Gorilla Theater puts a final twist on the holidays

Last year was exhausting, right? No wonder people pushed themselves to have the merriest holiday of their lives in 2016. Online sales hit the highest mark ever during Black Friday weekend. Consumers wanted, more than ever, to escape real life and celebrate in tinsel wonderlands. Now that you’ve digested plenty of fa-la-las and other family […]

Audio engineer Finn Downey is the area’s hip-hop go-to

Finn Downey is the first person to admit that his home recording studio is a modest setup. Downey has nailed egg crate foam mattresses to the wall and set up a couple of professional-quality microphones, a mixer, turntable, preamp, keyboard and a pair of equalizers. He has a computer equipped with digital recording and production […]

Album reviews: Real Numbers, Flower Girl and Goat

Real Numbers Wordless Wonder (Three Dimensional) Minneapolis’ Real Numbers declares its twee intentions from the first moments of “Frank Infatuation,” the leadoff track on Wordless Wonder. Brisk, strummy guitar chords make a bed for a bouncy, melodic bass before drums rush in along with a rudimentary but game-as-hell lead guitar line. Singer Eli Hansen enters […]

ARTS Pick: Old Man Luedecke

The Juno Award is Canada’s top trophy for musicians, and folk singer-songwriter Old Man Luedecke has a whole shelf full of ’em. His mastery of the banjo and authentic songwriting connects him deeply with his fans in Nova Scotia, and his work with Tim O’Brien has pushed his poetic, universal storytelling to a broader audience. Luedecke […]

ARTS Pick: Nabucco

John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice—artistic collaborations are special relationships with a dynamism that brings out the best in two people. Lesser-known in the mainstream, but just as prolific as the greats, conductor James Levine and singer Plácido Domingo recently surpassed 325 opera performances together. […]

ARTS Picks: Vaden Cox and Friends

In a family-friendly show that aims to “complete your celebration of the New Year and the Christmas season,” Vaden Cox and Friends break out new tunes and a long list of familiar favorites from the Monticello Road days. John Stubblefield and Eric Heinsohn are just two of the performers joining in to reprise an annual […]

ARTS Pick: Wonky Tonk

Punk cowgirl Jasmine Poole blends traditional country music with a bit of alt-rock edginess and stages it under the name Wonky Tonk. With a claim on influences ranging from Loretta Lynn to Modest Mouse, the Kentucky gal bends the musical perceptions of her heritage, stating, “It’s hard to separate the wonk from the tonk. Nor […]

Terri Allard celebrates 10 years of storytelling on WHTJ

About 10 years ago, Terri Allard had an idea for a television show. As an Americana-folk singer-songwriter raised in Barboursville, she had been sharing stories for years. Some of those stories belonged to her, but most belonged to other people, she says, and sharing them with an audience is what she’s always loved most. She […]

First Fridays: January 6

 Artist Caroline Nilsson says she is “fascinated by the idea of Eden as a place that is happening now, instead of this locked-away place that we may never be able to access.” Perhaps the only barrier between ourselves and paradise is how we perceive things, she says. In “Tides,” a series of semi-abstract paintings currently […]

The best movies of 2016 flew under the radar

They said 2016 was the worst year for movies in recent memory. But for every Batman v Superman: Yawn of Justice, there were at least two amazing works of genius clamoring for recognition. Some are simple movies of modest scale, others layered in ways we’ll still be studying years from now, but all prove that […]