Month: September 2015

Recap

Beericana, Year Two

Another year, another Beericana. Though I feared a bigger, brighter event in year two might spoil the fun of the original, I was pleasantly surprised that the 919 Beer crew seemed to pull it off yet again. I hesitated when I saw the long line to get in, but the line moved quickly and gave me and my co-pilot time to plan our attack. Even the drearier weather forecast couldn’t dampen the mood. The threat of rain never amounted to much and the overcast day helped keep the slightly warmer day a bit more bearable than if this year’s event managed to replicate last year’s sunshine and clear blue skies.

Speaking of that first year, it’s impossible to proclaim one particular festival a standard-bearer after one year, but Beericana made me a believer after year one. Now with two successful years in the bag, it’s clear that the organizers have managed to hit on a winning formula and I really hope they can keep it going and that the late summer / early fall North Carolina weather continues to give them the perfect arena for a memorable experience.

I’ll spare you my rundown of the festival itself, the fine folks over at Raleigh & Co can help you with a couple of different perspectives for that. But, if you’re interested, here are the notable brews I tried along with a couple of first time food truck experiences from this year’s event:

Sweet Baby Jesus (Porter from DuClaw): My favorite brew, but not one that I could probably double down on in a single sitting.

Copper (Altbier from OMB): The first one we tried and my favorite potential “every day” or drink 3 or 4 of these in a night brew. Full disclosure: I’m partial to coppers1.

Kind of a Big Deal (Fruit/Vegetable from Triple C Brewing Company): Most notable not for the peaches but because it’s aged in bourbon barrels.

I’ve also been itching to try Belgian Waffle Crafters (nee Belgian Waffology) and Arepa Culture, so I rounded out my day with a Cinnawaffle (speculoos!) and La Tica. Normally I would have had these in a proper sequence, but I started out with the Cinnawaffle and it was incredible. Next time I’ll ask them to hold the whip, I’m not a whip cream guy and that made it a little over the top, but other than that, the waffle was basically perfect. The “chicken on sauteed peppers” La Tica was my mid-event snack and it was also a very good showing. I still have a slight preference for Guasaca’s arepas, but the La Tica was a nice change of pace.

I’m not generally an effusive person, but mention Beericana around me and you’ll be met with a rare excitement that few outside of my close inner circle ever get to see. The best compliment I can bestow upon Beericana is that it is one of a very small handful of festivals or events that I genuinely look forward to every year. So tell me, when is Beericana 2016?

  1. Beers, I mean.  ↩

Upshot

Caffeinated Cereal Milk

As if it isn’t hard enough to keep my caffeine-craving three year old from constantly begging me for a sip of my coffee, Starbucks has gone off and concocted a new latte flavor that conjures “the taste of cereal milk, the delicious leftovers in your breakfast bowl”. No, daughter, you may not have another sip of daddy’s caffeinated cereal milk.

That’s right, I’m talking about none other than the Toasted Graham Latte, Starbucks’ first new fall flavor in over four years1. I happened to be on a mini-vacation with the family this weekend and vacations are always a good time to try something new so I gave it a shot. It’s a nice change of pace if you’re tired of the PSL craze but still crave something on the sweeter side. It probably won’t woo the PSL-obsessed crowd, at least for now, but it tastes like something you’d expect to come out of the Starbucks flavor lab. If you’re not normally a fan of the Starbucks flavor profile, then this new flavor certainly isn’t going to win you over. But I’m going to guess you already knew that anyway2.

  1. Their words, not mine. Personally, it feels to me like there’s a new flavor on the board every time I walk in there.  ↩

  2. Starbucks has something entirely different up their sleeve for you.  ↩

Short Cuts

Steven Hyden Interviews Ryan Adams for Grantland, Talks ‘1989’

If it isn’t obvious, I’m just a bit excited about the Ryan Adams cover of Taylor Swift’s 1989. I’ll try to make this the last post about it (for now), but Steven Hyden’s interview with Adams for Grantland is just too good to not post about it. The entire interview is great, seriously, just go read it. But here are my favorite bits.

Hyden doesn’t waste any time jumping right in, quickly asking Adams how the album came to be. I love the response:

The quick and easy way to describe how it came to be is, I basically was on the road for a year and three months, and when you get off the road, your body isn’t ready to let go of the time of night when you’re going to get ready to start playing. So at 8 p.m. every night, for three weeks to a month, your adrenaline will start firing and your body is going, Oh shit, I’m going to play in an hour. Then nine to eleven, you’re in the weird space-time continuum of where you’re not onstage, but you feel like you are.

Over the Christmas holiday I had a three-week break, and that’s when I originally started to track 1989. But I was tracking on a four-track cassette recorder. It was like, “Yeah, cool, I’m going to cover it like Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.” Then the cassette tape was eaten by the machine, which was unbelievable — after a week of setup, too. I didn’t get discouraged, but in my mind, I went, Well, this is not meant to be in the style; I’ll do it later. I’ll make it an after-tour, fun project.”

Next, Hyden deftly weaves a question by contrasting Adams’ prolific songwriting career with his growing notoriety (as he appears to some) as a cover artist:

There’s an interesting paradox to your career, which is that you’re known as a really prolific songwriter, and yet some of your most popular songs are covers. Your version of Oasis’s “Wonderwall” is easily your most streamed track on Spotify, and 1989 is poised to become one of your most successful albums. How do you feel about that?

Well, I’m not surprised that they’re more popular because they’re already more popular, so that makes sense. But I usually don’t think to cover a song unless it’s something that really moves me or there’s something for me to offer the song. I also cover Greg Sage, who was in the Wipers. My favorite band from New Zealand, the Verlaines, I’ve covered them. Or I’ll cover Natalie Prass. Or Black Sabbath.

“Wonderwall” always belonged on Love Is Hell, and it always belonged in that style, because it said something in the middle of that record that needed to be said, and it actually needed to be said in that context because that record was about a time that I spent between New York and London, and it was about losing someone that I loved very much and then falling in love with someone else while I was on a lot of drugs. [I was] taking pills and drinking and stuff, and sort of staying in this daydream to nullify a huge amount of psychological pain associated with losing someone that passed away.

The interview also offers more insight into how Adams approaches his craft, his appreciation for Taylor Swift’s music, and the level of Swift’s involvement and prior knowledge of the project (beyond her fangirl tweets).

Quoted

Spoke

“I never said most of the things I said.”

— Yogi Berra
Snap

Ryan Adams Releases ‘1989’, Tech Press Rejoices

When Ryan Adams revealed via Twitter a month or so ago that he was working on covering the entirety of Taylor Swift’s 1989, I don’t think I was alone in rejoicing; nor was I likely the only one who feared the project would never see the light of public day. It turns out, our fears were unfounded. With a bit more fanfare than a typical Adams release, the Ryan Adams reinterpretation of Swift’s 2014 chart topper made its way out into the wild.

Much to my surprise, the tech press was all over the news. Here are bits of the reports that I didn’t expect to see coming across my tech RSS and Twitter feeds:

First, James Vincent over on The Verge:

Adams’ reimagining of 1989 has already generated significant buzz thanks in no small part to Swift’s engagement with the project. Last week, she called news of the cover album “surreal and dreamlike” (adjectives that can also be applied to the listening experience), and this morning took to Twitter to retweet praise for the project, including judgments such as “if you need me, I’ll be listening to this on repeat for the rest of my life,” and “SCREAMING CRYING PERFECT STORMS.” It’s fair to say then that the reception, so far, seems pretty good.

Next, Wired graces us with a back and forth between K.M. McFarland and Jordan Crucchiola in Two Superfans Break Down Ryan Adams 1989 Cover Album. Here’s K.M. McFarland aptly drawing out the brilliance of Swift’s original work by way of its role as Adams’ muse:

K.M. McFarland: Turning this into a solo piano ballad reveals the inadvertent work Adams accomplishes with his full-album covers project. In general, Taylor Swift—like other pop artists with younger fanbases—gets pigeonholed as trivial and unworthy of critical analysis. But Adams’ covers are nothing if not wholly serious, proving that the underlying foundation of Swift’s songs merit this kind of meticulous attention. “This Love” is mournful but unspectacular in Adams’ hands, but it highlights the larger merits of this endeavor.

And finally, from probably the most unexpected corner of my tech world, Jason Snell writing for his Six Colors blog:

Covering an entire album is a pretty bold gesture, and doing it while the previous album is still in the public consciousness is even bolder. Swift’s original is very much modern pop infused with an ’80s pop sensibility, which—as an ’80s pop music fan—I love. Adams’ choices in reinterpreting the songs are fascinating—I hear Springsteen, Neil Young, even Chris Isaak at one point.

It’s unlikely I’ll ever recover enough of my overly anxious reactions for a full post or review, but right now my early favorites are ‘Out of the Woods’, ‘Clean’, ‘Blank Space’, and ‘All You Had To Do Was Stay’.

Locally Notable

Yahoo Travel: The Best BBQ Across America

More from Yahoo Travel, but this one’s a little bit of a head scratcher. According to this article, the best barbecue in North Carolina comes from little known Backyard BBQ Pit in Durham, NC:

It is a tall order to produce the best barbecue in this state, but Backyard BBQ Pit in Durham upholds the standards with sweet sauces and tender pork ribs. If you can pry your fingers off of those ribs for a few, try the fried pork chops. Holy pig’s feet! They are delicious.

I work right around the corner from Backyard BBQ Pit and yet I’ve never been. That means I’m unqualified to renounce this selection. But with so many other great barbecue joints in the Triangle and beyond, I find it hard to believe Backyard BBQ Pit is even the best barbecue in Durham. Tastes, they are subjective.

Quoted

Fish

“Gefilte fish will usher me out of this life, as it ushered me into it, eighty-two years ago.”

— Oliver Sacks