Cover Story
The state of Gonzo address
By Ron Whitehead GonzoFest Louisville co-founder and Chief Poetics The first time Jack Nicholson called he was furious, pissed off, screaming. It was August 1995 and my grandmother, Louverine Render, had died. Right after the funeral my family and I headed out, in a rented car, for a 5,000-mile-out-West road trip. Hunter S. Thompson had…
LEO Playlist 2/17
1) “Katherine Belle” by American Aquarium, who will be at Zanzabar on Tuesday, Feb. 24. 2) “Second Hand News” by Fleetwood Mac, who will be at the KFC Yum! Center on Tuesday, Feb. 17. 3) “New American Standard” by Wussy, who will be at The New Vintage on Friday, Feb. 20. 4) “I Don’t Get…
A Q&A with artist Mark Priest
Artist Mark Priest is currently showing his series “Underground Railroad 2015” at two UofL locations through Feb. 28 — The Cressman Center (100 E. Main St.) and the Schneider Hall Galleries (Belknap Campus). He says he’s “looking at [the Underground Railroad] as a historian,” discussing Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Charles Nalle and Stewart’s Canal. LEO:…
Review: the Soil and the Sun/Sarah Jaffe (Clifton Center 2/11/15)
The last of the WFPK Winter Wednesday concert series, featuring Sarah Jaffe and the Soil and the Sun, was rightfully packed. Both acts boast rich musical tapestries that would move even the toughest audience. When I arrived, the staff was just beginning to tell guests that the house was nearly full and seats were dwindling.…
Staffpicks
Feb. 11 – 12 Louisville Loves Mountains Week Heine Brothers’ Douglas Loop, Feb. 11 Frankfort State Capitol, Feb. 12 kftc.org, 589-3188 Free; 6-8 p.m. Wed., 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Thur. The coffee shop as a site of community organizing and political discourse. The mountaintop as a sacred site. Creativity — poetry and art — as means…
Break on through
After a decade together, Jukebox The Ghost is enjoying its highest level of popularity, thanks to a single, “The Great Unknown,” which went top 40 on the adult alternative radio charts after its release last fall. “I think us being a band for this long, it gives us a new appreciation of working with each…
Beyond the medicine show
Busking isn’t an easy way to make a living, but it can lead to some valuable connections and the opportunity to expand one’s musical horizons. Just ask Gill Landry, who comes to town as part of the Communion Series — the record label has recently expanded its monthly showcases to include seven new cities, including…
The hard road on purpose: a conversation with Murder By Death
Murder By Death has never been afraid to throw a curveball. That lies in how they’re naturally built: their ominous gothic-folk manages to sound both rooted and futuristic, while their lyrics seem like things that Cormac McCarthy characters would take turns singing around the fire at the annual meet and greet. But it also has…
b-sides: Giving Up
Giving Up came to be in the small town of Garner, Iowa, where three teens conquered boredom with creative output. In 2006, they began their young careers as a rock band, bonding over music, video games and wine. “We are all kind of weird from growing up there,” says guitarist Mikie Poland. “We learned to…
Plugged In (Feb. 11 – Feb. 17)
WED Feb 11th Brasserie Provence: Brian Curella; 5 p.m. Diamond Pub (St. Matthews): Devereaux Trio; 8 p.m. Gerstle’s: Kimmet & Doug; 9 p.m. Jim Porter’s: Mixed Bag Wednesday From DJ’s to Country, Rock to Jazz, Comedy to Blues, Rockabilly and everything in between Majid’s: Barb and Eddie; 7 p.m. Nachbar: Jacob Duncan; 10 p.m. Stevie…
THEATER: Louisville Repertory Company’s intellectual carnival funhouse
Several years ago, someone tipped me off to Randall Munroe’s webcomic “xkcd,” which describes itself with the tagline, “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language.” If you’re not already a follower, you can find it at xkcd.com. If you are already a follower (and even if you’re not), you should make your way to…
OPERA: Kentucky Opera takes a ride on ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’
Andre Previn’s opera “A Streetcar Named Desire,” based on the Pulitzer Prize winning play by Tennessee Williams, opened in San Francisco in 1998 on a big stage, with big stars and a big orchestra — and went nowhere. Previn’s opera called for an 80-piece orchestra to help the singers fill a 3,000-seat theater with sound.…
BOOK: Alan Lightman’s very personal time travel
Alan Lightman was trained as a physicist and became the first person to hold a dual faculty appointment in science and the humanities at MIT. He can write nonfiction about the cosmological and the very personal, and has joined the two in fiction with bestselling results (“Einstein’s Dreams”). Carmichael’s Bookstore, with the Kentucky Science Center…
Video Tapeworm
This Week’s Twin Peeks BIRDMAN 2014; $24.98-39.98; R This Michael Keaton vehicle is flush with Oscar buzz, with the former Batman portrayer playing an actor trying to rebuild his family and career decades after portraying a movie superhero. He’s bet the farm on an original Broadway play, serving as writer, director, star and co-producer along…
We eat 2,000 grains of rice at charming Bentuhua Teahouse
“I like rice,” the late, wacky stand-up comic Mitch Hedberg famously said. “Rice is great if you’re hungry and want 2000 of something.” This is funny because it’s a presumably true statement about a reality that we’ve probably never considered before, and yanks a laugh out of our bellies before we suddenly come up short…
Public Schools, KIPP Style
My first read of 2015 was “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell and it has my mind racing about the current state of our education system. Education is the means by which one can change his or her stars. I suggest this strongly because my life is a testament to the fact that kids just need a…
The empathy strip mall
Carefully keeping up with the news might be a formula for despair. Just in the past few months, we’ve endured a string of deeply disturbing behavior among our fellow humans. We’ve witnessed horrifying ISIS slayings, Boko Haram atrocities, terror in Paris, police brutality in the US, anti-immigration demonstrations, disease outbreaks and mildly underinflated footballs. A…
C’mon, Cards fans!
OK, enough is enough. It is time we stop worrying about all of the meaningless stresses and controversies that pester our daily lives. Enough about Brian Williams and Kanye West. Let’s take a break from the fear of Isis, as well as Obama’s controversy-du-jour — say the (accurate) parallel he identified between the “Islamic state’s…
Inbox – February 11, 2015
LEO Weekly welcomes letters that are brief (350 words max) and thoughtful. ?Ad hominem attacks will be ignored, and we need your name and a daytime phone number. Send snail mail to Inbox, 607 W. Main St., Suite 001, Louisville, Ky. 40202. Fax to 895-9779 or email to leo@leoweekly.com. We may edit for length, grammar…
