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HONORS & AWARDS: • Charles Shaw Trial Advocacy Award • Missouri and Kansas Super Lawyers • St. Louis Magazine, Best Lawyers in St. Louis DWI • Riverfront Times Best Lawyer • Best Lawyers in United States • 10 years of law enforcement training, including time as a narcotics agent • Invited to speak nationally on the topic of DWI defense • A proven record of successfully defending difficult DWI cases • A graduate of the National College of DUI Defense at Harvard
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THE LEDE
“I get too many lookie-loos who come in here, enjoy my air conditioner and think that I’m part of the state of Missouri and I must be just a touch-and-feel museum for them to learn ... and they all have their cellphone, and you can hear them, ‘I can get these scissors for $9 on Amazon,’ ... and I’m like, ‘Did they just teach you the reason why they need left-handed scissors? No!’”
PHOTO BY THEO WELLING
NANCY SMITH, PHOTOGRAPHED AT HER STORE, LOVE YOUR LEFTY, ON AUGUST 16
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Publisher Chris Keating Interim Editor in Chief Doyle Murphy
COVER
Fall Arts Guide Make your plans now for the plays, galleries and performers to see in St. Louis’ ever-growing scene Cover art:
New works by Jeremy Rabus (including “Faithful Companion,” above) are on exhibit at Cherokee Street Gallery (2617 Cherokee Street), now through September 12.
INSIDE
After the Wedding
5 7 9 12 22 25
Stage
27
Cafe
31
Short Orders
35
Culture
41
Guys and Dolls
Pop
A R T Art Director Evan Sult Contributing Photographers Virginia Harold, Tim Lane, Monica Mileur, Zia Nizami, Andy Paulissen, Nick Schnelle, Mabel Suen, Micah Usher, Theo Welling, Jen West, Corey Woodruff P R O D U C T I O N Production Manager Haimanti Germain
“DIMACIA LAGOON” by JEREMY RABUS
The Lede Hartmann News Feature Calendar Film
E D I T O R I A L Arts & Culture Editor Paul Friswold Music Editor Daniel Hill Digital Editor Jaime Lees Staff Writer Danny Wicentowski Restaurant Critic Cheryl Baehr Film Critic Robert Hunt Columnist Ray Hartmann Contributing Writers Mike Appelstein, Allison Babka, Thomas Crone, Jenn DeRose, Mike Fitzgerald, Sara Graham, MaryAnn Johanson, Roy Kasten, Jaime Lees, Joseph Hess, Kevin Korinek, Bob McMahon, Lauren Milford, Nicholas Phillips, Tef Poe, Christian Schaeffer Proofreader Evie Hemphill Editorial Interns Katie Counts, Joshua Phelps, James Pollard
M U L T I M E D I A A D V E R T I S I N G Advertising Director Colin Bell Senior Account Executive Cathleen Criswell Account Managers Emily Fear, Jennifer Samuel Multimedia Account Executive Chris Guilbault, Jackie Mundy C I R C U L A T I O N Circulation Manager Kevin G. Powers E U C L I D M E D I A G R O U P Chief Executive Officer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating Officers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner VP of Digital Services Stacy Volhein Creative Director Tom Carlson www.euclidmediagroup.com N A T I O N A L A D V E R T I S I N G VMG Advertising 1-888-278-9866, vmgadvertising.com S U B S C R I P T I O N S Send address changes to Riverfront Times, 308 N. 21st Street, Suite 300, St. Louis, MO 63103. Domestic subscriptions may be purchased for $78/6 months (Missouri residents add $4.74 sales tax) and $156/year (Missouri residents add $9.48 sales tax) for first class. Allow 6-10 days for standard delivery. www.riverfronttimes.com The Riverfront Times is published weekly by Euclid Media Group Verified Audit Member Riverfront Times 308 N. 21st Street, Suite 300, St. Louis, MO 63103 www.riverfronttimes.com General information: 314-754-5966 Fax administrative: 314-754-5955 Fax editorial: 314-754-6416 Founded by Ray Hartmann in 1977
Faron Huster at Russell’s on Macklind | Rock Star Taco Shack | Cafe on the Abbey
Sister Wizzard | Comedy on the Loop Trolley
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Out Every Night
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Savage Love
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Riverfront Times is available free of charge, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies of the current issue may be purchased for $1.00 plus postage, payable in advance at the Riverfront Times office. Riverfront Times may be distributed only by Riverfront Times authorized distributors. No person may, without prior written permission of Riverfront Times, take more than one copy of each Riverfront Times weekly issue. The entire contents of Riverfront Times are copyright 2018 by Riverfront Times, LLC. No portion may be reproduced in whole or in part by any means, including electronic retrieval systems, without the expressed written permission of the Publisher, Riverfront Times, 308 N. 21st Street, Suite 300, St. Louis, MO 63103. Please call the Riverfront Times office for back-issue information, 314-754-5966.
HARTMANN Dems Need 2020 Vision How the minority party can take a page from a dusty old GOP playbook BY RAY HARTMANN
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n 1972, a young, bright and energetic state auditor named Kit Bond ran successfully against Democratic Gov. Warren earnes to become the first epublican governor in 40 years. It was a stunning achievement, with Bond garnering a 55-45 percent victory margin thanks to a “Bondwagon” campaign promising to end a legacy of corrupt one-party rule by Hearnes and decades of predecessors. Bond, at 33, had become Missouri’s young-
est-ever governor in ending his party’s historic drought. I probably should note one detail: Hearnes wasn’t actually on the ballot that year. Even though Bond made a constant target of the incumbent’s record — current and inherited ond’s specific opponent that year was prominent St. Louis attorney Ed Dowd, a Democrat conservative enough to have run on a platform of “law and order.” It was basically a battle of moderates in a year that the national election was anything but that (with Tricky Dick Nixon crushing liberal Senator George McGovern in a sadly epic landslide). In any event, Bond didn’t pay nearly as much attention to Dowd as he did to railing against the ills created by decades of iron-fisted Democratic — arguably Dixiecrat rule. e had a fistful of audits his o ce had done, and his campaign was less against one guy than it was to throw the rascals
out. Or, as they say today, drain the swamp. That’s why I take the liberty of saying Bond ran successfully against Hearnes, even if they weren’t in the ring together. (Full disclosure: I was hired by Bond as a speechwriter in 1975.) Here we are, 48 years later, and I couldn’t help but notice some serious parallels when Democratic Auditor Nicole Galloway announced last week that she was running for governor in 2020. It’s deja vu all over again. Like the Kit Bond of 1972, she is a young, bright and energetic state auditor running for governor, just slightly older at 37. Like Bond, she proudly can point to a record of state audits that have uncovered widespread misuse of state funds and, in some cases, corruption. On that score, she has more ammunition, having been auditor about three times as long as Bond was at this point. (Galloway was appointed by Gov. Jay Nixon in April 2015 — af-
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ter the death of State Auditor Tom Schweich — before winning a full four-year term last November. Bond was elected auditor in 1970, just two years before the governor’s race in 1972.) Galloway’s accomplishments in o ce are impressive idely known (at least until now) as being a solid, equal-opportunity auditor in terms of who her o ce reviews, Galloway points to audits that uncovered $350 million in government waste and fraud and led to 40 criminal charges against epublicans and emocrats. In announcing her candidacy for governor, Galloway cited all of that and also demonstrated that she wasn’t going to be shy in attacking Gov. Mike Parson, her likely opponent. She released a strong video depicting two shadowy guys exchanging envelopes while accusing Parson of helping lobbyists and corporations receive favors in a “broken system.” Already, Galloway is calling out
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Parson for his administration having allowed 95,000 kids to fall off the Medicaid rolls — a subject covered in this space three weeks ago — and she’s attacked him on the subject of women’s reproductive rights with far more vigor than any Democrat has dared to show in recent memory. She’s even spoken out for background checks on guns, again venturing into a hotbutton region often treated as a radioactive site by candidates of her party. She has reminded epublicans of their failure to accept the will of the people, who overwhelmingly approved the “Clean Missouri” initiative to reform the way state government and its lobbyists and politicians do business. And she has done it with an air of calmness and moderation that might play well throughout the state. It has gotten Parson’s attention enough that his aides are already firing back with Trumpian tactics “Liberal Nicole Galloway echoes the talking points of the national liberals she’s backed in the past and has been critical of historic state and federal tax cuts that have provided great savings to hardworking Missouri families.” And there was this comment, notably, from the governor himself: “If I were to give her advice, I’d tell her to not worry about what the current governor is doing.” Galloway fundraised off of that curious line. Still, she has not embarked on an easy mission. The elephant in the room is the Democrats’ choice of presidential candidates. Galloway’s fate likely rests with the same balancing act her party faces between tapping the energy of a passionate, woke base while maintaining enough moderation to win the suburbs and the ust elt. We’ll see how that works out. But regardless, I think she and other Democrats would do well to take a page from the 1972 Bond playbook, one that I’m not sure they have on their radar, which is to run against a guy whose name should not be forgotten. That would be “ epublican Governor Eric Greitens.” As much as Eric Greitens’ party would like to sing kumbaya and forget he existed, it really does own him as much as he owned it until being forced off the stage as if he were, say, tied up and blindfolded. It was, after all, less than three years ago that the ticket of Greit-
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ens-Parson was elected. And while there is no question that Parson is a much nicer and more honest man than Greitens — a low bar, if ever there was one — it’s also true that much of the mean-spiritedness that Greitens embodied lives on behind the more benign face presented by Parson. With the exception of the issue of low-income housing tax credits — on which the two men differed and which were at least partly restored by Parson after being cut by Greitens — not a single major priority changed, not a single hardline policy softened. From the disgusting no-rape-and-incest anti-abortion bill to the neglect of poor kids to the rejection of Clean Missouri, it’s still his party. Even if the kinder, gentler era of arson, the epublicans supermajority showed no respect for Democrats in the legislature. Virtually every substantive Democratic bill that was introduced in the House waited until the last day of the legislative session to be referred to committee (a referral required by law). Democrats were completely frozen out of the budget process to a degree not seen in any current legislator’s memory. Democrats stood for hours on the floor of the House without getting acknowledged, only to have debate cut off. The Senate was a place with a bit more collegiality but few truly bipartisan outcomes. In fairness, the epublicans’ ongoing bullying tactics pale in comparison to the sad history of the state’s Democratic Party in the first two-thirds of the last century when, for example, one needed a signature from a Democratic county chairman to apply for one of thousands of patronage jobs. Kit Bond had a good point in his day, which is why the strategy of running against Hearnes and those who came before him was such a success. Dowd, a much more decent guy, was essentially ignored as a false front. Today, Galloway faces a similar task: running against a man whose affable characteristics disguise a state epublican arty that has truly lost its way. This isn’t Bond’s reform-minded party anymore. It’s something different, something much less fair and kind. Galloway, in this view, needs to call that by its name: Greitens. n Ray Hartmann founded the Riverfront Times in 1977. Contact him at rhartmann@sbcglobal.net or catch him on St. Louis In the Know With Ray Hartmann and Jay Kanzler from 9 to 11 p.m. Monday thru Friday on KTRS (550 AM).
NEWS Gardner Alleges Conflicts in Probes
In St. Louis, Gillibrand Talks Abortion Rights Written by
JAMES POLLARD
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Written by
DANNY WICENTOWSKI
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t the center of multiple legal maelstroms, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner is fighting battles against bad cops and bad convictions but at the same time, the storm in her own house continues to build. On Monday, lawyers representing Gardner appeared before Judge Rex Burlison, arguing that a public hearing is needed to evaluate possible conflicts of interest in a case where Gardner, the city’s top prosecutor, appears as a victim of a rarely charged crime, “tampering with a udicial o cer.” That case is progressing more than a year after Gardner first filed a report with the St. Louis metro police, alleging that in 2018 lawyers representing then-Missouri Governor ric Greitens told her that her career would be “ruined personally [and] professionally” if she did not drop the criminal charge filed against Greitens for invasion of privacy. Since Gardner can’t prosecute a case in which she is the victim, Burlison appointed retired Boone County judge Michael Bradley as a special prosecutor. But Gardner’s .C.-based attorney, oy Austin, contends that Bradley’s years working inside the Missouri Attorney General’s ce connects him to former governor Jay Ni on, who now works for the law firm owd ennett the very same firm whose attorneys, according to Gardner, threatened her in 2018. Therein lies the conflict with Bradley, Austin argues. “The public has a right to know that when the elected circuit attorney is not running a case, the person who is put there has no conflicts of interest,” Austin said in an interview after the hearing on Monday. “We will simply wait to hear the ruling from the court.”
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Attorney Roy Austin is representing Kim Gardner in court. | DANNY WICENTOWSKI uring the interview, Austin alleged that Bradley isn’t the only case of a conflicted special prosecutor given power to investigate Gardner. Currently, special prosecutor Gerard Carmody is overseeing an investigation into the Circuit Attorney’s ce for its actions during the Greitens investigation. Carmody has already charged illiam Tisaby, a former F I agent Gardner hired to help build a case against Greitens, with evidence tampering and six counts of perjury. An indictment unsealed in June described Gardner as an active participant in Tisaby’s alleged perjury, though she herself has not been charged. Carmody is still digging into the case, and last week he confirmed that the probe is active, setting up the possibility for a new grand ury to evaluate whether additional charges are needed on a case that, month after month, seems to get more tangled and e pensive. To Austin, however, the fact that Carmody attended high school with dward owd, one of the lead attorneys who defended Greitens, should raise concerns. “Jerry Cardmody has such an absurd number of conflicts,” Austin said. “ e has been very close
friends with the lead attorney for Governor Greitens, and he is the one who is investigating whether or not there is any impropriety with respect to the prosecution of Governor Greitens. That is as clear a conflict as one can find.” Ultimately, Gardner’s political fate may hang in the balance of these two investigations and their respective special prosecutors. oth investigations are e pected to wrap up in a matter months, and perhaps sooner. In July, after a udge lifted a gag order that had prevented Gardner from commenting on the investigation into her o ce’s conduct during the Greitens investigation, the city’s top prosecutor was defiant: She stated that she “did nothing wrong” and called on everyone to move on from the saga that toppled Greitens political career. Whether it topples hers is a matter that remains to be seen. “Now we have to stop spending our time and limited resources looking at one case as if it is the only measure of competence and success,” Gardner said in July. “The true measure lies in how we handle the 10,000 criminal cases that are referred to our o ce annually.” n
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.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) brought her 2020 presidential campaign to St. Louis — home of the only abortion clinic in Missouri — to discuss abortion access and reproductive health. More than 330 people, many dressed in pink Planned Parenthood or purple NARAL shirts, attended the Sunday afternoon town hall Q&A at Delmar Hall, moderated by St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura Jones. Gillibrand said, as president, she would codify Roe v. Wade as federal law, pushing back against state-by-state efforts to restrict abortion, like Missouri’s eight week abortion ban. “I love being in Missouri, because you guys are fighters,” the senator from upstate New York said, later adding it is important for her to go to the front lines of these battles. Gillibrand said women’s rights are under attack “like never before,” blaming the president’s rhetoric for renewed challenges. She said the next president needs to view women’s reproductive freedom as a basic civil and human right. She vowed to repeal the Hyde amendment, which prevents federal funds from paying for abortions, except in cases of rape and incest or to save a mother’s life. She also committed to appointing judges and justices who will uphold Roe v. Wade. “Just imagine how great it would be to have a working mom in the White House as opposed to a misogynist,” she told the crowd. Gillibrand noted the intersectionality of the issue of reproductive rights, saying it disproportionately affects women of color and transgender men. Describing herself as a white woman “of extraordinary privilege,” she said it is her job to lift up the experiences and voices of black and brown women. After Jones, a single mother, asked her how institutional racism relates to reproductive health and daily life, Gillibrand paused. She choked up, recalling meeting Jones’ son, the same age as her son, Henry. “He could have so many more challenges than Henry will have,” she said, speaking directly to Jones. “Both of us are elected leaders, both are women of stature, who have a place and have a voice. Continued on pg 10
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SAINT LOUIS ORCHESTRA Saint Louis Philharmonic Subscription Concerts 2019-2020
ROBERT HART BAKER Conductor
CONCERT 1
Passport to Europe
Friday, October 11, 2019 at 8:00 p.m. Purser Auditorium, Logan University Our continental tour of musical favorites includes the rarely heard dances on popular themes by Sinigaglia, a 100-year old treasure from our archives. Beethoven: Coriolan Overture, Op. 62 Leone Sinigaglia: Danze Piemontesi, Op. 31, Nos. 1&2 Verdi: Aida Ballet Music Rossini: The Italian Girl in Algiers Overture Dvorak: Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand focused on reproductive rights during a forum at Delmar Hall. | JAMES POLLARD
CONCERT 2
2019 Aspiring Young Artist Winner
Friday, November 22, 2019 at 8:00 p.m. Purser Auditorium, Logan University A colorful orchestral concert of programmatic works and the solo debut of a rising star instrumentalist. Elgar: Cockaigne Overture, Op. 40 “In London Town” Glazounov: Autumn from “The Seasons” Op. 67b Performance by 2019 Aspiring Young Artist Winner Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 17 “Little Russian
CONCERT 3
Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms Friday, February 20, 2020 at 8:00 p.m. The J. Scheidegger Center for the Arts
A sonic showcase of virtuoso works for orchestra complemented by our first performance of Leonard Bernstein’s choral masterpiece. Chabrier: Espana Rhapsody Hanson: Symphony No. 2 in D-flat major, Op. 30 “Romantic” Bernstein: Chichester Psalms, with - Lindenwood University Choirs - St. Louis Community CollegeMeramec Choir - St. Charles Community College Chamber Choir Rimsky-Koprsakov: Russian Easter Overture, Op. 36
CONCERT 4
American Legacy with Christine Brewer
Friday, April 24, 2020 at 8:00 p.m. The J. Scheidegger Center for the Arts The internationally-known opera star joins the Philharmonic for an intimate evening of songs drawn from her live recitals and albums. Copland: Appalachian Spring Selections from the Harold Arlen songbook, including “Over The Rainbow Christine Brewer, saprano Faure’: Dolly Suite, Op. 56 (orchestrated by Henri Rabaud) Reservations and Information available by calling (314) 4213600, online at www.stlphilharmonic.org or by mail. Please make checks payable to philharmonic Society of St. Louis and mail to P.O. Box 220437, St. Louis, MO 63112. All contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by the law
FOR TICKETS OR INFORMATION
(314) 421-3600
www.stlphilharmonic.org
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Marc Daniels holds up pink yarmulkes emblazoned with “Kirsten Gillibrand 2020.” | JAMES POLLARD
GILLIBRAND IN MISSOURI Continued from pg 9
But your son’s life could well be harder, because the color of his skin. And my son’s whiteness is what protects him.” She also spoke to racial disparities in maternal mortality rates. Missouri ranks 42nd nationally in maternal mortality with 32.6 pregnancy-related deaths per 100,000 live births, well above the national average of 20.7. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that African-American, Native American and Alaska Native women die of pregnancyrelated causes about three times more frequently than white women. “It’s the fact that, if you didn’t have a good delivery, and you were experiencing pain or something didn’t feel right, that pain or that feeling could have been belittled, demeaned, dismissed,” she said to Jones. “You could have bled out and died.” When Dr. Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer for the Planned Parent-
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hood in St. Louis, asked Gillibrand how she would expand abortion access, the senator said she would pass Medicare for All. Her plan for passing her legislative agenda involves defeating Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), gaining a Democratic majority in the Senate and changing the country’s political climate through the bully pulpit. Only one senator has voted against Donald Trump’s agenda more than Gillibrand. But Gillibrand, who previously represented a rural district in congress, said she knows when to reach across the aisle without compromising on core values. While she would not commit to it, she told the Riverfront Times she would look at filibuster reform — lowering the threshold for delaying a vote. She said she would also consider other reforms to “make sure our democracy works again.” “Unfortunately, money in politics is all too prevalent, and so I will actually pass a publicly funded election bill to restore our democracy back to the hands of the people, away from the money and spe-
cial interests that control everything in Washington,” she told the RFT. Gillibrand, a Christian, said that while many oppose abortion on religious grounds, she believes in free will and the separation of church and state. Marc Daniels, a Jewish man who brough pink yarmulkes emblazoned with “Kirsten Gillibrand 2020,” agreed. He said abortion restrictions infringe upon the reproductive rights of Jewish women. According to a 2017 Pew survey, 83 percent of American Jews believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. A member of that camp, he says that, according to the Talmud and the Torah, life begins upon birth. “Kirsten’s message is interesting, from a positioning point,” he says. “I call her America’s ‘choice’ candidate because she’s the person who ensures that this freedom of women’s reproductive rights — and probably freedom for male reproductive rights as well — gets spoken about, and that’s what I like about her.” Reproductive health rights are what brought Alderwoman Megan Green (D15th Ward) to Delmar Hall, located just over three miles from Planned Parenthood’s Central West End location. While she has publicly supported Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), she says voters need to support any presidential candidate talking about reproductive health rights. She added that the Board of Aldermen needed to revisit the issue of buffer zones. “Right now we have protestors that are often out in front of Planned Parenthood every time that it’s open,” she said. “While we all appreciate First Amendment rights, when you block a driveway and you impede access to healthcare, that is a problem. And a buffer zone would find that balance of allowing those First Amendment rights while also ensuring that patients can access the care that they need free from intimidation.” Antoine Givens is still deciding whether or not to support senators Gillibrand, Warren or Cory Booker (D-New Jersey). He says that he likes Gillibrand’s advocacy for family rights in addition to women’s rights. “She released one of her policy ideas for national paid family leave, which I don’t think any other candidate has really been pushing it as much as she has,” Givens said. Gillibrand, who has yet to qualify for the third round of primary debates in September, ended her event asking for $1 donations. She needs three more qualifying polls of two percent support and 130,000 total individual donors to make the debate stage. “We’re honored you thought enough of Missouri, which is often overlooked by presidential campaigns,” Jones told Gillibrand toward the end of the event. “You thought enough about us to come and recognize our struggle and our fight for women’s healthcare and our access to abortion.” n
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Fall arts GUIDE Make your plans now for the plays, galleries and performers to see in St. Louis' ever-growing scene nce upon a time,
the St. Louis arts community took the summer off, with a few notable exceptions (coughTheMunycough). Those days are long gone. There are art openings, plays, dance performances and book tours every month of the year. Did the Riverfront Times Fall Arts Guide have something to do with that? Having overseen more than fifteen editions of them, I’m confident in saying “absolutely not.” The local creative community flourished under its own power. If good plays were once hard to find in July of 2004, canny artistic directors soon realized they had an opportunity to fill a glaring void. Your dance company/gallery/theater troupe won’t survive long in this town if you don’t take your chances. As audiences grew in size, it made
sense to spread out across the calendar. With everything happening all the time, you’d think the competition for attention would be fiercer, but you’d be wrong. Artists and gallery owners go from opening to opening, vying to see everything. Dancers attend as many dance performances as they can; artistic directors share actors, costumes and props as needed. “St. Louis is not as cutthroat as Chicago/New York/San Francisco” is often said by newcomers. There’s a reason for that. Cutthroat tactics don’t result in a yearround cycle of dance, music, visual arts and theater; it ends with people nursing old wounds and fighting for attention. In St. Louis, people promote each other’s work, and the work grows apace, year after year. So what’s the Fall Arts Guide for? It’s a chance to see what’s coming, and for figuring out now what you’re going to be telling your friends about come October.
— Paul Friswold
Stephanie Syjuco, Neutral Calibration Studies (Ornament + Crime), 2016. Wooden platform, neutral grey seamless backdrop paper, digital adhesive prints on laser-cut wooden props, dye-sublimation digital prints on fabric, items purchased on eBay and craigslist, photographic prints, live plants, neutral calibrated gray paint, 10 x 20 x 8 feet. Courtesy the artist 12
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Stephanie Syjuco: Rogue States
september 6-december 29 Artist Stephanie Syjuco was born in Manila and immigrated to the United States with her family when she was three years old, which gave her an American education and an immigrant’s eye for our national blindspots. It’s these blindspots that inform the art in her exhibition Stephanie Syjuco: Rogue States, which opens at the Contemporary Art useum St. Louis 0 ashington Boulevard; www.camstl. org) on Friday, September 6. The title of the show comes from her installation of 22 flags that were used to represent the flags of made-up nations in various American films. Also in the exhibit is her large-scale installation Neutral Calibration Studies (Ornament + Crime), which comprises artifacts representing both colonizer and colonized societies. Cultural objects such as wicker chairs and traditional rugs Syjuco purchased online, cardboard cutouts of people and actual artifacts are mixed together in a larger-than-life diorama. Nestled in the background is a color photograph of the “stone-age” tribe of the Tasadai, found on a remote island in the Philippines in the early 0s, who were actually modern people posed by a photographer. Rogue States continues through ecember 2 .
Don't Bother Me
september 4-22 Composer Micki Grant and director Vinnette Carroll made history with their 1971 musical Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope. The revue was the first-ever Broadway show written and directed by black women. The show’s songs are interspersed with a little bit of dialogue, the topics ranging from the inalienable right of black people to exist “ y Name Is an” to the list of white annoyances (bad bosses, nasty clerks at the unemployment o ce that populate the title track. Don’t Bother Me has been praised as a combination of “block party and revival,” and while the 0s may be long gone, most of the issues remain relevant. The Black Rep opens its 4 rd season with the high-energy musical. Performances are September 4 to 22 at ashington niversity’s dison Theatre 44 Forsyth oulevard www. theblackrep.org).
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MADCO brings Wallstories back to St. Louis. | DAVID LANCASTER
Angels in America parts ONE and TWO
september 4-october 6 Time moves incredibly quickly. This past April, Repertory Theatre St. Louis artistic director Steven Woolf stepped down after helming the past 33 seasons. This September, incoming artistic director Hana S. Sharif embarks on her first season with the ep.
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Sharif’s season-opening show is definitely a statement piece Tony ushner’s Angels in America: Parts One and Two. The Pulitzer and Tony award-winning drama tells the simultaneous stories of the early days of the AI S crisis, a young gay couple haunted by the new plague, a young Mormon couple whose marriage is on shaky ground and the last days of hard-bitten lawyer Roy Cohn. Ad-
diction, cowardice, lust for power and the fear of being true to yourself all factor into the groundbreaking drama. The Repertory Theatre St. Louis presents Angels in America: Parts One and Two in repertory (and on select days, back to back September 4 to ctober 6 at the Loretto-Hilton Center of the erforming Arts 0 dgar Road; www.repstl.com).
Mark Deutsch will fill the Sheldon with the otherworldly sounds of the Bazantar. | COURTESY OF THE SHELDON
Margaret Atwood: live in Cinemas
september 10 If you can believe it, argaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale was considered science fiction, thanks to its near-future, dystopian setting. Thirty-four years of perversely regressive American politics have made it more of roadmap to our current nightmare than anyone (except Atwood) could have imagined. The Canadian author’s long-awaited sequel, The Testaments, is being published this year, and to mark the occasion, Atwood appears in nationwide simulcast, Margaret Atwood: Live in Cinemas. Author and BBC broadcaster Samira Ahmed will interview Atwood about her career and work, and why she chose now to return to Ofred and the land of Gilead, while several special guests will read from The Testaments. The interview can be seen locally at p.m. Tuesday, September 0, at arcus onnies Cine 20 South
Lindbergh Boulevard), Marcus es eres 4 Cine 2 0 anchester Road, Des Peres) and the A C Chesterfield 4 000 Chesterfield all, Chesterfied . For more information, visit www.fathomevents.com.
Ai Weiwei
an intersecting series of wooden pillars that pierce the surface of Qing Dynasty wooden tables. The work evokes China’s own interrupted and intentionally erased history. Ai Weiwei: Bare Life also includes sculptures, photographs, films and a triptych constructed of L G bricks. The show runs from September 2 to January .
september 28-January 5 The Mildred Lane Kemper Art useum o cially reopens with a bang. Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei presents a major exhibition of work that spans the past twenty years of his career, some of which has never before been shown in the United States. Divided into two parts, Bare Life and Rupture, the show features monumental exhibitions such as Forever Bicycles 20 and Through 200 -200 . The former is a commemorative arch built with Chinese-made bicycles, their carefully positioned tires lining up to create the image of telescoping lenses; the latter is
Cry-Baby
september 26-October 19 Continuing its proud tradition of righting roadway’s wrongs, New Line Theatre rehabilitated John aters’ musical Cry-Baby with its 20 2 production of the show. The musical was pared down by the creators e pressly for New Line’s inaugural regional production, throwing out the bombast and orchestrations in favor of a more intimate show with a six-piece band. These changes brought Cry-Baby back to street-level 4, when conformity and closeharmony singing ran headfirst into the hormones and heartache
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heralded by the pioneers of rock roll. ade “Cry- aby” alker is the uncrowned king of the rapes altimore’s greasers . When good girl Alison falls for the tender-hearted Wade, she turns her back on all that’s decent. Her jilted square boyfriend Baldwin will have his revenge on all Drapes and damn the consequences. New Line Theatre presents Cry-Baby Thursday through Saturday September 2 to ctober 19) at the Marcelle Theater 0 Samuel Shepard rive www.newlinetheatre.com).
Mark Deutsch and the Bazantar
october 8 Mark Deutsch spent several years in the 0s in St. Louis, playing and teaching the electric bass and the double bass. His passion for the sitar and the trance music tradition seeped into his work, and he embarked on an arduous journey to create an
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to 2 at the Tower Grove Abbey 2 Tennessee Avenue www. straydogtheatre.org).
Ein Heldenleben with Conductor Leonard Slatkin
October 12-13 Leonard Slatkin remains a beloved figure in St. Louis for his work with the St. Louis Symphony, of which he is the conductor laureate. Slatkin returns to town to celebrate his 75th birthday by — what else? — leading the orchestra through a selection of music that finishes with ichard Strauss’ tone poem Ein Heldenleben A ero’s Life . espite the piece’s modern popularity, it was originally greeted with critical approbation, which Strauss was very familiar with. It’s a musical ourney through the life of a stylized hero (often presumed to be Strauss himself , who appears, then fights his adversaries and retreats to the comforts of home and his unnamed companion. He returns to battle, earns a hard-fought piece and then retires. The piece is performed at p.m. Saturday and p.m. Sunday ctober 2 and at owell all North Grand Boulevard; www.slso.org).
Jay & Silent Bob Reboot
October 15 & 17
Pete Souza has turned Trump trolling into an art. | COURTESY PETE SOUZA/WHITE HOUSE PHOTO OFFICE instrument that blended east and west, bass and sitar. The result is the Bazantar, an acoustic bass with frets, a widened neck and a redesigned bridge that supports the traditional four strings with a secondary framework passing underneath that holds the tension of 35 additional sympathetic and drone strings. In eutsch’s hands, the Bazantar can sound like the music of the spheres or the song of destruction. It howls, it hums, it moans it’s a polyphony of tone and timbre, an orchestra performed by one man. Deutsch introduced the Bazantar
to a wider audience at the Sheldon twenty years ago. He then decamped to the West Coast for further sonic explorations. He returns to St. Louis for a 0 p.m. performance Tuesday, ctober , once again at the Sheldon 4 Washington Boulevard; www. thesheldon.org . on’t miss it, or another twenty years may pass before you have the chance to hear Deutsch play it again.
The Who's Tommy
October 10-26 ight years ago, Stray og Theatre
unleashed its glorious production of The Who’s Tommy. It was a knock out. Associate artistic director Justin een took the lead on staging the production, revealing his prodigious talents for arranging actors in ever-shifting tableaux. The result was a beautifully kinetic production that made pinball an exuberant celebration of life. At long last, Stray Dog will once again present Tommy in all his deaf, dumb and blind glory, with Been overseeing the production. The show is performed with a live band, as it should be, Thursday through Saturday ctober 0
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Writer/director Kevin Smith is newly slimmed down after a serious heart attack, and reenergized. After lo these many years, he returns to his stonedbozo version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with Jay & Silent Bob Reboot. Jay is Jason ewes, Smith’s heterose ual life partner who does all the talking, swearing and snoochy-booching. Silent Bob is Smith, the enigmatic man in the trenchcoat who acts as balance to the energetic Jay. hen the two Jersey boys learn ollywood is going to reboot even their film, the two hightail it to the West Coast to either break it up or horn in on the action. Will the pairing still work if Jay can’t crack okes about ob’s girth? nly one way to find out. Jay & Silent Bob Reboot gets a special screening thanks to Fathom vents at p.m. Tuesday, ctober 15, at the Marcus Ronnies Cine 20 South Lindbergh oulevard; www.fathomevents.com), with a special introduction from evin Smith. The film plays again on Thursday, October 17, at the
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FALL ARTS GUIDE Continued from pg 17
same theater as the back half of a double feature with the original Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
Dear Evan Hansen
October 22-november 3 en asek and Justin aul’s musical Dear Evan Hansen caused a national stir on Broadway, thanks to its ultra-contemporary plot. van ansen is a high schooler with social anxiety being raised by his working mom, who’s rarely at home. When a pep-talk letter he wrote to himself ends up in the pocket of a fellow student who commits suicide, van becomes involved with the grieving family. This gets him closer to Zoe, his longtime crush who’s also the younger sister of the deceased. A white lie he tells to comfort the boy’s parents spins out of control but also brings him closer to Zoe. f course, van also is throwing out more lies all the time to keep his story afloat, and he’s doomed to come back to the truth eventually. The Fo Theatre 2 North Grand Boulevard; www.fabulousfox.com) presents Dear Evan Hansen ctober 22 to November .
An Evening with Pete Souza
October 23 Pete Souza has worked as a photojournalist, shot for National Geographic and Life and has been the chief o cial hite ouse photographer for former President arack bama, but he’s currently most popular for his weaponsgrade trolling of Donald Trump on his personal Instagram. Sou a’s mockery relies on his large stash of Obama photos, which he repurposes with cutting captions that underline the differences in governing style, humility and humanity between bama and Trump. If you’re wondering, Trump doesn’t look very good in comparison. These photographic arguments formed the basis of Sou a’s book Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents. The paperback edition has 0 new pages of Sou a’s commentary on Michael Cohen, Brett Kavanaugh and the immigration crisis. At 7 p.m. ednesday, ctober 2 , Left Bank Books presents Pete Souza at the Grandel 0 Grandel S uare www.left-bank.com) with the new edition of Shade. The event requires tickets and comes with a signed copy of the book.
New Line Theatre opens its season with Cry-Baby, which was a huge hit for them in 2012. | JILL RITTER LINDBERG/NEW LINE THEATRE
Nick Offerman, American Humorist
November 7
Nick Offerman is a man of the people. That means he makes things out of wood, liberally quotes Wendell Berry, enjoys a nice sausage, plays a few instruments and does some acting. All of those skills come together, somehow, in his live show All Rise. e’ll sing a song or two, tell a couple jokes (some off-color), perhaps outrage you with a political oke or his take on women’s lib and e ual pay he’s fer it and generally amuse himself while amusing the audience. It seems effortless, but then most of life’s fun moments often are effortless. Nick Offerman: All Rise takes place at 0 p.m. Thursday, November 7, at the Stifel Theatre 400 arket Street www.stifeltheatre.com).
Wallstories
November 8-9 Ne la Yatkin grew up in Cold ar Berlin, and the shadow of the Berlin Wall — and the oppression it represented — cast a pall over her youth. Instead of succumbing to the paranoia and hostility that fear can generate, she channeled her feelings of helplessness and terror into Wallstories, a multimedia dance piece that transformed her emotions into
art. In Wallstories, recordings of other people who lived near the Berlin Wall play along with musical selections from Bach and ink Floyd’s The Wall album, all while A C ’s dance company performs in front of, on and atop a wall. Wallstories is performed Friday and Saturday (November and at the Touhill erforming Arts Center on the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus (1 University Boulevard at Natural Bridge Road; www.touhill.org).
songwriters such as Rufus Wainwright and Lyle Lovett, and his own original compositions during the show, which left New York reviewers breathless. Patinkin brings that energy to the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus (1 University Boulevard at Natural Bridge Road; www. touhill.org) at 3 p.m. Sunday, November 0, for a one-time performance.
A Life in the Theater Mandy Patinkin in Concert
December 6-22
October 10 Mandy Patinkin cemented his place in Hollywood history with his performance of vengeful swordmaster Inigo ontoya in The Princes Bride, but only after he’d secured a similarly lofty position in Broadway history. Patinkin won a Tony award for featured performer for his role as Che Guevara in the 1979 production of Evita and was nominated for best actor in 4’s Sunday in the Park with George. In the decades since, he’s moved from T to film and back to roadway with surprising ease. It is his love of musical theater and music in general that informs his one-man show Mandy Patinkin in Concert: Diaries. He sings classics, show tunes, works by contemporary
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In 20 , St. Louis Actors’ Studio staged a beautiful production of avid amet’s American Buffalo. At the tail end of 20 , the company performs another Mamet drama, A Life in the Theater. STLAS founder and artistic director William Roth, who was so good in American Buffalo, will play Robert, an aging actor paired with Spencer Sickmann’s John, a rising star. In a series of brief glances into the advancing careers, we see obert’s star dim while John’s continues to burn brighter. Like a pair of binary stars locked in each other’s orbit, John devours obert’s career, or perhaps Robert eats himself up with envy and anger. St. Louis Actors’ Studio presents A Life in the Theatre ecember to 22 at the Gaslight Theater North Boyle Avenue; www.stlas.org). n
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Your music has a history! SEPT 3 Motown Revue
SEPT 17 Coleman Hughes Project
SEPT 10 Love Jones the Band
6–8pm Forest Park • Museum’s North Lawn mohistory.org/twilight-tuesdays
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SEPT 24 Tribute to Earth, Wind & Fire
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CALENDAR
BY PAUL FRISWOLD
FRIDAY 08/23 Ninja Massacre Ninja Scroll, the wild and wooly all-action anime that hit American screens in 1995, helped popularize the format for adults. The keys to its success are its twistyturny plot, the vehemence of its violence and the brief interludes of a sexual nature. At the center of the story is wandering ninja Jubei Kibagami, a lone swordsman who becomes entangled in the hunt for a lost (or stolen) shipment of gold that could tip the balance of government power. Trying to keep the gold are the Eight Devils of Kimon, a team of ninjas with supernatural powers and a mean streak a mile wide. Jubei must fight his way through all eight of them to carry out his mission, but that’s easier said than done. The Reel Late film series presents Ninja Scroll at 11:55 p.m. Friday and Saturday (August 23 and 24) at the Landmark Tivoli Theatre (6350 Delmar Boulevard; www. landmarktheatres.com). Tickets are $8.
The Nightmare Never Ends Late Nite Grindhouse is back from its unfortunate hiatus with a new and hopefully long-term home theater, and to celebrate it’s going twice as long with the Slumber Party Massacre double feature. Slumber Party Massacre was originally written by Rita Mae Brown as a feminist takedown of slasher film, but was reworked during production as an essentially straightforward blood n’ screams teen film. Still, it retains something of its original humor as well as a few unintentional laughs. Both it and its sequel, Slumber Party Massacre 2, are written and directed by women, which is an interesting wrinkle for the genre. oth films are shown back to back starting at 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday (August 23 and 24) at the Marcus Des Peres 14 Cine (12701 Manchester Road, Des Peres; www.marcustheatres.com). Tickets for the two-fer are $13.12.
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Sam Falls, Untitled (Conception) (detail), 2018. Pigment on canvas. | ©SAM FALLS, COURTESY 303 GALLERY, NEW YORK.
Stranger Plays We’re getting late in the baseball season, but the Cardinals promotions team is still firing on all cylinders. For this next series against the failing Colorado Rockies, the promotions are stacking up two and three to a game. The Friday, August 23, game stretches to make a connection between baseball and Netfli ’s popular Stranger Things TV show. (It’s a big stretch; those kids are all fans of inside activities, clearly.) The link? The Cards have eleven Worlds Series titles — and hey, one of the kids on the show is named Eleven. Fans who love both the goings-on in Hawkins and Busch Stadium (601 Clark Avenue; www.stlcardinals.com) can opt for a ticket that comes with a special Cardinals-themed Stranger Things T-shirt (it shows a backflipping ie Smith in the Upside Down), with a That 80s Band concert before the game.
Look out, Demogorgon, he’s a wizard! | © NETFLIX/ST. LOUIS CARDINALS
AUUGST 21-27, 2019
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Jubei Kibagami in a mellow mood. | © 1993 VICTOR COMPANY OF JAPAN (JVC) work remains on display through December 22.
SATURDAY 08/24 Mr. Natural
The Internationale
Sam Falls’ artworks are inspired by, and at least in part created by, nature. For his exhibition at Laumeier Sculpture Park, Falls laid a canvas covered with dry pigments on ground in the park’s woodland. Left there for several days, the dew, whatever rain fell and the sunlight that passed through the leaves overhead and onto the canvas made a record of the local flora. In addition to his large-scale nature paintings, Falls has also mosaicked a pair of steel I-beams with tiles featuring native plants grown especially by Laumeier’s master gardener at Falls’ request. The finished beams are placed standing upright in the forest, reflecting and refracting the natural landscape that surrounds them. Sam Falls: Conception opens with a free public reception from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, August 24, at the Aronson Fine Arts Center in Laumeier Sculpture Park (12580 Rott Road, Sunset Hills; www.laumeier.org). Falls’
If you hate our turd president and his atrocious immigration policies, head out to the Festival of Nations and mingle with the people of many lands. The International Institute of St. Louis’ annual end-of-summer party showcases the culture and food of the metro area’s large immigrant population, from Bosnia to Vietnam and all points in between. This is what the United States is all about. You may dress, speak and prepare dinner differently than your neighbors, but once you get to America you’re an American. There will be discussions of the different belief systems we hold dear, sporting activities, demonstrations of dancing and music, and the most mouth-watering selection of food you’ve seen since last year’s festival. The Festival of Nations takes place from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday (August 24 and 25) in Tower Grove Park (4256 Mag-
WEEK OF AUGUST 22-28
TUESDAY 08/27 The Imagined West nolia Avenue; www.festivalofnationsstl.org). Admission is free.
SUNDAY 08/25 Rockin’ Crustaceans The Maya Café (2726 Sutton Boulevard; www.mayacafestl.com) celebrates its eighteenth anniversary in the traditional fashion, with a Rock & Roll Shrimp Boil. From noon to 8 p.m. Sunday, August 25, Chef Adam Smith will serve up a full Ca un boil with all the fi in’s, while Bob Koehler Acoustic Classics and Americana band the Cottonwood Gunners dish out the music. Admission is free, so all you have to pay for is your food and beverages. Gorging yourself on good times and Cajun shrimp isn’t the worst way to while away a lazy Sunday in August, bud.
Author Téa Obreht won the range Prize for Fiction for her debut novel The Tiger’s Wife, which was also a finalist for the National ook Award. The Serbian-American writer’s highly anticipated new novel, Inland, is already drawing similar attention. Inland is a Western of a different stripe, in which stalwart frontierswoman Nora lives with her husband and three sons in 1893 Arizona Territory. Her husband has gone in search of water, and her two oldest sons stormed off after a heated argument. Nora’s youngest son is certain that a dark beast stalks the wild landscape. Lurie is an immigrant to America and a former outlaw who’s currently crossing the country, and his ghost-haunted life somehow intersects with Nora’s. breht visits the St. Louis County Library Headquarters (1640 South Lindbergh Boulevard, Frontenac; www.slcl.org) at 7 p.m. Tuesday, August 27, to discuss her new novel and sign copies. Admission is free, and copies of Inland will be sold on site by Left Bank Books. n
The party’s in Tower Grove Park this weekend. | COURTESY INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ST. LOUIS
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FILM
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[REVIEW]
White Plight After the Wedding shows the lowstakes melodrama of repressed white people not talking Written by
ROBERT HUNT After the Wedding Directed by Bart Freundlich. Written by Bart Freundlich, from original script by Susanne Bier and Anders Thomas Jensen. Starring Michelle Williams, Julianne Moore and Billy Crudup. Opens Friday, August 23, at the Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema.
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elodrama is an awkward, di cult genre, filled with big emotions, big problems and big gestures to reconcile them. It’s not a genre well-suited for the current day, when ma or life events are announced by te t messages or Facebook status updates. In a time where emo is outrank emotions, the comple ities of the melodrama are easily dismissed and scorned. Confused because you have to choose between your birth mother and adoptive parents? There’s an app for that. The best directors of melodrama from ouglas Sirk to Fassbinder knew that you had to dive in to the pathos, no matter how awkward or embarrassing. It’s not a genre for filmmakers who want to look cool. Irony is not an option. From the very beginning, you can sense that the people behind After the Wedding, a remake — with a few significant gender reversals of a 200 anish film, are a little embarrassed by the potentially emotional upheavals of the story. Forty minutes pass before writer-director art Freundlich gets around to establishing the central conflict. Another significant plot point is thrown in during the final twenty minutes, almost as an afterthought. ather than get to the point, Freundlich swoops and twists his camera around the opulent yster ay setting, as if looking for a distraction. The source of his embarrassment? Isabel ichelle illiams , who teaches children at an or-
Michelle Williams and Julianne Moore in After the Wedding. | ©2018 SUNDANCE INSTITUTE phanage in India, is called to New York to meet with a potential donor. It may or may not be a significant plot point that the donor has specified that Isabel must attend the meeting personally. pon her arrival, the would-be donor Theresa Julianne oore , multimillionaire head of some sort of media business, is strangely noncommittal but insists that Isabel must stay a few more days, inviting her to attend her daughter’s wedding. At the wedding, a series of meaningful stares and closeups make it clear that Isabel was once involved with scar illy Crudup , Theresa’s sculptor husband. ut wait, there’s more uring the reception speeches, she also figures out that the new bride Abby uinn is the daughter she and scar gave up for adoption 2 years earlier. And if this weren’t already a set of contrivances that would make Stella allas blush, the filmmakers add an incurable illness to the mi . Confrontations and complications ensue. After the Wedding is mostly a film about beautiful, rich people in an elegant and e pensive location, the kind of people who use a cutting board when buttering toast. ven the clich of “first world problems” doesn’t begin to cover their situation. You might
After the Wedding is mostly a film about beautiful, rich people in an elegant and expensive location, the kind of people who use a cutting board when buttering toast. think that such a cra y salad of family issues might take precedence over the environment, but Freundlich who is the husband of producer/star oore isn’t all that interested. e’s more interested in pulling back to en oy the setting than in digging at the emotional wounds. e runs the camera past scar’s large metal sculptures, admires the architecture of Theresa’s glass house of an
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o ce, even lingers over a bird’s nest recovered from a fallen tree long enough to make one think it’s a symbol of something or other. The convoluted plot simply isn’t worth his or anyone’s time. Sure, this family has problems, but what of them? This is a melodrama but with a happy ending of sorts where nothing ever really seems to be at risk because oney Solves verything. The odd thing is that if you can look past the considerable flaws in both story and structure the problems that don’t really need to e ist or wouldn’t seem like such a leap if the characters would do more than drop hints about their feelings the film almost works. Freundlich is understated where a director like Sirk would be almost luridly hot, but still capable of hitting emotional effects from time to time, thanks entirely to the efforts of his cast. uinn and the underrated Crudup find genuine moments of thoughtfulness in their underwritten characters, while illiams and oore, two of the finest contemporary actresses, make even the script’s most e treme stretches seem almost natural. At their best, the performers hint at a better film that may have been ust beneath the surface of this one. n
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AUG NATE CRAIG 22-25 Netflix series “Maniac” Bill Burr’s opening act
8/28- LARRY REEB 9/1 “Uncle Lar” Bob & Tom show
SEPT NICK GRIFFIN 12-15 Conan O’Brien Amazon Special “Cheer Up”
SARAH TIANA SEPT Host of the Roast of 26-29 Justin Bieber and Rob Lowe Chelsea Lately
SEPT DAN CHOPIN All Ages Family Show 8 5pm
OCT TIM GAITHER 2-6
BROWNS BACKERS FRI. 8/23 at Tampa Bay Buccaneers THUR. 8/29 vs. Detroit Lions SEASON OPENER SUN. 9/8 vs. Tennessee Titans noon MON. 9/16 at New York Jets 7:15 PM
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SAT. 9/14 Billy Peek at Backstreet Jazz & Blues Club
STAGE
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[REVIEW]
Winning Bet Stray Dog Theatre’s production of singing gangsters, gamblers and fed-up women in Guys and Dolls is a safe wager Written by
PAUL FRISWOLD Guys and Dolls Written by Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. Directed by Gary F. Bell. Presented by Stray Dog Theatre through August 24 at the Tower Grove Abbey (2336 Tennessee Avenue; www.straydogtheatre. org). Tickets are $25 to $30.
The cast of Guys and Dolls in action. | JOHN LAMB
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or those who have given up on reading the news, listening to your favorite music and leaving the house in favor of drinking on the couch while watching your favorite old sitcom, there are glad tidings ahead. It’s time to reengage with life. The means of doing so is a 69-year-old musical about a long-gone fantasyland populated by two-bit hoods, hoochie-coochie dancers and missionaries. Guys and Dolls, never has America needed you more. The Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows musical is a potent reminder that life doesn’t wait. Stray Dog Theatre’s current production of the show is lively, funny and tender. While that would normally be enough of a recommendation for any show, in director Gary F. Bell’s hands, the show becomes more than the sum of its well-traveled parts. No longer is it ust a fi y good time Bell’s Guys and Dolls is a show about breaking out of ruts and betting on the future being better. In a small corner of 1930s New York City beautifully reali ed by scenic designer Josh Smith’s highclimbing set), the petty gangsters gather for another night of Nathan etroit’s long-running floating craps game. Kevin O’Brien’s Nathan is a big lug whose greatest gift is that he’s smarter than all his underlings, but perhaps not by much. e’s kept his fianc e Adelaide (Sara Rae Womack) waiting for a wedding for fourteen years, and
Adelaide (Sara Rae Womack, center) and the Hot Box Girls entertain the crowd. | JOHN LAMB he’s lying about his craps game (she thinks it’s been shut down at her request). Nathan needs a place to hold tonight’s game, and in a pinch, bets inveterate gambler Sky Masterson (Jayde Mitchell) $1,000 that Sky can’t take the woman of Nathan’s choosing to dinner in Havana tonight. Nathan picks stern missionary Sarah Brown (Angela Bubash) as the woman, and the craps game is as good as on. That’s the bare bones of the plot, but it’s the actors who make it sing. With his square frame and hint of a mustache, O’Brien makes a very Oliver Hardy-like Nathan. He huffs, and spins and lies and cajoles to great effect, creating the portrait of a very ineffectual criminal. e ain’t a bad lover, though
his frequent confrontations with Adelaide typically end with him acquiescing to her. And why not? Sara Rae Womack gives her an iron spine (you can almost see it in some of her skimpier outfits , and with her hefty New York accent and naturally loud volume, she’s bound to win most arguments. Whether she wins her longdelayed wedding is another story. As for Sky and Sarah, Jayde Mitchell deploys a small arsenal of simple, direct hand gestures while speaking that hint at Sky’s single-mindedness. He’s a rootless gambler drifting on the wind of high-stakes games, but this bet concerning Sarah is another matter. Angela Bubash’s earnest faith doesn’t allow space for a shiftless
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man like Sky, just as his own devotion to chance forbids love with a missionary. A change of scenery could realign their laser focuses on each other, and does. Dinner in Havana is mostly drinking and dancing, which allows Bubash to romp through “If I Were a Bell.” Speaking of the songs, none of them overstay their welcome. They’re all punchy, short numbers that rarely break the three-minute mark, and choreographer Mike Hodges pairs them with dances that are sharply drawn and visually lovely. Adelaide and Nathan’s “Sue Me,” Nicely-Nicely’s (a very good Mike Wells) “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” and Sky’s “Luck Be a Lady” are all worth the price of admission, but it’s Adelaide and Sarah’s “Marry the Man Today” that’s going to stick with you long after the final curtain. oth women are done feeling sorry for themselves and sick to death of waiting for their respective boys to mature into men, and they pour all their stifled dreams and oy into a plan to get what they want. I’ve heard Sara Rae Womack and Angela Bubash sing many times, but there was an ebullience sparking off them during this duet that was contagious. That’s the magic of Guys and Dolls in action. At Stray Dog Theatre, this senior citi en of a show has no time for complaining, malingerers or deadbeats. You’ll leave wanting to shake life by the collar until happiness and delicious Cuban cocktails rain down upon you. n
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PING PONG TABLE • POOL TABLE • BOARD GAMES WEDNESDAY TRIVIA • LIVE MUSIC / DJS 5 DAYS A WEEK
THIS WEEK THE GROVE SELECTED HAPPENINGS
IN
Day or night, there’s always something going on in The Grove: live bands, great food, beer tastings, shopping events, and so much more. Visit thegrovestl.com for a whole lot more of what makes this neighborhood great.
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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21
THURSDAY, AUGUST 22
HIKES, JR.CLOONEY, GOLDEN CURLS, KING OF HECK
PROTOJE W/ BLACKILLAC
$10, 7:30
PM AT
ATOMIC COWBOY
SOLAR POWER HOUR 6
GEZELLIG TAPHOUSE
PM AT
WILD WEDNESDAY 6:15
PM AT
HANDLEBAR
$20, 6
PM AT
ATOMIC COWBOY
FLYOVER COMEDY PRESENTS: STAND-UP COMEDIAN SAM TALLENT (COMEDY CENTRAL, VICE) 7
PM (DOORS) AT
THE MONOCLE
FRIDAY, AUGUST 23
4130 MANCHESTER AVE. IN THE GROVE FIRECRACKERPIZZA.COM
SEAN CANAN'S VOODOO PLAYERS' VOODOO WOODSTOCK 6
PM AT
ATOMIC COWBOY
SEXAUER'S VINYL HAPPY HOUR 5
PM AT
FIRECRACKER
FRIDAY, AUGUST 30
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6
ZOSO: THE ULTIMATE LED ZEPPELIN EXPERIENCE W/ BROTHER LEE & THE LEATHER JACKALS
REBIRTH BRASS BAND
$20, 6
PM AT
ATOMIC COWBOY
SATURDAY, AUGUST 24
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1
BATTLE OF THE DADS
MELVIN SEALS & JGB
7
PM AT
THE READY ROOM
$25, 6
PM AT
ATOMIC COWBOY
$20, 6
PM AT
ATOMIC COWBOY
BLACKWATER 64 ALBUM RELEASE PARTY W/THAMES & FLUORESCENT $10, 6
PM AT
ATOMIC COWBOY
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7
PUNK VS METAL : ALL OUT ATTACK!!
BASTARD VS BASTARD SQUAD 7
PM AT
THE READY ROOM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
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[REVIEW]
Your Daily Bubbles Dave Bailey’s Pop takes the extravagance, but not the fun, out of champagne Written by
CHERYL BAEHR Pop 1915 Park Avenue, 314-241-8100. Wed.Thurs. 4 p.m.-midnight; Fri.-Sat. 4p.m.-1 a.m.; Sun. 4 p.m.-midnight (Closed Mondays and Tuesdays).
W
ere it not for a reality show, Dave Bailey would have opened Pop two years ago. After all, he’d been sketching out the plans for such a sparkling wine-centric restaurant for the past fifteen years. All he needed was the right space, and he had just that when he moved his popular Lafayette Square dessert spot, Bailey’s Chocolate Bar, into the building’s upstairs lounge in the summer of 2017, thus clearing the way for a new restaurant to take its place. However, Pop would have to wait when Bailey and his wife, Kara, signed on to do a reality television show centered around a different theme for a restaurant. Though it was the Baileys’ business and reputation on the line, the producers of the show all but dictated what the new concept would be, giving the couple strict parameters about what they could and couldn’t do. The result was what Bailey describes as the reverse-engineered L’Acadiane, a Cajun- and Creole-inflected restaurant that looked good on paper but failed to capture his heart. It also failed to capture the producers’ imaginations. The pilot never aired, leaving the Baileys not only disappointed, but with a restaurant they never really wanted. Though they committed to operating L’Acadiane to the best of their abilities, the restaurant never really meshed with the Baileys’ other concepts. After two years, they knew that something
At Pop, Dave Bailey helps make every day extraordinary with a selection of sparkling wines and champagne. | MABEL SUEN had to change. That change would come in a dramatic fashion when, during an invitation-only dinner at L’Acadiane in January, the Baileys and their team converted the restaurant into Pop. The transformation was a complete surprise to everyone in attendance and took place, step by step, right before their eyes. First, the flatware and glassware were replaced; then the tables’ centerpieces. After a few courses of these subtle changes, the music was swapped out, servers shed their old uniforms for new ones and the L’Acadiene decal was scraped off the window while Dave Bailey told the story of how he and Kara came to love bubbles. For the final act, the staff pulled down curtains that had been placed around the restaurant, a big reveal that o cially changed L’Acadiene to Pop. If L’Acadiene failed to capture Bailey’s heart, Pop is where he wears his heart on his sleeve. The restaurant is he and his wife’s love song to the bubbles they’ve been sharing together since the beginning of their courtship many years ago. You feel their joyful energy the moment you walk into the restaurant; both the front and back rooms positively sparkle as can-
dlelight bounces off the glassware that adorns the tables. Lovely rose-gold-hued floral wallpaper is warmly modern and pretty, an aesthetic that matches the tufted banquettes and plush, pastel-colored pillows that decorate the space. Equally stunning is the outdoor dining area, a New Orleans-style courtyard that’s a lush, gardenlike oasis from bustling Lafayette Square just out front of the building. Bailey insists that bubbles can be an everyday occurrence — not something reserved for special occasions. Sitting on that gorgeous patio on an early summer weekday evening, you understand that sentiment. Bailey knows, however, that convincing diners to accept champagne as an everyday beverage is a tough sell. For that reason, he and his culinary team have gone out of their way to craft an approachable menu that caters to people looking for a quick bite to eat as well as those looking for a celebratory night out. Guests wanting a glass of sparkling wine and something to snack on can opt for something as simple as Pop’s outstanding deviled eggs, a perfect rendition of the ubiquitous appetizer. Though hard-boiled, the egg whites are cooked flawlessly so that they seem
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suspended between solid and liquid. The mustard-heavy yolk filling approaches the texture of custard and is so bright it makes the mouth dance. A small dollop of caviar garnishes the dish, giving it a briny pop of texture that is tailor-made to go with a sparkling beverage. Ahi tuna tacos are another wonderful light option. The ruby-red fish is blackened, seared rare and sliced into thin rectangles so that each bite picks up the Cajun spice blend that coats the exterior. Orange, avocados and pickled red peppers energize the dish, and a rich peanut sauce provides a wonderful, salty contrast. In place of a tortilla, a paper-thin slice of jicama serves as the taco’s base and wraps the elements in a refreshing crunch. Popovers, served with wonderful thyme butter, are deliciously eggy though a touch on the dense side. I preferred to spend my day’s carb allotment on the poutine, a bed of shoestring-thin fries smothered in molten cheddar cheese and velvety “red gravy,” a creamy sauce infused with piquant red pepper. Generous-sized cubes of bacon were sprinkled atop the cheesy gravy concoction, turning the dish into an haute riff
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POP
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on a potato skin. If Bailey feels his calling was to open a bubbles-themed restaurant, his second calling should be to run a fried chicken joint. Pop’s chicken skewers are evidence of his and his chef’s proficiency in the genre. Succulent hunks of pickled dark meat are coated in flaky, black pepper-flecked batter and fried to a golden crisp. The meat is placed on a skewer with poblanos, onions and red peppers, then drizzled with a creamy sauce akin to a remoulade. The generous dish may be billed as a snack, but it’s so wonderful, you’ll be tempted to make your entire meal out of it. The “Market Board” is another success thanks to its main attraction: vibrant red slices of beetcured salmon. The beet’s earthy flavor infuses the rich fish, giving it an added dimension without taking over. Simply paired with pickled shallots, horseradish cream, capers and hard-boiled egg, the board is as visually stunning as it is tasty. Entrees at Pop follow the New American bistro playbook with
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The burger is served on a challah bun with pickled radish and horseradish aioli. | MABEL SUEN dishes such as scallops, which are flawlessly seared and placed atop a rustic beet hash. A delicate buerre blanc sauce is drizzled over the scallops, underscoring their buttery flesh. A chicken breast, served skinon, was a bit overcooked on the inside, but its gorgeous, mouthwateringly seasoned browned skin made that point an afterthought. A lemon- and sage-fortified pan jus married with buerre blanc to form a rich, buttery gravy that
AUUGST 21-27, 2019
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coated the chicken and accompanying zucchini hash. Salmon was also overdone to my preference, but the wonderful sweet soy gla e that gilded the fish made up for this misstep. Al dente green beans, accented with pickled shallots and tomatoes cooked to the point that they burst when pierced, made for a simple yet bright accompaniment. Pop boldly leans away from the expected burger template in the form of a thick, rustically ground
flap steak. The meat, spiced with coarsely ground black pepper, is juicy; the rendered fat and jus soaks into the buttery challah bun like a French dip sandwich. Sharp horseradish cream, pickled radishes and micro daikon finish this sophisticated take on a traditionally casual offering. Far and away, Pop’s culinary scene stealer is the duck, a gorgeous, chili-cured breast seared medium rare. The succulent meat is warmed by the chili spice — it gives a back of the throat heat that is countered by jammy dark cherry chutney and sweet onion jam. Champagne-dressed arugula adds a tart, peppery punch, adding one more element to a dish that is positively electrifying. Pop does not offer desserts but invites guests to head upstairs to Bailey’s Chocolate Bar for sweet treats beyond the cocktails it offers. After that duck, however, it’s hard to imagine you could want for anything more. It may have been a dish fifteen years in the making, but, like Pop overall, it was clearly worth the wait.
Pop Chicken skewers .........................................$6 Burger ...................................................... $15 Duck breast .............................................. $21
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[SIDE DISH]
Russell’s Faron Huster Lives for the Rush Written by
CHERYL BAEHR
F
aron Huster didn’t set out to have a career in restaurants some 30 years ago when he got his first ob in the business. He was simply looking for a way to pay the bills after leaving his soul-crushing forklift operator gig for broadcasting school. By day, he worked in the meat department at Schnucks; afternoons were filled with school, and when evening came, he was a bouncer at a nightclub in west county. Then, fate intervened. “The G at the nightclub where I was working got fired one day, and the owner looked at me and said, You look like a responsible guy. Why don’t you take over?’” Huster recalls. “The next thing I knew, I got a set of keys and an alarm code.” Now general manager at Russell’s on Macklind (5400 Murdoch Avenue, 314-553-9994), Huster traces that impromptu promotion as the start of a restaurant career that spans three decades. It wasn’t his intention to keep going with it, but he instantly felt the pull of the industry’s energy as he worked his way through several different kitchen and bouncer obs with that initial company. Even when Huster moved from St. Louis to the southwest, he found himself in the industry, running clubs in Te as and Ari ona. When a then-girlfriend told him she was moving back to St. Louis to take a ob with the soon-to-open Harrah’s Casino in St. Charles, uster followed her back to his hometown. e got a ob with the casino as well and worked there for roughly five years before he felt it was time to move on. “I got really bored with the cor-
Faron Huster quit the restaurant industry to start software and marketing companies, but he missed the excitement and soon returned. | JEN WEST porate side of the business,” uster e plains. “ verything is by the book, and there is no creativity.” Huster had a friend who was making a good living at the nowshuttered Harry’s Restaurant & Bar downtown, and that connection landed him a ob at the legendary hotspot. e loved the ob and worked there for five years, but eventually, he felt like he was growing out of the scene and needed to find another path. Huster stepped away from the restaurant business for eight years, during which he launched both a marketing company and a software business. e en oyed a good amount of success in both, but that wasn’t enough to keep him from missing the industry. “I missed the rush,” Huster says. “Everything I was doing was mundane. I mean, it was e citing because I was trying to create something out of an idea, but I really missed those moments of getting my ass kicked and pulling together with a group of people. I’m a high-energy person, so I have to
“I’m not going to get rich and buy an island, but I love what I do.” be in the center of activity.” uster found himself back in the restaurant business after one of his companies merged with another in Atlanta. Around that time, 2008, the economy tanked and he found himself with few options outside of the restaurant industry — and he didn’t mind one bit. Huster returned to restaurants when he got a ob at the former 3500 Winehaus and threw himself into the work he loved. Eventually, though, he wanted more — and found it when he interviewed for a management position with Russell Ping, who was getting ready to open a new restaurant in the Southampton neighborhood. e
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and Ping instantly hit it off, and uster was hired as the first employee at what is now the wildly popular restaurant Russell’s on acklind. e’s never looked back. “ uss is an incredible chef, and we’ve built a fantastic staff,” uster says. “ ne of the best compliments I’ve gotten is when a customer said the place feels like a big warm hug. I’m not going to get rich and buy an island, but I love what I do. It’s frustrating at times, but I love it and feel very fortunate to be here.” uster took a break from ussell’s to share his thoughts on the St. Louis restaurant scene, why he likens himself to a good bourbon and the importance of working out when it comes to his ob. What is one thing people don’t know about you that you wish they did? I am the father of three great kids. My daughter is 27 and married, and I have identical twin fifteen-year-old sons that ust started tenth grade at Marquette.
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In May of 2019, Sedara Sweets joined the community of Affton. Sedara serves a variety of baked goods including fifteen types of baklava—both Iraqi and Turkish. Just like the name says, Sedara sells ice cream, using products from Wisconsin-based Cedar Crest, and milkshakes. The cafe offers a small savory menu featuring breakfast bread, falafel and shawarma sandwiches, with rotisserie versions of beef or chicken both on offer. Whether you are looking for something to satisfy your sweet tooth, or a new option for lunch and dinner, Sedara has you covered. “We want to have something for everybody” Sedara Sweets is both family owned and operated. They offer dine in and take out food services, as well as an amazing Baklava gift box that can be ordered online, or even delivered! Owners George and Esraa Simon look forward to meeting their new neighbors and sharing some of their favorite dishes with the community!
Located on both Page Avenue, as well as the upcoming location in the Saint Louis Galleria, Cluster Busters hopes to provide Saint Louis with high quality seafood at affordable prices. Cluster Busters offers both dine in and carry out seafood, with recipes from Chef Deion Woodard. You will find all your favorites dishes such as seafood, pasta, gumbo, and fried fish. Whether you want to try their flagship “Cluster Buster” or the Lobster Mac and Cheese, Cluster Busters offers something for everyone. Since 2017, Cluster Busters continues to grow as part of a staple of the North Saint Louis community, and is very excited to bring their offerings to the Galleria. Keep an eye out for menu additions as well as daily specials. Cluster Busters is also available for catering and private events, so consider them for your next event. At Cluster Busters, you’re invited to come catch this drip!
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Carnivore fills a nearly 4,000-square-foot space on The Hill with a dining area, bar lounge, and adjoining outdoor patio gracefully guarded by a bronze steer at the main entrance. Always embracing change, Joe and Kerri Smugala, with business partners Chef Mike and Casie Lutker, launched Carnivore STL this summer. As the Hill’s only steakhouse, Carnivore offers a homestyle menu at budget-friendly prices appealing to the neighborhood’s many families. Steak, of course, takes center stage with juicy filet mignon, top sirloin, strip steak and ribeye leading the menu. Customize any of the succulent meats with sautéed mushrooms, grilled shrimp, or melted housemade butters, such as garlic-and-herb and red wine reduction, on top of the flame-seared steak. Other main dishes include a thick-cut pork steak (smoked at J. Smugs) and the grilled chicken with capers and a white wine-lemon-butter sauce. St. Louis Italian traditions get their due in the Baked Ravioli, smothered in provel cheese and house ragu, and in the Arancini, risotto balls stuffed with provel and swimming in a pool of meat sauce. With an exciting new brunch menu debuting for Saturday and Sunday, Carnivore should be everyone’s new taste of the Hill.
The fast-fresh, made-to-order concept has been applied to everything from pizza to pasta in St. Louis, but the sushi burrito surprisingly had no Gateway City home until BLK MKT Eats opened near Saint Louis University last fall. It was worth the wait, though, because BLK MKT Eats combines bold flavors and convenience into a perfectly wrapped package that’s ideal for those in a rush. Cousins and coowners Kati Fahrney and Ron Turigliatto offer a casual menu full of high-quality, all-natural ingredients that fit everything you love about sushi and burritos right AVERAGE in your hand. The Swedish Fish layers NOT YOUR SUSHI SPOT Scandinavian cured salmon, yuzu dill slaw, Persian cucumbers and avocado for a fresh flavor explosion. 9 SOUTH VANDEVENTER DINE-IN, TAKEOUT OR DELIVERY MON-SAT 11AM-9PM Another favorite, the OG Fire, features your choice of spicy tuna or salmon alongside tempura crunch, masago, shallots, jalapeño and piquant namesake sauce; Persian cucumbers and avocado soothe your tongue from the sauce’s kick. All burrito rolls come with sticky rice wrapped in nori or can be made into poké bowls, and all items can be modified for vegetarians.
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Looking for the best seafood in St. Louis or the Midwest—don’t fret, Crawling Crab is now open! Here, we drizzle everything in garlic butter and then sprinkle on our magic dust! In a fun and casual atmosphere, you’ll enjoy fresh, hand-cleaned seafood ranging from lobster, shrimp, and of course crab legs. All platters come with corn sausage potatoes and Cajun boiled eggs and shrimp that won’t disappoint. For those pasta and veggie lovers out there, there is a spot for you here too! Enjoy our double dipped garlic butter rolls along side with your meal. And if you are still not stuffed, we have homemade dessert on the menu too! Have a big family coming in or an event coming up? Enjoy our family meal options and our beautiful seafood tables. As we continue to grow, we are excited to add new items to the menu, get creative with new recipes, and give back within the community. Join us on the first Tuesday of the month for $20 platter specials, and $5 appetizers on every Wild Wednesday! Open Tuesday thru Saturday 4pm-10pm, currently located in the 24:1 Coffee House Cafe.
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314.569.9300 10598 OLD OLIVE STREET RD CREVE COEUR, MO 63141 Stir Crazy Asian has been serving the St Louis area for 20 years. The pan-asian fusion style restaurant offers something for everyone. The market bar allows the guest to choose thier own vegetables and sauce, hand it to a chef to wok fry, and get fresh healthy options everytime. Serving gluten free, vegetarian and keto friendly options, Stir Crazy has tastes for any of your Asian desires from sushi to fried rice. Homemade sauces, fresh vegetables, handrolled crab rangoon and springrolls, bring out the true suttle flavors of Asia. With no MSGs the food will have you feeling great for lunch or dinner. Come see us at 10598 old olive rd. Creve Couer MO.
FARON HUSTER Continued from pg 35
What daily ritual is non-negotiable for you? No question: the gym. I have been weight training since my freshman year in high school. I love the discipline and dedication it takes to get there consistently. hen I’m surrounded by all of the wonderful cakes, cookies and baked goods each day here at ussell’s, I have no choice but to keep working out. If you could have any superpower, what would it be? oes slinging webs from my wrists count? If so, that seems cool. What is the most positive thing in food, wine or cocktails that
you’ve noticed in St. Louis over the past year? Not necessarily the last year, but it’s the sourcing of local products that we use. We have great relationships with many local purveyors and producers. Who’s the one person to watch right now in the St. Louis food scene? This is going to sound self-serving, but honestly, I’m going to say our owner/chef Russell Ping. For the quality and creativity of our menu and bakery items, I don’t think many in town can touch what he does. I don’t think he gets the recognition or accolades that he deserves. Which ingredient is most representative of your personality? A good uality bourbon smooth, with a little bit of an edge.
If you weren’t working in the restaurant business, what would you be doing? Farming. I grew up in the country, and my brother and I own 0 acres on the Iowa-Illinois border. Being there keeps me connected to my roots. What is your after-work hangout? Honestly, at this point in my life, my couch. Believe me, it’s a helluva lot easier waking up the next day than it used to be. What’s your food or beverage guilty pleasure? Basil Hayden on the rocks. What would be your last meal on earth? Crawfish touffee from roadway Oyster Bar and an ice-cold Stag. I’m a simple man, but that’s definitely my go-to dish n
[FIRST LOOK]
Tacos, Drinks, Rock & Roll Written by
CHELSEA NEULING
T
wo musicians walk into a bar, have a few drinks and start thinking about tacos and rock & roll. You know, the usual. They sparked the idea of combining the two, and six months later, a star was born. Rock Star Taco Shack (3242-1 Rue Royale, St. Charles; 636-395-7146), that is. Chef Wil Pelly, formerly of Nudo House, and his business partner Matt Arana have been playing music together for more than twenty years. They are currently in the band Kingpin together and have been shredding it in the taco business since opening Rock Star Taco Shack on June 18 in New Town, St. Charles. The tiny, counter-service shack contains a whole lot of flavor. After placing your order at the front window, you can take a seat at one of the picnic tables behind the building, where your food is brought out to you. The back area is shared with the neighboring businesses and seats about 25. The menu is split into four sections: Opening Acts, Side Acts, Backstage Drinks and Headliners. Their signature seasoning blend, “Rock Stardust,” spices up the menu and is their spin on chorizo seasoning. Some of the taco choices are the “Number of the Beef,” which is ground beef and Rock Star dust, the “Thunder Cluck,” which features boneless chicken breast stewed with chipotle, “More COWBELL,” which is angus beef braised with onion and poblano peppers, and the “Prawn Song,” which includes wild-caught shrimp seasoned with peppers, onions and Rock Star dust. All tacos are served with your choice of a corn or flour tortilla or lettuce wrap
The “Number of the Beef” and “Tito Puerco” are two of Rock Star Taco’s offerings. | CHELSEA NEULING and are topped with lettuce, cheese and “Fancy Sauce,” a blend of avocado, ranch and sour cream. The fun continues with margaritas, domestic and Mexican beers, canned cocktails and spiked seltzers. Pelly and Arana chose New Town because of its community. The homes in New Town are close together with little-to-no yards. This encourages the community to come together and spend time at the parks or out on the town. The town has lakes, pools, tennis and basketball courts and — right across the street from Rock Star Taco Shack — two sand volleyball courts. The largest attraction that brings in customers is the free concert venue that is in the shack’s backyard. Crowds as large as 2,500 people have come to enjoy the free shows and events. “We get so busy during the events. I
couldn’t do it without my amazing staff. They work their asses off,” Pelly says. As fitting as it is, Rock Star Taco has already had a brush with actual rock royalty. The restaurant catered for Alice Cooper when he was in town recently for his concert at the Hollywood Casino Amphitheater. “We were up all night, but it was so worth it,” Pelly says. Rock Star Taco Shack has already gained a following in the community, and Pelly plans to continue that momentum. Plans for bonfires and jam sessions are in the works for the fall; he hopes these events will support and encourage the togetherness of the community. Rock Star Taco Shack is open Tuesday through Thursday from 4 to 9 p.m., Friday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m and Saturday 4 to 9 p.m. The restaurant is closed Sunday and Monday. n
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[HIDDEN GEM]
Cafe on the Abbey Keeps It Local on Holy Ground Written by
KATIE COUNTS
L
ocated on Main Street in Columbia, Illinois, is an aging church and a red brick convent that is ust as old. ut you won’t see habit-wearing nuns walking on these holy grounds. Instead, you’ll find coffee grounds and local chefs in the habit of making farm-to-table food. uilt in the 00s, the church campus contained a place of worship, a convent and a school. Now, they serve a number of small businesses, including Cafe on the Abbey (322 South Main Street, Columbia, Illinois; 618-281-4554), which moved into the space in February 20 . Co-owned by e ecutive chef Danny Ball and pastry chef Marcia Johns-Brooks, the full-service cafe offers breakfast, lunch, weekend brunch, coffee and pastries, as well as catering. Cafe on the Abbey started as Johns- rooks’ coffee shop. After her husband passed away, the self-proclaimed coffee lover decided to purchase a local coffee shop, which she named Our Coffee House and Cafe. Over time, the coffee shop slowly evolved, moving from the back streets of Columbia to ain Street. When space in the former convent opened up, she decided to e pand her business. She says being located on ain Street tripled the customer tra c. About three months after opening, Ball, who has worked in the restaurant business for more than four decades, oined the team as a co-owner. all worked at Aramark for over two decades, and he was even the executive chef at the iconic Seventh Inn in Ballwin for a few years. He was really interested in oining Cafe on the Abbey because of the space itself. The complex, called Main Street Abbey, contains more than ust the cafe. There’s also a salon, loft apartments and an event venue located in the former convent.
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Every month, executive chef Danny Ball rotates the brunch menu. | KATIE COUNTS A fine-dining restaurant, craft brewery, bed and breakfast and a movie theater are e pected to oin ain Street Abbey, according to property owner Gregg Crawford. “ e’re all about community involvement,” Ball says. In addition to serving customers, Cafe on the Abbey also has a service mission. The restaurant coordinates with several members of the community, including the Helping Strays and Human Support Services, which are in Waterloo. all changes the brunch menu every month. In the past, the cafe has served wa es topped with peaches cooked in Stumpy’s vodka, an egg skillet with chori o, and eggs Benedict. e wants the restaurant to be as innovative as possible, and he’s constantly trying new things, Johns-Brooks says. “ e play with ust about everything,” Ball says. While he likes to mix up the menu, it’s important for one thing to stay consistent: a local connection to the ingredients. “ e could be corporate, and we could be a big franchise, and we could be really big and source all of our stuff from purveyors,” Ball says. “But how do you know where your food is coming from?” Cafe on the Abbey gets some of its eggs and meat from Fresh Pasture Farms in Millstadt and some of its produce from local Feather’s Farm in Waterloo and Schaefer Stock Farm in Columbia. “ rganic is e pensive, but we try to do as much as we can,” Johns-Brooks says. The local connection continues with the coffee. Cafe on the Abbey’s house coffee is roasted by elleville roaster Balance Coffee and Tea, and its flavored coffee comes from St. Louis roaster Chauvin
Coffee. Johns- rooks okes that her favorite part of owning the cafe is having access to coffee anytime she wants. “The passion was coffee. Always coffee,” Johns-Brooks says. hile the abbey is no longer in operation, the cafe carries a religious theme. Paintings of nuns enoying food adorn one of the walls. Even the menu items play up the motif with names like “Heaven on a late” cake and “Nun’s abit” coffee. ld library chairs, reupholstered by Johns- rooks and some friends, provide seats for about 40, while colorful umbrellas shade the outdoor patio, which seats about . Two concrete benches mosaicked with “Our House Coffee and Crafts” line the walkway as a testament to Johns-Brooks’ first coffee shop. “ e ust want a place where people can feel really comfortable having a good time,” Johns-Brooks said. Amanda all, all’s daughter, serves as pastry chef alongside Kelly Bennett. The pair prepare a variety of baked goods many of which follow the ketogenic “keto” diet. Amanda worked as a pastry chef at the famed Kimmswick pie restaurant lue wl before oining the staff at Cafe on the Abbey. She says many members of the community follow the keto diet, which is why so much of the menu does. “We like to give people what they want,” she says. Longterm, Ball and Johnsrooks ust hope Cafe on the Abbey will keep growing. “I see us ust keep growing and keep getting busier and busier, which is excellent for us,” Ball says. During the week, the Cafe on the Abbey is open from a.m. to 4 p.m., and on Saturday and Sunday its hours are 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. n
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MUSIC + CULTURE [HOMESPUN]
Sister Act Sister Wizzard delivers a set of intoxicating pop songs with new album Page of Mirrors Written by
CHRISTIAN SCHAEFFER
M
adison Price grew up in a musical family, but it’s fair to say that she experienced much of her musical education on stages around St. Louis. She had played bass guitar in college and eventually picked up the ukulele, but her trial-byfire began with borrowed guitars at open-mic nights and south-side hootenannies. “ henever I first started playing out, I was kind of forced to play in front of people,” Price recalls. “I was hanging out with a bunch of folk singers who would call you out to play. I feel like I developed as a performer in front of people.” You can still hear some of that development on the Bandcamp page for Sister Wizzard, the onewoman project she has helmed over the past few years. There you’ll find a pair of live recordings from 2017, made with nothing more than a too-loud drum machine, an errantly tuned guitar and Price’s clear, affectless voice — a voice that got stronger and more assured the more she played live. For Price, being part of a supportive musical community has helped; those same friends who prodded her to sing her songs in front of an audience still provide inspiration through example. “I still get terribly nervous, but something that has really helped me is watching my friends perform,” she says. “They snap into it and are totally in their element. I feel like I’ve taken that from seeing my friends. It’s time to be present in this music, in this moment.” That was Price’s experience at her album release show for Sister Wizzard’s full-length debut Page of Mirrors, which took place in early August at the Heavy Anchor. These days a Sister Wizzard set is
For her new album, Madison Price traded in her guitar for a microKORG synthesizer and a loop pedal. | VIA THE ARTIST still led by Price, but instead of a guitar she uses a tiny KORG synthesizer and a loop pedal to craft intoxicating pop songs with tones that can range from saccharine sweet to darkly dubby. In a season that promises upcoming releases by some of the city’s most promising and challenging artists — Le’Ponds, Golden Curls, Katarra — Page of Mirrors serves as a benchmark for what is still to come in 2019. Part of the album’s appeal lies in the unexpected approach; if you only knew Sister Wizzard as a singer-and-guitar act, the nimble structures and airtight rhythm section will be a surprise. But even those familiar with Price’s stage show will pick up on the precise production, courtesy of Drangus’ Tom Pini, as well as Keith Bowman’s feather-touch drumming. Price and Pini bonded after a shared bill at the Ready Room
“I still get terribly nervous, but something that has really helped me is watching my friends perform. They snap into it and are totally in their element. I feel like I’ve taken that from seeing my friends.” riverfronttimes.com
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and started working together last winter. “I had recorded at two really nice studios and was never happy with what I had paid for,” Price says. “I wanted a friend who knew me and knew my music. Sometimes you need that personal connection.” Price credits Pini with keeping her songs largely unadorned. “You can tell there is a lot of space in the album and lots of room to breathe. He knew exactly how to fill some of the spaces to add te tures,” she says. Much of the mood comes from Price’s own synth programming; her instrument, a microKORG, is versatile enough to summon a host of keyboard sounds, and Price was conscious to avoid casting a too-disparate sound over these songs. Her tones are generally simple — not harmonically overloaded or aggressively buzzy or abrasive — and Price says that her sound-sculpting is inspired by her lyrics. “The sounds should mirror the tone of the songs — I want the upbeat songs to feel brighter and on the lighter side of things,” she says. “For those more Nancy Sinatra, Peggy Lee type of songs, I want it to feel smokey.” Some of that slinky, smokey sound comes out on “King Cobra,” a song about a caddish playboy that exposes the sliminess of dickish dudes — kind of a “Smooth Operator” relocated to Cherokee Street. The slow and swirling “Dry Up” takes a more personal and vulnerable look at busted relationships and the role that addictions play in deepening those fissures Price calls it a “palette cleanser” on an album that is largely beatdriven. Album closer “Enough” is Sister Wizzard’s take on an empowerment anthem — Price calls it her Lizzo-inspired “bad bitch” moment and envisioned crowds chanting its chorus back at her as she wrote it. The song also serves as a capstone to the eight-track album. “This whole album is about me falling in love and love being fresh and fun, and then going through the loss and heartbreak,” Price says. “I also needed to have a song where I talked about having self-love. “If I can leave people with anything,” she adds, “I want them to feel good.” n
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[JOKES]
Off the Rails Loop Trolley will begin hosting standup comedians in bid to boost ridership Written by
DANIEL HILL
J
ust when you thought the Delmar Loop Trolley couldn’t possibly get any funnier, the old-timey means of transportation gets a new feature sure to bring the laughs: stand-up comedy. No longer merely the butt of St. Louis’ jokes, the trolley will soon feature local comedians delivering sets as it travels along its route in what the Loop Trolley Company has dubbed “Laugh Tracks.” At present, there are three dates on the books for the experiment, which is designed to help increase the trolley’s ridership. The first event will take place on September 13. “We’re super pumped about it,” says Brittany Robbins, a spokesperson for the Loop Trolley Co. “You know, the Loop Trolley is one of St. Louis’ great attractions, and this just adds to the experience St. Louis and tourists visiting from elsewhere will be able to enjoy when riding.” The idea to host standup comedy on the trolley came from Yale Hollander, a longtime local comedian. e says the seeds were first planted as far back as 2017. “We’ve been talking about the Loop Trolley for years, and in the course of those discussions on Twitter I kind of tongue-in-cheek sent out a tweet to the Loop Trolley Authority back in August of 2017 suggesting that they let me run an open mic on the Loop Trolley, and it was kind of laughed off,” Hollander says. “I did get a response from them, and that’s actually where the ‘Laugh Tracks’ name came from. It was later revealed to me that it was Kevin Barbeau, the director of the Loop Trolley Authority — he was the one who actually tweeted it back apparently.” Time passed, and the then-halfhearted idea sat on the shelf. But meanwhile, Hollander started setting up comedy events at unconventional venues across the metro area, including a regular show in Clayton at the Kingside Diner and a show out in Chesterfield alley at the Bike Stop Cafe. With those endeavors proving successful, he
Yale Hollander spearheads a series of comedy shows coming soon to the Loop Trolley. | KEVIN BARBEAU
“We’re super pumped about it,” a Loop Trolley Co. spokesman enthuses. “You know, the Loop Trolley is one of St. Louis’ great attractions, and this just adds to the experience.” thought back on his harebrained trolley plan. “Once I started getting into the habit of starting these oddballlocation comedy shows I thought, ‘Well, I’m gonna take another run at the trolley,’” he says. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. But this time I’m gonna go in with an actual proposal, and an actual plan, and an actual vision, now that I’ve actually been running shows.” Hollander wrote up an outline of his proposal and submitted it through the “contact” section of the Loop Trolley Co.’s website. Barbeau soon reached out — the Trolley Co., it turns out, was totally on board. Hollander was given a three-show commitment as a trial, with more in the o ng should the partnership prove to be a success. The first of those three shows is
slated for September 13 at 9 p.m. Featured performers include Kenny Kinds, Angela Smith and Sam Lyons, with guest spots by Ken Warner and Travis Terrell. The logistics of the arrangement are fairly straight-forward. Comedy and/or trolley enthusiasts are to board at the stop in front of the Pageant for the show, which will begin once the trolley passes the following stop due east. No cover charge is necessary, just a ticket to ride. The show will go on for one full pass on the trolley line, which takes about 40 to 45 minutes. Passengers should also expect frequent interruptions, Hollander says. “We will be on a moving trolley, so that means all of the stops will be called out by the driver,” he explains. “So we will have to work within those limits as far as dealing with those periodic interruptions and whatnot, which just kinda adds to the controlled chaos of the event, which I think will add to the fun as much as the actual content of the jokes itself.” The plan is for the comedy shows to take place on the second Friday of each month; October 11 and December 13 are already on the books. (Hollander says they’ll be taking November off because that Friday is one of the dates of this year’s Flyover Comedy Festival.) If those shows go well, more will be added. Which, honestly, how could they not? “I’ve got my fingers crossed that it’s gonna be a winner,” Hollander says. “As far as I’m concerned it’s too crazy to fail, but then again it may be too crazy to succeed. e’ll ust have to find out on September 13.” n
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[VENUES]
Let the Band Play Schmitty’s Sunset Inn Again brings live music, good times to a sleepy cornfield in Illinois Written by
THOMAS CRONE
S
chmitty’s Sunset Inn Again (8819 State Route 162, Troy, Illinois; 618-667-6600) is new, in one sense, opening along the edge of Troy, Illinois, on February 1. That’s when Joe Schmitt and his wife Stephanie took ownership of the space formerly known simply as the Sunset Inn, buying the bar’s business license and not closing for even a single day’s transition. Since then, changes have been coming in a slow, steady fashion. The pool table disappeared most recently, and an outdoor stage arrived just in time for the end of summer. The half-dozen bartenders have stayed the same, but the clientele’s been trimmed just a bit, with troublemakers sent packing. While the sign outside is fresh, the bar is well seasoned. Joe Schmitt is adamant in saying that “it’s always going to be the Sunset for a lot of our people.” That’s understandable, as it’s been a bar since 1936. It’s open at 10 a.m. most days, and closes between 2 and 3 a.m., so it’s also the first or last stop of the day for quite a few of the regulars. They provide the backbone of the daily ring, but Schmitt’s not content to let this roadhouse be just a sleepy, quiet spot, located, quite literally, in a cornfield. This Joe’s got goals, most of them involving live music. But even though the Sunset’s in a rural area, there are a half-dozen ranch homes visible from the bar’s front door, so neighbor concerns are a real thing here. And neighbors have factored into this music fan’s dreams before. “We’re tiptoeing in a little bit, see what they’ll let us do,” Schmitt says. “There’s no reason to blow it up like we used to do. We’ll have music outside, during the day. And on Friday and Saturday nights, it’ll be respectful, acoustic stuff until 10 p.m. We’re not going to bring in Superjam to rattle the
Schmitty’s Sunset Inn Again is a small roadside bar that sits on the edge of a cornfield. | THOMAS CRONE for being a go-to spot on Sunday afternoons, when St. Louis’ biggest tribute bands played to hundreds on the packed Schmitty’s patio. Eventually it became too popular, with the townsfolk of Smithton asking for less visitors, less volume, less everything. Schmitt sold off his interest in Schmitty’s, and while he learned a lot from the experience, he felt something go missing. The bar business, he says, “is just interesting to me. I had this feeling for four years, then spent a year without it. And I wasn’t really happy that whole year. Joe Schmitt previously ran a popular bar in We have two other busiSmithton, Illinois. | THOMAS CRONE nesses, but I missed the stupidity. I found myself getting old, I ended up melting neighbors’ houses, even if they’d into the couch that year and I was be done by 10. That’s too much. getting lazier. This business keeps We’re trying to be part of this com- me young and jumping, and whatmunity, and just because we can ever the negative parts are, they do something doesn’t mean that don’t outweigh the great parts.” He’s found a few of the latter alwe should. I’m going to try to turn it into a viable music venue, even ready. “It wasn’t our biggest crowd or if we aren’t able to do it as often as we’d like. Personally, if I had it my anything,” Schmitt says, “but we way, we’d be like the Broadway had Al Holliday play with Cody Oyster Bar out here, doing music Henry and Ron Sykes of Funky Butt Brass Band, playing in here every day of the week.” Schmitt’s reference to local rock as a three-piece. We probably only band Superjam harkens back to had about 30 people, but all 30 his time running Schmitty’s in were dancing like they couldn’t Smithton, Illinois (2014-2018, RIP). stop. I thought, ‘Oh, my god, I can’t Superjam was a featured band in believe this.’ The entire bar was a June 2017 RFT cover story about in a frenzy. People dancing you tribute acts. Back then, Schmit- never see dance, people laughing ty’s had developed a reputation maniacally. It was insanity, and
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everybody in here that night understood that this is what it can be when people get a bite of the apple. These were some people who were initially resistant, but they just gave in for the night. Good music always makes you feel, it’s gonna play in this room. I knew I was going to keep booking it, but I wasn’t positive it was going to catch on.” The music booked includes the kind of stuff that naturally plays the rooms that Schmitt worships: the Broadway Oyster Bar and the Blues City Deli. But there’s a mix. On a recent weekend, as Schmitt talked about his booking hopes and dreams, he had gig warrior Steve Ewing in for a duo slot on a Friday night, and Wooden Puddin outdoors on Sunday, that group a side project of Old Salt Union. While the music has changed, other little elements have been added, fun things like a septic tank painted like a watermelon. And more of those elements are coming as Schmitt makes the Sunset his own. A natural storyteller, Schmitt can spin a good yarn about a lot of topics. Transitioning this bar just happens to be one of his better stories. After Schmitty’s, he says, “buying a bar wasn’t in our plans, actually. We had thought we might do it again, but the longer it was in our rear view, the less likely we were to do it. A friend of mine, Wendy, asked us up to have a beer here. And I looked at it and thought, ‘This is the space. This is exactly what I’d always pictured.’ It had a little bar, old but historic and out there a ways. It had a good-sized parking lot. I thought of a list and was ‘check, check, check, check and check.’ There was a sign on the door that said, ‘If you wanna own a bar, call this number.’ Well, we were done. “I called the sellers,” he adds. “A month passed. And my wife and I didn’t talk to each other about it. Then one day, she said, ‘You know, we have to do it, right?’ I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so we decided to do it. When we bought the place, we knew the story and what it meant to people, that it was the oldest bar in Madison County and that every person who comes here has a big, long story about what it means to them. They are very, very attached to it. I didn’t want to disrespect that and make it just my place, my music place. I did want to preserve the integrity of the bar, not turn it into something else. We’re just converting it into a more music-friendly bar.” n
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[CRITIC’S PICK]
Josh Ritter. | VIA SACKS AND CO.
Josh Ritter 8 p.m. Thursday, August 22. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Boulevard. $25. 314-726-6161. In the most overcrowded demographic field in the history of music, the white male singer-songwriter, Josh Ritter has somehow set himself apart. Some two decades into a prolific career, Ritter has never needed gimmicks or hard swerves from his core sound, an effortlessly melodic fusion of anthemic guitar rock and plaintive folk, because he has a bottomless reserve of killer lines and faith-restoring sincerity, whether documenting a
THURSDAY 22
BLUES CRUISE: w/ Soul Reunion 8:30 p.m., $22. Gateway Arch Riverboats, 11 N. 4th St., St. Louis. THE FERBER BOYS: 8:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090. JACQUES THIBAUD STRING TRIO: 6:30 p.m., $20. The 560 Music Center, 560 Trinity Ave., University City, 314-421-3600. JENNY TEATOR + JACKSON STOKES: 8 p.m., $10$12. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. JOE NICHOLS: 7:30 p.m., $25. River City Casino & Hotel, 777 River City Casino Blvd., St. Louis, 314-388-7777. JOSH RITTER & THE ROYAL CITY BAND: 8 p.m., $25. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. NIKKI HILL: w/ Devil’s Elbow 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. OVERSTREET: 8 p.m., $13-$15. Blueberry Hill The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. PATHOLOGY: w/ Narcotic Wasteland, Malignancy 6:30 p.m., $18. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. PROTOJE: w/ Blackillac, Boomtown United 7 p.m., $20-$25. Atomic Cowboy Pavilion, 4140 Manchester Avenue, St. Louis, 314-775-0775. PTAH WILLIAMS: 8 p.m., $15. Joe’s Cafe, 6014
grueling divorce or slaying political dragons or chopping and screwing with myth, literature and murder ballads. And then there’s that voice: It always rings out like the archetype of the rakish troubadour with a soft spot for hugs after the gig. Against considerable odds, nobody else sounds like the kid from Moscow, Idaho. Ready For the Big Stage: St. Louisan Beth Bombara doesn’t get many chances to play venues like the Pageant, but on the strength of her new album Evergreen, her opening set at the venerable hall won’t be her last. —Roy Kasten
Kingsbury Ave, St. Louis.
FRIDAY 23
BREWTOPIA: 8:30 p.m., free. Rich’s Place, 4149 S. Highway 94, St. Charles, 636-922-0500. IEN’S WORLD: w/ Ruffgang 8 p.m., $10. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. JOE PARK GYPSY PROJECT: 9:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090. KORN, ALICE IN CHAINS: w/ Underoath, Fever 333 6 p.m., TBA. Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, I-70 & Earth City Expwy., Maryland Heights, 314-298-9944. LOBBY BOXER TOUR KICKOFF: w/ In Angles, Yuppy, Jackie Presley 8 p.m., $10. Ozark Theatre, 103 E. Lockwood Ave., St. Louis, 314-962-7000. POLO G: 8 p.m., $25-$85. Pop’s Nightclub, 401 Monsanto Ave., East St. Louis, 618-274-6720. READ SOUTHALL BAND: w/ Austin Meade 8 p.m., $15. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. REIGNWOLF: w/ King Nun 8 p.m., $15. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. REVEREND HORTON HEAT: w/ Delta Bombers 8 p.m., $22-$25. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. SEAN CANAN’S VOODOO PLAYERS: VOODOO WOODSTOCK: 7 p.m., free. Atomic Cowboy Pavilion, 4140 Manchester Avenue, St. Louis,
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Wednesday August 21 9:30PM
Sean Canan’s Voodoo Players Tribute To Bob Marley
Thursday August 22 9PM
Roland Johnson and Soul Endeavor Friday August 23 10PM
Little Dylan Band Saturday August 24 10PM
Funky Butt Brass Band Sunday August 25 8PM
Blues and Soul Diva Kim Massie Wednesday August 28 9:30PM
Sean Canan’s Voodoo Players Tribute To Johnny Cash
Thursday August 29 9PM
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Your music has a history! Tuesdays SEPT
3–24
6–8pm • Forest Park • Museum’s North Lawn mohistory.org/twilight-tuesdays
[CRITIC’S PICK]
Summer Cannibals. | JASON QUIGLEY
Summer Cannibals 8 p.m. Friday, August 23. The Duck Room at Blueberry Hill, 6504 Delmar Boulevard. $10. 314-727-4444. The music that Summer Cannibals creates — quick, brash, delivered with a mix between a sneer and an eye roll — doesn’t seem to be freighted with too much drama. That’s one of the benefits of pop-punk, after all. But after a few years of creative and personal turmoil in the band’s orbit, including a new line-up, a
OUT EVERY NIGHT Continued from pg 47
314-775-0775. SISSER: w/ w/ Keokuk, The Potomac Accord 9 p.m., free. Schlafly Tap oom, 2 00 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-2337. STELLA LUNA: 7 p.m., free. Hwy 61 Roadhouse and Kitchen, 34 S Old Orchard Ave, Webster Groves, 314-968-0061. SUMMER CANNIBALS: 8 p.m., $10-$12. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. THAT 90S JAM: w/ DJ Nico, Agile One, James Biko 8 p.m., $6-$12. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929.
SATURDAY 24
ALL ROOSTERED UP: 8 p.m., $5. Hwy 61 Roadhouse and Kitchen, 34 S Old Orchard Ave, Webster Groves, 314-968-0061. THE BATTLE OF THE DADS: 8 p.m., $10-$13. The Ready Room, 4195 Manchester Ave, St. Louis, 314-833-3929. BRIAN MCCLELLAND’S NO THUNDER: w/ Cherokee Moon, Dutch Courage 8 p.m., free. Livery Company, 6728 S Broadway, St. Louis, 314-558-2330. JASON ALDEAN: w/ Kane Brown, Carly Pearce, Dee Jay Silver 7 p.m., TBA. Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, I-70 & Earth City Expwy., Maryland Heights, 314-298-9944. LIL MIR X LUH SAM: 11 p.m., $10-$12. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. MISS JUBILEE: 9:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090. PRINCE DADDY & THE HYENA: w/ Kississippi, Retirement Party 8 p.m., $12-$14. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.
new label and a scrapped album, the Portland-based quartet is back with Can’t Tell Me No. It’s an appropriately defiant title, and singer/guitarist Jessica Boudreaux channels some of the past few years’ frustration and perseverance in the group’s hooky and propulsive songs. Arcade Fighters: The video for “Can’t Tell Me No” finds the band performing amid the glow of a vintage arcade — a perfect aperitif for Joe Edwards’ collection of coinoperated amusements at Blueberry Hill. —Christian Schaeffer
Q STREET RELEASE SHOW: w/ Amethyst, Postal Modern, Dillon Furlow 7:30 p.m., $8. The Firebird, 2706 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-0353. SCOTT MULVAHILL: 8 p.m., $12-$15. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. THE TUNGSTEN GROOVE: 8 p.m., $10-$12. Old Rock House, 1200 S. 7th St., St. Louis, 314-588-0505. WHITNEY SCREAMS: 9 p.m., free. Nightshift Bar & Grill, 3979 Mexico Road, St. Peters, 636-441-8300.
SUNDAY 25
#BLITZBASH: 8 p.m., $10-$12. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. ERIK BROOKS: 8 p.m., $5. Hammerstone’s, 2028 S. 9th St., St. Louis, 314-773-5565. THE MILK CARTON KIDS: 8 p.m., $35-$40. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900. RIVER CITY OPRY AUGUST: w/ Cree Rider, Nick Pence, Tim Crosby, Caleb Davis, Sean Conway 1 p.m., $5. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.
MONDAY 26
MATT MAESON: 8 p.m., $15-$18. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. THIRD SIGHT BAND: 8 p.m., $10. BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, 700 S. Broadway, St. Louis, 314-436-5222. WHY BONNIE: w/ Holy Posers, Pono AM 9 p.m., $7. Foam, 3359 Jefferson Ave., St. Louis, 314-772-2100.
TUESDAY 27
THE ADICTS: 8 p.m., $25-$30. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. EARLY JAMES & THE LATEST: 8 p.m., free. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. TYR: 7:30 p.m., $20. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050.
WEDNESDAY 28
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[CRITIC’S PICK]
The Maness Brothers have changed the St. Louis musical landscape. | ADAM NEWSHAM
Whiskey War Festival 8 2 p.m. Saturday, August 24. South Broadway Athletic Club, 2301 South Seventh Street. $15. 314-776-4833. Jake and David Maness are now on their eighth year of their homegrown festival Whiskey War Fest, and the whole St. Louis region is all the better for it. The aptly named Maness Brothers have made an annual tradition of their wide-ranging local fest, bringing rock & roll, folk, blues, metal and more together under one roof for a night of musical magic. Standouts from this year’s lineup include New York
OUT EVERY NIGHT Continued from pg 49
KATYA: 8 p.m., $28-$167.50. The Pageant, 6161 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. RALPH BUTLER: 2 p.m., free. Mount Pleasant Estates, 5634 High St., Augusta, 800-467-9463. SONGBIRD CAFE: w/ Emily Wallace, Tommy Halloran, Devon Cahill, Ryne Watts 7:30 p.m., $18-$23. The Focal Point, 2720 Sutton Blvd, St. Louis, 314-560-2778. STEVE’N’SEAGULLS: w/ Clusterpluck 8 p.m., $20. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989.
THIS JUST IN
24TH ANNUAL BIG MUDDY BLUES FESTIVAL: Sat., Aug. 31, 2 p.m., free. Laclede’s Landing, N. First St. & Lucas Ave., St. Louis, 314-241-5875. ADAM GAFFNEY: Thu., Sept. 26, 8:30 p.m., free. The Frisco Barroom, 8110 Big Bend Blvd., Webster Groves, 314-455-1090. BIG LOVE: FLEETWOOD MAC TRIBUTE: Fri., Nov. 1, 8 p.m., $12-$20. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. BREWBOPS MUSIC FESTIVAL: Sat., Aug. 31, 4 p.m., $5-$10. Webster Groves Garden Cafe, 117 E. Lockwood Ave., Webster Groves, 314-475-3490. DEEP SEA DIVER: Fri., Oct. 4, 8 p.m., $13-$15. The Firebird, 2706 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-0353. FALL CONCERT: Sun., Nov. 17, 4 p.m., free. Second Presbyterian Church, 4501 Westminster Place, St. Louis, 314-367-0366. FANTASIA: W/ Robin Thicke, Tank, the Bonfyre, Sun., Oct. 20, 7:30 p.m. Chaifetz Arena, 1 S. Compton Ave., St. Louis, 314-977-5000. HAYLEY AND THE CRUSHERS: W/ Radio Buzzkills, Backwash, the Fighting Side, Thu., Oct. 24, 8 p.m., $10. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis,
anti-folk artist Jeffrey Lewis, Legendary Shack Shakers vocalist J.D. Wilkes, Canadian juke-joint blues act Catl and California-based roots songwriter Sarah Rogo. Not to mention the Brothers themselves, purveyors of the shit-kickingest hard-driving blues-rock this side of the Mississippi. Hometown Heroes: St. Louis musicians always make a strong showing at Whiskey War Fest, and this year is no exception. The Opera Bell Band, Devil’s Elbow, Rover, Mother Meat and Mammoth Piano are just a few of the must-see local acts rounding out this year’s bill. —Daniel Hill
314-289-9050. LOBBY BOXER TOUR KICKOFF: W/ In Angles, Yuppy, Jackie Presley, Fri., Aug. 23, 8 p.m., $10. Ozark Theatre, 103 E. Lockwood Ave., St. Louis, 314-962-7000. LUDO: Sun., Nov. 3, 4:30 p.m., $10.57. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. MEGHAN YANKOWSKAS EP RELEASE PARTY: Thu., Sept. 19, 8 p.m., free. Gaslight Lounge, 4916 Shaw Ave, St. Louis, 314-496-0628. MICHAEL UNGER ORGAN RECITAL: Sun., Oct. 27, 4 p.m., free. Second Presbyterian Church, 4501 Westminster Place, St. Louis, 314-367-0366. PIÑATA PROTEST: Thu., Nov. 14, 8 p.m., $10-$12. Blueberry Hill - The Duck Room, 6504 Delmar Blvd., University City, 314-727-4444. PU FEST VI NIGHT 2: W/ Him Horrison, Half Tramp, Brendan Wells’ Plant Music, Pryr, Simon Joyner, David Nance, Katarra, Hash Redactor, David Beeman, Kaleb Kirby, Kijani Eshe, Sun., Sept. 8, 5 p.m., $30. Off Broadway, 3509 Lemp Ave., St. Louis, 314-498-6989. ROCK 4 RELIEF: Sun., Nov. 24, 5 p.m., $10. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. SISSER: W/ w/ Keokuk, The Potomac Accord, Fri., Aug. 2 , p.m., free. Schlafly Tap oom, 2100 Locust St., St. Louis, 314-241-2337. SON VOLT: Fri., Nov. 22, 8 p.m., $25-$28. Delmar Hall, 6133 Delmar Blvd., St. Louis, 314-726-6161. THE SWEET SPOT BURLESQUE SHOW: Sat., Sept. 21, 7:30 p.m., $25-$50. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. THE TEMPTATIONS: Sun., Sept. 8, 7:30 p.m., $30$60. The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, 314-533-9900. WITCH MOUNTAIN: Sun., Sept. 29, 8 p.m., $12. Fubar, 3108 Locust St, St. Louis, 314-289-9050. WOVENHAND: Wed., Sept. 18, 8 p.m., $18-$20. The Firebird, 2706 Olive St., St. Louis, 314-535-0353. n
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SAVAGE LOVE QUICKIES BY DAN SAVAGE Hey, Dan: I took Molly with my best bud. We wound up cuddling and telling each other everything. We didn’t mess around — we’re both straight guys — but one of the things I told him is that I would much rather eat pussy than fuck, and one of the things he told me is that he’s not at all into eating pussy and pretty much only likes to fuck. I think we’d make a great team: We’re both good-looking, athletic dudes and we should find a woman who loves to have her pussy eaten and loves to get fucked. I would go down on her and get her going (and coming), then he steps in and dicks her down (and gets her off one last time). What say you? Ultimate Package Deal I would say “FUCK YES!” if I were a woman, UPD, which I’m not. And while I can’t promise you every woman will have the same reaction I did, some women most definitely will. Hey, Dan: I’m a male in my late 50s. I went to a urologist for my erection problem, which was helped with ED medication. But orgasms are very hard to achieve, and the ED medication does not seem to make orgasms any easier to have. My girlfriend appreciates the erections, but I would also like to climax. This is very frustrating. Any advice? Pills Inhibiting Lusty Loads Tits and dicks both sag with age, which is why push-up bras and push-up pills were invented. And while ED meds do make it easier for a guy to get an erection, they can also make it more di cult for a guy to climax. Upside: You last longer. Downside: You may sometimes have sex without climaxing. Or you can shift your perspective and try to see this downside as a secret upside: Sometimes you get to enjoy sex without climaxing — and next time, when you do climax, you’ll blow a bigger load. Hey, Dan: I am a bisexual man who’s active in the sex-positive community, and I love playing
with couples. I was updating my Feeld profile to reflect this desire, but I realized there’s no consistent term for a male unicorn. So I listed “Male/Stag/Stallion/Minotaur/Pegasus,” various terms I’ve seen people use. WTF, it shouldn’t require a whole line in my profile to run through all the terms! As the person who famously crowdsourced “pegging,” I was hoping you could work your magic and get everyone to agree on a nonbinary term that works for all sexual identities. Having One Reliable Name What’s wrong with “unicorn”? Unicorns — the mythical beasts — can be female, male or, I suppose, genderless or genderfluid. They can be anything we want them to be, HORN, since we made them up. And while the term first came into use to describe bi women who weren’t just open to having sex with an established, opposite-sex couple, but open to committing to a couple and forming a poly triad, there’s no reason men and/or nonbinary folks who are interested in the same — hooking up with and forming relationships with established couples — couldn’t identify as unicorns, too. But are you a unicorn? People began to call those bi women “unicorns” because they were hard to find and everyone, it seemed, was looking for one. People interested in simply playing with couples aren’t anywhere near as hard to find. Hey, Dan: I’ve recently begun to experiment with a few kinky friends. One of them is a voyeur who is super into bukkake. I’d be open to a group bukkake scene, but how do I avoid contracting an STI? Anonymous Assistant “On me, not in me” was a safe-sex message crafted in the earliest, darkest, most terrifying days of the AIDS Crisis — and a bukkake scene, which involves multiple men ejaculating on one person, is all about “on me,” which makes it relatively safe. So long as you’re careful not to get anyone’s come in your eyes (ocular gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia are all things) or on your hole(s), you won’t have anything to worry about. Hey, Dan: Is there a regional difference between people who use
“I realized she’s a sexsomniac: If I put my arm around her to cuddle when she’s asleep, she immediately sexually responds to the skin-toskin contact.” the word “come” versus people who use “jizz”? I personally only use the word “come” and rarely hear anyone use “jizz.” Do people not use “jizz” or do they just not use it where I live? Seeking Pretty Unnecessary Niche Knowledge I’ve seen maps that track regionalisms like “soda” versus “pop,” SPUNK, but I’ve never seen one tracking “come” versus “jizz.” Seems like something a sex-positive linguist might want to jump on. Hey, Dan: I’m a 46-year-old man and I recently met a 31-year-old woman. We have not had PIV sex yet, but we have enjoyed several nights of cuddling, spooning, etc., as the relationship progresses. She has made it very clear she wants our first time to be a fairy-tale evening, so we have yet to take things past mild foreplay. Plot twist: After two nights of us sleeping together, I realized she’s a sexsomniac. She had no idea until I told her, and she barely believes me. But if I put my arm around her to cuddle when she’s asleep, she immediately sexually responds to the skin-to-skin contact. On two occasions she’s performed oral on me. I’m not complaining, as this is quite possibly every guy’s dream. My question is around consent when dealing with situations like this. She’s My Dream Girl Unless your new girlfriend gave you permission to initiate skin-toskin contact in the middle of the
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night — unless she not only didn’t have a problem with the first blowjob you accidentally triggered but explicitly gave you the go-ahead to trigger more — you have already and repeatedly violated her consent. If she doesn’t want to do more than cuddle or spoon when she’s awake, you shouldn’t be manipulating her into blowing you when she’s asleep. Most people who are partnered with sexsomniacs prefer not to have sex with their partners when they’re unconscious, but some do — with their sexsomniac partner’s prior consent. It’s a gray area, because an unconscious person can’t offer meaningful, enthusiastic, ongoing consent. But unless there are details you’ve omitted — details like your partner saying, “I blew you in my sleep? Really! Neat! I’m happy to keep doing that!” — stop initiating skin-to-skin contact when she’s asleep or stop pretending you care about consent. (You should care about consent and you should stop.) Hey, Dan: I’ve been seeing a guy. We’re not really “boyfriend and girlfriend” and we’re not exclusive. Last night, him and my best friend and I were all hanging out in his bedroom. After a while, I went to sleep on the couch in the living room and left them in the bedroom. When I woke up, they were having sex. I had told them both it was okay for them to have sex with each other, but I didn’t expect them to do it when I was just in the other room. Unwelcome Personal Surprise Enraging Totally You’re not exclusive, UPSET, and you gave this guy and your best friend permission to fuck, and … they fucked. But you got something out of it, too: You learned an important lesson. Namely, no one can read your mind. If you give someone permission to do something with someone else sometime, and both those someones are sitting on a bed, you need to bring up any and all additional conditions before falling asleep on the couch in the next room. Listen to Dan’s podcast at savagelovecast.com. mail@savagelove.net @fakedansavage on Twitter ITMFA.org
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HAPPY HOUR SPECIALS RHÔNE RUM BAR
SPONSORED CONTENT
The Rhone Rum Bar pays homage to Paul
sure to find your new favorite! While sipping,
place of one of the Caribbean’s most prolific
blowing. After all, who doesn’t love a little
British Virgin Islands, and celebrates the birth spirits. After taking just a few steps into the
place, noticing sand volleyball courts, a wall
of spirits, and the aroma of Caribbean spices, you’ll instantly feel as though you’re on vacation.
The menu consists of different Caribbean
seafood and BBQ dishes, a Pina Colada Cake, and of course a drink list that will have you
HAPPY HOUR
Featuring over 55 different Rums, you’ll be
and Wendy Hamilton’s second home, the
ordering more than just a couple. Don’t forget
there will be games such as limbo and conch friendly competition with a drink in their hand?
Bands including The Smoking Lion Band,
Non Stop Reggae Band, Palm Trio Band, and Eric Prewitt Band will be gracing the stage
while the festival is going on. Don’t worry;
there will be plenty more live music after the festival as well
Tickets are set at $40 and include 5 rum
to join us for Happy Hour Thursday and Friday
tastings and lunch (additional tastings may be
cocktails & delicious frozen drinks!
visit ezregister.com/events/29940
from 4pm-6pm for a $1.00 off wine, beer,
Rhone Rum Bar is also excited to announce
purchased that day).To purchase tickets, please
our Reggae Rum Festival, Saturday August
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delicious pig roast, games and more! Are you ready to transport yourself to the flavor of the islands with rum tastings, food and games?
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