FRIDAY 21
EVENT: GREATER CINCINNATI RESTAURANT WEEK
Calling all Cincinnati foodies: CityBeat has partnered with area restaurants to put together memorable meals and one-of-a-kind dining experiences during Greater Cincinnati Restaurant Week. Through Sunday, restaurants including Bistro Grace, Kaze OTR, Moerlein Lager House, Somm Wine Bar, The Golden Lamb, Metropole and many more will offer exclusive $35 three-course menus — just ask for the Restaurant Week menu. Bring your friends, make a date night of it or treat yourself to dinner and a drink from sponsor Maker’s Mark. Through Sunday. $35 prix fixe. Find a full list of locations and menus at citybeat.com.
MUSIC: MACKFEST
A year ago this Friday, pioneering Rock & Roll guitarist Lonnie Mack passed away at the age of 74. Mack has been called one of Rock’s first “guitar heroes,” and legends like Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page and Stevie Ray Vaughan have all cited Mack and his early instrumental songs like “Memphis” and “Wham” as being an indispensable influence on their playing. Mack was born near the Ohio/Indiana border, about 20 miles outside of Cincinnati, and he cut his teeth playing in clubs throughout the Tristate while also doing session work on Blues and R&B recordings for locally based labels King and Fraternity Records. Friday’s Mackfest: A Celebration of Lonnie Mack concert will celebrate the contributions Mack made to music with performances by Greater Cincinnati-area Blues Rock players including Sonny Moorman, Jay Jesse Johnson, Johnny Fink and many others. Proceeds from the event will be donated to Play It Forward, the local nonprofit that assists area musicians during financial, medical or other hardships. 8 p.m. Friday. $12 advance; $18 day of show. Madison Theater, 730 Madison Ave., Covington, Ky., madisontheateronline.com.
ONSTAGE: INTO THE WOODS
Ensemble Theatre’s D. Lynn Meyers knows her way around new versions of fairy tales — in December she staged Cinderella: After Ever After. Now she’s stepped up to a classic: Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods, with a student cast at Xavier University. This musical also looks at “ever after” with a more pungent dose of reality that sets in when fairy tales end — unfaithful princes, vengeful giants, a riddling witch’s curse. It’s a strangely beautiful show, amusing and poignant at the same time, and it teaches a lesson about being careful what you wish for. 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Friday; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday. $12-$17. Gallagher Student Center Theater, Xavier University, 3800 Victory Parkway, xavier.edu/theatre-department.
ART: SINNERS AND SAINTS AT MANIFEST GALLERY
Selected as one of eight exhibitions among 137 proposals that Manifest Gallery considered for its 13th season, Iowa-based sculptor Jessica Teckemeyer’s show Sinners and Saints investigates the complex relationships between humans and domesticated animals. Teckemeyer creates mixed-media sculptures of animals, which explore the multiplicity in human nature. The artist says of her work: “These sculptures represent archetypes. Through translating a human experience into the form of an animal, we look at ourselves from another viewpoint.” Teckemeyer will discuss the pieces in her show 1-2 p.m. Saturday at the gallery. Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Friday. Through May 19. Manifest Gallery, 2727 Woodburn Ave., East Walnut Hills, manifestgallery.org.
COMEDY: MIKE PARAMORE
“I took a girl out but she wasn’t that cute so I took her to McDonald’s,” comedian Mike Paramore tells an audience. “Don’t judge me; you didn’t see her.” The young lady drove and when Paramore’s date placed her order, the attendant had trouble hearing her — so she yelled at the employee. “She went nuts,” Paramore says. “After she gets done cussing out the McDonald’s lady, she turned to me and says, ‘Mike what do you want to get?’ ‘Wendy’s now, woman! I’m not ordering from this chick. Why would you yell at her like she’s not handling our food? I’ve seen this movie; it don’t work out in the end. Drop me off.’ ” The Cleveland native recently released an album called The Things We Tell Ourselves to critical acclaim. Showtimes Thursday-Sunday. $8-$14. Go Bananas, 8410 Market Place Lane, Montgomery, gobananascomedy.com.
DANCE: THE KAPLAN NEW WORKS SERIES
As street art becomes so accepted and popular a genre that its most outstanding practitioners have developed international followings, one of the foremost — a female artist known as “Swoon” — has two upcoming projects in Cincinnati. The first is a collaboration with choreographer Jennifer Archibald for the Cincinnati Ballet’s The Kaplan New Works Series, which opens Thursday at the Aronoff Center’s Jarson-Kaplan Theater and continues through April 30. All four of the pieces in the program are by women choreographers. Like Swoon, choreographer Archibald has worked widely. She’s the founder and artistic director of New York City’s Arch Dance Company, and she’s just been named resident choreographer for Cincinnati Ballet’s upcoming season. Archibald says via email that she and Swoon met in New York last summer. They’ve been collaborating virtually ever since, sending each other photos and videos and tossing ideas and materials back and forth. The conceptual framework of the collaborative dance piece draws on that. For Archibald’s New Works piece, entitled “Never.Nest,” Swoon repurposed elements from a raft that she floated on the Adriatic Sea. The seaworthy craft was made from discarded furniture and architectural objects that the artist and her crew had gathered from abandoned warehouses and garbage piles along the coast around Slovenia. “(It’s about) climate change and coastal cities and our relationship to nature in this moment,” Swoon says. “And (also) our need to viscerally process what’s happening.” The Kaplan New Works Series runs Thursday through April 30 at Aronoff Center for the Arts. Tickets/more info: cballet.org.
SATURDAY 22
EVENT: MARCH FOR SCIENCE
A satellite Cincinnati March for Science will be held in concert with the national March for Science in Washington D.C. The event starts at Fountain Square with speakers on topics including the role of science in society, science and compassion, growing human organs from stem cells and more, followed by a march past the public library and on to City Hall. What's the point of the march? In the words of Neil DeGrasse Tyson: "I am trying to convince people — not only the public, but lawmakers and people in power — that investing in the frontier of science, however remote it may seem in its relevance to what you’re doing today, is a way of stockpiling the seed corns of future harvests of this nation.” #sciencerules. 10 a.m. Saturday. Free. Fountain Square, Fifth and Vine streets, Downtown, marchforsciencecincinnati.com.
EVENT: RECORD STORE DAY
This Saturday, Record Store Day — the international celebration of independent music retailers marked by numerous exclusive, limited-edition releases from labels big and small — celebrates its 10th anniversary. Pretty much every non-chain record store in Greater Cincinnati is participating in some way, offering exclusives, performances or otherwise. You can search for participating RSD shops at recordstoreday.com, where you’ll also find a list of many of the exclusive releases being offered. Cincinnati label/store Shake It Records will once again celebrate RSD with lots of local music tie-ins. Special to RSD, Shake It’s label branch is releasing a new split 7-inch single featuring rockers Frontier Folk Nebraska and Folk greats The Tillers, as well as a vinyl pressing of Wussy’s third album. Cincy Punk Rock superheroes The Dopamines will be on hand to spin the band’s first album in four years, Tales of Interest, test pressings of which will also be available while they last (the LP is officially released June 2). And Frontier Folk Nebraska joins Dawg Yawp for performances in the store beginning at 7 p.m. 8 a.m. Saturday. Free admission. Shake It Records, 4156 Hamilton Ave., Northside, shakeitrecords.com.
MUSIC: THURSDAY
New Jersey quintet Thursday had been together for two years when the band’s 1999 debut album Waiting ushered in a new era of Alternative Rock. Packed with dark odes to suicide (“Ian Curtis” directly addressed the death of Joy Division’s frontman, one of Thursday’s avowed heroes) and the aftermath of rape, Waiting established a Post Hardcore benchmark of punishing volume, wistful melodicism and Geoff Rickly’s screamed/sung vocals that typified the new millennium’s Emo direction. After a personnel shift, Rickly, new guitarist Steve Pedulla, lead guitarist Tom Keeley, bassist Tim Payne and drummer Tucker Rule signed to Victory Records and released their breakthrough album, 2001’s Full Collapse. Constant wrangling with Victory led to Thursday’s defection to Island Records for the critical and commercial triumph, 2003’s War All the Time, the first to feature keyboardist Andrew Everding. The album cracked Billboard’s Top 10, selling over a quarter million copies in seven months, and the band toured behind it incessantly before taking a yearlong hiatus to recharge and get healthy. Late in 2011, Thursday announced the cessation of musical activities among the band members, a hiatus that Rickly eventually admitted was a break-up. Early last year, casual photos of the estranged band members together surfaced on Twitter, signaling an easing of tensions within the band. Three months ago, Thursday announced its current 24-date tour. The band seems adamant to keep their pledge of no more new music, so this could be a rare opportunity to witness one of the architects of Emo playing songs from its now-complete recorded history. 6:30 p.m. Saturday. $25. Bogart’s, 2621 Vine St., Corryville, bogarts.com.
EVENT: GREATER CINCINNATI EARTH DAY
Celebrate Earth Day at the newly renovated Summit Park in Blue Ash. The day’s theme — “local food” — will be manifested through activities and workshops on raised-bed gardening, composting and rain barrels, plus kids activities and information from a ton of local vendors. Find farmers, farmers markets, community gardens, CSAs, restaurants and more gathered to develop strategies to increase the demand for local food — and benefit by munching on bites from local food trucks and drinking beer from Rhinegeist. Includes live music from the Miami Valley Council for Native Americans, Hickory Robot, Room for Zero and more. Noon-7 p.m. Saturday. Free admission. Summit Park, 4335 Glendale Milford Road, Blue Ash, cincinnatiearthday.com.
EVENT: EARTH DAY OTR
Celebrate Earth Day at Washington Park with live music, food, drink and eco-friendly products and goods for purchase. Got hard-to-recycle items? Cleanlites Recycling, Inc. will be there to take them off your hands, including cell phones, prescription medication, light bulbs, #5 plastic packaging and more. A slew of family- and eco-friendly activities will make for a fun-filled day in the park. Noon-5 p.m. Saturday. Free. Washington Park, 1230 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine, washingtonpark.org.
SUNDAY 23
EVENT: HISTORY IN BLOOM
If you’re interested in petticoats, perennials and horse-drawn carriage rides, step back in time during Spring Grove Cemetery’s History in Bloom event. Spend the afternoon taking a ride past budding trees, blossoming tulips, interesting gravestones and some notable “residents.” There will also be docent-led walking tours themed around obelisks; “Patriots & Pioneers,” featuring the remarkable women of the grove and the stained glass windows of the Memorial Mausoleum; and a “Monumental Stroll” to tour the resting places of the affluent families of the Guilded Age. It’s a day of horticulture and heritage, with a sprinkling of costumed historical re-enactors sharing their stories. Rain or shine. Noon-4 p.m. Sunday. Free. Spring Grove Cemetery, 4521 Spring Grove Ave., Northside, springgrove.org.
EVENT: RUNNING OF THE GOATS
Last year’s inaugural Running of the Goats in Covington made international headlines — mostly because the Goebel goats went rogue and led their owners on a 24-hour chase before the herd was re-captured. The goats — adorable, hungry workers who help keep park grounds and urban forest space manicured by munching their way through unwanted and invasive plant species — will parade again this year in a more controlled environment. They will start their journey at the southern end of downtown Covington and march their way to their seasonal home at Kenny Shields Park in MainStrasse. The event coincides with the Westside Spring Celebration, which features live music, a craft fair and food and drink from the likes of Gutierrez Deli and Braxton. Celebration 1-6 p.m.; goats at 2 p.m. Sunday. Free. Hellmann Creative Center, 321 W. MLK and 12th streets, Covington, Ky., facebook.com/goebelgoats.
EVENT: BURLINGTON ANTIQUE SHOW
The greatest show on Earth? After the shuttering of Ringling Bros., the moniker is open and the Burlington Antique Show may be in the running for the new title. One of the most popular and treasure-laden antique markets in the region, Burlington is celebrating 36 years as the Midwest’s premier antiques and vintage-only show, and this Sunday is the first market of the season featuring jewelry, pottery, Americana, Midcentury tchotchkes and more. A perfect afternoon of hunting and haggling if you’re in the market for farmhouse furniture, giant metal letters, gas station signs, architectural salvage and vintage postcards. 8 a.m.-3 p.m. the third Sunday of the month. Through October. $4; $6 early bird (6 a.m. entry). Boone County Fairgrounds, 5819 Idlewild Road, Burlington, Ky., burlingtonantiqueshow.com.
