Freekbass’ Allstar Trio Debuts in Cincy
Chris Sherman (aka Freekbass) and his Funk band (aka Freekbass) maintain one of the most consistent touring schedules of any band based in Cincinnati. Soon, Freekbass (sans band) will be getting a lot busier, especially if his new “all star” project takes off.—- Sherman has teamed up with a trio of fairly high profile musicians…
Neon Swing X-perience
OK, here’s the deal … a “new rule,” if you will: If you move to Cincinnati and are in a really good active band, even though your bandmates might not live here, we still get to claim you as an honorary “local band.” (If your band sucks, well, we’ll pass. Thanks.) So, with this new…
Music: JT Woodruff
When you hear the soaring Post Hardcore roar of Dayton, Ohio’s successful Hawthorne Heights, the first thing you think is probably not, "Wow, that tune would sound great around a campfire and performed on just an acoustic guitar.” But singer JT Woodruff will do just that (minus the campfire) this Saturday at the Southgate House…
Music: eighth blackbird
The new year for Chamber music opens with strings. And flutes. And clarinets, prepared piano, flexatones, harmonicas, bongos and cowbells. That’s standard operating procedure for eighth blackbird, the wildly innovative, Grammy-award winning sextet acclaimed as the country’s premier contemporary music ensemble. Acknowledges flautist Tim Munro, “We like to wreak havoc in a creative way.” The…
Art: Cedric Michael Cox at the Carnegie
Cedric Michael Cox makes use of Cincinnati's ornamental Italianate architecture and gritty textures in city-themed paintings on display in a number of exhibitions. Soul Within Structure is a series of paintings at the Contemporary Arts Center’s UnMuseum that remain up until March 8. Concurrently, a new exhibition of Cox’s work is at the Carnegie Visual…
JT Woodruff
When you hear the soaring Post Hardcore roar of Dayton, Ohio’s successful Hawthorne Heights, the first thing you think is probably not, “Wow, that tune would sound great around a campfire and performed on just an acoustic guitar.” But singer JT Woodruff will do just that (minus the campfire) this Saturday in the Southgate House’s…
‘Road to Memphis 2010’ Blues Showcase
The Blues can often conjure images of sweltering heat and sweat-inducing sun rays, but a swift winter chill can be just as fitting. Be it Seasonal Affective Disorder or just the need for some down and dirty grooves to grind to (and keep warm), the Blues can be your best friend come wintertime. And Blues…
Sports: Winter Hike Series
Every Saturday through Feb. 6, Hamilton County Parks offers up a 4 to 5.5-mile hike along some of the city’s best trails. Fight cabin fever by finding some friends, bundling up and getting your ass out of bed before 10 a.m., which is when the hikes start. As an added bonus and warm reward, a…
Music: Coltrane Motion
Coltrane Motion has crafted a sound that blends sheets of distorted guitar racket with a palpable keyboard atmosphere, itself a hybrid of ’60s Phil Spectorish girl groupisms, ’70s Soul, ’80s Synth Pop and contemporary lo-fi bedroom laptop flights of fancy. Like a bizarre mind meld of New Order, My Bloody Valentine and They Might Be…
Sohio CD Release Party
When CityBeat did a Locals Only profile on Butler County kinda roots kinda indie/alt rockers Sohio a few months ago, it was confirmed that their forthcoming album was finished (after more than three years in the making) and that it would be released in early 2010. What the band members didn’t know was what the…
Comedy: Brendon Walsh
Comedian Brendon Walsh can't decide whether he’s depressed or successful: "Is it a sign of depression if the only reason you take the sweatpants off you’ve been wearing for three days in a row is to use them as a napkin in bed? Or is it a sign of living the dream?" So far, he…
2010 Predictions for the World of Media
Local journalists aren’t exempt from the love/hate generated by the command to compile lists of top stories at the end of each year or decade. More than anything, it’s a chance to remind everyone how smart they were when they wrote the first draft of what’s become history. Done well, reviews can update stories and…
Art: Rookwood Pottery Tour at the CAM
Rookwood Pottery is widely considered to be some of the highest quality, mass-produced pottery ever made. Hand-painted and fired, each of the works is unique and a local treasure. The Cincinnati Art Museum houses an excellent collection of the works in its Cincinnati Wing, featuring vases that date back to the 1880s when Maria Longworth…
Pete Fosco (Profile)
There is a hypnotic quality to Pete Fosco’s guitar manipulations, an Ambient drone that suggests the casual intensity of Steve Reich or Brian Eno. At the same time, there are melodic and harmonic touches that lift Fosco’s sonic texturalism above the realm of simple ambience, to a place where tone poems and more traditional song…
Events: Cavalcade of Customs
If you don’t like cars, baseball and SpongeBob Square Pants then you hate America. This weekend’s Cavalcade of Customs will have everything for the red-blooded American in all of us (and don’t try to act like SpongeBob is gay — that was one of the Teletubbies). In addition to showcasing dozens of hot rods and…
Music: Artists in Residence: Sparrow Bellows
One of the many cool things about the Southgate House is the beloved venue's "Artists in Residence" series, which puts an original local band onstage in Juney's Lounge each Wednesday of the month. It's a great chance to see your favorite local band in a super-intimate and super-loose setting — fans will often get an…
Art: A Shot in the Dark at Fabricate
Fabricate, Northside’s newest gallery (and boutique and supply store), keeps the momentum going with its third exhibit since opening in November. Their latest art offering, A Shot in the Dark, is a photographic survey of Rock musicians and shows (local and non) by area photographer Scott Beseler. According to the press release, Beseler says, “My…
Music: The Bled
Over the past nine years, The Bled has lived up to its name in more ways than one. The Tucson Post-Hardcore quintet formed in 2001, initially billing itself as the Radiation Defiance Theory and then almost immediately (and wisely) shortening it to The Bled. A pair of EPs within their first year raised the band’s…
Art: Chelsey Hughes at NVision
Through the end of this month, Chelsey Hughes will be showing her strange etchings and screenprints of medical anomalies, human oddities and other comparable subject matter at NVision. Hughes is a student at the Art Academy of Cincinnati focusing on illustration and printmaking. Her work will share NVision's space with its usual conglomeration of locally…
Events: Tuesday Night Movies at Grammer’s
Bored on Tuesday nights? Head to Grammer’s for their weekly movie night. Each Tuesday the bar screens two cult classic movies like The Breakfast Club or Dazed and Confused inside the Tarbell Room. The action has moved indoors because it’s freaking cold out, but in the spring the movies will be projected outside, “bike-in” style,…
Music: The Tillers
In addition to the CEA Folk/Americana win, The Tillers are getting ready to release their new album, By the Signs. They are also excited about their inclusion in an upcoming USA Network documentary and series of reports about people who live along Route 50, produced and hosted by veteran TV newsman Tom Brokaw. They celebrate…
Suzie Wong’s Is Delivering
Chef Alex Chin’s new eatery in Walnut Hills is now offering delivery service to nearby neighborhoods. Suzie Wong’s on Madison will deliver food to Walnut Hills, East Walnut Hills, Eden Park and Hyde Park. Diners should call the restaurant at 513-751-3333 or register for delivery on the restaurant’s Web site to see if they're in…
CityBeat Curses Bearcats, Bengals
Everyone’s heard of the “Madden Curse,” the seemingly inevitable downfall of any athlete who appears on the cover of EA Sports’ Madden-series video game. It’s the ultimate irony that the best player one season keeps having his next season ruined. How many years in a row can a new player be the best in the…
Cari Clara Signs to Deep Elm
The evolution of local band Cari Clara continues and enters an exciting new phase in 2010. The project began in 2002 as a recording/songwriting outlet for former Simpletons frontman Eric Diedrichs. While still recording most of the instrumentation solo, Diedrichs eventually assembled a backing band for live shows. Diedrichs now resides in Lexington but manages…
Flipping the ‘Bird
The new year for Chamber music opens with strings. And flutes. And clarinets, prepared piano, flexatones, harmonicas, bongos and cowbells. That’s standard operating procedure for eighth blackbird, the wildly innovative, Grammy-award winning sextet acclaimed as the country’s premier contemporary music ensemble. Acknowledges flautist Tim Munro, “We like to wreak havoc in a creative way.” The…
Licensed to Till
[NEW: Check out Cameron Knight's multimedia show from The Tiller's CD release party here.] As the members of The Tillers awaited their Cincinnati Entertainment Awards Folk/Americana win this past November, the trio was busy fomenting a feud. In a Queen City Folk version of the East Coast/West Coast Rap skirmish, The Tillers and Magnolia Mountain…
Coltrane Motion with Eagle to Squirrel, Bullying Ben Jones
It wasn’t so long ago that Michael Bond and Matt Dennewitz packed up their respective keyboards and guitars and headed for Chicago after plying Cincinnati fans with their eclectic vision of droning noisy Dance Punk. As Coltrane Motion (“More Roscoe P. than John C.” as is stated on the duo’s MySpace page), they've crafted a…
Alvin and the Chimpmunks: The Squeakquel (Review)
This sequel to the update of the singing cartoon chipsters picks up right where the first installment left off — with Alvin and the boys (voiced by Justin Long, Matthew Gubler and Jesse McCartney) smart-alecking their way through the new millennium (and apparently into school) until they meet their match: the Beyonce-inspired Chipettes (voiced by…
The Bled with I Am Messenger and The Paramedic
Over the past nine years, The Bled has lived up to its name in more ways than one. The Tucson Post-Hardcore quintet formed in 2001, initially billing itself as the Radiation Defiance Theory and then almost immediately (and wisely) shortening it to The Bled. A pair of EPs within their first year raised the band’s…
Dining in the New Year: Fresh Spots and Old Faves
What’s old, new and different for the New Year? Long-awaited Ko-Sho, the sushi spot that was hidden on Ninth Street downtown, has re-opened in Northside at 3172 Hamilton Ave. Ko-Sho’s sushi was a best-kept secret. I always found it to be top-quality, but the building they were in left a lot to be desired. I…
The Messenger (Review)
"It must be hard for you," a woman apologetically tells the two officers from the Army's casualty notification division who come to notify her of her husband’s combat death in our ongoing wars in the Middle East. Her concern for their emotional well-being stuns them — they don’t expect next-of-kin to care about anything other…
CityBeat Podcast 41: The Year in Politics
CityBeat News Editor Kevin Osborne discusses the top political and news stories of 2009. Read his related story here. —- If you like what you hear, please support our podcast by subscribing to our podcast in iTunes or via our RSS feed. Also, please tell your friends and share this link on Facebook and MySpace.
KISS, Pot Music and Vic Chesnutt
[HOT] A Kase for KISS Mini Gauge has never been a KISS fan. OK, growing up in the ’70s, there was a month or two we listened to them, but, like Dungeons & Dragons and crystal meth, it was just something we tried because our friends were all into it. Once we realized that, besides…
Taft Café (Lunch Review)
If you work downtown and you want to get away from the office and feel like you’re on a mini vacation, grab lunch at the Taft Museum of Art’s Linder Family Café (316 Pike St., Downtown, 513-241-0343). The Federal-style estate, featuring exhibits such as Drawn by New York, a collection of rarely exhibited works from…
High Strange Drifters
In 2003, a group consisting of some of the best musicians in the area released Ancient Tones and Death Knells, a CD of traditional 17th-19th-century broadside ballads from the UK, spun in a more modern context and released under the band name High Strange Drifters. It was a riveting effort, but the CD release was…
And the Winners Are…
The subjective nature of Top 10 lists inevitably reveals personal interests, quirks, prejudices and tastes, all of which can be either intriguing or infuriating depending on whether you agree with a given compiler’s cinematic worldview. Top 10 lists often yield more questions than answers. What’s the difference between your No. 1 and No. 6 movies…
Dec. 23-29: Merry Christmas!
WEDNESDAY DEC. 23 If there are two things you don’t need, and one of them costs more but is taxed less, which one seems more appealing? Not enough information? Let’s say one makes your skin look like you just got back from vacation and the other makes your face look like you’re 15 years younger…
Fires Enter New Year Burning
Local Indie rockers The Koala Fires have the honor of producing the first Cincinnati-spawned release of the new year/decade and, therefore, it’s the best local release of the year/decade so far! In all seriousness, The Beeping in Our Hearts is a strong effort that certainly has the potential to be on future “best of” lists.…
Going Out With a Thud
By anyone’s account, 2008 was one for the history books with a bitterly fought presidential campaign, the election of an African-American president and the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression. What about this year? Meh, not so much. Although President Barack Obama promised change once he took office, 2009 held little progress on the…
Lowering the Curtain on ’09
Here are 10 things I’ll remember about Greater Cincinnati theater during 2009: 1. Rather than host other theater groups, Covington’s Carnegie Center now produces its own shows. Results have been uneven, but the August-September staging of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with local professionals Mark Hardy and Charlie Clark did a great job of showing the potential…
Space Is the Place
(Editors' Note: CityBeat asked art writer Matt Morris, an artist himself who works with several galleries organizing shows, to talk about his experience witnessing and participating in Cincinnati's alternative-arts scene during a very tough year, 2009) Cincinnati’s vibrant community of alternative-exhibition spaces is my first love in this area. I am boastful of the innovations…
The Bengals and Local Republicans
[LOSER] BOB BEDINGHAUS: The New York Times published an article Christmas Day outlining the $14 million deficit Hamilton County has in its stadium account and the lousy, lopsided lease the county cut with the Bengals for the facility. Bedinghaus, the ex-county commissioner who spearheaded the stadium project and now works for the team, declined an…
The Auburnaires
The Comet in Northside presents a special New Year’s Eve shindig Thursday night with a reunion show by one of Cincinnati’s finest bands of yesteryear. The Auburnaires were kind of the like the house party band for Cincinnati’s Jockey Club/ post-Jockey Club Punk scene, playing down-’n-dirty Garage Soul/Funk/R&B with an electrifying energy. The band —…
Art Museums Draw Crowds, Big Shows in ’09
In what was a tough year economically for the visual arts, Cincinnati museums managed to not only put on some excellent shows but to draw respectable crowds to see them. The Cincinnati Art Museum may have had to put its expansion plans on hold as the recession grinded on, but it used 2009 to present…
Living It in 2009
Hell, it seems like only 52 weeks ago I was writing “Living It in 2008” for this column. Time really does fly when you’re having fun. Just like in 2008, you’ve gotten my always excellent, often brilliant columns just about every other week in 2009 while the rest of the time I’ve recruited (or begged)…
Blessid Union of Souls with Freekbass & Tobotius
Saturday night, you should be all sobered up and ready to get “Stone-d” at The Mad Frog. The Corryville club is hosting a benefit for VH1’s Save the Music foundation, which strives to strengthen music education in public schools. The night’s theme is The Rolling Stones — Blessid Union of Souls, Freekbass & Tobotius and…
Signs of Hope Along the Riverfront
Some people think The Banks, a sprawling $800 million residential and shopping district being built along the Ohio River, is Cincinnati’s best hope for increasing tourism and luring more people to live downtown; others call it a waste of money and an unnecessary gamble during tough economic times. The project is so controversial that Hamilton…
The Shape of Food to Come
A Portland blogger called the Zeroes “A Decade So Bad, It Didn’t Even Have a Name and No One Even Knows It’s Ending.” “The Aughts” never really caught on, and why would they? When we were freaking out in anticipation of Y2K, we thought our biggest problem might be a computer glitch. Now the TSA…
The Year in Your Ear
Thinking back to 10 years ago, wrapping up the year in the local releases meant re-examining a stack of CDs and maybe a cassette or two. In 2009, cassettes are long gone but the format choices have broadened — among the best local recordings of 2009 were vinyl releases (of the 12-inch, 7-inch and 10-inch…
