Minimum Gauge: Sturgill Simpson takes on the Country music establishment
HOT: Fighting for Country Country artist Sturgill Simpson’s latest album hit No. 1 on the Billboard album charts, but he’s never expected to be embraced by the Country-music establishment. Now he’s sure he won’t be after a scathing social media post he wrote about the Academy of Country Music naming an award after Merle Haggard…
Concerts and Clubs Listings (Aug. 31-Sept. 6)
Wednesday 31 Arnold’s Bar and Grill – Todd Hepburn. 7 p.m. Blues/Jazz/Various. Free. Bella Luna – RMS Band. 7 p.m. Soft Rock/Jazz. Free. Blind Lemon – Drew Rochette. 8:30 p.m. Acoustic. Free. Century Inn Restaurant – Paul Lake. 7 p.m. Pop/Rock/Jazz/Oldies/Various. Free. Esquire Theatre – Live ’n Local with Troubadour Dali. 7 p.m. Gypsy Jazz.…
Morning News: Cincinnati’s economy at pre-recession job levels; raises for county employees coming; don’t talk trash about Norwood
Hello Cincy. Here’s a quick news update. First, a bit of good news: the Greater Cincinnati area’s economy has surpassed its pre-recession job levels for the first time, according to a recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. That puts Cincinnati ahead of the state’s overall job growth — Ohio still hasn’t recovered…
Morning News: Green Party’s Jill Stein weighs in on Harambe; Walnut Hills gets big development; Ohio cities say no thanks to legal medicinal weed
Hey all. Hope your weekend was great and you survived the freak storms and flooding that hit out of nowhere yesterday. If you thought that maybe, just maybe, the furor was ending around the death of Harambe, the gorilla shot by staff at the Cincinnati Zoo after a child fell into his cage, well, you’d…
Judge dismisses Chesley lawsuit to block $42 million civil judgment
The Hamilton County judge who erroneously shielded disbarred Indian Hill lawyer Stan Chesley from a $42 million civil judgment has dismissed Chesley’s lawsuit to stop the collection effort. The order was signed Aug. 18 by Common Pleas Judge Robert Ruehlman. He gave no reason for the dismissal. Chesley’s problems are rooted in the fen-phen weight…
Experts interpret art as food in new CAC cookbook
Founded in 1939 by three women, Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center has come a long way from being located in the basement of the Cincinnati Art Museum. Like the city itself, the museum has undergone many changes, and the CAC wants to show off the ever-changing cultural landscape of Cincinnati with a new cookbook, Cuisine Art…
Your Weekend To Do List (Aug. 26-28)
FRIDAY 26 MUSIC: KURT VILE Kurt Vile’s most recent album, 2015’s b’lieve i’m goin down, was a left turn of sorts — a Folk-fortified collection powered less on the Philadelphia native’s soaring guitar leads and more by a laid-back, meditative vibe. “Wheelhouse,” the album’s melancholic centerpiece, sounds like something lifted from prime-era Yo La Tengo,…
Stage Door: Social Relevance or Pure Entertainment — You Choose!
With the Labor Day pause looming, most theaters are readying shows for early September, so there’s not a lot onstage. But the students at Xavier University are already hard at work on a production of Trey Tatum’s Slut Shaming. If that title sounds familiar, it’s because it’s been onstage previously, a production during the 2014…
Morning News: City, unions reach agreement; Donald Trump’s Cincy past coming back to haunt him?; Ohio inundated by political ads
Good morning all. It’s Friday. Before we go off and do fun stuff, let’s get real for a minute and go visit that sometimes befuddling, sometimes depressing, but never boring world we call news. The city of Cincinnati and two unions representing its police officers and other workers have come to an agreement in contract…
Cincy’s biggest funny fest descends on Sawyer Point
Cincy Brew Ha-Ha returns to Sawyer Point Park Thursday through Sunday with its blend of beer and stand-up comedy. Joining local and regional comics will be three headliners: Chris Porter, Ben Bailey and Hal Sparks on successive nights. The Brew Ha-Ha stage will be a welcome change for Porter, who performs Thursday. He’s on the…
The Reanimated reunite for one night only to help bandmate
In most zombie fiction the undead are dispatched by destroying the brain. Whether it be by katana, boomstick or just about every other sharp, heavy or explosive item imaginable, destroying the grey matter is the go-to method when dealing with resurrected corpses. But there is another, less glamorous (and gory) alternative. Some zombies shuffle along…
Your Weekend To Do List (Aug. 19-21)
FRIDAY 19 EVENT: MIDWEST REGIONAL BLACK FAMILY REUNION The Midwest Regional Black Family Reunion — one of the city’s largest family-focused events — returns for its 28th year with three days of festivities. Events kick off with a heritage breakfast and opening ceremony featuring keynote speaker Rev. Otis Moss Jr., pastor emeritus of Cleveland’s Olivet…
Morning News: Council’s strange adventure; Heroin overdoses spike; UC won’t move law school to The Banks
Hello Cincy! Here are a few bits of news this morning. First, Cincinnati City Council held a special session yesterday, even though it’s on recess, and it was… strange. Councilmen Wendell Young and Charlie Winburn called the meeting to talk about City Manager Harry Black’s status with the city. You see, Young, as well as…
What a Week! Aug. 17-23
WEDNESDAY, AUG. 17 It was the end of a bunny-eared era this week as Playboy tycoon Hugh Hefner sold his famed mansion to a neighbor for $100 million. Hefner, now at the ripe age of 90, will remain in the home indefinitely. Buyer Daren Metropoulos, who is in fact a real 33-year-old man and not…
RuPaul’s ‘All Stars Drag Race’ Returns
RuPaul’s All Stars Drag Race 2 (Season Premiere, 8 p.m. Thursday, Logo) features a fresh batch of favorite queens from previous seasons to compete for a spot in the Drag Race Hall of Fame. Ten legendary drag performers will compete in various singing, dancing, acting and other challenges before facing a panel of judges including…
Does ‘Southside With You’ do the right thing?
Oliver Stone’s W., which premiered less than a month before the 2008 election, was about the life — or a particular period in the life — of a sitting president. Well, here we are again. It’s close to the end of the second term of President Barack Obama, the country’s first African-American commander in chief,…
Restored ‘King of Jazz’ gets special screening
King of Jazz debuted in 1930 amid a cinematic era dominated by musical revues and the evolution of two-color Technicolor. One of the most expensive and elaborately staged films of its time, King of Jazz centered on bandleader Paul Whiteman — a large, curiously mustachioed man who in the 1920s was as famous as Babe…
Video games go streetwise in Northside
It was a normal Saturday night in Northside with plenty of foot traffic as people walked along Chase Avenue for a slice of pizza from the Kitchen Factory. Across the street, however, something unusual was going on at Happen, Inc.’s headquarters at the corner of Chase and Hamilton avenues: People were stopping on the sidewalk…
New Downtown Mural Is a True Big Picture
The name of this column — “The Big Picture” — is especially appropriate when discussing the new downtown mural by Brazilian street artist Eduardo Kobra. The work — the largest mural that ArtWorks has yet commissioned — is honoring the late Neil Armstrong, the Ohio-born astronaut who in 1969 became the first person to walk…
Xavier’s lively theater program kicks off
When Stephen Skiles became Xavier University’s director of theater in 2012, he wasn’t exactly a newcomer. His experience and background have helped him in bringing to the school a lively and often topical series of productions, like the one that opens the new season Wednesday night, Slut Shaming. It was first staged at the 2014…
Cincinnati Streetcar: Our Civic Redemption
EDITOR’S NOTE: CityBeat has invited three local activists to write monthly columns on pressing issues facing Cincinnati. Derek Bauman is a public transit and urbanism activist and also a suburban Cincinnati police officer. His column will appear in CityBeat the third week of each month. There is much to celebrate on Sept. 9, 2016 —…
Sound Advice: Maps & Atlases with Multimagic, Current Events, Room for Zero, Daniel in Stereo and more (Aug. 27)
Music and mathematics are inextricably bound. In a certain sense, music is the physical expression of math, the rhythmic sound of numbers taken out of the theoretical world and made tangible. Maybe that’s why the genre term Math Rock is perfectly descriptive, as it denotes both the cerebral and visceral elements of the style. And…
Sound Advice: Lily & Madeleine with Swear and Shake (Aug. 26)
Sisters Lily and Madeleine Jurkiewicz are perfect examples of the social media paradigm at work in the music industry’s current state. The Indianapolis natives began their musical partnership in high school when they recorded themselves singing covers of favorite songs and posted the videos on YouTube. Renowned producer/engineer Paul Mahern (John Mellencamp, The Afghan Whigs,…
Sound Advice: Robbie Fulks with Willy Tea Taylor, Tim Easton, The Harmed Brothers and many more at Whispering Beard Folk Festival (Aug. 26)
Considering the tongue-not-so-firmly-in-cheek wise-assery that has defined Robbie Fulks’ 30-year career on the periphery of Country music, it’s not surprising that Fulks looks to Roger Miller for inspiration. The difference is Miller routinely hit the top of the Country and Pop charts while Fulks, despite his songwriting brilliance, has toiled primarily in the shadow of…
Whispering Beard Returns, Bewilderfest Debuts
• The ever-growing Whispering Beard Folk Festival returns this week for four days of Folk, Americana, Bluegrass, Country and Roots music, much of it provided by artists from the Greater Cincinnati area. The festival (which is “camping-friendly”) takes place at the Old Mill Campground (7249 First St., Friendship, Ind.), which is about an hour southwest…
Experts Interpreting Art as Food
Founded in 1939 by three women, Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center has come a long way from being located in the basement of the Cincinnati Art Museum. Like the city itself, the museum has undergone many changes, and the CAC wants to show off the ever-changing cultural landscape of Cincinnati with a new cookbook, Cuisine Art…
Good Grapes and Great Tradition
I know it’s tempting these days to do a little eye roll when someone says they discovered a great new industrial space in Over-the-Rhine, but Skeleton Root, a new winery opening on McMicken Avenue in OTR, is truly remarkable. Every time I step foot into a new business with a genuine newness about it in…
2016 Fall Arts Preview
Fall is when the new year begins as far as the annual arts calendar is concerned. It’s when major institutions and organizations like the Cincinnati Art Museum, Contemporary Arts Center, Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Ballet, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Ensemble Theatre, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company and many others spring back to…
Our 25 Favorite Picks to Click
COMEDY: BREW HA-HA The return of Brew Ha-Ha, the popular mixture of comedy and beer that takes place at Sawyer Point on the riverfront every August, is set for Thursday through Saturday. Top local and regional comics (and there are some great ones here) are joined by national acts, including headliners Chris Porter (Thursday), Ben…
Home Away from Home for the CSO
Just three days after Labor Day, on Sept. 8, the Classical music fall season goes into high gear as the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra begins its 2016-17 series. But there’s much else packed into the season, as the area’s burgeoning Classical music scene offers standard repertory and new takes on traditional forms in large concert halls…
Expand Your Horizons with Local Theater
Looking for guidance regarding theater productions to catch this fall? Here are some shows categorized so you can zero in on those you’ll enjoy. Great Literary Works Onstage Theater has a way of telling stories — enacting them before a live audience — that vividly brings them to life. When great and familiar literary works…
The Search for Movie Gold Begins with Fall
Fall is when the movies aiming for awards glory — and success with discerning audiences — begin their releases. The season begins when film-lovers start gathering for the premiere slate of international film festivals — Venice (the 73rd edition runs Aug. 31_Sept. 10), Telluride (the 43rd event is Sept. 2_5), Toronto (the 41st installment unspools…
Focusing on Photography and Upcoming Museum Shows
It’s somewhat of an overstatement — but only a mild one — to say that Cincinnati’s upcoming fall visual arts season can be summed up in one word: FotoFocus. Basically, you need to plan your entire October around it. With FotoFocus now in its third installment, the biennial devoted to photography/lens-based art continues to grow…
