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New York singer/songwriter Jaymay is part of the Hotel Cafe Tour 

The Hotel Café in Los Angeles has become an influential venue — “the place that breaks artists” — featuring the country’s up-and-coming singer/songwriters.

“The stellar songwriters that grew The Hotel Café scene into community and camaraderie are the focus,” said spokesperson Patrice Fehlen, and the Hotel Cafe Tour, stopping next week at Bogart’s, follows the same formula.

“There are no headliners, the band is shared and spontaneous collaborations between artists are encouraged,” she said. “With a revolving cast of songwriters jumping on and off the bus, each evening is unique, creating a feeling of 'these people in this place will never happen again.’”

Now in its fourth year, Over the Hotel Café Tour will feature an all female line-up for the first time. Nineteen female songwriters, both established musicians and hot rising stars such have embarked on this 34-city tour, featuring a different line-up on each stop.

“One bus, one band, and a bunch of girlfriends on the road,” Fehlen said.

Cincinnati’s stop features Rachael Yamagata, Meiko, Thao Nguyen, Jaymay and Alice Russell.

“It’s almost like a talent show,” Jaymay said. “The band gets all of our songs in advance, so we go out and do three songs, let someone else play for a while, go back and do two more.”

how to go

• WHAT: The Hotel Cafe Tour
• WHERE: Bogart’s, 2621 Vine St., Cincinnati
• WHEN: 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 3
• COST: $13.50
• MORE INFO: (513) 562-4949; www.bogarts.com

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Joseph Parks as Beane in the Playhouse in the Park's production of "Love Song." Photo by Sandy Underwood.

Last summer, we saw Joseph at the Second Stage Theatre in New York where he starred in "Eurydice," a play that the Know Theatre is prooducing next spring. Small world..... 

First off, “Love Song” is not a musical, although it does sing, in a way.

Rather, it’s a quirky little comedy about a hermit-like 20- or 30-something tollbooth worker with a minimalist lifestyle discovering love for the first time.

The action alternates between Beane’s apartment that of his sister Joan, a career-obsessed perfectionist, and her husband Harry.

The apartments are both sparsely equipped, but while Joan and Harry’s place appears to be zen-chic in its clean lines and white chairs, Beane’s loft is just empty. Lacking both a plate and a full set of silverware, he eats from an enameled metal cup with a spoon. In fact, when a attractive young female burglar named Molly breaks into to steal everything he owns, she can pretty much put it all in her pocket.

But when he walks in on her during the apparent crime, she also steals his heart.

Prior to Molly, Beane was the guy who compulsively, obsessively kept to himself. Joan tells the story of how a school bus bully poked her brother in the back of the neck with a pencil for an entire school year without Beane ever turning around or doing anything to acknowledge the poking.

But once he meets Molly, Beane becomes verbose, even poetic, waxing eloquently, almost maniacally, about all manner of things, whereas previously he couldn’t answer a simple question in a personality quiz that Harry attempts to administer. He begins to live fully for the first time, relishing even simple things like turkey club sandwiches.

Beane’s new-found enthusiasm for life results in his quitting the tollbooth job and seeking to expand his outlook. His good cheer even has an effect on Joan and Harry, who re-discover the spark of their own relationship.

But still, something doesn’t seem quite right to them about Beane and Molly, so Joan sets out to unravel the mystery of the girl burglar she’s yet to meet, even though it could mean an end to Beane’s joy.

John Kolvenbach’s script if both fast-moving (90 minutes, no intermission) and poetic, the kind of magic realism that speaks to love and longing in an intelligent and profound way while providing frequent laughs. The acting is likewise taut and to-the-point under the direction of Michael Evan Haney, who allows the characters their effusiveness without being cloying or unnecessarily silly.

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Cincinnati singer/songwriter Ellie Fabe is still finding her way back into the scene, making her second appearance at the Music Cafe at the Fitton Center on Tuesday, Oct. 28.

“I have two kids, and that can check you out for a while,” she said. “But they’re a little older, 10 and 14, so I’m just now checking back in.”

Admitting that it’s hard to negotiate her way this time around — there was no MySpace.com when she first started playing her songs — Fabe said her strategy is just to play as much as she can, especially in performer-friendly venues like the Music Cafe.

“Sometimes you find yourself in uncharted territory at open mic nights,” she  said. “But I’ve been writing regardless of whether or not I’m playing out, so you start to get into this ‘if a tree falls in the forest’ thing.

“So for now, I’m just trying to stay next to myself and not get too far out ahead.”

Part of that includes recording. Although she’s recorded some demos of her work, she’s not sure what to do with it all other than post it on MySpace.

“I’d love to make a record, but I don’t see that as something that will catapult you to the top,” she said.

Fabe, who is also a working visual artist, said her songs, laden with girl-longing themes, seem to be especially popular among teenage girls.

“My work is a little self-confessional,” she said, “writing about what’s going on with me — although a lot of it is fictional. I also like words that just go together well.”

Also performing at the Music Cafe will be Christian pop artist Kevin Stokely, Debbie Silverman and Mitch Lieberman playing novelty and parody tunes, singer/songwriters Myron Gabbard and Brent Burch, and folk/rock/country band Diamond Blue.  

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Joneal Joplin, John LiBrizzi and Adrian Sparks in "The Seafarer" 

THEATER REVIEW — The Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati proves the worth of its name with "The Seafarer," the Conor McPherson drama now on stage.

The story is yet another take on the archetypical Faustian motif, but that matters less than the storytelling and characters that populate Sharky's rumpled Dublin home. The story itself is a little weary by this time, the subject having been explored hundreds of times, dating back to the earliest days of literature, and apparently neither "Damn Yankees" nor "The Devil and Daniel Webster" were the last words on the subject.

So the joy of "The Seafarer" is not in the surprises of the script (there is a twist, but a rather lame one, if you ask me), but in the presentation and in the performances turned in by the five-man crew under the direction of D. Lynn Meyers.

The play opens on Christmas Eve and the morning after a homecoming celebration for Sharkey, who has just returned from a driving job in which he apparently had a dalliance, or possibly just a flirtation, with his boss' wife.

Although Sharky's on the wagon, the others take a bit of the hair of the dog before making their holiday rounds of the local pubs, setting the stage for a traditional Christmas Eve game of poker. Sharky's prospective son-in-law Nicky joins the game in spite of Sharky's protests, and brings with him a well-dressed stranger who knows quite a bit more about the brotherly trio than they are comfortable with. None more than Sharky, who apparently shared a jail cell with the stranger some 25 years earlier. And the stranger apparently holds some kind of marker that is about to come due - although a friendly game of poker could resolve the debt.

Although the story centers on Sharky and his debt, "The Seafarer" is a true ensemble effort.

Adrian Sparks makes his return to the Cincinnati stage in a big way as Sharky, the Irish brawler with a drinking problem and a few dark secrets in his past.

Joneal Joplin, a familiar face to local stages having worked with ETC in "Copenhagen" a few seasons ago and in many Playhouse productions, does a fine comic turn as Sharky's blind brother Richard, also a fan of stout and whiskey, and a well-practiced player of the sympathy card.

Chicago-based actor John Librizzi makes his area debut as Ivan Curry, a friend caught in a dilemma: He's afraid to go home and face the wrath of his wife, but the longer he stays out on his binge, the angrier she's going to get.

Brian Isaac Phillips, the artistic director of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company who first came to town as an ETC intern, plays Nicky, the hot-headed youngster of the group. Sharky hates him, but probably only because he's just like him.

And Dennis Parlato, New York-based but a frequent ETC contributor, plays the polished stranger and holder of secrets. His smooth manners are a fine contrast to the rough-and-tumble crew.

It's watching the sparks fly among these veteran actors that makes "The Seafarer" a fine night of theater.

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how to go

WHAT: "The Seafarer" by Conor McPherson

WHERE: Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1127 Vine St., Cincinnati

WHEN: Through Nov. 2

COST: $29-$38

MORE INFO: (513) 421-3555; www.cincyetc.com

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Matt Johnson as Hamlet; Justin McComb as Guildenstern Rosenstern Rosencrantz; Billy Chace as Rosencrantz Guildencrantz Guildenstern. 

What most distinguishes the current Cincinnati Shakespeare Company version is the production design. At first blush, it almost seems as though the scenic designer and the costumers were working on different shows. The centerpiece of the set is a giant altar in traditional Japanese design, and the costumes could have come from a Robert Mitchum movie, at least in the first scenes. But the disparity is bridged by the dark hues of the set and the rich use of shadow, sometimes using only candlelight, and by the dark suits and fedoras in jarring incongruity to the samurai gear sported by the ghostly king when he arrives, which only helps make him all the more terrifying. Hamlet's black-on-black ensemble stands in stark contrast to the ceremonial white kimonos of Gertrude and Claudius when we get to the king and queen's court, and when Hamlet and Laertes have their final smack-down, it's done martial-arts style in short robes, though a bit awkward in its execution.

So the two styles blend together to create an exotic, even alien, post-apocalyptic world grounded in familiar references.

However, the discord between the production design and the acting style is less reconcilable. The actors deliver their lines in a conventional "trippingly off the tongue" manner, which seems at odds with the environment. Granted, the production would certainly have suffered should they have put on Bogey and Bacall mannerisms, but there might have been some middle ground somewhere.

Given that, however, the cast by and large makes interesting choices. Having seen Matt Johnson in a couple of dozen shows in his seven years at CSC, I can't say that I would have pictured him as a good Hamlet, but he wears the melancholy Dane well, partly by making him not so melancholy. In the most famous of soliloquies, for instance, he poses the existential question not as if it were his obsession, but with a bit of a laugh, the kind of chortle that signals a moment of unexpected clarity, and the rest of the speech follows becomes a process of discovery for Hamlet rather than a rumination.

The production is full of clever touches such as that. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern make their first appearance, they're flipping a coin, an homage to Tom Stoppard and his homage to "Hamlet," "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead."

Hayley Clark, following up a season showing her comedic chops in "A Midsummer Nights Dream" and a romantic side in "Romeo and Juliet," shows her mad side as a muddy Ophelia in an inspired performance.

One of the patrons overheard me before talking about how many times I've seen "Hamlet," and asked which I thought was best. It wasn't really a fair question, I thought, because it would be like trying to choose a favorite among your children.

Each had its charms and surprises, some "re-imagined," though in the end, they don't all seem that much different because what lingers more than production design are the words. Shakespeare was at top form when he wrote "Hamlet," and the language is both musical and rich in imagery, emotion and character (although it was recently brought to my attention that the women of "Hamlet" aren't treated very sympathetically).

Although it is far from a perfect production, the current "Hamlet" is loaded with riches and worth seeing even if you have seen it 10 - or 20 or 100 - times.

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how to go

WHAT: "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare

WHERE: Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, 719 Race St., Cincinnati

WHEN: Through Nov. 16

COST: $20-$26

MORE INFO: (513) 381-2273; www.cincyshakes.com

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Ryan Wesley Gilreath (l) and Tim Lile (r) 

THEATER REVIEW — It is true that in the early 1970s, the FBI kept surveillance on former Beatle John Lennon, presumably an effort to build a case against him in order to ship his pot-smoking left-wing hippie keister back to the U.K.

Likewise, much of the background on "Ears of a Beatle," now on the boards in a Human Race Theatre production, is based on history, beginning with the performance of "John Sinclair," the song that helped free a man from an unjust conviction, to the former Beatle's murder in 1980. The production uses photos, artwork and sound clips to hammer home that basis in reality, which Beatle fans will appreciate, but the story itself, of two FBI agents assigned to the case, is pure fiction.

Human Race veteran Tim Lile is Howard Ballantine, the hard-core fed heading up the case, and Ryan Wesley Gilreath (whom I last saw in New Edgecliff Theatre's produciton of Neil LaBute's "Fat Pig" last season) is the younger undercover partner, Daniel McClure, posing as a weaver (the original assignment had him posing as a guitar player, but he feared he would have to prove it somewhere along the way) trying to work his way into Lennon's left-wing circle of friends, which includes the likes of Abby Hoffman.

As the story transpires, the two begin to switch places. While conducting surveillance in a phone company uniform, Howard finds himself in Lennon's Dakota apartment, and his attitude toward the Beatle starts to shift. On the other hand, Daniel's cover takes a beating when he impregnates his source and finds himself on the verge of becoming a family man.

While "Ears on a Beatle" has its funny moments, it's hard to say that its a good comedy, and the dramatic parts just seem a little too pat and contrived to summon up much of an emotional response.

It's all a little too easy and finally comes off more of a fan tribute to Lennon than a thoughtful piece of theater.

• how to go
  WHAT: "Ears on a Beatle" by Mark St. Germain
  WHERE: Human Race Theatre Company, Loft Theatre, 128 N. Main St., Dayton
  WHEN: Through Nov. 2
  COST: $36-$75
  MORE INFO: (937) 228-3630; www.humanracetheatre.org

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New York Times, Oct. 19, 2008. About two and a half hours. Two wikipedia name checks.

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JournalNews feature

NASHVILLE — Butler County native and Nashville guitarist Tim Baumgartner is a little nervous about his apperance on “The Late Show” with David Letterman, airing Friday, Oct. 17.

Except for a couple of music videos in which the camera has “breezed by,” this will be Baurmgartner’s first performance on national television.

Baumgartner takes two solos on “Butte America USA,” a song performed by country singer Tim Montana. The first, he said, he emulates the solo played by the studio musician on the record, but the second one is all his and he’s out front and center.

Montana is just one of several musicians that Baumgartner slings his guitar for. In fact, the Letterman appearance marked his 210th gig of the year, no small feat in a city overflowing with pickers.

Baumgartner said that his first musical gigs were playing in a family band at Queen of Peace Church that included his siblings and his mother, Celeste Baumgartner, a frequent Journal-News contributor, on mandolin.

Like many other guitar players from Hamilton, Baumgartner took his first lessons at Mehas Music with Dave Sams, now the resident guitar teacher at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts. 

While a student at Badin High School, class of 1985, he played in a couple of different rock bands, including Risk and Scimitar, both of which played a lot of original music.

He got his first taste of professional work at Kings Island at the encouragement of  his mother.

 "It was the best thing she could have done for me," he said. "I had spent my summers baling hay and making maybe $300 the whole summer. At Kings Island, I was making $300 a week playing 30 minute shows with one-hour breaks, and we were treated royally."

After a year at the prestigious Berklee School of Music in Boston, Baumgartner finished his education at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music where he studied jazz guitar performance. He continued his theme park career in the meantime, not only at Kings Island and at Bush Gardens in Florida before moving to Nashville in 1992.

Tim Montana first approached him last summer to go on tour in (where else?) the state of Montana, which included a gig in Choteau, where David Letterman owns a vacation ranch.

He and one of the other band members were playing cards on the bus outside the venue after a sound check when Letterman came knocking on the bus door, wanting to meet Montana. Apparently, he was impressed enough to offer the band a slot on "The Late Show."

“He was just the nicest guy you could imagine,” Baumgartner said. “The people there treat him like one of their own.”

In New York at the theater, however, it’s a different story. While the band and the stage crew were all very friendly, he said, Letterman was kept isolated.

Although “The Late Show” normally tapes the same day as the broadcast, the Friday shows are sometimes taped earlier in the week. Other guests tonight, Oct. 17, include comedian Tina Fey, who has been making headlines for her impersonation of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

“All in all, I think the performance came off great,” he wrote on his MySpace.com blog. “However... the TV mix won’t lie.  Any tuning or intonation glitchs that are buried in the live stage volume will come out clear on the TV mix. So... I am biting my nails until I see it.”

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Go! feature

The exhibition is set up like a family’s living room, with furniture emblazoned with photographs and text.

“The images are mostly of people and the text comes from interviews I did with people with eating disorders and people who are close to people with eating disorders,” said Joy Christiansen Erb, assistant professor of photography at Youngstown State University whose “Family Gathering: A Look into the World of Eating Disorders,” opening next week at Miami University’s Hiestand Gallery, investigate the psychological and emotional effects of eating disorders.

“Eating disorders are often talked about in the media, but at the personal level, it’s often kept quiet,” she said, so her art makes an attempt to move the conversation from the tube to the living room.

“I first thought about how secretive eating disorders are,” she said. “They live in the home. So I created a desk to represent the mind and had things tucked away in the drawers so when you pulled them open and re-arranged things on the desk you could see more images and text.”

After that, she moved on to chairs to represent a counseling session. Facing each other, one chair expressed a professional, educating voice while the other had “a needy, raw” voice, she said.

She created the room of furniture for a traveling exhibition called “Share Your Voice” in 2005.

Her goal, she said, is to “help people, especially students, talk about their eating disorders and open up that dialogue.”

how to go

• WHAT: “Family Gathering,” an installation by Joy Christiansen Erb
• WHERE: Hiestand Gallery, Miami University, Oxford
• WHEN: Oct. 21-Nov. 5
• COST: No charge
• MORE INFO: (513) 529-1883

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CINCINNATI — Know Theatre of Cincinnati has joined forces with four other theater groups in the United States to present the world premiere of Sean Christopher Lewis' drama "Militant Language: A Play With Sand."

The play, which the author describes as "a play about responsibility in a world that doesn't make sense anymore," begins with the strife erupting after a 16-year-old boy disappears from his Iraqi village. A native in search of the missing boy is taken captive, and the American soldiers must hide him or risk losing their own lives. The soldiers battle wars within themselves as they are forced to endure loneliness, fear, betrayal and pain.

The play examines the consequences of war and the effects it has on soldiers and their relationships, Lewis said.

"With the upcoming election in November, the situation in Iraq will inevitably be a major deciding factor for many Americans," said director Jason Bruffy. " 'Militant Language' provides an entertaining, yet dark, thought-provoking look at the brave Americans that go overseas in defense of human liberties."

"The characters are a microcosm of our world. They come from all over," Lewis said. "They have to deal with others' prejudice and preconceptions. Class exists in the Army, just like everywhere else."

Lewis' "I Will Make You Orphans" was performed in 2004 at the first Cincinnati Fringe Festival and went on to tour for two years in the U.S. and Canada.

"It is a tribute to Cincinnati to have such a talented emerging playwright such as Sean Lewis choosing to premiere his play here," Bruffy said.

how to go

• WHAT: World premiere of "Militant Language: A Play with Sand" by Sean Christopher Lewis
• WHERE: Know Theatre of Cincinnati, 1120 Jackson St., Cincinnati
• WHEN: Oct. 11 through Nov. 16
• COST: $12
• MORE INFO: (513) 300-5669; www.knowtheatre.com

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I spent my 50th birthday on the trail at Vesuvius, somewhere in SE Ohio ....

But on the day I was born, this was breaking news:

New 'Sasquatch' found

At a road construction site in Bluff Creek, California, Gerald Crew finds big tracks in August and then again on October 1 and 2, 1958. He is told by his fellow workers, some of whom are Hoopa Indians, the maker is a hairy forest giant. Crew, using plaster of Paris, thanks to instructions from taxidermist Bob Titmus, makes a replica of the large print at the site on October 3, 1958.

The publication of that photograph of Crew holding an enormous foot-shaped plaster cast becomes a turning point in the pursuit of hairy wild hominoids in North America, and soon the world. Everybody wants to see whatever was making such imprints, and the public becomes interested in learning more about “Bigfoot.”

Thanks to: Cryptomundo

And this:

Lost genius found in homeless camp

Elmer Clarence "Mox" Meukel told his story to a couple of hobos in a shack on Scott Island in the Truckee River near Reno.

Most people wrote him off as a crackpot dreamer. After all, he was a sometime songwriter and self-taught inventor, but these men listened to his story.

Mox said he and some co-workers at Bendix Corp. had been designing a motion detector that would sound an alarm when a child got near a swimming pool.

On Feb. 1, 1958, the day he was laid off at Bendix, two military planes collided over Norwalk, killing 48 people. Mox said he realized that his motion detector could be turned into a device that would prevent such midair crashes.

Without a job, he began working on the device in the garage of the home at 7716 Bonner Ave., Sun Valley, that he shared with his wife, Jean, and three children. 

Found at L.A. Times

I sense a pattern developing here.

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It started out as a choice between acting lessons or violin lessons when Natalie Stovall was 4 years old. Because her mother had fiddled with a violin while carrying the child, music won out.

“I’m not even sure I understood what the instrument was at the time,” Stovall said, “but I had a lot of fun in class.

Practicing, however, was another matter.

“I liked the attention and I liked being on stage,” she said. “That was a big deal, but she couldn’t get me to practice until she figured out that if she took me to a park, people would gather around me to listen, and then I’d practice all day.”

She loved playing so much that her teachers sometimes chastised her for smiling too much during recitals. Music, after all, is serious business, Stovall learned, until she discovered the other side of the instrument, the fiddling side.

“You could play fast and you could play two strings at once and you could make it up as you go,” she said. “I continued classical training up until I was 16, just to work on technique, but I was really a fiddler by then.
When she was 10, she auditioned for a job performing in Opryland park when they asked her to sing something. She didn’t sing, she told them. Sing anything, they said. She sang “Happy Birthday” and got a job singing as well as playing fiddle, and taking voice lessons.

Stovall ended up studying at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she played in orchestras and formed her first band, taking them home to Nashville with her to play around there during the summers. The drummer in that band is still with her today, but it took her 27 different musicians to create the lineup, now together for two years, that will perform with her on Saturday at the Fitton Center.

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