"Hey, Fred!" 06/13-06/19/2024
Goings On in Columbus: Watershed release show | View from a Small Planet | Pride Singer-songwriter Showcase | All Day Blackness, Year Four | 7 Villages
Music
06/13/2024
Singer-Songwriter Listening Room Showcase
Featuring Drew Eberly, Ebri Yahloe, Kelly Vaughn, and Patrick Schaefer
Wanderlust Studio, 1603 S 4th St
June 13: Doors at 6 pm, Show at 6:30
$10 at door, BYOB
Wanderlust Studio, a locally focused downtown boutique hosts a monthly singer-songwriter showcase and June, themed around Pride month, hosts a handful of our finest songwriters, all members of the LGBTQ+ community, working at the top of their game.
I’ve raved about Ebri Yahloe several times here - great songs, ear-catching delivery, and stage presence. She’s always worth seeing and should be doubly so in an intimate venue like this. I couldn’t find a Bandcamp, but her SoundCloud has a wealth of gems to get the idea.
Kelly Vaughn is the performer I know least but I’ve been hearing her name for a while and I checked out her Life Goes On record while researching this week’s newsletter. It’s lovely, questioning Americana with warm, thick arrangements.
I first knew Drew Eberly as an actor. I got to know his work as a songwriter with a one-person semi-autobiographical show he collaborated on with director Matt Slaybaugh for Available Light Theatre, Dear Piqua. He’s followed that with two terrific, catchy solo records, most recently last year’s Bailiwick, which beautifully balances fragility and spikiness, aided by the stellar rhythm section of Kyle Sowash and Keith Hanlon.
Eberly was also the director of one of my favorite pieces of theater last year, Dave Malloy’s Ghost Quartet, and the fourth member of this showcase, Patrick Schaefer stunned me as the musical director/pianist of that show. He’s been putting out songs as Patty Schaefs, and the songs so far, especially “Pretend,” which has been stuck in my head a few times, remind me - in a good way - of Ben Folds, Gabriel Kahane, and Ookla the Mok. Extremely intrigued to hear more.
06/14/2024
Watershed’s Blow It Up Before It Breaks Release Show featuring Nashville’s Ricki
Rumba Cafe, 2507 Summit St
June 14 and 15: Doors at 7 pm, Show at 8
Tickets still available for night 2 at time of writing here: https://www.columbusrumbacafe.com/event/13449614/watershed-album-release-weekend-side-2/
I covered this in its own post, which has a long interview with Colin Gawel about the record being celebrated. I would take a couple of minutes to suggest those going get there in time for Ricki, the new rock project from acclaimed songwriter Erica Blinn - I remember a rock-leaning set when she was still in Columbus with half a dozen songs that held their own against a perfect cover of Joan Jett’s “Hate Myself For Loving You.” The early singles from this project have an addictive crunch underpinning Blinn’s gift for hooks.
06/15/2024
All Day Blackness: Year Four
Land Grant Brewing, 424 W Town St
June 15: 6 pm to 1 am
Free, donations accepted for Class War Collective
The All Day Blackness events started by Verge FM (RIP) and now in collaboration with Errant Forms, have blossomed into highlights of the year and this one is a feast for anyone interested in black club music.
In an article for DJ Mag, writer Tice Cin said the headliner Tah, “Listening to [their] music is like stumbling across a journal in a video game, a ship’s log of someone exploring themselves, their artistry and where Jersey club can go.”
The local acts on the bill are every bit as strong. I’ve caught ASL Princess a few times in the last couple of months, including as ferocious a night of dancing at AWOL as I’ve done in a while - left me sore - and a guest spot with my current favorite recurring night, Architects Anonymous at Parable, that brought some interesting colors and kept snagging my attention but without disrupting the overall flow of the evening. Sonicc Blush is killing it around town, in various residencies and one-offs, with killer tastes ranging from icy smooth R&B sets to hard, bouncing dance beats, all executed with a sure hand and aplomb.
Love Higher, I also got introduced to through a guest spot at Architects Anonymous; the night that solidified my love of that residency and of Parable (already my favorite coffee shop and new favorite cocktail bar) as a dance spot. It was my “If we’re in town at all, we’re showing up for at least an hour of this,” moment; part of her set had some fascinating atmospherics with wisps of a hook I recognized. It slowly sunk into me, she was playing a deconstruction/almost dub of Cam’ron’s “Oh Boy,” a massive hit when I was in college, turned inside out to draw me in, then exploding into a barrage of colors as she mixed into something else I didn’t quite catch. My jaw was in my lap.
DJ Sinceer and Negroyokio have been high on my list to see live for a while. Sinceer’s Korg Trax EP has been giving me life for a while, and Negroyokio’s New Summer EP is the platonic ideal of a summertime sonic journey, hard beats leavened by a sense of space and dynamics, conjuring stickiness and that perfect relief of a cool breeze, over as soon as that ice melting in your drink. Don 614 I know less about but there’s a cool footwork thing from what I’ve heard. The other three acts on the bill - Obsessed With Sound, N/Shrike, and Chico Himself - I don’t know at all, but with the rest of the standard of quality, I feel safe guaranteeing they’re worth checking out (no snub meant to N/Shrike; just couldn’t find a SoundCloud or Bandcamp). This is the single thing I’m most bummed to be out of town for.
06/19/2024
7 VILLAGES
Short North Stage, 1187 N High St
June 19: 7 pm
Free
I’m a huge fan of Scott Woods’ large scale projects and overjoyed that the Johnstone Fund provides for some of the most intriguing and evocative excavations of Columbus’s history and incisive interrogations into our present. Best of all, unlike Black Odes (out of town) or The Alsatian Queen (birthday celebration for Anne), I can actually make this one (hoping I didn’t just call a curse on my return flight.
With texts by Woods, poems delivered by Woods, speech by Valerie Boyer, dance from Lori Lindsey, and singing by Talisha Holmes, plus new compositions from Mark Lomax II delivered by Lomax and Eddie Bayard (my favorite format for Lomax’s compositions), 7 VILLAGES traces a journey through six Black Columbus neighborhoods - Linden, Mt. Vernon, Driving Park, Flytown, Franklin Park, and Bronzeville - along with Galveston, the latter including a remix of the Juneteenth speech. With the track record of everyone involved - putting my money where my mouth is, I took two of those photos this last weekend - I can’t recommend anything higher.
Theater
06/13/2024
View From a Small Planet by Sheldon Gleisser
MadLab, 227 N 3rd St
June 13 through 30, performances at 8:00 pm Thursday through Saturday, 2:00 pm Sunday
$25 tickets at https://newherring.org/upcoming-shows/tnbtnbc-7e8mr
I wrote a preview of this show for Columbus Underground in advance of a workshop production in February. I also saw that workshop - monologue with movement, performed by Michael Herring and directed by Scott Douglas Wilson and Ambre Emory-Maier - and it hollowed me out. It’s a fascinating look at desperation and hope from an angle I hadn’t quite seen before.
I’m sorry my commitments the first couple of weekends of its run prevent me from reviewing it in its final form but it’s 100% worth a look for anyone with an interest in experimental theater. A one-person show from Columbus’s finest interpreter of Beckett and - in the revived Red Herring and New Herring - brought us more fascinating theater than anybody else.