Tea Leaf Astrologer

Virgo

(August 23 – September 22)

Before a Virgo bakes a pie, they have already sliced it a dozen times in a dozen different ways. They have considered everything: how the vegan butter might affect the flakiness of the crust; whether the pie should be chilled before sliced; which knives to use for scoring and cutting; et cetera, et cetera. We know you’re analytical. But birthdays are meant to be fun. No need to dissect the flavor out of every slice. You’ll kill your own buzz.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

The knots will untangle themselves.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21)

Don’t overthink it.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Rinse and repeat.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Three words: Know your audience.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Cut the rope. You know what I’m talking about.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

The answer is chocolate.

Aries (March 21 – April 19) 

Take a breather.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20) 

You’re paddling upstream again.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Do they know that it’s a game to you?

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

Someone needs a hug.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Go for the upgrade.  OH

Zora Stellanova has been divining with tea leaves since Game of Thrones’ Starbucks cup mishap of 2019. While she’s not exactly a medium, she’s far from average. She lives in the N.C. foothills with her Sphynx cat, Lyla. 

The Creators of N.C.

The Feature Is Female

The future might be, too

By Wiley Cash

Photographs By Mallory Cash

   

Erika Arlee and Kristi Ray, co-founders of Wilmington’s Honey Head Films, grew up on sets. For Erika, one of her first on-set experiences was as a child growing up in Chapel Hill during the making of Attack of the Killer Dog, which she wrote, directed and co-starred in with her sister and one of their friends. Recalling the intensity of her childhood fascination with film, Erika says, “I wanted to make movies, and I wanted to hold the camera so badly.” Her early special effects included a plush stuffed animal dog that was tossed at the actors from offscreen so they could be, in fact, attacked by a killer dog.

For Kristi, who grew up in rural eastern North Carolina near New Bern, her first on-set experiences also took place at home, and included casting, producing and directing her older sister and cousin in back porch performances of Beauty and the Beast, Grease! and other movies that had left their mark. “I was always the director and the producer and the costumer,” she says. “And I would cast my cousin and my sister in the lead roles to get them to participate, and then I would play every other character that no one wanted to play.”

Regardless of whether they were handling stuffed animals while shouldering boxy VHS cameras or perusing thrift stores to outfit a cousin for a homemade play, both Erika and Kristi can trace their creative drive to those early days as girls who were desperate to see their dramatic visions come to life on the stage and screen.

That energy, which is apparent to anyone who spends any amount of time with these two women, combined and gathered force to create A Song for Imogene, the first feature-length film by Honey Head. While Erika and Kristi’s paths to filmmaking seem preordained, their path to one another was a little less certain.

After growing up in Chapel Hill, Erika attended the University of North Carolina, double majoring in English and dramatic arts with a minor in creative writing. Although she’d always been drawn to film, it didn’t seem like something that was accessible on campus or in town, but Erika had seen Broadway productions, so she threw herself into acting and dance, thinking those outlets might be the only way for a Southern kid from a small town to find the stage. She never lost her interest in film or her desire to hold the camera, however, and by 2014 she was living in Wilmington, auditioning across the Southeast and working behind the camera with local writers and producers.

Unlike Erika, who headed east to Wilmington after college, as a 17-year-old Kristi went west to Los Angeles to pursue acting after high school. “I probably ran out of money like a year into my journey there,” she says. “I came back to North Carolina and auditioned for a feature film that was being produced in the Triangle, and I got cast in the lead role.” Kristi’s performance as Charlotte in Pieces of Talent was noticed, and she was soon offered a scholarship to the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York. As much as she benefited from her education, Kristi found that the atmosphere in New York wasn’t as supportive as the film community in North Carolina, so she came home and settled in Wilmington.

   

I don’t know how many successful relationships, business or otherwise, begin on Craigslist, but this one did. Erika had joined with a local actor to write and shoot a horror film that featured a number of their friends, but they needed a female lead, so she posted a call on Craigslist, which Kristi happened to find and answer. Their bond was almost immediate. Soon, the two women were filming one another for audition reels, reading scripts together, and sorting through what seemed to be a shrinking market of opportunity for young women in the film world.

Aside from vapid roles that relied on little more than youth and appearance, “there just wasn’t anything interesting for young women that we were finding,” Erika says.

“This was the time when Winter’s Bone almost won an Oscar and there were a lot of really cool roles out there, they just weren’t around the Southeast, and they weren’t being offered to blonde girls who looked anything like us,” Kristi says. “We wanted to prove that we could play someone who wasn’t just a cute little girl at the mall.”

Erika wrote a short film about two sisters called Lorelei that was written specifically for her and Kristi so they could reach toward what they knew was the full range of their abilities. The story of two women settling their mother’s estate in rural North Carolina eventually served as the backstory for A Song for Imogene, which stars Kristi and was directed by Erika.

The two women who had come up through the ranks while shooting one another’s audition tapes are now at the helm of a feature film that’s in post-production and positioned to go out on the international film festival circuit. The relationship they’d built during their formative years, and through the experience of writing and shooting commercial work, had created a foundation that now guided them.

“Erika’s an incredible director. She was the first female director I’d ever worked with, so there’s this huge trust that I’ve always had,” Kristi says. “And her writing is really good, so it’s hard to do it poorly.”

The crew for A Song for Imogene was 70 percent female, including eight female interns from university film programs from around the East Coast. For many of these young women, it was their first time on a film set. Erika and Kristi allowed them to explore what interested them while also playing key roles in the production. While they watched the interns bond they couldn’t help but recall their own experiences of doing the same just a few years earlier. Now, they had become the teachers and mentors.

“When these young women go out into the professional world and work on sets, they won’t be afraid,” Kristi says. “They will have already gotten their anxiety out the door in a safe environment with us.” Erika and Kristi hope that the experience will leave these young women more mental space and emotional energy to collaborate and build community.

     

Pondering their own struggles in the industry while witnessing their interns thrive, Erika and Kristi had an idea about how to help the next crop of female filmmakers enter film programs or step onto sets with confidence. They partnered with educator Sam McCleod to create a summer camp, called Shoot Like a Girl, that focuses on female filmmakers from the ninth to 12th grades.

“We’re trying to get them at that stage where they’re a little bit more reserved,” Erika says.

The two-week camp, which kicked off its inaugural session in July, allowed the girls to learn cinematography, wardrobe, lighting and grip, screenwriting and directing. By the end of the camp they were casting and shooting their own short films. To ensure that the experience was accessible to girls regardless of their economic circumstances, Kristi and Erika were able to raise $18,000 from community partners to fund seven of the 12 girls at the camp. They’re excited to see what this first group will do next.

“To feel this empowerment and to be in a cohort of women is something that’s going to be invaluable,” Kristi says.

Erika and Kristi’s new film, A Song for Imogene, is certainly a female feature, and, with Honey Head and Shoot Like a Girl, the future of film might be, too.  OH

Wiley Cash is the Alumni Author-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. His new novel, When Ghosts Come Home, is available wherever books are sold.

Birdwatch

Songster in the Shrubs

The Eastern towhee hides to survive

By Susan Campbell

“Drink your tea, drink your tea,” the loud, emphatic call comes from dense shrubbery right outside our front door. It is the voice of a common, but frequently overlooked, Eastern towhee. It is hard to imagine that such a persistent songster could keep so well hidden, but towhees’ larger size makes them a target for predators, and keeping hidden is the survival strategy they employ. Belonging to the sparrow family, they are short-billed birds found in brushy or grassy habitat. The bird’s name originates from its typical “tow-hee” call.

Many backyard birdwatchers in central North Carolina are rather confused when they finally catch their first glimpse of a towhee. Is it some kind of oriole? Perhaps it is a young rose-breasted grosbeak? Males are quite colorful with rufous or chestnut flanks set against a white belly with a black hood, back and wings as well as a long black and white tail. The bill, too, is jet black. Females sport brown feathers instead of black but still have rufous sides. Their legs are long and powerful: good for kicking around debris in search of insects and seeds. Towhee eyes, which are usually dark red, may be orangey in the Sandhills population. Farther east, individuals have irises that are a striking pale yellow.

Eastern towhees are found, as their name implies, throughout the eastern United States. Here in the Southeast, they are year-round residents, although we do have some wintering individuals that breed further north. Their diet is variable, consisting of a variety of invertebrates (insects, spiders, millipedes) during the breeding season. However, in colder months, towhees can also be found scratching for seeds dropped by other birds from feeders. Their heavy bill allows them to take advantage of a variety of seeds. The powerful jaw muscles associated with such a strong bill make it a formidable weapon. If attacked, a towhee can inflict quite a bite. Males will viciously attack each other during territorial disputes and may inflict mortal wounds from grabbing the head or body of an opponent. Conflict is not infrequent where food is abundant, so the potential for fights exists throughout the year in our area.

It is not uncommon for Eastern towhees to raise three broods in a summer. Each brood involves three to five young. Nests are simple affairs, in short shrubbery or even directly on the ground. As a result, nestlings often do not remain in the nest long after their eyes open and downy feathers cover their bodies. They will move around noisily begging from the adults. Young towhees instinctively run for cover if their parents sound the alarm.

A little known fact about this species is that it was first described by some of the earliest Europeans to arrive in the New World. The artist-cartographer John White noticed towhees during his visit to the English colony on Roanoke Island in 1685-86. It was this trip that documented the colony’s disappearance — the Lost Colony. White’s unpublished drawings of both males and females predated the famous work of Mark Catesby in Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands in the 1700s, since republished with a modern perspective as Catesby’s The Birds of Colonial America.  OH

Susan Campbell would love to receive your wildlife sightings and photographs at susan@ncaves.com.

Simple Life

My Poetic Summer Vacation

Like dessert, the sweetest endings are meant to be shared

By Jim Dodson

Whenever our friend Joe comes to supper, he helps himself to a slice of my wife’s carrot cake before we all sit down to the meal. His philosophy, simple and sweet, is “Life’s short. Better eat dessert first.”

Sometimes, though, the best things come later in life.

More than a year ago, mired in a world shut down by COVID, I proposed to my wife that we take our far-flung American clan to Scotland to celebrate her birthday and the playing of the 150th British Open Championship. It would be our first family summer vacation in more than half a dozen years.

As is always the case in revolutions and family vacations, success lies in careful planning. With grown children and two sets of parents converging from compass points as disparate as Los Angeles, Chicago, New Jersey and North Carolina, it took no small amount of coordination to finalize a game plan.

Fortunately, I am married to a woman who could organize a convention of drunken anarchists. With her usual efficiency, Dame Wendy promptly arranged flights, secured tournament tickets, parking passes and rental cars, and booked a dwelling in the East Lothian village of North Berwick, a place I’ve returned to many times since the early 1980s.

Though I’d been to St. Andrews many times in my long golf-writing career, the chance to attend the oldest golf championship in the birthplace of the game was something I’d dreamed of doing since I was knee-high to a ball washer.

So was another bucket list item for the eternal English Lit major in me.

Long a student of English romantic poetry, especially that of William Wordsworth, I’d always hoped to someday find my way to Tintern Abbey in Wales, the ancient ruin on the River Wye that inspired England’s greatest Romantic poet to write one of his most beloved poems of the same name.

It was my clever wife who suggested a way to check two boxes with one trip. By flying to London a few days before the clan assembled in Scotland, we could take our own sweet time motoring through the countryside to Scotland, taking in the abbey and maybe even the Lake District, where the poet once resided.

England’s Romantic Age of poetry was, in large part, a reaction to the 19th Century’s bleak industrialization that robbed mankind of its intimate connection to nature. The world is too much with us; late and soon, warned old Bill Wordsworth. Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

Unfortunately, in the hours before we set off, the world still seemed very much with us.

News reports of transportation strikes and acute shortages of workers described travelers stranded at airports and train stations amid thousands of pieces of lost or unclaimed luggage.  Queues were said to be hours long at London Heathrow, the epicenter of traveler chaos. To add to the fun, Boris Johnson’s abrupt fall from grace had unleashed the usual jamboree of warring cabinet ministers eager to take possession of 10 Downing Street. Meanwhile, weather forecasters were warning of the deadliest heat wave to hit Britain since Medieval times.

Remarkably — I’m not sure how — we managed to escape the madness, with luggage, golf clubs and most of our dignity still intact, speeding on to the gorgeous Welsh countryside in a zippy eco-rental car.

Few of the world’s iconic landmarks have made my proverbial jaw drop as did the first sight of ancient Tintern Abbey (circa 1131) as we rounded a high meadow curve above the winding River Wye. There it rose in the vale below, startlingly large and bigger than life. Scarce wonder Old Bill was inspired by his first sight of this setting: O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro’ the woods / How often has my spirit turned to thee!

Two hours of exploring the quiet abbey ruins followed by a plowman’s lunch of crusty bread, local cheese and good Welsh ale, sent us up the River Wye Valley hungering for more. Over the next three days, in fact, we wound our way to the Lake District along rural backroads and narrow hedgerow lanes, pausing only to hike through spectacular forests and explore ancient market towns, including Ludlow, where my other favorite English poet, Alfred Edward Housman, set his famous paeon to over-indulgence: Terence, this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer.

To our good fortune, Ludlow’s famous summer food festival was just getting underway, so we briefly joined the fête, discovering what Housman meant when he added: And malt does more than Milton can / To justify God’s way to man.

By the time we reached our cottage in Scotland, I almost felt like a man who’d managed to shed the stresses and cares of modern life, just in time to celebrate an ancient game’s birthplace and The Open’s historic sesquicentennial.

By design, we’d arranged tickets for the first and final day of the competition, allowing time for me to introduce my future son-in-law and his golf-mad papa to a trio of the most celebrated links courses in Scotland. As usual, the stout North Sea winds took a heavy toll on our scores, but we loved every minute of the challenge. Like Joe with his carrot cake, it was the perfect appetizer for the main course to come across the Firth of Forth at St. Andrews.

The hottest and driest summer in memory left the Grand Old Lady (as St. Andrews’ Old Course is fondly called) at her most exposed in many a year. But to the record crowd of 290,000 on hand to shout and serenade their favorite players, that mattered little.

The theme of this year’s historic Open — displayed on everything from grandstands to golf caps — was “Everything Has Led To This,” a fitting coda for one who finally made a journey he’d dreamed about since boyhood.

The finish was predictably rowdy and wonderful. In the end, the veteran favorite faded with dignity, allowing for a young and promising upstart to have his name carved on the coveted Claret Jug, joining 149 previous Champion Golfer(s) of the Year.

My favorite moment, however, came when I walked my daughter and her intended through the iconic Royal & Ancient clubhouse, home to the keepers of the game, where I’ve had the good fortune to be a member for many years. Old friends and fellow members made them feel most welcome.

“Dad,” she said, clearly moved by the history and pageantry around us, “thank you for bringing us here. I never imagined anything so beautiful.”

It was one of those moments that felt, in retrospect, a bit like a homecoming and a farewell. Whichever it was, I shall never forget it.

Her words even called to mind my favorite lines from Old Bill’s Tintern Abbey, the perfect coda to a poetic summer journey:

To them I may have owed another gift,

Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,

In which the burthen of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened: — that serene and blessed mood,

In which the affections gently lead us on  OH

Jim Dodson can be reached at jwdauthor@gmail.com.

Wandering Billy

The Greene Street Music Scene

Hellraiser Haus raised no hell, but elevated musicians

By Billy [Eye] Ingram

“It was a killer spot in a strangely ideal location. One of the fanciest neighborhoods in town but with no actual neighbors at night. I still imagine that yard all packed out, a crowd sprawling out onto Greene Street.” —  Katei Cranford

When I read about First Presbyterian Church’s plan to bring down one or more of the houses on Greene Street directly across from the chapel’s western entrance, I was relieved to discover those demolition plans did not include 711 Greene, known to a generation of Gate City indie music lovers as Hellraiser Haus.

For a fleeting moment in time, this cavernous four-bedroom, brick home was a DIY live concert stage, so named because there’s an exterior shot of the nearby church in one of the schlockiest movies ever made, Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, where Greensboro (particularly around Lewis and South Elm) and the Triad were supposed to represent New York City. That alone should give you some idea of how laughably inept this unintentionally horrific production was.

Over the last 20 years, various dwellings on the outskirts of downtown and circling our college campuses have doubled as underground punk/experimental music venues — Karate Dungeon, TYP, Dogwood, Dude Ranch and Tuba House, a mid-2010s era crashpad so precarious you half expected The Wicked Witch of the East’s stockinged legs to be jutting out of the foundation.

Remind me sometime to tell you about running from the police with 9 inches of snow on the ground then taking refuse at Tuba House . . . on second thought, never mind.

Ironically, given the name, the most civilized of these rhythmic refuges was Hellraiser Haus. “I moved in around 2012 so [711 Greene] served as a music venue from then until 2018,” Ryan Stack tells me. “We were mid-20s kids living in that house, surrounded by a church across the street, a separate church to the left of the house, an outreach center. It was in a wealthy neighborhood and for some reason that house went to a bunch of kids.”

Stack had played in local bands such as Saucer and R Father for most of his life. “I think small scale venues help prop up larger venues,” he says. “If there’s not a grassroots music scene where you can go and play for cheap or free, then there’s nothing. You can’t build anything up from that.”

“That strip was a little oasis adjacent to downtown,” Yes! Weekly’s maven of music Katei Cranford remembers. “And, lord, that house was fancy. Like a soap opera set in 1980. Something about cracking a PBR on an exquisitely-tiled counter while punk bands thrashed out in the living room like a party scene out of a John Hughes movie — opulence and degeneracy intertwined.”

“Often neighbors walked by with their dogs or whatever,” Stack says. “They would be like, ‘We heard you playing music last night — sounded good.’” Without next-door neighbors, Stack says, they were “just a faint sound and a little bit of flavor in the neighborhood. Never ever got the cops called on us and we were there for about six years.”

Almost every Hellraiser Haus booking featured at least one band on tour, with all of the cash collected at the door going to the performers. “We never took any money,“ Stack says. “We focused on exposing new and young bands, pairing them with larger bands that were out on the road.” Eye attended Hellraiser Haus on a few occasions, most notably around 2017 for Instant Regrets, Bronzed Chorus, Basement Life, Taylor Bays, and The Kneads. The basement hangout was outfitted with a pool table and an arcade set up with dozens of vintage video games.

“There was a band from Japan called Mothercoat that did a really killer set at our house,” Stack recalls. “Ice Balloons with Kyp Malone from TV on the Radio played there. I remember going to work and stepping over him as I came down the stairs cause he was sleeping on the floor. We kept collecting mattresses and bands would come through and be like, ‘I haven’t slept on a mattress in months!’”

When promoter/performer Joe Garrigan revived GSOFest in 2017, Hellraiser Haus was naturally the launchpad: “For touring bands,” Garrigan says, “it was a better situation than playing at a club, then finding a place to crash after the gig.”

Stack fondly recalls his favorite evening, when Fat Wreck Chord label’s Night Birds played. “The place was slammed full,” he says. “The mosh pit got out of control and some dude went flying through the glass front door. He went to the hospital, the show went on, and all those nice punk folk donated exactly enough money to fix the door.”

“We had hip hop, folk shows, metal shows. I never felt like the space was disrespected.” Stack discovered that he and the 10 or 15 individuals living at Hellraiser Haus at various times were in harmonic convergence. “We were trying to do something for the music community,” he says, “and they were fully on board with us when we needed things.”

Shouldn’t be too surprising that Ryan Stack now lives in Glenwood where the music scene has been reignited at Etc.gso, formerly On Pop of the World, on Grove Street, a newly formed artistic collective booking resident powerhouses that never fail to rock, like Instant Regrets and The Old One-Two. World-renowned Eugene Chadbourne, possibly the 10th most famous person from Greensboro, will be performing at Etc.gso on Sunday, September 11.

Joe Garrigan is drummer for longtime grinders The Kneads. They’ll be at Oden Brewery on September 10, along with The Bleeding Hearts and The Eyebrows from Charlotte. Perhaps First Presbyterian could leave a door ajar in case anyone needs a place to crash.   OH

Billy Ingram has written 2 books about Greensboro, Hamburger² and his latest, EYE on GSO, has best-seller written all over it. In type so tiny you can’t read it but it’s there. 

Short Stories

     

Taco ‘Bout a Good Time

If you don’t like tacos, we’re nacho type! All roads lead to margaritas with a celebration of everyone’s favorite — if a little salty — duo since chips and salsa. At the Greensboro Taco and Margarita Festival, set out to find the taco with the perfect ratio of crunch to ooey-gooey deliciousness as you peruse the vendors lined up to serve you Saturday, September 24, at White Oak Amphitheatre. After you’ve wrestled with your hunger, get rowdy alongside pro-wrestlers — let’s hope they didn’t eat as much as we did before entering the ring. The fun starts early, with VIP doors opening at 11 a.m., and general admission at noon, but we all know it’s five o’clock somewhere. VIP/$49; GA/$15. Info: greensborocoliseum.com.

 

     

Dance Like Everyone is Watching (They Are)

We’ve gotten our fair share of dancing experience through shaking our groove thang to the Just Dance! choreography of J.Lo’s “On the Floor,” but maybe it’s time we move it, move it to the beat of another drum. Greensboro’s National Dance Day speaks the international language of thrusting hips, twinkle toes and emotive facial expressions as it honors the timeless pastime of humans everywhere: dancing! Take notes as professional dancers grace  — or tear up — the stage. Let the rhythm move you on over to an array of food trucks and vendors as you fuel up for the next hour or two of straight up boogying! Essentially the Coachella of the East Coast, dance the day away from 1–9 p.m., Saturday, September 17.  Info: greensborodowntownparks.org.

 

A PLAY on Words

We may be entering pumpkin spice season, but dreams of midsummer gardens and fireflies still dance around our pretty heads as Theseus and Hippolyta are married in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Venture deep into the enchanted forest with fairy and human friends alike as UNCG’s School of Theatre students honor the renowned playwright’s comedic portrayal of love, marriage and beguiling games of fantasy. With mischief-maker Puck on the loose, we advise holding on to your purses, car keys and loved ones while finding your seat in the Taylor Theatre Friday, September 30, at 7:30 p.m. Miss opening night? No worries! October welcomes the start of spooky season and the spirit of Shakespeare with performances all month long. Info: vpa.uncg.edu.

 

Change Your Tune

For most of us, our experiences on American Idol are limited to our imaginary shower auditions, which always end with a golden ticket. Singer-songwriter Mandisa has taken that stage and those beyond with a voice that’s transcendent. As a Grammy-award winner and chart-topper, she has undoubtedly experienced great success in her career. Yet it’s her willingness to speak on the dark sides of her struggle with mental illness and journey of faith that offer a true measure of difference. A Night of Restoration, an annual fundraising gala hosted by Restoration Place Counseling, welcomes this powerhouse to share the ways in which she has discovered peace through her suffering and a restored sense of hope, a gift that she bares elegantly in her music. Join her for a night of intimate storytelling and live performance at 8 p.m. Friday, September 23, at the Carolina Theatre. Info: carolinatheatre.com.

Ogi Sez

Ogi Overman

Yes, I know that school is back in session, football season has started, and the Halloween bric-a-brac is already on the shelves — but it’s still summer. Nonetheless, post-Labor Day is a beautiful time of year for many reasons, one of which is that live music is being played both indoors and outdoors, with festival season in high gear. In addition to our own beloved Folk Festival, check out these goings-on.

• September 3-4, Oak Hollow Festival Park: Now in its 11th year, the John Coltrane International Jazz and Blues Festival has truly become one of central North Carolina’s signature events. With Patti LaBelle headlining a power-packed global lineup, this year’s event is not only for the jazz lover, but is the music lover’s dream come true

• September 2-4, Camp Springs Bluegrass Park: Oh, the stories I could tell about Camp Springs back in the day now that the statute of limitations has run out. After going dark for many years, it has sprung back to life, and the lineup is comparable to the New Grass Revival-Country Gentlemen days. Among the 15 acts, the one that jumps off the page for me is IIIrd Tyme Out, playing twice with both the current lineup and the original, with arguably the finest bluegrass vocalist alive, Russell Moore, in both incarnations.

• September 11, Haw River Ballroom: I’ve been a fan of Western swing since the first time I heard Bob Wills holler, “Ah, come in, Johnny Gimble.” So, it would come as no surprise that my heroes are the finest living purveyors of the idiom, Asleep at the Wheel, with “Brother” Ray Benson at the helm. I’d waltz across Texas to see them, but will only have to go as far as Haw River.

• September 14, Ziggy’s.Space: In the mid-’90s, Reckless Kelly ventured from its native Idaho to test the waters of the musical Mecca of Austin. Ten studio albums and two live ones later, the band must’ve found them to their liking. Americana was just coming into being as a genre, and with the group’s blend of country and rock, they were — and are — a perfect fit.

• September 17, Greensboro Coliseum: To list her numerous awards, accolades and record sales tells only the stage and public part of the Mary J. Blige story. Her real-life story includes childhood abuse, alcoholism and addiction, and a battle with breast cancer. Through it all, she remains the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul and one of the most revered artists of our time.

O.Henry Conversations

The beat goes on at UNCG’s beloved summer music camp

By Billy Ingram 

Photographs by Lynn Donovan

    

When John Locke came aboard as UNCG’s director of bands in 1982, he approached local music educators about the university’s vision of conducting a yearly summer music camp for youngsters. Outside of Robert Blocker, newly hired dean of the School of Music, no one believed this was in any way a sound idea, much less feasible. Like many of his colleagues, longtime band director at Page High School, Charles Murph, was blunt when presented with the concept. “John, I really like you,” he said. “But this is never gonna work.”

And yet, in 2023, UNCG’s Summer Music Camp will celebrate its 40th anniversary. It’s the largest university music camp in America, attracting more than 2,000 middle and high school students from around the globe for two, one-week sessions of intensive training across a wide spectrum of musical disciplines. Camp culminates with a series of Friday night orchestral and band concerts, along with piano and choral recitals, for audiences numbering into the thousands.

As preparations were underway this summer, I spoke with former camp educators, counselors and attendees in an effort to understand this phenomenon, to discover what it takes to string together one of this musical city’s most important yearly events, one that not only contributes greatly to our local economy, but, more importantly, expands Greensboro’s cultural footprint.

    

John Locke, Summer Music Camp Director 1983-2018: The director of bands position came open at UNCG in 1982, I was the first one to interview . . . The new dean of the School of Music, Robert Blocker, looked at my resume and saw that I’d headed a music camp at Southeast Missouri State and he was thinking, “This is exactly what UNCG needs.”

Edward DeMattos, Summer Music Camp Attendee, 1996-2001: I went to UNCG’s music camp from sixth grade to 10th grade. It was a family thing. My brother and sister both attended summer music camp before — and at the same time — as me. They absolutely loved it and would come home every summer raving about it, so I couldn’t wait to go.

John Locke: The campus faculty, the band directors in town at Page and Grimsley high schools all said, “I’m telling you now, it’s not gonna work.” There was a popular music camp at Appalachian in 1982 and a big camp at East Carolina that had populated the state with its band director graduates, so [ECU would] get the good kids. UNCG’s first summer music camp was 1983. We had 361 students. Then we had 750 or so the second year, 980 the third year, and we never looked back.

Melissa Capozio Jones, Summer Music Camp Counselor 2012-14: They obviously hire a lot of the music students as counselors and I was one of them. A little stressful, definitely a little underpaid, but just a lot of fun, especially for someone who was majoring in music education. Having the opportunity to run sectionals and work with the students was like a crash course in teaching, too.

John Locke: When we sent out applications, everybody knew to get those things in the mail quickly. “Write the $40 deposit check, Mom. I gotta take it to get my band director’s signature and you better put it in the mail tomorrow ‘cause if I don’t get in I’m not speaking to you for the rest of my life.” It was a hot ticket. We got up to 2,000 students every summer, and even had a thousand more on the waiting list.

Kevin Geraldi, Associate Camp Director 2005-21: My first summer working with the music camp was July of 2005. I accepted a position as an assistant professor in the School of Music and assistant associate director of bands. John Locke brought me in and I started working for the camp right away, before I ever taught a day in the School of Music.

      

Kamala Lee, Summer Music Camp Attendee 2002: I played clarinet. I guess because I kind of paid attention in class so I got to go. At camp, in one week, I went from playing really easy sheet music to playing stuff that I never thought I would ever be able to play. Looking back on it, and even hearing it again, we played a Shrek medley and it was awesome. It didn’t sound like a bunch of middle schoolers playing.

Kevin Geraldi: The students arrive on Sunday afternoon. They begin their rehearsals on Sunday evening and learn a whole concert’s worth of music over the course of that week. We would have a thousand students giving concerts all at the same time, all over the UNCG campus. It was really exciting and enjoyable to see how much they learned in that amount of time, how fast they could grow. Then to see how much fulfillment and enjoyment they got out of making music together, that’s a huge reason music camp exists.

Edward DeMattos: The freedom they would give you at these camps, you didn’t have counselors walking you here and there, making sure you were on time for classes. You were expected to be where you needed to be and allowed to be a free and independent person away from your parents. You just weren’t allowed to cross Tate Street. Dr. Locke’s speech at the beginning of every band camp always, always included the line: “And do not cross Tate Street!”

Cody Jones, Summer Music Camp Attendee 2004-06: One of my favorite memories was going to The Corner on Tate Street, they had all kinds of laser pointers and stuff that kids would annoy the counselors with. That guy would sell you a little spud gun and two potatoes and you just stab the potato and shoot spuds at people and, again, counselors hated them.

John Locke: We’ve had the who’s who of band directors in the Southeast, particularly from North Carolina, but from Virginia and Maryland and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee. These teachers felt honored to be asked to come to UNCG and teach at the camp, which was good because we didn’t pay them that much. It was a labor of love for them.

      

Kevin Geraldi: Ed Rooker taught at camps from the very beginning, through the later part of his teaching career and all the way through his retirement. He had great energy and great passion and joy for teaching his students. So a lot of students kept coming back to camp to play in his band.

Cody Jones: One of my favorite teachers was Mr. Ed Rooker, who actually has passed away since (2014). He was a very popular conductor. They separated the bands out by colors and he was always the red band. He called it The Big Red Band.

Kevin Geraldi: When you’re talking about something that functions for 2,000 students over the course of the two weeks, it’s kind of all over the map in terms of logistical challenges. We’ve got a really great system set up that’s existed for a long time. Every year is a little different but the system is in place so it runs efficiently and effectively.

John Locke: If you have 2,000 students on your campus, you literally have 4,000 parents on your campus. And you’ve probably got another 2,000 or 3,000 brothers and sisters, and another 1,000 or 1,500 grandmas and grandpas, cousins who show up for the concert. UNCG’s got a hundred different majors you can pursue and these campers now know a little bit about the campus. It at least puts UNCG on the list of colleges they might attend because they had a great time at music camp.

   

Kevin Geraldi: I’ll really miss the many people who have devoted an unbelievable number of years, 30, 35 years of summers working for the camp. And I’ll miss all the newer people that come with great energy, great passion and enthusiasm and new ideas. [In 2022, Kevin Geraldi accepted a position as director of bands at The School of Music at the University of Illinois.]

John Locke: This thing is year round — it’s all consuming. There isn’t a week that goes by, even in September, October, that you’re not tying up loose ends from the last camp or making plans for the next one. I don’t recommend it to anybody because it imposes a certain insanity on your life. But I don’t really have any regrets. I loved doing it. [After retiring in 2018, John Locke remains active as a guest conductor for bands throughout the United States and Canada.]

UNCG Chancellor Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., 2015 to present: Summer Music Camp is wonderful on all counts. John Locke was a real driving force, I give him a lot of credit for maintaining the high quality of the program. They’re not appealing to the lowest common denominator. These kids really have to step up musically.

   

With preparations underway for the 40th season of UNCG’s summer music program, it’s worth noting, counselors in tow, those happy campers can now cross Tate Street.  OH

In 2011, Billy Ingram published an oral history about two young ladies who joined Dean Martin’s Golddiggers girl group in the 1970s and their adventures with The Rat Pack and other Las Vegas legends called Beyond Our Wildest Dreams. Available where books are sold and on Amazon.

N.C. Folk Festival

You can’t see it all — but you can try

NC Folk Festival promises something for everybody, and then some.

By Ogi Overman

Photographs Courtesy Of N.C. Folk Festival

It’s the best weekend of the year. Period. If you can’t find something at the North Carolina Folk Festival that a) ignites your passions b) arouses your curiosity c) fuels your sense of discovery and/or d) restores your connectivity with the world around you, then you’re missing out on much of the beauty and wonderment of life.

Now in its eighth year (counting the first three as the National Folk Festival, and the 2020 COVID-necessitated, virtual event), the festival will showcase downtown Greensboro, Sept. 9-11, transforming it from a business hub into a roving party with 100,000 or so of your closest friends.

To say that it’s been a raging success is putting it mildly. And much of the credit belongs to its president, CEO and director, Amy Grossmann, who assumed the reins in 2018 after working at ArtsGreensboro since the festival’s inception.

“We’re building a temporary city within a city,” noted the upstate New York native. “It’s complex, and we tweak it every year, but we make it work.”

Indeed.

While it is almost unfair to highlight only 10 items from the global smorgasbord, to feature the entire array of acts, events and eats would be impossible. So here is a sampling to whet your appetite:

     

Left: Big Bang Boom. Right: Larry Bellorín & Joe Troop. 

• Perhaps the best news for those who’ve braved the late-summer sun is that the City Stage in the Lincoln Financial lot will be tented this year. “It’s the biggest tent we’ve ever erected,” says Grossmann. “We’ve had several tented stages in the past but this the first time our main stage audience area will be covered.”

• Typical of the assemblage of worldwide talent on display is Larry Bellorín, a native of Monagas, Venezuela. A refugee who was forced into exile and sought asylum in North Carolina, Bellorín is a master of the Venezuelan harp, specifically in the genre called Llanera. He sings and plays several other instruments, and is a captivating storyteller. But the harp . . . oh my. You have to hear it for yourself.

• After going on hiatus for a couple of years, the Family Activities Area is back in full force. Its theme is “Playing Together,” featuring numerous interactive displays geared toward the younger set, many produced by the Greensboro History Museum. Find it in the Governmental Plaza, near the Courthouse Stage.

• “Songs of Hope & Justice” returns to its original slot as a pre-festival kickoff event, Thursday, Sept. 8, at the Van Dyke Performance Space. Piloted by Greensboro’s (and Danbury’s) favorite daughter, Laurelyn Dossett, and a number of her mega-talented friends, the ticketed show features tunes from some of the folk/protest genre’s legends as well as some new and original compositions dealing with the ongoing fight for social justice.

    

Left: Soultriii. Right: The Rumble ft. Chief Joseph Boudreaux Jr. 

• Traditionally, country & western music has been the domain of white performers, but all that seems to be changing. And it’s not singularly due to the phenomenal success of Jimmy Allen. There is a touring consortium of Black country and Americana artists who are living proof that Nashville is evolving. Calling themselves Black Opry, five members of the rotating ensemble will do both solo sets and singer-songwriters in the round. Charley Pride would be smiling.

• Perhaps taking a page from MerleFest, this year’s festival will launch Center City Jams, whereby anyone can bring their instrument and, well, jam. Held in Center City Park, some sessions will be facilitated by a pro, while others will be more spontaneous. “We wanted to create an informal space where pickers can get together and just have fun and play music,” says Grossmann.

• Drawing from the broad definition of “folk music” as all-inclusive and indigenous to a particular culture, i.e. “people’s music,” last year’s NCFF launched the Not Your Average Folk contest. Open to North Carolina musicians, applicants in the friendly competition were voted upon at the festival website, and three winners were awarded a slot on festival stages:

• 1st place: Anna Vtipil

• 2nd place: The Zinc Kings

• 3rd place: The Travis Williams Group

• Honorable Mention: Discount Rothko

Right: Diali Cissokho and Kiara Ba.

• Because of COVID protocols, no indoor events were held last year, which eliminated the immensely popular Dance at the Van Dyke. Happily, it is back this year, inviting patrons to the stage, where the Dance Project teaches Salsa to West African and everything in between. “This is a way to honor the vision of the great Jan Van Dyke, as well as give folks a chance to express themselves and learn new steps,” notes Grossmann.

• Formed last year from the remnants of the Grammy-nominated Cha Wa, The Rumble is steeped in the Mardi Gras Indian funk tradition. Fronted by Second Chief Joseph Boudreaux Jr. (Big Chief Monk’s son), they are following in the footsteps of such icons as the Neville Brothers, Meters and Wild Magnolias. And those are some big footsteps.  OH

Poem

Cardinal

Like a spot of blood against the blue sky,

a Cardinal perches on the shepherd’s hook

where I hang suet and a cylinder of seed-feeders

I gave Sylvia for her last Mother’s Day.

The birds are a gift to me now. Her beautiful

ashes fill a marble blue urn and rest

near one of her crazy quilts in the foyer to welcome visitors.

Buddha is there on a table and guards her keepsakes,

a cleaned-out bookshelf holds her high school portrait,

a cross-stitch she made for me. Every little corner

has its memory of how short a sweet life can be.

— Marty Silverthorne

From Collected Poems of Marty Silverthorne