Q&A with Peter Frampton
Peter Frampton is a true guitar legend, revered by every single one of his peers. As his Guitar Circus tour rolls into town this week, crowds will be amazed by the beautiful music from his catalog of 40 years of music, as well as performances by Blues legend B.B. King and special guests Sonny Landreth…
Heavy Glow
The members of Psych/Soul/Rock trio Heavy Glow may be getting their mail at a Californian address these days, but guitarist/vocalist Jared Mullins hails from the North Coast and his trippy Hard Rock/Blues/Memphis Soul sensibilities are filtered through his Cleveland, Ohio, roots and experiences. Mullins, originally a drummer, relocated to San Diego and found bassist Joe…
Jake Owen
Jake Owen is playing Riverbend and we can’t think of a better way to spend a summer night than with him. Owen’s rise to fame was quick, going from barroom entertainment to a signed artist in no time. And he has Kenny Chesney to thank. Chesney was originally set to record Owen’s song “Ghosts,” but…
Sonny Landreth
When Sonny Landreth plays guitar, for himself or for someone else, the sound is a sonic fingerprint. And as such, it’s a fairly easy exercise to pick out Landreth’s signature style from someone who is merely emulating it. When you hear Landreth launch into his unique hybrid of slide, fingerpicking and fragmented chording, a sound…
Diarrhea Planet
Although it sounds like potentially the worst show on the National Geographic channel, Diarrhea Planet is actually the irrefutable evidence that Nashville, Tenn.’s music scene is defined by much more than big hats and open mics at the Bluebird Cafe. In Diarrhea Planet’s wild world, a band requires three unhinged guitarists, a rhythm section with…
Poll: Higher Income Means Better Health
In results that will likely surprise no one, the 2013 Ohio Health Issues Poll found that higher-income Ohio adults reported better health than those with lower incomes. In 2013, 59 percent of Ohio adults above 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or roughly $15,856 for a single-person household, reported “excellent” or “very good” health,…
Sycamore Township Man Dies After Police Struggle
A Sycamore Township man died overnight after the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office used a Taser to subdue him during a brief struggle. While responding to a 911 call, deputies found Gary Roell, 59, half-clothed and smashing windows behind a resident’s home, according to the police report. When deputies ordered Roell to the ground, he charged…
Music: The Goat Rodeo Sessions
Riverbend Music Center — which is having one of the best-selling seasons in its 29-year history — presents one of its most unique concerts of the summer Tuesday as the venue’s PNC Pavilion welcomes The Goat Rodeo Sessions (GRS) in for a Classical/Bluegrass extravaganza. The group features modern Classical music legend Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile…
Music: School of Rock Mason: Green Day vs. Red Hot Chili Peppers
Ever sit around wondering who would win a musical competition between Green Day and the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Whether you have or not, the students of School of Rock Mason will answer the question for you during their Battle Royale: Green Day vs. Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. 6 p.m. $6; $8 at the…
Sports: Cincinnati Bengals
Is this the year the Bengals finally win a playoff game? It’s been 23 long years since such an occurrence took place, but this year’s club, again led by longtime head man Marvin Lewis, seems as deep and talented as any since Paul Brown left this earth. Rookie tight end Tyler Eifert gives quarterback Andy…
Event: Midwest Black Family Reunion
Head down to Sawyer Point to get in touch with distant relatives or simply make some new friends for the 25th anniversary of the largest family reunion in Cincinnati, the Midwest Black Family Reunion. Gather your whole family together for a weekend of fun and culture as you get in touch with the historic roots…
Event: Indie Craft Market
Tired of waiting for your favorite Etsy finds to ship? Are your DIY pins on Pinterest all turning out to be an epic fail? Satisfy your craving for all things handmade at the Indie Craft Fair on Fountain Square — no shipping required. From terrariums to tutus, and jewelry to comic books, the hipster-approved and…
Event: Movies at Smale Riverfront Park
Smale Riverfront Park is offering families some eclectic summer activities in the form of movies, music and theater during their “Family Summer Fun” events. Head out to the park this week for a screening of Oz the Great and Powerful. Be sure to check out performers from Cincinnati Circus before the show. See Cincinnati Circus…
Art: The Second Coming: The London Police at BLDG
Some three years since they last visited BLDG, a creative refuge in Covington, Ky., internationally renowned street artists The London Police (TLP) have returned to create more public art for the people of Greater Cincinnati. Whereas in 2010 they painted one of their iconic LADS characters (black outlined smiley dudes with round heads and big…
Event: Friends of the Public Library Warehouse Sale
Restock your bookshelf or DVD collection this week by attending the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County’s August Friends of the Public Library warehouse sale. From classic authors like Jane Austen to entertaining children’s books, a variety of gently used hardback and paperback books will be available in all genres at bargain prices. Also…
Comedy: Dan Gabriel
“When I was a younger comic, my material was more absurd,” Dan Gabriel says, “because I didn’t have as much life experience to talk about. Now that I’m a dad and a husband and living in Los Angeles — and I’m trying to be a writer and a producer — I’m wearing all these different…
Event: Meet Colonel Sanders
Despite the fact that he is no longer of our earthly realm, visitors can “meet” the founder of the world’s second largest fast food chain, Kentucky Fried Chicken’s Harland “Colonel” Sanders, at the Boone County Public Library. L. Henry Dowell, an internationally produced playwright and native Kentuckian, is currently touring as Colonel Sanders as part…
Classes: Garden Harvest Preservation
Green-leaning outlets around town are trying to help you make the most of your summer garden harvest with instructional classes on how to preserve your garden goods via freezing, drying, pickling, fermenting and canning. On Wednesday, Besty DeMateo and Jennifer Even of the Ohio State University Extension Agency, Hamilton County, will be at the Civic…
Sports: Western & Southern Open
World-renowned tennis players take to the court at the Lindner Family Tennis Center for the Western & Southern Open. Former champions, including seven-time Grand Slam singles champion Venus Williams — along with the likes of Maria Sharapova, Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and more — will compete to take home the tournament’s trophy. Entertainment from 30…
Onstage: Don’t Drink the Water
When you hear Woody Allen’s name, you probably think movies. But he’s also written a few plays, and one of them is currently onstage at the Showboat Majestic on the Public Landing. His 1966 farce, Don’t Drink the Water, was a solid hit on Broadway, running for nearly two years. It’s set in an American…
Feds’ Breach of Reporter/Source Confidentiality Stifles Media
Don’t you just hate it when a president and attorney general expect us to trust them? Missile Gap. Watergate. Tonkin Gulf. Weapons of Mass Destruction. War on Terror. All stinking precedents. Now, it’s Obama and Holder and their faux contrition for overzealous feds snooping in reporters’ emails and phone calls. Investigators use those records to identify people…
Morning News and Stuff
A tea party-backed pension amendment yesterday cleared the hurdle of 7,443 petition signatures required to appear on the November ballot . Cincinnati for Pension Reform, the group behind the amendment, had previously paid nearly $70,000 to petitioners to gather signatures. The amendment would privatize pension plans so the city and city employees hired after January…
Pension Amendment Earns Spot on November Ballot
The tea party-backed amendment that would semi-privatize Cincinnati’s ailing pension system gathered enough signatures earn a place on the November ballot. Of 14,215 signatures scrutinized so far, 8,653 were valid, according to Sally Krisel, deputy director of the Hamilton County Board of Elections. That clears the requirement of 7,443 signatures, but the numbers will grow…
Guest Blog: Musicians’ Desk Reference Content Completed
Editor's Note: Brian Penick of local music promotions company The Counter Rhythm Group is guest blogging for CityBeat monthly to provide a behind-the-scenes look at his journey to release his interactive industry guidebook, Musicians’ Desk Reference. Click here for his previous blog entries.Aaaaaaaaaaand we are done! Well, kind of … After nearly two years of…
Sexy, Salacious ‘Chicago’ Delivers at The Carnegie
Critic's Pick The Broadway revival of Chicago, the satirical show about murder, celebrity and corruption, is the longest-running American musical in Broadway history; the 2002 film of Chicago won the Academy Award. Fred Kander and John Ebb’s show has a memorable score, an array of tongue-in-cheek characters and is perhaps best known for Bob Fosse’s…
City to Cut Ties with SoMoLend
The city of Cincinnati is suspending its relationship with SoMoLend, the local startup that the city partnered with in December to connect small businesses and startups to $400,000 in loans. The broken partnership comes in response to accusations of fraud from the Ohio Division of Securities that have forced SoMoLend to stop giving out loans…
Morning News and Stuff
New York City mayoral candidates see Cincinnati Public Schools’ (CPS) community learning centers as a model for their city’s schools . The centers bring members of the community, including dental clinics, mental health therapists and mentors from local banks and churches, to a school hub to keep students engaged after traditional classroom hours end. But…
The Cincinnati Museum Center’s 1940s Weekend Keeps Visitors Swinging
On Saturday and Sunday, the Cincinnati Museum Center’s History Museum will host its annual 1940’s Weekend, where a menagerie of dance, history and antique cars await. Elizabeth Pierce, the vice president of marketing and communications shared, some information on what to look forward to at the event. “Cincinnati History Museum staff were inspired to present…
Morning News and Stuff
Ohio energy provider FirstEnergy, who last June won a bid to provide Cincinnati with “100 percent green” aggregated energy, was fined $43.3 million yesterday by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio for grossly overcharging its customers for renewable energy credits, or RECs. The issue dealt with FirstEnergy’s overcharging of customers across Northern Ohio from 2009-2011,…
Stage Door: Comedies and Classics
Summer is flying by, or so it seems. This is the final weekend for you to see Cincinnati Shakespeare's production of The 39 Steps (CityBeat review here), a satiric adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1935 film of espionage and intrigue. Making it all the more amusing is the fact that the story is performed by…
Mad Love for Mad Anthony: The Sequel
The Mad Love for Mad Anthony benefit on July 26, organized by the ever-wonderful Kelly Thomas, was a rousing success by any reputable yardstick. The Southgate House Revival was packed to the rafters with friends, fans and family turning out to support Mad Anthony, whose late June van accident had destroyed their touring conveyance, a…
Report: Childhood Poverty Worse in Hamilton County than State
Hamilton County fares worse than Ohio overall in a series of measurements for children’s economic well-being, health, education and safety, according to a report released Aug. 7. The 2013 “Ohio’s Kids Count” report from the Children’s Defense Fund and Annie E. Casey Foundation finds Hamilton County has a higher median income than Ohio does on…
FirstEnergy Penalized $43.3 Million for Overcharging Customers
On Wednesday the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio unanimously ruled that Akron, Ohio-based energy supplier FirstEnergy Corp. must credit its Ohio customers $43.3 million for overcharging for renewable energy credits (RECs) from 2009-2011 that it purchased from its affiliate, FirstEnergy Solutions. RECs are tradable, non-tangible energy credits that represent proof that one megawatt-hour (MWh) of…
Morning News and Stuff
City Council met yesterday for the first time since June and passed various development deals that span six Cincinnati neighborhoods. The deals include a 15-year tax abatement for the second phase of The Banks, which will produce 305 apartments and 21,000 square feet of retail space; several other apartment projects; new Over-the-Rhine headquarters for Cintrifuse,…
Council Approves Various Development Deals
City Council met today for the first time since June and passed several development deals and projects spanning six Cincinnati neighborhoods. The approved deals include a 15-year tax abatement for the second phase of The Banks, which will produce 305 apartments and 21,000 square feet of retail space; several other apartment projects; new Over-the-Rhine headquarters…
Epitomizing Cincinnati?
Cincinnatians don't like their city to be pigeonholed. At least not in a manner they perceive to be off target.That's so Cincinnati. BuzzFeed's "BuzzFeed Community" site helps the list-empire target specific cities and regions, resulting in one of the more shared links of the week, at least locally — "31 Ways to Tell You're From…
Council Members Rally Behind Racial Disparity Study
Cincinnati council members and community leaders today explained and defended plans to use the parking lease to fund a disparity study that would gauge whether the city should change its contracting policies to favorably target minority- and women-owned businesses. But before City Council unanimously passed the motion at today's meeting, it was amended to allow…
Lemmy Lives, Rocky Rocker Romances and Skinny Sabbath
HOT: Lemmy’s Not Dead The Keith Richards of Hard Rock, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, was recently declared dead … by Twitter. It’s nothing new for Lemmy, who dies quite a bit (the singer/bassist told an interviewer in 2010 that a French magazine once published his obituary). This time, at least something happened to spawn the rumor.…
Archer’s Paradox Releases Debut Full-Length
Friday, the free, weekly MidPoint Indie Summer series on Fountain Square features headliners Bad Veins , the Cincy-based Indie Pop act with loads of acclaim thanks to a pair of phenomenal nationally released albums and frequent touring. Earlier this year, singer/songwriter/guitarist/tape operator Benjamin Davis parted ways with founding drummer Sebastien Schultz. Davis has since been…
Saying Goodbye to the ‘Bad’ Guys
Since 2008, fans of Breaking Bad (9 p.m. Sundays, AMC) have watched the show’s central character, Walter White (Bryan Cranston), make like the series’ title and slowly shed his morals, becoming a more ruthless beast — a far cry from his beginnings as a meek, sickly chemistry teacher. Now, in the final eight episodes, we…
Harlequins’ Romance
T he Harlequins’ press page reveals that genre tags and band comparisons get thrown around like casino dice when referencing the Cincinnati trio. Psych Pop, Surf Rock, Garage, Punk, straight-up Rock and various permutations — plus bands as disparate as Guided by Voices, The Cramps, Pink Floyd and The Doors — have all hinted at…
Paul Schrader Tries a New Way with ‘The Canyons’
Paul Schrader has had a long and often tumultuous career in movies. The 67-year-old Michigan native began his obsession with cinema as a critic in the early 1970s, one of the most creatively fertile periods in American movie history. It wasn’t long before he began working on his own scripts, including one called Taxi Driver…
Red Roost Tavern at the Hyatt Regency (Review)
Y ears ago, there wasn’t anything particularly special about a hotel restaurant, but a few Cincinnati benchmarks exchanged a once formulaic model for fresh, locally sourced ingredients. After a $23 million hotel-wide renovation, the Hyatt Regency introduces their new restaurant, the farm-to-table Red Roost Tavern, which joins top-notch hotel eateries like The Palace, Orchids and…
Wheeling & Dealing with ‘The Millers’
Maybe I’m as juvenile as my wife thinks, but the bit in trailer for Rawson Marshall Thurber’s We’re the Millers where Jason Sudeikis, as a scheming drug mule who hires a fake family to smuggle drugs across the border, launches into a Bane voice (spoofing Tom Hardy’s villain from The Dark Knight Rises) just sends…
Merit Clothiers Earns Badge of Honor
Fifteen years after finishing Girl Scouts, Cincinnati natives Brittany Yantos and Brittany Yoder are still earning merit badges. Not only earning but designing and selling badges as well to commemorate adult accomplishments — their 2013 series includes badges for things such as coming out, buying a home, planting a garden, learning a foreign language and…
Morning News and Stuff
Six out of nine City Council members signed a motion to use money from the city’s parking lease to conduct a disparity study that would gauge whether minority- and women-owned businesses should be favorably targeted by the city’s contracting policies. Democrats Roxanne Qualls, Yvette Simpson, Wendell Young, Chris Seelbach, Pam Thomas and P.G. Sittenfeld signed…
CAC’S Performance Season Highlights the Experimental
In its two years in existence, the Contemporary Arts Center’s performance season — curated by Drew Klein — has grown in importance, if not become equal in interest to the museum’s exhibition season. At a time when contemporary museums nationwide are stressing cutting-edge performance as part of their mission, the CAC performance season keeps Cincinnati…
Persistence Of Vision
T he Western & Southern Open, which has taken place in one form or another in the Greater Cincinnati area since 1899, begins Saturday. For the arithmetically challenged, that’s 114 years, which makes it the oldest tennis tournament in the United States still in its original city. And it’s not like it’s just hanging on…
Cranley Outraising Qualls
Ex-Councilman John Cranley is outraising Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls in the 2013 mayoral race by roughly $124,000. Some are calling the fundraising lead an important indicator of strength, but the history and research of money in politics show the lead might not matter much, if at all. The numbers came in July 31 as political…
More Layoffs at ‘The Enquirer’
Although it’s moving staff out of its offices in Kentucky, The Cincinnati Enquirer intends to continue publishing a daily Kentucky edition with unique content for Northern Kentucky. Editor Steve Wilson was among those laid off from The Kentucky Enquirer on Aug. 1. He will remain at the newspaper for four weeks, along with several colleagues…
Incoming Federal Cuts to Hit Low-Income Ohio Families
With a temporary boost to the federal food stamp program coming to an end this November, more than 1.8 million Ohioans — 16 percent of the state’s population — will receive significantly less food aid, according to an Aug. 2 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). The report found that the…
LumenoCity Glows with Cincinnati’s Success
It’s impossible to separate what happened in Washington Park on Aug. 3 and Aug. 4 from the economic revitalization Cincinnati has achieved in the past few years. Four years ago, Over-the-Rhine was considered the most dangerous neighborhood in the United States. Two years ago, the park was largely abandoned and seen as too dangerous by…
Curtain Closing?
Months of strife between the nonprofit tasked with programming and raising money for the renovation of the Emery Theatre and the organizations above it came to a head last week when the Requiem Project sued the University of Cincinnati, which owns the building, and two organizations that run it. Meanwhile, UC and the chain of…
A League of Their Own
W hitney Woodburn had been to a few Delhi Skirt Games when she was a child, but she never imagined a cross-dressing softball game would be the event that, for her and her family, would be the key to overcoming a series of obstacles that nearly destroyed her family’s livelihood. And she certainly wasn’t…
Cincinnati vs. the World 8.07.2013
The first in-vitro hamburger, grown from an unharmed cow’s muscle cells, was served in London; its developers hope to get it onto supermarket shelves within a decade or so to deal with skyrocketing meat consumption rates. WORLD +1 A 7-year-old and a 10-year-old have been placed under a gag order, along with their parents, preventing…
Planes
Are there any other inanimate objects or animals for bored screenwriters to bring to life on the big screen? The “creative team” — Pixar CCO and Executive Producer John Lasseter — behind Cars rolls out Planes as if this were the next step on the path to genius and stacks the deck with a story about a crop-duster named…
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
The budding franchise based on Rick Riordan’s young adult series about modern incarnations of classic mythological demigods and heroes returns for another box office battle as Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman), the son of Poseidon and his band of near-immortal siblings (including Alexandra Daddario and Brandon T. Jackson) embark on a quest to find the Golden…
Sixteen Legitimate Concerns About Birth and Babies
I recently discovered that I am at the age when the average U.S. woman gives birth to her first baby. Children are a miracle and a blessing and, well, nowhere on my radar at this point. Baby-free is the way for me but, occasionally, the topic of my future family comes up, or, upon holding…
Lovelace
Directors Rob Epstein (Academy Award-winning producer of the documentary features Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt and The Times of Harvey Milk) and Jeffrey Friedman (director of Common Threads) tackle one of the more controversial figures in film in this biopic examining the life of Linda Lovelace (Amanda Seyfried). Known as the star of Deep Throat, Lovelace endured much abuse…
Elysium
Writer-director Neill Blomkamp follows up his stunning breakout District 9 with another nasty, gritty sci-fi actioner that aims to incorporate social commentary into the mix. Elysium explores a future in which the huddled masses scurry about on the Earth’s surface (imagine a global third world) while the wealthy reside on an immaculate space station with no health and safety…
A Lesson in the Lessers
Election Day may seem like a long ways off, but the Sept. 10 primary pitting the only two viable mayoral candidates is barely more than one month away. Libertarian Jim Berns dropped out and re-entered without much affect, and Sandra Queen Noble, the mayoral candidate most like an annoying sweat bee, lingers but, as per…
Worst Week Ever!: July 31-Aug. 6
WEDNESDAY JULY 31 People who say that things are “meta” are usually annoying and prone to trying to make themselves appear way more intelligent and informed than they truly are. That said, there seems to be a debate within the debates when it comes to the upcoming Cincinnati mayoral election. The heart of the issue…
