"Hey, Fred!" 10/16-10/22/2024
Goings On in Columbus, OH: Robbie Fulks with Jason Eady | Unorthodocs at the Wex | Dia de Los Muertos Festival at Greenlawn Cemetery | The Chameleons with The Veldt | Erica Dawn Lyle and Natural Sway
Film
10/17/2024
Unorthodocs 2024
Wexner Center for the Arts, 1871 N High St
October 17 through 24, various times
Single movie tickets at $10, $8 for members; full-fest passes at $50, $40 for members
Tickets and more information at Wex site
One of my favorite traditions of Fall and a shining example of what’s great about the Wexner Center’s film program - making the most out of the longevity and expertise of curators Dave Filipi and Chris Stults, who use the depth and breadth of their knowledge for crucial context and a point of view without ever feeling like we’re getting retreads, a mix of hyperlocal and international viewpoints, and relationships that get us some of the most exciting directors visiting town.
My colleague at Columbus Underground, Hope Madden, wrote this year's festival's best and most comprehensive preview. I recommend everything on this slate - some of the most fun I’ve had at Unorthodocs was showing up to something I’d never heard of five minutes before it started - but here are five things I’d specifically draw attention to:
Thursday, October 17, at 7:00 pm: Union by Stephen Maing and Brett Story. Ohio premiere with Brett Story in person
A look at the Amazon Labor Union and how unions are needed and the shifting needs and power of collective action
Friday, October 18, at 6:00 pm: Dahomey by Matt Diop
Maybe the single thing on the lineup I’d heard the most buzz about and if I didn’t have family obligations my ass would be planted for this early. A look at repatriating artifacts - in this case looted in the 19th century - and what they mean to a country now. Senegal’s submission for the Oscars this year.
Saturday, October 19, at 2:00 pm: A Photographic Memory by Rachel Elizabeth Seed. Midwest Premiere with Rachel Elizabeth Seed in person
A film I hadn’t heard of before reviewing the lineup, but extremely up my alley: filmmaker grapples with the memory of her mother Sheila Turner-Seed, by going through her mother’s archive of conversations with photography giants.
Saturday, October 19, at 4:30 pm: Sound Spring by Catalina Alvarez. World Premiere with Catalina Alvarez in person
The town of Yellow Springs has always fascinated me, home to Antioch College, and tucked away not far from Columbus or Cincinnati, much closer to Dayton, that’s still kept a remarkable amount of its bohemian delight and charm. This tribute to its centennial is told in vignettes and interviews with residents, by Catalina Alvarez who brings a multi-disciplinary arts background to this, her first feature.
Sunday, October 20, at 3:15 pm: Grand Theft Hamlet by Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane. Midwest Premiere
This jury-winning documentary from SXSW was on my radar, and I’m especially excited to see it in the Wexner Film/Video theater where I first knew people were trying to make deeper art using video game materials - and a conversation after with two longtime friends about whether non-comedic work had juice in these formats - so I’m interested in taking the pulse of where this kind of work is now almost 20 years later (says the guy whose last non-phone/casual video game was Crazy Taxi).
Music
10/16/2024
Jason Eady and Robbie Fulks
Natalie’s Grandview, 945 King Ave
October 16: 7:30 pm
$40 Tickets at Natalie’s site
It’s a good year when I get to see Robbie Fulks - sleeper candidate for my favorite songwriter, full-stop - twice, and this year has the added pleasure of pairing him with other great songwriters both times. This trip through Natalie’s is part of a short tour combining Fulks’ devastatingly sharp eye and caustic humor leavened with real humanism and a command of the last 70 years of American music, with Jason Eady, carrying that torch of Texas country/R&B with a keen wit and a warm rumble of a voice like the first whiskey after a long day—a killer double bill of singer-songwriters.
10/19/2024
Dia de los Muertos Festival
Greenlawn Cemetery, 1000 Greenlawn Ave
October 19: 10 am to 6 pm
Free
As someone who grew up not far from Columbus’s Green Lawn Cemetery, I’m overjoyed to see so much public engagement in the park and so much attention to it from friends in parts of town who didn’t grow up with middle school friends whose porches overlooked the back of the cemetery from Brown Road.
At the time I wrote this, I couldn’t find a schedule for the life of me, but last year stunned me - the deeply personal and well-thought-out displays of Ofrendas, the art exhibitions in the mausoleum, an astonishing slate of food including names I didn’t know yet, and in just a couple of hours there, excellent music including rapper MC Natrix, pan-Latin-noir from Bee Humana, and winding, perfect-autumn-day folk from October Ember.
10/20/2024
The Chameleons performing Strange Times, with The Veldt
Skully’s Music Diner, 1151 N High St
October 20: Show at 7 pm
$30 Tickets at Celebrity Etc site
Atmospheric British rock band The Chameleons - with lead singer Mark Burgess and guitarist Reg Smithies carrying the torch with a band rounded out by three players who joined in 2021 - have cast a wide shadow of influence on bands as seemingly dissimilar as Texas’s Spoon and Frances’s Alcest. This tour brings them through town playing their landmark 1986 record Strange Times - a record about which one of my writing/thinking about music idols, Robert Palmer, said “the band's most inventive and winning album yet and as fine a record as any pop-rock guitar band has made this year…[the] band's arrangements layer interlocking finger-picked guitars, ghostly whines of feedback and sustain, and boldly delineated countermelodies atop rhythmic foundations that are tailored individually for each song.”
Icing on the cake is the return to Columbus of North Carolina/New York soul-shoegaze titans The Veldt. Their Love at First Hate came out when I was 18 and took the top of my head off, but somehow, I didn’t get to see them until 2021 when Anne and I were going through Raleigh, and the reformed version was playing the Pour House. That same power, blending of influences, and diamond-cut songwriting were all still in place, if not even more potent. Catching the end of a set when they came through Bourbon Street recently reaffirmed that impression as one of our great rock bands of any stripe.
10/21/2024
Erica Dawn Lyle with Natural Sway
Used Kids Records, 2500 Summit St
October 21: 6 pm show
Free
I was a big fan of Bikini Kill—including finally seeing them on the reunion tour after three reschedules—but I’m also a huge fan of Erica Dawn Lyle as a writer and curator (On the Lower Frequencies blew my mind). I’m a little ashamed to say I didn’t know her solo music until Used Kids owner Greg Hall mentioned this show was coming to me when we were watching a different show several states away. These rippling solo guitar excursions are deeply engaged with the world, not hermetic, like sometimes I expect the genre, and this show is another example Hall and Used Kids’ commitment to being a venue and a hub for this community.
The opener, Natural Sway, Ryan Elibeck’s poetic Americana-at-an-angle project, impresses me more and more each time I see it. That first impression - I texted two different friends saying, “These are the best Wilco-style songs anyone’s written in years” - was already extremely positive, but catching them again this April for Seventh Son’s anniversary was a revelation. A band engaging all their influences but not sounding like anything else.