The Magic City will participate alongside St. Louis, MO; Baltimore, MD; Detroit, MI;  and Tucson, AZ. The first three have been participating since last summer – Birmingham and Tuscon’s participation was first announced late last year. Each community will receive $200,000 during the course of two years.

The Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham will be the agency awarding the grants here in metropolitan area. Amounts between $2,500 and $10,000 will be provided to “community arts projects that strive to address Birmingham’s pressing issues as determined by its citizens.”

Cultural Alliance president Buddy Palmer spoke with The Birmingham News recently about the organization’s hopes for the program as well as specifics about informational sessions to be held on February 22, March 10 and March 16.

In its seventh year, the community festival is scheduled to take place this Saturday, October 31 (though a rain date of Sunday, November 1 has already been announced) and they are still taking applications for art booths via Eventbrite.

This year they’ve added a Wild and Wicked Cruise to the festival’s list of activities. The fundraiser will be held at Old Car Heaven this evening (October 29) from 5:30-8:30 p.m. Partygoers can listen to live music by Ashley Miller with special guest Rick Carter plus have a chance to sample award-winning chili from Bottletree Cafe and view an outstanding collection of classic cars and a wonderful selection of silent auction prizes.

Tickets are $10 and include one drink and you can still buy tickets NOW.

The local music venue shared the unexpected news early this morning via their Twitter and Facebook accounts. Their Facebook announcement included the fact that they are hoping to reschedule for a later date and refunds for tonight’s show are available from TicketBiscuit.

The band’s announcement via MySpace was posted late yesterday evening:

“Lesbian” and “indigo” both have three syllables. The syllables are identically stressed. When I first heard them – les-bi-an, late 80s, walking home through the 3^rd grade suburbs of old Vestavia; In-di-go, early 90s, in a church van, radio blasting, scruples flaring, girls pretending to French each other – they were both followed by snickers and dirty winks. I think that’s what did it for me. For a split second, I totally thought they meant the same thing, or that one implied the other, synonyms in a sinner’s vocabulary. Both words sounded so… exotic. So… earthy. Onomatopoetic even.

Amy knows what I mean. She remembers the first time she heard ‘indigo.’ It was 1985. She had a dictionary. She was looking for a word to go with ‘girls.’

And when she dials from her private number in the North Georgia Mountains, we’ll talk about how people who live in the North Georgia Mountains (she’s been there 17 years) love to say ‘North Georgia Mountains.’

We’ll talk about her youth group skate nights with the Methodists as a teenager in Decatur, Ga.

We’ll talk about their 1997 show in Auburn with The Rock*A*Teens the spring before my freshman year. They had to reschedule. One of them had a sore throat.

We’ll talk about how their new independently released album, Poseidon and the Bitter Bug (which references North Georgia in the second line of the first song), is kind of incredible and how it just might be the best thing they’ve ever done, which I’ll tell her I really wouldn’t know much about because other than recognizing that one song from the church van, I don’t know anything about their music. I only own one of their records – that one, the newest one, and only a promotional download version at that, which cracks her up. “That’s refreshing,” she’ll say.

But for most of the 20 minutes, the Indigo Girls‘ Amy Ray and I talked about the word “lesbian” – about our first times to hear it, how we both instantly knew it was bad, and how it sounds so different now.

I went first.

Keith Nowell and I were on our way home after school rapping lines from Parents Just Don’t Understand. Ten yards behind us were these girls. Kelly Somethin’, the 5^th grader. But more importantly, Jessica Jackson, the boss. She was in our class but she was way taller than us. Already developing. Hot. Mean. She put bleach in her water gun.

She kept shouting the word. She wouldn’t stop. It kept buzzing from her mouth. “Lezzzzzzz…” she kept daring me to say it. She got ahead of me and got in my face.

“You don’t even know what it means, do you,” she laughed.

“Yes I do.”

Dear Lord, no I didn’t. The only thing I knew was that ‘lesbian’ sounded dirty as hell. I ran.

Ray laughs.

“What about you,” I ask.

“Oh God,” she says. “I think I was probably in high school, which would be in the late 70s, early 80s. I think someone was making fun of one of our coaches. It was definitely a negative thing, definitely negative. I remember thinking I had to go along with that. I didn’t even know what it meant but I had to go along with it. As the years went by I fell in love with a girl and really didn’t know what it was. I just knew I was in love with a girl. I was in the suburban South. There was no vocabulary for it.”

Now, 20 years after Closer to Fine’s break-out hit harmonies made her one of the most famous ones in music, she has to think about it a little while when I ask her if she’s ever made it through an interview without using the vocabulary.

“Ha! Um… yeah, I have,” she says finally. “There’s been different periods of time where it felt like everything had to refer to the makeup of our audience, assuming it was mostly women when it isn’t actually, and also what our lifestyles are. We weren’t really talking about the music at all for a while there. It doesn’t feel like that happens that much right now for some reason.”

Present interview excluded. I mean, I really do like that new record. I’d wear an Indigo Girls t-shirt proudly, even in Vestavia. The music so deserves to be talked about. But I can’t help myself. I’ve got 20 minutes and all I can think about is what it would feel like to be crowned as hook-savvy poets by music fans of all creeds (even conservatives, like her very proud Dad) yet spend 20 years prostrate to the angle-horny higher mind of music journalism as lesbian folk rock, lesbian folk rock, always lesbian folk rock? To have your career condensed to a punch line? To have your name rain from gossip blog tag clouds as evidence that Ellen Page, who burned with ‘sister fire’ during a ‘big lezzy jam’ of Closer To Fine (“that is such a memory song for me!”) at an Indigo Girls concert in a 2008 SNL sketch, might really be gay? To watch cartoon third graders in the first-season suburbs of old South Park crank up your CD so they can be lesbians?

Ehh… Ray doesn’t know. Or doesn’t care. She lives in the North Georgia mountains for a reason.

“I just sort of do my own thing and play music… I’m not in the pop culture kind of world,” she says. “I think that I don’t totally take all that stuff in because I try to live outside of that place.”

But she does receive visitors.

“The other day a friend of ours said ‘hey, I was watching 30 Rock or whatever and they mentioned you.’ Some cultural references to us – sometimes if makes you feel good, sometimes it feels like it’s derogatory.

“SNL did some spoof on us. I remember sorta being rubbed the wrong way it at first. But then I was like, I should lighten up. They also did these fake public service announcements that made fun of our activism. It was kinda like, ouch, you know? You try to do something good and you get sorta panned for it and distilled down to a bleeding heart lesbian activist and not taken seriously. Sometimes that kinda hurts.”

But it’s nothing, nothing, she says, compared to pain of the old days, the self-loathing of high school. The jokes, when she hears them, or is told about them, she can handle. They’ve changed. Everything has changed. Ray thinks things are closer to fine now than they’ve ever been.

Her thoughts on Birmingham are a perfect example.

“So, the Magic City,” I say, “What’s the first thing that comes to mind? What, to you, is synonymous with Birmingham?”

Man, how will the lesbigo folk rock activist answer… Courtney Cox? Bull Connor? Letters from a jail?

“Music, actually,” she says. “Music and Thai food.”

Photo: courtesy of the artist.

–

The Indigo Girls will be playing the Legacy Credit Union Stage on Friday; they’re scheduled to start at 10 p.m. Of course you can always check out the rest of the City Stages schedule over here and tickets are still available.

If you’re at Naked Art you might as well stop by Silvertron Cafe and take advantage of their weekend specials. You won’t be disappointed.

Tomorrow night you’re going to miss something special if you sit at home during Paint the Town Red.  The American Red Cross presents Birmingham’s first digital art show in downtown’s loft district. The storefronts along 2^nd Avenue North will come alive with digital media creations from 6-11 p.m. Tickets are $12.

If you’re achin’ for a show, checkout the calendar over at bham.fm and remember, unless it storms there’s going to be a kickball game Sunday at Crestwood Park followed by the Rojo after party.  Get the details at @gokickball.

What else do you have to share?

Are you a country music fan? Forget Nashville this weekend, road trip it down to Enterprise, AL for BamaJam. Taylor Swift and just about every other country star is there this weekend. Things kicked off last night but I’m sure the best is coming tonight and tomorrow.

Celebrate at Vulcan’s 105^th Birthday Bash Sunday. Tickets are pretty cheap for this afternoon of family fun.

Also on Sunday, the Alabama Theatre is hosting an open house which includes a tour of the Lyric Theatre.  The tour is free but a donation towards the renovation of the Lyric would be greatly appreciated. The Alabama’s summer film series starts this weekend as well with screenings of Pinocchio and the sing-along version of Mamma Mia .

If you’ve got plans of your own be sure to fill the rest of in…

Birmingham’s (and Alabama’s) only gay and lesbian film festival, Birmingham SHOUT, runs it’s opening film Sissyboy tonight at 8 p.m., but be sure to get there early for the filmmaker reception at 6:30. WorkPlay is host to the two day festival that showcases “…features, documentaries and short films by new and established artists” while giving “attendees the opportunity to view topics of interest to the LGBT communities.” Be sure to check this event out and show some support for Birmingham’s gay and lesbian community.

…to give a quick run down of what else is happening this weekend: The Birmingham Urban League is having the Young Professional’s Throw Back Prom tonight at 8 p.m., tickets are $25 at the door.

Saturday stop by the Open Door Cafe for the 5^th Annual Mudbugs & Music Crawfish Boil benefiting Juvenile arthritis, checkout the details highlighted by NBC 13.

If you haven’t heard Manchester Orchestra, you need to, and to further emphasis that you need to go see them at Bottletree Sunday night. Speaking of Sunday, it doesn’t look like rain so that means kickball, check it out @gokickball.

I’ll be out of town overnight Saturday, but keep an eye on @J_Don, to find out about anything that I might have left out.

I digress… That’s not the only show tonight; if you hurry you may still be able to get one of the extra tickets to the sold out Brandi Carlile show at WorkPlay, which starts at 9, but if not head over to Speakeasy and stay up late for the American Aquarium show.

Find your way to Bottletree tomorrow to see ISIS and Pelican, and support local jazz legend Cleve Eaton at his Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame benefit on Sunday.

What else are you doing this holiday weekend?

Later this month there’s going to be another round of shows to raise money to help with Cleve’s medical expenses related to his oral cancer therapy.

First up, the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame is hosting a benefit at the Carver Theatre on May 24. This evening of extraordinary jazz is headlined by the 18 piece Tommy Stewart Orchestra. Cleve is scheduled to perform, and there’s going to be a jam session open to all musicians. Interestingly enough, this is the first time that the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame has had the opportunity, or cause, to do this type of benefit for a living member. You will not be disappointed by this caliber of performance.

On May 28 head over to Ona’s Music Room for another performance benefiting Cleve with drink specials and appearances by Eric Essix as well as other local jazz talents.

Photo: Jazz Bassist Cleve Eaton (center) and the Alabama All-Stars. bpl/Flickr.

If I’m counting right Birmingham has offered up three consecutive weekends of art events. Sunday’s Arty Party (the BAO’s annual fundraiser) at the B&A Warehouse looks to be an excellent event for local connoisseurs, with over 200 pieces being auctioned throughout the evening. Tickets are $50.

Be sure to head over to Pepper Place tomorrow morning between 7 a.m. and noon for the first day of the farmer’s market. Don’t fret too much if you miss it though, it’ll be going strong every Saturday through October. André’s got some additional information about it on the Newsstand.

As for the rest of what’s going on (Where are the Shows!!!) I’m going to try something different this weekend. Be sure to keep an eye on my twitter profile, @J_Don, and the comments to this post as I’m going to suggest things to do throughout the weekend. Whether it’s what bar to check out Saturday night, which restaurant you should consider for Sunday brunch, a show or two, or even a friendly kickball game, I’ll be filling in the details.

Remember if you’ve read this your obligated to go to Do Dah Day!