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March 2008
Weekend feedback?
A lot of stuff went on this weekend and no way to do it all. I caught the Waco symphony on Saturday night, but missed the Foghat/Blue Oyster Cult show. Rock bands Chevelle and Finger Eleven played here on Sunday night. The Waco Civic Theatre finished its run of “Steel Magnolias” over the weekend while the Waco Hippodrome Theatre had a family stage presentation of “Old Yeller.” The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band also was in Waco on Thursday at the Bosque River Stage.
Anyone who attended any of these over the weekend feel free to post your comments here so the rest of us can share vicariously. Win Emmons already has mentioned the “Steel Magnolias” run and I got an email from Foghat’s PR team that praised the venue (Zack & Jim’s Hog Creek Icehouse), said the show ran smoothly and that the band had a great time. For those of you in the crowd, was that your experience as well? It used to be that Waco weekends with more than one major concert/play/event was the exception, not the rule; now it’s more common than not, though usually when Baylor and MCC (and their thousands of students) are in session.
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Allen, Heyde entertain WSO “Homecoming” audience
Soprano Nancy Crosthwait Allen and hornist David Heyde returned to their hometown to perform with the Waco Symphony Orchestra Saturday night, showing a Waco Hall audience dotted with friends and family why they’ve won fans outside Waco.
Allen’s stage soprano, married to a infectious smile and a glint in her eye, charmed her listeners with a highly entertaining six-song set drawn from Broadway while Heyde’s rounded, gilded tone infused Richard Strauss’ Horn Concerto No. 1 with glowing warmth throughout.
The WSO, led by Music Director Stephen Heyde (David’s father), complemented the guest artists with balanced support, adding a touch of jazzy swing to Allen’s renditions of Leonard Bernstein’s “100 Easy Ways To Lose a Man” (from his musical “Wonderful Town”) and Irving Berlin’s “I Got the Sun in the Morning and the Moon at Night” (from “Annie Get Your Gun”).
The “WSO Homecoming” evening closed with a final local contribution, with both soloists performing Waco composer Kurt Kaiser’s sweet, lyric setting of Waco writer Mary Landon Darden’s sentimental verse “Coming Home.”
Heyde (the hornist), playing from a music stand, showed a fine ear for melody and tone in the horn concerto, displaying a nice technical command in the work’s closing movement. After the piece’s finish, conductor Heyde bypassed the traditional handshake between conductor and soloist for an affectionate father-son embrace.
Allen, wearing a white gown with sequined bodice and opera gloves, filled her performance with personality, from the knowing wit of “100 Easy Ways to Lose a Man” to the broad Cockney accent of Liza Doolittle in “Just You Wait.”
She sang with a microphone and seemed to run out of breath in the final measure of “I Could Have Danced All Night,” but her ever-present smile signaled from the beginning of her set that it was okay to have fun and the audience readily joined in. The WSO also demonstrated its collective, largely local talent in a performance of Smetana’s “The Moldau” that smoothly blended sweeping phrases from the string section with fluid, burbling lines by woodwinds, punctuated by staccato accents from the brass section.
Brass players proved a little overbearing in the “The Moldau’s” climax, but gave Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries” the propulsive push it needs, resulting in one of the evening’s most rousing, effective pieces.
Saturday’s concert also featured the stage presentation of 59 Symphony Belles and Brass, whose sponsors help support the WSO’s season subscriptions, and a crying infant heard periodically during Heyde’s concerto and Allen’s songs.
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More on Blue Oyster Cult, Foghat, Chevelle
A confession here: Thursday’s three-concert advance was frustrating to write. In a perfect world that has yet to come into being, we would have had space and time to devote a separate story for each show. Because those three shows fell within a week’s time, coverage got compressed into one greatly condensed story.
Some interesting stuff from my interviews with Blue Oyster Cult’s Eric Bloom, Foghat’s Roger Earl and Chevelle’s Pete Loeffler got left out, so here’s second helpings for fans wanting more.
Both Bloom and Earl talked about growing numbers of young people coming to their shows - audiences are more than middle-aged headbangers reliving their youth - and the challenge of impressing those young fans helps keep the stage vets on their toes. While longtime fans want the hits, there’s still room for musicians to stretch in improv jamming. Bloom noted BOC’s reputation for its concert jams - the band recently cranked out a 2-hour, 40-minute set for “hardcore” fans at a Connecticut gig - won it an invitation to The Jammy Awards a few years ago, where BOC shared the stage with the likes of Phish and Moe. “We never do the same show twice,” Bloom said, noting he writes a different concert set list every night.
Ironically, what has enabled both Foghat and BOC to maintain their careers over more than three decades - income from touring and merchandise sales - has insulated them from the collapse of the recording industry in recent years. With digital music downloads gutting CD sales, more and more bands are relying on safer revenue streams of live shows and merchandise sales - something the rockers of yesteryear learned sometime ago.
Both Earl and Bloom admitted success had allowed them to cut their touring to a comfortable level - roughly 80-90 shows a year for both bands. “The pressure is off,” Earl said. Even Chevelle’s Loeffler confessed the physical toll that constant performing takes, although that rock band just recently passed their first decade. Life on the road is “glorified camping, although you have running water and a nice bed to sleep in,” he said.
Loeffler recalled the days when Chevelle opened for the likes of hardcore bands like Sevendust when there was more than a whiff of danger and menace from the audience. “Everybody flips you off - and that’s if they like you,” he said. Nowadays, Chevelle’s fans often sing with the band and that’s fine by Loeffler.
The Chevelle guitarist noted how drastically parts of the music scene have changed in 10 years as record labels have fewer resources and music videos don’t build fan interest as they once did. “It’s amazing. We used to do music videos for $200,000. Now - if we do one at all - it’s about $10,000,” he said. “We have friends doing our videos now. It’s a different world than 10 years ago.”
New pastimes, too. Bloom, for instance, isn’t only about Blue Oyster Cult. He’s big on gaming (a major World of Warcraft fan) and a staff contributor for Massive Online Gamer magazine as well as cars for www.autoweek.com.
What keeps all three onstage one or more decades after starting? Love for the music and love from the fans, mainly. “I’ll retire when I’m six feet under and pushing up daisies,’ laughed Earl.
Foghat and BOC play Saturday night, March 29, at Zack & Jim’s Hog Creek Icehouse, with John Epperson and Drivin’ Blind opening. Chevelle and Finger Eleven play Sunday night, March 30, at Whiskey River (formerly Graham Central Station) with God Or Julie leading off.
Those of you attending either/both shows feel free to post your experiences here on this thread.
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Locals win theater writing prizes
There’s more to the stage than just acting and it’s in writing that two Waco residents, one former, the other present, are showing prize-winning talent.
Joshua Hill, a Waco Children’s Theatre product (as well as Connally High School, McLennan Community College’s theater program and the University of Texas at Austin), recently had a play selected for a staged reading at the Great Plains Theatre Conference held May 24-31 in Omaha, Neb. Hill’s play “A Truth In Lies” was chosen to be read in the conference’s Play Lab. Hill’s presently in Columbia University’s graduate program for playwriting.
Award-winner No. 2 is McLennan Community College theater student Amanda Lassetter who heads to Washington, D.C., next month for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Lassetter was one of eight regional winners of the Student Dramaturgy Award and represents Region IV (Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico and Arkansas). If you attended MCC’s production of “Pride & Prejudice” last fall, you read her dramaturgy in the program.
I confess a partiality to writers - more power to these two in their competitions and careers.
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Margarita fest - It’s Green, Nichols, Fowler
The Arthritis Foundation and Heart O’ Texas Fair Complex have announced the entertainment lineup for this year’s Margarita & Salsa Festival, scheduled for Aug. 23 at the fair complex: It’s mayor of Salsaritaville himself, Pat Green, plus Joe Nichols and Kevin Fowler.
Tickets cost $27 in advance, $32 at the gate, and go on sale Aug. 4.
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Back in the saddle - catching up
Sorry for the lack of posts last week, but I decided to take a true break from work (OK, a break after coming back to finish some stories) and not even post from home.
I did want to comment on two things last week. One was the death of sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke, best-known for the novel behind 2001: A Space Odyssey. I haven’t read anything by Clarke in years, but I devoured most of his short stories and books when I was growing up. In an indirect way, he got me into my career. He had a reputation as a hard science-fiction writer, one whose imagination was tempered and shaped by hard science. That’s what appealed to me, science-geek-in-training that I was in school, and I preferred Clarke to what other friends were reading, primarily Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov (though I enjoyed Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy in my college days). Clarke’s vision of space as a limitless challenge dovetailed with the 1960s heyday of America’s manned spaceflight program and I gravitated toward science as a career. That led me to Texas and the University of Texas at Austin, where I decided 10 years in a lab coat before getting to what intrigued me wasn’t for me. I got into journalism at UT and that eventually led me here, where I get to enjoy other passions, namely reading and writing. I still like science, though, and Clarke gets partial credit for that.
Last week, I also finished reading Alex Ross’ marvelous overview of classical music in the 20th century, The Rest Is Noise. Highly readable and understandable, Ross’ book traces the branches along which classical music evolved. Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, obviously loves and understands what he covers and I found myself scribbling a list of works to listen to. I finished the book wanting more - I wish he’d covered what was happening in Latin and South America more or expanded the development of Hollywood film music, into which many European emigre composers went during Hitler’s rise to power - but that’s because this book whets an appetite for more.
Ross believes that the current dialogue between contemporary classical and rock/pop music is blurring the distinction between the genres. Rather than its death in the 21st century, as some have predicted, classical music may be on the edge of a fresh burst in creativity that could lower perceptions that it’s elitist, static and the preserve of dead white male composers. The Waco-McLennan Library has a copy - I’ve checked mine back in - but it’s worth buying.
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Art Center Waco says goodbye to photography exhibit
Just a quick reminder that the Steve McCurry exhibit “South Southeast” will leave Art Center Waco, http://www.artcenterwaco.org, this weekend. You have through Saturday to see such photos as the portrait of Afghan refugee Sharbat Gula, which appeared in National Geographic in 1984.
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Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella dies
BTW, Carl Hoover is off this week.
You may have seen on the breaking news blog that director Anthony Minghella has died at the age of 54. Here’s the latest story from the AP.
Agent says Oscar-winning “English Patient” director Anthony Minghella has died
LONDON (AP) — Oscar winning director Anthony Minghella, who turned such literary works as “The English Patient,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Cold Mountain” into acclaimed movies, has died. He was 54.
Minghella’s death was confirmed Tuesday by his agent, Judy Daish. No other details were not immediately available.
“The English Patient,” the 1996 World War II drama, won nine Academy Awards, including best director for Minghella, best picture and best supporting actress for Juliette Binoche.
Based on the celebrated novel by Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje, the movie tells of a burn victim’s tortured recollections of his misdeeds in time of war. Minghella also was nominated for an Oscar for best screenplay for “English Patient,” and for his screenplay for “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”
Among his other acclaimed films were “Truly, Madly, Deeply” (1990), and last year’s Oscar-nominated “Michael Clayton,” on which he was executive producer.
Minghella was recently in Botswana filming an adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith’s novel “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.” It is due to air on British television this week.
The book is the first in a series about the adventures of Botswanan private eye Precious Ramotswe; a 13-part television series was recently commission by U.S. network HBO.
Minghella also turned his talents to opera. In 2005, he directed a highly successful staging of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” at the English National Opera in London. The following year, he staged it for the season opener of New York’s Metropolitan Opera. It was the first performance at the Met under general manager Peter Gelb.
Jeff Ramsay, press secretary to Botswanan President Festus Mogae, said Minghella’s death was a “shock and an utter loss.”
He said the director had been coming to the country ahead of the detective film and learning about Botswana.
Ramsay said Minghella had told him how he had been forced to shoot “Cold Mountain” — set in the United States — in Romania and that it had “seemed wrong.” He said this made the director “more sure that the film could only be shot in Botswana.”
Born the second of five children to southern Italian emigrants, Minghella came to moviemaking from a flourishing playwriting career on the London “fringe” and, in 1986, on the West End with the play, “Made in Bangkok,” a hard-hitting look at the sexual mores of a British tour group in Thailand.
He worked as a television script editor before making his directing debut with “Truly, Madly, Deeply,” a comedy about love and grief starring Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman.
Thoughts on Willie’s concert
Caught Willie Nelson and the Family’s show last night at the Coliseum — here’s a Trib slide show if you want to see who was there, on stage and in the crowd — and it just reinforced what a pro the guy is.
He and the band took the stage about 9 p.m. and from the opening chords of “Whiskey River” to the finale of “I Saw the Light,” which ended the second encore, they cranked out 37 songs in a non-stop hour and 40 minutes. Not bad for a 74-year-old and a band with several players not too much younger.
Willie talks as much as he sings these days, but that’s really not a problem: He’s known not for a melodic voice, but his jazz-like phrasing, where he stretches a word or phrase before or past a beat. I always think of jazz great Billie Holiday, whose vocal quality wasn’t much to speak of (at least later in her career), but who could transform the most mundane of songs through emotion and phrasing.
Thursday’s concert reminded me what a master of the three-minute song Nelson the songwriter is — no long story ballads that I recall, but songs that lent themselves to instrumental solos and breaks — and what a smart show playlist he creates, a skill honed by hundreds of Vegas gigs, arena concerts and a couple of generations spent in honky-tonks. Nelson’s recent, popular duet with Toby Keith, “Beer For My Horses,” was the third song in the set with two new Nelson songs introduced at about the 10-song mark, followed by two more new ones in the concert’s final third.
Nelson also didn’t program hits in a strict chronology, but clustered them for emotional resonance, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” followed by a couple of songs from his Stardust album, “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” next to “Good-Hearted Woman.”
Great stuff, great show, though probably old-school to a younger generation raised on eye candy like concert video and pyrotechnics. Give Nashville’s current kings and queens 30 years and see what endures from their careers …
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Have you met Willie?
SLIDE SHOW
- gallery: Willie's Waco concert
Willie Nelson comes to Waco again tonight for a concert at the HOT Coliseum and as usually the case whenever I do a story on him, I get calls from readers who’ve met him or performed with him over the years. This morning, the call was from a lady whose sister grew up in Abbott and remembered a young Willie Nelson coming to her house to beg for food.
I’ve met Willie twice. Once was at his first Picnic at Carl’s Corner, back in the ’80s. The picnic was a flop as an anticipated crowd from 80,000 to 100,000 people - one expected to paralyze I-35 in the Hillsboro area - never materialized. Reporters covering the event were griping about what a mess it was and how no one was talking to them about it; I remember a writer from Rolling Stone in particularly high dudgeon about the scene. After a long wait and multiple trips by Willie’s intermediaries between the press tent and his trailer, Willie finally appeared in person, answered a few questions politely and shook hands with a few people. The reporters so negative and critical only a half hour earlier turned into fawning fans. Tough, big-city reporters, I thought to myself. The sudden change was due more to their personalities than his, but Willie can have a mellowing effect on those who meet him in person.
I also got to meet Willie on his tour bus minutes before he and the Family performed at the Margarita and Salsa Festival in 2002. The bus had arrived late and I had a deadline to meet, so I think I asked maybe two questions, then rushed out to start writing. Again, Willie was calm and collected, the epitomy of politeness (and, yes, I couldn’t smell anything in the air and, no, his brown eyes didn’t seem dilated … ).
Willie turns 75 on April 29. Between the years that he grew up in Central Texas and the innumerable times he’s performed in this area, I imagine there are more than a few people who’ve met him or shared a stage with him. Anyone like to share his or her story about Willie?
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Nashville singer/songwriter Tori Sparks tonight
This slipped through the cracks in last week’s entertainment section, but singer/songwriter Tori Sparks will be in Waco tonight, March 11, at Beatnix Coffeehouse on her way to the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin.
She’s on XM Radio and both MTV and Lifetime have licensed her “Under This Yellow Sun” for use. Sparks is earning a reputation for her emotionally expressive voice, songwriting range and lively show - all of which should play well in Beatnix’s small, intimate space. Show’s at 8 p.m.
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WACO country music - from Baghdad
As listeners to Waco country radio station WACO-FM (100) know, morning show personalities Zack Owen and Jim Cody are in Baghdad for the next week or so. They’d planned to broadcast from there Monday morning, but travel and processing delays threw a wrench in those plans, said WACO assistant program director Jennifer Allen.
They’ll try again at 6 a.m. Tuesday and, if all goes well, will handle their morning show from Big B through March 21. They’ll post photos to their WACO home page throughout their stay.
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BU theater profs praised for Dallas performance
Baylor theater professors Stan and Lisa Denman, Steve Pounders and Thomas Ward woo’ed a Dallas-area crowd Saturday with their performance of Craig Wright’s “The Unseen” at the Out of the Loop Festival. That festival’s held at Addison’s WaterTower Theatre and is known for edgy, inventive drama and comedy that’s looking for a home (Apologies, while I’m here, to Steve and Lisa for an earlier post in which I garbled his name and credited someone than Lisa for directing).
Their production won rave comments from Dallas Morning News theater critic Lawson Taitte. Taitte also liked the one-man performance by McLennan Theatre grad Lee Trull in “Rum and Vodka.”
There are two more performances of “The Unseen” scheduled: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 12, and 8 p.m. Saturday, March 15. “Rum and Vodka” has two more, too: 5 p.m. March 15 and 2 p.m. March 16.
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Belton’s Expo Center to host 3 Doors Down concert April 25
Rock band 3 Doors Down will join 12 Stones and Temple rockers Flyleaf in an April 25 concert at the Bell County Expo Center.
Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday, March 8, at www.texasboxoffice.com, at the Expo Center box office, H-E-B in Temple, Killeen’s Renaissance Records or by calling (512) 477-6060.
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Fans of truly awful movies, it’s March Badness time
TOURNAMENT
- link: March Badness
A heads-up for a piece that’s coming in Sunday’s Tribune-Herald (and online, too).
We’ll be running a bad movie tournament during March in which online readers can vote for the worst movie of all time. Admittedly, it’s subjective: We’re starting with 32 movies, compiled by looking at bad movie lists on the Internet, critics’ reviews and my personal experience (though I didn’t include my all-time-favorite, Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy). The films chosen are all available on DVD, should any of you need material for a DIY Golden Turkey movie festival. Readers vote for the worst movie in 16 head-to-head matchups and those winners proceed to the next round of voting.
The first round will be the most time-consuming, culling the field of 32 down to 16, so I encourage those of you who are knowledgeable about truly bad movies to do your part and start us off come Sunday.
Which is worse, Manos the Hands of Fate or Battlefield Earth? Freddie Got Fingered or the live-action How the Grinch Stole Christmas? You can decide …
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MCC’s “Anything Goes” kicks (and sings)
Lot of stuff going on last night: “The Producers” at the Hippodrome, Lady Bears hoping to win a Big 12 championship (sorry), BU jazz concert, McLennan Theatre’s musical “Anything Goes.”
I caught the latter; those of you who attended something else last night feel free to tag your comments about those events on to this post. (I meant to review “Anything Goes” last weekend, but a mildly sick daughter and end-of-week fatigued family kept me home. Then my Monday morning post inviting comments from readers disappeared somewhere into Internet limbo. So it goes.)
Anyway, MCC’s “Anything Goes” offers a lot to entertain the eye and ear, from old school vocal work (read: non-miked, with two numbers excepted) and a tight jazz combo in the pit to eye-filling choreography and costuming. Like most Broadway musicals of the 1930s, the plot and characters were little more than excuses for singing and dancing: a cross-Atlantic voyage mingles the rich and colorful with comedy and romance the outcome.
Traveling aboard the U.S. American in “Anything Goes” are young heiress Hope Harcourt (Christy Peterson), her mother (Julie Woodley), Hope’s British fiancee Lord Evelyn Oakleigh (Jason Beverly), saucy showgirl/chanteuse Reno Sweeney (Elisa James), eccentric and myopic millionaire Evangeline Whitney (Matt McGinley), his broker Billy Crocker (Trevor Wright), gangster Moonface Martin (Jesus Lucero) and his squeeze Erma (A.J. Harper). Crocker and Harcourt are in love, but she’s engaged; the world-wise Sweeney loves Crocker, yet’s willing to help him; ensuing schemes and comic characters intertwine to ensure a happy ending.
Director Jim Rambo’s young cast hit all the musical’s strengths: James’ brassy delivery of songs like “You’re the Top,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “Anything Goes” and “Blow Gabriel Blow;” solid vocal work by Wright (though his lower register was hard to hear), Peterson, Rachael Blizzard as Snooks and Harper; Jerry MacLauchin’s energetic, varied choreography, featuring a spirited, whole-company tap number on “Anything Goes;” and funny character work, led by Beverly, McGinley, Lucero and Woodley.
James and Lucero turned in a winning, comic “Friendship” duet while Wright and Peterson have a sweet pairing in “All Through the Night.” Dancers Willie Mellina, Abbey Fitzjarrell, Courtney Mock and Chelsea Lambert spearheaded the dance numbers with their fluid footwork.
There were some bumps. A sailors’ quartet meandered around the correct pitch on its song and the production stretched past two and a half hours’ running time, which the musical’s weaker second half made noticeable.
The cast’s visible enjoyment on dance numbers and actors’ enthusiasm in their comic characters, though, rubbed off on the audience, showing why Porter and those ’30s stage musicals still entertain.
“Anything Goes” has two more performances: 7:30 tonight and Saturday night at MCC’s Ball Performing Arts Center. Tickets cost $10 and $8.
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Brad Pitt movie filming in Waco?
Well, so far it’s not even in the unconfirmed rumor stage.
Here’s what I know: Brad Pitt and his pregnant wife Angelina are presently in Texas for the shooting of his latest film project, Tree of Life, which also stars Sean Penn. Principal photography is in Smithville, near Austin, and the Brad-o-sphere is abuzz at a Brangelina sighting at the Smithville Wal-Mart. There’s even a picture of Brad sporting a new short haircut plus a post (midway down the page) from a young pregnant Texan who showed up for a casting call last Saturday only to discover to her amazement the actor putting his head on her baby bump for the shot turned out to be Brad himself.
Pitt, incidentally, came to the project late, filling in for Heath Ledger after the latter’s accidental death by drug overdose. Colin Farrell and Mel Gibson were initially considered for the film.
Where does Waco fit in? Sheer speculation. The film’s somewhat reclusive director is Terrence Malick, a native Wacoan, and Tree of Life supposedly is a project near and dear to him, which might mean a touch of autobiography in its framing. I also have heard that the production crew was looking for a certain Waco-branded prop, which makes me think at least part of the story is set in Waco or nearby …
I’ll let you know more as I hear it.
