Events Calendar

Adapted from the book “The Mouse of Amherst” by Elizabeth Spires, Jane Franklin Dance’s Mouse in House reveals an unlikely friendship between a lively mouse and reclusive 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson. The mouse’s life changes forever when a gust of wind blows one of Emily’s poems her way. Moved by Emily’s evocative words that capture her own feelings, the mouse becomes determined to be a poet herself.  Animations designed by media artist Bryan Leister were developed from images of Dickinson’s actual home furnishings.

This family friendly performance is a lively movement and theatre presentation for the young and young-at-heart.  The performance incorporates spoken word, movement, music, and an interactive participatory introduction for young children.  The show opens with a brief performance by students from Perfect Pointe Dance Studio on January 26 and by Melina’s Dancing Garden on February 2, 2019.

Theatre on the Run, 3700 S Four Mile Run Drive, Arlington VA  22206

Performance Dates/Times:
Jan 19, Jan 26, Feb 2 @ 4 pm

Tickets $15 Adults/$10 Children under age 10

$45 Family of 4
www.janefranklin.com or call 703.933.1111

Get over the midweek hump with DC Fray and Maddy’s Bar and Grille for FREE bar bingo every Wednesday at 7-9 PM!

Free to enter. Free to play. Free drinks swag up for grabs. Nothing to lose. Sounds like a plan to us! 

Trivia is hard, Bingo is fun… See you there!

Visit dcfray.com/bingo for more locations, nights, and info.

“Take Flight” as you sample whiskies from around the world at The Next Whisky Bar in The Watergate Hotel. The hotel’s popular winter igloos, located on The Next Whisky Bar’s outdoor terrace, will feature whisky samples from brands like Johnnie Walker, Bulleit, Crown Royal, WhistlePig and more to offer guests a palatable tour of Canada, Scotland, Ireland, and the U.S.

“Flight Attendants” will assist as you travel from one igloo to the next, while Brand Ambassadors guide you through each cocktail or whisky flight being served. Halfway through your experience, enjoy a “layover” inside The Next Whisky Bar to sample small bites before your next flight.

To purchase tickets and for more information, please visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/take-flight-whisky-tasting-general-admission-tickets-54248896911?aff=ebapi

w/ Genocide Pact.

For a band who traffic in measured, unhurried riffage, Richmond’s WINDHAND have moved awfully quickly over the last few years. Founded in 2009, the VA quintet have been making waves since the release of their 2010 practice space demo, a two-track CD that garnered the band comparisons to artists like Electric Wizard, The Devil’s Blood, and Black Sabbath. That auspicious start was further realized in March 2012 when the band released their self-titled debut, which quickly became an underground hit and sold out of multiple vinyl presses in a matter of months.
A year later, the band officially signed to Relapse Records. After a steady touring schedule, the band collaborated with Richmond brethren Cough on a split entitled Reflection of the Negative, which was released on Relapse in April 2013. Pitchfork deemed the split WINDHAND’s “best music to date,” and the record’s positive critical reception helped pave the way for WINDHAND to release the highly anticipated album Soma in September 2013. Stereogum, Spin, and the LA Weekly featured Soma prominently on their overall best-of lists. The album was heavily represented in countless metal publications including Revolver, Invisible Oranges, MetalSucks, and Metal Injection. Rolling Stone, NPR, and Pitchfork all took note of Soma as well; the former considered the album the third-best metal release of 2013.
Soma was no flash-in-the-pan internet phenomenon. In 2013 and 2014, the band embarked on a series of support and headlining tours across North America, Europe, and Australia, sharing the stage with the likes of Sleep, High on Fire, Dead Meadow and Kvelertak. In addition, Windhand appeared at major festivals including Roadburn, SXSW, Scion Rock Fest, Day of the Shred and Maryland Deathfest. Windhand also took the time in October 2014 to follow up Soma with a brief two-track Halloween split alongside Swedish doomsters Salem’s Pot (released on Riding Easy Records). Noisey liked the record so much that they declared the band “must have definitely sold their souls for their new split.”
WINDHAND returned in 2015 with their third full-length, Grief’s Infernal Flower, a multifaceted slab of thundering stoner doom that Noisey has called “doom metal’s most anticipated album of the year.” Produced by Jack Endino (Nirvana, High On Fire, Soundgarden, etc), Grief’s Infernal Flower is massive, heavy, and personal, a modern testament to the power of doom and stoner metal’s legacies. One sees the urgency the band have displayed over their career reflected in their music – long-canonized tropes are reimagined and reinvented, Windhand convey an irrepressible sense of motion even within the slowest of songs. Front woman Dorthia Cottrell firmly establishes herself as one of the best vocalists of the genre by perfectly balancing beauty with enormous power, and the twin-guitar attack of Garrett Morris and Asechiah Bogdan weaves together nine songs of perfect riffs and fuzzed-out bliss. That often-delicate splendor is all tempered by the colossal rhythmic mastery of bassist Parker Chandler and drummer Ryan Wolfe, whose lower-register expertise serves as the backbone of the new record. Though the first two WINDHAND albums were underground classics, Grief’s Infernal Flower stands to see WINDHAND cementing themselves as one of the premier metal bands of our time.

Super Diamond, the ultimate tribute to beloved music icon Neil Diamond, performs timeless classics such as “Sweet Caroline”, “America”, “Cherry Cherry”, “Song Sung Blue”, and “Forever in Blue Jeans”. With a nod from Neil (the man himself), they have been embraced by long-time Neil Diamond lovers while inspiring a new generation fans at night clubs and events across the country. Super Diamond’s success is unprecedented for a tribute band. For over 25 years, they have consistently sold out shows at many of America’s greatest venues. They have appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, CNN, Fox News, VH1 and been featured in Rolling Stone Magazine, Spin, and The New York Times. 

In 2011 Super Diamond premiered their symphonic pops show with The San Diego Symphony. They continue to thrill audiences, performing with such orchestras as The Pacific Symphony, The Utah Symphony, The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and many more.

Super Diamond delivers a glittering performance of Neil’s power ballads and up-tempo hits with unrestrained enthusiasm. Every show is pure entertainment – classic music combined with fun, energy and passion – creating nostalgia for the good old days and excitement for today.
“GOOD TIMES never seemed SO GOOD!”

w/ Henry Jamison

Look Alive is our 8th album. The bulk of it was recorded in a vintage keyboard museum in Calgary AB, during a January stretch when the temperature reached 30 degrees below zero. We ended up in Canada because our British producer, Leo Abrahams, couldn’t turn around an American work visa fast enough, and we feel lucky to have discovered Studio Bell at the last minute. Despite having access to room after room of well-maintained analog keys, Leo gravitated to a cheap Ensoniq Mirage synth from the 1980’s that made Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation-era sounds from floppy disks. Leo spent countless hours poring over these floppy disks while the band gawked at the mellotrons, harpsichords, and other vintage equipment housed at Studio Bell. It was the beginnings of a stylistic clash that would ultimately play out beautifully. Our band had always gravitated to “warm” sounds. Leo would introduce us to “cold” sounds and the way they challenge us as listeners. He was the perfect complementary piece for Guster.
After working with the late Richard Swift four years ago and discovering a more raw and vintage sound on Evermotion, we fully embraced studio production with Leo this time around. The sheer amount of production on Look Alive grew into its own statement. There is a lot to unpack.
One day in Calgary we arrived at the studio to discover that Leo had put in a few extra hours on our song “Summertime.” He’d built an entire new intro using the Ensoniq Mirage overnight and played it for us. The band reaction wasn’t too kind. Our beautiful song now had a jarring, harsh, disruptive introduction, instead of the soft mellotron flutes we’d known. After some days of light bickering about it, Leo finally shed his proper British diplomatic side and belted out that “the world doesn’t need another fucking Beatles pastiche!” This would eventually become a rallying cry for the album as we strove to make something new and powerful together.
Title track “Look Alive” is an ominous, processed sonic collage with haunting words about waking up and becoming active in the midst of hollow words and fake heroes. “Hard Times,” written in the studio, came out more like the dark pop of Peter Gabriel / Depeche Mode / Tears for Fears than what people might think of Guster. “Overexcited” felt like classic Brit-pop and so Ryan sang it with a British accent over an Ensoniq marimba. Some of Guster’s critics will say “but you can’t do that” — and that’s something we’ve heard our entire career. We don’t subscribe to the same musical ideology they do and never have.
Writing songs for the second straight record with multi-instrumentalist Luke Reynolds (who joined the band in 2010) has been a key to our evolution. Working with artists like Leo Abrahams, John Congleton, and Collin DuPuis proved to be inspiring and adds to a “brain trust” that bolsters the songs. With Look Alive the plan is simple. Grow our musical community. Write better and better songs. Keep our minds open. Never repeat ourselves and create a legacy of music that is undeniable.
– Brian Rosenworcel, drummer of Guster.

w/ Henry Jamison

Look Alive is our 8th album. The bulk of it was recorded in a vintage keyboard museum in Calgary AB, during a January stretch when the temperature reached 30 degrees below zero. We ended up in Canada because our British producer, Leo Abrahams, couldn’t turn around an American work visa fast enough, and we feel lucky to have discovered Studio Bell at the last minute. Despite having access to room after room of well-maintained analog keys, Leo gravitated to a cheap Ensoniq Mirage synth from the 1980’s that made Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation-era sounds from floppy disks. Leo spent countless hours poring over these floppy disks while the band gawked at the mellotrons, harpsichords, and other vintage equipment housed at Studio Bell. It was the beginnings of a stylistic clash that would ultimately play out beautifully. Our band had always gravitated to “warm” sounds. Leo would introduce us to “cold” sounds and the way they challenge us as listeners. He was the perfect complementary piece for Guster.
After working with the late Richard Swift four years ago and discovering a more raw and vintage sound on Evermotion, we fully embraced studio production with Leo this time around. The sheer amount of production on Look Alive grew into its own statement. There is a lot to unpack.
One day in Calgary we arrived at the studio to discover that Leo had put in a few extra hours on our song “Summertime.” He’d built an entire new intro using the Ensoniq Mirage overnight and played it for us. The band reaction wasn’t too kind. Our beautiful song now had a jarring, harsh, disruptive introduction, instead of the soft mellotron flutes we’d known. After some days of light bickering about it, Leo finally shed his proper British diplomatic side and belted out that “the world doesn’t need another fucking Beatles pastiche!” This would eventually become a rallying cry for the album as we strove to make something new and powerful together.
Title track “Look Alive” is an ominous, processed sonic collage with haunting words about waking up and becoming active in the midst of hollow words and fake heroes. “Hard Times,” written in the studio, came out more like the dark pop of Peter Gabriel / Depeche Mode / Tears for Fears than what people might think of Guster. “Overexcited” felt like classic Brit-pop and so Ryan sang it with a British accent over an Ensoniq marimba. Some of Guster’s critics will say “but you can’t do that” — and that’s something we’ve heard our entire career. We don’t subscribe to the same musical ideology they do and never have.
Writing songs for the second straight record with multi-instrumentalist Luke Reynolds (who joined the band in 2010) has been a key to our evolution. Working with artists like Leo Abrahams, John Congleton, and Collin DuPuis proved to be inspiring and adds to a “brain trust” that bolsters the songs. With Look Alive the plan is simple. Grow our musical community. Write better and better songs. Keep our minds open. Never repeat ourselves and create a legacy of music that is undeniable.
– Brian Rosenworcel, drummer of Guster

Shawn Ryan (Superprince / Universal Cave), Nick Garcia (Yoshitoshi / Night Vision), DJ Eddy Bauer & Big Chain (Room) spin the very best Disco, Boogie, Electro, House, and Techno records. Experience timeless club trax the way God intended…on original WAX!

Residents of the greater Washington, D.C., area have an abundance of riches in the many museums close by. Spend Saturday afternoons developing your rendering and composition skills by drawing from both paintings and sculptures at the National Gallery of Art, Freer Gallery of Art, and Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Guided by instructor Paul Glenshaw, students begin by learning the art of copying, which focuses on the way an artist created a particular work, not simply making a facsimile. They then delve into drawing classical sculptures, which make ideal models for drawing exercises and aid in honing figure-drawing skills.

An introduction to drawing in public, this class is designed for the strong beginner, intermediate, or advanced student who has taken a previous drawing class or has equivalent drawing experience.

The first session meets at the central rotunda of the National Gallery’s West Wing.

Adapted from the book “The Mouse of Amherst” by Elizabeth Spires, Jane Franklin Dance’s Mouse in House reveals an unlikely friendship between a lively mouse and reclusive 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson. The mouse’s life changes forever when a gust of wind blows one of Emily’s poems her way. Moved by Emily’s evocative words that capture her own feelings, the mouse becomes determined to be a poet herself.  Animations designed by media artist Bryan Leister were developed from images of Dickinson’s actual home furnishings.

This family friendly performance is a lively movement and theatre presentation for the young and young-at-heart.  The performance incorporates spoken word, movement, music, and an interactive participatory introduction for young children.  The show opens with a brief performance by students from Perfect Pointe Dance Studio on January 26 and by Melina’s Dancing Garden on February 2, 2019.

Theatre on the Run, 3700 S Four Mile Run Drive, Arlington VA  22206

Performance Dates/Times:
Jan 19, Jan 26, Feb 2 @ 4 pm

Tickets $15 Adults/$10 Children under age 10

$45 Family of 4
www.janefranklin.com or call 703.933.1111

In honor of International Sous Vide Day on January 26, Cuisine Solutions will host a charitable sous vide dining experience at the Embassy of France in Washington, D.C. Guests will explore the modern French roots of the sous vide technique enjoying innovative cuisine and craft cocktails prepared by Cuisine Solutions’ talented chefs. The evening begins with a cocktail hour that takes guests around the world with artful drinks and perfectly paired hors d’oeuvres at four stations including a USA, France, Thailand and a Dr. Goussault station. Dishes include Sous Vide Buttermilk Fried Chicken with braised greens and spiced maple syrup from the USA station; a Smoked Salmon Terrine Wasabi Arugula Salad at the French Embassy station; a Crab Cake with green curry sauce and fresh young coconut slaw; from the Thailand station; and a Sous Vide Pot au Feu and 3 bone short rib, small can, vegetable and broth made with siphon at Dr. Goussault’s station.

Dinner follows opening remarks and guests will enjoy for a four-course dinner with wine. Dishes will highlight the company’s signature sous vide proteins and include a Salad Trio, sous vide beets with goat cheese, beluga lentil salad and sirloin carpaccio; Seared St. Pierre with cucumber beurre blanc and sous vide baby fennel; Duo of Beef Bone-In and Boneless Short Rib with celery root puree and pickled chanterelles. Dessert, Crème Brulee Napoleon with Caramel Sauce prepared by the French Embassy’s culinary team, Le Café Descartes, will be served reception style for mingling with stations for coffee, compressed fruit and an edible cocktail to complete the evening. Tickets are all-inclusive and priced at $100 per person.

Guests of the evening will be included in a raffle drawing for sous-vide related prizes which include: Joule by Chef Steps Circulator with 12 QT Sous Vide Tank; Precision Cooker Nano Circulator with 12 QT Sous Vide Tank; Precision Cooker Nano Circulator with 6 QT Sous Vide Tank; Precision Cooker Nano Circulator with 6 QT Sous Vide Tank; ISVD Swag Bag – Kitchen Scale, Peppercorn Set, Marble Salt Keeper; Specialty Aprons and a $150 Gift card to MyCuisineSolutions.com. Guests must be present at drawing time to win.

Five years have passed since Case’s last solo project, The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You. In the interim, she sang on Whiteout Conditions, the 2017 release from longtime bandmates the New Pornographers. The year before that, she released a vinyl box set of her solo work and joined k.d. Lang and Laura Veirs on the case/lang/veirs project.

Recording that record was a revelation, from Veirs’ innovative guitar tunings to Lang’s skills in studio. “I learned so much experiencing the work ethic of those two,” Case says. She considers Lang “probably the most natural producer I’ve ever seen. Watching her work was awe-inspiring.”

After their national tour together, Case found similar transcendence in October 2016 sitting on a panel at the first-of-its-kind “Woman Producer” summit in Brooklyn, NY. Between discussions and performances from a diverse group of women who produce music from around the world, she wondered how it had taken such a long time to get to that moment, and why so many female pioneers had been forgotten.

She felt lucky to have worked with the people she had encountered across her career—Darryl Neudorf, Tucker Martine, Craig Schumacher, and Chris Schultz among them—who encouraged her to expand her own skills in studio. But she had also gotten fed up with a world in which women’s accomplishments seemed to vanish from public memory. “The George Martins and Quincy Joneses of the recording pantheon deserve every drop of praise and every project they have received,” Case says. “But we can’t keep telling the same stories over and over. We need more stories, more inspiration, more flavors.”

A picture is worth a thousand words. A story churns up recollections or leads to new reflection.  The show features excerpts from Jane Franklin Dance’s The Migration Project and new work in collaboration with Fine Art Photographer Fax Ayers.  On Jan 26 Fairfax-based DanceArtTheatre performs  The Guardian, a company choreographed piece for 5 dancers that explores the notion there is a keeper or leader. Choices are made to follow or ignore the guardians inspiration.

“The Migration Project” shares family histories of immigration and stories of more recent relocation; stories by 15 individuals are layered with sound and amplified through movement. This edition revisits the “Happenings Happy Hour” production presented at Sidney Harman Hall in February 2018.

Fax Ayers “merges the aesthetics of photography and painting,” Still lifes are compiled by merging objects…gourds entwined, conical solids, ancient looking watch innards.. to inspire a comic sensibility and a delicate balance of opposition.  Find the surreal in the mundane, and discover moments that draw a “Second Glance” performed by Jane Franklin Dance with music performed by clarinetist Martin Gold of the United States Army Band.

For the past three years, the Current Affairs crew has brought you a monthly magazine of culture, politics, and the unusual. For the past year, from the Current Affairs World Headquarters to your ear, the crew has brought everything you love about the magazine into audio form, cutting through the nonsense, bursting open ideological piñatas, and presenting a friendly, relaxed, and upbeat guide to the world of politics and culture. And now, for the first time ever, the Current Affairs crew is live in the nation’s capital, to bring you two hours of the pure, unadulterated Current Affairs experience: serious and not-so-serious talk about the important issues of the day, the strange and jovial personalities of the magazine’s editors, and, of course, whimsical gags.

Profs and Pints presents: “Getting Congress Beyond Gridlock,” with David Barker, professor of government and director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University.

If “politics is the art of compromise,” Capitol Hill is no Louvre.

Why is the US Congress so often so gridlocked? How can productive bipartisan negotiation be achieved in such a polarized era? Does the historically unique 116th Congress offer any hope?

Professor David Barker will discuss findings from several studies he has conducted over the past few years that shed light on the causes of modern political gridlock. He’ll describe how gridlock has blossomed due to increases in education, the infusion of questions of morality into political debates, the emergence of “identity” politics, partisan media consumption, and what lawmakers perceive as electoral or cultural threats. And he’ll discuss how these trends affect Democrats and Republicans in different ways.

Dr. Barker also will talk about how well-intentioned institutional reforms—such as the elimination of earmarks—have tied the hands of legislative negotiators. Finally, he will examine whether the unique features of the 116th congress offer opportunities for bipartisan cooperation, and predict what we generally can expect to see happening in Congress over the next two years. (Advance tickets: $12. Doors: $15, save $2 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk begins 30 minutes later. Please give yourself plenty of time to place any orders and be seated and settled.)

Five years have passed since Case’s last solo project, The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You. In the interim, she sang on Whiteout Conditions, the 2017 release from longtime bandmates the New Pornographers. The year before that, she released a vinyl box set of her solo work and joined k.d. Lang and Laura Veirs on the case/lang/veirs project.

Recording that record was a revelation, from Veirs’ innovative guitar tunings to Lang’s skills in studio. “I learned so much experiencing the work ethic of those two,” Case says. She considers Lang “probably the most natural producer I’ve ever seen. Watching her work was awe-inspiring.”

After their national tour together, Case found similar transcendence in October 2016 sitting on a panel at the first-of-its-kind “Woman Producer” summit in Brooklyn, NY. Between discussions and performances from a diverse group of women who produce music from around the world, she wondered how it had taken such a long time to get to that moment, and why so many female pioneers had been forgotten.

She felt lucky to have worked with the people she had encountered across her career—Darryl Neudorf, Tucker Martine, Craig Schumacher, and Chris Schultz among them—who encouraged her to expand her own skills in studio. But she had also gotten fed up with a world in which women’s accomplishments seemed to vanish from public memory. “The George Martins and Quincy Joneses of the recording pantheon deserve every drop of praise and every project they have received,” Case says. “But we can’t keep telling the same stories over and over. We need more stories, more inspiration, more flavors.”

She set to work on her next record looking for not just new stories but also new sounds. This time, she wanted to put herself in a setting far away from everything she knew. She recalled Björn Yttling’s skill with Lykke Li, Camera Obscura, and his own band, Peter Bjorn and John. “I’ve worked with the same people so long, I never had to step outside my comfort zone,” Case says. “In this instance, I chose to.”

The two met over breakfast in Washington, DC, and decided to team up. By the time she went to Sweden in the fall of 2017, Case had already written songs with longtime collaborator Paul Rigby, laid down vocal and guitar tracks at WaveLab Studio in Tucson, and built Carnacial Singing, her recording space in Vermont.

But in the middle of her stint in Stockholm, with the finish line in sight, she received a surreal 3am call telling her that her house was burning and would likely be completely destroyed. She felt panicked and helpless.

The fire had started in the barn, where she kept an assortment of belongings, from artwork to old pianos. A friend had managed to get the dogs to safety. After the flames jumped to the house, her home was engulfed, too.

A few hours later, she went into a studio in Stockholm and laid down the vocals for “Bad Luck,” singing the lines she had written long before she realized they would land on her.

Case is now stoic about the fire. “If somebody burned your house down on purpose, you’d feel so violated. But when nature burns your house down, you can’t take it personally.” The month before the blaze, Hurricane Harvey had slammed into Texas and flooded Houston. Her home burned just as Puerto Rico was plunged into a nightmare by Hurricane Maria and wildfires incinerated California. “In the big picture, my house burning was so unimportant,” she says. “So many people lost so much more: lives and lives and lives.”

She was hell-bent on not losing sight of the goal, reminding herself there was still beauty in the world and in the process of making music. She had been reading a lot of ancient history, including Adrienne Mayor’s The Amazons, and thinking about how for millennia, women have been more central to events than the average history class admits. “We were always there, we were just erased. And I knew it. As a little girl I knew it. As a young person I knew it,” Case says. “Now I know it anew with a ferocious, righteous, razor-sharp tribe of witnesses, and it makes me feel like a super-powerful human being. It makes me feel joy. There’s an inheritance there that’s really important, and I want to share it.”

She decided to climb inside her role as producer and wield it more directly. It just meant owning what she was already doing.

w/ Mt. Joy.
Rainbow Kitten Surprise and all five of its members hail from the mountains of Boone, North Carolina. With chilling harmonies, dynamic instrumentation, and introspective lyrics, their genre-defying sound takes influence from artists like Modest Mouse and Kings of Leon as much as Frank Ocean and Schoolboy Q. Independently, they have over 75 million streams across digital platforms, and notched over 45 sold out shows on their first U.S. headline tour. Their engaging and distinct live performances have led to stand out sets at festivals such as Bonnaroo, Firefly, Shaky Knees, Hangout, Sasquatch, and Austin City Limits among others. The band worked with GRAMMY award-winning producer Jay Joyce (Cage The Elephant, Sleeper Agent) on their Elektra debut, How to: Friend, Love, Freefall, available everywhere on April 6th.
—–
“These dreams are more than paper things,” sings Matt Quinn on Mt. Joy’s infectious folk-rocker “Astrovan,” a warm, yearning bit of road-trip philosophy that posits the existence of a Deadhead Jesus cruising the dusty highways of the countryside, nursing a roach on his way to only He knows where. It’s an auspicious line from a band predicated on the revival of teenage dreams.

Mt. Joy started off as a rekindling of shared musical ambitions between Philadelphia high school friends Matt Quinn (vocals, guitar) and Sam Cooper (guitar). Reunited in Los Angeles thanks to the ebbs and flows of adult life, the pair met multi-instrumentalist Michael Byrnes through a Craigslist ad. They named themselves Mt. Joy as an ode to a mountain in Valley Forge National Park near Sam’s childhood home, and together, with Byrnes’ roommate Caleb Nelson producing, they recorded three songs and sent them out into the world, hoping for the best. “I knew I still wanted to write songs, but the realities of life made that dream seem pretty impossible,” Quinn says.

In this workshop learn about to block print! Refresh those skills that you may have picked up in art class, and design and carve your own block. After you’re done carving, you will learn the techniques for printing your block on a tote bag. You’ll be able to keep your block and use it for as many future projects as you’d like.

This is a beginning-level workshop and you can make your block as simple or complex as you’d like. We will provide plenty of inspiration! All supplies (tote bag, paint/ink, blocks, carving tools, etc.) are included. You will need to heat set your tote bag at home following the workshop, and instructions will be provided.

For questions, email Jessica at [email protected].

About Jessica

Jessica is happiest when she’s being creative. Whether hosting public events such as the Harry Potter Tea, or planning and designing weddings in D.C., her goal is that everyone she welcomes to her events can find a little space and peace. That is the mission of her creative events company, The Secret Life of Dreams.

Jessica is quite crafty and loves the arts and crafts side of her company. She has been hosting workshops for about two years and loves block printing because the finished product can be useful, not just another cute knick-knack. She also loves how surprised her crafters are with themselves when they see their finished work. To find out more about Daydreams visit www.secretdaydreams.com

Profs and Pints presents: “Trophy Hunting and Science,” with Kendra Chritz, paleoecologist and postdoctoral fellow at the National Museum of Natural History.

Former President Theodore Roosevelt is regarded as one of the most influential conservationists of all time, having drafted the Antiquities Act in 1906, which protected nearly 230 million acres of public land. He also, however, was an avid hunter. On one particularly prolific trip to eastern Africa, he personally shot 512 mammals with the assistance of his son, Kermit. It was no ordinary hunting trip, but a scientific expedition to better understand African mammals and their environments, undertaken with the involvement of the Smithsonian Institution. Today, the collections undertaken at the time play a vital role in the fight for the conservation of the very species that Roosevelt shot.

The story of Roosevelt’s hunting expeditions illustrates the complicated relationship between big-game hunters, conservationists, and sciences. Big-game hunters and conservationists and conservation-oriented organizations are often at odds with one another when it comes to the basics of how to protect species, but their goals are the same: keep species alive so we can enjoy their presence well into the future. Animal rights organizations such as PETA have worked hard to protect species with a strong anti-hunting stance that resonates with many people, and trophy hunting of rare or threatened species often sparks outrage (think Cecil the lion in 2015). The tensions that exist between these groups bring up tough questions: What is the value of an animal in the wild? What is the difference between poaching and hunting, especially in terms of impact on wildlife? How do we save species from extinction, and can hunting them sometimes actually help save them?

We’ll explore the legacy of both legal and illegal hunting in Africa, modern issues in mammal conservation, the complicated issues surrounding trophy hunting, and the story of how Teddy Roosevelt could reconcile being both a champion of conservation and one of the most prolific hunters of the early 20th century. (Advance tickets: $12. Doors: $15, save $2 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later. Please allow yourself plenty of time beforehand to place any orders and be seated and settled.)

w/ Mt. Joy.
Rainbow Kitten Surprise and all five of its members hail from the mountains of Boone, North Carolina. With chilling harmonies, dynamic instrumentation, and introspective lyrics, their genre-defying sound takes influence from artists like Modest Mouse and Kings of Leon as much as Frank Ocean and Schoolboy Q. Independently, they have over 75 million streams across digital platforms, and notched over 45 sold out shows on their first U.S. headline tour. Their engaging and distinct live performances have led to stand out sets at festivals such as Bonnaroo, Firefly, Shaky Knees, Hangout, Sasquatch, and Austin City Limits among others. The band worked with GRAMMY award-winning producer Jay Joyce (Cage The Elephant, Sleeper Agent) on their Elektra debut, How to: Friend, Love, Freefall, available everywhere on April 6th.
—–
“These dreams are more than paper things,” sings Matt Quinn on Mt. Joy’s infectious folk-rocker “Astrovan,” a warm, yearning bit of road-trip philosophy that posits the existence of a Deadhead Jesus cruising the dusty highways of the countryside, nursing a roach on his way to only He knows where. It’s an auspicious line from a band predicated on the revival of teenage dreams.

Mt. Joy started off as a rekindling of shared musical ambitions between Philadelphia high school friends Matt Quinn (vocals, guitar) and Sam Cooper (guitar). Reunited in Los Angeles thanks to the ebbs and flows of adult life, the pair met multi-instrumentalist Michael Byrnes through a Craigslist ad. They named themselves Mt. Joy as an ode to a mountain in Valley Forge National Park near Sam’s childhood home, and together, with Byrnes’ roommate Caleb Nelson producing, they recorded three songs and sent them out into the world, hoping for the best. “I knew I still wanted to write songs, but the realities of life made that dream seem pretty impossible,” Quinn says.