Cover Story
Waterlogged
When Brittany Bullard left her home at 7:45 Tuesday morning, she noticed it was unusually dark for such an early hour. After dropping her mother off at University of Louisville Hospital — where, Bullard says, the sky “looked like it was 11 o’ clock at night” — she continued her carpool toward Indiana University Southeast…
Culture: Facial philanthropy
A guy with a mustache walks into a bar. People seem captivated with the hair above his upper lip — who is this man and why does he have a mustache? There are many reasons why this guy may have chosen to grow one — from the obvious (starring in a remake of a ’70s…
Inbox — Aug. 12, 2009
Local Spending I would like to respond to the July 29 LEO Weekly article “Buy local” by Stacy Mitchell. The article mentions studies showing that if goods and services are purchased from locally owned businesses, then more money stays in the community. To the author, this implies that the community is wealthier. Yet money is…
Raitt brings Bontaj Roulet
Bonnie Raitt is many things to many people. She’s an active legacy of 1970s Warner Bros. Records, when the imprint had a distinct family feel. She’s a leading candidate for the title of Best Female Guitarist. She’s an activist and archivist — in the latter role, she’s most likely to bring old, deep blues styles…
An interview with Erik Reece
“I saw in Guy, I think for the first time in my life, someone who seemed completely alive.” —Erik Reece, from his new book “An American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God” In writing my article, I had the wonderful opportunity of speaking with Erik Reece about his mentorship with Guy…
A Guy Davenport bibliography
Fiction Tatlin!: Six Stories (Scribner’s, 1974) (with illustrations by Davenport) Da Vinci’s Bicycle: Ten Stories (University of Chicago Press, 1979) (with illustrations by Davenport) Eclogues: Eight Stories (North Point Press, 1981) (two stories illustrated by Roy Behrens) Apples and Pears and Other Stories (North Point Press, 1984) (with illustrations by Davenport) The Jules Verne Steam…
Put the brakes on this tour
Three strikes and the Russ Parr Bus Tour should be out of Louisville for good. Let’s get the disclaimer out of the way now: Russ Parr has a nationally syndicated morning radio show. His bus tour — which last week stopped at the Kentucky Convention Center for a free rap concert and school-supplies giveaway —…
Balf Quarry
If you have any friends that are all like, “Yeah, Karen O’s totally awesome,” slap them upside the head with Magik Markers’ Balf Quarry. Elisa Ambrogio is quite the badass broad on their debut for Drag City. Unfortunately, by adopting a new direction for their widest exposure yet, best described as a cross between fuzz…
B-Sides: Music & Other Ephemera
After an almost three-year wait, Scott H. Biram released his seventh full-length studio album, Something’s Wrong/Lost Forever, on May 19. “I was just a busy man and a crazy man, so it was hard to get it all together,” he says of the delay. He accredits this sabbatical to a mixture of excessive touring, personal…
Surprise, Surprise
The Felice Brothers were halfway through their third song at last year’s Oktoberfest celebration in Lexington when the power supply unexpectedly gave out. From the shadows of the stage, where the likes of Todd Snider and Sam Bush looked on, the brothers high-fived each other, joking around about how that was the easiest money they…
Tribute To
Yim Yames (aka, um, Jim James) is intimate in his six-track EP homage Tribute To, recorded a few days after George Harrison passed away in 2001. He captures the cathartic, healing power of the former Beatle’s music. We hear not the reincarnation of a dead man’s voice but rather the re-imagining of a spirit reminding…
Guy Davenport: The last American Jack
Guy Davenport came to teach English at the University of Kentucky in 1963. At the time, Lexington was no more than a college town surrounded by horse farms and a handful of stone quarries. No high-rise hotels or bank towers serrated the skyline, and the city was completely devoid of the suburban sprawl of Walmarts…
Crucial Cuts
Crucial Cuts is a collection from more than half a dozen solo albums. Fidel began his career as frontman for “rasta punk rockers Todos Tus Muertos” (his bio’s description), though they add the word “legendary,” which must be as relative a term as the title’s use of “crucial.” Throughout the 17 tracks included here, Fidel…
Carbonistas
Metroschifter are at their best when they speak with their instruments, not their mouths. With their first record since 2000, the Louisville rockers pound forward with eight furious tracks built around mathematical precision. “America Is A Prison” flexes its muscle-bound energy, albeit nuanced. While craftsmen musically, Scott Ritcher’s lyrics leave much to be desired. “Murder”…
Hits and misses in Finnigan’s ‘Wrong/Zombie’
(Finnigan Productions presents “Wrong/Zombie.” Directed by Brian Walker and Gil Reyes. Continues through Aug. 15 at 7:30 p.m. at the Rudyard Kipling, 422 W. Oak St. Tickets are $15. For more info, visit www.finniganbeginagain.com.) It’s hard not to feel uncomfortable when you’re sitting in the dark and a 20-something made up to look like…
Bar Belle: Praying to the porcelain god
Although I’m not condoning it, we’ve all been there. The room spins. Vision is blurred. Sweat drips from your brow, saliva from your mouth. The only thing that feels right is the cool, hard tile of your bathroom floor. A fierce tidal wave forms at the base of your esophagus. Make it stop. Make it…
Art: News Bits
The 2009 recipients of the Governor’s Awards in the Arts (www.artscouncil.ky.gov) have been announced. Louisville-area winners are musician Harry Pickens, songwriter Chilton Price, Liquor Barn and theater critic Judith Egerton. Other recipients are arts leader Jerry E. Baker of Bowling Green, George Clooney, Janice Mason Art Museum in Cadiz, Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead…
RE: Generations
The remixing of classic artists’ songs by new producers has been tried before, most notably and miserably with a remix collection of old Miles Davis songs. However, Nat King Cole’s voice is timeless and lends itself to anything with melody, unlike the instrumental meandering of Davis. Using a handful of modern producers, they seem to…
Jerry’s kids
Walking among the young, fly and flashy who filled the streets to attend the annual “Russ Bus Tour” last Thursday, an older man who recognized me commented that the teenage takeover was making downtown Louisville uglier than usual. “Who you calling ugly muthafucker,” screamed a teenage girl standing just behind me. Dressed more appropriately for…
Video TapeWorm
THIS WEEK’S TWIN PEEKS: 5 DEADLY VENOMS (WU DU) 1978; $19.95, UR A glorious new pressing of the most imitated Kung Fu movie ever made! A dying martial arts master sends his last student on a quest: Locate his five most dangerous disciples and bring them together to rout a conspiracy that threatens to destroy…
Art: News Bits
The 2009 recipients of the Governor’s Awards in the Arts (www.artscouncil.ky.gov) have been announced. Louisville-area winners are musician Harry Pickens, songwriter Chilton Price, Liquor Barn and theater critic Judith Egerton. Other recipients are arts leader Jerry E. Baker of Bowling Green, George Clooney, Janice Mason Art Museum in Cadiz, Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead…
Bistro Le Relais: Still classy, a little less pricey
The economy is still pretty much in the tank, local unemployment is soaring, and gasoline prices are crawling upward again. Who can afford fine dining? Faced with this fiscal reality, a number of Louisville’s more upscale establishments have undertaken menu resets, seeking to meet a shaky market with quality cuisine that doesn’t take quite such…
Art: Beauty is in the eye of the photographer
“I don’t know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs.” You’ve got to love a man with logic like that. Photographer Garry Winogrand (1928-84) was referring to a series of photos presented in his book entitled “Women are Beautiful.” Winogrand is…
Manipulate And Multiply
The 52-second opening track of Idaho, Alaska’s Manipulate And Multiply — a grinding, lyric-less and feedback-driven arrangement — teases you into thinking that the Lexington-based foursome are following up their 2007 debut with a heavier, darker sound. On “In the Desert,” lead singer Chris Soulis croons a nightmarish sequence, before the antipathy underneath his low…
