From Sam Flieshman–Sunday, 11/1/09 at 12:02 pm

Dana,

You said that spending $16 million on bike paths is a waste of money. Do you not think that we need to use more and more alternative (not oil based automobiles) forms of transportation? (Bus, bicycles, mopeds, etc).

I may still vote for you, despite your apparent insensitivity to those of us who travel around wilmington bicycle and risk our lives because of the lack of bike lanes.

Thanks,

Sam

Reply from Dana Page – Sunday 11/01/09 at 6:47:26 PM

Sam you have to be sensitive to the majority of the folks that take their lives into their own hands every day with the pot holes and the cracks in the pavement on the city roads.

Ride Shipyard Blvd. from the shipyards on the river to College Road. You will see what I mean. The poor condition of Shipyard Blvd. contributed to the death of a Wilmington policeman earlier this year. He was responding to a call and lost control of his police cruiser and lost his life. My son rides in a school bus every day on this dangerous road. I believe the policeman, my son, and everyone else’s safety is far more important than some hippie dippy bike rider who drinks the Obama “green Kool-aid”.

What you have to understand is that when Obama says “green” he is talking about money coming out of my pocket and others who are successful in society and going to some unnecessary scam for some feel good idiotic program that is not cost effective!

Repair all of the existing roads and bridges and then I might consider bike paths.

Do you realize the state of NC is $300 million behind in road and bridges repairs. Why would any one but an idiot want to spend money on bike paths when the roads are so under funded?

In life as you grow older you will learn that you have to learn to put needs in front of wants. We need a safe road and bridge network from Murphy to Manteo before we build bike paths that will not be maintained properly either. There is not enough money for bike paths and for good roads and bridges both. We have to choose roads and bridges over bike paths.

If you want more bike paths move to California where they are so broke from building bike paths that folks are fleeing the state in droves.

Think about what these Obama robots are saying. They want to make the rest of the country suffer the same fate of California and Europe. Why not make a stand in Wilmington this November 3, 2009 and fight the dictators in Washington and use our stimulus money to repair our crumbling road system before we build bike paths to nowhere.

Dana Page, Candidate for Wilmington City Council 2009. (A Reagan/ Jesse Helms Conservative)

From Catherine Welch, Morning Edition host, and WHQR 91.3 fm

Starting October 1, plastic bottles will be banned from the landfill.

The goal of the state-wide ban is to double the annual amount of plastic bottles recycled to 2 million tons by 2012.

The new law also bans wooden pallets and motor oil filters. These join a growing list of items banned from landfills across the state, including antifreeze, appliances and beverage containers from ABC permitted facilities.

For John Hubbard, director of Environmental Management for New Hanover County, the new ban means his people will need to keep a sharp eye on what trash haulers are taking to the dump. A journey that starts at the curb and what people put into their trash cans.

Listen to it here:  http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/whqr/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1560296

Since moving into our place near Legion park on Carolina Beach Rd, we’ve saved a ton of money and had (quite frankly) much better vegetables on our table since discovering Country Fresh Produce. They carry more varieties than most grocery stores, and the prices are phenomenal. That being said, I have had a couple folks say something like: “It looks kind of dusty in there…” or the like. Please, it’s what a produce shop should be: colorful, relatively inexpensive, and well stocked with fresh veggies. Oh yeah, and it smells like veggies. They also carry eggs, some pork products (all from NC), superb boiled peanuts, and more than I have time to outline here. Go there (map). (910) 763-6122

In this series, the Grove pays tribute to the Cape Fear region’s more unique and particularly notable watering holes. These are the places most locals cherish above all others and pray that tourists never discover. They are the stuff of frothy legend. They are small and dirty. There are generally at least two drunks on rotation who’ve seen too many moons and just as many years either at sea or behind a hammer—regulars, battered but not broken, damn beautiful people. No chair or barstool is alike, and cigarette smoke flows—regrettably for some—as freely as the alcohol. There are centuries-old ballast stones…somewhere. And, most importantly, unlike many restaurant bars on the planet these places celebrate their stature by operating in complete autonomy. Cheers to that…

The Fat Pelican (map)

We start at the Fat Pelican in Carolina Beach. Approaching the Pelican’s teal façade and wooden door from the road, you’d think you were walking into any other bar. Nothing special—a couple of neon signs, mock-parking signs with the catchy little sayings like, “Hippies Use Side Entrance.”

What hits you first is the odor of dust and old wood, smoothed and sanded down by resting hands, elbows, and 21 years of the bottom of a beer bottle. There is smoke. There is always smoke. The bar is on the left after the entrance, and when I came in, there stood a charming older lady with silver hair eating a single-serve bag of pretzels. Surrounded by old beer bottles, scattered trinkets, and pictures of everything from fishing trips to family portraits and drunk folk (young and old alike) wearing funny hats and memorable outfits, she’s watching golf. A young girl leaving as I come in says, “Catch ya later Suzie Q.” Perfect.

I ask Suzie a few questions about the bar—how old it is, who opened it, etc—and she rapidly points me to a patron playing arcade-bowling in a small alcove between the bar and the sitting room. Though the Pelican looks like its been there forever, he tells me the place opened in 1988, and that it started off as a small beer and wine shop that sold minor food items like baguettes and other sandwiches. He also tells me that the original bar was much smaller. It’s easy to identify where it was because it’s the only part of the overall place that has solid flooring. Everything outside the original space, which is more like a tunnel than a room, boasts mostly earth, scattered bricks, wooden boards, and badly worn carpets as ground cover.

I ask the guy a few more questions and in true bar-style he says he’ll talk with me more after his bowling game is over, so I make my way back the true heart of the Fat Pelican: the tractor-trailer beer fridge.

Now, the story I’ve been told by some locals is that the trailer had been on the property long before the bar ever existed—stranded by some poor trucker who got it stuck in the sand and decided to leave it—and that, miraculously, somebody started serving beers out of it like some magic fridge you see in football commercials.  The truth, according to another source, is much more logical: the original owner backed a refrigerated tractor trailer on to the lot for the very purpose it serves and the Pelican is built around it.

End to end and floor to ceiling, the trailer is slam packed to the gills with six packs. Many are fine micro brews in multiple fermentations and flavors you might only find from a couple of states—Cottonwood, Belle’s, Dogfish and the like. There are also your standard mega brands and international beers—Miller, Budweiser, Dos Equis, Stella, and so on. After a few minutes I decide on an Oberon, a wheat beer from Belle’s Brewery in Michigan with the slightest tint of orange in the finish.

Outside, the colorful exterior and patio is filled with dozens of old graying plastic lawn chairs both weatherworn and cracking from the weight of too many beers, I hardly expected to find an abandoned game of chess, four or five moves deep—just one more of a thousand glorious surprises that hang out in back of the Fat Pelican. Half of an old boat acts as a late night bar. Old golf clubs line and help hold together the fence protecting the place from the street and alley that flank it. There are scattered umbrellas, an old furnace standing by itself, and at least a dozen other icons of what it means to be at the beach: paddles, a water-logged surf board or two, wooden pelicans, wooden tuna, and flags of all kinds.

When I finally sit down to soak it all in, a chubby black lab walks slowly out the side door and, grinning, lays down right beside me in the sun for a few minutes. His name is That-a-Boy… “Boy” for short. He’s happily a bar-dog, and sits there briefly before he begins to scratch and lick. After a moment or two of typing, I hear him reach out with a calm, Sunday afternoon yawn, and that’s it. He gets up, shakes, walks back to the door. And then, he stops to look at me. No sooner do I get up to open the door for him than Boy mouths a rope hanging from the door handle, gives it a tug, swings the door open all by himself, and trots back inside. What that means to me is simple: Boy says, “Come on back inside… you need another beer.”

Before leaving, I stop at the bar and pay Suzie $4 for my “premium.” A pretty standard price… hefty. Though somehow, buying a beer at the Fat Pelican is like buying an experience. And though this can only come out somewhat redundant, the truth is simple: you don’t go to the Fat Pelican just to drink a beer… you go to drink a beer at the Fat Pelican.

“See suspicious activity at the voting station?  Call (919) 828-6423 ext. 146″

Does a such a question/prompt presuppose that democrats are cheating at the polls? Even worse, does it promote unneeded paranoia?

I post this question amid a recent allegation made by a Republican Kinston, NC man, who falsely accused–and I quote–”black democratic state employee aids” who work at a home for the mentally ill, of bringing “bus loads of mentally retarded and severely handicapped patients” to vote and then “voting for them.” The man’s letter, as I mentioned already, was a host of lies and exaggerations, and has already been debunked by several websites… but only after the accused home–the Caswell Center–received a phone call from FOX News on Sunday regarding more “bus loads” of unregistered mentally-ill voters that morning, a day when the polls weren’t even open!

I guess what I’m asking in addition to the above questions is this: does the prompt on the NHC GOP website encourage voters to fabricate stories about voter turnout and fairness at the voting booth?

Admission is free, but space is extremely limited, making the event an up-close experience with local musicians. Capacity in the Gallery is 80 and only 60 actual seats will be available for the concert. WHQR’s front desk will start taking reservations for seats on July 14.

The performers for this first show will be none other than Wilmington’s favorite folk-grass trio, the Barnraisers. You can check them out at www.barnraisersmusic.com, and listen to an older interview with them right here on The Grove Project.

All performances will be taking place on Thursday nights, and will be open to the public (and free… for at least a while).

Beyond the buzz? This is very rare for Wilmington area radio stations, who have few, if any, performances on air that are solely devoted to increasing regional awareness of Southeastern NC’s  music scene…which is filled to the brim with talented song-writers and musicians who often go unrecognized due to the difficulties of getting on-air at stations whose focus tends to be national pop-culture rather than community support.

WHQR’s Soup to Nuts: Live will provide talented and tested live local musicians an answer to these difficulties. It’s a live venue. It’s a radio venue.

Broadcasts for the new program will not be broadcast real-time for the first few performances. Rather, the show to be hosted by WHQR’s George Scheibner (Midday Edition and Soup to Nuts) will be set up as a live concert to be recorded live in the WHQR Gallery, and set to broadcast at a later date.

Stay tuned for more details and the first official Soup to Nuts: Live performance Thursday, tentatively scheduled for sometime at the end of July.

For booking & other info, contact David Howell at WHQR 91.3 FM by email at dhowell@whqr.org

To put it more simply, I cracked a beer and happily accepted the mosquitoes for one reason: baseball season is upon us locally. The Wilmington Sharks were getting warmed up for their opener.

As I watered, excitement and anticipation crept upon me. I could taste the stale popcorn greasily wetting its red and white striped box and feel the slow dehydration the likes of which you only get from a keg of Miller at the ball park. Ah, the sounds and smells–the bat crack, old leather ball-gloves, the organ winding, the pitcher’s poise, the smack of a catcher’s mitt, the out-fielders spitting, the umps bad calls, the dry of the dirt and the green of the grass, the children playing their own game behind the bleachers, the moms and dads explaining the game to the kids… ahh baseball.

Alas, the more the sky darkened Wednesday afternoon, the more I was saddened. The big opening game turned out to be about as upsetting as having to listen to the songs above anywhere BUT a baseball diamond. So in the end, there is nothing to report except that the umps called a 90 minute rain delay and then eventually postponed the game til June 15.

But there is good news in all this, and sweet redemption for baseball fans: the make-up game will be a Sunday double-header! Two ball games on a Sunday afternoon… double the pop-corn and double the beer! There is a God indeed.

The Sharks next game will be Friday night against the Fayetteville Swamp-Dogs and then on Monday against the Columbia Blowfish. See you at the ball park!

Check ‘em out at wilmingtonsharks.com

The Barnraisers are:

• Adam Forsythe, guitar and vocals
• Tiffany Reece, banjo and lead vocals
• Benji Smith, upright bass and vocals

After several emails, a couple of phone calls, and a weekend spent listening to their new self-titled demo, I had the chance to sit down with Adam Forsythe and Tiffany Reece of Wilmington’s own Barnraisers.

It was a good evening, and though you won’t hear this question in the sound-file, or read it in the transcription of our conversation below, Adam and Tiffany asked me at the conclusion of our chat why I wanted to interview them. I said, quite simply, that it was because they were more than a local band. They are, in no less certain terms, a local entity.

In the sound-file of our conversation, the listener will hear that some minor anomalies on the recording persist, and see that the copy has been edited for conciseness.
Last but not least, on the sound files attached, you will also find an extra half-hour of conversation with The Barnraisers, including conversations about country/bluegrass stereotypes, performance, attitudes and intellect in the Wilmington music scene, and, finally, two takes of a new song, “Wake up Shirley Bell.” Enjoy!

Artistically, Wilmington is a sort of a microcosm of sub-cultures. There’s “hip”, “tattoo-sheik” “heroin-sheik”, “metal”, “punk,” “pop”, “frat-pop,” “hip-hop,” you name it—all subcultures that fall under a “progressive” cultural banner. Among the various performance and visual arts, however, the artistic minorities seem to be jam-bands and folk musicians. That is, Wilmington seems a bit short on Folk Art. Do you think this is an accurate depiction of Wilmington’s music scene?

TR: I think when people think of “folk music” in Wilmington they automatically think of jam-bands. There are other bands out there that are doing something different, but I think being so close to the beach you get a lot of jam bands, you know.

AF: But they’re not straight-ahead bluegrass

TR: They aren’t. And we’re not either. I guess I prefer the “get in get out” kind of songs, you know? I don’t particularly want a six-minute long song, but I think do we have a lot of jam bands—I guess that’s the best way to describe it.

Is that who you find yourself playing out with?

TR: We get lumped into that category a lot because, first, we’re good friends with people that play that kind of music. And I think, too, that bands we’re meant fit in with all the time…are bands we open up for.

Take Larry Keel for example. I don’t think we necessarily match. I’m not sure it’s a good pairing…

What would you say is the difference?

TR: That’s a hard one…(chuckles)

AF: I think we’re more country and honky-tonk and they’re more “hippied,” or more hippies listen to them, or that genre of listener. And they do jam out. I think Larry Keel’s an awesome guitar player. I like to listen to him. But it’s not really what we do at all.

TR: Yeah, I think if people are looking for something like that…like a Larry Keel kind of band to open up a show, they’re going to be disappointed when they hear us… because our songs are two and half minutes…

AF: And the other band will have at least one extraordinary player…

TR: Yeah, we’re just two and half minute songs…

AF: And I think what we play is more like the Rose Maddux and Wanda Jackson type stuff we listen to. It’s more our speed… I mean, we just have a banjo in the band so…

TR: People assume that because there’s a banjo…

AF: It’s always bluegrass… and that’s not always the case.

So what would you say is the reason why the band has done so well here? …because you have.

TR: Well I think we’re older than most band members here, and so we practice a lot because we feel like we were having to play catch-up… and Adam is really a workhorse when it comes to the guitar. He plays everyday, hours a day… and so he has been the engine to keep us going…

AF: I think another thing too is that we didn’t start playing shows until I was 29… I think she was 27, so we’ve been audience members for the longest time. We know what we like to see in bands, and—I’m not knocking anybody—but we’ve seen a lot of bands that seem a little lazy when they get on stage and they’re not performing. I think that’s what a lot of local bands miss… the performing aspect. It’s not about just strumming a guitar and singing. But, you know, if it’s a correct venue, in a strict music venue, they’re there to entertain. And it’s just right up there with the musicianship to me.

And that’s what is so good about Tiff… she is so animated up there. She does the lead role very well… I couldn’t do it…

TR:I think too that’s me compensating for what I might lack when it comes to instrumentation, because I’ve been playing for just now four years… so I guess maybe I’m trying to distract people from what kind of banjo player I really am… (laughs)

AF: But the strong-suit is also vocals and voice.

AF/TR: (laughing) Was that answered?

Yeah that was fine… I think Wilmington often gets compared to places like Asheville and Charlotte. Do you feel like Wilmington as a community is as open to new forms of entertainment as these other NC cities? Perhaps more so even?

AF: I’ve been here since 1997, and I never performed live—I played guitar 13 years before I finally did play live. But for some reason I was always afraid to play out in Wilmington. Wilmington seems to have this fickle opinion about performance… I mean they like you for a bit and then they don’t like you. But from what I’ve seen now, it’s not really that way. I thought Wilmington would not treat us this good…I just didn’t know. But they have, and that’s been pretty surprising now. It was like “Wow! I should have been doing this five years before we did!”

TR: But I think too that everything goes in cycles. You have a scene for awhile, and it seems right now that Wilmington has a pretty strong folk/Americana thing—which is kind of a blanket-term I guess. There are lots of bands that are playing this kind of music, and seems like you’ll get a couple of bands that will play it… then all of a sudden more will pop up playing that sort of music. Or you might get a rockabilly feel for a little while where you’ll get a couple local bands, then suddenly you’ve got half a dozen bands playing rockabilly. So I think it goes in phases. But I also think Wilmington audiences can be starved for something new… So, when something new does come along they’re excited and receptive.

AF: It does have a big heavy metal scene… though I think they call it Rock n’ Roll (laughter…), and those bands have done really well.

I know that you guys (Adam particularly) come from a familial background steeped in traditional music. Few of questions on this… Tiff, you’re front and center in this group (which is the way many most likely guess should be…) what female vocalists do you model yourself after?

TR: Wanda Jackson, I really love. Rose Maddux. Those are probably the two that I listen to the most… and I’m not going to lie… the two I emulate—the way they sing and the way they growl. They don’t sound like, you know, Alison Krauss, and that kind of whispy sound. I just don’t have that kind of voice, so I really couldn’t sound pretty if I tried. But there’s something really ballsy about them, and so I kind of attach myself to that.

Where do you think “traditional music” fits into a community as artistically “progressive” as Wilmington?

TR: I don’t know… maybe I’m skeptical. But I don’t think there are many completely original artists anymore. I think they all draw from somewhere, and it almost seems like the further you go back the more original it seems—

AF: But Old Crow Medicine Show is “new,” and they play stuff from the 20s.

TR: Yeah, if you go back to the 20’s and 30’s… or, if a musician were to get up and do something like that now, they would seem like the most original thing in local music right now, I think. So the further you go back, the more edgy it seems.

AF: I think, with this type of music especially, you can go really far back. I would call what Old Crow Medicine Show does “old time.” They probably play songs as old as the 1700’s that carried all the way up to the twentieth century… these songs are from before our time…

Where in songwriting does “traditional” influence collide with contemporary subject matter?

TR: In our music or in any music?

Either, Or…

AF: I think I try simply to write about what I know, but in a way that I think is timeless as I can get it. I don’t really listen to anything new. Everything is old—Bill Monroe or Rose Maddux… old country, old bluegrass—Dexter Romweber is probably the most modern music I listen to right now… So my style does mimic their style. Tiff tries to sing like that. I try to write like that, and I think I gain a lot of ideas. But, things like love and lost love and cheating are going to be around forever, so that stuff does crop up a lot.

Do you think other folk musicians feel that same collision in their songwriting?

AF: Well, first, I think songwriting’s just hard. It’s something you have to do every single day. I write every single day just like I practice guitar every day. It’s like exercise, which you have to do to get better at, and come up with analogies and rhymes and stuff like that… and, I don’t know… To come up with any kind of subject matter that hasn’t already been done, or to try to put a different spin on it, or do it a better way, or just a different way… that’s really rough. So songs aren’t just coming out every week or nothing, but they’ll go in spurts.

TR: He’ll write some real crappy ones… (chuckles…) I mean, he knows they’re not up to par but he’ll just finish it to finish and move on to the next one.

AF: The last song I wrote that I’m proud of is “Wake Up Shirley Bell.” It’s about my grandma, and she died of lung cancer, and the song is basically a call…

TR: But it’s written in a way that’s not…and I don’t know how he does this exactly… but it’s a song about death that’s written in a spunky, sassy, fiery way where you’re not listening to it and thinking ‘Oh… doom and gloom and dustbowl poverty’ and, you know… It’s real fast, and if you weren’t really listening, you’d want to go out and take a shot and have fun with your friends and dance a little bit. He does that a lot with songs…

AF: It’s also the type of music we play. We only have three instruments so I have to write more up-beat songs… and it’s kind of hard for us to slow it down at times, and the crowd is always ready to just go. They don’t want it slowed down… they just want it faster and faster.

A lot of people lump bluegrass, gospel, and folk music into the same genre. Which would you say best represents your sound from an influential standpoint?

TR: I would say bluegrass…

AF: …me too…

TR: …if it came down to those three…and a lot of times I think we find ourselves in a bit of a trap when people book us as a bluegrass band. What they really want is bluegrass-gospel, which is totally different. That’s not what we are, though we appreciate it. We don’t do it justice. We know a few gospel tunes…

AF: In my opinion, I don’t think we’re folk at all. When I think of folk I think of Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seger… but I don’t listen to them…

TR: Yeah, I don’t know anything about them… I don’t study them. So if we are influenced it’s accidental.

AF: Yeah… and as far as gospel… We’re not that either.

TR: We appreciate it, listen to it occasionally…

AF: It’s part of bluegrass. Definitely.

How do you feel about the stereotypes commonly associated with the music you play… and I mean really, how do you feel?

TR: I think that sometimes people think we’re trying to be different and cool when we say we’re not really folk or specifically bluegrass. But I just think we’re not. I mean we have a banjo, and we have an upright bass and a guitar. If those were electric instruments, you wouldn’t say we’re bluegrass. Do I listen to it in the car? No… Adam does. Adam is probably the most influenced by bluegrass… but maybe the fact that we have different musical tastes melding together makes our music something a little bit different. I mean, I don’t even identify with female bluegrass singers or male bluegrass singers. Now if I could open my mouth and sound like Ralph Stanley… like an 80 year old man, I’d take it any day… but as far as female bluegrass singers… doesn’t really do anything for me. Rhonda Vincent. Alison Krauss. I just don’t feel inspired so much by them.

AF: Yeah… I don’t think it’s all Deliverance either. I don’t think we or anyone else who plays bluegrass are rednecks. I think if people would actually learn about it, they would see its very hard music to play.

TR: I think if we went to the mountains and tried to sell ourselves as a bluegrass band we’d probably just get run out of town. You have to respect it.

In an article on you guys (this is before Benji joined you) from October of ‘06, there’s a comment saying that your voice is as “delectable as a glass of iced tea on a hot day or a piece of sweet potato pie on Thanksgiving.”[1] The rest of the piece is filled with similar down-home metaphors and even uses a written dialect that’s borderline backwoods. How do you feel about this type of characterization?

AF: I think there’s Country compared to red-neck, and there’s two differences there. I think we’re country folks.

TR: I don’t mind a sort of backwoods metaphor…I don’t even mind that stereotype. I grew up in a family that is really Southern, and country, and rural, and I’m proud of it. I’m not embarrassed by the fact that I love collards, or that I’ll eat pork-rinds (laughs)… and I think it’s a culture just like anything else. Mick Jagger was actually quoted once as saying the only place in the United States where you could find interesting food was in the deep rural south. And I think it’s a really rich culture. So I’m not offended if people use those phrases.

Had you the choice, how would you want listeners to view you?

TR: I’ll let you answer I’m hogging…

AF: No… you’re the leader!

TR: Maybe it appears that way but you know…

(laughter..)

For the rest of the interview, which is at 22:14 in Part 1, listen to the sound files below.

MP3: part 1 | part 2 |

[2] Sandala, Bryan. Currents. “Barnraisers Embrace the Traditional Sounds of Bluegrass and Mountain Music”. 12/14/06.

Thursday April 17, 2008 – 8:00 pm
City Stage, 21 North Front Street, Wilmington, N.C.
910-342-0272
General admission $10.00, $8.00 for children under 12, students, seniors and GWACA members.

From the press release:

An exciting evening concert that features local musicians, choreographers and dancers. Live music will be performed by Rick Tobey and the Chickenhead Blues Band and the newly formed band Stable Hands with rhythm guitarist/lead vocalist Frank Bruno, who has toured with Bruce Springsteen as a member of the Sessions Band. Dance performances include “ Company T” tap dancers, Vatra Gitana Bellydance, Shea-Ra-Niche African dance, Forward Motion Dance Company, as well as works by students, instructors from The Dance Cooperative and Glory Academy of Fine Arts. Choreographers include Melanie Haulman, Linda Larson, Shea-Ra Nichi, Tracey Varga and Marcy Whipkins. Modern contemporary, jazz, tap, Middle Eastern and African style dance forms will be presented. Please come join us for a unique evening celebrating local talents uniting to support a very important Wilmington community organization.
Proceeds of Arts Sensation will go to support Good Shepherd Center and its mission to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and foster transition of those in crises to independence in the community.