Downtown After Dark is award winning journalist Russ Tarby's weekly take on the best and brightest of happenings inside and outside of Downtown Syracuse. Each week he adds best bets too.
Bio:
Central New York journalist Russ Tarby has been writing about entertainment, crime, sports and politics since the 1970s. His reviews and feature stories have appeared in newspapers such as the Village Voice, the Dallas Observer, the Auburn Citizen and the Syracuse Post-Standard.
For 12 years, he worked as music and books editor for the Syracuse New Times and while there he won several Syracuse Press Club awards including a Best Feature Story award for 'The Sweet Man,' his 1998 profile of 95-year-old jazz trombonist Spiegle Willcox.
In 2000, he was named music writer of the year for weeklies with a circulation of less than 55,000 by the international Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.
Tarby was a member of the steering committees which founded the Syracuse Area Music Awards(Sammys) and the Syracuse Walk of Fame.
He has been a member of the Jazz Appreciation Society of Syracuse's Board of Directors since 1993.
In 2007, Tarby edited "Into The Deep," a book by Dr. Andrew G. Hodges about the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway on the island of Aruba.
Tarby now works as a free-lance writer and editor. He compiles two weekly columns, Downtown After Dark for the Syracuse City Eagle and Livin’ in Liverpool for The Review, both published by Eagle Newspapers.
He can be reached at 457-1517, or via e-mail at russtarby@netscape.net.
Thirteen years after the publication of Syracuse author Donna Woolfolk Cross’ novel, Pope Joan, it has finally been made into a movie!
Cross was in Germany the week of Oct. 22 for the film’s premiere in Berlin. The movie opened there because the book was a huge bestseller in Deutschland, and much of the early action takes place there.
Pope Joan stars 34-year-old German actress Johanna Wokalek as Johanna von Ingelheim, a 9th century woman of English extraction born in Germany who disguises herself as a man and ascends through the ranks of the Vatican.
Morocco = 9th century
“The movie was produced by Constantin Film and was filmed in Germany and Morocco,” Cross said. Why Morocco? “It’s impossible to film 9th-century Rome in the city that exists today, so Constantin recreated it in the sands of Ouarzazate. Johanna Wokalek is brilliant as Joan, as is David Wenham as Gerold, and John Goodman as Pope Sergius.”
Yes, John Goodman, the big, blowhard actor who played phony preacher Big Dan Teague in O Brother, Where Art Thou? now plays a less-than-pious pope in Pope Joan! One reviewer noted than Goodman “swapped his Big Lebowski sunglasses for the flowing royal blue and gold embroidered robes of 9th-century Pope Sergius.”
In Germany last month, Cross told reporters her 400-page novel was based on the historical information recorded about Pope Joan who, disguised as Brother John, became Pope Sergius’ personal physician and confidant before allegedly becoming pope herself.
Many scholars believe that Pope Joan was a Medieval legend.
“What I wanted was to take that fascinating skeleton of a story and put flesh on it: give it laughter, smiles, tears — the things that make a story human,” Cross said. “But in the arch of her story — in when she lived and who surrounded her and how she died and all of those points — we have followed history completely.”
Directed by Soenke Wortmann, Pope Joan was filmed in English. It will be distributed by Summit Entertainment here in the U.S., but no release date has yet been set.
And Pope Joan has yet another CNY connection: Screenwriter Heinrich Hadding graduated from Ithaca College in 1997.
Roseanne Cash bio out
Le Moyne College Professor Michael Streissguth has written two books about the late Johnny Cash, and now he’s produced a book-long profile of Johnny’s 54-year-old daughter, Roseanne Cash.
Always Been There: Roseanne Cash, The List and the Spirit of Southern Music is being published this month by Da Capo Press.
“In the 1980s I was always more interested in Roseanne’s music than Johnny’s,” Streissguth said, pointing to albums such as Seven Year Ache, King’s Record Shop and Interiors.
The new bio goes behind the scenes in the making of The List, Roseanne’s latest disc released last month on Manhattan Records. The album’s 12 tracks were culled from a list of 100 greatest country and American songs that Johnny Cash gave Roseanne when she was 18. Johnny died in September 2003.
“The list is a physical manifestation of Johnny Cash’s love and study of American music,” Streissguth said. “It’s comforting to know that Roseanne is passing down the tradition.”
The Le Moyne prof, who teaches in the Department of Communications and Film Studies, appeared with Cash at a book-signing Oct. 30, at Barnes & Noble in New York City.
Brode-Orsak in tandem
Longtime Syracuse film critic Doug Brode has teamed up with illustrator Joe Orsak to create Yellow Rose of Texas, a graphic novel to be published next year by McFarland Press.
The book explores the legend of Emily Morgan, an African-American woman who inspired the famous folk song “Yellow Rose of Texas.”
Brode’s recent books include Elvis Cinema and Popular Culture and, most recently, he and Carol Serling (Rod’s window) completed Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone: The Official 50th Anniversary Tribute for Barricade Books. (Note: Rod Serling was born in Syracuse).
Brode autographed books Oct. 2, at the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror attraction at the Disney-MGM movie park in Florida.
“Oct. 2 was the precise 50th anniversary date of The Twilight Zone’s 1959 premiere on CBS,” he noted. “How cool is that?”
Orsak is probably best known locally for his newspaper comic strip, “The Adventures of Captain ’Cuse,” which ran during the 1980s in the New Times and the Herald-American. But that’s not all he does. Signing his work Jorsak, he has created tons of sports images and illustrated everything from advertising to zoology.
With Brode and Orsak collaborating, Yellow Rose of Texas should bloom brightly.
What a Card!
Syracuse City Eagle poetry editor Herm Card will be featured reader tonight, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5, at the Community Room at Books and Memories, 2600 James St., in Eastwood. Admission is free; 479-8157. An open mic will follow Herm’s reading.
A former English teacher in Marcellus, Card has published three volumes of poetry, and his work has appeared in many journals. His poetry program in the Marcellus Central School District was named a New York State English Council Program of Excellence.
Besides his work for City Eagle, Herm co-edits the academic journal The English Record and is an educator at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
Do you like it?
Shakespeare’s As You Like It, directed by Steve Braddock, runs at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, at the W. Carroll Coyne Center for the Performing Arts at Le Moyne College. Ticket prices range from $4 to $15; 445-4523.
Ravenous!
Back in 1845 “The Raven” established Edgar Allan Poe as a major American poet of the 19th century.
Poet Meg Kearney has yet to enter the pantheon, but she titled her first book An Unkindness of Ravens perhaps with Poe in mind.
Kearney lives in New Hampshire and works as director of the Solstice Creative Writing Programs of Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Mass. She’ll read from her work at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, in the GallerY at The Downtown Writer’s Center, inside the Downtown YMCA, on Montgomery Street. The DWC event is free and open to the public.
The poet’s newest collection is Home By Now.
And here’s an interesting blast from Kearney’s past: Early in her career, she organized educational programs and conducted power-plant tours for a gas and electric company in Upstate New York.
For info, call 474-6851 x 328, or visit ymcaofgreatersyracuse.org/arts.
‘Tipp Hill Love Song’
The deeply groovin’ Tim Herron Corporation celebrates a CD Release Party for the new disc, Trivium, at 9:30 p.m. or so on Friday, Nov. 6, Upstairs at the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, 246 W Willow St., downtown; 476-4937. Admission costs $10 at the door.
Under the leadership of versatile guitarist Herron, the band includes bassist Eric McElveen and drummer Jerritt Wahrendorf, That basic trio is often supported by percussionist PJ Bullock and mandolinist Jay Barady.
Tracks on Trivium include “CIA Blues,” “What is Logic” and “A Tipp Hill Love Story.”
Live and on record the Corporation deftly combines rock’n’roll, bluegrass, folk and attitude into a sound they call AmeriBeat. Check ’em out at timherroncorporation.com
Redhouse regulars
Central New York favorites Karen Savoca and Pete Heitzman make their highly anticipated return to the Redhouse at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7.
Karen and Pete, who live in Munnsville in Madison County, perform what Dirty Linen magazine calls an “addictive blend of hybrid pop with lots of jazz whimsy and slippery funk.”
“Karen Savoca is a gifted songwriter, drawing you into her world with humor and compassion,” says Redhouse spokesman Mike Intaglietta. “She tells her stories with such grace and ease, you feel as though you’ve been invited to her table for supper.”
Savoca composes and records on a variety of instruments, but opts for the primal combination of voice and drum in live performance, and the groove is deep and satisfying.
Heitzman, long one of CNY’s best six-stringers, has been praised for his “transcendent guitar work.” An innovative and sensitive accompanist, Heitzman, is so full of surprises that he has been called “a human aurora borealis.”
Tickets for Saturday’s show cost $15, or $12 for students and seniors; theredhouse.org. 425-0405.
Hookah Lounge in Little Italy
Here’s a place you gotta check out sooner than later.
Hamooda’s Hookah Lounge and Café serves up hot food, hot tea and coffee plus flavored hookah mixes for its North Side customers.
The Hookah Lounge is located at 321 N. Salina St.
Hollywood Hookah opened exactly a year ago at 171 Marshall St., on the Syracuse University Hill, but now they have competition on the North Side of the city, just a stone’s throw from downtown.
Freddy Cole coming
Reviving a longstanding Central NY holiday tradition, Syracuse’s Dunbar Association will present “Jazz Christmas 2009” on Dec. 19th, at Eastwood’s Palace Theater, at 2384 James St.
Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist and pianist Freddy Cole and his quartet will entertain in the style of the season. Cole, the youngest brother of the late great Nat “King” Cole, is based in Atlanta.
The holiday concert event, formerly presented annually by Syracuse Jazz Fest, is being produced by Dunbar in association with Jazz Fest and WAER-FM 88.3.
Tickets, which cost $25, can be purchased starting Monday, Nov. 9, by calling Sharon Jack-Williams at the Dunbar Association at 727-2495 or 476-4269, Ext. 222.
CATEGORY: General Society
TAGS: Pope Joan, Pope Joan film,Constantin Film,Johanna Wokalek is brilliant as Joan,David Wenham,John Goodman as Pope Sergius,Donna Woolfolk Cross,Doug Brode,illustrator Joe Orsak,new Yellow Rose of Texas, a graphic novel,McFarland Press
