Month: January 2023 (Page 3 of 4)

The PopCulteer
January 13, 2023

I have been a professional writer for over three decades, but I don’t think I could ever write a food column or blog.

I read plenty of food articles and I’ve been hired as a marketing consultant by more than a few restaurants and food packagers, but even though I obviously enjoy food (perhaps a bit too much), I have one obstacle that would prevent me from writing with any real authority.

I don’t drink. I don’t drink anything with alcohol…but I also don’t drink coffee, and I could probably count the number of times I’ve drank tea on one hand.

It’s not a principled stand or anything. I just can’t stand the taste. That, combined with the odd quirk that I apparently can’t get drunk, makes it easy to pass up anything with alcohol. I could theoretically drink and drink and drink without ever seeming inebriated…until I die from alcohol poisoning.

So I don’t risk it. In my sixty years on this planet I have never been drunk. Hearing people describe it, I don’t really think I’m missing anything.

However, because of that particular blind spot, along with a raft of potential bad reactions to certain foods and others that I simply can’t stand (mayonnaise, cole slaw, I’m looking at you), I don’t think I’d be able to cover the full depth of gastronomic offerings available around here. This is no secret. I’ve written about it here before, but it still holds true: if you don’t drink, your opinions about food are considered null and void.

What brought this to the forefront of my mind is the recent leak of some of the menu items that will be offered during Charleston’s restaurant week. As usual, I’m hard pressed to find anything listed that I could, or would eat. I certainly don’t give a crap about any beer or wine they might be pairing with their meals.

I have some allergies, perhaps more than the average person. Mushrooms could kill me. Strawberries can throw me into anaphylactic shock. Berries in general don’t sit well with me.

On top of that, avacodo, and anything made from it, makes my Myasthenia Gravis meds just stop working. That’s no fun.

And then there’s the food I just don’t like: I don’t eat pork (even bacon); Mayonnaise, to me, is the most disgusting substance on Earth; The mere sight of white gravy makes me want to projectile vomit; I refuse to accept the premise that cole slaw is actually any kind of food.

And I guess you can add alcoholic beverages to that list.

And to be honest, while I’ll eat an occasional hamburger…steak bores me. I’ve never considered it as a favorite. The fact that I like it well done, and that apparently makes me a monster in the eyes of some people, makes it even less appealing to me. On those occasions when Mel wants to eat at a steakhouse, I get the chicken. (and to be honest, we still aren’t comfortable eating in restaurants anyway, due to the ongoing pandemic)

So, I don’t eat pork, I’m not crazy about beef, some foods could kill me while others make me sick, and I have yet to taste an alcoholic beverage that doesn’t taste like cough medicine, mouthwash or dishwater.

That’s why it’s hard for me to muster any enthusiam when I hear that Charleston is getting another half-dozen breweries and a distillery this week. How about they reopen Blossom Dairy and operate it as a soda fountain for a change?  At the moment we’re supposed to be in “Dry January,” which for me lasts 12 months a year. I know I’m not alone here.

Recently, Nation’s Restaurant News wrote about a Gallup poll that said 60% of American adults say they drink alcoholic beverages. That covers everybody from the raging alcholic to the person who has a glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve.

That means that 40% of the adults in this country NEVER drink. Like me. Our culture spends so much time glorifying and normalizing drinking and catering to those folks who imbibe that they tend to ignore the sizable chunk of us who don’t.

And I have to admit, sometiimes I do feel a little left out when friends start raving enthusiastically about a new IPA or stout…and all I can do is talk about Quisp Cereal or new comic books.

Seriously, if it weren’t for Google I still wouldn’t know what an “IPA” is.

It turns out that I’m not alone. The context in which NRN cited those Gallup numbers (which, by the way, represents the lowest reported percentage of Americans who drink in over a decade) was in an article about how restaurants are scrambling to come up with craft sodas and non-alcoholic cocktails (AKA “mocktails”) so they can attract the growing number of restaurant-goers who don’t drink, but don’t want to be left out of the goofy-exotic-drink part of the dining experience.

And that’s a good thing. It’d be nice to go to a new city, find a cool Tiki Bar, and not have to order a “virgin” version of a drink. When we went to Three Dots and a Dash in Chicago a few years ago, I had a Virgin Jet Pilot.

That sounds like something Buddy Cole would say.

It’d be cool if we could get some new dining experience in Charleston that wasn’t based on alcohol. With 40% of the country being non-drinkers, you have to think that, maybe, they could come up with something for us.

Of course, given the actions of our State Legislature in the last three days, I think I can understand why so many people do drink.

That’s this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for all our regular weekend features, including an RFC Flashback to a video episode that has not been featured in this blog for over sixteen years.

The PopCult Music Review

An Evening of YES Music Plus: Super Deluxe Edition
Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman & Howe
Takeaway Records
6 Discs (4 CD/2 DVD)
Limited Edition

As with most “Super Deluxe” boxed sets, An Evening of YES Music Plus is a real treat for die-hard fans of the music within, but it may be considered extravagant or pricey for the casual fan.

Luckily for me, I am a huge fan of the band YES. They were the first major band I saw perform live in concert, and their music is among the favorite I’ve ever encountered. To make a very convoluted story short, YES has had several line-up changes in their five-plus decades, and at one point, in the late 1980s, there were so many prominent former members, including founding members John Anderson and Bill Bruford, that they formed their own group: Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman & Howe.

ABW&H included four of the five members of YES who recorded their classic albums, Fragile and Close To The Edge, and to be honest, they sounded more like Classic YES than the mid-1980s line up (which also included Anderson) did.

The legacy of ABW&H is a short one. They recorded one studio album and embarked on a worldwide tour before they actually merged with YES, for a successful tour and a truly wretched studio album. For much of the 1990s the band condensed down to the same five-man line up- Anderson, Wakeman, Howe plus Chris Squire and Alan White- that I saw in Huntington in 1979.

So for the fan of YES, this boxed set is a must-have item, with the caveat that there isn’t much new here. This boxed set includes the videos from ABW&H’s lone studio album, plus the 2-CD  live set An Evening of YES Music Plus, which had been released in 1993, after the band had been absorbed back into YES. Also included is the DVD of the same concert (and same name), which had been a Pay Per View broadcast in 1989. We also get a CD of the King Biscuit Hour radio show which used edited highlights of that show. The set also includes replica tour programs (English and Japanese), a replica tour laminate and press pack/folder, an album cover poster, a replica cue sheet for the radio show, replica press photos and a numbered certificate. And there’s a CD of radio interviews with the band.

In my case, my copies of the live album is 29 years old, and I never had the concert DVD or the videos from the studio album, so this set, while expensive, was worth it to me. It’s very possible that a longtime fan might have all the music contained in this box, so they have to decide if all the extras are worth it to them. You basically get a killer line-up of songs by YES and ABW&H, with a couple of solo turns, performed by a line-up that features four highly-recognizable members of YES.

The live performances are amazing. Recorded at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California on September 9, 1989, this show features Jeff Berlin on bass, and he does a remarkable job bringing his own style to Chris Squire and Tony Levin’s original basslines. Bill Bruford uses electronic drums here, and it’s quite an evolution from his original stint in the band.

Jon Anderson’s voice, as usual, is perfect. Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman are both at their peak virtuosity. Check out the band taking on a YES classic below…

The extra goodies are very well thought-out and wondefully produced. Even the box is impressive.

My only criticism is that it would have been nice if they could’ve provided a bigger sample of how the band sounded in Europe, before illness forced Tony Levin off the tour. There are reportedly some recordings of those shows. It also would have been nice to have a little more of Roger Dean’s awesome artwork. There’s also a little confusion with the way the discs are labelled. The concert disc box says it’s a “Double DVD,” but they managed to fit the whole show on a single disc.

Even with those quibbles, for the die-hard YES fan, this Super Deluxe box is a winner. You ought to be able to order this from local record shops, or from an online music dealer.  Prices vary from ridiculously high to insanely high. Take a quick look…

Once open, you find that there are two layers of inner box, with foam cut-outs to keep everything snug.

In the top folder there’s tons of repro press materials, cue sheets, photos and more.

Slick, glossy tour programs, in English and Japanese, and a poster of Roger Dean’s album cover for “Brother of Mine.”

The bottom layer of the box contains the discs. I have to wonder if the concert disc and music videos were supposed to be in the same CD shell, since the radio broadcast is simply adrift in a clear envelope.

We have no idea whether the weather will be seasonable or not in the coming week, but there’s plenty of STUFF TO DO in Charleston and the rest of the Mountain State from Wednesday through next Tuesday.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s The Carpenter Ants. Saturday Travis Vandal serenades the crowd at Charleston’s beloved Bookstore/Coffee Shop/Art Gallery.

The Empty Glass has some great stuff through the week to tell you about.  From 9 PM to 11 PM Wednesday, Ginger Wix will be at the World Famous Empty Glass. Thursday from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM, Swingstein and Robin play fiddle and piano and sing swing and early jazz standards (details below). Each week they donate their tips to a local nonprofit.  Friday from 5 PM to 8 PM Timmy “Courts and Friends hold down the fort at the Glass. Next week they’ll have an open mic Monday night, and Songwriter Showcase on Tuesday. Weekend shows that have graphics are listed among the images below.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. In fact, it’s surging again. Many people who have very good reasons are still wearing masks, and many of us, understandably, are still nervous about being in crowds, masked or not. Be kind and understanding  while you’re out.

If you’re up for going out, here are a few suggestions for the rest of this week, roughly in order.

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We are happy to be ten days into the new year this week on The AIR  as we premiere a 33 and 1/3 new edition of Radio Free Charleston! You simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay here and  listen to the cool embedded player elsewhere on this page.

We’ve created another new/old hybrid for you this week that you can hear at 10 AM and 10 PM Tuesday. The first hour is filled with new, local music. Hours two and three bring you a five-year-old episode of Radio Free Charleston International that hasn’t been heard anywhere for more than four years.

A cool bonus is that our first hour consists entirely of newly-released music. You’ll hear new stuff from Jim Lange, The Switch, Beauty In Chaos, Iggy Pop, Blue Twisted Steel and many more cool and largely local acts.

For our second and third hours I went back and dug up an episode of Radio Free Charleston International  from January 2018. I’m not doing links for the second two hours because they’re not local or indie artists, and my fingers are all tuckered out from that drawing I did of Mel for Monday Morning Art yesterday.

Check out the playlist below to see all the goodies we have in store (live links will take you to the artist’s pages where possible)…

RFC V5 114

hour one
Jim Lange “Nobody’s Home (Version 2)”
The Switch “Speak of the Devil”
Beauty In Chaos “Bloodletting”
The Red Book “T Minus 1”
Blue Twisted Steel “Fight For Your Life”
The Long Lost Somethins “Factory Reset”
Nixon Black “The Sun Also Rises (live)”
John Radcliff “Beautiful”
Nervous Twitch “Don’t Be Mean”
Payback’s a Bitch “Movin’ Up To Chelsea”
The Routes “Computer Love”
Frenchy And The Punk “Paradise Found 1”
Anti-Flag “Nrever”
Iggy Pop “Neo Punk”

hour two
Simple MInds “Don’t You Forget About Me (live, unplugged)”
Gizmodrone “Spin This”
The Selecter “Paved With Gold”
Cindy Wilson “Things I’d Like To Say”
PFM “There’s A Fire In Me”
Takiuki Hitori “Hadjmari”
YES “Machine Messiah (live)”
Gary Moore “The Prophet”
Virgil and Steve Howe “Dawn Mission”

hour three
Charlotte Gainsbourg “Songbird In A Cage”
Downes Braide Association “Skyscraper Souls”
Split Enz “I Walk Away”
The Producers “I Love Lucy”
Jakcie Wilson “Reet Petite”
The Ramones “Teenage Lobotomy”
The Who “Long Live Rock”
Gregorian Rock “Interra”
The Hawklords “It’s What You Wanted”
Utopia “Lysistrata”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM, Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight,  and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

I’m also going to  embed a low-fi, mono version of this show right in this post, right here so you can listen on demand.

Then at 1 PM we have MIRRORBALL, followed at 2 PM by Curtain Call. At 3 PM two great recent episodes of The Swing Shift arrive.

You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Thursday at 9 AM, Friday at 8 PM and Saturday afternoon, only on The AIR . You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursday and Sunday evenings.

After last week’s abstract inky doodle, this week I did a detailed portrait of my lovely wife, Mel Larch, using only red and black ink. I did this using a lightbox to draw over a photo that I took years ago, and have shared here many times in different forms. I wanted to see how the ink worked with a more realistic project.

While the bulk of the work here was done with Winsor & Newton inks, I did use a marker for some of the detailed cross hatching and linework.

I’ll probably be trying a few more duo-color pieces in the coming weeks.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Meanwhile, Monday at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a recent episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM a recent edition of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

On Psychedelic Shack, Nigel Pye offers up an hour-long mixtape of Psychedelic Music that, on this show,  kicks off with  Pink Floyd.

Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM.

On a classic Prognosis, Herman Linte presents his usual assortment of prog-rock classics mixed with new tracks, and he dedicated this show to “live epics.”

You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM. You can hear two classic episodes of the show Sunday at 2 PM.

Tonight at 9 PM we bring you an overnight marathon of Beatles Blast, hosted by yours truly. This week and next we’ll bring you all twenty episodes devoted to “The Lost Beatles Tapes.”

This week we bring you a few short videos, less than an hour total running time, about Paden City’s internationally-distributed Marble King, producer of some of the world’s finest Marbles.

These come from a variety of cable documentary shows, YouTube experts and local news.

At some point PopCult will actually make it to the Marble King factory in Paden City and shoot video, but so far we just haven’t had the time when driving through Paden City. Maybe in the new year we’ll make it a point to dedicate a trip to West Virginia’s Marble King.

It’s a new year and in this weekly feature that began almost a decade ago, we have finally managed to run all the way through our video episodes of Radio Free Charleston and The RFC MINI SHOW.

So, what better time than now to start it all over?

This time I’m going to try to run through them all in chronological order, save for the four remaining “lost” episodes, which someday may turn up on an unlabelled backup disc in my office. We are bringing you the first five episodes this week, that’s the pilot you see up above, and then we’ll drop one a week, in order, every Saturday here in PopCult.

RFC began life as a broadcast radio show in 1989 and 1990. Office politics killed the show, and a conservative radio industry kept me from bringing it back for years. Finally in 2006, with massive help from Brian Young and Douglas Imbrogno, the show was revived as a video program for The Gazz (at The Charleston Gazette) and then later on YouTube. Now we’re back on radio with The AIR, but it’s cool that RFC has been back from limbo now for longer than it was gone in the first place. Whether it’s video, The MINI SHOW or as the flagship program of The AIR, Radio Free Charleston has been a constant presence in Charleston since 2006.

In our July 2006 pilot, check out music from Whistlepunk, animation from my brother Frank, and comedy from The No Pants Players, as you watch the show that elicited the reaction, “What in the holy hell was that?” from the senior editorial staff at The Charleston Gazette.

Below you’ll find our second episode, “RVD Shirt” began the Radio Free Charleston tradition of naming the show after the shirt I was wearing.  Our second episode, from July 2006, presented music from Stephen Beckner and The Sleeping Dons. The Sleeping Dons were Sean Richardson, Jay Lukens and Deron Sodaro. We also had animation from Frank Panucci and a special sneak preview of the then-upcoming Batman movie, which eventually got this episode banned from YouTube.  So check out this embed from Vimeo…

RFC 002 "RVD Shirt" from Rudy Panucci on Vimeo.

From August, 2006, we find our third episode, “Mother Nang Shirt,” which was named after a shirt featuring the then-disbanded, since-reunited legendary band. RFC 3 was restored and remastered back in 2012. This early edition of RFC features a solo performance by Eduardo Canelon, of Duo Divertido and Comparsa fame, plus a vintage video from Charleston legends, Three Bodies.

Also in this show, is the first installment of “Pentagram Flowerbox” by Third Mind Incarnation and the short film, “The Alien Threat” by Frank Panucci.

Radio Free Charleston’s fourth episode “The Blue Guy Shirt,” featuring Raymond Wallace and Under The Radar was also originally posted in August, 2006, this was the very first time that RFC Big Shot (and now Mrs. RFC) Melanie Larch ran camera on the host segments. Since then, she’s shot the vast majority of the host segments for our shows. Both musical acts were recorded in the legendary LiveMix Studio, the home base for Radio Free Charleston back in our early video days.  Our animation is “Zachery Bop,” by Frank Panucci. Host segments were shot in Davis Park, downtown.

Our last video today, from September 8, 2006, is “The Beatles Shirt,” featuring Kevin Duffer, The Appalachian Celtic Consort, Pentagram Flowerbox, and cut-ins by IWA East Coast. This was the first show to bring you footage shot at The Empty Glass, albiet vintage footage shot back in 1990.

Next week we’ll go back to our normal one-show-per-week, chronological presentation.  Just so you know I’m planning ahead, this format will take us a bit more than four years, and when we get done, we’ll post all the episodes of The RFC MINI SHOW in order.

By the time we get done with that, I’ll be well past retirement age.

The PopCulteer
January 6, 2023

We have reached the first Friday of December, and this afternoon we offer up a special new episode of MIRRORBALL on The AIR. The AIR is PopCult‘s sister radio station. You can hear this show on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found elsewhere on this page.

At 2 PM, Mel Larch uncorks a new MIRRORBALL! The AIR’s showcase of classic Disco music presents that most rare breed…a live, in concert, Disco album.

This week Mel brings you the in-concert highlights from Sylvester’s 1979 album, Living Proof.

Sylvester was the pioneering Gay icon Disco singer, with a soaring falsetto and a string of hits. He also discovered his backup singers, who dubbed themselves “Two Tons of Fun,” but later went on to fame as The Weather Girls. Sadly Sylvester passed away due to complications from HIV in 1988.

On MIRRORBALL this week, Mel presents Sylvester recorded live at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House on the day he was given the key to the city by then-mayor, Diane Feinstein. It’s a stunning artifact of live music performed in concert at the height of the Disco era.

Check out the playlist…

MIRRORBALL 066

Sylvester, Live In Concert:

“Overture”
“Body Strong”
“Blackbird”
“Medley”
“Happiness”
“Lover Man”
“You Are My Friend”
“Dance (Disco Heat)”
“You Make Me Feel”

You can hear MIRRORBALL almost every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Saturday at 9 PM and Sunday at 11 PM exclusively on The AIR. Next week things will be a bit different because of our big December programming stunt!

And that’s all we have for this week’s PopCulteer. We could have written about Kevin McCarthy, Vince McMahon, The Doom Patrol, cauliflower crust pizza or any of a dozen other topics, but our plates are full this week, so you have to be content with our MIRRORBALL playlist.

But please do check back over the weekend for all our regular features.

The PopCult Bookshelf

The Charlton Companion
by Jon B. Cooke
TwoMorrows Publishing
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1605491110
$43.95

Longtime readers of PopCult know that your humble blogger is a big fan of Charlton Comics, the perennial “also-ran” comic book company that had bursts of creativity and innovation at various times in their history.

In this long-awaited book, Jon B. Cooke expands on his previous efforts, and with the help of many collaborators, puts forth the definitive account of that history. He covers the entire bizarre story of Charlton Publications, which was born out of a chance meeting in a county jail, and spent several decades as the nation’s only “all-in-one” magazine publisher, printer and distributor.

The Charlton Companion is an exhaustively-researched slice of manna from heaven for fans of Charlton Comics. In this book we learn how the company grew from publishing HIt Parader magazine to encompass a comic book line, hundreds of magazines and even their time as the original distributor of Hustler, before they finally shut down in 1992.

The focus is mainly on the comics, and this book has the full stories on the different eras, editors and creators that made Charlton, despite their lousy printing and distribution, one of the most interesting comic book companies around. While often derided for publishing substandard comics, the presence of Steve Ditko in their pages put the lie to that idea.

Among the revered comics pros who got their start at Charlton were Dick Giordano, Dennis O’Neal, Jim Aparo, Steve Skeates, Don Newton, Tom Sutton, John Byrne, Joe Staton, Mike Zeck and many others.

Charlton might have been considered a “farm-team,” but you can’t deny that a lot of hall-of-fame talent appeared in their pages. In this book we get lots of interviews and profiles with the different creators who worked for Charlton over the years.

The Charlton Companion also covers the magazine side of Charlton’s business, but the in-depth coverage is reserved for the comics. As the publisher’s blurb reveals:

Charlton produced a vast array of titles that span from the 1940s Golden Age to the Bronze Age of the ’70s in many genres, from Hot Rods to Haunted Love. The imprint experienced explosive bursts of creativity, most memorably the “Action Hero Line” edited by Dick Giordano in the 1960s, which featured the renowned talents of Steve Ditko and a stellar team of creators, as well as the unforgettable ’70s “Bullseye” era that spawned E-Man and Doomsday +1, all helmed by veteran masters and talented newcomers―and serving as a training ground for an entire generation of comics creators thriving in an environment of complete creative freedom.

From its beginnings with a handshake deal consummated in county jail, to the company’s accomplishments beyond comics, woven into this prose narrative are interviews with dozens of talented participants, including Giordano, Dennis O’Neil, Alex Toth, Sanho Kim, Tom Sutton, Pat Boyette, Nick Cuti, John Byrne, Mike Zeck, Joe Staton, Sam Glanzman, Neal Adams, Joe Gill, and even some Derby residents who recall working in the sprawling company plant. Though it gave up the ghost over three decades ago, Charlton’s influence continues today with its Action Heroes serving as inspiration for Alan Moore’s cross-media graphic novel hit, Watchmen.

While largely written by Cooke, The Charlton Companion also incorporates work by Chris Irving, who contributed greatly to the two issues of Cooke’s Comic Book Artist magazine from 2004 that had previously been the definitive word on Charlton; and also the late Michael Ambrose, the publisher of the dedicated fan magazine, Charlton Spotlight, who sadly passed away as this book was going to press. Frank Motler contributes an index of Charlton publications, as well. They even bring the book up to date with mentions of Charlton Spotlight and the Charlton Neo Comics.

The Charlton Companion is an invaluable resource for a previously-neglected area of comic book history. It’s also a fascinating look at publishing in the 20th century, and offers a glimpse of the immigrant business experience of the time. The story of Charlton is not only a huge part of American comic book history, but we also see how the company was connected to the likes of Betty Page, Larry Flynt, The Beatles, Heavy Metal Music, The Vatican and more.

The book is also profusely illustrated and wondefully laid out, which is pretty ironic, since Charlton was notorious for their low production values.  This book simply looks spectacular.

The Charlton Companion is a must-have for anybody with an interest in Charlton Comics, but the book is really recommended for anyone with an interest in pop culture, publishing, music or the changing face of comics in the Bronze Age. You can order The Charlton Companion directly from the publisher, or from any bookseller, by using the ISBN code.

Entering into the first full weekend of the new year, we have tons of stuff happening in and around Charleston to tell you about.  I don’t know if we’ll have any seventy degree temperature swings this weekend, but it is supposed to be unseasonably warm.

Live Music is back at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. Friday it’s Steve Himes. Saturday Andrew Adkins serenades the crowd.

The Empty Glass has some great stuff through the week to tell you about.  From 9 PM to 11 PM Wednesday, Ginger Wix will be at the World Famous Empty Glass. Thursday from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM, Swingstein and Robin play fiddle and piano and sing swing and early jazz standards. Each week they donate their tips to a local nonprofit.  Friday from 5 PM to 8 PM Timmy “Courts and Friends hold down the fort at the Glass. Next week they’ll have an open mic Monday night, and Songwriter Showcase on Tuesday. Weekend shows are listed among the graphics below.

Saturday at 7:30 M at the WV Culture Center, Mary Hott and the Carpenter Ants will perform “Devil in the Hills.” This soulful Americana song cycle was inspired by recently discovered first-person accounts of life deep in West Virginia’s coalfields. For more information and tickets, go HERE.

Please remember that the pandemic is not over yet. Many people who have very good reasons are still wearing masks, and many of us, understandably, are still nervous about being in crowds, masked or not. Be kind and understanding  while you’re out.

If you’re up for going out, here are a few suggestions for the rest of this week, roughly in order.