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“I want to win some trophies this year.”
BY SAM SPENCER
We were thirty minutes into a conversation with Charlotte FC midfielder Brandt Bronico and the MLS veteran was ready to answer my question before I finished it.
“We gotta start bringing some trophies to Charlotte,” says Bronico. “Obviously, top four is a good thing to target, but there’s a lot of opportunity. There’s Leagues Cup, there’s Open Cup, and we got the MLS Cup as well as the Supporters’ Shield. So I want to win at least one of those trophies.”
Bronico has been waiting a while for that first trophy with the club. In February 2022, he joined goalkeeper Kristijan Kahlina, now-assistant coach Christian Fuchs, and eight others to take to the pitch in Charlotte FC’s inaugural match at Audi Field in Washington, D.C.
Three years later, Bronico and Kahlina are the only two players left in the lineup from the club’s first starting 11. Of the nine bench players for that match, only midfielder Ben Bender and goalkeeper George Marks are still around, making Bronico an important veteran presence in the club — as well as the team’s representative to the MLS Players Association.
“You don’t have to be a captain to be a leader, and I think that’s an important message for
people to grasp,” Bronico told Nerve in a February interview. “This is going to be my ninth year in the league. I kind of know how things work … so if guys have any issues or are struggling to get acclimated, I’m more than happy to help with that.”
Despite Bronico’s leadership role, he started the first match of the season on the bench. Up until this year, the midfielder had started in every opening match in which he was available.
“I was a little bit surprised that I didn’t start,” said Bronico. “I had one of my best preseasons ever, especially as a professional.”
Bronico’s eventful preseason included not only three goals, but the birth of his first child, Brooks.
As one of the club’s “OGs,” Bronico’s bio may be familiar to you: He’s a North Carolina guy who grew up in High Point. He played at UNC Charlotte and with the Chicago Fire. He’s known for being a gym rat and one of the hardest workers on the team.
“There’s always a couple of us, like me, [Brandt], and [Kahlina], who are [in the gym] early,” Charlotte goalkeeper George Marks told Nerve, adding that the trio usually arrives sometime between 8:158:30 a.m.
“His work rate is infectious. That’s what makes
Brandt special, I think,” said Charlotte FC captain Ashley Westwood. “You see that from the stands, we see it on the pitch; the amount of running he does, the amount of tireless running he does.”
Before college, Bronico played soccer at the club level, and early in his young career a setback at his club became a turning point in his ambitions. He was on trial for the Olympic Development Program, which recruited the best soccer players in each state for interstate competitions.
“When I was 12 or 13, there were six [ODP] teams in North Carolina,” said Bronico. “I went to a tryout and didn’t make one team.
However, Bronico would use the setback as inspiration to improve his game. In less than two years, Bronico would make the third team, then the second team, and finally the first.
“It gives you that motivation to want to get better, to want to train more. It’s like fuel,” said Bronico. “[If] you don’t think I can make it, well, I’m gonna work harder and I’m gonna prove you wrong.”
“It’s all about proving people wrong, honestly,” Bronico continued. “I’ve had so many people in my life tell me I wasn’t good enough, tell me I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t make it, but [now] it’s like, [screw you]. I’m gonna go out, I’m gonna do it.”
Proving people wrong is part of Brandt’s ethos. Bronico would go on to play Division I men’s soccer with the 49ers before playing for MLS’s Chicago Fire — but as soon as Charlotte FC was announced, he knew he wanted to come home.
“[Charlotte] really just gets me excited,” said Bronico. “It’s so close to home and I have roots here. We just had our first kid here, I got engaged to my wife here.”
While at UNC Charlotte, Bronico met his future wife, Rebecca, which is where they built a tradition of delivering important messages on pizza boxes that continues on today.
“In college, she loved Hungry Howie’s garlic thincrust pizza,” said Brandt. “So we have this pizza thing, and that’s how I asked her to be my wife.”
The “pizza thing” goes back to when Brandt first asked Rebecca out in college. He brought Rebecca her favorite pizza and on the back of the pizza box
wrote, “This may sound cheesy, but will you be my girlfriend?”
The pizza box messages continued for other major life events, like when Brandt delivered the line to Rebecca in Romare Bearden Park as, “This may sound cheesy, but will you marry me?”
On June 19, 2024, Rebecca flipped the script. Bronico had just scored his first goal of the season against Orlando City SC, a nice chip over the goalkeeper off of an unselfish Patrick Agyemang pass.
“So we got this whole thing with the pizza, and so I was walking up the stairs [after the match], and there was a Hungry Howie’s box on the island and I was like, ‘Oh, like, I guess she got pizza.’ Like I didn’t think of it, I’m like still buzzing off the goal, and I opened the box and I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’”
Rebecca had written on the box, “This may sound cheesy, but like how does daddy sound?” enclosing two positive pregnancy tests.
“I think word for word I said, ‘Holy shit!’” Bronico corrected. “I got all teary-eyed, and [we] hugged and I was like, ‘I cannot believe it. Like this is amazing.’”
The Bronicos kept up the theme when they asked their doctor to write the baby’s sex on a Post-it Note and then seal it in an envelope. For this pizza gender reveal they wanted a larger canvas, so they called Benny Pennello’s in NoDa.
“They duct-taped it shut so we wouldn’t look in the car,” said Bronico. “We opened it when we got home and [the writing on the pizza was], ‘It’s a Boy,’ and it’s spelled out in pepperoni.”
“So we are big on the pizza for celebration,” Bronico adds in an understated way.
Marks told us that Bronico’s extensive work in the community serves as a “blueprint” for his own such engagement, including Brandt’s yearly fundraisers for local charity Beds for Kids. Good friends, the two OGs spoke often during the pregnancy.
“I think talking with Brandt, it’s helped him a lot knowing that there’s more to life than playing football,” said Marks. “It’s probably given him a new perspective, and hopefully it will take him to new heights on the field.”
Bronico may not have fully adjusted to fatherhood yet. When we asked him what the first thing he thinks about in the morning is, his answer was immediate: “Soccer.”
Before Charlotte’s preseason started, Bronico was already on Dad Duty.
“Since Rebecca was pregnant the whole offseason, I just stayed locked in the whole time,” said Brandt. “I spent a majority of the time training or supporting [Rebecca] for what she needed.”
Near Rebecca’s due date, the preseason matches began, with Brandt traveling to Florida for preseason matches then flying back before his wife went into labor.
“I think preseason matters in that you need to get fit if you didn’t come and fit already,” said Brandt. “You’re trying to get more match fit than just going outside and running and doing suicides all day. It’s about creating habits you want to keep for the season, those good habits, those goal scoring habits, right?”
After Rebecca gave birth in early February, Bronico scored three goals in his next preseason matches. Was it new dad energy?
“You have that little little bit of dad power, dad magic,” said Brandt. “It’s just [a] different perspective, different purpose, in life as a whole.”
Bronico isn’t the only one with new responsibilities at home. New star Wilfried Zaha’s daughter, Zuri, was born in late February, and midfielder Djibril Diani’s son Ismaël was born during Ramadan.
After Zaha returned from his daughter’s birth in London, he scored his first goal for the club on March 1, making it back in time to help Charlotte FC dispatch Atlanta United 2-0. The former Premier League star has made multiple trips between Charlotte and London in the month since to see Zuri and his wife, Paige.
“It [was] non-negotiable, being there for my daughter’s birth,” said Zaha after scoring the goal. “And at the same time, work is work.”
When Nerve asked if there was any “new dad energy” behind Zaha’s Man of the Match performance, he replied, “Yeah, 100%.”
“I do this for my family. I do this for my kids,” said Zaha, who struggled to describe how much his daughter’s birth meant to him. “Having my daughter … I don’t know, I can’t explain it. It was just a very good moment for me [that] I managed to witness that.”
“He’s used to ‘dad power,’” Bronico said of Zaha.
Despite the preseason goals, Bronico would have to wait to get his first official “dad goal” during Charlotte’s 4-1 rout of the San Jose Earthquakes on March 22. In the second half of the match, Charlotte FC midfielder Pep Biel found Bronico at the top of the penalty box. Despite San Jose’s goalkeeper sliding straight at him, Bronico was able to chip the ball over the goalie, jump over the keeper as well, and land a second touch that put the ball in the back of the net.
After throwing off his shirt in celebration, Bronico ran to the eastern corner of the pitch, making a baby-rocking motion with his arms in front of the cameras.
Though it was Bronico’s first shot in six
appearances this year, his patience had paid off.
“It feels great, for sure, the dad strength is paying off,” said Bronico.
For the home opener, a 2-0 win over Atlanta United, Brandt was back in the starting 11.
“You know that he just finds a way to get in the game,” said Marks. “Different managers at different times have maybe tried to put him out, and he always fights his way back in. He’s just such a hard worker, and I think he’s a testament to [the idea that] ‘winners win,’ at the end of the day, regardless of the circumstances they put themselves in … he always helps the team in whatever role he’s asked to do.”
With the exception of Charlotte’s season opener in Seattle, Brandt Bronico ended up starting all of the club’s first six matches — a testament to how his game has matured and evolved to keep up with a more competitive league.
“MLS is 10 times better, in terms of competition, now than it was at the beginning of my career,” said Bronico. “I came into the league, I got drafted in 2017, and [MLS] was good, but you can see [now] there is so much more quality; there’s so much more, money being invested into top players around the world. There’s a lot more interest from players around the world to come over to the MLS where the quality has grown exponentially over the course of the past nine, 10 years.”
After getting the start in the second match, Bronico felt good to be back home in front of Charlotte’s fans — even if he left the pitch with a yellow card instead of a goal contribution.
“We still have work to do, but we did a lot better than we did [in Seattle],” said Bronico. “You’ve got to be physical to shut down [other teams] … I’m gonna play a physical game out there, and if I’ve gotta get a yellow I gotta get a yellow.”
As Charlotte’s captain, Westwood is not surprised at Bronico’s success.
“He’s becoming an all-round player now, which is so nice to see,” said Westwood. “And he’s still improving … he’s just a unique player and a unique character, and one we certainly think a lot of.”
Brandt, with Rebecca’s help, has made a brand out of the “#Grindset” mindset and his “BB13” mentality, with BB13-branded merch on sale in addition to the usual team colors. The shirts and swag are reflective of Brandt’s commitment to hard work and persistence.
“I am a specialist in proving people wrong,” said Brandt. “And I will go harder for longer. And if somebody is not up to that challenge, then I will win. And that’s kind of how I look at it, because I will not give up … cause at the end of the day, it’s my life, it’s my dream.”
“You know, it’s not people’s opinions that matter to me. It’s what I wanna do for myself, and proving to myself that I can do it, and proving them that they’re wrong.”
After he scored his goal against San Jose, we asked Brandt about what he wants to achieve going forward, but his mind was still on that one original goal.
“I want to win a trophy,” said Bronico. “That’s it.
April 3-5 • times vary • Charlotte Motor Speedway, 5555 Concord Pkwy. S., Concord • $12-$35 • charlottemotorspeedway.com
The highlight of the AutoFair, The “All Shook Up” Elvis Festival, features an Elvis Presley impersonator contest and updated versions of The King’s favorite foods, including the peanut butter sandwich, but the big draw is Elvis’ 1975 Ferrari Dino (It is an auto fair, after all). After being named an honorary captain of the Memphis Police Department, Elvis fitted his “Black Mamba” Ferrari with police lights so he could pull people over for speeding and tell them to slow down while leaving them with an autograph instead of a fine. Maybe Elvis’ “police car” complimented the Drug Enforcement Agency badge he got from President Nixon.
April 4 • 7 p.m. • Petra’s, 1919 Commonwealth Ave. • $7 • petrasbar.com
Billed as “a queer affair,” Queerly is a colorful, eclectic and welcoming variety show that features burlesque performances by Nova Vella and The Flamingo Revue’s Edie Edison. Music is provided by acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter shmuushmuu (Sam Craig) and vocalist/guitarist M143, backed by an alternative genre-jumping band that includes percussionist David Gibson, trombonist Noah Hornburg and bassist Paul Mather. Past full-band iterations of M143 have turned out a tuneful and jazz-tinged mix of originals and covers. Queer comedy comes courtesy of Luigi (Luisa Donoso), with nonbinary poet and storyteller Adrian Parrish hosting the event.
April 5 • 1 p.m. • Dubois Center, 320 E. 9th St. • $50 festival day pass • independentpicturehouse.org
As part of the Charlotte Ideas Festival, Independent Picture House hosts mobile screenings of two short films: producer Eric Alan Rousseau’s Patsy and documentarian Madison Hill’s Fallout. Patsy tells of a 30-something Asian American woman trying to find love again while going through a divorce triggered by a traumatic miscarriage, while Fallout follows three people who have fallen ill after exposure to environmental contamination from a nearby US Army ammunition plant. The documentary exposes how the military and the private manufacturing industry perpetuate exploitation and environmental contamination in the Appalachian region. Rousseau and Hill take part in a post-screening discussion.
April 7 • 8 p.m. • Fillmore, 820 Hamilton St. • $53 • fillmorenc.com
Singer/songwriter/internet personality Poppy is a conceptualist/musical polymath. Surfacing on YouTube in 2014 eating cotton candy as a kind of platinum blonde, uncanny valley android, Poppy cranks out countless surrealist/absurdist videos like her “Improbably Poppy” series that couples a fever dream Sesame Street aesthetic with a disturbing satire of online influencers. Music has always been part of Poppy’s meta presentation, and she’s tackled multiple genres including pop rock, EDM, new wave, noise and alternative metal. Her sixth and latest LP, Negative Spaces, continues Poppy’s genre-fluid exploration of futuristic pop and metal. Alternative indie-thrash duo House of Protection support.
April 8 • 6 p.m. • United House of Prayer for All People, 2321 Beatties Ford Rd. • Free • charlotteshout.com/event/gospelshout
The trombone-driven shout band tradition is inextricably entwined with the United House of Prayer for All People, a Black Pentecostal denomination based in Washington D.C., but with Charlotte as its undisputed second city. Shout bands sound similar to New Orleans brass band jazz, but shout’s mix of massed trombones, sousaphone and thundering drums draw on the call-and-response of gospel. This performance spotlights the Cunningham Clouds of Heaven band, a national treasure that has been recorded by the prestigious Smithsonian Folkways label. The Cunningham Golden Angels and Cunningham Stringband also perform.
April 9 • 7 p.m. • Blackbox Theater, 421 E Sugar Creek Rd. • $59 and up • blackboxcharlotte.com
Five-piece South Korean band ONWE launched as a K-pop boy band — teen heartthrobs intended to beguile young female fans. ONWE, however, is an outlier on that scene; the band members came together by themselves instead of being cobbled together, like Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, by a producer/manager. They’ve also charted their own musical course from melodic soft pop to energetic rock with crunchy guitars and pummeling drums. And they’ve kept together for 10 years, refusing to swap out members for younger faces like Menudo — all of which means that ONWE is a solid pop rock band.
April 10 • 8 p.m. • Neighborhood Theatre, 511 E 36th St. • $31-$42 • neighborhoodtheatre.com
Nicotine Dolls frontman Sam Cieri made headlines in 2022 for walking away from America’s Got Talent, saying the TV show’s producers didn’t honor a promise to let the full band perform an original tune. The four-piece, which takes its name from a high school term for kids who went to house parties but spent the night outside smoking due to anxiety about crowds, crafts rootsy indierock elements like grimy blues-inflected guitar, folk rock stomping rhythms and Cieri’s raspy and rangy vocals to create classic yet contemporary songs for outsiders. Introspective Southern soul artist Wic Whitney opens.
April 11 • 7 p.m. • Ovens Auditorium, 2700 East Independence Blvd. • $72 and up • boplex.com
Ovens hosts a bill of old-school 1990s R&B. Singer/songwriter/producer Donell Jones specializes in jazzy and soulful urban pop, exemplified by his second — and platinum — 1999 LP Where I Wanna Be and its lead single, “U Know What’s Up” featuring Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes. Teaming with Timbaland in the late ’90s, Ginuwine crafted a commercial brand of slick and seductive hip-hop soul. Singersongwriter Adina Howard is perhaps best known for her sexy soul-funk pop fusion hit “Freak Like Me.” Accomplished three-woman trio Kut Klose essays sassy R&B pop with silky harmonies.
• cltcomedyzone.com
“This Pete Hegseth group chat story blew up like it was a Tesla,” noted Steve Hofstetter, a comic who dumped his management agency after it signed Kanye “I love Hitler” West. With Republicans currently salivating for a new HB2/bathroom bill, Hofstetter called out the bigots who claimed the original law would stop a man from telling someone they’re trans and then using a woman’s room. “Tell who?” Hofstetter asks. “The women’s room bouncer? You don’t scan your dick to open the door.” Hofstetter is now Charlotte-based, saying on LinkedIn that he fell in love with our fair city on a recent visit.
BOSTON, DYLAN GILBERT,
April 15 • 9 p.m. • Snug Harbor, 1228 Gordon St. • $12 • snugrock.com
Grammy-Nominated New Orleans rapper-singer Alfred Banks has given the world his haunting “G-Wagon” and anthemic “HomeComing” among other tracks, and now he headlines an explosion of talent at Snug Harbor. Charlotte’s de’Angelo Dia explores culture and moral imagination through poetry and performance art. With Top Femme Productions, poet and filmmaker Sasha Banks critiques the tottering American empire. Multiple Best in the Nest winner Phaze Gawd couples raw lyricism with hypnotic new-age hip-hop. Queen City DJ and drummer Walter Boston and multifaceted songwriter, producer, band leader, solo artist and instructor Dylan Gilbert round out this treasure trove of a bill.
Damian Peters creates a hub for the custom car community in Bessemer City
BY DEZANII LEWIS
Long before MTV’s hit show Pimp My Ride brought all the possibilities of custom car fitting to screens across America in the mid-2000s, Damien Peters has been building cars up and fitting them with game systems, TVs, beautiful interiors and stunning paint jobs.
He was inspired to get into the field of automotive repair and maintenance not by Xzibit but the people he had grown up around, watching them carry out DIY car projects on their own rides rather than pay other people to maintain or upfit them.
“All my OGs had dope cars and the cool thing about that, they like to work on their own cars,” he said. “It wasn’t like they just had money and they were dropping it off to the shop and getting done. [They would be] working on the engine, painting parts, doing a lot of accessories, car stereo and stuff like that. I saw them do that and I was like, ‘Man, these dudes got money, but they still like to do this stuff with their hands.’”
Though originally approaching the customized car world from an academic viewpoint, researching its history and becoming an expert on the subject, there comes a time when every mechanic has to get their hands dirty. Peters always wanted a place of his own to work on cars and now he has one.
Opened in 2022, ClubHaus 704 is a car garage unlike any other you may have visited. Part mechanic shop, part showroom, and part speakeasy, the shop is the perfect place for custom car aficionados to relax, talk shop and work on their cars.
The name’s German spelling draws inspiration from the types of cars Peters prefers to work with, which often fill the shop; BMWs and Mercedes Benzes are front and center at the shop, while the
atmosphere cultivated by Peters within lends itself to the clubhouse vibes.
Located in Bessemer City about a 35-minutes drive from Charlotte, Peters has found it hard to get the traffic that he’d eventually like to see come through ClubHaus, but his dream to run a hub for the local car community hasn’t diminished.
We stopped by the shop recently to chat with Peters about his vision for the future of ClubHaus704.
To look at the nondescript exterior of ClubHaus704, newcomers would be hard pressed to guess what’s inside. Peters said he’s designed the shop to look uninviting in an attempt to discourage people from sleeping in the cars he keeps outside, which has happened, and keep thieves from stealing parts or gas.
“I don’t want to bring too much attention to it,” he said.
The humble outward experience only makes the establishment all the more impressive once one enters. The main entrance of the shop leads to the clubhouse, where the walls are painted in an homage to the Nike Air Max 95 OG Neon. It’s air-conditioned, with TV, a coffee maker, a trophy display and a window to the garage.
Enter from the garage, and you find a fire-enginered ‘87 BMW, and a cobalt blue G Wagon, both of which are completed, plus a stark white ‘83 BMW that Peters is currently remodeling to better match the white BMW in the 2002 film Paid in Full, which also served as inspiration for Peters’ car club, Paid N Full.
The club, which currently has about 30 members, offers a yearly fee and allows members to participate in car shows and other events. As a nod to the movie, European cars of a certain age are the focus — ‘80s and ‘90s cars only.
“I always say before the CD changer,” Peters explained, “and if your car got navigation, then it’s too new.”
The shop could fit more cars, but Peters said he prefers to keep the number low so he can focus on whichever job he has in front of him.
“Once you have more than three cars, it’s almost pointless,” he said. “I really started cutting down how many cars I got because I really want to enjoy my cars. I’m in these projects so much, I just don’t really get a chance to enjoy it.”
Ideally, he said he would like the rest of the space to go to new clubhouse members. That wasn’t the goal when he first bought the shop, but it has developed over time into a shared space of sorts — though it’s taking time to catch on.
“You think if you build it, they will come,” he said. “Well, that hasn’t happened yet. [When I bought this], the intention wasn’t to make money. It was really just a place to put my cars. And then I thought like, ‘Man, let’s make this cool.’”
Membership for the car club is separate from membership at ClubHaus 704. Where the car club might participate in car shows, a membership to ClubHaus would grant the member space to store and work on their car, jump on the WiFi and get some work done, or just hang out with other members and talk shop.
There’s also a lounge hidden away in the walls of the shop — a dimly lit room furnished with handmade furniture, plush couches and a stocked bar that can only be found once you realize that what looks like a vending machine is actually a doorway.
Only members have access to the lounge.
There are a few things Peters would like to add to the shop, the biggest being a turntable that he can display the red BMW on, but the infrequent stream of customers hasn’t justified that just yet.
“We’ve had big things happen, but it’s nothing consistent,” he said.
One of those big things occurred in February 2024 when Kevin Hart’s Muscle Car Crew TV show featured ClubHaus 704.
When we visited, Peters was preparing for one of the biggest annual events ClubHaus participates in: Dreamville Fest.
The largest concert put on each year by Fayetteville native J. Cole, Dreamville Festival will take place in Raleigh on Apr. 5-6 this year. Concertgoers can expect to see the likes of Lil’ Wayne, Ari Lennox, Erykah Badu, and many more. There’s also a car show scheduled for the Friday before the festival kicks off.
For the third consecutive year, Peters and his car club will curate Gold Mouf Garage, named for Dreamville rapper Lute, an acclaimed Charlotte artist who’s also a member of Paid N Full.
Though German cars are his favorite, Peters assures fans of all types of custom cars that there will be plenty more in store for them to check out at Gold Mouf Garage.
“It’s not based on just our cars,” he said. “I got [Japanese domestic market] cars coming. I got Jeeps coming. I got Porsches coming. I got all sorts of stuff. It’s a perfect mix of cars. I got Corvettes coming. It’s going to be dope.”
Paid N Full is one of the few Black-owned car clubs in the industry, and one of an even smaller list that focuses on European cars.
There are many that focus on Chevys and other American brands, but for Peters, rebuilding a Chevy just “doesn’t do it,” he said.
He said he looks forward to Gold Mouf Garage and other shows like it because they grant him an opportunity to learn more about other cars and familiarize himself with other people in the industry.
“I love working with people outside our club or our type of cars,” he said. “It’s really about connections when it comes to the car game, meeting a lot of people, so it’s always good. The vibe is always nice out there.”
Following Dreamville, Paid N Full will take part in a larger meet in May when various car clubs from up and down the East Coast will meet up in Raleigh, offering Peters another opportunity to learn and network.
“We’re all like brothers, and we help each other out,” he said.
Peters has no shortage of ideas for how he wants to continue to build out his shop — new flooring, a custom-built driveway for low-riding cars like Lamborghinis — approaching it like one of the custom car projects he works on day in and day out.
“All this stuff is just fueled with too much time on my hands, ADHD, and parts of my brain,” he said. He will continue to build, comforted by the knowledge that eventually folks will catch on to the cultural hub he has created in Bessemer City.
DLEWIS@QCNERVE.COM
BY PAT MORAN
For a song parody to land, the music has to be good. Mike Mitschele and Rick Randall know that, while they can write lyrics as silly as they like, the music always must be on point or the whole thing falls flat.
In a varied career, the two Charlotte natives and songwriters cofounded the Queen City’s legendary parody rock band Alternative Champs and drew on their tunesmithing talents to launch songwriting and scoring company Hot Goat Music, but Mitschele and Randall are best known to fans of the hit HBO comedy series Righteous Gemstones as members of cringeworthy Christian megachurch rock band Tears of David
Mitschele and Randall write and perform ersatz Christian rock music for the show, the saga of a family-run Charleston televangelical empire, that stars series creator Danny McBride as associate pastor Jesse Gemstone and Walton Goggins as former child star and Jesse’s charismatic and unreliable uncle, Baby Billy Freeman.
Mitschele and Randall landed that gig in 2019, but still didn’t know what to expect three years later when they entered Truphonic Recording Studios in Charleston with Goggins to record a theme song for a scripture-based game show
After a few seasons on Righteous Gemstones writing earnest Elevation Church-style rock with saccharine yet authentic-sounding lyrics, Mitschele and Randall were offered the opportunity to stretch out by writing and playing something a little different. This time they were tasked with composing an outlandish Vegas-style showtune introducing Uncle Baby Billy’s absurd brainchild,
a Bible-based game show called Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers
Mitschele imitated Goggins in a demo he and Randall recorded when the pair went down to Charleston to cut the song with the Justified and Hateful Eight actor. They were worried Goggins might be insulted by the impersonation.
“Walton was great,” Mitschele says. “He totally jumped into Baby Billy in front of us and showed us some dance moves and what he was going to be doing. He transformed into the character.”
In the completed sequence, Goggins boogies as the 60-something Baby Billy on a glitzy yet tacky set, surrounded by dancers clad like refugees from a 1980s variety show:
“Let’s go Bible Bonkers/ Buzzing in in the name of the Lord/ We’re going Bible Bonkers/ Where Jesus has the highest score/ From Abraham and Sarah, to Adam and Eve/ A little burning bush to an olive tree/ Let’s go Bible Bonkers/ God’s favorite game…”
Unfortunately for the Gemstones, the game show goes downhill from there, culminating in a swarm of locusts inundating the studio like a biblical plague. Uncle Baby Billy escapes the raging maelstrom to wreak comic carnage another day.
Having both grown up in Charlotte, Mitschele and Randal met while attending Myers Park High School. The two soon realized that they shared a similar sense of humor.
They both played guitar, though both are proficient on other instruments. They met bassist
Brent Dunn and drummer David Massi, who attended Appalachian State University alongside Randall, and decided to form a band that would mix music and comedy.
When it came time to name the nascent group the band members convened at Lupie’s Cafe in east Charlotte.
“We threw a bunch of adjectives in one hat and nouns in another and took turns drawing them,” Mitschele recalls. Notable combinations included “Hot Goat” and “Sausagey Guys.”
“Alternative Champs” was the winning combo, although “Hot Goat” was later resurrected for Mitschele and Randall’s songwriting and recording business.
“Alternative Champs has always been a humorous rock band that jumps genres — everything from country to heavy metal to soul,” Mitschele says.
“It’s a nice break from being constrained inside a genre,” Randall adds.
In 1993, Alternative Champs played its first gig at Klondike Cafe in Boone, and subsequently dropped its first release, a cassette entitled Love
Mouth
Even in those early days, Alternative Champs followed the comedy adage “commit to the bit,” which exhorts performers to fully embrace a character no matter how outlandish.
As a result, the band consistently nails the multiple genres showcased in its repertoire, and plays it straight while singing absurd and/or silly lyrics on parody tunes like sultry suburban slow jam “Swimming Pool,” and “Cherie Berry,” an ode to the former North Carolina politician best known for plastering her name in elevators across the state.
“Even though we were writing funny songs, Rick and I have always been good at writing catchy music,” Mitschele says.
The band soon became noted for picking a theme for each show, dressing alike in eccentric outfits like giant flower headdresses or lederhosen and playing a set as if everything is completely normal.
“No two shows are ever the same,” notes Mitschele.
“It’s definitely ridiculous and bizarre, but it’s not campy like Weird Al [Yankovic],” Randall adds. “It’s more like performance art.”
For a short while, Alternative Champs was put on the back burner. Randall met his future wife Andi at Appalachian State University, moved to New York for a bit, then returned to North Carolina.
During that time, Mitschele played and toured with alternative Americana bands Jolene and Athenaeum. Randall played with grungy post-punk outfit Husbians. Both continued to join up with Dunn and Massi for occasional Alternative Champs gigs.
In 2000, Randall and Andi married and moved to Winston-Salem where they raised their daughter.
Alternative Champs wasn’t dead, however. The group released its debut LP Fort Awesome in 2005. The album contains a mix of songs already in the Champs’ live repertoire and new numbers composed in the studio, including bar band boogie parody “Mississikki,” mirrorball disco throwback
“The Gay ‘90s” and on-target soul pastiche “Swimming in the Pool.”
The band toured after that release, playing CMJ Fest in New York and Cleveland, and South by Southwest in Austin in 2006.
Eight years later, Alternative Champs dropped its follow up album Feelings, which includes “Cherie Berry”. The collection also boasts two guest appearances by Charlotte singer-songwriter Benji Hughes: “Drop the Ball,” a funk banger about bad sex and erectile dysfunction, and “Cigarette,” a buoyant soul satire about smoking like a chimney and developing incipient emphysema.
Over time, Mitschele and Randall perfected their empathic, almost telepathic songwriting process that has enriched Alternative Champs and the pair’s work on Righteous Gemstones
“Back in the day, we would just get on a four track [recorder], have a beer or two and come up with the most ridiculous song we could think of,” Randall says.
“We know each other so well that it’s comfortable to bounce ideas off each other,” Mitschele adds. “We never feel like we can’t tell the other person, ‘Nah, that’s kind of dumb.’”
Even though the songwriting partners live in different cities, Randall in Winston-Salem and Mitschele in Charlotte, they still frequently write in the same room.
“There have been times where we had to split off, and Mike would take some songs and I’d take a song or two,” Randall notes. “But we would always hit each other back.”
Through their connections in the Charlotte music scene, Mitschele and Randall befriended several people who went on to work on Righteous Gemstones, including production designer and assistant director Richard A. Wright; Concord native, director, producer, screenwriter, and actor Jody Hill, who plays Tears of David guitarist Levi on the show; and composer Joseph Stephens, who cofounded the Charlotte experimental indie-rock band Pyramid and played in instrumental rock outfit Sea of Cortez.
According to Mitschele, it was always a goal of Danny McBride’s to cast an Elevation-type band for the megachurch in Righteous Gemstones that was an actual band rather than actors pretending to be musicians.
Mitschele and Randall’s friend Richard Wright immediately recommended Alternative Champs, telling McBride that the band dressed up according to a specific theme each time it played and stayed in character through its set.
“What [McBride] wanted, we were doing already,” Randall says. “We’ve spent decades playing multiple genres and dressing up like weirdos so it wasn’t a stretch.”
“When [Righteous Gemstones’ creators] asked us to write a song for the pilot, we immediately thought they wanted the Alternative Champs so [we wrote] something funny,” Mitschele remembers. “We quickly realized they wanted us to play … and write real Christian rock songs.”
Mitschele and Randall found it weird writing
Christian rock lyrics because neither is particularly religious.
“I don’t know a whole lot about Bible quotes,” Mitschele says. “You can only sing so much about his love shining down on you … and looking into the light.”
“Not to be overly critical, but some of these megachurch bands are playing sort of hip music but they’re at least five years behind,” Randall notes.
Mitschele and Randall quickly mastered the art of writing and playing their pious pop with straight faces — even when Randall’s character gets to rock a flashy keytar onstage — and leaving the comedy to the show’s deeply flawed yet relatable characters.
“The joke is not in [our] songs,” Mitschele says. “Our job was to be authentic and by doing that, it’s ridiculous and funny.”
Mitschele and Randall reckon they’ve landed about 20 songs on the show out of the more than 40 they submitted to Stephens and music supervisor DeVoe Yates.
“Joey we already knew, and we developed a good friendship with DeVoe,” Mitschele offers. “DeVoe has an amazing breadth of knowledge when it comes to music, but he’s not a musician. He would give us what he needed [with] a little description and Rick and I would take a stab at it. We’d submit
two [versions of] a song and pretty quick, one would get approved.”
“It was like a game of telephone,” Randall notes. “Danny [McBride] would decide what he wanted and then it would go through DeVoe to us.” Often Mitschele and Randall would nail the tune on the first try, but there were a handful that needed more massaging and a few more passes.
“Danny’s spontaneous and if he hears something and loves it, he might say, ‘What if they tried this?’”
Mitschele says. He recalls a long outro he and Randall wrote for one tune. Word got back to them that McBride loved the music but wanted it to be a little more “Space Mountain.”
“Then we had to figure out what he meant by ‘Space Mountain,’” Mitschele says.
“We did a lot of Tears of David-style songs, but then after a season or two they started throwing us more challenging songs and we branched out a bit,” Randall says. “We got more funky and rocking and Vegas, and it expanded the palette.”
Those new opportunities included writing and playing the theme for Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers and scoring a few scenes as soundtrack composers.
The launch of Hot Goat
In 2022, Mitschele and Randall started their
company Hot Goat Music, where they compose and record songs for TV and movies. The business has gotten off to a hot start.
Mitschele and Randall composed a song for Nutcrackers, a 2024 comedy-drama directed by David Gordon Green and starring Ben Stiller. They also collaborated with Stephens on music for Upload, an Amazon science-fiction comedy drama series created by Greg Daniels of The Office and Parks and Recreation
Hot Goat has also recorded a song for actors to sing on The Hunting Wives, an upcoming drama series on Starz.
“We didn’t write [the song],” Mitschele notes. “It’s an old spiritual that we did a couple versions of.”
Meanwhile, Righteous Gemstones forges ahead into its fourth and final season. Both Mitschele and Randall say they love working on the show and playing Tears of David band members, and are sad to see the series come to an end.
“It was such an awesome experience,” Randall says. “We’ve become friends with the actors and everybody on the set.”
At the same time, composing, playing and performing on Righteous Gemstones has been a lot of hard work.
“We’ve been busting our butts,” Randall says.
One of the duo’s higher profile songs for the show will appear on episode eight, which airs in late April. It’s another tune with Goggins.
“Baby Billy will have the summer of 2025 fucking hit,” says Goggins, promoting the tune on the Dax Shepard podcast Armchair Expert. “Come June … you will be singing this fucking song.”
Mitschele asserts that he and Randall are still in “the excitement phase” of working on Righteous Gemstones.
“It’s not quite over yet for us,” he says.
It’s also far from over for Alternative Champs. While Mitschele notes that he and Randall haven’t done much with the band recently amid the pair’s flurry of writing, recording and filming, they’ve recently started writing new material.
Alternative Champs even has an upcoming hometown gig booked, playing Comet Grill on Saturday, May 24, to mark bassist Brent Dunn’s birthday. It’s a rare occasion, Mitschele notes, since nowadays the band only plays four or five local shows a year.
Mitschele hopes everyone who can see the show has a good time, but zooming out, he also aspires to leave a lasting impression. His and Randall’s goal with their music, whether through Hot Goat Music or Alternative Champs, is to elevate whatever project they’re working on.
“I love coming up with something that’s catchy; I love dropping ear worms,” Mitschele says, adding that he’s been disappointed at concerts where he was impressed with a band’s musical virtuosity yet couldn’t recall a single tune the group played.
When it comes to Alternative Champs, he says the same principle applies. It’s great when people laugh at tunes like “Swimming Pool” or the Bible Bonkers theme, but the two songwriters and lifelong friends’ goal has always been to write music that people will remember.
PMORAN@QCNERVE.COM
WEDNESDAY
ROCK/PUNK/METAL
Eightball w/ Shiteater, Backwash, Goatse, Autophagus (The Milestone)
Anberlin w/ Copeland (Neighborhood Theatre)
The Outfield Clovers w/ Owen & The Smokes, Fifth Floor (Snug Harbor)
Chelsea Grin w/ Shadow of Intent, Signs of the Swarm, Disembodied Tyra (The Underground)
JAZZ/BLUES
Kenneth Whalum (Middle C Jazz)
SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC
Josh Daniel, Jim Brock & Kerry Brooks (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)*
Rockstars in the Round (Visulite Theatre)
OPEN MIC
Singer/Songwriter Open Mic (The Rooster)*
THURSDAY
COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA
Daniel Donato (The Underground)
JAZZ/BLUES
Java Band (Middle C Jazz)
FUNK/JAM BAND/REGGAE
Shana Blake’s Musical Menagerie (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)*
SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC
Sam On Someday (Petra’s)
COVER BANDS
Mustache the Band (Camp North End)
FRIDAY
ROCK/PUNK/METAL
Dollars Taxes w/ Upsetting, Drunk Uncle, I Hate Dave, Something Left Behind (The Milestone)
Jivebomb w/ Polarview, Doltz, Survival Tactics (Snug Harbor)
JAZZ/BLUES
Rick Braun (Middle C Jazz)
COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA
Willi Carlisle w/ Ramona Martinez (Evening Muse)
Yonder Mountain String Band (Neighborhood Theatre)
LATIN/WORLD
Anna J Band w/ Randy Paul & Jesse Lee (Goldie’s)
CHRISTIAN/GOSPEL/RELIGIOUS
Josiah Queen (The Fillmore)
POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ
Subtronics (Blackbox Theater) Emo Night (The Underground)
J. Overcash & Friends (Salud Cerveceria)
CLASSICAL/INSTRUMENTAL
Charlotte Symphony: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 (Knight Theater)
COVER BANDS
Joe Hero (Foo Fighters tribute) w/ Adhesive (Stone Temple Pilot tribute) (Amos’ Southend)
Britain’s Finest: The Beatles Experience (Booth Playhouse)
Cosmic Charlie (Visulite Theatre)
SATURDAY
ROCK/PUNK/METAL
FUNK/JAM BANDS/REGGAE
Pink Beds w/ Mad Tea Party (Evening Muse)
POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ
Subtronics (Blackbox Theater)
Tyler Hilton w/ Jesse Ruben (Evening Muse)
Trisha Paytas (Ovens Auditorium)
Dean Lewis (The Underground)
CLASSICAL/INSTRUMENTAL
Charlotte Symphony: Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 (Knight Theater)
HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B
Elora Dash w/ Clarity, Bianca Jade (Snug Harbor) COVER BANDS
Separate Ways (Journey tribute) (Amos’ Southend)
The Hi-Moods w/ Matthew Church Duo (Goldie’s)
Brightside (Visulite Theatre)
SUNDAY
ROCK/PUNK/METAL
The Abstratica w/ Entangled Dreams, Auroras Hope, Snail (The Milestone)
HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B
Jagged Edge (Knight Theater)
COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA
Corb Lund w/ Hayes Carll (Booth Playhouse)
JAZZ/BLUES
Elan Trotman (Middle C Jazz)
POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ
Hazy Sunday (Petra’s)
MONDAY
OPEN MIC
Open Mic Night (Goldie’s)
Singer/Songwriter Open Mic (The Rooster)*
THURSDAY
ROCK/PUNK/METAL
77 Lies w/ Queen City Rejects, Squirt Vile, Punk Angels (The Milestone)
Nicotine Dolls w/ Wic Whitney (Neighborhood Theatre)
Cardinal Bloom w/ Alexa Jenson (Snug Harbor)
HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B
Plies w/ Boosie, Ying Yang Twins (Spectrum Center)
Shortie Shortie (The Underground)
POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ
Lane 8 (The Fillmore)
Magic Hours feat. Alan Charmer and DJ Pucci Mane (Petra’s)
FUNK/JAM BANDS/REGGAE
Nether Hour w/ Nathan Harris (Evening Muse)
Shana Blake’s Musical Menagerie (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)*
CHRISTIAN/GOSPEL/RELIGIOUS
Forrest Frank (Bojangles Coliseum)
CLASSICAL/INSTRUMENTAL
Opera Carolina: La Bohème (Belk Theater)
COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA
Presley Aronson w/ Lily Tallent (The Rooster)
The Tan & Sober Gentlemen w/ Driftwood (Visulite Theatre)
COVER BANDS
Jazzy Blu Lovers & Legends (Middle C Jazz)
POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ
AYYBO w/ TOBEHONEST (Blackbox Theater)
The Crystal Method (CUE)
BabyJake (Evening Muse)
4 JAN. 25
POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ
Poppy (The Fillmore)
JAZZ/BLUES
The Bill Hanna Legacy Jazz Session (Petra’s)
OPEN MIC
Filth w/ Fear Illusion, Two Stroke Smoke, Screwed Ends, Salamander X (The Rooster)
2 APR. 3 APR. 5
BATO w/ Spikepit, I.E.D., Fizxations (The Milestone)
SATURDAY JAN. 22
Nervous Surface w/ See Through Person, Amber Graci (Petra’s)
Spread Eagle w/ Strike the Tower, Fury 58, Trailer Park Orchestra (The Rooster)
Dead Letter w/ Jordan Sledge & The Saucepan, Vit
Debacco (Starlight on 22nd)
JAZZ/BLUES
Rick Braun (Middle C Jazz)
Tab Benoit w/ Sam Morrow (Neighborhood Theatre)
Find Your Muse Open Mic feat. Sarah Johnson (Evening Muse)
TUESDAY
ROCK/PUNK/METAL
Fame on fire w/ Halocene, Archetypes Collide (Amos’ Southend)
Red Rocking Chair (Comet Grill)*
Squirrel Nut Zippers (Neighborhood Theatre)
Resistor w/ Deathbloom, Conquer, Division Point (Snug Harbor)
JAZZ/BLUES
Menastree (Evening Muse)
POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ
Half Alive (The Fillmore)
OPEN MIC
FRIDAY
ROCK/PUNK/METAL
Modern Alibi w/ Sweet Spine (Amos’ Southend)
The Lenny Federal Band (Comet Grill)*
The Forum w/ Homemade Haircuts (Evening Muse) Mercury Dimes w/ 6Cardinal, Neon Deaths, B-Villainous, Dear Kavalier (The Milestone)
Husbands w/ Jaguar Sun (Neighborhood Theatre) Cryogeyser w/ MX Lonely, Tombstone Poetry (Snug Harbor)
COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA
Larry Fleet (The Fillmore)
Krista Lynn Meadow w/ Square Roots (Goldie’s)
POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ
STRFKR (The Underground)
LATIN/WORLD
Bakalao Stars w/ COMA (Evening Muse)
JAZZ/BLUES
Christian Sands Trio (Middle C Jazz)
Kenny Garrett (Stage Door Theater)
Open Mic Night feat. The Smokin J’s (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)*
WEDNESDAY
ROCK/PUNK/METAL
Spy w/ Brass Tongue, Laid Out, Jiu-Jitsu (The Milestone)
VOSH w/ Feyleux, Dead Cool (Snug Harbor)
POP/DANCE/ELECTRONIC/DJ
AWOLNATION (THe Fillmore)
New Translations w/ Ali Forrest (Neighborhood Theatre)
SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC
Josh Daniel, Jim Brock & Kerry Brooks (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)*
HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B
Nettspend (The Underground)
JAZZ/BLUES
Bella White w/ Mr. Sam (Evening Muse)
Chris Cain (Middle C Jazz)
LATIN/WORLD
ONEWE (Blackbox Theater)
COVER BANDS
Experience Hendrix (Ovens Auditorium)
HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B
Donell Jones w/ Ginuwine, Adina Howard, Kut Klose (Ovens Auditorium)
FUNK/JAM BAND/REGGAE
Eggy (Visulite Theatre)
CLASSICAL/INSTRUMENTAL
Opera Carolina: La Bohème (Belk Theater)
EXPERIMENTAL/MIXED-GENRE/FESTIVAL
Lakebed Fest (Petra’s)
COVER BANDS
Country Roads (Knight Theater)
Fake Happy (Paramore tribute) (The Rooster)
ROCK/PUNK/METAL
10 APR. 11 APR. 12
Nightly (The Underground)
SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC
Matt Walsh & the Movers (Primal Brewery)
FUNK/JAM BAND/REGGAE
Satellite Dog w/ Casual Cadenza (Evening Muse)
The FUNK Council w/ Ring of Wondo (Starlight on 22nd)
SINGER-SONGWRITER/ACOUSTIC
Tosco Music Party (Knight Theater)
COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA
Tyler Rich (Neighborhood Theatre)
Coughing Dove w/ Clementine Was Right, Jude Brothers (Petra’s)
JAZZ/BLUES
Adam Hawley (Middle C Jazz)
Kenny Garrett (Stage Door Theater)
CLASSICAL/INSTRUMENTAL
Opera Carolina: La Bohème (Belk Theater)
COVER BANDS
Thurston Howell Band w/ Yacht Rock Spectacular (Amos’ Southend)
Unknown Artist w/ Rod Fiske Duo (Goldie’s)
SUNDAY
ROCK/PUNK/METAL
Chiodos (The Fillmore)
CLASSICAL/INSTRUMENTAL
Opera Carolina: La Bohème (Belk Theater) JAZZ/BLUES
Charlton Singleton (Middle C Jazz)
COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA
Penny & Sparrow w/ Field Guide (Neighborhood Theatre)
LATIN/WORLD
Carin Leon (Spectrum Center)
MONDAY
JAZZ/BLUES
TUESDAY APR. 6
The Bill Hanna Legacy Jazz Session (Petra’s) HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B
Tyga (The Fillmore) OPEN MIC
Find Your Muse Open Mic (Evening Muse)
ROCK/PUNK/METAL
Red Rocking Chair (Comet Grill)*
13 APR. 14 APR. 15
Stripes w/ Saint Logic, Mean Habit (The Milestone) COUNTRY/FOLK/AMERICANA
Marc Scibilia (The Underground)
HIP-HOP/SOUL/R&B
Alfred Banks w/ de’Angelo Dia, Sasha Banks, Walter Boston, Dylan Gilbert, Phaze Gawd (Snug Harbor)
COVER BANDS
Back to Black: The Amy Winehouse Celebration (Neighborhood Theatre)
OPEN MIC
Open Mic Night feat. The Smokin J’s (Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar)*
*WEEKLY EVENTS THAT MAY BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE. VISIT QCNERVE.COM FOR THE FULL SOUNDWAVE LISTING
The Wise Man’s Fear w/ Softspoken, Winter’s Gate, Mourning Lotus, Reflect//Refine (The Milestone)
Lilith Rising w/Eyecandy, Sinz of Eden, Black Cherry (The Rooster)
Winepride w/ Lauds, Wilde Green, DJ Fat Keith Richards (Snug Harbor)
Disturbed (Spectrum Center)
Naked Giants w/ Girl & Girl (Visulite Theatre)
BY RYAN PITKIN
At the Charlotte Business Journal’s 2025 Women in Business Awards ceremony in Uptown on March 20, each of the 26 honorees — recognized as outstanding women who are creating an impact in the Charlotte region — was asked to speak for 30 seconds about what advice they would give to their 18-year-old self.
While all the honorees in attendance provided valuable insight with their short speeches, for Carmen Vasquez, the question was a chance to reflect on a journey that had just begun when she turned 18 and has since seen her defy the odds at every turn.
Vasquez marked her 18th birthday just a few months after arriving in the United States from her hometown in Guadalajara, Mexico. At that time, only her brother already lived in the US, so she had to leave the rest of her family behind and start from scratch.
She wasn’t sure what the future held for her, only that she had one objective somewhere down the road.
“My goal was to have a restaurant, but it was so far because, I mean, I’m Mexican, I’m new here in the country.”
She was not fluent in English at the time, but she knew that if she could land a job somewhere she could prove herself as a hard worker. She started
working in hotels and aimed to reach the restaurant industry in time.
“I’m just like, ‘Okay, let’s keep working,’” she said.
Vasquez shared her journey with us on a recent afternoon when she could take some time away from the catering orders that come into her office at Yafo Kitchen’s Dilworth location, where she’s the executive chef.
Marking 25 years with Frank Scibelli’s FS Food Group this year, Vasquez is also a partner at the restaurant group’s other Yafo locations along with Calle Sol Latin Café & Cevicheria, Little Mama’s, Paco’s Tacos & Tequila, and Mama Ricotta’s, the restaurant where she started as a prep cook at 21 years old.
CBJ’s recognition, and the question about advice to the 18-year-old who was newly arrived in the country and working in hotels, gave Vasquez some rare time to look back on all that she’s accomplished in Charlotte’s food scene.
“It felt like a dream,” Vasquez said of being honored at The Westin in Uptown. “I feel like a Cinderella because I’m coming here at the age of 17 and to get there, I mean, it sounds easy, but it’s been a lot of hard work.”
There was only such much time to reflect, however, before Vasquez was back at it, focusing
her efforts on helping to open a new Paco’s Tacos & Tequilas in Rock Hill and continuing to craft the menu at Yafo Kitchen, with big changes in mind for the establishment this year.
Growing up in Guadalajara, Vasquez watched her grandmother bring a passion to her cooking that she then passed down to the young Carmen.
One of her favorite dishes to bake was capirotada, a Mexican bread pudding that Vasquez still cooks for her four children, who range in age from 11-24, over Easter weekend.
Working through the last quarter-century with FS Food Group — which includes a wide variety of food styles including Italian, Mediterranean, Latin and barbecue — has given Vasquez the chance to branch out and learn new things about how certain foods fuse together.
“As soon as you see something, it can bring you ideas and tastes,” Vasquez told Queen City Nerve. “It’s a combination of everything, and it’s how I’ve been creating. I really like the fusion of different cultures. I learned a lot of spices from the Middle East, like the sumac. I never heard of that before. Different things … we mix this with this. Everything is a fusion.”
Vasquez is currently working on a new menu that will center lentils, a favorite ingredient of both her and her grandmother growing up.
Her involvement with opening the new Paco’s location in Rock Hill has also allowed her to get back to her roots a bit.
“It is great because it’s my culture,” she said. “I have so many ideas that I cannot wait to open.”
She shared that, the night before we spoke, she was putting together a recipe for a new guava mole that she plans to introduce when Paco’s opens in the summer.
Her home base remains at Yafo, however, and it’s clear in talking to her how constantly she thinks about improving the experience for customers there. The menu item she’s most proud of introducing to the Yafo menu is the brisket taco for now, but she’s got a wider vision about potentially expanding to serve breakfast or perhaps adding green smoothies to the menu.
“I love the healthy stuff,” she said.
She’s also working on an as-yet-unnamed bakery concept that will bring new possibilities to Yafo.
Working in between the 50 or so catering orders that come in every month, Vasquez is always collaborating with her partners within the company to share menu ideas and solicit feedback.
“If I have an idea, I bring it to them, and everybody [discusses] a little bit, and that’s how we create so many dishes,” she described. “A little bit there, a little bit of knowledge from different chefs, and that’s how I grew up on this process because, so many chefs, they teach me so many things. I think it’s a combination of a little bit of everything, and that’s how we create.”
Vasquez credits her success at FS Food Group to the simple principle of hard work. When she arrived
in the United States with no clear path before her, she clung to that one simple belief.
“I do my best all the time,” she said. “I’m always working with that passion. I feel like everything comes ... When you do your best, everything has to come at some point.
“I found that this is my passion,” she continued. “I always work if it’s my place. Maybe Frank saw that, and that’s why he gave me the opportunity.”
She remains aware just how unlikely her journey has been, going from a prep cook who could barely speak the language in her new country to an executive chef and partner with one of the city’s most popular restaurant groups.
“Because I’m Latino, I’m a woman, it was a lot of things that put me down,” she recalled, “but I’m like, ‘No, I come for a reason.’ I have four kids. I have two daughters, and I’m going to show them the way. If I can, they can do it.”
It’s not just her kids whom Vasquez is interested in helping. As a leader with FS Food Group, she remains interested in mentoring young people who work under her.
“The restaurant industry is predominantly male, which means it is hard to see a woman in top positions,” wrote one of her team members, Sofia Munoz, in a college essay she shared with us. “She is one of the few who has reached that point, not just as a woman but as a Hispanic woman, which makes it even more difficult due to societal stereotypes.
“Carmen shows the world that a woman can lead, organize, have a vision, be strong, and be a successful mother and professional at the same time,” Munoz continued. “She encourages me to follow in her footsteps and help other women reach the top. If society believes we cannot do it, let’s change what society believes.”
Vasquez said she was incredibly honored when Munoz showed her the essay. Vasquez recognizes when certain employees have the same principles around hard work that she does, so she makes an extra effort to help lift those people up and put them on a path to success.
She made that effort with Alfredo Alvarez, who started working under Vasquez as a dishwasher at the East Boulevard location and is now the executive chef at the Central Avenue location.
“It was hard for me because I come from a place that … it was like no people to give you a hand,” she said. “I feel like it’s a compromise. When I see them, I see myself. I’m like, ‘I can share with them all my knowledge, everything that I learned from the journey, so why not?’”
And as for what she would say to her 18-year-old self — or any 18-year-old in the same position she once found herself in?
“Dream big. Work hard,” she said. “Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t because it’s not true. I mean, I’m a good example, and I tell this to all my young people that are working with me: If you are here, you can do it. So just keep dreaming and work for it.”
RPITKIN@QCNERVE.COM
ARIES (March 21 to April 19) With change dominant this week, don’t be surprised to find new emerging facts that could put a slant on a situation and offer you another choice. Think it through before you decide.
TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) There could be some lingering problems from a previous matter that involved a decision you felt you had to make. Resolve the situation with your strong Taurean no-nonsense approach.
GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) The Gemini’s carefully made plans could be undone by someone’s unexpected decision. Getting the full story behind a surprise move can help you decide how to deal with the matter.
CANCER (June 21 to July 22) Recently uncovered information might put a new light on a situation you thought had been resolved. Keep an open mind about possible changes that you might have to consider.
LEO (July 23 to August 22) With a potential revision of an old agreement, you can’t beat the Big Cat for knowing how to sharpen a “clause” to the best advantage. Meanwhile, someone close could have the news you’ve been waiting for.
VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) Certain issues in the workplace could put you in the middle of a dispute you’d rather not deal with. Express your honest feelings before the pressure to take sides builds up.
LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) You might feel uneasy disagreeing with someone you’ve been close to. But your relationship should be able to withstand and even thrive when you confront your true feelings.
SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) A romantic situation seems to be creating more confusion than you can handle. If so, own up to your feelings. The sooner you do, the better your chances are for working things out.
SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) With change directing the Archer’s aim, consider a second look at your plans and see where they might benefit from a revision. In other news, a workplace matter is close to a resolution.
CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) New contacts help you learn some important information about upcoming developments. The week calls for the Sea Goat to be more flexible than usual in a number of matters.
AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) With both change and uncertainty in your aspect, you might feel less confident in a previous decision. This is OK. Check it out and see where it could be modified, if necessary.
PISCES (February 19 to March 20) Old relationships that seemed to be sinking are buoyant again, and new relationships are benefiting from Cupid’s loving care. This could be a good time to make a major move!
BORN THIS WEEK: You prefer making your own path, but you’ll go out of your way to help someone in need. You define what it means to be a true trailblazer.
ARIES (March 21 to April 19) Professional relationships grow stronger, but you still might need to ease some problems with someone in your personal life. One way could be to try to be less rigid in your views.
TAURUS (April 20 to May 20) You might be too close to a perplexing personal situation to even attempt to make a rational decision about it right now. Stepping back could help you gain a wider perspective.
GEMINI (May 21 to June 20) Being asked to choose between the positions of two friends is an unfair imposition on you. It’s best to reject the demand and insist that they try harder to work things out on their own.
CANCER (June 21 to July 22) A change of mind about a workplace decision might be called for, once you hear more arguments -- pro and con. A personal event suddenly takes an unexpected (but pleasant!) turn.
LEO (July 23 to August 22) Romance once again looms large for single Leos and Leonas, with Cupid favoring Taurus and Libra to inspire those warm and fuzzy Leonine feelings. Meanwhile, expect another workplace change.
VIRGO (August 23 to September 22) A surprise gift with no strings attached could happily come just when you need it to avoid a delay in getting your project done. Expect education to dominate the week.
LIBRA (September 23 to October 22) Someone close to you might ask for your support as they face a demanding personal challenge. Offer it, by all means, but be careful that you don’t neglect your own needs at this time.
SCORPIO (October 23 to November 21) An unexpected development could put your relationship with a partner or spouse to an emotionally demanding test. But your determination to get to the truth should save the day!
SAGITTARIUS (November 22 to December 21) A recent agreement appears to be coming apart over the surfacing of unexpected complications. You might need to get expert advice on how to resolve the situation.
CAPRICORN (December 22 to January 19) Your keen business sense helps you get to the truth about a suspicious business deal. Expect to have many colleagues rally to support your efforts in this important matter.
AQUARIUS (January 20 to February 18) Someone who once moved in and out of your life through the years might now want to come back in on a more permanent basis. Give yourself a lot of time to weigh your decision.
PISCES (February 19 to March 20) Showing frustration over a delayed workplace decision might get someone’s attention — but not necessarily make them move any sooner. The best advice would be to be patient and wait it out.
BORN THIS WEEK: You are drawn to excitement and thrilling adventures. You also enjoy fast tempo music — the more brass, the better.
1. TELEVISION: In the sitcom “Modern Family,” Gloria is from which country?
2. LITERATURE: Which author wrote “The Kite Thief” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns”?
3. GEOGRAPHY: What is the deepest lake in the world?
4. U.S. PRESIDENTS: Which first lady’s nickname was Lady Bird?
5. ASTRONOMY: How many stars make up the Big Dipper?
6. MOVIES: Which famous Hollywood couple played lead roles in the film version of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”?
7. ANIMAL KINGDOM: What is a group of skunks called?
8. GEOMETRY: How many sides does a decagon have?
9. ART: Which American artist focused on women and children in her paintings?
10. ANATOMY: What substance gives skin its color?
PLACE A NUMBER IN THE EMPTY BOXES IN SUCH A WAY THAT EACH ROW ACROSS, EACH COLUMN DOWN AND EACH SMALL 9-BOX SQUARE CONTAINS ALL OF THE NUMBERS ONE TO NINE.
For the folks and families who deserve more than to be made political pawns
BY GWEN FRISBIE-FULTON
It started in the back seat of my family’s Jeep Cherokee, the one with the broken AC and vinyl seats that stuck to my thighs in the late summer heat.
After school we would wait, all the doors flung open, for my dad to get off work. My mother reading in the front seat, her book propped up on her knees; my brother laying across the bench seat trying to put his dirty socks on my back, me doing my homework on the floorboard, sweeping pencil shavings and dog hair out onto the gravel, the sound of hammering and table saws whirring in the distance.
Then my dad would come, plaid shirt and jeans, his head sweaty from his hard hat. He’d take the keys from my mom and steer the Jeep out to the highway. As we picked up speed, the humid Virginia air would rush into the car off the hot asphalt, catching a scent of my dad, sawdust and blueprint ammonia, and send it back to me.
This is my love letter to the working class.
This is my love letter to the construction workers, the chippies and pavers, mudders and tapers, dancing high on their stilts to the Eagles and Juan Gabriel playing on the bright yellow Dewalt radio; my love letter to the painter who smiles and slaps the new guy on the back, laughing, “Looks good from my house!”
This is my love letter to the waitresses, to the cooks wearing no-slip shoes and the dishwashers who learn all the lyrics to “Outta My Mind” while slinging plates in the pit with their headphones on. It’s to order tickets and tipped wages, running dishes and stocking the low boy; to the milk crate holding the door for a smoke break.
It’s a love letter to the daycare workers, affixing Band-Aids and distributing apple slices, rhymes and clean-up songs, who lock up the center after dark, put the garbage in the dumpster and make their way across the city to tuck their own children into bed.
It’s a love letter to the orderlies hauling canvass bags of linens out to the truck bay, the office workers sitting at gray laminate desks doing coding and billing, the grandparents who pin photos up in their cubical from that treasured weekend on the Enchantment of the Seas, the nurses who drink Diet Coke through the night, the CNAs who bring romance novels to their homebound clients.
This is a love letter to the small town bartenders who listen to our stories and tell us when its time to head home; to my friend the tattoo artist who drives Uber at night waiting for his band to get
big; to my son’s teacher working the register at World Market during the Christmas holiday; to my neighbor stocking the Food Lion shelves as a second job to pay for his mother’s prescriptions. It’s to the teachers rewriting the lesson plan, the landscaper rewatering the lawn, the cook reheating the duchess potatoes, parsley on the side.
This is a love letter to you as you are, because politicians will claim you, songwriters will herald you, pundits will devour you whole, but you rarely see yourself. A love letter to you because you are scapegoated, blamed for the backwardness of policy, for 10,000 years of history; to you because you “vote against your own interests,” because they say you are uneducated, because they call you a redneck, an illegal, a baby mama, because you promised me that you are saving up for a little break, maybe a few days at the shore, someday.
So, this is a love letter to the nail techs and hairdressers, the fabricators and upholsterers, the machinists and gear jammers, those driving over the road trying to get home to see the kids. It’s to the pickers and shippers packing skids, to the scuds and pacers, to the mom working the front desk at the Corpus Christi Microtel who puts her homework away when she runs my credit card and gets me a key.
It’s a love letter against all odds. A love letter written despite back rent due, broken washers, waiting on payday.
A love letter written with the sweet memories of hand-me-downs and potlucks, a day off at the lake, a church fish fry, checking in on the neighbor’s kids on a snow day. It’s a love letter made tender by the
barista who shares her tips, by the store clerk who knows your brand of cigarettes, by the woman who sells pupusas and gives you extra curtido because she knows your mama, and by the big trampoline put together by all your uncles so every kid in the neighborhood can play.
It’s a love letter to bus routes and subway lines, to the access roads and drainage ditches, to the punch clock and piss tests, to the Dodge Dakotas and Chevy Cobalts that are “hardly broken in,” to work gloves and all the hands inside them.
Gwen Frisbie-Fulton is a North Carolina storyteller and organizer who writes about race, class, gender and politics in the South. This piece was originally published on her Substack, Working Class Storytelling, and syndicated by Beacon Media.
INFO@QCNERVE.COM
BY DAN SAVAGE
I have a problem that I’m not sure can be solved. I’m a single gay man who hasn’t touched anybody for 16 years. Yes, you read that right: I haven’t touched another person for 16 years. Sit with that for a couple of moments. Most people don’t believe me. I did something stupid in 1998 and had sex in a hot tub. I ended up having surgery because of an infection and ever since when I ejaculate, what comes out is a combination of sperm and urine because an internal flap no longer closes to stop the urine. The urologist and my surgeon said there was nothing they could do to fix the problem. I did not realize that sex in a hot tub was an extremely risky sexual activity. (You should warn people.) Men find this absolutely disgusting. I can’t repeat some of the things I have been told when I’m trying to be honest with a partner. What advice or suggestions do you have to explain this to potential partners even though I’ve said I want to please them only. Please give me some help as to what to say. Any advice helps.
Having sex in a hot tub — having penetrative sex in a hot tub — is riskier than having sex on dry land or damp mattress or hard countertop. Heavily chlorinated water dries out sensitive tissues, making abrasions and STI transmission more likely, and water containing potentially harmful bacteria can be forced into the urethra during intercourse, heightening the risk of urinary tract infections in both men and women. (Best practices: Get horny in a hot tub, get out to fuck, get back in when you’re done.)
With that warning out of the way, CUMS, can I ask when you last spoke to a doctor about your condition?
The “little flap” that contracts during ejaculation — preventing semen from shooting into the bladder and/or urine from exiting the body with semen — is called the internal urethral sphincter. While artificial urinary sphincters have been available for more than 50 years, the doctors you saw back in 1998 might not have been aware of them. (According to the Mayo Clinic, many doctors today aren’t aware of them.) It’s also possible you weren’t a good candidate for the artificial urinary sphincters available in 1998, CUMS, but these devices have gotten smaller (and the surgery has gotten less invasive) over the last three decades, and you might be a good candidate for a new model. You should make an appointment to see a specialist and talk about your condition.
While you wait for that appointment, CUMS, you also might wanna seek out different kinds of gay and bi men, online and off. There are lots of queer men
out there into “no recip” oral. If you were to meet up with a guy who just wanted to get serviced — if you hooked up with a guy who wanted to get head without having to reciprocate — you wouldn’t have to mention your condition in advance of your first meeting; since you won’t be coming on, in, or near him, he doesn’t need to know that your ejaculate comes mixed with piss.
There are also plenty of guys out there who are into piss, and if I were to bio-hazard a guess, CUMS, I’d say a statistically significant percentage of those guys would view your condition not as a tragic defect but an exciting superpower. Leading with this fact about yourself on kink or kink-friendly hookup sites might attract so much positive attention, CUMS, that you don’t wanna get an artificial urinary sphincter after all.
I am a pansexual non-binary FTM. I am able to have two types of orgasms. One is a squirty juicy wet orgasm and the other is a full-body orgasm that makes my clit throb. Squirty orgasms come easy and often but I’ve only experienced the clit throbbers during solo play — with two exceptions: Only my ex-wife could give me this kind of climax until I met a guy on Grindr. I update my Grindr profile depending on what I’m looking for on any particular night, and on the night I met this Grindr guy I was only looking to be eaten out. I arrived at his place and he got down to business immediately. He was patient, he was deliberate, he was rough, and it was … WOW! I had a rare, full-body, clit-throbbing orgasm! It was amazing. Then, as I was leaving, I saw the Trump flag hanging in his room. It was hanging on the wall directly behind me and I did not see it — I could not see it — while I was being eaten out. It was a Trump 2016 flag — not that it matters. (A Trump flag is a Trump flag.) So, what do I do? I suppose I can do nothing and just never meet up with the guy again, but what do I do about my conscience?
FEELING LOW ABOUT GRINDR SITUATION
P.S. We exchanged phone numbers before I saw the flag.
You may have accidentally discovered a new way for people into ruined orgasms to get their kink on, FLAGS: strategically positioned Trump flags. I don’t think it matters whether they’re Trump 2016, 2020, 2024 or 2028 flags, the effect will be the same: a post-nut yuck powerful enough to ruin whatever yum came first.
For the sake of your conscience, FLAGS, send a text to the Trump supporter that says something like this: “None of that would have happened — I would never have let you go down on me — if I’d seen that Trump flag on your wall before we got started.” Then
take a screenshot of his Grindr profile, if you can still see it, and share it — privately — with other trans men you know personally, FLAGS, so they don’t wind up having the same jump scare you did. Then block his phone number and block him on Grindr.
P.S. Next time you show up in a strange man’s apartment for no-recip oral, FLAGS, do a quick 360-degree turn — a little pirouette — before he drops to his knees.
P.P.S. There’s no need to steal Trump flags to ruin orgasms. There are plenty in the trash already, deposited there by Americans — not our best — who already regret voting for Trump.
My husband’s best friend turned into one of my best friends. This best friend of ours recently started dating a woman. We were supportive of their relationship at first, even though he was joining as the third guy in a polyamory relationship. After a few months, their relationship went from polyamorous to monogamous. Our friend met his new girlfriend’s kid very early in the relationship, even spending the night after only knowing this woman for a couple of months. Within six months of dating, they shared the kid’s toothbrush on a vacation. They didn’t say they boiled the toothbrush or took any measures to clean the toothbrush until weeks later when they were pressed on it. This is when we started to distance ourselves because we felt this behavior showed a lack of respect for this child. We had a severe falling out due to this. Now they are engaged and it raises even more concerns for us. How do we proceed? Should we stop even wanting to reconcile? Should we try to be the voice of reason about oral hygiene?
UNHYGIENIC GROSS HUMANS
While I got letters about grosser things this week, yours was the most surprising letter that came in the mail for two reasons; first, that your friend would tell you about using this child’s toothbrush on vacation and, second, that you would write to me — a sex-advice columnist — about your friend using this child’s toothbrush.
For the record, UGH, I agree that introducing a child to a new partner after two months is inadvisable — which is why I’ve always advised against it — and using someone else’s toothbrush on vacation because you forgot your own is equal parts gross and unnecessary. Most hotels make disposable toothbrushes available to guests who forgot their own, UGH, and even if your friend and his girlfriend weren’t at a hotel that offered toothbrushes, they could’ve gone without brushing their teeth for a single night and gotten new toothbrushes for themselves at the nearest pharmacy or truck stop in the morning.
To be perfectly honest, UGH, I don’t really care whether you reconcile with your friend or not, just please spare me from any and all updates about your friend’s oral hygiene going forward.
I am a proud kinkster in a city with a vibrant kink community, but I am worried that my community doesn’t know how quickly it could find itself at risk. I see friends grandstanding online about crackdowns on poppers, while ignoring
broader attacks by the Trump administration on fundamental rights. I understand the former makes for a better social media post, but with the government deporting legal residents who were not accused of crimes, performing armed takeovers of private entities, and scapegoating trans people, we have more to worry about than poppers. How long before Folsom attendees face legal jeopardy for public indecency? Democrats can barely stand up for Social Security. What makes us think they’ll go to bat for kinksters? Am I wrong in thinking queer and kink organizations need to be sounding the alarm?
Both houses of Congress, private universities, powerful law firms, professional baseball — the list of groups that have caved to Trump grows longer every day. So, I don’t think the organizers of gay fetish events like Folsom or Darklands (or straight ones like DomCon or RopeCraft, for that matter) have the power to stop Trump. If there’s a silver lining here, RUMP, it may be the huge numbers of kinky people who didn’t feel like they needed to hide over the last couple of decades. If you can’t hide, you have to fight … and with the receipts already out there (social media posts, personal ads, gear purchases) there’s no hiding now. Here’s the single most important thing organizers of kink events can do: Keep organizing great events that bring even more people out. Events help create community — which is a good thing unto itself — but they also create opportunities for activists to inform, organize and activate people they might not be able to reach otherwise, which is absolutely crucial at a moment like this. (A tip for activists: DO NOT treat people having fun at fetish events or parties like they’re doing something wrong. If you want people to show up at your demonstration — or call their members of Congress or raise money for abortion funds or defend their undocumented neighbors — don’t tell them they have to pick between the party where you found them and demo where you want them. Scolds drive people away from movements, they don’t bring them in.)
Speaking of protests: The protests at Tesla dealerships have been fun, effective, and cathartic — as Tesla’s cratering stock price and Trump’s pathetic Tesla infomercial at the White House both demonstrate — and there are nationwide protests scheduled for April 5. For more information (and to find out about your local demo) go to HandsOff2025.com!
P.S. Please don’t vandalize Teslas. Trump’s DOJ is throwing the book at people who vandalize Teslas — and it turns out Elon Musk’s shitty cars are selfvandalizing, as we learned last week when every single Tesla Cybertruck ever sold was recalled after pieces of them kept falling off. So, there’s no need to risk being sent to a prison in El Salvador when you see Incel Caminos parked on your block. Give Elon’s shitty cars a minute and they’ll fall apart on their own.
Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love; or record your question for the Savage Lovecast at savage. love/askdan; podcasts, columns and more at Savage.Love.
