November
ISSUE TEN
Cara Walton Photography Edited by Mike Arellano and Iain Oldman
WORST WEEK EVER Let’s just get right to it, shall we? November sucks, like, a lot. A bunch of just horrible, horrible shit happened in this month throughout history, like the Kristallnacht (see: cover), the opening of King Tutankhamun’s tomb, the Jonestown Massacre, the JFK assassination, and worst of all, Thanksgiving.
Cara Walton Photography
Yes, that’s right, we’ve made it here. Does anyone else find it odd that we are still celebrating the moment that America’s indigenous population shared agricultural advice while our Puritan ancestors shared their smallpox? I mean, it’s the 21st century, that almost seems like it shouldn’t be allowed. Not only do we celebrate it, but we celebrate it with gluttony! And football! November is a month of really odd traditions, like the president pardoning a turkey in front of laughing media members, while the turkey that is condemned to the slaughter is standing, like, right there , man! But hey, at least they are immortalized in the palm tracings of kindergartners everywhere, though. That’s a lot more than whatever I’ve got going on. This is the Worst Week Ever. All poetry, short stories and artwork are submitted by people that live here in the Harrisonburg area.
Brandy Somers Photography
Danielle Campbell Photography
Elwood “Trip” Madison
Court Square Theater’s “24 Hour Project” Court Square Theater’s “24 Hour Project” is now accepting performance applications! The 24 Hour Project is a unique event that will take place from 5:00 pm, January 23rd until 5:00 PM, January 24th of 2015. Featuring music, film, drama, comedy, poetry, and interactive workshops, the event is a celebration of community and collaboration through a non-stop, 24-hour run of performances by artists both local and broad. All are encouraged to apply. For more information, visit www.valleyarts.org/24hourproject
11/07 Juried Portrait Photography Show SPITZER ART CENTER 5:00pm - 8:00pm
I don’t think you could do a better job at kicking off Harrisonburg’s First Friday activities than at the Spitzer Art Center this month. Hanging up with be Spitzer’s FIRST ever juried portrait photography show, featuring over 25 artists! Jeff Gorman will be jamming out to compliment the beautiful evening and, no lie, Spitzer always puts out the most baller cheese platters. Most importantly, though, is the opportunity to take in over two dozen works of art from a wide variety of Harrisonburg artists. But…. also cheese platters.
11/08 CTHULHU’S LAIR - 9pm Dirt Bag (KY), Vomiting Dinosaurs Diseased Earth Donations New house, new rules, new bands- welcome to Cthulhu’s Lair. Now the unofficial (but totally official) headquarters of Worst Week Ever Booking shows, come break this hellhole in with style with the oppressively fuzzy, high as fuck Dirtbag from Kentucky. Packing an impressive punch for a two man piece, Dirtbag manages to stay away from every pit a drum and bass project can fall into: too slow, too boring, too patient. All of that is discarded for a busy and heavy sound. Joining them are two of the area’s finest metal groups, the Vomiting Dinosaurs, fresh with a new album, and Staunton’s death metal dudes Diseased Earth. It’s not my house, so feel free to puke all over that place!
11/09 Clementine Cafe - 9 PM The Soil & The Sun Mammoth Indigo Count This Penny $6
After being sought after for the past few years, the Soil & and the Sun make their triumphant return to Harrisonburg, bringing their beautiful brand of stripped down, harmonious indie rock with them. Promising to bring a live show unlike anything you’ve seen before, these kids from Michigan will leave you bragging to all of your friends who didn’t make it. They have violins, man! Violins! As in, more than one violin. Damn. Fellow northerners Count This Penny and Rocktown’s biggest indie band Mammoth Indigo flesh out one hell of a bill November 9th at Clementine.
11/13 The Pinkerton Raid Three Notch’d Brewery 7 PM
Celebrate Thirsty Thursday in style by walking down to the Three Notch’d Brewery to watch North Carolina’s own natural children, the Pinkerton Raid. This group is heading up the east coast right now and has chosen to swing by our quiet little mountain town to send us to bed with pleasant melodies and whimsical harmonies dancing around in our dreams. One of those bands that is just hard to put your finger on, the Pinkerton Raid does a little bit of everything really well: instrumentation, songwriting, vocals, presence. It’s all there, and all on display November 13th, so be sure to make it.
11/16 Artful Dodger - 9PM $6 EVISCERA BASK CORSAIR MARSH HAWK
The Artful Dodger opens its doors (and our hearts) to a night of heavy heavy metal, featuring the righteously shreddy and smoked out Bask from Asheville, NC. Come out and watch these dudes belt out a delicious blend of classic rock, stoner metal, and straight up doom, and hey, don’t forget about the undeniably awesome Corsair from Charlottesville. Harrisonburg’s Eviscera and Marsh Hawk round out this awesome night of ear splitting goodness.
11/17 Bobby Bare Jr., Dead Professional Clementine 9 PM $8
I’m not gonna lie, when I saw this show pop up on my newsfeed, I audibly shouted “Oh shit!” Bobby Bare Jr. is just one of the coolest acts out there on the alt-country scene, soaking with the heroin blues, sitting in a pool of lo-fi piss. The man’s catalogue is a journey through what it will take to keep country music moving along in the 21st century, and it doesn’t hurt that the guy is simply a showman. Oh, and hell, one of Worst Week Ever’s favorite acoustic projects, Dead Professional, is opening the night for everybody. This night is gonna be a goddam blast, so make sure you’re there for it.
11/19, 20 Super Gr8 Film Festival Court Square Theater 7 PM Pre-Sale $12 Door $15 Are you as pumped for the fifth installment of Harrisonburg’s Super Gr8 Film Festival as we are??? Okay, so we may have a dog in this fight, having produced an excellent black and white comedy and all (which is totally going to win best picture) but this festival has quickly and quietly become an institution in Harrisonburg’s counter-culture. Every year the films seem to be improving, though we tried our best to buck that trend, and more and more and more people line up to see them. Seriously, and I can’t stress this enough, pre-order your tickets NOW because these nights will sell out and, you know, you don’t wanna look like a nerd standing out there in the cold.
Cara Walton Photography
11/30 Black Sunday Swap Meet Artful Dodger 12PM to 6PM
Years ago I had lent my copy of Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg to a friend, who shortly thereafter went to jail, and guess what? I never saw that book again. Then, a few months ago I meandered into the Black Sunday Swap Meet (formerly in the Blue Nile basement) and after picking up a set of rad coasters, I found a fresh copy of Joseph Pearce’s surrealist philosophies sitting right there for me. What I’m trying to say is, these swap meets are just the best. Last time I saw someone selling venus fly traps and I promise you if they are there again, I am snagging one up. You should, too.
Photograph by Ross Figlerski
Celebrating Life:
The idea is to choose a random existing holiday each month. I’ll do a call for interest, then document the activity celebrating the holiday to share it with the world (as far as I can reach). --Brandy Somers
www.friendlycitylens.com
SAY CHEESE, PUMPKIN
I first met Isabelle at the Blue Nile (RIP). She was the friendly bartender and I was the loner at the bar, staring at my planner, eating nachos and replying to emails. She would make me a white Russian and keep me company from time to time. Since then, through various social media, I’ve come to know Isabelle as a true lover of kitchen-time‌ and insects, and the wonderful little trinkets of this weathered-world that go overlooked by the masses. I knew she was a perfect candidate for October’s Celebrating Life shoot.
Last Saturday, Isabelle invited me over on a chilly fall morning to help‌.er watch her do some baking in her adorable apartment in the heart of Harrisonburg. When she greeted me at the door it’s as if she was holding the smells of fall mornings hostage. A warm, comfortable wave of baked pumpkin hugged my face and my cheeks rosied at the latch of the door lock behind me. What a great reflection of the soul a home is. I let myself get lost in her comforts before getting down to business. I mean, pumpkin cheesecake is surrrious business.
Read the full post here. www.friendlycitylens.com
FIRST FRIDAY NOV 7TH *5-8 | Spitzer Art Center | Juried Portrait Photography Show (guest to cast vote for Peoples’ Choice Award) with live music by Jeff Gorman. *5-8 | Arts Council of the Valley’s Darrin McHone Gallery | EMU Silent Art Auction *6-6:45 | Ten Thousand Villages | Live performance by Uncle Bengine & the Restraining Orders *5-8 | Linda S. Hoover, CFP @ Ameriprise Financial/Denton Pocket Park | Quilts and Baskets by Molly Boland Stover *5-7 | Clementine, Ruby’s Lounge Composition in Branches: Paintings by Ellen Morris *5-8 | Oasis | Retrospective: 1970 - Today: multimedia works by Denny Fulmer with live music by Mel Lee *5-8 | Wilson Downtown Gallery @ Kline May | Our Viewpoints: paintings by Martha Mobley, Deborah Kay Nees and Nick Terry
*5-8 | Larkin Arts | Gallery 1: Nicole Randall. Gallery 2: METONIA: a setting for the consideration of direction, an art installation by Jeff Guinn with musical collaboration by Keith Grant. Live music at the opening by John Hostetter. *7-9 | Artful Dodger A collection of work from JMU’s Advanced Art & Design classes with live music *5-8 | Downtown Wine and Gourmet 10th Anniversary Bash *5-8 | Three Notch’d Mixed media by Eliza German *5-8 | Little Grill | “This and That” paintings by Denise Kanter Allen
WORST WEEK EVER
Cara Walton Photography
Down Great R
Brandy Somers Photography
River Valleys The Blue Nile has closed down. Where does that leave Harrisonburg now? There has to be something more. I mean, past the rumbling hardwood floors or the gentle lamp-lit soft air of the dining room, and even past those cut stone walls that became synonymous with ringing ears and whiskey vomits, there has to be something more, right? I stood in front of the empty casket of the Blue Nile yesterday, wondering this aloud. By all indications I probably looked like a jilted lover, but I couldn’t even find the will to scratch my head. My hands were in my jacket. The lights were off, the tables moved out, and if you slid around the building to the basement entrance there was the unshakable feeling of stumbling upon a bomb shelter entrance. All of the flyers that carved concrete into a kaleidoscope have long been torn down, recycled for an affiche that gravitates more attention, and all that is left is manilla steel and drab cement collecting pools of water and rotting leaves.
This place is dead. Whatever was once here is now but a vestige, and it’s time to move on. What was once here? The Blue Nile was, and this is inherently important to consider, a restaurant and bar, and a fucking good one at that. Ethiopian cuisine is a tough sell to Harrisonburg’s denizens, especially when you are competing with the allure of barbecue and ice cream half a block away, but damned if the Blue Nile didn’t try. Like I said, it’s important to remember that this place was a restaurant and bar first, to tax collectors at least. But, no one will remember this place as a restaurant or bar. The newsfeed of your Facebook hasn’t been saturated with memoriams and nostalgic instagram collages and tensentence eulogies because of gomen or sponge bread or even mimosas, or distinct mental images of stirring the siga wat at the buffet. No, this bar, this restaurant will always be- and should always be, remembered as an
Brandy Somers Photography unequalled center of diverse culture in Harrisonburg. These walls housed quite possibly the greatest display of artistic breadth and brilliance that have ever been collected in Harrisonburg. And now, it is gone.
Brandy Somers Photography
I’m sure that you, like me, have been assaulted with the same buffet of questions from out-of-towners, acquaintances, and siblings: Why did the Nile close down? Wasn’t it doing well? What happened? Overwhelmingly, though, the primary question that haunts the halls of our skulls, twisting and biting like an asp, an utterance that I think I’ve heard from any person who cares to ask it, is Where do we go now? It is an important question. For so many people, (editor’s note: Mike and myself included) the Blue Nile was the default bar to spend money at, and for so many reasons. Many people point to a sense of community, which is right, to an extent, but the patrons of this particular establishment were so different and contextually separate from each other that the only common theme has to be: well, there aren’t any douchebags here. And hey, that was fucking fantastic.
But the more we ask the question where do we go? we forget the common struggle, as the posture is inherently selfish, or at least misguided. Soon, we won’t be asking where do we go? but instead what do we have left?
And the answer? Shit man, I’ll tell ya, not a lot.
Let us pause for a moment to reconsider what aspects of the arts that the basement (and to an extent, the dining room) of the Blue Nile hosted at different points in time. Obviously, the restaurant’s enthusiasm to host musical acts is the first thing that comes to mind, but that simple sentence dilutes the impact of the venue. Simply, every genre was invited to perform: indie, jam bands, acoustic folk, hip hop, DJs and house music, experimental noise projects, honky tonk nights, death metal, black metal, doom metal, metal, punk and hardcore, and bands you can’t exactly quantify, but you tell your friends how fucking weird they were. All were welcome in the basement, even if they never drew voluminous crowds. Brandy Somers
If you can draw a parallel to the depth and diversity of bands, you have to point to everything else they hosted. Every month the Blue Nile hanged galleries from local artists upstairs and downstairs, simultaneously. At any point in the past six years the basement has been flooded by poetry readings, election viewing parties, spelling bees, book releases, and most recently, open mic comedy. When I got a wild hair up my ass to start hosting comedy shows in Harrisonburg there wasn’t a second choice on which venue to approach. I knew the Blue Nile would open their doors for us. There is something to be said about an unbridled enthusiasm to centralize all forms of the arts in one safe and reliable center. Photography
Brandy Somers Photography So, now that their long cement ramp leads down into irrelevance, what do we have left? Seriously, can we expect any other institutions in Harrisonburg to pick up the slack, show the same assumed responsibility to radiate the diverse voices and preferences of Rocktown’s artists and consumers? It’s hard to argue that we can. Some of the obvious names are sure to rise up, to a scale. The Artful Dodger has hosted local and touring bands (though not to the same volume) and continue to take chances on lesser-known local artists scratching for galleries, but the bar’s schedule is already filled up with weekly obligations for half the week: Salsa Night, College Night (if you get there before 10 it’s jazz night and it is
awesome) and the weekend nights are DJ dance partiesand fist fights after closing. Plus, they’ve shown a recent reluctance to host the bevy of heavier bands that count on Harrisonburg’s reliable metalheads. Clementine is another option I’ve heard continuously mentioned, but for the past three years they have refused to host anything that doesn’t have the words funk, jam, or folk plastered over their posters. That is, unless it is another “tribute” band covering the tunes of whatever 80’s band is the flavor-of-the-week. Yeah, I totally want to pay $15 to listen to thirty year old songs! The truth of the matter is, unless the show is under the umbrella of mother MACRoCk, Clementine isn’t interested in pursuing bands or other performance arts that don’t draw the same reliable, boring crowd. And after those two bars? Eh. A few bands have already turned to Backcountry Restaurant and Lounge for saving grace, and who knows, maybe that place could turn out to be a great venue, but its more than spitting distance from downtown and the bar has always had the reputation as a place you reluctantly meet friends at. The soon-to-open Jimmy Madisons could start hosting events, but no one really knows what they intend to do. Just north of town, where the dog food smell fills your pores, the Little Grill has always been a dependable and open-
Brandy Somers Photography
minded showspace, but their very small capacity has to limit what can and can’t happen there. A heartwarming trend has popped up in the past few weeks, where houses and basements are opening their doors to strangers and smelly dudes and ladies spilling out of tour vans, but the show house scene is unsustainable, limited to capacity, and subject to interruption by the boys in blue. That’s cops. I mean the cops. What do we have left? Shit man, I’ll tell ya, not a lot.
Brandy Somers Photography
The Blue Nile’s grave is a two story mausoleum located at 181 North Main Street, across from a church and in between a boutique and a Harrisonburg institution that fixes cameras and sells fake noses. There was one hell of a funeral and eulogies will be archived in Facebook timelines for years to come, long-winded celebrations and teary laments of a place so many people considered (somewhat pathetically) to be their second home. Outsiders would probably label the Blue Nile as Harrisonburg’s “hipster” bar, which is an unfair and subjective label, but also partially true. They just always had the coolest shit going on. There’s not really a great reason to mosey over to Wolfe and Main anymore, but if you want to see it with your own eyes, you can still read “Blue Nile” on the glass, though who knows how much longer that will stay up. Go up and look inside, seriously. Nothing. You have to imagine that’s what bands and artists see in Harrisonburg now, for the time being. Nothing. A window with dressing, a gentle promise of comfort and spice, but gutted of its substance, like an old coal mine, or a cracked and dried riverbed.
WORST W Cara Walton Photography
WEEK EVER
Cara Walton Photography
Dusk Lower my body with the sun And let eternal night set upon me Each shovel of dirt thrown drags the sun lower The shadows of the mountains stretch across the valley Like fingers dragging me deeper into the warm embrace of the ground So here am I now Laid to rest at last with the setting sun
Anonymous
STOP DRINKING SO MUCH. I hate everything I know nothing What do i have to give? I try so hard to achieve a sense of being define myself Righteous but a cowardly soul I wander about stoned Believe in nothing Doubt self. Sitting in the dark i crave for something more I drink too much thats for sure a comfort. a disillusion. Anonymous
Damn Beads Tonight I’m sleeping on the couch, but let me tell you why. I asked my wife for one of her smokes and she closed her eyes and directed me to the bureau in our bedroom. The menthols were easy enough to find, but I found her set of rosaries first. She had forgotten she had left them out and tonight I’m sleeping on the couch. Iain Oldman
Cara Walton Photography
The Judy Chops - Minor Sunshine Quickly becoming a satiating staple of Harrisonburg’s vibrant, though saturated, folk and mountain music scene, the Judy Chops have vaulted themselves above the rest of the crowd with their newest full-length release Minor Sunshine. If you’ve already caught them crooning their newest tunes around town, whether at Clementine or Shenandoah Alley’s porch or the Three Notch’d Tasting Room, you don’t need to be reminded of the Judy Chops’ bread and butter: depression era revitalization ginned up with a hint of vaudeville. Minor Sunshine is ten tracks of well-blended soul and folk where the instrumentation is reeled in, allowing the breadth of harmony to grab your attention, and the result is a well rounded, whole milk excursion into the macabre. The title track in of itself can be paraded as the zeitgeist of the album- take an old, happy classic and turn that shit dark. All throughout the album, you constantly have to remind yourself that you’re tapping your feet to songs about serial rapists and, somehow more lightheartedly, forlorn love loss.
Harrisonburg’s favorite octet shines the most in their close harmonies, though, displaying great range and intonation that is, more often than not, left as a side dish for other recording artists. This band truly has their shit together and their inherent chemistry seeps out of the album like black gold. Don’t believe me? Check them out yourself, and if you’d believe it, they are even better live.
Click to listen
Written by Iain Oldman
Na’ir Al Saif -11 Days Plucked from the inaccessible depths of human horror, Harrisonburg quartet Na’ir Al Saif weaves together a twenty minute long space-stoner concept epic in their debut (and solitary) album 11 Days. Chronicling an increasingly insane astronaut’s desultory drift through the cold, endless void of space, Na’ir Al Saif (a jolly little tapestry of Rocktown musicians) step out of the mold to bring an album that is as much background music as continuous track that demands your attention.
Click to listen
The songwriting is intelligent and concise. Usually with concept albums, especially ones stewed up from amateur musicians, bands find an excuse to wander off or keep a theme running just a little too long. Fortunately, 11 Days manages to sidestep those trappings and the polished result is a twenty minute, fuzzed out metal-driven exploration of the human mind’s ability to escape into extreme terror. Part Baroness, part Mars Volta, part Elder, be sure to listen to one of Harrisonburg’s most original and well executed albums from this past year.
Written by Iain Oldman
Click to listen
Slutever and Girlpool Split Tape Consistently one of Harrisonburg’s favorite draws, Philly’s duo Slutever (Nicole Snyder and Gagliardi) come back with a two song offering, sharing time with LA’s Girlpool on a new cassette split release. All in all, the tape is well balanced, each band showing their distinct attributes, though even after you flip the deck, you sigh ahhhh yes, I see what they did here. Don’t dismiss these songs as 20-ought riot grrrl tripe, these jams are for real. Girlpool’s A side is distinctively different, bopping out low-tone melancholy songs of lament. The two songs are soaked in 90’s nostalgia, from the vocal rhythms to the (fucking awesome) guitar tone. Everything blends together perfectly, harmonious and dopey, with an underwhelming noise. And then Slutever begins playing and you’re all like, whaaaaaaat where did this come from? Pushing through
a cloud of static is Slutever’s wall of wailing, chaotic and crass. “Blah Blah Blah” hits on all the notes familiar with disillusioned twenty-somethings, but Slutever’s real talent comes out in the final track on the tape, “Stomich Ache”. The three-plus minute track opens up with chilled out punk riffs, reminiscent of Best Coast, before everything crashes down into a wonderful wall of orchestrated noise. Slutever and Girlpool’s split tape isn’t an experiment of black and white sounds. That would be just silly. Good things come in pairs though, like boots or eyeballs or dice, and this split tape is no exception. Check it out and hope that the groups announce some tours in the new year!
Written by Iain Oldman
Treatment Demo Ex- Beside Human, ex- Worried Sick, current Thrones dudes, whatever you want to label them as, Treatment is a band draped in Harrisonburg that has actually only ever played Harrisonburg once, and that is, like, fucked up man. This basement born three piece belts out echoes of scratchy fuck you and your fuckin’ pizza post-core riffs. The mandatory technical prowess is present in spades, spewing out memories of pg. 99. Treatment brews up a solid (though brief) three-song sample in their first release here, and each track holds an independence that proves vital in the short recording. Control Burns sets up your mood, Stitched continues the theme, and Masonic fades out as the perfect outro, finding that voluptuous sweet spot between patience and persistence. Honestly, everyone here at Worst Week Ever has been waiting for this demo for a while, and now that we have it, our lives are just a little bit easier to bullshit through. Look for future Treatment shows in the future in your local basements and abandoned train tunnels.
The Vomiting Dinosaurs Spew Your Guts
Written by Iain Oldman
The thing that hits you, immediately, as in, like, ten seconds into this album is that the Vomiting Dinosaurs play straight up metal. No frocks, no gimmicks- just, ya know, metal, and it’s awesome. Opening up the album with the track “Crustation” was a smart move by the band, letting you know right away what their shit is all about. Powerful black metal riffs lead into unexpected death metal growls and grindcore blast beats, showcasing a little bit of everything, and while thats been done before, sure, these guys pull a fast one on you with crusty undertones. And it’s all done really, really well, which is refreshing. Finally someone has moved past the doldrums of the grindcore genre, delivering crossover songs that fart the putrid stench of rotten, crust-riddled death metal. It’s awesome. Through and through, Spew Your Guts is a must listen album for local metalheads. Expect the Vomiting Dinosaurs to garner some serious attention in the near future, as the three piece from Winchester blasted out an album that puts their barely-scratched potential on display.
Click to listen
Zooanzoo
Laka Dawg
Written by Iain Oldman
Click to listen
On the surface, Laka Dawg seems to be the album where Zach Williams (Medicine Calf) takes a step back from bat-shitted craziness, propelled to write something more accessible, or diluted. But nope. Not at all. If anything, in Zooanzoo’s new release there’s added extra layers of organized dystopia, which is pretty cool if you ask me. Williams steps back to his guitar and waves of whispery vocals to creep the hell out of you, leaving his keys and synths on the shelf for this one. Backing him up is an impressive crew of Harrisonburg’s hippest musicians, featuring members of Yellow King, Malatese, and Sleeptalker.
Certain tracks stick out like an infected toenail on this one, and I mean that in a good way, I promise! The title track “Laka Dawg” is a strangely infectious, brooding tune that is half Captain Beefheart, half alternative holler-folk. “Papa’s Belt” is, simply, a diddy that sounds like it was written by Frank Zappa in Hawaii...after a volcanic eruption. Much like a spider walking, Laka Dawg is a creepily well composed piece of art. You’ve never heard anything like it before, I promise you, and while that usually dictates that this particular album will warrant one spin before sitting on your proverbial shelf, similar to an alien invader Laka Dawg finds a way to crawl into your brain and breed. Find out for yourself, give it a listen.
Brandy Somers Photography
Cara Walton Photography
Check out some more independent music at: www.themodernfolk.net “The goal of my site is to feature what i think of as “folk music”, which is music made by people who are trying to get by leading lives in our modern world who love to express themselves through music. any genre or medium is welcome. I prefer submissions via soundcloud, bandcamp, or youtube, because these formats allow me to easily embed your music in my post and it leads readers directly back to your site, video stream, etc.”
the.modern.folk@gmail.com
Now booking shows for local and out of town bands, contact Michael Steele at
worstweekeverbooking@gmail.com
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