Guided to ‘Voices’
Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter have known each other since attending junior high together in upstate New York in the late ’90s. Their friendship came in handy when, in 2007, Carter was looking to start a new musical project, one in which Hip Hop beats could commingle with atmospheric Indie Pop. Enter Phantogram. The duo’s…
High Setlist Hopes
Tension is building as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, with special guest guitarist Tom Morello, prepare to “open” their 2014 U.S. tour on Tuesday at U.S. Bank Arena. “Open” is in quotations because, after the tour was announced, Springsteen added another date — a free show at Dallas’ March Madness Music Festival two…
Cincinnati Bands Turn to Fans for Ambitious Projects
• In just a few weeks, Cincinnati sextet Winterhymn will set off on its biggest adventure yet when it embarks on the Paganfest America tour (facebook.com/PaganfestUSA). The band will be the only American act on the tour, which showcases groups that perform Folk Metal, a fusion of (duh) traditional Folk music and Heavy Metal (often…
St. Vincent
A nnie Clark, aka St. Vincent, is a mysterious lady whose increasingly impressive musical output is informed by her expressive guitar playing and catchy, intricately crafted songs. St. Vincent’s just-released, self-titled fourth album is rife with contradiction, syncopated rhythms and surreal flourishes, the work of an artist who continues to expand her horizons. “This record…
Dom Flemons with Buffalo Wabs & the Price Hill Hustle
For eight years, Dom Flemons was a part of the retro-yet-groundbreaking Carolina Chocolate Drops. Formed at the Black Banjo Gathering that took place at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., in 2005, the group’s goal was to recapture the African American string band heritage that was nearly lost over the years. In the 1700s, 1800s…
Bobaflex
More than a decade and a half ago, brothers Marty and Shaun McCoy assembled a group of friends in their native West Virginia to form Bobaflex, and it’s been hard work and drama ever since. What would you expect from direct descendants of the McCoy clan, whose feud with Kentucky’s Hatfields nearly started a second…
Twenty One Pilots with Juicy J, NONONO and Hunter Hunted
At 2012’s inaugural Bunbury Music Festival in Cincinnati, I was amazed at the number of people walking around in Twenty One Pilots T-shirts. There were so many, in fact, I began to wonder if one of the top-of-the-poster bands had bailed and been replaced by this well-followed upstart. That was not the case, obviously. Twenty…
Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 (Review)
Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, nearly finished with the immense task of staging all 38 of Shakespeare’s surviving plays over its 20-year history, has launched another noteworthy effort: It’s staging — in chronological order — the eight plays that constitute the “History Cycle,” documenting dynastic struggles in 14th- and 15th-century England. When this five-year project is finished,…
Your Weekend To Do List: 3/28-3/30
The Cincinnati Art Museum’s monthly Art After Dark series is a really cool way to experience the historic art institution. Each final Friday, the CAM opens its doors after hours for a themed night of gallery tours, live performances and a cash bar with happy hour drinks and appetizers. Friday’s Art After Dark: Rococo Vibrations…
A Delicate Ship (Review)
Critic's Pick The Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park hit a home run with its world premiere of Anna Ziegler’s A Delicate Ship on the Shelterhouse stage. It’s the story of an unanticipated love triangle: Thirtysomethings Sarah and Sam are awash in the early months of love, a relationship they’ve both wished for but only just…
Opening Day Festivities
Opening Day is probably the coolest thing about Cincinnati. What other city has its own self-proclaimed, sports-related holiday respected by Fortune 500 companies, public school systems and private businesses alike? No one should have to do anything on Monday, March 31 except celebrate the upcoming Reds season and the fact that in 1869 some smart…
Winterhymn Preps for Paganfest America Tour
Spring has sprung, in name at least. For music fans, this means that more bands will exit from their hibernations and start scheduling shows and tours. Cincinnati’s own Folk Metal warriors, Winterhymn, have done exactly that, earning a slot on this year’s Paganfest America. The local sextet will be the only American band on the…
Blaze Fast-Fire’d Pizza Coming to Mason
Blaze Fast-Fire'd Pizza, a fast-casual build-your-own pizza restaurant, is coming to Mason mid-May. Using the assembly-line format (similar to Chipotle, Fusian, etc.), each guest can walk down the counter and create their own custom-built pizza, fired in a blazing oven and ready in 180 seconds. Each customer starts with a house-made 11-inch crust and then…
Washington Platform’s 28th Annual Oyster Festival Starts Friday
Washington Platform kicks off its 28th annual Oyster Festival Friday, March 28. Enjoy more than 40 fresh oyster dishes, including smoked oyster salad, oyster-stuffed jalapenos, fresh-shucked oysters on the half-shell and more, through May 3. And, like any good food festival, Washington Platform will also be hosting oyster-related contests and events, including a pearl count contest…
PUBLIC Kicks Off Weekly New Track Series
If you are a betting man or woman and the bet is “What Cincinnati band will be next to break out into the national spotlight?” putting your money on Indie Pop/Rock trio PUBLIC would be one of the safer wagers you could make. The three gifted young musicians craft some incredibly catchy music that would…
I Just Can’t Get Enough
Children of the ‘80s likely remember Jem, the glitziest high-tech cartoon of the decade. The series followed Jerrica Benton (hottest name ever), band manager and HBIC at Starlight Music who used a holographic computer to transform into the frontwoman of Jem and the Holograms. It’s basically the blueprint for every show featuring secret alter-egos (lookin’…
2014 Sports & Recreation Staff Picks
BEST LOCAL SPORTS STAR TURNED INTO A CARTOON On March 17 last year, Reds star Joey Votto made his prime-time debut … as a cartoon character. Votto voiced the animated version of himself, alongside David Ortiz and Jimmy Rollins on the now-canceled The Cleveland Show on Fox. During the episode, the trio is recruited by…
2014 Sports & Recreation Reader Picks
Athlete Joey Votto A.J. Green Brandon Phillips Musketeer (Current) Justin Martin Semaj Christon Chris Mack Team (Professional) Reds Bengals Cyclones Bearcat (Current) Sean Kilpatrick Mick Cronin Justin Jackson Bengal (Current) A.J. Green Giovani Bernard Andy Dalton Coach/Manager High School John Rodenberg (Moeller Football) Julie Plitt (Wyoming Volleyball) Dan Mueller (Highlands Football) Coach/Manager Pro or College Mick Cronin (UC…
2014 Public Eye Reader Picks
Blog 365 Things To Do Cincinnati Wine Me, Dine Me CityBeat Staff Blog Cincinnatian Nick Lachey Pete Rose Jeff Ruby Conservative Bill Cunningham Rob Portman John Cranley Do Gooder Matthew 25: Ministries Freestore Foodbank Crossroads Church Friend to the Environment Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden Cincinnati Nature Center Dan Korman (Park + Vine) Journalist Paul…
2014 Shops & Services Reader Picks
New Store (Since 3/2013) Rookwood Pottery The Booksellers on Fountain Square Queen City Cookies The Spicy Olive Jungle Jim’s Eastgate Rock Paper Scissors Spun Bicycles Article Dandy Haberdashery Hinge Animal Rescue/Shelter SPCA Adore-A-Bull Rescue Recycled Doggies Antique Store Duck Creek Antique Mall Wooden Nickel Antiques Ohio Valley Antique Mall Arts & Crafts Supplies Michaels Hobby Lobby…
Welcome to the Best of Cincinnati 2014
Producing CityBeat’s annual Best of Cincinnati issue is a daunting task — months of managing online voting; weeks of soliciting ideas for the city’s best people, places and businesses to feature in our staff picks; and long hours editing, fact checking and analyzing the wealth of information about our town that ends up inside these…
2014 Public Eye Staff Picks
BEST GROUP STOPPING POLITICIANS FROM DOING STUPID THINGS One of the reasons City Council ultimately kept the Cincinnati streetcar project going was Believe in Cincinnati. The scrappy group, formed within a month of the November election, quickly put together an impressive coalition of residents and businesses that local officials simply could not ignore. The group…
2014 Urban Life Reader Picks
Apartment Community Current @ the Banks American Can Lofts One Lytle Place Bed and Breakfast Gaslight Bed & Breakfast The Clifton House Murphin Ridge Inn Builder/Developer 3CDC Turner Construction Drees Building Union Terminal Music Hall Carew Tower Church Festival Panegyri Festival St. Rita’s Immaculate Heart of Mary Cincinnati Neighborhood Over-the-Rhine Hyde Park Northside College/University University…
2014 Urban Life Staff Picks
BEST REASON TO VISIT THE ZOO THIS SPRING Born in late 2013, Santos the baby ocelot is the newest, most adorable addition to the Cincinnati Zoo. He’s pounced into the hearts of the international media through the zoo’s Twitter and Facebook posts showing videos and photos of him playing with Blakely, a doggie that lives…
Colerain Oil Pipe Back in Operation as Cleanup Continues
A pipeline that burst in a Colerain nature preserve last week spilling thousands of gallons of oil is back in operation after crews repaired a 5-inch-long crack in the bottom of the pipe. Colerain Township Fire Department Captain Steven Conn says officials shut the pipe down shortly after the spill on March 17 and have…
2014 Eats Staff Picks
BEST BRUNCH TO AVOID THE GLARE OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC When you need a good meal to nurse your hangover but you feel like hiding in a dark hole, the Boom Boom Room at Virgil’s Café is for you. Owner Matt Buschle has a corner booth where you can draw the drapes and seclude yourself…
Streaming to Success?
HOT: Streaming to Success? Last summer, fans of Fifth Harmony campaigned to boost the Pop act’s chart position by asking followers to put their song on repeat, 24/7, on streaming sites like Spotify. It worked. Now, unsigned Michigan Funk band Vulfpeck has announced a cleverer scheme to rig the streaming game, releasing Sleepify — 10…
Health Insurance Deadline Approaching
Enroll America, a nonprofit designed to help citizens who are uninsured wade through the insurance process, stopped by Cincinnati on March 17 during a four-city Ohio tour meant to educate citizens on their health insurance options ahead of a March 31 deadline to sign up for coverage. The Get Covered America campaign visited the Word…
2014 Eats Reader Picks
Overall Restaurant Boca Bakersfield OTR Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse Montgomery Inn The Precinct Eli’s BBQ A Tavola Moerlein Lager House Sotto Nada New Restaurant (Since 3/2013) Sotto Incline Public House The Eagle OTR Taste of Belgium – Short Vine Sleepy Bee Café Ruth’s Parkside Café Jack Binion’s Steak House French Crust Café Cooper’s Hawk Salazar Appetizers …
The Pinstripes Celebrate Decade of Music-Making
Hard-touring Ska/Reggae sextet The Pinstripes have played more than 500 shows over the past 10 years. This Friday, to celebrate that impressive milestone, the Cincinnati band is hosting a 10th anniversary party/concert at the Southgate House Revival (111 E. Sixth St., Newport, Ky., southgatehouse.com). Music starts at 9 p.m. The Cliftones and DAAP Girls open…
Kicking Off a Legacy
Last October, Bobby Bare was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. His long career featured some twists and turns that found him leaving his southern Ohio home to try and find success in California and elsewhere before eventually landing in Nashville. Along the way, Cincinnati’s Fraternity Records played an unexpected part in his…
2014 Arts & Nightlife Staff Picks
BEST WAY TO HEAR NEW AND DIFFERENT RECORDED MUSIC Forget Pandora and Spotify. With the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County’s CD of the Month Club, real people will send you a CD based on your tastes to your local branch from their extensive collection. You just fill out an online form and wait…
The Rebuilder
Mick Cronin is seething. His University of Cincinnati Bearcats basketball team has just lost a hard-fought game to the Louisville Cardinals — on a last-second shot, no less — and he’s clearly in no mood to answer questions about it during a brief, tension-laced postgame press conference on Feb. 22. Someone asks if it was one…
Lt. Governor Candidate Blasts Kasich’s Tax Cut Proposal
Lt. Governor-candidate Sharen Neuhardt held a press conference on the City Hall front steps March 18 to lament a tax cut proposed by Gov. John Kasich, claiming it furthers his agenda to help Ohio’s top 1 percent. Kasich proposed cutting income tax 8.5 percent across the board by 2016, which would help drive Ohio’s top…
What Happens Next?
Just a couple weeks before Happen Inc.’s 15th anniversary, Tommy Rueff was asked what his biggest opportunity as leader of the non-profit educational agency has been to date, and his immediate reply epitomized his uncomplicated approach to running a busy educational organization: “Everyday is an opportunity. You never know what’s going to happen next.”' Rueff…
2014 Arts & Nightlife Reader Picks
Overall Bar Japp’s Arnold’s Bar & Grill Neons Unplugged The Blind Lemon Northside Tavern Igby’s Holy Grail (The Banks) MadTree Brewing Company Tap Room Bakersfield OTR MOTR Pub Overall Nightclub MOTR Pub Blue Wisp Jazz Club Below Zero Lounge Southgate House Revival Japp’s Boogie Nights (Hollywood Casino) Mynt Martini Northside Tavern Mount Adams Pavilion Igby’s…
No Haters, All SKATERS
If you accept the premise that SKATERS’ debut full-length, Manhattan, vibrates on a Pop/Punk wavelength almost everyone can identify with, it may relate to the fact that they are from (or have been) almost everywhere. Frontman Michael Ian Cummings and drummer Noah Rubin are native Bostonians who have lived in Portland and L.A.; guitarist Joshua…
Ripe for Resurrection
If the walls of 1910 Elm Street could talk, what would they say? We can only speculate, but given the amount of beer they’ve seen in the past century, it’s a safe bet they would slur their words a bit. They could tell the stories of ambitious Bavarian immigrant Christian Moerlein, whose name still echoes…
The Band of Heathens with Josh Eagle
While Austin, Texas’ South by Southwest extravaganza continues to jump the shark due to corporate excess and misdirection, the capitol city continues to be an exceptional music town. The Band of Heathens came out of Austin’s rich music scene with a lot of buzz in the mid-’00s. The group’s first two albums were live projects,…
Run Boy Run
One of the more interesting facets of the American Roots music revival that’s been building over the past several years has been hearing how artists incorporate their own personalities and experiences into the lineage of tradition. Putting personalized twists on old-timey Americana is far from new — it is, after all, how most genres of…
Corina Corina and Abiyah
Veteran, multifaceted Cincinnati Hip Hop artist/promoter Abiyah has teamed up with Brooklyn, N.Y.’s R&B/Hip Hop vocalist Corina Corina (whose latest album, The Free Way, was just released) for a two-week jaunt through the East Coast and Midwest, which began on Corina’s turf in mid-March and comes to Abiyah’s home base this week. Playing off the…
Sabotage
Agatha Christie probably never imagined that one of her novels (And Then There Were None) would serve as the creative spark for an action flick involving an elite DEA team led by Arnold Schwarzenegger that winds up being picked off one by one after staging a seemingly successful raid on the safe house of a…
Johnette Napolitano
It seems almost unfathomable, but Johnette Napolitano has been a musical fixture for over three decades, with her pummeling bass style, distinctive and alluring dusky vocal rasp and an almost Zelig-like knack for aligning herself with some of Rock’s more prominent personalities. Napolitano started her first band, Dream 6, with former Sparks guitarist James Mankey…
On My Way
A potentially tasty food and film combo, On My Way from co-writer (with Jérôme Tonnerre) and director Emmanuelle Bercot features the ever-lovely Catherine Deneuve as Bettie, a woman on the verge of losing a relationship and her restaurant who embarks on a road trip with her grandson in order to recharge her senses and sensibilities.…
Noah
Protagonists in Darren Aronofsky films always seem to lurk in a prophetic netherworld, whether drug-induced (Requiem for a Dream) or somehow inspired by the fates (The Fountain), so it should come as no surprise that for his latest, Aronofsky has tapped a Biblical narrative as source material. The story of Noah (the cannily cast Russell…
Mistaken for Strangers
There’s no mistaking the opportunity for local film and music lovers to appreciate this feature debut documentary from Tom Berninger (construction production assistant on Taking Woodstock, boom operator and actor in the short Cod Farthing), which captures the time he spent as a roadie with The National, the rising Rock & Roll band that just…
New Bums with Pete Fosco
Ben Chasny and Donovan Quinn, doing business as New Bums, are the sound of Bob Dylan and Neil Young raised as brothers on the mean streets of New York, singing dark songs of contemporary survival and busking for change with a cardboard sign that reads “Paul Westerberg Relief Fund,” although they’re spending the money on…
Bad Words
Known initially for his work on television — stretching all the way back to Little House on the Prairie and Silver Spoons in the early 1980s before landing a regular lead in the series Valerie and then coming to own a spot on the cult classic Arrested Development — Jason Bateman has now positioned himself…
Villeneuve and Gyllenhaal Double Up for Head-Scratcher
Have you ever found yourself staring blankly into the mirror at your reflection, sensing that you really didn’t know the person on the other side? As children, it is likely that we sometimes wonder if that “person” over there has another life, a better one than the one we happen to be living. This idea…
The Ted Mosby Saga Concludes with a Mother of a Finale
In 2030, a man sits his children down to tell them the story of how their parents got together. Nine seasons later, audiences are still eavesdropping on the Longest Story Every Told, How I Met Your Mother (Series Finale, 8 p.m. Monday, CBS). Is it a gimmicky narrative device? Sure. Would it be disturbing to…
CAC to Transform into Roomful of Voices
You’ve never heard anything like ensemble Roomful of Teeth, who will be making their Cincinnati debut at the Contemporary Arts Center this week. That’s no understatement. Their performances interweave Western classical singing with vocal techniques used throughout the world, ranging from yodeling and Inuit throat singing to Tuvan kargyraa. New York’s WQXR FM called them…
Pavlisko’s ‘Crown’ is Short of its Aim
Two years ago, when Todd Pavlisko was in the process of creating his installation Crown by having a sharpshooter fire bullets past the Cincinnati Art Museum’s Icons of the Permanent Collection exhibit into a brass cube, there were questions to raise. I had some myself at the time, worrying about the symbolism of firing a…
Ethereal Experimentation
W hile Anita Douthat and Charles Woodman both create photography-based or light-based art, their approaches are dramatically different. So, too, is their work — except for a common denominator. Both work in areas that could be called experimental, and both painstakingly make ethereal images of transfixing and even transcendent beauty. Beginning Friday, these two veteran…
Family Ties
There is increasing unease and reports of rioting in the streets of Kharkiv, a Ukrainian city that is tied to Cincinnati by a 25-year-old sister city partnership. Kharkiv has 1.4 million residents and is nestled near Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia. Two people recently died in pro-Russian protests amid calls for a vote that would…
Dog Day Afternoon
By now you know that 14-year-old Jashawn Martin was shot to death by half-brothers Miniko Hicks and Donyell Walker in broad daylight March 21 when Martin stopped to watch a fight between two warring factions. What you may not know is that the only thing sadder, more macabre and more indicative of the violent times…
Reds 2014 Season Preview
I s this the year the Cincinnati Reds finally break through and give long-suffering local sports fans something to get excited about? Uh, maybe. The Reds have made the postseason three of the last four years, winning 90 or more games each time, but it’s been nearly two decades since baseball’s oldest franchise has won…
2014 Shops & Services Staff Picks
BEST WAY TO UP THE GAME AT YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY The Boardwalk Hobby Shop carries a variety of obscure and entertaining board games including murder mystery dinner kits so you can host your own murder mystery at your next dinner party. Cocktails and … MURDER. They also carry a ton of other games —…
