Scene march 14, 2018

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TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DEATHS. HUNDREDS OF LAWSUITS. ONE JUDGE.

Can Dan Polster get Big Pharma to pony up billions for its role in the opioid crisis? BY DANIEL McGRAW

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MARCH 14 - 20, 2018 • VOLUME 48 NO 37 Dedicated to Free Times founder Richard H. Siegel (1935-1993) and Scene founder Richard Kabat Group Publisher Chris Keating

CONTENTS

Publisher Andrew Zelman

Upfront

Associate Publisher Angela Nagal Editor Vince Grzegorek

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A Greater Impact: On Cleveland.com and noble failure

Editorial Music Editor Jeff Niesel Senior Writer Sam Allard Staff Writer Brett Zelman Web Editor Laura Morrison Dining Editor Douglas Trattner Stage Editor Christine Howey Visual Arts Writers Dott von Schneider Copy Editor Elaine Cicora Interns Michael Wu, Matt Poshedley

Feature

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Can Dan Polster get Big Pharma to pony up billions for its role in the opioid crisis?

Advertising Senior Multimedia Account Executive John Crobar, Shayne Rose Multimedia Account Executive Kiara Davis

Get Out!

Creative Services Production Manager Steve Miluch Staff Photographer Emanuel Wallace

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All the best things to do in Cleveland this week

Business Sales Assistant/Receptionist Megan Stimac Controller Kristy Dotson Circulation Circulation Director Don Kriss Euclid Media Group Chief Executive Officer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating Officers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner VP Digital Services Stacy Volhein Digital Operations Coordinator Jaime Monzon

Stage

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A poke bowl at Corner 11

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Playhouse Square’s production of Rent leaves a lot to be desired

www.euclidmediagroup.com

Film

National Advertising Voice Media Group 1-800-278-9866, voicemediagroup.com

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Teen coming-out flick Love, Simon is among the genre’s best

Cleveland Scene 737 Bolivar Rd, #4100 Cleveland, OH 44115 www.clevescene.com Phone 216-241-7550 Retail & Classified Fax 216-241-6275 Editoral Fax 216-802-7212 E-mail scene@clevescene.com

Eat

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Corner 11 is dishing up poke and Asian fusion in Tremont, Phusion Cafe joins a small cadre of Asian options in Uptown, and more

Cleveland Scene Magazine is published every week by Euclid Media Group. Verified Audit Member Cleveland Distribution Scene is available free of charge, limited to one copy per reader Copyright The entire contents of Cleveland Scene Magazine are copyright 2018 by Euclid Media Group. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Publisher does not assume any liability for unsolicited manuscripts, materials, or other content. Any submission must include a stamped, self-addressed envelope. All editorial, advertising, and business correspondence should be mailed to the address listed above. Subscriptions $150 (1 yr); $80 (6 mos.) Send name, address and zip code with check or money order to the address listed above with the title ‘Attn: Subscription Department’

Music

Grant-Lee Phillips responds to the current political climate on his new album, Big K.R.I.T. reveals his musical alter ego, and all the shows to see this week

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UPFRONT A GREATER IMPACT: ON CLEVELAND.COM AND NOBLE FAILURE SELDOM HAVE WE WITNESSED Cleveland.com editor Chris Quinn reach the rhetorical peaks to which he free-soloed last Sunday, in a pugnacious column announcing the addition of gun violence to the digital news outlet’s Impact Agenda. “Today, we say that for every person shot to death in Cleveland these last 8 years, those legislators and justices have blood on their hands,” Quinn wrote, calling out the Ohio General Assembly and the Ohio Supreme Court. “They may as well have pulled the triggers themselves.” Quinn said Cleveland.com’s upcoming coverage on this topic will take aim at restoring the right of Ohio cities to govern themselves (“when it comes to firearms”) and will “take careful aim” at reducing the number of guns on Cleveland’s streets, guns that, Quinn noted, killed 836 people from 2011 to 2017. The editorial was not just bluster. It proposed specific reporting methodologies and an ultimate goal: “We will demonstrate the death and suffering the Legislature has wrought,” Quinn wrote, “and if we can’t convince elected leaders to restore the rights of cities, then maybe we’ll set off on promoting an amendment to the Ohio Constitution so strongly worded that even [Chief Justice Maureen] O’Connor and her fellow justices can’t twist it.” He couldn’t have been any more emphatic if he were former Cleveland city councilman Zack Reed. But Quinn’s passion was anything but abnormal in the wake of last month’s Parkland shooting, which has galvanized a national movement around gun control. Much like Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dennis Kucinich, who is making a proposed ban on assault weapons a central plank of his campaign platform — in large part because it preys on the vulnerability of his pro-gun opponent, Richard Cordray — Cleveland.com has rightly sensed that the current moment may be pivotal. In these days of heightened awareness, aggressive reporting

may lead to real, substantive change. From our perspective, the focus on gun violence will be a welcome addition to the Impact Agenda and will be distinguished chiefly for its identifiable targets. Quinn made no bones about the fact that there are parties responsible for gun violence in Ohio, and Cleveland.com is coming for them. Reporters will not be hounding the neighborhood criminals who buy guns out of car trunks in dimly lit parking lots, but the legislators and justices in Columbus facilitating laws on behalf of the gun lobby. These are largely “rural legislators,” according to Quinn, “who have no idea — and no care — about life in Cleveland.” Many of them are also recipients of campaign contributions from the National Rifle Association and affiliated local groups. Reporting on the victims of

social problems and structural inequality is critically important, but that reporting is amplified and contextualized by reporting on the creators of those problems and the architects of that inequality. Quinn clearly gets this principle. “We will demonstrate the death and suffering the Legislature has wrought,” he wrote. He understands that death and suffering do not simply occur for no reason, and that investigating the reasons they do — “evil” excluded — and interpreting those reasons for the benefit of the public, is one of journalism’s higher callings. New Yorker writer Katherine Boo, in a talk at Case Western Reserve University on Oct. 3, articulated a version of this principle when she presented 12 private rules, or “self-injunctions,” for her own writing. “As effective as [narrative nonfiction] can be at activating

empathy in readers,” Boo said, “it’s also really, really good at being meretricious, at converting genuine hardship into passing diversion for luckier people — sensationalized vacation reading for the minimally concerned. “If I’m only writing about the socalled victims,” she continued, “I’m trafficking in poverty porn. And I don’t want to traffic in poverty porn. So I decided early on that to be ethical, my work could not just focus on those victims. It also had to investigate the perps. It had to lay out their wrongdoing, and it had to name their names.” Quinn, in his recent column, presented a plan to do precisely that: to report on the tragedies of gun violence and to draw a line from legislative action or inaction directly to those tragedies. To lay out wrongdoing. To name names. (We’re looking forward to it.) But a side effect of Quinn’s column was to cast the failures of another project, “A Greater Cleveland,” into stark relief. If you’re a regular local news consumer, you’ll know that “A Greater Cleveland” is Cleveland. com’s months-long series on child poverty, a project that has been repeatedly billed as the most important, the most impactful and the “most enlightening” of the editorial series clustered under the Impact Agenda’s umbrella. The failure of the project is surely a noble one, but several months (or is it decades?) in, “A Greater Cleveland” is looking more and more like a missed opportunity. For starters, any goodwill or empathy that the project may have activated in its readership has now surely been compromised by its ongoing (and apparently eternal) occupation of the Plain Dealer Sunday Metro section. In addition to the pseudonymous stories of daily struggle that marked the project’s opening salvos, we are now force-fed vignettes recapping the kindness of readers. This endless play-by-play of the project’s individual impacts reads like Cleveland.com’s attempts to validate the project to itself. On Sunday, for example, the | clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

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Metro Section featured a column by Phillip Morris and six bylined stories by Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com reporters. Three of the stories were “A Greater Cleveland” installments. One, by reporter Sharon Broussard, told of a mother and her two children moving from “gritty and impoverished” Garfield Heights to Beachwood and the ensuing struggle to afford name-brand clothes. Another, by reporter Courtney Astolfi, introduced us to a 7-year-old girl called Yvonne who, inspired by African-American dancer Misty Copeland, wanted to start taking ballet lessons. “[Yvonne’s mother] wants to foster Yvonne’s dreams as much as she can,” the story reported.

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$168,000 Amount tenants at the Vue apartments have deposited into escrow with the court, as a rent strike that started in February at the high-end Beachwood complex continues.

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| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

“But she’s a single mother raising her daughter on $1,000 a month in disability benefits, and a lack of disposable cash and not having a car present challenges more often than she would like. One challenge is finding an affordable and nearby ballet class for her daughter.” The third story, by reporter Brenda Cain, showed the project’s flip side. “Ten-year-old Tiffany Everhart squeals with delight as her mother, Violet, pulls the car into a parking space in front of the pet store. “‘Finally,’ she cries as she dashes to the store. ‘I finally get to meet my new hamster.’ “Tiffany has been saving the money she receives for her birthdays and other occasions with the goal of buying a hamster. But until today, that goal seemed hopelessly out of reach because her parents could not spare the extra $16 she needed for a cage, food and accessories. ... “But the Everharts caught a rare break after reports about ... their inability to provide their daughter with a fuzzy bit of joy. Several readers were so touched by the account that they donated the needed money.” [Italics added.] It’s not even an especially cynical interpretation, anymore, to see these short dispatches as asks, as requests for donations gussied up as narratives. We are presented with a story about a particular financial hardship or the particular desire of a child in need. Then, some time later, we are presented with what has become the formula’s second half: a story about how readers were so moved by the given plight that they made a donation. In an important way, the series is accomplishing the goal it set for itself. Quinn has written repeatedly that the project’s mission is a call to action. Each week, for those of us who read the print edition, we are reminded that these stories of poverty are intended “to mobilize the community to help remove the barriers to success faced by Cleveland children in poverty.” But as constructed, the success of the project is unsatisfying. Quinn tells us in virtually every editor’s update that the response from readers has been “overwhelming.” But what has this overwhelming response, this community mobilization, consisted of? Well, among other things, individual monetary donations. That’s to be commended, certainly. But one-time charitable donations — whether it’s $16 for a hamster cage, $200 for ballet lessons, or even a

day at Mabel’s BBQ, courtesy of “famed chef” Michael Symon — do not remove barriers to success faced by children in poverty, at least not in any systemic or lasting way. They certainly don’t help identify barriers, one of the project’s earliest stated goals. Furthermore, these individual donations deepen and perpetuate the project’s editorial rut. There’s no natural ending to the project in its current form, and that’s one reason why the vignettes have become so eye-rollingly tiresome and futile. I hate that I get annoyed every time I see a new story in the series, but I do! I think I’m annoyed because they aren’t vectored toward the dismantling of an inequitable system; it’s not like a corrupt politician will be booted from office; it’s not like an illconceived or outdated policy will be reversed or revoked. Instead, scattered benefactors from North Royalton to Mayfield Heights get to feel good about themselves as they write tax-deductible checks. And we get to gawk. On the other hand, that is an awfully cynical interpretation, and there are much worse outcomes, which is why I hesitate to come down too harshly on the series. As I say, it strikes me (even to this day) as a noble attempt to open the eyes and soften the hearts of the publication’s readership. Though I initially gasped at the notion of dispatching Leila Attassi and Mark Naymik, Cleveland.com’s best reporters, to the Boys and Girls Club and the King Kennedy public housing complex for months, I came around. An evening constitutional through the Cleveland.com comments section will alert most folks to the fact that readers could do with a good deal more empathy. That is to say, any empathy. Credit to Quinn for devoting flagship resources to a project that might have been easy to ridicule. He should feel no trepidation over efforts to activate empathy in his readers, many of whom, it seems reasonable to assume, are rural or suburban folks who have no idea — and no care — about life in Cleveland. Quinn has been open about the struggle of making this project meaningful, and I, for one, regard that struggle as sincere. “I have to say I was pretty frustrated as the year neared its end,” Quinn wrote in January. “I had promised to come back to you with a call to action, but every time we thought we had a solution, we hit an obstacle that sent us back out to search.”

He was pleased to announce that he’d found an answer after seeking counsel from his Leadership Cleveland cohort and receiving assurances of support from county executive Armond Budish himself. The answer was Open Table, a project that invites privileged people to build relationships with poor people over the course of regular meals, thereby giving the poor people a leg up. “The members of the table use their knowledge, life experience and connections to help their young person,” wrote reporter Emily Bamforth, in a profile of the program. “Every table is different because every person being helped has different needs.” For example: “Michael needed help improving his low credit score and paying off debt. His table helped him obtain his credit report and showed him how to read it. They deciphered the roots of his debt and came up with a plan to pay it off. One table member talked to a contact, which led to Michael using community service to pay off old tickets.” Obviously this is great. Notwithstanding Quinn’s insistence on characterizing Open Table as “a board of directors for someone in need” — which, yuck — the program is much closer to something that removes the barriers to success faced by children in poverty. Indeed, Open Table originated as a program to help young people aging out of the Cuyahoga County foster care system. By developing sustained relationships with people who have “knowledge, life experience and connections,” they really do stand a better chance of breaking out of poverty’s stranglehold. But once again, Open Table’s expansion is deeply unsatisfying as the culmination of a reporting project on poverty. This may reflect my own misunderstanding, but it seems to me a fundamental misapprehension of the problem’s ‘perps,’ to use Katherine Boo’s language. And it suggests that the solution to multigenerational poverty is not legislation, organization or advocacy, but empathy. Or perhaps charity: a community’s willingness to devote an hour per week. Moreover, this solution is coming from an ardently pro-business news outlet that has editorialized viciously against policies designed to lift people out of poverty. Some of Cleveland.com’s most strongly worded editorials in the past few years have been about local efforts

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to increase the minimum wage. Several of the subjects profiled in “A Greater Cleveland” work full time or nearly full time, yet still find themselves trapped in substandard housing and dangerous neighborhoods. Shouldn’t low wages have been identified as a barrier to success for children living in poverty? Wouldn’t $15 per hour be a lot more impactful than $16 for a hamster cage? That’s not to say Cleveland.com shouldn’t have reported and/or opined that the Raise Up Cleveland campaign was flawed — one of the editorial board’s chief criticisms of the $15-an-hour proposal, in 2016, was that it would have made Cleveland less competitive because the wage increase wouldn’t have affected neighboring communities — but the editorial writers could scarcely contain their contempt for those supporting higher wages. Their disgust for the Service Employees International Union, in particular, infected their coverage of city hall and of broader social issues for months. That’s just one example. Cleveland.com also routinely fawns over the philanthropy of the region’s business and civic leaders. It is every bit as concerned with the “Cleveland renaissance narrative” as is the tourism bureau. On the topic I’m most familiar with, I watched Cleveland.com bend over backwards to justify support for the Q Deal last year, a public subsidy strenuously opposed by thousands of poor and working people in Cleveland (among others). “Elected leaders — and all of us — should rise to the challenge to identify the investments we can make to ensure that prosperity reaches deeper,” Cleveland.com wrote in its first editorial in support of the Q Deal, in a rare moment of concession. “Perhaps [county executive Armond] Budish and Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson could schedule a summit to come up with the kinds of solutions that opponents to this deal have so clearly articulated. We hope that happens. But that does not undo the worth of the deal now on the table to upgrade the Q and extend its economic development value.” I never saw mention of a BudishJackson Prosperity Summit ever again. Anyhow, when Cleveland.com hosted an info session for Open Table at its headquarters last month, the response was, once again, “overwhelming.” (And for the record, if I were in charge of the project, I’m sure I’d be just

as floored and heartened by the response as Quinn has been.) More than 250 people showed up, and Quinn gushed in this way: “We hope you are the beginning of a movement, one that shows the world that Cleveland is the city that cares.” Man ... I don’t know what the solutions to child poverty are. And my hunch, as I’ve said, is that Quinn and his crew of reporters have made a genuine effort. (Some of the profiles by Leila Atassi, Mark Naymik, Courtney Astolfi and others have been really splendid, compassionate stuff.) But I do know that Cleveland.com can hold local authorities accountable, a lot more effectively than Scene can, at any rate. So why not dedicate a reporter or two, full time, to go beyond short profiles and start investigating institutions and systems that erect and fortify the barriers to success they’ve identified in “A Greater Cleveland?” Why not dispense with the series, learning from its successes and failures, and inaugurate a beat? In the same way that Quinn has admirably proposed going after those at the top responsible for gun violence, why not go after legislators and local leaders — those at the top — responsible for poverty? Why not start attempting to reconcile some very thorny realities with Cleveland’s conception of itself? Why is the city still so segregated, for example? Why is it still so violent (poverty and violent crime being closely linked)? Why are black babies still dying at such alarming rates? Why is educational attainment still so low? Where exactly are those new lead inspectors? Why can’t a community known for its philanthropy and historic community foundations rally to improve its dismal quality-of-life metrics? Where is the urgency? What are we doing wrong? Because Cleveland is pretty clearly doing something wrong. And with respect, it will never be seen as “the city that cares” until it actually does. — Sam Allard

How John Carroll’s Latin American Student Association Felt When Border Patrol Agents Boarded Their Amtrak On Feb. 18, the students of John Carroll’s Latin American Student Association (LASA) were aboard an Amtrak train bound for Cleveland from Chicago. They were returning

to campus from a conference for Latin American student groups across the country. As the train approached Toledo, the two cars in which the LASA members were spread out were boarded by a group of border patrol agents. Carlos Cruz, a member of LASA and former president of the association, tweeted about his experience on board the train the morning after the incident. Seeing the agents board his car, Cruz’s immediate instinct was to alert the other students. However, Cruz tells Scene he took care to avoid appearing suspicious to the agents. “Immediately I was just like okay, this is bad. And so I texted our group and I said, ‘Hey, immigration’s on the train,’” Cruz says. “I didn’t want to get up and run to the back because then they could assume something.” As the agents made their way through the train, Cruz says he started to notice a pattern in how they fanned out through the car. He says he started to feel targeted, as the agents would only take notice of the LASA members. “Then he asked the person in front of me, then two seats in front of me. And then the person in front

of her, all of which were members of LASA,” Cruz says. “I got up to fill my water bottle and I looked behind me and there were people awake staring at me, so I know for a fact they weren’t asleep or anything and they just weren’t asked by the border patrol agents if they were U.S. citizens.” Gabriella Flores, LASA’s vice president, was sitting with the rest of the group in the lounge car where students were playing card games and doing homework. The lounge car was one of the only two cars inspected by immigration. Flores says she took immediate notice of the man Cruz mentions in his tweets. “He didn’t really talk to any of the students but he was talking to our chaperone before we boarded the train. He got a consensus of what our group was, why we were there, what were we coming back from,” Flores said. “We could honestly come upon a very deliberate conclusion that he felt very uncomfortable with our presence.” Brenan Betro, LASA’s current president, was sitting with Flores in the lounge car as border patrol entered. He says the shock of the agents’ presence on the train

stemmed from the fact that the students were targeted based on their appearance. “It’s not like they had any probable cause or anything,” Betro said. “They definitely profiled us and went outside the guidelines of their point of duty. This is a group of U.S. citizens that are now being questioned.” With the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program up in the air, as a number of the protections are set to expire over the next year, much of the program’s supporters’ concern has focused on protecting the young, often college-aged people affected by DACA’s potential end. Cruz says the incident on the Amtrak has served as a reminder that the privilege he experiences from his own citizenship status should not allow for complacency. “I’m a citizen. I was born here. But I also have a lot of friends that may not be citizens and any of them could have been a target of those border agents,” Cruz says. “I can speak about them saying that we need change. But if I’m not the change, then what exactly am I doing?” Following the incident, the members of LASA stress that their

main focus is spreading their story as widely as possible. Their strategies include connecting with other universities to strategize ways to protect potentially undocumented students. They also plan on sharing their experience with Sen. Sherrod Brown, a connection they have through John Carroll’s government relations team. In making the events on the train public, Flores says she realizes they are opening themselves up to potential backlash from right-wing communities. However, she also acknowledges that the recent political actions primarily targeting young Hispanic people and their families have solidified the importance of solidarity within the community. “How are we bringing it back to ourselves and making it stay our story, and of the 13 people that were [on the train]?” Flores says. “We want to be louder, and especially as college students, as hungry as we are, we are not just trying to pursue degrees, we’re trying to change the world.” — Michael Wu

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Photo courtesy Northern District Court

FEATURE

Federal judge Dan Polster

TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DEATHS, HUNDREDS OF LAWSUITS, ONE JUDGE Can Dan Polster get Big Pharma to pony up billions for its role in the opioid crisis? By Daniel McGraw AMERICA WILL TURN ITS DRUGaddicted eyes to Cleveland over the next year or two as the city becomes the capital of drug overdose law. What has happened is pretty simple if we take the lawyering talk out of it. Cities, counties and states have gotten pissed off in recent years with skyrocketing prescription pain medication usage and its ensuing public health crisis, thanks to overdoses from prescribed and illegal opioids, which they’ve had to clean up, literally, figuratively and financially. That includes more crime, ambulances, processing dead bodies that pile up so quickly and in such great numbers that some county coroners have had to call in mobile trailers to accommodate the cadavers, more foster care, health care, and it goes on and on. They asked the federal government for money to help, asked

the FDA to restrict pain pills like OxyContin from being passed out like candy, asked the pharmaceutical companies to quit being so greedy, and even asked medical schools to teach their doctors not to prescribe so many. No one listened. And the stats kept getting worse. The country now averages 52,000 overdose deaths a year. That’s six an hour. If you are keeping score for Ohio, about 13 will die today from an OD. In Cuyahoga County, about two a day. For further perspective, those 52,000 who died from opioid-related overdoses nationally in 2016 were more than the deaths from breast cancer (40,000), car crashes (38,000), suicides (32,000), and homicides (17,000) that year. So they all sued. Well, most of them. Nearly 400 cities, counties, states and Native American tribes

(at last count) have filed lawsuits against opioid pill manufacturers and the companies that distribute them to pharmacies alleging the companies up and down the supply chain willfully produced, marketed and shipped astounding quantities of what they knew to be highly addictive drugs. Those lawsuits might be put to rest at 801 Superior Ave. on the 18th floor of the Carl B. Stokes Federal Courthouse. In December 2017, the U.S court system brought all those cases together in what’s known as a MultiDistrict Litigation (MDL). Basically, the process gathers a whole bunch of similar cases and streamlines them through one court after which they’d all share rulings — what documents the defendants need to provide, who must sit for depositions, rulings on various motions and evidence — and

then the cases return to the state where they were initially filed for actual trial. The judicial panel chose Cleveland, and federal judge Dan Polster, for the MDL, for a variety of reasons. Cleveland has been among the hardest hit areas of the country, for starters, and many of the cases filed come from neighboring states. Kicking the cases back to trial is one option for how this can work. In reality, judges in MDL cases have all sorts of latitude and leeway, and some figure they can take the bull by the horns, tell the high-priced lawyers to go sit in a corner, and craft some master settlement for all the cases at once. That’s what’s happening in Cleveland with Polster, a Shaker Heights native and Clinton appointee, who has indicated he wants to be the kind of MDL judge who does more than | clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

13

FEATURE play legal traffic cop. That much was clear from the start, and perhaps not surprising given Polster’s reputation and advocacy for settlements in lieu of expensive and lengthy trials. At the first meeting of the major players in his courtroom on Jan. 9, when Polster told them to immediately begin getting ready for settlement talks, he said a pretty amazing thing to the lawyers involved, indicating that everyone’s to blame, and that any settlement had to go beyond dollars and cents to address real, viable solutions to a problem that is decimating the American population. “This is not a traditional [case],” he said. “What’s happening in our country with the opioid crisis is present and ongoing. I did a little math. Since we’re losing more than 50,000 of our citizens every year, about 150 Americans are going to die today, just today, while we’re meeting. “And in my humble opinion, everyone shares some of the responsibility, and no one has done enough to abate it. That includes the manufacturers, the distributors, the pharmacies, the doctors, the federal government and state government, local governments, hospitals, thirdparty payers, and individuals. The federal court is probably the least likely branch of government to try and tackle this, but candidly, the other branches of government, federal and state, have punted. So it’s here. “So I don’t think anyone in the country is interested in a whole lot of finger-pointing at this point, and I’m not either. Just dramatically reduce the quantity, and make sure that the pills that are manufactured and distributed go to the right people and no one else, and that there be an effective system in place to monitor the delivery and distribution. Because sadly, every day more and more people are being addicted, and they need treatment.” That was not a traffic-cop judge speaking. Indeed, he quickly drew criticisms from lawyers involved — The New York Times, while shadowing him for a day, overheard counsel calling him a “grandstander” and “Pollyanna” — and from the legal community at-large keenly following the proceedings. One Yale law professor remarked, “To say his goals are ambitious would be an enormous understatement.”

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Dan Polster at Shaker Heights High School

Polster, 66, who the Times noted had a hasty lunch of a hard-boiled egg and a tangerine that day, had no qualms concurring with the sentiment. “I think that’s a fair assessment,” he told the paper. “But I won’t fault myself for attempting this.” “This” is presiding over a case which represents the interests of the medical community, political policy, deaths that are hitting every age and gender and race in every state, big pharma power, and multibillions of dollars that could be dispersed to little towns around the country. And he might have to settle this by telling millions of Americans that they can’t have as many pain

| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

pills as they used to, that pain is more of symptom and not a disease as some have pushed. No one knows how this herculean, if not quixotic, journey might turn out, but no judge in recent times has ever really tried to handle something this monstrous. This is a historic crisis, and it’s happened on our collective watch. “I read recently that we’ve managed in the last two years, because of the opioid problem, to do what our country has not done in 50 years, which is — for two consecutive years — to reduce, lower the average life expectancy of Americans,” Polster said at the January hearing. “And if we don’t do something in 2018, we’ll have

accomplished it for three years in a row, which we haven’t done since the flu epidemic 100 years ago wiped out 10 percent of our population. And this is 100-percent manmade. Now, I’m pretty ashamed that this has occurred while I’ve been around. So I think we all should be.”

MICHAEL MOFFITT IS A Harvard Law School professor specializing in negotiations, dispute resolution and mediation in civil cases like this. He’s from Wadsworth and lived in Avon Lake some years ago while clerking for federal judge Ann Aldrich in Cleveland. When asked how Polster might

act in a case like this, he did what most do, throwing up his hands and declaring, “Who knows?” But Moffitt does see something different happening. “For about a decade, I used to teach civil procedure: a required, introductory course for all firstyear law students, aimed at helping them to understand the basic rules, concepts, and structures of modern litigation,” Moffitt said. “Inevitably, at some point during the year, a student would raise her hand and ask, ‘Can a federal district court judge … ,’ and I would cut her off, responding, ‘Yes.’ The class would laugh, and I would explain that it’s hard to finish that question in a way that would make me wrong. “I know that reading judicial tea leaves is something of a sport, both among academics and among members of the practicing bar. My admittedly uncomplicated, perhaps unsophisticated, inclination in this case would be to believe that Judge Polster means what he said on Jan. 9. “The prominence of discretion, the opportunity for creative problem solving, and the lack of narrow constraints on the judge or on the parties are precisely what causes some to be nervous and some to be optimistic,” Moffitt continued. “But regardless of one’s initial reaction to the conversations that are beginning in Ohio, we should all be curious, because we are all likely to be affected by what emerges — or doesn’t emerge.” Polster’s background would lead many to believe he will be trying to run down a path few would try. A native and current resident of Shaker Heights, and a member of the Jewish congregation Shaarey Tikvah in Beachwood and Park Synagogue in Cleveland Heights and Pepper Pike, he often cites the Old Testament Deuteronomy passage, “Justice, justice, you shall pursue,” as influencing how he manages his court. He is keeping a low profile in this case, and has instructed the lawyers and politicians involved in this case not to divulge any settlement discussions to the media. He himself is abiding by those restrictions. But reading the tea leaves of his Cleveland upbringing, there’s enough of a varied cultural and political mix to make “creative problem solving” a possibility for him. He grew up in the Ludlow neighborhood in Cleveland in the 1950s, just off Shaker Square, and his parents helped form a neighborhood association that

discouraged the “redlining” and “blockbusting” that was segregating that neighborhood. In a 2016 interview with The Federalist Lawyer about his parents’ action, Polster said, “Ordinary people can do extraordinary, heroic things if they recognize the opportunity and realize, ‘This is my time to do something significant, I’m not going to take a pass.’ Usually people take a pass.” In grade school, his Little League baseball coach was Cleveland Indians’ third baseman Al Rosen (whose son was on the team). Rosen, “The Hebrew Hammer” who tended the hot corner for the Indians for 10 years and won an Al MVP in 1953, tried to teach the sixth-grader how to hit a curveball. Polster couldn’t figure the curve out, went home one day, threw his glove on the floor, and told his parents, “I guess I gotta be a lawyer.” He graduated from Shaker Heights High School in 1969, starring there as a cross-country runner, elected council member, and sports editor of the school newspaper, before heading to Harvard College and Law School. At age 66, he still runs often and is known to bicycle long distances throughout the east side of Cleveland. He’s also been a volunteer reading instructor for the Cleveland Municipal School District and the Jewish Community Federation, and is known to keep a schedule packed from morning to night. He was appointed as federal judge by former President Bill Clinton in 1998, but his first legal experience was not so liberal: One of his early jobs after law school was with the U.S. Department of Justice, a post he secured after he impressed his interviewer, future Supreme Court justice and conservative legal giant Antonin Scalia. He has been married for more than 40 years to fellow Cleveland lawyer Deborah Coleman (she being an expert in antitrust, intellectual property and technology) and they have three adult kids. Those who know him say he is seen quite often at Browns, Cavs and Indians games. He is known for two completely different news items in recent years. The first was his handling of the breakaway Amish sect case where the charges of shaving men’s beards against their will was filed under the new hate crimes law. Polster sentenced the

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FEATURE bishop of that sect, Samuel Mullet, to 15 years in jail (since reduced to 10 years). Polster said his challenge was not allowing the oddness of an Amish hate crime case — along with the accused being a beardcutter ironically named “Mullet” — to become a media spectacle. “I am very glad I had that case in my 15th year as a judge,” he told The Federalist Lawyer. “I couldn’t have handled it very well as a rookie judge.” His other recent appearance in the headlines came about a year ago. Polster spoke out against President Donald Trump after the president derided a judge who ruled Trump’s Muslim travel ban unconstitutional. Trump called that judge a “so-called judge.” “This is serious business, because you start calling into question the legitimacy of someone, that undermines the whole system, all right?” Polster said at a private meeting in Bratenahl last February to a small group that included suburban mayors, attorneys and

city officials. “I think to say it publicly, that’s his right. But it calls into question, and some might even say forfeits, his or her own legitimacy. So I’ll leave it at that. It’s an important question, but that’s how I feel … I don’t believe there’s a single federal judge who would be intimidated by anybody. We took an oath to support and defend the Constitution and it means a lot. And I think that oath means even more today.” The power Polster has in this big case is not lost on the Cleveland legal community. There are already more than 200 lawyers listed in the filings, and the big companies are loading up on local Cleveland legal talent to help skew any possible settlement decision their way. “What can happen in [this case] is likely going to result in public policy changes on the federal and state levels,” said Lee Fisher, dean and professor of law at ClevelandMarshall College of Law. And one lawyer said doing what Polster has taken on — trying to balance settlement money with public policy changes — will be very difficult to accomplish. But he says Polster might be capable of doing it better than most, in that he knows

how to keep all sides in line. “A lot of the plaintiffs in these cases — the local and state government agencies — will try to turn this into a punitive damages case to get their public government agencies some money to pay off their expenses from all these overdoses,” said one Cleveland lawyer who has tried cases before Polster, but who didn’t want his name used. “Think of it this way: How much does it take to punish a big pharmaceutical company that builds these costs into their business plan to survive the long haul? But how will the evidence work that the medical and pharmaceutical profession likely created a culture of pain pills that are addictive and don’t do much for pain anyway. “The defense might be that the maker of OxyContin gave America what it wanted, and the FDA and the doctors and the many researchers signed off on this,” he said. “We are now a pill society. People are in pain. They get pills prescribed for their pain because they really want those pills. How do you blame the pill makers alone for all this? That’s what Judge Polster has to deal with.” And that raises all sorts of legal

questions. Some are comparing the Cleveland MDL opioid litigation to the Big Tobacco settlement of 1998. The cigarette companies agreed to pay about $206 billion to the states over the fi rst 25 years. As Mississippi attorney general Mike Moore said back then, “[The] lawsuit is premised on a simple notion: You caused the health crisis; you pay for it.” Are there legal similarities between cigarette sales in a convenience store and an opioid prescription from a doctor? “The public went against the cigarette companies back in the ’90s because they were seen as the villains in all this, and that’s probably why the settlement amount got so high,” said Browne C. Lewis, director of the Center for Health Law and Policy at the CSU law school. “But I’m not sure the public will want to make the medical community villains in all this like they did tobacco. It’s a very slippery slope. The pain component of this will be difficult to figure out. They will say their intentions were good in some respects, and they wanted to alleviate pain. And they will have all sorts of examples of people where they did alleviate the pain.

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“So it might come down to the settlement being a change in public health care policy,” Lewis said. “Like how we approve pharmaceutical medications and how we oversee prescriptions. How the money fits in will be the hard part to figure out.”

A FEW YEARS AGO, I interviewed a retired surgeon, now in charge of a residency program at a large medical school, who goes by “Skeptical Scalpel” in his blog. “People are more acclimated to getting medication for anything now, and they expect it,” Scalpel said. “Millennials have been overmedicated since they were born. They say they are depressed, and instead of figuring out why, we give them a prescription for Zoloft. ... It’s all part of the pill medicalization of the entire country.” Over the years, demands on doctors have grown. They were now seeing three patients an hour and often had no time to figure out who needs what pain meds and for how many days or months. “What has happened is that we have created a culture where the pain medication is not only expected, it is demanded by the patients.” Parma mayor Tim DeGeeter sees things a little differently. In 2012, his Cleveland suburb, which is also the seventh largest city in Ohio, had no drug overdose deaths. By 2016, it had 20. And those are just the deaths, not the countless victims who overdosed and survived. “The cities are at ground zero in dealing with this, “ DeGeeter said. “In 2017, we had to provide overdose help to 136 males, and 64 females in Parma. The youngest was 19, the oldest was 63. These were people who were employed, unemployed, with college degrees, high school grads, it knows no boundaries or group that it settles in. And nothing is getting done in Washington on this. “For me as mayor of a city suffering from this, I would be remiss if we did not file a lawsuit on this situation on behalf of our citizens who are paying for this in so many ways,” he continued. “We aren’t expecting a great windfall, but we are expecting a knock on our door with someone there to say we have settled this and we’re here to help and we’ll have less people dying in your city.” Who’s knocking though, and who’s cutting the check? That’s another complicated question in an already complicated situation. Say

someone was prescribed OxyContin and, over time, became addicted and overdoses. Who gets the blame? Purdue Pharma, which makes OxyContin, is being sued for possibly lying to doctors about the addictive nature of the medicine. (In what many in the legal community say is an acquiescence to Polster, a gesture of sorts, Purdue last month announced it would cease marketing OxyContin to doctors.) Cardinal Health, a prescription distributor based in Dublin, Ohio, is said to be at fault as well, for dumping alarming amounts of painkillers around the country. And then there’s CVS and Walgreens and all the other pharmacies that are alleged to have ignored red flags as they bottled billions of dollars of the medications. The lawsuits argue that anyone who touched that pill before you ingested it, ground it up and shot it into your arm or snorted it could be said to be liable. The defendants, however, claim they were providing a legal, federally approved prescription. Whatever the individuals did, they did themselves. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency keeps data on all prescriptions, who dispenses the meds to whom, what was dispensed and how much. The plaintiffs wanted about 10 years’ worth of that data; the DEA said that would be a problem. The agency argued it would be “law enforcement sensitive,” meaning the Feds feared illegal drug dealers could use the records to target users; but Polster ruled the DEA must turn it over, though the info won’t be shared with the public. If what we already know about the massive, mindboggling quantities of painkillers shipped to West Virginia is any indication, the numbers Polster looks at for the rest of the country are likely to poke holes in the defendants’ case. A Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation from the West Virginia Gazette revealed wholesale pharmaceutical companies flooded Kermit, an old coal-mining town on the Tug River with a population of 400, with 12 million opioid pills between 2007 and 2012, or about 30,000 pills for every resident. In total, 780 million opioid pills were shipped to the state over that span, or 433 for every West Virginian. Hard data is good, but it opens more questions. Not of who’s to blame — it’s clear by now the

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FEATURE answer to that is everyone involved — but to what degree. How much of this was America’s thirst for pharmaceuticals? How much was deceit on the part of Big Pharma? How much do we blame the medical community? How much was it a failure of those charged with overseeing public health?

SAY POLSTER GETS THE SIDES to agree to a settlement. The first question, of course, is how much money will go to the plaintiffs. The second question is how they would be able to use it. The major criticism of the 1998 $250 billion Big Tobacco settlement between the cigarette makers and 45 states was the fact that the settlement — payable over 25 years — gave no stipulations on how the states might spend that money. Many used a small portion of the funds for tobacco control and cessation programs, but most of the dough was typically used for other purposes, such as security for loans or simply for a state’s general fund.

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Ohio sold its future collections from the settlement for $5 billion in a bond sale (estimates say it could have collected more than three times that amount if it hadn’t) and used the cash for a variety of things, including paying down debt, giving real estate tax breaks to seniors, funding construction of schools, and spending $20 million to make E-Checks free for all residents. No states provided for direct payments from the settlement to individuals, to pay for medical costs resulting from tobacco use. The national smoking rate has fallen to historic lows since that settlement, with just 15 percent of adults still smoking. But the gap between the number of lesseducated rural smokers and the more-educated urban smokers is higher than ever: Researchers have found that America’s lower class now smokes more and dies more from cigarettes than other Americans. And again, that underscores the problems with these MDL opioid cases. Is a judge in Cleveland going to be able to rein in opioid addictions nationally, including in small towns in West Virginia? And if the opioid makers and

| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

distributors fi gure that a big multibillion dollar settlement is just the cost of doing business, will the cities and counties that get big money use it to reduce addiction in the communities or to repair sidewalks and pave streets? Oh, and the feds might want in on this as well. In November, Pres. Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers estimated that the opioid drug epidemic cost the country $504 billion in 2015, in terms of lost lives, lost productivity, health care, treatment, criminal justice and other costs. If the cities, counties and states are getting theirs, one expert told me, the feds will want to drink from that trough too.

PURDUE’S ANNOUNCEMENT that it would end OxyContin marketing was a small but tangible sign things are heading in a productive direction. And lawyers remarked to various media following the first settlement conference in January that they were cautiously optimistic after their initial reticence in the face of Polster’s bold direction. “The parties reported important and substantial progress on several

fronts, but also identified various barriers to a global resolution,” the judge wrote in a filing after a March 6 meeting. To address some of those barriers, Polster said they agreed to use a “limited litigation track,” which basically means a few of the lawsuits may go forward with discovery, motions and trials in what amounts to test balloons so each side can get a feel for how a judge and jury view their cases. He’s asked for a plan to be submitted by March 16. The next settlement conference is scheduled for May 10. Hundreds more will die between then and now, and hundreds if not thousands more will die between May 10 and whenever a settlement might be reached. Maybe Polster really is overly ambitious in thinking he can wrangle a solution that will shrink those numbers one day, but it certainly won’t hurt to try. “The judicial branch typically doesn’t fi x social problems, which is why I’m somewhat uncomfortable doing this,” he told the Times. “But it seems the most human thing to do.”

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GET OUT everything you should do this week Photo by Emanuel Wallace

WED

03/14

SPOKEN WORD

Cleveland Stories Dinner Parties Cleveland Stories Dinner Party is a weekly series that pairs fine food with storytelling. Through it, the folks at Music Box Supper Club hope to raise awareness of the mission of the Western Reserve Historical Society’s new Cleveland History Center. The goal of the Cleveland Stories Dinner Party is to “bring to life some of the fun, interesting stories about Cleveland’s past — from sports, to rock ’n’ roll, to Millionaires’ Row,” as it’s put in a press release. Admission is free, with no cover charge, although a prix fi xe dinner, designed to complement the night’s theme, is $20. Doors open at 5 p.m., dinner is served at 6, and the storytelling starts at 7. Tonight, Margaret Lynch talks about how the Irish first came to Cleveland and transformed the city. (Jeff Niesel) 1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com. DRINK

Hoppin’ Frog Hoppy Hour Much like the Fat Head’s tasting room in Middleburg Heights, the Hoppin’ Frog tasting room in Akron is in a nondescript strip of storage facilities and warehouses. But step inside and you’ll find a cozy space with a huge array of the brewery’s wonderful libations. The place features “hoppy hour” every weekday from 3 to 7 p.m. Tonight, the brewers visit the tasting room from 5 to 7 p.m. While they don’t fill growlers, you can drink bottles on site or take ’em to go. The place also offers a “Hoppin’ Frog Rare & Vintage” list as well as a guest bottle list. And you can order from a limited food menu too. (Niesel) 1680-F Waterloo Rd., Akron, 234-525-3764, hoppinfrog.com/tasting-room. COMEDY

Mike Palascak Comedian Michael Palascak has blown up on the comedy scene of late. With appearances on The Late Show and The Tonight Show in the same year, Palascak is starting to get his feet under him. The comic uses stories about his life and his awkward misadventures to open a window onto his inner workings. You can catch a very laidback performance from Palascak tonight

at Hilarities at 8. Tickets are $13 to $18. (Martin Harp) 2035 East Fourth St., 216-241-7425, pickwickandfrolic.com.

dressing room while trying on a pair of pants. His routines tend to be fast-paced and sometimes raunchy. He will perform at the Cleveland Improv tonight at 7:30, with additional shows running through Sunday. Tickets start at $13. (Jane Wight) 1148 Main Ave., 216-696-IMPROV, clevelandimprov.com.

THEATER

Rent Some 20 years ago, Rent, an original rock musical by a little-known composer, opened on Broadway and became a smash hit. Now, Jonathan Larson’s musical returns to the stage, in a 20th anniversary touring production, for a three-week run at Connor Palace. Tonight’s performance takes place at 7:30. Tickets start at $29. (Niesel) 1615 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

THU

03/15

MUSIC

Dvorák’s Eighth Symphony Cellist Alisa Weilerstein performs with the Cleveland Orchestra tonight at 7:30 at Severance Hall, as the orchestra takes on Dvorák’s Eighth Symphony, perhaps better known as his “New World” Symphony. The cellist and the orchestra will also team up for Barber’s Cello Concerto. Additional performances are set for tomorrow at 11 a.m., Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Consult the website for ticket prices. (Niesel) 11001 Euclid Ave., 216-231-1111, clevelandorchestra.com. COMEDY

Felipe Esparza Comedian Felipe Esparza has kept plenty busy in the wake of taking home top honors from NBC’s Top Comic Standing in 2010. In 2012, the wild-haired comic released his first one-hour comedy special on Showtime. In one bit, he jokes about how he needs to lose weight because he has stretch marks on his stomach. As a result, he says, he has to tell women he got in a fight with a mountain lion and that those stretch marks are really claw marks! He currently hosts a popular podcast as he works on his next comedy special. He performs tonight at 8 at Hilarities, where he has shows scheduled through Sunday. Tickets start at $18. (Niesel) 2035 East Fourth St., 216-241-7425, pickwickandfrolic.com. SPOKEN WORD

An Evening with Matthew Desmond Matthew Desmond, the Pulitzer

FILM

The St. Patrick’s Day parade brings thousands downtown. See: Saturday.

Prize-winning author of the book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, will present a talk tonight at 7 at the State Theatre. A book signing will follow the program. Though admission is free, registration is required. Consult the Playhouse Square website for details. (Niesel) 1519 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

Tehran Taboo With her directorial debut, Tehran Taboo, Iranian-born director Ali Soozandeh provides a compelling critique of the oppression that women experience in her native country. The animated flick centers on a prostitute and a musician, and the young people with whom they interact. It makes its local debut tonight at 6:45 at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, where it screens again at 8:55 on Saturday night. Tickets are $10, or $7 for Cinematheque members and students. (Niesel) 11610 Euclid Ave., 216-421-7450, cia.edu. FILM

THEATER

Lady Day After an extended run at Weathervane Playhouse, Lady Day, a play that features Akron native Marissa Davis as jazz singer Billie Holiday, comes to the Underground at the Holy Trinity Cultural Arts Center for a 10-day run. The play, which features Cleveland musicians Ed Ridley and Bradford McGhee, opens today and runs through March 25. The Underground, the company’s theatrical venue, will be transformed into Emerson’s Bar and Grill, the place that hosted one of Holiday’s last performances in 1959, just months before her death. Showtimes for Thursday through Saturday night performances are 7:30. Matinee performances are at 3 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets start at $20. (Niesel) 7209 Woodland Ave., 216-417-4571, trinityculturalarts.org. COMEDY

Joel Lindley Comedian Joel Lindley creates characters that he’s made famous through his comedy CDs and viral standup routines. One of his specialties is his prank phone call. In one skit, he calls a Gap store saying that he has “soiled” himself in their

Vazante Walter Salles collaborator Daniela Thomas makes her directorial debut with Vazante, a film set in colonial Brazil. It centers on a young woman who creates a scandal when she begins associating with the slaves on her husband’s plantation. The movie makes its Cleveland premiere tonight at 8:45 at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, where it shows again at 7 on Friday night. Tickets are $10, or $7 for Cinematheque members and students. (Niesel) 11610 Euclid Ave., 216-421-7450, cia.edu.

FRI

03/16

ART

78th Street Studios Third Friday Art Walk Time again for the Third Friday Art Walk at the cavernous 78th Street Studios. More than 50 studios and galleries will participate in this popular indoor art walk; be sure to check out spots like the Derek Hess Gallery, Tregoning & Company and Hilary Gent Studio. Look for food trucks out front and live music on the first floor. Hours are 5 to 9 p.m. (Niesel) 1300 West 78th St., 78thstreetstudios.com. | clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

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GET OUT THEATER

Flanagan’s Wake No one knows grief and mourning like a Catholic, let alone an Irish Catholic. Now in its eighth year in Cleveland, Flanagan’s Wake transports the audience to an Irish wake where villagers tell tales and sing songs for their dearly departed Flanagan. Finding the humor in life and death, the wake acts as a dark backdrop to an otherwise hilarious show in which alcohol fuels the humorous reminiscing. Sort of like a tragic Tony ’n’ Tina’s Wedding, the interactive and improvised show engages the entire audience as the guests are treated as the friends and family of the deceased. Tonight’s show starts at 8 and repeats tomorrow night at 8 at Kennedy’s Theatre. Performances continue weekends through April 28. Tickets are $26. (Patrick Stoops) 1501 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

COMEDY

John Mulaney An Emmy Award-winning writer and comedian, John Mulaney most recently teamed up with fellow comic Nick Kroll for the Broadway hit, Oh, Hello. Mulaney, who began his career in New York’s East Village, has since toured the world, and currently writes for IFC’s Documentary Now and for Netflix’s Big Mouth. He

SCHEDULE

ALL FILMS START AT 7 PM | ROCK HALL’S FOSTER THEATER

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3/7 3/21 5/2 5/16 5/30 6/6

WED.

WED.

WED.

WED.

WED.

WED.

FOOD

Lenten Fish Fry From now until the end of March, Prosperity Social Club hosts its Lenten Fish Fry every Friday from 11 a.m. to midnight. The special Lenten menu includes the Big Fish Fry, a seasonal staple that features a generous portion of haddock in a fluffy beer batter blanket, complemented by homemade coleslaw, house tartar sauce and old-school-style mac and cheese. Prosperity received national attention when the home-cooked Big Fish Fry was featured on TV chef Andrew Zimmern’s Delicious Destinations. To drink, this year’s featured beer is POC, now brewed by Double Wing Brewing Company which recently resurrected the storied brand. The clean, crisp European-style pils should pair well with the fish. (Niesel) 1109 Starkweather Ave., 216-937-1938, prosperitysocialclub.com.

longest running burlesque troupe in Ohio, celebrates its 14th anniversary tonight at 8 at the Beachland with a special show. Dubbed Burlesque Jubilee, the event will feature giveaways, flying drag queens, “lip sync for you life,” a special guest and cake. Who could want more? The lineup features Queen Bella Sin, Dottie Comma, Mr. Tuesday, Sapphire Savant, Georgia Pearl, Gigi La Femme, Phoenix Midnight and Ani Nhervoxa. Ken Schneck hosts. Check the website for ticket prices. (Niesel) 15711 Waterloo Rd., 216-383-1124, beachlandballroom.com. DANCE

MUSIC

Legends of Hip-Hop While we might not necessarily call rappers Too Short, Juvenile, Scarface, DJ Quik, 8 Ball & MJG and Project Pat “legends,” we would agree that the guys all had their moment in hip-hop history. They share the bill at tonight’s Legends of Hip-Hop concert that comes to Wolstein Center at 8. Tickets start at $57. (Niesel) 2000 Prospect Ave., 216-687-9292, wolsteincenter.com.

events ranging from the Kennedy assassination to the Vietnam War, Watergate, Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11 and the Iraq invasion. He’s just published What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism, a new book of essays about “the toxic political atmosphere and polarized opinions of our times.” Rather will speak tonight at 7 at Hard Rock Live Rocksino in

Lady Gaga: Five Foot Two 2017 • 1 hour, 40 minutes • TV-MA

What Happened, Miss Simone? 2015 • 1 hour, 41 minutes • Not Rated, Courtesy of Eagle Rock Entertainment

Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World 2017 • 1 hour, 43 minutes • Not Rated Who the F**k is That Guy? The Fabulous Journey of Michael Alago 2017 • 1 hr, 25 minutes • TV-MA

Head 1968 • 1 hour, 26 minutes • G

Purple Rain 1984 • 1 hour, 51 minutes • R

Members FREE w/RSVP • Non-Members $5.50 1100 Rock and Roll Boulevard, Cleveland, OH 44114 | rockhall.com | 216.781.ROCK

performs two shows tonight, at 7 and 10, at Connor Palace on Playhouse Square. Tickets are $25 to $35. (Niesel) 1615 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org. SPOKEN WORD

Dan Rather Veteran newsman Dan Rather has interviewed every president since Eisenhower. He’s also covered

| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

Northfield. Consult the website for ticket prices. (Niesel) 10705 Northfield Rd, Northfield, 330-908-7771, hrrocksinonorthfieldpark.com.

SAT

03/17

BURLESQUE

A Burlesque Jubilee Le Femme Mystique Burlesque, the

Che Malambo For the past 10 years, the all-male Argentinian dance company Che Malambo has toured the world. The group, which emphasizes percussion and rhythmic stomping, aims to capture the spirit of the gaucho (a South American term for “cowboy”) with its high-energy shows. The group performs tonight at 7:30 at the Ohio Theatre. Tickets are $25 to $60. (Niesel) 1501 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org. SPORTS

Leprechaun Chase 5K St. Patrick’s Day is traditionally a day of drink and debauchery. But Gunselman’s Tavern in Fairview Park will nevertheless host its inaugural Leprechaun Chase 5K at 9 this morning. The bar and restaurant has teamed up with Hermes Sports & Events, Sibling Revelry Brewing, Tullamore D.E.W., Ohio Irish American News and ABC Trophy to put on the event. The start and finish will take place just outside Gunselman’s Tavern. During the race, a leprechaun will appear on the course; racers who fi nish ahead of the leprechaun will receive an additional award, while the first 200 racers will receive a custom finisher medal and T-shirt. Gunselman’s will host a post-race party featuring live music, jumbo corned beef sandwiches and green beer. Registration, which costs $25 for adults, can be done online in advance and starts at 7 a.m. this morning. (Niesel) 21940 Lorain Rd., Fairview Park, 440-331-5719, hermescleveland.com. MUSIC

Shamrocks & Dreadlocks St. Patrick’s Day Party One of many St. Patrick’s Day parties happening around town, the Shamrocks & Dreadlocks St. Patrick’s Day Party features local acts such as Carlos Jones & the

P.L.U.S. Band and the Portersharks as well as local DJ Packy Mally. The musical performers will undoubtedly bring a party vibe to the Music Box Supper Club. The show starts at 7 p.m., and tickets are $12 to $18. (Niesel) 1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com.

place for a “social, swap, sell and spin.” There will be record show specials as well as door prizes and a 50/50 raffle, plus DJs spinning vinyl all day. Admission is free. (Niesel) 12112 Madison Ave., Lakewood, 216-600-5338, facebook.com/ thewinchestermusictavern.

Stocker Arts Center An Intimate Evening with Royal Wood & Diana Chittester

BOOKS

MUSIC

St. Patrick’s Day Celebration Each St. Patrick’s Day for the past 14 years, House of Blues has offered a free day-long celebration featuring music and mayhem. The local Pogues tribute act Boys from the County Hell kicks things off at 9 a.m. in the Concert Hall. DJ Sparky B will perform at noon, and again from 4 p.m. until the club closes. In the Cambridge Room, local Irish rockers Craic get started at 9:30 a.m. Billy Likes Soda will take the stage at noon and DJ Gene will perform from 2 p.m. until the club closes. The restaurant and bar will open at 10 a.m., and the Foundation Room will open at 11 a.m. Admission is free but the food and drink will cost you. (Niesel) 308 Euclid Ave., 216-523-2583, houseofblues.com.

Sunday Beat As part of a Sunday Beat promotion at Visible Voice Books, if you purchase a New York Times at the store, you’ll receive a free cup of coffee or tea and a Jim Alesci’s Place pastry. An added bonus: A jazz, Americana, samba or bossa nova band will perform from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Anyone who shows a Sunday receipt from Music Box, Prosperity Social Club or any of the Tremont restaurants that offer brunch can enter a same-day drawing for a chance to win a $30 Visible Voice gift certificate and a $25 Visible Voice Loyalty Card. They’ll also receive 10 percent off any Visible Voice book purchase. The bookstore is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Niesel) 2258 Professor Ave., 216-961-0084, visiblevoicebooks.com.

PARADE

FILM

St. Patrick’s Day Parade The first Cleveland St. Patrick’s Day parade reportedly took place in 1867. In the early years, the parade marched through the near-westside (from the Flats to Detroit-Shoreway), where the region’s Irish immigrants were concentrated. The songs and dancing were organized by the Order of the Hibernians. Back in 1910, Ohio senator Dan Mooney introduced a bill which recognized St. Patrick’s Day in Ohio, turning the parade into a true tradition. Today’s parade launches at 1:04 p.m. at the intersection of Superior Avenue and East 18th Street and will end at Rockwell Avenue and Ontario Street. Expect downtown bars to be jammed after it’s over. The parade route and more are on the website.(Niesel) stpatricksdaycleveland.com.

Unseen Local filmmaker Laura Paglin ( Nightowls of Coventry, Facing Forward) documents the tragic deaths of the women who were killed by known sex offender Anthony Sowell. Paglin interviews surviving victims and poses questions about why it took Cleveland police so long to catch the killer. The movie screens today at 4 p.m. at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. Paglin will be on hand to answer questions after the screening. Tickets are $11, or $8 for Cinematheque members and students. (Niesel) 11610 Euclid Ave., 216-421-7450, cia.edu.

MON

in Concert Friday & Saturday, March 9 & 10 at 8 p.m. Cirigliano Studio Theatre

Anne E. DeChant Trio in Concert

Friday & Saturday, March 16 & 17 at 8 p.m. Cirigliano Studio Theatre

For tickets call (440) 366-4040 or visit stockerartscenter.com The Box Office is located in the lobby of the Stocker Arts Center. Open from 12-6 p.m., M-F, and 90 minutes before ticketed events. 1005 N. Abbe Rd., Elyria, OH 44035 FREE PARKING

03/19

SPORTS

SUN

03/18

SWAP AND SELL

Burning River Record Riot While sales of compact discs continue to decline, sales of vinyl, the format once considered obsolete, are on the rise. Today at noon at the Winchester in Lakewood, vinyl aficionados can potentially add to their collections as the Northeast Ohio Vinyl Club descends upon the

Cavaliers vs. Milwaukee Bucks Led by Giannis Antetokounmpo, a 6-foot-11-inch forward with the ball handling skills of a guard, the Milwaukee Bucks appear headed to the playoffs. While the Bucks haven’t dominated the Eastern Conference, they’ve competed consistently despite playing shoddy defense at times. They take on the Cavs tonight at 7 at the Q. Tickets start at $22. (Niesel) 1 Center Court, 216-420-2000, theqarena.com.

| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

23

GET OUT NIGHTLIFE

Monday Night Trivia Do you have tons of obscure music knowledge? Are you a student of fast food menus and their nuanced histories? What say you about the geographic evolution of Scotch whisky? Tonight’s your chance to wow your friends, make yourself instantly more desirable to someone you’re newly dating, and hang with Cleveland’s headiest hipsters and hot dog lovers. It’s the Happy Dog Monday Night Trivia. Starting at 8 p.m., expect themed rounds and general knowledge questions that seem considerably trickier than some of the other live trivia locales in town. Obviously, have a hot dog and a craft brew while you’re at it. And arrive early: Tables fill up fast. (Sam Allard) 5801 Detroit Ave., 216-651-9474, happydogcleveland.com.

Bring your friends and family and make Movie Mondays a weekly tradition — many theaters even offer discounted concession stand items. Participating theaters include Apollo Theatre, Capitol Theatre, Cedar Lee Theatre, Chagrin Cinemas, Shaker Square Cinemas and Tower City Cinemas. Unfortunately, additional charges apply for 3-D movies. (Alaina Nutile) clevelandcinemas.com. NIGHTLIFE

Shit Show Karaoke Local rapper/promoter Dirty Jones and Scene’s own Manny Wallace host Shit Show Karaoke, a weekly event at the B-Side Liquor Lounge that allows patrons to choose from “an unlimited selection of jams from hip-hop to hard rock.” Participants are encouraged to “be as bad as you want.” Fueled by drink and shot specials, it all goes down tonight at 10 p.m. (Niesel) 2785 Euclid Hts. Blvd., Cleveland Heights, 216-932-1966, bsideliquorlounge.com.

FILM

Movie Mondays Every Monday, Cleveland Cinemas hosts $5 Movie Mondays, where film fans can catch up on the latest Hollywood flicks for significantly reduced prices.

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FOOD

Wing Ding Doodle Blues icon Howlin’ Wolf famously covered “Wang Dang Doodle,” the old blues tune penned by Willie Dixon. Prosperity Social Club in

| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

Tremont has adopted that slogan, calling its wing night Wing Ding Doodle. The weekly event features specials on Buffalo wings and cold brews. Prosperity will not only serve up substantial, $1 whole wings, but it’ll also offering meatless Monday “wing” baskets for vegans. Discounted drafts and a playlist of vintage-electric blues and soulful R&B curated by local musician Clint Holley will be on tap as well. Wing Ding Doodle takes place every Monday from 6 p.m. to midnight. (Niesel) 1109 Starkweather Ave., 216-937-1938, prosperitysocialclub.com.

TUE

03/20

MUSIC

Classical Revolution Cleveland Tonight, and the third Tuesday of every month, Classical Revolution Cleveland brings its wide array of chamber music to the Happy Dog at the Euclid Tavern. Performers like the Trepanning Trio, students of Cleveland Institute of Music and even Cleveland Orchestra members grace the stage in these exciting concerts. Tonight’s free, all-ages performance starts at 8. (Patrick Stoops) 5801 Detroit Ave., 216-651-9474, happydogcleveland.com.

SPORTS

Monsters vs. Chicago The Cleveland Monsters return from a lengthy seven-game road trip to take on the Chicago Wolves. The Monsters lost more games than they won in February, so they’ll be looking to get back on track with tonight’s game. The puck drops at 7. It’s College ID Night so students with a valid ID can buy $6 tickets and pick up a $6 College Meal that includes a hot dog, chips and a soda. Tickets for the general public start at $10. (Niesel) 1 Center Court, 216-420-2000, theqarena.com. MUSIC

Open Turntable Tuesday Tonight from 6 to 9, the Winchester hosts its weekly Open Turntable Tuesday. DJ Kris Koch offers 20-minute slots to people who want to bring their own vinyl and spin their favorite songs or deep tracks. Turntables are provided; you can play three to five songs during your time slot; and a mic is available to talk about the selections. (Niesel) 12112 Madison Ave., Lakewood, 216-600-5338, facebook.com/ thewinchestermusictavern.

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

VOTE NOW | BEST ISSUE OF THE YEAR!

A METRO MATCH-UP NE FOR THE AGES!

BEST

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WEST SIDE VS EAST SIDE

BARS & CLUBS | FOOD & DRINK | PEOPLE & PLACES

APRIL 25, 2018

clevescene.com/bestof

It’s time for you to tell us about 2018’s best people, places and things in our annual Best of Cleveland Readers Poll. This year, a bit of a twist as we seek to settle once and for all which side reigns supreme, east or west. So along with all the citywide categories, you’ll be able to select the best locations, bars, restaurants and more for each side of town. Nominations close March 15. Finalist Voting Begins March 19th | clevescene.com m | March 14 - 20, 2018

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STAGE A TIRED TOUR GASPS FOR BREATH IN RENT The cast seems totally tuckered in a lackluster production of renowned musical By Christine Howey THERE ARE THREE BASIC ways you can fi nd a place to live: You can own, rent, or squat. There is no stage musical called Own, because telling the story of a couple who buys a house is dull (unless it’s the 1986 movie The Money Pit , which is hilarious). However, there is a musical called Rent which opened more than 20 years ago and changed the face of musical theater. This rock musical based on the opera La Boheme tracks the story of a group of down-and-out young artistic hopefuls hanging out in New York City’s dilapidated East Village around Christmas in the early 1990s. They each have hope for the future, but are battling a lack of heat, a lack of food and the fairly new scourge of AIDS. The material — with book, music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson, who tragically died just prior to seeing his creation achieve monumental success off-Broadway two decades ago — is just as strong as ever. The backstory is also heartbreaking, since Larson had worked waiting tables for years as he labored on his masterpiece. The only bigger tragedy would have been if he had died before his play was fi nished. Unfortunately, this 20th anniversary tour of Rent might be more accurately titled Squat, because the performers on the Connor Palace stage seem like interlopers who are unlawfully occupying this iconic theatrical territory. Whether they’re suffering from a severe case of tour burnout or they just don’t have the chops to deliver this material as required is an open question. Either way, it’s clear that this Rent directed by Evan Ensign does not do the original, which was directed by Michael Greif, justice. Even at fi rst glance the show seems off-kilter since Paul Clay’s overly complicated set design, featuring a large metal junk sculpture through which the actors meander, is more attention-getting than useful or symbolic. Looking past the scenic disarray, the characters themselves feel like they’re being seen through a haze, due to indifferent acting.

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Photo courtesy Playhouse Square

Maybe this tour should have taken a few more stops at Waffle House joints along the way to restore their energy. Sammy Ferber and Logan Farine play the pivotal duo of roommates Mark (the wannabe fi lmmaker) and Roger (the wannabe rock guitarist). These are the two

improve when the exotic dancer Mimi (Destiny Diamond) appears and starts to fl irt with Roger. The sexual tension that should be ignited in their song “Light My Candle” is extinguished due in part to Farine’s lack of stage presence and Diamond’s faltering

RENT THROUGH MARCH 25 AT CONNOR PALACE, 1615 EUCLID AVE. 216-241-6000, PLAYHOUSESQUARE.COM

guys around whom everyone else orbits for the duration of the play. Even though Ferber does what he can to invest Mark with some neurotic tendencies, Farine’s Roger is a virtual non-presence on stage, plucking at his guitar and avoiding eye contact with his fellow actors whenever possible. And things don’t noticeably

| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

voice, which is even more apparent in her later solo, “Today 4 U.” The rendition of that up-tempo song by Diamond is more like a slow decomposition, accompanied by a less-than-spirited execution of Marlies Yearby’s gymnastic choreography. As couples go in this uninspired show, bisexual Tom Collins (the

splendidly voiced Josh Walker) and drag queen Angel (Aaron Alcaraz) fare the best. But even their doomed relationship doesn’t generate the kind of emotion it should. This may be due in part to the fact that, thankfully, AIDS is no longer mowing down young people at the rate it was in the 1990s. But even though Walker and Alcaraz sing their parts well, there is little electricity in their stage interaction. The featured lesbian couple is composed of Joanne (Jasmine Easler) and the much-desired Maureen, who is the former fl ame of Mark. Once again, this hot relationship never gets past simmer. And when Lyndie Moe as Maureen performs “Over the Moon,” a political parody of the children’s rhyme “Hey Diddle, Diddle,” she tweaks her ample boobs every time she says “milk.” Um, we get it. Is everything in this production low-Rent ? Well, no. The Act 2 opener, when the cast stands in a line downstage and delivers “Season of Love,” is powerful and downright spine tingling. The song is energized by a brief solo part sung by ensemble member Alana Cauthen, a soaring and pitchperfect performance that received the most enthusiastic response of the night from the audience. In that moment, it was clear what the rest of the show lacked: performances that grab the moment, take chances, and take off for the heights. Perhaps this 20th anniversary tour would have been better imagined as a concert version, paying simple tribute to Larson’s musical genius without all the gimcrackery of bloated scenic design and character portrayals that never quite work. Rent has a great deal to say about the necessity for all of us to treat each other well, especially at a time when there’s not a lot of compassion emanating from our government. It’s just too bad that this production squats where it should have soared.

scene@clevescene.com t@christinehowey

MOVIES SIMON SAYS Teen coming-out flick is among genre’s best By Sam Allard SIMON SPIER’S ‘SECRET’ IS NO secret in Love, Simon, the new teen drama from director Greg Berlanti, who helmed the panned 2010 rom-com Life As We Know It . Simon (Nick Robinson) is gay. Everything else about his life is not on ly intact, but more or less perfect. He’s got a loving family, one whose idyllic suburban wealth and happiness approaches the level of parody: dad the former quarterback, mom the former valedictorian, sister the Food Network devotee who whips up lavish meals on exquisite marble kitchen countertops multiple times per day. He’s got a multicultural group of pals, a Subaru all his own, and what looks to be a very bright and promising future ahead of him. But he has yet to come out to his family and friends. Simon’s coming out — and his relationship with a secret pen pal, Blue — form the basis of the fi lm, which opens Friday in wide release. The script successfully presents a dual storyline with two equally compelling narrative questions. In the fi rst: When and how will Simon come out to those closest to him? In the second: Who is “Blue,” this mysterious correspondent whom he met via the high school’s gossip blog? I have to say I found myself

caught up in the various romances and high school dramas orbiting Simon’s own — the crushes nursed in secret, the professions of love that fail in spectacular ways, the various solar fl ares of love and/or its potential that burn so intensely in high school. For this critic, stories of fi rst love are often so much more affecting than stories of love between adults. (With obvious exceptions!) Even though less is generally at stake — it’s highly unlikely that the relationships embarked upon will be for life — high schoolers feel everything by orders of magnitude more than their grownup counterparts. Moments of happiness are literally the best of their lives; moments of defeat are literally the worst. This is much the case in Love, Simon. In one memorable scene, Simon’s theater friend Martin (Logan Miller) interrupts the national anthem at the high school’s homecoming game to ask out his crush, Simon’s friend Abby (Alexandra Shipp). It’s such a grand, awkward gesture, and — watching through my fingers — I found myself sympathizing with everyone involved. Veep’s Tony Hale, pitch-perfect as the too-friendly vice principal, delivers one of his many laugh-out-loud lines.

The story itself has moments of implausibility, sure. And in one important development, I didn’t buy the treatment of Simon by his friends. Nor did I believe that Simon would be dense enough not to detect a certain budding dynamic with his best friend Leah (Katherine Langford, of 13 Reasons Why). But in general, I was on board. Neither Simon’s eventual coming out, nor the discovery of Blue, went in the direction I initially anticipated and I was delighted by a script that resisted the most obvious beats. That said, this suburban teen drama genre, marked by John Green adaptations and others, is becoming as identifiable as its dystopian kin (the Divergents and Maze Runners and Givers of the world). There are certain trademarks — contemporary alternative music, personal

emails presented via voiceover, a “party” scene) which are wearing awfully thin. But given the genre’s expectations and limits, I was impressed. To be honest, it struck more of an emotional chord than last year’s lovely coming-of-age gay drama Call Me by Your Name. In both films, for the record, the main characters come from immense financial privilege and have 100-percent supportive parents. The fi lm’s stars have local roots as well: Nick Robinson, who plays Simon, broke out in the Cleveland-fi lmed 2013 indie Kings of Summer. Simon’s friend Nick is played by Jorge Lendenbourg, Jr., who debuted as Cisco, the star of Steven Caple Jr.’s 2016 Cleveland fl ick, The Land.

sallard@clevescene.com t@scenesallard

SPOTLIGHT: 7 DAYS IN ENTEBBE SOMEHOW, WITH HIS LATEST film, director Jose Padilha wrangles some serious drama out of a story that many are already familiar with. The well-acted 7 Days in Entebbe generates some real thrills as it dramatizes a famous hijacking of an Air France flight. It opens at the Cedar Lee Theatre on Friday. A quick history lesson: Back in 1976, four people hijacked a plane on its way from Tel Aviv to Paris. Two of the hijackers were Palestinian members of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the other two were leftist German radicals out to prove that Israel had capitulated to Western

capitalist urges and needed learn a major lesson. The two Germans — Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann — had painstakingly planned the attack and forced the pilot to stop in Libya to refuel. They then forced him to land in Uganda, where the passengers de-boarded in Entebbe. Much like Argo, 7 Days in Entebbe turns the real-life story into a dramatic thriller (and takes a few liberties with the story along the way). Once Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin (Lior Ashkenazi) receives word of the hijacking, he and defense minister Shimon

Peres (a particularly smarmy Eddie Marsan) debate their next move. They decide on a covert military rescue that involves smuggling a black Mercedes into the country so that the rescuers can pose as Mercedes-loving Uganda dictator Idi Amin (Nonso Anozie) as they make their way to the abandoned transit hall where the passengers are held captive. All the while, Wilfried (Daniel Brühl) and Brigitte (Rosamund Pike) realize their ideals about combatting capitalism in a non-violent manner were terribly naïve. While they only want to threaten the hostages, their PLO counterparts are much more

ruthless and make it clear they’ll kill the people if their demands aren’t met. While the film often resorts to arthouse cliches in the attempt to connect a subplot about a young dancer’s performance with the rescue mission, Brühl and Pike carry the movie. They’re almost too successful at making the radicals into sympathetic characters when, in fact, they put innocent people in danger in the misguided attempt to make a political statement. — Jeff Niesel

jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel

| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

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| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

EAT CUSTOMIZABLE POKE BOWLS AND ASIAN FUSION MENU ARE A HIT AT CORNER 11 By Douglas Trattner I HAVE NO CRYSTAL BALL, BUT I do have a feeling that Corner 11 will have a nice, long life in a space that has seen more than its share of shortlived tenants and extended vacancies. Most recently home to Merchant Street Provisions, the prime park-side property in Tremont is seeing brisk business thanks to increased demand for poke. It’s easy to see why poke (pronounced poh-kay) is making such a splash: the raw fish-based food is fresh, healthy, portable and eminently customizable. When you’re first, it’s key to be helpful, and the friendly folks here begin every transaction with, “Hi, first time here?” We were walked through the process, which isn’t unlike working one’s way down the burrito station at Chipotle. After selecting one of three bowl sizes, customers pick a base of white sushi rice, black rice or mixed greens. Protein choices include raw sushigrade tuna or salmon (from Catanese Classic Seafood), poached shrimp or scallops, or cooked chicken or tofu.

Photo by Emanuel Wallace

CORNER 11 2391 WEST 11TH ST. 216-713-1757 CORNER11CLEVELAND.COM

There are seven sauces to choose from and management was more than happy to hand over samples of each and every one. In the end we followed the owner’s suggestion and blended the spicy Thai seafood with the creamy tom yum. Others on the roster include green curry, sweet

shoyu, spicy mayo and teriyaki. Next comes the fun part, customizing your bowl with fresh toppers like avocado, mango, edamame, jalapeno wheels and wasabi-spiked flying fish roe. The mixing and eating is left to the diner. Prices are $8.50, $11.50 and $14.50, depending on the size.

The rest of the menu is a sort of Asian fusion mashup of snacks, noodle soups and even an entree or two. A sweet, creamy and rich Thai-style coconut curry noodle soup ($9.50), based on a family recipe, is loaded with tender egg noodles, cubes of silken tofu and punchy pickled mustard greens that contrast the cloying sweetness of the coconut. The bowl is garnished with a nest of crunchy fried noodles. It’s hard to resist the “Thai stix” ($3.50), a pair of uber-crisp and uber-slender fried rolls filled with imitation crab and cream cheese. The kanom jeeb ($6) are Thai-style siu mai dumplings, a half dozen delicate steamed purses filled with ground pork, ground shrimp and crunchy pieces of water chestnut. If you like dim sum-style BBQ pork buns, you’ll love the pork steam bun ($5). Owner Thiwaporn Sirisuwan is not content to leave well enough alone. She intends to add and tweak menu items until she’s happy with the formula.

PHUSION CAFE JOINS A GROWING ROSTER OF ASIAN EATERIES IN UPTOWN By Douglas Trattner WE’RE ALL FAMILIAR WITH Cleveland’s AsiaTown, a robust concentration of Asian-owned restaurants, markets and shops in the St. Clair Superior neighborhood. But a little less conspicuous is the one currently taking shape in University Circle. Within a few short blocks of the intersection of Euclid and Mayfield are no fewer than eight Asian eateries, buoyed in large part by a student population hungry for a taste of home. Newest among them is Phusion Cafe, owned by Andy Newman with partner Ivan Tsou. The two also run Phusion in AsiaTown, Phuel Cafe in Playhouse Square and China Sea, which Tsou has owned for more than 30 years. The pair also intend to open a second Phuel on Chester near the campus of the Cleveland Clinic.

Phusion is located on the ground floor of Euclid 116, the brand new apartment building that replaced Mi Pueblo (and later Piñatas). The first thing that strikes a diner when entering is the menu, a dauntingly large chalkboard wall emblazoned

noodles ($6.95) and Hakka noodle soup ($8.95) rising to the top. The former is a deep bowl of chewy noodles, minced pork, boiled shrimp and crisp bok choy in a savory broth. The latter a satisfying medley of noodles, tofu and tender pork ribs

PHUSION CAFE UPTOWN 11611 EUCLID AVE. 440-552-5596

with dozens and dozens of entries handwritten both in English and Chinese characters. Newman describes it as a sort of Greatest Hits roundup of the group’s most popular dishes. Taiwanese street eats like noodle and rice bowls are amazing values, with dishes like the Peddler’s

in a rich broth. It’s topped with a puddle of pungent fermented black bean paste that gets stirred into the soup. Long-braised meats like pork, pork belly and even “trotters” are served on noodles or rice and garnished with bright pickled veggies, sauteed greens and the occasional hard-

cooked tea egg. A whole category of “Night Market” items range in price from $1.25 for an egg roll up to $15 for a family-style lamb pot with rice. Popular dishes include crunchy fried popcorn chicken, crispy scallion pancakes, and steamed or fried pot stickers. The number of dishes and the speed at which they come out is impressive for such a petite space. While many customers grab and go, there are a dozen or so seats from which to enjoy your food from real tableware and utensils. To drink there’s bubble and milk teas made from TenRen teas and quality fruit syrups.

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner | clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

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NORTHEAST OHIO DINERS have watched as local upstarts like B Spot, Melt and Barrio have grown from trendy one-offs to regional chains. Not too far behind is Barroco Arepa Bar, the popular Colombian-themed restaurant that fi rst opened its doors in Lakewood (12906 Madison Ave., 216-2218127) back in 2011. Last summer, the eatery run by Juan and Carlos Vergara expanded to the east side, with a splashy new location on Larchmere (12718 Larchmere Blvd., 216-938-9301). Next up for the energetic Vergaras is a third location at Crocker Park in Westlake. “We weren’t even looking to do another restaurant, but the opportunity opened up,” says Juan. “I feel like things are running smoothly at both Barrocos and, although a third restaurant was not in our plans, we feel like our

concept deserves it. I think we’re going to get great exposure over there. I can’t wait to show off Barroco to a lot of people who don’t know us yet.” The new restaurant will move into the space that was most recently home to 87 West 2 (287 Crocker Park Blvd.), which quietly closed its doors a few weeks back. Vergara says that the space will present the family with a few design challenges, but nothing that can’t be overcome. A full kitchen will need to be installed and the layout completely changed. But the overall space is similar in size to Barroco’s other stores. “We’re used to working in a small enough space in Lakewood, kitchen-wise, so this will be fi ne,” he adds. Vergara says that he considered running with a less ambitious spin-off type concept, but in the end

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decided to go with same format, including weekend brunch and the occasional live music. Early design plans call for some attentiongrabbing signage on the exterior of the building in an attempt to get noticed. “This place kind of blends in and I want to be seen,” he says of the building. Vergara adds that they are shooting for a June or July opening. “We’re really excited and we think we’re going to have a lot of fun there,” Vergara explains. “Larchmere was a great move for us, we’re having a lot of fun, we’re getting amazing feedback from the community, we’re staying busy and growing our brunch crowd. We’re stretching ourselves so that it’s still going to be a family-run business. We wouldn’t do it if we didn’t think we could.”

Bac Asian Bistro in Tremont to Close, Trio to Open in its Place by Early Summer

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With the forthcoming opening of Ninja City in Detroit-Shoreway, owner Bac Nguyen has decided to close his flagship restaurant in Tremont to focus exclusively on the new venture. After an admirable eight-year run, the business will close on Saturday April 14. “That place is my baby,” Nguyen says of the closure. “Me and my family put our hearts and souls into that place. It allowed us to pivot from what we were doing at other restaurants earlier.” That pivot eventually led to Ninja City, which showcases contemporary riffs on Asian and Asian fusion foods. With the looming closure of the Tremont eatery, Nguyen says that he will likely include more Bac staples on the Ninja City menu. Already there is some overlap, he points out, but he might introduce a “throw Bac” section that rotates in some favorites. Nguyen is estimating a late spring or early summer opening. The prime Tremont spot will not remain vacant for long. Already a deal is in place with chef Anthony Scolaro, who along with partners Meghan Pender and Scott DiPetta will open Trio, a modern American bistro. For the past four years, Scolaro

| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

has been working to elevate the culinary scene in Medina, where he and his partners run the popular One Eleven Bistro (2736 Medina Rd., 330-952-1122). His goal when opening the business, he explains, was to bring a little taste of Cleveland to his hometown city. “In Medina there was a lack of what Cleveland has to offer in terms of adventurous dining — even just independent restaurants,” says Scolaro. “Our goal was to bring a little bit of that down this way.” Over the course of four years, the chef proudly says that not only has his restaurant incrementally pushed his clientele forward gastronomically speaking, it has motivated others in the Medina restaurant scene to do so as well. Looking ahead, the chef has his sights set on even more progressive fare. “When this opportunity in Tremont came up, it was kind of a way for us to do all the things that don’t necessarily fl y down here,” he says. “The opportunity kind of fell in our lap and we decided to take it and run with it. That’s the nature of this business in a way. Tremont is a mainstay and I think we can use that ‘new kid on the block’ thing for a while to hopefully get people interested.” After getting the keys in midApril, the chef expects to spend about two months revamping the interior. The kitchen requires some extensive modifications, the bar will be modernized, and the dining room will undergo some cosmetic work as well. When Trio opens in June, it will do so with a concise menu of modern American food that changes frequently. The ingredient- and technique-driven eatery will also offer early happy hour, tasting menus and daily specials. Running two restaurants simultaneously presents some challenges. Running two restaurants 35 miles apart presents even more. Scolaro says that the team he has developed down in Medina is ready to take on more challenges. “The only reason that we’re able to even attempt this is because of the staff and team that we have already in place,” he says.

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner

| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

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Photos by Denise Siegel

MUSIC

SIGNS OF THE TIME The songs on Grant-Lee Phillips’ new disc respond to the current political climate By Jeff Niesel TWO YEARS AGO AT MUSIC BOX Supper Club, singer-songwriters Steve Poltz and Grant-Lee Phillips played a fun co-headlining show. They couldn’t stop talking about what a great time they were having on their fi rst-ever tour together. At the show’s start, they launched into a bit of banter before Phillips fi nally said, “Let’s do a song together.” Their cover of “Gentle on My Mind,” a John Hartford song made famous by country singer Glen Campbell, had a simple elegance to it as the two gently strummed their acoustic guitars and sang vocal harmonies together. “There’s a story,” says Phillips when asked about what that tour with Poltz was like. “The great American novel could be written. He’s a really sweet guy and a fascinating dude. I love his songs and his mind and spirit. We really

connected immediately from the fi rst show. We had never met prior to that. Our agent set up this blind date, but it worked out.” This time around, Phillips, who’ll bring a solo tour in support of his new album, Widdershins, to Music Box Supper Club on Sunday, has

wouldn’t want to go near her. I’ve been on stage with her, but I keep my distance.” The double billing should work out well. Both Phillips and Hersh are veteran singer-songwriters who can command a room even without a band.

GRANT-LEE PHILLIPS, KRISTIN HERSH 7 P.M. SUNDAY, MARCH 18, MUSIC BOX SUPPER CLUB, 1148 MAIN AVE., 216- 242-1250. TICKETS: $18 ADV, $22 DOS, MUSICBOXCLE.COM.

teamed up with Throwing Muses singer-guitarist Kristin Hersh. “Kristin is a different kind of animal,” says Phillips. “She’s not an animal at all. She’s quite a different person offstage. When she’s on stage, she goes into a sort of trance when she’s singing and then off the stage, she’s one of the funniest people I know. Onstage, I

Phillips, who grew up in sleepy Stockton, California, received his fi rst guitar as a Christmas gift and was immediately taken with it. “Something happens when you discover the guitar,” he says. “It becomes this medium that you can put all your emotions into nonverbally. I took to it and it never really left my hands throughout my

teenage years.” Having performed at the local Stockton theater, where he did sketches, comedy and magic, Phillips says he felt “destined” to wind up in Los Angeles where he could hopefully apply those talents to fi lmmaking. After arriving in La La Land, he learned how to operate a camera and began working on fi lm crews. His love of playing music, however, led him to abandon that pursuit and instead explore singing and songwriting. “Maybe about a year into it, I realized I couldn’t focus on it because my desire to make music was so great,” he says. “I just decided to work my horrible day job and to sleep for three hours a night because I was playing clubs at night. I made a deliberate move.” Initially, Phillips had some success with the indie rock act Shiva Burlesque. When that group | clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

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MUSIC

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| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

broke up, he started playing solo shows as Grant-Lee Buffalo before assembling a full band to back him. The group became critics’ darlings. “It was an exciting time — exhausting but exciting,” he says. “You go from playing music in your garage to playing in some of the biggest venues with people like R.E.M. Next thing you know, you’re on a festival bill with some of your heroes, like David Bowie.” Recorded over four days at Sound Emporium in Nashville, Widdershins was cut largely live in the studio as a trio with drummer Jerry Roe and bassist Lex Price. Mixed by Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, the Decemberists) and engineered by Mike Stankiewicz, the album shows off Phillips’ evocative voice and provides some commentary on our troubled times too. “This is an interesting album because it was written quickly and recorded shortly after I had written the songs and put out within six months,” says Phillips. “The bulk of it was written between November of last year and maybe February. I set up the time to record it in May, but I didn’t play it live that much. It was very fresh and very much a reflection of this time. It’s highly personal and sometimes there’s a social thread as there was with some of the early Grant-Lee Buffalo records. This album is along those lines. These times feel so ramped up and that pushed the feeling of the album, the drive behind it, the lyrics and even the manner of putting it out so quickly. There are other songs sitting on my desk waiting to be recorded. Some of them might be turned into mulch, I don’t know.” The album begins with the high-energy, alt-country-ish tune “Walk in Circles.” Inspired by a St. Augustine quotation, the song serves as a “proclamation of allegiance to the underdog and to the pacifi st and the meek and vocal people of the world who are standing up to the bullies but having a laugh along the way and being able to defeat such ideas with humor and guitars.” It’s good stuff. With its hoarse vocals and twisted guitars, “Scared Stiff” has a really manic, punk-ish quality to it that Phillips says stems from the way in which it was conceived. “That one was written during a feverish evening,” he says. “I’m sure it’s something I wrote while I

was fl ipping through one episode of breaking news after another. I was talking to a fellow musician who said he spent the day after the 2016 presidential election curled up in a state of rigor mortis unsure of what was around the corner. I realize not everyone looks upon our current climate as being a need for concern. To me, that’s concerning. We all have our blind spots. It’s become difficult to fi nd the best way to articulate it. I can’t say it’s possible to meet in the middle when I feel such opposition to such ideas.” A conversation with a close friend inspired the tune “Totally You Gunslinger,” a tender, folk-y tune about a guy who wants to get a gun. “What makes someone who is normally peaceful seek out that kind of solution for security?” says Phillips. “Obviously, there’s a big part of the country that embraces that idea. We’ve been conditioned to this new state of violence that passes off as normal. The song was actually written about a year ago.” With rattling drums and chanted vocals, “Liberation,” a sardonic song about a political victory, makes for a great closing number. “I tend to write songs and stand back and have a listen and see which ones fit together and which ones deserve to be recorded and which ones should be kept off the record,” says Phillips when asked about how “Liberation” wound up as the album’s last track. “I look at them after I’ve done the work. It’s more liberating that way. There usually is some thread that connects the songs. Usually, it reveals itself. There’s a lot about doublespeak and duplicitous governments [in ‘Liberation’]. It’s a fiery song and one of the fi nal things I wrote for the album. That sometimes plays a role in where the song goes. If it’s written late in the hour then maybe that’s where it fits best.” For the upcoming Music Box Supper Club show, both Hersh and Phillips will play acoustic sets. “I always see this as an opportunity to share new songs,” says Phillips in reference to the upcoming gig. “It’s difficult to resist the old songs that I have that connection with and that my audience has a connection with. I rarely use a set list. As a result, some songs get tossed in more than others. I like that freedom. It’s one of the upsides of performing by yourself.”

jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel

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| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

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Photo by Joshua Kissi

MUSIC SPLIT PERSONALITY Rapper Big K.R.I.T. reveals his musical alter ego By Emanuel Wallace THERE IS A SCENE IN Superman III in which Superman is secretly exposed to Kryptonite and soon thereafter becomes a darker version of himself. He succumbs to depression and finds himself in a bar throwing back shots of Johnny Walker Red. Then he stumbles out into the street with onlookers shocked at how far the once-great hero of Metropolis has fallen. He flies away, but once he lands, Superman has a nervous breakdown and the personas of Clark Kent and this evil Superman battle to the death. Much like Superman in that movie, Mississippi rapper Big K.R.I.T. (an acronym that stands for King Remembered in Time) also has battled demons and wrestles with the duality of being K.R.I.T as well as Justin Scott. The rapper burst onto the national scene in 2010 with his K.R.I.T. Wuz Here mixtape which ended up landing him a deal with Def Jam Records. While it seemed like a blessing at the time, K.R.I.T.’s tenure with the label was tumultuous as his vision and the corporate vision didn’t always sync up. After two critically wellreceived albeit underperforming albums (2012’s Live From the Underground and 2014’s Cadillactica), K.R.I.T. and Def Jam parted ways. Late last year, Big K.R.I.T. released his third studio album, 4eva is a Mighty Long Time independently through his Multi Alumni imprint. The album is a double disc that’s split into a Big K.R.I.T. side and a Justin Scott side. The idea of an alter ego isn’t entirely new in hip-hop — T.I. and Digital Underground have also experimented with the concept. “Just because of what I was dealing with in life — everything I went through with Def Jam —and I was in a place where I was creatively stumped and trying to be competitive,” K.R.I.T. says via phone when asked why the time was right to separate the two personas. He brings his Heavy is the Crown tour to House of Blues at 8 p.m. on Sunday. “It was always about creating the best music that I could when I was younger and wanting the accolades and things of that nature. This is the first time when I wasn’t really stressed over a label, and I was going to do things my way and create

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the kind of music that shows what I deal with on a day-to-day basis as far as anxiety and my vices as well.” In the past, Big K.R.I.T. was very vocal about his frustration with how he was viewed as being an artist from Mississippi but admits that the bitterness has faded some. “Not so much now,” he says of the once ever-present chip on his shoulder. “For me, I still want the song to be as good as possible. So if I’m doing a song with you, I’m still going to try and kill you on the record, but it’s all for the betterment of the song. It’s not me against the world now. I can’t change how people view where I’m from. I go back and listen to my very first album, and I was definitely frustrated that people didn’t get it. A lot of the aggression showed in my music and that wasn’t healthy. You could hear it in the music, you could hear it in a lot of the interviews that I was bitter, and it was a blessing to be able to let that go. The people that support my music have grown, and it’s important that I do the same for the sake of the music they support and listen to as well.” He feels as if there’s a superhero aspect that comes with being an artist and trying to be great, but sometimes when that superhero goes home, the walls come tumbling down. “For me it was very important this time to show people what I was dealing with, and I had to separate the albums so sonically it would be easier to digest,” he continues. “I also want to be transparent and let

time around for K.R.I.T. when it came to interviews and talking to people. So many people could relate to what was going on as far as getting older and going through anxiety and depression, and wondering if they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing in life. He essentially asked himself these kinds of questions on wax. As of late, Big K.R.I.T. has also been more openly creating songs about love and relationships and credits not only his partner but also a lesson he finally learned about happiness. “Money won’t make you happy,” he says. “It took me a long time to realize that. I had acquired so much over the years and it’s not really going to fulfill you at the end of the day. I actually went broke making 4eva is a Mighty Long Time, but it was a moment when I really found some peace of mind because I started to figure out what really would make me happy without trying to ball out. I was more about going outside and looking to myself.” Big K.R.I.T. is currently in a relationship with singer-songwriter Mara Hruby and recognizes her role

BIG K.R.I.T., CYHI THE PRINCE 8 P.M. SUNDAY, MARCH 18, HOUSE OF BLUES, 308 EUCLID AVE., 216-523-2583 TICKETS: $23.50 ADV, $27 DOS, HOUSEOFBLUES.COM

people know that a lot of the things I rapped about when I was younger, I don’t necessarily feel that way now. But I still do like old-school cars and candy paint. I feel like turning up the shows and enjoying myself, but also being more aware of the message I’m sending out and giving people both sides. It’s like, ‘Yeah we party and have fun,’ but there’s also that ‘Drinking Sessions’ side where I express what it’s like when you’re overdoing it.” The clarity made it easier this

| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

in his happiness as well. “Talking about love was something that the soul singers I grew up listening to did freely,” K.R.I.T. continues. “I think sometimes you get away from that being a rapper. For me, my woman is a big part of my life as far as keeping me grounded and allowing me to express myself without always telling me that I’m right. Having that was something that I thought I needed to share too. I feel like people need to get out there and

find someone who loves you for you and not for what you can do for them.” The Justin Scott side of 4eva is a Mighty Long Time also explore the perils of fame, including alcoholism and depression. The topic isn’t completely new, as K.R.I.T. has touched on it in the past, but never to the extent as he does on “Drinking Sessions” and “The Price of Fame.” “Once you call yourself out, you really start to look at the patterns,” he says. “I had put myself in the position where I felt like I couldn’t write the best way I knew how to if I was sober. That’s what I was telling myself. I really challenged myself to complete the process of making this album sober and it showed me something about myself. My energy and endurance to create songs in the studio was way longer and then a song like ‘Drinking Sessions’ starts to make more sense in how it can help someone. I just wanted to talk about that because it’s so easy to not realize that you’re not really going through things the way you should naturally.” While tight lipped about show specifics, Big K.R.I.T. promises to bring the same energy to his performance as always. “There will definitely be a lot of energy,” he says. “I’m trying to find a creative way of bringing the music to life. You have songs like ‘Bury Me in Gold’ and I’m trying to make it a spiritual moment — a moment where people can come to the show and get whatever they’ve got going on off their chest and just let it go. I really want to focus on doing the newer music. I think people got used to me taking it way, way back. But I dropped 22 songs and I really want to perform that music and show people where I’m at now as opposed to my younger self.”

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

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41

4422

| clevescene.com cllevescene.com m | March Marchh 14 - 20, 20, 2018 201 0188

LIVEWIRE

all the live music you should see this week Photo by Jacob Blickenstaff

WED

03/14

10 X 3 Singer Songwriter Showcase hosted by Brent Kirby (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge. The Brass: 9 p.m., $5. Now That’s Class. Dominick Farinacci/Joe Hunter: 7 p.m., $20. Nighttown. Danielle Nicole/Becky Boyd: Singer-songwriter Danielle Nicole has said that she opened up more on her second solo album, “Cry No More,” and she has called it “a dream come true” because it was exactly the album she wanted to make. The singer’s soulful vocals and strong supporting bass lines combined with the blues and rock rhythms make her songs remarkably accessible. (Jane Wight) 8 p.m., $13 ADV, $15 DOS. Beachland Tavern. Perfect Choice: 8 p.m., free. Brothers Lounge. RIFF RAFF/DJ Afterthought/John Sisco/Podeezy & DollaBillGates/ 2 Stoned/Atari Jones: 8:30 p.m., $20 ADV, $23 DOS. Grog Shop. Ben Rosenblum Trio: 8 p.m., $12. Bop Stop.

THU

03/15

Casey Abrams: 8 p.m., $15 ADV, $18 DOS. Beachland Tavern. Alexis Antes (in the Supper Club): 7:30 p.m., $8 ADV, $10 DOS. Music Box Supper Club. Born Ruffi ans/Fleece: 9 p.m., $13 ADV, $15 DOS. Grog Shop. Harriet Tubman Movement Presents Follow the Drinking Gourd Benefit Concert for Local Human Trafficking Victims with Emily Keener/Ray Flanagan and the Authorities/ Michelle Gaw: 7 p.m., $30. Beachland Ballroom. Chris Hatton’s Musical Circus (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge. Walker Hayes: 8 p.m., $15 ADV, $20 DOS. House of Blues. The High Kings: 7:30 p.m., $42 ADV, $50 DOS. Music Box Supper Club. High Up/Whispertown: 8 p.m., $10 ADV, $12 DOS. CODA. Jam Night with the Bad Boys of Blues: 9 p.m., free. Brothers Lounge. Judas Priest: 7 p.m., $42-$62. Covelli Centre (Youngstown).

The Stolen/Patternist/Persons/ Places/Things/Dreamliner/ Glendale: 7 p.m., $10 ADV, $12 DOS. Mahall’s 20 Lanes.

FRI

03/16

Jake Boland: 8:30 p.m., $20. Nighttown. Chantae Cann: Sol Empowered: 8 p.m., $20. Bop Stop. Craic/Reverend Morbid: 9 p.m., $5 ADV, $8 DOS. The Winchester. Cross Brothers LP Release/Glass Traps/Part-Time Lover/Sister Smirk: 9 p.m., $6. Happy Dog. Disco Inferno: 9:30 p.m., $5. Brothers Lounge. Earth, Wind & Fire: 7:30 p.m., $45.50-$95.50. Covelli Centre (Youngstown). Frank Sinatra Tribute with Michael Sonata (in the Supper Club): 7:30 p.m., $10. Music Box Supper Club. Headspace: Minimal/House/ Techno: 9 p.m., $3. The Euclid Tavern. Iron Bison/Two Hands/Wild Dirt & the All Purple Everything/ Terra Vista/Speedfreak (in the Locker Room): 7 p.m., $10. Mahall’s 20 Lanes. Jazz Jam Session: 11 p.m., free. Bop Stop. Jivviden & Trios Album Release Double Header: 9 p.m., $8 ADV, $10 DOS. Grog Shop. The McCartney Project: 8 p.m., $20 ADV, $25 DOS. Music Box Supper Club. The Movies / Happy Family / Ulysses: 9 p.m., $5. CODA. Shelby Olive: 9 p.m., $7. Musica. Pompous Ass (in the Wine Bar): 9 p.m. Brothers Lounge. Rodriguez: 8 p.m., $47-$67. Akron Civic Theatre. Revival: An Evening with the Music of the Allman Brothers: 8 p.m., $12 ADV, $14 DOS. Beachland Ballroom. Sands and Hearn (in the Wine Bar): 6 p.m. Brothers Lounge. Michael Schenker Fest: For Michael Schenker Fest, which just released the new album, Resurrection, guitar guru Michael Schencker recruited three classic Michael Schenker Group vocalists (Gary Barden, Graham Bonnet and Robin McAuley) plus Doogie White, who sings in Michael Schenker’s Temple of Rock. The supergroup also includes guitarist/

Blues singer Danielle Nicole comes to the Beachland. See: Wednesday.

keyboardist Steve Mann, bassist Chris Glen and drummer Ted McKenna. The album’s fi rst single, the Dio-like “Warrior,” features a somber intro before escalating and allowing all four vocalists to show off their chops while Schenker delivers a gritty mid-song solo. Schenker has said the band will deliver a two-hour set that includes tracks from his extensive back catalog. (Niesel) 7 p.m., $19.99 ADV, $27 DOS. Agora Ballroom. Moss Stanley: 10:30 p.m., free. Nighttown. The Vital Organs/The Waves/ Bonnie Clydeman: 7 p.m., $10. Mahall’s 20 Lanes.

SAT

03/17

Greg Bandy and Friends: 8 p.m., $20. Bop Stop. The Friends of the Firestone Band with Special Guests: 8 p.m., $10. Musica. Heaven Is In You Presents: Ghost Noises with Hi-VIS/FANA/Ghost Noises/A/V: Tonight’s special

electronic music concert hosted by the locally based Heaven Is In You features a range of different artists. Performances include “evocative sound collages” courtesy of FANA, as well as psychedelic hip-hop from Ghost Noises, a local group that’ll be performing its fi rst live show in months. Expect to hear new material from the group. The lineup also includes guitarist Ted Bizon from Seeress/Significant Loss. (Niesel) 9 p.m., $8. Now That’s Class. Liv Lombardi / Noon / Shy Moon: 9 p.m., $4 ADV, $7 DOS. CODA. Maura Rogers and the Bellows (in the Wine Bar): 9 p.m. Brothers Lounge. Shamrocks & Dreadlocks St. Patrick’s Day Party: 7 p.m., $12$18. Music Box Supper Club. Spandrels/Exotic Fruit Club/ Floorvveed/Pomade: 9 p.m., $5. The Euclid Tavern. St. Patrick’s Day with the New Barleycorn: 1 p.m., $10-$25. Nighttown. Michael Stanley and the Resonators/Donnie Iris: 7:30 p.m. Hard Rock Rocksino Northfield Park. Thy Art is Murder/Dying Fetus/ Enterprise Earth/Rivers of Nihil/Sanction: 6 p.m., $23 ADV, $25 DOS. Agora Ballroom. U2 Tribute by ONE (in the Supper Club): 8 p.m., $10 ADV, 12 DOS. Music Box Supper Club. VMOB: 8:30 p.m., $5. Brothers Lounge. Jackie Warren: 10:30 p.m., free. Nighttown.

SUN

03/18

“Angel of the Night” Barbara Barrett & Archie McElrath: 7 p.m., $20. Nighttown. Big K.R.I.T./Cyhi the Prynce: 8 p.m., $23.50 ADV, $27 DOS. House of Blues. BW Jazz Ensemble: 5 p.m., $10. Brothers Lounge. Kristen Hersh & Grant-Lee Phillips: 7 p.m., $18 ADV, $22 DOS. Music Box Supper Club. Hungover/Safe Bet/As Time Fades/Sarah Arafat/Wake Magnolia/Jake Dressler (in the Locker Room): 7 p.m., $10. Mahall’s 20 Lanes. Joe Hertler and the Rainbow Seekers/The Bees Trees/Urban Tropic: 8 p.m., $8 ADV, $10 DOS. | clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

43

LIVEWIRE Beachland Tavern. Mike Petrone: 5:30 p.m. Brothers Lounge. Ron Zehel Guitar Center Student Performance (in the Supper Club): 4 p.m., free. Music Box Supper Club.

MON

03/19

Skatch Anderssen Orchestra: 8 p.m., $7. Brothers Lounge. Idles: When Idles started making visceral punk rock music together back in 2012, their music was a wild mess, and that’s why it isn’t too surprising it took the British act five years to put out its fi rst full-length record. When Brutalism fi nally came out last year, that untrained sound was still there, but the five-piece showed just how refi ned it’d become. The music wails with purpose, covering some of the band members’ lowest moments, including drug addiction, death of a parent, medical battles and jail stints. The brutal way lead singer Joe Talbot yells, mourns and sings is mesmerizing. You can’t help but listen and jump and scream right along. The group recently opened for the Foo Fighters at the O2 in London and is now on a short North American tour. (Laura Morrison) 8:30 p.m., $10 ADV, $12 DOS. Beachland Tavern. Velvet Voyage (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

TUE

03/20

Devin the Dude/Callmechrisg/ Mellowxzackt/DJ Iceberg: 8:30 p.m., $20 ADV, $25 DOS. Grog Shop. Outlab Session: 9 p.m., free. Bop Stop. Steve Roberts (in the Wine Bar): 7 p.m. Brothers Lounge. Senses Fail/Reggie and the Full Effect/Have Mercy/Household: 6 p.m., $17.68 ADV, $20.80 ADV. Agora Ballroom. Stiff Love/Cotton Ponys/Street Gurgler: 9 p.m., $7. Now That’s Class.

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene 44

| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

ST. PATRICK’S DAY WEEKEND! FRIDAY, MARCH 16

THE FLANAGAN REILY BAND 7-11PM

Joined By...

THE BURKE IRISH

DANCE ACADEMY 8:15PM

IRISH DJ SHAMUS 11:15PM

SATURDAY, MARCH 17

ST. PATRICK’S DAY! DOORS OPEN AT 10:00AM Performances By...

POMPOUS ASS 10:30AM IRISH COTTAGE BOYS 4:00PM HARP CITY 7:30PM BAGPIPERS!! JAMESON, GREEN BEER & CORNED BEEF SPECIALS

TUESDAY, MARCH 20 7:30PM

SWINGCITY BIG BAND FRIDAY, MARCH 23 8:00PM

SHOUT! COMING SOON MAR 24 .....5 YEAR ANNIVERSARY APR 7.......................... PAT DAILEY GREAT MUSIC, FOOD & DRINK Book Your Special Events With Us! 1414 RIVERSIDE DRIVE LAKEWOOD HGLCMLMCKHFH © l ~y xDy

BAND OF THE WEEK UPCOMING ENTERTAINMENT!

Photo by David McClister

DAN RATHER MAR 16

TURNPIKE TROUBADOURS MEET THE BAND: Evan Felker (vocals,

guitar), Kyle Nix (fiddle), Ryan Engleman (steel and electric guitar), RC Edwards (bass), Gabe Pearson (drums) and Hank Early (steel guitar and accordion) JOINING FORCES: The alt-country band

came together about a decade ago in Oklahoma. Members played in different groups but knew each other from the local music scene. “It’s not a very big place,” says Edwards when asked about the band’s Oklahoma roots. “There’s only so many people playing the kind of music we like. I think we all had our own bands, and Evan rounded us up to join forces.” In 2007, the band issued its debut, Bossier City. “It was so do-ityourself,” says Edwards when asked about that first release. “We were selling them out of our van and at shows. The local smoke shop was even one of the places where you could buy them.” A GRASSROOTS THING: For 2010’s

Diamonds & Gasoline, the band worked out of a proper studio for the first time with a proper producer. “[Producer] Mike [McClure] is quite a character and really fun to work with. He’s also a really crazy person to work with,” says Edwards. “Our first studio experience got pretty interesting working with Mike.” The band’s fan base would expand in the wake of that release. “It’s been a grassroots thing,” says Edwards. “We meet the fans at every show we

play and then see the crowds grow as we go back to each city.” WHY YOU SHOULD HEAR THEM: The band’s new album, A Long Way from Your Heart, represents its most eclectic release to date. Songs such as “Something to Hold On To” feature a mixture of rock and country sensibilities as the song comes off as a cross between the Old 97s and Charlie Daniels. “The biggest difference with this record is that we used a producer for the first time in a few years,” says Edwards. “With [Ryan Hewitt], it was like having a whole other band member with us who had another set of ideas and eyes and ears. He helped make the songs better. He didn’t shape the style as much as he got the best out of us.” It’s also the first album featuring steel guitar and accordion player Hank Early, who brings out the band’s Cajun impulses. “We try to mix in more of the new songs with every show,” says Edwards. “It’s really fun. ‘Come to a live show,’ is what I tell everyone who hasn’t heard of us. ‘You’ll really like the live show.’”

PAUL REISER MAR 24

NORTHCOAST BIKER’S BALL 2018

WARRANT & JACK RUSSELL’S GREAT WHITE • MAR 23

DANE COOK (2ND SHOW ADDED) MAY 11 • 10:30PM

3/29 ANTHONY JESELNIK 3/30 CLINT BLACK 4/7 ANN WILSON OF HEART 4/12 BUDDY GUY 4/13 THE FAB FOUR

4/19 BILLY CURRINGTON WITH SPECIAL GUEST LOCASH 4/29 VEGAS COUNTRY: A TRIBUTE TO SHANIA TWAIN & TIM MCGRAW 8/17 PURPLE REIGN THE PRINCE TRIBUTE SHOW! TED BY PRESEN

UPCOMING ENTERTAINMENT!

CHAD ZUMOCK feat Chris Clem MAR 16 & 17

ANDY GROSS Comedian, Magician & Ventriloquist! MAR 23 & 24

live music presented by

every friday and saturday

3/16 ALLAN GREENE DUO 3/17 AMANDA STEFANIK TRIO 3/23 1988 3/24 MICHELLE ROMARY TRIO

WHERE YOU CAN HEAR THEM:

turnpiketroubadours.com. WHERE YOU CAN SEE THEM: Turnpike Troubadours perform with the Bottle Rockets at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 16, at House of Blues.

jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel

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MUST BE 21 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER. FOR FREE, CONFIDENTIAL HELP 24/7, CALL THE OHIO RESPONSIBLE GAMBLING HELPLINE AT 1.800.589.9966 OR VISIT WWW.ORG.OHIO.GOV.

| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

45

Photo courtesy of the Cross Brothers

DIAMOND DAVEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S

Join us on Facebook @CLE New Wave Connection

FLASHBACK

80â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s NewaWratvye Dance P

C-NOTES

Featuring

The 2nd Anniversary Celebration DJâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Dark Nave, Ally Akrillex and Diamond Dave

Saturday March 17th 10 PM - 2:30 AM

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The Cross Brothers talk about their anticipated new album By Jeff Niesel

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46

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13*$& 4&-&$5 8*/& #055-&4

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| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

SINGER-GUITARIST TONY CROSS and his singer-guitarist brother Nick grew up on Clevelandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s west side. From an early age, they developed a love for British Invasion music, something that would inspire their ďŹ rst band, CofďŹ nberry, as well as their new band, the Cross Brothers. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We liked the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Kinks and the Zombies when we were in our early teens and deďŹ nitely started by learning a lot of those songs,â&#x20AC;? says Tony Cross. The band celebrates the release of its debut album, Living on Sheepheads, with Glass Traps and Part Time Lover at 9 p.m. on Friday at the Happy Dog. â&#x20AC;&#x153;And then, as we got older, I got into punk bands, and I went to [the now-closed club] Speak in Tongues. That it made it seem like it was possible â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and maybe even easy â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to play a show.â&#x20AC;? At Speak in Tongues, the Cross brothers met local singer-songwriter Brian Straw, one of the clubâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s organizers and a regular performer there. The band still considers him a friend, and Straw, who now runs a studio out of the 78th Street Studios, even helped the guys add vocals to the tracks they had already recorded for the new album. The local imprint Just Because will release the disc. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Joe Vecchio, who plays in bands and is just a fan of music, runs the label,â&#x20AC;? says Tony Cross. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I think it says on his Facebook, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I just put out records I like.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pretty much his attitude.â&#x20AC;? The band recruited local musician and artist Scott Pickering to create the abstract artwork for the albumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cover. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We wanted to have him to do a really quick line drawing or a black and white drawing originally, and he gave us a bunch of artwork,â&#x20AC;? says Nick Cross. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Then, we saw that painting that he did too, and we were enamored

with it, and we wanted to use it right away. I thought it ďŹ t the songs in a weird way, but I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how.â&#x20AC;? With three guitars constantly vying for attention, the album simultaneously recalls the garage rock revival acts of the â&#x20AC;&#x2122;90s (the Hives, the Strokes) while drawing from Kinkslike songwriting structures. In â&#x20AC;&#x153;Crashing Down,â&#x20AC;? Matt Charboneauâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s beefy bass riff somehow mixes well with vibes, bursts of guitar and thumping drums. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We sort of had an idea of having the song groove along, so we did that with Nick and Will [Nolanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s] guitars kind of playing that arpeggio part,â&#x20AC;? says Tony Cross. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dan [Price] has a vibraphone, so he played vibraphone on it this time, and then Danâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rhythm stuff just really drives that track.â&#x20AC;? The band effectively turns a cliched expression into a catchy refrain on the rollicking, Dylan-like â&#x20AC;&#x153;Where the Waterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fine.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;That line in the song is about having a place where you feel all right,â&#x20AC;? says Nick Cross. â&#x20AC;&#x153;So thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about dealing with anxiety and having a spot in your mind where you can go.â&#x20AC;? Ultimately, the album suggests the extent to which the Cross brothers have evolved and matured into fantastic songwriters and musicians. â&#x20AC;&#x153;With this record, we sorta captured a good feel, a good vibe all across, I think,â&#x20AC;? says Tony Cross. â&#x20AC;&#x153;TA lot of times, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be listening to other bands that I really like when thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s this sort of nervous energy. This record kinda has that. I think some of the anxiety in the music comes from purposely trying to tilt the guitars or the percussion to try to accentuate that.â&#x20AC;? Tickets to the release show are $6.

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| clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

47

BOP STOP

Winner Of

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BEN ROSENBLUM TRIO

3/16 | 11PM

CHANTAE CANN: SOL EMPOWERED

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3/18 | 9PM

THE NIGHT CAP: STAND UP COMEDY

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3/17 | 8PM

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ERNIE KRIVDA AND GENERATION NEXT

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ROCK AGAINST DEMENTIA

Bar sales directly support The Music Settlement and its many programs. Tickets to the second sets of our shows are half price for students

Rocky Horror Picture Show

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Sat., Mar. 17

John Moreland & James McMurtry Thu., Mar. 22

The Zombies

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Karla Bonoff Fri., Apr. 6

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ALL SHOWS AT THE KENT STAGE UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED 48

Tickets available at www.kentstage.org or 877-987-6487 GMK [w cw i {{ © a{ B e~ JJHJF | clevescene.com | March 14 - 20, 2018

NEW TIME CLOSINGM 10P

SAVAGE LOVE WHAT IS LOVE? By Dan Savage I’m a 33-year-old woman from Melbourne, Australia, dating a 24-year-old man. We’ve been dating for about eight months; it is exclusive and official. He’s kind and sweet, caring and giving, and his penis is divine. The thing is, he confessed to me recently that he doesn’t really “feel.” The way he explained it is, the only emotions he feels are fear and anxiousness that he’ll disappoint the people he cares about. He says he’s never been in love. He said his dad is the same way. The only time I see him really “feel” is when he’s high, which he is semi-frequently. He uses MDMA and he comes alive. But when he’s sober, it’s like he’s trying to mimic the things a person in love would say or do. I confessed I am falling in love with him recently and told him I wasn’t saying this with any expectation of him feeling the same; I just wanted him to know. He responded that he cares for me a lot — but that’s it. I’m now worried that he’ll never love me. I don’t want kids, so time isn’t critical for me, but I don’t want to be with someone who won’t ever love me. — Lacking One Vaunted Emotion You didn’t use the P-word (psychopath) or the S-word (sociopath), LOVE, but both came to mind as I was reading your letter. Someone who isn’t capable of feeling? Isn’t that textbook P-word/S-word stuff? “The fear with someone who doesn’t ‘feel’ is that they may be a psychopath or a sociopath, terms that are used interchangeably,” said Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry. “And lots of the items on the psychopath checklist relate to an inability to experience deep emotions — like Shallow Affect, Lack of Empathy and Lack of Remorse. However, I have good news for LOVE! This line: ‘The only emotions he really feels are fear and anxiousness that he’ll disappoint the people he cares about’ is the critical one. Psychopaths do not feel anxiety. In fact, my favorite thing a psychologist said to me about this was: ‘If you’re worried you may be psychopath, that means you aren’t one.’ Also, psychopaths don’t care about disappointing loved ones! All those emotions that relate

to an overactive amygdala — fear, remorse, guilt, regret, empathy — psychopaths don’t feel them.” So your boyfriend’s not a psychopath. Not that you asked. But, you know, just in case you were worried. Anyway … My hunch is that your boyfriend’s problem isn’t an inability to feel love, LOVE, but an inability to recognize the feelings he’s having as love. What is romantic love but a strong desire to be with someone? The urge to be sweet to them, to take care of them, to do for them? Maybe he’s just going through the motions with you — a conscious mimic-ittill-you-make-it strategy — or maybe the double whammy of a damaged dad and that toxic masculinity stuff sloshing around out there left him blocked or emotionally constipated. And while MDMA can definitely be abused, the effect it has on him is a hopeful sign. MDMA is not an emotional hallucinogen; the drug has been used in couples counseling and to treat PTSD, not because it makes us feel things that aren’t there (in the way a hallucinogen makes us see things that aren’t there), but because it allows genuine feelings to surface and, for a few hours, to be felt intensely. So he can feel love —he just has to learn how to tap into those feelings and/ or recognize them without an assist from MDMA. Jon Ronson had one last bit of advice for you, LOVE: “Marry him and his divine penis!” I agree with Jon, of course, but a long, leisurely engagement is definitely in order. You’ve only been seeing this guy and his divinity dick for eight months — don’t propose to him for at least another year, LOVE, and make marriage conditional upon him seeing a shrink four times as often as he sees his MDMA dealer. Follow Jon Ronson on Twitter @jonronson, read all of his books ( So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed? is urgently required reading for anyone who spends time online), and check out his amazing podcast, The Butterfly Effect. To access all things Jon Ronson, go to JonRonson.com.

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