Director Bakari Lebby and Workshop Theatre Tackle Race, Class, Gender & Privileged with Stick Fly

by: Haley Sprankle

“I originally pitched this show as The Cosby Show with a sex scandal.”

Bakari Lebby definitely adds his own quirky spin on Lydia R. Diamond’s Stick Fly, the fourth show he has directed this season at Workshop Theatre. No rookie to the stage, Lebby has been involved a myriad of productions for the theatre, but this is his debut as a main season director.

“It has been cool. It feels like home,” the young director says. “I brought over a show that I directed at Carolina for a two-night run about two years ago and that was my first time working behind the scenes there. I did two [productions] last year with two directors that I really respect, Chad Henderson and David Britt, so that was cool, but yeah, Workshop is home.”

While his theatrical home has changed a bit, Lebby adapts to working and staging in 701 Whaley’s Market Space where each of the previous shows this season were produced.

“Theatre can be done anywhere. The only thing is the time constraints,” Lebby elaborates. “We've already pretty much built everything, and it all has to go up in about a day which is totally cool because we have a great set designer, Billy Love. It's a cool space. It's pretty intimate, so I'm excited for close contact with the stage.”

The play itself revolves around the LeVays, a wealthy African-American family who come together for a weekend vacation. The conversations focus on the issues the family faces with race, gender, and privilege.

“They're like any other family,” Lebby explains. “Loving, protective. There are secrets. But they  are also extremely wealthy. Martha's Vineyard homeowners wealthy. Homes in Aspen and New York and Atlanta wealthy. On the surface, they could seem like the Huxtables [The Cosby Show] grown up.”

Lebby brings the audience into this world through his eccentric style in performance and design.

“Well, the play is set in Martha's Vineyard, so it will all be on the first floor of a beach house,” he says. “It will be like watching a Wes Anderson-type set (mostly thinking of in The Life Aquatic) where each room is very specifically different, but the actors very easily flit from one room to another while all still feeling like one all-encompassing space.”

“I wanted the set to be a bit sitcom-y. I've accelerated the dialogue a bit to match my style more. Actors are occasionally interrupting each other mid-conversation. That's also more my style. We've also taken the script and used it to make any character the protagonist or antagonist depending on the viewer's opinion or emotions.”

These opinions and emotions address very real controversy in what may be perceived as a surrealistic life.

“The play not only addresses race, but also class and gender roles. There are relationships where race is an issue more than class, race is an issue including class, class is an issue more than race, and so forth. Even within race, there are colorism issues which are still prevalent in current society,” Lebby points out. “It also brings up the whole point that racism is still alive, but no one wants to talk about it past pleasantries. Kimber [a character in Stick Fly] has a line that rings true, ‘They don't even want people to say that it still exists.’ It does, and I think this play brings up the point that the only way to make it better is to talk about it.”

Stick Fly opens March 27 and runs through April 4 and 701 Whaley’s Market Space. Call the box office at 803-799-6551, or order online at workshop.palmettoticketing.com for tickets.

“I wanted to take a play that could have been only entertainment and turn it into a piece that makes people think and consider their relationships with family, friends, lovers, and strangers,” Lebby eloquently adds. “Oh, and I want you to be able to laugh also. Gotta have some laughs. And there are definitely some laughs.”

Actors’ Activism: Portraying Womanness and Feminism by Jasper intern Haley Sprankle

Feminism. Man-hating, bra-burning, hairy women running around and shouting, “Down with the patriarchy!”

…Right?

Wrong.

While it’s true that some women don’t wear bras, some may not be interested in men, some don’t want to shave, and some are absolutely sick of the patriarchy, those behaviors and attitudes don’t define the whole movement. Feminists are not merely some stereotype running rampant through the streets, seeking to gain the upper hand over men. Feminism is simply “the belief in the social, economic, and political equality of the sexes.”

“Feminism means a lot to me, in a lot of different ways, but most importantly it’s a social movement and a way of being that seeks equality for all people, regardless of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and so on,” says Alexis Stratton, who is co-directing of the reading of the play We Are Women! for the Women and Gender Studies Program’s 40^th anniversary celebration, explains.

“Because of negative stereotypes, a lot of people think feminists are ‘man-haters’ or want to put others down, but it’s actually just the opposite. I think most feminists want to bring everyone up and want equality for everyone,” she continues. “And while the focus has predominantly been on women, we have to understand that everyone exists at an intersection of identities, and one is not free until all are free. I also think it’s important to note that there’s no singular ‘feminism,’ but instead, there are ‘feminisms’—plural, because there are so many kinds of feminism, and I think they should all be welcomed and celebrated and recognized.”

Stratton, a program graduate and published author who currently works at South Carolina Equality, is co-directing with Suzanne Vargas, a local clinical social worker and former high school English teacher with a similar passion for melding arts and politics. “Alexis asked me to help her with the production because she knew that I have directed Vagina Monologues before, and am a huge believer in art as advocacy,” shes says. “I love new adventures, especially when they include ways to commemorate the individuals who came before us.”

The play itself was produced by the Women and Gender Studies program in 1995 and features a series of unrelated vignettes that are connected through the women in them.

“The play has a very 1990s, second wave feminism feel to it—a kind of ‘we are women, hear us roar’ feel that reminded me a lot of the feminism of my mother,” says Stratton. “As a queer, gender non-conforming woman, I have a complicated relationship with ‘womanness’ and have only grown to understand and accept my identity as a woman and a feminist by deconstructing what it actually means to be ‘woman.’ So to have ‘womanness’ spelled out so plainly before me in this play, I was initially frustrated, because as a queer and feminist scholar in the 2010s, I’m immediately struck by the question, what does ‘we are women’ even mean? And can we even say ‘we are women’ anymore? And does that ‘woman’ actually include me?”

Ultimately, Stratton believes it does. “I couldn’t get to the point of asking these questions if these women who came before me hadn’t pushed the lines and boundaries that they were able to push—and able to push only through their tenacity and sacrifice and hard labor and boundary-crossing,” she explains. “So once I allowed myself to see that, to get out of the blindness of my of presentism, I became quite attached to the play and really excited about producing it—and seeing what kinds of energy and ideas the cast could bring to it.”

While the piece holds on to some of the second-wave feminist ideals, Vargas and Stratton worked together to modernize it and make it more relatable to current audiences and what they may experience as women of the 21^st century.

“It wasn’t until Alexis and I talked about how this is a historical piece honoring where we’ve come from and hope to go that I absolutely fell in love with it. It’s made me much more aware of how, in order to understand what we are advocating for currently, we must know where we’ve been,” Vargas says. “When Alexis brought up the possibility of also adding a few more modern pieces to make the performance capture intergenerational and intercenturial voices, I began to see the piece as snapshots through several generations advocating; and in that I find so much beauty. That’s why I wrote “My Kind of Woman,” because it’s a story and a voice that not only captures my own relationship with feminism and womynism, but also it speaks to a civil rights issue that is so prevalent today.”

The question of whether or not feminism is relevant and necessary today has been raised frequently as movements like “Meninism” and Women Against Feminism arise.

“The world needs feminism, period,” Stratton says flatly. “The world needs feminism(s) because it teaches people to look at the world, to interrogate it and explore it and imagine how it could be different, more just and more whole. And then it gives folks the tools to make that new world happen, even if it’s a struggle, and even if we argue about how to get there. And those struggles are okay, because feminism(s) also teaches us how to work through those differences and arguments in real and productive ways.”

The co-directors and actors have worked hard to put together something entertaining, but also something living, breathing, and real to help teach what feminism is really all about.

“I am just blown away at seeing such amazing individuals put so much love and individuality into a supportive and beautiful artistic community,” says Vargas. “I think often about how I hope this is what developed 20 years ago when they did this play. I also grow more attached to certain pieces; I get excited when I know they’re coming, because each time they’re read, I feel a different woman’s story in it, if that makes sense.”

We Are Women! is a free, a one-night-only event this Friday, March 20th, at 7 p.m. in USC’s Law School Auditorium. Come out to celebrate the past, present, and future of women and watch their stories come to life.

“We don’t live in a post-feminist America, just as we don’t live in a post-racial America,” Stratton stresses. “Feminisms are real and alive and meaningful today—as you’ll be able to see in these actor-activists on stage.”

Q&A with Singer/Songwriter Hannah Miller by Jasper Intern Erika Ryan

After finishing college in 2003, Hannah Miller moved to Columbia for a band that ended up breaking up, but that didn’t stop her from pursuing her music career.

She decided it was time to go solo, and she’s being doing it ever since. She ended up staying in Columbia for seven years, but in December of 2010, Miller moved to Nashville, where she currently lives and works.

Her self-named umbrella genre “pop/folk/soul” was relatively isolated in Columbia, but settled nicely into the Nashville scene. Miller is known in the folk community for her bluesy, singer-songwriter sound paired with her charming voice, and has released several albums and singles over the last 12 years, including her 2008 debut LP Into the Black and a trio of polished EPs that followed her move to Music City.

Miller is currently experiencing a surprising flood of interest thanks to a viral video created by filmmaker Danny Cooke that used one of Miller’s new songs, “Promise Land,” to soundtrack drone footage taken of Chernobyl and the abandoned city of Pripyat, Ukraine. The video got an airing on 60 Minutes and has since gone on to get over 2 million views. “Promise Land” is available on iTunes now, but will also be on her new album, which she’s taking pre-orders for at her website here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNV5Sq28Mp4

On Saturday, March 7^th, Miller is set to play at Music Farm Columbia with her fellow Nashville-based and Soda City ex-pat Patrick Davis. Jasper was able to catch up with Hannah Miller and chat a bit about starting her career in Columbia, how the industry has treated her, and what she’s up to now.

Jasper: Can you tell me a little bit about your experience in Columbia when you first got into the music business solo?

Hannah Miller: Well, I was very young and inexperienced — I was just starting out, I had no idea what I was doing. Columbia was a really respective, welcoming place for me to start, I think. I remember sending the Free Times my very homemade demo that I made on my computer—that sounded awful—and they actually reviewed it and said nice things about it.

It was a great place for me to grow. There was a welcoming vibe about it — no one was snobby, I wasn’t looked down upon for just being a beginner. So, I’ve always appreciated that. I would just take my guitar and travel around to open mics and coffee shops around Columbia. It was a good place to be for traveling easily — Charlotte, Atlanta, Charleston are all right around there.

I’ve always thought it was a good thing that I started there.

Jasper: How is the community support for folk musicians in Columbia? What was it like starting out in that genre?

Hannah Miller: I felt like it was pretty supportive. I mean, it’s on a very small scale compared to Nashville because there were just not as many people doing it, so sometimes I felt a little isolated. No one was really doing that — none of my friends were really musicians in Columbia. But as far as the people that were doing it, I found it really supportive, and not competitive or anything.

I remember going to the South Carolina Musicians Guild, so that was a great community I got plugged into. I always felt accepted, and not judged. The only negative for me was the amount of people doing it — there weren’t that many.

Jasper: Do you feel connected to the music community in Columbia now, if at all? How do you think it has changed over the years?

Hannah Miller: I can’t say that I really feel connected anymore. I don’t know who’s playing anymore. I used to recognize names, knew them personally or at least had met whoever was playing, and now when I’m traveling through, and I hear who’s playing, I hardly ever recognize who it is or have met them.

I feel like it’s grown since I lived there, but I don’t know if that’s a matter of it being a different class of people. I don’t know if it’s growing, or if it’s different people doing it.

I feel like when I was there it was a little better of a time for venues, or places to play. Since I’ve been gone, it seems like a lot of places have closed, like the White Mule, I loved playing there.

As far as the listening room type of environments I like to play, it didn’t seem as hard to find, when I was in Columbia, to find places to play as it is now, trying to go back.

I’m excited that Music Farm is a new venue in Columbia, and I hope that my music will be better received there. I just feel like it’s kind of been a struggle, because it was going strong there for a while and now a lot of venues closed down and it feels like there’s no where to play.

Jasper: What has it been like climbing the popularity ladder? Was there any specific moment where you felt as if you “made it”?

Hannah Miller: No, [Laughs] not really. I don’t know who said this quote, but it was something like “No success is permanent, and no failure is permanent,” and I feel like that’s very true in music. If you think, “Oh, people are paying attention,” it goes away very quickly — then you could think, “Ugh, this sucks, nobody cares,” or no one came to your show or something, but that’s not permanent either. For me, it’s just up and down.

The biggest thing, recently, this video used a song of mine, and it went viral with millions of views. It was just kind of like, “Cool, this is happening!” Even then, I just never trust in that place of feeling successful, because it’s probably going to go away and I’ll have a time when it’s quiet and not much is going on.

I don’t feel like there’s ever a “made it” place — there’s making it, then not making it, then making it again… you know. I feel like it you go to a place where Bono and U2 is, you could say, “yeah, I’ve made it.” [Laughs] But for independent artists like me, it is just moments of success and glory, followed by moments of failure and depression.

Jasper: [Laughs] Well, I guess that’s true. How does Nashville’s arts scene compare to a smaller, less music-centric city arts scene like Columbia?

Hannah Miller: Nashville is just great — on one level, you don’t feel like a weirdo anymore. All your friends are musicians, they know what you’re going though, and they don’t look at you weird when you tell them you’re a singer-songwriter. [Laughs] Everybody’s doing it, everybody understands the struggle of it, and that’s cool.

And on the other hand, you could be in town and working. Versus in Columbia, I would always have to travel and book shows outside of Columbia, because there’s just not that many opportunities to play in town, other than just playing cover gigs at a bar, which I didn’t really want to do. So if you wanted regular work, you have to book shows and travel.

I just had a baby last year, so I had to cut back on traveling. So, it’s a great place to be if you want to focus on songwriting and recording, but you can play all over Nashville all the time if you want to, too. It’s just such a huge scene, and the audiences aren’t going to overlap that much, because there are a lot of tourists. You’re always playing for different people, so you’re not necessarily burning out your welcome, even if you play at the same venue every night.

Those things I’ve found to be really great about Nashville. There’s so much going on, so even if you’re not doing it, you still feel like you’re in the middle of it — your friends are doing it, they’re doing cool things and you can live vicariously through them. There’s a lot of music going on, so it’s kind of a cool vibe here.

Jasper: What brought you back to Columbia for your show in March? Was it just by chance?

Hannah Miller: Yeah, that was just my friend Patrick Davis — he invited me to play with him. We’ve done some shows together and he’s really great, so I always try and say yes when he invites me to play, so that’s what brought me back this time.

I’ve tried to play [in Columbia] once or twice a year, to try and stay connected a little bit to my home base.

I haven’t been back that much — this will be my first show in Columbia for a while, I think, maybe even a couple years. I don’t know, I can’t remember the last time I played in Columbia, which is crazy. [Laughs]

Jasper: So how does it feel to come back and perform here? Is there a sentimental aspect to it?

Hannah Miller: I mean, a little bit. It feels—I don’t know—different. When I first moved away and I would come back to play, it would feel like some kind of homecoming — a show with a bunch of friends that I hadn’t seen in a while. So when you’ve been gone for five years, it’s kind of changed. More people I don’t recognize will be at the show. It’s not as much about, “Aw, my friends are here” and playing music for fans, more than just old friends.

But, we can still get some old friends to come to the show, and that’s cool. I also love being able to come and eat at old places that I miss. [Laughs] So I guess it is a bit like a homecoming.

-Jasper Intern Erika Ryan

Q&A with Singer/Songwriter and South Carolina Native Marshall Chapman

One of the advantages of having Lee Smith as our One Book, One Columbia author is she has a lot of cool friends—like South Carolina native Marshall Chapman, one of the state’s most significant musical figures of the last 40 years. Chapman has been a songwriter and performer in Nashville since the 1970s, and her songs have found their way on albums by Jimmy Buffett, Emmylou Harris, and Joe Cocker, among others, and she also has 13 solo albums of her own. Of those, the most recent two, Big Lonesome (2010) and Blaze of Glory (2013), represent some of the finest work of her career. These albums come on the heels of Chapman’s turn to prose—her two critically-acclaimed and award-winning memoirs, Goodbye Little Rock and Roller (2003) and They Came to Nashville (2010), both books which demonstrated a life lived hard and well. In recent years Chapman has also written for such publications as Oxford American, Nashville Arts Magazine, Garden & Gun, and Southern Living.

This is all in addition to her collaboration with Smith, Jill McCorkle, and Matraca Berg, Good Ole Girls, a musical play which has toured throughout the South and had a brief run off-Broadway. Chapman will be performing songs from that play with Smith and McCorkle at 701 Whaley this Thursday, February 26th as part of the closing party for this year’s One Book festivities. Chapman will also be playing a show on Wednesday, May 13^th, at Conundrum Music Hall.

Jasper caught up with Chapman recently to chat about her long history in the musical world and late-career renaissance.

Jasper: Blaze of Glory was one of the best-reviewed albums of your career. Do you think you could have imagined 30 or 40 years ago that you would still be making great music?

Marshall Chapman: No, not really. Mainly because I never thought I'd live this long. (laughs)

J: How has the songwriting process changed over the years?

MC: I don't chase it like I used to. These days, I just let the songs come to me.

J: Did you have any specific goals or ideas in mind when you were writing for this record?

MC: Not really. But I knew I was onto something. At first, I thought it was going to be this sexy record. I even had a working title—Sexagenarian. But then it deepened into the whole mortality thing. As soon as I finished "Blaze of Glory," [the song] I knew it would be the title of the album. And also the last song you hear.

J: These songs all feel really fresh, even though it's still very much the sound and style you were working in during the 1970s and 1980s. The straight-up Bo Diddley take on “Love in the Wind” and the soulful rendition of “Nearness of You,” for instance, sound like reinvigorated takes on classic territory.  Why do you think that is?

MC: Oh, I don't know. I was working with producers and co-producers back in the 70s and 80s. I didn't really know that much about making records. I was like Gidget goes to Nashville and gets a Record Deal. But with these last two [Blaze of Glory and Big Lonesome], I was much more focused. Probably because I'm older. It's like ... Last call to get it right! I've been doing this a long time. And it's taken every bit of that time to learn how to trust myself in the studio.

J: You didn’t tour as much behind this record as Big Lonesome, and you’ve become more of a writer, actor, and collaborator (like on Good Ol’ Girls) in recent years. How does that balance work? Has the lack of touring affected your ability to promote your music?

Well, there's a personal reason I didn't tour as much behind this album as with Big Lonesome. Let's just say all the wheels supporting my life came off all at once and leave it at that. As for "lack of touring" affecting my "ability to promote" my music, those two things are pretty much entwined. Nothing gets the word out like a live performance. But it's true. I'm cutting back on live performances.

As for the rest, I've always enjoyed writing prose, so writing the two books felt pretty natural. I've always been interested in the stories behind songs. Especially when the stories are better than the songs!

The idea for Good Ol' Girls was conceived by songwriter Matraca Berg. Matraca called me out of the blue one day, saying she wanted to do a musical with me and Lee Smith. She was a big fan of Lee's writing, but she didn't know her. So I called Lee, since I knew her from when she lived in Nashville in the 1970s. At first Lee didn't seem interested. But then she called me back saying she was in and that she was bringing in Jill McCorkle and a director! [Paul Fergusen, who ended up doing the

adaptation.] The show has toured the South and even had a run off-Broadway. It's playing in a couple of theaters this spring. But this week at 701 Whaley, Lee, Jill and I will be doing our own version of Good Ol' Girls. And probably throw in some new stuff. I never really know what's gonna happen when the three of us get together. But I can assure you this -- something will happen! It's outrageous whenever the three of us get together. Why we haven't been arrested is beyond me.

As for acting, I've done three movies in the past three years—all since turning sixty-two. Maybe the Universe is trying to tell me something.

J: You’ve lived in Nashville for a long time (since you matriculated at Vanderbilt?). What does being from South Carolina mean to you now? What’s it like coming back for tours?

MC: Where you come from ... it stays with you. Especially if you're from South Carolina! Seriously, it's always special coming back to South Carolina to perform. I was in Spartanburg a lot this past fall dealing with the death of my mom. I was driving around there thinking, Hmmmm, maybe I could come back and live here! I even looked at some property off St. John Street.

J: You’ve written two award-winning non-fiction books about your life, Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller and They Came to Nashville. Any plans for a third, either fiction or non-fiction?

MC: Well, I've been writing a monthly column called "Beyond Words" for a Nashville magazine for nearly five years. They told me I could write about anything I wanted, and I imagine I've taken them to task on that. (laughs) Anyway, I'm thinking about putting a collection of those [essays] in a book. As for a novel ... I've had a few stories published, so I've danced around fiction. But the idea of writing an entire novel like Lee and Jill do all the time terrifies me. Which means I'll probably do it one day.

J: The record closes with the title track, which is a kind of uplifting take on mortality, almost like a gospel song. You also recount the most pivotal moment of your life, seeing Elvis as a 7 year-old in the song. Can you tell me a little bit about the idea and inspiration behind that tune?

MC: I wrote the first verse to that song while sitting at my breakfast table. I had a feeling it might be a keeper, so I captured just that little bit on a little recorder. A few weeks later, I returned to it and immediately wrote a second verse. And then a bridge about Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin and a few other musical heroes who died young, i.e., in a blaze of glory. But something wasn't right. It felt forced. So I went for a walk, and when I got back, I started from from scratch. I just went back to where it all began—seeing Elvis. As soon as I wrote "that colored balcony came crashing to the floor," I'm thinking, Now what! I mean, you don't want to raise the bar too high. So I got real quiet. And then that last verse about the sun just landed on the page. "Blaze of Glory" wrote itself. All I had to do was get out of the way.

For more information about Marshall Chapman and the latest updates about her various projects, check out tallgirl.com

Review: Justin Townes Earle @ Music Farm 2/20/15

Singer/songwriter Justin Townes Earle arrived in town hot on the heels of the release of two new albums, the tandem pair of Single Mothers and Absent Fathers, both of which take a leaner approach in terms of sound and arrangement than the genre hopscotching of Harlem River Blues and the soul turn of Nothing’s Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now.

Fittingly, then, he took the stage with just one sideman—the sturdy pedal steel and electric guitarist Paul Niehaus, a prolific session player whose solos shined bright but never overtake the spotlight. And even though Earle is a gifted guitarist in his own right, much of the night’s focus was on his inimitable vocal delivery, something which has become increasingly more pronounced in recent years. He's formidable even when he's singing straight, but its the masterful, swooping shifts in volume and timbre that are his secret weapons, livening up even the most plainspoken of tales with melancholy ache and longing. Often during the set it seemed as if he was deliberately slackening the tempo in order to wring even greater nuance out of his singing, something which suggests a certain joy in the act of performing that feels cozy and comfortable even in the cavernous walls of the Music Farm.

And while the music had an almost reverential quality to it—Earle seems to be downplaying some of his more humorous and ribald material this time around—his between-song banter with the crowd more than made up for it, as whimsical asides provided new perspectives on tunes like “Christchurch Women” and “Am I That Lonely Tonight?” while he turned tender in introducing  “Learning to Cry” as his wife’s favorite tune followed by what he said was his mother’s, “Mama’s Eyes.” While those moments were poignant, he also tacked on to the latter that “Nashville spreads bastard children like sprinklers.” The combination of emotional openness and hardened wit that serves his songs so well was quite apparent.

Earle appeared to be working without a set list for much of the night, and the show pulled fairly evenly across his albums save for his twangy debut LP. Highlights abounded, particularly when Niehaus was at his most effective, like on “Memphis in the Rain” and “Burning Pictures,” but workhorses like “Harlem River Blues” and Earle’s familiar take on “Can’t Hardly Wait” were clearly the biggest crowd pleasers.

The only thing lacking was one of his bruising confessional ballads (“Won’t Be the Last Time,” “Who Am I To Say”), but that could be chalked to an increasingly large catalog of songs to pull from. Here’s to hoping the presence of the Music Farm means we’ll be seeing Earle here again soon.

Mavis Staples Plays Harbison Theatre this Saturday, January 31st

If you pick up Greg Kot’s new biography on The Staple Singers, I’ll Take You There: Mavis Staples, The Staple Singers, and the March Up Freedom’s Highway, you’ll notice that, time and time again, he returns to waxing poetic about two things: Roebuck “Pops” Staple’s guitar tone, and Mavis Staple’s voice. And indeed, there’s something definitive about these two sounds, something that seems important if you want to understand the broad history of American music. And, really, America itself. While the group definitely had their share of hits and mainstream success, they’ve always been more important than the numbers suggested. They brought gospel into the mainstream in a way starkly different than their contemporaries, blending rural blues and Americana influences into their spiritual and topical songs with a spiritual fervor that’s never quite been equaled. Guitar player after guitar player, from Stax’s Steve Cropper (of Booker T and the MGs) to Ry Cooder, rave about the shaky tremolo guitar tone that defined the group’s early sound, while the surprise of the little girl with the deep, earth-shaking voice is one that still confounds audiences today.

Mavis started singing in her family group when she was just 11 years old, but from the start she was the star power. While Pops and her brother Pervis also took lead vocal turns, it was Mavis that had audiences enraptured. The Staple Singer’s first big hit was “Uncloudy Day,” which features the young singer starting her lead vocal in her lowest register, something that shocked audiences experiencing the group for the first time.

Pervis Staples, From I’ll Take You There:

“We’d trick ‘em. The audience would be looking for me to come up with the low part—this was for the people who had heard the record but had never seen us before. I’d come up to the mike and switch over at the last second where Cleotha was, then Mavis would step up. That messed them up, but it woke up the crowd. When you wake up the crowd in church, the spirit starts hitting ‘em. It goes through them. Even the ones who want you to think they’ve already sanctified were going at it. It’s like they couldn’t believe what they were seeing, like a little miracle or the hand of God or some s#!t like that.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmBNuNNnGHY

Their early records were very bluesy, rustic gospel numbers, but they would later spend time on labels like Stax and Warner Brothers that would seem them branch out with more elaborate, pop-friendly production and songs that could serve both religious and secular audiences. Folks like Bob Dylan and The Band were huge fans, with the latter developing their trademark vocal blend by imitating the family and the former carrying on a pseudo-courtship and friendship with Mavis that lasts to this day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCSzL5-SPHM

The other reason the group’s place in American history is so outsized, though, is that they in many ways soundtracked the Civil Rights Movement. Pops developed a close relationship with MLK and Jesse Jackson, and the Staple Singers often opened up for the leaders at Civil Rights rallies. They sang many of the traditional gospel tunes, like “We Shall Overcome,” that were repurposed for the movement, and Pops himself wrote many original tunes inspired by the movement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA8tX0PNgss

While the fortunes of the group waxed and waned over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, Mavis is currently in the middle of a late-career renaissance. With the help of folks like Ry Cooder and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, since the mid-2000s she’s returned to a sound and style reminiscent of the Staples Singer’s early days with great success. In 2015, as we celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and the critically acclaimed Selma is in theaters, we are incredibly fortunate to be able to also go see  Mavis, arguably one of the best soul singers ever, take us to church in Harbison Theatre. -Kyle Petersen

Tickets are still available SOLD OUT at the Harbison Theatre website here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZKPOes4SwY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5RTxtzAbLk

Westward Bound: The New Frontier of First Thursdays and Frame of Mind by Haley Sprankle

The arts have become and continue to remain an integral part of Columbia with the plethora of local theaters, visual artists, literary artists, dance companies, and musicians present. While all of this art was here, not many were aware of it due to a lack of shared understanding across disciplines. That seemingly changed after the start of one, free event.

First Thursdays on Main Street.

“It started with the creation of the Frame of Mind Series. I had space in my retail location that I wanted to fill with art (as I approach my eyewear as a wearable form of art). I connected with local artists and started doing a monthly art series (Frame of Mind Series). This lead to me asking my neighbors to do something similar on the same night, the concept being strength in numbers. The rest is history,” says the man behind the screen of First Thursdays, Mark Plessinger.

Plessinger owns the eyewear boutique Frame of Mind where he not only sells unique eye wear, but also features local visual artists.

“There are two main influences [in starting Frame of Mind]. One is my experience in the eyewear industry. I have worked in almost all facets of the industry (from big box chain to small private doctor to eyewear boutique). I understand where the markets exist within the industry and what I needed to do to set myself apart from others,” Plessinger explains. “The other is art. My family is filled to overflowing with artists and I have inherited a very art centric viewpoint of the world and business.”

Plessinger’s business was located in the heart of Columbia, but is now making the move to West Columbia.

“We are going to continue to do art, just like we have always done. The big difference is going to be a change from an "alternative art space" to an actual gallery. We are establishing a roster of artists who will be represented in their "home" gallery (Frame of Mind). We will continue to do the Frame of Mind Series, but on a less frequent schedule. Also, since the space is bigger than our current space, we will be incorporating events from our Shamelessly Hot brand into the location,” Plessinger says.

With this move comes a transition for First Thursdays on Main Street as Plessinger no longer will spearhead the initiative.

“Everything transitions, everything has a lifespan. I created First Thursdays on Main based on a specific model. It was designed to give the growing retail and restaurant sector on Main Street a free place to highlight their businesses. We picked a consistent date, create a brand, and a PR arm and gave the street the ability to fill in with what they wanted to do. It was a very low cost, grass roots idea (and one that was successful),” Plessinger says. “However, like everything, the event has grown and changed. Thus a new model is needed for its continued growth and success. We have begun to partner with a local event producer with the idea of them creating a new model (with new ideas and goals). We believe that this will give the event and Main Street the best opportunity to grow.”

These new beginnings in our familiar territory of Columbia bring about a new leader.

“After Mark moves, the essential parts of First Thursdays will continue. Preach Jacobs will be taking over as the leader of the event series, but many of the same organizations and merchants will participate,” Lee Snelgrove, the Executive Director of One Columbia, adds. “There could be some delays or minor lulls in the transition and it will likely take some time to develop a similar momentum that it once had. But, there are already a few events planned for the night of February 5^th. So, overall I don't think there will be much trouble during the transition.”

Although Plessinger is moving on to a new frontier, his impact on Columbia has set a standard for the arts community that will not be lost.

“One of the most amazing things about the Columbia art scene is its size and depth,” Plessinger says. “If I see a difference in our community now, it is that the city is slowly beginning to recognize that depth and size." - Haley Sprankle

Review: Mark Rapp & Stephanie Wilkin's "Woven"

By: David Ligon

As the lights come up, the stage was occupied by three platforms high above the floor with a five man band occupying them. After a subtle “one, two, three” from the bandleader they began to perform a big and brassy opening number called “Celebrating Life.” It immediately transported the audience to a New Orleans dancehall with the dancers onstage, coming in and out in pairs as they did the Charleston with huge smiles on their faces. It’s no surprise that New Orleans would have an influence on how composer Mark Rapp would shape his full-length work, Woven. He had lived and worked in New Orleans for the past decade, and most of the pieces that would become Woven were apart of Rapp’s master’s thesis. He and his collaborator, choreographer Stephanie Wilkin, both share a rich and experienced history that starts in Columbia then leads on to New York City, where they each found success. Neither had met each other until Rapp caught the interest of Katie Fox, the Executive Director of the Harbison Theater at Midlands Technical College. The theater ultimately invested in this show as part of Midlands Tech’s Performance Incubator series, with Woven as its third fully-funded collaboration. Katie Fox led a “speed date,” as she refers to it, while helping Rapp search for the perfect choreographer.  When he saw Wilkins’ choreography on a DVD, he was moved, and the collaboration began.

The intention of this series is to have the show previewed and then for it to become a touring work. After its debut, Fox was thrilled to announce that the show had already received two offers from production companies to begin touring.

Requiring two months of preparation, Woven is an ambitious collaboration, a 90-minute work combining jazz music and contemporary dance. Jazz music can sometimes be intimidating and difficult to choreograph because it’s scattered melody and improvisations, which pushes some choreographers away.  But Wilkins took that challenge head on and let her strong and fabulous dancers improvise in certain ways, just as jazz musicians tend to do. Wilkins makes a great effort to blend in interesting nods to swing dance while keeping a contemporary framework. Contemporary choreography has a way of being led by raw emotion, and deals with pedestrian movement and expands on it, sometimes playing off what your partner does on stage with a set of rules. Ms. Wilkins had very interesting ideas, new lifts I hadn’t seen before, and new combinations of movement that worked well with the evening’s music. The structure of her movement is interesting, because it incorporated a lyrical contemporary style, as well as Broadway and swing. It created unique juxtapositions not often seen. The structure of the movement gives more organization to the often-scattered music that can be associated with jazz.

Wilkins is an Adjunct Professor at the University of South Carolina, and when she was looking for talent, she picked five dancers from the university: Emily Anzalone, Rhe’a Hughes, Vidal X. James, Dallas King, and Dustin Praylow. She used one professional dancer from Columbia, Anthony Hinrichs, who currently dances with UNBOUND, a local contemporary-jazz company and is also on the faculty of Southern Strutt in Irmo. The dancers were enthusiastic about being a part of this work, and they danced with great ease despite the difficulty of Wilkins’ choreography.

With just six dancers in total, which is small amount for a 90 minute full-length work, it sometimes felt like the piece hadn’t reached its full potential. In the future perhaps more dancers can be added, spreading out the responsibilities to create a broader feel and really explore the main characters more. Hopefully a bigger cast can be incorporated in the future so Ms. Wilkins can have more to work with and not tire out the dancers. The moment where this was most clear was a video break in the fifth section of the first act, “Sweet Serene.” It was obviously meant as a break for the dancers, who until that point had been dancing wonderfully in couples and as a group. The video montage felt unnecessary since the dancers would be constantly going in and out of character. The constant real life or blooper moments that were happening on screen took away from the storyline and the music didn’t seem to sync that well either.

The night was comprised of two acts with eleven pieces of music with a story revolving around a couple and the evolution of a relationship from first encounters, to breaking up, to self-loathing, and ultimately getting back together. Dallas King and Anthony Hinrichs took on these demanding roles. Ms. Wilkins not only gave them athletic, aerobic challenging choreography, but she was also able to capture the emotions needed for the storyline.

The couple that was featured in the video, King and Hinrichs, now appears onstage, and the struggle that was depicted towards the end of the video is now more visually stimulating. The expressiveness that the film tried to capture is better understood on stage. After Ms. King leaves, Mr. Hinrichs is left all alone and he began to dance passionately and expressively, using a lot contractions and pliés as he is dancing through his pain. He’d jump high and turn, a tour en l’air, and immediately jump to the floor into a push up position, crawl out from that and tour en l’air again, all while playing the angsty adolescent boy trying to find love. He shakes a lot as if he was going insane from a broken heart, and he tries to compose himself but he can’t. He collapses; giving up under one of the platforms, and the moody cool jazz score is an appropriate ending to the first part of the evening. The second act opens with Ms. King dancing to slow lyrical number, almost pensive about what had happened in the previous act.  The movement quality is so strong with Ms. King that she is quite able to express the pain her character is going through. In the end they found their way back together dancing a beautiful pas de deux of him mimicking her every move, as if to say we’ve got this together.

The most disconnected part of the evening was when the dancers would leave the stage and do not return at all as the music finished. This happened more than once and it was disappointing that the dancers never really got to give their own punctuation at the end of each movement. These moments however were to give each musician time to do their own thing and give the improvisatory nature of the music its own autonomy. These jazz solos, although quite impressive, felt vacant because the dancing suddenly stops and the stage is free from movement. It felt as if there were two shows going on or the story of the song had yet to be completed. But when the dancers were on stage the juxtaposition of these two mediums worked really well together. The jazz music gave each movement a breath of happiness when sometimes contemporary movement can feel overly emotional and pained, although it didn’t seem like this was Ms. Wilkins’ approach. This show was a success because it brought two mediums together not often seen, and did an exceptional job. People will be clapping their hands with the dancers, and stomping their feet to the amazing music presented. Hopefully the show can add a few more dancers and then this already amazing production can be polished and made even better for people all across America.

Movie Review: DJ Spooky's "Rebirth of a Nation," Showing Monday, Jan. 19 at 7pm at The Nick

Watching the Birth of a Nation (1915) is a chore.

Based on the novel The Clansman by Thomas Dixon, Jr. and directed by D.W. Griffith, the film is an dramatic and epic silent film that tells the tale of two prominent families, one from the North and one from the South. Proceeding from antebellum unity, both political and between the two families, and the horrors of the Civil War in Part I, it continues into the violent, untenable Reconstruction period which ends the familial and political reconciliation thanks to the Ku Klux Klan. It’s pretty painfully racist throughout, too.

Renowned for its cinematic innovations as well as for its powerful cultural impact upon its initial release, viewers usually have to grit their teeth to get through its nearly 200 minute runtime today. The power the film had as the first major full-length picture and the thrilling cinematic storytelling innovations it introduced are mostly lost on us, unless we’re looking for them, and the rampant historical inaccuracies, downright creepy use of blackface (used most often when white female characters are also in the scene), and outrageously blunt racism are shocking and alienating to audiences used to the likes of Selma (2014) and 12 Years a Slave (2013).

This disconnect is partly why, as DJ Spooky (née Paul Miller) insists, it is so important that we see and understand the film today. While there have many spirited debates about what it’s actual box office haul was, Birth of a Nation was easily the most popular film of its time, even as it faced boycotts (mostly north of the Mason-Dixon line) from the NAACP. It was the first film screened at the White House, where President Wilson purportedly said that it was like “writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” It is often credited with the resurgence of the Klan in the 1920s, and was used as a recruitment tool for the white supremacist group up until the 1960s.

What’s more, Birth of a Nation serves as one of the most powerful examples of the ways moving images can play an outsized, almost coercive role in how our society understands the world around us. DJ Spooky actually says that he was inspired to make the remix by watching 24 hour news coverage of the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina, noting the present-day way narratives of race and power are constructed by the stories told through moving images. This is his main entry point into his “remix,” Rebirth of a Nation (2007). Originally conceived and commissioned as a live performance by a number of arts festivals, including Spoleto USA, Miller’s goal was to apply the DJ turntable principles to film, cutting, splicing, and upending the film to different ends than the ones intended by its creator. More importantly, he also gave it a new, more dissonant score that fits modern sensibilities around the film much better. Eventually, these performances gave way to a full-length film, with the score performed by the Kronos Quartet in addition to Spooky himself.

Perhaps somewhat problematically, this remixed version of Birth of a Nation makes the whole experience easier to stomach. Cut almost in half to 100 minutes, a feat achieved partly through editing (much of Part I appears cut out) and partly through speeding up key sequences, the film rides its hypnotic score, which alternates between ghostly, oscillating synth lines, understated string parts, and the occasional high lonesome wail of harmonica, through its convoluted narrative with relative ease. While hardly spliced and diced to the extent that the term “remix” suggests, there are some nice use of lines and shapes as well as highlights, lens filters, and shifts in focus, which work as a kind of hip close-reading of the film as well. Those changes as well as the occasionally clunky voiceover allow audiences both a stronger and more comfortable sense of disconnect from the visceral experience of the film--as well as a means to critique and deconstruct some of the ways in which Griffith is manipulating us.

That being said, these interventions can often feel half-baked, particularly when long stretches go by with a mere lens filter shift or when scenes pregnant with meaning, like the two infamous near-rape scenes which gives the films its bizarre sexual charge, are left uncommented upon. The film shines brightest, actually, in its opening minutes when it connects the film’s politics of racism, fear, and extreme prejudice with heartbreaking news footage from the 21^st century and (somewhat bluntly) overlays DJ Spooky’s thesis via voiceover. There are also key interventions in the name of historical accuracy, like during parts of the Reconstruction section, or times when the voiceover inserts an important cultural mythos being formed, like when the “superhero” white man fights off multitudes of free black men in the barn. In a film so fraught with meaning and multiple layers of meaning, it would have nice to see more of them though.

All in all, it’s difficult not to recommend this film, particularly if you’ve never seen the source material. It retains much of what’s important (and troubling) about the original while allowing an easier, quicker, and more critically distant position that makes the entire process ever-so-slightly less painful. And it’s important to understand this film if you want to understand the country's history, present, and future. -Kyle Petersen

Rebirth of a Nation is screening at The Nickelodeon Theatre on Monday, January 19^th at 7pm. For more information or to purchase tickets go here.

Two Local Artists Put On a Carefully Crafted Night of Live Music and Dance at Harbison Theatre on Jan. 17

Join trumpeter and composer Mark Rapp and choreographer Stephanie Wilkins at the Harbison Theater for a night of the weaving of two art forms.  With live jazz music and varied styles of contemporary dance, Woven: Life in Notes and Steps “alludes to how everyone is connected in the giant web of life, like threads strung together,” says Rapp.  The show is comprised of eleven live, original musical movements alongside contemporary ballet and swing dancing.  “Each piece, each melody is choreographed while the solos are improvised by both dancers and instrumentalists—inspiring one another—creating an exciting, organic and unique artistic presentation each time.”

Rapp and Wilkins did not meet before this project, but found they had much in common during their collaboration.  Both artists are originally from South Carolina and found great success living and performing in New York after completing their MFAs in their respective arts disciplines.  The pieces now known as Woven were born in New Orleans in the 1990s as part of Rapp’s master’s thesis.  He knew he wanted to incorporate dance, but it wasn’t until he linked up with Harbison Theater at Midlands Tech’s executive director, Katie Fox.  After viewing some DVDs of local choreographers’ work, Rapp felt a connection with Wilkins’s choreography. For the first few months of rehearsal, Wilkins and her six dancers had to perform to recorded music. “The first time we worked with the musicians, it was glorious. It was amazing. It was so different. It brought the dance to life so much more,” Wilkins says. The different movements in Woven, some traditional jazz, some contemporary jazz or swing, inspired a knitting of different dance styles that changes with the music. The very nature of jazz, its aliveness and undulation, allows for the dancers to improvise at times.

Woven will be the third performance to come out of the Harbison Theater at Midlands Tech Performance Incubator. The project aims to promote sustainable local employment, especially for artists. “It reflects the college’s overall mission of connecting capable people with sustainable rewarding careers,” Fox says. “We want performing artists to live in our community.” Fox hopes that the show will travel to other stages and believes it will enrich the lives of the Midlands community. -Kirby Knowlton

Woven: Life in Notes and Steps Harbison Theatre at Midlands Technical College 7300 College St., Irmo Saturday, January 17th at 7:30 p.m. $22 harbisontheatre.org / 803-407-5011

Americana Duo Bennett & Coolidge Play Jasper Release Party on January 15th

By: Al Black

I met Tom Coolidge four or five years ago at Utopia playing some of his own music and accompanying other musician at the Open Mic Thursdays; later, I saw him on stage with the Plowboys. He finally agreed to play at Mind Gravy, but said he had formed a duo with Steve Bennett who had been picking around the Midlands for 40 years with different bands and currently played with a local blue grass Americana band, Blue Iguana. I ask the name of their duo and he replied just call us, Bennett and Coolidge. The Mind Gray partisans loved them.

I asked them for a bio and here is their reply:

"Steve Bennett and Tom Coolidge play folk music, sort of, or maybe they play Americana music… if anyone can really figure out what that is. They both write songs, some are funny, some are serious and some are both. But they also play other people’s songs too … some you may have heard some you may not have heard. Basically Steve and Tom play music they like, but also think other people like too, and might find entertaining. Steve plays guitar and mandolin and Tom plays guitar and harmonica… they both sing… in harmony sometimes. Both of these guys have been at this for a while having played, individually, in a number of acoustic bands over the years. They met several years ago at Bill’s Picking Parlor and found common ground in the music they were playing. The main thing is that they enjoy making music, really enjoy playing together and really, really enjoy playing for folks who like music that is not run-of-the-mill, music that        may be familiar, but you may not have heard in a while, music that other folks don’t play, but  some they do."

This Thursday, 01/15/2015, they will be playing for the Jasper Release Reception at the Historic Siebels House and Gardens, 1601 Richland St, Columbia.  Come enjoy the release of the 21st edition of South Carolina's premier arts magazine, the announcement of Jasper's 2015 Masters of Art; the announcement of the city of Columbia's new and first ever Poet Laureate by OneColumbia; the announcement of Columbia's 2015 One Book, One Columbia by Richland Library; Historic Columbia's presentation of the Burning of Columbia sesquicentennial commemoration schedule and hear some great music from Bennett & Coolidge.

Plowboys Listening Party for "Gravity & Willpower" at The Whig on January 7

The phrase "ragged but right" has been used countless times to describe any number of bands with more heart and spirit than skill and discipline.

But rarely has a group taken it  as much as an article of faith as Tom Hall & the Plowboys.

Although they are hardly a band lacking chops or extensive musical training, with more than six records and countless live shows under their belts, the band has worked its way through folk operas and film soundtracks, long digressions into blues, zydeco, and alt-country, and rarely have they sounded like anything has gone entirely according to plan.

Which is exactly how they like it.

Gravity & Willpower, which is album number six for this rotating cast of characters, is in many ways a distillation of so many of the precepts that Hall has led the group with. Featuring longtime members like Andrew Hoose (drum), Bill Stevens (bass), Phil Hurd (fiddle) and David Lee Michelson (guitar) alongside some members who have fallen in along the way like Chris Lawther (banjo), Bert Cutts (trumpet), and guest instrumentalist Adam Cullum (accordion and piano), the ramshackle outfit cut a dozen songs over four hours, with minimal rehearsal and forethought. The result, predictably, can be a little rough and gritty, but these are songs that lean heavily on the timeless tropes of old-timey music, with ambling and meandering solos that feel entirely of the moment -- largely because they were created and conceived that way. And while Hall may not be a perfect singer by any stretch, his grizzled baritone and spirited delivery are indomitable, driven by, as the title suggests, "gravity and willpower" more than anything else.

While the Plowboys may not be for everyone, it's hard to totally reject the obvious and infectious joy these musicians bring to their restless and ramshackle jams, and a party can never be far away when these guys are playing. What's more, over the last 14 years as a band, they've come to represent something about the wild, wacky, heartfelt, and joyous vibe of Columbia in a way I can never quite explain.

The listening party for the album is this Wednesday, January 7th, at the Whig. Come and listen, and join these fellow ne'er-do-wells for a drink. -Kyle Petersen

Record Review Redux: ET Anderson - Et Tu, ________?

Almost as soon as ET Anderson announced their formation, its recorded debut became one of the most anticipated local indie rock records of 2014. Band mastermind Tyler Morris did great work in the Pavement-esque Calculator prior to joining up with Raleigh’s Octopus Jones, where his slashing guitar work and dry, terse songwriting did wonders as a complement to the bandleader Danny Martin’s funky, New Wave-inspired romps. When he split from that group and returned to Columbia earlier this year, he quickly assembled an extraordinarily talented group of players to back him for his new project, which made its first broad debut at this year’s Jam Room Music Festival.

Whether this seven song recording, written and performed almost entirely by Morris, lives up to the hype will largely depend on what you make of his approach, though, for Et tu is all about taking chances, letting instruments float at-times beautifully and at-times dissonantly in and out of the picture while testing the limits of the rhythmic pocket which most rock and roll depends on. The one-two opening punch of “It Don’t Even” and “I Do Not Mind” sees the bass line teasing a groove playfully rather than laying it down straight while alternating between twinkling guitar licks and Malkmus-esque distortion. The only thing seemingly holding it together are the drums, with who lots of fills and stops thrown into the mix that provide the momentum for songs that feel like they are near sinking under the weight of the rest of the composition’s playful experimentation. Things only get slightly more standard from there, as keyboards parts create an otherworldly aura for much of the record but also provide a surprising organ-style body to many of the songs, particularly to great effect on “Acid Earlier / Love Thy Neighbor,” the tune which comes closest to the charging spree of Octopus Jones. The fact that Morris plays almost all of these instruments himself is a dizzying feat given the dramatic range of styles and approaches that come together across these eclectic compositions.

Still, it’s the latter half of the EP that the project at its most winsome, with ballads like “Things You’d Do,” “Legs,” and “It’s Not the Same” capturing the warped beauty of peak-era Yo La Tengo. Like the sound pioneered by that seminal group, ET Anderson is attempting to combine noisy experimentation, pop sensibilities, and a sense of adventure in a way that defies the predictable and, at times, ease of access. Also like that band, their ambition might involve a few missteps and dead-ends, but the very kinds of missteps and dead-ends which can be so fascinating and delightful precisely because the process itself is so revelatory. As much as this EP falls short in some ways, it also leaves you impatiently waiting to hear what’s coming next.

Note: In the print version of this review (published in the November/December 2014 issue of Jasper), a significant number of mistakes were made involving musician credits on this project. This updated review more accurately reflects the creative process for the record.

Film Review: The Ballad of Shovels & Rope (Screening at the Nick on Nov. 21)

The key to a great music documentary is in the timing. D.A. Pennebaker caught Bob Dylan at his apotheosis as a folk singer and the height of his songwriting powers right before he turned decisively towards electric rock and roll for Dont Look Back (1967). Sam Jones started filming Wilco the day after they fired their original drummer and didn’t finish until they canned another band member, were dropped by their record label, and released their most critically acclaimed and commercially successful record to date in what became I Am Trying To Break Your Heart (2002). It’s easiest when it coincides with the band’s swan song—think The Last Waltz (1978) or Shut Up and Play the Hits (2012)—and, conversely, far more difficult to capture the moment where the band first emerges in the national spotlight.

The last of these is what The Ballad of Shovels & Rope, produced and directed by Jace Freeman and Sean Clark, poignantly does.

The film opens on Cary Ann Hearst and Michael Trent, circa 2010, playing a weekly bar gig at El Bohio, a Cuban joint that shares a space with the Charleston Pour House. It’s a familiar sight to long-time fans, as Hearst and Trent could frequently be found playing shows like this for years in order to make a living. Not long after, we see Hearst waiting tables at Jestine’s kitchen, a part-time job that persists through the recording of their breakthrough album, 2012’s O Be Joyful.

And throughout most of the documentary, this precarious position is where the two find themselves in. Over the course of 2011 and 2012, Trent and Hearst would make a serious bid at making Shovels & Rope succeed, spending hundreds of days on the road in an old touring van retrofitted with an air mattress for nights spent in Wal-Mart parking lots. Sometimes the van serves as a makeshift studio as well—the film captures with crackling intensity the moment where Amanda Shires is shuffled into the van between soundcheck and show to record fiddle parts for a few of the songs.

While the plot points of this story can seem a little predictable now—aborted recording session in L.A., lots of touring, home recording and trips to the Laundromat in between—the beauty here is all in the relationship between Trent and Hearst (and their dog Townes, who tours with them). Watching them casually interact with each other, whether they are writing songs together, working long hours in various studios, or deciding to sign a record deal, feels both intimate and revelatory. You get a sense of the full breadth of their relationship, with everything from slapstick humor and playful teasing mixed with subtle physical touches and smoldering emotional intensity.

Structurally, the filmmakers also wisely hang their narrative around the writing and recording of just a handful of songs, among them “Birmingham,” the lead single that would launch them into the national spotlight and later win “Song of the Year” at the Americana Music Awards in 2013. There’s a glorious amount of footage given to these creative moments, with everything from a half-written rendition of “Birmingham” by Hearst to a scene where the duo gathers around a living room microphone trying to nail harmony parts on “Hail Hail.” These are obviously great fan-pleasing moments, but it’s also just as likely to win over audiences unfamiliar with Shovels & Rope as well. In a casual, informal way, it’s an incredible glimpse of how a songwriting and recording partnership works, at least for them. Freeman and Clark also stick mostly with montages to capture the grueling grind of the road, using only choice bits like the Wal-Mart parking lot scene and casual backstage chatting with Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires (Trent and Hearst play them a hilarious double/single entendre tune called “Hard Hard Feeling,” which remains unreleased), wisely keeping the focus on songwriting and other scenes shot at the couple’s rustic Johns Island home.

Right around the one-hour mark, there is a palpable sense that the filmmakers are speeding up the story—we move quickly from record deal to  album release to Letterman appearance to the Americana Music Awards, with a montage that also sees the band upgrading to an RV and getting their own washer and dryer delivered to their house. The film only runs about ten more minutes, so it might feel a bit tacked on or like a rushed ending for some, but I can’t help but be happy with the balance of the film. It’s the moments of struggle and uncertainty that are the appeal here, and the adrenaline rush of success at the close that the film gives up probably mimics a bit what the duo (and, to a lesser extent, the filmmakers themselves) felt. “Being in a rock band is a lot like playing the lotto at the gas station,” Hearst opines during a late interview. It’s an apt comparison, and a fitting one that hits on the unlikeliness of the Shovels & Rope success story. And it’s all the more amazing for having been captured on film by these guys.

The film will be screened The Nickelodeon Theatre on Friday, November 21^st, at 11pm, with an opening set by Mason Jar Menagerie. DVD copies of the doc will be available starting December 1, with preorders available now at The Moving Picture Boys website here.

Note: You can still attend the 2014 JAY Awards, which start at 7pm, and see the film as well!

Trailer:

USC Symphony Welcomes Guest Pianist Adam Golka for its November 18th Concert

Rach 3 is the stuff of nightmares – for pianists. The 105-year-old piece has been hailed or lambasted, worshipped or cursed, for being one of the most technically challenging and demanding concertos in the literature for pianists. Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) composed the work in 1908 and 1909, completing it at the pastoral setting of Ivanovka, his family’s private retreat. The dedicatee, Josef Hoffmann, for whom the work was originally composed as well, never publicly performed the work. Many a pianist has lamented not learning the work as students – students are fearless in taming the unconquerable. Vladimir Horowitz – one of the legends of piano – infamously dubbed a passage (albeit short) of Rach 3 as “absolutely impossible,” despite Horowitz being responsible for being the most visible early representative performer of the work. All this is a reputation, though. A reputation, however, reinforced and dramatized through its focal point in the film Shine – but the work, no matter how well it lays under the fingers (or doesn’t), is a Herculean feat of romanticism, one of the last great out-and-out Romantic (with a big R) piano concertos.

Following a legacy of Van Cliburn and Vladimir Horowitz, Polish pianist Adam Golka will perform the work with the USC Symphony Orchestra on November 18. Golka initially studied with his mother Anna Golka in Poland, but later studied with Dariusz Pawlas at Rice University and Jose Feghali at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, TX (the hometown of Van Cliburn). Golka holds an artist diploma from Peabody where he worked with Leon Fleisher. He has won the 2008 Gilmore Young Artist Award, First Prize at the 2003 China Shanghai International Piano Competition, and debuted in Carnegie Hall in 2010 performing Rachmaninov’s Third Concerto with the New York Youth Symphony.

Also on the November 18 concert is Beethoven’s 4^th Symphony in B-flat – a cheery, robust work that is often masked by the epic Eroica Symphony (Symphony No. 3) and Beethoven’s ubiquitous and dominating work, his Symphony No. 5. -Tom Dempster

Single concert tickets are $30 general public; $25 senior citizens, USC faculty and staff; $8 students. Concert tickets are available from Capitol Tickets: 803-251-2222 or Koger Box Office, corner of Greene and Park Streets (M-F 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) or online at capitoltickets.com

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Live Music Review: Jack White @ The Township Auditorium

 

It didn’t feel like a Wednesday night in Columbia.

The presence of rock superstar Jack White alone was enough to make things feel unusual, but you also had excellent competing shows at the Music Farm Columbia, Tin Roof, Foxfield Bar & Grille, and New Brookland Tavern. An embarrassment of riches for what is ordinarily considered an off music night in this town.

Alas, I was one of a few thousand who packed the sold-out Township Auditorium for a show that was practically championed as the show of the year before it even happened. Such is White’s reputation as a live performer, as well as his stature in the rock world.

Opener Olivia Jean kicked things off with a set that seemed straight out of the headliner’s playbook, blending a bit of high country twang and rock and roll boogie into a garage band setting. And while her more-than-capable backing band followed her down every turn, a muddled sound mix left most of the words lost in the shuffle for an audience unfamiliar with her material. Given that her new LP is due out on White’s Third Man Records soon, I might look back more kindly on this set in retrospect when I have a stronger sense of the songs. As it is, though, it felt like a band gliding on the personality and character of its frontwoman, and also like a collection of musicians who would make a damn fine Jack White cover band.

White of course is known for his love of quirks, antics, and gimmicks as much as he is for blazing hot garage-blues guitar work and Zeppelin-esque grooves. The show’s set made much of a specially-assembled blue curtain, old school television, and other vintage equipment set center stage. The color blue and the number three were the main motifs (White’s in his “blue” stage now, and the number is likely a reference to his record label), but mostly the stage menagerie blended into the background.

Because Jack White takes this s*** seriously. Backed by a five piece band hell bent on following their notoriously impulsive leader through the paces, White proved his live wire reputation by sliding in and out of songs in chaotic bursts of frenzied guitar work and only occasionally signaling to his band what he was doing. As has been his pattern of late, the show mixed songs from his two solo efforts with a fair smattering of White Stripes tunes, the odd cover or two, and some choice cuts from his work in The Raconteurs and Dead Weather, but it rarely seemed to matter to the audience, who were eating out of the palm of his hand.

While I can’t say I was entranced as the rest of the crowd—the quality of White’s singing in particular, which is easily the weakest of his considerable skills, varied over the course of the evening, and, as with the Stripes, the energy and bluster of the sound occasionally belied less-than-engaging material—it’s undeniable how spellbinding White is as a performer. Personal highlights included his blistering transformation of the Stripes tune “Little Room” into rock therapy writ large, the masterful rendition of Dick Dale’s “Misirlou,” and the faithful, elegantly wrought take on the acoustic “You’ve Got Her in Your Pocket.”

White’s band is also part of what makes these shows so good too—drummer Daru Jones, positioned stage right, embraced the physicality of Meg White’s drumming and demonstrated flagless energy, showmanship, and just the right level of chops for White’s material, and the interplay between Fats Kaplin on violin and Lillie Mae Rische on fiddle was as surprising as it was spectacular. And the entire ensemble was adept at capturing the luxurious interplay found on White’s solo efforts—opener “High Ball Stepper” and “Three Women” off Lazaretto as well as Blunderbuss’s “Missing Pieces”  all showcased the dynamic chemistry of the group.

Fitting for a rock show of such proportions, most audience members left the show with their ears ringing and their throats sore, as White took arguably his two biggest hits—“Steady As She Goes” and “Seven Nation Army”—out for the full rock star spin, coaxing the audience to sing along and building each to a fury that transcended their recorded incarnations.

As I was leaving the auditorium, basking in the warm ear-ringing of rock and roll excess, I heard a number of still-dumbstruck audience members still sing-shouting the riff from “Army.” It seemed appropriate, as White’s signature tune has become nothing more than a clarion call for the survival of rock and roll.

Last night, at least, that call was answered.

Recap: Jasper Goes to Hopscotch 2014

Each year, just a few short hours away from Columbia, one of the premier underground, experimental, and independent rock festivals takes place in the form of Raleigh’s Hopscotch Music Festival. It’s a startling epic and eclectic undertaking, with 170 acts playing on a dozen stages over the course of three evenings, plus hundreds of more bands playing the increasingly crowded collection of pre-, post-, and day parties that have emerged to create a marathon-like live music binge for as long as you can keep going. While relatively few South Carolina bands took part this year (ex-pats Octopus Jones, who moved to Raleigh last year from Myrtle Beach, were the only local connect with an official slot; Cancellieri and The Mobros, both of Columbia, played day parties), a bevy of North Carolina talent took the stage right alongside a menagerie of characters from the various fringes of the music world.

The most recognizable names on the bill each year are the City Plaza headliners--this year, De La Soul, St. Vincent, Spoon, and Mastodon--and some indie rock marquee names will always be sprinkled throughout (War on Drugs, Thurston Moore, Phosphorescent, Sun Kil Moon, and Jamie XX in 2014), but the real appeal of the festival lies in the sensory overload and the sense of surprise and discovery as each days unfolds. A complete rundown of the experience of one person couldn’t possibly capture the spirit of the festival, so, in lieu of throwaway lines about each of the forty-some bands I encountered this year, here are a few sets that stuck out.

De La Soul @ City Plaza

Although I couldn’t escape the sense that these guys were now unmistakably dad-like, there’s also no denying that they can still put on a hell of a show. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the release of the seminal 3 Feet High & Rising, the trio was full of energy and embraced the traditional role of emcees with vigor, engaging frequently with the crowd with big smiles and playful asides. The fact they were performing on a huge outdoor stage at an indie rock festival in the South also seemed to be noteworthy, and the trio seemed especially cognizant of the fact--they even pulled some North Carolina MCs on stage to share in the moment.

Last Year’s Men @ Pour House

A Carrboro, North Carolina garage band that I wasn’t terribly familiar with, these guys put on a blistering show at the Pour House on Thursday night. Alternating between blistering up-tempo numbers that reminded me of The Libertines and a literal hopscotching of styles that ranged from the psychedlic-tinged garage rock of the 13th Floor Elevators to the shambolic alt-country of fellow Triangle favorites Spider Bags, this is the kind of rock and roll I can get behind.

The War on Drugs @ Lincoln Theater

Yes, the live show is a startling good approximation of what Adam Granduciel puts on record. But that’s okay when you’ve put out one of the best records of the year and take such obvious delight in resurrecting classic rock grandiosity for the indie rock set.

Little Black Egg Big Band @ King’s Barcade

This somewhat under-the-radar collaboration between the members of Yo La Tengo (Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, James McNew), William Tyler, Steve Gunn, and Letha Rodman Melchior (who provided pre-recorded material) looks on paper like its gonna be a sprawling guitar fest, particularly when everybody save McNew walks on stage with a guitar. However, what actually occurred was a far odder and more mesmerizing experience.

While McNew manipulated Melchior’s pre-recorded material with a bevy of pedals and electronics, the four guitarists created a feedback driven soundscape that saw them blending their individual parts and only occasionally giving in to the urge to break above the din with a few pointillist notes. It was a noisy, beautiful experience as the five musicians worked off the undulating rhythms and sonic base that McNew provided to build to moments of pure cacophony that recessed into something more reserved although no less chaotic.

Oh, and this happened during a day party around lunch hour. My active imagination likes to believe somebody in the crowd slid into King’s during their lunch break to catch a taste of Hopscotch, and this is what they got.

St. Vincent @ City Plaza

In my Twitter feed this performance got comparison to both Madonna and Thurston Moore. The SAME SET. While I could do without the hand gestures (which worked, but were hardly earth-shattering) and the odd monologue, Annie Clark has a Prince-like range and performance ability. The mix of crunchy, synth-driven indie pop songs along with dreamier and noisier digressions throughout the set had the crowd eating out of the palm of her hand.

Spoon @ City Plaza

I heard a lot of murmured derision about Spoon as a headliner. Something along the lines of the group being a bit too “vanilla indie rock” for the adventurous ethos of the festival. And while I would have described myself as a casual fan, at least prior to this year’s excellent LP They Want My Soul , I loved this set. The band is very much “just” a rock band, but frontman Britt Daniels has just enough rakishness to engage a crowd and they’ve always been first-rate musicians. Hardcore fans, in fact, seem to focus on small moments and licks at the expense of the long view of their songs. Even still, Spoon has racked up quite a few amazing tunes over the course of eight full-lengths, and the set had a very “greatest hits” sort of feel even as they cherry picked the best from the new album. In other words, if you weren’t enjoying it, you might have been trying too hard.

Open Mike Eagle @ Pour House

I saw a lot of great hip-hop at this Hopscotch, but Open Mike Eagle wins for just how damn good his writing is. Both self-reflective and wildly funny, the LA-based rapper made the most of his offbeat persona by wearing a backpack and having a number of talismans on stage with him. But really, with odes to qualifiers and references to House of Cards and comic books, I’m not sure he needed anything but the songs themselves. Check out his excellent new LP Dark Comedy.

Gems @ CAM Raleigh

Also from LA, this pop duo can at first glance seem like they are gliding by on sex appeal, but their swirling and shrouded dream pop tunes proved to be consistently good as the two created a drugged out mix of the xx and Beach House, all loaded down with reverb and ethereal vocals. It was entrancing, particularly in a the chic confines of Raleigh’s art museum.

Sun Kil Moon @ Lincoln Theater

This was by far the BEST set to hang out and talk to friends at.

Kidding. Obviously the wrong venue for the mercurial singer/songwriter, but at least I got this t-shirt out of it.

Hi Ho Silver Oh @ Pour House

One of my favorite random finds of this year’s fest, I was actually at Pour House to catch a lot of the acts that came after them, but this set stuck with me. The group alternates between giddy guitar sprawls a la Pavement, but more tightly wound and poppier and more languid, beautifully melancholic material. A four piece with vocal talent to spare, the harmonies were infectious, and the slowed-down-to-a-crawl take on Tom Petty’s “Time to Move On” was priceless.

Caitlin Rose & Phil Cook @ Pour House

These guys were ridiculously fun and informal with each other in addition to being a perfect musical balance. Cook showed off his virtuoso guitar skills on a few old blues and folk cuts and originals, while Rose’s well-honed country tunes and blow-the-mic-out vocals were equally pleasing. It was their rapport with the audience that stands out most though-- they shouted out trivia-like questions between almost every song (for instance, name the three best mullets of all-time) and gave off the kind of living room vibe that was so sorely lacking from Sun Kil Moon’s set the night before.

Loamlands @ Pour House

I loved Kym Register’s old band Midtown Dickens, so I was pretty excited to catch her new rock outfit Loamlands at this year’s Hopscotch. Part of the appeal of MD was the effervescent performance style of Register and childhood pal Catherine Edgerton, something that shines through in Loamlands, despite its more controlled and professional style. Register remains a solid songwriter, and the pretense-free Southern rock she and the band throws down feels so very “North Carolina.”

Mastodon @ City Plaza

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, there’s no denying that these guys have a pretty epic sound. While I’m not really familiar with their albums, this blistering set had me convinced that metal is really best experienced in a live setting, where the sheer physicality of the style comes through and the music is as loud as its meant to be.

Madison Jay / Well$ @ The Hive at the Busy Bee

Although these two MCs were pretty different from one another, the sense of how good local rap music is in NC came through with their back-to-back sets in this tiny room. Madison Jay has a bit of an old-school production sound to his jams, and he played that up a bit by coming dressed in a trendy three-piece suit. Well$, on the other hand, was all live wire energy that did little to impair his powerful flow, and the live accompaniment of a drum kit and saxophonist was a powerful demonstrated of how “real” and spontaneous live hip-hop can be.

Phosphorescent (solo) @ Fletcher Opera House

Matt Houck is another guy on the bill I’ve always been a fan of, but usually he performs with a full band. This set, with Houck accompanying himself on electric guitar or piano, was unimaginably poignant and direct, despite the singer/songwriter’s aw-shucks demeanor. Houck has one of those inimitable voices that can deliver simple lines with heartbreaking immediacy, and he knows how to play looping, reverb, and the natural acoustics of a room like Fletcher to maximum effect. It was a beautiful, wonderful way to close out my festival experience.

What Cheer! Brigade

...except this wild band of ruffians were on the streets outside of King’s as I rode pass. This punk-inspired marching band-turned-street performers had been spotted throughout Raleigh over the last few days spreading their gospel with the zeal of missionaries, and their adrenaline apparently peaked at the close of their official festival set sometime after one in the morning. The look on their faces was a priceless mix of absolute fatigue and pulsating excitement as the crowd cheered them on past the point of exhaustion. And THAT’s how a music festival should end.

For a full slideshow of photographer Jonathan Sharpe's Hopscotch 2014 photos, click here.

Show Preview: Washed Out Plays Benefit Show for Aaron Graves at the Columbia Music Farm by Caitlyn McGuire

To the dreamers, the explorers, those who sink their minds fully into what’s coming out of their headphones and let the music take them to an entirely different place, we’ve got the soundtrack to your life. The music of Georgia-based artist Ernest Greene, who records under the name Washed Out, is a unique blend of soothing vocals and flowing rhythms along with cool electronics and the sounds of almost unrecognizable instruments.  The title of Washed Out’s most recent effort, Paracosm, references an imaginary world that’s created inside one’s mind, takes listeners on a full journey to escape reality. It’s an appropriate allusion given the immersive effects of the music contained within.  Although each song is brilliantly different than another, the theme of escaping is apparent in every carefully written lyrics and tune, allowing the listener to continuously drift away. Even the music video for their single “Weightless” maintains this aesthetic, allowing listeners to completely disconnect from the real world and delve into the one created by Greene.

And if we haven’t obsessed over Washed Out enough, his upcoming show on September 16 at the Music Farm Columbia is full of additional good local vibes and connections. Greene and his live band, which features Columbia musicians Chris Gardner (bass), Cameron Gardner (drums), and Dylan Lee (guitar), is paired with the quirky indie folk-pop of Those Lavender Whales and the sly singer/songwriter Keith Mead, two of the city’s finest young talents. The show is also for a good cause as well. Earlier in 2014, Those Lavender Whales front man Aaron Graves was diagnosed with a grade 2 brain tumor, causing the Columbia music scene to band together to help Graves and his family. All the proceeds from Tuesdays show will go to Tumor-Schumor, Graves’ effort to raise funds and support for his life-threatening illness. On tumorschumor.com, fans and friends can keep track of Graves’s progress through his blog, donate and learn more about the cause. If there’s one show to go see at the Music Farm in the near future, this is probably it. Good music plus a great cause is reason enough to see these musical minds in action.

Tuesday’s show is at the Music Farm, 1022 Senate Street. Tickets are $15-$20, doors open at 8 p.m. and anyone 16 years and older is welcome.

To donate to Tumor-Schumer or follow along with Aaron Graves’ journey, please visit tumorschumor.com

--Jasper Intern, Caitlyn McGuire

IndieGoGo Fundraising Campaign for Local Filmmaking Camp S.M.I.S.T.

Are you a big fan of the Indie Grits Film Festival? What about Girls Rock Columbia? Man, wouldn't it be great if somebody combined those two ideas??

As it turns out, local filmmaker O.K. Keyes has. She is currently working to raise funds for SMIST (Space. Movement. Image. Sound. Time.), a self-proclaimed "workshop-in-the-woods for women DIY filmmakers." Based on the premise that most DIY film shoots require Jill-of-all-trades rather than dedicated experts, the camp offers a vast crash-course in the basics of filmmaking as well as instruction on the ethos of independent and experimental filmmaking. With guest speakers, nightly screenings, and a daily morning "Meditation in Maya [Deren]," this is an ambitious, and awesome, undertaking worthy of your support if you care about feminism, local filmmaking, or just the young women in your community. Keyes is a top-notch filmmaker herself (she was a co-winner of last year's 2nd Act Film Festival), and she's already put a lot of sweat (and financial) equity into making this camp--something that she likely would have loved as a young women herself--a reality.

Check out the IndieGoGo video and fundraising page here. The campaign runs through July 24, 2014.

http://vimeo.com/99601028

Spoleto USA Review: Lucinda Williams @ TD Arena

Continuing their recent tradition of incorporating a handful of roots-rock acts in their eclectic vision of high-culture arts programming, Spoleto USA brought one of the true legends of Americana to Charleston this past Wednesday, Louisiana-born Lucinda Williams. The daughter of acclaimed Southern poet and literature professor Miller Williams, the singer/songwriter has had a tumultuous, storied career, from her early Folkways Record releases to the painstaking birth of one the genre’s all-time classics, Care Wheels on a Gravel Road, which was released in 1998. Since then Williams has enjoyed steady sales and plenty of critical regard, but seems to have worked in the shadow of her greatest achievement.

That’s not to say, of course, that she hasn’t remained an exacting and engaging writer, as she’s capable of writing songs of anger and joy, lust and longing, with a sense of economy and painterly level of detail. Plus she's always had a one-of-kind weathered voice that's capable of a similarly broad palette of emotion. But it is to say that her arguably best material was released in the 1990s, on Car Wheel and 1992’s Sweet Old World. That the Spoleto set leaned heavily on newer material suggests that Williams will continue to be a relevant artist, even if her concert appearances are perhaps not as engaging because of it.

Leading a hot band through the paces, Williams sprinkled a number of new songs throughout the night that incorporated much of the band-oriented material from her last two records, Little Honey (2008) and Blessed (2011), that allowed her to showcase her sidemen's chops, particularly the explosive solos of electric guitarist Stuart Mathis, a longtime guitarist for the Wallflowers.  Mathis’ presence was key to the performance’s success, as the long instrumental passages made it difficult for Williams’ songwriting prowess to hold center stage for long. And while the set was peppered with stories and asides from the songwriter, and she was in fine vocal form for much of the night, too much of her time was spent playing the effacing frontman for the long jam-laden blues and rock excursions through some of her weaker material.

In my mind, the real highlight of the show was when Williams emerged for an encore with nothing but her acoustic guitar and sang “Passionate Kisses,” one of her most commercially successful tunes. Despite how good the band was, I would much rather have had a few more of Williams’ compositions in that more haunting and heartbreaking minimalist setting. That's not to say the night wasn't quite enjoyable, and kudos to Spoleto for bringing one of the true songwriting (and singing) greats to the Holy City, but I'm still left wishing for what could have been. –Kyle Petersen