"Hey, Fred!" 11/20-11/26/2024
Goings On in Columbus, OH: Shirese at Bobo | One More Time at the Lindsay Gallery | Mic Harrison and Chris Knight | Amythyst Kiah | Skylab fundraiser at Maroon Arts Group
I - and a lot of people I talk with regularly - are still a little shell-shocked and working through ways to be creative and thoughtful and care for our people in the coming days (work that should always be tended to but sometimes it’s thrown into relief when a rupture happens). While fucking nazis are walking through the streets, I was heartened by so much art and community at every corner this week. Some snapshot highlights:
At Short North Stage for the Johnstone Fund, Zach Hannah read a devastating poem that recalled the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E movement, shaping that rigor and sense of surprise around a molten heart and beautifully led into W4RP’s collages and glittering magpie landscapes connecting classics like Duke Ellington’s Black and Tan Fantasy and a world premiere Sarah Goldfeather work that shifted and shimmered.
The World Premiere of Tyshawn Sorey’s Cogitations for Max Roach, written for Sorey’s currently working trio of Aaron Diehl and Harish Raghavan, was gorgeous, echoing the complicated power and intricate intensity of Roach and also expanding on Sorey’s harmonic palette of his larger-scale recent symphonic work. I wish the three sections had been able to sink in and be celebrated - letting the George Lewis, the Julius Eastman, the jazz classics from the trio section, all get their own applause instead of feeling a little like wallpaper.
Scott Woods’ and Caitlin McGurk’s book releases brought some of my favorite people and favorite creators together in the same room. Ming Smith’s Jazz Requiem - Notations in Blue at the Gund did a beautiful job showing people, sometimes jazz icons, sometimes people on travels, in moments between the significant events, captured being who they are. Otterbein’s central Ohio premiere of Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 - open one more weekend; go see this - was a reminder of the power of a big, splashy musical and the freedom a college has to build these large canvases.
If there’s a goal of this column, it’s to remind us - me included - how much great stuff is going on at all times. Get out and enjoy something that strikes you.
Music
11/20/2024
Shirese, Aaron Troyer’s Floating World, Garbage Greek
Cafe Bourbon Street, 2216 Summit St
November 20: Doors at 6 pm
$10 at the door
Stacked bill for this early show - what’s accurately billed on the Facebook event as a pre-karaoke banger - at the current home for most of the rock and roll that’s turning my crank. Local reigning kings of garage rock - serrated and sugary hooks balanced with the deep groove of one of our finest rhythm sections - Garbage Greek and Aaron Troyer’s Floating World - fewer of the Jam-inflections from Troyer’s previous excellent band Day Creeper and a more expansive, cinematic tinge in his sharp-edged songwriting - welcome Connecticut’s Shirese, touring their swinging, psyche-and-harmony-drenched 2024 record Hardly Cricket. Anybody not at the rare appearance of Souled American (not listed here because it’s been sold out for weeks), this gets my highest recommendation.
11/23/2024
Chris Knight with Mic Harrison
TempleLive at the Columbus Athenaeum, 32 N 4th St
November 23: Doors at 6 pm
$35 tickets available at Ticketweb
Saturday’s a great night for roots rock of various stripes, starting with this double bill of two singer-songwriters who broke through in the late ‘90s/early ‘00s and have given me a few of my favorite live music experiences of the last quarter century, back in Columbus after too damn long.
I’ve been a fan of Mic Harrison since his legendary Knoxville band The V-Roys (great WBIR feature) who I learned about from an interview in No Depression with Steve Earle, who’d signed them to his label ESquared and was producing them at the time - same interview I learned about Marah. I saw them a few times before splitting in 99 and one of two reunion shows at the Southgate house in 2011. As soon as Mic Harrison’s solo work started hitting, I became a massive fan. Not a bad record in the bunch - great songs that understand vast swaths of history and also plant themselves in the present moment. Push Me On Home is still a favorite - and I believe that’s the record he was promoting when I saw him open for local Americana band The Boondogglers at storied Grandview watering hole Mickey’s.
I’ve seen Harrison play Twangfest - on a bill alongside former V-Roys co-conspirator Scott Miller - and a few other places over the years, but I think my favorite single memory of seeing him live was playing Bernie’s in the wake of his brilliant Pallbearer’s Shoes, solo acoustic, on a bill with six or seven bands playing death metal or something adjacent. And he turned that contrast into a beautiful statement of purpose. Expectations are the crowd will be more in his corner this time.
Chris Knight I first saw at Little Brother’s - which has come up in conversation more in the last year than the previous five, I think, maybe that kind of season - in 2003, having pretty big success on country radio with Montgomery Gentry’s cover of “She Changed Her Mind When She Couldn’t Change Me.” Touring what’s still my favorite of his records, 2003’s The Jealous Kind paired the already-sharp lyric writing and weathered melodies of the first two with a more cinematic, three-dimensional production. He’s continued to put out great records since. I think Little Victories is a highlight - and even came to Columbus a few times in the intervening 20 years - but I haven’t managed to line up. I aim to correct that this weekend and if you like classic storytelling songs, you should do the same.
Amythyst Kiah
Natalie’s Grandview, 945 King Ave
November 23: Show at 9 pm
$31 Tickets at the Natalie’s Site
Amythyst Kiah is one of the brightest lights of the vanguard of the new wave of Americana singer-songwriters - in the last year alone I’ve seen her on bills with writer/singers who changed and deepened the way I think about songwriting (Chocolate Genius at Big Ears and Jason Isbell in Cincinnati), and she’s every bit as good as either - she’s as good as anyone I’ve ever seen. I commented on seeing her in Knoxville in March that the new songs she did held their own against songs of hers I’ve loved for years, and the new album, Still + Bright makes perfect use of Butch Walker’s crunchy-pop production to create a wider-angle version of Kiah’s work without sacrificing any of the deep truth or close-up intensity that made Wary + Strange an instant classic for so many of us. See this at Natalie’s because you might never see her in this intimate a room again.
Visual Art
11/22/2024
One More Time at 986!
Lindsay Gallery, 986 N High St
Artists’ Reception: November 22, 5:30-8:30 pm
Free
Since moving into its Short North location in 2001, Duff Lindsay’s eponymous gallery has been a steadfast pillar of the shifting art community in Columbus and a world-renowned focal point for folk/self-taught/outsider art. Nancy Gilson wrote a terrific piece in honor of the gallery’s 20th for the Dispatch. Lindsay’s having one more party at 986 North High, with work from some of the most prominent artists in town, before relocating to the High-Gay corridor that already holds No Place Gallery and Sarah Gormley Gallery (with Contemporary Art Matters around the corner) and where Brandt Gallery is also heading. If you’re reading this, odds are you’ve had as many good times in this gallery space as I have; it deserves a proper send-off before the next chapter.
Film
11/23/2024
A Fundraising Screening to Save Skylab
Maroon Arts Group Culture Lab, 867 Mount Vernon Ave
November 23: 5:30 doors, 6 pm start
Sliding scale $8-15
There’s been quite a bit written about Skylab, the best piece by Andy Downing at Matter News. I’m still trying to get my head around what to say: I’ve been going since 2000 or 2001, some of my dearest friends lived there over the years, and at least one of the exhibits this year is a strong contender for my best of list. I was never a constant presence there, probably six or seven times a year, but I’ll miss the hell out of it, and I want to encourage every benefit for finding it a new home in a landscape of high rents and blander homogenized work.
Beyond those feelings, this event is special, held at the Maroon Arts Group’s exciting new culture lab in the Pythian Temple, Cameron Granger, who cut his teeth in the Columbus DIY art scene of MINT and Skylab and now has a solo exhibition at the Queens Museum I’m doing my best to make it to on a flying New York trip in December, has - as he says in his Instagram post - “put together a HEATER.” And that feels like an understatement - beyond Granger’s new film “Here & there, along the echo,” they’re presenting the Columbus premiere of Liz Roberts’ Even God - her last piece Midwaste blew me away at the Wex’s Unorthodocs in 2022 - and new work from Maria Joranko and Alexis McCrimmon alongside music videos from Dom Deshawn (who was a Skylab resident and recorded his terrific new EP series there), Peace of MND, and Inx0vate.