Give-A-Jam

Tim O'Brien

Clifton Center executive director John Harris joins me to discuss their annual benefit to end homelessness, which will be held on Dec. 18 at 6:30 p.m. Live music will come from Tim O’Brien, Appalatin, The Bibelhauser Brothers with Michael Cleveland and more, plus food from numerous leading chefs. Ticket sales go to the Coalition for the Homeless Louisville, whose executive director is Harris’ wife Natalie.

The Voice-Tribune: Why did you decide to raise funds for this cause in this way?

John Harris: It was pretty simple, really. My wife Natalie and I just realized we had a unique opportunity. Natalie’s organization was doing some really exciting work with their Rx:Housing project, and I was lucky enough to be in a position with the Clifton Center to be able to bring together the ingredients needed to pull off an event like the “Give-A-Jam” that could help. When the Clifton Center transformed itself in 2010, part of the vision was to serve the community in this way, so it was a natural outgrowth of our programming. The most important part, though, was that I had gotten to know some incredibly wonderful musicians and other partners of the Clifton Center who I knew would jump at the chance to do something positive for their town. Louisville is very lucky to have these folks here. I should also say that for years I’ve had a policy of never asking musicians to play for free. We really need to honor the work they do and respect their profession. But I now allow myself to break that rule once a year, and I always make sure to acknowledge that to all those generous people that participate.

V-T: How do you pick the artists and chefs who will be donating their talents?

HARRIS: It seems to be getting tougher and tougher! There are so many talented people that want to help, and we only have so much time to fit them in. But I tend to ask musicians who I’ve worked with before. Most have performed at the Clifton Center at one time or another, and all are really outstanding musicians. As always, that’s crucial for me. Even though it’s a benefit, we take quality very seriously at the Clifton Center, so we want everything we do to be of a very high level. We’re just incredibly fortunate to have so many great (and generous) musicians in town. As for the restaurants, we’re lucky to have lots of generous restaurant owners and great chefs in Louisville, as well. Some we ask because they are area restaurants we’ve worked with before for the Taste of Frankfort Avenue or one of the Coalition’s events, and some are simply restaurants we like a lot. We also try not to ask the same ones every year because we know it’s a big contribution they’re making. They’re buying all of the ingredients and using their staff’s time to prepare the soup, all while trying to run a successful restaurant. So we know it’s a big sacrifice for them, and we try to honor that sacrifice by not asking them over and over every year.

V-T: Do you think 20-somethings today have the same sense of activism, social justice and giving to causes as people did in the recent past?

HARRIS: I do. I think the mechanisms may have changed and the means of expression are very different, but I think young people are as aware, if not more aware, of the need and injustice that surrounds them than my generation was, or the generation before mine. I believe most people want to do good in this world. Often, it’s just a matter of figuring out how to express that desire to help. That’s what we want the “Give-A-Jam” to be: a mechanism for people that just want to perform a small act of charity that makes their town a better place and helps some people who really need it.

V-T: If someone buys a ticket, should they also buy you a Christmas present? Or are they good for another year?

HARRIS: You mean for me personally? A ticket purchase is definitely the best present for me. I already have plenty of beer.

Photo by Clarissa Peterson

c. 2014 The Voice-Tribune

Cabbage Patch Dad

The Rev. J. Tracy Holladay has led his organization, the Cabbage Patch Settlement House in the Old Louisville neighborhood, for 30 years. But its history goes back to a time long before his arrival, and the place promises to live on long after he leaves it. Its core mission – providing opportunities for at-risk children to succeed – is stronger and more necessary than any one person. Even a popular toy can’t get in the way of what they’re doing down there on 6th Street.

The first thing the normal Jane or John on that street needs to know is that, no, there is no connection between the Cabbage Patch Settlement House – a nonprofit instilling values, education and creativity in over one thousand children annually – and the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. “We think the Cabbage Patch Kids are cute, but we share no connection,” they clarify on their website’s FAQ page.

The Cabbage Patch Settlement House was founded in 1910 by Louise Marshall, who stayed until she was in her early 90s, 70 years after creating it. The name came from the neighborhood, as many residents had cabbages in their gardens, and a book, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch by Alice Hegan Rice, that was set there. It’s known as a settlement house from the 19th Century term used to indicate a place where new settlers to a community, especially an inner-city area, could find resources they needed.

Rev. Holladay took over shortly thereafter, having taken a circuitous route to get there from his native Florida. Born in 1951, the son of a military man, he says his childhood, spent mostly in Gainesville, wasn’t quite like “The Andy Griffith Show,” but allows that it was pretty close. It was “a very churched family, Baptist by tradition.” Church activities kept him busy throughout his childhood. In high school, he got involved with an organization called Young Life, an outreach ministry for students that Holladay says aims to make religion more fun for them. He later served as a director for the Louisville chapter during his time in the seminary, and a member of both boards suggested Holladay apply for the newly available executive director job.

Holladay decided to join the Naval Reserve during the Vietnam War. He took time getting through college (“I sometimes say ‘I squeezed those four years into 10’”), also working jobs throughout those years: a hospital corpsman in the Navy, the manager of a rental car agency (an outgrowth of teenage gas station work), selling real estate, selling advertising…

Between the many jobs and the religious training, Holladay was prepared to take the lead at the Cabbage Patch by his early 30s. “I’m still selling. I’m just selling at-risk kids these days!” he laughs.

“I didn’t come to seminary necessarily thinking I was going to do regular church stuff,” he continues. “I had been involved with some social ministry stuff through the church I grew up in, and had – as you can tell from those jobs – a business orientation. I was always pretty good with numbers.”

That skill comes in extra handy at the private Cabbage Patch, which prides itself on surviving without government funding. “Even when we were an even smaller entity – and this goes back to Ms. Marshall’s words – I think we were gutsy,” says Holladay. “And a little different. She decided, early on, to stay out of the traditional funding streams that most organizations like this (utilize).” In 1910, such funds, and places like the United Way, had yet to assert themselves as agents of such funds. As they did, the Cabbage Patch continued raising money without their assistance. “So I believe that meant she had to be fairly creative in fundraising. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she came from a well-to-do, prominent family and knew a lot of well-to-do people!”

Shortly after Holladay took over, a board member offered the idea of an amateur basketball event. Their “Street Ball Showdown” went on to raise a lot of money over almost two decades, helping to provide educational and recreational programs for their kids. Even during the recent recession, the organization’s financial savvy kept the lights on.

Rev. Holladay doesn’t get to spend much time working with the kids, but the organization includes perhaps one thousand volunteers, as well, who do everything from coaching to tutoring on a regular basis, or helping families during the holidays. But the mission has always come first for him. About the kids, he says, “I want them to believe that they can do more and accomplish more than perhaps they think they can. I think there’s a lot of untapped potential in … probably every person, but certainly children are this little gold mine of untapped potential.”

He says “it’s almost deprogramming” to take disadvantaged children and show them other ways of seeing the world. “Certainly, not every kid we serve is coming out of that environment, but there is something that’s different between – it’s clearly impactful, whether a kid feels loved or appreciated or has someone believe in them.”

They boast alumni including “an NFL Super Bowl Coach, a former city alderman, community leaders, teachers, coaches, firefighters, police officers, Cabbage Patch Program Directors, and leading executives.” A few current employees began going there as children.

“I think you have to let them try a lot of different things,” says Holladay. “The kid that comes and just hangs out in the gym all the time thinks he’s going to be the next Michael Jordan or whatever – we’ll be suggesting, ‘Hey, we’ve got this class on art. And we’ve got this leadership program. We’ve got camping. We’re taking a big bike trip somewhere.’ All kinds of stuff they might not have the chance to be exposed to otherwise.”

“And guess what? That might be the next great teacher, or performer, as opposed to the next great athlete. Ultimately, we want them to be successful, productive, well-adjusted adults that are contributing to the society as a whole. And have moral-slash-spiritual values, as well.”

c. 2014 Kentucky Monthly

Sisterhood of the Dazzling Stance

Novice Sister Fluffy has big breasts and a full beard.

It’s a Sunday night at Play, the club in Louisville’s Butchertown neighborhood that is home to some of Kentucky’s finest drag queens. But Fluffy is not a drag queen – the military vet also known as Kirk Murphy is an aspirant member of the Derby City Sisters, a group that bills themselves as “an order of radical fun-loving nuns dedicated to spreading joy and banishing stigmatic guilt.”

If the name hasn’t already given it away, Fluffy isn’t an actual nun, either. He’s part of the new Louisville mission house connected to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, whose network includes dozens of other houses internationally. The group began in San Francisco in 1979, quickly finding their calling as educators and activists as the AIDS epidemic began wreaking havoc.

The founding Sisters “went out into the streets to challenge the world,” according to their “Sistory”. The Derby City Sisters live in a somewhat more progressive world, where marriage equality continues to evolve. But many obstacles and prejudices remain.

“Ours is a ministry of presence,” says Ryan Phillips, 28 and the local founder also known as novice Sister Velveeta VonTease. “Just being there for someone when they need someone to talk to, to celebrate you for who you are.”

Phillips says the chalky clown white makeup the Sisters apply goes a long way towards putting those people at ease, especially after they’ve had a few drinks. People tell the Sisters all kinds of secrets, he says, things they won’t tell their families or even their partners.

This trust pays off when it comes to one of the core elements of the modern Sisters’ mission: sex education, still, including offering HIV/AIDS testing. “Unlike the church, we won’t tell you not to have sex – quite the opposite,” Phillips says. “We’ll tell you to have sex as often as possible, but just play safe … Our work is to spread joy and abolish guilt. Throw some glitter on you and throw that guilt away.”

The group was only a vague notion a year ago. Phillips had first discovered the concept as a teen, and after recent encounters on a “Drag Stars at Sea Cruise,” he sat down with some members and discussed how the organization worked. Phillips made a resolution at 12:01 a.m. on New Year’s Day this year to make it happen in Kentucky. “I felt that there was an incredible pulse happening in the city of Louisville, and that if something like this were to happen, for it to be successful, it had to happen right then and there.”

He invited a few friends. “I had no idea who would be involved, who would be interested,” Phillips says. 48 people came to the first meeting; six of them are still involved. Four nuns from Nashville and one from Portland came to help. “People in the bars instantly gravitated towards us. It was one of those moments when I was, like, ‘Yesss!,’” he laughs.



Soon, they were 15, then 25; now, they count 33 members. Some locals are aware of the group but confused about their mission. The simplest explanation is that they promote love. Also: acceptance, compassion, joy and other ideas that don’t come first to mind when one contemplates nuns (clowns, maybe, but also unlikely). Their members are Atheists, Buddhists, Catholics – a veritable alphabet soup united by the idea of destroying labels and divisiveness. That, and the greatest, safest sex you can find.

Sister Fluffy serves as “The Mistress of Pleasure,” putting together 1,500 “pleasure packs” of condoms, lube and breath mints each month. Tonight, he’s calling numbers for the monthly “Sister Bingo” night at Play. Kirk is somewhat shy in his everyday “boy” life, but Fluffy is more in your face. “I may have the biggest boobies in the order,” he laughs.

Murphy and his husband are both vets from Oklahoma. Getting involved with the Sisters has made them more outgoing, more open and more liberal. Husband Parker Coe Murphy acts as one of the guards for the Sisters when they are out doing their “bar missionary” work. Members begin as aspirants – those who are checking it out. Postulancy follows, as they begin applying their new faces and erasing their regular identity. They are more demure, silent as they observe the process. Novices go out in full dress, doing their work, including mandatory service projects. Then, and only then, can these men in dresses become a fully professed Sister.

It’s a year-long process, and it’s a lot of work. Phillips spends six to eight hours a day working on the group: organizing, promoting, networking and more. It takes an average of two hours for members to transform themselves into character. But even if they never help anyone else, they’ve helped each other. “I chose these people. I didn’t get to choose my own family. I spend more time with these folks than I do with my own family,” Sister Fluffy says. Their new names go toward spreading joy – it’s hard to get mad at anything named “Fluffy” – but also give them a chance to start over, with their new identity separate from those who might have been unkind to them in the past.

“More and more, Fluffy is coming out. I can’t take a picture now without putting my hand on my hip,” Murphy laughs.

Phillips says it’s a priority for the group to also work with groups outside of the LGBTQIA world – animal shelters and the homeless, for example – along with groups like the Louisville Youth Group, which provides support for LGBTQIA teens. Oh, and actual nuns? Nuns love the Sisters.

Louisville’s just the first stop, Phillips says, adding that they hope to expand to Lexington as soon as possible. Beyond that, he’s thinking about Cincinnati and Indianapolis. “There’s so many opportunities for this magic and this type of energy to have a presence in any city … We’re everywhere. They never thought they would see one in Louisville.”

c. 2014 Story Magazine

Dishes, Drinkers and Dreams: Vines, Barrels and Kegs Have a Master Plan

Daniel Huff and Brandon Schaefer are a classic team: dreamers, brothers from another mother, one part Mutt and Jeff and one part the Black Keys; well, at least if they work hard at it and get some things very right. These guys love beer, wine and bourbon, like lots of people. The difference is that they want to take their passion and turn it into a business, a business that will get them out of their bartending careers and transform Louisville’s food and drinks scene forever.

Inspired by the Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Huff started Vines, Barrels and Kegs as a TV program to showcase people who make those three products. But then Huff “decided against going to network TV with the concept because – I mean, we had 700 views for our first show on YouTube. Which is more than a lot of people get from Hollywood on theirs. So we decided to start a website.”

They decided to make the site a social media hub, now based around alcohol, food and music. They want it to become a place to find anything you would want to know about these topics. Instead of Googling, or using Yelp or Beer Advocate, they want you to go to VBK instead. What’s so different and special about their site? Well, they say, theirs has videos.

“We’ve combined the use of YouTube, Facebook and Craigslist,” Huff says. All video, and very few words: “More people are more apt to open a link on other social media, or a text or an email … some people like to read, some people do video. More people look at a video than the constant barrage …”

“I mean, it hasn’t been done yet,” Schaefer interjects. “You can see your personality better if you’re on a video, obviously … Do you want to watch a movie or do you want to read a book, you know?” he laughs.

Schaefer says he recently used a video of Dan Aykroyd promoting the star’s vodka line to sell a pair of $9 shots to his customers at Diamond Pub & Billiards, instead of the cheaper well shots they would have otherwise purchased.

Members can set up their own pages where they follow their favorite chefs, liquor companies, and also add friends – like Facebook, but it’s not Facebook, it’s VBK. You can even sign up for VBK Mail. “You can have interactions on the website, so you don’t even have to go to your email,” Huff explains further.

As for the Craigslist approach, Huff says that comes in because of the video recipe- book section. If you’re making drinks at a party, he wants you to go to his site to see recipes being demonstrated.

The music portion hasn’t been fleshed out yet, but the founders say a big crossover audience goes to see bands play in bars. Music in their TV pilot was provided by their friends the Villebillies. “I’ve heard from several people that the music scene is almost like when Nirvana was in Seattle,” Huff says. He dreams of live-streaming events like a Garth Brooks concert or even the Country Music Awards on Vines, Barrels & Kegs.

Louisville’s role as a food and drinking hub is only getting bigger, says Huff, 38, who works at Big Shots Bar & Grill in Fern Creek. “It’s possibly becoming the foodie capital of the United States,” he declares, citing Bobby Flay as an example. “There’s more places to eat here than anywhere in the United States … So why not expose it in a city where basketball, horse racing, bourbon and food are all synonymous?”

See for yourself at vinesbarrelsandkegs.com.

c. The Voice-Tribune

Miguel Zenón: An American Music Master

Alto saxophonist/composer/educator Miguel Zenón, 38, is a native of San Juan, Puerto Rico. His ninth and latest album as a leader, Identities Are Changeable, was released this week, and the handsome, serious Zenón has become increasingly known to a wider audience as the NPR crowd begins to pay more attention. The album took three years, from when the concept was first planted in his head when a New Jersey university asked for a new creation, and further inspired by writer Juan Flores’ book The Diaspora Strikes Back, about the cross-cultural exchanges between the people of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean as they journey to and from the United States.

Grammy nominee Zenón interviewed numerous other Puerto Ricans and American-bred Puerto Rican offspring about their shared heritage and turned pieces of those interviews into audio clips peppered throughout his new compositions. “Tell me your name, where you were born and raised, and where your family is from,” he’s heard asking after his sax kicks off “De Donde Vienes,” (“Where Are You From?”) that also features percussive piano and drums suggesting a hectic island life.

For his quartet’s upcoming show at the Clifton Center, the live production is augmented by video projections of the people and the places documented on the album by Zenón. The subjects discuss issues of identity familiar to anyone whose family came to the United States from somewhere else, especially fairly recently: self-definitions, language issues, assimilation, etc. Then there’s the music; Zenón says he doesn’t define himself as a Puerto Rican musician first, and notes that when someone talks about “Latin Jazz” they are using one term to discuss many different cultures, from Cuban to Brazilian to Venezuelan and Puerto Rican and on and on. Those genres are really only united by not having begun in the U.S., but that’s true of most music.

In 2004, after six years living in New York, Zenón became a founding member of the SFJAZZ Collective in San Francisco, and today is the last original member left. In 2008, he won not just a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship but also a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (better known as “The Genius Grant”). The latter award him and other recipients a half-million dollars to do with as they so desired. The idea is that it will free them from the usual challenges of having to do this or that to make money, because their art or creative skill doesn’t otherwise pay those bills, not enough. And no one’s accused jazz musicians of being rich … well, hardly ever.

Zenón first came north to study sax at prestigious the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He then followed that up at the Manhattan School of Music, and has played with the Mingus Big Band, Charlie Haden, Ray Barretto, Guillermo Klein, Kenny Werner and many more on almost 60 other albums since 1998. He’s reached a level now where a New York Times new release round-up can bear a headline such as “Albums by Neil Young, Bette Midler and Miguel Zenón,” as though anyone on the street would know who he is. Times critic Nate Chinen called Identities Are Changeable “steeply ambitious,” adding “The writing is potent and self-assured, girded with polyrhythmic cross talk — multiple meters churning in irregular union — and given to steadily mounting drama.”

The complex big band arrangements, Zenón says, were inspired by what he’s learned from Klein, the Mingus band and John Hollenbeck, as well as his SFJazz collaborators. “All those sounds put a lot of ideas into my head,” he told Downbeat magazine in his current cover feature. The album is the second released by his own label, Miel Music (after several albums released by the Marsalis Music label; the first, Oye!!! Live in Puerto Rico, was released in 2013), and Zenon also continues to leads Caravana Cultural, a program that has presented nine series of free concerts across Puerto Rico. As he told Downbeat, “I’ve been very, very lucky. It’s been a lot of work, but I love to work.”

“This young musician and composer is at once reestablishing the artistic, cultural, and social tradition of jazz while creating an entirely new jazz language for the 21st century.” – MacArthur Foundation, 2008.

The Miguel Zenón Quartet
Friday, Nov. 7
Clifton Center
2117 Payne St.
cliftoncenter.org
$18; 8 p.m.

c. 2014 Clifton Center

Houndmouth: A local band’s crazy week of both great and terrible adventures

Photo by Julia Rickles.

This week began badly for Houndmouth. The Louisville quartet woke up after a gig in Springfield, Mo., where they had opened for the Drive-By Truckers. A thief had smashed into their van and stole its GPS, an iPad, a Blu-ray player and personal items, including clothing.

“They took my favorite yoga pants!” keyboardist/vocalist Katie Toupin laughs with a true yogi’s lightness. For a touring band, such thefts are terrible and extremely inconvenient, she notes. It’s happened to several of their friends’ bands. “Not to point fingers, but it seems like every single one has been in Missouri,” she notes. While the band’s gear survived, presumably too heavy to take, the thief went through dirty clothes and selected favorites, leaving some behind.


Katie Toupin checks out the damage.

At least the thief had good taste in clothes. Toupin and business partner Addie Mills are behind a new store, Bermuda Highway, which will open at 811 E. Market St. on Nov. 8, coinciding with the annual NuLu Holiday Open House shopping event. Their music-themed shop will focus mostly on men and women’s clothing, new and vintage.

“I don’t like stores where you have to go in and look through 8,000 vintage things to buy one thing that’s cool. So the vintage is just unique pieces that are all cool,” Toupin explains.

Vintage band T-shirts will be a specialty of Bermuda Highway, which took its name from an early My Morning Jacket song. “It’s my favorite My Morning Jacket song. It’s obviously a tribute to my friend Jim James,” says Toupin. “He’s been a big brother to our band from the very beginning. So I really loved the whole idea of it … And the line in that song, Don’t let your silly dreams / Fall in between the crack of the bed and the wall, is incredibly fitting for doing something kind of risky,” she laughs.

So she wasn’t inspired by the previous line, Your ass, it draws me in like a Bermuda highway?

“Your ass — yeah, it’s a clothing store, so it works either way!”


Bermuda Highway takes its name from an MMJ song.

James wasn’t the only two-decade music veteran who helped inspire them. Houndmouth met Jack White and his Third Man Records crew in July at the Newport Folk Festival. “I fell in love with them as people,” Toupin says, “and I really loved the idea of just carrying their products, mainly. Also, not to compete with other local record stores. I’m doing a niche sort of thing, so everybody’s winning here.”

While the Nashville-based Third Man’s roving record truck has popped up in front of NuLu neighbor Please & Thank You, what the two shops do will be very different, as Bermuda Highway will only carry all of Third Man’s records, as well as their offbeat knickknacks.

Keeping with White’s penchant for surprises and his celebration of objects, the owners will present an artist-curated section in the store. In December, Dr. Dog guitarist/vocalist Scott McMicken is “actually making these special records, and hand-making clothing and all kinds of things, art, for his section,” says Toupin.

But each month will be something different. “It’s this open format for them to have a presence — a direct, exclusive relationship with the fans out of the store.” Some bands will also play in-store sets.

Houndmouth’s week went on to include a day spent doing tasks like fixing their van’s windows, followed by their debut at Nashville’s legendary Ryman Auditorium — “a huge thrill,” says Toupin. On Halloween, they joined the Drive-By Truckers for a show in that band’s hometown, Athens, Ga. After tonight’s Charlotte performance, they’re done for 2014.

Bermuda Highway began taking shape this summer after Toupin decided to stay in Louisville instead of moving to Nashville. It seemed like a way for her to give back to the community that has given her so much, she says.

Toupin and Mills met at General Eccentric, where Mills worked with Toupin to pick out clothes for Houndmouth tours. While Mills will run Bermuda Highway during Toupin’s tour time, Houndmouth’s three-month break means fans should be able to see plenty of the musician at the store for now. And possibly her bandmates.

“The boys in the band just talk about how they want to steal clothes from me!”

C. 2014 Insider Louisville

Louisville’s loudest art gallery comes alive in Portland

The Tunesmiths

Portland Rock City ain’t no thugs and cheats / Tunesmiths breakin’ the wall west of Ninth Street.

“Portland Rock City, that’s what we’ve been calling it. Although I’m sure it’ll get a NuLu-esque name soon.” That’s how Bryce Gill, a driving force behind the music program at the Tim Faulkner Gallery, summarizes their approach to creating Louisville’s loudest art gallery.

“There is live music nearly every night of the week at the gallery,” Gill says. “Some are sporadically booked shows, and others are weekly open mics and rehearsals. Tim has been building his connections around town and with national touring artists since before their recent move.”

Faulkner opened his eponymous gallery in NuLu in 2009, as that neighborhood was still taking baby steps toward becoming the shopping and dining destination it is today. The art-first punk attitude of the artist and his gallery director, Margaret Archambault, inspired them to move to a larger space in Butchertown, a little bit off the map of the NuLu trolley hop free-wine crowd. Though that sprawling space became a hub for artists, musicians and other free spirits, not all of their neighbors were as excited by the noise generated there.

Faulkner and his crew jumped at the chance to occupy a 25,000-square-foot space (plus extended courtyard) offered at 1512 Portland Ave. as part of a larger plan to fill the neighborhood with some of the art and dining found in NuLu. The gallery also rents studio space to numerous artists and recently welcomed a small shop, McQuixote Books & Coffee, inside their single-story property.


The studio space at the Tim Faulkner Gallery

Gill and his band, the post blues-rock band The Tunesmiths, had been holding open practices every Wednesday night in Butchertown, and that continues in Portland. The band also books shows for other acts. “I’ll remember these years for the rest of my life,” he says. “To say the gallery helps my band is a massive understatement. The number of people that visit the gallery and hear about us grows every week.”

Additionally, the band now gets to rehearse on a big stage with a pro sound system. The concert hall is 10,000 square feet, with a capacity of 1,574 (such capacity is similar to the Brown Theatre). “I have not heard of any other bands in town with such an ideal rehearsal space for a rock band,” Gill says. “We started as a garage band, and now people have described our sound as more of an arena sound.”

Popular cellist/singer-songwriter Ben Sollee spent a few days there rehearsing before his recent WFPK Waterfront Wednesday set, even sleeping over. The Tunesmiths have started a monthly series for friendly traveling bands coming through on a Wednesday night. The next one is Nov. 12, headlined by Greg Martin of the Kentucky Headhunters, with a vinyl records and music gear expo added for extra oomph.

A Halloween show, “Bella Muerte – A Halloween Masquerade Ball,” has been booked with D’Arkestra, Billy Goat Strut Revue and Small Time Napoleon. The latter will be playing songs by Tom Waits that night.

Gill says he’s seeing locals, business owners, nonprofit workers and churchgoers dropping by on a regular basis, alongside the developers trying to figure out how to make their profits.

“I have seen the plans for all of the new developments, and I tell everyone they have no idea what’s coming in Portland!” he says. “The gallery is one of the first establishments in Portland that you can see a massive amount of progress and consistent activity. We were invited to play at the Portland Festival and several other upcoming events in the area. My band also helps local musicians find secure and affordable rehearsal spaces in the warehouse district.

“We help Tim anytime there is an opportunity,” Gill adds. The gallery is his home away from home. “Tim, Margaret and the whole TFG family are now a part of my life and my band’s entire operations. I couldn’t be happier with their progress and impact on the local music and art community. I feel very proud and excited to be a part of it. To see it firsthand and get to experience even half of the activities there is priceless.”

c. 2014 Insider Louisville

Leo Kottke – fingers on the pulse of the American guitar

“His contributions to guitar technique are staggering and are still not fully understood. His brilliant synthesis of vernacular tradition and classical intent has fostered a new tradition in guitar music.” That’s John Stropes, director of the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, describing why his institution was honoring Leo Kottke with an honorary doctorate in 2008.

“For a long time, the guitar has been my primary interest,” Kotte told Innerviews in 1999. “I see everything through the guitar. My day is almost always built around it. The guitar is almost always beside me, wherever I am.”

Though his career has been further bolstered by Grammy nominations and a place in the Guitar Player magazine Hall of Fame, Kottke has also survived severe physical problems and the losses of his closest peers.

Born in 1945, Kotte moved often throughout his childhood. A benefit of this path was his exposure to different music, including blues, folk and country styles. A firecracker took some of the hearing in his left ear, and his right ear also became permanently damaged during firing practice while in the Naval Reserve.

Upon discharge, Kottke hitchhiked for a while, because it was the 1960s. He landed in the Minneapolis area, where he released his first album of acoustic, finger-style, steel string American Primitivism guitar work, 12 String Blues (Live at the Scholar), in 1969, at the age of 24. Only 1,000 copies were made, and Kottke would re-record some of its songs for his third album, 1970’s Circle Round the Sun.

But his second album, 6- and 12-String Guitar, unveiled in December of 1969, would be the one to cement his reputation. The album was released by Takoma Records, the label founded by John Fahey, himself a legendary finger-style guitarist. Though it was Kottke’s breakthrough, going on to sell a half-million copies, it also established him as the master of a style that would later hurt him.

The album is also known for its armadillo-centric cover art, and Kottke’s note saying that he preferred arrangements without vocals because his singing voice “sounds like geese farts on a muggy day.” On a positive note, the album became a major influence on guitarist Michael Hedges, who would become a friend and tour mate to Kottke.

A Rolling Stone critic at the time wrote, “(His) music can invoke your most subliminal reflections or transmit you to the highest reaches of joy.” Kottke went on the road, winning over large crowds with his beautiful playing and surprisingly funny between-song monologues. His fourth album, 1971’s Mudlark, was his first for a major label. Capitol. It was also his first to add other musicians, including members of both L..A.’s freak scene and Nashville’s country music scene.

As he ventured into the early ‘70s, Kottke began adding vocals, feeling pressure from his label to become more of a James Taylor-style singer-songwriter. He would record seven albums for Capitol, leaving in 1975 for Chrysalis. He continued on a steady path there until 1983, when his career took an unplanned, surprising new direction.

Out of the spotlight for three years, Kottke dealt with tendonitis that he had suffered through years of vigorous guitar playing. Signed to the independent Private Music label,where his quasi-New Age style made more sense than on a major label (especially in the gross, grubby ‘80s), Kottke returned with 1986’s A Shout Toward Noon, displaying a more classical influence on his playing.

Fun fact: around this time, Kottke also scored the Troma movie Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid.

By the late ‘80s, he had returned to fighting form (like contemporaries Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Paul Simon – the ‘80s were not good for anyone). His next album won Kottke his first Grammy nomination.

In the ‘90s, he collaborated on and off his own albums with like-minded artists such as as Rickie Lee Jones, Lyle Lovett, Chet Atkins, Nanci Griffith and Van Dyke Parks. Michael Hedges and John Fahey both passed away around the turn of the century, and Kottke began a partnership with a younger musician and fan, bassist Mike Gordon of Phish. The title of Kottke’s 2004 album, his last solo to date, summed up his approach cleverly and succinctly: Try and Stop Me.

Leo Kottke
Wednesday, October 29
Clifton Center
2117 Payne St.
cliftoncenter.org
$29-$34; 7:30 p.m.

c. 2014 Clifton Center

The Carolina Chocolate Drops and their umbrella revolution

There was a moment after the biracial Barack Obama was elected to the presidency that the punditocracy declared the United States a “post-racial” society. Unfortunately, issues of racial disparity and strife continue to plague us (or do you still think of the Scottish TV host when you hear the word “Ferguson”?). In the world of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, though, the best of both worlds do coexist. The quartet plays a blend of old-time musical styles, with elements of jug bands and string bands, country and western, Celtic, blues, hot jazz and traditional African approaches all informing a self-described “folk” band whose membership recently included a beatboxer.

It’s also a new world for the Drops now, once again. After winning a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album for their first widely-distributed album, Genuine Negro Jig (on the acclaimed Nonesuch label), in 2010, founding members Rhiannon Giddens (vocals, banjo, fiddle, kazoo) and Dom Flemons (vocals, banjo, guitar, jug, harmonica, kazoo, snare drum, bones, quills) replaced fiddler Justin Robinson with the aforementioned beatboxer, Adam Matta, and Hubby Jenkins (vocals, guitar, mandolin, banjo, bones). A year later, they added cellist Layla McCalla. By the end of 2013, Flemons had left for a solo career, and Matta and McCalla were gone, too. Giddens and Jenkins now play with cellist Malcolm Parson and new multi-instrumentalist Rowan Corbett (guitar, bones, snare drum, cajon, djembe).

That type of evolution shouldn’t be very surprising for a group determined to live in the present, looking back only to hold on to the best elements available to make the best music possible. It’s an approach that has won them endless love from theaters worldwide like our Clifton Center, roots music festivals, public radio programs and venerable publications like the New York Times (their writer Brian Seibert called Giddens “ridiculously charismatic” in a recent review of a concert he described as “rollicking, revelatory”).

That review pointed out the band’s intent as a dance band, one trying to educate their audience to a new way of hearing and seeing the world without making it feel educational. The band’s reclamation of the banjo, in particular, has helped fuel new interest in mostly forgotten music like jug band music, and the band – who plays for two nights at the Clifton Center – has proven especially popular in Louisville, where that genre was created. Dom Flemons spoke to journalist Michael L. Jones for the new book Louisville Jug Music, noting that “A lot of the history around the Louisville jug bands has not been written down in a way that is easy for people to digest,” a situation alleviated by Jones’ contribution to that story.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops came together in Durham, North Carolina, almost a decade ago. They found their sound in the traditional music of the Piedmont region of the Carolinas, studying with elder master fiddler Joe Thompson. Their most recent studio album, Leaving Eden, was released by Nonesuch in 2012. It had a touch more of a country/folk edge to it, aided by producer Buddy Miller (known for his work with Emmylou Harris, Solomon Burke and on the Nashville TV series). It was a transitional period for Giddens and her men, and the latest line-up revision promises another new dimension when the band returns to the studio.

Upon the release of Leaving Eden, Giddens said it like this: “We want to remain true to the roots of how we started. We’re always going to have a string band on our records. But we don’t want to just do Piedmont style fiddle-banjo-guitar tunes; there’s more to our musical life than that. We grow in a healthy, slow way that reflects our true development as musicians and as a band.”

Flemons recently further clarified their mission in an interview with Durham’s Indy Week newspaper. “When we first started the Carolina Chocolate Drops, it was always a three-person collective. For it to be a collective, each individual has their own intentions, their own ways of doing their material and the way they decide to play it. The idea of it being a band lessens the purpose of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. It’s an umbrella. It should be a place where we help out musicians.”

Carolina Chocolate Drops with Birds of Chicago
Wednesday, Oct. 22 & Thursday, Oct. 23
Clifton Center
2117 Payne St.
cliftoncenter.org
$29; 7:30 p.m.

c. 2014 Clifton Center

Rahim AlHaj: One Iraqi Whose Sounds and Stories Can Change Lives

There’s really no good reason why Rahim AlHaj’s life shouldn’t become a Steven Spielberg movie. The musician, who visits Louisville this month, has carried his oud all over the world, from Baghdad to the western edge of the United States, with stops in between as a political prisoner, Grammy winner and educator.

Now a resident of Albuquerque, New Mexico, AlHaj’s journey continues with a visit to the Clifton Center for “Into the Garden: A Festival of Iraqi Culture,” taking place from October 6 – 10. Kentucky Refugee Ministries and the Louisville Free Public Library’s Iroquois branch join the Clifton Center in presenting several opportunities throughout the week for learning, playing and otherwise sharing through the joy of music, art, food and everything else Iraqis and Americans have in common.

“He is an inspiration,” American guitar innovator Bill Frisell said of AlHaj. The two collaborated on the 2010 album Little Earth, which also featured AlHaj performing alongside R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, American violinist Eyvind Kang, avant-garde accordionist Guy Klucevsek and Malian griot Yacouba Sissoko. But it took AlHaj, currently 46 years old, a very long time to get to that highlight.

33 years earlier and 7,000 miles away, young Rahim discovered the short-neck, lute-like oud and quickly realized his skill with it. By 14, he was headlining concerts. He practiced under the master Munir Bashir, taking his studies all the way to college at the Baghdad Conservatory of Fine Arts. However, the politically progressive and outspoken AlHaj made enemies by refusing to join Saddam Hussein’s ruling party, and further provoked the dictator by performing songs like “Why?” A total of two years of imprisonment, including consistent assaults by his jailors, followed over the next few years. After his release, AlHaj returned to his university.

He studied Arabic literature, mainly because his father – who had never been truly supportive of his music – had put pressure on him. As the Gulf War began, AlHaj decided the time had come to flee all of his oppressors and try to find freedom and peace, for himself and his music. His one true supporter, his beloved mother, sold everything to help him escape. He wouldn’t see her again until 2004.

He moved through Jordan and Syria first, and told NPR, “When I crossed the border between Iraq and Jordan, they took my instrument from me. And this is the saddest moment in my entire life…. I had a choice between leave my instrument or have life. I had to leave. And so I left Iraq and left my instrument.” AlHaj found love in Syria, and they wound up together in New Mexico at the turn of the century through a refugee resettlement program.

Having to learn English while looking for work, AlHaj was directed to a job – at a McDonald’s. That short-lived adventure was followed by an almost equally disastrous stint as a night watchman (where he was fired for playing his music while at work).

He was able to release his first album in 2002, and has since released seven more. Whether solo, in a trio or a symphony, AlHaj demands attention without having to resort to loudness or gimmicks. His playing is focused and prayer-like, though the man is more overtly joyful and exuberant in everyday life. He writes about freedom, home, loss, war and of course, love. He combines poetry and music in all of his compositions, one way or another.

And then there is also his politics. Asked if he continues to be an active voter, as a citizen since 2008, AlHaj replies, “Of course! I’ve spent most of my life fighting hard for justice. I still do that. It is our duty to make life better against the politicians who control everything and destroy our lives! I am a big fan of change, and a big fan of making peace and compassion for all.”

“I call my music ‘The Sound of Resistance,’” he continues. “I always take the story of children, women, the tragedies of the world, and turn it and make it music from it – to give women and children a voice, for the voiceless people … I believe that everybody has the ability to make change, to make a difference.”

Rahim AlHaj
Friday, Oct. 10
Clifton Center
2117 Payne St.
cliftoncenter.org
$10; 8 p.m.

c. 2014 Clifton Center

Teddy talks: New orchestra conductor is on a mission to bring music to the people

photo by Sam English

The front door is open at Teddy Abrams’ new NuLu home as another reporter walks up, ready to take a turn in the month-long charm offensive that is the Louisville Orchestra’s plan to win back the younger audience thought lost to them. At 27, Abrams has proven himself to be an intelligent, hard-working and driven conductor, composer and musician.

His offstage wardrobe includes neat, stylish jeans and sneakers, and he gets around on a bicycle. But this is not Portlandia; Abrams has been studying and working for more than half of his life, and his journey has taken him from San Francisco to Philadelphia, Budapest, Miami, Detroit and Louisville.

In addition to Whitney Hall, the orchestra recently performed a free Sunday concert at Iroquois Amphitheater, and Abrams has appeared everywhere from the Village Anchor and Decca to Churchill Downs and YPAS. At the latter, he spent 90 minutes rehearsing a three-minute section of one piece in minute detail, while also offering life lessons and making jokes to put the students at ease.

If he sounds like a politician running for office, that’s not far off. Abrams stresses the value of connecting person-to-person with audience members. He responds to every letter, email and tweet, and stays after events to shake hands.

The simplest things, like talking on stage before each piece, sharing its story or trying to help the audience connect to it emotionally, goes a long way, he says. “I always say, ‘Museums really hit on something,’ because there was a time when they didn’t have explanations for paintings. Somebody came up with that idea. It changes your entire way of looking at it.”


Abrams with YPAS students
photo by Frankie Steele

Abrams’ job includes trying things that are new or unexpected. Pianos in the front room of his house are connected to speakers, so if he’s practicing, passers-by will be able to hear the music outside on East Main Street. He just needs to remember to turn off the speakers when he’s done — like he has to remember to turn off the microphone pack on his back when he takes a bathroom break while filming for the new web series, Music Makes a City Now, chronicling his adventures at work, at home and around town.

“We have this opportunity at the start of the season — eyes are on the orchestra and on Louisville. We need to capitalize on that,” he says. Last year, Abrams sat in several times during a turnaround year that found the orchestra in the black once again, with some thanks going to film composer John Williams for spending a night at Whitney Hall. Indeed, Williams’ theme from E.T. was on the set list again last Sunday. It was a selection that, predictably, delighted both children and their parents.

The question Abrams gets most frequently is, of course, “How do you get young people to come back to the orchestra?”

“As if there’s a secret. There’s no secret.” This impasse leaves Abrams and the rest of the organization determined to take to the streets, online, to schools like YPAS and U of L, and even to young bands, whether they come from rock, jazz, bluegrass or other genres.

Abrams started improvising on piano at age 3, and his love for music kicked in when he joined the school band on clarinet at 8. His parents took him to the San Francisco Symphony once in the late ’90s, and he knew that night what he wanted to do with his life. Abrams wrote a passionate letter to conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, and by 11 was his student.

Abrams’ education included exposure to the great old Louisville Orchestra albums that helped make its name worldwide (composer John Adams was among many who sent Abrams a note congratulating him, saying, “This is a wonderful orchestra”).

“That’s a big deal. The brand is very important. And that’s something most orchestras of this size don’t have,” Abrams says. “We can’t just repeat what they did 40 years ago. The same ideas, same inspiration (are still needed) — but in a contemporary setting.”

Saturday’s performances include an orKIDStra performance of “Cirque de la Symphonie” at 11 a.m. and an all-ages performance at 8 p.m., both in Whitney Hall. Tickets are available at louisvilleorchestra.org.

c. 2014 Insider Louisville

Las Cafeteras’ smart party fuses tradition and 21st Century street sounds

Every 15 years or so, a rowdy bunch of Chicano musicians rises up on the east side of Los Angeles with a game-changing sound, a must-see live show and a political message embedded inside everything they do. In the early ‘80s, it was Los Lobos. In the late ‘90s, Ozomatli took the crown. Now, it’s Las Cafeteras’ turn.

“Even in L.A., where we’re from, man, our music is so different,” says Hector Flores, who sings, plays the guitar-like jarana and provides zapateado percussion. “So I can only imagine how people are going to take it once we hit these different markets,” he laughs. “Our take on it: we remix roots music, we do hip-hop and cumbia and ska, we do this mélange, man, this great buffet of sounds. It’s stuff you heard before you were born mixed in with melodies that you hear today.”

Their current tour – their longest to date, 31 shows in 13 states in 51 days – is taking the seven-piece band across the middle of the U.S., moving beyond the biggest cities into the heartland, south and northeast, expanding their worldview as they also take time out to teach others. In addition to their Clifton Center concert on Wednesday, September 24th at 7:30 p.m., the septet – which includes several community organizers – will also lead a gathering at Farnsley Middle School at 6 p.m. Tuesday evening, with an in-school performance happening earlier at Field Elementary School.

“Many of us grew up doing community and social justice work,” Flores says. “Youth development, anti-racism work … and so the music became a way for us to really talk about different cultures, different communities and peoples in a really empowering way.”

Formed in 2005, Las Cafeteras’ name was inspired by the Eastside Café, a community space where they first learned about the Zapatista movement in southern Mexico and the Son Jarocho music from Veracruz that fuels their sound today (they use the feminine “Cafeteras” to honor the struggles women have faced). But while such a venerable style – best known in America as the backbeat behind “La Bamba” – is where they begin, they update it to the current day with a fusion of acoustic and electric instruments, rapping and poetry, and percussion instruments like … well, their own feet. In addition to string instruments like a donkey jawbone, Las Cafeteras also utilizes the tap dance-like zapateado tradition to add percussion to their mix of Mexican, Spanish, African, Arabic, indigenous and American music.

Speaking of “La Bamba,” their 21st century update of that internationally beloved tune has helped them build a bridge to people otherwise unfamiliar with their cultural roots. “Everybody in the world knows ‘La Bamba,’ Flores says, noting friends’ encounters with the song as far away as Vietnam. “It’s such a universal song … but people don’t know it’s a 400-year-old Afro-Mexican song.”

He says Las Cafeteras are storytellers, and part of their message is that it’s important for all people to share their unique stories. It’s the best way for a melting pot nation to overcome their fears, work together and, sounding like a more swingin’ version of Howard Zinn, Flores says we need to “create a new history of the United States… one that’s much more inclusive.”

Their first full-length studio album, It’s Time, was released in 2012. “While the studio album is a great representation, this is definitely a band you have to experience live… and if you have a jarana or jawbone lying around, bring it,” wrote Jose Galvan of Los Angeles’ trendsetting public radio station KCRW.

“Our album is a history book,” says Flores. “Hopefully, 50 years from now people will listen to it and be, like, ‘This is what L.A. sounded like 50 years ago.’”

The band is working on their second album and hopes to see its release in 2015. “I think it’s going to take us to the next level,” Flores says. “The new sounds, I think, will be moving more from traditional to more who we are as L.A. immigrant kids. We’re creating this new immigrant sound in the United States – it wouldn’t happen anywhere else but here.”

Las Cafeteras
Wednesday, September 24
Clifton Center
2117 Payne St.
cliftoncenter.org
$10; 7:30 p.m.

c. 2014 Clifton Center

Artist Scott Scarboro and family transform old junk into new, beautiful and fun forms

Despite seeing the world through the eyes of its outsiders, Scott Scarboro has earned quite a lofty reputation in the Louisville visual arts world. His recent Green Building Gallery exhibition, “Glitches from the Memory Bank,” has been revived and is on display at Krantz Gallery at Jefferson Community & Technical College. A new show, “Stitch Witchery,” opens at WHY Louisville Two in NuLu on Friday during the Trolley Hop. But the best part of Scarboro’s 2014 has been the debut exhibition of work by his son, Harlan Strummer Welch-Scarboro, who is 11 years old.

Like his dad, Welch-Scarboro is a multimedia artist focusing on taking old, discarded objects like toys from thrift stores, yard sales and alleys and placing them into new, unexpected contexts.

But Dad says the boy has his own ideas: “Harlan’s work is somewhat different from mine, although we both are cut from the same cloth and come from a long line of junk pickers and resourceful folk. His recent grouping of work — 50 pieces! — were more like surreal assemblage constructions … He has a good eye and keen sense of beauty.”


“Cute Combo” by Harlan Strummer Welch-Scarboro

Scarboro is continuing his family’s tradition of teaching their children to make things by hand. He watched his mother and grandmother sew, and it spoke to him. “Some boys learn about the facts of life over their first beer on a fishing trip with their dad. I learned while sitting beside my mom at the Singer machine,” he says. “We had many conversations there. Something about that mechanical rhythm that would force me to tell the truth … I am at ease and comfortable at the machine.”

His WHY Louisville show, one he calls “my continuing exploration of color, materials and the process of sewing,” salutes his mother’s practice of attaching patches to the knees of his jeans. Scarboro’s professional applications began with an early ’90s job constructing costumes and clown props for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, a good place for a young man who would go on to hang with the oddballs at Georgia’s Finster Fest and later found Louisville’s outsider Good Folk Fest.

But he has also found success in the corporate world. Pieces have been sold to Yum!, Maker’s Mark and Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum, and shown in Chicago, San Francisco and at Art Basel Miami. Scarboro says the world has changed somewhat and his way has become a bit more accepted, though that doesn’t change his approach. Even for his sewing show, the materials will be unconventional: “Wire, paper, cardboard, Taco Bell wrappers, etc. … If the needle can go through it, it’s fair game,” he says.

WHY Louisville owner Will Russell says, “He takes what others throw away and transforms it into art, salvaging nostalgia with his own unique twist.” The images in that show continue the distorted-childhood-memories theme of his “Glitches” exhibition — Wonder Woman, Batman, Evel Knievel and characters from “Star Wars,” “Lost in Space” and “Sigmund and the Sea Monsters” are manipulated fondly.


“Visible Man” by Scott Scarboro

On Sept. 22, Scarboro will give an artist lecture at JTCT, discussing his art from college through recent videos and public works. “I will also touch on resourcefulness and the flexibility of using what is around you to create,” he says. His approach wasn’t always rewarded. “In college, I was asked to make some large sculptural pieces for a bar in Lexington,” he says, “but when I brought them some things I made, they refused to install them because the junk was too dirty.”

JCTC curator Lisa Simon has known Scarboro for several years, going back to when they both had workspaces in the Cinderblock Gallery near what has become NuLu. She contacted him to ask about using some of his work in the school’s Krantz Art Gallery at First and Chestnut streets. “Fortunately, I had all this work that I wasn’t quite ready to put back into the studio yet,” Scarboro says. “So I took the show down at the Green Building Gallery, left the stuff in my car overnight and reinstalled (it) the next day.”

The co-occupant of his current studio space is rubbing off on him more these days. He says son Harlan “inspires me probably more than I him.”



c. 2014 Insider Louisville

Think Tank Theatre opens up for new, surprising collaborations

When the popular Le Petomane Theatre Ensemble announced their end after a 10-year run this summer, fans of their offbeat and influential productions mourned. WFPL arts reporter Erin Keane said at the time, “The end of Le Petomane as a whole is a loss for Louisville’s arts community.”

That was in June. Now, not even three months later, two of their six members have announced their new company, Think Tank Theatre.

Their first production, the love exploration “Ton of Bricks,” won’t premiere until November 13, when it is produced at Walden Theatre as part of the Slant Culture Theatre Festival. But Tony Dingman and Kyle Ware, the founders of TTT, want you to come see them this Sunday, August 31, at the Bard’s Town. They’re not performing, however – they just want you to tell them what you think about love. Stories, feelings, theories – all are welcome, and Dingman and Ware plan to use that crowd-sourced material as grist for whatever their show becomes: It could be a romance, or a comedy, or a tragedy, or a combination of all that and more.

As the dissolution of Le Petomane was being planned, Dingman and Ware “kept talking one night after one of these meetings, and talking and talking, and riffing on what possibilities were out there,” says Ware, who also writes for Insider Louisville in addition to working as director of education at Kentucky Shakespeare. “What we would do if we kept on going, what we always thought we could have done with Le Petomane that we never did – and then got to a spot where we just said, ‘We should just do that,’” as Dingman laughs in agreement.

Dingman, whose lanky, bicycle-riding frame provides a classic comedy contrast to Ware’s more compact, professorial appearance, notes that the aspect most exciting to the pair was being able to expand their boundaries, collaborating with anyone else who “wants to play.”

As members of Le Petomane, they found themselves approached often by musicians, dancers, poets and other people whose skills came from outside the usual structure of the theater.

“At the time – well, for most of the life of Le Petomane – it was kind of insular,” says Dingman. “Not that it’s a bad thing! But it was the six ensemble members who worked to create shows. And there were numerous people who wanted to work with us.”

He says, “One thing that came out that was, 'What if we said "yes"?'”

One detail they feel fairly certain about is that only they will stay on as permanent members, with others brought in as needed. It may not always go smoothly, but it also allows for “happy accidents” that add more than they could have expected.

“It’s forcing us to rediscover everything,” Ware says. “Which is great for creativity.”

Their experiences with Le Petomane have taught them that offering a variety of approaches doesn’t always lead to glowing reviews. “Not because they were poorly built, in my opinion, but because they were eclectic,” Dingman says. “Like Kentucky weather,” Ware adds.

The pair wants the public to get involved and have a stake in their shows, which is why they are asking for help in writing their shows, and using social media to reach people. “We’re going to touch it and see what happens” is the phrase Dingman comes up with, prompting a big laugh from Ware.

“Now that I’ve heard that, I kind of like it,” he says. “That’s the T-shirt right there!”

The laughter continues when I offer to use their crowd-sourcing model by including the embarrassed Dingman’s phrase in their story so they can see how the public reacts. “That’s my new favorite phrase,” Ware continues. “You know, that kind of applies. The whole thing’s an experiment to invite people in – touch it, see what happens … You could get burned, it could break, it could be a lovely thing.”

Think Tank Theatre hosts "What About Love? An Open Forum"
Sunday, August 31
The Bard's Town
1801 Bardstown Rd.
thebardstown.com
Free; 7:30 p.m.

c. 2014 Insider Louisville

Third Thursday Hoedown offers old-timey fun in Germantown

"I would definitely say it all started with T-Claw, and he brought us together,” says Johanna Sims, a member of the Louisville Old Time Squares Association (LOTSA). That crew, which also includes Chet Gray, Jane Mattingly, Jim Bennett, Alex Udis and a few others, was officially formed by the caller known as T-Claw in July 2012. They have been putting on square dance socials on the third Thursday of each month since then at AmVets Post #9. But wait – what’s a caller?

It’s simple, really: The caller announces the dance steps so you know where you’ll move next as the Appalachian music plays; the good ones also entertain with lively commentary. Their energy is important to keeping up the dancers’ energy. Sims says it takes a lot of practice and has to be mastered through experience. “Sure, you can call dances to yourself to recorded music, but it is nothing like calling to actual dancers. So you just gotta get out there and do it! Make a fool of yourself a few times.”

A native of Nashville, T-Claw came through Louisville a few times while on tour. He and Sims had met at old-time music festivals and had mutual friends, so she helped him get started here. Sims had been introduced to the activity via those festivals, where bands play all day and a square dance follows every night.

“Before we started having regular dances here, I had been known to drive all the way to Columbia, Mo., for a square dance,” she says. “I’ve loved old-time music for a long time and started playing it when T-Claw moved to town and started giving me lessons.”

The organizers held early dances at Derby City Baseball, the Rudyard Kipling and Nachbar before landing at AmVets, which is also home to Danny Mac’s Pizza.



“It’s a wonderful event that’s fun to watch and join in the fun. Lots of good people and smiling faces,” says pizza proprietor Dan McMahon. The son of a vet, McMahon also appreciates that money raised from each event goes to a fund for the veterans, their families and the community at large. “We have so much fun with these Third Thursday square dances that we designed a square pizza called the Schnitzelburg Square. It fills up the square box. More food for the customer, same great price.”

“I have loved their pizza and karaoke for a long time now,” Sims says. “It started as a hangout for us. The hall already had a dance floor, a disco ball, a bar, pizza, and it is all right in our neighborhood … It is a beautiful arrangement because the guys at AmVets Post #9 love us and the music we bring in, and we love them!”

Sims also introduced T-Claw to a friend of hers who became his special someone, which is how he came to live here for a spell (the couple now calls Denver home). Over time, “He taught us everything we needed to know through monthly meetings, showing us all that goes in to planning and organizing the dance. He is still very active in booking the bands and just general support.”

He also encouraged the Louisville crew to learn how to call so they would have a regular caller. Sims says the LOTSA members have practiced together at house parties, and have added an open mic to their Third Thursday nights to practice and train new callers, beginning at 10:30.

The night has other features, like an old-time jam led by veteran musician Harry Bickel starting at 7 p.m. Local and regional vendors sell their wares. Different nonprofits come out each month. Most important is the community that comes together. “I have seen three generations of a family represented,” says Sims.

A beginners dance workshop starts around 7:30, with some more experienced dancers helping instruct. Sims says some folks seem nervous at first, but “I have yet to see that beginner dance end without a smile on everyone’s face … I would say the majority of beginners stay and dance all night. The new people always dance the most at their first hoedown! Once you start, it is hard to stop.”

“Third Thursday Hoedown” with The Leveetoppers and caller Chrissy Davis-Camp
AmVets Post #9
1567 S. Shelby St.
facebook.com/groups/LOTSA
$5 (free for vets and children); 7 p.m.

photos by Robert Broussard

c. 2014 Insider Louisville

‘Seinfeld’ composer on Louisville, retirement and 25 years in TV

There may come a day when we’re not still watching, referencing or thinking about “Seinfeld,” but that day’s not coming soon. “Modern Seinfeld” is a hot spot on Twitter, spoofing how much urban life has changed since the series ended in 1998.

Two years after its finale, the show’s composer, Louisville native Jonathan Wolff, decided to also end his run as the king of TV sitcom music. The empire he had built was so large that he gave himself five more years to wind down, hand off jobs to trusted associates, and truly walk away from it all.

"Seinfeld” wasn’t Wolff’s first break, or his last, but that rubbery, slap bass-driven, mouth-popping theme will likely be his most popular contribution to the world. The very retired Wolff will make a rare local appearance at Actors Theater on Wednesday, Aug. 20, for an edition of the speakers’ series “Kentucky to the World,” moderated by WFPL’s Devin Katayama for Idea Festival’s IF University. The talk was originally scheduled at the Green Building but high ticket demand caused its move to the larger venue. All this for an event Wolff said he agreed to for a very specific reason.

“Funny thing about that,” he says. “The only reason I’m doing this is because my wife told me to say yes.”

Born in 1958, the Atherton grad’s career in music began in Louisville before he had finished high school. A student of jazz legend Jamey Aebersold, Wolff was playing at parties, in restaurants and hotels, for theater groups, at fashion shows and composing music for local TV stations while still a teen.

Wolff moved to Los Angeles for college and stayed for almost 30 years, adding some 80 or so TV jobs along the way: “Who’s the Boss,” “Married with Children,” “Will & Grace,” “The King of Queens” and “Reba” are among the best-known.

He made a lot of money, but he also worked a lot of 20-hour days. His relationships with his wife and four children (then between 5 and 10 years old when they moved to Louisville) suffered, and his decision to start a new life at 47 coincided with a change in TV programming, as reality shows took over some of the slots previously occupied by the scripted series’ he had mastered. After becoming a dominant force in a notoriously fickle business, he also began to see that he would never again be the hot, flavor-of-the-month discovery so vital to that world. When the Wolffs’ youngest children, twins, were babies, the couple looked at each other and agreed, “This can’t go on forever.”



“There’s this idea people go by – ‘Oh, there’s no such thing as enough money,’” says Wolff. “We decided to challenge that and say, ‘However much we’ve got, that’ll be enough. In 2005, we’ll leave. We’ll go someplace.’”

Why Louisville? It wasn’t about it being home for him, or having family here, at first. The Wolffs looked at several possibilities, but everywhere they went, they would compare those places to Louisville, where real estate prices were especially attractive to a family used to paying L.A. prices.

“We’d go somewhere and it’d be pretty good. But we’d go, ‘I wish they had parks like Louisville.’ Or, ‘There’s no real airport. We’d have to drive for an hour to get anywhere.’ … ‘There’s no real arts here. We’d have to go travel to hear music or see a play.’”

The parents have stayed busy raising their kids – Wolff proudly declares that he goes to every extracurricular activity – and working on house projects. He doesn’t watch much TV these days.

He promises show business stories at the “Kentucky to the World” talk – ask him to tell you about how he wound up onscreen on the ’80s soap “Knots Landing” – but he doesn’t miss it for a moment.

“No,” he says quickly, laughing. “It became a grind. The routine was really brutal when you’re doing as much work as I was doing. I burned out … The human body does really bad things when you go for days without sleep.”

After almost a decade back, few locals know that the guy whose music they hear in reruns every night at 11 is their neighbor.

“I’m in kind of a self-imposed Hollywood witness relocation program,” Wolff jokes.

Jonathan Wolff
Aug. 20, 2014
Actors Theatre of Louisville
316 W. Main St.
2nd Floor
$25; 5:30 p.m.

photos by Isaac Wolf

c. 2014 Insider Louisville

Revelry celebrates a new beginning with help from popular sculptor Matt Weir

"The New Synthesis" in progress

Mo McKnight Howe had some things working in her favor when she took over the Revelry art gallery and boutique on Barret Avenue. All the hard work of starting the business had been done by its founder, Paula Weyler. It had a prime location next to Regalo and Lynn’s Paradise Café. And McKnight Howe’s husband was working in commercial real estate, ensuring their bills could get paid. But then big things started to change.

Weyler decided to move away, meaning McKnight Howe, a recent Hite Art Institute graduate who had been helping with curating while also building her career as a photographer, had to buy her out to continue. Then Lynn’s famously closed without warning.

“When Lynn’s closed, it was a year of … just awfulness,” McKnight Howe says. She tried to stay positive while talking with neighboring businesses about how to survive, but the revival never happened. “The tourists weren’t coming anymore, and that’s what was driving the business,” she says. Tourists had wanted unique local items, a Revelry specialty, but now they weren’t visiting Barret without Lynn’s.

McKnight Howe decided to gamble and relocate to NuLu, where her rent is triple what it had been less than 2 miles away. “I didn’t want to let local artists down. Some of them depend on a paycheck from me.” Since moving, “It’s just been … awesome!” she says. “So amazing. The hardest part of being down here now is keeping up with inventory.”

Her roster is heavy on young, developing artists whose works are more affordable than expected, giving first-time buyers a chance to take home something local and original, as opposed to having to shop for art at Target, McKnight Howe notes. But she has also worked in some well-established names from an older generation, like Julius Friedman and Bob Lockhart, achieving a balance of serious artists coming from very different perspectives.

To celebrate another year – the first successful year – McKnight Howe gambled again and went after a favorite artist (and childhood friend of her older brother), sculptor Matt Weir.



Sculptor Matt Weir with Christopher Raber at work on his latest creation. Photo by Candice Tipton.

Now 34, Weir has swiftly risen to the top of Louisville’s art world. He had walked back in to his old school at 26 to propose a sculpture for their grounds, and won the chance to make his St. Xavier High tiger, “Panthera tigris,” completed in 2008. He returned to document their founding Xaverian brothers. His most recent major commission, “Earth Measure,” was unveiled at Bernheim Forest last October.

But he’s got some different ideas for his Revelry show, “The New Synthesis.” It’s his smallest solo show in several years, though his Indiana limestone-based creations are still relatively massive.

A themed collection of sculptures and drawings connected by scientific and philosophically based notions about the natural world and its unpredictability, “The New Synthesis” (whose title was taken from E.O. Wilson’s writings on evolution and conservation) includes works made in seemingly contradictory mediums. Carved limestone and 3D prints coexist, the former in two architectural “Saddle Point” creations and the latter, the figurative “FLOP,” being much smaller but no less integral to the story being told by Weir – “abstract yet realistic synchronicity,” he calls it. All of his work is figurative, essentially, he says, because it all comes back to human behavior.

Then there are the clouds, presented on vellum. “I am a member of the International Cloud Spotters Society,” Weir reveals with a nervous laugh, almost but not really embarrassed at the unexpected announcement. The membership was a gift from a fellow artist whom he “introduced to clouds.” “I’m passionate about clouds through scientific perspective,” he clarifies. “Isn’t that funny to say, ‘I’m passionate about clouds’?”

“I think of him as a high-end artist who wouldn’t even consider a boutique-slash-gallery,” McKnight Howe says. “I was so humbled and excited” when Weir accepted her invitation to present his latest works. “He’s so philosophical and cerebral. Everything he makes comes with so much meaning and depth.”

At the end of the reception, the party moves back to Barret Avenue, where it all began, for an after-party at the Monkey Wrench. McKnight Howe, the now-successful entrepreneur, plans to spin some tunes as DJ Mo Money.


photo courtesy of Revelry

c. 2014 Insider Louisville

This boy’s life: Q&A with Patricia Arquette and Ellar Coltrane, stars of ‘Boyhood’

The new movie “Boyhood,” which opens today at Baxter Avenue Theaters, was filmed over 12 years, starting in 2002. The cast and crew shot a few days each year, and all — including leading man Ellar Coltrane, who was 6 years old when he was cast — were free to walk away at any time. But they made it to their intended endpoint. Will they continue, and release “Manhood” in another 12 years?

Director Richard Linklater and co-star Ethan Hawke, who plays Coltrane’s father, have also collaborated on “Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight,” a trilogy that also follows the same characters through many years. Linklater’s credits also include “Dazed and Confused,” which took place over one night, and the hit “School of Rock.”

We spoke with Coltrane and Patricia Arquette, who plays his mother, to learn more.

Insider Louisville: Rick (Linklater) and Ethan and Julie Delpy made the “Before Sunrise” movies every nine years, and keep on surprising us with more of them. I’ve read that this movie is done and there won’t be more, but I have to think that you’re still filming a little bit every year.

Patricia Arquette: No — we haven’t even been through a year where we haven’t been filming. And the funny thing about the “Sunrise” series is that we started making this movie before they made the second one (2004’s “Before Sunset”). They made the second one while we were filming this one.

IL: You think the “Boyhood” experience gave them the idea to continue that series?

Ellar Coltrane: I think it gave him the confidence to do the long-term thing.

PA: Rick does have a very specific relationship with time, and long-term relationships, and the exploration of intimacy – which, oddly enough, a lot of filmmakers don’t have. If you look at his body of work, there really is nobody else in the world that would curate their career in the way Rick has … Because we’ve been friends for so long, he’s said things at times, like, “When we were on ‘Dazed and Confused,’ we got a great response,” but Rick himself was, like, “You know what I think I didn’t do so great with the movie was explore females in an interesting way.” My character in this movie, he really wrote a fleshed-out, complicated person.

IL: And you all had input on your characters and the story itself?

EC: Very much so. It was a constant reflection and amalgamation of the experiences and the perspectives of everyone involved, really. There’s very little that’s direct – I mean, none of the characters are based on any one person, but pretty much everything that they go through is informed by something that one of us experienced or heard about or witnessed or was related in some way.

IL: Was dialogue scripted before, or did you all just talk about ideas?

EC: No, it wasn’t improvised on camera. Rick would usually come to us with a rough draft, but that’s pretty much it. A couple days to a week, just try to workshop it, see where the dialogue could go using our experiences and our emotions, and our own words, to flesh that out. Then he would take all of that and create a final script by the morning of the shoot (Arquette laughs), but when we were on camera, it was always a script.

IL: Even when you were 8 or 9, he would listen to your input as much as the adults?

PA: Yeah, even when they were 7. The first year, I remember him saying, “You guys will be fighting in the car. What do you think you’d be fighting about?” And he meant it. He had a lot of respect for them. And also, he would laugh at things they would do. He thought, “It’s beautiful that we have children as part of our species. It’s an incredible honor to watch them grow and change.” He wanted to capture that.

IL: As an adult, and as a woman, did you think about how your appearance would change from year to year, and how you might feel about seeing those changes at a later age?

PA: Well, you know, I have been with myself all those years (everyone laughs). It wasn’t a really giant shock to me. Part of the discussion was, what does a woman really look like? And not wanting to Hollywood it up, and not wanting to be an actress in a movie playing a mom, but actually, what would this mom look like? This woman is an academic, and a mom, and there’s a lot of things she’s really interested in. Not to be attractive to the biggest number of men possible (laughs), or to Hollywood in general. So, I felt good about my acting choice when I watched it. I wanted to challenge the status quo in my business. And you know, we all have our egos.

EC: I think there’s something very comforting also about seeing these moments of yourself that, taken out of context, might be embarrassing or self-judgmental in a certain way, but seeing it all together, in context, such a larger span of time and such a large part of yourself – you see it in a different way, I think. It’s easier to take it as a complete assessment.

IL: Ellar, during those years, were you watching (Arquette’s TV series) “Medium”?

EC: I’ve actually never watched an episode of that. I’ve seen a lot of her movies, though. I don’t watch much TV.

PA: My own kids never watched it. Not for any other reason than I didn’t want my children to really be aware of me as an actress. I wanted their experiences to be a personal one, and not impacted very much by what happens when we see someone in a movie or on TV. Suddenly, you have this weird, distorted image of them, a little bit … I think my daughter saw one thing on TV – she’s 11 now – and saw “Holes” and hated it because my character died in it. I don’t have posters of movies in my house. I try to minimize what I do because the world already distorts it a lot.

IL: This is the kind of movie a lot of people were making in the ’90s. More independent, there’s no stuff blowing up –

PA: Yeah!

IL: Do you feel like you had to work in TV over the last decade because the movie parts haven’t been as good, especially for women?

PA: That’s definitely the case, but I think that’s been the case for a long, long time. They’re also about young people falling in love, whether it’s working out or not working out, and I’m not complaining about that. I think that’s part of human beings’ stories that we’re telling. But I’ve aged, and on “Medium,” the writing was good, it was a really interesting part. I also like that network TV is free – you have commercials, but other than that, you can be in some trailer park and have entertainment. You can be in an old folks’ home and have some entertainment. It’s also a different discipline of acting, because you have to learn to work really quickly. And you don’t have the same relationship with the director. You have to be fast on your feet and act on your own instincts. It’s very different, and it’s taught me a lot.

IL: Patty, you’ve been the young ingénue and now you’re the mother. Ellar, you’re a young, handsome fellow. If you were offered “Transformers 5,” would you take it?

EC: I don’t think I would (laughs). Yeah, I know what I like and I know what I want to do. I’m confident that I can find projects that can fill that.

IL: Are you committed to acting? Or is it just one possibility for you?

EC: Yeah, it’s obviously the biggest thing right now, but I’ve got a lot of interests. And I want to do all of them with the right frequency to maintain that.

IL: What else have you been working on?

EC: A lot of visual art, mostly — painting, drawing, photography. I’m interested in music right now. I’ve been doing some stuff on my computer, instrumental banjo. It’s a strange instrument. My dad’s a musician, and banjo’s one of the few instruments he doesn’t play. I think, subconsciously, that’s why I gravitated toward that one (laughs).

IL: How Hollywood have you had to get? Do you have representation, scripts you’re reading now?

EC: I’m working with a manager. The scripts are definitely starting to come in. I’m just sort of biding my time at the moment, just because I’ve been pretty overwhelmed with all the promotion and the release of the film. But the next few months will be a very exciting time.

IL: You must be tired of people treating you like some magic trick.

EC: That’s not really true, though. It gets overwhelming, and I get tired of answering the same questions, but as far as being approached by people, I feel so lucky that, by the nature of this project and the kind of vulnerability expressed, people will approach me with the same vulnerability and treat me with a genuine attitude. Just the little bit that I’ve watched other actors or musicians deal with their fans, it feels so impersonal so much of the time, the way people are approached. For the most part, it’s been people approaching me on a very personal level, looking me in the eye, wanting to express real emotions. It’s incredible.

c. 2014 Insider Louisville

Some tea, some shade: Comic queen Bianca Del Rio reads around the world

In 2002, Roy Haylock was a comic drag queen in New Orleans with a flair for costume design and a Don Rickles-like wit. As Bianca Del Rio, Haylock had a loyal following, but wasn’t a beauty or expected to become an international favorite. In an interview with local alt-weekly Gambit, Haylock cited Rickles and costume legend Bob Mackie as inspirations – but drew a line in the sand by dismissing RuPaul as “not my cup of tea.”

In 2012, Haylock was planning to retire Del Rio by 2015, after turning 40. Today, 18 years after Del Rio’s personal drag race began, she is best known as the New York-based winner of season six of "RuPaul’s Drag Race," and is working on a movie and one-person show. LEO caught up with her last week after she returned from a tour in the British Isles and Amsterdam.

For most of the show’s run, fans abroad had to find it illegally. And they have – a company in England recently bought the rights to make their own version of the show in that country. “I wasn’t expecting large crowds, but it was the complete opposite – it was packed!” Del Rio says. “It was insane. It’s fascinating to me, how far the show has gone on a global scale and reached so many people.”

To get through each day was a big challenge, as the cast spent 12-14 hours filming and then each went back to their hotel rooms, where they were prohibited from seeing each other off-camera. “I would get through each challenge to the best of my abilities, and then move on to the next thing,” Del Rio says. “It’s truly like a boot camp.”

Though she began her season feeling old and somewhat unsure, her personality quickly stood out in a battle filled with talented but less-defined, younger competitors. “If you can’t sing, dance, sew, act, or do comedy, you shouldn’t do the show … It’s like going to the Olympics and saying, ‘Oh, shit, I’ve got to swim?’”

“A lot of people want to be famous,” Del Rio says. “A lot of people want to be on the show and be fabulous – and that’s great, but do your homework before you get there if you want to succeed.”

Her first defining quality was her noted sarcasm. But it didn’t suggest that she was on a winning course. “I think people only think it’s one level, which is kind of fascinating to me.” Why don’t people get it? “I think it’s intelligence,” she says with a laugh as sharp as her words. “I’ve had my share of people telling me that I’m a bitch, that I’m an asshole, of course. But smart people get it. You’re not going to please everyone. I learned that early on.” Once her other level – which included warmth, support and generosity - emerged, Bianca Del Rio became a comeback kid, at 38. Not everyone was in love, though, because the Internet supplied its usual amount of commentary.

“Initially, I thought it was a good idea to look at it,” she says. “And then I realized, ‘Oh God, it’s pointless.’ You get nowhere with people commenting, and they know everything, obviously, because they’re trolling the Internet writing shit about you. I learned early on, whatever happened happened. I know what happened because I was there … it’s sometimes difficult not to get wrapped up in it. But the virtue of doing the show at 38 was that you have a better sense of self.”

Her success has meant taking a leave of absence from her job as a theater costume designer. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do this thing that I’m doing. Costume design is my passion and the thing I love the most. I mean, drag is definitely up there, a close second. But I don’t intend to do drag for my entire life. And I’ve always liked to do both, and keep a balance of two quite questionable careers.”

And did RuPaul ever find out about Del Rio’s earlier comment? “Oh, I’m sure. Everything you say comes back to you. But it was my opinion at the time, when Ru wasn’t doing all the things that she’s doing now. Everyone had an opinion on something in 2002, but this show, it’s amazing what it’s become… It’s a different world now.”

Bianca Del Rio
Saturday, August 9
Play Dance Bar
1101 E. Washington St.
playdancebar.com
$13-$15; 10 p.m.

Here
c. 2014 LEO Weekly