Cover Story
What is homeless?
Alaina Watson’s semi-trailer was loaded with 40 tons of charcoal when she started down the West Virginia mountain. She was only an hour into a long shift of driving, but hoped to make good time so she could return to Louisville in a week. Strictly as a precaution, she activated her engine brakes and began…
Theater: ‘Spring Awakening’ offers a titillating experience
I’m usually a boob when it comes to classic musical theater, but Tuesday night’s performance of “Spring Awakening” was a titillating mix of contemporary music and an age-old storyline. The critically acclaimed Broadway play, set in the repressive 19th-century Germany, follows a group of teens in boarding school as they discover their passions, desires and…
String theories
Howard Alden and Jack Wilkins, two of the best mainstream jazz guitarists, return to Louisville for performances at the Frankfort Avenue restaurant Varanese and for clinics and a concert at Bellarmine University. Alden is one of the few guitarists to focus on playing a seven-string guitar, which has one extra bass string. LEO Weekly interviewed…
Bar Belle: Breakfast with Bill — a Marked man
When I got a breakfast invitation from Bill Samuels Jr., the president and CEO of Maker’s Mark, I was flabbergasted. Was I being rewarded for my years of service? Was he going to ask me to become an official taster? Were we going to drink before noon? Unfortunately, none of those was the case. But…
Honey, I shrunk the Metro
For the past two years Mayor Jerry Abramson has managed to balance tight budgets and fill revenue shortfalls without raising taxes or letting go of government employees. When the mayor announced this year’s proposed $828 million budget, however, city workers were not spared: Metro government’s current $25 million budget shortfall — combined with Louisville’s double-digit…
Video TapeWorm
This Week’s Twin Peeks: GRAN TORINO 2008; $28.95-$35.95, R If all you know of Clint Eastwood is his more recent, artsy, “Midnight in the Garden” work … hold onto your shorts! This is Eastwood doing what he does best: Taking a minor premise based on seemingly two-dimensional characters and turning it into an engrossing…
Film: ‘Drag Me to Hell’ is a good way to kill an evening
(Starring Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao and David Paymer. Directed by Sam Raimi. Rated PG-13; 1:39. LEO Report Card: A-) The man behind the Spider-Man movies is getting back to his roots. Like a lot of directorial talent, Sam Raimi first made an impact via horror movies that didn’t require a big…
Theater: So much to love about ‘As You Like It’
(Le Petomane Theatre Ensemble presents William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” June 4-6 at the Rudyard Kipling. Directed by Gregory Maupin and Abigail Bailey Maupin. For tickets, call 609-2520 or visit www.lepetomane.org.) I’m ashamed to admit that last Thursday’s opening night of “As You Like It” was the first Le Petomane show I have seen.…
Blood
For the third time, Jim Matheos and Kevin Moore have combined progressive metal and ambient electronica, producing an intriguing genre-bending album. This release welcomes Gavin Harrison on drums, with guest vocals on one track by Mikael Åkerfeldt. The paradox of capacious atmospheres against thick riffing, over Moore’s terminally laid-back vocals, seems designed to demand repeated…
The letter
Before I get started, I’d like to address a concern that was recently brought to my attention by one of you who apparently wishes to remain anonymous. It was written on a piece of paper, tied to the back of a turtle and thrown through my open living room window. Unfortunately, it landed on my…
Inbox — June 3, 2009
No Apologies Regarding David Williams’s Inbox letter (LEO Weekly, May 27): To David Norton and Company: The incident that happened at Woody’s Tavern over a year ago is still very much alive in my mind and spirit. Mr. Williams, obviously sympathetic to Norton and his “anger problems,” seems to think that me and my friends…
To Willie
You know those couples who sit on the same side of the booth, who talk babytalk in public, who call each other “Ma” and “Pa,” who are a little too much in love? Phosphorescent’s To Willie is a musical experiment in such co-dependency. Matthew Houck doesn’t re-imagine Willie Nelson’s recordings as much as he puts…
Nighttime twang, etc.
Nine years in the trenches are starting to pay off for The Eli Young Band. The group’s major-label breakthrough, Jet Black & Jealous, earned them a Country Music Awards nomination, an opening slot for megawatt star Alan Jackson and Jason Aldean, and … Dave Matthews Band? EYB’s Jon Jones doesn’t harp on the word crossover,…
B-Sides: Music & Other Ephemera
Bernard Allison exemplifies predestination’s upside: The son of acclaimed bluesman Luther Allison, Bernard, the youngest of nine, picked up the guitar at age 10, made his recording debut with the elder Allison at 13, and joined Koko Taylor’s Blues Machine on lead guitar at 18. Following the muse and the work, Bernard further honed his…
Notes on a scandal
Boy, that was close. For a minute it looked like the University of Basketball at Kentucky had made a Big Mistake in hiring a coach from the University of Basketball at Memphis who might be implicated — somehow — in a cheating scandal in which somebody took the SAT for a basketball prospect so they…
Great Bunz, loaded with splendid burgers
So we’re walking down Baxter just north of Highland Avenue, well into the city’s club zone, and suddenly a new hanging sign catches my eye. “BUNZ,” it reads, like a hip-hop interpretation of a bread store specializing in … naw, can’t be. We swerved into the tiny quarters that had previously housed Omar’s Gyros and…
Industry Standard: Insider info for those who dine out
It looks easy, doesn’t it? I mean, they just walk up to your table and take your order. Half the time they don’t even bring your food, right? A food runner delivers your plates — and a busser picks them up after you’re done. Of course your server may help you with wine or beer…
Book: A comic darkly
Recent times have been good to Philip K. Dick. He has received more recognition and, somewhat as a result, been legitimized. That is not to say some in his time did not find him to be as intellectually engaging as he intended to be. But he was ghettoized in pulp sci-fi, not the mainstream he…
Adult Nights
Wild Light are a band that you probably haven’t heard before — and might never hear again — but they have made an album that is impossible to ignore with Adult Nights. Using earnest lyrics and an un-ironic harmonica, “California on My Mind” leaves you dangling, thirsty for more. “Future Towns” is a spectacular mid-tempo…
Finding my inner filly
She’s gorgeous and has a take-no-prisoners attitude. Even though she competes in a man’s world, she doesn’t know the meaning of the words “glass ceiling.” In fact, she doesn’t know the meaning of most words. Nevertheless, I’d like to think I have some Rachel Alexandra in me. We’re both Italian. Her father is Medaglia d’Oro…
From the outsider in
When the dust settles after this weekend’s kick-off of the first-ever Louisville Visual Arts Festival (LVAF), it’ll mark the first time that more than 35 local galleries and museums came together for a common cause — to celebrate and honor the work of C.J. Pressma, founder of the Center for Photographic Studies in Louisville in…
A case of E.D. (eminent domain)
It seemed like a done deal, at least for about a day: The Hotel Louisville on West Broadway had fallen into foreclosure, and Wayside Christian Mission successfully bid on the property at auction, planning to turn the 287-room building into a shelter for homeless women and children. Having learned from previous snafus, Wayside officials contacted…
Jigsaw
I liked Lady Sovereign. Her debut had a lot of the fun and sarcasm that has been a requirement of British imports of late. Pretty solid production helped her cause, in more ways than were obvious prior to listening to her follow-up, Jigsaw. This is bad. In spite of the live band present on many…
Citizen Lawson
When he was 18, Leonard Lawson worked on a highway project — his first of many — as an entry-level maintenance worker. It was good, honest work for a boy hailing from Beverly, Ky., a hamlet located near the commonwealth’s poverty-stricken eastern coal fields. No doubt impressed by the burgeoning spectacle of the American Interstate…
