People Issue - The Healer: Kim Carpenter

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When you go to see Dr. Kim Carpenter, she does not play around.

“Our approach to health is looking at you as a whole person, and then we address the way you eat, the way you move, the way you think, and the way that you live your life through your nervous system, to see what you would need to do to be healthier over the next five years.”

Dr. Carpenter is an athletic mother of two young kids, a chiropractor and the owner of Awaken to Wellness in St. Matthews. She agrees with my attempt to summarize it as a one-stop shop combining trips to the doctor, the gym, yoga and other medical hot spots.

Her facility also includes massage and acupuncture treatments, and they work with people’s eating issues, customizing meal plans. These plans help weight loss as well as balancing blood sugar and helping to wean people off processed foods, what she calls “getting you to eat real, live food.”

Some people come because they’re in physical pain. Some “know that, with our current health care system, the average person is sicker in five years, not healthier, and they want to find out ways that they can stay well.” It takes a variety of approaches to work with a variety of problems, and they see patients from babies to the elderly.

If it sounds like an alternative approach to medicine, Carpenter doesn’t disagree. Do people ever tell her what she does sounds weird? “Oh, yeah!” she laughs. “Unfortunately, in our culture, what I do is alternative medicine, or alternative health, and I think until our country decides that being pro-active would be the norm, then we will continue to be a sick culture … When mainstream health care is about lifestyle, that’s when we’ll see a shift in the way people live.”

Carpenter played volleyball in high school and college, and doctor visits for back pain led her to change her diet, improving her health and reducing those Ohio Valley allergies. By high school, her life’s work was laid out for her. Today she also continues to work with athletes in high schools, at the University of Louisville, and at the pro level.

But Carpenter isn’t the only successful professional in her family. Her sister Jennifer, who knew what she wanted to do while still in grade school, has carved out a career playing some of the unhealthiest Americans in fictional entertainment, as the title character in the movie “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” and as the foul-mouthed, brother-loving Debra Morgan on Showtime’s “Dexter.”

“Both my parents are very driven individuals in their own way,” Carpenter says. “They both gave us freedom, taught us the value of things, and the quality of not only material things but of people. They both just let us be who we were … We had no idea that certain things, to some people, wouldn’t seem possible. Anything we wanted to achieve was possible with hard work, determination and confidence.”

Family is central to Carpenter in every way; she says that families do even better with her program than individuals because they’re accountable to each other, not just to the doctor. Not everyone is ready for her approach, but she’ll be there when they are.

“The challenges in life are the exact same reasons why I’m happier and healthier down the road,” she says. “They teach you the most.”

Photo by Frankie Steele.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

People Issue - The Radio Host: Berk Bryant

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When public radio is at its best, it brings music, community and a strong point of view together in a way that can’t be faked. And while WFPK-FM has a heaping handful of local talent, none can quite be compared to Berk Bryant, the authentically genial host of “Sunday Bluegrass.”

Aged 82 years, Bryant’s both a radio and Army veteran, and a bluegrass lifer. He got his start in radio in his hometown of Lynchburg, Va., in 1954. “Then,” he says, “bluegrass was country. It was all called country” before mainstream country music evolved and became more distinct from the pure ’grass, old time and traditional country Bryant shares each week. “I like my bluegrass bluegrass. If you don’t know what to call what you’re playing, don’t call it bluegrass!”

Bryant served in Korea, worked for 12 years as a counter-intelligence special agent, and ran the closed-circuit radio station at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In his last decade of active service, Bryant was sent to Oahu, Hawaii (“somebody messed up,” he laughs), then Fort Knox, and in his last year, back to Korea. “I didn’t mind that, because there are a lot worse places,” says Bryant. He retired in 1982, having reached the rank of sergeant first class.

Through the years, he met a young Elvis Presley and befriended John Hartford, the riverboat man and influential singer-songwriter, and Ralph Stanley, the “Man of Constant Sorrow.” He doesn’t play any instruments himself. “When they’re talking about music and say ‘key,’ a key to me is something you start the car with,” he laughs.

He began his WFPK show — say it with me now, “the shortest, fastest and bestest three hours in radio” — in 1989, seeking to fill a void in the station’s programming. “Friends of mine in Radcliff,” where he lives now, “who knew about my love for the music asked me, ‘Why don’t you go to public radio?’” A couple years later, he showed up.

“I didn’t know anybody there, and nobody there knew me. I just asked to see the manager.” That manager was interested in Bryant’s idea but commented that the station didn’t really have much bluegrass. Bryant told him he had plenty at home. The manager asked, “Do you think you have enough to sustain a one-hour show?”

“‘Yeah, I think so’ … 23 years later …” laughs the man who gave himself the nickname “The Country Gentleman.” Two years later, the show had expanded to its present three-hour length, heard Sunday nights from 8-11 p.m. On New Year’s Day, he’ll also continue his two-decade-long tradition of playing nothing but Hank Williams music between noon and 3 p.m. on WFPK.

He drives in from Radcliff each week to share the best of today and yesterday from his collection of more than 1,000 CDs, some 45s and “close to 20 linear feet of LPs.” A large part of his happy longevity on the air can be explained by one simple fact: “No one tells me what to play.”

Photo by Casey Chalmers.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Vice Tricks jump up and down

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I’m not a sick boy, I’m not a well boy
I’m just a man who likes his music really, really loud. —“Rock & Roll”

King and Verity Vice are a couple made for each other, like Lulu and Sailor in “Wild at Heart” or Johnny and June. The leaders of the self-described “Psycho Rock” band Vice Tricks, they are proud parents of a new album, the self-titled full-length debut of their four-year-old band.

After releasing a couple of EPs recorded with friends “in exchange for getting them stoned,” the band — which also includes guitarist Jeremy Climer and drummer Ian Bottomley — went to Sneak Attack Studios in Lexington to document their sound professionally, having won the studio time in a competition.

Singer/songwriter/guitarist King, who downplays his first name, Jeremy, professionally, and Vice — known to the government as Verity Jones — met 15 years ago at a show he was playing at Pandemonium on Bardstown Road and quickly became “best friends,” they agree, from the motorcycle ride they took through Cherokee Park the next day through today.

Vice began playing her signature upright bass while King was still playing with his old band, Dead City Rejects, which lasted a decade. When that ended, “I wanted to start something new,” King says, “so I asked her to join, and we started this band.”

They were called Parlor Tricks first. “We changed it because we thought it didn’t really fit the direction of the music,” Vice says, as King adds, “Plus, there were five other bands out there called Parlor Tricks,” in addition to the long-running local band Parlour.

Their band is “a weird twist on a couple different genres,” King says. “We mix in kind of the old rockabilly, the faster psychobilly, but then we have pianos and keytars in it, but the overall feel is … I think we’d compare it to the Stray Cats meets Social Distortion …” Vice chimes in, “Meets Nekromantix meets … I would just, as a broad generalization, call it psychobilly/punk rock/rock ’n’ roll.”

“I would describe it as awesome,” she concludes with a big laugh. “Awesomeness on a stick!”

Vice had always loved the upright bass, and a friend working at Doo Wop Shop gave her a good deal on one. “I fell in love with it, and I love the physical challenge of it, and — I love it. I wouldn’t play anything else.”

“It’s fun to jump on,” adds King. “I do a lot of tricks with it,” Vice laughs.

Guitarist Climer joined the band a year ago, helping the spry King be able to put his guitar down more often, and “jump around and climb on things,” adding to the appeal of the live show.

The Vice Tricks album also documents the contributions made by their keyboardist, Evmenios Poulias, better known to fans as Dr. Evil. Poulias has returned to his native Greece, where he is a third-generation dentist in his family’s practice. Having come to the United States four years ago for a residency, Poulias joined the band a year and a half ago, having been recommended by “a friend of a friend of a friend” on Facebook.

“It was love at first sight. We practiced and it was like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s it!” says Vice. “We miss him terribly.” Poulias is scheduled to return to Louisville for Saturday’s record release show.

“We were sad to see him go,” agrees King. “The last show we did, his friends kept bringing up shots of Drambuie. He ended up on the ground — playing with one hand, drinking with the other.”

They’re not going to replace him. “There’s no way,” says Vice. “We’re gonna rock it out as the band we are without him.” His girlfriend has roots in Louisville, so he’ll be back often.

It’s a band made up of “do-it-yourself people,” Vice says, though they’ve used Kickstarter to try to keep going. True to their worldview, they asked for $666.

We’ve heard it all again that rock ’n’ roll is dead/
Not one time, not two times, but it’s your time/
Never believe it, never receive it/
cut you like a knife ’cause rock ’n’ roll ain’t dead.

Vice Tricks with The Queers, The Manges and Stoner Moms
Saturday, Dec. 29
Diamond Pub
630 Barret Ave.
diamondpubandbilliards.com
$10 (adv.), $12 (doors); 9 p.m.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Black and Blue and White

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White Reaper is a fuzz-rock explosion made up of two: guitarist and vocalist Anthony Esposito and drummer and “cassette tape technology” specialist Nick Wilkerson. Their debut album, White Aura, was released on Halloween. “We’re really influenced by fuzzy 1960s and 1970s kind of stuff, like Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath, but we’re also really influenced by more poppy stuff like the Beach Boys,” Esposito says.

When asked how they get some of the sounds that distinguish them, Wilkerson explains, “We use a delay pedal to make cool noises, and we recorded drums on a 4-track in our dear friend Hank Paradis’ barn.”

The North Oldham natives are finishing up their studies at MTSU and are returning to Louisville full time. Their next chapter starts with a show at the Rudyard Kipling tonight (Dec. 19), headlined by another of Wilkerson’s bands, The New Mexico, which has also included his twin brother Sam and Esposito.

“We grew up in Louisville, and we met each other when we went to school in Oldham County,” Wilkerson says. They bonded over hardcore shows and started playing together four years ago. They both decided to go to MTSU, 30 minutes from Nashville, to study audio production.

“We really liked Nashville, we went to some awesome shows, but we always had to bum rides from kids who had cars, so we also missed a lot of awesome shows,” Wilkerson laments. “We’re really excited about moving back because it was a lot harder for us to properly jam in a dorm room.”

Discouraged by the commuter nature of their school, the duo is excited to return home.

“Louisville is a place where we can practice whenever we want, record whenever we want, and we know a little bit more about how the Louisville scene works,” Wilkerson says. “Our plan is to write a ton and tour as much as possible. Basically, we want to do everything that we were too young to do in our previous bands. Now that we are older, we can work harder and we have bigger plans.”

c. 2012 LEO Weekly