SCENE: Roseanne Cash @ The Times Center

Friday | January 8, 2010 6 – 7:15 PM
	Rosanne Cash
	The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter on “The List,” her latest album of the essential American songs her father, the legendary Johnny Cash, gave her to learn. Conversation with performance. Interviewed by Jon Pareles.

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The New York Times: Nifty 50

The NY Times' Nifty 50 came out a few weeks ago, with these southerners making the cut:

23. The New Orleans-based duo of singer-songwriters Grant Widmer and Ted Joyner, known as Generationals (pictured above), are nostalgically pop; their idea of techno is a Moog synthesizer. Their first single, ''When They Fight, They Fight,'' caught on, and so did they.

27. It's fitting that Boyd Holbrook should look more like an artist, a filmmaker and an actor than a model. This Kentucky-born 28-year-old got a bit part in ''Milk,'' had a gallery show in Chelsea and wrote a screenplay. A real model for models to follow.

41. The plucky Georgia teenager Melanie Oudin is American tennis's next big hope. She scored upsets at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open -- only a year after turning pro -- and has a breathless charm that brings to mind Alicia Silverstone in ''Clueless.''

SCENE: A Deck of Lives

A Deck of Lives

After the murder of his son, Tom Lucas created a special deck of playing cards, now used in South Carolina prisons. He hopes they will bring clues to cold cases.

Read Dan Barry's NY Times article here, watch the video here.

SCOOP: NY Times' "36 Hours In Richmond"

From Sunday's New York Times: AS the heart of the old Confederacy, Richmond, Va., watched with envy as other cities like Atlanta and Charlotte became the economic and cultural pillars of the New South. But Richmond may finally be having its big moment: a building boom in the last few years has seen century-old tobacco warehouses transformed into lofts and art studios. Chefs are setting up kitchens in formerly gritty neighborhoods, and the city’s buttoned-up downtown suddenly has life after dusk, thanks to new bars, a just-opened hotel and a performing arts complex, Richmond CenterStage. Richmond is strutting with confidence, moving beyond its Civil War legacy and emerging as a new player on the Southern art and culinary scene. (Read more of Justin Bergman's piece here)

BOOK: Floodmarkers

out now...

BOOK: Outcasts United by Warren St.John

The extraordinary tale of a refugee youth soccer team and the transformation of a small American town. (source)

Clarkston, Georgia, was a typical Southern town until it was designated a refugee settlement center in the 1990s, becoming the first American home for scores of families in flight from the world’s war zones—from Liberia and Sudan to Iraq and Afghanistan. Suddenly Clarkston’s streets were filled with women wearing the hijab, the smells of cumin and curry, and kids of all colors playing soccer in any open space they could find. The town also became home to Luma Mufleh, an American-educated Jordanian woman who founded a youth soccer team to unify Clarkston’s refugee children and keep them off the streets. These kids named themselves the Fugees.

Set against the backdrop of an American town that without its consent had become a vast social experiment, Outcasts United follows a pivotal season in the life of the Fugees and their charismatic coach. Warren St. John documents the lives of a diverse group of young people as they miraculously coalesce into a band of brothers, while also drawing a fascinating portrait of a fading American town struggling to accommodate its new arrivals. At the center of the story is fiery Coach Luma, who relentlessly drives her players to success on the soccer field while holding together their lives—and the lives of their families—in the face of a series of daunting challenges.

This fast-paced chronicle of a single season is a complex and inspiring tale of a small town becoming a global community—and an account of the ingenious and complicated ways we create a home in a changing world.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Warren St. John is a reporter for The New York Times and the author of the national bestseller Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer.

On October 17th, 1982, St. John visited the set of “The Bear Bryant Show.”

In Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer, he recalls the event:

“My father asked Bryant if he wouldn’t mind posing with me for a picture. Without so much as a word, the Bear put his arm around my shoulder and forced an unconvincing smile. We stood there in front of the Coca-Cola sign in this uncomfortable pose as my father fiddled with his camera, stalling in the hope that Bryant might loosen up. After forty-five nerve-fraying seconds, the Bear leaned over to me and thundered, “Son, I don’t think your father knows what the hell he’s doing.” We both laughed and in the photo that now hangs on my office wall we look like old cronies sharing an inside joke.”

St. John has also written extensively for The New Yorker, the New York Observer, and Wired. He went to Columbia University and lives in New York.

SCENE/SOUNDS/EAT: Art Of Field Recording II - Live in Athens GA 1/31

The Melting Point in Athens will host a release concert for Art of Field Recording Volume II, a box set compilation on Dust-to-Digital of Art Rosenbaum’s field recordings of American traditional music over 50 years. Volume I, released in 2007, has garnered two Grammy nominations, was called “blindingly beautiful” by the New York Times, and was the subject of a New Yorker article by Burkhard Bilger. For more info visit Dust To Digital.

While in Athens, be sure to grab something at Garden & Gun fave 5&10 restaurant. The mag raves: Embracing a dress code “from Speedo to tuxedo,” the 5 & 10 injects down-home modern into Southern classics. Named for a five-and-dime that once stood on the same lot, the 5 & 10’s menu shifts daily, with a few stalwarts, such as Frogmore stew—a tasty spawn of a Lowcountry boil and bouillabaisse—always available. “When we opened, we wanted to be a community restaurant that cared about good bread and good wine and good food,” says chef/owner Hugh Acheson. “I come from a fine-dining background. I was running away from that as fast as I could.”

Luckily, Acheson didn’t get too far. Try the roasted asparagus covered with a poached local egg and warm bacon vinaigrette, followed by the “bronzed” redfish fillet in lemon emulsion. Such dishes earned Acheson Food & Wine’s 2002 Best New Chef award and, more recently, a 2008 James Beard nomination for Best Chef Southeast. There’s a fine, rangy wine list, too. (706-546-7300)