It's a family affair on this week's episode of Local Vibes, as co-host Mariah Scott's brother Tim Scott Jr. comes through to talk about his role as artist-in-residence at Charlotte Center City Partners, for which he's serving as music curator for the upcoming Soul Junction Charlotte festival.

Of course, we also discuss the local music scene and bump some tunes from Harvey Cummings, Arsena Schroeder and The Hamiltones.

 

Make sure to check out the rest of our team at Queen City Podcast Network, especially now that we've added two new shows to round out the squad. Also, catch up on all our past episodes on iTunes, Stitcher or just by typing "Local Vibes" into your Spotify search bar.

It's been a week of birthdays for Josh Higgins, founder of Refresh Records. Fresh off celebrating his own 34th birthday, he's now heading into a weekend of shows to celebrate Refresh's third anniversary at Snug Harbor on Friday and Visulite Theatre on Saturday.

Ryan and Josh (left and right, respectively, in the above picture) had a one-on-one convo about Josh's 20 years in the music business, what it takes to run a locally based record label, vinyl and much more. They touch on a slew of Refresh acts, from former signings like Holy Ghost Tent Revival and Scowl Brow to current artists on the roster like Junior Astronomers and Cuzco.

New co-host Mariah Scott couldn't make it to this week's recording, but worry not, she will be back for a great episode we have planned next week. Also, be sure to check out the Queen City Podcast Network to see what's happening in the local beer, news, comedy and food scenes. The team has recently added two new podcasts, so you've got plenty to catch up on. Speaking of catching up, find all our old episodes on iTunes, Stitcher, or by simply typing "Local Vibes" into your Spotify search bar.

Two local filmmakers are now in the post-production stages of a harrowing documentary titled Frayed Fabric that they have been working on for three years.

In September 2016, Creative Loafing sat down with Devan Penegar and Camille Dalke-Rogers as they were in the midst of interviewing sexual assault survivors from the greater Charlotte area. You can read that interview here.

Penegar said he expects he and Dalke-Rogers will be finished editing the film by December, and from there the duo will be working on an online distribution deal to release the documentary. He said they will be updating the documentary Facebook page with any news about Frayed Fabric and a short film the duo made for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, set to be released next month.

Upon finishing filming, Dalke-Rogers said the entire process put things into perspective for her.

"I felt honored that all of the people trusted us with their stories, but also incredibly sad that there are so many people who have stories just like these," she said. "The number of people who came forward to do interviews was insane. There are so many people affected by sexual assault, abuse or rape. It really makes you think: if all those people came forward, how many are there out there who aren't ready to speak? Or who will never be willing to share their experience in a public forum like that — which is fine.

"I'm hoping this film makes those people, in particular feel less alone, and maybe even give hope to those who are still struggling or haven't come to terms with their assault yet."

The video below shows a portion of Dalke-Rogers' interview with a survivor named Teresa. The two discuss the effects of PTSD and have a short discussion about what it really means to be healthy.

Jerry Klein, the author of an estimated half-a-million words worth of Creative Loafing columns, news features and cover stories, lost his battle with esophageal cancer early this morning. He died peacefully, according to loved ones.

A Creative Loafing contributor between 1987 and 2001, Klein tackled the city's toughest issues, lifting the rug to expose the dirt below and the folks who swept it there. He was also a passionate patron of the arts and a fervent music fan, and it showed in his inspired coverage of Charlotte's cultural scene. It is believed he wrote 365 columns for CL during his first decade with the paper.

Klein returned to the paper in 2014 as a contributor, writing a cover story on the struggle to find funding for arts in Charlotte and contributing columns and news stories on the I-77 toll lanes, Thom Tillis, the Michael Brown shooting and much more. You can see his archives here.

A celebration of Klein's life will take place on Saturday, August 18, at the Great Aunt Stella Center, where Klein was Director of Programming from 1988 to 2001, at 926 Elizabeth Ave. at 3 p.m. Organizers ask that attendees wear bright colors in honor of Klein's colorful life. His loved ones also ask that any donations made in Klein's honor be made to DrumsForCures, a local DRUMSTONG program that holds events to raise awareness and funds in support of cancer survivorship, education, prevention and research through uplifting, facilitated and interactive rhythm experiences.

John Grooms, CL's longest-serving editor, worked with Klein for most of his years at the paper. Grooms was saddened to hear of Klein's passing on Friday and offered the following statement: "Jerry was an important part of Charlotte’s cultural growth during the late 1980s and ‘90s, expanding both the limits of political discourse on talk radio and the range of live music available in the city’s venues. He was a big part of Creative Loafing’s growing popularity during that era and it was a personal as well as a professional pleasure being able to coordinate and shape coverage of important issues with Jerry. He was a fiery, passionate man with a strong sense of humor and the absurd, and a 'Damn the torpedoes' attitude that caused some to oppose his efforts, but which we at CL found to be right up our alley. He is already missed."

Born in Philadelphia, Klein moved to Charlotte at 3 years old. In the '90s, he was a talk show host on WBT-AM, where he railed against many of the same injustices he covered in the pages of Creative Loafing. In 2015, Klein wrote a column, titled "The Night They Missed," recalling the time someone shot at him while he got out of his car at the WBT studios one night.

In the early aughts, Klein moved to Washington, D.C., and married his high-school sweetheart. He found a job with WMAL, serving as the token liberal at a station known for giving Rush Limbaugh his platform. Klein made headlines in 2006 when, during his WMAL show, he sardonically called for all Muslims to be rounded up and marked with an identifying tattoo. Near the end of the program, he proclaimed that his remarks were a hoax, then went on a rant indicting the many callers who had phoned in to agree with him, comparing them to those living in Nazi Germany. It was an experiment that today could be called trolling at its best.

Creative Loafing mourns the loss of Jerry Klein. In our 31 years, there has never been, nor will there be, a talent quite like his.

After a couple weeks off, Local Vibes is back for another season with a brand new co-host, Mariah Scott. To kick things off, in the lead-up to his performance at Charlotte Pride, Dexter Jordan stops by to talk to Ryan and Mariah about the loss of his mother, "Hello, New Me," and what comes next.

As always, make sure to catch up with the rest of our team at Queen City Podcast Network. And catch up on all our past episodes on iTunes, Stitcher, or simply by typing "Local Vibes" into your Spotify search bar.

Tuesday, August 7 may seem like another weeknight to stay in, catch up on your shows and do your best to ignore and avoid interaction with your neighbors as much as possible. But the city of Charlotte with CLT250 want you to rethink your plans.

From 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Charlotte is celebrating another installment of the annual National Night Out event, a city-wide neighborhood experience that demonstrates the community’s intolerance for crime. It’s also a way for neighborhoods to enhance their relationship not only among residents, but also with police departments in order to create a safer community.

Charlotte has participated in this national event for 25 of the 35 years it's been running. For one night across the city, over 70 registered events such as cookouts, block parties, porch sit-ins and ice cream socials, will build community togetherness and neighborhood camaraderie while also promoting police-community partnerships.

Because this year is also Charlotte’s 250-year anniversary, CLT250, an organization formed to celebrate the city’s past, present and future, is participating in tandem with the city to promote this campaign of neighborhood friendliness.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department is committed to having an officer at every event that is registered with the city. Through this participation, sheriff-elect Garry McFadden hopes to connect with the community and reunite with people that they don’t get to see during the year for a neutral event.

“Reconnect, reschedule and reunite,” Fadden stated. “I look forward to it. I look forward to the candid conversations. It’s not political. For some people it is, but for me it’s not political.”

Although the National Night Out event is only officially held once a year, McFadden hopes the community can come together more often than that for a night of fun and what he describes as “a city-wide picnic.”

McFadden said that he hopes that the community will begin fostering and cultivating connections on a continuous basis, and in the near future, there should a monthly community event much like National Night Out.

“To me, it’s a great opportunity, and we need more opportunities like that,” he stated.

To help support National Night Out, CMPD also invites residents to leave their porch light on from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. as a symbol of alertness and awareness, according to the city’s community letter.

On Friday afternoon, August 3, the voices of about 30 congregants could be heard inside the sanctuary at Myers Park Baptist Church in south Charlotte. In unison, the voices sang, "Somebody's hurting our brother, and we're not going to be silent anymore."

That somebody is Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, acting on orders from President Trump's administration, and Ben Boswell, senior minister at Myers Park, is done being silent about it.

After Friday's prayer vigil at the church, Boswell and his associate minister Chrissy Tatum Williamson led a group of 27 people to Lumpkin, Georgia, where they formed a prayer chain outside of the Stewart Detention Center, an infamous private prison run by ICE that houses immigrant detainees awaiting deportation.

The trip was part of the church's Awakening series, a project thought up by Williamson in which church members study a social justice issue throughout the year, then end their studies with a pilgrimage of sorts. Last year, after studying racial issues in America, participating members toured through the Deep South.

This year's focus on immigration issues was inspired by an experience Boswell had with Gilles Bikindou, a member of his former church in Cary. Bikindou was a Congolese resident who had lived and worked in the United States for 10 years. In January, he was detained during a routine check up at his local ICE office and eventually deported back to Congo, where he had once been witness to a murder and felt his life was in danger.

Boswell decided this year's pilgrimage would follow the path of Bikindou and countless others who have suffered similar fates, from the ICE office in Charlotte to the York County Detention Center in South Carolina and finally to Stewart Detention Center.

"When we saw his path and the inhumanity of the path that he experienced and the secrecy of it and how quiet it was and how nobody could get to him ... we knew that there was something secretive and inhumane and immoral about what's going on that we need to shed light on, that we need to bear witness to as people of faith and to tell the truth to the world about what's happening in our own community," Boswell said on Friday. "Friends and neighbors, brothers and sisters who are from other countries are being detained and they're disappearing, and we need to be able to tell that story."

The group also stopped in Atlanta to meet with representatives of refugee and immigrant advocacy groups and Baptist cooperative fellowships to discuss the Sanctuary Movement, a religious and political campaign in the 1980s that offered sanctuary to undocumented immigrants fleeing wars in Central America. During Trump's administration, more than 800 faith communities have come together across the country to form the New Sanctuary Movement.

For Williamson, it's all the more important for churches like hers to speak up as evangelists and politicians spouting off about religious values have been largely silent in the face of Trump's "Zero Tolerance" immigration policies.

"As a religious person, I think one of the central tenets of our faith is to love our neighbors, Williamson said. "So when I think about what does that look like played out in public life, it's certainly not ripping children from parents, it's not locking people up who are in search of survival or fleeing violence or domestic violence or gang situations or no economic opportunity.

"The tricky spot we're in right now has emerged from the religious right using itself as a political movement to different politicians, and so the message of Christ in my opinion has been deluded and has become a political message that's co-opted by the Republican Party," she continued. "So I think it's important for Christians on all sides of the political spectrum to speak out about how we interpret text and how God is telling us to live in the world. And I think some more progressive Christians have lost our public voice and it's time to reclaim that."

Cynthia Aziz, an immigration lawyer from Charlotte, spoke at Friday's prayer vigil. While she said she wouldn't be joining the group on their trip to Georgia, she said she would be with them in spirit.

"I've practiced immigration law for almost 30 years and it's a conversation that I've had with people about immigration for years, and I was excited to see that people now really care and want to see what's really happening," Aziz said. "It's sad that it's taken this kind of atrocity at our borders to get people's attention, but this movement, this prayer pilgrimage really means a lot, even to people that don't know they're doing it."

TLC’s long-running show, Trading Spaces has announced a casting call in our very own Charlotte. In a video posted on Twitter by the network, host Paige Davis announces that it’s time for another season and they are looking for neighbors who are interested.

“If you’ve got a neighbor who’s maybe even a sister, or maybe you do live next door to your boss, perhaps,” Davis excitedly says in the video. “I can’t wait to meet you if you get picked!”

The premise of the show is two neighbors, either down the street or right next door, will trade homes for a week. Armed with a $2,000 budget and a team of carpenters and designers, the neighbors redesign and redecorate a room in one another's homes.

Trading Spaces, which first aired in 2000, was nixed by TLC after 8 seasons in 2008. The show was revived and rebooted by the network for season 9, which aired this summer. Renewed for another season, producers are now conducting casting calls in Southern California as well as Charlotte.

Those interested are told to go to the casting site, TLC.com/Casting to submit their applications.

As thousands of people showed up to the Blumenthal Arts box office in uptown Charlotte this morning for a chance at the highly sought after tickets to the Hamilton musical's long-awaited arrival at Belk Theater in Charlotte, many more were stopped in their tracks online, as a technical issue crashed all internet sales for more than two hours.

Not content with interfering with our elections, it appears bots were to blame with trying to influence the sale of Hamilton tickets in Charlotte, according to the Blumenthal Performing Arts Twitter feed. At around 8:30 a.m., a half an hour after tickets were supposed to go on sale, Blumenthal tweeted an aplogy for the delay, stating, "[Sales] will begin as soon as a technical problem is resolved."

An hour later, another tweet was more specific, reading, "We have learned the technical issue is related to bot prevention software that detected more than 8,000 bots trying to influence the official on sale around 6am."

Then at 10:19 a.m., the tweet everyone had been pulling their hair out in anticipation for finally came.

BREAKING NEWS: ONLINE SALES ARE NOW LIVE!

Thank you so much for your patience!

— Blumenthal Performing Arts (@BlumenthalArts) August 1, 2018

There's still no word on whether Blumenthal will hold a separate show specifically for bots, since there is such a high demand, apparently. Here's to hoping you all kept your space in the internet line. When we just tried, we were number 87,300 in line when we just tried for shits and giggles. Something tells us we won't be getting in.