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August 26, 2010 | Issue 32
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Hot August Blues Festival
As the story goes, the Hot August Blues festival started in Brad Selko’s backyard nearly twenty years ago. At the time, a friend of Brad’s had the idea of having a picnic, featuring blues harp legend Charlie Musselwhite, at his farm. Between three and four hundred people showed up the first year. Each year more and more people made their way to the show as word spread. The festival has since outgrown Brad’s backyard. This this years total is around 6000 people. Past performances at Hot August Blues include the likes of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Eric Lindell, The North Mississippi All-Stars, Dickey Betts & Great Southern and The Derek Trucks Band.
This festival has the laid back positivity of a family reunion and, if you’ve lived in the area for any considerable length of time, the odds of running into old friends are pretty good.
Part of the proceeds from Hot August Blues goes to benefit Common Ground On The Hill, an organization whose goal it is to teach, study and present a wide variety of musical and cultural traditions in order to illustrate the “common ground that unites us.”
This isn’t a heapin’ helpin’ of Chitlins con Carne, people. This is What Weekly.
The Big Picture:
Who can hold the attention of over 6000 people for an hour or so with just a guitar and whole lot of soul? Keb’ Mo’ can, that’s who. The legendary performer entranced the audience with a simple, subtle spell that infused Oregon Ridge Park with gentle good vibes.
Cover photo by Theresa Keil.
Promote your event: Email charmcity@whatweekly.com
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Chas. Phillips, Jesse Bowen and William J. Smith.
The antidote to a severe case of the blues, as one can plainly see, is beer.
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The Good Word.
www.allianceforpeacebuilding.org
The Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP) is a coalition of diverse organizations and professionals working together to build sustainable peace and security worldwide.
Help build peace.
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If you’re curious as to how one becomes the chairman of the English Department at a major university, don’t count out living in a cave with hippies on an island off of Greece. That’s what Edwin Duncan did long before chairing the English Department at Towson University. With him is the legendary Clarinda Harriss, the founder of BrickHouse Books, Maryland’s oldest continuously operating small press.
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While Black Joe and the Honey Bears kept most peoples interest, the real drama was unfolding within the crowd. This is where we found an epic battle unfolding on a miniature chess board between chess legend/musician Shodekeh and child prodigy Colin Dubose. The match went on for what seemed to be several minutes. The outcome of the match is still unknown as we were eventually distracted and wandered off.
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www.lot201.com
Original apparel designs by Julie Bent.
Call Julie for an appointment: 410.929.1183.
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Gavin Scott, you, Sir, are the winner of this week’s prestigious and highly coveted ‘Out Of Over 6000 People You Were The Only Person We Found Sporting A Mohawk And That, For Reasons Still Unknown, Makes You Special (and in the good way, not the learning disabled way)’ award. Congratulations, looks like all that hard work finally paid off.
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Thirty Six Dead in Catonsville
The body count is high, but still an estimate, because it’s only the first week of shooting. The final count won’t be known till the film wraps, and the dust settles from the carnage of the climactic battle royale. For a micro-budget feature, Witch’s Brew beats just about any Hollywood movie (we don’t count apocalyptic disaster movies ala 2012, but Taken comes close with 34 individual kills).
Midnight Crew Studios’ previous offerings (Presidents Day, Book of Lore) were delivered on budgets closer to 5K, so the Witch’s Brew ten thousand-plus kickstarter.com generated budget represents a move up to almost Avatar levels (the effects aren’t as sophisticated as Avatar’s, but the story is better).
All this killing takes place in quiet Catonsville suburbia, at the hands of writer/producer Jimmy George and writer/director Chris Lamartina. These guys are smart, persistent, hard working, and fun, and possess the essential quality needed to produce indie films: they actually do it. They are also able to attract dedicated cast and crew people who actually do it, mostly for the love. Assistant Director Jeanie Clark (who wrote and directed her own feature, Smalltimore) is foregoing income to see the Witch’s Brew 27 day August shooting schedule through till wrap. The excellent Jason Koch of Zinnia Films (zinniafilms.com) has a modest special effects budget to work with. With so many kills, he and his partner Gaylee must deliver everything from prosthetic “demon fingers,” to gore and amputations, and of course, ectoplasm (thanks for your ectoplasm recipe, guys). Witch’s Brew is only one of many titles in which erstwhile schlock star Shawn C. Phillips is racking up acting credits this year. Let him be known as Baltimore’s Shawn of the dead…… keep going.
– david warfield
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David Warfield, Confessions of a Mad Filmmaker
A What Weekly Column
“And so here we have a unique opportunity to track the production of a truly independent film from the moment of conception (the script is not yet completed) to the first public screening, and beyond. ”
We’re not talking about EPK filler here, we’re talking about life, and it’s bound to get messy.”
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Music Fog at Cyclops
The thought of old honky tonks, saloons or even an old juke box probably doesn’t conjure images of blogs, RSS feeds, or Youtube; but Music Fog creators Jesse Scott and Jim McBean have been using connectivity to bring Americana music to a wider audience. I spoke to Jesse Scott at a honky tonk show hosted by Andy Rubin, at his bookstore, Cyclops, on North Avenue. She told me that Music Fog’s motto is: “How hard could it be?”
Music Fog was created by Scott and McBean after they both lost their jobs when XM radio went through a merger with Sirius; Scott being the program director of the Americana format on Cross Country XM and McBean was the head of production at XM. They started by taking a tour bus to music festivals where performers like Jeff Tweedy and Buddy Guy would come on their bus to do impromptu interviews and performances.
“At first we just had audio, and then we realized that it was just too good and we needed to expand to video.”
Music Fog now publishes a song a day in video format, and Jesse writes a new blog entry every day. They’ve only had the site up for eighteen months but they’ve already gone beyond one million views. The video’s are high quality and the performances are amazing. Their philosophy is to keep it clean on the page, just like the music, no BS.
Photo and story by Philip Laubner.
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This night at Cyclops included The Mystiqueros from Austin, TX and The McTell Brothers from Virgina.
The McTell Brothers, who started the evening, are a pair of down-to-earth, but kick-ass blues, folk and rock players. If you closed your eyes and just listened you might think they were seasoned old pros rather than fourteen year old fraternal twins.
Photo and story by Philip Laubner.
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Books, Live Music, Art Gallery and more!
Same block as Windup Space, across from Joe Squared. Plenty of room inside for your bike; FREE street parking for your car (we’ll plug your meter before 6, after that it’s free anyway) – come on over…
30 West North Ave.
Baltimore, MD, 21201
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Currently Jesse Scott is traveling with The Mystiqueros, an Austin Texas based honky tonk band with not one, but three excellent song-writers. She’s accompanying the band as they do a short tour up to NYC. There’s a reason why someone as connected as Jesse Scott is traveling with them: incredible, impassioned song writing.
Photo and story by Philip Laubner.
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Screaming Females
We’ve all stood on chairs in order to get a better look at moose at one time or another, that much is certain. But this isn’t an attempt to muster up nostalgia for simpler times. This is a different kind of story altogether.
Photo by Theresa Keil.
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The Baltimore Love Project is a city wide mural project initiated by the Baltimore muralist Michael Owen. Our mission is to express love by connecting people and communities across Baltimore city with love themed murals. BLP will be painting the same image of four silhouetted hands spelling out the word love on 20 walls across Baltimore.
www.baltimoreloveproject.com
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Screaming Females is an indie rock/punk band from New Brunswick, New Jersey; Marissa Paternosten on guitar and vocals, Jarrett Dougherty on drums and ‘King’ Mike Rickenbacker on bass. We had the good fortune to catch them at the Golden West recently.
Photo and story by Theresa Keil.
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First look at Marissa and you see a small girl in a militant red dress, tights and the coolest black wingtip shoes. She is cute. No, she is adorable with a squeaky voice that you’d totally expect. What you don’t expect is her singing (screaming), the way she shreds, the non-stop swirling, squealing and scratching as she soars through scales with pure power and energy.
Photo and story by Theresa Keil.
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130% Surround Sound at The Red Room
M.C. Schmidt
For a series still in its infancy, the 130% Surround Sound concerts at Normals Books and Records have produced some surprisingly sophisticated results.
Tucked away in a cramped, un-air condit ioned cranny of the venerable East 31st Street emporium dubbed The Red Room, the curious sit front-to-back in creaky folding chairs ensconced in a blanket of warm, analogue 4.0 surround sound.
Quadraphony fell out of favor decades ago but given Normals status as ground zero for the world-renown High Zero Festival, it’s a lovably archaic, suitably arcane notion to explore.
Only three gigs in and already these happenings have enveloped not just the physical performance space, but also the entire avant community of Baltimore at large – thus reaffirming Charm City’s hard-fought reputation as thee hub of East Coast experimental music. Just a cursory glance at the fifty or so in attendance last Thursday included True Vine co-owner/Ehse Records head Dr. Stewart Mostofsky, Lexi and Samantha from Lexi Mountain Boys and Hexagon synthsmith Logan Mitchell, Sr.
Perhaps it had more than a little to do with the talent. Thursday’s third installment featured a triple bill of bona fide Baltimore demigods: Leprechaun Caterer Tom Boram, Matmos’ M.C. Schmidt and Tarantula Hill’s resident beanpole Twig Harper.
Photo and story by Logan Young.
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Twig Harper
For the opening set, Boram and Schmidt played tag team. The former’s gutter-wrenched electronics providing the perfect foil to the latter’s acoustic implements. Along with Drew Daniel, Schmidt’s partner in love and in theft, Matmos made their name concrète sampling everything from a nose job to their own cigarette-burnt skin to the amplified synapses of a crayfish’s nerve tissue. And while Schmidt’s arsenal was decidedly less obtuse here, he nonetheless managed to coax both the beautiful and the damned from a duck call, baking spoons and his own personal bottle of import beer. With Boram’s homemade noise salvos coming from all sides, Schmidt continued to tout texture and subtlety over sheer spatial confusion. Just because you have four speakers instead of two, it doesn’t mean you’re obliged to use them all all of the time. Discretion, like brevity, is often the soul of wit. And to wit, Martin Schmidt emerged the better man.
After a brief recess for the smokers, Twig Harper took the stand. Disheveled yet imposing, his set began in earnest when he flung an equally tattered crash cymbal to the floor, startling a few latecomers who, backs turned, had been resigned to there. Still reeling, himself, from a gloriously rabble-rousing performance at this year’s Whartscape, Harper wasted little time dialing up the din he’s become so revered for. With no less than four noisemakers of various intention and intensities plugged directly into his mixer, there was seemingly no shortage of source scuzz from which to cull. Nor was there any sign of Harper relenting. For nigh on twenty inscrutable minutes, he saturated the place with a clamor atypical within its confines. So often, those involved in the live noise trade appear as if they’re having a downright wretched time. One look in Harper’s direction however, and anyone could tell that devilish smirk of his was nothing but pure bliss.
Compared to pitch, rhythm and timbre, for most sound artists, space remains an all too infrequently explored frontier. For the good people “sitting in a room” at Normals though, the wide expanse where sound ultimately exists is ever-shortening. And while their math and their jargon may be a bit off, maybe that’s the true manifest destiny of Baltimore’s 130% Surround Sound.
Photo and story by Logan Young.
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Hit and Stay by Joe Tropea.
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Friday, Aug 27
The Beechfields Record Label Showcase at the Hexagon 7 pm
The Beechfields showcase this year is part of the Baltimore Independent Music & Arts Festival-a 3-day, multi venue festival taking place for the first time in Baltimore on August 26th-28th. 2010. Join us for a great night of music and listen to what The Baltimore City paper calls “The Baltimore indie-pop and pop-folk universe…”
Land Of Confusion at SONAR 9 pm
On August 27th Good Vibes Promo & Rise N Shine return home to Baltimore to bring our sounds to one of downtown baltimores dopest party spots!! We know how tough it is living in the land of confusion, so we made this special event $10 and we packed as many of your favorite producers onto one lineup as time allowed. Come welcome Good Vibes back to baltimore for a trip to the land of confusion…
MOUSTACHE – SUPER FUN DANCE PARTY at The Ottobar 9 pm
Kyle Gregg, The Specialist, DJ Safe Sex, & The Moustache Crew
For more details, directions and events click here.
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Saturday, Aug 28
BiMA Fest 6 pm
Baltimore Independent Music & Arts Festival is a 3-day, multi venue festival taking place for the first time on August 26th-28th. 2010, as we bring you three nights of performances from regional and national recording artists, plus special events featuring visual arts and film, as well as music seminars on Saturday August 28th. We anticipate that there will be more than 140 performing artists playing at 10 different venues in Baltimore. More than 125 artists are already confirmed. We’ve coordinated the venue schedules and locations to allow fans to hear as many artists as possible between 6PM and 2AM each night.
All About Evil premiere with Peaches Christ & Mink Stole at The Creative Alliance 8 pm
Midnight movie impresario Peaches Christ (Joshua Grannell), returns to his home state of MD to premiere his film directorial debut: All About Evil. This twisted black comedy features Natasha Lyonne, Thomas Dekker, Noah Segan, cult icon Mink Stole, and Cassandra Peterson (known better as Elvira!) Are the slasher films shown at the Victoria Theatre harmless DIY gore or….more?! Mink intros and Peaches performs before the screening! Q & A with Mink and Peaches after. 8pm. $15, $13 mbrs.
Neil Kurland at The Red Maple 9 pm
Neil Kurland has been an omnipresent force in the electronic music scene for over a decade. He has electrified crowds at events such as Star Scape, Afternoon Delight, PEX Summer Fest and in cities such as Miami, San Francisco, New York City and the Cayman Islands.
For more details, directions and events click here.
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Sunday, Aug 29
Creative Differences Presents Henry Grimes & Audrey Chen at The Windup Space 7 pm
An evening of solos and duos featuring HENRY GRIMES – double bass,violin,poetry AUDREY CHEN – cello,electronics,voice.
Last Sunday, Last Rites! at The Baltimore Hostel 7 pm
Last Rites Baltimore started as a reading series, appropriately called Last Sunday, Last Rites. The first reading was held on July 26th, 2009. Founded and hosted by Nik Korpon and Pat King, the series has featured many excellent Baltimore area writers. The readings take place at the historic Baltimore Hostel on 17. West Mulberry Street, just across the main branch of the Enoch Pratt Library in the Inner Harbor/Mt. Vernon area.
The Sunday Night Gun Show with Brad Gunson and His Orchestra at Joe Squared 10 pm
Live Jazz.
For more details, directions and events click here.
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Ongoing
Cut-Ups at Gallery 1448
David Fair and Matt Bovie both use scissors to produce eccentric works that
share a raw and colorful way of looking at the world. Their child-like vision
incorporates animals, super-heroes, celebrities, demons, skulls, and a curious
way of depicting the mouth as an oblong band. Ends August 29.
Day Glow at Nudashank
Nudashank is pleased to present Day Glow, an investigation into the stylistic variations and innovative processes of current contemporary photography. Day Glow is Nudashank’s first guest-curated exhibition.
Andrew Laumann is an artist based out of Baltimore, MD. His work was included in Table of Contents at Nudashank in March of 2010. Laumann has recently exhibited his work at Capricious space in Brooklyn, NY and runs Pent House Gallery located in the Norths Arts District of Baltimore, MD since 2009.
August 7 – August 28
Simultaneous Presence at Evergreen Museum and Library
Sculpture at Evergreen 6: Simultaneous Presence is co-curated by Ronit Eisenbach, an artist and architect, and Jennie Fleming, an artist and cultural historian, whose dialogue and simultaneous presence along with the works by the invited visual thinkers contribute to an embedded conversation on the intertwining of moment, meanings, and place. Ends Sept. 26.
Minas: Relief at Minas Gallery
Gallery owner and artist Minás Konsolas exhibits two-and-a-half dimensional mixed media works on cardboard that explore the many meanings of the word “relief”. Proceeds will benefit Doctors without Borders. Ends August 30.
You and Me Living Vol.2: The Land
Gallery Four brings San Francisco based artist John Chiara to Baltimore for a residency to create new works for an exhibition with Baltimore artists Christine Bailey, James Rieck, and Jacqueline Schlossman. (opening reception 8:30-11 p.m. July 10). Ends Aug. 28th.
For more details, directions and events click here.
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What is What Weekly?
What Weekly is a multimedia magazine chronicling the real Baltimore movers and shakers- not the corporations, not the politics, What Weekly spotlights the people. We’re paying attention to the good things happening in Baltimore and sharing it all with you.
Why online? Disposable print media is wasteful and, with the advent and proliferation of the Internet, it is more difficult to justify. Technology is a gift and a tool- use it to evolve and build things together.
If you want to be a part of the movement, you can send us your photos to publish, your events to promote and your ideas to talk about. Forward the email, share a link, start a movement. Your audience is the world, pass it on.
What’s the Goal?
One day soon you will hear a bit of news like this, “Multimedia Magazine Reaches One Million People.” If we don’t do it, someone else will. We want to build a large independent distribution channel and we’ll use it to tell the world what you’re doing. We want as many people as possible clicking on the links to your websites and ultimately taking an interest in the Baltimore Renaissance and its artists.
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What’s the point?
This is a movement dedicated to uniting the creative community in and around Baltimore City and then sharing it throughout the world for the benefit of Baltimore and its people. The movement has already begun; we just gave it a name.
Using a multi-media platform, we want to put Baltimore on the map so it’s recognized globally for the artistic and intellectual hub that it is. We start by chronicling your amazing work.
We understand that the distribution of ideas is no longer bound by geography. This paradigm shift allows for cultural movements to exist locally and globally simultaneously. We can share everything, we can create anything and we can reach everyone. It’s time to do something with that power.
What Weekly does not exist without you. You are the soul of this movement.
Submit Your Idea.
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What’s the Mission?
1. Document the Baltimore Renaissance
2. Make Baltimore a better place to live and highlight good news
3. Help support Baltimore’s artists and independent businesses
4. Build a tribe, start a movement
5. Encourage more face-to-face interaction within the community
6. Drive awareness of excellent events
7. Put Baltimore on the (global) map
Read more about the mission.
What’s the Good Word?
We believe in spreading the good news, which also means spotlighting organizations that do good things.
Submit Your Good Deeds.
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| Copyright© What Weekly LLC. All rights reserved. | P.O. Box 16275 | Baltimore, MD 21210 |
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