cher’s 3614 Jackson Highway, whose cover art serves as our inspiration, was the ﬁrst album ever recorded at the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.

JESSIE CHILDERS AS CHER

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

46 » Stars Fell on Alabama » Where to Buy DIANA ROSS P. 34 CAPE (PRICE UPON REQUEST) NICOLE MILLER GOWN ($1200) FINERY (256) 429-4329 EARRINGS ($14) JEWELL’S (256) 712-5988 BRACELETS ($34.99) VERSONA AT BRIDGE STREET (256) 922-8607 ELIZABETH TAYLOR P. 37 SOPHIA & CAMILLA GOWN ($898) CHERRY TREE LANE (256) 767-4262 RABBIT JACKET ($1988) THE VILLAGE SHOPPE (256) 383-1133 15.39CT GREEN OPAL PENDANT WITH DIAMONDS, TSAVORITE GARNETS, PALM TREE SEED, AND RECYCLED 18 KT GOLD ($7395)

PALM TREE SEED AND RECYCLED 18 KT GOLD EARRINGS ($2200) MEFFORD JEWELERS (256) 764-2632 7CT OPAL WITH 2CT DIAMOND CONVERTIBLE RING/PENDANT ($6250) JAMIE HOOD JEWELERS (256) 381-6889 FARRAH FAWCETT P. 38 TRACK JACKET ($36.94) NEW YORK & COMPANY AT BRIDGE STREET (256) 327-8500 PPLA CLOTHING JEANS ($77) GRL BOUTIQUE (256) 349-9293 CUSTOM SKATEBOARD CARTER MCGUYER FOR EPICUREAN EPICUREANCS.COM KATHARINE HEPBURN P. 39 JACKET ($79) COATS CLOTHING COMPANY (256) 760-0033 IRIS SETLAKWE OF CANADA BLOUSE ($220) D. EXTERIOR ITALY PANTS ($234) CARRIAGE HOUSE (256) 355-4349 SANDALS BY L’AMOUR DES PIEDS PUMPS ($198) MARIGAIL’S FASHION HOUSE (256) 764-9444 AUDREY HEPBURN P. 40 HAZEL DRESS ($121) AUDIE MESCAL (256) 314-6684 GLOVES ($24) THE SOMETHING BLUE SHOPPE (256) 773-4956 PEARL AND DIAMOND BRACELET ($45) EARRINGS ($25) HAIRPIECE BY TITIAN ($75) SIDE LINES (256) 767-0925 RHINESTONE BANGLE ($39) PEARL NECKLACE ($135) MODERN BRIDES (256) 533-9333 L’AMOUR DES PIEDS PUMPS ($220) MARIGAIL’S FASHION HOUSE (256) 764-9444

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF CAMBRIDGE P. 42 JACKET ($3060) TANK ($1260) SKIRT ($1890) ALABAMA CHANIN (256) 760-1090 JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS P. 43 LEATHER SHIFT DRESS, BAG, SHOES (PRICE UPON REQUEST) BILLY REID (256) 767-4692 EARRINGS ($45) SIDE LINES (256) 767-0925 CHER PG. 44 VEST ($58) NECKLACE ($49) ANN ALDRIDGE BOUTIQUE (256) 284-7308 LEVEL 99 JEANS ($132) SHOES ($128) AUDIE MESCAL (256) 314-6684 LEATHER BRACELETS ($38) RINGS ($150-450) SIDE LINES (256) 767-0925 SILK SCARF ($78) MARIGAIL’S FASHION HOUSE (256) 764-9444 TANK ($58) HARPER CLOTHING CO. (256) 760-7115 (CHER CLOSE UP, LEFT) COPPER BUBBLE BAND ($190) GREEN SQUARE RING ($450) MILKY PINK RING ($350) BLACK SWIRL RING ($300) BRACELETS ($38 EACH) SIDE LINES (256) 767-0925 NECKLACE ($49) ANN ALDRIDGE BOUTIQUE (256) 284-7308 LUCILLE BALL P. 110 CUSTOM DRESS NICOLE NICOLE CLOTHING & DESIGN (256) 714-1081 FRESHWATER PEARLS ($280, $300) JAMIE HOOD JEWELERS (256) 381-6889

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48 »

old school » Text and Photos by Chris Paysinger After graduating from Auburn in the late ’90s, I returned to my hometown of Elkmont for a teaching job, and to return a favor. Growing up, my grandparents had taken care of me; now it was my turn to take care of them. I arrived home to find a town devoid of friends—mine had all fled post-graduation to Atlanta, Nashville, and San Francisco— leaving me with nothing to do and nobody to do it with. Making matters worse, in those days, Limestone County was dry as a bone—not a single place sold alcohol, though the joke persists to this day that it was the wettest dry county in the state of Alabama. You just needed the right divining rod. With whiskey whiskey everywhere, and not a drop to drink, I started to miss my halcyon days on the Plains. I figured out pretty quickly that I’d traded in the War Eagle Supper Club and The Strutting Duck for drinking cheap beer on my porch, with only my grandfather’s cows in the pasture next door for company. Luckily, I wasn’t entirely alone; my brother Jaffe was still around. Jaffe and I were, and still are, very different people. I was a bookish, soon-to-be Ph.D.’d teacher. Jaffe was a cattleman and chicken farmer, with the manure-caked boots to prove it. Springsteen could have written “Highway Patrolman” about us, or so we told ourselves, when he told the tale of disparate brothers connecting over cold beers at the local roadhouse. Night after night, Jaffe and I headed north in the direction of the honky-tonks that straddled the Alabama and Tennessee line, places that weren’t quite places at all. And a funny thing started to happen: through the haze of cigarette smoke and neon-lit beer signs, I could see we were becoming better brothers. Honky-tonks have a reputation as the kinds of place where, if you don’t have a knife when you arrive, you’ll be given one for the beer-fueled brawl that will inevitably break out, a kind of blue collar version of a coat check. Hollywood, in its clumsy attempt to explain the peculiar ways of the Southerner, has stereotyped the people who seek out watering holes after a day of sheetrocking or bricklaying as fight-prone, and maybe there’s the occasional truth to that. But it never occurred to Jaffe or me that we might need Patrick Swayze to swoop in

and save us. (Although I will confess to having seen some dancing not unlike that in Roadhouse, maybe even taking part in some myself.) Invariably, Jaffe and I would sit down at the bar next to a local, who would strike up a conversation to alleviate the boredom of hearing the same tired stories told and retold, night after night, by his buddy seated forever on his other side. Often, Jaffe would know them or their family, and sometimes I would too, having graduated with a brother or a daughter. We’d all talk about the rain—how there was too much of it in the spring for the corn crop, or not enough in the summer. I didn’t know a damn thing about growing corn, but I listened intently to these people because it really meant something to them, even when their farms were just a few Better Boy Tomatoes planted behind a small brick rancher on the edge of town. In those days, the Country Club at the border of Ardmore, Tennessee, was everybody’s favorite. The bar hung hard to the side of a sloping hill, supported on stilts in the back. An uncle told me that years of nicotine and tar build up was the only thing that kept the Country Club attached to the hillside and out of the ditch below. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving was the biggest night of the year at the literally named Country Club. Locals would flood home from college, looking for cheap beer, long lost friends, and pretty girls. The bar served free chili or goat stew, and the homecoming crowd was so thick you couldn’t move, leading me to wonder about the health of those stilts holding the whole place up. But most of our times there, it was just Jaffe and I, and a few locals. Those nights were my favorite. Someone could always be counted on to drop a quarter in the ancient jukebox, so Waylon, Willie, and Merle could warble us through another game of pool. Other times there would be a band of very modest talent, but that really didn’t matter to us then. One night I danced, sincerely and slowly, cheek-to-

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

cheek, with a woman who looked exactly like Mrs. Garrett from The Facts of Life, while the band played “New Orleans Ladies” by Louisiana Le Roux. I can still smell her perfume. We’d take the occasional break from the Country Club to ride up the hill to Garon’s, “Home of the Frosty Mug.” Jaffe and I were starving bachelors at the time, so we’d order a vile creation of chicken, spices, and deep fried sin, called “Demon Bites.” Invariably, I’d wake up during the night with heartburn bad enough to make me believe I’d never live to see my twenty-sixth birthday. (My wife and I had our post-wedding reception at Garon’s; our friends from Atlanta and Birmingham declared it the most exotic experience of their lives.) My favorite place these days is the Valley Tavern, a low-slung, concrete affair squatting on the only flat spot for miles, just inside Tennessee. It’s what a honky-tonk ought to be, free of the pretense of Nashville’s Lower Broadway, faux-honky-tonk hellholes, full of drunk tourists and rhinestone cowboys. Unlike those wannabes, the Valley Tavern serves its ice cold American pilsner and crispy froglegs with a side order of sincerity. Glyn Usery is the Tavern’s part-time proprietor. Mr. Usery is a man of indeterminable age. He carries his years well as he works the room, asking after everybody’s mama or the age of our children. My family has known him forever, and I always look forward to seeing him.

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

Jaffe and I are busy these days, but we still try and get to the Tavern as often as our wives allow. And Jaffe’s time now is filled with more than just cows and chickens. In July 2014, his daughter Molly was diagnosed with leukemia at age two and a half. The time since has revolved around St. Jude, chemotherapy, and trying to keep life afloat. Soon after the diagnosis, Mr. Usery called my brother and asked him to come by. Jaffe tried to demure, saying he’d drop in soon, but Mr. Usery wouldn’t be put off. And so, later that afternoon, Jaffe dropped by the Tavern, where Mr. Usery placed in his hand a wad of money, the haul from a benefit for Molly the previous evening. Jaffe, forever the good Southerner, tried not to take it. But Mr. Usery wouldn’t take no for an answer. Walking him to the door, Mr. Usery put his arm around my brother, leveled his gaze at him, and said, “It ain’t just preachers that do nice things for people. Tell that girl we love her.” If you drop in today, you’ll probably find a jar on the counter, or a stew simmering in the back, for others like Molly. Honky-tonks not a bad place to meet a nice girl, either. On one of those Wednesday nights before Thanksgiving, I spotted a pretty blonde across the room of the Country Club. I sent a beer over and tried to flirt, not that she noticed. Even today, after 13 years of marriage, she’s still unimpressed with my flirting skills. But she does like the froglegs at the Tavern, and Mr. Usery loves her too.

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

MEET

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may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

Behind the Scenes Fifty Years of Theatre in Huntsville

BY ROY HALL PHOTOS BY PATRICK HOOD

 | noalastudios.com | may/june 

TI IME: ME E: The Th e ac a t ti ion on tak akes e pla lace ce e in th the e pr res esen en e nt, t, wi ith fl fla as sh hba b ck c s st stre re etc tchi h ng ove hi ver r 4 40 0 yea ars rs. . SE SETT ETT TTIN NG: Maki Ma ki ing g art can an be se ser rio ri ou us bu busi si ine ness ss; ss ; th t is s off ffic ice is ic i HQ Q. . The Th e r ro oom om is s sm mal a l, l, bar arel ely en ely nou ough gh h spa ace ce for r two o des esks ks, ea ach h clu lutt tt te er red d wit i h se sea as a son tic i ke k t ma mail ail ler ers, s sub s, ubsc scri sc ri ibe ber li list s s, st h lf ha lf-c - om mpl let e ed d gra rant n app nt ppli li ica cati ion ons. s. A con nfe fere re renc enc nce e ta t b bl le st stre etc che hes s ou out t i fro in ont nt of an ove v rw rwor or rke k d co coffee mac a h hi ine n . In n the h bac ckg kgro r und, ro un nd, , above e a w wa all of fi fili l ng cabin li inet net e s, s han a g p po ost ster er rs f fr rom o pas st sh show ows— ow s— Driv Dr iv vin ing g Mi M ss ss Daisy ai isy sy, An A gels ge els in Am Amer er ric ica, a A Few a, w Goo o d Me Men n. PLAC PL A E: AC Hu unt ntsv s il sv ille l , Al Alab abam ab am ama. A mi id d-s -siz ized ed Sou outh the th ern ci er ity y, co ons ser rva vat ti ive v in de eme mean anor an or, or , w th wi h a hig i hlyyy -ed educat ucat a ed ed, , tech te ech chno nol no logi ica c ll lly y-sa -sa s v vv vy p po opu p la ati ion on. . CAST CA ST: ST : SA AM MA ARS SH Hu H unt unt ntsv sv s vi il lle le nat ti iv ve. . Sma art rt, , fu funn nny, nn y, cre y, reat at tiv ve pr p of fes e si sio on nal al and nd ext x ra racu c rr cu r ic i ular r j ck ja ck-o -of-al o ll-t th hea hea eatr tr re-tr rad des es. . He He’s ’ don ’s one e a mi ill lio on an nd on ne s sh how ows. s. s. Tw wo mill mi ill lio i n ma ay yb be; e he lo lost st cou st ount nt som o ewhe om ewhe ew here aro oun u d St tre eet tca c r in ’8 ’89 9. 9. S m un Sa nde ders rs rsta sta and n s th the e ag gon onie onie es of o budge ets, ts, fi ts fick ckle ck le e aud u ie ienc n es nc es, , and an nd co cont tra r ri ria an an di ire r ctor or rs; he do does e it fo f r th the e ec e st stas a y th that at com at mes wit i h ge gett ttin in ng it i all ll rig igh ht. ELAI E IN NE E HUBBA UB BBA BARD RD Qu uin i tu upl p e th hre reat at: Ac at A tor, r, sin inge ger, ge r, dir irec ecto ec tor, to r, pro odu duc cer, cer, ce r th t hea eatr t ic ical al boa ard mem embe b r. be r The pre ese enc n e of of an ac cto tor, r the r, h dis isc cip ci pl line and an d ho howw to of a pr prod od duc cer e /d /dir irec cto tor. . Sav avvy vy, vy , st stra ra aig ight htfo ht forw fo r ar rw a d, d gen ener erou ous. s

Resu Re s me su m dat a e es s sug ugge g st t the hey’ y’re y’ re r e bot oth h on the h nor o th t sid ide e of 50, bu b ut yo ou u’ ’d ne neve ver r gu ues ess it to lo ook k at th t em m.

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have been involved in the Huntsville theatre scene—each as actor, director, producer, non-profit board member, and champion of the sometimes lost art of community theatre—for as long as almost anyone. Talking to them, as we had the privilege of doing back in March, while surrounded by mementoes and memorabilia from dozens of shows stretching back decades, the line between life and art, reality and fantasy, can get a bit hazy. Rather like getting caught in a production of Noises Off, starring Elaine and Sam. And that’s perfectly fine. The quality of their work, and the commitment of the other folks who keep theatre alive and well in Huntsville, makes immersion in this world of cardboard trees and false facades a fine place to be. You almost wish you could stay backstage a bit longer, eavesdropping, for two more acts of intermission-less storytelling. At the moment, Theatre Huntsville is itself immersed in rehearsals for their May production of the wildly entertaining musical Forever Plaid, with Elaine serving as director and Sam producer, although it could just as easily be the other way around, and often has been, throughout Sam’s and Elaine’s Huntsville theatre history, which is where our conversation quickly turns on a sunny Sunday afternoon between costume fittings and rehearsals.

the heyday of big-budget, barnstormer musical productions, and winds its way through four decades, to the stillevolving present and future of Huntsville theatre. Throughout all the expansions and contractions, the necessary concessions to changing times and tastes, there remains a loving commitment to the art of theatre, and an awareness of its necessity to a cultured, cultivated community. Both Marsh and Hubbard have spent most of their lives in Huntsville, and both caught the theatre bug early on. “Mother dragged me along to work on costumes or something backstage,” Hubbard says of her mom, who sang with the Huntsville Community Chorus, way back in its early 1960s heyday. Once you’ve done a couple hundred shows, starting in childhood, they start to blur together in a fog of auditions, rehearsals, and performances, so Hubbard’s ﬁrst foray into the grease paint is a little blurry. It might have been Community Chorus’s production of Man of La Mancha. Or was it Fiddler on the Roof?

« Elaine Hubbard

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Again, so many shows, some of them done twice, three, or four times, and some of those productions with some of the same actors from previous productions. You can see how it all gets to be a bit of a blur. What’s crystal clear in retrospect is that those were community theatre’s “glory days.” That’s Hubbard’s characterization of the ’60s and ’70s theatre scene, with its big shows, big casts, and biggerstill audiences. “Seats were easier to fill then,” according to Hubbard. “People knew the songs, and we were the only game in town tackling those productions.” Lerner and Lowe. Rogers and Hammerstein. The Gershwins. Irving Berlin. Names that sound like ancient history to 21st century ears were on the tips of DJs tongues in those days. Their shows, and the songs that came from them, weren’t artifacts of some quaint, bygone era—they were pop music. They were on the Billboard 100, in popular movies, sung on the radio by big stars. So when Community Chorus performed them, audiences turned out. And then a funny thing happened on the way to the Tonys, and the shows started to change. “New kinds of musicals came along,” Hubbard says of a transition point in the American theatre, somewhere in the 1970s. Darker, more demanding stuff from the likes of Sondheim and Bernstein began to crop up on Broadway. And that meant some of the shows that got all the press and most of the awards—shows that theatre boards might like to stage—were suddenly too auspicious to mount. Not to mention too expensive. The audiences’ tastes went through a metamorphosis, too. “The Broadway crowd was dying out,” says Hubbard, frankly, of the season ticket holders of a previous generation, who could be reliably counted on to fill Von Braun for a My Fair Lady or an Oklahoma! There weren’t dozens of networks vying for people’s attention in those days, either. Nor were there smart phones, tablets, apps, other performance venues, breweries, cinema screens, and who-knows-what-all competing for people’s disposable entertainment dollars and rapidly diminishing free time. Simultaneously, people who, a generation or two earlier, would never have dreamed of taking an annual theatre excursion to New York City were suddenly returning from the Big Apple hoping to see the same shows—done to the same expensive standards—as they’d just seen on Broadway. The transition from the golden age Hubbard fondly recalls to the modern age of more mature productions and sophisticated, distracted audiences coalesced sometime right around 1980, just as Sam Marsh returned to his hometown from college and immediately immersed himself in the Huntsville theatre scene.

continued, p. 62

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Sam Marsh »

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« Lorie Gill Hubscher “One of my favorite memories of plays from the ‘80s has to be my first play as an adult, Countess Dracula, for Twickenham Repertory Company. The play is a gothic melodrama in the same vein as Dark Shadows, and with the production values of an Ed Wood film. This play had so many disasters: guns that didn’t fire, a character’s corpse that arrived on stage one act too soon, a fog machine that blanketed the lower half of the seats, set pieces that broke, and props of dubious origin. I still remember with fondness a Hidden Valley Ranch cruet bottle of “holy water” that an actor inadvertently used to baptize the front row. Had we tried to make a comedy, we could not have been more successful, but this trial by fire taught me the value of the backstage crew in ways that successful plays rarely can. I am still very close friends with many of the cast and crew from this production, and despite my rocky start, theatre is still my thrill ride of choice.”

Jason Graham » Jason is a seasoned professional in the local theatre scene, having started as a child actor in the early ‘80s with Fantasy Playhouse, Twickenham Repertory Company, and Huntsville Little Theatre. He’s widely known and admired by his peers for the diverse and challenging material he’s taken on over the years, projects like the troubled patient in Equus, Roy Cohn in Angels in America, and equally demanding roles in Glengarry Glen Ross, Doubt, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Cabaret. His appearances on stage have been infrequent lately, but this actor’s actor still casts a long shadow and each rare opportunity is an occasion to buy a ticket. —Sam Marsh

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continued from p. 58

A Huntsville native and graduate of Johnson High School, the theatre bug bit Marsh in the classroom of Ron Harris, whom Marsh refers to as a legend, responsible as anyone for a steady stream of Huntsville theatre lovers over the years. Like Hubbard, Marsh recalls the Community Chorus days and their sold-out weekends at the Von Braun Concert Hall, before Huntsville theatre, on its microcosmic level, experienced the same contractions entertainment juggernauts have been forced to adapt to in the internet age. “There just weren’t all these choices,” Marsh says. “You’d ﬁll up the playhouse with every performance.” Those were the days of the Twickenham Repertory Company—Marsh was on their board as early as 1981. Twickenham was established with an arts grant, which allowed the repertory company to employ actors-in-residence, and directors, too. The remainder of the casts, along with all the crews were composed entirely of volunteers, just like today. “They were the upstarts,” Marsh says of Twickenham, “especially in the early years. They were always ﬂying by the seat of their pants. It was always kind of amazing that they got it done.” Twickenham further distinguished itself by taking on slightly more experimental fare, leaving less provocative subject matter to the “old guard” Huntsville Little Theatre. In the late ’90s, in response to changing times and audience fragmentation, Twickenham and Huntsville Little Theatre merged into a single entity, Theatre Huntsville, which carries the banner of four-plus decades of Huntsville theatre into the present.

of straight plays—Forever Plaid is their one seasonal musical. The process of choosing which plays make up a season is the work of Theatre Huntsville’s board, on which Marsh serves. Marsh’s insights into the play selection process oﬀer a glimpse into the age-old struggle between art and commerce. Generally speaking, musicals are the shows audiences know the best, so it’s little surprise they’re the easiest to sell. “Comedies come in second,” Marsh reports. And a comedy sub-set of the homegrown variety is particularly easy to sell. “All you have to do is say ‘Southern comedy,’ and audiences ﬁll up the playhouse. So we do at least one a season,” Marsh says. Once a musical has been chosen, along with a few comedies—including comedy subgenres and hybrids, like the Southern comedy, the farce, and the “dramedy”— there’s still room on the calendar for one more show, and this one presents particular challenges. “Some audiences come to the theatre for escapism,” Marsh explains. And for some, escaping means not being put through the emotional ringer. “We usually do only one dyed-in-the-wood drama each season.” Marsh mentions

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John Miller » “Prior to 1974, all theater in Huntsville was presented at one of the local high schools, or, more commonly, at a temporary civic arts center housed at a surplus school on Clinton Street. The Clinton Street location played host to the Huntsville Little Theater, Fantasy Playhouse Children’s Theater, Huntsville Community Chorus, Huntsville Art League, Huntsville Ballet Company, and the Huntsville Arts Council, all of which were housed in former classrooms throughout the building. The number of organizations under one roof meant things got a bit crowded, but the closeness fostered cooperation and interchange among the groups. When Huntsville committed to a new civic arts center, the Clinton location was demolished, and its residents scattered to various locations around the city. Sets were built in garages, donated loft spaces, and a variety of odd sites. Productions reverted to high school auditoriums for several years, until the Von Braun Civic Center opened in March 1975. The tenants who once occupied the Clinton Street location have long since taken it upon themselves to ﬁnd permanent quarters, some owning property, others renting. But the cohesiveness and interplay between the groups that was enhanced by their daily intermingling has been lost. No longer can Fantasy ask an Art League member to assist in decorating the mighty Oz’s throne, or an HLT director enlist a Community Ballet dancer to reﬁne the choreography for his play. That type of activity was common at Clinton Street. Theater is alive and well in Huntsville, but I miss the cross pollination that is possible in a true civic arts center.”

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« Anna Quirk The Huntsville community theatre scene is responsible for shaping much of who I am and what I do today. It’s so hard to narrow down just one favorite show, or one best story, but some of my favorite memories come from the big Huntsville Community Chorus summer musicals throughout middle and high school. HCCA summer shows were a kind of rite of passage for teenagers. The experience of being in their shows was every bit as much about the friendships that formed during rehearsals as the actual production. The summer before I went to college stands out the most, because there were four major musicals that season alone, and lots of people in town were involved in more than one. A group of us was in Big River with Independent Musical Productions in the beginning of June, followed two weeks later by 13: The Musical with Lyrique Music Productions, and then, the last week of July, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Three giant musicals, three insane months. There was lots of caravanning, plenty of sweat, tears, and occasional blood, equal amounts of bickering and cuddling, and delirious, postrehearsal loitering in various parking lots. But by the end of the summer, as corny as it sounds, we were honestly like a family, with all the forgiven ﬁghts, inside jokes, and love to prove it.

the Arthur Miller classic Death of a Salesman and The Laramie Project, about the murder of Matthew Shepherd, as examples of the kind of emotionally demanding material Theatre Huntsville can only get away with producing one of per season. “And even then it’s going to be at a loss sometimes,” Marsh says. Add generational and demographic considerations to the ones above, and you’ve got yourself a real puzzle. “We have to pick six shows we believe will sell 200 seats, for seven performances, spread over two weekends,” Marsh says. With Von Braun’s hefty rental fees thrown into the mix, ticket sales have to be a top consideration when choosing which shows to stage, which ones to shelve for another season, and which ones will never see the artiﬁcial stage light of day. Still, Theatre Huntsville’s eight-member play reading committee casts a fairly wide net in terms of material subject matter. While Fantasy Children’s Theatre caters to young people and Community Chorus and Independent Musical Productions stage, well, musicals, “Theatre Huntsville doesn’t really have a niche,” Marsh says. “We try to do a little bit of everything. We try to cover all the bases and make everybody happy.” Although, not necessarily everybody at every single show. Superior Donuts, from the 2015-2016 season, was, in Marsh’s words, “a real experiment.” Donuts was the kind of show the board allows itself one of each season—a bit of a rule-breaker and a line-crosser. First, Donuts isn’t well known, although its August: Osage County playwright, Tracy Letts, is; second, the language and some of the subject matter can tend toward the adult; and third, its genre is tough to peg—It’s not quite a comedy, but, then, it’s not exactly a drama, either. “We went in with ﬁngers crossed,” Marsh says. And they came out pleasantly surprised. “It sold really well.” Just as satisfying, “on two separate occasions theatregoers, one a senior couple, the other, millennials, thanked us for bringing something of substance.” Not that substance is the exclusive domain of the little-known non-musical. Forever Plaid is both a crowd favorite as well as a particularly strong piece of theatre. It also has the added advantage of being downright fun. “It’s four guys singing four-part harmony,” director Hubbard says. And not just any four guys: four dead guys. “A group is on their way to a doo-wop gig when they get sideswiped by a busload of Catholic school girls on their way to see the Beatles,” explains Hubbard. Now they’re trapped Forever on stage, singing a jukebox-full of ’50s classics.

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You’ll laugh, you’ll love, you’ll want to sing along. Forever Plaid had been on Theatre Huntsville’s wishlist for several seasons before it made the ﬁnal cut this year. When the time came, Marsh and the rest of the board turned unanimously to Hubbard to direct. “I’d been waiting 20 years to do Plaid again,” Hubbard says of the personal favorite she previously staged back in the ’90s, when she and a few friends owned their own semi-pro house, Theatre ’Round the Corner. “We did 50 shows in 50 months in a 100-seat theatre in the former Belk Hudson store,” Hubbard says of her ’Round days. “People still stop me on the street to say they miss it.”

took a mid-act break from Twickenham’s 1981 production of Scrooge to report on the state of the arts in 2015, nobody would believe the specter’s terrifying tales. Hundreds of television networks to compete against? Movies on mobile devices the size of books? Live entertainment options too plentiful to get to in a year? Bah-humbug! But that’s the reality community theatre faces. Impressively, according to Marsh and Hubbard, audience levels have remained largely steady over the years. Steady, but with drastically diﬀerent expectations in terms of what audiences want from theatre and when they want it, as well as changing tastes in what they ﬁnd entertaining. Through it all, the Huntsville theatre community has adapted. More than adapted, actually—Theatre Huntsville has thrived. When asked to step into the role of Ghost of Theatre Future himself, Marsh sees a potential horizon that includes a new facility owned by Theatre Huntsville, with maybe a black box theatre for edgier, more experimental shows. That’s part wish list, part wild guess. This part is certain: no matter what the future brings, “There will always be room for live theatre.” Curtain.

Theatre Huntsville presents Forever Plaid, May 13-21, at the Von Braun Center Playhouse. For information and tickets, visit theatrehsv.org, or call (256) 536-0807.

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Supporting Cast » Clockwise from upper left: Left to right: Jason Lightfoot, Joshua Jones, Jacob Daugherty, and Cameron Duvall, in rehearsal for Forever Plaid; Plaid choreographer Marianne Windham; Fantasy Playhouse Children’s Theater actors and The Little Mermaid cast members Theresa Gardiner and Ryan Rorick; Joshua Jones rehearses the role of Sparky in Forever Plaid

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text by sara

wright covington photos by abraham rowe

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I’ll be honest, science was never my thing. My high school biology teacher, who happened to be my aunt, once told my mother that she had never seen my eyes glaze over with boredom as much as they did during her 50 minute lecture on photosynthesis. In college I took the two lowest level science courses I could tolerate/pass to get those eight required credit hours toward my super useful English degree. After that, I’ve given myself permission to pretty much shut science out unless it involves an analysis of moldy bread to determine how much is considered too much to just scrape off and serve my children. SO, when my editors suggested I write about beer nerds—more specifically, beer industry experts who make it a priority to know everything about craft beer from its endless flavor profiles to its production processes—I was less than thrilled. And though I wasn’t eager to get into conversations about the fermentation of yeast and the molecular composition of a hop, I agreed, because although I hate science, I love beer. And in case you haven’t noticed, the people of Huntsville love beer. Craft breweries and tasting rooms are popping up all over the city, and locally crafted beer can now be bought and enjoyed at dozens of different spots in town. Just over a decade ago, domestic beers mass produced by national mega breweries (think Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors) were the only beverages available on tap. From my nerd-research, I learned that prior to 2004, antiquated, pre-prohibition era laws put severe restrictions on beer in Alabama, preventing our state from brewing and selling craft beer,—which by definition is beer containing higher quality ingredients in greater concentrations. Craft beer is also produced in much smaller quantities (no more than six million barrels per year) by independent, non-mega breweries, using old but innovative ingredients, which allow for a much fuller flavor profile. In 2004, the beer nerds of Alabama united to form grassroots non-profit organization Free the Hops, which would set the chain of events in motion of making change and welcoming craft beer to Alabama by working with state leaders to get rid of old laws that kept Alabama from having a craft brewing industry. Fast forward to 2016 and Madison County now boasts eight manufacturing breweries, making Huntsville the statewide leader, surpassing even Birmingham which has only four.

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No’Ala decided to spend some time with a select few of the aﬁcionados who have helped make this happen, focusing on three of them in particular whose passion and activism have no doubt helped lead the charge. Along the way I learned from these nerds that there was deﬁnitely some chemistry involved, some legislative research, a few written exams, and even some mathematical equations, but at the end of the road, craft beer came to Alabama. And that is something that even a science neophyte can get behind.

Carie Partain, State Vice President of Free the Hops Carie Partain fell in love with craft beer on a trip to Georgia in 2009. “My husband and I went to the Brick Store Pub, which is kind of a rite of passage for most craft beer geeks. At the time, we couldn’t get the majority of the beers they had in Georgia here in Huntsville. I’m a foodie, and as soon as the beers hit my palate, I was hooked.” Partain explains that the ingredients in craft beers are much more palatable, creating a much bigger flavor profile. Craft beer also has many more ingredients than a regular beer, with endless styles and combinations for different brews. Partain says there are between 80 and 100 categorized styles of craft beer, creating infinite opportunities to pair food with so many different flavor components. She wanted to get involved with helping bring the craft beer movement to Alabama and immediately came home to Huntsville and joined Free the Hops, which she describes as a group of well-traveled, passionate people who had discovered craft beer and knew what Alabama was missing. In the spring of 2009, many of the beer laws had not yet been changed, but lawmakers were about to go into legislative session. “We initially decided to tackle the laws that would set up business and industry,” she says. “The first law was the alcohol by volume law. Commercially we couldn’t sell anything that was above six percent. The folks who wanted to start breweries wanted to have the full range.” Free the Hops wanted to take that alcohol by volume to an unlimited percentage, but settled at 13.9 percent, which was still a huge stride for craft beer. They next set out to pass the Brewery Modernization Act, which would change laws about where a brew pub could be located, removing

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the old restriction that once required a brew pub to operate only in a historic area in a county that produced beer before prohibition. Historic buildings were typically huge money pits for the brewing industry, often requiring extensive renovations to bring a building up to code for maintaining the necessary equipment required for brewing beer. The act removed this restriction, allowing breweries better opportunities to open and operate in more modern facilities. Another important milestone of this act allowed brew pubs to set up tasting rooms where patrons could consume beer onsite. It also allowed finally allowed brew pubs to package and sell their beer to other distributors. Partain believes the other major piece of legislation Free the Hops was instrumental in helping to pass was the Gourmet Bottle Bill. Prior to the passage of this bill, Alabama restricted the size of bottled and canned beer to no larger than a 16 ounce container. Because craft breweries brew many seasonal and artisanal batches, getting the container limit raised to 25.4 ounces allowed them to better market and sell their beer in larger bottles. “This was a competitive market strategy,” says Partain. “Breweries could sell small, limited batches for more money and they could offer their seasonal varieties. This change finally allowed craft beer to get up to speed in Alabama.” Another major piece of legislative change goes into effect June 1—the Growler Bill will allow patrons to purchase a limited amount of beer from the tasting rooms. Now that Free the Hops has helped to successfully set in motion legislative change in Alabama to clear the way for craft brewing, Partain says they want to focus on a second major project: beer education. “Now that we’ve got the beer here, we have to teach people what they want in the glass,” she says. “Huntsville is such an education based city. There is higher education and higher disposable income. And when you put art and science together, you get really good beer. So we wanted to teach this market what they need to know about it.” They began Rocket City Brew Fest in 2009 to educate the people of Huntsville about craft beer. By bringing in different food vendors and selecting a variety of craft beers, Partain says people were enlightened about how different beers could pair with food. From pulled pork paired with porters to cupcakes paired with pale ales,

“Huntsville is such an education based city. There is higher education and higher disposable income. And when you put art and science together, you get really good beer.” —Carie Partain

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“Huntsville is an area that has been primed. So many people are rallying around the ‘drink local and drink craft’ movement. I think the wave is deﬁnitely coming to Alabama.” —Weedy Weidenthal

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Brew Fest was designed to get people excited about the many ways to enjoy craft beer. “Once we got all this industry happening, retailers needed to know what food to pick to go with their beers,” she says. “We began consulting for bars and restaurants and even retailers who wanted to add craft beer to their inventory.”

the lifeblood of what makes this organization even possible at all.”

Free the Hops also partnered with Drake State when educator Dr. Mary Jane Taylor came to a beer education forum and approached Partain about offering a beer education course. “Drake State is very workforce education focused,” she says. “Dr. Taylor said she wanted to get the ball rolling on getting the workforce trained and educated about beer. We ran the first class to a sold out class of 40.” For that first class, Partain says they brought in retailers, distributers, a brewer, a brewery owner, a tourism representative, and even restaurant owners to discuss how to sell and pair beer. Class participants ranged from restaurant servers and culinary students looking to learn more about food and beer pairings to even students in the HVAC program who wanted to learn more about the cooling systems in breweries. The day and a half class was a huge success, and definitely generated enough interest to offer a follow-up course. Now with a better idea of what people are looking for, the class’s second run has been expanded to two days with an optional third day where class participants can learn more about beer cicerone certification, which is professional certification for individuals demonstrating a high level of expertise in their knowledge and understanding of craft beer.

While we creative majors were diagramming sentences, studying art history, and praying for a genius lab partner to help us pass Earth Science 101, Weedy Weidenthal was creating chemistry experiments in his own backyard and traveling the world to study the science of making beer. And at just 25 years old, he has already proven that exceptional craft beer is truly a healthy mixture of chemistry combined with creative genius. “I started off drinking craft beer,” he says. “I had my first beer when I was living in Wisconsin. I was 16 at the time.” A self-described military brat, Weidenthal eventually moved back to Alabama to attend Jacksonville State, where he attended keg parties full of Miller and Bud Light, with nary a craft brew in site. “I’d never had a light beer in my life before that, and I thought there was something wrong with it,” he says. “I realized at that point that if I was going to drink good beer in Alabama in 2008, I was going to have to brew it myself.” Brew it himself he did, and what began as a hobby has developed into a career that has taken him all over the world, and eventually back to Huntsville where he has been instrumental in helping the craft beer movement to arrive. Weidenthal began home brewing his own beer and started out making about 300 gallons a year—all in a 750 square foot apartment. “My first two years of brewing, I made about 60 batches,” he says. “I brewed in my fiancé’s backyard and then carried it over to my apartment. For me it wasn’t about drinking the beer; it was about brewing it.” When the Alcohol by Volume limit for craft beer was changed to 13.9 percent in 2009, Weidenthal got even more serious about brewing beer and his hobby turned into an all-out obsession. He began reading and researching on beer advocate home brewing forums and soon started buying his own equipment. After his college coursework began to suffer, Weidenthal made the decision to leap headfirst into studying and making beer. “I didn’t do too well in my classes because I was busy reading about or brewing beer,” he says. “So I moved back home to Huntsville, stopped the management degree, got a

Free the Hops has no doubt been the driving force that has enabled Alabama’s arrival on the craft beer scene. And for Carie Partain, the journey is largely about laws and education, but also about the sense of camaraderie that comes along with Huntsville’s craft beer family. “We are in each other’s live. We come together and we bring bottles and food. We have a truly dynamic volunteer base here, and it’s all of them who make everything we want to do possible.” Partain insists that she could never do what she does without the behind-the-scenes nerds who brew the beer, the volunteers and sponsors, and the lobbyists who are helping to bring change to Alabama. “I’m just the mouthpiece and the cheerleader,” she says. “I appear to be geeky by association, but they are the ones who make it all happen. And that’s

Weedy Weidenthal, Brewmaster at Blue Pants Brewery

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job at Blue Pants, and started working on getting an international diploma in brewing technology.” In his coursework with the World Brewing Academy, Weidenthal took online courses and spent several weeks in both Chicago and Munich, Germany, where he learned hands-on technique working with scaled down versions of what you would see in a large craft brewery. He studied fermentation and flavor profiles in Chicago before heading to Germany for several more weeks of study, which included a two-week European brewery tour. “We went to three breweries a day and saw breweries of all sizes,” he says. “The smallest we saw was a little bigger than Blue Pants and the largest was about the size of Sam Adams.” Now that Weidenthal has settled into his role as Brewmaster at Blue Pants, he is most interested in staying on the cutting edge of brewing craft beer. Blue Pants gives him the freedom to be creative, and that creativity revolves around a lot of chemistry experimentation. “Lately I’ve gotten a lot more into studying biochemistry, especially with a particular type of yeast strain I discovered,” he says. “The yeast I discovered has the ability to biotransform hop compounds.” Weidenthal explains that there are specific type of hops that have a high oil content, and the yeast strain he discovered can tame that oil and biotransform it to a different compound, turning it into beta citronella. What this translates to for us non-science majors is that beer that would normally come across as floral or rosy comes across as citrusy—specifically like candied oranges, according to Weidenthal. This yeast strain does not settle out in the beer, making it hazy and helping it retain all the hoppy flavors so it will last longer. Another of Weidenthal’s experiments involves working with wild yeast, which he says is something not many other breweries are doing in Alabama. For some of their beers, Blue Pants uses Brettanomyces yeast, also just called Brett yeast, which adds even more complexity and often adds a strong pineapple character to the brew. Working with this type of yeast yields what the craft world calls “funky beers” and according to Weidenthal, the gaining popularity of these beers is something that has only taken off in recent years as this type of fermentation has only been studied for a little more than a decade. “The thing I like about this industry is

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that it is evolving quickly,” he says. “The stuff of hop aromas is a very new science. We learned the foundation of the science in school, and it’s allowed me to branch off. Bio transformations are a new study and it has just recently been discovered that they exist for hop compounds.” In addition to trying out new experiments and ideas, Weidenthal also embraces the home brewing movement and believes it’s another essential piece of beer development. He notes that when he began, he only knew of one other home brewer in the area, and now Huntsville is full of craft beer lovers who are embracing home brewing. “Home brewers are coming out and offering their samples and offering us critiques,” he says. “As commercial brewers we learn a lot from home brewers because they can experiment a lot more at home without having to worry about the business side of beer, which can really help feed the craft beer movement.” When Weidenthal first became involved in Huntsville’s craft beer scene in 2012, there were 2,100 breweries in the United States. In just four years, that number has doubled, with the South leading as one of the fastest growing regions for craft beer. That’s a very exciting shift, and there is no denying Weidenthal’s innovations at Blue Pants are helping to put Alabama on the craft beer map. “Huntsville is an area that has been primed. So many people are rallying around the ‘drink local and drink craft’ movement. I think the wave is definitely coming to Alabama.”

Keith Yager, Head Brewer and Co-founder of Yellowhammer Brewing When Keith Yager arrived in Alabama from his native Pennsylvania in 1993, he looked around, discovered there was no craft beer here, and promptly began brewing his own. Little did he know that over 20 years later, he would be one of Alabama’s leading craft beer pioneers, co-opening one of Huntsville’s ﬁrst craft breweries, Yellowhammer Brewing. Yager admits that brewing beer speaks to his artistic side—he has a degree in art—and he has also always enjoyed cooking, so brewing beer was a natural ﬁt for him. “When I started

“There is almost an inﬁnite amount of creativity that can go into diﬀerent beers. That to me is what is interesting about brewing. I am constantly learning more about it, and I’ve been doing this for 20 years.”—Keith Yager

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brewing, I just really enjoyed the process,” he says, “and it turned into kind of an obsessive hobby. I started out with a five gallon system, then I went to 10, then my copartner, Don Milligan, and I built a one barrel brew house.” Before long, Yager says he was buying his own grain and grinding it, and his passion for the craft is what would lead him to eventually help launch Yellowhammer. Yager is self-trained, and says that science is a huge portion of what he does, but that for him, good brewing has to begin with a well-developed palate— a true appreciation and understanding of the different tastes of beer. That ability to taste and differentiate the flavors, plus a passion to learn about beer, are all he says it takes to make beer. “You do have to understand pH and pre- and post-fermentation and how that all relates to the beer, but it’s not too chemically involved,” he says. “It’s not rocket science. It is approachable if you are willing to learn how. The key is that to be good, you have to be able to taste. If you don’t understand the taste of beer, you will struggle at being a good brewer.” As one of the now several breweries in Alabama, Yager says Yellowhammer sets itself apart by choosing a more narrow emphasis for their beer—choosing to focus on Belgian and German brews. They have adapted the slogan “European Tradition, Uniquely American,” and Yager says they strive to focus on how they can merge tradition with innovation. “I like to give a nice dichotomy between the styles,” he says. “Belgians have more yeast character and there is a lot of creativity that goes on there. There are no real parameters with the styles. But German beers are the opposite; they use a lot more

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tradition. They use clean yeast flavors and the styles are more astringent.” As an example of their innovations, Yager says where a typical Belgian beer would be brewed with coriander and orange peel, Yellowhammer might instead use fresh ginger and kaffir lime leaves. They are currently doing a lot of exploring with German styles, and they are also putting a heavy focus on what they consider their flagship beers—the Yellowhammer Belgian White, Rebellion Red Lager, Midnight Special, and a soon-to-arrive Hopes Fell Hop Lager. “We want our flagship beers to be known as consistent products you can buy again and again. They aren’t really high alcohol—all are under six percent. And that’s because we want you to be able to go sit down with a six pack and have a couple and not have to struggle getting up the next day.” Yager says he hopes to see Yellowhammer also establish itself as a regional brewer who also offers special, one-time bombers of different seasonal varieties. But one thing is certain—with hundreds of beer styles and endless variations to consider, beer never gets old to Yager. He says that craft beer has been evolving for as long as wine has, and the learning process will never be complete for him. “There is almost an infinite amount of creativity that can go into different beers. That to me is what is interesting about brewing. I am constantly learning more about it, and I’ve been doing this for 20 years.” Still only five years old, Yellowhammer is still in its infancy, but with Alabama continuing to update craft beer laws and freedom at his fingertips, Yager says he sees big things for the future of brewing and for Yellowhammer. He hopes Alabama beer will begin taking over market share from some of the bigger breweries and moving into other states as well. But at the end of the day, for Yager it really is all about celebrating the art of craft beer. “My favorite thing about beer is sitting down after a hard day of work and having time to relax with nothing else to do and drinking a beer and contemplating the flavors and the aromas. To be able to sit down and enjoy a good craft beer just caps off a good day.”

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text by sara wright covington » portrait by olivia reed

If summer for you means cold brews and hot tunes, you may want to consider arriving at your favorite brewery a little early this year to grab a good seat. That’s our takeaway from a recent conversation with booking agent and talent manager Justin Tidwell, who says the Huntsville live music scene is more popular than ever. No’Ala sat down with the founder of Rocket City Sounds to chat about the business behind the bands, and the exciting economic and entertainment future Tidwell believes live music can bring to Huntsville. Justin, most of us think bars and bands go together like barley and hops. But there’s got to be more to performing live than just walking into a brewery and plugging in a bass. How did your artist booking agency come about? I started small, a couple years ago, managing friends’ bands. Along the way, I made some good contacts with bands and venues, and pretty quickly realized I had a knack for this type of work. Once I’d established myself as a successful liaison for musicians looking to book shows, it was clear to me that I wanted to represent bands fulltime. From there, it all just sort of Live music: It’s not just good; happened naturally. it’s good for you!

So, it’s 2014, and Rocket City Sounds is oﬃcially up and running. Did you go out pounding the pavement in search of bands, or did the bands come to you? The amount of bands and musicians that came out of the woodwork was overwhelming. That helped me feel more conﬁdent that I was doing the right thing, and that Huntsville really needed someone to encourage relationships between venues and artists. Sounds like this is more than just a business for you. It’s so much more than a business! Music has done so much for me, and I just want to do what I can to show my appreciation for it. I want to help musicians share their music with everyone willing to listen. So starting Rocket City Sounds was a natural evolution. What has the developing process been like for Rocket City Sounds in the past two years? It’s growing fast. The thirst and desire for music is here to stay now. We have a lot of local bands in Huntsville, and bringing in acts from other cities helps give our local bands more exposure. It’s taken two years, but I don’t have

According to a study conducted by London’s Royal College of Music, Centre for Performance Science, live music attendance reduces stress and increases a sense of well-being. Researchers collected saliva samples from 117 concertgoers as they arrived at a concert, then again at intermission. The results demonstrated an “across the board” decrease in levels of stress hormones cortisol and cortisone. Note: only classical music concertgoers were tested, so don’t ask your insurer for your TicketMaster deductible just yet.

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ROCKET CITY SOUND CHECK to push music down venues’ throats like I did in the early days. I’m kind of the catalyst to help the venues now. Where do you typically book bands to perform in Huntsville and where do you see them performing in ﬁve or 10 years? I’ve booked bands at most of the venues in Huntsville over the past couple of years and still book some bands at Coppertop Dive ‘n Dine, Furniture Factory, Yellowhammer Brewing, Maggie Meyers, and Sportspage. I’m the talent buyer for Humphrey’s Bar & Grill, so I’m responsible for all the live music that happens there. You’ve mentioned before that you see Huntsville as becoming a music hub for the Southeast. I want Huntsville to evolve into a destination for touring bands and become a place people think of when they want to hear live music.

Justin Tidwell’s observations about the Huntsville music scene aren’t just anecdotal. A 22-city international study conducted by the World Intellectual Property Organization pinpointed ﬁve crucial characteristics of a “Music City,” which WIPO deﬁnes as “cities that have, or are, encouraging the development of a vibrant music economy.”

WIPO’s ﬁndings echo Tidwell’s experiences, and reinforce his call for new venues dedicated to live music acts. · the presence of artists and musicians · a thriving music scene · available spaces and places for music · a receptive and engaged audience · record labels and other music-related businesses

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How do you see that happening? I can see Huntsville becoming a routine stop on national and regional bands’ touring schedules. Huntsville is perfectly positioned to become a music hub, because we are so centrally located to all the touring cities in the Southeast. We are literally right off 65, so if a band is going from Birmingham to Nashville, why wouldn’t they stop in Huntsville? The people are here, the economy is here, so it’s a great fit. I would love for this city to become known as a music metropolis. What’s standing in the way of making that dream a reality? Very recently we’ve had new venues and breweries open, and a lot of them are slowly working their way into having live music three to five times per week—which is great— but we don’t have a location strictly dedicated to music, and that’s a problem. What are you most proud to have accomplished with Rocket City Sounds so far? We have a great scene in Huntsville now. At the beginning of the year, we got an email from national talent booking site Sonic Bids. They listed five up-and-coming music scenes, and Huntsville was number three. To keep up-to-date with the Rocket City music scene, follow Rocket City Sounds on Facebook.

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A DINING ROOM WITH A VIEW

For help in realizing his vision, Vonk turned to Whitney Dalton, property manager at Belk-Hudson Lofts, the staging ground for Chef Vonk’s soiree. Together, they organized the preliminary details, starting where all hosts start, regardless of altitude—the guest list. To increase the sense of adventure, Vonk and Dalton’s list of invitees included people who knew one another, and some who didn’t. The seasoned event planners knew that between the delectable menu and the inspiring venue, guests who arrived as strangers would leave as friends.

text by sara wright covington

Wine and yummy appetizers facilitate camaraderie as much as conversation, of course, and for those, Vonk partnered with Church Street Wines and Colin Woltmann and Allison Clark of Athens’ The Hummus.

photos/styling by abraham and susan rowe

“I knew I wanted a beautiful cheese board that offered fruits, cheeses, spreads, nuts, and of course I wanted to feature hummus.” Vonk considers those offerings indispensable, a lesson he learned while working for Malakasis. Last summer, a lucky group of people sat down for a highbrow culinary experience in a fitting location: a downtown Huntsville rooftop. The altitudinous dinner party was the brainchild of Chef Rick Vonk, who likes “to present the kind of dining experience you wouldn’t find in any ordinary city.” And an ordinary city Huntsville most certainly is not. Vonk credits Huntsville’s transient culture for its willingness to experiment with new cuisines presented in unusual locations. “We’re used to something new every once in a while,” Vonk says of his fellow Huntsvillians, whom he credits for having “a palate that craves a variety of different foods.” Wyoming native Vonk began his culinary career with another Huntsville original, Tasia Malakasis, and her Belle Chevre Creamery. After a few years of apprenticeship with Malakasis, and with her blessing, Vonk struck out on his own to create exceptional dining experiences with recipes that include atmosphere, as well as fine ingredients. For his adventure last summer, Vonk—inspired perhaps by the big Wyoming sky he grew up beneath—set out to host his next dinner party as close to the clouds as an elevator would allow.

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Seated at one long table, guests were presented, ﬁrst, with the eight-foot-long cheese board, followed by an amusebouche of roasted red grape and garlic masala hummus crostini. Next on the menu, black bean hummus and pesto ﬁlled arancini appetizers, each paired with a rich marinara. For the entree, Vonk chose apple glazed pork belly and chorizo and mussels in a white wine butter sauce. “The pork belly is so incredibly moist, and then you have the crispiness of the skin and the sweetness of the bourbon with a little bit of maple. It’s a simple bite, but once you taste it, you can’t help but sit back in your seat and close your eyes.” Eton mess, a traditional English dessert, adapted for the occasion by Chef Vonk, brought the evening to a sweet conclusion.

Location logistics forced Vonk to prepare the meal downstairs, but he managed the occasional pop-in throughout the evening to mingle with his guests. “The overall mood was one of people genuinely enjoying themselves,” he says. “It was a very communal evening of everyone enjoying the food and the atmosphere all at one long table together.”

Host your own al fresco dinner party with our sample menu from Chef Vonk, who assures us the food tastes every bit as good on ground level. (Note: The recipes have been edited for clarity, but have not been tested by No’Ala.) See page 106 for recipes.

Vonk intends to make unique dinner happenings a habit, with more this summer. In the process, the chef hopes to introduce his guests to new ﬂavor proﬁles and pairings in inspiring settings throughout the city. “There’s a sort of mystique that goes with eating food in an environment that’s just as pure as the food,” he says. “When everyone is sitting down and talking and eating, it allows for really genuine connections. For me, as a chef, creating those memories is what I like to do.” continued, p. 86

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continued from p. 85

Rick Vonk

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text by sarah gaede photos by patrick hood

After studying the schedule and teasing ourselves with the menu at ilovebacontruck.com, my husband Henry and I drove straight to Straight to Ale in Huntsville, where an appearance of the I Love Bacon food truck was promised for 6 p.m. Shortly before six, a bright red truck emblazoned with decals pulled up, and a man with the cropped hair and hustle of a longtime chef jumped out, opened the serving shelf, and began wiping down the surface. After I introduced myself, his ﬁrst words were: “Road grime is one of our biggest challenges.”

Josh Patrick, to whom I was speaking, is one of the partners in a thriving food truck business. He and Keith Hill, the other partner, met in Huntsville years ago while working as DJs. Keith grew up in Decatur and has been, in Josh’s words, one of the seminal DJs in Huntsville for years. Keith has a background in business and music, and a passion for good

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“YOU WANT TO COME BACK TO HUNTSVILLE AND START A FOOD TRUCK?” food. Josh, who is from Florence, has a business degree from UNA and a degree from Culinard in Birmingham. He worked in ﬁne dining in Birmingham for years, and as a sushi chef in Phoenix, among other things. A few years ago, Josh found himself in Utah, sitting on a hill regarding the scenery, when his phone rang. It was Keith. “You want to come back to Huntsville and start a food truck?” They found an old nacho truck in Atlanta, kicked around a few concepts, settled on bacon, and launched the business three years ago, just ahead of the food truck wave in Huntsville. While the rules for food trucks are complex— they have to have a business license for every address where they park their truck—the Huntsville City Council, which is strongly supportive of the food truck culture, is changing the law so that the trucks will need only one portable license. There will still be restrictions: a food truck cannot park within a certain distance of a brick and mortar restaurant,

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which Josh says is just professional courtesy. And they will still be subject to stringent inspection standards—the commissary where they do their prep work is inspected twice a year by the health department, the truck four times a year, with random inspections. When they were first in business, Josh and Keith drove around looking for good locations. Now they’ve been in operation for three years, they are booked months in advance for specific locations and events. Once in a while, on an off day, they will go to their downtown spot, for which they have a license, and alert their fans on social media. They also do private events, such as weddings and parties, with customized menus from vegetarian/vegan to apple-cider bourbon pork cooked sousvide, thanks to their completely equipped chef ’s kitchen. Josh says the secret to their success is time management. The order system is iPad-based, and they pride themselves

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on a three-minute turnaround from ordering to serving. This enables them to do 100 orders an hour.

cheese. A new bacon truck is due in August, just in the nick of time, as the current one is beyond retirement age.

All the I Love Bacon menu items have musical connections. My husband had the Miami Sound Machine, their riﬀ on the classic Cuban sandwich, with pork belly, Black Forest ham, Swiss cheese, dill pickles, and yellow mustard on grilled, pressed Cuban bread—a better choice for dining in our car, it turned out. I had the Carlos Santana, the national sandwich of Uruguay, according to Josh. It is described as a “huge sandwich, brioche bun, ﬂank steak, bacon, ham, sunny side up egg, Swiss, lettuce, tomato, smoked mayo”— in short, a meaty, messy, dining challenge. Although I made do with about 20 napkins, I really needed hosing down. But it was worth it.

The keys to the partners’ success are many. They are long-time friends with similar interests. They both have backgrounds in business. They are both enthusiastic about good food. They aren’t afraid to take risks. They are focused, work hard, yet take time out to relax and cultivate other interests—in Josh’s case, his farm where he raises free-range chickens and hydroponic greens. Most important, according to Josh, they hire experienced, skilled workers, whom they value highly and trust completely. I referred to them, partly in jest, as the Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas of the food truck world, but Josh said they are not worthy of such a title. Maybe not, but in the food truck world, Josh Patrick and Keith Hill are at the very top of their game.

The partners will be opening The Big Cheese food truck at the end of April, serving gourmet grilled cheese and mac and

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THEY PRIDE THEMSELVES ON A THREE-MINUTE TURNAROUND FROM ORDERING TO SERVING.

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continued from p. 85

Entrée: Seared Chicken Breast with Warm Cauliflower Purée and Spring Vegetables, Frisée with Blueberry Balsamic Vinaigrette Ingredients: • 4 boneless half chicken breasts, 6-8 ounces each • Salt, pepper, and any other desired seasoning to taste • 1 small head cauliflower • 1 quart chicken stock • 1 small onion, diced small • Clarified butter, bacon fat, olive oil, or neutral oil • Roasted or steamed spring vegetables of choice (I might choose asparagus, rainbow carrots, fiddlehead ferns, radishes, etc., just to give some variation in color.) • Blueberry balsamic vinegar • Olive oil • Salt and pepper • 1 small head of frisée lettuce, washed and separated Directions: Preheat oven to 350º. Butterfly the chicken breasts and season with desired spices. (Google a video on how to do this.) Let sit for 15 minutes, allowing chicken to take in seasonings.

Appetizer: Caramelized Fig, Blistered Jalapeño, Feta, and Cilantro Crostini Ingredients: • 6 fresh Mission ﬁgs, quartered • 1/4 cup ﬁne sugar • 3 jalapeños, seeded and julienned (you might want to wear gloves to do this) • 12 toasted baguette rounds • Olive oil • Garlic • Crumbled feta • Cilantro leaves

While chicken is sitting, cut cauliflower into florets and put into small pot. Add about 1/4 cup of stock to pot and turn up heat. Season with salt, and add onion. Cover and steam until cauliflower is tender, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat. Put cauliflower into food processor, blender, or Vitamix, reserving the stock. Pulse until smooth, add reserved stock if needed for desired texture. Heat fat or oil in a heavy ovenproof skillet. (Rick likes bacon fat).

Directions:

Place the chicken breasts in the skillet, presentation side down ﬁrst. This allows for a better looking plate when served. Sear on both sides for about 2 minutes, or until the meat is well-browned. After searing both sides, place in the oven and ﬁnish cooking until cooked through (160 degrees on a meat thermometer). Remove and let rest.

Heat cast iron skillet to medium. Coat the cut sides of the ﬁgs in the sugar and place cut side down in skillet. Sear one side until sugar is caramelized, then sear other cut side.

For the spring vegetables, I use a variety to give good colors. I also choose vegetables I can sauté or roast, with the exception of radishes. Choose your vegetables and garnish the cauliﬂower purée.

Heat another skillet to medium high; sautée jalapeños until they are blistered. You’ll hear a cracking/popping sound, which means it’s working.

The vinaigrette is incredibly simple. Just add the oil to the vinegar in a 3 to 1 ratio and mix well. Season with salt if desired and lightly dress the frisée.

To toast your own baguette rounds, cut a good quality baguette on a bias about 1/2 inch thick. Place on a baking sheet, brush olive oil on the top, and place in a 350º oven When the rounds become lightly toasted (watch carefully), remove from oven, and using half a peeled garlic clove, rub the top of each round. This imparts the ﬂavor of garlic to the bread.

Mound cauliﬂower purée on plate, place chicken on top, garnish with vegetables, and place frisée on side.

Divide the seared jalapeño among the rounds, followed by two pieces of ﬁg, crumbled feta, and a cilantro leaf.

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Dessert: Lemon Blackberry Crepe Cake with Honey Chevre Cream Ingredients: • • • • • • • • • • • • •

1 cup all-purpose ﬂour 2 large eggs 1/2 cup milk 1/2 cup water 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted 1 cup heavy whipped cream Oil for pan Belle Chevre breakfast cheese with Honey Honey 1 cup fresh blackberries Zest of 1 lemon Sugar

Directions: In a large bowl, mix together the ﬂour and eggs. Gradually add the milk and water until combined. Add the salt and butter and mix until smooth. Heat a lightly oiled small nonstick skillet or crepe pan to medium high heat. Pour about 1/4 cup of batter into the pan, making sure to tilt the pan to coat entire bottom. Cook for about 2 minutes, then turn and cook other side. Continue with batter until it’s all used up; stack crepes on a plate to cool. You should have between 8 and 10. Whip heavy cream, adding in chevre and honey to taste. Be sure not to over-whip. You want a nice smooth texture. When crepes have cooled, begin stacking them, alternating crepes and whipped cream. Let the cake chill until ready to garnish and serve. To garnish, I like to let the blackberries simmer in about 3 tbsp of water and a dusting of sugar, then purée and strain out the seeds. Drizzle this on the plate and zest a bit of lemon over the cake before serving. It makes for a light, bright ﬁnish to your dinner.

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

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food for thought » Sarah Gaede This was in the ’60s, before the meteoric rise of celebrity chefs. We learned to make the kind of meals our mothers put on the table every night.

LIGHT AND SPRINGY When I was in junior high and high school, back in the middle of the last century, I took a full academic load (except for math, from which I retired after Algebra 2 in the 10th grade.) To rest my brain once a day, I chose home economics for my elective. Back then, home ec was required for girls in the 7th and 8th grade; boys took shop. After 8th grade, instead of band, art, chorus, or gym (which I loathed, and was thrilled to be done with in 10th grade), I learned to sew (I made many of my clothes in high school, which, alas, was obvious), knit, embroider, and wrap presents. I learned how a lady should hold a cigarette (really!) and, best of all, how to cook. I also got to mingle once a day with the greaser girls, which was an enlightening experience. We had a love of the Monkees in common, but that was about it. This was in the 60s, before the meteoric rise of celebrity chefs. We learned to make the kind of meals our mothers put on the table every night—a meat, a vegetable, a starch, some kind of bread, tossed salad with iceberg lettuce and bottled dressing, and, two or three times a week, dessert, although I never thought Jell-O, even with canned mandarin orange slices, really counted. One thing we did not learn was how to put together appealing seasonal menus for entertaining, that would not only please dinner guests, but also not stress the cook. This is something that takes time to learn through trial and error. It helps to have a guru like Mark Bittman, my go-to guy for anything culinary. I’ve recommended his basic cookbook, How to Cook Everything, before. If I ever have a question about an online recipe, I go straight to Guru Mark. I also love his Minimalist columns and books. The following seasonal menu, easy on the cook and lovely for a spring dinner, features three of his recipes—fresh pea soup, roasted salmon, and strawberry fool. The pea soup is far better than I thought it would be. It is a stunning color, and tastes fresh and herbal. Unless you can ﬁnd extremely fresh, sweet English peas, the frozen ones will be better and cheaper. And you don’t have to shell them. Guru Mark says this soup can be served cold, but my husband, who ate the cold leftover soup before I could try it, liked it better hot. I made mine with tarragon, but if you despise anything of the licorice variety you might be better oﬀ with mint. Order your salmon from Publix a few days in advance, and have them skin it. I pick through asparagus at the store to make sure none of them are sun-burned (sort of yellow) or have mushy tips, and are all about the same size. Publix also sells the Enchanted Rose potatoes. When Alabama strawberries are in season, this would be a great way to feature them. I might serve the dessert with LU Petit Ecolier cookies—Publix has them too. Wasn’t it clever of me to come up with a one-stop shopping menu? As for wine, a French Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, or white Burgundy would be lovely.

Fresh Pea Soup

Fresh Asparagus

• • • • •

• • • •

1 tablespoon olive oil 1/2 cup (about 3) thinly sliced shallots 1 large clove garlic, ﬁnely chopped 3 1/2 cups cold water (preferably ﬁltered) 1 pound shelled fresh English peas, or 1 pound frozen 1/2 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon or mint leaves 1/2 tablespoon kosher salt 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1/4 cup half and half

Heat olive oil in heavy pot or large saucepan. Add shallots and garlic and cook over medium heat until shallots are just wilted. Add water, bring to a boil, turn down heat and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes. Add peas, tarragon, salt and pepper; return to boil. Turn down heat and simmer for 5 minutes, or until peas are tender. Remove from heat and let cool for 30 minutes. Purée with an immersion blender (or in a regular blender, in batches) until very smooth. Push through a mesh sieve into a clean pot. Discard pea skins left in sieve. Stir in half and half and add salt and pepper to taste if necessary. Can be made and refrigerated the day before. Reheat gently to serve.

1 pound asparagus 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1 tablespoon butter Juice of 1/2 lemon Freshly ground pepper to taste

Cut the woody ends oﬀ the asparagus. To prepare in advance, wrap in damp paper towels, put in a plastic bag, and refrigerate. To cook, ﬁll a large skillet about two-thirds full with cold water; season with salt. When water comes to a simmer, add asparagus, all pointing one way. Set the timer for 4 minutes. While asparagus cooks, microwave butter and lemon juice in a small dish covered with wax paper (it contains the butter explosion that often occurs). Asparagus are done when they are bright green and just starting to turn translucent on the cut ends. Remove with tongs and place on a platter—all pointing one way. (You may have a guest with OCD.) Pour melted lemon butter over asparagus, season to taste with pepper, and serve. Serves 4

Serves 4

Note: If the asparagus are really fat, they need to be peeled. Peeled asparagus are a luxury and a labor of love, but they are stunning to serve. Google if you are interested in the how-to.

Roasted Salmon

Strawberry Fool

• • • • • • •

• • • •

2 tablespoons unsalted butter 2 tablespoons good olive oil 1/4 cup chopped dill or parsley, optional Salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 2-3 pound salmon ﬁllet, skinned Chopped dill or Italian parsley for garnish Lemon wedges for garnish

Heat the oven to 475 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with heavy-duty foil. When the oven is hot, put the butter and oil on the sheet and melt in oven, about 1 minute. Don’t let it brown. Spread the butter and oil out evenly and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and optional herbs. Place the salmon in the pan skin-side down, salt and pepper lightly, and roast until it is just cooked through, 8 to 12 minutes. To see if it’s done, stick a paring knife in the center; it should be bright pink and still a little translucent. Garnish with chopped dill or parsley and lemon wedges.

1 pint very ripe strawberries 1/2 cup sugar, or to taste 1 cup heavy cream 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, optional

Hull strawberries; wash, drain, and chop into 1/4-inchthick pieces. Toss with half the sugar and wait 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they give up their juices. Place half the strawberries and all the juices in a blender or mini food processor and purée. Pour purée back into bowl with chopped strawberries. Whip the cream with remaining sugar and vanilla until cream is stiﬀ and holds peaks easily. Fold berries and cream together and serve immediately, or put in serving dishes, cover, and refrigerate for up to 2 hours. Big martini glasses or parfait glasses would be pretty. Serves S Se Ser ve 4 ves ve

Serves 4

Boiled New Potatoes • 1 28-ounce bag Enchanted Rose or other small red new potatoes, cut in half unless they are tiny • Kosher salt and pepper to taste • 2-4 tablespoons butter • Italian parsley for garnish, optional Put potatoes in a big saucepan and cover with cold water. Add about 1 tablespoon kosher salt. Cover and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 15 minutes, or until tender (stick a paring knife in one). Drain, return to pan over low heat, add butter and salt and pepper to taste, and shake until potatoes are coated. Toss with optional parsley before serving.

may/june  | noalastudios.com | 

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parting shot » Robert Rausch

BRANDI MCGUYER AS LUCILLE BALL

huntsville symphony orchestra presents its 2016-2017 season

Gregory Vajda, Music Director and Conductor FAURÉ REQUIEM Friday, September 16, 2016 | Classical 1

JOHN WILLIAMS Saturday, February 4, 2017 | Pops 3

YOGA Sunday, September 25, 2016 | Casual Classics 1

SYMPHONIES ON THE SIDE Sunday, February 12, 2017 | Casual Classics 2

MAHLER 5 Friday, October 14, 2016 | Classical 2

HSO WAGNER WITHOUT WORDS Saturday, February 18, 2017 | Classical 4

WICKED DIVAS Friday, November 4, 2016 | Pops 1

A PAINTER IN THE ORCHESTRA Sunday, March 26, 2017 | Casual Classics 3

BÉLA FLECK & ABIGAIL WASHBURN Saturday, December 31, 2016 | Pops 2

BEETHOVEN PASTORAL Saturday, April 1, 2017 | Classical 5

FLUTE AND HARP IMPRESSIONS Saturday, January 21, 2017 | Classical 3

THE RITE OF SPRING Saturday, April 22, 2017 | Classical 6

COMPOSE YOURSELF Saturday, February 4, 2017 | FREE Family Concert

VIDEO GAMES LIVE Saturday, May 6, 2017 | SPECIAL Event

hso.org 256.539.4818 700 monroe street sw suite 410 huntsville, al 35801

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