EAT: 3rd Ward Bluegrass BBQ 8/23 @ 4PM

August 23, 4 to 9 p, FREE Admission, Cheap Eats & Drinks

Join 3rd Ward for an afternoon of Bluegrass music and BBQ! Local Bluegrass bands will perform between 4 and 7 p and then at 8 p Bluegrass Musicians are invited to grab their banjos, mandolins and acoustic guitars for an open session of parking-lot pickin' in the yard.

Open to everyone, just throw on your country clothes and come out for this buckdancing, bluesy, Brooklyn BBQ. RSVP events@3rdward.com

3rd Ward is a member-based design center for creative professionals in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They are committed to providing resources, opportunities and a dynamic-creative network to our members and the community at large. Its 20,000 sq. ft. space houses four gorgeous photo studios, a professional wood & metal shop, a fully loaded digital media lab, shared & private office space and a large interdisciplinary art education program. Throughout the year they also offer exciting events and opportunities for artists. (source)

SOUNDS: Patterson Hood in NYC 6/23 & 24

Patterson Hood will release Murdering Oscar (and other love songs) today on Ruth St. Records. The second solo record from the leader of the Drive-By Truckers has been 15 years in the making. The album was produced by Hood and long-time DBT producer David Barbe (Sugar). Most of his DBT band mates join him on the album as well as Don Chambers, Will Johnson and Scott Danbom from Centro-matic/South San Gabriel. This is also the first time Hood’s father David Hood, famed Muscle Shoals bass player, joins him on a record.

The album was recorded at Chase Park Transduction Studios in Athens, GA and will also be released on 180 gram vinyl. The vinyl release will include three exclusive bonus tracks. An a cappella version of “Range War” will also be available exclusively with iTunes. “Pollyanna” and “Pride of the Yankees” are available to preview on his Myspace page.

Hood and the Screwtopians will start the first leg of their tour in Nashville and end with a headlining slot at AthFest in Hood’s hometown of Athens, GA. Joining Hood on tour will be Brad Morgan (drums), John Neff (guitar/steel), Scott Danbom (keys/fiddle), Will Johnson (guitar) and David Barbe (bass), who has not toured since his days with Sugar. Will Johnson will open the shows. (source)

Patterson Hood plays the Music Hall of Williamsburg in BK tonight, and Bowery Ballroom tomorrow.

STAGE: The Protestants in Bklyn thru 2/14/09

Now at The Brick Theater in BKLYN: When Scottie, the eldest, returns home to Virginia from his NYC sojourn for the marriage/departure of his chronically negligent mother, he discovers his biologically-ruined brother wilting, his emotionally-untethered brother firing, and his baby ‘brother’ Tippy becoming a woman and the family’s final hope. Tippy’s tough-as-nails best-bud Ruby, a Nurse fallen from the pages of Chekhov, and Scottie’s cosmopolitan girlfriend Virginia round out this frenetic yet heart-blooming world.

Told in evocative, free-wheeling scenes, The Protestants penetrates the rural, central Virginian landscape with characters of big desire, personality, and problem—one part The Royal Tenenbaums, one part Faulkner. It delivers a South where pain and humor intertwine, with both aiming for the last laugh; where the need and the notion of God lurks throughout to order and illuminate things forgiven, things forsaken.

The Old Kent Road Theater (OKRT) is proud to return to The Brick, site of their festival hits The Children of Truffaut (Pretentious Festival) and Death at Film Forum (The Film Festival: A Theater Festival). The OKRT has also produced at the New York International Fringe Festival, Midtown International Theatre Festival, and the Ontological-Hysteric Incubator Program. Its plays have been noted for their ‘vibrant characters…heartfelt passion, and spirited volleys of non sequiturs’ (Village Voice) and described as ‘pure inspiration’ (nytheatre.com) and ‘downtown theatre at its best’ (New York Cool.com).

Eric Bland, writer/director, received his MA in Writing for Performance at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His play Death at Film Forum will be published in the NYTE anthology, Plays and Playwrights 2009.