We are excited to host a live art and jazz trio on Trade & Tryon on November the 19th. In co-operation with Trafk Media we’ve brought the Ocie Davis group together with the good folks from Ink Bot Printing to put together a memorable afternoon affair.

Samples of Ink Bot’s work are in this article and you can sample some of Ocie’s tracks below.

Backwards Step – Ocie Davis Group

G-Thang- Ocie Davis Group

sponsored by:

Trafk Media – A Website Design and SEO Firm in Charlotte NC

Sitting there clutching my coffee with almond milk, reeking of hickory smoke and watching the sun rise over the Porta-David (renamed in honor of one of the members of the team), I had to wonder, “What am I doing at a barbecue festival?”

On paper (and, perhaps, in person), I make about as much sense at a barbecue festival as Lady Gaga does in pants. Not much. I’ve been a vegetarian for nine years. I haven’t purchased or prepared meat in almost a decade. I assume that pork butt is exactly what it sounds like and, much to my father’s dismay, I won’t even eat seafood.

Despite my apparent shortcomings as a barbecue reporter, I was offered and eagerly accepted the job anyway, and for good reason. I may not know the difference between a T-bone and a strip steak, but if there’s one thing I understand, embrace and encourage, it’s obsession. And you encounter a lot of that at an event that requires contestants to stay awake for 24 hours hovering over a hunk of flesh. The care and attention with which barbecue competitors tend to their meat is the kind of behavior I’d reserve for caring for an infant. It’s an all-consuming hobby set aside for the fanatical — and it’s awesome.

“I’m a little obsessed with food,” contestant Vic Werany said. “Passion is easy, but obsession, this endless obsession that I have with food …” he paused, “it’s hard what I do. Barbecue is a mistress you don’t want.”

I arrived at the 2010 Time Warner Blues and BBQ Festival in Uptown Charlotte early Friday evening with a sack of vegetarian snacks and my older, meat-eating brother in tow. I needed an official meat taste tester and knew my brother was an ideal candidate, considering his diet consists of meat, cheese, bread, bourbon and Toaster Strudels. I suppose I also owed him for all those years he had to listen to me stomp up the stairs screaming, “This family has got to stop eating so many cows!”

I knew very little about what I was getting myself into, but I also knew that I did not expect the first person I encountered to have a sprawling “Vegan Life” tattoo across his chest, complete with broccoli icon. This would be the first of many unforeseen twists to what I assumed would be an otherwise predictable event.

I did know the next 24 hours involved meat. I knew a Porta-Potty would be present. I knew sleep was discouraged. And I knew (from diligent Facebook stalking …  er, investigative journalism) that the guy I’d be following around for 24 hours had a giant “CHILI MAN” tattoo across his back. These are all things I’d expect to find at a barbecue event. Vegans, nuns, religious crusaders and shirtless athletes are not, but that didn’t stop any of them from passing through.

My brother and I walked down South Tryon, past the vendor booths with corn on the cob and funnel cake and by the professional teams with tricked-out, double-decker party trailers and 5-foot-tall trophies, to a lot alongside St. Peter’s Catholic Church where the amateur teams were camped out.

We weaved through rows of pop-up tents, corn hole games, smokers and coolers — some filled with meat, most filled with beer — to meet with the team I’d be embedded with for the evening.

You may know the tattooed CHILI MAN around Uptown as Vic Werany, the Hotdog Guy who slings wieners from a cart at Fourth and Tryon. A man with many meat-related talents and often unable to decide which is his best, Vic can be heard referring to himself as the Chili Man, the Hotdog Guy or the Sauce Boss. On this particular night, he was the Sauce Boss for team Fat & Chili. His partner, Matt Hughett, appeared to prefer doing one thing only and one thing well, so he held down the fort as the pitmaster.

From my limited knowledge of barbecued meats, I gathered that their responsibilities fit their personalities. When it comes to barbecue, I know that the sauce is the first thing you see. It’s bold and in your face (or on it) and, without a wet wipe, it’s not going anywhere. Vic is this way. He describes himself as talkative, loud, gregarious and boisterous, and he’s not lying.

You have to dig a little bit deeper to get to the meat, though, and whether it was prepared properly won’t become apparent until it’s been on a grill for 12 hours and you’ve made it past the sauce. Matt is this way, a little guarded perhaps. He’s quieter and more cryptic than Vic. Though, this is not to say he’s not a perfectly warm and welcoming parking lot host (he was passing out the beer, after all); it’s just that, to overshadow Vic’s personality, it would be quite a feat and likely an overwhelming combination.

Together they form Fat & Chili, a perfectly balanced, smack-talking dynamic duo hooked on the hog (and the cow and the lamb) and ready to take home some trophies. They greeted me with open arms and closed grills. Do not, under any circumstances, open the grill. “If you’re looking, you’re not cooking,” Vic says. Barbecue lesson No. 1 … check.

Their tent was a bit of a destination within the amateur lot. Past and present competitors stopped by to say hey, to toss around friendly threats and to see what was cooking, literally.

The vibe among the amateurs, known as Backyard Grillers, is one of camaraderie first and relentless ball-busting second. They ask questions and share advice about grills, temperatures and rubs. They relive the trials and tribulations of past competitions. They share beer and portable toilets, and they all talk mad shit the entire time. With 37 rib entries and 46 butt entries, they can’t all be winners, but it certainly doesn’t stop any of them from pretending like they will be.

“This is where it all happens,” Vic says. “These are the backyard guys, the locals. We’re the draw.”

There’s a general sense of divide between the backyard grillers and the pros, a sort of “us” and “them” mentality. But this is not unlike the divide you’d find in any competition where pros make the big bucks while the amateurs are in it for the love of the game. The pros here are a part of the Memphis Barbecue Network (MBN) and are fighting for a spot at Memphis in May, competitive barbecue’s answer to the Olympics, or “the holy grail,” as Vic describes it.

Developed in Norway during the late 1980s and early ’90s, black metal was a reaction to what its progenitors saw as a sterilization of commercial death metal. They opted instead for low-grade recording and poor equipment, which gave the early recordings of bands like Mayhem and Darkthrone a brittle, cold and grim feeling — necrosound, as it would come to be known.

The monochromatic moods, harsh timbres and broad, sweeping melodies made an impact, not only on metalheads, but have inspired bands as far away from metal as alt-country songwriter Ryan Adams, indie-rock stars Interpol and folk singer Marissa Nadler (whose haunting voice graces the claimed-to-be-final recording of American black-metal recluse Xasthur).

Click here to view the embedded video.

But the ideologies espoused by some of the genre’s pioneers — which run a hateful gamut of nationalism, xenophobia, homophobia, racism and anti-Christian sentiments  — make it a tougher pill to swallow than even its standoffish sonic approach would suggest. In the ’90s, the original Norwegian scene imploded with a series of deaths (both suicides and murders), church arsons and prison sentences.

To both the advantage and disadvantage of “Until The Light Takes Us,” Aites and Ewel dodge editorializing as if it would kill them. Rather, they merely let the cameras roll as figureheads — including the film’s de facto stars, Gylve “Fenriz” Nagell of Darthrone and Varg Vikernes of Burzum (interviewed in prison before his release earlier this year) — explain their music and their motivations as best they know how. We hear Vikernes explain his hatred of American and Christian usurpation of Nordic heritage, laced with currents of anti-Semitism. The camera merely listens; the filmmakers offer neither challenge nor approval. We hear Jan Axel “Hellhammer” Blomberg, ex-drummer of Mayhem, extol the murder of a homosexual committed by Bard “Faust” Eithun, the drummer of peer-band Emperor. Again, the camera offers no reaction.

Nagell, by contrast, denies any involvement, claiming at one point that as Vikernes’ thoughts drifted toward politics, his own moved farther into music, creating a rift between them. But he never directly condemns his contemporaries’ actions, either.

The filmmakers’ objectivity is a gift to their ability to let viewers reach their own conclusions, but focuses more on the personalities than the music. The pathology of a character such as Vikernes makes for good drama, but he wouldn’t be nearly so notorious if his black-metal movement hadn’t resulted in an interesting sound.

And since the sound left Norway, the music itself has been adopted and morphed into new and vastly more interesting contexts — something the documentary fails to recognize. The focus remains solely on the subset of Norwegian bands directly active during the periods of greatest controversy.

In the world outside the humorless documentary, many of black metal’s aesthetic traits, like those of other metal subgenres, are often treated as punchlines, both by detractors and admirers. The often-cartoonish facepainting and unyielding obsession with all things dark, grim or evil quickly gathers the feeling of juvenile and superficial attempts at shock value or of an adolescent pissing contest — one that was taken to violent extremes in Norway.

Musically, though, the genre has been adopted to varying degrees by a number of interesting artists. The aforementioned Xasthur’s solitary, depressive take on the genre is a grayscale panorama, in which subtle shadings can offer immense dimension.

Pacific Northwestern trio Wolves In The Throne Room counter Xasthur’s insularity by adopting the genre’s most expansive and triumphant sounds for their naturalistic Thoreau-meets-Slayer epics. Their vision of black metal evokes the wet, foggy chill of a dark redwood forest, but refuses to wallow in the darkness, and instead embraces the majesty of nature’s magnitude with sprawling 15-minute-plus meditations.

The similarly meditative Chicago outfit Locrian injects black metal’s trebly, buzzing guitars and hoarse vocals throughout their lengthy pieces — which also incorporate pensive drones and dynamic noise to build redemptive and mostly instrumental epics. But several times on this year’s superlative “Territories,” the trio goes at black metal full-bore. At one such instance, “Procession of Ancestral Brutalism,” the result is an exhilarating 11-minute upwell of patient, but potent, sonic force.

This works much like Horseback’s appropriation of the genre — which I wrote about last month — in creating a sense of struggle and triumph through challenging sounds and dramatic, expansive melodies. For Horseback, the harsh timbres and dark tones serve as an auditory metaphor for the struggle of self-actualization on the excellent album, “The Invisible Mountain.”

But no matter how many exciting, fresh, even uplifting contexts the sound might move into, it’s haunted by its origins. I’m forced to wonder if a sound can ever be forgiven for the sins of its fathers, and to question the relationship between art and artist. Trying to appreciate Burzum despite Varg Vikernes’ murder conviction and bigotry is similar to trying to appreciate Mel Gibson’s work as an actor and director despite his bigotry, or Roman Polanski’s work despite his pedophilia. Some will embrace the art and artist, some the art, but not the artist, and others will shun both entirely. I’m not sure there’s a right answer to these questions. I’m conflicted.

And so, apparently, is “Until The Light Takes Us.”

Contact: 704.7163676 or ensocharlotte.com

sponsored by:
Trafk Media – A Website Design and SEO Firm in Charlotte NC